Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the August Government Operations Committee meeting.

We've got attendance from Mario Castillo's office, also from Tarsha Jackson, and from Julian Ramirez.

I am Fred Flickinger.

I am the vice chair.

The chair is on her way.

She should be here in about 10 minutes.

So as soon as she comes in, uh she'll take over.

Obviously, we do not have a quorum today, but we don't plan on voting on anything anyway.

So that'll still work.

The first uh presentation we have is from Houston Public Works.

And at this time, wanted to yield to Gabriel Mesillo and Mira Victor for the Houston Public Works presentation on the water loss and leak management.

Whoops.

Y'all can hear me?

Yeah.

Good afternoon.

Uh do we have the presentation?

Uh can you move up the mic?

Yeah, I can move it up.

Can y'all hear me?

Awesome.

Um we don't have the presentation up here.

We I know that our uh public works office sent it.

I don't know.

It's it's showing on the screen, but it might not be showing on your screen.

Okay.

Uh well, that's okay.

I can uh let me grab my phone.

It's all right.

We can give you a copy.

That works.

You can have it.

Uh, uh let me see the title real quick.

Uh good afternoon.

Uh my name is Gabriel Musio.

I'm the senior assistant director leading drinking water operations within the Houston Public Works Department.

Um I'm here with uh Mira.

Would you like to introduce yourself?

Good afternoon, Council members.

Um my name is Mira Victor.

I'm with Corolla Engineers, and uh we are working on this project, the program manager as for the waterline leaks and loss program, and we'll be helping Gabe and his team execute this, implement this program.

Yep.

So today we're gonna provide an update on our uh water loss and leak management program.

Uh just a quick snapshot of the agenda.

We're gonna talk about the uh where we're at today with our waterline uh leaks loss program, uh all the process improvements we've made to date, uh current operational challenges, and uh how the program manager Carolo is going to help us uh with our our our leak loss uh program.

Um sorry, next slide.

That was the agenda.

Next slide.

Awesome.

So just to provide an update, we do have a public-facing dashboard that's on the uh city website.

It does show you what our uh active work orders are at any given time.

And so right uh uh just to let y'all know, back in March 18th of 2025, we hit a high of 1,901 active work orders.

Uh that was that was a high amount.

Um we're currently sitting at well, as of August 13, 2025, we're sitting at 498 active work orders.

So if you ever want to see where we're at on that, you can go to that site.

Next slide.

Um so improvements that we've done.

Uh we've procured additional uh resources.

We have four new contractors on board since the last time we spoke about a year ago.

Um we've uh gone through and developed advanced analytics, we've developed dashboards and daily reports to make sure we have a polls on the crews, both internal and contractual, and the work they're doing out on the distribution system uh to manage our our leaks.

We have improved our contract management.

Um we moved the contract management sys uh uh sorry, the contract management in general to an internal capital improvement uh project management software uh to improve transparency and accountability with those contracts.

And we have made uh several efficiency improvements, including uh consolidating the restorations group into the distribution maintenance group.

Uh and then we've we've established uh KPI of 3% pipe replacement and we've identified uh quite quite a bit of pipe in the distribution system for replacement uh next slide.

Our ongoing operational challenges include uh we still have a high number of leaks right now, uh approximately um anywhere from 45 these days of leaks coming in uh into the system.

Uh these are work orders that we create to to uh repair those leaks.

Um we get about right now about 150 to 200 service calls, and those are the ones that we have to go out to and check to see is it a valid leak and a leak that we have to repair, and so we generate a work order when we confirm that that's the leak we have to repair.

So we're getting about uh in terms of leaks that we have to repair.

We're still dealing with um inadequate infrastructure.

Twenty-five percent of our valves are inoperable.

That makes it more and more difficult to isolate lines to be able to perform the leaks and mitigate some of the shutdown uh impacts uh for customers uh taking water from our lines.

And then, of course, we're still having uh difficulties with staffing uh in particular equipment operators with uh uh uh good experience operating heavy machinery like uh large excavators uh to do complicated uh and uh repairs.

And then uh I'm gonna turn it over to Mira.

She's gonna talk about the uh program management.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gabe.

Um again, Councilmember Mira Victor here with Corolla Engineers, and it's a privilege to be part of this team working with uh Houston Water.

And uh as you all know, we just got onboarded recently back in June, and so we've been talking with the city and Gabe's team to understand what are the challenges.

As you just heard, there are several challenges.

Houston Water has done phenomenal job addressing some of those challenges internally over the last few years.

Um we were trying to figure out how we supplement their team to help these make uh much more successful program.

So, based on our discussions, we came up with some short-term and long-term objectives of this project.

So I'll walk you through the short-term objectives first and then we'll move on to the long term.

The short-term objectives being sorry, next slide.

Sorry, uh, sorry about that.

No, it's okay.

Perfect.

Um, the short first task that we are planning on performing is optimizing the work order scheduling process and also the routing process, how these leaks, when the work orders come in, the leaks come in, how do those get scheduled, uh, whether they are uh in front of a hospital or in any emergency center, uh, what where what is the location of those leaks and what is the process of repairing that?

So we are trying to we are going to understand what the city currently does and then under if they're understand if there are any gaps uh and provide recommendations to those processes.

Uh we'll also help develop the cost analysis for the repairs, as you heard from Gabe.

Currently, the city has been handling majority of these repairs in-house.

So to get a better idea, we will dig into the financial um information as well to understand how much is it costing the city to repair these uh waterline leaks, both in-house, internally, and externally if you do if they do use external contractors.

Uh we'll also be reviewing the existing standard operating procedures that the city has in place from starting from when the waterline uh leaks are noted and the work orders are open all the way to the closeout.

So to understand what happens to these processes, what are those SOPs, review them and again provide some um recommendations based on any of the gaps that we see during those processes.

Uh we'll also be evaluating some leak detection technologies.

I know first and foremost, we need to finish uh repairing all the current waterline leaks that are out there.

But over time, we do want to be a little bit more proactive to understand where uh these leaks could potentially happen based on the water pipe, uh the pipe age, where how uh deep they're buried, what is the material used.

Uh so we will look into there are several leak detection technologies out there, so understand those, evaluate those, and figure out which is the best for City of Houston.

Um we will also be reviewing the water loss accounting uh methodology that the city currently has in place, as you all may uh already know.

Back in 2023, City of Houston had reported a water loss of 32 billion gallons for the year.

Um that was massive amount of water that was lost, that is revenue that was not collected.

So trying to understand what is the methodology behind uh accounting that water loss and how can we get that more efficient uh and account for um better understanding on that entire process.

Uh we'll also be performing some valve assessments, as you heard from Gabe.

25% of the valves in the system are inoperable.

In some cases, we don't even know where these things have grown up grown over, uh, they're underground.

Uh so to understand where these valves are so that they can better isolate the system to repair an existing water line.

So we'll go through that.

Next slide, please.

So long term, our plan is um to be more proactive versus reactive.

So we will be developing a water line repair prioritization framework, uh, which will again look into where the lines are into in the entire distribution system, what is the age of the pipe, where are um what are the soil conditions where they were buried, how deep are these pipes buried, uh, what is the material of the pipe used and come based on those informations and several other factors, come up with a framework and methodology uh to for that for the city to proactively repair these pipes before they actually break.

Second, we'll be developing and implementing a repair notification system.

Um again, um, as you all know, sometimes you know, when the when the work orders come in and the pipe breaks, uh, there are a lot of constituents that may call you all uh and uh and the city finds out through 311 calls or from your offices.

And our plan is through this project is to develop and implement uh a notification system when the city is repairing those waterline leaks to uh help uh help the community understand what are the challenges that's going to happen, how long will they lose the water, what is the time frame that's expected for the repair, et cetera, so that they are well aware of the situation, something similar to what Center Point has on their outage um dashboard.

Uh cities also our plan is to uh complete finish out the smart meter installation uh over over long term.

Uh as Gabe mentioned, the city has already identified replacing 9% of the distribution system.

So, how do we proactively repair that 9% of the distribution system as soon as possible?

And then over time, long term maintain that 3% annual replacement of the water lines because these water lines are getting older every single day as they move on.

So maintain that 3% replacement uh for those pipes so that the city can again be more proactive versus reactive next slide.

I think that is all we had for our presentations, and we can take any questions if you may have.

Thank you so much.

And I'm sorry about for my tardiness.

Thank you, Coachier, for assisting me on that.

Um, I want to acknowledge the people that are here, if that's okay.

All right, so from uh district A, uh District B, we have a staff member in person, District C, Councilmember Kiman's actually online with us.

Um, district E staff and then district F.

Uh, we have representation from District H and I K, and then um uh at large one, and then Councilmember um Alcorn is where is present with us as well.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Um Councilmember Kamen, she has a question.

Thank you, Chair.

Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Gabe and Mira, thank you for the presentation.

Um I'll say at the outset, while we get a lot of water leak calls in the past few months, we have noticed repairs going faster.

Um, so I want to thank everyone that's been working on this in Mira Corello's reputation proceeds itself.

We're very excited about this partnership and bringing y'all's expertise to the table.

Was the high that was noted from March the highest this year or the highest ever?

Um, and I know we said we're seeing about 40 to 50 leaks a day.

How does that compare to other years?

So we have noticed that there has been a steady uptick in the number of leaks that are coming in since we've had the 2023 drought.

Uh and the reality is our system is is on average 35 years old, which means most of it is rapidly approaching the end of its service life.

So we're we're actually seeing an increase as time goes on.

So that 40 to 50 you know leaks a day, that is a a considered uh pretty high uh and abnormal for our system for a system of this size and for the soil types that we have in the age of the distribution system.

That 1901 number, that number is there is a higher number from the past, but it is mired uh in potential inaccuracies because of uh the situation that occurred in 2023 with with our work order system uh and the potential for uh yeah.

Got it.

And is there a nexus?

We talked about the age of the system, which plays a role, but is there also a nexus with you mentioned severe drought?

Then we're going from extreme saturation to extreme heat and drought back to saturation.

Is that having an impact um as we see more extreme weather?

We believe so, yes.

Okay.

And there's a cost to the repairs.

I believe Ms.

Victor mentioned this and the loss of water.

We heard 2023's number, which is astronomical.

Um do we know what the losses in water and costs were for 24 and what were expected this year.

We have those numbers, we can provide them to you.

Okay, that that would be very helpful.

Um how long is it taking on app to do a repair?

And can someone speak to the complexities of it?

Uh you know, again, folks reach out to our office very concerned about ongoing water leaks, and I know how hard the crews are working to get these resolved, but can you all kind of expand upon how long a single repair is taking and what that entails?

Sure.

So we do track the the we have a metric that we track on how many repairs we can complete uh under seven days.

That's from the time the work order is created until the repair is actually completed.

Uh and so right now we're roughly around 60 percent.

We were much lower uh uh before that, like back in March, we were uh below 50 percent.

So um uh once the work order is generated, uh our our goal is to complete the repair within seven days.

Now we would have the meeting begin in five.

Sorry.

And and uh to answer your question, so just to kind of recap the process, you know, uh as y'all know, folks when they see a leak occurring, uh they call it in to 311 from 311.

We uh a service request is generated.

Uh an inspector is dispatched to to to the site to check out the leak and and check whether or not it is on the city side, and therefore our responsibility at that point a work order is generated.

And and once that work order is generated, we do various activities.

Some of them include what we call a test cut, where we go and check to see what valves we need to operate to be able to isolate that leak and repair it.

Uh uh, so sometimes you'll you know we've had citizens complain, you know, or uh express concerns about those those test cuts.

Uh usually they're short in duration, no more than 30 minutes.

Once the crews validate uh what valves need to be operated to isolate the leak, they will then schedule that leak.

Again, our goal is to complete the repair within seven days.

And so when they go on site to do the repair, at that point, they will shut the valves off.

There will be an isolation, and typically that repair will occur within four to eight hours.

That's about how long it takes us to complete the repair.

