Good evening. Welcome to Linking Longmont. My name is Jim Angstatt. I am the Director of Engineering for the City of Longmont, Public Works and Natural Resources Department. When I first mentioned speaking tonight, I always ask my 12-year-old daughter what I should do first. So she said, start with a joke, Dad. You'll like this one. It's the hardest thing about learning to ride a bicycle. The pavement. I was hoping that that wasn't going to be a flat joke. So what brings us together this evening? We are here as part of, to have a discussion about the city's continuing efforts to enhance safe walking, riding and rolling. Tonight you'll have the opportunity to meet with a number of city staff, to engage, to talk, offer ideas, and receive information on our future efforts to improve walking, riding, and rolling in Longmont. And when we talk about Longmont, part of it is also an effort, let's not just talk about how we connect Longmont, but how do we link Longmont, Elder County. We have some speakers here who will talk about a few things throughout the state, we really want to encourage the guests here tonight, which are our residents, to ask questions. So how do we link Longmont? From our city staff perspective, we start with Envision Longmont, embedded in Envision Longmont. This is our planning document for the city, embedded in Envision Longmont is a multimodal plan. One of the plans within that plan is our bicycle facilities plan. So city staff uses that plan, we create, start crafting projects from that, which carries us through a budget process, then we go to design and construction, and hopefully, if we're successful, we will end up with a couple of projects that improve walking, riding, and rolling in Longmont. So I wanted to highlight a couple of our recent accomplishments. The first project on your left is Sunset Street. That was what's called a road diet, where we took basically four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, and basically added a center lane, took out two lanes of traffic, and added bike lanes. We improved the sidewalk, so we are one of the projects here. This is the first phase, we all have a second phase you can see tonight. The center project is our South Highlight that, because this is an example of one of our projects that's included in our pavement management program, and one of the philosophies our staff has in the engineering department is that we look at each project, each road we pave separately, and if there's an opportunity for us to do something different, we will undertake that. When I say something different, we look to expand that roadway, and not just by widening out, but by pushing in. In this case, we took out some of the medians in the center of the road, reduced the lanes, we're able to add bike lanes. The last project is Mountain View. This is an example of what's called an EMUK, Enhanced Multiuse Corridor, where we, in this case we were able to take out some of the parking areas and then add bike lanes. In this case, we also added, we added what we're looking to do where we can, a buffered bike lane. So that's some of our recent work, but there are other ways to promote walking, riding, and rolling. Next I'd like to introduce Sophie Schulman, and she's got a really cool title. It's the Chief of Innovative Mobility for the Colorado Department of Transportation. She will speak on transit, mobility technologies, and electric vehicles. Welcome Sophie. Thanks for having me here. Just a little bit about myself before I go into this presentation. I just moved out to Colorado a little under a year ago. I moved from Washington, D.C. where I worked on electric vehicle charging, and I worked at the federal government on clean transportation and smart city technology. So I had a really high level national perspective, and it's really exciting to be here in Colorado. Building tools that we use on our streets every day. For me specifically, this is really close to home because I don't have a car. So I take transit, I took the LD2 to get here today, and I walk a lot, and it really gives you a great perspective on what's working in our roads and what's not. I just wanted to give a little context there, and I'm going to talk today about how the state is thinking about new technologies and mobility and how those things work together. And I'm just touching on a small slice of what CDOT does, and obviously you guys deal with highways all the time, and there's a lot of other work that I'm not going to be able to cover today, but I'm happy to answer any questions after we're done speaking. So the Office of Innovative Mobility was created again about a year ago when I came on board, and really we started with what's the problem we're trying to solve by introducing new technologies by better you have today. So big challenges that we see that I think folks are probably aware of, this chart on the left here is population growth in the state of Colorado, but especially in the front range. We are seeing massive growth, and we need transportation solutions to help solve that. The chart on the right, which I'm sure you can't read very well, is really showing how transit is also a really important to communities in vulnerable populations that don't have other options to get around. And so when we talk about transit, we frequently talk about RTD, we talk about urban areas, but it's also really critical as a basic transportation tool for some of our most vulnerable folks, and I just think that's really important as we think about other parts of the state, rural areas, this is a really critical tool. So those are the two major issues that we're looking at, and some of the challenges that are associated with that are congestion, poor air quality, the Denver Metro North Front Range area was knocked into serious non-attainment for Ozone, and again that hits our most vulnerable populations, that's hits our kids, our aging communities, and we really need to look at transportation both to improve convenience so everybody can get around faster and more easily, but also to make it healthier for our communities. So the Office of Innovative Mobility is designed to really think about those challenges, and we brought in the Division of Transit and Rail, which is an existing team within CDOT, and it operates the bus dang, which I'll talk more about in a second, but really that existing transportation tool that we have, which is transit, which is great and works really, really well to do a lot of things for our communities, and then looking at what are the technology tools like electric vehicles, shared use, and then the future of connected and autonomous vehicles, and how can we use all of these things together to better move people in Colorado. So I'm just going to go through each of these areas quickly. I mentioned the Division of Transit and Rail. Busting is our inner city bus service, which if you haven't taken it you should definitely look into it. We've launched a new service that goes directly from Denver Union Station to three different ski resorts, which we're really excited about, and obviously that's not as convenient for you folks, but we are hoping to expand more of those services, and part of that is showing the success that we can get people to take a and then we can further expand that and sell that to other parts of the state. We're also working on Front Range Rail, which this is very much a study at this point, but that's looking at again that very significant growth that we see along the I-25 corridor. What are tools that we can use to solve that? Part of it is the success