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Episode Transcripts
Please Note: These are automatically generated transcripts.
Jen: (00:39)
One of the major jobs of local government is helping people to get around.
Ted: (00:43)
We've talked on this podcast about paving the roads, but we haven't talked yet about another part of making sure your ride goes smoothly.
Jen: (00:51)
The traffic engineering department at the city is responsible for a lot of things, traffic safety, bike lanes, signal timing, and we have Todd Frisbee here who heads it all up. Todd, thanks for being with us.
Todd: (01:02)
You're welcome. I'm glad to be here.
Jen: (01:04)
We appreciate it. We want to just welcome you with some applause. Yes, of course. And we want to talk about, um, city traffic engineering. That's your team that you had up and you are the city traffic engineer. What does that exactly mean for people who are not sure what that title entails?
Todd: (01:22)
Well, the, the title, I'm a city traffic engineer. Uh, it, it, um, everything within the traffic engineering department related to your traffic signals, your S, your street signs, your striping, um, all comes through our department. Uh, and so we're working, our staff works on, uh, on timing our traffic signals. We work on, Hey, what's, what kind of traffic control should we have in an intercession? Should it be, uh, should we have a traffic signal here? Should it just be stop signs on? Should we do around about at this location, this location? Uh, we're making those, we're collecting data on those things. We're making decisions, running analysis, um, to figure out what kind of traffic control we have at our intersections.
Jen: (02:01)
People see something new pop up on a city street. That's, that's your department?
Todd: (02:04)
Yeah, that's our department. So when you see a new traffic signal go up, we've done the analysis and, and, and, and looked at the criteria for whether our traffic's into would meet our warrants and if it does and we have the funding would go out and put out a traffic signal.
Todd: (02:17)
So that's uh, that's one part of our, uh, part of our job. The other part of our job that we do a lot of project planning that maybe people don't know about. We talk about, um, uh, uh, when we talk about, um, where, um, you know, how many lanes our roads need to be, you know, where we should have bike lanes, uh, where um, uh, you know, pedestrian crossings where our trails cross, what kind of traffic control we should have a trail crosses. All of that comes through our department. All of that is analyzed and we look at it and make the best decision based on the data that we have available.
Ted: (02:49)
Well, let's take a step back. Yeah. Let's talk about where you're from. It sounds like you're a hashtag native as the kids would say. And then I'm also what actually got you into being at a traffic engineer and then talk about your time with the city and getting you up to this point.
Jen: (03:03)
Sorry, that's a loaded question.
Todd: (03:06)
Well, I'm not a native, so I was both, but I've lived here since I was four. I got here as quick as you look. I here y'all.
Ted: (03:11)
So I think you'd be counted as a, as a hashtag name.
Todd: (03:13)
Yes, I'm close. Yeah. But okay, so those are four. So I grew up here. Uh, I went to school, went to college here. I went to the MSEC graduate, a M and a. And basically how I got into this, uh, field, uh, when you're, you know, at CCC doesn't have an engineering department. So, um, I was part of a dual degree program with Washington university. After I finished my time at CC, I went in and got a degree in, uh, civil engineering, uh, civil engineering. Well, when I was there, uh, took a couple of transportation courses, um, and new and a couple of structural courses and I'd have to take it a couple of structural courses.
Todd: (03:48)
I realized, you know, that's not for me. Let's go, let's go. Let's work on transportation. That seemed a little more interesting, a little more dynamic. You had a lot of public involvement. There's, you know, there's always a, you know, it's a solution oriented type of, uh, profession. Uh, from there, uh, I ended up going to graduate school at the university of Texas where I focused in on transportation. Uh, and specifically kind of what I do now, traffic analysis, traffic operations, and sort of the funniest story about how I kinda ended up in this field. And, uh, we joke that it's all because of my wife. Um, um, she was bad before we were married. She, um, she was making phone calls for me, um, here locally to work engineering versus, she called the, this firm called FHU. And, uh, this grumpy secretary answered the phone.
