Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

I'm calling the regular meeting of the transportation committee to order on Wednesday, 05/13/2026 at 4PM. Next on agenda is the roll call. Alderman Savage?

Present.

Alderman Shanemeyer.

Present.

And I am Janice Allsop Johnson, Alderman. Next on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

I would like to move the agenda as amended to add some public comment on transportation initiative with the electric ferry.

I will second the amendment and second the motion to approve as amended.

All in favor?

Aye.

You to all the person who's made the motion. So next on the agenda is business and miscellaneous approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from 04/08/2026 meeting?

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Next on the agenda is the discussion section. Bob Alderman Savage.

Thank you. So yeah I made a motion to add some general comment because and I appreciate your openness to this but tomorrow at environmental matters we're going to be going to be discussing the electric ferry but we had a bit of a scheduling conflict so and I knew that somebody did want to testify regarding that electric ferry. So since it's transportation oriented, probably good to do here if you're input. So thank you for your willingness to do that. You're welcome. And I think

Do we have anyone here today who want to come up and testify? Alright. Would you come to the podium?

You don't have to push a button anymore.

You guys

have upgraded since I was here last. What's going on? Can I start or are

you My name and address? My

name is Gavin Buckley, 6 Stuart Avenue. I'm here to testify in support of the ferry that we funded through a federal initiative. A ferry we are pushing to connect our communities and I want to point to the value of this. This city at one time had two trains that connected us to DC Baltimore. We had a ferry system that connected us throughout the Chesapeake Bay.

And then we built a bridge for cars, not pedestrians, and all those things fell away. Well, all the ideas are new again. And if we really are gonna decarbonize our country, we need to think about other initiatives that get people out of their cars and into mass transit. And one of the things I think that's really important to think about when you think about moving people around on mass transit is you have to make it experiential. We've all been on the San Francisco Trolley.

We know how that is an amazing experience when you go to that city. When you're in Seattle, you move around on ferries and it's really an uplifting way to get to know a place. So on Annapolis, could start that on a small scale with a 3,000,000 grant that we got for a ferry. And that $3,000,000 grant also includes money to improve the street ends where the ferry could land. And we could start with 5th Street.

And this ferry would connect the shopping precinct of Eastport's 4th Street to the shopping precinct of downtown and connect people and make them move around without going back to their cars to get around the city. We know you can't drive across these four bridge on the weekend. It's too too crowded. The traffic backs up. Would it be great if you could just get on a free ferry?

I'd like to make it free between 5th Street and City Dock. And get people on their bikes walking and enjoying the city the way it should be. I am a strong supporter of it. The county executive is also a strong supporter of it. To the extent that he also applied for the same grant a year later and was successful in pulling down a $6,000,000 grant while they were doing a regional study of mobility around the Chesapeake Bay.

We've been a great team and I want to thank this council for the hard work they did to get us to the point we are now. Let's not give up on this. Let's lean into it and make sure we deliver on it for the citizens of Annapolis. Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair. I I don't have a question, but one of the things that I'm most excited about about the potential for this ferry project is when the pilot is successful, the potential for expansion. Because in the works for expansion, we have this going more than just to esport. We have this going into Cars Beach and Alderman Savage's ward. We have this going into Truxton Park in Ward 6, but I consider that part of that borderlands between Ward 6 and Ward 5, which will be serving myself and Alderman Conti's ward.

This has a lot of potential to be serving these areas that have traditionally not had a direct route into downtown. And this would be something very unique and one of a kind to Annapolis as far as a transportation system. Some cities can really make their claim when they have a truly this is our signature public transit that actually draws people to them. A good example is think it's Bogota with the cable cars. This could be our version of that.

Thank

you for testifying. I was wondering did you have any information on, you mentioned the county also having some money to put in a ferry. Do know if there's an intent to have the systems connected?

Yes. So we see the starting point for the county's ferry system be an Apple City dock. So we could use that to connect us to just for instance Kent Island and then to Baltimore. It will be a larger ferry system so we would do micro version of that in our kind of six knot area. But we could expand it beyond that also to Sandy Point over to Holly Beach Farm.

There's different options to that. One thing why I would urge you to make sure that one segment of it is free is because there are many people that maybe not as lucky as us that don't have an auntie or an uncle or a mom or dad with a boat but other people would get a chance to get on the water probably for the first time so let's let's make sure we think about those people that that will get to do the amazing one of the best reasons to live in Annapolis is to be on the water, but not all of us get that chance. And I just want to say thank you for sticking with Remember, this was free money. This is money that we found that if we didn't apply for it, it would have gone somewhere else in the country. It wouldn't have come back to Annapolis.

And you put the work in now, let's not give up on that and find excuses why it won't work. Let's think of instead of going to the worst place of what could happen, go to the best place and think about how you would live in Eastport and just walk to the end of the street and get on a ferry to go to the downtown areas and restaurants and those sorts of shopping. Or the other way, you'd be parked at the top of the hill, you could come down on a ferry or on a trolley and then get off the trolley get onto a ferry and go to Eastport and spend the day maybe walk across the peninsula to the maritime museum. Potential is amazing. If we can't work it out in this kind of small beautiful little European city I don't know where we can.

And, again, I thank you for, all the fighting you're doing for this. Thank you.

Can I ask one question? How many peep people does allow to sit on this this bill?

So I've seen various ones. We saw them in our trips to The Netherlands and to Sweden. So we this is a small turnaround area, so I would imagine 30 people would be the most we could get in it depending on the design for for this very but of course the county one will be a much lot have much larger capacity but there there are plenty of models out there for you for us to see and and they're all they'll work amazingly well. And of course, we had it this close to being designed and built when it was a 100% electric and we would have been the first city in the country with a 100% electric bike to ferry option. Of course, that changed when they changed the parameters of the grant.

We changed our grant application to design a hybrid ferry, so we've got that in motion now. Now it's time for us to move forward.

I'm sorry. Call miss Abbott.

Yeah. And just so thanks again for taking the time. I I do think this context is helpful as tomorrow at environmental matters. I know we're gonna have some additional staff just to dig into, try to figure out what the current status is and and what the council might need to do if anything with associated with this year's budget. And yeah, I think it's it's I'm personally very excited about it.

I think it's often the aspect of how it really would connect Ward 7, Cars Beach with City Dock, and getting access to people like in Hawkins Cove who may not have cars and vehicles to get around town is really exciting prospect and to do it in a clean manner. It's excellent. So thank you for your leadership on that and your testimony.

Thank you for letting me testify and I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you so much.

Thank you Mr. Buckley for coming out today. Next on the agenda, general discussion section. First we have IED 75 dash 26 blue mobility manager discussion and it's by the blue system smart mobility senior manager, strijedit, strijedit, what is that? Partnerships with Anna Ward. Is she present,

miss Anna?

Got her up on the screen, madam chair.

Alright. Hi. I'm here virtually.

Can you hear me? Yes. We can.

Okay. Lovely. Lovely. Nice to meet you. I'm Anna Ward. No affiliation with any of the wards just mentioned. Just pure coincidence. So nice to meet you. And, yeah, excited to be here. I wanna just make sure that I'm not taking up too much of your time. Is there a cap, on my presentation at any point?

No.

Within fifteen minutes.

Okay. It'll definitely be be less than fifteen.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Awesome. Alright. So let me share my screen and make sure that you can see it. Can you see it? Yes. Awesome. Okay. So a little bit about who Blue Systems is. I just wanna say thank you for the opportunity to present and how we support Annapolis once your shared micromobility program is up and running.

