Very good.

Thank you, and welcome everybody to the Wednesday, March eleventh meeting of the Hillsborough County TPO.

It's good to see everybody.

Hard to see now, everything is calm, but right before the camera turns on, this is a boisterous crowd this morning.

And so should be a lively meeting.

And so if you would please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Motion by board member Stevens, seconded by is it Councilmember Clendennan?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Commissioner Bowles.

Um, any discussion of the minutes?

If not, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

No nays.

Minutes are adopted.

Public comment.

I believe we have one person, and I don't know if he's uh made it in or not.

Is uh Rick Fernandez?

Are you with us this morning?

Mr.

Chair Rick Fernandez has not signed in yet to the meeting.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

So we'll move past that to committee reports and advanced comments.

Uh Rick Fernandez is not here, but I understand that uh our TPO staff Sarah Capers is going to provide a CAC update.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Sarah Caper, and I am the CAC liaison on staff.

The Citizens Advisory Committee met the evening of March 4th.

The CAC heard a presentation on the Temple Terrace Multimodal Connection Study.

Members asked questions about roadway leases, how this would be used, and about signal timing for bicyclists.

The CAC voted unanimously to recommend the TPO board accept the Temple Terrace Multimodal Connection Study.

Next, the CAC received the safety treatment effectiveness evaluation presentation.

CAC members noted that the written report was well done, but felt the presentation was overly simplified.

Members asked questions about specific treatments at the locations, the role of law enforcement on some of the corridors, such as Bayshore Boulevard, why these projects were chosen, and how the data and report will be used.

One takeaway was that was noted is the uniqueness of each location and its areas of concern.

The CAC voted unanimously to recommend the TPO board accept the safety treatment effectiveness evaluation.

Finally, CAC members noted the need for several planning studies.

Members introduced the following ideas for planning studies.

An additional bridge across the Allifier River, public transit circulator from the airport to downtown and around the proposed race stadium, a multimodal connection between McKay Bay and the Bypass Canal Trail.

Coordination on the transportation impacts of the updates to the City of Tampa's land development code, and the need to look at traffic impacts around the proposed race stadium, including to nearby neighborhoods.

And that is the CAC report.

If there are any questions, I'm happy to take them.

Thank you, Ms.

Capers.

Board members are there.

Any questions?

Good, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I think we'll next hear from uh Harmony McGee from our TPO staff.

Good morning, Miss McGee.

Good morning, Harmony McGee TPO staff.

Regarding today's action items, the technical advisory committee recommended that the TPO board accept the Temple Terrace Multimodal Trail Network Plan.

Members did ask whether multimodal traffic counts were considered.

TPO staff clarified that counts were not included at this time due to budget constraints, but could be considered as part of the toolbox in the future.

There was also a question about whether the city of Temple Terrace has a plan to fund projects beyond requesting TPO funding.

TPO staff explained that the toolbox is intended to help the city prioritize projects and begin identifying potential funding opportunities, particularly for connectivity improvements.

School connectivity was also discussed, and TPO staff noted that the schools were considered in the project scoring.

The technical advisory committee also recommended that the TPO board accept the safety treatment effectiveness evaluation report.

There was a discussion about roundabouts, including an example from Sarasota County presented in the report.

Members asked whether the report would be used for decision making, and staff clarified that is ultimately up to the decision makers, and that the analysis was intended to identify trends associated with road safety treatments.

The road classifications chosen for the study were also discussed.

Staff noted that treatments can potentially increase or decrease property values.

The 15 street treatments were highlighted, particularly because the corridor is heavily used by wheelchair users.

Members also asked about findings related to rectangular rapid flashing beacons or RRFBs.

Public comments were received via email and social media.

George Stokes emailed sharing his support for a Bright Line station in Tampa.

And on X, a community member inquired about light rail projects.

This concludes my report.

Thank you, board members.

Are there any questions?

Very good.

Thank you, Ms.

McGee.

Okay, board has everybody reviewed the consent agenda.

And if so, is there a motion to approve?

Motion by Councilmember Clinton, seconded by board member Gray.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

No nays.

The consent agenda is adopted.

We have a couple of action items.

One is a presentation by Chris Keller from in Banesh from Banesh regarding the aforementioned Temple Terrace Multimodal Connection Study.

Good morning.

Good morning, board Chris Keller.

One?

There we go.

Sorry, we'll do that again.

Chris Keller with Binnish, consultant to the TPO on the Temple Terrace Multimodal Trail Network Plan.

A lot of words, big plan, but impactful, hopefully.

So a quick summary of the plan and kind of the process that we went through is what will be given to you guys today.

Really, the objectives when we set out and initiated this plan was to look at to keep it simple, connecting people within Temple Terrace to the places that they want to go.

Really trying to look at opportunities, take advantage of kind of what the city has, which is a lot of existing kind of low volume, low speed residential streets, really trying to highlight some of the unique characters, characteristics of the city, and look at some opportunities that kind of highlight and showcase some of the offerings that the city has from a multimodal standpoint.

Our project process, pretty similar for planning.

You know, we went through existing conditions, went to the public, obtained some information, took that information, came out with some ideas, went back to the public, refined those, and then came out and you know, ultimately to the draft plan that I'll go into a little bit more detail here today, and that you guys have available to you.

Where are their bicycle facilities today?

Um, some of the roadway characteristics.

But one of the things, you know, when going back to what our one of our big objectives at connecting people to the places they want to go was to look at some of those community activity areas.

Um things like uh the cities, downtown, um, the CRA looking at the location of parks, looking at the location of schools, uh, government facilities and commercial activity areas uh within the city.

Um, and I'll highlight this again at the end, but outside of the city as well, looking at regional connections and how can we connect to things like USF, the future bypass canal trail, um, and really kind of identifying where those locations are before we get into what kind of treatments and what streets and where are we looking at some of those connections?

Wanted to see where the places that we are trying to connect to.

Um, once we kind of got through that stage, we did a couple different rounds of public engagement.

Um, I'll reference the picture on the left in a little bit, so try to remember that.

But um, did your typical, you know, developed a uh through the TPO website, um, a project page with some project information, um, had a public uh engagement survey uh where we receive some information.

Um we had a stakeholder uh group meeting where we pulled together staff, city staff, um, county staff, uh, heart staff uh participated in that, um, members from Florida College, which is located within Temple Terrace participated, um, and then a few members of the public as well to really kind of dig into some ideas.

And and at this point, we had an idea of where we are going with the plan.

Um, really wanted to bounce, you know, and kind of validate are we going in the right direction?

Does it make sense?

Um, are we missing something?

And really use that group to kind of get into some more technical uh a workshop with them than you would maybe the general public.

Um, and then the one I really do want to highlight, and really kind of a unique and a first for us, and kind of our quest to always try to find unique ways and better ways to do public engagement instead of a traditional public workshop.

Uh, we uh took advantage uh City of Temple Terrace, their fire department has an annual open house, so where they open up the fire station, families can come in, they do demonstrations.

Uh we were able to set up a booth there and really got a lot of uh just pass by traffic.

Um, a lot of younger families, a lot of people that we normally would not see at a traditional public workshop and the ability to really engage.

Um, especially for a project like this when those are really kind of the type of people that we were trying to plan for.

It was a really unique opportunity and gave us some really good perspective as we were developing the plan.

So talking about the plan and what is it that we looked at?

So we looked at the city as a whole, and ultimately we came down to what we called the multimodal connections and network.

Sounds technical, jargon, bumbo jumbo, whatever, but it's really a collection of streets of what we thought with existing facilities and opportunities to really kind of make some improvements and what kind of streets connect to those places that we talked about, trying to get people to where they want to go.

Um, within the this network, we identified our multimodal toolbox.

Um, what are the type of treatments and applied them kind of accordingly to uh that network?

Um plan goes into great detail segment by segment of what type of treatments are in there, but generally looking at things like walk bike treatments, so shared use paths, um, sidewalks, bicycle boulevards, um, traffic calming opportunities, uh, crossing treatments, uh, major intersection uh improvements, minor intersection improvements, and then uh simple things like you know, supplementary signage and wayfinding opportunities within the city as well to help um kind of guide the process and the implementation, we developed a priorization uh process for this.

