Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Our recreation and parks department to be able to do some at Pit Moyer and some of the other places. And last year, I did a demo at the senior center in the Bates Complex that was really successful, and everyone was really excited about it. So I appreciate you all's time. And if there's any questions I can answer, I'm happy to do so.

Are there any questions for my colleagues? Go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair. Sarelle, thank you so much for joining us in this wonderful presentation. My two questions are, one, do we have a timeline on the West East Expressway yet? We do. We have

a timeline but it's it's constantly moving. And part of it is because we have we our lawyer who helped us acquire and and work with land some of the landowners to get, you know, ease proper easements and all the legality done with that, what ended up happening is some of them were kind of absent, some of the the landowners, so it took a while to reach them. I would say for we, we installed the sign and we had the symbolic groundbreaking. I don't know if you remember that. That was but it's supposed to happen any any day now when we first start breaking ground.

You know, we're still working out some contractual things, but all of the framework is already established for that. So I feel like this is a senate hearing where they don't answer the question. But in short, it should be in the next it should be sometime this year.

My second question, and if you don't know the answer off the top of your head, that's fine. I would love to get something written out. These infrastructure projects take a frustratingly long time for all

of us.

Yes. Some of that's financing, some of that's negotiating with private property owners is what it is, federal law, financing Yeah. Property rights. I get that. Some of that is our own city process, and some of that city process is code. What could we do in the code to streamline these projects?

Okay. Well, I will tell you. In the bicycle master plan, one part of that is being able to, for lack of a better word, advocate for that level of change in order for it to happen. We attempted to do it in the last administration, but a lot of it, as you all know, happened like rapidly, and we were kind of building the plane as we were flying it. So in short, I would say I can provide a series of recommendations.

I can draw them from the bicycle master plan, but I also have a little bit of framework that I can grab from some other areas, some of my, you know, colleagues in similar positions, for instance, to county to find out their process. But but you're absolutely right. I mean it is it you know, it is time consuming because with everything there has to be a study related to it and that's usually what takes a good deal of time. Alderman Schandelmeyer, to answer a part of your question, we do have a an RFP that we've I was on the review committee that we've already gone through, which is pushing forward our safe routes to school programs and some other things and drawing down money for that. So, you know, so I think that will kinda expedite a little bit of that process because we'll have our own like relative framework locally as opposed to drawing off of Anne Arundel County or the state of Maryland.

Excellent. Okay. But but I'll I will provide some recommendations.

Thank you. And just anything that we can change locally that we control on this level, I definitely want specifics on. Anything that's required by the state, I'd like specifics on because we can go and at least ask, hey, can you help us streamline this? We might not get it. Yeah. It never hurts to ask. And then the feds, you know, the feds we might as well just yell into the wind. Nothing we could do about them.

Yeah. I will say one really good resource that we have is Eric Leshinsky because he's done so in other municipalities but he's also, he's actively trying to navigate ways in which you know we could cut some of the red tape in terms of getting some of the and you probably already know that but but he's you know he's you know I work with him and he's he's quite adept at you know figuring that out.

Thank you sir. Okay.

Alderman Savage.

Thank you madam chair. And thank you so much mister Ralph for joining us today. And can I say about bike to work day? I look forward to biking to work with my fellow Ward 7 constituent and colleague, the director. Uh-oh. We need to get the bike share program set up.

Yeah. We'll get a bike. You know, we'll get a bike.

You can borrow one of mine, Marcus.

Actually I know another director who's in Ward 7 that has a whole garage full of bikes. But in any case, I'm really glad. I know you're somewhat new in this position. It hasn't been too long, but I'm glad that we have you in this working on these. I would love to see the goals that you if you could send those to us, that'd be great to see.

Okay.

And I love the symposium idea. And let's see, I'm gonna try to go a little faster than I normally would just because I have some place I need to get to soon. But so as far as the bike, the 2011 bike ped plan, you know, think for those colleagues who may not be aware of some of the background, I believe this is the plan that was put together by your predecessor By Ian, yeah. Banks. Because we had a position like yours. So again, this was like twenty years ago, whatever, fifteen years ago. Mhmm. And then and that was under a different director. And then I think we had a new director. That position went away.

Mhmm. And we haven't really done it back until a year or so ago

Yeah.

When we created yours. So so that plan the 2011 plan was great, but it kinda went into a black hole because of that. We lost the staff person who was heading it up. We lost the director. So we didn't really have a champion. And so, you know, I'm glad that we we will get one, you know, and you will be able to champion that plan. Because it it laid out a lot of things. The plan called for a lasting transportation program that was integrated with the the county and the state. It called for annual meetings of, I think, of their the work group

Mhmm.

That set it up. And, you know, I haven't even had a chance to look at who was in the work group, but that work group was supposed to identify things they need to get updated in the plan as far as projects, improvements, the routes, all kinds of things. And we just haven't I know I know both you and mister Lushinski have been working on parts of this, but at least from my mind, think it'd be really helpful. And think of it, maybe we should reconstitute that work group in some fashion or utilize the transportation board to help support you in that effort. Because I think it does need to be a group effort.

And I'd really like to make sure that this plan is able to be continue in the future. Because that's one thing I know we've worked a lot on these issues the past few years, but we don't really have it collected in, at least not that I'm aware of, that we can really visualize and show to the public, well here's really our plan. These are the improvements that we're looking at immediately. And some of them are pretty easy in the plan. They were like putting up signs.

Mhmm.

Putting paint on the road. Those things we should be able to get done really quickly. And I don't know if we need and plus we have that that Alderman Shannon might be able help me with it. But we have a CIP project for, I think it's safety improvements, traffic safety. Yeah. And I think we did specifically call out in that CIP that it

's supposed to

be used for these kind of bike, quick build bike projects. And so as you get your head around that plan and and what you're envisioning as far as your own goals, I think please do keep us posted as far as if you need additional resources. I think a number of us would be more than happy to try to track that down. I'm trying to figure out different funding mechanisms for this infrastructure. But if, you know, in the short term we need a consultant to help out with various aspects, I think we're certainly very open to

Thank you.

Kind of prospects.

I appreciate that. And that, know, luckily the RFP that that we're getting ready to to put out into the world, I think, is is gonna help with aspects of that. It's I think we've already identified the contractor that we're gonna use. So so hopefully, the plan that they come up with can be integrated into this and and will greatly help me with a work plan.

Is that the the mobility plan that

Yes.

Mister Leshinsky's working on?

Yes. And and myself.

It'd be good, madam chair, if you and the colleagues on the committee, if you're interested. I would love to hear about that plan from mister Leshinsky. Don't know too much about it.

Yeah.

My what I do know about it is that it it seems to be very much broader. I think this bike plan is more of a deep dive than specifically biking, but it does touch on other things that you mentioned. But yeah, I think that'd be important to hear about as we figure out what we want to fund in the upcoming budget. Yeah, so I guess if we could we add that on the list to follow-up with. And then, yeah, so I would love to also see more of you if you're, if directors willing, I don't know if you think quarterly or something or at least a few times a year.

