Transportation Planning Organization Meeting - May 04, 2026

The 6th meeting of the Gainesville and Elachua County Transportation Planning, Planning Trans, oh, it's written twice there, Transportation Planning Organization, GACT. All right, let's start with our roll call and confirmation of quorum. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Chair Willits. Present. Vice-Chair Hotsantos. Here. Member Alford. Here. Member Book. Here. Member Serton. Here. Member Charles Chestnut. Absent. Member Cornell. Here. Member Desmond Duncan-Walker. Absent. Member Eastman. Here. Member Engel. Right here. Member Cynthia Chestnut. Member Priscilla. Here. Member Taylor. Member Ward. Here. Member Wheeler. Here. Member Brown. Member Lindex. I'll combine your name. I'm sorry. Dixon. Mr. Chair, we have a forum. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. Can I have an approval of the agenda? I'll move it. Second to second. All right, we have Engel and Hay-Santos. Is there any conversation, discussion about our agenda? All right, see none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Like sign. Motion passes unanimously. All right, and we have some minutes from our last meeting, I believe. Is that right? They're our April meeting? Yes. Can I get a motion for approval of our minutes? So moved. Second. Second. Somewhere. Second. By Alford. Is there any further conversations or minutes to our minutes? Objections? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Like sign, say nay. All right, approve, but unanimously. I have no chair's announcements. We'll go to public comments. Does any member of the public have a comment they'd like to leave now as opposed to in any of the individual items? I know that we have a later item specifically brought up by members about some safety on West Newberry Road. food, and we also have some items that'll have opportunity to do a conversation about our transportation improvement plan, the current one, and the future one we are. Are there any members of the public who'd like to speak now as opposed to later? I have a couple that we will work those in as we go. Is that on? Yeah. All right. On to our action items. Director Ruppel, 7.1? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Item 7.1 is the final version of the Unified Planning War Program for fiscal year 26-28. We received comments from the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida Highway Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration, and Federal Transit Administration. In your packets in front of you is a list of all their comments to the left, and then the staff's responses to comments on the right. So staff feels that the UPWP in its current form generally complies with the comments made by the agencies. On the screen here, the slide basically has the steps that we've undertaken so far, and we're now at the very bottom, getting the NPO, addressing all those comments made, and then adopting the UPWP, and then uploading it into the DOT's GAAP system for the last round of review to make sure that we've addressed all of their comments. DOT has already completed their review of the draft, and the only comment that they have, which will segue before I go to the next screen, is relative to the travel policy. Also in your packets in front of you is a draft resolution. So per statutes, if we do not use the state's travel policy, which is in statutes, then we can develop our own, and if we do that, we have to adopt a resolution. DOT has provided to us a sample that North Florida uses. This is what they adopted in 2017. It has their rates reimbursed based on the IRS's rates for mileage. They have their set rate for meals and incidentals at $10, $14, and $26, with a cap of $50. The state has $6, $11, and $19. So for your information also, I printed out the current 2026 IRS rates from the U.S. website. That's just so you can see a comparison. We can either opt to select the standard that is across the board, regardless of location, or the standard plus, depending on the location, or just the mirroring what North Florida adopted, which was 2017, so it's been about 11 years now. Commissioner Alford? The site-specific rates are based on the GSA standard? Yes, ma'am. I move that we adopt the site-specific GSA standard, as well as the IRS mileage standard. Second. Okay, I have a motion offered, seconded by Haysom. Which is this resolution? Yes, ma'am. Which is what the resolution that we have. Thank you, Chair. And that will just, we don't have to do this again. It'll just automatically update as the GSA and the IRS updates. I've spoken to TPO's fiscal analyst, and she's fine with operating, doing the operation this way. So she would look it up every time there's a request for reimbursement is submitted. Is there other conversation about this, Chair? I also want to just quickly add that even though the rates appear high, the board is adopting the budget amount in the UPWP for travel. So even if the rates are high, we are still capped by whatever that budget is. So staff would have to be cautious as, which events we're going to, how we're divvying out funds, and how we're using the budgeted travel expense budget. They're not that, as I was going to say, they don't look that hard. They're not, they're not super. Thank you for bringing that out. We have a memory. Some of us know city rates. Some of us know county rates. A lot of people know state rates. But this is, it's good to just kind of see what those federal. I'd like the GSA rates. You're right, isn't it my contracts? There you go. All right. Since we have a motion on the floor, are there any members of the public who would like to comment about this resolution for travel expenditures? And, Director, this is needed to be passed now because of the final UPWP. Correct. We need to upload it with the UPWP when we submit. Perfect. All right. There's no other conversation. A resolution that's just passed by voice vote, correct? I think we can do it by voice vote. It's not an ordinance. That's right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. So, suppose, say nay. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Director Rutfield. Thank you. So, continuing on with the UPWP, you have the paper copies that you can read at your leisure, but I just did snippets of what the comments were. For DOT, generally, there were a bunch of comments, but some of them are repeat comments, like numerous modifications to Exhibit 1. So, it shows up a few times. It just shows up once here. So, comments were relative to updating the federal project numbers, changing the worst effective date to fiscal years, summarizing the, changing the contract number, finishing the soft match table, which in draft form we hadn't gotten there yet, and DOT accepted knowing that we would finish the soft match, and we used the DOT's formula for that. And then, deleting the cost allocation and indirect costs, since that was something that was needed with RPC. We don't have that now since we have staff. And then, having a more detailed description of the audit. In our description, we have an audit, but in the task table, there wasn't a line item for audits. So, I added that line item with an estimated budget of 50. That may or may not change. It is required to be an independent audit. And then, the website, that's forthcoming, identifying the executive director and board chairman and planning manager by name. So, that's been added. The planning manager is currently vacant. And, links to the website. So, generally, and then I omit it from here, which is why DOT, when we had our check-in this morning, I was reminded, again, I forgot about the travel policy. So, hence the rush this morning, and I didn't get it to you until just now. But, that's the one missing item, is the travel policy. In terms of FTA comments, they're very, very broad. For example, the first comment is to review the entirety of the federal regulations and make sure that you're eligible. So, the basic comment is, comments noted. We will do everything that we can to be compliant with federal regulations. Yes. Please follow the Bible and you'll be fine. The second comment is relative to making sure that all of our processes are performance-based and our programming is performance-based. So, I did modify the areas in the UPWP that speaks to making sure we're doing it based on performances. In this provision, there's a stronger emphasis on transit. That was one of the key things that our FTA person spoke about when we had our on-site mock meeting, was to show more transit. What do we do with transit? So, there are some tweaks in the special projects that specifically calls out transit studies based on the direction from the board two meetings ago where the discussion is to consider transit on a county-wide level, thinking outside of our regular sandboxes to see how is the best way that we can use all of our resources and provide transit across the county. And if that is the transit system, great. If that's not and we can't do that, then at least para-transit. So, we're having those conversations. I'm going to be trying to meet with Janelle, DLT's District 2 Transit Coordinator, in the coming weeks so we can continue that conversation. But we did move some monies from the systems planning budget into special projects for transit evaluation. Possibly not the Transit Authority because there's probably not state funding for that, but maybe some sort of transit partnership is what we'll be discussing moving forward. But we're still looking at the data. And then Federal Highway Administration comments, a lot of them mirrored the DLT's comments. There was quite a bit of change in Title VIPS legislation. There are certain words that we are not allowed to use anymore. So, basically, we just have to make sure that our documents just are, you know, we're not discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. Everything else has just sort of been deleted from the executive orders. There was a request from them to remove Justice 40. So, there's an executive order that terminated Justice 40 initiative. And some other ones, they also wanted us to specifically call out the projects that would be utilizing the 2.5% complete streets. You'll see that in the task five now. So, I divvied it up based on the two complete streets projects half to each of those projects. Summary tables, a lot has changed. The last time I presented to the board, the direction was that we were not sure of whether or not we would get the obligated funds back. That's also slightly shifted to now, where instead of it's the state deciding, it's going, that decision is going to the district. So, you'll, what the chairman has is a copy of the agreement for the total 2.779 million that I presented to you back in March. So, that is for us to sign. And we'll continue forward with our UPWP as if we have all the funds, but we will be working very closely with ACHEA to make sure that before we actually sign any scopes or authorize any projects to commence, we'll check to make sure that those funds are in place so that when they invoices, we'll have the monies to pay for those invoices. So, that's the bottom row on the left-hand side. As I mentioned, special project number five, updating it to talk about the complete streets. Task two, data collection. They want it more descriptive on what kind of data collection. And based on my conversation with the deputy director, we feel that a good use of those 50,000 is to do a county-wide bicycle-pedestrian counts using a consistent methodology instead of Gainesville having its own, the county having its own. It's having a consultant looking at and giving us the best methodology to do a county-wide count system and using that data moving forward. Can I ask what the use, what would be the outcome of that data collection? What's the point of the data collection? That's a very good question. I think it's important to know where the needs are instead of just looking at existing facilities. Well, I agree. It's just that we might have a need that might not present itself on a bike path because there isn't a bike path there. Right. Yeah. I would say, I mean, I guess we just spent a lot of time and effort developing a bicycle-pedestrian master plan based on the data that we collected. So I guess my concern is that we do this and then, like, how does that match with our bicycle-pedestrian master plan? Do you want to add to that, Allison? I mean, there's an old adage. Allison Moss, deputy director for the TPO, that what is counted counts. And so we have very little data for bicycle-pedestrian use globally. So I think it's important that we have hard data to show, you know, what trails are getting the most use. For instance, we may have a gap in the network. We may show that we have really high use along adjacent corridors, and if we would connect that gap, then we would really serve a need, and that would be a critical component. Whereas if we look at another, say, competing priority, perhaps there's not as high of a demand. So I can't really say what all of the possible use cases are, but we have, in general, a paucity of data on bicycle-pedestrian transportation. Because I think the bike-ped-master plan is mostly looking at facilities. Yeah. I mean, so these are different count mechanisms. They would be either inductive loops, side-fire infrared counters, or a combination of both. In some cases, video counters that are using AI to detect bicyclists and pedestrians. And that would really augment the work of the bike-ped plan, but not be computing or inconsistent. That's helpful. Thank you. Yeah. Because I believe the bike-ped-master plan looks at the facilities. This will be looking at how those facilities are used so that Project 1, Project 7, Project 8, based on their ranking, are ranked that way, but based on the usage, they may need to go together. Gotcha. I will say this makes a lot of sense because what's the purpose of this board is sometimes this coordination between city, county, UF, and State Department of Transportation. So that seems like, even though our bike-ped is a joint effort, but if it's not measuring – Well, it's not getting actual counts. It's not getting the counts, and so it's a lot of anecdote on that part. We have a lot of citizen feedback, but not the data. So if we can establish a standard and then have it going forward, it seems to make sense. So I'm glad that's in here. And we don't have to use the whole 50, or it may be more than 50. It's just a line item for when we get staffed up to do it. And then there was a question on the consortium. I got the direction from RTS that the Gainesville RTS is no longer participating in that, so that's been removed. And then updating the UPWP, the TPL boundary in the UPWP, whereas before it was just Gainesville. And I did include a boundary because in my mind it's the entire county, but FHWA still wanted a map that shows the boundary. So County TDA has prepared a map for that. So this is just an email from the DOT central office saying that it's not there until it's there, basically. So it's just a reminder of what I presented earlier about working with and coordinating with DOT District 2. So because we have the travel policy approved, staff is – what is this, the old one? I'm sorry. If you look in your packet, I've updated the recommendation. Staff is asking for the board to approve – we've already done the first one, approving the 2026, 2027, 2028 UPWP as presented in the attachment, subject to the condition that the TPL process as a formal amendment, if needed, should the state not have the budget authority to encumber the funds following the October federal fiscal cycle. So I have a motion by Crizia and a second by Alford. Just real quick to clarify, what's in our packet as you read, not the yellow part there. Not the yellow part. That was as of 1 o'clock last time. That's right. But instead it says, if