Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Meeting - October 7, 2025: Dockless Vehicles Extension and Airport Advisory Board Appointments
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Meeting - October 7, 2025
The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met on October 7, 2025, from 2:02 PM to 4:20 PM. The meeting covered a one-year extension of the dockless vehicle program contracts and initiation of a new RFP, as well as interviews and recommendations for appointments to the Airport Advisory Commission. No public comments were made.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of minutes from the previous meeting was moved and seconded, passing unanimously.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No members of the public signed up to speak.
Discussion Items
- Dockless Vehicles Program (1-Year Extension and RFP): John Stevens (CCDO) presented the item. Since 2018, over four million trips have been taken with two current vendors (Bird and VO). Program revenues were approximately $373,000 per year, with FY25 revenue from ride fees ($175,000) and compliance fees ($146,000). The proposed one-year extension would maintain the current contract terms (2-year base + 1-year renewal, 1,000 vehicles per vendor). Staff sought committee endorsement for the extension and feedback to initiate a new RFP in summer 2026. Council members discussed community feedback on sidewalk clutter, geofencing (including sensitive areas like River Walk, Alamo Plaza), accessibility concerns (e.g., from Disability SA), competition among vendors, and safety records. Council requested a follow-up memo including a geofencing map, comparisons with other cities, and an analysis of adding a third vendor. The committee voted unanimously to endorse the extension and proceed with the RFP.
- Airport Advisory Commission Appointments: Debbie Ruckstuhl (City Clerk) presented the background. 78 applications were received, 67 deemed eligible. An ad hoc committee shortlisted candidates. The committee interviewed 11 applicants in two-minute opening statements and three questions each. Applicants represented aviation industry, travel/tourism, business community, and community at large. After executive session (3:49 PM – 4:18 PM), the committee reconvened.
Key Outcomes
- Motion 1 (Minutes): Approved unanimously.
- Motion 2 (Dockless Vehicles): Motion to endorse the one-year contract extension and initiate a new RFP passed unanimously. Item will go to full city council in early November.
- Motion 3 (Airport Advisory Commission): Motion to recommend the following individuals to full city council for appointment through March 18, 2027, passed unanimously:
- Airport Business Lease: Mark Provost
- Aviation Industry: Doyle Turner
- Travel and Tourism Industry: Wilson Luong
- Business Community: Marcia Hendler, Brian Morris, Christy Villanueva
- Community: Ignacio Reyes, Marco Barros, Jose Lerma
- The meeting adjourned at 4:20 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Well, let's try to get through them. The time is now 2 02 p.m. on October 7th, 2025, and the meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is now called to order. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Councilmember Corr. Councilmember Mungia. Present. Councilmember Aldete Gavito. Councilmember Spears? Here. Chair McKee Rodriguez. Wonderful, thank you so much. We're gonna do things a little bit out of order, but we are gonna start off with uh first item on the agenda is approval of minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion for approval. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Item passes. Uh Madam Clerk, are there any members of the public signed up to speak? No, there is no public comment. Okay, next time. Uh, like I said, we're gonna do things a little bit out of order. I'm gonna ask via Metropolitan to hold off just a little bit. Uh you'll be the last item today if we're able to get through all the interviews and whatnot, but we're gonna start off with uh item three. Or item yes, three. Good afternoon. Uh John Stevens, C C DO. Um, have a short item for you related to Dockless Vehicles. Uh currently we have two vendors in the market, and this will be a uh one year contract extension. Uh and then we're seeking feedback from you all on initiating an RFP for future contract award. Oops, excuse me. So the Dockless Vehicles first launched here in 2018. We've completed two RFPs at this point. Under both of those RFPs, we selected two vendors. Um our current operators are Byrd and VO, and since our program was initiated, over four million trips have been taken. The current contract terms is that each vendor has a two-year agreement with a one-year renewal. Each company is allowed a thousand vehicles, uh, and then we had several other important contracting goals, which included geofencing of priority downtown sidewalks to soil vehicles, uh, voice uh voice alerts to vehicles, and then there's a section of the agreement that allows flexibility for increasing vehicle counts, and we had always committed to coming back to the transportation committee uh uh council committee before we would ever do that. So program revenues. You can see that uh program revenues rose in FI25 compared to 24. Uh and the program makes about 373,000 a year. The city basically earns revenue in several ways. There's a per vehicle annual fee, there's a 30 uh cent ride chair revenue uh for each trip taken, and then we receive um fee-based revenue for violations. Um and those violations are really for sensitive areas like the River Walk and Alma plaza when the vendors fail to comply and correct violations within the contract SLA. So at this point, we have this one year extension under the contract. City staff would like to go ahead and execute that um or bring forward that uh one year amendment and then initiate an RFP uh with the same terms, two years with one one-year renewal option. Uh and during that RFP process, we'd be looking at technology improvements and geofencing, uh, things to prevent sidewalk riding and just further safety, which are really the same things that we've looked at through each iteration of of these RFPs. The timeline for this, uh the timeline at the top here is what it took us to get through an RFP the last time, which was that we issued the RFP in September of 2022, and then we came back for the contract award in October of 2023.
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