I want to note that this is a little different than kind of thinking project prioritization like go build this one first.

Um, our intent with this was to kind of identify um greatest impact with with segments.

So segments in tier one are ones that we think could be you know potentially implemented easiest, um, have the greatest connectivity, um, we're supported by our public engagement, um, and it was kind of reflected that way.

So it's more of an opportunities priorization than this is the most important project.

It's really a guide to we think that these are the segments that you know, from a prioritization standpoint could be implemented the quickest, the easiest, have the most support or the least amount of complexity with them.

Uh, one of the unique things as we started to get into and really started to examine that overall multimodal uh network was that we started to see an opportunity for what we've kind of noticed our primary route, but a kind of a circular route around the city.

Um really kind of thought of this as kind of like a green artery for the city of Temple Terrace.

Um, but looking at opportunities to utilize low stress, uh low volume streets to create a route around the core of the city, um approximately eight and a half miles long.

The proposed route uh connects many of the city's parks, schools, uh commercial activity centers, and downtown.

Um again, we looked at regional connectivity as I mentioned before, is really important why we're largely focused internal to the city.

Um didn't want to ignore what's going on outside.

Um USF, the stadium is already gone vertical there, so opportunities for more walkability, um, especially in that northwestern portion of the city.

Um, future bypass canal trail and eventual connections out to that, and other things like uh medical centers, MOSE, some of the other parks and uh wilderness areas just outside of the city as well.

Um finally, we didn't want to just leave a bunch of lines and suggestions.

We did do uh very high level, I'll note, um, feasibility, so really try to look at fatal flaws.

Um, we didn't want to make a suggestion or recommendation for a corridor, knowing that you know, like there's no way that this could happen.

Um, if there were, we'd look for alternatives in that, and then um also did some very high-level planning costs uh for the project to really kind of give kind of a scale of what it would take to implement everything within the plan.

Uh finally, we looked at kind of next steps, knowing that this was really sort of a visionary type of plan.

Um, you know, that that while we think they're solid recommendations, things that the city could go do now, a lot of this stuff is going to need continued effort.

So, really highlighting where you need that continued coordination, um, where additional feasibility, engineering design needs to be done, and then opportunities for funding to actually implement some of those projects.

With that, I'll take any questions.

Good.

Thank you, Mr.

Keller.

Board members, other questions.

Um board member Gray.

Thank you, Chair Ross.

Uh, my question is what what schools are affected?

You have three schools, and I I'm almost guessing it's Greco, which is on Fowler.

Yes.

And um, I know Florida College would be.

Um, I'm trying to make that circle in my brain here.

River Hills elevated.

River Hills, Lewis Temple Terrace and River Hills.

River Hill.

Oh, that's such a beautiful area.

Yeah.

And then the other question adjacent to that is what signage so we would know, or students would know, and pedestrians would know.

So I mean, so there's some kind of basic a lot of what we looked at was kind of bike boulevard type of treatments.

You know, a lot of the facilities.

So there's some, you know, share the road type of signage.

Um we also go in and talk a little bit, we didn't go into great detail in it with this study, but opportunities for wayfinding.

Um I think there could be some opportunities, especially with that primary route for some branding.

Um we didn't have kind of the budget or the time within this study to really go and explore that.

I think that that's something the city should take on and really kind of define themselves.

But so I think it's looking at that, like is there some unique branding opportunities, um, some signage, but the signage that's in there is is your you know, typical warning uh traffic type of of signs.

But um there are opportunities, and we recognize some opportunities for some wayfinding um within this this plan as well.

Well it's very exciting, a lot of green space there versus other parts of Tampa.

What's the third school?

So you have River V River Hills.

Well, I don't mean to test you.

I I didn't know if you just had that look at the split.

Yeah, um I know where it is, but I'm I'm not sure.

So you have Temple Terrace Elementary Greco is one.

Um Temple Terrace, Lewis, River Hills, Greco, those are the public schools.

We have private schools and charter schools in addition to that.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Other questions, board members?

Uh Councilmember Hurte.

Uh thank you so much.

I think this is a great plan and to you uh answer um board member Gray's uh suggestion.

Um FDOT just completed or is close to completing the Ola Avenue bikeway, which has phenomenal signage.

So if if you were interested in that, I'm sure F Dot could share.

Uh and it's very directional, it's it's very clean, and uh it's it has been incredibly wonderful.

So this is my chance to say thank you because that has been a huge uh impact in the area that it is.

Um but also I really uh interestingly on on uh I did a bike ride uh for Florida Bike Month uh last Sunday, and one of one of the the questions was how do we get safely to Temple Terrace?

So this was just perfect timing.

So definitely I know this is inner Temple Terrace, but but also that connectivity to the city so that people can get back and forth.

So I I know you're thinking of it, but I just I had to say it because I have constituents who are who are working in the city, living in Temple Terrace, or living in the city and working in Temple Terrace.

So uh I just wanted to highlight that.

Thank you.

Yep.

Uh I'll just say we did the so city has multiple phases of the walk bike plan, um, which I was fortunate enough to work on a lot of those.

So there we did kind of cross a lot of that and and see where there's some opportunities for those connections.

I know it's just time and prioritization to getting some of those projects moved forward, but yeah, I think it it except very city focused plan, but we also wanted to recognize the importance and kind of the unique position that Temple Terrace sets with being adjacent to the city on the show.

So I like what you're saying.

Uh Mr.

Hall.

Yeah, it was just just a point of clarification.

So when you had the map showing the future connections like the highlighted in blue.

Yes.

I noticed that you didn't extend, you didn't show a connection extending down Fowler to the west.

Like you had Fletcher kind of extending out.

Fowler.

Sorry, I didn't mean to catch you.

Um we do have Fowler in there and and that coordination part.

Um big part of that is coordinating, you know, um, with you guys.

I know you guys are working on the the path project to the west um from Nebraska over 50th kind of um so yeah, so some of that uh it is on there.

Um we didn't want to put a lot of emphasis on that, but kind of recognize it, hey, uh from a commercial activity, um, you know, regional connector, Fowler, um, Fletcher County Road are are important.

Um those are big complex projects.

Um so we try to focus more on the smaller city stuff, but um I do believe at least parts of Fowler are listed on there as a kind of a continued coordination with you guys and looking for opportunities for additional enhancements.

And the always one brought up is that's something we've been working on with the mayor for a while to be kind of the backbone for those connections, you know, to connect to existing city and county facilities.

So I just want to make sure that wasn't missed in the study.

So thank you.

Board member Slater.

Thank you.

But when you look at the network that's proposed, you know, where does the ownership lie?

Is it part of the state system, county, city, all of the above, that kind of thing?

All of the above, but um again, as I just said, we our focus was looking at the city maintained roads.

There are some county um maintained roads, they were at our stakeholder meeting, we were able to talk to them.

Um Fletcher as a big example of of opportunities.

Um, but especially like you get into the uh southeastern part of Temple Terrace, um, kind of south and east of the river, um, you get a mix of city owned and county owned roads within there.

Um but for a large part we tried to focus on stuff that the city could do um at their level, um, but recognizing that there are some other streets and some important streets and some important connections that are gonna need continued coordination with the state and county.

That was kind of me thinking down the road a little bit, you know.

So to do anything on the county system, you're gonna have to coordinate pretty closely with the county or state pretty closely with the state.

Yeah, and and especially looking at like future regional connections.

So if the um if when the uh bypass canal trail um gets extended and moved up that way, um you are going to need to look at if residents from the city of Temple Terrace want to get out to that, they will need to utilize some state roads, some county roads in addition to city roads and and ways to get out there.

So it's gonna be a continued conversation and coordination.

Commissioner Cohen.

I just wanted to remind everybody that Hillsburg County just last week approved 24 million dollars for Fletcher Avenue improvements just last week.

So uh that it it comes right up to the line uh of where we're talking about here.

Other questions, board members?

Mr.

Board Member King.

Thank you, thank you, Chair.

Um perhaps you mentioned this, but what sort of time frame do you anticipate for fully implementing this uh this project?

That we didn't put one on there.

Um so this was kind of it's a high level planning, it's kind of developing a vision.

