Transportation Advisory Board – April 2024

Video Description:
Transportation Advisory Board – April 2024

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Unfortunately, the public invited to be heard segment was cut due to audio issues.

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 0:15
Okay, we’re gonna get ready here in about 30 seconds. Good evening and welcome to April 15. Transportation Advisory Board meeting.

Unknown Speaker 0:24
call to order. We do a roll call.

Unknown Speaker 0:29
Chair laner. Here. BOARD MEMBER Bennett,

Unknown Speaker 0:34
board member wigglin

Unknown Speaker 0:36
Vice Chairman Kay burrows.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
Board Member McInerney Oh, which is boulder Lewisville

Unknown Speaker 0:44
superior up to Netherland and Lyons and a small piece of Longmont including Phil’s house. So

Unknown Speaker 0:53
I am His representative. Thanks for having us tonight. This is great. It’s good to get a good get the full report from our great staff. I was the chair last year. I’m very happy to have turned that over this year. And

Unknown Speaker 1:08
but we are very involved in some of the legislation that’s going on Tabor is our big issue right now. Well, we’ve got several big issues, but that’s that one’s coming up we lose RTD has a one cent sales tax. six tenths of that is the original tax the base tax, we can think of it as mostly the busses. And the next the other for chance is fast tracks which does have some bus but it’s it’s mostly the trains and was based on

Unknown Speaker 1:39
a ballot issue in 1999. That funded some some additional development. There was a waiver of the Tabor cap and the Tabor rules, we got an exemption until we paid off the base bonds which will happen in November. So we’ve looked at what our options are. It puts something around 600 or $630 million of our TVs money about just over half subject to Tabor and looking at what other counties in the area Jefferson County and El Paso that have not debriefed are subject to Tabor. They’re having to refund about seven to 10% of their revenues per year, which means we would be at risk for about 40 to $60 million dollars refunded every year. It’s a big issue. It won’t take long before it affects our ability to fly. We have to start cutting service we might get through we’ve got pretty good solid reserves, as Eric was saying we’ve been I think managing our finances. Well, and our staff has done a great job of doing some refinancing. But we’re looking at that we’re we’re doing some polling, we have some early polls that other people have done that have looked pretty good. There is the Front Range passenger rail district asked a question about on their poll about whether it without raising taxes could RTD keep its money, and about a 60% support response. So we were pleased with that. Within a couple of other tech, recent polls that others have done asking

Unknown Speaker 3:09
approval ratings. One of them in Denver was Denver City Council, Denver mayor,

Unknown Speaker 3:15
probably a police department, I think school board and only RTD in Denver airport got what they called a highly favorable rating. So we’re encouraged but we we have to keep a keep moving in, I think by June the board board and making the decision on that. And you will be hearing more. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:42
With that, we’ll turn it over to Natali harmless from our TDs Planning Division service who told me

Unknown Speaker 3:53
Good evening. Thank you for having us. My name is Natalie handleless. I’m the lead or senior service planner scheduler for what we call North team within the RTD service development division. I have several colleagues with me here tonight. We have Greg Folkman, who’s our service planner, one of Kelsey fine was our service planner to have our Lee who was our project manager for 119. And we have Chris Quinn, who’s also a project manager within the planning department to take it from here. See, sure is it working?

Unknown Speaker 4:25
There we go. That’s nice. Okay. I’m gonna give you a quick update on local regional services, some of the special services and a little bit update on long range planning.

Unknown Speaker 4:37
That includes fixed routes, special services, future plans, services that are mainly within the 119 BRT implementation, update on the new fare structure, and then an update on the 119 BRT engineering implementation.

Unknown Speaker 4:57
Right fixed route updates

Unknown Speaker 5:00
I’m gonna hand it over to Greg, we’re gonna tag team ID here.

Unknown Speaker 5:05
Up there we go. Thanks for having us.

Unknown Speaker 5:09
Here is our expected operating costs year over year from

Unknown Speaker 5:16
22 to 23

Unknown Speaker 5:19
really wasn’t a lot of changes between the two years, we have not been able to add service back, like we’d like to.

Unknown Speaker 5:28
And that just gives you a baseline of what we have done the last couple of years. Next slide, please.

Unknown Speaker 5:37
Here is our average write average boarding, weekdays by route and this is off our fall run boards. And as you can see, we’re using 2019 as a baseline 2020 Everything fell off with the pandemic. And we’ve slowly been coming back.

Unknown Speaker 5:57
It’s still not where we would like it to be.

Unknown Speaker 6:03
It’s still

Unknown Speaker 6:06
and a lot of our adding services back is dependent on on

Unknown Speaker 6:11
ridership, what’s the ridership, what’s driving it.

Unknown Speaker 6:16
Some routes have turned around a little better, but we’re still far below pre pandemic levels.

Unknown Speaker 6:22
Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 6:25
Here again, foul run board, boardings. This is for the regional routes, this would be the bolt and the LD. And

Unknown Speaker 6:36
there again, you can see that we’re starting to come back a little bit we’re still about 500 board people a day, lower than we were in 2019.

Unknown Speaker 6:50
This is the local flaw. The local boardings for the Fall run board. And you can see there again we’re about 500 passengers per day lower than we were in 2019 rebounding slowly

Unknown Speaker 7:06
system over to calcium.

Unknown Speaker 7:10
Either way, either way, you want to do it here, whatever.

Unknown Speaker 7:15
Hi, my name is Kelsey Ryan. And that service planner scheduler, two for RTDs North team and service development. So this is our system optimization plan which was approved by the Board in June sorry July of 2022. And it is a plan to optimize RTD system. The thing about the Longmont aspects of this is these are all tied to the Colorado 119 BRT service. So we have not implemented most of these because they are to be implemented with the Colorado 19 BRT service. The only exceptions to that would be the LBR route, which is kind of a it’s essentially the LD route and the LX two route which would resume service on the LX. We intend to bring back the LX to when resources allow, but it is included in the system optimization plan, so it will happen.

Unknown Speaker 8:09
And I also have the special services update. So special services is our flex ride service here in Longmont. And it’s presented the data is presented in like the same way that the fixed route data is presented starting with 2019 as a baseline, we have our in service hours or maximum number of vehicles. What that annualized hours looks like so that has dropped some from 2019 but has also come up since since 2020. Then we’re the closest that we’ve been to our in service hours from 2019 as of 2023.

Unknown Speaker 8:44
And here we have our average weekday boardings for the long flex ride. So it’s a pretty similar trends what we saw on fixed route where it’s gradually coming back up. It’s not quite where it was before the pandemic but as Greg said, it’s slowly rebounding.

Unknown Speaker 9:04
It’s my turn again,

Unknown Speaker 9:07
for the future plans services. Again, this is mainly related to the long mount local network plan that was implemented in the process with the PL or the preliminary environmental linkage study that was done in 2015 2015. Regarding the 119 BRT, we presented this much last year, it hasn’t changed in the sore intention to implement these routes when we get the opportunity when resources allow.

Unknown Speaker 9:39
And when the ridership allows in at this point, you can see the differences between what the current network is and what the proposed network is. Think the biggest change in that is that there will be service out east to where the Costco and a Walmart is in the hospital. And I’ll go through the presentation but when

Unknown Speaker 10:00
So when we decided on these routes, we again, we included them as part of the system optimization plan. And as well as part of the one item, BRT overall plan. So when one item BRT is to come online, and I think at this point, we’re looking probably may 2027. By time, everything is done all constructions done, first domain station and everything is in place, then we would look to start implementing some of these routes, again, depending on what is then warranted at that time, what makes sense. So the evaluation overall for this local network. And this feeder services, we call it include an external consultant evaluation, we had somebody come in and take a look. So we had a third party neutral source. We coordinated heavily with the city of staff,

Unknown Speaker 10:48
the made sure that it was included in the BRT, like I said, report so that when BRT comes online, it would be kind of the Kickstart to allow for the implementation of this network. And we will look to phase it. And when we say phase, we would kind of evaluate which ones which these changes would make the most sense, at the time of the opening of the BRT might be the routing out to east, I think that is the one that is pretty much on everybody’s Top list to be implemented as there is a desire and need out in that area. But we would also look at some other potential adjustments because we created this network plan in 2020. And things have obviously changed. So same as we do with the SOP. It’s kind of a guide, that tells us here, here’s what we

Unknown Speaker 11:43
thought would make sense at the time that the SOP was was decided on in 2022. But we’ve already noticed that certain patterns, travel patterns and things and demographics and land use and development is changing. So as we move forward, there could be some additional changes to routing or service levels as a response stop locations. This is just it’s same thing as we would do with any other route implementation, make sure that what we implement actually makes sense versus Oh, no, this is the line that we had put on a map and a report.

Unknown Speaker 12:16
This is just I know, it’s a lot of numbers. And it’s small, but it just gives you an idea as to what the service level change would be. Not going to go into detail, you can look at it, but the overall can see that the service hours would be increased with this local network plan.

Unknown Speaker 12:33
And with that, I’m going to hand it over to Chris, for the first study.

Unknown Speaker 12:47
Okay, thank you. Good evening.

Unknown Speaker 12:51
Just wanted to give you a quick overview on where we are with a fair study that we probably presented to you this time last year when we were in our draft phase, the Board of Directors did approve that last summer, our recommendations, and so I’ll real quickly go through some of the highlights of those. When we were going through the study, the main goals were to achieve equity, affordability, simplicity, and I think we did a pretty good job with it. Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 13:20
This table shows you the new fare structure. And just I won’t go through all of the categories. But just a couple of things to take note of one of the things that the new structure achieves is the elimination of the of the fare zone, so to speak. So we used to have the regional and the local fairs. Now we just have what we’re calling a standard fare. So three hour past $2.75. So that means basically somebody could get on an LD bus in Longmont take that down to say Union Station, and then go as far as lone tree in the south end of the metro area for $2.75. Monthly Pass reduced to $88. That also includes airport travel.

Unknown Speaker 14:05
So pretty significant savings over what those passes used to be. Next slide please. And then just to kind of go over a little timeline of when things have happened. So the overall overall the new structure went into effect the first of this last year. And it’s noted, this lowered fares for all customers and we did simplify the pricing structure by eliminating the fare zones and boundaries. We’ve also rewarded frequent customers with a very, very low cost Monthly Pass, which again would be valid to any destination within the district. Another highlight of the program with the new structure is we have what is known as the live program. That’s a discount for low income individuals. And it used to be if you were eligible for the live discount, you still had to pay 60% of the fair that’s we

Unknown Speaker 15:00
reduce that to if you are eligible, you’d pay 50% of the fair now. And the threshold for eligibility was increased fairly dramatically from 185% of the federal poverty level. That went up to 250% of the federal poverty level.

Unknown Speaker 15:18
That program was a little bit delayed in going into effect, partly because in order to in order to determine eligibility, we use the Colorado peak system. That’s the statewide benefit system. And it took a while for the programming of that to get finalized, it actually came on board faster than we thought. So that went into effect roughly March 1, another

Unknown Speaker 15:41
component of the new structure, the Eagle Pass us, Eagle Pass the neighborhood Eagle Pass as well. We simplified that program as well. We had a lot of, you know, we were going out to the public. We heard from employers a lot of concerns that the process was a little bit complicated. The pricing was very variable between years. So we’ve established a two year contract system simplifies, simplified the pricing matrix, and also lowered the contract minimums so that more smaller businesses can participate in the program. One of the most popular elements of the new program is the zero fare for youth pilot program that started September 1 of last year.

