Hello, and welcome to the Pittsburgh City Council budget hearings.

Uh, my name is Councilmember Barb Warwick, and I chair the committee on public works and infrastructure.

For this hearing, we will be hearing from the department of mobility and infrastructure.

And I'd like to well, everybody's here at the table already.

And uh so uh budget director, Peter McDevitt, if you'd like to give us a brief overview.

Thank you, Councilmember.

The mission of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure is to provide the physical mobility necessary to enable the social and economic mobility of the people of Pittsburgh through the management, design, improvement, and operation of the public rights of way.

We're going to get to all three of these functions in our slideshow, okay.

It is sorry, I'm a little glitzier.

We have four bureaus.

We have administrative plan and policy and permitting, project design and delivery, traffic operations, and we have a total of 127 full-time positions.

For 2025 accomplishments, this is for department wise.

We had a dedicated communication staff.

This the staff was very vital for delivering our projects.

They were able to go out to community meetings, be able to have community participation and also work with council on our projects.

Penn on SPC coordination.

This is very vital since Domi's been a department.

We started with about four or five projects that are federally and state funded.

We're currently around 44 projects that are receiving federal and state funds.

And the majority of this is because we have a great pend on SPC coordination.

Public safety coordination.

We show them the design, show them the impacts of the community, and we take their feedback seriously, and we have to um we hear we hear each other out.

Um vision zero.

Vision zero um really has become really robust in 2025.

Um we have um a couple um different types of uh um committees that are now um attached to it, and it's really going well, and we're looking to see it through.

I'm gonna hand it off to Angie Martinez.

Yep.

Um thank you, council, for having us.

Um I always look forward actually to this budget presentation because it's a great opportunity for us to look back at our accomplishments.

Um I think that's especially important for the Bureau I lead of planning policy and permits because so much of what we do is kind of behind the scenes, um, especially when I compare it to you know what my colleagues are doing, literally building bridges and uh our traffic signals.

Um but it's through planning, through policy, uh standard procedures, guidelines, all things that you'll hear me talking about that our group oversees that we really get the opportunity to be able to scale up and deliver all aspects of Domi's mission because when we deliver predictable and consistent work, I believe we're providing the very best value to our residents and delivering our work in the best manner possible.

Um before I jump into slides, um the executive team we're talking about, uh prepping for this presentation.

One of the things we wanted to do was really put a spotlight on the our staff.

Um it's because of the 120 some people that work for the department that we're able to achieve the work that we do.

So we'll be talking not only about the work that we've done, but also about the staff that have um enabled us to be able to do it.

So starting first with our planning bureau, um, this is an office of one supervisor and then three um staff planners.

Um the thing that I want to highlight on this first slide is our in-house capability within our planning unit.

So we have a team that is expert and qualified in being able to look at crash data, analyze it, review crash reports, um, do uh GIS uh analysis, and also do um design conceptual design drawings for projects.

So because we have all of this great in-house capability, we're able to actually act as good planners um to our colleagues in traffic and streets division to help them better deliver the projects um that they oversee.

So on this slide, you see some examples of the planning process that we uh ran for both South 18th Street and 21st Street.

Those are projects that are gonna be delivered by other Domi bureaus, um, as well as uh some of the scoping that we did for both um traffic calming um installation projects and for the Lawrenceville Mobility Enhancement District.

Next slide.

Um this slide continues in some of the work that we started this year and that is going to continue into next year.

Um, just very quickly, I want to highlight two projects of this list.

Um the first is our South Nunville and Boundary Street Street Streetscape plan, excuse me.

Um this is an example of a transportation planning process, I think, in its sort of church form.

So this is a vital roadway uh mobility link in Oakland, and it's a road that isn't working well for anybody today.

And unlike many streets in the city where we're working within a very constrained tight geography or cartway, we actually have space along boundary level to really reimagine that road and how it can work for all users for cars, for pedestrians.

This road currently lacks sidewalks, so people are walking in their street, and even for cyclists because this road is also an extension of our trail network.

So this planning process is very robust, and we're approaching it in anticipation of being able to seek grants to actually move into construction.

So the reason why I wanted to highlight it is because our approach to planning with Indomi is to really be focused on making sure that anything that we do in planning is in service of ultimately getting to a project that can be implemented.

The other project that I wanted to highlight on here is actually a project done by others.

So some of the work that we do is also just being a liaison or a point person for the city on behalf of other people's projects.

Allegheny County is in the process of doing a vision zero action plan.

And as a part of that effort, Pendot is at the table, SPC is at the table, of course, the county is at the table.

And this in this process, they've identified 10 corridors within the county that are going to advance into conceptual design.

Six of these are within the city, and three of them are on Pendot Roads.

This is really notable because for so long we have talked about the limitations that the city has when it comes to seeking roadway safety treatments on state routes.

So this is an example of a project that somebody else is leading, but is really starting to break down those existing silos to get us to a place where I think we all want to be, which is the city being able to have a greater say on how state roads, state routes within our city function.

Our planning group also facilitates our complete streets advisory group, which is our citizens sort of sounding board and body for DOME decisions.

One of our 2025 goals for CSAG was to focus on membership.

This is just the second year of CSAG since it's come back off hiatus, and we really want that group to be reflective of the city's population as a whole.

So to that end, this year we onboarded six new members onto CSAG, and then we also worked with the committee to help organize a mini-election for them to actually nominate or select somebody who would act as a representative and able to speak on their behalf.

So this has been great because it's able to keep the CSAC committee separate from DOMI and sort of put somebody in the place of having the voice to be able to speak on behalf of the committee as a whole.

Moving on to some of our policy and program work, we have a transportation demand coordinator and a policy analyst.

Our transportation, or excuse me, uh transportation demand management refers to the policies and strategies to enable or reducing vehicle congestion by promoting other modes.

This position is actually grant-funded through a CMAC fund that's congestion mitigation reduction program.

And so this person has been working throughout the years to promote uh detours and closures, getting those closures and navigation apps.

They were a liaison to DCP as they were working through potential changes to city code involving parking maximums and transportation demand management.

This position is important also looking into 2026.

One of the things that we want to get better at is promoting and communicating proactively on where we have major roadway closures and disruption to the transportation system.

And when appropriate, when those closures or impacts are significant enough, we also want to pair them with opportunities for trip planning.

So you'll see this in 2026 when the city hosts the NFL draft when Pendot closes the commercial street bridge for their construction project.

We're going to be promoting not only the road closures, but also better ways to get around.

Where's their good place to park?

So maybe you're not running into congestion.

Should you be, should we be encouraging people to maybe take the bus or bike, grab a pogo?

This is how we can think about reducing congestion by advertising and promoting other modes.

This year we saw an increase in both the number of students walking and biking during our fall and spring bike and roll to school day.

The other thing that we did this year was develop a new site visit request form for school administrators.

So our safe routes to school coordinator, Harriet Jackson does a fantastic job, but one of the things she was struggling with were the school administrators, crossing guards, others reaching out to her with a slew of problems, whether it was sign changes, loading issues, uh bike parking for students.

Um we worked with our colleagues in the traffic group to create a site visit form so that we could consolidate all of these requests into one place to hopefully expedite actual reviews and changes of the streets to make them safer for kids walking and rolling to school.

Um so we used that form six times.

Um this year, it's already resulted in street signage changes around two of our schools, and we look forward to continue to build this out and expand it.

Um in 2026, um, we are also looking forward to for the first time going into the high schools for our safe routes to school education.

So uh more exciting things uh to be done there.

Moving next to our curbside and new mobility team, um, 2025 was the first full year that we had staffing of this group.

Um, it's comprised of one uh supervisor position and then two uh positions underneath a program analyst and a policy analyst.

Um the group sets policies and reviews for everything from loading zones, residential permit parking areas.

They also oversee the city's bus shelter maintenance contract, um, work very closely with parking authority and our traffic sign shop to uh coordinate and implement these changes.

Um in 2025, some of the highlights of the program, we put forth two changes to RPPs.

We stood up a mobility enhancement district in Lawrenceville, we conducted over 22 parking studies in-house.

Um, I want to stop there for a moment because when we did the Lawrenceville Mobility Enhancement District, we actually had to contract the parking studies for that out.

Now that was a very large, complex study area.

Um, it's probably closer to three studies than one study, but the cost to contract that out was $55,000.

And so by having the staff in this group that have the time and the ability to actually go out there and do the traffic studies is just so important.

It means that the decisions that we're making about our curbside regulations are based in data, and thankfully, we don't have to rely on trying to find outside funds to make that happen.

Um, the last thing I'll note on the successes of the team for this year has to do with installing new bus shelters.

I'll touch a little bit more on that in a later slide through our transit improvement program from 2025.

Um assistant director uh Jeff already talked a little bit about our vision zero working group.

So, as folks know, the city committed formally to vision zero last year.

We've seen a lot of progress in the 14 months or so that we've been up and running.

Um, one thing to know is that all of the work that's been accomplished has been under existing staff capacities.

So that means a lot of people who have some role in getting to zero roadway fatalities or serious injuries have been pulled into our five working groups in order to break down these sort of interagency silos that you know prohibit or prevent us from making progress in this area.

So we're really excited to see that in 2026 there's a plan for a coordinator position.

It is absolutely a full-time job to make sure all of these things come together.

Um, I would say successes for Vision Zero.

Um we have made great strides towards improving our relationship with public safety.

Um we got the automated red light enforcement RFP out the door.

Um, this slide shows some of the education materials that we've been developing.

Um, so far this year, we've had 19 fatalities on our non-interstate streets within the city.

Um, four of those involved pedestrians, um, three of those involved motorcycles.

Um, so on this slide, you can see uh the education material that our education engagement and communications subcommittee put together, specifically speaking to motorcyclist as a sort of group, and then we attended a motorcycle show to distribute that materials to that specific audience.

So again, this is a good example of how we're applying the data and what we're learning about you know the types of fatal crashes that we're having, and then attempting to tailor our marketing and outreach to meet those to meet those needs.

Moving on to our permit and review staff, in terms of permitting process, or excuse me, permit processing, we have four staff and one supervisor.

For traffic reviews, this is the people who review any road closures as well as issue no parking signs.

We have two staff and one supervisor.

When it comes to development review, so looking at changes from private development and impacts on the right-of-way, a site plan is on this slide to give you a sense of what our development review planners are looking at.

We have one project manager and a senior planner supporting the work.

When we look at volume, we've issued 7800 DOE permits as of October.

That's on track for where we've been in the past.

And we've completed 761 transportation reviews on building and zoning permits.

So that 761 number is directly attributed to those two development review staff members I've talked about.

We continue to be sort of resource constrained in this group.

In 2025, we had, you know, just normal things, people going on leave, people taking vacation, but we just have no Slack in this group.

And so when those things happen, we fall behind.

Typically, a permit turnaround is three to four days.

This summer we were at three to four weeks because of our sort of resource scarcity when it comes to the staff available for these volumes for processing.

That said, we do continue to try to develop policies and procedures that make it so that we can better deliver service to our customers.

Two examples of that on this slide.

We developed a utility capital project permitting process.

This were this will allow Domi to see plans from utilities earlier on in the process and hopefully help streamline permits as they actually get applied for down the line.

We also developed a new asphalt art policy to help guide community groups and others that might have an interest in pursuing street art.

So I think this is a great example of how our work is both practical and necessary in the utility space, but how we're also trying to you know meet the needs, other needs of streets.

So making sure that they can be beautiful, there's placemaking elements, etc.

