Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'm calling the regular meeting of the Transportation Committee to order on Wednesday, July the 8th, 2026 at 4 p.m. Next on our agenda is the roll call. Alderman Savage.

Present.

Alderman Chandermeyer. Present. Chandermeyer. And myself, Alderman Alsop-Johnson. Next on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved. Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you all the persons for making the motion. Next on the agenda is business and miscellaneous approval of the minutes.

So moved.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Next on agenda is general discussion. Next on the agenda is ID 149-26, Parking Action Plan, the City Manager's Office, and by the City Manager, Lewis.

Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, I'm Marcus Moore, Director of Transportation and Parking, and with me today, I have... Rhonda Lewis, City Manager. Vinod Abraham, the Parking Program Manager. So what we'd like to do is share with you what we're doing here with our parking program, parking reform work group. One of your committee members, Alderman Shandermeyer, got a chance to meet with us on our first kickoff meeting back in June, June 24th. Alderman Chandamaria, would you like to share from comments of that time with us?

Yeah, it was a very well put together meeting. I'm looking forward to us finding solutions. The goal is to try to streamline our parking process, move away from a model that constituents are seeing as overly complex and occasionally predatory and get to a point that benefits residents and businesses and folks outside of downtown and that can be as simplified as possible for everybody i did have to jump off a little bit early for a meeting for my day job but i'm looking forward to a lot of the solutions that this group can come up with

Good afternoon. Once again, for the record, Yolanda Lewis, City Manager. Thank you, Chairwoman, for allowing us to come and present today. into the committee members. So we're going to talk a little bit about kind of how we got here. And I think the best starting point is to just kind of talk about parking in general. So as you know, parking in itself is an important component of municipal infrastructure and our services. It makes our city open, accessible, and user-friendly to all. It connects residents and visitors to our attractions. It helps with our business and economic infrastructure, and it makes our city work. It fuels our economic infrastructure and allows visitors to just participate in this beautiful city. And when parking doesn't work well, it has ripple effects across our entire community. And so before we start to talk a little bit about Annapolis specifically, I want to give context that this is not just an Annapolis problem. According to a major national study by NRR, a leading transportation data and analytics firm, American drivers spend about 17 hours per year just searching for parking. 63% of those drivers who were surveyed said they avoided businesses, restaurants, and destinations because of parking challenges. And 34% of those who were surveyed just abandoned their trip entirely. And we're hearing similar context here in our city. to offer you some perspective of how we manage some of these complaints and also concerns. Of the 303 constituent cases handled by our constituent services offices or ombudswomen between March 12th and June 30th, 38% were parking related. That makes parking the single largest category of constituent concern by a significant margin. And the issue, of course, affects our entire city, but we see the most acute feedback coming from Ward 1 and 2, which carries the vast majority of our burdens. Despite our parking efforts, which in the excellent work of our transportation team and professionals, including our transit options, our select free parking passes, our golden passes, and other programs, we continue to hear that there are concerns around technology interface, our confusing practices in many instances, inconsistency around citation and enforcement, and the need for better customer service. So just as we move into kind of this work, I want to just level set to be honest that this work group nor the action plan that we're developing will solve all of the parking problems in Annapolis. It is our starting point. It is not a comprehensive redesign, but it is our effort to acknowledge that the challenges exist and also put effort collectively across the city to help design a response. And so with that, what you will hear today is very much centered on Ward 1 and 2 with the idea that we will produce a plan that will allow us to start working while we start to also develop a larger framework to address some of the parking concerns across the city. So with that, we'll turn to our presentation. I'll turn to Director Moore to start the conversation.