Yeah, on

things you need. And I'll just end with something about the bike share program. Would this include, cause I think I've so in in the past when we've heard from you and I think the director, it's been an issue has come up as far as we're not attracting too many people, bidders on this because the market is just relatively small, at least when you look at just the city. Right? Is that accurate?

In a broader sense, yes. The good thing is with the RFP we do have a lot of vendors that do universities and colleges. And so I think what's gonna be most conducive that that you can kinda overlay is let's say the vendor who does University of Maryland College Park. They are it's numbers wise and size wise, it's more conducive than let's say, you know, which is what you're saying. You know, let's say, you know, Bird is Bird is used to markets like Washington DC, Baltimore, New York, and stuff like that. And so, yes, what we do is we wanna attract some of those other vendors, but they are out there.

Now is the county joining us on this effort?

So per some other conversations we had when we found out we were running kind of side by side tracks, Tanya Asman and I have been talking about being sure that we're combining scopes. And part of that is because is exactly why you're asking, which is it makes no sense that our scope and our geo fencing would end right at the county line and then there's a different vendor. So what we're trying to do is kind of move alongside. But I think what they're doing, what she said they may be doing is allowing us to do our process. And then if the vendor works for them, there may be an opportunity to for them to do the exact same thing on their side.

If I could throw out an idea, because this is what we did with the streetcar feasibility study, which is running it through the resilience authority.

Because Mhmm.

Obviously, as you mentioned earlier, one of the reasons to get people out of the cars is because of the climate emissions and whatnot. So it is directly related. And plus transportation sector is our largest sector for greenhouse gases in the city as well as the state. Mhmm. But so perhaps maybe we could end this to the director too.

We have a conversation with the Resilience Authority about maybe they could be the vehicle to pull our money as well as the counties and do an RFP from them. Because to your point, it really seems like it makes sense because people are gonna wanna take this out right on the wee trail to go out to the mall or the hospital, right? Mean people I'm sure who live in Bay Ridge or Hillsmere may wanna also jump on this, right? Use the bike share. So probably makes sense to

I think that's pretty innovative way to use the resiliency front because there's only so much storm water infrastructure you can put in. And I can think of nothing better to address the problem than cutting it off at the source.

Yeah. Okay. Well thank you. That's all. If you could maybe talk with the director about Yeah. See if that might be something that'd be feasible.

Yeah. I'll certainly follow-up with you all and provide the answers to the questions that Alderman Shandomar have. And I'll and whenever you need me to come back to give updates or to flesh out some of the some of the other things, I'm more than happy to do so.

Alright. Thank you, mister Rao.

Thank you all.

The chair may have questions for

you. I did. I did. So the bus buses hold the bikes on have bike racks on them?

Yes.

And how many bikes will you they allow on the bus? I think

it's three. Only three? I think it's three, yeah, at a time.

Are gonna be increasing them since we if we get this

Per bus. And but, you know, people they the odds of people 10 people having a bike at the same time and putting them on the bus are at current pretty low. Not a lot of people utilize that. In fact, we we had talked the director and I had talked about, you know, promoting and doing, like, videos to let people know. Because some people may not know that all the buses have have bike racks on them.

Right. I

didn't know. Which is awesome, you know, if you if you think about that. It's it really is a good

That's good to know.

It's a good amenity for the city.

Okay. Alright. But just keep us posted. And I really we really appreciate you being here today, mister Rowe.

Thank you. Thank you very

Enjoy your

day. Okay.

Next on the agenda is ID 5526, potential bus route serving Annapolis High School. We have mark mister Marcus Moore here. Yep. Okay.

Good afternoon, chair and members of the transportation committee. I I know you're pressed for time. I will, kinda share with you quickly, but not too fast, information about, the new bus stop on the counties. It's their number 207. It used to be our yellow route.

Where it actually goes, when it started, and the like. But we have both of our parking contractors that would like to present, and I have a few things too, I know Alderman Savage has a pressure time. So what I can do is on March 2, which was a Monday, the county added another stop at the swim club. And what this stop does is bring the students just a little bit closer. But they stopped at 2662 Riva Road, which we call the Heritage Turnaround, which is right nearby, and there's a cut across to go to the school itself.

I had presented to you last month saying that school would not let us on their property. So this is still the swim club is not really their property, but they're not allowing the county bus to go two times a day. At 08:30 in the morning and also at 03:30. Because to get out of there they have to go around the school and go out the same way the school buses do. Intermingling it'll be a bit of a challenge.

However, the stop will still remain where it already is, less than 50 yards to the side of it. But that stop is there. It's a step in the right direction. It doesn't completely solve the problem. Alderman Savage and I will be talking about some of the essays that came up for this fiscal year, FY '26, about studies.

Our TDP that was approved by you guys last summer talks about a forced drive corridor and East Port circulator. So we want to develop these ideas because a lot of our services go back more than twenty years. Slight changes have been made along the way to make it a little bit better. And if I can use a reference point of our 2019 TDP, it talked about looking at a micro transit. So in 2024 we did.

It cost money. So where we are, I talked about last month, I don't wanna go too deep into it unless you questions, we're able to get the technology, which is the iPads, and you know, we rent the software, no one's gonna sell it to you. And also get everything set up for this, and we have enough money for thirty six months. And we're halfway through that. So in FY 2028, we'll need to look at our micro transit and how it's operating if we want to keep it or expand it.

So if I can give you a quick brief on it, what this did was remove two underutilized routes. It was the orange route that went Monday through Friday and it transversed Robinwood, Bywater, all the way down Spa Road. This route did not go to the mall, and it did not go to Eastport. It ran Monday through Friday, the ridership was really low. Monday through Saturday in the evenings from seven to 10:45, we had something called the purple route, which picked up everything that we did.

And the purple route also encompassed the yellow route, which we did. The yellow route was all in the county, and that's why the county took it over in 2018. It didn't pick up what we did with the gold route, which went from Edgewater to Kmart all the way down to the community college. So that was underutilized. When I say underutilized, sometimes you would have two buses out there for the purple, we may carry 30 or 40 people, and sometimes a 100.

But two buses for three and a half hours with utilization. Because it ran the whole route. It was on a headway of more than an hour and a half. So now with the go time, if you're going that same place from the mall, and you wanna get to by water, you'd make all those stops along the way. Would take you twenty some odd minutes. Now with a few people, so you still should ride. It won't be as long. But one of the things we look at ridership, it is more costly or as costly as ADA. See ADA is a curb to curb service which we're required to have because we have federal funds. It costs twice as much as fixed route even if you are a senior.

So $4 that service covers it. With the go time, it's the same rate as our fixed route. It's the way to go, but it's expensive. But it's the wave of the future, and we do really need to realign. So I look forward to upcoming conversations that talk about what we can do with Eastport Edgewood Road because we're gonna be developing Cars Beach.

