Good afternoon.

And welcome to the September Public Works meeting.

I am Chairperson, Barbara Burke, and I would ask for the City Clerk to please call the roll.

Chairperson, Councilmember Burke.

Vice Chair, Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Here.

Councilmember Clark.

Here.

Councilmember Taylor.

Present.

Thank you.

We have seven consent items, and I would ask council members, are there any items that you would like to have pulled?

Three and four, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Clark.

Is there a motion to approve the remainder of the consent items?

So moved.

Second.

A motion has been made and it has been second.

We'll have a voice vote.

All in favor, let us know by uh saying aye.

Aye.

It passes.

City clerk, would you re please read consent item three?

Item C three resolution monodernizing the Winston Salem Transit Authority's fair policy to establish a fair cap.

Thank you.

Councilmember Clark, you ask for this item to be pulled.

My question is how does the system know that you bought a ticket that morning and therefore is not going to charge you in the afternoon?

So great question, Councilmember Clark.

And good afternoon.

Madam Chair, members of the committee.

Catherine McClellan, answer your question.

With the launch of the new mobile platform, this is going to be a really an enabler for this type of treatment.

And in fact, the item really talks about how the ease of transaction with the mobile technology allows users to establish that fair cap or allows us to establish a fair cap.

Basically, the profile identifies when they load the bus by the tapping of the reader on the bus and identifies how many times that they have assigned that profile to credential on the bus as they has they passed through.

So essentially, no more than two times or two dollars.

Well any any any access on the bus past that will know that it's a free trip.

So every rider's got to have a card.

That that's the that's the uh moving towards this.

This is a the uh a tool to to incentivize that that mobile technology as we move towards a uh a fair list or a cashless uh trip.

Just curious, I would would have guessed most of your transactions are currently cash.

Well, right now, by and large, we don't we don't really accept anything but cash on the bus outside of the ticket that you get from the kiosk or at the transit center.

So that is correct.

That's why we have a lot of benefit into this technology when we move toward the mobile technology will allow us to establish that with the profile of the user.

It just incentivize them to download the application.

Okay.

Councilmember.

Excuse me.

I was gonna make a motion if you want to.

I have another question.

Oh, there are other questions.

Okay.

Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh so um you've already answered that when this will begin when when when we have the new uh UMO app, correct?

Um so but the the another question I have is is so when how will this costs pass the two dollars?

How will that be covered in our budget?

So that's a great question, Councilmember.

So right now, you know, at a $30 million budget, our fair revenue is about $900,000 to a million dollars, right?

And so one of the issues we have with current projections is to figure out how much of that we can expect year over year.

One of the challenges to that, council member, is the fact we have a free transfer policy.

Right now, that complicates issues with the Hub and Spoke model where you could have two or three transfers for a single origin and destination trip, right?

So it's really, really hard to quantify that loss of revenue.

What we've committed to is rolling this out and doing some benchmarking of kind of what the current uh you know, fair we call it fair recovery, how much actually we take in this year and then benchmarking that next year.

So we're gonna have to make some budget projections of on the revenue side to get this right.

But what we do think actually is that on the revenue side this will increase because we have such a blatant abuse of the transfer policy.

Folks are really abusing that transfer policy whether they don't communicate clearly with the operator, or we don't have great tracking of when they're transferring.

There's a lot of logistic logistical requirements about understanding that transfer policy uh with the operator and the folks that are entering and exiting the bus.

Because this does away with that, we do expect actually to see a little bit of increase in revenue while also incentivizing folks to ride the bus more frequently once they meet that two-dollar cap.

Thank you, sir.

Councilmember Sibio?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Umsler.

Um, I used to ride the bus and correct me how this changes everything.

I used to get a monthly pass, I think for 30 rides or something.

Um, how does how is this more convenient than that?

Yeah, so right now, I think the biggest opportunity here is folks, because right now our monthly passes are $30, which that $30 upfront initial cost is a large barrier for a number of our ridership base.

This opportunity here bypasses that where they know riders at $2, they can ride that bus all day long for whatever their needs are.

If they need to go to the to the maybe the grocery store after work before going home, and those what used to be maybe multiple trips are capped at $2.

I think the biggest advent you know the biggest advantage here is that we eliminate that $30-day, $30 upfront upfront deal.

Well, you know, for those that could afford that, that may still be your best financial choice if you could choose to do that.

But this does let uh I guess you know remove that upfront barrier.

Is it an opportunity for people to preload so much on the Absolutely?

Absolutely.

You can load your UMO account and then ride to the extent the system is sophisticated enough to know that once you meet that two dollar cap, essentially you're gonna have free anyway, even though you may have $15 on your account.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

One more question.

So um in the um the report, you you referenced uh three different uh um other transit authorities that utilize this, how they be able to show success in this and and ease of use and improvement of of transfers and all those things.

I appreciate you bringing that up because we spent a lot of time benchmarking these peer agencies, and we we we're happy to show that the fair cap policy they have.

The biggest thing that we've seen and takeaway from this is the fact that the UMO platform enabled this to be a a fair policy for them.

So we're excited to bring UMO to our city to allow us to introduce this kind of fair cap ability just to further incentivize folks that may have I've got two bucks, I can go there and I come back.

Maybe you can go there, go somewhere else, and then come back and just add that.

So those are the kind of the success stories.

Now we don't have granular data from these other other you know providers.

What we do know is that the UMO platform which they utilize um enables this as as a benefit to their ridership base.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you, Mr.

Fansler.

Can I get a motion to approve C3?

To approve.

Okay, it's been uh approved.

We made a motion, we approved it.

Uh let us uh all vote by on our iPads.

Thank you.

It passes.

City Clerk, would you please read C4?

And we have Mr.

Fansler again.