And at that point, the valves will be open and the service will be restored.

Got it.

But we also, correct me if I'm wrong, have to work with utility companies sometimes, which can take time, that there's other things that can prolong the process.

Correct.

So yeah, definitely.

For example, if we have um if we have leaks that are going to impact critical customers, and we have to be wary of like when we shut it down, we have to schedule that accordingly uh and to meet their schedule as best as possible so we don't impact their operations, for example, hospitals or clinics.

And then in addition to that, um, yes, sometimes, like for example, we had um a leak that was occurring under the beltway.

I I believe is it was on the north side of the town.

And if you looked at how long that repair work order was open for, I think it it was over 200 days last time I checked, I'll have to double check on that one.

But the reason why is because we had to get uh quite a bit of legwork done.

It was under a very it was under uh an overpass in a casing, very, very deep, and it required a lot of permits, it required a lot of coordination, and so that was one of those issues where it it took an extraordinarily amount uh extraordinary amount of time to complete that repair.

Thank you.

So Madam Chair, if I could go back in queue, I just have two more quick questions.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thanks.

Um, on slide four, talks about contracts move to internal.

Oh, thank you, by the way.

Uh contract move to internal CIP management software.

So does that software track not only these water leak repairs but also other types of infrastructure?

It does.

It tracks uh all of the capital improvement projects uh for the Houston Public Works Department.

So all infrastructure projects go in that software?

To my understanding, yeah.

Okay.

And so in the case, for example, of water leak repairs, um, is it correct that it tracks if there's a delay uh in repairing it either beyond your target number of days or otherwise?

I I see no the the software we use it to to manage our contracts.

The actual repairs that go against that contract are in our work management system that's called the in-for-public sector.

And does that also have other types of uh infrastructure projects in it?

That software?

That that software is only used for water and wastewater work management, specifically related to repairs uh of the collection or distribution systems.

So do you happen to know I assume there's some other project management software for other types of infrastructure projects to track uh project management, right?

Well that's that would be our capital improvement, our internal capital improvement management software that we use for project management contract management.

So that tracks uh delays in other types of projects, is that right?

I see.

And is it possible um so your industry is not my industry, but in other areas where I've worked and we had um tracking software, we could make a template, uh, create a template once for a report, and it would sort of auto-generate, right?

It would um pull up up-to-date info anytime we wanted it.

So we weren't having to manually recreate a report every time we wanted to know what projects are delayed, or was it delayed because the we're missing a part that was delayed, or right, you could track certain variables.

Is that the the case in your software as well?

To my understanding, yes, but I myself do not uh uh I only deal with you know what's related to drinking water operations, so we can definitely get with your office and determine you know, get you the right POC.

In your software, does it do that?

On the work management one for the leak repairs, yes, we do have a lot of uh uh basically real-time reporting features generated from that software.

So to export a report, you don't have to re spend a bunch of time recreating the report every time.

You can just click a button if you created a template and it pressed out.

You can do either or okay.

Can I keep asking questions or if you want to put me in this?

Okay, great.

Council Member Flickinger.

Just a comment more than anything else.

Um obviously the number of leaks outstanding looks very good compared to where it was a year ago, year and a half ago.

I think y'all done a good job.

Uh I also think it's been very fortuitous for repairing those leaks in the weather this year.

Uh we've gotten consistently rain every three, four days, it seems like um so you know it's been a bit of a tailwind.

I hope y'all can knock it down as much as you can now, because you know who knows next month what happens if it doesn't rain for a month or whatever.

That's correct.

We are trying to capitalize on that tellwin.

You know, our our production has gone up uh, but our incoming leaks have gone down uh for the time being.

Uh and so we are trying to capitalize on that, make sure we stay ahead of it and make sure we have the resources needed to uh consistently stay ahead of it of any headwinds that may come in the future I'll I'll let came in, but I'm gonna have one quick question.

Um on your long-term objectives, you had mentioned 100% smart meter installation.

Can you give us a little bit of timeline of what where you are and how close we are to 100%?

We so meter installations are handled by uh separate service line called utility building.

We'll get with them and and get you an answer on that.

Okay, perfect.

All right, Councilmember Cayman.

Thank you, Chair.

Very quickly, um one of the Gabe, one of the things you spotlighted was challenges with staffing.

How many staff have we lost?

I know there's been a lot of voluntary retirements, which is a great program, but how short on staff are we right now?

I don't have that exact number with me at this time.

Um let me get back to our our you know, we can get that answer to you.

Okay, I appreciate it.

And then that brings into you know uh the realm of how lucky we are to have uh Miss Victor and others that are also stepping in to provide their expertise.

Um with outside contractors coming online, how long uh for example we talked about the procurement of four additional contractors, how quickly are they being activated?

You mean like from the moment that we award a contract with them?

Yes.

Uh we we have that notice to proceed pretty much within a week or two of getting that contract back, and they typically have at least one to three crews readily available to move.

Uh so pretty quickly, like within a couple of weeks.

So where are we in that timeline?

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Uh yeah, where are we?

Have we uh secured all four additional contractors?

Are there still some that need to come to council?

Yeah, correct.

These are four.

So as y'all know, you know, we had we had uh uh uh an issue a couple years back, and we only ended up with one contractor, so we added four contractors, and those are contractors that are doing work today.

Okay, great.

Um and Ms.

Victor, I think the last question is to you, unless there's anything else in my questions you'd like to add to um how long will it take y'all to get all of these assessments going?

What is the timeline?

And what can we expect when?

Um great question, council member.

Um so our short-term objectives, our plan is to cover our short-term objectives within the next 12 months.

Um as you know, this contract is for over five years.

Uh but our plan is for the sh uh short-term objectives to be handled and completed within the next 12 months.

And we'll continue building upon that if some things come up, but uh long-term objectives, hopefully the smart meter installation, for example, as Gabe mentioned, that's a different service line, so we would be working with them and see what assistance they need from us.

Uh, but completing the fra uh prioritization framework for the repair, that will be ideally be done within the next uh 18 months or so, if that gives you an idea.

Terrific, thank you.

And one last uh I just got a text from my staff.

One thing, Gabe, with the dashboard.

Um, while the numbers can be broken down by council district, it doesn't get more granular than that.

So it's very hard for our office to try and track water leaks um or look at kind of how things are looking within the district.

If there's any way that our offices can have greater access to the status of water leaks, locations, things of that nature, I think that would be very helpful as we're relaying information to constituents.

Note it and I'll get back uh with my team on that.

Great.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you, madam chair and vice chair.

No problem, thank you.

River is thank you.

Um so back on the staffing question.

Uh and I realize the answer may change based on the analysis that y'all do, but at this point, what's the kind of how many open positions are you trying to fill annually?

What does that look like?

I'll I'll have to get the numbers for you.

Yeah, I don't have those really available right now.

What's the uh so our council member mears' office is connected to a number of workforce training groups.

So can you briefly explain what's the zero certification or a training?

What's the training look like for that position?

So for the leak repairs, the positions are usually utility technicians and equipment technicians.

Um utility technicians, to my understanding, they can be pretty much um, you know uh out of high school, they're they're they're very small amount of experience.

Uh their equipment technicians a little bit different.

Um they are required to have experience with um uh operating large equipment like excavators, things like that.

Maybe we can circle back afterwards.

Um another question on slide three.

At the end of all, it's the it's the one with the chart, slide three.

Um with the chart.

So I'm curious, it shows the the active work orders declining until somewhere I guess between July and August and then increasing.

Yeah, that one, that slide.

Right.

So curious, what is happening in the last where it ticks up again?

So that's a combination of incoming leaks versus how much we're able to produce.

So in that time frame, uh very recently because the temperatures went up, there was a small wave where we had like maybe five, four or five days of a high pressure system, keep things relatively dry and and hot.

Thankfully it didn't last long, but just that four days alone, we did see an increase in the incoming weeks uh where daily we were getting more leaks in than we were repairing.

So it's from your perspective, it's more about uh leaks were happening faster.

Correct.

But we were still repairing at the same rate.

We were getting more leaks during that time period.

Thank you.

Council Member Flickinger.

How many leaks will we able to repair in a day?

On a weekday right now, we're we're hitting about 40 to 50, which is pretty good.

We used to be at around like 25 to 35.

Um on a weekend, we're at about 10 uh a day, Saturday.

I assume very limited staffing on the weekend.

It's it's it's become mostly because of that, you know, we have to be mindful of how we um spread them out and have their shifts.

Yeah.

Um and also because some very critical water lines require us that we we can only do those work that work on uh on a weekend.

And in staffing, do we have a significant impact from the early retirement?

We did we we did see an impact.

Yeah, we did lose uh uh uh a few of uh internal crews.

Oh, those positions to be backfilled or they to be currently in the process of filling those positions, yes.

We have utility technicians available online for the on the hiring, yeah.

Thank you.

Sure.

Okay, this is a question that came in online.

Uh let's see.

How much does it cost to treat water compared to the cost of fixing leaks?

We can get you that number.

It's not that I I have a rough idea, but you know, it's I just want to make sure I get you something accurate.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah, but but let me try to make sure I understood that.

So you're talking about the cost of producing water against the cost of producing leaks.

Is there something you're trying to get out of that just so I can understand?

Um it might it might be shown that fixing leaks is profitable by saving water treatment costs.

So what we can show y'all uh we can get numbers on is is basically as we as we get better at repairing leaks and as we uh get in more of these projects to replace our pipelines and the number of leaks come in and come down uh and the duration that it takes to repair the leak uh is shortened, that is less water loss in the system, and we can give y'all a number of like how much we perceive to be saving from that, and then you know, versus like how much we're yeah, we we can I can we can get something to you on that regard.

Yeah.

Great.

Sure.

Any other questions?

We have okay, Ramirez.

Feel free to this can be my last one, I promise.

Okay.

Um, on slide seven, uh, Word has the nine percent of the distribution system is our goal for replacement, I guess, uh, and three percent annual pipe replacement.

Can you clarify first of all, right?

Not my industry, what is the difference between a pipe replacement and a distribution system, and also how did you come up with those values?

Was that yeah, how do you come up with those?

So the city um looked at their entire distribution system, their entire water distribution system, and came up with based on where the waterline leaks are currently happening, where the aging infrastructure is, they have identified nine percent of that distribution system to be replaced.

That means the pipe has either deteriorated and it cannot be repaired anymore, and you have to replace that portion of pipe.

So the city has identified nine percent of the existing distribution system, which is about 7600 miles uh of pipe in the city.

Uh so nine percent of that needs to be replaced.

Um is the Houston Public Works goal uh to maintain that replacement every year so that they can cover and replace that aging infrastructure so that they are um attacking the problem before the water breaks or the line breaks actually happen, and you come and have the issue of even repairing it.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much for the presentation.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right, our next presentation is the Houston Railroad Opportunities presented by David Wardlow, Colin Leopold, and Paris Woods.

Thank you.

Um stop.

Are you able to see the presentation on the screen?

Okay.

Just not submitted.

All right, thank you both for being here.

Try that again.

Um hi, my name is Colin Lupold.

I'm the city traffic engineer in Houston Public Works.

Um I'm joined with Paris Woods, uh, who helps in our uh traffic engineering group, uh manage railroad and and school zone uh initiatives.

Um and then David Wardlow is also with us to talk um on the funding aspect of uh anything railroads related uh in regards to Houston Public Works infrastructure.

Um so for a brief agenda, we're gonna kind of touch on rail safety, where we are today in terms of uh the city's infrastructure uh with anything related to railroad operations, um, some improvement strategies uh that we try to implement, um, some of the technology and uh communications that goes into those uh types of projects.

Um touch on our our quiet zone uh initiative program um and then finally wrap up with uh some funding efforts that are that are in the works right now.

So next slide.

So with our rail safety, um, we are doing the at grade crossings to provide safer crossings by updating infrastructure and technology, the grade separation and pedestrian bridges, so we can provide safety for infrastructure around high traffic areas to eliminate conflicts, and we are also working on a rail safety education program to provide rail safety for students in schools.