And parking is gonna be pretty much at a premium, at limited basis, on how we get people back and forth. We need to look at Forest Drive and partner with the county of things that we can do. So looking forward to that, but I can definitely present you with the actual schedule of what the new bus route what it does, and it just shows you the schedule of where it goes and all. But we can revisit that, but if I may go into my presentation and answer any questions you have and come back to whatever it is that you might have. So for the record, which I don't know if I did actually say, I'm Marcus Moore, director of transportation and parking.

And you've already heard from Mr. William Rao, our bike ped micro mobility coordinator. But along with me, with my presentation, you'll also hear from Metropolis, Jason Kinney, the senior manager, and Brianna Denton, the facilities manager, and with premium parking Jason Perola, the market president, and also Brianna, excuse me, Megan Murray. She's account manager. They have some things to follow-up from the last time we spoke and try to answer some of the questions that we have going along.

So if I may, one of the things we talked about last time around was the automatic vehicle locator, the AVL system. And as I mentioned, it was our hope to piggyback on an existing contract in the state that we could use the same service that the county is using, which is PASIO. Not to say we can't, but we decided we're gonna go our own direction and get an RP of our own, which will be put out. And who knows, PASIO might still be that winning bid. And as we discussed in previous meetings, this technology of course will allow us to track the buses in real time and improve the monitoring of on time performance and provide a more accurate arrival information for our passengers.

In addition to that, the system will give our operations staff better data to manage service more efficiently. So the request for proposals are underway, and once we have them we'll be evaluating them. And our collaboration with the county really makes a whole lot of sense as you talk to mister Rao about the scooter situation. That will be the same thing here. Another thing I'd like to talk to you about, and you know, stop me along the way if there's questions about that, but I'll definitely have time at the end.

But I wanna talk about the magenta shuttle because also this past Monday, which was the second, we've added that extra little loop that I talked about last month. So that's really helped out and for a variety of reasons as I made mention. Even if people don't get off at the first go round, remember this service connects all four of our garages. And probably the other ones too because it's nearby Whitmore, not too close to the Calvert Street garage, but it's free. And as I mentioned before, Monday through Thursday from 06:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night, Friday 06:00 in the morning to midnight, Saturday 07:00 in the morning to midnight, and Sunday eight to eight.

So even though we have an inventory problem with parking downtown, this does help out a lot of the employees of local businesses. Maybe not all of them that restaurant or closing that bar, but we do have some options that we're working on that can hopefully make life a little bit easier. And along with that, at the work session we had on February 23, we're asking about other programs for employers of downtown businesses, the Park Shop and Dine. Those programs do still exist, and the further out you get, the cheaper they are. For Gotts Court Garage, a local business will make contact with SP Metropolis, and if they enter their employee or they themselves enter between twelve and six, they would pay $5 and they would have to be out by 06:00 in the morning.

Night garage is $3 and still between twelve noon and 6PM, $3 out by six in the morning. And the caveat is Park Place. It's $3 come anytime out by six. And the bus stops there. That's where the very first stop of the bus, the magenta shuttle is. It works out pretty well. Another question you guys answered, I think I answered almost all the questions you had from that work session, but I think there's two that were still out standing. Why was the ridership so high on a Tuesday? And it is the court. It is the circuit court when the jurors are reporting.

You'll see that spike there. So one of the other things we talked about a little, or maybe we haven't come into that season, we have two EV carts. They're called gem carts. And I know, chairwoman, you don't like abbreviations. Global electric motor cars. It's a gym. It's an e six. Six just means six passengers and not counting the driver of course. The one that we have that is well, we have two that are operating during fair weather. The fair weather would be in the next couple weeks all the way through sometimes October, November.

So we were running in the area of Eastport and the Calvert Street. Calvert Street does go down West Street, Church Circle, School Street, around State Circle, Maryland Avenue, Prince George Street, College Avenue, St. John's and back. Free. Remember the battery operated, there's no HVAC.

We try to do some aftermarket stuff. If I plug it in, I get lesser time. The best time I can get is like seven hours. And remember, you know, trying to get the bus back to our location to charge for the next day, I can only do it about six and a half or seven hours. So ridership in 2025 for that route that I just made mention of was just over 950 people.

Remember, Saturday and Sunday. Eastport, a little longer of a route. In fact, I'm sorry I didn't jot down exactly where it went, but it started all the way down at like bread and butter, 2nd Street and Severn Avenue, all the way to Eastport Shopping Center, Monroe Street. We had just over 400 during the same period of time when one ran, the other one ran. So the good news is what we want to try, because this is a pilot program as well, in a couple weeks, I want to say clearly by the Easter weekend, but maybe the last weekend in this month, I want to say it's the twenty eighth, we will put these fully electric carts back on the road.

And what we're going to do with this other one, it's going be a pilot, and I'll give you a map of it as well. It'll start at Church Circle and go down School Street around State Circle. It'll hit Cornhill Street, which merges into Fleet Street. Fleet Street, they'll be able to make all the way down and make a left on Market Space. They'll come down to Main Street, make that left around Memorial Circle, which is Randall, and also hit City Dock.

So make that right, it'll hit City Dock, Craig Street, Prince George's Street, Randall. It'll come back up around Main Street, and then it'll hit Gorman. And it'll go up Gorman, make the left onto Conduit, a right onto Main, back to the circle. We really think that'll help even folks that are at the top of the circle to be able to get back down to City Dock. And remember this is a pilot program just to see how this works out.

Hopefully we can run this as long as possible. When I say fair weather, if it's really really hot, ambient temperature, people say I'm gonna be there in only five minutes, but the driver's there for seven hours. I can only give them so much water. And just trying to keep them comfortable. And because of the flooding, I gotta be careful of that too. But we're trying to look at the businesses downtown and what we can do to show that we care, to show that we're working on some things to take a look at. So we talked about the high school, but I wanna entertain any questions that you may have before I ask our parking contractors to come up. I will stay up here with them. And in case it comes up to you later on, I'll still be right here.

You can go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair. So I wanna talk about two things that you brought up. One was the parking program for downtown employees. We you went over some of the several generous programs we have for each garage. It gets more expensive as we get closer to downtown, which makes sense. That's just how prime real estate works. Can you repeat the costs of each? Sure. And what I failed to do was talk about Hillman. Hillman's got a program

too. Friday, Saturday, Sunday is really busy, especially good weather. So there's a program Monday through Thursday. It's a $110 for a monthly subscription that they can work that through premium parking. And I know that doesn't work out well for a wait staff or anyone in a bar because you may not work four consecutive days, but if you can share it, you know, because remember your subscription. In all of our garages, yours per subscription, you can have up to three vehicles in there, only one in at a time. The second one's gonna get a ticket. So So a

$110, just average that

out thirty days a month. Yeah. Seven a day if you want every single day?

$3.06. Three? $3.66.

About four days a week though.

Okay. Well, if we do it I was doing seven days

a week. Can't be used Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So it's just Monday through Thursday. That's the program we have right now. So it comes out to be about seven. So you're close, but just four four

days a week.

