Got it before.

So then we dig into your capital infrastructure.

Um, you guys have an amazing transfer station.

The buses are actually in really great condition, but we looked at your shelters, um, your polls.

What can we do out at the shelters to make them more attractive to bring amenities so that we protect our people when they're out waiting for the bus to come?

So you have an inventory in your report of your existing um capital pieces.

Then, of course, we look at ridership.

This is the number one thing that all transit managers look at.

Um you can see the trends on the top left.

We went back to 2015 to the old study.

Um, there is a dip in ridership for uh the COVID era, which every transit agency in the United States had had that craziness happening.

Also, what's a little bit unique is you guys um typically have your highest ridership in late summer and fall.

Um, there's a dip in the winter months, which is also not a shocker with bad weather, people just don't go out as much.

Um, but for 10 years, five years, that trend has been the same.

You know what I mean?

So planning on that in the future, you know your biggest ridership is going to be in that fall, and making sure that we plan appropriately when that happens.

Before I go into goals, any questions you guys just about this first data that were in the report.

All right, we're gonna keep tracking here then.

So every plan starts out with goals and objectives.

Um the biggest uh message that we heard from the PTEC from the Commonweagement is we need to make sure we get out to our community, we need to listen to our members, we need to listen to our people that use our service.

So we um old council, we were here interviewing you.

It was a long time ago, but um, you guys are a big piece of this, you represent your neighborhoods and your groups, and so we're very grateful for the time.

Um, we had many, many stakeholders.

We were also out at the transfer station.

We had open houses, and you know, truly it's it's wonderful to see that the community is very involved in Columbia.

We work in some areas where they're not, and so it's really great that they come out.

Sometimes they have a lot to say, sometimes they just want to hear what's going on, and you definitely get a mix, but the main thing is they care about their service, and that's what we care about.

Uh planning priorities.

So when we talk to our community to our stakeholders, some of the main questions that we wanted to share just as a summary is number one says, How what do you think is more important?

A or B.

A is run buses more frequently on existing routes, and B add or extend routes to new destinations.

And remember, when this study was going on, we had moved from 45 minute headways to 90 headways.

So it's not a surprise that there was a strong preference for people just to have more frequent bus service.

We anticipated that, but it certainly is what we heard from the folk.

Number two, um, we gave another comparison, serve as much of Columbia as we can, or um concentrate in high ridership areas.

Um this one kind of scored in the middle.

So some people do want more, but some people were okay just looking at the core of Columbia.

Uh, the third call out we just wanted to talk about mentioned was add more service during the peak period.

So we're busiest in the morning and the afternoon, or add more service during the off-peak time and the nights and the weekends.

Now, this one a little bit different is there was a very strong preference for people to have service in the evening and on the weekends.

Um that's a very common response with many transit studies, but when you guys have had a major change from 45 minutes to 90s, we didn't know where that was going to shake out when we went out to the community.

Yes, ma'am.

How many?

How many people did you have participating in this?

Ooh, I don't know.

I might have to get back with you.

I mean, I can easily say from council to stakeholders to people that were at the open house.

I could at least say we had a hundred from different that there were many over several different times.

Um, but I say a hundred at each event with feedback, but I do know we went out for surveys too, and it was well, you know, well above a hundred, but just off the top.

I can get you an exact answer on another day, but sorry, I don't know what off the top of my head.

The ballpark is close enough.

Number three really surprises me.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, and sometimes we never know.

Yeah, I guess I didn't know.

And the last one we wanted to just call out for the presentation for you all is um options of routes that travel quickly but with fewer destinations, often requiring you to walk a little bit further, versus routes that serve many destinations directly that cause the route to be very slow.

So your bus is stopping at many different stops.

Strong preference for frequent frequent trips.

Give me there as fast as I can.

And so that that was the preference from what we heard in the community.

And on the right hand side is just the picture of the different dots that you can see that people answered to give us those summary answers.

So then what did we learn and the key takeaways?

Um there was a general agreement that the services are more limited than they should be.

And again, we're at the 90 minute headways when we did much of this outreach.

Um, but given our city's size, uh, the expectation from our community is that people want more.

And so that will continue to drive where you guys are going in the future.

Uh, number two bullet um recruitment and retention of staff is a high priority.

Um, make sure we we're a place that people want to come and work, that that we do amazing things and we want our our staff to feel feel that too.

The last bullet talks about the current routes, um, they make sense and they do serve key destinations that many of our riders do want to go to.

So that's a good thing for our staff to hear that they've done a great job on the route planning themselves.

And as you guys know, major destinations, shopping and workplaces and medical facilities are usually your top.

Yes, sir.

Um, this is actually more for shade.

This is more for shade.

Um, given that this information is roughly a year old, where are we at as far as staffing for bus drivers?

Um I don't mind brought that information, probably.

As of today, we have 29 full-time uh drivers that's both CDL and class E.

We have four part-time drivers.

We have one driver that's on boarding right now, and three that are in the process of being hired.

Okay, and what's what what are the what would be full staffing?

Four.

Four total.

40 total full time.

That adds up, what is that added up to 35?

Yep.

Okay.

36.

If we could maintain a uh a census of 36 consistently, we could start thinking about changing our timing.

Okay, but that's gonna take some time.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah, really great question, like where we've come.

And Mike, your lowest staffing level during scraping, what was that?

About 25.

25 was his answer.

So you can't even make pullouts in the morning and the afternoon, which that's never where any transit agency wants to be.

But if you don't have people, we don't have buses, so yeah.

Yep.

So good news to be where um where we are, probably 90% um capacity for staff.

So a hundred's where we want to be, and we're close.

So good news.

Okay, then we go on to talk about the vision that was established and what we heard from all of our stakeholders.

Uh, number one, focus on recruitment of staff.

Um, I think that we you'll hear that a lot in this message.

Number two, uh meet the needs of our riders who need transit service.

So make sure we're serving our transit-dependent population and they get what they what they want as financially feasible as we can make it happen.

Um, number three, prioritize near-term actions, or we had called them short-term, improving services, frequencies, and the hours of service.

Number four, make sure that we align the long-term transit vision with what we see and what is developing within the community of Columbia.

And then number five, it says make sure we're taking advantage of opportunities to add county level and regional services.

Um, because as you all know, there is a need for transit service outside of Columbia in our periphery area, and then also in Boone County.

And so, how can we make sure we're serving um serving all of our community?

Can I ask a question there?

Yes, sir.

Can you fill that out more what that what that might look like when you're talking about county level and regional services?

We're getting there.

You're dot dot dot.

Yes.

No, don't leave alone.

Great question coming up coming soon.

Um, what were our goals and strategies for service concepts?

So we had many ideas, you guys.

We have many things that are um wonderful ideas for Columbia, but we needed to make sure that when we have this entire bucket of ideas that we're narrowing, narrowing those so that they're feasible and financially feasible.

So taking all of that piece that we we focused on near-term concepts, which is at the bottom of the slide at long term.

So we have budget neutral scenarios, so we would just keep doing what we're doing today, and then we have those incremental changes that go to long term that align with what we're seeing at our peer agencies, but also align with what our community said that they want to have.

One example of this for service.

We had heard do people want more frequent service or do they want more coverage?

So the map on the left hand side shows that you have six routes or five routes, one, two, three, four, five, six, six routes that are serving this.

You would have frequent service in this particular map.

If you spread out your service, then this is a very different concept with different headways.

And so, what did our community say they want?

The one on the left with more frequent service.

Now, you will hear some of our feedback as the report is written that we do want more regional service too.

So there's how do we do both?

Well, just a little more money, that's all that comes down to, but we still have to prioritize.

You know, we do all of this work, we hear from our folk.

What does that really mean that we can do and make things happen?

So overall, um, implementation takes time, and no one wants to hear that we can't flip a switch even though everybody wants to, but it takes time to gather funding if it's a new funding source.

It takes time, as Mike said, to hire staff.

So we are two years post-COVID mostly, and we're just getting there.

So just making sure that when we go out into the community, we're very realistic for people to say we're gonna make this happen as soon as we can, but please know it does take time for us, you know, to make it happen.

Um, so bullet one says operate and maintain services and our infrastructure.

So we have a great service today.

We need to make sure that baseline is taken care of from our buses to our drivers to our riders, you know, make sure we're maintaining what we have.

Then as we build and receive new funding, we can build on top of that to get where we want to go.

Number two, purchase capital resources, bus, bus shelters, buildings, um, you know, buses this day and age are 700,000 per vehicle.

If they're an e-bus, electric bus or other, they're over a million dollars now.

So if we don't have a garage to park those in, how's that work out, guys?

Not very well.

The life of the vehicle just significantly decreases.

So when we are looking at capital resources, everybody says and we do need new vehicles, but we've got to make sure we have the infrastructure to have those here too.

Then the third one hire and retain high performing employees, um, provide safe, reliable, and customer friendly transportation service.

Um, train, train, train your people.

That is one of our diehards that outreach in my 30 years of doing this crazy world that you can never have too much training, even at 30 years, I learned something new every day.

Um, but if we hire good people and they're they're here for the right reason, and we know that we're gonna have good transit service on the road.

So, tier one, you guys.

So this slide is a summary of a whole um whole section in your report.

And tier one, I'm gonna read you the note on the very right hand side, this bottom right-hand corner, it says you will not see a change in the route map.

So there's nothing new for routes in this tier one, and as you know, um, the summary table says baseline.

So this is what we're doing.

Um, we have weekday, Saturday and Sunday, these are hours.

Tier one, we don't see a lot of change with hours.

Frequency, 45 and 90, 45, 90, but you guys see day and evening, we would have evening service moving to tier one.

And again, this is a whole chapter in your report, so it's just a summary slide.

How many buses would we have out there?

Six, three on the weekend, um, zero and so no Sunday service yet.

Um, we're moving to tier one, six plus three in the evening, three, we don't have Sunday yet in tier one.

Now, today on our baseline service, 20,000 revenue hours.

When we move to tier one, we're adding almost a little over 4,000 hours.

What does that mean?

It means buses on the road so that we can get folk.

Now, of course, if you move from 20,000 hours to 24, that's an increase in costs.

Um, so we've got to figure out the funding to make that happen.

But as you guys can see, this is baby steps to get to where we want to go.

So a summary of that, and the big piece is people were like, Well, I don't see any change on the map.

Well, they're right, there isn't a change in tier one because it's putting more frequent service out, which is what we heard from our community.

Can I ask you really quick?

Yes, um, when we're referring to evening, when does that like 90 minute when is the recommendations for when it's the 45 minute and when it's switch over to the 90 minute?

When we have uh let me uh let's see.

The are you talking for the exact time of day or like when the idea is it's kind of after Gilway from work and then or like how late did we start that?

Usually it's right at between six and seven, Shane.

When do you guys do your is that still your shift right now?

640, so it's kind of like what our existing is for baseline and then 640 to 1025.

Yeah, evening and usually there's one bus that's still rotating, like you have one a little bit later driver, and then it'll shift into those evening, and then your schedule may change, so you may have evening service versus like your daytime schedules.

Yeah, great question.

I also have a question.

We're we're comparing it to baseline.

Are we currently at baseline service?

No, right, right.

So it this would be assumption of this would be uh an improvement over baseline and baseline would be an improvement over current service.

Yes, so it's a significant improvement over current service, correct?

And how close are we to baseline today, though?

Much closer than when we're a driver what might stand with 36.

I heard you and you count it 35.

Well, and what we've noticed is it kind of goes like this.

And so if all of the folks were trying to onboarding right now get on board, we'd be at 37.

Historically, you won't get all three, and you'll lose a couple and you'll gain one, and you'll gain three and you'll lose two.

And so at the end of this, we're gonna come forward with what I call kind of a state of transit council report at a future meeting to kind of show you what that's looked like since we combined routes.

We wanted to get kind of get through the transit study first and then come forward with that, but we'll show you that along with ridership and what we're seeing in parentransit and that sort of thing.

Because is your thought that you want to have a certain um amount of months of full of at least the 35, 36 or whatever before we feel confident?

Yes, the the major reason when we combine routes, we wanted to get back to fully staffed and be there for six months, something like that.

Because the last thing I want to do is uncombine routes, lose drivers, and then combine routes again.

So I need to have some kind of level of comfort with where we're at, and we haven't even gotten back there yet.

And so that's really the trick is how long do I wait before wait on combine routes?

But like I said, the last thing I want to do is go back and forth because that's that's what our biggest concern when we combined routes was our inability to provide that service, and then when it breaks, it doesn't break evenly.

Meaning I'd be combining two routes over here and providing the same service over there, depending on how much staff I had.

So that'll let that gave us some cushion to continue to provide consistent service that everyone could at least count on.

And Shane, in that report, when you're doing will you also show because you you just mentioned the example of the three that you're potentially going to be bringing on.

Will you also show when we lost?

You know, like kind of like how long they you know, everything when we've lost drivers versus when yeah, and in very very general terms for obvious reasons, right?

Some of the reasons that that's the case because it varies quite a lot of it.

Okay, we've got Betsy and then Valerie have questions.

Um, do we have any idea why this that we are having such continuing to struggle on hiring and keeping drivers?

Uh first thing I tell you, it's a nationwide problem.

If you Google transit and staffing, you'll find lots of places that are doing similar things to what we're doing at different levels.

Okay.

Um, so that's part of it.

Um, I also think that at the price point, you know, where drivers should pay, they have other options of things that they can go do, and there's there's quite a heavy process.

It isn't just being a commercial have a having a commercial driver's license, but there's a whole other level of scrutiny, background check, um, medical check, things like that, and we lose some folks in that process, whether it's the time it takes to get through that process.

If you can imagine not having having a job and trying to get to that process and having an offer to go someplace else, we lose some folks that way.

Um, and some of it is just not wanting to deal with that, or not being able to be qualified one way or another.

And all of our drivers need to be CBL drivers, uh everyone except we have a class E position, but they can only drive paratransit vans.

Okay.

So in order to drive a fixed route bus, you have to have a CDL.

And is that because of the length of the bus?

Or what partly number of people you're carrying?

There's a variety of factors, but yeah, that's the main one.

Is there any way to change the way we do things where we don't have to have CVL drivers?

You still have to have qualified drivers.

I mean, they need to know what they're doing, but is there a way not to make them all CBR?

It's a it is it's a federal requirement, and the thing we hear a lot just to hit that off the pass is why we buy the size of the bus that we do.

Yeah, all that's federally funded, and so heavily federally funded.

And so those are the buses you can use the grants to buy.

So buying something else you'd be buying on your own.

So wouldn't something else be cheaper?

And then we could actually get drivers.

I mean, are we sort of getting stuck in this whole the federal government is making providing these and making all these rules that we can't match what we need to?

I mean, it's just a it's it wouldn't be there, it wouldn't be dramatically cheaper to go to a smaller okay.

So I think from an economics perspective, we're doing exactly what the best thing we can from that perspective, and that's why you see that all over the country, the same kind of same kind of issues at different levels depending on how much local funding is infused into transit, how much state funding she's gonna talk about a little bit then as we go along.

That's a big factor in all this is funding, it all comes down to funding, I think.

Thanks.

Oh, kind of make this more cover.

Um talking about uh staffing on an average date, we'll have anywhere two to five drivers that'd be the call and snake or out for vacations or whatever.

Um so that automatically reduces the number that we can put on road on a daily basis.

Another factor that is not often thought about is that um the average age of a bus driver is about 47 years of age, and so we're attracting people who are getting close to the end of their career, not necessarily the beginning of their career.

So I have one driver right now that's leaving in October.

Uh, what driver that is put in the retirement papers for January?

Yeah, I have three others that are eligible today if they choose to do that.

So there's a lot of factors, but that aging workforce is something that is gonna be really something to deal with in the future for translating.

Yeah, and I'll just point out too you have a good section in the report where it talks about kind of the nationwide trend on staffing and recruitment and what other places are doing.

So I'm assuming that we're kind of taking some lessons learned from those pure cities.

Someone else got a value.

Yeah, can you tell me the map here for baseline?

Or I guess this is the tier one map.

Um, is baseline with the um combined routes or with the routes that we want to have.

So tier one is going back to what we provided before we combined routes, so 45 minute turnarounds, and then we've extended in tier one.

They've also extended hours later during the week and on the weekends.

Baseline is both the 90 minutes and the combined.

So the way the study was done, it was we they wanted to show tier one through four, but they kind of talked about a tier zero or whatever, and that was just to get back to baseline, staff backup, uncombined routes, get back to where we were before we did that, and then build from there.

How long do we think it will take to get to tier zero?

The old baseline.

Um a lot of it's gonna depend on staffing.

Well, so we've been working since the time we've combined, and um, at no point have I been fully staffed, and at no point have I been comfortable done combined routes because of my fear of them up and down.

Fully staffed plus six months, whatever that math comes out to.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

I was just gonna add one other uh thought to the oh, there's a never-ending question about size of buses, and um councilwoman, you had just asked, you know, why don't we get smaller vehicles?

Um you can always buy smaller vehicles, but you can only fit so many people in there, and then you have to run another bus right behind it, which is another driver.

And so there's all this yin and yang that if you would ever choose in the city to go to smaller vehicles, your capacity issues will become a challenge, and then you will be needing more drivers to actually meet the capacity, so many agencies to uh look at that.

Um, because if you can't have a cheaper bus, cheaper buses have to be replaced more often, they usually have a five or a seven seven-year vehicle life.

They usually have a five or a seven seven year vehicle life.

Um, your buses have a 12-year vehicle life cycle right now, so lots of things in that tiny question that you asked that to be considered, you know, with uh good question.

Anyone else?

All right, we're gonna keep going, guys.

So tier two building uh building on baseline uh tier one we just talked about, and then tier two, and there is a change to the map, which is a which is a good thing.

Um, but I'll start with the service hours again.

Um you can see we start a little bit earlier, so go until 12 or sorry, 10 uh 10 30 at night.

We do have Saturday service, we don't have Sunday yet, so in tier two frequencies, we are going daytime to evening, so 30 minute service.

Who can wait for that?

Bring it on, and we're gonna, you know, that's it.

Uh, this is what people will look forward to.

This is what we want to see.

Saturday service, we have service every hour.

Want to see that too.

Still no Sunday service again.

The number of buses, as you guys can see during the daytime, you'd have nine out on the road, and in the evening, you'd have six with those service hours.

Look at our jump here, though.

We go from 24,000 annual hours with tier one to just under 40,000.

So you're basically doubling.

So you can imagine that doubles a budget.

We have to have the vehicles to do that too.

So it is a big jump.

This is what we heard from our community, so this is what we want to be aiming towards.

Okay.

Can I ask you a quick?

Oh, it's over here.

Yes.

Going on.

So this is just something I I kind of noticed on the last slide, and I'm noticing on this one because you're gonna reference a little bit the funding needs for um the VRHs.

Um, this number is different than what's in the report.

Um, at least I am fairly certain this is the most recent report.

I have like third, not that it's that big of a jump, but it I have 38,474 in the report that was at 308 or 38.

