Traffic and Transportation Committee

COMMITTEE ON TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION December 11, 2017 A meeting of the Committee on Traffic and Transportation was held this date beginning at 2:33 p.m., at City Hall, First Floor Conference Room, 80 Broad Street. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Seekings, Chair; Councilmembers Moody, Wagner, and Wilson, Mayor Tecklenburg (arrived at 3:06 p.m.)Staff: Keith Benjamin, Director of Traffic and Transportation, Robert Somerville, Janie Borden, Colleen Carducci, Mark Aakhus, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary Other Councilmember Present: Councilmember Mitchell and Lewis The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Chairman Seekings. APPROVAL OF MINUTES On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the November 13, 2017 meeting. TO AMEND THE CODE OF THE CITY OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 270 TO PROVIDE FURTHER CLARIFICATION ON RESIDENTIAL PARKING DISTRICT DECAL ISSUANCE. (AS AMENDED) Chairman Seekings said it was nothing major. They had some words missing the last time. Councilmember Moody said that Councilmember Waring may have been there the last time that they talked about this. They talked about somewhere having a decal or something on the Councilmembers cars to provide for their parking as they were going around the City. He asked if there was anything going on related to that. Chairman Seekings stated that they had discussed it and it had come up in a number of conversations. There had been a variety of views on that. They should get an opinion on the legality of it and talk to Mr. Benjamin. Keith Benjamin stated that he had spoken to the Mayor’s office after it had come up at a Council meeting. He didn’t know the Mayors position on that. Chairman Seekings said he would check in with the Mayor. Councilmember Moody said it kept coming up. He had been told that they just needed to hand their badge on the mirror and they would see it and go on by. He did that the next time and had a ticket. Chairman Seekings said they would go back and talk to the Mayor. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above item. Director’s Update Mr. Benjamin said they had gotten halfway through the process of replacing the meters. There would be a press release that would come out that day regarding the smart card system. They wanted to make sure the general public knew that if they already had an old smart card, that they could just exchange it at no charge and money would be transferred over. They were waiting for all of the computers to be upgraded to make sure that was together. They had been in conversations with the BCDCOG about bus shelters and how they could bring those to the City. They had a new design and had the ribbon cutting at the airport. They had benches that were available too, so they were in conversations with the Charleston Housing Authority about some locations around their properties where some benches could be put in place near the bus stops. They would see more information coming soon. The CARTA board just voted the new contractor on board to do the installation so there wouldn’t be a cost to the City. It had just been the City office communicating with them about what the locations were. They had been identifying locations both on and off the Peninsula, so if there were suggestions they should let him know. Council had approved financing to re-do their entire traffic video management system. They had a huge screen set that monitored all of the traffic cameras. They would be upgrading all of that. They would be doing a presentation to showcase the capabilities at the end of January so they would be receiving invitations to come by and see what that was doing. They had also been in conversations with the Police Department about how to aggregate data better. Right now, they didn’t do as good of a job with understanding where accidents were happening as they could be. BCDCOG had launched their regional transportation framework plan for transit. They had launched a steering committee the previous week. There would be three stakeholder meetings, and that would be huge. It would dictate where the investments would be. Councilmember Moody asked when the smartcard installation would be complete. Mr. Benjamin said the computers were up and running. Councilmember Moody asked about the meters that would accept them. Mr. Benjamin said that there were 943 meters installed of the 1709 so far. They only had two technicians, but they were trying to move as quickly as possible. Councilmember Moody asked if they were going to wait. He asked if they were going to go to 24 hour use or if they would still only go until 6. Mr. Benjamin said that the time of meters and the charge didn’t fall within his decision making process, but if they did go into action, it would be on January 1, 2018 that they would go into effect. Councilmember Moody said it would be 24 hour charges and Mr. Benjamin said no it would be the time they was set. Councilmember Moody asked if the monitoring system was manned all the time. Mr. Benjamin said it was during the daily hours. Those people weren’t in the Traffic and Transportation department. They had staff that did that specific work, but right now they didn’t have enough people to man it 24/7. The hours they monitored depended on the staffing schedule. If they had crewmembers doing other work, sometimes there wouldn’t be someone there. They didn’t have a robust enough staff to ask someone to be there for a consistent amount of time. Councilmember Moody said it seemed somewhat wasteful to have all of that there and not be using it. He assumed it was used for traffic and holding the lights. Mr. Somerville said technicians had to go to the intersection itself right now to make any