00:00:07,670	It is June 17th. We’re in the Tom Baker room of the Bismarck, Burleigh City County Building. This is the Bismarck Mandan Metropolitan Organization Policy Board, um, before we start, we’ll pledge pledge of Allegiance. I pledge the United States of America. And Republic stands under that individual justice.

00:00:43,530	In case I forgot to say the time, it’s approximately 1:30. Um, we’ll call roll to calls to order. Mayor Berglund, Comm Zach Meyer. Mayor Frelick, I’m here. Comm Schwab. Schmittz here. First item is review of minutes and possible approval from the May 20th, 2025 meeting. I make a motion to approve the minutes. I can second them.

00:01:16,930	Is there any discussion? He none will call roll. Mayor Berglund, Comm Zach Meyer, Mayor Frelich, Comm Schwab Cha Schmittz, yes. Uh, next item for public transportation agency safety. Plan targets. Uh, Paul. Thank you, Mayor Schmidtz. Give me one moment while I. There a screen here. OK. And Coming up. There we go.

00:02:16,570	Exhibit A here on page 7 in your packet is a resolution of support for Bizan Transit’s public transportation agency safety plan or PETASP, and its associated safety targets. The Federal Transit Administration or FTA requires public transportation operators to develop a PTASP and accompanying safety targets to ensure its operators and public remains safe during public uh during transit operations.

00:02:44,170	The transit board adopts or updates these targets and the P task on an annual basis. Targets may be set by a State Department of Transportation and adopted by local transit providers or The transit provider may set their own safety targets separately. And for the season of 2024, 2025, Bisman Transit sets its own safety targets and adopted them in December.

00:03:09,230	FTA asked that the NPO support Bizan Transit’s targets and PT tests, which is why MPO staff is requesting the board adopt the resolution of support in our packet and um an additional note that targets for the next seasons of 2025, 2026 will be coming up again next month in July.

00:03:30,300	And uh yesterday, TA did approve this item. And staff is seeking a motion to recommend approval of the resolution of support, a bizman Transit’s PTASP and the targets. Any questions? You have questions? I would entertain a motion to approve the resolution. I make a motion. To approve the resolution of support for the Bbizen Transit Ptas and targets. A second.

00:04:10,100	Is there any discussion? Here none will call roll. Mayor Berglund. Yes, Comm Zach Meyer, Mayor Frelich. Comm Schwab. Cher Schmidt. Yes Adam 5, 2025 policy safe safety study, uh, Luke. Yes, thanks, Char Schmidtz. Uh, can you hear me all right? I can. I think everyone else can. Great. Sounds good. Um. Well, thank you, policy board Chair Schmitz.

00:04:41,630	I’ll provide a quick update here. uh, I’m, and I’m will share my screen actually on a couple of items here. We’ve been busy working on the safety analysis uh for the safety policy study and uh just this week we delivered two critical memos to your jurisdictions, technical staff, um, those include a crash data analysis

00:05:07,230	and trend summary. I’m just going to quickly share screen here quickly so you can get a glimpse of what it looks like. It is a technical memorandum at this point, but the intent here, if I zoom in a little bit.

00:05:28,100	is to provide an overview of the crash data, um, how many crashes we’re seeing in the Bizman MPO planning area we’re looking at just under 17,500 crashes recorded, that’s between 2020 and 2024, the calendar years. Of those we are seeing 281. Which we would call severe. That includes fatal crashes and then uh incapacitating or life changing injury crashes.

00:06:00,100	Uh, this memo, um, is 48 pages long and if I were to scroll, you’ll see a map of severe crash locations and, and then an overview of the crash data. As well as some preliminary findings, so there’s a approximately 45 charts in here similar to this one shown on the screen, uh, where we will be diving in with your local technical staff.

00:06:26,300	Ah, to identify some trends and potential focus areas that, that each jurisdiction might want to dive a little deeper into. So that’s one memo that was sent out. The second was a high injury network analysis.

00:06:48,170	This one is very technical, but it explains our methodology for establishing a high injury network, and I’m gonna just share a map that was also shared with um the uh steering committee for this project. That highlights the high injury network, um, just to verify you are seeing a map on your screen. Yes You make it bigger, it would help.