Um, you know, I think we look at implementations, there's some stuff that the city could go right.

So if I mean the city finds a bunch of money, um it could accelerate some of this, but recognizing the the budgetary and financial constraints that um but I think there's a lot of stuff that that could be done pretty quickly.

But I think our goal in looking at implementation with this is looking trying to identify the connections, identify some of the improvements, um, and then you know, have a plan in place, and then as things like maintenance projects come up, or if there's another kind of uh goes with type of project that these type of improvements can be wrapped up into, um looking for those opportunities.

This really kind of serves as a guide moving forward.

I I know mentioned like City of Tampa has their walk bike plans, um, and that was kind of the intent on that.

Like, I mean, we completed the first one of those 16, 17 years ago, um, and it's still being worked on.

So it's kind of a long-term plan, um, but leave that up to the city and how they I mean with the money they have and how they want to do some of this, but we really see it kind of as a long-term um kind of a multimodal long-range plan for them.

So over the next 10, 15, 20 years as they start to work, you know, towards building out this network.

Um, also recognize that like our suggestions, we call them suggestions because we want them to kind of evolve over time.

Um different trends, different, you know, what's acceptable, what's you know, most likely, or what people want may change over time.

Uh, we didn't want to lock the city into like, oh, you have to do um, you know, a sidewalk and you know, or you it has to be an on-street bike lane on this street.

Yeah, we've got suggestions for that type of stuff to that detail, but it's really kind of focused more on the connections and the point A to point B type of stuff, as these are roadways that we really see as key and critical to getting people from where they live to where they want to go and back.

Okay, thank you.

And one other question is um how comfortable are you that the project can be completed within a reasonable time period with the proposed budget.

I would I'll caution say it's not just a singular project.

Um I would say that this is there's multiple uh many many projects within here.

Um so I I mean, as a whole, I don't I can't really put a timeline on that.

Um but you know, I think from an implementation standpoint, um, you know, of the ability to get a majority of those projects actually completed that I'm highly confident that they could be completed.

It's then it just comes to um, you know, what is the priority of the city, how do they want to spend their money, where can they spend their money, how much do they have to get some of this stuff done.

Um it's not I will keep saying that it's not just one singular project.

This is there's multiple, it could be divided up into more segments than we even have recommended in here.

But I think at a high level, we have over 50 projects identified within this plan.

So it's a lot of work to be done.

So would you say it would be fair to call this an alighcart menu that depending on how much we have the appetite for?

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, and that's where the prioritization kind of came in too is to look at um, you know, where might that low-hanging fruit be.

Um, where could you do stuff, get some early wins, um, you know, recognizing that you know there's some segments that are gonna be more complex when you like we evaluate right away.

We didn't we'd look to not obtain any right-of-way with any of these improvements, but there still are things.

I mean, as you know, you know, any time you get outside of the existing pavement, there could be drainage impacts and stuff to get into to some of those projects, it gets a little more complex.

Um, so some projects are going to be need to go through full engineering design.

Um, there's other ones that could be easily wrapped up into a maintenance project.

If you were doing a resurfacing in the next two or three years, you could get that done potentially through that.

Um, but there's other ones that are going to need a lot more work.

So it's it's kind of all over, and yeah, I'd say a la carte, do as you can, um, not go build it all at once.

All right, thank you, sir.

I may be able to fill in some of the blanks here better than than the consultant.

So let me put this into context here.

First of all, to to board member Gray's point, um, Temple Terrace has already been working for several years now, not just not just the past six months, but for the past three or four years, we've already been working, particularly around our public schools to enhance um pedestrian and bicycle safety.

We have added segments of sidewalks down around River Hills.

Um we get a lot of neighborhood children walk probably more to River Hills than some of the others.

We've already uh added some sidewalks in those, and we and we continue to do that.

Um we've also done a lot of improvements on Ridgedale, which is the road that runs right in front of Temple Terrace Elementary to do some traffic calming and the results of our um our traffic studies before and after show that we've had a great deal of success slowing people down, enhancing the crosswalks, um, putting RFBs.

So we've we've done quite a bit of work around the schools already, and we continue to do that.

We've been talking to DOT now for uh probably the day after the USF stadium was announced, uh Justin and I were talking and and um his predecessor also so we've had discussions going on now for years about enhancing our connectivity to the campus, uh not only because of the stadium, we have a lot of affiliates, a lot of USF affiliates that live in Temple Terrace, a lot of professors, a lot of staff, and some of them don't like they they don't want they don't even buy a parking pass because it cost them, so they ride their bike and or they want a golf cart or whatever.

So um the connectivity between USF campus and Temple Terrace is very important, and we currently have a sidewalk, but it's not what we need.

We need we need something much better and then the the stadium and the Mosey development only exasperate that.

So we want to make sure we have that connectivity.

The third motivation behind this is kind of the connectivity to the city of Tampa's network, that potentially if we could get to there safely, we could connect with them along 40th Street and ultimately you could ride all the way down to downtown Tampa, which I know to some of us that seems extreme, but to people who bike, that's not a very long ride.

And so people will do that and know we'll ride to work down here and ride back home along that network.

So part of what we were trying to accomplish with this, it's not difficult to establish the links between the bypass canal through Temple Terrace to Tampa.

That that part it's pretty easy to conceive of.

The the tricky part of that is to align that with safe crossings on particularly the major roads, which we have three, Fowler 56 and Bullard or Temple Terrace Highway.

We want to align these preferred bike routes with safe crossings so that people aren't crossing in the middle of in between two traffic signals and they're trying to ride their bike across, is and you know, then they got to ride over a median.

That that's what we're trying to avoid all of that.

So that's what the impetus for this was.

We started a few years ago our own bicycle pedestrian advisory committee to help us further this.

That's where this project came from.

And so I do want to assure you and all of our Temple Terrace constituents who may be watching and everybody here, but I want to quell the rumors right here and now.

The city of Temple Terrace has no plans to spend 18 million dollars of our taxpayer money to build these bike trails.

So when you get to the ballot this fall, and you see that we have a $50 million bond issue on the ballot to build a public safety complex, we want you to vote yes for that, right?

There's no push.

Because with all the property tax discussion that's going on and our bond issue initiative that's on the ballot, the last thing in the world I want people to think is that we're about to spend $18 million in addition to all this on a bike path.

Because that is not the case.

And so I I really questioned that slide when I first got it a couple weeks ago.

I'm like, I wish you'd take that slide out because if you had everything together, I don't see how it adds up to $18 million.

But the other thing is we don't even want to build everything that's conceived in this.

We don't want to plaster the city with speed humps and bike lanes because it eliminates street parking, and some of those streets we don't want bike lanes because the people need street parking.

And so this has got to be like a lacquart, Mr.

King said, and and uh that's exactly what this is like we want to go down Temple Terrace Highway, we want to make sure we can connect, we want to go down Whiteway, we want to make sure that we can get across Fowler and get across 56 and get to campus, all of these things, but we are in no way, shape, or form asking the taxpayers to pay 18 million dollars for a bike trail.

So, yes, board member great.

You know, I was thinking if you look at the Pinellas Trail where they have the overpass on the major.

Thank you.

Well, at any rate, um well, no, no, there's it one more part.

There you go.

How about now?

There we go.

Yeah, well, you know, a lot of the uh bikers and the runners, we we go over there's roads, I mean, there's bridges, of course.

Um, and that's even more expensive.

I would only imagine, but just talking about crossing Fowler alone, you know, the um we have Mosey, that bridge there, but uh have you thought about that in in the if Secretary Hall wants to build us a bridge, we'll be happy to take it.

It's just a little bit of money.

I just wanted to throw that out.

I know you're doing big bands.

Our money does have a bridge over Fletcher uh as pedestrian pedestrian bridge.

Yes.

Okay, yes, Commissioner Wallsville.

It's just a it's just a brief comment when you're doing these studies.

Um I've been here now for three and a half years.

Um, all of the commissioners have parking down right below us, and we immediately exit from our garage right onto a double bike lane.

Not once have I ever seen a bicyclist on those back and forth bike lanes there ever.

The only thing I've ever seen on them once was a driver get frustrated and swerve into the two empty bike lanes to go around a stoplight that somebody was blocking them at.