needed, should the state not have budget authority to encumber the funds following October federal fiscal year. So from the last time we presented it, it was going to be determined based on the state budget. At the MPOAC directors' meeting this past week, the direction is that the decision will go to the districts. So this language was worked on with Akay and myself this morning so that the authority goes to our district liaison, not central office. Okay. Mr. Hays-Santos. Thank you, Chair. You mentioned the transit authority and looking into that and transit partnership. I kind of missed what you meant, not looking into transit authority. The likelihood of the transit authority is probably not a viable option simply because we need the state's support and financial support, which I've been told I'm not going to be the financial support for that. But we are welcome to continue the conversation on how to create a partnership with all the agencies that are involved with providing transit. So it's still, nothing's determined. We're still having those conversations. So I guess, yeah, I guess one of the thoughts I thought we had was us like looking at kind of the different options and then this board kind of saying, hey, we want to go after this. Is that still the? Yes, that still is, but I'm just trying to set a realistic tone that is likely not going to get state support for a brand new authority. In this UPWP? In Alachua County. I mean, that's a political determination, which I'm happy to kind of make, I'm happy to have, I mean, politics is a part of the world, but it's a question that, you know, if you have, you know, the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, City of Gainesville, Alachua County, all at the table saying this is the direction we want to go in, you would certainly be able to get, you know, bipartisan political support. I think it's worth, without a report that looks into that, you're certainly not going to. Yeah. It's just coming out of nowhere. We're still looking at all of it. It's just, you know, there's the dream, and then we're going to try to, but. I guess to that point, I think that's what Commissioner Eastman is saying. It's like, bring us all the different options, and then we'll make the decision based on kind of what we think is more, and we're not, we're not sure if that's the dream that we necessarily, but I do think it's worth, look, a transit authority is a fairly common structure that would, that is worth us, you know, taking a look at the types of it, how the policy would work, financial support might be difficult, but it might, might not be, it might be worth having that conversation. Yes, we have the steps on how to develop a transit authority from DOT. We are following those steps, but it's just, but you know that we're still working on it. There's no decision that has been made. I'm certainly not making any decisions, but at this point, we're just trying to bring all the players to the table to have regular meetings to talk about what we can do. I guess one of, sorry, one of the thoughts we have is just like, what are the different options before we start actually asking for a specific direction? You said you're already having conversations with like DOT on what we might do? No, no, no, no. It's just the direct, the steps. What would be needed to be an authority? That was the motion that we made months ago. Yeah. The conversation that we've had, the one conversation that we had has been with staff from UF, the county, RTS, DOT planning, and transit. So we've had the one conversation so far. Okay. Is there more about that? What else do you have on UPWP for us? That's it. Because we're at the, okay. Do we have any members of the public who would like to comment about our final UPWP staff recommendation? Go ahead and come in. You have to come to the mic. You'll come forward and tell us your name and we have three minutes. At least, if she could also fill out the comment card so that, yes. We will make sure she does that as well. I have a question about, you had mentioned that there would potentially be AI camera enabled on the trails to count the amount of pedestrians or foot traffic that we're getting in those areas. I was wondering if there's a plan for data security with those cameras. I know that there's been a lot of headlines internationally about like block cameras and how they're pretty easily hackable. People are able to just see any part of our city, any of our trails, cameras that are there. And I'm curious if there's a plan to keep that information, you know, to the city itself rather than being available for people all around the world to just look at. That concerns me as a citizen. We haven't scoped out that project yet, so I don't have an answer for it at this point unless Allison has any. I mean, I think there's probably best practices regarding data security for the cameras. They would be, the footage would be used just for the purpose of determining bicycle, pedestrian and other like e-mobility counts. And the data would be handled with the greatest security possible. You voted for that. I guess I just wanted to say a couple things. One is that block cameras are already in use in our city by our law enforcement officers and by private companies. For the purposes of Alachua County and the Sheriff's Office, when we approved the use of them for speeding in school zones, I don't know if that's flock in particular, but these sort of cameras, surveillance cameras, we asked specifically that they make sure that the data security was focused on us having the ownership of that data and managing how that data was used and that that data wouldn't be available for sale. And not sharing. Huh? And not sharing. Yeah, not sharing it. I mean, it's public record, so someone can request that data and information, but that it was our data. It wasn't data that was open for sale. Like, it was something that we managed. And so I'm not sure how that was incorporated into the final contract language, but certainly I'll keep that in mind as we move this scope forward and try to maintain that same, hopefully that same level of security and protection for what we can do in this era of surveillance. Are there any other comments from this board on 7.1? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. The motion passes unanimously. All right, Ms. Whitfield, we are on to 7.2. The LTE District 2 is going to present on this item, Chair. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Lori Santana. I'm the MPO liaison from Florida District 2 to the Gainesville and Alachua TPO. Today we're here to ask the board approval for an amendment to the TIP for fiscal years 25, 26, 29, 30. That's our existing TIP. We'd like to add a project to the TIP. It's project number is 443-2582, and this is State Road 20, Southeast Hawthorne Road, from west of 211th Street to west of Northeast 5th Street. This is entirely in the town of Hawthorne. It is entirely in Alachua County. The intent is to resurface, rehabilitate, and restore SR20 from within those limits. And by adding this to our STIP and TIP, we would be allowing the preliminary engineering funding to be in the first segment of next year's TIP. So we're asking approval. Commissioner President? I know that Hawthorne has been the subject of many of our safety conversations with regards to the amount of trucks that are coming through there, the schools that are located there. I'm wondering if this road segment, if our staff could tell us that this road segment in particular was the subject of those safety conversations, and if so, would those safety considerations be part of the conversation during resurfacing? I think the DOT has some safety comments as well. I could tell you the extent of the project. They did a pavement maintenance, pavement management study, and there are sections of this roadway that they found that there was a failure in the pavement. So it was a subsurface failure, and they intend to repair that. There will be bike pad improvements, so they checked both sides for the sidewalks. The sidewalks were in good repair. This is a segment of State Road 20 that has sidewalks already, but they will include improvements to the detectable warnings that need to be replaced, the curb ramps, and either retrofitting and realigning the existing ones or completely improving those that are not ADA compliant. The shoulders are used as bike lanes, so that won't change. There are no existing right-turn lanes, so there's no need for bicycle keyholes in this location. There aren't any bus stops within this limit, so there are no bus stop concerns. There is an existing mid-block crosswalk within these project limits near a school zone, and that will be maintained and replaced with new striping. And then there's a pedestrian signal features that will be upgraded at the signalized intersection at Southeast 211th Street. That's the only signal in the project limits. They will be repainting the crosswalks in a nice, emphasized way. The pedestrian signal features will be improved so that they're ADA compliant. And all of those, there's a few drainage improvements that need to be made. So it's really a maintenance project. Commissioner Prisci? Yeah, I do believe it was that mid-block crossing that was brought to us by the City of Hawthorne. There's serious concerns because a lot of young children are crossing that road, and even though there is a mid-block crossing, the trucks don't stop. There's a lot of truck traffic that comes through. There's 301s right there. And so there's been a request that there be an improvement to that mid-block crossing for the schools if there could be a signalized crossing in order that the kids could get across. I know that was a concern. I'm not sure if there was any others that we had discussed. It's in a minute. There may be some confusion on which corridor we're discussing. So 301 North-South and 69th Avenue, I think Southeast 69th. It was a pretty major crossing for students of elementary and the middle school. And that is going to have a pedestrian hybrid beacon, and that's in FDOT's work program. They were able to accommodate that in their signals program. So then on east-west, say, route 20, there is a completely unsignalized but marked crossing that does have crossing guards. And apparently it sometimes helps do traffic control, whether or not that's part of their scope of work and responsibilities at the school arrival time. And so, yeah, TAC, and I think also the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Board requested that there be additional improvements along with this project, but they are limited to what was shared by Ms. Santana. Okay, and so just did the county, I thought originally the speed cameras at schools, I thought it identified Hawthorne as a really bad initial study. That's what I'm saying. But the county didn't decide to do cameras there, but I thought the initial study was this crazy amount of speeders right there. I think the county didn't decide. I think the county has decided to do pilot and slowly expand implementation once they have, once we've gotten used to being able, I think the concern, if I recall, was around data management and being able to like process the amount of data and verify license plates and what that was going to take. And so we didn't want to do countywide until we had tried a couple intersections. And so we were focusing on ones that were, I guess, maybe they were the easiest to implement because of cost, or maybe they were the ones that were the most egregious in terms of issues. But I know that there is a plan to ultimately expand those efforts across the district should they pan out to not be overly difficult to implement. I just thought I remembered that Hawthorne, it was a while ago now, it was 18 months ago, I think it was, or two years. But Hawthorne was one of the schools that had, it stuck out. And it makes sense, SR-20, an overpass. Some people are treating it like an interstate highway. So, yeah, there's an unsignalized crosswalk at 215th Street. So I guess the question is, is there any opportunity with this resurfacing project to improve the signaling at that mid-block crossing? Right now, the scope does not include anything except for restriping it as it is. But it will be much more visible because it'll be all new thermoplastic and everything else, and the surface will be darker. But there isn't any plan to put any kind of signalization at that mid-block crossing. Not as far as this project is concerned. Commissioner Book. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is just for the engineering for the particular area. So it's about $600,000, $7,000. And then would we have to come back next year once we saw the engineering plan to see what the cost would be for implementation or what exactly happens next? I believe, as Ms. Santana can correct me, doing this will just put it, it's so that it can go into the first quarter in the next UPWP site. Yeah, that's correct. They're ready, and they just want to have the $600,000-some dollars to be put available in the first quarter of the next TIP instead of having to wait because they're ready to start engineering. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. Commissioner Cornell. I would move that for recommendation and ask DOT to look at also the signal at P15, potentially at increasing the scope. All right. I have a motion from Cornell and a second from Wheeler. Is there further conversation about this amendment to the TIP? I just have a question. Did I understand you, Commissioner Prisner, to say that there is a crossing guard or someone to say that at 215? Yeah. The light. I was trying to get my bearings straight there. I know the light is at the stadium, so this is a little bit farther east of the stadium. It looks like it's from the map here, so thank you. Councilman. With the engineering, when they put the crosswalks in, are they going to elevate like they have a wall, though, or how are they going to do that? I'm not sure. This will be DOT's project, so we won't see it until they're done with designing it. Those issues with the rain? Yes. I did bring that concern up this morning with DOT as well. They passed it on to their safety office. Dorit, would you pull your mic? It's really hard for you to hear. Member Taylor was asking about whether or not the design would include the kinds of, I guess, I don't know what they're technically called. They're like raised tables, but they're not in the road itself, but along the corners. The way it's built in Waldo area doesn't seem to be working, in my opinion, as designed. So I was sharing that. I've passed that information on to the district, and that's been passed on to the safety office. And my reasoning for asking that is because it's a really bad safety issue right now that's going on in Waldo with those raised pillars. It's really, really bad to make sure that once they move along and talk on that mistake isn't made there as well, because you do have an amount of seniors that walk that little area up in there as well. Okay. Is there further conversation from the board on item 7.2? Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on 7.2, our amendment to our current TIP? Okay. Good afternoon. Akaya Brown, Transportation Planning Manager with DOT. So this is the opportunity. You all are requesting a signalization. This can be done leveraging your SU funds. So during the LOPP process, you all can add this project to your list of priority projects, and we can look at potentially funding this project prior to it being during the preliminary and design phase before construction is decided. So this could be in the fall when you all are looking at your tentative work program, deciding how you all would like to use your funds moving forward. So this season. That's a great reminder. Thank you so much for the program. Thank you. I've noted that. All right. Seeing no further discussion, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, say nay. Motion passes unanimously. Now, Director Whitfield, 7.3? Yes, sir. Point three is the draft fiscal year 2627-3031 transportation improvement plan. This is a draft. Our public participation plan requires that the board, that the public has 21 days to make comments. This is, it covered, so there was a baselift to the TIP to reflect the entire county as opposed to the previous smaller geographic area. The steps for the TIP were down there on the lower left-hand side where we are initiating the review of the draft tip. The time frame for making actual comments on projects would have been 12, 18 months ago. As Ms. Brown just mentioned, the timeline to make comments would have been back when we were looking at projects and the list of priority projects and then going into the department's tentative work program. At this juncture, the TIP is basically an alignment of our transportation improvement plan with the state's transportation improvement plan that's already gone through its cycle and has been approved by the governor's office. So moving forward, the next TIP, when we add the next fifth year, as Ms. Brown mentioned, we start making those comments before the department creates their tentative work program. This one is basically to ratify what the TPO sent to the state last year. But we are obligated to provide some opportunities for 21 days of public comment. So that's what this will be for. And it's mostly for the body of the TIP document itself, not so much the list of projects since those have already been approved by the governor's office. Can I ask a question about that? Yeah. Do we have, like, you know, being that we're a new TPO and I feel like it's a much more sort of process-oriented focus on how we develop our TIP and how we develop the work plan, is there a way that we can capture these projects, like the one we're talking about, we were just talking about, and have sort of a list of those that you present to us when we begin the process for the TIP? Like, these are all the things that you talked about wanting. So, because I feel like sometimes that happens, but it happens, it used to happen in a pretty opaque way. So it wasn't clear which projects we're competing against, which for the funds and how we were prioritizing those projects and how they aligned with the things that DOT was doing. So if that's something that I could request, if folks are okay with that for the future, when we go into this process, that would be great. Commissioner Alford. Yeah. So what are we going to do? So one of our goals, I believe, is to try to engage the public more in this TPO. So what are we going to do to share this public comment period with the public? How are we going to? So right after this meeting, once the board approved the draft, we are super close to finishing the website. It's essentially finished. We're just going through and making sure that all the links work, that you're clicking on email us and it goes to the appropriate email address and things like that. So the structure of the website is complete. It's just we're doing QAQC right now because nothing's more frustrating to a resident than to click on a link and your email just gets lost. So we're just trying to make sure that we do the QAQC before we do the final release to go live. Once it's ready to go live, then we will be reaching out to Mr. Sexton with the county to do a press release and maybe Jennifer too with the city to do a press release. We still have the contact us on the existing TPO website. So this PowerPoint can also be, we'll place it on the website as well so they know how to get to it. And then anybody can always, of course, email myself. So the TPO, the gappedpo.org email will come to me as well once that goes live. Can I request that we also communicate with each of the cities and give them an opportunity to talk about this during their city council meetings? So do you want that communication, Commissioner Alford, to city managers or to the chair of each of those commissions? Probably the managers, I think. Commissions? Okay, I'll just tell you this and I'm just being honest. Every experience that I've had when they've gone to managers has been that then I get a call from the mayors after the fact saying we had no idea. I think that we're used to a high level of coordination between staff and commissions but I think in the smaller cities there's less of that. And so I do think that both is really important. So that, yeah. Seems easy enough. To both, whatever. Do you need a motion for that or is that just something we can request? I can, I'm writing it down. Just to reiterate, this TIP, the projects have already been set. So as long as the general public understands that we really can't change projects at this juncture. But we can certainly take in comments for as we prepare the list for any projects for the next year. It's all about setting a, to me it's all about setting this process of how we connect with and include the public as we move forward. All right. Commissioner Book. So thank you Mr. Chair. So ditto to what you said Commissioner Alford. You have a minimum 21 day public commenting period but it's going to go live within the next few days. So I think we should, you know, extend that to the extent as the executive director you think we get the comments we need. I recognize we're not going to change projects. but just the fact that we've announced the fact that we have new organization that this is the way that we engage I think will really be beneficial going forward. So I would say extend that 21 day and to look to what you think and certainly don't, don't include it past the time when our website goes live. Okay. Certainly can do that. Also me trying to like, I can share with you that the BPAP had a lot of questions on the TIP and out of that conversation it made me realize that there needs to be some literature out there that is easy for the public to understand. I started putting together some flow charts but then I reached out to our partners at D2. She, Lori, shared a list of a whole bunch of different flow charts that we will be putting onto the new website as well. So you'll see the steps for the TIP, the steps for the UPWP. Oh, that's good. Just like the ones that I pulled from those wires. Good for all of us. I know. We can look at it but we know what works. Yeah. At the MPO Institute that Ms. Taylor and I went to, there was one slide that had the DOT's steps and the TPO steps all on like one page. So we'll be sharing information that we've learned from the Institute on our webpage as well. Yes. Great. So with that, staff is looking for board approval on the draft tip. So as soon as this is approved, we're going to put it on the website. I will say that in its current form, it is not 508 compliant. So what we will do instead is put links to the actual Excel files, the actual letters, the actual exhibits so that they'll be individually posted online so that they'll hopefully will be more ADA accessible. Even some of the things that we've gotten, I've gone through the effort of clicking on the accessibility and then trying to correct all of them. But there's still a lot of documentation that needs correcting and some things just can't be corrected. It stands out as a fail in the document. But it'll at least be a little bit more readily accessible. And just so we're clear, we're not required for another year for that level of accessibility. So the requirements for the website to be a 508 compliant, Victoria Pennington and her team are doing that. They're doing the checks. But in our contract, we as the people who populate the data will be required for making sure that all of our documents are compliant before we upload them onto the website. I see. Okay. And so this, we're in the kind of building the plane as we go. By chance, our website, we're looking to go live very soon. Is that where I'm hearing? Very soon. We are almost ready to click on the go live. Then I'm like, then I start checking the link. Will that be within the next, I'm just trying to understand the 28 days. Okay. So then it'll be online for a full 21 days. Yes. Even though now counts as starting today, required 21, we've opted, the recommendation is 28 days going forward. Yes. So because of this flux and we're still trying to like get our TIP up, like the interactive TIP, we have like a 12-page document where we have to check, yes, this works, yes, this works, yes, this works. I haven't finished going through all that yet and I have found some things where I've snipped it and then popped it into the table, like these things need to be corrected. Because we're still doing that, what I will do instead is just put the entire Excel file so that the Excel file itself is compliant and they can do searches and all that in its broad form. Like the federal obligations projects list, we have it in a PDF table that is not searchable, but Ms. Brown was also able to find it and send it to us in an Excel form. So those links will also be available if anybody wants to really dig into the weeds of the federal obligations projects. But yeah, we're almost there. It's not quite there yet. Thank you, Dr. Whitfield. That was a little in the weeds, but all of us work with our respective governments and institutions and are having to deal with this, so it's a good reminder of where we are at and where all of our institutions are at. Ms. Moss? I did just want to backtrack a little bit and respond to Member Prizia's question comment about kind of getting a recap of different capital project needs that we've heard about through the course of a year when we get to that list of priority projects. So TPO staff does maintain such a list. We were ready and prepared to share the list at this last list of priority projects period. However, we determined that we have basically committed funding through the year 2030, so we don't have any reasonable prospect of, you know, that's not just projects that we would like to do but for which we've already committed the funding until that year and so we decided to, you know, not have that conversation at that point. However, it could be that in the future we still, for the sake of transparency and sort of keeping track of topics and issues, we could still bring them up even if we have, you know, sadly very little local funding for capital projects. Is it reasonable to think that on some of those projects we might make a legislative ask if it was significant enough? I think so. Like we did on Archer Road. Yeah, like we did on Archer Road, right. Is there further conversation about our draft? Move staff recommendation. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second from Cornell and Alford. Members of the public, I believe, well, it's now an appropriate time to start now. Sheriff Darnell, some of this may be comment about the future future but I think now is a perfect time. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners, members. I'm not sure what you are with the new organization but it is a pleasure to find out that this organization exists and I've done out about it for the record. My name is Sadie Darnell. For those of you who don't know me, I was born and raised in Gainesville and also worked for over 40 years in public safety at the Gainesville Police Department and the Electric County Sheriff's Office. Having said that, that means that I most likely have either ridden or driven on every road into the city of Gainesville or Alachua County which is the point of me being here for this meeting. What we're going to show in just a few seconds is a video of a crash that happened in an area of Alachua County on Archer Road at Southwest 154th Street. Don't start it yet. Don't start it yet. Stop it. Need a pause? Okay. It just started itself. Yeah. Thank you. Southwest 154th Street in Archer Road. As you watch the video... For those of you that's right in front of Jordan Glen on Archer Road. Yes. It's the access road into Jordan Glen. The cars have to stop because there's not a left turn lane. The request today is going to be for a consideration of a left turn lane flashing orange light and reducing the speed limit which is 60 miles an hour along this roadway. So as you watch this video and if anyone in the room has had an experience of being in a severe crash or you find this might be troubling to you just be aware and use caution. This is a 25 second video. What you're going to see is a stop vehicle which is a white SUV driven by Jennifer Francher, my niece, my marriage. And within that SUV are five children under the age of 12. Under the age of 12. Now I'll tell you no one was killed or tragically injured in this crash but the potential is there and that's what I want you to see. So if we'll watch the video then I'll continue with a few more comments. This is from the dash cam of a car that's behind Jen. The chatter is from their radio. She stopped to turn left at 154th Street to go to Jordan Glen for summer camp with the five children in her vehicle. I happen to watch it again. There's a blue pickup truck coming eastbound that was just missed by seconds. So this could have been and we don't know why it wasn't a fatality but it wasn't. And so my purpose today and Jen if you want her to speak is to highlight this as a hazard within the roadways of Alachua County. The ingress road into Jordan Glen to just give you an idea this is a school that has 10 different special events highly participated by parents and relatives of the children. The growth of that school has gone since its inception up to over 700% of students and staff the school has grown and the parents are having to take their children and use that 60 mile an hour lane to turn into the ingress road to go to Jordan Glen. The other point I want to make is we all know that Archer Road is heavily traveled. It's primarily if you go down and now you'll see a lot of dump trucks and the reason for that is because the southwest part of the city of Gainesville as well as Alachua County is growing very very fast and as a result subdivisions are going up churches are going up a new publics is being redesigned I've heard something of a golf course and most of those are along Parker Road and 122nd Parker Road and what's the other one Tower Road most of those the construction and development is along the road but the debris the debris that's caused by those development and constructions construction is being loaded onto dump trucks like you saw in this video and they're headed to Archer Road because there are two landfills in Archer where the construction debris goes so that as these developments and subdivisions are being built that debris is growing and the trucks on that road again going 60 miles an hour westbound on a two lane road it's just a high hazard and I want to make you all aware of that and recognizing that there is a process and it seems to be pretty involved keep in mind that things change and if you have a set project and we know that Archer Road is going to be expanded at some point to four lanes but be aware that this hazard exists now it exists today there will be other crashes there hopefully none that will be fatal or high injury but there's something that needs to be done we've been told and we went through the process that has taken us a while to get here that the road will be changed and expanded in 2029 2029 is a long time away we're concerned about it the parents at the school are concerned about it we've got a petition drive that's being started so we will be at the meetings to be able to offer input and advice but we want to plant the seed in each of your mind of what is happening now and what can be prevented so thank you may I answer any questions thank you Mr. Arnell all right and we also Ms. Fancher would you like to speak now Jennifer Fancher I was driving that vehicle with my I'm sorry