 Hi, am I under-able to system you, Kate? I'm not allowed to. Get it out of your system now, it's all right. Shut down. Why are you still here? We haven't got a point of, I mean, the chair that's going to be in space and we're going to present those guests at the same time as I commissioned them. We have this part of the most genuine building that you can build. 6 p.m., 26.30 a.m. You're allowed to beat bikes and block them into existing units. Would you say that the board needs to be getting it updated in some detail on the projects, maybe other? You can work with us. I didn't hear from Susan. I'm happy to be able to hear from you. Yeah, I can work with you. I know what it feels like to not be experiencing on the bikes if there's, let's say, a big cyclist or something. Yeah, we can figure it out. All right, so I'll tell them yes on top of these. Yup, so with the e-bikes there, it'll give you a notification that you have X amount of miles left until this battery runs out. Hello. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so many of them don't have that much. Oh, okay. So you only have in my opinion a passage time. Where's this part? It's where you can get us to charge on the stations and stay. So we go and we see the question. And they'll put a question on top. Right. We have a lot of children. And the journey is making me understand what they go like this week. Spring-like night. I am Chapin Spencer, director of Public Works. And thank you for making it out tonight for our public forum on bike share and scooter share. So we are going to run a efficient meeting tonight and start with a presentation. We'll have a Q&A. Then we'll answer questions and mingle in the back. There are some poster boards to engage with. The bathrooms, should people need those, they're downstairs on the first floor. And with no further ado, I'd like to invite Mayor Morrow-Wineberger up to say a few words before we get started. Thank you, Mayor. Great. Thanks, Chapin. And let me echo Chapin's point. It's great to see so many people come out on a challenging night. And I think that speaks to the importance of this conversation. To try to kind of tee it up from the way the city is thinking about this conversation right now, it's certainly my sense that we are living at an exciting time in terms of the way in which transportation technologies are evolving. We are living at a time when it is urgent that we find ways to evolve as a society. And let me say it just a little bit more of those things because I think those are very much on our mind. After, I think, a fairly extended period of somewhat static transportation options and many decades of drift towards more and more dependence on automobile ownership and automobile use, that really has started to shift over the last ten years. And it certainly has shifted dramatically from my perspective even in the seven years that I've been in this role. We have seen these new technologies emerge that have already had a significant impact on our transportation system, thinking back just the highlights of the last seven years. We didn't have a transit center seven years ago and realized that long-standing dream which has changed the bus experience. We have been making major investments in both our sidewalk, pedestrian infrastructure, in our bike infrastructure, and I think picked up some momentum with that and particularly in the last year as we started using these quick build techniques that allowed us to make more rapid interventions to improve bike and pedestrian safety. And we're excited by the first year of results with that effort. We have seen, I see Annie here. We've seen car share really mature and expand in this community and serve a key role in the community. We have seen the bike share launch and we're going to talk a lot more about that tonight, but it's, you know, it's awesome to think we have a season under our belt now where we may not had it before. And maybe most significantly to the transportation eco-structure we have ride sourcing now that we did not exist, you know, what was it, four years ago, five years ago, and that has profoundly changed the way Burlingtonians are getting around the town. We see on average more than a thousand trips happening within our, within Uber and Lyft every day. And I think you add all those things up and it is much easier to have either a car-free or a car-light lifestyle than it was just a few years ago. From everything I can see, these trends are going to continue and accelerate in the years ahead. Very exciting what's happening with, excuse me, with electric vehicles. And BED is trying, and that's a whole other topic about how BED is attempting to be a major force in that area and move Burlington forward there. And now the topic of tonight we have seen in 2018 across the country dramatic expansion of electric bikes and especially electric scooters in cities across America. We, I think, tried to be mindful as a city that new technologies are not an unambiguously positive thing almost ever. There are always disruptive elements of new technologies and there are new issues that need to be considered and regulated and weighed and by all indications the e-scooter technology falls into that category. Our sense, and we are not completely expert in this, but we have been trying to pay attention and when I say our, I want to be clear. I think I'm speaking, hope I'm speaking accurately for the multiple partners involved in the Burlington bike share system. So that's UVM, Champlain College, South Burlington, the city of Winooski and CAPMA as the kind of coordinating agency that is playing a key role and I see Sandra Tebow here who has been helping lead that effort. We all are excited about having a bike share. We are excited and hopeful about the idea of expanding it to include e-bikes and e-scooters in the upcoming season. At the same time we are aware that there has been a pretty dramatic difference of experiences in cities across the country depending on how this rollout is done and the way in which it is planned and communicated. Our understanding of the 2018 experience is that cities that were not proactive where these companies just sort of showed up and started operating. There was often a variety of issues the public was quite unhappy about while elements of the public were excited. Maybe 50-50 in some cities is sort of the public acceptance of these. Cities that were more proactive, did better planning, maybe had more rules about where these equipment could be stored, the way in which they could be operated. There is much greater public acceptance and excitement about these operations as high as more than 70% of the public. The point of tonight is to start the communication with all of you about what a 2019 pilot with e-bikes and e-scooters expanding our current bike share might look like, to hear your concerns and hopefully your excitement and enthusiasm for certain areas and to incorporate your feedback with all of our partners as we try to figure out where we go from here. We are expecting to work again with the company Gotcha that was the lead partner in this past season. We have not signed a new agreement with them and frankly I thought it was critical that we have this meeting first before we kind of negotiate exactly what the upcoming season was going to look like. And do we have a member or representative of Gotcha here? So great. Can you want to just introduce yourself real quick with your