Item C4 resolution authorizing a supplemental agreement with American lighting and signalization of North Carolina LLC for installation of a traffic signal at Meadowlark Drive and Meadowlark Knoll Crossing.

Thank you.

Councilmember Clark.

Yeah, I started reading this and it seemed to go all over the place.

We're suddenly talking about Reynolds Boulevard at Shorefield Drive.

So what exactly are we doing here?

So thank you, Councilmember.

Good question.

So right now this the item before you is to is to approve a change order that would allow allow the funds to be administratively moved to to fund the installation of the traffic signal there at Metal Arc Metal Arc Noll.

It's finished.

Yes, that's right.

And so this is the programmatic element where essentially the the contract that we've already let with ALS, which is a provider that does a lot of work for our city, um, they're currently under contract to build the traffic signal at Shorefare and Rentals.

So this is uh advantageous knowing that we needed to identify the issues before school and uh get this built before school, that was the the metric we chose to pursue uh to allow this this work to be done.

So they're the contractor doing the rentals signal that that's why you see it in the item.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Can we get a motion to approve C4?

Move approval of C4.

Second.

It has uh a motion has been made.

It has been seconded.

We can vote on our IPads.

The motion passes.

City Clerk, would you please read G1?

Item G1, resolution approving a change order to the street resurfacing contract with APAC Atlantic Inc.

Tom Thompson Arthur Division.

Okay, Mr.

Huff, thank you.

If you would please uh share information about C1 G1.

Absolutely.

Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, members of the committee.

Good afternoon.

The item you have before you is consideration of a change order with APAC Thompson Arthur, who is our current contractor for resurfacing.

Uh this is a change order to add additional streets to their current contract.

Uh as you may be aware, they council approved their parent contract last June, basically in the amount of nine million in change.

They have performed satisfactorily in the job.

They've exceeded the MWBE goals, and most importantly, they have been the only contractor that has been our bid our resurfacing projects in recent history.

So for the last half decade plus, they've been the only contractor to bid our jobs.

So to advance our interest in improving our our street network, basically staff reached out to them to consider a change order.

They were interested in that.

So basically, we gave them a list of the worst disfirst streets for our pavement condition study.

Basically, they came back with a unit cost price of $5.2 million approximately.

But considering the nature of those streets, how degraded they are, staff thought it was appropriate to add a 20% contingency on that because these might not be just mill and fill streets, these could be total rehabilitation streets with the pavement scores that we're seeing there.

So basically what you have before you is a consideration of a change order in the amount of six million three hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred and seven dollars and five cents for APAC Thompson Arthur to continue on those resurfacing efforts.

Be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Hoof.

Any questions for Mr.

Huff?

Councilmember Scipio?

How does this change the timetable?

Or what is the timetable for this this set of research?

So we have segregated the time frames for the initial parent contract, and then what we're gonna see with the uh change order, assuming is approved.

Basically, APAC has until October, the end of October of this year, 25 to complete the parent order streets list, and then they will have until October of 26 to complete these change order streets.

So it's compartmentalized as such.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Can I get a motion to approve G1?

Approval.

Second.

Okay.

The motion has been made and a s and a second, so we'll vote on our IPAS.

The motion passes.

City Clerk, would you please read item G2?

Item G2, request by the Town of Lewisville to reinstate its expired annexation agreement with the City of Winston-Salem.

Thank you.

Hello, Ms.

Kessler.

You're gonna give us uh an update on this.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council members, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

So this annexation agreement is similar to the item that you saw last month for uh the village of Clemens.

This uh one stems from interest from the uh town of Lewisville to also reinstate their annexation agreement.

So just a really quick refresh, these types of agreements were very commonplace uh until around the 2010s when the state eliminated municipalities' rights to involuntarily annex uh unincorporated places.

Uh this is the same chart from last month showing our research into all of the past annexation agreements.

What you will see is that everything in red, these agreements have all lapsed or expire expired except for the town of Midway.

However, that agreement does not affect for Scythe County.

This map shows all of the different municipalities, the areas red hatched.

Those are areas where historically uh the city of Winston-Salem agreed not to annex.

All of the other different colors are areas where the different municipalities had also agreed not to annex.

Which basically condenses down to this image.

So everything in green, that was historically where Winston-Salem was allowed to annex, should uh the property owner file and initiate the petition, whereas the areas in red were agreed that they would not fix.

So in the current status, we have no active agreements except for the town of Midway.

Uh the town of Lewisville has expressed that they want to update uh their agreement as they have in the past.

And this is the zoomed in uh area around Lewisville.

So everywhere that you can see this was the uh agreement that expired in 2023.

Everything in red, uh the city would not be able to annex, whereas everything in green would be available to the city of Winston-Salem.

So uh just just in summary, uh they have shown interest and perhaps renewing their agreement as well.

Uh the petitions will still have to be initiated by the individual property owners.

So if no green agreement was in place, it would just give the individual property owner, they would have more of a choice, whereas the agreement sort of delineates these specific areas.

At this time, we do not have a formal uh boundary that the uh town of Louisville is looking at.

However, should they go with the previous boundary staff does not expect any issues.

And are there any questions?

Thank you so much.

Any questions, Councilmembers?

Okay, this is not an item that we're voting on.

This is an item that we need to uh provide some direction on uh if we have interest uh councilmember Clark.

I I would certainly recommend that we continue uh and I would suggest we could maybe we already are continue negotiations with the other towns, uh Walkertown, um we've got here rural hall, tobacco bill, et cetera.

Okay.

Are we in agreement, Council members?

Okay, thank you.

City Clerk, would you please read G3?

Item G3, stormwater infrastructure update.

Okay, Mr.

Huff is back to give us an update.

Thanks, ma'am.

