October 27, 2020 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] all right i'll start recording [Music] adam your legacy is going to be getting us started on time always remember if i made one change to this community and this council that's not a bad one to make so i agree and are we not expecting sam tonight he didn't tell me uh he wouldn't be here so we can we can wait the minute for him to get here for sure i talked to him i talked to him moments ago and he was funny to be here there he is perfect party if everyone's here we're going to go ahead and get rolling and here's my script okay um just in case anyone forgot we're doing rotation of council members for study sessions so this is

[1:00] i i got the short straw on this evening um welcome to the tuesday october 27th study session of boulder city council uh to begin the meeting we do have a couple of announcements this evening uh first announcement the city of boulder has decided to fill the two open ex officio positions on the cannabis licensing advisory board these two non-voting positions will advise the advisory board will will be appointed to five-year terms beginning retroactively april 1st 2020 and may be filled both by resident and non-resident applicants we began accepting applications for this board beginning monday october 26 2020 and we'll stop accepting them at 5 pm on thursday november 12 2020. if you are interested in applying for the cannabis license advisory board please visit the city's boardroom commission webpage at boulder colorado.gov backslash boards slash commissions

[2:03] second announcement the state of colorado has implemented a new covered exposure notification system through mobile phones this feature can be easily activated on your phone and will provide you with an exposure alert when you may have crossed paths with another person who has this feature enabled and who is subsequently diagnosed with covet the more people who turn on this notification feature the more helpful the tool will be for all of us notably the feature will not collect or store any of our personal information this is a simple but crucial step we can all take to keep rates our rates as low as possible to ensure ensure your phone has notifications enabled please visit www.add your phone a d d y o u r p h o n e dot com and now moving on to the agenda tonight we'll be covering two items

[3:02] an update on the boulder bike share b cycle strategic plan and the regulation of human and electric powered micro mobility devices on streets paths and sidewalks so a whole lot of transportation this evening and i'll send it over to i believe dk are you going to start off i am thank you um good evening mary members of council i'm erica vannenbrand the director of transportation mobility here in boulder staff is very pleased when meeting with guests from the tab boulder bike share cu boulder and the boulder police department to discuss and explore with council to micro mobility related topics the first topic focuses on the evolution of the city's shared micro mobility program the second topic addresses where the place or the where both shared and private electric mobility devices can be illegally used

[4:00] on city streets sidewalks and multi-use paths based on council's recent direction the city's shared micro mobility program will be changing and evolving for over 10 years the program has consisted of a bike share system operated by a local non-profit boulder bike share which uses a platform provided by b cycle a limited liability corporation in the private sector owned by trek bicycle company council has directed staff to expand the shared micro mobility program to include shared e-scooters on a limited geographic basis and to evolve the bike share platform to include electric assisted bicycles to add e-scooters and evolve the bike share component the city will be issuing a request for proposals in early 2021. the rfp process could result in a single operator offering both a shared e-scooter and an e-bike platform or it could result in two operators each

[5:00] operating a single platform one for eight bikes and one for e-scooters in the study session we hope we would like to discuss with council four potential scenarios that identified that staff identified for the city's shared microvillibility platform and evaluation criteria to be used primarily for the rfp process the intent of this information this evening is not to select a preferred alternative program scenario but rather to get your feedback on the criteria that we'll be using to evaluate the proposals from the rfp process in the next several months and we look forward to hearing your feedback now for the second portion of the discussion the second item with council is to identify both where both private and shared electric devices can be legally operated on city facilities many community members already need already using a diverse array of new electric devices like e-scooters electric skateboards one wheels etc

[6:01] with the increasing private use and the changes coming forward in our shared micro mobility program the city will need to update our existing ordinances about where these devices can be legally operated on the streets sidewalks and multi-use paths and through both internal discussions and community outreach we've been exploring these options and would like to get council's input before returning with recommendations and a draft ordinance in january 2021. so with that i would like to turn this over to senior transportation planner dave dk kemp great thank you very much erica i do appreciate the introduction for this evening's topics and good evening mayor and members of city council i'm dave kemp senior transportation planner and with the transportation and mobility department and joining me this evening is kevin krauss executive director for boulder bike share brandon smith assistant director of sustainable

[7:00] transportation with cu's environmental center heidi van genderen with cu cu's chief sustainability officer and they will be available to answer any questions you may have during the discussion this evening followed by my presentation okay having an issue with advancing the slides all right um you're protecting them from your ndk is that right yes dk if you click on the screen and then click forward on your keyboard that worked thank you very much chris okay sorry about that um over the last several months boulder bike share staff its board members and staff from the city of

[8:00] boulder and cu boulder have been engaged in a strategic planning process to determine the purpose and next logical steps for the boulder bike share organization and the b cycle program concurrent to this planning exercise city staff has also been developing the foundation for its shared micro mobility program including its goals potential program scenarios moving forward and the evaluation criteria to help policy makers understand the nuances associated with these different scenarios it's important to note that we are in only the exploratory phase and we are seeking council's feedback on the latter staff has not made any recommendations regarding which program scenario would best suit the city of boulder but your input tonight will be helpful as we prepare for the upcoming request for proposal process to select a shared micro mobility program operator so a little bit about boulder bike share first um as erica described uh boulder bike share

[9:00] is the nonprofit behind the b cycle system and again this system was purchased by through b cycle llc which is manufactured by the trek bicycle corporation since 2017 we've seen an average of about 105 000 annual rides there's been about a 60 40 split between community members and cu boulder affiliates 60 percent being the cu the city and 40 in recent years being general community members the the system right now consists of 300 bikes in 45 stations and there's about 15 000 b cycle members looking at the sea investment over time since 2014 the city has provided approximately 65 000 and we increased that sponsorship that subsidy in 2019 due to a loss of a

[10:02] presenting sponsor kaiser permanente this was very much not unique to boulder this did happen in other communities where kaiser permanente pulled out as the presenting sponsor and we increase our subsidy 245 000 to keep operations alive in 2020 through coordination with some of our funding partners we were able to continue with boulder bike share efforts and we all pitched in uh to make 2020 reality and looking forward in 2021 here right now in transportation mobility we have approximately fifty thousand dollars budgeted and of course the impacts from coven 19 has had a tremendous effect on the city's budget much alone transportation mobilities and so it's very important that we continue our coordination with cu boulder and boulder county moving forward to determine our best next steps with our micro

[11:00] mobility program i will say that since 2011 uh the city's 663 thousand dollar operational investment has helped boulder bike share provide reliable transportation to a hundred thousand unique riders introducing shared on-demand microability as an option for nearly seven hundred thousand essential and recreational trips seven hundred thousand trips over the last ten years approximately city funding has supported this behavior change at less than one dollar per trip so in terms of system use ridership did decline in april to the impact of coven 19 in our community but has significantly bounced back in recent months mainly due to the return of cu boulder students who now comprise about 60 of our current use and since august average trips per bike per day are increasing and so

[12:10] this year boulder bike share staff city staff cu boulder staff and boulder county engage in a strategic planning process their strategic planning process included several stakeholder interviews and a survey to which 285 members responded the strategic planning effort was concluded in the fall of 2020 with a new purpose statement and a recommended business strategy which we'll share shortly but for now here's the the latest purpose statement for boulder bike share empowers people through mobility solutions that are fun safe accessible and environmentally responsible in terms of considerations the respondents wanted to see

[13:00] in a shared micro mobility system a positive environmental impact safety affordability and enhancing regional mobility all rose to this top as you can see in this chart and then in terms of the business model recommendation i'll read this one boulder bike share will continue to partner with a private company and will be accomplished through a revenue share agreement or with boulder bike share as a contractor boulder bike share may not own the equipment but will operate the system leveraging its existing relationships and knowledge of the community okay with that i'd like to shift the focus for the remainder of the presentation to the development of the city's shared micro mobility program including program goals potential program scenarios the evaluation criteria and an evaluation matrix we developed to help illustrate how the different program scenarios work to fulfill the evaluation

[14:01] criteria that will use that would be primarily used for the upcoming request for proposal process so as we've worked to envision what a world class shared micro mobility program looks like we've identified six goal areas that we'd strive to achieve in a comprehensive program these goal areas transcend into evaluation criteria that will be used to select an operator from the through the request for proposal process later this year and i'm going to walk through these criteria and talk a little bit more about them for safety what we mean by that is the safety of devices used by the service provider its operational practices and the safety education of the users of the program for financial viability we're talking about the long-term viability of the service provider to remain in business if any local subsidies would be required and what the profitability expectations would be if we went with the private sector

[15:02] looking at equity this is the degree to which low income and minority populations have access to the system and the cost of using the service environmental sustainability the degree to which the service provides platf the providers platform encourages travel behavior change to meet the city's transportation and climate goals and the environmental sustainability of the devices of the platform and then there's state of the art technology the level of technology and innovation that service providers can implement with their bikeshare platform and the level of data access and sharing with the city we're looking at introducing e-bikes and e-scooters into this program we're looking at new technology to help complement a robust program and accessibility the ability to of the service provider to respond to demand with expansion of geographic coverage and dynamic fleet size

[16:00] and then finally the responsiveness to operational issues which is the ability of the service provider to respond to operational issues identified by the city community and users quickly and effectively and so understanding where we've been in the last 10 years and looking to the future and thinking about how we would incorporate these program goals we identified four different scenarios ranging in a diversity of partnership models and types of shared micro mobility platforms and i just wanted to walk through these different scenarios so everyone has a keen understanding of what we're looking at here so scenario a would be to go into business with a new private sector a service provider the potential could be the existing b cycle system would be dismantled and the boulder bike share nonprofit organization would be dissolved scenario b is very similar to scenario a where we would have a new private sector service provider and dismantle the b cycle system however boulder bike share

[17:01] would operate the system through a franchise model and then scenario c b cycle llc again the company that owns the equipment or had owned the equipment the trek bicycle manufacturing company would operate the existing platform and that could be with a partnership or without a partnership with boulder bike share and then finally sonar iod would be boulder bike share continues to operate the existing b cycle system through ongoing annual city and partner subsidies and again as a reminder the city has subsidized builder bike show the last 10 years at varying levels and of course the introduction of qubit 19 has had a tremendous impact on our budget and we simply cannot sustain the same amount of funding that we've done in recent years okay this is the evaluation matrix again

[18:02] that will be used primarily for selecting a criteria but we wanted to walk you through this color-coded system to help you understand how these criteria match up with the different scenarios the items in blue are to be determined to the rfp process the green boxes currently work well to satisfy criteria the yellow boxes works part way and the red boxes do not satisfy the criteria um today and so for tonight i like to walk through a couple of the yellow and the red boxes to help you better understand why those are colored the way we've colored them and so looking at scenario c and state of the art technology the yellow box there this with b cycle llc taking over the operations of the current system we would be able to include a docked e-bikes as part of this as part of the program with potential new stations replacement of existing infrastructure but we're still unclear

[19:01] on whether or not to be able to provide e-scooters and also the type of data that they would be able to provide for transportation planners to understand route finding throughout the community and in terms of accessibility as well it's more difficult to achieve the ongoing demand based cap due to the limited number of docking spaces the dock systems are a little bit more expensive typically and deploying those in the community where the demand can grow or shrink is a little bit more difficult second and then looking over at scenario d and going down to financial viability the red box again right now um as i just mentioned this would be dependent upon us an annual city subsidy and in terms of the equity and being able to provide services in underserved neighborhoods this potentially could require