Next slide.

So here's kind of a big picture where we are today.

Um the map to the right kind of highlights all the uh interactions that our uh transportation facilities have with railroads.

Um so you'll see a number of those white dots, those are all the at grade, which means the the street and the railroad are at the at the same elevation, so cars have to cross over tracks all those crossings throughout the city.

So right now we have over 700 at grade railroad crossings throughout the city.

Um a number of them have adjacent traffic signals that require uh communications from the rail uh to the traffic signals to properly operate those uh intersections.

Um at those crossings, we've got a lot that have outdated infrastructure and making improvements to their we do not have a current dedicated funding stream for those types of improvements, um, and the process can take a number of years to to complete the required improvements.

Um and what we see at those, there's there's often hazardous conditions for pedestrians.

There's either lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, uh, gates, um, all of those elements are currently missing at a lot of our our at grade crossings throughout the city.

So next slide.

So for our improvement strategies, we partner with railroad or railroads for crossing upgrades right now with Union Pacific.

Um they can fund technical upgrades to train control train control systems and activate warranted devices at certain crossings.

So they do have funding to go ahead and do that.

Um on our part with the city, we have to do upgrades to sitewalks, medians, curbs, and pavement markings and other traffic control devices for prop proper channelization and traffic control.

Um potential opportunity is for our council members to use their CDSF funds to help in that in those improvements for the city.

Um we do have a clear zone improvements, so any obstruction of view to any um drivers out there that's getting close to a crossing.

We do have need to have a clear zone so no obstruction of view can make an accident happen coming towards a crossing.

Um crossing closures and consolidations are great separation for road safety and risk mitigation and elimination.

So that's another strategy that we are working on, and then of course the quiet zone initiative integration to adjacent traffic signal operations and intelligent transportation systems.

Next slide, please.

Um this slide kind of highlights uh a potential opportunity that we have uh in the city, um, and that's basically leveraging technology in our our communications network, um, which can have a high impact on uh the road users.

Um this will kind of blend into uh uh a presentation that Mr.

Hanagraft's gonna give in a little bit, but um the rollout of their their train watch um initiative um this is kind of a supplement to that.

So basically it's it's a way to communicate to drivers, um, alert them hey, there's a there's a train blocking or stopped on a on a on a uh at grade crossing, find a different way or provide them a different route, um, integrate with our traffic signal network to uh adjust timing on the fly to flush out traffic in an in an area.

Those are the kind of things that we're looking at from the intelligent transportation uh system standpoint, and this was also um uh we we recently went through an ITS master plan effort for the city of Houston, and this was one of the the stri strategic uh measures that were identified as part of that program.

Um, and then this one does require um use of dynamic message signs, so the DMS, uh, you may have seen some of those throughout the city.

Um they are uh large pieces of infrastructure that require foundations and um significant design and and right-of-way uh to be implemented properly, but they are a useful tool in conveying real-time information to the traveling public.

Uh next slide.

So we're going to go into the quiet zones.

So this map is the pending quiet zones for the city of Houston.

Unfortunately, they're pending because we have a lack of funding.

And then the other pictures are just showing um some of the upgrades that we have to make for those crossings to be a quiet zone.

Next slide.

So we have 40 requested quiet zones consisting of over 154 crop rail crossings.

Again, like I said before, pending due to funding.

Quiet zones improve the quality of life and could and can include safety enhancements.

Um typical costs for to implement can range between 50,000 to 150,000 per crossing.

Next slide.

So here is a map, uh roadmap of how you request the quiet zone all the way to the completion of a quiet zone.

So one of the major phases is the preliminary engineering agreement with the railroad.

We have to come into agreement with the railroad company to even establish a quiet zone.

And then after that, we go into engineering design.

So the engineering design phase can be easily from three months, six months to a year, depending on what we find in the field.

Um, and then the final phase is the contractor construction.

After the design, we have to go ahead and start the construction for the quiet zone.

Next slide, please.

So this is the a map of the already established quiet zones.

We already have sixteen established quiet zones throughout the city of Houston.

We do maintain them every quarter.

So we have an a field inspector that goes out and maintained to make sure the channelizations devices are in place.

The striping is visible and the signage is up and operating.

Next slide, please, I think we have to make our in the works right now.

So uh Greg's long and makawa uh is an issue initiative right now that's um they're looking at grade separating the the street facilities over over the railroad.

Um then the rest are just kind of snippets from from that plan set, some of the concepts that they're that they're workshopping around.

Um that one's a partnership with with Text Thought Um to implement some of their changes.

And then you can go and go to the next slide.

Yep, back one.

Sorry, back two now.

There you go.

Um this one's another example uh of a project that's in the work.

So Antoine Road, um, there's a great separation um project that would take the the road facilities overne over over top of the the railroad facilities, and it also includes an adjacent pedestrian bridge.

Um so yeah, you can this one kind of gives a good picture of the the length that these projects are required to span to um accommodate approach grades, and then you can tell like if there are adjacent businesses that are right there that formally had access directly to a street facility, they would they would essentially lose that unless there were some system of frontage roads and incorporated.

But it kind of changes the whole dynamic of the area, so those are a lot of things that we have to consider.

Um so yeah, they they great separations are great in in terms of the the safety benefits they can provide, but they also have a lot of impacts that that need to be carefully considered.

All right, next slide, please.

Uh thank you, Colin.

Again, David Wardlow, senior assistant director with public works in the financial management services section.

Um I'm just gonna have a couple of slides to cover what resources can be available for these types of improvements.

Um and then we'll get into your questions and answers on the material.

Um this first slide really just kind of covers what federal and state resources can come to us.

Really, they fall into two main categories discretionary programs where you make some type of application and a project is gonna compete on the the merits of that uh basis, and the executive branch is generally making a selection on that.

So that includes programs through the Federal Railroad Administration uh and things through the U.S.

Department of Transportation Secretary's office.

Um this also includes uh requests that we make through our legislators, so uh through our House representatives at this point in time uh to request earmarks uh in the appropriations process.

Um there are also federal form lift funds that can be used for some of these uh types of improvements.

Uh these are programs that come as allocations to the state of Texas, um, and there's a process either by the state or with a the regional metropolitan planning organization to make choices about how those funding uh sources are are allocated out.

Uh so this includes service transportation block grant funds and CMAC funds that the MPO controls.

This includes uh transportation set-aside program funds that both the state and MPO control and uh highway safety program and section 130 uh funds that the state directs.

Um then I don't want to forget uh the state has this last legislative session agreed to put a significant amount of funding towards investing in railroad grade separations.

Hopefully that continues on, just not in just one biennium.

Um, but so the the railroad grade separation projects grant program uh or SB 15 uh 55 program is getting off the ground now.

I think it's 250 million dollars for this first biennium.

Uh we'll see if that is able to can be continued.

And then we were successful in getting a couple of legislative appropriations or riders, including in this last year's Bonnium budget uh for a couple of locations, including the Memorial Bridge at Pur Milby uh high school area and uh two locations for um along Hirsch uh Road uh that Representative uh Thompson uh Sabrina Thompson was able to carry.

Uh next slide, please.

All right, this gives you an idea of where we've been successful securing funding, federal funding in particular, and state funding for uh railroad uh grade crossing improvements.

Uh so the highlight here is the work at the West Belt uh project.

So it's two intersections, commerce navigation very close to downtown, and then the Samsung York uh area, just a little bit further down the West Belt.

Uh we have funding through both the MPO, so CMAC funding and a discretionary grant award through the Federal Railroad Administration uh through the railroad crossing elimination program or RCE program, uh totaling nearly 100 million dollars of federal support for that project.

Okay.

Um as Colin mentioned and showed also the Antoine Drive project, uh that great separation is part of our Antoine Drive corridor reconstruction project.

Uh so we have funding through the MPO to support that.

Uh we have uh some legislative appropriations and noted for the pedestrian overpass at Broadway near Milby High School, uh, and then the two locations along Hirsch at Little York and at Tidwell to get started on those uh locations.

I did want to make sure we note there are some other programs, right?

So Section 130 is really focused more on the operational, just upgrading the signal equipment, the basic infrastructure that's already there.

Um that's a partnership with Techstott and the railroads to go through and do those refreshes.

Um so I've noted just some of the locations that are moving through that program.

Um so just so you can see that.

Um and then uh we have a lot of partners coming along.

That'll be um I'll hit on just a moment, but uh Harris County applied for uh a discretionary grant through the uh FRA through the same railroad crossing elimination program to focus on the East End Triangle area, and they were successful, so that study is ongoing right now to look at what the best options are gonna be for crossing improvements where we could do grade separations and TS up for requests going forward for that area.

Uh next slide, please.

And this is the real key here, and you've got a couple of presentations coming that talk about these partners, right?

None of this works.

These are by definition, every single one of them is a public-private partnership, right?

So um it really is important that we are collaborating with everybody uh to move them forward.

I do want to highlight the effort that we started a couple years ago, or the Houston area rail transformation or the heart.

And it's really to bring all those partners together, reach agreement on priorities so that we can be chasing and securing resources to make the investments in a very programmatic, thoughtful, thoughtful way, and actually move the uh move the needle.

So with that, uh I think we're happy to answer any questions you guys might have.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh Councilmember Castiga's office.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh David and team, great presentation.

Um it's timely because we have just this week heard about quiet zones.

Um and so I'm curious, and I have a few questions.

Um what the a couple of neighborhoods have reached out to us and said they've petitioned the city for a quiet zone in their area.

I'll be honest, I don't know, I don't fully think I understand, and I don't know if we as an office understand the process and sort of where does someone come in and and what do they need to provide in order to petition the city for a quiet zone?

So it would be helpful to understand that process.

Um and then for us, as we as an office respond to those inquiries, like who do we as a team go to to say, you know, can you give us some more information on this particular application or if it's an application or or whatever?

Um but then I guess specifically for us uh as a council office that does utilize council district service funds, um, what are the what are the menu of options and then at what point do those get decided on?

Um because going from 50,000 to half a million, there I would assume that there's a lot that sort of goes into that.

And is it possible to sort of chip away at that?

If like what is half a million mean realistically, and and is it something that can be multi-year or does it have to be all at one time?

And then I think maybe my my final question is in the sort of totality of the list of of requests for quiet zones, how do you all prioritize one, two, three, four, five if funding should become available through one of these federal state programs?

So I know I threw a lot at you, but it's something that we do hear about.

Yeah.

Well, I'll defer on the process piece, and then I might have some thoughts for you on the funding side.

Okay.

Yeah, so um on our website on the traffic engineering website, there's there's an application that citizens can put in.

Um those go to Paris.

Uh she's the manager of that program, so she'd be the one that would have the latest and greatest on where it's at in the process.

Um, in terms of the the required um cost, it all depends on what happens when we go out with the railroad and perform that first diagnostic meeting.

Um there could be minimal treatments required and everything's in good shape.

Um it could law it could need a lot of like sidewalk work, curb work, uh delineators, striping, paint markings, um, signage, the whole shebang.

And it could also need significant um infrastructure improvements on the railroad side as well.

So it kind of just depends on the on the current state of the infrastructure that's out there.

Um so those sometimes can snowball into something bigger.

Um the big some of the some of the bigger constraints that we run into today are a lot of these crossings have very narrow roads.

Um trying to work in some sort of channelizing device without uh encroaching into the lane widths, it sometimes doesn't work, and you have to either widen widen the lanes, and then it does become a more significant infrastructure project.

Um but those are kind of the some of the things that we that we run into.

Um but yeah, in terms of uh yeah, there's that online application that's got all the program details on it, kind of walks through what what's required, um, and at the end of it, it's it's just a uh a form that gets submitted to to the traffic engineering group and um we try our best to funnel it through the necessary steps.

But that that slide, I forget which slide number it was, but it that had the flow chart, that's kind of where things um fall.

