Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, September 21, 2010,
Item 7
Now let's call back to order the voting session of the travis county commissioners court. And we indicated this morning that at 1:45 we would call up item number 7. And 7 is receive briefing and take appropriate action regarding the formula one race track and we have formula one representatives here, shy as usual, and county staff. We started our discussion two weeks ago and it was so fascinating we thought we would have another one so we're back today.
>> thank you, judge, members of the commission. Richard subtle, here on behalf of the formula one project. As you know, last time we were here i made the presentation and we pretty well wrapped up but we heard a lot of questions and concerns raised and i just wanted to bring you up to date what we've done in the last couple of weeks in response to those. One of the things that has come up are the traffic concerns and circulation concerns. Mr. Geiselman has provided, i think they are going to present today their analysis of the current traffic and what it would maybe take to get down to a better situation. In that regard we heard mr. Geiselman loud and clear. We've met with him science our last meeting and we've actually hired two traffic consultants. We hired the traffic engineers out of england that did the silver stone and the british grand prix traffic plan because they have a unique circumstance over there with smaller roads and similar situation. And then we also hired kenly horn, which is a premier traffic engineering firm that has a lot of event planning experience. Not just in tias, but event planning. So we're hoping that between those two groups and joe's group that we will be able to get down and analyze and make the improvements necessary to make this a successful event, so obviously everybody has an interest in it being successful from a traffic standpoint from the f-1 people all the way to the county. And so to answer the traffic question, we don't have any specific answers today except that we have hired the two premier traffic engineers to work with the county and the city on the traffic management plan and what improvements might be needed. The other thunk we've done is there was -- we had a conversation that the plans that we have turned in to the county and city for review at this point were grading plans. And what grading plans include are how are we going to sculpt the property, how are we going to drain it, handle water quality, handle detention. Commissioner eckhardt, you asked me a question two weeks ago. I need to clarify, you said are we affecting any flood plain and i believe my answer is no. As it turns out in talking to the engineer, we're not affecting any of the flood plain in the main floodway, but we have a couple small areas that are described by the careers as fingers, -- areas that show up on the fema map that we will be affecting but we won't be having an adverse impact on flooding. There are some areas we are going to be affecting. But since -- since the last presentation, we talked about the grading plans being in and we had conversation about it was difficult to read those plans and find out exactly what is going on. That is true. If you were to open them up, unless you are an engineer, it's very difficult to understand the grading plan. Even though it includes retention and drainage, you can't tell what's on the site. That was a very fair criticism. What we have done today, we have turned in what we're calling on this board as the conceptual master plan, but what is translated into engineering documents that have gone into joe's office are engineered versions of this. It shows the track, it shows the proposed buildings, it shows the proposed parking areas. We have access points labeled around the site, but i want to be really clear, those are place holders because what we'll need to do is get with joe and get with the traffic engineers to find out where the optimum places for access will be to -- to maximize circulation. This also shows some of the uses that are on there. A lot of the green space, and what our intent is we've got that in now as part of the grading plan. By the end of this month, i anticipate we'll have that plan dimensioned to where it's more like the engineers are used to seeing back into the county as well. But the purpose of getting this in at this point is so everybody can see the overall plan, the overall opportunities for access, the overall water quality plan, the overall lay out. We've also -- we are also -- have instituted an environmental study that goes beyond what we're normally used to seeing. We've heard some in the community talk about things like air quality and the impacts on air quality, and it's difficult to measure when you don't know what to compare against, out our initial comparison if you compare to what's out there today, of course we're going to have an impact. If you compare to what has been planned on this track, the impact is much less. Our analysis is showing it's a much less impact. I would have fun with trey but i'm not going to do it. He always tells me to turn my phone off. So we've submitted the master plan. We've got the traffic engineers hired. We've done -- we're continuing our environmental study. The -- we've had extensive conversations, as i told you last time, we have two pipelines that are going to need to be addressed on this. One is a three inch and one is a 20-inch natural gas line and we've had good conversations with the pipeline companies. The opportunities for adjusting their location and moving them seem to be very doable on our tract where we won't need additional right-of-way and it is looking like that is going to be an issue that we can handle, make them safe and actually come out better at the end than we are today. Because in moving these, we're going to get the opportunity to update them, inspect them and do some looking at them that normally wouldn't have happened but for this project. So the opportunity is there to make things actually better from a pipeline standpoint. We -- we're also looking at ways to include the community, not only -- primarily the del valle community in terms of opportunities to work on this project. Because it's privately funded, it's -- it doesn't necessarily fit into a process for outreach for local or minority owned business outreach, but we're going to make it that way and we are working on proposals now to get out into the local community so that as this project gets going, it will have an opportunity for local hiring and hopefully expand the opportunities for lots of folks to get to work on this.