[20:01] additional city investment and then we believe that with improved technology for the shifted trips and device device lifespan that we can actually get more trips per bike per day on e-bikes versus traditional pedal bikes and then we talk about the state-of-the-art technology again these bikes with the current system has done well for the city of boulder it's been it was a good investment they're now reaching their lifespan of over 10 years old and while they still work and are safe it's time to think about upgrading the technology to e-bikes and the same goes for the docks the docking systems are aging as well and we've got to think about their future replacement and again the type of data that we currently receive needs to be enhanced to allow for for better planning opportunities for transportation planners although i will

[21:01] say the boulder bike share through its app has managed to document routes through the city um for approximately 10 percent of the trips in 2019 which has helped us and in terms of accessibility the same with scenario c it's more difficult to achieve ongoing demand base cap to the limit number of docking spaces with the limited funding that we currently have okay and now i'd like to move on to tab and tabs and put on the matter the transportation advisory board is very appreciative of boulder bike share service to the community for the last 10 years tab tab wants the city's current bike share program to evolve to become a shared micro mobility program that includes e-bikes and e-scooters tab would like to be involved in development of the request for proposal process to be issued in the fourth

[22:00] quarter 2020 and they want to ensure that the evaluation and selection of an operator is based on quantifiable metrics such as ridership and change in travel behavior and they expect us staff to continue to monitor and evaluate the operator's performance based upon those metrics over time tab acknowledges the city's current budget limitations that the transportation and mobility departments has in 2021 and the fact that we cannot meet builder bike shares annual operational budget tab concurs with staff on the ongoing coordination with cu boulder boulder county and the boulder chamber this is all a very paramount to creating a successful shared micro mobility program that works for all of our partners in the community and that is our primary goal okay looking at next steps here we are tonight october 27th talking about the results of the strategic plan and potential scenarios

[23:01] moving forward in fourth quarter we'll issue a request for proposal and hope to select a a new operator by hopefully the first quarter of 2021 and then looking into the second quarter of 2021 we would like to launch a new or refined shared mobility program and the little note on the bottom there is we just wanted to ensure console that we do plan to fold both e-bikes and e-scooters into the shared micro mobility program okay so questions for council tonight is do you have any questions or comments regarding the results of the boulder bike share strategic planning process or do you have any feedback on the potential share micro mobility program scenarios and specifically we're looking for input on the evaluation criteria that we'll be using to select an operator um here in the coming months and so with that thank you very much for listening appreciate your time and look

[24:00] forward to the discussion thanks for that dk um we'll start with questions first before we get into feedback so any questions on the presentation i see bob's hand raised first thanks adam uh thanks dk i appreciate that very much um i have three or four questions uh i saved my comments towards the last can you go back to slide number three dk you bet i just try to like to try to understand a little bit better i i'm looking likely towards this pretty significant change here so we don't need to dwell a whole lot on the past or even the present but i do um think it's important for us to understand the current state of affairs so that we are intelligent about whatever rfp we issue and what criteria we might apply so i'm trying to understand a little bit about ridership um so in this slide it shows that we've had an average of 105 000 rides per year sounds like they might be down a little bit this year but that's okay

[25:00] um i'd like to understand the kind of the breakdown in the 105 000 rides first i guess the first question is as i understand it um there's really effectively two types of writers those with subscriptions who can ride effectively for free for at least a period of time and then those who might come in particularly tourists who might buy a day pass or pay by the hour do we have a breakdown and if you need to defer to kevin on this that's perfectly fine dk do you have a breakdown on how many of those hundred and five thousand rides were like day past hourly versus subscribers yes and you're right bob uh kevin would have that information is the expert on his organization so um ryan if we can make sure that kevin has speaking privileges on this link that would be fantastic to answer some of bob's questions regarding the specifics good thing kevin you're a panelist so go ahead thanks ryan and good evening council um yeah um councilman i'm happy to speak to that basically over the last few years um it's

[26:00] been the case that the number of trips from what we call our day tripper pass casual walk-up users who are just paying for system access for that day they usually take about an average of 1.5 trips per person obviously no one's taking exactly that number but that number has been going a little bit down as users of the system who have annual passes either through larger corporate membership programs are at the university and those people take on average a lot more trips per person with the mean number of trips per rider of subscriptions being much higher than the median thanks kevin do you have an estimate of the 105 000 average rides per year how many of those rides are um day trippers versus subscribers yeah um let's see i think looking even back at last year um i'm gonna need to double check but i want to say that the out of a hundred and five thousand i think that we were uh in the low twenty thousands were from

[27:01] casual walk-up users who were taking you know just a little over one trip per person largely tourists and visitors and then um the number of trips by by pro membership programs and ceo affiliates has been going way up and year to date this year we're at about i think we're over 70 of our trips here today this year are from cu affiliates only those would be students mostly with annual passes okay that's that's good enough for for for my purposes kevin what i'm trying to get to i'm going to ask you a couple two three questions i'm trying to get to try to get a sense for how many people use these bikes for commuting purposes so let's just use your 20 or 25 000 day trippers so backing that out of 105 000 gets us down to call it 80 or 85 000 rides by subscribers if i divide 15 000 subscribers into that comes to a little bit less than six rides per year per subscriber is that my math direction correct there except for um of those fifteen thousand subscribers that includes um a fair number of includes

[28:00] all of the walk-up casual day users a day tripper is a subscriber uh we we call that person like a casual walk-up member um like in the industry we usually call them casual or walk-out members people do not have a monthly or yearly subscription are just purchasing access for the day okay how many how many annual subscribers do you have um at this point we're right around 6 000. okay okay so i'll correct my math there then so it sounds like the average number of rides per subscriber is probably in the direction of 15 or so does that sound right yeah with a handful of folks who have already ridden over a thousand trips this year and then plenty of plenty with fewer sure and that's that's exactly where i was going kevin so i appreciate that so if you've got a handful of like rockstar writers that that write it you know multiple times a day a thousand times a year or they use that for commuting that would obviously decrease the number of rides remaining rides among those

[29:00] 85 000 to the among the other 6 000 subscribers any guesstimate if you if you call like a commuter somebody who rides more than a hundred times a year i mean you know a round trip times 250 working days would be 500 but let's just say 100 which would be a means a fifth of your commuting trips were on the b cycle how many hundred plus writers do you have per year roughly oh i love that question i wish i had an answer for you right this second but i can get that information for you and provide it back to council okay are we talking like dozens hundreds it's obviously not thousands because that math doesn't work out but dozens or maybe a couple hundred the question was how many writers write over 100 trips annually i'm just picking a number okay um uh if it was over a hundred trips annually i'm guessing we're in the dozens dozens okay we've certainly had it be in past years that the top 10 riders have had close to 10 of the trips yeah

[30:02] um but obviously it falls off quickly from there and then you get more into the average what we call maybe called more an average user so that number of trips is obviously very different for a monthly pass or an annual pass or even um this year has actually seen the greatest use of our pay per trip pass that requires no sort of subscription in advance and you just pay for it when you're using it you know that's that's good enough kevin that's how helpful that i kind of kind of assumed that we were talking about dozens of commuter writers rather than hundreds of them um i'm gonna shift gears a little bit maybe this is a question for the cu representative uh um if um if 60 i know historically about 40 of the rides have been taken by cu affiliates um students and faculty members and staff but it sounds like that shifted this year and whether that's a permanent shift or not we don't know but uh if um if 60 of the writers are now cu student or sue affiliates and that continues into the future what's cu's

[31:00] feeling about subsidizing um a system whatever system we'll talk we'll talk about that a bit but let's assume that a system requires a subsidy and let's assume that half ish is um is used by cu affiliates how does cu feel about subsidized continuing to subsidize some sort of system going on and anybody who who can answer their questions maybe clark or somebody from from you can answer that one bob i think that brandon smith is on the line brendan would be great too director with the sustainability program and his office provides the funding the current subsidy for um boulder bike share so brandon are you with us yes i'm i'm here uh this is brandon smith i'm assistant director of the cu environmental center and last year we provided a subsidy of 78 000 uh which allowed us to basically give out memberships to cu affiliates and uh you know we have seen a great success in that so um i i feel good about that subsidy

[32:01] and providing a similar subsidy in the future um you know everybody's got budget constraints right now with covet as does the program i manage but uh if if the numbers work out we would do everything that we could thanks brandon that was helpful uh adam just with your indulgence i only have one more question yes bob thank you thank you um dk can you walk us through the difference between option a and option b as you said they look really really close to me it looked to me like the difference between a and b is is both of them when involved in rfp and a would would let the successful bidder i guess i'll call them operate as they wish and scenario b would would require the successful bidder to use boulder bike share as a operator is that the primary difference between the two yeah you got it bob um essentially it depends on if the private sector the

[33:01] service provider or boulder bike share would apply for the or would they would respond to the rfp um they so in scenario they would be the organization that would operate the system so it might let's let let's throw out um like uh just a hypothetical company say like uh ride fast or something you know if we if we took in ride fast bikes and ride fast scooters um then uh boulder bike share would then be the organization that would operate the system but they would be long the equipment would belong to that that company now what if what if right fast that's a bad name i know what right safe how about slow ride i'll be legit we'll just i don't care if it's fast or slow let's just call it safe right safe safe there you go thank you thank you um was the successful bidder what what would be the reason we there may be a really good reason i just want to know what it is what would be the reason that we would require under scenario b

[34:00] um that ride safe would be required to use boulder bike share as their operator like what's what's kind of in it for us for cu and for the boulder community sure and it's so it's it's an option um and so it's one way in which uh one of the companies may solicit a response to the rfp but i think that what we would keep or continue to gain is the institutional knowledge that we've had through boulder bikeshare over the last 10 years they've developed a number of relationships in the community they're well known um and so i i think maintaining uh their presence as um the operator would be helpful and and we also have a great working relationship with them they're they're great people and don't take my question as critical of boulder bikeshare i think they've been fantastic they provided fantastic service to the to the community for over a decade i just wanted to understand the thinking between a and b so that was helpful dk appreciate it um those are all my questions i'll have some comments later on thanks adam can i uh call away with you on that letter

[35:00] um go ahead mark adam and said okay thank you um with respect to scenario b if b uh bbs were to operate the system to a franchise model uh would that be a fee based service that they're performing or would it be um in effect pro bono and and how would that impact the overall economics of providing the system um with having a franchisee versus having the designated provider um handle all aspects of the service kevin you want to answer that one sure i'd love to thank you very much for the opportunity um i wanted to say that i think that maybe the best way of answering that is many in many cities the provider the operator of the system is different from the owner of the system and we here in boulder just always happen to have it be a single non-profit owner and operator and the rfp process is looking to confer

[36:01] both ownership of a new system as well as the operation of it upon one entity but i think option b would keep opening the possibility that there's an equipment provider that does not do their own operations they're not vertically integrated and they're actually looking for a local organization to run their system um um i think the reason it would impact the economics is highly dependent on the service area and devices and potential competition that company would be in they an equipment operator could be in the position of paying a local service provider like our nonprofit to run a system for them because they're making sufficient revenue to do that um however to offer the other side of that coin is in most cities where there's a different owner operator structure if it's a city or transit agency who owns it there's actually a for-profit operator

[37:00] who then makes money is paid to operate the system and is trying to then make money back for the city via uh via an agreement via contract thank you all right all different models for that mark bob if i could just weigh in on that a bit too um oops sorry about that i think it's important to clarify for you that you know these are just options right now that could come from the market from the rfp process we're not going to be shaping the rfp to cater to each one of these different scenarios and so we're right now just currently speculating that these could be potential scenarios um moving forward that could come out of the rfp process does that make sense yeah that that helps okay good all right on deck i have aaron up next then mary and rachel great and dk thanks for that last bit because i was going to ask that clarification so essentially just to clarify the the rfp process is going to be fairly open-ended and then these are

