Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

This meeting of the transportation committee will be called to order on Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 04:01PM. This time, we will do roll call. Right left. Alderman Denil Charles. Here. And Alderman Savage.

Present.

Arma O'Neill is here. I will entertain a motion for approval of the agenda.

So moved. Second.

All in favor, aye. Aye. Great. And obtain a motion to approve minutes from 06:11 twenty five.

So moved. Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Alright. Our general discussion starts with transportation board update. Do we have somebody from the transportation board? Didn't know what

Oh, she did.

Okay. It does not look like we have anybody from the transportation boards, so we will move on to our next, which is ID 1725, transportation department update, Marcus Moore.

Welcome.

Welcome. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Madam chair O'Neill, alderpersons, Savage and Pindell Charles. For the record, I'm Marcus Moore, director of transportation parking, here to provide you with a brief update on our agency's activities for the month of, Juners since we last met. One of the notable things is that the, MDOT MTA has approved our f FY twenty six capital and operating budget, which is approximately 1,500,000.0. And, of course, we have that 10% share local share that we will pay. So as a part of the grants that we get, there's MTA provides an oversight to the monies that we get quarterly to make sure we're in compliance with all the locally operated transit systems in Maryland, which we're a part of.

There's about 23 in the state of Maryland. These reviews assess our use of the grants and make sure the overall health of our system is good. And this and our reports have been pretty good or very good favor favorably as noted by us being able to extend the life of our our buses. As you know, the bigger buses are ten year buses, and some of them we have for twelve or thirteen years just because we've been doing what we should be doing and some to keep them in in operation. So we're pretty excited about that and able to move forward with some of our capital projects that we just need to do in our facility and the purchase of other buses as the ones that we have are going out of service because of Asian mileage.

June was quite a busy month for us, as we engaged in many community activities, like, Kids and Caboodle, Touch A Truck with kicks and clears, volunteer fire department, Esportsville Association making presentations, and a lot

of the things that Parks and Recs did with the, fun events, with parades, fourth of July, Juneteenth, and the like, and helping out as best we can with the, office of emergency management. So we we we remain pretty active in in what we do with the service or the resources that we have. So, of course, getting these grants are very important for us to continue our our movement forward, as we continue to grow. At our last meeting, I believe, was June 11, you as a committee requested, presentations from our parking contractors, and we'd like

to have, SP, a division of Metropolis, come up first if it's okay for them to give you a view, answers to the questions that you had on on June 11. And then from there, we'll, have, our county. Anne Arundel County, mister, Adam Greenstein will give a presentation on safe routes to transit, followed up by our ped, bike ped micromobility coordinator, mister William Rao, on on bird bike and, scooter, operation. If I can have, mister Dankyo, join us for the presentation with, Jason Kinney, to present.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee members. Jason will be driving.

Good afternoon.

Alright. So, this is just a follow-up to our last meeting, and you asked us for some specific information. We did leave some of it the same, from the last presentation. The length of stay, as you can see, has stayed pretty consistent, with Park Place driving the length of stay for the most part because of the hotel. People come and stay for three and four days, so that really pushes up those length of stays.

Alderman Savage, you asked for, you wanted to know how many people leave the garage without pay. So we have here for you, by the last three months, as you can see, we've significantly controlled and dropped those numbers. But there are several Okay. Factors that also that play into these numbers.

Things

like new parkers who were part of supposed to be part of an enterprise didn't set up their their monthly parking correctly. I just I forgot my cell phone. I paid at a later date. Some of them some of that group there did get citations, and, but you do have twenty four hours after, you exit the garage to make a payment. So while this shows people that all just left, it's not indicative of nonpayment.

It's three can you say that again? That's the mayor.

Yeah, of course.

So, you said it's not Why did you say it's not indicative of them not paying at all?

Well, because the way the Metropolis system works, you have up to twenty four hours to pay Okay. For your session. So, you could come to see an attendant and go, you know what? I forgot my cell phone. I don't have my phone. They'll hand you a card to scan it when you get home, and you can pay for the session that you left Okay. Unpaid.

But this number counts that person?

This this number counts every single person who left the garage without interacting with the system.

What percentage of overall access is that would that be as far as 250 out of how many exits total for that? And this is for the month. Right?

Good question. We'll we'll we'll incorporate that into the next one, but it's a small percentage.

Okay.

Very small percent.

Okay. Probably single digits, probably.

Single digits? Single yeah. Definitely single. So I'm I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's probably less than 3%. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But we'll update. Going forward, that'll be part of

the I know we keep throwing new questions that

Yeah. Of course. That's that's good. Right?

And, you also asked for residential validation uses and how many, how many hours, were given away for free by the validation. So these are the uses by by month and by location, and, every validation's two hours. So for the next one

That'd be good to see, also a percentage

Of total parkers.

Of total parkers who utilize that grace period?

Well, we have 623 participants and we've used a total of 3,106 validations or was that six hundred six thousand two hundred and twelve hours used by that validation or free hours for the resident.

So that's probably lower than I would have guessed if I were when I when we were initially, you know, engaged to go through this data, that's that's less than I would have guessed prior to actually pulling all the Yeah. Pulling all the data together. So but we'll we'll again, we'll incorporate a percentage, and I'll bet it's lower than I would have guessed

Right.

You know, when the question was asked.

Each participant using it four times. Right?

Yeah. Correct. Not much, right, over eight months.

Right.

And then and it's not actually like that. The concentration is much greater, which we all which we knew anecdotally for some time that you have heavy user, if you will.

Right. Okay.

Yeah. I get that also like, I'd like to see the just to be able to compare, like, what the total usage is overall. Yeah. Again, getting that that percentage, that'll help help me picture how significant this is. But related

And I think we'd probably wanna drill down to show there's like I said, there's 623, but I'm our our suspicion is that there's a lower number that are making up the bulk of that usage, and maybe we can understand, okay. It's a 100 participants who use 80% of the of that benefit. Mhmm. You know?

I guess you could take the table if we wanted to put a cost to it, or as they have cost the city this month. Mean, I know there's an economic benefit to getting people down there, but just the sake of arguing, you'd that's a dollar amount. Because each garage has a different charge. Right? Mhmm. So for two hours, just an idea of how much revenue that potentially is.

Sure. Can you go back to that slide that you were just at a second? Thank you. So a bed and breakfast is able to purchase validations as we talked about last

Yes.

And give those to their yes. But in eight months, only three of them, right?

No. No. We only have three bed and breakfast that participate.

Okay. Thank you.

And these are participants. They're participant. We can add usage by this category too, but we just didn't.

Okay.

You have 41 businesses that participate in the employee discount program, 69 businesses that purchase park shop and dines, and then 14 business organizations that purchase comped hours, one, two, three, or four hours. And, but again, everything from business and organization up are purchased by the business with the exception of Okay. Actually, that's about half right. Employee and bed and breakfast are free to the business. Park, shop and dine and the business and organization comps are purchased.

