 Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining us for the Transit Moves Fort Worth Facebook Live. I'm Jeff Allen, Communication Specialist for the City of Fort Worth Department of Transportation and Public Works. My name is Chad Edwards. I'm the Regional Mobility and Innovation Officer here with the City of Fort Worth. So today we're going to talk for a little while about the Transit Moves Fort Worth Plan. Chad's going to give us a brief overview. We're going to answer some questions. If you have questions about the plan as we go along, please let us know. Type them out. And we'll answer them, or if we don't get them during the broadcast, we will be sure to answer them after. Chad? Alright, well thanks a lot. Thanks for joining us today. It's important for us to talk about the future of public transportation here in Fort Worth. And we appreciate you spending your time, lunchtime I guess it is, to talk about public transportation and listen to us for a few minutes. The Transit Moves Fort Worth Plan is really a re-evaluation of the current transit services that we have here in Fort Worth. And it provides Trudy Metro some input on how we the city should see the transit system of the future. And it's important to us because we're growing very fast. There's about 54 people per day coming to the City of Fort Worth. And we know that we're not going to be able to build enough roads to accommodate all these people. So we need to have transportation options for people, including roadways, including public transit, and any first-last mile options. Great. Tell us a little bit more about the plan and why is it important for residents of Fort Worth? So the plan really is an opportunity for the citizens of Fort Worth and anyone interested in public transportation here in Fort Worth to really have their voices heard about what they do and don't like about the current transportation system, the transit system. We've heard a lot of feedback from people about the buses don't run frequently. They don't run on time. And so those are things that we're hearing and want to make sure that we address with Trudy Metro as we move forward with this transit plan. Great. So where can people who are interested in a plan find out more about it? Yeah, so that's a great question to start off with. You can go to transitmovesfortworth.com to find out more about the transit plan. We have documents all the way from when we started this effort all the way up to today. We have public meetings coming up and we'll show you those later of where they're located. But it's really an opportunity to access the information that we're sharing with the public, which is on transitmovesfortworth.com. Okay, great. How long have you been working on the plan? So we've been working on this plan for quite a while. It's a little over a year now and we're at the point where we're wrapping up with draft recommendations. We've had a lot of public meetings over the past year, some in May, some in November last year, and then we have another round of public meetings that are ongoing here in March. And it's really just been a year-long process to evaluate the system and try to come up with recommendations on improvements to the system as well. Okay. So what are expectations on the plan? Well, the expectations are that we find opportunities for improvement and make improvements to the transit system here in Fort Worth. So we're spending time with the public. We're spending time with elected officials. We're spending time with Trinity Metro to see what their opportunity for improvement is as well. Great. So you mentioned Trinity Metro. How much coordination have you had with them on the plan? Trinity Metro has been a really good partner for us. Obviously, this is a city plan that we're recommending improvements to Trinity Metro's transit system. And so they have been at the table the entire process providing feedback on, yes, this works. Yes, this is a challenge. But they've always been there to help out and help guide the transit plan as a whole. Okay. Tell us a little bit about what's included in the plan. So the plan itself, we had some goals for the plan. And those goals were to enhance the transit system and make it more attractive to riders, not just the current riders, but to new riders as well. We wanted to connect people to life's activities. And that is, you know, how do people get from home to work to church to restaurants to the library and back again? How do they do that? And what are those frequent uses of those trips? So what are those life activities? How do we connect them to that? We wanted to improve forward quality of life by making the system thrive and give them an opportunity, give riders an opportunity to utilize a successful system and then make it sustainable as well. And so we wanted to make the system sustainable, not only financially, but environmentally, which means that we need to have really good data so that we can influence how the transit system works over time. I've got a slide I'd like to show you that also includes some initiatives that we've included in each of our recommendations as well. And so you can see there on the screen that there's six initiatives. The first is to develop a high capacity transit services. And I think we've done that with the recommendations that we've identified in the plan. We want to improve obviously existing services. Why else would we be doing this if we didn't want to improve those services? Expand transit to new areas. That could include parts of Fort Worth, but it also includes opportunities outside of Trinity Metro's current service area that is the same boundary as the city of Fort Worth and Blue Mound. What are those other opportunities outside of Fort Worth within Tarrant County? There's 40 other cities within Tarrant County that have an opportunity to participate in the transit system to move their residents around and we want to make sure that that's an opportunity for them as well. I do know that Trinity Metro has been exploring options with several cities, Crowley, Forest Hill, Everman, as far as opportunities for services and so hopefully more cities will be participating as well. We also want to improve access to transit and so that's something that sounds pretty simple, but it's a challenging task in that we want to make sure that it's easy to get to those transit stops. In some cases it might just be a post with a sign in grass and if it's worn enough it could be muddy. We want to make sure that there's an opportunity for us to put in a sidewalk to make that a little bit easier way for the rider to utilize that stop and then get on the bus without having any muddy shoes or anything like that. The fifth option or the fifth improvement there is improved facilities and amenities and we want to make sure that those amenities and facilities that have