[38:00] some of the responses that types of responses that may come out of it is that right so we're not you're not issuing an rfp for just scenario one or just scenario a or just b that's right and then you probably should have painted the picture for you better um in the beginning that yes exactly we um we speculate these are the types of scenarios that would come out of the rfp process and that the rfp process will be built on the criteria that we've um provided for you tonight great okay yeah thanks now it's good to have an understanding of that and that just the other thing i had is i just wanted i know we have robert hutchison from the transportation advisory board so just want to invite him if he wanted to add any color to tabs uh feedback that we already heard just to give him that opportunity i guess sure is now the right time adam is now a good time or should we wait until after our other questions i just want to bring it up no this is this is a good time uh just introduce yourself real quick

[39:00] rob sure uh my name's robert hutchinson i go by hutch uh and i'm one of the five tab members and uh with a particular interest in this topic so i'm the lucky guy that gets to be part of this discussion um i think in addition to the nice summary that dk put together of some of our feedback uh there's probably three other things just to emphasize uh one is and and the team has mentioned data and planning uh in a pretty high level way but i wanted to emphasize that there are cities where what they're learning about who does what when uh from more modern shared systems is amazing in terms of really thinking about transportation dynamics in a city particularly around things that are not

[40:00] the operational construct of the city everybody goes to school every monday every every morning everybody goes to work every morning it's the non-standard flow you don't really look to these devices or these shared systems to be people's daily commutes if they commute daily they're going to have their own bike because it's more comfortable because whatever whatever you know you you can guess it right um so don't think about it as oh how many commutes are we getting rid of that's that's not so relevant and do think about what we're going to learn about the more random overlays when do people end up downtown when do they end up in the shopping do they shop with one of these micro abilities so that's point one uh point two i think people kind of get it but e-bikes are a really really big deal uh e-bike sales in this country doubled over last year uh in europe they

[41:02] went up by a factor of five or six in many places this year uh for various reasons there's there's more support for various people to buy them and things like that uh but expect to see a massive numbers of e-bikes and b uh if if we have an effective e-bike service within this construct we're going to have totally different classes of usage numbers than we do now i i believe and i don't i don't know how the cu membership affects that uh depends how we price i don't know the route structure of the cu kids a lot of them are actually pretty close to campus so i don't know how that works uh but e-bikes are a big deal and then finally just a little bit of a word of warning that i i shared uh directly with dk and the team before um from what we know uh

[42:03] there's a set of big cities where uh i think a a fair amount of the wrinkles in the business model and the construct and how do you make money and where is this going uh is starting to mature uh and that's the biggest cities that's not places like boulder we're on the weeny end of the spectrum here so we're the we're in experimental land with respect to business model for these folks so that's one of the reasons we said maybe we can help a little bit with this rfp because uh expecting somebody to come in and say i'm 100 confident that for you little guys that are very odd uh and have a university in the middle that this is the business model that works uh i think you're going to get a lot of fast footing because they don't know and so we have to run the process in such a way that we we can learn and choose who's going to

[43:00] be the best in that construct so those are our three additional comments thanks for that hutch uh if anyone has any further questions for hutch just feel free to put your hand up and we'll ask them as as we go on here next up we have mary followed by rachel and juni thank you adam um and thank you for the presentation dk and hutch and kevin um i have several questions the first one is just did i hear you say correctly dk that the 60 40 split um city university flipped so that it's okay and so do you have any speculations as to what that is attributable to some of it may be the fact that uh students are not using transit right now because of kogan 19 that is one

[44:01] speculation that we have for the increased use um and we're not quite sure and probably kevin can speak to the general community use with with boulder bike share and why that's not bouncing back or perhaps it is bouncing back but a bit slower but i suspect that has a lot to do with it the fact that transit is no longer looked at as an appealing mode of transportation because of the company okay great thank you um and then i noticed in the categories of requirements for the rfp um in equity you had affordable and inclusive i believe now is that something that is going to be yes thank you very much affordability and inclusivity um is that the affordability and inclusivity especially the inclusivity is that something that is going to be

[45:00] defined by the rfp or are we defining for them um what we're looking for i think that we would uh define what we're looking for and then have them respond um through the request for proposal to determine what they're able to do but it is our goal to create a program that you know has a sort of a cash payment plan um or potentially even a subsidized plan to some degree and then making sure that it's also so for those folks that don't have credit cards and or mobile phones how do they use how do they use this program and then also making sure that we have these devices um deployed in these underserved neighborhoods um throughout town no thank you um i i didn't mean to incorrupt um but that was that okay great thank you um thank you for that and then um so that was i guess that was my

[46:00] questions two and three so the other thing that i found curious was in the next slide with all of the different colored um based on their efficacy um i was curious about in the equity piece where it says required by business license um so is that something new is that something that all business licenses require and how does that work so so within the business license that a company would have to apply for and receive there's a city manager rules component of that and so through the city manager rules we could define what that program what we'd like to see in that equity program okay great thank you very much that's all i have thank you thanks mary now we have rachel and juni for questions thanks adam um my first question is um i know that we're leaving the rfp

[47:01] pretty open but um it seems to me like particularly scenario d under the color coding is like dead in the water and c doesn't look real viable either so like why are we still looking at those two i guess is my question right so so council does have the choice to allocate funds as they see fit um currently in our budget we we do have limited funds um fifty thousand dollars for 2021. um and so if it was under if it was council's purview to continue the operations as they were today um they could they could we could work on that absolutely so is that something that you're hoping we will weigh in on tonight whether we want scenarios c and d to continue to be looked at um it's up to you absolutely we'll take any input we can on the matter um and so um that would be helpful to know okay thanks um and then i

[48:01] just one other question something that hutch mentioned it intrigues me that europe's e-bike um volumes have gone up by a factor of five or six or something like that and he mentioned that there were maybe subsidies involved so i know sometimes the county has offered subsidies on electric cars and bikes in the past as a city have we looked at any um incentives and if we you know maybe have some funding that we're doing less for the bike shared model could we be offering some incentives for people to purchase e-bikes which are now down like at close to a thousand dollars for for some like rad models so is that something that staff is looking at yeah and so we're talking about subsidies for individuals to buy a private e-bike correct yep okay and uh and rachel that is in our transportation master plan one of our objectives to do that just that very same thing so um there are there is actually a grant opportunity that is

[49:01] available right now that the city and our community partners are looking at to see how we might be able to actually purchase e-bikes for under-served community members that's one program we haven't identified other areas right now where we'd find the funding to provide the subsidy but it's something that is in our purview and something we'd like to do okay thanks if i could just if i could just um talk a little bit more about the option d um i just wanted to um just add that you know if it if it is option d that council wanted to go with that we could scale back the delivery of the services under the current model if we have less cities city subsidy to work with and that's where the the scenario d becomes more viable thanks for that clarification dk next we have juni and if nobody else has questions i'll ask one after judy

[50:00] thank you uh adam i am slightly confused and i think probably people who are watching us might be confused as well i've been on the b cycle website and also the boulder share website and from my understanding actually scenario d kind of looks like a present system meaning that currently that b boulder bike share currently operates b cycle is that correct that is correct juni that is um so scenario d is the status quo okay i do have another question and i think it goes back to um looking at scenario a and scenario b and i think i had a similar question to what mary i think that's you know just came up to me as well was the idea

[51:00] of equity affordability and location because you mentioned the solution of b cycle and i'm wondering what does that really mean does that mean i am a proponent of e-scooters but at the same time i'm wondering what are some of the perimeters that will let's say you were to dissolve b cycle while people still have access to bicycles what's the percentage or is it just going to be like everything is going to be replaced by mostly e-scooters so right no so scenario and scenario a and scenario b would include both e-bikes andy scooters the ordinance for the um the dockless e-bikes is to have an initial fleet size of 500 bikes and then for um and then for the e-scooter ordinance it's 200 at the start and and both and then both of those modes are subject to a demand-based cap

[52:00] that means if they can achieve a certain amount of rides per day per vehicle or per device they're able to increase the number of units they would have deployed within the city so we are looking at a combination of both of those devices available to community members okay thank you and i think i like what you mentioned earlier about the undeserved community and i hope especially if we can going to a private sector and i really don't fully understand what that means and how much say we're going to have in the locations or where where you know these e-bikes and new bicycles are placed especially if there's a dissolution whether it means that well it'd be just a replacement side by side let's say for instance i know there are a bunch of bicycles in my on on the bike path near the boulder library and in different locations well these locations still be the place

[53:00] as well including other parts in the community or will it be left to these institutions or whichever is that private sector uh service provider will they be the one that choose that location and that'll be under the city's purview to determine the deployment locations and of course we would work with the operator regardless if they're private or non-profit to determine you know where those best locations are and it's somewhat organic in that demand changes um locations shift and we've seen that with older bike share where we've moved some stations to other locations because there was a greater demand um in a new location where there was lesser in the in the previous and so having that capability of being flexible but then also helping well requiring the provider to deploy the bikes and e-scooters in specific areas is under our purview and is required through their business license thank you

[54:03] thank you juni uh my question is on the timeline slide if you want to go to that dk um and it mentions at the bottom in your asterisk uh that the e-scooter program will be rolled into the shared micro mobility program and i was just wondering that is with the constraints the council placed on it correct so it's not you know yeah just want to verify that that's still the case so we don't try to get ahead of ourselves accidentally right right so the e-scooters are universal through the community and right now we're still working with our partners in the community determine the appropriate parameters for the e-scooters where they where they can operate okay but the rfps will sort of be rolled out at the same time for bikes and e-scooters with those constraints yes sir okay perfect that was my last question does anyone else have any questions i'll just give a second for more hands okay then we'll move on to the feedback

[55:01] portion so feel free to raise your hands for that first up i have bob followed by sam thanks adam i just had three items of feedback dk this was a really helpful presentation and thanks for everybody who participated and put this together um and this is very understandable and cogent i have just three items of feedback um first i i want to agree with what hutch said about the popularity of ebikes not just people who are buying e-bikes but also e-bike rentals i recently came back from a trip to new york city and on several days road on the um the um the the the shared bike system there which is called city bike and city bike has expanded its um offerings from pedal bikes to about five to ten percent of its inventory now is e-bikes and it's on the same terms they sit in the same docks and um i think there's a slight up charge it's like 10 cents a minute um but other than that it's it's um it's exactly the same as as the other bikes i will tell you

[56:00] anecdotally having done that maybe uh 10 or 15 times in new york city over the last couple weeks these e-bikes were fabulously uh popular um you can go on the app and find out how many e-bikes are at each docking station and maybe 40 pedal bikes and one or two e-bikes and people would flock to the the docking stations on the e-bikes people would stand in line waiting for an e-bike to come back um so that they could take it out themselves i even saw almost a fight developed between two people who showed up at the same time wanting the last e-bike in the system so i would urge us as we um put together this rfp to have a big emphasis on e-bike rentals as part of this because i do agree completely with hutch this is the wave of the future and while a mix between pedal bikes and e-bikes is going to be healthy um i think the biggest problem they're having in new york is they have too few e-bikes it's only about five or ten percent of their stock and my guess is if they made it fifty percent of their stock um they could keep all those e-bikes out on the streets it'd be interesting to see what their ratio is of