adjustments. They would like to have someone there 24/7. With the upgrades, they could make changes from the room instead of going to the intersection. Councilmember Moody asked if they monitored anything other than streets. Mr. Benjamin said not from there, however, it was understood that the monitoring system would be a back-up to the MEOC. Councilmember Moody stated they were having a discussion in the budget process about the security. He was talking with the Mayor about the security here at City Hall during Council meetings. There was an officer at the Hazel Park restrooms as well, and his question was if they could put a camera over there rather than have the security guard there. Mr. Benjamin stated that the only thing they would have to look at would be fiber connections for it. Ideally, they could monitor it from the system. Chairman Seekings asked what time those restrooms closed and Councilmember Moody said he thought they closed at dark. Mr. Benjamin said that the capabilities were there to use a camera. Councilmember Moody said it might be a funding position to fund that position. They could save some money somewhere by putting a camera there. Chairman Seekings asked if they had a master graphic of projects that were underway or proposed in the City. Mr. Benjamin said they didn’t have one yet, but he was working on it. They were working with the IT Department to create and aggregate a map and make it digital. Then, it could be referenced. He hoped to present that at the end of January or February. ABM Parking Services/Parking Discussion Chairman Seekings stated that there were some basic questions which included what ABM did for the City, what the duration of their contract was (including extensions), and where they were specifically with going from manned to automated services in the garages. Ms. Carducci stated that in 2013 there was a request for proposals and ABM was selected through that process. The selection committee included Councilmember Waring, Councilmember White, Bob Miracle (deputy CFO at the time), Captain Mercer, Robbie Somerville, herself, and Mark Aakhus had participated as a resource. The contract was started in the summer of 2013-2018. They had up to 4 additional years. The City had the ability to extend the contract. The contract allows for ABM to get paid a management fee. All the revenue from the parking system went into the City’s account. ABM contracted and managed all facilities, so all of the employees were ABM employees. The City then gave them quarterly operating advances, and with the advance funds, ABM then paid all expenses. As the selection committee, they put out questions because there were a lot of discussions around automation and the need to advance the City’s cash management systems and the gate equipment. A lot of the equipment had been extremely old. So, as a result of that, they sent out questions to the companies they brought in to consider. One of the questions was how they would implement the automation and what they would recommend. Chairman Seekings asked how much they were paid. Ms. Carducci stated it was a flat management fee. The City had the ability, as it added facilities, to add those facilities to ABM’s contract, which it did. Mr. Aakhus stated he believed it started out at $100-150,000 per year with a 3-5% increase. The management fee was a price per space. Ms. Carducci stated that they paid ABM an operating expense cost which included the overhead for employees. Chairman Seekings asked where they were on automation and if that was displacing employees. Ms. Carducci stated that it did not displace employees. The automation had commenced, so they had automation in the Queen Street Garage, Majestic Garage, Midtown Garage, and the Aquarium Garage. They worked with the churches and they had been using the automated system. In the bulletin every week, they published a QR code and it allowed the members to park in the garage without paying. Chairman Seekings asked if they had any sense on how the automation was working with the egress time from the facilities. He had heard that it took a while to get people out of the garages when it was busy. Ms. Carducci said when it was implemented they had run into some technical problems with the equipment that was installed. That had been resolved. Mr. Aakhus said that everything was on track now and once all the garages were automated they would have cameras that would pump to the command center so they would be able to monitor remotely in the event there was a back-up. Chairman Seekings asked if the plan was to go fully automated at all garages. Mr. Aakhus said they would be like what the City currently had. Ms. Carducci said that no employees would be terminated as a result of automation. They would be transitioned into other positions, whether it was customer service or the command center. As part of the implementation of automation, the first thing that needed to occur before automation started was that a central command center needed to be opened. That center was owned by the City, so the City paid for the installation of the computers and the system that then read all of the computers in all of the garages, so that 24/7 there would be people working in the command center answering questions of people at the garages if they pushed a button. If someone needed assistance the command center could then dispatch someone to go to the garage if they were somewhere else, or the command center could push a button and open the gate for the person. The command center would bring new positions. There are also new garages that had come online where staff could be moved to. Chairman Seekings asked how many employees ABM had in Charleston. Ms. Carducci said she thought it was around 90 or more and they had some open positions. Councilmember Moody asked if