Travis County Commissioners Court
January 19, 2010,
Item 30
>> 30 is to consider and take appropriate action on the following items.
a, whether to participate in the express shuttle pie late program and, b -- pilot program, and b, the commuter survey.
we acted on a couple of parts last week and requested another week to look at the shuttle pilot program.
i didn't understand what this was, it is quite similar to what we approved based on the follow-up conversation I had with miss rather there.
and that's a good question, I guess.
what's the difference between what we approved and the express shuttle pilot program.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> what you approved, judge, was the qtb, qualified transportation benefit.
that's the overall benefit that allows the employees to utilize the tax-free vouchers for mass transit which includes the van pools, and for parking.
so that's the benefit, the framework that would allow them then to access -- you know, be part of the pilot study for the van pools and get the $230 tax free.
or purchase their vouchers with tax-free dollars.
so the framework had to be in place before the van pool could really become a reality so it was two completely separate issues but you've approved the qtb so that that framework is in place and you have to decide whether Travis County wants to be part of the pilot --
>> what you're calling the pilot study is the express shuttle pilot.
>> zoo and we're talking about same --
>> yes.
>> and we're talking about same employees, federal law, at employee's option.
>> it would be at the employee's option.
the van pool pilot is looking for about one quarter of their ridership which would be between like 50 and 75 county employees to participate in the van pool.
>> that's what I did not understand last time.
and on the survey, though, follow-up conversations led me to the conclusion that we may be able to do an appropriate survey in house.
>> well, we're still really working on the survey question, we're not really prepared to finalize our survey recommendations today.
we have been talking about fbmc about the survey.
we were talking whether they could provide as a sample survey about what they would do for Travis County for that amount of money and you had made the point you wanted it to be customizable and it turns tout is fully customizable for the survey.
but we're still in conversations with them so whether we do it in house or not, I am not really prepared to speak to today.
>> all right.
>> simply that we've been in discussions with them and there is a number of possibilities.
>> but if we were going to do it in-house, we would get several county employees to work on it.
>> yes.
if we did it in-house, staff would do it.
my concern with doing it in house is that analyzing the data, which is really what you're paying for, the survey itself is fairly simple but analyzing the data that comes back from the survey and putting it in the useable summary form would be my concern.
>> all right.
what if the court were to give directions to try to do it in house but if we conclude that in fact, we cannot do an appropriate job in house, then we simply contract out for outside experpties.
>> okay -- expertise.
>> okay.
we kicked it to this week.
>> right.
>> judge robin rather on behalf the environment defense and the clean air force.
if its' the course's decision go ahead with an in-house version, we have research professionals and other folks that would be happy to pitch in on the and littics on any aspect of it.
this project, the shuttle project has been a boot strap from the beginning.
this is a hell airs economic time and I understand -- hell aitious economic time, if it is your decision and/or the funding doesn't exist we will make sure it is done at the highest professional level as part of the project.
>> also, may I make a decision we also perhaps contact the downtown Austin alliance regard to the consultant that they're contracting with on their transportation demand management.
>> we're working with them and I think there would be no dupe pli indication, we can work together with them to make sure it is very tight.
>> I'm thinking about double-dipping.
>> if we can do it in house, we ought to.
if we cannot we basically come up with the funding to contract out to get it done because the survey results are key, right?
>> yes.
>> and that will give us a good understanding what employees will participate and on what basis.
>> some questions we were going to ask is the corridors, we will try to define what corridors people actually travel to work and what their destinations were.
we know where they live but we don't really know where they're going as far as the data that we had that is useable to fund this so it would be helpful for the van pool pilot if we knew the corridors people took to work so we were trying to do it in conjunction with providing the needed information.
>> what we approved last week, we believe, will involve capital metro.
>> yes, because they are a mass transit right now that it's capital metro, the commuter train and any qualified van pool and this would be a qualified van pool some of what we've done you've put the structure in place for them to utilize their federal pre-tax benefit if they want to be a part of the pilot study or on going maybe another van pool or whatever else may come up.
>> okay.
it turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought last Tuesday into move approval of 38.
>> second.
>> discussion?
>> I wanted to make sure you and I have had a little difficulty getting together.
>> yes.
i'm sure it's my fault.
>> no, no, it's not anybody's fault, we just couldn't get together on this but a lot of things, aid chance to revisit the testimony given last week on this item, I just want to make sure that what we're doing as far as the survey and everything is concerned, I want to make sure the auditor's office is in step and in tuned with the outcome and ensure that their workload won't be as significant or have a serious impact on what we doing as far as trying to keep up with the records and of course personnel has so some something to say about it to some degree, I guess.
i want to make sure all the loose ends are connectioned.
my final question on that was if the study itself will indicate a whole bunch of things, but if the study ends up revealing a lot of need to bring a along ths express shuttle service, do we have enough interest throughout to actually provide the service to the county.
say we hit a home run, which is something I think the Austin office was basically concerned back because you have an inplucks or heck of an increase of persons that would really like to be involved in this program.
say we have a home run and by hitting a home run mean as workload and not only that, the persons that we may contract with, you may end up contracting with, local or whatever, to ensure that those services are available to the, as far as what the study reveals.
>> right.
so that was my -- that was going to be some of my questions that I was going to bring to you.
>> they're excellent comments.
the first one I just want to say I completely understand.
we have so much respect for the role of the auditor in this kind of process and it would be one of our top priorities after you make your decision to sit down and be sure that we are understanding all the issues and that we're meeting their time line proses issues and everything else that is on their table and we will try to do that right away.
>> okay.
>> so secondly, in terms of capacity, we are wanting to do a short pilot, a 90-day pilot.
one of the reasons we have chosen the provide their we have is they are a large enough company to do whatever the capacity requirements turn out to be.
i would love to have the problem, love to have us hit a home run here and have a huge amount of demand.
i think the demand is there, to put it in football terms, this is ours to fumble in terms of demand but we don't intend to.
in the capacity issue I don't see that as one of our constraints, although I would love to push the envelope and see if we can get there.
>> one thing I would like to america the point of, we are operational in June.
robin's pilot program is scheduled to start in April.
>> correct.
>> why?
>> because April is when the ozone operating system begins.
>> we will not be functional on the qtb until June so robin was aware of this.
this is as quick as we can implement it.
>> and we want to respect that.
on the other hand, there are a lot of things we can do preptory, things that we can do educating the employee base, making sure we understand what their needs and concerns are.
there is a lot of prep work that we can do so we won't just be widdling our thumbs until June.
we will be ready.
>> we can coordinate that because staff is going have to talk to employees in any case about the qtb, holding meetings, information sessions, e-mailing that sort of thing and we can certainly incorporate the pilot program in that and give robin and her group access to the employees to explain what they're trying to do there's no problem with us doing that, just know we won't be operational until June, though.
>> thank you.
for that clarity, I appreciate it.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor.
it passes by a unanimous vote.
>> judge, I want to say thank you and also set, sitting here s morning, you've looked at tma, cars2go and this is forward-thinking strategy you're putting in place and I want to say thank you so much for doing it.
>> thank you.
i move that we direct staff to try to do the survey in house, but if that cannot be done, let us know and we will figure out another way to do it.
>> we advise the court which ever way we're going to do after we've had more time to study it a little bit.
>> discussion?
all in favor.
that passes by a unanimous vote.
thank you very much.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 4:03 PM
