Ders Anderson --Openlands

Ed Barsotti--League of Illinois Bicyclists (LIB)

Bruce Christensen--Lake County

Greg Dreyer--Village of Orland Park

Peter Fahrenwald--Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

Gary Foyle--Metra

Cathy Geraghty--Forest Preserve District of Cook County

Andrea Hoyt--Forest Preserve District of DuPage County

Barbara Ladner--Pace

Alan Mamoser--Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC)

Jan Metzger--Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT)

Bobbie Moore--Palatine/Willow Rd. CMT

Joseph Moriarty--Regional Transportation Agency (RTA)

Mayor Arlene Mulder--Council of Mayors

Randy Neufeld--Chicagoland Bicycle Federation (CBF)

Pat Pechnick--Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)

Keith Privett--Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT)

Elaine Ricketts--Cook County Department of Public Health

Craig Williams--Edwards and Kelcey

Others in Attendance:

Larry Bury--Northwest Municipal Conference

Steve Call--Federal Highway Administration

Ray Campbell--American Council of the Blind

Carmen Carruthers--City of Naperville

Josh Deth--Break the Gridlock

Cameron Davis--Village of Cary

Christina Dudek--Village of Lemont

Cori English--South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association

John LaPlante--TY LIN Bascor

Jill Leary--West Central Municipal Conference

Dave Longo--Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR)

Marty Mueller--Knight

Lisa Pearce--Oak Park Department of Public Health

Artemio Perez--CNT

Lisa Phillips--Chicago resident

Jeff Sunderlin--Illinois Department of Public Health

Heather Tabbert--Kane County

Linda Bolte--Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS)

Tom Murtha--CATS

Don Kopec--CATS

Tom Murtha --CATS

1. Approval of Meeting Minutes

The minutes from the May 30, 2001 meeting were approved with no changes.

2. Update Regarding Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan

Mr. Murtha reviewed the development of the regional bike and ped transportation plan to date. The plan was proposed as part of the 2020 Regional Transportation Plan. Over the past several months, staff has requested and received permission from IDOT to seek consultant services. Staff has since developed a draft scope of work.

Mr. Murtha discussed the scope of work, discussing each of the four major tasks outlined in the scope of work in detail. In response, task force members had a number of questions. The first question was regarding the schedule. Mr. Murtha and Ms. Bolte answered that the request for proposals would be sent to Springfield as soon as possible, and that the project would be completed approximately at the same time as the Regional Transportation Plan. Ms. Bolte noted that any comments would have to be in by Tuesday, September 4.

Ms. Metzger said the scope was good overall. However, she suggested that broader reasons for developing the plan (e.g., air quality, public health) be included in the introduction. In addition, she said there should be some mention of the needs of children compared to adults in bicycle and pedestrian transportation. Mayor Mulder said there are other population groups, e.g., the visually impaired, that have special needs in walking across streets. Ms. Metzger agreed, and added that the language should address the special needs of particular populations.

Mr. Campbell thanked Mayor Mulder for her consideration of the needs of the blind. He stated that a major concern of the American Council of the Blind is pedestrian safety. He encouraged CATS to incorporate the needs of people with disabilities in the planning process, particularly pedestrian safety. He mentioned audible traffic signals as an example. He said that while sidewalks are great, if you cannot cross the street you don't have access. He stated that audible signals provide equal access to the information provided to sighted pedestrians.

Ms. Moore summed up by stating we were concerned with the health and safety of all users, seniors, children, and adults.

Ms. Kilgore noted that this discussion is currently reflected in an existing RTP goal. Ms. Kilgore stated current goals and objectives would be reviewed during Task 2. Ms. Kilgore said we could make the current goals and policies more specific, and develop tools to analyze these goals and policies. Ms. Kilgore added that we made an earnest attempt to develop a general scope of work, so that the process could fill in the details as the plan development process moved forward.

Mr. LaPlante stated that the product of the scope of work as presented would be more akin to a framework than a plan. Mr. LaPlante said we are looking for a framework. He echoed Mr. Campbell's statement that policy changes are necessary, e.g. supporting universal sidewalks and audible traffic signals. Mr. Privett responded that Task 3 includes a report of best practices and ideas. Mr. Privett anticipated that the plan would promote the ideas that may not now be universally accepted. Mr. LaPlante answered that these ideas should have some teeth, rather than just be suggestions.

Mr. Campbell said that draft legislation is already available discussing some pedestrian safety issues. These drafts can be used during the plan development process.