Unknown Speaker 16:26
It is at this point, a pilot project. So that will expire at

Unknown Speaker 16:32
the end of August of this year. However, we are hoping to find grant funding, possibly from the state to keep that program alive. And as I noted, it’s been very popular. Lastly, we have the new structure set aside $1 million

Unknown Speaker 16:50
for a Transit Assistance Grant Program. And that was to provide fare media to nonprofit social service organizations, public agencies that may have clients with immediate needs. So with the with the expectation that if somebody is lucky enough to have a low income individual, eventually they can get on to the live discount system. But it takes a while for those applications to be processed. So for organizations that have clients with immediate needs, such as maybe a domestic abuse, shelter, homeless shelters,

Unknown Speaker 17:28
they can apply for fun, or they can apply for tickets for

Unknown Speaker 17:33
to be awarded, which they can distribute to their clients. We opened the program in March, we have over 200 agencies and organizations applying. We awarded 186 agencies, and those were announced on April 4, so clearly a lot of interest in that program. And I think yeah, that’s

Unknown Speaker 18:01
and for the first study. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 18:07
Hi, my name is Ali masa, he I’m the project manager for the Colorado 119 BRT project.

Unknown Speaker 18:14
Back in 2013 2014 timeframe, we had the Northwest Area mobility study that identified a bunch of corridors in the counties in this area to be identified for transit improvements. And the one that the that was including Colorado, 287, Colorado, seven 119, and others, and the first one that got funded based on the planning and was actually color the 119. And then an ensuing planning and environmental mineral linkages study

Unknown Speaker 18:54
was spearheaded by RTD and its stakeholders that got finalized in 2019.

Unknown Speaker 19:03
The goals are outlined, as you see on the slide, basically to have a more robust transit system serving the communities of Longmont and Boulder, and all the communities in between,

Unknown Speaker 19:19
with the

Unknown Speaker 19:21
focus on first and last mile connectivity,

Unknown Speaker 19:25
optimizing the transit services. So before pandemic we had Jay and bolt running this

Unknown Speaker 19:34
route.

Unknown Speaker 19:36
J stopped after a pandemic. And we still have bolt, but the bus rapid transit and it’s what its nature is to be much more reliable and much faster than typical bus service, which is what we intend to do here.

Unknown Speaker 19:58
Sorry about that.

Unknown Speaker 20:01
Did I skip one? No. So this is the current timeline that not only had

Unknown Speaker 20:08
already talked about, this is the latest

Unknown Speaker 20:13
timeline we have developed.

Unknown Speaker 20:17
As you see, by the time everything is said and done, we’re talking about q1 of 2027, that the full blown BRT service will be in place.

Unknown Speaker 20:30
Our partners are listed, that’s alright, you could see it, but

Unknown Speaker 20:36
it’s like to give ourselves a little bit of a little

Unknown Speaker 20:40
one, we’re gonna give ourselves one quarter to make sure that everything is done.

Unknown Speaker 20:45
Right, the punch lists.

Unknown Speaker 20:49
So

Unknown Speaker 20:51
the diagonal piece of the project, the BRT project, as you see,

Unknown Speaker 20:57
or the trunk is basically between Foothills Parkway to the south, all the way to hoever Street to the north. And as you see, if you look at the legends, you’ll see where we’re going to have what we are calling Q bypass lanes, we’ll get a little bit more into it later, where the BRT

Unknown Speaker 21:19
stations are along with to park and rides at nyuad Road and 63rd. And then

Unknown Speaker 21:29
we will talk about, it’s not on this slide, but we’ll have another parking ride up in north Longmont.

Unknown Speaker 21:37
You’ll see the improvements are listed to the to the in the slide, the transit stations, parking rides, bike lockers, and one of the things that CDOT has undertaken is

Unknown Speaker 21:51
where it’s a signal timing adjustments. It’s part of a, an adaptive signal system that CDOT region four has already implemented and it’s already working, why we’re going to be really relying on that on the transit movement as well. Instead of having typical am pm and off peak lands, it plays with the cycle length and the splits all day long. And it’s traffic based on live traffic, so it adjusts all your timings. So that is going to really help us out to that’s why I just wanted to mention that real quick.

Unknown Speaker 22:31
This is another

Unknown Speaker 22:34
way of looking at what we had in the previous slide. That parking right I was talking about is way on top of the graphic, north of Highway 66 And II stuff 287.

Unknown Speaker 22:45
That’s the parking ride that we’re going to be building from scratch and the city is helping us has been helping us tremendously to get that

Unknown Speaker 22:57
going because it’s currently owned by a developer but they’re supposed to give us a full four acre lot to build a park and ride the future Parker right there.

Unknown Speaker 23:08
You will also see where those Q bypass lanes are going to be where the parking rides are. Where Colorado 50 suwo. We have stops basically stations but no parking right. And basically all the features that we talked about. We also need to mention that the PL when it was finalized, we were going to implement manage lanes similar to us 36. But a further full blown traffic study

Unknown Speaker 23:40
deemed infeasible if you will, because we realize that people are not going to be paying to get in the Manage lanes only to get stopped at the traffic’s signals.

Unknown Speaker 23:52
Instead, we are going with the cue bypass lanes which we’re going to have a slide on.

Unknown Speaker 23:59
We don’t have we don’t have the

Unknown Speaker 24:03
showing, okay, how do we we have to find a way to share it

Unknown Speaker 24:08
with a team. It actually has a little

Unknown Speaker 24:11
animation in there too as how the bus pulls into the exclusive bus lane, proceeds through the intersection does boarding alighting and then it gets a cue job signal proceeds through the intersection and eventually gets back into the general purposely.

Unknown Speaker 24:30
We’re very sorry about the technical difficulty. You see the little arrow is supposed to play it but it’s not doing it.

Unknown Speaker 24:38
But anyway, because so

Unknown Speaker 24:48
basically,

Unknown Speaker 24:51
the parking Ride facility that we were talking about the cross street is Park Ridge, which is north of Colorado 66 at 287.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
And then we are going to have the BRT project gets past a safety and mobility project, which is the diagonal, but we’re going to make improvements in both Longmont and

Unknown Speaker 25:17
just mark, this is yours just in general BRT update. Basically, everybody knows this about BRT, or she is in here in general for the presentation.

Unknown Speaker 25:26
And

Unknown Speaker 25:28
I can click update. So just to make sure that everybody understands, it’s closer. So make sure that everybody understands. So when we say we have a blue and orange pattern, we are representing the blue as what’s currently the bolt going to be minorly adjusted within Longmont and potentially a little bit in Boulder as well. And the orange pattern is taking the resources from what used to be the J and changing the pattern slightly with in Longmont, and then within boulder as well. We’re having conversations with the City of Boulder right now there’s a study going on. Specifically regarding the orange pattern within boulder.

Unknown Speaker 26:10
There has been a desire to serve cu main campus and not just East Campus, CU is moving forward slowly to have a lot of their classes on East Campus and activity on East Campus. But it is not quite lining up with our timeline of putting this service into place. So we’re kind of redirecting, like I said earlier, we make those adjustments as we come along. And we’re redirecting and looking at some other potential routing options, which would maximize the service efficiencies to see you with in Boulder. So these are the dotted lines on the map. As we’re moving forward, hopefully, by maybe by end of April, within May, we should know what the pattern will look like within boulder.

Unknown Speaker 27:00
Then,

Unknown Speaker 27:02
in general, I think it’s just gives you the same information. We have this presentation for the public as well. So we operate two routes, you have the orange and the blue line, you have the local service schedules within Boulder and Longmont, which will optimize to work with the BRT service that is that feeder network, the adjustments of the local routes. And then we also coordinating with the city Boulder, like I said, to evaluate that orange pattern.

Unknown Speaker 27:27
Where I’ve been having monthly meetings with local communities and the partners along the corridor. We’re also engaging with CDOT on their quarterly PMT, the project management team meetings, and we’re doing an outgoing ongoing outreach to the public incorporated with CDOT along the corridor to coordinate where we are with the project as we move forward. It makes much more sense for us to do together as CDOT as the main portion and then we manage portions within Longmont and Boulder. And that’s really all we have. So we have questions.

Unknown Speaker 28:04
Happy to answer as best as we can.

Unknown Speaker 28:08
Yeah, I guess we can start down with board member Bennett if you want to start.

Unknown Speaker 28:18
Hello. Oh, yes. So thank you so much. This has been very insightful. And this is exactly why I have joined the transportation advisory board is to increase public transportation right now for Longmont residents. And

Unknown Speaker 28:33
you answered a lot of my questions, one, that I have two that are lingering. I am curious as to what has prevented the LX from being re implemented, and if

Unknown Speaker 28:46
you foresee it being implemented before 2027. And then my second question is, when looking at the numbers of ridership between 2019 and 2023. Just for an example with bolt, having a ridership in 2019 of 1439 versus the president of 918. I was wondering how much do you consider the fact that bolt also doesn’t have any express routes doesn’t connect to our Range Community College doesn’t connect to IBM anymore? And how much you factor that into the current ridership displacement? Sure, for the LX it is included in the system optimization plan as Kelsey mentioned. So it is to be reimplemented. It’s a matter of physical resources, operators shortage. And Eric Anlin. You might have the numbers much more closely than I do, but I believe it’s 150 full time and about 75 part timers that we’re still short. That’s significant. It’s like 13 to 20% of our operators that were missing in order to fully implement all that is in the system optimization plan. We also have to keep in mind the equity within the system.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
So if we were to implement the LX, it’s a corridor that provides a service to certain amount of customers passengers within that area. And if we implement that service within North team, then we also have to look to the other areas of the districts which we have a West team and East team and a rail team. And we have to see that we equitably can apply the same resources. So it makes it a bit tough when you’re short operators, where if we were to implement the LX belief, when we had it operating before, the pandemic, we had at least eight or 10 operators on that route. Does it sounds like a lot because it was only am and pm, but because of the length of the trip that they’re called tripperz. And the way the the the service would work out is that you’d have literally one operator to run a trip down and back. And then you’d have to have another operator for the keep the frequency to have that next trip, because the trip back wouldn’t get back back north in time to operate another trip south within the schedule. So you end up with quite a few operators

Unknown Speaker 31:19
looking to implement the LX and will trigger a title six review within the district. And it would trigger more than just say one or two or three operators that we would need if we were to operate one or two tripperz in the morning in the afternoon, because we would also have to look to our other teams. And they would then also require additional operators. So it’s a little bit tricky to make it all work right now. But we’re fully intending to bring the ALEKS likes back it was doing quite well, before the pandemic, we were actually looking to add service to it at that time. You know, it’s used by students a lot.

Unknown Speaker 32:00
So it’s definitely it’s one of kind of our list as to what routes we would like to see implemented sooner than later. And so when we get the chance for Norris team to implement, that is one of our top three routes to look at.

Unknown Speaker 32:15
Now for the numbers for the ridership, for the bolt,

Unknown Speaker 32:19
the locations you mentioned, actually did not draw a lot of ridership was minimal. And that’s why we we removed the route from those locations, as we were evaluating the BRT. Because it would have been

Unknown Speaker 32:35
a deviation. So to say, where you have more people on the bus that want to bypass then you would have people board at this, the stop these locations. So IBM was out of the way.

