City Of Ann Arbor 2013 Sustainable Ann Arbor Forums: Planning for Change In Our Community: Transportation Options

Fri, 06/05/2009 - 9:47am

When: April 18, 2013 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

This fourth and final session in a series of monthly discussions centers on transportation options, including the transition to more fuel-efficient modes of transit, such as electric vehicles, and non-motorized planning efforts in the community. Building on the public forums from last year, the 2013 forums will focus on planning for change in the community. A think tank of local stakeholders, including University of Michigan faculty, representatives from community organizations, and city commissioners, join City of Ann Arbor staff and the public to discuss local sustainability concepts and efforts--past, present and future. The presentations will discuss conditions that are changing in the community and past and potential actions to adapt to change. Each program will also include tips for individual actions that residents may take.Speakers include: John Hieftje, Mayor, City of Ann Arbor; Erica Briggs, Project Manager, Clean Energy Coalition; Nathan Voght, Economic Development Specialist, Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development; Eli Cooper, Transportation Programs Manager, City of Ann Arbor; Michael Benham, Strategic Planner, AATA

Transcript

[00:00:24.46] TIM GRIMES: Well, good evening everybody, and welcome to the Ann Arbor District Library. My name is Tim Grimes. I'm the manager of Community Relations and Marketing here. And it is a stormy night out, and we really appreciate that you braved the weather and joined us tonight.
[00:00:40.16] This is one of many events that we have here at the library. We hope to see you back for many more. You can check out our website, aadl.org to find out about all the exciting things that are happening here.
[00:00:51.43] But this is the final session in a very wonderful series that we've been having here with the City of Ann Arbor, the Sustainability Forum Series. And we're sorry it's coming to an end, but it's been a wonderful, wonderful series. It's the second year that we've done it. And it gives me great pleasure to introduce tonight's host, the mayor of Ann Arbor, John Hieftje.
[00:01:12.42] [APPLAUSE]
[00:01:17.05] JOHN HIEFTJE: Well, thank you very much, Tim. And thank you all very much for braving the evening. This is one of the wetter days that we've had. I certainly got wet today trying to-- I chose the wrong day to bike. But I have my raincoat, so only the bottom half was soaked. And I'm sure that you've all experienced that as well.
[00:01:34.40] The topic tonight is a pretty exciting one, and it is the end of our series. And I wanted to talk a little bit, we've had a lot of success, but then sort of talk about a goal and a problem. And some of the successes, and some of the things that are happening in transit, it's hard for anybody to take credit for because what we're seeing is a new generation right now that has a totally different attitude about how they get from one place to another.
[00:02:02.78] And if you take a look at, for instance, people in their 20s or late teens, when they get their driver's license. I can remember that when I was 16 that pretty much was my focus that I needed to get a driver's license. And nowadays, that date is being put back and moving back further and further. People 19, 20, 21. Many, many people aren't even getting driver's licenses.
[00:02:25.57] And when you look at surveys, and particularly when you talk to people in their 20s nowadays, they're not so interested. They don't want to live in the suburbs and drive somewhere. They want to be near where they need to be to work. They want to be in a city center. They want to have people around them. They don't want to have to spend a lot of time in cars.
[00:02:43.10] So one of the really good things that's happening, from my point of view, is that we have a generation coming up that is not car centric. And that's got to be, in some ways, really good for the drivers, because if you're a driver and there's fewer people driving, that's probably a good thing.
[00:02:59.53] But it also means that if cities want to be in the running for places where people want to live, and we hear more and more from people who live in Ann Arbor who have the ability to live anywhere because their job is no longer tied to a central office. They're part of a network of people, they're working on their computer. And they can choose to live anywhere.
[00:03:21.81] I recently had a long letter from a family that moved here from Chicago. And I was just like, they moved here from Chicago, because we used to see so many people from Michigan moving to Chicago. And they moved here because they found that they loved the art scene here, they could do their work here just as easily. But also, because Ann Arbor has a lot of transit, and there's readily available transit through the AATA. And they enjoy walking and biking, and Ann Arbor's pretty good at all those things.
[00:03:52.22] When we take a look at some of the stuff that's going on, and it's pretty exciting, if you take a look at the Amtrak numbers, they continue to go up. I think they just went up another 8% for last year. Ann Arbor continues to be the busiest train station in the state.
[00:04:06.08] If you look at transit numbers, the last listing I saw, Ann Arbor was number 10 in the whole country for the percentage of people who use transit to get to work. New York City was first, and we're never going to get to that level that they have, because maybe it's because they don't have other options to get around. So some of those things really are going very well.
[00:04:26.80] I think we continue to improve in the way people walk and bike around town, Ann Arbor continues to score very highly in those things. Top 20 for the number of people that walk to their destination. Those are, again, all strong things.
[00:04:43.57] But the generational change is one I think we have to recognize. And the cities that are going to be attracting the young workers, the people who want to start young families, are going to be the cities that have a variety of different amenities, and activities, and excitement about them, where people want to live. So those things are all good.
[00:05:03.02] I wanted to talk a little bit, I mentioned that we would talk about a problem. And a problem that we have is that we have a situation that most cities, particularly Michigan would, frankly, would want to trade places with us in a minute. But we have a growing job base. The job base is growing in Ann Arbor. They have the lowest unemployment in the state. In addition to the University of Michigan, hiring about 800 people, 900-- actually, it's 910 people a year is the average over the last 10 years.
[00:05:37.49] We have private sector jobs are growing pretty fast. We have established a tech campus in downtown Ann Arbor. The old Borders building is filling up with tech companies. And then you have Google, and you have Mental Innovations down there right next to Google, and then you have Prime Research that's gone into the top of the second floor of the Borders building, and Barracuda that's in the whole backside.
[00:06:00.70] And LLamasoft is growing downtown, and they're hiring a couple of software engineers every week. And that's been going on for a while. And then you have Biotech and you have all the little companies that all of our work in getting SPARK going several years ago is really paying off. And SPARK has started a lot of small companies that are continuing to grow. So we have employment that is growing up.
[00:06:22.67] If you've been in Ann Arbor for very long, you've noticed that the traffic congestion is increasing. And if you start to look at the computer models of what's happening with traffic congestion and look outward, you begin to see some real problems not very far down the road. Certainly by 2020 we begin to see more gridlock at both rush hours.
[00:06:47.23] And if you're downtown, or if you're in different parts of town at the wrong time of the day, right now, there's a huge problem already with traffic congestion, and the attended pollution and everything that comes with it.
[00:07:00.43] And it's not particularly because our population is growing, although our population is growing. Obviously, there's some new buildings going up in town, mostly students, although some of the newest ones have two and three bedroom-- I'm sorry-- they have one and two bedroom apartments, about 60% of the units.
[00:07:17.57] So we know there's some working people living there, but we're also seeing this trend that has students are moving out of some of the neighborhoods, working people are moving in. And I live in an off-campus neighborhood, and we've seen some homes that used to be student occupied homes, are being purchased by families. And they are re-colonizing neighborhoods.
[00:07:37.57] I can remember back around 2003, 2004, 2005, neighborhood groups were coming to the city and talking to us about we love students, but our entire neighborhood is being taken over by student houses. As soon as a house goes on the market, a landlord snaps it up, puts in some new walls, creates some new rooms, and puts students in there.
[00:08:00.42] And people weren't comfortable with that, as far as if you were trying to raise kids and you had little ones and there's a party next door. All the kinds of issues they we're, here in a college town we're used to, and used to those conflicts.
[00:08:12.71] And we're seeing a reversal of that situation now, and I think that's a good thing. But also means you need ways for people to get around. And bicycle lanes that have been expanding at a pretty rapid pace-- I haven't checked the percentages lately, but I know a couple years ago we had added about 600% more bike lanes in the five year, six year period before that than we used to have. So those are going in.
[00:08:37.25] And more and more people I think are taking advantage of them, and we're seeing that. I always like to see the big bike parking stations that are being put in downtown, like in front Bivouac, and in front of the food co-op, and how they fill up. And that would have never happened.
[00:08:50.64] And we're putting on bike parking into parking structures now. And so a parking space will hold a whole lot of bikes if you hang them up. And they're undercover and they're in safe places.
[00:09:01.27] So that work is going forward. It's going to help somewhat, but it's not really going to take a big bite out of the growing traffic congestion.
[00:09:09.34] So the problem we have is that we can continue to grow jobs in the city, and to some extent the University will continue to do that. We can continue to grow private sector jobs. But if that's going to happen, then we're going to have to keep building parking structures. I don't want to build any more parking structures, if we can help it.