Mr. Moriarty requested a timeline or Gantt chart to show the actors and schedule. Mr. Murtha answered that developing the schedule was the responsibility of the consultant. He also stated that staff would return to the task force at a later date to recruit members to develop a working group to work on the plan. Mr. Moriarty said that we needed to develop the schedule so that coordination may be planned. Ms. Bolte responded that we had to wait until the consultant was selected; we cannot spend the time and effort developing that schedule at this time. Ms. Bolte reiterated that an oversight working group would be established for the plan.

Mr. Anderson requested that the issue of the definition of transportation be resolved during the plan process. He said he wanted to move away from having to argue that a movement was transportation as opposed to recreation. He advocated the position that all movements were transportation. Mr. Anderson stated that unless this issue is resolved, many of the other goals of the plan we were speaking of would be relegated to secondary importance.

Mayor Mulder asked whether there was any coordination between this plan and other plans and programs, for example IDOT programs. She stated that the Arlington Heights bicycle commission had been told repeatedly that "now is not the time" to integrate their plan into proposed projects, only to be told "it’s too late." Mr. Privett responded that we were developing a separate plan because many of the issues raised during the 2020 RTP process required additional study. The goal would be to integrate the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan with the Regional Transportation Plan. Mayor Mulder reiterated engineers should consider how pedestrians will get across the roads they are planning; she said we must start thinking about integration.

Mr. Neufeld stated that the issue was raised weakly in task 2 of the scope of work. He suggested that Mayor Mulder's comments be turned into a recommendation for the scope of work. He stated that coordination between the TIP and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan should be explicitly included in Task 2.

3. Household Travel Survey

Mr. Privett introduced Mr. Englund of the CATS staff to the task force. Mr. Englund invited questions regarding the household travel survey, and said the RFP would be developed within the next few weeks. Mr. Neufeld asked if 1990 procedures would be changed to include bicycling as a separate category. Mr. Englund responded that the survey would specify bicycling and walking whenever mode was discussed.

Mr. Neufeld also asked whether an effort would be made to capture short trips. Mr. Englund responded that we had made that effort in the past. The problem is that some respondents do not feel we are looking for the short trip. He went on to say that the telephone survey design would enable more interaction to be sure the respondents are reporting all trips. Mr. Neufeld stated that the Portland MPO tried a different design, focusing on activities rather than trips, thereby uncovering a substantially higher percentage of trips than they had in previous travel surveys. Mr. Neufeld asked if this approach was being considered. Mr. Englund questioned whether the survey data could be used in our models, and pointed out that the change in the survey results could be a result of changes in behavior. Mr. Englund said that adopting an activity-based survey would require a paradigm shift in the use of the data.

Ms. Moore stated that it is also important to look at travel that would occur if more places were accessible. Mr. Englund responded that the household travel survey was not the means for answering these sorts of questions.

Mr. LaPlante asked what the data was used for. Mr. Englund answered that the data was used primarily for estimating parameters and coefficients for regional travel demand models. The variables are compared by socioeconomic data. Mr. LaPlante followed up by asking whether those forecasts could be accurate when the data may be constrained by access factors not accounted for. Mr. Englund stated that some more data could be requested during the survey, but that the response rate would drop off, leading to more questionable results. Mr. Campbell said that validity is important, but it is also important to take other issues into consideration. He pointed out that his travel behavior would change if he could access more destinations. Mr. Englund said the purpose of the survey was not to find out desires, but to determine what the behavior is, then relate community structures, income, household structures, jobs and other variables to that behavior. He added that the size of the survey was not large enough to get the detailed information being requested.

Mr. Privett asked about the scale and timing of the household travel survey. Mr. Englund responded that the target is 20,000 complete surveys. A pretest will be conducted this fall, with the main survey to be conducted in the spring and summer of 2002. Mr. Privett asked how the survey works. Mr. Englund stated that individuals are assigned a day to take note of their travel, and are subsequently interviewed to collect demographic and travel behavior information. Demographic data will include household structure, number of workers, number of inhabitants, number of vehicles, number of bicycles, and geographic information.

Mr. Murtha asked whether this information was used primarily for trip generation. Mr. Englund said no.