00:07:11,670	Yes, I can zoom in a little bit here, um, but these roads, um, if I zoom out, you’ll see this the symbology, but this is uh uh symbolizing the high entry network. This is where we are mapping uh you know, where most of the severe crashes are are occurring on the regional transportation network. Um, and we have a few of these files that look similar to this.

00:07:41,070	One is for um motorized transportation, um, there’s others for non-motorized transportation, and we do break it down even further by establishing a passenger vehicle, high injury network, a bicyclist, high injury network, pedestrian, eye injury network, uh, etc. and this really helps, will help guide local jurisdiction. and um you know, where the, the trouble areas may be based on historic crash data.

00:08:06,700	So technical staff are reviewing this information and uh adding comments and and some of the some of their reaction from the findings. We are meeting on this material. On the 26th. To dive a little deeper and then the last thing that I will share is um A and I a lot of tabs open, so.

00:08:28,200	Pardon me, um, we We will be sharing a The safety analysis results with the steering committee as well as uh an overview of public engagement to date. I just wanted to share the comment map that we had out at the um the Earth Day festival. Uh, and then we also were out at Mandan Touch a truck event.

00:08:54,100	And uh we received over 80 separate comments at specific locations from from people, both young and old, um. So there’s a specific comments that are correlated with these dots which are color coded by the um the type type of transportation that uh that people are talking about, for example, blue is is car or vehicle, green is bicycle, red pedestrian, yellow

00:09:19,970	is motorcycle, so we have a lot of great public feedback and some key themes that we pulled from our public engagement so far, as well as meeting with focus groups in the areas of law.

00:09:45,370	enforcement or emergency services and then um we also met with uh bicycle and pedestrian focus group and had a separate survey for youth population. It was a bit difficult to get that group together, believe it or not, but uh we had approximately 8 or so about a focus group size of survey responses from youth population and moving forward we I we’re going to be identifying stakeholders to engage with as well as we kind of dig into this crash analysis

00:10:06,700	and um. Start thinking about strategies, so that’s a pretty exhaustive update. I will be quiet now, but I’m happy to answer any questions. Any questions? I, I guess I do have a question. You, you said how many total accidents were over that time period, which was more than one year.

00:10:29,700	Is there a trend? That has been identified, be it on the critical ones, non-critical. Yeah, um, so if I point to this chart again, we are seeing that, you know, the bizman region is is following um pretty closely national trends.

00:10:56,900	We saw a very steep increase in severe crashes, which would be the red bar here in in 2020, 2021 and it looks like, you know, the trend is coming back down to Earth, I would say, um, moving forward in time, um, so Well, yeah, you’re, you’re kind of seeing in this five-year window between 2020 and 2024, we are seeing a peak of sorts that um you know, for various reasons, I think.

00:11:18,830	You know, 2020, 2021 time frame was just very dangerous for people on, on, uh, streets across the nation. That’s, that’s kind of the trend, uh, but I think the promising thing here is that you do see a pretty significant drop off, um, or sort of a back to normal um level of severe crashes in 2023 and 2024 and so

00:11:44,430	we will be diving a little bit deeper to look at. Um, you know, this, this is showing all modes, but we’re going to be diving a little bit deeper into, you know, crashes that involve cyclists, pedestrians, um, we break it out by transportation mode, and one of the more concerning trends is that um

00:12:03,570	across the nation, you see more. Bicyclists and pedestrian severe crashes, um, you know, you see those increasing year over year. Um, I don’t. I think that’s the case in Bisman region, but we’re diving into it with this, with the steering committee, just to You know, verify that, you know that we’re We’re looking at normal,

00:12:26,700	you know, sort of, uh, trends and nothing is sticking out, um, that would be of concern. The one thing that I would be most concerned about, and this is uh very common in North Dakota is the uh the severity. As a proportion of, for example, if you look at motorcycle crashes. The severe crashes make up.

00:12:52,770	Over 24 or over, you know, 1 out of 4 of those motorcycle crashes results in either death or a life changing injury. Or the motorcyclists. And so That’s a bit concerning.

00:13:15,730	Um, we’ll be diving in a little bit deeper, like I said with the steering committee, but as far as trends go overall, You know, you’re severe crashes have come down. Um, since 2021. Um, so So I think that’s a positive, um, sort of trend that we’re seeing. OK.

