Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Committee Staff Report 11.12.24 Old Business 1. Transit Shelter at the corner of Court and Washington A citizen recently purchased the home at this corner that was previously multi-family housing and is renovating it for his family. He attended the September Committee meeting and requested this shelter be removed. He stated concerns with loitering, people on his property and littering. This shelter has been in this location for a long time. The East River neighborhood association paid to upgrade this shelter a few years ago. The stop is pretty heavily used and the shelter has been in this location for many years. Staff worked with the Oshkosh Police Department on potential solutions. OPD requested that signage be placed on the shelter as to when transit stops are “open” which is during service hours. OPD said this will give them recourse to move individuals along after these times. The bus shelter is in the Right of Way. It is likely that if the shelter is moved, the issues would just be moved to a different area. New Business 2. A request to clean up a parking ordinance on South Main Street. Part of South Main Street was reconstructed recently and parking cut-outs were added. Therefore, we need to update the parking ordinance. (Current condition is No Parking, both sides, from Fox River to W. 9th Avenue). Requested condition: No Parking, west side from Fox River to W. 9th Avenue. No parking, east side, from 7th Avenue to 40’ south, and from 180’ south to 260’ south. I recommend approval. 3. A request to add the new East 9th Avenue Parking lot to the municipal code. This is a new parking lot that was constructed for public parking in association with the Sawdust District Plan which includes the T. Wall development and Riverwalk Extension. The new parking stalls will be free with no time restriction other than overnight (2-5 a.m.) initially. 4. A request to remove on street parking on Dove Street west side from 243’north of Buchanan Avenue to its northern terminus. (Current condition: No parking, both sides, from 327 feet north of Buchanan Avenue to its northern terminus). Transportation Committee Staff Report November 12, 2024 A citizen that lives in this area has made this request. The citizen states that vehicles are parking here to fish and blocking their driveways making ingress and egress difficult. The parked cars are also causing issues for garbage collection and mail delivery. There is still parking in the area. I recommend approval. 5. A request and public hearing to match Paratransit Service Hours to Fixed Route (6:15 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday). GO Transit currently contracts for paratransit services. The initial 3-year contract expires at the end of this year, however there is an option for 2 one-year extensions if mutually agreeable. GO Transit engaged the East Central Wisconsin Regional Plan Commission (East Central) to study our service and ways to improve it. East Central presented their study at the September 10th Transportation Committee meeting. The study is included in your packet. One of the items the study identified as a way to make this service more attractive and to improve service is to match paratransit service hours to fixed route. It has been noted for many years that 24/7 paratransit service isn’t sustainable long-term. The study discovered that the only other contractor that bid on and provided part of this service in recent history lost money due to the 24/7 service requirement and therefore bid $500,000 higher than the current vendor on the last bid. The study also noted that if 24/7 service continues and GO Transit ever needs to take this service in house, this requirement would be very costly as extra supervision and maintenance staff would be required in addition to drivers and vehicles. The study indicated that offering 24/7 service is a barrier to attracting vendors and recruiting and retaining drivers for this service. GO Transit’s Fixed Route bus service hours are 6:15 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The FTA requires the city to match paratransit hours to fixed route and this is what almost all municipal transit systems do. Matching the hours is equitable. Attracting more vendors to submit proposals for service will most likely improve the quality of service in the future and help control the costs. The quality of drivers is also likely to improve. We also desire to offer electronic ride scheduling, vehicle location, and video surveillance in the near future. This will result in better service to our riders. The quality of our current service is questionable. We are interested in contracting a carrier that has the ability to scale any potential future service enhancements such as micro-transit. It is feasible that micro-transit could help meet after hours and/or off route needs in the future. Additionally, we have been tasked with finding efficiencies per the budget meetings with City Council. By matching paratransit hours to fixed route, we believe this will allow our contractor to be more efficient and effective which will ultimately result in less costs. The cost savings may not be immediately realized but over time will be. Particularly, there will be less overhead if they are not required to be staffed 24/7 in case a ride request comes in. Please see the attached sheet for the number of rides and trip purpose. Only about 10% of rides are after hours. It appears that many of these rides could potentially be absorbed by the Access to Jobs program. Others could possibly be handled by volunteer drivers/family members/neighbors etc. This change is proposed to take effect January 2nd, 2025. This allows some time for the contractor and riders to work through these changes. There is potential in the future that micro-transit could meet the needs of some of these riders. I recommend approval of matching paratransit to fixed route hours from 6:15 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday. 6. Truck Route Study Follow-up Remove North Main Street between Algoma Blvd. and Irving Avenue as a designated truck route and add South Park Avenue between Ohio Street and Main Street. As you may remember, KL Engineering previously presented this study and their recommendations at the June 11th meeting. Subsequently, the information was provided to the Common Council with a request for direction. The Council has requested that these recommendations be considered together. They also requested that residents of South Park Avenue be noticed of the potential addition of South Park Avenue as a designated truck route from Ohio Street to Main Street and be given a chance to comment. This is that opportunity. The Transportation Committee previously recommended phase 1 of the truck route study be implemented. We did receive some feedback from a resident on Jackson Street concerned that no longer offering North Main Street as a truck route may increase truck traffic on Jackson Street. KL and staff believe that would be a very minimal impact as trucks are still allowed to take the most direct path to and from their origin and destination and many already avoid N. Main Street. The study is included in your packets. I recommend following the Phase 1 plan recommended by KL Engineering (The Committee previously approved / recommended this. Should the committee wish to reconsider their pervious recommendation, a revote can be taken for any reason). Staff Statements ❖ Follow-up on allowing the Transportation Director to reallocate parking stalls between 2 hour and permit/leased in city parking lots. I followed-up on this proposal with the City Attorney. In order for the parking ordinances to be affectively enforced, they need to go through a formal ordinance adoption process. Therefore, she isn’t comfortable with this. However, in order to expedite the requests, I can take them to Council directly (and ask for the rules of a second reading to be waived if time is of the essence) and report the changes to this committee once a year as approved at the last meeting. I think this is a good compromise and will allow this committee to focus on more important issues. ❖ EAA Shuttle Service – GO Transit will be discontinuing the shuttles from UWO to EAA during the Fly-In. It is no longer possible to efficiently staff this extra service with our staffing. In order to operate the service, operators were working up to 100 hours a week which raises safety concerns and negatively effects regular service. We provided 20,598 rides in 2023 and 17,575 in 2024. EAA attendance increased but ridership decreased. Therefore; attendees are staying elsewhere, local or have found alternatives. We added 446.62 hours for the week with a profit of about $7,000. We don’t have the staffing to accommodate that many extra hours. There are other private shuttle services which will most likely pick-up this work. Last year, EAA ran shuttles from Target for example. We have had preliminary discussions with the Oshkosh Area Visitors and Convention Bureau and UWO so they can begin to plan accordingly. ❖ Report on the traffic signal at Bowen Street and New York Avenue – This signalized intersection utilizes vehicle detection therefore; Bowen will stay green until there is demand on New York. New York Avenue is a designated bike route. The current traffic count is 6100 on Bowen just south of New York. Due to these factors, staff is in support of the signal remaining. ❖ Electric Vehicle Charging Plan Follow-up ❖ Ridership Update ❖ WisGO Electronic Card Reader System Update Future Agenda Items Adjournment