Ms. Metzger said she had seen the survey, and was impressed by its length and complexity. Ms. Metzger stated that there was a need to get the survey data being requested, and asked whether a compromise was possible, such as getting the data from another source. Mr. Englund responded that more money was necessary to collect more information. Ms. Metzger followed up by asking how the data would be collected. Mr. Englund stated that we do one survey every ten years because that matches our ability to get the money to do it. If we want to do more, we can do surveys any time. Ms Metzger asked about samples of particular populations. Mr. Privett asked if she meant a long form/short form sort of setup, as in the census. Ms. Metzger asked why CATS wouldn't do smaller samples in the intervening nine years between major surveys, focusing on populations with physical disabilities, the elderly, and other selective surveys. Ms. Bolte suggested that we are discussing another survey; the problem is money. She pointed out that service boards survey their customers to determine why people ride and don't ride their system; a similar survey is possible for bicycle and pedestrian travel. Dean said staff would be willing to work with the task force; but data collection may not solve the problems and the household travel survey has already taken several years to get to the point where it is now.

Mr. Murtha stated that such a survey proposal may be a product of the regional bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan. He pointed out that one of the products of the plan was the identification of key missing pieces of information. He said that extensive new survey may not be appropriate now; that may come after the plan determines the need for such a survey.

Mr. Williams asked how many questions are on the survey. Mr. Englund answered that it was between 50 and 100, but would vary depending on how the person responded. For example, a one-person household has many fewer questions than the six-person household. He said there are approximately 45 screening questions, then 40-60 questions about trips. Mr. Williams followed up by asking why adding questions about why people didn't walk or bicycle couldn't be added to the survey. Mr. Englund responded that the longer the questionnaire, the lower the response rate. He noted that incomplete household surveys are useless; we cannot work with half of the household or half of the trips.

Mr. Williams expressed concern that the survey results will not satisfy the need for bicycle and pedestrian planning data. Mr. Englund answered that the survey underpins many aspects of transportation planning, and had derived from much work and experience conducting previous surveys. Mr. Williams suggested that the bicycle and pedestrian questions can be added to the end of the required data. Mr. Englund said that if we haven't spent the time to determine what information we want, we may not get useful information. It takes more than simply developing ten questions over the course of two days. Mr. Williams asked if it was a timing question. Mr. Englund answered that timing is always an issue, but the key point is that we would have to choose the ten best questions from among the million questions people would like answered.

Mr. Anderson asked if the survey could be focused on areas of interest, such as Schaumburg, where there is an extensive bike network, or downtown Arlington Heights, where there is extensive transit oriented development. He went on to say that the relevant comparisons were not between Chicago and Barrington, but between Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, and other suburban communities that have not invested in bicycle and pedestrian-oriented infrastructure. Mr. Englund answered that the level of geographic precision in determining the location of telephone exchanges was not sufficient to answer such questions. Mr. Anderson expressed concern that the data would be aggregated in such a way that we could not make geographic comparisons. Mr. Englund said that for purposes beyond an aggregate database, the household travel survey is not very good. He added that we could not buy enough surveys to answer Mr. Anderson's questions; we are conducting the survey to estimate parameters and coefficients for regional models.

Mr. Mamoser asked what is the real value of the household travel survey in understanding bicycle and pedestrian accessibility in the region. Mr. Englund responded that we are getting information on all travel; and very little of the travel in the region is done by bicycle. Mr. Mamoser asked whether we could lay the surveys over the landscape to determine whether the connective fabric, e.g. different street patterns, has an effect on bicycle travel. Mr. Englund answered that he didn't think the household travel survey could be related to such geographical information. Mr. Englund said household information will be much more important in determining trips than any other variable.

Mr. Neufeld pointed out that while the number of bicycle trips is small, the number of walking trips is very large, perhaps greater in number than transit trips. Mr. Englund affirmed this, and added that a number of these walking trips were transit access trips. Mr. Neufeld then pointed out that the utility of the survey was greater for walking than bicycling. Mr. Englund answered that getting people to report walking trips is a challenge. The telephone survey would allow more back and forth in order to count these trips.

Mr. Privett asked whether there was a prompt to attempt to get people to report every trip. Mr. Englund responded yes. He reiterated the advantages of the phone survey. Mr. Neufeld expressed satisfaction that CATS had decided to implement the phone survey.

Mr. Neufeld asked about how the seasonal variation in travel would be accounted for. He noted that the U.S. decennial census collects data for the last week of March, which is not good data for bicycling. He asked if the schedule could be such that the summer months were included. Mr. Englund said that summer and winter travel was lower than during the spring and fall. He went on to say the survey will likely spill into the summer.