So our role, just to be clear, is not to be the operator of the service itself. We know that you're out to RFP on that, but it is to provide the data oversight and the management tools that will help the city city monitor the performance, enforce policies, and make informed decisions over time. So a little bit about us. We work with cities and public agencies that need a clear, reliable view of how shared mobility is functioning on the ground in their city. Our platform is designed to help staff manage the program day to day while also giving the city the reporting and analysis needed to evaluate results, communicate with stakeholders, and adapt as the program evolves. And so here's some examples of cities that we work with. So we're working on really, really large

which

is New York City, where I'm based, Los Angeles, London, and then New South Wales out in Australia. But we also have experience with much smaller cities like Tempe, Arizona, San Jose, California, West Hollywood out on the West Coast, Gainesville in Florida. So we really have the ability to work with really, really big programs and then much smaller ones as well. And so we come with more than a decade of experience supporting these public agencies. We exist under a subsidiary of the Bollore Group, which is a French conglomerate, Fortune 500, but we are operating, fully independently here in The US.

And we've helped cofound the Open Mobility Foundation, which oversees the mobility data specification revolution, which is the standard that all the e scooter operators are currently working with data wise. And our head of product, works on the steering committee of the MDS revolution and has played a really big role in getting that moving. So we're bringing a lot of both technical depth and public sector experience. As mentioned, we're already being used across the globe, and really excited to show you a little bit more about what we can do. And so here is just a visual of what our platform does.

So as you can see at the top, there's many different types of data sources that we ingest, and I like to say that anything that moves in the public right of way can be ingested into our platform. So the focus today is on shared micro mobility, but I always like to mention that we're able to scale beyond that very easily. We're ingesting data from Uber and Lyft, from car share operators. Most recently, we've been working with autonomous vehicles like Waymo and Zoox, and all of that can be visualized in our software. And it's really interesting for cities to see how the different modes interact with each other, especially in relation to public transit as well.

So how are those first mile and last mile trips happening? And so I'll dive a little bit deeper into the specific products that we offer, specific specifically regarding shared micromobility. And so a little bit about the Blue Mobility Manager, which is our product for dockless shared micromobility. So it's a cloud based platform for shared mobility oversight. So for Annapolis, it would serve as a central control room for the program.

So it's bringing real time and historical data into one place. And through the platform, the city can visualize where devices are located and how the fleet is distributed throughout the city, can monitor usage trends, parking behavior, and the service coverage. You're able to track compliance issues, support operator accountability, and a really big one that cities like to use is generating reports for internal staff, for leadership, for the public, meetings like this. And we also have the ability to support fee and fine processing where that's applicable. So the goal is really to give the city a single reliable view of the program so that staff don't need to rely on any manual spreadsheets or disconnected data sources and also to keep the operators accountable for the kind of data that they're reporting to you.

And beyond that, we also offer a doc Doc Bike Share dashboard. I'm not sure if this is in the plans for Annapolis at the moment, but here in New York City, we're overseeing the entire city bike program. So it's the same concept as with the dockless, but, it's, instead a dock system. So the bikes have to be parked, directly into the dock rather than being left, on the street. So, again, it's the same concept of real time monitoring.

You can see utilization and demand analytics. And then, again, you can also export all of this into very easy readable reports. And building off of the dockless system, we have a parking bay manager, which I like to say helps the dockless system become a dock system. So it's one of the optional modules that we offer to our clients. It's especially useful for cities that want to guide riders towards designated parking areas and reduce clutter in high traffic locations.

So for an applet are full, partially full, available, overcrowded, and you can show these parked devices in real time and help, help operators understand where additional parking capacity is needed and then also producing occupancy and compliance insights over time is one of the goals. So this is really valuable because parking is often one of the first issues that residents notice in a new shared micro mobility program, and parking manager is a really good way to help the city stay ahead of that issue and keep the system organized and visible to both staff and operators. And we've launched this with some of the biggest micro mobility providers already. So depending on who you end up choosing, it's it's pretty likely that they have already, worked on on this with us and have approved it. And then lastly, we have a smart patrol app, which is a mobile app that you can have either on your iPhone or on your Samsung, and it's an infield enforcement companion to the dashboard.

And so it gives the city staff a tool to verify parking in real time. They can document the violation by scanning the QR code on the actual vehicle, and then that gets sent directly to the operator and to the platform. And then this can help support any enforcement decisions on the ground. So in practice, this would let Annapolis staff confirm uncertain GPS based locations, create citations for improper parking if that becomes part of your operating model, and then identify areas that have repeated compliance problems as well. So it gives the field staff a really simple practical tool to work from while in the community.

And it's important because not every violation can be fully understood from just the dashboard alone. So the SmartPatrol app really helps bridge the gap between the digital monitoring and the real world conditions. And that is everything that I have today, unless you would like

to

see a let me am I done done sharing?

Yep.

Yes. You are. Still working.

Okay. Yep. Awesome. And so, yeah, I I'm happy to show a short demo of the the platform. It's of interest unless there's there's any initial questions that anyone has.

You need to go ahead.

Thank you, madam chair. So thank you for the presentation. I I guess is Blue Systems going to be providing, like, the actual physical, bikes and scooters for us, as a replacement for Bird, or are you going to just be managing the software that is going to be helping us track and maintain it? Sorry if I'm misunderstanding that. Yes. You're giving us the speed. The ladder? Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. So we are not an operator. We work with the operators like Bird. Yeah.

So my follow-up question is if we're going into like a a pure docking system, how does the system work if let's say all the docking spaces are taken in a very popular area? Is the user still paying for the service while they're looking for new docking space nearby? Wouldn't that potentially discourage people from taking these scooters or bikes? Have you seen that be a problem in other jurisdictions?

Yeah. That, frankly, is more of a question for the operator, and it's not doesn't really fall in in our wheelhouse. But it that question kind of falls into the parking bay manager that I presented on. So situation like that is you're able to see situations like that and then kind of troubleshoot it next time. If you're seeing, okay, a ton of people are parking in downtown, and it's becoming overflowed, then you can create a policy that says, okay. Only x amount of scooters can park here, and then let's put another parking bay close by enough where it doesn't deter someone from taking the trip to downtown because they know, okay. I'll have multiple places that I can park my scooter.

K. Thank you.

Alderman Savage?

Yeah. I mean, personally, yeah, if there if your demo is short, it'd be nice to see. But just to clarify, some for my colleagues, I I don't believe you have any contract with the city. They just approached us with giving us a brief run type of software that's available if we do decide to go down this road.

Yeah. It it it's just to show you to show you what's what's out there. I had seen that you went out to RFP for the program itself, and that's usually when we begin to approach cities and talk to them about, okay, once you select your operator, here's how we can help you manage the program more efficiently.

But it sounds like you you have the capability to track more than just the micro mobility, the scooters and e e bikes, whichever direction we end up going, but also buses, larger transit systems?

Yes. We we have the ability so public transit is in this format called GTFS, general transit feed, dashboard, I I think is what the acronym stands for. And in the process of launching that with a couple cities out in California, it hasn't been official yet. But the idea is we're already working with them on shared mic mobility and also the little delivery robots, if you've ever seen those on the street. And so these cities out in California, they wanna understand how are these last mile deliveries or trips interacting with each other.

So a scooter trip that ends at a transit stop, then where are they going after that on the transit, the transit of their choice. And so, yeah, essentially, anything that is moving in the public right of way, we can visualize, as long as the, you know, the data is clean and and comes to us in in a pretty cleaned up format. So, yeah, it's I focus today on shared micro mobility since I know that that's what Annapolis, had gone out to bid for. But, yeah, if, Waymo I know Waymo is, testing out in Baltimore. I wouldn't be surprised if they make their way to Annapolis pretty soon. So, yeah, any any of these kind of devices, these shared devices.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much, Alderman Savage. Okay. Can you show us the demo?

Yeah. I'd be happy to.

Oh, thank you.

Of course. Alright. Can we can you see my screen?

One second.

Not yet.

Sounds like we might not be able to do the demo just because of the technological hiccup. So

By being very

Let me

try to share and reshare. Let's see if that does anything.

If you have a a YouTube video or something similar that you could share with us, we'd be happy to take a look.

Yeah. I'm not sure why it's not it's not

screen share. It's on our end. It's on our end.

Oh, We

just weren't prepared, I think, to be able to do the screen share.

Yeah. Can't do

All good. Yeah. I'm happy to to share something over over email. You know, a video tutorial of it if if that's helpful so you better understand how it works.

