Video Description:
City Council Joint Meeting with the Downtown Development Authority
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.
Read along below:
Unknown Speaker 0:00
And we’re ready to order. Let’s go around and introduce John Mayer Susie Hello faring. Marcia Martin’s Council and watershed council. John Craig ltva Rodriguez City Council Chiquita your turn PDR row City Council carefully making Development Authority development authority for the city manager Chris McGilvray ltva West Parker with the LED voice David Moore bunkers in American democracy we will try to do some fundamental Genetics and Public Works in my mouth the attorney financial I appreciate that I don’t think anybody’s gonna know and Cindy cedar just integrated assistance in the county
Unknown Speaker 1:38
is that a promotion or demotion?
Unknown Speaker 1:44
Sorry topics to be discussed in the pedestrian access and safety in the downtown area. And I’m going to turn it over to Chris McGilvery.
Unknown Speaker 1:59
Awesome. Thank you, Mayor Perez, thank you City Council. Obviously, there’s a lot on your plate. There’s a lot of priorities that we’re discussing as a city. So we’re we really appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation about something urgent, and really important to not just start downtown, this is a city wide issue. But you all appointed us to serve in this capacity on the ltva board and represent the LDA. So we’ll be discussing one of our six pillars within our master fan of our downtown, which is cognate activity and access. And I just want to start this conversation by reading the cognate activity vision that we all adopted back in 2017. That in five years already, access to our downtown is easy, safe and low stress, easy, safe and low stress for people living working or visiting by any form of transportation understanding that almost every person is a pedestrian at some point in their trip to downtown. We’re all pedestrians at some point. And most of you know I, I work at Front Range Community College, I teach there and we’re going through this massive change right now, where we’re completely changing our structure. Moving from campus space right now. We agree. This is one in Larimer, one in Westminister and one in Boulder. And we’re moving to a one college model with a new president. We’re under new leadership. And so there’s a lot of very, very important decisions being made across the college. And one of the things that we’re that I’m always reminding myself that as we’re going through this massive changes, how is this impacting students? And how is the student experience through these changes? Improving? It’s not that that’s a big problem. And so I think we all want to keep that in mind, as we have this conversation is, you know, we’ve experienced adding 500 new units to our downtown because housing was a top priority for us coming out of our master plan in 2017. And we’ve added a lot, we’ve done a lot of great things, and we’ve experienced a lot of significant growth. And we also have over 1000 units in the pipeline. So we’re going to be adding a lot more houses and residents. And so one thing you know, as we’re experiencing this growth, a big concern is pedestrian and the impact it has had on the safety of our pedestrian. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity of walking through our downtown as a reset, and try to cross the downtown at any point and what that experience feels like. And so keep that in mind as we have this conversation. And so, the goal today we want to we want to discuss safety, you know, and right now in our vision, it’s easy, safe and low stress. And as a board we feel that it’s it’s not very easy right now. It’s not very Save. It’s definitely quite stressful throughout the day. And so we want to discuss our overall philosophy, transportation philosophy as a city and how that is all that relates to the downtown. What are clear priorities moving forward? And how do these How do the projects that we’re currently working on in ltva, align with the city’s priorities, discuss ways that we can in ways that we can make real change happen now. We have a lot of different plans. But you know, last month 2.0, and vision long launch the master plan. And so what are some real meaningful steps that we can take quickly to address the safety of our community, and then just discuss funds and next steps. And so, we have a residential advisory board that we created that actually brought up this issue, but we hear we hear concerns every single day, Kimberly, the board your concerns about the safety of our pedestrians every single day, and sometimes it takes, unfortunately, something very tragic to bring this to light. And someone really dear to our hearts passed away recently due to traffic. And so because of that, the prompt is, you know, it’s always been a priority, you know, in our ltva master plan, and because of that, that really is what brought it to intensified the discussion. You know, we have a unique area that’s meant to be investor unfriendly, bringing our community together is the heart of our town. And it’s really meant to put people first people above colors, and creating spaces for residents and visitors to walk, to explore, to feel comfortable to feel invited. And the traffic is just too fast. And it’s poorly timed crosswalks, there’s several broken and incomplete sidewalks that are deterrence to the overall success that we’ve worked so much on over the last five plus years. And as we continue to grow, and improve our downtown, taking meaningful steps on these issues is at critical importance. No, we’re going to, we’re going to go through some of the issues, Kimberly is going to walk us through some of our current projects. And that we’d like to have a deeper discussion around the overarching high level philosophy of Transportation and Safety with you all, I can’t thank you enough for the collaboration and partnership. And again, taking the time to to have this conversation with us. And Kimberly, go ahead and hand the baton over year.
Unknown Speaker 7:57
Just real quickly, I think Chris touched on the pillars of our master plan to remind folks, their economic vitality, placemaking and urban design are creative district connectivity and access, land use and leadership. We’re here today to talk about connectivity and access. Although everything is important, really works together, of creating an environment where people can live, work and play downtown. You can see number five, those are the six overarching principles of all the work that we’re looking at. And number five is improving and expanding the infrastructure that ensures downtown is well connected and easily accessible by multiple transportation modes. And like Chris hammered home really looking at it through that lens of easy safe and low stress as we’re walking around. And again, I just want to reiterate that, that we’re our partners in all of this in this community. And we can’t be more thankful for the investments that city council has made in downtown. And we are just here to continue to make it safe and comfortable for all of our residents and districts. I quickly want to go through the goals and strategies under each of those pillars, our particular goals and strategies that were created by the community by a working group for connectivity that was wider, reaching folks from the entire community back in 2017. The first one is to align those transportation and land use planning efforts to achieve a well connected downtown. When we look at this, the connections to the Greenway are absolutely essential to our success as we want to get rid of single vehicle occupancy and having everyone have to drive here. The Greenway is a jam. It is a fantastic asset. One of the things that we talk about all the time, but it’s not super easily connected to downtown. If you wanted to come off, you know around Main Street, there’s not a safe protected way to get there. So looking at the continuation of our street grid, as well as easy ways to get from the Greenway and developing easy and effective walking and biking connections from the Greenway and from other parts of downtown. I bike all the time but I would say Have A B minus level C level biker, right? And if I get out of my neighborhood and really have to go around, it’s not low stress or comfortable. So how do we get people here easier? Well, we look at enhancing downtown as a central hub of city wide transportation, we all know that, you know, first inmate, you are all actively working on that. And that is going to be fantastic. But there are many missing linkages around that to get into downtown and to walk around. If there aren’t sidewalks or it doesn’t look comfortable. We do not want that first and main transit center to be a car hub where we’re having a call car trouble, people are driving, they’re jumping on and then driving instead of walking around. So finishing those things, I think are essential, encouraging alternate use of transportation modes. And one of the things that we talk a lot about, I talk with Phil all the time feels like not my bad zone, but talking about transportation demand management. And we all know that there will be a construction project here across the street, and that we have a lot of concerns around parking. How do we dig deep and say, what are some of these transportation demand management things that we can experiment during this time and really start to gather information and say, what are what are residents or visitors willing to do? What they do is shuttle would they park further if we gave him downtown dollars and incentivize them to do so? And what what are these things so I don’t have the answers today. But think that that’s definitely an opportunity for us to explore. As we look at enhanced bicycle and comfort, certainly our bike infrastructure remains very important as to what we’re doing. We did have a dismount zone. I think that people chose to dismount for a while but are no longer choosing to dismount and are now just really flying up and down. So looking at further