Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Yeah. It's your mic. You turn your mic.

Oh, it's your mic.

I have a big mouth. Okay. I'm calling the meeting to order as it's 04:04 p. M. I also have Alderman Rob Savage in the pulpit with me. The pulpit, but in the in attendance with me. So first we have approval of the agenda.

So moved.

Okay, no changes.

Are you making any?

I would like to see if anyone would like to approve the agenda.

Okay, yeah, move approval of the agenda.

Okay. Do we have

to Yeah, second you second it.

I will second the agenda. So it has been moved and approved that the agenda be accepted. All in favor.

Aye.

Now we'll have our, the business and miscellaneous. Yes,

minutes. Could I move approval of the minutes from January 14?

Yes, you may. It's been approved that we accept the minutes of January the fourteenth. Can anyone second the minutes? Can we have someone to second? I can do it, right? Yes. Okay, I will do it. Okay. We're have the vote for the minutes? Okay, now we're have a vote on the minutes.

Aye. Aye.

Okay, the minutes have been approved. Okay, now we're going get down to business. At this time, we're going to ask Captain Thacker and Sergeant Wayne to please come forward for the speed camera program discussions, please.

Good afternoon, madam chair and alderman.

Good afternoon, madam chair, alderman.

Good afternoon. You may begin.

Good afternoon. Captain Thacker from the Annapolis Police Department. I know that we're here to discuss the speed camera program, the expansion of said program. At a very high level, I can report on two things right now. The law office is still in discussions with Red Speed and at this point I believe their attorneys as well.

Ms. And Ashley Leonard is representing here. She's been probably the lead representative from the city law office to speak to all of that. I've been following in-depth with a very long email chain back and forth and the discussions that are going on. The second thing that I can report is Sergeant Wang has a scheduled meet with city engineers and Red Speed, a representative from Red Speed on Tuesday upcoming, up next week, to go out to three of the locations that had been identified and we did a data analysis on. So Sergeant Mike, do have anything you want to elaborate on?

No. So we have a meeting set up for next Tuesday with Erwin Lanier from Red Speed and Jeffrey Wentz from Public Works. He's the traffic engineer. He's actually been helping us also with the location of three cameras. And the locations would be West Street near the library in that area, Tyler Avenue and Stephanie Lane area, and then Edgewood Road and Tallwood Road area.

Alderman Rob would like to ask

a question. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you for joining us again. Just a couple follow-up questions. I will get to Ms. Leonard. I saw your email. Took a quick read. I'm trying to find it again. But first, a few other questions. To the police department, I think, I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear everything. You may have said this already, but has this, last time you were referencing a speed study that still needed to be done for, I don't know if it was for the particular locations or a study for all the locations, potential locations at once?

Correct. So right. Last time I was here, we were waiting on our second speed study for these locations. So just due to the weather lately and with all this snow and ice, these they have to meet certain conditions to conduct these studies. Yeah. And there's no way they can conduct the studies with this, you know, with this weather. So Red Speed has agreed that, you know, with the first study that we that they conducted, they can use those numbers and we can move forward with looking at the locations of the cameras.

Okay. So they determined this study may not actually be needed at this point in time to move forward with which locations? All four of them or just

At this So three locations have been approved. So we're looking at West Street near the library, Tyler Avenue near Stephanie Lane, and then Edgewood Road near like Tallwood area, Brakewater Drive area.

And I think the other one

So the right. The fourth location we were looking at was Duke Of Gloucester out here. But the numbers were very low, very low.

It's kinda what I heard might be the case. Alright. Just make a note. We should probably let Alderman from Ward 1 know. But I'm very glad to hear we'll be able to move forward with Edgewood and Tyler for sure because I know I of course, gotten a lot of complaints about those roads.

So excuse me. So that's good. But that does hit on one of the points I wanted to bring up as far as contract, and this gets to email from miss Leonard. And so just summarizing, paraphrasing what I recall without being able to find it right now is that there are a lot of details in the contract that are confidential. So the entirety of the contract can't be shared because we were getting a request, I think, from the transportation board to see a copy. I guess have you let them know or should the

committee I have not reached back out to the transportation board yet because they had a lot of other specific questions. And Red Speed is reviewing those and hoping to get answers back, but I was going to do a comprehensive answer to them at that point. And I would probably copy you guys as well, this committee as well with those answers.