Thank you, Ms. Lewis. As Ms. Lewis made mention, the mission of this parking reform work group is to look at ways to better the system that is fragmented or looks like it's more citation-dependent parking system and unify the whole experience. This group is made up from Annapolis Police Department, our Office of Law, Finance, our Public Information Office, Ombudsman, City Manager's Office, and Transportation. We will be expanding a little further as time goes on to get more into the community. As you see in your handout and what's projected here, our objective of the group is to, after we're hearing from what the constituent services says, the feedback from residents, employees of downtown businesses, the visitors, and our own staff, What do we need to do is really find a consistent approach to what it is that we're doing. So the impetus here is to look at the experience. What does it look like? What kind of lens are we looking through? How do we tangibilize something that's intangible as far as better, good, some of those words that may be a feeling but certain things that come through as far as a citation enforcement or how our citation enforcement is being handled um it is needed you know we do need to look at uh people not making you know certain things available following the rules or the regulations of what our city code says but you know the issuance makes the user feel uncomfortable and as the statistics shows uh from what we looked at from the inrx people that can't find a good place to park to enjoy our beautiful city on the water may go somewhere else. So what does that operational framework look like now and how we are navigating through multiple ways to do the same thing? sometimes you give too many i too many ways to solve a problem that gets confusing to figure out how does this work with this a scan an app a machine how do i know how things work throughout so what does parking look like today you have that in front of you but if you look at the left bottom it says i try to pay and the technology failed me and i was um i was punished for it So sometimes a $4 overage costs someone $50. So multiple vendors, parking contractors with different ways of doing the same thing sometimes confuses even the most apt person who is tech savvy. So the experience, you know, when they call the ombudsman's office, the transportation department, the city manager's office, or even the independent contractors for parking, there may be more friction points that they're able to handle at that one time. How do we handle that in a consistent approach to what it is we're trying to do? Make parking easy. As you can see here, another customer, I got a $50 ticket for a $4 error. It's just too much. So the enforcement concerns, when we look at residents, so we'll talk a little bit about that, what's called a resident parking permit program. It needs to be up to each year, residents in certain districts, certain districts within the ward have to do this each year. It's getting better, easier to navigate, but sometimes if this is my second home, proving that I'm here the majority of the time. There's just, how do I handle this? Do I go through the Office of the Mayor, Office of the City Manager, or the parking contractor? So the pressures of the construction at City Dock, of course, has added to the stress of all of us. However, the old Hillman Garage, Noah Hillman becoming the new Mills Hillman Garage, has over 120 more spaces that was going to be lost, I should say, reallocated from City Dock to the mills hillman garage but while we're going through construction we're doing our best from all of our departments from economic development um you know to our department um transportation all how do we get people down there while we coexist with latitude 38 bitty and bows and all the other shops they're trying to survive while we're going through this we need to look at other ways of doing the same thing that may find a new outcome So the vision for this particular group is what we want to build. So if you're looking at the left bottom, simplifying the experience, how do we do that? We want to really hear some of the out of the box thoughts of making something different and how do we massage that to fit into our mold of what we're trying to do. The consistency, clear, consistent policies, which may mean a code redevelopment or city code change. What we have right now on the books doesn't really match what we're trying to do. Being transparent in all that we do and not giving someone a runaround that they have to call four different places or three different times the same place to get someone that can really help and resolve that problem that is going on. You know, a system that serves its residents, its visitors, the employees of the city, and anyone else that's using the assets and using the businesses or partaking in the businesses whether it's dinner under the stars or anything down on main street we want to make sure that this is that we're open and inviting um in here

I just want to add context to how we are thinking about this. We started at the lower left around simplified experience because we think that that is one of the most important components of trying to streamline parking. Right now, we have multiple apps that are available, processes that happen whether you're parking in one garage or the other and part of that creates a lot of uh confusion so for instance you know the assumption is that the more options you give people around payment that it makes it easier to pay. That has not necessarily been the case for the constituents that have provided feedback to us. The multiple options for pay, the multiple options of how that needs to happen, and multiple rules that happen in each one of these different places is confusing. So part of what we are trying to get to ultimately is better customer service. But in order to do that, we think we have to start by making the experience easier to interact with the parking infrastructure that we have. And that then would lead to us being more consistent and having user expectations about what they should expect no matter where they park across the city. There should be one consistent base of practices that apply. And so part of starting with simplified experience is just kind of the baseline. All of the policy pieces, of course, are important. But I think where we're losing people is it's just too difficult to park. And part of that is kind of the impetus for our shift and baseline change.

So the deliverable, what is it that we hope to accomplish and when? As we made mention, we kicked off just about two plus weeks ago, developed our team and updated folks on how the structure, what it looks like now. we're going to try our cadence for going forward where we will we actually meet tomorrow but we will be going forward to meet meeting um probably every month and as you can see here you know to develop a 12-month action plan that transitions uh annapolis towards one of the what we want to do is a unified customer-centered physically responsible parking experience as we know there has to be the fiscal responsibility for operating our parking system and our transit system along the way. So what we've done here, we've kicked off, we'll be reviewing the things that we, we've discovered so far in the next several weeks and as you can see the action plan dates are october 22nd um all the way through the january 1st if you see the next folks of this this one actually in your workbook shares exactly the um the breakdown of the group but one

I do want to stop here on this slide with the work group composition. I think Director Moore talked about all of the different entities that are a part of this, and we also wanted to make sure that we identify why they were involved in their role. So you see that here. But on the next slide, I just want to draw attention to the very final point here, which is community engagement. There will be a lot of internal work that will happen in order to review our processes, create structural recommendations that will be responsive to some of the challenges that we see most, but it will not come without community engagement. And so there is an intention, although we're working internally to as a part of this process, solicit feedback and recommendations from residents who have lived experience, meaning they have tried to actually park or have feedback that is clear, concise, and allows us to act upon that, and also working with our local organizations, businesses, and partners locally. So while this part of the process planning process and work process is internally focused, there is intention to make this a community engaged process.