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> we have not made direct contact. We're in the process of figuring out how our process internally will work and then we definitely are going to work with your department and the city's department to make sure we have the broadest possible outreach program on that.
>> i would suggest that you contact purchasing.
>> we sure will. So with that, i think i'll -- the last time we didn't have enough time for mr. Geiselman to make his presentation. We're anxious to hear that and at the end of that i'll be happy to respond or respond with questions.
>> kinly horn, is that a local --
>> kinly horn i believe is a national firm that does stuff nationally. They have done a lot of stuff locally and they have local people here.
>> but if we have questions regarding traffic, joe will be given the contact information of i guess which one of these consultants to contact?
>> well, both of them -- kinly horn will be the primary one since they are on the ground and they are here and they know austin and travis county and texas. That will be his point of contact on the traffic.
>> okay. Mr. Geiselman.
>> joe geiselman with transportation and natural resource department. David greer who is also with the t.n.r. Fort worth was really our point of departure on this formula one because of the similarity between the event, more of a nascar racing venue than formula one. There are differences, but for lack of our own experience we sent a delegation to find out more about the traffic situation there. And what it would take to service such an event that we knew had a peak characteristic, it all just happens in a weekend and intense activity and then dissipates. So forthly the consultants selected is the same firm that did the transportation plan for the city of fort worth, for the texas motor speedway. So it gives us some level of comfort that they will know what they are talking about when it comes to race car events and how to improve the transportation system to get to and from. David greer, who is background, he's a traffic engineer on t.n.r. Staff. I asked him to use the traffic generation characteristics of a formula one race and to place it on top of the site that was selected by formula one in austin to find out what happens. And you heard two weeks ago a statement that it would take 12 hours to get to and from. That was literally the worst case. That was if you did nothing and you had that event. Just by using simple cue theory, which is an engineering technique to find out how many people can you get through the cry of a needle given -- eye of a needle given the size of the needle, how long will it take to process that many people. What i want david to show you today is the rest of our analysis. If, we were able to replicate somewhat in a very sketchy way what's happening in fort worth. They have a three-hour delay, which by some standards is acceptable for such a magnitude of that event. So we, through a series of steps, david got it down to three hours. And so what we want you to see today is just the more or less the order of magnitude of what's going to happen and what it's going to take to service this event. We'll do this very quickly so we won't take up much of your time. I want to add this is really a sketch analysis. We expect to work with the consultant selected to work further and through analysis they are going to import experience from england, silverton, which may or may not be applicable. We would like the find on what's going on there and how much of that can be imported to a texas experience. And -- but it's our intent and i want to make that very clear, is to work with the applicant to make this a successful event. David.
>> good afternoon, judge and commissioners.
>> good afternoon.
>> my name is david greer. He work for traffic engineering at travis county and i've prepared a power point presentation. I don't know if -- here we go. What i've done is i have gone to fort worth and looked at texas motor speedway, see how they control their traffic. I kind of compare the same ratios that they have going on with spectators versus number of cars, things like that. And i have several assumptions. We don't have a lot of information about formula one, but what i've done is there's several grand prix locations around the world, and about a average of 120,000 spectators is expected as a standard grand prix. It's usually a three-day race culminating -- culminating on sunday with a peak race on sunday. It's usually a three-day event averaging 300,000 spectators total. That's just an average. We don't know exactly if this is what's going the happen here or in and out but that seems to be the going numbers. So 120,000 spectators, that estimates about 35,000 vehicles. That's the same ratio as texas motor speedway has. They have about 200,000 spectate, in about 60,000 vehicles. We assumed about 15,000 spectators would come by mass transit, which is a very healthy number. Hopefully we can get that much, but that relates to about 150 buses, one bus every minute for three hours. I don't know how many people can actually support that much busing in this area or not, but that was an assumption i made. We have to assume there's going to be no charging for parking on the site because that would really delay access to the site and back up traffic. I assume traffic control officers would be controlling intersections and driveways if we have to contraflow lanes, which means we send all traffic in one direction on a roadway. We'll have to have traffic control officers. Let's see. And also any additional access to the site has to be paired with additional capacity of the roadway. You can't have one without the other. You can have more roadway capacity and not enough access points and it's not going to do any good. My assumptions were basically these right here. What i have here is a side by side view of the same -- same level of zooming in on what you have here with the texas motor speedway on the left and the formula one site on the right. I've labeled where the major highways are and minor highways and local roads are in fort worth. And i've also numbered them. The number of access points they have around the texas motor speedway, and they have 15 driveway access points. The worst case scenario where you've heard the 12-hour delay is what is on the right, which is two driveway access points and no improvements to the roadways and no contraflow lanes. This gives you an idea of the comparison to something we have here in texas. This is a zoomed-in version of the texas motor speedway in fort worth. The white triangles are showing where all the driveway access points are. I don't know in you notice or not, there is a internal loop roadway and internal loop roadway, which really helps disperse the traffic coming in and out after the race. The red arrows are number of lanes used in contraflow, which means that these are two-lane roads, but during the race they put all traffic in one direction except for maybe one road going to other direction for emergency access. So this gives you an idea of how many lanes are coming in and driveways. And this is sort of what we have right now, the do nothing scenario. Worst case scenario where we have here in austin right now is two driveways, one on fm 812 on the southernnd and one on
>> [indiscernible] road on the northern end. Just to kind of give you an idea of what we have in austin right now. So what i've done is assuming the worst case scenario and using the cue theory that joe talked about and estimated cost of zero dollars, nothing to do is a 12-hour delay to get in. And i've represented this as coming to the site but leaving the site is just as bad, sometimes worse because it's a little more concentrated. What i've done is i've eventually added contraflow lanes in this one which is sending all traffic in one direction on a roadway. And then i won't bore you with always the details, but i started adding capacity, widening roadways until i got down to what joe asked me to get to was three hours delay, and i was able to do that. And this is a scenario we have right here. And basically it's widening fm 812 to a five-lane roadway. Right now it's a two-lane roadway. Extending elroy road as maybe a four-lane or five lanes all the way out to additional roadways. I'll have the white triangles and the red arrows showing how many lanes will be approaching these directions. The estimated construction cost is about $15 million. That does not include right-of-way.
>> 15 million?
>> 15 million, yes.
>> 15 million excluding right-of-way costs.
>> excluding right-of-way. All right.
>> that's just construction costs.
>> all right.
>> but it is doable. But it's something that would have to be done in phases for sure. And we've also kind of drew up a proposed transportation improvement that's a little more regional, and it includes some possible arterial roadway locations and this kind of gives you an idea of phases 1, 2, 3, how we would try to improve transportation network this the area over several years. But it gives you sort of a good idea what we may be seeing out here. Now, we've had a lot of compare ton so a silver stone england site. The formula track right here. I did a lot of research on that as well. This has been around for a long time, the silver stone england site, since 1948 for british motor sport. They just had their most -- they just recently had a grand prix in july of this year and they had 115,000 spectators on sunday. So it's very similar to some of the assumptions i made for what we might expect in austin. The mentioning facts, the nearest airport to silver stone is 70 miles to london heathrow and they have helicopters running shuttles. A lot of people compare it to like apocalypse now, the number of helicopters, it's pretty business, i they have multiple campsites on farming property, on golf course property that have been established over the years as tent camping. It's not rvs like at nascar. So it's a little different. Four-person tents and a single car per $200 is the average going rate. So they do a lot of camping around the area and they walk to the site. General admission is about $180 for a three-day ticket general admission. Race weekend consists of three days, final race on sundays. Average attendance about 300,000 over a three-day span. Historically silver stone has been notorious for traffic jams on race day but they recently made improvements to a bypass area in the roadway and i haven't seen too much on how it's working now, but i'm assuming it's probably doing a little better.
