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0:00
Transportation advisory meeting December 14 to order and start off with a roll call. President
0:16
–.
0:40
JOHN, How’s it? Okay. Awesome. Thank
0:53
you. In Sandy, so
0:56
cool. She’s in there twice.
0:59
I don’t think he
1:01
or I didn’t hear my name. I’m president Courtney. Michelle.
1:08
Awesome. Well, why don’t we jump to the minutes there? Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from the October transportation advisory board meeting?
1:24
Making?
1:27
Sandy, I think you were first there. Is there a second?
1:33
Second. All right. Thanks,
1:35
David. there any comments on the meeting minutes? any corrections? any concerns?
1:52
Okay.
1:54
Hearing none, we’ll go for a vote. They’re all in favor of approving the October minutes, maybe or raise your hand. So the camera can up for either. All right, hold it up.
2:10
Just make sure Stacy has the chance to see it. Great, thank you. Any opposed? Seeing none, the motion carries. Awesome. Well, why don’t we jump to communications from staff.
2:31
Neil, thanks. Nice to see you all tonight. Doc, thanks for hopping on there. We’ve got we’ve got some presentations lined up for you tonight. Probably some staff you’ve not seen. And quite frankly, I think staff will have a chance to meet some new staff that’s joined us recently. So I think Phil’s going to do an introduction. And we’ll go from there. I think that’s all I have for now from staff.
2:55
Thanks, Tyler. And thank you, Chair. Appreciate it. I just wanted to introduce Glenn and Wiggin from, he’s our new planning director. I wanted to see if he can get the camera on and so we could see him, he’s taking the place in the phone. If you know Johnny Marsh, she’s been doing kind of two jobs over the last couple of months here. Well, yours really, I’m planning director and assistant city manager. So we’re just so excited to have Glenn come on board and be able to take over the role of planning director for the city and so he’ll be our person who really goes through the whole piece of going through the different permits and the different planning practices that we do through the city. So it looks like he’s might be having some problems with this camera. So just wanted to introduce clan and make sure you all get a chance to hopefully meet up before the end of the meeting. Maybe we’ll wait for him to be able to get into a WebEx since I don’t think he’s used our WebEx system before and it is it is kind of different. So But anyway, Glenn’s a great new addition to our group, and he’s been wonderful so far, a couple weeks here in to him being on board. And so we look forward to working with him throughout throughout throughout this year and many more to come. So things cleaned. I don’t know if you can hear us or if you can say anything.
4:22
I’m going to get us not well there is a Glenn Glenn. Beck just now started hearing what you said Phil, so I’m sure it was great. I’m glad to be here
4:36
was pretty much flawless cleanse. So I was just going about how great. Yeah, great, great. Well, I have nothing more to say than I just wanted you to.
4:53
If you had a chance to kind of go over what she’ll be doing and kind of the role you’ll be playing and then we’ll go through just a quick introduction of folks. Okay, well,
5:03
I’m just my second week. So I’m still learning what my role is. But I understand it as being the planning director and also in charge of code enforcement
5:14
with city along month
5:16
and thrilled to be here, it seems like I’ve kind of been preparing to get to this point. So
5:23
I’m, I’m
5:26
really thrilled to be part of the team. And I’m excited about the transportation planning.
5:31
So Phil, invited me this meeting is a great overview.
5:41
Good Neil, did you want to just introduce yourself quickly, and then we’ll just go through the group or how do you want to share?
5:48
That’s,
5:49
that’s fine. Very nice to meet you there, Glenn. I’m Neil virium, the transportation advisory board chair and been on the visor e board now for two and a half years time goes fast, but looking forward to having a chance to work with you. And well, since you’re our Vice Chair, why don’t you go next?
6:08
Alright, thanks, Neil. Hi, Glen. Jacques Livingston, vice chairs Transportation Board. I’ve been on the board, boys. This is my second year. The time does go by quick. I think just teleworking might have something to do with that, too. But, but yeah, happy to be here and go to beat you.
6:28
Awesome. David, do
6:29
you want to follow up there? Thank you.
6:42
Thank you for that. Good to have you, Glenn.
6:45
I’m Dave droz. Systems Engineer up at Keysight up in Loveland and active cyclist. And I’ve been on the board for probably, I think just a little over two years.
7:00
So sensitive,
7:02
Sandy, and then Courtney, and then Joe and then Liz.
7:14
Okay. Sandy Stewart, and I’ve been on that board a little over a year. And I don’t have anything else to add.
7:30
I’m Courtney. Michelle, I’ve also been on the board just a little over a year about a year and a half now and enjoying it greatly. And welcome to Welcome to your new role.
7:39
I’m Glen Joe long. Again, I think I’ve been on the board about half a year, I think to the point the whole COVID reality is changed. Good to meet you.
7:58
Good to meet ticklin. I was born and I’ve been on the board as long as they came on in July of this year. And so just learning what’s going on.
8:07
Oh, it was
8:10
awesome. And lastly, Councilmember Peck.
8:18
Hello, Welcome aboard, and very happy to have you come and join the city. I’ve been on council just starting my second term. So I am very interested in transportation, and hope that you can stand all of us.
8:39
Nice to meet you, Councilmember
8:41
YouTube.
8:44
Awesome. Thank you, Glenn.
8:45
So nice to have you here. And Phil, anything else before we march forward? That’s it. Thank
8:49
you. Thank you much.
8:54
Are there any members of the public who are visiting us today who have any comments they’d like to share?
9:08
None.
9:10
We will
9:12
march forward. So we have an action for today around the 2020 transportation advisory board annual report, which we were so efficient. That is drafted even before we got here. Tyler, do you want to frame the conversation?
9:32
Sure. So obviously this year has been pretty impacted with with the pandemic global pandemic definitely limited the amount of meetings that we had. Each year we talked about beginning of the year we do a kickoff with things that we wish to accomplish throughout the year. There’s a handful of things that are cyclical we do on an annual basis such as the CRP, the upcoming tip is a big important one of the bigger things that we asked to take to the board on annual basis as other items come up through About the year or the board is interested in something, we try to bring those items to as we can. And one of the requirements of the board is to report to council each year on the work plan and the accomplishments for each year. So this is the, here’s the summary of some of the highlights some of the bigger things we did this year. And then the second sheet is kind of the work plan that we all talked about earlier this year that has the items that we try to cover on an annual basis. And next month, I think, good segue into, think about things you’ll want to be working on next year. So as we’re looking through this and thinking about it, chewing on it. Think about some of the things on here, and we’ll talk about next year’s work plan at the next meeting. But any questions about what’s on on here currently, and
10:50
we’ll go from there.
10:52
Yeah, Liz.
10:54
It’s probably just a typo. But when I looked at it, and it said, including December 4 2012, and he had a heart attack that I missed a meeting is that a typo? Should be 14th.
11:05
Should be December 14? Yes. Okay.
11:07
Thank you, Liz. We
11:09
were all there. Where were you?
11:11
I was like, Oh, no.
11:14
Any other comments on the annual report? Tyler, do you need a motion? To finalize?
11:27
Okay, yeah, we
11:28
need a motion. Great. anybody like to make a motion to approve the the annual report?
11:39
Says Joe, I’ll make a motion to approve the report in ScreenFlow.
11:43
Okay, sounds good. And I saw that Sandy seemed a second there. All right. Any discussion before we do a vote? Okay, all in favor of approving the motion there? Raise your hand. All right. There’s unanimous support there. Anybody opposed? All right, the
12:05
Motion passes.
12:06
Thank you, Tyler. Alright, so it looks like when we talk about our first meet transit station planning there, Tony, you’re gonna be leading the way for us?
12:19
Oh, yeah. 20, Chico, redevelopment manager and director of urban renewal, it was kind of hoping that it was going to give me a spectacular introduction. But I don’t know, I got to keep him in control more often. So anyway, it’s a pleasure meeting you all, I have not met you all previously. Except for john. We’ve been on several occasions. But what I’m here today to talk about is the progress we are making on the first and main transits. And I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the RTD process as it related to what was known as the fast tracks project, which was supposed to bring rail to Longmont sometime in the immediate past, but now we know it’s long time in the future. But with that RTD had designated $17 million that could be used by the city to or in conjunction with the city to start development of the improvements needed to support the transit services in that particular area. Just for your information, that 17 million as of today is closer to about 16 point 2 million, because RTD has been in the process be utilizing some of those funds in its planning efforts today. With that, though, the last couple of years, myself and Phil greenwall have been in intensive discussions with RTD about the facilities that are to be constructed. And to determine what those costs would be accordingly, which then will lead the city and RTB into final negotiations in terms of actually constructing these facilities. So, the first order of business that has to be concluded before any acquisitions and or improvements can commence is what RTD is referencing as their infrastructure master plan. And what that essentially does, it identifies the preferred location for their facilities. It identifies the costs associated with the possible acquisitions. And then it also identifies the infrastructure that would be needed to support the transit facility itself.