[57:01] of rides per day on e-bikes versus pedal bikes but i'm going to guess it's probably an order of magnitude different so that's item number one number two as to option a and option b i think it's great that boulder um bike share is willing to be on standby and to support any for-profit um up uh uh uh entity that wants to come in and provide this service to us i think i'd just be really careful in the rfp to indicate that that's an option for the bidder um and that boulder bike share would be available if um they if the bidder chooses um to provide local on the ground operations and and share its institutional knowledge as knowledge of boulder but not impose that upon a better if a bidder doesn't need that type of support i wouldn't want to scare them off and say that they must use um boulder bike share so i guess i'd be in favor of kind of a hybrid between a and b uh i think the rfp is well thought out uh dk

[58:00] and if boulder bike share wants to be on standby to provide assistance that's really kind of between quite frankly the better and and boulder bike share and then finally i'd be remiss if i didn't um voice my continued objection to the e-scooter proposal um i know i lost that vote the last time we talked about this a few weeks ago and i hate to one margin so i want belabor the point but i do want to reflect the fact that by some studies e-scooters are 100 times more dangerous than uh bicycles on a miles ridden basis and we see tens of thousands of people no exaggeration tens of thousands of people injured and even a few killed on e-scooters in this country every year and i'm i'm not um excited about the fact that we're going to have e-scooters as part of this program so much so that i probably would tend to vote against whatever proposal comes before us if it includes e-scooters as a part of a package with e-bikes that's it thank you bob and just to clarify uh the vote was originally 6-3 turn 7-2

[59:03] in order to get it past that evening who who joined me in opposition on the uh um you me and mark i believe oh okay well thank thank you mark for for standing by me wasn't as bad as i thought and next we have sam great thanks and thanks dk for the presentation it was quite complete and good um i will note that the boulder bike share strategic planning exercise is the one that identified the four scenarios that are in the memo so i really view the scenarios more as possible outcomes to an rfp rather than something the rfp would necessarily specify i do think scenario d just doesn't work at all so we shouldn't think about it as rachel pointed out but i just wanted to note that the scenarios came out of the boulder bike share strategic planning process and

[60:02] i agree that we shouldn't specify whether boulder bike share is involved or whether a company that's vertically integrated who has a great response to the rfp should get the award so i the way i read the boulder bike share strategic planning document was that in response to the rfp older bike share would go seeking private partners who they would bid with and that may be just one or maybe a couple um but i think that's probably the the best role for us is to acknowledge that boulder bike share has a lot of local on the ground expertise and then allow the market to sort out who might want to work with them and who might not and so that's question one questions or comments regarding the strategic planning process i thought it was good exercise on boulder bike shares part and i hope that they're able to find one or more private partners to work with

[61:00] as the rfp comes out i will note you know i totally agree with hutch and bob e-bikes are a big sea change my e-bike changed my commuting habits greatly compared to just normal bike a lot of reasons for that but we're in hilly terrain and tourists for instance could want an e-bike because they may not be acclimated yet and certainly people who are carrying groceries or books or anything like that in the silly terrain would probably prefer an e-bike to normal bikes so i think that that is a big deal it's a game changer for use i'll point out that with the number of bikes and um the current bike share program 300 bikes and 105 000 rides it's about one ride per bike per day and i don't know what we're shooting for but that seems too low to me um and i expect with e-bikes kind of like bob described

[62:00] that if we have a mix the e-bikes will be more popular and so i think we should plan for that in the rfp and hope to specify some relatively high fraction of e-bikes to just normal bikes on the subject of e-bikes there's multiple kinds there are e-bikes that are pedal assist which um the memo refers to multiple times there's also e-bikes that are essentially just scooters um electric scooters where they don't have pedal assist some of them don't even have pedals and i would like us to have our e-bikes that we're going to put the rfp out for b pedal assist there's also blends which are um you can have pedal assist or you can just use the the throttle i think for what we're trying to get done um i would think we would want to do pedal assist the other thing to think about is there's what three types of e-bikes

[63:00] based on the max speed we definitely want to stay away from the type 3 i think which is the highest speed i think we would want our b cycle or whatever the program is those e-bikes to be governed at 15 miles an hour because our paths have a 15 mile an hour speed limit um type 2 my type 2 e bike will go 18 miles an hour before the assist turns off so i think we want to make sure and specify the type of e-bikes if we're going forward with that for the shared micro mobility program um and then one of the things that you asked for dk was the criteria that we thought were the most important and i wanted to pop back to that i think it's of course safety is the first one that's listed and i think that's critical and that gets to bob's point about e-scooters and we've kind of restricted that e-scooter program to be in an area with less congestion east boulder

[64:01] i'm not particularly optimistic about it but i think it's worth a try which is what we decided so that's good that we'll go forward with that but i think safety both for the e-scooters and for e-bikes and normal bikes is important but i think right behind that also is financial viability if we go through this entire rfp and we pick some uh model that is not financially viable we're going to have wasted time and money getting there so i think evaluating the the viability the financial viability and the number of bikes that will be provided and you know number of rides that we expect per bike that's going to have a lot to do with whether this is going to be something that's going to last a decade or last a year or two and if it only lasts a year or two i think that would be a big negative for us so to me safety and financial viability equity i think we should definitely make

[65:01] sure the rfp specifies uh the measures of affordability but also where stations will be located i don't know if the number right now 45-ish stations is the right number or not but whatever the number is we do need to make sure that we have geographic accessibility so safety financial viability and equity are at the top of the list environmental sustainability i really think with e-bikes many of them are are very sturdy and long-lasting they're typically built for people who want to run them for years so i'm not as concerned with environmental sustainability for e-bikes i mean we should look at it but i don't think that's going to be a challenge i think there's dozens that could meet that i think with the e-scooters it's a much bigger deal so you know environmental sustainability to me is more of a check box for the um e-bikes but for the scooters it's going

[66:00] to take a lot more research and you know diligence on what the potential providers are going to say i guess i would also say i don't think it really matters if it's one company doing both scooters and e-bikes and pedal bikes or if it's two companies one for the bikes and one for the scooters and then state-of-the-art technology that's nice but it's not to me as important as the others accessibility i kind of tie that in with equity i think they're you know a couple different sides of the same kind of coin and responsiveness to operational issues i think it's hard to suss that out ahead of time we know boulder bike share so that's good we we understand how they work others it'll be harder maybe they have other cities they can reference but for the criteria i think the ones on the left of your slide to me are the most important and kind of in the order that you have them listed i think equity and financial viability are kind of

[67:00] side by side for me so i think that's all i've got i think this will be exciting to see what we get out of it it is going to be a time for change i want to thank boulder bikeshare for all the services they've provided boulder for the last decade i hope that they are involved with the next decade but i think we have to let the private market sort that out a little bit so thanks dk and thank you all thanks sam next we have mary followed by aaron nearby and rachel thank you adam yeah i want to agree with uh bob and sam with respect to the e-bike um split to perhaps make it greater than we may have thought to the extent possible um and then with sam regarding the type of bike to make sure that it um can't go faster than what the speed limit is on our multi-use

[68:00] pads and bike paths um so those two things i wanted to agree with and also um sam brought up the idea that equity and accessibility are kind of um similar or are subsets of each other and i was going to bring that up as well and suggest that what we do is that we combine equity and accessibility and to me equity is about providing access and access is recognized as a five-dimensional kind of concept and the five dimensions include the accessibility which is um like accessibility for people with disabilities and then um then you have the availability which is what the accessibility i think is referring to in this slide that you have up um you have accommodations which are i

[69:00] think um part of um well i don't see it included anywhere here but the accommodations would include things like um providing um the information in languages other than english and as well as making it available via cash so those are accommodations and then you have of course the affordability as part of those five dimensions and then you have um the acceptability which of which inclusivity would be part of so i would combine equity and accessibility and within the rfp mention that that we're looking at this as a multi-dimensional kind of concept um and include those five dimensions um so that was um my main comment thank you thank you mary thanks mary on to aaron the nearby and rachel

[70:01] yeah i was going to make a a comment about uh the accessibility tying into the equity piece mary made it uh better and more thoroughly than i did uh would have so i'll just uh tag on to her comments and agree with everything that's been said about e-bikes and and the importance of them and and the game changing nature of them and just look forward to seeing what we get back here so you know i think your criteria are on target and so it'll be really interesting to see what folks come back with um i also very much thank be cycle for their 10 years of service and i hope that that the next 10 years involved them as well but like others have said we want to see what's out there and what meets the needs of the city because you know we can keep those various scenarios in our heads as we move to the next stage but you know the reality is that we don't really have the money available right now for the same level of subsidies that we've been putting in right so that's that's really unlikely to be an outcome here although we can keep it in mind uh

[71:01] that's it thanks thank you aaron uh nearby rachel and mark um i'll just keep my comments short um first of all congratulations to the 10 years for b cycle and um i think sam really summed up most of how i was feeling very well in his explanation but i will also say that i was not at the meeting that bob was referring to about the scooters and i also am with bob in terms of not wanting to really support a program with the scooters so i i know i wasn't at that but i did write a letter in um and i have big concerns around that as well as i think many of our community members so i'll just put that in there but um i'm fine with incorporating what mary just stated as well so again to keep it simple i'll just kind of go along with what bob and sam has said with mary's add-in mayor bye uh rachel and mark i just um wanted to maybe disagree with

[72:00] one thing that sam said which was about the pedal assist and the way that i would hope that um staff evaluates the rfps there is you know how does it measure up for safety financial viability equity and all the others so if a hybrid bike is more safe or more financially viable why would we take that out of the equation now so i would give staff and the rfp process maximum flexibility um to to get us a product that's going to work best for our community so i would not be overly prescriptive and and limit in that way that's all thanks rachel so it sounds like safety is still sort of the most top priority but don't exclude anything else in all of the ways that we are evaluating these criteria if we limit what we're looking at to um the pedal assist bikes and take off the ones where you can also you know uh

[73:00] hit a throttle and pedal also that may be taking the best bike option that is the highest rated for safety and accessibility and financial viability out of the equation and so i wouldn't want to do that gotcha so okay all the criteria but saying maximize our flexibility in what we are evaluating perfect thanks for that clarification mark and juni okay um i am supportive of the comments that sam and mary made i um i think that uh we ought to be careful about what type of equipment we're going to put out there and i want to make sure that it's easily available to all segments of our community i do have one late question that i'll ask dk and again dk thank you for the presentation it was very helpful um did i miss something where when we authorized a pilot program

[74:00] for e-scooters was that not something that was going to be formulated and then brought back to us for us to take a look at or have i skipped a step or not properly understood where we were going with that and the reason i'm asking that is i would assume that we would incorporate whatever limitations were in that program in the rfp and if it was the intent to have us take a look at that program it seems to me to be time would be running short if you're going to go out with an rfp um in the near future you are correct on on the latter there that we would include those parameters within the rfp and we will be sharing with council perhaps not through a council meeting but through an email through hotline or another method that the city manager might suggest regarding the parameters of the where the e-scooters can operate we are looking at that right now and

[75:00] most importantly we're coordinating with our partners and cu boulder being one of those strategic partners with respect to where these devices can operate as bob said i am also not a big fan of these scooters but if we are going to do a program i would very much like it to be correct in scope um and correct an implementation and so i would it's something i would like to see before we go out to the business community and and make it part of the rfp how you do that i would leave to you very good anything else mark no that's that's all for me all right thank you and last junie and then i'll go thank you adam i just wanted to thank mary for her comments about accessibility i think that's very important that we understand those dimensions