[00:09:29.36] The new parking structure downtown I'm told was absolutely vital. Folks, like at Barracuda Networks and Prime Research would have never brought their company's downtown without that promise of parking. Even though the tech companies are some of the biggest users of non-motorized systems, of the go paths, of people walking and biking. It's a younger demographic that works at the tech companies. They seem to really be into that. They needed to have some parking.
[00:09:55.10] But if you look back over, and particularly if you count the new parking structure that the University's going to start this spring down on Wall, we've probably built over 3,000, maybe 3,500 structured parking places in the last 12 years in Ann Arbor. And that's expensive. Although parking that the city does, does pay for itself, eventually. It takes a while. Takes up real estate. It may be something that we can get around, but if you build more parking, you're going to have more cars, because you've got more jobs, you're going to have more congestion, and the problem begins to multiply.
[00:10:29.69] So our problem is we can decide that we don't want to grow anymore jobs in Ann Arbor, or we can decide that we need more transit. I don't see really a way around that. We can supplement transit bus system. AATA's doing a great job. They're adding buses on Washtenaw and Packard, and those buses are full of people coming into town from Ypsilanti.
[00:10:53.57] But we've got a fundamental problem that we need to grapple with or we're going to find that the computer models looking at 2020, 2025, that those things are going to come true.
[00:11:05.00] So there's an expansion being talked about right now, a series of meetings going on with our surrounding area. It's kind of the metro area. So you have at the meeting Ann Arbor, and Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, Pittsfield Township, the City of Saline all very interested in more transit. And I think as transit reaches out into their areas, that helps us here, because we have people coming into town to go to work, and obviously, people from here that may want to go there.
[00:11:36.19] And so we're engaged in a conversation of how to make AATA work better for the metro area. One of the concepts that's on the table is the Ann Arbor Ypsilanti Transit Authority, and working more closely with Ypsilanti. And you'll hear more about this in the coming weeks. We have three or four scenarios that we're looking at. The group is coming back together, I think it's on the 25th of this month to discuss where we go next. And there'll be a series of these.
[00:12:03.69] So that work is going on, and I think it's excellent work. AATA has great potential. When I'm in Lansing talking about transit, AATA is regarded as the best, as the most efficient transit company in the state, the Transit Authority in Michigan. So they're looked to for innovation, they're looked to for leadership around the state.
[00:12:25.03] We also see something going on on the rail line. I'm sure you've heard that this is a savvy group. But I actually get up sometimes in the morning and I say thank you to the Tea Party Governor of Florida. Because Michigan was slated to get $200 million in Federal funding to fix up the Amtrak line between Detroit and Kalamazoo. And the Governor went to legislature, and they had put up, I think, $37 or $40 million in matching funds to get the Federal money, and they did that.
[00:12:58.60] So the Federal money's in place. MDOT is taking over from Norfolk Southern, ownership of the line. And you will very soon see all new gates going in, new track, new welded track, new crossings, LED lighting, all sorts of things. Fiber optic that will carry the signals. Everything much more secure because trains along the line from-- And also the new I think they call it the flyway or whatever it is through Detroit that gets you right into Detroit.
[00:13:28.81] And you also see then, in just a couple years, maybe 2 and 1/2, trains will begin to go over 100 miles an hour. A lot of us don't realize that trains have already been going over 100 miles an hour. And they even had a cake on Amtrak a month or two ago between Kalamazoo and Niles, Michigan where they are up to 110 miles an hour, and they're flying.
[00:13:51.13] And then the Governor of Florida said no to high speed, and I call it higher speed rail money, at least in Michigan. And we got an extra $200 million coming to us that did not require any matching funds. So these are really exciting things.
[00:14:05.51] And so what's going to happen is Amtrak is going to have brand new cars, double decker cars, made in the United States, brand new engines, more efficient, pulling them. Many new stations going in. Dearborn's building a brand new station. Other stations along the line are being fixed up. I think Battle Creek got $5 million, Kalamazoo got five or 10.
[00:14:25.34] And then something really important is happening to the west of us. There's about $100 million going into Northern Indiana and Southern Illinois to do the same thing to the tracks there, to get rid of the bottlenecks, provide more two-track so that trains can pass.
[00:14:39.81] And now, as we look down the future, the trains on the track will be controlled by the Amtrak office out of Chicago. So no longer will you have to wait for freight trains. If you've traveled to Chicago right now, we have a pretty undependable, I'm going to say, service. I've ridden it many times. You can expect to get there on time sometimes, or you can expect to be there an hour or two hours later, and you really don't know.
[00:15:05.31] So once that's fixed, once you have trains going at a higher speed in a much more efficient way, Amtrak is looking at some of their routes on the East Coast where they've done similar work, they've fixed the track, they've put in the new cars. People are opting, there's probably 12, 15 flights a day from Detroit to Chicago and back, people are opting not to go through the airport rigmarole, but to take the train.
[00:15:28.91] And so if we have a consistent ready ride between Detroit and Chicago, that's what people are sure to do. And they believe that it wouldn't take very long before Amtrak ridership might double.
[00:15:41.60] The other thing that they're starting to talk about is if that begins to happen they're going to put on two more trains. Right now there's three each way, and so you have six stops. They're talking about going to five each way in a few years, and then you would have 10 stops. That begins to create the potential for a commuter rail.
[00:15:59.32] And the beauty of that is, because Ann Arbor's the busiest train stop in the state, a lot of people going to Chicago are actually getting on in Ann Arbor, you will have empty seats coming out of Chicago-- or out of Detroit-- I'm sorry. And then you'll have empty seats from Ann Arbor heading back into Detroit because of that.
[00:16:17.93] And so it would be very easy to have a commuter rate so that people could begin to use Amtrak. If you have five trains a day, you'll hit more key times, it'll be dependable, no longer maybe hit or miss that you're going to get there on time. And also, travel between the cities. So from Dearborn to Ann Arbor, the U of M Dearborn campus to Ann Arbor, people will be able to take the train. People that go into Kalamazoo. Wherever you have a trip along that line.
[00:16:42.42] Tech companies, by the way, we were talking about them, they love it because they see their workers getting on the train and being able to work all the way. They'll have their computers and the Wi-Fi on the train.
[00:16:52.20] But it begins to open up this whole new avenue for us, as this progresses and the money's in place to make that happen. The Governor seems to be very committed to it.
[00:17:02.32] Ann Arbor has already received the first couple of million dollars to research a new station, to do the environmental work, to do the preliminary engineering. That site has not been completely chosen yet. There's the old train station that presents some problems, because there's really no way for buses to get in there to serve commuters. If you've been down there at the peak times of the day, depot is clogged with traffic.
[00:17:23.67] If you put the station over on the other side of the tracks, you pretty quickly begin to get into the flood plain, a very difficult place to get Federal funding. But that's a possibility. The Fuller road site has been talked about a lot. At the base of the U of M hospital where there's a parking lot there, been there since 1993, that is another site where 34-- the University tells me 34,000 people go to the hospital complex every day. Obviously not all from the east.
[00:17:50.31] The University also says they have 10,900 employees who have a zip code that touches that east-west rail line. And the University, a long time ago said, for rail passengers we will pay the full price of their ticket the first year, 2/3 the second, and 1/3 after that. So that's a pretty strong inducement to get on the train.
[00:18:10.77] I know. My time is almost up.
[00:18:13.00] But I also said that we were going to talk about a goal. And that goal is to make our city a place where people can live without an automobile. And think about that. And there's a lot of people that do it now. I run into them all the time. But think about that. If you can get from Ann Arbor to metro, if you can get all across the country because you got an Amtrak connection, if you can get where you need to go around a city because we have better bike lanes that are always being upgraded, if you can use AATA to get where you need to go, do you really need a car.
[00:18:41.63] And think what that does for the family, too. The family that may have had two cars, now you've put about $400 or $500 a month back into their pocket. Or the family that has one car, you've said to them-- and we have folks that are biking and riding, taking transit everywhere now. It can be done.
[00:18:55.40] We begin to be a really modern city, and one that I think is going to appeal to all of our residents. We'll continue to be a healthier city. People will be getting exercise, walking, biking back and forth to their transit options. So things really begin. I think it's a brighter transit future, and we begin to build on all those successes that we already have in place.
[00:19:14.70] There's a lot of work yet to do, a lot of things you have to put in place. But I think it's a pretty bright picture in the way that things are moving.
[00:19:23.03] And I will stop there. She held up the sign that said I had zero minutes. I like that one a lot.
[00:19:29.91] And up next, we have someone who's actually very experienced in our community and used to serve on our planning commission, and has, for a very long time, been involved with making Ann Arbor a better place to walk and to bicycle. And she's now the Project Manager with the Clean Energy Coalition. And let me introduce Erica Briggs.
[00:19:48.59] ERICA BRIGGS: So again, I'm Erica Brigg's from the Clean Energy Coalition. I'm here to talk tonight about the development of Ann Arbor's bike share system, and also what bike sharing is.