Yeah. Great, yeah, please do. But some of the big picture questions I have, and feel free to speak up if I'm getting too specific, I'm sure you will, would be, so we did express some desire to have, as a council, some more control over where the cameras go. I'm glad that they're mostly going with what we were recommending as well. But is there anything in the contract that could be changed?

Just like if, for example, if we passed a resolution with some locations that we really wanted to have speed cameras at. And I guess don't get me completely wrong because I do think the decisions need to be backed by data, right? And I do think the report is valuable. But I guess could we ever get in a situation where the report shows that there are Well, guess thinking out loud, if a report does indicate that there are enough violations, enough speeders, right, to warrant a camera, presumably there would be enough justification there to install one on the part of the contractor.

Yeah. Mean, keeping in mind that we we're paying the contractor service fees, so some of it will be somewhat subject to what the city can afford Yeah. For the services and how many spaces are there. As for a resolution, that's always within the council's discretion, keeping in mind that it would have to sort of be subject to sort of an internal review of what is feasible, what the system would work for, things of that nature. Of of course, you are within your authority to suggest locations So as

I guess part of it seemed to come down to the cost mechanism. And I get that at least somewhat that may be confidential as far as how much money they can or what percentage is

Yeah, they of these companies consider their pricing models confidential, which doesn't mean we couldn't potentially share it in a more limited fashion, but I'm not sure we could share it at a full public committee meeting or an advisory board meeting. But that's one of the questions I have asked to some extent, and I will let guys you know when I get feedback.

Yeah, and I, you know, maybe a closed meeting of some kind might be, but warranted. Guess the

And keep in mind that we're currently negotiating possible price changes. Right, right, So we might want

we have plenty to deal with. We don't need to be involved in those meetings. But the bigger picture is that I would, I wanna make sure we get to a point where, well I guess the determination I think as you alluded to in your email is gonna be the department if you feel like we need to get an updated contract. I think there are some benefits to putting it out to bid, but then again it sounds like some of the equipment is technically considered theirs?

All of the equipment is theirs. So with these companies, if you were going to put it out to bid, you essentially be switching out I believe my understanding is you'd be switching out the systems, the software, the equipment. So if you if you switch to a different vendor of some sorts, you would essentially be resetting everything up and everything else would have to be removed from the current vendor. Not that it can't be done, but there would it would require a little bit more coordination and probably time to get, you know, a new vendor up and running.

Has there been any dialogue with any other potential vendors just to see if there would be a reason to put it out to bid again to get a better deal or better features? I don't know.

I'm not aware of any, but that doesn't always include me until later on in the stages. So I'm I'm not sure if procurement or the police department has looked.

Yeah. I guess it's gonna come down to the police department and finances. I mean, this I would not be surprised if this question came up during the budget presentations because I do know the chair of the finance committee is also keen on the camera program. But just as far as how we handle those costs and yeah, just I don't we don't know the budget as well as you all do in the department, but I think the council would definitely be supportive if you felt like there was justification to because it's a very old contract.

It is. It's a very old contract. I mean, and that's part of the negotiations right now is that we need to do if we're going if the decision by the department is to stay with this vendor, we do need to do significant overhauls to reflect not only the passage of time, but also state laws that got passed in 2025.

Oh, right.

So there's there's a host of things that need to be addressed.

Okay. And I do have in my notes for the meeting the letter from the transportation board. But I you know, we just received this too, so I haven't really fully digested this. But they are asking about revenue split walk away fee.

Yes. And I think I believe I passed most of those questions along to Red Speed. We might not be able to give them a complete detailed access, but Red Speed did indicate that they might be able to provide some information. From a legal standpoint, an advisory board, not that they don't need the information, but it would be harder to keep that information confidential Sure. Than it would be to be in behalf of closed session with

counsel. Is there anybody here from the transportation board in the audience?

She's on

Oh she's on her way, okay.

Yeah, but that being said, to the extent I can share information and Red Speed authorizes me to share information, I'm happy to do so.