On the inspection side of the house, um, we did see some changes to this team as a result of some of the operating budget items from last year.

We have two staff that specialize in code enforcement, basically 311 response, and then also looking for proactive violations in the right-of-way and a supervisor to make sure those get resolved.

And then our right-of-way construction supervisor, excuse me, our right-of-way inspection inspectors, we have eight of those and a supervisor.

This team collectively has performed close to 25,000 inspections for permits and over 5300 code violations that have been cited in the right-of-way.

The last three slides I have are not specific to any one person or group within the department, but I think really just illustrate some of the progress that DOME has made over the past couple of years.

So on this slide, I wanted to highlight work we did for our transit stop improvement program.

So this was new for 2025.

We focused on high ridership transit stops that did not have a bus shelter because the condition of the sidewalk was either not appropriate to install a shelter or it wasn't wide enough for us to be able to install shelter and still provide ADA clearance.

So knowing that this is a limitation to us being able to get shelters installed.

And our colleagues in the trap or excuse me, in the streets division to make sure that we had the necessary designs and engineering in place.

So people talk about government, you know, working slowly.

Um I feel that way too at times.

But I think this is an example of in less than a year, we developed an entire program and actually got transit facilities out into the public space.

And so if you look at this location, Brighton Road at Woods Run and go back in Google Street View, you'd see that prior to this bus shelter being installed, people were literally sitting on milk crates.

So I think this is an excellent example of what we can do when we kind of line things up and time them out.

And more to come on this program in the future.

It wasn't funded in 2026, but I think now that we've operationalized it, we're gonna be able to look for more creative uh funding solutions to be able to continue it.

Um the paving work actually runs out of uh project design and delivery.

Um, but because it represents such a huge portion of Domi's budget, planning is involved to make sure that we're constantly improving the way that we're preparing that paving list, that we're avoiding utility conflicts where we can and that we're looking for potential opportunities uh to coordinate our work with paving and even with those utility jobs.

Um on the left side of the screen, um, you'll see some of the stats from our paving program this year.

We hit 44 miles.

Um, we focused on primary streets and picking up um streets that are going to be high impact um when we host the NFL draft.

Um to the right are some of the changes that we made more on the procedural side of things.

Um so as of this year, there's an engage page for our plan our paving program.

So residents, members of council, you could actually subscribe to this page and you'll get an email notification.

Usually it's up Thursday or Friday before the next week's uh paving list actually starts.

Um we also spent a quite a bit of time making sure that we were cleaning up all of our street records.

Um this was a monumental sort of administrative task, but now that it's complete, it really positions the city to be able to use GIS and other mapping tools to get ahead of any potential conflicts.

And so making sure that we use the same street ID as the utilities do when they submit projects to us helps us just very quickly be able to know where we might be running into issues.

Um and then finally, uh, I think the success of this work, really the gold standard that we hit this year that makes you know me really proud of all of the time we put into it is that we were successfully able to leverage the work of utilities to install traffic calming projects.

So the two examples on here that we did was uh Bayard and North Neville and Beacon Street and Whiteman.

Utilities already had these streets opened up.

They had to pave them and put down some markings because we had our designs ready to go.

We said instead of putting down replacing in kind, replace the traffic in to the new standard.

And we can do that, and it doesn't cost the paving, or excuse me, it doesn't cost the utilities any more money if we get ahead of it and plan for it.

So we had two of these this year.

Um I suspect that as we continue to grow and get better, um, this will be something that we'll see more and more of.

And the last item I wanted to highlight was trail development.

Um, this is work that spans not only Domi, DPW, a lot of external partners that are interested in our trails for recreation, for mobility, for even for economic development.

Um, to the left, you see um the portion of the South Side Trail between Hot Meadow and Baldwin Borough.

Um, this is probably our most cited 311 section of trail because it's been uh really bumpy because of tree roots.

So this year with a grant from DCNR, we were able to pave that trail.

We cut down all the invasive species so that you can actually see the river from the trail, and we also resolved a drainage issue that was there.

Um to the right and on the other side of the spectrum, um, we also had to close a portion of our trail along the Ohio River in the Chateau neighborhood because of a structural issue and the trail and uh the land starting to uh to to you know destabilize there.

Um but what I want to call out with these two examples is really the partnerships and the bridges that we've been building between Friends of the Riverfront, River Life, and DPW and managing this really important asset.

So thankfully, Friends of the Riverfront was able to help us communicate all of these closures.

I think being able to close a trail and not catch people by surprise is important.

And then in the case of the South Side Trail, where there was simply no opportunity for any sort of detour, um, friends um actually at their own expense and with assistance from the uh the Gap Trail Network was able to uh pay for a shuttle to actually bus cyclists and trail users so they wouldn't be stranded when we close the trail.

So this is only possible when we make the time and we have the relationships to you know coordinate on these efforts.

All right.

Um I'm gonna go in and start talking about the Project Design Delivery Bureau.

Um our bureau has five divisions.

I'll talk about the first couple, then I'll turn it over to Zach to go from there.

Um of the stuff we've done this year, and I think you'll see a bit of a theme with what Angie started with talking about staff capacity and some of the things we've been able to do in-house.

Gonna highlight some of the stuff we've done this year, and I think you'll see a bit of a theme with what Angie started with talking about staff capacity and some of the things we've been able to do in-house.

I'll continue that theme and it'll continue on down the line because uh it's a really big deal that we think uh that that we are accomplishing a lot.

Um first talking about our streets division.

Um this is one of our engineering divisions.

Um we manage a lot of our bigger street projects.

We have um street reconstructions, full reconstructions.

Uh there's four of them going on right now, two of them Penn Avenue and Smithfield will be moving into construction next year, finally.

Bus Rapid Transit is ongoing, of course, and we already talked earlier.

We mentioned the Boundary Street Project.

Um, streetscape projects, which maybe aren't full reconstructions, but still have a very big impact on the street.

Uh we have four of those going on right now in design, including South 21st, which I'll talk about on the next slide.

And then trails.

We're doing trail work.

Um, Trolley Trail is at its very final stages of design, and we'll be out to bid very shortly.

Um Sylvan and uh Allegheny River Green Boulevard just getting started on that one.

Um South 21st Street is one of our um streetscape projects.

Um folks know South 21st, it's a very, very wide street with a lot of parking in the median currently.

Um there has been a project that was originally developed and championed by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to redo the street, and it languished for a number of years due to a lack of funding.

Um this past year, we had to kind of make a decision point, and we moved it, rescoped it, moved it in-house, and are doing just a straight street streetscape project at this point.

Um our planning group has been involved in doing the planning for it.

Our um our streets division is actually designing engineering and designing the project in-house.

Um we are estimating that we'll save over 400,000 in consultant design costs and over six months of design time by doing that work in-house.

Um, so we're really excited about that.

That's the the biggest project that we've bid off to date.

Um so far, it's going quite well, and we are hoping to get it out to bid uh in the first half of next year.

Um, another big area that our streets division gets involved in is our critical sidewalk gap program.

Um this has been active for several years now, um, replacing sidewalks both that are in poor condition or also closing gaps where perhaps a sidewalk never existed before.

Um this year we've delivered nine um just strict sidewalk gap projects.

Um do another case study.

We received a pend grant to do critical sidewalk gaps uh at three locations, which was wonderful.

Um, and it helped us do that work.

Um the design cost was was kind of steep.

It was 192,000 to build to design those three locations to meet the the Pendot standards and everything.

Um the other six locations we designed in-house for for no design costs.

So that shows once again the power of our in-house staff to get some of these projects through the process.

Um just a little graphical uh view of our sidewalk projects.

Um, in addition to the nine critical sidewalk gap projects, the 10th one, Sylvan Avenue neighborway is also listed because while it wasn't strictly a sidewalk project, it resulted in a lot of new sidewalks.

Um, all this work um was done by our streets division, which has four staff.

Um two project managers, one of which um Steve is is funded by the BRT project and only focuses on BRT and RAIS, and then the rest of our work being done by a project manager, project engineer, and staff engineer.

Uh I want to touch on our construction division.

Um a little different than the DPW construction division in that they don't have tradespeople, but they do manage um a good bit of work for us, both some larger capital construction projects.

There's a listing of them up there.

A lot of these are retaining walls, landslides, um, some of our wall and step projects as well.

Um they also manage our concrete brick and blockstone street repair program.

We had 17 different streets this year, and they are able to do step recompair reste repair and reconstruction off of our on-call contractors.

So those are projects that don't require design process, and they can uh they handle all of our contract guide rail and fence installation and repair.

And we've got three folks in our construction division, a supervisor, a project manager, and an inspector.

I wanted to touch on our paving division as well.

Of course, Angie talked about it already to some degree and a lot of the improvements and the coordination that we've done this year, but I did want to give our staff their due there.

It's uh um a small division considering the amount of capital funds that they push through.

Uh there's seven staff, a supervisor, foreman, three inspectors, a fiscal coordinator.

Um, and the seventh is actually a laborer that we've been um had his position has remained in DPW, but he's been working with us um since even before our department was created.

Um that is something that we need to uh he retired this year, so we need to make sure that we can continue with that position in future years to keep keep going and making sure we're inspecting our work.

Um as I said, it's the largest city funded capital program.

We did about 17 million dollars of work in 2025.

Um in addition to the paving, they also handle all the ADA ramps associated with the paving program and are able to pick up different kinds of drainage improvements along the way that have kind of a paving component to them.

Um so that's the paving division.

Then I will pass it off to Zach.

Thank you, Eric.

Um so I'm gonna go over our um our structures division, but uh for the I wanted to start off by looking uh more closely at our bridge maintenance division, kind of the last um the last operate operations division within PDD.

Um so this year um proud to say that we finally have a fully staffed bridge maintenance division.

Um the division started off the year with just our our supervisor.

Um we were filling uh the foreman position in January and the other positions um throughout the year.

Um it's been a really long process, it's been a lot of work, but um it's great to finally have that team of five.

Um, the fully staffed team as as we've had more people come online.

Uh our the capabilities of the division have greatly increased.

Um, initially they were basically able to wash um wash pedestrian bridges, uh, wash our bridges with really low traffic volumes, uh, but they're now to the point where they're able to take on um some of the much larger structures and are doing some critical repairs as well.

Um so yeah, with that, uh I want to look a little bit more closely at our uh kind of a case study for one of the bridges that was washed recently.

Um this is the California Avenue Bridge uh washed in August 2025.

Um so it's not very exciting, but washing bridges is extremely necessary, and it's um already been some of the kind of bread and butter of the maintenance division.

Um so we've got some before and after pictures of of the condition of both the gutters, um, the scuppers, and really, you know, we need to keep these things in good condition, um, otherwise it leads to extremely expensive deterioration um down the line.

So our crew, they've been um logging their their daily work in cartograph, um, and they're able to put their equipment and their time and cartograph is estimating uh that washing this bridge that cost about $2300.

Um, just for comparison, if we're to have gone to our uh competitively bid on-call contractor, the work order for this structure would have been about $35,000.

Um so getting this work done 15 times cheaper uh is really great representation of the value of the bridge maintenance division.

So looking more closely at um the structures division, the engineering work um coming out of the structures division and DOMI.

Um wanted to start off looking at our um our larger bridge capital projects.

So these are all bridges that are on the um transportation improvement program or the TIP.

Um we've got 19 bridges in the works, two of them in construction with another 17 in the in the design stages.

15 of these bridges are in poor condition.

Um so again, this is addressing um critical issues in the transportation I work in Pittsburgh.

