January 12, 2026 — Transportation Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] Okay, we're good. Welcome, everybody, to the January meeting of the Transportation Advisory Board for the City of Boulder. Who's gonna share the technical rules? Sydney? Trini, yeah, that'll be me. Okay, so I'm gonna hand it over to Sydney so she can share all the technical rules. Yeah, let me share my screen. Thank you for attending the Transportation Advisory Board meeting. To strike a balance between meaningful, transparent engagement and online security, the following rules will be applied for this meeting. This meeting has been called to conduct the business of the City of Boulder. Activities that disrupt, delay, or otherwise interfere with the meeting are prohibited. The time for speaking or asking questions will be limited to 3 minutes. No person shall speak except when recognized by the person presiding, and no person shall speak for longer than the time allotted. Each person shall register to speak at the meeting using that person's real name. Any person believed to be using a name other than the one they are commonly known by will not be permitted to speak at the meeting.

[1:07] No video will be permitted except for city officials, employees, and invited speakers or presenters. All others will participate by voice only. The person presiding at the meeting shall enforce these rules by muting anyone who violates any rule. The Q&A function is enabled, and it will be used for individuals to communicate with the host. It should only be used for technical online platform-related questions. Only the host and individuals designated by the host will be permitted to share their screen during this meeting. And if you're joining by phone, you can press star 9 to raise your hand, or star 6 to unmute. Thank you so much, Sydney. I guess the next matter… Oh my gosh, hold on. we have approval of minutes from November and from December. I was not in the November meeting, so I don't know if the rest of our TAB members can…

[2:05] Vote on that, please. Well, I was, chairing that meeting, so do I ask for a vote, or does Trini ask for a vote? I think you should ask for a vote, Darcy. All right, all right. So, everyone who attended the, November 2025, November 10th, 2025 meeting. Let's… does anyone… do I have a motion to approve the minutes for the November 21st? Does anyone have revisions or anything? Any revisions? Seeing no… Hands for that. Does anyone want to move to accept. I move to approve the November minutes.

[3:02] Okay, second. I second. Assuming you can hear me? Great. And so, how many of us were present in that meeting? I think it was… Just the three of us, Mike, Michael, and myself. So all who approve of the minutes, raise your hand, say aye. Aye. Aye. Yay. Any opposed? All right, so we approve the November meeting minutes. Thank you. 3-0. Do you want to do December? Or should I do December? You cheered, decide. Alright. So, since I was at the December meeting, I moved to approve the minutes, unless anybody has any revisions or anything they'd like to add. I think we should vote on the revised, minutes, based on Mike's… Feedback, so the re-register.

[4:04] So… I move to accept the December Minutes as revised. I second. Next. All in favor? Hi. Bye. Okay, so we can move on. And… We have public comment. I can't see anybody's… Sydney, would you be able to help me with that? Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Looks like we have one person with their hand raised. Lynn, I'm going to give you permission to talk, and if you can just state your name, I'll start your time. Siegel, yeah, I just have two other board meetings to speak at the same time. It's always all at once. I'm concerned about, in front of Alpine Balsam, I was rushing to my friends the other day. I'm riding on… I'm riding going north on Broadway.

[5:07] just beyond alpine, and suddenly I'm having to jump off my bike, rush to my friend's house. by running through the gutter with these cars coming at me. Why is that? Like, I know they're doing construction there, but it's all throughput, except not there. And this happens a lot all over town, and… There are so many things I can't think of. But, like, lots… I'm really upset about the asphalt, and the fact that I'm gonna have to have a transportation maintenance fee when I drive my car only 4 times a year. Four times a year. Why don't you set up so you have odometer readings, and people have to pay according to how much they use, because I commuted to Denver for 25 years to be able to buy a house in Central Boulder to be able to ride my bike everywhere, and now I'm losing out by paying these fees that are just indiscriminate to me, you know, just riding my bike. My two bike tires do not

[6:14] use up what a heavy car, you know, 50 times that weight uses, just like a big truck, you know, uses more. So, can you get that to be fair to folks? And, Oh, gosh. I don't know what to say. I don't obey any rules, stop signs, stoplights, or anything. I just really watch out for myself. But, I find sometimes that I don't understand a lot of these, lights, that they're… they're… they need to be more intuitive to, like, if nobody's at the friggin' intersection, why is everyone stopped? You know, like, and they're causing carbon footprint, can't… you know, I know it's expensive, but long-term, it's cheap.

[7:07] to get automated systems and AI and stuff, so that we're not wasting people's time. Time is the main thing. because, you know, I'm commuting on my bike, and it's not electric, and I'm dragging 50 pounds of groceries with me. I'm not a recreationist, I'm just out there for getting where I need to go, you know? And, I don't feel that appreciated in this town for that. Another thing you could press for is these commercial spaces could have small local groceries. that have the things that you always need, you know, that people can just run to the neighborhood thing. Like, in my neighborhood at Maxwell and Six, there was the Daisy Grocery. Yeah. Thanks so much. Thanks, Lynn. Thank you so much, Lynn. So…

[8:01] I think we need to… well, is there anybody else, Sydney? No, there's no one else treating. All right. Okay, so I guess we can just move on to matters… no, to the staff presentation. So we have a presentation… I don't know, if everybody's ready? To cope? Trini, I'd be happy to introduce. The one item. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Dean. Yeah, you bet. So, good evening, Trini and members of TAB. My name is Jean Sanson. I am the Policy Advisor for the City's Department of Transportation Mobility. And this evening, I'm really pleased to introduce you to the Boulder County Transit Plan Project Team. So, this team is a group of planners and community engagement specialists. Who are working in close coordination with our staff and community members in the city. And, they're very much focused on improving transit, both accessibility, reliability, and regional connectivity throughout the county.

[9:10] You know, I… I attend a lot of regional meetings on behalf of the city, and I will share with members of TAB that we are the envy of the region when it comes to transit service, but we know that we can do better, and we can think more broadly about connections throughout the county to our neighboring jurisdictions. And so, tonight, I'm pleased to introduce Alex Hyde-Wright. He is the project manager for the Boulder County Transit Plan project and their consultant team, and so with that, I will hand it over to Alex. Thank you, Jean. Thank you so much for that introduction, and thank you to the members of Boulder Tab for having us here this evening to share our project with you. We are really excited to be discussing the County's Transit Plan project with you tonight. It is an exciting time for transit in Boulder County right now. As many of you are probably aware, the Boulder Junction station has been reopened, and the FF4 service has been resumed.

[10:07] There is more movement, towards, implementing rail service in Boulder County than there has been in recent years with the proposal, for joint service between Front Range Passenger Rail and RTD. There's a lot happening in the service planning space. There's new state funding coming online in later 2026. Boulder County has become a direct recipient of the FTA, which opens up some new funding sources. some new potential funding sources to the county as well. So there's a lot going on, and there's more municipalities getting involved in the actual delivery of transit service than ever before. And so we're really excited to be working on this project. that's really seeking to integrate all of these efforts and ensure that we're all working towards a coordinated, vision for what we want the future of transit service in Boulder County to be. I think we have a slide deck. That I'm sure who is pulling up.

[11:06] There we go. Jennifer, if you want to go to the next slide? Sure. So, this evening, what we're hoping to cover with you is going to be an overview of the countywide transit plan, which we are calling Linking Boulder County. We'll be providing a summary of our Phase 1 outreach, and so, this is the public involvement that we did in October and November of 2025. be providing an overview of the existing conditions analysis that our team has been up to this winter, and then discussing some next steps. And so with that, I'm happy to introduce our consultant team, led by Jennifer Whelan with Nelson Eigard. Thank you very much, Alex, and thank you all for the opportunity to join you this evening. As Alex said, I'm Jennifer Whelan with Nelson Nygaard, and have the pleasure of Leading a great team that is supporting the county and all of you on linking Boulder County, and I am joined tonight by Paul Ludi from Nelson Nygaard, who is the Deputy Project Manager, and Carly Steve from Farron Piers, who is leading our outreach efforts, as well as supporting on other elements of the plan. So, as we go through the slides tonight, I'm just gonna warn you, we have a lot of content in

[12:20] So we're going to move very quickly. We would certainly invite, if you have clarifying questions as we go, we would welcome those. You could feel free to put them in the chat. We are going to try and get through the slides in about 20, 25 minutes, and then have plenty of time for discussion, and happy to go back to anything as we move through. So, just to get us started. Alex talked a bit about what Linking Boulder County is, and if you remember two things about what this plan strives to do, I hope it can be these. The first thing that Linking Boulder County is focused on is setting a vision for transit service in the county.

[13:03] And that vision gives us the opportunity to think a little bit ahead, to build on amazing work that has been done as my lights go out already, across the county, and certainly in the city of Boulder. And to really set forth what we hope transit can look like in the county over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years. The second key piece of the project is an implementation strategy. So, this is not a big picture vision that just sits on a shelf, but really has very specific recommendations, projects, programs, and policies attached to it, as well as a plan for funding and governance as we move forward. So a vision and an implementation plan, both are really core to what we'll be developing through this project. When we talk about transit, I did want to just take a second and throw some photos up on the screen, because we are taking a very inclusive approach through this plan.