You can see with all the pieces together, this is not being done in a silo or a vacuum. That is just internal from the City of Annapolis perspective. We definitely will be bringing in, as the City Manager made mention, the community, which also includes our parking contractors who know this best. But looking at the strategic objectives of the unified customer experience and what that actually means, how we hope to address the issues that we have been confronted with or faced with or that have been brought to our attention. We've done pretty well with answering the questions on the fly, but we have not been consistent with that approach. And this is something that this governing body will help us with a roadmap to what it is that we need to do for these points here that you can see. Unified customer experience, the enforcement and the citation reform, what does that really mean? How do you adjudicate a citation? What is your first line? What does it say on the back of the ticket? And what can you do after that fact before it comes to someone else's need for help, which would be the mayor's office, city manager's office? really should not get there if we get all the parties in row to be able to approach these concerns if someone has a concern as to why they got a ticket. Revenue sustainability, of course, we need to make sure that we're fiscally responsible, that the city's health fiscally is improving along with the customer experience. Because what you want is more parking revenue that doesn't equate to citation revenue. you want parking revenue, and you want to be able to turn parking spaces more frequently. That's why we have two or three hours maybe on the street, not five or six hours. Those businesses would love for folks to come and someone else come and going that way. The longer stays would be in the garage. The capacity, access, and mobility, let's think outside the box as we get outside of Ward 1, District 1 and 2, or Ward 2, District 4. We're looking at what we can do with partnering in other garages. Let's look at United States Naval Academy. We do currently have service that brings us into State Circle. We're close to downtown. But we want to explore these other satellite lots and what we can do and how does transit feed into this whole mobility plan. So as we made mention, the delivery timeline and phases, of course, we're still here in phase one as we just kicked off the work group formulation, the internal reviews period, and the legal aspect of looking at our policy, analyzing the policy, which is the code of what we're working through. The October, November, you can see the actual plan for delivery of what we want to do for the formal recommendations. We look forward to meeting with you, if it's not every month, every other month, of course, with the Transition Board and others that may want to hear a little bit about what we're actually doing here. So in your package, you do have the phases of what we're doing, the community engagement, the delivery, and then the final part here of introduction of the roadmap that'll still take us beyond. We don't think this is a one and done or even after the 12 month period that we're finished. It'll transition to something else because certain things, as you notice with a group, to create, to better something, you're putting together a group to get things started and you may end up turning it over to the experts that will be running it, but you want to do litmus tests along the way. How are we doing? What are we doing? Do we need to pivot anywhere along the way? With that in mind, we'd like to hear any questions that you might have, and please understand that you can email any of us, and we can send you the list of the folks that are actually on the team, but as the leaders up here for the team, we'd like to hear some of the questions that you might have.

Okay. At this time, are there any questions? Alderman Savage.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So first of all, I want to thank you. I certainly agree with the outcomes that have been listed, but I do have questions. I want to back up because, yes, frankly, I'm still not sure why we need this work group in the first place. We know what needs to get done. We need a singular app. And we know the barriers to that, and that is really premium and their contract, which we have to renegotiate with them and figure out if we need to pay for the new software, if they can do it. The second thing we know people are upset about is the fee structure. We don't need to study that for another 12 months. We've started to adjust the fine schedule, but in order to change that further, we have to renegotiate with premium. That's the only barrier. So again, I don't see how this helps us with that. Because we've been hearing the same thing for the past, I've been on this committee for a while, three years probably now, needs to negotiate, needs to negotiate, and it's just never gotten done. So how's this gonna get us to that finish line?