Okay. The business comps mostly tend to be at Park Place or, you know, the Merrill Lynches so on that will comp one, two, three, but they pay full rate, I believe. Yeah. Let me get back to you, but I'm pretty sure

They do.

Purchase the full rate and then just give it to their their client.

Okay.

And the bed and breakfast and employee, while they're free to the organization, the benefit to the user is not free parking. It's a discounted rate. So the user's paying less than the rack rate, if you will, from a normal transient parker. But acquiring those by the by the organization, whether it's a bed and breakfast or a business that wants to provide that for their employees, they don't they don't actually pay. Their guest pays a lower rate.

Yeah. Yeah. Bed and breakfast.

And, of course, as we know, Park Shop and Dines pay up they pay a nominal amount, we'll say, for distribution to their patrons.

Okay. These numbers seem a lot lower than I would have like you

Participants? Well, we'll we'll get we'll tie in some usage, and maybe that'll you know? I mean, 69 parks, shop, and dines is a good thing. That's a much higher number than when we were you know, when I look back years pre COVID. So that's encouraging.

So that's sixteen

Sixty nine.

Businesses Yes. That are purchasing.

Correct.

Yep. And then Mhmm. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

The the other thing I I had for you last time was, how often the garages are at capacity?

Since session ended with the exception of fourth of July evening, I haven't been in capacity.

Okay. I'm guessing God's is probably the first two. It has the most usage.

To fill, yes. Mhmm. And then we push all the overflow to Knighton, and then down to Park Place.

Yeah. Okay. But Great. Well, great information. Thank you all.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Thank you, madam chair. What would you say roughly is the average capacity of the garages combined or even independently? Just a rough estimate.

We have all that data, we'll we'll make that a regular portion of the update as well. It's obviously very different. It's a tale of two cities as I've always said here. In during session, it's a Monday to Friday, and it fills they fill by by 10AM, and then they turn over Monday to Friday. And then you your your occupancy is much higher after session, typically, Thursday eve later on Thursdays some Thursdays, I should say, but Fridays and Saturdays

Mhmm.

Too for dinner under the stars.

I would

you know, it's been a bit since we operated Hillman, but I'd be willing to stake quite a bit on the fact that that's the trend there as well.

Thank you.

But we'll get our hard numbers, and we'll include them Okay. You know, in the next next time we're together. Okay. Or we'll follow-up with an email.

Great. Thank you so much.

Yeah. If you wouldn't mind, due to the fact that we're not having an August meeting Sure. Just a follow-up email that we can share

with Yep. Absolutely.

The rest of council and constituents would be great. Thank you. I appreciate that data. I do want it noted, for the record, that we also invited premium parking to answer the same questions, and they refused and decided not to attend last month's meeting nor this month's meeting. So anybody that's interested in actual details on Hillman's data, We're still waiting on that.

So I appreciate the fact that you guys are helping us to better understand the numbers as we move forward and looking at parking in the city and operations and how to best serve our city residents with our park city parking. I appreciate the fact that you're providing us with all the data in a very timely manner. Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chair? Yes. Would you wanna entertain a motion that the committee sends a subpoena through the council to serve to, premium parking to come present updates to us at our next meeting in September?

I wouldn't.

Question. Miss Corace, would you like to weigh in on that?

I can look into that and see if they would be bound to come. I know the issue is that the contract is through Medco. So Medco has the authority to make premium up here, but I can look into it and circle back with you guys about that subpoena option.

Thank you.

I just I think it's important to note that if they want to really be a good partner with the city, then then we need to have data. And we've been asking for it for a long, long time, and we keep getting stalled. So it's a frustration on the council that we don't have actual numbers, so we don't know if we are making our waterfall. We don't know if we are making progress towards making sure that the Hillman Garage is sufficiently staffed and sufficiently providing the services necessary to our

I'm sure. So considering our tight tie timeline, I I'd suggest maybe that the committee entertain the motion to get some advice from the law office on this because I think if we wanna do this, we should probably get it introduced ASAP and approved by the council so that we can actually get them to attend in our September meeting. Mhmm. At least you know, we only have two meetings coming up with one week. It might be a little tough, but perhaps we could get a placeholder on the agenda.

Otherwise, we might have to suspend the rules. But if we change our mind on this, we can always just not put on the agenda. So to that end, I guess, could I move that the committee ask for a subpoena resolution, whatever it's called, to be drafted by the law office? And to be, I guess, given to the chair to review, so we determine if if she wants to move forward or not with the whole council. And the subpoena would be to

don't know exactly data?

Yeah. I don't exactly know how to word it, but it would be to compel, Premium to attend and provide information that the committee is provide an update to the committee on the, I guess, the Helmer parking garage performance and other standards that we've requested.

Okay. I think it would also be useful if there's specific questions and information that you want to provide that to the office of law so we can include that. So we get and is it do you want them to appear, or do you just want the information? Or do you have a preference? I don't have a preference. I want the information that we've asked for for the past nine months. That's what I would

Yeah.

We can forward to you the request that we had sent originally to both premium and SP Plus that created the presentation that b plus slash Metropolis just gave to us along with the data that they provided in June. But I can forward that information was requested in early May.

Yeah.

Do I have a sec?

I'm not quite sure what the motion is. Could you repeat it, please?

The motion would be I'm just looking at the city code here. The motion would be to summon task the law office to draft up a resolution to summon or com yeah. We can summon the persons or so as we can summon the persons or compel the testimony and the production of documents on such matters that relate to the Miller Park Garage as requested by the chair.

Second.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Motion passed. I'll get you that information. And

that's in case just in case you don't have it handy. It's section 10 of article four of the charter. It talks about our judicial power.

Thank you. Is there anything else that you want? Thank you. We appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up on our agenda is the presentation on the safe routes to transit.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for having us. It's nice to see some familiar faces and some new ones. So my name is Adam Greenstein. I am a project manager with the Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works, and I'm leading this charge by county DPW to conduct the safe routes to transit study. My goal today is just to give a brief high level but detailed enough overview even though plenty of folks from the city, both elected officials, stakeholders, and individual citizens have been involved in the project as partners and provided feedback just to give, you know, additional voices, idea of what's going on to help inform what's going on with transit in the city.

Even though Marcus provided some, you know, overviews of what's happening from his end, this is a partner from the county what we're trying to do to improve transit in in and around the city. So I'll briefly cover the team that's involved, including some folks who are here with me, overview on goals of the project, things that we're trying to focus on to improve safety, mobility, and accessibility for people who use the transit systems, the different transit service providers in the county, both, you know, within and around the city, but also elsewhere in Anne Arundel County. What we've done so far and the progress that we've made and what we're trying to achieve through the remainder of the study, what might come after the study itself, and then an overview of the public, input and outreach process that we've done and what's still to come. So, again, I'm Adam Greenstein. I sit within the county DPW's Bureau of Engineering.

So we execute these projects even though it's a feasibility study. It's under the county's capital improvement program. And I serve as the PM, so I'm overseeing all the execution of the project. There's several departments and divisions within and beyond the county that are, involved in this project, so it's very multi jurisdictional. Lots of different state, local, county agencies involved, including at the county level.