Really important to highlight that these projects are all either 95 or 100% reimbursed by FHWA and Pendot.

So they're really time-intensive, but there's a lot of value in putting the resources into delivering these projects.

That we're contingent to turning our attention to our projects without Pendot oversight.

We've got a whole host of things going on.

Obviously, we're really excited to show off the newly completed Davis Avenue Bridge.

But also we've got we had a major remediation and mitigation landslide project in Mount Washington.

That was a $13 million project that was fully reimbursed by FEMA to present bring resiliency to the street grid in Mount Washington.

We're finalizing the construction contract for repairs to the Panther Hollow Bridge with the goal of reopening it in 2026.

We're advancing seven landslide projects through the engineering phase.

And one project that's we're excited about Calera Street Bridge number two.

We're actually designing this project in-house using Domi's engineers.

Really proud of the work they've done so far.

To compare, we have a Calera Street Bridge number one, which is on the tip, and the first phase in engineering for an outside consultant is $431,000.

So that's the scale of savings when we can do this work in-house.

So I want to take a closer look at a few specific bridges, put into context the work that is necessary and the work that we're doing, starting off with our Charles Anderson bridge.

So this started engineering in 2019, and then it was closed in February of 2023.

Engineering completed later in 2023.

We issued notice to proceed to a contractor in April 2024.

They were able to complete some of the early repair work by the end of 24, which allowed them to then mobilize for full-scale rehabilitation.

There have been some challenges and surprises, but construction is proceeding and the team's been working really well together.

But the enormity of the project, the thousands of hours that go into the engineering, the thousands of hours into the construction, into the oversight document documenting the project from start to finish, is um it's it's just substantial.

So just wanted to highlight that while this is one of our largest and most complicated structures, it does, I think it puts into perspective uh the dozens of projects we're advancing now through the engineering phase and the work that lies ahead.

So a little bit different in scope.

Um again, I think these are uh really important things that we are tackling this year.

Um the Milroy Street Bridge over I-279.

Um this connects East Street to a small neighborhood near Observatory Hill.

Um the bridge is only 40 years old.

Uh I think the average age for our bridges is um probably in the 80s.

Um we designed bridges to get 75 to 100 years out of them.

So 40 years is objectively a young bridge.

Um this also provides the only access for larger vehicles into this small neighborhood.

Um so it's essentially it's an essential route for for the people that live there.

Uh the bridge has been in poor condition for 14 years.

Um, and ultimately that's due to a lack of maintenance.

Um in 2023, we conducted a sort of a blitz addressing leaking expansion joints on critical bridges across the city.

That work order for this bridge cost $19,000.

So here's an example of you know keeping up with the routine maintenance tasks, making sure that things aren't leaking, that the drainage system works properly, saves hundreds of thousands of dollars and ensures you know access to neighborhoods that might potentially be cut off.

So I'm really excited though that this bridge is finally being lifted out of poor condition.

The city still has 39 bridges in poor condition, uh, and everything we can do to cut that down is um I think exciting.

So and then on a similar note, the Heron Avenue Bridge, which was closed for four months earlier this year.

This also is a bridge that's not very old.

It was built in 1980.

It has modern construction techniques.

Um it's especially challenging to work on because it crosses over three separate railroads and PRT.

Uh so access is a nightmare to coordinate.

Um but nonetheless, um it has the same routine maintenance needs that were going undone for decades.

Um so this was one that we also addressed in our 2023 blitz on expansion joints.

Um it's a little bit bigger bridge, so we have to spend a bit more on it, but um that routine work of $76,000 to keep things working as they're intended.

Um the project, this bridge does have a comprehensive rehabilitation project in the works.

Um engineering started in 20 early or in 2024.

Um we're looking forward to being able to make a major investment with the support from uh FHWA and PEN DOT.

Um in order to get the bridge reopened, we had to do a very um well, as a temporary solution.

Uh that's basically a sunk cost, and that's money that won't be recouped uh and isn't an investment into the the long-term health of the structure.

So again, another example of just keeping up with the maintenance to save dollars down the line.

Lastly, I just wanted to highlight um the awesome work that our uh junior engineers are doing in-house modernizing our asset management program.

Um following on you know, completely redeveloping our uh how we how we monitor our bridge, um, our bridge structures, uh, we've also applied that now, um, carrying the momentum forward to overhaul our retaining walls and steps.

Um so this year our uh two staff engineers and some interns have digitized thousands of records and have completed over 500 inspections on city retaining walls.

That's out of about 900.

Um that in itself is practically a full-time job, uh, but it's uh what they've completed is really impressive.

The median age of our retaining walls is 83 years old.

Um again, um that's that's getting up there in age.

So we've been we've programmed several projects a year, but uh when you have 900 retaining walls in your inventory at an average age of 83, um, you know, there's going to be a lot of work to be done in the next few decades.

Um similarly, we've been modernizing our steps asset management, developing inspection procedures so we can uh get caught up on those in-house and also developing better resources for monitoring our uh landslides.

So with that, I just want to emphasize that um the structures division, we've got seven engineers, including myself, uh, and I would describe that as a lean team for the amount of work that we're doing.

With that, I'll hand it off to Mike for traffic.

Thank you, Zach.

So before I go into my my section of this presentation, I have a few housekeeping notes.

Um, first, I want to acknowledge you all have a hard job.

I appreciate that in terms of you know a common theme amongst us is that we are excited about the in-house work we're doing.

We're gonna talk about how resource constrained we are.

I'm gonna continue that.

Um I'm doing so with the knowledge that we have a tight budget.

And so if I'm dreaming about things, more things that we can do with in-house money, that is primarily just because I'm looking forward to a future where we can do this more.

Is no, I'm not being a flippant about the current budget situation.

Um also in listening to what my colleagues have said, I also my other two notes are that I'm just really proud of our work, both the breadth and quantity of our work.

And it's not just my team, like not that's a traffic operations team, it's everyone.

Um I'm just talking, I'm just saying words.

Like everything that I'm doing here, there's a collection of civil servants behind it who are the who are what makes this happen.

And so I just want to like we are very I'm very lucky.

We are all very lucky to have them serving the city.

I'm terribly proud.

And I hope you all feel the same way too.

So with respect to my team, I have three divisions.

I have a divine design to the division first, and within them I have three separate groups.

The first one is Street Light.

LED conversion started this year.

That was that was our big accomplishment.

It's a huge accomplishment.

It's been around for I don't know how many years, eight years.

And so this is a Moby Dick of a project for us.

It is happening, and as of a couple days ago, I believe 40% of our LED luminars have been replaced.

All 47 of our gateways are installed for future connectivity for smart street lights.

Obviously, we have contractors, we have consultants, but all this passes through DOME staff.

And in this case, there's one staff person for the entire city who does street lights.

That's Denny Robinson.

He'd better be paying attention to this presentation today.

Uh, my second design group, which the branding is rough.

I still need to work this, but I'm calling them vision zero implementation.

Um, and within them, they they do three types of projects.

The first type of project is neighborhood traffic calming.

Uh that project is entirely meant to slow down vehicle speeds on neighborhood streets.

We did 13 projects in 2025.

I'm not naming them.

And just because I know someone's gonna ask me this at some point today.

Current status of our neighborhood traffic calming portal.

The big one there is 265 locations that meet our criteria for traffic calming and another 213 that need to be evaluated.

These projects are designed by in-house staff.

The evaluation process is a combination of consultants as well as in-house staff.

Uh so we also do what I'm calling uh vulnerable road user safety projects, uh VRU for short.

These projects are entirely focused on making our streets safer for our most vulnerable users, that being the pedestrian and the cyclists.

In most cases, these are gonna be intersection or cycling facility projects.

Um again, we did 14 projects this year.

These are high impact projects, typically using quick build materials, uh paint, flex post, signage, sometimes precast, concrete curves.

Um we are doing all these projects that I just mentioned in our neighborhood traffic calming budget, which in past year I believe is about 1.3 million dollars.

And then projects where we take a holistic look at the corridor and not immediately identify spot treatments for spot problems, uh spot problems.

I'm calling corridor safety projects.

Uh, these take more effort.

These are gonna have some form of public engagement.

Uh many cases, Angie's team is gonna help us by doing planning up front.

And these are ones where we combine our full suite of treatments and look at the corridor and identify problems, a combination of slowing down vehicle speeds, multimodal designs, as well as intersection safety treatments.

Uh, these are valuable projects, they're harder for us to do just because of the quant like the amount of work involved, and we did three this past year.

So the Vision Zero implementation group did a total of 30 projects in 2025.

Five people.

Start to finish design, invoicing, five people.

And so my third design group is the traffic signal design group uh from the capital signal program.

We have currently we did four traffic signal construction projects in the city, and then three were designed that will be constructed next year.

The fun notes here are that 80 or 100% of these are funded by Pendot.

And that of that list on your screen right now, I believe four out of the seven were designed by in-house staff.

Um, and that same bureau also manages our large quarter um federally funded projects.

And so of that collection on the screen right now.

Um I'm I'm putting BRT downtown loop into this group because even though we do not hold that contract, like my team is along for every step of the way because we own the infrastructure at the end of the day.

So every traffic signal problem, we're out there responding.

Every design question and construction issue, someone from my team is out there.

Uh, that was a major accomplishment for us.

We also began North Avenue, and then the BRT Oakland Uptown project began this year as well.

And then there are five large federally funded projects that are in various stages of design.

And we also do smart signals.

That is a this is hard.

This part of the job is really, really tough.

And it's been a long road for me and for my team.

And we are so close to beginning construction of a city traffic management center, a facility that houses streaming footage as well as the ability to communicate to traffic signals in the field from one location.

Currently, we're dumb.

We go out and we look at them from the street corner.

It's not by choice.

Well, it is it's not by choice because we have no we have no choice.

That's how we operate.

This is a major step for us.

Um it's gonna change how we respond to traffic needs in the city.

So what I just laid out to you from the traffic signal side is $60 million, six people.

And then there are also two maintenance divisions that are within the traffic bureau, one does signs and markings.

Uh our supervisor Ron Romano kindly put together this really large spreadsheet.

He's been keeping all year of all the stuff he's painted, all the signs he's done, it's a lot.

They're the best.

I love them.

They're great.

And something that I'm most proud and excited about what they accomplished this year is that we have a thermoplastic truck and they're out there putting thermoplastic crosswalks on a street.

That is a city crew at 40th and Butler.

I went out there and watched him.

Uh you don't notice how nice these look compared to Waterborne.

The amount of money we're saving, I roughly estimate per contractor, 5,000 in intersection, the materials is $750 for the city.

And like every single one of you, I'm sure, have asked me at some point for crosswalks.

And this is like they look good, they feel good.

We can do it now.

Like this is they have gotten so good at this.

And so if there are a world in which we could have a truck and three people, we would be blasting these into the city nonstop.

I know that's not something that can be provided right now, but this is where we're going.

And I'll also acknowledge that these guys they support our vision zero projects for construction.

They do the signs, they do the flex posts.

In some cases, they do the thermoplaster crosswalks for the whole project.

And we also have two sign painters for the whole city who painted no one knows how many signs.

I guessed 8,000 signs.

And they don't not only do they do signs, they do everything, they do banners, they do ice rings, they do your informational sign outside this door telling you what this chamber is, they made that sign.

And so I'm just excited about their work.

Like they're great.

17 full-time staff, if I had that right.

Yeah, 17 full-time staff for the whole city.

And then uh last but not least is our signals maintenance group.

This is a rough list of everything they did over the year.