Yeah, yeah that's understandable. Now I was just asking because I think it'd be good to know exactly why they're asking, what they're looking for. Is it just efficiencies or some other specific improvement recommendation from the board?

I'm not sure, to be honest.

Okay. Alright, well I think that's all. Did you have any, that's all I have.

No, don't have any questions at this time.

Okay. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we would like to have Marcus Moore and Jason Prolo please come forward. Transportation department update. Jason? Jason, Yes, Jason. No. Just yeah. Oh, just one?

Yeah. I'll call him up. Alright. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon, madam chair Johnson and committee members or Alderman Savage. I'd like to give you an update on a few transportation things going on in our department. And also, we'll have coming up with us our representatives from the two parking contractors. Jason Perola is the market president for premium parking, deals mainly with downtown.

District Ward 1 Districts 1 And 2, and senior operations manager, Mr. John Kemp of Metropolis has the rest of the city. So what I'd like to talk about first some good news, our magenta shuttle, the free magenta shuttle that comes around downtown that operates daily, we're gonna do a little bit of a reroute on that starting on or about March 2. So if you can kind of picture the route as it's coming down Duke Of Gloucester making the left onto Saint Mary Street, a left onto Compromise. Instead of making that left going up Main, it's gonna continue down Randall, make a right onto Dock, a left onto Craig, a left onto Saint Prince George Street, back left onto Randall to back up.

What this will do is help the businesses of the downtown City Dock area. There's about a dozen or so to see that they are open. There will be one stop on the corner of Dock Street and Craig Street. And this bus runs every day. If you need the actual schedule, can kinda detail it here. Monday through Thursday, 06:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. Friday, 06:00 in the morning until midnight. Saturday 08:00 in the morning till midnight, and Sunday eight until 8PM. And we're really hoping that that will really help those businesses even if someone doesn't get off the first time. But it connects all of our garages, and they can see that, hey, Latitude 38 is open.

And the other businesses like Bowen Biddy's and Pits Sandwich Shop and all. So I think that's a win win for all of us. Mr. Jason Perola will give a little snippet of some things that we're working on for the downtown business or residents of Annapolis, but it's on some work for downtown that we'll be sharing a little bit of information with you. Alderman Savage, think, know, coming back to you with the question that we started last month with the AVL.

We still we were hoping to have heard back by now. We have not heard back from St. Mary's County. So the department is still currently waiting for St. Mary's County transit to decide whether they'll utilize the remaining quantities or release them for our use, and we need 19. Remember, this started with Hartford County, then, you know, Saint Mary's got some. So if we don't hear back from from the end of the month, we'll just start moving on on what we need to do. So what that means is preparing a separate RFP for MDOT, MTA's review and concurrence. This will serve as a contingency plan in the event we don't get what we need. There's a lot of economies of scale if that worked out with Pasio, as you know with the county.

There's no reason why we can't have our own standalone with Pasio, but it would make the whole procedure or process of you know not having to go through RFP a lot smoother. But we will continue working to that effort for the remaining of this fiscal year, and hopefully we can get that all squared away for you know a lot of July 1 startups. Before I invite our parking contractors up to discuss what they have, are there any questions that you might have for me?

Alderman Savage.

Thank you Madam Chair. Yeah, good to see you again. Good to Director Moore. Alright, so great to hear on the circulator. Think that's a great idea to extend it over there to help out those businesses. Also thanks for the update on the AVL. What was it? Did you say it was Carroll County?

It's actually Hartford County where it started, but it's St. Mary's County. See if they're gonna utilize the rest. And as we talked about how our RPs go with like a bus purchase, x amount can be used, and if they have some extras you can just piggyback on that actual contract. So the request was made through Howard Howard Hartford County, not Howard, Hartford County who directed us to Saint Mary's County, and we really thought we'd heard by now.

Okay. So I think I've asked you, I've talked about this with you before, but just to clarify. So do you have a dedicated marketing person or team in your in your department?