Good afternoon again, Madam Chairman, members of the committee and council.

This is a brief update on basically our stormwater infrastructure.

And as I was putting this presentation together, I was thinking about the timing with the the anniversary of Katrina and all the named weather.

But it's interesting that we can't size stormwater devices and pipes for named storm events that are in the 500,000 year level.

It's the afternoon thr thunderstorms and things like that that we got Saturday afternoon that really tax our system.

So basically with this presentation, we want to kind of focus in on what those stressors are to our drainage infrastructure.

And then what does the city own and what do we not own as far as what we budget for, what we handle, and then kind of give uh the committee an update on some emergency drainage projects that uh staff has been addressing as of late, and then some process items that uh we're looking at moving forward.

So as everybody knows, we have received record rainfall amounts in the past years, and the 10-year storm used to happen every 10 years, but now it happens multiple times every year.

Well, we're seeing this recurrence interval, which is a 10 percent probability storm, and it occurs multiple times every year.

It's commonplace almost.

And and that is a storm event that will really will overwhelm our drainage systems.

What you see at the top right-hand corner of the slide is a NOAA stage storage diagram, and basically it tells how many inches of rainfall you get in a duration.

And that 10-year storm, again, it used to be more spaced out, like 10 years apart, but now we're seeing that regularly during the year.

So point being is our storms are changing as we go forward, and we are receiving more intense storm events on a more frequent basis.

And to our infrastructure that was designed in the 40s and 50s, and everything has a hydraulic lifetime.

All pipes, basins, et cetera, are going to carry through through the end of their lifespan at some point in time.

And being constructed in the 40s and 50s, we're seeing a lot of failures right now.

And basically some of those systems show very little warning before they fail.

And you just see a hole in the road one day, and you have to close it and react.

So now we have over 30 major repair projects throughout the city.

Every ward is dealing with this in some capacity, and these priority capital projects are over 30 million right now and growing.

And with current resources, they will take over 20 years to complete.

And this is only pipes.

This is not bridges, this is not any of those pieces of infrastructure.

On you only your drainage pipes.

And basically, like we talked about, it it affects roads, it affects other utilities, water, sewer, gas, all of your other infrastructure components that are riding in that roadbid.

So what does the city own?

This this is a common misconception to the public that they think that the city owns all the drainage networks in somebody's backyard.

But in fact, we own, operate, and maintain only what's in the public right-of-way and on city properties.

There are certain prescripted easements that deviate from that, but generally speaking, we own, operate, and maintain what's in the public right-of-way.

And that sums to over 24,000 structures.

Manholes, catch basins, hooded grate and frame, pipes, and ditches.

And basically, our our folks, we we maintain that.

Uh you see the maintenance of those systems, jet vaccines, whatnot.

And we also own stormwater control measures like Bloom Park, that constructed wetland.

The city owns, operates, and maintains that.

And some of the things we do are street sweeping activities to keep those those activities or the catch basins and whatnot in check and keep them from getting clogged with uh debris, organic matter, et cetera.

This is a picture of Bloom Park right here, part of those city-owned facilities, stormwater control measures, if you will.

Uh those require significant maintenance to keep on doing what they're doing.

Um right now we are working on the IQ pond, corner of 52 and 40.

That's going over a major renovation right now.

But uh city-owned uh properties, we've had uh uh Lochland Park, Spring Park, Washington Park, all of those uh uh city parks have had infrastructure failures and significant cost as you see as far as three million dollars in repairs.

And we also keep our our the city's NPDS phase one permit in in checked as well as far as uh listed discharges and what's going into this system.

So moving on to private property drainage, what what is the popular misconception with the public?

Staff deals with over 350 private drainage calls per year.

And right now, we do not have a program to address those private property concerns.

What we used to have commonly referred as the 7030 is in legislative moratorium because basically this local government does not have the authority to uh utilize public money on private property.

But these are the the slide the top right hand uh picture.

That's what uh uh a private property owner experienced where they had a sinkhole uh due to an improperly installed pipe, and uh woke up to a 20-foot deep sinkhole next to their house.

Uh some people might recognize this as food line on Hawthorne and Oldwood.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Andre Bowen in his backyard.

A lot of attention to this where the piping system that ran under the bakery of food line failed, and they had to enact very quickly.

This was something that the city got a lot of calls on this thinking that we owned the pipe, when in fact it was on private property, and the owner of the parcel actually was the responsible party for that.

So moving on some of the to the right-of-way emergency projects that we're we're dealing with right now, and uh this these slides are to give you some scope and breadth of the type of things that you would see in an emergency project.

This is Canal Drive, basically bordering Peters Creek, basically Peters Creek during storm events, came up and basically destroyed the uh embankment and the road network.

The road was literally impassable due to the erosion.

And uh we had to do an emergency declaration, get some funding in place, approximate cost on this one was $90,000, and uh basically restored the embankment and the road network.

So that project is complete and the roadway is currently open.

Another one that's currently under uh construction right now is Hawthorne Road, first in Hawthorne.

Basically, this was a uh situation where the main box culvert had settled over time and uh it was pulling away and and basically was in jeopardizing uh Hawthorne Road proper.

So where they're at right now on this is the eastern portion of the culvert system has been uh upgraded.

Now they last week basically they moved traffic control, and now they're working on the western side.

This is a three million dollar culvert replacement project, so pretty large scale right here.

But uh very very sensitive location with a hospital and all the traffic going through there.

Next one, um recent one, Ronolda Road near Buna Vista.

Basically, uh there's a pipe system you see in red there that crosses all four lanes of Rinolda.

That pipe system had failed.

It was a 24-inch clay pipe, and basically we had to do an emergency replacement of that system there.

Uh it was done at nighttime.

Approximate cost of this one 220,000.