$7 a day to park in Hillman Garage is an offer and a benefit we have to downtown employees. So we've been getting some emails recently from folks saying that we don't offer affordable parking in our downtown to local employees. Businesses just need to reach out to us and And find

out how they work. Yeah.

We are very happy to help accommodate. But can you repeat those other ones which are even more reasonable?

Yeah. Because those are a lot better because, you know, you can you use it you pay it for it when you use it. So let's go back to Gott's Court, 25 Kelbert Street. Under the management of premium I'm excuse me, under management Metropolis, which is SP, it is $5 for their their shift because they're they're probably not gonna work past 06:00 in the morning coming in at twelve noon. You come in between twelve noon and 6PM any day, and you have to be out by 06:00 in the morning the next day, $5.

You have to sign up through the establishment, so it will be the owner of the business or the manager of the business reaching out to Metropolis. The second one we talked about is similar. It is Night and Garage on Colonial Avenue. It's $3 for the same parameters in between twelve noon and 6PM, out by 6AM the next day, same price. Park Place wide open, $3, come in at any time but still out by the next day.

How do we know the next day? Because we have the they have the LPR system and that's how they'll register to validate that employee of the local business. As they come up with me too, you might have some, you may need to peel the onion back a little more, you might have some more specific questions, or they may fact check me to make sure I said everything is absolutely correct.

So for reference point, if someone with that deal parks in Gott's Garage for twelve hours, that is 42¢ an hour. That is very affordable for Gott's Garage which is less than a mile from the waterfront. Anyway, why noon though? Like let's say there's a retail employee that has to come in before that or there's a brunch shift where you have to get at 10AM. What can we do for employees that have to be in there? Do we have ways to deal with that, or is it we encourage them If to go to Park

they were creative, all of our meters are two hours. Maybe they have to move it by $3.25 $6.5 I know it costs more than the whole rest of the time. Or in the garage, the folks behind me will be able to give you the exact cost of the first hour, hour two to three, three to four, it might be cheaper that way as well. But thinking outside the box, there might be a way for that. Maybe that's anomaly, not sure, you know, for somebody coming in at two hours before that time, you know, they're probably still getting off in that calendar day at ten, eleven, or twelve.

Maybe not after midnight unless it's some big event like Saint Patty's Day. We hope to keep the bars open, the restaurants open a lot longer.

My second question is regarding the go time. I don't remember if I asked this during our first meeting, but I used go time for the first time back in January and I was very impressed

with it.

But one issue that we had was I for some reason had it in my head. I guess it's because we had hyped it up as similar to Uber, ordered on the app, just go and stand on the spot that I could pay for it through the app. This was wrong. Luckily I had $2 cash on me. So we were able to take care of it.

But do we have the capacity to find a way for someone to input their credit card information into the app itself to start paying for it? I think if we're really starting to aggressively push GoTime as this wonderful service, that can improve compliance, especially if we wanna make it as a competitor for ride which I personally do. Right. The Gen Z

crowd, I mean I'm not that young

man. I'm still a millennial.

But putting thing on Apple Pay. So not only with that one, but the rest of our service. As we grow our service and we improve our service that's been around for the same way for more than twenty years, we need to look at other payment options. So not just GoTime, but others. That's come up not a lot, but some.

How can I pay other than cash? You know, because the parking allows us that you can prepay for the garages, and these guys can talk to you about how that works. Not necessarily reserving a space, but you're prepaying for a space if the system will allow it based on availability. But that's something, Alderman Chandelmater, that I would think that we wanna look at. It's gonna be a cost to be able to do that. So not just with GoTime, it would make a

lot of sense with the other services that we have too. I personally think that would be worth the cost to figure out and incorporate directly into the GoTime app itself. Unless you come back and say it's like millions on top of millions of dollars, then we'll adjust from there. But I think incorporating that convenience can really help encourage more people to use GoTime. Which goes into my second question on people using GoTime.

I was at the gym, there was a Monday around 03:00, and there was a fellow who was trying to order the GoTime and he couldn't. It wasn't being offered at that time by the Pitmoreer Rec Center. Apparently it's only offered past a certain hour. Do we have plans to expand it to more frequent service beyond after I think 6PM was the kick in time?

That's a good question. And as I made mention of the areas served, like right now, it's replacing the orange route. So using the parameters that the orange route never went to the mall or Eastport. So within that three quarters of a mile, a mile of where that orange route was, it'll say no service available if you're around that period of time. 7PM to close 10:45 or all day Sunday or a holiday is covering the whole city.

So during the day, it was that orange route that we removed. So I would have to look at the coordinates and remember my geography of the city of Annapolis as to Pitmore, 275 Hilltop Avenue

Used to have an orange route stop. Sorry? Used to have an orange route stop.

It it does. It does. So why that didn't pick up at that time, I'm not sure. If it didn't ever work, it's it's always good to call the (410) 263-7964. It's our dispatch office. I'm having problems with the app. Can you tell me what's going on? I'm not able to book it on my device. Because what you just gave me at 06:00 in that location, it should have been able to book the trip.

They were informed when they called that that they couldn't pick them up until six. I don't know if this was a misunderstanding on someone's part, which it happens, but

Offline if you'd like, if you can give the date. We got the time, the date, we can definitely check it out. I'm sorry to hear that, because all things that I'm looking at right now, that should have worked.

It was a rare Monday I got to work from home, I was able to get to the gym. I can't even quite remember the exact date, but sometime in February. Thank you, mister director.

Thank you mister Alma. Your turn.

Thank you madam chair. And thank you director. So a few things. Going back to high school bus question. So the route the changes you were talking about, correct me if I'm wrong, were made by the county.

Excuse me. Can you help me out, please? Thank you. Sorry.

So the route changes that you were talking about in the new bus stop at the pool, was that made by

I got it.

Was that a change made by the county route?

Yes. That was by Anne Arundel That's Arundel County.

Their yellow route. Right? Yes. So has, but that so when I looked at that, that doesn't actually cover the city. That route does not go well, partially see. It doesn't go down Forest Drive, which was the main concern of people.

Right. As I made mention, that was one of the routes that we had that stayed all in the county. So that's why we wanna look at some of the other initiatives that you've supported with SAs. This is this bus or this route was the same route that we ran that's all county.

Okay. So well, guess because the the concern I've heard from people, you know, so they want the the kids on and off of Forest Drive and, you know, around that area to be able to get to the school, to and from school for after school activities. But they also similarly want the parents to be able to have the ability, who again may not have car availability, to be able to use, get on a bus and actually get to the school to participate in their activities. And so the county route doesn't address that because it doesn't go down to Forest Drive. So I'm wondering what are the are the options?

How can we get coverage? Do we need to get can we get a fixed route during, you know, morning rush hour, an evening rush hour, just for a few hours? Or is there some other option that you have in mind? And where's the the school district on this conversation since it'd be?

