Director of Aviation - Regular Meeting

TINO. My name is Kevin O'Neill. I'm the chair and first district at large councilman.

Jonathan Duncan, 6th District.

Lindsay French, 2nd District at large.

Oh, sorry. Online.

Eric Punch, 4th District. Melissa? At home not spreading my germs. These

are our two sick sick folks.

Good morning, everyone. Melissa Robinson, district vice chair. I'm trying to sound sicker than Eric.

You guys don't breathe on each other in there. Alright. Alright. Our staff. Sorry.

Martha Ross, city clerk's office.

Lana Torzan, city attorney's office.

Andrew Bonkowski, city attorney's office.

Cooper, director of aviation.

Jeff Martin, senior manager's office.

Mike LaShawn, public works.

Cynthia Jackson, public works.

Wes, I don't think anybody heard you yet.

Wes Rogers, second district councilman.

Thank you, sir. Alright. We'll start with the first ordinance.

Ordinance 260,055 amending chapter 70 code of ordinance by repealing and replacing section seventy-thirty nine for the purpose of rev revising that section of the code pertaining to the authority of the public works director to close sidewalks and establish an effective date.

Good morning, chairman o'neill, members of the transportation infrastructure operations committee. My name is Jason Waldron. I'm the transportation director in public works. With me today is Mark Montgomery, associate director of transportation and construction. We are here to present ordinance 260,055.

Basically, just off the top, it's a refinement of our sidewalk furniture language and policy. Our current policy basically does not by interpretation by word by language does not allow closures more than fifteen days. Addition to that there' no appeal or waiver process involved if a sidewalk closure does need to be beyond fifteen days. So we' stuck in a situation where as interpreted by law that every sidewalk closure beyond fifteen days would likely have to go to counsel. So we're here to create a little bit of refinement of the policy and create a little bit of discretion amongst the public works director.

As you can see in the slides, it's kind of a side by side comparison, the current sidewalk closure ordinance versus what is proposed. Mainly what the proposal would do is basically say if you have a fifteen day closure you' allowed to close one side of the street but not both them. If you have more than

a fifteen day closure then you would have to create an alternative path on the same side of the street. If that is

not doable for whatever reason, maybe it' for streetcar operations, maybe there' just not enough room in the road, you can petition the director of public works for a waiver, but you must go through the multimodal transportation commission, formerly known as parking and transportation commission. One other thing that this adds is it adds some increased accountability of our contractor partners. Currently, the only recourse we have for bad actors is to double the fee for the permit. What this would do is for the first violation would stay the same and double that fee. But the next violation, let' say they ignore so they don' abide by the rules, would be a fine of $250 per day.

And then that third violation would be a $500 fine per day. So what we' seeing and I don' want

to call

anybody else specifically we have a few instances right now actually with Central Business District where we have sidewalks closure for an extended period of time that are unpermitted and unresponsive. We' looking for a little bit more accountability with our partners in our right of way. So I kind of chainsawed through that. We can certainly get into more details and specifics, but that's kind of the executive summary of ordinance 20 six-fifty five.

Board

of of

of

to do And And so

do 're that.

To to

that.

Do wow, you guys are doing a great job. And What I hear, And and this is more for permitting side, is Kansas City has wildly different rules than Kansas. And so I always want to know how are we how do we compare and are we coordinating our efforts so there's some type of consistency across the state line.

We did not do a peer review of this particular ordinance. I cannot speak to that objectively. I can say my guess would be that we're probably, at least in the metro area, probably more progressive. And what I mean by that is more intentional about our permitting system. I think we do based on what I've heard from others and this is subjective, by the way is that we probably do insist a little bit more from our contractor partners than others. But that's my guess. Mark, don't know if you've had any other experience.

I agree with the thing. We have a little bit more restrictive not restrictive on the sidewalk closure, especially since we have compared us a little bit against some of the cities in Kansas, we have a lot more urban downtown areas. Ours are a little bit more we make sure we keep the sidewalks open.

Thank you.

Good. Councilman Bunch?

Yeah. Thanks. And I I would actually like to be listed as a sponsor of this ordinance. It was, something that we we figured out after our last ordinance that dealt with this issue that this needs to this small edit needs to happen. In re response to the the peer review, we I did not conduct anything in regards to communities in the metro area.

However and this is prior to my time on the council, when I was the chair of the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee and also policy director at Bike Walk KC. I I conducted with, some of my colleagues peer a review on other kinda similar sized cities across the nation, and this was this is pretty similar. It's it was accomplished a little differently than than maybe some of the other cities. However, it was based on best practice, and this is a little less aggressive than some. What I think some cities have found is when it's too too aggressive or too, too prescriptive, it's harder to enforce.

And so this provides, again, a couple of ways to a clear path to exception. Lacking the clear exception in the past was was part of the challenge as well. So I just thank staff for coming up with the the the new edits to this, section of the code, and, look forward to to voting yes on it. And, again, would like to be listed as a sponsor.

Thank you, sir. Any other or comments? If not, any public testimony?

No public testimony.

I would accept the motion.

Mr. Chair, I move that ordinance number 260,055 be reported at a committee with a recommendation of advancing to pass.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Ordinance passes. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Next ordinance.

Ordinance 20 six-zero-sixty three amending chapter 70 code of ordinance traffic and vehicles by repealing and replacing section seventy five twenty three for the purpose of amending the portion of the code prohibiting parking in specified places to provide that individual shall not park within certain distances to mailbox and city storm drainage systems openings.

Thank you, Bertha. Councilman Rogers, pleasure to have you at our committee. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Chairman, and to the rest of the members of the committee. So this is a pretty straightforward ordinance, and it just gets into the chapter on parking tickets. And if you go to the very last two lines of the proposed code change.

That's the

only thing that I'm proposing that we touch here. The first one deals directly with mailboxes, and it says that in front of or within four feet on either side of a mailbox used by the United States Postal Service for the delivery of mail, parking would no longer be allowed. And I will tell you, I've practiced law for nineteen years, and I did not know that it was legal to park in front of a mailbox in the city of Kansas City. It turns out that in some municipalities in the state of Missouri it's legal and others it's not. The closest place where we found where it's illegal is in Excelsior Springs and it's a wide range, anywhere from four feet on either side of the mailbox to as many as 15 feet.

Kansas City is an urban setting so we went with that tighter number, the four feet. The second piece of this deals with storm drainage, and it just says the same thing within four feet on either side of an opening to the storm drainage system as defined in our code. Parking would also be prohibited except for such vehicles within a signed and white designated parking area. And I will tell you the reason we brought this forward is we had a neighbor in the Northland who was terrorizing his neighbors in many ways, one of which was intentionally blocking their mailboxes. Some of these mailboxes were places where people got their cancer medicine.

So they were not able to get their cancer medicine because their neighbor was intentionally blocking their mailbox. He's also doing the same with storm drains. In fact, I talked to somebody today who ends up with basically a flood in their yard occasionally because the storm drains are being blocked. So this was terrorism. There's no other way to put it. It was attacking a neighborhood. This will happen again if we don't change this. So it is a pretty straightforward amendment to our code, I think it's an important one. It does two things. It says don't park in front of your neighbor's mailbox and don't park in front of the storm drains and cause flooding. I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, sir. Any questions from my colleagues?

I just wanna thank my colleague and second district councilman for bringing this forward. This is an extremely important ordinance. And I too, as you were you were researching this, was very, shocked that this wasn't already a law or a federal law at that point. I guess we're just kind of grown and ingrained in our own, you know, sense of humanity not to park next to a mailbox.

Yeah. Being a decent person.