Unknown Speaker 32:49
From from

Unknown Speaker 32:51
is kind of out of the way you have to get off the road. And so yes, keeping that in mind, but those numbers would not make up for bold ridership. Much than what we see now, there were

Unknown Speaker 33:06
a

Unknown Speaker 33:08
think in two or three, bold two trips that we were operating that were also coming from long on down foothills by a boulder junction, and then into downtown boulder versus coming down 28th Street. So it was more the Express Route. We mentioned. We did see some ridership on that route. But also those numbers were not that significant that we will say, Oh, if we had that pattern at this time, then that ridership in general for the bolt would show, you know 100 or 200 people more.

Unknown Speaker 33:39
Does that answer your question? It does. Thank you. Also, I am one more that I’m curious about. I know that RTD has recently hired a lot of security officers. And I was wondering if that if there have been any in the north or if that is a Denver based operation?

Unknown Speaker 33:58
I can comment briefly on that. Yeah, thank you for the question. So actually, a lot of what we’ve done is we’ve increased the actual the police force, and the number of sworn officers. So historically, RTD had a large presence of contracted security providers and what we’ve moved to now we actually hired a new chief of police

Unknown Speaker 34:18
chief, Dr. Joel Fitzgerald, who joined us, he has restructured the force and increase the size of the force. It’s actually as we’re struggling with workforce shortages for a number of reasons that we can happily touch on that are unfortunately holding a lot of our service back in 2023. One of the only positions we fully staffed that was budgeted it was actually the number of police officers and we increase that number 2024. That is system wide. And that is happening. It is our police. Our Chief of Police is reorganizing into precincts that are more akin to the way other

Unknown Speaker 34:54
other police forces would work so that folks can be you know, in their precinct.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
To understand their areas very well get to know all of the people on the system. And we are in the midst of rethinking that system and redesigning that to increase response rate. Interestingly, one of our big challenges on the workforce side of things is actually retention. We’re doing great right now, with recruitment of bus operators and train operators, retention is really challenging. Because it is a difficult operating environment, we’ve had a number of assaults, including assaults that have happened during the probationary period, that is before an operator actually is working full time with us, and it gets out of their period after getting their CDL. If you have an assault early like that, it generally results in, you know, you don’t retain the workforce. So the two actually go hand in hand. And this is why this is sort of an ongoing process. So happy to take it, there’s any follow up, but it’s a long winded way of saying yes, it’s system wide, there is some up here, some of it is also needs based based on where we have the highest level of criminal activity. Great. That’s all I have for now. And I look forward to emailing for any further questions. I’ll have down the road. Thank you. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 36:09
Well, I guess it’s my turn now. Thank you for the great presentation. It was informative.

Unknown Speaker 36:17
You know, I wrote down some simple questions, just to kind of

Unknown Speaker 36:22
tie in with board member Bennett,

Unknown Speaker 36:26
about the

Unknown Speaker 36:28
security need of

Unknown Speaker 36:31
you know that this is a theory view. But why what why do you think we came to this? You know, besides obviously, a high level of crime, but why? Why why kind of after COVID, as this kind of spurred on?

Unknown Speaker 36:47
Two big questions, big societal questions. So certainly, you know, we at RTD, operate trains, and buses, our job is to get people to and fro. And there’s been an increase of, you know, activity of drug use, there’s been an increase of criminal activity. We’ve seen this, you know, we’re certainly not the only agency that’s experienced this. But we’re really, as our general manager, and CEO likes to say, and I like this phrase, we’re really interwoven into the fabric of society. So you know, everywhere you go, and there’s a stop. And so our operators, our customers, are consistently faced with, you know, with these issues. So, what we identified is we had a real need to have more trained officers, and that also includes mental health clinicians. So you know, just as society has seen an increase, I mean, certainly one that catches a lot of media attention is fentanyl use. And with the increase of fentanyl and the increase of fentanyl use naturally, given that we’re in a woven into the fabric of society that makes its way onto the bus that makes its way onto the train that makes its way into our facilities. And, you know, here we’ve announced this great thing with zero fare for youth. So we’re going out there telling folks, you know, this is a great family activity. So you can save money going to and fro. And also, you know, the youth of the region can gain their own access, actually, Denver Public Schools, testified at the SB 32 hearing, which is seeking funding to maintain zero fare for youth that they saw an improvement in truancy rates, well, then simultaneously, if we’re having drug use, get onto the system, which we’ve just seen more of society wide, it becomes a real problem for our customers. And we hear that feedback. And that’s why we needed to move to having folks who are trained to handle those situations, trained to de escalate those situations, and have mental clinicians, mental health clinicians available as well. Not only is that so that the officers can actually respond directly. Those officers now that they’re on our staff are also creating and providing de escalation training to our operators as well to help keep them safe. Help keep, you know, any number of folks safe out there. So I can’t really answer your question about the broader society increase. We’ve just seen the same increase, everybody does. And if it happens, you know, anywhere in society, it hits transit.

Unknown Speaker 39:16
Alright, well, then thank you. You know, it’s just always concerning when we just kind of respond with force, with great societal issues. And just to clarify, so we that is in our intent is to have the right mix. The key with

Unknown Speaker 39:34
mental health is trained de escalation tactics, all those in Denver stars program, if you’re familiar with that, and that’s actually the kind of we’ve actually done a partnership there. And I will just put out the call to action that we are hoping that more communities create programs like that, because we are very anxious to partner with those types of organizations, like we’ve done with Denver stars in downtown Denver.

Unknown Speaker 39:57
Okay, and then, just because you did mention the zero

Unknown Speaker 40:00
fare for youth pilot, do we have any data of how much that’s increase of how much youth is using this service? Because I think, you know, a bus is an opportunity for independence, especially if there’s access to it. And, and in our today’s society where we’re experiencing kind of, you know, they always say we’re becoming the loneliest generation. Well, the it’s important to start with the youth. Get them out. So where, you know, what’s the data? So I heard, you know, it’s great St Martin’s gonna testify for it. But what’s Do we have any numbers? Yeah, I don’t have any numbers. At this time, what I will say no, and perhaps one of a member of our team may have numbers, if not, we can follow up with you with what we might have. What we are doing, though, is we made the decision to do a year long, full pilot, one of the challenges that often comes from running pilot programs in transit is you end up having very limited data over the course of a couple of months. And you don’t know how much you’re dealing with seasonality, you don’t know how much you’re still dealing with, you know, post COVID recovery or shifts and patterns. That was one of our challenges. When we examined zero fare for better air data, we, you know, we’ve run this zero fare in the summer months, and zero and low ozone. But you know, there’s still ridership that’s emerging back after COVID. And also, we deal with some seasonality. So it’s sometimes hard to parse out that data, we actually got a special clearance with the FTA. To do a full year long pilot, you can’t always do a pilot on something like this. So that we could get a full year’s worth. So I think the best data that we’re going to have is going to be in September of this year, because we’ll have that full year. But I’m not aware of any data we have right now. And if any member of our team might know, we really don’t have any specific numbers at this point.

Unknown Speaker 41:48
But we are watching the ridership on the routes. And so when we look at trip level ridership. So there is a little bit of an increase on certain routes, with schools. But it is not anything where we would say oh, wow, there’s something really happening here. We had done an evaluation before COVID, because this idea came up to have this free fair for us. And in that evaluation, it was decided that we would not have any negative impact or would require any additional services for additional youth riders.

Unknown Speaker 42:33
Now as we’re looking past COVID, and service levels are down some, but ridership is also down in general. Again, we’re not seeing anything that says oh, you need to increase service or you’re having pass ups or stand ups or stand button, it’s just causing people to not have a seat on the bus for a longer period of times. But we have seen a slight uptick on some of the school trips there. When I say school trip or stare for North team, we have everything scheduled within the regular schedules in order to preserve resources, instead of having extra operators out operating specific trips for schools in the am and pm. So on those trips that we have scheduled to match bell times as best as possible. There is a slight uptake. But it’s not something that I’d say, Oh,

Unknown Speaker 43:22
I think it’s a great program just to encourage independence for our youth. Yeah, absolutely. The just to pivot a little bit is the lack of operators related to budget, or is it just lack of people applying what’s we have people applying, we had 50 people applied to set this last job fair, it’s a matter of how many stick around depending on what the situation is. And like director Davidson mentioned, there’s some that have had assaults within their six month period to the probation. And some of the side this is not for me, it is rough when you come on it’s union. So you’re at the bottom of the list when you start out and when everybody has to vote for what they’re going to operate. And those who come on last hop get to work last. So whatever’s left over, and that could be work pieces that are what we call splits, for instance, that start very early in the morning, and then have a break in the mid day and they end fairly late at night to work operators can be out there most 1213 hours. That’s that’s a workday. So if you have new people come in, and it’s rough for family life, to have that type of situation. So that that is a challenge, but that’s challenged in the industry in general. So people will get their six months probation, I get the CDL and then they’ll go and look at UPS or Amazon or some of these other places. Yeah, well, if I may ask, what’s the kind of starting wage for an operator 2020 to

Unknown Speaker 44:50
26 an hour 2599 I think and there’s $4,000 signing bonus and

Unknown Speaker 45:01
Double time for overtime. So there’s a big article in the paper yesterday, I think it’s probably belong in the long matte paper. I know it was in Boulder and Denver that talked about, you know, if your work, people can make a good wage, they just this is Natalie was saying their their things. And another thing that affects is we have to follow the, of course, the federal drug laws and

Unknown Speaker 45:24
marijuana being legalized, there are a lot of people who can’t do these jobs.

Unknown Speaker 45:32
Okay, well, then thank you that that is, you know, according to MIT living wage calculator that is just below a living wage for one adult for Boulder County. So just just something to keep in mind and then obviously include to two adults and more children. That number needs to be even greater.

Unknown Speaker 45:51
But I was just curious.

Unknown Speaker 45:53
And then also kind of since COVID.

Unknown Speaker 45:57
How many routes? Would you say? Maybe this is long route but have increased in frequency and have? And then therefore, have we seen also an increase in ridership?

Unknown Speaker 46:08
I’d have to see, I have to look because I have to look at the other teams as well. It’s not just for North team. We’ve had a couple of routes increase in frequency. But we can go get we can look and get you the list if you’d like. I’m just curious, because I always kind of see public transit as expanded access also means expanded use. Right? Yeah. So we’ve had I think, on the 19, and on the 849 49 is coming up. Yeah. So something that up in this area, have to say for Boulder, there hasn’t been much of an increase or for Longmont, either the ridership is and then don’t Don’t worry, fellow board members last question.

Unknown Speaker 46:51
Parking rides,

Unknown Speaker 46:53
you know, I know what they are, you know, you park your car, and then you go ride a bus?

Unknown Speaker 47:00
Is there ever thought of you know, a the state is looking at more Tod districts? Because a that brings in more revenue?

