Metropolitan Council - Special Meeting

If you could take your seats. I'm going to call to order the joint meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Budget and Finance Committee. We don't have any items to vote on, so we don't need a quorum. So we're going to go ahead and get started with our presentation. You should see on item number two of the meeting agenda, Transportation Improvement Program Implementation Team Update pursuant to Resolution 2024-880. And I am going to turn it over to them. If you could introduce yourself and you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Hi everyone, my name is Sabrina Sussman. I am the Chief Program Officer for Choose How You Move. Very glad to be back with you for our quarterly update and briefing. As you have heard before, we meet with our advisory committee in the morning and then join you that same afternoon for the same set of updates. So we're excited to walk through a big chunk of updates for you and have some guest speakers as well. So we're gonna start with a bit of a welcome and overview on some of our general activities that I will cover. Andrew Walzak, the Choose How You Move finance manager will do a budget overview of both 26 and fiscal year 27 to keep on theme for the rest of your activities. We will then do a deep dive into some of our capital projects where deputy chief program officer, Michael Briggs and interim deputy director of NDOT, Derek Haggerty will walk you through sidewalk signals, complete streets and all access corridor updates. And then we'll end with any of course time as the chair allows for any questions. So to dig in, I wanna start by telling you a bit of a story. And I told some of this story to an audience you'll hear about in just a little bit, a non-Nashville audience. So we'll start here. For many of you, this might be an image you're used to. It might be an image you grew up with. It might be an image that feels like home or comfortable. This is Nashville skyline in 2015. An incredible thing that over time has morphed. That is today's skyline. And so we start with today's briefing with just a moment of recognition for the unbelievable growth and change that this community has seen. And Choose How You Move is really coming out of an acknowledgement of that growth and change that the infrastructure for which was not properly resourced over the years for all the good reasons that we know. And so there is some catch up to do, as we all know. And I think it's really important to start with a little bit of context around capacity building. That incredible growth did not happen overnight. And all of the growth and the infrastructure that we are now talking about will also not happen overnight. And this chamber knows that the institution of Metro government has not been able to change overnight. And so a theme that you will hear tonight, whether we're talking about capacity building at our departments, talking about budget changes, talking about changing the way that we fund capital projects, the theme tonight is change. And change brings upon such great opportunities. And we wanted to sort of set and start with that as a reminder for all of us because we have gotten used to this second image. This does not come with some of the shock and awe that it came with when I showed it to an audience that I will tell you more about in just a little bit. You are going to get a good briefing on a bunch of things and part of where I just want to start is along with change comes opportunity and along with money comes opportunity and some concrete. And so the last time we were here, we told you about the first sidewalks and now you'll hear about a summer of sidewalks. You'll see the You're Half Sent at Work brand out there on these sidewalks and we encourage you to play, locate with us, take a photo and send it in if you find it. And then you'll hear more about budget, of course, which is what enables our ability to build all of the incredible infrastructure to support this community. We're gonna try and keep the presentation tight and then leave a little time for questions. Some exciting things we were in, many of us were in Minneapolis several weeks ago at the National Association of City Transportation Officials, NACDO, of which many of you are familiar with. We took Nashville's largest ever delegation to NACDO. for some deep learning that started early in the mornings and went even into overnight pitch dark striping lessons that some of our team took. So if you're curious, there's some good stories from that. Some important takeaways. Everyone is watching Nashville. As you all know, many do not have the resources and the enthusiasm that we have at the moment. And so there's a lot of interest in what we're doing, how the program is unfolding and what we've been able to achieve such far. We also know that the challenges that we have are frankly not unique. Some cities are having the same challenges at the same moment. Some cities had these challenges and found ways through them. And really, I think this kind of community helps us to remember that strength comes from learning from our peers and then finding a way to apply it and refine it for what we need here in Nashville. Several of your Metro Nashville staff spoke and were able to sort of share their perspectives on panels. NACDO also features a lot of what they call walk shops, which means instead of sitting in a conference room, you actually go out into the city. You walk, you ride a bike, you take a scooter, you take the bus and actually