To the director leaves.

Good uh afternoon, gentlemen.

Good afternoon.

Director Cramer should be here shortly.

Yeah, he was back there.

I saw him and he just kind of disappeared on us.

Right.

Oh, look at it.

Can somebody go find a director?

Oh, you know.

No, I don't right now.

Because otherwise we have to recess, and that's not what we want to do.

Did we see him coming down the hall?

If the answer is no, then we shall recess to the call of the chair.

All right.

Will you please call the road?

Councilmember Scott Benson.

Councilmember Letitia Johnson.

Present.

Councilmember Denzel McCampbell.

Present.

Councilmember Renata Miller.

Councilmember Gabriela Santiago Romero.

Present.

Councilmember Mary Waters.

President.

Councilmember Angela Whitfield Callaway.

Council President Pro Tempore Coleman A.

Young the Second.

Council President James Tate.

Mr.

President, you have a quorum present.

Thank you so much.

Pro Tim wanted to say here, right?

Yes, here.

There you go.

All right.

We are now back in session.

Thought we had lost you, Director Kramer.

Glad we found you.

I know, right?

But we are starting a little bit early.

Thank you for uh being present and always ready.

And uh if you would like to introduce yourself and your team, and you all uh may proceed.

Floor is yours.

Absolutely, Mr.

President.

Uh good afternoon, counsel.

Um I'm Robert Kramer, and I'm the executive director of D Dot.

And with me I have some of my friends here today.

I have uh James George, who is our agency CFO.

I have Darren Beach, who is uh senior advisor for operational readiness, and I have Miss Stephanie Davis, who's our governor uh government liaison.

Uh and so we're here to go through the uh presentation and then of course entertain any questions you might have during this important process.

So um right on cue.

Want to go to the first slide.

Um so this year in alignment with Mayor Sheffield's Rise Higher Vision, D DOT will lead with care and deliver results focused on improving the customer experience of transit that the city of Detroit residents riders receive in implementing bold and innovative programs to directly address the needs of youth and seniors.

In fiscal year 27, DDOT will launch a year-round fare-free bus program for K-12 students to improve absenteeism outcomes and increase access to youth activities.

In addition, seniors and individuals with disabilities will be supported by DDOT through accessibility 2.0, and increased funding for growing paratransit ridership.

Um, I think it's important to note if you want to go back one slide real quick.

So I think it's important to note that there's a lot of opportunity for us to work with our partners.

Uh during DTC's presentation, of course, they're a major partner, and they're part of DDOT's budget.

The RTA, Smart, MOGO, and our paratransit providers, the scooter companies, private ride hailing services, the greenway.

There's so many important pieces of helping people get around and make sure that they're connected and have options and choices for the trips that they need to make every day.

And that's something that's really been a focus of Mayor Sheffield, certainly during her campaigning and during her first couple months in office here, really focusing on making sure that we make the most of those relationships and make sure that the city can be part of leading those kind of initiatives.

And really stressing the importance of our partnerships and also seeking feedback from the advocates and so many other important stakeholders.

Reliable transportation is really reflected in this in the city's overall budget, certainly in DDOTS with another very generous increase.

Last year we had 20 million dollars that was increased to the budget, and this year you're seeing even more than that.

And certainly we'll go through some of that during this presentation and through the questions, I'm sure.

And just to reiterate that DDOT is a vital public service.

We provide over 50,000 rides every day, and that's dozens of routes crisscrossing the city and the opportunity to connect to some of our other partners to reach destinations across the region to get to jobs, health care, education, recreation, and so many more things.

So we know how important it is.

We'll talk a little bit about our progress today.

So over the last year, um it hasn't been a great year, the last year, as far as the service that the riders are experiencing.

We improved a lot of our internal visibility, adding uh data and tracking, um, and really getting a clear picture on some of our strengths and weaknesses.

And that helped us to develop some strategies more precisely.

You know, we increased service 5% twice, so a 10% increase in service that happened last year at two of our quarterly opportunities.

Um, but without the vehicle availability, we fell short of being able to provide that service, which then led us to stop increasing service so that we could work on the vehicle availability.

Um, you know, with the lessons learned from that experience and with this incredible opportunity from the additional road funding that was made available to the city through the state's legislative changes last year, and with the support of uh then council president Sheffield and many of you on this board, we were able to secure generally generationally historic union contract increases for our frontline workers.

And I think that was the result of uh maybe uh a little bit of luck, you know, good uh the stars aligning and opportunities all coming together.

But really, that's part of learning from what our strengths and weaknesses were is that really for us to grow and become uh and have the level of service and the quality of service that the Detroiters expect and that you all expect, those union contracts were the critical component that we needed.

So we have an incredible opportunity, but uh an incredible challenge this year is how do we take that uh those resources that we've been provided and turn that into increasing and implementing a lot of D DOT reimagined, looking at innovative new ways to add more layers onto the mobility picture and increase uh mobility, especially for seniors and uh young people who are the future.

And so all of that is centered around this vision to lead with care and and making sure that we take care of the 1,200 employees that make DDOT work every day.

So, quick recap on this slide is we had 10 classes, we hired hundreds of TEOs, which are transit equipment operators, and we got to the end of the year, and all we had to show for it is that we had not fallen from our number of drivers that were available.

And again, that's reflecting that really there was more to it than just training and and hiring and recruiting.

We needed to make sure that these wages were had parity with other transit operators so we could make these real attractive careers of choice.

And now we have those tools.

We've already seen through the three first quarter-ish of this year that our driver numbers have increased by nearly 50 drivers, even when accounting for separation.

So we are on track with that.

Our bus availability fluctuated, which really highlighted the fleet condition and the skills gap as those things that were the ceiling for our uh attainment.

So we had a really rough uh July and August, uh, then we got basically back to near 100% in November and December, then we had a rough start to this calendar year, and now we are recovering again.

Then we had a rough start to this calendar year, and now we are recovering again.

The common denominator in those is the technical capacity, capabilities, and skill set of the workforce that we have that is really forcing us to rely more on vendors than we would like to.

So thinking about where we want to go in the future is a system.

I've spent some time talking with our partners in Grand Rapids.

In their case, they're able to do everything in-house except for basically the required warranty work where they say, no, no, we've got to do it ourselves to keep your warranty.

Everything else that they do diagnosing, major body repairs, major repairs, preventive maintenance, they're able to do in-house, and that's based on the ability to train and incentivize the development of highly skilled technicians.

We installed 60 shelters and 25 benches, and you'll hear more that we've got uh in the pipeline.

We've set ourselves up this year to be able to install 100 shelters and another 175 benches with funding in a process we're in.

Uh we're in the process in the process of replacing our cloth bus seats.

Um of those things that has universal support is to remove cloth bus seats.

That's something that Smart did uh with COVID money.

Um it sounds like maybe they'd be less comfortable, but I can guarantee it is much more comfortable, and you know exactly what you're sitting in, which is what we're hearing from our our riders as well.

And then uh the Coolidge Terminal project, that's uh on budget and on schedule and nearing our uh opening in at the end of April for our service change in April.

165 million dollar project, uh I think round numbers, you know, 15 years in the making.

I think it's been at least 15 years since the last time that terminal was operational.

Of course, it was operational for 80 years before that.

Um, but that's a major uh a major undertaking and something that's really important to uh again that idea of investing in the workforce and making this uh uh improved morale and making it uh an attractive place to work.

Because again, the riders aren't gonna see that terminal, but um our our mechanics and our drivers will.

Um, and really uh this this funding has set us up for the future.

We can go to the next slide.

So again, talked a little bit about uh this showing our last year of uh TEOs.

So you can see it's basically a flat line through all of last year.

Uh once we have the new contracts approved in November 2025, you can see these last three months have really shown in December, January, and February, we've increased by about 50 drivers that are active.

And that is critical.

When we increased service twice last year, yes, the uh bus availability was a challenge, but we also didn't have the drivers.

We were seeing uh service cut for drivers even when we were short buses.

So this is really critical for us to be able to move up the drivers and the buses and increase service.

Next slide.

The fleet replacement status.

So this is um what this chart is showing is uh the green are um our model years of buses that we have purchased over the last several years.

Uh again, the way that this works generally is you have a fleet size that uh you're maintaining based on your peak service, and as buses reach their useful lives, which is 12 years or 500,000 miles, in many cases you get to both, uh then you can get grant funding that's meant to replace vehicles.

And so um, this is a combination of grants, but you can see in uh 20, 21, 22, 23, we we replaced um about uh what about 70 um buses with clean diesel 40 foot buses, and then starting in model year 2025, which are the buses that we've just taken reception of here, uh we're doing all uh diesel electric hybrid buses.

So these are buses that do not need to be charged, but they have about 80% reduction in emissions and some pretty significant fuel economy improvements, especially when you have city driving uh like DDOT has for some of the more suburban services.

You don't always realize those benefits.

Uh for 2027 and 2028, we've got 80 buses that will become eligible for replacement.

Those would be the model year 14 and 15 buses, and as you may have heard toward the end of last year, we actually have two consecutive uh discretionary grants, no low emission grants that we have in hand that will be able to pay for all of those buses.

So that's a really uh huge deal for us to have two years in a row of that.

Um again, these buses are almost a million dollars a piece.

So we're talking uh a big deal when it comes to the cost of having to replace these vehicles.

Uh, we also have just before we switch this one, uh we have uh just taking delivery of uh four all electric buses.

Two of them are 40 foot, two of them are 60 foot.

We're anticipating that those should be on the road by the beginning of May.

Right now they're going through the PDI process.

And then we are lined up to have training, so the drivers and the mechanics need to have extra training for the intricacies of those particular coaches and some of the special maintenance requirements because they have high voltage electrical components as well.

Post delivery inspection is PDI.

Yes, thank you.

It's part of the process of accepting any new buses.

Okay, next slide.

So our fleet availability.

This is kind of looking at graphically, telling the story I was mentioning a few moments ago.

You can say we had a dip back in uh last July at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Uh we did a lot of hard work to get back toward where we needed to be in December, and then had another fall off at the beginning of this year.

Um we're projected as we've increased steadily week over week, and we have resolved the issues we had with the uh 45 new flyers, had about 50% of them were not working on a daily basis over the last couple weeks through some daily persistence.

Uh we're we're up to uh at least 80% of those vehicles that are available, uh so 35 out of the 45, um, and that's continuing to increase.

So we've kind of uh we've crossed the ridge when it comes to our issues with those buses, um, and uh have implemented some new uh maintenance strategies to really focus on some quicker repairs and diagnosis.

And so we're on track to um hopefully in the next month or two will exceed the vehicles we need to meet our current schedule, and then we can start plotting out when we might be able to increase service next.

Next slide.

The bus seat replacement.

This is what they look like when they're replaced.

Uh again, they're comfortable, they're clean, they're easily washed.

I think enough said on that one.

Next slide.

Oh, well, so the funding we have this is a this was a council supplemental from last year.

Uh this is enough to replace 68 buses.

After this, uh, we will the 14 and 15 model years will still have the cloth seats.

Those are the ones that are in line to be replaced over the next year or two.

So we prioritize the newest buses going backwards, so that was 17 and 18.

Everything 2020 and newer, we've already been purchasing with the plastic seats standards.

All of our new buses will have them already.

Uh, the only buses left with the cloth seats again will be the about 80 buses that are the 14 and 15 vintage.

Next slide.

Uh the bus shelters, the next phase 100.

This is something that was in front of council or something related to this in front of council last week.

Uh so we did award uh or the council awarded a contract to have the installation ready for those.

We are finishing the state and federal approval process for these 100.

About half of them are replacement of a dilapidated or previously destroyed shelter, and the other half are sites that have not had a shelter before.

This is the map of kind of the the two that the two phases we divided them into, but again, um these have not been ordered yet because it's a requirement that you have to complete the state and federal uh compliance approvals.

So once we have that, that'll be in front of the council with the list of the approved locations for your final uh approval.

Next slide.

All the sites will be ADA compliant, by the way.

Next slide is the rider experience initiatives.

Uh so these are a number of uh things that we're committed to based on our uh at least being able to pilot this based on our current fiscal uh fiscal budget.

Um and a lot of this is based on feedback that we've heard from riders, especially students and seniors who are using the system.

Uh and so we've got uh funding allocated to reinstate some of the on-route enhanced bus cleaning.

This was something that was done during COVID to do kind of some touch-up cleaning, trash, maybe um some surface cleaning as necessary at transit centers and out on the road again to improve that kind of clean and safe experience.

Um we're planning to implement that March through April, and then we've uh including kind of uh some odor neutralization testing, and then based on those results, kind of fine-tuning the program and having it in place in fiscal year 27.

We're also working to revamp currently the public real-time information.

This is something that has become more acute just over the last month or two, is getting some real feedback again, especially from students and some of the seniors using the system that the bus tracking has become less and less reliable.

And so we're working with a partner that uh PeopleMover and SMART and uh formerly QLine used uh that can increase the accuracy of the real-time predictions and tracking, and also provide the opportunity for real-time detours and uh rider alerts all through a very easy managed system.

Also improve our customer service because when people call to ask about the bus, customer service is a really quick and easy way to see it.

And then also the last on this slide is adding some QR codes and informational posters at key stops, especially thinking about student experience.

