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MPO TPC/TAC Board Minutes - 10/24/2007CITY CLERK'S OFFICE M S Date By ime TRANSPORTATION POLICY COMMITrE--E-(TPC) MEETING WICHITA FALLS METROPOLITAN PLANNING ORGANIZATION October 24, 2007 Present: Lanham Lyne, City of Wichita Falls, Mayor, Chairperson ♦ Members Charles Elmore, City of Wichita Falls, City Council Representative Dennis Wilde, NORTEX Regional Planning Commission, Director Jeff Watts, City of Pleasant Valley Michael Smith, City Council Representative Scott Taylor, City of Wichita Falls, Director of Public Works Steven Halloway, Lakeside City Woodrow (Woody) Gossom, Wichita County Judge, Vice - Chairperson Carolyn Askins, TxDOT, Transportation Planner II ♦ Staff Donnie Arbeau, WFMPO, Transportation Planner II John Burrus, City of Wichita Falls, Director of Aviation, Traffic & Transportation Lin Barnett, WFMPO, Transportation Planning Director Danny Brown, TxDOT, TP &D Director ♦ Ex- officio Jon Moller, Stakeholder ♦ Guests Nora Zarate Hodges, NORTEX Regional Planning Commission Larry Tegtmeyer, TxDOT, District Engineer ♦ Absent I. Welcome & Introduction Mayor Lyne called the meeting to order at 8:31 a.m. II. Review and Approval of the July 25th Transportation Policy Committee's (TPC) Meeting Minutes Mayor Lyne asked for comments and changes to the minutes. None were made. He then asked for a motion to approve the minutes. Mr. Watts motioned to approve and Mr. Wilde seconded the motion. The minutes were unanimously approved. III. Review and Comment Regarding the Technical Advisory Committee's (TAC's) October 10th Meeting Minutes - No Action Required Mayor Lyne asked for comments on the October 10`h TAC minutes. Mr. Barnett commented that WICHITA FALLS MPO TPC MEETING October 24, 2007 PAGE 1 the majority of the TAC meeting was spent prioritizing the 2007 -2008 Surface Transportation Projects List. No further comments were made. IV. Review and Approval of the Corrections to the Year 2000 Urbanized Area Boundary (UZA Boundary) Mr. Arbeau began by describing the process required by the TxDOT Transportation Planning and Programming Division (TPP) in Austin, Texas to make the Wichita Falls 2000 Urbanized Area Boundary, or UZA, conform to the MPO Place Boundary. He stated there were some small corrections that needed to be made that would incorporate two new urbanized areas with the MPO boundary and would exclude one rural area to the south of the MPO boundary. This would help the UZA conform better to the city limits boundaries. Mayor Halloway asked what the impact would be to the urbanized areas. Mr. Arbeau stated the addition of the two new areas within the MPO boundary would transition the rural roads located there into urban roads, and in the area to be deleted, the urban roads would revert back to rural roads again. He also explained that the removal of part of Lake Wichita was necessary for accurate population density calculations. Mr. Arbeau stated the approval of the minutes would be sufficient proof to TPP that the corrections had been made. Mr. Barnett commented that if the need arose to expand the MPO boundary then his staff would find justification and present it to TAC and TPC for further discussion. Mayor Lyne asked for a motion to approve the corrections to the Wichita Falls 2000 UZA boundary. Mr. Taylor made the motion to approve. Councilor Smith seconded the motion, which passed unanimously. V. Review and Approval of the Prioritized 2007/2008 Surface Transportation Projects List Generated from the September 2007 Environmental Justice Public Meetings Mr. Barnett explained how his staff and the TAC committee had produced the project list. He stated that two public meetings were held in September allowing the public an opportunity to review old and new projects on the list and to submit projects of their own for consideration. Mr. Barnett stated that the TAC committee worked to distill the list down to mobility projects only or reconstruction /rehabilitation projects of major importance to the MPO area. He stated that all projects for the past three years (since the beginning of the prioritized list) were accounted for in a separate Excel spreadsheet where they were listed as either Preventive Maintenance Projects, Completed Projects, Under Construction or "Let', or Non - Feasible with supporting reasons. He also commented that the TAC committee reasoned that it would be best to send memos to both the Public Works Director and to the TxDOT Transportation Planning and Development Director listing Preventive Maintenance projects that needed to be removed from the current list and included in their respective maintenance project's lists. This would help to narrow down the current list to mobility projects primarily. Mr. Barnett explained the ranking system and how each project was scored. He stated the list was now ready for committee review and revision. Mayor Lyne commented that he would like to see the Turtle Creek Road project (WF -18) move from a MEDIUM ranking to a HIGH ranking. Mr. Taylor commented there would be a `T' intersection located at the first turn once a proposed road comes out of the Canyon Trails subdivision. Mayor Lyne commented that this was the road he received the most calls about and that it was also being looked at from a safety perspective. Mr. Taylor stated the importance of this road and Taft was great enough to include them in the City's Capital Improvement Plan or CIP. The consensus of the committee was to move this WICHITA FALLS MPO TPC MEETING October 24, 2007 PAGE 2 project into the HIGH category. Mr. Taylor stated the WF -17 Taft Blvd. project was equally as important as the Turtle Creek Road project and that it should be moved into the HIGH category as well. Discussion then centered around the opening of the new Wal -Mart over on Hwy 79 and the importance of the project EJ -21, which is currently ranked as MEDIUM. Mayor Lyne asked for a motion to approve the prioritized 2007/2008 Surface Transportation Projects List with revisions. Councilor Smith made the motion to approve. Mayor Halloway seconded the motion, which passed unanimously. VI. Other Business: A. Discussion & Overview of Progress on Local Transportation Projects — City and TxDOT staff (Quarterly Review) TxDOT Report: Mr. Brown reported the new Falls Flyover interchange is progressing and is scheduled to open on November 13, 2007; the northbound US 287 going to westbound US 82 section will be delayed because of rougher than anticipated ride that must be fixed; the Kell West extension has let, but construction will not start until after the first of the year; Loop 11 is ready to go with a few utilities left to move, but not until after the first of the year. City Report: Mr. Taylor reported that the Loop 11 utility relocation for the Loop 11 extension will be complete by November 2007; there are nine other utility improvement projects currently under construction; in the future, Kell West Extension utility relocation will be let in November 2007; traffic flow improvements: construct left turn lanes at Kemp and Midwestern Parkway, Maplewood and Elmwood, Elmwood and Southwest Parkway; 10th Street, Harrison and Speedway intersection will be receiving faux brick concrete pavement to replace existing brick structure; Lawrence Road transfer station bridge will be constructed across Quail Creek Channel that will allow transfer trucks access to Maplewood and Lawrence Road at the signalized intersection (January 2008); a street rehabilitation City wide mill and overlay project that will let in January 2008; a city -wide designated alley rehabilitation project scheduled for March 2008; the Maplewood Phase II 4 -lane construction from Kemp to Lawrence Road with drainage improvement scheduled for March 2008; Gregg Road and Langford Road scheduled to reconstruct Gregg Road from Southwest Parkway to Langford Road and Langford from Gregg Road to Barnett Road in May 2008; there are 10 other utility projects scheduled for 2008 and 8 drainage improvement projects. B. MPO Quarterly Financial Report (3rd Quarter FY 2007 — April, May, June) Mr. Barnett reported that the expenses should reach the minimum 75% expenditure requirement for PL -112 funds. He stated that the Socioeconomic Forecast Study update was beginning to show up in monthly invoices and should help in meeting the goal. Mr. Barnett then informed everyone that a public meeting was scheduled for November 12, 2007 at the Public Library for 6:30 p.m. to allow anyone interested to come out and discuss the components of the study. He stated that there were two open transit grants with a third (FY 2008) in the process of being opened. There were no other comments. WICHITA FALLS MPO TPC MEETING October 24, 2007 PAGE 3 C. Transit Study Progress Report Mr. Barnett informed the committee that the City had received the final report from the consultant Moore and Associates, Inc. in California and that Mr. Burrus, Mr. Burket and he had reviewed and submitted their evaluation of the report to the City Manager. He then asked Mr. Burrus to discuss the report further with the committee. Mr. Burrus stated there were three areas of great concern to the staff. First, the financial calculations for implementing their system were greatly underestimated by several thousand dollars. M & A recommended only 2 buses to start up a paratransit system. Staff, through much research, determined it would take at least 8 buses with another 2 for a spare ratio. Second, the report did not serve some of the key areas of the city. Mr. Burrus then gave several examples. Third, none of the routes reduced the headways (the time to complete one circuit) to within two to three minutes of one another and none them approached thirty- minute headways. He then gave examples of this problem. Mr. Burrus stated that his department would present the M & A plan, but that he and his staff would also present an alternative plan that would better utilize existing and possible new assets. He stated there would be at least three public meetings to garner input on both plans before implementation of either one. Once meetings have been completed in December and January, Mr. Burrus stated he hoped to take the issue to Council by the first of February. No other comments were made. D. Calendar Year 2008 Meeting Schedule Mr. Barnett presented the meeting schedule for calendar year 2008. The calendar was accepted as presented. No other comments were made. E. Other Mr. Barnett stated that he added a last minute report from the Traffic Superintendent, Mark Beauchamp that illustrated the time delay savings, in dollars, from the implementation of the new traffic control patterns on the Brook Street traffic corridor. This would not have been possible if the TPC board members had not approved the purchase of the software, hardware and training needed that the MPO presented to the board members at last year's July TPC meeting. Traffic Control has been able to implement a traffic control pattern on Brook that is saving an estimated $170,000 per year in travel time savings based on the Value of Time Index published by TxDOT in 2005 of $17.80 per vehicle hour. As the cost of oil increases, these time delay savings should increase as well. He stated that each intersection will eventually be optimized over time. Mr. Brown updated the committee on the availability, or lack thereof, of mobility funding for the State of Texas and how it would affect the MPO as a whole. He stated that money continues to move from mobility categories into rehabilitation /reconstruction categories at an escalating pace. He explained that most of the Prop 14 bond money has been used up, that construction costs have risen 62% since 2001, but revenues have risen by only about 1 or 2 %. He stated that the state as a whole had to "put on hold" $958 million worth of projects and the Wichita Fall's share of this amount was $27 million. There were three mobility jobs to consider and TxDOT decided to save the Kell West Main Lanes project while putting on hold the Holliday overpass at FM 368 and the WICHITA FALLS MPO TPC MEETING October 24, 2007 PAGE 4 expansion of US 277 into 4 -lanes in Baylor County that ties into Knox County. Mr. Brown stated that TOOT has been alerted that an additional $500 million will also have to be put on hold in the near future. The hope is that this additional $500 million will not affect the Kell West project. He stated the FM 890 project will not be built with mobility money. It will have to be funded in some other way. State Hwy 79 is also in a similar predicament. VII. Public Comment on Anything Not on the Agenda Mr. Moller asked if Mayor Lyne had any information concerning the landscaping on Kell at the Falls Flyover. Mayor Lyne stated that council had approved a plan to do landscaping and that information could be obtained from Parks and Recreation. VIII. Adjourn The meeting adjourned at 9:45 a.m. Honorable Lanham Lyne Mayor Wichita Falls WICHITA FALLS MPO TPC MEETING October 24, 2007 PAGE 5