Yeah. I haven't gotten with the school, but that was one of the things that you made mention or we discussed about the four strive quarter of just making that a little bit more robust. Because we got a lot of economic development going on going on on Riva Road that would only make sense for us to look at that for other jobs of folks that live within the city. To make those kind of change, we would have to kind of I'm sure we'd have to have public hearing. That will change some of the routes of how we are connecting.

At the top of my head, it could work how we divert one route to do something, one of the buses on a specific route to do something different. But we'd really just have to look at how we would need to do a change like that with requesting, you know, what are the steps for that?

Yeah. Okay. So is that what you're saying? You would need more time to develop some of the next steps?

Well, yes. A a few things. We'd need to develop what we're gonna do. You know, are we rerouting a brown or red, clearly not a green, to do something like that, and how does that affect connections for other services that we're connecting to currently, and what are the requirements to provide this type of a change even if it is a pilot.

Is that something that be done by the department or a consultant?

Both. We can actually look internally what do we need to do with MTA, or what are the rules that we're required to do when we make a change to a bus route, and how things need to be posted with public comment, and for how long we make that kind of a change. Adding a stop along a route like they did, that was pretty easy for them. It's an existing route. You know, it's along the way where they're going.

For any of our routes to go down Riva Road, even if we say it's only a half a mile during certain times of the day, and getting caught up with other traffic because you're looking at control devices of getting to certain places and getting back out. May not seem like long, but it could add anywhere from twelve to fifteen minutes, which is throwing a whole route off. We really would need to look at a whole route of what we wanna do. Part of the TDP talks about that. It's a whole another color.

A blue route to do something similar that can connect with the county or make a connection directly. One of the things we can't do is for one group, as we talked about before. A group of students, a group of seniors, a group of whatever it may be. Any organization, any transportation entity that gets federal funds, you can make stops along the way, and we can do these kind of things, but you're not gonna be able to have a route that's gonna go express. Okay. Because that now you're a charter.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I guess that's one reason why I think we need to pull the the county in. But I mean, the school district. But so we have a lot of people making this request on us. I think all three of us have constituents that are impacted by this. And so I'm just trying to get an idea of expectations on our end, but also expectations of our constituents. So what is what's the next step, and when when should we and they expect to get some updates on that?

What we, you and I, what we can do is try to set up some virtual meetings in the next couple weeks to see what we need to do. I can do some background research so when we meet and we can figure out how we need to go about this, and what kind of timeline we're looking at. I would honestly say for the next meeting we should be able to come back with some realistic time frames of what we need to do, and we'll be able to work backwards from here's the goal, here's what we want to do, and how do we get there in the time it'll take, the avenues we need to take to get there.

Okay. That sounds good. And the other quick request would be, do you have a visual yet, a map showing the the electric JITNY routes? Actually,

I do. And I'll bring that up with you. One of the things I know they can't see on on those who are watching virtually, we're having these signs made as a test when we talked about it at the last work session of the council back in February 23. It says, family parking only. So, you know, if you got a family of, you know, I'm still a family with all of my older friends, older members, but we're really trying to go towards those that are in strollers and hand walkers kind of thing.

It's an honor system. We're gonna try it out in God's Court with a couple a couple spaces once the signs come in next week or next week. We'll be able to report back to you. It's just a pilot, and if it works well, we might try it in other places. It's something similar to what you've seen in grocery store parking lots in the mall reserved for.

You know, expecting mothers or just families with children. I mean certain things are new. Then because of COVID, they have all these stalls that if you've called in here, go to Stall Number 5 so we have reserved places that they can bring the things out for you. But I think this is a good step in the right direction with the things that we're going through with, you know, Gotts Court and all of our areas that need work, elevators, mechanical things that break down. I think I made mention at our 20 work session that we had 11 handicapped spaces and nine of which were van accessible.

I was reminded or corrected that we have actually 22, and nine of them are van accessible. So we can take away some of those to do maybe three spaces there just to try it out. Work continues with Techmark to get that circuit board fixed in the Northeast elevator. Talked to planning and zoning of what needs to happen for the permit to do the work. Parts have been ordered.

We really, really hope to get that one up soon. The other one, the whole design and build it, made mention that a local architect firm has been awarded back in January, and they're two or three months to get the design. Another RFP will go out to build. But that's ten months away, maybe nine months if we're aggressive. But that'll happen towards the end of this year. Then we have others to do like in the Knighton Garage, and then of course one of our facilities where some of our offices are. We're dealing with all those at once. We got a little bit to work through that you'll hear during the budget deliberations.

Thank you, that's all I have madam

chair. Thank

you at this Can

we finish or do what? Are you finished?

Are you finished? No. Oh. Well, go ahead.

I'd like to have mister Jason Perilla, the market president with Megan Murray. They have a brief presentation to provide you. And I need mention we have Metropolis. They have a presentation, so we'll continue on. Then I think you have transition board.

Okay. Hi. Jason Perola, market president for premium parking. Thank you for having me here. So I have a short deck here for the last month since we met. And I'll just kinda go through that with you and take any questions that you have. Current status of elevators and EV chargers, all but one EV charger are working. This is sort of a repeat of last month's update with a small caveat. We finally received the part that we've been waiting for for many months, and it was installed. The issue was that as that was installed, it enabled us to find out that there was another part in the charger that also needed replaced.

So once we had power flowing through the device, we found another fault and that is unfortunately on order. I wish that wasn't my update on this, but incrementally closer. Unsure what the delivery time is on that part at this point. No elevator issues. I think my note right now is we need to replace some of the Braille buttons inside. They get ripped off nearly every weekend. We're out of inventory and are placing an order on those. And then no updates from the partner in the concession with future EV strategy. I don't expect one to come anytime soon. I wanted to leave that in here for now.

But they are looking at EV and solar at a high level. They manage about, I think it's four fifty gigawatts of power around their book of business. And so we'll provide further updates when and if we receive some on that. At this point on the dmv integration through the mva, right now I believe it's actually with Marcus to look at with IT. The integration is via a FTP server.

If you're familiar with those, it's a very archaic old file sharing format. What it does is looks for a replace or changes in files and then it uploads and replaces new files and downloads changes from the other side. Right now the MBA has a system or policy in place where you have to have or you're allowed to have one administrator account per entity, the city of Annapolis being one. Gonna work at the high levels of kind of saying, hey that's a bit restrictive and prevents this being simple. This is of I think at home at my office computer I could set this up in fifteen minutes and we could have this ready to rock.

Right now we'll have to work with Marcus and the tech team to figure out how both of the parking operators could have access to it without sharing each other's parker information, things like that. Don't know what the ETA will be on that. These are relatively low lifts but probably a lot of more red tape around them than anything. But we'll push through that and see what we can learn. As soon as that's done, mobile LBR will start to happen as well.

We'll either procure or release. We have the pricing and everything set up for both with whatever we do. And actually have a really big improvement on the platform side on our mobile LPR and read rates and things like that that are exciting. And it's now moved to a continuous video that reads and has about a 99% read rate on accuracy as it drives down the street. Which is good.