Todd: (04:40)
Um, and um, and basically asked my wife, roadway or planning. So basically, which yo, which hiring manager you should go to. And my wife in a, in a, in a panic said planning, planning, and then ended up getting the job in planning and transportation planning. Um, so we joked that she set the course of my whole career and that now, one second. Yes, yes. Uh, she laid the roadway, she laid the roadway for the, for that, um, behind every great traffic engineer is a great way, if that makes a second decision, sets your whole career. Yeah, exactly. It's been good. It's been good. So actually I spent, um, I did spend 22 years, uh, with that company in the private sector doing what I kinda, you know, kind of what, uh, you know, traffic analysis, you know, Porter analysis, safety analysis, uh, intersection operations. That's sort of, that's my bread and butter.
Todd: (05:39)
That's my background. That's what I know. Uh, know the best.
Jen: (05:43)
And so you work with the city in that job?
Todd: (05:45)
Yes. Yeah. So, um, for about, you know, 10 to 12 years, I've worked on many city projects, um, you know, 30th street corridor, um, a couple of things on Hancock and Academy. So I knew a lot of city staff. Um, you know, you know, the city partners with their consultants all the time to do traffic analysis. So I was doing that kind of work for the city, uh, as a consultant. And then when the opportunity came to, um, be the city traffic engineer, I after 22 years and with the firm, um, you figured, Oh, I'm a lifer. You know, this is where I, this is what I'm going to do. I'm not going to change my career at this point. Uh, but when an opportunity came up, I was like, how could I really do that?
Todd: (06:25)
And, um, I think I could. And so I said, all right, let's give it a shot. And, uh, uh, and so that was on, uh, the, you know, obviously I got hired April 1st was my first day, so no joke.
Ted: (06:37)
Uh, that was last year.
Todd: (06:39)
I was yet last year, 2019. Uh, so what, a little more than 10 months now on the job. I love it actually. Um, uh, you know, there's a, there's a lot of meetings and there's a, you know, a lot of emails, a lot of citizen and accurate interaction. But what I love about it is that this position you can make, you can make some changes to our roadways and our intersections that make our intersection safer, that make that improve traffic flow, um, that improve options, transportation options for, uh, for individuals. So that's what I love the most, is the ability to affect change on our transportation system.
Ted: (07:12)
Well, and I think you may have hit on what I'm about to ask you, but, uh, what are some of your major, uh, goals? Uh, you're still relatively new in, into your position, but even when you were being interviewed or coming into here, um, what were some of the things that you really said I want to set out and do this? Yeah,
Todd: (07:29)
well, that's a great question. I really had three main goals and I carried those through the interview process and I'm working on implementing. And now the one, uh, one main goal was safety. Uh, you look at, um, I feel there is an opportunity to improve safety at our intersections in our, in our long our roads. And so I'm, uh, putting in some, um, some processes and some analyses in the place that allow us to better, um, to better evaluate, uh, where we have safety issues. And then once we know where it'll safety issues are, we can then focus our resources to address those. Um, uh, and really my goal, the goal in that is, um, you know, drivers are gonna make mistakes when they drive. They just do. And, and, um, people say, well, Carava Springs drivers are the worst drivers in America. I don't buy into that, buy into that. I think the drivers in Bozeman, Montana are just as bad or still there are people operating vehicles that they make. And the thing is they make bad decisions. And so our goal as the traffic engineering department is from a safety perspective as help drivers not make a bad decision. That's sort of, that's sort of one main focus for me. Uh, the other one is technology. Uh, there is, um, there is opportunity now, um, with some of the radar technologies. Now I'm going to get a little too tactical here, but
Ted: (08:41)
okay. I have acronym alerts and bureaucratic babble sound effects over here. So, so watch out. So
Todd: (08:49)
the, um, uh, where we can, um, better, you better take advantage of our signal system, uh, make it more efficient, um, uh, introduce less stop, fewer stops, um, less delay, uh, for, for drivers. And so some of the technologies out there, um, we're actually, we're, we're implementing them right now on our corridors to help reduce, um, delay and stops for drivers on, on major corridor. So, so that's a technology piece. That's an example that we really need to leverage that as much as we can to get the most out of our system. And I think we're heading in that direction.