So when you're doing the analysis of these routes, do you ever like we do traffic studies and say, hey, this is how many they put the little black cord across and they say this is the traffic.

Do you ever analyze like, hey, this is the value proposition of putting a bike lane here, and this is how many riders we tracked on this route that we're studying, or is it just a is it done through a hope and a dream?

Uh it's not a hope and a dream.

And and I think it was mentioned in the committee reports that question was asked about um doing bike and bag counts, and that data wasn't available for us as doing this, and we didn't have the budget within this to go do it.

I will say and our public engagement, one of the things that we heard a lot was that oh well, these are the streets that I already ride or walk on, um, which we took as a compliment, and maybe we were going in the right direction.

We that that's what we wanted to try to find with this through our engagement was to figure out where are people going, where are they already riding, where do they have interest in doing that, and look at minor enhancements to to some of those routes.

Um, you know, we're not talking about complete overhauls.

We don't have any cycle tracks like on Jackson Street and there, but it's are there some minor little things where people are already utilizing where they're trying to take their families to the parks where the kids can maybe go to school that we can do some minor improvements on here and use that as kind of the basis of where to do that.

Um the prioritization had different factors like that in their proximity to school, proximity to transit, proximity to parks, um, and looking at that of where you know in the absence of having raw data looking at what we know as attractors or potential attractors for people to use different you know modes other than a single you know, or their personal vehicle.

But the short answer is that you you don't do what I'm saying then to analyze it.

And this project it wasn't a part of it.

Is that okay?

So the answer is no.

All right, thank you.

Okay, board.

Do we have a motion to accept the study?

Motion to accept by uh council member Clinton and seconded by Commissioner Myers.

Uh, any discussion of the motion?

If not, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

No nays.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Keller.

The studies is accepted.

Next uh the presentation by Jennifer Musselman concerning safety treatment effectiveness evaluation.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Um Jennifer Musselman with Kittleson, consultant to the TPO, and excited to share with you today the results of our safety evaluation.

Um we set out on this evaluation to answer a question that a lot of agencies are struggling with with a mounting list of safety challenges to address and a set amount of funding to address them.

Is it most advantageous to invest in a lot of smaller projects or a handful of larger projects?

So to help us answer that question, we did two different evaluations.

The first was focused on documented research, and this allowed us to isolate the potential impacts of individual treatments and their effect on safety.

And then we also looked at 10 local projects completed in the last 10 years or so, which often involved a bundle of treatments and what their impact on safety was.

So starting with the research part of the evaluation, we looked at 14 treatments across different costs, so all the way up to roundabouts and raised medians, but also lower cost treatments, including signal timing strategies, crosswalk enhancements, more minor modifications.

So I'm going to share a handful of charts that are all structured the same way.

So we see crash reduction on the bottom, cost on the vertical axis.

These two in particular are the same.

The one on the left serves as a legend for the one on the right, but on the right, you can see the individual numbers a little bit more clearly where they fall in the chart.

So the green box is the sweet spot of where you ideally want to be, where you have high crash reduction potential and low cost.

So the treatments we're seeing in that box are lane narrowing from 12 to 10 feet, raised crosswalks, and then signal progression to reduce speeds.

So those are the three treatments.

Then we look at all crash types, all crash severities where we're seeing the greatest crash reduction for their cost.

There was a handful of treatments that are meant to address specific types of crashes.

So where research existed, we isolated those.

The yellow dots are pedestrian crashes.

And so again, that green box, the sweet spot there would be raised crosswalks and rectangular rapid flashing beacons, seeing the highest potential crash reduction on pedestrian crashes for the lowest cost.

And then for left-turn crashes, there was two that we looked at.

Both would be at traffic signals, and the first is converting from a permissive left turn to the flashing yellow arrow signal head that you see, and then the other is a fully protected left turn where you can only make a left with the green arrow.

So about the same cost for both of those treatments as they're mainly signal timing tweaks, but we saw greater potential crash reduction going to the fully protected left turn.

And then the last set we looked at was where research existed specifically on injury crashes, getting to the vision zero and target zero goals.

So looking just at injury crashes.

The one we saw, the most potential return on investment was the pedestrian hybrid beacon.

Then getting into the case studies, we selected 10 projects.

We had a window of about seven or eight years where we could still get before data and have enough time after to evaluate the impacts of the project.

So most of the projects you see are here in Hillsborough County, but we did look to neighboring counties for a couple, one in Pinellas and one in Sarasota.

And there are five higher cost projects and five lower cost projects.

And so in the next few slides, we'll talk through the trends for each of those groups of projects.

We looked at a handful of benefits that we could monetize to get to a benefit cost ratio.

So of course, number and severity of crashes being the main piece of the analysis, but also to round out the impacts of the projects.

We looked at their effect on vehicle travel time and reliability, and also property values.

And then there was a few things we thought were important to look at, but couldn't quite make it into that benefit cost ratio.

So we also looked at changes in specific crash types, how vehicle speeds compared to the posted speed, and then change in traffic volumes.

In general, we had looked at three years of data before and after each project, removing some of the COVID-19 data that provided an outlier.

And then we also identified five control sites where there was no project done in this window to try to identify what impacts we could attribute to the project and what might be more attributable to larger trends within the county.

So we'll start with safety, which was of course the main focus of the evaluation.

This chart is showing the percent change in annual fatal and serious injury crashes.

So the green is a decrease in crashes, which is of course what we want to see and solve for most of the projects.

When we break them into the two categories of higher cost projects and lower cost projects, we see on the left, all of the higher cost projects had positive outcomes when it came to fatal and serious injury crashes.

And a majority, three of the five had positive outcomes for the lower cost projects.

For travel time, we looked at peak period travel time during an average weekday and saw that where we had data available.

Higher cost projects tended to more negatively impact vehicle travel times than the lower cost projects.

But they also tended to increase the reliability of the travel time.

So perhaps it's taking a little bit longer to get through the corridor, but you're getting through more consistently, possibly with fewer crashes, less travel time impacts from incident clearance.

And then property values.

We didn't see a lot of impact on property values from the projects, but where we did the more significant impacts were for the higher cost projects on Himes and Sheldon.

We did the benefit cost ratio two different ways.

First, just isolate the safety benefits relative to the cost of the projects.

On the left, we have the higher cost projects, and you can see four of the five had a positive benefit cost, and then for the lower cost projects, three of the five had a positive benefit cost with Fletcher on the left and 15th Street on the right, seeing the greatest return on investment.

And then when you look at all of the benefits, including travel time reliability and property value, seeing consistently positive benefit costs for the higher cost projects with some more negative impacts on the lower cost projects.

And then the couple of things that didn't go into those ratios, but again, we still thought were important to look at to paint the full picture, looking at traffic volumes and how they changed before and after the project.

So for the higher cost projects, we saw more negative impacts to traffic volumes.

So after the project, we were moving less cars less efficiently.

With the lower cost projects in general, we were able to move more cars more efficiently down the corridors.

For transit, HART was able to provide some good transit ridership data before and after, and seen pretty consistently in both groups increased transit ridership before and after the projects.

And the last one was posted speed.

There was only three projects that actually resulted in a change in speed limit.

So for Bay Shore and Fletcher, we saw a couple mile per hour decrease in the speed that vehicles were traveling.

They didn't quite get down to the 35 mile posted speed, but closer than they were before.

And then on 46th Street, we ended up seeing an increase in vehicle speeds.

So a few summary slides just to kind of tie this all together and share some of the key takeaways that we found from the data.

This one is summarizing the research treatments.

So which of those are you getting the most potential safety reduction, safe crash reduction from the cost?

So again, if you're looking at all crashes, it's the lane narrowing from 12 to 10 raised crosswalks and signal progression to reduce speed.

If you're focused on left-turn crashes, it was converting to the protected-only left turn.

For pedestrian crashes, it was the raised crosswalk and the rectangular rapid flashing beacon, and then for injury crashes, it was the pedestrian hybrid beacon.

For the case studies, we couldn't quite tie it up into that neat of a bell, but I wanted to highlight a few stories that I think convey the trends that we saw.

So 15th Street was one of the lowest cost projects that we looked at and had some of the strongest safety outcomes afterwards.

