Transportation Planning Organization Meeting - Mar 02, 2026

Alachua County Transportation Planning Organization one thing we're still waiting on quorum but I did want to change the minutes I guess we do that once we have the quorum we can't really adopt the agenda either right or yep so I guess we can start the roll call and then we'll adjust it as we go all right one thing on the on the chairs announcements there's an error in the minutes on the December 16th minutes that had a Mary Alford as the vice chair instead of myself so if we could have a motion to change adjust that yeah I'd like to move I don't want to be vice chair that's fine yeah I'll move to him in the minutes for December 16 2025 to reflect the appointment of Adrian Hay Santos as vice-chair all right is there any discussion see none any public comment all right all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay our motion passes unanimously approval of the agenda second yes one change I would like on the agenda is if we can switch the RTS item and the bike master plan items since we have some members of the public on that that's okay all right all right we have a motion to approve the agenda with the RTS item and the bike master plan items switched all those in favor say aye aye any opposed our motion passes unanimously roll call do you want me to do that or do you want to do that and Commissioner Willis is unfortunately out today I believe Commissioner Willis is on the line Commissioner Alford here Commissioner Wheeler absent Commissioner Cornell here Commissioner Chestnut is absent Commissioner Pritzia here Mayor Ward here Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut is absent Commissioner Desmond Duncan Walker also absent Commissioner James Engel absent Commissioner Ed Book here Commissioner Eastman here Councilmember Taylor member certain is absent Vice Chair Hay Santos here Mr. Dixon here Mr. Kea Brown Mr. Chair you have a forum okay thank you very much the motion to approve the minutes from last meeting second I have a motion to approve the minutes from February 2nd any members our discussion at the board any public comment seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay my motion passes unanimously move towards a public comment if there's any members of the public public want to talk about an item not on the agenda please come forward you have three minutes seeing none we'll close public comment all right and director action items Mr. Chair you wanted to move the presentation up before the action items or I think just switch the RTS on the bike oh okay I gotcha yes do you want me to advance me item number 7.1 is the amendment number six to the existing or the current fiscal year 2425-25-25.6 UPWP submitted in the agenda to the board are a few items attachments versus the revisions log then the revision form number six the existing current pages of the task tables and summary tables the proposed task and summary tables the proposed task and summary tables and then the final UP document UPWP document the UPWP document item item number 7.1 is the amendment number six to the existing or the current fiscal year 2425-25-25.6 UPWP submitted in the agenda to the board are a few items attachments versus the revisions log then the revision form number six the existing current pages of the task tables and summary tables the proposed task and summary tables and then the final UP document UPWP document the UPWP Unified Planning Work Program document in its entirety the only thing that's changing are the summary and task tables the TIP transportation improvement plan was emailed separately I believe it was earlier this week or last week the purpose of it is to do the de-obligation okay that so this amendment is to de-obligate 1,096,073 dollars from the current UPWP two-year cycle and then moving it into into the next UPWP 26-28 cycle leaving behind 1.4 million dollars to be spent for the rest of this fiscal year in column one is the proposed which is the I'm sorry is the original which is the existing 25-26 year and then the second column proposed is the remainder of the fiscal years reflecting the 1.4 million I just to say time not going to go through all the individual task items so this is a summary table for existing year one is unchanged because that fiscal year has passed and then this is the year two reflecting the rest of the current fiscal year totaling 1.365 in PL funds planning funds and 35,000 in PL complete streets funds the 25,000 the 24,000 for local match or local contribution for a total of 1.42 million for the remainder of this 24-26 fiscal year fiscal year UPWP with that staff would like to make a recommendation to approve the amendment and then authorize the chair to execute the amendment to the MTPO agreement with DLT thank you very much is there any discussion of the board so that amount is getting moved into the following it's the remainder of this fiscal year it's going to be moved the separate de-obligating we don't lose it we don't move it's just putting it back correct correct move did we get a motion yeah I motioned but I didn't get a second second all right we have a motion to approve staff recommendation any discussion on the motion is there any public comment on the motion to approve the amendment seeing none bring it back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously thank you thank you Madam Director next item yes item 7.2 is the draft UPWP for fiscal year 26-28 some basic changes to the introduction and chapter 1 elements updating some outdated updates clarifications consolidating some items that existed in the body and in the appendices and then some general cleanup chapter 2 are is the task work tables and their descriptions and funding tables and then 3 is the summary table and then some of the appendices have been modified just as a summary this is the year 1 for the total for 26 to 27 separated into the 7 different tasks and then this is year 2 so combined you'll see that if you add the the obligated funds to the 1.68 million that we get per two years it totals $2,779,597 understanding that and I don't know if you can see my mouse okay yeah here so these dollars is just some ballpark estimates just like with the current UPWP we can make amendments as we go at the time that this was developed it's anticipation of five funded positions we can talk about that as we go along in the year in terms of timeline the draft UPWP that this board is considering today has to be uploaded and completed by March 15th into the state's GAP software or platform we are supposed to receive agency comments back by April 15th and then we would have to take the final adoption to the board on May 4th so that we can go back and forth with DLT and Federal Highway and FTA to get the authorization letter everything completed before June 1st so that we can be in the queue for funding come July 1 and with that staff is asking the board to approve the draft UPWP for fiscal year 26-28 staff recommendation second all right we have a motion to approve staff recommendation any discussion of the board is there any public comment on the approval of the 2027-28 Unified Planning Work Program seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay our motion passes unanimously next item thank you item 7.3 is the list of priority projects it's supposed to be updated annually every annual update is just adding the new fifth year through conversations with district 2 the department has advised that we just update the years and keep the list of projects essentially the same there are no substantive changes other than some project extension begin endpoints which you'll see in the next slide also as a point of note re-approving the current list makes the university lighting project be eligible to be expedited to construction so very briefly this is the current list and projects 5 and 9 these were the old begin endpoints based on comments from TAC the endpoints have just been extended to reflect the projects same thing for project 9 and with that staff is asking the board to approve the re-approval of the current LOPP with just the date changes Commissioner Buck yeah thank you Mr. Chair I just thought it was pretty important that in all three of these particular action items that we've kind of been working hand in hand with the department of transportation which is exactly what we're doing under the new structure it's what we've talked about for the last two years and it even talks about the fact that they've reviewed our current list of plans so with that I move approval of item 7 all right we have a motion to approve on the updated priority projects list any discussion of the board any public comment all right seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay our motion passes unanimously nice work jumping on that I know you had to dive in pretty darn quick welcome thank you Merry Christmas did you note a notch that that also can be amended mid-cycle yes it can also be amended and I believe next item please the letter of support is yours next next item the letter of support marriage do you want me to talk about it no no no I was going to talk about it I can talk about it so the county is requesting at this time 2.25 million in state appropriations for FY 2026 this would be to complete design on the Archer Road four laning from Tower Road to 122nd Street I mean it's fully constructible plans and so the first legislative appropriation covered part of design and so this is essentially to fulfill design not to fund subsequent phases for this project why does it cost five million dollars to design a road I mean it's like two miles of road please ask at CO2 I don't know it's a general I'm not being facetious I'm literally wondering why it costs five million dollars there's pretty standard right there's like standard requirements and I just it just seems like an inordinate amount of money to design a road they're real good design roads are expensive nobody has an answer okay great I don't know if it includes the work to deal with the right away right away but that could be pretty expensive in time you mean to think about like stormwater or or no to actually acquire the property and make the agreements and just deal with like driveways or commercial properties is that included? is right away I can look into this further and follow up at the next meeting I do not know it's all the design of all the public right-of-ways and all the I guess I would just yeah I would love a full cost accounting of what goes into five million dollars worth of road planning I believe there would also be a lot of utility relocation along this quarter in this particular segment but who the engineer firm is? I don't it's being handled in public works I mean they've outsourced it but I don't know who they're working with is there a second? second all right we have a motion to send the letter on Archer Road any more discussion of the board? any public comment? seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay all right motion passes unanimously next item Madam Director yes so as the board knows we did a general planning consultant services contract scope we put it out there and we received my phone just keeps going to sleep I'm sorry we received five proposals so we received proposals from North Florida Professional Services Crawford, Horfrey, and Tilly the Cardino Group Atkins, Realis and Kimley-Horn and Associates the selection committee met and evaluated all five and the top two candidates are Kimley-Horn and Associates and Atkins, Realis so this item is just to get the board's approval to move forward with negotiating the contracts with each of these top two firms and then executing the contract so just as a point of clarification there isn't a fixed budget number to this we would be the contract will be based on negotiating the hourly rates from the two consultants the GPC allows us to enter into two request for proposals which will itemize exactly the type of work that's done and this is for two complete street studies and the negotiation on the task the amendment six that the board just acted on item 7.1 has budgeted $600,000 $300,000 each for each of the two complete streets projects so the budget is capped at $300,000 for the two projects and that will come back through an actual scope of services detailing each of the corridors and what we'll be looking for the level of public involvement and the hours of work and things like that thank you commissioner Alford I believe that I remember that Kimberly Horne was the engineer that was working with the city of Newberry and the city of Archer and they changed engineers because they had issues I think I would ask that if we with any of the ones that we negotiate with that we look at what local work they've done recently and if and get have a discussion with whoever was doing that work with them because I don't want to be in the same situation that they were in it should my understanding wasn't that there was much that was the issue of the company it was an issue of a non-payment I think there was an issue with not that's that's a separate thing but there was a problem with I think there was another problem I think it was a different group I think that was the sewer group versus the transportation group but yeah I hear you either way they're local management you know I just think it would be worthwhile to get that to get that background information and just make sure that we're clear what our expectations are yes we can certainly do that they are the I think the highly number one ranked correct I'm sorry they are Kimberly Horne is the number one ranked correct yes sir they're number one which what are the two complete streets I don't have they are Archer Road from Southwest 13th Street to Debbie what is the to 34th Street and then Southwest 13th Street from Archer Road down to Southwest 16th Avenue no 16th Avenue to Williston more discussion a motion move staff recommendation second all right we have a motion to approve staff recommendation with with the request that you check into local references other than so contingent on local references is the seconder okay with that any more discussion of the board any public comment all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion passed unanimously all right next item it will be the RTS report we should probably note that Commissioner Desmond Walker arrived hello thank you Commissioner welcome Mr. Vice Chair here's a member member of the board Jesus Gomez from the city's transportation department we're going to talk a little bit about RTS overview and a little bit of history and then you go down to the financials I have Dennis from the city's he's the finance director he's going to be doing the rest of the presentation but I'll go over the in the overview RTS have a service area of 106 square miles we have right now 239 FTEs we have a fleet you know it's on and off about 100 buses we went down to 24 routes in the city and two on campus we provide two micro transit routes and do advanced doing service on the east side Kingsville and we currently as yesterday we're providing the ADA for the transit service in-house in 2025 our route was close to 5 million and we provide close to 220,000 hours of service on the map you can see the routes we have the area in the city also of course we're going into the county I guess more and more every time on the ridership history we have you know between 1985 and 1995 we have I guess the combination of a campus and UF ridership and I was always under 2 million it was in 1996 1997 when they have the campus development agreement where we have some funding with DOT county the city and the university and we started the transportation fee agreement when we started adding service into the system so we started with 11 cents maybe in 1998 all the way to 2015 that's actually where we got almost the peak and that was I guess 9 hours and 44 dollars per crate hour the fee hasn't increased since then since 2015 so having the operating cost increasing every year so we've been doing a reduction of service and of course reduction of service is a reduction of rights pretty much of course then you said the fees didn't go up but that was just the university portion what about the contribution from the city was that going up remains stable then during COVID you see that it hits us for any agency in the state was hit really hard during COVID and we're on the way to recover but also you know we have some opening cost increases during COVID a lot of opening like parts for example increase over 30% and contracts increase like then we contract 60% so a lot of operating costs also increase so we have to reduce service so we estimated for 2026 we're probably going to go to 4.2 million passengers so there's also a reduction you know compared to 2025 the hours of service you can see since implementation of that fee it went up all the way to almost 300,000 and now we're projecting it's going to be less than 200,000 for 2026 so it's 100,000 hours less of service that's a lot of service reduction productivity went the same way depending on the hours of service you know we're starting less than 20 passes an hour all the way to almost 40 passes an hour then you know with the reduction of service went down too and COVID so we getting closer to that 25 passes an hour on system wide compared to other agencies we were the second on state in productivity so despite because everybody we're not the only ones that suffer every transit agency in the country really suffer so we went from 41 city routes in 2018 where we have the highway number to 24 in 2025 10 campus routes to 2 campus routes 300 and almost 18,000 hours up to 220 so that's we we're estimating less than 200,000 for 26 so we're talking about 100 almost 120,000 hours reduction since 2018 the fleet also of course we we're reducing service the fleet went down from 134 buses to 100 and for 2026 we're estimating we just need 290 buses employees went from 304 to 239 so we reduction of 65 employees you can hold up for a question Commissioner Prithia yeah what on the slide previous with the reduction in service what were the criteria for making a decision about which routes to get rid of well productivity budget and the funding source mainly UF routes but we've been reduction through the years so we had