Ted: (09:25)
So safety, new technology. What's that? Third one?
Todd: (09:28)
Third one is multimodalIncluding more than one mode of transportation. For example, a facility that accommodates lanes for motorized vehicles, bike lanes, sidewalks, and transit stops. as I want to give, uh, the residents of the city, uh, options in their transportation. Now we're not, no, we primarily drive and that's going to be that way for, you know, for a long time. Uh, but I believe that we need to give our, um, our pedestrians or bicyclists, our transit users, um, options or well and our vehicle drivers. Um, also options for transportation, you know, um, uh, so that they can get around the city. I'm in a mode, um, of their choice. Uh, they can get around safely on that, on that, on that mode. And so, so yeah, so it's, um,
Jen: (10:04)
and they can do a combination, right? I mean, they can drive to work, but they can bike around on the weekends and if they live downtown or whatever. Yeah,
Todd: (10:11)
exactly. Right. It's, um, it's sort of that, um, we call it that first mile, last mile trip. You know, you can get, you can take your car and get to a point, but you need to make, there's a little last hurdle you've got to get over. And so maybe, you know, having your bike or having good pedestrian facilities so you can get between that, you know, where you're parked, your car to that destination you're trying, uh, trying to get to, and so that, yeah, I think that's a focus to that as the train of the traffic engineering department, that is our, our responsibility is to, um, ensure a mode, choice, transportation mode, choice among, for our citizens.
Jen: (10:45)
When you're focusing all of these things, technology, safety, all of those things, you're collaborating with different departments, right? I want people to be aware that it's not just trafficking sitting on their own in this little room. Ha figuring it all out. Um, but a police department obviously is big input. And then like you said, our, our Metro transit system, our bus system, you're working with those folks. Um, we have a bike plan, right? I mean, everybody's at the table. And
Todd: (11:12)
I think on one of the things about traffic engineering division as I w I think we, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think we interact with more departments and divisions within public works than really any other, any other division. You're right. I work with the police department on safety. Yeah. We're consistently collaborating on, yeah. Yes. Right. Uh, I don't like to use the word dangerous. I use the word unsafe. That's true. Not performing. There's a, um,
Jen: (11:39)
when a lot, when a lot of accidents or start to happen, it says, okay, what can we do as police? What can we do is traffic engineering. Everyone is talking,
Todd: (11:47)
driving engineering would take the approaches, are there more crashes occurring at an intersection than you would expect? And so then once we know that, uh, we can either coordinate with police, say, Hey, please, we have a red light running problem at this intersection. This might be a location for red light camera or a place to step up enforcement. Or we see we have a speeding problem. You know, we work with police. Say, Hey, you know, this is might be an area where you could, you step up some enforcement, uh, in that area. And then they come to us and say, Hey, we're looking at red light cameras at these locations. Uh, Y, you know, what do you think? Uh, and so, uh, so we have a, um, uh, since I've started, you know, been pretty intentional about having a collaborative approach to safety on our roadways with police.
Todd: (12:28)
So that's a big sort of department outside of engineering public works that do, we have a lot of coordination, a lot of coordination with. We also work with the planning department quite a bit, uh, because every new development generates new traffic. Uh, and so we work with, uh, the, um, uh, we require traffic impact studies of our, of our new developments and we work with, um, the planning department to, to, um, to try and get your infrastructure. You have developers put in the infrastructure that we need to offset their offset, their impacts. And so there's a negotiation and never know in a working relationship we have with planning, um, a close working relationship with planning on trying to address those,
Jen: (13:08)
which is good for people to know if they're moving into one of those many new developments, you know, that there's really a concerted effort for safety and, and just helping to get around
Ted: (13:18)
smooth. I think people don't realize sometimes how much collaboration happens in the city to make sure that you can get somewhere safely. Let's talk more about that collaboration. Uh, let's also talk about some, yes, that's what I was gonna say. So I know a lot of people want to know about signal timing. Um, also some other misconceptions that are out there because we all like to play a backseat. A traffic engineer I guess are driving me included. So Todd, I got a lot of a lot of things to talk to you about coming up here.