name and role? Bob Down, the local community manager for Gotcha here in Chittenden County. Great. So with that, I guess I didn't really address what I meant by our urgent time and let me end with that. I know there are some of you are here because you have concerns about this and real skepticism about whether this makes sense for Burlington. And I do think we have some work to do before we fully commit to this. I know there is emerging information about the public safety data. Do people on e-scooters, how at risk are they for accidents? Is there a big dramatic difference between that experience versus bikes? We are becoming an expert in that and we need to grapple with that. I think in general, I am of the mindset and I think the partners are of the mindset that this is an issue that we have to grapple with and have to be open to innovation and change in that we face a massive crisis in the decades upcoming in climate change and we know that Vermont and even Burlington are not meeting our climate goals with respect in particular to transportation. We are making progress with respect to how we heat and cool and insulate our buildings. We are making great progress. In fact, in some ways we have kind of achieved a major milestone as a community in the way we light and power our electricity doing so with 100% renewables here in Burlington. The area that remains a challenge that no one really has the answer for today is in the transportation sector. We know that our missions, even during a period of progress in these other areas, the vehicle trips have continued to go up despite many efforts to bring them down and this threatens our achievement of critical climate goals. The way we think to get to success ultimately is to innovate, is to change, is to be open to these new technologies certainly not to do so blindly without awareness of risk and possible pitfalls but at the same time we feel a responsibility to consider and explore innovations that have the potential to replace vehicle trips. There is emerging data, there's dispute over this, it's not a settled point but I think increasingly information coming out is that these e-scooter and e-bike trips can replace a significant amount of vehicle trips and when you do that, not only do you make impact on emissions, you also make an impact on congestion and parking load as well. So there's a lot of potential upside. We're looking forward to the conversation tonight and in the weeks to come to find a Burlington way to get this innovation right. Thanks. Thanks Mayor. Come on up Director Cindy White, Director of the Parks Recreation Waterfront Department. We want to talk briefly about the regulatory environment and any new technology, the e-bikes and e-scooters does create an opportunity and a challenge for us to figure out the appropriate way to manage these uses. And we have been working with the city attorney and looking at the general landscape. Our city ordinance does not have a lot of specificity when it comes to e-bikes and e-scooters. State statute does say that e-bikes should not be ridden on the sidewalks. E-scooters are even less clarified in city ordinance and state statute and this is an area we want to hear from you and understand how best to manage it. Where we've seen e-bikes and e-scooter programs in other parts of the country work well. They are using bicycle facilities and communities with a robust network of paths of lanes of bike boulevards provide safe corridors for folks to travel. So we will be looking with the RPC, the Regional Planning Commission, has a consultant on board to work with us on what city ordinance and what state statute may need to be adjusted to best regulate this use so that it works for our communities. Cindy, anything to add on the bike path side? No, that's pretty much it. So that's how Parks and Rec gets involved is that we obviously aren't on the streets but we have our beautiful Burlington Greenway. So this is something that we have started tackling at the Parks Commission level as far as the e-bikes and now we have the e-scooters coming on. So it's an exciting time but the great parts we're all working together to try to see if we can figure this out and make Burlington a great place, I always say, to live, work and play. The play part being important. I'd like to invite up Sandy Tebow to give a brief overview of how our green ride bike share program worked last year. Sandy is the Director of the Chittenden Area Transportation Management Association. Thanks, Chapin. Thanks, Mayor. Sandy Tebow, Executive Director of CAPMA as Chapin introduced me. And I just wanted to talk really briefly about CAPMA's role in this process. So back in 2016, we joined with the University of Vermont and Champlain College and the RPC and went through a formal procurement process with a formal RFP. Received several vendors that submitted proposals for the system and after much review and discussion, we selected the gotcha group as the vendor for the current bike share system. And that was implemented in April 2018 with 105 bikes at 17 stations. So I think as the Mayor said, it's been great to have this foundation to learn from and build upon. A little bit about CAPMAs. So some of you, I see some familiar faces. We've been working with the institutions for over 25 years and reducing single occupant vehicles on the hill and also increasing sustainable modes of travel for employees and students. We've been pretty successful in reducing single occupant vehicles by 20%. And the way we do that is through a variety of incentives and programs, services and education. In 2015, we expanded our service area within Chittenden County, which meant that we opened membership to businesses and developers in Chittenden County. And I say that because CAPMA is holding the contract with the bike share vendor right now. It makes sense as a nonprofit regional agency to do so. So did I cover everything? I think I'll look to Bob to share some of the report and statistics from year one. Thank you. Thanks, Sandy. Hi, everyone. My name is Bob Dale. I am the local community manager for the Gotcha Group and GreenRide Bike Share here in Chittenden County. We have, as Sandy mentioned, we've been operating GreenRide here in Chittenden County since April of 2018. Some of our statistics to date, we have around 587, that number kind of goes up and down, daily active members, close to 9,000 trips, 21,000 total miles biked. As Sandy mentioned, 105 bikes, 17 hubs across three municipalities in Winooski, South Burlington, and Burlington. Our average trip distance was 1.78 miles, and our average trip duration was 18 minutes. We're hoping now that we're looking into the spring and expanding our different options, both for mobility assets and different options, and especially hub locations, we are looking to sort of expand upon that and sort of boost some of those numbers. So we're going to give you a quick little rundown on the proposition from the Gotcha Group looking ahead to the spring. We're looking possibly to roll out some of these shared mobility options come around May of this spring. So the Gotcha Group, we are based on Charleston, South Carolina. We have around 50-plus mobility assets around the United States. Our big mission is to get people to lead happier, more productive lives through transformative, power-sustainable, and accessible transportation. We always like to say when you ride with Gotcha, you ride with some fierce