to cut last year city routes the city current city routes affecting also the county contract so productivity was the primary criteria you used like how many riders or okay not the not the other alternative transportation options in that well we have to we have for the federal transit administration we have to do a title six analysis and make sure that we are serving the majority of the population the same way even with the reduction of the level of service we can't cut one side and you know not on the other side so you have even good routes with productivity that went you know disappeared pretty much on the budget history it's been on and off of course we have less than seven million in 2000 all the way to almost twenty nine million in 2025 we don't going down to 27 commissioner hold on for a question commissioner cornell yeah so this is the slide I really want to chat about so when I looked at the traffic and the trips it looks like we're around 2000 2002 levels as far as ridership and I know we spiked way up and then we came way down after COVID but when you look at the budget you know so we're four not quite four times but maybe three and a half to four times what I don't know is kind of how much that is inflation 24 years and have you been able to kind of right size for where you were in 2002 2003 versus where we are now from a budget perspective in terms of level of service hours almost the same as we have in 2002 2003 right but the cost you know you have to deal with the employee cost and all these operating costs fuel completely yeah so do you know how much of this is inflation related versus so I did a one for 2010 to today and I think it's around $3 million like if you did inflation we would be $3 million higher in budget from 2010 so we're not keeping up with inflation just our current from 2010 that was about $3 million under budget or less than we should be if we kept with inflation right but 2010 is twice as much as where we were at the current level service levels yeah in terms of statewide we are the second on productivity and on cost per trip or even number one that's really the measure you look at yeah we look at how much of the budget is like fixed cost versus variable cost like fuel and you know like you've got all the buses that are the same you know you have to maintain and you have certain employees that are full time you pay no matter what whether they sit there or whether the bus is moving or you know I guess I'm just interested to understand how much of this budget is a budget regardless of whether you're operating 10 buses or 50 buses I can well we can we have that analysis but I don't have the exact number okay but it said the main cost would be labor fuel okay so most of it is the variable cost associated with the routes okay so compared last year with this year you know we went down from 29.1 million to 27.8 and you can see the difference in the percentages and the contribution towards the budget so for the the actual expenses and revenue we're going to have Dennis come and go I'll be here welcome good afternoon my name is Dennis Wendt director of finance for the city of Gainesville I've been asked to put together a schedule of actuals for RTS so this is what I got a lot of these numbers are based on the audited financials of RTS of course 2025 is still in draft and we're still working on those audited financials but for the most part a lot of these numbers are coming from our trial balance and our actuals of our general ledger the revenues grouping I did my best to try to interpret how each category is being bucketed but from what I understand this is what how I put it together as comparing to RTS's budget and how they budget so first of all we have the city's contributions now most of this is the local option gas tax and some any transfers from the general fund or any other fund into RTS I would like to note in 2024 we did transfer $2 million to RTS and that's why you see a spike in 2024 in city contributions but for the most part it relatively remains around 3 and 3 or 3 and a half million for contributions from the city next we have the county line I believe in 2024 the service agreement was revised and thus you see an increase in the revenues from the county so it went from about 1.1 million to about 1.8 to 2 million in the last two years next we have Santa Fe Santa Fe's been relatively consistent on providing support and that's about 800 grand over the last five years every year next we have the University of Florida and starting in 2025 we did have reduced services from the University of Florida so you know we didn't have as much support financial support from the university and starting in 2025 you can see a drop off in revenues so with FTA and FDOT these are our grant revenues they do provide operating assistance but for the majority of the fluctuations that you see in the numbers here it's capital yes so with RTS's capital replacement plan it goes every probably two to three years then we refill or re-update the buses and the infrastructure that they have fares and passes this will fluctuate with the service demands so you're going to see you know not a lot of revenues coming in from fares and passes but there is some a bit of money coming in and then finally we have other revenues the majority of this is advertisement revenue but some of it is also sales of fixed assets but there's a multitude of different things that are also coming into that bucket so these are the revenues over the last five years majority of the fluctuations came from the University of Florida or capital needs from RTS operations going down to expenses here we have salaries and benefits as we've been indicated from the University of Florida we started reducing services in 2024 and you can see that drop off in salaries and benefits starting in 2024 and 2025 and operations and maintenance and administrative in general a lot of this is contractual services it's repairs and maintenance it's operating supplies so you know your fuel is in here a lot of tools and other different things are in here especially the contract with MV transportation that was also in this line item but you know it will probably no longer be within the scope of RTS administrative or non-discretionary spending most of this is indirect cost RTS is providing indirect cost to the city of Gainesville for a variety of things including HR payroll attorney's offices fees different variety of things and the balance remaining is mostly insurance costs that they provide to our self-funded insurance fund depreciation and amortization we do depreciate our assets straight line over anywhere between five and thirty years so this is relatively consistent over the last five years and then other financing uses this line item represents the transfer to our debt service fund for a pension obligation bond so the RTS does have a balance for our pension obligation bonds and this transfer represents the annual debt service payment transfer and then finally we have a change in that position essentially our net income for the year and again this is primarily driven by capital purchases so you're going to see a fluctuation throughout the years I did provide a line at the very bottom here and this is their capital outlay or CapEx so you know it kind of trends along with the net income or the net position throughout the years as it will fluctuate how does RTS adjust for changes in fuel costs given the fact that we're anticipating possibly significant changes in fuel costs due to military activity what's your sensitivity for dealing with that well maybe Jesus could answer that better does RTS hedge fuels at all we used to we used to hedge actually no RTS never hedged their fuel it was the city and our fleet we did hedge have a fuel hedge program but not under RTS yeah because there's you know some things are saying that fuel could go up significantly high depending on how long the conflict left hate for folks that are already going to be suffering to have to suffer more because of that thank you continue cool so next I wanted to kind of represent the RTS fixed assets now RTS is a very capital intensive operation and in this slide you can see where most of their assets are invested in which is buildings and improvement and vehicles you know it really shows how much of their operations is capital and dependent I also wanted to show some of RTS's long-term liabilities luckily with the pension obligations and our OPEB obligation these did land at a with a net asset balance so we are you know we do have a healthy funded balance between these two programs and it does help RTS out a lot as you know their funding status is sufficient so again you know these are not negative numbers because they're positive and they're asset balances but I did want to show that so that you know it is technically or usually reported as a liability but it's really helping RTS out due to the city of Gainesville so this is essentially the float that the city offers RTS operates on a reimbursement basis for most of their operations so with grants and even reimbursement from the University of Florida we kind of wait to build them after one or two months we'll do grant draws every three months so they're always going to be behind on their cash balance so at the end of the year 2024 they ended at a $5 million deficit and a $6.6 million deficit at the end of 2025 but again this is mostly just timing on their receivables the pension obligation bonds as I've mentioned this is the balance that is remaining for the pension obligation bonds then this is specific to RTS only so over the next 16 years through 2042 this is what we're looking to for RTS to repay and that's about $800 grand a year over the next 16 years these last two are fairly nominal accrued vacation leave or accrued vacation payable and the right of use is just various software contracts that RTS holds so this is the makeup of their long term liabilities and then finally I just wanted to show a little bit about RTS fund balance it doesn't draw a great picture of how they're maintained but it does show that they're heavily invested in capital assets and they do have a negative unrestricted fund balance primarily due to the obligations that they hold so I don't know how telling fund balance is to you but I just did want to show this as it is a part of their financials so that pretty much wraps it up for my portion I'm open to any questions or I can pass it back to Jesus to wrap up the presentation all right any questions for on the finance Mr. Gomez do you have anything you want to wrap up do you have any update or anything that you wanted to provide I did want to provide at your last meeting you had asked feedback about the university's kind of long-term intent in terms of financing we did provide an email response to chairman Willits and to your executive director so I'm sure that can be circulated if you want to see that but essentially the university commits continued collaboration with the city of Gainesville and with Alachua County to meet the needs of students and their mobility very committed to ongoing engagement of stakeholders and students in the community very interested in data so things like ridership evaluations and surveys to really understand how the transit service to UF can be run the most effective and efficient and kind of on that data point and I'm going to come back to that but I wanted to mention too just in terms of the you know you heard about some of the route reductions on campus just to be clear you understand that those services are still being provided there's still campus transit just not provided by RTS and it's being provided at a significantly lower hourly rate so the students are still getting those services and not all not all of them there's still well the campus routes and so when you see the reduction too in terms of the funding to RTS also understand there's a reduction in service provided by RTS so they're having less expenses because the university is taking care of service to those campus routes they are sending some routes off campus is that correct I have to look back there may be a couple that go just a little bit into the neighborhoods around campus to get students RTS is still operating too on campus I've got an intern that's been studying this so right right and so back on the question of data one of the things we wanted to ask of RTS I know there have been some conversations about some kind of card swipes or automatic people counters I know you had the slide that showed I think the ridership slide the red was indicating UF ridership was that correct yeah so how are you collecting that data and are there plans to you know make that some kind of electronic data collection that can be more accurate Mr. Gomez do you mind coming up to the microphone you can sit here and just stay had a chance he was walking out he made him sit back down that easy we upgrading our revenue collection system that is the fair boxes so you are going to be able to tap and validate the student IDs in the future and that's what we're working now we have the money now with the grant and we hopefully we're going to start working on that soon is there a timeline by the end of the year completed by the end of this year calendar or the physical year calendar year that's good news we're happy to hear that and I just wanted to clarify too if I forgot to say it the email response that came the statement I just wanted you to know that that was vetted all the way up through interim President Landry so you know the university is paying attention to this issue at the highest levels do you mind sharing that everyone as well Chair Willis asked me to read this this is a response from the University of Florida and it states that the University of Florida is required to conduct a comprehensive review of UF funded portions of the RTS transit system to ensure the effective and efficient use of student resources we continue to engage with students and the broader community to better understand their transportation needs and remain committed to collaborating with the city of Gainesville and Alachua County to support student access and mobility some of this work includes ongoing ridership evaluation to better align off-campus routes within available funding with our current contract with RTS extending to 6-30-2027 we will spend the upcoming months determining the next best steps based on our students needs and available funding thank you thank you in that email and I feel like in some of your responses the real focus has just been on students and I guess I look at their overall impact on the university they're the number one employer in the county and so it's not just about students it's also about staff and faculty and the fact that our roadways are really congested particularly in the areas where our staff and faculty live in Jonesville and Archer Hale Plantation and many of that's where faculty are living and so to the extent that the university is interested in collaborating it would be great for us to also think about how they might collaborate on routes that are we could potentially enhance to provide better services to ideally incentivize faculty and staff to utilize the buses also staff you know I mean there's some staff that rely on the bus they can't afford parking they can't get to work otherwise and as routes get cut I'm concerned that it also means that people's reliable transportation to work gets cut I'll take that message back just to understand that the focus on the students is because that's the funding source that we have available is from the student transportation impact fees and so we don't have anything comparable to that for employees so that's that's why the focus kind of typically turns on the students because that's the funding source thank you mayor Ward no I was just going to say I hear that I think we do have I mean there are you know there are parking fees that you all charge for people who are driving their cars to campus seems like some of that funding maybe could be used to offset the opportunity to create alternative transportation options but I hear you I know there's not a direct fee associated with transportation for staff but many of them do pay quite hefty fees for parking and transportation so thank you Mr. Chair as we if we're going to have a broader conversation about transit then we need to start with some some givens and decide what what are givens what is the community what what do we as policymakers believe ought to be givens for a transit system and that includes the major employer and the and the major educator of students and I think we have not articulated as policymakers for a very long time why we want to have a good stable transit program and I think it's time to to start working on that we kind of assume that we have people who know why transit matters and there's some real obvious reasons why transit matters and you can experience those things starting right about now on any of our western arteries but you also the things you can't see and touch and feel are if we don't have a as robust a transit system as we could have then there are folks for whom those wonderful job opportunities on campus are not job opportunities because they can't get there and and the people who make UF attractive to students from around the world will find it not as attractive if faculty and staff and by faculty and staff I don't just mean the highly compensated faculty and staff I mean folks who sweep the floors and graduate students and a variety of folks who make it a great place to be a student and a great part of the community and we often don't find a way to quantify all of those things we also don't talk about the fact that if it's not a healthy system it doesn't it that starts to show up in ridership so if if you don't treat it as if it were a great system you won't get the riders you know get the riders to make it a great system the harder it is to ride the less likely somebody is to ride it if we set up a system where you have to go through multiple checkpoints to get on the bus and spend a little money etc etc etc people just will make other choices the easier we make it to ride the bus the more people are going to ride the bus the fewer people are driving cars on all of our major arteries the more likely it is for