OCEAN CITY – A construction project at the public works campus, vehicle replacements and a development study highlighted a review this week of the resort’s draft Annual Transportation Plan for fiscal year 2021.
On Tuesday, Public Works Director Hal Adkins presented the Ocean City Transportation Committee with the proposed fiscal year 2021 Annual Transportation Plan, a list of funding requests that will be submitted to the Maryland Transit Administration.
“Annually we are required to submit what is known as the ATP, the Annual Transportation Plan, which is fancy terminology for our operating and capital grant submission to the state,” he said. “We are required to put together a capital list, and I’m sure you all have seen it before.”
Adkins said proposed funding requests for the coming fiscal year includes $2 million for construction at Ocean City’s public works campus.
For nearly a decade, the town’s Public Works Department has been working with the Maryland Transit Administration on a plan to upgrade the campus in phases. The overall project has an estimated price tag of $25 million.
“The first item is the final financial commitment previously promised by the state toward the overall campus construction project,” he said. “That final allocation of $2 million will wrap up their total commitment.”
Adkins said the proposed plan also included a line item for construction management oversight of the public works campus project, but the cost has yet to be determined. He explained the request would cover any oversight costs acquired by extending the timeline of the construction project from July 2020 to January 2021.
“This place runs 24/7, 365 [days] as you know, and we’ve had to incrementally adjust their schedule as we’ve gone along …,” he said. “Therefore, it has extended the duration of the overall project. It has not increased the cost of the construction project from a bricks and mortar standpoint. It has simply extended the schedule. By that schedule extension, it requires some extension of oversight and management fees that the state is willing to participate in and willing to pay for. We are simply trying to finalize that issue as we speak.”
Other funding requests include $68,000 for the replacement of an ADA paratransit van, $785,000 to support maintenance work on the town’s bus fleet, $3.2 million for the replacement of four heavy duty 60-foot buses and $7,098,000 for the replacements of 22 heavy duty 40-foot buses.
“Do we realistically think we are going to get 22 buses? No, we don’t,” Adkins said. “But we are informed and instructed to continue submitting this by our state representative, that when we have buses that meet the federal definition of useful life criteria both on age or on mileage that we need to identify that.”
Adkins said the proposed transportation plan also includes $260,000 for four ADA-accessible transit supervisor support vehicles, $300,000 for an on-board announcement system on the bus fleet and $350,000 for an automated passenger counter system.
“The current TransLoc system is expandable to add that feature,” he said, “and we are currently counting our passengers by hand with the clickers.”
The list also features $100,000 for a transportation development plan study. Adkins said he was optimistic funds for the study would be approved by the state.
“At some point we need to scope out what the transportation development plan will be studying …,” he said. “We may have our own laundry list of potential scope, but please be thinking about if there are certain things you would like us to be looking at – broad brush, long range – because that issue will be coming up in about six months.”
Adkins said he was hoping for projects on the town’s list to be funded once the public works campus project was completed.
“I’m not overly optimistic we will get much of this list at all,” he said. “It’s just reality, but we have to submit it on an annual basis. For the last couple of years, the focus has been to pay for a $25 million project. The first couple of items wrap that up. Once we get that over with we hope the floodgates will open once again to assist us with these other items that are further down the list.”