Being a decent person. And, unfortunately, it took some recent events in the Northland and our district for this to become

more

apparent. And so I really, really appreciate you bringing this forward. I appreciate your diligence in this over the last couple months looking into this. And then also taking into account that Kansas City is an urban setting, so looking at that as well and on street parking and more towards downtown and being able to accommodate people that do have just on street parking. So really looking into that. And again, I just really commend you for your work on this and your diligence on this, and I'd like to be a cosponsor as well.

Thank you.

This is more a question for public works. We're not going to have to install any additional signage or anything. There's no cost associated with this change?

No, don't believe so.

Councilwoman Robinson?

Thank you. I would like to know more about storm drainage just because in our urban setting with individuals that are dependent upon street parking that might be an issue for them because I know several instances in which people wouldn't have a place to park if they could not park next to the storm drainage. So can we talk about the size of storm drainage? Because I can understand if there was, like, a smaller drain and it would impact flooding, but the storm drains that I'm thinking of, a car would not impact the water flow. And so can we maybe drill down on what types of storm drains we're actually talking about and how cars interfere with that?

Yeah. Counsel, from an absolutely and I'll tell you the specific story. And, actually, the the witnesses here today, the the nave the the neighbor who's terrorizing his neighborhood was literally driving his car basically into the storm drain in order to block it. And so I would think we would be able to amend this in such a way that would prevent that sort of behavior without limiting parking in neighborhoods where people are using the streets to park. So, yeah, I'm very open to a change on that.

Okay. Is there anybody from the water department? Are there different sizes of storm drains? That's my curiosity. That would a car could actual actually prevent the water flow? Because the ones that are on the sidewalk or or is is this one actually attached to a sidewalk?

The drain that you're talking about? Where is it is it attached to the sidewalk?

It's a street

Or is it

on grass?

Or the

The part two. Could you speak on yeah. Sorry.

Hello. I'm Mark Cowan and a resident of Maple Woods Estates. And we experienced this issue recently since June. And the mailbox is pretty straightforward as we already talked The storm drains are a street side storm drain. To my knowledge, the the standard size street side storm drain, a single vehicle pulled in would basically block almost half of of the storm drain.

The individual in this case was literally pulling his vehicle, driving his vehicle into the storm drain where the tire was literally up against the curb in the drain. The drain itself did come out into the easement, obviously, with the ability to clean the drain. So in the incident of the day excuse me, the day of the tragic death in the Northland, the vehicle that was removed from our property towed away, which had not been ticketed at that time because we were told it was legal, was actually pulled up on top of the storm drain. The tire was literally setting, excuse me, on top of the curb, and the rear tire was almost in the storm drain itself. So this was the incident.

Prior to that, directly across the street, our neighbor's property was facing storm drain there on both sides of the street. The individual was parking on both sides doing the same thing multiple times. So however, you know, however the ordinance can be changed to prevent this type of blocking and in this case harassment as well so that it can be ticketed is the most important thing to us. Then I'll just step back real quick as it relates to the mailbox. The individual was actually parking so close to the mailbox, you could literally not open the mailbox door.

And the mail carrier could not actually deliver the mail. Our mail carrier went over and beyond what she needed to do under these circumstances with the harassment that was taking place. She was actually coming to our doors delivering the mail. And this exposed her to verbal harassment in which led to the United States Postal Service actually contacting their inspection service office and then them getting back to us as well as the larger neighborhood to also contact the inspection service office. That then led us to find out that the inspection service office from the U.

Postal Service initially begins with local enforcement. They work with the local police department. However, without an ordinance on the books, our KCPD and we understood our KCPD said all they could really come out and do is tell him to federal offense. They had they had no way to address it because there was no ordinance on the book to make that illegal. So whatever can be done to assist the larger Kansas City community to keep these type of events from happening in the future is what's most important to my wife and I.

I am Mark Cowan. We live at 2400 Northeast 78th Street in Kansas City, Missouri, to our larger neighborhood and then to the larger Kansas City community. Nobody needs to go through what we just went through. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cowan. I guess I would ask, since we have public works and water department, former water department here, if you guys would give us some kind of guidance here on drainage and how we could actually impact

Yes. So in looking at the city standards, the standard curb inlet is actually five foot wide and four foot deep. And so there's actually a throat section on either side of that as well where the curve transitions down into it for as short as five feet or as long as additional 10 feet. So but the actual opening of the storm drain itself is five foot wide for our standard inlets. There's obviously some older inlets out in the city that can vary in size to

think Would be better instead of making this a preventive measure where you couldn't park in an area that the impact is what we're enforcing? So if there is a blockage that could be reported and then ticketed rather than a blanket wide citywide you can't park in front of

a storm drain? As long as we distinguish the storm drains from the mailboxes, I think that's okay. Mailbox things But should be a hard line. I understand the storm drains present a different set of challenges. So I'm open to something like that. Again, like Mr. Collins said, the goal is just to prevent bullying like that from happening again.

Is that acceptable to staff? Can you Andrew, can you put some wording together for us?

Sure. Definitely. Just to clarify, I understand the intent is to modify the language such that violation occurs when parking is done in a matter to intentionally block the flow of storm drainage or intentionally or not.

Hope we I I don't believe this here. We can't improve intent. Right. But if there is if there's a cited cited problem, right, that there is that the impact of parking in the drain causes the drain to back up, that that could be a ticketed offense. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Sure. I have two more comments. I'm not sure which one you put your hands up first, I'm going to go with Eric and then Melissa.

Thanks. Are most drain inlets at, like, near the curb corner near the intersections? And if so, there's already a prohibition on parking within a certain number of feet from the crosswalk or from the corner. So I I I guess that maybe I wonder how how much does this actually and maybe and and maybe actually in other parts of this city, I guess, maybe there are in mid block. I think I'm just wondering about if how how is it already illegal to park in a lot of these places anyway?

I just just wondering how how how many places would this actually affect by

On changing block, which is a cul de sac, and I'm at the end of that cul de sac, the drain is right there. There's no parking prohibition in front

of us.

It. I would imagine that the streets are like that.

Yeah. That that that makes sense. I'm I'm kinda thinking from my own neighborhood, which are all the corners, but in other parts of the city, you're you're yeah. That makes sense. Alright. Thanks.

Park in front of the storm drain of every day, and I wouldn't have a parking space. I park in the drain nor do I park water. I know that it's not on the end of the block, you know, in my neighborhood. So some concern that we might lose parking in some neighborhoods.

Are you comfortable with the solution here?

It sounds like, I had a bit of a interruption on this end. It sounds like, we're going to make a adjustment so that we don't block the water flow. Is that Okay. Yeah.

Think kind of a discretion of the officer or whomever goes over there to determine if it's blocking, and I would assume

And I'll tell you, based on speaking to the neighbors in this neighborhood, it's pretty obvious when someone is intentionally doing what this guy was doing. So I think that may satisfy you. The last thing we want do, councilman Robinson, is restrict parking parts of the city where it's already pretty tight. So I get that. But, yeah, there's got be a way to make some kind of judgment call as far as whether it's causing blockage or not.

That's one. Yeah.

And I agree with you completely, and we can use common sense or we can can look at that. But legally, like, I'm not a lawyer.

How do you

write that so it's not subjective or

it's Well, I think we need to talk to our prosecutor's office before we amend this to change it to see what we can enforce. And so I would really like to hold this to make sure that we talk to our prosecutors if just the way I mean, because I mean, if you're saying all of a sudden, okay, you're only going to get ticketed, oh, if there's if it overflow I mean, I just I just feel There's an actual storm or water

or something at that time or

if there's to make sure that our lane we just correct and that we can enforce this.

