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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAir Quality Advisory Board - Minutes - 07/25/2006MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 200 WEST MOUNTAIN AVE. July 25, 2006 For Reference: Eric Levine, Chair 493-6341 David Roy, Council Liaison 407-7393 Lucinda Smith, Staff Liaison 224-6085 Board Members Present Jeff Engell, Nancy York, Dale Adamy, Dave Dietrich, Kip Carrico, Gregory McMaster, Nancy York Board Members Absent Eric Levine, Bruce Macdonald, Cherie Trine Staff Present Natural Resources Department: Lucinda Smith, Tara McGibben, Brian Woodruff Guests Mark Jackson The meeting was called to order at 5:37 p.m. Minutes The minutes of the month of May 23 and June 27, 2006 meeting were unanimously approved. Public Comment • No public present. Agenda Item 1— Transportation Planning Smith: In the past, the board has brought up for possibility 3 agenda items; the subjects of air quality, opportunities and barriers, and transportation planning. It seemed to me fairly often transportation questions came up such as, "Do PSD or CSU have to fit within the city's transportation planning plan and guidelines?" "Why isn't PSD doing more to help reduce VMT?" The Mobility Management Scan was prepared as a supplement to the Mobility Management Best Practices Assessment. It looks these questions in more detail and at existing City practices. It was a good grounding for me, and I thought it might be for Board members as well who aren't as familiar with these issues. This is a good opportunity to ask questions since Mark Jackson (Transportation Planning) and Brian Woodruff (Air Quality) are both here. Smith for Levine: Page 3 of Mobility Management summary regarding city plan: quote stating that at least 2/3 of the developed land area is set in pre-existing land patterns and travel patterns. Why not adopt strong measures to encourage VMT reducing infill and Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 2 of 22 use existing areas when possible? For example a single convenience store could go a long way in reducing needless trips in the right place. Do we have good methods yet for calculating VMT reduction potential in existing neighborhoods for things like small grocery stores? So the question is what kind of VMT reducing measures are there for infill areas and how might we calculate the VMT benefit of these types of things. • Jackson: The concept that Eric Levine describes is endemic and one of the spines of city planning if you will; that's what it's built on. That's why we have the density standards that we have; that's why we have the concept of activity centers. They are clustered together to minimize trip length. That's why we build our enhanced corridor project, such as the Mason corridor and Harmony/Timberline and the mountain vista corridor specifically to reach and meet those activity centers and neighborhood areas. • Woodruff: The last City Plan update strengthened the infill -provisions. Infill is developing parcels of land that have been undeveloped or re -developing land by infill. Infill and redevelopment are the only chances that the city has of getting at the 2/3 of the developed area that's in pre-existing land patterns. City Plan is doing what it can in those areas. We have to recognize that 2/3s is locked in to the established patterns that are auto dependent. That's a challenge that we face as a city. We can make sure that the new infrastructure is developed differently. • Jackson: Since we made the decision with the 2004 update to the City Plan to fix the growth management area boundaries for the community, that has ramifications in terms of development patterns and such both internal and external to the growth management area. This has a positive affect in that it's forced the city to focus on infill activities. The Mason Corridor is a good example of infill and will have a huge developmental impact. • Carrico: What are the some of the other elements besides the transportation end of Mason Street? • Jackson: There is a first phase development of bike trails on west side of railroad right- of-way. On the east side of the right-of-way is intended to be a 5.4 mile long bus rapid transit corridor. If you're familiar with Boulder's transportation systems called Hop, Skip, or the Jump; these are corridor routes that run on short 5-7 minute head -ways where the bus runs frequently. Imagine that with low -slung vehicles that are more comfortable, easier to access and egress; they look like light rail vehicles on wheels; that's the transportation element of it. The land use element varies per segment per corridor. The northern segment is basically Old Town; and that would remain how it is today except it would have a high speed shuttle service running up and down Mason Street. Mason and Howes would convert back to two-way streets. That would service CSU main and south campus relieving a lot of their parking pressures. South from there through the Mason/McClelland general area and down to the south transit center, just south of Spradley Barr Ford, it's the trail head for the Mason trail that connects to the Fossil Creek Trail. Land use has tremendous potential for high density activity centers that can be reached via mass transit or bike. We're seeing developers interested in high - density loft developments in Old Town. Foothills Mall wants a shuttle connection from the corridor to the mall. The corridor segways in with the inter -regional plans that will connect Ft. Collins with the Denver metro area either by commuter rail or bus rapid transit; the south transit station would serve as a hub for either one of those two. • McMaster: Would you say the Mason Street corridor vision does not seem to be successfully getting out into the community? Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 3 of 22 • Jackson: I would have said that a year ago, I think it's much better now, we've seen a marked increase. We made the mistake selling it as transportation medium. As soon as we started talking about the economic potential, just dollars and cents bottom line what you can make from a TOD (Transit oriented development) and the fact that there's starting to be on the ground successful TOD examples throughout the nation, Denver being the closest as a result of T-Rex and some of the light rail stuff that's going in. Developers smell money and that seemed to be the turning point, when there's a real tangible economic benefit to it. Once we realized this we have done public outreach blitz since the beginning of the year. We've made presentations to city council, to all the boards and commissions. If you're interested in the presentation we've love to come. Chamber of Commerce, realtors association, home builders association, DDA, DBA; we did part of the sustainability series at the senior center this fall and brought in experts on TOD and people went nuts for it and we're still getting invitations all the time. The Community Foundation will be our next presentation. • McMaster: So you have a great north/south corridor plan. What are you going to do about east and west? • Jackson: The Mason corridor acts as a north/south spine for most of the activity centers in Ft. Collins from a transit perspective; it's only part of the system. An enhanced travel corridor is similar to Mason where you have a combination of rapid transit in combination with other alternative transportation modes as well as vehicular movements in a high -activity -high, density -high -demand area and there are four quarters that are identified in the transportation master plan for this type of facility. One is Mason, the others are Harmony corridor from the Mason line to the interstate which will connect to the park and ride. The third one is Timberline from Harmony to mountain vista area. The forth is some route, by default referred to as the Conifer area that meets northern transit center back in Old Town. That's the hub of the enhanced corridor. The transfort strategic plan, which we're in phase 2 of 4; there's feeder routes that are being put in place. I have a presentation that would take 30-45 minutes to go through. • Smith: Is that on the transfort strategic plan? • Jackson: I bring in Kurt Ravenschlog and Kathleen Brackey. Kurt gives an over -view on what transit has been in Ft. Collins and takes it from past to present. Kathleen talks specifically about the Mason corridor and the role it will have locally, regionally and economically. • Dietrich: What is the probability of re -development of residential property along some of these corridors? You mentioned down town they're putting up lofts. I don't know where the city stands on re -development of exciting residential areas. • Jackson: We're working with current planning on doing a zoning over -lay district for the Mason corridor. And it's a test balloon because of the pressures we're getting; we want to be able to facilitate the type of development that would work in concert with something like the Mason corridor/rapid transit. It's been received well. The corridor has more than one characteristic as you go North to South. There's tremendous pressure for redevelopment in the northern portion right now. CSU has their plans for their main campus and there's a lot of redevelopment involved on the main campus there. Drake to Horsetooth is currently residential and I don't see that turning right now; maybe the East side. The west side there's a lot of residential. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 4 of 22 • Dietrich: From Drake south there's some single family units there that were built in the late 60's/70's. • Jackson: I'm certain that at some point they'll gentrify and there will be those sorts of market pressures. We're not putting undue pressure on it. We're reacting to market force. • Dietrich: So I guess what I was asking is that if anybody expressed any interest it in. • Jackson: South of Horsetooth very much so. The character changes again from Horsetooth south and it has lots of interest in potential re -development. • Dietrich: Is CSU planning on putting dorms closer to the corridor? • Jackson: I think they're hungry for facility space rather than residential. In talking with Brian Chase I got the sense their residential was all going to be towards west end. • McMaster: They have that pretty much mapped out. I was on the City Plan update committee. One thing that became clear that re -development and infill can not change the character of existing neighborhoods and that's where this gets dicey. If you have a zoning that's going to allow that, then it's okay. But, unfortunately I think that's where the conflict is going to start to come. • Jackson: There's going to be things like that to work around. • Dietrich: A lot of the development that went in has no ability to walk closely to something. You would think they could develop some of these residential areas without being to disruptive to put in this -that -and -the other things, the way towns used to be such as a small store within a block. • Jackson: To some degree you can find examples of that such as Harvest Park in the south-east end of Ft. Collins. That's what you'd consider new -urbanist, linear streets, grid networks, good pedestrian porosity so that you can get where you want to go and aren't put in a cul-de-sac and force them to drive. • Dietrich: The real issue is traffic, parking, crowds, noise, that kind of stuff. People should travel by foot traffic; given its economically feasible and sustained economically. • Smith for Levine: Is there any way to assess the VMT reduction potential from these small scale land use changes where, for example, a convenience store or another needed store went in to a residential area. • Dietrich: I have a VMT related question too. Since we're seeing more hybrid vehicles and scooters along the road, how will you model VMT and how much will it change in the next years? • Jackson: The industry is really reaching to get a good answer to that in terms of what is going to be the future in terms of fuel efficiency, emissions, size of vehicle as they relate to capacity, those sorts of things. Those are all elements of traffic forecast modeling. Fuel consumption, fuel efficiency,, cost of fuel; all those are factors and I'm sure there are lots of people at the major university's think -tanks who are grappling with that situation right now. • Dietrich: Now the VMT may not change; the pollution related aspects will. • Jackson: In the 2004 transportation master plan we saw that with our mobile air quality analysis. We found that, as a result of cleaner fleets and more efficient vehicles, even though the VMT was climbing the emissions were going down. As the old fleets retire and the new, cleaner fleets come in. It really is a big X factor in terms of VMT doing one thing and having air quality improving as well. In terms of measuring it I think Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 5 of22 there are ways to measure VMT but they are developing better methods of doing it. We do a traditional, regional 5-step gravity model. It takes into consideration a lot of the issues that you're raising that would have an impact on VMT. It would determine trip choice, trip length, and trip type based on demographics, land -use patterns, and proximity to attractiveness. The model is somewhat sensitive to that but it's such a grand scale. There are more sophisticated modeling tools for corridor level analysis, for sub -area analysis and those are things we're trying to get on the forefront of and pushing to be able to do micro -level quarter plans and analyze those things. • Woodruff for Levine: Well that sounds like it might get at the issue that Eric is raising here in his question: Do we have good methods for calculating VMT reduction in existing neighborhoods for example for small groceries? That's a very fine scale for the kind of modeling that's usually done on a master plan. I was going to answer this question as no, but it sounds like its evolving. • Dietrich: That's a question of economic viability. Whether or not it's worth going to those levels because the economic viability of the small grocery is never going to occur, it'd be nice but it's never going to occur. If you were going to start a Beaver's Market today, would you? • Jackson: I would in particular circumstances. If you were to do it the old -school way that Beaver's did it, where you stuck it in the middle of the neighborhood without any ancillary things around it, I think it would sink in a heart-beat. There's no way it could compete; I'm not even sure how Beaver's does it. I think when you start going to more activity center concept when you have a Beaver's coupled with a dry-cleaners coupled with your insurance agent coupled with a day-care center, restaurants, those sorts of things, I think they become a lot more viable. • Woodruff: Plus it's a walk -able area. • Jackson: If you think of old Gaylord in Denver, what a lovely, charming activity center area that's maybe two blocks long. It's surrounded by residential and those sorts of things and has done well. • Carrico: Carving out two blocks in an existing area; how do you it? • Jackson: I don't think they carved it out. I think it was the way Gaylord was and this is the old neighborhood center and I think they revived it. • Carrico: I mean, how would you do it today. • Jackson: You'd have to master plan a block and do property acquisitions and such. • Dietrich: Construction such as Timberline, Prospect, do you have any estimates on how much does that increases VMT while construction is in progress? I would venture to say in that particular development has increased VMT dramatically and doubled VMT for most people. You have to go way around to get to where you want to go. • Jackson: There's some of that. It shoves some of it around too. It shoves who's affected around; there are certain areas that'd normally be impacted and because of the construction in proximity to their area they get arrested from a lot of it. • Dietrich: You don't have any information; well it's pretty hard to do the two. People find the easiest fastest way and not necessarily the surest route. • Smith: Wouldn't there be information in retrospect by looking at the traffic count data? If there is traffic count data. Air Quality Advisory Board 1 /20/2005 Page 6 of 22 • Jackson: We've done some of that data for the transportation board members for the uptake on Lemay because of the Timberline project; but that doesn't get to VMT so much as traffic patterns. • Dietrich: If you're at Prospect and Timberline now, in order to get to Harmony, most people go N to Mulberry, out to the inter -state, down, off on Harmony and back, adding and making a big square because of this mess. You can't go to Lemay and cross, forget it. • Jackson: I like to think 2006 is an anomaly. Your point is well taken. • Adamy: Foothills is looking into a shuttle as the Mason Corridor develops. Are there other businesses interested? Is there a study about the transition of pedestrians from the corridor across College to the east? If there's an influx in residents who want to get to the corridor and people drop off the course and start infilling on the east side of the business. Is there some discussion about how this is going to be handled? • Jackson: From Mason master plan to the way the design work it's being done with a premium on pedestrian and bike access as well as vehicular access. It's easy for people to get where they need to go. There's a number of barriers involved with that. One would be College Avenue and the second would be the railroad. That's why we're trying desperately to get grade -separated crossings in as soon as possible. We have secured grant funding to have one. We are continually looking for ways to improve safety conditions for pedestrian crossings at College. We'd love to do grade -separated crossings where ever we can but they are expensive and we can't do them all over. We look for things such as hazard elimination funds from CDOT. We received $350K for help on the College/Willox intersection. We're lobbying for hazard elimination funds at College and Rutgers. We're really trying to get the ear of CDOT. • Adamy: What can we do as a board to facilitate anything? • Jackson: I'll let you know. I have my team mobilized to do research and get in touch with CDOT, whom we've had good luck with. When a new project goes in we make sure there's good connectivity and trail access. • Dietrich: What are the options to cross railroad tracks? Over, under and across? • Jackson: I can tell you the one that's least favorable. If you want to build a new crossing of a railroad track, the PUC won't allow at grade crossings unless you trade them out for another at grade crossing and put a grade separated in. If you want to get around the tracks you have to go above or below, for all intents and purposes. • Dietrich: Not even for pedestrians? • Jackson: Not even for pedestrians. We tried at the CSU campus as well as some other areas, we could some at -grade crossings with treatments and they opposed it and it becomes frustrating because it adds millions of dollars in cost to your project costs. • Dietrich: Is it a safety issue? ,. • Jackson: To hear them talk it is, but it's really a legal liability issue. They are going to do what ever they can to keep themselves out of court. Cost estimations for some of the grade separations that we have on our master plans, such as Vine and Lemay, that's a big project at a cost of $21M for a grade separation and relocation of Lemay. • Smith for Levine: Level of service standards. It's difficult to maintain historic level of service standards and clearly a lack of major transportation funding is the major problem. Why aren't developmental impact fees scaled to address the actual higher cost? Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 7 of 22 • Jackson: The short trite answer is Nexus. You cannot disproportionately charge for impacts. You can only charge the proption of the amount of the relevant impacts. For instance, a development comes in and you ding them for the impacts that they caused to the street system, you can't tack on a bike trail unless you can show there's a tangible nexus or linkage that they're causing those impacts you can't require them to make it. You have to have rational nexus and rough proportionality. The non -trite answer is that we do alter our costs on a regular basis by reviewing our street over -sizing which is our transportation impact fee and amend by miles have been added and types of roadways. The other issue is that you can't hang it all on new development. Ft. Collins is older and you have a lot of pre-existing conditions. Lemay is a perfect example; Prospect is a perfect example. Those are undersized facilities and to go in and re -do those to today's standards would be extremely expensive and you'd alter the neighborhood character in that area. • Woodruff: I would challenge Eric's question. The people are driving more and more every year. The VMT per -capita is going up. So you can't point to the new developments and say they're the ones causing the increases. • McMaster: You can because that forces city activities farther and farther out. The rational is you have the development fees and then you add the people with tax base and between the two that's supposed to cover it. And we now know that's never the case. A perfect example is Timberline and Prospect and it just gets worse and worse. • Jackson: I agree people are driving more and more as a society. • Dietrich: A lot is beyond the city control. • Jackson: A lot if it is where we choose to live, work, what's acceptable in distance now as opposed to 15-20 years ago. We import the trips because of CSU and being the city and county government employer. • McMaster: The City is dynamically changing where there's transportation. • Jackson: School of choice increases VMT. • McMaster: It's an ever changing problem. • Jackson: There is a severe issue with no consistent transportation funding in the city. There is no dedicated source of transportation capital funding in the City of Fort Collins. It comes through general fund availability or grants and opportunities or development impact fees or taxes. • Woodruff. You submit a list of projects and voters vote on it. And those projects are locked in for the life of that sales tax and those are the projects you build no matter how the needs change. • Jackson: It's hard to be reactive and that's what put us in the hole. That's why we'd like the transportation maintaince fees. • McMaster: I see a lot of planning in transportation, enhance transporation corridors. Great concept, but we don't see how it's going to be implemented. How would we work together to create this? Buy in is good as far as the Mason Street corridor; but how are we going to get there? We're loosing bus service at this point. What about PSD route? • Jackson: My response is welcome to my world. How do we go from the material planning stage to really putting something on the ground; that really is a challenge. It's forced us to be creative. We're talking with CSU to enhance travel options with them. The Mason corridor is a good example of teaming with business and economic interests Au Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 8 of22 and has made us rethink how we do things. The old school way of asking for a tax increase or special vote is a special circumstance and doesn't get you through for what you need to do. We look for collaboration options. The development community knows they will have to contribute to the big development picture. • Dietrich: That's an answer to Greg's question. It has to come from top down. • Smith for Levine: The NEPA has a policy of no significant deterioration for new sources. Couldn't or shouldn't the city consider a similar policy for its transportation levels of service? Such that the city would commit to maintaining it at a certain X level of service for pedestrians or bicycles. • Jackson: We do that to a degree with our pavement management system. The pavement management system has a threshold on a scale of 1-100 our acceptable level is 70. That's one of the most cost effective. To do it on an- overall level of service that's creating an unfunded mandate. How are you going to move forward with the level of service on these facilities without funding. To a degree we have a mechanism like that; we have an adequate public facility ordinance in the city. Which basically says if a facility such as stone water, waste water or transportation, any infrastructure, if it's not meeting level of service and the city doesn't have the funds to make those improvements, then no development will be allowed unless those improvements are brought up to level of service. That means the developer can pay for it or they can find other mechanisms or they wait it out. That's what happened on Timberline. That's why you see the Timberline/Prospect project going on today. That's not found money from the city. That's a special district created by the developers and the land owners on that corridor and that's how they're financing it. We do have to some degree a mechanism like that in place, the Adequate Public Facilities ordinance. Even that is causing issues now that we're in a more economic development mindset than we were in the past. It's causing a lot of issues because there's so many un-funded existing deficiencies throughout the community in key areas. • Woodruff for Levine: Eric mentions in one of his questions that no body has come forward to support the transportation maintanence association in Ft. Collins. There's a study done saying the time not right for TMA. But in talking with business community they were hoping for support; but it didn't happen. Is there new developments on that? • Jackson: I wouldn't say it's a bad time, the riming isn't right yet. I think the timing is closer than the TMA report suggests. I feel there's a lot of potential on the Harmony corridor. Particularly with the development pressures that we're seeing now between Poudre Valley; between the Bair Center. If that goes in that's going to be a huge development with HP, Intel, and Avago, there's a lot of potential. The TMA study was a small project without much budget. They had small sample sizes in their methodology report. Many people want Harmony service. The transportation issue isn't as bad as people think, compared to Denver metro area: • McMaster: What about PSD, are they willing to integrate into the public transportation system? • Jackson: From a transit standpoint there's not a lot of discussions. I think politically people shy away from it. There's still a stigma having their kids ride the bus. • McMaster: Aren't they bothered that two of the major high schools have ' no bus service; aren't they concerned about that? • Jackson: Apparently not. We have much better success with PSD in dealing with things such as pedestrian access, pedestrian safety, bicycling access, safe routes to school. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 9 of 22 We've got a tremendously strong relationship with the PSD in those terms. They have shied away from any route sharing conversations with us. We'd always be available to talk with them about it. About the school of choice, I believe if the school was close the parents will drive kids, even living four blocks from school. • Dietrich: That's a major problem. The school district must say no driving. • Jackson: CSU has the lowest parking permit price of any university probably in the Western United States. • McMaster: What would happen if the city did approach the PSD, would there be common ground? Can we better marry transport and the entire issue, VMT, public transportation and school of choice. • Jackson: It'd be an interesting conversation to have. Historically the response we get from them when we've reached out is, well, what are you going to do for us, we don't have any money and we can't do anything. It makes for some short conversations. It's frustrating. • McMaster: Wouldn't it be worthwhile to get it out on the table. One of the things we learned at the MPO summit is the demographics in the area and how it's getting older. We know there's issues with dial -a -ride. There's a bunch of things; we currently have close to non-existent bus system to Poudre Valley hospital and nothing to Harmony Medial Center, and those kinds of things. As we see the population aging, is there any outreach on how to address the demographic needs? • Jackson: We beat the drum hard during the Transportation Master Plan and City Plan on the demographic shift and aging society. We're importing older demographics and becoming a retirement hub and has ramifications in terms of travel patterns and travel needs. It's had a direct impact on Dial -a -Ride service and is now operating on a deficit and it will impact availability. We discussed with council but it didn't get anywhere. I think we're trying ways to get transit on Harmony and Prospect corridor. We're trying desperately to find local match funding for Mason bus rapid transit. The feds will fund it if we can come up with a local match. We're looking at connecting the downtown center and bringing that into the CSU campus. Any time you'd like a presentation just let me know. • McMaster: One of the first sentences is it's generally recognized that we can not build our way out of this. Did they keep that? • Woodruff: Out of traffic congestion? • McMaster: Yes, basically that whole issue. Did they keep that in their revised report? • Smith: I don't know. I can look now at the beginning and see if it's in there. • Woodruff: The reason I ask that is I thought that was a powerful beginning statement with an important context out there. I do get the sense that has been lost or starting to be ignored as we go on in time and it shows up a lot in our decision making; which of course then is why we're fighting a lot of these issues. I looked at other people's plans and there was very little emphasis put on road building. Underlying all this is I'm wondering if part of the message needs to be getting out better such as transportation, environmental, air quality, coming back to all these fundamental things that keep policy makers ideas. They don't go back to the way they think of dealing with all these issues. Smith: Did you interpret that statement: We can't build our way out of this; meaning we can't build our way out of this by building more roads? McMaster: Yes because I think that's how they put it. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 10 of 22 • Smith: I think that, as Brian says, is a very valid concept. • McMaster: I think most of us would all agree with that. If it's lost from the update I think it's a problem. • Woodruff. The Transportation Master Plan has plans for streets -bicycle sidewalks and transit and so on. We're doing some things to bring up the alternative modes. You can ask the question are the streets getting more then they're due? Should we be putting more money into sidewalks, bike paths and transit? That's where the question really comes down to. It's a matter of priorities relative to the need. The decision makers know this and they are struggling because of the predominance of automobile use. I'm sure that if we try to bring up the capacity of the alternatives and create a more efficient transportation system so that people can walk and bike increasingly It's difficult to spend money on alternatives that aren't very popular; even though you know in your head you're going to need them more and more. The question is why aren't people using them now and will the public support investments in alternative modes. • McMaster: We've had no answers for sure. • Woodruff: That's right. • Dietrich: So how do you educate the public? • McMaster: The Coloradoan did us a favor today on the front page about gasoline prices; it's a statement of the obvious. It's affecting a lot of people. I'd be curious if we could get a closer vote on the bus issue we had 6 years ago. • Dietrich: Politicians aren't willing to take the step they need to take to reach us through. The gas tax deficit is going down; well if gas prices are here they should be here because you need a certain amount. Politicians have to take the step also; but of course they'll only do what the public supposedly tells them to. It seems like education of the public is an extremely valuable thing to do. • York: I don't know how involved the public was at the summit, but there were a lot of ordinary people and the Homebuilder's president was at my table and he wanted roads. I think people want alternatives and the public is with us especially with gas prices going up. I went to the transportation board meeting last week and an interesting little fact is the pavement maintanence is $2.3M in arrears. So that would make over a third of the deficit for the city. I don't understand what Mark meant that they could come up with $5M with the Beat Street thing without even going to the voters. There's an incongrunincy. • Dietrich: Did he mean city money or was he talking about a match with private funds? • Woodruff: Mark was talking about $5M to match federal money in order to build a new component of the bus rapid system. I'm not real sure what source of funding he was discussing. • Smith: It was outside funding that we could leverage as our match; grant funding. I don't know what he meant either. • York: The Mason Street corridor ... I'm active in PTAG which is Public Transit Action Group, those folks saved dial a ride and they're coming to the table as a needs basis. Their feeling about the Mason Street corridor is that it's not as necessary as other routes along Harmony and Timberline and some other places. I know that one of the great appeals of the Mason Street corridor is transit oriented development because it would be an enormous boost to business community. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 11 of 22 • McMaster: Mark gave an overview on that and the business community realizes the money potential and that's what got it moving. • York: I hope the city doesn't get so heavy in its encouragement of business that it forgets the need, meeting the needs of people. I do think the cost of gas will get more people out of their car except in this community there's not too many alternatives. • Engell: I'd like to think that about the gasoline prices but then you read articles, statements from GM and Ford that SUV sales haven't fallen despite gas prices. Their revenues are not falling. • Dietrich: GM and Ford aren't responding to the needs; every one else is. Why aren't they responding to the right size and type of cars? • McMaster: GM made some bad gambles by going to the hydrogen fuel cell instead of hybrid. Ford tried but it's minimal. • Woodruff: We've had an announcement from major auto maker, GM or Ford; they are backing away from hybrid technology and going with alternative fuel technology as their preferred way. • McMaster: Has to be Ford because GM has done nothing. • Dietrich: Is that because it's a better way or because they realized they already missed the train? • Woodruff: I think either they've missed the train or they don't have to change their internal combustion vehicles in order to deal with the alternative fuels. They don't have to develop a battery technology. So I was very disappointed by that. • Dietrich: Have you seen the National Academy of Science report on that? How's this going to work, corn and soybean and suddenly it's going to go for fuel? It's not going to work. • York: I sent something on that... • McMaster: Yes, you sent some info and there's others. Is some of this just the nature of how you need to write a document like this? What I'm getting at is on Page 2, you want to encourage residents to use alternative to travel. Encourage is always used. It seems to me we're at a point that's it's going to take a little more than encourage to get this going. A: We're going to have to have price subsidies or provide incentives beyond encouragement. Maybe in a sense to put it nicely a bit of force rather than encourage. If we continue to always try to make it easier for the single occupancy vehicle and trying to make it so you can drive farther and farther all we're doing is delaying and making it more difficult to get to where we think we have to be. It seems in some ways this would be the type of document that maybe we need to be a little bit harder hitting. • Woodruff: To me encouraging residents to use alternatives covers a wide range. You can say this is a good idea why don't you try it or you can change the price structure by charging for parking so that's an encouragement to use an alternative mode. • McMaster: I guess that's the nature of the document. I think under encouragement you would see incentives, education, and price changes. Those are all part of the menu. They're not being used, in that we're not ordering from the menu at the moment, but they are on the menu for use. • Smith: And wouldn't you say that this Mobility Management Scan is a reflection of the way things are now. Maybe it's true, if there's a way to do it; higher level of encouragement might be called for, it's just not being done now. • Woodruff. With the price of gas rising, that is an inducement. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 12 of 22 • Dietrich: That's it's not at the city level; a lot of what we're talking about is a national and federal level. The city can only place mandates. • McMaster: For instance, you have a 4-lane road, reserve one lane for high occupancy vehicles and bus. In other words you just make it more and more difficult, but that's going to require some real fortitude on the part of ... • Dietrich: The city can't do that. • McMaster: There's a number of things. They can charge parking. Like CSU, they should raise parking if they're truly trying to get away from that. • Dietrich: But the city doesn't control the campus. • McMaster: No, but they could work with them. I bet you that wouldn't be difficult. • Dietrich: Where would the money go? • McMaster: Because it's an enterprise activity on campus they have to be self supporting. So in a way it's good and bad. If they can raise more revenue they're better off but they'd loose the parking. • Woodruff: Let me just mention the CSU committee, they call themselves the Sustainable Transportation Committee, is looking at a proposal to increase the parking rates and use the extra revenue to pay for a shuttle service around campus. • McMaster: I heard it was for a parking structure; they've been trying to do that for years. • Woodruff: They have a $1 OM parking structure on the master plan. I'm told its 10 years out and just a fantasy. I hate to see it there too, but it's not real yet. • McMaster: Was it Ron Phillips who was talking to us when he was giving an inside story on that. Part of the rational was students thought part of that money would go towards parking structure. That fell through and then whoops the money's gone. They keep trying and that's part of the argument with the new dormitories. They can also put the new parking structure both for Moby Gym and for the dormitories so there's more parking there. That frees up parking space for building. It's an enterprise status, and they have to raise all the money. One way or another they have to be able to cover it and they just can't do it. • Woodruff: They would have to raise the fees to astronomical levels. • McMaster: Then no one would pay the fees. Is there a way we can work with the different groups to come up with more proactive changes that would help? How can we get this moving forward? • Smith: My sense is that the board has really been interested in these issues and actually wants to talk to the groups involved, i.e. Poudre School District, or CSU. It's a tricky thing because it's not the board's role to be a spokesperson for the city. But it is the board's role to have groups come in to gain more information and have a dialogue. • McMaster: Or, even if we can't speak • to these groups, at least say here's things... especially if you have more groups coming together suggesting this, say these are some concrete things that we can do as a city. Why aren't we doing this, why aren't we moving forward on them? • Woodruff: And if you send that message to the city council, and you have other groups who are also saying the same thing, there's nothing preventing you from orchestrating that. Having the same message come from multiple directions is much more powerful. • Smith: Brian, can you say whether you think the MM assessment would be able to provide some concrete suggestions that the board or other groups would then look at Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 13 of 22 and then take to council? Seems like that could potentially be an avenue to have some fairly well thought out suggestions on what the city could do. Do you anticipate some of that? • Woodruff: I think so, yes. The MM report will focus on the best practices that cities of our size use to decrease traffic and increase alternative motor use and so forth. There will be some case studies in there showing what other cities are doing. There will be suggestions for the things the city ought to be perusing. Those are recommendations from our consulting team. We're going to have bring those in and process them internally with Mark's staff, the planning staff and us and try to figure out what the next steps are. There will be plenty of grist for the mill there; plenty of suggestions and examples of how they do it in other cities for you to look at. • Dietrich: Are there some big impact suggestions? • Woodruff: I don't think so. MM turns out to be something that you have to do several different things. You have to bring up the sidewalk and bike -way infrastructure; you have to provide the transit service, you have to increase parking fees, manage parking, and others. If you do all of those things they are reinforcing our synergistics so that they produce a lot more travel reduction and use of alternative modes then if you did any one thing. That's the long of it. • Dietrich: This example's been brought up before regarding PSD. In order to involve PSD the first thing you have to do is not allow anyone to drive them and provide transportation for the kids; that would reduce the amount of police and fire necessary, it'd be that whole economic analysis down through the system; and you have this gigantic impact. Assuming that is economically feasible, now McDonald's doesn't get as much business; kids don't work because there's no need to have a job because you don't have a car; it's a whole economic thing. In order to make the big steps things like that have to happen. And you're talking about a CSU thing. I don't know how long it takes to pay off a parking garage if you take in $3 a car. Apparently it's done in every city, individual private firms put up parking garages and seem to pay it off. (91) Where do we get this information? How do you make the big steps because the little steps are fine but it takes time and they're not always implemented. • Woodruff: I'm fascinated by the concept of going to the Poudre School board and asking them to make a proposal not allowing driving. • Dietrich: The school district can say no more driving. You'd have to show them the economic benefit across the board because the school district can't make that decision themselves, PSD doesn't care because it's not affecting their budget; in fact they'd prefer it so they don't have to buy buses. But the city has to carry that load. • Engell: I think you can look at it from another perspective. What would happen if; say you're not going to let students drive; that's, a big step and we agree that would defiantly have an impact. What about a steep parking fee, now does it really work to drive four blocks to school? Probably not. You take something like that and it's simpler to analyze than looking at the big economic impact. • Dietrich: Then parents ask where the money is going? That's the difference between the larger picture if you bring in a series of different things; you're going to save on police, fire money, I don't know how the economics work out or makes sense. As opposed to fining. Paying parking fees to PSD to drive there, the parents say I don't want to pay a fee then how are the kids getting to school. The fax has to be big. We've gone the Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 14 of 22 wrong path too long and we have to turn around and set the right path. I have no idea politically how you do this. I'm frustrated. York: Is the school the main part of frustration? • Dietrich: The school is just one example. I think that's a major example in this town. Woodruff. The transportation planners say school of choice is a major impact. • McMaster: Time check for Woodruff. Are other's ready to ask questions? • York: A sub -committee should consider the bus/school PSD. And the city budget, it seems we should be thinking about recommendations to the city budget. Bringing in health issues, it's a dollar and sense cost but it's not a direct cost. Should we consider doing an air quality report to the community? McMaster: We need to have an agenda item of ways of moving forward on coming up on these kinds of issues and a sub -committee to help with interaction with different departments and give more meat to the idea. • Smith: I think that's a great idea. I think when you have the presentation on the MM report that will be another big piece of information that you can weigh as you're trying to decide what your focus will be on. It would probably make sense to focus on one general area. If you're going specifically try to move forward. How do you want to hear the MM report presentation, in conjunction with the NRAB or transportation board? I understand that these discussions are perhaps frustrating, but I hope that little pieces from today's conversation can help rule out certain things or try to help clarify others. • McMaster: Yes, it all helps. Frustration still remains. • York: Is it possible to have dialog over email to brainstorm ideas and come up with something? Sub -committee work has been very successful in the past. Has anybody had any success in dialog over email? • McMaster: In my experience, anytime it had