So when that gets initiated, it starts at step one and then it works its way through, and ultimately we gotta find um after after the field diagnostic piece, we got to find a way to design the improvements and then construct it as well.

So uh we partner with our construction uh service line uh to to do the types of implementations, but the CDSF program is a is an alternative way to help expedite some of those.

And is there a sort of high quality version of this that we are?

Okay, so that's that yeah.

I know that one got kind of blurred.

Yeah.

So morely to illustrate that it's a uh many step process, right?

That we unfortunately can't just go out there and do a few things and turn on the quiet zone.

And the piece I was gonna just highlight is depending on where you are, it's not just one crossing, right?

We can't turn on a quiet zone because we did improvements at one crossing, particularly in most of our places.

So correct.

It would require a corridor treatment generally.

Um and those are the the kind of things if it if it needs if there's 10 crossings in that area, um, we would have to fully address all of them before that it is implemented.

And then I will also note that even if a quiet zone is established, there are instances where trains will still sound their horns if pedestrians are in the tracks um or if there's an obstruction that they see that just because the signs are out there doesn't mean that they will completely stop uh sounding the horns.

Um and I know we've gotten some complaints about that.

It's like oh it's a quiet zone, but I still hear the train is like, yes, there are instances where that can still happen.

And all of that sort of feedback would be provided to the to the constituent or to the council office to say, hey, you know, we can't just do your one thing, it it's 10 actually.

So all that type of feedback we would receive, they would receive so that we can give a more comprehensive answer to their request.

Yes.

Okay.

I have a question just on that on that same point.

Um, all of the ones that have been requested, what happens?

Do you just gradually go through each one of them and then evaluate a budget or what needs are, or do you go through I mean, how does that work?

Yeah, because I guess I didn't I didn't touch on the prioritization.

Um in an ideal world it would be first in, first out.

Um, and we would address the one that that has had the initial uh request on it.

Um but we're kind of yeah, we we need to get a grasp of what is entailed for each one because they do they can span a large corridor uh and require significant infrastructure upgrades, and then that's when we would have to see if it fit within minimal treatments that could be facilitated through the CDSF program, or if it needed a bigger potentially alternative funding source like partnering with TextOt and the rail, um going after a grant, that kind of thing.

So it it kind of depends on the size and scope that it that it turns into.

Um the people that the people that make the application, do you follow back up with them and give them this information?

Uh we probably need to be doing a much better job of that because right now it's it's uh until something moves the mark, um they wouldn't be getting notification.

I think that's probably something that needs to that we should probably should do because I think people say, well, I put it in 10 years ago, and they just don't hear any feedback from it.

So I think it would be really nice to kind of see see how we can give them updates on what that looks like.

Yeah.

Um council member may's office.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um, so if we're seeking funding for crossing upgrades, uh grade separations, et cetera.

Does that mean that the city has a list of here's our priority projects and here's the criteria that put these on the priority list, or not not so clean like that?

Yeah.

So uh gonna probably maybe defer to call in a little bit on that, but um yes, the city has gone through uh several times, right?

A process to identify where there are opportunities for these type of investments and where we would really try to in partnership with the railroads kind of consider to focus on first.

Um I will say that has generated a couple of priority lists over time.

And again, I kind of tilting at the or looking at the heart program.

That's kind of why we want to have a regional collaboration to agree on what those core investments need to be and how we should take them up in what order.

Um I would just note sometimes we may go after funding not in a the top location that we would love to get done under a perfect world, may not be the one we chase first because of other circumstances.

So like Griggs Long Makawa, I don't think it's ever been at like literally number one on on the list regionally, but it is like the number one opportunity for us to resolve because of the other issues going on in the investment Text Dots making SH 35, the issues on the operations for the railroads, moves that location up as an opportunity for select seeking grant support.

So that's that's really why that location is top of mind.

So the the regional collaboration to clarify, this is a new coordination initiative, or this is what folks have been doing.

No, no, so that it builds off of the work from the railroad rail district, which has been in place for uh twenty years-ish, right?

Um and um so the the great work that they've been doing for a long time to study these corridors, come up with plans for how we could address them.

That's a boomed into how do we go solicit work.

So the number one, so that first project on our list that we've been successful for West Belt has come out of that regional collaboration and planning work that the Gulf Coast Rail District undertook.

Do you want to put next yes?

Just be for because of time.

I'm gonna kind of keep it to one question if that's okay.

Um I'll put you back in cue.

Okay.

Um Councilmember McCayman.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, going back to the quiet zones and David at all, thank you all for the presentation.

When count the chair says, you know, there's been requests for decades.

I'm referring to now the 34th Street request for quiet zone, which has been, I believe, a multi-decade request now.

Um what is the status of the 34th street?

I have memos going back to 23 where we were applying for federal funding.

We now have no congressional representative in that area.

Um, so we cannot get federal funding.

So what are our options?

How much I I think I'd like an update, I think is what I'm asking on 34th Street corridor.

What we can do, and if there are other opportunities to fund the investments that would be needed to qualify for the quiet zone.

Um do you have a specific update on that one or that one's so there was I think on the priority list at the East Day.

So Ferris just indicated that they were second on the list.

So right now the the only one that y'all have seen an agreement uh come across council's desk was for the for the east end.

Um that one was to uh facilitate the funding for the the professional uh engineering agreement with the railroad.

So that's basically stage one.

We haven't moved past uh into like formal engineering design yet.

We're working on scoping contractors for that.

Uh the 34th Street one is is in line behind that one.

Um but but yeah, I don't know if you want to talk on the funding side.

Um so council member, as you're I'm sure aware, we were hopeful that in last year's and so in the FY 2025 um appropriations request, the bill that came out of committee uh really about came out of the House um uh did include an earmark for that corridor.

Um working with uh um district 18 folks, right?

Um unfortunately that bill was not taken up, and we ended up with full-year continuing resolution, no earmarks were improved uh last fiscal year.

Uh this year we do have support right now.

Uh the bill coming out of the the committee in the House uh Transportation Committee does include somebody for the East End Quiet Zone uh help carried by uh Representative Garcia, but we don't see that obviously, as you mentioned, without a representative there for 18, we were unable to even submit requests for that for that district.

Right.

So if we could, and I'd like to include, of course, district H in that because now they now represent um some of this corridor as well.

Just the status, and if we say number two, what can we relate a residents?

What can we do in the meantime?

Uh given we have no congressional representative representative that we can you know submit these requests to, but it's number two on the list.

So thank you all.

I know y'all are working hard on this.

Um I I get you know, throughout the city residents are frustrated, it's not a fix-all.

Quiet zones are not a fix-all, but they certainly will bring some relief.

Um, and it's it's what we hear a lot from from residents in the area.

So thank you again.

Thank you, Council Barr.

Council Mr.

Flickinger.

Yes, we talked about the quiet zone.

You talked about depends upon what's in the area.

Can you define the area?

Uh it's basically the the street right-of-way crossing with the railroad right-of-way, um, the intersections of that area.

Okay, I thought there was other intersections you were referring to for a corridor implementation?

Yes.

Yeah, so it would require uh coordination with with the owning railroad um to define what limits that we could establish that quiet zone, they can be broken into pieces, but um they would determine the the there's not a set like half mile or not that I'm aware of.

Okay, so they look at it and just come up with a plan from each individual circuit.

It it it likely has to depend on the the distance between the crossings that they're able to parse it out, that kind of thing.

But if you have a number of crossings that are within uh X mile radius of it, they would need to be able to sound the train horn at the next one, and then if that overlapped the concentric circles, then they would probably have to include that crossing as well.

So it's likely dependent on that.

Thank you.

When it comes to yeah, when it comes to uh the technology and communications, I know um we had talked a little bit about putting some type of alerts way before uh a lot of the the tracks get stalled with trains.

And um that type that type of technology, I know it already exists.

Are y'all just kind of still vetting it?

We we already know where they should be placed.

Um obviously the funding is always a big question.

But do you at least have do you at least know which technology you're gonna move forward with, possibly?

Uh that kind of will bleed into the presentation that Mr.

Hanagraf is gonna give.

Um so they're working on actively monitoring some of the the crossings.

Um yeah, the yeah, the the technology is out there, it's a system of video cameras that can monitor and alert a system whether there's a slow-moving train or blockage at the crossings, and then that can tie into our already established uh intelligent transportation system.

Um like you said, the the piece of the the active um messaging systems, those require physical infrastructure at critical points, and that requires funding and planning and design to implement those.

Right, and that and the signage that would be on there, I see like that's kind of an example um on this slide, but it would basically say this this area is blocked and it will give a detour.

Ideally, it will tell where the detour would be.

Yeah, the message could read um block block train on X Street, use Studiowood or whatever the next uh crossing that doesn't have uh an act grade crossing that would be blocked by that same train.

But that is definitely something that we're trying to do.

Within the capabilities, yes.

Okay, but I'm saying in terms of putting those sign those those types of alerts there, that is something they were actively working on.

Uh well, the piece of it doesn't like it would require funding to put those specifically at those train crossings.

Right now they're not located strategically for that purpose, but it is something that could be visited in the future if we have funding opportunities identified.

Uh if that's an initiative that the city wants to follow.

Okay, thank you.

And the last last person in the queue is um Council Romero's office.

Be brief.

Um okay, on slide five.

Uh it it says Union Pacific can fund technical upgrades and some other stuff.

So not to be too blunt, but do we have a dollar amount we're asking Union Pacific for, or what's the can fund?

What is that?

Uh let me see what that one.

If you want to come talk.

I was gonna say they're gonna come join you in a moment.

And I might ask them too, but so Union Pacific actually has a dollar amount that is only for their company to come in and make the upgrades to the arms to the bells and whistles at the actual crossing.

Um, is not to give us the money, but is for them.

They said this is the requirements that the city has to do, and once you fix those requirements, they were gonna go ahead and upgrade all the crossing.

Gotcha.

So we're not asking for something beyond that.

That's what their investment is.

And is there a dollar amount on that?

No, we don't know.

Yeah, they didn't disclose that part.

And Metro also, I know I had heard that they had a list of potential grade uh things they were working on or thinking about doing.

Do we know uh metro?

I mean, they're they're often a uh well see metro crossings of these facilities have similar operational concerns, right?

And previous projects have specifically looked at building great separations or like the Harrisburg line, we did build a great separation.

But so Lockwood is part of the the previous university corridor.

There's still interest in pursuing a great separation there.

You know, how embedded metro is in that solution, we'll we'll see.

But we don't know yet.

Correct.

There's they're still moving forward.

And they're they're also part of the uh Greg's Long McCower discussion too.

Thank you.

All right, thank you all so much for the presentation.

I don't see anyone else in queue, so we are going to move on to the next one.

Uh Union Pacific's track safe Houston introduction presented by Richard Zintec.

It's good to see you, Richard.

Thanks for being here.

Okay, y'all hear me okay?

And we do have some items I'm gonna be handing out as far as um our track safe Houston initiative.

So Minera, I meant to give those to you prior, but maybe as is I'm showing them to you, then afterwards I can I can hand them out to make sure that the full committee has them.

So uh good afternoon again.

Good to see many of you who I know I've worked with over the years.

Uh my name is Richard Zentec, Senior Director of Public Government Affairs for Union Pacific Railroad.

I am based in Spring, Texas, and my role is to work with cities, counties, and community stakeholders focused on the greater Houston region, largely the HGAC footprint.

We appreciate the opportunity to be here today and share an update on our track safe Houston initiatives.

I'm also joined by my colleague, AVP of public affairs, Clint Shelbitsky.

Uh I'd like to start our discussion today, uh, just asking the question is uh what what is track safe Houston?

Track safe Houston is our commitment to making rail safety visible, responsive, and connected to the community needs.

We've heard from communities, and we are committed to working together to enhance mobility across Houston and deliver the goods businesses and consumers rely on.

We go to the next slide.

And so Track Safe Houston, it's a multimodal culture of safety.