Something that we heard from students is hey, we we're taking our route to school, we have a lot that has some trash, we have a bus stop that has broken glass.

There's an area we're feeling unsafe where it's poorly lit, and so kind of uh first thing was to connect them with the improved Detroit app, which we've made some uh fine-tuning on to make it easier to get to the D DOT items, but then also we'll be putting some QR codes and posters out at some of those stops as another way to remind people there's a way to let people know that there's some issues they're experiencing in the system.

Next slide.

So thinking about you know driving change, a 2027 uh budget, you know, moving forward, um, really thinking about a number of initiatives here.

Uh some of them we've kind of set up through some of the uh comments I provided so far.

But um there's some precise additions for some FTEs, including some more ambassadors.

Uh we are adding uh FTE for the public health liaison.

This is something that we were trying to fill in the current budget.

We have not been able to do it, and so that you see represented here as an official additional FTE.

Those are balanced out with some uh small reductions in the FTEs for drivers.

Part of the reduction there is not that we're reducing service, but because of the uh extreme turnover uh that you've seen through the student classes, um we were able to reduce some of the extra drivers we need to have for students because we've had to have you know over a hundred students active at any time as we cycle through these classes.

We've already shrunk our next couple of classes are down in the 30 to 40 range instead of the 60 to 70, and we're actually going to take a month, uh actually a month and a half.

We're gonna take off to pause and kind of refresh some of our training materials.

So that's an area where uh and and that's as budget is excited about.

That's an area of cost savings to stop having to spend all of those resources and time training new students only to have them leave uh only you know six or twelve months onto the job.

So we're excited again, already some early returns from those contract changes.

Um then really thinking about kind of the changes underway and priorities in this budget from Mayor Sheffield, again, pointing to both short and long-term efforts to develop and implement bold programs that will have real impacts, the daily life and represent an energized focus on our future by infusing uh youth perspectives and priorities.

This is something that I've been really excited about with the new administration, uh just this extra layer of emphasis and energy.

Dr.

Hampton, uh, Mr.

Howard just really spending a lot of time bringing that to the forefront of every department, and certainly DDOT is no exception.

Uh we've also got uh you've heard already from DTC continuing their growth and improvements, um, OMI, which we've got a couple of slides on a couple of their initiatives, uh which are also uh well integrated into uh DDOT and the other city departments.

Um and then again focus on student outcomes and seniors with the launch of Accessibility 2.0, which I'll talk about later on.

Next slide.

Uh the Coolidge, we talked a little bit about this.

This is internally, again, this is one of those things that you know, riders hopefully are not gonna have any idea that this is happening.

Uh it's a big deal internally to move your operations and hundreds of employees and hundreds of pieces of equipment from one location to the other.

But we're on prog on pace to do that.

It's about a six week six-week process, but all of it comes down to a couple of hours overnight between the 26th and 27th for us to pull it off.

Uh and thanks to uh the um DBA and CDD and other project partners, but it's been uh a real team effort to get to this point.

Next slide.

So the new contracts, I've mentioned them probably three or four times already, but it is uh worth stating again that these are uh generational and transformational to D DOT.

This has been as long as I've since I've graduated from college, probably this idea of the lack of parity between Smart and DDOT in particular, but that actually is between D DOT and everybody else.

Ann Arbor, Lansing, Flint, SMART have always had this gap that has put the city at a disadvantage.

And despite that, DDOT has always had an excellent group of operators that have an incredible amount of pride in their city.

Um speaking experience from SMART.

It was difficult for us to get people, even though we had that increased wage.

And so now that this is in place and we have parity, I'm just very excited about the opportunity to really have uh the best and brightest be able to also be uh paid on par with their counterparts as well.

And then similarly in maintenance, um not only increasing the base wage, but also in uh adding for the first time uh a huge uh layer of incentives that really not only encourages but rewards uh people that are willing to invest them in themselves and have us invest in them.

So you can earn up to about seven dollars an hour if you stack all of these incentives on top, and that is uh if you have all those, not only is it a benefit to you and your career, but it's an incredible benefit to the city and D DOT because you have all these ASE certifications, you've got CDL training, you've got specialized training, we've talked about hybrids, battery electric, those all basically buses are now rolling computers, and in these cases also have high voltage electricity.

So this is not just a matter of being really good at maintaining a heavy diesel engine, it's tons and tons of other things, and this is a way for us to really push people in that direction, but also again for the opportunity for them to be rewarded for it.

Uh next slide.

Uh the safe system initiative.

So this is something again high on the priority list for for Mayor Sheffield in the administration, uh really looking for opportunities for us to have a safe system.

And safe, safe and secure can mean a lot of different things.

We want to make sure first and foremost that our employees are safe.

I've said multiple many times on the record, uh including when I was at Smart that the bus driver is the toughest job that we have.

Uh they're out on the field 24 hours a day, uh taking whatever kind of traffic, weather, whatever their riders are experiencing that day, they're the ones that are bearing the brunt of that good and bad.

And so for us to have continue to have programs that help support them, and then also obviously support the riders to make sure that they can feel safe and secure while they're riding as well.

Uh the new uh driver contracts include for the first time a safe driver incentive program, which is every quarter you can earn up, you can earn $500 if you don't have a preventable crash.

We're also looking for a program that safety uh has been supporting of recognized drivers that have longer periods without crashes.

So, right now we've got about 150 drivers we're gonna acknowledge for the first time that haven't had a preventable crash in over two years, and then from there you'll be able each year to kind of get another another pin or button to show that you're continuing to have a clean record.

And then continuing our partnership with DPD, the transit division to improve safety and security at transit centers, bus stops, and on board.

Again, this is something we hear from a lot of folks.

How can we do better to make sure that people are safe?

Um, and really that's supported by some of our technology investments.

The council improved last year, um upgrading and replacing the onboard camera system, which will have uh clear clear images and really help with training and security.

Next slide.

So far, again, kind of some early results, but looking at preventable accidents that we've got from 2025 to 2026.

We've got about an 18% reduction in preventable accidents.

Again, pretty small sample size here of two months where we're able to advertise this uh safe driver incentive program.

Uh but so far, uh so good.

We're we're expecting that this will continue to play out over the long term, but it's just one part of a larger uh safety culture system.

Next slide.

Uh okay, so continuing on the maintenance uh uh angle here of building Detroit's workforce.

So we're really excited, we're teaming up with Henry Ford College DESC and the city HRD to launch a training and hiring pipeline for hybrid diesel mechanics.

Um again, all of these are lessons learned over the course of the last several years of where we are have gaps in uh in talent and in technical skills.

Um again, this is a great grant-funded program.

Uh it's got funding for at least 25 candidates to go through and finish this program.

But we have heard recently that they may have grant funding for even more.

Uh so we've worked really close.

Uh Darren and the maintenance staff have spent uh uh months working directly with Henry Ford College to develop a custom curriculum that's really focused on the precise needs of D DOT and creates a pipeline for training and placement.

And that was one of the questions I saw in the LPD was there was um I can't remember what it's called, but I think it's government intern.

There was three positions in the budget that we added.

Those are the positions that are actually what uh the candidates, that's where they are housed while they're in the program.

So that's the the D DOT's portion of this is we are actually paying them to work while they're in the program.

And then when they graduate, if they complete the program, the grant actually gives them a $5,000 tool set, and then they get a job with D DOT as a repair technician.

And so from there, we've got someone that's gone through the program.

Uh they've got it's a combination of classroom and on-the-job training, they've got a nice new set of tools, which is something we really saw with some of the new maintenance workers, is that you could you could know how experienced someone is based on the kind of tools that they bring with them.

So we're kind of setting them up for success, and uh again, really just a great program, uh, one of many layers of building up our technical capability and our maintenance workers, but really part of our long-term fleet maintenance uh efforts.

One of many layers of building up our technical capability and our maintenance workers, but really part of our long-term fleet maintenance efforts.

Next slide.

So we're also looking for ways to support new jobs.

This is a program that we soft launched last year.

It's called Ride Free for Three.

The idea is that businesses that are located in the city of Detroit can sign up for this for free.

Once the business enrolls, then there's basically if you have a new employee that's starting, they're able to say, hey, Frank's my new employee, and then we actually provide three monthly passes to basically give them the first 90 days of their job, they have their transportation covered.

And in some cases, that can be a really big benefit financially if this is someone that's getting a new entry-level position, but it's also a way for them to learn how to use the system to have reliable transportation for them to get to work.

We've had again some pretty good, we've provided over 100 new employees passes since this was launched, uh, and we'll look to kind of continue this program into fiscal year 2027.

Next slide.

And so now we've got um a couple of slides where we're we're doing a little crossover here between uh D DOT and OMI.

And we are joined uh here in the audience by Ryan Michael.

He's the deputy chief of business innovation and emerging industries.

I did write that down to make sure I got it right, but uh Mr.

Michael has been a fantastic addition to the team and already looking for ways.

He's he's basically he's the acting chief of the Office of Mobility Innovation, OMI, and is looking for ways to support these types of projects, uh, not only with D DOT but across the city.

So a couple of quick things here, um, and and Trisha Stein is here as well if we have any questions.

But uh we've got citywide access to EV charging.

Um so we have three new publicly accessible fast chargers and 11 level two chargers.

We've got 21 additional uh sites planned in 2026 and beyond, and plans for uh chargers, fast chargers in all seven council districts.

On the next slide, you can see kind of the before and the planned map here.

Again, these are in your handouts if you want to look at them more precisely.

And the next slide uh talks about clean freight.

Again, this is another grant-funded program that OMI has been working on in partnership with Toyota Mobility, working to study how to improve air quality for all Detroiters.

Um there's a million and five dollars that will be uh granted from OMI for developing and deploying innovative technologies to review reduce emissions, um, especially with diesel freight around eastern market.

Um, and that really is something that lines up very uh strongly with the initiative for health and all policies approach that Mayor Sheffield has been pushing.

Next slide.

Uh also maybe a contentious topic is uh expanding shareful mobility through uh safe and accessible personal mobility.

Um e-screwish ridership was up throughout the city in 2025, um, and really looking at kind of that connection between the CBD and neighborhoods.

Um, 370 non-CBD rides logs.

So obviously something that the push has been to have it be more and more accessible outside of the downtown area.

And um for 2026, OMI, through their their role is planning a 30% increase in the scooter availability citywide uh to get to having uh 100 to 200 screws available in every district.

Next slide.

So the youth in education, we've got two slides left.

We're in the home stretch here.

Youth in education, again, a huge I think I mentioned this multiple times in my little uh speech here, but um something that's really um just well it the youth are our future, right?

It's something that's very important.

It's an incredible opportunity for transit and mobility in general to really be an asset rather than a hindrance to the youth.

Um, and so this budget includes uh funding uh for an initiative for K-12 students to ride free year-round.

We're also drafting an increased safety program, including the evaluating the possibility to having onboard staff support and safe bus stops and routes in select areas, kind of coincide where we may have concerns of students that are trying to get to school.

We're also launching our new upgraded onboard camera system in 2027, as mentioned earlier.

And then we're also going to be working with the mayor's office education liaison to identify transit improvements to decrease absenteeism and increase access to outside of school programs.

So this is something that as we've been meeting with students and uh with some of the new team members in the Sheffield administration that have joined us, is learning that uh an area where we could do better is to incorporate input from the school districts and most importantly from this from the students and their families about how D D DOT and our transit solutions are working and where we can improve.

So that's something that's really has been emphasized throughout and excited to be working through that.

And then the next slide is accessibility.

So accessibility was a free fare self-driving shuttle pilot led by OMI in partnership with May Mobility, had the white and green vans, pretty popular service.

That did come to an end.

But we are ramping up for accessibility 2.0.

And that's going to include a grant program to kind of learn a lot of lessons from what we have from the first version.

May mobility again, that was a good first pilot.

They've kind of gone in a little bit different direction.

Don't take it personally.

It wasn't a Detroit thing.

This was a kind of a little bit of a corporate change for their model.

But it gave us obviously a lot of great feedback about how something like this could work, especially for seniors and individuals with disabilities.

2.0 aims to expand access for those who need better access to transportation.

We'll also include access for veterans and survivors of gone violence.

It will have an extended coverage to include more areas of the city than the first 1.0.

And also have this goal of sustaining itself as a permanent DDOT service to residents.

So the budget this year includes 1 million dollars.

That's to get the pilot and the system up and running.

And then after that, we are counting on a grant from MDOT to do the part of the kind of the phase two of accessibility 2.0, which includes that autonomous driving portion as well.

So very excited about this and the impact it can have, especially on seniors and others.

And with that.

Thank you.

And I'm here for any questions or comments you might have.

Thank you so much, Director Kramer.

And we're going to start with questions with members on Teboro.

Thank you, Mr.

Presidents.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for your work and for this presentation.

Again, we work closely as the chair of public health and safety.

We meet often on your progress and how we can help.

So I think I will focus my questions on what you shared regarding new shelters.

Excited that we have them coming down the pipeline.

Just wondering how you decided the locations.

Many of them in district six are downtown, and I have residents in residential areas that are looking for shelters.

So how do we decide those locations?

Sure, great question through the chair.

So there's a pretty prescriptive process that we have to follow.