[76:01] um i just wanted to add that i agree with the need to fully understand where these e-scooters will be placed uh whether it's gonna be near the bikes or i think that's very important because again um i know that sam mentioned it would be an east boulder but actually i remember the last time we talked about it i could be wrong it was somewhere near 28th and 30th street so i think it's very important that we have a better understand of where these e-scooters will be placed because safety of members of our community is very important and we cannot just allow these e-scooters in places where we know it's unsafe where you know um with high traffic areas we have to be very careful when it comes to these things um so i think again we need those

[77:01] constraints before we go ahead with e-scooters um that's very important to me i i'm still in favor of supporting e-scooters as long as it's in a safe area where there's no high traffic and if it's some place where it's in high traffic area i think that's gonna be very hard um to support so i think these constraints are very important for these perimeters and not just leave it to um to whoever whether it's a private company or or just you know whichever institution that we choose to decide so i think accessibility and location which is part of the safety to me is the highest priority when it comes to these with this new venture thank you juni and last um my feedback are uh

[78:00] thanks for being on the goals area sheet uh that's what i was looking for um i would love to see sort of what the metrics of measurement on these would be for the rfp i think that's an important component so we can sort of see what those measurable metrics are before we go asking companies uh what they can actually do um a along those lines i share a lot of the same uh interests with sam and bob and mary and um i think you're asking a lot of the right questions i'd just like to see the measurable amounts uh that you plan on asking for uh i also agree that e-bikes are probably coming up fast and we should plan for that i also really like the concept of docks for whether that be e-bikes or scooters i think docks um they really keep sort of the constraints in place that a lot of the community is worried about obviously

[79:01] safety is still a concern but a lot of the other concerns are whether or not they're going to be left or even create a hazard in uh walkways so um maybe making sure there's a dock component i didn't hear a whole lot about that but uh that's that's a personal interest to me and um i think that's going to be it for me so uh does anyone else have any other input before i summarize and we move on i'm just going to wait a second for any hands and seeing none um what we heard is option d may not be very options d and c may not be very um helpful going forward but options or sorry these are not options these are scenarios um but a and b we all seem to have a relative interest in uh making sure that the rfp process is open the there is substantial interest in

[80:01] weighting it uh towards e-bikes to some degree uh the the components of those e-bikes are still in question but um operating within speed limits might be a good option um looking at pedal assist and non-pedal assist depending upon what the safety mechanics of those are um and making sure that equity and accessibility are sort of top measurements uh when we're in the rfp process to make sure that not only are things accessible but they're accessible in the right places to reach our goals and there are still concerns about e-scooters we already all knew that so making sure that we can see ahead of time sort of what the plan is for that in one way or another before the rfp goes out just to try to alleviate those concerns as much as possible and i think that's about all i had

[81:00] um anything else dk is that good that's fantastic thank you so much council for your input tonight appreciate it perfect um doing a quick time check here we're a little bit ahead of schedule so i suggest we do a a four-minute break um and reconvene at 7 25 for our next topic anyone uh disagree okay here we go

[82:22] that

[85:59] all right we've got

[86:03] almost everybody just a couple missing just waiting on okay we're good all right so our next topic this evening will be the regulation of human electric powered micro mobility devices on streets paths and sidewalks and i believe dk you're still up thank you adam appreciate that and so yes let's uh shift modes now uh so to speak and discuss the regulation of human and electric power devices on streets paths and sidewalks and joining us tonight this evening is jack walker traffic commander for the boulder police department and also bill cowan a deputy director for transportation and mobility department who will be representing transportation

[87:02] operations and so we do have a number of items to discuss with you um and it's important to note that just like the last line and we are very much in the exploratory phase of this topic based upon your input tonight council will return to you in january with proposed modifications to current ordinances to best accommodate our communities transportation needs but to get us started and to help us become more familiar with the topic at hand we'll first review some of the types of human and electrocard devices discuss potential changes uh to the city's dismount zones and then examine the types of facilities discuss where these devices should be allowed or not allowed to operate we'll then conclude the presentation with the results of our community engagement efforts and share input from our transportation advisory board okay we've seen some of these let's uh refresh our memory with the types of devices these are human powered devices they are bikes and e-bikes kick scooters skateboards

[88:03] and rollerblades and and currently bikes and e-bikes are allowed on sidewalks outside of designated dismount zones and they are allowed on multi-use paths and also all streets skateboards and rollerblades on the other hand are not are excuse me are allowed on sidewalks except dismount zones and multi-use paths and but they are not allowed in the street allowed on sidewalks outside the dismount zone and on multi-use paths but not in the streets and we've probably seen some of these around town as well a nice collection of electric powered devices um one wheel e-skateboard e-scooter e-unicycle are some of the examples of these vehicles these devices and so electric power devices are currently not allowed on sidewalks multi-use paths

[89:00] or streets e-scooters are the exception and they are allowed on streets per changes in the state statute which passed in june of 2019. okay let's first take a look at potential revisions to the dismount zone ordinance and so we recognize staff recognizes that the current distinction of where human power devices including e-bikes and skateboards can and cannot be ridden on sidewalks it can be confusing and difficult for some community members to discern staff is proposing modifications to current dismount zone ordinance to designate the dismount zones based upon the boundaries of the city's general improvement improvement districts which correlates to the downtown university hill in boulder junction areas the ordinance currently in place identifies dismount zones based upon commercial land use and this is very sporadic throughout boulder this modification would make it legal to ride human power devices on

[90:00] more sidewalks while maintaining the dismount zones in our high pedestrian volume areas that is key another reason to visit potential changes to this ordinance is that there are many areas of the city where cycling and skateboarding is prohibited on the sidewalk and in some locations bike facilities may not even be present and sometimes the bike lanes on some roadways like arterial roadways which have a higher volume of traffic and greater speeds these can produce a higher level of traffic stress for people riding and so they may choose to ride on the sidewalks because they feel safer and as i mentioned the revised dismount zones would expand the sidewalk locations in the city where bicycling would be allowed it would also be easier for community members to discern where cycling is allowed and more feasible for staff to appropriately sign and mark as well as educate users on the limits of the dismount zone depending upon which direction council prefers to go staff would develop a communications plan

[91:01] to educate all road users on the limits of the dismount zone and how to safely navigate those intersections it's important to note however that crashes involving turning vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists on sidewalks and multi-use paths adjacent to roadways continues to occur throughout boulder but it is it is done so in a non-trending manner which is a good thing crash data does identify locations where crashes between cyclists and pedestrians have occurred and staff is working to mitigate those vehicles excuse me those crashes and so as part of this dismount zone revision the boulder police department has also weighed heavily in and on this topic and has asked that transportation mobility stat staff perform a proactive view of intersex intersection locations that have certain characteristics to determine the potentiality for future crashes once identified and evaluated we would then apply the appropriate mitigation tactics to proactively prevent future crashes

[92:00] more feasible okay this next set we're going to be looking at the different types of facilities sidewalks multi-youth paths and streets so for the same reason that people choose to ride bikes on sidewalks people may also choose to ride their electric power devices on sidewalks the primary staff concern about sharing sidewalks with these devices is speed many of these devices can travel up to 20 miles per hour and have the potential to cause severe injury crashes with other sidewalk users these electric power devices can also travel quickly through intersections along sidewalks and encounter a turning vehicle whose driver may not be able to react in time so potential solutions if we did allow electric power devices on sidewalks may be to modify the current ordinances which currently require cyclists to slow down to eight miles per hour in crossing and crosswalks and to also activate pedestrian crossing tunnels when present and so if the use of these devices are

[93:02] is allowed on sidewalks outside the dismount zones these ordinances should be modified to address these devices and users should be informed about how to interact with other users including yielding to pedestrians and taking a look at multi-use paths we recognize that many people travel along the multi-use path system today and a lot of folks are using electric power devices the operation of all motorized vehicles is prohibited on multi-use paths and trails on open space land too that's an important clarification we need to make e-bikes are allowed on a multi-use path that's an important another important clarification to make and that was an ordinance change that was made in 2014. the boulder police department believes that multi-use paths are the most appropriate facility for these types of devices these devices can vary in breaking and lighting equipment but generally they do

[94:01] provide a method for regulating their speed staff does have concerns regarding the interaction with other multi-use path users and if electric power devices are allowed on multi-use paths ordinances should address their proper use meaning speed limit of 15 miles per hour riding at night with lights using audible signals when passing and yielding to pedestrians and slower moving traffic and then we look at streets and it's important to note that we are exploring allowing these devices on residential streets and only in the bike lane on all other streets and so typically human-powered devices such as skateboards and rollerblades they do not have the proper brakes or lights and when in the street they can travel fast and unpredictably skateboards for example require the user to carve back and forth with an entire street with to regulate their speed there are also concerns regarding their

[95:00] visibility by drivers and motor vehicles if allowed on streets the ordinance should govern their safe and proper use to not cause crashes to occur an example of this would be to ride at night with lights to stay in one travel lane or within the bike lane and follow the rules of the road similar to how we currently regulate bicycles drivers and vehicles per the state statute each scooters are currently allowed to be ridden in the street other devices classified as lightweight electric power devices like the one wheel and the unicycle what not the skateboard they are currently defined as toy vehicles per state statute and are not allowed in the street whether it be in the roadway or in the bike lane again if these devices are allowed to operate on residential streets or streets within the bike lanes the ordinances should govern their proper use similar to human power devices on streets

[96:01] okay community engagement we've been staff we've been working with many community state stakeholders over the last several months on this topic people are very passionate about their facilities whether it be sidewalks bike lanes or multi-use fast as you can imagine we've been in close talks with cu boulder regarding these devices and where they're allowed to operate with the goal of creating a seamless transition between the city and city cu's campus in terms of regulatory expectations and we've heard from the parks and recreation board in the county's mobility for all working group regarding concerns for vulnerable populations such as children and our aging community members and about their safety when using sidewalks and multi-use paths and concerns regarding the electric powered vehicles mixing with pedestrians and people in wheelchairs staff has also worked very closely with the boulder police department on this topic and the city's pedestrian action committee to work through several of the nuances associated with where these devices

[97:00] should be allowed to operate and of course the transportation advisory board weighed in on this topic at their october 12th meet october 12th meeting i'll share their input next but first i'd like to share the results of the be heard boulder online community questionnaire which is more of our general public input that we conducted for this particular topic and we named it which which wheels go where and this questionnaire was live for a little over two weeks and received about 360 responses and so i would like to walk through these particular questions we asked and their responses and so um before i go before i do that though to to preference this next set of slides we did provide a brief introduction in the be heard boulder questionnaire to the effect of that we are working toward the goals of our transportation master plan and that we recognize that these smaller scale personal micro mobility devices such as e-bikes and e-scooters can help reduce single occupancy vehicle

[98:01] trips provide more travel choices and fill in gaps in our transportation network and so with each of these questions i'll go through them and so what is your top concern regarding expanding the use of human powered devices on sidewalks again speed people may be traveling too fast may not yield as another top concern and then getting their the the nine percent sidewalks some people feel sidewalks are already too congested some of the other examples are that they are too narrow um and and some and some folks are not concerned about the device necessarily but they're concerned about how they're used and how they're enforced and then what is your top concern regarding the use of electric powered devices on sidewalks again very similar to the first one to human devices electric devices they

[99:00] have the same concerns may travel too fast and they may not yield to pedestrians when we look at their top concerns regarding the use of electric power on devices on multi-use paths what was surprising here is that 42 of the respondents did not have a concern there was no concern regarding their use but again a speed may travel too fast as a common occurrence or a common concern that is coming up through this the results of this questionnaire and some of the things we mentioned earlier is people sometimes will pass without an audible signal when they're passing on the left and they're also afraid of folks that are riding their vehicle or their device in a reckless manner hey dk before you move on can you explain real quick it looks like the the bars here one of the two has to be wrong either the percentages are wrong or the heights of the bars are wrong