[14:00] That means that we are thinking about fixed route services, general public on-demand services, paratransit, as well as many of the incredible seasonal and recreational services that you have in Boulder County. We also are thinking about supports for people riding and accessing transit, whether that is information, whether it's shelters and stations, or micro-mobility and active transportation connections to transit. the building blocks for this project are many. You all in the city have certainly done an incredible amount of work. There's been a lot done in the county and across the region as a whole. And so, these three examples of work that we're building on, I think, should be very familiar to all of you. We really want to be focusing in on the corridors from NAMS, the Northwest Area Mobility Study, and how we advance those, recognizing the work that is underway on Joint Service Passenger rail, and then, of course, using your renewed vision for transit to help inform where we go as we move forward.

[15:03] Throughout this project, we are starting with what you would typically do in a planning project, digging into data, community priorities, and existing conditions to help set our vision and goals. That is the work that we are sharing some early pieces of with you today, the existing conditions. As we move a little bit further into 2026, we'll be focusing on strategies, so projects and programs to improve transit, and then in the summer, moving into some of those questions around funding and governance. Once we make decisions about what we think the right strategies are, how are we going to pay for those? And who is going to manage them? Who's going to implement them and operate them as we move forward? The goal is to wrap up the plan by the end of this year, and we will also have several more points of community engagement as we go. So that's the very quick overview of what we are up to and where we are going. But we'd like to share with you first some of the key findings from our first phase of outreach. So I'm going to pass it over to Carly for this piece. Carly?

[16:09] Great, thanks, Jennifer. So we held a robust community outreach process over 5 weeks in the fall, where we had a wide number of ways that we were promoting our outreach using our website, using the transit app. Many of you probably saw the banner when you went to go catch your bus. We sent share kits to partners, so did want to thank TAB for all of your promotions, spreading the word about the number of different ways that community members could be involved in the planning process. And then we had a number of virtual and in-person outreach opportunities to make sure we were capturing a diverse cross-section of the community. As you'll see on the next slide, the survey that we conducted was the way in which we heard from the most number of folks. We also had pop-up events where we went to where community members were to make sure we were catching folks who maybe don't engage with us in the traditional ways. And we had a number of focus groups. community advisory committees, as well as attack. So overall, we heard from over 1,300 community members through all of these in-person and virtual activities. You can see on the bar chart on the right that about a third of our respondents are residents of City of Boulder, so we had great representation from City residents.

[17:14] We looked to see the demographics of who we heard from to make sure we had an accurate representation of races, ages, auto ownership income, so we compared the demographics of the survey respondents with the demographics of the county to see who we had an over-representation of, who we had an underrepresentation from. So white residents were slightly overrepresented, while Hispanic residents were slightly underrepresented, but just a smaller amount. So we really did target the Hispanic population through focus groups and making sure we were attending specific events to target that population. We did, however, see a significant underrepresentation from youth, so you can see in the bar chart on the right, especially 17 or younger, but also the CU population. So this is an important note for us as we continue on our outreach efforts through this process to really reach out to the CU population.

[18:04] But also youth councils, high schools, middle schools, to make sure we're hearing from that young population. And then with that, we saw an over-representation from older adults. So, it's important to understand who we heard from and who we didn't hear from when we look at the results. This is a really key lens to… and context to understand, some of the key themes that we saw. Similar to that, the frequency of transit use is important as we look at the sound bites. So low-frequency transit riders were our most common survey respondent, and then we saw from when we look by age, when we break that down of how frequently people use transit, that our youth who responded to the survey tended to use transit frequently every day, but our older population, a lot of them were not transit users at all, who have never taken transit. So, we're really happy to see that we heard from non-transit users and frequent transit users, so we're getting both lenses of the spectrum there.

[19:00] So, now looking at the results of the survey in combination with the in-person touchpoints. So, when we ask people why they ride transit, what trans… what trips are you predominantly taking transit with? Airport travel was number one, which makes sense, given that a large number of our respondents are infrequent transit users. If you take transit a couple of times a year, it's likely to go to the airport. One thing that we were excited to see is that leisure, social, recreation are actually more common trips than work trips. Traditionally, when you look at this data nationally, work trips tend to be the most common transit trip, because they happen at the same time every day, and people build habits around that. But because Boulder County has great access to recreation with their transit services, we're seeing recreation, rise to the top here. And you'll see as we get to the results, more people desire to see even more recreation transit access. We asked respondents what works well with transit today. Affordability was by far the number one response that we heard. After that, we heard, speed and reliability being, one of the things that… the strengths of the current transit system, as well as coverage. So the fact that there's usually a bus stop nearby where you're coming from or where you want to go to.

[20:14] when we asked folks where the transit system can improve, we heard some of the similar things that we heard of what is working well, but the number one thing was frequency. And this, we heard from City of Boulder residents especially, and we'll share what routes specifically City of Boulder residents want to see more frequency with. But frequency over coverage, which is an interesting takeaway. And then we… speed and reliability were numbers 2 and 3. So if you are going to rely on the bus, you need to know you're going to get to work on time, similar with appointments. So maybe that's why work was number three, was the lack of speed and reliability of the transit service. Then we see bus stop amenities right up there, and a little bit of coverage, too. We had a number of open-ended comments, so we broke those open-ended comments down by different demographics to see how those trends and themes differ depending on who we heard from. So when we looked at all respondents, we heard a desire for more frequent connections from those main, dense hubs of employment and residential hubs, so Boulder to Longmont, Boulder to Denver. We also heard a desire for more airport service, and then improvement of the experience at

[21:21] stops in the station, so a perception of safety at stops and a desire for improved comfort. When we look specifically at car-free respondents, it's not surprising that those first and last mile connections rise to the top, as well as a desire for better transit access to the daily destinations that maybe if you're a choice transit rider, you might drive to the grocery store, but if you're car-free, then you're relying on transit to go to do your local shopping, and therefore wanting more frequent service as well, given for those car-free respondents. Non-white respondents wanted bus stops closer to key destinations, and more connectivity for those short trips. So, similar to car-free respondents, they're maybe making those local trips more than regional trips, so they want those local connections to have increased frequency as well, and maybe improved first-last-mile connections to them. Low-income respondents tend to have non-traditional work hours, so they're desiring more transit in the

[22:17] early morning and the light night, and higher frequency during those hours, and often there's no transit at all. So, expanded service hours for transit to accommodate their work hours. Also, better access to those common destinations, like grocery stores and medical services, and then more comfortable bus stops as well. So, improved accessibility, snow removal at bus stops. We also had respondents drop pins on a map to show where they currently take transit, which is shown in red, and then where they desire to take transit in the future, which is shown in blue. So we saw lots of great heat maps starting to form here. You can see a lot of blue dots in the more rural areas, so that it represents a desire for improved access to recreation. This was most commonly heard from City of Boulder residents.

[23:04] We also see in the mountain areas a desire for access between Gilpin County and Boulder County, so between Ned and Rollins and some of the resources and amenities on the western side of the county. From Longmont and Lafayette residents, we heard a desire for access to the airport, but we also heard a lot of, interest in the 300 series and local access and frequency and coverage locally within Longmont as well. So did want to supplement the airport Longmont, note with what we heard from our community advisory committee for just a desire for better service in Longmont locally, as well as regionally. And then from Louisville, we heard a desire for that Louisville-Boulder connection, some east-west connections, that we heard from Lafayette residents as well. So those are just some of the key themes, but a lot of great information in the spatial map. And then lastly, when we pull apart what we heard from City of Boulder residents, we mentioned increased frequency. The Skip, the Flatiron Flyer series, and access to the airport, rose to the top for specific routes for more frequency. More weekend and evening service, so not just for work trips, but for other, more recreation social trips as well, to make transit more reliable. As we mentioned, access to recreational destinations.

[24:14] And then we heard a lot from Fraser Meadow residents referencing transit service that used to exist to Fraser Meadows, that is not there currently in a desire for, especially given mobility challenges, improved access to transit. Just a quick review of how respondents who live in the City of Boulder compare to all respondents regarding the question of what are the highest, the most important values as it relates to transit. You can see how the green bar, City of Boulder residents, compares to the orange bar, all respondents. And we see that reliability is more important to City of Boulder residents than to our full subset of survey respondents. As well as comfort and convenience. So those are the two that we saw a higher representation from Boulderites than others, as far as what they want to see in the future of the transit system in Boulder County.