Um, I would probably call their workload one of the more diverse in the city just because of how the traffic signal technology is changing.

And I would also consider them to be essentially first responders because when polls get knocked down, like they are on the scene immediately to secure the site and begin cleanup.

And this is going into it.

These guys not only do they have to do heavy construction and their electricians, but there's a programming element.

There's a network communication element, and they also go out, and there's lines on the ground.

You see the identify utilities underground, we're the ones painting them.

So it's red.

Um, they they handle a lot of work.

We have 600 and I think 15-ish traffic signals in the city plus several flashing beacons.

Um it's a lot.

I also want to highlight their work.

April 29th, 2025.

We had three signal poles knocked down.

At times we had anywhere from probably 75 signals that either were flashing or did not have power, and so they were working non-stop for those first four or five days responding to calls.

Um 100 plus response calls.

And that group is 13 full-time staff.

So I'm really appreciative of all their work.

And I hope this presentation like shed some light in terms of how how much they accomplish for the city.

All right.

Um, so I am the fiscal supervisor, and so I wanted to provide some numbers of what we have done as a department across the whole year through the end of November.

We have spent 73 million dollars of capital funds.

A lot of this has been reimbursed or is reimbursable and will be reimbursed, but that's just a scale of how much money we have spent.

Uh the main drivers of this have been the TIP bridge projects highlighted by Charles Anderson.

Um paving has 19 million dollars and slow projects driven primarily by the Mount Washington PIMA grant, 8.2 million dollars of money spent.

Other project areas that a lot of people ask questions about.

We spent about $4 million fixing up our local bridges, $400,000 in Vision Zero traffic calming work, with the note that there's a lot of work that is still uninvoiced or unprocessed yet, but we'll be coming in maybe in the next month or into the new year.

And then $175,000 in bike infrastructure, which represents about a quarter of a percent of all the money that we've expended on the capital side.

So Dummy is more than just bike lanes.

We have received 26 over 26 million dollars of reimbursements from Pendot for various federal projects and or grants.

And we have applied for $67 million in grant uh $67 million in funding across 20 about across 19 grant projects.

And we're waiting to hear back still on uh big chunk of them.

Uh and that's the wrap of 2025 for 2026.

This is off on Domi has a very small operating budget slide where we are the seventh largest operating department, but we have the fourth largest budget overall because we have 47 million dollars of capital projects in the budget.

And then 61% of our capital money is directed into the paving program.

If you did if you uh remove that, that's 11 million dollars of local funding for all other projects in the city that were managing the city.

Um and so for each non-paving capital dollar, this dummy brings in $1.80 in match or outside funding.

And I will pass it off to Jeff to talk about 2026 stuff.

And we're almost done, I promise.

For 2026, we're looking at add a couple new positions.

Um we do need that infrastructure engagement performance uh manager.

This person will be able to go out to the community, go out to the public meetings, um, engage everybody about our projects.

As you can see, we're really passionate about them.

We want the community and everybody also to know about them and be involved in them.

Um the next one is a press officer.

This is for all of our press releases.

Um we're looking to add a person that's gonna be able to get the social media and take it to the media or to get to um regular media about when our projects are happening.

And the last one is uh excuse me, it's a vision zero coordinator.

Um we talked about this position before.

Um we really this program has been going really well, but we really need a person that's gonna be a part of it.

It's gonna own it and it's gonna drive it um the way it should be.

And we are looking to add two seasonal labors.

This is for Zach and his group.

This is to put two labors in um the bridge division, okay.

Um the 2026 uh milestones.

What to look for is Panther Holdo Bridge will be open this year in 2026.

Um we have three major road reconstructions.

We have Penn Avenue in the Garfield area that will be starting construction.

Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh, and the Liberty Avenue in the strip district.

Um we also have state safe streets for all.

This is part of Vision Zero.

It's a 1.6 million planning grant that we are working with CMU on.

And on um in quarter two of 2026, we'll have the automated red light enforcement deployed.

Um, we also have the traffic management center online.

Um we'll be able to do this by in a remote area and be able to manage and uh take a look at where all the signals are at in the city of Pittsburgh.

Majority of the city lights in city of Pittsburgh, I'm gonna rephrase that.

Um, and also a couple of our projects that we that we are not we do not own, we're not the managers of it, but we do have a lot of city staff time is BRT.

The uptown and Oakland portion will be finished construction in 2026.

Um the big one, the NFL draft.

Um, this is the biggest event that I know in my lifetime in Pittsburgh.

Um, we do have Domi staff that is dedicated to the draft to make sure um it goes well.

We have a lot of people coming in.

We want to make sure they get in safely and get in um appropriately.

So we're working on that um a lot of hours, okay.

Um commercial street bridge detour.

This is a Penn Dot oversight project.

Um, but we've been working with um Malik and his team on the um detour throughout the city of Pittsburgh and with councilwoman's help um to get people around without a lot of major headaches.

Um, and also updates to the TIS.

This is the traffic impact study.

Um, Angie and her group, they have been really um that will be finished in 2026 also.

Um the objectives what we need help to get there.

Again, we're gonna keep on harping on vision zero.

Um we really need to hire that full-time vision zero coordinator.

Um it's been going really well, successful, but we really need that position.

Um, also, you heard it from the whole team.

We want to expand in-house capacity.

Simple people, we need people.

We're doing things in-house, um, plan studies through Angie's group.

They're doing design work in um in Eric and Mike's work and Mike's Mike's group, and also with um Zach with the labor positions of actually fixing bridges and not writing work orders.

Um, it's great to see.

Um, we want to keep it doing and doing it well.

Um also we want to improve delivery of capital projects, grant projects.

I've been with the city now for nine years, and when I first came, we had about five projects on the tip.

That was about that's for federally and state funded projects.

We're about 46 projects in that amount of time.

And then we also have other projects that we receive grant funding.

We want to go after more.

As you can see, we have a hungry team here.

We want to be able to go after those um grants, but we need money.

Um we would like to get a line item or some creative way to be able to go after more grants.

Um, like we said before, a lot of the grants have a 20% match, some a five percent.

Um so for instance, for a million dollar project, if it's a 20% match, it's $200,000 of city dollars we're getting for a million dollar project.

We want to go after it, but we need some money to go after these grants.

Um and also a line or local agreement budget policies with Penn Dot.

Um, this is also to be able to get our projects to go faster.

Um our projects are tied, you guys see us up here a lot in the council chambers to go through legislation.

Charles Anderson, I think we had what 26 legislations to go through.

Um that took us time.

Every time we had to come up to see you guys, we love talking to you guys, but 26 times for a bridge is a lot.

Um that is that makes it go slower and makes it go longer, and we want to get these projects moving and get them open for the public.

Um that is all we have today for you guys.

Any questions?

Great.

Thank you.

Uh yeah, so I'll open it up to members.

Uh Councilwoman Gross.

I know you have a time commit, so comes first.

Yeah, I promise to keep it short for all of my colleagues because I am running out the door.

Um you know we are struggling with budget.

And this is one of these conundrums, right?

It's like, but I'm also really enthusiastic about hearing about doing work in-house.

So most of us have now experienced lots of infrastructure projects.

And when it's all subcontracted, it takes years.

Oh, you didn't make it into the scope for this year, your steps just fell down, and we've already scoped out the contract for next year, and then you've got to wait another year and then another year, and then the price changes.

Um the more of these kinds of things that we can do in-house, we learned the same lesson at PWSA, right?

We used to, you know, everything was outsourced.

The entire capital budget of PWC and all the engineering.

And then, but there wasn't much work done.

And when suddenly, you know, 30 years of work hadn't been done, and you had to do all of the work, we really learned that some of it could be brought in-house, right?

And there were in-house crews ready for when the something happened with the water plant or something like that.

So that's a balance.

We're gonna have to juggle that because we really it is cost savings and it's expeditious, right?

You can get that project done in a year instead of three or four and move on to the next project.

So it it adds up, right?

So it's not in in both time and money, and time is money.

Um, and then um I I wanted to ask about um some of the bridge projects, because we're doing some of that work in-house as well.

Um, and I think this is just some work that I need to look at maybe the capital asset group, right?

Um, I think it was both bridges and retaining walls that we kind of inventoried, and again, nobody had done that in generations, let alone decades, right?

And so now we have like here is the list of our walls.

I don't know what it was, a thousand walls, something like that.

Um, and so what condition are they in?

Is that in cartograph?

Because we were voting on that earlier today.

Yeah, everything, um, our entire retaining wall inventory exists within cartograph.

Great.

And that allows us also to compare to the some of the other utilities like Peter Brazilian's also using cartograph.

True, false?

Do you know this?

I think that's also true.

So maybe something to check on.

It was meant to be true three or four years ago when we were all looking for, you know, for years they were all trying to get Excel to work both so they could actually compare um things like hey, do you already know you've got lots of leaking pipes on this hillside?

Because we've got a retaining wall on that hillside.

Um, and I'm not sure.

I think it was the intention to all both switch over to cartographs so that those things could happen.

So you don't end up closing down the East Busway for three days and periling people's neighborhoods.

Um that's a good idea.

And then I'm just gonna leave.

I was keeping it under five minutes.

I'm gonna leave with a crazy thought.

Engineers sometimes tell us things, right?

Not you know, outside the city.

And um this one was affirmed to me when I visited Chicago a couple years ago with my daughter, and we did one of those river tours around like a little riverboat of the Chicago River, and you're looking at the architecture.

And all of the bridges are open steel mesh.

Great.

That are I have photos of them that I won't spend time finding, right?

And we know that generally people usually don't like them because they kind of go like I'm old enough to remember when like a lot of our bridges.

I think like the Liberty Bridge was like that at one point in my lifetime, right?

They weren't asphalt surface.

And certainly they weren't concrete peers.

And so I'm told by people who like sell steel bridges that they're faster, a lot faster to construct.

Possibly cheaper in some cases and last longer.

I'm not an engineer.

I don't know these things, but I do see that they have them in other cities.

And in the Chicago River ones are, it's it I think that river is smaller than like any of our rivers, but so they are not big bridges.

Um so you're not driving over the steel grate for a long time.

Um but just food for thought since we do have a lot of bridges and they are in terrible shape and they're all concrete and asphalt.

And they've you know, it's expensive to maintain.

So I'll just leave you with that.

Just feed for thought.

Thank you.

I appreciate it, madam chair.

Thank you.

I'm not sure who it was, Councilman Strasberger next.

Councilman Sharland.

I don't remember.

Okay.

Uh so that well, thank you all for for being here.

Um also I want to appreciate thank you for recognizing the overarching uh you know situation that we're in here um in terms of our budget.

And um I you know, I appreciate most of you have referenced kind of the understanding the reality that that we're facing here, uh, which you know, none of us none of us really want to be in.

Um I want to start off though, again, with talking about some of the um our financial constraints here.

Something that is always been on my radar is our inability to go after grants because we don't have the matching funds.

And and really that is us leaving money on the table.

There's so much more work that all of you can do if we were able to have that to have a approval to go over uh, you know, after these monies that exist and we are just losing out on.

Um I really do think it is like you know, there's there's major cost savings that come from that.

Um I I know specifically, you know, Mike.

I think this was you you kind of educated me on this the first and and others have as well.

But the idea of the these green light grow grants that are you know a lot of free money for us, and we should really should never be paying for paying full cost for signal upgrades when there is that money there.

But sometimes we just cannot find the matching funds.

Um, you know, so I I do want to ask you, you know, how much do we think we really need in order to create that that line item that will allow you to go after this additional money?

