30 00:00:02,678 --> 00:00:06,993 Thank you so much for the invitation, some of you I know very well and 31 00:00:06,993 --> 00:00:09,278 several of you I don't know at all. 32 00:00:10,308 --> 00:00:15,158 So a quick introduction- the organization that I have 33 00:00:15,158 --> 00:00:18,948 the privilege to be the director of right now is responsible for 34 00:00:18,948 --> 00:00:22,972 long range transportation planning for the city of Tampa and 35 00:00:22,972 --> 00:00:27,833 two other cities in our county as well as our huge unincorporated area population. 36 00:00:29,568 --> 00:00:34,337 Welcome. 37 00:00:34,337 --> 00:00:40,212 Who here already knows that there is a long range transportation plan for 38 00:00:40,212 --> 00:00:42,242 the greater Tampa area? 39 00:00:42,242 --> 00:00:45,311 Do you know, raise your hand, yes so, 40 00:00:45,311 --> 00:00:50,519 if you didn't raise your hand, if you didn't already know that, 41 00:00:50,519 --> 00:00:56,666 would you have wished that somebody had a long range plan for transportation? 42 00:00:56,666 --> 00:01:01,675 So medical and planning organizations (please come sit at the table). 43 00:01:01,675 --> 00:01:07,021 So Metropolitan Planning Organizations are set up all around the country in 44 00:01:07,021 --> 00:01:13,037 metropolitan areas for local communities, cities and counties to come together and 45 00:01:13,037 --> 00:01:18,301 agree on what are the major transportation investments that they intend to 46 00:01:18,301 --> 00:01:23,896 make over the next decade or two decades to meet their current and future needs, 47 00:01:23,896 --> 00:01:29,155 and there are a lot of pieces of that puzzle, and I'm not going to go through 48 00:01:29,155 --> 00:01:34,414 all of the pieces of that puzzle because I want to talk with you about how some 49 00:01:34,414 --> 00:01:39,571 of the issues around transportation play into our community outcomes. 50 00:01:41,191 --> 00:01:44,481 And if you want to find out more information about my organization, 51 00:01:44,481 --> 00:01:47,651 this is sort of our annual report, we do it in a calendar format and 52 00:01:47,651 --> 00:01:50,998 there's lots of ways to get involved with us if you're interested, 53 00:01:50,998 --> 00:01:53,911 we can talk about that later, so let me advance this slide. 54 00:01:55,761 --> 00:01:59,031 Maybe I'll use this mouse. 55 00:02:03,454 --> 00:02:03,954 Works. 56 00:02:06,304 --> 00:02:10,834 How many people here are actually in transportation in one way or another? 57 00:02:12,216 --> 00:02:15,306 Many people, OK so 58 00:02:16,468 --> 00:02:21,283 handful of responses why, why are you interested in transportation, 59 00:02:21,283 --> 00:02:28,311 anybody? 60 00:02:28,311 --> 00:02:29,351 OK so that's good. 61 00:02:34,450 --> 00:02:40,558 It's true, it affects everybody and I think a lot of 62 00:02:40,558 --> 00:02:44,898 people that I've talked to and these are a lot of women locally who are involved in 63 00:02:44,898 --> 00:02:50,333 transportation who got together last year with WTS (Women's Transportation Seminar). 64 00:02:51,528 --> 00:02:57,478 And the answers tend to be about not the transportation itself but 65 00:02:57,478 --> 00:03:03,248 what does it do for our community, so in the same way that doctors who 66 00:03:03,248 --> 00:03:08,778 look at our blood circulation, maybe they love veins, maybe they do, but 67 00:03:08,778 --> 00:03:13,068 I think a lot of them are in it because they want the person to be healthy, 68 00:03:13,068 --> 00:03:17,498 right, and isn't that what we what for our communities, and so we want 69 00:03:17,498 --> 00:03:23,838 the transportation systems to work in a way that supports the community. 70 00:03:23,838 --> 00:03:29,518 So I'm going to talk a little bit about our community in the greater Tampa area 71 00:03:29,518 --> 00:03:35,038 and I'm going to start by going through some little factoids that the Tampa Bay 72 00:03:35,038 --> 00:03:41,028 partnership put together last year as part of their regional Competitiveness Report, 73 00:03:41,028 --> 00:03:47,460 so they're looking at how are we doing as a region kind of big picture, as a whole? 74 00:03:47,460 --> 00:03:49,730 And a couple of points are very positive. 75 00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:55,860 We got a lot of growth in this area, we're one of the most rapidly 76 00:03:55,860 --> 00:04:00,230 growing areas in the country and we have a lot of job growth. 77 00:04:01,570 --> 00:04:06,197 We are number two among the 20 peer regions that they looked at 78 00:04:06,197 --> 00:04:10,386 in the country, but some of the challenges that we have, 79 00:04:10,386 --> 00:04:13,704 our average wage is a lot lower than Seattle, 80 00:04:13,704 --> 00:04:19,640 you'd expect Seattle's to be higher right, a lot of high tech folks there but, 81 00:04:19,640 --> 00:04:24,681 this is a lot, this isn't just a little lower, this is a lot lower. 