been with Trinity Metro since the beginning start to get some refresh and some technology updates as well. We know that smartphones have really kind of taken over in the last many years and I don't know that the transit system has necessarily kept up with those technology improvements as it could as far as rider information technology services. And then lastly is you know make the service easier to use and that's a very it's a simple statement but it's a it's a challenge another challenge for us in that some of us are very in tune with how you use transit because we do this on a daily basis. And there's other people who use the transit system from time to time and don't have that opportunity for experience in the system. So how can we make those improvements where people feel comfortable using the transit system because it's easy for them to use. Okay, we do have a question from Julia. It sounds like there's a lot of a lot of information in this plan. Are there any recommendations that can be implemented early? Yeah, that's a great question. So some of those recommendations include partnerships that we have worked with Trinity Metro on. They include zip zones for example the mercantile zip zone and then the near south side zip zone that Trinity Metro will implement here later this spring. That's in the medical district area. We also have partnered with Trinity Metro on a smartphone app that you'll see will be rolled out later this year and that uses the same technology that Dart uses with their go pass app. And so what we're trying to do is as we were working through the transit plan itself, what were some of those opportunities that we saw as we were working through it and what could we advance on early so that we could get this plan up and running. And so we're not waiting until a plan is approved to implement anything. We're already starting to make those improvements and those are really a partnership between the transit authority Trinity Metro and the city of Fort Worth. All right. Well, how are we going to use this plan in the future? So the plan itself is a guide on how to make improvements to the transit system and we've broken it. It's a 25 year plan. We've broken it into three parts, a short, medium and long term implementation. The short term implementation timeframe is five years. We think that we know enough now that we can make improvements in the transit system within the next five years and we've identified what those recommendations are. And then the next two periods, the midterm and the long term are broken into 10 year periods each. And so the idea for the transit plan itself is that we evaluate this plan periodically. As changes occur within the city of Fort Worth and development occurs within the city that we have that opportunity again to take another look at where are the bus routes, where is the service being provided, how frequent is that service. And then if there's an opportunity to make changes then we do that on a more regular basis than what we have done over the past 10 or 15 years. Okay, so I know you've been working on this project for quite a while. I know there were public meetings that were being conducted as far back as November. When those initial meetings were happening there were three different scenarios in the plan. Incremental investments, aspirational outlook, and then visionary city. Where has the plan landed with these scenarios? As you can imagine, the visionary city was an overwhelming winner in that. Many of the people that participated in the survey and participated in the public meetings that we had back in November had voiced their opinion that, hey, we want to make sure that we're on the cutting edge. We want to be out in front. We need to catch up with the transit systems of peer cities. And so that visionary city recommendation was one of those. As we looked at the recommendation and looked at the visionary city it was a very expensive plan, which is a challenge for us with a limited funding source. And so after some work with that we kept almost all of the recommendations in the visionary city except for one. And what we had to do thinking of funding of the plan itself, future funding of the plan itself, what we had to do was replace any light rail recommendations that we had in it with Bus Rapid Transit. Bus Rapid Transit is one of those services that is very similar to light rail, but it's not near as expensive as light rail. Light rail on average is about $110 million per mile, and the Bus Rapid Transit or BRT is only about $30 million per mile. And so you can see there just in that one mile comparison there where you would have a lot of savings on a recommendation that might be tens or 20s of miles, if you will. So that's really where we landed on was a visionary city with a BRT component and not a light rail component. Okay. Sounds like there's a lot of things in the plan. Can you tell us a little bit more about one of the bigger items that are in the plan? Yeah, sure. So one of those projects that we had mentioned is the East Lancaster BRT project. So that's a corridor that's recommended in the plan for improvements and to be converted into a Bus Rapid Transit corridor. And there's already movement on that project itself. We've worked with Texas Department of Transportation, Trinity Metro, North Central Texas Council of Governments, and obviously the City of Fort Worth and different departments on what could that project look like. It's about a seven-mile project. It would be a dedicated right-of-way for the BRT, very similar to light rail, except you just take out the rail and have that dedicated right-of-way section there for transit. Transit signal priority. It would have stations very similar to that of light rail as well. And so we're already moving out on that, developing a scope for that project so that we can work with the Federal Transit Administration and others on the project development portion of that. Okay. We have a question from Mandy that's come in. Does the transit plan include an expansion of Fort Worth Bike Share? So there's always an opportunity for Fort Worth Bike Share to be expanded, although we may not call it out specifically. In the transit plan, I think that's always an opportunity for us as a first, last-mile option to provide bike share in other locations across the city. Not just in some of the downtown locations, but anywhere across the city that can get people access to transfer centers or rail stations or just any frequent bus stops as well. Great. So you've thrown out some pretty big numbers so far today. So what's the overall cost estimate for the plan right now? So, yeah. So the transit is expensive. When we first were looking at the visionary city cost estimate, it was $6.2 billion. And that included many miles of light rail. And as I mentioned earlier that as we evaluated our