14:53
So
14:54
that plan is well along. We are waiting have been advised by RTD that we should be seeing a draft of that plan come the end of the year, which then would lead us to some refinements and then hopefully moving forward with the necessary acquisitions and possibly the improvements sometime next year. So, what does the infrastructure master plan include, there were several primary elements number one again is the acquisitions. Number two includes or it has been agreed to that there will be a parking structure constructed of which RTD is requiring a minimum of 200 spaces be dedicated to them, and that’s that portion of the project for which they would fund although they are supportive of the city, increasing the capacity of that to support Jason development, if the city wishes to do so, it the other thing is a component of that structure will be the bus facility. So, it has been agreed that the bus facility, which could harbor about 10 buses would be at the ground level of the parking garage itself. So, it would be under shelter people would actually be able to load the buses on load under shelter provisions. And then another element of the plan now is Kaufmann Street, because it has been his plan that access or bus access to the facility will have to come off of Kaufman street which is to be extended from where it currently ends at First Avenue down to Boston. And then that facility is to be designed to allow for co mingled use of both vehicles standard or regular vehicles and the buses themselves. So I think Phil is are you are aware of the Kaufman street multimodal project to the north, it will differ slightly from that section in that section will have dedicated bus lanes, this section will not have dedicated bus lanes. As I mentioned, it will multimodal that section also will be multimodal in that it will also incorporate improvements to facilitate bicycle movements as well as pedestrian movements. And right now the plan is there would actually be dedicated bicycle lane edge as part of that project. And then the last component of the infrastructure master plan is effectively all the supporting infrastructure. So the area is totally devoid of water infrastructure, sanitary infrastructure and storm facilities. And all of those will have to be constructed in conjunction with the improvements that I just previously noted. So, again, we are looking forward to getting hopefully that draft of the imp by the end of this year. And then that will lead us to moving forward with the improvements or more importantly is the negotiations at that point. Because right now, there is discussion as to who is going to be responsible both for the acquisitions and the construction of the facilities. The preference of this time is the city if it has the capability and willingness would actually be the party to pursue both acquisitions and the improvements, but we will be having that conversation with the City Council hopefully, come January, February at the latest on that matter.
19:01
So,
19:04
that is pretty much the update on the transit project. The first the main transit project, we are also going to be coordinating to ensure that the Kaufman street project and this particular project are integrated with a smooth transition. And that will be forthcoming when we get closer to final design on the Kaufman street section a particular project. I also provided and I do believe that you should have received some images and I don’t know if
19:44
Tyler around applause
19:48
Do you have to possibly share a short sec through this real quick. So what you received was a packet showing some examples of how we would love To see the development, we are proposing is that the parking garage actually would be wrapped by residential and or commercial development and mixed use project, we have been talking to the prospects in regards to that. And this just represents just one vision of what possibly could happen at that particular location.
20:24
So we’ll go through them real quick, this
20:26
is a slide if you’re looking to the southwest at Main and first,
20:32
next
20:36
slide, as you noticed on that last and this particular slide, this the previous slide, basically, you do not see the transit facility. It would have ground floor commercial. This slide shows what it would look like along possibly look like along Kaufman Street. And as you know, they’re on the ground floor, and you can see the bus facility that is embedded into the development project itself.
21:03
Next,
21:05
this kind of gives you an aerial view of how the parking garage would work in relationship to the development.
21:16
Just another angle.
21:22
And this actually is a section of Main Street showing a midpoint crossing where there would be a portal where you could get to the bus terminal without having to go to either First Avenue or Boston, you could actually enter at midpoint in the development itself. And that’s just another perspective of what that might look like.
21:52
NET
21:54
might be it.
21:57
So Tony is getting rid of all the traffic on Main, which is nice to just kidding.
22:03
Well, under this scenario, apparently we don’t have parking either. But part of the plan would be to reinstate parking on both Main Street, and also provide par on street parking along Kauffman Street. So that just gave you a perspective of what we would like to achieve. From a city standpoint, we believe it’s very important that we don’t end up with a standalone parking garage, especially in the redevelopment area around first and main. Our interest is really stimulating new development activity. And we believe that this particular project could basically serve as a catalyst in conjunction with the South Main Station project that was more recently completed to really view the progress of development in that corner there. So with that, I’d be glad to answer any questions you may have.
22:58
David have a reference there?
23:05
He’s unmuted
23:06
he can unmute yourself.
23:10
I’m looking at the the slot one of any of the slides that are looking down where it shows the railroad tracks.
23:19
Yes.
23:20
And I thought that this was going to somehow incorporate the railway. But it looks like it’s completely separate. Is that true?
23:30
You mean the future? rail track? Yes, the so a couple of factors. First of all, we are looking to locate this bus facility. And the park commuter parking garage is in close proximity where RTD would intense rail service. Right now the plan would be if and when I shouldn’t say if when they bring rail to Longmont, the actual loading platforms would be immediately east of the Kauffman street improvement, I mean, sorry, west of cars right there at that intersection. So effectively, persons would be able to walk right across the street to the rail.
24:18
I think Tyler’s bringing it back up so you can see where the future rail station is up on that right side. Right. And then that’s part of kind of that whole loading area for the for the rail, and how to incorporate back to the parking garage as well. So there’s a proximity that RTD has to have for the future rail to be close to the station as well. So we worked with them on that as to try to get that proximity.
24:48
Okay, so the slide shows First Avenue going west. You know, when the rail comes, they would occupy those lanes that are currently before lanes.
25:01
So the station would come right up to the tracks.
25:04
Yes, right. Rail actually comes brand comes off of the tracks for the commuter portion and an ends right in front of this potential rail station, right before Kauffman Street. We didn’t want to block Kauffman street with the rail, because we need that for our bus rapid transit sections. So and I’ll be talking about that in the next segment. When we talk about Kaufmann Street. Okay.
25:25
And at this point, all of both the road, the railroad and the bus transit are all considered at the same grade.
25:34
Yes,
25:35
yes. Well, yeah. And we don’t know the final design on the rail platform itself. Yeah. I mean, that’s to be determined at such time they get to that point.
25:46
That’s all I have. Thank you.
25:48
Great. Thanks. It looks like Sandy had a question.
25:52
Neil, if I could just jump in?
25:54
I’m curious. I’m curious to know, if we know, have any idea how much it’s going to cost and how it’s going to be paid for? I mean, the $17 million, or 16.2 is not going to take it?
26:07
Yeah, good question. Yeah, yeah. So the the, like I mentioned, the infrastructure master plan is giving us some cost estimates, the preliminary numbers that were received a few weeks back or a couple weeks back, are that it’s going to be in the range of about 23 million total. So if you took out 17, we’re effectively looking at the city would have to bring or identify six to 7 million of resources to cover that differential. Now, there. The other factor is, though, if we were to build additional parking spaces, in addition to the 200, that’s an additional cost on top of that, however, that’s one reason it’s important to pursue a development project, because they wouldn’t be able to use those spaces, and then pay for the help pay for those spaces. So the final numbers, we don’t know exactly, the city will have to make this significant contribution. But hopefully, we’ll be looking at a variety of funding mechanisms. We could look at, you know, capital improvement funds of the just the C IP program, we’re going to be looking at just general bond issues, possibly. And then another avenue, is actually through the urban renewal authority, and its ability to utilize what were referred to as tax increment funds. And that’s, that’s, effectively the taxes that are generated by a new development project.
27:50
I have a quick question, does that estimate include forecast or potential overage? Or is that kind of a net? The 23 million
28:02
include like a contingency? Yeah. Yeah, right now, that includes a contingency of some sort of the other factor at this time is those numbers are premised or we believe the premise on RTD, building the facilities. And just for your information, RTD, they adhere to strict federal requirements and guidelines, regardless where the funding source comes from. So there’s a tendency that those federal requirements actually increased costs sometimes. So we have other avenues. That’s part of that discussion of who takes this project on, because there are other avenues that might help us bring that cost down a little bit.
28:49
Would RTD be Alessi in this environment? Yeah. So
28:56
what happened is they with Well, they would contribute that 17 million million thereabouts in total towards the project. With that they would get a dedicated easement for 200 parking spaces and the parking garage, but at at no cost other than annual operations and maintenance.
