Video Description:
Transportation Advisory Board Meeting – January 11, 2021
For a transcript of the meeting, please read below:
Meeting Transcription Disclaimer:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
To listen to the meeting alongside a transcript, please visit:
https://otter.ai/u/ufUY2aGdJhP6TTgONozfHDNgR80
0:02
Do we have a motion to approve the minutes that were sent on as part of the backup?
0:09
So move. Alright, Chuck.
0:12
Thanks. Is there a second? Okay. Okay, so a second from Sandy as the first hand. I saw there, so we’ll go with that. Any comments on the minutes before we
0:25
do the vote?
0:26
I do have a couple two updates, or corrections.
0:32
All right. David, what are those?
0:36
Let me see if I gotta find him here. Quick. Sorry, I was in the process of looking for this before. You got to a quicker and I could find it to hold on.
1:00
to you while you’re tracking that down. Why don’t we go to Courtney? I think Courtney had a couple of some comments, as well. And then we’ll come back to you there, David.
1:08
Yes. My only comment is that my last name has two L’s in it. And it’s spelled with one hour in the meeting minutes whenever my name is mentioned.
1:15
Sounds good.
1:18
Like correction with the name spelling, they’re always important there. And David, were able to come back to the comments.
1:31
I haven’t found it yet. Okay.
1:37
Are there any other comments? from Sandy or jack? Or Liz? Or Joe?
1:55
Oh, yes. Um, I mean, I, I haven’t found it. But in one end, there was a when I had mentioned maybe it was at the closing minutes about public input. Kind of focusing on mountain Avenue. It said mountain Avenue between airport and hoever. And it just in the in the minutes, though, I can’t find it. It says mountain add hoever. So it’s, it’s on Mountain View. The Trump the inputs that we’ve had for public to be heard is between hoever and airport on Mountain View. Why? I haven’t been able to look at it
2:50
looks like page eight. You’re talking about your comments, David, the Mountain Dew and Airport Road.
2:57
That’s right.
2:58
Page a second to the last paragraph. And it says the complaints regarding road and speed issues surrounding Mountain View and Airport Road. That’s what it currently says.
3:11
Yes. What it what it should say is on Mountain View between airport and over. Okay.
3:24
Seems reasonable. Any other comments? No. So we have a motion to approve the minutes there.
3:36
With hopefully with those adjustments, they’re all in favor of approving the minister with those adjustments. Raise your hand or say aye.
3:45
Aye. And, Joe, don’t
3:49
have your video there. But are you supportive of the minutes?
3:53
I Yep. Sorry, video is not on my apologies.
3:57
Alright, fair enough. Any opposed? All right. The minutes are approved communications from staff. Hey, Tyler, Phil, and Ben and Jim. Hope you guys are doing well.
4:14
Happy New Year. Just want to say thanks. Thanks for hanging on tonight, we’ve got a bit of a special meeting a little different than normal. Keep to relatively quick timeline here about 645. We’ll jump up to this meeting. And you all should have another link to the Joint Session meeting with counsel and RTD members so if anyone doesn’t have that, let me know and we can work on getting that to you. A couple other things just some work updates wherever enclosures we still are anticipating being at the BNSF repairs on Main Street at First Avenue will require full closure of Main Street. Initially the work was scheduled for earlier this month that’s been delayed. They intend to It, reassess and see if they can do that later in the month. Is it I suspect it might, it is due due to road temperatures of the ground. So if they have really cold temperatures trying to pour concrete may impact their schedule again. So generally later in January, he’s probably not going to see a warming trend. But we’ll see what we’ll see what weather holds for us.
5:25
Fishing mainstream,
5:27
I would expect it’s probably going to be
5:31
a week
5:31
project I’m hoping for less than a week, but I would plan on about a week of it’s a full reconstructive that crossing, remove the rails, move the surface, and some additional concrete on the road surface has to be removed and replaced. So it’ll be it’ll be an impact to that section of Main Street for sure.
5:51
And I take it the communications person to city is going to be communicating with the local newspapers and community.
5:58
Yeah, we will be coordinating with public outreach, to the extent we can and and keep in mind, this is a BNSF project BNSF and c.so. We’re doing our best to make our position be heard and make sure that those entities understand the impacts to us. But also is their project that they’re doing. If anyone’s been out and about and however they may have, you may have seen some message boards out today, would you anticipate some lane shifts for I believe on the 13th. So starting in the morning, 930 in the morning till the wee hours of the next morning, we’ll have some lane shifts in place. It’s for Leak Detection on one of the main water transmission lines out there. So you see work areas and Lane shifts out there. That’s what’s going on there. So I think you had a couple other things you wanted to mention. So I’ll turn it over you.