It will help us with very limited staffing to be a bit more efficient with the enforcement that we do out in the field in between all of the one off calls and things that we serve throughout the day. Beyond that, this is just a quick update. Our February mystery shop score. This is kind of the norm we typically run between 97 and a 100%. I think our lowest over the last year was one that was 85 or 88.

And most of that one was actually just a misunderstanding of the scoring and items. I think there were two deliverables we were able to walk away with and make changes to on that one bad one. But that is the most recent one. The one before that you can see at the very bottom, the two middle columns you can see the one before that for January was a 97.3. And I believe we lost points on that one mostly because of the storm and snow and things that were happening.

This is a fun one, programs and promotions. So we said there was a pilot program on the way and couldn't say much more. As of last month's meeting, at this point we launched the Gold Pass this week. We put the PR out on Friday with the mayor's office. That has been I was worried that we wouldn't have a big user base or a big interest base and that it would fall to the wayside.

And we've had a really good it's had good energy so far. We're only a few days into it. We've had over 60 applications in the first day around mid afternoon. 39 have fully completed the registration process after the first forty eight hours which would be yesterday. And there's probably interestingly enough, maybe another 50% of this would be an increase in demand for people outside of the city that are not residents.

Which is something we'll continue to monitor and take a look at. We want to it's interesting that it was marketed to residents, but we're getting non resident interest for this. This is for 62 and older, hence the Golden Pass name. What this does is it allows people to park at any meters in the city. So that was a last minute change.

It includes Maryland Avenue which I thought was a great inclusion and last minute change. And then if the inventory is not available to them, it also will work in the home and garage for these folks. And that's just to make sure. We didn't want to offer something with a paid program and then not have them be able to get access to it. The real original genesis of this was to, with all of the city dock project and malls parking, to allow elderly to park in front of the store and not have to make quite a walk.

Unfortunately since all of that parking does expand all the way up to market space, there's very limited inventory on Main Street and it's also probably the highest demand street in the city to park on. So that lets them access Hillman, but also kind of have an easy way to access it. Think of it as almost a monthly pass that expands into the metered areas, if you will. And then our occupancies. So January is a repeat from last month's.

You had this data and I want to keep a couple months in this as we go through for future meetings. And not just have one with no reference point to what's happened prior. And then January, very interesting. This is winter storm Fern and the impact we had with all of the free parking for residents in the garage throughout January.

So it's full because of the winter parking?

Yes, and with that volume of snow there was a lot of issues with dirty lasers. So these are laser counted vehicles mixed with reported occupancy from the app that users can also report. They're blended and weighted. But yes the majority of this, some tech issues with the snow being plowed over the sensors and then not working at all. Resetting the counts every day.

And then also just salt and things like that kicking up onto them with all of the wet weather that we had. And then a very expanded compared to normal period where we had the residents in the garage as we worked through the ice. I was shocked to see it, but it made sense once I stepped back and thought about this when I was looking at it. And this is the validation program data. To follow-up with our last meeting, I've added the dollar amount.

February being the most recent and the third square at the top is the February dollar amount of free parking given to residents through the two hour program. Below it you'll see maybe I'll change the font to a little less gray one next month. But below it is the January amount as well and you'll see it better displayed further down below also. And so we have the free two hour resident parking and then you also have the park shop and dine for the last two months in this. And that is what I have, but love to take questions or have conversations.

If I may, one of the things that we're learning along the way, we'll make sure you guys get this information that you can look through before the meetings. So we're now always sending it out to you after the time. So apologize for not having the printed material in your hands prior to the meeting.

And I'll take ownership of that. I had no mobile signal on my cell phone all day and spent half the day fighting that. So I was unable to send it to Marcus early enough to get it in your hands. But we will do that in the future.

Okay. So that's the end of your presentation? Okay. That was great. You're give us copies of it or you have

to send them? We will send those out. Yeah. I with the tech issue I had, I couldn't get them out earlier today. We'll follow-up with them in in the future. Make sure you get them prior to us sitting down.

Going forward, we'll make sure you have them prior to. But all the presentations and things that we've given. Because I think Will also had an issue with what you were seeing and what he was reading from. Right. So we'll make sure those are all sent before the end of the week. Preferably tomorrow, you'll have everything Thank at the

you. And thank you for coming up.

Of course.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next, you'll

be hearing from mister Jason Kinney, senior manager with Metropolis.

Good evening. Thank you for having us. My name is Brianna Denton. I'm the operations manager for Annapolis Parking Metropolis.

Thanks. And I'm Jason Kinney. I'm the senior manager for Annapolis parking.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. So I had one question from the last time that I'm aware of and we will get to that at the end of the presentation. It's part of the presentation but everything else is just occupancy for the garages. A little breakdown there you can see the total visits, where our biggest stays are. The two to four hours seems to be the biggest.

You know the the most amount of stays for this is for Gott's garage for January, and then this is just a little heat map that shows you visits per day. And you can see how after the thirteenth kinda picked up a little bit during the week. We tend to be busiest Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday during session. This is February. Visit counts are up a little over 2,000.

And again two to four hours is like the biggest group of visits but you can see the four to eight hours has really stepped up since we're in the middle of session. Did I miss one? Oh and your heat map for February's visits. And this is the night and garage for January and your heat map. And you can see how the snow really affected everything.

No visits on during the snow. And your visits for February, again that two to four, four to eight, the biggest the most amount of people are staying in the garages for transient parkers. And there's your visits by day. And I'll fix this for next time because I just realized that that doesn't have the days of the week on it. I think February 1 was a Thursday.

And then Park Place. And you can see Park Place, have some longer stays, not many, but six and seven days because of the hotel upstairs. There's your heat map. Well, it's not really heat map but your visits by day. And then February,

a

18,494 visits for the whole month, And that's the visit breakdown by day. And then you'll see the twelfth and the fourteenth. The twelfth was the peace walk when the monks came. What? And then the twenty sixth was a small business symposium that was held at the Westin Hotel.

So we did good those two days. And this is your this is the number of citations that was issued by month by garage. And then of this number, 218 were adjusted for first time infractions. So when somebody gets a citation in the garage for the very first time, instead of the whole thing, we reduce it to what the cost of their parking was. So if they were there for two hours and gots and didn't pay and left, you got a citation for the $6, then we reduce it to the $6.45.

So they pay the their parking fee and the service fee and then now they're signed up. Now they'll never get another citation.

Is Park Place so high because we're guessing the hotel and just out of towners not knowing the process?

We're still like this is higher than it was at the end of last year. So we're still kind of investigating that. I think a lot of it is that we don't understand. We get a lot of that in the appeal process.

Because

getting nearly double of guts and nearly quadrupled. My numbers are rounded obviously here but there's pretty substantial differences.

But it's also three times the size too.

Yeah. Park Place has 1,140 spaces.

GOTS. About twice the size.

Yeah. It's about twice the size of GOTS.

So if we account for that would that all I guess even out I suppose? A little bit. It

is a little bit higher than last as he mentioned. But it is always a higher number than the rest of the facilities just due to size I believe. I do think that we're working with Vinod on some things that might help alleviate some of those issues. But we are still currently investigating what the cause of those are.

Interior signage way finding inside the garage. And then last, this is your validation usage for the garages. So 206 residential QR codes were used for four hundred and twelve hours. And then the residential automated QR or validation, we had 12 of those. And then the business is 3,458, and that's a mix of park shop and dines, bed and breakfasts.

Some people do buy full comps for their visitors. That's included in that number as well.

That also includes, and I need to correct that, employee validation usage as well.

Ah okay.

I just realized that doesn't. But those are included.

And then what you the residential automated, we now have the ability to add residents to a group like a like a membership, and they don't have to scan a QR code. They drive in, it recognizes their tags, it automatically applies the two hour residential validation, and they drive out. So and we are slowly, it's the numbers are small right now because it's new and we're slowly transitioning people to that option. That's all I got.

Anything else? No? Well thank you for coming by.

Did you guys have any questions?

What's going on at the garages? Great information and it's just gonna take time but we'll get there.

Do you have any questions for us?

Do you have any questions? No. No, not Thank you so at this time. Again. Have a

good evening. Thank you

very much.

Marcus, you're done? Are you done? Okay, have a nice day. Okay next on the agenda is ID 1226 transportation board update. Afternoon. Is chair here today? Miss

Tara Ashmore, chair of the Annapolis Transportation Board. I have not much to discuss or actually nothing but this is the opportunity we had mentioned bringing Zoe Johnson to meet with you all so that you could get to know her. She is the liaison from the Naval Academy on the Transportation Board and she's really quite knowledgeable about transportation and all things with infrastructure roadway work being done in Annapolis. Welcome.

Thank you chair. Well welcome.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here madam chair. Holden, Brooke Schindelmeier. My name is Zoe Johnson. I'm the community planning liaison officer for the US Naval Academy and Naval Support Activity Annapolis. And it's been my pleasure to sit on the Annapolis Transportation Board for six years. I looked it up this morning. So it's so I've seen been been in several administrations with the city, but it has been very informative. And I've it's been very useful for us to continue advocating and being a good neighbor to the city of Annapolis. We are not an island at the Naval Academy.

We depend on community resources both on the city of Annapolis side here on this side of the Severn River. We sit within the city of Annapolis. And on the other side of the Severn River on the North Severn side, we we do our coordination with Anne Arundel County. And so I wanted to take the opportunity, Tara, know mentioned at one of the last meetings you asked if if I could come and kind of share some of the things we're working on and how we're working with the city and kind of what some of our interests are and why I continue dedicating my time to to participating on the transportation board. So just a kind of the kind of high level issues that we're interested in with regard to the Naval Academy and continuing to support our mission in in in in you know, in concert with the city.

We have a lot of special events. City has a lot special events. We have a lot of general traffic congestion issues throughout the city. I like to say in any given Friday, we've got a lot of traffic backups. But throughout the city, I would think, I would say that we do have you know some serious congestion issues.

And so we are continuing working and exploring ways at alleviating some of those congestion problems through infrastructure upgrades, traffic single upgrades, better planning preparedness for evacuation and response planning, and a lot of special event planning around navy games, boat shows, miscellaneous festivals, race run these these foot race routes that are, you know, the the three major running races that we have. Another one is coming up on on March 21. So the other thing that we're very interested in in continuing working with the city on is public safety, including infrastructure projects for both pedestrians, bicycles, but also roadways. Our midshipmen, you can see them recreating, you know, throughout the city, but you can also see them doing physical training and and their running routes. They don't always stay on sidewalks.

We encourage them to stay on sidewalks, but they do run throughout the city. So improvements for bicycle and pedestrian, you know, projects we're working on both right, you know, there on Route 450 in King George. But we're also supporting other upgrades to pedestrian and bicycle safety routes throughout the city, recognizing that our our employees, but also our midshipmen you know are utilizing those same resources. And evacuation route planning is something. There are only three major evacuation routes out of the city of Annapolis.

We sit at the Naval Academy kind of on the corner if you will. And so we're very dependent on working with the city's emergency management office on making sure that we have good communication and planning when it comes to evacuation. So with those kind of high level issues, I wanted to kind of just give you a kind of a few projects that we're working on just to kind of showcase the kind of planning and preparedness and project execution that we're working on in concert with the city. Right now we do have we're working this

is

a project that's being led by the State Highway Administration with Department of Transportation funding, which is the Route 450 Kings George Street Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Improvement Project. Alderman Schenelmeier mentioned that projects take a long time unfortunately. We've been working on a project there, well initially a sidewalk improvement project in 2016. We're ten years in. We sort of switched that project to the state highway came back in around I think 2020 and started the first feasibility study of doing a bicycle and safety improvement project.

So moving from just sidewalk upgrades to looking at options for both bicycles as well as a shared use path. They started with seven alternatives, and it's a very complicated segment of roadway. It's basically what they're called infrastructure retrofit project, where you have to try and figure out how you're going to expand a roadway, put in new ADA compliant sidewalks, put in a shared use path, look at options for in road bike lanes, off road bike lanes, and what can you fit within that existing infrastructure. So process really, we went from seven alternatives down to three, and now we're down to one. And it's moving forward in terms of there's a commitment by state highway administration to see that project through to 100% design.

And we're a little still not not firm on the timeline, but they are working towards a 100% design. Yes?

I'm sorry. Can you repeat what it's moving forward into? I I missed that word. You said it was moving forward into and then I I missed that.

100% design.

Design. Okay. Thank you.

With a commitment for funding by state highway administration. But this includes a large stakeholder planning group. The city participates. The county by AAA as well as state highway administration. Then it is all at least the portion that we're working on a 100% on federal property.

So the real estate piece will will come in line as well, but that will be obviously complicated and you know take approximately a year to eighteen months. So that's sort of why it takes so long, just to try and look at some of these infrastructure retrofit projects that are complicated from a design perspective, but also complicated from a real estate perspective. This project though ties into improvements on the the Naval Academy Bridge and will tie into, you know, the the bike paths that are on North Severn, as well as travel down Taylor Avenue in tying in with the Naval Academy Trail. So it's a it will be a huge project once we get it over the goal line, but it is still a work in progress. But we're very thankful for for the county who and the city who who both you know contributed to the funds towards the feasibility study, as well as state highway that now is committed to to the design and and moving forward to construction.

The other project I wanna mention is the military installation resilience review project. So this was a DOD funded study that was completed in around 2022 and twenty two thousand twenty three. These were DOD dollars that were brought to the city in Anne Arundel County to look at the impacts of of extreme weather and infrastructure improvements that could be made to better improve the resiliency for both the installation and the surrounding community. And that project funded what was called intelligent transportation signal upgrade study, looking at these key evacuation routes, not just near the Naval Academy but throughout the city on Forest Drive, West Street, Rowell Boulevard, and Route 450. And what sort of technology the existing signal network used, what opportunities they were to advance the signalization to enable us to install signal upgrades.

