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.