somebody who is a great would be a great hire to show up and do that work is a great hire I want to make sure that going forward we find a way to have those conversations at the city at the county at the University of Florida at Santa Fe College throughout the community and talk about every piece of of this it's hard if you live in in in a lot of way it's hard to want to know why we should spend why the whole community should spend money on a transit system because I'm going to drive in and pay to park you want to you want to invest in the transit system so that it takes you have as much time to come in and pay to park we need to have some conversations about how that's all funded differently than just expecting students to pay for it through campus and we need to be honest about the fact that having more people on campus more people showing up to have to work on campuses that are working remotely there is a bump to to revenues to people buying more parking passes as well that doesn't necessarily benefit too many people but it makes the system the parking system in the University of Florida more whole and all these things some of them skew the numbers because they're easily quantifiable some of them don't appear in the numbers but they make the whole thing less less solid kind of shaky we need to as a broader community start talking about why transit matters and what makes a quality transit system and what is likely to make it something people want to use over the medium and long term in this community if we don't invest now if we start looking at numbers saying well that's a little expensive you're right it's expensive but it makes a better place to live and if we don't if we don't talk about the reasons why that is then we will start defunding it and then we will see a system that doesn't work very well and we'll see reasons to completely unfund it and then none of us will be able to get anywhere in less than two hours because the roads are clogged and unsafe so I'm not saying that's anything we need to take action on today but we need to start having that conversation at every at every institutional part of it about why this matters and make decisions about if it doesn't matter we may decide that we're okay with two-hour commutes in what used to be 15 minutes I don't think we will but we might decide that but if we don't have honest conversations about it and and really talk about what it is we're funding when we fund transit we'll find ourselves in a tough position end of my speech sorry thank you Commissioner Albert yeah I know there's a difference between capital expenditures and operational expenditures but I look at new parking garages being built and I can't help but think how many buses and how many bus drivers could be hired with the cost of a new parking garage I mean it's a lot because those aren't cheap and I also think about and you're you're getting the brunt of the message taking the day but you know the there's there's a lot of folks that are sweeping floors and and doing you know very necessary and often underpaid jobs at UF that could get the equivalent of a few hundred dollars a month back in their paycheck if they could get to work without having to have a second car or worry about parking or worry about carpooling if you know we we used to have a dedicated bus line that went to the public's inhale plantation right and it would observed at one time and it was all these very happy professors getting on the bus every morning with their coffee and their newspapers and most of them had come from other places in the country where they're used to public transit they got on that bus and that bus took them straight to you up didn't stop anywhere else didn't do anything else it just went back and forth to a few times a day you know if we did that again and if we did that to other parts of town where there were you know numbers of employees that we know are going to go to the UF I think with park and ride a lot you know I look at the cost of doing that compared to the cost of parking garages and I think that while I know you guys you know collected a lot of money from parking passes that has changed since you know I graduated 30 years ago you know I don't think it's I don't think I think parking has always been a problem it's always going to be a problem and anything that we can do to help fix that would be really fabulous thank you I conclude I'll get you just want to give a couple comments yeah thank you the UF and being here and and hopefully I think it could be a more of a picture with RTS and bringing that back I mean I think transportation our community is struggling I mean we are traffic is getting worse and worse it seems like every day places I used to go there I take there I mean and only we're not gonna build new roads to like to get rid of that congestion it's there it's gonna get worse and really the only way to do it public transportation but RTS has been struggling with the budget cuts I mean just the on-time performance looking at the last year's report RTS has a goal of 85% for on-time routes their average was 54% in last year's restoration reports so even though we were running places we're still behind early or just it's hard for people to rely on that to be able to get to a job when you have a 54% chance that it might not be dedicated routes are so good yeah and then also on the funding side we've I think as a community we have relied too much on UF other communities looking across the state of Florida they have much more funding from their local government that who's the city of the county whoever it is it's funding those much more than we have here and we've kind of just relied on UF and then I think we get complaints of why this is a student-run thing because mainly pay boards for students and I don't think that's fair for the rest of the community and we got to pay for that as the city in the county I think I talked about the inflation number numbers yes 2010 worth three million dollars below where we were then and yes we are running less routes but we're still much larger service there than we were there to 2004 transit was not great in our community and I think that's where it just comes down if we're going to be serious about creating alternative places for people in a transit system that we become proud of we have to fund it more that's it's a funding issue and being able to want to serve our workers or students are vulnerable in our community you must commit to investing it I hope got a motion I was going to bring for about discuss later but just on kind of I think we need to take steps on investing and hopefully looking at this year investing more for the city county in UF and being able to address these issues and be able to have one I know there's property tax maybe go away and all that but I think we can plan as a community if property taxes don't go away we'll do this Commissioner Prizzi I think we're next Thank You Mr. Chair I'm sorry about me being tardy I know time's up next up Ms. Dixon it has anyone asked you up about contributing to making a contribution to transit we understand the student transportation fees I understand that activity student service fees being used to pay that but they are here in our community and would they consider what I think they should consider investing in transit for the reasons that Commissioner Alford and Mayor Ward said you know the staff they and their employees other employees and they are here pretty much free they extract a whole lot out so I think an investment in the community being our largest employer you know with some auxiliary funds that they may have that's an investment to improving the quality of life for not just the community to alleviate traffic but also for their employees they don't buy a parking decal that improves their pay I mean some of the lowest I mean people that work there are some of our lowest paid employees it's like the school district so that would be so one way that they could invest back in the community right and I'll respond you at UF has historically contributed funds that were not from the transfer student transportation fees so there have been actually some from the the parking and transportation budget that have gone to transit to RTS I would have to go back and kind of you know dig up that data and kind of see where we're at now but but historically we have contributed to non-student portions of ridership because we have the universal access for employees also provided through RTS and then of course our campus development agreement over the years has contributed significant funds started out being some operational funds and then shifted to capital purchases of buses I guess I thought I thought that we already had a motion approved and on the floor like sort of waiting for us to have a conversation about the idea of a regional transit authority and sort of this discussion overall of like what is transit looking like in our community I mean it's not just about UF or about the city or the county specifically but it's about overall service across the county like every single time we have a conversation with resource limited individuals transportation comes up as the number one challenge that they have to accessing resources and supports to being able to get to work to I mean you name being able to get to health care you name it you know and so it just feels like if we're talking about the idea of you know a safety net or a safety harness for those that need it the most and we're talking about basic needs and we're talking about basic needs and trying to address that foundation of Maslow's hierarchy in order for people to live and thrive in this community like transportation is a number one investment we need to make and so I'm with Mayor Warwick and I think it's a I feel like but I thought we already had a motion on the floor so I guess that's my question is like where are we with that conversation being moved forward and sort of the idea of staff bringing you know best practices from other communities forward and ideas for how we might address those things Mr. Chair yes we did add it to the notes it's in the minutes and we did tentatively add it to the work program and kind of a soft manner I would say we have extra budget for class of seven systems planning expressly for evaluating something like this 140,000 140,000 you said 140 or 400 140,000 just one quick so the idea was we knew that the new director would be you know very busy with updating the unified planning work programs and the list of projects and then sort of after she got staffed up and office space and all of that to have this to be kind of be kind of a front burner activity also I know Mr. Commissioner Cornell has something he wants to say but I have started the conversation with FTA to be more of a stronger partnership with the TPO and RTS so that conversation started Commissioner Cornell a couple things first of all I want to thank RTS the thank you for that presentation that for me answered so many questions about kind of historical numbers and ridership and where where where you are where you are I want to thank the city manager manager Parsons because he and I had a conversation after the last meeting about that the city is funding RTS from a cash flow perspective it shows right up there and I and I and I so thank you all for that that was really helpful for me I think it's helpful for our community for those that are interested in kind of understanding the history and where we're trying to go I think we do have standing direction but something Anna Mary and Mayor Ward said really hit home for me in this meeting as it relates to really engaging our number one employer and our partner from a faculty and a staffing perspective we've always been focused on the students at least I've in my mind I've always been focused on students and really this has to expand like Commissioner Prizio said every city we talked to it's it's on the agenda every time we talked about folks that are trying to find a way to get their groceries or go to work and get their groceries or go to work and get their groceries or go to work and get them out of time and get them out of time and think about that and really this has to expand like Commissioner Prizia said every city we talk to it's it's on the agenda every time we talk about folks that are trying to find a way to get their groceries or go to work it's on the agenda transportation is on the agenda no matter where we go so I wanted to put a motion on the floor that would love for y'all to add to it if you'd like to but I really do think engaging UF with new leadership that's in place and separating this from this what I perceived as a fight between the city and UF last year into a conversation with this organization and UF I think it could really we can really kind of move this forward so I wrote after listening to you all move that we invite UF's transportation team to work with the Gainesville and Alastair County Transportation Planning Organization so this organization to evaluate how we can improve the ridership opportunities of faculty staff and students to enhance both the quality of the transit and the long-term financial viability of the RTS countywide system second so there's lots of words in there countywide's in there TPO with UF is in there faculty staff and students is in there and then quality as well as financial viability it's got to be kind of this whole and patients I mean I think that's the other thing is like the University of Florida also runs the hospital and a lot of doctors and like a lot of people that are coming and going are also patients so it's like I think we have to realize that too like you know so I just if we just add that so that also the hospital like engaging actually staff maybe UF and UF Health and UF Health yeah UF okay invite UF and UF Health transportation teams and I'll leave the rest is that okay yeah so I'll make that change I would motion the floor and I think just one thing on that I think yes UF but there's we can't just be solely UF I think as well I do think I think that motion it's UF is a partner of this but we have to look at our entire area and I think that's one of our issues we've been I think if you're okay with kind of broadening it just say like how well I have standing motion this board has asked for countywide recommendations both funding as well as how are we going to do that but what really hit home with you all for me at least today is engaging our biggest employer these two employers UF and UF Health and after listening to the email that was read it is student focused it's it's really student focused and what what I'm hearing you all say and I could completely agree is it's got to be community focused because they are they are the 800 pound gorilla in our community and we need them to be successful for us to be successful so we need about the table so all right mayor warden so I completely agree with that I everybody's got to be a part of the conversation and we can't we can't expect love to have to speak for everybody on campus that's not fair and it doesn't it doesn't help us get get the conversation I want to share an anecdote and I want to say what I hope we can do moving forward the anecdote is last fall I had the opportunity to spend time in Washington DC and College Park Maryland University of Maryland had a terrific easy ride on on the Metro from from the middle of Washington DC to the station at College Park Maryland it took the same amount of time to get from where I was in DC to the station in College Park on the Metro as it did to get from stepping off the Metro to where I needed to go on campus and that's primarily because there were two different transit systems one for College Park Maryland and one for the University of Maryland and I was reminded that that is the case in almost every big state university across the world the city runs their transit system and the university runs a transit system and yeah and it is not a useful system it makes it less makes you less likely to want to use it makes you more likely to say I'll pay for a parking path because you get off the train and you wait for for the city bus and then city bus gets you to where you need to go and then you got to wait for for the campus bus and they're all fine systems there's nothing wrong with any of them but there it was disjointed it was not a seamless experience we offer seamless experience and that is a unique selling point for our community for campus most the vast majority of our students don't live on campus now a lot of them live across campus and don't need to walk onto campus but they need it's fairly rare that they ride that they walk all the way across campus from from building to building they're using some kind of transit and the more seamless that is the better it is for our entire community my hope is that we can build rather than a what can we afford let's piece this together system a what do we want to have and then if we can't afford that we start pulling pieces off of it with the understanding that every time we pay less we're losing a component that that it's not as good as it could be but I really want us to think about it from that perspective and not from a what can we buy with what we have rather what do we want and how much of it can we buy on an annual basis very good way to look at it so I think what I'm hearing and I like what mayor Ward said I think just thinking about this holistically right I mean we it's easy for us to look at say you know the on-campus routes which I think would probably the most productive bus routes in the entire city you you are likely to see less cost per passenger significantly than paying into an overall system where you have a mix of less productive routes and more productive routes the more productive routes are going to be easier I was and less expensive and work very well but I was curious I mean I when we were having this discussion before I remember reading the transportation parking strategic plan from 2018 which helped me understand sort of all it what UF was coming from I like that it included transportation and parking as Commissioner Alford said because that does seem to be the the push and pull of this whole thing and so I'm just curious I mean the email said that you guys are going to be looking