Citi is kinda taking that report and now is working moving forward, and we're continuing to engage with them to kinda move that and advance that project or those projects. There is some opportunity to pursue some additional DoD funding, for signals that are that support the Naval Academy's evacuation response planning. The tricky thing is that there is a hodgepodge of who owns traffic signals throughout the city of Annapolis. So the two signals that sit on Naval Academy property at on Route 415 King George Street as well as Boyer Road and Gate 8 are both owned and operated by Administration. So they're state assets.

Same on Raub Boulevard. I'm not sure about West Street and then those that sit on Forest Drive. So you know it's, and then this, a number of the signals within the city are also operated by the state. So we're really continuing to work. This is sort of an area we want to focus a little bit more heavily on you know in the next year or so, really to kind of take a better look and at what where we are and what we do need to do next to advance the signalization of these intersections so that we can do better response planning and also as a secondary benefit would help with congestion flow.

Signals could be timed, we could do reverse flow during evacuation, there's a lot of opportunities. The other area that we work very closely with the city on is these road race coordination. I mean we coordinate these road races. So I just wanna give you an example. This event is coming up on March 21, the Annapolis Running Festival.

Requires the closure of our Gate 8 which is our primary entrance into the gate, into the Naval Academy for three and a half hours. So we've worked with the city to and the reason for that is that the runners run from the stadium downtown Annapolis, down Randall Street, up King George Street. They run over the Naval Academy Bridge, up Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, and then they come back down, and then they run back over the bridge to Rowell Boulevard and back to the stadium. So Gate 1, we've worked very closely with the city to support metered traffic for about an hour period between seven and 8AM. And so traffic has congested there, but race and the organizers in the city can support traffic both inflow and outflow at the Naval Academy.

The concern is just the length of time that we lose access at Gate 8. So just wanna thank the city for their continued participation, but we're constantly looking for ways to kind of coordinate and improve these races and the congestion and the impacts on our gates. The spring races are much more complicated because I think we have seven athletic events on Saturday, March 21 during the same period as the race. We have a STEM event with 400 students coming in, And we have a candidate visit it weekend for USNA admissions with about two fifty students on the same day. So we're trying to get students off.

We're trying to get students on. We're trying to get our athletes and visiting athletes to different venues, including those on North Severn. And it's just a lot to coordinate. We're working well and we're working on it, but it just kind of shows you the type of coordination and the mechanics of it to assure that the races are not sort of impacting mission and we're both carrying on all of these activities. So I just wanna highlight that those are the kind of operational special event planning coordination efforts that we work very closely with the city on.

The other thing that we work very closely with the city on is construction project coordination. So we have three projects. Two, one currently underway on Hanover And Wagner Street where we've coordinated a parking and sidewalk closure for a period of two years with the city of Annapolis. And you know, unfortunate impacts to those residents in that area. We are rebuilding a failing perimeter wall from the eighteen hundreds, and it's a long steady construction project that required parking outages.

So we work we've run a number of community meetings, two community meetings with those constituents and with the support of the city and and the Department of Transportation. But it there's a lot of concern and and angst among those residents just on the loss of parking and the need for better parking enforcement. We did work in the transportation department helped support the conversion of on street parking to residential only, but it still requires some enforcement. So that's something that we're working on. The other project that we kicked off just this week, you may have seen it, is we are starting a floodwall construction project on Lower Prince George Street.

So it basically extends from Barrie Gate to the Severn River, where our floodwall will tie in with the City Docks flood protection project. So we've worked extremely this most of the time I've been presenting to the city council. It's been on this project, but over the last six years or so. But that project also took out parking, which is unfortunate. About five parking spaces over the life of that project.

That project is estimated to take approximately one year. So the other project that we just awarded for construction, we will be replacing utility bridge that runs alongside the College Creek Bridge on King George Street. So that existing utility bridge will come down. It is the u shaped bridge that sits just to the right side as you're exiting King George Street. And we'll be replacing that bridge with a new bridge 50 feet further towards the Naval Academy.

There will be impacts that we'll need to get on the existing state bridge to to when when we move to the portion of the project when we remove the existing utility bridge. So there'll be some impacts to King George Street there. So we're working, know obviously when we get to that stage we'll work with the city, the county, the state you know to support that major construction project. So those are just kind of a couple examples of how we coordinate for projects, for special events, for kind of the issues we want to work towards in terms of flood resiliency, as well as better evacuation and response planning for the safety our of our midshipmen in our population. The other thing area that and one of the the the the I would say to a hot topic for our the transportation board is public transportation.

So our midshipmen are one of the high users of public transportation. They have certain routes that they love. And so we want to continue supporting the city and then advocating for the use and routes that are services that benefit midshipmen. So those are just a few areas of interest. And I just wanted to thank you for your time and for the opportunity to continue representing the Navy on the city's transportation board.

Not only with just the events you were talking about, but you got the commencement coming up soon too.

That's one of the special events. Yeah. That's Yes. Yes. So you've all

run right behind each other. Yeah. Altogether. But we appreciate working with you all at any time, you know. But if you could send some information to us, copies of what you just indicated before we can send to our constituents to let them know about what areas gonna be busy, what streets gonna be you know bottled or whatever. Mhmm. Please. Will do. Also, Alderman Sharma had some concerns.

Thank you, madam chair. I wouldn't say concerns, but excitement and wanting more information on the Naval Academy Bridge project. So I appreciate you getting into that. That was actually something that Alderman Savage wanted some more information on as well. But unfortunately he had to step out. So you said that was entering the design phase.

It is in the design phase.

It is in the design phase.

It's past 30%.

So it's at 30% of the design phase?

Mhmm.

Long

Tracking towards 60.

How long does the rest of the 70% of the design phase take? Is that a giant void of

It's not our project. It's being led by the state highway administration. So it's it's likely to take 2026 and then probably the next phase in '27 likely probably if I had to guess and I can't really speak for state highway. But we're still looking at a year to two years out for construction.

So two years out from construction,

thank you.

Because we will, once they're at sixty percent design, we can begin the real estate process. So we'll know the right of way and the extent of roadway impacts and we can begin that real estate process with state highway.

Okay, thanks again for coming out and giving us the upcoming events at the academy. Thank you very much. Thanks Zoe.

Thank you, that's all for

us today. Okay, thank you. Okay, next on the agenda? The agenda is complete, so is anything else for the good of the order?

I just wanna shout out and thank our colleague Alderman Savage who had ducked out but getting the RFP for the study for the street car going down West Street into downtown. That's great work. He's been spearheading that the past year and really proud of him.

Okay. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Okay. I say aye. So the meeting is adjourned. Black settlements do you have in Annapolis, or what was the first black