So others in public works like myself, traffic engineering, county office of transportation, and Brian Ulrich is over there behind me to my right. Office of transportation, including Brian's team, serves as the sponsor of the project. So they developed the plans for DPW to execute these types of feasibility and planning studies, and they also helped, secure a grant award that I'll describe in just a minute. Of course, both Indianapolis area and around the county, a lot of transit is served on the state route system, so the state highway administration's involved. Definitely MTA since we're looking at their bus stops as well.

City transit, so city of Annapolis across the board between DPW, DOT, planning and zoning, they're all involved. Other state and, local stakeholder agencies, we're getting the Department of Aging and Disabilities, Department of Mental Health, nonprofits involved. And then outside of the Annapolis area, but just to give you an idea of who else is involved as our partners, because the transit services in the county often transcend county borders going into Baltimore City, Prince George's County, Howard County. Those county governments are involved. The city of Baltimore is involved.

And then because we're looking at all the different providers that have transit service within the county and also to an extent within the city as well, although not specifically relevant here, is RTA of Central Maryland. They're mostly focused in the western part of the county, and I'll go over an overview of, where that where these study areas are. But first, to give you an idea of what the goals of the project are and why we're doing this, I would hope that everyone acknowledges that there's issues with getting good access to transit both in the city, around the city, in places like Parole, Edgewater, and the Broadneck Peninsula, and just county wide, and it's emblematic of challenges with access to transit in the Baltimore and DC regions. We're trying to find ways to develop recommendations that would eventually go into a capital, plan, a capital improvement program to implement improvements to make it easier to walk and bike to bus and rail transit in the county. We also wanna provide better accommodations at bus stops and rail stations themselves.

It's not the primary feature because the biggest concern from the counties and and with our agency partners is making sure that it's safe to get to and from the stop in the first place. And then we're focusing on the communities that where have the where they have the greatest need, populations where there's low car ownership, areas where people have more challenging access to transportation, more economic disadvantage where they rely on transit more even if they do have a car because it's more economically practical for them, focusing on them the most because they will get the greatest benefit. So the scope includes, as I mentioned before, developing recommendations for improved infrastructure connections to transit stops and stations for local bus service, MTA commuter buses, MTA light rail, MARC service, park and rides like the Truman Park And Ride, just outside the city here. And we're also going to prioritize those recommendations. There are upwards of 550 bus stops in the county.

A 180 of those are in the Annapolis study area, which I'll show in a map in a minute. But we can't do everything all at once. We need to figure out which stops need the most improvement first. Granted, that's not necessarily the lowest cost. But if we can get a capital project started early, we can meet the needs of those communities as early as possible and then try to get to all of those.

We'll have a whole single list of every bus stop and the three study areas that we identify, prioritize, and just try to address them one by one as best we can. Hopefully, also getting some financial support from the city and adjacent jurisdictions and also the state DOT. The number one goal really is making sure that this is community supported. We could come up with a whole bunch of infrastructure recommendations, and people in different communities within the city and around the county might completely disagree, have different ideas to share. We can't make it perfect for everyone who needs better access to transit, but our goal is to get general majority community support both from individual residents, community associations, stakeholders, and elected officials both at the city and the county level at level and also from state elected officials to the best extent we can.

So we're trying to make sure that there's, to a certain extent, some community consensus. So this project is partially funded by a grant from the Federal Highway Administration called Safe Streets and Roads for All, which you may be familiar with. So Brian Ulrich in transportation and his team put together the application, got the award. It's funding a portion of this study, and hopefully trying to leverage more potential grant opportunities to implement these recommendations. But in the grant application, they established three study areas.

You can see the one that we're highlighting today is, of course, the greater Annapolis area, which again includes the entirety of the city itself, Parole, the Annapolis Mall area, a small portion of Edgewater, and a very small portion of the Broadneck Peninsula. Only a couple of bus stops on Broadneck, but because they're inside that study area boundary, we are including them. We also identified other areas in the northern and western parts of the county. There's a little bit of a misinterpretation of the study boundary for West County where you can see if you look at North County, it's bordered by Baltimore City. So we have a dotted line because Baltimore City is a partner, but we're not actually studying transit service once you get into the city itself.

West County, that border on the western end of it does go into Prince George's and Howard Counties, but, really, the border is within Anne Arundel County. It's just about how the map was drawn. So we're looking at a number of different ways to try to improve safety, and granted, these are just recommendations. This is just a planning study. There's nothing said and said about how to get it done, when it gets done.

Recommendations could change after a study completed once things go into implementation. Prioritization could change. This is just a sample set of things that we're considering. This is definitely not comprehensive things like low cost options, like signal upgrades and better crosswalks and curb ramps and better signing and flashing beacons and and things like that. Somewhat more substantial upgrades like providing median refuge in the middle of the street for crossings, you only have to cross one side of the street at a time.

Upgrades for curb ramps, whether it's to meet compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act or just to make them better quality, easier to see, easier to notice for, the portions of the population in and around the city who need it. It does take a little bit more work, but it's less substantial than major improvements like new shared use paths or new sidewalks. And as I mentioned before, we're looking to make the experience better at the bus stop. Some aspects actually do make the waiting experience or the user experience safer. Most of them are focused on more comfort, but it encourages paired with better infrastructure, increased transit use in the city and the surrounding communities, such as better landing pads when you get on and off the bus?

Can you easily get to and from a sidewalk or a path, or is it just a grassy area? Not ideal. Possibly relocating stops mostly closer to intersections or designated crossings. So, for example, looking at some of the bus bus stops on Forest Drive, can we relocate them closer to a signalized intersection so someone gets off the bus, walks to the signal, and uses a signalized crossing as much safer than other locations? Or they might be discouraged from doing so and crossing mid block just from dodging traffic, which we certainly don't want people to do.

Things like benches, bicycle racks to encourage people to walk or bike if they if they choose to. Lighting from a visibility perspective for traffic makes it safer, but also might give more of a sense of comfort from a public safety perspective for transit users as well. Now as I mentioned before, the goal is to prioritize these recommendations. So we're coming up with a list of potential improvements at each stop, and we're going to prioritize prioritize rather, my apologies, each individual stop based on these factors. They have different scoring, and we've come up with a prioritization scoring system.

Again, we could have something at the top of the list that can move down once we have more conversations with the community, but it's just a starting point. When we talk about safety, we're talking about crash risk, not necessarily just police reported crash history, especially because even though the severity of a crash involving someone walking or biking more often result results in injury or, god forbid, fatality. We're looking at the factors that contribute to the likelihood of a crash, travel speeds, number of travel lanes, availability of sidewalks and paths and dedicated bike facilities, presence of good quality traffic control, high quality signals, traffic calming. That's on the safety side of things. Equity, even though in the transportation space right now, that's becoming a little bit of a taboo term.