It's forward-looking, community-informed collaboration to advance infrastructure and innovation, improve multimodal safety by working with our transportation partners, helping to support economic vitality and build a culture of shared safety.

Together, we can make visible collaboration tangible and mobility smarter for everyone.

Next slide, please.

So this includes uh partnering for results.

So focusing on those critical corridors, um, making sure that we're building those local partnerships with our transportation partners and elevating visibility when it comes to railroad safety and making sure that we're delivering targeted education.

Next slide, please.

So what are we doing?

We've started with our bilingual social media posts, and what you are seeing right here are some of the examples of those media social media posts that we have been putting out via the Union Pacific uh social media channels or through tangible uh documents that we've been handing out, either at events that we've uh been attending or other uh opportunities, uh community events, town halls, things of that nature.

Uh so the high visibility billboards that we've put up uh currently have nine installed, five in English, four in Spanish, in those critical areas that we know we need to make sure that we're getting our safety message out.

We've also been handing out and distributing our uh Clifford and the railroad crossing book, which I have right here.

Uh we've had over 1,100 distributed, uh 620 in English and 500 in Spanish, knowing that we'll continue this effort of making sure that we're educating um our young population on the importance of railroad safety.

And I'll go to our next slide, which goes into more of our community outreach.

So some of the photos that you're seeing right here are are almost real time within the last uh two to three weeks.

Uh, our outreach, working closely with the Houston Independent School District on making sure that we're getting this rail safety information into the hands of parents, students, faculty members.

So uh, you know, back to school initiatives, we were at over seven different events over the last couple of weeks, either it be it a back to school orientation nights, uh having our colleagues out who are out in the field, some of which are the actual train engineers, talking to the students about the importance of of traversing those uh those tracks safely.

So, first week of school uh handing out railroad safety information.

We were at the Broadway Street Crossing.

Uh I was there on the first day as well with our with some of our uh uh colleagues uh handing those documents as students were were coming across the safety safety information, uh track safe Houston information, as well as always expect to train.

Uh we've got the billboards that we've put up, but then also focusing on these key uh schools that we've identified, working with HISD, and then knowing we've got broader beyond uh to get into to additional schools, and we're continuing to work on that.

Uh so Cook, uh McReynolds Middle School, Milby, uh, Chavez Cashmere Law, and then the uh the Milby Sunrise Center as well.

Additional efforts, uh, thank you.

Additional efforts that that we're working on uh as we're launching our launch pad here that are underway uh is a microsite.

So right now, if you put in uh Union Pacific Track Safe Houston, uh it will get you to our UP Care site.

We are working on a dedicated site for track safe Houston, where we can uh share with community members, with schools, with the public in general.

Here is where you can go to pull a lot of the information that we're sharing uh specifically for for the Houston region, um, utilize those uh safety elements and those safety documents that we have uh that you will be able to pull from there.

So that's that that is what we are working on, is in development right now.

Um we are working with HISD on putting a rail safety training webinar.

We're looking at doing bus driver training with HISD as well, and then looking at additional billboards, eight which are proposed for the fall, uh, in those key areas of Houston that we know, the East End, um is it fifth ward?

Are there other areas uh within our greater here scenario, which we know we need to make sure that we're getting that education and those billboards up.

And so Track Safe Houston is a collective commitment to safer mobility.

Uh we want to make sure that is something that can complement, is it a program that the city of Houston has?

You know, talking with Paris, we'll but let's find ways that we can collaborate on the safety initiatives that the city of Houston is putting forth, and how can we complement each other?

Um, looking to help with improve improved mobility uh to make sure that drivers are being safe and connecting to our communities.

Uh when we move smarter, we grow stronger, and collaboration will unlock real and meaningful change.

And uh last to touch on uh some of the discussion that we just had related to our efforts and working uh collaboratively with the City of Houston with TextOt and many of our other transportation partners when it comes to the importance of just understanding mobility and uh and grade separations and the real need that we see here in Houston.

Um going through just some of those, what are those infrastructure items that we have looked at that we've completed and are continuing to work towards installed films and fencing uh near Milby High School, and that's what you see in that the top photo, along with the the billboard that we had put up in advance of going back to school.

Uh but the fencing to help direct pedestrians to the protected broadway street crossing, making sure that the post-pedestrians know this is the safe area to cross over the tracks.

Umgraded uh we we completed the extension of the sidewalks at Millby High School as well, which you see there in the bottom uh photo.

And then coordinating with Text Dot, the City of Houston and HISD on pedestrian bridges near Millby High School as well as McRunnolds Middle School.

Uh we did sponsor the design for the McReynolds Middle School pedestrian overpass and pursue continuing to work towards pursuing construction funding uh with our local and state partners.

Uh we are also conducting crossing safety evaluations at schools near railroads and developing safe safe route plans with the Houston independent school district.

I see if the video is gonna work, Manara.

I don't know if that's uh if not, it's okay.

We can there we go.

These are just some of the highlights of where we're at.

That's uh Jack Gates that we were at on a Saturday, part of their back to school initiatives.

This was some of my our colleagues that were out while we were handing the safety.

Captain Martinez joining us uh to help distribution of those safety materials.

So I just would like to echo again our uh appreciation of being able to share our track safe Houston initiative.

We understand the importance of of sharing this information, making sure that we're visible and we're committed to doing so.

So I thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for the presentation.

I I do have a question.

You mentioned um partnerships in your presentation.

Are these people are these groups that just support track safe, or are these actual active partners in the um in the initiative?

So that's what we're looking for right now is who can help us be an active partner?

What are those organi what are either organizations that you all would recommend that would be good for us to partner with?

Um, or are there already programs that are are already, you know, that we could add in um our track safe Houston.

So while we are the ones who launched it, we Union Pacific, we want to make this a this umbrella and bring in other partners as well.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Uh Council Member Meriz's office.

Thank you.

Um first quick question.

I assume is it accurate that you all have um you track levels of accidents and things like that, and you have a goal of this year we had this many uh accidents and next year we want to reduce it by this percent, or is that true?

Do you track that type of stuff?

Or we do definitely have safety initiatives, right?

Of not wanting to see any type of incidents that are happening, right?

Um do we keep the metrics internally of of knowing yes?

And is there information you know that that one thing I wanted to point out, you know, the FRA, uh the Federal Federal Railroad Administration, too, right?

Of information that they keep track of as well.

Um and that kind of gets to the the quiet zone question and wanting to make sure that the committee and and everyone is aware, that's a uh a federally driven process, right?

So that involves the federal railroad administration uh along with the roadway authority in this case the city of Houston.

And so the different um elements of your safety program, like the book and the billboards, right?

Do you track sort of impact of those strategies?

Is there a way to we I would say right now with the the launch, and so yes, yeah, we're we're uh we're in early stages right now, but as we're looking at what are the total number of of uh students, parents that we were able to get that information hands into, right?

Safety information wise, we're keeping that data, right?

We're tracking that, we're making sure that we know uh how many how many students uh did we talk to, how many of those that we've uh we've touched and reached as well.

Okay, last question.

Um to be a little bit cheeky.

Uh so in addition to the the funding that you put in for this initiative and for what was just discussed, um some of the tech technical pieces.

Um are you super excited for the city to pitch you to collaborate to sort of invest more in some of these great separations and some of these other crossings?

Um I think when we look at the greater Houston area, right?

This is the heartbeat of our franchise.

What happens in Houston impacts everything throughout our 23 state network, right?

So we are going to kind of continue to look at what are those collaboration efforts uh that we can work together with our transportation partners on.

And I think you've if hopefully today you have seen the demonstration of our commitment to safety, the understanding of its importance as well to thank you.

And I I would like to say um when you're working with HISD and you're doing are these materials are they in spaces to where students can pick them up, like within the halls of the school, or is this only something that was distributed outside?

So it will be McReynolds Middle School as an example, has it at the front office, right?

And so these safety materials right here, which are uh English and Spanish, um, between our track city of Houston and our always expected train, uh, we are getting those into the schools.

We've also provided electronic copies as well and encouraged as many campuses as possible.

Can we try to can we share that?

Are there other ways that we can look at uh in those uh take-home folders like our you know, my children bring home their uh my daughter, right?

Her her take-home folder.

Can we get those in?

So we're looking at different ways how as we move into the uh into the school year uh that we can get this information uh and we're committed to to uh every month looking at what are new ways of opportunities of September is going to be railroad safety safety week.

That's our opportunity right there.

We look at October, but throughout the year.

So, yes, we're looking at different ways of how can we get it physically in the schools, as well as our team being present at those events, be it uh additional orientation nights or opportunities for us to come and share the safety message.

Okay, thank you so much for the presentation.

I don't see anyone else in queue.

So I think we could thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next presentation is going to be Houston Safe Railroad Corridors, presented by Jack Hanagreth of Houston's Smart City Program.

Thank you so much for being here.

Nice.

This is the day of railroads.

Actually, uh uh Pardon me.

Um I know I'm not on the agenda, but I I wanted to uh just introduce Jack, who's working uh on behalf of our our office.

Um so thank you, Chair Plummer, uh Vice Chair Pleckinger and all council members and esteemed representatives.

Uh thank you for having us today.

I'm Jesse Bounds.

I'm over the mayor's office of innovation and performance uh and helping coordinate some of the city's response to uh uh rail safety.

So uh y'all know Mayor Whitmeyer is not one to embrace the status quo.

Uh he wants to see real and immediate improvements and and uh especially when it comes to his number one priority of public safety.

Uh today we're gonna discuss some of the improvements to public safety related to uh rail crossings and ways we're making it easier for for Houstonians and first responders to navigate their way around uh railways.

Uh joined today here with Jack Hanagriff, who has been uh working on rail issues from his days uh as a police officer um you know all those years ago uh at the city uh and HPD.

Um he also worked in the for the mayor's office of public safety and homeland security and is now serving as an independent contractor for our office at the city uh and also leading the regional coordination efforts uh as a member of the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District uh among other things, and also uh the East End district uh managing their transportation committee as well.

So with all of that, wanted to turn it over to Jack.

Thank you and good afternoon.

It's a pleasure to meet you and look forward to working through those that I have not met.

If you would do the next slide, please.

So coming on the heels of uh Richard and Union Pacific Railroad, I do want to commend their efforts in trying to make the railroad corridors, all the railroad corridors safe for you know the city of Houston, because Texas does lead the nation in gray crossing collisions, and Houston has quite a bit of crossings that are predicted to have a crash through the FRA database.

So we want to look at those crossings and look at the conditions of what are some of the contributing causes of the cross crashes on just beyond people playing beat the train.

You know, there are other conditions.

You know, you want to manage the motorist expectations.

You know, when when people are trains are stopped for long periods of time, you don't want to get stuck like that again.

So some people will risk their lives to try to avoid getting stopped by a train again.

So we definitely want to pay attention to those crossings that have the potential for a crash.

Next slide, please.

Houston also leads the nation and reported stop train events.

Uh we are three times more complaints than the highest state, all the all the cities combined in Illinois.

We're at three times more.

And what's interesting about Houston, it is a small footprint of the city, uh, somewhere with them in about 16 square miles, seems to have the most stop trains, and that's East Houston.

That's fifth ward all the way down to uh South Park, OST South Union, seem to have the most stop train complaints.

And that was kind of our our focus for some of the some of the technology uh uh efforts.

We also want to show that Houston First Responders, specifically HFD, is impacted by trains a hundred times a month, and that's delay in their response uh to you, the community.

The Houston Police Department is also impacted, not only in their response, but they also at times have to go investigate the block crossing complaints.

So that could be upwards of 20 minutes that a first responder is taken out of service to go to this crossing and try to investigate what's going on.

So we want to work closely with the railroads and city leaders uh to try to manage manage these occurrences and resolve this.

Uh next slide, please.

To do that, we wanted to look at a safe system approach.

We wanted data analysis, you know, where is this happening, how often it's happening.

To get good data, we wanted to introduce technology because most of the reporting from the fire department to the citizens can be subjective.

It's based on their perception.

So we wanted good data.

We wanted 24-7 accuracy as to where this is happening.

Then we also wanted to implement uh communication and collaboration or continuity.

We all have to work together from the railroads to the citizens to the city to the county, working together to try to manage these occurrences and improve uh public safety and response.

Next slide, please.

So communication and collaboration is very important to the Office of the Mayor.

He he likes communication, collaboration, and transparency.

And this program was also important to him, but it was also working with the communities.

If you see on the left, there are several groups that regularly meet.

Uh some of them have been formed within the last three years.

Uh one of them, the Gulf Coast Rail District, has been in existence in 20 years, the last 20 years.

But one of the key ones is the rail quarter collaborative.

That is all the railroads, Houston Emergency Services, Public Works, and HISD meet monthly to, and I explain what crossings are active, what are the citizens' complaints, where are the impacts in the city of Houston, and then how can we resolve some of those?

And that's been helpful to the railroad because they are better communicating what's going on, and they are changing some of their operating practices.

These are they're they're trying to improve the quality of life and community stability in these highly impacted areas.

Uh the rail safety focus group led by Senator Alvarado, that is a group of pretty much government stakeholders from local, city, state, uh HISD Metro.

She meets with them on a quarterly basis, and that's kind of moving the needle together.

You know, who's doing what where?

How are we, how are we improving things?

It would also very instrumental in driving uh this collaboration and this discussion helped her and others up in the State Capitol to with uh House Bill 1555 to get funding because she realized there was key in the funding.

So that that that cooperation and that communication was key.

The rail safety task force, that is comprised of uh representatives from every community from Fifth Ward all the way down to OST South Union and South Park.

We meet monthly.

Uh just me and the community and some city personnel.

We let the railroad come on every quarter to to kind of interact with us because we want to do that.

But we're trying to assemble as one voice, one voice of what the community needs are, and then we escalate that to the railroad.

I do need help in getting South Park and OST South Union and Pleasantville to kind of re-engage.

They started in the beginning, but when you're starting it at ground zero, which was in the East End community, it took us a while to build out.

And so they weren't seeing a lot of, probably wasn't seeing a lot of activity in their community, but we have grown since then.

Uh we do know we're all interconnected, and what happens in Fifth Ward impacts the East End, and East End impacts the Fifth Ward.

And what we've also noticed that some of these changes in operating practices, the introduction of technology, uh some of the things this office is doing and others are doing, is helping the other neighborhoods.

So if we make something and uh improve something in the East End, it helps Fifth Ward, because we're all interconnected.

Uh one of the highlights of this is this communication is everybody had a crossing list.

Everybody had what their priorities were.

So working with HGAC, we're creating a crossing catalog, a 13-county crossing catalog that will have whose fire departments are being impacted, what crossings are next or corridors are next to schools.

So they're putting the metrics to it, a weight.

So we can so you can look in your respective community, your district, uh uh jurisdiction, and see what crossings should be prioritized.

And this is also going to help the Gulf Coast Rail District that has to look regionally at everybody's needs.

Uh next slide, please.

So looking regionally, working with all the fire departments in Houston and Aries County.

This program is not only looked at Houston, but we also looked at the Harris County area and Fort Bend County, because we are all connected.

It is very important to know what all the crossings are infected throughout throughout other cities or other areas, because what goes on in Tomball, uh a train stopping in Tombaugh, a train stopping in Hempstead, no, no, no doubt cuts off that entire city, but it also stops trains in the Houston area, or could potentially stop trains in the Houston area.

So that is very important to kind of know uh where everybody's critical crossings are.

And these are crossings typically that impact first responders.

There's 107 crossings regionally that we identified working with the fire departments and these other jurisdictions.

There's there's about 69 in the Houston area that we're looking at and been looking at over the years, and out of that, we kind of drilled down to 35.

And that was those are the ones we're really looking at and working with the railroads, we're introducing technology, other types of strategies, going at it with the railroad quite a bit to try to see if we can affect change and learn from those changes.

Because if you can affect change at these crossings, you can replicate it in other parts of the city.

Uh next slide, please.

So to get good data, you got to centralize the data.

You got the FRA block crossing database, you got the HFD delayed uh reporting, you got the council members and their their complaint, uh citizen complaints.

You got 311.

So we've been trying to compile this data into one centralized location.

We're working to get 311, so you report the 311, it goes to the FRA.

So the citizens don't have to go to five different places to try to try to report this.

But we want that data.

We look at the FRA data, we look at the HFD uh uh delay data, but then the introduction technology is is very significant because now we're able to put measurement to it.

We're able to look 24-7, how often this happened, how long is it happening, and we're also able to validate some of these complaints when people are complaining to the FRA, the train was there for three hours.

We can say that was less than that or more than that.

We can see what's going on.

So the technology has been very, very important.

It's also been significant, helping the railroad understand where these uh high profile locations are.

Next slide, please.

So we had a tech this uh test this technology, and we kind of spread it out throughout Houston as best we could from the west side to the east side, but predominantly in the east side, because as you heard earlier, that's kind of ground zero for railroad activity.

It is in the commodity the Gulf Coast commodity flow from Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

It's also four railroads operate in East Houston at the same time.

So we felt like this was a good spot to uh test the technology.

But if you look look at East Houston, you have the East End Train Triangle, also called the train trap.

Uh you have the Fifth Ward Rectangle, Fifth Ward has up there by Clinton and Hirsch in Eaglewood Yard.

It forms kind of a rectangle.

People could get trapped in there.

Uh fire you have two fire stations in there.

And then you have this the South Park Junction down in South Park, which is really called the TNO junction and railroad terms, and it's Griggs and Makawa, which you heard earlier.

These are all high points of congestion that we wanted to focus our technology on.

And we wanted the type of technology that could uh two-factor validation.

We wanted to not only detect when it was happening, but we wanted to validate through visual validation, cameras, why it was happening and uh how it was happening, I guess, and then uh what was happening with the trains.

Uh it was very important to the railroad because we were able to say it was this train at this time, because technology is interesting, it can be buggy.

So you want to make sure, you know, when you see a three-hour blockage, three-hour or 20-hour, we were seeing 20 hours three years ago, that you had some visual validation to say, yep, that was really happening.

Uh so it was very important that we we did the cameras with the what we call audible detection.

It's listening at the for the train and at the crossings.

This is also the technology we are recommending uh for a demonstration project that I'll talk later on to go forward and expanding the program.

Uh next uh uh slide, please.

So in a nutshell, the crossing sensors detect.

They detect when a crossing is active.

The cameras will validate if a train is there, but they detect when a trying a crossing is active.

We we pretty much know if it's active for more than an hour, yeah, that's a stop train.

Ten minutes, 15 minutes, it's probably a slow moving train based on the side of Houston it is.

So the the crossing sensors detect, and then next slide, please.

And then for the last two years, we have been sharing this information with key fire stations in Fifth Ward and the East End area to display it on a map, very similar to the train watch map that was released last week.

They have been testing this equipment and validating it, and then they also can get it in their vehicles.

Some of the vehicles are equipped with the technology to to see the active crossings.

And that was important because we discovered that they could check the crossing before they leave the station, and by the time they get to the station, a train showed up.

So now they can check it before they leave the station, and then they can check it again in route to their call.

And if a train shows up, they can reroute before they get get stopped and potentially stuck in in traffic and unable to turn around.

Next slide, please.

So, and then we also have the fire station sees all.

So they have live video feeds in some of the stations, so they can look at what the crossings are doing.

And the fire department has gotten pretty good at this.

They are they're more or less what I call train whispers.

They they know the trains, they can tell by the movement and if they need to worry about it or not.

Uh I'm showing there some companies, because I think it is very important to note that these companies have been supporting this project at little or no cost to the city.

It's been a significant savings, about 280,000 worth of product is out there for three to three to four years of this test at little to no cost to the city for us to test because they believe their product can be the solution, and they also think this is a very important matter to uh address.

Next slide, please.

So the deliverables are.

We can look at through sensor validation and and vehicle validation.

We can confirm that the railroads are doing what they can do to help reduce the issue.

This example here is Hirsch Crossing may be blocked, but Lockwood is open.

And that was kind of the agreement.

It's got to be give and take.

These trains are long, they got to put them somewhere.

So we've we've we've done some give and take, which is okay, if you're going to block Hirsch, give us Lockwood.

And that's where Public Works was talking about some wayfinding signage or some other ways to direct people that just to block over, there's a way around.

And we're able to validate that the railroad is honoring, honoring these agreements.

So keep in mind they are federally regulated.

So anything they do is is on agreement as a courtesy to us because they're just following regulations.

So having them work in the community to try to lessen our impact is a huge benefit.

Next slide, please.

So that brings us to the train watch.

This is the concept of the train watch board that was launched Friday.

It is but we wanted to be informative, not just where the stop trains are or the active crossings are.

We also wanted to put in some helpful links on safety information, which you're going to hear more about later.

We also uh TextDOT has a very nice link on why do railroads do what they do, and it has all the questions and answers to help citizens understand why do they blow a horn at night?

Why do they why are they so long?

All those little helpful informations that are confusing to people.

And the emergency numbers to each railroad uh if if you have to contact them.

But the the map is a significant one.

This is this is very similar to what the fire department sees.

And what we were able to do with this map was converge the sensors we have out there testing and leveraging the public works traffic city management traffic system management uh traffic management system, sorry, leveraging that data into one map to help the public, to help the public understand where there may be an active crossing.

So we were able to, you know, we only have seven test sensors out there.

We were able to put an additional 40 to 70 crossings uh in service to start detecting using existing technology already owned by the City of Houston.

Uh it's also important to note that as we grow this technology, uh public works will be able to complete some of the projects they want to do because we're going to establish the system.

Once we build the system, then it will interact with some it will interact with the public works uh traffic management system, and they will talk to each other, and then they will be able to do additional things to better inform the public.

Uh again, technology, any launch, it's going to be buggy.

I know some people are out there checking it.

Hey, this isn't working, but we are we are slowly fixing those bugs.

Uh and we wanted to get things in the hand of the public because we have been talking about this for several years.

So we wanted to get that information out there.

The first the fire department's been using this for a couple of years, benefiting from it.

Now the public can start using it and benefit from it.

And we we hope to grow the system.

Next slide, please.

So this is very important.

The City of Houston secured Federal funding from the Safe Streets for All program of $3.4 million through the Houston Fire Department.

It's in the agreement phase.

The grant was approved.

It's in the agreement phase.

We're waiting for the Federal Government to release the funds.

And what that's gonna do is quite a bit of additional things for the program.

One, it's gonna actually put the system in place.

Uh it's gonna add uh 32 intersection sensors to high crash intersections, and then it's gonna add 25 additional railroad crossings on top of the ones we already have.

The important thing is the system.

Once the system goes in place, then we can get better data and we can add additional components to help public works better inform the public.

Yes, and it does have uh CAT integration, so we can get this information to the computer-aided dispatch uh program that supports the Houston Police Department, Houston Fire Department.

Uh we also baked in some other services, such as it's gonna go out and study the existing preemption.

These are these are uh sensors at the uh traffic signals or uh intersections that are supposed to change when a fire truck or police car is running emergency lights and siring supposed to change green, but because of traffic, it can't get close enough to change it.

So we're gonna look at a better way to do that.

Fire stations, when they get a tone is supposed to change those traffic signals so they can get out of their fire stations.

That doesn't always work because of traffic.

So this this funding will also, whilst I'll pay for that.

It will also look at software improvements.

You know, you got data over here, data over there.

We want to converge that into a single pane of glass so the first responders only have one place they need to go to get the information they need.

And the very important part is everything that we build in this data collection and alerting, our goal is to get that into Houston Trans Star, and then the public can consume that.

And then also Apple products and Google products will pick up that data into your map services, helping us make trains part of the traffic congestion model.

You all get on your phones to look around what freeway I want to take.

Cars are all in the model, but trains are not.