micro-transit advocates. And our big motto is we believe mobility is freedom. In this photo here, you can see a little bit of our photo of our new assets, our electric bike and the electric scooter, which we're kind of here to talk about tonight, and get some public feedback on as we look ahead towards the spring. A little bit more information on Gotcha, as we mentioned, 50-plus mobility systems across the United States. A lot of those are on university campuses, and we have quite a few systems now partnering with municipalities and local partners in those municipalities around the country. So with the new transforming landscape of transportation mobility options around the country, a lot of bike share systems in both municipalities and university campuses are looking to go towards electrified fleets. With Gotcha, we have now our electric e-bikes, electric scooters, and we also operate electric ride-share vehicles throughout the country as well. A little bit of an overview of our e-bike. It is a 100% e-assist bike. It is a 350-watt motor. Carbon-fiber drive, GPS-enabled smart lock, automatic safety lights on both the front and the rear. A basket, our big thing this year is we are implementing a cup holder in the basket as well. The e-bikes operate off of a swappable battery. So the way these would work out in the field, they would live out in our system area throughout the day, and we would have a team of fleet mechanics that would go out both throughout the day and overnight swapping out the batteries for our bikes. The proposition, like the current green-ride system, is to have the bikes live outside 365 days a year throughout the year. We have a smart integrated lock, cable lock that runs off of the front of the bike. Nicole, I believe our next slide, gives a little bit more rundown on the bike specifics as well. As we mentioned, integrated LED light in the front of the basket, we are now utilizing a cable lock, which runs from the front of the bike underneath the basket, which can be locked to both our gotcha, proprietary racks, and most township-style racks that we have in the three municipalities at the moment. A really nice little auto-upseat handle which makes these seats very easily adjustable. We have a steel auto-release lock, which locks the back wheel as well, which allows for a little bit more flexibility. That allows the bike to not necessarily have to be locked to something if we were looking to implement some of these sort of virtual hubbed areas. We do encourage all of our assets throughout our systems to be locked to whether it is a gotcha hub or a city bike rack. So that's another piece of the conversation that we're having with the municipalities, with our partners on the ground, is the utilization of both the cable lock and the lock-to abilities for these bikes. The big thing, the big development, which a lot of the new mobility options around the country are looking at now, is of course the e-scooter, which I'm sure quite a few of you have some questions on, which we will hopefully be able to cover most of tonight. So this is the gotcha proprietary e-scooter. We developed this ourselves. It is our proprietary product, so it is unlike any of the other scooters out there in the market. It has a 350-watt motor, 15 miles per hour max speed. It gets up to 18 to 20 miles per charge. Unlike the bikes, our current scooter is not a swappable battery. We are working to develop a swappable battery for the scooters so that our fleet mechanics can go out in the field and swap out the batteries. Currently, the system we're operating under is every night all of the scooters are brought in. They are charged overnight, and then our fleet team brings the scooters back out into the field in the morning. The big differentiator between gotcha and a lot of the other operators out there, which is one of the biggest concerns around scooters, is the clutter, scooters blocking, pedestrian ways being just left out in the middle of the street, being tossed up into trees, you name it, is that we encourage all of our scooters to be brought back to mobility hubs. So similar to our current bike system, we highly encourage that all scooters are brought back to hub designated areas. What we're really trying to work with the municipalities and all of our partners on the ground this year is what we want to do with a combination of physical hub systems and virtually geofenced virtual hub areas where these bikes can be locked up and the scooters can be left out of the right of way, left out of the sidewalks so that they are not blocking any pedestrian traffic or just causing general clutter. It also helps our fleet team to be able to go out throughout the day, you know, know where the scooters and the bikes are going to be at any given time so that we can make sure we're on top of doing all the battery swapping and charging, and like we said, that they're not blocking ways and that it's nice and aesthetically pleasing. All the scooters are standing up, they're not strewn all about, they're going back to our hub areas. The great thing about both these bikes and scooters is that they will all live through one app. So we have developed our own Gotcha app. So you will be able to see our system area, find out where the bikes and where the scooters are, all through our Gotcha app. As you can see on that second little phone slide there, it'll give you a map of our area, it'll show you where the scooters are, where the bikes are and how many bikes and scooters are there. You'll also be able to tell you the electrical charge on those bikes and scooters so that you know exactly how far you can get on said bike or scooter that you choose to rent. New users, really easy, quick sign up method. Just put in the credit card and you are ready to go. Like we said, you will have the option of choosing either a bike or scooter, it will show you where those are and a little bit different from what our current bikes are that have the computers living in the back of the bike where you type in an account number and it gives you all your information right there. Really easy for the bikes and scooters. All you need to do is with your smartphone or an RFID card for people who do not have smartphones. You can either scan the QR code or tap an RFID card and then you are ready to go. Another thing we can do through our app is show people areas that we may designate as no park areas or areas that are restricted off limits for the bikes or the scooters. We can geofence specific areas for both bikes and scooters if we decide that we do not want to enable bikes or scooters in those areas. It will give users a warning on their phone and it will also disengage the motors on both the bikes and the scooters and then encourage the riders to return to areas that we designate with the municipalities as our system areas. So as we have the continued conversations with the municipalities about where these scooters and bikes can live, that is another thing that we can do right through our app is make sure that riders are first educated on the rules. That's another great thing with our app as well as users are signing up and as they are going to rent one of these assets, there will be a lot of educational pieces that they can go through to see whether or not they are allowed to ride on the sidewalks. And again, one of the biggest things is where exactly we want to allow all of these assets. At the end of the ride, all you do is you