>> do you know what the delay is as far as the process?
>> no, i don't.
>> it would be something good to maybe look at anyway. I really don't know, but delay seems to be a pretty important factor as far as process and something may that be contributed to what we're doing here.
>> if anyone can find that for me, i've been doing a lot of research. I'm sure there's something out there that shows you what the delays are. At silver stone. We do know the texas motor speedway has about a three-hour delay so we do have some local numbers. And i notice on the f-1 formula one race day, a large number travel by helicopter, to make silver stone heliport the busiest day. And i have a google earth map of the silver stone circuit next to toaster, england, and a lot of campsites and pictures of what it looks like. They have large camping, almost cities where they have beer stands, food, restrooms that is correct sort of thing. And that's it.
>> so then would formula one be in charge of providing the port-a-potties and water and those -- and take care of those health issues that usually --
>> i would hope they would not only have port-a-potties but organized wastewater on the site of some variety, restrooms, yes. But i think more than anything, all these things are connected, as you can see, there's an aviation element to this. What do we do at the airport, how do we get the materials from the airport to the race track, what do we do with emergency services. Both those people that live there today and 120,000 visitors. So i think for us what is important is first to get the context, what exactly are we planning for to work with a consultant to prepare such things as traffic analysis, the incident management plan, what type of services are needed, where are the staging areas, how much of this can we help to reduce by mass transit or some other event. We know it's a peak event so it's at least the race will be one weekend. Probably wouldn't want to build all this capacity for one week out of the year. Unless we see that the venue is going to be used periodically throughout the year for other types of activities of similar size. Then we start talking about permanent improvements. But we -- we have a joint task force composed of the city and the county and txdot. We met yesterday just to compare notes, and we resolved to have a list of questions and comments to the applicant by next tuesday. And so we're working to get one list that we can give the applicant. What we want to avoid is throwing stuff at each other. You know, they get threw with something, they throw it at us, we get through and throw it back and it bounces back and forth even though perhaps nothing is getting resolved in the process. We want to work very closely with the consultant to make sure as soon as we have a concern, it gets built into their analysis and it's something we are working together on in order to get this thing done on schedule. And that's where we're at right now.
>> as far as on schedule, i want to make it's in concerted with the same schedule. I've heard a schedule -- what was it? December? I heard one schedule as far as that's concerned, but i guess as far as certain things happening, starting in december and then i guess completion date, that particular schedule, i guess are they still pretty much etched in stone as far as the date of scheduling different phases for this particular facility. You know, is there any alteration in the existing schedule or has that been determined? I don't know who can answer that question, but --
>> let me take a stab at it. The formula one season goes from march to november and they race in 19 different countries in all. And that schedule is actually not published until december of -- prior to the march. So you don't really know when your slot is going to be that season until december. Now, what they try to do though is because all these cars and teams and the equipment, they are all flown in from the various places, they attempt to coordinate that. So, for instance, we've been told we ought to be ready by june of 2012 because historically the canadian grand prix has been somewhere in that time frame and it would be convenient once you are over here in canada to be able to go to austin or vice versa. There's another race in brazil that occurs at a different time, and they might coordinate that. It's hard to imagine, but from a worldwide basis, that's closer than, say, europe. But we won't know, but in order to be ready by june of 2012, our engineers and the folks that have been working on this with us tell us that we need to be able to start moving dirt in december of this year. And to move dirt in december of this year is a very -- it's -- it's hopeful, and that is why we have been turning in stacks of documents amounting to grading plans as early as we get them so that the various folks can be looking at them. And we've gotten good response from the city and the county in terms of being able to put together this team and look at them and hopefully we can expedite that. That's one of the things that we're going to be asking from you is that while this is an ambitious plan, we hope that you will share it with us and be partners with us and help us expedite those permits.