So we've got a series of criteria based on uh boarding and alighting information, uh the physical constraints and opportunities of the site, um, and then we run that through our Title VI process to make sure that the sites we are selecting are are equitably distributed.

Um that's maybe the easier part from there than we have to go through the state has a SHIPO review process which looks at historic assets or um characteristics character characteristics of an area, and then also uh federal approvals through their uh environmental process as well, and that's actually what's taking the longest.

So we've proposed 110 sites that are going through that process.

We've already had a couple fall off and added a few more.

Um, but uh that's the criteria that we're using as we're selecting um these sites.

The bench program is a little bit simpler where we can really look at um uh we because of the way it's set up, the bench program uh is local money, and our our program is not required to have this same uh quite as rigid of a process for site selection.

So that's what you're seeing is really areas where we've tried and and couldn't succeed in the past for shelters, or just areas where we can have more of them.

Again, we have 200 bench sites.

Um that's I think an opportunity where we can fill some of those gaps that I think you're referring to.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Um, that's good to know.

Um, and we will work with you to try to figure out um how we can fill the gaps.

Um there are gaps, and I wonder if that can be part of the criteria.

There are gaps in in in the city as far as shelters and and benches, um, and I think that is is isn't as a need to meet.

Um, so we can continue to work on that.

Um I know that we've worked very closely on trying to bring more shelters on Ford Streets.

Um, it's a state road, so we will work through those issues together.

Um other line of questioning will be uh what I ask every year, which is around free fares.

I did visit for a conference once.

They were offering a free month of ridership around August.

The idea being to encourage people to not drive their cars to lower gas emissions to really combat climate.

Trying to get their logo on the people mover that's gonna provide them funding for free fares.

What do we have to do to pilots at least a month of free fare to begin the process?

Uh, because I truly believe that we will get more ridership if we make it free.

I know it has to be on it has to be on time, it has to work.

Um, but I'm just trying to to help here and just wondering what we have to do to get a a month at least, uh, a pilot program at least of a free fares.

Um through the chair.

So I think um it's an interesting idea, something that I think we could uh go back and take a look at and kind of report back what that might look like.

Um I think something I didn't mention in my lengthy presentation uh was that we're replacing and upgrading all of our fare boxes this year.

We've got we're right at the pretty close to doing it.

Um something that's important about that is it will probably provide more opportunities to make it easier to pay, but also uh other tools um such as fare cappings, the idea that um without having to purchase a monthly pass that if you're using the same media or way to pay for your trips, that after you get up to um spending the amount that's on the pass, the rest of your rides are free.

So that kind of levels the playing field.

If for whatever reason maybe you can't uh come up with $70 at once at the beginning of the month to have an unlimited regional pass, you can just as long as you're using that same card or account or gift card to pay for all of your rides or even cash with an uh uh ID card, you can actually earn your way to basically have free rides after you would have spent that same amount on a pass.

So that's something that helps level the playing field.

Again, this would be you know, kind of maybe a uh part way to getting uh free fare is at least making sure you're keeping it as affordable as possible and making it really easy for people to pay, removing that barrier as well.

All of that leads to uh you know more of this push toward um other ways to pay that are faster.

It removes uh a barrier, but also reduces the amount of time that the drivers have to take interacting with people about it and also the time uh of boarding uh boarding people at the stop.

So I think that's something that's high on our priority list is looking for ways to improve the experience with these fare boxes as a tool, and undoubtedly we'll be providing more updates to council as we uh kind of work those details and timeline out.

Okay, thank you through the chair.

Thank you.

And I do appreciate that.

Um I've I've mentioned the need for us to make it easy to ride the bus.

Um at first, you needed exact change, um, and we're really moving towards tapping, paying get before.

So thank you for doing that work.

I it will definitely help um get people on the bus.

Um, and thank you for mentioning um the hiring of the community liaison.

Sorry, Mr.

President.

Just want to confirm you do have the budget for this because it's been asked um that we have a again, it's like a social worker or community liaison, uh a healthcare worker.

Uh, just to confirm you have the budget for that staff.

So we were we were trying to make it one of our current FTs this year.

We just haven't been able to make that work.

So the 27 budget includes that separate line.

Public health liaison, I believe is the name of the position.

So that is included in this budget.

Through the chair, thank you.

Okay.

Um with that, um, I welcome anyone that's interested in learning and more of D DOT in their efforts to listen to our public health and safety standing committee.

Uh, we do have quarterly updates on what's what's going on, how the buses are running, how they're not, how staff is going.

So I welcome folks to join us for those conversations.

Um, and we'll add to the closing resolution uh for us to work together towards a a free fare pilots.

Um so Mr.

President would like to add to our closing resolution um a motion that we include a pilot for free fares for D DOT.

All right.

Colleagues, there's a motion on the floor.

Any objections?

Seeing none, that action shall be taken.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Uh director, I believe in the past I was told it might cost about a million dollars to have a free month of uh fares.

That was this information I believe was given to me by the previous uh director of D D dot.

We will confirm.

Um, but I think that's the these are the steps that we need to take is how much would it cost to do a free pilot program?

Do we have to find spine sponsorships or do we put in the general funds, if not this year, next year for us to pilot that program?

Um so if we can start there, we can then continue to have conversations.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Member Waters.

All right, so thank you.

Um I was certainly boy, it's a lot going on with D Dot.

I was trying to take it all in.

Um I'm glad that you you're working to improve the safety of both the drivers and the passengers, so that's real good.

And you appear to be going after state and federal grants.

Um that's a that's a really really great thing.

Um I haven't heard anything uh bad about paratransit anymore since we're right, we did it.

So um, but I guess I I just want to ask you if there's anything else that you can do to make sure uh that that um that our drivers are kept safer too.

You know, is there some glass that you can put them behind to shield them from I don't know, gunshots or things like that?

Um it's a very dangerous uh job uh driving the bus and riding the bus too, you know, trying to keep both of them safe, but you always have just one or two people, somebody just wants to come on and and really act up and put everybody's life in jeopardy.

So I'm just asking that that you think about uh some of those kinds of things, and I know we were gonna put more security on on the buses before as as well to try to keep the riders uh safe as well.

So um I just wanted to at least float a couple of those things out there.

Do you know how many how many people connect um like early morning and and and late afternoon between Detroit and suburbs because they're getting to going to and from work.

See, I and of course I'm concerned about people getting to work on time and to school on time.

Um could you talk about that a little bit more?

We are we making sure that people have those connections so that they can get to work on time.

Absolutely, through the chair.

Um something I didn't spend a lot of time on is talking about how important it is.

Well, I mentioned it a little bit, but um it's something that us and our partners at SMART take pretty seriously because there's a lot of uh there's a lot of people who use both systems.

Yeah, and my round number recollection, which I probably should update to make sure it's as accurate as possible.

Uh, but about half the people, uh half the jobs in the city, I believe, are uh the employees are from outside the city, and about half the people who live in the city work outside of the city.

And so if you just take those round numbers and think about that, it means that a lot of people are gonna rely on smart and DDOT together, especially when they're getting to and from work or health care opportunities.

Think about all the different health care around the region as well.

Um, and they really don't care what color the stripes are on the side of the bus or how what the the fare card might be, they just want to make sure that they can have an efficient trip.

So that is something that we are always talking about with our partners, both on fixed route and paratransit.

And there are some ideas that we've been uh floating uh between us and smart with the you know support of um the rise higher uh efforts is thinking about ways where we could even make that a smoother transition on this regional level.

Um but I think that um to answer your question more directly, um that is this idea of knowing how critical it is for people to get to healthcare appointments and jobs on time is part of the reason why we're really emphasizing this upgrade to our real-time information, so that whether there's you know there's always gonna be something that happens on the road.

So even if there's just one bus that's missing, we want to make sure people can rely on not just the schedule of what the bus is supposed to do, but what the system's actually doing.

And by upgrading that information, um, which we have the budget to do, thanks to some of the council support from last year, we'll really help us uh rebuild some of that trust.

Um, and it's the same system smart's using.

So as they're using both systems together, they can really rely on the information that they're getting for free.

It's all through the the transit app, uh, real-time information.

To me, that's a really important benefit, and it helps us deploy and manage the service uh uh more effectively internally as well.

So hopefully that answered kind of the idea you threw out there, but uh we know how important it is, and I think that real-time information is the most important piece, so we can tell people you can count on this information you're getting in real time of what's actually gonna happen.

Okay, well, certainly uh we'll be looking to you know, additional improvements uh when it when it comes to uh getting people to and especially to work, you know.

That's a real critical piece of it, you know.

Um in those talks regarding the regional transit millage at all.

So, yes.

Uh the um administration, D dot um certainly has been you know part of the discussions that are out there.

Um, I think it's important to remember that um the the millage uh does have to um go on to the ballot, it has to be approved.

Um, and then kind of the details of exactly what's gonna happen with the funds at that point.

Is this something where um if assuming that it passes those dollars, the tax collections would be coming in around this time next year?

So thinking about you know, starting to think ahead about what's what is the way we think uh estimate is that it would generate about seven or eight million dollars.

The property in the city of Detroit uh for about a mill would generate about that amount of money.

So that's the question is how could we really turn that into you know that's that is a significant amount of money, but when you compare that to the overall budget for D Dot and the city's general fund contribution, maybe maybe it's not exactly as much as it might sound like.

So I think it's really important for us working with all of our partners because obviously we want to make the biggest bang for our buck, um, but to really think about some opportunities where that could have real real um uh real results on the ground, something that the Detroiters would really be able to see every day.

And so that's what we'll continue to work on.

What's the best way we could possibly you know make the most of those dollars when it comes.

All right, then thank you.

Thank you so much, and thank you, Mr.

President.

Thank you.

Member Miller.

Thank you for joining us today.

I just wanted to say I am excited that the D D dot workers got the six dollar raise to drive behind SMART on the same road for the same amount of time and it makes six dollars less was really insulting.

I campaign with them at the bus terminal.

I had my sign up, and I tell anyone if you need anything done, do it during election time.

Because the money came in, I think a few days or maybe even a week before we cast our ballots.

So people have a tendency to move.

So I am excited that that actually happened at the right time, although it was delayed by years.

But I'm glad that the right thing was finally done with our union workers who do the same job as smart but make less money.

We have to find ways to be competitive so we can continue to draw workers to Detroit.

We have high turnovers because to be behind a bus and make six dollars less than you're on the same route.

It's just I don't understand why we drag our feet when it comes to doing the right thing so many times in Detroit.

But I wanted to say on your uh ride free for three.

You give uh 31 day passes in every job I've ever had, there was a 90-day uh time frame to get rolled over to your job.

So I would like to see that increase to 90 days.

31 days, you you can barely save enough to even buy a car, a used car at that.

You need about 90 days because they're gonna check your attendance for 90 days.

Three.

What is it?

Three days.

Three days.

Through the chair.

Three thirty-one, no, I'm sorry.

We give three.

Thank you.

Okay, I appreciate it.

Your desire is well, thank you very much, Mr.

President.

Yes.

Well, I was just like when I read it first, I'm like, wow, I I thank you.

I stay corrected.

I apologize.

Thank you.

But that is an amazing uh new uh initiative because you need the 90 days to get to work on time.

And one of the biggest things when you work afternoons, sometimes the buses run late or you're running the midnight shift.

Is there a mechanism in place that can they can check to see if the bus is running on time?

Um I used to work nights, and I would get off at 1.30 in the morning.

And sometimes the bus just wouldn't be there.

You're outside by yourself and you're wondering, is the bus coming?

You could just stay inside your facility until the bus comes, but is there an app or something?

Is this someone that can that where you can tell even um our our people that's going to work?

Is the bus is late?

Or is there a way the bus is not coming on this route?

They can remind me maybe call and get another route of transportation because they have to make them 90 days.

Um do you have that in place?

Yeah, so through the chair.

Um right now we have um the D DOT tracker app, and then there's also transit app, and it's being fed the regular scheduled information, and it's also being fed real-time information about where the bus uh is.

So if you open up the app, you'll see a little bus icon that's kind of done coming down the route that you're looking at.

Um what we've heard some feedback from, especially the last couple of months is that those real-time uh buses scooching down the route are not accurate enough, and people are feeling like they can't count on that.

And so right now, as we speak, we're working on a way to upgrade and improve that information, uh working with a partner that's smart and the people mover use that will not only improve the accuracy and the feed of that information, but the software that it includes provides um easier uh access for customer service.

Now we don't have customer service uh humans available in the middle of the night, but if it was during regular hours you could call, they'll be able to give you a much quicker answer on what's happening with the bus I want to take.

And then if you're using uh we're really encouraging people to go to the transit app as uh General Manager Howard mentioned for the PEEP Mover, the RTA has worked with a grant to have an upgraded, publicly available, upgraded transit app platform.

And so we want to upgrade what we're supplying to that platform.

People can get download it for free, they can customize the logo to match their favorite transit provider, they can save their favorite routes and times, and then they can get customized alerts that this new software also allows us in the control center to say, hey, there's a train that's blocking Grasshit, it's gonna disrupt service.

We can type up, hey, these couple of trips are experiencing delays because of the train, or this trip is canceled because the bus broke down, or we have lack of equipment.