Again, you see the various range of these things, but none of them are cheap.

None of them are inexpensive repairs when you're doing these fixes.

Is this one finished?

Yes, sir.

This is finished all except for sidewalk and curb.

So the main pipe system is installed and it is functioning.

Next one is button wood.

This one is unique because this was the sole ingress egress for these property owners.

You can see the stream channel in blue crossing.

And if this pipe had completely failed, these people would not have any access in and out of their homes.

So this was a jack and boar replacement of the pipe, and we had to basically stabilize the embankment structures and replace the pipe.

So this one is complete, $800,000 project cost here, currently under warranty.

But had this not been caught and dealt with in a timely fashion, those citizens would not have access to their homes.

Yes, ma'am.

Is that on private private property?

Of course was public, but Buttonwood is owned by the city.

So we we had full responsibility, Councilmember Scipio.

Okay.

Thank you.

Let me add because that's in my word.

What would you have done if it because it came close to failing the what would you do?

Uh sweat first, uh, but we would have to basically build another access, and and Councilmember Clark, you've seen that.

It's it's in a ravine.

It is.

So it would have been very difficult.

You could have put a couple of bypass pipes in there and rebuilt the shoulder.

It could it would have been very expensive to do anything other than what we did.

I'm talking to the tune of millions, so it was expensive enough anyway.

Yeah, very expensive to even touch these things.

But uh that one was what in a very sensitive location.

It was so one of the last ones, this one is actually in service, been in service for several months now.

Bathabra Road, we had to shut this road down because of the old metal arch.

It was literally falling off of the concrete footings that it was situated on.

Uh this this road carries a 24 and a 12-inch water main, speaking to the infrastructure that is in these road embankments.

But uh this is since been completed, new culvert installed, all the utilities are in service, and the road is open to uh the public and has been for a couple of months.

So just to give the committee a cross section of what we're seeing with these with these drainage repairs and these issues coming from these aging pieces of infrastructure.

So some processes moving forward to kind of get out in front of things better than we have been.

Uh we've commissioned the study of several classes of pipes around the city.

Uh Alpha and Omega, we're working with them to do inspections of these piping systems and to give a priority ranking, like you would rate a bridge on the condition of the pipe, the serviceability, and then what we can do as the city to make repairs if need be.

So we've got a lot of these inspection reports in from Alpha and Omega, and the goal is to prioritize them and let them guide our CIP process.

And when it comes to actually boots on the ground repairing them, what we would like to do is get an on-call contractor.

We've got some assistance in a master service agreement for design phase.

We want to get a contractor on board or contractors, I should say.

So when we have these issues, we can choose from that list, negotiate pricing, and move forward.

And it's not something where you're reaching out to one contractor in an emergency situation.

So that said, those are some things that we're moving forward with and be happy to entertain any questions.

Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh first uh thank you for uh that presentation and second uh as someone who rides through the Hawthorne to First Street Street uh almost multiple times a day.

Uh appreciate the quick work that everyone is making and the the notifications of of the moving of that.

So thank you for that.

Um thankfully there's been uh minimal grumblings from the public about that, but they they appreciate the work and the the openness about the process.

Um you mentioned the Alpha and Omega group.

Uh is there a timeline of when they expect for that process of the studies to be done?

Yes, so we expect all of those reports in in the next month or so, then we'll start compiling them, reviewing them, and then making that priority ranking list.

Beautiful, thank you, sir.

Sir.

Councilmember Clark.

Yeah, just answer the question.

Uh because how soon before Hawthorne is finished?

Hawthorne's got a little ways to go, and it's very weather dependent.

Um if they get good weather, it might be a December time frame, late December, is what we're thinking.

But that the progress on the east side was severely hampered by the weather that we have had during the summer months.

So if they can get a break with the weather, late December is an anticipated deadline or finished.

I mean no rain.

No rain, yes, sir.

We need rain.

Or snow.

Okay.

Councilmember Scipio.

Thank you again.

Mr.

Huff.

When I drive around, I see uh landscaping companies uh cutting grass and blowing leaves into the street.

Um they don't pick those leaves up typically or the grass.

Yes, ma'am.

Um I am certain that that is having an impact on our system.

Do we have any recourse with these landscape companies?

Do they know that they're not supposed to do this, or what can we do to make sure that they are complying with what we would like for them to do to help keep our systems going?

Yes, ma'am, good question.

This is hitting the water quality vein of of the discussion.

What we've been talking about before is the quantity, how much water.

You're talking about how clean the water is.

And the answer to your question is yes, we do have recourse.

We have actually had trainings with the landscaping groups.

We do point of purchase like Lowe's.

Uh we put information cards out, and we do have a section chapter 75 of the city code that speaks to illicit discharges, but you've got to catch them in the act, uh, which makes things difficult.

But we do try to educate that service group.

We do try to work with them, but yes, uh, do we get them all?

Do we educate them all?

No, ma'am.

Well, there's another issue too, is homeowners um when they put their leaves out for pickup, they oftentimes put them in the street, and when it rains, it clogs up the system, and we have flooding on the street.

So uh be interesting if we could have some thinking about how do we make sure that our residents are also helping to maintain our our drainage system because it floods on the streets when those leaves are right there blocking.

Yes, ma'am.

Any other questions?

Well, Mr.

Huff, we really thank you for coming today to provide this update on our infrastructure, stormwater infrastructure, and we thank you for all that you do.

Thank you.

Okay.

City clerk, would you please call item G4?

Item G4, Winston Salem Transit Authority Microtransit Overview.

Thank you.

So Mr.

Fancler, you're back to give us an overview.

Well, I'm going to introduce this item and then turn to folks much more than me to to cover the the item.

But I appreciate uh Madam Chair, members of the committee opportunity, just to you know, it feels it feels like every month there's some cadence of wisdom items, and I appreciate your appetite for that.

Uh that's a welcome change, and we're we're grateful for that.

But you all have been well aware that you know we've recently adopted the what we call the WIST division network, where it kind of gives us some uh some benchmarking and some kind of goal setting to to where we aspire to be with our WIST of service, and in doing so, we've had some additional cadence of of approvals like the UMO mobile application, like some identifying some security needs that we funded and addressing those things moving forward.

All of those things are really modernizing and really bringing our system into where we think it should go and need to be to inform kind of best practice to inform better decision making and overall better performance of our network, right?

And so in doing so, thinking about where we're trying to go, there's been a lot of conversation about microtransit.

Some of those those that type of service you've seen in the news nationwide, you've seen the news here in North Carolina, and there's been some interest uh in our community about how can microtransit be uh available or could it potentially be an option at some point for the WISTA network?

And I I pause there to say, you know, I think that that's a that's that's a good question.

And I I think our staff has spent some time with uh consultants with in-house expertise with looking at our system to figure out how microtransit could be utilized in our network.

So what I'd like to do is turn the floor over to my assistant director, uh Rockstar in our transit world, Kelly Garvin, to allow us to uh to go through kind of what is microtransit, but I think more so keep in mind I challenge you to just think about that WISP division where we want to go, and then maybe how microtransit could one day uh obviously subject to future funding, but allow um that that potential in our city.

So without further ado, uh Madam Chair, I'd introduce Kelly Garvin.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Garvin.

Um Mr.

Fans.

Garvin.

I do apologize.

Didn't want to put it in the middle.

Yeah, you're matching.

Okay.

Good afternoon, uh, Madam Chair Woman.

Good afternoon.

Um, as mentioned, I'm Kelly Garvin, Assistant Director of Transportation, and uh with specific oversight over the uh transit authority.

And I would like to talk to you a little bit today about microtransit.

Um Jamie's helping me um pull up the the item.

Okay.

Tell them something else good about WISTA, Kelly.

Oh, well, um, while we're pulling it up, um, some good news I heard today, not necessarily related to microtransit, is that uh September second and third this month since school has been back, we have seen seen an increase in ridership that is above what pre uh pandemic level were.

Yes, since school has been back in session.

Um since we did the changes in March, we have been tracking ridership since those changes, and we've seen some of those routes where we've made changes start to slowly increase, and then since school came back in session, we saw a boost those first two days of the of the of the month.

So we're tracking, we're hoping we're excited.

Um that it's just an encouragement to staff.

And additional news that I heard from Jeff earlier, we added a stop at HM at an HM health facility.

Um not far from uh Waterworks.

And um we we were receiving encouraging picture from staff there about people using that stuff, that stop daily fa families using that stop all day.

And that again is a testament to um our our ability, uh flexibility, um, and the the the way in which we listen to the residents.

And so that's exciting news.

Yes, cities.

Uh Madam Chair.

Yes.

Can we ask y'all to take a five-minute recess while they uh see if we can get this presentation loaded?

Yes.

At this time, we'll take a five-minute recess.

I can't do anything.

No, that's not right.

I go, my border is Miller Street and 40.

So I've got town campaign public.

Okay, we're ready to bring the meeting back to order.

Ms.

Garvin.

Thank you so much for your patience.

As I was mentioning earlier, the item before you as an information item just talking a little bit about microtransit.

And so we we're gonna talk through what microtransit is, um, what it's not, some of the use cases that we've seen, and sort of how it could be applied uh to us here in New England Salem within our transit network.

So microtransit, what is it?

Um it's a uh public transportation system, as you can as you can tell, it's it's a shared ride, um, and it's usually picks up multiple passengers and takes them to multiple destinations.

Um it's flexible routing as opposed to our current fixed route network.

It's on-demand service and it's usually re requires uh a technology of some sort, an app to be able to request the ride and uh communicate with the operator.

Um and it's often uh operating in a zone, and so the zone can be either just part of the system the system or the entire network.

Uh, but it's all all often operating in a zone, and it can be procured in several different ways, but the probably the most uh advisable way for our system, just because that's where we currently procure our transit services, it would be mobility as a service, which is where the contractor brings the app with them, the operators, and we provide the fleet and the facilities, sort of for the model that we're currently using for our for our transit system.

So it will be about the same as that.

Um just some key differences between what microtransit and paratransit, those terms can be a little uh uh interchangeable and and confusing.

So I wanted to bring to your attention just two key differences about the two.

Paratransit, that's our trans aid, right?

It's uh it both of them are are zone defined.

The only difference in the zone is that paratransit is uh an FTA required zone.

So FTA says if you're gonna operate fixed route, you need to have it's accompanied ADA service within at least three quarter miles of that fixed route.

And for us, that's the entire city of Winston-Salem.

Um, as opposed to microtransit, where we get to define the zone ourselves.

There's no requirements attached.

And then the time frame zone, another difference on the paratransit side, we usually request require um the rider to book its their ride 24 hours before at a minimum, and you can book up to seven days ahead of your of your scheduled time as opposed to uh microtransit, where it's a same-day booking on demand type situation.

And and oftentimes your ride may get there within 20, 30 minutes of your of your booking.

So that's those are the two uh you know, s significant differences between microtransit and paratransit.

Oftentimes you can use the same vehicle for both because even though you be you might be running uh microtransit service, you still want to have ADA accommodation on those vehicles.

And so it is uh very likely that you can use we can use either vehicles to do to do either tasks.

So I'm gonna talk through some use cases.

One that we probably all knew about is the Wilson uh scenario where they switched from their full uh uh fixed route service to a a full microtransit service for the entire their entire system.