enforcement of that dismount stone, better connections to neighborhoods, and ensuring an adequate Well, distributed parking supply. Evaluating regularly, we do have a parking study that will wrap up in January, and we’ll be able to give you the results of what does that true parking snapshot look like today? And preparing for future needs? I talked with Harold all the time. And we’re talking about what are some of these hotspots where people are going to be living and playing that are new to downtown? And how do we strategically invest in some parking that can can be used in multiple different ways. You know, that’s what we did with the scope on cost. And we said, we know that there’s people that are working in the county that are coming, but then at night they’re leaving and all that parking is available. So we have that widely open to the public. So how do we really get the most bang out of our buck for parking. But the number one thing that we have that we really want to focus on today is maintaining a safe and enjoyable walking environment for pedestrians of all ages and abilities. And I think that’s really important to remember, as we have an aging community, it’s going to get even, we’re going to walk a little slower, I know that I walk a little slower than maybe I did in my 20s. And so that that’s going to be pretty important to focus on. So when you look at the goals that we have there, it’s things like improving, improving pedestrian connectivity, ensuring sidewalks are ADA accessible. Expand the alley scape project, ensure that mid block crossings allow for high with agility support and encourage building site design that enhances safety and working with CDOT and the city to have automobile compliance with scope posted speed limits. So those are some of the things that are in our are jointly adopted master plan. So this is some results of a survey that we that we got about 2020 2021 is when we got these. This isn’t the whole survey it really just pulled out the questions about what we’re talking about today. But we asked what prevents you from visiting downtown. Inadequate parking is something that we have heard probably historically since the first card hit downtown. But traffic issues is something that we have not heard since recently, and that matched the matched what people were saying about parking. So it was very interesting that is really starting to come to the forefront. These that you see beneath are things that people typed in, so I copied and pasted exactly what they typed in. But these were just a smattering tons of excessive speed, lots and lots and lots of stuff around speed, traffic sizing, safety and noise or deterrence to visiting and spending time downtown. The highway makes walking and making difficult traction with a character traffic signals and crossings are not sufficient to keep people safe. Short street crossings for pedestrians we hear that over and over and over. Vehicles are driving too fast and they’re too loud in that mainstream is very busy making walking scary. This is just a smattering of the things but that was really what we were hearing over and over and over within that survey. The survey was administered through CU Boulder. And so that’s how we got these results. If we did ask what people liked most about downtown, they like community feel the local business and dining in the history of the vibe, suggestions to improve better and more quiet connectivity, parking and access, that would be overwhelming more shopping and dining and then increase gathering space and cleaning it up a bit. And then what do you dislike most about long about downtown, again, was connectivity, traffic, parking, bike access district issues, not enough choice that the need for more social services community. So that’s what we’re hearing as we’re asking people about what they think of downtown. In our 2019 parking study, one of the interesting things that they had said was, they saw a bunch of people that would drive from one side of Main Street to the other. And they, some of them are were working the system trying not to get a ticket. But they said many of them weren’t even in a timeslot, right. So they were just driving during the day from East side of Maine to the west side of Maine. And they said, in all of their time of doing this, they haven’t seen anything that was that higher, incredible. If people driving from one side to the other. That’s a pretty clear sign maybe that people don’t want to cross the street. It said that traffic was observed to move quickly in some pedestrian crossings were difficult to navigate in the allotted time. And this was from the people that were collecting the data who collect data in towns all over right. So this was kind of their observations. They said there was difficulty crossing the highway. And they noticed that if you did not start your walk, the minute you got the clear walk sign that you probably wouldn’t make it across without. And when you talk about low stress, it’s always notice if you take three steps in and then you get the red countdown, you know, that’s not that’s kind of stressful. So that was just I wanted to pull that out, because that was right from the report of their observations as they were collecting the data. On paper, I think our downtown looks amazing. We have the mid block crossings, we have call outs, we have all of these things for traffic calming, doesn’t feel like the traffic has understood that this is for them to go slower or to call. And so I just think we’ve done great work in this in this brown, but we’re just not seeing the traffic calming that we were hoping to see.
Unknown Speaker 17:28
Some of the things that we have done as a result of our master plan is better lighting, we changed out the lighting and all of our public parking lots and we added the streetlights on Main Street, we did hear people saying that it was too dark. And maybe they were worried about parking in one area and walking to another. The board took that very seriously and upgraded all of that lighting, we did initiate the dismount zone, I’m sure some of you that have been on council for a long time know that that has been something that people have wanted, we change two to eight bikes in the alleyways. But we’re still not seeing the compliance, we would love to see for the dismount zone. We have made investments in parking, broken pop and garage, like I talked about before. And we did we worked with you all and you were all fantastic to do the bigger heart stronger streets were during COVID, we went down to the one lane Main Street. And these are a few pictures that we captured. And what I love about these pictures is man, those are full of the streets and people walking around the streets. And that’s the downtown that makes me happy when I see that of all of the people that are using our public space that are gathering and some of the things that I knew blew me away, when we did it that I wasn’t expecting was it didn’t feel easy, safe and stress free, not what I was thinking about at the time, I was thinking, oh my gosh, let’s say for businesses, and let’s get people down here to do something. But it was so much quieter. I don’t have the data. But I believe I was asking Phil because I think Tyler was the keeper of the data. But it slowed the traffic down. But I think so like 24 or 24 miles an hour and the speed limits 25. And so knowing what that felt like to have people going the speed limit consistently and always was much more comfortable. And so those are the kinds of experiments that I think were very helpful in to what we’re trying to achieve. We’ve also added a lot of infrastructure for bikes, a lot of different bike racks and things like that. And so then we’ve commissioned a Wayfinding plan that I’ll talk about in a second. So here are some projects that are in the works because I don’t want the great work that everyone’s doing to go unrecognized. Right now we are we budgeted, I think back in 2019 to do some preliminary alley planning. It got kind of kicked down the road for a while because of a number of issues. But we’ll be kicking that off this year to really looking at that 200 Block alleys in the 600 dark alleys, but especially the 200, block alleys as we’re trying to connect with South Main Station and then down into steam. Having that as a pedestrian corridor is super important, and probably not one that’s super walkable today, the wayfinding that we did with the city, I think a lot of our parking is maybe hidden, there’s maybe some confusion as to is this public parking? Can I park here? How long can I park here? As well as just how do you get around, and what is that kind of curated experience. So that plan is done and our board has allocated over $400,000. To implement that within the downtown area, we’ll start to see that in 2023, we will be starting with all of the parking ID signs in the parking Trailblazer signs to be able to get the community to know where parking is. We’re working with the city on a camera project to be installed in the alleys to soon help elevate safety. Our colleagues in Fort Collins said that was a complete game changer for their allies when they did that, that it really deterred a lot of the negative activities they were seeing. We talked about our parking study that will be coming out in January, we can share those results with you. We have been working with traffic engineering on mid block crossing lights and having head lights. If you remember, we had a tragic accident on the 500 block in 2021. And it took out that mid block crossing pole. And so we have said it looks much to replace it with a bowl, let’s see if we could replace it with one of the flashing lights. And so see that has been amenable to that. So this summer, we’re going to do that. And hopefully we’ll also be doing that at 300 or 400 blocks because I feel very strongly that it has to be consistent. So you know, okay, I’m looking for this, and this is where I’m gonna stop. So that’s a great progress. But lights alone maybe aren’t aren’t just the answer, but it’s a great step forward.
