call to order. Hello everybody. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. I think I'll call the meeting to order. We'll start with the roll call. People maybe do
10 Okay. Let me just get yours ready right so okay, just say presidents are here. Hannah Vaughn Max Dalton here in the blue around MEC. Mark Dennett your test arm to Douglas saying facility meetings can make a divide as long as the jacks as we know is on her way. And Johnson here is that she'll be here in about 10 minutes the vendor man Suzanne 7am kampsen here. Jacqueline's. Apparently. So we have nine right now. We don't quite have quorum waiting for one more person so we can continue on with with meeting. We just can't approve the agenda and minutes officially. Or take other voting actions around can continue the meeting. So we're certainly going to have consequently Chavez speaker or whatever sort of the first purchasing says, I think Toya and Leslie both so they're on their way.
Shortly. Perfect. Sounds good. Thank you can start with the land acknowledgement. Before we get into our agenda. As we meet here today, we are reminded that Minneapolis is situated on the homelands of the Dakota people, an area that is steeped in rich indigenous history. It's home to the indigenous people for more than 30 Different nations. As a city, we have a responsibility to care for the land on which we live and work and all its natural surroundings. The stewardship is an integral part of our involvement in this commission. And we honored as we begin our meeting, we now have the space to discuss ways in which we can support indigenous black and black people in our community.
We may want to just circle back on this really quick I don't know if people saw but there was just a quick one page handout there that I printed out on behalf of Leslie regarding some of the green zones work. So maybe if she just wants to speak to that when she would come in, we could just kind of open and close
all right. Well, thanks everybody. For anything come to mind later on. Feel free to share as we go. I think we'll start off by opening the Florida council members Travis house around we're Travis is going to kick off our sort of rounds of interacting with and welcoming council members to our meetings, just to hear what they're interested in if there's opportunities for cooperation and working together on stuff, sharing ideas and just getting to know each other because we send you a lot of letters so it's nice for you to have some. Yeah, so yeah, go
Hi, everyone. JC Chavez sponsored content and I have the honor and privilege representing the Ninth Ward on we have the city council so the South Minneapolis Parramatta Park, East Phillips metabolomes central neighborhood Corcoran, and a little bit of Longfellow after me district I lose a lot of the central neighborhood. And being the entire Longfellow neighborhood, not the area, but the neighborhood itself. So going to have, again, the majority of the East Lake Street corridor along with the constituencies around there, I think very important to the city of Minneapolis. But I just wanted to take some time, thank you for the invitation, I really appreciate it. Take some time to say Hello, and thank you for the work. I see all the emails I get, and very appreciative of the work that you all do for environmental justice specifically, and want to take some time to just say hi and open have an open door policy, if you're ever want to meet with my office and talk about policy ways that we can improve sustainability and environmental justice in the city of Minneapolis, I would love to work on policy or have coffee or whatnot, just to get to know each other better. I think these kinds of groups help change policy and want to make sure that that door is open for my office. I also just want to take some time to just talking about some of the stuff my Office supports. If you have questions, and then I assume this will be on a question towards the end, probably a little bit installed or been farm stuff. I know we've gotten emails about that for the past six months. But I was going to talk a little bit about the people's time and Equity Plan, which my Office supports. But it seems like I'm the agenda that I was reviewing. And before I'm coming here, there's a little bit about that so much based on that. But I think it's something that was revealed that can change the way we do things in Minneapolis, it's really important, specifically appreciate the way we can reduce pollution through that plan. And then support like small businesses, bypassing all businesses on like making sure that they're environmentally friendly, I think is really cool. So there's someone that he doesn't touch base on that. So I want to talk much about that. But I think that's something that if you don't live in fortnight, you should contact your council member and ask them for the position on the plan, do a little research on the plan. And figure out like if that's something that they will be supportive of in the city of Minneapolis, and whatnot, and they come up with, like 4080 people, maybe those two different times those 40 People aren't real momentum, but twice. So maybe like 80 people asking about this time, I think it's really cool. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me after I know there's a big polluter in Ward nine. It's dismissed foundries. And I don't know what we can do at the city level yet. But I know meeting with Director Hamlin, I think tomorrow, we're just going to talk about you know, some of the polluters in these Phillips in Ward nine, figure out what walk will policy we can do the City of Minneapolis, even if it's not in our jurisdiction to address some of the pollution, not only nice, Phillips but South Minneapolis that we know is impacting our lives. Pollution is something that's really important to me, I think I was born and raised in Philips. So like, the pollution that does happen is still very important and dear to my heart, knowing that a lot of founders that I grew up with, do have asthma, because of the you know, the highway, the monster pollution that has been ingrained into people's bodies from there. And even in my family specifically, like going out, we have this apple tree in my backyard. And I talked about this if done before the city council member, my family would eat from this apple tree, we had vegetables, and we found out that our soil is contaminated. So that's really bad. And then on top of that some people in these neighborhoods can have excellent health care whether it's because their immigration status, or because health care so expensive. So you can't even get support for your medical bills because of the pollution and poison that was put into your bodies, my parents being one of them. So that's important because my office wants to work on whatever we can do to address the lead. I know there was some funding to wrestle lead poisoning in the ARPA funds, I still think we can figure out some other stuff aside from this lead for the City of Minneapolis, and we'd be happy to work on that stuff with all of you. But I guess I can address the East Phillips fire. Right now. I know you all know that. In September, the city council passed the How about the campus expansion project under a different city council. So it gave the direction to build the expansion project set aside, I think we address for anybody to purchase. I don't know the exact number I think was 3 million to $5 million to purchase two acres. And then
so the first thing I decided to go with the councilmembers you know, I want to just Urban Farm project wants to make sure that we can pass it on the city council with the new council. And we worked from January all the way to march with the East Hills neighborhood Institute, meeting with them on a weekly basis, meaning accomplish a different councilmembers we submitted a notice of intent to basically reverse that decision that was made in December and only in September. And we did that in February knowing that two weeks later, we were gonna have a vote on the city council that did three things that it was gonna suspend the Hiawatha campus expansion project that was gonna direct city staff to find the $14 million or finds some funds. Over $40 million that community have to pay for the water fund to pay for the land. And those don't allow any wishes. The east coast neighborhood Institute to submit a proposal for project approval on June 30 2022. And I think it's important because you will probably know what happened the past as the past three weeks. So that happened. We passed it 85, which was like I believe was a historical when he was like, something that wasn't necessarily supposed to happen because the decision was made back in September. And then the following day, we were veto. So the veto has come to a vote to override on the city council. And it was unsuccessful. So it was the veto sustaining. So I was not successful in overturning that veto. I think, initially, I thought was a five. When it came to the veto, it was seven to six, you need not nine votes to overturn a veto. So that context happened. And then since then, my office is working with me which they sold it to me every Friday morning at 830. For the mayor's office, customer, Caci customer, Johnson and our city staff public works a whole bunch of people to try to figure out like, what we can do, besides just staying with what happens at Kemper, which is again, somebody will have to purchase that land, and that land can be purchased by anybody, not just me. And we found this other solution moving forward, which I know isn't going to make everybody happy. And and that makes sense. Because, you know, I mean, members have been fighting for this specific project for so long. But the new thing that we passed on the council was basically that the speakers did not have any purchase. So the community will be able to get the free, probably like $1, after like conversations just because of the legalities of all that they were going to bring a training center back. And all this conversation was working with different unions that have been has been working really closely where there was a privatization of electrification and mostly in the area, working with Braun, and figuring out how everything can be working with Vaughn to address some of the soil. And for me, that's been one thing that has, for me, like been very personal, like on both sides, right from the city's perspective. And at least perspective, because I don't think the city and MPM town had addressed the soil contamination, which is really important to me, because my family had a contaminated soil. And I don't even think the city and epithelial cells had addressed that. And I think now we're getting to a place where they can be addressed. But I know the sticking point from both sides when I had to be like, Okay, well, once I sort of information for it, because I can't support something that's gonna, you know, put poison into people's bodies, just like my family has suffered through that. So that was just part of the stuff that happened. What happens now is that now there's a settlement. So the city council authorized specifically Apalis to go to
with me. So Evany and the City of Minneapolis are going both a settlement. And then I'm sure that it's going to be a piece of city and whether they're going to want to go forward with this or not. And what that gives, it just gives that choice in terms of like, I represent tonight, one on city council, Minneapolis represents Ward nine as well. And then everybody also has constituents, they represent these Phillips, and we all have to do our due diligence to represent all of our communities as well. And that decision is gonna be made in that settlement. So no matter what I've been decided to go for with, they have my support in terms of like, that's my community, that's why I represent, you know, that at least in my end, I worked really hard to get to where it is right now. And I'm proud of how far we were able to move it. And I know there's a lot of questions and people, maybe some misconceptions on the public. And I addressed the level of concerns in my newsletter. But that's just the reality of how we got here. And the work that we're doing. And for me, what I'm proud of is that from September, we were told that that was the end of it, that we were not going to be able to move anything at all. And we moved, we moved a lot whether people see or not, this is something that can change the lives of people. But I also do and I'm kind of sad about the environmental pollution in the area that is very important. So that's just questions about that. And if there's any questions, because I know how you probably know about this project, and we would love to answer anything.