at this over the next year what is the method of doing that what is the structure of doing that like what is the the total scope of that review is it a holistic review overall I mean what is what is you have the vision for this at the moment I think that's kind of yet to be determined there are some folks who are working on that some conversations happening some survey work but but yeah that's still coming into shape so I think that there is opportunity for these kinds of conversations that that you all are talking about between the different organizations yeah okay and is that an RTS specific or is it your total transportation system or how are you guys um a total total transportation system okay I mean I to me that would that is ideal and that is kind of where I mean and then thinking about how that works with this the mayor said people going off campus coming into campus but I think that yeah we're in a much better place when we're looking when UF is looking at all of its needs altogether so I'm glad to go thank you Commissioner Alford I did a quick search on university town shared transit systems and interestingly the internet still thinks that Gainesville Florida is one of those but it I thought it would be you know useful to the you to UF to be able to look at other universities that are that have shared transportation with towns and there's some good ones on here Bloomington Indiana Ames Iowa Morgantown West Virginia Salt Lake City Utah Boston Cambridge Massachusetts Philadelphia Pennsylvania and St. Louis Missouri all have universities and cities that share transit systems and I think that you know that whole that's one of the things when I met with the interim president that we talked about transit a lot and we also talked about housing and you know there's a lot of universities that are doing really very dedicated sort of town gown communications and working together and planning and I would really love to see UF become what you know as one of the biggest universities to be part of that that thought process right where they they embrace their their role in the community and they recognize their impacts to the community and work together but I thought this list was super interesting of the other towns that were that have partnered with universities in order to provide transit so you know it actually mentioned the fact that Gainesville had like a significant portion of their system was funded by students as opposed to some of the other ones but that doesn't mean there's not something to learn from those systems and we have looked at peers we had some consultants do some campus transit planning for us back in 2019 and we looked at a lot of the different funding models because you're right there's there's a lot of different ways that it's done and different levels of partnership or the parallel systems like University of Maryland and kind of got some information on pros and cons and what to look for yeah yeah I used to be involved with an organization called the Congress for New Urbanism and I went to a whole multiple day thing about universities that partnered with cities in order to do amazing things and transportation was usually one of the big things that was Commissioner Bornell I was just gonna comment that for our staff I think it's important to hear what what vice chair hey Santos and the mayor said that transit has to be publicly subsidized it just does and what we're really talking about is how do we improve ridership of it and how do we improve the financial viability of the system so our major partners and the city and the county and UF are on there I mean the funding partners are there this board is going to be looking at our federal and our state partners to help with that but you know I know the County Commission is interested in having that conversation with regards to our contribution it's obvious the city is they put in two million last year and they're continuing to fund it so I think we're at a place where this organization can effectuate a countywide system with our major employers and I think this is a good step really good stuff I have two questions for RTS I guess one is the data that you just shared about the headway issues you know timing and things like that are those primarily related to the reduction of the number of buses that you have in service because of budget cuts or is that are those other other issues that are causing those headway challenges with traffic congestion increasing that's one of the so rapid transit lane funds that we've been collecting you reduce the number of passions that we can get those on the faster we can get those right exactly the faster we can get those you know the other question I was gonna have is with the with it I've heard again I heard it before anecdotally in conversations that I've had in efforts to try to encourage you have to come back to the table with conversations around transportation that data is really important to them it sounds like you're getting these leaders I know that that process can be cumbersome to the riders you know that bubble through their bag to find their ID so that they can scan it and then it makes headway is even worse I guess I'm wondering are you all looking at a way in which like there's an app that's on your phone that scans it has your ID programmed in or other ways to make it like a little more seamless for riders when it comes to that yes I think that data will really help not just the University of Florida but also all of us with like long-term planning exercises of understanding the demographics of who and where they're coming from and all of those sorts of things thank you I think one more thing on the headway is yes the lanes but that's years before we can get there I think one of the shorter term and we have to start now but I think one of the short term things is getting the streetlights we can trigger those when a bus gets there it moves and there's ways to do it on a you got quicker while we figure out longer-term plans too yeah does the University or the city have a route that goes from campus to downtown on Thursday Friday Saturday night nights that's for the that's for the people that eat I'm talking about for this the University they're all using we used to yeah yeah that's an opportunity and a lot of people have moved closer to walk they walk downtown now yeah all right like to open it up to a public comment members of the public thank you mr. chair board bobby rumor coordinator of the alachua county labor coalition there were going to be a few more of us here today but most of them got snatched up by stuff in Tallahassee so we have been working with student groups primarily three student groups two environmental groups and one general group as well as some organized labor groups and through social media and a comprehensive survey form general riders most of whom are either students or employees at uf health interestingly enough we're getting more feedback and we're hearing more concerns from you have health employees than we are general staff on the rest of campus we actually had a stakeholders meeting last month and I wanted to report to this board what the priorities that came out that meeting were and hopefully this board will see fit to bring that information back to your respective bodies and hopefully work on the collaboration not just between the local governments in the uf but also the community at large with organizations like mine and what we're hearing is in order to improve RTS we need to do at least four things one we need to increase headways people cannot plan their lives around the many of the current headways number two we need to increase operating hours including on the weekend this helps people with especially students with shopping getting around not needing to spend a lot of money on gas parking and whatnot also restoration of full restoration of door-to-door ADA service to the city limits so I know that they have since restricted that in the room I believe where we don't we don't cover all of the city and that's a important to our disabled community and then finally something that should be relatively easy the route information is missing from the signs and this is really frustrating to people people don't app developers love everybody to have an app nobody else does people do not like fumbling around for that and you know even me I thought a route was cut entirely and I didn't know that it wasn't until I saw a bus come down but that's because the route information was removed so those are the four things I think that we can start doing with some more investment from all partners we can start doing to improve RTS and make RTS one of the greatest transportation public transportation systems in Florida again thank you next speaker Khali Blount constant bus user sorry mr. mayor it's not seamless when I'm riding into Rosa Parks downtown yeah I only have four seconds I can't even talk when I'm coming into Rosa Parks downtown on the 5 or the 15 or the 1 and the and I see the 11 or the 7 or something I want to transfer to pulling out before my bus gets to the curb I know it's a transfer station but I haven't learned about transferring between moving buses so when that happens then the people that want that transfer they know they have another 30 40 60 minutes to wait and how does that complicate their life and whatever the errand needs to be that day whatever appointment I also missed the later gator when I was working night shift at chance that was very instrumental I missed that I want to talk about safety a little one day recently I was on the bus and I got to my seat just as the bus started rolling but the person who was entering behind me who appeared to be of my same age cohort was still in motion moving you know backwards in the in the aisle trying to get to a seat when the bus started moving and he had to drop his stuff and lurch toward a pole and grab on to keep falling on that same later on that same ride the bus brakes some for some reason the brakes were hit very hard and I was looking out front I didn't see an obstruction maybe I missed it but somebody another person went flying and I happened to grab that person's arm their momentum was so great that it was yanking me out of my seat I had to grab a pole to hold on now in the past I've had drivers tell me that they never move they take they keep their foot on the brake till everybody's seated and I thought that was the rule apparently it was the custom because I'd said something to that driver that day and that driver said to me and they're behind the yellow line I can go their level of concern you can talk to a lot of people at stops especially on the east side and they'll tell you that RTS means really terrible service because the hours have cut so short much shorter than the rest of town on the weekend for those east side serving rooms and people will tell you will say all the time wish we could get the kind of service that the students so this is how you are perceived and this is what people are experiencing with the buses I also would love to see more frequency I know it costs money but some of the things our system does for instance cutting off service on holidays just no service whatsoever in a town well health care is such an important part of our employment how many hospitals and nursing homes shut down for holidays so uh it's strange to me to shut out all service on holidays thank you next speaker hi commissioners mtpo um i'm moksha and i'm going to speak into the microphone because i was listening on the youtube and just so you know people cannot hear any of you that do not speak in the microphone and i want to thank anna prisia and alfred because they really enunciate and are very clear and you can hear them on the on the video okay so i am not a rts rider but now i'm forced to be a artist es writer as a paratransit community member we are still requesting a town hall info session for this paratransit transition that commissioner ed book said months ago that we need this up and running on day one well commissioner book it is not up and running on day one one of the main things that we are having these are my concerns and then i'm going to say some other concerns of other paratransit community members that are not here our tickets a lot of us we brought this up before still we have no nothing from rts about this some of us buy a thing of tickets because we don't want to be fumbling for dollars some of us buy 150 to 200 dollars worth of tickets per year some of us still have those tickets left over those are mv tickets that should be allowed to be used for rts secondly paratransit according to ada standards is supposed to be able to be scheduled seven days a week currently rts is only allowing five days a week 8 a.m to 5 p.m monday through friday to schedule i'm glad that bobby spoke about the app a lot of us don't use apps i personally am not an app person i really can't stand apps and there's people that are visually impaired they are autistic they have issues and they can't use an app i want to be able to call in secondly when we do call in there's a long wait i've been hung up on i know some other people have been hung up on we were told by some rts people that there's five people working those phones and yada yada well i don't know where those five people are and then we already are having reports of paratransit community members being stranded that were stranded at davida just the other day and also stranded at parkland's community also there was a man in a wheelchair dropped i cannot say that i was there for any of this these are things that reported to me but i do believe the people that reported this paratransit community members are also being stranded in the county as they can now only go to medical appointments and have to reapply with their doctor's letters and all that now to mv paratransit community members like myself that reside in the city can now no longer go to anything outside of the city unless you now go through the doctor's letters i have a horse therapy that i go to that i will now i don't know how i'm going to get there so those are some things and then this is to mayor moore mayor ward this was never about saving money if this was about saving money in my observation the city would not have been fiscally incompetent in destroying paratransit something that was working mv has over 25 years and the city to me wasted 675 000 on big belly 5.2 million on gcra and now 478 and lastly i would like to say that i would like to see us have an info session a paratransit community session once a month to provide feedback to see what's working and not these are people's lives thank you thank you yes my name is harrison stowell i'm a paratransit writer myself and i'm also a member of the rtf advisory board and i've been a member of that board since 2018. i also want to talk about restoring um a door-to-door paratransit service because that's what paratransit is supposed to be for for those of us for any reason that can't use a fixed route it's supposed to be a door door-to-door service operation i i understand the reasons that rts gave as to why they're not doing it but in my view the core of paratransit is door-to-door service and also i'd like to echo some of the things that some of the other members of this board said today you guys need to engage in community-wide conversations you need to engage with all the stakeholders whether that's uf or anyone else because i live on route eight there's a lot of subdivisions along route eight where uf health staff live they've told me they'd love to take public transportation but it doesn't operate in a time window that makes sense for them to get to their jobs you know particularly if you live along route eight which is where you have a bunch of subdivisions on 39th there's a whole bunch of residential subdivisions and nobody wants to use rts because of the the route timings and i've just been very disappointed lately in overall rts service cuts because every time i go to a meeting they're announcing another cut in some fashion and bringing this back to paratransit one of the reasons paratransit is so crucial is that only 63 percent of the fixed route stops on rts are considered ada compliant the ada was passed in 1990 how is this considered acceptable to members of this board that only 63 percent of the stops are any compliant thank you thank you very much any other public comment bring it back to the board um i want to thank all everyone who came and spoke um especially the people members of the community group that have been reaching out to a lot broadly to our um to members of the who are writing rts um i think one thing just brought up here is i mean you talk about transfers but i think crosstown routes is something that we've never done um but i think it's something that would be great for a community not having to transfer being good all the way from east gainesville to uf would be great um i used to live on walter road and i was working at uf and i didn't take the bus because i had to come to downtown then transfer and then get over there it was quicker just to drive and then deal with that and deal with parking um i was hoping that maybe uh hearing after hearing from the community there'd be uh maybe have an amendment to the motion i think one of those is to request the city of gainesville add back in the route information um on all the stop signs are all the rts uh signs um that's something that the was removed when rts was moving all the routes and made a lot of sense but i think now that we have relatively fixed routes that's a it i was reading a uh a study on that i think it had a three to five percent um increase in ridership when you had uh route information so that's uh that's something you all do okay you okay with that yes yeah all right add that okay um and then i think when you guys are i think we we talked about looking at that the funding but i think maybe the three things that were asked here is is when that group is looking at looking at headways um operating hours um and weekends to be able to allow for shift work and um to be able to access it because they used to go earlier in the morning and now they don't so if you work i mean we we should align our rts schedules really with with uf health and uf major employers make sure it works for