Jen: (14:26)
We are back with Todd Frisbee, our city traffic engineer and we're going to tackle some of the misconceptions about traffic engineering, um, and our last section here with him. Um, and I think one of the biggest things is um, if we can talk about people when they're sitting at the, at the stoplight and they're saying, Oh man, I'm hitting every red light and it is your fault, Todd.
Ted: (14:44)
Yeah. What are you doing back there? You're like the wizard of Oz. Just making me late to work lives.
Jen: (14:51)
Well, I know that you get that a lot. That's a big misconception. So can you talk about signal timing and, and, and your role in?
Todd: (14:57)
Yeah. Right. And, uh, we have a team that does our single time, so I, you know,
Jen: (15:01)
they're not out to get us.
Ted: (15:02)
They're not, they're definitely not out to get us. They're great guys. They try to push blame on other people that's attracted to your, I can do that. That's right. That's right. Uh, no. Um, ultimately it comes back to me. So I'll take the blame for whatever. Um, the, um, so yeah, we have three. We have, um, uh, uh, we have individuals that their job is to, um, uh, to deal with to, to time our signals basically. And, uh, and now what we do, there's a couple of ways that we approach that. One is, um, uh, during our peak hours, you know, during your morning commute and your evening commute, uh, our major corridor signals are, are timed.
Todd: (15:41)
Um, uh, they're coordinated well. We use the word coordinated. And so that means that they, um, in theory as you drive along the road, you should be hitting greens as you, as you, as you drive. Now, you know, most people say, Oh, that doesn't work well when you get into a situation where there's a lot of traffic and you have to slow down and gestion your coordinated system doesn't work as well because you've got congestion on your, uh, on your roadways. But you know, a common practice within traffic engineering is to coordinate signals during the peak hours. Um, so in order to move the traffic on the main street. So that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is during those off peak times we run, we run the signal in a situation when we call it free and it's more of a demand response.
Todd: (16:29)
It doesn't mean yes, demand responsive. It's more than just, um, um, uh, you know, just there was not a free for all, but that maybe that's not the best term for, to use there, but it's more demand responsive in that, uh, and you probably have all experiences, you know, it's eight o'clock at night and you, and you're coming out of your residential neighborhood and you pull up to a light and boom, you get a green right away and you go, uh, well because of that, at that point, the signal is in this demand responsive mode. And then as soon as you go away, you notice that the yellow came up like within three seconds. Well, it did because there was no more cars left to serve on a side street. So it starts to cycle back to the green on the mainstream. So in the free operation, it, the signal would sit in green. Um, and then if another car pulls up, if, um, that, um, uh, it, it has to sit in green on the ministry for a minimum amount of time. So if another car pulls up within that minimum all the time, it will sit in the red for a little bit longer. But once that minimum time is hit, it will release that car and move on. So cool.
Ted: (17:35)
How does it know, I mean obviously I drive up and I flash my, my, uh, high beams at it.
Jen: (17:43)
Another misconception folks does not work. Oh yeah.
Todd: (17:46)
I get that one a lot. You know, that say, Hey, if I my high beams without where the light come on. And unfortunately folks, that's not how it works. Um, so, um, you know, I'm going to keep believing that it does keep trying. [inaudible] fine. And uh, so what, um, what, how it works, if you notice on a lot of our intersections there's a white camera sitting on across from you and that is a detection camera. It's not recording anything. All it is, is it's, so it's not big brother. It's not big brother. Okay. Just making sure on that, since we are talking about misconceptions, right, there's the, you know, you've probably all seen those TV shows that tapped into the, you know, the traffic cam. They'll find it. No, we're not doing that. We're not doing that.
Todd: (18:27)
Uh, so what, yeah, what it does, it's a, it's a sort of a pixel based thing. So there's a monitor within the cabinet, you know, and then in that, on that monitor, we draw a little, there's an image that that camera's projected and we draw a little, our texts draw a detection zone. Okay. And so when a car pulls up in that little zone and a pixels change, because the car's there now, um, it sends a command to the controller that says, Hey, there's a car here. Um, do what you're supposed to do. Uh, and so that, and so, so we use detection, uh, video camera detection. We don't, there's not weight sensors in the road. I get that a lot. So if there was, yeah, no, there's no setting, there's no waiting. Um, it's all intersection detection and which, you know, uh, brings me to the, sort of, the, one of the struggles we have with that is they, they get dirty.