So I think the studio would need a little bit of time, five, ten minutes to get ready on their side. But maybe we could come back to you a little later. What do you think madam If

we can get it. Yeah. Okay. Alright Mrs. Ward we will come back to you shortly I hope so we can be able to see the presentation. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. At this time we are on our next agenda which is ID fifty six dash twenty six pedestrian and cycling safety coordinator update by bike pedestrian and micro mobility coordinator mister William how Raul. I wanna say Howard. Raul. Good evening.

Good evening. Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Again, I just wanted to very briefly go over some updates. One is if you look at the slide bike to work day, the RFP that was just referenced in the previous agenda item, and then also upcoming safety workshops. Next So slide.

I'm hoping you all are familiar with, bike to work day and in particular, bike to work week which takes place across the country. In Maryland, we have a special brand of it because we have several different regions that we utilize. Baltimore has their own. Baltimore city and county have a combined one. Hartford, Howard, most counties, in the state.

But, in Anne Arundel County, what we do is is focus a lot of our energy on the Annapolis area, and a lot of our attention and events take place, in Annapolis. And so we have several meetups throughout the county, and then people ride down to city dock. So it returns to Annapolis, this Friday, the day after tomorrow, May 15, as part of National Bike to Work Week, with celebrations across the region. Ours is hosted by, of course, the city of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, Bike AAA, and this year also the Annapolis Department of Transportation. This particular event will take place at 8AM at the Donner Parking Lot at City Dock.

That's the one that's on Compromised Street right next to Chop Tank, in between Chop Tank and Eagle Alley. There is also two different meetups on the way to the downtown celebration. One is, on Taylor Avenue at a section of the Poplar Trail, which is right next to the Annapolis Police Department, and people will be meeting there at 07:15. And proceeding down Poplar Trail and into town on the We Trail to right across the street on Calvert from the Arundel Center where we'll pick up the mayor, I believe. We'll also pick up, we'll for sure usual pick up the county executive, Chris Trumbauer, a few other, probably John Corrin and some others from Bike AAA.

So it'll be really exciting because then we ride from there downtown to City Dock. And the celebration features a group ride, as I said, community speakers, yours truly, and others from refreshments to music to, you know, really an opportunity to to get to meet other people who are interested in cycling and, you know, who like to get outside and, you know, ride our trails and, and share youth paths, which is good. We'll also do bicycle safety checks. There'll be a lot of giveaways. A lot of times, you know, there's, you know, air pressure, detectors.

There's safety items, you know, bike reflectors, things like that that are very helpful for bikers. And also, there'll be, t shirts. If you look at the color that's on the right, you'll see kind of what the the, you know, the palette is this year, which is kind of like a, you know, a pastel. And that's for registered participants. I also wanna point out before I move to the next slide that this year we had more than 200 registered participants which is great, because usually more people show up.

Next slide is our RFP bike and scooter. I hope you all can read that. So as was mentioned and as we've talked about, what we're doing is we're seeking a qualified full service micro mobility provider that's capable of, you know, capable of deploying deploying, operating, and maintaining a fleet of shared vehicles. Essentially, what this means is it's turnkey, which, I'm assuming, myself and Mike Goracio and Eric Leshinsky will have an opportunity to go more in-depth once we finish the process that we're in now with the RFP. But the turnkey part means that there's shared data, there's dashboard, and there's an opportunity for us to interface more closely with the provider, that allows us to track and, you know, all the things that that were kind of mentioned previously.

And then, one added piece is Anne Arundel County is also in the process of releasing an RFP to do the same, and we're trying to be sure that there's alignment. And, you know, so far, our process has worked out well because we have a few, you know, really good potential vendors. So one of the things that we're doing is is looking at enhanced technology solutions like safety technologies, rider verification systems, fleet monitoring pack and integrated communication tools. So, one of the lessons learned, last time as we discussed before is, all of the things that you all brought up in the form of questions, but also what we learned from, our contract with Bird, which is, you know, being able to manage those, scooters and bicycles once they've been used and kind of what happens to them after that and the retrieval process. And also who's responsible for charging them, repairing them, and being sure that they're maintained and kept in the system.

So what you know, all of those things were included in the RFP, because we're looking to improve safety, compliance, and overall system performance. And so we do know that we have increased volume of tourism and seasonal use, and so the dashboard is really important. So where we are right now is we're in the evaluation and interview stage. So we've, you know, we've closed who can, apply, and, you know, I can't give that away publicly right now, but we do have a very good pool of potential, vendors. Next slide.

Safety portion. One of the things we did realize, is that centralizing trainings and workshops sometimes doesn't work out for those communities and neighborhoods that don't necessarily venture out for specific programming. We do know that people go to Pip Moyer, which is, you know, kind of our hub, especially for young people. But what we wanted to do was go right to them, which we've done in the past. And so, our bike our bike safety workshops will be held in various Annapolis communities like Robinwood.

That'll be the first one. And it highlights the importance of knowing the rules of the road when biking or operating an electric scooter. The time line is of this is because, the warm weather's here, and we're seeing more young people out on bikes. And quite frankly, we're seeing just more people of all ages out on bikes and using, the areas that are designated for right of way for runners, pedestrians, and bicycles. So, we'll be doing this in partnership with community members, Bike AAA, you know, Annapolis Department of Transportation, the Baltimore Metropolitan Council who provided us the materials, and instruction and training to do these.

And then miss I'm not sure if you all are familiar with mister Fixit, but, he's he's a person who, you know, doesn't get paid to work with young people, in his community and other communities. And, you know, I'm really excited because I've been looking for an opportunity to kind of integrate him into what we're doing. And so, you know, look out for that because he'll be involved in all of our workshops. Finally, I wanted to let you all know because of some of the lessons learned from our last RFP process, we created an RFP I mean, RFQ. I mean, FAQ.

There's too many acronyms. And in this FAQ, essentially, what we do is we provide, some guidance on how we're gonna proceed, with with our, shared use program. So there's questions about docking versus docking dockless, and there's questions also about, who's responsible for what. And then, you know, one thing that that that is, I think relevant is is the data reporting and system integration, which we talked about a few moments ago. And so those are things that on the front end, we wanted to be sure that we were very clear about what our expectations were. So thank you all for your time and

questions.

Alderman Savage.

Thank you, madam chair. Have a few questions. Yeah, I'm excited So, about Bike to Work Day. I'll be out there Friday. I'll try to meet up with the group in the morning as well. I'm looking forward to it. Had a quite related question on the, is there any update on the symposium?

Oh, yes. So the symposium, we we decided to regroup, based on the workshops and the subject matter. It wasn't, one of the things we learned was it it I mean, it's hard to admit, but it's it's not the most provocative, subject matter for p for people to want to attend. So so what we're gonna do is, integrate things such as, sustainability and, hopefully, be able to also integrate the, you know, electric vehicle part, and put all those together and, you know, package it in a way that that draws a broader audience as opposed to a more specialized transportation based audience, and in particular, bike and pedestrian. And so the other thing is, we're we're I'm working with, Patrick Denker, to to partner with, yourself, Jackie, and others, you know, so that we have a more a larger base, you know, to work from.

Excellent. So we are we originally had tried to push it to late August, September, and so, you know, we're working on a date sometime in the fall area that allows us to really get as many people as possible there. Yeah.

Excellent. Thank you for your work on that. I have another question which you know, so just just because frankly we're in the in the middle of budget season. And so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about, you know, because personally I think your position is I think very crucial to I think what this this committee and environmental matters committee as well want to do as far as moving in sustainable motor mobility direction. And and so I wanna ask you on the in that vein because I do think like your position really is key to helping to really enable the enabling this transition to a sustainable mobility society, but also, the change in behavior that we need.

Because we really don't have I think people do tend to get stuck in ruts as far as they're just used to driving around in a car and don't think that there are a lot of alternatives. So I did want to get a better understanding from you. What do you do you tend to focus on? Like what do you think is most important to this position? Is it the do you do trying to get a better understanding. Do you spend a lot of your time on educational programs? Do you do infrastructure work, community outreach, contract management, all the above?