them um and then also looking at the door-to-door paratransit expansion of the city limits as well uh mayor warden so i wanted to uh just add a a few things to to the conversation uh first of all i'll say you know i i love everybody's input one of the reasons that i brought up several years ago the idea of potentially at some point when it makes sense making this a um a true regional transit system and not only a department of the city of gainesville is so that everybody realizes that everybody is on the hook at that point financially um it can whenever we talk about what the city ought to do those of us on city commission know that we ultimately have to figure that out you know or say no you know we get to be the bad guys or we get to not do something else funding wise so the benefit long term of it being something where everybody is is on the hook and not on an annual basis is that everybody has to to face those same funding decisions every year um so i that is something that that i would hope that over the years we can move to it's not going to happen quickly will not happen quickly but it is something that that i am interested in for for the uh the long haul there are other things i would like to see us do not on on this motion because i i am always exceptionally wary of of ad hoc omnibus motions i think they get us in trouble a lot um so i'm i want to be real careful about how i vote on that kind of thing um we do need it to have a a holistic look at this but we don't get that sitting here at the table one time or even a couple of times there are things i would like to see us do like work with the airport authority for airport specific transit if you come in on a late flight you have very limited options about how you're going to get to gainesville from the airport um and because uber is not your buddy all the time i i paid 45 bucks to get from uh from the airport to uh to my house a month or so ago nobody picked me up i couldn't get anybody to take it it is it is we would have had none if we hadn't restored that bus route right it's so it is a a thing that we all need to uh to be thinking about but but there are there are other tailored routes that would be useful i think in in a a long range planning sort of thing to from the the medical center to the airport from the medical centers to uh to tiger you know areas within the uf system that aren't part of regular service these are things we ought to consider we have not in the past but there are things that we could consider if we're thinking about a holistic practice and i i'm interested in doing all those things but i'm real wary of omnibus ad hoc motions so let's be careful how we approach what we tell the city we're going to do so uh commissioner president um i guess i just want to say i feel like that's i hope that that is the plan for the conversation about a regional transit authority or other regional transit approach um that we're going to have i mean i hope that all of those things are in it i hope i wish i'm sure that our staff knowing i'm getting to know in us but i know allison well and i know that your team well and i know that they probably have a lot of great ideas and thoughts about what's possible if we have a robust transit system and i would hope they bring those ideas forward i mean they study this they work every day in this and they know our community well i think one of the things that i just want to point out is that yes you all have to make the decisions but we all have a stake in this we all already put our money into it so i mean uf is putting money into it i know they've cut it but they do county puts money into it not nearly enough but we do and so i think that i just want to point that out like we are already invested and we do care and i think that that's one of the things that is good about the idea of elevating it is that then we're all in the decision making process of like what the cuts are that we're going to make rather than putting that all on your shoulders then you get the brunt of why was that cut and not this and x x y and z but i do think that even right now it would be really helpful if fuel costs go up and you have to cut routes like having that discussion here and then making recommendation this group making recommendations to the city on which things could be cut i mean that's something the city could do now you could bring it to mtpo and ask for us to have a discussion and i think that that would be helpful because like i didn't realize that every time there's fuel prices go up services get cut necessarily you know or things like that and i don't think that that's fair that you all have to make that decision unilaterally for a regional transit system you don't have to bring it to us but i'm just saying this body has an investment in it and i think we would be willing to at least lean in and listen and try to provide some level of perspective and take some of the heat off the city in terms of how we're making decisions about overall service provision so thank you for that um at the end of the day until we have a different system than we have now pension decisions um capital decisions the float for the the financial health of the system all that has to be by design that's on the gainesville city commission yeah and i appreciate input but we're the ones who are going to have to be responsible for that as long as the system is what it is and and that's why i wanted years ago to get this started and i'm glad that we're moving in a direction i love the fact that we're responsible for the transit system love it but it's not the healthiest way to do it if it were there would be more than two of two systems like this in the state of florida um i i think being unique is always fun to talk about but it's probably not if if you find yourself in government in a unique position something's probably wrong i mean it's probably not optimal so uh and we see that in a couple of things currently in in the city of gainesville but um yeah i i want us to move toward a system where there's broader responsibility um but but that is not where we are now so i'm always going to bring that up and point out that great ideas are great ideas but somebody's got to be you know the arbiter of can we do it or can we not do it and that ends up on on our shoulders across the street consistently but i do want to evolve toward a system where we can share that where it's on all our shoulders so thank you commissioner book yeah thank you so it's kind of interesting anytime we talk about transit and transportation it can morph from when we're focused on a particular area to uh just a whole host of factors that impact the way kind of we live work and play i i did probably want to bring it back a little bit to commissioner cornell's uh motion which really dealt with what we're dealing with strategic planning for uf how they're in general how the uf communities focus on transportation and their entire community the students the staff uh the workers and how that um overlays or kind of does with town gown relations which is what you said uh how that partnership with town gown relationship and what that does the the downside when we focus on a on an aspect like that is yeah we miss we may miss some factors in transit and transportation but i think we should probably focus the the broader that the motion is the more likely us to that we will be less effective in getting done something that relates to specific aspects so i i did like i think commissioner cornell had had to focus on what you're up doing um what can they do how does their uh overall community and what they do for how they consider their community how does that interplay so i like that um on the one hand the um as it relates to some of the comments we heard i i know that the city manager i think is probably likely to give us an update i know he's in the audience on thursday about this second very big aspect of how we deal with our most vulnerable population and folks who really need transit and transportation in a much more significant way than most of us who have cars and drive down here and so i hope i know the manager's listening and shook his head i think we're probably going to get an update for that specific this mv transport um and mobility transport that we have we have morphed as of i think director last friday or last thursday but i know it started uh this week we started yesterday the our first yeah and we brought 80 80 trips and they all were picked up door to door the yes the the issue was that mv gave us some trips to provide because they didn't have enough capacity so last week they have issues with that and well they're of course they're saying it's rts but we have to help mv out they didn't provide the old information that we needed to pick all these people up and some got stranded and we have to pick them up later on but rts really started yesterday doing the ada service yeah on that particular part we want we this transition for people are most likely the biggest impact that is um has to be done as well as possible and that means there's very little margin for error as it relates to that so i do look forward to probably at the city on thursday uh hearing an update on that particular aspect because we've heard some things right here i do agree with what you said commissioner pretzio that um all these things interrelate and it's important that a group that's uh made up of other municipalities and the university of florida and the school board and city and county does have the capacity to provide you know does have the capacity to provide some probably really good insight and direction i just probably i would recommend that we stick with the motion and what we're dealing with for that and then these other aspects come out in different in different motions or we'll end up with 10 different amendments to it and we may not be quite as effective but that would just be thank you i think your member certain i just had a question that's outside of the motion based on citizen input about the pre-purchase coupons so maybe some of the city staff could make sure that we can address that i don't know what the answer is but that was i've made another question of mbe using mbe transit tickets later right those pre-purchase tickets and now that the service has changed and they don't uh will rts um do those will mbe refund their money or whatever because the folks pre-purchased them i guess before this change was announced or anticipated and so um mr jomez do you have an answer for that now or do you need to look well we've been talking to mbe transportation about it because they're all done they're collecting those funds so they they should be the ones providing that a refund back but we we're not getting there yet so we we haven't we keep talking to them thank you uh commissioner i just want to throw one thing out i know we have an emotion for them to add the bus routes on the signs but i also know that's a city um function i just want to offer if we do have a sign shop as well and i don't know i don't know what our guys can do or can't do with relate to the signs you have but if it's a matter of cutting vinyl numbers out so they can go on your signs it may be it's something that the city and the county can collaborate on i just want to put that out there i mean you know we're trying to solve challenges here so you know well uh in the direction of city commission is to put those signs back we do it the main reason was we have a major changes in the service this fall so we have to remove that we're confusing a lot a lot of people now they're more stable we can address that and put those signs back and in terms of the ada improvements we we're in the second phase of that we've we're gonna uh hopefully by the end of or early next year will be a hundred percent ada compliant with the bus stops we have the funding we did the design of all the stops and we hopefully we're gonna send that for a bit soon so we can finalize that so 100 percent ada compliant by next year yeah councilwoman taylor councilwoman taylor and then back to you thank you um regarding the some of the riders that you picked up from envy that have transferred over to you going back to the tickets and you're saying you know the funds are going back to envy but the riders right now that are being transferred to you if they have tickets are they able to use their tickets now or do they have to pay the three dollars or whatever the fee is now to ride uh we don't know what we do not right now i need to check my my operation manager but i think we are accepting those so you're accepting the ones that they have now but we're trying to negotiate with them be those their reforms commissioner cornell do you mind so i added headways and operating hours and i added um the request rts so move that we invite uf and uf health's transportation teams to work with the gainesville and elastro county transportation planning organization to evaluate how we can improve the ridership opportunities including daily headways and operating hours of faculty for faculty staff and the student ridership and to enhance both the quality of transit and long-term financial viability of the rts county-wide system part two was to request rts to add back the route information to the signs and look at community feedback for recently transitioned pair trip which i think they're going to talk about on Thursday i wrote it down i'm gonna give it to you um and just is there a request for our transportation planning and our did you want to have county and city staff there as well at that um i don't know if that was part of that motion or not yes along with mtpo i think it would be valuable to have city and county transportation staff yep so work with um gainesville officer county transportation planning organization city and county transportation staff to evaluate and who was the seconder you could put the i am okay all right um we've already taken any more comment on this all right seeing none all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed say nay our motion passed unanimously thank you all right uh next item is the bike pet master plan update i think it's fine i don't think we have any yeah commissioner ward our mayor ward has left for and i'll be leaving momentarily also do we have any other items that need quorum that we need move around okay i mean that last one didn't let's not actually hang around at the end of the county thank you allison yep allison moss deputy director for the tpo and transportation planning manager for alachua county i'm going to provide a brief update on the alachua countywide bicycle pedestrian master plan i know some city of gainesville commissioners received a presentation recently this does include updated information but we'll go briefly through the sort of introductory materials so today we'll be talking about project background network and project development how we've prioritized projects cost estimation and next steps so the primary purpose of the bicycle pedestrian master plan is to make walking and biking attractive choices um for people of all ages and abilities and so we will do that through the creation of goals policies programs and projects that make it safer more convenient and more comfortable to walk and bike these are the different elements that i just sort of mentioned the elements of a bicycle pedestrian master plan we are now um nearing the end of the development of this master plan at the project prioritization phase the existing conditions is sort of the first step so we layer all of this data demographic land use safety planned projects from all the different partners this is an effort as a reminder between the county the city and university of florida and we're looking at roadway characteristics and bicycle pedestrian facilities we have had two meetings so far for this project the very first one was the sort of big wide open what are your issues and opportunities we had virtually blank maps or with some sort of land use or attractors within the city county and smaller municipalities and ask people um you know what they would like to see we included an online survey online mapping tool um there's an in-person event and parallel pop-up events not sure if i said so on a later slide but the survey received over 2000 responses we generally heard a strong desire for more separated facilities people do not want to be alongside traffic on busy streets and safety is a big priority goals and policies so the project does include development of existing goals and policies starting with a review of what we've got recommendation for new goals and policies and the working group that was established for this project also helped um determine some goals and policies some of these include things like mode share so what percentage of people are walking and biking for transportation um what percentage of our residents are served by an all ages and abilities facility the plan also includes programs so these are things that typically complement the sort of capital project engineering side of things so we have education encouragement enforcement enforcement evaluation and equity education may be things like bike rodeos where you help fit helmets for people open streets events are things that are commonly included in a program so without further ado network and project development we looked at a lot of different elements as we developed our network we looked at connectivity route directness so that people don't have to travel too far out of direction route density another thing that makes it convenient impacts to private property planning for user comfort and community input and the idea is that this will be a regional tool probably for the tpo more than any of the three sort of constituent organizations to collectively make decisions about biking and walking infrastructure so historically it's been a little bit of horse trading the city gets a project the county gets a project this looks at them all in a more systematic way looking at all of the data and all of the community input to come up with lists of priority projects so um building the network includes identifying you know the connections that need to be made we're looking at key destinations it's a very dense network that we came up with quarter mile to half mile was the goal and that'd be