Okay.

And then similarly to the last one, because you had mentioned 24,000 or 23,000 in the report.

Oh, okay.

I'm glad to know.

Yeah, thank you for telling me we shouldn't have a difference, like in the final report.

So if there's a change, then so sorry about that.

But we should have had the numbers and the final report.

I do know we looked at a few changes because we did get comments back from council.

So this may be the updated, but I'll need to check.

I don't want to tell you all, but I'll just tell me which one is presentation or report.

Thank you.

Well, we'll get we'll get it fixed.

Yeah, I'm so sorry.

Thank you for finding good eagle eye.

Um, however, just to just to note that still doubling our our hours, which is the big piece of that.

Um, if you look at our frequent service, the 30 minutes, do you love to see that on Broadway?

Would love to see that on Broadway.

So again, you guys, this is a great goal to have.

Um, you know, we we want to continue to strive toward this.

Um, the specifics of this again are in the chapter for tier two, and uh this is a media goal.

We would love to see this happening within five years.

Now, all of that is we've got to get to baseline, we've got to get to tier one, and then we need to get to tier two, so you guys can see the time that it will take us to get there.

But again, your community is asking us to make sure we have representation of what their vision is for the future.

So questions on tier two summary.

Okay, then we happen to have an alternative because we did want to, we did want to have some options, and this goes to council uh councilman.

Your question about more regional service and employment driven um service.

Um, so this tier two uh talks about a purple route that is added to not necessarily a high density area, but we've got a pocket of high employment along that corridor, and how do we get our people to work and get them home again?

So this alternative does include a purple route that serves um the Paris Road of Route B corridor.

The difference by adding that is not all of our buses would meet at the transfer station at the same time.

There'd be like a 15 or a 20 minute wait.

Um, but they do go to the same location, so you could transfer buses, um, which is good.

But it does it does give you.

Oh, I thought we had a map of the purple.

I think it's later on, you guys.

I'm sorry, I thought I had one in here, but it's not in here.

Um, but we do want to make sure that there is an option that if there is funding that becomes available to help us serve our employment destinations in the community, that we at least have the costs and the hours in there to get there.

Can I clarify on that?

Because one of the things I believe we've heard in the past about that was about that third shift and did do these times meet those needs of the third shift.

Okay.

They would they would meet one end of the because typically third shift may be 11 p.m.

to seven or a 10 to 6, you know, depending on who the manufacturers are or whatever business.

So we could serve somebody getting there.

We might be able to get them off if they have an eight-hour shift, but if they have a 10 there, you know, or a shorter one, they wouldn't.

Or if their shift is midnight to eight or midnight to six, we could get them in the morning, but we might not be able to get them there at night.

That often happens.

Yeah, great, green.

Yeah, that I thought we had heard back from I don't know if it was employers or from Ready at one point, um, that the employers were operating their own shuttles for the um Route B corridor.

But the thing that they struggled with was um getting in candidates for job interviews.

Um, so they had shuttles for their employees, but not those who were prospective applicants.

And and actually um our team and then the Como staff met with the chamber and the representatives from that corridor.

Um that I think that's a solution for one or two of the employers.

I'm not sure that's for the you know, the general consensus.

Um, and we talk about that just a little bit at the end because I we had finished the study and then we actually went out to talk to the employers and surveyed.

Our response was not good actually.

I mean, I want to be and you can't twist people's arms to do a survey.

Um, I think we did a pretty good job going to them, which is usually that, but um yeah.

So um, yes, so any other questions about this one though, and I'll keep going and we'll talk more about that in just a few.

All right.

So tier three, you guys were not quite to um tier four as Shane has Shane is uh prepared you for, but again, you guys, this is a huge jump in addition to the service.

Um, the Paris route B, here's the purple map.

Sorry, that was coming up.

It's in your north bus or northeast corner, as you guys see.

Um again, if you look at your service days for the first time in tier three, here we go.

We finally have Sunday service all, and so that's a good news.

Um, we do have Sunday added with the tier two alternative.

We did not have it in the original tier two.

Um, our our hours are extended to 11:30 at night, not 10:30.

Um, if you look at the frequencies, you have 30-minute service in the daytime, 60 in the evening, 60 on Saturdays, and 60 minute headways on Sunday.

Um, the buses, the number of buses, we have 13 peak vehicles out there, and then six in the evening.

Saturdays, you have seven out there, and Sundays would have seven vehicles on the road.

So if you look at those hours, we're not quite doubling, but we're just under 60,000 revenue service hours.

Um you have an amazing um system here with frequent service to areas that we do not serve today, and they have frequent service.

So it's um it's a really great vision, it's a great goal to go towards.

And the challenge will be us today from our baseline of 20,000 moving to almost 60,000 hours, so you're tripling the amount of buses and service on the road.

It's a really great service.

Yeah.

Questions about tier three.

Yes, ma'am.

Um talking about I guess regional service and new routes.

I I read about this in your study.

I don't know if this is in this part or perhaps you have a later um slide on this.

Um, there was some discussion about working with MODOT on a route to and from Jefferson City.

Um, I have gotten a number of people contacting me with interest um in a regional route between us and Jefferson City.

Where are we on that?

Is this how long term is that goal?

So we do talk about that.

Um, after we gave this presentation and y'all adopted it, um, we did look into regional service.

There is um funding for the Federal Transit Administration, uh 5311 F monies are inner city bus funds, and the route between Jeff City and Columbia qualifies if you meet certain criteria.

And the route between Jeff City and Columbia qualifies if you meet certain criteria.

And to my knowledge, that needs to be explored more because as you all know, the state did cut funding.

And I think they would be very interested.

I'm not sure of their funding outlook, and they may say, Oh, those monies are spoken for, but you all still have a very good potential route, and you've heard it.

It's been it was documented in your 2016 study because we heard that name back then.

Um it was documented in this study too.

And when we are going to MODOT to look at future services, that would be one option that we would encourage you to go after that funding.

And would running that service pull from our city city's staff.

Um, or do we need to look at?

I mean, can we share staffing options with Jefferson City?

I well, do you want to talk about I have thoughts, but you go ahead.

Well, I know 90% sure that one of the multimodal or um transit unfunded needs lists hold on to on Modot's unfunded needs list is something regarding a route between Jos City and Columbia.

It's just that it's an unfunded thing from a state level.

I think when we saw the cut in state funding and the staffing issues that we were having, we didn't pursue that interaction with Jeff City as of yet.

I feel like we need to get into a different tier ourselves to really be make that a viable thing to have that discussion.

Can we see that?

That doesn't mean we can't do it separate from all those things.

It was just transit was concentrating on staffing and the kind of implementation of this before we were looking at that specifically.

I would certainly prefer to see us um in a better tier locally before we go regionally.

Um but I will voice the concerns of constituents.

Um I also don't want us to lose track of those goals and those pools of funding that we're eligible for.

If the monies are out there, you have a definite potential route that could be.

If the monies aren't, they'll say we'll wait till the next allocation comes at the state level and the federal level.

So you now have documentation from the Columbia side that says, hey, we do have interest.

But again, when I worked on your 2016 study, that was one of the needs spoken 10 years ago.

So it doesn't shock me that you're still hearing that.

And we know you have a major employer in Jefferson City, you have students up here, that route is run every day.

So I don't think it's off the thing.

Um, you know, Shane and Mike and Shannon, they can send a note.

I do know MODOC is currently looking at an inner city bus study, and I'm sure that route will come up, and it'll be interesting for you all to find out that study is just starting and it'll take a year to get done, but they can pay attention to where that goes, and they have really great um resources in this study to talk about that and contribute to that one.

And I think that's a very viable next step for for the staff here.

Is that something you can report back to us after that study is done?

Yeah, I'm looking at our for sure.

Thank you.

It wouldn't shock me if Shane becomes a committee or uh uh you know, can you sit on our committee?

You know, like others of the study, it wouldn't surprise me if that comes not that I'm giving them more to do, but they do need people that have heard this that have representation and know the needs.

So don't be shocked.

I do know the study just kicked off though, so it it takes a year to get it done, but um, certainly we have good evidence here of what was collected, you know, through this.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Oh, yeah.

Process question.

At what point in this process do we determine where the actual bus stops will be that are having this frequency?

So great question.

Um now this study typically doesn't go directly down the bus stops.

So in my experience as consultant world, you usually know where you're going here.

You talk about times, usually there's a next step that we're like, okay, on this bus route, we have 30 stops inbound, 30 stops out.

Should it be 28?

Should it be 37?

And based on you look at your boarding counts along that route, if we're not picking up anybody, or if you're having a lot of time delays where we're having to make a stop every other block, there's probably some changes that usually that would be like the next step to the study.

If that does that kind of make sense, like where you go.

Is there a particular area that you were looking at?

Like four stops.

No, I just curious how we know where along this there will be stops.

That's really helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, good.

Um, and many, how many bus stops do you have?

She how many do we have here?

About 435.

Oh, just about 435, by the way.

Um, so yes.

Um, so in that mix of 435, um, the more you grow when you just make service more frequent, you probably aren't adding and subtracting, but the minute you add those other routes, then Shannon's number will will go.

The only thing I'd add to that is I tell a lot of people we get the requests for additional stops.

And I tell a lot of people we don't control where the state decides to put some um government agency that people want to get to with the bus, where great example.

Um Boon Hospital built the clinic there west of Providence.

Um they don't talk to us about that, and so when we understand why people don't want to go there, but fitting that in dramatically changes headways, and that affects the entire system.

And so we have a list of places we would love to go.

It's a matter of being able to expand service basically to the other side of Providence when I'm talking about the hospital clinic, and and so and how that affects the rest of the system.