We do not. And I think that that was a discussion at the last transportation board meeting where they were sending to you recommendations for that. I've been with the city for ten years. No one's we have not had that position since I've been here. I'm hearing around the 2010, 2012, somewhere around there is when we lost it. A couple administrations ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I do thinking back to some of the conferences we've been to together and especially the bigger systems seem to have quite a bit of marketing to help drive ridership. It just seems like it'd be a good idea for us to think about with, if we wanna, as a committee, we're always welcome to make recommendations for the budget. Maybe Right.

Yep.

Keep that in mind as we move forward. I mean, we don't have to give it too many details at this stage, but

I think when the chair, miss Tyra, when she comes, I think she might have the talking points or the drafted letter of recommendation to present to the full council.

And I'm trying to find my notes here. A couple other transportation questions. So, let's see. So we got, you know, so in last year's budget, you got some one time use money set aside to look at the potential for getting some kind of study assessment to see if we could do a circulator in connecting downtown through Eastport to Forest Drive and Edgewood Road. I'm trying to remember I'm trying to look up, do you know off the top of your head where that is in the process as far as

Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up because I was gonna talk to you offline as we had that discussion last Thursday at our first town hall meeting in Ward 7.

Yeah.

You had a series of questions that spread itself throughout some of the agencies. We had two specific, the one that you're speaking of now, and we wrote back the responses asking for a little bit of clarity. If you haven't gotten those, I can have those sent directly to you. But our acting city manager was gathering those 25 or so questions that you have, and sending it all together as one packet. So if you haven't received it, I can make sure you get that. If not this evening, definitely tomorrow.

I do have some of those. I'm trying to find them now. But my point is, I would love to sit down whenever the time is ready with you or whoever with the department just to talk about what the intent was with the budget amendment and with the with the study. Mhmm. As the primary sponsor, I'm happy to provide any kind of details you may need.

That would be very helpful. And as you brought it home with last week, just sharing what's going on with Carr's Beach and all and seeing what your thoughts were, And then working with the county to do other things that have come on our radar with other transportation things and what our TDP has outlined. We'd love to have that conversation with you.

Great. And could we get, the chair is interested too, I would love to see like, I suppose maybe another presentation on the, what do you call it, the Jitney, the electric cart in Eastport? Just to get a better understanding of myself and I think maybe some of the new, the committee members may benefit too. But just to get my head around where that jetty is operating, when it's operating, because I think last time we spoke it was like a seasonal transportation system and running only partial hours. But I'm curious just to see again, I just want to visualize in my head, but also learn how you think it's been operating, if it's something that you think we should continue with, or seek funding to expand.

Yeah, so those are the kind of things I'd

like to Yeah, get go ahead. You through at

some

You brought that up because that too was a pilot, and Calvert West School Street State Circle has been widely successful of connecting that garage or the three I should say, Calvert Street, Whitmore, and Gotts Court. The Eastport won less of success, and it might be time to really look back and get some ideas where we can try it next. Seasonal because there's no HVAC in there, and as far as the battery life. Some may, like we couldn't run it now, we wouldn't have been running it for quite a while. But the battery life, you know bringing it from our location, you may get about six and a half hours kind of thing.

And if we plug something in for you know conditioning the air, you just start draining the battery even more. So we tried some standalone stuff that was marginal at best. And I know we sometimes think, well I'm only gonna be in there five or ten minutes, but the driver's in there for seven hours. So, you know, just like a bus. So you gotta make sure that, you know, the temperature is ambient temperature is conducive to somebody being in there. But I'd like to hear some other thoughts on what we can do with the e sports. Maybe it's time to look at another area.

So now didn't have you used those electric jitneys anywhere else? No. Just e sports?

Not other than, you know, a parade or something else moving around, but not on a route to try somewhere else. Remembering it's a low speed street legal vehicle, so you do want to keep it off some areas like Forest Drive, you know even Bay Ridge Road, Bay Ridge Avenue. You know, good downtown kind of thing. So we really need to keep an eye on what, you know, it's fiberglass. We've been bumped into twice, so you know what a bump will do on fiberglass alone. We had no injuries, but just property damage.