Unknown Speaker 47:09
So is there a thought of instead of creating a massive parking lot, let’s create housing mixed use development? Okay, yeah, we actually have a department of we have a group of people within our systems planning department that is Tod oriented. They look at any and all the opportunities that we have, when we have these big lots is your opportunity to work with a developer to make it more efficient. Okay. And then I would just like to bring up a if you know, the organization, urban three,

Unknown Speaker 47:38
that, you know, it’s dated 2016, they did a study between Austin and Charlotte. Austin has three times the infrastructure. But their value per acre is less than half of Charlotte, part of the Charlotte has expanded service all of it until I looked up today, they actually go to 2am. Now instead of 1am, compared to 2016. So it’s just, you know, providing that access also builds that wealth, and probably more revenue for RTD and neighboring communities. So yeah, that is something we need to somehow incentivize pre COVID, we did have longer service bands. But it just hasn’t at this point, the ridership is just not there that right to keep these trips. And we know there are people out there that really depend on it. And it makes it really tough. It’s heartbreaking for us to then we look at this, we know there are people out there that need to get to jobs and work these these late night shifts and the cleaning jobs and so forth. And yet for us to say, well, we need to run these operations until two o’clock at night and day in and day out when you only have 123 people is not efficient. We have to watch reuse the taxpayers money. So it’s whether the hard thing is then for a developer or building a Tod why why would I build one if there’s no service? So it’s if we allow Tod, then it isn’t our parking. Right. So so there would be service? It’s just at this point. Yes. Yeah. Lower Level, lower level. So yes, we kind of the story is, you know, why? Why would someone live up here in Longmont, when they can’t really reliably get to Denver? You know, if they work in Denver,

Unknown Speaker 49:25
you know, so, so that’s part of the development process, too. It’s, you know, what I’m asking is what comes first the chicken or the egg?

Unknown Speaker 49:36
Yeah, and that is the challenge. You know, and I would second on board member Bennett’s comments about the LX you know, I used to write it as well.

Unknown Speaker 49:47
Also, Longmont is becoming the largest city in Boulder County, and we don’t have a reliable way to get to Denver, which is disappointing. So, so I’m excited to see Yeah, I’m excited.

Unknown Speaker 50:00
See the expansion?

Unknown Speaker 50:02
Again, I just hope the state and you guys are looking at how to actually build wealth within those COD’s and I believe is expanding service.

Unknown Speaker 50:13
Thank you. Appreciate that.

Unknown Speaker 50:20
Hi, thanks for the presentation this, I’m in my first year of tap. So this is the first time I’m hearing all this information. So I’m a transit user as much as I can. But

Unknown Speaker 50:31
so I have had experience over the 12 years I’ve been here in Colorado, I used to use the flex to go up to CSU and my husband used to get the LX down to Denver every day. Now he catches a bolt, which is very infrequent. So just kind of give you some background on where I’m coming from. So I’m just wondering, because you, you’ve commented a lot of times about the lower ridership. And I’m wondering if you’ve done any studies or have any insight on why there’s less ridership now, is it because of the reduced service is it because there’s not more remote workers than there are everyday commuters, which was kind of more than norm before the pandemic, right? It’s depends on the area within RTD. So we have certain areas where ridership is up, and there’s quite a bit of usage or actually has multiple routes where ridership is pretty much back up to what it was and where we need to look and see how we can add service again, in this area, there used to be a lot considering for the for the region, a lot of commuter ridership, and they have a heavier load of commuter ridership. And that obviously is quite down since COVID. And that has had a huge impact on the routes, the local routes, as well as the regional routes. And that’s what we’re struggling with when we don’t have the ridership to see how can we bring these routes back? How can we implement the service and not just have empty buses running around?

Unknown Speaker 51:59
Like I said, in Boulder, for instance, none of the local routes, the ridership is back up to a point and you would think it’s local, right? People are going to move around within boulder under these local routes. While people are not riding with in Boulder, they’re having to come in from all over the place regionally. And they’re coming from places where RTD transit in general cannot support that. We can’t just once outside the district is a challenge, obviously. But people have to live in Frederick and in Erie and in other places that are just so far out, that in order to afford to live somewhere and then working, for instance, in Boulder even come into Longmont

Unknown Speaker 52:40
makes it really tough to provide transit networks that could sustain. So some solution might be more of a flex ride shuttle type service in certain areas, and we have those but even if flex rates, the ridership is really low, we’ve had to eliminate some of the flex rights. And we had to kind of lower the standard as to say, Okay, what is the number of writers that we would expect per hour used to be, you know, four or five. Now we’re saying, Well, if we get to that’s great. But it’s in general, again, has to do with commuters, but then the layout, the lay of the land. So the way this area has developed and

Unknown Speaker 53:21
it’s sprawl, and sprawl cannot be served very well, because it’s low density cannot be served very well with transit. And it’s a huge challenge for the region as a whole.

Unknown Speaker 53:33
Okay, so thank you.

Unknown Speaker 53:37
So kind of along those same lines, as do you recognize that we now have less commuters? Have you? Are you thinking about the way that you as you kind of ramp up routes moving forward, not focusing on just providing commuter routes, but make making your service more of an all day service that people who are using a service, not that those traditionally commuter times would be able to use ice, because that’s me, I don’t use those. And I know many people who are also like me, who maybe use it during the day when it’s not traditional commute times. And so again, depending on the area within the region, it varies for Longmont, it actually has been for a long time I’ve been doing this not North team, I’m now on 14 years.

Unknown Speaker 54:20
But I’ve been doing this for three decades now. But for Longmont, it pretty much has always been that flex right is really what would subvert serve the community best because people are trying to get from everywhere to everywhere. And we’ve had fixed route service and we have changed fixed route service. I think roughly every seven years we make adjustment a change to fix route in order to try to address how can we get people best around. But that’s not what the majority of people really need because of the way the city is laid out. So there is not a hub or major destination like cu for instance, or major business like

Unknown Speaker 54:57
I have to constantly make some bold

Unknown Speaker 55:00
But

Unknown Speaker 55:01
some some larger businesses that would draw a certain ridership.

Unknown Speaker 55:08
So, for for long lunch, looking at the service that I look at what the routes are doing, the local routes are doing, and they’re doing actually really well considering the situation that we’re in coming out of COVID and the recovery, because I can look at other places within the district and say, You know what, it’s just not happening there. So Longmont actually has bounced back quite a bit. And flex right here is doing quite well also. So it’s a matter of resources in this area, then rather than Okay, is it really the ridership where

Unknown Speaker 55:43
we know there is a certain demand, there’s certain needs and specific demographic wise, that could be addressed if we could increase service.

Unknown Speaker 55:56
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 55:58
So, you just mentioned local service, I’ll ask your question about local service.

Unknown Speaker 56:03
Is there a reason why Lamont has a significantly less number of service for local services and compared to similar municipalities like Boulder, for example, has a lot more local roots than Longmont and we actually have a very similar number of people who live here in Longmont, but we just have so many fewer routes and the timing of those routes as well. Yeah, so the routes where the routes are operating is in the denser, most densest areas, within Longmont, when you start looking on the outer site, then we’re starting to talk sprawl. And the density does not support it. It’s also demographics where you have certain areas, people are more car centric. It’s more of a suburban environment. And so,

Unknown Speaker 56:48
you know, if we had fixed route service out there, it probably would not sustain. That’s why flex right, is there so that people can use the flex right to get from all places within longwan to all places?

Unknown Speaker 57:02
It okay. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 57:05
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 57:07
It’s frustrating for us. And we have to have to look at well, students, we do have students, but students have have a different travel pattern. And it’s even within the schools, we just don’t seem to see the right ridership with the local system. But yes, for CEOs, right. That’s my I mentioned the LX, we’re aware that we know that there, there are students who need to get to Boulder to Denver to get to university. So the LX is definitely at the top of the list. But it I have to say it’s frustrating for us, when we look at this when we look at development, and there has been a lot of development. And it is all in a sprawl, low density situation. Rather, I come from Germany.

Unknown Speaker 57:53
I don’t want to get on my soapbox. But I look at this and it was just gonna, you know, come on, can we get this right. But it makes it extremely hard for us to provide service that is efficient and effective, because that we have to watch our tax dollars when we implement them. So we don’t want to have buses run around empty. But with a local feeder network, for instance, for the BRT to look at, okay, have a route now go out to the Walmart area and Costco in the hospital, because we know development has occurred there and the type of development that has occurred there. And the businesses that are there are places that people do want to go to and from. So it’s definitely something that makes sense. And that we would want to implement. Get we have the resources, this is where the chicken before the egg thing where you have, okay, can we do we have enough resources to operate it at half our service, which would make sense if you have

Unknown Speaker 58:52
have a trip length that is shorter than the headway the frequency of the route, it becomes inconvenient for people to to use a route. So if my trip is 20 minutes, but my headway is 30 minutes, I’m going to think about it. Am I going to drive? Or am I going to use the bus? If the headway is 60 minutes, we’ll probably out and say no. Right? And my trip is only 20 minutes I’m going to drive. So it’s those kind of things within the community. How far are people going, where are they going? And what are the headway steps that we can afford and provide?

Unknown Speaker 59:29
If you provide too much, then you end up with running empty buses again.

Unknown Speaker 59:35
So it’s a fine line. Fine tuning.

Unknown Speaker 59:39
Okay. Thank you. I’m

Unknown Speaker 59:43
so sorry. I know many people that I live around. They always ask about when are we going to be having access to get to the airport? Because my mom has no really good transit way of getting to the airport currently like most the city south of us, and

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Boulder County or have connection in some way to get to the airport. But to get from Longmont, it takes two and a half hours to get to the airport using transit. And that’s just not any reasonable time that most people would do so

Unknown Speaker 1:00:13
well, again, it goes back to what is the overall demand. So Longmont in general, if there was a driving hub that would create that ridership. So Boulder, it see you, it creates a lot of the ridership on the A B, the A B itself actually has a lot of ridership that happens as of McCaslin, and flatiron and substations and not so much within Boulder, depending on time of year. So long one has the same challenge. There actually is not that much of a demand that would allow us to implement a fixed route.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:48
Every all day, if you do a route to the if we have to do seven days a week. And so the what is the demand, how much ridership Can we can we get and in all of the evaluations we’ve done,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:00
it just doesn’t add up to be enough to warrant that type of fixed route service. You couldn’t operate it, it wouldn’t make sense to have something that operates every two or three hours just to have a couple of trips when you’re flying and you get and you get back, you want to be able to get buses going to be a half hour service, you got to be able to get off the plane get over there and know that there is a bus you don’t want to sit at the airport another hour waiting for the bus. So it’s the demand within Longmont itself. That doesn’t drive it is the same, I have to hate to say you have to Boulder again, but it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:01:35
it is within Boulder, it’s the same there actually is not that much demand within boulder per se. It comes from along the corridor where people then drive to these parking rides from three 510 15 miles away.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:49
So since that AB route is so popular, what about if you connected Lamont to the AB route so that you could still use that same route that’s been useful. That’s the thought the board in our life? Well, we don’t underline it per se to it’s not the bolt actually continuing as an AB anymore, and we have separated it out. Because of the impact that’s going to happen with the construction of 119, it’s going to have impacts to the on time performance operations for the route. And that would impact then the Route A B if it was connected. So the route bolt sets by itself and the AP stands by itself. But we make sure as best as possible that a downtown boulder station, we allow for what we call meats so that people can get from the bolt easily to the AP, we actually have them scheduled gates close together. So that it’s an easy transfer. Yeah, unfortunately, that takes a long time from here. That’s why it takes two and a half hours because you have to go all the way to Boulder, then all the way back out again. Whereas if you could just go straight down to join it and McCaslin it’ll be almost the same amount of time as driving. But there is no route that takes you to McCaslin right now from here. No, and it wouldn’t it wouldn’t connect with McCaslin if it would connect it would connect a Broomfield at best or maybe a 270. I know Boulder County is asked multiple times to see if there is a way to improve the

Unknown Speaker 1:03:15
ramps and the layout of the 270 M su 470.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:23
Yeah, yeah, 287 and Z. Right. It’s to allow for reconstruction of that interchange, to have that connection. We’re not opposed to that. But currently it is just not feasible. It’s it’s not safe. Even when the LX is to be implemented the way the stops are currently at 287. I don’t know if you’ve been down there, but they’re pretty much just pulled in the dirt right by the I just want to do a quick time check because we’ve got two more items on our agenda. It’s 720 at this point in time so I just want to give you guys a quick time check we’ve got one person waiting online to to come in for their item. So

Unknown Speaker 1:04:03
I appreciate the conversation but we’re going to probably have to get to just question and answer quick. So if we want to be out at eight o’clock thanks

Unknown Speaker 1:04:18
I’d also appreciate the presentation up is there data available yet to indicate whether RTDs reduced and simplified fare structure coincides with increased ridership?

