- Okay. Good morning everybody. Thank you for being here and I'm gray cloudy cold November morning or
- today Wednesday, November 19th MPO technical advisory committee we'll start on our agenda here and First
- item is call the order and introductions. I'll start to my left here if you could just introduce yourself
- and the agency you're with and
- If you are a proxy for someone, please just let us know who you're filling in for so with that Ryan
- I'll turn it over to you and I understand we have one online member We'll get to you at the end as soon
- as everybody in the room is introduced themselves. So Ryan starts off Ryan Roebling City of Bloomington
- planning a transportation department proxy David Hittle City of Bloomington City engineer
- Nickle City of Bloomington Public Works Department Paul Satterly Monroe County Highway engineer John
- Baitin GIS coordinator Monroe County Kelly Whitmer Monroe County Parks and Recreation Jane fleek City
- of Bloomington utilities Max Dyer City of Bloomington GIS division proxy for Megan Blair Thank you
- And at this point we can go ahead to our online guest our online member. Go ahead and introduce yourself.
- Mary Wells natural resources manager operations director for Parks and Rec. Great. Thank you.
- Person disappeared so okay Okay with that we can move to our next item approval of agenda Do I have
- a motion to approve today's TAC agenda motion to approve second Any public comment
- Hearing none over to staff for roll call vote. No copper. Yes. Ryan Robling. Yes. Jane Flake. Yes.
- John Baten. Yes. John Connell. Yes. Kelly Whitmer. Yes. Max here. Yes. Nate Nickle. Yes. Paul Satterly.
- Yes. Mary Wells.
- Yes. Motion passes. Great. Thank you. Okay. Our next agenda item approval of minutes from our last meeting.
- It's been a while since we last met August 27th 2025 to have a motion to approve the August meeting
- minutes. So moved. Thanks for I have a second second. Thank you John. All right. Any public comment
- on this one.
- Hearing none and go back to staff for a roll call vote Nate nickel. Yes, Paul Satterly. Yes Jane Fleag
- Yes, John Baten Yes, John Connell. Yes, Ryan Roebling. Yes, Neil copper. Yes Kelly Whitmer.
- Yes Max here. Yes, Mary Wells Yes
- Motion passes Jane do we get you? Okay, great. Thank you Okay, moving ahead to communications from the
- chair and vice-chair John do you have any county updates? I Do not have anything at this time. I will
- note that we are in terms of GIS side of it. We are about to Deploy a new I deploys not the right word
- We are in the process we're about completed with a new addition to our social vulnerability index viewer
- for the county what the social vulnerability index is a metric from the CDC that identifies communities
- across the United States that And their ability to bounce back from some type of disaster occurrence
- And so we have this for 2020 already, but we're bringing in data for 2022 as well so we can get an idea
- of kind of how these different census tract groups are
- Looking in terms of this two-year period and so it's a fairly valuable data set that can be utilized
- to identify Areas where investment might be appropriate for things like roads infrastructure and things
- like that So that should be done by probably the end of the day today great Now definitely encourage
- you to check out Monroe County's GIS website There's a lot of great information on there the aerial
- photos from previous. I mean you're going back to the
- 1940s and 1960s is always great to look at we use it quite often and just a lot of great information
- on there So definitely done some great work with that. Thanks Just an update quickly that I can pass
- on is well, it's November. So we're starting to get ready. We're officially wrapping up any kind of
- remaining paving work and Looking forward to that four letter word snow so plows around the trucks and
- we got a little taste of that last week, so
- Hoping for a mild winter but we'll see what what it has in store for us. Okay. With that I think I can
- move ahead to reports from MPO staff Pat and Katie. Oh it's been a while. Sorry. We're not on our showtime
- queue here. The first one we've got is the fiscal year 26 2030 transportation improvement program. This
- is actually old news.
- but it came during a odd period here where we presented this to the policy committee, but we did not
- present it to the TAC or the CAC simply because we didn't meet for two months. So in the packet is the
- approval letter of the 2630 Transportation Improvement Program by the Indiana Department of Transportation.
