The Fox Cities Transit Commission met 04/27/2021.
They welcomed three new members
- Mike Patza from the Town of Grand Chute
- Maiyoua Thao, City of Appleton Alderperson (District 7)
- Brad Firkus, City of Appleton Alderperson (District 3)
They elected George Dearborn to continue as the Commission Chair, and elected Joe Stephenson to be Vice-Chair.
Valley Transit General Manager Ron McDonald was appointed as the designated contact person for the Commission.
They discussed Valley Transit’s overtime expenses which are substantially higher in 2021 than in previous years. Chairman Dearborn wondered about that in light of the fact that there isn’t a heavy demand on the buses.
Ron McDonald said that it’s entirely related to being short-staffed. They have 36 full time positions for bus drivers and are currently 6 drivers short. As of the upcoming week, they will be 7 drivers short because of a retirement. They’ve also had others off on extended family medical leave.
Alderperson Thao (District 7) asked how they covered routes when they were short staffed.
Ron answered that they fill those holes by having drivers work overtime. They’re continuing the recruitment process. His team did an interview late last week and have just made another job offer. They’re still working to get an acceptance from that individual. He said that it’s difficult to get people who are willing and capable of being a bus driver and that they have been doing lots of interviews trying to find people.
One of the commission members wanted to know how Valley Transit’s pay compared to other cities and mentioned Madison and Milwaukee.
Ron said he thought they were good. Theyjust finished contract negotiations last year. Appleton’s then Human Resources Director Sandy Matz had done a lot of comparables and they got an agreement with the union for wages. Given that they just went through that process, Ron thought they were pretty competitive.
They moved on to the item to award the Design Contract for the 2021 Valley Transit Whitman Avenue Facility Renovation Project to Kueny, LLC for a total project design cost not to exceed $253,368.
Ron gave some background on the item. A few years back, they determined that the Whitman Avenue facility was going to be needing some updates. They put an estimate into the Transportation Improvement Program to try to alert the federal government that they were looking for funding to redo a facility. About 2 years after that, the Transit Commission authorized Valley Transit to complete a site assessment and master plan for the Whitman Avenue facility. That site assessment and master plan was recently completed By Kueny, LLC which recommended they expand the facility, update it, make it ADA compliant, along with some other things. The building is 40 years old, not ADA compliant and the HVAC system needs work.
Steve Schrage, the Projects Manager for the City of Appleton spoke. Once they completed the assessment and master planning, they brought that to the commission. They then put out a Request For Proposal (RFP) to consulting firms who were interested in doing the design and construction oversight for the project. Three firms made proposals. The team that reviewed the proposals was composed of Valley Transit and city facilities employees. They scored the proposals according to the Brooks Acts and started negotiations with the most qualified firm which was Kueny, LLC the same firm that did the design assessment. The price is very reasonable for the amount of work that will be happening.
One of the commission members said that, having gone through renovations recently, he was surprised by the price and wondered what the other bids looked like and if they were much higher than that.
Steve explained that as part of the Brooks Act, they need to find the most qualified consultant and then negotiate price with them. So they didn’t go into pricing with the other firms. They did negotiate a pretty good price with Kueny, LLC.
Ron added to that. According to the Brooks Act, they’re not allowed to look at pricing. Under Federal Law they have to select the most qualified firm and once they’ve selected the most qualified firm then they negotiate price. The firms do submit a price, but you have to go negotiate with them. Kueny did negotiate a fairly good price for Valley Transit. He also said they were talking specifically about architect and engineering work for this contract. When the Commission talked about it last time, he had told them the FTA suggested that they move into this part of the design phase because the FTA may need information as they approve the environmental process of the project. All of this moves them further along in the process. But they will come back to the Commission to enter into any further contracts for construction or anything else. This contract is specific to the architecture and engineering work.
George asked if there was a deadline for when this would be completed.
Ron said that they were anticipating that the project’s design work would be done around the end of 2021. If they award the contract, they would put a deadline of early 2022 on it.
The Commission voted unanimously to award the design contract for the Valley Transit Whitman Avenue Facility Renovation Project to Kueny Architects, LLC
The Commission then moved on to the item about issuing a purchase order for 5-New Flyer Xcelsior Buses
Ron said these buses would be funded in part by a Volkswagon grant. That grant was awarded to Valley Transit to allow them to purchase 15 buses. They’ve already taken delivery of 10 buses so this would be the last 5 of those. They are going through the same procurement as last time around. The price you for this purchase is the same dollar amount per bus as it was for the buses they just took delivery of last month, so there was no change in pricing. They were looking at potentially taking delivery of the 5 additional buses in the first quarter of 2022.
There were no questions and the item was approved unanimously.
They then moved onto the item regarding issue a purchase order for replacement bus stop signs
Ron said that there are a number of signs around down that are beat up and scratched up. They do have a life expectancy. He handed it over to “Dave”, who may have been David Vickman the Transit Operations Specialist.
Dave said the current bus stop signs had a 10 year life expectancy and they’re just over that. Some have graffiti, some are bent, some are missing the vinyl material and the reflective surface is fading. They also have an outdated logo. There was some funding in the 2021 budget for this replacement.
They have about 976 bus stops across the Fox Cities. Right now, 854 of them are signed with a bus stop sign. There are other unsigned locations that are where stop signs are present. They issued a bid in March to find a vendor to create signs for us. The bidding period ended April 20. They received 11 bids in response. The lowest bid was a company called Decker Supply Company in Madison.
Valley Transit made a few changes to the sign design. The face is similar to what they have now, but the sign is on both sides so if someone approaches it from behind they can see it’s a bus stop. They are also printing a smaller sign for places that have less space for a markup, so riders can know it’s a bus stop.
This item was also approved unanimously.
They then moved onto the Authorization For Free Fare For “Service Connected” Disabled Veterans
Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford was in attendance and spoke briefly in favor of approving this. It was approved unanimously.
They then moved onto the financial report for February and March, focusing on March.
Deb Ebben gave an update. She had noticed an error on the documents included in the agenda packet, so she gave them corrected pages.
Overall they are under budget. Fare revenues continue to be under budget due to Covid-19 and the loss of ridership. She said that they’ve actually seen an uptick in the number of inquiries regarding advertising on the bus, so, even though they’re under budget on that, she was hoping we’ll see an increase from that revenue source this year. Other revenue is also under budget. That consists of the rent they receive from Greyhound for space at the Transit Center and the commission they receive from the vending machines.
Their expenses overall were also under budget at the end of March. They were under budget in all of the categories with the exception of utilities and repairs. Within the utilities line item they’re mostly over in gas (which is normal this time of year and should even out in the summer) and in repair and maintenance (which is because of the software support account because they pay the largest portion of the software maintenance at the beginning of the year).
She stated that, despite their shortfall in revenues, they’re more under budget in expenses than in revenues. Because there had been a question about the overtime, early, she wanted to point out that in the salaries and fringe benefit category they’re actually under budget, and that is specifically due to the fact that they’re down drivers. Even though they’re over budget in overtime, there is savings in the regular salaries and benefits because of the vacant positions. Transportation is under budget and that’s mostly due to Covid 19; their services are based on a per ride charge so the reduced ridership causes both less revenue and less expenses.
She also noted that they were wrapping up the 2020 audit, and an auditor will be presenting their report in May or June of this year.
They then reviewed the ridership numbers for February and March with a focus on March.
Their fixed route ridership continues to be lower when compared to prior years. It was 45,000 this year compared to 80,000 in a normal year. Year to date, ridership is down by approximately 109,000 rides.
In March of last year the pandemic emerged, the emergency was declared, and schools and businesses started to close. So in April they’re going to start seeing a comparison of pandemic numbers to pandemic numbers instead of pandemic numbers to pre-pandemic numbers. She noted that their ADA and ancillary service had a slight increase in ridership when compared to March of last year, and they have seen an uptick in ridership of both fixed route and paratransit in the last few weeks. In March the ridership for the ADA and ancillary services started increasing, so the total year to date ridership shows a decrease of approximately 19,000 rides when compared to 2020, but their average in March of 2020 for the ADA and Connector per day was about 218 rides and for this year in 2021 the average is about 236 riders in March per day. So they are seeing an increase.
Ron added that, although it is not a rapid increase, they are seeing an upward trajectory of ridership. It’s not setting the world on fire, but it is headed back up slowly as people are getting out and about and returning to school and various other things.
They then reviewed First Quarter Key Performance Indicators
Dave reviewed this information.
Fixed Route Buses were meeting all of their goals (on time performance, total passenger trips, complaints, miles between road calls, and vehicle accidents per 100,000 miles) except for total passenger trips and vehicle accidents.
Dave noted that, as Deb and Ron had explained, they’re doing better on ridership but still far away from where they were a year ago.
Although they missed their target for vehicle accidents, their score of 0.4 compared to a target of 0 was still very good and they had managed to reduce the number of accidents.
Contracted services were surpassing their on time performance targets and were on time 99% of the time. He noted that having reduced ridership allowed them to focus more on the rides they were providing.
Complaints, however, were up from the last three quarters. It was just barely above what their target is, but it was above and it was something they will look at and investigate with the applicable contractor to determine what they can do to prevent those complaints going forward.
The contracted services vehicle accidents score was the same as the fixed route bus score–0.4 accidents per 100,000 miles. Again, it was above target; however, it was still a very low number of accidents..
They finished up the meeting with a Covid-19 update.
In the agenda packet, Ron included test results on the Proactive Air and Surface Purification System (PASP) technology. They installed this inside their buses. And before they bought it they received information from studies that were done by the FDA, OSHA, and others, but the results he included were from a recent independent study done by Oahu Transit with an independent lab. They used the same system Valley Transit has but had in installed on a larger bus with a larger surface area. During the test period, they swept the vehicle out but didn’t do extra sanitizing anywhere. On day one, three, and five they did not run the air and surface purification system. One days 2, 4, and 6 they did run the system. On two of the 3 days when they did not run the system, they swabbed touchpoint areas and found Covid. On the 3 days that they did run the system, they did not get any Covid results. So the Covid that they did get on the days when the system wasn’t running was gone and removed by the system when they swabbed it on the days that it was running. He thought that demonstrated how beneficial that system is. Another thing he found interesting was that when they started this study on day 1, they found 4,328 units of CFUs (colony formation units) per square inch of bacteria, then on day six when the study ended those were down to 30 CFUs per square in. So they went from over 4,300 units to 30 units of other bacterias. He was thrilled the systems were providing that much value in cleaning the entire fleet and good about the work they are getting from those units and the protections they’re providing customers and drivers.
A Commission member wanted to know if they were marketing that to the public and letting them know what they’re doing to the buses and that the buses are getting safer.
Ron said they have done stuff already and are going to continue to talk through this information especially on social media. They will certainly continue to put this information out there.
One commission member wanted to know how people were responding to the federal mask mandate that applies to buses. How has compliance been? Are they getting significant pushback? If people don’t wear a mask are they asked to get off the bus or not allowed to get on?
Ron answered that they’ve certainly had some resistance but it hasn’t been significant. If people refuse to wear a mask Valley Transit is obligated to tell them to disembark the bus before they move it. Overall the compliance has been pretty good, but there’s always one or two people who want to test it. That has ratcheted up a little bit primarily with the kids who are back in school. Some of those folks don’t want to comply but we’ve worked through that the best we can. The vast majority are complying without incident. His understanding was that the federal mandate was set to expire in mid May, but from what he has heard it’s likely to be extended by another presidential order. They were expecting it to continue.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=834833&GUID=F72A7CAA-A884-44F3-98B0-771853CC022D&Options=info|&Search=
Be the first to reply