Okay, so we're gonna call to um order our work session for today and let's do roll call from your end, uh Counselor Platt.

Steve here.

Megan Perkins, she her, Melanie Keeler, she heriley him, Ariel Amendez here, yeah.

Gina Fanzas, she her and Councilor Norse is running a little behind, but will be joining us shortly.

Started because we have a lot of good topics tonight.

So we're gonna start with our mobility program overview, please.

Well, they're teeing up the presentation.

I just wanted to let Council know we uh items uh one or two and three are connected.

So uh we have really beefed up our programs within our transportation mobility department.

So you're gonna hear from assistant city engineer Janet Ruby and Derek Hofffire, the mobility program manager about the programs that we offer in there.

It's nice entry point into transit, which is a an element of our travel options.

So I'll turn it over to Janet.

Hi there.

Thank you, Dan.

So I'll I can get started.

Janet Ruby, assistant city engineering transportation.

Good evening.

And I'm with Derek Hofbauer, our program manager, and we're gonna kick it off tonight talking a little bit about how our department staffing and um job tasks have changed as we've been implementing the transportation system plan.

So gosh, not quite 10 years ago, it was just Ty Combs and myself, and we were doing some version of the same job tasks, just at a much lower volume and with essentially no funding.

And so one of the um related to today's discussions uh that we worked on were citizen requests.

So that time we started gathering together, putting together some project ideas, we were able to get 25,000 in funding, which can do a few signing and striping projects, then we crafted that into the neighborhood street safety program, which ended up getting capital and then go bond funding and is now being built by our engineering group.

We also started the speed radar sign program at that time.

And then our as we implemented, I'll go through the two.

As we um adopted our transportation system plan, we added our low stress network, we um changed to designing beach streets, and then we also got some funding for projects.

So we brought uh Robin Lewis on board, she came over from growth management, who is now retired, then we um added Sinclair Burr and Brad Tower who work on projects, and those projects range from signal timing projects, pedestrian push-button projects, ceiling bridge decking to buffered bike lanes and now uh paving a gravel street with a grant.

We also added Aaron Ritter, who works on CAD design, um, bringing that in-house saves considerably and improved quality for our pavement preservation project.

And then now that we added Derrick last fall, six months, I think it's been and we're hiring a new planner, and that's really to work on I call it the people side.

So they're working on education and safety and increasing the options for people to walk, or actually kind of encouraging more people to walk bike and ride the bus.

And those two positions were funded by the transportation utility fee, and they are also in our transportation system plan to help the projects.

It's not all about just building things, it's also changing behavior.

So with the addition of those two positions, we've achieved kind of a milestone with our transportation plan polls.

Then moving on to our tasks.

We talked a little bit about our service requests and technical services that we've been doing, moving into the project work and what we've added with uh also transportation utility fee is walkway and bikeway projects that were just starting to scope and we'll be building this year and into next year, and also a number of crosswalks that you see throughout town.

We started developing standards for marking them.

We evolved to adding uh rapid flashing beacons and traffic separation medians, and I didn't get account yet.

Our um OPM group is just working on telling that when they're doing the um walking and biking inventory.

So hopefully soon.

And then our programs, before I hand it over to Derek, I just wanted to touch on we get a lot of questions from the community about why are you spending um time trying people to walk, bike and ride the bus.

And really, that is one of the um measures and action items in our transportation system plan as a way to accommodate all the people that are moving here and then give the people who are here better options.

So we we know people are driving, and we're gonna continue to make driving and operational improvements, but we also want to make it easier for people to walk while you had the bus.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Derek to talk about how he's already started doing that.

Right.

Hey everyone, uh Ms.

Derek Hoffbaris, I'm the new mobility programs manager at the city of Bend.

Uh before that, I was over at CET working with Bob Townsend behind me.

Um innovating the transit system, spent about eight years there, and before that, I was working on large-scale travel behavior change programs through a lot of different neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest.

So a lot of experience working on this, really.

Our goal is to expand travel options, and what does that mean?

It means we're providing opportunities for our residents, our visitors to be able to more easily to connect to their destination.

So when I say travel options, that's walking, biking, rolling, um, riding the bus, parkouring, vampuling, anything that's not in a single-occupant vehicle.

And you know, we've seen from some of the MPO's traffic data that uh a little over half of all trips in Bend are less than three miles.

So that's a pretty easy biking distance.

A quarter of all trips are under one mile.

So those are trips that you know could be done by walking and rolling.

So we're here to get out to the community, we're doing events, we're doing wayfinding, um, we have a safe route to school program where we work with commute options.

Really, it's talking to community members, getting them at getting them educated about all the new infrastructure that's coming into place, where there's you know, separated bike facilities, where it's safe to bike and walk, where are our paths located?

So it's a it's a big lift for our team, but we're really excited to you know join this initiative and really start to move the dial in terms of getting more people to bike, walk and roll to their destinations.

And I'll touch a little bit on bike share and mobility hubs later, but really we're also using the data, you know, we're looking at increasing safety, potentially lowering speeds, um, and trying to make sure that our residents and our visitors feel safe when they're out on our streets.

Um, so some of the main objectives, you know, we want to build awareness of travel options, these new facilities that we're building with the GoBond funds, um, and we're wanting people to use those facilities.

So we're out there um doing outreach.