- You can see that, that happened July 2nd.
- but then it took until August 28th for the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration
- to approve the Indiana's statewide transportation improvement program, which includes our TIP by reference.
- Everything is good to go. We had to do some adjustments, some modifications, but other than that, we're
- good to go and we're ready for all the spending.
- And the money is flowing, albeit a little bit slower than normal. I'll be happy to answer any questions
- that anybody would have. Okay, next item. 17th Street and the state would 45, 46 bypass. There was a
- fatality there earlier this year and involved a car and a motorcycle with a
- what I would call a T bone type of crash. Staff took a look at it, made a request through the INDOT
- for you submission to the Seymour district to have them take an exam of it. It had a permissive left
- turn yellow, flashing yellow I should say.
- If you were westbound and you wanted to turn left and go on to 17th Street and had a permissive yellow
- they've now changed that to a hard green and a hard red and we haven't had knock on wood we haven't
- had any incidents since then. So our thanks to the traffic Seymour district Seymour district traffic
- engineer Damon Brown for taking that action.
- They were very quick on taking that. Any questions anybody may have? Yeah, thanks, Pat. That's great
- to hear that there was that adjustment made. Is there any type of idea, like how often we make these
- requests to NDOT? Or I'm just curious, kind of, for these changes to signals and things like that for
- safety? In previous years, we made a number of requests through the NDOT For You channel.
- predominantly from the policy committee where people were concerned about student 45 or other corridors.
- In recent years, we've been less likely to do that simply because the reaction time is faster. Where
- we don't have to report it, they're already aware of it. And in this case, they were aware of it and
- we were aware of it at the same time.
- And you'll see when later on in the agenda we're shifting to a different type of crash analysis software
- as to where with that we'll be doing what I would call near real time adjustments. And then also the
- Department of Transportation Chief Traffic Safety Engineer has made adjustments where he's become proactive
- very proactive on intersections they adjusted
- Something like 56 intersections in the Seymour district just in the last four months alone. So you're
- and all of that is aimed at reducing fatal and serious injury crashes. So the answer short answer is
- not recently. We don't make these requests but we do make them whenever they occur with a fatal and
- a serious injury crash. Awesome. Thanks.
- Any other questions. Anybody I'll just say appreciate in that working so quickly to get that that resolve
- and any individuals willing is able to make a request. I think Hopi Stasberg made one for Kinzer Kinzer
- and the bypass recently and they did it quite quickly and she was very surprised by that.
- Okay the next item I just want to say a quick word about the city Bloomington's College and Walnut Street
- project which is slated to receive some federal funds through the MPO. They hosted two public open houses
- during the last week of October where they showed proposed designs and staff also conducted outreach
- on the streets as well by tabling in various locations.
- So they have a public feedback form available for the public to complete by December 1st. So just wanted
- to make you aware of that. The next item is traffic incident management training. So MPO staff coordinated
- with Indiana traffic incident management to hold a TIM training in city of Bloomington council chambers
- on October 24th.
- Tim is the concept of having a planned and coordinated multidisciplinary process to detect respond to
- and clear traffic incidents so that traffic flow can be restored as safety safely and as quickly as
- possible and reduce secondary crashes individuals from the city of Bloomington Fire Department and risk
- departments Ellisville Fire Department and Monroe County Health Department participated in this particular
- training and
- You can see the Facebook post for pictures. As of July 2025, the TIM training is required for all new
- EMS personnel. However, it's not currently required for law enforcement to take the training even though,
- although law enforcement does take the role of incident commander in traffic incidents. So we encourage
- all responders in the area
- communications, EMS, fire, rescue, law enforcement, towing, DOT staff, public works, transportation
- staff, to reach out to Indiana TIM and if you're interested in organizing a training for your staff.
- Indiana TIM also offers a train the trainer workshop as well. On a related note, I also wanted to take
- this opportunity to mention a couple dates.
