welcome um i'm mayor ben kessler and
we're here this evening to talk about
the link us
program and just in general the future
of sustainability in central ohio
we have representatives here from ohio
state university for coda other regional
partners
transportation is essential to our
communities um and the way that we've
been doing transportation for the past
100 120 years
um has many ways of dividing our
communities and so we're trying as a
besley community but also as a greater
central how can we find
and position our region for future
growth and baxley is really excited to
be a part of that conversation and we're
very excited to have folks here with us
tonight to talk about what linkus is and
what the future of transportation looks
about looks like in central ohio
from a whole different from all sorts of
different lenses so with that um i'm
going to introduce harvey miller from
ohio state university
thank you
okay thanks everyone i'm glad to be here
in uh
again i really love coming out here it's
a beautiful city my wife's out right now
i'm looking at property to anticipation
of the latest
so i'm always happy to come here and
happy to share with you some ideas
i'm a professor of geography at ohio
state university i'm a transportation
geographer studies sustainable mobility
in cities
so we look at ways of making mobility
more sustainable more equitable and more
environmentally friendly and that's the
beginning of my opening comments today
i'm going to place a uh
put all this um initiative here for
lincoln's put this all into a broader
picture and give you the big picture
about what we're trying to do
so
when i say sustainable what i mean is uh
this is a definition from the former
prime minister of uh
of norway royal harlem wetland and she
spoke at ohio state in 2015
and um she's one of my heroes i really
admire her because she gave us the
modern definition of sustainability
through heading the u.n commission on
defining what sustainability is and
there's some inter generational justice
to it just leaving the earth better than
the way we inherited the next slide
please so when we say sustainability
what we mean is environmental economic
and social because people think when
they think sustainability they think
environmental they make making things as
clean as possible but we also want to
make sure we're building economically
vibrant competitive innovative regions
and social justice we're concerned about
social equity and social justice so once
we can when we work across all three of
those dimensions of sustainability we
get truly what we call sustainable truly
sustainable system
a sustainable mobility system the
problem is that our mobility systems
right now are not sustainable that's
what i'm going to go through in the
remainder of my talk and talk about some
of the issues with the ways we've been
doing transportation for the last 120
years
so first some good news we live in an
age of mobility miracles i mean it is
true that the way we've been doing
transportation for the last century has
allowed us to be very mobile very active
and do a lot of things in a lot of
places so we have to not deny that our
transportation systems do generate a lot
of benefits but it does come at somewhat
of a high cost that'll be the next few
slides climate change transportation is
the largest source of greenhouse gases
in the united states and most of that is
personal mobility us moving around
cities and cars and suvs
cars are the least energy efficient way
to move people whether it's internal
combustion engines or electric vehicles
it's the same problem
it's basically what we're doing is
taking a 200 pound package a person and
wrapping it into a two-ton shipping
container to move around the city most
of what a car does on blues around the
city is move itself
you are way down on the list in terms of
weight
and air quality you know now from a lot
of research in the last two decades with
high quality measurements and health
outcomes that air quality has a wide
range of very bad health impacts your
cardiovascular system your brain
your immune system
there's a lot of problems there
one of the big problems in our current
mobility system our car dependent
mobility system is that it is really
unsafe traffic crashes are the leading
cause of death for americans aged 5-34
for those of you listening to me right
now who have a child or grandchild who's
in that age range the main reason they
won't reach 85 will be because of a car
and it's not an isolated problem this is
a crash density and eye injury network
back to vision zero columbus
it's available on their website and you
can see it's a problem everywhere in the
city it's not isolated any particular
paper or all at risk
americans with respect to congestion of
course that um that's a big consequence
of car dependent development the average
american spends more time in traffic per
year than they do on vacation first
certification hours not very long in
america but still that is a very
striking uh statistic americans spend
more on automobiles than they do on food
and healthcare it's like a major expense
for american families and big economic
drag enough to have to
expect some equipment in order to move
around the city
and finally the lack of physical
activity is leading to a lot of
lifestyle diseases and the real epidemic
here in the united states
and of course at least some of this
infrastructure we built over the last
century or so has divided communities
and this is an example from the columbus
dispatch right near here near pexley
hanford village where the highway went
through and destroyed a thriving uh
black community and it's something we
have to try to deal with now that this
infrastructure is aging and needs to be
rehabilitated
refurbished or in some cases perhaps
torn down
the other thing about
car dependent development is that it
induces sprawl and sprawl is expensive
you all remember maybe from school
that um the
equation for the area of the circle is
pi r squared which means that as the
radius gets bigger the area gets much
much much bigger
same thing with the city lake columbus
as the city sprawls outward the area
