- Okay, I'd like to call the meeting to order of the Bloomington Monroe County MPO policy committee meeting
- Introductions and we'll start to my left Bishop City Planning Commission Andrew Seabor serving as proxy
- for mayor Thompson Hopi Stossberg Bloomington Common Council Lisa Ridge Monroe County Scott Ferris Monroe
- County Planning Commission
- Doug Horn with the Bloomington Public Transit Corporation Board of Directors John Kennedy proxy for
- Sam Tobin Hoxton Becky Packer Indiana Department of Transportation City of Bloomington Public Works
- Department serving as a proxy for the public works director Jason Bannock IU and online Julie Thomas
- mineral kind of commissioner
- Thank you. Moving to item to approval of agenda for August 28th 2026 need a motion and a second. I'll
- move to approve the agenda as presented. Second we have a motion and a second. Any board comments any
- public comment seeing none.
- Guess we do a roll call vote since we have someone online Bannock nickel Yes, Kennedy. Yes horn.
- Yes Ferris. Yes bridge. Yes Stasberg. Yes Seaborg. Yes Bishop yes Packer. Yes Thomas Yes Motion passes
- Thank you. Moving on approval of minutes from July 24th 2026. Do we have a motion for 2026 as presented.
- Second we have a motion we have a second. Any board comments seeing none. Any public comment seeing
- none. Roll call vote please abstain.
- Horn. Yes, Ferris. Yes, nickel. Yes, bannock. Yes, Thomas Yes, ridge. Yes packer Yes, Bishop. Yes Seaborg.
- Yes, Stasberg. Yes motion passes All right moving on communications from the chair vice-chair Seeing none
- communications from officers or committees TAC we met this is prior Wednesday and had a chance to review
- the new business item that's being proposed today and recommend it for approval Wednesday and recommends
- approval of the tip amendment today. Thank you.
- Seeing no other comments, we'll move on to, looks like the stars of the show today is reports from staff.
- The stars are aligned. First item we have for you in your packet is the U.S. Department of Transportation
- Service Transportation Reauthorization Priority Letter from Secretary Duffy. This was dated July 22nd.
- Thank you.
- Dated July 22nd, Congress has been discussing the reauthorization since January, first week of January.
- So this letter is somewhat late to the table. And it looks right now as if Congress will do a continuing
- resolution until the new Congress comes in in January when reauthorization will occur then.
- Nonetheless, the letter from the Secretary of Transportation is quite extensive. What I'll do is just
- highlight key points here. First one is transit safety and security. Secretary of Department
- of Transportation feels that he should have the authority to withhold transit funding for safety and
- crime prevention in transit systems.
- Second thing is expanding modernizing modernizing infrastructure. They want to authorize the completion
- and expansion of the interstate system. Third point restoring the highway trust fund solvency. Their
- their proposal is that they eliminate the mass transit account from the highway fund. But there's no
- no detail on how
- transit would then be funded. Next item, prioritize motor vehicle travel over bicycle lanes, eliminate
- road diets and bicycle lanes that contribute to congestion. They believe that bicycle lanes contribute
- to congestion. Next point is preserve daylight savings time. In other words, they've come out and said
- that there are four daylight savings time.
- This all leads into the next item, which is the National Roadway Safety Strategy for 2026, which was
- also published just about the same time. Just a few days before publication of the National Roadway
- Safety Strategy for 2026, the Federal Highway Administration quietly removed from safety countermeasures,
- proven safety countermeasures, they quietly removed
- bicycle lanes, road diets, speed safety cameras, variable speed limits, speed limits that are appropriate
- for vulnerable road users from the list of proven safety countermeasures. With that preface, the National
- Roadways Safety Strategy for 2026 focuses on three things. First one is safer people, safer roads, and
- safer vehicles. Under safer people,
- They note the fact that there were over thirty nine thousand fatalities on the roads in twenty twenty
- four a third of which involves speeding and another one third involved alcohol impairment. What's failed
- to mention here is that there's distracting driver distracted driver emphasis which is a big deal in
- Indiana was not really called out directly.
- 41 percent of the deaths occurred on rural roads in Indiana. The deaths are predominantly on rural roads,
- not just 41 percent. It's more like closer to 56 or 60 percent. Safer roads, they note that half of
- all deaths occur on arterial roads, and the reason for that is traffic volume. More people travel on
- arterial roadways.