visit active construction projects, completed projects, and see what's on the way. The reason why we had the largest ever delegation is we had some exciting news, and we were actually featured in the closing plenary. where we had the opportunity to announce that NACDO is coming to Nashville in May of 2027. This is an incredible honor and a great opportunity to show off, not just what we have accomplished, but some of the work that has to be done. And we've had an honest conversation within our own team with the mayor and with others that we are in middle of Nashville story. And so when I started by telling you, I told a story, I told this story in Minneapolis and I'll be honest, it sort of went back many years and started and talked about some of the talked about the AMP and talked about some of the other referendum opportunities and told a bit of the story of where we are in our evolution. And then for the rest of the conference, had people coming up to me and many others on our team saying, we had no idea what Nashville had been through and we're so excited to come. And so we're really looking to hosting this incredible resource. NACDA also serves as the preeminent guide for urban transportation. And so when we think about modeling best practices, this is really the organization that helps us drive towards that. Now we'll dig into a couple more CHIME-specific opportunities. We've had incredible success with the Journey Pass program since its soft launch in October and formal launch in November. Since then, we've delivered over 1.6 million Journey Pass rides. These numbers are from May 19th, and so new numbers will be on the website on Wednesday. We've registered and have over 11,000 riders, all who received three years of free WEGO rides and are continuing to march along with registration events held weekly where we're seeing growth continue. As folks know, a key part of the Choose How You Move budget is operating dollars that help and allow WEGO to do service changes and expansions. We do these in a six-month cycle, and the next set of changes become effective on July 5th. We are very excited about some of these changes that include changes to two routes that really affect Nashvillians. And so the first I'm very excited to talk about because the last time I was here, many of you wanted to chat about this, which is expanded service to the airport. So we focused on the 18 specifically because that is the route that is more utilized by airport employees. So local Nashvillians. And so rather than sort of take on visitors or tourists, we want to start with our homegrown support network. And so you will see shortened wait times for the 18. We will also see increased frequency going out to Opry Mills on Route 34. This is one of those success stories where we have seen increased ridership. And so we go process of selecting service enhancements allows it to be nimble over time and be data-based. And so this is one of the ones that really rose to the top as seeing the need for increased capacity. These will be effective July 5th. And as you know, we have programmed that we will do the next set effective in January. We also had some fun the last couple months with many of you in some cases celebrating both transit month and bike month. saw folks out and about enjoying some good weather before the rain like today's started, both on We Go Star for Ticket to Ride, Tour de Nash, and of course, Open Streets, which was held jointly with Tour de Nash this year. And I should note there are two more Open Streets dates coming, one in June and one in July. And then finally, an update that we gave to you earlier in the year is that we were awarded to be the sole city participating as of receiving technical assistance from America forward. This was a program that went and selected one city, one transit agency in one state throughout the country to receive dedicated project delivery assistance. They came to town a couple weeks ago to do focused segment on capital investment grants. These are the Federal Transit Administration's grant program that funds transit expansion in this country. We in Tennessee have never once done a CIG grant before. And so this is a world new down here. And so we had some national experts come down, including a former colleague of mine from USDOT to really specifically talk about what is different about this grant program. An anecdote I will leave you with is that this is the only grant program in the nation where the name of your project has to be in the president's budget. So it is a good reminder to all of us that this is a very different kind of grant program than the ones that we are used to. And so they did some workshops for us on things to know and how to think about the strategy. Next up in just a couple weeks, a new onslaught of experts from America Forward will be coming in to focus on local project delivery. So they'll be receiving two days of briefings from Metro Nashville staff, key stakeholders in the community, utility partners on how it is that we currently deliver projects. and we'll be open to the opportunity to hear more about how this is done in other cities, similar to our size and capacity, to really refine. It'll end with their presentation on recommendations on how Nashville can really work to continue to expedite project delivery. And then the third tier on their stool that they'll be helping us with is a workforce development strategy, and that is to come later in the year. And with that, I will pass it off to Andrew Walzak, our finance manager.