So what you're saying is exactly what we're focusing on right now because we want people, especially as you're pointing out in the middle of the night, the buses don't come as frequently and it's the middle of the night.

You want to make sure that you know, worst case, at least you know when it's gonna come, you can stay inside your place of work or grab a bite, whatever it might be, and know that when it's time you can get to the stop and it's gonna be there.

So, yes, we are we are working on that, and we're working on improving what we have right now as we speak.

Okay.

Uh last question.

I'm on the iOS team here for lawsuits.

We have a plethora of lawsuits every single week.

I know she in in your um plan here, you have installed cameras.

Is there anything else that you're doing to slow the amount of lawsuits?

It is in a the amount I can't even speak on it, is every single week.

We have lawsuits for various amounts.

Yep.

Through the chair, a couple of things on that.

So uh the new camera system, right now, every bus has a camera system in place.

But um, in some cases there aren't as many cameras as we would like.

The resolution is lower, and the D VRs and the equipment are outdated.

They need to be replaced and upgraded.

So the new camera system, which should be fully deployed in the next couple of months, certainly by the first quarter of fiscal year 27, has uh more cameras, more consistency, uh, higher resolution DVR space, newer cameras, um, and it has the ability in case of an emergency, uh, DPD or our dispatch could actually remote in in real time and see.

So if a driver signals, hey, there's something going on in the bus, we can see what's going on and and have uh a more prepared and and uh proactive approach to addressing those.

Also, hire uh uh um a better, a more dependable camera system is an excellent training tool.

So you have opportunities where if you have customer complaints or if you have an incident where maybe there's a slip and fall or a hard stop and that results in a lawsuit, those are all become training materials for the next generation of drivers and for the enhancement training of like, hey, this is this is what can happen if you're not practicing defensive driving safe driving skills, and then uh a couple other things uh we're uh reinvesting in enhancement training.

Um, now that we're able to have not have to exert every ounce of energy into continue to hire drivers and then having them go away.

We're able to refocus on the enhancement training and refresher training, which is something that if you have a uh uh a near hit or a crash, or it just once a year, you actually go through some training to help remind you about safe driving techniques.

And then the last piece is the new contracts also have the $500 a quarter safe driver incentive.

So all of these things stacked up are all geared toward the idea of don't damage the equipment, don't hurt the passengers, don't hurt the public, and all of those things in turn then reduce the uh level of risk and the lawsuits coming out of it.

Okay.

As a supporter for ATU 26, they often talk about the assault.

I know they're not supposed to have anything, but is it ever going to be an opportunity where maybe they can have some mace or something, or is that like totally illegal?

That's a question.

I I heard some union one of the union meetings I tend to couple.

They talked about the fear of driving, and I was told they couldn't carry anything, they couldn't have anything.

Um through the president, I think this is um kind of along the lines of Council Member Water Waters' question as well.

So um all of the buses have the driver uh vapor barriers, vapors to the brand, it's not actually a barrier to the vapor itself, but they have vapor barriers that were added during COVID.

Um, but they don't they're not it's not it's not a cab, it's not a fully enclosed capsule.

And so each of these things are trying to make it more safe.

Someone can still reach around the outside, as we've seen, you know, they there's also a window that they can roll down.

Um but a lot of the disagreements um or or issues uh revolve around the the fare boxes not working or or having difficulty paying their fares.

So that's another benefit of the upgraded fare equipment is to help and kind of reduce some of those friction points.

Um and then it's something that we really train the drivers to on de-escalation techniques, um, you know, making sure that we continue to work with DPD transit unit to make sure that they have uh quick response times.

Um but specifically I I don't know the answer legally speaking.

Um I know our policy is that not to have uh the the TEOs have have weapons, which generally may be considered that.

But I'll make sure that we circle back with you on that specific question.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you all for being here today.

Um just a few items.

Number one, looking at the page ROL 35 tax 17.

This is under non-departmental DDoC contribution for operations uh fiscal year 27, it's 84 million dollars.

The in that is that the cost of providing free fare to the different programs that we have in the city now.

Can you restate what looking at page Bravo 35 tax 17?

That's non-departmental under transportation services support.

B 35 B 35.

What was the last 17?

Act 17, yeah.

17, yes.

You got under transportation services support, it's about two-thirds of the way down.

Contributions for operations, eighty eighty-four point two million dollars for a contribution for operations.

Is that where we would find the cost to providing free fare?

Through the chair, uh that is true.

Uh 84.2 million dollars is for the operation and all the other subsidies that the D dot is receiving for the P.

Okay.

In a few years ago, I asked about the cost to provide free fare 100% for DDOT.

The number they came back was 25 million dollars.

This is a number of years ago.

I'm not sure if that is still the number.

And this goes to my colleague's question about a pilot.

What would it cost to provide free service?

Period.

And I'm looking at a trend here.

I see the people mover has done it.

Obviously, there's a sponsor to help with that.

Um, we're providing to certain special groups.

Um free service youth, although I think we were already doing something similar to that already.

Um we do it for now for the pilot program for the free for three, and then I believe returning citizens uh receive free fare as well.

Just what would it take to do everything?

Just provide it free.

And then what's the um what's the value add besides I get to ride the bus free?

Um I don't know what the number would be to provide for free, but certainly that's something we'll sharpen our pencils and crunch the numbers to get back to you.

Um I think that the value is also a uh complicated question, but there's a lot of possible ways to look at it.

Um I think something I've learned um it was actually I can't remember what conference I went to, but there was a discussion of a considering to go fare-free for the Houston transit system, I believe.

Kansas City as well.

The way that they uh the way that they analyzed it was interesting at the time it took me a while to let it sink in.

Um, but the cost of fare-free, and again, I am trying to provide a uh holistic view of this.

Um it's easy to say that the cost of fare-free is just uh taking the fare revenue and making up for it.

And I think in the people movers case, that was the pretty simple math of the peep mover.

What they looked at for Houston, I believe the system was, is that the ridership um, and this is kind of painful as a transit supporter and a planner to have to think about this way, but the increased ridership that would be uh induced by having the free fare would result in the need in their case for them to build an entire additional facility and purchase 50 additional uh buses, and so they got to the end of the day and said, Oh, this is gonna cost us 300 million dollars of capital expenses, um, let alone the operating for that based on the increased ridership.

Now, of course, all of the council or some of you may be thinking, well, yes, of course, that's the point.

We want more people to ride the system.

Um, but that's you know, we also have to balance the budget.

So I think I I hear a challenge from the council of uh, you know, take a look at what this kind of would look like uh from whether it's piloting a month, uh, what would be the larger implications financially?

And so I uh like the opportunity to be able to do that come back to you.

Okay, just that'll be interesting.

And then I was unaware, maybe I missed this in the um in the org chart, but OMI is now under your span of control.

So the uh through the chair, uh the budget for OMI has always been aligned under D D DOT's budget, uh just like DTC, uh, but it reports up through uh Mr.

Michael.

So and he does not report to me.

So from a org chart perspective, they are not part of D DOT, but they are in our budget, and obviously we want to closely align our efforts.

All right, so then should we be asking questions to OMI here today, or they'd be back before this body at a later date?

Yeah, if they do not have a separate hearing, so if you have a specific questions, then we can we can bring them up.

All right, then looking at and this is for OMI then.

Then looking at your at the 2026 and beyond for DC fast chargers, level two chargers, our charge ahead program.

Where are we and how are we looking?

I'm I'm looking at a very robust map of populated potential DC fast chargers, 19, versus the three that we have, uh, one of which routinely does not work.

Um I know that we have an ordinance which requires us to charge 39 cents per kilowatt hour that is being charged at two.

Uh the third one will be nice, but I believe if we were charging it, we could use that revenue stream to pay for the repairs that are needed.

And then there's looking at the reliability of our level two chargers that are moderately fast, our level two chargers that are slow, and just the going to different rec centers, two may work.

Go into another rec center, maybe one is down out of the four.

The problem is if we don't have an infrastructure or service that works the way we say it works, people lose confidence in the city of Detroit.

And for me, that's worse than not having the free opportunity or the low cost opportunity to charge our vehicles.

Looking at probably close to 21% of vehicles being registered in the city of Detroit are EVs now.

We've seen that grow over the years, even with the federal government um retracting its support, it's still the future, and what we're doing for our residents helps level the playing field, which is the reason that we did this, and we've kept those chargers free.

What are you doing to make sure that we're keep complying with our own ordinance that says charge uh maintaining the uh infrastructure?

And I'm sure that there are a number of different departments who are engaged here.

How are we doing this?

What are we gonna do to make sure that our infrastructure works, it's reliable, and people have a level of confidence in our services here?

Uh absolutely through the chair.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to answer your question, Councilman.

And uh, it's great to be here in front of all of you.

Again, my name is Ryan Michael.

I'm the deputy chief of business innovation and emerging industries for the mayor and also acting chief of OMI and uh hear your question uh loud and clear.

And the intent of the program is to make charging available, accessible, and practical for every intended resident throughout the city, and we understand completely that uptime and reliability are you know the chief concerns because if as you appropriately acknowledged, if they're not working when I need a charge, then uh w will I continue to go back.

Um so we're continuing to uh work with all the partners that we need to to make sure that all those uh the reliability questions are addressed, working closely with the uh construction and demolition department um to make sure that as soon as we are aware that a charger is down that we have somebody who's able to go out and and and address that and make sure that the parts are ordered and that the services is back up as soon as possible, continuing to work with those same partners on the um the the fees as you indicated, making sure that uh we're able to uh to pull that revenue so that we can uh make those make those adjustments um as needed, but then continuing to put chargers within the uh available access of residents throughout the city and all the communities that are here.

Um so we'll continue to work uh alongside yourself and the entire body as well as my colleagues at OMI along with D DOT to make sure that um as those those um those residents' concerns or anybody's concerns as they're appropriately brought forth that we're addressing them as quickly as possible.

Okay, um today is the 16th of March.

The ordinance requires charging on all of our DC fast chargers by one January 2026.

We're a bit behind, hoping that we can get this one together and start actually charging as well, so that maybe we won't see these type of um downtime on our infrastructure.

And just recently, I think all four of those ports were down.

I think we're back up to two right now, and they're threatening to repair the other two.

But I'm just hoping that we can get to a point where the reliability is on par even better than typical service, and then just looking at current uh the current ecosystem.

Right now, we are at war as a country in the Middle East in Persia.

Um there have been threats to that gas could increase 200 a barrel.

Um seeing numbers in Los Angeles, California, gas at eight dollars a gallon.

Um for those of us who haven't made that switch or looking at higher rhythm, there is a significant reason to start looking at transitioning away faster from ice vehicles.

And so I just want to want to say that that we have the opportunity, and this map is is very intriguing, and it's it's a great foreshadow if it comes to fruition.

There are 19 charges that are outstanding.

We've got three DC fast ones, but all the other ones that are free, man, that's fantastic.

We have the opportunity to ensure that people can drive for free in the city of Detroit.

And with the the specter of $200 a barrel gas ones at $100 now, I mean that's gonna kind of let you know what the gas prices could be per gallon, and that is nothing that anybody wants to see.

Not neither do I, but I'm just saying if we're gonna lean in, let's lean in and let's make sure that we can give people a level of confidence that when they get there, it's going to work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and good afternoon.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

I first want to ask about um the map that you provided for the first 50 shelter and the next 62 62 shelter locations.

Um, is difficult for me to really understand the terrain because we don't know where existing shelters are.

Um, and so as I was looking at the map, my first thought was do we have shelters and I would think benches near the schools because we know students are catching the bus to and from school.

Um and so as I look at the maps, I don't see a dot near Southeastern High School, right?

But I don't know whether or not there is an existing bus shelter in that area.

So if you can provide that, that would be great.

Um I also just want to say I hope that as we get more things um aligned as it relates to the app being more accurate, uh, the shelters, the benches online, safety and security.

Um, I hope that we will promote and encourage residents to utilize um DOT because it can be a tremendous uh reduction in just how we operate and and living in the city and you know, um, so I I think that is extremely important.

But I I think we need to make sure we have all of those things addressed before people will actually even utilize um the bus system.

So um that I just wanted to note those things.

My two questions.

Um, I know we not long ago um implemented the floating platforms on East Jefferson.

Um, can you just talk about how that's going if you all are evaluating um the platforms, if there have been any concerns raised around the platforms, if you're planning to expand the use of them.

Sure, through the chair.

Um so the platforms uh 16 locations have the platforms installed.

Uh there will be another five that are installed this year that are waiting for uh some disruptive construction work at those sites.

So rather we waited to install them till that's done.

Um so far I think the feedback has been mixed.

Um the the benefits of the platforms themselves are to provide um a better and faster boarding and the lighting experience.

So if you think about especially on Jefferson, where you've got bike lanes all along the corridor, if you think about just trying to get a bus where you want that front door to touch the curb, you're gonna be at an angle, you're blocking the bike lane.

Um, and it can be a real challenge, and then from there trying to navigate back out into traffic.

Uh there's a lot of delay and and not a lot of convenience if you're going out the back door, you're stepping into the street.

Um the the biggest benefits of these amenities is to have something where the bus can pull, stay in the travel lane, pull right up to it, and everyone gets on and off easily on the platform.

So from that perspective, I say they are a success.

Um we've we did some observational measurements, I'll call it, so not uh super scientific, but we did our best to try to try to measure the amount of time people were taking in the boarding in the lighting process, and we'll be comparing that as we get some more data to see how much of a travel time improvement we would have, which again would be a positive thing.

If we're shaving off the stop time by 50%, um that's a measurable thing you can benefit in the long term, you can actually make the schedule shorter, which then takes less driver hours, and so there's a real benefit possibility that's there.

Um, and it provides uh good separation and safety for bikes because they're actually able to ride across, basically think about the sidewalk, you've got the platform, you've got a bridge between the two that has a ramp.

And so the bike, as long as everyone's looking out for each other, pedestrians and bikes, they can navigate through the stop safely and not have to worry about interacting with the bus itself.

So, from that perspective, um, good things.

Some of the uh again, pretty preliminary but maybe more negative feedback is uh the visibility when you're out on the platform.

This is something that I kind of noticed the first couple times I stood out there is it kind of feels the equivalent of standing out in traffic.

It's not the most comfortable experience.

Um so that's actually why we have kept the orange construction barrels have been there on purpose.

Wasn't a great look when they also had dirty snow piled up against them, but that was really intended to keep the visibility of those platforms up.

We're gonna be working on purchasing at least for the leading edge to have a railing that's there.

Again, not necessarily to stop a car from running through the platform, but to provide an extra layer of visibility and uh a place where people can kind of rest while they're waiting for the bus as well, um, out at the platform.

Um, and then you know the shelters and other amenities are still on the sidewalk side as well.

Um the other uh challenge we experienced, which I think is part of learning over time, um, and this is actually something we experienced at stops across the city, is um the snow and ice management.

So, in addition to the regular challenges we have, these are platforms that are out in the plow zone, I'll call it at my made-up term, where you could clean them off, and all it takes is a plow going by, and they're sticking right out in traffic to be plowed over again.

Um so we actually have ordered, and uh, probably for next winter season I would call, we actually have ordered like a drive-behind uh snow thrower.

Um, and that will provide an opportunity that we could also use at other stops as well if we you know kind of trailer it.

Uh, we do rely on uh GSD and some of our partners to clean the stops, but again, trying to look for just layer on some solutions because that was a pretty consistent uh complaint that we had uh for people who have ridden the bus.

All it takes is not even 24 hours of a busy bus stop of people tramping down the snow, and then it turns into an icy shell for a long time to come.

Um and so thanks to our GSD partners for chiseling uh some of those stops apart.

But um, I'd say those are probably the biggest concerns, but things that can be resolved through um you know some adjusting how we handle those stops.

Um we don't have any current uh funded plans to expand them to other corridors yet.

I think if you're thinking about some of the corridors that have had enhanced streetscapes around the city, each one's a little bit different.

There's quite a few corridors that actually have the concrete uh islands that are built kind of out beyond the bike lanes.

Um these resin-based platforms are much uh are much less expensive than the concrete work, but uh we're still you know looking forward to learning more about how they survive with more than a few months under our belt.

Okay, thank you.

Um I I appreciate the what you shared.

Um I did do a walk a mile in my shoes with uh Ms.

Maddox uh and she pointed out some of the things that you uh shared as well.

So I'm sure it sounds like she's been communicating with you to let you know how um effective they are and and whether or not they are um helpful for people of a varying um mobilities.

Um so thank you for that.

The other question that I had is um related to bus routes and frequency.

Are you all planning to increase any frequent or the frequency for any of the bus routes?

I know East Jefferson, I believe it was on a pilot.

Um is that now standard practice for it to come essentially every 10 minutes?

Um are you planning to do that at any other on any other streets?

Great, great question through the chair.

Um so uh Jefferson 10 minutes uh with our June service change last year.

We also increased Grand Rap uh Grand Rapids, Grand River, which goes to Grand Rapids.

Uh Grand River uh was also increased to 10 minutes.

Um, and that is part of the framework laid out in the the D dot reimagined framework is this idea of this network of uh enhanced corridors that over time will be increased to you know 15 minutes or better is kind of to me the the standard where you can abandon the schedule and just count on the service coming.

10 minutes, of course, is even better, especially if you have high frequency and want to make sure that people are spread out across the vehicles.

Um so as I mentioned earlier, that is the plan is to keep increasing that.

We did two increases last year, but then our equipment was falling short, and so we have paused that.

Our budget does allow uh for the mechanics and the training incentives and also the drivers that we need to increase service further, and that would focus on increasing the frequency on some of those enhanced corridors and also increasing some of the low frequencies on the less served corridors as well.

So I think if you think about the idea behind D dot reimagined is overall increasing the frequencies on a on the on a network of enhanced routes, but also bringing the lowest frequency routes up as well.

So we're not talking about a bus that comes on the schedule every 45 minutes or 60 minutes.

We want to bring pretty much all the routes to 30 minutes or better, and have those enhanced corridors be you know 10 to 12.

All right, excellent.

Thank you.

I have additional questions that we will email over.

Um I do just want to say thank you for uh responding to the request from Cody high school students.

It came through our office because I am the um city council liaison and glad to connect with member McCampbell and his team to be there.

So I understand it was a great conversation.

You all um heard directly from the students and their experience and are addressing the concerns that they raise.

So we appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Member Johnson.

Member McCampbell.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh good afternoon, you all, and also just also want to extend thanks to um Member Johnson and you all as well from you know what the students are called.

I saw that they made the uh presentation, so that was that was great to see.

Uh and thank you also for um exploring uh having um folks on the possibly having folks on the buses to help students in that uh as well.

I saw during the presentation.

So that's that's very um great to see.

I had a few questions around um one, just overall, I just want to say uh great work on improving the system and and happy to see the coaches increasing to get on the road to make sure that the service is needed uh that is needed for folks there.

Um I had a question around you know, I always bring up the benches and shelters, um and on the map.

Um, there's only uh four identified in D7.

I know you went over the criteria in which um this is laid out and how that um and the process and that um but three of those four are on Grand River, uh and I know that's uh uh a major or more frequent route.

Only one is on the uh west side of Southfield Freeway, so that leaves out a lot of the population in D7.

Um and I know the benches, and we saw the list of the benches, and um that will help supplement.

But I'm just wondering uh what can we do?

Is it is it budgetary or what I know the criteria, I know the criteria is there, but separate is there anything that we can do um as a city to increase the shelters in those areas because as I mentioned, um if we are having as we talk about frequency, if we're having routes which D7 does have a lot of routes that are like 30 minutes or 45, um, and again we're re D Dot reimagined, hoping to get those down, but is more for me more essential for shelters to be on those routes because folks will be waiting longer, especially in the LMS and such.

So, what can we do to get more of those shelters in those areas through through the chair?

Um, as a um GIS and map person, I I love the challenge of let's have a map that shows all of our bus stops and what amenities are there now.

Um that isn't gonna answer your question, but at least we'll have a uh we'll be able to all talk about what's actually out on the on the street, what's there, and I think maybe some opportunities too to try to identify if we know physically there's a sh a site that can't physically accommodate a shelter.

That seems to be what we've run into the most is um not having adequate right-of-way in order for us to put a shelter in, we have it has to be fully ADA compliant.

There's no way around that, and that means we have to have a certain footprint and a certain slope.

And the slope is often the challenge between the sidewalk and the curb.

If it's more than a three percent slope, um then you you can't use that site.

So all of those things go into the process.

But I think to get back to your actual question, um, I think knowing more about what's out there, but hearing again this challenge of how can we get uh more sites that have at least a bench, if not a shelter.

Are there different shelter designs we should be considering?

Uh there's some spots, um, including the one on Woodward that was in bad shape where there are cantilevered so they can fit in a little bit smaller uh footprint.

Um at Smart, I know oftentimes we would have to engage the the private property owner side of the sidewalk and get basically a licensing agreement or lease agreement to be able to place something on their side, but oftentimes that's something that they were amenable to because it gave a place for people to wait rather than them trying to come uh into their business or hang out underneath their awning.

So it's really just about finding ways that we can get uh these amenities to the spots that need them the most.

And I think part of this overall collaboration with uh the schools, the schools, all schools uh will help us also identify those as well.

And then the last thing is that real-time information provides you more confidence so that you're not getting to the stop thinking there's gonna be a bus there, and then it's 30 minutes late, and now you're standing at that stop for 30 more minutes than you should have to.

So I think all of those things pile on top of your initial question, which is just how can we get more of these?

I think the council's extra funding that they put toward this last year is how we have money to spend this year on getting up to at least 200 bench locations.

And once we kind of get through those, um, if there's you know funding available, we might see if there's more sites available for the benches in particular.

Um, but you know, for for us, it's just gonna be a process of we really need to um this is my opinion is that uh we really need to find ways to reduce the amount of energy cost and time it takes us to get these sites installed.

And that's about working with DPW with the Wayne County Roads, with MDOT, with our vendors to figure out how can we make these less costly and faster because that's right now for these uh hundred sites, we're actually gonna end up spending over $50,000 per site.

That's between the concrete work, engineering drawings, permitting, traffic control, and the shelter itself.

That's a pretty big expense for a shelter.

And as you can see, since I was here at 12 months ago talking about basically the same project, it's taking us you know 18 months to navigate the process.

So I think right now I would say if you gave me more money right now, I'm already got a hundred sites stacked up with funding to do that we need to get through, and that's why I want to focus on can we speed that up, and then we'd be looking at okay.

Now we're ready to be able to try to take on more sites.

Thank you for that.

And I think uh and I hear you on that, and also you you touched on it.

I was thinking about you talking about the right-of-way, and some I've also been talking to folks in the administration about the need to expand some of the uh sidewalks and and and streetscape in D7.

So I'm I'm thinking there's a larger conversation about uh coordination there as well.

Um I I just I hear you on the there might not be a budget number right now as you get through this.

I I do want to explore further, maybe there's more benches.

So I'll make a motion to put a conversation around additional shelters and benches in the Zecule session.

Colleagues, there's a motion on the floor.

Any objections?

Seeing none, that action shall be taken.

And thank you.

And um do the chair just wanted to also touch on that coordination with departments, you know, here and I but the you all have been responsive to this as well, but especially the one on winter months.

We got a lot of um inquiries on snow removal around um bus stops, and I know DPW helps with that um or handles that, but we also um I've heard from a lot of folks of there may be construction that's happening that wasn't noticed and there wasn't a detour around us.

So could you talk about the the conversations that you are on the coordinations that you all have with departments such as DPW or MDOT or the folks that are having construction to make sure that not only the riders know about any detours but also operators know that they may have to take a that there may have to be a different route that day.

Through the chair, uh it's a really good question, and we've got some some great staff that uh do their very best to stay on top of uh these different layers about um not only uh the many different uh uh agencies and contractors that can disrupt uh a bus stop or a street or a route for us, um, also staying on top of if they're doing work at the shelters or around the shelters or stops, uh staying on top of the contractors uh around the city to make sure that they're maintaining uh accessibility for those stops.

due to us but also operators know that they may have to take uh that there may have to be a different route that day through the chair uh it's a really good question and we've got some some great staff that uh do their very best to stay on top of uh these different layers about um not only uh the many different uh uh agencies and contractors that can disrupt uh a bus stop or a street or a route for us um also staying on top of if they're doing work at the shelters or around the shelters or stops uh staying on top of the contractors uh around the city to make sure that they're maintaining uh accessibility for those stops but as you mentioned making sure that the drivers understand the detours and also the passengers and not to harp too much on this but this does go back to this initiative that we're trying to upgrade the um the software that we use to notify passengers and the public about these routes um that's something that with this kind of software we can make those changes very quickly and let the passengers know right away even for something that's a relatively short detour might only be for a few trips you know a few hours of the day um to be able to have in the transit app there's some great visual examples that somewhere on a deck somewhere as I have where you can do some pretty pretty innovative routing or you can even close a bus stop so you can pick okay this stop we know that there is something going on there we click it we press closed and we can put a note that says close due to sinkhole in the area stay away and then when they go to plan their trip it'll actually tell them hey you can't use this stop there's an alert about this route and so a lot of this is about that information that's kind of the the one side on the other side is continuing the the 247 365 work that we do as all different departments and in some cases outside agencies you know even Gliwa, DWSD, DTE all those are opportunities where we need we can we can always do more to make sure we're very precise about minimizing the disruption to service but that's something that we're doing constantly like I said there's a couple of great folks in our operations staff I'm thinking of uh Gina and KK Karsten they're they're staying on top of this in some cases even out in the field um you know keeping track of hey you said that this I can think of one from a few months ago where um Mac was closed at Woodward and they were out there because the the contractors said their permit said they were going to be back open at 6 a.m and here it is eight o'clock and they're still trying to keep the the sheathing over the concrete to get some extra drawing time in and it's disrupting service.

We had people actually go out in the field and getting on top of these contractors of like hey when you're gonna open this is disrupting service so it really is a team effort uh long answer to a short question but you know there's a lot that goes into it uh because we know how much it impacts the riders and the drivers thank you and yeah I hear you on the technology side I think that will be very helpful and as much as the coordination can happen um I'll have some recussion for DPW as well when they come also I appreciate that like I said I I it's great to see their improvements um with DOT and I think you all are doing a great job.