Um what's interesting about that, I'll go into the details of the data for a little bit here.

Uh it's their their service area is 31 square mile just for context, um, as opposed to uh what our service area is, and um which ours is 311 square miles.

So that's for context where they are in reference to us.

Um the data you see, the 2020 data is specifically their fixed route numbers.

So when we talk about their ridership, their cost per passenger, their operating costs, and then the passenger per revenue hour.

When we talk about passenger per revenue hour, the revenue hour is any time the vehicle is in service.

That's that's what we quantify as a revenue hour.

In 2023, that's data that is both their microtransit and their paratransit together because it's reported together.

So you see a big jump there, but we just have to keep in mind that it has to do with the fact that there's also paratransit included in that number as opposed to the 2020 number.

Um but overall, we've we've had and we've had conversations with uh with with Wilson.

We've had the chance to meet them and and discuss about their services and how things are going.

Ridership has increased.

That is just the fact ridership has increased, their cost per passenger has gone down.

Um, but in contrast, the operating cost has also gone up, and the passenger per revenue hour has gone down.

And that's usually has to do with the fact that when you are um uh using microtransit uh vehicles, you the vehicles are usually smaller, so you will carry fewer passenger per hour because of the size of the vehicle.

So that's that usually also explains that that metric.

Um the passenger per revenue hour is one that we use to usually think about productivity of the route.

How productive, how efficient am I with servicing uh the my residents?

So that's those are some key things about the data on that on that slide.

The next slide is a uh newer service, that's microCats.

Um you may have heard that Charlotte launched their first microtransit zone in February of this year.

And so there's just very early preliminary data that we could uh get from them.

We again staff had the opportunity to meet with them and discuss um in detail about how their service is currently running.

Um they launched again, like I said, in February of 2025.

They replaced four of their routes in the northern part of uh north of Charlotte in uh Huntersville, and they they kept their express routes.

Those are usually routes that have very little stops, they go from one point straight to the downtown, usually to the core uh uh of where they're you know trying to take people to, but they they replaced their their fixed route with a microtransit solution.

Um from what we've gleaned from them, the they report an increase in ridership.

Um they also report, of course, an increase in operating cost, but a decrease in cost per passenger is also what they report.

We don't have any actionable data because again, this just started.

But this is part of a conversation we we had we had the opportunity to have with with their staff.

So I want to bring us back a little bit to the WISTA route vision.

If if if we remember, uh council recently approved uh a vision uh for WISTA route.

And I want to talk about where we were, which is you know, 31 routes before the March switch over, and most of our routes being 60 minute headways, that's how long between the bus, right, and uh just a few of them having some 30 minutes uh headway for part of the day.

And what council adopted was a vision where we are reducing the number of routes and we're increasing the frequency of the headways because one of the the found the the things that we talked about a lot during that route study was how can we get people to jobs faster and thereby help them help our community uh uh move up economically mobility uh uh wise.

And so that's that's what we that's what this study did.

That's what this this proposal was about, and that council approved.

But you know, when we remove and we reduce routes, we also create some in some gaps in the system that we have to try to figure out how to meet the needs of the community members that will be affected by those gaps.

And so that's where we we we think that microtransit might be a solution.

That might be an option.

And so staff looked initially very preliminary at some areas that might benefit from uh a microtransit solution.

Now we've got to remember microtransit, in in our scenario, the goal is to bring somebody to the route.

Um, and so the the routes that we we are proposing, that the the sections that we looked at, the intention would be to bring the the people that would not benefit from any routes within their area where we would remove routes to take them closer to a new route that would be hopefully faster than what they had before.

And so that's what you have before there on on that map.

So we we talk a lot about faster.

How do we get people to move faster in our cities using using WISTA?

Um and we so we talked about time, what what does time on the bus really mean?

And this is a slide we've we've shown before.

It has to do with the time when the riders are on the bus.

That's that's that's the transit time, and then the time when the rider may get off the bus and transfer to another uh uh bus for a different route.

And so those are both ways that we can tweak to help um uh our system work uh a little bit faster and in a more efficient way.

And so those are both ways that we can tweak to help um uh our system work uh a little bit faster and in a more efficient way so the time on the bus that's that's making more direct routes which means you're pulling routes out of the neighborhoods more on the main streets to help them go faster um time waiting to transfer that's usually shortened by um making uh adding more buses to your route so you increase in your your headway if you if a if a if one bus makes an hour you add two bus that's your 30 minute headway so that's adding more buses to the route and then the final one is you time that can be saved by creating routes that do not go to the downtown because downtown while downtown used to be uh where you know you found most of your you know jobs the the system the the network has changed the way in which people travel has changed and where jobs are located have changed and so in responding to that we have to account for routes that maybe uh be able to go cross town without necessarily going downtown and so how does microtransit help us get there and so when we create I said when we generate service cuts whether we're making a route straighter or whether we are re uh removing a route altogether making geography changes we we try to think about ways in which we can compensate or help those that are going to be the most impacted by that change.

And so we part of our service standard is we analyze our network we look at our data every day I have somebody looking at our ridership every month reports to see what route is functioning and how is it functioning and then we implement some cuts we look at okay well this route is not really working well so what can we do to tweak this network this route to make sure that we are getting the best out of it and then we adjust the geography we might straighten the route we might say this route is still not responding we'll take it out of the system and then we address the gap so because when we take something out of the system we're again impacting somebody so we address the the gap and the recommendation might be we might decide okay microtransit would be something that might work very well in in this neighborhood and so what to consider when we talk about microtransit pilot what are some of the things that we want to think about we should think about the fact that the the service does the zone should bring the riders to a fixed route service that's that's the ultimate goal we want to bring them to a fixed route service um we want the zone to cover the areas where fixed routes have been removed or did not exist before um and and so we we're we're feeling backfilling that gap in our system and then we want the buy the pilot we want to start small we don't want to buy it off more than we can chew.

So we want to pick a zone that's small enough that we can manage the data and see how it's going and then over time analyze and determine if we need to adjust the geography or maybe even invest in another zone because this one is working so well um and then we want to prioritize two things our lowest ridership routes and then uh routes that are in neighborhoods or in in areas of our communities where there's low income population because most of the time those are going to be your zero car household people and so when you remove a uh a route from a low income neighborhood you want to try to see can how can I make them whole how can I still you know help them get to the transit center.

So those are to the to the to the network.

So those are the things that you would consider the lowest ridership route along with low income population would be sort of the metrics that you would you would utilize to determine where to start your pilot.

And then the microtransit you know we have to keep in mind it might perform worse on the per hour basis as you saw from the slides earlier the the revenue the the the ridership per revenue hour is usually worse just because it's a smaller vehicle so that number shouldn't frighten us when we see that number go down but we can we we can certainly anticipate or or at least hope that the ridership will increase because not only are we making whole the existing user of that route that we moved but now we're creating oh somebody that might not see that as an opportunity might view microtransit as a new opportunity to now utilize the system because we made it easier we've made it more convenient and we made it faster um and so that's those are some of the things that we might want to think about.

And then like I said it will attract hopefully some new customers.

So with that being being said I'll leave you to ask any questions that you may have.

Thank you Ms.

Scarve and any questions Councilmember Clark is this something you would experiment with in certain parts of town yes.

And when do you anticipate we would try that I think with this is a discussion for city council to tell us so I'll add on to that council clerk I think the information item that that Kelly just presented to you today is really to serve a couple purposes we've heard requests from council members to have a little bit more information on this so that is the purpose one of just kind of getting microtransit on the table.

Staff feels like microtransit is a tool that we should have in our toolbox to help reshape the WISTA network.

And I guess this is an opportunity to get some feedback from the public works committee.

Do you agree?

And is this something you want to see staff continue working on?

So that's some direction we're looking for from the committee.

Thank you, Mr.

King.

Councilmember Clark, any more questions?

Councilmember Andrew Bowen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, so uh to um see as a city manager King's question.

Uh I personally would love to see this move forward.

This is something that I'm a huge advocate for.

Um I think one one thing that I think Councilmember Clark and I agree on is um seeing buses come through uh that are are nowhere near filled and the the amount of uh money that we put forward to this.

So I think putting something in place in those places um makes sense for me.

And um we were talking about um the the cost of those things.

Um uh someone remind me how much should we we approve last Monday for nine new buses?

Seven million the the nine new buses that how much was that?

7.6 million.

Okay.

So uh thinking about that moving forward, the how long it takes to get those new buses.

Um we we had a conversation around the the sustainable energy around those buses.

Um again, uh Councilmember Clark looked at the the miles per gallon that these buses get, these these microtransit will get more uh miles per gallon, thus being a little bit more sustainable in in those things.

Um and so this is something that I personally would love to see move forward um again, based on the the approval and the agreements of the people here, but um it makes sense to me to move forward and I'm very excited that I heard that you guys are hoping to get things out of downtown because that's the the usually the number one complaint that I hear about our public transport session is why do we have to go through downtown?

So I look forward to that happening.

Mayor Pro Tim Adams.

Yes, good afternoon, everyone.

Um Councilmember Clark, Councilmember Taylor know how long I've been talking about and Kelly and uh Aaron and those that have been around for a while with the transportation and everything that I always felt like why do we have to conform to these big buses?

If the big buses are half empty or empty, why wouldn't we just purchase going forward?

And we're talking 14, 15 years ago, smaller buses to transport people.

I always reckon it to the idea that when we realized our city was growing so fast, and we had one police station, and that was the one downtown, Councilmember Taylor, the public safety building, getting it.

And we knew that our police all had to go just like a hub to the the big house to get to whatever they were needed, which was downtime, costing lives, costing money.

You know, our employees as police not being able to do their job.

Same thing that with fire stations, you have to put stations wherever the people are.

And we even discussed, because I was on public works early when I got on the council, that you gotta put the transportation with the jobs and the people, that's the connection.

You know, so I am all for this.

Um they've heard me talk about it numerous times.

I'm like, well, let's go.

I told them we all we needed ever when you bring a new idea is a prototype launch.

You don't need to roll it out full steam.

You just need to start somewhere, get the data, who you expect in the impact.

And Councilmember Taylor and I and others decided we were going to do three police substations, and we let the data lead us to where the first station would be.

And it was very much warrant and very much accepted by the citizens of the community.

So I am all for this.

Y'all know I am.

Let's go.

Let's ride.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim.

Councilmember Taylor.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh Ms.

Garvin, appreciate the presentation.

I guess I support the concept in theory.

I I guess I just have one question around the cost.

The 175,000 dollar maximum for the proposed year one of the program, would that be for all five of these zones, or will we have to kind of pick and choose which zones make the most sense?

Um so we don't actually have a a this is those are the cost estimates that Wilson incurred when they did their launch.

Ours will certainly be different.

But one of the things that we intend to employ is if we're removing a service, a route, can we recycle those revenue service hours with our current contractor and provide that service?

We're hoping to get to a budget neutral change.

So we already have the fleet.

So we're hoping to use the current fleet and the current contractor and see if we can get to an about revenue uh budget neutral change.

There's again, there's I don't have any figures quite yet, but we're working on those things.

If I may make one comment too, Councilmember Taylor.

Obviously, budget neutral is a is a big term.

Basically, to do that, you know, there will be some hard decisions to made about how much service we have to take away to make that because there are elements that could be more expensive with microtransit, and so to do so, we'll have to make some hard decisions about how much service we have to remove to get to that point.

Should council say that no, we don't want to we don't want to provide any more funds to the WIST of fund to support this effort.

So there'll be some hard decisions if we're able to get to that point.

Good deal.

And Madam Chair, as long as we're talking about pilot programs, I think this makes sense.

But in the future, if we roll this out into a full program, I'd just be cognizant and sensitive about how it looks to the downtown community as we make these adjustments.

So in theory, it makes a lot of sense, and I'm happy to support it.

Councilmember Scipio.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um Ms.

Garvin, I think this is great.

I'm glad you are working on considering this idea.

Um I have one question.

I was wondering what happened in Wilson that led to the increase in ridership, other than just the microtransit change, were there other things going on, were there new employers that and people needed to get to work or were roads closed, just to understand that dramatic increase in ridership.

Um the other thing I was curious about is what I heard you say that the zones would just connect people to an existing route.

Um I wasn't seeing how that having that zone was going to make transportation better if and I guess my concept was okay.

You pick me up in zone A and you take me downtown to the transit center.

But I don't that's not what you're saying.

Okay, so explain that a little bit.

So I'll I'll do question two first.

So uh the the idea of the zone is we would connect uh community members riders to a route that is faster, right?

So because we're we're adjusting our geography, so in theory, our bus are moving faster on the surface transportation network because we're not going into the neighborhoods anymore.

We're taking people from the neighborhood to the main road where the bus will take them downtown.

Or if they're taking a crosstown in our future vision network, they don't have to go downtown.

They can catch the line in that microtransit zone that takes them, you know, wherever they would like to go along the fixed route.

Because we would not be put in zone initially in different places.

We would, you know, hopefully pick a one specific area to try first.

And we would want to target a small enough area that the the passenger per hour is not so low because we're taking people all the way down to the TC and back.

And and and I it the way that it would work is if you connect somebody, if I take I'm at my house, I call the the microtransit folks, they pick me up, they take me to the bus.

I've already calculated my route.

I know my bus will be there at 10 o'clock.

So when I book my ride, I get to the bus station to the to the bus stop, I get on the bus, and I keep going.

So would it be that within a zone?

I I my concept was that within a zone, let's say zone two is West Winston, and I'm using the microtransit there, and my where I'm going was would be within that zone.

You mainly.

In theory, you could go anywhere with it.

That so you could pick the the microtransit if there's a food line within that zone, they could drop you off there.

Okay.

But if I needed to go somewhere else, you would connect me to uh faster fixed route line line.

Exactly.

Okay, I got it.

And then to your other question about Wilson, if I may, um, we didn't necessarily have the discussion about the the economic changes, but uh from my understanding with our conversation with them, it had to do with the fact that their ridership level was very low.

She saw their productivity number, they were they were having six passengers per per revenue hour.

That's our lowest route today is six passenger per revenue hour on a big bus.

And so it just made economical sense for them to switch.

And then the why the number is so big is because as I was trying to say, say the the first number on that line was the just the fixed route, but the 2023 number is the fixed route and the paratransit number.

That's the huge delta.

But even on top of that, there's an additional increase because now new people are using the service as well.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions, and uh you probably already answered them, but please bear with me.

Um thinking about just going back to the microtransit uh concept, how much advanced notice would uh a rider have to provide in order to uh be able to take advantage?

So I have heard from both Cats and uh Wilson that it's on average 20 minutes that by the time they order the you know put their ask for the service to get the the vehicle is on average 20 minutes both for both of them.

I'm not sure about all the other, but I think the target is to be below 30.

So thank you.

Uh thinking about the question that council member Scipio asked, if you are in a zone and you request transportation to another location, you're not just stuck there.

If you decide to go somewhere else, you'll make the request, and the request could take as long as 20 minutes.

Okay.

Depending on on, of course, the service level during that time, yes.

Okay.

And you had said something earlier in your presentation about microtransit versus para.

And you said something about uh microtransit.

Uh there's a difference when it comes to ADA compliance.

Can you explain that?

Yeah, so uh paratransit the FTA requires us to provide paratransit because it's it's an AD year requirement for operating a fixed route service that you have paratransit.

Microtransit, you also need to have an ADA-friendly vehicle.

In other words, I should be able to, as a uh this differently abled person, tell on the app when I order my ride, oh, I also I have a wheelchair, and so we would then deploy a vehicle that would be wheelchair accessible, for example.

So there will be assurance that we'll be able to accommodate our ADA compliant citizens.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Well, Ms.

Scarvin, thank you so much for this information.

And as Mr.

King said, um, today we have to decide whether or not this is uh we have an interest for them to move forward for staff to move forward, and it looks like we do.

We're all in agreement.

Okay, Mr.

King.

Yeah, Councilor Burkala, thank you for the direction on that.

I think that's what staff was looking for there.

I'll just also throw out while we're on the topic of WISTA.

Um we've talked a little bit internally with the manager about um last year leading up to the um retreat, we gave council the tour city facilities to help give you a little visual of kind of what's going on in some of our facilities.

And one thing we were not able to cover at that time was some of the WISTA facilities, the transportation center downtown and the Hampton Have facility.

So we will probably be reaching out to get a feeler from council to see if there's interest in doing uh a smaller tour, probably sometime this fall, maybe a couple hours to give you a little flavor of some of the issues and things that are going on at those facilities just to help you see what's happening there.

So you may see an email coming out shortly to try to set something up there.

Thank you, Mr.

King.

We'll look for that email.

Uh council members, any other uh questions, discussion?

Finance committee will begin at four o'clock.

Thank you, Council Clark.

Well, that concludes our uh agenda for public works.

This meeting is adjourned.