that we've already had with bus dang, which runs along the I-25 corridor and has really had rapid growth over the past several years since we launched it, but would there be consumers for that? What would the cost be? That's the process that we're going through right now. Then we're looking at ride sharing and emerging mobility technology. Quick stakeholder process where we brought together industries, so Amazon, Uber, Lyft, lots of other companies that have interests in this. We brought together local governments, nonprofits, advocacy groups to really think about how are these new services impacting our communities? What are the tools that we have, whether that's fees or other incentives to encourage those services to use as many shared? We came up with a report on that and it's available on our website and I'm happy to share the link with anybody afterwards. There's a lot of data in there and a lot of it is really trying to think about what does the future look like? There's a lot of questions out there of how Uber and Lyft are going to grow, how they're going to impact our communities, but I think it's really important for all of us to think about how do we want technology to really play within our communities and what public policy tools do we have to impact that in a positive way? And attention, you may have seen that Lyft announced that they are bringing 200. They actually have already brought 200 Key and Eero EVs to the Denver metro area, which is a progress to show that some of these high mileage vehicles can be converted to electric and that that works in some communities. And obviously, a key part of that is making sure that we have enough charging for those vehicles as well, which I'll talk more about. And then transportation demand management. This is something that has been a longstanding practice and it's something that I'm excited to talk about in the context of technology because traditionally this is employers convincing their employees to bike to work, to take transit, giving them an eco pass. But I think there's also some really exciting new tools to make this app-based to create gamification, which means giving you a couple of cents to take transit, things like that that make this a little bit more exciting, a little bit more engaging and can help us all be convinced to transportation choices. And then on top of that, I think making transit easier from a data perspective, you know, all of us walk around with phones. Most of us have Google Maps and can look at and see when the bus is coming. It's really great when you have that integration. But getting that data from all the different transit agencies across the state, integrating that with Uber and Lyft, which RTD has started doing and will be doing that with busting at some point as well. But really trying to have everything in one place. It makes it easier. We have the tools available today. And it's just putting the time and effort in to make it easy for people to take transit. And then finally looking at what are the tools we have, especially using things like Uber and Lyft to better serve some of our vulnerable populations. We talked about that earlier with that map that I showed at the beginning, which is that transit is really, really essential for these folks. But there might be better, more cost-effective ways to serve people that have non-emergency medical transport needs through some on-demand services. So we're exploring that as well. And now the sexy stuff. This is the connected and autonomous vehicle. So if you're not familiar with an autonomous attenuator, that's what you're looking at right now. An attenuator is actually a device that we mount on top of a truck and it's designed to basically get in the way in case another car comes along and hits this vehicle. And it's to protect the car in front of it, which is doing, in this case, paint striping. So it's really just a safety measure. It's an extra vehicle that's intended to get in the way and help prevent an accident. And so it seems like a very logical place to take the human out of the equation. And this is a really great opportunity to test autonomous vehicle technology because it's a leader follower technology. So this secondary vehicle is just following that vehicle in front of it. It slows down when the one in front of it slows down. It stops when that one stops. And so it's a really great opportunity where we see a near term safety benefit. We think that the technology is ready to do this now. And this is really the approach we're taking to autonomous technology. There's so much uncertainty and the technology is changing very, very quickly. So in terms of wise taxpayer investments, we want to do things that are improving safety, that are showing near term benefits, and are really helping us learn for the future. In addition, CDOT oversees the Autonomous Mobility Task Force, which is the regulatory body for the state. So if a private sector company comes in and wants to test in the public right of way, they have to come present on what their plans are, what their safety plans are, and then CDOT, the state patrol and the DMV actually have to approve those plans. So it's a short term solution as we have relatively few deployments here in Colorado. But I think in the long term, we have to think about what does that regulatory structure look like for local communities, for counties, for the region and for the state. And one of the ways we're doing that is looking at what are states like California and Arizona that have more of these deployments? How are they thinking about this regulatory structure? And then obviously, what is the federal government going to be doing? So lots more to come on autonomous vehicles. And then finally, zero emission vehicles. And you may hear electric vehicles, zero emission vehicles. There's lots of terms thrown around. This is a CDOT Chevy Bolt here, which is a battery electric vehicle. And we're really excited about the potential here, and especially CDOT's role in helping to provide connectivity across the state so that people with an electric vehicle and a tourist coming in with electric vehicles can get anywhere they need to go. And we're seeing a lot of rapid improvement in the market for electric vehicles. Lots more models coming on, longer ranges and faster charging times. There are new state of the art 350 kilowatt chargers that can charge your car in about 15 minutes. Those aren't that common, but it's really starting to get to a point where it's very similar to the traditional car experience. So one of the things that the governor instructed us to do back in January was to adopt the Zev standard, which requires manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles in the state of Colorado. And what that means is that all of those new models that are coming on, all-wheel drives, SUVs, it means there'll be more motivated to bring those to Colorado because they get credits for them. And so this is not a mandate on any individual, but it really provides more choices to Coloradans. And we're really excited to start seeing those vehicles very soon. And we've actually gotten our first Kea Nero EV here in Colorado, so we're excited that that's already happening. And then the other piece of this is transit electrification. And lots of cities and counties in Colorado have started to sort of think about what does this transition look like, and it's definitely something that we as the state feel like we need to help prepare folks for. It's not something that transit agencies are used to planning for. And so it's really important that