So we've got a list of places we'd like to go, and so when we expand to tier three in this case, you know, those those kind of things become an option.

Um, but then it's also where's a safe place to stop.

Where's you know where can we collect the most people in one spot?

Do you want to keep to keep things moving?

So and councilwoman, should I uh tell Shane that you're happy to sit on his committee when he does his bus stop locations?

Or the merrier the more the merrier, yeah.

Um but truly uh bus stops are so important to infrastructure for our people to get to their stop safely and making sure making sure that's considered um where those locations are the far side near side and next step to come.

Yep.

Any other questions you guys about tier three?

Do we need to stand up and stretch so I don't lose any, but we're all we're on 25 of 40.

Okay, we're going here.

Thanks for hanging in there, you guys.

Um so tier four.

Um, this is our um vision that what we heard from your community from our residents.

Um, this is where they want to be.

This is their vision.

They say I have this in other communities.

Why can't we have it here?

Um, this goes from baseline.

We have uh many hours, as you can see.

We start at five in the morning on weekdays, we go till midnight.

Saturday, we run from 6 a.m.

to midnight.

Sunday, we run from 7 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

You imagine anywhere, anytime.

I've got to love it.

Um, how many buses?

Look how many buses.

Oh, sorry, on days.

Um frequencies, you have 15 minute service.

Bring it on.

I can go anywhere.

Don't need 30 minutes in the evening.

Um, in the um evening time, you have 30 minute service and 60 minute uh afterward.

Saturday, 30 minute service and 60 in the evening, and Sunday headway 60 60 minutes.

You've got over 20 buses out there.

You know, again, today we're running six, so you can imagine buses are everywhere in this community, which is where we want to go.

Saturday we have 13.

I'm missing some buses here on Sunday.

I apologize, you guys.

We should have 13 buses here on Sunday.

Now we are over 100,000 service hours, and again, remember our baseline is 20.

So we're five times what we're doing today.

This is achievable uh because of the champions in this room.

You guys, it takes money.

Um, but our community wants to see this type of service, and we've got to find a way to get there.

That's the main thing.

Um, it's a lot, it's expensive, but we can connect anybody almost 24 hours a day, which is pretty amazing.

Your map is serving different areas.

Um, you have microtransit service with this option too.

So you see on this map, there are some dotted lines where you would have zones of micro transit, and um micro transit is kind of the Uber and Lyft of today's service.

That it's um it's really great in some areas, it has limited capacities again because of the vehicle sizes, so you just have to make sure we're running it very efficiently.

Um, but the tier four is an amazing service, and you know, certainly a goal for the Como staff and for the PTAC and for you all here, you know, sitting on council.

So questions on four questions get there, Corinne.

What you doing?

You know, you gotta get there.

Uh microtransit, you guys, I talked just a little bit about this one, and the map is on this back side.

Um, I won't read all of these to you, but the main part you guys can see in the southeast section of town.

Um, there's a zone that is east of Providence, and there's a zone that's west of Providence.

What's our what's our road down here on the south?

I can't remember that we go towards for the zone.

I should have brought my other map.

Rolling Hills.

Yes, yes, the Rolling Hills neighborhood, but you can see the zone goes and the same on this side.

So extensive service.

Um, it is recommended for microtransit because of the cost.

You don't want to fix drought bus running out there empty.

Uh, we can do better than that, and so we want to make sure we have the right size bus out there or vehicle out there and the right service level out there.

Before you go on to talk more about microtransiting, um can you can you?

I was just I was just noting down, oh, and then I totally blinked my mind because I got all excited about microtransit.

Oh, I know.

Um, it's about the evening um end times, like for our the dream, the dream tier, right?

Um you know, as we get into longer discussions about partnerships with some of our community stakeholders, especially maybe universities.

Um, I know in the report you made mention to, but I don't think there's a slide on the conversations about the late night potentials.

Do you want to just touch on the relationship between whether or not our transit system or if we just rely on private um you know stripes and Ubers and Lyfts to provide that, you know, after midnight potential?

There's no wrong answer.

Uh, there are transit agencies that provide the tipsy taxi um from midnight till 3 a.m.

or 4 a.m.

Um, you know, I think there was a consensus here that we would stop and we potentially have partners that would pick up that after hour, um, which you guys will need when you get to this level, you'll have to look out.

And if there aren't any partners stepping forward, should we go till 3 a.m.?

Okay, probably so you know, to do that.

But would even though if they're not partnering to do it, would they help you pay for it?

Oh, yeah, that's nice.

I think so too.

Yeah.

Now it's a liability, and poor Shane's gonna have to get some drivers that want to work at two in the morning, and you know, there's lots of challenges.

Um, but some people want that too.

Well, I'm just thinking, you know, as you showed on one of the first slides, as our population growth continues at like one and a half two percent.

There's gonna come a time where it's not just college students, it's also just the vibrancy of being a city, yeah, that we're gonna need some sort of night bus service.

I mean potential.

So just planning for that to think about before we all of a sudden have to be something.

100%, and that service from you know 11 a.m.

till 5:30 will be your least efficient service ever.

Yeah, you know, that's what you're doing.

So we're least efficient too.

So yeah.

But you say if we can get people home from work at two in the morning because they worked at we can get someone drunk off the road, uh, we save lives, and there's a lot of quality of life benefits that may not measure a metric that many agencies have chosen to be part of that quality of life, but they usually have like if there's a business, a downtown business district where you have most, they contribute and help fund that service.

So potentials as you go, but I think the the consensus here with the midnight is we do think there's some partnerships that would be able to as you guys get closer to that, that needs to step forward.

And if you don't see it, you as an agency and council need to decide should we go later, should we not?

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

I'm also looking at um employment growth and changes in development, especially as I'm looking at that blue line.

Um keeping track of I guess recent progress on developments and recent headlines.

Um we have new employers in that area.

We have a couple medium to large employers and university um expanding into that area and or potentially selling um in that area.

I do expect that to be a location where people will need to be getting to and from.

I also wonder as there is a site that's likely to be developed in the near future by the university.

Is that something that we can partner with them as we do campus shuttles and shuttles to other university health locations?

Can they help us break into this kind of tier?

I think it's a great opportunity.

And you see that in other communities if they're willing to look at that option.

If they're willing to, you know, partner like their other tiger line routes, if they have one going out there that doesn't have to just be student based that can be open to the general public, and that certainly would be what you know you all would want to encourage them.

Yeah.

They will have employees who use who use the stop at um reactor drive reactor parking lot, that's a tiger line, who will be employed both at that location and the Discovery Drive location at one day.

When will that happen?

Do you know?

Like when do they break ground?

The timeline is fluid.

Because it was supposed to be four years, 10 years ago.

To be determined.

Oh yes.

They are talking about it much much more lately, is all I can say.

Yeah, that's great.

Um, again, an opportunity for us an open door to have discussions.

If they're not, um, we understand, but we would keep knocking at the door.

I'm sure that's what we do.

We're in the transportation business.

You know, yeah.

I certainly think once ground is broken on that, and there are other developments that are breaking ground.

I think some of it depends on what tier we're on.

That's happening.

So, how easy is that to connect to that and use that?

And so timing, if it worked out, that'd be great.

It's just a matter of where we are compared to what they're doing exactly because I don't know exactly what they're doing and how interested they are at the end of this, it's something we'll put in our council report.

We're doing more for the university than we've we've done in the past because they're changing, and I'm sure you know this quite well, how they're handling parking on their campus and how they want to move faculty and staff, you know, around.

And so that puts a burden on us too, but it's also our only revenue source.

So that's part of what I want to cover in our you know, preferably cover in our council report that we have opportunity tonight.

We're happy to talk about that.

Okay, thank you, China.

And our service with the existing tiger lines, um, what they give us is mostly funding.

Or do they students and students and writers?

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Oh, yeah.

Um, I'm wondering if you're if you have um specific recommendations, maybe throughout these tiers, maybe regardless of the tiers for you talk, you've talked a lot about the infrastructure at the bus stops themselves.

And like looking at this map, which is an ideal map, I'm seeing it, it kind of traces the the outline of ward two and doesn't go a ton into it.

And I I understand why, I understand why those neighborhoods might not become bus stops, and I'm picturing specific houses, specific people I've talked to who couldn't walk to the bus stop, certainly don't want to can't bike all the way to their job on the other side of town, but could bike to the bus stop and potentially if there were infrastructure, they would rather leave their bike there than have to take it off at the transit station, put it back on and take it off at work.

Um so I'm wondering if you have recommendations for what the bus stop infrastructure should actually look like.

We don't in this particular one.

And the other thing I um I think is really valuable, it is more to your your area too, so you know it well.

And for all of you that know your neighborhood way better than anyone else here.

Um these routes are as good as a uh little computer that drew them.

When you guys get to tier two, three, and four, you'll want to re-look at these and make sure that this is exactly where they should go.

Um, at that time, they will be looking to identify the stops too.

And um, it is a very simple thing to add a bike station, a bike locker at a if we have a neighborhood request.

Um, it does cost money, you know, they cost about 12,000.

There's some cheaper ones, but you don't want your bike stolen.

So, you know, do those.

Um, we would just need to have a little more right-of-way if that was going to happen.

But if you had a community coming to you as a council, you know, councilwoman, you can say we can talk to transit.

Do we have funding for that?

You know, I don't know if we do or don't, but it would be worth it at that time to talk about that so your people could know, you know, from your specific ward.

Yep.

I'm going to talk about fancy options now because um I did my postdoc research in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Um, and we in that area had three private companies that ran bike blockers and bike stations near each of the bus stations.