lock up your bike, leave your scooter in one of these hub, virtual hub mobility areas, and then you can give us a rating on how we did. It will give you your statistics, how far you went, how much you were charged. One of the big things that we are really looking to do with both the bikes and scooters this year, a little bit of a change is in our pricing model. We have one of the biggest concerns of any kind of bike share and especially the scooter share programs is impacts on local shop business. We've had a few meetings with some of the local shops. We are really looking to continue these conversations, especially as we continue our tool study with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission on some better ways to partner with the bike shops. One of the big things that we are doing this year is changing our pricing model to a per minute fee for all of these assets, which will really encourage riders to utilize this as sort of a short ride, first and last mile transportation option as opposed to going out for a four or five hour ride out on the bike path. Going to a per minute charge, we are really trying to make this more of a transportation option, first and last mile hour or less style rides. A little bit more information about our hub system. As some of you know on the left here, we have 17 hubs around the three municipalities, Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski. The proposition is to go to 25 physical hubs utilizing our gotcha racks with the ability to geofence some virtual areas just like on the right there. These are great options if we wanted to geofence the Winooski Circle for an event. Let's say we want to allow riders to ride to waking windows for the weekend. We can geofence the entire Winooski Circle and they can lock up their bikes to any existing racks and then bring scooters to a designated hub area within that virtual hub as well. So we're really looking to sort of work with the municipalities on keeping this a really flexible system. We're trying to figure out exactly what balance we want to strike between physical and virtual hubs, which is sort of something that's kind of a rarity in the bike share world out there right now is gotchas we are really dedicated on working with municipalities and cities after they've had their conversations to really try and cater all of our systems specifically to what areas we are in. As you can see that photo on the bottom right there, that is what we are currently using in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Unlike some of the other scooter share operators that are out there that just allow you to leave the scooters wherever you please. You can park it in the middle of the sidewalk. You can park it in the middle of the street if you're really pleased. We really encourage all riders to bring back the scooters and the bikes back to our hubs and again you are penalized if you do not bring scooters or do not bring the bikes back to either a virtually geofenced or a physical hub area and like we said it's kind of an ongoing conversation with the municipalities on what we want to find for a balance of physical and virtual hubs. So thank you and I think we are going to hand it back to Jaypen. Thanks Bob. Brian Davis here, I don't think so. Brian couldn't make it. Elaine Churchill is here from the Regional Planning Commission and thanks to their support they've helped us fund a study to look at suggestions on stations and also looking at the regulatory environment that we discussed earlier. There will be an opportunity. There's an option back in the room to put your green dot where you would like to see a hub. There's also going to be a WikiMap online soon and then suggestions here about how to regulate and educate will be brought forward and thanks to the RPC for having that consultant help out. So we're here in terms of what's next. You can see right up here we're going to continue negotiating with Gotcha see if we can come to an acceptable agreement for both parties amend ordinances as needed and the goal would be to get up and running by summer. So with that we want to hear your thoughts. We do have CCTV here tonight so if you could speak up with your question I'll probably repeat it for the listening audience and let's we also have Facebook live is that correct? Great so anybody can add a question via Facebook live and we will get to those questions later on as well if folks could not make it in the snow. So questions. All right let's go with Rick first and then we'll head back. My first concern someone who is the first shop that actually recommended electric bikes and harrowing us and my first concern with both of these programs is what effect they are going to have on our existing bicycle and e-bike rental system that we have out there. What I am very afraid of is that by bringing in these bikes and the electric bikes and scooters maybe that's a bunch of scooters with electric bikes and the bikes if you don't regulate it properly they will bring ruinous competition to existing bike shots and locomotion. The locomotion of 30 of the bikes as you know comes from the wetland of bikes on the shop there. What the city as I understand it has done is they've given Gotcha the most prime spot in the entire city which is wrapped out of the wildfire. I think they give it for zero. Segway we paid 5% of our gross income to the city for the privilege of operating our segway around the bike path. Since to me that if you've got a level of the playing field, you've got somebody else that's renting bikes and e-bikes and other things they should be paying a 5% fee to the city for that purpose as well and they should not get the best spot in the city for free because we would love to have that spot we'd love to have our e-bikes right there and run them out and run them out all day long because everybody sees them right now. So in my opinion the hub on the waterfront should not exist and the reason is that it gives unfair advantage to this company which is around the state company over the local bike shops. If you take a look at what the problem we have is getting information from Gotcha they will not share the information as to specifically what was done hub by hub my understanding from a chart that I've seen is that almost half of all bicycle rentals came from one hub at 17 last year that was the waterfront that means that is a direct competition with the other bike shops in town that is not what this thing was organized to do it was supposed to be organized to provide transportation from hub to hub within the city so in my opinion if half of your entire fleet is coming from one hub that's in the waterfront this system is not working properly if it is going to work properly it has to do it without having income coming from the water it has to do it with the other hubs it has out there my opinion is you ought to eliminate hub on the waterfront entirely so you get some equity with the other bike shops in town and see if the system stands on its own point to point without the waterfront coming in. Very happy to hear that you've got to put some type of geo-fencing in there sometimes because that will then allow you to prevent the bikes from going out on the causeway our main income coming from the church during the summer that means renting a bike is going out on the causeway that's where the rest of the bike you cannot have a real competition with this so if you can put some type of geo-fencing that doesn't allow those bikes and e-bikes and scooters to go on the causeway that certainly will provide a lot of attention for the local bike shops. Thank you very much. Thank you. The audio is very good so don't worry. The audio is very good. The audio is good that's great to hear. So there's regulation there's technology to look at ways that it does not detrimentally impact the outdoor recreation local business scene here in Wellington. Yes let's go with Joe and then up front. So I had a plan that said my point is kind of a counter point to that and I guess I wondered what's the number of point to point in our last found trips that we have if there are local bike shops and they have e-bikes then it seems like they could convene in this marketplace but I guess I wonder from, you know, Gotcha what are the numbers in some of these other cities how many are people that are taking them for hours at a time that are going places that are tourists, essentially visitors versus last mile people and we're so small we have enough people that live here essentially a last mile only kind of system or do we need the other people as well the tourists. Okay let's get a brief answer from Bob and then move on to the next question. Yes so one of the one of the main concerns obviously with the local shop businesses in town is how much this is going to cannibalize some of the longer distance trips. One of the things we really are looking to do with this tools design study which we put on by the CCRPC is figuring out how we want to especially position hubs more into residential areas keeping hubs away from just these tourist market waterfront areas so that we can truly try and transform this more into a transportation option and not take over take over some of the local shop businesses. Another point just to touch on really quick which we didn't really get to earlier with especially the scooter piece a really big piece that we probably should bring up today. Gotcha proposes for as long as we have scooters on the ground in Burlington for both bikes and scooters there will be no more financial contributions that we will require from any of the municipalities first of all but we are actually looking to then contribute a dollar per scooter per day so with the proposition of adding close to 200 scooters if we have those scooters on the ground between April and say through to the end of September we're looking at close to $30,000 that Gotcha is looking to invest into a local micro transportation sustainable transportation fund which we want to have Katma oversee to work with the three municipalities to invest that income into improving local bike infrastructure and working with policy as well. Thank you so much. Bob I'm on the electric commission and I support electric vehicles and I support maybe electric scooters but when I'm just a guy on the street on my bike I have a little different view about electric vehicles and I want to point out and I think I heard you say this Chapin we basically have no policy about where these things can go and cannot go when we replace a car with an electric car we save a lot of carbon and the car occupies the same space that the car did before when we replace a car with an electric bike we only hit about one eighth as hard in terms of carbon and furthermore we now open areas that previously were closed to motors the prime example on my mind is the greenway so when I'm hearing that we're going to go full out on these things by Memorial Day and ironically it means now you won't be able to rent a bike that isn't motorized and we still don't have any idea about where they should go legally I think the whole thing is turned upside down we're rushing and we're not actually confronting the issue of what are the downsides of some of these things and specifically I'm concerned about motors going where they didn't used to go thank you Bob alright sir yes I get one question about the e-bikes are they electric assist bikes or bikes with electric they are electric assist bikes at least the ones that gotcha is proposing to add to the fleet I know there are many different types of electric bikes but these would be pedal assist or electric assist excuse me yeah and just to try to open them up there are very very different experiences no one's if you haven't tried one I would highly recommend it I would just like to say my mom couldn't come here but she would really like to say she's very excited about scooters she drives to work she lives in the city she doesn't fight with us hurts okay thank you next comment yes I'd like to know more about it more information on the RFID card for the unbanked or smartphone yes so we currently partner with Old Spokes Home who we are looking to continue our partnership with and bolster our partnership with Old Spokes Home if any of you did not catch the mayor's Facebook little visit to their new space highly recommend checking it out they're moving into a beautiful new space but going back to the RFID yes so for unbanked users and people without the smartphones they have the ability to go visit Old Spokes we are also looking to sort of broaden throughout multiple other partners in the local area so that users can prepay for a specific amount of time so we're going to do a little bit of a trip for the bike share and then will be issued an RFID card which they can then use on the bikes and scooters to unlock the bikes and scooters will then track their usage through the bike and computer GPS and they can then see either online if they were to utilize the computer or to go into Old Spokes Home and see how much time or both of our monthly and annual memberships you are allotted a certain amount of free time riding per day great thank you very much and before I get to the next question just to remind folks tonight is not the only night to comment we do have this email address dpwplanning that is up and running the public should feel welcome to submit comments and up soon will be a wiki map to contribute ideas for locations to the bikes yes so the scooters leave 50 miles an hour proposals be limit on the e-bikes so the the e-bikes they have a 20 mile per hour max again they are an e-assist so you know with some of the hilly topography around here we do kind of see this really revolutionizing the you know for the biking but again with the bikes being a pedal power you know putting a max speed that the bikes can reach is kind of interesting because it really depends on the rider themselves the motor itself will disengage once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour or over we also another point to point out we have the ability to geofence areas in which we control the speeds of both scooters and the bikes and not just geofence but put governing the speeds at whatever we decide any kind of maximum speeds for the bikes and scooters we decide on with the partners speak up please so the comment was looking at speed governing the use of the e-bikes on the waterfront greenway at least in the congested portions of it right we definitely want to have bikes that go 20 miles per hour because it's a huge benefit when you're using the bikes on streets along the bottom of the hills especially in the downtown sector because now you're going to have a lot more people that are comfortable biking on the streets and when you're walking on the streets I'll say for instance it comes from the city so I'll say it okay thank you yes I'd just like to know what the public works in the mayor and the city are thinking in terms of the infrastructure in the city and accommodating another 200 motorized e-bike e-scooters and e-bikes happening on the street because I think there's going to be a potential conflict and competition I think it's whatever you decide to do it will be helping pedal bikes as well but I just want to make a plan that's a great question about the infrastructure and how we build an infrastructure for an increasingly diverse set of pedal powered battery powered mobility devices the city has been expanding its infrastructure both on-road and off-road this year we have bike lane expansions plan for lower pine street for Flynn Avenue and a number of other communities neighborhoods of the city so we will be continuing the network these technologies are intended to be used on-road and we want to develop a system where the users of the bike share and scooter share system are riding safely and appropriately on our traveled ways I think you may have even been on the commission at the time of the public works commission we've lowered the speed limit to 25 miles an hour except on a handful of streets we're continuing to build out the neighborhood greenways we have a couple of new neighborhood greenways coming online this year so it is a work in progress but it is an opportunity for us to have new users advocate for infrastructure that the city is interested in building here and then back over for a second I have a number of different questions and concerns so 200 new scooters are being proposed how many bikes? the original proposal that got you proposed to us was 200 bikes and 200 scooters that hasn't been finalized but it's a starting point I'm also just confused this model of freedom of choice but only all electric bikes so no more pedal bikes all electric assist bikes and not sure where all these nice bikes can happen all these nice bikes that we've had and how they've worked so it feels like we're abandoning a program and bringing in a whole new program so that's one question about the bikes but I really do have a strong concern about the scooters and not having a lot of knowledge on the ground here about the scooters I presented last night at the city council meeting and I've been in touch with a lot of people about just the dangers of the scooters it sounds like you've addressed some of that by having this a docking system which is great so you've addressed this problem around the country but the other thing is safety and things around you have pictures of people with a helmet but who's going to have a helmet for a last mile ride people don't know how to ride they do zip around and do bring them on sidewalks who's going to enforce some of these rules that we're saying we want people to follow and the department's supposed to now take care of 400 new vehicles around in the city and so there's just feels to me also like in this meeting itself sounds like it's a done deal I hear that you're negotiating last of it but I heard Cindy say we have these scooters coming on period, end of sentence so this is like a done deal where so many cities dozens and dozens of cities around the country there's real ups with disasters and so I'm really concerned about that happening here I also want to talk about pedestrians and people who use the sidewalks to walk people who use the sidewalks who have our wheelchairs people who use the sidewalks who don't have great balance all of these things are people who use the bike path who don't have great balance people who use the bike path with strollers or running so it feels like it's going to really impact all of that and I don't really see how we have a plan we have a lot of staff in all of these departments and it's beautiful, all these planners but what are they doing is turning it into policy and how is even a meeting like this going to impact policy let's start with the bikes cool to touch on the bike piece so it is essentially a complete overhaul of the current system going from the 7 speed 105 bikes to a 200 bike all eassist we really see that sort of revolutionizing usage especially in this area with the topography one of the current downsides of having a bike share system in a very hilly area is a lot of people tend to take the bikes from the top of the hill ride downtown turn around, look back uphill and say oh you know what I'll walk, I'll take the bus or just leave the bike here so what we really see especially from an operational side the eassist bike sort of revolutionizing a system that can really self balance itself so that people can ride back up the hill get back out to wherever they are trying to go we are really looking to utilize some planning with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and this tool study to really focus in on redistributing and adding some more hubs to make this a transportation option as opposed to something that people are just going to be taking cruising on their e-bikes down the bike path that's really not our goal with this system so again, nothing that we're talking about here is a done deal no pens have been put to paper we are really looking to go through all of the planning conversations with the city being there at the table with them and as these conversations go on I'm sure Chapin can kind of touch a little bit more on the next steps but we at Gotcha are really really focused on working with the city before implementing any of these assets and making sure that we have a well and thought out system before we put anything on the ground. Great, thank you. I will just say bird scooters wanted to come here last fall and launch no cost to the city we said no, we need to wait we need to go through a process it was the mayor who said to us we want to do a public forum and engage the public before we sign and understand how to move forward it was the city of Burlington who asked the RPC for the money to do a study with tool design group so that we could figure out how best to regulate this program I don't disagree that there aren't risks, there are challenges and we are learning last year's program was a limited launch this year's program is going to be more challenging and for that we have asked for these additional resources and we have also gone to Gatcha and said Gatcha was interested in signing a multi-year contract we said we want to do a one year with options to continue we need time to evaluate this emerging approach and so that those are some of the steps we have taken to take that measured approach Yes, Sarah and then Sandy I just wanted to take the opportunity to react to your reminding us about the speed limit in the city as you know it's one of my prime joys unrealized and so I look to the possibility of electric whatever joining the roads mostly to help auto drivers realize that they're not the only ones that can enjoy the infrastructure so my point is that I'd like us to think about what it's going to take for people to actually drive the speed limit I've come to the conclusion that people won't do it voluntarily and I think if we took a poll here there's really limited population that probably not more in two or three people would say yeah I conscientiously do not exceed the speed limit in town so I've worked with somebody in locomotions this week stuffing bags to give appreciation for people that ride in the wintertime and somebody there said oh yeah I put six miles an hour over this speed limit in South Burlington so from 25 it's 31 because I don't want people in my rear this is somebody who's worked volunteers for locomotion I just know anybody I talked to whether it's my wife or Joe anybody people really have a hard time following the speed limit and so if we get more people on the road I think it's going to be strategic to somehow deal with all the cars whether it's DPW or the police or the school buses whoever's driving all of us really fails from what I can see to come close to observing the speed limit so I think anything we can do to make that more of a reality I don't know what it is I'd encourage us to do so Before I turn to Sandy I will say that one of the pieces that was recommended in the bike walk plan that was adopted two years ago was a Vision Zero platform which is zero fatalities and zero serious injuries on the roadways the city is taking a very close look about whether we are resourced and ready to launch such a campaign if we do we are going to be aggressively moving to engineer our roads even more than we are now to get people to abide by the policy limits that we have set Yes, Sandy Question first a comment the question is is your current thinking that the e-bikes and the e-scooters would be welcome on the bike path Welcome on the bike path I would say that that is a topic that's open for discussion that's why we are here tonight I think there are we have heard already some concerns about it we've heard tonight some additional concerns about it so we want to hear more input on that one of the nice things is because of the technology should we choose to regulate it on the bike path we are able to speed govern the bikes and scooters to a point where either they would be very slow or they wouldn't be able to power at all so it's in our hands to decide I think that we've talked about what is the value of pedaling a bike and the value of using a power assist vehicle and they are wicked fun and all that I really get you there I think that when I first was involved with the presentation I read and heard that gotcha strategy involves tapping the tourist market we have had subsequent discussions and I personally have made suggestions that instead of saying an electric bike or an electric scooter is worth $2 it's really not the same as a pedal bike but back to comment on your statement about pricing I can join as an out of towner I can join at $15 a month and get one hour free riding and the current up to one hour rate at locomotion on the waterfront is $18 so I can pay $15 save three and then for the rest of the month take one hour trip per day or say I'm here for a week and so I don't think the pricing is actually supportive of some other investments we've made in this community save the locomotion or other businesses that provide this service and we're not really competing with someone who's riding six hours and like killing themselves but they are going to cosplay or they're going for an hour or two and I would encourage you in this community to think about what's the nature of the bike path in half a mile beyond Moran when I'm mixing kids with strollers runners bikers running his friends on scooters people who just stopped a phone brewery grabbing the scooters skaters and that's inevitable and what do we think about that right and that's why we're here this is a policy question the good news is we can make the decision and I think I understand your thoughts about how we set up the financial pricing to disincentivize the use of these for recreational rides and to as well look at prohibiting certain use on the recreational path yep Jordan we have a question from Facebook live and then we'll get you there question from Facebook live does the city get better proposals from any other okay so the question was did the city get any other proposals from any other operators we are working in partnership with a number of other partners here Katma and Winooski in south Burlington Katma did do a competitive procurement last year for the 2018 green ride program that was managed by got you and so this round there has not been a formal procurement process but there is a negotiation underway for the 2019 proposals it does not mean that this community can't decide we want to regulate this in a way where we want multiple vendors in our community that is a choice we can make there are pros and cons with multiple vendors you get choices at the same time you get additional companies with varying price points with different management strategies and it may be more difficult for our community to get what we want those are choices yes right here what you reject the impact is like I don't have a feel for how many car miles are driven per day if you look at the scooter miles you're talking potentially 4,000 scooter miles per day so what's the how big an impact would that have on the total car that's a good question I'm not but Bob you're welcome to come up and give a short answer if you'd like and then we are going to move to wrapping up so that we can have folks provide input in the back the conversion we use at BED is that one electric car replaces one electric car a regular car that's 10,000 miles I'm doing on a per car basis one bike replaces one 8th of a car personally it doesn't answer your question completely but it compares the relative impact of an electric car and an electric bike okay great thanks Mary and then JP and then RJ I have a couple of questions one is is this at all or nothing can we have e-bikes and not have scooters if that's what we decided that's the community regular bikes maybe and then I'm interested in the maintenance part of this you said maybe they would come around and collect all the scooters what does that entail in terms of equipment what would that look like great I'll answer the first question which is it is in our right to decide we want to go with bikes we want to go with scooters because the city can regulate and allow operators to have hubs within our right of way under our encumbrance ordinance so as to the others I'll give to Bob yeah so to touch on the operational side of things the way we foresee if we decide to go with both the bikes and the scooters we would continue our relationship with old spokes home who does all of our rebalancing and battery swapping on our current bike system to continue as our partners like maintenance as well as our bike battery swapping in the field and then we would be hiring on a local team to help manage the scooter side of things so what we use in other systems is at 11pm our fleet mechanics go out they collect all of the scooters out of the field they are stored in a facility charged overnight and brought back out and redistributed out through our hub systems at 7 o'clock in the morning we then have teams staffed throughout the day who sold jobs are to go out and collect any scooters that may have been left outside of hubs or in the public right of way to help make sure that we are keeping it a nice tidy and orderly system great thank you JP okay so there's a I got a few things so first up I work at a bike shop our normal bike rentals were down last year so and you can ask Zanny I think the same thing and my question is that we didn't really see we saw total trips but we didn't see where each trips were coming from which mostly what we saw was when we saw diagrams was 75 60% of all the trips were taken from Church Street or the waterfront and that to me isn't like a I thought this was supposed to