82 00:04:24,681 --> 00:04:26,723 What could that be related to? 83 00:04:26,723 --> 00:04:32,908 We don't have high educational attainment in this area, 84 00:04:32,908 --> 00:04:37,958 we're number 19 out of the 20 metro areas that the partnership looked at. 85 00:04:39,500 --> 00:04:46,130 And our labor force participation is not great, particularly among younger people. 86 00:04:47,260 --> 00:04:51,087 So like age 16 to 24 not in school or not at work, 87 00:04:51,087 --> 00:04:54,380 we're number 19 out of 20 in that area. 88 00:04:54,380 --> 00:04:58,338 So what could underlie those kinds of statistics? 89 00:04:58,338 --> 00:05:04,174 Well one of the things is that we don't have a very good transit system, 90 00:05:04,174 --> 00:05:09,043 so how are people getting to educational opportunities and 91 00:05:09,043 --> 00:05:14,784 how are people getting to jobs if they want to start out their careers, 92 00:05:14,784 --> 00:05:19,940 if they don't have access to a car, their options are a lot more 93 00:05:19,940 --> 00:05:24,751 limited in Tampa Bay than they are in places like Seattle. 94 00:05:24,751 --> 00:05:29,682 So when the Tampa Bay partnership was looking at our problems, 95 00:05:29,682 --> 00:05:32,667 they did look at traffic congestion. 96 00:05:33,697 --> 00:05:37,318 And they found we were kind of middle of the pack as far as traffic congestion 97 00:05:37,318 --> 00:05:40,779 goes, it's not our big challenge, this is one of our big challenges. 98 00:05:42,537 --> 00:05:46,542 And they actually looked at, if we increased transit availability 99 00:05:46,542 --> 00:05:51,087 by one mile per person in this county, 100 00:05:51,087 --> 00:05:55,067 we could seriously increase our gross regional product, 101 00:05:55,067 --> 00:06:00,341 has very clear economic outcomes, this was part of a study that was done through USF. 102 00:06:03,669 --> 00:06:05,579 But they're not the only people saying this. 103 00:06:06,619 --> 00:06:11,389 This is an article that the Tampa Bay Times came out with a couple of years 104 00:06:11,389 --> 00:06:15,059 ago looking at what our spending 105 00:06:15,059 --> 00:06:20,718 on our public transit looks like compared to other major cities. 106 00:06:20,718 --> 00:06:25,722 So yeah, we're on par with Sheboygan, something to aspire to, but 107 00:06:25,722 --> 00:06:31,419 Tampa Bay spends far less on transit each year than any other major metro area, 108 00:06:31,419 --> 00:06:37,506 it's the only top 20 metro region to spend less than $213 million annually. 109 00:06:37,506 --> 00:06:42,378 Our $141 million operating budget is on par with Bridgeport, 110 00:06:42,378 --> 00:06:48,368 Connecticut and Buffalo, New York, each of which have 1.5 million fewer people. 111 00:06:48,368 --> 00:06:55,208 So we basically have a seriously undersized public transit system and that 112 00:06:55,208 --> 00:07:00,188 has implications, so I'm a planner so now I'm going to talk about planning stuff. 113 00:07:03,248 --> 00:07:08,897 To start off with, the transit agency's, HART's Transit Development Plan, 114 00:07:08,897 --> 00:07:12,135 so when we were updating our long range plan for 115 00:07:12,135 --> 00:07:17,203 this urban area in 2014, we're looking at all the different pieces 116 00:07:17,203 --> 00:07:22,185 of transportation as we went to HART to ask them "What are your plans for 117 00:07:22,185 --> 00:07:27,251 the future?" and they said "Well, at our current investment level, 118 00:07:27,251 --> 00:07:31,985 which we are calling investment 'level one', we can continue our 119 00:07:31,985 --> 00:07:37,101 existing service, we might be able to add some night and weekend trips. 120 00:07:38,788 --> 00:07:45,348 "But, if we had more funding, we think we could really provide good service 121 00:07:45,348 --> 00:07:50,898 to our job centers, to our residents, if we had six new MetroRapid routes, 122 00:07:50,898 --> 00:07:56,168 if we had 30 new or improved local routes, 20 new or improved express routes, 123 00:07:56,168 --> 00:08:01,838 and 18 new or improved flex and circulator routes." We said "okay, well that's great, 124 00:08:01,838 --> 00:08:06,428 what does that look like if we plug that into our long range plan?", so 125 00:08:06,428 --> 00:08:13,700 we are comparing it with where are people and jobs going to be in the year 2040? 126 00:08:13,700 --> 00:08:18,147 This is a forecast, a little bit like forecasting the weather in the year 2040, 127 00:08:18,147 --> 00:08:22,067 but we look at where job growth is happening, where residential growth is 128 00:08:22,067 --> 00:08:27,437 happening, and we compare that with our transit system at the existing 129 00:08:27,437 --> 00:08:33,817 level of investment versus the proposed, expanded level of investment. 130 00:08:35,558 --> 00:08:41,400 And so here the dark green means frequent service and 131 00:08:41,400 --> 00:08:46,698 we've drawn a quarter mile walking radius around those routes, so 132 00:08:46,698 --> 00:08:52,578 you can see with the plan that HART had, if we up the investment level, 133 00:08:52,578 --> 00:08:57,598 we can serve almost half of people in jobs with frequent service, 134 00:08:57,598 --> 00:09:01,743 and almost two thirds of people in jobs with somewhat frequent service. 