One of them partnered directly with the city.

Um, two of them just rented storefronts nearby, to my knowledge.

Um we have a lot, we have a fairly active cyclist community.

We have very entrepreneuring cyclists and three major bike shops.

Um wondering how we can build into those partnerships, and maybe there is a way to have a public-private partnership or encourage someone to fill that space.

Um we're gonna get too far down in the weeds, probably.

But um with the way we handle historically have handled bus shelters and things like that, they're what I often refer to as a reverse ride of use, meaning we're getting permission to put it on somebody else's property.

And so we typically don't go and purchase ride away.

You could do it that way, but we have not done it that way.

A lot of times it's in a commercial area.

The idea is, you know, you want that patronage, so therefore you'll allow us to put that there.

Sometimes that backfires on us a little bit.

Sometimes people decide they don't want that there anymore.

And so we have money currently for additional amenities and bus stops.

It can be difficult to find willing partners to do that and past councils haven't like the idea, and I understand why of forcing that issue, you know, condemning to get that space or something like that, or you know, the ability to get that additional ride away to provide that off of the rideway where it needs to be.

And so when we get into that, that's really getting down on the weeds, but that's a that's a different conversation, I think, for a different time.

And I'll just make a note to um do make sure we don't get too far down the weeds because I point we're at an hour.

So in your thankfully you're just over halfway through.

No, no, no, no, it's a good point.

But I think for some of these that maybe bring up, put it make sure we note it down, like put a pin in it for us to continue.

So all right.

Any more questions you guys before we go on?

Okay, so recommendation summary.

You're like, oh my, this slide is a busy slide for those interested.

It provides an opportunity for you to look from baseline to tier four.

We just went through all the details.

There are several charts here on the right-hand side that show the hours of service of where you would start and then at baseline and where you would finish with a tier four.

And obviously, the big difference that you'll see on those charts are the baseline tier one and tier two.

There are zero colors on Sunday because we were not operating on Sunday.

When you get into tier three and four, Sunday services there, and each color represents a different um frequency.

So whether we move from a frequency of 60 minutes to 30 minutes is what was what this is summarizing.

Um, again, the tier four that we just talked about.

You have service basically from early morning till midnight or 10 o'clock every day of the week, so seven days a week.

Life doesn't stop at five o'clock on Friday for our community, and we have over 20 buses that are operating, you know, during weekday service during peak time for our tier four.

So again, um, just a summary, and this is one that the Como team and the staff, they really look forward that when they can show their drivers, they can show their passengers, you guys.

This is what we're fighting for every day.

This is why we need you, and this is where we're headed.

So it's a really good just summary to have on hand.

Okay, we're gonna move in to regional service options.

We were already there, but we're gonna we're gonna talk about this particular one that is operating or will be operating from Columbia to Jefferson City.

Uh they have stops at the airport and in Ashland, and this section federal transit administration section 5311F, this very long-winded program name.

It is inner city bus service, so you do have to align with Greyhound that operates.

You also need to make a stop in a rural area, which is why Ashland is purposely shown with a stop.

And we just put together some, you know, these are tentative stops that you'd have early morning departures from Columbia.

They would get to Jefferson City, you know, it takes an hour to get down there, and we had to stop in Ashland in the middle.

We'd stop at the airport in Jeff City, and then we'd go to the state building, and then that service would come north again back to Columbia with morning service and afternoon.

These are not published, these are absolutely just giving in person an idea of what that service could look like.

With this particular service, it's just over 600,000 for six uh trips each weekday.

This does not include weekend service.

Um, so again, when Shane gets an email to sit on the inner city bus route study committee, um, the here's some pre-work for that committee.

They're going to do a statewide study, so they won't be just looking at this quarter, they'll look across the state from St.

Louis to Columbia from Columbia to KC, and even in the southern portions of the state.

Um, but you uh Shane has it is fingertips to take hey, here's some preliminary work, this is what we heard from our community, and here are some estimates for our bus routes.

So we did look at that regional service.

This is the only one we went into detail about, um, but we do have that option.

If Como wanted to have this regional service, you guys can see the operating dollars that are here.

Um the ridership isn't unknown on this one, but we do know there's a demand for it because we've heard it for over 10 years in our community.

Questions about this one?

I'll just say that I think from looking at other cities, and like when we visited Madison a few years ago, one of the conversations they had is that um, especially because in Madison in Wisconsin, they're they're not allowed to do uh regional transit authorities.

So I think it is it correct that probably the way that they handle that is they have like an MOU with that city that is also receiving like Jefferson City might have an MOU with us, and they might give us some funding to provide.

Very common to see those, and whether they do an MOU or a contract, whatever they decide that there's a governmental agreement to extend that service.

Okay, good.

Any other questions about this one?

Okay.

I guess actually, just one really quick question.

Based on all the other dollar amounts you've thrown out, that like is that that's just the operating cost for like people, like that's not actually for the cost of like equipment and or is it six trips a day, no vehicle included.

Okay, that's right.

I was like, I was like, uh let's do this, Shane.

And then there's other cost in there, you're not including just one more bus in the backyard.

Yeah, yeah.

And a driver, by the way.

Yeah, or two.

Not okay, all right.

Yeah, but like you say, doable, it just takes those pieces.

And is that our highest priority for our community, right?

You know, those okay, we're moving to implementation, guys.

So this is where we do talk costs, and um, there are many tables on these slides.

So we've talked a lot about those because our vehicle revenue hours are our buses that operate on the road every day.

Um, the baseline is 20,000 revenue vehicle hours per year.

We are trying to get to 107,000, and you can see the percentage of change just from baseline to tier one is about a 20%.

Um, then you have almost a doubling to 94%, tier three is 145, and tier four is at 80 percent.

Then to our mayor's particular uh particular ISPY of the dollars.

Again, this is solely operating dollars.

This is not capital equipment.

So fixed route, 2.5 million para transit, just under 2 million.

So our baseline service every year is right about 4.5 million.

And you guys have seen those numbers with your budget talks, plus or minus.

Our tier one moves us to just under 6 million, 5.8 million million for operations.

Tier 2 moves that to $8.5 million.

And then tier 3, $11.7 million, and tier 4, we're just under 20 million annually to operate the service.

So we are at 5 million today, and I'm doing ballpark numbers, and we're going to 20 million just for operations.

Questions on that?

It's tier four, the percentage missing a number.

It's going from one to the next, three to four.

I think from three to four.

Right.

The others seem to go from baseline to the tier.

I think it's going from the 59 hours to the 107.

And that would be about an 81%.

Yes.

Good check on the numbers here.

Questions about the numbers.

Anyone if that's the case, then I think the percentage from tier two to tier three is all.

Because you're only adding 20,000, which you're only 145%.

I think that would be true for tier one to tier two.

I think maybe tier four, we have different math formula than the other.

And the other three.

Thank you guys for catching that.

I'm sorry that those are all.

I will get them changed.

Yes.

All right.

Noted.

Okay, then we're moving over to capital costs.

So again, we talked about how much it is to buy a bus and peak vehicles.

If you guys remember, we were talking about with our baseline.

We have six buses out on the road when we're at baseline.

We'll have over 20 when we get to tier four.

That does not include the paratransit vehicles.

So we add those in there.

And do we have what's our total fate today?

25.

25 total, including paratransit.

39.

39, including paratransit.

So we have 18 peak vehicles, and we have over 35 vehicles on the lot.

So the dollars on the right hand side are the replacements or additional buses that we would have to purchase if we're expanding service.

And that can be bus stops because a bus stop ranges for an intersection, you can put in bus stops for about 10 or 12,000 dollars.

That's if you had to put in curves and shelters and landing paths.

If we have to build facilities to park our buses under or within those costs, are also included in the in this particular or if we have to expand.

So in tier one, we have about 100,000.

Tier two, again, remembering that we're adding significant hours just over 8 million.

Another 10 million on tier three and tier four, 22 million.

And again, we went from six base vehicles to over 20.

So it is a lot, but we've got to have buses to provide the service out there.

And that detail is within the report.

You guys apologize that this is just a summary table.

But we didn't want to go into a million details.

Okay, I'm going to keep going then.

So funding options all this is like how do we get the dollars to make our first step and to keep going forward?

Um today we receive 5307 dollars.

Those are from the federal transit administration.

There's an opportunity.

So we maximize the federal transit programs to the extent that we can.

As Shane just added, or one of the council persons had just asked, what do we get from the university?

And we said ridership because our allocation is based on our ridership numbers and our population.

So that does make a big difference to us.

5311 are rural monies that if we provide services outside this urbanized area, we are eligible for these 5311 dollars.

So if we do coordinate in the future with Boone County, we do want to have those conversations and that talkative monies in those conversations.

There are competitive grants that are available.

There's the raise, there's the build grants.

From you just mentioned uh San Francisco, so from BART to Washington DC Metro.

Um we have good numbers here.

We have great opportunities.

You do have an um an aggressive, I'd say legislative body because that does make a difference in Washington when you're going after these grants.

You also um, you know, wanting to just know your senators and so that they know and can fight for these dollars when we go to Washington after these competitive ones, making sure we keep them in the loop if we go after those.

Um, again, the chances of those, I think you never depend on them, they're a nice surprise.

And you can the best part is that Combo can have plans like this that are out there.

If there's an opportunity that comes in, they reference these grants.

They want to say, did your council approve this?

What page is it on?

And that's how pinky they they are when you fill out these competitive grants.

Um, so from the federal level, those are the primary funding sources that we know of.

Um, sometimes there's some surprise funding out of the Department of Agriculture, some there from the housing and urban development side.