We're still focusing and using the term equity. As I mentioned before, the communities where there's the greatest need for public transportation, where we can have the greatest impact of the people who rely on it day in and day out. When we talk about impact, we're looking at ridership. The primary focus is what are the actual ridership numbers for the four different service providers in the county and the three service providers within and around the city of Annapolis. When we talk about potential ridership, we're making our best guess using transportation research and studies that say, if you make certain improvements, you are likely to have an increase in ridership.

It's an estimation process. It's statistical. It's not perfect, but we're hoping that if you build it, they will come. I hate to use that line, but it does tend to pay off in a lot of cases. And then the most important thing in depending on who you ask is community support, agency requests.

If the state or city staff have already been working on issues and we can implement it through this effort would be ideal. If there's strong community support from a homeowners association or the bike commission or other groups like that, that can certainly bolster support because you have a contingency of people who are really interested in making a change. So as far as our study progress and timeline, we began this in, September 2023. We looked at existing conditions, doing field reviews and desktop reviews of what's out there right now, starting to screen locations for where general different types of improvements might be needed, and then, of course, starting that prioritization strategy. What are the biggest factors?

How do they score? How do we weigh the different low, the locations and the different factors in play? That's all been done. We are in the middle of a lengthened period of community and public input. So we had, and I'll get into this in a little bit.

We had a couple of months of a public comment process. We're extending that over the next couple of weeks, and I'll discuss some of those details in case that might help you understand our partnership and relationship with the public. Once we finish that within the next couple of months, we're going to refine our prioritization because that's going to include input from the public, refine our recommend improvements. It's gonna be a really long matrix that has everything listed in a scoring for priority, and we're gonna break it down into things that are short term that you can do through an operations and maintenance budget, like refreshing your pavement markings, providing better traffic signs, upgrading or fixing broken traffic signals or improving lighting, midterm which could be minor geometric improvements like providing a better quality curb ramp for ADA accessibility, and long term, a big capital project like a new sidewalk. Once the assessment is done, we have everything prioritized.

We're going to determine what different programs at the local, county, and state level we can utilize to get this stuff implemented and where the funding is going to come from between capital improvement program dollars. We're gonna go after as many grants as we can, community support, wherever it can come from. And then our current goal, pending some additional federal approvals, would be to finish the study, which would be a final action plan is what they're calling it in the federal grant, would be a little over a year from now. One big part of this, as you already know, is public and community input. So what we did is about a year and a half into the study after we got a lot of data together is we met with stakeholders, community leaders, a defined list of contacts, including police, public schools, elected officials, homeowners groups, advocacy groups, special interests, and we had virtual meetings with them.

One for each of the three study areas ended up having anywhere between, you know, ten and thirty p representatives from each of those groups just to get the ball rolling so they could share information with the general public and their constituents and their neighbors and friends and family on getting some interest in it. It's hard for these types of studies to get public input because they have a hard time and I sometimes deal with this myself in my community, latching on to something that's so big picture vision. You don't know when things are actually going to change in your community when something's going to get built. So we're trying to find different ways to engage with the people who represent the general public to get more interest and get more feedback. Because the more public comments we get, the better this works out.

From there, we held an open public comment period for almost three months. It included information on our county project web page, and so we opened it to public comments. We sent out flyers and mailers and social media posts saying, go to the website. You can look at an interactive map and pinpoint a specific issue, put in a comment. You can tell us who you are.

That was optional. You could fill out a survey, and we provided that in English and Spanish to be hopefully more accessible to more people in the county and especially for the Spanish speaking community in and around the the city here as well. And within that period, we held three in person public meetings, one for each study area. It included a brief presentation with some slides kinda like this, but a little bit more in-depth, plus an open house boards and opportunities for people to meet with us one on one where we really get that personal value out of making that connection with people, and they can really explain what the issue is and if we can try to address it. After the third public meeting in mid April, we got some strong interest from the community, especially in parts of Annapolis to have more public outreach, more opportunities for public engagement, especially because there were some issues with scheduling and venue selection for the meeting that was in Annapolis to serve this study area.

So we're holding another in person meeting, a little less than a week from today or about a week from today at the Bush Library on West Street. And then because we acknowledge that many communities in and around the city either have access troubles with access to transportation. They can't easily get to an in person meeting, or they have trouble with access to Internet trying to provide something in person and something virtual. So the following week, and this is a little bit out of date, we'll have a virtual meeting on July 24, so just over a week from the in person meeting. And even though many communities, folks might have issues with getting access to Internet, we're trying to work with stakeholders and elected officials to organize groups of those residents to find a community space has Internet, and they can join the meeting as a group and still provide their input.

So I didn't provide contact information there, but easy to find my information on the county website if there's more questions, but I'm happy to answer them now.

Hey. Thank you. You've been busy.

Sorry. But for good reason.

What's that?

No question.

Thank you, John Chera. So thank you for joining us. I know I'm unfortunately, I haven't been able to make any of the meetings, but they've certainly been on my radar, I've been trying to send them out to constituents. I am curious, just first of all, why is this being led by public works as opposed to the county department of transportation?

So the bulk of and Brian might be able to expand on this a little bit. The bulk of, if not nearly all of the either community level or roadway corridor level planning and feasibility studies that the county conducts are funded through the capital improvement program even though they're not actually designing construction of infrastructure improvements. So then office of transportation will develop a plan to put the get the projects into the into the CIP, and DPW is responsible for executing them. So it's pretty typical. There are certain things at the planning level that Office of Transportation does, but it's more master planning. But needless to say, even if DPW is executing the project, the Office of Transportation is a very strong voice in pretty much everything we do, so it's almost like we're doing it together.

Mhmm. Okay. Thank you. I was just curious. And you said you said some of the funding is coming from a federal grant? Correct. What percentage roughly?

So just offhand, the total cost for the study between consultant services and county in house costs is probably running somewhere around let's call it, like, 2 let's call it 225 to $250,000. The federal grant is a 105,000. Plus, there's a county match requirement of 20%, so that's another 26,000 that the county is putting in, but that's all built in within the cost. And so we'll be submitting reimbursement requests to Federal Highway. We just submitted one last week for 80 of the 105,000, so we should get a lot of that back already before, hopefully, anything or not hopefully, before at risk anything changes with federal grant programs, try to get that money back while we can to support the county's transit programs.

And is the Safe Routes to Transit name part of that federal program, or is that just the name that the county's using?

I'm not gonna steal Brian's thunder if you wanted to expand on that, but, that was the name that they used in the application for the grant funds. Then I don't know if there's anything more than that. Okay. Yep.

And to clarify, I didn't quite catch this, but you said there's quite a bit overlap with the city, but does this include city bus stops, or is it only the county bus stops in the city?

Within each study area, it includes every bus stop regardless of the service provider.

Oh, good.

Okay. So, yeah, city, county, and MTA stops in the city. In the western part of the county, that includes RTA. And even if there's a bus stop that serves multiple providers, there's plenty of MTA and county and city stops that are all in the same place. If we make a recommendation, then it just becomes a question of how to partner to make the improvement, if they share the financial burden, anything like that. But long story short, it doesn't matter who serves the bus stop. It's an active bus stop we're looking at it.