Hello everyone, Andrew Walzak, finance manager with Choose How You Move. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how we've performed so far in fiscal year 2026, and also just take a little look ahead at our FY27 budget that's been proposed. But really quick before we do that, Just a reminder to everybody and also for ourselves, the constraints around the half cent sales tax that we collect for transit projects. The Improve Act that was passed in 2017 by the state allowed municipalities in Tennessee to collect that type of revenue for transit projects. but everything that we collect must be used on projects that are identified in the TIP. So that's something that we're always mindful of as we're making decisions on how to allocate funds and need to continue to do into the future.

All right, so FY26 revenues.

Around this time last year when we were setting the budget for fiscal 26, We projected about $164 million. As of May 22nd, we've collected just under $128 million, which puts us at about 77, 78% of projected collection for the year. Our last formal analysis of how the tax was performing, we projected that we would collect just above 165, so right on target, just ahead of the target that we set for ourselves. Collections have been pretty consistent month to month. We see a little bit of seasonality, with this being based on retail activity, the Christmas shopping season, back to school season, there's fluctuations up and down that result from those time periods. But overall, in the range of $12 to $15 million per month that we bring in in the surcharge. On the expenditure side, just one thing it's important to note too is that CHIME revenue funds the entire CHIME program, both our operating component and our capital project component. And we budgeted just over $60 million in our operating budget for fiscal 26. To date, we're just under $51.4 million. And it's worth noting that about 48 million of that 51.4 has gone to direct transit services via WeGo. So CHIME expansion initiatives through the Journey Pass program, expanded routes, more frequent service, WEGO link zones, things of that nature, all included in that amount that's passed on to WEGO. Otherwise, CHIME is a pretty lean operation. We do have some departmental expenditures through the program office and our partner agencies, the majority of which are personnel related. We do have a program manager, HNTB, that is under contract and has been assisting the implementation of the program, and some of that comes out of our operating budget. But aside from that, it's mostly personnel and some minor administrative costs. Looking at capital program or our capital expenditures year to date, that orange line on top shows cumulative expenditure by month. And if you look and see where it spikes around that November, December period, that was right after the $104 million in projects that were announced last fall in October. So almost immediately, we started to see cash go out the door. And you can see that the blue line on the bottom, which is the monthly spend starting to take upward each month, as more projects get started, and work begins to complete. I think it's worth noting we have just under $21 million in active purchase orders right now, which is an indicator that we will see additional cash going out the door in the short term. So a lot of work in progress. So we should continue to see that blue line and orange line go up and to the right. And we also have $99 million total in initiated projects. That's through an internal process that we have for committing the dollars that have been budgeted for various projects and allocating them to a specific individual project. So looking ahead to fiscal 2027, anyone who's already looked at the budget materials for this year, and these next two slides should look familiar, but that big green pie is our single revenue source, our sales tax surcharge that funds our entire program. There's a modest amount of interest income included in there, less than one half of 1%. So we didn't represent that visually on our chart, but we do achieve revenue in that way. So there's a wide variety of factors that go into our assumption, national economic indicators, local economic indicators, global events, the potential of, and so on. And so we assumed a conservative growth amount of about 2.8% totaling $169 million for FY27. And on the operating expenditure side, we show this graph here broken down by department and how all of our funds are allocated. You can see three quarters of it goes to WeGo in the form of dedicated transit services that I already spoke about. represents a total increase of over FY26 of about 15%. And the difference between what we project to collect and what we project to spend on operating will go all to our capital program.

Thank you, Andrew. The other thing I will just note is we did have our joint hearing for the budget with the mayor's office and so went through in much more significant detail the investment recommendations. If you have any questions about that, of course, happy to take that as well. And then with that, maybe we'll call up Derek Haggerty and Michael Briggs.

Thank you, Sabrina. Good afternoon, I'm Michael Briggs, Deputy Chief Program Officer. And I'm gonna go through just kickstarting a little bit on project delivery. Derek will go into a little bit more detail on that. And then I'll end on the all access corridors. So as a reminder, Mayor O'Connell campaigned on 15 fixes as part of his campaign. Choose How You Move delivers on three of them. So that includes implementing Nashville Next, taking plans to reality, and developing a frequent transit network. And so we've been seeking ways to accelerate implementation because it's been clear from over the 70 plans that were developed to become the backbone of the Choose How You Move program in the last decade that there's a sense of urgency around a lot of our infrastructure fixes in Nashville. And so dedicated funding gives a level of certainty that really has not been possible historically. Funding has sort of shifted dramatically each fiscal year to the next. We're beginning to rethink processes and reorganize Metro departments really around a delivery mindset and moving towards a best practice that shifts spending, shifts spending funds closer to implementation. This approach improves taxpayer value and applies to all of the capital programs that NDOT is undertaking. Recently concerns were raised about this approach specifically around main Gallatin and the Vision Zero funding. And some of that has been impacted by rethinking our approach on the all access corridors and project development there. And so I'll talk a little bit later about how the main Gallatin all access corridor will be handled here in a minute. But first I'm gonna turn it over to Derek to talk about some of the recent funding adjustments and projects that are moving forward.

