Transit Commission Receives Capital Projects Update – Whitman Avenue Remodel Project On Hold Due To Inflation; Estimated Cost More Than Doubles

The Transit Commission met 08/23/2022. One of the information items they received was an update from Valley Transit General Manager on various Valley Transit capital projects.

THE WHITMAN AVENUE FACILITY – Valley Transit had already hired a company that performed an assessment and created a master plan for the site. The remodeling/updating project had originally been estimated to cost $7-$8 million. However, with recent economic issues, the costs went through the roof and the project was now estimated to cost up to $18 million.

General Manager McDonald told the commission that he was talking with other people who were currently taking bids and they also were seeing prices that were 2 to 3 times higher than what they had budgeted for their projects.

Valley Transit applied for a grant through the Federal Transit Administration but were, unfortunately, not successful. He noted this was the first grant they had applied for during his time at Valley Transit that they had not received. Valley Transit staff had put in a request for a debriefing to find out why they weren’t successful. He said there had been in excess of 500 applications, only 150 of which had been granted, and Valley Transit had been selected not too long ago for a grant funding the purchase of a lot of buses, so he wondered if that had something to do with why this most recent request for money had been denied.

Valley Transit intended to come back during the next grant cycle and apply for some additional grants, but in the meantime, they had hit the pause button on the Whitman Avenue remodeling/updating project.

TRANSIT CENTER SITE ASSESSMENT AND MASTER PLAN – Valley Transit had contracted with an architect firm called LHB. LHB and their team of subcontractors had a significant amount of transit center joint development projects throughout Wisconsin and the United States.

Their first task was to look at the current transit center site and determine if it was the best location and to look at additional sites in the downtown area to make sure there was not a better location for the transit center.

General Manager Ron McDonald noted that the transit center was part of the College North Neighborhood Plan and had been listed as a very high priority project.

They were going to start putting some focus groups together regarding the transit center in which the Transit Commission would be invited to participate.

RUN CUTTING AND SCHEDULING SOFTWARE – They were going to purchase some software to assist in planning and scheduling bus routes. This software would allow them to move routes around, play with potential changes, and see immediately and show them immediately, based on census data, if those changes in compliance with requirements be they related to Title VI, the Civil Rights Act, FTA regulations, etc.

He hoped to bring that request forward at the September Transit Commission meeting.

He noted that software was changing and was moving away from expensive software packages that were hosted on an organization’s own computers and moving toward cloud-based services with monthly fees. This was beneficial because if a program turned out to not do quite what they were hoping for, they could move on to a different product without worrying about needing to break even on a large upfront expenditure.

BUS TRACKING APP – Valley Transit currently used a bus tracking app called DoubleMap which had been working very well for them, but app owner had decided to sunset it and replace it with a new app which didn’t do the things that Valley Transit needed it to do. They were, therefore, going to be looking for a new bus tracking system. He mentioned that with software companies being bought out, he thought Valley Transit was going to have to pivot pretty regularly on things like this.

FARE BOXES – Valley Transit was facing a similar situation to their bus tracking system with their face collection system. They currently had GFI fareboxes through a company called Genfare. These boxes collected fares and gathered passenger demographic data. At the end of the year, Genfare was ceasing manufacture of the model of box that Valley Transit used. Their new model of fareboxes would be very expensive and General Manager Ron McDonald was not interested in them. Valley Transit would be reviewing other alternatives and would probably get a contactless fare system of some type which, per General Manager McDonald, was what transit providers were all moving toward.

TROLLEY BUSES – Lamers currently provided the trolley service. After having contracted with Valley Transit at a specific rate, they came back and requested a change to their rate, claiming they couldn’t provide the service for what they had contracted. It had been discussed at both the committee level and the Common Council level before the increased rate had been approved.

Valley Transit went on to discussion with the Federal Transit Administration the possibility of using some existing grant money to buy some trolleys so they could provide their own trolley service in the future instead of contracting with Lamers. The FTA had approved that, and Valley Transit would be bringing more information about that to the Transit Commission at a future date.

The commission members had no questions or comments.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=959043&GUID=77586201-5E1A-4D16-96CF-E297084DE880