Todd: (19:21)
Okay. And, um, and they can't pick up, they can't pick up that car cause they can't see it. Uh, and so, um, you know, so that, you know, so some of the calls that we get from, from the, from residents that says, Hey, I pulled up to that intersection and my left Turner all didn't come up. Or Hey, it never turned green. I was sitting there and it never turned green. Uh, for me that's probably because our detection is either dirty or it's out. Sometimes these things get hit by lightning. Uh, and so we've got to go out and replace those things. Sometimes they just go out. So it's not common but it does happen. It does happen. Yeah. And so, and I would say that's probably, uh, one of the, uh, from residents. That's probably one of the biggest things that we get or comments that we get is like, Hey that, that dream never came up or that arrow never came up or you know, it only lasted like three seconds.
Todd: (20:10)
I mean you need them to tell you that. So that's another way, another plug for us to say download the go cos app. Cause that's a great way to report it. Right? It is, it is. It's to let us know where you were. If the intersection seems to be not functioning correctly, um, let us know. We can take a look at it. Well now I would imagine doing it that way instead of building in like you said, you've here, you hear a lot. The uh, is it weighted under the road? I'm guessing the putting it in the road is probably more expensive than, uh, than having those sort of sensors. So that's just another good way of, uh, of trying to use your taxpayer money as best as possible.
Ted: (20:47)
Is there a crew that has to go out and wipe the lens then?
Todd: (20:50)
Yes. So, um, what will we get those calls? We could actually every signal within, um, we have over 600 signals in the city. Um, every signal is connected back to a traffic management center and our signal timing techs can look at the data that this controller is providing and said, Oh yeah, the detection does not work. You know, it's not coming up with that. We can send, we send out our signal tax, they try to diagnose the problem and if it is a dirty camera or a um, or a malfunctioning camera that needs to be replaced, we do send out a maintenance crew and they go out and they fix the your cleaner camera or they replace it or, or something. So to mention you're keeping up with 600 signals. Yeah, that's another. Right. And you know, and I'm not even just, you know, Brad on the city just for a second on our channel, our traffic brag away, you know, having every single connected to our TMC, we can diagnose a lot of, hold on, hold on.
Todd: (21:50)
Let's tear TMC. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you're right. Sorry. Traffic management center.
Jen: (21:54)
Yeah, we should put a picture of that up, uh, with the podcast because, and we will, if you'd like to go to our podcast page, Colorado springs.gov/podcast because it is really kind of a cool place to see that.
Todd: (22:06)
It's that you've probably all seen, if you ever watched the movie, the Italian job where the guy breaks in and you know, manipulates all those signals and there's this big wall of TV screens and all that. It's for real, for real. We have a big wall of TV screens. Uh, and um, but you know, by, you know, having every signal connected. And then our controllers are actually there. They're smart controllers. They're programmed to tell us when there's problems, right? And, and so a lot of times we get what we call the broke list.
Todd: (22:34)
Uh, and, and our techs get that and say, Hey, these are where we've have, where we have issues. Go out and check it out. Um, so a lot of you know, and the nice thing is if, for example, if the signal goes into flash, yeah, we often know that way before we started getting calls from the public because we'd get the alert that the is in flash and we can dispatch a tech to go out there and see what's Koran. And so that's the great advantage of having all of our signals interconnected in back into the traffic management.
Ted: (23:01)
Yeah. There's people monitoring, uh, some of the issues going on. And, and that also goes into smart technology. Um,
Todd: (23:08)
I mean it's kind of like great people plus great technology. Yeah. You need both.
Ted: (23:13)
Especially for the, like I said earlier, the city size that we are 200 plus square miles, that's 600 plus, uh, lights that you're dealing with. Um, you had said earlier, technology was a big thing for you going forward. Are there some things that you could share with us that you're looking at in the future or some, uh, some new technology that you've seen maybe being used in other cities that might work well here?