29:27
Related related to that, there has been rumors, not rumors, but mumblings about a divorce of RTD in Longmont, for some time, and if that divorce took place who would get custody of this building? Is what I was wondering.
29:45
Well, to tell you, we haven’t really looked at the legal ramifications of a scenario like that, but maybe Phil can feel a little bit more about where things are heading.
29:55
Yeah, I think, you know, the kid in this scenario is this is this transit stations. So we need to make sure that everybody is contributing to the, to the child in this relationship so that that station will get built that money has promised, we’re not talking about actively removing ourselves from RTD, per se, but we are talking about a different way of governance. And, and one thing to think about is RTD would still control the regional trips, the train the bus rapid transit piece, we want to look at how long mine can be more, take a more active partnership in the way that the local buses are run. So that’s kind of a summary of divorce as much as it’s a, you know, talking about who does different roles, and how do we, how do we maybe share the share the different chores more evenly?
30:51
It’s probably a good thing for us to have in the 2021 work plans, we can dig into that a little more detail, but when the time is right,
30:57
okay. I’m sad.
31:03
I’m just curious of what current businesses are going to be impacted by building this transit station?
31:12
Oh,
31:12
are you talking in regards to the acquisitions?
31:15
Yes, yes.
31:16
Okay, until the imp is released, we don’t have any specific properties. But any acquisitions that those businesses would be worked with for basically either relocation, or some kind of compensation. So it’s not a matter of where the businesses are just rudely kicked out of the premises. Either RTD, or the city and my perspective, I think city is a little more sensitive to those needs. We would work with those businesses accordingly.
31:57
Great, I know we’re gonna be chatting about the coffin street activities, which obviously directly relates to to this there. So before we do additional q&a there, Phil, did you want to give an update on the conference treat planning and then we can kind of dig into the intersection of the two?
32:16
Sure. What I’d like to do is just share briefly this, this presentation, it should be fairly quick. I’m hoping. Hopefully, you can see my screen. Great. So I think many of you’ve heard about the conference St. busway corridor. And it’s this is really the design aspect of that whole piece of the project right now. So we’re talking about it’s a $750,000 project. It is part of a $6.9 million total overall project costs. And I’ll go through that a little bit at the end of the slideshow, but I just wanted to quickly talk about this because we’re actually going to kick off the project tomorrow. So we do have a consultant on board, I can say it’s otech, OT AK, they’re out of Lewisville, great company. And so we’re really excited to work with them over the next 1618 months on the design of Kaufman Street. So that starts tomorrow, we’ll start the funding for tomorrow. And I’ll show you some more about that, you know, conference street now because you know, we live it. I don’t know if many of us have been out lately, but you certainly have you certainly most people know about conference street one block, west of Main Street, we’re talking about from first to ninth basically actually the whole thing what the whole project will go up to 11th for buses. But the bulk of the construction piece is going to be from first to ninth Avenue on Kauffman Street. So right now we have the walkways that are pretty pretty narrow, we have a pretty wide tree lawn for most of it, and we have the parking, it’s both diagonal, you’ll see the diagonal on the left side. And on the right side, you see the parallel parking. So the parking with varies. There’s also very wide lanes for for automobile traffic and a very wide center turn lane as well. So that all fits within about 100 feet of existing right of way today. What we plan to do is, and this is maybe this may not be the final look of this, but this is the initial design, the kind of very, for free, the very early work on design here is to talk about at some point we need to have bus lanes part of this project. And those have been a vision for the center of the roadway. We also have to do separated bike lanes. And so those are spikes. bike lanes that actually be fully vertically separated from the roadway actually probably be up at the sidewalk level. But again, depending on how much the design goes through, and we’re talking about maintaining the same number of travel lanes, so nothing will change as far as the existing traffic and the capacity for that traffic. And then we want to accommodate Obviously the trees in the parking that that some parking and you’ll see that up on the very top of the slide there, parallel parking, where we can fit it. And then really try to keep the tree canopy and some of that more that the green look in the corridor that we have today. But it’s kind of hodgepodge and mixed up throughout the corridor. And we have some really great places where it’s green. And this is really trying to keep the tree canopy throughout the corridor. And then again, enhance those pedestrian connections, which are about four feet, they kind of vary from four to eight feet, right now, we want to make that consistent along the corridor. So those are the things we’re trying to do this is really starting, obviously, in 2020, at the very end here, so we’re just we’re just getting it in, we’re still hoping to complete it by mid 2022. We’d really like to get construction going soon thereafter, once we’re done with the design. But there’s a lot of there’s a lot of issues with that as far as when you want to do your timing for going out to bid on for construction projects and things like that. So we’re trying to be cognizant of that. And then we try to try to say that opening day will hopefully be in later Later 2023 or early 2024. But again, that’s a pretty aggressive schedule. So we’ll have to talk about that as well. The funding sources. Again, this is all going back to Denver Regional Council of Governments or Dr. cog is affectionately known as the tip, Transportation Improvement Program, project or program award that we won, by being going out to a competitive process with the rest of the region. Again, we got $750,000 for the final design, we got just over $6 million for construction. So total project costs were $6.9 million total, you’ll see that the city’s matching dollars, which is pretty low amount, one $150,000 to get, you know, basically 6.7 million, seven and a half million dollar 6.75 $6.75 million. Anyway,
37:11
that’s it for my presentation, I want to be quick, I wanted to get you guys to allow you to do some questions. So with that, I’m going to try to stop sharing here. And hopefully we can talk a little bit more about these projects together. As you mentioned, Neil.
37:30
Great, thank you. Well, well, folks can ponder their questions. One initial question I had, Phil is from the image of the cutaway from the street, it looked like there was a five foot bike lane, does that include a three foot gutter drainage glitter, or is that in addition to the roadway gutter?
37:50
Well, again, what we’d like to do with the bike lane is actually elevate it to the same elevation as the sidewalk. So you’d actually have a sidewalk, a tree lawn, and then the bike way, and then drop into the street level with parallel parking in some areas. And then the street continues into into the different lanes that you saw. So what we’re really trying to do is whether it’s going to be a a buffer with some delineation between the buffer and the moving traffic, or if it’s going to be up above at the same rate of the sidewalk, we’d really like to separate that bike way. So that there’s a comfort level and a level of stress. That’s very low.
38:28
That sounds great there and just follow up on that. So if you’re traveling south on Kaufman, I, as I recall from the documents that Tony was walking through earlier, the bike lane does not continue at first and main there are basically turns into a bike path I’m assuming on the east side of the road, if I have that, right. And if that is indeed the case. How do cyclists get from if they’re heading south there from the southbound bike lane to the the bike path on on the east side of the street?
39:04
Well, what we’re really trying to do with this whole bike way is connect the same vein Greenway of itself, all the way through downtown to the bike lanes on 11th. Across town, actually quite a way. So your question is getting into some serious design issues that we still need to work through with the final design. But right now we have RTD wanting to keep all the bike facilities, so they’ll do a two lane or a two way bike facility on the west side of Kauffman. And we need to either transition that into one, one bikeway on each side of Kauffman, as I’ve shown it in my presentation, or may continue on the west side of Kauffman as a two way kind of cycle track. There. We go all the way up the quarter that way so we’re still working with the design on that but it would either have to transition into two pieces coming together on the west side of coffin in front of the bus station because we don’t want to We don’t want those bicyclists getting into any turn conflicts with bosses. That’s just RTD doesn’t want to. And so it’s the same. It’s a big safety issue. So we need to kind of work that through the design process. Thanks.
40:16
any follow up questions for folks?
40:18
Yes.
40:20
As I looked at those pictures, I realized you’re doing design still. But eliminating the center turn lane, coming through southbound a lot of parking is on the east side of Kauffman Street. So if you’re coming southbound, where would you would you block traffic to make that turn into all the parking? It’s
40:41
Well, sorry, go ahead.
40:44
No, that was the end of the question.
40:49
As far as the preliminary design goes, we did eliminate that, it appears that we’ve eliminated that move. But again, design will will dictate what actually ultimately happens in that section.
40:59
I do multiple times a week. So I’m like,
41:02
I know that one. Yeah, we’d like to do is, you know, we’re really trying to keep people out of those bus lanes, but we don’t even know if they’ll be in the center or not, or where they’ll be located. But the idea is, maybe you could use, you know, use the bus lane for turning traffic in the direction. That’s not, not the not the primary flow, you know, and not the primary direction of travel for the buses. But we really like to keep the buses kind of separated out and not mix that in. So there’s gonna be some issues as far as how do we get turning traffic into those parking lots. Right. And so that’s been brought up a number of times by the downtown Development Authority. So they are they are on it. They’re watching that for you. And so are we, and we just want to make sure it’s safe again.