over which we have to provide
urban infrastructure and services gets
geometrically bigger and therefore
geometrically more expensive and that's
going to be a big fiscal drag on our
cities now and into the future but
people also always ask me do we really
need so much pump transit do we need to
invest more in public transit what about
self-driving vehicles that's been
promised to us the ability to drive
around your family play dominoes perhaps
read a book
aren't that aren't these things going to
solve our problems
well you know they've been promising us
that
um this is they've been promising this
with respect to powers for a long time
so the first on the left side you're
looking at um
futurama that was an exhibit funded by
gm at the 1939 world's fair and you
basically sat in a conveyor belt and
went around this
3d mechanical model of the city that was
turned over to the automobile and you've
got it was about half the size of a
soccer field it was very very elaborate
and expensive but meant to show what
would happen if we just
surrendered most of these to the
automobile on the right side is a
drawing from an architecture science
named like uca who developed um you know
plans for cities that were completely
automobile dependent with walking
separated a different level away from
multiple levels so they promised us a
wonderful future automobiles but this is
what we got we've got congestion we've
got sprawl inhumane landscapes we have
poor air quality and again we have a
very unsafe way to move around in fact
driving is the most unsafe thing a
person does on a regular basis
so avs are important autonomous vehicles
are important but they're only a partial
solution first of all like all vehicles
personal vehicles that are single
occupancy they're energy inefficient
because of the
space and not only the energy
requirement also the space required how
much space is required to move them
around the city but also uh store them
when they're not being not being
occupied
there really are unclear safety
improvements they promise us that
autonomous vehicles are going to solve
our safety problems they will make um
our streets safer i believe safer than
humans driving but not as safe as public
transit if you really want to make
people safe put them in public transit
in equities due to cost autonomous
vehicles are going to be expensive and
they're going to have to be updated you
know how often we have to buy new
smartphones now imagine under that kind
of pressure to have to buy a vehicle
repeatedly over and over again in order
to get the latest hardware
and technology and it turns out that
driving's hard you know um engineers
thought they would solve this i thought
ten years ago we're gonna have
autonomous vehicles right now
we were all wrong it's too hard of a
problem an urban environment is too
complicated there's too many things
going on there's too many edge cases um
we're not going to solve it i don't
think we're going to see autonomous
vehicles anywhere except perhaps some
you know
highways and trucking and applications
like that for quite some time
so we have to move beyond this mobility
monoculture we have now in most of our
american cities including columbus for
this few mobility options where we have
to adapt to the system we plan our lives
around boating traffic and finding good
parking
and our current infrastructure is
saturated there's a million more people
coming to columbus we cannot build our
way out of congestion
all we do is generate more traffic
and um
and and just start more um you know
struggle to the system sorry about that
okay
but um we have to move beyond um
mobility monocultures to what are known
as polycultures and this is where we
have a wide spectrum of integrated
mobility options where it's very
flexible where the system adapts to the
people you don't have to plan your life
about around the availability of
mobility and around
parking
and it's more efficient and resilient it
actually can move people around and more
with more options and it's able to
handle shocks better than our current
car dominating system right now our car
dominant system fails twice a day we see
traffic jams we see a single crash um
blocking an entire interstate um highway
that's the that's that's the
illustration of a brittle transportation
system
so what do i mean by sustainable
mobility system it's a mobility
polyculture where most people do not
need a car for most trips now notice i
said most people
in most trips we're not talking about
banning cars we're just talking about
rebalancing our transportation systems
so that most people can rely upon
walking for short trips which are most
urban trips
e-bikes
and regular bikes plastic bikes for
medium trips public transport longer
trips and cars to fill the niches i mean
you know
all people only need a car some of the
time some people need a car all the time
that's okay that's the kind of
transportation system
that we can have where we use cars in
order to fill in the gaps that that
these other modes
can't do for most people in most parts
and i'm a big fan of bus rapid transit i
really think brt is the way to go it's
high quality bus based public transit it
has dedicated lanes to make it a smooth
efficient non-delayed service
it has really nice stations and stops
it has onboard fare collection which i
mean offloading fair culture excuse me
so that you used to get on the bus after
buying a ticket at a station just like
with light rail or subways and it has
frequent operations
why i like it is because it's fast and
comfortable it's not a typical bus
experience it actually is a very smooth
experience
it approaches light rail capacity
especially if we have those articulated
buses like this one picture
here in the illustrations in france
where it shows um you know it's like
basically two buses with the flex uh
between the two and that allows for
efficiencies and throughput that
approach light rail it's very cost
effective it costs half as much as light
rail and we can get it in less than half
the time and that's the last problem is
that it takes too long to build rail in
this country i think we should move
towards more bus rapid transit as we can