135 00:09:01,743 --> 00:09:06,689 But I want to 136 00:09:06,689 --> 00:09:11,439 talk about a related challenge that we have in this area, and 137 00:09:11,439 --> 00:09:17,049 this photograph was taken not quite a mile south of here. 138 00:09:17,049 --> 00:09:18,807 Theories on why would anyone do this? 139 00:09:18,807 --> 00:09:22,524 I get this question a lot- "why would anybody do that?"- because they have to 140 00:09:22,524 --> 00:09:24,178 get to something on the other side. 141 00:09:24,178 --> 00:09:27,790 To get to something on the other side (why did the chicken cross the road?). 142 00:09:29,910 --> 00:09:34,632 So let's think a little bit deeper into what's going on here. 143 00:09:34,632 --> 00:09:41,842 Tying it back to the transit system, where are those bus routes running, 144 00:09:41,842 --> 00:09:47,843 they're running on those major high-speed six-lane arterial road lanes. 145 00:09:47,843 --> 00:09:50,961 Would you run across that six lane road to catch a bus? 146 00:09:50,961 --> 00:09:54,114 What if the next bus doesn't come for 30 or 147 00:09:54,114 --> 00:09:58,215 60 minutes and you'll be fired if you get to work late? 148 00:09:58,215 --> 00:10:00,573 Dig a little bit deeper. 149 00:10:00,573 --> 00:10:04,577 So here we're going to look at Busch Boulevard and 40th Street, 150 00:10:04,577 --> 00:10:08,638 like I said just a little bit south of here, what kind of a place is this? 151 00:10:10,118 --> 00:10:12,838 There are stores all along this road. 152 00:10:14,048 --> 00:10:17,142 There are walkable neighborhoods with connecting, 153 00:10:17,142 --> 00:10:19,968 rigid streets all along this road on both sides. 154 00:10:20,998 --> 00:10:26,015 From this point the distance to the next signal-protected 155 00:10:26,015 --> 00:10:32,045 crosswalk is more than half a mile, so am I going to walk that distance? 156 00:10:32,045 --> 00:10:38,887 If I cross Busch at this intersection, I have to cross not only the through lanes, 157 00:10:38,887 --> 00:10:44,541 but also the turn lanes which means I'm crossing nine lanes instead 158 00:10:44,541 --> 00:10:49,814 of crossing six, if I try to run across in between the signals. 159 00:10:49,814 --> 00:10:56,614 Plus, if get half way across and I run out of time, there is no protected place for 160 00:10:56,614 --> 00:11:01,023 me to wait in the median, if I get to this crosswalk. 161 00:11:02,714 --> 00:11:08,123 And some survey research that Julie did pointed out people don't 162 00:11:08,123 --> 00:11:14,220 believe that drivers are going to yield to walkers at a crosswalk anyway, 163 00:11:14,220 --> 00:11:19,821 so if I am in a neighborhood and I'm trying to get to a grocery store, 164 00:11:19,821 --> 00:11:24,930 or to a bus stop, what incentive do I have to walk a quarter mile 165 00:11:24,930 --> 00:11:30,969 out of my way (potentially) and cross at this nine lane intersection? 166 00:11:30,969 --> 00:11:35,820 We also find that we have a lot of neighborhoods where people 167 00:11:35,820 --> 00:11:40,864 are not only transit dependent to get to work or to education, 168 00:11:40,864 --> 00:11:45,035 but also to get to grocery stores, to health care, 169 00:11:45,035 --> 00:11:50,080 to child care, and they don't have a lot of opportunities for 170 00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:55,222 those things in these neighborhoods, so we're talking about 171 00:11:55,222 --> 00:12:02,238 food desert areas that line up with these same very challenging walking conditions. 172 00:12:03,527 --> 00:12:07,434 So in this particular area along Busch Boulevard, we have a survey from 173 00:12:07,434 --> 00:12:11,470 the Health Department "During the past year, were there times when your 174 00:12:11,470 --> 00:12:15,267 household did not have enough food?" and a lot of folks saying yes. 175 00:12:16,827 --> 00:12:19,807 Residential units with no vehicles available, this area, 176 00:12:19,807 --> 00:12:23,687 area of interest, a lot higher in the county as a whole. 177 00:12:23,687 --> 00:12:28,847 So all I'm saying is, when we dig a little bit deeper it 178 00:12:28,847 --> 00:12:33,947 starts to make sense why people behave in the way that they do and 179 00:12:33,947 --> 00:12:39,007 use our urban spaces the way that they do, and by urban spaces I mean roads, 180 00:12:39,007 --> 00:12:43,198 those are our urban spaces. 181 00:12:43,198 --> 00:12:46,988 So I'm going to talk a little bit about something that happened here locally 182 00:12:46,988 --> 00:12:47,818 a few years ago. 183 00:12:48,848 --> 00:12:54,176 Which is, we had a grass roots group, Walk Bike Tampa, get organized and come 184 00:12:54,176 --> 00:12:59,691 forward and demand a change, particularly in the number of pedestrian deaths. 185 00:12:59,691 --> 00:13:04,895 And it happened after, there was a high school student who was trying to get 186 00:13:04,895 --> 00:13:10,278 to Chamberlain High School across Busch Boulevard, and was hit and killed. 