[100:02] okay um let's see doing quick math i could add them up i tell you what adam i need to continue the conversa the presentation i can come back to that and figure out if there is a discrepancy and follow up with you perfect thank you okay and then we look at uh what is your top concern regarding the use of human-powered skateboards on residential streets again 37 percent no concern um 32 people not following the rules of the road and then what is your top concern regarding the use of human-powered skateboards and bike lanes again a common theme we're seeing is that there's a large percentage of people that are that have don't have concerns with um some devices and multi-use paths and also on the streets and streets of bike lanes

[101:00] and of course some of the other comments skateboards are unpredictable we see a lack of product protected facilities uh will will be hard to get skateboards to follow the rules of the road and then what is your top concern regarding the use of electric powered skateboards one wheels and the e's the unicycles and electric skateboards and residential streets again um 30 no concern again not following the rules of the road the unpredictability associated with these types of devices and then what is your top concern regarding the use of electric powered skateboards one wheels on non-residential streets and only in the bike lane so we are seeing some recurring themes in in the results from the questionnaire okay moving on to tab input

[102:00] tab is supportive of modifying coordinate current ordinances to allow human and electric power devices on facilities where they are not allowed today they believe that it is less is it that is important to be less restrictive less prescriptive if you will toward micro mobility modes to shift trips away from single occupancy vehicles tab supports the revised dismount zone map and requests that staff effectively communicate the limits of the dismount zones to community members through education outreach signs and markings tab believes it is important to provide signing along the multi-use path that correlates to the safety messages identified in the city's way of the path program and they understand the boulder police department's limitations regarding enforcement and then in terms of next steps again we'll be taking these based upon uh your input tonight

[103:00] we will then begin to look at how we might modify the current ordinances to achieve council's goals and the goals of our transportation master plan and so we would bring to tab in december propose changes to those ordinances and then we would return to council in january january 5th and 19th respectively uh up for the public hearing to look at these ordinances and if any changes are necessary and then so for tonight your questions do you have any questions or concerns regarding the expanded spending the use of human powered devices on sidewalks do you have questions or concerns regarding the use of electric power devices on multi-use paths and sidewalks outside of the dismount zone what are your questions and concerns regarding the use of human-powered skateboards and electric powered devices on residential streets in the bike lane and on all other streets again thank you very much for listening

[104:01] i know that's a lot of information and we look forward to working through the details with you all thank you dk can you roll back one slide just so we have those questions up uh as we begin the process here um first let's take general questions about the presentation and then we'll go into these one at a time sam thanks dk for the presentation this is a a subject that i think as long needed to address so i really appreciate tab and transportation taking this on so thank you i guess i only have one question to start with as i've observed the various flavors of electric powered vehicles that aren't e-bikes on the pass the the unicycles seem to be the one that folks will put a helmet on and armor on and go really fast on the paths so i was curious what you know about those unicycles top

[105:02] speeds i don't know anything about them except that i observe that they seem to go faster than the one wheels or the electric skateboards or anything so i was just curious if you have any background on that electric powered unicycle um i know that daredevil the exact air double you're talking about right now he's got a full face helmet on right right he's got the electric unicycle and he's typically on the boulder creek path that we see him and he's going at a pretty high rate of speed absolutely i i know that i don't see too many of these users currently i would say that some of these devices can be modified i think generally speaking the devices are regulated about 20 miles per hour but it's not to say it's not possible to change the the the speeds that they are capable of going got it and and just one other question um given that some e-bikes type threes can go faster than than 20 miles an hour and

[106:02] that obviously some of the unicycles can be modified and some have been modified um how does transportation and the police department look at trying to get the message across that on multi-use paths on sidewalks and even bike lanes that there are speed restrictions because i think that's it came up as the most concerning element on sidewalks so i was just curious you know obviously the path has a 15 mile an hour speed limit there's some attempt to communicate to users that that's the case if we did this kind of changes most of which i'm in favor of how would we try and make sure that folks are abiding by the speed limits right so correct the there is a 15 mile an hour speed limit on the multi-path system today there's an ordinance behind that and i think that what we could do a better job of right now is communicating these messages

[107:00] and also installing signing and marking along the multi-use path that reflect the messages safety messages of our way of the path campaign and we typically today get all that information out through social media we'll do periodic bursts of informing the community but i think that there's more that we can do and be more intensive particularly if we're going to be changing any ordinances to allow these vehicles we have to go full court press to really get the word out there around these devices and what these ordinances are whether it be the speed limit 15 miles per hour or using audible signal when passing on the left yielding uh to slower moving moving vehicles these are all i think the messaging that we would have to um uh really put out there in order to get the message across and then having the signs in place and the markings in place in the field there would be a cost to that we have to look at that however um i think having them in the field having them on the multi-use path

[108:00] and so you're hearing it and you're seeing it i think that would help instill a culture of safety um in time thank you ek would you mind if i uh add in just a little bit absolutely transportation and mobility um in in reference sam to your question about how we would handle this um especially on sidewalks versus multi-use pass because i think dk did a pretty good job of how we handle that on multi-use pass today we've got quite a bit of speed limit signing on the path system i imagine we would probably need to treat our sidewalks much the way we do our residential street system and we would need to identify those locations where um we have an issue with people bicycling too fast and post speed limits on those sidewalks much as we do with the residential streets today we obviously would not be able to post speed limits on all sidewalks in the city

[109:02] thanks bill thank you sam uh next we have mark rachel and mary yeah i really only have one question at the moment um the survey that generated 360 responses are you considering that a statistically valid survey no sir it's only a questionnaire um because it you know i note that it represents about three tenths of one percent of uh people living in boulder so it struck me as sort of a a fl a thin read on which to make judgments as to the receptivity of the community to various alternatives so thank you that that was really my only question if you have anything you want to add to that please do i don't have anything to add to it i

[110:00] agree that is it is a questionnaire it's not statistically valid at this point um but it is additional outreach that we've done you know in addition to the stakeholders you know it's not the complete picture in terms of the statistically valid survey but it does help us understand what the concerns are um from an implementation standpoint you have any plans for something a little more systematic in terms of of outreach and and obtaining the views of the community so that is a communications plan that we've yet to develop but it would definitely be comprehensive and and more robust and what we've done previously is that something you're intending to do yes sir um prior to our inaction of of specific changes yeah we can bring the elements of the communications plan to the first and second readings for council in january okay thank you welcome great next for general questions we have

[111:00] rachel and mary well it feels like sort of specific questions here adam but i'm going to put it under the general questions category um first on the dismount zones which it's awesome i think to have them much better simplified so that seems like a really good direction but i noticed like in the downtown zone there's no bike paths and there's no multi-use trail there and so we're asking people to dismount um and not be able to ride their bikes safely really in a lot of downtown so i wanted to make sure i was like following that map right and then um understand if there's any argument to doing something different than a full dismount zone like could people have to ride you know very slowly there like some my bike for example is an e-bike it's really heavy and cumbersome and if i dismount it it's unwieldy like it's much easier for me to be on it it's safer to be on a sidewalk like how did we land on um

[112:00] on on the dismount where there are no bike lanes and and paths it's really because of the high pedestrian volume area and then the interactions the potential conflicts with pedestrians people in wheelchairs and and whatnot we do recognize that some of the streets in the downtown don't currently have a a low stress option i think that's something we need to continue working on um but we do feel that it's important to ask cyclists to dismount um ask anybody on that's on a device to dismount while they're in this in the downtown area there's you know if you're if you're accessing downtown from the from the north or south there are many ways to get there safely and effectively but i will agree that if you're traveling um east and west then it's a bit more difficult yeah like if i'm trying to go from the municipal building to west pearl say like they're just not you know i'm gonna have to walk something that's um really unwieldy that's it just doesn't

[113:01] seem like it would be great if you could if we had a little bit of maneuverability in my mind so just wondered if that was thought through or um maybe if i guess to hutch if that's still our tab contact here if if tab talked through that issue at all what what we provided us as feedback is that we were we were not so much worried about uh dismount or not uh although we didn't have any real sense of you know once you start to get complicated on these things there's times of day when there's no one around and why we we talked about that a little bit but the main thing we talked about is how do people know that they're in this zone the boundaries are sort of these convoluted zigzags and uh we we were concerned about uh just knowing and getting

[114:01] messages out and maybe the shape could be simpler or or what is it and therefore how exactly do you think about those boundaries that was our main additional dimension uh besides what dk already summarized okay thanks i guess my like well i'll save it for comments um so my my other question um is can you give the background on how we arrived at 15 miles an hour for our multi-use paths and i'm sure this is not gonna like be super popular for me to verbalize but the you know we're talking about e-bikes are becoming much more popular and they're all set at either national or international standard of 20 miles an hour that's the speed limit that both class one and two go so is there any reason did has the his staff or tab thought about like should our multi-use path match what that standard is and i assume that that

[115:01] standard of 20 miles an hour for these bikes was set with safety in mind so just wondering how we got at 15 miles an hour and have we thought about whether in light of this um surge of e-bike use that we are predicting where everybody's bike's going to show up going 20 miles an hour and a lot of you know they don't all even have um ways that you can read what speed you're going like is is there any benefit to looking at what the safety modeling was you know how they arrived at the 20 and how we arrived at 15 and is there any room to to look at whether 20 makes sense and if i jump in on this one dk absolutely bill so um unfortunately i can't tell you where the origin of the 15 mile an hour speed limit on the multi-use pass system comes from that that predates me it's been in the the old revised code for quite some time um i can tell you that we have not talked about increasing it um

[116:00] i'd i'd point out that um the ability for uh an e-bike to go 20 miles an hour period doesn't necessarily mean that we want them to go 20 miles an hour on the path system that has a lot of pedestrians on it probably best if they're going faster that they're doing that in the road and so we certainly get a fair number of complaints from the public who walk on the multi-use path system about bikes traveling too fast so we would be leery about wanting to encourage cycling or e-cycling to go faster on the multi-use path system and rachel i'll add um to that too and you know regardless of the speed whether it be 15 or 20 it is important i think to implement some bicycle slow zones this is another idea we've had through

[117:00] the wave path so let's say you're traveling up the boulder creek path and you get to the civic center park this is obviously an area that has a lot more people walking and people biking and people scootering and and whatnot and so this might be a good location um you know to mark these zones as bicycle slow zones or device slow zones we don't don't know the exact terminology we would use but but to really be a little bit more strategic more surgical at pinpointing these locations within the city where we really want you to to be cautious you know there's a there's a lot of people using these zones and we want you to slow down yeah that makes sense and and i think to some degree it's kind of like with traffic where you have natural calming if there are um obstacles right and the streets narrower and certainly if if there are a lot of people and um using the path you slow down pretty naturally so it makes sense that you want to um specify those areas as well um i would ask hutch did tab at all look at the

[118:00] at the speed of e-bikes and these and the mismatch to the trails we didn't discuss it explicitly uh i i think in general the issue we have with speed is you know it isn't like a break comes on on any bike e or not when you hit 20 either you can go faster than 20 on those things i've personally done it many times on the hill or whatever so toss it's a more general speed limit question as opposed to a specific e-bike question uh but beyond that to my knowledge and i'm pretty new to tab uh we haven't haven't talked about it okay thanks cool just to clarify we are going to go through these questions one at a time uh quickly after this first round of general questions uh last we have mary