Yeah. Great. Thank you for that. Mhmm. Let's see. Are you are you gonna be looking to update any kind of standards just to ensure that future bus stops adhere to some of these safety standards that you're gonna be developing and identifying as part of this study?

That's not within the scope of the project, but what has happened is in a lot of the discussions that we've had mostly with MTA is they have their bus stop design standards, and there's industry guidance on provision of certain traffic safety elements like sidewalks. But at least at the stop level, MTA has started thinking about, well, we recently updated our bus stop design guide and all those similar details. It's helping them think a little bit differently about whether or not they need to make changes. The county is pretty much doing the same thing. So it's just a natural part of the conversation because it gets the gears turning about whether or not our standards and our policies and guidance needs to be modified a little bit, but that would all be a separate effort.

Okay. That'll be a question for our director at some point if we are updating our standards for, our bus stops. So what distance or radius from the stops are you looking at as far as safe routes and improvements? Are you looking sounds like you're looking at both ADA and cycling, but is it 500 feet, thousand feet from a bus stop? How far out are you looking?

If I'm the point I'm getting at is I know even if we improve right at the I've seen some communities where they just as an example, they'll put in a crosswalk, but there's nothing at the end of the crosswalk. Right? Right. And I'd hate to see these bus stops just be on an island. So is there what's the scope of that you're looking at?

Most of it is on a case by case basis, but if there's any gray area, we, at a minimum, are doing to the nearest intersection. In the more urban areas where there's more closely spaced intersections and higher volumes, we'll look to the nearest signalized intersection, but it really depends on the circumstances of the stop. In some cases, because we have a pretty good idea of why the bus stop was placed where it is, we'll look at connections to adjacent communities and see if we can at least include in the recommendations some improvements for better access within a community or to a local business. And part of that's also coming from public input, and we've got some comments gotten some comments from individual residents and business owners and tenants about, you know, please make sure to cover a certain distance because I know that people would like to use transit to get to my shop or my restaurant or to go to work wherever they're coming from, but it's not being done uniformly around every bus stop.

Okay. Alright. Oh, and before I forget, I did have a specific request. And so Bay Ridge Gardens in the city, it's near the intersection of Forest Drive and Bay Ridge Avenue. Mhmm. They currently do have a bus stop. However, it does have a lot of issues. I just wanna basically put your attention on that. We've recently had a shooting in that community, and I was recently reached out to you about ensuring that the sidewalks and bus stops and everything are safe for people because they have to walk or take the bus a little further

Mhmm.

Because part of the community is getting gated off. And so, yeah, I just wanna make sure that's in your in your mind as you Absolutely. Look at the study. It sounds like you're familiar with generally what I'm talking about.

The intersection in general, yes. I wasn't sure if you were talking about any specific bus stop at the intersection because we acknowledge that there's a couple on Forest Drive in front of the gas station, and the layout of the sidewalk there is not ideal. And so between this effort and the county trying to get the gears turning on improvements along Forest Drive through other capital improvement program funds. We're trying to pair those together. Some limited funds handicapped us on how much we could get right now, but we're trying to put a plan in place to do more at that intersection.

We had to scale back a little bit, but I think this project is gonna push that a little bit more. It's just a matter of when it gets done, primarily in front of the gas station because we know there's that sidewalk gap and there's a stop nearby and then a stop around the corner and just trying to see if we can make that all work a little bit better. Mhmm. Yeah. The Forest Drive corridor between the safety study the county recently completed in this study has become more of a priority than it already was.

Yeah. Okay. Well, in my last point is just and I don't know if you have this data for the county or not, but based on some of our ridership data because you were talking about equity, which I I think is a very important lens. But on the other hand, I really think it's already implied in transit. And what we're finding from our rider surveys is that vast majority, I'm talking 80% of the people who use it, don't have a car, or have one car. The that that last 20% of those who have one car

Right.

Or less. Right? Right. It's already the people who need it. I don't know how much extra effort needs to get done. It it's just that's a part of transit, and I think it does beg the question of which I think is a separate bigger but separate question as far as how do we make transit serve not just those who need it, but to get more users out of their cars and into transit vehicles. But, you know, I think getting safer bus stops will help increase ridership for sure. But, in any case, yeah, thank you so much for your work on this and including Citi. Absolutely. And, yeah, I look forward to hearing, hope, with future updates.

Absolutely. Looking forward to it.

Great. Thank

you, madam chair. Has there been and this might be a combined question for director Moore as well. For this meeting at the Bush Library, has there been any outreach? And I'm a follow kinda on Alderman Savage. As far as, finding out for people who don't have transportation, can they get to the Bush Library? Has there been any outreach to those, residents to get to the to the meeting itself?

From the county end sorry. I didn't to interrupt. We're working with the county office of transportation just to see if there's any way to make that a little bit easier. We haven't made that part of the plan specifically because the goal is to hold the meeting and relying more on community stakeholders and representatives of the community to try to help us with getting the word out and trying to organize transportation. But, unfortunately, it hasn't been a major piece of it.

But that was part of the reason the virtual meeting was planned. Even though some of those folks might have trouble with access to transportation might also have trouble with access to Internet if it's an economic issue, and trying to work with them and the different communities around the city to see if they can group together to join the virtual meeting. So, hopefully, whether it's a transportation issue or a scheduling issue, that they can still be part of the public comment process. If there's a different way that we can come up with to make it easier to transportation for folks who wanna come to the in person meeting, we can certainly work with city staff on that as well, but it hasn't been part of the plan to date.

It's kind of strange.

Mhmm. That's exactly why we're trying to make it better to get access to transit.

Yeah. I think our excuse me. Marcus Moore, director of transportation, city of Annapolis. Our meeting at the, American Legion, was back in April, Adam

Mhmm.

We had a pretty good turnout on

this one with stocks. Hold on, director Moore. I couldn't make that meeting. I had another commitment, but the feedback I got was there were very few residents at that meeting. It was Macely Stack. That was the feedback that I got. But so from several people that it was not. And that was and mister Green mister Adam and I have had that conversation, and we met about it. I was very disappointed. I had sent out multiple, multiple, multiple emails to hundreds of people to come.

I had a commitment that I had to go to in Baltimore, but that was disappointing. And I was hoping and and that that meeting the next meeting could be scheduled at Mount Olive. And I'd indicated that to mister Adam because the last meeting that we had concerning the comp plan, we had, I think, 42 people there. That was a cup maybe two years ago. And it was a very good turnout.

There was no problems with parking or ingress or egress. And so I will say on the record I mean, not that the Bush Library isn't beautiful and wonderful, but I thought Mount Olive would be a better choice for that next meeting. And we had a discussion about that, and I'll say I was extremely disappointed that it did not happen. And so that's why I'm asking the question, is there any way to get people who can't get to the Bush Library or don't feel comfortable, getting to the Bush Library as they would walking to Mount Olive Community Life Center. So, my understanding was it was a lot of staff there at at the American Legion, but very few, if any, residents.