get there quicker and build in more
places and really see the mobility
transformation that we truly need
so this is a vision of mobility as
without ownership mobility as a service
where you can get around without having
to own the car unless you you want to
unless you think that um and even if you
do own a car maybe your household owns
one of them and you only use it um you
know occasionally when you when you need
to use it and part of the thing that's
going to tie this together is all this
information technology all these apps
and phones like transit app which you
can use now to not only get around on
coda and figure out where to go you can
also use it to pay for your code trip
this allows us to treat mobility as
something we can do beyond without
having to own the expensive equipment
and things can change this is my
favorite example it finds us
1998 don't get in strangers cars don't
meet people from the internet but by
2016
we were literally summoning strangers to
the internet from the internet to get
into their car
so we can change and we can change
quickly and one of the silver linings of
content is that we actually show we can
change our behaviors quickly when we
need to and we've done it before this is
a picture from the mid-1940s
showing the ohio state campus with the
trial and if you can't read that it says
maine to bexley we used to have a
trolley from ohio state to pecksley i
could have taken it tonight to get here
um and we did this when we had when the
technology was worse and resources were
not the level we have now now we have
better technology and we have the
resources to do this and there's really
no reason why we can't do it again it's
just something we need to choose to do
and that's it for me i'd like to turn it
over to zach from coda who's going to
talk more about the linkness project
great thank you harvey and thank you
mary kessler for my soccer today
my name is zach sterling i am project
manager with coda specifically project
manager for the east main street project
and the west broad sprt project but
before i turn over to preeti from our
project team i'm going to talk about the
link us initiative and
how we got here
so back in 2014 morph see the mid ohio
regional planning commission uh looked
at our region uh to see uh by the year
2050 there will be one million more
people
living in our central ohio region
which would be a bump of 1 million more
people back back then
and then in 2017 coda looked at
our
network by the year 2050 looked at what
it could be it was a vision plan called
cuda's next gen plan
included fixed route
improvements new lines new services like
on-demand services
and most importantly to link us
initiative it looked at
several corridors in the region that are
suitable for high capacity graphic
transit so
i think there were about 14 of them
identified in that plan
two of them being
east bay street and west broad street
and all these corridors
analyzed for bus traffic transit light
rail
street car and
commuter rail and then in 2020 or in
2019
morphy took the information from the
inside 2050 plan with the amount of
people moving to the region
and they wanted to see how origin could
grow
whether we grow further out or
focus that growth along keep corridors
combining the transit and the
development in really a way that hasn't
been considered in our region before
and then 2020 uh the link us initiative
form initiative formed which really
is action and implementation and lingus
initiative is a partnership between
city of columbus dakota franklin county
morpsey and of course all of our
regional partners
so again looking at our region
to see that 3 million more people would
be living here by the year 2050 and of
course this was before the announcement
a couple months ago with intel moving in
the region so potentially that could be
more than what it was analyzed about 10
years ago
um and the second point here i really
want to latch on to is that you know
there are a lot of uh new federal grant
programs
um that have been released in the last
couple months and really um the lincoln
initiative is about latching onto those
programs and making sure that we can
access those federal funds um as a
region
and so uh lincoln's initiative is really
about addressing 21st century challenges
so equity workforce advancement
innovation
affordability economic development and
sustainability
and really it's about syncing up with
all like existing efforts
in the region so we know that there's a
lot of planning that's been done in the
last 10 years there's a lot of current
planning
so all these initiatives sinking
together um for equitable growth as part
of the lincoln initiative and one we
don't have on here which is definitely
incorporated is that uh bike friendly
bexley plan which i know is important to
uh
and so as a part of the lincus
initiative again we're looking at
how we grow this region really syncing
up the transit with the development in a
way that hasn't been done before in a
region and ultimately increasing
opportunities
so currently there are three corridors
under studies so again the west broad
street corridor and then the east main
street corridor traveling through the
city of bexley there's also the
northwest corridor which primarily
operates or
um would plan to operate along all
entanglement roads from downtown up till
bethel road
actually there is some public engagement
for that corridor as well this week so i
encourage you to visit our website at
www.linkhousecolumbus.com
but now or before i move on and turn it
over to friday to talk about uh east
main street
i think harvey did this pretty well but
really just looking at what we're trying
to do with this lincus initiative and
it's really something that we don't have
in the central ohio region today
you have that level boarding really
having stations instead of just bus
stops
creating a safe waiting environment
having near love or boarding where
people with bicycles can board their
bicycles on the vehicles in much easier
way
and then again there's articulated buses
so currently in coda's fleet our largest
vehicles are 40 feet we're looking to