[00:19:57.70] So this is the simplest definition I could find for what bike sharing is, and it wasn't too jargony so I put it up there. But it's basically bicycles made available for shared use to individuals on a very short term basis. It's a fleet of bicycles around an urban area that are available for public use.
[00:20:14.55] But we've probably seen, if you've heard about bike sharing, there's been a lot of iterations of bike sharing over the past 30 years or so. So this is what's known in the bike sharing world, and this is the first generation of bike sharing. The yellow bikes or the white bikes out of Amsterdam. Great idea. It was this paint bikes a certain color, put them out in the community. Allow all folks to use them.
[00:20:39.75] Unfortunately, there were a few issues. You can kind of see, there was vandalism, theft, they ended up in odd places. They still work in certain kind of communities, but widespread, they haven't worked very well.
[00:20:52.90] Here's the second generation, and it's still working pretty well in a lot of different places in the world. This is a picture from China. They tried to address some of those issues that came out of the first generation, trying to provide a little more security, maybe there's a kiosk where somebody's sitting at the kiosk and you check one out. Maybe there's a kiosk that you put in some money-- a few coins or a dollar bill or something like that.
[00:21:16.56] And that cut down a little bit on the theft issue. But you can imagine if you're stacking a kiosk, that starts getting pretty expensive to put those up in a lot of different places around a town, or if it's just a couple of coins that you're putting in, that's not a very huge deterrent towards theft. So it became an ongoing issue. So these work in certain places, but widespread they don't work in most urban areas.
[00:21:37.92] But this is bike sharing today, and this is what we're talking about in terms of bike sharing coming to Ann Arbor.
[00:21:42.64] So bike sharing's evolved in terms of these bikes, you can see, this is a B-cycle system. The bikes are specially designed for bike sharing. The thought is that they're going to be out all the time. They're theft resistant, they're vandalism resistant. Everything's kind of in case. There's no good wires to cut. There's lights on them. There's baskets. You walk up to a kiosk, you swipe your credit card and you can check out a bike.
[00:22:07.14] There is a way-finding map there, so you can see where the different locations of bike sharing stations are around the downtown. And then maybe on the other side of the map there's sponsorship or some sort of way to sustain the system financially.
[00:22:20.72] So that's what it looks like today. I talked a little bit about how it works. The idea for this system is that anybody should be able to use it, whether you are an office worker or a student at the University, you have somebody with a smartphone, somebody without a smartphone, somebody who hasn't ridden a bike in 20 years, or somebody who rides a bike every day. They should be able to come up to the system, figure it out, and make it work for them.
[00:22:44.07] So you can sign up on your computer to become an annual user. You go and walk up directly to that kiosk right there and swipe your credit card. And that's how most people use bike sharing. They're walk-up users. So they've stumbled upon it and they just went, hey, this is a great idea. And you want to make it really easy for them.
[00:23:03.28] So basically, you check out a bike and you go to your next destination, which the idea is that they're kind of set up around an urban area and those destinations that you would want to go to, there should be a bike sharing location there. The more stations there are, the better the system works.
[00:23:22.14] But the question is kind of why has bike sharing reemerged? Why has it gotten so popular over the past few years? You start reading and start realizing these are popping up in cities all across the country.
[00:23:33.97] They've been operating in a lot of different systems around the world outside of the US for a while. But I think this is the system, the Velib in Paris that really made cities in the United States, metropolitan areas, wake up and realize this is a way we could solve some of our congestion issues. You can see in this system, there were 54 million bike trips in the first two years, 100,000 trips per day. And it was credited with reducing car trips in Paris by 10%. I've seen anywhere between 5% and 10%, so I'm sure exactly what the right stat is. But pretty impressive.
[00:24:08.62] So it reduces congestion, improves air quality, increases transit usage. The idea is if you don't have to think about that transfer, if you're just riding the bus one stop, and then you know you can count on bike share, you don't have to worry about that transfer.
[00:24:23.02] Or in large metropolitan areas, or even in Ann Arbor, where you have issues with congestion on transit, like the North Campus to Central Campus connection is we're running buses every two to three minutes and they're full. And for the University, that's a pretty huge problem. They need to figure out a different way that people get between those two locations. So it's also an opportunity to relieve some of the pressure on those systems.
[00:24:44.64] And, of course, it's great, it's healthy, it's active transportation. So a lot of these systems have been funded through public health grants around the country because public health organizations are beginning to realize this is a really tangible program that we can put down in cities and impact our obesity and health related issues that are, of course, all across the country.
[00:25:07.21] That's a picture from the capital bike share proclaiming all the wonderful things that have happened since they put bike sharing down in Washington, DC. Really, some fun stats on there.
[00:25:18.27] But one that I think is fun to point out is that it really improves that access to local businesses and increases economic vitality. I think that the ridership data out of DC said that 9% of the users there used bike sharing to make discretionary trips. So they didn't really anticipate actually going out and making a car trip or making a trip during the day. But once they became a bike share user, they realized, well, actually, it's a little bit easier just to go out and do that errand than I had expected.
[00:25:47.30] So a lot of the shops, even in places outside of big metropolitan areas like DC, Boulder, Madison are seeing that people are making a lot more trips than they anticipated using bike sharing, so it's a big boom for their systems. And it's, of course, a nice green transportation option that we can get behind in terms of our issues towards trying to impact climate change and that.
[00:26:10.12] So now getting to-- that's the what and the why it's becoming so popular. What's happening here in Ann Arbor?
[00:26:18.21] Basically, we've been working for a number of organizations, the City of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan have been thinking about bike sharing for a few years now and looking into it. But in November of 2011, this partnership came together with the City of Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, University of Michigan, the Downtown Development Authority, and Clean Energy Coalition, which is a nonprofit here in town, to try to figure out how do we actually bring bike sharing to town and to seek funding for that.
[00:26:44.01] So here is a couple of the milestones that I thought would be of interest to this group. Last summer, we were awarded $600,000 of congestion mitigation and air quality funding for the capital expenditures. So the bikes, the bike share stations, the engineering that go along with bringing bike sharing.
[00:27:05.17] And this past winter in March-- I guess it's not that long ago, a month ago-- we selected B-cycle as our vendor here in Ann Arbor. So that was done through that. You saw that group that's come together, there was an evaluation team that came together and we put out that RFP and reviewed and decided that B-cycle was the vendor that we are going with.
[00:27:28.26] Here's one of their promotional materials in terms of this is this concept of be connected, so that all these communities that have B-cycle have reciprocity now. So if you're a member in one community, you can use another system for free. But there are 15 B-cycle communities in the United States, which I think that there's about 20, maybe a little bit more, systems operating around the country right now, overall, with other vendors as well. And it's growing exponentially. So there are 16 more systems planned across the United States in 2013 alone. So a lot of cities are really looking into it.
[00:28:09.79] But B-cycle is the one that we chose. It seemed a good fit for a community like ours. They had worked in Madison, and Boulder, and communities of our size and could provide us with a lot of resources and expertise and guidance, because as you can imagine, putting a whole new transportation system into a town, even if it's bike sharing, really comes with a lot of different sort of nuances with that. So it was really nice to be able to lean on them and their expertise working in similar communities.
[00:28:35.60] So we're looking at putting down potential bike share stops in a lot of different places, across U of M campus, Central Campus, definitely North Campus, area probably near South Campus, in the hospital area, downtown, including Kerrytown or South University, State Street, Main Street. And looking at all those key spots that we could, all those areas you think you might want a bike share station, those are all the spots that we're looking to see if there's actually a footprint and room for that. So evaluating each of those different spots.
[00:29:13.82] We're anticipating about 15 stations and 130 bikes to begin with. That's kind of what our estimate is right now. And that's what we hope to see soon in the future. That's a picture from a woman who was traveling in the Velib system and blogged about it, and that's the kind of happiness that we're hoping folks are going to be experiencing here in Ann Arbor, hopefully next spring when we anticipate launching. Right now we're looking for doing all of the site planning, and fund raising, and community outreach that goes along with it. So if you're interested in any aspect of that, feel free to get in touch with me later.
[00:29:51.25] [APPLAUSE]
[00:29:56.10] TIM GRIMES: Well, and up next-- Thank you, Erica. Up next we have Nathan Vought who is the Economic Development Specialist, the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development. Hope I said that right.
[00:30:07.05] [APPLAUSE]
[00:30:07.29] NATHAN VOUGHT: Yeah. You said it right.
[00:30:16.35] Well, thank you. Thanks for having me tonight. My name is Nathan Vought. I'm with the Office of Community and Economic Development with Washtenaw County, and heading up the ReImagine Washtenaw Avenue initiative.
[00:30:28.91] So tonight I'm going to tell you a little bit about that. Basically, this is an effort that's about four or five years running, and the county's been providing the leadership in this effort. It is multi-jurisdictional to transform the kind of the spine of Washtenaw Avenue, of connecting the City of Ann Arbor, and the City the of Ypsilanti into a mixed use, more attractive, bikeable, walkable corridor all-around public transit. The number four bus is kind of the main route there, and efficient mass transit this is the key.
[00:31:08.75] We've got a lot of partners that have evolved from day one with the effort. Of course the four local units-- City of Ann Arbor, Pittsfield Township, Ypsilanti Township, and the City of Ypsi. We wouldn't be anywhere without AATA at the table or MDOT-- it's an MDOT road. And so they're involved as well. And we've recently involved the chamber more to engage the business community and other partners.
[00:31:35.01] This is the study area that we're talking about. It's the stadium Washtenaw split, and all the way down to the water tower. Again, about a 4.5 mile stretch, and, again, really the spine of the transportation hub for the county.
[00:31:48.11] Assets. A lot of transit riders, a lot of housing density, providing the connections for many employees and shoppers, people heading to various destinations. But a really important transportation hub for us.
[00:32:02.80] Highway access, existing infrastructure challenges. It is crossing four jurisdictions, and so that's why the county has played a key role and just kind of keeping everybody moving in the same direction and providing that leadership.
[00:32:16.11] Congestion. It is a real issue, as the Mayor pointed out. In fact, we just met with our consultant this morning, and our right-of-way study, which I'll talk about. In the no build scenario for this roadway, if traffic continues, as SEMCOG and as the Washtenaw area transportation study believes it will, we'll have failing intersections by 2020. We've already got one that's basically failing, and we're going to have more. So something's got to change, and hopefully through these efforts it will.
[00:32:43.08] Sidewalk gaps. So infrastructure in terms of walking and biking, no bike lanes. All challenges. There is no there there. There's no sense of place. It's a place that no one really is drawn to or attracted to. It's kind of a road that we tolerate because we have to get off at 23 and go into Ann Arbor, or maybe go to MU or whatever.
[00:33:04.94] And then lack of safe pedestrian facilities is an issue, not just the sidewalks but how people get across to a bus stop on the other side of the street, or how people get across to the Whole Foods. We don't have enough facilities for those pedestrians to do that reasonably and safely.
[00:33:21.67] So I love this picture. This was sent to me from AATA. This is a poor guy trying to navigate the roadway in the '70s, and you could see these very wide lanes that were built. You can see the lack of sidewalks, the multiple driveways, all centered around the automobile. Really no thought or consideration for walkers or bikers.
[00:33:40.04] And if you look at these big 1970s cars, those lanes are still five feet wider than those cars at that time. And you'll see, nothing's much changed today. We still kind of have those really excessively wide travel lanes, no bike facilities, the sidewalks are filled in a little bit more compared to 1975, let's say. But you could still see wide stretches where there's just no sidewalks.
[00:34:07.00] So in terms of where we've come, we are really beyond planning and visioning. We're kind of in implementation, but there has been a significant effort to involve the stakeholders, involve the businesses, involve the communities, involve everybody that has a stake in the future of this roadway.
[00:34:23.88] In 2009, this document on the left was developed which really outlined a general vision for what the community wanted for the corridor. And then we further developed a 2010 corridor redevelopment strategy, which gave us actionable steps and areas that we were going to focus on to achieve that vision. So we'll talk a little bit about that.
[00:34:44.64] Basically, the implementation strategy talks about a mixed use corridor. It's already mixed use, but in certain areas we really want to look at vertical mixed use, not just a house here and a store here. But vertical mixed use, higher density, and creating special places at key redevelopable intersections. And I'll talk a little bit about nodes, but that's the concept of nodes.
[00:35:07.86] And then transit oriented development. It's been a buzz word, and I think it's something we're focused on in terms of if the transit gets more reliable and increases in usage, which we all know it will, how do we integrate adjacent develop better with those transit stops? How we make the transit stops more usable for the transit users? And that's why AATA's at the table and involved with our offer effort, and you'll see more TOD in the future.
[00:35:33.82] And then the importance of connecting the adjacent neighborhoods. If you've ever seen this corridor and seen the adjacent apartment complexes, you know they're kind of there, but they're kind of separated. And so we need to do a better job of connecting those people to the corridor and letting them move about the corridor more easily.
[00:35:53.52] And you know why are we doing this? Why does it makes sense? For all the reasons that we've already talked about, but providing more choice for people. Why should we force people to get in a car maybe when they don't want to? Affordability. Healthier lifestyle. The things we've been talking about.
[00:36:09.90] From an economic development standpoint, I talked to the scuba shop owner a few months ago and he says, I could close my shop between four and six every day. I don't even need to be open. And so you can imagine what, if things continue with the way they're going, it is an economic issue for the businesses along the corridor, and so we need to address it.
[00:36:32.15] And then kind of the workforce housing. There's a lot of workforce housing out on this corridor, and luckily we have a great transit option for them. But we need more housing options. Why not open it up to seniors or young families, families with kids? So there's a lot of opportunity to provide more diverse housing, and then provide that connection to their jobs through public transit.
[00:36:56.42] We won't go into this in great detail, but I just wanted to touch on in terms of our strategy what are we doing? We're working on land use with all of the units and making sure that the zoning is updated, and that we're getting the development patterns that align with the vision that the community has. Mixed use, zero lot line, or close to zero lot line at the nodes, decreased parking requirements, putting the parking not in front but on the side. Sidewalk infill, et cetera.
[00:37:26.44] The transportation again, we're building this corridor around efficient transit, so continuing to work with AATA to increase the reliability of the transit. Making sure transit is a priority and not the vehicle, the single occupant vehicle necessarily. And so there's things we're working on to make that happen.
[00:37:44.45] And then the cooperation. Again, we have four jurisdictions. We've got a great model that for four or five years been working. How do we take that to the next level? What options do we have? And what role does the county play in that?
[00:37:59.89] So just visually, I don't want to belabor this too much, but if you're a planner in the audience you've probably seen these. These are kind of used quite a bit. But very typical, declining shopping center situation on Washtenaw Avenue at some points. And you can see the dramatic difference that doing infill, zero setback, walkability, mixed use, higher density really impacts the economics of the center, the walkability, sense of place. And there's even higher density.
[00:38:39.36] And then here's one more example, Oakland, California. A typical thoroughfare that you might see with a kind of legacy characteristics. And then you can really see the dramatic change that occurs when you just add some street safe elements, and better ped facilities, mixed use, adding value to the street.
[00:39:03.16] And then a potential future where is there light rail down the middle of Washtenaw Avenue? Is there a dedicated transit lane? A bus rapid transit? In 20, 30 years, what might we have? So that's certainly something that is possible.
[00:39:26.01] So just using one example. Everybody, I think, is familiar with Arbor Hills, which is across from Whole Foods. This is the first large development that has gone through the updated zoning standards in the City of Ann Arbor that really tried to align itself with the ReImagine Washtenaw vision. And specifically, the buildings are up to the street, there's transparency of the buildings.
[00:39:53.15] So from a walkability standpoint, you really start to engage people walking on the street. So these are showing people walk about 70 feet before they'll just turnaround if there's nothing to engage them and provide some interest. So this goes a long way in doing that. And this will set a new tone, I think, for the corridor.
[00:40:11.82] Just in terms of progress, AATA's, again, been a partner. This is the new bus pull-off and shelter at Arbor Hills that you'll see. There'll be new traffic signal, and new ped crossings at Platt Road which will really enhance the walkability and safety for that area. They have doubled the weekday service, the number four, which has led to an increase by 20% of the ridership in the last year.
[00:40:35.09] MDOT. I'm sure you've noticed this, the wide multi-use path under this huge barrier that was a barrier, which is the overpass. Now we have a safer way, much safer way for people to get through there.
[00:40:46.73] A lot of sidewalk infill going on by the local units. This is Pittsfield Township. This is at Golfside, so Pittsfield and Ypsi Township. This is the road [INAUDIBLE] that this crossroad, Golfside Road went through, which really changes, again, the character.
[00:41:01.93] And so what we're doing now is, again, land use, working with all the local units to update their standards, looking at design guidelines. When it comes to sense of place, the design guidelines are really key in getting the details right. This corridor right-of-way study, there will be some public workshops at the end of May which you'll hear about. Very excited about those.
[00:41:21.32] Transportation demand management is all about working with large employers and working with them on strategies to help those peak hours, which are really the problem for the roadway and reducing the volume at those peak hours.
[00:41:33.67] Transit signal priority will allow buses to hold a single green. So if they're behind schedule and they're coming up to a light and it would have turned red, they can actually hold it green and get through it. That's TSB or Transit Signal Priority. We're working on that, and that'll be implemented hopefully in a couple of years.