Unknown Speaker 1:04:34
Not yet. Not yet.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:37
And

Unknown Speaker 1:04:39
how do you quantify ridership in Longmont? What we don’t have fares city wide to the operators count passing count. Yeah, all the vehicles have what we call APCs automatic passenger counts. So when somebody gets on, they get counsel now distinguishing between adults and youth. Now that is

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
The operator making that this distinction on the farebox, so to say,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:07
thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:15
Thank you. Yeah, I don’t really have any questions, I realize you’re the experts. And you’ve been doing this a long time. And if we had more demand, I think a lot of this would be taken care of. We know that there’s been a lot of long term challenges in short term with COVID. And what have you. I was curious, the only question that I had and, and not going to go too deep into it. You mentioned the trends with losing ridership. Do we see any trends about gaining ridership in areas such as Longmont, which you attributed to the suburban sprawl, which I totally understand, do you see long term trends, it’s going to help us build ridership that’s going to allow us to to have these reintroductions of routes and all sorts of things. So on the local routes of now going back to what we have pre COVID, which is a couple 100 riders a day off currently,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:07
I would think that we can see still an increase in ridership. Some of it has to do with the frequencies and at this point, and if we don’t have the resources, with the network, the feeder service implementation, we hope that we can make those adjustments that will help

Unknown Speaker 1:06:24
in the routing adjustments. So hopefully, we can hit some different areas within Longmont to allow service being provided to people that currently don’t have service. So our hope is definitely that this ridership will local ridership will continue to grow back to what it was pre COVID for the regional services is going to be much tougher now with the BRT, hopefully,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:48
there’ll be more frequent, more reliable than what we can do with a bolt at this point. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:55
Same with the LX, we wouldn’t put it back if you wouldn’t expect the ridership to come back.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:04
Thank you, I just want to say thank you for the presentation. And thank you for all the work that you all do. And I understand getting complaints all the time being on City Council. And I just want to say give you the thank you before I complain. So that’s how it goes.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:26
Know I’m not complaining. But I think is because I’m understanding this transportation ever since I’ve been on council, I’m learning more and more. And I’ll make this quick feel

Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
like

Unknown Speaker 1:07:41
it is so fascinating that we in the city who we’re trying to increase electrification as far as vehicles and reduce the carbon, carbon footprint and everything. And I think about us also increasing housing. And then we have a developer they say for instance, by Costco and I know that you are looking at that’s one of your priority areas. But when you when we start building homes in areas and there’s no transportation, there is no line

Unknown Speaker 1:08:19
already created a route there. Then guess what, I’m gonna buy me a car, because I can’t get to work. Whether you all are tucked in and may not be electric, either. I may purchase what I can afford, because I need to get back and forth. Maybe I’m working in Boulder. Maybe I’m working in Greeley. And so what I’m saying is and I understand what uptight member Wicklund was saying that the egg before the chicken,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:49
sometimes I’ve I just feel like we’re at a point now where we kind of go on backwards because we are growing. And I feel like we need to already have that established, like we still don’t have enough routes at high schools. So guess what parents are providing cars for their kids because they want to make sure that kids can do that after school activities and drive where they need to go whereas boulder pretty much have routes

Unknown Speaker 1:09:20
where they have high schools and not here in Longmont is not like that. And so anyway,

Unknown Speaker 1:09:27
I told you I couldn’t complain. So thank you first.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:30
But I just I don’t have that understanding. I know that’s another time maybe we can have coffee and you can explain some of that to me, but I just don’t get it. I don’t I don’t have a clear understanding about that as much. When we are trying to reduce our carbon footprint and we’re, we’re building homes, but yet it’s taken forever. You know, for us to have transportation. This should be readily available. are you shutting me up now? Phil? Okay. I was just going to say what

Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
Echo transit,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:01
because that’s going to help us get a lot of these areas to the existing transit network. But I appreciate your request for for what I think’s coming next. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:12
Oh, what’s coming next? My next question is more buses. Oh, yeah, definitely more about this. Absolutely. You’re right. That the other thing I had this and then I’ll be quiet.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:24
While we’re talking about the youth, the increase of youth.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:31
on buses and everything, have you thought about a program and I know everything costs money, show me the money, we need the resources. But have we thought about having a summer program for youth to decorate the buses have we thought about having a program where youth can do

Unknown Speaker 1:10:48
youth program on buses? You know, I don’t know if you have a coordinator or consultant that can do those things. But we need to start getting youth involved in order youth wanting to get on buses, and understanding that that’s a part of their daily activity in a part of their life.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:09
But it’s not attractive. I’m not really has to be sexy, but it’s not truck attractive for us to get on buses. And I understand that. I know, we didn’t talk about it, you didn’t talk about having a type of outreach for homeless

Unknown Speaker 1:11:23
riders as well. I don’t know if you have any coordinator for them. I know you have a mental health

Unknown Speaker 1:11:31
person, people that can help with the officers and everything as far as RTD. But I don’t know if you have anyone that’s also helping our homeless population to though, or riding the buses, which can also maybe be a deterrent for some of the kids if those writers may have mental health issues. So I’m just trying to think and I know everything costs money.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:55
But I think thinking outside the box, you know, if you give kids like, I know, my kids love just a cardboard box to play with. But if you give them some paint and some ideas of creating some things, oh, have we asked them why they were at the booth? I mean, what would they like to do? So I’m just all those days is everyone was talking and I was listening to you, I think we need to step back a little bit on some of the things you that you all are the experts. I’m not the expert, I’m still learning and we need to have coffee and talk about that. But I just wanted to throw that out there to make sure that we are going on the right, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:12:36
going in the right direction, moving forward, according to our comprehensive plan. And enlisting in Boulder gets everything.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:46
So that’s a way of saying that’s all we’ve been talking about all night.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:51
Already for a long month. I know we got Michael Tracy, so we you know, we got to do all we got to do feel you got to get us the money for you. You got to get us to micro transit feel. Yeah. So I mean, it really step up here and help us out a little bit. And, um, you know, I understand, just want to do your points, the beginning, just to make sure that we actually coordinate on a regular basis, between staff and RTD staff, we meet at least quarterly, if not more often, to talk about development that’s coming online, and what the changes are that are happening so that we with RTD can look and see what can we do, what changes can we make to address these increases are these changes in development? So this route out to the east with Walmart and Costco. And so we actually had looked at that pre COVID and had hoped that we could have implemented it

Unknown Speaker 1:13:52
and then COVID it.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:55
So we have the communication, we have the conversations, we try to coordinate as best as possible when it comes to these kinds of things to talk over. How can we influence the developers to help us out right to be the ones to put the bus stops in, for instance, the infrastructure that comes with it. That is that is expensive. So a route expansion, such as that out to the east is going to require a whole set of new bass pads. And how are we going to do that? And that’s, it’s not just the money. It’s the layout of the physical landscape. Is it even possible to put these stops in place to where we can then connect them with ADA requirements safely to these developments to the past that are already in place because transit somehow seems to be the afterthought?

Unknown Speaker 1:14:53
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:56
Now we would be happy to be a key

Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
obviously keeping the conversation and how and having those discussions and whatever we can do to say, yep, these are the things I was going to talk to Phil about the expansion, see if there isn’t an opportunity for some grant funding, so that when we come to the point two years out for that is when we want to make that happen, that we have funding in place that we can have those stops built, and we can have the terminal and make sure that it is doable.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:28
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:31
Yeah, thank you, Councilmember. I just wanted to make one brief comment here. And actually, it’s kind of collective. A lot of the comments I’ve heard of, you know, we want more transit, and that’s desperately what I want. And thank you for the comment, not only about transit is often the afterthought. That’s one of the things that we as a region, so there’s so much great energy here, we have to flip the region’s mindset to being very transit first or the chicken and egg question transit at the same time. When it comes to the money standpoint, I did also just want to level set because there’s the energy for advocacy here, I’d be kicking myself if I did not say it, Colorado is 44th in the nation. For the state funding of transit. We fund RTD on a per capita basis at approximately $372 per capita when using the primary urbanized area, which is how that gets reported to the feds. If you look at other areas, say Seattle is one people often referenced to me of these kinds of different divergent land use patterns. They have multiple transit agencies. So if you were to collectively add them together for the same urbanized area, it’s north of north of $1,000 per capita, la similar. San Francisco similar. Washington DC similar, if you look at a similar per capita funding has asked you to look at Philadelphia, for example, Philadelphia has a similar footprint in terms of the size of of transit area, and funds at a similar per capita level. However, they have twice the density. So if you look at their funding on a per square footage basis, it’s twice that that RTD receives and cept is going off the financial cliff right now in Philadelphia, increasing fares reducing service, and they’re fortunate to be in a state that Pennsylvania has got $300 million that cleared the house to go to transit statewide to help so I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t say we want expanded transit. That’s what RTD wants all day, we have a very large service area with one multimodal transit agency. Divergent land use patterns were transits the afterthought. And we’re way down the list on state funding for transit. So any energy there is for advocating on that. That’s those are some of the numbers to know. Thank you. I would be delighted to

Unknown Speaker 1:17:52
Yes, thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you, thank you

Unknown Speaker 1:18:30
so next up, are we ready?