And I will say as a former prosecutor myself, you're not you don't want to put intent in a parking ticket either. Right. Just got to avoid that.

I want to make sure that, you know, when we codify something, I just want to make sure that we have

If we were to advance it and pick it up the February, is that something would that be enough time?

I think so.

Just a due pass.

Just a due pass.

Yeah. We'll just do a due pass, and at the end of the day, we'll we'll come back. Can

amend it. Right.

You can explain the prosecutor's viewpoint, and then we can either adapt or change to that. Everybody. So we will hold this until February. What is it? We're going to recommend.

Yes.

We'll recommend anyway. Any public testimony?

No public testimony. And

thank you for being here. We appreciate you being here.

I did have a question, though, about just in I guess is this gonna be when if we were to vote on it as a full body, when's the, I guess, timeline? Does it just become effective immediately? Is there gonna be education around this education campaign?

It is generally fifteen days after an ordinance passed it becomes effective unless otherwise prescribed. I just want to add, Lana, that I think the obstruction language is the bigger question. Does the parking obstruct that? I think if it is written as obstruction and then it can only be enforced if the flood or something occurs because you have to see that it actually obstructs. So if it is a clear day and it is not raining then in and of itself would not be violation because there's no obstruction of water flow.

But if it was water flowing down the street and it's pooling and blocking, then it is an obstruction which constitutes a violation. So from an enforcement perspective, I think that would be the burden to prove that it obstructs versus the physical parking itself. Because one could possibly straddle that and then not obstruct, which goes to the point of councilwoman Robinson suggesting that one could park without a violation. But there is plenty of ordinances that we have that talk about obstruction as being the key trigger. But you have to prove the obstruction.

That makes sense. There is one right in front of my house but I'm at the bottom of the hill so it would be almost impossible to obstruct that even if you were parked in front of it. So that makes a lot of sense to me.

Okay. No public testimony.

So are we going to amend it, or are you going to wait until a week and then and be amended from the floor at City I

would recommend just, like I said, advance and do pass, then we've got ten days before we actually hear it, then we can amend it on the floor. We do pass. Just do pass.

Right. I would accept the motion. Do we have public testimony?

I was just going to add, listening to the discussion around the storm drain, what was actually impacted, and this may shed a little bit more light on whatever the wording needs to be, was the five foot opening. It was not the apron, the approach to it, if you would. The vehicles were the vehicle was literally parked into, like I said, the storm drain. Current ordinances, as we understand, I think you can be within one foot of the curb out to the street. Well, this was a situation where they weren't the individual wasn't parked far enough out into or too far out in the street.

The individual literally was parked into the storm drain. So when you talk about obstruction, and I do appreciate,

you

know,

from public works, I think they in my opinion, they hit on what was the key here is what is the obstruction. Because in this instance, the vehicle, it was rather obvious, literally pulled itself into the physical storm drain or was on top of the storm drain. And in the case of our property and our neighbors across the street that has the facing storm drain on their side of the street. We've lived here for thirty six years. Off my off top of my head, my recollection is that the city had to actually come out and clear that drain because of street flooding and property flooding.

We've had water up in about halfway into our front yard, easily six feet beyond the sidewalk. We're kind of the low spot in the neighborhood. And after the fall, winter, it would back up in the street and and would flood there. So in my opinion, if this was allowed to happen, the parking was taking place like it is now, it would just make it even more difficult to clear the obstruction because they would not have access, public works would not have access to the storm drain to clear it out. The only thing they'd have access to is the manhole cover on top of the storm drain, and that's not going to get that would not get it done.

So I just wanted to share that information because that may help you all in coming up with the proper language to keep this from happening.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right. I would entertain a motion.

Mr. Chair, I move that ordinance number 260,063 be reported at committee with a recommendation of do pass.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye.

All

those opposed? Ordinance passes as a do pass. No advance. All right. Thank you, councilman.

Thank you.

Next ordinance.

Ordinance 240,533, amending chapter 70 code of ordinance entitled traffic and vehicles by section seventy-nine 62 entitled pedestrian signal programming policies and standards for the purpose of instituting policies and standards related to pedestrian crossing signals, establishing an effective date, and directing the city manager to provide periodic updates regarding implementation progress every forty five days to the transportation infrastructure and operation committee.

You know what? I do want to say, Mr. And Ms. Cowan, thank you for coming today, and, we're sorry everything that happened to you guys, and, we hope that, everything works out over there. But thank you for coming. We your

Good morning chairman o'neill members of the transportation infrastructure operations committee my name is jason walder and I'm the transportation director of public works with me this morning is saw moyningdin he is a traffic signal engineer and I know you don't see him very often but he is the person who deserves credit for keeping the traffic signals and everything related going. And his team do an amazing job.

How is this your first time in front of us?

Second.

Sorry. I'm Be nice.

Well, good to have you.

Thank you. We're here today to just give you a little bit of an overview of our pedestrian signal program, a little bit of what we're doing, a little bit of a 101. You'll see that early on. And then we are also asked to do a peer review of what other cities comparable cities are doing across the nation. This is obviously in relation to the ordinance 20 four-five 33. First of all, just a little bit of housecleaning and table setting. You' going to hear a few terms along the way. We' trying to keep it high level executive. Hear pedestrian But recall. Basically what pedestrian recall is, is what you see out here in 11th And Oak.

It is a pedestrian phase regardless of whether or not someone hits a push button to walk. So that's pedestrian recall. Leading pedestrian interval, I'm only going to say that once. I'm going call it LPI the rest of the presentation. Basically what that does is it allows the crosswalk signal, the pedestrian signal, to be in advance of the roadway signal or the vehicular signal.

The idea there being is get them out in the street and more visible rather than maybe a motorist looking over a shoulder and making more than one decision at once. Lastly is rest and walk. Might be a term I've not heard as much but basically what rest is walk is saying every time a vehicle gets a green in a particular direction we' also going to give that pedestrian signal. I know that seems like why wouldn' we? We agree there are some situations though and we can get into that where the timing is a decision because it does have a ripple effect to other movements in the intersection.

So pedestrian recall basically always gets a pedestrian signal. LPI gives a pedestrian a head start. And then rest and walk gives basically a green to pedestrians whenever it gives a green to vehicular. So we can certainly circle back to that. First of all, pedestrian recall, I talked a little bit about that definition already.

Some of the pros of pedestrian recall and we're agnostic, right? We don't think there's a one size fits all. Saw and his team are constantly adjusting the right temperature porridge for each intersection. But one of the advantages of pedestrian recall is that pedestrians don't have to push a button, that they are part of that phase regardless whether they push a button or not. And I think your routine users, whether it be a vehicle, bicyclist, pedestrian, all expect that phase to happen.

They're usually applied obviously in higher pedestrian volume situations. One of the criticisms of putting pedestrian recall in areas that may not have higher pedestrian volumes is there's a certain numbness that happens. I think we've all can relate whether you're pedestrian or vehicular. But if you're in a car and you have a red light and there's no other cars or there's no other pedestrians or other bicyclists and that' a routine that you see every time you hit an intersection, sometimes you become numb to some of that and sometimes we see some bad behavior as a result of that. Notable, we have six thirty five traffic signals citywide.

You can understand SAL's responsibility here. But of those six thirty five, 90 of those intersections are in pedestrian recall. So basically, 90 intersections where pedestrian does not have to push a button to get that phase. Primarily as you can probably guess in the plaza areas and central business districts. The next some of the pedestrian recall implementation considerations I' not going to read all of this.