have more capacity having that
articulation in the middle
to have 60-foot buses which can carry
much more people
so now i'll turn it over to uh pretty
from our project team to talk
specifically about east main street
great
thank you zach
i'm pretty chowdhury i work with
the consultant team leading the design
and engineering for the east main and
west broad street corridors so we are
the first line here sorry no worries
this is the project uh the private
concept and i'll talk a little bit about
where we've come so far so last year we
did uh performing an alternative
analysis where we looked at
different variations for high capacity
transit for these east and west
corridors that were identified as part
of lincus
initiative and the previous plans that
zach mentioned
so
with that alternative analysis the
things that we initially focused on were
identifying the preferred mode and the
routing as well as the guideway so we
can just look back with um
we identified the mode as being bus
rapid transit and that was based on
looking at
kind of balancing the cost of the
transit and ridership and we also looked
at at batting as you see here so west
crowd street goes all the way from
prairie township to downtown
and east maine goes from downtown out to
reynoldsburg to taylor road throughout
the corridor we can have different uh
guideway types and and that really just
means where the bus travels so that's
one of the benefits that we're going to
mention by by harvey but crt is flexible
you can build it up to be to provide
that high capacity just like light rail
with less investment so you can do a
variety of guideway types and so we've
landed on
both dedicated median guideway and some
sections of each corridor and mixed
traffic where the bus would operate with
general traffic
so in the next slide the other
piece that we figured out as part of the
alternatives analysis
was station locations and so here
we looked at
where
current ridership is along code's
existing routes um so kind of providing
proximity and connections to those and
importantly we looked at a variety of
economic development factors
population activity centers
proximity to affordable housing
and then redevelopment opportunities so
as part of the alternatives analysis
phase we landed on these approximate
station locations and these are just
looking at nodes um meaning just the
intersection we haven't
i'll talk about the overall process but
this is just the start of the project
it's really the concept that we're
building on so the next slide you can
see this is one of those factors that we
looked at when we were trying to
determine station locations
here we call out some of the activity
centers along the east main street
corridor
here in bexley we have obviously capital
university right here on drexel as well
as downtown so that was our
preferred location for for the bexley
area was that drexel road and main
street
so kind of stepping back and talking
about the overall project process um for
these two corridors and for easing
specifically we've completed the
alternatives analysis where we did the
planning we identified that concept just
that routing uh kind of the preferred
guideway in those rough locations
we're now working on 30 design and and
typically construction projects go in
phases so you have 30 percent and 60 and
100
and what 30 really means is that we're
figuring out the footprint of the
project so we're not really
this is not this is just the start of a
long process where we figure out the
issues and the trade-offs and the
specifics around what this will look
like on the street right now we're
determining the extents of the project
roughly where we want to put these buses
and these stations and kind of
considerations that will take us through
the next phase of design
which is
60 to 100
where we'll really identify the issues
and the solutions to those issues um so
part of 30
there are a lot of balls in the air with
this project and any other big
construction project
for what we're working on
on for our team um we're managing
stakeholder and public engagement which
is extremely important i should have
mentioned uh informed the alternatives
analysis and conceptual design and
planning phase and we'll continue to
inform this entire process so we'll be
actively reaching out to the public um
calling for public input throughout this
this process to give us insight into the
issues that we can address with this
project and as well as your ideas for
solutions
um we are going to be coordinating with
the federal transit authority and to
fund this project so
we'll be working with them we'll be
applying for grant funding and so we're
going to give them some information to
satisfy those metrics that they require
we're working on urban planning so what
these stations and the corridor will
look like in the context of the
neighborhood
that it travels and and other ways that
we can complement you know the
redevelopment that's being planned for
this whole this whole region
um
we're looking in traffic obviously there
will be some traffic impacts with any
change to the roadway and so we're
looking at where there may be
issues that mean we might medicate and
also kind of the rebalancing that's
going to occur with this with this
transit
service
and then the last point on here not the
least
environmental clearance and that also
informs the alternatives analysis
inform the planning and we'll continue
to inform our detailed design as we as
we move forward
so this is a really high level schedule
that aligns kind of with the federal
transit authorities administration sorry
uh
scheduled for
these big capital construction projects
so
we are entering this project into what's
called capital investments grant program
we are
in project development um which means we
basically entered the pipeline for
funding so that was kind of the stopping
point last year with the with the
concept and the alternatives analysis
now that does not mean that that's uh
fixed and and not able to change
that's just a start to the design
process as i mentioned so so right now
we're working on that 30 design which
should go through the end of this year
2022.