Um we'll just take a look at that to be give you a better number.

We could take a look at it and get back to you.

Yeah.

I'm not sure top of my head.

I I mean I think it's and the concept that we have been told from O and B we want to require the project managers to go after their own grants is crazy.

I just none of you have time for that.

Um none of none of the folks working for you have have time for that.

I I we need to make sure like that is such a cost savings if we can figure out how to run that correctly.

Yeah, our grants right now for Dillamy, we have Angie Martin, she's one who spearheads it for the department.

Um so the project managers really talk to Angie, and Angie talks to them about what the priorities are.

She works with the grants team at the mayor's office, and that's how good.

Yeah, and you know, just to give you like a sense of scale um for what we would need in that line item, we very likely would be looking um at you know millions in the bigger years.

So like this year, um SPC opened, that's the uh regional MPO.

Um they process a lot of grants that were eligible for our from federal dollars.

Um those are all 20% matches.

Um but we package the the uh projects that we're applying for our corridors.

So we applied um submitted C Mac applications for Warrington Avenue and for Murray Avenue this year.

Um I think Warrington has seven seven signals, uh Murray has nine.

So those projects are seven to nine million dollars.

So to get us the 20% match, um, you know, we have to to be able to meet that.

But again, it's that uh value for we put in 20 and we get you know the 80%.

And these are all infrastructure that are past their current life anyway.

So like realistically, they're maintenance issues as well.

And so us being able to spend our time, you know, putting together really good project proposals, really sound construction estimates and plants, that is a much better use of our time than us having to you know pilfer through old accounts trying to cobble together the local match needed.

I would just like to find a way to make it a little bit more of like a fluid thing.

These are these are money, you know, in the case of the SPC grants, um, that you know the Fed down to this region saying that based on our population, this is how much transportation investment you know we should be making.

And so I hear absolutely right.

Like if we're not going after these grants, we're um leaving money that's for us on the table, and it's just the case that we have to you know match it 20%.

Yeah, I um I you know, I I want to the I I know that there's a lot of projects that you guys all want to work on, but the overarching project that really needs to happen in your department, and and it's not with you as much as it is you know OMB, but that is the that is the project that I think will have the most impact on all of your work.

Um finding a way a way to do that.

Um so I I do hope that we're able to work with the next administration and really figure out a better way um to bring those dollars in and not leave money on the table.

Um, you know, because we have in a situation like this here.

Uh so that being said, uh some more specific projects.

I wanted to talk about the LED light conversion.

Um so we're talking there, we're talking uh street lights, not signals, correct?

Correct.

How far along are we in there?

How are we choosing neighborhoods?

What what's tell me about that project?

I I have not been updated on that in a while.

We're 40% done.

Really?

And so I don't know how many crews we have working a day, but it's just basically like a little chain, they go down, they just chew their way through the city.

It's picked by council district, and there's also an equity component into this in terms of selecting which neighborhoods we go to.

Um it's by and large, it's it's going smoothly.

We started this in April, so we are eight months into it.

Um almost halfway done.

And we have had some concerns about the the light that is emitted, but by and large, compared to our partner cities that did this, you know, four or five years ago.

Um we're lucky to have done it now instead of then because the light technology and how we view street lighting in the city has changed.

Uh so we believe that it'll be completed by the end of next year.

Is it about about right?

I don't want that.

Sounds right to me.

Okay, Jeff, my my boss is saying yes.

I don't want I don't speak out of turn.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh yeah, that's something I mean, since I started here as a staffer, that is something that we've been clamoring for and specifically Beltsover and Knoxville.

Um if you could give me an update on where they are in terms of uh being upgraded there.

We we know that we and it came up uh specifically during Halloween.

We were talking about all the kids running around and not having you know the the neighborhood just being broadly too dim.

What we can do to improve that.

So, you know, please let me know where we are on that.

Yes.

Um, so I guess the other trafficking, I'm I'm sure others will ask you a lot about a lot of the other traffic calming issues here.

Uh and I I often um I I feel like I've spent enough time with you that I I feel like I'm I'm preaching some of your your gospel when I I talk to the that's not good the the you know the the argument that I always make is that no one would pretend to be you know a a bridge engineer, but everyone pretends to be a traffic engineer.

And uh I often well why do you think I'm so angry on the side?

But I I often am I you know like when I'm driving, I'm like, man, these lights they should be time different.

Like, you know, and there's probably a lot more that is into that calculation than I'm aware of.

But how how often are you looking at the you know the timing of lights and um you know like an example that I'm thinking of is like the left left turn signal on the 10th street bridge coming into town?

That's that's green for a second and only a second, and it is on my commute, and I'm mad at you every morning.

You know, you know my number.

Yeah.

But how often are are you looking at that?

So state of good practice is every two years to you do it, but not that's still practice.

As as I'll I will harp on, there are six people on my team who focus on traffic signals, and they're also the ones who are managing the pro like the 60 million dollars of projects.

And so if I'm being painfully blunt, it's when we get time.

Project delivery is always gonna be the thing.

Like that's that's where we make the most difference in my opinion.

Um it's gonna be driven by three one ones, and then simply time.

If someone has time, you can also only like right now.

I mentioned we're doing things dumb.

Yeah, we can only I have to be boots on the ground standing in a corner with a clipboard looking at things to make that adjustment for that protected left turn from Armstrong Bridge onto Second Avenue, 10th Street Bridge.

Um and so the answer is we don't have it programmed.

I would like to, and if we like the things such as the traffic management center, as well as getting fiber, you know, I've struggled so much to get fiber pulled into 412.

So once we get that fiber pulled in there and we can actually talk to the signals, then it's gonna be like on a day-to-day basis, like as we're as we're working, we see problems.

If we get eyes on these traffic signals, we can be doing it as much or as little as we want.

So I I do want to put a request in for you know uh the the test read that I wrote it down.

That's my issue.

I got you.

But I do want to talk about the the rest of Carson Street.

I think that that does need to be retimed, um, especially with the um the safety improvements that have been made on Sarah Street.

I think that is something that we need to need to look through.

Uh if if you know, I'm gonna be happy to if you want to like even if we talk off offline, I'd be happy to look into that.

Yeah.

Um so the uh other thing I want to mention, you know, it uh it will be a big fight for me this year that we're able to get uh I believe it's 200,000 that we need for the uh Baldolf Street, uh, you know, uh kind of uh affiliated with the a porto or the Billy Buck Hill landslide.

Um you know I think that's we're gonna have to find that somewhere.

I I'm not sure where, but um I you know I've talked to you guys about that before.

I I do wonder though, a project like that, where we need 200,000 in the grand scheme of things, not that much money to move forward in design.

Why why is it that you think that OMB did not score?

We're literally saving people's houses.

Why did that project not score well?

I have no idea.

People will be homeless if that project does not.

Yeah, I mean, we were of course discouraged also when we didn't I I don't know.

I mean that's a question for OB.

So if you look in the back of the Capitol budget book, it tells you of the five schools who scored it.

So you can ask the representatives from council how they scored.

Yeah.

Well, maybe we'll talk later, Pete.

But um, I I mean I I am uh like that is what other projects that were you know we're talking today about the how important the housing opportunity fund is and keeping people in their homes.

People are gonna lose their homes if we don't move forward on this project.

You know, I I I just don't understand how kind of how those things don't don't get scored well and and what else in through the city is is struggling like that.

And I do hope that that's something that we're able to change our process around.

Be great, yeah.

Okay, cool.

Uh the last last thing I just wanted wanted to mention um some kind of positives that your department has worked through this year.

I really appreciate all the the work that has gone into the 18th Street.

Um vulnerable road user network.

Um safety improvements, that that has been you know fantastic to see.

Also 21st Street, I think all of us will be happy when we don't have to wonder wonder what's gonna happen with the end of that DC grant there.

Thank you so much for your community process on that.

Um again, wanna want to thank uh you know his Angie and and really Rylan who were able to make some of our our traffic or our parking issues in Southside uh move forward so that we're able to to build a project that we've been litigating for for years now, and you know, it was really a lot of your hours and hard work to be able to make that happen.

Um and the one other employee that is not in your uh necessarily in your department but works so closely with you is is Jan, who has been uh so val valuable for me, you know, to have someone with some level of expertise that can go out into the district, meet with residents, often translate from engineer to you know neighbor, and be able to mitigate that solution, even if it isn't necessarily the result that that the neighbor wants to see, but being able to have someone from Domey and from the city come out there with a level of expertise um is is just so important and um you know I really really appreciate that relationship and how that's been working over the last two years or so.

Jan might be like the most important person to me, right?

And he's a unicorn in terms of it I'm true in terms of his ability to like have the emotional tell us to talk with different audiences as well as the technical aptitude to like learn things, pick them up and convey them.

I can't speak for my colleagues, but my operations suffer if he's not part of them.

Yeah.

She's so good.

Yeah and and knowing you know again um trying to get you to come out to a uh a site visit and your your spread so thin as it is being able to send be able to send yawn so you can continue doing the work that you're supposed to be doing and you know Yon can be yelled at for a little bit no kidding aside like my team has the most public scrutiny I think in terms of our projects and I would burn out and leave this position if I had to go in front of the community the amount of times that are asked.

So having someone like Jan who's removed from that is a major reason why I'm still here.

It's great to hear um all right well you know we will all be talking a lot more I'm sure but just want to want to thank you guys for for coming out today and uh pray for us as we try to figure this budget out.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilman Councilwoman Strasberger.

Thank you.

I'll I'll read reiterate what my colleagues have said about and I've worked with each and every one of you on various projects or programs or task forces and cannot speak highly enough about the work that you and your teams do on a daily basis.

It's just I think that one Evan that one bar chart that shows that the capital relative to operating is the most striking of all of this.

I mean what you are able to accomplish relative to other departments and the budget that you work with based um relative to the the operating that you're given is really something and it has been for a while this is not news.

Okay couple of questions one is if we were to reimagine what I I you know I I see that as um as we have as Domi has been sort of you know it it's not and I would not say it it's it's in its infancy anymore but has it's been you know continuing to grow and learn in which ways it's growing and build the plane why it's while it's flying it right continuing to figure that all out right like you you you learn and then you iterate and then you learn some more and I mean right now we know that when it comes to traffic calming we ha there's not there's a reason there are 2500 individual requests out there, right?

It's because people see that that is the tool that the city has and then they request it and then they see their neighbors getting speed humps and they're like I want that and everyone wants it.

But if there was a world in which I just want to ask the question like anyone who wants to answer in terms of your philosophy or theory if there were the p possibility of of partnering engineering like speed humps or chicanes or whatever it might be shortened crosswalks with increased enforcement that we knew we were going to get um how would that change your approach to some of these and is that would that be a welcomed like additive or would that help supplant some of these requests because we knew hey like this isn't a great candidate for speed humps.

Because we have so many others we have to get to but we know that we could work with public safety or automation to ensure that at this one speedway or intersection we knew that it was I know our Arlie's coming online and that's one thing but that's not going to be everything right so how are you thinking about that?

Yeah um I'll get it started and then anyone else who wants to chime in please um so I think what you're honing in on is really the future of the work especially the vision zero program.