Unknown Speaker 1:18:35
Next up, we’ve got

Unknown Speaker 1:18:39
Eric and I get early.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:41
Fairly, really great.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:44
And awesome. And Austin is also on the on the phone. I hope you can see him on the monitor.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:50
He can’t see you guys, but he can see me. But that’s about it. So unfortunately, I’ll let them take off and they’ve got some information about the intelligent rail crossing monitoring app that they’ve been working on. So thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:04
Just before I begin can get a mic check for Austin. See.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:09
I need to turn him on. You’re right.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:14
Okay, good

Unknown Speaker 1:19:17
afternoon.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:25
Good evening, everybody. Like to give an introduction on the work that

Unknown Speaker 1:19:31
I do Integrated Traffic systems and the strategic integration group of Longmont have been doing on the development of the intelligent rail crossing monitoring mobile application.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:43
So to begin, I just like to introduce

Unknown Speaker 1:19:47
imagery, Integrated Traffic systems. So my name is Eric Burley. I lived in Longmont for nearly a year. I’m a professional software developer and partner of itfs

Unknown Speaker 1:20:01
And I’m Austin, ater,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:04
Eric and I started it is about four years ago,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:08
we thought there’s a lot opportunity to apply

Unknown Speaker 1:20:12
Smart City and AI based applications on the local government or municipality level. I think a lot of times, these more high tech projects are overlooked or there’s not enough awareness. So that’s kind of how we got started in this in this domain. And, and before we start, I guess, thanks a lot to Phil for getting me connected. He’s done a lot of work. So thank you, Phil.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:38
Okay, so just to give an overview of what we’ve done so far. So our first intelligent railroad monitoring application was launched in the town of Plymouth, Michigan in 2021. It’s been active since then. So with Michigan is a town of roughly 10,000 people. So to the size of Longmont. And we’ve amassed nearly 5000 users in the last three years, we’ve had nothing but positive feedback from both the city and its residents. We’ve received quite a bit of press and a local news about the application and its uses within the city. So it has introduced this idea to Becky Doyle’s

Unknown Speaker 1:21:26
strategic integration group and fall of 2023. And since then, we’ve developed and released a mobile app,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:35
which we have created a communication plan for and plan to release a pilot program for

Unknown Speaker 1:21:41
the coming weeks. So what exactly is the app? How does it work, and what are its capabilities. So we even saw the camera which has a view of the first and main street crossing,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:55
which gives us access to a live feed,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:58
allowing us to discern with computer vision, whether or not a train is blocking the crossing or not. That also allows us to calculate the velocity of the train and show

Unknown Speaker 1:22:11
the train actually moving on the map throughout the city so that we can extrapolate the information that we receive

Unknown Speaker 1:22:17
at Main Street to the other crossing. So

Unknown Speaker 1:22:22
the first and probably most important capabilities that we can send out real time notifications of the status of block crossings, we can give a current and an estimated waiting time for the crossing based on the time of day velocity of the train and historical data.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:39
And as I mentioned earlier, the train track review which allows us to extrapolate that information to make it as useful as possible.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:47
Let’s give a short demo, see if I can. So this is just my own screen recording my home home screen here. And this is going to go through what the workflow is when somebody receives a notification.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:02
So let’s

Unknown Speaker 1:23:05
wait a second here. So you’re waiting.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:09
Oops.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:11
Let’s go back.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:15
Like when I press pause, it wants to go to the next slide and said

Unknown Speaker 1:23:25
at the exact moment that the notification shows up, the play button goes away. So let me just skip ahead.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:32
keep us moving

Unknown Speaker 1:23:35
off his law live demos. Yeah, okay, well recorded demos.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:39
Okay, so you can see the information that you receive in the notification. So it says the crossing is blocked with Main Street blocked the estimated waiting time for this train. And this is a real train, I could hear it from my window coming so I was ready to record was two to six minutes and we calculated from the velocity that is traveling westbound. Once a user actually taps on this notification, it will immediately go to the live feed

Unknown Speaker 1:24:04
for that crossing, so a user can confirm with their own eyes a train is there. Although it’s it’s basically 100% accurate from what i’ve what we’ve tested. But for anyone that needs reassurance.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:18
If you go back to the home screen you can see the status bar for Main Street

Unknown Speaker 1:24:26
is blocked.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:28
It gives the current weight so at that current time the train was there for one minute and nine seconds we estimated there to be for from two to six minutes. And you can see a little train

Unknown Speaker 1:24:38
moving

Unknown Speaker 1:24:40
on the map.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:42
Let’s get this going again.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:46
Okay, that’s the gist of it. That train will start to move when the video keeps going.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:54
Oops.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:56
So much.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:59
Let’s wait

Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
Should I restart PowerPoint?

Unknown Speaker 1:25:07
Okay

Unknown Speaker 1:25:20
try to come up with.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:22
Okay, I can have it on my computer as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:25
Let me just restarted

Unknown Speaker 1:25:29
corresponding great.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:34
Sorry for the technical difficulties

Unknown Speaker 1:25:38
go to presenter.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:45
So that’s the gist of the demo. Let’s go to just the next slide before it crashes. Okay, so then Austin is going to take over and tell you a little bit about the use cases for the city.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:54
Sure, sure. So Thanks, Eric. Eric kind of went through the day to day kind of use case for citizens as well as EMS was what we seen in Plymouth.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:06
On a bit of a higher level, we also provide historical crossing records for each crossing that we support. So you can see in this little table, the crossing, and then the start time and the end time where the crossing was blocked, as well, as you know, how long it was, what direction it was going, those sort of things. And we think this is helpful for a couple of reasons. One being, and this might become this is a bit more recent, it’s our understanding that in Colorado, the state legislator is, you know, considering legislation to hold railroad companies accountable for block crossings, I think if they’re there for more than 10 minutes, then there’ll be fine. And, you know, we can provide, you know, time stamped photos of a real block crossings. So we think that this could kind of keep the rail companies accountable, and honest and in,

Unknown Speaker 1:26:57
in representing your city in this way, and making sure that there aren’t these, you know, crazy long block crossing times. And then additionally,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:07
there’s,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:09
if you have objective data, over the years of, of a crossing, I think that could help you get larger, you know, capital intensive project projects, such as you know, overpasses, and that sort of things.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:22
There’s been a lot of talk about, at least in Michigan, about states, trying to get funding for these railway overpasses. And if you have, you know, multiple years of data showing exactly how bad the crossing is that might help you pursue those projects. And the graph on the bottom just quickly, is a graph from Plymouth, Michigan over I think 2022, that shows the cumulative crossing times for the month.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:47
And you can see it’s about between 40 and 50 hours a month. So almost two days, entire days out of the entire month, out of the month. The city is basically cut in half by a block crossings. So we thought this was sort of kind of indicative about how pesky and how much of a problem that these these rail crossings can bring.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:10
But yeah, that’s that’s another aspect of what we were doing with with Becky.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:18
Future capabilities.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:22
Really, this project will scale very nicely with more supported crossings and more cameras.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:28
You get some network effects with this sort of application

Unknown Speaker 1:28:33
that will allow us to get more proactive alerts of, of incoming trains can even get into intelligent routing to tell people to go certain ways if if you know, something’s going to be blocked for a significant amount of time.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:47
I mean, imagine if you had in the perimeter city,

Unknown Speaker 1:28:52
different cameras to sort of give a overall view of the train status in Longmont. And finally, we’d like to try to think we’d like to explore getting into some physical signage to show real time crossing information. The mock up on the right is just a kind of a quick picture of what we might envision it to look like. So people would be able to see at a glance what’s the crossing status throughout the city

Unknown Speaker 1:29:22
as an additional medium, in addition to the app.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:28
And this image right here, this is from the Federal Railroad website showing all the different crossings in Longmont. So the US you can tell there’s quite a few.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:39
The decisions for implementing new cameras the where we should place them, obviously depends on you know, community feedback from the pilot program.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:51
Also, you know, from an information standpoint, it probably doesn’t make much sense to put two cameras a couple 100 feet away from each other

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
because it really doesn’t show that much information from in regards to the whole city. So that’s also a consideration. And finally, you know, feasibility of camera locations

Unknown Speaker 1:30:12
to make sure that a camera could be installed, you know, somebody easily.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:20
Okay, and then finally just want to touch on briefly for a couple minutes other smart city projects to make sure guys are aware. On the left news on the left side of the screen, you see a screen grab from

Unknown Speaker 1:30:33
showing the automatic license plate reader reading cameras are coming to Firestone. So I just put this in here to show you that the Smart Cities slash AI projects are real. And

Unknown Speaker 1:30:44
I think it’s I think there’s going to be more applications of of AI or machine learning within local governments and municipalities. And then the screenshot on the right shows you some of long months existing webcams, you might be aware long one has I think, 14 Webcams of traffic and intersections. So the point is you have you long lead already has a lot of the hardware

Unknown Speaker 1:31:09
out there. And it’s just a matter of running the analytics or the software all over them to try to show some valuable projects.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:18
Finally, this is kind of a busy slide, but I’ll just highlight two things. Here. In the upper right, you see a GIF of what I call parking management.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:28
I know I listened to a couple of the prior to have meetings and they had some concerns about parking enforcement and curb management with the micro transit system. In this application, you can kind of tell on real time, counting the number of parking spaces and trying to manage that better. And then finally, in the bottom right, we have some adverse event detection, basically being able to tell if there’s an accident in real time.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:53
And detecting sort of these anomaly events. I think this fits in well, in addition to Vision Zero with no limit to the number of crashes and fatalities.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:04
So yeah, that’s just to kind of show your awareness on some of these

Unknown Speaker 1:32:08
new applications. So to conclude, and you know, our future plans, first of all, we invite you to download the app and let us know your feedback. The QR code on the right will take you to the app store to download it.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:22
Kind of a comment slash question for the for tab. Is there are there any additional data sources regarding railroad congestion studies that we could use to

Unknown Speaker 1:32:33
find locations for new cameras and find in also we would like to return to tab after the communication plan and pilot program has finished probably about two months from now. And finally, you know, we think you should consider what smart city projects are appropriate for the TMP or revision zero. So that’s, that’s all we had for tonight. Our contact informations there as well as our website if you’re interested in learning more.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:08
So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:12
Thanks, Austin. Eric.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:14
Any questions?

Unknown Speaker 1:33:17
We will be back so

Unknown Speaker 1:33:19
I only got one question. Thanks for the presentation. It makes sense because when I’ve read the packet, I’m like What is what is this? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:30
Is are you only doing one intersection right now for the pilot program? That’s right. Yep. Just personally, okay. Then, you know, I’m happy with that too. So that Thank you. Yep, of course.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:44
This looks like a great app to be coordinated with Longmont soon to be introduced micro transit app

Unknown Speaker 1:33:58
thanks so much.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:01
Exhausted Okay, thanks.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:15
Great just in time for Ben Ortiz.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:26
May I use that?

Unknown Speaker 1:34:28
Perfect. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:34
Apologize about ducking out.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:40
Anyway, sure. Sure. Lena councilmember Yarborough, members of the transportation advisory board. Good evening. My name is Ben Ortiz and transportation planner.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:51
Tonight will we will be reviewing the proposed changes to Chapter 15.0 5.080 parking, stacking and loading of the city’s land.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
city’s land development code as well as a new affordable housing definition. And so City Council was presented with the changes I’m going to present to you tonight in a zero reading back in March, and we’ll go we’ll be going back to them with an ordinance.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:18
But I would like to get a recommendation from the TA B on the proposed changes. So tonight we’ll be presenting you with two options. Option one includes eliminating minimum parking requirements in several sections of the parking code but retains reduced minimum parking requirements for affordable and market rate requirements.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:39
market rate multifamily housing, and then the second option is it includes eliminating minimum parking requirements for all use categories, including all residential use categories over and above what was presented to city council in March. So the project team concluded that the best way forward would be to eliminate minimum parking requirements entirely and establish parking maximums for all use categories citywide.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:08
So at the February 6 2024, meeting the City Council the route group presented several policy suggestions to further incentivize affordable housing, one of which included changes to parking requirements for affordable housing. The route group recommended changing the parking code to require a minimum of one half space per fordable multifamily dwelling unit and one space for market rate units. But in the multifamily developments that include a mixture of affordable and market rate units, the minimum parking requirement of one half space per dwelling unit would apply to all units in the development, including the market rate once the project team came up with an alternative parking plan policy, which I’ll review on the next page.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:58
Because there were other changes staff felt we needed to make throughout the code, we took the opportunity to make them at this time. And we’ll review the more substantive changes with the transportation Advisory Board, we won’t trouble you with with the minor changes, many of them are just clarifying changes or mere grammatical corrections.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:25
So as noted earlier, the route group recommended a minimum parking requirement of 0.5 spaces per affordable unit in multifamily developments, and one space per unit for market rate multifamily units, but that in multifamily developments that include a mixture of affordable and market rate units, the minimum parking requirement of a half of parking space per unit would apply across the entire development.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:56
So this approach obviously would free up land for more units over the existing parking requirements. And that’s a good thing. But the project team didn’t think this approach would necessarily result in more affordable units being built. So to incentivize the construction of more affordable units, staff recommended that the minimum of 0.5 parking spaces be applied to affordable multifamily units only on a one for one basis, and then one space for market rate multifamily units on a one for one basis. And so we’re hoping that tying the reduced parking requirements directly with the provision of affordable units would lead to more affordable units being built.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:39
For other affordable housing thus not multifamily, the president minimum parking requirement of one space per unit would remain intact. And then lastly, a new housing category which is included in red here in the center of the three