- More than half of all fatalities occur at night, where only 25% of the travel occurs during darkness
- hours. Here in Indiana, fatalities are higher at night than 25%, and they predominantly occur on rural
- roads, and they predominantly occur with some sort of an alcohol impairment or speed or distracted driver.
- and they typically involve leaving the roadway. Under safer roads, the proposal is that ITS solutions
- such as LIDAR equipped adaptive signal control technology can reduce congestion and improve safety at
- intersections by quickly adjusting signal timing to real traffic time conditions.
- have asked that we prioritize safer work zone management. That's something that's already prioritized
- by the state of Indiana. They noted that 5,300 people died in large truck crashes in 2024. That number
- in Indiana is substantially less, substantially less, but it nonetheless is, it's a big issue and a
- concern issue for the state of Indiana.
- A shortage of truck parking nationwide forces drivers to choose between cutting driving hours to secure
- parking spaces or risk driving beyond their acceptable limits. That is a problem in the state of Indiana.
- There are not enough truck parking areas for commercial freight users or drivers, I'm sorry. Safer vehicles,
- the policy
- promotes integrate life-saving technology into vehicles and automated brakes and automatic bag systems
- and better technology for that without a great deal of detail. And then they also promote the deployment
- of automated vehicles. And that's all it is for the strategy. Any questions thus far on any of the two
- items? Yes.
- impact our long-term plans or funding expectations in terms of things like the road diets and
- the prioritizing or de-prioritizing bicycles or anything like that. Well, the current administration,
- if they had their way, they would de-emphasize, well, they would eliminate bicycle lanes altogether.
- And some of those bicycle lanes are also used jointly with pedestrian facilities. There is no real mention
- of vulnerable road users here in any of this. So the proposal coming out of Washington D.C. would be
- eliminate this and the prioritization would be given to automobiles. That's all I can say and that's
- that's their
- recommendation priority. Now what Congress does is completely different. The reauthorization discussions
- that have happened so far on both sides of the aisle would largely maintain the current infrastructure
- and investment jobs act programs, which are bringing, which bring about safety. And they also recognize
- multimodal transportation. Does that answer your question?
- funding, even like transit funding, like any of that? No. Well, transit funding has been impacted nationwide
- in that the federal transit, well, there are a number, a large number, and there have been stories published
- in the New York Times and others, a large number of the great metropolitan cities, Chicago, New York,
- Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, go on and on and on.
- San Francisco San Diego their transit programs have been authorized by the Federal Transit Administration
- but the office of the management budget has not released funding for any of those programs. The capital
- investment fund for public transit has not awarded any projects as of two weeks ago they had not awarded
- any projects.
- for major transit projects anywhere in the United States in the past year and a half. Does that answer
- your question? I think so. So this doesn't affect it any more than it's already been affected. Correct.
- Yeah. We have, we have a critical situation with large transit systems right now, but this does not
- affect anything beyond that point. Questions. Any others?
- Okay. The next item we have, and this is just an FYI, U.S. Department of Transportation, Intercity Bus
- Atlas. Just two key things to note here. Miller Transport serves Bloomington with routes to Evansville
- and Indianapolis. And then there's a second carrier, our bus, OUR, capital B-U-S, all one word, serves
- Terre Haute with connections to Bloomington.
- with connections to other locations in Illinois and Missouri. I don't know if there are any questions
- about that or not. It's just something we found online because there are people that use the intercity
- bus system, predominantly students and predominantly international students for that matter. Next thing
- we have is the Indiana second gas tax holiday reimbursement.
- The key takeaway here is that you should be aware of this is a cost to the state of Indiana of $5 million
- per day. This has been ongoing for two and a half months, I think, something in that vicinity. This
- is being this holiday, tax holiday, has been, well, replaced.
- Temporarily replaced with the state surplus revenues and those state surplus revenues have been directed
- to the motor vehicle highway account in the local road and street account so local jurisdictions won't
- see any change whatsoever. It's just a Significant cut and constant drain on the state's revenues on
- the state's surplus revenues The question here. The key question is the issue of long-term viability
- How long will this continue?