we're thoughtful about this transition, that we help them through it, that we don't over-purchase a bunch of vehicles as the technology is improving. And so this is something that that's a huge priority for us because the air quality benefits are really huge, especially in disadvantaged communities that frequently have the worst air quality. And so we're really excited to plan for this transition and help our transit agencies through that. And then finally, charging. I mean, this is the big barrier I think in a lot of places for folks even considering buying an electric vehicle. And so the state has invested in 33 DC fast charging stations, which should be built in the next year or so. Those are across the state and they'll be providing a corridor network. That's in addition to private sector investments from Electrify America and other private sector partners. We're also working with our neighboring states to make sure that that connectivity is across major networks of the state. So lots more to come in terms of charging infrastructure, but it's really great that Colorado is a leader on electrification and we're excited to continue to help build that over the next several years. All right, now I'm going to turn it over to Pete. Thank you, Sophie. Our final speaker tonight is Pete Piccolo. He is the executive director of Bicycle Colorado. Pete will discuss his organization's work in providing a voice for bicyclists statewide and how to further sustainable transportation. I think I got that right. Welcome, Pete. Good evening. Thanks for having me today. Let's see if I can get this out. So I'm going to jump right in. There are three topics I want to cover with you. The first is so I know that many of you are fans of biking, walking and public transit, but nevertheless I'm an advocate so I want to light a fire under your butt. I want to make the case to you that our transportation system is fundamentally broken and in fact if we don't up our game, if we don't do more sooner, we're going to find ourselves in the midst of a transportation crisis. And if we find ourselves in a transportation crisis, our community, perhaps Longmont as well, is going to be a place that many of us and our kids and grandkids are not going to want to live in 30 years. So that's objective one. Number two, I want to share with you some of the challenges that I and my teammates and others who are advocates for sustainable transportation face on a day-to-day basis. And then the third objective is there's a little bit of doom and gloom in this presentation and so I want to try to end on a high note. I want to provide you a path forward, a path that I hope is part inspirational and part practical to overcome a few of these challenges I'm going to share with you so that you can accelerate your work of building a sustainable transportation system.  Me too. I'm not like Sophie. In fact, I have two cars. So my goal tonight, hey Peter, my goal tonight isn't to shame you by the transport for the transportation choices that you make. The physical infrastructure that we have built really dictates to a great extent our transportation choices. Typically a car is the most convenient way to get around and is sometimes the only way. And again, I have two cars and I drove here this evening. So I am part of the problem that I'm about to describe. And secondly, could you give me 15-minute notice? I'm going to put you to work, otherwise I'm just going to keep babbling on. So we have to start with this. And Sophie mentioned this. It's projected that we're going to add three million people to our population over the next three decades. To put that in perspective, that's the equivalent of adding just over four cities the size of Denver. To provide a little more context, in 1908, when cars were first available to the masses, there were about 750,000 people in Colorado. Almost 110 years later, we've added four and a half million. So we're talking about adding three million people in three decades. And don't think for a minute that all of these people are going to be nicely distributed across our 104,000 square miles. The majority of these people are going to plant roots right here in the front range. And Longmont is in the impact zone of this population tsunami. So many of you know that the number of people living in a community impacts the quality of life. It could impact it in a favorable way, but if not managed, it could have some downside impacts. It impacts housing, it impacts climate, it impacts transportation. So let's just talk about transportation. So I believe it is a fact that a car dependent transportation system has a limited capacity for the number of people that it can move. And as you approach this capacity, life gets pretty uncomfortable. And then at some point, and I think we're getting close to this point, at some point it's not possible to increase that capacity by building roads. I wish I had more time just to talk about that because I'm guessing some of you disagree, but I'm going to have to move on. And let's talk about why our car dependency is a crisis. Let's talk about what it looks like when you start hitting this capacity limit. So first let's talk about climate. If you had to pick the dirtiest form of transportation on a day-to-day basis, it would be driving alone in your car. 53,000 people die every year in America from vehicle related emissions. That's according to a recent study released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pollution from our tailpipe is now the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and is the number two source of greenhouse gas emissions in Denver. I can go on and on with data about how dirty gas-powered, I should be clear on that, gas-powered cars are in the negative impact it's having on our climate and how our air is, the quality of our air is really a challenge. But I have other depressing data to share with you, so I'm going to move on. So last year 40,000 people died on America's roads. That's more people than, that's more people than died by a gunshot. An additional four and a half million people suffered a severe bodily injury. In many cases a permanent handicap. 632 people died on Colorado's roads in 2018. 20 of those, 22 of those people were on a bicycle and that's up from 9 in 2002. If we were to have this trend line for pedestrians it would look the same except the number of deaths are much greater. So every one of these tragedies it just breaks my heart and I'm sure it impacts you as well. But it also makes me angry because almost all of these deaths are preventable and I'm guessing some of you may disagree with that as well because people have challenged me on that and I'll come back to it in a minute. Driving around is the most expensive form of transportation we have on a day-to-day basis. On average it costs 8,500 bucks a year. It's the second highest cost for us behind housing and it's a cost that many people can't afford. So ask yourself this question. Ask yourself if you had to design a way to get around town that can accommodate the greatest number of people what would it be? And this picture hints to it. I can tell you it's not driving alone in your car. So on the foreground is 50 people and on the left are those 50 people on bicycles and the amount of space they take. On the right is if those 50 people were in a bus and then the middle is if those 50 people were on a car. And this picture is actually pretty generous because the cars are parked they're bumper to bumper so you know the train would be much longer if they were if they were moving. This is congestion right here this middle picture.   