Todd: (23:37)
Yeah, know, the big thing right now is that everybody talks about is conducted vehicles. Uh, and, um, uh, in right now our vehicle fleet is, you know, the general fleet of vehicles out there don't have connect to Ted. You don't have all the, don't have connect to technology. And so what we're doing on our side is, um, uh, we're using what we call advanced detection. So we have, you know, I'm, I, I talked about the video detection that was used to detect the vehicle enters at an intersection. We're also using what we call advanced detection, where you can see vehicles 900 feet away, uh, up to 900 feet away approaching the intersection. So a couple of quarters, we have this installed, we have the us 24 corridor. We're about to implement this on powers as well. And what that allows us, if our controller can see cars 900 feet away and the number of cars and the speed they're approaching it can make decisions on whether to serve that side street traffic.
Todd: (24:33)
You know, the car has pulled up and wants to go. And instead of just saying, Hey, there's a car there, I want to make it red on the main and I'm gonna let that car go. And all the cars on the main street stop, you know, that frustrates everybody. Yeah. So with the vast detection says it can say a car is pulled up and say, okay, we have a call for a car on the side street. Oh look, I've got a platoon of cars 600 feet away, traveling at 40 miles per hour. If I extend the green for six more seconds, I can get all these cars through. Yeah, now I can deserve it and then go back to green and catch the next platoon. So, uh, we've been deploying that kind of technology and so it's, it's like a, it's a tiny little step into this world of connected vehicles.
Todd: (25:15)
You know, these, we've connected our infrastructure to the vehicles, you know, and so we're, you know, so that's one thing that we've got that working on us 24, uh, right now. And, um, you know, that helps reduce the number of stops on the main street. Um, it also, um, it, it actually makes for safer intersections cause you've ever tried to come up to an intersection of high speed and then you get that yellow light. Do I stop or do I go, yeah, yeah. So we can, accidents happen. Yeah. So we could detect the technical term is a dilemmas zone. Um, the weekend of the tech, Oh, the signal says, Hey, there's four cars in a dilemmas zone right now, let's extend the green for three more seconds. So they get through. And so, um, we have founded this technology and where we've implemented had reduced that dilemmas zone by almost almost a hundred percent.
Ted: (26:01)
Wow. Which is a major, which is a major safety benefit for us. Well, that's some good bragging that you're doing. Also on the misconception side of things, this reminded me, you guys obviously cut yellow lights, right? So people get red light tickets or a hit a red light camera. Right?
Jen: (26:17)
That's a misconception.
Todd: (26:17)
Exactly. Yes. Yeah. We have a guy in our office who sits there and just [inaudible] the wizard of Oz. Can you explain though, just for people that may question yellow lights, what's kind of the length of yellow lights per, you know, isn't there something about if it's 45 miles an hour, all this is, there's been your decades of research. There's, there's actually a formula we use based on speed of the speed of the road. Uh, how long the yellow clearance should be and it, uh, generally ranges from three to six seconds or so depending on the size of the intersection to speed of the road. Okay. Um, uh, we also have in what we call a lot of our signals have an all red phase where every signal, every approach is red for a few seconds. Okay. Just in case somebody did run and then another safety, uh, aspect to that. Yeah. Right. Okay. Wow. It's really interesting. Yes,
Jen: (27:14)
it is. I mean it's, I think it's nice for people to know that you're not messing with them and that in fact you're working [inaudible]
Ted: (27:19)
I still think maybe you've convinced everyone I'm going to keep flashing my high beams getting mad when I get red light flashing at the intersection. Overall, I think
Jen: (27:32)
it's really nice to hear the great technology are using to help everyone get to where they need to go, whether they're on foot, on bike, in their cars, but also, um, you know, that you've got the, this awesome team working behind the scenes too is nice.
Ted: (27:47)
Multi-modal. We covered safety and new technology. All three of the things that you wanted to hit
Jen: (27:54)
some bike lane information coming soon and some other projects coming up. So we'll definitely, we'd love to have you back on if you're well definitely we didn't scare you off. Yeah, it's going to be on
Ted: (28:04)
this time. You just wait until we get into some of those other subjects though, right? I'm ready for you guys. Thank you Todd.