within the city of gainesville and the county's urban cluster of course outside the county's urban cluster we're not providing that level of density trying to preserve the more rural character we look to utilize existing and planned routes and also to plan for new development so within the unincorporated county we have some sites that have you know very large many many acres and there's an idea and support within the county's land development code that there be a good degree of interconnectivity but we don't necessarily have routes that make sense if you don't plan for it at a high level identifying gaps meant not only looking at places where they're straight up is no facility say no sidewalk or no bike lane but also looking at the stress somebody experiences if they're biking or walking if it's a street with a posted speed of 45 miles an hour or greater a painted bike lane is probably going to feel pretty uncomfortable so we considered things like that gaps community outreach touch point number two was sharing with the community the network at that point i think i have a map here no it was just a map of the entire county all of the routes we didn't have what type of facility was recommended at that point but we're just asking people have we connected the places that make sense have we connected you to your school to the shops things like that um we identified some development context so again city and county urban cluster would be treated differently than outside and then developed a list of projects so again we heard increased need for safety separation from you know motor vehicle traffic um and then interest in separated bike lanes traffic calming things like that without going into too much detail these are some of the facility types um the top left is a shared use path that's the one on sixth street um we have separated bike lanes those are separated with ideally concrete um sometimes more quick build materials um there's a two-way bike way that's separated buffered bike lanes are just extra paint um to you know offset people riding bikes from traffic standard bike lane and then a bike boulevard um which does include you know bicycle markings on the street but also importantly includes significant traffic calming and proper handling at the busy streets so um a lot of times the neighborhood street will be just fine and then you get to a street like 13th street and you need to make modifications to the traffic signal and the intersection itself to make it safer and more comfortable i do have one question just on the definition of separated bike lanes does that include a vertical separation or like a like this kind of protected like that what's being yeah i mean um it could be something like an armadillo which are these um you know big plastic features that i think exist on the eighth avenue bike lane um or the flex posts the candlestick things those get beat up pretty quickly they don't look nice and some people you know hit them errantly or maybe for fun um so i think something more durable is better concrete is the best but it's expensive yeah to do the so that that's the definition is being used for separated bike lanes something that's physically there yeah a buffered bike lane with just paint is not separated okay um so yeah at the meeting um you know we had input on whether the network was good or not the network did include um this is sort of the ultimate build out before we had decided what or specified what the nature of the projects were what facility type um it's nearly 500 different projects um so we did not get a ton of feedback about new projects to be added um there were some though and you know some that have come on and then for reasons of working with you know within the agencies they have to come off because there's all kinds of constraints that we face um project prioritization so we looked at these six inputs um we looked at safety healthy people healthy communities how can we make it um easier to make the healthy choice healthy being walking or biking using active transportation connecting gaps connecting the network we looked at transportation disadvantage so where have people been disproportionately impacted negatively by transportation how can we provide better choices safer attractive choices increased multimodal trips again integrating transit and bicycle and bicycle pedestrian infrastructure and then feasibility and the reason we've been working so long um the past several months is doing a very deep dive on feasibility yeah hdc there is historically disadvantaged communities which is um a more acceptable term to equity but largely means the same thing um and then um for feasibility as i mentioned the consultant team has been spending several months looking in depth at these nearly 500 projects to evaluate their feasibility they looked at tree conflicts curb relocation so that means maybe we've got today a painted bike lane and a sidewalk which equal 10 feet maybe if we would move the curb outward or inward rather in the street we could have a 10-foot wide path that would be you know more used by people of all ages and abilities who maybe would feel stressed out about being in a bike lane um paving needs really means there were routes that were identified um generally in the county maybe exclusively in the county where it's a great route but the road is actually a dirt road so are we going to pave a road just for the bike network likely not um so we looked at that drainage impacts um most bike projects especially um trails are just really expensive drainage projects in disguise and so we have looked at what it would cost to completely um pipe you know and cap swale drainage or to relocate swales but anytime you get into such a project it becomes very expensive because of all the water we need to manage in florida right-of-way impacts are for sure significant and then utility impacts we looked just at overhead so if you had master arms utility poles what it would require um to work around those or move them and then grade separation yes member certain would you help me again with the curve relocation i don't understand that so like some streets i'll just i'll pick on 16th ave or boulevard um there is a bike lane which is probably around five feet wide and then there's a little parkway strip of grass and then there's the sidewalk um and in the case of 16th it's wider and in most places than the standard five foot sidewalk um but there is another option that you get rid of the bike lane basically you'd move the curb closer to the vehicle travel lane and then have a wider path and dedicate the road from the county to the city so the area where you're talking about is that like west like almost towards santa fe is that what you're talking about i'm trying to picture it like picture between 13th and 34th street right so westwood okay there's a bike lane on that on that road and then there's a sidewalk and the sidewalk is maybe six feet wide and then there's a bike lane if we move the curb out to go for the bike lane okay so that the road became narrower and the sidewalk became wider and with the expectation of the bikers like beyond the sidewalk so i'm gonna have to pay more attention to that because i drive 16th avenue a whole lot that's why i was when you were saying i was like i couldn't put it in my head yeah you said as an example anywhere i'm trying to picture what you're saying so i'll pay attention to it and anywhere where there's a painted bike lane you can have a painted bike lane and a sidewalk or you could move the curb and then have a wider path and i'd say a decent comps you know sort of city for gainesville is boulder colorado they have um these 10 foot wide separated paths on all of their arterials um and collector roadways so let me ask you a second question just second um um if um would that have been an option and more a little bit more digestible for like eighth avenue where we could have kept the two lanes and just moved the curb out and given the bikers and the walkers i would defer to the city um on that but i mean it's always an option it does slow down traffic when you do that too when you bring the curbs closer to where the cars are then the traffic slows down yes you get a win-win it's like a double double win but it's very expensive yeah very very expensive to bring in that's a lot of concrete and also you have to all the drainage has to be it's probably the most expensive option you could do thank you yeah yeah yeah thank you uh mr vice chair i i had a question and i know i really only have at this point one colleague from the city that's here and i'm trying to look behind me and see what staff there okay hi brian so i'm thinking brian is this did we do curb relocation over on six was that you know that big piece of curb that kind of jets out into uh northwest sixth just beyond right in front of the police department yes ma'am we uh northwest 6th street and northwest 7th avenue there was a bulb out constructed to reduce the crossing distance the crosswalk distance so is that what we're talking about here is that curb relocation or um it's i mean it's curb relocation but not the same concept so what what um this moss is discussing is removing or relocating the entire curb down an entire corridor gotcha okay so um uh like the chair pointed out today that's a very expensive method of um providing a bicycle facility because you have to relocate all your drainage structures you have to move the curb um it's it adds up very quickly for sure for sure understood thank you for that i would just add um that in the case of what we did with that particular portion of um the curb for me even now i'd love to see some modification to that because i think when you're driving down the street if you are close to that lane you've been used to being able to drive over there and it's a little hard to see so if there could be some yellow paint or something that's there and i'm sure i don't want to take away from you at all it's just that we're kind of talking about something very similar just about every time that i traverse that street or i talk to people who do traverse that street it's it's hard to see it's not easy to see at all and if you're used to driving over there you get right up to that curb before you realize you're not supposed to be over there anymore and you end up kind of jetting over to the left so just a quick little note all right thank you thank you mr singleton uh miss moss all right included commissioner i do okay um then the very last one is the most expensive one which would be grade separation um so that would be for a place where you know the bicycle pedestrian volumes are very high maybe vehicle volumes are very high and they really don't have any business mixing so so um to jump right into it um and i will be following up um probably through a notch with an email that has a link to a web map so there'll be a web map where you can really zoom around and look at all of the projects more specifically this is just a sampling of top 20 projects and they're just broken out by geography right now for sort of ease of consumption they are um listed here seven seven seven seven seven it's just they're all the same they're all prioritized the same yeah they are all the same score one and two is one and one but this is not the right map because we had a slate update apologies so this one they are they appear to be unique numbers but they actually are um to commissioner cornell's point ranking some of them the exact same so it's a little bit false to say one is project number one and one is number two um these are the top 20 bicycle projects within the city of gainesville green in this map is a shared use path so that'd be a 10-foot wide path where bicyclists pedestrian scooter users can use the facility together this sort of golden rod color is a separated bike lane bike boulevard which is that traffic calm neighborhood road with crossing enhancements of the major streets is the dark blue and then red is trail upgrades so the portion of the waldo road trail that exists is included in this for upgrades um so this includes all of the number crunching that i alluded to on the previous slides so all of the inputs that said this is why a project might be needed um counterbalanced with what are the feasibility constraints and so we've played around so far with different ratios how much we weight the need for a project versus the feasibility and um at the moment we've landed on 65 35 it seemed to result in a suite of projects that made sense um there are some 65 65 need 35 feasibility okay the 20 now 480 to go yeah um but top point but there are some results in here that kind of surprised me and i think we'll have you know we're going to be looking to get more input from tpo um and then staff are going to be looking and we're going to look at the community you know input from the community as well so for instance for 43rd street and um 53rd ave to rank so high um surprises me but it is a ranking this isn't just a they are numbered and these are 20 to all this is right equally this is right yeah that is worth taking this map and walking and driving and writing and so these are subject to change again with community input we're also probably likely going to have um another phase of evaluation that include county city and uf um liaisons to the project where we kind of can provide some input on the ranking um similar to what was done for the long range transportation plan so i'm sorry it's seven northwest second from 60 to 20 or northwest 22nd am i just northwest second second street okay yeah oh i see 441 sorry i was like and again we will have a map i'll see if i got a response already um shortly that we can share we're thinking middle of this month so you'll be able to see much more clearly and i think also to drill down and to see what inputs led to the scores so there are some neighborhoods where there's um zero vehicle ownership and that's per the census data some of those areas you know are somewhat surprising but they're a little that would make your need higher and then the higher ranking gives that equity yeah that equity lens yeah and then um you know there are areas where you have um say short trips can be a high percentage of short trips could be made and so it's two miles or less and so there's some areas where a lot of short trips could be made and that's based on anonymous cell data um so the next map is just listing more of them out um but it's the same projects for city of gainesville so they don't include projects that are already funded but haven't started yet that's right it excludes those okay so like the kinkade loop trail well the kinkade loop we left we left on um it is funded um but as i think are aware there have been some budget issues with the construction costs the probable construction costs coming in higher than the budgeted amount um so we did leave it in this group of projects number is that it'll be on the county slide coming up that's okay um city of gainesville sidewalk projects um city of gainesville keeps a pretty um solid inventory of its sidewalk needs um and is really implementing them as they can and so this was mostly complementing that effort if there's some that we found that we're missing we went ahead and added um within the unincorporated county um and the smaller municipalities they're kind of far flung and it doesn't map very well but those will be included on the web map as well so and zoom in a little more yeah three yeah um so that's cool how did schools factor into your waiting because there's like at least three school projects that i see on here that aren't on this trail map which i'm kind of surprised which school projects like westwood the sidewalk that connects the sidewalk after the park to the past the school up to 16 and the one that's over for it's like a trail project that's in like hazel heights that goes from the bike trail that extends from the neighborhood and then it just stops and then it picks up again after 24th street i'm familiar with that one um so as i mentioned these are just the top sort of tier projects and so for some of these you know when you can look at the whole list of them it might be that some of those are coming in just underneath um schools were definitely considered um if we go back to the inputs um those were schools were considered in terms of like the development of the network and what the type of project would be there is not an overt school input at this phase in the prioritization okay um there are a lot of other things that you know may or may not bump up such a project but i think some of them that are just out of the top tier you know it bears evaluation to see if they're just underneath um so here are the county's urban cluster projects um so kim k loop is there as three um the very first project is southeast 43rd by eastside high school um and then part of williston road does that say southeast 143rd street or is it is that different that's not the east side right number these 43rd by east side right but maybe i'm on the wrong slide it could be so at the very top it's 43rd um however what was printed in your agenda packet may be a slightly older version okay that makes me feel better because oh my god i'm not able to follow this yeah 143rd would be off the map and you know right here it's right here actually um what i have says 143rd so that's why yeah so the next map i'll find lists i don't know why i'm not seeing it doesn't have a number it's clearly here so i don't know why it's not showing up in the list um well i think the major networks are all in that pale green like 441 is that color yes yeah these oh yeah yeah that's why because these were not supposed to be these are just here for reference these are long distance projects that are going to be showing you on the subsequent slides so just the ones with the numbers um so in terms of there being 143rd mr that might be from an old map okay um just a quick note to point out that the purple lines are developer driven connections and that again was the county's attempt within some of the greenfield areas to look at making connections that make sense before the development comes in and then this um there it is yes these are the long distance connector projects so these are really longer they're probably more recreational in nature um we will