- First, the week of November 17th through 21st this week is Crash Responders Safety Week. Crash Responders
- Safety Week is a week to both raise awareness for the work that our first responders do on the roadways
- and to educate the public about traffic incident management and its related laws like the Indiana move
- over and slow down law.
- You can find more information about that at responder safety calm and then also November 16th this past
- Sunday was World Day of Remembrance Which is World Day of Remembrance for road traffic victims? Occurs
- every third Sunday of November in honor of those who have lost their lives or been impacted by roadway
- crashes So we just wanted to share this information with you
- in remembrance of the 59 fatalities that have occurred on urban and rural roads within Monroe County
- between 2019 and 2024. So at any moment our lives or the lives of our loved ones can change because
- of a roadway crash and it's a time for all of us to come together and consider how we can participate
- in making the road safer.
- The next item on pages 11 through 30 of the packet is a slideshow. So the MPO was asked to present at
- City of Bloomington's Common Council meeting. Specifically the council was interested in what new pedestrian
- infrastructure has been supported by MPO funds in previous years and what pedestrian infrastructure
- will be built with MPO funds and by INDOT in the near future.
- So there's a copy of the presentation in the packet. It provides a good overview of past years and the
- future. So feel free to take a minute and glance at that. Next item, the India Department of Transportation
- is currently in the process of updating their long range transportation plan.
- it would be the 2050 Long Range Transportation Plan. So NDOT is required by federal legislation to develop,
- adopt, and implement a Long Range Transportation Plan, policy-based plan used to guide the development
- of Indiana's transportation network. So in the meeting agenda, there is a link to a fact sheet, a virtual
- room where you can learn about their goals, and then there is a public survey link in there as well.
- where you can pin problems on the map for the region. So this is just one of many ways they're doing
- their data collection for this. So feel free to complete the survey. It's open until December 20th.
- Next, for your information purposes,
- Page 35 of the packet show the memo that MPO staff sent to end up on September 18th approving
- an administrative modification to end up project 2 4 0 13 86 which is intersection improvements at SR
- 46 and Flatwoods Road. So in dots request was simply to increase fiscal year 20 26 P.E.
- HSIP funds from 400,000 to 511,000. This increased their total project cost by 5%. And this was just
- considered an administrative modification, so we didn't have to bring this to committees for approval.
- But we just wanted to share it with you as an information item.
- Go ahead. Go ahead. OK. Next time we have is the. Schedule. Closely this is.
- John, this is what I was going to call you about the other day. If you please take this into consideration
- and let us know if you have any conflicts with any of this. We designed it so that the difference here
- is that policy committees will meet on the second Friday of the month. We'll move it out to
- I'm sorry, we'll move to the fourth Friday of the month. So that way it's a back to back to back where
- the technical advisory committee will meet, then the citizen advisory committee, and then the policy
- committee all in the same week. That's a significant structural difference from the way we've done it
- in previous years. Jane, you've been around, I think, as long as I have, and this was
- The approach in 2005 and six was always the second Friday and then the fourth Friday. So this breaks
- with the tradition significantly from previous years for 20 years or so. Anybody sees any conflicts
- on any of this. Please let us know. We'd be happy to address those. Makes it all committees are off
- in November.
- I'm sorry. All committees are off in November. Yes. Instead of moving the November meeting up a week
- to accommodate Thanksgiving it's just been moved to the beginning of December and December's is there
- was never a December one but it's just not on there. And then it's a significant break from December 2nd 4th.
- to January 28th 30th. So there are breaks built in there. It's just not clearly as obvious as we had
- made it explicit before where we had summer breaks and winter breaks. Like I said take it under
- consideration. Let us know at our next next meeting or you can contact us freely.
- call, email, whatever, before our next meeting to let us know what you think. All right, and then I
- just wanted to share some updates with the projects receiving MPO funding. I can share some, but I'd
- like to invite Neil and
- call to share any updates they want to share.