[25:02] Thank you, Carly. So, this is just a snapshot of a lot more information that we have available and will soon be publishing in a summary report that shares a lot more of the sort of context, but the reason that this is particularly important, we wanted to start with this today, is even though the survey is not a statistically valid survey, it does do a a really nice job of. helping to point us to some of the themes that build on what the different communities across Boulder County have heard and learned through various transportation planning and transit planning efforts of their own. And so, we use this as one piece of data that connects to other existing conditions analysis that we've been doing. So, the input from community, our team's fieldwork, conversations. with jurisdictions, and then data analysis of a variety of different types helps to shape our existing conditions work. So, Paul's going to give us a quick overview of some of the ridership and transit need data, and then I'll jump in and talk a little bit about travel flows and origins and destinations before trying to summarize a few of the key takeaways for you and talking about what's next.

[26:19] So, Paul, let me pass it over to you. Okay, thank you, Jennifer, and hi, everybody. So, yeah, one of the first things that we wanted to do was really to understand the… the… I would say wide variety of different services in Boulder County. And as you can see, this graphic does… we're trying to summarize the variety of service. There are 54 separate routes or services that operate in Boulder County. About half of those are fare-free, about half of them are fare-based. There are 12, different providers in Boulder County, and then just a variety of different kinds of services, some that focus more on local connections, some that focus on connections throughout the county, and those that are providing more regional connections.

[27:06] As Carly mentioned, some of the popularity of some of the recreational services, there are also 6 of those, and seasonal services that operate throughout the county. And then, of course, as you know, CO Boulder has a lot of service that's… that focuses on their campuses, and then on top of that is all the paratransit service, so accessoride, access on demand, as well as via paratransit service. So, just a wide variety of service. In some ways, this is… this is very good. It's very comprehensive. It's also, it's… it's a lot. It's… it's a fairly complex network of different services in the county. Boulder is really largely the hub of transit service in the county, as you know, and has a… the wide variety of services that I just presented on the last slide really does converge largely in Boulder. Longmont also has kind of a local services

[28:01] But Boulder really kind of encapsulates the wide variety of service that's provided here, including both regional, local services, as well as the only micromobility in the county right now with Lyme and B-Cycle. So we did look at, ridership in the county, and so, as you probably are not too surprised to see that Boulder really does have some of the highest ridership in the county when we look at it at a stop level. So this is an average weekday, ridership, and so the bubbles on the map represent, ridership at a specific stop on a particular day. It's on our average weekday. And so, Boulder really does show up. We'll have another map that kind of focuses in on the city, but there are other corridors throughout the county that does have, you know, relatively strong ridership. South Boulder Road in Lafayette, Main Street in Longmont, as well as some of the regional, sorry, the seasonal services, like the

[29:01] SE Shuttle. The Park to Park Service, those have fairly strong ridership, and you can see some of those up in… up in the mountains. The next slide shows more detailed, focused ridership just within the City of Boulder, and really, Broadway shows up as one of the strongest corridors. Skip is one of the strongest routes. We'll have a slide that shows that. But also some of the park and rides. Table Mesa, and, has really strong ridership along 36. Micromobility really supports transit, does not necessarily take away from it, but supports it in terms of getting people to and from transit. And we've seen a lot of growth in B-Cycle trips between 2019 and 2024, a 600% increase in trips on B-Cycle. Lyme has also, and that's what this map is illustrating, is the number of Lyme trips, and throughout the, throughout the city, it's more than doubled in 2024, following the transition, becoming permanent in the fall of 2023.

[30:07] Many of the Lime trips and even B-Cycle trips are along some of the major corridors and concentrated kind of around the university and the downtown area, as you can see here. We also wanted to look at current transit ridership. This compares… this chart, it's a lot to look at, it's probably hard to see the numbers, but essentially it, ranks all of the different routes and services in Boulder County. by ridership, by annual ridership. So, at the top of this list is the skip. And right there with it is the FF. the various FF routes, and the two of those routes combined account for about a third of the total ridership in the county. Of the bus ridership, I should say. Not too far behind it is the AB, AB1, AB2, now the AB3 service to DIA, so it's very popular, it's well utilized, that's the third highest ridership route.

[31:03] The, the, CTN routes, the skip, the hop, the bound, for example, have some of the highest ridership in, local ridership in the county. But also the… when we look at some of the county services, and even the, provided by the county, and, the seasonal stuff, the HESI shuttle is really one of the strongest ridership routes. And it only operates on weekends and is seasonal, so when you compare that to some of the other routes that are operating throughout the year, really a significant amount of ridership there. And then, as I mentioned, B-Cycle and Lime, they provide an important and really important connection to those transit services. So we did want to show that in this chart, and if you compare B-Cycle and Lime to some of the fixed routes or some of the other transit services in the county, it's right up there at the top in terms of total number of A riders in a year. We also looked at a lot of demographic data. We're just going to show you a couple of samples of the maps.

[32:04] that we have been producing. We've been looking at population and employment density, but this map really kind of focuses on what we call transit propensity. So it's not necessarily a density map, it's really more of a map that assesses need. And so, the darker colors here indicate that Those are areas that have a higher propensity to attract transit ridership. And so we really… we focused on a few factors here. We combined them. Basically, household income, vehicle ownership, race and ethnicity, and country of origin. When we did that, really, vehicle ownership comes up as the most important factor that tells us that these are areas that have high transit need. Vehicle ownership is about 5 times… people that, without access to a vehicle, about 5 times more likely to use transit than those that… that have access to a vehicle.

[33:00] And similarly, lower-income households tend to be a little bit more likely to use transit, about one and a half times, but not as much as those without access to a vehicle. And those are similar, but when we combine them, it gives us a good sense of need. The next slide illustrates where we see both that need, and we overlay that with the amount of transit service that's available right now. So we call it transit supply. Really wanted to focus you, kind of, on the highlighted areas, which are areas that show that there's a high need for transit service, but a relatively low amount of service currently. And so these are opportunities for us to look at as we start to look at You know, where might transit be improved in the county? This is not prescriptive, it's one piece of that bigger puzzle. And as Jennifer's going to talk about in just a minute, it also very much relates to how travel flows have changed in the county, so…

[34:02] Great, thank you, Paul. All right, last couple of maps that we'll ask you to stare at with us for a moment. So in addition to the analysis that Paula's just walked through that's using data from transit providers, that's using census data, and a few other sources, the next few maps use big data. So, data that is generally generated by cell phones, it is coming from Replica and from Streetlight. And it gives us the ability to look at all of the trips that are being made, rather than just, for example, commute trips. And so, part of what is really powerful about this, aside from the volume of data, is that it helps us really think about the ways that people might be able to take different types of trips by transit, and where people are traveling right now. So, a little bit different than what you would get from a traditional travel demand model, because this is giving us information from fall of 2024.

[35:01] So, this first map is going to be very similar to things that you all have seen before. But really illustrates travel within Boulder County, and specifically looking at origin and destination pairs. It won't surprise you all to see that the fattest, darkest line is connecting Boulder and Longmont, so the most trips happening in the county between jurisdictions are between Boulder and Longmont. You also see some pretty significant travel pairs between Boulder and Lafayette, and then also Louisville into Boulder, and then Louisville into Lafayette and Erie. So, good… it's a good illustration, I think, of the amount of trips people are making within the county. And it's important to use this as a piece of information that also helps us think about the connections outside of the county. And so, this is one example of a number of different gateway analyses that we have done. And we've identified gateways kind of all across the county, and look at all of the travel coming across those gateways over the course of a day. And this is a representative weekday in fall of 2024.

[36:15] Part of the value of this type of analysis is that it does really help us see the regional picture in a slightly different way. On the transit ridership maps that Paul was showing you, we didn't get to see connections into Denver from Boulder County and from the City of Boulder, but that is a really strong travel pair. It is a strong travel pair for transit, and it certainly is for all… for other modes as well, and so that is something that this map helps to illustrate, that when we look at the trips that are coming in through this gateway on US 36, you're really seeing those connections to Denver, to the airport, and then, of course, from and to Estes Park. When we look at some of the other gateways across the county, the trips are a lot more dispersed in terms of the destinations to which they are headed. But I think when we really consider that

[37:05] flow from the southeast part of the county. This one makes a lot of sense. Couple other pieces of the replica analysis that we wanted to share with you. This is mode share, so how people travel. This is countywide. We know the story for the city of Boulder is different than this. You certainly have a pretty enviable mode share in terms of the mix of trips that are not made by private auto, but when we look across the county, private auto trips and auto passenger trips trips do remain the most predominant way that people are traveling. What you are seeing here, and I should have identified this before, is the gold color is data from 2019. The navy color is data from 2024, and so you're able to see how people's travel mode has changed since before the pandemic to very recently. One of the most important things for us to be thinking about as we're doing this work is the decline that we're seeing in public transit ridership.