I I do want to say I know there has been recent reports and news I'm not gonna ask about that because I know it's investigation and such but I just as we're talking about culture and such I just want to make sure we're doing what we can um to make sure that folks in the department are lifted up and listened to and also that we're protecting folks that may be engaged in whistleblowing so I just wanted to note that as well um but thank you all so much and thank you Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Approach and young thank you Mr President hello everyone good to see everybody here as always um I just wanted to ask you just to kind of talk brass tax what are we doing about making sure that the buses show up on time and what are we doing to make sure that the bus drivers are friendly to the citizens the customers when they show up okay that's a pretty important and basic questions.

Yeah.

Um so for a couple of things so let's say bus on time and customer service which are uh are linked as well um so when recently we've had um you know shortage of buses available and so that's why we've been really emphasizing uh improving the communication that we have with folks um so that's kind of a portion of that um my challenge to the that due to breakdown I mean because but is that due to breakdown of the buses in terms of that is they do the maintenance is that do you just not having the bus or is it both through the chair this would be about um the buses not being available for service so you that they have long-term repairs or preventive maintenance repairs that aren't completed it's it's not generally I mean that happens but it's generally not a bus that gets out and breaks down on the road okay um and so you know that that's part of it and really focusing on increasing that bus availability number which again is why we're kind of holding off any more service increases so we make sure that we wouldn't be putting something out that we know we can't deliver.

The second part of that is and this is something I've been you know challenging the operations team on is when you know you're missing buses then it's even more important to make sure that the buses that are out there are running on time on the schedule.

I know for in the example of Cody High School, uh we had you know, we uh had some complaints about students being late.

Well, it turned out that uh there was in some cases two trips in a row on the Joy Road route that were cut that were exactly when students were needing to get to school.

So it's this constant exercise of being ready so that if you do have if you are short buses that you can be very intentional about what service that you cut.

And again, when you have the technology there, it's easy because you can have uh real-time rider information that's accurate, but in the meantime, it's like hey, we need to make sure if this is a route that's coincides with school in and school out, we need to prioritize to make sure that that's a bus that gets out on the road, and maybe we're able to miss uh a trip or two on Grand River or Jefferson where we've got a bus that's coming every every 10 minutes anyway.

So you know, those are the two two halves of like making sure the bus gets there on time, but again, it's that information piece, even as Commissioner uh Councilmember Benson was mentioning with the chargers, like the only thing worse than uh not having uh the information is to give the wrong information.

So that's what we really want to make sure is that at least we'll tell you it you can believe it's true.

Yes, there's a bus missing, okay.

I know it's not there.

Yes, the bus is gonna come, I can count on it.

On the other uh the second part of your question about customer service, um, a couple of things with that.

Obviously, it starts with um the recruiting and hiring process, and this is something that I think is universal to all transit agencies is when people think about um a transit equipment operator, they're thinking about like an expert driver, right?

I want someone that can drive fast and safe and maneuver the corner and the slalom course and all that sort of stuff.

Turns out that's generally the easiest part of being a bus driver operator.

You also need to be someone that at least have a has a tolerance, if not a passion for customer service because you are you're the cashier, you're the stock person, you're the delivery driver, you're all of those things in one.

Um, and you're meeting people where they're at on the road.

So some of that again starts with recruiting and and uh hiring practices, uh the uh training, uh you know, the the student training program.

Uh we're we're launching uh with the ATU a um ATU International has a really great uh mentorship program.

So something that once a driver graduates and is badged, and the once the student graduates and becomes a TEO that you're paired up with a mentor that can help you kind of navigate the challenging schedule and and dealing with the customers every day, and then uh thinking about opportunities where we make sure we have uh lots of ways for people to complain and let us know what we're doing good and what we're not doing good, and then having that camera system and our complaint system so that we can take and really nip those in the butt.

So if we have we see a driver that's got a couple complaints about being rude or not lowering the ramp, or um sudden stops, some of those things that are really customer service focused, is that we can get to them right away.

Again, this is not about discipline or getting rid of everyone, but it's like, hey, hey, we got a couple complaints here.

We looked at the video, like what tools can we give you so that you we can make sure that you have a uh really focus on the customer experience on the bus.

No, excellent.

I I I I appreciate that, and I and I thank you for that.

Um, I just wanted to ask you uh if I can I want to make this uh suggestion to you, and I want to ask you for improving the services.

Uh, are you implementing AI or at all?

Have you thought about artificial intelligence?

And we and if you have, where are you in the process?

And if not, why haven't you?

And after you're done, then I will tell you why you should and why you should listen to all of my recommendations.

Very good.

Uh through the chair.

Um, as far as specific AI applications, I'm not gonna say uh that we have anything in particular where we're relying on AI to do a specific task.

I think that there's opportunities for AI and or other computer assistance when it comes to scheduling.

Um actually I take that back.

There is one thing that we have implemented recently.

Uh it's called IVA, it's um interactive voiced assistant, I think is what it's called.

Nice.

This is for our paratransit riders.

We just rolled it out a few weeks ago.

Um, and the the computer person is called Alex.

Okay.

So when you call the um customer service for a paratransit, uh, you actually are starting with the AI-based um uh Alex attendant.

Nice.

Nice and what we've heard, and I know you all have heard is that we can have some pretty ridiculous wait times when it comes to people calling in to book trips and get in, especially getting information about their trip.

So we've just rolled this out a few weeks ago, um, and over 50% of the calls we receive have been able to be completed using the AI assistant before without having to transfer to one of our dispatch folks.

And this is everything from uh confirming the the timing of your ride, you can cancel or or change the details of your trip.

Um you can hear about um uh future trips.

There's other things that you can do, but those are things that um we were really hoping to be able to uh reduce the the burden that's leading to these wait times and have people be able to get quick information.

So I I that's very recent.

Um we have used it for paritransit to to pretty positive results so far.

No, I appreciate that.

Alex sounds really nice.

Um I just wanted to say if you so choose to implement my performance that I will send to you, and I recommend that you should.

Uh, this is involving artificial intelligence, trackless transit, auto autonomous vehicles.

This is what the benefits would be for you.

So right now, operated cost per bus hour is 170 dollars.

That'll be reduced if it had a smart mobility system to 140 dollars.

Your fleet downtime right now is 18 to 22 percent.

That'll go down to 8 to 10 percent.

You're on time performance, that's 72 percent.

That would go up to 90 percent.

Your bus operating cost per mile is eleven dollars.

That'll go down to five to six dollars.

Your maintenance costs are reactive repairs and predictive air artificial intelligence maintenance would um it would allow you to receive 10 to 20 million dollars in savings.

Your fuel costs, your D's diesel fleet currently, you would switch to electric fleet.

That would go to 20 to 40 million dollars in savings.

Your transit wait time is 20, 30 minutes, that go to five to ten minutes.

Your transit coverage is 65 percent of city Detroit, that'll go to 95 percent of Detroit.

Your night service is limited.

If you implement all my reforms, that'd be 24 or seven possible.

And it was included with the uh accessibility and the Thomas Vehicles, and I think that's a great opportunity to be able to use that as well.

Trackless train costs, your light rail uh costs is 150 to 300 million dollars a mile.

Trackless trans is 20 to 40 dollars a mile, is 70 to 85 percent cheaper.

Your ridership growth is baseline.

With these reforms, it increased to 40 to 120 percent.

Your property value near stages the baseline.

There's an increase to five to twenty percent.

Your retail activity is baseline near stations.

It's an increase to 10 to 25 percent.

Your transit-oriented development is limited, this would decrease to six to six billion to twelve billion dollar investment, and your annual tax revenue increase would go from would be increased, excuse me, from 120 million to 200 million dollars.

The new housing units that will be built projected, 25,000 to 45,000, and the new jobs that we created is 35,000 to 60,000 dollars.

I will send this to you.

I suggest you listen to what I say, implement all these reforms.

Thank you very much.

And uh thank you, Mr.

President.

I am done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um just got real got a brief one here because uh a number of the questions I've had um colleagues ask.

Just want to ask just in general.

I mean, so every year we come to the budget process and we make some improvements here and there.

Big money, not a little money at all.

Um made a huge significant um investment last year, doing so again this year.

What is it gonna take to get us to the point?

I mean, we asked this question, and this is not saying it's your fault.

It's just the nature of the beast.

I mean, I look back at some of the videos I talk about watching the uh YouTube videos from the 70s, 80s, uh, and they were talking about our DDoT system all the way back then.

So this is uh a legacy challenge that we have here.

Um but what is it what what is it gonna take for us to get to the point where we have a system that is not um uh what that doesn't feel like it's a system where people are for the most part riding it out of necessity, but uh out of choice.

We want people to ride out of choice.

I mean, when you talk to a lot of folks nowadays, and I'll say this when I talk to younger folks, they are not interested in getting cars, can't afford cars, can't afford insurance, can't afford the gas, you know, fill in the blank, everything is is raising.

D dot is affordable for a lot of folks, and it's a great alternative.

Yet it it's something that's keeping them from taking that plunge, so to speak.

Um you have other folks who would certainly uh while they have the ability to have a car, have insurance, all those things, they would benefit tremendously from being able to just pay you know the fare for DA, that 31-day pass.

That'll be great for them.

What is what is that thing or those things plural that you believe, director, that's preventing us from having a system that people are desiring to ride, wanting to ride, versus one where it feels that it's almost like a necessity and they're forced to ride it.

Mr.

Chair, yeah, I think you said this was a small question because it feels like uh a big question, but very important.

So um let me take a shot.

Um I think that you mentioned last year, you know, there was there was a 20 million dollar investment in that case was to increase the number of drivers, a way to chart our course to increase the amount of service.

We were able to increase some of the service toward this idea of uh having a network of high frequency routes, which I think is important.

Uh we started to run up against the this um uh ceiling of sorts where the the pay wasn't enough.

And so this year now we've got you know 20 to 30 million dollars that we're adding uh some cases for some uh some technical improvements and stuff, but really a majority of this is to lift up the wages for our frontline workers to have parity with other systems, which I think is really important.

Because if we're gonna build something, if we're gonna build a system that's worthy of being uh a system of uh first choice or or an attractive choice, that's gonna be not only uh a reliable system, but one that has high frequency and connects people where they need to go.

So I think that it's important to um, and this year again, we we've been trying to do both, and we didn't succeed as much as I would like us to.

This idea of uh pushing to expand service and also to maintain reliability.

And in this case, we expanded a little bit too far, perhaps, and the reliability has suffered.

And so you you're trying to make a step toward both of these things, which is a system that provides the frequency and the schedule and the coverage that makes it more and more attractive as a choice because it can connect you conveniently to more and more places, versus having something that is reliable uh to the schedule.

And so that's over the last year is kind of the back and forth that we had.

But I think um it's the answer is even maybe a little bit more complex than that.

So, you know, D dot reimagined or the idea of well, we should double D dot, like those are good things to push us in the right direction.

And I know uh from Councilmember Miller had a great point about this, just we we need to we were way behind, right?

We need to lift all these things up.

But I think it's really important to think about the real needs of folks, which is the the meeting that uh we had at Cody was really um it was uh inspiring might be the wrong word, but it's something that really energized me because you can see that the the next generation of these students want to have something that they can count on, and they were very direct with how how it's working for them and what they'd like it to do and what it's not doing.

So I think that it's important to keep it keep that in mind of like uh none of these things on its own is the answer.

We can't just say, like, oh, if we just increase all these routes to 10 minute frequency, that's the answer.

Or if we um if we switched to all the Director Kramer, I don't mean to cut you off, but I mean I hear you.

And this is the re what you're giving me is a budget answer.

Okay.

I'm looking for an answer like pie in the sky if necessary.

All right, because then we go after it and we go and try to find it, right?

Not looking at shuffling this the the debt that we already have, because that is still not gonna get us there.

All right.

I know it, you know it, and again, I'm not blaming you.

It's the budget that we have.

That's the one we have to work with.

But the re what I'm trying to figure out, because that's the thing that people are always asking me, well, what is it gonna take?

And now I'm coming to the expert and say, what is it gonna take to get us there?

I mean, is that going to certainly be uh it's not gonna be a one-year, you know, um uh a fair two-year, may not even be a ten year, but what gets us to that point where we can transform that system?

Um dollar-wise, uh, operations-wise, um uh uh manpower, woman power-wise.

You tell us what is it get what does it take us to get there, time-wise.

Mr.

Chair, um I think I appreciate this uh you know, pushing thinking big picture.

I think that um gathering coming up with that um the combination of services that uh meets the needs of the current and the incoming generations is the best place to start.

Maybe to kind of use your your request uh as the answer is rather than thinking about like, well, if only we had a hundred million dollars, that would be the answer, is I think it's it's really important to think about um all of the things.

So if we if we throw a budget out, like we pretend we're not at a a one-year budget hearing or a four-year budget hearing, is thinking about uh what would it take for this system to be attractive enough that it on its own can encourage people to either stay or come back or to move to the city?

Like that's a that's a good measure of all public services, including transit.

And I think showing that innovative forward thinking is the answer.

Like I'm not answering the question with other non-answers, but understand what I'm trying to say is that so thinking about are there different models that can work together?

There's not one if we just say, well, if we had um, you know, light rail down this the radius corridors, yeah.