Jen: (28:13)
We want to, um, and today's podcast with just a little bit of city talk, um, some events and things we want you to know that, um, is coming up. Ted, we've talked about this before. 2020 census.
Ted: (28:24)
Oh yeah.
Jen: (28:28)
It's happening in March. You are going to get something in the mail that says please be counted. This is the census that happens every 10 years. You can learn more about how the census Bureau protects your data, why it's safe, all the details@twentytwentycensus.gov. Please check it out.
Ted: (28:43)
Yeah. And please fill out the census when people come by or you can do it online. Um, but yeah, it's important for money coming into the city and the County. And the state and the, yes, exactly.
Jen: (28:55)
Betty everywhere. Um, so the other cool news we have is that [inaudible] ice center just received from the NHL. Um, the first of its kind on ice sled bench prototype. It's part of their legacy project initiative. So it's basically, it's designed to accommodate sled hockey players of all levels so they don't have to jump over the barrier when they're coming on and off the ice. Really cool. So the NHL also provided new sleds and sticks, um, all kinds of great stuff for local programming. So thank you. NHL.
Ted: (29:26)
Yeah. Another, another huge a sports thing for, for our great Olympic city USA. That's
Jen: (29:31)
right. And um, another big, um, piece of news is that King Soopers is now supporting the my mountain campaign. Go your applause. So if you shop at King super is you can just link your, all your loyalty card can link to Pike's peak summit complex, the new complex they're building on top of hikes peak, you can link to that and they will donate to Pike's peak summit complex every time you shop. That's awesome. So that's building a new summit complex. Come on, Ted. Oh my gosh. I hope, I hope the listeners know that. I don't, I also hope that perhaps you know that Amazon is coming to Colorado Springs. Woo. All right. That's coming to the Southeast quadrant of the city near the Colorado Springs airport. 1000 new full time jobs. Awesome. Yeah. And then going and looking over there and then next we have no Ted, we need you on the podcast. Okay. Yes, please. Yeah. So next we have a new exhibit at the Colorado Springs pioneers museum. What you say, you have never been to the Colorado Springs pioneers museum actually more like, Oh yeah, terrible. If you've never been to the museum folks, it's so great. Please go check it out. And this is a perfect time to do it because there's a new exhibit called una Familia grand day. It's the Conejos neighborhood project. Um, it's all about a really wonderful historical neighborhood, um, that existed in Colorado Springs and it's just going to be a great exhibit,
Ted: (30:55)
actually a council member, Yolanda Aviles, she's got a lot to talk about with that. Her family is very, very close with that neighborhood. And there's some cool stories that are sharing.
Jen: (31:05)
Yeah. She represents that district. So please check that out. And then if you are driving in the black forest area between Woodman and old ranch roads, we know a lot of you are driving that because it is just like amazing growth out there over the past few years. Um, and so the city has initiated a quarter study for black forest road to establish a plan to try to meet the big capacity and future needs out there. Um, I don't know if it deserves an air horn, but with this corridor study, Todd. Yes, that's right. So you can go to Colorado springs.gov/black forest road black forest RD and you can give your input and find out about some meetings coming up. And, um, we just, we would love to hear from you. It's kinda like Todd emphasized, we really need to need and want to hear from the public on these traffic studies. So it'd be great if he could give your input on.
Ted: (31:56)
Yes. And that's one of the big things I admire about Todd. We took a week long public participation course together, and that's something I know that he also is striving for a more public meetings and more, uh, interactions with the public to get feedback
Jen: (32:10)
enough. Ted, we want people to let us know behind the springs@coloradosprings.gov please email us and tell us what you like about the show. Do you hate that airborne? Nobody hits their horn. What would you like to hear more of? And do you have any topic ideas? We would love to hear them. Thanks for joining.
Ted: (32:31)
Yes, thank you, Todd, again for being with us. Really appreciated this one. Another edition of behind the spring.