So in recognition that we are not gonna build our way to you know safe drivers or zero fatalities or you know more comfortable you know streetscapes or our residential neighborhoods you know all of these things rely on a combination of roadway design elements um good user behavior um enforcement is one of those things that can change behavior so it's a critical part of the work um as well as like making sure that we have the policies and standards in place to be able to you know regulate at various levels of government so um it's no secret to Domi um that you know we're not gonna build our way to uh you know vision zero or to meet every single one of these needs and that we really need to be working to uh solve things more comprehensively um so you know the things that I am looking forward to sort of on the horizon of this work is Domi doing more of the you know program sort of element um whether that's through visions error working groups um we had our very first vision conference this year which sold out it was excellent um and our complete streets advisory group so how can we sort of engage with residents at a policy level as opposed to having to pretend that every the end all be all is a project because it's absolutely not it's about how we you know respect each other as neighbors it's about how you know if we're choosing to drive or run a red light park too close to an intersection block an ADA ramp.

So, how can we sort of engage with residents at a policy level as opposed to having to pretend that every the end all be all is a project because it's absolutely not.

It's about how we you know respect each other as neighbors, it's about how you know if we're choosing to drive or run a red light, park too close to an intersection, block an ADA ramp.

So the advancing the complete streets advisory group will be one way that we can you know build that out.

Um as a part of that 1.6 million dollar Safe Streets for All grant.

Um there's some additional work in there, um, a street design guidebook, um, which will help us sort of standardize a lot of these uh treatments across the board, um, as well as some funding for a community ambassadors program, and that's where we'll actually be able to uh you know offer small funds, grants, um educational materials for neighbors to talk to their neighbors about um safe streets.

So, you know, we don't need to feel that the only way to have you know people driving responsibly on your street is to install an asphalt hump.

You know, there's other tools and the toolbox, and you know, if we approach these problems comprehensively, um, you know, that's gonna be how we actually you know solve um solve it at the global level and not just you know what's happening on the street outside of my front door.

I I'll just go to suggest that I'm always gonna want to build things hair on fire.

Like I don't see there's a world in which I want that world to exist, but I don't think it's coming anytime soon.

And so I don't see what you suggest changing my approach.

But I think you know, we asked for very we had very few positions we asked for, one of which is a vision zero coordinator.

And so having someone and like I know I've I've heard uh mayor liked O'Connor speak about vision zero, so I have zero concerns about him not moving this forward.

But any time there's a change on like you all's role in terms of making sure vision zero is prioritized, and we have this person who can be dedicated to it full time and like thinking of ideas or working with you collectively is so crucial to moving this forward.

Yeah, no, having engaged with vision zero in various capacities, I see that the benefit and the what I always tell people is it's the multi-departmental approach that really is what makes it special and um what makes it effective as well.

And I know that will grow and iterate as as well in the years to come.

So and I did I mentioned enforcement, but of course, yeah, thank you for reminding us and reminding me that there are multiple elements of what makes safe streets.

Um my my motivation there is both the acknowledgement that there aren't un you know, is public safety and there aren't unlimited funds.

So if there could be a way to in the future reappropriate some of the many, many funds we're spending on the engineering piece to like the ones that are the most necessary, that would be um while also then satisfying the public safety needs that are being asked for, you know, that's what I'm trying to get out there.

Okay.

Um I was um uh honored, I guess is the word to take place in the Charles Anderson Sprint, so-called um uh Charles Anderson Sprint um task force to look at what was mentioned at the end of this presentation about how we can thank you, Eric, for for your for your leadership there on how we can how is it phrased here, approve the uh align local agreement and budget policies with PendOT and SPC policies, bring down the number of times that something like a bridge project is coming back to council.

Um that was eye-opening, just how the like long and security route that any kind of budget or project that has to do with Pend Dot takes like shoots in ladders.

And I just want to ask like who is owning that so that we can continue moving that forward despite an administration change because I don't want to lose that work.

I think it's really crucial that we figure out some solution to make these projects go faster on the on the on the on the on the like bureaucratic end, not necessarily the design end, maybe the design end too.

Um I will say, I mean I was really excited that we did some of that work with Charles Anderson and some of the follow-up we had.

And you know, I saw some hope, and I think it kind of lost steam over this past year.

Um in the new year and really put some effort into it, some time into it.

Um, particularly now with with Zach being my deputy and taking a closer oversight of the structure stuff, I would like to spend some time on like the process improvement aspect.

Um, you know, if you're still excited about that, I would be happy to work together and see what we can do in the new administration.

Um I don't I think it's hard.

I mean, I think even just like even just explaining all the steps that lead to the time is like it's it's hard to even like just explain where we're at and why it takes so long.

Um I think there's a lot of things that could be done.

I think a lot of them are very complicated and are gonna require everyone from different department for the mayor's office from consult to buy in if we want to try to pursue some of those and changes.

Um but I think it could pay like as we've acknowledged we we want more staff.

We are not in a situation where we can expect to have any significant staff growth this year because of the budget is so tight.

But on the flip side, if we reduce the workload, that has the same effect of allowing us to um just move things through in a faster.

And and the overall goal, of course, is to deliver projects that help our citizens.

So it's it's not about to us, I think we want to get the project delivered and we want to, you know, I think we do enough of that work, enough of that 80 to 100% federally funded work that it could be worth looking specifically in that area.

Are there processes that maybe only apply to those things?

But you know, it's worth potentially having separate processes that would would align with the way the feds give us money and allow those things to move faster.

So yeah, I'm hoping that that there'll be some appetite to to look at that again in the new year.

So to put a scale on that, we've advanced around 80 pieces of legislation this year.

I would say 60 of those uh somehow tied to either uh a TIP project, either an RA issuance, adjustment supplement, or the contracting piece.

So we've been to the council 60 times for projects that uh budget approved, and just we have to come here to either add additional federal money that we've got because a new phase is coming online, or a phase went over budget and we went to SBC, got the extra $300,000.

So we have to come back here, go through the six-week process of legislation, and then go through the four-month contracting process.

So there is definitely Eric is right.

If we could find a way to streamline that process, we could save a ton of time on that end.

And I could add one more thing to that.

The the task force you mentioned was stood up when we were trying to get the Charles Anderson construction agreement executed within the notice to proceed window that we have for these Penn Dot oversight projects.

Um, you know, I felt that it was critical that we did it, that we meet that goal, but I didn't know if we could.

And folks were were kind enough.

We know we had weekly meetings.

Um you were on, I was on, and we had various directors and and you know, chiefs and lots of lots of folks from every department in these meetings weekly, and we made it happen.

Um, which is great, but obviously you can't do those meetings for all projects.

You shouldn't have to.

We're currently working towards notice to proceed on our Penn Avenue phase two project.

Um we're waiting for some agreements.

Notice proceed is supposed to be given on January 5th.

We are very close to the end of the year shutdown, and I'm not, you know, just trying to get some information today if we're gonna meet that date, and I'm not sure if we're going to.

Um, but I want to find a way that we don't have to have everybody on weekly calls to make it happen, just make a process that works.

Absolutely.

We have to wait make a way for government to work for people without all the bureaucracy there, right?

Like we just want the bridges to be fixed and in place and built, and and that's that, right?

So to answer your question, Eric is gonna be so glad to hear it.

And then I was debating whether to ask this question.

There's there's news coming out that is a I think surprise to some of us on council that um Waymo drivers realist taxis might be coming to Pittsburgh and wondering if there was anything that has that that you're aware of that has um where where they have interacted with city government at all.

I'll go ahead and take that because um new mobility services and sort of these uh new uh mobility or technology deployments happen to fall under the planning group.

Um so we were not aware there's been you know a public uh I had news article that came out about Waymo, which operates um autonomous vehicles in several cities throughout the country uh coming to Pittsburgh.

Um in the state of Pennsylvania, uh we've been preempted at the state level in order to uh put very much potentially any regulation on those operators.

Um however, uh we maintain a really good relationship with the Pennot Central office that does issue the state level permits.

And so um we're in the process of lining up conversations with them to see what we might be able to do at the local level, even though it looks like we've been preempted at the state.

So this is a company that operates again um in other cities.

Um I believe that they are operating in Philadelphia.

But we have had, I think, success in working with these new technology deployments.

So it's not an foreign concept to us.

We've seen them deployed in other cities, which means we have good examples of things that work, things to kind of be prepared for.

But certainly, you know, well, we're gonna try to get as much ahead of it as we possibly can.

Um because there will be questions that the public will have as these you know autonomous uh vehicles are are deployed on city streets.

I appreciate your answer.

It's a very diplomatic way of putting it.

And um I hope that they I hope that you are able to work with them and that they come to us to work with us as well.

So um those those are the extent that's the extended my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Oh thank you.

I want to thank you all for all of the work that you do across the city of Pittsburgh.

But this is actually one of the departments that actually does a lot of work in district two, whether you want to or not, landslides and you know other things that happen there, but and I want to thank you for always responding and always trying to come up with something to prevent the $14 million worth of work um to stabilize Grandview in that area.

So that helped both of us.

Um I want to thank you for all that work and how do you check on it to see how that's holding up?

Yeah, we get out there.

Yep.

Yeah.

And you think it's okay so it's doing great, yeah.

We did have some small repairs made to the green leaf sites.

Okay.

Um those are good now.

And um yeah, we'll keep monitoring it.

It'll go into our retaining wall inspection program.

I got a little nervous because I went by one day.

I'm thinking that doesn't look good.

Yeah, they're back out there.

The heart starts racing.

As if it's me causing the landslide.

So um okay, so um thank you for thank you for for the uh your work there.

But so McGuardle and then Elliott, you're doing a lot of work in Elliot.

A lot of the so many landslides or uh slope remediation issues.

I think we have the number one in the city in district two, the number you know, the most in district two.

So um and how are you with funding for those for the cut the coming year?

Same thing.

Yeah, so um Herndon Street, of course, is one of the ones that you're referencing.

We do have the funding for that.

It should be going out to bid for construction um within the next couple weeks.

Um and we'll start work next year.

So that's funded.

Um I don't believe that there is specific funding for some of the other streets up there right now.

We've been, you know, been asking for a number of years now.

Um did get funded and and has progressed.

But correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think.

Emerald View.

Emerald View, not on in Elliott, but over um in the mount, yeah.

Yeah, in the mount.

That one, that one has funding, so that one's progressing.

Good.

Okay.

And then you're doing a lot of work on McGardle.

Yep, yep.

And so I just want people to know that there's a lot of work.

I can I'm not gonna go through all the lists, but I do know that there's significant work from your department in district occurring in district two.

One of the things I do want to talk about is the bike infrastructure and the traffic calming.

And I I love the idea of calming traffic.

I like the idea of maybe making people take their driver's less test, you know, license test over again.

I don't know.

I think there's just such a problem right now.

I really do.

I mean, all everywhere I go, no matter what city, no matter what state, it's an issue.

And so um I would like to see something more there.

But I do worry that when we're putting in all this infrastructure to slow things down, that we're also slowing down our first responders.

And I also am concerned that when you're putting in infrastructure, we have an aging population in the city of Pittsburgh, and it's not as easy to navigate those things, you know, when you're when you're an elderly person.

Trust me, I'm elderly.

So I guess so I want to know um do you take any of that into consideration?

You know, the the ability, you know, ability of other people, or is it just we want to put bike infrastructure in and that's it?

That's a that's a nuanced answer.

Uh what I will say is certainly not we just want to put in bike infrastructure, that's it.

Like nothing traffic I actually think is traffic engineering is the only like human-centered branch of civil engineering, I think.

And so everything we do from traffic signals, whatever has to have some form of human design around it.

Um from from the um the aging population in terms of driving.

I that is not I know of I don't know of any literature that could guide me about having having like in intersection devices or at things be age-friendly.

Um people do complain about their ability to navigate them, which even though it's that's like a frustrating thing, that can be embarrassing at times.