187 00:13:10,278 --> 00:13:15,599 They asked us to look at a movement called 'Vision Zero', which is a vision of 188 00:13:15,599 --> 00:13:21,568 zero traffic deaths, so we started looking at "Does Vision Zero make sense here?", 189 00:13:21,568 --> 00:13:25,703 "How do we stack up compared to the rest of the country?". 190 00:13:25,703 --> 00:13:30,120 So we looked at traffic deaths per a hundred thousand residents. 191 00:13:32,010 --> 00:13:35,160 At the time that we're looking at it, that was the highest rate of any 192 00:13:35,160 --> 00:13:39,892 large county in the United States, and this is on a per capita basis, 193 00:13:39,892 --> 00:13:45,570 we do look at these statistics in a bunch of different ways but, we continue to be, 194 00:13:47,400 --> 00:13:53,050 unfortunately, like in the top tier for severe crashes as a whole, 195 00:13:53,050 --> 00:13:57,630 and for pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the country, year after year. 196 00:13:59,977 --> 00:14:04,521 So we start asking questions "Why, why us?" and 197 00:14:04,521 --> 00:14:08,447 people say " that's the tourists". 198 00:14:10,267 --> 00:14:15,447 Actually our economy and Hillsborough County is not that tourism focused, 199 00:14:15,447 --> 00:14:19,047 we're not a beach community, we're not a theme park or resort area, 200 00:14:19,047 --> 00:14:24,167 our average age is similar to the national average, so it's not the retirees. 201 00:14:25,367 --> 00:14:29,457 We have a lot of folks who are born here and 202 00:14:29,457 --> 00:14:32,792 grew up here so we're really similar to the rest of the country on that metric. 203 00:14:34,297 --> 00:14:39,417 So, it's not strangers, it's not people retiring here who can't see, 204 00:14:39,417 --> 00:14:42,677 it's not tourists, it's us, we're doing this. 205 00:14:46,558 --> 00:14:48,478 So let's dig a little deeper into that. 206 00:14:48,478 --> 00:14:52,398 What do we know about us from a crash data point of view? 207 00:14:52,398 --> 00:14:57,669 Well, for one thing, we not only have a problem with fatal crashes, 208 00:14:57,669 --> 00:15:01,649 we have a problem with severe injury crashes, so for every one fatal crash, 209 00:15:01,649 --> 00:15:06,907 we have eight incapacitating injury crashes, more or less. 210 00:15:06,907 --> 00:15:13,529 So, you think about 1,500 people being significantly affected -every 211 00:15:13,529 --> 00:15:19,359 year- in our county, and it's not just those individuals, they have families. 212 00:15:19,359 --> 00:15:24,409 You think about the long term care that may be associated with taking care of 213 00:15:24,409 --> 00:15:30,637 somebody who's been in a serious injury crash, it's affecting a lot of us. 214 00:15:30,637 --> 00:15:33,081 Where are they happening? 215 00:15:33,081 --> 00:15:37,881 75 percent of fatal crashes in our county are on roads with posted 216 00:15:37,881 --> 00:15:42,741 speeds of 40 miles per hour or greater, so we're looking at our relatively higher 217 00:15:42,741 --> 00:15:47,601 speed roadways, and there's an exponential relationship between speed and 218 00:15:47,601 --> 00:15:52,024 crash severity. 219 00:15:52,024 --> 00:15:54,704 We have some concentration of those crashes, so 220 00:15:54,704 --> 00:15:57,924 75 percent of them occur on only one third of our roads. 221 00:15:59,745 --> 00:16:04,590 Aggressive driving is a big factor for us, and so 222 00:16:04,590 --> 00:16:09,647 is lack of lighting. 223 00:16:09,647 --> 00:16:13,879 When we look at intoxication, which is something that you hear about a lot, 224 00:16:13,879 --> 00:16:19,438 affecting severe crashes, yes it's a factor here, but 225 00:16:19,438 --> 00:16:25,308 as a share of the crashes it's a smaller factor here than it is in the country as 226 00:16:25,308 --> 00:16:30,308 a whole, which is kind of interesting, it kind of points to "yeah that's a problem, 227 00:16:30,308 --> 00:16:35,428 but we also have some other problems that we need to pay attention to". 228 00:16:35,428 --> 00:16:37,428 So speed, aggressive driving, lack of lighting. 229 00:16:38,589 --> 00:16:41,549 And we average more than one pedestrian injury crash every day. 230 00:16:44,811 --> 00:16:51,221 So I'm going to give you a little snapshot of what one of those roads looks like, 231 00:16:51,221 --> 00:16:55,121 so this is West Hillsborough Avenue in the Town and Country area. 232 00:16:57,382 --> 00:17:02,481 Six through lanes, the posted speed along 233 00:17:02,481 --> 00:17:08,715 the length of West Hillsborough is 45 to 55 mph, 234 00:17:08,715 --> 00:17:13,551 176 severe crashes over five years. 235 00:17:13,551 --> 00:17:19,986 So what kind of a place is this? 236 00:17:20,998 --> 00:17:24,822 This is a suburban community that grew up in the early 237 00:17:24,822 --> 00:17:29,888 Eighties along West Hillsborough, you see shopping plazas, 238 00:17:29,888 --> 00:17:34,948 behind it there are sub-divisions, a lot of this housing has 239 00:17:34,948 --> 00:17:40,298 become more affordable housing as sprawl continues to push further out. 240 00:17:41,331 --> 00:17:44,596 So this is actually a high percent Hispanic area, 241 00:17:44,596 --> 00:17:46,601 through part of West Hillsborough Avenue. 