- In terms of the county or for a bike connector sunrise greetings project is now open and we finished
- up the punch list as well. So that project is fully complete and our Fullerton Pike project quarter
- project opened I think in September 26 been a little while but they're still working on some final details
- fencing landscaping and some minor drainage issues and
- And that should be fully complete this year. So And on the lookout Eagleson Avenue bridge project will
- be starting next next year with utilities mostly during the summer and then well that bridge will be
- closed starting after move in week I guess. So be on the lookout for that project coming up.
- Thank you both. If anybody has questions for Neil or Paul and you think of it later feel free to reach
- out a lot of good work going on. OK. No old business items so we can jump ahead to new business and
- several items for our consideration there. So back to staff. OK. The first time a new business we have
- here is the
- Indiana Department of Transportation's calendar year 2026 safety targets and the safety targets. If
- you've been on this committee for a while you'll remember that the safety targets that come out on an
- annual basis always involve the number of fatalities fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled
- number of serious injuries the rate of serious injuries per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
- And also the number of non motorized fatalities and non motorized serious injuries. The department of
- transportation currently this year is their target is a 2 percent decrease in what we call FSI or fatal
- and serious injury crashes. So far this year even though it's incomplete there within the target.
- In other words a less than 2 percent 2 percent decrease or greater for fatalities serious injuries are
- up. However we still have we still have the data yet to come in for November and for December. Their
- projection for calendar year 26 also looks at a 2 percent reduction in total fatalities and also in
- serious injuries and those numbers are reflected in
- The numbers that I am required to read out loud target number one the number of total fatalities predicted
- by the Indiana Department of Transportation in calendar year 2026 is seven hundred ninety four point
- seven. The rate of fatalities for 100 million vehicle miles traveled is zero point nine nine two. The
- number of serious injuries.
- predicted projected I'm sorry for calendar year 2026 is two thousand nine hundred and sixty five point
- five target number four the rate of serious injuries per 100 million vehicle miles traveled is three
- point seven oh two and then target number five the number of non motorized fatalities and serious injuries
- projected their goal target is four hundred and sixty two point nine six.
- Now the question always comes up what happens if they don't meet this target. And the answer is they
- are well the surface transportation block grant funding which comes from the Federal Highway Administration.
- That's the primary source for all Indiana Department of Transportation funding that primary source would
- be reduced.
- And those funds would be reallocated by the Federal Highway Administration to safety projects. So there
- is no what I would call net loss of funding overall for the state. But what it does is it shifts the
- resources from maintenance and preservation to safety instead. As I mentioned earlier about the proactive
- actions on the part of
- the Department of Transportation not only in central office but also in the Seymour district. They've
- been very aggressive. They're very aware of this 2 percent target of decrease for this year this calendar
- year and 2 percent decrease for calendar year 20 26. Also a part of this which I'll get into later on
- is the acquisition of new crash software ashtoware that
- coupled with the proactive what I would call almost near time reactions on the part of the Department
- of Transportation should lead to a decrease next year. But then you always have those wild cards of
- unpredictability of how drivers drive and unpredictability of weather which could be a factor too. Anyway
- oh and then the requested action here is
- recommend policy adoption by the Technical Advisory Committee and that policy committee would be meeting
- would be within two weeks from today So if there are any questions, please I'll be happy to answer those
- Pat this is the same document that we've looked at over the past few years, right and we generally approve
- it with an amendment saying that we would request that the target fatalities are zero or
- And those things correct Yes, so I feel like that's probably a thing that we could do again is to say
- that yeah, we we acknowledge that there are Going to be fatalities, but we think the target should be
- zero not 800 people in cars and not 462 people not in cars dying in in fairness to the Department of
- Transportation they have Talked openly about
- Vision Zero and the vision Vision Zero network particularly by the communities municipalities of Indiana.