And we want to put that in the modeling.

So that's our goals.

I think that's the last slide.

Yep.

Thank you.

This is so do you see me just like smiling over here?

I know you're encouraging me.

Oh my gosh, you have no idea.

This is like music to my ears, especially to community.

Um can I read off this?

There were a couple of crossings that I'd um submitted to public works at least.

Yeah.

There were a couple of crossings that just the community, um, a lot of some of the state reps in communities kind of said um lions near St.

Elmo.

Um Laurentide between Market and Candy.

Uh those are the two in Lions New and Market Market Street near uh McReynolds.

Mm-hmm.

We have a sensor on market.

Okay.

And then how about Lyons near St.

Elma?

Lions, we do not have sensors yet.

We're waiting for the funding so we can add those sensors.

Okay, and then um and then Laurentide between Market and Candy Street.

I believe those are on the list.

So we we are looking north and south.

So the goal of this whole program is so fire department coming from Fifth Ward, a fire truck can look all the way down Scott Street, uh, all the way down to the sunny side, looking at the crossings, looking at the intersections to see if that route is clear.

Okay.

Then we want to look west and east.

So lines is a big one.

Uh down there by uh 610 frontage road and all that is big, Mart uh Martin King Boulevard.

So we're looking west and east.

Telephone Road is another one.

We're looking at what they call the emergency route flow path.

Okay, how one fire district uses these routes to get to another fire district.

Fire trucks do not want to get on the freeway unless they have to.

Because once you get on the freeway, sometimes they can't get off.

So they try to stay to the surface roads as much as possible, and they do what I call they they try to drive as the crow flies in that general direction, because they can't make a lot of turns.

So we're trying to pick roads that they normally use for a straight shot into another neighborhood.

And that's what's important about the block crossings is one crossing is not only impacting that neighborhood, it's impacting other neighborhoods because fire trucks and ambulances can't get out or can't get in.

And I and I I think I've already sent this.

Um, but Lions and Sacowitz, Lockwood, Lockwood near Clinton.

Waco near Clinton, Pleasantville, between Market and Tilcombe, McCarty and Market, North Wayside, Tidwell and Hirsch, Little York and Hirsch, and then Little York near Mesa.

I know Sacklewoods, so along Clinton, we do have a sensor on Hirsch, we do have one on, we have a camera on Lockwood.

I do know we're looking over in the Pleasantville community, uh, because we like I said the west and east, because the fire department goes down market uh into the Pleasantville area.

Uh around Wayside, I believe it is, uh and market, that is a rail yard, so that gets very interesting because that crossing will always have a train because it's two two railroads operating there at their at their yard.

So that's a very difficult crossing.

So is like Bringhurst, uh not Bringhurst.

Is it Bringhurst?

It's one of those up there in Fifth Ward.

Uh I think it is Bringhurst.

That is very difficult because, or Greg, I get those two mixed up.

Uh, that's very difficult because there's a rail yard there as well.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Ramirez's office.

Thank you.

Um, what can we do?

What are you hoping for from council?

Uh just like I said, a better engagement from the community.

Uh, if you have those neighborhoods, uh, try to get me some representation.

Get me people I can work with.

Uh I I like when they're when they're uh recommended by a council member, because that's somebody y'all have identified in the community that that really wants to work with the railroads.

Uh it's not a it's not a uh town hall group.

It is a group to really identify the concerns of the neighborhood, best represent the neighborhood, and then we communicate those to the railroad.

And it's been very effective.

I mean, the curfew at McReynolds and the curfew at Milby was born from this, from this interaction.

Uh it was tested at McUh McReynolds.

Uh that's that's unprecedented for them to hold trains an hour in the morning and an hour afternoon.

For them to reduce some of their activity during peak traffic times.

They they've been really tremendous at that, is they're trying to stay off of peak traffic times.

I've also noticed trains are getting quicker in the East End.

They're flowing faster, quicker than I've ever seen, which is huge because the West End of town always had faster trains because there was less junctions, less clutter.

And the East End was always industrialized, but now their services are increasing there, their their fluidity or velocity.

I've also seen through this data program, we're changing the expectations and the mindset of the public because they're starting, you know, seeing change has been very difficult because it's slow moving, but showing them, you know, no, the average wait time is 10 minutes there.

People are now waiting.

People are now, okay, the train will hopefully be there 10 minutes.

We were seeing a type of it used to be beyond what we call beat the train, they were beating what we call the ghost train.

There wasn't even a train there, but they were so worried there was going to be a train that they were running red lights and speeding up and and trying to get across that crossing.

So we we've seen a lot of positive uh improvement from this data.

Thank you.

Councilmember Alcorn.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Jack and Jesse and Richard, everybody that's presented on the trains, obviously a big issue in Houston.

I I'm um on one of the reps for the Transportation Policy Council.

So I know tomorrow we're gonna be looking at uh railroad crossing grade separation initiative.

I I believe did you touch on that earlier where it's not really a prioritization, but we'll be picking 10 or this group, this initiative will pick 10 of the of the cross out of like 38 crossings to really do a deep dive into.

Are you involved in that effort?

I'm in in some point under the Gulf Coast Rail District and also representing the East End district.

Um I know it's very important because you need to start now.

We need to identify those crossings.

We need to start the work now.

Because I was on the initial 20 years ago.

Right.

When we were getting some of the bridges like York and Samson and Commerce and others, I was in that team 20 years ago, so that's how long it takes.

So it's good we're having those conversations now.

It's also good if those are the focus crossings for a separation.

What can we do now to be able to do that?

And again, this will is that in the A County region, so it's not it's not just Houston's, but um we'll be that it's just an informational item tomorrow, but we'll be talking more about that.

Um also about SB 1555.

Um, 250 million dollars for the next two years.

And is is HART kind of the leading group that that's kind of figuring out?

We're the goal is hopefully to get there, and that's why through the East End Safe Streets Project, we brought down Chicago to learn from them and their best practices.

Uh, but it's going to be beyond just hard.

It's going to be everybody working together on hard.

I mean, Text Dot is going to pay play a key role in that.

Uh, but yeah, that would be a goal is to see HART uh hopefully help better informing and guiding these communities and maybe the projects they should pursue.

Yeah, I saw some of that Chicago presentation.

So that that yeah, that's kind of the goal, I guess.

Um, thank you so much.

And and w on on the train watch, um, we're putting that out in a newsletter.

Um you know, you're you're mainly how many how many crossings are are on train watch right now?

There's a total of 70 crossings, but because of some of the technology is a little buggy, we're we're kind of reducing it because we want good information coming out.

So it may be around 40 now until we can improve the 40 now with with the idea of expanding, but will you you'll you'll expand obviously to the most difficult ones.

I mean, I know I'll have people saying, I waited for 10 minutes at, you know, why isn't the one at you know St.

Philippian, you know, uh whatever, you know.

Yeah, the high priority crossings will typically get a sensor, and that's what's that's what's geared when we get the funding, those will go to the high priority uh crossings.

Once we put a sensor in place, that is good information, and we know that would be accurate, and those will be displayed.

But again, those won't be at every one.

I mean, there's too many.

So it'll just be on the ones that have the longer wait times.

It could be, yes, wait times or a threat to public safety.

Uh it could be quite a bit of things we look at.

And how about that tying into uh Waze and Google Maps and all of that?

So my understanding is Waze, Google Maps, they lift from Transstar now today.

So as soon as we can get this information to Transstar, Transstar has access to this and they have the map, but again, it's buggy and they're not comfortable releasing it.

Uh we did it to reduce it to a certain uh size that we thought would better serve the public today, and then as we improve it, it'll get it'll get much better.

So it's not gonna be on those those GPS apps for a while.

Uh I do know the system that we're looking at to demonstrate.

I can't guarantee what we're gonna buy, but we're looking to demonstrate a specific system as part of this grant.

They're already in pilot with Google Maps.

Okay.

And I think we're kind of part of that pilot.

So we could see that incorporated in the next one.

Yeah, we're very fortunate with the system we're looking at.

It seems to be the most robust one.

It already has connections to mapping service, it has connection to dynamic messaging, advanced warning uh signals, you know, the flashing lights, don't go down the street, and also the pilot with Google Maps.

So they're very forward thinking.

And our hopes is if that's the system we choose, a lot of these mechanisms are already in place, and we won't have to wait much longer because it's already active.

And as soon as we plug it in, it's working.

Right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I know that your focus, which and your focus is public safety, but um one piece that we have to keep in mind too is this quality of life.

Yes.

You know, I mean, that's a big part of this conversation too.

Um I do believe that the dynamic messaging signs and maybe not even the messaging just in the flashing lights, you know, one mile prior to the crossing is something that it would be less expensive possibly to do.

And I think that's maybe something that that low-hanging fruit that we could look at.

It is, and we're just waiting on the system.

We don't want to get too far ahead of the grant.

Exactly.

So we're just kind of waiting to get things in place.

But yes, you're right.

The advanced warning signals are far less cheaper than a lot of other systems.

And I think from a quality of life perspective, I think if people just know not to go down that street, it allows them to get to work on time, get the doctor on time, kids from school, whatever that looks like.

I think that's a lot of what the frustration is, at least in the communities that I hear from the most.

That is correct.

I also know along with the Eastern District, Houston Public Works has been uh testing wayfinding signage, helping people with signage guide them around the crossings.

That a lot of people sit at these crossings for 30 minutes to an hour, have no idea there's a bridge and block over.

Exactly.

So we're testing that type of deal.

And I know Public Works was looking up there around Hirsch Road in the fifth ward area and in the East End uh has signage up at Leland and Cullen trying to get people around.

No, this is really great.

Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

I think this is really gonna change um how communities are able to function with trains.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

All righty, our last and final presentation.

Saving lives through rail safety education, presented by Jessica Desica, I'm gonna really mess up your last name.

Deborsky, I would not have said that of Texas Operator Life Safer.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you all.

I think I'll round out the railroad safety.

Yes, exactly.

Or the city of Houston and Harris County here.

Um Jessica Davorski, and I'm the executive director of Texas Operation Lifesaver.

So thank you so much for having me here to talk about our organization.

Next slide.

Texas Operation Lifesaver has been committed to preventing collisions, injuries, and fatalities on and around railroad tracks and highway road grade crossings for over 50 years.

With the support of railroads and our network of volunteers, we are committed to saving lives through education.

Next slide.

Texas Operation Lifesaver is fortunate to have strong partnerships on the national, state, and local level, sharing rail safety education messages.

Safety partners include federal, state, and local government agencies, highway safety organizations, and America's railroads.

Our safety programs include free presentations by authorized volunteers in schools, civic and community organizations, as well as specialized training for law enforcement, professional drivers, and emergency first responders.

These partnerships make it possible for us to share the rail safety message for free.

Additionally, many of our most dedicated volunteers have professional railroad backgrounds and become some of our most vocal advocates.

Next slide.

Our programs provide valuable facts about trains.

Illustrate how drivers can safely navigate highway rail grade crossings and reinforce that it is illegal and unsafe to ever walk on or use railroad tracks for recreation.

Our volunteers participate in community events, set up information tables, and give presentations to various groups in the community.

Volunteering with Texas Operation Lifesaver gives you the opportunity to connect with diverse groups by educating the public on how to be safe around tracks and trains.

So I just want to point out some of the photos that I have here on the slide.

These are Houston Metro, some of our volunteers at Houston Metro.

We've got about 10 volunteers in Houston Metro, and they're very active in the community.

So if you've ever seen any of our messaging out in Houston, it's probably coming from one of our Houston Metro volunteers.

Additionally, back in February or March, we trained 15 Harris County Department of Education employees as authorized volunteers.

So they are already qualified to go into the schools.

I know school safety is very important, and they don't just let anyone, just any volunteer, go in off the street.

So we thought it was really important to have volunteers within the Houston County Department of Education who can go into the schools and share rail safety information with the school children and give presentations there in the schools.

Next slide.