Mr. Murtha followed up by asking whether the data record would include a trip date field, so seasonality information can be calculated, and whether the information would be collected regionwide throughout the survey process. Mr. Englund replied yes to both questions, but cautioned that the goal is to minimize seasonal variation. He also cautioned that the response rate is lower in the City of Chicago, so surveyors may be scrambling at the end of the process (in the summer) to obtain responses in the city, leading to somewhat skewed seasonal results.

Mr. Englund then asked whether the task force wished to have any input regarding the question regarding the number of bicycles within the household. He asked whether the question should be limited to bicycles in working order, adult bicycles, or similar parameters. A wide-ranging discussion ensued regarding the advantages of collecting information regarding children's bicycles, since there is a focus on independent travel by youths. Mr. Murtha pointed out that since we are not collecting independent trip information for children under 14, it may not make sense to collect information on child-sized bicycles.

Ms. Metzger, Mayor Mulder, and others took up the issue of youth travel. Mayor Mulder focused on the ability of kids to get to school on their own. Several members of the task force suggested that the cutoff age for household travel survey be reduced from the current 14 years of age. Mr. Englund responded that current cutoff was the product of experience with the survey.

4. Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Funding

Mr. Murtha reported that he had no updates on the Hazard Elimination Program, but that he had been working on the question of how to better document improvements to the bicycle and pedestrian environments. In previous bike/ped task force meetings, requests were made to develop a system for determining the amount of funds used for bicycle and pedestrian projects. However, it was pointed out that it is not always easy to identify what percentage of a project's cost goes to a particular feature of that project.

He suggested measuring improvements instead of the dollar amounts associated with them. For example, we could work with agencies to sample funded and built projects to see if they improved (or degraded) walking and cycling conditions.

Mr. Barsotti mentioned that he recently surveyed 17 other states on their sidewalk construction and funding policies. Almost all had a formal cost-sharing policy. Those that had policies were more generous than Illinois. He would like to see more discussion and clarification of IDOT's sidewalk policies. Mr. Pechnick explained that many projects are not funded using the federal formula. Sidewalk maintenance and ownership are also complicating issues.

5. Task Force Membership

Ms. Kilgore noted that six task members have stepped down since the task force was reconstituted in November, 1999. CATS staff have been trying to identify possible replacements. She introduced two individuals who have expressed interest in serving on the task force: Mr. Ray Campbell, from the Chicago Chapter of the American Council of the Blind (user/advocate group) and Mr. Josh Deth, from Break the Gridlock (citizen group). Mr. Campbell explained that he is interested in helping pedestrians get along and across streets, and would like to see more use of audible signals to help those with visual impairments navigate intersections. Mr. Deth explained that Break the Gridlock is a grassroots organization working to reduce the use of automobiles in Chicago. Mr. Murtha also introduced Mayor Arelene Mulder of Arlington Heights, who is the new Council of Mayors representative. The task force approved staff's new member recommendations. Mr. Privett noted that these members bring more balance to the task force; Mr. Campbell adds the pedestrian perspective to the user/advocate category and Mr. Deth adds an urban perspective to the citizen group category.

6. CMAQ Project Selection

Mr. Murtha invited the task force to provide feedback on the project rankings for the FY02 CMAQ program. He noted that project readiness is an important factor, since we are nearing the end of the current federal transportation authorization. $65 million is available for this year's program; projects proposed total $166 million. Historically, between 5 and 10 percent of the program has been used for bicycle and/or pedestrian projects.

Randy Neufeld raised concern about access to the Busse Woods Forest Preserve, and said he was seeking assurances that the Rolling Meadows project on Golf Road would not hinder bicycle access to the forest preserve.

Mr. Deth asked if project analysis paid more attention to short or long term air quality and congestion benefits. Mr. Murtha explained that a long-term analysis is conducted based on current condition.

Ms. Hoyt urged support for multi-agency projects, such as the Salt Creek Trail.

7. Walkable Communities Update

Ms. Kilgore reported that planning for the workshops is going well and encouraged anyone interested in participating in a workshop to contact the local coordinators.

8. Other Business

Mr. Mamoser requested the task force return to the issue of the age cutoff for data collection in the household travel survey. Mr. Neufeld moved to request that the Work Program Committee consider including the travel of youths under the age of 14 in the household travel survey, leaving the exact cutoff age to staff. The motion passed unanimously.

9. Next Meeting.

The next meeting was scheduled for 9: 30am, Wednesday October 24, 2001.