We can certainly take a dive. This is some technical research and study done of some of that national guidance of when to apply pushbutton activated, when to do ped recall, things we talked about. Worth noting is that we find ourselves sometimes in middle of some of these studies. This study information was mainly done for like Boston and Washington, D. C, which is a little different animal.

We find ourselves somewhere in between those larger metropolitan areas versus some of the smaller ones that we know in the Midwest. So we're constantly trying to find that right temperature of policy when it comes to this stuff. But again, we can get into this more detail if you'd like, but just as some of the background and research that we're aware of for national policy. The LPI, that's where we're giving those pedestrians a head start, basically can be give anywhere from three to seven second head starts. Obviously, the pro is making that pedestrian more visible, giving that pedestrian better confidence about crossing the street and not having to worry about dealing with a car moving at the same time.

One could argue that putting the pedestrian out their head could risk some additional exposure, but I wouldn't say that's the best case or national best practice acceptance of that. It is listed as an FHWA countermeasure when we're talking about Vision Zero and traffic calming and all those other things. And so there again, there's another study based on LPIs that include New York, Chicago, Toronto. Not exactly a direct reflection of us, but certainly best practices that we can apply from those studies. And then right now, we have LPIs programmed for 50 of those six thirty five signals.

We're usually pretty receptive to those requests. One more recent, as many of us could probably relate to, we've got the trolley trail running along Warnell. There's a lot less there, a lot less that people aren't necessarily looking forward. Those are instances where our hardware allowed. We did do some LPI's and that's just one example of the city. They're all over the place. Rest and walk. Again, it's a curious terminology but basically it's giving pedestrians a green in the same direction when a vehicle gets green. One of the reasons and again, if I were you, why wouldn't we have that all the time? One example could be where a pedestrian green has minimum required times.

It's a program, it's a formula, and it's pretty conservative, make sure everybody can get across the street. There are some areas we don't do that because we're cycling cars a little more in a particular intersection. Obviously, one of the pros is pedestrians don't need to push button across the street. One of the drawbacks is it is going to first

that

half twenty.

And that

we are have rest going and walk. Because as you can imagine, we rest and walk, hey, we could do it at an intersection, but it's not quite as effective. It's better to apply it through an entire corridor, much like it is to synchronize vehicular traffic signals through corridor. So you can see some of these usual suspects on here. I think you would probably guess most of these if asked, but I won't read each one of those. We can certainly go back if there's any interest in going line by line on those. So basically, just a quick summary. We have six thirty five traffic signals out there. We have pedestrian, call it, 90 of them, LPI at 50 of them, and rest are walking a little over 10 corridor. I don' have a number for intersections but rest assured it' more than 10 intersections.

Next part of the presentation first of all before we get into that this is just a snapshot we wanted to give you an order of magnitude of where we' applying these policies. The map of the city is much bigger than this. This is just one area and we do have that map up if you want to zoom in in any particular part of the city. But as you can see, we' not been shy about instituting these policies. Supportive but not one size fits every location and we tend to like to have a little more of a tensional approach when we apply these different mitigations in guidance.

This is just zooming out, showing you where all the existing traffic signals are in the city. You can see some density as we get closer to Central Business District, which probably isn't a surprise to most people because traffic signals are typically a function of traffic volumes. Now just kind of the peer city review, and we've got like six or seven of those. I will just say off the top, we didn't know what we were necessarily getting into at the start of it. And I just want to give credit to our team that we found that they were as progressive as or more than other cities.

And so we certainly don't find ourselves behind the curve with some of the policies. One of the things we did discover, we didn't know this going in, that most cities have a very similar I think most cities except one, and I'll talk about that one, don't have a general policy that they just kind of apply to every location. Most of them are more intentional about specific corridors and intersections and a little more of a comprehensive approach to that strategy. But I'm going to go very quickly because this could go this could be go from a fifteen minute presentation to an hour if we take a deep dive in each one. But with Denver, you can 1,300 and we have a summary table at the end to compare.

1,300 traffic signals, about 200 of them are pedestrian recall. They are evaluating an LPI policy, so as an example where we might be a little bit ahead of the curve with some others. And they have rest and walk in all their coordinated corridors. Coordinated you can also translate it synchronized, basically those corridors where we have one intersection talking to the other with traffic signals. Broadway and Southwest Traffic Way are two of the more prominent ones we have.

They don't really have a pedestrian signal policy per se, but that's not to say like us they don't apply these best practices. Minneapolis, they have eight twenty five traffic signals, 500 of those are in pedestrian recall. They're an example of one they're the one exception to what I mentioned before. They had a general policy during the pandemic. Although they've had some success, they've also had some reevaluation.

So they're slowly walking some of those back in the intersections that in their mind do not make sense. They've got 50 LPIs, mainly near high schools and high pet areas, and then all their synchronized corridors also have rest and walk. You're going to hear a little bit of a theme through some of these. City of Austin, 1,000 traffic signals, 150 in pet recall, 200 in LPI, all synchronized corridors with rest and walk. Very similar to Kansas City.

Cincinnati, 800 signals, two seventy seven pet recall, 96 LPIs synchronized corridors rest and walk. Oklahoma City, on the other hand, they have eight zero five traffic signals, zero on pedestrian recall, yet they have a higher number on lpi at two thirty. They haven't implemented a rest and walk policy for their community. And lastly, city of Indianapolis, 1,200 signals, 200 pet recall, 600 LPI, they have not implemented a rest and walk policy. So really quick, I'll stop here because I know I really went through those slides.

But this kind of gives you a feel of those peer cities. There's more cities in the nation for sure, but I think this is a pretty good net of what people are doing. We're we find ourselves almost kind of in the right temperature when you look at all of these different percentages. But I'm going to move on here unless anybody wants to take a deeper dive into that table. So just only a couple more slides left.

Really, policy discussion as you consider the ordinance before you, we would just say we're not policymakers we're policy implementers. But some of the considerations we would have for any type of policy like this is first and foremost, obviously pedestrian volumes. One of the unfortunate things is we don't have pedestrian volumes at every intersection, as you can imagine, and we do have some of those cost estimates. Next slide. Considering national best practices and guidelines, but don't let them how so I said, don't let them be the sole provider of your decisions because a lot of the guidance that we have are based off of more populated, more higher density metro areas.

So it's not always the best apples to apples. It might be red apples to green apples. Obviously, the high injury network is a data driven decision process that we've used, and we would encourage you to consider that as you do your policies. The only thing we would note is pet recall is not typically what FHWA considers as a countermeasure for that high injury network. So something just to keep in the back of your mind.

There are some things that we want to be sensitive to when we have transit signal priority for streetcars and buses, obviously those rely on some programming that some of these policies could have an adverse negative ripple effect to. Obviously school districts and land use, guys know that you guys deal with that every day. Those are obviously other factors to consider, as you said, policy moving forward. We were asked to provide a few recommendations. We do feel we were reassured by the peer review.

We're happy and proud of the work we've done, and you can see that we haven't been shy about implementing those policies. So we do feel comfortable continuing our current efforts, our current approach. One thing to do, if we wanted to have a little more data driven, we could get pedestrian volumes at every intersections. We approximate and it is an estimate cost. It would be each day we do those counts would be about 1,500,000.0.

And we think for us to have a real feel for that data, we would want to do it at least three times, not just one day on Christmas or Easter, forgive the analogy, but three different times. And so that would bring you up to $4,500,000 if that's what you wanted to pursue. We do think that if we we would caution again against just going to national practices because we don' know this for sure, we haven' done everyone because we don' have the pet volume. But if we just did solely national numbers and some of those figures you saw on another side, we might end up having less than we do now. And we kind of like being able to decide what's best for Kansas City.