[119:00] well i guess i could fit my questions under some of these but i'm going to just task of it as a general question um so my first question is about the general improvement district boundaries and if i recall correctly from reading the memo your staff is proposing that we use the boundaries for um for the general improvement districts in downtown in boulder junction and on the hill and i'm wondering if those are the same boundaries that are used for other um ordinances that we have specifically regarding ordinances um on smoking and on parking is it are our if if this is passed as proposed would

[120:00] the resultant ordinance be the same boundaries as applied to smoking and parking that's a really great question mary does this with this proposed ordinance change be consistent with other types of regulations within these these specific districts i don't have the answer to that tonight in it but i'd love to follow up and and see if there is a correlation for other ordinances or regulations that are pertinent to the general improvement districts okay great thank you and then my other question has to do with um yielding hierarchies i think that you've made a lot of references to human powered or electric powered yielding to pedestrians but is there any kind of um thinking around say um

[121:00] an electric powered skateboard yields to a human-powered skateboard you know a hierarchy of who yields to whom um has there been any talk about that and if so what has been the conversation yeah you know we haven't split it out amongst the different device types but typically it's been a bit more general in that people if you're on a device whether it be a bike or a skateboard that you are required to yield to a pedestrian or a person in a wheelchair but it's an interesting concept that i could further explore in terms of how we educate our users i don't know if there would be much of a split a lot of times you can't you can tell and you can't tell the difference between an e-skateboard and a regular skateboard so it's hard to discern um but but i i understand what you're saying the varying levels of capability that these devices have and then there's their hierarchy in terms of of yielding to

[122:00] one another yeah and um you know i recall that on i think it was leave no trace had a really nice yield sign that clearly said who yields to whom and when um so that's kind of along the lines that i was asking this question from but okay well thank you that's all i had absolutely we'll certainly look into it and you know typically it's the people on device anybody should yield to slower moving people on the multi-use path okay thank you thank you mary so my suggestion here is uh we go one question at a time here since they're all distinct and uh oh and uh we'll start with question one obviously um get your questions out first and finish with your concerns or thoughts and then we'll move on to the next person so everyone gets one shot um if there's any follow-up after that i'll ask for a final follow-up but

[123:02] one at a time get everything out there and then follow up as necessary so first what are your questions and concerns regarding expanding the use of human-powered devices on sidewalks and i have bob aaron and sam i'm gonna break the rule that you just laid down and just give you my overall comments because i don't think they vary between um sidewalks and multi-use pass i don't have any questions i can just uh offer a comment or observation if that's okay adam or do you want bob if you want to do it in one shot that's easier i'll just do one shot i was going to go exactly where mary started to go um you know in the in the world of boating um there are rights of way rules that are very specific um where for example powered boats have to yield to sailboats and and and sizes of votes and so on and so forth and i think that as we develop these rules i mean listen there's not going to be any easy answer here because we want to increase mobility options and we we want everyone to be safe and

[124:02] some of these modes that are only allowed to be on streets are probably not safe on streets because they're interacting with cars but when we put them on sidewalks or build a used path they're not interacting with pedestrians and so rather than being the victim they may be the perpetrator um and and so i don't have any any magic answers to what should happen but i do agree with mary that we as we develop these rules there should be a hierarchy not unlike the rules of boating and i look at it as four tiers number one pedestrians pedestrians should always be protected have the right of way and whatever that means and rules you guys figure out but we need to make sure that pedestrians which are our most vulnerable um uh people out there and it's the most vulnerable mode of transportation always have priority always have the right of way and are always always the greatest protected the second and the four-part hierarchy i think are human-powered devices um like um pedal bikes um you know hutch

[125:00] made a good point that bikes can go fast um but there is a greater degree of control if you're pedaling at your bike um and because you're you're controlling you only go forward if you actually make it go forward with your with your body and so i think on the hierarchy human power devices of all types would have the second priority the third priority um would be power devices with where the control is well established and i and i guess i put e-bikes in this this category um e-bikes um have been around for a while most people know how to operate them most people don't operate them drunk and while they can go faster and sometimes they're powered partially or exclusively by a motor i think most people know how to break them and how to steer them and then the lowest priority i think and it's not to say that they should be excluded from sidewalks or by or multiple use paths but i'm going to be very very skeptical of of their expanded use without a lot of

[126:00] great protection would be power devices with poor or little track record for control uh or safety and in this category of course i would put e-scooters and some of the other uh not novel devices and i think if you guys develop your rules along those lines pedestrians human-powered power devices with good control power devices with bad control or bad safety records i think that will will help you pull together rules on sidewalks and on paths and on streets that will protect the most vulnerable folks while still allowing um other modes of transportation to um to to to share the share the way as you say um and so that's i'm going to give you a very general guidance i'm going to look forward to community engagement and then whatever you bring forward in january thank you bob if anyone else feels that they just want to have a more generalized input that's totally fine too but we're going to try to stick with question one uh aaron yeah uh thanks adam

[127:02] i'm going to go a little more general too if you don't mind be a be another rule breaker along with with bob um yeah i mean this is exciting to see i think these micro mobility options you know really expand the opportunities to to get away from you know your single occupant vehicle trips so i'm really glad to see us updating our regulations uh and also particularly to uh to replace the kind of patchwork of where bicycles can ride on sidewalks and where they can't you know which has been very confusing in the past so that's really great to see so thanks for taking taking this on um bob i appreciated your hierarchy idea i was going to say something similar you know that i think we want to try to allow more devices rather than fewer so that we do expand those opportunities for different types of of transportation but we really need to be careful uh you know about the safety of them at the same time so i know you're thinking about that carefully and i just urge you to keep

[128:02] thinking about that carefully from a safety perspective because i think i think this is not a one-size-fits-all kind of situation you know that you you don't you don't have the same regulation for a human-peddled bicycle as you do for a electric unicycle for example so i look forward to seeing what you come up with on that side the one other piece of feedback i wanted to offer was that i'm not 100 sure that the general improvement district boundaries are the ways the exact boundaries to use for the dismount zones i'm going to absolutely support you know dismount zones in the core of our downtown area where the pedestrian traffic is the highest but you know as community cycles pointed out in their email you know we don't have a good low stress bicycle network all through the downtown so is there a way of reconciling those two things somewhat so that yes you you have to dismount you know of course on the mall and in other

[129:00] of the most highest pedestrian areas but you know could we um maybe not have the exact boundaries as the improvement district and maybe give people some more opportunities for a safe way to to ride in the downtown uh where the pedestrian volumes aren't quite as high and i'll say the same thing about boulder junction you know that i was a little unclear why that improvement district was included in the dismount zones because it right now it doesn't have that high level of pedestrian traffic and it doesn't feel necessarily that different to me than other commercial areas so and and and the bounds of it are a little arbitrary so that would be one that i just asked you to go look at and you know kind of i'm sure you're doing this but you know get out get out the pencil and look at the map of the boulder junction area and say you know is this exactly where we wanted dismount zone and is it here and not any other place in east boulder if no other place in east boulder has one do we need one here and and if so exactly where um so i think that's it just on the dismount

[130:00] zones but obviously in all of those considerations it's a matter of balancing safety concerns right so we need to protect the pedestrians but also how can we find the the safe ways of getting uh people on these devices through these areas thanks very much look forward to the next stages thank you aaron thanks aaron uh next we have sam then mary rachel and miraby thanks adam um i'm going to give my comments on all of these i'm going to be a rule breaker as well and then i'm going to have to bow out um for the evening for personal reasons but i do want to commend staff for bringing this forward it is a huge improvement so the dismount zones we can quibble about exactly where the boundaries are but i think starting with the improvement district boundaries is a great place to start the map is far more comprehensible than what's currently in place and i will say

[131:00] that given the more limited areas the improvement districts it's going to be a lot easier to sign that it's a dismount zone wherever the actual boundaries are one of the problems is you know in the current situation there's no way to sign all the commercial districts across the city um and this will enable i think a much more clear understanding of people where they can be and not be i think human powered devices on sidewalks is fine i agree with mary and baba that hierarchy i will put out there the national trail system you've got horseback you've got hikers and you've often got bicyclists and there's a hierarchy there and so lots of lots of different travel modalities have hierarchies um and a lot of times it has to do with speed and so i'm quite happy with human-powered devices on sidewalks

[132:01] i'm a lot more unclear on the electric power devices on sidewalks i think they should be on multi-use paths as long as they're obeying the speed limit and i think it would be a huge mistake to change the speed limit any higher than 15 because that speed differential is already enough to scare many pedestrians who um will complain as dk said about that and you know many bicyclists to their um not credit don't let you know when they're passing on the left and so i think that's another way of the past thing that if we do on multi-use pads have a lot more electric powered devices we need to get people clear that when they're approaching particularly on these electric devices which are very quiet that they need to give pedestrians particularly some kind of indication that they're overtaking them and so

[133:00] i'm a huge fan of the dismount zone change i really think we want to um be careful about these electric powered vehicles on sidewalks so the way i think about it is if there is a bike lane i think the electric powered devices need to be in the bike lane rather than on the sidewalk and in many places you do have both a bike lane and the sidewalk the complexity comes in places like 28th street where you have a multi-use path on one side and the sidewalk on the other side and there's no facility where one of those electric powered micro mobility devices could go so i i feel like to number one yes on all human powered on sidewalks i'd be much more careful about the electric powered devices on sidewalks but i think multi-use pads is great and i think you'll get that figured out and then i think i have very little concern as many of the people who

[134:00] responded um to the surveys about um having these electric powered and human-powered um vehicles on residential streets i think that's a no-brainer um that typically particularly with 20 mile an hour speed limits they're not going to be slowing people down very much generally and then you know in the bike lane on other streets i think that's perfectly legit and i think you know it is important that all types of skateboards and these one wheels have a place to be um because you know skateboards whether electric or human powered are perfectly legit way to get around town and so i'm glad that we will allow them in bike lanes so the only of all the things that staff has proposed the only one that i am a little bit hesitant about is these electric powered devices entirely electric powered um on sidewalks so that's all i've got thanks very much

[135:00] thank you sam and have a good evening uh next we have mary rachel and nearby thank you adam um so i will um agree with sam um in terms of the answer to the questions and the biggest concern is to have electric powered devices on sidewalks um and then you know with respect to raising the speed limit and multi-use paths um i think that the the speed differential between walking and somebody going 20 miles per hour is just too much um i it's too much at 15 miles per hour it's too much at um going pedal powered bike speed on a multi-use path and then having a neat bike go by you at 15 miles per hour so i think that it's about the speed differentials

[136:00] and the safety that is um associated with those differentials so so i would not be in favor of raising the speed limit to accommodate how fast an ebike can go by that logic um i would question why we went to 20 as plenty um because cars can go well as we know pretty fast um but um i wanted to just talk about the the boundaries on um the general improvement districts um i think that it would be helpful to um people who understand general improvement district boundaries and people who are business owners in those districts to understand that um that it's the same if it is the same with smoking if it is the same with parking that the um the rules that apply

[137:00] to bicycles be the same just to kind of keep it all tidy um however it's kind of a hybrid um thinking about this where the the rules would apply within the boundaries of the districts but um signage for dismount zones would be focused on those high pedestrian areas um and and places where people would probably need to dismount anyway um so so i think that the signage wouldn't necessarily be all over the cages for example but it would be in those areas that are just very high pedestrian and of course people are going to not dismount and dismount zones and people are going to ride in within the the general improvement districts but most people i think tend to