[00:41:50.03] Engaging the business community, as I mentioned, the West side has now formed an association. We've got a series of developer round tables that we're holding to engage the development community.
[00:41:59.83] And again, AATA continues to, I call it their project, but the investment in route four that they've made.
[00:42:07.34] Thank you.
[00:42:08.21] [APPLAUSE]
[00:42:15.63] TIM GRIMES: Well, thank you very much, Nathan. Up next-- And just a word, as you begin to look at all these different systems, so the person on a bike, the person on a bus, if you're a driver you might say if somebody doesn't want to use those systems, what's in it for me? Well, the person on the bike, the person on the bus, the person on the train means that there's one more car that isn't on the road. So those are the payoffs I think for everybody as we talk about these things.
[00:42:39.00] Up next is Eli Cooper, the Transportation Programs Manager of the City of Ann Arbor, and Eli has worked in different states, in different cities. And I think is one of the best people in the state at being able to bring all these different modes of nontraditional transportation together.
[00:42:59.26] ELI COOPER: OK. Let's see if I can work the technology. That's a good first start.
[00:43:05.71] Good evening. The subject that I'm going to focus on this evening is the city's Non-motorized Transportation Plan review. It was in 2007 when the City Council adopted its first Non-motorized Transportation Plan. Prior to that we had a series of bicycle plans, but as we entered into the 21st century, we began to look at sustainable transportation looking beyond just bicycles, but including walking as well.
[00:43:33.70] The highest level, the vision, what does the community want? How are we going to position ourselves in order to achieve a sustainable non-motorized transportation network and a community? And the vision is to create both a physical environment and a culture. So it's more than just putting lines on the street, but it's creating an environment and a culture. So both the place and the people resonate or can relate to the non-motorized transportation system.
[00:44:05.14] As you can see, there were goals that aspired to align with that vision. And what I'm going to share with you is a quick overview of five or six years worth of progress and the dramatic changes that we've begun to see.
[00:44:20.68] I'm going to organize the information I'm going to present to both by outlining the advances that we've made, the progress, highlight some of the challenges that we've experienced over the five years and we framed for the purpose of the plan review process, and then quickly touch on some new concepts and recommendation.
[00:44:40.41] Just before I go into the detail of the presentation, for those of you in the audience, it's important to note that Tuesday, the City Planning Commission released the document, or recommended the release of the document, for public review.
[00:44:53.84] So as much as a lot of this information seems like it's really firm, what we're going to be looking for is feedback, critical input, from the community over the next month and a half or so. And we'll take those comments and include them into a revised draft that at that time will go forward to, back to the Commission and Council for adoption as the plan update.
[00:45:17.71] For those of you audience members at home, we're probably looking at the May to June time frame. So if you're looking at this and we're still in the month of May or early June, might still be time to get in touch with staff and give us your input on the information that we're talking about here this evening.
[00:45:36.64] A quick reminder, the non-motorized plan, if you can see there's a lot of color in terms of the different areas of the city, but the roadways are colored red. And those red lines indicate areas where the plan recommends on-road bicycle lanes. I can say that this is the near term plan.
[00:45:57.31] In the five years our target was to achieve this level of investment. What the plan looked about into the future beyond that is that every major arterial road, every roadway that you probably use to get to or from work, into the downtown, out to a commercial center in some of the neighborhoods, should have bicycle facilities right on the road.
[00:46:23.08] Over the past five years we've added about 20 miles of additional bike lanes. They're shared roads. Some of the roadways just weren't wide enough to put a discrete bike lane, but we were able to put signage and pavement markings to inform bicyclists that they're welcome, and to advise motorists that they should expect and respect bicyclists to have the legal right to share that road.
[00:46:48.07] We also, as I mentioned, it's a non-motorized plan. There are elements in the document that speak to the pedestrian realm. Sidewalk gaps along the side of the road, crossing islands, and other features that I'll elaborate a little more as I go through the presentation.
[00:47:05.40] The question that you might ask, the simple question. You've made these investments. Is it having an effect? And the simple answer is absolutely. I know when I was in the city in 2005, 2006, yeah, it was clear that this was a bicycle-friendly community. But I suspect that each of you, as you've walked around the city over the past year or two, can't help but notice that everywhere you go all the time you'll see a number of cyclists using their legs and their energy to move themselves to meet their needs.
[00:47:38.95] So I think we're really seeing, and the statistics bear that out, 46% increase in the percent of bicyclists that are using their bicycle to get to work in a very short period of time. What was that old movie, "If you build it, they will come." With respect to bicycle facilities, it held true in Portland, it holds true in Ann Arbor. We're building it, and as I look at the audience, I suspect many of you are using it, but also, many others are out there as well.
[00:48:07.25] Erica's bike share program I think will help expand the reach of bicycling to even more folks in the community, and I know, looking at what Nathan presented and working with him on that, this is a city-wide plan that I'm speaking to. But this is a regional imperative, and the Washtenaw corridor and the partners in that are all helping to make investments to build on the fine start that we've taken here in Ann Arbor.
[00:48:32.51] What does it look like? Obviously, the trend is upwards. Close to 40 miles of bike lanes-- or 40 miles of our roads have bike lanes were close to 80 miles, because some streets are one-way so you only have a bike lane on one side. But close to 80 miles of bike lanes in the city. And very welcoming. When we'd re-surface a road and we add the bike lanes, it's fresh pavement, fresh pavement marking, and it's a smooth ride for cyclists.
[00:49:01.55] This map illustrates the connectivity that we're beginning to see within the city. For those of you who are sitting in the front, you can see the scattered green lines that were not connected.
[00:49:12.09] So that back in 2007, we had a nascent system of about 18 or 19 miles of bicycle lanes. Now, with close to 40 lane miles plus the shared roads and share path, you can get into the downtown from almost any of the major radial arterials. And we're working at extending that system further to the edges of the city to connect with our neighbors and to connect into the neighborhoods.
[00:49:39.40] AUDIENCE: What's a shared use path?
[00:49:41.29] ELI COOPER: Shared use path is, it's in the area of a sidewalk, if you will, the width is greater. Sidewalk's generally 4 or 5 feet. Shared use path is 8 feet wide or wider. So if you look at the path on Huron Parkway, that would be considered a shared use path. The new facility that was just constructed on Washtenaw Avenue, that's 10 foot wide, that's a shared use path. Some of the paths that comprise the Border-to-Border trail that run along the railroad corridor through Gallup Park, those are also shown in that purple color as shared use paths.
[00:50:20.28] Progress seems simple. I love seeing signs, lines and symbols. And what you can see is a variety of them. What you can't see is the complexity. I've learned to make a lot of new friends with traffic engineers who have things like the MMUTCD and AASHTO that create the standards and specifications of how you need to create a sign, where it can sit, and what it can say.
[00:50:46.59] So the interesting piece is we've got a lot smarter. But over the five years we've installed over 500 new signs. And again, to me that advertises or communicates to cyclists that they're welcome, and to the community that this is a place where cyclists are valued.
[00:51:07.31] Pedestrian treatments. Again, non-motorized, so we're looking at the pedestrian realm as well. Interesting that the sidewalk system is fairly well complete. Now I know there are many gaps in the city. There were 75 outlined in the plan at its adoption. But the bigger issue is helping people get across the street.
[00:51:27.13] And so what we've seen is deployment of innovative technology, something called a HAWK beacon, which is shown on the lower right. And it's a overhead signal that has just two colors, red and yellow. It stays dark unless a pedestrian wants across the street. Pedestrian touches the actuation button. The signal actually wakes up, starts flashing yellow. And in a double red bulb. This is right out on Huron, right behind the YMCA, and it's a very effective means to help people get across the street, either to the Y or there's a senior tower across the street, access to West Park. Very effective, but somewhat costly.
[00:52:07.62] On the lower left you see what's described as a flashing beacon. It's a rectangular device and you've probably seen those perhaps on East stadium, we've just installed a couple. Plymouth Road, a similar concept. The pedestrian wants across the street, pushes the button, but instead of a red light, we get a series of flashing yellow strobes. And what that does is it advises drivers that a pedestrian wants to get across the street.
[00:52:39.16] This map shows the areas that I described-- East stadium, Plymouth, Washington and 7th areas where we've made pedestrian improvements over the past few years.
[00:52:51.38] Sidewalk gaps. We will have more to show in the future. This is an area that is proven to be a challenge. What you see here are some sections of new sidewalk. The plan included 75 to 80 identified gaps. We filled a handful. We're looking for additional and innovative funding sources in order to make further progress in filling our sidewalk gaps.
[00:53:18.05] In the non-motorized transportation realm we can't just provide facilities if we're going to change culture. We need to provide education, information, and encouragement. These are a couple of examples of some materials that we've produced over the planning period.
