Thursday, November 13, 2025, 1 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Mobility Committee
The Mobility Committee, chaired by Council Member Ellis, held briefings on APD traffic enforcement, the state of Austin's bridges, and the Living Streets program. Members asked about enforcement priorities on high-injury and neighborhood streets, the motors unit staffing, bridge funding needs (an estimated $149 million over five years against $62 million available), and the transition from temporary healthy streets toward more permanent shared-street infrastructure. Public comment supported protected bike lanes on Sixth Street and highlighted a successful healthy street. The committee approved the October 16 minutes, including 2026 meeting dates, and previewed December topics such as the I-35 Capital Express Central project, micromobility, and a Sixth Street pilot update.
0:36 Is everybody ready? I think we're ready to go.
0:40 Good afternoon everyone. This is the mobility committee.
0:43 I am the chair, Paige Ellis, and it is 1:05 pm and we are conducting this meeting in Austin
0:50 City Hall chambers. I'm joined by vice chair cadre and Council Member lane, Council Member Vela, and I
0:57 believe Council Member Harper Madison should be joining us shortly.
1:00 Um, via the remote access.
1:05 I believe we have three people who signed up for public communication.
1:08 Can you go ahead and call their names?
1:10 Yes, can I please have marty combs, kate haynesworth and adam greenfield.
1:19 And I believe we have three minutes per speaker.
1:25 Go right ahead. Make sure the microphone is on.
1:29 Why don't you hit that button till it turns green.
1:31 There we go. There we go.
1:32 Okay. Yes. Perfect. Thank you.
1:34 Welcome. Thank you. Um, uh, I would like to voice my support for a single bike lane on
1:40 sixth street between I 35 and congress, which is called an an alternative design.
1:44 Number two, alternative design number two, lets businesses on six three go from having zero space to nine
1:52 and a half feet of extra space for tables, chairs, patrons, and customers.
1:57 I can understand why businesses favor alternative design number three, that lets them go from zero space to
2:03 12 feet. They want as much space as possible for patrons and customers.
2:08 However, in alternative design two, they still go from zero to nine and a half feet.
2:14 A still pretty substantial increase.
2:17 The difference between the two alternatives two and three is 30 inches barely wider than a closet door
2:24 in design. Two, patrons choosing to arrive by bike or small electric scooter will use the bike lane
2:29 instead of going down the sidewalk or using the vehicle lane.
2:33 Pedestrians on the sidewalk will be safer.
2:35 The bicyclists and commuters and the electric scooters will be safer.
2:38 Everyone gets their own lane.
2:40 We all know the reality.
2:42 When provided a vague path for travel, some cyclist or person on an electric scooter will make that
2:47 random decision. They'll allow to use a sidewalk endangering the bar and restaurant patrons, or they will traverse
2:52 in the vehicle lane, potentially pass p*****g off a driver road rage is a real thing in high
2:57 traffic congestion. Some incidents May cost the city of Austin more money as ems or police May to
3:03 be involved. Alternative design two provides one small bike lane, less than a half mile long point, 0.45
3:11 to be exact one small bike lane.
3:14 One big benefit. Thank you for your consideration.
3:18 Thank you. I appreciate those comments,
3:28 adam. Okay. Good afternoon, council members.
3:33 Adam greenfield here with sage streets Austin.
3:35 Um, welcome back. Council Member cadry, wherever you are.
3:39 Um, so we are here to speak strongly in support of protected bike lanes on sixth street.
3:46 Uh, staff is currently working on proposals for the future of sixth street.
3:49 Those plans must include protected bike lanes.
3:53 It is official city policy.
3:54 It's in the bike plan.
3:56 Um, sixth street has unique connectivity.
3:59 So some people say, well, why not have bike lanes on fifth or seventh?
4:03 Sixth street is the only westbound, um, street that goes from I 35 to mopac.
4:07 So, um, it has unique connectivity value for cycling.
4:12 Our mode shift goals very much depend on protected bike lanes on our high profile streets like sixth
4:19 street. Uh, we know merchants, some merchants have concerns about bike lanes, and we wanna see the city
4:25 really work with the business community to make these, uh, these bike lanes work.