- They just aren't there yet. And the reason they're not there yet is because the U.S. Department
- of Transportation isn't there yet. But yes it's a very laudable amendment. Yeah I think in passing like
- John mentioned it's always sobering to see these numbers up there as
- targets and I think we've always made it pretty clear here that okay we acknowledge the constraints
- that end out is under but at the same time should be zero and we've always conveyed that the policy
- committee and every time this comes up the policy committee I try to make sure that that's included
- in the update too. So policy committee hears this every time and never had any pushback.
- Very similar mindset as well. So if anyone would like to make a motion we can certainly language that
- we've approved I think it's going on probably at least three years now to this effect happen entertain
- that Yeah, I put forth the motion to approve with the same language we've used in the past about that
- target zero Have a second Thanks, Neil Any public comment on this item?
- Hearing any further committee comment Move on to roll call vote that Chain flea. Yes John Baten Yes,
- John Connell Kelly Whitmer. Yes Max here. Yes, Nate nickel. Yes Mary Wells or Rebecca Swift whoever's
- online now
- Rebecca Swift just joined. Yes. Paul Satterly. Yes. Neil Copper. Yes. Ryan Roebling. Yes. Motion passes.
- Great. Thank you. Okay. Next item is several proposed fiscal year 20 26 20 30 tip amendments. I can
- pass it back to staff. Okay. The first amendment we have here is
- Acquisition of the Indiana Department of Transportation of what's called the ashto Safety software or
- ashto where is what we call it ash aware with the safety segment Ashto for those of you that aren't
- familiar with the term is the American Association of State Highway Transportation officials This is
- all 50 states of the United States and also the territories the ashto
- Software packages have been out there for quite some time The Department of Transportation the Indiana
- Department of Transportation has been relying upon what's called a national I'm sorry a software package
- called road hat This has been this was developed by research staff at Purdue University It's been in
- vogue for I don't know seven eight years or something like that uses some element of
- of not only statistical analysis forecasting, but a small element of artificial intelligence, AI type
- software that would be replaced by the AASHTO safety wear. The AASHTO safety wear is what I would call
- a national standard used by 40 Department of Transportation's across 40 State Department of Transportation's
- across the United States. The AASHTO software
- Segment includes in it crash crash queries safety analysis network screening predictive analysis Promotional
- collaboration streamline reporting. It also looks at dashboards public portals and again more collaboration
- This is a statewide license acquisition and in dot would share this and
- acquisition license with all of the MPOs and all of the communities throughout Indiana at no cost. This
- would what it does is it decentralizes what I would call crash analysis or safety analysis brings it
- down onto the local level. So we're all speaking the same language. We're all using the same software
- and we're all
- more or less hopefully coming to the same conclusions on what I would call reactive or not reactive
- what I would call safety countermeasures that are standardized by the Federal Highway Administration
- and the Federal Transit Administration. With that I'll be happy to answer any questions anybody may
- have any questions for staff on this one.
- Is it a particular software package to happen to know the name of it or is it like an ashto hit. It's
- a standard software page called Ashto where is what it's called. But the safety module is the is what
- they intend to acquire and allow all of the communities in Indiana to use that software also. Current
- process is they
- Department of Transportation relies on Road Hat, the software, custom software built by Purdue University.
- And with this, it brings it down to what I would call the local level. It's a great deal for us, free.
- Any other questions, please?
- Sure, Pat. I'll ask one in terms of like the ashto software Do you know with like the data will it be
- data collected by it? And if there is data collection, is that stuff that we can access and get? Data
- the data is coming from the top down to the bottom up Department of Transportation collects their their
- data from the state police records the Aries Database and then we also take the same data and
- We clean it up. We spend Katie I'll give credit here spends extensive amount of time cleaning up the
- data because it has a lot of errors to it. We GPS coordinate coordinate identify every crash that we
- can identify. We send that clean data. We not only put it on our portal but we also send it to the Department
- of Transportation and we're in the process of doing that now.
- Indata has requested that all MPOs Take their clean data Upload it to them. So that way they can put
- it in their database and that way we're all looking at the same data That's been corrected for any errors.