Yeah. And the other question which you may recall that came up, I think it came up at the town hall I did with the mayor, but asking about the people want a bus service to the high school. And I know that doesn't fall shouldn't fall solely on our shoulders, but I just wanted to see if there's any what your thoughts were on that? Any update? Any potential for partnering with the county on

Maybe we can. I can talk to my counterpart, Sam Stead in the county. I think he's already reached out to Anne Arundel Public Schools. They will not allow a bus on their property. You just intermingle with all kinds of stuff. I did not know he's reached out to that. That is where he turns around, which is called the heritage turnaround on Riva Road. That's about as close as you're gonna get unless I'm not sure about the swim swim club. But I would like to, you know, revisit one of the members, the newest member appointed on the board, Feenus, has brought some white paper together to take a look at. And Sam and I are more than willing and able to meet with them, maybe at their next call, next call.

But it'll be good to really bring those parties together because we all have a shared interest in this. Not just the county, city, but you know the school system. Collaborative efforts, we love to do it. Know with money we can get, you know we're there going now because that's what we did. That was the yellow route that went from the high school, excuse me, from the mall. There might be another way to do something like that. But one of the things with MTA charter, even though, excuse me, federal FTA charter, charter. Even MTA bus system in Baltimore, which is the thirteenth largest in the country, they can't have a service just for a group of people. Meaning senior citizens, students, not for hire, you know, free or for charge. It has to be for others.

So we could still do that by making stops along the way. It can't be to go from here directly to the school. We we have to take the whole community involved in it. But there's ways to do that.

I'd be selfish. To say, my day job office building's right there.

It is, yeah.

Get lots of county employees who could potentially use that service too. There's still a bus stop.

Yeah it is. That still goes through, that was our old yellow route that goes through the mall to goes to the Heritage Turnaround. That still runs when we did, I think it was Monday through Saturday. I'm not sure. I have to check the county's website. It's probably the same times. We ran it every on the hour. And then 2018, this county took over that one in the gold route, was our longest going to Anne Arundel Community College, to Edgewater, the Kmart.

Yeah. Some of the county buses do come into the Heritage Complex to do a turnaround. Yes. So there's plenty

of room There's a lot there. Yeah. They're they're move on or move. I forgot their slogan, the green ones.

Now, so who did you say reached out to?

Phenis. I'll send you the information he shared earlier this week or over the weekend asking for a meeting.

And did you say Finneas put together a white paper too?

I thought he did. Let me go back and look and see exactly what he sent. But he wanted to further develop his thoughts.

Yeah, well now is certainly the time to approach county on some kind of because again, especially, I think it would strengthen our argument to say, look, yes, the school district is county. Right?

Yes. School. But

but the county employees, I mean, don't know how many 100 are there in those buildings. Yeah. There's the school board right next to it as well. All that development and parole, like so it seems like we'd have a pretty good argument for the county to include this in there. Maybe director Sneed is already thinking about it.

He he might be. With all the economic development on Riva Road, you know, it's just growing. It just makes a lot of sense that, you know, it's connecting with, you know, jobs. Yeah. With all the stuff that's here for our city residents. So it only makes sense, you're right.

Alright, so we'll I guess put that on the list for updates. Thank you. I think that's all.

You know, bring it to the next meeting.

When do you think we should check-in with you for an update?

Which one? The e cards or the school?

The school bus.

Let me see what I can do between now and then. I can get back to Caitlin and just you guys to see what we have for the next meeting which is March what? If not March, it's clearly April. March 11. March 11?

Yep. Yes. Okay. Let me see what we can do. If not that clearly the twelfth. That'll, you know, you know, April. April is the eighth. But let's shoot for March.

Yeah. I'm gonna add that on my own list because it I mean, I I know you probably can't get into too many details. I'm not asking for details at this point but I would love, I'm looking forward to hearing what you're proposing in the budget but that's just something I think that committee might need, wanna think about is if we need to find a way to fund a bus for the kids.

Yeah.

But the county would also need to be prepared to budget for

it. Right.

Alright. Yeah that's all I

have. We're gonna ask Mr. Kim, Ms. Rolo to No, come on

not right now. You did good. As always. Good evening, you may begin.

Gentlemen, introduce yourselves for the record.

While he's getting ready there, my name is John Kemp. I'm with Metropolis or SP Plus.

Hi, Jason Perolo. Thanks for having us. Market president for premium parking.

Do either of you have at present anything to present on in particular?