242 00:17:48,231 --> 00:17:51,234 This is a high ridership bus route along Hillsborough, so 243 00:17:51,234 --> 00:17:54,251 you're going to have folks running across the road to catch the bus. 244 00:17:54,251 --> 00:18:01,232 This is a school age student, high-crash area. 245 00:18:01,232 --> 00:18:05,212 What kinds of crashes do you see on roadways like this? 246 00:18:05,212 --> 00:18:10,722 So of severe crashes, we've got angle and left turn crashes are the largest share, 247 00:18:10,722 --> 00:18:15,612 that red slice of the pie here, of the fatal crashes we have walk and 248 00:18:15,612 --> 00:18:18,932 bike crashes being the largest part of the share. 249 00:18:20,237 --> 00:18:23,564 So these are the things that we're focusing on, so angle and left turn 250 00:18:23,564 --> 00:18:28,297 crashes, think the T-bone crashes, so think about people pulling into and 251 00:18:28,297 --> 00:18:33,007 out of driveways at the same time the traffic is coming through at 45 or 252 00:18:33,007 --> 00:18:37,717 55 miles an hour, and that's a very serious crash. 253 00:18:37,717 --> 00:18:41,927 And then, let's say that you also have somebody walking along the sidewalk, 254 00:18:41,927 --> 00:18:45,228 interacting with the people pulling in and out of the driveways, 255 00:18:45,228 --> 00:18:48,736 trying to cut across six lanes of traffic to make a left turn, and 256 00:18:48,736 --> 00:18:53,321 then the through traffic going through at high speed, 257 00:18:53,321 --> 00:18:57,458 so it's not a recipe for success, it turns out this isn't rocket science, 258 00:18:57,458 --> 00:19:00,808 it turns out we have built this, we have created this problem. 259 00:19:05,320 --> 00:19:09,956 A couple of things about some of our other crash statistics: aggressive 260 00:19:09,956 --> 00:19:14,290 driving I mentioned was a factor in one third of fatal crashes here. 261 00:19:14,290 --> 00:19:19,050 So what kinds of places, here's three of them- Boyette Road (east of the I-75 262 00:19:19,050 --> 00:19:23,948 interchange), Columbus Drive at 50th (just north of the I-4 interchange), 263 00:19:23,948 --> 00:19:28,411 Brandon Boulevard near Lakewood (just east of the I-75 interchange). 264 00:19:28,411 --> 00:19:32,931 So these are areas where we have made our roads quite wide, 265 00:19:32,931 --> 00:19:38,061 where people are speeding up, coming on or off of our interstate highways. 266 00:19:39,241 --> 00:19:44,364 And we've sized these roads for peak hour traffic, and off peak 267 00:19:44,364 --> 00:19:49,124 you don't actually need all those lanes, and people are going really, really fast. 268 00:19:52,735 --> 00:19:56,595 One other thing to think about with aggressive driving is your street network. 269 00:19:58,267 --> 00:20:03,238 So for example in West Tampa (maybe you can't see this very well) 270 00:20:03,238 --> 00:20:06,007 that's a pretty solid grid system. 271 00:20:08,028 --> 00:20:13,288 We don't have as many aggressive driving related crashes in this area 272 00:20:13,288 --> 00:20:17,558 as we do along Dale Mabry highway quite a bit north, 273 00:20:17,558 --> 00:20:21,615 which is a suburban area, was developed in the Eighties and 274 00:20:21,615 --> 00:20:24,658 Nineties, not nearly as much street connectivity, and so 275 00:20:24,658 --> 00:20:29,538 what that means is everybody coming in and out of these neighborhoods, 276 00:20:29,538 --> 00:20:34,671 they're all coming to a few major intersections on Dale Mabry Highway, 277 00:20:34,671 --> 00:20:40,111 and those intersections are trying to get so much traffic through that one spot, 278 00:20:40,111 --> 00:20:45,611 that the signal cycle length has to be really long to let everybody take a turn. 279 00:20:45,611 --> 00:20:50,801 So if you miss that green light, you're going to be waiting 280 00:20:50,801 --> 00:20:55,823 another two or three minutes, and people don't want to wait that long. 281 00:20:55,823 --> 00:20:59,813 So now they're doing crazy things, they're veering around each other, 282 00:20:59,813 --> 00:21:03,603 they're using turn lanes for things that they shouldn't be using them for, 283 00:21:03,603 --> 00:21:06,803 which was actually how that young lady on Busch Boulevard was killed near 284 00:21:06,803 --> 00:21:12,205 Chamberlain High School, and they're running red lights. 285 00:21:16,199 --> 00:21:21,499 So this is another way of looking at how our transportation system affects 286 00:21:21,499 --> 00:21:25,859 our traffic safety, lack of lighting, one other thing that I wanted to mention, 287 00:21:25,859 --> 00:21:31,939 if you can't see the person in the crosswalk you're not going to stop, 288 00:21:31,939 --> 00:21:34,699 you're not going to slam on the brakes before you're coming up to them. 289 00:21:40,608 --> 00:21:44,688 So let's talk a little bit about how this lines up with 290 00:21:44,688 --> 00:21:48,498 our different populations in Hillsborough County. 