4:30 But the data are very clear.
4:32 Bike lanes mean business businesses that are close to bike lanes do better than businesses that are not.
4:39 This will be one of the most famous bike lanes, not only in Austin, but in texas.
4:44 When you see photos of bike infrastructure in texas, that will be shown across the country.
4:48 If we have bike lanes on sixth, they will be seen in those presentations.
4:54 Uh, conferences coming to town will use these facilities.
4:57 They will become really a, um, an example of of how serious Austin is about biking and really
5:06 the future of sixth street and the future of bike lanes on sixth street is a litmus test
5:11 for biking in Austin.
5:13 How serious are we about our mode shift goals?
5:16 How serious are we about safety?
5:18 Um, how serious are we about listening to all stakeholders and making sure that sixth street can be
5:24 accessed, uh, safely by all transportation users?
5:28 So thank you very much for the time.
5:30 Uh, we really hope that the council will support staff in, um, implementing our own plans for bike
5:37 lanes on sixth street.
5:38 Thank you very much.
5:41 Thank you. We appreciate your remarks.
5:44 Do we have a third speaker or are they not here yet?
5:47 She's not here. She did email me and let me know.
5:49 She'd be here around one 30 if she can still speak.
5:53 Okay. Yes. I will give her time to speak when she arrives.
5:56 Let's go ahead and start with the other items that we have to tackle today and just flag
6:00 me when she arrives and we'll give her a spot in between presentations.
6:04 Perfect. Thank you. Alright, item number one is approve the minutes of the October 16th mobility committee meeting.
6:13 Do I have a motion from Council Member lane?
6:15 Seconded by Council Member Vela.
6:18 Um, I wanted to ask a question about the meeting dates for 2026, or is that something that
6:23 we could have added into backup, or should I create space so we can read those into the
6:28 record? Give me one second.
6:52 Um, I need a few minutes to pull up the, the proposed dates.
7:00 Perfect. Let's go ahead and move to the first presentation and then we'll circle back on that since
7:05 it's been motioned and seconded.
7:08 We will just leave that on the table for a second.
7:11 Sorry. Oh, you're fine.
7:12 Can we approve the minutes?
7:18 Good afternoon. This is a briefing update from the Austin police department on traffic enforcement.
7:25 So we have a great presentation.
7:26 We know that the police department has been doing great things, trying to make sure they're covering traffic
7:31 enforcement and other safety issues on the roads, and we wanted to create a space to be able
7:34 to learn more about the initiatives.
7:37 Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
7:38 Um, assistant chief Mike chancellor with Austin police department, I was asked to present on our traffic enforcement
7:43 efforts and initiatives. First, I wanna thank ashley avan with our executive staff for helping put together the
7:49 presentation. Um, there we go.
7:55 Um, so two things that kind of, uh, we look at when we're doing traffic enforcement to guide
8:01 it. And the first one is our mission statement, which is about keeping our community safe.
8:05 And then the second is vision zero.
8:07 Uh, you're all familiar with vision zero.
8:09 This is the 10th year with we've been a part of vision zero.
8:12 And, uh, even though our traffic numbers have dropped, you'll see substantially that within Austin where we started,
8:18 middle of the road compared to other texas cities, 10 years in division zero, we're now the lowest
8:24 per capita for serious injury and fatality rates among the largest cities in texas.
8:31 So there's two parts to, uh, the way we run a traffic initiative or have enforcement.
8:35 The first part is education.
8:37 We always wanna make sure that people are educated on, uh, the issues that people are facing, where
8:42 we're having collisions, what's causing collisions, and things like that.
8:45 So you'll see a lot of social media, uh, that we push out.
8:49 Usually at least once a week you'll see something put out about speeding seat belts, drunk driving, things
8:54 like that. And so that's the first part.
8:56 We always want to educate people before we take any type of enforcement action.
9:03 Here you've got a slide for the traffic citations that we've ridden this year are the top ones.