- There's been a public push about Indiana has the lowest gasoline prices in the nation But the question
- is how long can you keep that up? And that really revolves around how deep do you want to go into the
- surplus revenues? The next item we've got is early coordination letter for the state road 45 46 new
- sidewalk addition between Kinzer Pike and Walnut Street and
- The need for the project is a lack of pedestrian facilities in the project area. Purpose of the project
- is to provide safe and adequate pedestrian facilities. This would be located on the north side of the
- roadway and on the north side of the existing bridge structure between Kinzer and Walnut. There would
- be a 10-foot buffer from the edge of the roadway.
- There would be a concrete barrier wall protecting the pedestrians and or cyclists using that facility.
- There would also be a replacement of the existing railing on the bridge and railing on the north side
- of the bridge is is for well for automobiles and it would be replaced with railing that would facilitate
- safe movement of bicycles because the bicycles are in elevated
- Elevated height about pedestrians above the automobiles Concrete barrier for pedestrians and cyclists.
- I mentioned that and also they would upgrade the pedestrian push buttons and the pedestrian Signal heads
- at all the signals in those locations Questions on any of this at all One question that came up in the
- Citizens Advisory Committee is
- or maybe no, but that was a technical advisory committee is who would be responsible for the maintenance
- of this. And, um, I had assumed on the bridge structure, it would be the Indiana department
- of transportation, but I was corrected by Neil copper. The deputy city engineer said that probably it
- would be a, an agreement with the city where the city would maintain clearing and, uh, safe passage
- of that corridor once it's constructed.
- Any questions anyone. It's been a long time coming. This is something that was recognized by a member
- of the Citizens Advisory Committee five years ago but then two years ago the Department of Transportation
- did not fund sidewalk type projects that only occurred in recent years. City of Fort Wayne took all
- of the funding.
- The first year and that's somewhere around 18 to 20 million dollars statewide. So simply to have this
- project programmed is a major win for our area in terms of safety for the pedestrians and the bicycles
- using that court or going back and forth predominantly to the Kroger there on that one corner. Next
- item is the city of Bloomington safety week. Oh, I'm sorry.
- I missed one city of Bloomington press release increased traffic enforcement for the beginning of the
- Monroe County School Corporation consolidated school corporation year. That's already occurred. That
- was two weeks ago City of Bloomington safety week. This is safety week This almost was safety week here
- because we're at the end of that the big takeaways here are the community bike ride and
- sponsored by the Planning and Transportation Department. Community bike ride was for new IU students
- and or returning students and also people interested in the IU community on how to navigate the city
- on a bicycle. How to get to key component areas of say healthcare, groceries, shopping, other opportunities
- like that.
- That was on Wednesday night. I'm sorry, Tuesday night. Wednesday night was traffic cones at Chocolate
- Moose where people could stop by, have a free ice cream cone thanks to Chocolate Moose, meet with the
- staff, the planning transportation staff regarding traffic safety issues for pedestrians and cyclists,
- I was there only an hour and we had something like 35 to 40 people in the first hour and that was early
- on. And then I had to leave after that and I don't have a follow-up for that. Last night was Kitticoe
- Mass at Bryant Park where it was involved with safety again, giving away bicycle lights,
- which we also gave away at the community bicycle ride and also traffic cones so that way people can
- ride safely with the flashing lights. There was what I would call safe movement of the bicycles, training
- techniques, and also answering questions for critical mass. Katie was there last night, I was not. Then
- the final thing I've got here is
- A rather large one, this is the MPOs fiscal year 2028, 2032, transportation improvement program calls
- for projects. We do this every two years. This is for all federal aid projects. For the allocation,
- the published online here is the timeline, what we call the development and adoption timeline.
- It's very aggressive, very tight. We do think, however, that we can achieve it. If the need comes up
- for a postponement or some sort of a delay of some type, we have what I would affectionately call wiggle
- room for approximately a week or two in meeting that schedule.
- It's all being driven by the fact that we hope to have an adoption of a final transportation improvement
- program in the first week of December. We could go as late as the second week of December, don't necessarily
- want to. If we have to go beyond the second week of December, then we're looking at an adoption sometime
- in the latter part of January by the policy committee and mid-January also by the
- Advisory Committee and the Citizens Advisory Committee and all of this is aimed toward an endgame of
- having an adopted transportation improvement program approved by the Federal Highway Administration,
- NDOT and Federal Transit Administration by February no later than March because the new fiscal year
- would begin on July 1st and development approval approval
- Timelines for the Federal Transit Administration the Federal Highway Administration In this calendar
- year have been four to six months So if you take February and add in four months to six months, then
- you're looking at a transportation improvement program Conceivably might not be approved until August
- of next year which would delay the implementation of our federal aid projects by somewhere around one
- to two months and
- And that's significant in terms of development timeline when we're meeting critical timelines, milestones.