291 00:21:48,498 --> 00:21:52,988 So there is an Executive Order on Environmental Justice, 292 00:21:52,988 --> 00:21:59,638 it's a federal order that was signed by President Clinton a number of years ago, 293 00:21:59,638 --> 00:22:04,368 which says that our federal Investments shall 294 00:22:04,368 --> 00:22:09,398 not have a disproportionate negative burden, or negative impact, 295 00:22:09,398 --> 00:22:17,088 on protected populations, and that meant low income and minority populations. 296 00:22:17,088 --> 00:22:20,868 So as we're looking at what our investments are for the future, 297 00:22:22,351 --> 00:22:29,181 we're looking at "Are those investments going to make things worse?". 298 00:22:30,772 --> 00:22:38,985 We already are coming into this with some disproportionality, 299 00:22:38,985 --> 00:22:44,935 in terms of the hurdles that folks are facing. 300 00:22:44,935 --> 00:22:49,525 So for example, one of the things that Christine Williams' group did, 301 00:22:49,525 --> 00:22:54,615 was they looked for us at the intersection 302 00:22:55,855 --> 00:23:00,519 of communities of concern with some of our transportation facilities and 303 00:23:00,519 --> 00:23:05,325 gaps, they looked at sidewalk gaps, where do areas with 304 00:23:05,325 --> 00:23:09,465 a lot of sidewalk gaps line up with communities of concern that are going to 305 00:23:09,465 --> 00:23:14,255 be needing to use those sidewalks to get to bus stops or grocery stores. 306 00:23:14,255 --> 00:23:18,685 We also looked at our severe crash rates and 307 00:23:18,685 --> 00:23:23,619 we found that your chance of being in a severe crash of any kinds while 308 00:23:23,619 --> 00:23:28,538 bike driving is 20 percent higher in a community of concern, so 309 00:23:28,538 --> 00:23:32,678 that's today. 310 00:23:32,678 --> 00:23:37,848 We also look at things like what's affecting community health 311 00:23:40,618 --> 00:23:45,558 in the greater Tampa area, so one of those ways that transportation affects community 312 00:23:45,558 --> 00:23:50,691 health is vehicle emissions, so where do you have vehicle emissions? 313 00:23:52,151 --> 00:23:57,061 We looked at some national research, the Department of Environmental Health 314 00:23:57,061 --> 00:24:01,826 suggests looking at population within 300 meters of roadways that have 315 00:24:01,826 --> 00:24:05,891 30,000 cars a day or greater, but what does it look like in Tampa? 316 00:24:07,981 --> 00:24:13,319 We have about 21 percent of our population as a county, 317 00:24:13,319 --> 00:24:16,141 as a whole, in those areas. 318 00:24:18,442 --> 00:24:25,320 If you're in a community of concern, it's 23 percent of your population is exposed. 319 00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:30,196 So just doing the math, that means if you live in a community of 320 00:24:30,196 --> 00:24:35,496 concern you have a 13 percent higher chance of being exposed to 321 00:24:35,496 --> 00:24:40,826 these higher vehicle emissions, and you potentially have fewer resources to try 322 00:24:40,826 --> 00:24:45,811 to recover from the health effects, and emissions exposure is linked to asthma, 323 00:24:45,811 --> 00:24:48,796 chronic lower respiratory disease, and several types of cancer. 324 00:24:55,039 --> 00:25:00,162 And then digging a little bit deeper into the geography of chronic disease (can you 325 00:25:00,162 --> 00:25:05,285 tell we've been spending a lot of time with the Health Department?), so they put 326 00:25:05,285 --> 00:25:09,849 us onto some data that we have uploaded into a mapping tool on our website. 327 00:25:10,967 --> 00:25:13,857 The Hillsborough County Health Atlas, and 328 00:25:13,857 --> 00:25:19,557 you can look here at data from the Center for Disease Control, 500 Cities project, 329 00:25:19,557 --> 00:25:23,927 so we don't have this county wide at this point, we just have it for 330 00:25:23,927 --> 00:25:29,234 the city of Tampa, but it does show you how different types of chronic diseases, 331 00:25:29,234 --> 00:25:34,073 how those rates vary across the state, and so right here we're looking at 332 00:25:34,073 --> 00:25:38,327 diabetes and you can see it's more concentrated in East Tampa. 333 00:25:43,789 --> 00:25:48,554 Well it turns out that it also lines up with food desert areas, so if you get 334 00:25:48,554 --> 00:25:52,919 the data on food desert locations from the United States Department of Agriculture, 335 00:25:52,919 --> 00:25:55,509 and we put this up on our Health Atlas site as well, 336 00:25:56,609 --> 00:25:59,691 you can see that lines up as well. 337 00:25:59,691 --> 00:26:06,526 Is this really a problem for us? 338 00:26:06,526 --> 00:26:11,806 The Health Department of Hillsborough County says that we have significantly 339 00:26:11,806 --> 00:26:17,006 higher deaths from blood pressure (hypertension deaths) than our peers, 340 00:26:17,006 --> 00:26:22,046 and by peers I mean Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando, so 341 00:26:22,046 --> 00:26:27,902 they're looking at peer cities in Florida and we're higher than those other cities. 