00:13:40,300	There’ll be, they’ll be both positive and um more concerning trends that will highlight from this document, uh, which, as I mentioned earlier, is about 50 pages long and pretty technical in its analysis. OK. Luke, this is Mayor Frelich. Are you breaking that data down, uh, from year to month to day to time of day to weather conditions. Yes, yes, we are. So, um, for example, Ah, this figure Figure 5 is showing, you know, our For this example, all modes, hour of day.

00:14:06,000	And so we can see. Sort of the trends as you might expect. are peaking when they’re the most traffic is on on your regional roadways. We also do do one by month. I should see if I could find it by day of week.

00:14:26,270	I always find the month um interesting because We have a lot, we, we hear a lot about people being concerned with winter driving and winter weather in North Dakota and rightfully so, um. But what you’ll see is that severe crashes are occurring. Primarily in your warmer, in our warmer seasons and that the colder winter months.

00:14:53,430	Ah, you know, that you can see how the proportion of of red is significantly less. In winter months than in summer months, and part of that could be explained by Ah, people just being more comfortable to drive faster speeds or be Unfortunately, you know, more reckless driving, but there’s also the consideration of we have more people walking, biking, riding on motorcycles

00:15:18,570	in the summer months, um. You have more visitors and, and things of that nature that we should consider, but um that’s always an interesting one to point out. Um, because people have a perception of winter in the state that that doesn’t actually reflect itself in in the data.

00:15:41,530	Those are actually safer uh statistically months to drive on our our regional routes. So Um, this is something that you’ll be able to get eyes on, um. Uh, eventually, I think, you know, right now the steering committee will, will be diving in and we’ll be making some refinements to this, um, hopefully diving into a few areas a little bit more with

00:16:01,170	them, and then I think that would be something that you can take a look at and um there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, so um it’s a great question. Any other questions? Thank you, Luke. Thank you so much. Item 6 is 2025 monitoring report update, Jeremy Williams. All right. Yeah.

00:16:23,730	Am I coming in OK? Yes Awesome. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the time, um. To give you a quick update today on the monitoring report update. Uh, so over the month of May, uh, some of the kind of key milestones hit were continued uh project management so coordination calls, things of that nature, as well as some

00:16:43,430	ongoing data collection, uh, and, uh, documentation in terms of a draft outline monitoring and report that the consulting team is working through at the moment.

00:17:01,570	In the, the main milestone I wanted to highlight was the performance measures workshop, which was held on May 28th with the NPO and local agency staff to uh come in and talk about the report update and get some ideas on some topics that are relevant to each of the agencies that they would like to see reflected in that uh report update.

00:17:18,970	And finally, uh, talk through performance measures, that would be a good fit to cover within the report update once that’s finalized, uh, and so that’s all I had for you today, quick update, so I can answer any questions anyone might have. Anyone have questions? Doesn’t look like it. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. Item 7 2026 to 2027. Unified planning work program. Jim.

00:17:47,200	Thank you, Chair Schmidtz, members of the board, today I’d like to talk to you, uh, about our proposed studies for the 2026, 2027 unified uh. Uh, unified planning work program for the NPO. The unified planning work program is our uh. Program of activities uh that we anticipate, uh, incurring for the next 2 years along with um budgeted studies and um, other staff time. This is, um.

00:18:16,400	This is basically our, our Bible, our, our budget and our guidance for the next 2 years. Uh, a couple of months ago, I did bring before the board a timeline that had been agreed to by North Dakota DOT and the state MPOs and just to bring that back so that we can recall where we’re at in the process.

00:18:36,770	I’ll remind you of that timeline, uh, first of all, it, it begins with the identification of priority studies by MPOs and its jurisdictions early in the year, uh, and then North Dakota DOT comes in to provide estimated avail.

00:19:01,630	CPG or consolidated planning grant funds that will be available to the NPOs by April 15th, and just a reminder that our CPG or consolidated Planning Grant are the federal monies that enable the NPO to, uh, fund its operations and programs. Uh, and then once we’ve been provided those estimated CPG amounts by DOT.