I do have a deck. I'm waiting on the tombstone flip here. But thanks for having us back. I think it's been since September since we last sat together. So happy to be here.

Oh, it's not plugged in. I didn't realize that you used a different computer there. My apologies. I hope she's not running across the street. Save me already. Okay. Just some largely operational updates. Just some f y i's and things that have happened over the past few months. I haven't gone all the way to September. I really focused on mostly December and January so far.

So snow response and coordination. Obviously, Storm Fern was quite the interesting one and a bit overbearing on the the region. We really focused heavily on entrances and exits at first, followed by pedestrian paths with the roof prioritized last. All of those have been cleared. The roof was done.

If I skip down one bullet point further to the weekend of the seventh, largely one day ending arguably a bit late in the evening, which we're working with the vendor on. There were some challenges even pretreated surfaces with the temperatures for such a sustained period being so low. Certainly bonded to the surfaces, and that took some work through and some constant salt and revisiting to get that knocked back. And then last, we do have some meetings scheduled between a few different parties to kinda walk through some service area scope challenges as things have changed over time, which Marcus and I are, I believe, hoping to schedule next week. And we can follow-up further if there's changes there to anything.

Elevator and EV charger status. All elevator or all EV chargers are operational minus one. That one has been out for a significant period of time. We've talked about it in the past. The part is still on order. Our apologies for that. It is outside of our hands. We are actively managing this and we will hopefully provide positive updates soon. We've had no substantial or repeated elevator issues whatsoever over several months. I think we're hitting six or seven months at this point of that being the case.

We do have calls here and there, but nothing significant. And then there is a high level there and outside of our purview, there is a review of the EV chargers that are currently there being done that could include up to a change in what types of chargers are in the Hillman Garage and potentially even how many. I can't speak for others on that, but just an FYI that we are aware and those that we report to are aware that we have some challenges with those that are significant and repeated. And so that's being looked at. There's about four fifty gigawatts of managed solar and EV charging under what is now Boyd Waterson.

And so they want to look at this at the highest level for all of their assets that they manage before they make decisions. That's what's happening now. I will, without going into specifics, say that I am aware that they have found some people they've been enjoying working with and that have put forth things that they're excited about, How well that scales and what kind of timeline that would look like, think is what they're talking about now. And that's what I have there. MVA, DMV integration and mobile LPR.

We started working on this in October. A lot of emails and phone calls, most of it unresponsive sort of fault on into a black hole. We were able to escalate through the chief administrator of the MBA through the state of Maryland and get progress. We are essentially ready to to make this happen at this point. There are some more sort of red tape to navigate.

I'm actually gonna chat with Vinod who's in the back here later about some updates there that he might have as well that'll help us push that forward. As soon as that's done, mobile LPR will be in place. There will be a timeline of course to get that done. But it is already built and integrated into the platform. So it's just a matter of procuring and installing the tech. Not much else there. Programs and promotions. This is just a light one. The holiday season was wonderful. Second year in a row, it went really well.

No systemic or patterned issues that we saw whatsoever. Any negative experiences that we heard about were one offs. Typically they were handled right away and the parker left happy. We do have and I can't talk too much about this, but a new special parking pilot program that we may even hear about as soon as tomorrow. As of an email I just got five minutes ago, we'll be fully implemented on the platform.

Name is even pending. I just submitted a few ideas to get the naming part sort of some momentum behind it. But excited for it and to see what comes of it, what kind of data we can collect once it's in place. And I'll just end with December and January occupancy. Really happy with what we see midday, weekday still continues to be where we're really seeing the the majority of demand and revenue enter into the garage.

Surprisingly high weekend volumes and occupancy levels throughout the month of December. A lot of that really ties to the free parking for the the holiday shopping program, if you will. And then in January, Monday through Friday really looked the same, and we were happy to see that. There's a little bit of a drop off on the occupancy levels, and I think we can attribute a big part of that to the end of the month with storm winter storm fern. And and it certainly see the drop on Saturday, Sunday where we tend to have our tourism retail and dining folks join us. That's all I have other than questions.

May I, Madam Chair?

Go ahead Alderman Savage.