Like if someone's having trouble navigating navigating the stuff, it means they're probably moving very slowly, which in my mind is a a good thing, like because if you're moving slowly, then your likelihood of you severely injuring or killing someone is severely reduced.

Um it comes to bike lanes.

If you're driving, I think, right?

Not if you're walking.

If you're if you're driving a car.

Yeah.

So and so people see.

I'm concerned about the people, the pedestrians.

You know, senior citizens.

No.

Sure.

Is that their seniors and people we've heard from people from the dis you know varying ability communities and um they have trouble navigating their you know equipment and stuff.

And I had talked about this before, maybe talking to and working with and putting when you have a task force working with um pioneer school and school for the blind and different people to get a group of people.

So you're getting diverse opinions.

That's all.

And maybe some of the senior centers or something.

Angie's work with complete streets.

I'm happy to talk about the first responders more, but anybody's gonna be able to do that.

I'd be livid if I put money into a business and you just plop down bike lanes down Penn Avenue without you know, having a real feedback with them and trying to figure out how you could work with them.

I went down there the other day.

I couldn't believe it, to be honest with you.

But um for me that's my those are my concerns, other than um making sure that we're doing the continuing the projects.

I'm happy that you're putting in the lights.

Um the speed bumps, I wonder why we're not doing more of the in-house if we're even trying to train anyone to do it in-house.

So Domi doesn't have um the street division.

Um it's uh goes through DBW, and we were working with DPW on um we actually had them shadow um our team, not our team, the contractor that makes speed humps.

So right now that'd be a DPW function, but we were working on it with um so that we do it in-house.

Um we're looking to do that in 2026.

It'll be easier, cheaper, faster.

Um we're just gonna keep on continuous conversations with DBW.

I just think it would probably you know eliminate that list, that waiting list a little bit if you could do it in-house when you need it just.

If we had the people in the material dummy would do it, but right now it sits with DPW.

Well, I'm sure the new administration coming is gonna make some changes from from that, from what I understand.

From what I understand.

I could I could be miss I could misunderstood.

But I think in terms of making sure that you everybody can operate the way they need to.

Um everybody does it.

Every administration comes in and makes some some kind of changes.

Um The other thing I want to know about the li the timing of the lights of the West End Circle.

Who does that?

You do that?

So what I hear all the time, constantly, is that the West End is held up while they're coming through the the strip to go over the bridge from the South Hills.

So it's a our people are held up at the West End Circle and traffic's backed up all the way up, you know, uh Noble stown road.

Well, meanwhile the cars are flying through.

Sure.

You know.

So they're always asking about the timing of those lights.

And we've we've addressed them a couple of times, but it's still just not not perfect.

Our people in the West End are constantly waiting.

Oh, add this to my list.

Yeah.

It's in the West End, so I just want to make sure.

You know, because I mean Yon actually lives right by there.

So does David Fromm.

For the record, Yan has never complained to me.

Can I just say no?

He doesn't complain about anything because they're amazing.

They are amazing.

All three of those guys, Dave, uh David Fromm and Juan and Ronnie Fryermouth.

They're all just amazing District 2 domy residents.

Um but I just want to I'll end it with um Evan.

You know, if you could just tell me, you know, my husband and your father-in-law, Bob Sharlin's dad have worked together for over 40 years.

And the same I get invited to the family reunions every year.

So when I'm there, the one thing I keep hearing his mother say is I don't know why I don't have any grandkids.

I plead the fifth.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to ask you on behalf of Hit Bob's mom.

She wants to be a grandma.

And you're fiscally responsible.

So you say, you know, you should probably get you could probably get uh tax you know write up or something.

Well the record, the question's from uh dad, not to dad.

Okay, Bob put me up to it.

But thank you all for your work.

And thank you, Councilwoman, for having the meeting.

I think the media has its clip right now.

Um there any other follow-up questions for members?

You want to ask if he's gonna have kids?

I've got some kids you can borrow some of mine.

Yeah, so I I you know I just want to say thank you all so much.

I the sheer volume of work that this department does is just truly mind boggling, right?

With 120 people.

Um yeah, I mean it's it's I mean, we we we've been sitting here just to get through the presentation alone is um uh it's incredible, right?

Like the accomplishments from from every section and you are all so organized and um so responsive.

And I know it can be it can be tough because Domi does it's not stuff that can be done right away, right?

Like someone calls and they're like, I you know, I need some traffic calming on my street or whatever, that's what we get the most calls, and you can't do that.

It's that's not filling a pothole, right?

That's not um although signs, the sign shop is incredibly fast.

If the sign's down, the sign gets up back up immediately.

I mean, and so the things that uh that can be done quickly, right, whether as a broken light or whatever, right?

Um are always done quickly.

And um and uh you know the work is is very impressive, all the longer term work.

Um I think it's great that um that we're beginning to work with the utilities to put traffic calming in.

Uh that's that's nice to hear.

I know that utility coordination, I'm actually probably gonna call a post agenda at some point in the new year about utility coordination because I've been hearing a lot, right?

Just to get the utilities here and get um Brian Ralson here and I just say Brian Rolson's another great dummy.

It leaves in district two, so fiercely defensive.

But just because that's something that comes up a lot with residents.

Um, you know, uh lots of people have opinions about how we need to be doing that better, and so it's worth a conversation at least.

But um uh but I'm glad that that that that's happening with with traffic calming.

And um, you know, we do have this large paving budget.

Um 19.5 million this past year, right?

And I it would it would be um interesting to see so many people want speed humps, right?

That if that paving could include a speed hump, if it meant that we did a few less miles, but on the miles that we did do, we were able to drop a speed hump in, you know, that might be worthwhile.

That might be something to think about.

I know that that folks, I mean, you know, over 2500 individual requests is a lot.

Um you know John Klinger's team is fantastic, does a great job.

Um you know, one thing I do just with with regard to the traffic calming and the bike lane infrastructure.

I know that the sort of the in in the in the Facebook comments and I hear it a lot, you know, just out about is this um this sort of statement of well they have all this money for traffic, you know, they have all this money, like the cities has all this money for traffic calming, has all this money for this and that, but why can't we do and I so I just want to underscore I believe you know, looking at this report between traffic calming and bike infrastructure is 575,000?

Is that so that is how much we have spent year to date?

The there's workloaders out there on traffic calming that still haven't been paid.

So that number would change if we run it at the end of the year.

So tops, right?

TOPS in 2025, what?

One and a half tops.

One and a half million.

And we spent 19.5 million on paving, right?

I I will say that a portion, part of our coordination um of developing the paving list involves us looking at the traffic calming and visions era projects that Mike's team is planning on uh installing.

Yeah.

Um so what we've done for the past couple of years now is actually build the paving um into or build traffic calming into the paving program.

So this year, about $800,000 of the paving budget um did go to help support the installation of the Vision Zero projects.

Right, but e I I hear you.

And even so, right?

Like when we're looking at numbers of stuff, you know, money that we spend, the amount of uh the the improvement in the quality of life that we get out of these traffic calming projects, right?

Of just simply slowing the cars down, of allowing cyclists a safe place to ride next to the cars, not in front of the cars, right?

Um is minuscule compared to what we spend just on smoothing out the roads so that it's not like a bumpy ride when you're driving your car.

So I just for that's maybe just for other council members, just to like have that in your in your back pocket when people say, well, we have all this money to spend on traffic calming.

We don't spend that much money on it, right?

And the amount that we have that we get, right?

The amount that your team is able to do um with such small amount is um is impressive, or I think so anyway, and I would love to see more.

Um the uh I I didn't realize how many of the street lights, 40%.

That's that's impressive.

I didn't realize how many, um, how much of that had been had been um installed.

I know I I have some I I have a I have a note to myself to send an email to to Denny about I it's funny because now I have a few people that are like it's too bright.

So which I don't know, maybe it is, but but that's that's you know, if it's going in the window.

So um, but you know, I don't that's just that's a that's just an incredible, it's just like one more thing, like one more small thing that was like a huge accomplishment.

And I and even as the chair, right?

Like I didn't even really realize it's a vision zero project.

Yeah.

Like street lighting saves lives.

Yeah.

And it's just flying under the radar.

It's not fly, but like it's and it's one person who's managing it.

And yeah.

Yeah, it's New York Times article about it that Denny refused to have his picture in because he's shy.

Which is why I'm talking about him more here.

Yeah.

But yeah, and he'll he'll take care of it.

Like he'll he'll do it remotely.

Anytime I have a letter, it's it's done immediately, right?

Um at any rate, um, and it was funny in that storm, the you know, the April storm when all the the electricity was out, and um uh I went out walking around my neighborhood, and it was weird to have it be so dark.

And it was dangerous, right?

Like it felt very dangerous because people were driving, people were out driving, and like all these people were out walking around, even with little handheld lights.

So, you know, um the one thing sort of future looking um that oh well I can ask you that.

I'm just gonna ask about the Green Light Go grant for Mifflin.

But I can ask you about that another time.

Well, any day now.

Okay, great.

Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, Lincoln Place.

We have to do that.

I check the webpage twice a day.

Okay, great, great.

Um, but uh what I wanted to to ask about sort of future looking, so you know, we see we pay we we're spending on all these projects, but but um I wanted to ask about sidewalks.

Um just in general, I I feel like we are so hamstrung in Pittsburgh with this um where people are responsible for their own sidewalk.

And um, and what is the what is the budget look like?

I mean, and and even and I and I so appreciate the critical sidewalk gaps program, like it's great, but I mean I I think it was said 2.3 miles of sidewalk.

And um there's just so many places around Pittsburgh where the sidewalks are are not in some places they're really not passable, and other places it's just not, you know, it's just not a comfortable walk, whether it's trees or whatever.

Um are there any thoughts about ways that we could um improve or sort of out of the box again?

I'm not saying that that some but yeah, yeah.

Um so ultimately, you know, building sidewalks is a construction project.

Um I believe that last year we had 700,000 in critical sidewalk app funding um and the 2026 draft 350,000.

I don't know why I remember that.

Those numbers just really stuck with me because it means we're gonna be doing about half as many sidewalk projects than we did this year.

Um so you know, ultimately we have to have the money lined up for construction.

Um of the things on like the planning and programming side, um one of the things in the presentation that I just didn't hit on for the sake of time, uh Domi worked with our uh GIS department this year um to create a um interactive mapping tool um that will allow trained users um to be able to log um sidewalk condition information.

So we went through an entire process of creating a manual with photos that says this is what a crack looks like, this is what scaling looks like, like, and so that you know, there's a way to like numerically rate the condition of the sidewalk um with this manual, get it in a GIS format, report it back to the city.

Um that's gonna help us close the gap on sort of the data piece and like an understanding of the magnitude of the issue.

Um the other benefit of it, I think is that we're um doing that by leveraging the interest of advocacy groups.

So um to make this effort happen, um, it was an organization called Pittsburgh Walks that came to Domi and said sidewalks are our priority.

How can we work together to help it make it easier for Domi to build more sidewalks?

And so one of the things we can do, we know we struggle with is the data piece.

Um so this is hopefully gonna help us build out um you know, at least an inventory of where the need is.

Um, I think always looking for creative, you know, funding solutions, whether they're you know, grant programs where the city can help, you know, defer the cost of repair, um whether it's you know, working with utilities and developers to make sure that sidewalks are a priority when we're talking about um, you know, uh investment or work done by others.

So um it's definitely you know a critical piece of our infrastructure.

We don't know the magnitude of the need right now because of that data piece.