[00:53:33.80] At the table in the back is one that MDOT recently produced and we reprinted. It talks about for motorists, how to drive around bicycle lanes. It'll answer all those questions that you were thinking. Am I allowed to pull into that bike lane? There's a bicycle riding alongside of me, what do I do?
[00:53:50.38] Enforcement is an important ingredient, again, in creating the culture. Enforcement's not a physical environment issue, but it's creating that mindset for motorists that they need to respect the rights of pedestrians as they walk across the street has been a real tough one here in Ann Arbor.
[00:54:10.68] We continue not only to make progress in reviewing the plan and implementing the recommendations, but we monitor the extent of the system, the condition of the system and its use. We're seeing the increased use, just under safety. Increased use the same or decreasing number of crashes between vehicles and bicycles and pedestrians. To me that's a good story. That means more people are using the system and are using it safely.
[00:54:37.80] Challenges. It's kind of like me trying to fit within 10 minutes-- overly ambitious. I'm getting there. The idea was that the plan, although it was a transition from biking to non-motorized, there was still an emphasis on bikes. We're trying to balance that out. I mentioned the sidewalk gaps. We've only handled a handful. We're still in a process of making recommendations for enhanced funding sources, way finding, and best practices.
[00:55:05.22] There were certain areas in the plan where the engineering wouldn't support the plan recommendations, so we're taking another view of some of these critical areas. And what you'll see, if you look at the plan review online, is what staff's recommending now to substitute for what was in the '07 document to assure the system continuity or integrity, but using different techniques than what were in the '07 plan.
[00:55:34.03] Erica already talked about the bike sharing, bike boulevards, use of a lower volume street next to a high volume arterial as a strategy in order to make bicycle connectiveness.
[00:55:45.65] Continuing to deploy signs, lines, and symbols. And the pedestrian facilities, the flashing beacons and HAWK. These are all, again, just a quick highlight of the type of recommendations that are in the plan.
[00:55:59.86] Many of these concepts were not around in '05, '06. Bike boulevards, bike stations, flashing beacons. It's all a new vocabulary and you're among those on the ground floor hearing me talk about it, and you know what they are when you see them out there in the street.
[00:56:15.75] This is a list of what are the various elements of the plan review. So there is technical reports. There's a non-motorized transportation plan review website on the city's web page. Just in a search box type Non-motorized Transportation Plan, and you'll see a series of maps and reports. And, again, they're all looking for your feedback. Is there something that we ought to be talking about that we're not.
[00:56:39.89] With that, about a minute and a half over, which you know when you walk or bicycle somewhere, sometimes it takes a little longer to get there than you expect. Appreciate your time and attention. And I'll turn it back to the mayor.
[00:56:50.79] [APPLAUSE]
[00:56:56.33] TIM GRIMES: Thank you, Eli. And we will move on now to our last speaker before we start a panel. And Michael Benham, the Strategic Planner with AATA, and he's working on a lot of strategic plans at AATA, I can tell you that.
[00:57:18.91] MICHAEL BENHAM: Hi. I'm Michael Benham. And I thank you for having me here tonight. The topic tonight is the relationship between transit and sustainability.
[00:57:30.48] You may know some of our services. We provide fixed-route bus service throughout the city. Also, dial-a-ride service. Then we've got a number of specialized services, as arrayed on the screen here before you.
[00:57:45.64] Some of you may know about a recent effort that we undertook called Countywide Transit, and that was an effort to create a countywide transit system throughout Washtenaw County. We published a 30-year countywide plan. We organized kind of a temporary countywide transit board, and we actually began the process, or we went through the process, of incorporating a regional Countywide Transit Authority.
[00:58:15.95] For a number reasons, that process really kind of came apart. I think it was a situation of the county wasn't quite ready for countywide transit. But we learned a lot. We talked to a lot of people. And I think that we laid the groundwork for a lot of future efforts. There are still people out there who are asking us for services. That whole effort really got started because people were coming to us. There's a real lack of transit throughout Washtenaw County.
[00:58:50.08] But at any rate, we learned I think that perhaps we over-reached a little bit and now have a new focus. In fact, the Countywide Transit Authority actually got officially dissolved yesterday by the County Board. But we've been busy really focusing now on the urban core. Part of this came about as a result of a city council resolution back in November asking us to really focus on the urban core, that being the City of Ann Arbor, the City of Ypsilanti, and some of the adjacent townships.
[00:59:24.97] And so, we've kind of regrouped, and we're now asking the question of all of these jurisdictions. What is it exactly that you want out there? We began with a question about service, and we said, we can sustain the service that we have, basically, with probably very little increase in funding. Is that what you want?
[00:59:49.41] We asked, we could improve the service that we have within the footprint of the existing service area. Is that what you want? And, of course, that would cost some money. And then we asked the question, or do you want us to expand beyond the boundaries of the current service footprint and really start reaching out into those areas that have been growing while the transit system has remained relatively stable in terms of its footprint.
[01:00:16.96] We had a meeting on March 28th where we got a pretty clear signal from folks that they wanted us to both improve and expand the system. Now, it's easy to ask for that and assume away issues like funding and representation, so I would call that a conditional statement that people would like to have improvements, they'd like to have expansion, but subject to that being financially and organizationally acceptable.
[01:00:53.99] So a little bit about that service plan that we put in front of people, and we'll focus on the improve sections of that plan first and then talk about the expansion.
[01:01:07.55] But here we're talking about the existing system, and by and large it's not new lines on the map. It is oftentimes rather than new lines on the map, it's increased frequency, it's later services, it's weekend services where none now exist. In some cases, we've reconfigured these lines on the map so that there's more direct service and different places being served.
[01:01:35.89] This is the Western edge of Ann Arbor, and all of those lettered services-- and I realize some of this is hard to see and please contact me after this and I'll be happy to share the copy this plan with you. In terms of the services between the two big cities, Ann Arbor and Ypsi, and I know Nathan mentioned the route number four and we got a little bit of a jump on that, and we've doubled the service on that, and overnight we had a 28% increase in ridership on that service.
[01:02:06.52] We've also increased night ride service. That's the service where you can get a cab ride after the fixed route system is closed down. If you're a worker in Ann Arbor and you're not getting off till midnight and you want to get back to where you live, perhaps in Ypsi, you can take that service. We've extended that service into Ypsilanti. Again, the ridership has just increased tremendously.
[01:02:34.70] So we're proposing a number of an additional service improvements, again, frequencies, evenings, weekends on those services that travel between the two cities.
[01:02:48.66] And then if you get over into the East side Ypsilanti, Ypsi Township, a lot of improvements there. If you know the services there, they've always been relatively sparser, if you will, compared to the services within Ann Arbor Proper, so we'd be adding some additional routes here, as well as, again, frequency and increased evening service and weekend service where none exist.
[01:03:19.08] And then getting out in the townships, this is where we talk about expansion now, not just improvements within the existing footprint. Getting out into the townships you can see that we've got some new extended routes that are proposed.
[01:03:33.57] We've got some new park and rides proposed, which those have always been a really good way to kind cut people off outside of the urban core, or outside, I should say, the downtown Ann Arbor area. If people will drive to that park and ride then they can take the bus system and get into town the rest of the way without having to deal with traffic or adding to traffic. So we've got some of that planned.
[01:04:02.65] And then last but not least, there's a township-wide dial-a-ride service. Ann Arbor residents have enjoyed for years a dial-a-ride service that covers the entire city, and that also applies pretty much to Ypsilanti. But out in the townships those services have been very sketchy or nonexistent. So we're offering that as a way to get around within those communities, as well as a way to connect the communities into the center of the urban core.
[01:04:35.27] Also looking at Pittsfield Township and Saline, again, basically the same sets of services. We've got some newer extended routes of our fixed route service into those areas. We've got some express ride services that actually connect those areas on a nonstop basis into the heart of the city. And then the township-wide dial-a-ride services.
[01:05:00.24] So it's easy to talk about service. There are two other elements, though, that are a little bit more tricky to talk about, but they're absolutely necessary if we're going to actually have these services on the street. And those two topics are governance and funding. And the services, they don't come free, so if you want to expand the service funding has to be expanded. And if you expand the service area, then you need to start bringing other communities into the governance or organization of that service.
[01:05:33.87] So as I said, we had this conversation about a month ago with our urban core working group. Pretty much agreed on the service plan as an aspirational thing. The next step here now is to start talking about governance. We are taking the approach of arraying the possibilities to the communities without being really prescriptive. It's really up to the communities how they want to get involved in this process, and how they want to organize themselves to govern transit.