So the bulk of my time and efforts, if if I were to prioritize the list of things that I work on is spent on infrastructure, meaning the myriad of meetings with Anne Arundel County, with the state, and with others in work out our road map to the trails. And and that's everything from meetings on easements, which is really the holdup right now with a lot of our trail system. So it's working with with Eric Lashinsky in his office. That would be the bulk of that, which is, you know, partnerships and serving on committees that are working on these, you know, connector systems. And that includes our work on mobility stuff with Baltimore Metropolitan Council.

And then secondly, it would be working on the RFPs that we create, which is time consuming and and and a bit tedious, but very necessary because it moves the needle on on some of those projects that we wanna do. In particular, right now, I would say a a good percentage of my time is spent on the RFP that we're doing for our bike master plan to update that master plan and and also, of course, pick, a a firm, you know, to do this work. And so, everything from, the construct of what goes into the RFP, you know, all of the materials and being sure it's it's integrated into our current, you know, bike plan, but also our current trajectory, you know, in terms of our shared, you know, paths. So a good a good amount of time is spent on that. And then another good amount of my time is spent working with partners on most of the work that they do.

So, you know, Bike AAA advocacy work, and showing up for them in the work that they do and, you know, so on and so on. But what needs to be added, you know, in there also is my work with Department of Transportation, and, you know, hopefully being, you know, useful to the process of the work that they do, which is a bit different and can be bifurcated. But, you know, we we've worked on ways of integrating it, you know, such as our outreach and media, but also, the fact that we do have bike racks on buses. And, you know, they're underutilized and trying to find ways to be sure that people know that they can both ride their bike and the bus and, you know, not happen to car.

Well, thank you. I know I'm putting you on the spot with that, but

That's okay.

It's something that's been I think it's important for all of us to know as we get into the budget season because I know there are are various proposals impacting plan zoning as well as transportation department.

I actually respect the question and I thank you for asking it because it does, you know, it does require with all positions and all work and, you know, scopes of work, does require fully understanding, you know exactly really the efficacy and the return on the investment. So you know I completely understand that and thank you. If there's anything I can provide that helps flesh that out please let me know.

Just one thing to leave you with, if you could dig into. I know there was a I heard there was a presentation by the state on West Street as far as looking at some pedestrian cycling improvements.

Yes. Yes.

I was out of town but it would be good if we get some more information perhaps in your next report.

Thank you. At this time, Alderman Shunmai. Thank you, madam chair.

I got one very simple question. When is this RFP for our new scooters and bikes going to be completed? When are we getting these?

So, I if I had a crystal ball, which I I left in the car

Microbike. Yeah.

I I would say our goal, what we were shooting for, we were originally shooting for, May. But as you know, with RFP, with those processes, they it's it's it's on a timeline that sometimes extends a little further. I I don't wanna promise a specific date, Alderman Chandelmeier, but I will say we're aiming to have it done before we lose warm weather.

Warm weather in Maryland is a very wide window.

No. What I mean is okay. Our peak usage our peak usage is May, June obviously, May, June, July, August. Right? And so we're trying to capture our peak usage. Okay. Keeping in mind that we with the RFP, once they're selected, we all you know, they need time to ramp up and they need time to load in and and work out all the kinks and everything. So we're I wish they were here yesterday. You know?

Any more questions? Shalomar? Okay. Thank Thank you. I wanna ask one thing.

Oh.

Where is the finish line for the bites to end up? Where we gonna end up at?

Well, what we what we're hoping is that we and there's there's two there's if you look at it as, if you look at it from ground level, I think what the the goal is for it to look like, there's more people out and about. There's there there are children going to school on foot and on bike safely. I do think that there's and and then when you move up a little higher, let's say, 500 feet, there's there's more, you know, articulated crosswalks. There's you know, there are more, of course, bicycles and scooters on the road. But and then when you get a little higher, there you see that there's less cars.

So, ultimately, what we're trying to do, in this, you know, seven square mile area is reduce the number of fossil fuel vehicles that are on the road, and allowing people to to actively see a way in which they can they can, you know, navigate throughout the city without hopping in a car. So that downtown, you know, what's coming with downtown, the green space that's there, and as removing essentially a large parking lot, the idea is that hopefully, in the future, all of Main Street and all of that area isn't a glut of cars just riding around and people looking for parking, that there's an opportunity for families to kind of walk around and, you know, stop and and eat and shop and stuff without thinking they need to drive their car right to the front of the store.

So is it similar to, like, you're have policemen out there as we riding on, you know, me, they do when people be having the walks and the other events where

Well, they do.

Large groups in town.

Yeah. They do. I will say one of the the the the great things about the city and and APD is we do have a bike unit. And we do have we do have officers, who are on bikes all the time, and they they work with young people. And, TJ, officer TJ is is one of them. And, actually, at bike to work week, they're gonna be meeting us at that at that stop by the police department and riding down with us. Yeah.

Well, good luck to, the bike week. I'm gonna try. I'm not gonna make any promises, but, again thank you for coming in and informing us about the bike week. Alright. Have a nice okay. Next we have Ms. Ward, are you still on? We are ready for the demo at this time.

No? Not yet?

Yes. Yeah. We can. Yes. Oh,

you can. Okay. Amazing. Okay. So this example, I felt like was the best to show you was West Hollywood. They have a smaller fleet. They're, you know, spread out geographically this way. And so here, this is the home page. So down here, you're going to see a live fleet of everything that is currently operating. So bicycles, delivery robots, and scooters.

But, of course, it depends on the city and the type of mobility that they have. And if you zoom in, you can really get down to to to the nitty gritty and go exactly to each device. So that is the home page. And then here is the vehicle's live map. And so because of this MDS data format that we are working with, we get the data in real time from the operators.

So BIRD, and Lyme, which are operating and apologies, for the delay on the loading time. I think it might be my Wi Fi, but I will keep talking about the filters until this loads up. But over here, BIRD and Lyme have shared the data with us in real time so we're able to see exactly where the devices are. So right now, we're filtered to one exact geofence. So the last person who was using the platform really wanted to see what was going on just with Lyme in this section of the city.

And so if you zoom in, you can see exactly what is going on. So the last, known location of this Lyme bike was two days ago. It was at 46%. It's a bike, and you can actually have a specific VIN number here specifically. And, again, West Hollywood has robots as well.

So they have Coco, Geco, and Surf Robotics as well sharing their data and MDS. So we can see in real time where those delivery robots are making trips and deliveries to. Again, you can filter by removed, available, nonoperational, etcetera, if you want to understand the status of a device. Right now, we're filtered to a about a one week time period, from last Wednesday to today, but you can go as far back, as you would like. If you'd like to look at a certain week, a certain month, if you'd like to filter it just down to one hour of the day, you can do so.

And West Hollywood has chosen these specific areas. So West Hollywood does a lot of geofencing for different types of events. So during their AIDS walk back in 2024, they were able to geofence different parts of the city so that the devices knew not to operate, in that zone. And, again, they did this during the marathon. They did this during Cyclovia, and then they also have all these other different zones.

If right now we're looking at the neighborhood East Side, but you can filter it to any type of location that you would like. Again, Pride was a big one. They wanna make sure that residents are staying safe during these events, that there aren't devices driving into parades, especially those delivery robots, which go autonomously. That's really helpful for them. So a little overview of the fleet. And, again, apologies for the load time. This is just a different way of looking at the devices rather than on a map view. They're all listed out here. You can go by provider, by vehicle type, by status once again. And this one, we're on West Coast time, so this was just a few minutes ago, the last recorded date of this device.

We can see the energy level here, all the same, filters as beforehand. And here, we get into the KPIs. And so right now, we're filtered to this one week, time period. But, again, whatever you choose, to look at is up to you. And so this is the max fleet size per provider.

You can look at the average fleet size per provider. So it looks like here that Lyme has the biggest fleet in West Hollywood. The number of vehicles by status, if you want to look at each day for this this first week in May. The fleet availability, the percentage of deployment of total fleet, and then here is a heat map of the vehicles deployed. And then the utilization KPI, which is you're able to see the deployed vehicles versus the trips count.