K. I'm gonna springboard off that.

Mhmm.

Would it be possible to make Mount Olive a community center where there is a virtual options so that anybody that went to Mount Olive, they're watching the meeting virtually?

Don't know. I have not connected with

the That's what you're sort of indicating that, hopefully, people could congregate in community centers if they couldn't make it because you're providing the virtual? Is that what I heard that

you're Correct. That would be a separate virtual meeting. So we will provide a dedicated presentation that would be virtual only, not not a hybrid setup. But if they have Internet access and there are folks who have easy access to get to the Mount Olive Community Life Center to join as a group to the virtual meeting, we can push that message out as much as possible.

Okay. It wouldn't be viewing the meeting that's taking place at push by

Correct. We look into hybrid options and their trade offs, and I'm not an expert on setting up public meetings in every aspect of the sense, but in certain aspects of trying to put them together. We had concerns about the ability to, what I'll say, divide and conquer our our county team representatives along with folks from the state and the city to monitor the virtual attendees at a hybrid meeting versus in person and and as opposed to if we could have a stronger contingency of the project team all in one place dedicated to the folks who were either in the in person room or the virtual room, we can give them our undivided attention, plus also making sure that folks understand that we don't want the public meetings to be the only avenue for public engagement. We understand that providing a public project web page might present the same challenges for folks who might not have access to Internet to join a virtual meeting, providing as many different ways that folks can reach out to us by phone and email and interactive maps and surveys to provide feedback at any time even though there was so called an official open public comment period that had an end date.

We still would always accept public comments and questions. We just consider it a little bit differently. But anytime through the study, if we get a comment on something, we will definitely try to incorporate it into how it informs our decision making process. I know that's a little bit more broad and a little bit off the rails from what you were asking about before, but that's the general goal.

Because that that section of parole is highly concentrated with Spanish speaking residents. Right.

I I appreciate the feedback. We'll push the word out more to try to find ways to make it easier to get to the library, if there's any way we can do that, and also make it easier to join the meeting virtually from wherever anyone would choose to or would desire to do that.

Thank you. No more.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you. Sounds like a lot of work's been put into it. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is ID 10725, an update on Bird and Scooter.

Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.

Okay. Thank you.

I appreciate.

I already started off wrong. Sorry. Greetings, everyone. Thank you all for having us. In particular, me as the bike and pedestrian and micro mobility coordinator. I'm gonna walk you through an update on the Bird, Bike, and Scooter program, which is a joint between Bird and the city of Annapolis to have them provide this service to those visiting and also our residents. My name is William Rao.

Welcome.

So I wanna start off by briefly asking the question, why micro mobility? And there are a lot of reasons why micro mobility, is something that is advantageous to the city of Annapolis and its residents, but also a lot of our, departments. And one of those is that it reduces traffic congestion and parking demand. Now, this first bullet, will be demonstrated in some of the data that's on, a following slide. But, so just put that in your back pocket.

The second one is, it supports climate and sustainability goals. I think, obviously, reducing our footprint in the in the best case scenario, reducing the number of cars that are on the road and also changing the culture of our city from being car centric to being, you know, a city where you can use alternate modes of transportation including walking. Next, it expands access to transportation options. As we saw when we first acquired the bike pro excuse me, the bird program, there was geofencing that eliminated some communities, initially, and then it was expanded. And what you saw was an increase in ridership from some of those communities, most notably Harbor House, Eastport Terrace, and it provides, an opportunity for people who are in the workforce, in the downtown area to quickly hop on a bird, bike, or scooter and shoot downtown or shoot to West Street, and I've seen it with my own eyes.

And the next is first and last mile connections. And so what we've been talking about in the transportation department and what the director has been working on is is really ramping up the knowledge, the community knowledge that each of the buses have a bike rack on the front. And, you know, part of that is because a lot of people think that when they take public transportation, it's to get all the way from a to all the way to b. And the truth of the matter is, you know, you do have an opportunity to, maybe ride your bike or a quarter of the way and then go to a bus line, take the bus, and then take your bike off the bus and ride the rest of the way. And and so, one thing about the scooters is it does provide an opportunity for people to maybe not take a whole trip on the scooter, but maybe walk aways, find a scooter, get on one, and then walk some ways, which is really helpful.

And that lends itself to the last bullet, which is a healthy, active, travel option for people. What we do know is that, particularly in the warm weather months, you know, to be out and about and experiencing our city, let's say, you know, going to Pipmoyer or going downtown or even going, up West Street into the DeParro area, it provides an opportunity to, know, for people to be out out and about and, meeting their neighbors and meeting their friends without having to hop in their car, find a parking space, get out, and, pay for parking. The benefits to the community. First, it reduces car trips for short travel, and we all know, that we have a finite number of supermarkets in the city, finite number of a lot of other outlets. And so it, the idea that someone could really hop on a bike or on a scooter and, let's say, go to Walgreens or go to Giant or go to Safeway, Those kind of short travel trips, you know, really help, reduce the number of times people need to both find parking, also hop in their car and add to the density that exists on roads, like Hilltop And Forest Drive and some of the other roads that feed into those major roads like Bay Ridge.

The second is it eases parking strain in high traffic areas. Now all of these are highly aspirational and it would take some time for it to reach that point, most notably when we're able to increase the number of bikes and scooters that we have. But also the idea is that the more we build out our trail and multiuse systems, we're able to provide a a clear pathway for people to hop on scooters and hop on bikes and not feel that that they're being kind of an an added piece to traffic in terms of safety. Next, it enhances mobility for residents without cars, which is a huge thing. I was just referencing the previous conversation which we've been involved in terms of safe routes because it provides an opportunity for people that simply don't have the means, to purchase a car, in some neighborhoods where, you know, parking is, and, you know, this is no pun intended, but parking is a premium.

It it it provides an opportunity for people to have other options. And lastly, it supports local businesses by improving access, which we know because, again, the dream is once downtown is is up and running again and and it's, it's been fully revitalized, there will be green space and opportunities for families and people to to hop on scooters and hop on bikes and, you know, safe ways for them to get around, to support those businesses downtown, along West Street, and along other corridors. So I just wanna give you, very quickly some of our usage spike dates. This is important because, I I know, myself, I've made a lot of assumptions about which days there would be more people on scooters, simply because a lot of our use comes from tourists, to be honest. And so, it's something exciting for people to do when they come to town to rent a scooter or a bike.

So June 30, we had 278 rides and, you know, that's been our spike since April. That's been kind of the the largest spike. Why June 30? I went through my calendar when I was looking at the dashboard, and I try to to correlate if there were any big events, and I couldn't I couldn't find but it's very interesting that it's June 30 and not, let's say, commencement day or something like that. April 26, we had 257 rides.

June 14, 02:40, and you'll see as you go down two thirty four and two thirty one. We did have, I do have some data, as as we'll see as we move forward in the presentation, that'll that'll show you some other numbers that are a lot more recent. So we currently have 150 in circulation in the city. This is hopefully going to be increased. We had a reduction in our bicycles in the bikes, and they kind of upped it on on the scoot they meaning bird, upped our inventory of scooters and kind of lowered our our inventory on bicycles.