>> joe, i hope that as far as the scheduling aspect as far as making sure that things aren't back and forth and you know, da, da, da between you, is that the schedule that you are basically addressing as far as some of the things that your particular presentation that need to -- need attention?
>> we don't have a whole lot yet. Like richard said, we have the grading plans. We've gone asking for basically the context upon which to review those grading plans. We're beginning to get this. The quicker we get information like traffic impact analysis, the general feel for the activities, the intensity of the activities, the more comfortable we'll feel that we can review this product without regret. Our biggest fear is trying to approve something only to find out later that we didn't have all the information and then we're so far along we can't go back to correct it. So we would like to be in a position, and i pledge we will not be in a position of approving something unless it's ready. Unless this receives due diligence, we're not going to just slap it together to meet a schedule. So we're pressing hard to get good information up front and i promise that we will process it as quickly as we can. We'll give it our priority. But we're not going to roll over if we don't have good information.
>> david, i'm going to ask you a question about this -- it says texas motor speedway in fort worth, that page.
>> yes, sir.
>> where you have the triangles indicating 15 access points.
>> that's correct, yes.
>> so when i think access points, are there roads that take you to the access points? Or are they basically just sort of internal access routes more than anything else?
>> all those access points are on an external, what we call an external loop. Dale earnhardt, jr. Jr., is a highway and the other points are taken off state highways. Those are actually driveways off a roadway system and they are not -- once they get on the site, then they are internally shuffled around to the parking spots and stuff like that.
>> so all of that in blue is the project itself. I wouldn't go there and find any kind of residential development or commercial development unless it's related to the project.
>> correct.
>> okay.
>> the other question i had was are we expecting that sh 130 is going to be the -- since it's the road closest to the project, that that will be used as in and out of around that race track?
>> i'm assuming it will be used some. We can't direct someone to take a toll road. The one site is about a mile east of state highway 130. We also have mf 973 and 183 in the area that are north-south roadways. So we're not going to assume everyone is going to take 130, but i'm guessing traffic is going to go where the least congestion is and i'm assuming 130 will probably have the biggest capacity.
>> it's probably less congest odd 130 because if you get on i-35, and i've watched when we have the south by southwest event, it was bumper to bumper all the way down to the county line and people couldn't get out of the subdivisions. People who live here couldn't get in and out because all of the visitors were sitting on i-35. And so i -- just seems like 130 hasn't been used very much given the fact that it had incredible support at the beginning.
>> and that's one good thing about where the site is located. It is close to state highway 130. Just keep in mind it's a toll road as that so that throws a wrench in some people's minds.
>> we were told toll roads would be used.
>> toll roads will be used that day, i promise that. I don't think looking at taking away tolls. But it will be used.
>> any other questions from the court?
>> the -- there may not be an answer to this question, but is there any assumptions or staggered assumptions as far as what is an acceptable or unacceptable travel time at opening day if we're looking at june of 2012 for the first race? And if that is the targeted first race, what is the amount of time if the funding is available to even construct portions of roadway to accommodate that?
>> two years is not a -- not enough time to put in the type of infrastructure that you will need to get it down to three hours. There's just not enough time to do that. So i think what you have is some minor improvements to the existing system. I think with contraflow lanes, you might be able to put on shoulders, intense traffic management, perhaps bus, certainly get more people into the buses. Pedestrian access, things that don't costing a much money to put in you might be able to get in in two years. After that when you start widening roadways, by and large you are restrained by rate of way acquisition. You know we have to go through good faith negotiations to acquire additional right-of-way. That takes time. Utility relocation. All those things take time, design, construction and funding. First you have to have the funding to even start that process. So i would not look for the major capital improvements to be done by the first race certainly.
>> but you brought up the point and i heard what you were saying especially when david greer put his overlay model on that particular site and looking at the situation also at fort worth, i guess when has -- well, when will -- since you did mention busing, in other words, so many buses you have to have, will cap metro, have they been invited to the table to look at some of the transportation shortfalls that i'm hearing really right now, that's what i'm hearing, the transportation shortfalls to get people, participants in and out of there?
>> this area is outside the capital metro service area, but i imagine they can -- the applicant can contract with any number of bus providers.
>> [multiple voices]
>> could be another bus provider.
>> well, i guess the applicant, i guess i need to pose the question has there been any -- since it appears that there will be shortfalls as far as the transportation aspects, moving persons in and out, of course with the intent of decreasing the process as far as the delays as far as the number of hours that we're seeing there now, has there been any movement toward the possibility of looking for transportation bus situations to this particular site or any other transportation needs back and forth to the site?
>> the capital metro and the bus situation is definitely a tool that we have, we haven't analyzed it, but we've put it on our list of things that we're going to need to look at. What we're going to do is rely upon the professionals, the traffic engineers and the traffic planners to help us devise a plan that will include mass transit and traffic control and improvements and that recipe. So while we have -- we've put it on our list of things to consider and make sure our traffic engineers know that's available, we're going to count on them to help us formulate this plan. As you can imagine, we're -- we're a little more optimistic maybe than joe is on how we can make this work and when, but again, it would do us no good to put on a worldwide event where the entire world is looking at us only to have somebody sitting out in their car and having a bad experience for hours. So we share the same -- the exact same concerns you and the county and joe has in making this work.
>> thank you.
>> any other questions, comments from the court?
>> another bit of information, keep in mind that there are no dedicated buses -- bus lanes in this city, in this county, and so any buses will compete with cars and they will probably be sitting out there as well. In gridlock.
>> judge, can i make one closing comment? I don't promise that it's closing.
>> maybe it's not closing, but i want to address the way this event came to us. It's an unorthodox way that we were able to come and it's put us in a position at least i'm not used to being in. I'm not used to having the folks that are going to be responsible for approving things and looking at things, i'm not used to having you read about them in the newspaper. But because of the way this thing came about and because of the competition with other states and all, it was a necessary evil. And i just want to apologize for the way we had to handle it and the way that you ended up finding out about it. But i can pledge to you from a go forward basis now that it's on its way and it's gotten the worldwide attention and the support that it is getting throughout not only just this area but the community and our general region, i'll commit to you the information flow is going to open up and i won't promise it because it's going to happen, but every attempt is going to be made that you don't have to read about stuff in the newspaper. We're going to be working in concert with you and your staff on this from here on out.
>> thank you.
>> if you are here on this item and would like to be heard, please come forward. I got a phone call or two from individuals indicating that they would be here and would like to have --.
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> [no mico].
>> give us your name.
>> yes, sir. My name is todd robleski and i didn't prepare to speak today, but basically the concern is, from my point of view, is that i've actually seen mr. Suttle speak to the del valle community coalition and it seems that what he was trying to establish is that this is much more than a -- just a formula one i vent and it seems like that what's we're you talking about is a formula one event. The term he used seems much more appropriate and that's a race track facility. According to the documents that were viewed by the austin american-statesman that were provided by i believe
>> [indiscernible] productions, this facility is looking at having use up to 250 days out of the year. And that would include events such as grand am racing, drag races, et cetera, for an additional use of 400,000 people per year. And you can correct me if that is what was submitted to the city. And so also there is expecting 20,000 to 30,000 people from mexico and south america. So i'm assuming that those people would -- a certain percentage of those people would actually be coming on the highway and not just by airplane. And so i'm wondering what the impact would be on hays county at the intersection of s.h. 45 at i-35 and whether there's been any discussions with hays county or even if that's relevant. Because that section ends at a stoplight and i'm assuming that most people coming from outside of the region would not be aware that 130 was a toll road and they would just use it given the map that would be the quickest way to get there. So i'm bonding what the traffic impact is going to be at 35 at 45 and i just want to reiterate that i think these discussions should go forward on the basis of a race track facility that would be used up to 250 days per year and not just be talking about a single three-day event. And that's pretty much what i have to say.
>> okay. Thank you. Anybody else? Last opportunity today. Thank you very much, mr. Greer. Good job there.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you all.
>> and we'll see you all again when appropriate. All right? Thank you very much. Joe has a copy -- you have a copy of that?
>> yes.
>> can you give me a copy of that?
>> sure.
>> give me one. I appreciate that.
>> thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 7:57 PM