Unknown Speaker 21:51
That’s like the flashing lights. Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:59
Yeah. I don’t know if that was exactly like that. I would just Yeah, yeah, exactly that. Third Avenue improvements, which I can’t speak to, but I know that those are coming this year. The first main project, like I talked before, we know that there’s a parking garage coming there. There’s going to be great bus transit there. But those connections are essential, making sure that we don’t just build it without thinking of how is it going to connect to everywhere else. quiet zone certainly wanted to have some questions around the quiet zones, the timing, when would that be happening? When would that be happening in downtown? What would that look like? So Vision Zero, we have been listening in on your conversations around Vision Zero. I think that that’s very consistent with the things that we’re looking at. We know that a transportation plan is coming. Kaufman Street is something that we’ve been talking about. Possibly I might have heard rumblings about changing the timing of some of the symbols. And I’m not sure if I missed anything else on this list. So as we go into our discussion, we can come back to this. I know there’s some questions, I know that there’s things that we would really like to be a lot more part of this record. And if I missed anything, I apologize. But I tried to scour through all of the CIP and budget document and get a good reflection of what’s happening in the downtown area. And
Unknown Speaker 23:18
forgot to mention every street is also planned connection to the Greenway through downtown but to the east side. So if I go outside the Ltda, but I think it’s on your border, and it does connect out.
Unknown Speaker 23:33
So those are those connections that we were talking about? Is it is it just in a plan? Like in theory, we want it or is it an applied
Unknown Speaker 23:39
multi use corridor plan? seating plan is so complex. So I forgot to mention that to you. My apologies.
Unknown Speaker 23:48
So it would happen when continents connected or just sometimes that
Unknown Speaker 23:51
happens with development. So if development comes in connection of me street down to Boston Avenue,
Unknown Speaker 23:58
you’re talking about changing light signals, Ziff, the timing that you’ve been talking about, or is it just?
Unknown Speaker 24:04
Well, it’s so right now, I think it’s adaptive signal systems. So there’s cameras that are looking to say there’s this many cars, there’s a regular part isn’t. So I think maybe that might be changing. We’d love to see changes in the timing. But I don’t know if we talked about that. So the next slide. You know, we commissioned the wayfinding and you’re kind of seeing a little glimpse of what that will look like. We do have a test site right in front of the scope on Kaufmann if you kind of want to see it’s not, it’s kind of a poor man’s version of what we’re gonna do, but we wanted to get it up to kind of show that that’s public parking and it’ll be better but it’s done for real. But you know, one of the things that we also commissioned was a placemaking a placemaking plan, and you know, these kinds of artistic crosswalks are happening all around the Contrary, and they did certainly say this might be a good way to kind of show number one that you’re in a creative district number two, really say there’s pedestrians and there’s pedestrians all over this place. And so when I’m driving here, it’s going to feel different because it’s meant and built to be a pedestrian district. And I know, you know, that’s what downtown’s are about, but you’re not in a car that is very walkable. And so how do we work together maybe to implement some bold pedestrian statements like this to say, you know, my mind is a place that we encourage you to walk? And how do we make sure that it’s not only a clear and understandable what is the driver you’re supposed to do? Again, we want to make sure that it’s safe for everyone. So there was a CIP that was adopted in the 2023 budget. For the Main Street corridor plan, the ltva board has committed $250,000 in 2023, and put in put it on for 2024. As well, in that CIP, this is all from the very community driven plan of the mainstream forward plan, how are things that could help in this area, improvements of the alleys was on their median installation, the 200 block of main if you’ve noticed, we work together to raise the median that was in the 100 block between she’s a quarters in South Main Station. So that’s great stuff, the same way as the medians are raising the 300 or 500 block. The DDA has budget, we this year, we’ll be planting that to make sure that it’s a beautiful gateway. But then when you go to the 200, blocks, kind of like a real fast autobahn, open way up again, there’s no media, there’s no nothing and then you neck to back down into the historic or so, you know, putting that media is in that CIP, looking at the mid block crossings and improvements in the downtown character area, which includes also maybe looking at adding a mid block crossing on the 200 block of Main Street, adding those flashing lights, finishing the sidewalk connections and fixing those that are in disrepair, super important. And then speed mitigation. And you know, in that CIP, it talks about what is going to a one lane look like in Main Street in that core, how do we slow, slow traffic. But what we want to make sure is the $500,000, that we’ve put in the CIP that we’re working together with things that that will be implemented that are in agreement with the philosophy that we have here for transportation in our communities. We are here as partners, we have money on the table to help tackle some of these issues. So I’m going to turn it back over to Chris, for inclusion, and then we can start the discussion. So counsel, do you have any questions at this point, Marsha,
Unknown Speaker 27:48
this is actually for the staff. Because I’m on the senior advisory board. And I’ve been there for five years, because I love them so and every single year, it used to always be tired. It was no, it was I think, Jim and Carolyn Caroline. Thank you, Caroline. I do. She’s lovely. But every year, we are promised that the crossing times on May in the walk lights will get longer every year. And I believe that somebody is trying to keep those promises. But what I think there must be as a quality assurance problem, you make a parameter adjustment in, you know, there’s this program, right, that, that calculates, you know, the adaptive light controls and stuff. And what I think is happening is that the adaptive software must be putting it right back where it was before, because all those old folks say it’s just the same. I measure it with my phone, and it’s just the same. So my question is, after you make those adjustments, you guys send people out there to measure and make sure that it really is longer after you make the adjustment. Because I mean, people swear up and down, that there’s no change. And Susie, as you say, like it’s not the advisor, seniors own way, but I think you’re trying that it didn’t happen. So I just wanted to get that out there.