There was a handful of very serious crashes in the before period that were all eliminated after.

Hillsborough County is also planning to do a larger project out here on 15th Street.

So I think this is a really great example of do what you can now while you're waiting, maybe waiting for a larger project down the road.

Kennedy Boulevard is another good example of this.

This is the towntown segment, whereas part of an FDOT resurfacing project, they were able to add some curb extensions.

So it may not have addressed every safety challenge on Kennedy, but it was able to reduce pedestrian crashes in a way that was more cost effective than if they had maybe come back later and done the same project.

And then B Ridge Road in Sarasota, this was east of I-75.

It was a series of roundabouts.

It was the most expensive project we looked at by a long shot.

But we see consistently in research and in case studies like this that roundabouts do deliver the reduction and typically elimination of fatal and serious injury crashes.

So when we do invest in these high cost projects, we can be a little bit more confident that we're gonna see the safety outcomes that we want.

And so just final thoughts on how this all comes together.

In general, we saw that the higher cost projects performed better and more consistently than the lower cost projects.

With that said, when you compare the right low-cost treatment to a specific safety challenge like 15th Street, you can see really great benefits.

Low-cost treatments were also a bit better at balancing vehicle mobility goals, having less impact to travel time and vehicle volumes.

And they can also be a great way to incorporate into ongoing projects like Kennedy to more proactively address safety.

So there's a lot more information and data in the report, and happy to answer any questions that you all have today.

Thank you, Ms.

Musselman.

Councilmember Clinton.

Yeah, this report kind of bothers me.

I feel like that there's not enough information to be able to jump jump to a lot of these conclusions.

And in some ways, it sounds it's it's a little bit of bureaucracy looking for work and trying to find a way to create another report that doesn't really provide have the data behind it to justify the conclusions.

As much as I'd like to agree with, I mean, obviously, intuitively, some of those conclusions I agree with, but again, it just seems like there's there's an awful lot of work going into this that didn't have the data to justify the expense or the and and I definitely don't think it necessarily has the meat on the bone to be able to direct us for future investments.

So I'd rather steer away from this type of a limited data type of experience and focus on something that's that's a little bit meatier, and I would definitely wouldn't want it necessarily to guide us for in for future conclusions.

I mean, I I think there's there's parts of it that you could parse out maybe and focus on, but I I think as as a as a general, I'd hate to see this dictate um our actions or expenditures in the future.

Thank you.

Commissioner Walshold and Commissioner Coolen.

Dr.

Wong, and I'm assuming you have data support.

You're you're the most data driven guy of I've worked with in government, so I'm assuming you have to.

Well, my rebuttal to Councilman Clenden's conclusion, and with all due respect, um, so I'll be up front and acknowledge the limitations of the study, right?

Limited sample size, um, um three years of data.

What we have is far from scientifically valid.

This wouldn't pass muster with a peer review.

The reason why I challenge the consultant and the team to take this on is because for more than a decade, it has been this board, not just the current composition of the board, but the TPO board's position to invest small amounts of money in many different projects.

And you know, prior to being the director, I was very involved in the data analysis, specifically the safety.

Um, and what I never felt comfortable with was saying that our investments are really moving the needle.

There are years where our crash data has been very low where we haven't seen quite as many, but we can't say with any certainty that it's attributable to what we're doing.

And I've long suspected that it might make sense to change the strategy to develop more transformative projects.

So with that in mind, we won't have scientific certainty, but I'm comfortable with the data that kind of point us in a new direction to at least give it a shot of trying something different to see if there's an impact.

Um, and so what I would advocate to the board is give us a chance to work with the local governments and develop planning studies that offer more transformative safety projects rather than this opportunistic mentality of getting one safety element in all projects.

And so I'd like to shift our strategy to see if we can generate some change.

I'll ask you my question now.

I just wanted to give him the opportunity to respond.

I I thought the report was fine.

And it's, you know, not everything's perfect.

Um can you give me the information for the Bay Shore Street, the the county, strangely, from a really old lawsuit in the 80s, we own about 25, 26 roads in the city of Tampa, and that's one of them.

And I just want to see what those um improvements are.

The the countywide reserves are exorbitantly higher than they need to be.

And if there's something that we can do to um usher in some safety improvement, I I'd be all for bringing that up as an item if you can get me what you're thinking there.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Commissioner Cole.

Um I I think that that the benefit sometimes of these types of reports is that certain things stand out to you and and just on the on their surface make some sense.

And there were two things that I I noticed in this that I think would be helpful to us.

The first had to do with the the pedestrian bulb outs on Kennedy Boulevard, and we all we all walk in this neighborhood uh uh sometimes, so we all know exactly what they're talking about there.

I remember when they built those, I sort of couldn't figure out what they were doing.

I honestly thought uh this is the oddest thing that they're building these crosswalks out into the road.

But I you know, it it looks like this has worked in terms of uh preventing pedestrian fatalities, and I think I I think it's a good low cost thing that ought to that ought to be looked at in other places.

The second thing I wanted to just understand when you're talking about a permissive versus a um what was the other one?

A per progressive.

Well, wait, one is a permissive permissive, flashing yellow arrow and protected.

And protected and protected as a green arrow, then okay.

And the protected did much better than the yellow arrow.

In the flashing yellow arrow, yes.

So I mean, I think that left turns are a huge challenge and problem for us.

And the worse the traffic gets, the more people take risks going through the intersections, they're distracted in the in the middle of the intersection.

It's it's really unbelievable.

And I think this is also a very low-cost way of getting more uh pedestrian safety bang for the buck.

Because all you have to do is change the um the way that the the light is programmed, and you can essentially turn uh uh which which is it a permissive into a what permissive you would have to change the signal head configuration, but yes, it's a low-cost way to anyway.

The the point being that you know there are some things that we can take from this, and um uh I in on both of those, I think those are low-cost examples that um that we ought to look at.

Board member Gray.

You know, I'm I'm enjoying this conversation because I I believe that, and there's an adage, um, what if you never begin the project?

What if you never start the planning, then you really have no no feedback.

So it it is a start, but I I also see that there is a noticeable difference with the Bay Shore went down for two miles per hour.

Um I know that's not a big deal, but it it really is.

Um West Shore uh to um uh Cohen's point and 15th Street.

My question is are there any lives that have been saved?

Or is there any prospectus about lives being saved in terms of traffic crashes, etc.?

Yes, in several of the case studies we reviewed, 15th Street being one of them.

There were no fatal and serious injury crashes after the project.

Versus versus before where there was I don't remember the exact number, but several.

Well, they're that to me means a lot right there.

One life saved is tremendous.

So that's my feedback.

Thank you.

Um Chair Ross.

Councilmember Clinton.

Yeah, just uh just to uh emphasize it's not that I'm dissing all the conclusions of state uh in the project or the the study.

It's just the uh the the data and the and the scientific method methodology you can't necessarily rely on to draw those conclusions, even though the conclusions may be valid, and I think there's parts of this that probably are worth pursuing.

Uh clearly there's you know, there's obviously just intuitively, and as those of us that move through the city, we can see some of the you know the out those outcomes and the desirable outcomes like roundabouts.

We obviously know those are effective once people learn how to drive them.

But uh, you know, so I just I just want to make sure I again uh I'm I'm very uh apprehensive about government and and their and the ability to do studies that you know and we we I think Commissioner Wasslow has talked about how many studies we put on shelves, you know.

So have you know shelves study after study after study that doesn't you know isn't consequential.

So I'd like us, you know, see us focus on, like I say, if intuitively we know that these uh several of these improvements have been spoken about today.

If we dove deeper down into those and see how we could extrapolate the success of that particular project and where we could apply it in other areas of the community to be effective, I think that would be a great outcome of this study to say, okay, this is the guiding point on these two things.

Maybe we can look at that why we believe this is successful, expand what you're doing, and then try to figure out places where you can apply it.

Okay, board members, is there a motion to accept the report?

Second.

Commissioner motion by Commissioner Bowles, seconded by Commissioner Cohen as there are discussion of the motion.

If not, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

No nice.

Thank you, Miss Musselman.

Thank you all.

We have a couple of status reports.

One from Hart.