- Anticipated funding levels are shown right here. Funding levels reflect the fact that we've had decreased
- shares in recent years. That's because of the 2020 census, all group two,
- Metropolitan Planning Organizations, that is those of us that are smaller than 200,000. We are allocated
- our funding based on a per capita basis on the 2020 census. Our population here in Bloomington, our
- population predominantly, the IU students all went home with COVID the second week of March.
- Census came in the first week of April and we lost 48, 49,000 students. Those were not counted in our
- population. Therefore, in terms of our proportional share of the urbanized area based on per capita
- population, we lost funding allocations. I've gone into anticipated funding levels. The last thing is
- the LPA response to date.
- Like to thank Monroe County, Lisa for the applications that we received thus far. We understand that
- there's one more application still out there. I spoke to the county engineer the other day and he told
- me that one was in process. Uh, Bloomington transit also like to thank them. We received all of their
- list of projects yesterday from Krista Browning, the controller. Um, that's all I have to say unless
- anybody has any questions for Katie or myself.
- So I guess under six seven the Bloomington safety week yes, the question I have Is how much did you
- have a whole lot of participation from IU students or is it just local people primarily? Well on the
- first one the community bike ride it was predominantly I use students and and or faculty and or a staff on
- Traffic cones chocolate mousse. I don't know because what I saw were predominantly local local people's
- school children parents was school children There were three families. I saw with at least six children
- if not more and those I spoke with Last night for Bryant Park for critical mass. I don't know. I don't
- know the answer to that because I wasn't attending
- So in those discussions, and this is a topic that I hear about quite a bit from primarily the older
- crowd, and that is that the bicyclists are not adhering to the traffic laws. They're not stopping. They're
- speeding through intersections. They're not using turn signals. They're just zipping right through the
- intersections and are not adhering to any of the, well, the traffic laws. So my comment is that,
- Is there some sort of a, oh, by the way, you need to be aware that if you're going to be in our community,
- you need to adhere to the traffic laws to be enforced by whatever local authorities, et cetera. Any
- discussion about that? I don't know. Yeah, well, I would offer that if you're going to do that work.
- What we can do is we can push that out there as a follow-up. I mean, you noted on cyclists. I've noticed
- it on pedestrians.
- because I drive through the campus on 3rd Street every morning and every evening on 3rd Street or on
- 10th Street and pedestrians. Yeah a lot of jaywalking. Well I live as I brought up before in previous
- discussions I live off of 10th Street going toward Unionville and of course we get all the little 500
- crowd out there doing their thing and they really don't adhere to the traffic laws.
- So anything you can do to put the word out there to get people to adhere that would be greatly appreciated.
- Yeah I would I would note that the little 500 training teams also go through my complex and what I've
- observed is them observing the laws they're stopping they're going through our neighborhood.
- On their way to see where forty six and four forty six and they take four forty six as a training route
- all the way down to U.S. fifty and then coming back and they're using the shoulders they're using the
- shoulders on steward four forty six because I travel four forty six down to Lake Monroe three four times
- a week to run down there. As you know we don't have shoulders on 10th Street going toward Unionville
- except in certain places.
- We will note that push out the safety message about obeying traffic laws. Thank you. Any other questions.
- Observations. Moving on to old business which there are no items. I'm sorry we have six point nine which
- is. Oh I'm sorry. Katie I apologize. It's OK. Just just an announcement in general we
- NPO staff do hope to explore new ways of handling TIP project applications that are submitted every
- two years. So I'm not saying we will change the process necessarily, but we do hope to explore possibilities
- for how to go about processing applications and making decisions on funding in the future. And so just
- This is just a general brief announcement about that. So we encourage you to pay attention to this year's
- tip development process and call for projects process. And that way you can take note of things that
- you think should change how we currently do things etc. So just wanted to say a brief brief thing about that.
- Item 6.10 page 35 and the combined packet. All of this information in this memo is in our current tip
- document that is on our website. But this memo just pulls the fiscal year 2027 information out of the
- tip and puts it into a memo for you. So this being the beginning of fiscal year 27 which started in July 1st.
- We just wanted to share what the allocation plan was for the MPOs annual federal funding allocate federal
- funding amounts. So the MPO receives four point five million in this fiscal year. We have to either
- use it trade it or flex it to transit by the end by May 1st of 2028.
- The majority of this year's allocation federal allocation is going towards paying back a loan to the
- Indianapolis MPO 4.6 million in exchange for an amount that was received in 2024 We also have an incoming
- of 2.2 million from a exchange that was made with another MPO and then we have
- Extra 47,000 that was granted to us at the end of fiscal year 26 in May and we have until September
- to use it So this makes the total amount available for this year 2.2 million and As previously programmed
- in the tip and approved 2.1 of that will go towards High Street multi-use path and intersection improvement
- project and
- the 46 extra 47,000 will go towards downtown curb ramps project PE phase as That was decided earlier
- this spring And shared with you at a previous meeting any questions Item six point eleven
- Don't have any major updates on the projects that are occurring On the tip projects that are taking
- place As usual you can go to the tip project listing link here to look at the latest updates and I'm
- sure you're all aware that several of the projects in the tip are ongoing currently and I just wanted
- to remind everyone that
- If you want to go to our web page, I'm sure you're familiar with each of your own web pages for road
- closures. But we do have all three linked to our website. If you want to know what construction is happening
- when in the upcoming months, you can find that information online. Any questions, comments?
- Old business, we don't have any new business item 8.1 resolution fiscal year 2027-03 proposed changes
- to the fiscal year 2026 2030 BMC MPO tip We per federal law we have to present changes to the tip to
- you for approval and So the first change we have is to
- to a Bloomington Transit project called Green Line Design and Engineering. And the change that is taking
- place is changing the funding source for the money that is being used in fiscal year 27, and then updating
- the funding amounts that will be used for this phase of the project. Specifically, this 300,000 is for
- traffic signal prioritization.
- Second amendment for your consideration is an update to the Bloomington Transit project called
- new administrative and maintenance facility unlike the MPO the transit transit agencies are allowed
- to bank their their funds over the course of years and so Bloomington Transit has been banking their
- funds for a while now and They are
- Wanting to update fiscal year 27 funds for this project They'll be adding 23 million to Fiscal year
- 27 and that is for phase one of building construction for the new facility There is a risk of I'll say
- there is a risk of this funding being taken away and
- And so they are trying to get it used for what they've been saving it for. The next amendment is the
- addition of a new end up project called high mast tower lighting replacement at various interchanges
- in Vincennes and Seymour districts. So as you're aware they put these generalized projects for the district.
- They have us put them in the tip because it
- Accelerates approval in the future. We do not have specific locations for this at this time And the
- last amendment is to update the funding for in dots project of repairing or replacing joints on SR 48
- over I 69 They are simply increasing the fiscal year 27 construction funding a bit
- from two hundred thirty nine thousand to three hundred sixty two thousand and that is it. Any questions
- on any of the tip amendments. I would ask for a motion approval of resolution.
- FY twenty twenty seven oh three as presented to approve these minor amendments to the tip. We have a
- motion and a second. Any comments from the board. Any online. Any public comment. Seeing none. Roll
- call vote please. Stasberg yes Seaborg.
- Bishop. Nickel. Thomas. Yes. Bannock. Yes. Horn. Yes. Kennedy. Yes. Ferris. Yes. Ridge. Yes. Packer.
- Yes. Motion passes. OK. Moving on public comment.
- It doesn't look like we have any public online. Communications from committee members on non voting
- matters not included on the agenda. Topic suggestions for future agendas. I'm not a committee member
- but I did want to share that the city of Bloomington is doing a public meeting on Tuesday September 1st.
- at 5.30 PM at Switchyard Park. This is a public input meeting for their Rogers Madison Kinzer corridor
- study and redesign. There is also an online survey available on the website. It's a pretty good survey.
- And so please, I encourage you to fill that out if you'd like to provide your input. Great. Thank you.
- The next technical advisory committee meeting is September 23rd at 10 a.m. CAC citizens advisory committee
- is September 23rd at 530 and policy committee is September 25th at 1030. All the meetings are available
- by hybrid and I would move for adjournment.