Unknown Speaker 29:37
Appreciate those remarks, Marsha. So just to summarize what Kimberly just presented, people don’t feel safe in the downtown. And we have budgeted funds over 500,000 Over the next two years. And so we got to make sure that these funds are targeted, intentional and providing the right value for us. And we With all the growth that we’re going to be experiencing, I mentioned we have 1000 units in the pipeline. So what does our future look like? What does that plan look like to support that growth? And then what are some meaningful short term tactics that we can deploy? That can really make a difference? So we’re balancing short term impact versus the long term.
Unknown Speaker 30:27
So what I’ve noticed, I’m glad you’re going to be putting in the blinking lights through the walkways, but what I’ve noticed is that it’s very difficult to see. So it’s going to be crossing, because there’s a car there. And from the sidewalk to the end of the car, how far does that person have to come out so that the driver can see them. So I think that makes it very unsafe for pedestrians. The other thing I’ve noticed is sometimes trees are hanging down, and you can’t see the signs. So those are very short term, immediate things that we can do, I think I’ve also had some places I want to be I don’t know where the bus stops are there. But that during snows like this, that who’s going to clean those bus stops, that’s, that’s an argument that people don’t want to walk again, because they cannot get to the stop, because too much snow. And that comes from I think the snow plows you know, when the power goes right, on the sidewalk or in the shelter. So, especially a competent street, you’re right across a road at Rosedale Park. That’s a walkable place for young people getting off the half or so we have to make sure that who’s responsible for that? Our TV system? I know it’s restricted. So I think we need to make sure that those places are successful. Elizabeth? That’s good. Thanks
Unknown Speaker 32:13
for that insight. John, last Joe, fellow board members do you want to do?
Unknown Speaker 32:25
Well, really, that first question is sort of what’s on my mind is the starting point is are we? What is our priority? Is it? Is it moving on the hills through the community as quickly as we can? Or does it create a pedestrian friendly environment downtown? And the answer to that question, from my perspective, drives a lot of other answers. And unless we’re explicit about it, and we are all in agreement on it, then implicit decisions about that drive a lot of decisions. And so they really what we need to hear from you and understand from you all is philosophically, which is, what is the priority? Is it moving automobiles through town? Or is it making it as a pedestrian friendly area, it does feel easy, safe, and stress free.
Unknown Speaker 33:25
I also think it’s a critical time right now, when you have an increasing density with housing in the Delta, is really the time to make these changes.
Unknown Speaker 33:37
Calling on a miracle.
Unknown Speaker 33:41
Maybe I think the simple answer in certain ways is that the more driving a bursary car reverse, as far as moving traffic through town, more pedestrian friendly, you’re going to get and I think anecdotally anecdotally we saw that when we had the one lane and it really did bring speed down. And I brought a lot more kind of sense of walkability to the downtown, right. And then when we open it back up and went back to, you know, very thick stream of traffic, right. And so the more comments I see from people saying, I don’t like driving downtown, is going well, the more people that don’t drive to downtown, the more pedestrian friendly. And to expand on that if I go to downtown Denver, I don’t like driving in downtown Denver so much that I will park somewhere, just get my car and walk to wherever I’m going. Right? Like at that point. I’m like, I’m not even worried about parking within 50 feet of the door trying to go I just want to get out of my car business is really stressful. Dr. Michael, instead of you know, I think that first question is really the proximate transportation philosophy. Do we really want to make downtown that traffic averse to promote that kind of walkability and pedestrian safety and you know, From my perspective, yes. I have all I remember, you know, because I’m a native as Mr. Councilmember McQuaid is, some of the very first art walks where nothing was closed off, you’re literally just tons of people walking up and down the street and in traffic just going up and down the street. And that’s a little sketchy, you know, as, as we’ve been able to close off Main Street on occasion, obviously made a lot more friendly. And so I think that’s going to be the big challenge here is it is a state highway. And I think there’s going to be certainly more in some things that C dot will require. So to what extent can we push seat up to allow us to restrict? I think that’s a good question as well. From my point of view, yes, for strong, pedestrian friendly, thriving downtown, we need to make it as unfriendly to cars as, as possible, as I heard, or the business owner recently say, I’ve never seen a car, buy dinner, or buy a dress from the store. Only seen people do that. So I think that’s what we kind of have to worry about as far as
Unknown Speaker 36:11
thicknesses, maybe for Sandy or Harold, because my memory of an ice distinctly after that very high profile and fortunate traffic def on Third Avenue. We very distinctly as a council express our support for moving toward Vision Zero. I don’t recollect, like the the degree of official illness that policy ended up having. So can one of you?
Unknown Speaker 36:45
Well, I think you directed us to move forward with Vision Zero, which were staff is working to put that together to bring that back to you will? Sure.
Unknown Speaker 36:53
So that means that it will version zero was a big policy, it will inform future smaller decisions about what we do. And I think that that is that’s good enough. And that is one way or the answer. I also think. And this is especially important for downtown, because one of the things for compliance with a less car centric policy is making it harder to use cars. But the other side of that coin is making it easier not to and we don’t want to pay to have the downtown virgins pay a penalty in terms of people buying dinners and dresses and stuff like that, because it’s harder to drive. So I just want to hear a discussion, I think about what we do to achieve that balance. And in particular, what we’re going to do during the construction phase, for the for the hotel, which needs to become the beloved Hotel.
Unknown Speaker 38:13
Observation for that. We think about actually, a lot of parking is downtown spoke that. People are just learning about Roseville apartments or parking available. All very walkable to downtown. I think that that driving is so easy to do downtown, that people don’t even that’s why they want to park in front of the place that they are a parent’s point. But also the pedestrian perspective, because people are trying to get right in front where they’re starting. It makes Main Street and Kimbark to a lesser extent, carry coffin. But the whole though is very intimidating streets for pedestrians to cross. And so if it was difficult enough that people would walk for walks, then it’s still easy to get downtown. But then once you’re downtown is walk, do we actually I would make a case in the parking say we’ll prove whether I’m right or wrong. We have an abundance of parking. It’s just everyone wants to park in the same spot. And we’re right in front of their store. So it’s we need to create the conditions that they’ll use the abundance of parking there into your point
Unknown Speaker 39:34
do I think the wayfinding initiative
Unknown Speaker 39:36
should really help? Yeah. But I do think that starts with this notion of pedestrians first and I think, you know, my hope is that you all might consider and what are things that we can do to plant a flag and say that yes, we are for pedestrians first. And well, you know, I don’t know Have this comment to take us off track. But I think a down payment that you can make as if there’s four way stops at all intersections on Kimbark. And Kaufman in the downtown area. I mean, that’s a very simple, quick thing that could happen. That says, Yes, we take the districts more seriously, then cars. Kind of near.