Operation LifeSaver creates an assortment of resources and assets for a variety of audiences to include public awareness campaigns and education outreach.

Assets are used by partners at in-person events like county fairs and booths at free rail safety presentations virtually and in person.

And let's not forget about public service announcements like commercials.

We have several of those available.

They're used as traditional paid media organically and for sharing across social media platforms as well.org where all of these assets are available to use free of charge.

Next slide.

Oh yeah, that's that's right.

Here are just a few examples of ways that we share the rail safety education message.

Everything created by Operation Lifesaver is free to use and available, like I said, at OLI.org.

Up here in the top corner is our five alive.

That's our specialty training for school bus drivers.

We recently transformed that and re-released it last year.

It's a brand new training, we're very proud of.

We have public service announcements for all kinds of specialty groups and many, many social media things that we can share.

Next slide.

Takes on a cross case takes children on a cross-country journey.

Learning rail safety tips along the way, and train track trivia is what the name implies, an online trivia game for older children as well as adults.

Train safety savvy includes 12 different trivia games, one for each month of the year with rail safety and trivia shared throughout.

We also have lesson plans for educators on our website as well as coloring and activity books.

Next slide.

One thing that we've noticed over the past few years is that you know, as media begins to cover railroad incidents, that they're doing so on or very close to the tracks, or they're discussing an incident or a tragedy in a way that might encourage more activity on and around railroads.

And so we have some information for the media specifically to encourage them to responsibly report around railroad tracks.

Next slide.

Next slide.

The annual observance of rail safety week across North America is a great example of partnering to share the rail safety education message.

This year, Rail Safety Week will be observed September 15th through the 21st.

As you can see by all of our pictures here, daily themes include trespassing, crossing, law enforcement, first responders, professional drivers, photographers, and this year we're doing a special day for our volunteers.

This observance wouldn't be possible without our partners holding safety blitzes, presentations, and sharing rail safety on social media as well as our volunteers being the face of rail safety in their communities.

The campaign is visually branded for the week, which includes a month-long social content calendar as a bonus for our partners.

It's filled with images and text for a variety of social platforms.

And this is available on our website, OLI.org.

We have a landing page for it.

It's free to use for anyone.

Next slide.

And finally, our risk, rail safety training for first responders or rail investigation and safety course for law enforcement.

Our risk course for law enforcement prepares first responders to use proper safety techniques while investigating or responding to rail grade crossing or collision or trespasser events in addition to maintaining on-scene safety unique to the railroad environment.

The law enforcement officers are given information and introductions to railroad personnel when responding to an incident so that they will have contacts.

And what you can see here is um this is actually a railroad investigation safety course, a risk course that we did.

Um is actually I don't know, I don't want to lie, I don't know where this picture was taken.

But um it's at a we'll we'll do the classroom portion and then we'll take the officers on scene if we can and actually put them on a train and teach them how to be safe on and around a train.

And our officers really appreciate getting to be hands-on that way.

And Union Pacific is our great partner, always allowing us a train to you know get our local law enforcement officers and always having their personnel come out to the classes so that if there is an incident in the city or anywhere around that um the first responders will have their contact information very close.

Uh last slide.

I just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak about rail safety efforts throughout the state.

I know we heard a lot today about railroad safety, and I just want to say that we were in the background of all of those presentations, every safety booth, every almost every I know we've worked with Jack Hanegraff for years and years.

He is um invaluable.

It's whenever you're talking about railroad, especially Railroad in Houston.

He's just a wealth of knowledge and information.

And um, I just must say thank you for having us out today and let us talk a little bit about rail safety.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Councilmember Mayors' office.

Hi, yes, thank you so much for your presentation.

It was wonderful to hear more and really great work that y'all are doing.

I know that you mentioned um that train safety week is gonna be coming up in September.

Um, would you mind maybe giving us some more information about ways that we can get involved as a council and kind of bring our local government involvement to y'all as well?

Oh, absolutely.

So on uh OLI.org, there is a social media calendar that has um photographs and different images that you can use as well as um what to say in according according to each of those images.

We also have videos and psas that we would love for you to share.

And it's at OLI.org.

I'll send that to you.

Yes.

And so you can have it handy.

And so if we could share that safety information on social media channels, that would be wonderful.

Okay, I don't have anyone else in queue.

Thank you so much.

We really appreciate it.

We do have some public speakers today.

We'll have two minutes.

And the first speaker is Dominic.

I know grade crossing separations is expensive.

I know doing something like the Almeda trench in Los Angeles, we cannot do because of our flooding.

But I think we need to start encouraging the railroads to have holding yards outside the city limits of Houston and even outside of the Texas Triangle to where a train does not enter the Texas Triangle or the Houston Terminal without having a clear shot to clear Houston or to get into one of the yards.

I've made the suggestion at Houston Gallas Area Council.

And I think, for instance, uh Union Pacific has a huge yard up in spring, Lloyd Yard.

The train does not come into into that into the Houston Terminal unless it's got a clear shot to the terminal that yard is going to or clear the city.

Uh they also have a uh in, and I say even have a place west of San Antonio or even hold trains at Santa Teresa Yard in El Paso.

I think the railroads could do a better job dispatching.

I think they need to spend some money in some holding yards, make and even give them a tax break to do it.

Because uh we also have another thing hitting us.

It's a possibility of Union Pacific actually buying Norfolk Sovereign.

Railroad, I don't know if y'all know that.

Uh we already are are under watch from the uh surf board, the transportation service transportation board.

I think we need to, this group needs to watch those in Houston, the Hoose Terminals are under that watch for five years.

And I think the people in this group need to read those that those reports and report back to Washington if the congestion gets worse.

And if this merger goes through, they might be even put more pressure on this terminal.

And I think that might be something the city needs to look at when they when this is going to the Service Transportation Board.

And I think too, maybe the number thing too is the railroad companies have what they call bulls or railroad police of themselves.

It's kind of like the Metro PV, but it's for railroads.

I wonder if they could watch some of these crossings.

Not so much for the trains, but for people violating the laws of Great Crossings.

You know, there if they're in case you're going down, they slide through.

Give them tickets.

Maybe we can get, I know the mayor's talking about uh Houston Pv MPV.

I think we need for rail crossings.

I think we need to get the railroad police involved.

All right, thank you so much.

So I am my time's over.

Yes.

But we we always love having you here, and you always give great suggestions.

Okay, thank you, ma'am.

And Mr.

Dominic, you can always email any suggestions you may have.

You can always email our office, and we will definitely make sure that the um the departments know about it.

Okay.

Okay, thank you so much for being here.

Our next speaker is Laura Gallier.

Okay, Jack Velinski.

Ms.

Joetta Stevenson.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um, my name is Joetta Stevenson, and I'm the president of the Greater Fifth Ward Super Neighborhood.

And I'm here just to kind of emphasize some things that um you've already heard, but I want to emphasize the importance and how critical it is to have some sort of improvements on uh uh in terms of train safety in the Greater Fifth Ward.

I was born and raised in Fifth Ward.

We I've known nothing but railroad.

My grandfather actually retired from Southern Pacific.

Um, and we have lived with uh in a web of rail line.

So we're looking at um rail, at least four uh rail lines cross Lyons Avenue going east and west.

We have um rail lines traveling north and south.

The one of the largest rail yards in the state, which is the uh Inglewood, sits right there in my community.

Imagine what it's like on a daily basis that a huge percentage of people in my community don't drive.

They're walking.

They're walk, they have they have wheelchairs, they're using walkers, or they're just walking.

And they come up on a rail rail line with a train sitting on the track.

After so long, they're gonna get creative trying to cross that track.

Now, I can say I can attest because we have people watching the rail lines now that's that are in the community.

And in the past, we have had rail rail uh track trains sit on that track for hours and hours.

I have gone to church, and the same train is still sitting on the track when I get back home.

So we can't go to the to the drug stores where you have your prescriptions.

We can't get to the one large store in our community, which is Fiesa.

Uh so we have people that get creative, and sometimes they lose their lives with that creativity.

Last September, we had a man to die on Lions Avenue.

He was a man on a walker, because that train was accustomed to sitting on that track for hours.

That man decided to figure out a way to go under that train.

And as people gathered around during that incident, you heard all of these stories.

It was not unusual.

It is what people did.

We need either railroad crossings for pedestrians.

We need better signage or alerts to tell people where those trains are.

Now I didn't hear everything that that other gentleman said about different alerts and stuff, but it sure did sound like it was some of the solutions that I would like for some of you to study and see whether or not they could actually work in my community.

Now I heard him mention Market Street, but I don't know if he mentioned a 4200 block of Market Street, which is a deadly collision waiting to happen.

I'm telling you, somebody's gonna die in that block.

That part, that block of market is one way.

That part of market people come drive there, find the train, they're stuck, they turn around and come out of there.

It is a one-way street.

It was one way leading onto I 10 West.

We need help with that block, or somebody's gonna die.

Um I I could just kind of reiterate some of the stuff you've already heard.

I don't want to do that or waste your time.

But we need solutions.

We need to work together.

The community needs to be part of that collaboration that Charlie saw him put up on the thing.

We didn't see the super neighborhood there.

We didn't see the residents on that collaboration because you can't really have a full uh prop uh uh plan unless the community has a voice in that plan.

So that's kind of what I came here to say.

Uh um it is really critical.

We need help, and I I'm really loving some of the things I've heard, particularly even the young lady that just spoke about uh uh educating children and adults.

Uh I've learned a lot, but I also came to also advocate.

Please help us, please help us.

Thank you so much for always being a voice for that community.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I do see Travis McGee is here.

Travis, would you like to make some comments?

Good evening.

We good now.

Oh, yeah, I just want to speak on the uh the water main brakes.

I agree to everything she said about the railroad though, but I won't speak on the water main brakes in Houston.

Um, they take too long to fix.

Uh and I actually sat and watched a uh crew the other day, and they fixed one in less than two hours.

But the problem is they go by the three-on-one system and they just fix that one when it's 10 other water main brakes on the same street.

That's a waste of manpower and money and everything else.

And uh not only that the water main brakes on the go on the break when it's too hot and when it's too cold.

What we experience it now is actually from the freeze we had.

It was hairline fractures, but now that they're heating up, they're expanding and busting all over again.

Uh we called one in in December and it just they just came out and fixed it like in April.

That's ridiculous.

Uh the water pressure is off, and they still building on top of this prehistoric infrastructure.

So we have to get away from every everything can be called three-on-one.

It has to start being proactive.

And three-on-one is reactive.

But and then it's hard to tell convince people that that water main break doesn't have anything to do with your water bill going up.

And they said it, they said it's a whole river going down the road for over almost a year.

And the water, the uh water bills are going up.

And we expect our water bills to go up if we run in a washing tier or a car wash, but not just a couple people in the house, you know.

But uh we really need something done about that.

And it's it's getting it's getting worse before it gets better.

But I actually saw the cruise.

We actually I called in all 10 on my Pacific in my Pacific neighborhood.

So I I know, and I watched them come out and I timed them all and a half, two hours tops.

They was finished with it.

And anything in front of the meter belongs to the city, anything behind the meter belongs to the residents, and all of these was the cities.

And then sometimes it takes them too long to come back and replace the driveways once they dig them up.

And they and I've saw them put the bamboo out also.

I question it.

I've been around construction all my life, and I've never seen nobody put bamboo down in place of rebar.

You know, in Houston climate, you can't do that because as soon as it gets, it's gonna start shifting anyway.

And we we even on city property, they don't fix the uh the water mains right away.

And that it simply does not make any sense.

So that's all I got.

Travis, thank you so much for for just kind of being the ears in the neighborhoods and letting us know what's going on.

And just you know that you meet we obviously we want them to call 311, but you know, we're all here to help you if you're at large members and your district members, so just let us know how we can make sure we can expedite some repairs if necessary.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Well, I see there's no one in queue, y'all.

Thank you for hanging in with us.

Um, I really appreciate it.

This meeting is adjourned.

All right.