Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Community Planning and Transportation Committee met to receive updates on public transit performance for September 2026 and on the status of the Traffic Management Center (TMC) and ongoing transportation projects. Discussions focused on ridership trends, grant applications, operational costs of microtransit, TMC staffing with student operators, and future infrastructure funding.
To the City Council Community Planning and Transportation Committee meeting for October 22nd, 2026. We have Taylor here with uh transportation. Going to give us an overview of the September public transit reports, and then we'll be here and then discussing about the status of progress ongoing transportation projects. Thank you. I appreciate you switching the order to accommodate a personal item. Yeah, our normal transit report is in your packet. I do have the on-demand report here and paper I'll pass around because I inadvertently did not include that in the PDF I sent to the city clerk to be sent out with the agenda. But I appreciate the council's approval of a replacement of unit 52065, our last unit that doesn't have a vehicle on order that's ready to be replaced, and uh we're working through uh getting that um in the bill schedule with the uh vendor right now. So we are uh doing really well on vehicles as we have been in the last uh you know five, six, seven years. Um, going down to grants. Uh we've been talking about this for a couple months, but I appreciate all the uh approval from council for the resolutions of support and going after those grant items. We just as a go going over those again. It was uh one of the FTA grants for ICAM, which is innovative coordinated access and mobility looking at uh regional paratransit in partnership with Embark and City of Edmunds City Link, a CAD ABL upgrade, so technology on our fixed route buses uh through FTA's bus and bus facilities program. Uh another application to FTA's bus and bus facilities program for replacement of three paratransit units uh that are due actually a year from now. So trying to get ahead of that and maximize our local dollars through more FDA funding. And then uh looking out even further into fiscal year 30, we will have our next two fixed route vehicles up for replacement, and we're looking at ACOG funding for that. So again, just trying to get all that set in motion so that way we're not wondering what to do when those replacement units come around. We have some federal funding available and ready to go. And then I'll get into the ridership, which like I said, the embark Norman portion is in your packet, and I'll pass around the Norman on demand portion here in a moment. Uh total ridership for Embark Norman in September was 51,441 compared to 47,643 in last September of 25, and that is both fixed route and para-transit. You can see there at the first page of the ridership report, uh, both weekday fixed route and Saturday fixed route were up in ridership, which is good. Uh, and then on our plus side, we had an overall increase of uh about a hundred, about ninety um for the month, so uh pretty stable there. I will note that our average daily for Saturday uh was over a thousand, which is good. Last year we had two months that was over a thousand. Um September was not one of them, so hopefully that shows a good trend going forward, and all that is available in graphs in the in the ridership report if you want to look into more detail showing you last fiscal last fiscal year compared to this fiscal year, uh, just giving you some background data for Norman on demand, and like I said, I'll pass uh these around for everybody. I'll get three for across the table. Apologize for not leaving those in your packet. Um for that service, let me go through here. On the back page is the the ridership. We had uh just under 2,000 rides this past September. So 1984, and last September we had just uh Shy 3,000, 2,928. We did serve uh 11 passengers with our wheelchair accessible vehicles in September of this year, eight last September, and our ridership for service hours holding pretty uh similar to last last September at 4.7, it was 4.8 last so last year. Um I'm available for any questions, but don't want to hold up for meeting any more than I I need to, so I appreciate that. Maybe any questions just a quick comment. Like I I love everything you're doing, um, and the city behind you is doing for public transportation. Um I truly see it as like we're just in a weird spot, like with