Unknown Speaker 40:24
The idea here is I, you know, it’s a philosophy that I think you guys are really hitting on here. And I think it’s a, it’s a good way of approaching it all, I think you have a well thought out plan here in general. Of course, we do have to focus on arches, we do have to focus. And I hadn’t thought of John’s point there. Putting on competent Kimbark all those stops. But again, that’s that’s an excellent way of making it more pedestrian centric. And again, looking at where do you want to go? If we had success with Nike, the main street down to one lane? What’s that look like? How do we get to there? And at some point, because if that’s if that’s what we’re, you know, our get these these ideas that you said about making it work, people kind of understand that they know, this is an art district and everything, this is a place where you can come in and have dinner and and do a variety of different other activities. Okay, so then, if that’s the way we want it, then we’ve seen how the positive effects of negative down to one. Let’s see what I did. You know, for years when we’re here, we’ve talked about this. I mean, we’ve talked about being Kimbark, we’ve talked about going to the overt pace and talking about all this. And I think it I don’t think this early people were against it. I think there was just not enough well there. And I think that probably is the biggest thing that we’re we’re up against.
Unknown Speaker 42:20
One of the things that I would just say in my observation, because you’d asked about see that and just bringing that up in my tenure here, recently ICC dot bringing up grants that prioritize bikes and pets, right. And I don’t know if that’s new, it seems new to me. And so it feels like to make even to investigate it. This is the right channel. But to do it and to do it, we definitely see that. Now it’s probably the time because it seems like they are in who knows if other administrations or other or their seat administrations will think that way. But right now, it seems like they’re more open to and I know that from a downtown perspective, I go to those conferences in meetings, as well as the Creative District, many folks are on a state highway. So it’s not just us alone, so many people are dealing with that in a seat at reps calm or other communities come they are doing and they are experimenting or implementing these strategies that are maybe different than than the conversation was open to previously. So it’s, I think it’s a great time to really start that conversation. Work with your family signs.
Unknown Speaker 43:26
I haven’t noticed that tell Republic parking is I know, in other cities, especially if there have been there before, there will be signs that say, public parking with an arrow or how do
Unknown Speaker 43:39
people know where to park? So this year is part of that way, if you could go back and do slides that the first thing that we’ll implement are what’s called a parking ID sign. And so it’ll be a large sign at every parking lot that says, the same parking lot, it’s open. And then parking Trailblazers that along so that lots full, there’ll be a sign on the street that says parking this way, kind of pointing you to the next lot. So So those are the two first things that we’ll implement to make sure that system wide people are understanding where those choices are
Unknown Speaker 44:11
great.
Unknown Speaker 44:14
You ever like what how many? What are the degrees of freedom, in terms of see God? And whatever, those are the degrees of freedom in terms of what we can do, because I don’t even confirm what are those and of all the things we talked about, from your perspective, what would be the maybe the highest impact? And then, you know, along with high impact, the most easily implemented into the degree that those might be the same thing or different but a couple on a couple of different scales. So they have been high impact or high cost and hard to do that the interesting to be interesting to know. Also, there’s something that’s, you know, immediately actionable may not be as impactful but something we can do, right. Maybe it’s four way stops, but you have a set of recommendations.
Unknown Speaker 44:57
Well first of all say about see data. I’m certainly no expert on Sita. I know that they are there, what we’re hearing is they’re more willing to talk about strategies. And we were told to do what they’re doing and other communities don’t really look at it. And their grants are trending toward how do we make things more walkable and bikable? So I do think that that I don’t know enough about working with them on what it would be. But I know enough that that they’re saying, Yeah, now’s a great time to engage in the conversation. You know,
Unknown Speaker 45:23
we can help you on some of that. I think when we went in, and we went to one lane on Main Street, if you all remember, we openly talked about this will potentially be a test case for us to look at, what would the opportunity be? And so I’m teasing Phil, back here. I think if you said, I think honestly, the one lane, my opinion probably has the most significant impact to safety and walkability. And I think it’s not to completely overshadow the amount of comments that you all had to deal with, when we decided to do that. But I think if you really looked at safety, and you said what would be the thing to target and go after, with because we’re so close to when we tested it is to start having conversations and CDOT in terms of how do you narrow it down to where you could go one way that actually then would match potentially with the work that we’re doing on coffee screen, where we’re moving the buses off of Main Street. And I think the cost of that could I mean, it can be a varying degree, as I’m looking at Jim, it can be minor adjustments into where you’re just necking it down, curving or something. I mean, you’d have to work the design, to where you fully build it out. And I think we could do the words. But Kimberly and I talked about this a lot. And there’s a lot of people that will probably string me up on my toes for saying this. But I think if you wanted to really focus on what would have the most significant impact, I think it’s having that conversation and start engaging.
Unknown Speaker 47:11
Easy, safe and low stress. You know, I always come back to that, because
Unknown Speaker 47:18
we talked about for us, you district for
Unknown Speaker 47:24
not not for us.
Unknown Speaker 47:26
No easy safe for us Council
Unknown Speaker 47:28
jobs. Yeah. Right. But I think that what we see is people are avoiding the area because they don’t feel it’s easy, safe and low stress. And so that’s, you know, that’s definitely an issue. When he asked about other priorities, I think I would turn it over to my board members to chime in on you know, if they have different opinions, and
Unknown Speaker 47:52
it just feels like just listening to the conversation that there’s strong alignment in regards to what the council is talking about versus supporting Vision Zero and the suggestion of the viability of going one lane, and and how that aligns with our vision in the master plan. So I mean, this is all positive.
Unknown Speaker 48:15
Always, I always think to those connections, so we’re really talking about those connections. And as we are building out and as we are planning for the future, really thinking first, how would a pedestrian get from here to there, especially things like in the steam area, and it first did make transit and from the freeway again, I can’t speak enough to how important those connections to be radar and not having to navigate kind of to Main Street and you can’t be on the street, you can’t be wherever or you know, it’s such a gems that it’s that it’s a missed opportunity.
Unknown Speaker 48:49
So I’m really thinking of the future and hopefully not that far into the future. When we recruit we design downtown for rideshare. For other things, we need drop off points that are easy for people, especially people with disabilities. So some of those side streets instead of on Main Street. If we could maybe start now moving, letting the residents know this is not going to be a place where you can park we’ve already started it with the pickup food pickup. And I think that that’s what people have gotten used to it we can’t park there. So I think that we should move in that direction slowly changing the behavior that this will be wide share drop off point because we are going to go that way. At some point hopefully sooner than later.