9:08 Uh, we typically, uh, always target aggressive driving first, speeding, running red lights, running stop signs, things like
9:14 that. Uh, but as you'll see, our most commonly issued citations are driving without insurance and driving without
9:21 a driver's license. Those are things that once we stop a vehicle, we end up finding that someone
9:25 doesn't have the either of those, and so they end up getting a citation for those.
9:32 On this next slide, you'll see that we're up about 14% from last year.
9:36 Uh, and part of that is the staffing that we've been going through and trying to get officers
9:41 back on patrol. You'll see that it's had a steep, uh, decrease since June.
9:46 That is specifically based on our step grant overtime funding, uh, that ran out during that time period.
9:52 And so we haven't had the overtime funds to, uh, from the grant to have officers specifically target
9:58 the high speed roadways and collisions.
10:00 But the good news is that's a state grant, so it wasn't affected by the shutdown.
10:04 It's a fiscal grant, so it's now running again.
10:07 And so you should see that red line start to go back up again.
10:11 Uh, but we've issued a little over 11,000 citations this year, uh, through September.
10:16 And so that is an increase from last year, and we expect that number to continue to increase.
10:22 Talking about some of the campaigns that we've done this year, we typically partner with txdot or other
10:28 groups to put on campaigns.
10:30 Uh, again, there's an educational component before the enforcement component.
10:34 You can see that in March and April of this year, we did a distracted driving campaign.
10:38 That is when, uh, people are on their cell phones driving.
10:41 Uh, you can see the marked increase in citations that were issued during March and April of this
10:47 year. And that was based on that campaign.
10:49 Walking through a few more campaigns, we had a click and ticket campaign with texdot.
10:55 Uh, it didn't really increase, and that is based on when you're, when you're looking at seat belts,
11:00 it is a little bit harder to to see if someone's wearing a seat belt or not when
11:03 they're driving around. Uh, versus we can all tell the person that's on their cell phone, uh, swerving
11:08 in and outta a lane.
11:10 Uh, so, but we did run that campaign.
11:12 We ran a speeding operation slowdown campaign as well.
11:16 Uh, you can see the numbers, you can see that, uh, in July we had our highest, uh,
11:20 number of citations this year for speeding.
11:25 We also did a dwi initiative downtown.
11:27 And so we had our drug recognition experts that were working downtown over the spring and summer, and
11:34 they were picking up shifts during the Friday and Saturday nights and looking for drunk drivers.
11:38 And so you can see we made 49 dwi arrests during that time.
11:42 It was very specific, uh, timing, very targeted to make sure that we were looking in the areas
11:48 that we believed we had the, the highest amount of intoxicated drivers.
11:54 So kind of moving forward of what we're doing to target, uh, and find out where we need
11:59 to run traffic and where we need to be specific.
12:02 Uh, I don't wanna beat a dead horse.
12:04 Everyone knows we've got a slight staffing shortage.
12:07 And so that does kind of drive, uh, and make sure that we have to be data driven
12:11 and figuring out where we're going to put traffic enforcement.
12:14 And so we have weekly crime reduction meetings and during those crime reduction meetings, we go over the
12:20 hotspot locations for collisions throughout Austin.
12:23 Uh, they're typically centered around high speed roadways I 35 180 3 and things like that.
12:28 And so, uh, we, we will push out directed patrols for those areas and ask officers to go
12:35 enforce, uh, citations specifically where we're having those issues.
12:39 Uh, and we also talk about the infrastructure in those areas.
12:42 So what we see a lot of is, okay, on, on I 35, there's a construction area here.
12:48 Seems to be a lot more collisions in this area.
12:51 What can we do to partner with txdot to put better signage up to make sure it's very
12:55 clear to reduce the amount of collisions there?
12:58 In addition to the enforcement that we're taking there
13:05 in leveraging resources, we have a reserve officer program.
13:08 While they can't run traffic, they can't go out and direct traffic at, uh, special events and things
13:14 like that. And so we do have them out there directing traffic in those areas, trying to make
13:18 sure that, uh, people are safe and being able to exit a special event, say the football game
13:22 or a festival or anything like that.
13:25 Uh, and keeping people safe there.
13:27 We also still have a commercial vehicle enforcement unit.
13:30 This unit, uh, has done some amazing work.