Unknown Speaker 1:38:59
is called affordable supportive housing and for this type of of housing serves people with suffering from chronic homelessness. And so there would be no parking requirement, but developers would be able to provide parking if they feel it’s needed.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:18
So other than the change to the minimum parking requirements for multifamily residential the first substantive change

Unknown Speaker 1:39:26
is to group living uses now these include group care homes, in facilities, independent living facilities and rehabilitation and treatment facilities. And so for this land use category we’re proposing changing the minimum parking spaces required to a maximum parking lots.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:43
And this fall is a city wide change made back in 2014, where minimum parking requirements for commercial development were replaced with parking maximums to create access. She great success in the group living category is one that was left out of the changes back in

Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
2014

Unknown Speaker 1:40:02
Which is why we’re including them with this update now. And so we did consult with a local developer who is known for building these types of uses in this category here online. And they stated that they’re supportive of the proposed changes, noting that the proposed ratios would give them the flexibility to right size, the amount of parking for their future developments. And I know this person, they would not provide no parking. They want to make sure their development works, and so they provide the parking that they need.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:39
The next substantive change includes amendments to parking regulations for educational facilities. And the first amendment on this page includes changing the minimum parking requirements to a maximum parking allowance, consistent with commercial developments. for colleges and universities were proposing changing the minimum parking requirement of one space per two enrolled students to a maximum of one space per one enrolled student. The next change impacts K through 12 schools.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:12
So the first thing we did was we separated out the public and private schools. And then for public schools, the city doesn’t have any site planning authority, so would be up to the school district to determine the parking need for new K through 12 Public Schools. And then our next changes for private K through 12. Schools. In four private elementary and middle schools, we changed the minimum parking requirement of two spaces per classroom, to a parking maximum allowing up to three parking spaces per classroom, we should accommodate the teacher perhaps a teacher’s aide, who is impaired in staff. And for private high schools a maximum of 0.5 spaces per student, or one space per two students at design capacity, who would be allowed in this ratio is based on the assumption that no ninth graders are driving very few 10th graders would be driving in a fraction of 11th and 12th graders would be driving. And then the last changes for vocational or trade schools is proposed change the minimum parking requirement of one per 200 students to a maximum of one per enrolled student.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:20
And then the last substantive change clarifies that the existing US Department of Justice ADA standards are applicable

Unknown Speaker 1:42:27
in all new Inami lots. This is to ensure that we’re always applying the latest US Department of Justice accessible parking requirements without having to amend the parking section of the land development code. And so the language you see here and is intended to replace the existing table on the next slide. In the event the requirements change.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:52
So this table here shows the required number of ADA spaces as a function of the total amount of motor vehicle parking provided. We propose eliminating this table as noted in the previous slide. But we will create a handout with the most up to date ADA requirements consistent with DOJ standards that we will keep for our own reference as well as distributed to future developers.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:17
So the project team recommended adding a new housing definition called affordable supportive housing to the definition section of the land development code, which supports the addition of this housing type in the parking table. So affordable Supportive Housing means residential units constructed that are strictly for individuals or families that are homeless or at risk of homelessness, due to having an unstable permanent residence location or status, and where such units are paired with support and services. And so you may recall that this housing type is included in the proposed changes to the housing section of the parking table, and that there is no minimum parking requirement for affordable supportive housing. And while the developer would not be required to provide parking for this type of housing, under the proposed change, they could if they felt it was necessary.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:10
So subsequent to the presentation to city council in March, the project team concluded, again that the best way forward would be to eliminate minimum parking requirements for all land use categories citywide. And so what you see here would be the remaining land use category with no minimum parking requirements over and above the categories that we’ve already reviewed with you tonight. So the consequence of this approach would be that the parking incentive for the construction of affordable housing would go away because all housing would be exempt from the minimum parking requirements.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:47
For the CCO housing category, we eliminated the word now. New excuse me, because it isn’t a new category and we created a parking allowance of three

Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
street parking spaces. For the single family attached category a maximum of two off street parking spaces in the form of garages or carports would be allowed. We also add an exemption for driveways and the off street parking requirement but would require driveways to be at least 10 feet by 20 feet long if they’re provided.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:23
For single family detached, a maximum of three off street parking spaces wouldn’t be allowed in the exemption for driveways. And the parking count is included in this category, as well as the dimensional requirements.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:38
And for multifamily developments, a maximum of two or three parking spaces per dwelling unit would be allowed. And then presently, in the mixed use corridor, multifamily developments are exempt from minimum parking requirements. And because we’re proposing to eliminate minimum parking requirements citywide this lined out section second from the bottom would no longer apply and that points to a section not shown here.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:03
But lastly, as noted previously, there wouldn’t be no parking incentive for affordable housing in the form of a reduced minimum parking requirement. So this lot last line would be struck as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:17
So why we made minimum parking requirements? Well, cities across the country are eliminated minimum parking requirements in their land development regulations. And there are quite a few reasons for this. Minimum parking requirements inflate the size of the city, increasing distances between trip origin and trip destination. And then this discourages walking and biking and encourages more automobile use. Minimum parking requirements lead to other negative consequences as well including more storm runoff which leads to more pollution in the city’s waterways. Minimum parking requirements lead to more hardscape that makes the urban heat island effect worse. And then parking requirements increase the cost of development, it should be noted there is no such thing as free parking. The cost of parking is pretty, pretty extensive.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:11
And it gets passed on to customers in the form of higher prices for goods and services, as well as higher prices for rent in home purchases, which translates into a huge subsidy for automobile use. So for people who are either cannot afford an automobile or choose not to own one, and minimum parking requirement is tantamount to a subsidy paid by those that do not need to park a car on behalf of those that do. And then this includes people that cannot afford to own an automobile. So it’s important to note that eliminating minimum parking requirements doesn’t necessarily mean no parking will be provided. developers want their developments to be successful and will provide parking for that reason. But eliminating minimum parking requirements empower developers to provide the amount of parking the feeling need, as opposed to the amount of parking the city wants them to have. And then lastly, very few lending institutions will provide construction loans for developments without parking. As I noted earlier, you know the where this policy is most beneficial is with smaller infill sites, where minimum parking requirements would make it really difficult if not impossible to get a project built without major variance.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:29
So staff is seeking a recommendation from the TTB on the proposal to eliminate minimum parking requirements for all residential uses city wide over and above the other land use categories already presented to city council. Staff recommends approving the proposed changes that would eliminate the minimum parking requirement

Unknown Speaker 1:48:49
for all residential development to include parking maximum allowances sufficient enough to provide developers the flexibility they need to right size the parking provided for their developments. And staff doesn’t tend to go back to city council with an ordinance with parking amendments in May. Unfortunately, we were not able to make the deadline to present an ordinance at the April 23 session of city council consistent with Tip communication. So we’d like to take this up at the first regular session which should be May 14.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:27
So thank you, that concludes my presentation. And with that I and and most likely Phil would be happy to try and answer your questions. Just real quick, I just wanted to briefly set up or summarize. So we did take for zero reading to city council. The first piece that Ben presented which was the changing the minimum standards. Since then we’ve worked as a team within the city and our city team together has decided that all of us can live with parking Max

Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
X mom’s. And that was presented to Council and the zero reading has changed since then. So we’re going to come back to council with kind of the two different options, one with what we presented for zero reading, and then this new option, which is parking maximums, only, no minimums anymore for the city, and see what they think about that. So we wanted to ask you first, what your recommendation would be to city council so we can present that at the same time we present the city council, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:36
Well, I don’t think it’s any surprise to anyone here, but I am definitely full, eliminating minimum parking. I think the sprawl that is become present so many problems with things like transit, is going to be enhanced and become hopefully less of a issue. If we have maximums rather than minimums. Of course, I’d love to see maximum is way bigger than what’s presented. But having maximum rather minimum is already a step in the right direction, in my opinion. I do have a couple of questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:09
So I was wondering, you talked about having the school district decide on parking moving forward. And I was just wondering if there was like any precedent for school district doing this if they had someone who would be working on there? Or is this kind of a brand new thing for them to be doing? School?

Unknown Speaker 1:51:31
I want to thank councilmember murals professor,

Unknown Speaker 1:51:34
board member morose, my apologies.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:37
School District is is actually a function or an extension of the state. And so the state has purview in this case in the city, the city just has no land use authority with regard to to the public schools. And so the school district frequently does come to to the city, and seeks comment on their proposed developments.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:05
And they take it under advisement. But that’s as far as it goes. So we could say, Well, we think you should provide, you know, 100 more spaces, and you’re, you’re you’re proposing, and they could say well, thanks for your feedback, we’re not going to do that. And, and if we were to say, challenge, their land use design, it would be something entirely external to the city processes. So most likely, those challenges would fail. But yeah, so they, they’re completely independent of the city. We’re basically we’re basically a referral agency for them. So they take what we say under advisement, but they don’t have to follow it. Okay, that’s good to know, because I often see schools that have very empty parking areas. So they definitely could do with reducing some of their parking spaces for sure.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:03
And I was also had a question about why a driveway is exempt from the single family housing, why do you not include driveways as as part of that parking maximum that you’re proposing? Yes, board member burrows. So that was my idea. I thought it would make it a little more palatable. But one of the things that increases the cost pretty substantial to to residential development most particularly to attached and detached single family homes is the price of that garage. And so I’ve, I’ve looked up the square footage per foot for for the construction of a detached garage. And I think on the low end, it’s somewhere around $35 A foot and obviously that’s going to change depending upon the market. But

Unknown Speaker 1:53:55
we felt that, that that driveways are MultiFit are multifunctional. So they’re not necessarily always used for parking, although we expect that they would be which is one of the reasons why we tacked on that dimensional requirement. So for example, if you have a front facing home, and then you have a space between the home and the sidewalk, we want to make sure that space is at least 20 feet. So to give enough space for your typical average car to park without encroaching over the sidewalk and that was the intent of that pet 20 foot dimensional requirement and then 10 feet wide is is slightly larger than what we require of a typical parking space in say a parking lot. But it was a way to provide some off street parking without actually counting it.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:56
Okay, so would you consider me

Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
driveways not exempt. Because that I mean, in reality, people do use their driveways for parking all the time. And so it functions as another parking space. So, in addition to having the garage space, you also now have driveways as well. So you’re correct. We could, I mean, if if that’s the recommendation you’d like to make, we can include that as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:22
Where you need to close that, and then you need to get your second, etc.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:28
I’d be interested here what other board members think about that particular aspect?