Unknown Speaker 49:49
You know to you made a lot of great points to one of the points you made earlier about the cars being parked there and having it hard to see the pedestrian is a midblock you know the traffic engineer when we met With him had said, maybe these are no longer parking spaces? Or maybe they are those drop off and pickup, you know, right there at every minute block. And so I think if council wanted to look at that, or if that was a change, maybe do both things that you have suggested in one area, it’s not on the side streets, but
Unknown Speaker 50:20
we help with wherever it’s feasible, unknown engineer. Thank God. Worship, yeah. Temporally mentioned the connections. And I think that’s really important. The connections are the reason that I haven’t flipped my ebike yet. Right now. I mean, okay, and and the last two weeks of snow. But, but seriously, the connections are the year round problem for someone like me, who is like a sci fi has to depose by. And we’ve got this thing that keeps getting, you know, we zoom across it, which is we work on the pedestrian and bike adaptations when we work on that piece of the infrastructure for some other reason. And maybe we’ve got the tail wagging the dog a little bit, maybe we should prioritize by the connections that are. And I understand you can’t always do this, because you know, for water main breaks and breaks, right. But if you prioritize by the connections that people need for the vision, instead of the other way around and saying, Well, it’s been seven years since we’ve done up the street here. So let’s dig up the street here, we included a bike way. Maybe we will get to the answer faster. So I like to throw out there. So anybody else feel the same way? Do we think that the connections are the big deal?
Unknown Speaker 52:01
I think in my opinion,
Unknown Speaker 52:02
one of the biggest problems right now is we’re not enforcing what or like, the speed is a great example. People are just following through downtown, knowing that it’s 25 miles an hour, and they’re willing, who knows how fast and so I think that would make an incredible difference in short terms, as we kind of work them through the long term stuff to just enforce the speed. I think that would you know, I rarely see a car getting pulled over in the downtown. And it’d be nice every once a while because we’re knowing we’re enforcing what we what we shouldn’t be enforcing.
Unknown Speaker 52:41
I had a residency to me, what are you doing about the people speeding downtown? I go through there five over like a nice person. And I because I don’t want him up my tailpipe in the zoom around me anyway. Well, I told him first of all, in off Main go on Terry or something. And second, Tuco five over go find Mother, you know if you want to make a difference. So I mean, we have a big read reeducation program with enforcement. Unfortunately, I do
Unknown Speaker 53:18
you wish your public safety representative might have been your questions.
Unknown Speaker 53:22
And I just want to Tim’s question is a enforcement erlton I to think that probably the single most important thing we can do is to make sense of single lane traffic on Main Street, but that’s not a small undertaking. So whatever the case may be, it’s what are the down payments on change that can be made, whether it’s longer crosswalk signals, or some of the other things that we’ve discussed. But we also want to acknowledge that, you know, we vote Friday, we allocate money to make parking more affordable. When it comes to some of these bigger things like one nine traffic, we understand you all get the calls at us. So we appreciate you all. Taking that when these kinds of things discussed.
Unknown Speaker 54:15
So it’s one thing to have a philosophy about transportation and I don’t think there are many degrees of freedom between or much light between everything that you’ve shared and you know, the conversations we’ve been in. But there’s also the theory of action, right? You go bigger, go home. Yeah. What do you do a bunch of little things, low cost, lower impact, as a way to start messaging, and maybe modifying behavior. If I take that and go back to Vision Zero. You know, I recall the five priorities that Phil and Jim, put up on board, accountability, etc. If I were to take those, right and put them up, and then take the things we Talk about and say, Okay, let’s translate those five criteria into a set of decisions. That would be an interesting exercise to see how that lines up, then the question how big you want to go, if I’m gonna get phone calls, I just didn’t get phone calls, because we would be mindful to get anyway.
Unknown Speaker 55:20
Can I say? I think I totally agree. And I feel like, but if go big names seven years from now, oh, no, I’m not talking about. So I say making those small changes are important. And I did want to go back to your point, Marsha, the thing that you described to me or what we were talking about preparing for the future, right, and making sure that that when these things, or even as a catalyst to get some of the needed housing that we have, or or those kinds of things sometimes. So I think we need to look at that to those connections. And how do we do that? I think you’re right, how do we not just wait, okay, this is nine years from now, right? So how do we look at what is what is impactful today? Because my fear is we do these little things here and there. And they just become car centric, that we build first and make transit nervous, like, Yep, I get in my car, I get on my bus, I get in my car, and I go home, you’re not really using it the way we want it.
Unknown Speaker 56:17
If I recall the five principles. Without us, what would you what would you label the what you put up? Or what did you label? This is a test. Yeah, yes, we’re gonna fail that Alright, well, we’ll just call it five life principles from the moment. As I recall, one of them is accountability. You know, one of them is, you know, the right set of policy decisions. So, in the name of accountability, if we put that up there and said, seven years, we’ll get there. So there’s, we’re not serious about accountability. Let’s just take that off the board. Right? Because there are some things that are going to be I said that when we sat in here, if we’re serious about those things, there are some things you’re going to have to be different for our behavior, our policy decisions, our resource allocation decisions, are going to have to reflect that set of principles. And if not, let’s just be quiet, and not try to fool somebody that we’re serious about that because we won’t be right, if we’re serious about it. Let’s just let’s let’s lay it out, and decide we’re going for it. That’s for me. Now, I’m a short timer here. So I’m not gonna get as many phone calls as these others, but, but I’d say let’s go hard.
Unknown Speaker 57:25
Here, you read all those barriers that we have out there? No, they just
Unknown Speaker 57:34
think we still have they were meant
Unknown Speaker 57:36
to do. We have those wires, small water filled water. So those are only the city but larger ones that were to close off off Main Street, each direction work.
Unknown Speaker 57:49
So I was just thinking the ones that we didn’t have on Main Street, those are the
Unknown Speaker 57:53
wide. So from last year, we put the the parklets and then we put the water barriers in front of the particulates to help with somebody’s but we do have water barriers. When we when we did the first time we did this we use the jersey barriers, which were the concrete. So you can you can do different versions.
Unknown Speaker 58:20
I was just thinking, you know, there’s there’s a little bit of a run up another hand, getting those back in place might be that that trick did to give the the tennis point, go bigger go home, you start putting it out there, right again, you get the community around the idea that we’re going to start doing these things, and it’s going to be a work in progress. These are temporary variables.
Unknown Speaker 58:50
I think if I can add something to
Unknown Speaker 58:52
security, we’ve got our hands up as well just want to let you know, oh, she can’t hear you are
Unknown Speaker 59:02
hearing and you will make a really good point. And I agree with with all of you that I agree with Councillor water, they’ll be able to go home I definitely would love to have to see downtown one way at least that we can get the process started or research started to see what we need to do. But in the meantime, I believe we definitely need to make sure that we have enough time for people to walk across the street. That is a huge issue. I myself experienced that with the the assistant I think as the assistant living across from hotels and unknown he was out at the pump house on a patio and it was raining and the senior citizens were walking across the street and the light. I mean a lady would have one Her and her friends and the friends left the lady with a longer run out from the patio with my umbrella to walk this lady across the street because the wind was changing. So they wouldn’t have to get both of us because she was in the middle of the street, she was on a walker and it was raining. So push is going to go slower. So I think that’s an immediate changes to make sure that is consistent up and down Main Street that people have enough time to cross the street and not be afraid to I have been gone when I drove across the the different states all the time. And when I go into a main street like downtown of a city, a small town, there’s all most of the time, there’s this flashing light to tell you that the speed is about to decrease. So is there something that we can put up a flashing light at the beginning of the street to let people know, hey, this is about your speed is about to decrease? So you have been worn visually, and you see that? Maybe that’s something we had to start making people I mean, we can’t make anybody do anything we know. Right? But at least you know a little bit implementing those tools for those Wayfinding. The flashing lights maybe just a little bit better for people. And there’s a vessel warning. So of course, we don’t know what all is being enforced downtown. From a police us standpoint, how many are out there, you know, giving warnings or violations? I’m not sure we don’t know that. But I’m all for the one lane and definitely those little pieces of just making sure that people have enough time to cross the street. People with wheelchairs or have enough time to cross The cross the street and visible signs or lights that flash when the when the the speed limit changes. So that’s
Unknown Speaker 1:02:10
a question for Harold. Because you mentioned earlier that we wouldn’t be starting from scratch with going big, going bold one way and some of the work we’ve
Unknown Speaker 1:02:20
maybe potentially mentioned.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:23
So can you help us understand? What are the steps moving forward?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:30
Well, one of the things I was going to say because I think understanding the the framework that we’re working on is going to be pretty important. So when we look at one of the things I was going to tell counsel and I’ve got meetings coming up to figure out both of these issues. When we look at what’s in play, two of the anchor projects that we’re talking about when it gets to this is actually first the main transit station and the coffin Street project, of which both of those are coming in once again projected. We’re going to need money for both of those. And I think generally right now I’m looking at the back, first and main, we can need an additional million dollars, coffin Street, the transit station, right, we’re looking at an additional potential million dollars, profit ministry can be upwards of four to 5 million based on what we’re seeing. And we’ve seen David killing even more than that. So when we look at those, those anchor projects into the point of what’s our accountability, if those are the two core projects, then I think, you know, we’re going to have to really focus funding on those two core projects to really set the stage for other things. And that’s probably that’s going to entail us re looking at everything within our transportation budget. And if you know, if that’s what we want to see done, it is highly likely that we come back in and say we’re going to have to cut this amount of money off of rehab, or some other section of the transportation fund in order to see this project through. Because of those cost demands, I wanted everybody to understand that. So as we’re talking about under this, know that there is a pretty big bogey out there for us financially that we’re already seeing on projects that were substantially down the road on what we’re what they are, and I’m tangentially involved in the conversations is we’re partnering with NDC, which is a national development council. I’ve been looking at other funding sources. And Kimberly and I were talking about this is how do we aggregate these and work with him to try to bring in additional funding sources so we can work with the aggregate with what we’re trying to do and fill some of these gaps because there’s definitely going to be financial pressure Asher’s on all these projects. And I haven’t thrown out. Another project that I think is incredibly important to this that we haven’t seen is the work that Jim and his group is doing in terms of the Boston street crossing on the railroad, because that’s gonna hold traffic. Third. And so there’s cost parameters there. You know, we’re dealing with the quiet zones. And so, Jim Boston Avenue Bridge, and in Boston Avenue Bridge is sort of resilient saying brain. So there are all of these pressures financially that we have. And I think to the point is, you know, we know we have two projects there that are foundational to everything we’re talking about, we’re going to have to be reviewing these and counsel from a funding perspective to really figure out where we go. And or look at how do we get increased funding for it? Which and Kimberly talked about the MDC work, because it’s kind of what we’re talking about into it. But how do we look at a more holistic approach to our entire area? So Kimberly, I don’t know.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:10
Yeah, I think as we were working with MDC, we kind of put on a map all of the things that are in the pipeline right now and looked at what’s on the pipeline, and what are those missing connections, and what would we need, and MDC said, as opposed to looking at, there’s a parking project here, and there’s another project here, another project here? Maybe you look at it as one huge kind of city center project. And so how do we look at those, put them together and see what kind of, you know, if we wanted to do a bond? Or? Or is there other funding sources out there? How can you look at it more holistically as opposed to a one off here and a one off there, and then you build kind of connections to nowhere. And so I think that’s the word that you’d like to be looking at. Further, I did want to say some of our next steps is, we’re five years into our master plan. And so our board retreat in February really going to say, Where have we been? And what have we accomplished? And what are the next steps. Part of that was this conversation, having this conversation and finding out your philosophy and understanding a little bit more of what counsels thinking? Now, if we talked about traffic calming or one lane Main Street, we will go back to stakeholders, we just want to really point out that this was the first part of that conversation, it didn’t really worked for us to go out and rally the troops if you didn’t meet City Council’s philosophies, right. So now we’ll be having starting those stakeholder conversations and engagement. So I just want to make sure that folks know that yes, we will be going out having those conversations, looking at our master plan. And then looking at funding for For these and other critical needs that address parkades that address other things, looking holistically at what we need to get to this vision of ecc. So I didn’t want to make that crystal clear that we do want to start those conversations and work hand in hand, but wanted to make sure that the philosophy on that.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:02
Yeah, I did not get to weigh in on the first part. And, you know, I am in alignment with what I’ve heard from my council colleagues, as well as what have you all are are talking about in regard to pedestrian first, ideally, so, you know, we made my husband like me inactive and years ago, ArchiCAD second, you know, that full year’s part that went in, and we just kind of work our way. And, you know, focusing on that, looking at shops that are in downtown, you know, there are clothing stores that I’ve not noticed before, and a lot of people have said, especially when businesses are going under, you know, I didn’t know that that was there. Well, no, you didn’t because you’re driving. So I am very much in favor of that idea of going down to one lane. I’ve had to commute from the north side of town to the south side to go to work. I survived you know, we were live you know, it’s not as convenient but the other the other thing that was very It’s very dangerous when we have people passing each other on Main Street. So that’s you know, and I understand that it is a highway is 27. But if CDOT is capable of allowing us to do that for that section I would use that. Other things that I would like to see done immediately would be those traffic lights crossing the street. I beyond is on my older age especially post COVID It takes me forever and I never made it on time even when I do just slow walker was weird or not changing. Yeah, I Yeah. Last week, I was walking on there. It changes fast. So and the other one was We’ll be looking at where those cross midway crossing the new block crossing, to look at eliminating a lot of those barriers, whether it be car or tree, that’s something that could be done pretty, pretty fast.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:16