6:50
Thanks, Tyler. Thank you chair, Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city just wanted to do some quick. I guess, just some quick info items. Really just one big one is we’ve just heard back from a group called the Denver Regional Council governments, I think we’ve talked about in this group quite a bit. So I’m hoping you know, Dr. cog, also see that was working on these projects as well, as far as getting dollars out to folks, for some projects, dealing with alternative modes and safety projects, we were able to combine that into one $1.2 million project at sunset and Ken Pratt Boulevard or highway 119. So if you think about sunset, kind of going through that area, we’ve done some major work south of compare Boulevard where we consolidated a four lane road down to what we call a three lane road with bike lanes. And we have bike lanes north of that north of Nelson. And what we’re trying to do is connect from Nelson south to basically Kansas where the project starts further south there, we’re trying to fill that gap as it were with a project and just make that intersection safer for all of the traveling public. So we’re excited that we finally we kind of knew what was coming? Well, we had to kind of keep it quiet because it wasn’t public yet. And so see, let us know that they had officially approved that project. And so we can go out there with vim and vigor and say that, yeah, we’ve got the $1.2 million. We’re pretty excited about that project. And we’re hoping to go after some other projects here. But it’s really based on our our resources, and what we have at the city to be able to actually get those complete, because what we’re seeing now is that a lot of this money needs to be spent quickly. And we have to show that, you know, we’re making progress. So we’ve got some other projects that kind of fall under that cares act, if you’ve heard about all all the funding from the federal government based on the on carers and the COVID DCE. There’s some money available there that we’re going after as well, but it’s gonna it’s gonna be, you know, depending on how quickly can move projects forward. So I think that’s it unless Tyler You thought I should talk about anything else. But I think that’s it for me. Thanks. Any questions are?
9:13
Great, thank you. Sounds
9:14
like good news on on sunset.
9:21
All right.
9:23
Anything else from staff? Okay, don’t think we have any members of the public to be heard. But just do an imitation there. Are there any members of the public to be heard?
9:39
All right, well, why don’t we roll into our action in there with the transportation advisory board work plan and Tyler is that when do you want to kick off?
9:50
Absolutely. Thank you chair. So each year we do a January meeting is a good time to reassess what we hope to accomplish and work on With this meeting, we put together a proposed work plan. And I would say it’s not a hard and fast we don’t we can definitely make additions or deletions to this as we work throughout the year. And as new issues come up, we can definitely adjust the schedule. But but really kind of set the groundwork for what we hope to accomplish and things we want to see brought to this board this year. A lot of the items you’ll see on here are repeats, we do a lot of the same issues, or a lot of the same topics every year, the Capital Improvement Program being a big one that that this board provides input on on a year to year basis, we generally do an RTD meeting which we we do anticipate doing another RTD meeting later in the year. In addition to the ones tonight, handful of other projects going on. comp plan land use amendments, we can bring those to you as they’re coming through the development process, if that some words interested in seeing any lightpad traffic safety plans, crash reports as new projects on there, so feel free to discuss comment requests. We are asking for an action on this. So with that Alyssa, you guys discuss. Thank you.
11:20
Okay, thanks, Tyler. So hopefully they’re everyone’s had a chance to to look at the the work plan. That’s part of the agenda here. Are there any comments on the work plan? Any questions, clarifying questions? Other thoughts on the work plan? I think a lot of things on here are things that we’ve seen here in the past. Common Sense, shock, I’m sorry,
12:12
I just wanted to jump in real quick and just say that this all looks good. And I really appreciate it this time of year. It kind of maps out like the deliverables that kind of we as a Transportation Board need to look at what’s our schedule, too, because there’s stuff we need to approve and stuff that we need to be aware of. So just appreciate it. This all looks good to me.
12:37
Okay, thanks.
12:39
Just one quick comment on on my side. Looks good to me as well. Tyler, just a favorite asked there, I noticed that the neighborhood traffic mitigation program, follow up conversation. They’re scheduled for sometime in q2, which sounds fine. If it’s possible to have that in April or May, that would be great. I know, personnel will be out the month of June. So and we’d love to be able to participate in that conversation. So it’s possible bill to have neighbor traffic mitigation in April or May. That would be great.
13:14
Great, um, any last come up before we seek for a motion to approve the work plan? All right. Do we have somebody who’s willing to offer a motion to approve the 2021 work plan?
13:36
Motion to approve.