Because I'm thanks so much. Are there any questions?
I guess I have a question. Just start. So see, I wrote a lot of letters about this to the previous council. I'm curious how much of that made it to the new council, if that was useful. As part of the conversation. As Anna mentioned, the we want this to be a two way conversation to to understand what's helpful for you in making policy. If there's an advisory group,
I think, I mean, I can't speak for the council members. What I would say that I think would be helpful is sending the letters are great and they're very helpful to understand like what the community isn't doing well what amplified even more like setting up a meeting with the council member, whether it's the Chair, Vice Chair is not sure how the leadership of this works, and then say meeting with the customer saying this is our we met? Is our letter this would want to work on? How can we talk about this face to face instead of just like sending an email where customers can just read it and be firm, but not much if they don't care? So I think I think it helps a lot of people and then meeting with them. And talking about the letter specifically and addressing it in person can help it escalate it in a better way.
And is it safe to assume that when a new council member comes in, we need to repeat that to refresh them on it?
I haven't identified
contaminated or what
have you identified? Are you able to identify where you're through the contaminants that are in the soil?
I can ask the public works department specifically, that that question, I know that they identified that there may be pollution under the building, not on top, not inside the roof depot, but under it's like in the soil. So I don't think that, from the board's perspective that the soil has reached the building, it is just on the bottom, but I don't want to quote me on that because I need to get get the actual accurate info. And I could take your email, and they can answer that question for you with more information. But from my understanding, there is contaminated there's sort of soil pollution, or whatever you want to call it on the bottom, but it's not it has not reached a building. If anybody can focus here, please correct me. And the other question.
I just had one, question two, was the so right now the status is that there's an offer on the table to FD for three acres? And they're considering that and we'll have how much time to get back to the to the council?
Yes. So initially, when we did this, they put out a statement saying that they don't accept it. But since talking to them, they said that they're gonna go talk to them about settlement. So they are gonna, for sure, go to the settlement. And then based on how settlement goes, that was one of the concerns that they had was that they will never be able to sue the city of the city itself, which is a, you know, it's a it's a real concern like the city that didn't uphold something that they said they were going to do, and that they couldn't sue them for that. That was one of the concerns. But I was concerns were that the lawyers were not talking with each other. So like, there was a lack of communication from the lawyers to help each other understand what actually, if the lawyer talking, I don't even understand I'm not a lawyer. But I know that some of that could have been solved with communication between multiple years. And that didn't happen much. And then there was some other stuff about cars, which was a big concern for the people who need to get back. And then those are the two main things for most people's assuming part, I think, quite, at least in my conversation with the mayor's office, building burger guy, they should be able to there's just a whole bunch of other stuff that needs to be addressed with like, what can you do with this? There's a lot of distrust between government and community members, and rightfully so like, I used to be one of those, and then not trust the government that like, you know, and part of that is because of the disconnect the lack of community building. And people want to make sure that they're not signing out to something that's just gonna spit them out later.
QUESTION I'm glad you mentioned Smith foundry. So I'm, I've also been concerned about that facility. I write by it on the Greenway several times a week. And I have not seen any studies and reports done on emissions from that business. I looked online to see if there's any outstanding permit violations, things like that I didn't see any doesn't mean there aren't good, but there may not be an easy way to force them to improve. But I was just wondering if you are maybe Kim or somebody else knows a bit more about the history, you know if there's other things that could be addressed. Personally, my gut feeling, again, based on zero data, is that the pollution from the Foundry is likely more negative than any additional vehicle traffic would be from a public works expansion. So I'm just thinking that might be a place to focus our attention, even more so. And just wondering what
Yeah, I don't actually know the entire history and all that A lot of people on board and I know that a lot better than I do know is that something needs to be done. And I think for a customer combo chart to work on that I'm not sure if he's talked about it, sometimes picked up where those conversations. And let's see was award night for the office can do. I know that my me with me every Friday 830. I told her eventually when this gets figured out, if it gets figured out that I want to turn those fighting meetings into Smith funding. So instead of addressing just the highroad expansion, I'm gonna start addressing spent foundries and I want to expand it, like I want to be focusing on the people are passionate to address what is happening in this area with the Smith boundary. So I don't know, if you're ready to definitely this has caused a lot of pollution from the neighborhood more than the car usually is passing by. And if you have ideas, I would love to sit down with you and see what we can. So I know that some dishes may be state federal issues is what I'm hearing. But there has to be something
ya know, within the foundry and other sort of legacy business in there. And so they've been there a really long time. Now, they are locally owned. And they do a lot of they do provide a lot of jobs to folks that are coming out of prison. And I know we're on jail and some things like that. But yeah, it's been obviously a considerable amount of pollution there. Because not only the oil and sort of test of the power drain, but just temporal power productions coming from they've been, you know, talking about whether they could convert some of it to electrical, obviously, they use a lot of heat. So it's melting metal, that's expensive. One of the things that we've also done sustainability where we were, we did put some legislation forward in the last two years that will allow the cities to be able to grandfather basically right now, if there's a non conforming, use that if you're there, and you were originally conforming to your grandfather, and there's no way to go out of it. But we propose that this legislation last year, the year before, that allowed for the city to be able to create, basically eliminate the grandfather and be able to agree to time periods and phase out that type of use if it's no longer conforming. But of course, it did not get a hearing in the Senate. But that's that is the one issue where we're, we're somewhat tied. Now there are no pollution control things that we can do. I know there's some things that they've been doing to try to reduce the amount of admission. So maybe it's a longer term path plan rather than sort of like, okay, we'll fix your emissions from this heating source or what have you. Was anybody else's ideas on that and to love to hear and
while and I recall some conversations about the GA facility on the river Grove, Minneapolis, that there's a little bit of a conundrum, I think is even in the case of Northern pebbles at one point wanted to go to like if you help them invest, then they're staying to clean things up that they're staying longer. So you have to weigh the benefit and cost of cleaning up the operation and how much cleaner do you get and what's left behind? And is that something that you've mitigated to the point where you're comfortable with it staying in a neighborhood that we had some discussions about champ here? Four years ago, was it parents years ago? The same thing came up.
I haven't. Since you guys are concerned about the soil in the contaminants in there. And I know Minneapolis has been over on the north. The health department has been over the north side has, have they been over in that area to test the case for lead poisoning or anything like that. There.
They shouldn't do that, though. I think we passed $3 million. Don't quote me I forget the number for the lack of programming that no director Hammond was working on. For northern the priorities should be not Minneapolis in South Minneapolis on the results, my understanding. And I think there's a strong network already released. I want my Facebook and I say there's already a link sponsor from the City of Minneapolis on the start. You maybe know more that you can start getting help for lead poisoning. Yeah, getting tested for kids to heal for kids in your household and whatnot. So I know that part of the nice. The three acre thing was that the city was going to try to put some of their testing in this area specifically, or something so they wanted to prior terms that are so from my understanding the program hasn't been done already. I don't know how many people in that area have
been tested. Because I know they're over North, I was just wondering where they have they been over Safiya to test those kids. Now that school's out, there's all kinds of events in the area. I know they give the kids $50, little stipends to test now. And I don't know if that's connected with Northern metals, or is just the program with the city, the Health Department. And I was just wondering, as far as when I got another question, as we spoke of settlement. Now, you were seeking settlement? Kind of makes sense. Would it be just for the people that are immediately there? What about the people that live there that was affected, health wise, that moved our area? Would you be reaching back to those people that been affected because of it, or just the people that are there now.
So the settlement is mostly between the lawsuits between the city of Minneapolis and the so State Institute, it went from my understanding of what an address like outside, outside parties involved, they will just be specifically to the expansion project. And what has been offered,
okay? Because the reason why I asked is that there's a lot of people, my son got affected by lead, and he's having very mental severe issues where I had have committed. Now my thing is, he does no longer live, we don't want we live in these areas. And people like my son, my daughter, that area, and here they are with high medical costs for medication and things like that doctor wheels, and it's not like you know, the metals, they just give you a little bit of money, doesn't cover any health care care, doesn't need to buy a pair of tennis shoes to me. So my thing is with the settlement, and again, would you be reaching back out because mental health is affected by the fatalities in our environment? And these people are out in our community, and may not even know what affected them if they live in that community. And so that's why I'm saying, Would you be reaching back out to those that were there that might have been affected, health wise and kids? And are now adults that
have issues? I think that it might be I think they're two separate things. But I think they can't be two separate things are talking about, because one of them is related II Sophia Institute. And then the other part is like, the environmental racism that has been caused from from pollution that has been forced into people's bodies, right. I don't know, when it comes to that aspect, which is like what your son has been impacted from the environmental racism? There shouldn't be some things that happened with that. I don't know what I don't know what the law is. I don't know if there's a specific lawsuit.
Excuse me, let me clarify. It wasn't racism that affected my son, or it was a pain in the environment that affected everybody because the pain didn't care what color you are, because there's a leg pain out White Bear Lake, your stuff like that, because the house was in an upscale neighborhood. And I had the paint, which everybody used at the time on previous and everything. So there's not SES races like there's so much product that was put into our stuff environment.
Well, when it comes to something I don't know where where that happened. But it's something Yeah, it's a nice Phillips, it is environmental racism. So that was what I
was saying. But because of the paint, the lid itself, the fake lead is all over America. And I just want you to understand that it's not a race, we're going to make this lead Kane, let's go here with a brown where these low income people does paint their house with this paint. It didn't happen like that. So I understand the racism in the community, because I'm born and raised in Minnesota Southside to the north side. But I just wanted to clarify that the element that causes the lead is not a racist thing. It was something that was created in a chemical cause told place, whenever it came. It is too late in
here, for sure. And still so two separate issues. settlement is two different things. So we're talking about environmental pollution, lead poisoning, everything that happens over Minneapolis specifically in some neighborhoods more than others. So two different things. East Hill settlement is not related to that.
Yeah, I was just I was just asking, you don't want that to be clear. And understanding Canada's I don't I'm sorry that I was late. I'm I'm also a poacher, the green zones. And I also studied at the University of Minnesota environmental science policy. So I'm very aware of the racism and how things work. But I just wanted to be clear that that probably had nothing to do with people's Opposition.
Yep. So we can just that I can help follow up with you with our city lawyers, if that helps if there was ever a lawsuit to the city for this lead poisoning. But like I said, it's just two separate things that aren't. They can be related, but they're not. People run around like my son and not normals, for sure. Well, thanks. I was curious. With the
arson, I could go on. And just the challenge of mitigating the pollution on both sides. If there's been a work to look at examples of other places that have had a similar kind of cleanup challenge, and whether there's lessons about how we can make sure that we're implementing the best practices for that, for my
understanding, they're working with Braun, who did the ice cleanup in the arsenic triangle in east village that has been doing this work. And the results were when it first, you know, was discovered in my neighborhood. And so I said to us, I do have people that actually know how to get rid of this soil, that a lot of our families have to get their back.
Again, so I was like, so this was talked about, please ignore. So I know that you still tend to they were also worried about air contaminants with the any construction on the actual building site, that because a lot of it is in the ground under the buildings that were dug around. And so once you start to touch that dirt up, it becomes not only a ground contamination issue, but an air issue, and there are ways to manage it. However, I don't know how much like a solution to like, giant tent over it versus maybe not disturbing the ground to begin with.
I know there are is going to be meeting with Iran. So that meeting is going to be set up so that you can meet with the person that is going to do those soil remediation, whatever you want to call it. And they can hear about what the plan is and how they've been drafted. They saw the 500 pages, I
believe them at all.
And now they will be able to meet with the person to hear so that you can express any concerns. Because they know the plan was a couple of years ago or whatnot. And there's some concerns from that Nina, like, you may be outdated. And those concerns should be addressed. And figuring out like what that looks like and what plans have worked in other cities. So I think that's the conversation that he's going to be having probably the settlement to like, does this settle this so contamination, IP address their concern that they have? So they'll be able to have that discussion to say the lawyers and the lawyers
about the soil does pick up a child and then you are so it's either contaminated as well as
which is a big thing that we haven't been talking about, like, if you disturb it, you can go to the air go into people's homes or
cars
Well, thanks so much for
kills a member, I was wondering if you foresee any upcoming opportunities where or future intervention points for this Commission where a decision is brought before Council whether to consider any kind of mitigation plan or approval of construction or anything like that, you know, that is beyond the initial project approval that would that the group might be able to to intervene or make a recommendation.
So right now, we're just waiting on like this whole lawyer thing. So my hands are kind of like out of it. No wait away for now, until like, that gets figured out whether it's figured out or not like my office is always getting involved. But until then, I don't know. Like, I don't know what is to come. So once if that gets figured out if it doesn't have that conversation on what it looks like, but at the very moment, even myself, I'm just on hanging with them every Friday and we have fun, but there isn't anything new that I have been able to provide people with because there's not much information or anything really is changing. Since the settlement interest now, lawyers have to talk and they have to figure it out and then if something else happens, and I think might go to the council, I'm not sure but there's a lot other opportunities. I just can't think of every now because it's not stalemate, but it's like,
we're gonna pause. Yeah.
But when it comes to other work, yes, many opportunities, like I mentioned earlier that people's climate and equity plan I think you're gonna talk about more later. But that's something that I think just started pushing and I think it would align with your values.
Great. Well, thank you so much for being available this evening and talking with us and sharing. Yeah, we'll be in touch you have my emails, and then feel free to reach out to him to talk about policy, whatever, as you see fit on your own.
It took almost an hour or so. Sorry about that. But whatever. Y'all need me. That's great. Yeah.
So So one quick suggestion. I don't know if there are any members for word night residents, but it's also an opportunity if they don't have nothing whatsoever to at least say hi.
Oh, yeah. Anyone from Ward nine? Okay. Good evening. Excellent. Well, thanks, everyone. We move on to the presentation about shared mobility. Thank you for being here. Feel free to introduce yourself and then we can just jump in.
So, speaker talk about a couple of things. I name is Danielle Elkins. I run the mobility team and the Department of Public Works, traffic and parking divisions. And
Ross Brooks and I've been playing around Danielle's public works I've never responsible for mobility ups.
So one of the first things that we learned to date on was our new shared by scooter cargo. We our original nice ride bike share program, and the original federal grant agreement from 2010 expired in 2001. Last year, so for the first time ever, we did a combined bike and scooter program. And we also collaborated and issued an MOU with the city of St. Paul, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Park rec board and we also had involvement from Metro Kansas. We created this during RFP last fall and incorporate a lot of great feedback from residents as well as different advisory boards in the city that we we all reviewed and scored the proposals together and then each individual entity chose whether or not to enter into an agreement with the company based on the results of the RFP.
So extensive research went into this RFP we talked to basically every other major city that is dealing with similar programs right now. very lengthy RFP, 120 pages 15 topic areas, anything you possibly imagine. We asked for it. We identified our top three members as being line spin, a nice ride with schooner licenses going to line spin and lift. And nice Ray is receiving the soul bike license currently and they operate both classic and electric bikes. Unfortunately, we had a protest on the RFP by our fifth place vendor bird, and which on Earth a process within our procurement system, where our permanent review committee which is the committee that oversees procurements in the city held a protest hearing and essentially recommended that the city offer the two additional vendors licenses as well as a program. So we have offered licenses at this point to veal and bird we have not executed licenses with either of them. But by potentially the end of August we could have two more vendors license in the city. As part of this kind of new extension program, a few folks that there is new things that we're looking into is adding an adaptive vehicle program. So trying to explore different types of vehicles, trikes, like handle operated in many different kinds of adaptive vehicles and each of the providers did suggest different ways that they can participate in the program and we do have a financial commitment from nice friend list as well to start the program. So that's something that we're looking forward to next year. And then we're also looking at adds how we can better incorporate electric cargo bikes as well. So we're looking at acquiring a couple of different models to start to test within the department, see which ones might work and different scenarios within a public shared model, whether it's for public use, or for something like a neighborhood based for food or package delivery workers. So you've mentioned gig workers to get access to electric cargo bikes to do deliveries around the city by Oregon. And we will hopefully have those soon to start testing them and see how they can work into our model that should take people away from hearts. On top of this, in 2020, we added the lock to requirements who are scooter program, and in an effort to try and keep the right away more clear and tidy, getting all these devices to parks to infrastructure in the city. So as part of that we're trying to do an investment in bike infrastructure around the city, we've incentivize to be companies as well to be tripping into that fund to help us buy this infrastructure. And those that provide the infrastructure receive it just counseling, nice ride provides all of their jobs and lightweight stations, they receive a discount on their fees or license fees, because they provide that infrastructure. And we also in the past, we 2020, we installed about 1500 meter, which is around the cities, you can see every other parking meter hasn't been on it now that any bike or scooter could be locked to that as well. But we're exploring different types of bike parking, and looking to kind of grow that program or school next year. And then another kind of big supporting piece of the program is our mobility program, which is what rest has been explained to we're also working
to you. So
I, as I mentioned before, I'm in charge of our mobility program, and we are working into our third year of our pilot, the city lock originally launched mobility hubs in 2019, and had them again in 2020. And then, due to some grant difficulties, we didn't actually have one on 2021. So we're excited to to get them going again. But your first question is probably what is a mobility on mobility hub is really a central location for people to to be able to easily and conveniently find low and low carbon transportation options. So Bike Share, Scooter share electric car share, hopefully, eventually we'll have adaptive and cargo bikes, though, it'll be at some of these locations, hopefully next season. But and they're always co located with transit. So the idea really is that it will help you make the first part of your journey and the last part of your journey after you you take transit. So think get off the bus be able to find a scooter, get a bike share bike and take that the rest of your journey to home or work or school or wherever you need to go. So what can you find in mobility of just those things, like I said, transit bikes, scooters, and electric car share, we've got about a half dozen of our, of our mobility applications right now have electric car sharing, and the even car sharing network. We're hoping to continue as the city continues expanding those locations, we hopefully expect that to grow. But also the other part of mobility is really the amenities. And you know, we've got plenty of green infrastructure, we've got furniture and seating. So if you're waiting for the bus, or you want to take a rest before you take your next part of your trip, we certainly have lots of parking, as Danielle just mentioned. And then we've got wayfinding and vote finding so wayfinding you know, really what's in the community. What's in the neighborhood around me were my things of interest or importance. And mode finding is where do I actually find the bike, where's the car share actually located. So as I get off the bus, I can help me figure out where I need to go next. And a big part of our back of our mobility program that we started in 2020 is our ambassador program. And really what we heard through our community engagement and our surveys and other feedback in the initial year was that people wanted to see more of a presence on that they certainly had questions around comfort and the different amenities. You know, they do want seats, they want lighting and other things. But safety was another big consideration as well. And then lastly, there was a lot of questions about just kind of what is shared mobility and how do I get a scooter and how do I sign up for it? And so we created the ambassador program, and the idea behind it is that it's it's the actually the gentleman in the middle is Mark woods. He led our team on the north side last year, or excuse me, 2020. And really, you know, Mark does a lot of youth outreach, a lot of kind of non violence and intervention work. But you know, so the ambassadors have kind of a multi layered role. They both maintain the site and just kind of keep it up and deal with the plantings and garbage and other things, keep things looking nice. But they also serve as a physical presence in the space. They welcome and greet people, they help them. You know, where's this thing? You know, where how do I, you know, what time is the next bus coming? How do I sign up for shared mobility, I've never seen a scooter before. And so they're really there to be a presence and engage. And they really all also come from the neighborhoods that they serve. That's a big part of our kind of our recruitment and hiring program mark is actually going to take over leading all of the work this year around the whole city. So we'll have about 32 different locations around the city. And we'll have about four Ambassador teams, we'll have one that kind of covers north and northeast, we'll have one in the Cedar Riverside area, we'll have one along the Lake Street corridor, we're working with lay street Council, and then we'll have another one, we're kind of partnering with the downtown improvement district here in downtown. And so we'll see larger presents for that. So we're really, you know, still in a pilot program.
And we're really because we're still trying to learn, it's a really, it's still a pretty new concept. And domestically, we're one of the first if not the first city to really have a functional and computer kind of comprehensive mobility Health Network, but we're still learning. And so we're testing out new locations, you know, we keep adding, we started with 12 locations, we doubled it to 20. For the second year, this year, we're up to 32 locations. So we're trying to both expand and learn about different places that work and don't. We're also testing new infrastructure like seating, that will happen at some of the locations this year. But that is we'll see, kind of the bottom there, we're going to test new projectors and lighting, to help people get from one mode to another vote and to get better understand kind of how to flow through an area that's
never seen anything like that before.
Well, that is from Oulu, Finland, is where Danielle actually found out from a gentleman who was rolling on to it. So we're going to test out new things like that we have another one that we want to test, it's actually more of like a laser projector that is more dynamic. Those are very static images, they'll look a little bit different than that. But the idea behind the laser projector is that it can actually produce dynamic images on the ground or on the side of a building or word that that will be able to do test around. But we're also going to try to update the brand this year next year, we're kind of working with the University of Minnesota and the School of Design to help us think about how we can kind of reimagine our brand and make sure that people can understand what it is. But we also got a grant from ADRP, to update our signage to make it more visible for older adults and people with limited English proficiency and people with vision issues. So we're going to work on that this year. And then last year, or excuse me, lastly, we're really gonna focus on ambassadors again, this year, as I mentioned, Mark is going to expand his wallet takeover. He's gonna take over the city. But also the partnership with AARP has really provided us with some extra funding to really try and engage with older adults and help them understand kind of what shared mobility is and how they can use it. But secondly, you know, we have areas of high ridership, especially down by the river, where we have a lot of problems with scooters where they might be laid on the sidewalk, or they might somebody might be riding down the sidewalk. And so part of that grant is to focus on how do we engage with those users to get them to better understand the impact that they're having on just kind of the general public, but also, especially for older adults, you know, certainly as your wizard down the sidewalk at 10 or 15 miles an hour, that can be very frightening to people who are walking on the sidewalk. And if you dump your scooter in the middle, that can be a really difficult people with mobility issues. So so that's a really big focus. And we're actually going to, we're going to try something a little creative and a little different. And we're going to get some comedians and some drag queens and some other performers to go down in the river and kind of try to shake things up a little bit. Because what we've learned is that if you just say to someone, like don't ride on the sidewalk, I'm being super defensive really quickly. And in some cases, it's escalated really quickly. And we want to avoid that. So we're going to try some creative strategies to try and mix things up a little bit of freight that dynamic. So as we go through this kind of, you know, I'll speed up a little bit here because I realize I'm dragging it out a little bit. We're really You know, it's really about testing and learning. And so there's lots of different things that we're learning everything from like, how do we work with him to county and Mendota over those shared jurisdictions to how do we actually get electricity to these projectors. So it's a lot of different things like that, that we're really working on. The last thing that I'll share, and then I'll turn it back over to Danielle is that we also got a grant from the McKnight Foundation. And the grant from Meg Foundation was really to engage a company called Hack Lavon. And what akoma does, is block level air quality monitors. So what they do is they put a set of sensors on an electric vehicle, and they drive that vehicle or multiple vehicles around the service area, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, monitor that. And so they are pulling energy and see lots of different kinds of blooms, PM 2.5, carbon, ethane, ozone, everything. And what they're doing. And the area that we're focused on is the green zones. And some of the areas of concentrated poverty that surround that, just so that we make sure that we get not only the green zone, but we get the things that impact the green zone as well. And so each block, each location gets measured about 20 times throughout the year. So what we get is a really high resolution picture that we can see across seasons and times of day, that gives us a really fine or high resolution image of what the air quality is across those four areas. So we're hoping to get that going really quick. We're just in the midst of kind of contract negotiations with them, and are hoping to really roll it out in the next couple of months. And then that'll go for 12 months. And then certainly we'll come back and make a presentation to all of you all will have a public dashboard. So anybody can click in and kind of get a better understanding of what's going on in their neighborhoods or for the areas that they care about.
All those metrics, like laid out, I think that this is like a general theme is figuring out that electrification in the city work right away. So this links with the UB HeartShare with like you turn on the projectors figuring out do we want to have electrified charging, and then right away, like your scooter charging in the right way, and all the challenges that come with that and the partnership opportunities. And we are working with kind of King County won a grant from DOE, leap grant to basically do public engagement in the green zones around electrification of transportation, and asking the communities, what they want to see and what we should be prioritizing in that space. So we're just doing scoping on that, and the engagement will happen in 2023. And no surprise, we've kind of identified a lot of the challenge of this still, you know, having issues with market availability of this technology, still having issues with them surviving winter. That's the first question we asked like, survive, you know, minus whatever temperatures and a lot of these products cannot still so really pushing out that per technology improvement, just dealing with some of the challenges of state statutes that limit advertising and the right away, which prevents even like a logo of a company to be on something in the right of way, but also be cognizant of like not wanting clutter on the right way. And like all of just the jurisdictional coordination, the issues of insulation, and and the other challenges just like the proximity of modes, so how do you co locate electric car sharing, electric Micromobility charging near transit, when they all need very unique on street or off street spaces? So navigating a lot of that, and then figuring out the long term maintenance, storage and of course, funding for all of it.
So any questions? My question is kind of like the last statement you made about funding. So I thought we had like 10 years of data and then looking ahead, at what point do you think that it would be self sufficient, and you don't have to rely on for this program
for over like bike sharing. So Bike Share was funded initially with federal grants and rebates, and was under a nonprofit model that is now evolving. So it's kind of a new process. Now, the program is they pay a license fee, so it is self sufficient already, and it does support administrative staff as well as funds one position to oversee the program. And then they're now additionally also starting to chip in on parking infrastructure. But the shared mobility program is totally self sufficient. The mobility house is where we're looking for additional funding. All of the capital stuff all of the like this bigger stuff that we're doing around that's planning and capital stuff because we're we're looking for additional funding. So we did apply for a regional solicitation granted Metro Transit, and for funding of going after more federal funding as well. And we've otherwise been very scrappy in every popular buying, or pilot this year as funded by mythos, typically presentation grant program, they haven't supplemented by ERP.
It's not really a revenue generating enterprise in the same way that Wi Fi and scooter Share Program is what we are hoping as part of it to include Daniel mentioned very briefly advertising, and you have a number of vendors for Micromobility parking for bicycle parking, and others who want to put their products in the city that are interested in that generate revenue through advertising. And there's actually a revenue share part of that. So it kicks off wanting to the city. But given the current state statutes and such, it's a little difficult to navigate right now. So we have been working on that. But along with that, lots of other transportation things, especially so.