just watching it gets me upset but I do understand that there was a survey done following the crash and that it was approved for a turning lane there and that approval is scheduled for 2029 so I'm just here to ask for that to happen sooner than 2029 it's not the first crash the wife of the director of the school has been rear-ended there twice one time her car was totaled that crash was in July of 2025 and the following or the previous summer there was also a crash at that intersection same situation it just wasn't a fully loaded dump truck so I don't know how these things get decided in order of importance but if there is a mechanism in which that can be prioritized that's what I'm here to ask thank you Ms. Fancher and I'm sorry about this accident I'm sorry you had to see it again Commissioner Alford I drive that road every day and so I know that DOT did make some changes at that intersection there's some very confusing road markings that went up there I'm curious I'm curious if DOT is aware of those road markings and if they have any could explain what they mean do you know what I'm talking about yeah I figured you guys know but I mean I drive it every day I don't even know what they there's like an arrow that points three directions and there's right the striping of the arrows is in the middle of a moving lane and it is very confusing it's an arrow going forward an arrow going to the left and the arrow going to the right which means I guess choose your direction you want to go it certainly doesn't suggest slowing down no it certainly doesn't and that's the point we're trying to make and the other point is when you're leaving the school you've got to get up to 60 miles an hour to get into that moving lane for cars and trucks that are going eastbound it's a very scary situation I ran I wrote through there this morning just to make sure I got it refreshed in my mind travel it thank you for having that experience and going there so you notice that thank you thank you Ms. Darnell Commissioner Cornell thank you Mr. Chair so first of all thank you to the folks that sent that video I was able to speak to Sheriff Darnell last week and I had heard about this accent but I had never actually seen the accent so it prompted me to actually buy a larger vehicle this weekend because I have two grandkids and it's just scary you know it's just really scary what I would like to communicate is I know on the county side there's a lot happening from development standpoint on Southwest Archer obviously it was one of our highest priorities to expand it to four lanes really appreciate DOT looking at it and I would ask Ms. Brown if she could look at the opportunity of maybe moving that up or I don't think we're switching things but if the money is there and it's just a matter of us waiting if there is an opportunity to move it up I know that with the developments happening with the redesign for four landing and two from Tower to Parker Road there's going to continue to be increased on traffic and every day that you move it up is another day to potentially prevent this type of accident so I appreciate you allowing us to share that to you I appreciate Ms. Brown being able to see it and taking that back to the district and if there is an update that we can bring back to the board and vote on that would be great before we can communicate back to the school thank you Mr. Alford is it appropriate to request that that be designated school zone I don't know how that works out in the county on a state road will private schools get school zones too yeah yeah Commissioner Wheeler there's been some question though about over there the Krishma school that's school too because I've also asked for that kind of designation there and we've not been able to get it so I don't I don't know what the regulation is with that but I know that we've had that same question over there Oakview though has school zone yeah I would add to the staff recommendation move that our staff look into what is involved in designating an area as a school zone on the state road or do you know Allison okay never mind yeah so evaluation of a school is done if the request is made it's largely based on whether or not there's a presence of children walking and biking which with a magnet school or a private school especially out in the rural areas tends to be very low so that's the reason or sort of the basis of not granting a school zone to some of the schools in the under corporate who makes a decision public works I would say so the county engineer the county engineer all right well then and we need to have a conversation about the difference of a school zone in a rural area versus an urban area and what that means yeah to me a school zone that abuts a 60 mile an hour speed limit on a state road that's heavily trafficked you know would be very valuable but I guess the question is is that a county referral or would that come from here could we refer to our Alaska County public works so I would yes or no member certain so I figure I should jump in on this convo also because we've asked like the school to look at this on Parker for markings and lighting and it's been declined and I wasn't sure if it was county staff I think it went to county staff but yeah so as like Commissioner Willis said the charter that's on 235 around from a vein we've asked several times about that and we hadn't been successful but we were successful on 23rd Avenue to get lighting and markings in front of the charter yeah boatwear charter yeah so it I think it's just any school but there are bikers and walkers on 23rd there are no bikers and walkers on 235 but the same situation scenario that is here that was shown here it has happened I know once by the the Christian school out on 235 but as and we had that terrible accident just north of Terwilliger on Parker Road so I I agree I think if we're going to address or when we address the one on Archer that is definitely one but there's some other hot spots that need to be addressed as well that are schools people turning in and out and similar to to respond to Commissioner Cornell's question about whether this board can make you know can move that staff look into this I think that TPO staff can research who it is that is responsible for investigating school zones and follow up that way either with the county engineer or FDOT if that's relevant okay council Taylor first yes I would like that also because since I've been on the council before when we had the last school that was there in Waldo told several times that no we couldn't get a school zone yes we could get a school zone the city manager had to do X Y and Z our city manager didn't want to do X Y and Z or said no we couldn't get it okay the school came we had a few kids that were coming back and forth now we have a new school in Waldo all of our children the majority of our children in Waldo assigned up to attend that school when school starts back in that means that they're going to be crossing from the railroad track coming across the first part of 24 going across the second part of 24 we have the beacons on the other part by the hardware store where the crash just happened where the car ran over the pillars and ran into the wall and went through the wall in the hardware store so I don't know I would really love to find out again who's in control of saying whether or not we can have school zones for where they're supposed to be because that is a very big danger that's in Waldo and with our children that are getting ready to start school again in June all right commissioner yeah I guess I guess I would just say I would like to make a motion that we refer to the TPO staff to look into school zones and the policies regarding them in every jurisdiction regarding rural versus urban and what the standards are report back to this board and ask those boards to take up that policy consideration as necessary second I have a motion by president second by Cornell commissioner Cornell did you have anything to add I was going to I think we have a motion on the floor so if we could just make that part two part two of the motion that's right all right is your conversation just very quickly to speed zones in those areas too you know I know that would be a part of the discussion but that even around Santa Fe high school where that where you're pulling out and it's going 45 miles an hour through there it's really hard for to pull off 235A into 45 mile an hour traffic with all the congestion there with those kids there yeah I think that's a separate conversation than the school zone conversation but I agree with you we need to I've brought up speeds in this meeting before and I'll continue to bring them up I'd like to keep it separate from this conversation shouldn't that be a part of the consideration though for an area that is considered a school zone if that's a school zone that's part of the question of is it a school zone if it's a college or university I guess I don't I don't know the answer to that question but I just want to keep it focused on the school zones right now but I'm happy to have a separate motion Santa Fe high school oh Santa Fe high school then that's a school zone right that would be a school zone consideration yeah so this larger conversation is particularly about the forms of non charter private all of those other forms of schools that are kind of blossoming yeah all schools all different types of schools yeah and so that's I think that's where we're getting at so is there any other further conversations about the motion that we have on the table right now okay remember the public would like to comment on this particular motion just about getting to the bottom of school zones all right I see none all those in favor say aye those opposed say nay and passion motion passes unanimously all right we're still on 7.3 our draft tip though thank you all for having hearing some of the public comment during this even though this is mostly set out there in stone but we also know there are amendments like we just passed an amendment to our current tip so sometimes there are amendments in the middle when the state particularly needs or wants something the state department of transportation so who knows what happens between now 30 31 is there further conversation about this this draft going forward that we're about to release to the public and have our minimum 21 required days but 28 days of public comment how receiving public comment exactly how are we reaching out to the public commissioner miss Whitfield can you just remind us about all the ways so we're going to be sending out the press release once the website goes live we'll also be sharing it to the city and the county's communications offices to share with their their I guess groups like the city city commission city mayors and city managers sharing with the city of things will as well as the smaller communities and it'll be posted on our website remember saying that but are we trying to like really reach the public any other type of way to make sure I'm open to suggestions if there's any distribution list that you want us to send to we'd be happy to send these out well they're having a jazz festival this weekend at the Oaks mall and it's gonna be pretty big because the last Saturday shops I think it is they had out there there were a lot of people out there you had kids from the university around it was a very nice diverse crowd out there so you may want to I don't know and and the DJ is always announcing so you may want to pass something sorry to them to see if you can get the word out as well so that folks can truly say that they didn't know because again he's continuously announcing things as the show was going on so that's one way to get word out on the southwest side of town as well and actually to all the general public because you have a lot of people with their phones that are recording so it's going to be heard that way as well if I could that's I want to put a lot of public involvement when we develop the list of projects for the next tip since the projects are essentially already set for this tip but it could be conversation like we're preparing the business cards of course but also the pull-up banners for when we do start going out the public events for the next round where we can make impacts on projects whereas this list of projects that have been approved by the governor all right is there any further conversation on facebook will be live this item 7.3 seeing none all those in favor say aye aye those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously all right miss Whitfield so this item is not an action item it's just an informational item I wanted to bring to the board that the city of Gainesville RTS had submitted an application for competitive bus grant they were one out of two slides 479 applications for a total of 6.8 billion dollars so as you can see in this area this highlight of those 479 34 projects were selected proud to say that Gainesville RTS was one of the 39 the total of the 34 projects was 388 million dollars the recipients do have to talk to FTA's regional offices and of course our DOT transit office for their applications on the right hand side I've listed the kinds of projects that they could the funds could be used for it's equipment replacement rehab purchase lease as well as capital projects rehab purchase or lease of facilities this also comes from the circular that the funds have to be allocated and obligated by the grant application by 20 2029 so we do have some time DOT shared with us the schedule on how to get it to this point so discussion on this board today the nod of yes will certainly give DOT the direction to assign a federal ID number to it once we get that federal ID number then we'll bring it back to the board as an item to add to the proposed tip and it'll be the 2030 tip as well as the 2031 tip we didn't want to bring this item as an amendment to the 2030 tip just to turn right around and then amend the 31 tip so we're just going to do them all at the same time in the September October time frame good work that's great so kudos to RTS for doing that so once what will we follow this process then it'll get the ball rolling and then they can proceed with their application to formalize their grant and then oops going to the wrong direction was that were there specific projects outlined in that grant or was it generalized funding for improvements along the transit corridors so for RTS for city of Gainesville this is the majority of the there's another page and there are other states but Florida links was a recipient and Gainesville was a recipient RTS's application was 10 million 263 750 of that 5 million I believe will be for the construction of a bus transfer station as well as the purchase of replacement buses and then improvements to bus stops I just had a more specific question on this project is that is that the Tower Road bus transfer station or do we know which one specifically no I'm not yet this is I've asked RTS to give me like their whole their whole packet we'll have the whole packet when we bring it back can we can we go ahead and have city staff just chime in real quick sure either one y'all can fight for the mic good afternoon Brian Singleton interim chief operating officer I will do my best as Jesus is out of the country at the moment as far as the transfer station we are working on siting the station on a UF property on the west side of town we have not finalized that yet we will not be able to enter into a grant agreement until that land rights process is worked out if that does not work out we will have some other options but that is our current plan of action at this point all right so somewhere on the western side the tower property the tower property all right and then obviously purchasing more buses correct all right would that include a park and ride I really I mean I just don't think there's a lot of call