Some of those come with a lot of ties.

So if you're going to go after a bus route, they might fund it for two years.

Well, what happens in two years?

You know, so making sure we know that before we walk into those grant opportunities because the worst thing is to be to take those services away once they've been out there.

Um, the next opportunity are state funding.

Um, so the state transportation fund and the general revenue um dollars that we have received for for many years.

Unfortunately, they were um almost cut in half this this past fiscal year after the previous two years, they have been almost doubled.

So I do think you guys will eventually go back.

I think the there's pressures across the state to make those monies.

We have zero control of that though.

Um, this council is one of the largest councils along with Jefferson City.

You guys make a difference, you know, at the state offices.

So paying attention that stay good friends and say, hey, that impacted my community, you know, making sure they know that.

Um it's in our legislative priorities.

Uh, that was one of the ones that we passed.

Do we have any sort of metrics on the impact to us that we can make sure we have for any sort of topic points or letters we need to send?

I don't have anything in my fingertips, we can do something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, they're not in session yet.

I don't need it yet.

I just mean that's the sort of thing that we can okay.

But when they hear from uh voters, when they hear from other council, and again, you guys are one of the strongest ones in the state of Missouri, you know, Jefferson City makes a difference, but you guys do too, and then St.

Louis and KC.

So top five.

Um can you say that more often?

Oh, yes.

Maybe it does, but it's true.

You know, you guys are top five in the state, and you know, that's why you do make a difference.

It's amazing.

Um, but keep playing those cards because eventually dollars which are doesn't happen overnight, but if you can get a few more dollars in, then it goes to our people here.

So thank you for keeping fighting.

That's a good thing.

Um, then we talk local dollars because this is always the hard one.

Who's coughing it up?

How are we gonna come up with the funding?

Um, our absent uh transportation sales tax that we have.

Do we try to do a new dedicated tax?

Do we have a bond coming up that we want to put transit in?

I don't know how how often council has talked about that or not talked about it.

Um that's certainly what is done in other communities to support transit, and um, but it's a hard, it's hard.

Um, you have to have champions in the community, and you have to have uh tough skin.

That would that would just be how that goes.

Um, there are districts that can be created as you guys know.

Um, there's also private funding, there are transportation management associations that can be built, and then also we already talked about the partnership with the university again.

We want to keep enhancing that and making sure um that we have great relationships with them.

So questions about the funding side.

I hear rumble on the other side of the table.

What is going on?

Um questions.

Well, there's nothing here about fares and reintroducing fares.

That's a question in the community.

So I wonder about that.

What that might look like when you're going to be able to do that.

I'll ask my council members.

What does that look like?

Yes.

You had them before.

Well, in our most recent conversation, we talked about how we really couldn't, even if we chose to, we couldn't implement it right now because we don't have the equipment on the buses.

I'm just looking for a basic bottom line idea of the impact that a fair would make.

So I'm just wondering what that might look like.

We can pull something like that together, and not only the cost to the infrastructure of your fare box, but you also have to have staff to reconcile that back at the offices.

So that's an employee hire too.

But we can look at that.

The impact on ridership is for every one percent that you raise fares, and you'll have a 3% drop in ridership.

And that's a just a national rule of thumb that is used.

And again, you all have to decide if that's the future of that.

It is a revenue source.

I don't know of a transit agency that I've worked in 30 years that has fair revenues over 10% of your, but you have a five million dollar budget, 10% of that does make it, you know, it's a it's chips it off.

Is it your answer to the future of going to that?

Yeah.

So you again, you guys have to decide that, listen to your community.

Um, but certainly you can run the numbers on the estimates and what that would do for ridership.

Well, we have had fares previously, so I assume that we can go back and look and see what the what impact that has.

That's probably gonna carry forward if we read some.

Yeah.

Top very um sensitive topic.

Many communities looking at too.

Yeah, I can say that I've heard from most of our transportation advocates asking for fares to remain free.

Um I wondered also on the subject of employee recruitment and retention and onboarding.

I remember hearing from the unions a while back about the CPAP machines and the cost of those following sleep studies during onboarding being a significant burden to um employment.

Were we able to reimburse or defray those costs?

Not to my knowledge.

I don't know.

I know we talked about that a little bit.

Carl, do you remember?

I know, like there was an HR component to that.

Yeah, I think the mining your own business is back.

Yeah, and as a quick just a note on this, um, how many more sites do you have?

You have 10 more?

Okay.

I'm keeping an eye on our time because I can require fast or not.

It may be easier for me to get something from Kathy to count right out.

I know there's there's different avenues.

So part of it is once they become an employee, then there is some part of our benefits that we'll offer to be sectionally or not.

But I think something that I can give a little bit more detail to look at.

Thank you.

I think your next slide is on staffing.

Staffing, yes.

I will move ahead of no other questions.

Okay.

So these next slides, you guys are different parts of the implementation piece.

And when we started this study over a year and a half ago, um, looking at the future of the administration for ROMO was a critical piece because when you start young and you start to grow and you don't change your administration, you don't change your training, people start wearing 10 hats, there's burnout, and you're gonna miss something, and that's just the reality of life at a transit agency.

Um, so making sure that when we were tasked with looking at a typical transit agency that runs six vehicles, 12 vehicles, 20 vehicles, we looked at the recommendations of what that should be for Como.

There's not a wrong answer again for how much you have, but the goal is having the safest system you have, making sure when we get a triennial audit, our procurement is up to piece, and that our revenues are never in jeopardy of being taken away because we missed something because we didn't have enough staff to do that.

So there is a table on this slide that talks about our existing services, and there's a the chart on the left hand side that talks about your existing org, and then what we are recommending on the right hand side.

The baseline, there's not actually a large change in the admin staff until you get to tier four.

Then, and except for your drivers, you're always going to have more drivers the more buses you put out on the road.

So today, one director, four management and superintendents, five supervisors, finance safety and trainer, and 52 staff dispatchers and drivers.

So that's a total of 62 staff to run the baseline service.

Now we are growing that to at tier one to 65.

So you're only adding three more drivers, no management to tier one.

Now, tier two is where we had a big jump in the revenue hours.

So the biggest growth you're going to see is your number of drivers and dispatchers where we bump to 80 staff that are checking in and out every day.

Tier three again and tier four are incremental gross growth positions.

The supervisors, finance, safety, and trainer in tier three, we had one.

So we haven't changed admin staff from baseline all the way to tier three, except for one staff.

Then tier four is where we have the major major service seven days a week, almost 24-7 service, where you then have one public works director, seven superintendents or supervisory level, and then you have supervisor finance safety and trainer that bumps to 10 administrative folk, and then 165 drivers.

Are there questions about that particular structure?

Are there questions about the staff members of where those came from?

Don't let us get into the weeds like this.

And don't let you get in the weeds.

So it is in the it is I don't know how many drivers shane needs, but Shane tell me, yeah.

Sorry.

That's why he's good at what it goes.

Right.

Um, but again, um, even from when we were working with the Como staff early on, our Olsen team actually have a few more administrative people before tier three, uh, because you do have you have a I won't say a skeleton, but you don't have a lot of cushion in the administrative positions with Como.

Um, we're comfortable with this one for sure.

Um, from the management and superintendent, um, we had one more person in tier two, but they were very comfortable with where it is, so that's what we ended up recommending.

So okay, then I'll go ahead and move on, you guys.

Uh so system integration and development, and this goes back to much of the conversation that is a little bit out of our control.

Um, but when we are moving towards a tier four structure where we have frequent service in our community, if we don't align our policies for land use and development, and Shane, you gave the perfect example of the clinic that happened to be located on the other side of the road, which is always what happens.

Um, when we choose those, it is very hard for transit to adjust to that and to still be efficient.

So when we do the update to our comprehensive plan for the city, um, looking at the high capacity corridors that are in the transit plan, our zoning and land use should line up to those.

That's it.

That's what we would expect to see from the planning staff.

Um, if there's questions, it may not line up perfectly, but it should be in the same vicinity.

Um transit-oriented development, so having mixed use along those high capacity corridors.

Sorry, um, is also very important so that we can have people living and working in the same locations.

Um, transit cannot control that, but we can certainly advocate for it.

And so when we do the update to the zoning and we look at setbacks and we look at, you know, what's what do we have?

Is it agricultural?

Do we have single use housing?

All of that needs to be looked at.

And so we have simple recommendations to make sure that when the city staff goes to those next levels that they please look at that for transit and get transit involved and put on the on the committees.

Any questions about that?

Okay.

Sorry, should we keep that with the table here?

Um so when does all this happen?

When what's so what's gonna go on?

Um so the updated this um this is a different table that was in the adopted plan because you guys have already adopted all of this information that we talked about, but this is an updated timeline about what we're actually doing today.

Um so we finalized a study in this in this next quarter, um, pursue local funding commitment.

So in 2026 for us to move forward, we have to come up with more funding.

And so we have shown, you know, it's gonna take a year to talk about that to make something happen and see what we're able to do in that first year.

Um, continue to procure vehicles as we need them.

The Como staff has a vehicle replacement plan that looks really great, and they should continue to do that.

As funding is received, those vehicles for expanded service will be incorporated into those.

Um, so then there's a draft schedule, you've got to go out to the community, make sure our staff that we the org chart that we're recommending is approved by council, so that can happen as soon.

Usually that happens at the start of a fiscal year, so whenever it's appropriate for that to transition, uh, we would recommend with the new services.

You do have to do a title six plan, that's a federal requirement.

Then you look at scheduling drivers and the rest of this falls falls in place.

If we do get the funding for this tier one, everybody see that go live, go live in 2027.