in 2023 we will work on
60 and then 100 design so this is where
we really get into the nitty-gritty
figure out the solutions to issues um
to
way more coordination and outreach and
we'll continue to have conversations
with community throughout
beyond that we expect
the grant funding and
other details to be figured out in early
2024
and construction
could take about two years so
we're expecting that service would begin
in 2027 um after construction and
testing of the service
so that's that high level timeline
and this is just um
kind of a picture
and
some quotes from people
that go to having good capital
university here and use the station or
the
current voter service which is lined to
establish here on drexel
so we currently koda currently serves
this community and
and these activity centers and we plan
to increase that service and really um
hopefully provide
even more for
for these students than others
so we're going to stop here and take
questions which you can follow link us
on social media and uh
links are there
bring the speakers back up
thank you everyone
so we have i believe some questions
online that we're going to take first
um and
maybe sam could you talk about the ones
that came to us before um the meeting
started today
yes
and then i would repeat back for our
online audience we didn't have some
folks turning in ahead of time thank you
for taking the time and attention to do
that
all right
the first question
is is link us a concept that has been
voted on or approved
if it's happening what should residents
be on the lookout for
so the question online was or the
question that came in ahead of time is
have
try to read it from here instead
hasn't been voted on has linked us as an
initiative been voted on and approved
and hopes the secondary if it's
happening what should residents be on
the lookout for
and so if it is happening
then what should residents be on the
lookout for i'm going to throw this one
over to kim sharp actually
sure
thanks good evening uh lincoln
is happening but just like a community
sustainability plan there's lots of bits
and pieces to it
it comes from many previous planning
documents that we've been working on
since the early 2000s and it's really
about
proactively managing the growth in the
region and so with that building upon
these planning efforts there's parts
that
can be paid for with existing resources
and departments that will need other
resources and we know we currently use
some federal funds from federal grants
for projects
this type of infrastructure will take
other federal infrastructure dollars and
of course those do require a local match
but
that is all packaging and trying to
understand how it works together and
it's really about what is that return on
investment so we're looking at that now
but thank you
thank you very much kim and i went ahead
and pulled up additional questions here
at ucl so another one that we uh
received was what are the major pros and
major cons to link up so um i believe we
can kind of divide and conquer on that
um zach talk a little bit about the pros
and cons it may be hard if you wanted to
add any additional commentary
yeah so it's really about creating more
options for everybody in eurasia as as
harvey showed you know
um it can be more difficult if you do
not know automobile uh currently today
but you know
in the future when we're adding even
more people here just having those more
options where you don't have to rely on
a vehicle to get around so um
i will add that um a lot of people see
one of the negatives of bus rapid
transit of course is a loss for
traveling to uh
car you know that cars can't use and
also the loss of parking
but what people don't realize is that
we're they're doing this for a mobile
shift for people to not have to use an
automobile in order to get to places
like that's like into downtown columbus
so
in practice it turns out that it really
doesn't impact traffic
a lot of people always have that fear it
turns out that there is any traffic
impact it's usually some order of just a
few minutes at most and it does get
people to come to different parts of our
community without having to get into a
car so the loss of traveling and parking
usually turns out to be
really
not as fast people think
thank you harvey um so another question
that came in ahead of time
is are the rapid bus lines a response to
population increases in columbus we
begin to talk a little bit about this
but just to make sure we've got it
addressed um zach can you just talk
about are are we doing this in response
to population increases
yes
we recognize that there's challenges now
with you know getting around with
transit but so building on what we have
but also preparing ourselves for the
future
thank you um i'm gonna throw this other
question so um is this a taxpayer-funded
project or has a city
received grant funding so we talked a
little bit about this a moment ago but i
want to make sure we've got this
addressed him
thank you coda's currently operates on a
voter approved sales tax initiative and
also along with fair
revenues and federal and state grants
and we know that this again this project
will require
an increase in those federal grand tasks