342 00:26:27,902 --> 00:26:32,882 Our adult obesity rate is higher than those of other cities, our cancer 343 00:26:32,882 --> 00:26:38,443 incidence rates are higher than peers for all the six reported types of cancer, 344 00:26:38,443 --> 00:26:44,004 and we also have higher rates of asthma and chronic lower respiratory disease. 345 00:26:48,726 --> 00:26:50,336 So what can we do about all of this? 346 00:26:50,336 --> 00:26:53,701 I know this is so cheerful, I'm just seeing lots of smiles 347 00:26:53,701 --> 00:26:58,164 around the table here [sarcastically], it's not all bad there's a lot of 348 00:26:58,164 --> 00:27:02,436 good things that are being worked on to turn some of these numbers around. 349 00:27:02,436 --> 00:27:05,246 So how can planning projects improve health? 350 00:27:05,246 --> 00:27:09,473 Of course we can look at injury and mortality rates of drivers, 351 00:27:09,473 --> 00:27:14,547 pedestrians and bicyclists, how do we bring those high crash rates down? 352 00:27:14,547 --> 00:27:20,607 We can look at promoting physical activity through biking, transit, walking 353 00:27:20,607 --> 00:27:26,527 to public transit, helps with obesity and chronic disease prevention and diabetes. 354 00:27:26,527 --> 00:27:31,437 We can look at our air quality, at our greenhouse gas emissions, 355 00:27:31,437 --> 00:27:36,897 reducing our asthma rates, and finally we can look at access to goods and 356 00:27:36,897 --> 00:27:41,117 services, and education, remember that educational attainment thing that I 357 00:27:41,117 --> 00:27:44,487 mentioned back at the beginning, so trying to look holistically 358 00:27:44,487 --> 00:27:49,200 at how do our transportation systems improve these outcomes. 359 00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,680 So we changed our performance metrics. 360 00:27:53,543 --> 00:27:58,703 We started by reshaping our performance measures around what 361 00:27:58,703 --> 00:28:02,953 was required by the federal government, and the federal government a few years ago 362 00:28:02,953 --> 00:28:07,803 said "Thou shall look at the good repair of your transportation system and 363 00:28:07,803 --> 00:28:13,133 have some performance metrics about potholes and bridge repair" 364 00:28:13,133 --> 00:28:17,656 which is a good thing, right, "whether your buses are well maintained", 365 00:28:17,656 --> 00:28:21,553 they said that "we will look at severe and 366 00:28:21,553 --> 00:28:25,075 fatal crashes, that we will look at travel time reliability". 367 00:28:25,075 --> 00:28:28,424 But we added in some more measures, 368 00:28:28,424 --> 00:28:31,660 because we want to know more things about our transportation system. 369 00:28:31,660 --> 00:28:36,217 So we want to know what are our crash rates in communities of concern. 370 00:28:37,358 --> 00:28:41,858 We want to know about our vehicle emissions exposure, and how does our 371 00:28:41,858 --> 00:28:46,478 our traffic management affect that, both countywide and in communities of concern. 372 00:28:48,018 --> 00:28:53,948 We want to look at access with the bus system and our walk and 373 00:28:53,948 --> 00:29:00,408 bike network, access to those systems from households, jobs, and health care. 374 00:29:01,678 --> 00:29:04,844 And then one other thing that I haven't talked a lot about, but 375 00:29:04,844 --> 00:29:08,808 certainly we are vulnerable to major storms here on the Gulf Coast of Florida. 376 00:29:10,158 --> 00:29:14,198 And so we've been looking at economic impact of a major storm and 377 00:29:14,198 --> 00:29:19,518 we've started including in that how are communities of concern 378 00:29:19,518 --> 00:29:25,675 affected by things like the need for hurricane evacuation and resilience. 379 00:29:25,675 --> 00:29:30,509 So here are some things that are going on locally, 380 00:29:30,509 --> 00:29:34,389 if you are interested I can tell you lots and lots about some of these different 381 00:29:34,389 --> 00:29:37,479 projects and there are some highlights in the calendars. 382 00:29:38,919 --> 00:29:44,579 But one of these projects the Vision of Zero traffic deaths 383 00:29:44,579 --> 00:29:49,704 has a strong coalition of members who are working on this issue, 384 00:29:49,704 --> 00:29:51,553 raising awareness (thank you Dean). 385 00:29:54,179 --> 00:30:00,739 And raising awareness and also working with folks in enforcement, 386 00:30:00,739 --> 00:30:05,959 and in health, and in traffic engineering, to turn around these numbers. 387 00:30:08,370 --> 00:30:13,780 We've been working on access to fresh foods with a grant from 388 00:30:13,780 --> 00:30:19,580 the Aetna Foundation, that is helping to create more 389 00:30:19,580 --> 00:30:25,240 community gardens and improve walk bike access to those gardens. 