00:19:25,270	We take a look at those studies and um we, we gain estimates for the costs of the studies so that they can be included in our UPWP. Those costs in the study lists are finalized and a draft UPWP is then developed in about the May June time period, so that’s kind of where we’re at right now, uh.

00:19:44,900	It would be anticipated we’re, I think we’re running a little bit behind schedule this year just because this is the first time that we’ve actually rolled it out in this manner, but um in future years and ongoing, we would anticipate that a draft UPWP would be presented to the tac and Policy board in June or July at the very latest, uh, and this year it will be July,

00:20:03,600	by the way, and then after that, a draft UPWP is submitted to North Dakota DOT and to our federal. Oversight, uh, they are then provided a 30 day review and comment period after which their comments are addressed and we bring that finalized uh UPWP back to the tech and policy board hopefully in August, but no later than

00:20:26,570	September for a final adoption. So, um, that time period is, has been uh formulated and agreed on to, um, provide the NPO’s guidance in development of their, their.

00:20:53,330	PWP is in a timely manner and to uh ensure that uh North Dakota DOT and Federal Highway have enough time to review that final approved document and then generate the contract between the NPOs and the North Dakota DOT, uh, for, for that annual CPG funding. So where we’re at in this process this year, uh, we have held discussions with our jurisdictions regarding the identification of their priority studies and needs uh for each of their jurisdictions.

00:21:17,900	We were given our CPG cost estimates on April 15th by North Dakota DOT, um, it was a, a nice number for us. We’re at about 799,000 $700 for um federal funding, which, um, is substantially increased over our funding for 2025, so, so that’s kind of a blessing to us that we can, um, program a couple more studies into our,

00:21:43,470	our work program than what we were able to in 2025. Um, We have taken a look in the last 6 weeks or so to evaluate the, the studies that were defined by our jurisdictions, um, and identified and we’ve established estimated costs for those studies, and then with the CPJ CPG funding that has

00:22:07,370	been identified by DOT. We can formulate a budget, so, um, that brings us to the handout that I’ve provided for you today, and I’m gonna try and share that on my screen. OK There we go.

00:22:38,600	Um So just as a reminder, uh, the, the Bismarck Mandan MPO is currently operating out of an annual budget for 2025, but again, we are going to be changing that back to a biennial, uh, budget and work program beginning now for 2026 and 2027.

00:23:02,900	So the handout, um, that I’ve provided you and that I am sharing on screen details a list of priority studies and needs that were identified by the MPO jurisdictions at a meeting again, that was. held on April 14th, um. And Uh, Again, we had to take the time to evaluate each of those studies and then to uh determine estimated costs for those studies once that was established, then I was able to develop a program for 2026 and 2027 that worked with the estimated available CPG funds

00:23:25,570	that DOT provided us. So, um, on this first page of the handout, the top table is for year 2026, and we would call that the in-ear of the two-year UPW. WP and those studies and their costs are pretty solid based on earlier discussions with our jurisdictions and based on, uh, the discussion that was held at yesterday’s TA

00:23:47,900	meeting. The table on the bottom of this page is for studies that are proposed for year 2027 and of course this being the 2nd year in the biennial budget or the out year, um, it’s a bit more fluid and it will be reexamined in early 2026 as we begin the development development of the

00:24:09,700	2027, 2028 UPWP, so, um, we do like to refer to this as maybe um an illustrative list or kind of a wish list because although there are studies on there that are continuing from 2026, and we know those will get programmed.

00:24:33,270	uh, there are some additional studies that have been, uh, included that, um, you know, they maybe there’s another priority that gets identified in early. 26 and bumps one of those studies, so there, there is room to have those 2027 studies change or be modified and move around a bit. Um And then on the next two pages of the worksheet.

00:25:02,570	Uh, we just basically have the budget worksheet that gets included in our UPWP document, and I’ve provided this for 2026 and 2027, uh, just for your information, uh, this is basically how it’s laid out now.

00:25:25,170	Uh, it will be put into the UPWP draft document in this form with these numbers as shown, and I wanted just to give you a heads up and and allow you to get your eyes on this before this comes back in a draft document to you. in July, so, uh, at this time, is there any questions regarding the development of the UPWP. The studies that have been identified and included or the budget itself.