Um and yeah, at the end of the day, like I said, it's a it's a construction um it's a construction need.

I don't know, Eric, if there's anything to add.

No, not too much.

I mean, I think you know as sidewalks are are part of the mobility network in a perfect world, we would be able to manage them the same way we do the asphalt in the street.

Um, you know, that that's a potentially huge amount of investment and we're in a tight budget.

Yeah.

I mean, I yeah, I I uh obviously not not this year, but um uh but I've thought I I believe it was in Denver.

Um, introducing the idea of sort of like a a sidewalk tax and in exchange, you're not responsible for your side.

You know what I mean?

Like in exchange for that, then and then we just address sidewalks with whatever budget we have, just like we do with paving, right?

Like we get to your street.

I mean, if it's urgent, urgent, then okay, it can get pri it gets prioritized, but we could address sidewalks in the same way, right?

And if we could generate um the funds to do that, and then take the burden off of the property owner to to have to fix the sidewalk.

I know that there's like maybe liability implications and whatnot in that, but I think that it's something worth thinking about.

Um also um just since we're so I was in um I was in London over the summer for a couple of days, and I they have in a few spots these these weird, like it's sidewalks, they look like like playground surfacing.

Is that something?

I don't know if they're permeable.

It was just interesting.

I just wonder in terms of cost if there's something that's like less expensive than your typical than you know, typical concrete sidewalk.

Um I haven't seen that one.

I'm not sure.

I would, you know, this is what it felt like.

I don't know.

This is sort of like a rubbery, it was like a rubbery sidewalk.

I mean, we you know one of the lower cost things.

There are some areas in the city with asphalt sidewalks, which is not standard and we don't encourage it, and they don't last long as long, but there are some out there.

Yeah.

Um I don't have an exact answer, but I think we're you know, always want to be open to whatever folks are figuring out in the world and see if it applies to us.

Yeah.

I'd also I mean, in in areas too, some like in like the 31st ward, for example, I know we've talked about even just using lines, right?

Because there's no sidewalks, right?

Like areas where there are no sidewalks at all, um, just using painted lines to sort of at least create like a space where you can walk and the cars kind of know, and that might serve to narrow the road too and slow cars down.

Um be something interesting, just a low cost, you know, maybe that's a vision zero conversation for next year.

But um, yeah, I don't really have anything else.

I just it's always such a pleasure working with everyone from Domi.

And you do so much, and you're also at everything.

You're at everything that everyone else does too, it seems like, you know, when I go to events and things like there's there's always seems to be engagement from Domi in some form or another, uh, which is nice, right?

That's the the that's very nice.

And all the in-house work that you do.

I mean, it's incredible, right?

Like all the planning and engineering and designing, and it's all done, you know, with with with a very small team.

So very productive.

Productivity high with Domi.

So it's much appreciated.

Um anyway, I don't have anything else.

If there's any last thoughts before we break.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So with uh, I guess we've exhausted the uh the business of this hearing, and with that we can adjourn.

Recess, recess, recess.

With that we can recess.

Do I need a motion?

No.

Yeah.

Motion recess.

Motion to recess.

All right.

Thanks.

Thank you, guys.

Profits that do similar work or entities within the city itself.

There's lots of different departments that have litter activity that might not be like meeting on a regular basis or might not be collaborating.

And so our recommendation is having a staff, a city staff member who's really supporting the Clean Pittsburgh Commission to like all of the administrative details behind that commission, but also making sure that they're funneling up nonprofit projects and then funneling down work from the city of Pittsburgh itself.

It's also an opportunity to do some traffic directing to make sure that if we have an organization that's really focusing on cleaning up homewood, because they got a really they got a great grant to help support that, that our other nonprofit partners say, well, let's use our resources elsewhere.

There has been some challenges with approving new commissioners, some like very lengthy delays, I've heard up to a year, and that prevents new talent and perspectives from coming on board to help moving that work forward.

So again, our first recommendation is getting an anti-litter admin person to help guide the Clean Pittsburgh Commission.

And here's a graphic that kind of shows how we envision that funneling up and funneling down.

And we also want to highlight that they wouldn't just be supporting and coordinating with nonprofit partners.

We're thinking of the contract that the Department of Public Safety recently got for neighborhood stewards, and they're doing anti-litter work, making sure that that's all singing from the same choir book.

Our second recommendation is infrastructure.

Infrastructure, like we said earlier, is the number one deterrent for litter.

And we know that that's a current conversation with the city of Pittsburgh when they just went through looking at a capital asset management plan and managing aging vehicles and garbage trucks.

So we highly recommend uh increase uh updating that equipment to help with DPW capacity.

We also know that there's an interest in bringing in new garbage cans, and while that's a significant investment that we believe would help with a lot of the garbage day litter that we hear about uh on a regular basis.

We've seen that it made a lot of improvement when recycling cans came onto streets.

So providing um citizens with a garbage can would help with the same.

And also uh for infrastructure, you know, it's holding people accountable to the systems that we have set up within that infrastructure.

For one, um, it's a requirement that haulers are supposed to cover their load when they're driving down highways.

Uh it's ironic that on my way here to this meeting, I was driving on 28 on a mile that we just had um maintained through the sponsor highway program, driving behind a hauler who had a full load uncovered with litter falling out of it.

So if we have the infrastructure there with the garbage truck and the tarp there, it has to be used.

And it was not a city of Pittsburgh garbage truck, it was a private hauler.

Third, public education.

We really need dedicated pup uh funding to help educate people on how trash systems work, even down to their recycling day in um how garbage works and uh different collection events throughout the year.

Um and I would highly recommend like going to an outside marketing firm who understands how information, visual information is received from people.

It's really how you empower citizens to make the best choices with their trash.

Um beyond uh marketing education, like you know, campaigns to help people understand um the impact of litter and and solutions in their own communities.

Fourth, we want to suggest that the city of Pittsburgh consider expanding contracts with nonprofit organizations that offer expanded capacity organizations like Friends of the Riverfront, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Allegheny Cleanways, Allegheny Goatscapes.

These are all organizations that do aligned work in the community.

Um the fact of the matter is that the city of Pittsburgh has the most philanthropic dollars per capita of any city in the country.

And uh these are all nonprofits that want to work in alignment with um our community.

And so there's a real opportunity here for the city itself to um bring them along for expanded capacity.

And also it's not just capacity and brute labor that they're bringing.

They're also bringing along thousands of community volunteers who develop civic pride, learn more about trash systems in their community, and that makes long-term impact um with their behavior.

And our final recommendation is to partner with the City of Pittsburgh to support DPW employees from environmental services and the streets bureaus.

Um we hear a lot of anecdotes that uh a lot of the litter starts with trash day litter collection, but we would really like to spin some of that narrative to say like what if we go to frontline workers directly to learn what are they seeing on their garbage routes on garbage day, what kind of resources could they uh have to help reduce litter?

Um, why is litter coming up with garbage collection?

Um, and just hear from them directly what what they may need um in their day-to-day work to help reduce the problem.

And that's our final slide.

Right.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

I also want to mention we're joined by uh Councilwoman Strasberger.

Um Great.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And then uh why don't we launch right into the DPW presentation and then we can do questions at the end.

Yeah?

Okay.

Okay.

Uh at this time I'd like to invite um you know some of my fellow members in public works that will have speaking roles in this presentation.

Um they could join us here and introduce yourselves for the public.

See, do we have enough chairs?

Yeah.

I'm Marcel Muran, Assistant Director on Public Works.

Hi, uh Eric Antakus, I'm inspection supervisor for the Department of Public Works.

Bill Crean, Deputy Director of Public Works.

Christopher Mitchell, project coordinator public works.

Anna Bagwell, environmental enforcement coordinator for public works.

Thank you all for coming.

Um, today we're gonna uh talk about a um a few things.

Um what we in public works consider litter and litter prevention.

Uh we just want to give a very brief history of garbage and litter.

Um and then we want to talk about our many and varied uh litter prevention programs, which include like our public engagement and communications, enforcement, street sweeping and litter can collection, some of our other standard operating procedures that also um address litter, and then our clean and lean and illegal dumping uh programs, and then at the end we'll just have a kind of uh a summary of needs and recommendations.

Um with that, what do we consider litter?

I mean, the you know, your basic definition is it's trash in an open or public space.

So we in the city classify litter in one of two ways.

We either consider it to be litter or we consider it to be legal dumping, um, depending on the size and scale, the scope of the materials involved.

We have found um through all of our work that litter begets more litter.

Um and so it will escalate it until it's addressed.

So we view this as constant vigilance is required.

This is why we love uh the Clean Pittsburgh Commission.

This is why we love our many nonprofit partners within the city that help us in this matter because we feel that all litter cleanup is litter prevention.

Um, there is kind of an internal joke that I like to share in the sign.

This is if you want to know where legal dumping is happening, go look for the sign that says no illegal dumping.

Um that's pretty much your first indicator that illegal dumping is happening there on a regular basis.

And so we try very hard to take a holistic approach to litter prevention through all the services that we offer.

Um with that, I just want to invite uh Chris Mitchell to speak a little bit about our brief history of garbage and litter.

So um previous to this role I had uh it was uh uh listed as the anti-litter specialist for the City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works, and in that I I learned a lot about how the city has operated on litter and also about the psychology of litter and and um uh all of these systems that we are up against here.

So previous to this role, I had a it was uh uh listed as the anti-litter specialist for the City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works, and in that I I learned a lot about how the city has operated on litter and also about the psychology of litter and and um uh all of these systems that we are up against here, and um not to start this on a down note, but I really always want to emphasize when talking to people that at no point in human history have we ever dealt with this much waste.

This is unprecedented and it's likely only to get worse.

And um we can't come into this thinking we can solve this to root.

We can't um it is a global system of overconsumption, of late state capitalism, whatever you want to call it, but uh this is we are dealing with the down effects uh of these larger systems.

And uh that's not to say that we can't do anything.

There's absolutely things we are doing, there's absolutely more that we can do, but we're not going to solve this locally.

I hope I'm not bursting too many bubbles here.

Um but uh um you know we we we do have unique challenges in Pittsburgh that we've got to find ways around.

We do have high um you know rates of unoccupied homes uh located um uh in densely in some areas.

We do have we are a majority renter um city that also contributes to this problem is that the higher the homeownership is, the more likely there is to be people taking care of their own properties.

Um so we might see it a little bit more than other cities, but that's because of those structural problems that we're not going to be able to solve by focusing on litter.

Um those problems are going to be solved higher level than that.

Um I also won't, you know.

Last time I I came and spoke to um city council here, I did talk about the need to measure litter, as in our uh uh litter index pilot in 2019, we found this inverse relationship between 311 requests and litter and where the litter was found, and so that when we focus a lot on reducing those requests, we may be servicing people who need it the least and ignoring the people who need it the most, so that we have to make sure that we're talking about having a holistic uh approach.

We're not focused on reducing the amount of complaints because those complaints largely are generated by the people who suffer the least from these issues.

Um just because we can't solve this to root locally does not mean we we we absolutely can work smarter, we can adapt, we can improve.

I I fully believe there's no such thing as a perfect system, and that's always good.

That means we can always approve upon what we're doing, and I'm um really uh uh impressed by a lot of the um ideas put forward uh by today.

So thank you.

Um I now want to invite uh Marcel Newman and Anna uh to speak about our work in public engagement and communications.

Right.

So uh between myself and the enforcement office and our recycling office with uh help from Vanessa Reeves uh and Helena Procopio Ross.

Uh we've hosted 30, more than 30 outreach events this year.

Uh