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Committee recommends $500,000 federal Safe Streets grant, selects consultant and approves traffic-probe data purchases
Summary
The Public Works Committee recommended accepting a $500,000 FHWA Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, selected Kimberly Horn and Associates to prepare Overland Park’s Safety Action Plan, and approved procurement steps to purchase traffic-probe data to support the plan.
The Overland Park Public Works Committee recommended City Council approval of a federal grant agreement under the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program. Lorraine (city staff) said the city was awarded $500,000 for a transportation safety action plan (project ST3053); estimated project cost is $625,000 with the city share at $62,500 and KDOT also committing $62,500.
The committee then considered selection of an engineering firm to develop the plan. Lorraine said 13 firms were solicited, three were shortlisted and Kim(b)erly Horn and Associates was judged the most qualified after interviews. Staff reported negotiating a scope and fee in the packet in the range of about $599,000; the committee voted to recommend approval of the selection and agreement for that amount.
To support the safety plan, staff proposed purchasing traffic-probe data through a KDOT-supported agreement to acquire aggregated vehicle telemetry. Sean (city staff) said the city would pay a 25% match ($43,750) toward a $175,000 project budget, with KDOT providing $131,250. Sean described the data as provided by General Motors — aggregated and anonymized from GM vehicles — and said the sample is limited to GM vehicles but can provide near-miss and hard-braking information that supplements crash records.
Several members raised privacy and representativeness questions. One member characterized the data collection as potentially intrusive, asking whether vendors were "spying." Sean responded the dataset is aggregated and anonymized and that GM was one of the only companies willing to provide the data at the time; staff said the consultant will evaluate the data’s usefulness for identifying risky locations.
The committee recommended City Council approval of the federal grant agreement, the selection and contract with Kimberly Horn and Associates, the city-state agreement with KDOT for the probe-data purchase, and a separate recommendation to approve a subscription agreement with General Motors LLC for the Safety View data product (amount in motion recorded as $174,999). Each recommendation was passed by voice vote in committee and will be forwarded to City Council for final action.
Staff said the Safety Action Plan will include data collection and analysis, public and stakeholder engagement, policy and process review, recommended strategies and projects, and a demonstration quick-build traffic-calming project.