You're able to see the ratio of time used. And, again, these are just the filters that are specific to West Hollywood. We are able to look at all different types, of information depending on the client. Here looking at the trips, again, this is, more information about each vehicle and the type of trip that they did. So you can see exactly when it started, when it ended, how long the trip was. And, again, by device, by provider, you can have all of these same filters here. And then some heat maps of the trips. So here is the origin heat maps. You can see kind of the hotspots of where the trips were starting. Switch over to destination, in West Hollywood because it's such a small geographic area.

It's not going to look much different. Most of the trips are just going within West Hollywood. And then you can also see a trip heat map and see the most popular routes throughout your city, and different street segments, that are the busiest. And over here on the trips KPI, right now week in February up to March, and we're looking at the number of trips on each day. You can also see the percent of trips per provider.

This one, is important to a lot of clients. These are percent of trips starting close to a public transport infrastructure. We haven't quite implemented DGTFS data format that I mentioned earlier with West Hollywood, so that is not something that they're tracking at the moment. But they are you are able to overlay the subway system, the tram system onto the map because that is public data, and you're able to see how many trips are starting and ending at these public transit stops. Vehicle miles traveled, the trips by distance traveled, so you're able see, kind of how far people are going, average trip duration, and then these trip origin areas again.

The environmental KPI, this was one an important one that cities like to look at as well. So how, the trip energy efficiency per provider. So how much energy, is being used by each provider, the total GHG emissions per provider, and then the total estimated GHG emissions by alternate vehicle mode. And then, this is the, the reports that you can create. So West Hollywood to track to make sure that all the operators were compliant during the AIDS walk in 2024.

Same thing during the pride parade. And so they were able to see, who was complying and who was not with the geofencing rules. And West Hollywood, has a public right of way fee that they enact on their operators, and so they were able to create this. West Hollywood is not a big user of this, but in New York City, for example, there's about 90 different policies, that they are implementing on their operators here. And that is really the high level overview of the platform. So happy to take any questions. Are there any questions?

We don't have any questions at this time Mrs. Ward. Again thank you for your presentation. No problem. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next on the agenda is ID 113Dash26 SP plus parking update by SP operation manager, Mr. Jason King. Kine? Ken?

Excuse me, madam chair. Oh, yeah. Due due to time, can we shuffle that a little bit and request premium parking due just before? Because they have to leave by 05:30, if that's okay with you.

That's fine with me. So now we'll have one I 1926.

Yes. Premium parking. Yes. Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Please introduce yourself, state your name and job title.

Hi, Jason Prola, market president for premium parking.

Megan Murray, account manager for premium parking in Annapolis.

Okay, I don't see a way to present this, so we'll use the PDF here. So this is the April update for the concession area that we operate. The quick update on elevators and EV chargers. We have none of our preexisting issues with EV chargers in place right now. We do have one down. It's one of the ABM ports which is the level threes. This needs a charging cable replaced, correct? Which is ordered. We don't have it yet but it will be on hand. This is we think not a long term wait to get this part.

It's not part of the innards of it and should be readily available. Elevators, no issues. They've actually been really reliable and consistent for a couple months in a row now. And this was on the last slide but we do have the spring power wash was finished. I believe it was actually happening while we were in our last session when we met in April. We had one mystery shop come in for April. It was a 96.4. It would have been 100. They I don't recall what we lost points for. It was something oh, it was because we didn't have gates at the entrance to the garage which is intentional.

And so happy to hear their feedback. Wish it was a bit different. Somewhere we can improve or change. But we'll take it. And then at this point I'm going hand it over to Megan who is our account manager, an absolute rock star that we've been just grateful to have since I think November at this point to talk some more about the Golden Pass as it was and some future stuff that's coming with it.

So the Golden Pass was a pilot program that was launched in MarchApril and ran for a month and the city's decided to run it again for ninety days. It'll be available to residents and non residents that are aged 55 and older for the months of June, July and August. It is really to make it easier to park downtown, to make it a little less intimidating. You don't have to use your app or a promo code or even a pay machine like you're used to. You can just park and walk away.

The cost associated, you can keep going Jason, with it is $20 every month and the time limits are up to two hours a day. You can park in the Mills Hillman Garage, on Maryland Avenue, or on Main Street. And we just use digital chalking to enforce and make sure that people are staying within their two hour limit there. It just reduces some friction, makes it a little bit easier to park. There's a couple ways that you can register.

Originally registration was open online because this is a program aimed to help take away some of that stress. I'm stationed here at City Hall every morning this week right out here at this little desk from 9AM to 12PM. Don't come see me at midnight. And you can come sign up in person with me. You can give us a call at our customer service line if you have any questions or you can sign up online.

We've already had a lot of interest. It was announced less than a week ago and in that time we've had I think I think it's on there, 86 people have already expressed interest in the program which already surpasses the amount of interested parties for the initial month. So we're excited about it. We're excited to draw some of our seniors into downtown and let them experience frictionless visit.

We have questions? Oh okay, Alton Savage.

I just wonder, you're, this is stated as being a pilot again. I'm curious, what would you, in your mind, what would be a successful, represent a successful pilot and where would you hope to go with it if it is a success?

Yeah, so, we're probably pushing the limitations of calling things a pilot right now as far as being codified. But we're okay with that. I think every party in the concession is very excited about this one upcoming, what happened with the last one. I wish we all have talked about a bit better communication, a little bit longer of a lead in to it. And then we've worked heavily on some surveys to get feedback from the last one.

And I think the other piece is a lot of folks we lost in the registration process which is why Megan has been in city hall this week is to sort of give them a way to reach out and get help. And so the only negative feedback that we had was that by the time they learned about it or they figured out how to register it or they gave up one night when they saw an email or a PR piece and then remembered to do it and then did it, it was halfway over and they got half the benefit. Which is part of doing it for a longer period. Also the summertime is when we like to come down to Annapolis and get coffee and walk around and things that we do here. So I'd call it a success already.

I think we've learned, improved, extended it to a longer duration and when this is done we probably talk about how to make this a real thing next year and I think all of the parties are already interested in that. Just last month, not part of this, but year over year which was already by numbers a large success with the concession agreement, We're 20% up over March. These are not the folks where we want to We want to reach out and make it easy for them. It tends to be for not tech savvy people. Which is also why you see if you caught this but we dropped it from 62 to 55 as well.

We also didn't do a good job of communicating that it was also for non residents. So if you live in Severna Park or Arnold or something, Edgewater, you can come in and take advantage of this.

Thank you on those questions and answers. Do you have any questions?

About this specifically, no. Okay. So Megan will be in the at the desk in City Hall for two more days from nine to twelve. And we'll just move into we've seen the marked occupancy. I like to leave one month up so we have a reference point to the prior month and what's happening in the garage.

March is very much like February minus the storms that we were still experiencing the tail end of through February's first ten days or so. In April we see spring happen. And so you see that big sort of nine to noon and then you also see that Thursday sort of start to pick up and Friday, Saturday certainly busy. Sunday through the late afternoon We see the increased occupancy with the nice weather that we've been blessed with for a couple months. And then a bit different format because I left my computer at home today and had to drive back and get it and come back which left Megan very little time to put her stuff in here and I didn't give this to you in the format I prefer.

But the April promo code usage, there were eleven oh nine uses at Hillman. Dollars 7,460 was that dollar value on the parking. And 98% of this is residents. Very little of this is from the Park Shop and Dine. Which I'd love to change but for many years we've tried to get people to use that program.

That's it. Other than questions?

Call them Shabbat, I mean Sharma. You all need these long names. Can I show them your names?

Just call me Brooks, it's fine. Thank you Madam Chair. Fantastic and detailed report as always. I want to get on to the topic that the folks that came in Monday. Some of that was a bit one-sided, but there is still obviously some difficulty in some issues that folks are having getting signed up for programs, getting registered for different programs or for ensuring that proper compliance is done in the garage.