That would work for some things, but there's a lot of people who want to be able to get around in their neighborhood.

So maybe it's a course, maybe it's a matter of having um microtransit that are in certain zones that would actually provide better service with less cost and less rigidity.

So, like at Smart, they have some areas that are a little harder to serve with fixed route, they have microtransit.

In other areas you might want to look at, are there opportunities to have uh express service?

So, thinking of um you know, the smart fast service, they have a stop every mile instead of every two blocks.

And maybe that's an opportunity on Grand River is we have a D D dot Express and a D dot local.

Because if you've ever ridden Grand River from end to end, that's a long like geom geometrically speaking, that's the longest line you can draw in the city and stay inside the city.

That's a really long trip and try to convince somebody from from Five Points or Old Redford is like, oh yeah, it's a quick trip downtown.

That was the that was the ride that's about 60 minutes to get downtown.

So thinking about what are these layers of service, but but and and another another example of this challenge is we've been working over the last couple months.

Uh the the Sheffield administration is again really focused uh on a lot of things, but including students and and you know, meeting with uh DPS C D and even the charter schools, even that itself, thinking historically speaking with neighborhood schools, you can build a model of transportation around that idea, but so many of the students, I mean, 50% of all the students go to public school uh DPS C D 50% go to charters.

Even within that group, a lot of the DPS CD students don't go to their neighborhood school.

So for us to think about targeting these D dot improvements when you have some some students that are going all the way across the city on a bus route, like that's where you start to think about what are the different layers of services.

Do you have an express bus?

Do you have more targeted, you know, point-to-point, they're collecting people from one one neighborhood and taking them to one school?

Do you have microtransit that lets you take uh trips um in a neighborhood, maybe uh in Brightmore or areas that have a little bit less density of housing where the microtransit can collect people and take them to the retail, or they can take them to a higher frequency express route to get elsewhere in the city.

So just thinking about, I think maybe breaking the idea of going back to the D dot from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that had a lot more buses and a lot more ridership, but was serving a city with this fixed route network based on how people wanted to get around then, and thinking about today, how different that is, and what are the different services that we can layer together, whatever their cost might be that actually provides people with the mobility they have.

Because I think that's what you want to get to is what combination of services and a matching land use because I'm a planner, so I gotta connect the two.

So, what what mixture of services and the connective land uses of what people need to get to, how can you put those together so that people can have a high quality of life either without a car or maybe instead of a two-car household, they can get by with a one car, save on the insurance and the cost.

So I don't know if I'm getting in the right direction.

So so those are always going to be variables.

Yeah.

To the end of time, there's always multiple variables.

But the question is, even if you talk about a student, I mean, we're we're providing free bus rides, which I think is a good idea.

But what's going to prove what's going to convince someone like my wife, you know, who has access in her vehicle to go wherever she needs to go uh and get their own time.

What's going to convince her to leave the car at home, take the time to get to a bus stop and take the bus to and from her locations within the city of Detroit.

Who's who's thinking about?

I mean, it's because I thought that's what D dot reimagined was thinking was working to do.

How do we get I'm just trying to still figure out how do we get there, right?

We can sit around, we we talk about it, and again, I'm not blaming you, not blaming the folks who are there, but at some point we we got to stop talking about it, having meetings about it and getting there.

And I know incrementally we're you know doing things, but it feels like band-aids.

It doesn't feel like you know, complete repairs.

It doesn't feel like that we're transforming it, the system to a point where we're gonna see the light, so to speak, where folks will voluntarily what you call it first choice, first choice, you know.

Yeah, um, see, I'm not even ver well versed in in the language, you know.

How I'm just again trying to figure out how do we get there.

Yeah, so I think in the example of like figuring out um and D dot reimagined did some of that.

So some some of the the uh trade-offs with D Dot reimagined was um in some cases they were actually consolidating routes.

So there'd be some areas of the city if D Dot reimagined was just fully implemented, some areas of the city that might have a little bit less access to high frequency transit, um, but then there was much more of the city that had more access to high frequency transit.

So those are kind of the trade-offs.

But the the idea is continuing to find ways to um to hear and uh identify solutions for where people want to get to.

So, for example, the RTA has uh the DAC service is Detroit to Airport Express, it's from downtown.

That's been a pretty successful service.

That wouldn't be, you know, most people are not flying enough that that's something that they're not gonna get rid of a car just because they can go to the airport on the DAC service, but you start to add up those different ways.

There's a bus to downtown Ann Arbor from downtown Detroit.

Are there other spots, are there other neighborhoods that should be connected into that kind of service?

Um, are there um you know this idea of finding areas to bring people to some of the business districts in the city, like thinking about what would be something you'd want to do on transit, and then figuring out how do we serve those areas?

You want to be able to go to uh to Livernoy.

You want to be able to go to Old Redford.

Uh, how do we design the services so that we can take not only just the people that can walk there or maybe the people from that bus route, but are there ways to start capturing with convenient trips more and more of those people?

And that that's why I started mixing in the land use.

I think that's important too.

Because if you can design the land use and the transit and the neighborhoods together, then you're you're kind of changing the the types of trips you need to take, and then the system is designed to make them more convenient so that you don't have to go as far to go to the grocery store or to the movie theater or to the doctor's office.

So it's it's never gonna be to your point.

You're like, yeah, that's fine, we can keep talking about this, but what's the actual answer?

I think we just have to keep we have to keep chopping.

We have to keep asking people how's the system working and what what is it not doing you want to do, and just keep prioritizing the the improvements we make behind that and make sure we don't get stuck in this one year at a time, which is what you're trying to push me out of in this discussion.

Don't get stuck in this.

Well, this year we can do this much, and really be thinking about like this year, well, next year we can try more zones.

The year after that, we can try a hyperloop, whatever it might be, thinking about you know, a couple years in the future is something we could benefit from.

Gotcha, thank you.

I'm gonna we're gonna still have more conversations, just looking for like a timeline of these improvements that will help move us in mass.

My final question is regarding like a quick strike phone number.

You know, if if there are some maintenance issues, um, I did take that route from Grand River northwest all the way down here.

Um and it was a long ride.

When we got down here uh at the bus shelter, there was a uh I mean when we got down here to Common Young Municipal Center, there was a bus shelter and it rigged of urine.

And I'm sure that's not the only one.

We've also seen some of the um bus shelters that have uh debris and trash.

Is there a phone number that's you know we can put out to the community if you have any of these uh maintenance issues, uh you can call this number and then within a uh confirmed amount of time that those issues will be addressed.

I mean, when I tell you that it was wrong, it was a hot day that day.

Um and we were told that they had just come by maybe not terribly long and uh addressed it.

Um but there's some individuals that unfortunately make it more challenging for us.

What is their phone number?

Is there a time frame?

Um, Mr.

Chair, what what we have really been driving people to is using the improved Detroit app.

And that can be for any complaint you have.

And what's really and I've I can see how the sauce is just made, obviously being part of the um administration, is from there it's funneled into a system, and there's people actively assigning.

Okay, we've got this complaint about a urine smell at this stop and garbage, and there's a sidewalk crack on the way there, and then it makes sure that that gets out to the right people.

And so, and that comes with accountability, you're gonna get a number and it's gonna be uh kept on top of.

So that's really what I would encourage people to use is go there, whatever your complaint might be.

Um, and then you can call D DOT customer service, and I don't have the number memorized that I'd want to give it and make sure I got the right one, but we'll make sure that we continue to broadcast that out.

Stephanie's got it, she's gonna say what it is.

It's 313933, 1300.

One more time for the folks we're watching, please.

313, 933, 1300.

And from there, again, there's there's systems to handle that sort of thing.

Uh, we do have kind of a combination of um partners that help us maintain those stops.

GSD does some, uh Brooklyn Outdoors for the ad shelters is actually in charge of kind of cleaning and repairing those in the downtown area, it's the Biz uh team through DDP, midtown Detroit has a role.

So there's a lot of different people uh and agencies that can help us clean those.

Um, but we can always do better.

So what's that turnaround look like?

I mean, what what are we telling folks?

I mean, we're telling folks to use this, it's very um uh um efficient, it's in their pocket for the most part.

You got an app, boom, you hit it.

What's that turnaround?

Because if I go to that bus stop and I see that issue, I do exactly what Director Kramer told me to do.

President Tate told me to do, and then I come back the next day and the day after that, and it's still there.

Yep.

I've lost confidence now.

Yeah, and I'm telling other people about it as well.

Right.

And and so um generally it'll depend.

So if it's broken glass, like that's within 24 hours or hopefully sooner, and that's even a matter of there'll be people from the D DOT staff that'll jump on it.

Because again, you think about the if it's a safety issue, we obviously don't want broken glass that it's that's there.

Um, but that's the commitment is like a 24 to 48 hour turnaround, but it really depends on what the what the issue is, but that's why I really like the app because you put it in there and then you can see how it's progressing through the system, which helps hold us and all of our um partners accountable.

Okay, I love to see that data because I on how many folks are actually reaching out that way.

Um, because we get complaints, and I would love to know what it looks like from the passenger side of things.

I don't have any motion at this moment, but we'll be submitting our questions.

Um before I go to you, Mr.

Corley.

If there's anyone who would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand now for this particular hearing.

Um please raise your hand now if you're in the committee of the whole or at home.

Uh Mr.

Corley.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um, I want to talk about the general fund subsidy to D DOT.

So according to the city's annual financial statements, in 2023, the general fund subsidy was about 73 million dollars.

And I think that's because we got help from ARPA.

In 2024, the subsidy was 134 million.

2025, 120 million.

The budget for the current year 2026 is 97 million.

And so the question is, you know, how likely we are to meet that target.

That probably probably be a question for Mr.

Johnson.

So let me uh let me stop there.

I got another couple of questions, but I don't know if Mr.

Johnson can kind of forecast, and maybe Mr.

Kramer can help.

Are we on target of meeting the 97 million dollar subsidy for the current year?

And whoever can have answer that question, the floor is yours.

Uh uh through Mr.

President to Mr.

Corley, yes, we are.

Um, those resources since it's the general fund subsidy, those resources have already been set aside and allocated.

So as they are required, we do regular transfers to the transportation fund from the general fund.

So, yes, those resources uh do exist.

That's great.

Now for the proposed budget for 2027, the DDOP susity, uh the general fund subsidy to D D dot is 84 million, as Mr.

is Councilmember Vincent alluded to earlier.

Um however, the overall contribution to D dot is increasing.

My understanding, the reason why we're able to reduce the general fund substitute to DDOT by 14 million going into next fiscal year, is because we're getting increased state funding through the um governor's budget that was you know passed uh back in uh October.

So we're getting 20% of the role funding that you know usually is slated for uh road improvement.

We're able to use 20% of that for transit purposes.

What is the total projected general uh overall subsidy for D DOT going into NES fiscal years?

Whoever can answer that question, floor is yours through the chair.

Through the chair, uh the total subsidy, including the DTC, the people mover subsidy is going to be 118 million.

Which includes the DPW trans, you know, Act 51 transfer, which is 24 million.

So 84 plus the 7.5 for DTC, which is that is 91 million is going to be the subsidy for from general fund to D to D to D dot.

So that's so I'm assuming in the four-year plan, we're also assuming to receive the the fund the um the state funding, the 20% throughout their four-year plan.

And are we are we anticipating for the overall subsidy to go up through the four-year plan?

Is it two percent growth or is it no growth?

Uh through the president to Mr.

Corley.

Um, yes, we do assume uh a growth factor um on both Act 51 uh revenue side and the D dot expenditure side.

So expenditures we always assume some sort of inflationary pressure, so it's gonna be based on um the union wage tables and as they grow over the course of the collective bargaining agreement, um, other sort of inflationary costs and DDOTS operations, costs of parts, tires, gas, oil, these sorts of things.

So that on the expense side, that's the upward pressure.

On the revenue side, however, we do know that Act 51 generally increases year over year.

We've kind of plateaued, but the state has generally been on an upward trend with with Act 51 as a whole, so Michigan Transportation Fund funding.

Um, and whatever that amount is, 20% of that will be allocated to D DOT moving forward.

Um, this allows us to um provide the general fund some relief as we move forward um and um you know put these dollars to use.

If the state adds additional funding into Act 51, if the legislature, let's say the next state budget increases the allocation of funding for the MTF, um, then we would be having a conversation about um the percentage of the base revenue that's Act 51, and then whether or not we would seek to use a percentage of any additional revenue.

At this time, that's not the plan.

Um, the base of the Act 51 sort of baseline statutory allocation is what we're targeting with the 20%.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

So, in terms of federal dollars, uh, what are we anticipating receiving for D D dot in the current fiscal year compared to um 2027 proposed year?

Whoever can respond.

Whoever has who has whoever has the answer, please respond.

Through the chair, uh Mr.

Corley, are you uh mentioning about the LBOA revenue, just the FDA revenue, or so whatever federal dollars most likely for funding for more buses, but whatever federal dollars that we're getting on both the capital side and on operating side, it's probably more capital side, I'm thinking.

Uh through through the chair, um this would be uh I believe Mr.

Quarley's referring to 5307 funding, um, which is the funding that you know we use to purchase buses and and also covers a portion of our preventative maintenance work each year.