they did garages other than the City’s. Ms. Carducci said that number referred to employees that worked in the City parking system and collections. Councilmember Lewis stated that there had been over 100 employees before and they were down now. Ms. Carducci stated that when people found better jobs or were terminated for cause was how people were losing positions. No one was losing their job due to automation. Councilmember Lewis asked if anyone from the City monitored ABM to see how their employees were doing. There were employees who had been there for a long time and he had heard stories. Ms. Carducci said that they were employees of ABM, so the City needed to be careful getting into their employee issues. However, when the City had been told that there were employees who had a grievance and felt they were wrongly terminated, the City asked questions. ABM was a very large corporation and had employees across the country. The local staff here couldn’t terminate an employee without going through the corporate process. Oftentimes, the corporate office caused the local people to give the employee a second chance. They followed very strict corporate guidelines for employee rights before they terminated. Councilmember Mitchell stated that he had met with ABM a few months before with Councilmember Waring and they had spoken about the automation. He said that he didn’t like automation at all. ABM said that people weren’t losing jobs and that wasn’t a true statement. ABM had told him that they were not going to do automation and when he heard about this he said, ‘they lied’. He hadn’t heard about the automation until it was already done. The automation was causing back-up. Automation couldn’t talk or give directions, and now there was no one in the booth. Automation didn’t give good customer service. He would not support a contract. He was not aware of this until it had already happened. Mayor Tecklenburg arrived at 3:06 p.m. Councilmember Wagner said he wanted to be sure he heard right. The City reimbursed them for all costs, plus gave them $150,000 per year. He asked if the City knew the cost up front or if it was surprise. Ms. Carducci said that the City knew the cost up front. In the budget book, under the parking fund, ABM gave the City a budget. They went through that with Ms. Wharton, herself, and Mr. Aakhus, and then it got flushed out into the budget book. They also gave monthly reports. Councilmember Wagner said that they were saying no one lost jobs because of automation and asked why the City is automating if it costs the same. Ms. Carducci said that they were adding garages, so they could shift from one garage to the new garage. They would have the command center which operated 24/7 which required additional staff that would be new hires. Cashiers could shift into those positions. There were also people who chose to leave on their own. The issue was that there were still 90 employees and positions that needed to be filled. She said that if Councilmember Mitchell was referencing the meeting they had the past year, that was after 3-4 garages had already been automated. It had been since 2014 that automation and the acquisition of the equipment had been in the budget books. Councilmember Moody said that no one was being fired, but the number of people should be shrinking. Councilmember Wagner said that they would spread people over 10 garages instead of 5 garages. That was confirmed. Ms. Carducci said that multiple garages that the City had before had no staff in the middle of the night so the gates were opened and people could leave without paying. With automation, those garages could keep the gates down, and if someone needed assistance there was a button they could push that would connect them with a live person that would respond. There may be 1 staff member that was responsible for 1-2 garages that could respond in person. Mr. Aakhus said that year they also had their cash management policy reviewed. Chairman Seekings stated with the new meters, and the fact that they were collecting money out of the new meters, had they gotten with them to make sure they knew what they were doing. Some of the meters weren’t getting completely cleared out and some of the meters were going down. He thought it was money in the meter issue. Mr. Somerville stated that they had recovered 10 canisters that were completely full. The meters weren’t operating correctly because the money wasn’t being correctly. Mr. Benjamin said that they were dependent on the collections and there needed to be accountability. Ms. Carducci said that the route was established originally by T&T. They asked for updated route information so ABM could adjust their routes. With the new equipment, more people were using their credit cards. Once those were in place, they would be in a better place to determine what the routes should be and make sure that they were going on the busiest routes more frequently so the canisters stayed empty. They requested that when T&T found these meters, that they would get the ABM people there so they could see what they were talking about, so there would be a clear communication. Chairman Seekings said that he had read a contract and it said that they had a 5 year term and unless the City gave them notice 90 days before the notice of expiration, it would automatically renew for two years. But, if notice was given, it would only renew for 1 year. Either way, there was an automatic renewal. He asked if that was correct. Mr. Aakhus said he believed so. Chairman Seekings said that was something they would need to talk about. He asked if someone could get the date of the 90 days was, so they could have a discussion about it before the date passed. Having no further business, the Committee adjourned at 3:15 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary