good afternoon and the meeting of the housing human services and transportation committee will now come to order it is one thirty p m on thursday august fourth twenty sixth before we begin may i please request that we all turn off or silence our cell phones or other noisemaking devices at this time i'd like to introduce our committee voting members chair of the committee big mike victory no and we don't have any of our non voting members at this summit like to introduce our administration representatives director of transportation don midair us thank you for diligent committee staff committee secretary tammy frias and legislative attorney michelle you're sure members we have a single item on the agenda today so we'll get started with public law thank you and from the district office is a nice fernand thank you denise for individuals who will be testifying in the chamber but sign up at the desk located in the eighth floor lobby just outside the chamber door if you will be testifying from the remote testimony locations pacified on the meeting agenda please sign up with council staff at that location testimony would be limited to the ideal list that on the agenda today and pursuant to the rules of the council each testifier will be allowed to testify for up to three minutes per item with one minute to conclude if requested when testifying please the journey and the name of any organization you are representing do we zero from my cell seasick revelle relating to them short range transit plan correspondence data july first twenty sixteen from the director of transportation transmitting a report entitled moez short range transit plan april twenty sixth seen prepared by s s m f m international with west wing consultant services inc and pacific cartographic the committee may receive a presentation from the department of transportation and may review the report the committee may also consider the filing of county communication sixteen dash one three zero our department of transportation will provide an overview of the ma we shot range transit plan so this is a light to us to department to commence with their presentation thank hello good afternoon members thank you for the opportunity to present this plan today this is a department second short range transferred plan the first was done in two thousand and five this plan was conducted as chair mention by s s f m international its development process included riders surveys community meetings technical analysis and coordination with key stakeholders the plan contains three hundred twenty eight pages and is presented in six chapters you have a hard copy before you today there is a copy of it also on the county website under the department of transportation for anyone that is interested as i said it's contained six chapters first is the introduction planned background followed by current the current fix road system a rider demand analysis service analysis and recommended improvements a financial plan and finally the action plan but the department commissioned this plan to help guide the agency for a six year period until twenty twenty two we all understand that the availability of mobility and handsome is the county of maui for many this is especially true in rural areas where distance and scattered population make these connections even more important public transportation connects people to jobs health care social recreational and educational opportunities this availability of realty and hats is the quality of life for many on mali each day the my bus system logs over six thousand boardings public transportation contributes to regional economic growth and development by connecting business to customers employees to employers and visitors to tourist destination this plan provides background this is sorry to understand the need for future service improvements and capital improvements if you evaluates the existing chances system and provides recommendations including the actions necessary to implement the plan as a result of this plan we are in the process of no longer require an appeal e passengers to change buses in kaanapali and road to la hina the second is a community driven action we will be extending the cooler route beyond rice park into hawaiian homes with a stop near the cool hospital and adding a round trip into moscow out with met with the cooler community association the cool hawaiian homes association to foster this change we've planned on implementing this in a couple of months there are several important findings that are worth mentioning extensive analysis was performed to evaluate the performance of the my bus system each route was compared to likely concentrations of trance it rightor trip origins and destination using various demographic and social economic data ridership data for each of the about two hundred bus stops on the system was reviewed and analyzed and on board self administered a cell passenger survey was conducted on weekday fix the weekday fixture out transit services operated by the mob boss to obtain trance it rightor characteristics and detail of tracks it trip making behavior the results are as followed over seventy five percent of the passengers are employed about fifty four percent of the riders use the my bus to get to work my bus provides options to low income people to get to work and appointments about twenty one percent of the passengers reported a household income of less than fifteen thousand dollars per year visitors about eight percent of the passengers identified themselves as a visitor or tourist molly bus now ten years old has been a phenomenal success ridership has increased from less than two hundred thousand passengers year  to about two point two million molly bus connects important population centers attracts attractions and business centers some of the connections are so popular buses are overcrowded trances centers often experience long lines of people waiting to board the bus my bus has significant capital needs that can be funded through continued use of federal funding assured through the passage of the fixing america's surface transportation are