Uh Jesus Peraza Garcia is here, I believe, this morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good to see you.

See you all right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Ross.

Um, good morning, Chair Ross to your board members and Dr.

Wong.

Um, my name is Jesus Baraza Garcia, Hart staff, and I'm here to uh provide an introduction to the 2027 major update of the transit development plan or TDP.

Um, what in the world is a TDP?

It is a multi-year operating and financial plan for a transit agency.

FDOT requires transit providers uh who receive state funding to develop and adopt a TDP.

Major updates are required every five years with annual updates required during inner intermediate years.

Uh the major update we're working on right now is due in March of 2027, so a year from now.

Um, aside from being a requirement, the TDP is an opportunity for HART to work on our vision for transit service over the next 10 years.

It is our opportunity to think big, looking at what are the needs of the community, what projects would best address those needs, and how do we prioritize those projects?

Now, here are a lot of acronyms you might have heard about before.

So, how do they all come together?

Uh you've seen my face a couple times over the past couple years talking a lot about the COA.

That's short-term improvements, no new funding is assumed.

Then the COA that CIA we worked on sets the foundation for this TDP we're working on right now, but the TDP goes beyond that, laying out a 10-year vision that will guide Hart on how and where to grow.

Uh the TDP includes unfunded needs.

So, for example, if new funding became available, what projects will we spend it on, and how should we prioritize those projects?

Resulting in a tangible list of needs over the next decade.

And last but not least, there is a long-reach transportation plan, the LRTP, which is put together by you all and your staff.

And the LRTP has a transit component, and the TDP is the first 10 years of that component, and then the LRTP goes beyond that, seeing as it is a 25-year plan.

These are the required components of a TDP.

First, there needs to be a public involvement process that includes a plan explaining which activities will be conducted to gather feedback on needs and solutions, public feedback, that is.

More on this later.

Coordination with the local MPO is paramount because of how the TDP and the LRTB come together partially.

As part of the operating context evaluation, we will conduct a review of other local planning documents to see to understand what they have laid out over the next 10 plus years.

So we ensure we're all in sync.

The land use on corridor development section looks at elements like density and development to identify where in the county's transit the most needed and which areas are more ready for transit service.

Lastly, the main piece of the TDP is the 10-year operating capital program, which involves identifying and prioritizing projects as well as estimating costs and ridership and developing a financial plan.

So now the main star of today, the public involvement.

We started public involvement last week, and it's gonna go on for five weeks throughout the month of March.

We have a survey available online at a unique webpage, Hardvision Plan.com, which will ask people to rank their needs in different categories, things such as potential frequency increases, new routes, different types of service, and overall improvements to writer experience.

This feedback that we receive will help us create that list of priorities for transit needs that I mentioned a few moments ago.

We will also be hosting 10 different ambition workshops across the county to dive deeper into the priorities and have brainstorms about ideas for the future.

You have a map on the screen, those stars are the locations of the 10 workshops.

We actually kicked off yesterday in East Tampa.

Tonight we're gonna be in West Shore, tomorrow the North Tampa Library.

Next week we're gonna be at University Area CDC on town and country regional library, and then we have five more over the next two weeks after that.

Uh South County, Brandon, Progress Village, Downtown Tampa.

And we're closing with a South Tampa workshop on April 1st.

And if you think I sound like an artist announcing our tour dates, that's because I am.

And I personally think this is more fun than a concert.

So I suggest you attend and tell your friends.

Aside from the workshops, we will be our transit and transfer centers with staff to inform people about the survey and answer any questions.

Throughout the year, we will have other involvement activities taking place.

We will be doing in-depth one-on-one interviews with key stakeholders and community leaders.

Actually, as part of those stakeholder interviews, we will be interviewing some of you guys.

We will have a review committee made up of transportation stakeholders that meets routinely, and we will be getting feedback from hard employees with our own internal workshops.

For TPO board members, we invite you to fill out the survey and inform your networks and constituents about this opportunity.

And you're also welcome to attend any of the workshops.

Um I cannot emphasize enough.

Please spread the word.

You guys have a sizable constituency and several networks.

So the more the merrier.

So please tell everybody.

Uh the flyers who are going to be receiving uh through TPO staff so that you can spread those.

Um lastly but not least.

Uh special thanks to the Hills Row TPO for their support to execute all of these outreach and marketing uh by providing us with a consultant.

Here's the timeline and next steps.

So in January, we selected WSV as our consultant to develop the TDP to build on the work they did with the COA.

The outreach effort will take place in March, as I mentioned.

In parallel to the outreach, we're providing an intro to the process to TPO boarding committees.

So that's why I'm here today.

We'll come back to TPO boarding committees in August to present on the uh what we heard during public outreach.

The TDP will go to the Hard Board for final approval in November and later submission to FDOT District 7.

And lastly, the final TDP will be presented to TPO boarding committees in January of next year as an informational item.

With that, I thank you for your time, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Garcia.

I think it would depend on the concert.

Board members or other questions.

Commissioner Wastel.

My comments are just very brief.

Um I'm always grateful when you show up.

When I originally got here, I know you didn't entirely agree with all of my decisions I did at the heart board, but I hope that you see now it was really just in an effort to stop the bureaucracy and politicians that ran it into the ground the three years prior to me getting there.

I I believe that HART is an um organization that deserves to be saved.

I think that we still have a lot of work to do to rigorously overhaul the political structure that it operates under, which is what the FDOT study said that we should do, and we've we've failed to do that so far.

In fact, we um voted quite opposite, but um I'm gonna keep fighting to make sure that heart is reorganized and structured in a way that good people like you that I think genuinely care about protecting the industry and that organization for those segments of society that just in the reality is um would have to rely more on government if heart went away, and that's why I worked so hard with the legislature when they were looking at closing it down entirely to ask them to please give us one more chance.

And I think that you and your cohort deserve a lot of the um um praise that goes into rescuing that organization from financial um turmoil that it was in a couple of years ago.

So I'm going to praise you every time that you come here and present to us because I think that you really care about the organization and you do a really good job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hurta.

Uh and I I want to um thank you also for coming, and I know you said you're going to send it, but definitely a flyer version, something that's easy to uh pass on to constituents would be wonderful.

So uh I know you said you're gonna do it, but I just need to hear that we're gonna get that emailed to us.

Yeah, we have them in English and Spanish.

Okay, uh board members, is there a motion to oh, this is status.

We don't need a motion.

Any final questions?

Mr.

Garcia, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next we have Sir Caper is going to present a draft unified planning work program.

Uh presentation for July 1st to June 30th of 2028.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Sarah Caper again from the TPO staff to present the draft unified planning work program for July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2028.

So, what is the Unified Planning Work Program or UPWP?

It is essentially the TPO's two-year budget for planning work.

So you see more often the transportation improvement program or the TIP, which is a five-year document that looks at projects that are moving their way through design, right-of-way construction, the project phases.

The UPWP is planning focused, and this is the funding that the TPO gets directly to do our planning studies, such as the ones you heard about this morning.

It is one of our core requirements from the state and federal government.

And one of the pieces of that is to document the federal and state funding for transportation planning.

So that involves reaching out to our partners who receive this funding as well to make sure we're including that in our document.

There are a lot of federal and state rules we comply with in the development and operations and maintenance of this document.

And it is a two-year document.

You will recall two years ago, we had this presentation before you, and so we are in that process now, kicking it off for 2026, July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2028.

The UPWP documents projects that fall within the tasks listed here.

Tasks are the way in the UPWP that we document the kinds of work that we're doing.

So, for example, task one is transportation planning management that involves the maintenance of the UPWP and the invoices and grant compliance that goes with that.

Task two, the system and quarter planning.

Some of the studies you heard today fall under this.

Our safety planning, our intelligent transportation system planning falls under that task.

Task three is a long-range transportation plan and data monitoring, things like the traffic count program and the long range plan come in this task.

Task four is the transportation improvement program and a list of priority projects.

Task five is public participation, which includes this meeting today that falls under our public participation process.

Task six is our regional planning and coordination work.

Task seven, we carved aside specifically to track how much we're spending on exploring a regional MPO.

And then task eight is a shared one to be able to transfer funds between the MPOs and our region for work that we do together.