[01:06:07.46] Right now we have purchased service agreements between Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Pittsfield, and Ypsi Township. And basically what they're doing is on a year-to-year basis they're buying the service from us. But there have been ideas floated out there that talk about maybe expanding the authority to a five jurisdiction authority, or maybe something in between where the authority expands incrementally and continues to have these purchase of service agreements with the other communities.
[01:06:37.85] In fact, I just came from the board meeting upstairs, and the City of Ypsilanti there spoke to our board and told us that they would be requesting permission to join the authority next week. So that's a big development.
[01:06:54.72] We've got another meeting scheduled with the urban core transit working group next week and we'll be talking about these governance possibilities and see if we can settle on something that makes sense in the near term, but recognizing it's an incremental approach.
[01:07:11.70] The last thing, of course, is funding. And as soon as you start talking about people's pocketbooks it gets very sensitive, very political. But the services do cost money. We tested the attitude of voters in this county for possibly-- well, for their attitudes towards transit and towards additional funding for transit. And as you can see by the middle column, in the depths of the recession-- this survey was taken November 2011-- we got an amazingly high response, positive response for the possibility of a one mil property tax to fund transit.
[01:07:47.31] So we think there's reason for optimism out there. But again, we think it's up to the communities to have the final word on this, and we'll be having those discussions as we go along.
[01:08:00.39] So why do we do this? Why bother to worry about the transit system at all? Well, as population has grown over the years, vehicle miles traveled has grown even more. And we all know the issues with that.
[01:08:14.91] So what can transit do to help? This is some information from an APTA publication. It was compiled by ICF International. And they basically looked at what's transit doing today to help us be sustainable in terms of reducing energy use, and also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
[01:08:38.05] They even went further, though. They got kind of visionary and they said, what if we could grow transit by 10% a year? What would be the impact of that? And you can see here what the estimated results would be. Within 30 years, we could save almost $100 billion gallons of fuel a year, which is equal to about what the transportation sector consumes today for transportation. And then also, about a cutting in half of transportation sector carbon emissions.
[01:09:12.08] So we feel real strongly that we can make our contribution towards this very ambitious vision. And I hope you'll support us as we move forward in this.
[01:09:25.77] This is kind of a graphical depiction of what might be in a transit-oriented future. We talked about a transit-orient community. And these are some of the potential impacts in terms of energy use and greenhouse gas reductions.
[01:09:43.97] So hopefully, one of these days, we'll see many more people riding many fewer vehicles here. And thank you for your support of transit.
[01:09:53.87] [APPLAUSE]
[01:10:00.82] TIM GRIMES: Well, thank you Michael. And thank you all for being here. And we're going to move into a panel discussion now.
[01:10:05.95] As we think about these things, and you think about the daily travels that we do, the Washtenaw area transportation studies found that about 68,000 people come into Ann Arbor every day to go to work from somewhere else in an automobile. And then leave again. Of course, there's thousands more using transit. But it's an interesting large number.
[01:10:29.88] AUDIENCE: I have a couple questions. One is about the bike share program. And as a parent and a grandparent, seeing people get on bicycles and riding them, particularly one of the shots had a picture of a woman who had a child carrier behind, nobody is wearing helmets.
[01:10:48.17] And to me that is just a major, major issue. Are people going to carry their helmets in their backpacks and go pick up the bike and go from point A to point B? So that's a concern to me. That's not really a question. It's just really a comment, and I don't know if there's anything at all that can be done about that situation, other than people carry their own helmets.
[01:11:18.20] ERICA BRIGGS: I can address that. And that is kind of an issue that comes up in every single community in terms of bike sharing coming in, so how do you address the helmet issue. And a few systems have put up some kiosks with helmets in them, but you can imagine, kind of sanitary issues and also helmet fitting issues that go along with that.
[01:11:36.03] And so the way most programs have addressed this is that annual members really are given a discount and encouraged to wear helmets. And so there may be a way for them to be encouraged more so to ride with a helmet.
[01:11:49.77] But one of the things we know in terms of safety is that although helmets obviously are really good, one of the safest things we can do for a bicyclist is actually to get more bicyclists out on the road, and there are less crashes when there are more bicyclists out there, and there's a lot of data to support that. So the more bicyclists we have out there on bike share bikes and bicycling the community on their own personal bikes, the safer the community will be for them.
[01:12:14.26] So it's not a perfect answer, but I think it's how most communities have been addressing this.
[01:12:20.72] AUDIENCE: It's at least been considered.
[01:12:22.17] ERICA BRIGGS: Yeah.
[01:12:22.58] AUDIENCE: And the other one, the comment that I have has to do with the pedestrian crosswalks. I've seen lots of issues with those. Someone's riding on my tail in a car, and I see there's a pedestrian about ready to walk out. I'm ready to put on my break to stop and I'm going to be rear-ended if I do. And I know that's been a concern for a lot of people, and I don't know if there are flashing lights, then people behind can see the flashing lights, even though they can't see the pedestrian and they're prepared to stop.
[01:12:59.12] But in just the plain old crosswalk with no flashing lights, that the pedestrian can, in fact, start-- like the one just today was up on Plymouth Road right by the Arab center there. And the person pushed the thing and the lights started flashing and everybody stopped, no problem. But there's so many others without that. And I don't want to get a ticket because I am not stopping for a pedestrian, but I also don't want to get rear-ended and maybe shove me into the pedestrian.
[01:13:30.78] TIM GRIMES: I think we can handle that one.
[01:13:31.57] AUDIENCE: What are going to do about that.
[01:13:32.71] ELI COOPER: I appreciate that, and I think every driver's responsible for their own behavior. And that clearly, if you're in a lane and you see a pedestrian, you tap your brake, you hit your brakes, your brake lights should illuminate. You're not a small pedestrian, you're probably sitting in a 3,500 pound car, and when you step on your brakes, the car behind you will have a clear notification to stop, and they should.
[01:13:57.47] I cannot protect every driver, nor can anyone from being rear-ended. But the reality is that vehicle code requires people to operate their motor vehicles in a lawful manner, and it's against the law to run into the back of a car, it's against the law to run over a pedestrian, and this is part of that culture change.
[01:14:16.80] The higher speed roadways, I think, the city, we agree with you. That's why some of the new techniques, the HAWK and the flashing beacons are being very helpful in communicating to drivers to be more vigilant or aware of pedestrians. But the individual choice, if you've run that crosswalk, that's a choice that you make. You step on your brake, that's a choice that you make. The law supports the lawful behavior of stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks in Ann Arbor, along the curve waiting to cross the street.
[01:14:49.41] And I could tell you, as the Mayor introduced me earlier on, most recently I was in Seattle, Washington. In Washington State we don't have issues or we didn't have issues because drivers were more courteous. And that if a pedestrian was at the curb or in a crosswalk, the cars would all stop. That's what our plan aspiration is. The culture and the environment where the behavior is such that you won't have to think twice as to what is the right thing for you to do. It's a simple answer, stop.
[01:15:19.96] TIM GRIMES: And there's some room in there because the law reads that you need to stop if you can do so safely. So depending on where-- It's a judgment like we all have to make when we approach and the light changes.
[01:15:32.47] AUDIENCE: And when it's a two lane situation--
[01:15:34.51] TIM GRIMES: Hang-- Wait. Ma'am, just hang on if you're going to continue the conversation.
[01:15:39.56] AUDIENCE: If it's a two lane situation or a four lane, say I'm closest to the curb, I stop, the pedestrian starts to come out, doesn't see that there's another car sailing through here.
[01:15:50.99] ELI COOPER: That's a problem.
[01:15:54.01] TIM GRIMES: We have a question right here in the back. Hang on just a moment.
[01:16:01.57] AUDIENCE: This is probably for Eli and Nathan. I take Packard out in back quite a bit, and Packard and Stadium, that light is-- I noticed tonight it was 17 seconds. Now that's pretty-- it's just tough for traffic to get through there. Is there going to be some traffic light synchronous-- I don't know how to-- synchronize the traffic lights? To me, that's a big-- and that also affects the bicyclists too, and pedestrians, because 17 seconds to get across Packard at Stadium is really tough.
[01:16:47.72] And also on Washtenaw, too. The rush hour, getting east out of town almost all year round is pretty bad, too. So maybe if you could-- Eli and Nathan can--
[01:17:03.36] ELI COOPER: With respect to traffic signal timing, some of our signals are the most advanced in the world. We have real time traffic adaptive signals, meaning that they respond to the actual traffic measured in the streets. I'm going to take your question back to our traffic engineers, and see if there's something that's gone afoul with the system at that specific intersection. If there's too much volume, that's a separate issue, but if it's just taking too long, there may be some kind of malfunction in the system.
[01:17:30.64] JOHN HIEFTIE: Over the last several years we've used Federal congestion mitigation funds to purchase some of the most sophisticated synchronize-- however you want to put it-- systems that will synchronize our lights. So there's adjustments that can be made and we'll bring that up to them.