Alright, so I guess I have like a two fold thing. One could be the more exciting stuff, what I wanted to say, really excited about the adaptive, like bikes and scooters that may happen in the future, as well as the cargo one, I know I needed something like that. But anyway, as as you're looking for, I guess, different identity, right for your mobility comes at, I know that like, while you mentioned, you have like different air quality monitoring, it would be interesting to see as well. Some type of like weather and air quality, like display in that section so that people can make an informed decision before they you know, ride a bike into a, you know, makes blizzard. Not that I've done that before. But as well as if it's safe enough for them to be doing strenuous exercise outside of their sport.
Yeah, I would say that we have a part of our long term planning is that we would love to have what we're kind of colloquially calling a beacon, which is the thing that sits on the street that is that kind of announces that that's where the mobility hub is, and lets you know, you know, what vehicles are there, what modes are available at that location, we also hope that that will have a screen in the future and that we will be able to add that kind of information on the screen. So think real time information about transit, and you know how long it might take you to get from A to B on a on a scooter or on a bike, you know, directions, other kinds of civic information. And certainly one of those things might be information from the air quality sensors, information from the Weather Network, things like that.
Awesome. And then the the other thing I wanted to mention is what is your kind of like, material lifecycle or like end of life plan. I'm just kind of remembering the giant bicycle graveyards in China, you know. And I'm hoping that that's not going to be the case here. But like, what, what happens to them?
Part of the license agreements and as part of the RFP process that we designed for this year by computer program, and a life and recycling was actually a big part of that. How are these companies dealing with that? And they were rated scored and judged on their answers to that question. All the operators that are currently here do have end of life plans, most of them work with, you know, pop cyclers or third party recyclers to take care of both the physical material goods. So they have, in addition, they have pretty robust maintenance plans in terms of creating modular vehicles so that they can swap parts in and out as much as they can to reuse. They have a secondary is a recycling program for all their materials. And then third, a lot of them have started partnering with upcycle and recycling for batteries. Because that's obviously a very big part of that. And then lastly, I've been participating in a national workgroup around lifecycle analysis for micro mobility vehicles. So what So we as cities have a really good understanding of what the total lifecycle the impact of vehicle is, and so that we can begin to work with companies that are actively working to address their lifecycle and reduce the lifecycle or to the it's reduce the impact of the, during the life of the vehicle. And so we're kind of in the process of trying to figure out exactly the best way to do that and how to really candidly measure apples against apples, like how do we treat different regions of the country or excuse me, regions of the world, different vehicle types, how do we kind of put all that together in one package and standardize Your costume is yours.
All right. And also, when it comes to your seating and stuff, I hope that you consider using like pre or post consumer recycled materials, the shape and composition kind of looks like it's lend itself to that.
I can actually connect to this and it was bad timing for me. And I never felt like I had been trying to find out what the charging processes. This research might be outdated. But a few years ago, I was shocked that I, when scooter share was sort of newer, it was mostly a gig worker model. And there wasn't even any optimization, they were just sending people out to pick up whatever scooters, they could and charge them, even if they were already fully charged. So I'm assuming that's not the case. But then when we tried to get some answers from her last year, and it was very ambiguous.
This was a lot of this was like questions in the RFP of like, what are your workforce models? How are you going to ensure that you're doing the targeting as a play way, we are seeing also there's some major evolution of the industry. So you'll start to see that like the lime scooters, now swappable batteries, which means it's much easier to just swap them out, you're not bringing vehicles back to someplace charging them for now, one bag, you come out with like five different batteries and just pull and swap them out right there is a much more efficient model. They're also you know, the size of the battery versus a full scooter is also much smaller to me, they are telling us they're planning on transitioning to a cargo bike situation where they can just put the batteries and then write the cargo bikes that are swapped out. Each company does it a little bit differently in terms of their worker status. Both Legends fans are full time w two older workers. So they're doing it all in their warehouse spaces and have their own algorithms that does the efficiency for toddlers while they get charging all that stuff. Mine is using currently a hybrid model where they have some WT workers but they're also contracting with local LLC, some minority companies within Minneapolis who've been doing this for a couple years with different companies and trying to get a more efficient model. But we're pressuring also that a lot of them made commitments in their RFP that they would transition to cargo bikes or electric vans. But we're not saying again, they keep saying Oh, no, this year supply chain things, you know, we'll see. But we are also going to be you know, we're tracking their clients on their contracts. And that's one of the many things that we're tracking other clients like, are you following through with everything you promised in your proposal? And similarly, with veal and murder potentially coming into the market? We will be tracking their compliance very closely. And that will determine whether or not they are.
I have a question. I would just one thing I would just add in that the biggest impact that scooters have is the operational BMT. So that's where we really focused our effort. And like, as I've been learning in this, this lifecycle analysis that there's like a certain chunk that comes from manufacturing the vehicle, a certain chunk that comes from the battery, and then transporting it to the market. But then the vast majority of it is the rebalancing of scooters and things like that. So that's why we put it in the RFP and graded it pretty hard and are working on Triple tracking their operational VMT. But also, as they have, you know, Daniel mentioned they've committed to, to using both electric vans and for cargo vehicles or cargo bikes to do this work. So we're pushing them really hard. And we're just running into the same supply chain and difficult mobile issues that everyone's
I'm sorry, how much carbon year was generated? How much carbon? Because I know electrification is one of the second largest for emissions and greenhouse gases, even though you're not using the fossil, and all that. I'm just wondering how much even in and you got monitors how much total have been estimated from the program, and in the future for the car? And because we have programs set up in to cut conditions. And no, I'm just wondering, have you put that into consideration
when you're playing? Yeah.
So in the past the way the only way that we've been able to really analyze our impact is to annual user surveys. So we're asking people, are you choosing to take a bike or scooter instead of driving or instead of walking or taking transit to understand the mode shift? So how much are we changing people's behavior in a positive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? But the a lot of the math that had been done around this, I think a lot of it greenhouse gas production mass has been very loose. Which is why we want to do the actual measurement of the impact to understand that the before and after of what happens before we put these vehicles on the street, and we put them mobility housing, and are they having a measurable impact in people's mode choice where it is reducing the greenhouse gases in these names. So
you're adding the whole process from the beginning to the end, where you put them at how much carbon you using, how much how much management of the land you're doing. And then per vehicle, what it's a cargo van, or regular bike or a car or whatever you're using. And you're doing each buy one per, or you're doing as a person uses. So he might use the goal, this you might use there, but I'm talking about as a whole, with your company, I have 22, bikes and 72 cars, or who yada yada, yada, per this unit, this is how much carbon we can expect from this, regardless of uses, but this is how much we can expect from this. That's what I'm asking, have you done that analytically? Or are you just waiting for the numbers that come in by people to use it, as you've said, problems.
So there's a there's the problem that companies reporting that companies have to report to us what they what what their BM T's are and what their what we sell, like the rebalancing impact is, bands and stuff. So they report that to us. We also so in terms of like the traffic tracking of the individually future trips, we do the individual user survey, and then we also have data on every single bike or scooter trip that happens in the city.
But that's not telling me about how much cars you expect, per your progress. So this is
a nutshell and the total number of the vehicles, we can look at what the estimated cargo reduction is per vehicle and per trip potentially replaced by that based on the survey you're
gonna do estimated per vehicle or Yeah, so there
is an equation that tells you per vehicle for permanent the number of trips, the number of vehicles on the street, what the estimated reduction is, but what we found is that estimated reduction is not necessarily accurate. The science is not there yet to prove to us that is making the impact that we think it is, which is now why we're trying to do another way to measure it to verify it.
I would say part of this lifecycle analysis is getting an understanding of exactly how much carbon is generated with every passenger mile traveled, which does not exist in any standardized form anywhere in the world. Right, I guess that's what you're asking.
I was just wondering. So we say
there's 100 miles that were traveled on a scooter with this lifecycle analysis. And we'd be able to say, by this company using this vehicle, this is what was generated. We don't have them today, though, it just frankly, doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Because we're trying to figure out all of these upstream manufacturing processes right now, it didn't give us the total carbon that's generated through the life of this vehicle. And then the other variable is sometimes the vehicles go 1000 miles, sometimes they go 3000 miles. And sometimes it's through just normal wear and tear. And sometimes something happens. And so we can get an average. And that's what we're trying to figure out is what an average is per passenger mile. So that we can say it compares to transit, it compares to your own personal vehicle it compares to you walking. That's our that's our long term goal that we're trying to work on right now. If you have
a common image of the projector, I did not put those together at first, but it looks like a camera. Have camera places already, but especially like sensitivities around that. And surveillance. I don't know if there's other designs that are less easily confused with the camera or
actually it's funny, we've talked about this because the the other laser that I talked about looks even more like a camera. It's like your traditional like hardened like long box with a screen on the front. So actually, we don't we're totally cognizant of that, that concern as well as one of the first things that popped in my head when I saw the product. And so we're trying to figure out a solution for that. Is it Boston, it's Boston. So Boston has this like really interesting thing where they both run like a YouTube channel that says like, what's this thing in my neighborhood? So it explains to people kind of like what this thing is. But then additionally, they're starting to put up signage so that on the poll, it would say this is not like basically this amount of camera. Here's what this thing is. If you want to learn more, here's where you can find out more. So we're cognizant of that. We're just that's one of the things Frankie that we're going to test and figure out how to best convey that because we probably agree about cameras in
these locations. So that would be my first hypothesis. That's a sign up if you aren't code
related to security stuff. And this may have changed with your your RFP, but I was a former nice ride user, and then ultimately walked away because some of lifts, data security and data use policies were really big turnoff for me. Does the city have leverage to basically tell them that they can't use your data for anything unless you've explicitly authorized it?
So we put it out in our RFP and basically asking them, What is your, your process your user policy? What do you give people allow him to opt in or out of the company based on that they are required to provide your user policy, privacy policy, everything, they're also, you know, on our side, they're obviously required to comply with all our data provisions or security provisions. And there's going to be a Practices Act, we are very cognizant of user privacy, and we do a lot for our IT data analytics group is like international best practices in terms of data privacy, and how they aggregate the data. Every, every other city is basically following us in terms of how we do that work. The hard part is like, most of the companies will allow you like 30 days to opt out or something like that. But they try and kind of hide it from you. And so it's something that like, you know, I wish that users were more cognizant of that, that they know that they have the right to say, I do not consent to this, I opt out of this user policy. But it's really hard with these, like, large third party tech companies to have much leverage over them.
So So forcing them to go out and model is not possible. Like they can ask people to update in the app, but still not checking the box for people automatically. It's still on, it's still it's still providing the same level of service. Yeah. Because I mean, I'm sure we all use services like Google and things, but they're providing a service to us for free. For me, it's really hard to stomach the idea of paying a subscription fee for a service that is then also going to leverage your data
no question about this car. Can you ride people or people sit in the in the little fight? And he has got those two packages? Not? Also downtime when you're down? Yeah. So
that's actually one of my was my my another big argument that I have again, and I was like, I think just the like big long tail cargo bikes, I think are really intimidating to people. I think they look like you ride them differently.
Yeah, a little bit less like balance.
Yeah. So I want like the big trike with the big box out front, so that you can do, you could throw a 50 pound bag of sand in there, or you could throw your kid What do you mean?
I mean, like, I know, I see people everywhere. I never got one. So is there like, is it gonna be a reasonable for the general public to get the cargo
to write down? Yeah.
So here's the here's the thing that we've stumbled across in this is that there's only like, two cities in the whole world that have any cargo sharing, it's, it's super new, one of the biggest things we run into is that the vehicles that are being designed today that are cargo bikes just likely cannot handle share, use, like the reason that a bike share bike weighs 80 pounds, is because they get beat up really just through normal everyday use, they get a lot of traffic, and they get really beat up. And so we're trying to figure out, that's why we're buying a couple of internally to test is which ones are going to be hardy enough for us to even try a pilot. And so we're trying to do that. And the idea, you know, from a model standpoint, like our rates, how much it will cost or rent, I don't, we haven't even begun to think about that yet. It's just kind of too far out. And we'll also very candidly depend on whatever partner we're able to work with to actually manage the service. So I really want to work with nitride because it's just banging into a doc is the easiest thing in the world. And once you don't have that system, you have to figure out things like storage and security and locks and access and you know how to use it and then pass it off to us. So we haven't even started to think about those parts of the operation yet. What we want to just figure out is like, Can we do this? Because I think we're both really interested in I think all of you probably see more and more cargo bikes on the road every day. It's a really, it's a great option just for people but it's also a really important option to get trucks off the road. But yeah, affordability is a big part of it, which is why I actually had to go back to the bike and scooter program. We require equity access programs. So if you qualify for Any financial assistance, basically, you can get into one of the access programs. So a nice ride for all is $5 for the year or spin as they're free, I think it's 530 minute rides a day, you can take on one of their scooters if you're in that program. So that'll be a big part of whatever program we do as well.
That's, that's good. I have one up, sorry. Go
ahead. Sorry, I don't know if we have time for more questions. First of all, I'm a huge fan of, like shares and transit in general, I like one bike commuter, but a couple of questions. What are you folks doing to try to overcome the challenges of winter in Minnesota for which makes it hard to rely on a lot of this kind of stuff, you're around, thereby maybe getting rid of your own car? Connect kind of thing? And second, how do you get ahead of the next new thing, you know, the next trend and next,
emerging technology
that might be really effective? You know, I remember scooters just kind of over appeared overnight, and became a big problem until we got our hands around it, you know, is there a way to both proactively seek out new, better ways of doing things and then also to help have policies are in place to manage, you know, these new things before they kind of explode and get out of hand?
So I would say the first question around winter is like, we're totally excited and interested to do something in winter for exactly the reason we stayed in, which is, it's really hard to get people out of their car, if the thing you're trying to move them to disappear six months a year, right. So we're really focused on that Daniel mentioned around just like the hardiness of equipment, that actually plays a really big role. But then suddenly, a lot of it isn't necessarily under our control, but it's around snow clearing and making sure that there's consistent coverage and that they're attacking the white network person, things like that. That's a much larger issue that is outside of just our department. And then we've talked to our shared mobility partners to get a sense of like, will they be interested? You know, is Lyft interested to test with us next winter? Get a sense of it? And the answer is yes. And they're all really nervous about you know, so we're kind of inching them up to the line to talk about, yeah,
like we talked about, like, you know, University of Minnesota, they have a different kind of a calendar, when they see high uses, could we do a pilot or winter pilot on campus and see if that is sustainable, and could be that standard for the city, that kind of thing?
I was gonna say, I think for
the like, how do we get in front of the next thing, I think I should be not to be conceited about it. But I think we're pretty tuned in to what's going on nationally and internationally, which I think gives us we both belong to a lot of different workgroups, and in a lot of just network groups that give us a sense of what's coming. But I would also say that the last two big things were ride hailing, so Uber and Lyft, and then scooters, right, we had laws in place, I think that's really important to know, like, we have laws in place, and they wrote them. And so we responded to it, because it was a new model and a new thing that we integrated into our cities, but it was, you know, to be clear, at the beginning, there were processes, they just didn't pay attention to those processes. And so we took them, and then in cities, not just Minneapolis, but around the world, really, and adapted those processes, so that they were applied directly to the model that they were working on. And so I think that as a result of that, cities in general, have really learned how to actually do that and do it really quickly. And I think a really good example of that is all the changes that happened with COVID. And how quickly cities pivoted to close off streets to open up space for restaurants and businesses and do that, when we didn't have any processes around those. And so I kind of put those two things together and, and kind of think about, like, we joke about what's the next thing, you know, like a flying carpet, you know, we actually do have a process for that we do have a process for car sharing, we can really quickly and easily adapt them. But it also does require the companies to act in a way that that respects those processes and moves through that. And I think that you know, we you know, day I mentioned earlier that the scooter industry has evolved and that has been a big evolution, that first wave of people who are just like really be you know, a venture capital driven, aggressive, using the kind of the old Uber playbook to attack cities. You It's changed a lot. It doesn't mean that the next people invent, invent something or create something are going to do the same thing. But I think I think we have a really good handle on exactly how to deal with it now, in a way that we didn't
have to face here that the reason that we created the mobility team and public works, we didn't make this, I think, Minneapolis to do this and find a team to create this team so that we have an entirely in the works now that is focused on figuring out what is next, a goal, what's coming. And we're working with men die for different working groups across the region constantly to prepare for those things that are coming. And also figure out what are the things that we even want to have to allow to be there because, you know, Minnesota has unique timing requirements. And that, you know, the first one on my list of questions that every tech company that wants it and says, Oh, I want to come to Minnesota. I asked them like the first five questions and multiple can't get past the first couple of questions are like, are you wherever data policies and what that means in terms of how you share your data with us? Are you aware that we can get to minus 60 degrees in the wintertime? And most of us are just like, oh, nevermind, okay. You're ready to actually, I'm also hoping even with autonomous vehicles, like there's still testing in Arizona, and it's going to be a long time before there's anything remotely feasible, that's going to work here.
I suggest that we kind of lead into the climate seasonals situation here. And I think that you'd have less objection to bike lanes. They were seasonal, if you just recognize that. Okay, you know, four months, really interestingly, I ride a bike, I enjoy biking, but I don't have the fat tires. And I don't want to go to minus five. So you could just as we used to time, bus lanes or whatever season we signed for right?
Yeah, I mean, the city that we hold the projectors on has another program that this is kind of standard practice where they have cameras, but lasers that measure this snow depth at any one location around the city. So that you can see on a map in real time, what areas of free for your mic, what's up, there's a quarter of an inch and it goes down to one millimeter, they can tell the difference. But then they also just prioritize as part of their policy.
We do I mean, I'm seeing that the bike lanes are cleared before the streets and drivers.
It's not a problem. But is it a problem to upset drivers?