This is a very small amount of money.

We develop the unified planning work program looking at what are our requirements, what are our required projects, the requests that we receive from our partners, and then projects that support our strategic plan.

You can see here on the slide the funding that we anticipate in these fiscal years.

So our largest chunk of money comes from the consolidated planning grant.

This is federal highway planning funds and FTA funds that are consolidated together, and we have the estimated amounts that we'll receive on this slide.

We do have an asterisk, that's why it's an estimate because it does not include the de-obligated funds from fiscal year 26.

Deobligated funds are funds that we have right now today that we don't think we will spend by June 30th.

So there's a process, you'll actually see it next month at your meeting where we say we don't think we're gonna spend this money by June 30th.

We'd like it available though sooner.

And so we take the money literally out of this year and we put it into next year.

So that will come before you at your next meeting, and then it gets put into the unified planning work program.

We also receive surface transportation or SU funding, 600,000 each of the fiscal years, and then we receive funding from the commission for the transportation disadvantaged.

Some of the projects, and this is not an exhaustive list, but some of the projects you'll see that we are considering critical path or required and necessary committed projects in this UPWP are continuing things like our state of the system report showing how are we doing, our transportation disadvantaged planning work.

Some of those are requirements of the state, the public participation plan, making sure we are maintaining and following that, the transportation improvement program, things like the long-range transportation plan, which it might feel like we just adopted 2050, but 2055 work will already begin in this next UPWP cycle.

And then there's available funding for additional planning efforts.

Some of these we get through, you might recall that this board authorized a call for planning projects last November.

That was shared with all of our committees with this board, and it was in our newsletter, so the public could provide planning suggestions.

We also reach out to our partners to see if they have any other additions additional suggestions.

One thing we did emphasize this year in that call for projects is some of what I heard earlier in this meeting about making sure planning studies don't sit on a shelf.

And we really emphasize the need to have a project sponsor or some kind of discussion with us about who would be responsible for continuing a planning study going forward so that it has value as it continues through its process.

Some of what we heard, and we're still um working through what we heard and how much money is available based on the deobligation and any feedback from you as a board this morning.

But we've heard of requests for safety planning for smart cities planning, the ICASP project that you received last year presentation on.

We saw interest in that.

Plant City, for example, requested an update to their walk bike plan.

And then we heard another example is the business operations report.

We did the inaugural one last year and heard that you'd like to continue that.

So we've worked that, for example, into those additional planning efforts.

So where are we now?

We have uh held that request for planning projects.

We have been developing the draft based on what we heard and the feedback that we are getting from the committees.

We have the draft before you today in your agenda packet.

We are required to submit it to our review agencies, the state and federal government by March 15th.

So after today's meeting, we will submit that.

We'll get comments back in April, and then we'll come before you again in May for approval.

We are required to submit the approved document to the Florida Department of Transportation by May 15th.

And then it is effective July 1st.

And with that, I'd like to thank you.

I'm happy to take any questions, comments, or project requests that you have that we can incorporate into our process.

Thank you, Ms.

Caper.

Board members' other questions.

Yes, Commissioner Walshwell.

I'm sorry I didn't see you.

I was gonna do this um in old business, but uh it's kind of germane here since we're talking about work programs and tips and this and Secretary Hall and Mr.

Wong.

But I I took a trip up 301 recently for the first time ever.

I I won't, I'm I live far northwest, and I've just had no reason to go up there.

I've I've read all the studies and I know how bad it is.

But I'm I'm really just looking for where are we at on moving forward with that?

Are we anywhere close?

And do I need to make any motions soon because we have a new comp plan amendment, um, Secretary Hall, you can't track everything the county does, it's coming forward on a very large piece of property up there.

And as you know, right before I got elected, the former board approved several thousand homes that on the north on the west side of it.

This is on the east side of it.

Um I saw someone almost get killed just on my drive, and then the person I went to go meet, their own son had almost got killed a week ago, and he actually got hit.

So um I don't know if it it if it's totally germane.

I could do it in old business if you want, Mr.

Chair, but I'm just really curious about that 301, if it's uh it's where it's out on the prioritization lists.

Um it fits now.

We'll just hear from Secretary Hall.

So I'll tell you about four or five years ago we were ready to do something out there in uh this board um at the time, right?

Not the same makeup, this board at the time killed that project.

Um we are currently looking at a revised design that minimizes ride-away impacts out there, and I know several of the developers in the northern part of that corridor, including in southern PASCO and Northern Hillsboro, have dedicated ride-away to us uh to do some improvements out there.

So I anticipate that uh that project will come back around for this board's consideration soon.

Okay.

Um I will tell you in the in the intermediary, I'm sure you saw we put in several signals out there that were not there before, which have made an impact uh on the on the uh overall safety out there, but yeah, that that continues to be one of the number one uh corridors for fatalities in District 7.

So that it was before it still is today.

Um so uh yeah, we definitely plan to bring that project back around.

So you'll see it.

The only reason, thank you, Secretary Hall.

The only reason I bring it up is you know, this organization is the planning organization.

Just this morning, the Hillsborough County Commissioners, in my opinion, were rightfully chastised by the chair of the planning commission who happens to sit on this board because of our lack of planning, seriously, though.

We have a lot of growth, and we're just we're not planning.

We're we're always reacting.

We are always reacting, and when you're reacting with transportation, people are dying unnecessarily, and that's just a harsh reality of it.

And we know that that corridor is already bad, and we know we have plan amendment updates coming for that corridor.

So we we must do planning and get these serious um high injury routes planned for and executed before you know property rights and planning are separate, and so the they do not run together, unfortunately, because of protections legally.

They run parallel, and right now property rights are are far ahead in their lane than transportation planning.

That's the easiest analogy that I can get of the situation, and I I want to feel like we're getting ahead of it.

Um it's it's not anyone's fault.

It's it's past it's past board's faults, um, but that's not an excuse for us to make radical changes if we need to to try and try and get ahead of that.

Um I know that it the the answer is always is always funding, and we have a big we have big questions at the city of Tampa and the um uh board of county commissioners about stressing those funds again in an area that does not have to do with these critical transportation corridors.

And um, it's just you know, it's just an excuse, it's a certain circular excuse that goes on and on, and and here we go, and the carousel kind of goes ever faster.

And and I would love for us to respond to Chair Joseph's um email to all of us and in a in a rightful manner to start planning for transportation and property rights cohesively.

So I'll just um digress there and I I will look forward.

I will do anything I can to help you get that 301 um passage um moving forward.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner and Secretary for the City Temple Terrace would support that too.

We have our residents dying on that road uh on a fairly regular basis, too.

So board members, other questions for Ms.

Caper.

I just want to make a statement because obviously we deal with uh four MPOs in my district, and I will tell you procedurally.

Um, you know, I don't want to get into the content of the UPWP because that's the board's decision.

Um I'll tell you procedurally, this uh organization's as efficient as any and um honestly handles the like Sarah, Johnny, and team, uh they handle the UPWP very well.

Like we have very few issues, you know, even when they go to DOB move money around, like they do everything top-notch.

So if you ever are wondering, you know, about how they're doing procedurally and their interactions with us, they they are kind of the gold standard uh locally of of how we should operate.

I've been on this board long enough to know that that statement would have been made, would not have been made a few years ago.

So that's that's kind of refreshing to hear that.

So thank you, Ms.

Caper.

Thank you.

Okay, executive director's report, Dr.

Wong.

Thank you for those kudos, Secretary Hall.

Before I get into the bulleted list, I'll share a follow-up from a question that was asked last month about Hart's fleet replacement schedule.

If you recall, there was a TIP amendment to add some money to the agency, and with that money they're gonna purchase uh a lot of new buses.

And the question was with such a large one-time injection of funding, how would that impact future replacement schedules?

Basically, will they all retire at the same time?

And the answer is yes, if they purchase them all at the same time, they're gonna have an issue uh in 12 years when they reach their useful life.

And the follow-up response from Hart was that they plan to stagger the purchases over a number of years.

So now moving on into the bulleted list.

Our next regular TPO board meeting will be April 8th.

In the month of April, Pasco and Pinella's MPOs intend to bring a draft apportionment plan on the merged MPO to their boards.