[138:00] use some level of common sense um and it's only in terms of um enforcement um or should an accident happen that these solid rules and these ordinances come into play so um so that's that on um on the the boundaries and then um yeah i would agree with bob on the hierarchy and who yields to whom um and that's all i have thank you mary uh rachel nearby and mark thanks adam um i agree with most of what's been said obviously i i would prefer that we have the data on 15 versus 20 miles an hour and not go with our guts so much on that so i i think that that is worth looking at i i think overall this is um moving in an awesome direction you know our goal is to get people out of cars and

[139:00] this is going to help facilitate that so um i think it's awesome like i said i i like um the way that we have have shrunk the the footprint for the dismount zones i still think maybe we're we're not like thinking throughout all the way you know in terms of like right right of ways and yielding you know you obviously can have a um somewhere in one of those districts where it's going to be dismount that sometimes it's really light traffic you know it's later at night or whatever and nobody's there and you're also going to have the inverse outside of those districts where it's really heavy traffic on sidewalks sometimes and i think that the goal is that you need to slow the bikes down when you are dealing with pedestrian you know heavy pedestrian traffic wherever you are so i guess i just wonder like is it is what we need really these dismount zones that are you know super um rigid or do we really need education and focus on the yielding

[140:02] and um and slowing down and in some areas like we've said you're almost always going to have to slow down and signage would be great there but um i guess i'm i'm i'm glad that there are going to be fewer and easier to understand dismount zones but i i might prefer to see us focus more on education and always writing um in keeping with whatever the the pedestrian circumstances are thanks thank you rachel nearby and mark um so i also agree with most of what's been said um so first i'll go off of bob's hierarchy i think that makes perfect sense um i do have one question i may have missed it but i guess with with the implementation of everything that we're doing is there going to be a chance then in whatever six months or a year after the implementation for the community to let us know how this is working because i kind of understand where rachel's

[141:01] coming from with the education and the dismount zones and not being so strict however and my concern comes to the people who are going to be like oh i can you know weasel my way through the few people that are there and the next thing you know you you have crashes and so then the education's not working because the few are ruining it which you know the five percent always kill you um you know that's always going to be concerning it'd be nice to have the feedback as to what's working because i'd prefer to have the dismount zones not be as strict as rachel's saying but then if it doesn't work you know it'd be good to know on that so i think having a really good um more inclusive community feedback after this has been implemented is what i'd like to see because again i think a lot of this is going to be working and adjusting to see how this affects the many different varieties of people again one of the biggest things i always hear that the bikes don't signal and the people walking are jumping out of the way and i mean that happens we have a walking path behind our house

[142:00] and it happens constantly and they're running through there like they own the walking path and there's tons and tons of people walking and they have their dogs and whatnot and so i guess yeah just seeing a robust community engagement after this is implemented would be fantastic um and other than that i guess i pretty much agree with what's been said and we'll see how it goes thank you mirabai and i have mark and then bob but if junie wants to win i would take her away and in before bob gets the second chance okay um i also um uh feel that bob has has properly articulated the distinctions and the hierarchy we ought to be following um i have a grave concern about putting electric powered vehicles on sidewalks generally uh i think product protection of pedestrians has to be our first and highest value especially since some of those

[143:01] pedestrians are going to be children or for the elderly or other people who are not quite as nimble in terms of getting out of the way of someone who's careening down the sidewalk with an electric powered uh apparatus um i don't have the same concern on the multi-use paths um uh and so i'm fine with electric vehicles there and i'm also okay with them on residential streets and in the bike lanes and some of them should probably be restricted to residential streets and bike lanes but the sidewalks are something of a bridge too far for me especially with respect to electric vehicles thanks thank you mark uh juni did you want to weigh in or should i go to bob

[144:01] yeah yes um i heard everything that everyone was saying i'm just not sure exactly where i stand on a lot of these questions i have had um since the pandemic and i have been doing a lot of walking on the bike path and i've done i think it's like six miles and i've done it every day for the past five months and i really enjoyed it and i have seen a few of those electric bikes and it's pretty scary and i was startled um so i'm not so sure if i agree with the idea of putting electric bikes on the bike path and again when you think about it when you're walking on the bike path it's very narrow it's very narrow so i'm thinking

[145:01] if there is bicycle and then there is you know just human-powered bicycle and then there is electric vehicle and if it can goes really fast we i'm just thinking i mean accident can happen at any moment but i'm just thinking it's so narrow and then you have a a speeding vehicle just going by really quickly so i'm not so sure about that um i like the idea of yielding to pedestrians and i have to say when i first started walking on the bike path there were times i did i wasn't sure where i was walking and then i'll see the sign that says oh you need to be on this side of the road so i think that's very important to have these signs that say you need to yield to pedestrian if we're going to allow these type of vehicles and as far as the sidewalk i mean i guess since that's where we're heading of course i wouldn't prefer it to have an electric

[146:01] vehicle on the sidewalk but then again if that's where we're heading that's where we're heading um but again i think it's how do we use our roads in our streets because we tend to prioritize cars maybe you know having more access to bike lanes i would prefer all these vehicles to be on bike lanes because now you there's like almost a conflict between people and bicycles and electric vehicles and we don't want these conflicts so i think um it's a very very difficult discussion to have when we know we don't have whether it's the space or the street management because i think that's where this come that's where we should start first with the street management then talk about where we're gonna put these things because we don't have the proper street management all we're gonna have is really conflict and i think um mary by mentioned you know knowing having the data i think that's gonna be important to know whether we're doing

[147:00] the safe thing when it comes to our community members thank you juni um and for second go-arounds we have bob and rachel i just wanted to comment on the uh 15 miles an hour versus 20 miles an hour and if you'll indulge me i wanted to geek out a little bit on physics i know that's a real dangerous thing with traffic engineers on the line who are a lot smarter than me but um the impact um by being hit um at 15 miles an hour is not um is not proportionate to being hit at 20 miles an hour in other words 20 miles an hour is not one-third worse it's actually twice as is bad because of the way velocity and kinetics work uh kinetic energy is measured as a square of velocities so if you had a 100 kilogram person in a bike on 15 miles an hour and they hit something they're hitting it with an impact or kinetic energy of 2500 joules if you bump that up to 20 miles an hour it almost doubles to 4 500 joules so i

[148:01] just want us to to be bear in mind that um that incremental changes in speed limits have a more than um linear impact uh or literally speaking literary linear um effect when when there's an impact or a collision so i would very much be in favor of keeping things at 15 miles an hour and would he actually even welcome a discussion of lowering things below 15 but 15 has to be absolutely the max because of the um because of the way physics work thank you bob rachel yep um two things uh i like mirabai's idea as well of having ongoing engagement and feedback about this i wanted to support that and second you know we're sort of i feel like we're quibbling here over leftovers so i just want to um pan out a bit and say that um cars get all the space and what would be best is if we were creating protected bike lanes downtown

[149:00] where you know where i'm worried about having to dismount my bike so i can go on the sidewalk safely because we don't have bike lanes let alone protected ones there so i think this is a little bit of a we're moving in a good direction but it's also a bummer of a conversation because it's not very expansive thinking about taking some of the space really away from cars and redirecting it so that we don't have to fight about you know 15 versus 20 miles an hour for the e-bikes who might come into contact with pedestrians but creating more um for everyone who's not in a car so that's really the conversation that i would like this council to be having and the city to be having and i don't know if and when that might get lifted up but we're really fighting over the leftovers here and that just makes me a little sad thanks thank you rachel if no one else has anything i'll weigh in real quick um i do agree this is sort of like hey fixing with a band-aid uh what the major issues are in transportation in the city but

[150:00] it's definitely a step that needs to be accomplished regardless these rules need to be updated i i think dismount zones are still pretty necessary and we could discuss where they're very necessary but um to me i think in a lot of cases they're sort of a suggestion and not a uh something that really is well enforced simply because i can see people blow right through them there's not a physical barrier you know there's not a stanchion or anything there that really indicates hey you have to get off your bike it's just sort of written on the ground which can be easily ignored so maybe something in that regard to the really really high density um switching from a a bike lane to a high density traffic area i think we may have to go a little harder on the dismount zones but i agree um they could be looked at zone by zone

[151:01] to see what's really necessary overall i also have just a slight suggestion cu generally has like sort of a hey welcome to cu curriculum here's some rules type of things this might be you know the general traffic rules might be a really helpful thing to collaborate with cu to have them take you know a 10 question primer as they enter school so that they know the rules going in um so we can avoid a whole lot of the con the conversation and um sort of negative um results we might see just so everybody knows the rules when they get here and you know um not everybody reads the street signs as they should but if you have to pass this little thing going into in the cu we know for sure you know the rules that type of thing i think is always a good way to collaborate so that the city and cu are on the same page and you know students

[152:00] and community members are really good at knowing the rules altogether with that being said that's my input does anyone have anything else to add before i go over the synopsis real quick i'm gonna wait just a second for hands cool seeing none um i heard a lot about developing a hierarchy that was one of the major things the general improvement district boundaries are a good starting place but they could be refined beyond that several people thought there was a question of whether or not we should look at the speed limit data to see where the safety comes into effect there several people were against it even without the data but the data could still be collected let's see uh there was a lot of questions about dismount zones whether they should exist at all or if we could just um narrow

[153:00] their scope or their implementation and there were some that said they absolutely need to be there still and to some degree improved um and then there was some concern about electric vehicles on sidewalks specifically i didn't hear a lot of that for roadways or multi-use paths and then the whole general question of hey shouldn't we just be fixing our streets so that they're not vehicle-centric anymore so we can bypass most of this anyone else had anything i missed or is that a pretty good synopsis cool i don't see anyone dk and transportation staff is that all good for you yes thank you adam and thank you very much city council we really appreciate your input this has been very helpful for us as we move into the next um stage to look at these ordinances and and we'll be visiting with you again in

[154:00] january thank you so much dk um and all of transportation staff who helped us out tonight and tab and everyone who contributed um these are great presentations they were really easy to to answer the questions you asked and uh we always really appreciate that when things are teed up super well so this was awesome thank you so much it was really productive and efficient um with that being said i wanted to recognize this is our last public meeting with jane in our presence so uh unless she wants to come testify in front of council which i don't see happening anytime soon uh i just wanted to say thank you again jane um and allow a little space for anyone who wanted to say any more goodbyes in our public uh in our public uh open comment here bob i have you and i know that we we um we toasted you last week and and i hope that um after covert is over we can have a a big

[155:00] party to toast to you some more but i just want to observe the fact that uh in your 12 years here at roughly 50 council meetings per year you've um you've tolerated 600 sets of council meetings here in boulder and i know that you were city manager in other places before this and i appreciate you putting up with us for leading a fantastic staff i just want to say from the by my heart we're going to miss you very much thank you bob i'm going to miss all of you so much as well it's been a great ride i i'm honored thank you and i have aaron well i've said goodbye a couple times i just wanted to offer up do you remember from car talk and they would say today we watched it listen to this they say well you've just wasted another perfectly good two and a half hours of your life at a city council meeting and but never again yeah yeah get your tuesday evenings back so enjoy them thank you uh sam thank you jane for all your years of

[156:00] service um sad that this is the last meeting we'll have you at but i look forward to seeing you around town looking much more relaxed i hope yeah absolutely thank you sam thanks to all of you anybody else like to weigh in perfect um well jane uh the best i can give you is 24 extra minutes of your life and uh i'm glad we could provide you with an efficient meeting for your last meeting so super thank you that's my gift to you great bye everyone nice out everyone good job adam i will adjourn the meeting now thanks for a great study session everybody adam you are currently the champion the shortest meeting of our council tenure fantastic job thank you thanks guys have a good night everybody all right