00:25:49,630	You don’t have anyone have questions? All right. Well, thank you. Um, we’ll be seeing a draft document next month. All right. Thank you, Kim. I made bicycle friendly community workshop update. Me too.

00:26:13,230	OK, um, well, we’ve all heard about the bicycle friendly community workshop that the NPO is hosting in May, um, leading up to that workshop, and now I’ll just provide you a little, um, post workshop briefing. We did hold that 1.

00:26:33,000	5 day workshop on May 21st and 22nd, the 21st was a full day workshop as a reminder, uh, we were provided this opportunity through the League of American Bicyclists who contacted us and asked us if we would be willing to host a workshop at No cost to us and at no cost to our participants, so we did indeed do that. We, we actually gathered a very good attendance.

00:26:50,600	Um, it was received very well by our community and even people outside of the community as we had folks attend all the way from Grand Forks, North Dakota, so that was very encouraging, um. So the the first day was divided into two parts, and the, the 1st 4 hours was kind of a classroom education where we learned about the benefits, uh, and, and the importance of being a bicycle friendly community and what that can bring to our community in terms

00:27:09,570	of economic gain and, you know, social and, and healthy well-being, um, and things of that nature. And then we, we learned how our community actually was evaluated against the 5 E’s, um, through our bicycle friendly. application in 2024.

00:27:35,400	Uh, the 5 years including things like engineering, education, encouragement, and we found out that overall we’re we’re doing things fairly well, um, there’s always room for improvement, and a lot of that improvement comes not from um the fact that we’re, we’re not doing things, for instance, um, educating or encourage encouraging the culture or the activities in our area.

00:28:02,530	We are doing that, but sometimes it is about um coordinating our efforts and sharing that information, uh, and, and maybe, maybe turning that into something that is more reportable in a data-driven way. So, um, those are things that we can always uh make some improvements on, and we, we got some good takeaways from this, um, this workshop overall.

00:28:20,630	So that was the 1st 4 hours of the classroom instruction and then that afternoon we embarked on an actual bike ride. audit, um, we, we rode a 7 mile predetermined route that had been worked on through the months and, and refined, um, the weather was not all that great. It was a mid-40s temperature.

00:28:44,100	It was raining, windy, um, not like your typical bicycling weather, but we had 14 participants on that audit, so we, we were very impressed and, and very gratified by that, um, we are still awaiting the, uh, receipt.

00:29:06,500	all of the, the observations of the auditors to be returned to us, and once we have that, then we can kind of identify some of our, our hotspot areas where maybe, maybe we’re excelling, uh, you know, in promoting some of those bicycle friendly facilities and um experiences or maybe some areas where we need to improve, but, um, we’ll get more on that as those results come in, uh, and then our final 4 hours was on.

00:29:28,900	the 22nd where we kind of strategized about how we could move forward with uh maintaining the momentum that we gained through this bicycle-friendly community workshop, and uh we do have a, a bike walk, um, group that had been started and everybody who was at the workshop was provided a link to join and uh Steven is our Bismarck Mandan MPO bike ped subcommittee facilitator, so if anybody has

00:29:53,670	any bicycle or ped est ri an or active transportation interests, I would certainly encourage you to reach out to Steven, uh, via our website or give him a phone call and he can uh get you in touch with how to be a bike walk advocate in our area, so any questions on the, on the

00:30:11,170	BFC workshop. Any questions, anyone? All right, well thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Uh, under other business next month there will be an election of officers for chair and vice chair, and also we moved to Mandan. For our monthly meeting. So yeah, go there instead of here.

00:30:38,430	Is there anything else, Kim? Yes, I do actually have something for other business. Um, I have a new face to introduce to you today. Uh, last month we did report that we were actively, uh, interviewing for the transportation specialist position and we had a very successful candidate that we were able to offer that position too, and she did accept, so I’m very happy to

00:31:00,770	introduce Tracy Walters and hope that you will welcome her to as the newest staff member to the MPL and she It’s actually going to uh just say a word or two of introduction for herself. Hi, it’s nice to meet all of you.

00:31:20,570	Um, I am excited to have accepted the transportation specialist position, and I look forward to getting to know and work with all of you. Thank you. Welcome.