To Lowry share cap is going down, they're putting on the north side so quickly, but like none of the connecting streets are out like nobody's counting either way, because you can't get to or from it.
Yeah, I mean, my philosophy is that there's no better way to address climate than to get people out of their cars and does not electrify them or to change how they work or to make them automatic is to get people out. And that takes a lot
let me know when the seizure happens
because one of the cars so to speak to the nice ride season, which is sick, malleable. They don't really say much about when the season starts and ends they seem to operate personal opinion at the hands of their staff were right people use it. People get picked up on the cars, people have to know that it's available as an audio the shorter the date the season, the harder it is to get back in that mindset that's available strictly from one perspective and remember again a restraint that oh yeah, I can use these these options to cut off my my commute I can get I can get I can make my bus and answer faster, but only for one I can like pick the bike rack and pick the bike. So I know Madison, Madison, Wisconsin operates from March 15 to December 15. Every year they put the garden definitely put them out unless they take them out. So recycled. Milwaukee runs all winter. Three, they're one all year long. I'm not saying we're gonna pull those cities but I'm saying I just I just want more out of our out of our bikes here.
Our goal is always to launch at least April 1, we have some challenges where there's always like so this year we were in an RFP year and we had this great intention of doing an RFP and the hall negotiating contracts having like three months to basically get ready to launch as soon as a lawyer got better. Unfortunately, we're no bigger cheating with three tech companies and negotiations to four months
Is this well is with three other agencies in the region
to negotiate and all kinds of things that happened in the RFP year. The other challenge is that if you imagine a nice array of facilities that docks and the legacy stations are short in place and wintertime, we have to process the permits for 400 permits and verify against every construction project happening that year, any new occasions. And so that takes a long time to and then this is a weird year where like, the guy who installs the racks is the only guy in Minnesota that can install the racks got bitten by a dog. Like the things that you don't think of it just happened in these scenarios, that can be very frustrating. And like we were planning on as launch days, and like, we got to April 19, which was you know, when things were finally getting warmer, and that's when the full season launched this year, the end of last season was also very abrupt in shorter because their federal grant agreement expired, they had to get off the street by October 1, I think last year, basically, the intention is to go in to be out as long as possible to have as many of the docks restore and play through the winter as well. So that it has a lot less time to get up and going and won't have to negotiate anything again. And then just go from me, and my nice read as well. They're allowed to operate as long as they feel safe and comfortable to do so. So assuming it doesn't smell like last year, it's really snow solidly. It's held in December, one of the scooter companies stayed out through the first week of December. So they presumably could do that, again, I wish someone could tell me exactly when it's gonna sell.
The other part of the RFP this year was to do a multi year to look out and not be two years or be one year, this is the first time that we've been able to bundle everything together. And the idea was to go multi year and select the vendor so that there would be that stability long term. And we ran into something that we learned, which is that by city charter, we can only sign a one year deal. So we're forced to go back every year. Now, our expectation is with these companies that we're not going to renegotiate anything next year that they've just resigned them. But that also threw a hiccup into the process this year where then the companies go wait a minute, so this is only for one year, because they want that long term stability just as much as
related to that. I know. It didn't work out well. And also I let's say your RFP sounds process sounds really thorough, which is commendable. And I'm glad to hear that. But also I know they're you weren't able to like coordinate with St. Paul to maybe like, match up? Or did you did okay, I'm wondering if there's like a plan to remedy that going forward. I
did everything we possibly entered into the MOU with them. We ran the RFP with that we included them in the process, we negotiated on their behalf and caught them by your share. They were given that on execution of those contracts in March. And they have done nothing. Okay. That's good to know. So it's entirely on them. They have everything they need.
Yeah, we actually approached this program and specifically went after our partners to start to create a regional system to push that as well. Because the biggest thing that we hear if people want to cross the river, right, and I want to go to St. Louis back, we don't actually get a lot of I want to write a Brooklyn center. But we do get a lot of I want to go to St. Paul. And that was always part. And as Daniel mentioned, we kind of laid down and sacrifice some of our stuff to better their side of it. And they have just not shown maybe to others on this one.
One last question.
You, you it sounds like your group also manages the transportation network companies to
know. So you're preempted by state statute, we have nothing to do unfortunately with them. The state oversees all TNCs because like I was mentioning, they preempted us they went and pass state laws and said that cities are not allowed to regulate them at all. So we can be worked with them in terms of trying to enforce a for large events or you know, getting to do like special take on areas in the city. But otherwise we have no control over them.
A few cities like New York and San Francisco 47 states have preempted cities for being able to deal with TNCs. They're very powerful.
Did the city have an ordinance at one point?
They were preempted.
They were in discussions to create an ordinance to start dealing with that. And they learned about it and went to the Capitol to get preempted. which is very much in their playbook,
what comes out everywhere taxi companies, Uber, Uber and Lyft.
They appeal to outstate and rural legislators predominantly around the business
needs, who who really get great service from those.
The last thing I'll just ask is if there's anything that we should be aware of in terms of like public feedback processes, or anything Siak can do to be supportive, or add to what you all are doing. Yeah.
So we put out annual user surveys for anyone that they ride race or peers to do intercept surveys, online surveys for mobility hubs, we are constantly asking for more feedback on where to put more bike parking. Our hope is that on our website, we'll have a whole section of like links are all the things you can give feedback on here, all the links to all the surveys, which we can share with you guys, I will just say that there is a small group within the city right now that would like to see all of these programs away. So I encourage you, whatever or you're in, if you care about my scooter share, to make it known that you don't want to see these things go away.
Yeah, I would just add to that, that there are very, very small, very loud, very conservative group that is working. And I don't think the council is hearing from anybody on these topics outside of that very angry little group. Because people just don't typically call in and say this is great. We love it. Right? And so getting that feedback in the way that that Councilmember Java has suggested would be amazing.
And that probably doesn't help when people's average person's experiences the woman's parked in the middle of the sidewalk.
Yeah, and I Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And I think there's a scale issue, we try to talk to some of these groups about about this. But even if you thought that there was like 1000, scooters that were walking in the street somewhere, or like 1000, rides and went wrong, like I think we're at about 140,000 rides for the year so far. So it's a it really is a very, very small proportion, it just happens to be really visible.
With a lot of refinement, people are learning, even teach people started doing the right thing more and more, which is why we're so focused on things like educational campaigns, we've done social media tic tock campaigns that have gotten 14 million views. And it's starting to change people's behavior. So we're going to keep doing the positive things and telling people this, what we want you to do, this is where you should be locking. And then like restaurants and with the ARP grant, trying to also invent some humor, acts of roasting to also encourage people, they continue to do the wrong things that they should not do that.
Yeah, we have a public dashboard. I don't know that we mentioned that either. So anybody can go in and see, like, how many rides public companies are doing? Are they meeting their equity goals in terms of the distribution of scooters, and bikes around the city? What the complaints are like where the complaints are coming in. And so that's all public that we put up on a dashboard. And they're there for years past as well. So you can see historically, last year and this year,
and I noticed, where do you guys work with the schools with the kids with the schools and the blacks, like you said, You've got programs where people go in about the kids.
So the challenge is that you have to be 18 to ride any of the rented bikes or scooters. But there are some high schools where obviously this the kids are already 18. And so we're piloting as a therapy tool in downtown we installed a nice side rack and we're doing a village up there and working with MPs to try and figure out a model because it's generally a school that is because it's gonna be a downtown most of the kids are getting there by transit and then they're trying to get to internships, so they want to be able to use the bike to do that. So they're our main pilot locations as
well thank you so much for being here. This was really informative and great conversation. appreciate ya.
Suddenly the link to the dashboard don't get it in minutes. Yeah. This email on your city website,
yeah, the city that data source website.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Okay, we've got about 18 minutes Allah. Thanks, everyone for those good questions. Good discussion. That was really informative. It sounds like there's feedback on the website, lots of surveys and then A lot of time. So we'll encourage folks to do that. And then otherwise. Yeah, I don't know, we want to think about or talk about ways to just like support investment in bike infrastructure in general. It sounds like there's a dearth of that, at the moment.
There's like a community group, just put it in an email, I feel like the most effective way to just get a bit of positive feedback. Yeah.
It can be it can be useful to to poke open streets, especially since they have their sessions ongoing right now. So I don't know. I know that you're in in one of your emails, you said that we that this sustainability office hasn't a table or something at one of the open streets coming up. Last time we were discussing, Eric, with the group, folks are interested. So I just don't know what whoever is coordinating with them. On having a site there, it can be useful to just say, Hey, can you support support? And we go? Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I feel like that could be one of the QR codes is just to like, serve. Like,
yeah, how to the user,
or the user, whatever, the users. Cool. Any other thoughts about that? Sounds good. Maybe I'll maybe I'll meet you should I just send an email to city council being like, hey, we
saw the mobility hub presentation, and we think it's great. Frankly, we support like, the accessibility equity and mobility things that we're we've seen there.
Yeah. And it could be helpful, like individual actions to you know, like, email your own council member like, Yeah, okay. Cool. That way, it's, instead of just one email, it can be like a dozen or whatever. Right. Okay.