And and what we've done is let them know that we needed more, and I may need you all's help in terms of if you're interested, recommending that we have more bikes, because I do think the bicycles, though not as popular as the scooters, it will get people on some of our trail systems like Poplar Trail. And part of the reason why it's increasing and why, we have an opportunity to have more of the scooters and bikes in circulation in this city is because we've been able to provide an opportunity for them to, reclaim them locally, repair them locally, and recharge them locally, which has been an incredible help because before, it was an hour away, and that meant that they would collect them. You know, a lot of residents were complaining about them being left on the curb, and they were in weird places and kind of an eyesore to people. But that's, that problem has somewhat been resolved in the sense that now they can very quickly be put picked up, repaired, charged, and put right back out into inventory. So by the numbers, we launched in 2022, which was a pretty fun day.

We all rode scooters across the Eastport Bridge and we had, you know, no one fell off of of any of the scooters, which was a good thing. We all had helmets that were provided by a bird. And and since then, these I've requested that these numbers be updated. And these numbers aren't that old, but, I don't have them for our current summer, which I think exponential, you know, adds to the number. But the number of rides taken, 118,403.

That's 13,200 rides a month. Average distance per trip, 1.23 miles. Average time of trip, seven point two five minutes. And that's that's an interesting, I was looking at some other municipalities and cities, and that's when you remember that the square mile, the city of Annapolis, and you remember that it's not like looking at, you know, Boston or or DC or, you know, even Baltimore. So pretty interesting.

Car trips replaced 69,170. I think that's a good number to highlight and, you know, for marketing purposes and, you know, to kind of also look at the opportunity to replace some of our cars. C o two saved in metric tons. Director Moore asked me how that how we came up with with that, and I had to consult, my engineering physicist consultant that we hired to come up with that number. That was a joke.

It came from Bird. And they and they actually have a system that they use to determine that in some in some of the larger cities because it helps them, you know, cut down on that carbon footprint. Total ride distance, 153,711 miles. And unique users in Annapolis 19,707. So this is I know you all don't have an opportunity to really be able to see those numbers because they're so far away, But we have we do have a okay.

You do have a copy. Thank you. And, I will forward each of you away away if you're interested in looking at the dashboard yourself because it it is updated often. And it shows you that let's say you can look on this and find that the July 4, we had 201 total ride. That kinda helps you understand what some of the ridership is and some of the numbers.

It gives you average distance and some other information on there to help assess the ridership. But that's just an example of what the dashboard looks like, and what I did is I've made it for a month, but you can do it for the number you can do it for years and and days. So this next map is a heat map that's showing the where riders start, and I thought this was appropriate for you all because, it helps really understand some of those areas where there's just a density of of users. And you see a lot in the the lower part of Eastport. You see a lot in the downtown area.

But then you also notice that there there it's going out in the West Street area and in some offshoot neighborhoods that are not necessarily in the downtown corridor. And so, I I thought it was also interesting in looking at the the fact that it goes out, by Georgetown East and towards towards Giant, because there's a lot of talk, on in, you know, really looking at transportation in that corridor and how we're able to, you know, make it less congested and and more safe for pedestrians and cyclists. And so, yeah, it's something they really look at as well to see that people are using them out in that area as well. And so that's the end of the slide presentation. Are there any questions?

Yeah. I have. Sorry. Thank you very much. That's that's great information. Do we have a sense on, age range of users? We is that are we able to track that at all?

I do not think that we are able to track it. I do know that they're in order to use them, you you have to have, a way to pay. And initially, they thought that that would be we thought that it would be it would prohibit younger users from writing them, but somehow young people are able to access them. So I that's a really good question. I can check on that for sure, and it would be useful to know that information. The only thing I can think is they would get it from maybe when people sign up if there's, you know, if there's something that has it, like, a birth date or something on it. So I I'll check on that.

Right. And I think it's because they can use Cash App.

Yeah. I know. At the it's like all kinds

of things that they

You know?

Right? You don't have to have a credit card. You just use your cell phone.

Right.

I just learned about Cash App and how it works. I'm like, wow. Anyway, it would I'd be interested to see that. And I know that when Bird first came out, there was a lot of talk at the Navy Stadium that they actually wanted the stadium as a a no fly zone, especially on game days. And are we still working on those types of

Yes.

Policies in world and okay.

Yes. We, we have compiled a list. And in my regular conversations with them, it's it's those hot spots in areas that we know that that we could, really use those modes of transportation. But also the idea like you see in some other cities of having, kind of not necessarily docking stations, but, clearly delineated areas where there will be scooters and bikes, whether it's, what Bird usually does is they'll paint a spot in their blue color and then have like an icon or something on it. But then, you know, people that are, let's say, going to a soccer game, a soccer match, you know, they know that they can pick up one in that in that particular spot.

So yes.

Right. And I think that that would be a great opportunity for us to kind of look at, one of the biggest complaints about them that I've heard is that they're just scattered everywhere.

Yeah.

And Yes. Often, for whatever reason, they're, like, at the exit, on Cedar Park and Farragut from the stadium, I'm guessing because maybe it doesn't work on the stadium path, and so they just abandon them there.

Mhmm.

But that's one of the biggest complaints that I've heard about Bird is that because they're scattered everywhere, it's more like urban trash Yeah. Versus if there was a corral, so to speak, even if it's a painted square on the sidewalk Mhmm. Then that hopefully would cause people to sort of put them into the corral. I don't know if there's if you have a bonus, like

Yeah.

Or something like that if you made it into the corral. I don't know how the technology works as far tracking them, but I'm wondering if could

Yeah. I'll tell you how it works. And it's and exactly what you said is is the dynamic that's at play. So without a without a area that so let's say a corral, like you're saying. Without that area, what happens is they it it's one person who has the contract to retrieve them, and he drives around in a pickup truck and he picks them up based on where people leave them.

And so because there's not an area where he can corral them, what he what he'll do is he'll just pick them up, put them all, take them all back, and then just put them out in various areas. Right? And so if there's areas, what you can do is you can say you know, he could probably say, oh, let me put five of them here. Let me park five of them, which I think, would be helpful, so that there's not scatter. Mhmm.

Because part of it is they wanna lee they leave some of them wherever people leave them because on the app, if they're charged and ready to go, people can go on the app and they can find the nearest one. So they could be anywhere. But you do find I don't know if you've seen them in other cities, but, like, you can normally, there's a couple of them parked together. So Mhmm. That is something we're looking into along with the geofencing for areas like the stadium.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate the data. Follow-up in.

Thank you, madam chair. Who repairs them?

The same contractor that that that Bird has. They're subcontracted, and it's almost like a franchisee type thing. And, he he picks them up, and, he does a really good job. It's those I don't know if if those scooters are so heavy. They I mean, they don't they don't look heavy, but they're, you know, they're like a 100 pounds. So being able to have him again, you know, more local really helps out a lot.