13:38
Alright, Joe, motion to approve there. Was there a second? Chuck? Second? Great. All in favor, raise your hand? Any opposed? All right. Looks like everyone’s in favor of moving that forward there. And Tyler, thanks for giving us a plan for 2021.
14:04
All right, and then as it relates to the information items there. We have an update on the quiet zones.
14:13
Thank you, Chair. So this came up that the last meeting we had there was a comment from the board to bring back some information updates on quiet zones. Where are we at? Where are we going? Are we where are we been? So there’s a communication in your packet to really try and summarize that information where we’re at. As you know, we were selected in February 2020. We received notification that we were successful with our grant application for federal funding, which is going to provide $4 million in matching funds towards implementing safety improvements that we could then establish what zones bulk of my work in the last year has been working through the obligation process with fra the Federal Railroad Administration is the administrator Have those dollars, we had to do a lot of work to get all of our environmental and historical clearances. And at the same time, we’re still continuing to finalize designs. We are also in order to get the first round of construction, or the first round of intersections under construction, we are still working are waiting on Final construction and maintenance agreements from BNSF. So a lot of moving pieces in this one a lot of a lot of hands in the pot between city of Longmont, fra BNSF and state Preservation Commission. So we’ve had to do a lot of work on the on the front end of this. And I’m hoping that we can get this going and start seeing some improvements here in the next next couple of years. Right now we’re planning on doing we’re planning on having improvements of five crossings this year, Third Avenue long speak my 17th memory, memory streets not part of the grant. But that’s a separate capital improvement project.
16:02
I think that’s really the the bulk of what I had to offer on this one. But just a brief update and any questions at this point? by its owns or so
16:20
you had mentioned, I’m not real clear on stand alones. In the quiet zone, you mentioned in that information you provided us that the one on Mountain View is going to be a standalone. But how many other places? Do you anticipate being stand alones? Or is this the only one and I don’t know what it standalone is so
16:44
but remember, sir, the thing to keep in mind with these quiet zones is that the trains required to start sounding the whistle a quarter mile in advance of each crossing. So some of those closely spaced crossings that we see in Old Town, third, fourth, fifth, sixth Long’s peak, they’re all spaced at a block apart. So you can’t do if you do safety improvements at one, the horn, the whistle is still going to be sounding great through that crossing, because it’s sounding for the next one in line either direction. And so really, you have to have a quarter mile spacing or more between each crossing to where you can do an individual crossing by itself. Mountain View is one where it is based for either direction that that one could be implemented as a standalone client its own. There may be some other ways we can package that to get maybe leverage that improvements at one intersection for maybe speeding up the process of implementing a quiet zone and others would be on a temporary basis. But then we’d come back and do the permanent improvements. So there’s a couple of strategy items there but Mountain View, the short answer is Mountain View could be done in established as a quiet zone by itself 17th to 21st, at least 66. Those are the ones that really could be standalone quiet zones.
18:01
Thank you. Thank you for explaining.
18:07
As I was trying to remember, my memory is failing me here with the federal money. Tyler, is there any deadline requirements that you know, deliverables that we’re kind of needing to adhere to? Or is this kind of open given all the partners that we have on this?
18:27
Great question there. There are deadlines we are working through what those deadlines are with fra there’s some flexibility in terms of 2020 was a challenging year from a lot of fronts. So So we do have deadlines. We are currently still meeting all deadlines. Okay, thank you.
18:55
Any other questions on rubber quiet zones? Thanks, Tyler can imagine the process of working with BNSF and anyone else on top of BNSF is complicated at best. So thanks for your help with that. All right, well, let’s keep plowing forward here. Any comments from board members? either on items that were raised today, items you’ve seen around town, anything else Top of Mind is related to transportation related issues in Longmont. So all right, Liz, why don’t you start us off? First, I
19:40
want to say thank you for all the work toward quiet zones. I know that that was something that a lot of people felt really strongly about. One of the places I saw out of that feeling was in next door. And during the past month, it was interesting watching conversations on the next door app, as people were talking about where they were having problems that wanted to have traffic mitigation. And when I noticed that, I said, Well, here’s the web page for the city. And this is where you start what you need to do. And I realized that we probably could be doing better at outreach. But that’s kind of overall, I wish we could do a citizenship in the community merit badge for adults, because so many people don’t know how to interact with the government. It’s always them and they and their money. And it’s like, I felt as I watched people talk about it, we need to do more outreach on how they can get involved. And I think that was part of what we were going to do with changing the rules about traffic mitigation. But I just want to mention that that’s an ongoing issue of people understanding how to interact with the local government. Awesome. Thank
20:52
you. Sandy, you want to go next door with any comments on on your site?