for a transfer station out there somebody's riding the bus on the west side of town so unless they get on the bus there they're not going to transfer anywhere I mean I'm just you know what I mean there's not a lot of ridership in that part of our town because there's just the headways are really long there's not a lot like you're not we're not seeing that kind of ridership over there so I'm just wondering if we created we were able to include a park and ride we would vastly upgrade the number of people on tower and park road that are riding into town to go to UF to go to the hospital if my memory serves me correctly from the preliminary site plan it would be a very similar layout to the east side station which includes a park and ride lot the only difference would be there wouldn't be the building associated with it I believe how it works is we have that a list of projects that we submit for capital improvements I believe the funding can go towards any of those projects but I'm not 100% certain on that well I guess when it comes back for final integration into the TIP we can have more conversations about that congratulations that's really really good very competitive bringing those dollars back home thank you Brian I just have one more thing on RTS two meetings ago I think we had the Gainesville transit alliance which is like alliance of different ridership groups in town who came here and one of the requests was to add the route numbers back to the bus signs and that was removed I think last year my understanding and this board voted unanimously to ask RTS to to do that my understanding is the city is not going to do that until like late 2027 until I think even start on the project which is it seems like a very long time two years to add route numbers especially when we're seeing ridership decrease and there's a lot of route changes and people don't know what the routes are so I don't know other thoughts of members of the board but I think this is a very easy quick thing to do and it helps it's scientifically proven to help ridership and it's not a super costly thing so my understanding is that the city is intent on waiting is that is about is doing new signage for their bus stations and wanting to integrate these numbers into that signage what I think is a great idea I guess what I would ask is the city and RTS consider doing a temporary fix in the meantime which would be simple stickers on the route signs and if staff time to implement those is a problem I know that there are some transportation related organizations that might be willing to organize volunteers to go out and do that stickering with like you know an hour of training so I would just ask that maybe we have a two-step process one where we print some stickers maybe even the county could volunteer to put them at our sign shop and you know we get them out and then secondarily we could do the sign study and get them through in a more formalized way I thought we had a motion to do this a while back we did we did but their step was we'll put it in our sign study and then we'll put it on our new signs and we're asking can we do both can we put it on the existing signs and do the study and put it on their new signs so I move that we request RTS that to temporarily add route numbers to the signs before their whole route study and if they need help doing that to come back to this board and we can help find ways to get that done second motion by hey santos and a second by presia is there further conversation about this item no about the next item all right and if there's no further conversation about this we'll go ahead and vote all those in favor say aye those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously I just want to excuse me just want to add something on that transfer center and I don't I don't want to speak for RTS or the city and I really don't have an opinion one way or the other but I just wanted to share my recollection of that transfer facility began with RTS losing the Oak small transfer center and looking for replacement so that's that's what that purpose was in terms of their system and it was the Tower Road Southwest 8th Avenue location yeah so we move the transfer station that's currently a little better used further west so more people would actually be kind of routed slightly further west in the county so all right are we so that is are we done with a point one in this otherwise this is congratulations and good work to RTS all right 8.2 I will keep this very short and sweet so the countywide bicycle pedestrian master plan held its third and final community meeting we held it at the Isis UF extension off of West Newberry Road it was pretty lightly attended we're not very surprised based on the location but we did want to have meetings in diverse locations including somewhere outside of the city of Gainesville with the first one being at the Natural History Museum and the second one being at the Thomas Center so we were presenting our prioritized projects that are in draft at this point I would say that county city and UF staff who are part of project managing this project feel pretty comfortable with the recommendations we have requested that the consultant go back and try to add a little bit of a bump for project routes that go directly adjacent to schools and so we're just not seeing some of the schools within the county be rated quite as highly as we think they should so we want to see what this looks like and after that sort of last pass we're going to be really looking to button up the prioritized projects and the master plan document and hope to bring it back to you all we were aiming for May which is National Bike Month maybe a little bit more in June as at this point but as soon as we can okay I already touched on this Victoria is watching she's waiting for me to finish giving her all my comments on the on the website it looks really good all the photos that they took or like this year's photos the ridership report from RTS this is the last page on your packets that's in front of you and that actually is a really interesting thing like is there a way to have the boardings be a little bit more segregated between 81 and almost 1300 like a huge it could be but this is perhaps a natural break I'm very interested to see the data is this natural break methodology you know to 200 maybe and then 200 to 500 500 to 1000 I don't know just a little more segregated if it's possible okay good afternoon my name is Chris Ochia and I'm the transit planning manager and I'm listening for Mr. Gomez so I understand you have a copy of what I'm going to talk about so it's on page one you're going to see numbers and at the bottom those numbers are telling you that compared to where we were last year this was going on so last year at this time we had 2000 2000 2.8 million ridership on your right hand side we have 2.3 and so we're about 19% down from last year at this time and of course so why would that go down so if you look at you look at service hours we are down by 16% so we're providing fewer services than we were last year so that you find out that they go hand in hand however when you look at the passenger carrier hour it has barely budged because people who use transit where they exist are still doing it that's why the passenger ridership per hour has not changed as much as the ridership or the service hours they are provided services so are you saying that essentially it's the reduction of routes that's creating the reduction of riders correct and then the reduction in service hours yes correct and then so I don't know if you want to ask questions as we go or just keep talking and then if anybody has a question they'll ask me okay good I have a question sure so on the fiscal year 2025 side these numbers don't seem to add up to shrink okay like I said that 2.8 million is where we were as of March last year right so and so the same same here on the on the so all you add is just those that's what I see yeah October november that wasn't really clear yeah because if you add no no it's just those first 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months yes sorry I heard you say it but it didn't really yeah yeah it's confusing when you look at that but that's how we report them yeah but that's why it says there's no year to date maybe maybe uh yeah maybe okay and then on the second page um test your ridership by route and I think what I want to say there is at the bottom you're gonna see 600 the microtransit so in March we took over the ADA service and so when you look down there you're gonna see that we're gonna switch from microtransit to ADA paratransit for future reporting because it's the same demand on demand service you call up you schedule a ride you pick it up microtransit ADA same thing that's how you get a ride on the system so previously our microtransit was listed separately but now RTS is going to list both microtransit that in that is established in a couple zones plus the entire paratransit we're just going to lump it all into ADA paratransit because it's all transit on demand yes they're all demand service yes okay so the no do you know that we were given a number the last meeting roughly about how many how many uh paratransit trips had been had been given in a first month or 20 something days or something did that number already include the microtransit or was that a standalone number when it was given to us it will be combined okay but we will have the ability to separate out that all right but at least in this version um at least in this version of the report together okay yes okay wouldn't it be better to continue to um report the microtransit and the paratransit separately versus combining them you know just for continuity as to be able to see or where that's one way to look at it but we are looking at two of them on demand mobility on demand service the same process the same pickup the same drop you off off where you're going touch the door off the curb the curb to curb the curb to curb the curb to curb the curb to curb the curb I think what one is covered one is paid for with a lot of federal funding and grants and has a lot of reporting requirements and the other one is sort of a concierge service that the city is providing to try to try to show need and to help support areas that are underserved by candidates I feel like they're two very different even though they're both from your perspective from a transportation perspective they're both the same kind of transportation the funding and the reasoning for having them are really different so I guess I'm still confused and I'd like to know also if we are if the riderships once the city took over for MV if it's stagnant increase you know how we have the same ridership with the city operating it or it's decreased whatever yeah we've gotten just data on a similar the month before but not we didn't I don't think we had a running six month before data on on MV so that we can know I think we were just given one month as a comparison as or maybe the year before we were only given kind of one number yeah as opposed to the whole lead-up so that may be something that some people are interested in and the city may be interested as well there further questions at this at this stage okay Chris okay okay so that's what you have on that second second page and then on the third page is mainly productivity which is passenger passenger passenger character hour so it breaks it down for 2026 by hour and then for where we are now and if you look down at the bottom for example the micro transit ADA transit passengers passengers carry per hour 2.3 per hour now somebody might go really is that what you're doing yes that's what we're doing because nationwide the average is 2 to 5 anyway for that type of service and you can compare that with fixed service where for example we carry 23.7 for fixed route services um so the the the the the thing here is even though the passenger character hour is low it's providing opportunity to people who will not participate in the system giving them chance to go to the doctor uh go to see their lawyer go to social security office so you're really doing a lot of service even though the passengers carry per hour is few which is very in my opinion supportive of those who can otherwise not be able to travel so that's why that um passenger carry per hour is low and so the next two pages we have the same information for saturday and then for sunday um page two for the microtransit page two on the microtransit um the 6501 for ridership is there a difference between that number and the 459 passengers on page three for ridership for microtransit uh micro what can you say that again on page two yes sir on page two uh-huh there's um microtransit doesn't have a number um ada paratransit has the 6501 but on page three for demand response microtransit has 459 and paratransit has the 6501 are are what's the difference between page two and page three with respect to microtransit the 459 um passengers i forgot to put the 459 i said 459 and the 6501 is that what you're asking i think it's missing i think it's missing the second page great question i'm very confused i forgot to put it there well one's ridership one's passengers but if it's not a fixed route there should be some difference so the question is um the number on page three how do they align with this data on page two yes that's that's my question specifically for march that's march yes it looks like it just did the 459 is just not there yeah right 459 is not there yeah okay okay yeah good difference that 459 is not there for micro transit so like which may which means yeah back to your question there so i guess we are reporting because when we go to page three we can see the number for micro transit so which means the 6501 is uh basically for uh ada transit that's what it's saying so but when it comes here it's the president and tells you that the 6501 was ada transit however there was a 459 for micro transit do you want me to say that again could i make the request then that you could i make the request then that um the micro transit would be on page two as well as on page three i think that would be fair but in that way we don't have to explain okay so yeah we got a lot of chatter it's a little uh let me get everyone's attention okay so based on this question uh i think we're gonna go ahead and on page two repeat the number so that it will be consistent with page three okay all right all right so councilwoman taylor so um going back to what uh executive director whitfield said on the page two because i had already uh put little asterisks beside that now the 459 was just not it was omitted it wasn't put in there so out of the six thousand five hundred and one with the ada paratransit on page three are you saying 459 goes into that 651 no no no we're saying that yeah i understand but you're saying that you want to combine everything together and as um ms certain was saying how are you going to truly be able to tell who's riding what and who's riding what ada paratransit and then you have the microtransit if you combine it together oh yeah yeah because when you call you tell us that you're writing microtransit so we record that by the way you don't pay when you do microtransit but when we do paratransit you pay so this one you're calling you tell us what you're doing it goes in this slot direct person calls that during this it goes in a separate slot or and and when you book with an app you also ask you in the app what you are doing whether it's ada or microtransit so get the record of who's doing what commissioner president i don't want to make things even more complicated but i'll just point this out and maybe it can get like thought about and then when we get the next month's report but also 600 i believe is the route number for the micro yes and under 600 at the top it says it's 3.1 passengers per hour but below under microtransit it says