You ready for that, Shane?

Michael, come to the party.

And it's gonna be um if all stars aligned and we could get the funding and the staff, then that that would happen in mid-2027, third quarter.

Yes, sir.

And this would take us to the baseline.

That would take you.

Hopefully, we're already at tier one.

Okay.

Yep.

So when we talk about the funding for transit, it would be meet where you are today to baseline to the tier one, it would be both of those.

Questions on that?

Yes, ma'am.

In order to have tier one by that go live date, when do we need to have baseline in place?

Tomorrow.

That's our tomorrow.

Mike said yesterday, okay, Mike.

And I say that jokingly, but I'm not joking at the same time that we have to have the drivers, we can't get the buses.

If we have the drivers, we can get the buses, then we'll go for that additional funding.

Yeah.

So it doesn't uh what do they say?

You don't let up on the gas today of continuing to bring bring eligible drivers in.

Okay.

So you all have adopted that plan.

Now we're um when we presented to you probably six months ago or five months ago, you had asked us to look at several additional pieces, and some of that we've already talked about, but um, we would we have some summary slides to make sure that we go over this new information.

So um a peer review, particularly looking at funding, and so when we talked about the peer review and the report, we um contacted the same universities to talk about specifics of where their funding came from.

And state funding, you know, several of ours were Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, um, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Kansas again.

Unfortunately, the state funding in Columbia is definitely a setback based on other peer communities.

That's not new news to you all.

Um, we keep promoting, we keep um contacting our legislature to make sure they know that that does impact us and the amount of service that we can provide.

Um, Champagne Urbana, Illinois, their state funding for transit is at a very high level.

Um, the first bullet says it's 50 over 50 percent of the agency's budget.

So could you imagine if we could have 50 percent for our budget?

It's a game changer.

Um, Indiana, they have about 25 percent of their entire budget as uh state funding.

We are one percent.

So the this peer information is available for you, but again, the more we can promote to our legislatures that it does impact our community, the better it is for us.

Questions on that piece?

It looks like we are contributing a little bit less local funding.

Is that something we need to be able to grow?

And I take it that would have to come from tax increase.

Yeah.

This famous slide of the local, yes.

We talked about it with the existing half cent or a bond partnerships, yeah.

You know, something what happens in many um communities if there is a uh transportation initiative that includes roads, bridges, bike pads, transit needs to be included in that.

Um it needs to have operations and a certain percentage of whatever a 10-year bond or a 20-year we can't forget about transit because that helps the general fund where it's you're not coming back every year fighting against fire and police and libraries, they're very great services.

Um, but if we can have a tax bond for transit that's dedicated to public transportation, that's an opportunity that takes some pressure off of annual uh general funds from from the city's coffers.

Betsy have a question.

Um I just have more of a comment just that bonds need to be repaid.

And um, so my understanding is in Columbia we generally do that with our enterprise funds because they are repayable and and transit already is a problem.

So I would just want to look into how you could do that bonding and make sure that we don't reneg on paying it back.

Yep, great comment.

And every community does it differently.

You're right.

But I'm just saying successful communities that have had that structure in place, they have been able to have relief off of the general funds because there was a dedicated um source for funding.

But if it's just bond, if it's just bonds, it's not dedicated.

It may be an increment finance.

Yeah, there's there's different ways.

Well, questions for another time.

There you go.

More than more to go.

I don't want to get in trouble with the mayor here, you know.

Um peer reviews again.

Um you all had asked us to look at what other transit agencies in Missouri do about funding.

So St.

Louis, they have an operating uh budget that's primarily from the sales tax, and that comes from City of St.

Louis, St.

Louis County, and then St.

Clair County.

Um, they have state and federal funds, and their base fare is a buck.

Um St.

Joe, Missouri, St.

Joseph Transit, um, core funding comes from FTA, just like it does here, 5307 and 11.

Um, there is a local match from their general fund.

Uh they do also receive the FTA 5310 monies for elderly and disabled, and their base uh base fare is one dollar too.

Cape Girardo, um, they have a county transit authority.

Half of their budget is from FTA grants, so they receive 5311 monies.

Um they do have a recent partnership with the college, but we couldn't, they didn't have um the exact funding breakdown of that.

Now their transit service is just like yours, it's free in Cape Girardo.

Then we also looked at peer examples for microtransit service since that was one of the interests from council.

Uh Norman, Oklahoma, their microtransit operates from 7 p.m.

to 3 a.m.

As y'all know, there's a university there.

Uh $2, it's free for students.

Um, they book trips only through the app, or they can call.

Um, I believe uh the call they said it had to be booked by a certain hour.

I think it might have been midnight, was the last time they could call in for the ride, otherwise it had to be on the app.

Um, and they do share rides.

So if there's one car, you might have two other people sitting in with you.

It's just how they are able to uh maximize the service.

Lawrence really quick clarifying on that one is um it's free for OU students because OU is paying.

They are contributing to the funding incorrect.

Um Lawrence uh transit on demand, uh, you can schedule those up to five days.

They do operate overnight, so 24-7 and on Sunday, seven days a week.

Um microtransit in Bloomington, the Blink microtransit, they have three different zones.

They provide late night service till 3 a.m.

Uh, two dollars per trip, and they have a partnership with Uber and Lyft there.

So they that would be a different mechanism than is operated in Lawrence.

Champaign Urbana, again, they have this West Connect and Northeast with designated zones Monday through Friday only, and they stop at 6:30 p.m.

There's not an evening service, and it's one dollar for that.

They also have a partnership with the university for that one.

With the microtransit and particularly the Bloomington one rent scene that's operated by Uber and Lyft.

What are what, if anything, are they doing to ensure that these vehicles are accessible?

I know in Columbia we have a real lack of Uber and Lyft drivers with accessible vehicles.

I don't know this exactly, but I know the only way that they could have the contract with the transit agency is they must have one accessible vehicle available so that they can provide that service.

So when they book a trip, if they need to have that accessible vehicle, they will either go transfer vehicles or they have somebody staged in that vehicle.

Yep in Bloomington.

So that's one vehicle available at all times that the service is offered, not just one vehicle in the city of Columbia.

No, it would be when it's offered.

Yep, correct.

Yep.

Anybody else?

Okay.

Then the other peer review is we wanted to look at other, or you all wanted us to look at other university partnerships.

So we looked at um KU over in Lawrence.

Um they fund two campus routes.

Um they have the city service and then KU.

Both entities are separately funded and governed.

Um route planning is made by each one of the agencies, and they have a um, they have an MOU.

Um, actually, I think they have an IGA and intergovernmental agreement versus an MOU, but they're very similar, you know, legally.

Since 2009, the city and KU have selected a third party to operate that service, even though it's funded from the different entities.

So they put out a bid, uh private company bids on those, and that's how that one is funded.

In Champaign, Urbana, um, where University of Illinois is 1989, because that's back in my day.

Um they have a three-year agreement in place today.

That's um just over 20 million dollars for the three years.

Um, they fund seven campus routes and then the after hours safe ride program.

So that'd be the tip CASE.

The goal of that partnership with the city and the university is provide evening options for students and avoid building parking garages in the community.

80% of that ridership are university students or staff.

Do we have an idea of how much the university provides the funding for each of these?

We they did not tell us, yeah.

Yeah, which that is their prerogative.

We did ask for them.

How often do we or do we get to negotiate with the university?

Annually.

Oh, absolutely.

Annually, nice.

Um, other universities in Manhattan, Kansas, where Kansas State is since 2009, so just about 15 years, they have a public transit board where the city county and K-State sit on that board for plan meet planning and for the management.

Um 51% of the fixed drop ridership are K-State students or staff.

They do have an IGA or local governmental agreement between the city, the county, and K-State to coordinate and secure the federal funding.

So the agency at a bus, the Flint Hills Area Transit Authority as their long name, um, they would go after grants, but they would have signatures from all three partners to go after different grants.

And then K-State does contribute to the local match for federal funding.

Not completely though, but we they did not disclose the amount, which was not surprising.

Um, in Bloomington, Indiana University is there.

Um they have six bus routes that serve the campus area.

Three routes are funded by the university, approximately 1.3 million a year.

Students, staff, and faculty ride for free.

Both entities coordinate uh regular and monitor the performance of the system at their meetings.

They IU operates their own transit system of the six routes.

So we talked about.

Okay, then we're gonna switch gears to peer county partnerships, like with communities.

There's a partnership between the transit agency and the county program, which is called SEATs out of Johnson County for operating only the paratransit service.

Iowa City Transit provides the vehicles, so they don't have the Johnson County does not have to buy the or purchase the vehicles.

They just use the city owned vehicles.

And the funding comes from the local communities and then Iowa City Transit for the County Transit Service.

In Manhattan and Junction City, that's where K State is.

That's what they would have used that for.

The board consists of representatives from the towns and the counties vote if they want to go after the FTA funding for the bus, and usually they do.

And then the last one for county partnerships, Raleigh Durham.

2025, they provided $4 million to go triangle for countywide services.

Any questions about that?

Okay.

This is a little bit repetitive of what we talked previously about.

How do we retain drivers?

How to re recruit drivers and why the perfect question of why is there a driver shortage?

I should have gotten you your slide, Shane.

Aging workforce, just as Micah talked earlier.

Mike, you said your average age of driver 47.

Oh, that's national.

Yes.

Competitive job market.

Our drivers can get the same as if they work at a Walmart or grocery store, and how do we get them to come over to transit?

Regulations, the biggest one that we didn't hit on earlier are drug and alcohol testing.

They're random.

Everyone has to do it.

If you're a driver, you do criminal background checks, CDL requirements.