Thank you, Alderman. First of all, what we're trying to do is the transportation team very often are trying to respond to one-offs. And even though we know some of the things that need to be done, There hasn't been a 100% collective focus of the entire city departments that are impacted or have the ability to support this as a single set of opportunities to build out recommendations and to keep ourselves accountable to the fact that we want to do this. So this action plan, by the way, it is not going to take us 12 months to develop the action plan. The action plan actually is the roadmap that we will continue to work on for the coming year. This actual set of recommendations that we want to bring back before the Transportation Committee will only take us about 120 days. And the reason we need 120 days is to actually really think more strategically around what the problems are. We now have data, not just kind of one-offs, but we are actually collecting the data information around constituent feedback. We are also now reevaluating our contracts and understanding what the feedback is according to our engagement with them. We are thinking about the fee structures, as you mentioned, and the fine structures, but more importantly, it takes time to change interface and apps, and we have kind of moved to a different structure. So I think what we're hoping to do, and certainly we have teams that have just, know a lot of experience we're trying to build out an actual strategic framework and roadmap for all of the departments that are impacted and can lend their hand including our law department to build one single package with sets of recommendations benchmarks and the ability to show accountability to those recommendations to the transportation committee and the council writ large So instead of kind of moving one off and asking what's happening on one piece of this, you can actually see how the entire framework is designed and how we're moving forward on each component, which might not be delivered at the same time, but certainly are part of the larger opportunity for shifts for change.

So I... So... it's helpful to hear um but again again maybe i'm just somebody who's been dealing with this for years it problems seem pretty apparent those are the top two of the app and the fee structures uh all these other things are ancillary um so if we could really hone in on those and again i thought that it was going to be currently i thought that was going to be negotiated renegotiated with premium um i i'm just that's why i'm a bit surprised that no actually you need to wait another few months so this gets sorted out if not longer um it's again we've been told repeatedly

just as a matter of information, those processes are continuing. So we have not stopped the push towards a singular app. We are pushing for expanded opportunities. One of the things we did not talk about even today is rethinking our concession area and how that works. Obviously, the concession area downtown limits our ability to have overflow or satellite lots or build out additional parking infrastructure. That is also inclusive in the thinking around larger problems with parking. So I think what we are trying to do is not have such a narrow focus around parking. So yes, apps and fines are part of it, but it's not exactly all of the parking infrastructure that needs to be addressed. And so I think this is certainly the things that you pointed out will continue to move forward. And also some expanded thinking, I think, to build into kind of the parking concerns writ large. So all of the things that you mentioned, 100% true, they are part of what we're doing. And I would also, I think this is our opportunity to also add some additional things that need to be addressed into that fold.

Well, personally, I would just really like to see it focused. Those are the things we've been hearing about, had knowledge of them over the past few years. Personally, I don't think Annapolis has a parking problem. We hear presentations here every month. We have plenty of capacity in our parking garages. It's a matter of getting people in the garages in an easier way, an easier manner, which comes back to the apps and the fees. We don't have a shortage of parking in this city. You look at these charts every month. Again, the garages are very, very rarely full. I think we've had... two instances, two days that I've seen over the years that it's ever been full, even downtown Hillman. So it just seems like a lot of energy being spent on an expansive issue. So besides those two big things that I hear about, it's the other thing you said, which is not gonna be included in this, which is how premium I think it is handles the parking enforcement around the rest of the city. All of a sudden, this is after my neighbor's constituents have been parking the same way for the past 20 years, actually 40 years, some of them who live there, all of a sudden are getting harassed by parking enforcement and getting all these fines. No warnings, slap of the fines. That is something that we need to get addressed. That affects everybody. We can't just have this be focused on ward one and two. I just think that's a waste of time. Let's focus on these known issues. Related to that, I don't think we need more community feedback. We know what the people want done. We've heard about it for years. Like I said, let's just focus on getting it done instead of waiting another month or two to get public feedback. That's just my two cents on that. So I guess the question on this would be when will the parking vendors be brought into this conversation with the working group?

They're already in, but if I can clarify some of the questions you made mention as City Manager Lewis made mention about the technology change and all. Those meetings are still going on with the concession, which is Medco and Boyd-Waterson. The operator is Premium Parking. And you spoke about outside of the downtown area of Metropolis or the SP. So those are coming very close to them presenting to us within the next, I would say, before the end of the summer. We've met with them just five weeks ago. They got the last pieces of data that needed from us. So concurrently, that is going on. Holistically, what we want to do is looking at not just the downtown parking for visitors or the garage, but the residents. When we look at the residential parking issues that are going on in the Clay Street, which is District 4, this is all part of this as well. How do we handle that? We've been trying to work on that for the last few years. It's the 50-50. Half of them want it, but the other half just, why should I have to pay for a parking permit? there's not many districts that have a residential parking program um and we want to just see what what makes the most amount of sense and it's not um one size fits all for district one and two versus three and four but holistically what can we look at that makes sense I believe you, Alderman, with the downtown garage and certain things that may not be the fees, but it's the fines. As we address those, that is probably 65 to 70% of what you're talking about. But the other 30, that's just been, the can has been kicked down the road. We want to look at this with the team that we've assembled with things that we hadn't thought about. Because some of the ideas that are coming from the new employees to the city with senior level thoughts, they came up with some ideas that we never thought about that. So I think it'll be good what you will see in 60 to 90, 120 days, not a whole year, but I think we do need this team to really have a holistic look at what we've been trying to do, but it's been inconsistent over the past.