[01:17:46.22] NATHAN VOUGHT: And I could just speak quickly to east of 23. MDOT got a CMAC grant, which is the grant you just mentioned to due to the signals east of 23 along Washtenaw, what Ann Arbor already has, which is the real time traffic feedback, they're going to have cameras. So that during rush hour, as the conditions change, the central office can actually change the timing of the lights on the fly. And that will be done, I think, either this year or next by MDOT east of 23.
[01:18:15.15] TIM GRIMES: OK, we have a question right here.
[01:18:17.56] AUDIENCE: How are you going to make it safer to walk to school?
[01:18:24.60] ELI COOPER: Well--
[01:18:25.23] JOHN HIEFTIE: Go ahead. I'll help.
[01:18:27.12] MICHAEL BENHAM: Thanks, John. We'll make it safer to walk to school by encouraging more people to walk to school together by providing sidewalks for you and your classmates to walk on, for making sure that our crosswalks are properly marked, and that they have good lighting so the drivers can see you.
[01:18:46.63] So the more that we can do to give you a good system, or good sidewalks and good crosswalks so you feel safe, and that you can be seen. But you, too, have a responsibility. Always look both ways before you cross. Wear light-colored clothing, especially in the morning during the winter when it's dark. And always be careful.
[01:19:07.65] ERICA BRIGGS: I can add just a little bit to that, too, before you jump in. One of the things that all the schools should be working on is Safe Routes to School grants. So I think you're going into Clague next year. And Clague Middle School just got a Safe Routes to School grant for $180,000. $172,000 of that was to add sidewalks around Clague. And $8,000 of that was to work on encouraging kids to bike and walk to school, and getting the kids kind of excited about that.
[01:19:33.00] So one of the things you can do as a kid is to say to your classmates, you know, you should consider this. But also, for any of your friends that are going to different schools, encouraging them to say to their teachers, hey, how come we didn't get any investments around here? Has anybody thought about a Safe Routes to School grant? So that's something that's really school led. It has to happen at the individual school level, unfortunately. Clague's on top of it, but not every school in the system is.
[01:19:58.56] JOHN HIEFTIE: That was a great question, because one of the things that happening in our community is as the schools have been financially pressured, they are cutting back on bus routes to the near school neighborhoods. So that's taken us back to a time-- I grew up in Ann Arbor, and all the kids used to walk, and I walked too. We didn't have to, like some people might say, we didn't walk 20 miles through the snow, but I had to walk about six blocks year round.
[01:20:23.97] But now we have this challenge again, and so the city and the schools have a working group of highly placed staff members, and some council members have met with school board members to try to come up with some of these solutions and make it even better and safer, because more kids are going to be walking.
[01:20:38.21] TIM GRIMES: Another question here.
[01:20:40.54] AUDIENCE: So I'm an infrequent bus rider, but I do use the bus system. And I think that I would use it more frequently if I could figure out the way buses move around and stop, particularly in the downtown area. And I am sure there's software improvements for riders that are possible and I just highly recommend an investment in them. I guess it's not a question, as much as a suggestion.
[01:21:12.04] Because I will say it's been amazing. My neighborhood was iced in, and I had a car from AATA come pick me up because I was on the first bus route, and the buses weren't going to safely come that far in my neighborhood. So coming from New York City, it's a pretty amazing transportation system here in a different way. But again, if I knew the system better, I would ride it more frequently.
[01:21:42.09] JOHN HIEFTIE: Thank you for that. I realize it's not a question, but let me just say that we're working on it. In fact, a solution is imminent. We're about to unveil our new website, which will be accompanied by a mobile component, and in that you'll be able to pull up a map of whatever route you want to look at and see the buses in real time, so you'll know where the routes go, when the next bus is going to come, and it's going to be all, like I said, very real time. And so that should help navigate throughout the system.
[01:22:16.48] AUDIENCE: I just want to add a couple things to what the Mayor said about rail. Amtrak has taken over the maintenance of the lines through here from Norfolk Southern. Today, for the first time, I saw an Amtrak truck and crew doing maintenance work in the yard near North Main Street.
[01:22:34.71] And also, in that yard, there are presently eight privately owned railroad cars, two from Charter Corporation, which wines and dines their customers in the auto industry there in luxury cars. But there are also six cars from an organization which is going to be doing weekend trips to Chicago, leaving Fridays at 4:00 and arriving back Sunday early evening. This is in addition to Amtrak, using Amtrak locomotives and some crew members. So it's really exciting.
[01:23:10.40] Also, as far as the flashing beacons for pedestrian crossings, I live out off Plymouth Road. I travel that road a lot. And those beacons have been wonderful. A great help, especially when you get early evening around dusk, to see that people want to cross.
[01:23:33.75] One of the nice things about it is when you, as a pedestrian, push the button, that beacon comes on right away. You don't have to wait a couple minutes for the signal to cycle through, as you do at regular stoplights. So people use them. And the cars do stop, they do have warning. And I remember when the two young women were killed trying to cross the road, I think it was around 7:00 or 8:00 at night in the winter, by the Islamic Center, and were--
[01:24:01.13] JOHN HIEFTIE: It was--
[01:24:01.31] AUDIENCE: --hit by a pickup truck.
[01:24:02.76] JOHN HIEFTIE: --eight or nine years ago?
[01:24:04.05] AUDIENCE: Was it that long?
[01:24:04.90] JOHN HIEFTIE: I think it probably was.
[01:24:05.59] AUDIENCE: Anyway, it's just really a great investment at a reasonable price for what you're getting, and I'd like to see that expanded to other roads of a similar nature, too. Thank you.
[01:24:22.14] TIM GRIMES: And we'll have a question here and here, and then I think that's just about all the time for questions. But we'll take these two.
[01:24:29.11] AUDIENCE: I'm a frequent bus rider, and one of the things that I would like to-- information I'd to have is where the actual bus stops are on a route. And I was thinking that like on your bus maps on the web and the printed ones, if you could just put a little dot, I think the maps would still be comprehensible.
[01:24:49.04] MICHAEL BENHAM: That's the other thing is part of this process or this project that I just told you about, within the next couple of weeks we're going to be unveiling our new website. Those things that we use in our timetables now are called time points, and it's not all the bus routes. It's just specific time points. And that helps make the schedules compact. But on the website what we're going to be able to do is you can click on those and they'll expand to every single bus stop on the route. So that is literally weeks away.
[01:25:23.56] AUDIENCE: I have a number of questions, but I'll just choose two of them. And then I also wonder how I can address the other questions dealing with both bus and biking, which is how I mostly get around.
[01:25:34.49] But with biking, if the road has the lines across it, is that a place where cars have to stop? There's no signs, but there are the crosswalks things on it-- painted on it. Like there's one on Division right at Ann, I believe. And cars do not stop there.
[01:25:57.51] NATHAN VOUGHT: That is a marked crosswalk, and by law they should be stopping there.
[01:26:02.77] AUDIENCE: OK, thank you. And then are bikes included with pedestrians for those kind of crosswalks, or do we have to get off the bike to be a pedestrian for that?
[01:26:12.33] NATHAN VOUGHT: That's a very good question. And I think what the Mayor had said earlier in terms of the drivers are not expected to stop suddenly. For bicyclists, my suggestion is, first in response to your question, treat it as pedestrians in crosswalks.
[01:26:27.39] But a bicyclist shouldn't approach a crosswalk at 15, 12 miles an hour and expect that motorists are just going to stop and yield the right-of-way. I think this is where a little common sense goes a long way to creating that safe crossing for the cyclist. But they are categorized as an appropriate pedestrian user within that crosswalk environment.
[01:26:48.98] AUDIENCE: OK. That's what I usually do. I approach it, get off the bike, and then sort of push the front bike wheel out a little bit and wave my hand. Sometimes they stop.
[01:26:57.86] NATHAN VOUGHT: Hopefully, within the next five years when we revisit the plan that we will go further in changing the culture and you won't have to stop and wave, that the drivers will actually stop for you.
[01:27:07.93] AUDIENCE: OK. And more questions like that, where should I address them, both--
[01:27:11.48] NATHAN VOUGHT: I'll give you my business card.
[01:27:12.75] AUDIENCE: Thank you.
[01:27:14.08] TIM GRIMES: And I think that's just about all the time we have for the questions.
[01:27:18.62] JOHN HIEFTIE: Well, thank you very much for the use of the library for this. It's been spectacular. And, again, thank you for everyone that came, and to everyone that came to all of our sustainability forums.
[01:27:27.19] [APPLAUSE]
[01:27:34.72] JOHN HIEFTIE: And thank you, panel.
[01:27:37.91] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:00:00.00]

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April 18, 2013 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

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Sustainable Ann Arbor