We also pave over an extraordinary amount of land to drive and park our vehicles. In most urban areas Denver included roughly 60% of public space is allocated to cars. So this is an aerial of Denver and what shaded in green is the real estate that is allocated to parking. And I know Longmont allocates quite a bit of space to cars as well. I've done my homework. It's not this bad but there's quite a bit of real estate we allocate to cars. Space that could be used for affordable housing, parks or how much is grass. So I would argue this is what a broken transportation system looks like. And I have to be honest with you it's it's beyond me why we accept the fact that going from our homes to our jobs or going from our homes to school or to the grocery store requires that we pollute our air and take our life into our own hands. We can do better than that. We really can. So my view on all of this is summed up neatly for me by this person, Eddie Anna Krug from the World Health Organization. She said if motorized transport did not yet exist no seeing government would permit it. In other words if we had a white canvas and if we could just start from scratch what we have today we would not have going forward. So let's just turn our attention to the to the future and begin to wrap our head around what sustainable transportation is. So this is my definition of sustainable transportation. This is what we talk about it at Bicycle Colorado and it's essentially the flip of what I just went through. It's a transportation system that's not dirty. It's clean. It's not deadly. It's safe. It's not expensive. It's low cost. It's space efficient. So therefore it's time efficient. I haven't talked about active transportation and we are all designed physically to walk and you know I don't have time to get into the health challenges we're facing but ideally we would be moving more and it would be equitable. It would be available to people of all ages, physical abilities, genders and so forth. So how do we go from what we have today to something like this quickly because remember three million people are coming to Colorado. So this is a September 10th article that provides some indication of just a few of the solutions and solutions that I recognize make a lot of people uncomfortable. So this is a piece that covered a potential punitive plan by the Environmental Protection Agency that involved banning on-street parking certain times of the day, dedicated bus lanes, not just in Denver but the surrounding suburbs, all to address air pollution. This article was published in 1973. Downtown Denver got its first dedicated bus lane this year. So A, it's too slow and why are we moving so slow? So there are a long list of challenges and I'm going on to my second objective. There are a long list of challenges that that I can speak to that I face and my teammates face on a day-to-day basis. Some of them are policy, some of them are economic, and some of them are just a reflection of who we are as human beings. And I find that that last category those are the toughest challenges and that is a long list as well and I don't have time to go through all of them but I will do a few. So we go through life building mental models to make meaning out of the world that we live in. They're implicit, they're explicit, but we're processing information and we're making judgments on what people look like and conclusions about what's right and what's wrong. We have a mental model about transportation and for most people today this is the mental model they have. This is a hierarchy of priority and when you ask most people what are streets for, they will say for moving cars as quickly as possible. At the top of the priority list is me driving alone in my vehicle and at the bottom of the list are the people who want to walk, bike and take public transit. Have any of you been to a bike lane meeting? A couple of you. So I've been to a few too and I mean there are times I've been bike lane meetings. When I first started this job, the first meeting I went to, I thought it was in the wrong meeting. You would have, it was so contentious, you would have thought that we were haggling over a slice of land on the Gaza Strip. It was it was really unbelievable and part of the reason there's disagreement is because I have a different mental model. It's basically the opposite. Then when we're designing our physical space including our streets you start with the cleanest form of transportation, the most active, and our most vulnerable users and then you work down. And I'm not suggesting that cars don't have a place in the world, they do. It's just not at the top of the hierarchy, right? And so part of the change that we need to wrestle with is shifting our mental model, which is really hard to do.  We do. There's a quote that I'm sure many of you heard that's attributed to Henry Ford. Some people say he didn't say it, but it's relevant nonetheless, which is if you ask people what they wanted at the turn of the century they would have said a faster horse, which I think captures this thinking really well. But think about it. From the moment we took our first breath on this planet, from the moment we looked out the window and had our first memory, it's cars, right? People move by cars. We expect to see that visual of Denver with all of that payment. That's the way the world works. It's as if it's this, I don't know, this immutable law of nature, right? Sun rises in the east, suns in the west, sky is blue, equals MC squared, and humans get around by driving. So we're in this mental cage, mental cage, it's really rigid and it's hard to break out of. And when you sit in that cage for a long time, you get this feeling of futility or a lack of hope, which is the next thing I hear a lot about. It just can't be done. And I hear this most often when I'm in conversations about vision zero, which is the global initiative to eliminate traffic fatalities. Boulder's embraced it, Denver's embraced it. I think you're talking about it if I'm not mistaken. But people, you know, no one wants to say, like, well, our goal should be to reduce fatalities from 70 to 50. That's a good number and we could celebrate 50 deaths. But people have said to me, it can't be done. So I just want to dispel that myth. Not by this graph. Denver embraced vision zero in 2016 and deaths have increased. But if you look at a city of comparable size, Oslo, they have about 670,000 people, last year they had one death. No kids, no pedestrians, no people on bikes. This was a car crash. Now I know there are going to be people who say, well, they're European, you can't compare Oslo to Colorado. So I've been there and I can tell you that the human species in Oslo is the same as the human species here. And the reason they've made gains is because they have that hierarchy that I shared with you with pedestrians on top. They drive smaller vehicles, they drive slower. It's a function of our infrastructure. It's a function of the world that we want to build. It's possible. So the last barrier that I want to cover is just change. And we talk about it all the time and you know people often say, well, I'm adaptive, I'm flexible, I like change. And I don't, I don't believe that. So I want to tell you a quick story to underscore my point that change is hard and particularly changing car culture and moving from what we have today is something different. And while I tell this story, just to make my point that change is hard, I want to ask you to do something. If you're wearing a watch or a bracelet, take it off and start putting it on the other hand. Just wear it a little bit and let it sink in how uncomfortable, I'm serious. I see watches, try it. And I'm going to tell my story. So I live in a wash park, plant park, which is a suburb of Denver, about four miles outside of the city. And it's kind of, I have wonderful neighbors. They're pretty progressive in their views of the world. They're early adopters for everything, from technology to cultural norms. You see the signs, all lives matter. I mean, they're all in on everything. So one morning, a Sunday, about a year and a half ago, I look out the window and there's this commotion next door.  So I walk out to check out what's going on. And this was all the commotion.  One of these scooters landed in my neighborhood. And this scooter was on that patch of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, right? And my progressive enlightened neighbor was really upset.  And they all know what I do. So my neighbor looked at me, kind of tongue in cheek, but serious. And it's like, what do you think about this? What are you going to do about this? And so I said, I go Vinny, I go look up and down this block from one end of the other, bumper to bumper cars on a Sunday.  How come you don't have a problem with the 50 cars parked on our block, but you have a problem with this one scooter resting against the tree. And he said, well, their cars. Car culture is so embedded in our view of the world that sometimes we don't even recognize our natural bias. So how do we break that? So let's talk about that. So this is my final point. I'm going to try to end on a high note. Talked about, so first you have to start with, like, we got a problem. And if you don't think we have a problem, then, you know, what I'm about to say is pointless, because you have to accept that we have a problem and we've got 3 million people coming and the problem's only going to get worse. So think about the mental cage. Think about the difficulty of change and how do we move forward? So you got to just start by asking yourself, how do you want your community to look and feel today in 30 years from now for your kids and grandkids when millions of more people are here? And then, you know, think about the hot spots in your community that may drive you nuts, where the traffic is, you know where the crashes are, your city folks have the data, or think about the places where you'd like to be more people-friendly, a park or a plaza, right? And then envision it. Don't just envision it in your head, but put it to paper. And when you put it to paper, start talking to your community members about it, right? So I just want to give you a couple of examples. I know for those of you who are in this line of work, this is old news, but I just want to give you a couple of examples. I was trying to remember where I got these from. I think it was, maybe you will know when I go through, I think it was Fort Collins. But this is an example of a street where if you think about the pyramid and the hierarchy, single occupancy vehicles are on top. Two lanes in each direction, parking as well, no place to ride a bike, pretty tight sidewalk. How could that look? 20 mile an hour speed limit, protected bike lane, and this is cheap. It's cheap to test this. Again, two lanes in each direction, no place to ride a bike. How might that look? Sketch it out, talk about it, make changes if there's something you don't like. This is made for speed. Three-way, three lanes, one direction, plus parking. How might this look? Just paint and ballers. All right, so you've sketched this out, you've talked to your neighbors about it, you've worked through some of your disagreements, and now let's test it. Don't put in the heavy cement right away, but let's test it and experience what's possible. So here's a traffic circle, chalk and pylons. While you're testing the traffic circle, you're collecting data on traffic flow, community sediment, bump outs, narrow the distance for pedestrians to cross, slow traffic, again, paint and plants. Just test it. A bike lane. So you've envisioned it, you're testing it, and then let's say, you know what, I like this, I want to make it permanent. So I'm going to wrap up with a quick case study. Putnam Triangle. So this is in New York. So for those of you who are saying New York is New York, and nothing in New York applies to Colorado. You may not believe this if you've been in New York, same human species in New York as well. So this is a mess. It's been this way for decades, it's a cement ocean, a lot of crashes, police car typically perched right there, it's a mess. It's mixed use as well. There's some residential and commercial here, but the community was fed up. A couple of people said, how can we make this better? So they started drawing it, and they started talking about it. And they began to settle in on a vision of what it could look like. And then with spending virtually no money, they started testing it, just a pop up community event. And then it went to movie night, the music night, and reading day, all temporary, and all virtually no cost. Turns out people liked it. And they decided to make it permanent. Here's what it looks like today.  Crashes are down, pedestrian injuries are down. The one downside of this, it took six years. It should take a year. Roughly 15,000 square feet, not that big. So I'll wrap up by saying, what do you want your community to look and feel like? Not just today, but 30 years from now. And are you doing enough, quick enough? And you have to answer that honestly. And then all it takes is for one of you to pick a spot in your community that you know can be better for people who bike and walk, and just ask yourself, you know, what if? What could this look like? Vision it, test it, and then do it? Thank you for your time. You didn't give me a 15 minute warning. I went way over. Thank you, Pete. So where are we going to go? What's next? Some of our city future efforts are listed here tonight.   We also, somewhere around here, I had a comment card, which is basically we went real high tech. It's like, just a plain blank card. So, so fill out some ideas. Tell us what you think. What, what, where do we need to improve? We have a plan, but that may not cover all the needs of the community. We'd like to hear from, from the residents who, who, who grace us here tonight, who came out in a lovely evening. Take their time. We want to hear what you have to say. So please, ask questions to staff. Fill out some comment cards. If you see something missing, let us know. But we can't do it all alone. Part of the reason we're here tonight is, is to get residents take on it. But we also have to be truly successful. City Longmont needs help. So we have some community partners. We've asked some, they, they, they again came out tonight on a, a nice evening. So they're out here, out here as well. So we'd like you to stop by, ask some questions. We have some, some people from our, our public safety because we want to have safe walking, riding, enrolling in Longmont, in Longmont. Boulder County's here. We've got Walk to Connect. Commuting solutions. Bicycle Longmont, Bicycle Colorado. So we'd like you to stop by and stop by their booths, chat with some people. I'm going to do a shameless plug now real quick. And I was asked to do this earlier. It's, it's census time. So when you get your forms, please fill them out. And on that I would like to, to late, I want to thank everybody for, for coming out to linking Longmont. And please stop by or some of our booths. We'd appreciate it. Thank you much.


So I'm Dallas Harris, and I am a Policy Fellow here at Public Knowledge. My name is John Gasperini. I am a Policy Fellow here at Public Knowledge sponsored by the George Washington University Law School. My fellowship is funded by George Washington University, the law school that I graduated from. And without funding from GW, I wouldn't have the opportunity to come to Public Knowledge and work on important issues like access to broadband, privacy, lifeline, tech transitions, and many other really important things that are essential to consumers in the telecom space. I've been here at Public Knowledge for almost a year, and in that time I've worked in a number of areas from legislative advocacy on the Hill to substantive legal work before the Federal Communications Commission and in writing briefs for courts on a variety of communications and technology policy issues. I work particularly on video competition, wireless spectrum policy, and general competition issues within the telecommunications marketplace. So working here at Public Knowledge has given me a great stepping stone to whatever I'm going to do in my future career. I've gained a bunch of advocacy skills that will be transferable to all kinds of future positions. And with the clout that comes with the Public Knowledge name and the substantive experience that I've gotten here, I have no doubts that the next step of my career will be largely impacted by the work that I've done here at Public Knowledge. There's so much more to being a public interest advocate than simply being a skilled attorney. And I have been exposed to a wide variety of skills from advocacy work and hands-on and in-person on Capitol Hill and federal agencies to different types of drafting other than traditional legal drafting to communications outreach with allies and building coalitions. The types of work that I do here is so much more than simply being a good lawyer. It's being a good advocate and being a good contributor to the work of this organization. At George Washington University, I got a great basis legal education, giving me the basics, the understanding, the ability to think through problems and legal solutions. And working at Public Knowledge has been a great next logical step and a good supplement to that education that I've received at GW, giving me a holistic view of working in the public interest advocacy space. One of the coolest experiences I had early in my time at Public Knowledge was the opportunity to visit a class that I actually took at GW Law now that I'm working and have graduated alongside my boss, Jean Kittleman, who co-taught that class to talk about telecommunications law and policy. The opportunity to sort of see things come full circle and see that from the other side and to meet people in that class who worked as PK interns later or are applying for the next round of PK fellowships has been really remarkable to me and shown me really the wonderful path that I've had the fortunate opportunity to start down and that others hopefully will have the opportunity to continue on in the future.


Hi everyone, welcome! Today we have with us three PolyU undergraduate authors, Sissy, Paco and Cheryl. We're going to have a peek behind the curtains at their inscribed publications and their journeys. So hi, my name is Cheryl, and I'm studying Accountancy.  It is about two people finding out who they are and finding out their place in the world. You can think of it like a Romeo and Juliet, but an underwater version of it. There's some kind of forbidden love elements in it. I would like to think that it is kind of epic because it also talks about the century-long rivalry between two underwater empires. And there's also action scenes, love story scenes. I hope readers will enjoy it. I found out that in some myths, sirens and tritons are enemies, like they're totally different species. Like one of them, tritons are very upright and clean, while sirens are absolutely horrible beings. So I'm thinking it would be quite fun to have a Romeo and Juliet forbidden love story between the two characters. So that's how it came to me. So I'm Paco and I'm studying Radiography and I'm a Year 2 student. So I've wrote that laughing is a deadly matter and it's about comedy, but it's more than that. It's about how comedy relates to the freedom of expression and how important is that connection. So comedy is kind of thing that really offends people, but now people have lost sight of what comedy really is. And it actually wants to make people think about their choices, whatever, but now they respond to comedy with violence. And that's not what we want to see. So that's why I chose to write this article. Hello everyone, my name is Assi. I'm a Year 2 student majoring in Product Engineering with Marketing. And in Scribe, I wrote short stories talking about a boy addressing his biggest fears on stage with the inspiration of his greatest hero. The idea of writing short stories spring to my mind because I study a ELC course subject last semester which is called persuasive communication. And in that course, from Mr. Mossman, I learned numerous persuasive strategies and that really inspires me and I find those strategies very interesting and useful. So that's why I wanted to write a short stories and sharing these strategies to more Poly students. Yeah, I would like to think that this story has two deeper meanings. The first is to embrace who you are and the second is to embrace the reality. So for the first one, as you can see in the story, the main character, there is a part where he says he feels like he should be a different person. And I think this is sort of something that resonates with a lot of people right now. Like people feel like they are not living out their true self. They are somehow hiding themselves from other people. So I think that that is a very tiring and exhausting thing to always hide who you really are. So I would like to encourage people to not be afraid to live out their true self. And the second one is embrace the reality. In the story, there are lots of moments where the main character encounters obstacles, maybe some real realizations. Those are things that are really unexpected to him. And I would like to encourage people when they experience these sorts of unexpected situations, they could learn to embrace them and keep moving forward. Canary is this type of bird that helps coal miners to detect whether there is a carbon monoxide leakage. So the diver is allowing that coal miners to retreat and get back to safety. So comedy in a way is similar to this kind of bird, because comedy is often being, comedians are often being attacked first when there is a threat to the freedom of expression. What my first success would be talking about back to my high school. It was my first time doing dramatic duo love with my partner. And in that competition we practiced a lot, but there was no pressure. And then we just go to our utmost and try our very best to perform well with a lot of guidance from teachers. And we really did not expect to win any of votes since we just want to enjoy and try our very best. And it turns out that we won the championship among the groups. So that was quite surprising to us. And then it was one of the most like the earliest small first success that boasts my confidence and give me a big kind of hope and encouraged me to continue pursuing my public speaking dream. My style of writing isn't really based off of any authors. But I would like to say that I quite like where some authors like to make their stories seem like a movie like cinematic experience. And I quite like the idea. So I kind of merged that with there's a passage in my story, which is the part where the Triton has gone underwater and he went through this kind of transformation.  So yeah, I would like to, you know, make readers feel like they're watching a movie. For me, I like to like re-quote and maybe like some of them I pick quotes randomly from like some authors. And then the one line that I included in my article would be George Orwell's Good Jokes. Every joke is the tiny revolution. So in his passage about it's called like funny but not vulgar, he criticised that like 1970s century that in English the comedy is not very offensive, but he states that in his article that comedy is meant to be offensive, like because it reflects the truth and like the powerful people often don't like that. And that's what makes it funny. So in that sense I would like to refer that, I would like to reinforce that kind of idea in my article as well. Most of my writing process are quite similar. It all starts from a basket of messy ideas. In InScribe the short stories I wrote were they I really want to grab all the interesting and useful strategies that taught by the teacher in the course. And I also want to include my personal experience in public speaking and resonate the stories using the reflection of Chris. And in that process what I struggle a lot would be there are too many, there are too much information on that basket and it's kind of hard to filter and select the best of the best information and effectively deliver to the readers. When I was writing the short stories as I mentioned before it was very messy but through lots of help from the editor he trimmed down my long chunky paragraph to short punchy paragraphs and that makes the whole overall reading experience more engaging and make it more bite-sized for readers to read. As I said before the reason why most of my stories are unfinished because I don't really know the full process of writing a story and getting published on InScribe actually helps me to learn the full process of writing a story from beginning to end. During the editing process there's a lot of times where I notice that there are very small details we need to focus on which is something that I before I didn't know about and details as in plot details, language sort of details and this has helped me with my own writing as well. So for me at first I would just write to myself like my writing is not only for myself now that I kind of create something that people want to read and the student editors actually help me in like providing a perspective from the readers perspective and showing us that oh how can we improve by like considering more from what they want to hear what maybe from their perspective as well so that ELC helps help a lot. I would say I learned the importance of a readers perspective because when I'm writing on my own I usually have this whole story planned out in my mind but then after having a discussion with the editors about my story I realized that the readers are not in my head they don't know what I'm thinking about even though in my head it seems like really logical the whole story but for the readers perspective they might not understand what is going on for example like maybe there are some plot incoherence in between so I learned that the readers perspective really helps the story go smoothly. For me it would be the interactions with editors because my original idea is about like comedy and then I approach them and they say why not make it bigger like something bigger of itself so that's where the freedom of expression part came in and then I think oh it would be a good idea very good idea so and then I restructured it and then talked to them a few more times these kind of interactions they actually helped me to improve my article and give me more inspirations along the way and that is a very good experience that I've had with Inscribe. As one of the social media managers I find the whole Inscribe journey very fruitful and transformative. Firstly I really like helping the organization of social media since during the social media management we need to keep writing stories or like making a post and that really pushes me to be organized since I was kind of tends to be more messy a lot of time besides I also like working with people a lot so in being in the role of social media manager I get to communicate with many of my teammates and they are all very kind and lovely people and then in that communication process I learn to effectively addressing their concerns but also deliver what they want to say on social media Last but definitely not least due to my marketing background I do think this Inscribe journey provides me a valuable opportunity to manage social media which is beneficial to my career development I think of course if you have passion I would definitely encourage you writing a story of your own because for me writing is sort of a medium of me escaping from reality you can immerse yourself in this imaginative world that you built for me it is a very good way of just releasing pressure but for those who might not dabble much in writing I would say you can try because for me it is really a very pressure releasing experience writing I believe that everybody has a life that has many stories to share so if anybody is willing to tell their stories that would be very impactful to the people around so I do think as long as you are willing to give it a try please don't hesitate and be afraid and try to write stories to share your thoughts try not to think about how would it turn out since writing is a surprising journey and then there are many interesting thoughts and ideas popped up in your mind along the way so do enjoy that process and give it a try you will always get something out of it I think writing is a part of reading and thinking all combined together because in order to write you first have to read a lot and know what you have to write and then that's where the thinking part comes in so it really is a good process of combining all your thoughts together to construct a coherent passage and other than that it's also a medium of expression for me I like to express my feelings in writing so that I can record them and maybe save for later to see what I have written maybe this year in time or whatever but if you have time or if you really like to try out maybe reaching out to readers or see how others evaluate or comment on your passage just feel free to join Inscribe and join our team and they will be very grateful and very helpful as well


Good morning, I'm Kristen Filetti and welcome to News Desk on SiliconANGLE TV for Tuesday, June 11, 2013. Yesterday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, CEO Tim Cook unveiled a completely redesigned iOS 7 operating system for the iPhone and iPad. Join us now to provide us with a look at the OS refresh, a SiliconANGLE web producer, Mark Zamora. Mark, good to see you once again. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having me back. So Mark, start us off by telling us about the iOS's new look. Sure.  We have E3 going on, the Nintendo E3 conference going on right now. We had WWDC yesterday. I can't believe it's barely Tuesday anyways. So the new look of iOS 7, we've been hearing for a long time now rumors of it just being very, very flat, very, very clean, very, very modern. And those are the three words that I would use really to describe it, flat, clean and modern. You know, we're used to kind of having that skeuomorphic design where like the notes looks like a leather bounded notepad or the calendar looks like a spiral calendar, but they've kind of gone away with that. There's still a little skeuomorphism in there, but mostly it's just flat now. No more of that shiny little half moon thing on the app icons. Everything is just two colors with a gradient kind of giving it a little fade. All the fonts are really, really thin. So it looks really, really clean and really, really modern and there's a lot of transparency. So there's a lot of layering effects going on. So basically everything that we've been hearing for the past few months has been has pretty much turned out to be true. Now flat, when you use the term flat, that sounds dull. So is flat a good thing in this case? I think it is. I'm also kind of a graphic designer on the side and I follow design trends and everybody is kind of going flat. We see flat design with Windows Phone 8. Also with Windows 8 is also very, very flat. It's not really dull because you also tend to use really, really bright colors as accents. Like I said, for example, the phone app icon is just a green rounded rectangle with a white phone circle. So it looks, it pops out, it's flat, but it pops out at the same time. So what sort of other improvements did they make? It's kind of funny. There's a lot of new features in iOS 7 that as coming from Android very recently, I just made the switch feel very familiar. So first off we have the control center, which is you swipe from the bottom and you get immediate access to things like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, airplane mode, volume, screen brightness. So we're very familiar with that with Android. We can swipe from the bottom and we have access to all that. And they've also made improvements to the notification center, which again, we're familiar with on Android where you swipe from the bottom and you have all your calls or upcoming scheduling up on there. So that's another thing that they've kind of improved on, which has existed already, but it's much better now because you have a daily notification thing where it has like a calendar and then you have just everything and then you have a missed column. So it's much more organized now. Another thing they added was, it's called AirDrop, which is basically a way, it's coming from OSX on the Mac system where you can instantly share files like pictures and videos with other phones. We're familiar with this. You also may know it as S-Beam or Bump coming from Android phones where you can share the local connection. So we have that feature as well. They've made a lot of improvements to the camera. So it has built-in filters. You can also swipe and pick different layouts. So you have normal photo mode.  What else? There's iTunes Radio, which is basically like Pandora, but it's on iTunes and you can build your own radio stations. They've made a lot of improvements to Safari, 3D tabs, runs a lot faster. It looks kind of like Chrome and then they updated Siri. So you can choose between a female or a male voice and she has some new search algorithm stuff she's doing and some new features as well. So a lot of stuff, but at the same time it's a lot of familiar stuff. So yeah. So this is being hailed as a very significant upgrade. Would you agree with that terminology? Significant? I think so actually. iOS has looked the same since it first came out and it's not improved much. If you look at Android in comparison, almost each new iteration looks a little different. We started off with a very simple wannabe iPhone looking thing and now we have this leak Android 4.2 design, but iPhone has stayed the same for a long time and it's kind of felt like they've been holding on to the past and this is completely different, but at the same time familiar and that's kind of the terminology they use where it looks different, but you know how to use it immediately and that's completely true. It's really intuitive. So it's very significant because I think it means more for their future. Now you mentioned that Apple's new OS has some striking similarities to Android's operating systems. Do you think that's because they're trying to compete with them or do you think that's because they're finally catching up with Android? What's your interpretation? I think when Android first came out it was the operating system for hackers and it was really, really complicated, but as time moved on and I've been saying this for a long time, it became intuitive. You have, oh it just feels natural to have all these things at instant access or it just feels natural to have this much control over this app. So I think iOS when it first came out was it felt intuitive because it's like, oh notepad I know how to use a notepad or a calendar I know how to use a calendar, but now that we've had experience with smartphones, we want intuitive smartphones. So I think that's why iPhone is doing it. Is it to compete with Android? Of course the features are almost identical, but I think it's really just because that's what consumers want is something intuitive. So Mark I understand that you've already had a chance to test out the new OS. What are your thoughts? I've been playing with it all day. It's hard for me to put it down just because of how, number one how beautiful it is. I mean everything is so sleek. There's a lot of little details that they've added that are just like, whoa that's really cool. For example, if you're holding the phone and you kind of tilt it, the apps stay there, but the background kind of moves. So it kind of feels like a window into like a space, which looks really, really cool. But it's also really, really functional. I mean everything's really, really zippy. And again, coming so recently from Android, it feels very familiar. So I'm not like, when I first moved to iOS, I was like, oh God, how do I close all these apps? But now it's exactly the same where you open up your task manager and you just swipe away. And it's like you're just slicing your apps to stop using them. It's really, really great, really, really intuitive. I think it was an amazing decision from Apple. And I have, I loved my iPhone 5 when I first bought it, but I've never been so happy with my device until I got iOS 7. Now something that we've heard about is a kill switch functionality. Can you comment on that at all? Kill switch functionality? Oh, okay. So what it is, is if somebody steals your phone, I'm trying to remember, I didn't pay enough attention. But I know it's where if somebody steals your phone, you can kill it from iTunes on your computer. And even if they try restarting the phone or reformatting it, it's tied to that Apple ID and only that Apple ID can unlock it. So they're just trying to prevent lost devices, which I think is pretty smart also. They already have find my lost or find my iPhone, which helps you find it if you lost it. And I actually know somebody who's recovered it using Apple's security measure. So I think the more that they're doing to improve that, the better. Well, Mark, thanks once again for joining us this morning. It's been great to have you and we hope to see you soon. Sure thing. And still to come, Walmart increases their big data ante and Comcast gets a little more eco-friendly. But up next, we're going to try to get John Furrier back on the line to talk more about software defined storage.


Blackadder is a comedy series starring Rowan Atkinson, so it's not a war movie, it's a war thing. Every season focuses on a specific era from history, really. I like Rowan Atkinson, okay. Mr. Bean, I guess. Rowan Atkinson and Mr. Bean, is he not? I'm pretty sure it is. But if it's him, I have full respect for Rowan Atkinson because he stands against censorship. He believes in free speech, okay. Yeah, huge respect to the guy, man. Huge respect to the guy.  Everyone should be allowed to speak paraphrasing, of course, right? Salut gang, I'm all the way down to the chat. Joe says, chichou, it was called Operation Burn Hand. It never went through though. Oh, they never dropped, is that the dropping counterfeit currency? They never did it? San sunatji. Oh, didn't know Rowan Atkinson was the critical thinkers. Yeah, amazing, eh? Usually, usually, not always, but some of the greatest critical thinkers, philosophers, prophets in our societies are comedians, right? They just happen to be able to get around the censors and the brutality of centralized power by categorizing their critique of government and society under the umbrella of comedy, right? So, it's a good way to get the information across. That's why people say laughter is one of the best remedies, right? One of the best ways to fight tyranny is laughter. Not just because you're laughing, but because sensitive information can be conveyed easily when people express that information in a comedic manner, right? Jokes are truths, like they say. Yeah, yeah. One of the greatest ones would be Bill Hicks, right? And if you've never listened to Bill Hicks, check out Bill Hicks. I have met Rowan Atkinson and Elder God says, in fact, I cooked his meal as well. Nice. And I like Mr. Bean. A lot of people trash talk Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean is funny. Slapstick is amazing. And British comedy gang. British and Irish comedy, awesome, awesome. So my favorite comedians have been British comedians and Irish comedians. Dave Allen at large. Dave Allen. Check out Dave Allen, Irish comedy.