Thank you, that's all I have. Madam Chair. Okay.

Oh, Mr. Adama, you have comments?

Not particularly, Madam Chair. So I've been joining the committee meetings as a representative from the Transportation Committee. I am looking forward to solutions. Something that I do want to caution, and I will make this abundantly clear in more public ways in the committee meeting itself, we can't go into this process with the mindset that parking in Annapolis's downtown should be the same as parking at the mall. It's not. Annapolis is better than the mall. We don't have giant parking lots because people like to spend time in downtown Annapolis. We were built in the 1600s before the automobile, and unless we feel like tearing down sections of the historic city, we're not going to get that experience. We should be focusing on making it convenient to operate the system, ensuring that when people pay for a space that they don't get fined and that we have a singular app. And as we've been discussing for a while, the drive in drive out at the garage and anything else that we come in with, but downtown Annapolis parking will never be the same as strip mall parking. And that is a good thing.

because strip malls are terrible downtown annapolis is wonderful let's not try to make them the same thing right okay well again thanks for your demonstration and we'll be looking for you at our next meeting hopefully Okay, thank you very much for coming here today.

Thank you, we appreciate the time.

Okay, next on the agenda is ID 11-26, Transportation Department update.

Our director, Mr. Moore. So Madam Chair, our update was the parking reform. However, there were some questions from the committee member, Alderman Savage, with Mr. Will Rao from our staff to give some updates on bikes or bikeways. Yes. Okay.

Good evening. thank you all for having me per previous communications with you all and updates in the past there were a few items that I was going to update you on and I wanted to take this time very briefly to run through that list of items the first which admittedly I'm biased about because I'm really excited about our new potential contract for our micromobility, our shared micromobility program, i.e. bikes and scooters, and in this case, a more evolved fleet, which is gonna be really awesome. So the update I wanna give is where we are in the process. The RFP process was a bit tedious and long, and most of that is because we wanted to be sure, of course, we were crossing every T and dotting every I, and we also wanted to be sure that we were fulfilling the variables that were evaluated in our previous contract that we didn't want to revisit. And so, per that, we went through three rounds in gaining consensus from our evaluation committee. What we did is, there were two firms that submitted proposals, as I mentioned earlier. I couldn't mention the actual names, because we were still in the process, but they were Drop and Lime. And Lime Ride, of course, is the most known one, because they're in Baltimore, D.C., and other various municipalities. is in places like New Orleans and some other more comparable sized cities to the city of Annapolis. And so our evaluation has basically landed at us looking at that particular vendor. We interviewed them. It was a really fruitful process because we learned more about all the different ins and outs of their business model, but also what we were really looking at is how much they would prioritize the city of Annapolis. Because what we learned in our last process is if we're viewed as an offshoot market, what happens is the services that we need as the city of Annapolis and understanding our topography, understanding all of our demographics, traffic, all of those other things, we need something that's more tailored and that can be tailored to suit our needs. And so we believe we've landed at a good place. So the update is, We are at the phase now where we're getting all the signatures and finalizing a contract and offer to the vendor. And that should be happening in the next, hopefully this week. One part of that process is already done. Our interviews and scoring were completed July 2nd. so we're pretty close to you know when we actually did that i mean that should be coming through soon uh the next update i wanted to go were there any questions around that specific piece keep me going yes thank you yeah just so does that um

Were you able to make any progress on kind of getting the coordination overlapped with the county? Are they gonna be able to join us on that to expand the scope, or is that still gonna be limited to the city?

Yes, yes, thank you for that. That's a very important point. In our interview and process, one of the things we considered with whoever we were going with was their ability what's the word I'm searching for, their intention to expand into the county and to do so in conjunction with the county system so that it was integrated into ours. So, for instance, they wouldn't have to use a different app or a different service just because they went past Solomon's Island Road. And so we actually chose, that was one of our decision points, was whether they were aligned with that. So in conversations with Tonya Asman and others, my counterpart in the county, that is in line for what they're going to do. My observation is that because of the election and what's going on right now, I think what's going to happen, excuse me, is they're going to make a lot of those decisions following this coming, probably January. But the good thing is we do have, and we did pick a vendor who, in explaining our map and our boundaries as a city, which we all know is somewhat amoeboid, because the counties all around us, it just wouldn't make sense to go with a vendor that was only gonna do Annapolis proper.