um and there will be more funding needed
for the high capacity transit corridors
but that is how we currently operate
all right we're fielding the online
questions as well so thank you guys for
your time and attention
on the youtube channel so one of the
questions that came in is how do i get
around with the bike in this kind of a
system
can i get my bike
onto off of
prt so i will let zach answer
yeah so we're really looking at this um
as pretty showed in different segments
based on our right-of-way
and we realized you know a lot of people
obviously a majority of people
walk
take a wheelchair or even ride their
bike to
to get to these station locations so
it's definitely part of what we're
looking at is providing access to all
people to get to these stations
now
the vehicles themselves so currently
are our 40-foot vehicles we don't have
that dedication in our region so
um if you board a bike uh today there's
two racks in the front that pulls up you
get from the bus and you pull down the
rack and you can there's two spaces for
bicycles
so
you know with what we're looking at for
this with the 60-foot articulated buses
a lot of systems we've seen have spaces
for bicyclists who roll their bicycles
on there team locked them up i'm just so
just speeding up that boarding time
instead of getting in front of the
vehicle and putting the rack down so
those are some things we look at as we
get further into design including the
logistics of the vehicle
thank you very much so we do have a
couple more questions
um so one of the questions and i don't
know harvey if you've got any insight on
this what is the annual reduction in co2
that we're expecting so if fully
implemented is there any guide posts or
any grading
i don't know if that's
reductions
yeah so we talk about
i don't have like a number of seats
right but i can say
that um the majority of code is vehicles
were diesel for a long time but we know
what that means um but we are converting
to all low or no emissions by 2025 no
emissions so we've been converting to
cng for many years and
our goal is to be
mostly all electric price on cng cng is
also no emission but the goal is no
emissions and that has a lot to
contribute to the greenhouse gas
reductions we know that the greenhouse
gas reductions in most regions about 70
percent is caused by transportation and
so just that in its own is a reduction
there was kind of a follow-up question
to that that is mostly answered and it
was will the vehicles be electric and or
are there plans for the vehicles to be
autonomous similar to the pilot with
smart columbus wonderful so another
question that came out online was
whether or not the
vehicles will be all electric and or
could it be autonomous such as the smart
columbus pilot
uh we started to answer that question
but did you want to add in any of that
okay previous expertise but um for east
maine and west drive currently we're not
exploring autonomous vehicles that being
said there are future other corridors
that could be looked at for that type of
technology
um
i know that there's a system in
connecticut called fast track that has a
bus way that has that type of technology
but it's something that code doesn't
want us to
research in the future
wonderful i have a couple more questions
here from online thank you guys again
for your engagement i appreciate it so
um somebody asked how do other
communities along the border feel about
this initiative well that's the good
news is we are on the point of really
having great conversations with a number
of the folks along the border so as a
member of the public engagement team i'm
sorry if i didn't mention my name
earlier mindy justice um i support um
others on the communications team and
we're working through what those
conversations mean they need different
things for different populations of
people
um so we've had a variety of engagements
we've had a variety of conversations and
i would say a lot of folks are excited
it's a little harder when we're at the
beginning of this project to say i want
this exactly so we're still getting that
that's something if that makes sense so
a lot of folks love it and a lot of
those are really excited to dig into it
when it gets to
the detailed design work is there
anything else anybody wanted to want to
put aside say about what
i'll just note that
for overall blink house we are talking
to all 37 jurisdictions in the code of
surplus area and it's really important
to hear from everybody to understand one
of your mobility goals what are your
priorities and it's it's true among most
communities that it's really a priority
to move the workforce
and to really help seniors be able to
get around
um and we're seeing a lot more high
school kids use
code of services to really have that
independence which is great so and we
work with all of the universities um
to make sure the students understand
that that ease of transportation so what
we're hearing is help us understand how
to move people around in an easier way
and it really is that is definitely key
to economic growth in the region
thank you kim i will um on this next
question i will get started and then um
i might have zach or free help me out a