it's 2.3 passengers per hour march got copied over to all of fy26 instead of all existing fy20 26 yeah i see that yeah it's the data transfer of now taking on ada i'm sure is just causing some confusion but i just wanted to point that discrepancy out because i either 3.1 and 2.3 i mean that's a not a huge difference but it is a you know it's a person so so just to be clear the city commission hasn't seen this data first to have gone poked around and seen it in our emails uh so this is kind of the first meeting we've seen it at but thank you chris for going through it it's slightly different when you've combined it but to mc to councilwoman uh taylor's point we we have the rts still has the data on how many people do um the microtransit type versus this but this is just one way of reporting it as it chose as to say across our um transit on demand this is what productivity looks like but if it needs to be further taken down we can always ask them on the city side and we probably will look at that as when we look to expand microtransit or the transit on demand we will be saying how productive is it let's let's segregate the data to see just that as opposed to paratransit uh linda just a one question one comment um on the i guess it's uh page two there is a really surprising drop pretty much on each route between just october and march and i was trying to understand that in terms of when the route changes happen and so i want you to confirm for me typically your route changes happen sort of in correlation with uf semesters so that october would be reflected of changes made like in august and then you would make if you made any other changes they would be made in january is that correct kind of overall yeah we do you know service changes everywhere i coincide with when you guys go back to school yes didn't we didn't we also have route changes at october 1st because of budgetary this this past season did i for some reason i remember that we had we had in the summer plus october plus january as i remember yeah we do change in summer spring spring fall and summer excuse me three times spring summer and fall so so so the changes perhaps made by the fiscal year would have taken effect in january oh by the october fiscal year yes okay like i said we do changes in the fall so fall starts october 1. oh okay and then next one we do is in this for spring and then summer and the spring one's in january yeah january yeah january is spring yes okay so i don't know if your question is when do they get effective they get effective when you open school when school starts so august okay yeah so you would have had route changes in august and october and january so well we have uh summer spring change summer a and b so like two changes but that one but there are two for you because of the two summers you have but there's a summer a and summer b so that's what one change because just one change summer change right well i guess what i was trying to understand is on this like looking from october to march the only time in that window when there would have been route changes would have been january is that correct okay no but you if you did something in the in fall it was effective in october okay the first even october then you do another one it's effective in january and so that january okay yes all right and then my other just a comment on the page where you have uh ridership and farebox key showing the uf ridership it might be helpful on that if you could somehow highlight or footnote the routes that uf is paying 100 for oh we're done you're talking about whatever that is that talks about the ridership but rather than farebox yes yeah we can provide that you have ridership yeah it'd just be nice to show that as a footnote which routes uf is paying directly for footnote or show them anyway or just color code those cells i i know i did a lot of flipping back and forth just to remember asterix them or something yeah okay so that when you look at it you go oh of course that makes sense because that's the one that uf has been supporting or the one the county supports or yeah just just to get colors you know right are you suggesting we'll show the city county routes by color here city county uf yes excuse me city county uf by color here right yeah and some of those other so you can quickly see and go oh yeah that makes that makes sense it's it's highly used and see where there's some surprises where it's more like a 50 50 split and then try to remember well who's paying for that route okay i've made a note we'll do that yeah that's easy but on that page anyway so if you combine that uf ridership with san afe at 73.3 percent so uf based ridership and san afe based ridership that that page and the next page add them up 73.3 percent ridership come from these two schools that's major um and that's basically and then our boardings was somebody saying something about the boardings on the last page yeah i was just asking if we could possibly segregate you know it's like it's pretty segregated zero to five six to 14 15 58 59 to 80 and then it's a very massive jump from 81 people to 1295 people i was wondering if there was a possibility of segregating that data further you know maybe 80 to 250 and 250 to 500 you know what i mean like having i understand what you mean okay okay yeah 250 500 something like that something like that just more breaks as you get into the bigger numbers like have a little bit more segregation well we thought we thought we'd look more fancy if we did it that way to kind of jump out at you okay yeah we'll do okay um that's uh that's my story all right anything else you think we should would know about that's not in this report anything else about ridership or oh i thought you were going to ask me about oh no no no but so just one reminder we haven't gone through summer yet so at this stage of the game the amount that our uf and santa fe riders are always high at this stage and as you get closer to you know it goes down in the summer and then it pumps back up in september september october the highest traditionally when you look at ours are the uh september and october yeah and by november for some reason the kids stop going to the students stop going to class i mean they don't get off their bikes and get into air-conditioned buses uh yeah i when the when the weather's a little nicer i think some of them will ride their bike but yes in september they are they are bus riders for sure thank you for um all of that data um if you will we have just one more uh from brian singleton on the city side just a couple follow-ups to my comments earlier um on the movement of funds between preaching projects uh there is a formal public notice and adoption period for those priority of projects the dollars listed are the maximum amount so those can't be edited throughout the year um we can adjust our submittals as we go through future years but i just wanted to provide that clarification um in regards to the west side transfer station follow-up with member dixon's comments and um some other information that i was able to pull up uh yes we were displaced from the oak small property uh currently the station is happening on 62nd in front of the hobby lobby we did try to work with another public jurisdiction on 62nd boulevard uh for for purchase of a property that did not work out so now we're working with uf the location of southwest 8th avenue at southwest 70th terrace um there are six bus bays a ticket office 52 standard spaces and two handicapped spaces um we are also uh discussing the potential of locating within the new very newberry village development if that ever moves forward uh in alachua county so this uf property and new newberry village are both options for the west side station so i'll yield with any questions if there are any any further questions about that i know there's a lot of information but we have seen at least a rough plan the city has seen a rough plan of what uh potential that station could uh transfer station would be and i did see it there's lots of parking spaces yes correct okay it's actually a great location because there's a lot of folks that need the bus service in that area and now that that tupless 8th goes through and connects to 24th it's a direct route to uf so it's good it does seem like it's a this is a the next 30 years of bus transit not necessarily today project correct real progress yeah and that road also goes all the way to teoga and there's a lot of development going out that that road then connects into um 143. yeah it just feels like that 52 spots may not be quite like from a park and ride standpoint i hope there's on that space that'd be great there's a lot of land out there so we can have a minute i did talk with the eberly folks about putting up park and ride at that development if it happens on um parker and archer all right thank you so much mr singleton that's that's good too yeah all right we have a few more things commissioner can you just take over for a minute so i can step out okay okay i think uh what we have left is mpl institute if we could all sort of pick a date we pushed it out to august to try to get some more availability would um the board be okay with a date all three of those days are sufficiently hot in games before the week of the 10th is the first week of school which is a little chaotic for some of our members probably um is 17th when uf starts or does uf start so uf starts the following week so and then flc has their annual we have our annual thing why isn't it in august year it's in august the flc has their annual uh meeting they haven't given us a date but i know it's in august and the nice thing about september 28th and september 28th is also a non-commissioned meeting week which is always good it's also after budgets are pretty much done yep okay yeah that's the i actually really like the week of the 28th okay so i'll um let amanda carpenter know that we're gonna go with a date for her team the week of september 28th that is the city commission's fall recess so we may or may i mean i think the august one is also a recess that's our election recess which um uh i i would imagine that some of us will be traveling over the week how does how does the 10th well for me i could do the week of august 10th the first day of school is the first day of school i mean kids in school unless the superintendent asked me goes on where i'm back so the 10th the week of the 10th works for everyone since um the whole week right no it's just one day one day yeah actually eight hours one day but i mean he was saying it was their um election recently i'm trying to avoid their recess so for me that's what i'm saying i could do one day it's not a whole week so if the week of the 10th works for everybody one day in august i'd probably be fine for for any of us i do think i i looking at that i would probably want to travel over that fall recess that's the one time we have so the week of august 10th then yeah well august 5th works for me i don't have kids in school i i have kids in school but it's one day my kids at school during that time area so that'd be easy um does anyone have a preference whether it's tuesday wednesday um it'd be tuesday wednesday or friday can't be wednesday thursday or friday cannot be we do it can be wednesday thursday or friday yeah we have meetings scheduled for that tuesday it is the intent to try on that thursday too so i would say that wednesday or friday because the commission has a budget meeting on the thursday so the intent is to get some statewide representation correct to this the intent is just to get as many members of this board as possible to attend as the mpo institute they're bringing it here they're bringing it no that i that i know and as soon as the board decides on a date we will be extending we'll set that date with the mpo ac and then extend it to our sister counties who aren't served by a tpo to see if they can just know and learn what the tpo does so you've heard some feedback from the the various board members that you should probably look if you're looking regionally then take a look at when the school is in session for those for those counties my guess is if it's the first day like a monday and it was august 10th you'd get very little traction for folks to to come on that day but you can do that by looking yeah you just look and see when are those other schools starting in their session a lot of times they align it's the 10th well there you go probably probably 90 percent of 95 so i would probably august 12th or 14th i will let miss carpenter know that so i will i would not be available everyone available on the 12th i like the 12th i like the 12th too i don't like the schedule stuff august 12th then all right i am literally repinning it i've already been writing it then i think it august 12th thank you so much all right our next item um is there any other further public comments of general nature on anything transportation related yes i definitely have one coming up all right hello my name is george don and bill i reside at uh mill pond which is 4 30 northwest 48th boulevard uh and i wanted to talk to you all because i've reached out at both the city transportation and the county's transportation with this issue and they all say i need to talk to ft ot and since i know there's always going to be an ft ot person here that's why i showed up today so briefly my problem is living at mill pond i get to watch a car accident probably every other week as the stops stoplight right out in front of my neighborhood across the street from a neighborhood if you're not familiar with that road is that gainswell health and fitness center which is extremely busy in and out in and out in and out all day and all night long so i can sit in my condo if my doors open i can hear the crashes so i know how often they happen and quite often i can view them happen in fact my real pick is what's the speed limit so if i put you at the corner of 34th and now we're at university but it's soon to become newberry when they join up a little bit further west speed limits 35 miles an hour makes sense one past couple shopping mall on the left once a strip shopping centers on the right you then get to 38th and now you've got a bigger shopping center on the right and now you finally got a neighborhood there for sugarfoot where you dropped into then you've got individual businesses lining up the left on the right gas station stuff still 35 just as you pass the marathon gas station boom there's that big sign says 45 miles an hour and you look ahead and you say oh i got to go uphill so you're going to hit it at 45 but by the time you reach the top of that hill you're probably doing 50. if you catch the light you're now going downhill toward my intersection not at 50 miles an hour you're probably going 55 and i've watched people going 60 through there they had to be going that fast and now that's where a lot of the a lot of the accidents occur they can't stop in time a pedestrian's walking there's a lot of bicycling going on on the side scooters motorcycles you name it it's a mess and now they're going through that intersection if they caught that light and they're heading toward three stop lights real quickly and still 45 and now they're going uphill a little bit to get to where the mcdonald's is that kind of area right before you get to oak small and on the rights the hospital i will share with you today that that actual intersection there was a terrible crash a couple vehicles going west i was coming east but i happened to have been just coming underneath i-75 it was backed up to there it took me 20 minutes to get to the accident site after finally the ambulance had been cleared and moved away i saw three you know police type vehicles that went up there as well so i know there's accidents happening there all the time okay can you look at the speed limit and drop it all to 35 from where i began my conversation at 