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.