little bit so what are the common
concerns coming for residents businesses
government and commuters and what are
your responses to these i would say the
good news is we haven't seen significant
concerns raised from a negativity
perspective but that also is because
we're also working through process dough
so we have some concerns at different
specific places station areas for
example you can really see that as you
get down into the degree the devil's in
the details so we get down to that we
have to have really good detailed
conversations and that tends to be more
where you can concern the service right
understanding what the dynamic of the
specific place on that road looks like
um you want to talk about those approach
on that you can touch on a little bit so
the challenge solution kind of
orientation around design
yeah so i would i would have
specifically a concern that we've heard
and
planned to address is about safety
um so in the design phase the initial
concept phase uh we did do a lot of
outreach to
communities all through the court or the
king's center uncle invest network
network we invited comments on an
interactive map and we also had
long-form uh virtual sessions
and uh a lot of the comments that were
received were around feeling safe at
stations and that was coming from riders
but also pedestrians in the corridor
area feeling safe crossing roads or just
even
accessing accessing the road on sideway
on sidewalks so part of our charges is
digging into that a little bit
understanding specifically
what makes you feel safe
and so that we can incorporate some of
that into our design things like
improving
improving lighting i mean improving the
widening uh the sidewalk and and for the
median um stations you know treatments
to make the crosswalks feel safer all of
those components and factors will be
incorporated in the design in the next
stage so at this point we really want to
hear from folks about what their
concerns are just
thank you i understand the mayor you
have a couple of questions coming in
from your channel yeah so one of the
questions i've received is um so on the
map it shows a stop at i believe drexel
in maine is there room for more stocks
in bexley is that something that
if there's interest might be
accommodated so the question is around
the preliminary station areas have
something around drexel around um
downtown bexley and couldn't even have
more than that
um so can you talk a little bit about
the amount of distance between stops and
that application on the
network sure
so
for bus rapid transit and rapid transit
options in general um we try and keep
station spacing to at least half mile um
half mile to a mile is preferable and
that's really to keep the speeds high
throughout the corridor
we do look at an overall service plan um
figuring out exactly the time between
stations and and also how that
integrates with existing service
but um
right now based on kind of those factors
of
uh existing connection to activity
centers population all the rest um
drexel's the only one flagged that is
not as i mentioned um
fixed and there's always opportunities
and
things that we'll learn about in the
future like new developments that are
coming that might uh give us some
impetus to look at adding station
exactly but we do want to keep at least
a half month
thank you very much and um i'll add that
if you did have a specific spot of
interest you know
let us know on social media
so that we can know what that input is
we're specifically we make the most
sense for you i'll add one more point um
zach did you want to talk about
improvements to
coming with brt and how that relates to
other potential network improvements
even if there is not an additional stop
in bexley could they get other
infrastructure investments
this entire region so this east main
street corridor project is one project
with an entire lincoln initiative so
really looking at making those
improvements to make those connections
to the corridors and then holistically
as well
the doors are closed
all right well mayor did you want to say
any closing words sure yeah
uh first off we want to thank everyone
who presented this evening and for all
the thought and energy that's been put
into this concept
um some of the questions i've had
eventually have revolved around
how do we support
a dedicated rapid transit lane in bexley
alongside on street parking alongside
the tight-knit pedestrian nature of our
of our downtown border those are
questions that we're still thinking
about so this public engagement piece is
really important um if you've noticed
the map showed
bexley potentially being
not a dedicated lane but i know that
there's interest from some members of
the community and having dedicated lane
i really want to hear from you guys i
know that our council wants to hear from
you and i hope that we have future
engagement opportunities as we continue
to talk through this uh so keep your
eyes on the vexy blast our social
channels and bexa.org where we'll
continue to provide updates on the leak
us planning and
see how this develops i'm excited about
what this means for our region i'm
excited about what this means for our
community
so thank you for engaging on this