Unknown Speaker 1:55:35
And I think that’s if my questions actually say, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:50
Thank you for the presentation. Again, you know, I sat through it one time before as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:58
I’m also in favor of of making parking maximums and also just to inform other board members, there’s HB 24 1304, that has been proposed, I hope that passes, it would make us go to parking maximums anyways, within a year’s time. So so the state is looking at this too. But I think it’s an opportunity for Longmont to lead the state, just as we’ve already done in a lot of ways.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:25
But just to bring up some concerns from members of the public that had come to speak.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:34
You know, in terms of current developments, it has no effect in in terms of a someone who wants to build a private home, they could obviously go through a variance and and get a three car garage if they wanted to. Is that correct?

Unknown Speaker 1:56:51
Actually, board member Wicklund, the way that the way the code, the way the code is written, as we’re proposing it, it would tack on a maximum of three off street parking spaces for any single family detached home, so they’d be able to put in a three car garage. And that would be approved by right they wouldn’t need to seek any variances. But they could provide less than that, or none if they wanted to. Right. And I you know, I’ve been reading a book called paid paradise to prepare for this meeting. First, I’m only halfway through. But it’s you know, they talked about a garage and it increases the home value by 20%. Sometimes so. So I think having what I appreciate you guys bringing is having a much more universal approach to the parking maximums instead of just focus on on affordable housing. Because everyone struggles at some point and and also not everyone owns a car, and they shouldn’t be paying for that. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:57:54
And if I so choose, I would move that we

Unknown Speaker 1:58:00
were

Unknown Speaker 1:58:02
the to expand parking maximums for all residential zones.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:14
Second

Unknown Speaker 1:58:19
all those in favor of eliminating the minimum parking requirements and going to a maximum say aye. Aye.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:28
Aye.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:31
Any opposed?

Unknown Speaker 1:58:33
passes.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:35
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:43
Okay, comments from board members, since we’ve gotten through action item seven, and we’ll start with board member McInerney on my left here.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:57
My questions have to do with code amendments for parking. So

Unknown Speaker 1:59:03
you might want to

Unknown Speaker 1:59:06
Okay, he’s with us.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:10
In our packet page 20. The second paragraph states that of spillover parking does result from under park development, appropriate parking management strategies can be initiated what what would those be

Unknown Speaker 1:59:25
for number McEnery? That would be something along the lines of a parking.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:31
Basically a parking study, if we feel as staff that there’s going to be impacts to a neighborhood based on the lack of parking provided by a development, then we would ask them to do an alternative parking study and provide that to us as staff and we would review that and make determinations based on that or have the mitigate that issue. So Correct.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:53
Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:59:56
Also, too, you have a lot of reactionary people who say

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
Oh, this is gonna cause that has caused problems in my neighborhood, because people are parking on my street who don’t live there. And so one of the things we’d want to do is establish a metric as to what constitutes a problem. I have people parking in front of my home, frequently.

Unknown Speaker 2:00:18
But I’m able to park in front of my home, the majority of times, I would say, one thing we need to do is define what constitutes a problem. So if I can’t park in front of my own home, say, 50% of the time or less, but I can park on my own street, does that constitute a problem? Probably not. However, if I can’t park on my own street, say 80% of the time, then that might constitute a problem. But that’s a decision we would need, we would probably need to make with with the community.

Unknown Speaker 2:00:53
And so there are a lot of strategies that can can be

Unknown Speaker 2:00:58
employed to address

Unknown Speaker 2:01:01
spill over parking, I was recently visited LA to to watch my daughter play water polo. And,

Unknown Speaker 2:01:09
and we visited some friends and they had a parking permit district. And so it allowed to our parking on that street, unless you actually had a hang tag, and then the owner that we were visiting, they gave us their little hang tag, and we put it on the rearview mirror. And we were able to park there all day long without getting a ticket. So that’s one example of what you could do. But there are a lot of other examples as well. And it’s really going to depend on the circumstance. If you’re in a commercial district versus a residential district, the approach you might take would be different.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:46
Okay, do

Unknown Speaker 2:01:49
all adu proposals require site plan approval?

Unknown Speaker 2:01:55
So not all of them? No, there wouldn’t be project by project consideration of parking for ad use then necessarily, well, the planners that do that review at us they they are looking at the parking presently.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:12
And, and they’re just making sure that they’ve got

Unknown Speaker 2:02:16
one street space because that’s what’s required. However, presently they can the owner of the adu can can request that, that that on street parking be used to meet that that off street parking requirement. And we look at that on a case by case basis. A lot of times, streets are under parked

Unknown Speaker 2:02:40
curbside parking is under Park. And we would feel that it wouldn’t wouldn’t lead to negative impact by allowing

Unknown Speaker 2:02:48
that on street parking to be used for the adu. I see.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:54
I expect that you’ll receive some pushback on the

Unknown Speaker 2:02:59
short term rental maximum that’s proposed.

Unknown Speaker 2:03:05
In fact, I think we we had that type of comment before our meeting this evening. And finally, we’ll the maximum of three spaces per 1000 square feet for public transit terminals affect the first and main station development or any future rail station development downtown.

Unknown Speaker 2:03:33
Well, what we do with those is a lot of shared parking. So we’re going to incorporate a lot of different

Unknown Speaker 2:03:39
folks who are sharing that parking at different times of the day. So we’ll take the parking Max that’s available for the transit center alone but we’ll also take our parking Max that’s available for the for the different units that are part of that too. And so we’ll basically it’ll be the I’ll come down to the same ideas like an alternative parking study we’ll do what we need to do to make it work especially with a park and ride piece of that because it’s not quite the same as any other transit station in the in the town it’s going to be very different. Okay, so the the square footage referred to as building square footage, but you’re saying it’s not specifically limited to a transit station?

Unknown Speaker 2:04:24
Well, more than the entire Tod space, right? There’s so many different uses gonna be part of that, that space, there’s gonna be retail and there’s going to be the residential, and then the parking right so it really doesn’t stand alone at that point. Can we be more indicative of what’s going on up north that they were talking about with Park Ridge Park and Ride? It stands alone as a transit, you know, Park and Ride facility.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:47
Okay, thank you

Unknown Speaker 2:04:54
okay, I was hoping to get two comments for the board for the night. We’ll start with you

Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
You did, or council member, board member magneri Gotta get it right

Unknown Speaker 2:05:27
it was a really informative evening. I mean, I’ve been looking forward to learning about Ltd and hearing their presentation for a long time and the parking maximum proposes an exciting move in the right direction, I think for moving Lamont forward in transportation and the sprawl issues that we have and hopefully how having high density housing so that transit and things like that are much more reasonable. And getting from one side of town doesn’t take forever.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:57
I do want to make a note, I am organizing a big event

Unknown Speaker 2:06:01
on Saturday that my fellow board members are welcome to attend. As long one Earth Day, it’s on Saturday. Looks like the weather is not looking so great. So I think we’ll probably end up going inside the school is at Timberline from 10am to 3pm. And

Unknown Speaker 2:06:16
transportation department will be there as another for other departments from the city. So it’s heavily attended by city departments. But

Unknown Speaker 2:06:25
it was a really informative evening, and I

Unknown Speaker 2:06:27
enjoyed hearing everything about.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:34
Yeah, the great presentations, and I’m glad at least two board members of RTD showed up this time, because last year, no one showed up. So it’s great to have someone with a little bit more say and listening to our comments. As for I did want to bring up Third Avenue but because we don’t have city engineers here

Unknown Speaker 2:06:58
are

Unknown Speaker 2:07:01
because I know that the project’s not done. So so you know. So I’m, you know, I will make a judgement when it’s done. And we live with it for six months. So but when is the next phase of that starting? It’s actually starting up very soon. They’ve got design plans to get going pretty quickly as the weather gets better. And if you do have a question, I don’t mean to put Carolina on the spot. But Jim and and Kyle both said if there’s questions, please let them know. And we’ll get answers to you as soon as possible. My My perspective is, you know, protein division zero, you know, we got to figure out how to stop vehicles and slow down and where people are crossing. So. So I believe, you know, those stop signs are quite important. So and people will learn to live with it. Next.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:55
Yes, wow, this was indeed a very informative evening. And I look forward to seeing things as they progress. I did want to acknowledge the house Morrison’s comments from the public. I do think that the Third Avenue stop signs on Francis and Sherman in between each other

Unknown Speaker 2:08:18
are really close together. And it may be worth looking into further on.

Unknown Speaker 2:08:24
How, how true it is that people are running the stop signs and considering having a crosswalk at Sherman othered. Also, I last month, I was not able to attend it as I was at South by Southwest and one exciting update that I had was I got to see CEO Daraa COEs rose how he still mispronounced the CEO of Uber. His name’s wrong. But he identified that one of the key things that Uber is looking to do is to have micro transit. And so it is exciting to see that long one is ahead of the curve. But also to be aware that that a major rideshare app is looking to take that market. So we need to be really on top of our game and make sure that we are providing the most equitable services for for our residents in Longmont. Other than that,

Unknown Speaker 2:09:25
yeah, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:28
Great. I just want to acknowledge Phil, again for the million dollars for the microtransit. Well done. I know that took a lot of work seriously.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:39
And I think the comprehensive review by RTD was good. I think the audience that they they provided us with was was great to see all those folks here. I thought their fare structure is very well done.

Unknown Speaker 2:09:52
You know, I think some of the challenges that they face with ridership and all that and I know that we’re seeing that across society and in regards to

Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
You know, increasing ridership so we can increase our routes. It’s that seems like that’s just going to be a challenge as we go forward.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:07
And excited to see the BRT. And the parking maximums, I think is a great idea. And kudos to you, Ben, for doing all the homework on that.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:17
You guys are keep us very well informed. And I appreciate that. So thank you. And council member Yarbro.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:27
Thank you, of course. Thank you. For all you do. I appreciate you all.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:35
I will say I have to agree, I was going to bring up the exact

Unknown Speaker 2:10:42
issue that the public invited I can’t remember his name

Unknown Speaker 2:10:47
was add.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:49
This happened to me yesterday, I was so confused. Like, why cars was missing? The stop sign? I mean, just driving through the stop sign on third.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:00
And I was like, wait, wait, you know, so that is happening? I don’t know if we can get someone maybe to sit over there. I mean, resources, right. But, or a camera as we just bought a new camera. Okay, awesome to try that out. So that’s maybe a place where we could try it. blinking. I was thinking about that, too. But yeah, he’s absolutely correct. Because I was gonna bring it up tonight, because it happened to me yesterday. And I was like, wait a minute, what happened here? Why did I not stop, but the car behind him stopped. But I mean, it was just like, they’re not used to the stop sign being there or something. And so if we can make those stop signs that has the red, you know, lights on it or something like that, so people can know, in aware that they’re there. But um,

Unknown Speaker 2:11:57
that’s why that’s why that’s why, um,

Unknown Speaker 2:12:01
that was I think it I had, I think that’s all I had to say. Anyway, I hope I wasn’t too harsh with RTD today. But you all are amazing with all your questions, huh?

Unknown Speaker 2:12:15
Suggestions. But, yeah, thanks for the money and thanks for staying late today.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:23
Okay, items for the upcoming agenda. Phil, do we want to cover that it looks like it’s the CIP update. First, Jim would be doing that for 24. Yes. Get ready to do that as we speak so perfect. Not right now maybe but if there’s nothing else, I guess I need a motion to adjourn.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:43
Motion to adjourn tonight’s meeting.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:47
seconded.

Unknown Speaker 2:12:49
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed. Great. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai