Fiscal Note
The funding for the proposed consulting and data services contract is included in the MPO’s 2021 purchased services budget. No additional City appropriation is required.
Title
Authorizing, on behalf of the Greater Madison MPO, a noncompetitive sole source contract for a one-year subscription renewal to an online transportation data analytics software platform from StreetLight Data, Inc. to support MPO and City of Madison planning activities
Body
WHEREAS, the City of Madison is responsible for providing professional staff services to the Greater Madison MPO (“MPO”), the designated metropolitan planning organization for the Madison area, as provided for in the 2007 MPO designation agreement; and
WHEREAS, the City of Madison is the administrative and fiscal agent for the MPO and is a legally constituted entity under the laws of the State of Wisconsin and able to receive the federal and state grant funding, which covers 84% of the MPO budget; and
WHEREAS, as the designated MPO for the Madison area the Greater Madison MPO has responsibilities to perform metropolitan transportation planning and programming activities, including development of a long-range multi-modal regional transportation plan and transportation improvement program; and
WHEREAS, due to limitations in scale, cost, and time, traditional travel data collection methods alone are not sufficient to support effective transportation planning and project design given the changing transportation landscape as evidenced by the impact of COVID-19 on travel, and transportation professionals are therefore turning to “big data” sources from mobile devices and connected vehicles to support planning for the future in our dynamic transportation world; and
WHEREAS, the MPO has had a subscription to StreetLight InSight, StreetLight Data’s on-demand transportation analytics software platform for two years to support MPO planning activities; and
WHEREAS, the original subscription was purchased through the MPO’s consultant hired to develop a new and improved regional travel forecast model to support that project, and the City subsequently renewed the subscription for another year until August 14, 2021 to support other MPO projects, including the current development of the update to the long-range regional transportation plan; and
WHEREAS, the MPO has also used the transportation data platform to provide data to support City of Madison projects and planning studies, including the Bus Rapid Transit project, Metro Transit Network Design Study, Vision Zero Initiative, and Complete & Green Streets Study, and other City staff are able to use the platform through the MPO’s subscription; and
WHEREAS, StreetLight Data’s StreetLight InSight® transportation analysis tool offers many unique capabilities that differentiate it from competing vendors, including:
• Ability to run and interactively visualize unique customized projects for areas in a cloud-based web platform to understand travel patterns, traffic behavior, and demographic information about the composite group of travelers being analyzed;
• Use of data derived from two location-based services (LBS) data sources and navigation-GPS data sources, as well as many contextual data sets to enrich the metric output;
• Use of an analytic data processing engine, Route Science, that algorithmically integrates spatial data points from multiple types of devices (cell phones, connected cars, fleet management systems, smart phone applications, etc.) into trips and activities, and also contextualizes this Big Data with conventional data, including Census data and traffic counters;
• Availability of data on multiple modes of travel in the platform, including motor vehicle, medium and heavy duty trucks, public transit buses, bicycles, and pedestrians;
• Availability of estimated average annual, monthly, and hourly travel volume (AADT) counts for almost all roadways in the U.S. by algorithmically combining five data sources (GPS, two sets of LBS data, Census data, and continuous traffic count stations);
• Ability to estimate daily vehicle miles of travel (VMT) for different areas or roadway networks;
• Ability to customize parameters in the platform to get data on unique analysis zones customizable by time of day, day-part, specific dates, circuity, trip length, speed, duration, demographics, and general trip purpose; and
• Provision of additional, regular enhancements to the platform, including new features and functionality, at no additional cost to the subscriber; and
WHEREAS, MPO staff has or is using the StreetLight platform to support numerous MPO planning work, including the regional transportation plan update, safety studies, equity analysis, and support Madison and other local community planning initiatives; and
WHEREAS, MPO staff has found StreetLight Data metrics to be highly accurate overall, the platform easy to use, and the customer service excellent, and the experience gained with the platform over the past two years will result in efficiencies from continued use rather than switching to another platform, which wouldn’t offer all of the capabilities of StreetLight InSight anyway; and
WHEREAS, the cost of the annual subscription renewal is the same as this year ($125,000 after discount) with 84% of that or $105,000 covered by federal/state grant funds; and
WHEREAS, the cost of the subscription renewal is included in the MPO’s approved 2021 operating budget, which is part of the Planning Division’s budget; and
WHEREAS, under MGO 4.26(4)(b) annual software contracts of more than $50,000 per year that are not competitively selected must be approved by the Common Council and must meet one of the exceptions to competitive bidding in MGO 4.26(4)(a); and
WHEREAS, for the reasons above and also spelled out in the attached noncompetitive selection request form, the StreetLight InSight® transportation analytics platform provides unique capabilities not offered by other vendors, thus meeting the exception of 4.26(4)(a)2., and continuing the subscription with the existing vendor is more economical on the basis of time and money, meeting the exception of 4.26(4)(a)7.
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Common Council authorizes the Mayor and City Clerk to sign a one-year renewal contract on behalf of the Greater Madison MPO for $125,000 with StreetLight Data, Inc. for the purposes described above to support the MPO and City of Madison’s planning activities, including development of the MPO’s long-range transportation plan, transit development plan, and safety studies and also supporting City of Madison and other local community transportation planning efforts.