[38:05] That is not unique to Boulder County, that is something that we're seeing across the country, but it is an important piece of the story when we consider the ways that people's travel behavior has changed over time. A really important complement to this is the time of day at which people are traveling. And so, before you focus in on any particular hour here, I would encourage you to just kind of step back and look at the different bars. So again, gold is 2019 data. Navy is 2024 data, and you'll see a couple of things. First, you might notice that there is a lot more Navy in terms of the height of the bars on this chart. And what that is telling us is that there are more trips being taken in 2024 than there were in 2019. That's not surprising. The county has grown. But what is interesting is that there are… what we're typically seeing is that there are a lot more shorter trips. So it's not that overall vehicle miles traveled or overall miles traveled have increased so dramatically, but that the number of trips is increasing.

[39:14] Because again, this is by all modes. The next key thing to look at here is the time of day at which people are making these trips. If you look at, sort of, the traditional morning peak, the 8 a.m, 9 a.m, you still see a lot of trips there. You still see a lot of trips in sort of the traditional afternoon peak, between 5 and 6 p.m. But what's particularly interesting about the 2024 lines is that you see a lot more trips being made throughout the day and into the early and even middle part of the evening than we did in 2019. Those are times of day when transit service isn't always as robust, and so this is a really important piece for us to look at as we move forward. So, to bring all of that to a close, and then start to talk about what we do with it, I wanted to try and summarize what Paul just shared and what I shared, and sort of point us to a few things that we are taking away from some of this analysis.

[40:13] First and foremost, as Paul talked about at the beginning, Boulder County is incredibly fortunate to have so much service and so many different providers in the game of transit. That is a great thing in terms of coverage across the county, but it does present challenges, because it can be difficult for people to understand the services that are offered, and having that many services can also often mean that frequency isn't necessarily what it should be, and reliability is a little bit challenged. So, those are important areas of focus for us as we think about governance moving forward, as we think about who is providing what service. One of the pieces that is important that we didn't cover in what we showed you today is just that ridership on transit services between 2019 and 2024

[41:03] still is… has not rebounded in the way that we might hope it would. That is, again, something that is consistent across U.S. communities, but it is important as we think about what the future begins to look like, and how we can get that mode shift back to what it had been before. Of course, micromobility and paratransit use has really grown substantially, and so it's an important, it's important to think about those compliments, too. some of the origin and destination pairs help to point us to the importance of the regional and the key corridor services. The NAMS identified so many of those important corridors, and they remain really critical, but I think what we heard consistently through the community outreach, and what we're seeing in some of the other data analysis, is that access to everyday destinations, helping people take Those short trips in other ways is also really important.

[42:00] On-demand services are a really important component of the transit story across the county, especially in Southeast Boulder County and in Longmont. They can be quite expensive, but they can also be a really important gap filler in some of the communities where a fixed route service might not make as much sense, given density, given demand, given land use. So, we want to keep those in the mix in terms of what we're looking at moving forward. Of course, the recreational and seasonal routes are not only popular, but also do really fill an important need And then the last pieces of this are the ways that we start to think about different types of services in different places. So, the geography of Boulder County is both really interesting and really diverse, and what makes sense for Boulder might not make sense, probably won't make sense in the mountains and even in some of the lower density suburban areas. But part of what Paul showed in the transit propensity analysis is that There is need in some of those places, and so thinking really creatively about the types of services that might make sense will be important to ensure that this plan can offer something for the entire community.

[43:13] when we looked at that sort of supply and need map that Paul shared a minute ago, I think one piece that's really important to note is even though there is good supply in the City of Boulder today, there also were areas that aren't well served by transit. And most importantly, this focus on frequency and reliability points to very key opportunities for improvement, even within the city. Because, as this next point shows, Boulder's going to continue to be a hub And the major gateways that lead into the City of Boulder are always going to be important. We just talked about service patterns and the time of day that people are traveling, and then, of course, that first-last-mile connectivity, the importance of micromobility services and supports for transit will continue to be a big focus as we move forward.

[44:06] So, the last piece that I want to share with you before we open it up to questions and discussion is just how all of this fits together. So, it's a lot of data that we've just run through, it's a lot of community input, and our focus after we summarize all of this and publish it for the community is moving into articulating the transit vision. And the City of Boulder, of course, has a strong vision, which is really helpful. And so when we think about what the transit vision means for the county. It is about the guiding principles that really articulate what we hope transit can do for the county and the role that transit will play. And that is thinking about connectivity, reliability, frequency, some of those bigger words that help to shape the types of recommendations we might make. Those feed into clear goals, performance measures, and then, of course, evaluation criteria. We are going to come up with a lot of opportunities for improvement, and there is not going to be funding for everything immediately, and so being able to evaluate and prioritize is really critical.

[45:12] The transit vision will have a map along with it. It will focus on some of those key connections, not necessarily every specific project, and not necessarily modes, but really thinking about the ways that people connect throughout the county and within jurisdictions. And then finally, the vision helps us think about the types of improvements, the types of services that might make sense, and so that's really going to be key as we move into the spring. So, it is that piece of existing conditions, the field work that we've done, the data analysis, what we've heard from the community. And then a piece that we'd love your feedback on tonight, which is what we're calling forces of change. So it's one thing to understand today, it's another thing to think about what are some of the trends, what are some of the externalities that might impact how people travel in the years ahead, and what the county's ability is to deliver service, what RTD's ability is to deliver service.

[46:10] Those pieces together help to shape the transit vision. So, as we move forward, we will be publishing the outreach summary, we will publish our State of Transit report with a very short, reader-friendly briefing book to go along with that. We'll use that as another opportunity to reach out to the community, and then use additional input to help shape the draft vision and goals, which we look forward to talking with you all about at a future meeting. So, as we wrap up tonight, we did identify a number of questions that we'd love to talk through with you, over the next 30 minutes or so, and we're interested in how the outreach findings sit with you, whether they reflect what you hear and experience. We're curious to hear your thoughts on the existing conditions findings, recognizing that this is only a subset of the data that we have, and kind of your response to how well they match what you see and experience. And then to help us start thinking about the vision.

[47:10] We're curious for your thoughts about thinking ahead. What are some of those trends or factors that you think are really going to play a role in transit delivery for the county? So, with that, thank you very much for letting us run through all of that information. I will leave the slides up just so we can flip back and forth, but would really welcome your feedback. Alex, was there anything you wanted to add in closing? No, I think you covered it. Okay, great, thank you. Well, thank you on behalf of TAB for this amazing presentation. It was, like you said, very, very detailed and very thorough, so, I would like to answer your questions, because I will… get lost in the mix, I think. If I don't jump on it, I'll forget. But my feedback, based on everything that you guys said, I think you guys are right on point, and my only thing would be to ask if you considered,

[48:16] Talking to the kids, talking to the high school students, the middle school students, the ones that are frequenting this skip route so much. And if you got any feedback from them directly. Yeah, that's a great question. So two of our pop-up events were extremely family-friendly. We went to a Louisville Trunk or Treat, and then the, Munchkin Parade on Boulder over Halloween, too. So, lots of youth that tended to be, maybe on the younger than high school side, so a little bit more fun, visioning, getting creative, and hearing, the ways that they use the bus. They're very excited about the bus. I have a 3-year-old who loves the bus. The missing gap, I think, was the high school population, as I mentioned, CU, so

[49:02] We did work with Longmont and CAMI to get in touch with the Youth Council at Longmont. This is an ongoing conversation. I think our next outreach touchpoint will engage… engage the Longmont Youth Advisory Council, but that… that was definitely a missing gap, so one we acknowledge we'll fill in in our next touchpoint. And also, I suggest you reach out to Amy Thompson from BBSD. I think she has a lot of feedback. I think what, as a parent, what I feel happens a lot is that because the routes, the RTD routes, don't function the same way as they transition through the seasons. So, when school begins, there's such high demand on, you know, these buses, and I think the kids just get very overwhelmed because there's so many kids that are… I keep saying kids, but, high school students that need to use the bus, and so there's not enough buses, and there's not… there's just too many kids jammed into the bus. So, I think that's a trend that I've seen throughout these last 5 or 6 years.

[50:08] And… And so, maybe adjusting the frequency once school starts, and not having to wait until whenever it is that is, like, more seasonally friendly for RTD, but expediting that process from the get-go, so kids are like, oh my gosh, it's not a drag to have to, you know… So they're happy and encouraged to want to use transit. That's great feedback, and we do have a teenager high schooler on our community advisory committee who goes to Nywat High School who's transit-dependent, so she's expressed a lot of similar feedback, and then I saw your note about Growing Up Boulder would be a great resource, too, so thanks for that. Awesome, and there's a lot of feedback here. Darcy has a bunch of questions. Darcy, I don't know if you want to… would you just like to take over? No, I don't have questions. This is my second time seeing this presentation today, so I've already asked all my questions.

[51:01] I, I… commend the, the, the consultants for doing this twice in one day. No, I just thought that somebody might want to explain what school trippers are, but, because that's a specific thing. Yeah. The trip trackers, you mean? No, it's… it's a service that's provided. It's the way that… it's the way that public… transit agencies. Manage school population… sort of work with school districts to make sure that they're not violating federal But anyway… I won't go into that myself. One thing I do want to say is I was really glad that I didn't say earlier today was, I'm so glad that you heard a lot of, positive feedback from the residents of Fraser. and, their desire to have… maybe it's also the employees, because I think, you know, we've been really trying to help employees at Fraser have greater transit access, but I hope that it was both employees and residents, who were interested in getting that stop.