We talked about that.

So there are regulations that must be followed for us to receive our federal transit administration funding.

Best practices that we've seen across the country, increase the pay, provide benefits, a package where you can do performance-based bonuses, tuition assistance.

Do we have a clear policy about every year you get an increase?

You know, is that in place today?

If they refer somebody, do we get a $500 bonus?

You know, if they stay for six months or a year.

That's what we're seeing across the country as some of the incentives.

Improving worker schedules, um, who loves a split shift?

Nobody.

Um, so can we try and give them better shifts to keep them so that we can keep them, you know, 10 years instead of two years?

Um, positive work environment.

Do we do we have mentors?

Do we do positive encouragement for reportings?

Um, clear path to promotions, so people don't have to guess if they're gonna have a promotion to a supervisor or lead driver or a trainer.

Um, ongoing trainer, um, train train train your people, make sure we train them so they know.

Um, more effective hiring, modifying an application so that we can help younger people or older people fill out the application easier.

Uh, recruiting practices, um, employee referrals and social media.

Are we out?

Are we out online?

We should be if we're not.

And I do know when we presented at the PTAC meeting, um, one of the PTAC members had said, hey, do we have applications down at the transit station?

And we typically everyone comes here, and so we were going to check on can we make that happen?

Can we put a QR code that's down there that it makes it easy for someone to apply?

It's a good idea.

Yeah, if we if we can do that.

Thoughts on this one.

I think our one question is just like um with staff considering all you know, yeah.

I assume you're considering all of these and just yeah, letting council know what support you need from us, city city manager.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, for that and working with HR department.

Yeah, which is good.

Okay, you guys, we're talking a little bit about the famous purple route.

We we've looked at that the tier two alternative.

Um, we did look at that option.

We looked at how much would it cost, um, how could we fund that one?

We talked about this transportation management association.

That's actually a legal, a legal um association that can be formed by businesses and and community members to fund transit.

Each of those entities would help come up with dollars to help support either a local match or the full service.

Um, we talked to the chamber representatives about that.

We talked to the businesses when we went out there.

Um again, we did survey um the folk that were there too, and they um I think they were very interested.

Their follow-up was not interested.

So I think there's opportunities there.

I think it's you have to keep knocking at the door going forward if they really want transit service there.

Questions about that okay.

We're wrapping this up, guys.

Okay, TOD.

Uh, we already talked about transit-oriented development, uh, mixed use that when we do our next comp plans, we really want to pay attention to that and look for opportunities with grants.

Two examples are Cleveland, Ohio.

They have the health line, um, which has had development um from day one when they opened up their rapid transit.

Make sure we look at our high capacity corridors and that we try to keep our community and our planners involved for Columbia.

Um, we need to look at those, and Shane will look at the at the city planners to help explore where we think we have opportunities in the north-south corridors and also downtown and on stadium boulevard.

So more to come on that in the future.

And then last slide, guys.

So I'm four minutes out of here.

Importance of sustainable revenue.

Um, we I think we've beat that dead horse.

We know we need to have um sustainable funding so that we're not having to go back every year.

The org structure is critical to get in place.

The the minute council approves that um to make sure that we have that in place before we're gonna grow too fast.

And then um, last item, Shane, you're gonna be back on what date though?

I can't remember.

I'm not sure we have it defined quite yet.

Oh, for the report.

Yeah, but it'll be a council report, and we just kind of cover what it's looked like since we combined routes to the day, those struggles we've had, what what we're doing as far as hiring, those kind of things, and then like I said, it'll be that matter of there's things we can do just to get back to baseline.

That's really what we're talking about here, and then it's in order to implement many of the things that are in here, it's how you all want to approach that.

Yeah, and then is it um so um whatever side of where they had kind of like the GAMP chart or like when we're starting different things?

Yeah, is it my assumption that um for when we're talking about the pursuit local funding commitments?

I am assuming that we are going to be reaching out to the university of Missouri about just a task, like like just a conversation about because as they're looking to actually not do as many parking garages, if they're as they're looking to do this, and they've got a new person that's coming to them from California that might have more, you know, new ideas to do.

Can we work because this is under the the previous vice chancellor, you know, uh Sarah Jania was wanting to have this conversation about a joint system.

Uh, she's no longer with the University of Missouri, so can we start those conversations back up with with their staff about what could this look like?

And it would incorporate tiger line, but really thinking about as we are growing.

We want students to ride the bus.

We want that because that will help us with ridership revenues, and then will help us reach more places in Columbia because they're not just living downtown, they're living all over town.

Sure.

Um so yes, we will obviously we'll have those conversations.

The way that Columbia is set up and the way things have been done, make it difficult.

Um, as far as where the students live and how the students get to campus and some of those kind of things, or some hurdles that um make it make it more difficult, I think, for MU at the periphery to be involved, plus our hours and how that interacts with the students.

Um currently, what they're asking us to do is really provide more service on campus as a parking shell basically.

Yes, and so and at the what our and that any you know this, what it actually cost us to provide a bus for an hour and what they pay is about half, and so we've been working to increase that.

And so therefore you can't you know ask them to double what they pay because you know they they in theory have other options as well, and so we're working in that system.

Um I don't know the status of their current planning because they had some changes there.

Um so we're kind of doing this the first year uh working with them and then see where that takes us next.

It's kind of where we're at right now.

Okay, well, yeah, I would definitely want to have those those those conversations with it because I think it is just all the examples that you gave of best practices of university towns have a strong partnership that's more than just the parking shuttle provider.

So yeah, and then we've got uh a few more minutes, so Vera and then Valerie.

Um I want I have more of a uh process question again.

Um looking at the maps that have been set for the routes.

How did we decide what the routes would be if we're you know looking at the ideal routes tier four?

Um how did we prioritize residences versus businesses?

Were there other considerations that went in place?

I can't, but you can go you would take that.

I'll give you my version first.

Um what we do in any city where we're looking at route planning is typically the routes run on our arterial streets, or if there's a major activity, whether it's a housing, an employment, you know, some kind of surface there, all of the rounds that we have, we will go drive it, and then we'll see.

Do we think a bus can get usually drive a bus out there?

Do we think that's you know, do we think that's even viable?

Can they make a right turn or not?

Um Shane, is there another answer to that?

That's what I'll say.

And quick follow-up as well before you answer.

Uh, when we were looking at housing, did we do any work to specifically make sure there were bus routes close to some of our affordable housing?

Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

Yes, um, so some of the slides where we started getting into a microtransit possibility and things like that.

Some of that was to address the location, like there's a desire for the bus to go everywhere, and what I often say is we if we take a bus someplace, what's that ridership need to be to continue to do that?

Because there's only so many places we can go, and so even in tier four, there's a lot of there's a lot of residential areas, but there could be someone that wants to ride the bus, and so that's really where I think you start talking about something like microtransit to to be able to pick those folks up and either take them where they need to go or get them to a bus stop.

And so that's how I would suggest we address some of those locations.

Um really it's just what we hear places we know we don't currently go, how to best do that, how to best and also on the end of the context of we think we're going where we need to go for the folks that have limited other options, and so therefore, how do you build off of that versus do something totally different?

Thank you.

Okay, Valerie and then Nick, and then we are at time.

So I was wanting to ask, um, I understand a lot of the considerations about how students are getting to campus.

Um, and we are mostly being used to move them about campus and satellite.

Um I wonder if we've engaged with MU on I guess their employment centers, they are more and more tending to have satellite healthcare centers and hubs of employment.

Um, and if they have a role in funding those as shuttles where their students um work and research at those sections at those locations, um, they have um they have healthcare workers that are university employees.

Um I'm asking Mike if he has any conversations with MU and those negotiations about those locations because I'm not aware of that, but not those specific locations, uh, but we have talked to like the uh education department and students who are doing their practicums and providing them with services, and so they were excited now.

How much they will actually use that, we don't know, but um, as far as reaching out to other places, at the end of the day, we can have really great conversations and have some wonderful plans until we have enough people to actually implement those plans, it's just theory.

I'm asking how much will they fund that, not how much will they use that?

And some of those centers are on our existing lines.

Yeah, we have nothing.

Yeah.

Do the campus um bus passes.

If I and I never tried to use it this way, so maybe I could have had the answer myself, but now I don't have one.

Um could I, as an MU employee, use not only the campus shuttle, but could I get on a city bus and go out to one of the stops?

As long as we're fare-free.

All right, right.

That was silly.

Good question.

I know that.

Nonetheless, funding.

Please.

I just want to say a good sport of word for transit-oriented development, and as we're looking ahead and looking to redo Columbia matches, we're looking at housing, as we're looking at uh quality of life for people wanting multiple neighborhoods.

This really does need to be a part of it, and these things go together.

So I think when we're looking at these things from a high level, we need to incorporate all these issues in one and not be.

I mean, I we're focused on transit today.

I'm just saying that this is a part of the whole, and as we're especially as we're looking at planning and planning documents, this needs to be a part of what we're what we're talking about.

And housing development.

Those things go together, and if we can if we can put them closer together, we can be more successful with each one.

All right, so we are five minutes past the time, and I know I promise for work sessions to try to keep them kind of timer, which you guys gave.

Um so I will expect within the next few months the train like state of transit update where some of these additional questions that came up might also be answered uh that fell within the cracks.

You guys have specific questions that you didn't get answered tonight, just send them to staff and they'll make sure to incorporate them and share them with all of us.

So thank you for the update.

It was a very thorough report.

I think one thing, yes, if you can't make sure whichever numbers are the correct one, is just make sure we know which ones are right.

All right, we'll thank you.

I'll go ahead and adjourn us at 606.