We will follow suit in the following month.

So you might hear some chatter about the apportionment plan and what's happening in our counter uh or in our partner counties, but uh we will tackle that issue in May.

Legislative updates, I can't offer much aside from uh what you already know.

Uh the regular session ends this Friday.

Um it's expected that they'll be called back for a special session to resolve the budget regarding the transportation related uh bills.

I'll I'll focus specifically on the uh industry bill impacting DOT.

That is the one that's furthest that has advanced the furthest.

It has made it through the Senate and the House and just waiting on a gubernatorial signature.

Um that one would change the uh prioritization schedule for significant trails on the Sun Trail Network.

Um there's a lot.

I I won't cover it all because I've recapped it in previous meetings, but uh that is the one that has advanced the furthest.

Uh now turning toward personnel issues, I want to take a moment to recognize the retirement of TPO assistant director Gina Torres, and if it's okay with the chair, I'd like to invite her up to say a few words.

I'll start by saying that Gina has had a great career, 36 years with the county.

She started fresh out of USF with the Environmental Protection Commission doing air quality monitoring four years later.

Uh the MPO was fortunate enough to have her join us.

She's been the tireless champion of our local Vision Zero efforts, and she in fact hired me 10 years ago.

But I'll turn it over to her to say a few words.

You obviously I wasn't 10 when I started when you said that I came out of college.

It's not like now I blew that.

Um yeah, I wasn't gonna like do a drop the mic kind of you know speech here, but I did sitting here thought, well, I'm gonna share some things as I heard the discussions.

I just wanted to say a few words.

Planning is long-term and very visionary, and I know that our work is so good that everyone gets excited about how we get these recommendations moving forward.

And I heard that about implementation, but that's really where you all come into play um to be able to tell your staffs in your various you know agencies uh to this is a great work that we did.

Let's move this forward because we don't implement things here, but we come out with some really great recommendations that can make you know a big influence on safety for one thing.

Of course, my screen went.

I just I did take notes.

I really wasn't gonna say anything, but but if you stick around long enough, uh these uh things that we have recommended aren't sitting on the shelf.

I have seen so many improvements in some of the work that I did 30 years ago that I'm seeing now, and I you know, could East Tillsboro, the state's putting those crossings.

There's I could go on and on.

There's a lot.

Our county is just so huge.

We have 8,000 lane miles.

I mean, there's a lot of uh room for improvement just because of the way that we developed here.

I mean, we sprawled out, and we have these big roads that all need you know a backlog of of attention.

Um so I do think that we could do a better job, both staff and and here at the board, um, in just recognizing those accomplishments.

I think that uh the fruits of our labor have happened, and I think we should toot our horn just a little bit more and point to the great work and the things that are happening.

Um I spent a lot of my career earlier before you could get into management, you don't get to do anything anymore except manage.

Um irritating, you know, public work directors and DOT secretaries and board members because I was very much an a spokesperson for the people who are dependent on biking and walking, and they are out there.

If you look at the crash numbers alone, that tells you there's a demand that's happening.

And I even spent one summer, my poor kids are all grown now.

But I spent a summer pulling over who I were, I was calling the invisible cyclist because they are on Dale Maybury and they're trying to get to their uh restaurant job or working at the hotels, or wherever they are, they either work or live these these different roadways that we personally would probably never want to get out on and walk or bike, but they're out there and they're they're getting heard.

But we also um have the ability, these are these are preventable crashes that we're seeing, and we have an ability to make some changes in the lives of our citizens and recognize that they're out there, whether you you know actually see them or not, but they are um so I guess that's the only other thing.

I was encouraging my colleagues and this board to push the envelope and uh definitely if you all feel really strongly about a study that we've brought to you, be a help us be a champion to see that move forward to implementation and uh just believe that we have really solid data behind us in our recommendations.

We have public support and many of we have to compromise a lot because of the funding mostly, but also just ideology about how design should look.

But I have really enjoyed, I have no, I'm not bitter.

I've loved uh coming into work and seeing some of those great things that we have you know believed in being being done, and I'm going off to do some really great things.

You probably won't see me much.

Um I've got grandkids and I play a lot of softball, senior women's softball, but we're really competitive and good.

And uh, yeah, I've got my elderly mom I'm taking care of.

So, yeah, I'm just really ready to go on to the next thing.

But thank you.

It's been a real pleasure working with Gina.

I know we're gonna miss her on a related personnel note with Gina's retirement coming up in just about two and a half weeks.

I've decided to reclassify Sarah Caper to be the assistant director.

Uh her uh position is already effective beginning February 22nd, so she has been the acting deputy director.

You just didn't know that until I announced it right now.

But um, she's been doing amazing work, and I'm really really proud of both of them.

That is it from me, unless anyone has any questions.

Any questions for Dr.

Wong?

I just want to say congratulations to both of you.

Gina, I remember you, I think from my sheriff's office days back in the back in the long long time ago, and and I look forward to working with uh Sarah in her new capacity too.

So I have one thing under old business.

Uh if you'll recall last meeting, I alluded to um a potential sunshine violation that occurred, and I wanted to report to the board about uh what with more detail about what happened and what the outcome was and what we're doing uh to try to prevent future occurrences.

And so what happened was we had two volunteers that served on one of our advisory committees, the same one.

And uh let me remind you that these are citizen volunteers who feel passionate about transportation in their community, which is why they're volunteering their time.

And so they um inadvertently they they discussed TPO business outside of a of a meeting of a public meeting, which of course we know as elected officials is a violation of sunshine.

I they knew at some level, but I doubt that that was on their mind when that conversation occurred.

Um the Dr.

Wong, the executive director, myself, um Mr.

Clark had conversations.

We actually ran it up and had further discussions uh at the at the with the county attorney's office to make sure that we were interpreting the events correctly.

Uh we also reached out to the the two people involved to give them an opportunity to explain, refute, you know, rebo make sure that we had everything correct.

Um and so the the bylaws of the TPO give the chair the responsibility to remove um uh volunteers who violate either the rules or in this case the sunshine law.

I didn't really want to do that, and I mean that's you know, these are people trying to do the right thing in their community.

We talked to them, uh Dr.

Wong talked to both of them, and we gave them time to think about what they how they wanted to proceed.

There was no particular urgency to this, there's no harm ongoing.

Um so we gave them plenty of time, and they both decided to tenure their resignation, and so they were not removed, they're eligible, I assume, in future to return to service, I would guess.

I didn't specifically ask that question, but um so there are no reporting requirements.

I questioned whether we had a duty to report this to the ethics commission or something, but there's not there's no legal duty for us to do that.

We are implementing some safeguards in the future to try to prevent this from happening.

We already onboard and they already get um training in the sunshine law, but you know, it can be a long time from the time you heard that to a couple years later or something, you may not remember.

And so we're going to um give them that same onboarding, but we're going to have people we're gonna give them a document that they signed for to show that they have understood that they've been given this training and they understand it.

We're also uh the county attorney's office is going to try to do uh annual training for all of our volunteers to refresh that information so that there's no future occurrence.

And so I'm happy to answer any questions, but for the public who may be watching and the media who may be watching, I there's no there's no scandal here.

These are not elected officials, these are not backroom wheeling and dealing.

There's nothing, these are two well-meaning citizen volunteers passionate about their community, giving their time.

These are not professional, there's just no, so please don't you know use discretion.

We we rely on citizen volunteers to fulfill our mission.

We want public engagement.

These two people made a mistake, and and uh so there's there's no story here.

So but I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.

If not, is there any other old business or new business to come before the board?

Commissioner Wall Street.

I just have one quick old business.

Um Mr.

Slater and Dr.

Wong.

We've both discussed previously, Waymo and I have said that um cyber cab, cyber taxi, Tesla has talked been talking about moving to Tesla, but that is now a reality.

They have active positions launched specifically for the city of Tampa, operations managers, full self-driving night shift managers, etc.

etc.

Um any conversations that however you initiated with Waymo on that previous um topic that came up, please um have those same efforts for um cyber taxi.

I believe that competitiveness is only going to improve transit in the city of Tampa.

That's that's really it, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you.

Would you have a contact that you could share with us?