34th all the way out to the interstate what you do with it out there then it becomes the people at tayoga's problem all those people that are moving in out there they want it's those folks that are traveling in and out of town that are used to driving 45 50 miles an hour and then when you get into town now it's our problem all right yes thank you thank you mr dondenville uh we're going to have some more of that in uh in member common i'm sure are there other any other members of the public who would like uh their three minutes to to speak to any item or any any issue rather okay we'll go on to our next item which i believe leaves us that member comment we have one at least scheduled so we'll start with that 12.1 uh commissioners parisia and cornell had some conversation about road safety mobility concerns on west newberry road is that right who wants to start yeah sure um i guess you know we've had several conversations i think here in this room our board and a number of um comments and concerns come from residents to both our public works and to our commission regarding um safety and capacity and speed limits on newberry road and i think um it's i think it's long overdue for us to do a real a real comprehensive study of that corridor um you know the demand amount of development that's happened on that quarter since the last time it was looked at is pretty intense and there's a number of you know developments that are potentially coming online including newberry crossing the stuff that's going to be happening on parker road and there's a lot of commercial that's happened along that corridor as well um that is increasing traffic patterns so i just wanted to talk to this board about the possibility of adding a newberry corridor study at at a minimum from 34th west um you know but definitely um we need to be looking in that corridor of um of the western portion of newberry road that's my comment and my request is that we um add it to our list for the coming year to kind of use or coming up years to look at how much it would cost and to begin exploring the feasibility of doing a corridor study for that area uh councilman taylor um yes and to add to that as well on 53rd going back to sheriff darnell speaking about crashes and being hitting hit from behind um very appreciative of the resurfacing on 53rd but as you're on 53rd heading back towards the airport and you're getting ready to turn down oh gosh you know i'm not good with streets but where the water tower plan is and you're getting ready to turn down that uh street there i've almost gotten hit i couldn't tell you how many times because i'm slowing up because someone's getting ready to turn and then we have individuals behind that are on their phone or whatever they're doing not paying attention but it's just kind of like when they resurfaced they just did like a little bit of a like a little bit of a turn where you can kind of go to the side but you can't actually make the turn so it's kind of dangerous it kind of really needs to be turned into a turning lane as the one when you're getting ready to come from the airport way on 53rd they made that a turning lane because that was very dangerous as well with people not paying attention um and back to speed limits i don't even know what the speed limit is on that i think it's 45 and i'll be honest i do 55 whatever it is you know if no one's there on that road you everyone's flying on there but it needs to have a little look at that little intersection there because it's very dangerous very very dangerous other commissioner yeah and i i i'm i'm very uncomfortable um supporting the research in a study i do want to find out so we have um you know as a tma now we have more funds that we can utilize for more studies to look at all this um when our what is the next step let's say that we made a motion to ask you all to look at potentially doing a study of this corridor i would kind of i'm always skeptical of saying okay well this is a priority let's move forward with this as opposed to sort of you know putting everything up on a on a board and saying well what is the like where where's our most important you know what is our priority when we've looked at all of our priorities together like we have our long-range transportation plan that's looking at each corridor and how we want to expend funds i mean how do you what is the next step in terms of us determining where our next corridor studies are going to be looked at and how we're going to be determining those priorities i think the first best step is to look at the lrtp cost feasible plan and see if it's in there and then um the next step's going towards developing their list of priority projects i'll be reaching out to the county staff and the cities individually to get their priorities and then looking comparing that to the existing list of party projects and the cost feasible plan and then having a conversation with the ot about how to best prioritize them and then bring that prioritized list back to the board i think um they're referring to just a corridor study so like a comprehensive corridor safety study as opposed to a capital project correct for newberry road yes from 34 to 143rd yeah so there is available budget provided the de-obligation doesn't yes it depends on nuclear because we already have two complete street studies on the books that we're trying to make sure that we have funding and provided there's not a large scope with a large budget developed for a um sort of regional transit authority study i think there's there's probably enough left for one big study that that's good when you uh director for when you showed us kind of this spreadsheet and you you had kind of had a placeholder for some potential study you kind of saved some yes knowing that we would have some interest but to commission reason's point i think we got to be a little on city and county side we can sometimes be like yeah we'll figure out how to pay for it out of fund balance slightly different situation here so i think we do need to have more of that looking at all the strategies where we're at on everything we have that's already spoken for or you know um obligated and then what are all our needs and some of it i do agree like some of that could come from that cost feasible so that we or rather we just need to reference that so we understand but um i like the idea of bringing multiple ideas forward before we just go say yes because because we i know we have a lot of concerns literally our business corridor in your it is in our county it's the business corridor it hasn't been studied in years and we just heard safety concerns yeah i might say it probably will be the highest but we i think it does need to be kind of global or universal and looking at it and and know that okay this is probably the one study we could find because this is going to be bigger than a smaller corridor study yeah yeah so that might be interesting commissioner offer because this is state road is there are there any uh are there any state funds that we might not be aware of to do this type of corridor study especially since i know the state is working on doing that bike path along that same uh part of that same area have have they done any studies that we're not aware of just thought i'd bring fdot into the conversation miss brown akaya brown with fdot i'm not aware i have to speak with the safety office to see if they have conducted a study recently i know they did do one between um 122nd and 98th street um in 2019 studying those developments intersections they have recently done and we have agreed recently to do another only at northwest um 115th street we did have a resident request a study there oh that's in front of salva yes that's the secrets yeah yeah that's great i mean that addresses but i mean yeah i mean i think i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt no that's okay i just feel like you know if if dot is putting money into doing these studies that we want to study i just felt like it would be important to coordinate you know get all the data and save money did you say 122nd and 98th street yes that it was done in 2019 2019 at 115 and 2022 at 118 and i'm missing one more um the study was done in 2022 so it has been revisited but it's done in pieces so it's not done like through the whole stretch not a real court yes uh commissioner cornell yeah so i support what anna says to get it on a list and i also support brian says once we get this on a list let's look at them all and then we can help prioritize them if we have that up commissioner book you always like to look at things uh mr chair comprehensively uh and like you said commissioner eastman so we see them all we know we have monies for for the two that are unprioritized or that are already prioritized and we may have monies for another big one but i would like to look at them all and see what they are and so maybe you might consider commissioner pretzio that we bring back the list of what we know what the monies are and then move forward with the motion at that time i think might be beneficial and we might also have the the opportunity to see what data has already been compiled on the newberry road corridor because there's been cool there has been data we know it at the 4400 block there's already some data because we already have a prioritized project there and so there may be data that's already existing um that could either reduce reduce the cost and if we had that in front of us um it might help help us inform whether this is the one we go forward i certainly support that entire area to make that global and then include if we were to look at it yeah i mean the thought would be we look at all the projects in the very next meeting it was it was almost a mo it was it was i didn't recognize it it was almost a motion so i didn't recognize it all of the studies for us to evaluate um as well as history on what studies have been done on the major corridors so that we can then determine if we want to add one to track one and prioritize it which would include the newberry road absolutely right let's take a look at it motion by cornell second by presia any further conversation about this this motion to start peeling back that that layer of the onion um that's what brian said i don't really understand what i just said the entire process about the studies you're better making motions i mean it seems like there's a lot of development ongoing out there and any study we do seems like it's almost going to be out of the day by the time we get it back um are they able to kind of roll those things into it yeah they look at like future i mean i think my understanding and in conversations that i've started having with staff i mean virginia secrets reached out to dot dot said we need a study there hasn't been a study there's not a comprehensive study and staff said the same thing to me like we don't have that corridor study and like there's been a lot of talk about like lowering speed limits because it's urbanized i think that i think that they do take into when i asked that question and what i was told is they do take into consideration construction starts so like west end where we actually modified the west end right and parks that have been added like all of those things that have been so things that are in existence and things that are probably like approved or somewhere in the approval process i don't know that it would be like all the zoning along that corridor but it could be i don't know just allison do you any any major opportunity for development um we would know about smaller scale development that would be permitted for the zoning we may not know but it would be kind of trivial in terms of the trips generated for the road um so i think we actually could have a pretty clear idea um at least to some extent projecting into the future what you expect and frankly we filled up a lot of the urban cluster in that area um yeah commissioner eastman did you uh yeah i mean just just to say that i think this these studies are really important because it's what fdot will use as their resurfacing they're going to need something i think much more in depth than just uh hey we'll oh we feel like this is the right way forward it's going to have to be something that you can take to district two that they can take two central offices we'll say hey like this is the reason that we want to do x y and z we've had outside so i just think having like it makes sense to me like on a gut level that that corridor is our highest priority corridor that hasn't been looked at just um i think this is one of the this is one of the critical decisions we make as a tpo yeah commissioner is is the corridor study i think it's another dot question i know we tried to get speed limits reduced on east university avenue and they did a speed study and they said well because people are already going fast we can't lower the speed limit right some really weird um justification like that so i don't i i want to know is that is the corridor study the right answer for getting a speed limit reduced is that what is that the study we need in order to do that have do to make that happen well i think sorry to make you walk well i know it's not just i know we get other information as well but if that's one of the concerns is reducing the speed limit is that the is that the kind of thing that they look at as a quarter study unfortunately we are governed by the florida statute when it comes to the speed limit and fdm manual and the we're you know the requirement so if it's not meeting that 85th percentile five below and under that standard language we're kind of restricted and there's a tiny little bit leeway but i'm not an engineer so i don't know the um the avenue to take in that regard but yes and that's unfortunate as well as in school zones as well it's also governed by statute okay thank you for that just a comment on that florida's attorney general kind of single-handedly decides what he thinks is law and isn't law and so i maybe maybe we can get some help from the state to say you know those statutes don't apply here and we can we can have a safe speed limit just the point being that what is written in stone in tallahassee is not necessarily in stone and it won't be that way forever so let's not let's let's hold out hope i don't think it will be written in stone forever is what i'm saying so some at some point yeah i do think i do think speed is a piece of this i think and the intersections a lot of these intersections haven't been thought about in a while i think some of them need some major updating whether it's changing the signalization considering roundabouts there's a lot that could be done in some of the turn lanes yeah turn lanes and some of those reduce some of those things could reduce speed in with an engineering focus versus a sign focus one of one of the things we learned about at the um mpo institute was um the use of tismo traffic transportation systems management and operations there's a lot of resources out there for improving the efficiency and safety of the existing system so metroplan and some other larger mpos have taken the lead on that so we'll we'll be reaching out to them as well okay miss boss something extra i'm going to share the thing that i was going to say and then also what okay i whispered into my ear um so what i was going to say is that um they're just not related um fdot has context classification for roadways and the context has certainly changed and is changing with every development permit that the county approves um so that's something that could be looked at and within those context classifications there's latitude to go say on the lower end of the speed limit um for a posted speed that may not be as low as as you know tpo members would like to go but um a relook at the context classification which generally has not been done globally um in the state since the publication which was