Um at this time, there have been no indications that we have anything to worry about in terms of the federal funding pipeline for transit.

Um there have been no indications that 5307 or any of the other um transit grant uh transit funding that we receive um is expected to change in any meaningful way.

Um I would say the only things at risk would be clean energy um sorts of grants, um, which were always a very small component of our revenue anyway, and usually some we had to apply for.

What we're talking about here is more what we would consider a formula or entitlement grant, something that we receive via a federal formula automatically by virtue of being a large regulated transit system.

And I could add to that too.

So if you look at um a portion of that that we uh use toward our operating costs, essentially with preventive maintenance.

So the fiscal year 26 adopted uh was about 17.5 million between federal and state grants for preventive maintenance, and in 27 it's it's about the same, it's uh about a million dollars less, but essentially the same, and as um Mr.

Johnson mentioned, uh the overall amount of funding goes toward other things facility repair, buses, equipment, vendor contracts.

That amount has uh is is approximately the same as well.

We believe that will continue relatively flat into the future.

That's great to hear.

Last thing uh, Mr.

President, um you will notice council would notice in our um budget reports.

We have a section towards the end that highlights council's changes to the budget in the current fiscal year and some um the prior fiscal year 2025.

So for the most part, it's the 2026 council's changes to the budget, and we're asking for a status.

We understand that you know um uh Ms.

Stademeyer, Mr.

Johnson were you know feverishly working on the budget proposed budget.

So we asked these questions about a month ago, what's going on with council's changes, um, and then been so busy.

So we're if we included them in our budget analyses so that hopefully you can council can get an update on your monies that you put into the budget in the current fiscal year.

So just kind of alert you about that.

Fortunately, in this life for D Dot, they have used the additional funding, right?

You know, so that's good, but in terms of other agencies, we do not know you know where they're at right now with those additional dollars that council put into the budget.

But I just wanted to bring that to your attention.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

I'd like to also note that we are closing the collection of public comment cards at this moment.

Uh any last words, any final words, uh, director Kramer.

Uh through the chair.

Um really appreciate the opportunity and uh to to present today, but more importantly, the support and the interest in how important transit is.

I think something I've mentioned to um to uh colleagues and and uh counterparts elsewhere is um I I and and the department never have to wonder if we have the support of uh of the administration and the council, and that's something that I encourage everyone not to take for granted because it's not always the case.

Um and there's a lot of other challenges that other transit providers and agencies have that we do not.

I think you all are a part of that.

We have our own list of challenges and concerns, which all of you are you know helping to hold us accountable for uh to improve.

Uh but just wanted to note that um that it's uh uh unique and appreciated.

Um, and and also even just the challenge of how can we think bigger and where do we want to go in the future?

I do really appreciate that feedback and uh and encouragement.

So with that, conclude my comments.

Thank you.

And this will conclude your budget hearing.

Thank you so much.

All right, we shall now go to public comment.

Want to remind everyone that during the budget uh season uh we will be having abbreviated public comment sections, uh noting that again there will be an opportunity for full public comment uh during the public hearing uh that will take place on March 30th.

These are budget hearings, not public hearings that are taking place.

Just want to make sure that's clear.

We got three names here that are before us.

I'm gonna start off with uh Megan Owens, Donald Stuckey, and then Joel Batterman.

Those are the three names that we have.

Megan Owens, Donald Stuckey, Joel Batterman, if you can take those three seats up there.

Uh one, two, three.

And we're gonna give one minute, and you're gonna push that button until the red turns green.

Um when your one minute is up.

Unfortunately, we're gonna have to allow the next person to move forward.

Uh, not my rules, but the state law, open meetings act.

All right, um, Miss Owens.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, and I would echo what uh the chair said about or what the uh director said.

We really do appreciate the attention that you're giving to the uh to uh to D DOT and how important this is, and they are heading in the right direction.

Um we're all frustrated at how slow it is.

Um but I would I really do uh applaud uh uh President Tate your your attention to what will it take to get to world class transit.

I do note uh it it feels a little strange to be saying it's gonna take some time, uh but we have been saying, as we have been saying for a while, um there is a need to double the D dot budget.

Um so and that's to get to good service.

They're working hard to get from crisis to to adequate, uh, fully implementing the D dot reimagined will get us to to something that's all of the good, and then I look forward uh to to working with you to uh to get to that world class standard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Mr.

Stuckey.

Thank you, uh President Tate and to members, and I do appreciate the support that this council continues to give to D D dot.

Uh what we just heard was that the city is any dollars that come for D Dot should be in addition to, not a subtraction of or replacement of.

And so when I hear that the city the uh the the but the uh budget is being assumed that dollars are being used to they're using state dollars to replace some city dollars, that that makes that gets me kind of upset because we should be those dollars should be in addition to.

Joel Batterman good evening I echo what's been said about uh um the just thanking you for for the priority that you've given to D dot over the past couple years and uh to the priority that the mayor has assigned it in her budget proposal uh I would say that there are a few more important investments uh when it comes to unlocking opportunity for Detroiters uh reducing costs and providing a better quality of life uh I also want to again emphasize the importance of continuing to work towards uh the double D dot D dot reimagined uh proposal for increasing service around the city uh I live um off of Lynnwood and currently the Linwood bus runs only on an hourly basis like many other buses around the city so increasing frequency as proposed in the D dot reimagined plan um has to be a priority for the city as we go forward thank you we will now transition to our online callers uh how many callers do we have and who do we have first he good afternoon council president there are 10 callers online our first caller is caller ending and 169 caller ending in 169 the floor is yours you have one minute general public hand you guys hear me yes sir great um I just want to say thank you thank you so much yes you I'm talking to you I appreciate all of you for praying and helping help people when I think of Cunningham I think of the word gumption gumption is defined as both initiative courage resourcefulness and common sense combined it refers to the drive and the mental acuity to take action especially in difficult situations often described as having guts or spunk it implies being a self-starter who possesses both practical understanding and audacity to succeed thank you and fix D dot.

Thank you.

Next caller please our next caller is Betty A Varner Spetty Avarner the floor is yours you have one minute general public comment uh good evening I'm Betty Avarner president of the Soda Elsewhere Black Association asking the council to please allocate monies for the land use hearing fee that our association black clubs have to pay if they would like to have equipment on vacant lots that they have purchased for example we would like to have playground equipment we must have a hearing it's a requirement the application fee is $1500 also allocate monies for corridors neighborhood corridors that has not been blessed not had the attention that some of the uh wonderful corridors in the city of Detroit has had so please help us with to improve our community our neighborhood that $1500 fee it creates havoc for small black clubs who are doing the work to improve their neighborhood thank you for this time God bless you all and thank you Ms.

Farner next caller please our next caller is IPhone the floor is yours you have one minute general public comment caller are you there?

Yeah I'm here uh I if it costs a million dollars to buy a new either 20 or 40 foot bus have you considered getting something uh like a uh large van or even a short school bus type of bus that would be uh still uh adequate for handicap but instead of driving these big buses uh at night when there's a low low uh ridership I think it it might be be more efficient if they're a million dollars for a bus can't you buy about 10 of those vans and start running those for on the low frequency rights where you don't have a lot of people figure out where your people are and then put those on the low where that you don't have as many people and then if we start getting more people eventually we can load up thank you so much next caller please our next caller is Cassie Cassie the floor is yours you have one minute general public comment hey thank you to the uh council members this is Casey Peller resident in district four and with Detroit disability power um uplifting uh

Figure out where your people are and uh put those on the low where that you don't have as many people, and then if we start getting more people, eventually we can load up.

Thank you so much.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is Cassie.

Cassie, the floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Hey, thank you to the uh council members.

This is Casey Pettler, resident in District 4 and with Detroit Disability Power.

Um, uplifting um my colleagues in the room um to double D dot.

Um, we really need to see uh D dot reimagined um come into being um by 2030.

And um, as a part of that, we'd love to see um some improvements this year, including borderless paratransit and a 15% uh coverage at bus stops for shelters and benches.

Um to all the council members who may be curious, you could check out is the metro accessible.com.

Our friends over there have been doing an open source community-based um tracking system that shows where the stops are and if there are benches, shelters, or landing pads at them, um, just to uh have a starting point.

Um, and as far as borderless pan transit, um the director uplifted the job um cross flow between Detroit and suburbs, but medical appointments and uh schooling are the same.

Thank you.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is owner Papa.

All right caller, the floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Caller, are you there?

Let's put that caller at the end of the queue and go to the next, please.

Our next caller is Renard Monchinski.

All right, Renard Manchunski, the floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Good afternoon, Mr.

President and honorable members.

Can I be heard?

Yes, sir.

All right, Ms.

President.

Uh um, really encouraging to hear um this proposed budget and then your conversation with the director earlier about this turning into a system of choice.

Um, however, it's a system that people really have to use day to day, and this budget reflects um the reliability um and frequency that the mayor is looking for in the administration.

I am very encouraged about this conversation about fares um and its connection to security and the violence against drivers.

Um the council members asked some really good questions that I wish I can go into dialogue with them with.

So um, I'll be doing that.

Um, other than this regard, um, I really uh want to affirm that this budget has been years of listening to us advocates and organizers with these legacy issues being addressed as well stated.

Um, so I just want to continue the progress and the good work, and we'll be in time.

Thank you.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is Samson S M.

All right, caller, the floor is yours.

We have one minute general public comment.

Can I be heard?

Yes.

Uh I want to speak about the uh the shelters for the buses, that's what people to sit in.

I've rode the six-mile bus from six and Davidson all way to telegraph.

There's no shelters there.

I rode the six-mile bus all the way down to Van Dyke, past Van Dyke.

There's no shelters there.

On Shane for the Rony bus, there's no shelter there.

So we need some shelters for the riders.

And uh right now, being that my car is down, I had I catch it the bus quite a bit.

So we need some shelters for the riders.

And uh they need to air time to the shame, the con it, and the six-mile bus because they want slowest all get up.

Summer is coming.

Some people might not want to drive, they might want to ride the shame bus, the cone bus at the bell out.

There's you know, the buses are just so slow, especially on the weekend.

Oh my god, it's just it's terrible.

So can they speak?

Thank you, Miss Riley.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is William M.

Davis.

It's William M.

Davis, the floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Oh, good afternoon.

Can I be heard?

Yes, sir.

Okay, start off.

The people move, I think it needs to be expanded uh quite a bit more.

And uh they need to have some low-cost parking that people could utilize and then get on the people mover.

Also, as it relates to um DOT, I think DOT needs to be moving more towards green energy and trying to reduce our carbon footprint.

Uh also I think that uh there should be free bus rides available for city Detroit retirement time on all city of Detroit retirees.

Uh, because uh a number of city retirees are getting old and don't necessarily want to drive or could afford to drive.

That would help to be an economic boom to the city of Detroit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is Rochella Stewart.

All right, Ms.

Rachela Stewart, the floor is yours.

You have one minute, general public comment.

Good afternoon, council.

Um, I just want to say uh uh I'm in land with all the advocates.

We thought so, however, these things is gonna be in its budget.

Hope you finance this budget.

Uh D I reimagine need to be funded, so it will be there for 2030.

And I just want to say please pass a decent budget for DCAT.

This 30 million need to be passed, if not more, because more is needed to get this up to an efficient system that we all would be proud of, and the whole United States will want to replicate.

We need to be trying to get a system that people will replicate because we're not there quite yet, but we're getting there.

I thank you.

Thank you.

Next caller, please.

Our next caller is Cunningham.

All right, brother Cunningham.

The floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Whistleblower, whistleblower.

I need you all to go to my Facebook page, put in 313 444-9114, 313-444-911, 9114 in the search, or you can put in not enemy Detroit.

There is an article by Metro Times.

I don't want Mr.

Kramer anything.

I'm praying for Mr.

Kramer.

And I'm also praying for that whistleblower.

Now I digress.

I like to talk about doubling D dot.

We need to double D dot, double D dot, double D dot, borderless pure transit, free bus fare.

The system's not adequate and not on time.

Why are we paying for the bus fare anyway?

We can find a sponsor.

If the people mover in the Q line can find a sponsor, the powers to be does what they want to do.

When they want to do something, they find a way out of no way.

So let's make bus fares free and applauding manifestment.

Thank you.

Next caller, please.

Council President, we are now going back to owner Papa.

All right.

Caller, the floor is yours.

You have one minute general public comment.

Caller, are you there going once?

Going twice.

Caller, are you there?

Caller, are you there going three times?

Unfortunately, we're gonna have to move on.

If you would like to provide your comments to the clerk's office, they will be placed onto public record.

Next caller, please.

Council President, that was our last caller.

All right, that takes us to the end of our public comments and the end of our budget hearings for today.

Uh, Mr.

Corley, anything you want to add before we wrap up?

All right, just want to let everyone know that we will not be having uh budget hearings tomorrow.

We're back to formal session, but budget hearings will begin uh 10 a.m.

on Wednesday, March 18th.

And we'll have before us uh the Detroit Institute of Arts, Department of Administrative, excuse me, Department of Appeals and hearings.

Uh, we also have B seed and finally CREO.

Okay.

All right, colleagues, is there a motion to adjourn?

See no objections that action shall be taken.

This meeting is adjourned.