Do they have interns, for lack of a better word?

No. I'm sure he'd love that, some free labor.

I mean,

you know, we've got them. That's a skill that could be learned, maybe. That's not my area of expertise at all.

No. I agree. I agree because he's also an entrepreneur. I mean, he's also a small business, you know, in the sense that he he does that. But, you know, I'll ask him about that and ask him if there's an opportunity to maybe do an apprenticeship and, you know, let someone understand how that business model works because it's just him

Right. Locally. Yeah. Might wanna partner with mister Jay. He's into entrepreneurship

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

To see, if there might be any high school students or whatever who would be interested. It's a great little, I'll say, little side job,

but Yeah.

It might be something that somebody can parlay into, something larger.

Yep.

So but the work you're doing on these this project and the this these initiatives is extraordinarily important. Thank you, director Moore, for being there, doing this for us. It's really important. This is the first time I've really seen a report like this. This is exceptional. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I wanna also bring your attention, to our the website. We'll I'll send you a link of where you can find information and updated statistics that mister Rao talked about. That's right on the translation website about bird, bike, and scooter. There's a a map, I guess, that's dynamic that will update that he's making mention of. We'll send that information out so you could be one click away of getting it.

Yep. And if you if you ever have any questions about any of the data or or you need any any information on it, you know, please feel free, to email, and I'll I'll shoot it out for you as as quickly as possible and or connect you to, someone at Bird for for if you have further recommendations.

Thank you. And in this forum, it's great too because other people are watching, so they may not be aware of the magnitude of it. So it works for

all. Yeah.

I do have two suggestions for you, and I know that Alderman Savage has some questions. My one suggestion that we create a sticker that says something, either to report or to have this picked up, and either the QR code or the phone number that's very visible because I've actually had to turn them over and find the little teeny tiny, and that sticker could go right over the sticker that says no writing on sidewalks because in the city of Annapolis, we can find them on sidewalks. Yeah. So just say, it would be nice if it were very, very easy for people to report, like, pick this up. It's been here for three days or, whatever the case may be, without having to search for it because most people are just gonna walk by if they do more than just glance at it.

Okay. So do you mean you mean a sticker on the actual scooter that's more visible? Okay.

More visible. There's a tiny little QR code, and I think in the, like, three point font, it says, report this scooter to have it picked up or whatever the case may be. Call this number or go to this website. But it's like

Okay. Alright. And we can also probably, which we had talked about, is doing some some educational information in general around bird bikes and scooters with the city and community.

So That'd be great.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alderman Savage?

Yeah. Just a few things. Thank you. But building off the whole idea of the the fence off there, I think they call them bird nests.

Mhmm.

And I don't really see any on the actual app. Yeah.

We don't have any in the city. We don't have any. So No.

Is there any way we can get them? Because that's also it's not the cheapest way to get around, and having those nests gives people an incentive, because I think you can save some money by leaving it in a nest. And I I know I mentioned this last time they were here. It was a year or so ago. They haven't done anything with it. I also mentioned adding signs so people know. You know, otherwise, it just looks like a random scooter. But if we have part of the giant shopping center, right, pick a couple of their parking spots, they probably won't care. Paint them blue, put up some signs. I think that'd be a good make it into a nest.

Yeah.

I agree. I'm not sure why they haven't done that.

Yeah. We I've talked with them about that. I to be honest, like, their their contract with the city of Annapolis, I think that they didn't see it as being as competitive as some of the other markets. So they kind of you know, we initially piloted it, and then it it's, like, still kind of viewed as a pilot. So I agree.

I think having more one, more signage. Two, having more of a footprint in the city so that people, you know, to your point, they they go to the supermarket, they can see and say, oh, I can I can get a scooter the next time instead of yeah? So I agree with you 100%. I'll have that conversation with them again at our next meeting and then some of the other notes that we're making, points that you all have made about stickers and deal fencing for some particular areas, like near the stadium and the age of users. So I think that's a good point. Thank you.

Yeah. And I imagine they have some promotional material that could get left around, maybe on the buses or at some of these shopping center like you mentioned. It just seems like they're not really being super proactive with their local, you know, promoting this and whatnot. So how long is their contract for? Like, can we get is it gonna be coming up soon for renewal? Can we get some things added to the contract?

I don't think it comes up for renewal for a couple of years, but we can definitely there's there's an opportunity. The truth of the matter is we haven't really required a a whole lot of them. Mhmm. It's been on autopilot because because, again, I think it was a a pretty like a pilot, you know. It was still experimental.

And in their mind, they probably feel the exact same way. I do think that we should provide, like, a more of a road map for them of where we wanna see because there are other options, you know, for for scooters and micro mobility. So that might be a little bit of leverage also in, you know, in that respect. But we've incorporated we've incorporated it into our micro mobility plan and, you know, our our bike and pedestrian plan as well, that there are micro mobility options. So I do think maybe referring to that and kind of bolstering what we actually want from bird, bike, and scooter. So so I'll follow-up with that as well.

Yeah. Because I really just think we we also just need more. The Giant I just checked, like, there are no I've there are couple of times when I've wanted to take them downtown, and there just are no scooters at the Giant Yeah. Which is really the hub for that whole area. Yeah. And, again, I think it's just just the numbers. But has I was gonna ask if anybody's reached out to the county, but more I'm thinking about it, it's the roads just really aren't safe enough, unfortunately, like West Street and Forest Drive. It'd be nice if we could work with the county and put some hubs in parole, but I think until we get these roads improved, I'm not sure how safe it would be.

Yeah. And a lot of a lot of people the point that was made earlier, by auto woman, O'Neil was that, technically, they're not supposed to be right on the sidewalks, but we all know in the city sometimes you feel the need to ride on the sidewalk because it feels like when you're crossing the Eastport Bridge, you feel a little like, you know, anything could happen. And so I do think that providing, safety conversations, kind of the rules of the road, to both drivers and people on scooters is gonna be very helpful. I wanted to in lieu of time, I didn't wanna take up too much time commenting on things, but we did begin with the marketing and outreach materials. We printed those out for all of our events that we had and had them at our tables.

So all of our transportation events like the EV event at the Annapolis Mall, downtown, our our, you know, introduction to electric buses. So we've been pushing that. I'm out there, but I do think it it's a good idea to have some at places like Giant and Safeway and and other outreach efforts. So I'll connect with our community engagement stuff and and be sure they get that stuff out there as well.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

No further questions. Thank you all so much.

Thank you all.

We appreciate your time and your effort into the report. Thank you.

Likewise. That

concludes our agenda. Is there anything else for the good of the order? No. Take a motion to

adjourn. So moved.

Oh, second.

Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Alright.

God bless the Mitchell family. God bless his legacy, and God bless this amazing state. God bless y'all and thank you so much.

I am absolutely honored to be able to have the ability to present to the family this governor's citation, which reads, to the family of congressman Perrin Mitchell, Be it known that on behalf of the citizens of this state, in recognition of the life and legacy