[52:12] back, near their community, so that's exciting to hear. And… Oh, and then one just last thing was, as you're, putting out the report and, you know, consolidating all this information for the public, I'm wondering if you've thought about, short videos, social media. pieces that… can really help people digest this and use it in an active way. I don't want this to just get lost like so many reports get lost. Thanks. Thank you for that, Darcy. That is, yes, we have started to think a little bit about kind of sharing bite-sized pieces of information over social media, and then, we will do a brief virtual open house, but have also talked about, you know, just a little 3-minute video that chooses one snippet of the community feedback, or the existing conditions report, to kind of give people a little bit of a bite-sized piece.

[53:10] see the ability to use that information really throughout the rest of the plan. So as we start coming up with recommendations, we can link it back to this in some interesting ways. So Michael has his hand raised. Michael? Yeah, so… Oh, man. the questions you asked, like, how does this sort of correspond with what I've seen and heard. I think, though, the, you know, the, the, The outreach does correspond pretty well with what I've personally experienced. The need for more frequent Bus service to the airport, the popularity of the rides up to the mountains,

[54:03] I think, you know, I know that I am personally much more likely to use a service like Skip, because I don't need to attend as closely, if at all, to the schedule, because the frequencies there are so high, the headways are relatively short. Whereas other services, a little more difficult. I'll say another factor for me anyway, is that some of the other services run some fairly circuitous routes. And so… It can be a challenge just figuring out which bus you need to take, or whether a particular bus is going the place you need it to go. I would fully second what Trini says, because my daughter takes one of the buses, and they are. They're in there like sardines, so, I mean, you've got, you know, a population that's eager to use that transit, but is… or is glad to have the transit available, not so happy with the fact they're getting packed in there like sardines. So, everything, you know, and also the, you know, the relative roles that this plays, like the, you know, how people are sensitive in terms of income,

[55:15] to all these different factors, the proximity of the stops, all of that completely makes sense. So, even though it wasn't a, you know, statistically valid sample, it does seem to me like it captured the primary dynamics that are at play. Which is… which is reassuring. I will note one thing, that, because I am… I am a transit user and ride the GS, your survey data would have… looks like it came from 24. That service, the ridership on that has gone way up this year, because all the bus feds have been forced back into the office, so, that bus is… I won't say it's full, but it's certainly a lot different than it was in 2024.

[56:03] That's just a minor thing. But the other… the more interesting question is, like, what trends or factors might play a role in the future? To me, that's a very interesting question. And that was… also kind of points to one of the areas where I was hoping… it wasn't clear, maybe you guys did reach out to these folks, but it wasn't clear to me whether you reached out to the disabled community, and if so, how, to the cycling community. Because one of the issues that I see on the GS, for example, on the GS bus, that thing has, two racks in the front for bikes, and room for maybe 2 or 3 more, you know, in the bays underneath. One of the trends I see, right, the analysis and the imagery and everything here suggests primary dependence on B-cycle and Lime scooters. One of the changes that may be coming is that micromobility devices that are personally owned, that aren't rented.

[57:07] may become much more affordable and widespread. And e-bikes and other, you know, things… and people will want to get… they'll want to put those on the bus, they'll want to put those on transit, and get them from home. to, you know, to their destination so they can use them for the last mile. And I don't, you know, I can't predict exactly when that's gonna happen, but I think it's gonna happen, and it would be a shame if we weren't prepared to kind of bring those folks along. So, that's just an, you know, an area of sort of interest for me, and thought maybe it'd be something to attend to. The other interesting thing you pointed out is you've got more frequent trips, and also you pointed to the complexity of the system. And both of those made me think that having a unified fare system

[58:01] But with a daily fee cap might be a good idea. Because if you're… if you… are folks that are just really gonna do transit, especially the folks who don't have a car. That's their primary mode of transit. If they're making lots of frequent trips over the course of the day, and paying the standard fare each time they board, that could be expensive. Now, I know we have EcoPass, and we do have some tools to help manage that. But it's just a, you know… That's a thing that could help not only deal with, the complexity of the system, to have unified signage, like, you know, so that… The signage in Longmont looks pretty much the same as the signage in Boulder as in Lafayette, so that these systems are… are legible to… to people as they move around the system. That might be really, helpful, and also to have the payment system be unified so that people aren't having to use one card in one place, and a different card in another place, and, you know, that… that'll…

[59:06] reduce friction, I think, for the user base. So that was one change that I thought might be coming, and anyway, things that might be helpful. Made a few notes here. Michael? Bye. Can I just jump in while you're thinking? Let me, let me… because I think this is important, piggybacking on your… on your thought. So the racks that are currently available, is there a weight limit to those? Because these bikes that we're talking about that will potentially be you know, more available, are gonna be significantly heavier. And so, it would be interesting to note that they're gonna have to be a lot heftier. I mean, I don't know what the weight limit might be on the current ones, but… it's usually for any of the individual racks, it's usually no more than 50 pounds, and getting a 50-pound bike onto one of those racks is a challenge in and of itself. And so, as more people have electric bikes and different types of bikes, really thinking about the ways that you provide on-vehicle access for a micromobility device, whether personally owned or…

[60:17] Or rented, or whatever it might be, is really important. And… I think maybe just a couple other pieces, Michael, that before I… before I lose a couple of the threads there, I did want to note that we did a focus group specifically with the Center for People with Disabilities to make sure that we were hearing that perspective. Certainly our community advisory committees include folks who travel by all modes. We've got representatives from the cycling community, as well as representatives who are people with disabilities. And then, just even in recently looking through the open-ended comments on the survey, there were a lot of comments about bike and scooter access to transit, people thinking about their own devices as well.

[61:03] And thinking about short- and long-term storage for those devices, as well as what you can actually get onto a bus. So, definitely some of those themes started to emerge. And to your point about fare integration, integrated systems. anytime we're working somewhere, I think about the Bay Area, and the 30-plus agencies, and the ongoing struggles to integrate fares and systems. And, you know, with 12 providers already in Boulder County, you've got to have a minimum of 4 apps to be able to make your way around, and that assumes you've got app capabilities, so it… I do think there is a lot of opportunity to really make the system feel more seamless for people. Cool. Before I forget, so one of the other things that seemed important to me, the areas where there might be change. is… is in the areas surrounding the stops that are served by transit, particularly… and I'm… when I say transit, in this case, I'm thinking more about, like, the regional transit, right? Because

[62:14] Right now, it may be the case at many of those stops, I'm thinking of those along, you know, between here and Longmont. I won't say they're impossible to access by bike or scooter, but they're probably for the brave of heart or the semi-suicidal. And if there are improvements made in those locations, and if you get the, you know, bike and micromobility storage done well at those bus stops, then the catchment areas for those stops could grow substantially, and that could contribute massively to the success of those services. And so, that's an area where

[63:02] you know, coordinated work to make, you know, to expand the catchment. Like, for example, right, if people have to walk to it, catchment area's gonna be pretty small. Right. But if… if they can bike to it, boy, you're gonna get a lot more people in some of these places. And so that's… that kind of coordination could really… I won't say it's make or break, but it can certainly contribute substantially to the success of some of the services that you're contemplating. You already got, clearly, the message that, you know, quality over coverage is… is critical, and I think that's… I think, you know, coverage… it's not that coverage isn't important, you know, but… But to fight the long-term political battle needed to sustain and fund services of this kind. I think quality can never be sacrificed, because that's when the naysayers get a foothold.

[64:01] And say, look, there's nobody on this bus, why are we paying for this bus? Why are we doing this? This is dumb, they should not have their own lane, all the usual kind of grousing about, you know, they're pushing me, you know, traffic is worse now that they have this bus line. Those, you know, those… those kind of grievances get traction when the service provided is not manifestly a success. And so that's one of my anxieties always when it comes to training. transit. And the last thing is. I wonder if it's possible at some point to run a simulation with the respondents, the folks that you've already engaged with. So you design a system. Then you go back to some of these fo- like, not… you don't build it, but you design it. You've got headways, you've got every… all the little details, like a simulation.