opportunities and our recommendations, funding $6.2 billion of light rail was a challenge for us because it's not only the capital cost, it's also the maintenance and operating costs as well. And so we've got to keep that in mind as we're looking and making these improvements to the system. And so what we've done is with our draft recommendations, we've identified that the cost estimate now is $2.8 billion. And so about half of what it was when we first rolled this out, visionary city back in November last year. But there's some other opportunities there that with those capital investments, there's an opportunity for us to get a matching grant to the capital investment grant program that Federal Transit Administration has. And what we might be able to do is actually reduce that overall cost, you know, again, from the $2.8 billion down to $1.6 billion, which would be a savings of $1.1, or really a cost sharing of $1.1 billion with the federal government. So there's still some opportunity there. And remember, this is over a 25 year period and not all $1.6 billion or $2.8 billion that have to be collected or attained in this year or next year. It's over a 25 year period. Okay. So David brought up an interesting point when we were discussing rapid bus versus light rail. Did we consider maintenance costs on a bus versus light rail when we were looking at the cost savings? Yes, definitely. You know, we think about both the maintenance costs and the capital costs when we're putting this plan together. And Trinity Metro, again, was there with us as we were making these recommendations and these discussion points that if these are the recommendations that we're going to have from the city to the Transit Authority, are they going to be able to fulfill these projects and be able to maintain them for a long period of time. And in many cases, they're agreeing with that. And knowing that it all doesn't start at one point in time, that it is implemented over time, really helps them because then that helps them budget appropriately for these projects. Okay. So what do you think you'll brief the city council on the current version of the plan? I'm planning on taking the plan to the Infrastructure and Transportation Committee meeting in April. So that'll be the ITC meeting in April to talk about this. And then after that with feedback and conversation from council members, we'll see how that proceeds if it goes off onto full council or if there's other opportunities for discussion with ITC. Okay. David mentioned again, when talking about maintenance, what about road maintenance of the line where the bus would use versus a rail? Did we look at that as well? That's included as well. Again, it's a partnership between the two agencies. So where the city will have clear responsibility for any of the main lanes or general purpose lanes, if you will, on East Lane Caster. I'm assuming he's talking about that. Sure, the city will be responsible for that, but then Trinity Metro will be responsible for the upkeep of the transit system itself, the transit way, the dedicated right-of-way that they have. They'll be responsible for that. So if any potholes pop up, if you will, on the BRT corridor, then Trinity Metro will be the one responsible for making those improvements. Okay. So let's talk again about benefits of this plan for residents of the city. What kind of details do you think you have on that? Yes. So benefits really include improved transit system. Right now, there are quite a few routes that are 60-minute headways. So that bus comes once an hour, which is very difficult for you to plan your day around. If you're going grocery shopping and you have to plan your trip to the grocery store with hour headways, then that's a challenge because if you miss that bus by five minutes, then you're sitting there with a bunch of food that needs to be refrigerated in your bags for a long creative time. And that's just one example. And what we're trying to do is provide people improved coverage, improved frequency for transit, which is really kind of the no-brainer type of transit system where you don't really have to look at a schedule to utilize the transit system. And in some cases, in more of the dense areas, that'll be easier to achieve. But in some of the other areas that aren't quite as dense, then that'll be a little bit more of a challenge to do. What we are trying to do is not have any 60-minute headway bus routes. And if anything, our highest would be 30 minutes. And ideally, we would get down to 10 and 15 minutes where we can for many of our bus routes. So that's that frequent transit network that we're really trying to focus on. Okay. Well, we do have another question that just came in. We may have discussed this earlier, but I think there may have been a few audio issues partnering with suburbs or other cities throughout the region to help with funding. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Sure. So although this is a plan that we're focusing on Fort Worth and Blue Mountain and the services that are within the city, that doesn't mean that we're not excluding any of the cities outside of Fort Worth that are within Tarrant County. We want to make sure that they have an opportunity as well to participate. And if there are opportunities for them to partner with Trinity Metro and get connected within the rest of the transit system, we'd be more than happy to talk. I know Trinity Metro is already having those discussions with several cities around Tarrant County. And I know that the North Central Texas Council of Governments is working on a Tarrant County transit plan as well. That will do a very similar activity is talk to all those 40 other cities in Tarrant County about public transit and how they can connect within or to the transit system that we currently have. Okay. We're starting to run out a little time here, but are there any last comments that you wanted to share with everyone listening? Sure. I want to remind everybody of the public meetings that we have. We have a graphic for that as well. So we do have several public meetings over the next over this coming week. There's four more tonight, lunchtime tomorrow and then Wednesday and Thursday night. And then we have two more we skip for spring spring break so everybody can go and have fun for spring break. And then we're back again on the 18th and 19th of March for public meetings. So you can see there we've identified where they're located, what time they start and then even if you wanted to ride a bus to get there, we try to provide those bus services as well. Great. Well, I think that's all the time we have this afternoon. Thank you everyone for joining us and sending your questions. Please continue to send them. We'll watch the post and we'll try to get back to with any answers to your questions. Thank you. Have a good afternoon.