any success is when it's a very focused area of discussion. We're not yet to a focus. Before we start we need an agenda item to get it started; then how to proceed on that. • York: I like the idea of the full committee because we have many different perspectives and that's important. • McMaster: Sub -committees were to help move things forward. • York: I like the idea of a sub -committee too. • Engell: I'm interested in knowing, CSU, there has to be someone responsible for parking or repairs. Does anyone know what forum the parking budgeting happens in? It's always been my perspective the university is subsidizing some of that. • Woodruff. I don't have the answer to that but I believe you're correct; I have the same concern. They charge $85 a year for parking for an off -campus student. It has to cost them more than that to provide the parking features. There's an implication of subsidy but not analyzed. • Engell: There has to be a budgeting conversation during the year at some point where they project these things. • McMaster: It'd be interesting to see how the university internally functions. Parking and that is an enterprise status but how does that fit into the university structure. They're autonomous but they are integrated; it clearly doesn't match up with the university stated goals of reducing power on campus. ti Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 15 of 22 • Woodruff: One thing we learned about the current management practices, although the campus has a master plan and policy documents that say we want to be pedestrian oriented and so on; at the administrative level there's a real interest in insuring free access to cars to campus. There's a perception that CSU would become less competative to attract new students and retain existing students if there was any restrictions on auto traffic. • McMaster: I agree. They're scared to death of that. • Woodruff: If that's the case people who run the university will not change until they or are shown that that's not true. It's a very difficult conversation but it's a very leveraging one. If you can figure out who brings that message to CSU administrators so they can hear it. If they had an urban planning school as part of its mix, we wouldn't have this type of situation. We don't have that kind of expertise militating. • McMaster: It's interesting the way the university's are changing and how they're attracting students and what students are looking for. They're looking at the community and the facilities. What's driving the dorm renovation has nothing to do with providing on -campus housing, it is students are looking at what they can get out of the school, such as the dorn itory and parking. They are looking at it from a very different perspective than the city is. Unless you hit them with really clear numbers that somehow override that and their perception, it's not going to work. • Smith: I can find out what the budget and approval process is; and what kinds of things do they look at as far as parking and revenues. • Engell: It's more just information for me, don't spend too much time on it. The only reason I ask is because I think PSD would be more of an impact. I don't see PSD, I see CSU. • Smith: One thing that is relevant regarding PSD is that they're working now on developing a sustainability management system but I don't know to what extent the transportation is playing a factor. It seems like it must be; it should be. • Woodruff: CSU has the same thing; they have a sustainability committee; but if you don't consider transportation of staff and students in and out of campus as part of your plan then you're missing a lot. • York: Alternative transportation in the city is so lacking nobody else is going to solve their problems because we have a city that you can't move around in. • Woodruff. That's why the package; you increase transit service then you run the bus rapid transit and then you increase the parking fees. They work together. • York: Maybe we can get people from the sustainable management developers from PSD and CSU and ourselves and some t-board members and look at what needs to happen in order to move everybody forward. That's a possibility. That would be a good committee. • Smith: It would in that you would think you would have the advocates within those organizations for these kinds of issues. So at least there would be dialog back and forth and they could bring back this message to their own organization. Which is probably where they're encountering some resistance. • York: Could we find the member's names? Then we could come up with a proposal to meet. • McMaster: So there's CSU and the PSD are the two players that we're looking at. Air Quality Advisory Board 1 /20/2005 Page 16 of 22 • York: I also want to point out the Civic Center parking is being subsidized by the city and county for employees. That's a big chunk of paying off that parking structure. I don't know how much it is in arrears right now, but in subsidizing employees is another snafu too. They have to do that because we don't have a transit system. We have no other alternatives. • Smith: It's true at least for the city it's subsidized, I'm not sure about the county. • McMaster: We need to come to a decision because we're past time. We can continue with Brian and move on; or do we need to wrap this up? • Smith: It's related to the decision as how you'd like to conclude for tonight and carry on this agenda item. When would you like the MM presentation? The reason why I ask is because is it possible to do it at the next AQAB meeting. I think it's an option for the AQAB alone to do it next month, although it may be "better to wait until September because it might be possible to have a joint meeting with NRAB or Thoard. John Stokes is interested in having the NRAB hear this issue and his thinking was that if there was a joint meeting it would be an extra special reason to have two council liaisons's there. I think it would be great to have two council liaisons at a discussion. Are you willing to wait until September and would you like to have that.... because we can do as many presentations as need be. • McMaster: I would vote for August as a board and September as a joint meeting. It feeds into the idea of what else we can do to move forward. It gives us a chance to think about it directly and understand the documents and having a joint meeting would bring us more up to speed. • Carrico: I agree. • Woodruff: Would it be okay if I gave the MM presentation to this board? That would simplify things a bit. • Smith: The interest is bringing it to you ASAP and you'd be willing to attend another meeting. • Engell: I like that. • Adamy: What's the date for the Growth Management Lead Team meeting? • Woodruff: It's not appropriate. They need to first understand it and talk about how it's going to be rolled out to the public. • Smith: Everything we do and all info is public; but I'm not sure of meetings at the administrative level; I don't think those are open. I can find out about that. • York: I think all meetings are public with the exception of executive sessions. • York: When is the budget passed? • Smith: November, I think. It's the budget exceptions process; it's scheduled for all work sessions. I believe it's in November because it would need to be established for the city's operating procedures by 2007. 1. Agenda Item 2 -MPO Transportation Summit Thoughts: • Engell: I think it'd be good to give those who weren't there a quick overview of the exercise that we participated in. We were given a budget of $1.3M, and we were allowed to spend it on roads, alternative transportation, I-25 improvement, inter -changes and we had round -table discussions in groups of 10. I thought it was good regional look at transportation. There were various people representing different communities, I thought Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 17 of 22 the conversation was the most valuable. The budget was too much so we were allowed to do it all. • York: One table didn't spend all the money; I was admiring of that. • Smith: Our table didn't spend all the money either. We put it into a general education fund. I was a facilitator. • Engell: I thought it was interesting but not sure how planning information would come of it, but it was fun. • York: I was surprised at how people went for transit. The politician said people want roads; and it made me think we're so compromising, there's some people who want roads but not all people. We do want to face the global warming situation. • Engell: My table was all people in the work force with one grad student. The big issue was how quickly can you get to point A from point B and then point C. It was all about time and the adage that time is money. • McMaster: York was in my group. There was a number of groups well represented. There was a lot of diversity there. But there were a lot of the disadvantage groups such as the elderly and students that really have a need for transportation; they were all gone. • Adamy: Has there been any progress on the suggestion of a second summit? • York: I understand it's being called a different name. They're going to be at times when people who work can attend. I heard this at the transportation board, it's an MPO thing. They're going out and