probably end up comparing city and urban cluster projects together um even though the tpo is no longer using gainesville metro area those really have a lot more you know characteristics in common than projects like this which are you know would be very expensive long distance and potentially um utilize the different funding source as well um so what does not show up great um but what we wanted to mention is that you know there are not um as many like voids in this map as it might seem so we have of course the archer road trail that goes all the way from the city of archer um and then really connects um through waldo road um and then up towards in the future of the city of waldo and then the gainesville hawthorne trail all the way from city of hawthorne in and fdot is currently working on final design plans for a shared use path from i want to say it's around 180th all the way to the city of dewberry and the one-way pair projects can we go back to waldo i see it on number one northeast waldo road canard street from northeast 47th avenue to us 301 okay so i know canard street from northeast 47th avenue to us 301 it's meant to be this whole segment if we have are we going to connect with hampton some type of way because i see hampton they've already started on the work for their trail and it's coming up right by city hall the current yeah the current terminus of the project is the city city of waldo um so okay so i guess that would be no that um at the next council meeting because that's something that they were concerned about our former commissioner carolyn wade was um asking inquiring about our trail okay okay and then lastly um we have rail to trail projects which are even different than the others in terms of um of course being along a railroad corridor and then um both of these would be um eligible for sun trail funding which is a really good source of funding for these long distance projects that are part of the sun trail priority network um so the high springs to newberry rail to trail is um a project that actually has some momentum again um and so that has ranked number one within this category it has been acquired from what i understand trust republic land has has acquired okay the by the way option to acquire oh option to acquire yeah um and just for reference um county staff recently spoke with city of newberry staff and they are conditioning development um nc ranch in newberry um to provide path through that area as well um because the railroad corridor itself is sort of tied up it's being leased to a secondary railroad from csx um so that is promising in terms of getting it closer to newberry and then the number two project is actually sort of a crowdsource citizen initiative and that's the um rochelle to micanope route um unfortunately that rail corridor was not rail banked meaning that all of the um railroad right-of-way reverted to adjacent landowners um so it's it's a little bit piecemeal um acquisition would need to be undertaken and yes um a lot of low-lying land in that area as well that said i think a lot of people in the community would be very excited to have something to do off of the gainesville hothner trail instead of just the out and back um it is part of the sort of statewide opportunity of trails um the darker lines here on this map our central priority network um and that really matters a lot for funding so um i believe that the city of high springs to newberry is already a priority um if the if the land is acquired and design is completed it would be very um attractive within the central program for capital funding cost estimation at this point is just planning level costs um we did look at drainage and utility impacts and we've used a combination of costs from city of gainesville and fdot steps so um poor miss whitfield had to hear me give this presentation like four times two weeks ago to bpap tac cac um i give a different variation to city of gainesville um but we are here to get feedback this is just informational at this time um we'll be engaging the public we actually have um april 15th tax day reserved at the ifas um extension off of newberry road for the third venue um for public meeting we will be preparing and finalizing the full master plan document and coming back to all the boards and then ultimately we hope that this is a tool for us to use especially through the tpo to make collective decisions thank you very much commissioner cornell yeah slide we had all the different bikers um so first of all alison this is incredible work incredible that we are finally to this point um the big facilities uh the less stress to more stress yeah um because when i when i was looking just briefly and i'll spend some more time on this now on the projects you know this this slide really hit me uh when i think about the the folks that actually use the bike for work or grocery store or this is all i have um and as far as as we prioritize these projects um i i can see that that that need is really a a good alligator so thank you for doing that and um yeah i look forward to hearing what the community says of kind of where we are now and helping prioritizing these these projects because i'm really interested in starting to get now that this is at a place where we can really start to use it um getting some of these projects done so great work it's also pedestrian level stressful yeah this would come to the mic i'm sorry yes um the lte also has a similar graphic for level of stress for pedestrians yeah yeah because if they're if they're high stress or something like i think they've heard that tonight you know a couple times if it's just too hard we're just not going to use it and there are many folks that don't have that choice what you tend to see in places where there's a high stress like an existing but a high stress facility is you see a lot of sidewalk riding right and so that just increases conflict between you know people on wheel devices and people walking um if it's only five feet and so that's why we're advocating for you know an off-street facility but something that's wider i was walking to charleston um this weekend and there was we were walking to uh the aquarium and it was like my wife said why don't we take that path because there's a dirt path i said that's the path everybody's taking so that's the next that's the next sidewalk project and you can learn a lot from that yeah commissioner alford um oh i was going to say i got distracted by your comment about yeah um look at the uf does on campus they just look where the dirt paths are that's where the next sidewalk's going well you know i i went to pk young and i was on the student board and they came to us and said how do we keep people on the sidewalks and i said why don't you just move the sidewalks to where the people are so i started that back in 1978. um oh my question is about the public engagement so in the public engagement part is there um are are we including like cost and budgets in that discussion at all like we have this much money to spend and this trip this would cost this much kind of thought process you know like would people rather see more smaller projects or one big project kind of thought process and that would be hard to do but i have been to some community engagement that does that so i was just curious um because we do have limited funds and whenever we engage the public they see all these wonderful projects and they want them all so um we have not i think planned to make like an exhibit that fully posts all of the planning level costs but it is baked in to the overall score okay it's in the scoring okay and i think i mean we want to be very transparent on all of this um and all of the inputs that went into it as well you know as the feasibility are things that we can share we don't want to like overwhelm though um in a public setting it could look like a you know 50 column wide spreadsheet um which would yeah no i i don't think that's necessary but just i think really making it clear that the financial part of the score is wrapped up into that and you know that you know these things are really all these things are really expensive but these are really really expensive kind of thought process i i know that's helped me when i've done that kind of thing in the past yeah that's good yeah thank you for all the work you've done really i really really do appreciate it really great um i have some questions on a few questions so one of them is their prioritization for doing quick flipping building out this whole thing might take 60 70 years to do all of it um and to your point earlier i mean like moving badges of payment are very expensive and and uh what kind of bottom prioritization is on doing quick builds where you're just like putting up some ballers or doing some stuff which may cost ten thousand dollars versus a million dollars for the whole project i think there'll be a toolkit that's included in the master plan which provides that as an option um for you know any project that has that as a potential avenue implementation and i guess following that uh design guidelines in terms of like i mean having consistency between the city and the county how it looks but also just making sure that we're following the best practices when we're creating um infrastructure in our in our community expert a lot of us kind of and dot and and dot yeah but is there is that a part of it design guidelines or is that i mean i think um mutcd and the ash toe bike guide um dictate you know a lot of the signing and striping and the widths and things like that um the city has rolled out a pretty great way finding program for some of its trails um the county doesn't have something like that yet um you know we could look to try to find a way to make them not the same but complimentary yeah i think it'd be good like maybe integrating a nacto standards or things like that in there that really kind of help creating safe riders for all ages um and then looking at the shared use path i mean you have 10 foot which may work in more kind of in terms of volume like a 10-foot trail in front of your university avenue is probably not for that of volume was that does that look that or is like the shared use path looking in terms of 10 12 14 depending on those volumes or potential volume um we did look at um there's national standards that uh relate to how much volume of bicyclists and pedestrian use you have and so in general i would say alachua county gainesville are suburban places and so a shared use path in general works pretty well there are certain areas right around campus downtown where the sheer volume of people especially on e-mobility devices make that sharing very complicated um we are looking however at um trying to be very careful in terms of showing what really should be there from a best practices perspective but also acknowledging the significant amount of work that's gone in between city of gainesville uf and fdot to get near-term projects on the ground so we're going to try to show what's planned for the near term and also show that the ultimate build out for instance like a corridor like university avenue should have separated bicycle pedestrian facilities because it's the campus corridor through a campus town i guess lastly to that point of having shared bike and pedestrian there's a new state law that looks likely to pass on electric bikes and speed limits which i think is limiting it to 10 miles per hour within 50 feet of a pedestrian that's in busy areas it's not 50 feet away from pedestrians not you're constantly that's and 10 miles per hour is a very slow way to commute has that been looked at at all in terms of where what facilities may not be the best anymore if that new law goes into effect i am aware of the legislation i'm aware that a lot of people powering a human powered bicycle can go well over that speed limit and how difficult it is to enforce the speed limits um with these e-mobility devices so um i think i'd say we're we're letting the best standard best practices in terms of like when there's a break point where you should separate bikes and and pedestrians guide the facility recommendation more than the recent legislation thank you any other discussion from the board anything for the public thank you very much almost done hey 2017 I made motion to make this bike master plan very quickly updated by loss is basically I brought a copy here I forgot that Commissioner Wheeler would not be here today but the update that was done in August 25 that allowed two board members to travel that needed to just be actually written into the bylaws I brought a copy of that for her to sign speaking with the county attorney she could sign it since that was when the action was taken so we'll just I'll bring it back when she's able to sign the joint certification with FDOT we are done with the TPO's portion DLT is fine with our part one part there's two parts part one is us part two is the DLT we are all good for our part so we're just waiting for the DLT's part to go up through their chain of command for district signatures and then come back and then they'll send a DocuSign document for the chair to sign and we're done for this year all right there is one thing in the report card that speaks to congestion management planning that we do we do need to do a better job on so this is a big deal last time we got a letter remember yeah I should know because I was on NTBA we didn't have those issues the next MPOAC directors meeting and the FMPP the Florida Metropolitan Planning Partnership Training is April 28th and 29th FMPP is 28th the directors meeting is on the 29th so I will be attending that and I don't know if you'll be attending as well as a as an elected member the next MPO Institute follows the directors meeting on May 1st I have in I know Councilwoman Taylor has expressed an interest in attending the May 1st one and also maybe the the networking event the night before I have reached out to miss Donna Green the FDOT MPO administrator as well as miss Amanda Carpenter the MPO AC executive director to bring the Institute here so that any members of our board can commit to a day training so that we don't have to pay for travel costs and and pretty Emma reimbursements and all that so I'll probably be sitting out a survey to see who's always interested so that we can make those connections and get get it booked on MPOSD's calendar and that's the last item that I have all right and then future meetings future meetings is the our board meeting on April 6 and then the biped master plan committee meeting for tax day that is all I have any agency reports partner updates is there any public comment all right a member comment yes thank you very much so colleagues last week we had a little bit of a conversation well we had a big conversation around the trail that is going to abut the Gainesville Police Department and I brought up an issue about another trail that really has to do with safety because the conversation was very much about safety of the individuals that traverse our trails but also the individuals that traverse the highways and so on southeast Williston Road and 4th that's the Hawthorne Trail right what trail is that but it's connected to a trail it's connected to a trail is what yeah let's pull up a map so it's this is before you get to 4th here we go there is a little trail that runs along 4th closer to the the old shopping center yes that's the Hawthorne Trail that's what I thought so there's not a time that I have traveled Williston Road where I have not seen a near miss of a person and we had a little bit of a conversation about getting a chair letter from this organization to go to FDOT and I see a lot of my colleagues have had to leave today but I wanted to put it on everybody's radar because it is something that I do believe that's important it's not just about the near misses but it came to my understanding a few months ago that an actual hit someone was actually hit there and that's been a serious serious concern of mine I travel that road almost daily I think the hit was at the 8th by the the the little girl was hit right no it was before that yes it wasn't we have standing request in the DOG for improvements to this intersection with the trail and Williston Road right yeah miss Leisner is gonna come up and provide the latest update thank you welcome hello Debbie Leisner city transportation department the state has agreed to convert that signal instead of what is there now there's a pedestrian actuated signal for full signal full signal yeah they're working on that I don't have the exact schedule but I can provide thank you very much and you'll get back with us on when that'll happen yeah thank you so much yeah greatly appreciate that I do think on the long term though there's just gotta be one that goes across I mean it's a major trail it is all the time and it's continuing used more and more and more and just we're gonna do that let's talk about 13th University amen I don't I don't leave it there but 10th or something where the Lincoln is because there have been several near misses there with school crossing guards I think when I my first meeting here before I was appointed that was one of the first things I brought up was that particular intersection and not to negate that whole quarter where you talk is that whole quarter is really really because the trucks come in there so fast and I can't tell you how many as as crossing guards have told me they've almost gotten smacked sure it's matter sure and they're at that next intersection there by the is a high tower home intersections the school crossing location has been investigated thoroughly with the city and FDOT and FDOT is maintaining that that's the current setup is satisfactory I hear what I hear what FDOT and those are saying but I'm in my view the two times a day the students and the traffic that are there in the morning and at dismissal that is a dangerous intersection so I be on record as bringing it up again so I'm glad for the pedestrians and the folks that use that trail that something is going to be done but I'm telling you this is kind of what like when these types of decisions are made this contributes to the feelings of some residents that their safety is is less important than students and people who use nature trails so this is this is really and even at the red