- It may have been made out in the field by the officer the reporting officer So the ashto is like there
- you it's going to be building off of our existing data and
- To provide new insights. Okay. Sorry for the question. Oh, no, you provided clarity to us. I thought
- it was a new type of data acquisition software. No, it's not. It's the soft. Yeah, the data that is
- still the same. We still have problems. State has problems. We have problems with with the data and
- we go through the adjustments. They go through the adjustments and then we're meeting in the middle
- here to try and make sure that we're all talking the same data.
- No more questions on that. We can keep going items B2 through B5. Okay. The next item we have here is
- a transportation improvement program amendment for Bloomington transit involving EV mobile chargers.
- These are chargers for the Bloomington transit fleet of electric buses. Pretty straightforward. I hope.
- The next item we have is the acquisition of S1 guard deflectors for all of the BT Bloomington Transit
- fleet. These are safety deflectors that keep people from stepping off a curb into the wheel of a bus
- the rear wheel of a bus and that deflector keeps them from doing that. And then also the big one here is the
- Bloomington Transit new administrative and maintenance facility. This would be a rather large multimillion
- dollar project beginning in fiscal year 20 26 that involves not only the acquisition of the property
- but also involves design construction of the facility itself. And then the last one we have here is the
- Purchase replacement of battery electric buses and charging equipment for Bloomington Transit. This
- is a normal phased phased replacement phased replacement of what I would call diesel buses with electric
- battery electric buses. That's part of the commitment on Bloomington Transit part to to develop a whole
- electric electric fleet.
- And then John Connell is here to answer questions also if I can't answer the questions. Any questions
- on any of these proposed amendments. Where's the new maintenance facility going to be located.
- Somebody talking in the council chambers because audio has gone out if so Sorry about that Rebecca will
- John come up to the mic here. Yeah, sorry about that We haven't disclosed the location. We do have a
- subject property under consideration and the goal is to finalize the negotiation purchase by the end of the
- calendar year. Any further questions? Thanks, John. These tip amendments were proposed as a bundle, so if
- We want we can vote on them together if people want to vote individually that's fine too happy to entertain
- a motion either way Motion to approve these as a bundle Second Thank you any public comment on these
- new business tip amendments that are being proposed Okay hearing none staff or roll call vote
- Nickle. Yes. Kelly Whitmer. Yes. John Connell. Yes. John Baton. Yes. Jane Fleague. Yes. Rebecca Swift.
- Mary Wells. Yes. Paul Satterly. Yes. Max Dear. Yes. Ryan Roebling. Yes. Neil Copper. Yes. Motion passes.
- Great. Thank you.
- Okay, any public comment and anything we didn't include on today's agenda Okay seeing none communication
- from committee members if you have any updates or topic suggestions for future meeting agendas or anything
- else you'd like to discuss I'd like to give a shout out to the city of Bloomington's
- I guess road team the the new maintenance that's occurred around the Argon Place neighborhoods. Excellent.
- I run that every day. I love seeing the speed bumps. I'm guessing that's actually not the name for them
- but whatever those speed deterrents are and I'd love to see more of those and some of the thoroughfares
- around town like around Winslow Road and things like that. But that's a great like nice clear path right
- now and it's no more little holes and I'm going to trip in. So yeah. Thanks a lot. Awesome. Thanks.
- I'll make sure to convey that.
- I know I'm not a committee member, but can I add something? Sure. The beeline extension I noticed is
- open as of this week. I went took the beeline from the City Hall to Adams this on Monday and it looks
- like you can go on to the new extension to 17th Street. So be sure to check that out.
- And we are just thrilled that we put those lights to use and got him out of the goat barn. So thank
- you all for that opportunity as well. Thanks Rebecca. Yep. Looking ahead to upcoming meetings looks
- like policy committee will be meeting on December 12th and we'll be meeting January 28th typo there
- 2025 make sure you change that to 26 are bad.
- That time of year is going to be hard to remember to change it. CAC also meets January 20. So with that
- I hope everyone has great holidays and we'll see you next year. Thank you. Please be safe driving running biking.