41:48
Sounds good. Yeah. Sandy, and there’s a jacket a question there as well. Okay.
41:53
So I may be confused. But when the buses are coming up on North on 287, or Main Street, and and the new parking structure is built, they’ll be turning left? Are we not going to be having any persons go from first to ninth or 11th Street at Main Street?
42:19
That’s a great question. And it’s one that we get, again, from a number of folks who are kind of concerned about that, what we’re, what we’re saying is we think that there may be local bus service, that’s still you know, the smaller buses that that run on Main Street, but the idea is to really, and we’re going to talk about this in the neck. He’s all these issues kind of play off of each other. We’re going to talk about the capacity on Main Street, what happened with with the lane closures. And one of the things that we found was we took all the buses during those lane closures, we took all the buses off of Main Street, so that there wasn’t any buses, stopping traffic on Main Street that kept that capacity, open for vehicles and kept kept the traffic moving, which was great. So that’s what we’re trying to do here too. We’re trying to keep their safety issues with you know, people opening doors and a bus coming by and buses stopping in traffic and people having to pass in that in that inside lane. So we’re trying to pull as many buses as we can off into the coffin Street corridor. But that’s not to say we might not have a local bus using Main Street. But the idea is really trying to move that traffic off that bus traffic off of Main Street onto Kauffman. Thank you,
43:28
check. Yes, so
43:31
it’s a couple questions here. And I and I actually support the moving the buses, one block west on coffin Street. I think having the buses detoured during this last little time actually contributed to having a comfortable downtown. I actually enjoyed it a lot. So anyways, that’s just a comment. So first question on the Kauffman reroute phone much have we looked at the study on the train crossing. I know I brought this up earlier. And I have lots of memories of taking that morning bus. And sitting at that crossing on Main Street for 10 1520 minutes, as a big freight train is coming across. And I’m looking at the plan here. And I’m saying buses and potential rail and like a lot more traffic. That just kind of concerns me a little bit. I could see a huge snarled mess there as we wait 20 minutes for a train to clear. So that’s one of the things and then also just want to check in on a Boston update over on hoever. Are we still planning to do that to bring it over? All the way across the tracks? Just wondering if that was still the plan as well.
44:48
Very well give a will give a heads up to Jim angstadt. Just to get ready for that second question that you have. But the first question and maybe Tyler can help me with it a little bit as you know we really are looking at I mean, that’s going to be a big piece of this project and it might be a might be a pretty, you know, big ball of wax that we were gonna have a tough time working with the railroad as far as what goes on as far as the crossing at first and and and Kaufmann, we’ve had the similar issues at first and Emerson and it hasn’t been pleasant, quite frankly. But what we’re thinking of doing and what we’ve talked about RTD, and they do this today is if there’s a train blocking the traffic, and it’s a, it’s one that’s going to take some time, we’re really going to ask RTD to divert and go over South Parkway and come back to Boston that way and get back into the, you know, bus station that way and the other the other direction as well, the northbound direction to be the same way as we may have some intelligent traffic signals that help you know route buses. When there is such a long blockage, we could we could actually put in some, you know, some some detours some temporary detour, signage, electronic signage that would help buses get around that. So there’s a bunch of different things we’ve been thinking about with that. So great point, the same thing would happen at Boston, quite frankly, it’s going to be an at grade crossing in the future. That’s the that’s the vision of it right now. And I’ll let Jim, talk a little bit more about where Boston is as far as connecting across the tracks. Good evening. to Matt static director of engineering services. In response to Phil’s question, the buffet Avenue crossing project has been stalled a little out due to COVID. Some staffing issues, but we are still working on it. We have been working with the property owner, some preliminary negotiations on property acquisition as well as some preliminary design. But we anticipate getting some more traction this year as we get right should say in the next year in 2021.
46:54
So that is does continue to move forward. It is it is in the budget, and will continue to be so until we we get it done. Thanks, Jim. Great, thanks. Any
47:07
other follow up clarifying questions?
47:13
It very much. All right. Thank
47:15
you, Phil. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate that. And thank you, Tony, for the update earlier.
47:20
Thank you for having me.
47:24
So I think next time the information unless there is for the main street link closures, which sounds like ties on in there. So Tyler and Phil will let you take it from there.
47:35
Thanks for let me share with you tonight. I’ve got some information to share on Main Street lane closures, some of the traffic data, and some of the delays we saw and then Phil chime in as you wish. I’ll try and I’ve got some slides to share and talk about and kind of kind of debrief on the experience what we saw what we learned and maybe some talk about some next steps.
48:00
I can hold on.
48:04
All right, so I will see Mainstreet lane closures, we started this circles and lanes in first part of July, and it was primarily in response to as businesses were allowed to reopen. Throughout the pandemic, a lot of them were restricted to capacity of about 50% of normal. And so in. It was really a collaborative effort working with business owners with LDA. Coming up with an idea of how do we support some of the downtown area and get more people out and provide more opportunities to keep businesses alive. We talked about we ended up closing lanes talking about closing lanes, we set the jersey barriers and took one lane of traffic in each direction on Main Street. And that wasn’t before a process has talked about the collaboration with C dot and fH CWA. Obviously Main Streets a state highway. So we need a state permit. We need state approvals to do this. And the other thing that came up during this was from from F hw a the other little wrinkle was being a federal highway own route that runs from Mexico all the way up to the Canada Border to 87. Does and certain alignments but one of the clauses they have in there is compensation for use of right away. So that was one of the big hurdles that we had to, to work through. And I think that was a big help and getting a temporary waiver of that requirement is we were able to close the lanes on Main Street. So really, really good effort of or good collaboration between all those jurisdictions working together and quite frankly, in a relatively short time. I think we started talking about closing lanes on Main Street late in June. And we’re able to pull it together and implement early July. And so with that said, with the compressed timeline that we had, we really wanted to try and measure what traffic impacts would be. I think we heard from some of the neighborhoods Particularly the east side neighborhood and in some on the west about Where’s traffic going to go? If you’re closing lanes on Main Street, it’s going to divert. And how bad is that going
50:09
to be?
50:10
How much is that going to impact me? It was a good opportunity for us to for the city to try this. I think there has been discussion over the years of, can we close the line on Main Street Do we really need for travel lanes on Main Street. So from that angle, it was a good opportunity for us to actually try it and see what it looks like in implementation. So early on, we were able to to get a slew of counts done before we started implementing the lane closures and hindsight being 2020. I wish I’d had a little bit more time to get more counts and a better more data. But we did the best we could with with the time we had. Each each county tread line you see on here is a two count where we did it before lane closures on Main Street during the lane closures on Main Street and then a follow up after we’ve taken the barricades off. I will note the further north one main street north of Long’s peak is a is an automated count. It’s one through the loop detectors we have at the signal. So I’m able to get every day, a pretty good data set of every day of what happened. So that’s outside of where we had the lane closures, but you’ll definitely see the impacts of how traffic volume was impacted on Main Street from the lane closures. In general, we saw traffic bottles on Main Street drop about 3000 vehicles per day. 25.2 point 1000 vehicles per day. And I think Phil touched on it in the previous discussion talking about capacity and getting the buses out of the way. So why didn’t we think and we were here that Main Street is congested, congested and backed up and really bad in normal times? How could we possibly consider closing lane on Main Street? It’s going to be gonna be a nightmare. Well, I think the reality of what we saw, so we’re gonna get it. What’s that?
51:55
I think it’s called karma gun.
51:57
Carmageddon? You know, I don’t think that really came to fruition. Obviously, I think volumes were impacted by people still staying at home from the pandemic. So it’s maybe not a full on controlled case where we have a control. There were a lot of variables in this one rather than just one control, or one variable. But part of what we saw is taking those lanes away, we didn’t lose 50% of the capacity of the roadway. It wasn’t cut in half. Why is that we look at what what are the what are the slow points what what impedes traffic as you travel up and down Main Street. A lot of it is those buses that you mentioned. So every time those buses stopped, they’re blocking that that outside lane, both north and southbound. So that takes away some of that capacity from that outside lane. We also have the parallel parking there on Main Street. And I know I’ve definitely stopped for people to park there before. So someone’s trying to navigate a parallel parking stall that that’ll impede your capacity or reduce your capacity of that lane. And so all of that together, I think getting the buses moved off of Main Street getting rid of that parking there really, really helped provide for some of that free flow leave free flow capacity in the through lane we had. So one of the volumes look like open for move on volumes, we said Main Street was down about 3000 it had the biggest impact. When we look at the side streets, both Kauffman kimbark they were up a couple 100 cars a day. order of magnitude is relatively small, they’re in the two to 3000 to 3000 vehicles per day. So it 10% but 200 out of 2000, I think is still well within a capacity of both of those streets. One of the other things we saw in Kaufman, I think Kaufman the after counts were impacted by some of the construction going on. With the Boulder County project up there on sixth. We did see some apparent increases in traffic over on the east on Emory Street. After the lanes were closed, the one of the things we noticed with that was the day the follow up count that during the lane closure was done was also the day that the library reopened for public access. So I think that definitely skewed that, that change as well. But again, still well within a capacity of that roadway. I mentioned the the traffic data recorder that we’ve got on Main Street North of Long’s peak. And this is a daily volume graph back going back to march 1. And I think it’s really interesting. You can see the impacts of everything, all the events that happened. So over on the left March, this is the pandemic I think we had our first cases of COVID reported around March 5 in Colorado. So if I pick data to the left, it’s not on this it looks a lot the same about 25,000 on average for the week. And then as COVID cases started being reported in color We really saw a pretty big decline of volume on Main Street, it was about not quite half, but 55 55% of normal volumes down on Main Street. And then as each stage of the reopening happened, you can see, traffic kind of came back to normal. And even when it came back, this is easier after all the restrictions are lifted over here. Stay at home orders were were taken off, traffic kind of leveled out still around the 20 to 23,000 vehicles per day, which is still lower than a normal day. And then I don’t know if you can see my pointer here on your screens that come through. So right here, this is the transition. This is when we put the lane lawyers on Main Street. And that definitely you can see where that volume was impacted even north of Long’s peak. And it stayed the same throughout. Over here, November. See November 3 is when we finally pulled all the barricades we had a transition phase where we took out most of the barricades but left some of them in both a half block northbound and half block southbound to some of those businesses adjacent to there had an interest in expanding or extending the time that they were able to use that space. So November 3 is when all that all of the barricades were removed. And it’s been interesting even since then we’re seeing a bit of a general downward trend in traffic, obviously, some of that’s from the Thanksgiving holiday that is kind of influencing that.
56:30
When I talked earlier about wishing I had a bigger picture of data. I was looking at other tools I have in place. What else where else can I pull accounts off of and some of the materials I was looking at to see if I could find a measurable Where did that 3000 pips a day ago? Where were they at? And quite frankly, they’re not really showing up on the other other arterials. When I look at pastries, similar, the same timeframe. Again, we see very similar patterns where the state homeowners stay at home more is going to place volumes dropped and then kind of come back. I can’t really say there’s a noticeable spike. Maybe a little bit up on average, in that second week of July. Same with airport Airport Road, again, similar from a big drop, when endemic came and then all the traffic came back. And it’s been relatively stable since then. One of the things we also measured was travel times. That was pretty important. Even though the capacity is down are we are we that Carmageddon I mentioned before are we seeing major delays show up on Main Street because of this. So we were measuring travel times between first and ninth Avenue on Main Street, both north and southbound. Throughout the day through the am noon and pm peak hours, I think where we really saw the biggest increase in delay was northbound in the BMP, we saw an extra minute of delay. So about four minutes, travel time from third and main Well, first and main up to ninth in Maine. But really where that delay was coming in, was it third, third, Maine. So I think that would be an opportunity if we’re looking at how do we do this again in the future, and how do we make it work better, I think that would be an area to focus would really be third and main southbound. Quite frankly, we didn’t really see a lot of increase in travel time southbound through any part of the day, it was pretty consistent about three minutes from knife down to first throughout the duration of the lane closure before and after, as well.
58:32
DDA shared some information here in terms of pedestrian counts that they were counting on both east and west sidewalks of Main Street. And what you’re seeing here is just a comparison, it’s not an actual number, but a comparison of pedestrians on the sidewalk pedestrian activity year over year. So it looks like their first data point was probably in May, I would think too much about this or think of this as a decline. That’s probably just where they started there. started there zero at so I think this is sort of misleading, showing a decline here. I think this is probably where the data starts. And really, at data going back, it’s probably more of a extrapolated line to the left. line to the left here. But one of the things I think you’ll see July is when we put those lane closures in place, and I think we’re really seeing DDA work hard to have some additional activities to get people out and about utilizing the space and we actually did see some increase in pedestrian activity. Most of September parts of August and October we did a cost city spent a little over $98,000 all said and done trying to get those barricades out there. The the rental the barricades was not the most expensive part it was the labor for shipping, the falling them out here and setting them and then picking back up was a lion’s share of cost. We did get some reimbursements from C dot i think Phil if you didn’t, may have some more information to share about the grants and What the names are but we did get some reimbursement from from C dot for this. And LD da also expended money on this, I’d reached out to them for some costs. And I hadn’t heard back yet. But I know they spent money and buying some tables, some furniture or the street. And then they also paid to remove or to clean the barricades after they were painted. So they allowed businesses or artists to paint the barricades if they wanted to. One of the conditions was they had to be cleaned before they returned back to the, to the owner of the barricades, so they spent money on cleaning them for sure. I think we’ve seen I don’t have the full picture yet in terms of did it or did it not help businesses? I think, anecdotally, I think I know Phil, and I talked to a couple business owners who said that they had to add some staff and add additional shifts to cover the demand that they were seeing during the closures. So I think there were definitely some that had saw an improvement and really utilize the space well benefited from it. I don’t know that that was across the board. But I don’t have the final tax numbers or the the final data to show that. Again, Phil, I don’t know if anything else on that. But
1:01:13
you know, we just don’t have the information at this time for you know, we don’t have all the receipts and everything from from from all that. So we we hope to kind of complete this whole report. And I think people are gonna ask us to take it on the road as well. So Heather, and I may be presenting this in other locales here if once things open up again, but I think people are really interested in find out. Yeah, how much what how, what was the impact to the businesses? And we’ll know that we’ll know that a few, hopefully by the end of this year. So
1:01:47
say similar in terms of the crash analysis, I’d like to run some numbers on crashes and do a comparison of an a year over year did we see? Did we see any increase or even reductions in crashes? I think that overall, again, back to the anecdotal data, I think that we heard from the general consensus was that positive experience, I think people enjoyed using the space, I think crossing Main Street seems probably easier most and that those mid block crossings, you’re only crossing one lane of traffic instead of multiple. So I think that was a benefit to the pedestrians that were out. And then I will say I think that, you know, as we look at the future, where does this go? Is this I think there’s desire from DDA, and potentially businesses to look at Can we do this again next year? I think we’re definitely facing in recovery going into next year. So there will probably be requests or desire to do something similar. even further than that, is this something that the city would want to consider on a permanent basis? It might be too early to know that, but just kind of put in the question.
1:02:59
Tyler? Oh,
1:03:01
yeah, go ahead. Anything else to add to that?
1:03:03
Yeah, I just just to kind of just to finish up on Tyler’s thoughts here is that you, as the TA members and city council certainly get information all the time about from folks who are worried about growth in the community, and whether the roads can weather the streets CMR can handle it. And I think what we proved here, to some extent was, the roadways really do still have a lot of capacity in them. And so, Main Street certainly isn’t always full. And there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do to ever widen this section of Main Street, to, you know, to three lanes or four lanes, certainly, you know, in each direction, because there that will just ruin the character of our city, right, so. So whenever you get these people who come in and start talking about impacts to traffic, because of a development, our roadways really do have a lot of capacity to give. And we have ways you know, if there really is a situation where we do need to move the traffic better. There, we have tools in the tool belt to be able to figure out how to do that. And we can we can make some adjustments, like we did with with Main Street. So just just to kind of set it into the bigger, you know, city wide aspect of, you know, growth and traffic, and all these different things that are all being being kind of pushed upon you as a board member. I’m sure you get the question a lot about, why can’t you just widen this road. We believe we have capacity in our road system today to be able to handle roadway traffic in the future. So and this kind of this kind of illustrates that at some level. So thank you.
1:04:43
Awesome, thanks. Phil. This is Joe quick question. Pardon my ignorance. What is the definition or how is capacity measured? When you say road capacity
1:04:58
Well, usually it’s How many vehicles can you get per lane, and Tyler can help me out with this because he’s much more brilliant about this stuff than I am. But it’s really about how many how many vehicles per lane you can, you can deliver in in a typical hour. And usually it’s only a rush hour that you see it’s like 22 to 2600 vehicles per lane per hour that you can do and that was measured in like Dallas, Texas, on one of their freeway systems. So really, that’s that’s just bumper to bumper moving fairly slowly moving traffic through still moving traffic. And those things where we kind of say in the transportation planning world is who would really sit for that right, who is really going to, especially along Main Street or any of our streets in Longmont, what we say is people will either find, and this is what we saw with the lane closures, people will either find a different way to travel, like they’ll walk or they’ll bike or they’ll take a bus. And even with COVID people were taking buses, you know, during this, and they still are people who need to travel by bus. But people find a different way. Or they’ll find a different time of day to travel or find a different route. And that’s what we were concerned about was people finding those different routes, and really impacting the neighborhood. So we didn’t see that. So we did see some you did see some growth in traffic. But all three of those things kind of worked in combination where people were able to find and a lot of people were working at home too. So that’s that’s kind of either a different route that they weren’t, they weren’t taking any route or the different modes that they were working at home. So all those different things played into kind of keeping us from being what we called Carmageddon.
1:06:39
Thank you for that. Awesome. Yeah, Sandy.
1:06:45
So Tyler, thank you for that report. It was really good. I just wonder if we’re gonna have pushback from the state because it is a state highway to think about continuing to do this, you know, this year COVID. Still here. But in the future, do you think that that the state will allow us something like that to continue? Would we need a variance or I don’t know what you call it? Like? They didn’t want us to do that?
1:07:17
Sure. That’s a great question. And one that we’re not 100% sure on yet either. I’ve asked the question to read it to the region traffic engineer and said, Hey, this is something we’re trying obviously they were involved in, in the production process. They’re interested in the data that we put together on it as well. And I haven’t mentioned that, that, hey, this might be something that the city’s asking for in the future, or, or maybe even contemplating on a permanent basis. And the response of the time was, well, we’ve we’ve definitely done some lane reductions or reduced lanes on some streets and in the state, but we’ve never done one on a street of this high volume. So I didn’t get it. A director clear answer is a yes or no. But But I think we’ve we definitely have some follow up discussions. And some some more data to share with See, based on this, if that’s the direction that we want to go with it.
1:08:08
Thanks, Chuck. I think you were next.
1:08:13
There’s the mute button. Let’s see, what was it gonna say? Oh, I guess anecdotal. I’ll just say it was a very pleasant experience to go down there with the single lanes of traffic. So I echo basically everything that was shared. It’s just curious. Tyler, I know you needed more data. And you wanted to go back. And look, I heard airport pace. kimbark. Kaufman, I didn’t hear over. Do we know any? Did it spill over to over at all?
1:08:45
So I was checking detectors on hover. And unfortunately, the only deter I had on over was not really working. Well. I didn’t get good data that I felt comfortable sharing. It was, it’s pretty intermittent. So didn’t have a good data set to share on that one. I think a couple of streets that I’d be interested in doing some further investigation would be Martin and sunset.
1:09:07
Yeah, I would echo that. And I think just from my experience over did seem a little bit more, but not consistently. So. Yeah. But that that would be where I would think a lot of people would shortcut all of Maine to go all the way up to 66 and then continue north or 17th. Great.
1:09:32
I take sunset all the time there. I didn’t notice any significant shift for that period. But keep your ears open on that. When I was question there, then I’ll go to david there. As you were
1:09:51
what was that question? David, we’ll
1:09:53
go to you and then I’ll come back to me and I’ll think of it.
1:09:56
Okay. So I have some anecdotal information. So I’m, so I’ve spent part of every Saturday for the last four years at six in Maine. And
1:10:11
I can tell you that the traffic has changed, or did change during the time that the barriers were up.
1:10:21
Before the barriers were up, there was never I don’t ever remember seeing even once traffic backed up to Sixth Avenue. After the barriers were up, it could easily back up to Long’s peak. And may, so there still might be for a four minute time, I don’t know how long it took them to get through it.
1:10:41
But
1:10:43
if they were easily backed up, they were always backed up to six hours where cars were literally stopping at six and waiting a cycle or two before they could move across and continue on South the sixth.
1:11:01
I don’t know what was happening, of course, south of Maine, excuse me, South a third. I couldn’t couldn’t see that. The other thing. Um,
1:11:10
so in the four years that I’ve been there, I think that I’ve probably seen Brea accidents in that area.
1:11:21
But since the barriers went up, I would see an accident at least every other weekend. And during a couple of weekends,
1:11:30
I was seeing multiple accidents a day, I was only out there for an hour. These accidents didn’t they’re always you know, just rear Enders. And the plays were often not called. So I doubt that they were reported.
1:11:45
I think the pump house probably got a lot of business because they pull over in front of the pump house and exchange information. And, and then I, you know, I quit watching them. But um, so I don’t know, it’s just anecdotal. And but
1:12:03
I think that something if we were to do something like this, we’d want to maybe consider that there’s information that wasn’t recorded, and traffic or police reports, or time.
1:12:22
You know, I don’t I don’t know where you’d get it if it wasn’t that adorable. But
1:12:28
what I experienced
1:12:31
differs a little bit from what I’m hearing. Good. Yeah, that’s good feedback. And I think what we did, what we did not mention in this, I think, maybe in the full report, but what we really did see was, there were conflicts at the merge point, whether it was direct, you know, rear Enders or fender benders, or not even that much, or just, you know, people bumping each other, or if it was a little bit of road rage we did, we did see some of that where the weather was the weather was the merge point. And Tyler and I, quite frankly, Jim and other folks on this line, we really fought hard to try to get it so it was more so that the merge points were places where it really made sense for where traffic would be pulling out anyway, like at third, when you’re going northbound on Main Street, we really thought that it would be probably better for folks to go all the way up to third and be able to, that’s your decision point of maybe you have a lane that drops or turns on to third. And then the inside lane would continue going northbound and and we had some businesses, you know, south of third that really needed really needed that outdoor space to be viable. They were one of the some of the most positive businesses that we heard back from actually about, you know, being able to cover their yearly rent, and what we did, or what they did over the over the summer, couple months there during the summer. So yeah, to do it over to do it on a permanent basis, we would work on really minimizing those conflict points so that they weren’t as severe as they were and making more signage that would really talk about going all the way up to the, to the point of the merge. We had a lot of places where you’d like you mentioned, David word were, you had stalking back further than we’d like to see. And that did impact some traffic signals. So thank you. Great,
1:14:23
good feedback there. I do remember the question I was going to ask now, I don’t want to lose sight of the importance of the unexpected benefits of removing the parking off of that section of Main Street. Just that the concept of removing the parking and removing the bus is there and pushing that on over to to Kaufman, I think very likely contributed significantly to the improved traffic flow there. So whether we continue with two lanes in each direction or not, the buses and parking I think are definitely an important thing not to try to over so Anything else before we jump on over to the neighborhood traffic mitigation burger? All right. Well, thank you, Tyler and Phil, and we’ll hand it back to Tyler and Carolyn.
1:15:20
Yeah, thanks. So just, I think you’ve probably mostly met. I’m but Caroline’s gonna kind of walk us through. I guess the the impetus for for talking about this is I think that, you know, this is something that you’ve had an interest in, we’ve talked about we’ve, we’ve provided some information to the board about the traffic mitigation program before. And I think based on some of the discussions we’ve had, we want to bring this back to you give some information for those that have not heard about this before or may not know about it, and then talk about some of the next steps and things we’d like to do. And, Caroline, if you’re ready, I will queue up.
1:16:13
Just to introduce myself, my name is Carolyn Michael. I’m an engineering I work with Tyler. I’ve been to some TV meetings before and I was last here in October, but the crash report. Um, but today I’m gonna be talking about the neighborhood traffic mitigation program kind of an over but of some of our challenges and we want to do in the future. Okay, slides. Traffic ation program. Right now, the program we have was adopted in November 2006. So obviously over 10 years old now. But what was really done at the time, we really wanted a way, open up some communication between city stuff. And resident, it was really focused on morbi II of life peace. So if you can, one. So we kind of two processes in our current neighborhood traffic program. So one is a city initiated. And another is a citizen initiated process. And with our city initiated process, we rank all of our neighborhood collectors in a prioritization table, try to choose our projects based on that table. And that’s based on a number of factors, volumes, speeds, crash incidents. And a lot of times, we also follow the pavement overlay schedule as well, because it’s the easiest time to address some of these things. And for our citizen initiated process, that’s get started when we have an application from a resident, usually. And on that application, that resident has to identify the street, the boundaries that they would like to see addressed. And they also have to sign it themselves and get signatures from by other people from different households on the same street. So you can’t have three people from the same household signing it. And we have a threshold currently, for the citizen initiated projects. And we kind of apply this generally, with our 750 vehicles per day threshold. So street have more than that volume would be eligible for our physical mitigation tools, which would include permanent speed radars, and speed tables, among other things, and less than that, we typically would not consider a street for physical mitigation tools.
1:19:13
So the current program has a lot of challenges. So like I was mentioning before the center most tend to address and make a lot of these improvements as during during pavement overlay with the pavement management program. But um, a lot of times those schedules don’t mesh because our priorities are often different than their priorities. And sometimes, if we try to do it outside that process, especially if, say we want to do new, then there may be some cosmetic issues there as well. Another problem is low resident engagement for some of our city initiated efforts. So back in the pre COVID time of February 2020, and he wanted to kick start a process on East Fifth Avenue between Alpine and pastes kind of over by Rocky Mountain Elementary. And, um, there’s actually a joint process as well, today, we’re also going to look at East Fourth Avenue. Three. And, and they’re both going to be undergoing pavement management. But um, when we had the initial open house, we had low turnout, I think two residents ended up coming. And then offline, I think I had two or three others. There wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for it, and we ended up canceling the project. So sometimes I don’t think what necessarily we would rank as, like an important project. And I think for a lot of different factors, sometimes that doesn’t translate to what our residents are interested in. Another is the sort of cumbersome application process. So the citizen initiation initiated programs, we also have an additional petition, they have to fill out and get even more signatures to prove kind of some neighborhood bought the process. And I’m right now, especially because it’s all offline. So you don’t really have a nice centralized way of doing that, or a centralized way of really accepting applications right now. How it is you can sort of turn it up with city growth. So right now we’re seeing a lot of growth in this central areas. And right now, we have a stipulation in our design standards, that new streets are to be designed with slow points at 500 foot spacing. But what we’ve been seeing, even if we construct streets to the standards, you know, we’re still getting calls. After the streets are done, I just moved in, please put in a speed bump. So it’s sort of awkward to explain to people, well, your street was already designed, the slow points, we don’t necessarily want to go back. You know, when we have all these other streets, we want to address this ball. And sometimes we have mitigation that doesn’t meet expectations. So the last city initiated project we did was on left hand drive between sunset and South bone street in 2019. And there we tried a different design of a speed table that was designed to have wheel pads for trucks to get through to kind of help out with some of the emergency response questions, like I’ll address later. But that was not successful, that design did not end up working out. And we got some feedback from it, we had to go back and actually re construct that to design
1:23:10
are about that
1:23:11
the PowerPoint there. But um, and again, there’s, it’s we’ve done in the past. So one that comes to mind is Mountain View Avenue, between four and over, has gone through traffic mitigation process before some permanent radar is out there. But we still keep getting calls Street. And I wasn’t around initial process. But again, with the emergency response, I think there was Tyler, correct me if I’m wrong. But there is that fire station at Mountain View and hover, which I think might be part of the reason? And maybe we’re more and put in some of this?
1:23:57
Yeah, so I think one of the things to keep in mind is this not just, I mean, if we were, as engineers, if we could design it in a vacuum and say this is the solution, we can solve the speeding problem. And we might be able to do that if we build big enough speed bumps and make it painful enough to drive through I think reality we’re faced with is that meeting the needs of everyone, right? And one of that comes up is bit speed speed tables, we call them instead of speed bumps, they’re a little bit different design, they they do have an impact on on speeds and actually do slow people down. So I think that it’s not just not just cars, but it also slows down that emergency response. So definitely something that’s part of the picture when we’re looking at what can we do we how do we implement this there there is a real impact to some of those emergency services as well.
1:24:47
Yeah, and I’m especially when we’re looking at areas with schools, so that was something I was thinking earlier this year because, you know, elementary is right on East Fifth Avenue. Okay,
1:25:02
why should do? Is there any demographic data available in terms of infractions? What categories are age groupings and things like that to overlay on some of these issues?
1:25:16
Um, what do you mean by infractions?
1:25:20
Well, speeding is speeding is
1:25:21
the primary safety. Can
1:25:23
we say The 80%? fall between 8022? Something like that?
1:25:30
I don’t have. So I have crashed. I do not have data for speeding tickets. Okay. Yeah.
1:25:47
So we typically do anytime we’re doing a mitigation project, we do data collection, before and after. So we do a measurement of what are the speeds, I think there’s definitely a different perception. And a lot of times standing next to a car that’s going 25 is maybe different than driving cards. 125. So I think things to keep in mind, obviously, the, and I’m a parent of a toddler as well. So right, someone speeds down the street and say, speeder slow down, right. So I think we collect that data to have a baseline to get angry cars probably to meet going faster than it might actually be. So we do some data collection to try and measure that so we can get a perspective of a condition on the streets.
1:26:37
And, um, so part of the reason we’re doing this, this, kind of to show what our counts are. And for 2021, we’d like to start sort of maybe working parts of this program. So one of them, I think, is probably to get online. Right now. It’s all so hardcopy, and I don’t necessarily want to get rid of that option. And I think the technology literacy gap does exist. But I think getting online, we just sort of maybe increase some participation, updating the toolbox that we have right now, maybe both one and level two. And a lot of those level one strategies, honestly, I’ve never really used, like the neighborhood speed pledge, and maybe some of those things back because a lot of the speeding in neighborhoods is from people that live there. But um, there’s other things that I, we also get asked for a lot that not necessarily part of speed management strictly like we get a lot of requests, or rectangular rapid flashing beacons, which we typically have not included as part of the process, as that’s more of a pedestrian control, but um, maybe looking at things maybe a little bit more holistically as well, and keeping those things in mind when we have these some of these pavement overlay projects. And, and also just sort of overhaul the process. So that right now the city of Boulder, and I’ve kind of looked at Boulder program, and I want to look at some other programs as well, to see how they do it. So I’m like, our processes set up, I can keep an application really at any time. And I’m really receiving applications. Um, at any rate, I’ve had one recently. But um, the way bowler does it, there’s just an application blind, where it’s like anyone can sort of train your application by the state, and, you know, to be cluttered for next year’s
1:28:56
kind of like work projects.
1:28:59
So just some more, some more. And that way, I think would be helpful. So then I’m sorry, I was,
1:29:09
I think what we’re gonna do is look at some of the other surrounding municipalities and see reach out and see what’s working. And, and work to improve our process. I think we’re, we acknowledge our program is probably it’s a little dusty, dated 2006. So I think it’s in need of an update. And I think some of the takeaways, we’d ask this board to provide some feedback on some things that we should consider or if you have suggestions on how to improve our process or make it better, by all means, please, please provide that feedback. It doesn’t have to be right now it can be over. Pick it up. Get back to us as you wish and feel free to email or call Carolina itself. Happy to have a discussion. Awesome. Thank
1:29:52
you. Thank you Karolina. Appreciate that. Yeah, we can maybe take it off of the slides there and invite Any feedback from TP members? According
1:30:07
as Caroline had mentioned, level one and level two, but I was wondering what the definition of those were.
1:30:14
So in the program level one concept, a non physical, which the two most common non physical tools we have, we offer free, slow down yard signs, they’re the purple ones, you’ve maybe seen them around. We also have some portable speed Raiders. So like the trailers that we can go set out on streets by request. And some other things we can do is just some additional regulatory signage, like some speed limit signs and things like that. And struggle to constitute more construction or physical tools. So like I said, speed tables is the most popular requests, and also pop extensions, and maybe even a traffic circle, something like that, if it was appropriate.
1:31:06
Awesome, thanks, David.
1:31:10
Um, and this is just this primarily for the benefit of the newer members of the tab. So my from the least the way I’m remembering things, which could be incorrect, but it seems to me that of the public invited to be heard,
1:31:28
that we’ve received in the last two some years, the folks that have been there to complain about road and, and speed conditions have been Mountain View between over an airport. So despite the fact that we haven’t figured out how to fix it. I think we need to keep on it. And keep in try something you’re not trying something else. I don’t know what it would be. But folks are coming out of their homes coming to this meeting to tell us about it. I think that
1:31:59
the I don’t I don’t know what the answer is. But we we need to keep it on high on the list.
1:32:06
Dave, just real quick. And for the benefit of the group, one of the neighbors that we’ve definitely talked to many times they’re on Mountain View, one of the requests has been for improved fed crossing there. I think there’s one that’s a school crossing across Mountain View to get up to the school upon Northwestern. And as of about two weeks ago, we do now have one of those the I mentioned before the RFP the rectangular rapid flashing beacon is installed there so that it did to to address the bed crossing concern. We didn’t do that.
