 Welcome everybody. Thanks for coming. So a mighty group I can tell. So as Julia mentioned we're here to talk about the Fort Worth Active Transportation Plan. This is a long-range plan so this is this is gonna set the strategy for walking, biking, access to transit, and trail use for the next 20 plus years. It doesn't mean it won't be revisited but this is the long view. This is what is our what is our vision for the network of the city for active transportation. So it's it's a project of the city of Fort Worth and the North Central Texas Council of Governments. My name is Darren Flushay. I'm senior planner at Tool Design Group and we're working closely with Kim Lee Horne on this project which is supported by Blue Zones Project. So today we just covered the introductions. We're going to talk a little bit about why we're here and why why a master plan is important for active transportation in the city. We'll talk a little bit about what we've done so far in the schedule for future work and we'll talk about the process of the existing conditions and and what we've heard so far from the public and we're excited to share with you our draft recommendations and get your feedback on the pedestrian priority areas, the draft trail proposed network and on-street bicycle network. Then we'll we'll do some activities and we'll talk about next next steps. So why are we here? The purpose of the active transportation plan is to develop a connected seamless network of facilities for walking, biking and trail use all with the purpose of connecting to transit and supporting transit access. Not with a sole purpose but supporting transit as part of each of those efforts. Throughout this effort we're tasked with looking at not only of course safety but also level of comfort and we'll talk about different ways that we're measuring a bicycle level of comfort and pedestrian level of comfort or what we're calling the pedestrian experience. This plan will update Bike Fort Worth and Walk Fort Worth and it will be the first ever city wide trails plan. Through the planning process we've developed an overall strategic approach for what we want our networks to look like and we'll talk a little bit about that and we will be developing policies and performance measures to support the networks through through systematic improvements over time and what we're really excited to do is deliver a prioritized list of projects to the city to help the city understand its immediate and short-term projects that can have the most impact all the way up to those long-term projects that that will help that will help create a real seamless and complete network over time. So we'll be delivering an implementation of funding plan. So today's meeting as I mentioned is to make sure you all understand why we're doing this project and why it's important and give you an opportunity to review the draft network recommendations and the process of developing the networks and then get your input on those network recommendations and prioritization. So that's going to be a really important part of today is Julia mentioned limited resources of the city. Every city is constrained by its resources so how do we figure out the projects that are going to make the most impact and be the most important and we want your input on that. So here we are today in September and one more click. This is the second round of public meetings and we'll have another round in the winter and it's the first round of some stakeholder meetings that we've been having. You see that we've developed the existing conditions report back in March and have developed the draft concept for the network and what we're here to talk about now is the draft network so we can finalize it in the coming weeks and develop those implementation plans and prioritize lists that we've talked about. So an important part of the beginning stages of this plan was understanding what are the existing conditions in the city of Fort Worth. So in our March public meeting we introduced the plan and we had a lot of activities around what's the big vision for bicycling and walking, what are some of the key needs, what are the trip purposes that we really need to be planning around. Is it the work trip or is it the trip to the park and what are some of those key destinations that we need to be thinking about. So we developed a lot of maps to talk about in a second. Then we came back in June and worked with our stakeholders to brief them on our progress and get some input on our analysis and here we are today. So we've got the draft recommendations and we're really moving towards prioritization and that would be the activities we'll focus on today and then we'll come back in the winter where the real fun is and show where some of our prioritized networks are and we look forward to seeing you again there. So the next part of our existing conditions was not only the public input and the stakeholder input but also the data analysis. So where are the current biking, walking and transit use areas? Where are the population centers and the employment centers in town? We asked the public, we asked people to fill out the interactive map to say where are the places that are really good for biking and walking right now and the places that are barriers and challenges. We also reviewed city data so the city's been doing a lot of work on master planning and the race and culture task force so we were able to incorporate a lot of that data into our existing conditions and our ongoing analysis. Speaking of analysis, to start to develop the various networks we looked at a number of different factors in our existing conditions. So this map is showing what we think are high demand areas based on factors such as employment density, residential density, schools, transit stops, bus stops and stations and zero car households. So those parts of town where there's a relatively high population of people that don't have access to a car. Then we looked at where the existing facilities are, where the planned facilities are. We'll talk about level of traffic stress, that's a bicycle measure. We looked at traffic volumes, I mentioned the interactive survey. We looked at Strava data to figure out where people are currently biking and using Strava and we invited stakeholders to identify barriers and places of opportunity. So you'll see how all of that comes back into play in a moment. So from all of that existing conditions work some key themes emerge and you can think about whether or not these resonate with you. First is the idea of connectivity. It's okay to have a sidewalk here and a sidewalk there but if they don't connect to each other you haven't really succeeded in creating a pedestrian and accessible network. So connectivity is really important, redundancy of routes is really important. Identifying and reducing barriers, so highway crossings, need for bridges, railroad crossings and rivers and then the fact that needs differ across the city. So we heard from stakeholders pretty clearly that the needs of people living downtown or moving downtown, the kind of places they go to, the kind of facilities they need might be different for people in the less dense areas who are maybe more interested in a shared use path or a side path and accessing a park rather than going to a job by foot. But the need for daily destinations, not every trip needs to be a work trip. We need to support people walking and biking to a restaurant, to a park, those kinds of things. Connections to transit being really important, a major theme from the very beginning of this plan and then focusing on safety and comfort. We'll talk about how we measure those things for walking and biking. Accessibility is a major theme throughout this, making sure that our streets comply with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and are accessible for people of all ages and abilities. Equity, making sure that funds are distributed fairly across the city in places based on demographics, based on vehicle access and income. And then the last two, connecting short trip areas and focusing on short trip areas. So thinking about biking and walking and access to transit as really short trip by nature. It's very tempting to look at a map and put a line here, connect that line all the way across the city and say, okay, I've created a bike network or a walking network. But in fact, the nature of these trips to daily destinations are short. So making sure that we're identifying the parts of town that are most lend themselves to short trips and connecting those parts of town to each other. That's what those two themes mean. And think about this. The reason I'm spending a little time on this slide is because we're going to ask you to prioritize some of these issues a little later on to help us figure out where the investments are most important. So I mentioned the different networks. So we've got trails and on-street bicycle facilities that we're recommending. And we've got the pedestrian network and all that is going to come together to become our active transportation network. So the pedestrian network first. So we looked at where the sidewalk gaps are. We looked at where the important street crossings are and analyzed the different street crossings. I'll talk about that in a second. Identified some of the key barriers to walking and we encourage you to continue to give us feedback on those. And we looked at high demand areas that I mentioned based on population employment, schools, transit, and zero car households. We looked at transit corridors. And you can see on that map there there's a little buffer around each bus stop to say the sidewalks around each bus stop are going to be important to our transit access. And then buildings and land use. So what are the ways that we build our city that can support the pedestrian walking and biking and ways that we build our city that don't? And so we're looking at all of those things. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. Which leads us to this. We're developing what we're calling a pedestrian experience index. And that is looking at citywide data and identifying the things that support walking. The things that when you go to a place you say, okay, this was built for walking. This was built for people to be here, to linger here, to walk. And so we can talk more about that. I will be stationed back there. And we're happy to talk to you about our methodology, the data we used, and the way that we analyzed not only whether or not you have a sidewalk, what condition that sidewalk is in, but also how are the buildings oriented towards the block? Is there a sea of parking next to the sidewalk? Or is there a building with retail and lots of addresses on that block next to you? So all those things go into this analysis. And we're pretty excited about this analysis as a unique tool for the city. And this is what that analysis looks like. We take all those factors that were on the previous slide. And we look at each of those data points for this segment. So you can see the lines are color coded, the dark green are places that we think lend themselves well to walking based on those factors. And the red are places that maybe have longer blocks, maybe there's not as much as many addresses on the block. Maybe there isn't a sidewalk. And maybe the buildings aren't up against the sidewalk, maybe they're set back more. That would all those factors would contribute to a lower score, not to mention more more traffic lanes, and higher volumes and speeds of traffic. So then you also have the circles on this map, the circles indicate our estimate of what it would be like to cross that. So are you crossing a lot of lanes with high speeds of traffic? And is there a traffic signal or a four way stop to make that crossing easier? So you can see we've rated every single intersection in the city based on that. And one of the things that we considered was whether or not there's Americans with disability act accessible curb ramps on each of the four corners. And so if an intersection lacks curb ramps, it gets a lower, it gets a lower score on that scale from 1234 where one is green and good and four is red and bad. So again, happy to talk more about that afterward. So we talked about prioritization. Why is prioritization important? We have 3000, an estimated 3000 or more miles of roadway that don't have a sidewalk in Fort Worth right now. So that is many, many years of intense investment. And so what we want to do is we want to say, where should the city focus its near term investments on improving the pedestrian environment and building sidewalks where people want sidewalks and where if they were built, they would likely get high use. So that's really what this plan is going to help the city with instead of being reactive, being proactive to make sound investments that are going to have the most impact. So this is gives you an idea of where we think some of those priority areas should be. There's a buffer around access to trails, transit lines, I mentioned bus stops earlier, and those high demand areas where there's high levels of population, employment, zero car households, transit and schools. So last note on that, we've got maps you can mark up, we'll talk about that in a second. And you can help us with prioritization as well. Okay, so that's the pedestrian network moving on to the bike and trails network. This is a map similar to the one on the table back there will give you a chance to look at and mark up. It's got the blue lines that are on street bicycle corridors. And that doesn't necessarily mean a particular type of facility like a bike lane, a side path, a separated bike lane, or a buffered bike lane. It just says these are the routes that we think are important. And then we'll go through a process to identify which facility is going to