[65:00] of this network to be. And then you go back to those folks and you ask them, would you use it? you know, will you actually use this? And then they will… and then it has to be interactive, because they will say, well, then how much does it cost? And when is that bus coming? And when does the service stop? And, you know, and those kinds of things, I think, might be… A useful way to get more information than you got in the original out, you know. More detailed, granular data that will tell you… hey, are we getting close to the mark, or… or, you know, are we just gonna build it and launch it and see if it flies? Anyway, just… that's all my thoughts. A really interesting presentation, and I'm, you know, yeah, sounds like it's all moving in the right direction. Excellent. Thank you, Michael, and thanks for those… those thoughts on future rounds of outreach, too. There are a couple of ideas that we've started to talk about when we kind of get into the strategies and scenarios piece. One of the activities we often like to do is have people design your own system, and so you've got to make trade-offs, you've only got a fixed amount of money to spend, and it really helps to highlight what is most important to people, and then as we are

[66:18] further down the road, even, and have a clear set of recommendations, like, giving people an opportunity to really think about what would make a difference for them, I agree, can be really helpful. I will say people are often very optimistic about what they will do, and so we always want to try and balance that, but I do agree, like, the more detail you have, the easier it is for people to engage. Thank you so much, Jennifer. So Blythe has a suggestion that I think is a very wise suggestion to remove the screen sharing. We do have the questions in the chat. So I think that'll help a little bit. Thank you. No, thank you. And Hernan has had his hand up for quite some time now, so, Ernan, if you want to go?

[67:04] Oh, no, I just wanted to add a, What you said earlier… what you said just a minute ago about, like, having to juggle, like, 4 apps sometimes. Just a small suggestion, like, I would like to see, in the next few years, move away from apps towards, like, just wallets. Like, Android has wallets. iPhones have wallets, and I remember when I went to San Francisco, about a year ago. And, I got off the plane, it was really easy to just… Take out my phone and add… the, BART transit card, and add funds to it through Apple Pay. and then just get on the train, and then you go to, Dublin. So, yeah, I mean, it was very seamless, like, no… no, I didn't have to, you know, download an app, or create an account.

[68:04] or have to remember a password, it was just like, you know, tap, tap, base ID, transit card, I'm good to go. So, I don't know, just a… I'm sure it's difficult, but it's something that I hope, you know, that… in the next few years, we can transition from apps to just simply wallets. I feel like it's a lot smoother. And then I think Darcy wants to say, yeah. It already exists! For RTD? I'm just dying, I'm just like, We are so lucky! RTD rolled this out last fall. So, Tap2Pay is active now throughout the RTD system. So, all you have to do is tap your card or your phone, your wallet on your phone. So that's amazing. I think the apps that you were referring to, Jennifer, had more to do with planning and scheduling, right? And maybe also coordinating, you know, like, there… But But, you know, the, like, the transit app, as I sort of… I deleted my comment, because I thought maybe it was too much, but, you know, that is pretty comprehensive, and I think Nextride is also pretty comprehensive, but, you know, when you get into special users looking for AccessorRide and whatever, I mean, yes, you have to use other tools, but, but yes, or not, go out if you don't have an EcoPass, which I think you do, but if you don't have an EcoPass, you can just use your card or your wallet. Yay!

[69:20] Oh, that's convenient. Okay, okay. I had to say it. Thank you, Darcy. Yeah, I could see you just, like… So Mike's had his hand up. Mike? Oh, yeah, just first, following on that, I'm glad to hear about TAP2Pay. I experienced that on the subway in New York a few weeks ago, and it was great. And of course, have had an EcoPass as a TAB member and as an employee before that, so I didn't realize that had been rolled out. And I wanted to also echo, what Michael was talking about. When you have limited resources, there will be a conflict between, frequency and quality on one hand, and expansion of coverage, and so it would be very interesting to see what kind of criteria you come up for, that competition, and I very much agree with what Michael said about,

[70:12] Prioritizing the frequency and quality, for For the routes that are going to be used more. It was interesting from your data to see two… things. Of course, there's this long-term, decades-long trend of more people commuting into Boulder to work, and so we need to prioritize things like the US-36 and Boulder-Longmont corridors, but also, As a county, coordinate this with. With housing, planning, in the future. But then there's this other trend, I think this is a post-COVID thing of more… Non-work-related travel that is, less tied to The peak hours,

[71:03] And so this is calling for re-evaluation of transit service at non-peak hours, so, I was interested to see that, and, just… Really, interested in your thoughts on all these things. Thanks for highlighting a couple of those pieces, Mike. I… I mean, when we think about the connections between Boulder and Denver, that travel pair continues to be really strong, but I do think it is important that as we dig into some of those pairs, we are really thinking about when those trips are happening, and which are the commute trips, and which aren't. And we agree that really looking at the time of day that people are traveling was one of the things that jumped out to us right away. It is consistent with what we're seeing across the U.S, but it's also, I think, really helpful to see it at a local level and just understand the number of trips increasing. Those are shorter trips, the time of day, and start to really align that with when service is available and when different types of services are available to think about where those opportunities for improvement are.

[72:14] I did want to jump back to the topic of apps and taps and payment methods for just a quick second. As Jennifer noted, this challenge is hardly unique to Boulder County. And it's also not unique within the broader context of the state of Colorado, and it has caught the attention of the state legislature, and to that end, the state has just started an effort to look at what better fare integration across all the different transit agencies in Colorado would look like, and so they're at the very early phases. Of that effort, but that is… it's certainly a… An ongoing challenge that has not gone unnoticed. That's great to know, Alex. And, well, does anybody else have any other comments?

[73:04] Regarding this wonderful presentation? Okay, so… I suggest we move on. Thank you so much again. It was a wonderful, wonderful, very, extensive presentation, and I think we all truly appreciate it. So we have… Thank you. No, you're welcome. So now we're gonna move on to matters, and there's matters from staff, so I believe there's another presentation. Let's see… Am I correct? Attorney, let me introduce… I think Steven is going to introduce. Oh, perfect. Thank you so much, Bliss. We're so excited to have Sam Bromberg here, and without further ado, I think Stephen's gonna introduce Sam for what she's gonna share with us under matters. Excellent, thanks, Blythe. So, my name's Steven Briejo, and I'm the Transportation Planning Manager, here tonight to introduce Sam Bromberg, who's providing a brief update on performance-based pricing in the RAMP annual report.

[74:06] Sam is a new addition to the Transportation Planning Division in 2026, who previously worked for the Community Vitality Department prior to its reorganization. She works on a portfolio of parking and access programs, and we're excited to have her on the team. So with that, I'll hand it over to Sam for an update on the performance-based pricing and ramp report for 2026. Thank you, Steven! And good evening, board members. Thanks for having me here tonight. Let's get this screen share going. Alright, can everyone see that okay? Awesome. I think it's showing your notes, Sam. Oh. Well… Let's try this again.

[75:02] Is it still doing that? It is. I also have it open, if it would be helpful. For me to share. Let me, Give me just a second. See if changing the screens helps. Did that do… did that… did that work okay? That's great. Okay, awesome. Sorry, just had to flip-flop everything around. Cool. Well, I'll get right into it. Just a little bit of background, on Boulder's Access Management and Parking Strategy, or AMPS. I'm sure some of you have heard a lot about it, and others maybe are relatively new to AMPS, but, just a refresher here, it was developed as a guiding framework to help city staff

[76:03] Leadership boards, commissions, and the broader community improve how we manage multimodal access and parking both citywide and within special districts. This particular graphic highlights the key projects and strategies established through AMPS in 2017. With the completion of the parking code update and the Transportation Demand Management, or TDM, ordinance in 2025, All of the initiatives committed to through AMPS have now been delivered on. Today, I'm just going to focus on the core AMPS programs and strategies within my parking and access portfolio. Which include the three on this slide. So to implement the areas for change identified in the original AMPS framework, the City launched the Revitalizing Access in Boulder project in 2019. This effort focused on reworking the city's parking programs, including the Neighborhood Parking Permit, or NPP, program. and paid parking in commercial districts to better align with the AMP's vision. The community played a central role in shaping these updates to a range of engagement efforts focused on parking pricing and permitting. And through that process, three core strategies merged, performance-based pricing.

[77:11] Graduated and mobility safety fines, and priority-based neighborhood access management, the foundation for the Residential Access Management Program, which now includes the existing MPP program. Hopefully that's, not too many acronyms for you. I'll quickly just give, an overview of those three strategies and how they function. Performance-based pricing focuses on understanding the supply and demand of on-street parking and adjusting prices to better distribute parking across available spaces. By pricing the most in-demand blocks higher, the city encourages turnover and reduces vehicle circulating, while lower-priced options in garages and less in-demand blocks provide alternatives. The intent is to provide a range of parking choices so each person can balance price, location, and availability based on their individual needs and resources.

[78:02] The approach relies on monitoring parking behavior and responding to demand, raising prices when demand is high, and lowering them when demand is lower. This strategy was implemented in 2023 and continues to guide parking decisions in Boulder's key commercial districts. Graduated and safety mobility fines updated the city's parking citation structure by first aligning base fees with peer jurisdictions and then applying graduated premiums for repeat violations within a calendar year. Violations that compromise mobility safety, such as blocking bike lanes, carry higher fines to reflect the seriousness of the impact. This approach reinforces the value of the public right-of-way, encourages consistent customer compliance through clear and escalating consequences, and supports a safer environment for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. This strategy was implemented in 2022 and continues to be an important tool for supporting compliance with parking regulations.