light back there where the child was hit it's like we respond to issues when certain people in our community are hurt or threatened and we just say what is being done is okay for others and so I just what I mean I know we don't make any we're not the ones making those decisions but I just want to tell you this is what feeds that narrative when actions are taken very quickly on when when there's an issue brought up in certain sectors and it's this I don't say dismissed but that's what it appears to be dismissed in others I think it's our responsibility to explain to those residents that we're advocating equally for those intersections and that we're pushing hard on please know that I do say that yeah right it's like I've brought that intersection up for schools as well as the Hawthorne 301 one but we don't seem to get the movement but I'm just saying this when a decision is made to address an issue that is brought up very quickly but others are ignored I can explain all I want which I have been but that feeds that that feeling well yeah yeah no I'm with you I'm not I'm just saying that I think it's I'm just saying it wasn't really quickly it was long it was a long long time coming and I think we haven't I'm just saying we have the power to push and if we want to send a chair letter to DOT saying that they need to I mean that's why I asked about the school intersections in our pedestrian bike master plan because we don't seem to have just intersection improvements in here they seem to be like trails and corridors mostly in this plan but I think to your point like we've been pushing on the Hawthorne 301 stuff and we've been pushing on the Melrose issues with the school and we've been pushing on this one as well and if we're not getting the responses you know it's like we get we push on it and then I guess if there's we don't always know what the follow-up response is until we ask again so knowing Wendy if he says it's fine so that we can then say no it's not fine and if it's not fine then we could share the letter whatever the next thing is to address that so I will look to see if that corridor is it 11 as it crosses it is if that is included in the plan and to see how it ranks but actually in this plan one of the many things that we asked the consultant to do which you know has caused the timeline to go on is to look at every crossing with a major road and so even to presume if there's a traffic signal that's not necessarily a good enough crossing if you have kids using it it goes into this whole discussion goes into the priority of that 65 percent need and that's that's how we make that happen yeah by saying that is that need right there yeah I was to your point Commissioner I think that that too has to be a part of what we request from them show us the priority so we can show it to the people how are they prioritizing it because we're the people who have to interact with our constituents they're gonna be asking us and we can advocate for them all day long we know that there is a very morbid formula that pushes them to make the changes anyway and honestly death should not have to be a part of why you make a change to a road it that is just clearly dangerous and to be honest with you you have to have several you have to have a certain number you have to have a certain number you have to intend and even the fact that a road is a truck route I'm sorry I'm prioritizing the people that are trying to cross that road safely and drive that road safely trucker get up a little earlier so you can get your load to where it needs to be on time slow down I'd love to see the speed limit changed that's ultimately what I like to see the speed limit at fours I mean that might be a way to quicker solve this or to slow down traffic just having that right up next to where the traffic people will slow down and it's relatively cheap I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm just adding like I'm just adding like bollards like vertical bollards on the bike lanes they expand the bike lanes and adding some vertical bollards will slow down traffic just creating that vertical friction I don't think that was considered on the Williston Road repave and restriping I mean that might be a way to quicker solve this or to slow down traffic just having that right up next to where the traffic people will slow down and it's relatively cheap Inexpensive Member Taylor Yes thank you When we're talking about transportation, and transportation is a whole for Lachewa County, what are we doing about Vettiports? And this is actually to you, Vice Chair, about Vettiports and evotiles at the airport. Like, are you guys talking about that? Are there pads, or are you thinking about building pads, or are we bringing that to Gainesville? For what? I don't know what it is either. Vettiports. I think about the vertical takeoff and landing. Yes. Vettiports. Or Vettiports, Vettiports, we call them that at the conference. But it's the newest thing that they have that's coming about, and it's like we all grew up in the Flintstones area, so it's very simple to come up with what I'm talking about, the flying cars. I'm actually with you. They've been talking about that in some of the transportation committees. They are putting in, or just large drone landings. There are, you know, those things are, those things have been planned for a lot of other counties around Florida. So, you're not wrong. So, there's a lots of accounting. And we're not that far off from the flying car thing. Yeah, because they're doing it now, I believe. Can we ban them? They just passed the law off. It's very close. It's up where Grady's at. Around the county area. So, yeah, it's always being looked at. We do have, I mean, we have helicopters and things that take off. We are one of the few airports that does have an electrical charging station for airplanes. So, there's an airplane maker that installed them. It's right next to the FBO. I think there's only like two or three in the state that have that. So, I would say we're probably in a more likely position because of that electrical charging system that we already have for airplanes that may work for that. The reason why I ask about that is because at one of the FLC meetings, the last meeting that we just had that was in START, I met a young man, Mr. Ewell McNair, who's the manager over the airport in Palacca. And that's something that I brought up. And he sent the information, and that's something I want to know whether or not, or was inquiring whether or not, if Alachua County was in the group with that. And placing them, are they placed around like certain parts in Gainesville if we were to do that here in Alachua County? Because that's something with transportation that with UF, they're always working on things and coming out first with new inventions and stuff like that. So, would it be feasible to put, if we start doing this here in Alachua County, to put a pad there to just, as you're saying, streamlining the folks that are going to UF, the faculty and things like that? So, that would streamline them right on in there. Yeah, our discussions at the airport, I mean, we have kind of electrical charging already there, and we have the, you can take off from there already. We're not expecting, and our discussions have high demand here, because we just really don't have that much traffic. Like, Tampa, Miami is probably where you're going to see more of it. And I think Tampa's the one kind of leading a lot of the charge on it. So, we're not expecting, just because we just don't have a lot of rich people who have a lot of bad traffic, it's not really expectation right now. But it could happen. And I think there's a state law that's doing preemption on it as well. I don't know if it went through or not, too. Sorry. Okay, that's something that I wanted to inquire about. Since it'll be a new way of us getting around. Our CEO does serve on the technology committee for, like, the Florida airports as well, and they've been discussions. Commissioner Albrecht? I had two things. So, when I went to the MTPOZ meeting, the alphabet soup meeting, we had a bunch of presentations on MTPOs and public engagement. And it was super interesting to me what other MTPOs were doing with public engagement. And some of them have spent significant amounts of money to do surveys of residents, to do real serious public engagement, to do newsletters, to bring people into meetings, have meetings out in the community. And I think as we discuss things like, you know, problem with Waldo Road and all those other things, I think that as, you know, we're maturing into a doer and better MTPO or TPO, I think that whole thought process of public engagement becomes a lot more important. So, I just wanted to share that, and if you want more information or copies of the slides, I can send those. The second thing that I wanted to mention was I asked for an article to be shared with everybody, and I don't know if any of y'all read it. I know you probably haven't read it. You haven't read it. I know you read it, Anna. I brought it up at the commission meeting on Tuesday. Oh, yeah. I wasn't there for that. But I want everybody else here to take a look at it. It is how Seminole County has changed their public transit to do a, what do they call it? Jitney. What's that? Do they call it a Jitney service? I mean, that's what it is, essentially. It's basically, they traded in some of their Lynx buses to something that they now call Scout, and they have vans that provide ADA compliant, not paratransit, but ADA compliant transport, you know, across most of the county. So, it's super interesting to me to have that as an option to think about as we are considering what regional transit might look like in the future. But that article's in your email somewhere, so if you would like to take a look at it, it's very interesting. I sent it to you. Yeah, she sent it. Yep. She sent it so that I didn't have to deal with the, what do you call it, such a lot of issues. But anyway, yeah, it's really interesting, and it's, Seminole County is not unlike Alachua County in terms of size. I thought it was interesting to see how it's working for them. It's not that you, they have, they have zones, so you, if you're in the one zone, it costs, I think, $5 a ride or $4 a ride, and then as you go through other zones, the further you go, you pay more. So, the most a ride can cost is $14, which is still way cheaper to go from one side of the county to the other in an Uber. But if you are a senior or if you're on public assistance or, I think there's another couple of categories, it's half that. So, it's half price. Could be a good solution for our small cities. It would be a very good solution for our small cities. So, I just thought it was worth looking at, and I thought it was a very interesting model. And they're not the only county in Florida doing this, but they're the only county that's a small, small, like Alachua County that's doing it. So, that's kind of similar to the jitney that I had mentioned on all that. RTS is running that, in essence, on the east side of Gainesville, too. Exactly. Point to point, yeah. Mr. Chair, so, we actually have public comment bookending the meeting, and per suggestion from Commissioner Cornell, put member comment after public comment. So, can we now pause for our second round of public comment? We already took public comment. We already did that? Yeah. Okay. There's the second time? The second time? Yeah. We did. I didn't even. I called for it. No one came forward. The board wants to take public comment, and we can. It's fine with me. All right. Yeah, I'll let you. Take public comment again. Sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. All right. Let's take public comment again. Sorry about that. I apologize. Hi, Moksa again. I have three safety concerns. One I've mentioned before, but I want to see if this is the board that would do something. One is a light strobe. It's at 1410 Northwest 13th Street. One of the businesses there is New Attraction. There's a lot of little businesses there. It's by this Lloyd Clark Sports, and I've called, and they said, oh, yeah, we're going to deal with it, but they haven't been dealing with it, and I don't know if anybody's familiar with light strobes can affect certain people that have medical conditions like epilepsy, strokes, heart attacks. So I wanted to see if possibly a letter could be sent to, I don't know who owns the building. I just know that there's a lot of businesses there that that light strobe is really causes stuff for people that I'm one of the people that has sensitivity to light strobes. And then, too, the Starbucks on 13th right there, if we want to talk about people being run over, and can anything be done? Because the Starbucks, you will have people, like, literally right there going into 13th Street with all their cars sitting out there. And I have almost seen so many accidents because people have to go around because they don't understand that there's another entrance they could go out on 16th. But they're coming back out there, and sometimes in the morning, like, there'll be, like, 10 cars just literally sitting on 13th, and you can only go on that lane, and then they're almost, like, running in. And then the last one, if this, I think, is a further agenda item, if it could be added for another discussion, this is something I've mentioned in a lot of different meetings. But the lane turning left, this is, I think, a lot of times where pedestrians are being hit. You're there. I know Commissioner Chestnut, Charles Chestnut has brought this up before. And you're going to turn, and it's set to turn and to where pedestrians are walking. And there's not a whole lot of time for that person. If you move a little bit slower, I think it's, like, 14 seconds you have. So just if something could be dealt with with that. I'm always told it's on a timer, but the timer says turn. And you have the grace of that person, if they are paying attention to you, to basically not turn into you. So those are just some concerns. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing those. Any other comments? Wasn't there something passed some years ago about blinking lights on signs? Because I know that it affected the LED signage because some people had to take that down because it was distracting the drivers. Does anybody remember that? It was some years ago. I don't know if it's still out there, but if there's a strobe light, that is distracting the drivers. It sounded like most of those were city issues. I may refer that to the city commissioner here. I think that the Starbucks is enforcement by GPD and then lights and then how signalizing the lights is also ran by Public Works, too. So that's all everything? That's all. We'll take care of all of that. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these are things that we have been talking. I mean, not the light strobe that was there, but the Starbucks with the queuing and some of those issues have been discussed for many, many years. The left-hand turn lane, we do have a Vision Zero document that looks statistically at where pedestrians are getting hit, where the most fatal hits are. I do remember permitted turns. I think both left turns and right turns were one of the larger ones that were in that, and so certainly on our radar. And thank you for bringing all those forward to us. All right. Anything else? I just have one last comment. That's it, I promise. Speaking of people getting hit, in Waldo, will you guys put the blinking lights that's down by the hardware store? F-D-O-T. Yeah, F-D-O-T. And you put the new ones that were by the new store that reopened up right there where you get ready to cross the railroad tracks. Is there any way that we can get blinking lights there? Maybe because with the event hall that's there, Tara Jay's Wedding and Events, she's having events there all the time, and I was there for an event that was this Saturday night. There was a family that was walking out, and they had to cross the street. So I'm seeing the cars coming, so me, I walk outside to make sure, okay, you get across the street because I don't need anyone to get hit. We don't need any lawsuits. So I'm telling them, okay, you know, cross the street safely and making sure they got across with their three children. But is there any way that we can get some blinking lights as we have on 301 to let the people know that traffic is crossing or something? Because, again, her businesses are really picking up, really picking up at the event center, which is a good thing. And the young lady that she had there was the little viral sensation, Ms. Shirley. So it was a nice crowd that was there. And a lot of the people that were there were with their children to cross back and forth. So if we could please add on to that little area there. And then we do have a lot. By the store being there, they're not walking all the way down by the hardware store to push the button to cross. So they're just crossing right there. And it's kind of dangerous. So the wait there with the traffic at any given time, you're going to wait about 15 minutes just to cross the street unless you want to play dodgeball with the traffic. And thank you all for listening because I brought up something about the trails and safety last year when you all came to the annual meeting in Waldo. So thank you all for listening because it is kind of scary with people out on the trails and biking. And if something happens, your phone is dead. There's nobody out there. Anything could happen out there. So thank you all for listening. I would ask if you can email the request to, I tried to jot it down, to Director Whitfield. And on that note, so the list of priority projects, as she mentioned, basically got rolled forward this year. One benefit of that is that lighting on University Avenue can finally show up in the work program in the near term. The downside is we have a long list of projects, like, you know, that get mentioned at every meeting. So I've kept track. I know Anach will keep track going forward. But those aren't things we want to add while we still have a backlog of all the projects we have. All right. With that, we're adjourned. All right. Good job. Good job. Yeah. Glad it wasn't me. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job.