It's interesting that Thursday at six to nine is the peak out of the week. I kinda just assumed it

would be Friday or Saturday. Yeah, it's always higher than normal. I think you have that that transition of you have the the downtown employees that are still around and maybe out for drinks or dinner on a Friday and Thursday. Both of those really happen. And then right now we're in session. So I think that has a multiplier to it while we're in session as well.

Although the December, that was before yeah. Because then when you get to January

Yeah. December

Thursday is no longer the peak. For some reason, Thursday was the peak in December. Maybe it's because of is that Midnight Madness on Thursday?

It it is also. I was gonna say we also have Midnight Madness on Thursdays in December on top of the two hour free holiday parking program.

I mean that's it looks like that's really it's interesting. You can really see that uptick. Yeah. Because the holiday

I mean when you walk around on the street, could there's a lot of people out. You could see people are coming down to participate.

But overall, still plenty of capacity in there. So, what was I gonna ask? So did you, by chance, get copied on there was a email from the transportation board.

I saw it today. It came in, I believe, late evening yesterday. Yeah. Saw it today. I haven't you know, I'll have to follow-up with you. Okay. It it all seemed very pragmatic and reasonable. I don't know how.

Yeah, they were just trying to get an understanding of some of the how the reserved parking works. If it's static or if it's adjusted. Kind of the gist of it.

I had a talk with Boyd Watterson as they worked through their EV and solar project. Part of my feedback and consult to them was there is no EV solution that provides sort of a full stack of managing EV. For a long time it was subsidized and so we had it installed and they left. And even getting, as we've talked about relentlessly over the last eighteen months, repairs and parts has been a challenge. So that's a big focus of what they're kind of looking at, as they look at this on their end.

And so I don't want to not look at what the board sent and consider it and see what we could do in the meantime or forever depending on what they decide. But we'll go through it and follow-up and happy to even communicate back and forth on that before the next

meeting. All right, thank you. So do you also have any of the utilization rates as far as the two hour code or even the how do people use because I think Sunday we have it's free, I think, right, for intended for churchgoers.

Yeah. I don't I can send it to you tomorrow. I I really focused on sort of bringing you up to speed on what's happened since September, especially with a new group in your seats. And and so this can be tailored back into whatever we pick from the fresh start, And I can share that tomorrow. It's already pulled, it's just not included here.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have, madam chair. Thank

you Alderman Savage. You have any more concerns? Do you want to tell us any more information?

No. If you think of anything between now and the next meeting, just send it to Marcus or I or both and I'll follow-up with you.

For coming out today. Thank you. Alright.

Yep. Yeah. John Kemp, Metropolis.

Thanks for

having me. I don't have any slides today. I'll make sure I bring Alderman Savage in in the last session was had seen a lot of the similar statistics, and we'll update those for the Gotts Court Nighting Garage, Park Place Garage data. One very important update, which was advocated heavily for last year by Alderman Savage, so thank you, was the transition from the need for residents who benefit from two hours of free parking at any Annapolis facility from requiring a physical credential to process that that validation. That's now been automated and it is tied to their license plates.

It's in. It's live. And we folded residents into that. We'll be working with with Mitchell to send out some communication. You know, I don't know that it would be get to more you know, it'll certainly be a welcome thing. I'm you know, we know that for sure. But as far as attracting new residents, I mean, any resident who's made aware, it'll be a good it'll be a good refresher to Annapolitans who perhaps moved here since the last few times. Any any sort of communication on free residential parking has been made. But now folks don't have to do anything. So they'll just register with us as they always have, and they'll get the benefit just by driving in and driving out.

So that's a really exciting development. Yeah. You're the only city in America who's who's got that sort of

a program.

That's very wow. That's great. Thank you. And is that something that now that premium is gonna be more connected with MVA, is that something that you could incorporate into your technology?

Yes. I won't speak to timelines and product. I think Adam, our CTO might be upset with me. But yeah. Behind the scenes I think that tolling, if you will, is coming. It's been in the platform for years. And I won't go into why it's not something public facing. But as that happens, yeah.

Okay, thank you. I'm trying to think of know I had some other questions, but thank you.