be someone who was getting off the bus getting into town and already in town they're not you're not saving any carbon emissions because they've already driven here they're already here they're gonna come I think someone said like do we really need to last mile like if they're already in town and they're going to the bike path like do we they're gonna go there regardless do we need to get electric bikes on there or electric scooters and stuff like that so like but we were down if you look on Church Street the majority of all the bikes percentage wise are mostly in those locations there and they're less expensive so that's I first was under the impression that it was gonna be more the old North End the new North End get the people to actually ride into these areas to do it and that was kind of my big concern you know like hey how many trips did you get out of this hub in the old North End near Sondra Studios and stuff or how many did you get here if it wasn't that many and they're all going straight to the waterfront isn't it success is it worth the actual dollars invested into it so you know I think it was like $400,000 of like procurement of money and that's a you know if it's worth that much to get just people right down to the waterfront I don't know if that's money well spent great I'll answer that one you're welcome to ask conditional questions the model of the bike share and scooter share is changing dramatically last year the city of Burlington did contribute $40,000 to last year's pilot this year the model has changed so quickly among the whole industry that we've gone to a place where as Bob pointed out they're looking for no municipal contribution and actually proposing to share some of the revenue with the municipalities and the bike and pedestrian infrastructure I share some of your concerns JP and Zandy and others Rick who have talked about the locations from this last year I think we learned with a small fleet and few hubs there weren't great opportunities to for ride from hub to hub that met people's needs and that too many of the trips from my standpoint were out in back trips from a particular hub this venture for me is about mobility and that is why we're proposing a larger fleet why we're proposing many more hubs and I am very open to hearing the public's interest about where they do want hubs and where they don't want hubs and that is very much an open conversation which is why you're here any follow up I'll get you one more behind you and I believe oh yes I also have a bunch but I'll try to pick one we really need to do ride tests before the roll out one of the big problems with last years roll out a fairly active user of the bike share even though I have my bike and ride it a lot too was that it wasn't gear properly like you try to get up any of the hills in town I'm an everyday rider fairly young person and it was tough like I would take a break halfway up the evil streets so you need to test for the wide variety of riders before deploying the equipment and I do worry about the scooters being able to get up the hill and balance and being able maybe it's just because I haven't got a lot of personal experience on scooters but that seems kind of dicey so yeah, ride testing my thoughts and some of the concerns that they brought up bikes are bikes even if they're e-bikes they're still bikes you use them the same way you're still going in the same places and we should pretty much treat them the same like don't allow them on the sidewalks and the CBD scooters either but outside of there a lot of times sidewalks are essentially empty and it's not really a problem to ride your bike on the sidewalk and you know should I think we should just apply the same interfire district rule of scooters in Colorado okay, thanks for that input I appreciate that thanks, I'll step back and take a kind of big picture comment and say I'm appreciative that the city feels a sense of urgency to reduce transportation related emissions and that's awesome to live in a city that prioritizes that and I'm excited that in the past year we've doubled the number of shared mobility options and potentially going to triple it and I think that making those options available is a huge part of the solution to getting people to be less dependent on private vehicles and I just encourage the city with that same enthusiasm and swiftness to think about the other side of the equation which is to make the default choice of driving a private vehicle less favorable and less easy and less convenient so that people will really gravitate towards shared mobility and not feel the need to drive around a personally owned car and you know, drive from home to work in the same city and think about using these other modes so it's awesome I'm excited and yeah great, thank you, I'll take two more and then let's head out back for Mingle and Dots is the data that's generated by this system like what hubs are getting used coming out of the bike having a booster bike is that going to be publicly available or is that conscious data? Right, so that can be negotiated as part of the contract and so this is why we're here and it sounds like from what I'm hearing from you and others that it should be public so as whether or not the data on ridership and where the bikes are taken and scooters taken whether the data is publicly accessible that's a must we've been asking for over a year for that information we did not get it we will not give it to us hub by hub the public cannot make rational decisions about whether the system works or not without having that information so in my opinion if you're not going to get that information out of the system don't enter into a contract with that company okay, we are taking notes thank you, Nicole, for keeping us in all these good comments written down any last comment before we break up I just wonder how decision making is actually going to happen you said this is open for discussion we're going to talk about it but how is decision making actually going to be happening and who's going to be responsible for that? I will ask Sandy to come on up Katma helped organize this effort last year the city has asked to be part of the organizing committee between UVM and Champlain and Katma and the three municipalities so that we can be an active player but in any partnership it's going to be a team decision exactly I would just add too when we initially signed our agreement with Gotcha it was a three phase project so we had agreed to launch with 105 bikes with the intention right from the beginning to expand into phase 2 and phase 3 based on the experience and the data that we acquired so I would just mention that and also echoing Chapin's point about forming a advisory committee Katma really facilitating that group and having the municipalities the university, the college, the RPC some key stakeholders on that committee to make decisions great so please send us comments via email the goal here for us is to be getting a vendor under contract the hope is within the coming month so that we have time to shift and get something up and running for this summer so please get us your comments in the next couple weeks we really appreciate you being here tonight thank you for your leadership mayor on all sorts of transportation options look forward to the ongoing conversation make sure you sign in if you want to stay in touch with us as this project moves forward thanks for coming and safe travels home um