discussing the 2035 transportation plan. • McMaster: I know they have to do a lot of work just to consolidate all these plans, I'd be curious as to how they do that. • York: They have to go out to the public; it's just one of those things they have to check off. • Smith: You mean getting public input for the plans? • York: Yes, the 2035 plans. • Engell: It'd be interesting to see what the final thoughts are. • Smith: I talked to John Daggett on the status of that. They're just about to release the final report, the summary. They have a web site up and each of the table maps are evident but I didn't find it when I quickly scanned the MPO Web site. If you want to look at the 17 or 34 or so maps those are available. I'm not clear exactly what the next steps are. How are they going to incorporate what they learned into the transportation planning efforts? Either that or continue with more public input. • Engell: And do it without any money. • Smith: Right, there's that too. • Engell: It was a good exercise but I don't know what you'd gain. I think you could have gained more with less budget so a decision could be made. There needs to be a heated discussion for it to really be an effective exercise rather than being able to buy everything. • McMaster: The rational for the $1.3M budget was doing a penny sales tax. There was some rational that was somewhat doable. • York: I think that's the money they anticipate coming from the feds because that's where they get their money. • McMaster: They said it would include the one cent plus the x-amount of Feds money. They felt that was a reasonable projection. The other problem could be what the cost of each of the services might have been. Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 18 of 22 • Adamy: You mean like what they should have done is have a reverse process? • Smith: I thought there were some valuable discussions about the value of different modes. There were certainly different opinions recommended and yet despite that, and maybe it's because certain people were more successful arguing their case, our table came out with a transit oriented map. They couldn't buy everything, but I will say they could buy more than I thought they could at the start. They made some choices so clearly expansion of I-25 went out the window and just the basic levels of maintenance is what my table chose. Overall I was surprised and pleased to see how much transit appeared to be supported by the whole group in general. • McMaster: That's what I said earlier, I thought transit rated very high. • York: The ones I found impressive were the train was going through Ft. Collins through Greeley and Windsor. • McMaster: The little groups can vary, but overall you can get a good feel. • Smith: I do feel they tried to mix up the tables and have different view points represented. Agenda Item 3: Lucinda Smith updated the city project and state with remote sensing. The purpose of this presentation is to give you an update of what's been happening both in our city project and the state with remote sensing. A lot has been happening since the board last talked about this in March. There's several different things going on at the state level that have really ramped up the focus on the ability of using remote sensors to identify high emitters. Earlier this year the governor basically directed the air quality control commission to look at alternatives to terminating the whole emissions program for Denver. The governor also signed a bill that calls for an emissions program that's largely remote -sensing based. ESP, Environmental Systems Products is the vendor that provides the emissions testing down in Denver, is doing a comprehensive remote sensing analysis. The Denver Repair Your Air program that has been going on that's funded by CMAQ; and then our pilot high emitter project. The governor asked the air quality control commission to look for alternatives for terminating or changing the emissions program. What they plan to do is look at these alternatives and whether they would provide enough credits for our state implementation plan to allow the Denver region to meet its requirements that are already documented for carbon monoxide and ozone. So they're going to be looking at high emitter, remote sensing hi emitter, remote sensing clean screen program which would mean expanding the clean screen component. They will be looking at extending model year exemptions, changing the cut points for emissions programs. Looking at a completely different kind of program that would just be based on on -board diagnostics which would only be applicable to 1996 and newer vehicles. You would pull the codes from the vehicle and depending on the codes it could cause the vehicle to fail. Looking at evaporative system testing because that would help with reducing VOC emissions. Or just going away from the whole enhanced centralized program where there are few lanes of dyno-testing and instead go into a program more like we have here which is a de -centralized program. Another alternative is doing away with the emissions program. The state is busily trying to look into the costs and benefits of all these alternatives. They need to have a proposal by August. They plan to bring this to hearing at the air quality control commission in November. So we know there's a focus from the governor to significantly change if not eliminate the whole state's emissions program. On the Air Quality Advisory Board 1 /20/2005 Page 19 of22 other hand the legislature passed this bill — 1302. And its goals were to reduce the motorist's cost and increase convenience of the emissions testing program. It calls for the state to develop a plan to implement this program by the end of this year. It also calls for the state to report annually, I don't know for how long, to the committee of the legislature on the cost effectiveness of some type of remote sensing program. • McMaster: The goals are simply to reduce motorists costs and increase convenience, nothing to do with air quality? • Smith: No, except for the emissions program; which is tied to air quality. • McMaster: It sounds like... • Smith: I know this bill went through a lot of amendments and discussions in various committees. It probably didn't start out exactly like this. It lays down some requirements and other elements of this new program are not defined yet. The requirements that are laid down in the bill are that the model year exemptions will grow from; we currently have 4 model years exempt, to 8 model years being completely exempt from any type of emissions test or requirement. That's one of the convenience things. The whole emissions program, the new one, will be paid for by everyone. Everyone who registers their car will pay $9 at their annual registration. And then there will be no need to actually pay $25 for an emissions test. • Engell: Including the cars in the exemption. Smith: Yes, everyone. And what it basically does it significantly expands the clean screen components. Now the goal is to clean screen half the vehicles and they're not even close to that; they've only clean screened 10%.But the goal is to ramp that up and clean screen as much as 80%. And the high -emitters on the other end would be required to come in, and within 30 days of receiving a notice, have an emissions test that they would get for free. And if they failed the test, they would have 30 more days to get their car repaired. I don't know how the aspect of registration is worked out. If in fact the motorist came in and had the confirmation test and their car was not confirmed as being dirty, it was a false failure, then they would be paid $25 for their inconvenience. One of the main issues with using remote sensing is that it does have "false failures". They would continue with in -lane testing, the basic Dyno test until the point where the program could evolve so that more vehicles were being clean screened and being lane tested then they would phase out the lane testing and just keep the clean screening and the high -emitter portion. They need to work out the details of that. The next thing I mentioned was the ESP High Emitter study that suddenly came into shape after the passage of this bill. They've been tasked with finding out issues like how to provide maximum fleet coverage with their remote sensing devices; how can they provide an equitable program and a program that will actually look for all the vehicles. How can they determine which vehicles will actually be identified by remote sensing and deal with some of the SIP credit issues. Especially the issue of coverage and equity is one they're working on right now in preparation for this plan that needs to go to the state at the end of the year. Briefly to mention, Denver is still working on the Repair Your Air campaign phase 2. They have been able to decrease the number of false failures by having two valid remote sensing hits instead of just one. Previously they were just having vehicles contacting them if they only had one valid reading indicating they had high emissions. They were having a high percentage of false failure, about 50% of the vehicles that actually came in had low emissions instead of high. Now they require two valid hits and they're reducing their false failures. 