Sure. Yeah. As I said, I'll bring some some more statistical info to dive into in our next the next time we gather. I will just say anecdotally, you know, it's session. At least up at the garages, Gotts Court, of course, is a bit closer to the State House.

It's absolutely packed every day right now. That's similar to every year I've been here. And I will just say anecdotally during Midnight Madness, to me this was clearly, I was here for well into the evening on both the first two, and the occupancy was much higher this year compared to last year. I think maybe I don't know if the weather was a little more cooperative, but not sure. But it was certainly great to see.

Yeah, that's good, very good. Yeah, and one of the reasons why I'm asking for the same thing to you is some of the data on presumably you'll still be able to track how many residents the two hour. Because what I'm getting at is that at some point, I'd like to be able to put a dollar value on that.

Sure. We can do that too. We'll include that in our data.

We haven't had a larger conversation with director Moore's group and others about how to, and the council really as far as are there different pricing from a transportation planning perspective, are there other pricing mechanisms, other things we should do to encourage people to use the bus system a bit more for some purposes? Because I know there is a cost to us having the two hour program. Sure. You know, again, just thinking out loud, I'm kinda thinking in my own head is like, do we wanna tweak that seasonally or keep it standard all year? I get during the holidays or in low periods, it may make sense to have that in place.

But right now, it's just static. Right? Two hour.

Yep. You know, you've got geography matters perhaps in this case, and you've got a terminus of the circulator on the western side of town. And perhaps there's a carrot to be placed out there for folks to really make the choice, you know, or at least think about, let let me make the choice to go here and I'll circulate her down or walk.

Yeah. Yes.

We've seen that work and we've seen that work when we've put together so typically, would in the past here and commonly around other communities, Less communities and more commercial properties who are seizing on the opportunity for when an attractive event is occurring in a particular place. Think the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. When that comes, the commercial properties will happily enjoy the bump in rates, you know, because folks really wanna, you know, go to that event. So conversely here, one of the ways we've helped mitigate mitigate traffic downtown, I wish even more so, but but certainly there's been some mitigation of congestion downtown is by turning that on its head and making attractive pricing, you know, too good to pass up pricing further to the West, keeping vehicles out from downtown and filling up the circulator or walking up certainly when there's good weather. There's probably more opportunities for that than have been taken in the past.

And I think that's certainly becoming known by people, but I'm trying to recall, do you have signage up on, like, West Street as somebody's driving in, they can actually see

There was in this case.

Prices kinda going up as they go in.

Not prices, but there was in the case of of Midnight Madness on the board. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

But there are certainly a few other ways to go about making sure that that's communicated, you know, as much as possible. Certainly, if we're thinking outside of holidays, thinking outside of Midnight Madness, where that's really a citywide, you know, everyone's participating in that sort of a thing, where you've got other events that might attract folks, The communication coming directly from those event organizers is really powerful. And so where the opportunity is to market that, there's certainly channels. The event organizers have the greatest power power in those cases I think. Yeah. Thanks.

Thank you.

Adding to my degree. It's very difficult scene.

Marcus, there is a halo there. I mean he's a nice guy, but.

Alderman Savage, do think there's some fun conversations we can have about those maybe closed door though with that idea.

Yeah. Yeah, and just talking, thinking out loud here. Yeah. That's where I'm going long term though is. I think that's all I have Madam Chair.

I think that's all we have for today unless like you said there's any other questions or circle back. But I'll send the information as requested to you guys by tomorrow morning before noon. Thank you for having us.

Well thank you for coming out.

Thank you.

And I will see you next month. Director

Moore, I don't know if you have content information for the transportation board chair.

I'm sorry, say that.

Have you in touch with the transportation board chair?

Oh, have not. What we got what I got from her earlier that around now is 440 to 04:50. So it's, I don't have a number for her.

Okay, I wasn't sure.

Yeah. So we want to hang for five minutes, or just give it till 05:00. It's five of now.

I'm sure I can think of some other questions

to ask. But

I No, I don't think we need to We can always I'll hang out for a few minutes and have a chat with her.

Let's just wait five more minutes.

Okay. Let me see I can

see,

we can just

that might be her.

Okay then. That concludes the meeting.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

And I second it. And thank you all again. Be safe. Until we meet again.