I think one of the biggest issues, then we brought this up before, is the drive in drive out timeline. Do you have an update on that front because people predicting how long they're going to be staying has been a hurdle and a deterrent for many folks. Do you know, do we have an ETA on that?

I can answer. We do not. It is in the hands of the parties that would discuss this and we do not have an update at this point. I'll let Marcus.

Good afternoon. For the record, Marcus Moore, director of transportation. We're still working on massaging the data with Medco and Boyd Waterson that they requested from us that we were a little slow in getting that last final piece to them. I can honestly say it won't be as long as it has been. We're hoping that it will be before the end of this fiscal year. So it'll it'll be a few more weeks because they don't have everything that they need from us at this point.

A few more weeks until drive in drive out is implemented or a few more weeks until we can get that negotiation started?

Negotiation started and hopefully that won't take much longer after that. But negotiations started negotiations have started, but the final data that they need to finalize how that'll work, what that'll cost. We're really looking for that being, I would say the first couple weeks in June, maybe the end of this month. But less than a month away for getting them everything that they need so we can negotiate.

Now sometimes people have brought up getting issued a ticket after they have paid the fee. Usually this is done during street parking. I'm sure sometimes when people make a big deal of this, it's they're trying to get sympathy because they overstay in a meter but I have also seen it happen where someone has correctly paid it and they're issued a fine anyway. How what happens in that situation? Does it they pay the wrong they use the wrong app like they intend to use park mobile and they plug the wrong space in, space number in? Or is it just a glitch in the software? Or is it overzealous enforcement that gets the wrong guy? What happens on that case? Yeah.

Are we talking, you know, is it a resident or a business? There's too much or not enough and we're right in the middle which is where we want to be. So it's not the enforcement. And the system doesn't make mistakes. It's ones and zeros.

It's sometimes you're at Harry Brown's but you parked at Hillman, you walk outside and scan a sign. Make a payment, it doesn't get recognized as a payment at Hillman Garage. But if they follow the process, which is the biggest thing I always encourage, and appeal the ticket, it is right in front of our team to fix that and we have that precedent set to void that ticket right away. In the garage it's always an overstay. I dealt with one from somebody very high up in the state legislature's staff and four minutes was twenty four minutes.

And so rarely is it an issue of aggressive enforcement or anything like that. It's not looking at the text or getting the text or the app notification or whatever it is that causes it. Right or wrong, that's sort of the answer there. It's working as intended and we work through the one off cases as we get them.

Thank you. And finally this might be more a question for director Moore than you guys because this is in general with our employee parking program. Because usually this applies to GOTS and Park Place. So this might be more for Metropolis or director Moore. But some employers seem to not want to get their staff registered. Does staff have the ability to go out on their own and register for this? How can we make sure that staff, if their employer thinks that they're too good for what we're offering, get registered and get really good deals on this program?

I'm definitely going to take a stab at it with the help of Metropolis as well. But we gotta prove or validate that the person that works there so it would be the owner, the general manager that would be worked with they would work with the parking contractor to prove that Marcus Moore is a employee of, you know, whatever the establishment is. So no, they couldn't come in and just say that because they maybe they used to work there or they're hoping to work there or just trying to use someone else's code. But we can definitely answer that as Metropolis does their presentation, we can go in a little bit deeper and explain each of the three garages, how they work. But when I say each of the three garages as far as the time and the cost and how that, you know, fits in with downtown business district kind of thing.

So I couldn't come in with, like, a pay stub if I worked at one of the retail stores downtown and go, look, Here I am. This is a pay stub from last week. I'm good.

They shouldn't have to show a pay stub. You know, you can look at it if it was, you know, in the last week or so, but who knows if they left yesterday. They their their boss be would be able to make that phone call, but I'm gonna rely on Metropolis to be able to answer some of those real life situations or those one offs that may have really happened as you're describing it but we can definitely discuss that with you.

Okay. Well, I'll wait for Metropolis then I suppose.

One other thing before we leave with premium. There is a program that's off right now in Gilman that doesn't get as much activity or announcement as it should. It's the Monday through Thursday. Is there a need for that? That's one hundred and ten dollars Jason, would you like to describe that a little bit more?

Yeah, so it's Monday through Thursday. It's $110 and that's when we have the open occupancy to do that for them. But I think I'll speak a little bit for John and Jason and their team and ours. Annapolis has one of the most well thought, thoroughly implemented parking policies and understanding of what parking is that I've seen around the country. I was on a call with a city I won't name a couple weeks ago and they couldn't tell me how many parking spaces they had.

And that's not uncommon. I don't know that we'll ever solve everyone's perfect solution or provide everyone's favorite solution or what they would like to see. But there's a very robust system in place here with occupancy available to put people into places that are close enough. Maybe there's some transportation involved, affordable, and we sort of work out from the water and the pricing is in line with that to give them opportunities to park places. It may not be right in front of a business but that's and I know many business owners in Annapolis who would love to park in front of their store but they're taking their own business away when they do it because now there's no turnover.

That's why we have a limit to the meters instead of you know I work a lot in Virginia Beach and they just went with unlimited time, you just pay more money. But you know, the people with the means will pay the money and park in the closed spot, myself included, if you give it to me. And you again don't have the foot traffic now. You're stealing from yourself. So I love what we do here. I think there's small tweaks here and there that we could have but I don't think that we need to listen. I don't think that we need to react so much to what we heard on Monday. And we can talk with those folks if they have feedback that we can then bring to you and work on.

Okay, any more questions? At this time, any more questions? Meyer. Thank you premium staff for coming out, updating us. Next we have ID 11326SB parking update by our operations manager, mister Jason Kenney. Kenney. Okay. Thank you. State your name and

Jason Kenney. I'm the operations manager for, Metropolis.

John Kemp also with Metropolis. Jason will drive the presentation here. We'll go through some data. These next few we can move through relatively quickly. These are occupancy charts.

So the green areas are your more heavily utilized times of day. Print is small but the theme is is really the same across Gotts Court, Park Place, and Knighton where this is still, you know, April. It's still that time of year when the town is much more of a Monday to Friday business hour environment. Perhaps we'll see that green move a bit later into the day, you know, as we go along. But peak occupancy across all three are are as expected during regular business hours.

Can I ask a quick question?

Sure.

What's the peak? What's the capacity for GOTS?

540. You can make sure you have an electronic version of this. I know the the data is the numbers of the print is small.

You may continue.

Yep. Average length of stay, so this is interesting in that Park Place is is always high. There's a there's a hotel attached there and that drives a lot of the demand, lot of the a lot of the occupancy and those stays of course are generally a bit longer. So that's that's as expected. Knighton is higher than I would have anticipated.

That includes all the monthly parking and Knighton as a you know in terms of the proportion of parkers at Knighton, it's more heavily utilized the monthly parker who typically stays longer. We're gonna break that previous one out in future months so you can just see transient visitor length of stay as well. That'll come down a bit to more likely land in the two to three hour range in at Gotts And Knighton. Here is our validation usage and Alderman Schandelmeier will we can talk a bit here, pause here a bit and talk a little bit about the employee program that you had asked a question about previously. So here you can see that in April there were more than 2,500 uses of the employee validation.

And let me just clarify how that works. This again applies to Knighton Garage, Park Place Garage, Guts Court Garage. So there's no registration needed in any way by by employer I'm sorry, by employee. We just ask that employers whether that be a manager or the owner or whomever a management level representative interact with us to acquire that validation and then they're they're controlling it. So they're the ones who determine, yes, you're an employee of mine.

Scan this for your discounted parking. But there's no registration needed or necessary by each employee. There's no extra work for them to do other than simply scan that barcode and apply it to their session. And so we just ask that the that a manager or management representative interact with us so that they're the ones controlling it. We can review data. We can say, hey, you're this is being used a lot or or reminder to use it. You know, you've got this available for your employees to use and that sort of a thing. But again, no registration required by anybody. Trying to see if there's oh, the residential two hour which is at the bottom. I'll just point out that usage is picking up with that.

That's I don't know. That's I'm not sure if it's just seasonal. That had been a quite a bit lower number over the last few months. But again, weather related most likely. We noted on here there were 96 automated uses.

So this is this is is an example of those folks who just simply drive in and drive out. They've elected to put their plate make their plates associate their plate directly to the program versus having to scan a QR code. We have some information in here on enforcement. So number of infractions for nonpayment by garage. First time offenders, 54.

And I'll point out for those first time offenders, I just want to remind the policy is that folks who reach out, they're not obligated to pay the fine. We just simply get them signed, use that as an opportunity to get them signed up. They pay the amount of they pay for the amount of time that they were in the garage and didn't pay at that time, and they're given that grace that first time. And new members is surprising number from my perspective. It's great.

That means are folks who are who have parked in one of those three facilities in April who have never parked in in those facilities previously or any metropolis facility. So that's great. I mean, the number of new people coming to Annapolis far exceeds that. But that was a good number to see, frankly. Okay.

Here's some new information we've got coming out of our our system and we'll continue to share this and update it. So so there are there's a customer service, there's an opportunity to capture some customer service information with brief surveys. Nobody's obligated to take it, but very encouraging that over 1,300 folks who parked in one of the three garages in April did in fact respond. You can see that they gave it a score of over 90%. That's great.

That beats our company average. Know anecdotally I think folks generally really do appreciate the gateless environment. This not only tests or asks about or gives the opportunity for feedback on the system itself but rather overall garage experience, cleanliness, personnel friendliness, customer service, in addition price, in addition to the in addition to the actual use of the technology. And then next one. So here it actually has some information on the specific areas that they liked and areas that are noted as possible areas for improvement.

I would expect to see the price on that. I think I've seen pricing as the top area needed for improvement on every one of these results for any facility that I've looked at. But really as important or more importantly, each individual session who's responded has the opportunity to provide feedback in that area off to the right there where there's additional comments. We've already been able to dive in and understand, okay, what's what what are some of the folks who are choosing to add more feedback into their response telling us here and can is it actionable? Extremely helpful.

And we can go back into those sessions and look at what occurred and what may have driven that particular response. This is extremely powerful for us to help us manage and know weed out individual experiences that are perceived as poor and hopefully continue to drive that score up or at least maintain that that high score. So we brought I hope I answered the question on the employee

More questions?

Ahead. Thank

you, madam chair.

You're welcome.

So we appreciate the info on the employee parking program. What is the current timeline where employees can come in to GOTS for that 50¢ per hour deal?

So that's a part that's there is no 50¢ per hour but they they get $3 flat rate of I'm sorry, flat rate of $5. He just it's $3 at Park Place, $5 at at Gott's. Okay. They have to enter after noon currently.

Okay. And

I add in Alderman Shandermeyer, what you probably if someone came in and took full advantage of the whole time of twelve noon and out by six, you might come out with that that amount. But what it is is, as mister Kemp is saying, between twelve and six, you can come in. Must be out before six the next morning to take advantage of, Gott's Court at $5. And the other two are

$3.

$3. With Park Place being no time limit but still out by the next day at 6AM.

If an employer has come in and said, to negotiate a deal where they can potentially come into GOTS at an earlier time besides noon, Would we be amendable to negotiating a deal with them?

I mean, I bet that's not really for us. We don't determine, you know, the city has control of the rates and the structure and we certainly, you know, participate with director Moore and his team and and and give our feedback as they ask for it.

Yeah. We would definitely consider that. In fact, those are the things that we're looking at. We have a pretty good structure as you can see here with just the three garages that are being used by quite a few people on a pretty regular basis. And I think one of the best kept secrets as we had premium discussed was that Monday through Thursday program which is closer to where we are here now.

You know, it was once upon a time in between three and noon. And we backed it up about two or three years ago to twelve, three hours. You know, eventually, we'll be at, you know, bring coming in at 09:00. But we do have one garage that's there's no time limit, and it's not like it's at the mall. It is, about three quarters of a mile, maybe just half a mile of the road. So we do have some pretty robust programs that offer, quite a bit of, inventory. And one of the things to keep in mind with Gotts Court during general session, those hundred days is probably gonna fill up at nine or 10:00 in the morning.

So basically, if you're an employer, just go to you and try to talk about the options and we can even potentially work something out even better.

We can talk about it with our leadership or administration of the city, city manager, mayor's office and all and see what's the best move for everyone. Thank you.

Any more questions? Oh, go ahead. Go to the side of it.

I just wanted to clarify like it. So do you know is there a plan to respond to or meet with the people who testified? With administration or constituent services? That

would be constituent services ombudsman's office. We can definitely work with them to find out point by point what has been done through our strategic partner Laura Richards. I think there have been some behind the scene even before the new person occupied the ombudsman's office. So there's some history that they already have as some of the things you may have heard before.

Any more questions? Okay. You finished your presentation? Okay. Thank you very much for coming by for the meeting and good luck with the parking and and I'll see you hopefully at the town hall with me tomorrow evening.

Will Oh, be

please come. Okay. Thanks again.

So yep. Oh, sorry.

Metropolis Park.

Yep. Good evening, everyone. Madam chair. For the record, Marcus Moore, director of transportation. Last, Metropolis to stay up because there might be some questions that go along with some of the things that may have sort of not bouncing back and forth.

But I'd to update you on a few things, this afternoon, of course, and answer any questions that you might have. Under the leadership of our, engineer with, central services, Donovan Harold, as the project manager. He'd like to announce that our electric charging infrastructure at our facility has been finished within four months. We're just still waiting for BGE to energize it and have our our planning and zoning permit folks just make sure everything's okay. And we anticipate having a ribbon cutting probably early early June.

This EV charging infrastructure project was funded by the city capital improvement project number 73010. So few highlights of the project was this site right now that we have, it has four charging port ports. They're all underground infrastructure that will support future expansion. Right now, these are all these are all level three, which are the fast chargers capable of charging our large buses. We have two thirty foot buses that are portable chargers.

It takes about three or four hours, maybe a little longer to do that, but it'll drop down to about an hour and a half to two and a half hours with this particular charge. Once construction began, the installation process, as I mentioned, was completed a little bit earlier than our proposed plan of six months. We do have two smaller fully electric vehicles that were supposed to arrive this fiscal year. They were acquired last fiscal year. Just supply chain challenges, they'll be here maybe December, most likely January 2027.

They'll fit right in. But just understanding that this, charging infrastructure is just for our city vehicles because we're of course, you know, a lot of activity with buses coming and going. So it's not a public facility. Flipping it a little bit just to talk about ridership with our gym cards. You know, we've been in operation just about six weeks, late March, maybe all of April.

The new one that we're doing city doc that comes around here, we're really excited. It's just about a 100 a 100 riders in the first, you know, six weeks. And then the other one is the Calvert Street that connects Maryland Avenue, State Circle, Saint John Street. It's still very strong with just less than 90. If you kinda look back a couple years of how long it takes to grow something and when you're looking at a pilot, it's really exciting to see how this other one that we just we just started in March, how fast it's picking up.

And I think it's really a good testament for what we decide to do to go towards City Dock to really help out those businesses. And, obviously, it's only Saturday and Sunday between eleven and 05:30 partly due to the charge and how long we could actually operate and, you know, the weather. You know, even in those very warm days, just having someone out there that long. But we talked about in other meetings that we've had with you over the budget hearings and all. You know, what about Eastport?

So certain certain things we wanna learn as we look at jitneys or electric vehicles that may look at other parts of the city. You know, can we bring that back? And of course, with the right funding and the right marketing and all that kind of stuff, getting back to Eastport and probably other segments to bring us into a a pretty much of a hub of, you know, going into our fixed route, ridership. So these numbers were definitely very encouraging and it's very encouraging to see what customers are thinking and, you know, really bringing this back to, you know, how we look at micro mobility and sustainability and resilience for the whole city. But that's basically all I have for us right now, but you might initiate some other questions that you might have that deals with, other parking or transit related questions.

At the meeting on Monday, they, forgot her name, but she gave out this list. Have you seen this list?

Yes.

Oh, you have? Oh, okay then. So I don't have to talk about anything then.

What is well, we won't yes. I've seen it.

They just wanted, you know, more extension on, like, the two hour, and you already talked about that. So that's one of their main concerns. And same business are leaving and closing because they are they have to run back out to get in the car, but and they tired of the parking situation. So but we all know what's going on. So doing the best we can, and that's all we can do. Any questions? Alden Sanders? Well, I saw some paperwork on my on the extra hour for up Asbury. I see where it is in the making, and I appreciate that.

I was waiting for you

to ask.

Oh my god. I saw that Monday, and I was like, yes.

As your Monday meeting, fees and fines each year, we take a look at it. It's not just us with parking, but other revenue generators that may be parks and recs or permits from planning and zoning. So one of the things to really look at when you the request came in, can we add on Sundays one extra hour free parking at all four of our garages? Economically feasible, it is you'll lose 6 figures. A good Sunday, even if it's in March, on on a Sunday at 02:00, I mean, it's it's full.

You're really diluting the things that you can do. So what we're looking at or it's been proposed for you guys to legislate, adding one more hour to the Larkin Street lot. And it's for those dog walkers, those brunch folks. It's not churches. It's anyone. Oh, yeah. It's not for just

one For everyone, you lot of people do drop park in that garage. I mean, in that lot.

But the thing is it's still what we're mentioning is is the utilization and, you know, the small inventory of just 40 spaces, guys. A Larkin lot is not that big. What is it? About forty, forty two?

Forty forty two. 42.

11. So, you know, we we have Monday through Friday. It's really all filled with monthly parkers, seven to 04:00. So weekends, it is a transient lot and the lot the spaces are turned over pretty rapidly about I think parking is only two hours. So it is a hidden asset, a hidden gem that we have. And whatever we can do, and that was one of the concessions that we requested or had put in the fees and fines for you guys to, take a look at and, of course, vote on.

So if if it gets approved, it'll be available July 1. Right?

Started the FY '27 with all the things that we're putting in, which is 07/01/2026.

Oh, okay. So it won't go in place until another year?

No. This year. This is 2026.

Oh, okay.

The start of the fiscal year. FY '27, 07/01/2026.

So happy. I'm a keep keep it in prayer. That's all I can do. Any more questions? Any more presentation?

One other thing I'd like to share, our parking program manager that's sitting in the back. He's working diligently on way finding because if you can't find it, how do you get in? Way finding on the streets to our garages, also way finding in our garages, how to get around. You know, just certain things, especially Park Place is a very large garage. Our largest, 1,140 spaces.

So, you know, you have everything's underground. So we're working on a few things that we can do to way find our ourselves through it, where where to go with parking. And remember that's a shared asset with another, with a majority owner, of course, for the things that we're able to do. And having Metropolis as our partner to help out with, you know, the Weston Hotel. They have a few spaces that they use for, valet.

And as mister Kemp showed there with, Park Place, you know, because you have a lot of overnights there because of the hotel. But things that we can do to, increase, usage, availability, and there's so many ways to get into that garage. I would say at least three different entrances, you know, getting through and navigating the street. So we're pretty excited, with things that we've asked for for way finding, signage to our garages, inside of our garages, and things that we can do better going forward.

Sounds great. Project to have going trying to get started. Alderman Savage, you have a question?

Yeah. Just I think since we have you here, might be worthwhile to to get some information for the committee. But as you may know, as you well know I should say, with the budget there are gonna be some conversations about transportation department and and some requests and amendments. And so one of the things, you know, I put in there as an amendment was to potentially do an interim funding for what's known as the blue route except have it be a limited blue route to be able to get people out to the high school and River Road and, you know, county offices, the swim center. Could you speak a little bit just give the committee a brief on that blue route?

Because I believe that it came from the that did come from the transportation development plan, right?

Yeah. Thanks for asking. There are really good concepts that transportation planners can come up with for agencies like ours or areas around the country. And in the twenty twenty one k every five years, we're required to have a look from transportation planners if we wanna continue to get funding, grant funding from the federal and state government. So every five years, this is performed.

And one of the ones from the 2019 TDP talked about micro transit, you know, that kind of a a different type of route. And we put it into place of as a pilot, in 2024. Things take money, so things that come out as, Alderman Savage is speaking of, one of the things in last year's TDP talked about how we can redefine our routes. Our routes have been in place for probably twenty or twenty five years. What specifically is being looked at with the blue route, there's a lot of economic development and growth on River Road that our residents can partake in with businesses but there's also housing.

We do have next to the high school, Annapolis High School is a swim center in the county. So folks being able to partake in something like that. There is bus service, Monday through Saturday there, that's operated by the county. It used to be called the yellow route. I'm not sure what it's right now called.

But they were able to get, an extension from where they did a Riva turnaround, which is at, I think, 2662 Riva Road, and it's about, you know, fifty, sixty yards to the swim center, another 40 yards over to the school. They were able to get authority to go down that road to go to the swim center, the students a little closer to the school and servicing the swim center. What we're looking at is a development of a different route. Most of our routes were color routes, rainbow routes, the brown, the red, the green, and the orange that was discontinued with go time. So the the blue route is a route that would redefine what we're doing coming down the quarter, maybe forced drive, and connecting with these new economic developments for people going to work, going to school, going to the other businesses that are opening up.

So more studies will be needed, and we're really excited about working with Alderman Savage and others to develop these because a part of that those amendments in this current fiscal year FY '26, we're looking at other quarters, transit quarter in for on Forest Drive, which is shared with the county. So we need to get their, partnership with it. Other things that we can do to get, you know, to this new Cars Beach that we're developing. There's not a lot of parking there, so looking at how do we do, what do we do, is it during peak times to operate something, what makes sense, and the type of vehicle that might make sense. One of the things I made mention earlier in my, presentation of the two smaller cutaway, electric vehicles, those are gonna be eight seaters.

So that may be something that's a little bit better, that can run-in all weather unlike my gym carts that can do that kind of, service. So we'd like to we need to study that and see what makes the most amount of sense, and we have ideas, that we need to, you know, develop with the county, their planning, their transportation, and the things that we have in our own arsenal and develop them. But thank you for asking Alderman Savage that we look forward to the challenges that would go with growth.

Yeah. And as a part of that, think which another thing I'm pushing for in the in the budget as amendment is to try to get a marketing person in your because I believe you used to have one and could you go into a little bit of what they do and the value?

That was before my time. I even though I've been around for ten and a half years, 2015, I think we lost it with a budget cycle back in 2012 or 2010. So if you look at the, you know, what a budget a job description for somebody within marketing, you know, the the the product and services that we have. I think it was it was successful. But when you looked at certain things that had to be cut because we had a budget reset then, but it's been probably thirteen, fourteen years ago.

Presumably that kind of a position would help to generate ridership, but do other jurisdictions have that kind of capacity typically?

It might be combined in another area, but I can definitely check. I don't think specifically the county has one, but I'm sure somebody like agency like MTA Baltimore being the thirteenth largest in the country as far as, you know, the different modes of transportation that they do have. But I'd be interesting to see within our state, Prince George's County and Montgomery County are pretty darn large as well geographically in their public transportation system. But yeah, can definitely look into that. Thank you.

That's all I have, madam chair.

Okay. Thank you. At this time, I just wanna thank you all as always for coming in and sharing all your ideas and all the work that you all do to make this transportation in Annapolis move smoother. And it's gonna get better. It's gonna get better.

Thank you for having us all going.

Thanks again, and, good luck with all that you do it. But we all like,

I can call

it my city family, you know, because we spend a lot of time there. So but we're gonna all work together and we're gonna get through this. So next on agenda is that the agenda is complete. And is there anything else for the good of the order? I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Please say aye. Second. Oh, I can second it. I'll second it.

Aye.

Please say aye.

Aye.

The meeting is adjourned. Thanks again.