[79:05] To take a broader and more proactive approach to managing parking and travel behavior in residential areas, the Residential Access Management Program, or RAMP, was introduced through the Provitalizing Access and Boulder effort. RAMP builds on and expands the existing NPP program. Like performance-based pricing, RAMP uses a data-driven approach to manage parking. The program is grounded in an annual assessment using key metrics such as parking occupancy, nearby high trip generating land uses, and input from residents or city staff identifying areas of concern. The goal is to make residential parking management more responsive to the specific conditions and needs of each neighborhood, moving away from the previous one-size-fits-all approach to managing parking. Over the past 5 years, the Residential Access Management Program has focused on implementing the strategies adopted by Council, which you see listed here. They include annual monitoring, a strategic and data-driven approach, income-qualified discounts.

[80:04] for the program to achieve cost recovery, for the program to phase out existing NPPs that do not meet key metrics, and eventually for community reinvestment in mobility initiatives. You may recall the last two items were presented to TAB in 2025, and I'll return to that final item, community reinvestment, in just a bit. In 2025, staff completed an updated financial analysis to ensure the recent program changes made in response to the elimination of parking minimums would keep RAMP financially sustainable. The analysis showed that the program would remain sustainable and is expected to begin generating revenue for reinvestment into mobility initiatives as early as 2027. Additional program adjustments, such as converting time-limited parking within NPP areas to paid parking, would create even more opportunities to reinvest in mobility improvements that directly benefit residents of those neighborhoods.

[81:11] The Goss Grove Pilot Program, proposed as part of the adjustments made to accommodate the elimination of parking minimums last year, represents the first step towards implementing community reinvestment in mobility benefits. The pilot will convert the current time-limited parking for non-permit holders to paid parking, and the revenues will be reinvested into EcoPasses at no cost to the residents of the Goss Grove NPP. This pilot will inform whether the model achieves cost recovery, and how it changes behavior in the neighborhood. While the pilot was originally anticipated to begin on January 1st of 2026, it was delayed to allow additional time for engagement with the neighborhood and Boulder High School, as well as to account for the recent restructuring of the parking services divisions, as roles and responsibilities are clarified under the new organizational structure.

[82:03] Staff anticipate re-engaging with this pilot as soon as timing and capacity allow, and view it as a key opportunity to demonstrate how parking programs can directly reinvest Re… in neighborhood mobility outcomes. One of the core tenets of RAMP is responding to requests for changes to the NPP program. In 2025, staff received three valid petitions, including from West Pearl to expand the existing NPP, in Boulder Junction to create a new NPP and layer that on top of the existing paid parking in the district, and to reduce the existing Mapleton Hill NPP. Staff are currently incorporating these requests into the work planning process, and as a reminder, any changes to the NPP program require a public hearing with the Transportation Advisory Board, so you can expect these items coming forward in the near future.

[83:06] For 2026, on- and off-street parking rights will increase by 50 cents per hour across all blocks. Unlike the usual performance-based pricing adjustments I described earlier, these rates were approved directly by City Council through the annual budget process. This modest increase will maintain the vibrancy of Boulder's business districts by generating additional revenue to offset rising costs for maintaining parking services and infrastructures in today's inflationary environment. And here are the changes to off-street rates in Boulder's downtown parking garages. On the left is the 2025 garage pricing, and on the right is the 2026 garage pricing. You'll notice that the second through sixth hour have increased by 50 cents. And the 99 cent Metropolis fee is no longer baked into the rate, but separated out.

[84:01] These adjustments align with the on-street rate increase and help ensure the financial sustainability of the city's parking system while continuing to provide reliable and convenient options for visitors and commuters. And that wraps up the presentation. I'll be glad to answer any questions, or revisit any slides. Thank you so much, Sam. Garcia. I see that Darcy has a question. Yeah, thanks, Sam, this is great. So, I've had conversations with a couple of people, who are really trying to invest in local, local engagement downtown, and kind of local vibrancy downtown. And just wondering if there's been any discussion of potentially flopping, or somehow, changing the parking rates so that weekends and holidays are actually maximized in terms of cost. And weekdays, where locals and local employees would be more,

[85:16] Would be parking downtown more often, maybe, to have those rates decreased or free. I just… I'm throwing it out there because this person I spoke with sort of floated that idea of, you know, we really should be charging people who are coming into Boulder, to… you know, to shop and go to restaurants and stuff, to park, but we should be favoring locals. And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that I hold that position, I'm just curious if that conversation has been had. The conversation's not been had in a very formal way in some time. We have attempted to have the conversation a couple of times.

[86:00] I think, we would probably get some significant resistance to changing the free weekend pricing. If I'm honest with you, particularly from the business community, but I'm certainly open to having the conversation again, and I think it's definitely a possibility, especially with Sundance on the horizon, that… that we'll need to have that conversation again around When we're charging for parking, and what are the days and times that it's appropriate, because it's true, the trends that we see in the data show that the weekends are much more highly utilized than the weekdays, particularly for our downtown parking assets. Yeah, thank you very much, appreciate it. Glad that you're investigating that opportunity. So Michael has his hand up. Yeah. Michael? Well, he… I consider myself very much a Shupista, so I kind of like everything I see here. But I did have one question, and it kind of came to mind when you were talking about

[87:07] parking near high schools, and, you know, like the Goss Grove, where you're converting things, over to a theme structure. I'm wondering… If there's an equity concern that we need to be attentive to, so that, right, the rich kids all get to pull right up and park right next to, you know, their destination, and the poor kids have to park far away. Or if the kids… Who… Live further away from school, and who are therefore sort of obligated to drive. By virtue of the distance that they have to commute, are disadvantaged relative to the folks who are driving but could walk. And so, I'm wondering if there is a mechanism to… address those equities, those equity concerns. I don't know what it would be, but I'm just wondering if it's something you all have thought about, whether there's, like, some differential fee structure or something like that that could be deployed to make this…

[88:13] You know. fairer for the people, and to not create stigma, for the people who… Are not able to afford the You know, the higher rates for parking. Yeah, I love that you asked that question, Michael, and it's definitely a concern, I would say, and it's something… it's such a… it's such a… it's such a challenge with this particular pilot, and I've talked to Boulder High School's principal and assistant principal about this as well. They are pretty significantly underparked there. They have a pretty small lot. Their permits are on a lottery system. the, like, school district actually sets the maximum rates for what they can charge, so they're pretty… they can't really… they don't have a lot of flexibility in that, and so the lottery system was the fairest way for them

[89:07] to… right now, to figure out how to distribute the small amount of permits that they have, but, you know, it's something that I've grappled with, and I don't know that there's, like, a perfect solution, but that's part of the reason that we wanted to go back out and do a little bit more engagement to figure out if there was A better solution, because… you know, there's plenty of kids who… who have to drive either because they have to bring their siblings to school beforehand, or they have to go to work afterwards, and there's just not, you know, bus service, like, at the times that they need it. Another really big concern that the high school brought up in conversations was, their student athletes, have a really difficult time getting, like, to and from games if they're not, you know, in the city of Boulder. And so having the… having, like, their personal vehicles helps them. So, really, like, the areas is… it's really challenging, because there's not enough parking, not everyone can use transit.

[90:10] And so how do we balance that in a really fair, equitable way? I don't know that there's, like, a perfect way to do it, but those things are definitely top of mind as we go back into doing a little bit more engagement around this pilot and figuring out what some of those solutions can be. So, to answer your question, I don't have the answer, but we're seriously considering that, and looking into different solutions, and open to any and all feedback that you have. That might help us, because it is a really… it's a challenging situation, and I do want to find the solution that will work best for everyone, and in particular, keeping our vulnerable populations, in a place where they're not getting, you know, really expensive escalating parking citations because they have to park in the neighborhood, and right now it's time-limited, right? So…

[91:03] How do we… Thread that needle. Yeah, maybe some continuing utility for apps. Even in the age of tap and pay. Thank you so much, Sam. Mike has his hand up. Yeah, you talked about the, changing of parking fees based on occupancy, and I believe that's… that's just something that's changed on an annual basis, is that right? Typically, it's something that we review and change on an annual basis. This year, things happened a little bit differently because of the… the budget crisis that we were in, and so, We had just a… Uniform increase across all parking pricing to try and accommodate for,

[92:02] Some of those challenges that we were facing as a city. So, normally, yes, and hopefully next year we'll be able to go back to that, where we can both raise and lower prices. But in accordance with performance-based pricing. And then, other than that, You just have one price for… Weekdays during the day, and then… free weekends and… and nighttime parking? Is that generally how it works? Yeah, so, for on-street pricing, it's Monday through Saturday. It's the same price all day, the price just varies based on the block. So, depending on the demand for that particular block. Will have a higher price or a lower price. And then the garages is just Monday through Friday, and it's uniform pricing, though we do have different prices for different times of day in the garages with our 3 for 3 product. And I'm happy to bring back up that slide that illustrates the… the garage pricing if you feel that would be helpful.

[93:05] Yeah, no, that's interesting. I was just wondering how dynamic it gets, and you… like, the garages do have different times of day. I'm wondering… If, seasonality should be a component in any of this. Yeah, when we were, when we were originally… working on implementing performance-based pricing. I mean, there's a lot of different opportunities and ways to implement it. We didn't want to make changes too frequently, because we wanted people to be able to prepare and react and adapt to the price changes, so doing it annually made sense. For a city like Boulder, we didn't want to change prices, like, so, so much that it was hard for people to figure out, you know, how much it was going to be when, but… That's certainly something that could be changed in the future if there was significant desire to see the program adapted, and

[94:02] Certainly, the seasonality could be a component, though, in most of our commercial districts. Besides University Hill, it's fairly consistent throughout the year. I mean, we definitely see a little bit more traffic April through October than we do in the winter months, but again, with Sundance. All that could change, so, yeah. Alright, yeah, I would just add, yeah, I'm very, encouraged by the… the Goss Grove pilot, although it's on hold now, in terms of reinvesting in neighborhoods for eco passes, so I hope, that sort of thing can… can start moving forward again soon. Thank you, Mike. Does anybody else have any more feedback? Anything that they'd like to share?

[95:01] Well, I guess that concludes our presentation. Thank you so much, Sam. That was great, and… Thank you, thank you for having me. You're welcome. So now, we can move on to matters from the board, if there are any. That I'm unaware of. Does anybody have anything? Darcy. I just wanted to… so we submitted our letter to City Council for the retreat, which, began today, I believe, and, I, you know, one of the items that we listed in our letter was, a more comprehensive communication strategy, and I just wanted to… encourage all TAB members to be sure to read the Transportation Report on Progress. this is the kind of thing I think could be really,

[96:01] could be communicated quite well in a more dynamic and active way. So, just as an example for our staff. on the, meeting here, you know, we… I think there was some… Question about, well, how would we… how would we create a more comprehensive communication strategy, and when we have all these reports, and we have websites, and all this stuff. And that transportation report on progress is really, really good, and I'm not sure how many people are downloading and reading it. And I wonder how we can activate the pieces of that, because that's the kind of thing I was envisioning. So it really presents a nice dashboard-type structure for where investments are happening, where they are… where we're kind of falling behind, where we're on track, and I wonder how staff might think about, well, and, you know. Provided that City Council says to move forward with that, which is not certain, of course. But if City Council says, yes.

[97:05] move forward with this comprehensive communication strategy for transportation, that's just a model I wanted to put out there to say, let's explode the transportation report on progress and make it really more accessible, more active, and And that, I think it provides a really good kind of foundation for the kinds of communication that I was suggesting, just in a way… non-report structure, and in a way that could be more accessible to more people. So, just wanted to add that. Thank you so much, Darcy. I… oh, Blythe, I think, has something to say. Darcy, excuse me, Darcy, I wasn't sure if you were asking for a response, but I had one anyway, and I thought it may be helpful. The retreat was today, and while it's… there's still another day yet to come, there's no finality to it. I thought maybe helpful to mention that, the communications recommendation in the letter was mentioned, and as a result of that, I've had several discussions around it, and your suggestion, and I'll certainly take others from board members, your suggestion,

[98:15] To, to model the, the, the report on progress is really helpful, and in fact, I've I've chatted with our city's communication director, Sarah Huntley, and plan to have a sort of quick interchange with her tomorrow before the proceedings get underway, just in case there's further conversation from… in case me or Sarah are asked to speak to the idea of communications. So I think your idea here gives me some focus. on… on at least one… one way to have this conversation with Sarah Huntley, so thank you. Yeah, great. I'm so glad to hear that, Vlad. Thanks for sharing that. And, what I think is so powerful about that report is that it kind of, you know, it really lays out

[99:01] where we are, the current data, and, where investments are taking place, and I think that that's where we were discussing that there… we… that we hear sometimes just sort of, you know, maybe, lack of familiarity in the community, and so I think it's so great, I just want it in non-report form, a more accessible format. So thank you so much, I really appreciate you having those conversations, and thanks for the update that, that the communication strategy was… Yeah, thank you so much, Blythe. Well, I… We then have open board comment, which I believe… this could be construed as open board comments as well, so I don't know if anything… anybody wants to add anything else. Mike? Yeah, I just, wanted to add a couple things. Another thing in our letter was about signals policy, and I hope they…

[100:05] City Council can… start moving on that. And now that we have an official transportation director, not an interim one. We can, make faster progress on, projects, like CAN, just be interested in hearing more about, in the future, about funding, including our our Safe Streets for All grant, whenever that seems appropriate. Yes, Darcy. Just as a matter of interest to this group and others who may be listening, I was on a… hall last week, the Transportation, Planning Coalition, and, Matt Weir from Cyclists for Community. brought to our attention that the federal government had announced its Safe Streets and Roads for All funding for this year, and Colorado and Vermont were the only two states in the entire country who received no SS4A.

[101:16] by all means. Mmm… nope, I think… Colorado and Wyoming. Oh, it was Colorado and Vermont. It was somewhere out… out east. Or New Hampshire. Either Vermont or New Hampshire, I don't know. But, but if you look at the map of approved projects, every single state has approved projects, except for Colorado and that one other state. But, you know, this is really dramatic, and of course, we know now that the federal government has rescinded transportation funding to the tune of about $109 million from Colorado, and so I don't know where that's impacting us exactly, and I don't know what impact that has on our local SS4A funding, but I do know that it's,

[102:01] It's tenuous, and I… it's a difficult, time for… Transportation staff and for our community, so, yeah. Do you have any insights, Blythe? Do you want to share later? Do you want to share on the call? I do not have insights on Safe Streets for All, but I'm eager and… concerned and… I guess both of those things. Sorry. We don't know either. Yeah. If it's alright, I can just add on the previous point that, there, you know, were multiple cycles of SS4A, and the city was awarded such a large grant. In the first cycle, that we were advised that we would not be considered for the second round.

[103:02] Thanks, Valerie. And that totally makes sense. I mean, I think that we were very lucky. I mean, what I found kind of shocking was that, the Colorado 119 was not approved. You know that that was… But, you know. I mean, the… Well, I guess we'll. 36th and… Yeah, the North 36 Bikeway. Is that the one you mean? Yeah. Yeah, that was Matt's project that he mentioned, or the one that he's been supportive of. Yeah. Sorry, I muted myself on that happy note, let's see… I don't think we have any future agenda items. Do we? From what I saw in our email, I don't think we do. I hate to end this in such a sad way.

[104:01] That's my fault. Go out and use… go out and use the, tap to pay. Tell… tell everybody what they. can ride RTD with their… if you have an EcoPass, or you have a card. That's great! I know, I know, and for anybody that's interested, that is listening to this, boards and commissions are still accepting applications, there's gonna be an open spot for TAB. I believe, and, so please apply. I think the deadline is on the 25th of January, so… please, anybody correct me if I'm wrong, so please… apply. We'd love to have you with us. And… yeah. I don't know if anybody else has anything else to add that is happy, so we're gonna end on a happy note. And if not, I am gonna move to adjourn… Darcy has something. Winter Bike to Work Day. This is a happy thing. Winter Bike to Work Day is February 13th, which is a Friday, and then the next day, on Valentine's Day, I am hosting a 15-mile older end-to-end choose-your-own-adventure ramble.

[105:10] Which you can do all 15 miles, or you can do just a short section. There are 4 different starting points. And so we'll have those up online soon. I actually have… it's on the Boulder Ramblers Meetup, but it'll also be on the City site as it's co-hosted, and but Winter Bike to Workday is going to be great, where we'll have a breakfast station at the Boulder Chamber from 7 to 9 a.m, and I know that there are breakfast stations, all around. So, Valerie, do you want to say more about that? I saw that you… I have an additional item after you're completed with this one. That's… Go, Valerie. Yeah, I had a positive piece of news or a preview to share. The city, across departments, is currently compiling a list of all of the 2025 accomplishments, and so pretty soon, we'll be able to publish and share with you all that kind of look back at 2025, all of the incredible and unprecedented progress we made, across our work plan and transportation.

[106:12] With the advancement of the core arterial network, you know, getting council approval for three individual corridor projects in one year, essentially. You know, all of the collaborative work we did, across departments on things like the AMPS work, eliminating citywide parking minimums, and coupling that with a new TDM ordinance. I mean, there's just going to be so much to celebrate and look back on in 2025. So just a shout out to our incredible staff teams that really made so much progress on significant signature efforts last year. Yeah, well, that sounds so much better to end like that. Thank you so much, Valerie and Darcy. And yeah, and with that, I move to adjourn.

[107:03] I second? Am I doing it right? you can… Sir? You can ask for a motion. Yeah, can I ask for a motion? I move to adjourn. A second. And with that, I believe… The meeting has been adjourned. So, thank you so much, everybody, for your time. Good night. Okay. We have to…