probably in like 2017 or so of that document um and then okay was reminding me that i think this was more in the county's realm but um county staff and fdot staff looked at 122nd to 98th and we were getting a lot of safety concerns around that area specifically from residents of south point um and so we looked at crashes it was pretty extensive um they looked at all crashes i think of any level of severity along the corridor and fdot came up with um some recommendations they were largely sort of advisory signage and warning beacons and things that were um i'd say meant to caution drivers at um say full access medians and then there was a suggestion that the tpo again like many things you hear could consider adding this these improvements to the list of priority projects i think um if i may say i think this board is interested in something a lot more transformative than what was recommended there um not just advising you know that people may be entering the roadway but but slowing the prevailing you know traffic down from 50 miles plus an hour um to something slower so that if there is a conflict it's not severe or fatal um so i can re-share that or maybe share with this board for the first time those recommendations um and it was a very detailed study um but you know there was a fatality around christmas um maybe two years ago at one of the intersections and the unfortunate thing about crash data is you have to have a lot of it to sort of prove any kind of trend and so one fatal crash um to traffic engineers is not a trend um and so you know you can kind of see along this whole stretch there's a general trend of high speed motor vehicle conflicts um but i think what the sport's interested in is something a little more fundamental and forward-looking than reactive so i think a quarter study is probably the way to go thanks for having to sum up some of the some of our thoughts commissioner presia i just wanted to add to it to her point too i think we've also added some more parallel capacities since then you mentioned aids like those other you know and so being able to think strategically about the quarters that we've added and sort of how those i don't know that that would happen in this study but you know how we direct traffic and how traffic knows to get through and get around and use those parallels corridors to relieve congestion exactly yeah parker road is one third to relieve traffic i uh thank you for reminding us the context definitions because that's that's what i've talked about on southwood 13th you know versus 2017 versus now the context is changing is becoming more urbanized whether we can convince everybody of that now or not um so thank you for reminding us i do i did remember that at some point it is no longer what it was and we just need the state to work with us and and acknowledge that yeah so then that's out of fdot's control how the context changes so it really does need to be a conversation to update it yeah uh so sometimes i feel like we have to come with our data to help convince that but um either the city or the county um so we do have a motion on on the table is there any other further discussion on on this motion this is to um can someone remind me of the motion it is commissioner cornell yeah brian's motion that i made the stolen motion um all right all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously do we have other member comment hold up i got commissioner taylor first i'd like to thank executive director whitford for coming to waldo and we did the ride around to see exactly what was going on in waldo and and how she would be able to help out with transportation needs and looking at our beautiful roads with our beautiful holes in them she had a tour of waldo and i'd like to thank the county for the um maybe like five holes that they they filled um on 1475 however the most worst spots that are on 1475 are still sitting there it is a real danger and when i mean danger i mean danger like the supervisor needs to get in their vehicle and ride to waldo and ride 1475 and they will be amazed at how many times it has been patched it has been patched so many times that it cannot be patched anymore the patches on them are like this and my executive director can affirm that it's terrible so on both sides of the road so if you hit a pothole and you try to correct you really will over correct end up in the ditch or however if you want to really ride down the road and you're from waldo or that area back in there we know how to come down the road but you're zigzagging back and forth that is a danger so again i'd like to thank the county for the few holes that they um did fill but 1475 needs to be completely stripped and resurfaced uh can i ask um allison if she knows if ramon has 1475 on our 10-year um capital i don't know where exactly it is in the tcip that is in draft but i can follow up we can get that information to you thank you i do want to make sure you know about the email road bridge rb maintenance at alachacounty.us to send any potholes to and tell them exactly where it is and they usually get to it within a few days it's rb maintenance road bridge maintenance yeah it stands for road bridge maintenance but rb maintenance at alachacounty.us thank you commissioner and you have a comment i just wanted to say i uh i went to the mpoac is that what it is meeting this past weekend we had a really good class on um the value of communication plans in transportation projects so i figure i should share what i learned when i go but um i'd never even thought about a communication plan for for these kinds of projects and it was uh it was very useful if anybody wants any more information i'm happy to share a copy of the presentation member certain or you just wanted the copy um comment all right thank you um good conversation today i just want to kind of reiterate in um the situation with the school zones and the studies i want all of them to be looked at comprehensively and not just the one that was mentioned today in the video shown um that's my comment thank you as well as the one we didn't bring up hawthorne but the one the situation of hawthorne also where the students have to cross the three oh one um because there was just a really really bad accident there where my friend's dad was t-bone 20. all right any other comments i just want to say i've been going to these meetings for 12 years and to see uh real work getting done like in live with this round here rts with all that data allison and um director woodfield it's really refreshing and it's nice to see real work getting done quickly i take all the credit that's how i was going to end you're doing great job sharing it yes commissioner book yeah it would have probably been better if that was the last comment because that's that's that's the best one the progress is a good thing the transparency is a good thing getting a new executive director is really good and and also your attention to detail on some of these pieces it's very difficult when you're talking about hundreds of pages so that's appreciated i did just want to say for my county commission colleagues uh to please pay attention to the road we've talked about a few times which is northwest 83rd street um specifically that 0.6 mile stretch it has a tremendous amount of potholes there right now i do use the email i did another recent work order i have done many work orders over the years especially when i was employed at santa fe college it's currently in really rough shape um and it's forcing um especially the motorcycle population and the two-wheeled population to have to move around those just because the the nature of those much like you said councilwoman taylor um uh force you to have to move around them otherwise they cause some some danger to specifically those it's currently on the 2028 um plan for for for some greater uh work but i would ask that you all consider that the county it's a county road and it is a small section of road that is really really vital uh to that institution it's our most embarrassing stretchers what 80 no i think 98 is the most embarrassing i don't but in particular i just want to let you know that at the moment it's in really rough shape and we just hit the summer i think it is coming here so for i just want to say your comments would have been better to finish i think at the moment thank you mr chair absolutely uh commissioner realer to add to what you're saying i've had that on my mind as well and i didn't know if there might be some grant money or pots of money or special project money something you know somewhere that we could find that we could actually move that up on our list i think the recommendation is apparently for it to move up on our list it's coming back to us in the next uh okay yes it's it really that one is on the i think that one is bumped up slightly next year which seems like it should be a long time from next year next year next year's october yeah it is but i also had a question um we get a lot of emails and i don't know if you do in the city but the county we get a lot of emails from people who are complaining about the different roads or the concerns of the roads and i can't keep up with them all i there was one that i was supposed to bring today and and that's what i was looking through trying to find the correspondence not remembering if it was a phone call or do you all check our emails do you all see these things can we refer them to you is there a way to keep a log of you know where ramona and gina do check ours and they do they do so they are going to keep up with them and i copy i forward them to ramona and i copy a notch that way okay so maybe we need a way of doing that so that you know there is a log going not only to ramon but to you all too so if there are pots of money or special things that come up that we could address you know some of these up to the side i don't do all of them i just do the ones that make make sense to well i i agree but you know there are it you know there are some that we hear from frequently but it seems to me that if we have the name and the in the location that when we are talking about all of these things together as a group we we know who those guys are who those families are that are have concerns because a lot of them have young people that are learning to drive and they have concerns on the roads you know that need to be repaired for their kids learning on those even the back roads so commissioner are you specifically asking about for state roads any of the any complaints to communicate to tpo staff i know on city side we i poured stuff along and just say fyi i saw this they they see it who do you send them to um usually as high up as possible so they know i'm paying attention would it be to a k yeah no no on the cities no because on on city roads oh okay on all of our city roads communicate to uh uh usually brian singleton because he knows the best person to get it to or or to or to public works but then sometimes i communicate like oh this is a county and so sometimes i will still send it and they will send it to the county because they know exactly who to send it to but so the question is particularly state roads because some of that may follow in the cracks between um city and county and you know or other cities and so should some of that on state road be getting straight to tpo staff that's what that's what i'm trying to find out if there is a way that we can kind of keep track of these that's i forward mine to ramon i do and then and then really he takes care of the more serious ones but you know they're like this one that i'm talking about was a narrow road somewhere where there was supposed to be a bike area but the road was too narrow did you all get anything was that the one out there by um cross creek yes yes that's what it is it was out by cross creek thank you because i knew you all had to get but i couldn't remember and then to talk about it so but that's something you know that that's a that's a state road or county road cross creek going through there county road county road so i just didn't know if if you're forwarding them used to be a state road a lot of so you're getting things forwarded to you too it depends on the board member after they read the email if they decide if it's in their purview they feel like it's something that tpo related that the tpo could do like i had a resident asking if there's something that could be done with finishing off the lip of a roadway because there's a two-inch gap between the first lift and the second lift and the drainage line which ours the tpo doesn't have to do that is this finley woods north oh i was i was there yesterday and that's exactly the issue was it from the first lift and second lift yes so something like that wouldn't be a tpo issue then we would but even just keeping record of it i just didn't know keeping record of some of these issues that are along the road would be helpful at all in terms of where the need is i'm keeping track of the ones that are sent to me but i don't have access to okay the counties and the city's commissions is that beneficial at all i mean to the extent i would say that it could be made tabular and we could keep track that like number of hits that a certain segment gets that would be incredibly useful that's then when we have discussions about what is the biggest priority um and so that is possible within the county okay there's some sort of database where public works sort of logs segments and how many times they're complained about um okay well that's what i'm asking actually i think they're working on a um on their dashboard a thing that shows exactly that we'll see that tomorrow right yeah right yeah to the extent that a notch could receive something that was sort of tabular or digested um so from the dashboard information that we would be supplementing but i do think though if there's like a safety issue like we're talking about like an intersection where there's you know where that's the kind of stuff i think that that i forward to a notch like that kind of thing not necessarily the pothole issues but like a engineering safety concern that could become a project that could become a project okay all right thank you thank you mr tier are there other member comments i forgot to mention on newberry road does is there any um you know the resurfacing is going on and i know it's in progress but when this difference between the lip was mentioned that brought jog my memory is there any does fdot go out and do any type of inspections to make sure that things are cleared out because there's um before the resurfacing there was a drainage issue just west of um the west side baptist church like water would collect there and it's even worse now but you know just the condition of the road as we wait for them to come back and put that final layer on is really like the drain oh yeah those are horrible yeah yeah man holes they're they're they're they're like about this big and they stick up like that part and they did finally put they tried to mount mount them up to make them a little less obvious but if you hit one at night it's a yeah and then in that area there it's they're in the road like in different areas like kind of zigzag but then there's a difference between the curb and the pavement that in water when we when we get rain it's not often but when we get rain they're in there it collects in there and it's really like a little dangerous yeah but i'm hoping that they do some type of inspection and all in that to make sure that that project is done and done well because it's just kind of they're they've left that um unfinished portion there it's been that way for months and i'm thinking as many car trips that's on there it's going to be wore out before they put the it's a good time to do a speech all right are there i'm going to say there's no other further comments our meeting is adjourned until the next time thank you all