So. Thank you. mean that so i guess what's the scope of the counties what are they planning are they looking to do this for the entire county or just certain urban areas?

Well, initially, and in our conversations with them, we're focusing on their model for a transportation hub. So it would go all the way up in the county and probably not South County across the South River, but part of what they wanna do is focus around that Riva area and out from there. So the hope is we can integrate all of the stuff that we're doing right on the edge of that, as well as our trail systems and some other things that are happening. So that, I mean, that is the hope.

You said their timing, I guess, is thrown off because of their elections.

Our timeline has been on speed dial, but theirs, I think, it's not as prioritized as ours is. The one thing I do know also, I'm glad you brought that up also, because they're... The trail system and the connection that we're making with the B&A Trail over the bridge and into Taylor, you know, also integrates our system because they want to be able to have some of those users use that trail. And obviously they can't use it if it's a different app and company.

So are they gonna be, are users of this going to be limited to the city limits? No, no.

No, okay. No, actually the geofencing will allow us to tailor, but that's a conversation that needs to be had obviously with our law office and others in terms of liability and what it means if we are managing that and they're using outside of our service area as a city, but it can be done.

well that's good news it's yeah it is safe for it to come back for sure yeah but yeah i mean maybe we could if the county is going to be a while maybe they'd be willing to contribute money at some point just to

yeah to actually get it extended officially formally to some of their residents yeah and i wanted to also reference that um i want to come back and give an update along with eric leshinsky i think we had mentioned that before and you mentioned it um who's our comprehensive planner um because a lot of these um rfps and our new you know new things that we're rolling out are um are not standalones. They're in conjunction with other things, other moving parts. And a part of that I wanted to add is that we are, one of the reasons why we went with this particular vendor is because we have an opportunity to do advertising and to get advertising dollars to help supplement costs. And the other thing is that we, part of our RFP process was to actually let it be known that the city does not have the resources to pay for any of these particular services that they would offer. And so we had to go through the process of like, as we know, and what you all were just speaking on in terms of parking, right? And so we don't need to add to the problem of parking in spaces with what we went through before, which is the scooters ending up on the sidewalks and on the side of the streets. So one really good, awesome part of that is we get the chance to have docking stations and to have designated stations and to also charge through the app, charge if they don't park in a space that, you know, that does not obstruct traffic or pedestrians. Okay. Yeah.

Pretty good. Excellent. Well, thanks.

Thank you. The next, oh, are there other questions? Any questions? In relation to that?

Not on the cycling portion, no. Okay. Apologize. I missed your presentation, but... No worries, no worries.

Actually, that's a good question though. Is it, will they include, will it be bike cycles and scooters both? Yeah. Okay.

Yes. So the other was our, I don't want to get in the weeds with this because I don't want to, you know, usurp a bit of what Eric Lashinsky and I work on, but he's the lead on our micro, I'm sorry, on our safety and mobility plan, RFP. But per what you brought up, I just wanted to very quickly run through some larger pieces of the scope of work, because a part of that scope of work deals, of course, with our Vision Zero campaign, which I know you focused on, which is limiting pedestrian fatalities and accidents, and for the most part, hopefully mitigating some of the roadblocks in us attacking, those issues that exacerbate fatalities or accidents involving pedestrians or bikes. And so written into this is also developing a plan to engage the community, educational outreach, all of those things around safety, around bike use, and around pedestrians in relation to motorists. The other is, which we talked about and I'm really excited about, and I had mentioned this in my previous update, was the bike plan update. And the bike plan update will allow us to do an assessment of the existing bike network, and also areas of opportunities that have been identified. And a part of that is because we do know that there's gaps in the system, and once we are able to you know again we don't need to do um any more long three-year plans or you know to get to that point and so we've done a lot of that you know evaluation and looking at it already in conjunction with other systems and so in this report they'll be able to identify those um opportunities that exist for us to do more with our trails the other is we had you know in the past we have had a bike map um that's somewhat codified but not totally and and so this you know in this plan what they'll be doing is reviewing that you know that network map updating that map and giving us you know some really good data around that but also something that can be used across multiple platforms so that you all can can also articulate what's happening with our trails um and something that's more user friendly for us as well as for the general public, which I think is gonna be helpful. And then the actual overall plan will address things like policy, which we all know is incredibly important. That was another point that was brought up because I'm taking a look at some of those things that will ease the bottleneck and us being able to make a quick turn in any direction as it relates to crosswalks and as it relates to signage and things of that nature and so they'll be taking a look at that and then they'll you know they'll do a draft and submit it to us and then we can look at some things that need to be modified and or added and then they will present the plan and then you all will have an opportunity to look at it and then I'm starting planning for our Walktober, which I do every year, which is around pedestrian safety. And even though it's warm out or hot out, and we don't want to imagine the cold weather yet or the fall, it's coming. And so the planning has to start early. And this year we want to really do something that... is both educational but also fun so that we can get people more involved and particularly with our tourists so that when people come here they understand pun intended the rules of the road and so I look forward to that lastly we have an intern in the Department of Transportation who's you know just just amazing um she has a background in mapping and data and how to tell a story and kind of you know weave a narrative into some of the data um and she just started i think a week ago and so we're really you know we're really looking forward to being able to put her to work on some of those gaps in information and data as it relates to all of these moving parts. So we have a lot of stuff planned for her, and hopefully you all will get an opportunity at some point during her tenure to maybe sit at the table with us and present some of what she's worked on. And she's pre-law, but in her last year in college in London. Thank you. Any questions?

So you said you're working on identifying and removing some of the bottlenecks in this process. Have you found any at this time that you can share with us?

Yes. The number one thing which we all know is our easements. I mean, the number one thing is really, and we're learning a lot because what we realize is there are a lot of absentee landowners in the city of Annapolis and people who own property that has been in the same condition for decades and decades. And then when you bring up the fact that you want to do something that doesn't completely take over their property or impede on anything that they're doing, what happens is then it activates them to one, you know, take a position on their ownership to really slow up the process because you have to, it's legal and, you know, multiple departments are involved in that. And so that's been one of the biggest bottlenecks as it relates to us being able to expand our trail system. The other, of course, which I think all of us have been in previous emails, communications, in relation to things like the access that bicyclists have on the road and code enforcement and all those other things. And so a part of that is being able to, just like Director Moore has been doing, convene the necessary entities to be able to work on and focus on those specific issues i think of you know compromise street as an example and so identifying people that can help move the needle the example i use is is you know we have a bi monthly coordinated meeting where we talk about all of those issues and you know part of Part of the challenge is realizing where certain departments and certain positions, where their authority or influence ends and begins. And that's the learning process also, just to be able to work together in teams. And I think that's probably, One of the things that will help ease some of the bottlenecks is, for instance, when we have code stuff or we have things dealing with planning and zoning, we're able to connect with how public works. And I would hope that we're also able to get, in a lot of those conversations, be able to have Department of Transportation at the table as well.

On the easement front, is there anything that can be done to expedite that process short of eminent domain, which we really don't want to do because that's using a sledgehammer on a fine surgery process?

Yes, on China, on fine China.

Exactly. That's not what we want to jump to.

And again, I'm being mindful of Eric Leshensky because I respect the work that he does so much. He He can better define the finite points of that, but I will say it has been expedited in the sense that we have our city office of law more involved in helping to, for example, Graduate Hotel, working with them they're uh you know a a large you know they're basically hilton and so they're not here and they have no context and they don't understand the importance of connecting our downtown to poplar trail and so being able to to just work through that process so it's not just getting them to agree to it and legally bind them to the agreement it's having them even have context of why creating a trail behind their hotel is important to the city anything else um not at this time I don't think so I mean yeah I think I look forward to getting the presentation from Mr. Lischinsky maybe we get that scheduled at some point yeah I think we had talked about September I know I know there's a break you know in August and you know you may have a lot of things on the agenda for September but if at all possible

know that that would probably be the best maybe we could sit down some time with eric and and um jeff wentz yes because i i would really like love to see us get to work on some of these quick build simple things we could do like putting bike markers in some of these lanes and getting them painted that's just seems Putting up signs.

It seems easy.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's... You know, you all know. Sometimes it can be a rather tedious process. But, you know, other municipalities do it. Other places do it.

They do, yeah. And I've made a lot of comparisons to... what i do my day job with stormwater management we've figured out quick ways to get projects in there get blanket permits so you don't have to do plans every time you don't get all these approvals every time get one approval for this type of project you want to do if it's putting up signs if it's painting and just do it but i think you need to get people on board in the city to do that to get those processes but it's it's safety yeah so i think we should be doing what we can to get those simplified but anyway thank you thank you all for your time okay thanks for coming out to give us the update on the transportation

See you at our next meeting, be safe during the summer, because we will not be meeting again until September. So next on the agenda, the agenda is complete. Is there anything else for the good of the order?

You said the agenda's complete, huh?

Yeah.

I did have a question for the Director of Transportation.

Oh, you do? Okay. Back to the hot seat.

Do you have a schedule in mind for getting the Blue Route trial implemented?

Yeah, we will definitely discuss that with you, and we've started working on that with, we let the county, in Orono County, that is know, that we have funds to do a pilot there. So we'll circle back with you, even though we're not meeting formally next month, we'll circle back with you later this month, early August, but yes.

And yeah, because I think we're gonna, Obviously with school starting, I think we really need to get on top of this as far as getting out an estimated timeline. Some people, we can set their expectations with education commission and folks, and transportation boards, so they know what to expect. So even if we won't be meeting, but still welcome to hear any kind of update over email. Yep. Anything else in the budget we need to bring up? I think that was about it. Oh, the other thing with, I was going to mention something else on the parking. Can't remember now. So you got lucky. That's all I think I have right now. You have my number. Don't go far.

He'll think of it. Oh, I'm sorry. On the mission online.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Director Moore, Alderman Savage and I were chatting a little bit before this meeting and we were talking about the forest drive transportation study or forest drive transit study and he said something concerning that you brought up we may have lost the funding for this study

Well, I've talked to the city manager about that. We'll figure out how we can move forward with the funds for the study, for the circulator study. Because what's happening now, when we look at Forest Drive, it's going to be pretty much like what the school route is still the Forest Drive. So that's almost the same there. So talking about the circulator, the Edgewood, Bay Ridge Avenue. I've talked to city managers about that, and we'll see what we can do.

Well, the other one with the Forest Drive one, we chatted a bit with the county, and they were interested in working with us on that because they've never actually done a specific transit study for that corridor. And what I'm thinking of is something akin to the 2009 study that we did for West Street. which looked at all kinds of modalities for transit, right? To look to see what kind of density do we have there? What kind of development is planned? Can we do, what kind of permanent fixed route can we do on that road that connects in with the county development in parole? Can we look at longer term looking at some kind of bus rapid transit system? What kind of bus stop improvements can we get in there as far as clear signage? Can we get something that runs every 15, 20 minutes for headway? Do we look longer term to see, like we did with West Street, is there a potential at some point where we could look towards getting a fixed trail system on there? Again, we don't even know if we have enough density. You have to look at what kind of density's on there, what kind of development potential, but My whole point with that was, and it's something traffic is one of the top concerns i hear from my constituents it's not parking it's traffic and we have a lot of housing targets we want to meet a lot of redevelopment on that corridor you know robinwood i think i saw is going to be adding when they redevelop even more housing than was there originally we need to have a solid transit plan that will tie in with our tdp as well but looking even beyond our tdp as far as um is longer into the future too when we again when we get this build out what kind of transit will we be able to install to address the traffic concerns because that gives me at least from my standpoint a lot of comfort with accepting the growth as long as we have the planning and the studying to look at what infrastructure we need to improve for the transit. So that's my long answer to the description.

That's a really good question. It's multifaceted because it brought up a lot of good thoughts. the park and ride you know that's you know 18 months down the road and we need to look at how we coexist with them because that's the transfer point we still need to hit them all but we got to get now over to um harry s truman so when we look at that long range with the county's tdp and our tdp that's where you got the name of the the blue route is what they put in there They all kind of come together with a multimodal, out-of-the-box kind of way we need to do things going forward. So specifically, how do we connect with everything that's going to be at the hub and dealing with the Forest Drive corridor? That all should work together. It really needs to work together because of the improvements and the growth with the county, and we want to be a part of that.

Yeah, so that was the other, I think it was $100,000 of one-time use money from a couple cycles ago. I thought we were making progress on that scope of work, but I think we both need to circle back and figure out where we left that and circle up the city manager. But that's, I think, what the alderman was getting at, because obviously that's key to both our wards and what kind of economic redevelopment happens in the corridor.

I understand. Exactly, and losing that transportation study funding, I'm gonna be blunt, would just be unacceptable because being able to unlock an effective transit route on Forest Drive would be such an economic engine and would turn what is effectively a car sewer into something where people want to actually spend time at and linger and right now it's it's a highway and a bunch of strip malls with some great neighborhoods just off of it but forest drive itself is terrible and no one wants to spend a lot of time there. And that's a good chunk of the city's land. We gotta find a way to turn it into something really valuable for all of the city. So if that's close to getting lost, let's figure out a way to not get it lost. If it did get lost, let's find it and we'll look the other way and pretend we never lost it. But losing it's unacceptable. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much, Director Moore, for attending today. Okay, the agenda is complete.

Will you take a motion to adjourn?

So moved. We'll take it.

I'll second it, I guess.

All right, meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.