21:02
Yes, thank you for all your work. I, I traveled down a mountain view, West, from Culver to Airport Road. And I saw at Harvard, the new crosswalk that was placed in where the flashing lights will go when you walk across the street, and how I appreciate that. And I and I do remember, we’ve had a number of people comment about the speeds on Mountain View and the hazards of children crossing and the worry of them getting hit. So thank you very much for putting that there. And I know it’s going to be used. That’s it. Thank you.
21:43
Great. Thanks, Sandy. Courtney, you want to go next there with any comments in your side?
21:48
Sure. I just want to say the work plan, really good. And I appreciate everything that goes into that and looks like a good list for us to keep continuing working on this year. Thank you.
22:04
Thank you, Courtney. Chuck, you want to jump in after that?
22:08
I think I’ve talked enough tonight. I here’s the 2021. We got a good work plan. And I’m excited for it.
22:18
Sounds good. Joe, I will hand it over to you next. He comes here type.
22:25
I’ll be abnormally quiet for once.
22:28
Yeah, David.
22:31
I just want a second. Sandy’s comment about the passive pedestrian crossing on Mountain View. I also went through it two weeks ago, and it looks good. I am looking forward to seeing if, if the public invited to be heard or comments that we may get indicated the neighbors are also happy with it.
22:58
That’s all I have.
23:00
Sounds good. Thanks, David. Anything I’ll add? Taylor and Phil, this is more of a question for the two of you. In thinking about the conversation with our TDs, new General Manager coming up here at seven o’clock. Are there any topics that you think would be important for us to be you know, in particular listening for or anything else? timely that that we can help reinforce as an advisory board?
23:30
I can start off with Tyler doesn’t mind. I’m just wanted to let you know, I think what we’re really trying to do is this is more of a meet and greet. And you should just understand the format is going to be kind of council led unfortunately for you guys on this. But fortunately for Councilmember Peck, but so you know, Aaron Rodriguez is the mayor Pro Tem and he’ll be running the show tonight. But we are making sure that the tip does have a chance to ask questions. So that’s kind of why I throw that flipping comment in about in Council running the show. This is your time is why I say that. But the council really is the governing board of this. So they are there will be chances for you to ask questions, obviously. But it really is a meet and greet for you to find out who these people the new people are, and kind of what their stances on different things you’ll play want to hear about their their long and short term goals. I think one thing that you may want to bring up as a tip is really the idea and council may do this as well as the idea of more localized control of maybe local transit routes might be something you you, you just see the risk response and see how folks are thinking about those kind of things. Obviously, they’re going to probably cover fast tracks early on in their comments because they know that’s exactly their their staff is has already prepped them with the idea that they’re going to hear loud and clear about Train tonight. And so they’ll probably be prepped for that. But it’s also about getting RTD help for our first and main project. You know, that’s fast tracks, those are fast tracks dollars that people forget about the $17 million of actual fast tracks dollars. So it’s it is our tax dollars coming back to the community, which is a good thing to, to kind of hear about. And so hopefully they know a little bit or enough about that, we will have one board member who is from what’s called district Oh, which is really Western Longmont. So anybody who lives west of hoever Lin Chi singer is actually your representative. So yeah, Sandy, and probably others. But so Lynn geislinger is your representative. She’s been there for a number of years, already two years, I believe. And so she is kind of the veteran, I believe among this group. And so feel free to ask her questions, too, she has some more background. And but they are leading this whole idea of changing the governance and the structure of RTD, to be really more inclusive of the locals and letting us have more of a voice in decisions that are made rather than it just being a centralized, you know, Denver centric system. So maybe some things that you want to talk about. Also, if you have any issues with things you’ve heard from writers or have heard in previous ta B’s, about, you know, kind of the state of the bus system, if you’ve heard good things that’s good to share. If you’ve heard bad things, that’s probably good to share as well. And Sandy, you probably have a lot of information on that front, based on some of the work you’ve done in your in previous, in previous work you’ve done but just a discount, it’s just a general sense, you know, if this was to be any other year, the supply be more of a reception than than kind of a formal meeting. And we do plan on having kind of the, what we call like the RTD grilling session in March, where we invite staff to come by and tell us about ridership and projections. And of course this year, it’s going to be much different. Because the ridership is is way down right and and you know, they’ve just had a, they had three rounds of layoffs last week, and so we did lose some, some staff members that we work with quite we were we were working with quite a bit one on the one person was on the first and Main Station planning efforts. So that’s going to be a loss for us. But so they’ve been doing a lot of things I think to try to shore up their their costs and expenses. And, and they’ve obviously laid off a lot of drivers too. So it’s a tough time for them. So just remember that when we’re kind of talking to them today and on in March, that they’ve been through the wringer quite quite a bit, but that we do still think that change is important. And I just throw that out there. And sorry if I took all the others time, but
28:01
it’s canceled. Councilmember Peck? Gentlemen, mute.
28:11
So one thing that if you’re interested, that I think might be appropriate for tab is a question on the fairness of our different levels of passes. That’s been a that’s been a conversation about there’s too many or too confusing. And, and basically asking if they were going to address that. Because that affects all of us. Thank you.
28:42
Great. Additionally, I
28:42
should say that there’s been a push lately to do a fair fee system across the whole district, which will be great for us because we’re kind of paying for our small portion of it. But there’s there’s a push that and this is happening all across the country. Well, not at all across but it’s happening in various large metropolitan areas like Kansas City has adopted this and and some others are in California as well, but it’s just a, like a fare free system across. Because it does cost a lot actually to collect fares. And that whole that whole piece does cost a lot of money. So it’s it’s kind of balancing that level, and we do pay taxes. So
29:25
great. Thanks, Phil. Hey, one quick poll question on that did swing as part of the federal legislation that was signed into law a week and a half two weeks ago? That was supposedly going to be including some dollars for for transit agencies like RTD Do we ever hear back in terms of what that came on out to and what that’s going to be going towards?
29:47
I just got an email right before this. This meeting 200 to $3.4 million RTD expects to to get from from that. So that’s The Porsche mentor TD, and that’s another reason we’ll talk about that tonight.
30:04
Sorry. Yeah. No, I
30:06
brought it in, as usual, but that would be another good question for tab. What what are our expectations for that money?
30:17
Sounds good.
30:19
Great. Thanks so much for the update there. Phil. comments from council liaison. Peck anything else above and beyond the RTD conversation? Now, I
30:32
think I’ve said enough thing.
30:35
Fair enough. Well, any upcoming transportation meetings besides the one in 30 minutes, that folks loaded on to Bruce raver.
30:51
I could not find any on my calendar for the next month. So we’ll keep our eyes posted. If we, if we do hear anything. We will certainly for that long.
31:02
Sounds good. Yep.
31:09
Okay. Chris Quinn, the project manager for RTD is having one tomorrow morning. I’m trying to it’s going to be at 10am is for for it’s a meeting for local officials as an update. Um, am I looking at the correct one fill it look like that’s when it was. But I think anybody can listen in.
31:33
Yeah, he did not invite staff to that. So I don’t have it on my calendar. Oh, I’m sorry, for it might just be for elected officials. Okay.
31:43
I’ll see. I’ll see if you can if we can, if anybody can tune into that. And if so, I will send to her there the link, you can send it out to join.
31:53
Interesting, it takes place just as the the new border county commissioners are going to be installed into their new office. So interesting. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Well, I know the upcoming meeting, we’ll be talking about the equitable carbon free transportation activities. So interested to hear more about that. Anything else pressing before we sign off, and we’ll reconvene at seven o’clock there as part of the RTD meeting.
32:23
Just say Is there anyone that doesn’t yet have the link for the meeting? RTD meeting anyone to help with that, or customer packet didn’t come through?
32:37
Or? It didn’t? I don’t know why. But okay. Thank you,
32:42
Sandy, did you have it? Or did you need it? Nope, you’re on mute there still?
32:51
Would you mind sending it to me again, in case I deleted it.
32:56
I can do that. It’s on zoom platform. So it’d be a little bit different than this meeting. But it’s a zoom meeting. Right.
33:05
And just quickly, just the reason why we had to do this, I think you’ve all got it in the hopefully you’ve got it in the console, and then the column or in the information but Council and RTD both meet on Tuesday nights at the same exact Well, basically the same time. So we we had to kind of hijack your meeting a little bit here to to make it work and I appreciate your, your patience and your time to do that. I think it’s going to be I think it’d be really great to hear I think I really enjoy the new General Manager and the new board member for our district. So Oh, look forward to seeing you guys on seven.
33:41
All right, sounds good. Thanks so much, Phil. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks, Councilmember pack and I will see you guys in half an hour.
33:48
just jumping in real quick, Phil, I think we’re supposed to jump into that meeting
33:52
like a quarter up.
33:54
Right? Because there is a check in for that. So that while the meeting starts at seven, I think they want you to check in by by 10 off so kind of get
34:02
there. 20 of maybe
34:05
everybody gets a bio break for about 10 minutes. 10 minutes.
34:10
Sounds good. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, everybody. See you later.