facts that act and act in december of december fourth the fifteenth i want to just bring your attention before i close and we can talk about it a little bit afterwards and section twenty there are several short term fa recommendations one of which is a cashier for off peak service to comply with federal standards of a dollar for senior disable and medicare in closing we should all be extremely proud of our accomplishments the county has been able to leverage local funds to garner over thirty nine million dollars in federal grants in the past six years on behalf of the many folks that use the system i thank you for your support and we look forward to your continued support in the future this concludes our presentation and will answer any questions you may have thank you very much thank you department any further comments on your presentation before i open up the floor for questions on further comments members i don't know how much time you've had to review what is before you but if you'd like to ask questions as by courting going according to a chapter or the unfortunately we got this yesterday and so have not had a whole bunch of time to look at it but of course i always go to the meat of it and first of all i want to thank the director very very much for responding to the action folks tuesday evening and i told them and they were extremely pleased and so i convey their thank you for you know being able to look at what they want they have been trying so hard to get the  extended into hawaiian homes and at the hospital and also for that mark wahlberg out so thank you very much for that but my own my questions are yes twenty eight for me of course the meat of all this is money because we all know that this is a wonderful wonderful service and as the director stated it has been incredibly successful and almost too successful because you know we're like when  crowded buses we know that it's going to take more money to have more buses and more drivers but i'm kind of curious if somebody in director mark or whoever deals with the finances here would kind of give us an idea of keep in mind that this is a plan it's not in concrete but it allows us to look for with i from someone who is coming from the outside has looked at other transit systems and said you know maybe these are the things that you should be looking at if maybe these are the adjustments you should be making and this is what it would take to put it through and so this is sort of their what they feel we should do and some of these i think this is something that as time goes on we need to look at and we need to bring it here attention the success of this system has been that it's passenger driven we put things out there and by the passengers getting back to us saying why don't you do this or don't do that it's cetera we've been able to be successful just putting new runs on the road doesn't necessarily mean that  that ridership is going to increase or revenues are going to increase and i know we have a lot on our plate as a community and you as a council to deal with so the numbers here are kind of daunting in some respect say take it with a grain of salt if it's really what we're saying at this point because it's not it's not written in concrete and you know paying attention to the fact they we see these things on five to ash twenty you see a group of breakout here of fares in the short term mid term and long term and i'd like to bring your attention to the short term one of the fares the second one down in that second column it's called senior disable medicare and it's changing the fixed ro boarding from two dollars to one dollar so it's cutting it in half and that that is to address a statute for federal statutory requirements unlike other systems our system doesn't have peak off peak you've heard systems at certain times of the day they'll run more buses shorter shorter schedules between buses but with our system we just run the same schedule seven days a  week for the from five o'clock in the morning to eleven o'clock at night because the schedules of the people that are using it are generally static they're getting to work we work different days different times different shifts and so it's worked so having said that the feds look at our schedule as because we don't designate peak or off peak as off peak therefore we would have to offer a half fare but it's a cash half fare so here again we have no way of knowing what kind of effect this is going to have are on our overall budget because if you're going to buy a pass which we've offered passes and they're quite  good pending on how many stops you're going to go it's probably cheaper to buy a pass unless you're going to go from point a to point b point b two point eight in which case then and you're a senior citizen or person with disabilities then it might work for you but this is not the past driven and so this is something that we're going to need to do and we'll put into our as in our budget when we start talking about fees with the new budget coming up when work when we head again that when we get to that point  they always do also talk about something that we did talk about a while back and neck that's sort of the next one down and it's called the daily pass for the fix right only and currently it's just it's four dollars and one point i know we brought it to the council and we talked about what we should do a five dollar pass and and what not for the day but it was determined the council felt that four dollars is where it should be and and that's where it is well these folks are saying well probably make more sense if you bring it up to five dollars as it comes on down you'll see that the next one below that is fifty dollars where as they fix route commuter and eighty a paratransit passes are forty five dollars they're proposing to change that a little and to to do a fixed route only for fifty dollars so it's up five dollars leave the student alone and then they want to change their proposing to change the senior pass from fifty five years of age to sixty five years of age and call it a thirty dollars pass and to fix that disability