Sounds good. Okay, moving on to the last kind of shorter topics. So we only have September, October, November, or December. I miss one, five more meetings. So if you have things that you want to that we should prioritize, feel free to say them now or email them or think about them, and send them along. Here's a list of possible future meeting topics. Folks have thoughts about any of those?
Yeah, and I would just say, you know, if, I guess the the respective equity climate equity plans are, it seems like they're kind of teed up. And that timing would be best for August, if that's okay with folks in terms of Democratic agenda setting. I know that lines up really well with what we're doing at the city and our climate equity plan. So yeah, I mean, if August, that's going to be to climate equity plans, it's going to be a full a full meeting and a lot to digest. So that means if August is kind of claimed that we're September, October, November, you know, we've got four meetings left. And so if anybody you know, has, you know, we want to start prioritizing, or if there are kind of rising current issues that are of concern. And also, you know, anticipating the fact that something might come up that, you know, the group wants to address that, that we don't even know what it is right now, too. So I don't know, I guess would it be helpful just to like, send this out, and folks can send some E email feedback about maybe just like a ranking of what you'd want to address with the rest of the year here are the stickies on the slides Yeah. Yeah, we could do that. Cool. Yeah, we can resend that
code from your lab to like, drop a topic
and please yeah.
I would be really interested and learning anything that we can do for like helping electrify heating. So having like a two way heat pump and promising those you know, they look like that. sideways leaning air conditioner things that would be super great to learn more about. And in that same vein, I think there was talk about geothermal like two years ago. I think the whatever pilot was going on at the time in there sort of any has finished? I don't know. But again, that's another heating thing that maybe it'd be interesting to see like, how can we facilitate this occurring?
Can I suggest that could be maybe a point of discussion in the climate equity plant, because I'm guessing that reducing emissions from heating is probably going to be a big emphasis there. So we could just make sure we do a deep dive on the technologies that are feasible, rather than just saying, we're going to get rid of natural gas.
And there's some newer technologies in geothermal like, I know we've been been exploring at work, there's one called like the Darcy wells system, right. So like, I don't know, information about the difference for instead of meeting like, 10,000 walls, you need like 16
on the water, but,
ya know, that's a different one. No, that's not the dosing.
I just thought Darcy doesn't directly use water exchange from Wildwater. Through.
Not, I'd like to see the one that's Jemez staples, put up a bomb, and it's a single, large, well, that's 250 feet deep, doesn't go into the aquifer. It's it's a closed loop system.
So the chief technical officer from Darcy was on the previous Siak.
Right. So maybe, Miranda,
Jimmy Randall home might be worth seeing if he would want to come and educate people about some of that stuff.
He Yeah, I mean, it's actually I didn't see the system either. Or just was talking. Jabez last week, I went off to see their site. And they have it in their parking lot implement them at 1200. Plymouth Avenue. And it is a one large single pipe that goes there. But what they have is they actually use smoke kind of heat exchangers and some kind of compressor to light heat pump thing built into this thing too. So which is also underground and container, but it has some additional system than just circulating the water or the heating, cooling, you know, fluid. So it either has a heat pump system or something like that. But we certainly could ask them to come in and give us some more information on it. Yeah, you might be thinking that the power side district energy project to that was over near the you. Unfortunately, that was teed up to go forward, but it did not move forward. The developer decided to move forward with magic packs. And so the building was set up to take it's really sad. Yeah, the meeting big night committed a million dollars the city committed $2 million project. So we're looking at another other alternatives for that and some stuffs been talked about in the North Loop for example. Upper Harbour terminals possibility, the large Nicollet Lake redevelopment site Savatthi. Community Senator wants to do one as well. So do worthwhile to look at that. But that is a girl that is a now becoming a much more popular alternative when we're looking at decarbonizing fossil gas.
Cool, yeah, that sounds good. Maybe begin focus on the climate Equity Plan discussion and then use that to launch into something more technical? Yeah.
Oh, man, that got me thinking when you mentioned climate equity plan, I was like, oh, yeah, definitely. So. So in my work, I worked a lot with like, flow home and Section Eight housing. So a lot of what you see in the building itself is, you know, issues with just even having a building that's like, you know, through the roof is good enough to like have like solar or like, you know, before you even think about making the building, you know, more efficient, it's not even like weatherize to begin with. So, and also when it comes to reducing plastics, and we're thinking about businesses, a lot of the businesses who I guess still use Styrofoam and it being you know, like, my next business is Somali businesses. And it'd be like really not good to flip penalize those people. But inspect, like helping them make that transition and be like, you know, leading in that aspect.
So I thought everybody was not the catch all getting penalized for using Styrofoam. When I worked at the you, the manager, he had things he would go to different restaurants and call and report them because they had styrofoam container. And I was like he has nothing else to do. Yet, I can keep everything alive. These people are literally getting fine. He was getting off on.
And I'm like, at my local, you know, theory of plants like No, like they're awesome. But guys,
you're pretty certain environment. So they do need to be educated so we can change that, instead of just looking in.
Yeah, there is the good to go ordinance in Minneapolis that does require either be recycled or compostable. And I haven't had discussions with them to actually tweak it because we aren't able to recycle black plastic and is used for takeout. So but if you do, you know, it is mainly a reportable, like if someone calls and complaints. It's not an act of like environmental inspector going around the city, what can I do to take out materials they're using. But if you do, you can call 311 and just get the name of the business. And then they will they will send it off. And someone will give a call. Typically what they've been doing though, was they they don't tell people you have to like cut off yourself and get you so they look at what your inventory is. And they say, Okay, you got another two months to use Donald, but you got to get ready for the next, you know, this change to go over controls. That's how they generally
work. They at one point, or was it maybe a new neighborhood you'd like Lake Street calls to have grants to help fund the incremental costs of the compostable?
There are some grants originally available. I don't know who they were through that. But I know there was some stuff that was done. For example, we did some things, farmers markets and plastic bags, for example, and to get rid of plastic bags. We did like distribution for two years in a row of reusable bags. And they actually found that they cut down by 75% of their use of plastic bags. That's another thing too, that actually is reportable, or whatever my complaint is, if you any business, a retail business is giving out a plastic bag without telling you that there's a five cent charge related to her not sure if you have five cents. That's that's against the the
tip. Don't say that there is a plastic or paper veiling charge right? By a single paper, right?
Yeah. So that I know I started at Walgreens today and I don't have a sushi restaurant. It's like plenty of crack down on the flip side as well. They hate plastic
straws for exempt. Take out bags for food were exempt? I'm pretty sure. I don't know. I don't think so. I believe so from the charge.
I think they added in there with food.
And I'll look into that. No, they are
that went through CI like three different times. And so it's hard to keep track of which the letter was right. But I think the final version or to keep some of the Restaurant Association folks happy the council member does kind of allow that meet exact
I'll look into that. Because they haven't been doing it in a while and my sushi restaurant that they stopped. So I guess I was just assumed they were
so bad Styrofoam. How come Linton papers and these other places Walmart, Kmart, Kmart, Walmart, and all these other stores can sell the stuff if we banded him and so
it's up to him.
It's just you can't use it for takeout containers for restaurants in Minneapolis. But if
I go to a barbecue in these styrofoam, yeah, that's correct, because that'd be the party.
Yeah, yeah, we get
around to carry out bad times.
And then we all shut enough tears over there. I remember the meeting at the Northside Co Op where we had actually been one of the few few non unanimous votes on CNN because there were some people who didn't want to vote for a charge that was only five sets, they either wanted to be more, or they wanted to stay on and voted and protest.
institutional
history we're at 647. So just the last thing I'll mention is, I think all of our terms are coming up to a close. Is that right? At the end of the year? Okay,
you know, even if you only just started recently, you're gonna like the end of someone's term. So
your term is ending also?
Yes. So maybe start thinking about if you want to renew or not? And is that a good way for folks to, like, communicate that to you? Or ahead of time? Or have Yeah, what what factors?
Do you have to fill out an application? And we're gonna be rolling that out right after Labor Day. Okay. But let us know, send an email and make sure you get the one pager.
Yeah, and I believe we have three seats that we'll need to fill as is. So if anybody is considering for whatever reason, that's totally fine, not reopening. I think it would just be good to have a conversation about how many seats we should expect to fill, and how we can be strategic about engaging folks about engaging council members, maybe focusing on some specific areas or awards or something like that to further fill up.
And with that in mind, if folks have moved since they were nominated, it's probably important to let you know, because you may not know what, which words are represented right now. Sure.
So I'll send a recap email after the meeting, like I did last time. And if folks just want to ping me back individually on that, not CC everybody, or you can if you want to, it's up to you. But yeah, with any indication if you're leaning one way or another. That's totally cool. That'd be great. Cool.
And I just remembered we didn't approve the minutes and agenda so if someone if someone would want to move up Aaron moves. Maxwell Second. All in favor, aye. Any of us? Great. So adopted. A gamble. Yeah. My dream. Alright.