Thanks, Michael. Derek Hagerty, Interim Deputy Director with NDOT. Just building off what Michael was talking about there, talking about how this best practice is being applied to our Vision Zero program. Many of you are aware we had about $8 million in surplus funds that were given to us in 2023 meant to be spent in 12 months, which we as a department did not do. That's been moved throughout the budget and wanna assure everyone that does not impact the projects currently in motion with their current phase. This is funding for future construction that was tied to those projects being held back. And that's something we're looking to get away from moving forward, ensuring that we're spending the funding in the year we're getting it, taking full advantage of that purchasing power. So a couple of project examples on the screen, Michael mentioned Main Gallatin, that's a $7 million project, about 3.1 million of that is paving coming out of our state of good repair budget line, which typically goes to maintenance activities like paving, bridge repair, sidewalk repairs, et cetera. The rest of that funding is coming from Vision Zero dollars. And that 3.9 million currently sits in FY22 and 23 budget line items. Moving forward, we're looking to ensure that does not happen again. Those dollars have lost probably 12 to 15% of their purchasing power over the years. And we want to make sure going forward here, we're being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, spending this funding as we receive it. So a couple of examples of projects in motion where we're applying this, Charlotte Avenue and 47th Avenue pedestrian crossing, looking at deploying likely a pedestrian hybrid beacon or a hawk, as some of you may have heard them called before. At this crossing, it's right by a park, a library, good opportunity to improve safety. Entire project budget's close to 500,000. We currently in this year only need 75,000 for the design, maybe some early right-of-way work. That's the funding we're applying to this project right now. We'll be coming back in next year's capital spending plan, asking for the remaining of the construction piece. Same thing with the Harding Place project. This builds off of a TDOT paving project between Nolensville and I-24. This year, we're just looking to spend 300 of that $800,000 for the design work. That design is due to TDOT in September to fit into their procurement schedule. Next year, we'll come back, ask for 500,000 for the construction piece. So quick look at that process, want to get into the fun stuff, which is the Choose How You Move project delivery, starting with sidewalks. Sabrina mentioned our first sidewalk funded through Choose How You Move was completed recently, Edge Lake Drive. A couple more just kicked off two weeks ago. Oak Valley, which is right off Dickerson near the HG Hill and Charlotte Pike River Road down in Bellevue fills a gap near the Walmart and Lowe's if you're familiar with the area. This month, we're gonna be kicking off a few more projects, Nashboro Boulevard, down on Murfreesboro Pike near Kroger, Revels Drive, kind of in the Haynes Trinity neighborhood, Benton Avenue right outside Giotis Park, and probably breaking ground in July will be the Fort Nagley sidewalk project, which fills the gap between the Adventure Science Center and the actual park. Smart signals, want to spend a little time talking about this and really get into some of the vocabulary we've been using. We have 115 signal upgrades coming this year. 83 of those are downtown, 32 are on Nolensville and Harding Place. And when we talk about smart signals, really want this group to think of those in terms of hardware. The smart signal upgrades are gonna allow our signals to detect, to communicate, and to act within parameters that we set. Now the operations piece is really where we're gonna see those key efficiencies and improvements to our transportation system. And that is going to change by location, by time of day, by what's actually happening. So just to give a couple examples, you know, imagine you go to a concert at Bridgestone, you walk out, you come to Fifth and Broad. What do we want that signal to be doing right then? Yep. Council Member Allen, great, great point there, that we want to be flushing all those pedestrians out. So that's what that smart signal would be doing at that time. At 5 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon on Nolensville Pike in the outbound direction, we're going to be looking for those smart signals, maybe doing something different, helping buses, vehicles get through, get people home, flush them out of downtown, while at the same time being able to detect to detect pedestrians, ensuring we have safe crossings. So when we say we're deploying smart signals, really want everyone to understand that that's the hardware that's going out in the field. What we do on the operational side is gonna change by part of town, by signal, by time of day, by what's actually taking place out there. And that's where we're gonna see those improvements. Last slide I have is Complete Streets, along with the all-access corridors that Mike will talk about. These are really safety-focused projects, I think long, linear safety projects. Really excited to let everyone know that in about a month, we'll be breaking ground on our first Choose How You Move-funded Complete Street project, which will be the Chestnut Street project. This runs from Lafayette down to 8th Avenue. If you have an opportunity and if you're curious, we have a great website set up which gives an overview of this project, has the plan sets there as well. If you're curious to see what that project Looks like, just pull up the plan set. I encourage everyone to scroll down a little bit to the slides that have the pavement markings plan. That's really the best visualization of what it's gonna look like. If you're really interested in stormwater details, that's there too. Not always as interesting of a reading. So following Chestnut, Edge Hill will be the next piece. That picks up right where that leaves off at 8th Avenue, connects down to 21st Avenue at Vanderbilt University. Few other projects in the work, Church Street, Elliston Place, that runs from downtown across the interstate all the way to West End at 25th, right near Centennial Park. Jefferson Street, we've had some great public engagement going on the last, well, I was gonna say a few months, but probably a year or two at this point. That draft plan is now up on our public input website for feedback. Please take a look at that, give any feedback you have, encourage residents to do the same. Once we finalize that document on the Choose How You Move side, we're gonna move into design of that Complete Street project. Besides those, also working on our downtown Complete Streets projects, DeMombrian, Seventh and Union, and East Thompson Lane. With that, I'll turn things back over to Michael to talk all access corridors.

Thanks, Derek. So as a reminder, all access corridors are 54 miles of Nashville's most heavily traveled roadways that receive a complete upgrade through the Choose How You Move program. Each corridor integrates high-frequency bus service with strategically located transit lanes, smarter signals, and safety and accessibility improvements. All access corridors are really how we transform our streets and build out all of the things that Nashvillians have asked for for so many years. So I'm gonna give two brief updates on projects. One involving Main Gallatin Pike, all access corridor. That is in project development from Fifth Street up to Brawley Parkway. That's five miles of a local street network where we have control over the street design. Derek mentioned the safety improvements, continuing to move forward with repaving this year. So while that's underway, we move into the all access corridor project development this summer. And it builds on the vision plan that was started with the community back in 2023 and going into 2024, just before the Choose How You Move referendum passed. That vision plan clearly lays out an opportunity to have the street function as a gateway to our neighborhoods, as where people want to cross safely. They want to walk up and down the corridor and enjoy the businesses and spend time there and really connect better to transit. This is also a redevelopment district along portions of the corridor. And so we will evaluate the redevelopment district along with the all access corridor project development work. I'm excited to also say we have a new staff person who's been with us for about a month. So Adams Carroll is in the back and we'll raise his hand. He's the project manager on the main Gallatin corridor. And so if you're along that corridor, you will see him as a face of this work. going forward for the Choose How You Move team. So anticipate engagement and continue this summer, particularly around some of the paving, striping details to happen later this year, and then continuing to talk more about the all access corridor project development. Really quickly on the second project for Nolensville Pike and it's all access corridor work. It's a seven mile corridor from downtown to second and fourth avenues and down Nolensville Pike to Harding Place. The Choose How You Move team was in a neighborhood meeting last week that was hosted by 16th United in the Woodbine area. And the good news there is that they had nearly a hundred people show up just to talk about ideas along Nolensville. And we heard very similar themes. Those came out of the main Gallatin work and really residents wanting to reflect their community at being a safe place to cross and be able to enjoy the businesses in the area. So our official community will work. We'll start later this year. First thing that has to happen is the MTA board will need to execute a contract for the project development work. And we anticipate that later this month. And that really helps bring in the expertise for the project to enter the Federal Transit Administration's capital improvement grants pipeline. This really is how we get that half cent that we're all paying to then leverage more money back to Nashville and make our program go much further. And even though it's a rigorous process with a lot of deliverables, it's something that's real intentional. And it's something that we're very proud as a city to begin entering that program. Meanwhile, we'll continue working with council members on the Nolensville corridor and residents to fulfill a resolution the council passed during the 2024 referendum that asked for a working group. And so a community advisory board will be pulled together to vet ideas and ensure our neighbors have the most accurate info during this multi-year process. And so you'll hear more about that in the upcoming months. So with that, I will stop and hand it back over to Sabrina for closing comments.

And I will just say, Madam Chair, I will hand it back to you.

Thank you, Ms. Sussman. Okay, it is 518. Ideally, we can start budget and finance at 530. So let's see where we get in 12 minutes. And I see a whole bunch of hands. Hold on, let me get everybody. Okay.

Okay, I think I got all the hands.

Council Member Evan Segal.

Thank you, Chair. Just a couple quick questions. On the smart signals, will y'all be able to, when you're controlling them, turn those into all-way pedestrian crossings like we have downtown that sort of allow people to kind of cross all at once safely? Okay.

That is a good question, and I'll have to get back to you on that. It just depends on the controllers we have and the programming. We can absolutely look into that, though.

Okay, yeah, I think those are really helpful when we have them, especially downtown, and they feel really safe, and they also help cyclists who can kind of use that, too, in our bigger intersections to kind of cross safely as well. And... The other quick question I have is you mentioned Chestnut is coming up. Originally, I thought Chestnut and Edge Hill were tied together. Is Edge Hill also starting or how are they linked today?

Good question. So we've been communicating about them together. Each one has different design firms. We're going to be moving into construction at slightly different times. So Chestnut will be kicking first. We hope to you all into the public. It really looks seamless as we transition from construction at Chestnut into Edge Hill.

So are you thinking those will be back to back or that they might run simultaneously, but you're waiting on the Edge Hill to finish up?

Yeah, so we're still wrapping up design on the Edge Hill piece along with some community engagement coming up. So right now, my estimate would be they'll run back-to-back, potentially with a little overlap.

Just one more quick thing on those. There are four schools along. Today there were three, but by next fall, there will be four schools on Edge Hill. So as you were timing that out, not including Vanderbilt, which is like, but four, like, you know, schools where kids are coming and going. So just please keep that in mind, just your timing, Edge Hill, you know, Rose Park, Carl Lawrence, whatever that new Vanderbilt one is, the Roberts Academy, and then USN will all be impacted.

Absolutely, and we're coordinating closely with all of them.

Council Member Huffman.

Thank you, Chair. I'm gonna be speaking just in regards to being an advocate for the smart signals. I can speak to it in regards to the upgrades on Lebanon Pike. That's made a noticeable difference between the county line and downtown in regards to just overall commute times. My question though is, first off, how many total signals do we have in the county?

Within Davidson County, we have about 900, and I don't know if this is gonna get ahead of your next question, under Choose How You Move, we are upgrading 592 of those. That is every signal on a current or future plan transit route.

That was my next question. To ask just a follow-up on that one, what does the prioritization look like for that? What factors are taking into place?

Good question, so really it's a combination. I think these first 115 you see that we're rolling out, those are ones where we largely have fiber in place or easily able to get that fiber network in place. Our next round, looking at a combination of factors, I think in the next month or two, we'll finalize that list. get it out, but it'll include readiness along with factors such as safety, potential efficiency gains. So there's going to be a whole lot in there. We're working through the weights at the moment. We want to ensure that we have a fair setup that's going to start working on day one. So working very closely with our partners at Metro ITS. Got you.

And sir, I would just add, I think we also have a dig one approach here if we can. And so there are some cases where we know we're going to be doing other work in the area and we'll go ahead and layer in those signal upgrades at that time.

Sure.

How many of the, so you say 592 have been upgraded? How many of, or no, sorry. 592 will be upgraded. Will be upgraded. Okay. Okay. I got you. Of those, how many do you think that you'd be able to accomplish all in one sweep? And I ask because With Lebanon Pike, we've got the upgrades, but we don't have that fiber connection yet. Once we have that, we're rolling. We know that. So just love you to speak to that. Yeah, correct.

So it's really two different timelines there. The signal upgrades, year one, we're doing 115. Next year, we're hoping to increase that number some. The fiber installation is being led by Metro ITS. That's a little bit of a different process. And... I know we have Jesse Turner here from Metro ITS. I don't know if you want to share a little bit on that.

Where we can, we are, we're looking to in the short term deploy cellular services if possible, um, that will give the sum of the connectivity that we need. But unfortunately the cellular, connectivity will not be efficient to run all aspects of the smart signals. The throughput's just not there. So currently we are working on different project designs through multiple corridors. Our first component of that is to coordinate with our design elements to determine whether or not we're going to do aerial or underground fiber. Most of the time we will choose aerial because the pole lines already exist. So that requires us to go through an engineering process with NES. So just depends on how much work needs to be done on those aerial routes as to how quickly we can deploy the fiber. But again, we look for those interim steps where we can implement cellular communication or we can tie into existing fiber that's already on the corridor.

Thank you. One more question, Chair. In regards to the Complete Streets Program, glad to see that that's moving along really good. Just making sure, and I believe the answer is yes already, but you're utilizing indigenous plants, wildflowers, things like that when possible.

Absolutely, and we have a great sidewalk project actually coming up on State Route 45 that's gonna take full advantage of that program.

Thank you. Council Member Parker.

Thank you, Chair. I've got a couple of questions that I think would, I imagine would have quick responses and then one that might be just a little bit lengthier. So the Route 18 improvements to BNA, could someone let us know what that frequency is today and then what we'll be seeing in terms of improvements this summer?

Currently, the most... I'm sorry, Steve Bland, CEO for WeGo Public Transit. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Currently, the frequencies range from 45 minutes at most frequent to 60 minutes least frequent. That'll go to 30 minutes most frequent, most of the day, and then 45 minutes later in the evening.

Thank you, so that's a significant improvement, but still lots of room to grow, but hopefully that'll get more folks able to try it out, and maybe I can convince my partner that it's worth waiting for.

Two other changes with the 18 that should both improve speed and reliability. We're putting an additional bus on to sustain that frequency. We're also doing a reroute to avoid the at-grade railroad crossing on Elm Hill Pike that tends to back us up significantly. multiple times a day.

Excellent. That's great to know. Thank you. And then on the All Access Corridor, Main Gallatin, for the interim work, the Vision Zero, the safety improvements, I know we had a round of community engagement like a month or so ago. When can folks in East Nashville expect another round of engagement, updated plans, anything? And if we don't know exactly right now, then that's okay. But just do y'all have a sense of when that might be?

Yes, not an exact date yet, but currently working to refine those plans, update them. I would say the second half of summer here, probably July, August timeframe.

Great. Thank you. And the intention is to do more community meetings. I know just to be clear on that.

Excellent. And then the last question is a general question, but I'm asking because of my experience on Main Street. So y'all talked in the earlier meeting today about leading pedestrian intervals quite a bit. And I'm a big fan of those. I had the experience, I cross Main Street at 10th quite often. on bicycle. And, um, for a while there was an LPI there that was like every time, every phase had the LPI. And what I suspect is that now the LPI only comes up when you push the beg button. Um, and so I really liked that predictability and consistency as a cyclist of like having that defined interval where, you know, cause you know, folks, sometimes the the person turning left across from you is like, well, that's a bike. I'm just going to go and get ahead of the bike. And you know, they're, they don't default to like following the rules of the road, but that LPI kind of says like, okay, well the bike has space to get going and you clearly say you're not going to try to get ahead of the bike or whatever. Anyway, all that to say, I really appreciated the consistency of having that LPI there constantly. And I don't like dismounting to touch a bag button. So as we roll those out, and more intersections, I would strongly advocate for universal application of the LPI, not waiting on the beg button. It just, I think it's much safer and more predictable for everybody involved. So that's not really a question. That's more of a comment. But if y'all have any response to that, I'd be happy to hear it or.

No, I think great point. We heard that loud and clear this morning from the advisory committee as well. And really when we're talking about that detection for the smart signals, being able to detect pedestrians, bicycles, vehicles within a 300 foot radius really allows us to have that experience for bicyclist pedestrians, where you can expect that LPI every time you walk up, but if no vulnerable road users are detecting the area, we get some of that efficiency back in the system. Now that's very dependent upon good maintenance, strong policies in place, but that's the world we're looking to go with smart signals. Today, correct, LPIs are programmed a little differently and that's something we're reviewing currently. Thank you.

As I go to the next council member, what is LPI?

Apologies leading pedestrian interval It's about a three to four second head start for pedestrians as they moved into a signalized intersection So all the signals are read you get the little flashing Walk person pedestrians are able to get that head start establish themselves for vehicles start moving Thank you council member cap

Council Member Parker took my questions, but thank you.

Council Member Ellis.

Thank you. So I'm still in my first term, still trying to learn how everything moves. And so going on, just from the website, right? So it says on the Nashville Transit, latest Choose How You Move work by council district. And so when I go and I look up my council district 29, it pulls up this PDF that has the program snapshot and under signals, it has 11.5 million. So has that money been spent on the signals and laying the fiber or is that just a plan?

So I think I can imagine the PDF that you're looking at. The 11.5 number is inclusive of all Davidson County or signals for this one year period. The back of that one pager. So page two is all of the district specific investments that are being made. Okay, that's what I was afraid of. So the short answer is we have spent some of that 11.5, but not necessarily in your district, ma'am.

Got it. And so that's, I was also happy to hear you mention that you all are gonna do the community meetings as well. Happy for you guys to come out to District 29. And the other thing is more just a fundamental question. So I was hoping to see like a downgrade in the budget for WEGO. since we've had this dedicated transit revenue coming in so that we could maybe spend some of those monies to give folks raises. So help me understand, where is all this money that we've collected gone?

So great question, and maybe can I?

um would you we can talk a little bit about 26 or we can talk about 27 i just want to get some numbers up for you and i just want to just give you a heads up as well just um so before we have these type of meetings and maybe i missed it in the email could you all send this information out so because we you know get compressed for time yep to be able to ask questions but I have to answer to 20,000 people about this.

So if we could talk about just fiscal year 26. I don't think that we have the breakdown by entity here, but it is actually quite similar to what you see for 27 as far as the percentages. So the dedicated revenue, as Andrew mentioned earlier, the legal structure under which we're allowed to collect it says that we had to make a plan. We had to make a transportation improvement plan that said these are the projects and this is how we're gonna spend it. All of that revenue then the expenditures received has to be spent in accordance with the plan. So part of what happened with the referendum was a collection of capital projects. It's the 86 miles of sidewalks, it's the 600 traffic signals, It's 39 miles of complete streets and then really bountiful changes to WeGo. So the money that is going there is doing things like the service increases, the expansion. It is helping to buy buses that you need to run more. It's helping to make sure we have enough bus drivers. really supporting the entity writ large, part of what was in the TIP was moving WeGo to a 24-7 operating model. And those sorts of investments don't happen obviously overnight and are incremental, but these early years really helped to shore up a couple of the operational baselines and address one of the big plaguing issues that we had, which is not really a sufficient reserve fund, which is a really important best practice, particularly as you're growing a transit agency. And so this, the modeling that is in the TIP is very much aligned with this sort of breakdown where you see some capital expenditure on the Metro Nashville side and a lot of operating money that goes to support WEGO's operations day to day. I don't know if that directly answered the question, but hopeful that it's helpful.

Yeah, it's definitely helpful. So I was, so, and maybe this is too basic of a question, but it's just the way that I need to break it down to be able to understand So are we ever going to be at the point where we can consolidate? We go and choose how you move into just one complete department and have that transit department completely funded by the tax revenues that we're collecting. That way, the money that comes out of the general fund that goes to we go gets, you know, redistributed.

Great question. And that was something that we definitely, and obviously prior to my arrival talked a lot about, we do not envision a future where the general fund does not contribute at all to we go. So the assumption in the plan as part of, we did the modeled financials is that there would continue to be general fund contribution and but that Choose How You Move's contribution over the years would increase as there's sort of a growing need for more and more and more investment. Part of what was happening is the general fund obligations and needed investments were rising faster than the general fund was. And so this dedicated revenue allows you to still make those investments really support the system without that increased burden back on general fund, but we are not gonna move to a place where the general fund isn't funding WeGo at all.

Got it. All right. Last question. So as far as where the Choose How You Move monies get spent, is that just going to be based on who's in the mayor's office as to what the district gets prioritized?

Great question. So again, it goes back to the tip. It goes back to the list of projects. So we already know everything out of the entire Choose How You Move program that will be in each of your districts. That was sort of predetermined and voted on. The question you're asking about sort of timing is based off of the operational and capital delivery schedule work that we're doing to sort of assess what order do you do things in. So for example, there's 86 miles of sidewalk. The program is prioritizing in the next couple of years the sidewalks that are not on all access corridors because when we know, when we build an all access corridor, we're gonna build those sidewalks. You wouldn't wanna build something now and then rip it out in five years. So it's those kinds of project delivery timetable discussions that we are having that helps to set that schedule. Thank you.

Thank you. And Council Member Koopman, you are last in the queue.

Thank you, Chair. No pressure to be quick, but I'll be quick. Thank you all for all the work you do. For the bus number 18, is there going to be a, is it the same drop-off kind of at the back corner of the airport? Are we looking at moving that farther up?

Excuse me again, Steve Bland. We go public transit until the new transportation and rental car centers constructed. It'll be the same location it's in now.

Do we know when that will be approximately?

I've heard two years, but that would be a better question directed to the airport.

Thank you, and then I noticed that now if I were to leave this council meeting to take a nice trip somewhere and take the 18, it would take me almost an hour to get there with all the stops along the route. Have y'all looked at doing like an express line, like direct to airport or something with, you know, stops on major stops along the route, but not every single one or something that gets that duration a little bit shorter.

One of the things Ms. Sussman referenced was the way we use data. And what we find is most of the ridership on that route is actually along Elm Hill Pike. So for us to, for lack of a better word, express it, we end up disenfranchising probably almost two-thirds of the ridership. So that's sort of the challenge for that route. Longer term with the airport, there are other planned route extensions that and route expansions, but that's really contingent on, and I think that's the point you were getting to in your first question, council member, having expanded and improved stop locations there where we can actually have more capacity for more service.

Yeah, thank you, because I would love nothing more than to take the bus to and from the airport, but that would be my challenge, even with increased frequency, is that I would be hard-pressed to, similar to Councilman Parker, justify to my partner a 60-minute bus ride to the airport that would be a 20- to 25-minute car ride. So, you know, that's part of the plan, and we're making progress, but I think even with increased route frequencies, that's going to be a big barrier to entry.

Council Member Allen, you're the absolute last person.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Only because this is something I've been harping on for a long time as well. If we get to keep that same spot in the back of the thing, is there a possibility for better signage to ensure that people know how to find it?

We are working with the airport on it. Steve Blaine from WeGo again. We are working with the airport on improved signage and what I'll call a lower level of investment because, again, for a two-year period, we don't want to put too much money into it. And certainly we're working with them on the design of the new facility. Excellent. And where we'll be located.

Glad to hear that. And then my other question is, does the data show that most of the employees who are taking the bus out to the airport along the current route, I would assume there's some sort of shift concentration riding in in the morning and coming back out at the end of the day or a midday shift or something like that. I mean, does the data support maybe some express routes the rest of the time when tourists who are just arriving at all times of day might be the different clientele that would use it if they knew it was shorter.

Steve Bland from WeGo again. We used to run some of the trips express and we found them to be very low patronage because they were, frankly, one of the reasons was their limited number. So if it didn't happen to hit when you were there and actually what we found on the ridership of those trips, for instance, we found a lot of the folks who would ride the express say from downtown to the airport, we're actually trying to get to a location on Elm Hill Pike would ride express to the airport and then take the local back to get to those locations. So that sort of go into that metric. Longer term in the all access corridor plan, one of the quarters is planned for the airport extension, which would have what I would call the more, uh, Streamline service would be the Murfreesboro Pike all-access corridor, which would extend the Long Donaldson to the airport with very frequent service, more limited stops, and kind of a direct shot into the downtown core.

Great. And I'll just put in a plug again for some kind of grant that gives us the opportunity for a pilot that just uses those little 15-passenger vans to see if this works. But so excited we're making progress in that direction. I think it's great.

Thank you, colleagues. Anything final, Ms. Sussman?

No, ma'am. Thank you for having us.

All right. Meeting adjourned.