0 McMaster: So they get two hits at different times? Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 20 of 22 Smith: Yes, different times. One of them has to be within 30 days of when they send out the notice. But one of them can be out a year. That's their window for the two valid hits. • McMaster: What do they do with the cars out-of-state? Smith: They don't deal with vehicles that are not registered within the program area. They did something else that they actually confirmed this summer that some pre -inspection repairs are happening; which is where in that program, some motorist got a letter stating we saw your car , it has high emissions please come in and we'll pay for the repairs. Regardless of that a few people actually went and got their car repaired before they took it on. I don't know how but they indicated they've been able to confirm that. That's an issue for their own study. Because if that happened in a full-fledged emissions program the issue would be addressed. They are finding the repair costs from this summer are similar to last year's costs. They're still having some problems with participation. They increased the amount they will pay for repairs from $500.00 to $1000.00. They just did that a few weeks ago, so maybe that will boost their participation. So now, motorists in Denver who get a letter from them saying we saw your car as having high emissions, please come in and if it has a problem we'll pay up to $1000.00 to repair it; because they've had problems getting people in. This is funded through the federal government not through Denver or the state. York: And Denver was able to do this - Denver city, county? Smith: It's the RAQC, which is their air quality planning agency. They applied for this CMAQ funding and that's how their doing the repair your air campaign. Just like in our case, the City of Fort Collins applied for the CMAQ money to do our small pilot high emitter. They been moderately successful in that they've actually repaired 820 vehicles over 3 years. It didn't meet their goals but that's not a small number and they're really achieved some savings. We'll quickly look at the Fort Collins High Emitter program. I presented this before so this is just a reminder. We are doing voluntary remote sensing high emitter identification and repair. Our goal is to repair 25 vehicles and measure public response. We are going to do that part by offering $500.00 in repairs. There's also a voluntary change of ownership component to this grant. We will offer rebates this summer for emissions tests to buyers or sellers of used cars as long as they provide us with the emissions test data and we get to survey them about their views. For consumer protection as well as for air quality there could be some value in voluntary change of ownership testing. We knew there would challenges identifying enough vehicles, reducing false failures and getting enough participants. And we have really struggled with this project. Here's some preliminary information. So far we have only gotten data on 43 potential vehicles; and this is looking at all the remote sensing data from May of 2005 through now. That's over a year, that were registered in Fort Collins, that were read anywhere on their system, even it was down in Denver. We've only gotten 43 that had two valid dirty hits. And of those we've only gotten 4 to actually participate. And of those all 4 have been confirmed as clean. They -were all false failures. We've had other problems, these are to be expected, some people move, one person declined, one person sold, two were trucks that were too large to test on the Dyno. There's 7 that we haven't done the complete follow-up with yet. It's somewhat disappointing. One of the many problems is that we really felt we were going to have more remote sensing vans located in Fort Collins and it's actually gone in the other direction as a result of the passage of that bill; all the resources are sucked back down to Denver. All the ideas and plans to permit new sites in Fort Collins and have the vans up here half the time just went away. • McMaster: What are you going to do with the savings in money9 Air Quality Advisory Board 1/20/2005 Page 21 of 22 Smith: It's not our money, but we're certainly not spending it. We're spending it appropriately but very little has been spent so far relative to the project budget. This I thought was interesting, this is an actual graph from one of the dynamometer test. The red line is the dyno trace, it's a 240 second driving cycle which sort of mimics the way one might drive a car, speed up, stop and sort of go through neighborhoods. At the high point on the graph the vehicle is going about 55mph; that's the red line which is the top line. All those green lines represent the emissions at the momentary emissions of hydro carbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. The point that this illustrates is that the car is really clean, except is has one big spike right at one point. That's really what this illustrates. I hear from the technicians that that's not that uncommon. This car would be measured by all emissions test as a clean car, but if the remote sensor happened to catch it at that dirty spike that is one of the many reasons why we might be having false failures. I knew about the issue of the cars not being warmed up as one of the prime reasons for false failures bui there's a very different issue which is the way that they operate and that represents that. I could email you the PDF so perhaps you can see the colors in the graph better. I thought you'd be interested in looking at how the car functions second by second because that's what this is a picture of. Two more slides. We actually debated abandoning the project because it wasn't going anywhere. But decided that because we did all the leg -work to get everything in place for it, and because there is this increased interest in remote sensing at the state level, there would be value in doing what we could and try to keep our hand in the game so to speak. We're going to continue with the voluntary change of ownership program. Soon we'll start advertising this rebate for the emissions program. Our hope is to have 70 participants and it has to be if someone is buying or selling a car; it's going to be difficult to verify the accuracy of that because it might be presale, but. • York: Are you going to advertise in the classifieds? Smith: We're going to start in a phased way. I have a feeling that it's going to go slowly. But Katy Bigner feels that it will go quickly. We're going to start by advertising it at the DMV and maybe then ramp up to having cards at auto repair shops where people come in to check the vehicle. Then if we still don't get participants then we're going to put it in the newspaper in the classifieds and maybe the Thrifty Nickel. • York: As one who's looked to buy a car. • Smith: What would you suggest? • York: I would suggest putting it in the classifieds. Smith: Exactly in the classifieds, right when you'd be looking. There's another component towards the end of the project in September we will do a focus group of citizens to gather via focus group, the views on voluntary change of ownership and the high emitter type of program. We're also surveying participants but we only have four so it's a little shaky. Then we'll complete the other components to the extent that we can and prepare the final report by the end of October. Then present the results to the -board when that's completed, so it might be November. That's just a quick update to let you know unfortunately that the project isn't going well but more broadly at the state level I'm actually really encouraged that there's this interest in this concept of remote sensing and looking at high emitters because I believe that's appropriate. • Dietrich: I assume the definition of vehicle is a passenger car? • Smith: Gasoline. It's any on road gasoline vehicle. • Dietrich: Does it pick up the larger vehicles that are gasoline? Air Quality Advisory Board 1 /20/2005 Page 22 of 22 • Smith: The remote sensor can pick up any vehicle as long as the tailpipe is within a certain height of the beam that's shot across it. There are emissions standards for all gasoline vehicles. Part of the issue is the confirmation test, because even the dynamometer can't test certain super heavy duty gasoline vehicles, like certain cargo trucks. But maybe they'll come up with another way like a tail pipe test to confirm that. • York: What's the bi-product of ethanol combustion? Does anybody know? • Carrico: You're going to get pretty similar emissions; maybe not the same proportions; NOx versus VOC versus particulate material. Same constituents. • Smith: I think that's right, I don't know the percentages. I believe they're all reduced with the possibility of an exception in NOX emissions increasing or staying the same with ethanol and there may be some additives that address that problem but I'm not sure. But you're right Kip, it's the same basic thing, CO, nitrogen oxides, hydro carbons. • McMaster: Thank you. There was no other new business. All agreed to adjourn the meeting. Meeting adjourned 8.33PM Submitted by Tara McGibben Administrative Secretary I Approved by the Board on /� 2006 Signed 2006 Administrative Secretary I Extension: 6600