And then traffic signal equipment upgrades, we are limited in some locations, as you can imagine. Not all of our traffic signal intersections are brand new. So to do all intersections in one policy, we would need a citywide upgrade and again, approximate cost of $10,000,000 which is approximately 65 intersections. And then lastly we would ask you to consider agency discretion for any ordinance moving forward. Again one size is not even a fit all in the nation much less our community.

So those and you heard a little bit about the sidewalk policy earlier today. The ability for you, for the department, for the city manager all to take into account those unique considerations. I really appreciate your time and patience through this. We can go back to any slides but that concludes our presentation and thank you for your attention. We'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Councilman Bunch, this is your ordinance. I'll let you speak first to it.

Yeah. Thanks. My my recommendation on the ordinance is at this point is gonna be to hold it off docket. This was an attempted placeholder for continuing this conversation. So I just wanted to say that upfront, and I also wanna thank Jason and his staff for doing a great job in in collecting some information from other cities.

So thanks for that. But what I wanted to to start off by saying is I I wanted to clear up something that I think might be, if one was listening to this might misunderstand, and that a policy would necessarily be a cookie cutter approach. A policy doesn't necessarily mean this is what you do at every single intersection. A policy, and which was my attempt in in writing this ordinance, is to say, here's when we make this type of decision. Here's where we here are the conditions under which we would turn this pedestrian signal to to recall or to rest and walk or, any number of of of other things.

A policy is, by its nature, in this case, a way to make a decision that is best for that particular circumstance. So I just wanna be clear about that and that that was my intention here, was to create a policy around how do we make a decision at every at each particular intersection that is reflective of best practice. National best practice also doesn't say turn on the light every time, you know, do recall in every single intersection. That's not what national best practice says, and that's clearly not what other, other cities are doing. So I just wanted to clear that up and say, you know, my hope here is that we have just a framework by which to make decisions that is more reflective of of improving walkability.

So that being said, I just wanted to go into some of the details. It sounds like and and looking through the report, the presentation, it sounds like one of the biggest opportunities might be the rest and walk, function. And so I just wanted to ask, it seems like that's not commonplace here versus it being 100% of the corridors in some of those other peer cities. What what is holding us what is preventing us from having more corridors that are synchronized that use the rest and walk function? So that's kind of my my first question.

My I'll just leave it at that one for right now and see if what your thoughts are on that. And and because I think that's probably the main difference that that when I'm going from one city to another and and walking, in some cases, 20 miles in that city and never having to push a button. It seems like rest and walk might be one of the reasons why. Could you maybe explain how we can get to that and what does that require extra equipment or or or updated technology? What are the features there that we could be incorporating here?

Yes, I'll take the first stab at it. You'll get a much better answer from Saul. I think mostly, to answer your question, the rest and walks are lend itself. That's not the only application, but you guys can probably guess lend itself to those synchronized corridors because those synchronized corridors are getting a green a little longer in a particular direction, which allows us to accommodate that little bit longer pedestrian traffic signal phase. Sol, if you would like to add anything to that about why we don't have more or how can we have more?

Yes, sure. Council and bunch are correct that kind of rest and walk would produce the least amount of delay. So it works best on coordinated corridors, like, for example, Southwest Trafficway, the north and south crosswalk rest and walk because the greens are mostly for the mainline. But we can't activate our rest and walk for East West because East West doesn't have a set amount of green time. So like Southwest Trafficway at 35th Street, if you're crossing East West, there's not going be enough green a lot of times for the pedestrians to cross.

Some other factors that would impact the rest and walk is, let's say you're running a signal in what's called a free condition, where nobody has a pre timed approach like 90th At Flintlock up in Liberty or some of the more isolated intersections, Ambassador Tiffany, the new signal we installed. Those approaches don't have a preset time. They just run free. So whatever vehicle comes or pedestrian comes to get the call, they will get the green. So we can't rest and walk in those locations.

There are some other locations where we can't rest and walk when there is the left turns take a lot of green, left turns is a major movement. So there are some different factors. But yes, that is one of the operations that we can implement with less disturbance.

I would just add that I don' recall very seldom can we not do those. Like I said you can see the list on here we can go back to the map. We' very receptive to that policy. It has been, at this point, as you can see the number of quarters we have, it has become a little more intentional, where else do we have them rather than again, more by need, I guess, is what I'm looking for.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate that.

Yes.

635 traffic signals. Do we approach all of these as one offs, Or is there some type of metric that we're using to say these qualify for this type of pedestrian signal, these don't? Or are you looking at each individual intersection? And I without a detailed pedestrian study,

I'm

thinking of like obviously, entertainment districts, our Central Business district, Plaza, Westport, Martini Corner, we go on, right? Are we looking at those as like a separate group than the ones such as the newest one you put up near Tiffany Springs? How are how are we what is the metric that we're using to say this needs this type of pedestrian signal, this doesn't? How do we measure that?

Well, we have traffic volumes that we kind of put into our model. And then we have some knowledge of the pedestrian activity there. So we kind of try to analyze it that way to see I mean, it's a balance, right? If you give if you put it on pet recall, then you're taking time away from the vehicles. If you don't put pet recall, then you're taking time away from pedestrians potentially, like where they have to push a button. So it's like a balancing act. But we're examining corridors at a time, areas at a time.

I would only add that do think each area is somewhat unique. Now, lend themselves to other areas, don't get me wrong. But like if we we just got down to the streetcar project. I won't use that ad nauseam. But like we just did a traffic calming in Westport, right, and things like that.

When we do those things, we step back and say, all right, what makes sense here? And one of the things we pride ourselves on in our group and we're not perfect, but we like to have more of a comprehensive transportation strategy. When you look at different corridors, no one is going to confuse Highway 71 as being a vehicular You look at Gillum, nobody is going confuse that. That's a bicycle corridor. We put some investment there, same with streetcar and main and on down the line and trying to identify those different areas that need those fine tuning. So I would say we do look for custom and unique tailoring to the intersections. With that said, he's got he knows more than I ever will, but knowing where to set that baseline.

I'm getting to you next, councilman bunch.

So I appreciate those answers. I had some of those same questions on the metrics and kind of what signals that what groupings of signals and things that we look at and then how flexible that is as well, whether we have like a rest and walk or a recall or and then based off of time of day, based off events, based off like I've talked about school zones and things before, so time of day for school zones, events as well, entertainment district downtown. Like I just had a volleyball tournament over the weekend. And so if we had automatic signals, which is what we have on 13th And Broadway, dropping everybody off, wanting to drop off their athletes in front of the convention center, traffic backed up considerably. And we have pedestrians crossing into the convention center and stuff as well across Broadway.

So that left hand turn on Broadway for people trying to go on park and do other things, that backed up traffic considerably and would take quite a bit of time to get that traffic moving forward and getting people to drop off. So is there a way, like you were looking at a comprehensive study, looking at that comprehensively, is there a way to adjust like you said, it's not a one size fits all. So as certain events or certain times of day or certain traffic patterns and certain traffic patterns aren't always the same every day, right? So how do we adjust and balance that towards not a one size fits all?

Before we saw, we'll have certainly a ton of examples. I really appreciate you bringing that example. One thing for you all to know right now is we're in a scoping phase. We're going to partner with downtown council and streetcar authority in Casey Moan. We're going to do a long overdue event planning study and hopefully a policy comes out of that. And it's not just cars and streetcars, right? It's pedestrians In to your fact, during those weekends and others, that is the one traffic mode. So I just wanted to add that. But absolutely adjustable. And I can tell you right now, we're it's constantly adjusting because we think we get it right when we walk away from that initial setting or that initial installation.

And I would say well over half we need to adjust and go back because there was a pattern of backup we didn't quite recognize and might be time driven. It just might be a mode that didn't show up in the traffic counts and things like that. It happens all the time. So I would say that when we get those requests or we get those situations identified to us, if we can't do what's requested, we try to pride ourselves in coming up with an alternative. So if we can't do that, what can we do? How does your group go about each individual intersections and recognizing the unique characteristics of those intersections?

The event plans are a little trickier, but we have been in contact with PD about some of the 12th Street corridor, 13th Street. We've had some conference calls with them about that. That's something we're working through to kind of clear that out. It's tough when intersections are saturated, they're saturated, and it's hard to take some time to get out of that condition. So but we can adjust.

We have been adjusting, but there's still some work to do, especially around the Bartle Hall and T Mobile area. Our technology downtown is we've invested a good amount of money there. So we could do time of day plans. We could do event plans based on when there's a Disney on Ice or a volleyball tournament. And it goes by day, too, just the specific day, not just time. So that's something we're aware of and we're trying to work through.

My

follow-up to the rest and walk question earlier was going to be, well, what's preventing us from doing more? And are we doing are we program them to be rest and walk every time that the that the clearance interval allows for it? For example, if you mentioned East West on Southwest Traffic Way, if if it was the case that the green phase East West was long enough to accommodate the pedestrian phase, would we naturally or automatically default to the rest and walk? And and I'm not suggesting we change it, but I think what I'm getting at here, what I've been trying to get out of this ordinance is in the cases when we can make it when we can make it just a little bit more friendly to pedestrians, are we doing that? Are do we have opportunities to implement rest and walk system wide, again, where it makes where where it doesn't dramatically or or at all change cycle phasing of that corresponding green phase?

The second one, well, I'll follow-up on another question here. I'll let you answer that one for now, though.

Council in the green is where we've implemented the rest and walk. If you're doing rest and walk on the side street, that's basically pet recall is what that would be because side street doesn't have a set amount of green time. So we need the seven seconds of walk plus twenty seconds to clear the peds out, twenty

five Okay.

Let me let me reask the question, and I'll I'll use my own street at 36 in Maine. It it's different now because it's got TSP, so it's it's a little different. But if I look at 36 Street Crossing Maine prior to the streetcar opening, the green phase was the same time if if a vehicle pulled up and it changed to green, but it pedestrian did not push the button. The green phase was the same amount of time whether you push the button or not. So it didn't change.

So it still had a the green phase was enough to accommodate pedestrian clearance interval, yet it still didn't go on. And so it was not set to rest and walk. So that that's what I'm asking. It's not if it's on set to recall, but if a vehicle pulls up and makes the because there are a lot of intersections where the it's maybe not balanced in the East West and North South traffic, but it's a little bit closer than, say, southwest traffic way at, you know, one of those very sides one of the side streets with very little traffic. I guess talk through that and what the decision is there.

And I I could probably think of others. There are probably some, elsewhere that are similar to that where the the green face seems to be unchanged whether or not you push the button. So could you walk me through that process and and how maybe that consideration is is made?

So 36th Street, you mean crossing East West?

Yes. Or On at at Main. And, again, it's different now because of TSP on the streetcar, but prior to that. And and I'm just using that as an example. There are probably others that would be better examples because they're not on TSP. But that's one that prior to, it's just an example. Again, I I'm not asking for that specifically once, to be changed. Just wondering what the decision is in, what what are the considerations when deciding whether or not to put on, rest and walk?

So at thirty six, we have it North South, rest and walk. Yeah. But East West, we don't because East West won't get a call, unless a vehicle shows up or a pedestrian

is which is really common. I mean, it's, you're gonna get a vehicle making a call there fairly consistently because it has it it's busier than, say, you know, a a more of a suburban street to suburban context. So I so what you're saying is if it doesn't if you're predicting that it won't get calls frequently, you won't put it in rest and walk? I don't under and why not?

It if we if we that would be a pet recall then. It would come up every cycle, every eighty seconds.

No. That's not no. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if a call comes from a from a vehicle Mhmm. Like, a driver rolls up to it and that detects it, which, again, happens fairly frequently on this street, and there are probably lots of others, again, where it's, like, somewhat balanced. I'm not saying that that it just cycles. I'm saying when a vehicle trips the signal, isn't that is that not rest and walk when you have the walk signal go with the green phase?

We could certainly look at the timing on that one. Usually, what happens is once the vehicle is clear, let's say you have a few vehicles, it'll gap out, and then it just the green goes to the main line, is how it's configured. But

Sure. Sure. And and I'm and I'm not and I that one, again, may not be the best example because it, is TSP. But before the transit signal priority went in, before streetcar opened, that one was was not set to rest and walk, and it would not east west. But when you push the button, it didn't change how long the green phase went versus when you just let a vehicle trip it at the call to the to the controller.

It comes in this this could go on for

Yeah. I know. I'm just

We I'm just we've got presentation, we're getting Understood. Sorry.

Understood. I will defer to back to you, Chair.

Thanks. Councilwoman Robinson, you one.

Thank you. I just I'm sitting here a bit, percussed and confused about what our aim is. Are we trying to address better convenience for the pedestrian, parity for the pedestrian, or is it just more better operations that we're trying to address? And if it seems like we're, like, at the first step of you all looking at some data, looking at other cities. Can you post the presentation online?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay. And this is gonna be held off docket. So I'm also unclear about what the next steps are. We wanna I wanna make sure that our streets are safe for pedestrians. And even if this was a resolution asking the staff to do come up with the implementation plan for all of these policy points, I will feel better about it.

And maybe that's something we can do at work with the staff and maybe addressing this as a resolution so we could talk about implementation. We could talk about cost. Because while this was brought forward by our colleague, I do have, you know, just some challenge I wanna put on the record for us to just kinda hold it off docket, especially after the tech public testimony that was posted next to this as well. So would the staff be amenable to maybe coming up with the implementation plan for all of the items, and we can reintroduce this at a later time as a resolution?

Yeah. We would do that as requested.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Any other questions? If not, we will hold this off docket for now.

Okay. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. We are now a presentation from the aviation department on their wonderful rating nationally. Do want to, having flown in on Saturday, I think I told you I, I was very impressed with the cleanliness of the runway. The the the insides was inside of the terminal was looked great and had a great experience. So thank you. Thank

you. Thanks for flying. Good morning. Melissa Cooper, Director of Aviation here with Pete Fullerton, deputy director of commercial development and property management. I'm also responsible for the concessions as one of the County EDC. And legend in Platt County EDC. We actually are here today. Wanted to share a briefing with you. We've invited Michael Taylor from J. D.

Power to talk about the large hubs, what and how Kansas City International did specifically in the last customer service satisfaction study. We know what our customers' thoughts are matter. We like to toot our horn a little bit to you guys as the citizen satisfaction two years in a row. Aviation departments leapfrog to the top. Really, J. D. Power is doing this as a third party looking at data driven information and talking about what we did well against our peers and what we did that we can actually improve to be even better for our community. I'm going to turn it over to Michael Taylor with J. D. Power.

He was supposed to be here today, but I think he has 14 inches of snow in Connecticut. Michael, it's all yours. We'll turn the PowerPoint on and advance as you're ready.

And it is blocking my mailbox, so I was very interested in that previous conversation. All right, wait for the slides to pop up. And I'll try not to make this a death by PowerPoint. So just really quickly, this is a study we've been doing since, basically 2000. Actually, we started in 1998, expressly for the Port Authority of New Jersey.

But over the years, it's evolved. We have three different categories of airports, mega airports, which are 33,000,000 passengers or more as measured by ACI. Large categories, million to 33,000,000, and about 4,500,000 to 10,000,000 is the medium category, only because they all have very different problems. If you're operating Atlanta, that's a much different proposition than Palm Beach International, and also MCI. It's a year long survey. It's U. And Canadian residents. It's online. We have over 30,000 people who evaluate airports. There's about 185 questions. No one answers all the 185 questions. And then there's some other little, asterisks and things there, which I'll explain along the way. So we can go to the next slide. One of the things about J. D.

Power is we try to give our clients, including MCI, an idea of what's important to the passenger experience or the experience for anything at all. The example I always use is, you know, if you're going to buy a car, how important is it to have the world's best designed door handles? Well, that's not that's nice, but it's not why you buy the car. It's probably horsepower, gas mileage, number of cup holders might be more important. So ease of travel through the airport is about 19% of the satisfaction score as well as the level of trust with the airport, how much do people trust the airport to actually do what it's supposed to do, which is get you on to one mode of transportation and into another.

Terminal facilities are 15%, and I won't go through all of these, but all the way down there at the end, the arrival and departures are people getting to and from the airport depending if they're arriving or departing. And 12% is the food, beverage and retail. And one of the things we've seen over the years, over the decades of doing this study is that you got to be a good airport, you got to do things on the right hand side very well. That makes you a good airport. What makes you a great airport is having an excellent food, beverage and retail, program.

And we use a Port of Perfect scale, which I won't really go into right now at the moment. So we go to the next slide. So anyway, MCI, was, if we looked at this four or five years ago, we have found MCI, closer to Philadelphia, at the bottom of the list. And, you guys have done a tremendous as was mentioned before, you've leapfrogged a lot of airports here and are doing very, very well in this study. The little lozenge or diamond there means you're statistically significantly above the average or below the average.

So you guys are statistically above the average, you went up eight percent eight points, excuse me, on a 1,000 scale versus last year. Now, some of the other you can see there's a lot of positive numbers on the right hand side simply because a lot of these airports in this large category completed a lot of their construction projects, improved their food, beverage, and retail, and they made a lot of progress over the last year or so. But an outstanding result for MCI, and they continue to be near the top as we go forward in this study. So next slide, please. This one's a little bit of a mystery here, but basically we just kind of look at, well, what is driving the difference between MCI and the average year report, average year report being six forty four points out of 1,000 and MCI being six ninety one?

We like what that in that difference there of 47 points, where did those 47 points come from? And you can see they're green across the board, meaning that in every single dimension, MCI outperforms the average large airport by quite a bit. Two or three points actually is a significant difference here. So you're up 10 points in Terminal Facilities, which shouldn't be surprising because it is a brand new, very well designed facility. You're really up there with the level of trust airport and you're green across the board for everything else, all the way down to the airport staff because as a Midwesterner, I can say that, Midwesterners are pretty nice to strangers.

So at least that's what my wife tells me was a big selling point. She lives she's from New York here. So anyway, anyway, great performance across the board. There isn't a single weakness that we can find, in MCI, versus the average large airport. So we can go to the next slide.

So, Net Promoter Score, which, for those of you who might not familiar with, that's just basically an enthusiasm measure. You know, how likely would you be to recommend this airport to your family or friends? Which is kind of a strange question for airports because a lot of times, especially, say, for Kansas City, there you don't have a lot of choice, but it really is kind of an we we think of it as an enthusiasm measure. How enthusiastic are people? And you can see that 64% of people would recommend MCI to their family and friends.

That's number three or four, I guess, number four versus some of the airports that rank up very highly and do very well in the study itself. But you got a plus 56 points, meaning that's, more promoters than detractors. You have very few detractors. So excellent performance in people in Kansas City, the Kansas City area, in Missouri and in Kansas, really enjoy the airport and are enthusiastic about it. Okay. Next slide. So I'm just going to go through some of these things here. You're ranking near the top in almost all these measures that you would call dimensions here. So terminal facilities, that's how clean is the bathroom, How clean are the concourse? Is there places to sit down?

What's the general upkeep? Those are terminal facilities questions. And you're just off slightly, but you're a brand new facility, so four points is anything to write home about as far as, a decline at all. So we can go to the next slide. One of the key things, I say this all the time, my wife gets also my wife gets embarrassed by this one, is, that cleanliness of bathrooms just means an awful lot to airport rankings.

It really is kind of a signal to how well the how much the airport cares about passengers. It's how much, time and effort do they spend in making the, airport bathroom appear to be clean. Now we I have a I'm gonna be doing actually for MCI about a forty five minutes to an hour on airport bathrooms, and I can talk for actually longer than that about airport bathrooms. But one of the things that really, does affect bathroom cleanliness perception is the age of the bathroom itself. Newer bathrooms are always considered to be much cleaner than older bathrooms.

Anything that is worn, broken, damaged is dirty no matter how antiseptic it might be. So you've really got an advantage in that you have a brand new airport, but I'm here to say that advantage will not last forever. I always tell people that if 50,000 people used your bathroom at home, what would your bathroom look like at the end of the year? And that's basically the kind of wear and tear that happens in restrooms at airports. So I always tell all our airport clients, you've got to plan ahead to budget for airport bathroom renovation.

If you let that slide, that really will affect your score and affects how people perceive the airport itself. But right now, you're doing very, very well. Okay. Next question or next slide. Again, this is just people getting to the airport itself. Again, one of the things about the Midwest is a lot of drive time in certain areas of the Midwest. So that might account for the fact that you're not at the very top here. You may have relatively good access to the airport itself. Those people who are in heavier metro areas, which have various airports that they could choose from, like SNA, which is in Southern California, those people don't have to drive to LAX. Getting to LAX is a very difficult thing.

Dallas Love Field is a little bit easier to get to than DFW. RU has got two major highways to go past it. Tampa is doing the same has basically the same arrangement. And Vancouver actually is fairly easy to get to because it's on jammed on one side of the country. So anyway, but MCI is, you know, doing pretty well and statistically above the average there as far as getting to the airport. Next one, please. This is the ease of travel to the airport. It's one of those key things, how easy is it to get to where I want to go. And that could be the gate. It could be food and beverage.

It could be the bathroom. And you do very well there as well, and you're up by 16 points, which basically is one of the things that we see in new airports as people get used to it, they kind of get an idea of, do I go left or right here? And signs and directions don't become as important as the airport ages a few years. But as soon as the airport changes and signs and directions become very, very important to getting around the airport itself. So doing well in getting around the airport. Next slide, please. Airport staff, again, you're Midwesterners, so this is great. These are great scores. You're significantly above the average. You're 10 points above a year ago.

One of the things about, you see those big numbers on the right hand side that were improvements versus last year is simply because construction finished in a lot of those airports. And construction makes people cranky because it slows them down in getting to the airport. And one of the key things, we're going to be in the next slide, we can go to the next slide if you'd like, is food, beverage and retail. And one of the key things about food, beverage and retail is not only the choice of airport restaurants and retail establishments, but do people have time to enjoy what is on offer at the airport? And the faster faster you get them to the airport and the more that they think they have time, the more likely they are to enjoy what the airport has to offer.

Now MCI is a little bit lower down the list on this particular dimension than the other ones for some very unusual reasons. Usually, we're telling our airport clients that you need to add more local food, beverage and retail to really give a sense of place to the airport itself. And in the case of MCI, actually, the data shows us, and I don't have the slides here because it does take a lot of time to get into it, is that you might have a skosh too much, local food and beverage. One of the things about it is, as I mentioned before, people are on a deadline. They need to get somewhere. It's one of the biggest deadline you have in the travel experience. If you're late for your hotel room, no problem. They give you another key. Late for your own car, no problem. They toss you another set of keys.

You're late for your flight, you've got problems. And that affects the way people look at their time they have to spend on food, beverage and retail. And one of the things I like to see is a mix of local sit down white tablecloth restaurants and chains that they know and understand. If a person walks up and looks at the line in McDonald's, they can mentally calculate how much time it's going to take to get to the counter itself or their food, consume it and get to their gate. They look at a white tablecloth restaurant, you know, it may have great food on offer, but how fast is the kitchen?

How fast does the bill come? Can I get to my gate on time? And that really makes a big difference. And one of the things we see in the data is that MCI maybe could use a little bit more well known brands on the air side of the building itself. And that especially expense extends to coffee. Two things that people want in the airport. One is coffee. They want so much coffee. They want to be able to stick their hand out and get coffee no matter where they are in the airport. And I always joke that, Starbucks is the number one desired airport or airport coffee vendor.

And people want so much Starbucks, want a Starbucks in the bathroom with Starbucks. That's how much Starbucks they want. But things like that, probably could, aid, and help MCI get better scores overall by just having a little bit more chain and understood or well known brand names as far as the food, beverage and retail goes. We can go to the next slide. One of the things about, thing is that everybody likes to complain about airport prices and yes, they are high. There's no two ways about it. It doesn't cost $5 for a bottle of water. It just doesn't. But people pay it because you know, of the convenience and also, you know, TSA takes it away from you and basically creates a desert. Now, this slide here just puts people in a couple different categories.

Those people rating the airport poor, there's only 1%, 15% of people, that's a blue bar there, rated the, MCI to be perfect. And then we ask them how much money they spend. And you see there's a nice curve there. And in fact, in the, bigger airports, it becomes a more pronounced curve. People who spend more like the airport more.

It doesn't seem to make sense, but if you think about it, if they find something they're willing to spend money on and they like the quality of it, they think the airport does a great job. Key thing is do you have things to spend money on? Now you can see that the blue line there for MCI is slightly below the other large, airports, partly because of the kind of prices that you experience in the Midwest versus, say, East And West Coast. The most expensive markets and the highest rings dollar ring per passenger happened to be in Miami, New York and Los Angeles. And you get in the middle of the country, and that bottle of water is not $5 it's $4 And that's part of the reason why.

But you still see a slight slight curve. The more people spend, the happier they are. And I always get the question, are they spending money because they're happy or happy because they're spending money? And the answer is yes. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. But they gotta have something to spend money on, and they've gotta like quality. Like And you have a lot of really good quality at MCI, a lot of good local food that has high quality and some retail that, is a little bit local as well. Kansas City Chiefs, I think, helps you guys with that. Level of trust in the airport, you guys are back there at the top again and growing by six points. So that's another key factor.

Do people trust the airport? And, there's a little sometimes a little bit when an airport's new, they it's a little bit mistrustful because people are kind of used to finding their parking and knowing the walk times at the old airport and it's a little bit different as an airport is new and then people get you have a little bit of a wear in as far as level of trust at the airport. Once people get used to an idea of which airport which parking lot do I want to go to and how long will it take me to get to my particular gate. You can go to the next slide. Anyway, so just some of the things that we've been telling MCI over the last year or two.

You've got to maintain your success. You improved in five to seven dimensions. Food, beverage and retail, as we talked about a little before, was a little bit off. And again, I think that some chain restaurants and more well known brands on the area side would help with that score. And again, giving that people that sense of time that they have.

And if we go on the right hand side, security wait time signage is something we'd also recommend, how long is the TSA wait? And they do a pretty good job. As in the second box, you can see that there's an already good TSA experience, TSA experience at the airport and improving it a little bit better with the signage and having daily huddles with TSA seems to help. At least we see that helping at other airports. And then we talked enough about food, beverage and retail, a little bit of having more of that chain type of thing that people could mentally calculate, can I do this and will I spend the money? And if I do, I'll be happy and, you know, get on my plane, a happy passenger or get off of my plane and be a happy passenger. And I know I talked very fast and a lot, but that's basically the presentation today. Do I have any questions?

Thank you, sir. Any questions for my colleagues? I think everybody's good. Any, I'm sorry, Melissa? Allison?

Well, just real quick. Do you have a separate, like, section just for recommendations? You had intertwined in your presentation some recommendations.

Yeah. That last slide with the blue and gray boxes?

I

think it's the Okay. Be big things that we would recommend to MCI to do. Working with TSA a little bit better to give it a little bit of sense of time, having more chain restaurants, having a wait time signage, those kinds of it's blue box, second to last slide that you saw.

Thanks. Thank you so much. I'll review that.

Yeah. Those are the big things that we think would help MCI get to number one.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, it just wasn't showing on the screen here.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Okay. Thanks.

There it is. Somewhere in the I see it as a little picture right now. Okay. Blue, green, gray, that kind of thing.

And, thank you, Michael. I think, you you may have glossed over this. At 11:00, we are actually we're already meeting to talk about restroom renovations. So it's hard to believe February 28 is our third anniversary in our new facility. I don't know what time it doesn't be new anymore, but and so we're already looking at what does that bathroom look like. And so we are meeting with our design team, and Michael has offered to provide us lessons learned as the kickoff to that kickoff meeting. So he will be hopping on at 11:00 to share that with our share that wisdom and experience with our team as we look at the future already.

I did notice on my trips in the last three or four months that three of the four bathrooms that I visited in various cities from Nevada, I think Las Vegas and, other places, it seemed they all had the same problem with the soap dispenser because each of them had soap bottles in them. And I'm wondering if that's an industry problem with the makeup of those soap dispensers or is that just

Yeah. I've I also used to be fun when I was in college, and now I look at soap dispensers and things like that when I go out. But, yes, it is a you go to hotels, go to lobbies, everywhere, there's So hopefully, that's some of the things that we're going to address. Really, a collective opportunity to talk to the architects on what their thoughts are. But we're bringing in our custodial staff, our structural staff, people who have to maintain it, who have to clean it, making sure that they have buy in and that we have the best product for our community. And hopefully, Michael gives us some tidbits in about half

an Well, can if I can just jump in for really quickly here. One of the things that we see very often are the small things at airports tend to break because they're not like looked looked at as major investments as far as quality goes. USB connectors are number one among that. People break those things off all the time and get very upset when they can't charge their personal devices. And as you mentioned before, the soap dispenser, that little thing that you smash with your hand, if it's cheap and not well made, tends to break or tends to clog. And what good is a soap dispenser that doesn't dispense soap?

You. In

some future TIO meeting, could we get an update on current contracts? I know we just got through the parking one. I was told that there's potentially another contract with the food and beverage workers.

Okay.

Yeah. I think we will be ready to talk about the status of our concession contract and potentially have a minor amendment to their agreement. I'll get back with you at maybe late February. Is that okay?

Yep. Absolutely. Probably in early March.

Early March?

Yeah.

Okay. Perfect.

Alright. Anything else, Cynthia?

Point of personal privilege, Lana,

last How

could we forget the most important person at our meeting? Our favorite attorney who only interrupts me, like, what, five times a day. You deserve it. Thank you for keeping us honest and out of jail.

We appreciate it. You.

Lada, I would like to say something too, mister chair. Thank you. Thank you, Lada, so much for your contributions to our meetings and making sure that we're on point and that we are the smartest of our electorate wants us to be or needs us to be. So we really appreciate you and, best wishes in the next chapter.

And I might add that Thank you, Melissa. We are lucky enough to have the best attorney for the committees. Not that I would say that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lana.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Are we adjourned? Adjourned.