1:32:40
Great, thanks. quick comment for me there and then we’ll jump to Sandy after that there. First of all, Carolyn, thanks for being able to have a chance to to run through that I think it’s great to be able to look at some different peer communities and see if there any lessons learned or or or good ideas that may be worth repurposing here in Longmont. There are three quotes. So first, I hope is you’re considering what the future process looks like anything we can do. I know they talked about kind of reimagining the process, I would take it a step further and say is there a way we can simplify the process? Because it seems like there are an awful lot of steps along the way. And I wonder if that becomes a challenge for the staff perspective, even manage all those different touch points along the way, that really limits our ability to address some of the other even if they’re not complaining on a regular basis, they’re they’re still feeling the pinch points there. So maybe there’s a streamlined process there that will allow staff to be able to to address you know, more than just one or two or three streets for a year. So one quick second quick thought is in the table that you provided in the materials. I did not see any reference to the width of the road or just other unique circumstances I happen to live on Francis street arrow road so you have basically cars right up against hillbillies on the southbound side, right up against the sidewalk. So it when you don’t have that extra ability for that extra buffer of parked cars there. The cars that are coming by feel that much closer. And as we’re starting to think about how do we get more people to to be walking how to get more people out of their cars to consider bicycling, being able to to think about some of those unique circumstances or I think important for us to I’m not sure how to be able to wait that but maybe in the table there’s a way to have sort of a unique circumstances that may warrant lowering or raising priorities on the table I think is worth considering. Unless I on the list of would you call level one or level two in the future or whether you simplify in some other way. I didn’t see reduced speed zones as being Even an up and on there may be overloaded there. But But I hope you’ll at least consider for communities or streets that do have some unique circumstances to least to allow a reduced speed zone to at least be an option that staff and the neighborhood can consider as we move forward.
1:35:18
So some quick thoughts.
1:35:23
Great. Other comments? Sandy? Carolyn,
1:35:27
thank you for your presentation. And I was just wondering, the neighborhood process on Fourth Avenue East Fourth Avenue and Fifth Avenue between Alpine and paste that you talked about, and there was low response in the neighborhood? Do you think it’s because you, I don’t know if you do this or not, but do you lack outreach to the communities to try to see what their needs are? Or you guys started this, and then the neighborhood didn’t see was a problem? or What was that about? Him?
1:36:02
That’s an interesting question. And something I wonder, too. So we did. It was a city initiative. So came from our end, it wasn’t driven by you know, I get have, you know, some overwhelming number of, you know, complaints about Eastern Avenue. It was, and then we said, well, we started with sending out, like a mailer for an open house, is usually how we would start that process. And, you know, just very little turnout, and it did include Spanish transit, as well. But
1:36:40
yeah, typically, typically, our notification process is is we try to be conservative with the area and pick a larger area that is impacted. But it’s generally a letter mailed to each house and Endor property owner, if it’s a stay a rental or something, we also contacted the school district for participation as well. But I think there’s absolutely, I think, as we look at how do we improve our our outreach throughout the city or communications, I think we’ve definitely worked with public outreach team to try and improve that process. But I think there’s always room for improvement.
1:37:16
Awesome. Thanks. I
1:37:17
agree. I think there’s always room for improvement for engagement. And like you said, people, that sort of cumbersome process or something, I’d maybe like to streamline as well. So
1:37:31
sounds good.
1:37:33
Awesome. We’ll we’ll keep pushing forward here. We’ll look forward to coming back to the TV so that we can hear some of your conclusions or recommendations there in the months ahead. But appreciate you planting the seed for future conversations. They’re nicely done. Thanks, Carolyn.
1:37:47
Thank you.
1:37:49
Awesome. comments from board members there. So we’ll just do a quick fly around here the time we have remaining to see if there’s anything else that is top of mind. We’ll start with Jacques. Anything will go Jacques, then then Sandy, anything top of mind for you?
1:38:06
Yeah, just really quick. And this is kind of off transportation a little bit. When we’re looking at the charts for the downtown and the pedestrian traffic, it was very startling to see the huge drop in pedestrians in November and December. And it just reminded me that every decision that we’re making here, we should keep this in mind that we have a lot of community members who rely on some of the decisions we make their livelihood. And I myself went downtown, this last weekend to do some shopping. And I just I hope that we see an uptick in that, because I know those businesses are probably hurting based on that data. So that’s all.
1:38:52
Great. Thanks, Chuck.
1:38:54
Sandy.
1:38:58
It was a good meeting. Thank you for all the work that you’ve done. And I’m amazed the amount of things that got done in spite of COVID, you move through things very well. I went to the virtual meeting for bus rapid transit on November the 12th. And I I’m trying to wrap my head around how we’re going to do massive transit through 287 through Main Street, when we’re looking at getting all the traffic from the buses on to Kaufmann Street. So I just am trying to figure out how that’s going to work together. And I’m sure it will. But I don’t know how that is going to happen. So I’m going to leave it to you all to figure it out. Thank you.
1:39:47
If I could just didn’t reject. That’s why we do want to put those buses on those separate separate lanes so they have their own bus way to kind of do all that activities. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks. Let
1:39:59
me go. To listen and Joe.
1:40:04
Thank you. And that is a great lots of presentations, lots of good information. The thing that’s off the top of my mind as you think about Main Street in particular, but all of the different streets has to bear in mind accessibility for people with wheelchairs or blind things like that. A lot of this sounds like it could be difficult to navigate, or hard for people who have difficulty walking to get to where they need to go. And I want to make sure that that’s remembered.
1:40:32
For you. Thanks, Joe.
1:40:35
I don’t have anything additive at this point that hasn’t been touched on.
1:40:41
Awesome, Courtney, and then David. Yes,
1:40:45
thank you for all the information tonight. I also attended the October 12. Regional bus meeting, and I thought that was very informative and a good start, at least to looking at regional transportation as a whole. I know it will impact how we see that here in Longmont, but it seemed to be a good start for seeing how many people use the corridor. And that that people are starting to look at the corridor in a bigger perspective.
1:41:20
Thanks, David.
1:41:24
I’m thrilled with the amount of work that continued to get them. So despite all the challenges we’ve had in the last couple of months.
1:41:33
One thing I would like to hear on maybe maybe at the next meeting is status on where we stand with quiet zone. designs and implementation.
1:41:45
Sounds good? buyers? Great, thanks.
1:41:49
Only thing I’ll add is it can be frustrating seeing how long regional and, and key sec intersection traffic planning projects can take, you know, measured in years, sometimes longer. But when I think ahead about, you know, the long term benefits and and and positive impacts of getting that transit. No transit station there first. I mean, I think that can that combined with, you know, some improvements on Main Street that we talked about earlier, and that being able to get those improvements on Kaufmann. I think those can really be transformative. And yeah, it’s going to take time. But I really think that some of the decisions and some of the the improvements that we’re talking about are going to fundamentally transform long mine in a really positive way, and one that we can all be proud of, and in the years to come there. So thanks to staff for your good work and marching that process forward, and we appreciate it. Councilmember Peck and anything on your side?
1:42:57
Not really, I just want to echo what everyone else has said in to keep praise. I think our staff, they do just continue to work and try to work solve problems, and I think they’re doing a great job. So um, thank you.
1:43:14
Sounds good. Totally agree.
1:43:17
Um,
1:43:18
awesome.
1:43:19
Are there any upcoming transportation related meetings that are on the radar that folks want to keep others in the loop about?
1:43:26
Yeah, if I could just mention, they’re pretty important. I’m sorry, I mentioned this earlier from items from staff. And I’m glad you asked Neil. Tomorrow is the East Carolina public workshop. He’s kind of my road, basically, the Longmont section from state highway 66. Basically down to the river, I think we’re talking about tomorrow down to the same frame Greenway anyway. So that starts at 430. If you need any links or anything like that, I can certainly I’ll just send it out to everybody. So just remember that that’s happening tomorrow. You can also join Wednesday at 430. And Thursday at 430 for the theory section and the section in between area online is on is on Thursday. So you can talk about the whole quarter if you’d like to during these three meetings or just the warm up portion tomorrow night, like before City Council. Sounds good.
1:44:19
Thank you, Phil. Any other transportation related meetings on the reader? Great or anything else pressing before we sign off? Okay, well, for upcoming agenda we know we’ll be talking about are 21 2021 work plan at the January advisory board meeting. So definitely be good to do some thinking about some of the priorities that you’d like to see addressed on the agenda here in 2021. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and we’ll look forward to seeing everyone in the new year. Thanks everyone. Consider the meeting adjourned.
1:45:01
Thanks, everybody. Thank you, everyone.
1:45:36
Hey Stacy. Good job.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai