The Fox Cities Transit Commission met 02/23/2021. Larry Wurdinger and Joe Martin were excused.
The first action item was the Approval of Payments.
Assistant General Manager Deb Ebben reported that the year to date price of diesel is $1.86 a gallon; they budgeted $3.00. Gasoline’s year to date price is $1.55 a gallon; they budget $2.50 per gallon.
One commission member mentioned that there was no line item for Red Shoes PR, Inc for January. He wondered if it doubled up in a different month, or did Valley Transit not do anything with Red Shoes in January?
Per General Manager Ron McDonald they’ve been doing this with Red Shoe every month, but it just depends on the timing of the payment whether or not it’s on the invoice list.
The January payments were approved unanimously.
The next action item was voting on whether to award a contract tor TransTrack for a data management system
Ron said that this was an enterprise data management system. He wanted to point out that they’re asking for approval to do a sole source procurement. They sent out a pretty extensive memo giving their justification for the sole source procurement.
He added that TransTrack is a current vendor that’s already involved with two of their software programs. They have multiple data systems. This is just an attempt to take all of those silos and group them into one database so they can get at the data efficiently.
One of the commission member wanted to know how long it would take to implement this new program.
Someone referred to as Dave (who I am guessing is Transit Operations Specialist David Vickman) answered. During discussions with TransTrack it was suggested that they would start a month or two after the contract is signed. He thought most of the work could be done in a couple of months and that they would have most of their data integrated by the end of the year. They have a big, cyclical report that they would be doing in March-April of 2022, which they could do with their old system and the new system side-by-side. By this time next year he anticipated they would be transitioned fully over to this new system. At his previous two jobs he’s been involved in enterprise databases, and it’s not easy. It takes some time, but once it’s done, the amount of work the systems can do is like having a couple extra employees on staff.
A commission member had a question about the fiscal impact. It looked like it was covered 80% through a grant and then 10% would be through the annual budget.
Per Ron, there are two different costs associated with the project. The first is the capital expenditure for actually purchasing the software. The second is the annual maintenance agreement which will come out of the local budget. The capital expenditure will be paid for out of a grant fund. The local shares will be spread out among the municipalities as part of Valley Transit’s normal budget process.
The commission member said it looks like the annual service fee increased every year.
Ron confirmed that it does because of inflation and that that is typical of what they’ve seen in previous service agreements.
Another commission member asked for them to give him a more detailed update on all the systems that would be compiled into this new program.
Dave said that he listed the main ones in the memo. Right now, through a company called Genfare, they have a fare box on every bus and collect data that comes out of those boxes. That system was purchased around 2008-2010 but is, unfortunately, becoming a legacy system. The contractor still does a good job of providing data, but its reporting capabilities have been static for a long time.
Finance and HR are handled through TylerMunis, a company a lot of these municipalities are familiar with, and they would be pulling data from that into this new system. Finance information is critical for their annual NTD reports. [As far as I can tell, NTD stands for National Transit Database https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd]. There are a lot of metrics that incorporate expenses and revenues.
Their current maintenance vendor is TransTrack. They’re taking care of parts, fluids, and preventative maintenance scheduling. They also do their fuel management and tracks who pumps fuel, how much goes into the vehicles, mileage of the vehicles, etc.
Two years ago they contracted with DoubleMap for Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) services. That information would also be coming into the new database and would give them information by route and by driver.
They also use Ecolane software to provide their paratransit service. That is a schedule and dispatching software that also tracks riders. Some of that data will also go into the new program.
Additionally, as mentioned in the memo, they recently received new federal requirements for a public transit agency safety plan. Those requirements added a lot of new metrics that they hadn’t been tracking before in the way that the federal government now wants to see them tracked. This new system will provide a forum where we can put that stuff in there. Information that they have been gathering from different locations and spreadsheets would now be centralized and consolidated. The product also has a lot of great ways to display the information that it collects, providing them with business intelligence a lot more quickly than they currently are able to get it.
He said that their safety data is in Excel. This program would put it into a form and track it much better than they are currently able to. They also have to do a Transit Asset Management plan, which involves tracking all of Valley Transit’s assets. The maintenance management software they use now does a good job of tracking vehicles, but they have more assets than simply vehicles–facilities and larger pieces of equipment that aren’t necessarily in their current database that they would be able to put into the new system. Additionally, when they do their Transit Asset Management (TAM) plan, there’s a lot of maintenance data in that plan and this new TransTrack system would allow them to pull information from multiple sources.
Their current Transit Input Report (TIR) system tracks the customer calls they receive such as complaints and compliments. Right now, they’re tracking those with Access [Oh. My. Goodness.], but the TransTrack program has a module for that that would greatly improve that. Currently it’s a manual process to break customer comments down into categories. This new system would enable them to collect a lot more information and do more with it.
Those were the major data silos. Dave added that they have a lot of smaller pieces of data that are done in spreadsheets that he maintains. At the end of the quarter, he has to go into 5 separate systems, pull data out of them, and manually re-enter that information into the spreadsheet which has formulas within it to process the data. One of the things they put in the memo as a reason to do this is issues surrounding succession and turnover. When he came into this position three years ago, it was really difficult to come up to speed with what was being done in spreadsheets by employees before him. He thinks this will really help with cross training and put them in a better spot to maintain reliable and quality data should they lose staff in the future.
A commission member wanted to know what city this corporation is from.
Per Dave, they’re located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
The commission member then wanted to know how long Valley Transit has used TransTrack’s maintenance software.
Dave was not sure and said that it had been used before he arrived.
Ron said he was familiar with their product since he started working in transit in 1989. [For the record, that didn’t actually seem, to me, to answer the question of how long Valley Transit has been using their program.]
The commission member wanted to know if they got any quotes from other companies or only from this company. Did they search TransTrack out because they were pleased with their maintenance plan and wanted to look at add ons? How did they start looking?
Ron said that was a good question. They tried to outline that in the Sole Source Procurement document that they provided. They have a current relationship with TransTrack and TransTrack is working on two of their data siloes already. If they started looking at other companies then they would be looking at possibly having to redo at least two other software packages in conjunction with that. He said that Dave did some reference checks on this vendor, and everything they got back was positive, so it just made sense from their standpoint to go with a sole source procurement. They discussed this project with the city of Appleton’s IT Director as well as the city of Appleton’s Purchasing Director specifically about the database and the sole source procurement; both of those people were on board with what Valley Transit wanted to do.
Another man (possibly Dave) added to what Ron said. He stated that he had searched for other vendors and other options but did not find anything. He belongs to a group through one of the transit associations, and he had posted on multiple boards asking what people do as a solution for this, and he got nothing. He is not aware of another vendor that specializes in this type of software for transit. There is also the possibility that they could create their own database and hire a database developer to do that but the cost and time of that would far outweigh an off the shelf product that is plug-and-play and ready to go. They were unable to find any other solutions.
A commission member said that she was comparing some other produced yesterday, and there was only one thing that she came up with for TransTrack that was lesser than the other companies and that was that TransTrack had live support only during business hours and the other ones had it 24/7. She was curious how TransTrack started and she wanted the city, because there’s a lot of variations of the name TransTrack, and she wanted to make sure that it was the right one that she was checking and it was.
In response someone [I’m not sure who] told her that sole source contracts are something that will result in them being reviewed by the federal government. When we do that type of purchase the government looks at it, so they make sure that when they do that they have everything documented.
Ron added that, if it would make her rest easier, the parent company of TransTrack is huge–a huge conglomerate of other software companies.
George Dearborn, the commission chair, added that he has experience with software as well, and it sounds like this firm is applied throughout the United States for transit systems. He thought it was better to have software that’s more universally known when you hire an employee because otherwise the training is very difficult. He has had experience with having offshoot software that they couldn’t find anyone to use.
A commission member wanted to know what the crossover would look like. Would there be any disturbances regarding crossover.
Ron said that they will not get rid of one system until they’re confident the other system is working like it’s supposed to. They will have parallel systems while they’re working through it.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the contract.
They moved on to the financial report.
Deb stated that they were looking at the January 2021 financials. For January they should be at 8% of the budget. Because it was January and they were just getting started, she didn’t have much to talk about. Their revenues, as expected due to Covid, are starting the year under budget, and their expenses overall are also under budget.
Ron added that they passed over the December financial report. They will be bringing that information forward as they get through their independent financial audit. They’ll put everything together for the end of the year and come back with that report in either May or June, most likely June. That’s typically how they do that. He wanted to make sure everyone was aware that they didn’t miss the month.
They then reviewed their Ridership and Revenue for January 2021
Per Deb their fixed route ridership is down approximately 46,000 rides compared to last year. The ridership route chart shows an overall decrease in ridership on almost all of the routes.
The fixed route by fare category chart shows a decrease in all categories for the month of January when compared to last year.
They didn’t start losing ridership until March of last year due to Cvoid. So they’re still comparing January (pre-Covid) to January (during Covid). Their ADA and ancillary services also have a decrease in ridership of approximately 6,300 rides. Total year to date ridership shows a decrease of approximately 52,000 rides when compared to January 2020.
There were no questions.
The next item was the Grand Chute Thank You Letter.
Ron just wanted to share the thank you letter that Valley Transit received from the Town of Grand Chute, issued by the Fire Chief and the Police Chief, thanking Valley Transit for providing assistance during the shooting at the mall.
The next item was Transportation to Vaccination Clinics
Per Ron, the Valley Transit team was approached by Winnebago County, initially (and since then discussions have taken off with Outagamie and Calumet counties as well) regarding making sure they can provide transportation to people who are going to fall through the cracks so that they are able to get to the vaccination clinics. Winnebago County has worked with the Community Foundation of the Fox Cities as well as the Community Foundation in Oshkosh and possibly also United Way to put together fare reimbursements for people who absolutely can’t afford bus passes to get to the vaccination site. Valley Transit has offered up one of their fare structures, the Elderly and Disabled transportation fare, which is a dollar each way on our system. Winnebago County and the Community Foundation are going to reimburse them $2 per round trip for people going to the vaccination sites. They’re also opening up their paratransit service. The $4 fare is still applicable, and that will be reimbursed as well. It doesn’t matter if the individuals are going to the community vaccination sites, to CVS or Walgreens, or a hospital site; as long as they’re going to a vaccination site Valley Transit will transport them.
There were no questions
The next item was a Covid 19 Update
Ron said the previous agenda item pretty much addressed most of the things going on. The numbers are tracking down so that’s always a good thing. It sounds like more people want to get vaccinated than vaccinations are available, so they’re still working through that. They’re still providing essential travel.
They have a mask mandate in place by Presidential order directed to the CDC. The CDC issued a directive and the TSA is the enforcer of that directive; they’re going to be traveling to transit systems and ensuring compliance with the mask mandate. He’s aware of only two people so far that have refused to wear a mask and exited the bus. One got off the bus and started throwing snowballs at them as they drove away. The other just said a few choice words and left. For the most part they have very high compliance and it’s not been an issue for them.
There were no questions
The final item was a request for future agenda items
One commission member thought it would be a good idea to get an overview of how Valley Transit has used the money that came its way this last year. It was a lot of dollars, and he thought it would be good to be informed about what they’ve done with it and what they’re thinking of doing if there are any dollars that haven’t been accounted for.
Ron said they could get that on the agenda for the next meeting. He could assure the commission there were no funds that are unaccounted for. Beyond that he would be glad to go through what funds are obligated, which funds they’re preparing to draw down, and which funds are still out there unobligated. This would be an estimate pending the completion of the audit.
George Dearborn mentioned that it appears as if a lot of additional funds might make it into the transit system depending on what happens at the federal level.
At Ron’s request, the commission kept both of their March meeting dates on the calendar. They then adjourned.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=821052&GUID=80C4DFEC-05CA-48F8-BE0B-DBCFC5DF4175&Options=info|&Search=
Be the first to reply