U-PASS Advisory Board Regular Meeting January 6, 2017 Transportation Services building room 218 Present Daniele Meñez, ASUW President Hakikat Bains, ASUW Dir. Of Campus Partnerships Alissa Mustre, ASUW Representative Adam Khan, ASUW Representative Naveen Sahi, ASUW Representative Anna Wittow, GPSS Representative Cooper Smith, GPSS Representative Sarah Loeffler, GPSS Vice President of Internal Affairs Lucas Simons, Advisory Board Staff Zachary Howard, Transportation Advisor Anne Eskridge, Transportation Advisor Jon Massey, Shuttles Manager I.

Public Comment Period (No comments)

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Agenda approval Everyone introduces themselves to the group. (Meeting Agenda Approved 1:35pm)

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Approval of Previous Meeting’s Minutes Lucas notes change in meeting minutes format to summary form. Sarah asks that her name be changed to Loeffler, not Loeffler-Haberly. The agenda is approved by the board.

Introduction of New Transportation Services Director Anne introduces herself to board as the new director of Transportation Services. She worked at UNC at Chapel Hill, RMWC, and Western Washington University in student affairs, and served for four years in the banking/credit union industry. Anne oversaw Recycling/Solid waste, Moving and Surplus, Fleet Services and UW Shuttles when she first came to UW. She helped put UW Sustainability on the map. Following her time in Transportation Services she was the Assistant Director for Materials Management which included oversight for Facilities Services Stores. She is now the Director for Transportation Services. She wants to leave the board with point that transparency is paramount to business affairs at the university. She believes that ransparency helps strengthen the organizations role and relationship with the University community and Anne wants the help of and to help the board to fulfill that goal.

NightRide Overview 

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Jon hands out printed presentation (attached) and gives overview of what NightRide service is. He discusses the east and west zones, routing and stops. He mentions that they are open to meeting needs of customers in terms of expanding service but notes there can be frequency tradeoffs when looking at service area expansion. He notes it can be difficult to stick to route with flexible service. He also mentions that NightRide is a contract service, which can make having a direct line of communication with operators difficult. Cooper asks who the vendor for the service is. Jon responds that SP Plus is the vendor. Regarding the process for contracting the service, Jon notes three two-year extensions are provided for in current contract. He notes a ~2% cost increase in the most recent contract because of increasing costs to the vendor. Anne gives more detail on cost increases and refers to the increased cost of living in the area to put increasing cost of NightRide contract in perspective. She reiterates that increase was minimal. Jon begins to discuss NightRide boardings and notes that they have been increasing steadily since 2014. Cooper asks if size of fleet has changed and Jon responds that it has not. Jon says fleet expansion or larger vehicles might be something to consider. Mentions that capacity for current vehicles is every seat filled plus seven standing – more than that compromises rider safety. Daniele asks if they have looked into extending hours during finals week because students are out later than 1:30 (NightRide currently operates until 1:30 am). Jon says they have not looked into it. He notes that it would roughly $2000/month per vehicle to extend for 90 minutes, and will get per-hour costs of extending hours just during finals week. Adam mentions the flagpole would be a good stop. Daniele says they are not talking about extending service everywhere. Zack mentions costs are more associated with time than the area of service. Jon returns to discussion of ridership and boardings. He notes September is low because quarter starts then and some students are unfamiliar with service. He refers to slide with ridership graph and says you can see when the service is most popular and compare between years. Zack asks if they have seen change since light rail launched last year. Jon responds they have not looked into it. He says there was a request to add a stop somewhere near the light rail station because the current stop at the IMA was too far. He says he can look into it. Jon says they can map many things out if the board has requests in terms of routing and finances. He says he wants to make sure the service is working for students Naveen asks if Jon sees them reaching a point where increasing ridership will exceed the capacity of the service. Jon responds that there will come a time when they need to look at whether they are leaving riders behind. Anne notes that it might be time to look at that closer by doing some ride-alongs. Adam asks if the conversation on bringing the service in-house has been started. Jon says it has been for another service but not NightRide. He says right now it is more cost effective with the vendor and that the drivers are well payed. Anne notes the difficulty of hiring for employment with late-night hours, and the cost increases of bringing in-house. Anne says more direct oversight through ride-alongs is something to pursue given that brining the service in-house is not cost effective. Zack reminds everyone that the faculty-staff U-PASS covers 5% of NightRide, and the remainder comes from student U-PASS. Adam asks if we have data on faculty and staff ridership. Anne says it’s hard data to collect but she knows it is a small percentage, between 1% and 5%. Anne says the

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service is offered to aid in creating a safe campus and to fulfill the campus’ ADA obligations. The group discusses how safety is a big concern for beginning students at an urban campus. Zack notes the current trend for increase in enrollment is about 1,000 students a year for the Seattle campus. Action item: Questions for tuition statement presentation

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Anna asks for background regarding why the U-PASS fee is a line item on the tuition statement as opposed to part of the tuition breakdown. Adam says that may be because it is a universal fee. Sarah notes that SAF is the also so questions why UPASS would not be on the same part of the tuition statement as SAF given that. Lucas relays discussion he had with fiscal services representatives about the fee name change and the legal reasons why that was not pursued by previous boards.

OUTCOMES: Lucas will tell fiscal services that the main question the board would like the presenter to address is why the fee is located where it is on the tuition statement and not in the tuition breakdown with SAF. The presentation on this will occur at January 27th meeting. V.

Other Business 

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Zack, referring to last meeting regarding discussion of fee change, says he is still discussing numbers with the Accounting team. He recommends not meeting next week but going to weekly meetings after that because timeline in MOU for fee change process is quite tight. He says he wants to make sure group is talking to Rene and using her as a resource because she has extensive experience with past boards going through the fee change process. Adam confirms that next meeting would be the 20th. The groups discusses the timeline of meetings to make sure they have the recommendation ready for sending to Senates. Zack notes that the MOU is amendable, and recommends the AB review the fee change timeline to see if there are opportunities for more breathing room. Zack says Transportation Services’ commitment is to get the board a recommendation by the 20th.

(Adjourned at 2:23)