390 00:30:26,490 --> 00:30:30,360 This new sign near the Tampa Heights Community Garden in the top right here, 391 00:30:31,510 --> 00:30:37,620 that is an outcome of this project, City of Tampa is one of our partners and 392 00:30:37,620 --> 00:30:43,070 they created a new sign design for us and so we're hoping that we'll 393 00:30:43,070 --> 00:30:48,200 be putting up some more of these, because we did just get the larger grant for 394 00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:53,620 $50,000, so 'yay', we get to do more of this! 395 00:30:53,620 --> 00:30:56,870 We've also been working in the school areas. 396 00:30:58,454 --> 00:31:02,468 Not only on traffic circulation, but walk bike access, and 397 00:31:02,468 --> 00:31:06,358 really zooming in, in collaboration between the school district and 398 00:31:06,358 --> 00:31:10,998 traffic engineers on the areas around schools and, how do we make those safer, 399 00:31:10,998 --> 00:31:13,808 so created a new working group for that. 400 00:31:15,578 --> 00:31:21,058 And we were fortunate to win a grant from Federal Highway 401 00:31:21,058 --> 00:31:25,253 to look at the resilience of our transportation system, so 402 00:31:25,253 --> 00:31:33,018 the Resilient Tampa Bay working group is actually not just Tampa but also St. 403 00:31:33,018 --> 00:31:38,328 Pete, Clearwater, and Pasco County, they are all collaborating on this project. 404 00:31:42,290 --> 00:31:47,080 All of this feeds into that long range transportation plan that I mentioned at 405 00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:50,270 the beginning and we've put a lot of time and 406 00:31:50,270 --> 00:31:55,110 energy into seeking feedback for the long range transportation plan. 407 00:31:55,110 --> 00:32:00,580 This is a snapshot of the interactive website survey tool 408 00:32:00,580 --> 00:32:05,607 that we used back in 2014 with our last major update of the long range 409 00:32:05,607 --> 00:32:10,440 transportation plan, it's supposed to kind of gamify some of these questions and 410 00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:15,281 make it easy for people to get feedback, and we've tried really hard 411 00:32:15,281 --> 00:32:20,101 to get that kind of engagement strategy out to 412 00:32:20,101 --> 00:32:25,391 as many different folks from as many different walks of life as we can. 413 00:32:25,391 --> 00:32:31,683 So that particular survey, we had more than 3,500 survey responses and 414 00:32:31,683 --> 00:32:35,943 presentations to 94 different civic groups, and 415 00:32:35,943 --> 00:32:38,847 what's interesting when you go and 416 00:32:38,847 --> 00:32:43,491 ask just a wide range of different people what they want, 417 00:32:43,491 --> 00:32:47,797 is you get really sensible responses, go figure. 418 00:32:47,797 --> 00:32:51,517 You ask people, what is the right level of investment, 419 00:32:51,517 --> 00:32:56,507 on preserving the system, on minimizing traffic, on reducing crashes, 420 00:32:56,507 --> 00:33:01,970 on real choices, so those areas where I showed you our new performance measures, 421 00:33:01,970 --> 00:33:06,697 and very few people said they want the low level of investment. 422 00:33:06,697 --> 00:33:09,967 Lots of folks said we need better outcomes, and 423 00:33:09,967 --> 00:33:15,297 they said it even though we showed them a budget that meant increasing taxes. 424 00:33:21,988 --> 00:33:27,096 And so, out of that long range transportation plan, and related to it, 425 00:33:27,096 --> 00:33:32,124 there was a ballot initiative last November that was approved by 57% 426 00:33:32,124 --> 00:33:37,482 of our voters, saying we should raise our sales tax by a penny on the dollar, 427 00:33:37,482 --> 00:33:42,506 and it should fund those same things that you saw in the long range plan, 428 00:33:42,506 --> 00:33:47,034 maintenance, congestion reduction, safety improvements, 429 00:33:47,034 --> 00:33:51,641 walk and bike facilities, and then there is another pie that I'm 430 00:33:51,641 --> 00:33:55,397 not showing you that has the transit improvements. 431 00:33:55,397 --> 00:34:01,898 So we can now, assuming our sales tax is upheld by a judge next month, 432 00:34:01,898 --> 00:34:09,634 six weeks from now, we can actually achieve those better performance outcomes, 433 00:34:09,634 --> 00:34:15,597 that I showed you at the beginning with the investment levels. 434 00:34:19,597 --> 00:34:24,696 So I just want to leave you with this thought, you have more impact than you 435 00:34:24,696 --> 00:34:29,794 think, you never know when write you a long range plan who might read it and 436 00:34:29,794 --> 00:34:33,597 think it's a good idea and try to do something with it. 437 00:34:34,597 --> 00:34:39,127 So I just encourage everybody to stay involved with the things that you 438 00:34:39,127 --> 00:34:40,663 are passionate about, 439 00:34:40,663 --> 00:34:45,297 because it all feeds back into making a difference in our communities. 440 00:34:47,597 --> 00:34:50,852 I'm here for questions if you have questions, or 441 00:34:50,852 --> 00:34:56,697 if you have something that you'd like to share from your own experience [clapping]. 442 00:34:56,697 --> 00:34:59,705 [clapping].