fixed only would be would stay at thirty dollars part of that idea was that they figuring you can it's easier for you to see where this money is coming from you know but it's a proposal that some of it which we've discussed at this at this in the council before i think a director m studied what would happen if we had accepted the general excise tax option and can you comment on how this would work it seems to me like the bottom line is we have money we didn't but you know it is curious to contra since they did the work we might as well look at it yeah and you know essentially they're saying it would it would reduce the county highway general finally it's their theory it's kind of the bus left the station i know the bus left station but it looks like there would have been an awful lot of money involved here you know you know transportation is you know done because you've been in this longer than i have is an expensive program and just looking at the capital investment that we have to make in the coming years is you know kind of staggering it's a lot of money and  so i think we have to look at options for funding because we can like raise fees to the point here people cannot board because we defeat the purpose which is to help people that don't have cars can't have cars can't drive and do all of that so it's a very interesting thing i would like to have more time to really take a look at it i have more questions but thank you very much thank you misplaced members any other comments or questions for the department and i think the department for because any of this to us my disappointment this afternoon is i don't think you consultant's this into us the last time we had a but that's not going to happen and yet this is based on that happening which again the consultant did not listen to this committee's earlier comments at a previous meeting so i'm very disappointed in that perspective i agreed mispriced so we have to make it so it works but i would have thought it would have asked us what are some of the premises or parameters you wish us to work at i would like to see them come up with a plan that the county doesn't subsidize more than fifty percent of this program and why would it take for us to achieve that goal or already had one according to them twenty seven percent which is better than most other programs so it tells me that at least my work is going in the right direction but i would expect the consultants to at least come up and ask us what were some of our goals regarding we would like to see the certain category does that come with them also then paying up the difference of the potential loss in revenues to implement their requirement no it does not so the county then ends up further subsidizing another federal mandate correct and that changed as a result of the census where we ended up in it and it rolled from rural to an urban category and that is also part of the recruitment of as another way to approach it no because you would this applies to off peak so if you make a designation as to what is peak then everything else is off peak and so this is h and i think would be hard pressed to come up with something like that and yet they have not done that review and approval well they know we argue it we haven't got anything back from them so what does that mean we suck tommy and twitter all our fingers for another twelve months of wasted time and effort or can we move forward since they had their opportunity to chose not to respond within a reasonable time so can the county now move forward on its own without waiting for them yesterday so we could do this well i would say why don't you see what kind of options are available get to you as i be partly from the company's perspective for us to move forward because the further away the greater the subsidies and that's not where i want to go need of the and we've just said when he so much finances to share so we look for use for some advice and considerations the rector but i think you know some of our main core programmers we do is there anything else a consultant is on contract that they can do for you after this meeting regarding adjustments of this study or this is it mr holcombe taking your comments into consideration and council member obama would you want us to follow up with some sort of correspondence expressing readjusted again because we know what it costs we rather build them main thing we know that the main thing is component of this requirements is an annual thing and i don't think it's properly reflected in the numbers but saying that the other thing i would like to also ask you to consider the rector and i heard misplace i'm not telling you that the upcountry allowing homes already is not a critical component but that's project that i think working with cork council and a real property tax we've got to come to terms of how our homes once us to expand services to their area come to terms with this county on pain you do your taxes  because fair is fair i'm happy to consider the road expansion i think there is a need but to me how in homes needs to be fair with this county and pay what is due to this county to their obligations  so i ask you to can look at that is this is another way for us to keep the get the books clean go to screw it away and be able to do this on its merits because i have an issue with the administration of this department not and i know that you didn't do this but maybe you can help explain on page twenty eight where we talk about a financial plan by year and it shows in twenty seventeen that total expenses are about twelve million dollars and fair revenue and related is about three point one million dollars and it says farebox recovery ratio is twenty eight percent twenty point eight percent you see you following that there yes how do they we get that recovery ratio because if you take it's my understanding of recovery ratios you here's your expenses twelve point one million dollars fair revenue is three point one million dollars so you divide three point one million dollars by twelve point one million dollars and you get twenty five percent if you're the next one it's thirteen percent you go the next one it's twelve and a half percent so where are they getting these numbers explain to us how those numbers are created so i mean i got i got a long list of questions but i have to assume that we're working off of  zero why is that and then also the c i p projects for the two thousand and eighteen is that it was at seven million is that for for two thousand and eighteen and then also the c i p for two thousand and six is a two thousand and seventeen seven million is that for the according to chapter yes six point two there is a replacement of the queen comment to center transit center is that what that's for the seven million this is for eight hundred four i guess for two thousand and eighteen or two thousand eighty eight million twenty seven million six hundred seven right for don't actually have to get back to you on that because i'll have to go back and and read what it is that that where they came up with that and then referred forward ok and then also the federal grants discretionary it's in  you're going to be applying in two thousand and nineteen or seven hundred sixty so why wouldn't they assume that we would be applying for x amount of money in two thousand and eighteen couldn't tell you you and under the action plan in regards to your question for this e i p m p six dash three it talks about the capital investments in twenty eighteen so how how does that fit in with the seven somewhat million dollars that w maintenance facility and got way they feel and it's true we would be able to get more part more people bidding on the contracts that we're going to be putting out for service and as long as that that is lagging then we're going to be stuck at the same point we're at so to that end we're in the process of working with the department of management to get the department of listed on the central base yard project at least ten acres central bay shore project which is which will help us to get something land of course is what you mentioned council member get us a piece of property that we can start to work towards that the timing of course  contingent upon when that they go through the environmental assessment and what have you at the at that location but once we're we're in the plan and they start moving forward that then we would apply for federal discretionary money to fund the construction of that facility where we would need you know a couple of buildings one for maintenance one for admin operations fueling bus washing and of course to park the vehicles and that's that  problem sure you're familiar with it's located you know off of clearly highway so that that would be a a a big that's a that's a big ticket item but in the in the long run it's probably better off it'll be better off for the  system and for the county as a whole jerry yes so do isn't it by bill by building this maintenance facility are you saying that we would receive additional federal grant money all these c i p suggestions all really good suggestions but it means taxes and we don't get  we certainly don't get good recovery even in the best of times it says twenty percent so you're saying we're going to get federal we're going to apply for federal grants what are the likelihood that we're going to get those grants to build these facilities that they are requiring us to build so you're saying seven point six million for this building i have no idea what it's going to cost this is something that they came up with they came up with and this is something that will have to work into you know our vision it would be something about rebuilding for a double wide trailer is to create their visit there they're building and we purchased that a long time ago and you know you just maintain stuff you know and so as council member common actually used to maintain stuff and it stays here i think a lot of us have the old mentality at least i do because i'm old is that once you get something you better take care of it because you don't know where you're going to have the money to replace that thing and as an example of that we i mean we have very good need to it's now as an example of that the first transit buses the one that looks like trolleys that we run to key and to the west side and all you know the first ones are approaching six and seven hundred thousand miles that's unheard of because we haven't hit the history we haven't hit that the deadline  set up by feds as far as the life of this of the bus in years we're hitting it and mileage who would think that an island like this we're going to hit that if you say that to chad city agency and in chicago or another big one and you give them this kind of their jaws drop but they're safe and they're operating and we'll keep them operating you know as long as we can because they serve they serve a real need and will probably replace them the way we bought them a little a few at a any comments or question of public transit johns's services are also expanded and then what is the cost and how will it be paid that's that's a mouthful but we can do it when the time up you know  changing their report current airport road we're not planning on doing another a new route for the airport we keeping the same system as it is now in the expansion piece for cooler with the cost there's no cost to it in dollars and cents there's a cost that now will be hourly service will be ninety minutes service so that's the cost for that as far as the the let's see you know we weren't really looking at touching the hina villager at this point either there their plan was to split it up frankly i don't want to bite off too many things so we can't  chew and what we're going to do on that side as i mentioned is we're going to enter line the current not purely and kind of poly route into the hyena that's a no cost option but it would be a great benefit for the passengers of whom there are quite a bit right in the pili bus to line a tunnel and so they no longer what what's happening now is you get on the bus in the pili you get two wheelers village and you've got to switch buses where when you want to switch buses there on the bus the line there's a long line and so these you know they get to the back of the queue and sometimes midst of us this way they're going to sit in the bus it's the same bus so that the folks that get on the bus and kind of call it going to if there's no room they'll stand to get out a line to tell in essence i take it back there is a cost i'm sorry i don't want to go off target here there is a cost and we will see a reduction in some fares because right now it cost you to get on the bus in appealing it costs you to get on the bus in qana poly so there could be a cost there i think most of the people use it on a regular basis have a have a pass so that the cost might be negligible but it will bring the ridership down because we'll only count them once we're not going to count them twice because right now we count every time a person boards a yes correct thank you so you know now that the department has the short range jazz a plan one that probably not all of us  approve of the recommendations or the report because it's so much based on the g e tax which is after nonexistent for us what is the department's  next step and what does that department intend to do as conservative as we are we're going to continue to be conservative and see where we can make changes in the system to enhance it without adding additional costs were in the process of doing the changes we mentioned now and we'll kind of look at other ones as time time goes on you know they talk about a team that we should be doing the k one but their proposal was to add a third bus that's why it was very expensive at this point we run it with two buses there's no need to run a third bus we made some accommodations in the schedule and juggle some things within the schedule to make it happen and i think that's going to be a huge benefit for the folks that come out in appealing folks to ride the bus i think that as ridership numbers increase and  increased they will look at what we can do to make it more efficient honestly we lost one hundred thirty thousand passengers this last fiscal year it went down by five five something percent compared to the year before and i think that has a lot to do with our economy getting better fuel prices going down you know a good economy kind of everything sort of comes up and i think that's helped at some thing that that i'm looking at you know is a great service we're doing a good job there's no question about it it's just as at what cost because under operating revenue you also have county highway yeah that's revenue to your department but that takes away from public works for building roads i mean for eight or so next year for this fiscal year seven point seven million dollars will pay a lot of  road quicker gentle i don't it's just it's kind of frustrating because you know just the twenty seventeen costs minus revenues actual revenues we get you're looking at sixteen million dollars that is costing the county for this which is about you know ninety seven dollars per person in here in the county to operate a bus system i understand it's a good system and i understand something we need but we we have to see how we can curtail some of these costs it's just i mean we're bleeding  lots of money on the bus system and i understand that nationwide and cut it worldwide that's what happens it's just we have to figure out a way to and you guys are doing a really good job it's just that these because i've been out of this for a while used to be the fear of recovery was about twenty five percent the cost of the running the whole thing and these guys are twenty eight point eight so we are doing a little better than most people and i think that's due to you know very careful management so we shouldn't be too surprised that there's i mean we have to settle for it but we are you know above the national average thank you any more comments for department of transportation project included in the central base yard where the specific language is this is for the o t base think this is for the viral mental assessment for the whole thing which includes us as well well discuss and more in my thing is one why wouldn't this be under the m p s budgetary considerations i would just come to the county is part of what general bond consideration instead of m p o consideration t federal funds i think eventually it will go to n p r you know once we can get fully up and running so this is transferable i can shift it on the books i'm not going to say that at this point so i  not really clear and until that's taken up by the m p o itself i can't speak for that so at this point then would you say this is premature for us to consider no i think it's needed because we need to get moving on the central based project in itself i mean that's everything as in which includes department of transportation i think i think the department manager is doing that because they realize that the way things are working that we'll be able to you know access federal funds but weak not going to be able to build that piece of it the transportation piece of it but that until and a environmental assessment and all this done along with all those other things nothing is going to happen we still need to do land so any changes i believe and those sorts of things and at what point can we move it forward and i think you know w advertising i believe that we this recently this year amended that ordinance to allow further advertising on the process correct what is the status of that right it's in purchasing at this point with a purchasing need to go out to bid to bid ok yeah ok so in terms of two thousand and seventeen you would estimate how much revenue question mr okama brought up a very interesting point and since you and i are and mr materials are on the metropolitan planning organization is this something that you are going to submit to that bring to the n p r where it goes from there i couldn't tell you i got you ok thank you i just want to get there i thank you thank you all members thank you have a good afternoon this is the aug fourth twenty sixteen meeting of the housing human services and transportation committee is