be sufficient to make it a comfortable place to ride. The green lines are the bold greens lines are existing trails and then the light green lines without the casing are proposed trail connections. And the pink lines are side paths are separate bike lanes from the master thoroughfare plan. So how did we develop recommendations for the trail corridors? We looked at especially our partners at Kimley Horn, looked at floodplains, utility easements, railway lines, either active or inactive park and open space existing plans, including the master thoroughfare plan and the regional Velo web trail system. And I think a lot of you already come know about that. And it was important for us to think about the connections to that regional trail system. And then how did we develop the on street bicycle routes? We looked at high demand areas, and all of these, all these factors that I mentioned earlier that we looked at through our existing conditions. I'll walk through a few of them now. So we, we listened to public input, we had an interactive map that we asked things like, where places that I like to ride my bike now, you can see here the Trinity River Trail was not surprisingly really popular route. So when we were thinking about our on street connections, we made sure to make those rib connections or those, those routes that are going to connect you into the trail. We also asked people about places that they don't that they found stressful or they didn't like to ride, they wanted to have connections. And so we took that into account and made sure that we addressed some of those stressful areas either with a route parallel to a highway that was stressful and making sure that we had crossings of that highway, or actually addressing and recommending a facility on the stressful route. So here's an example of that. Where is on the east side, there was, there was East Rosedale, and kind of a loop of stress, if you will. And so we made sure that we made recommendations that would connect those corridors, but then also add some, because this was, this was a potentially popular neighborhood or high demand neighborhood. So we added some granularity in the network. And, and that's how we got to this this recommended network. And those colors on the map correspond somewhat to these colors here. So the blue lines are going to be some sort of on street, we're recommending some sort of on street bike facility, and that will be determined through some guidance that we provide as part of this plan. The pink lines are primarily routes that were in the master therapy plan, previous planning effort. And those are typically side paths or separated bike lanes. That's what those are. And then the green lines are trails. And the design of these things will provide input on as well. So getting towards the end, and then we'll break for activities. We did analyze every street segment for bicycling comfort as well, like we did for the pedestrian experience. And we use the what's called a level of traffic stress. And Kevin will be in the back. By that poster, we can walk through the methodology of how we looked at the speed and volume of traffic of every road, whether or not it had a bike lane on it right now, and how the how the intersections were for crossing. And then we were able to rate it one two three four based on is it going to be comfortable for almost everybody? Or is it going to be only rideable on a bike for those strong and fearless folks? We all know one somebody that will bike on any street. But we want to make sure that we're designing this network for people that aren't comfortable in any condition. So this is what the level of traffic stress map looks like. You see the green or those neighborhood streets. But then you've got those faster, more stressful roadway conditions in orange and red. And we look at intersections and segments. So that is why we're here. That is what we did. And now we have an opportunity to hear from you. So today, we'll talk about the network maps, we've got maps on both tables of pedestrian priority areas on one, and the bike and the trail routes on the other. We want to hear from you. Are these the right routes? Are these the important corridors? Or is there somewhere else that we're missing? And once we have to take those routes and figure out which to build first and which to prioritize. So it's really important for us to hear from you. What are the factors that are going to be most critical? And I'll just point out that we know that equity, so income, demographics and zero car households has to be baked into this. It's really critical to support the city's priorities to do that. So we know that's going to be in there. And we know that accessibility is definitely going to be a high priority. So we're asking from you all is what are some of the other priorities that we should incorporate as well. For all of your friends and family that are not here today, but have opinions about the bicycling, walking and trail network in Fort Worth, we encourage you to use and share with them this link. This is a link to the project webpage. And if you scroll down, you'll get to this how to participate piece with a link to the interactive map. This is an opportunity for you to tell us every square half mile of the city zero in on it. Tell us if it's a priority for you, what it's a priority for trails, walking, biking, transit, all of the above. And you can weigh in on the specific issues that you see in that portion of the city. And we'll incorporate that into our notes and our prioritization process. And it's going to be extremely valuable for us. So, so please do take the time to do that. If you mark it on the map, we'll know that too. But for everyone at home and seeing this on the website, we really encourage you to click on that link and frankly, give us as much feedback as you'd like. So what's next for the plan, we're going to take all this information we heard and we're going to refine the network. And then we're going to start developing prioritized project lists. We're able to slice those lists in lots of different ways to give the folks implementing it the most the most helpful direction on the projects to pursue first. We'll also talk about some demonstration projects to show proof of concept and develop that facility selection guide that I mentioned. So we will be back to hear from you to hopefully see you again in December or January, depending on what schedule makes the most sense. And then we will show you kind of draft final recommendations. And that's where you can kind of see is this line going by my house? Is it what I want it to be? And we look forward to getting your feedback again on that. So thank you all. And here's some contact information. We'll leave this slide up. Julia is with the city. And I'm sure you're going to take your phone calls. Please do see the the project website and we'll see you at the next public meeting.