It’s one of the things we taught, we do have one of those flashing lights on, like night night. And that can be an interesting experience, too. Because sometimes people don’t pay attention to that. And I’ve seen so many things on my way home. And those just aren’t completely safe, because I’ve seen a number of near misses even with those lines. And so I think you do need to clear sidewalks. the sidelines are going to be incredibly important to even things like that,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:53
you know, most of our community believes that those that those crosswalk, flashing lights are the answer. So if they’re not, we need to do a better job of messaging. Why not? Because the only the only conversation I recall, there was a time early on when Tyler is still with us. And we talked about that. And what resonates or where I think I recall is that somehow there was data that somebody had indicate that those were not as safe as we thought or at some most people assume. If that’s the case, it would be good to get us that information. Because I have to tell you, I got phone calls today in emails, knowing that this meeting was going to occur with expectations that people have for us doing something. I think one of the things we keep hearing is that is give us those crosswalks.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:43
Yeah, Kyle, he was his new traffic engineer for the city. And he is he’s he said something really clear that I didn’t pick up on earlier, but he was going to he mentioned its intention to walk. So when you push the button, you’re telling the traffic that you would intend to cross that street. And so that’s, that helps everybody involved. It’s a communication secret
Unknown Speaker 1:12:07
that I think we’re I’ve seen it where the danger really comes. I think Boulder is when somebody hits it. And as soon as it starts flashing, they just go and, you know, even at crosswalks, you know, I think where you have probably as many car ped accidents anywhere is the crosswalk between safety and justice and city hall, I mean, of which a lot of people from SMJ. You know, even there when that clock starts, I think we’ve all trained ourselves to really look at the people that are driving and turning. Just don’t know, and I think that’s part of the education piece is to say, just because it starts flashing doesn’t mean you go,
Unknown Speaker 1:12:51
yeah, but that’s still upside down. The burden of not hitting pedestrians is on the automobile.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:57
Oh, great. I just. Yeah, I just think that’s part of it. So I think in terms of direction, you know, one of the things that we were we were talking about is I think if Youth Council is interested in approaching the one lane concepts, as you Kimberly talked about a public involvement process and really overtly engaging in that, because I think that’s going to be necessary. And we can look at some of those other options, thinking that those sides to put in the mid block crossings correct. We’re working on that we see that. So and again, see dots, the one that has to say yes to all of this.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:41
Yeah. Just clarify. It did not want to ever give it the intention that see toxic. Yes, that was a ghost. I know. They think they’re more open to hearing about sentence and talking about it. So I just want to be crystal, Fifth Avenue,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:55
blocking in the
Unknown Speaker 1:13:56
blanks. We have the data for them. And they said Go ahead. And we’re working on the other two crossings to get that next step going.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:07
Shall I correct. The tweet that I just said?
Unknown Speaker 1:14:13
That’s important is this thing. It’s unlike many other places. And so at the end of the day, see DoD is going to make the decision as to all of these things and I think based on your direction, if that’s where it is, I think we start conversations and work collectively with Sita versus surprising them are shocking.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:38
This is a new ones thing. If you’re negotiating with CDOT and they’ve got all these rules that we don’t see until they wave them under our nose sometimes. narrow lanes are also traffic calming, I believe. And so I wouldn’t want to have real absolute direction because it may be that they can’t take us to one way that they could take Lego allow us to make our two lanes in each direction skinnier and put bike and pedestrian safety tools and and Macs and stuff like that that would have much the same effect. So can we be broad minded about this? I mean I’m assuming you’re gonna know that there and I was just making you know
Unknown Speaker 1:15:29
are lanes on mentioned already three feet narrower one standard seat on 12 foot lane so doing that,
Unknown Speaker 1:15:41
but not on the block which
Unknown Speaker 1:15:44
just the one thing is I also just want to encourage you to keep in mind it’s not just Main Street I mean Kimbark Civic Center here. Seals and so those in the parking lot to the east of the pump house the business that parking lot Kimbark is equally treacherous. Right now is mainstream.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:10
All of those turned out okay, thank you. So I noticed on Kaufman we will go on cognitively there are either a light or four way stops, pretty much like so. And then on Kimber, there are words to stop, you stop on the to going east and west. But if you’re on Kimbark, and that is that I’ve tried to cross it again, slow walker, so and so that if that is something that we can look at doing the four way stops in some of those areas, especially where there are restaurants in the area. So there’s a lot of cross traffic.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:54
It’s just more or less, I just want to reiterate that we really think of downtown as an extension of everyone’s neighborhood. And we don’t want this to be we want everyone to come here and feel welcomed from every neighborhood in Longmont these changes are are going to be helpful for every resident, every visitor. So we really just want to reiterate that we feel like downtown is an extension of everyone’s family. But we want everyone to come to feel comfortable. And so that’s why
Unknown Speaker 1:17:24
I do want to bring something to your attention during COVID. Of course, that is why restaurants extended their restaurants out into the and the municipalities, the hungry departments were agreeable to that. But now in some states, that municipalities, the restaurants want to keep that space because like you said, but they are now it’s now very valuable property to the city to see that. They may want to read that to you. Because it’s property that they are losing, but that they can read to you. But I’ve seen that in some states. And so just FYI. If we make it into a permanent, that’s their real estate.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:17
So one thing to add to that. Tweet seven is a federal highway as well. And there are requirements. We ran into it when we were doing the parklets. And things about about I believe it was Phil brought it up that federal highway had to have does have issues with private businesses using that public right away for their benefit. One thing I will add, just so everybody is aware of it, there’s about 25,000 vehicles a day running up and down Main Street. So if we add more time to the crossings, I understand that the group consensus is that the council’s consensus is that we want to make it safer, we will do that it will cause more congestion on mainstream. It will there will be options that people will go elsewhere. And narrowing those roads down we can certainly start talking to see that something that groundwork now. That’s not an issue. We’ll look at the timings. We’ll look at the crossings on Kimbark as well to see if we can do anything about about some of the crossings about making the four way stops if they meet our criteria. But this is a really big don’t just want to wait seven years this might be a seven year project upstream getting funded and funded and getting it approved and permitted and it will be expensive.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:44
And changes waiting seven years not. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:52
We can certainly look at those things in the coming weeks.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:57
So I think so I’m clear with the cow Until is start exploring the idea of one lane is probably the biggest one for us. We’re already looking at and working with CDOT, on the midwife crossing sides. The council wanted us to learn cat sightlines as it relates to trees and cars, parking in those areas, which may mean losing some parking spots, as we’re looking at sightlines. And then, we did talk about looking at a more holistic approach and working with NDC in terms of parking generally, in the area. As part of that projects, understanding that we have two key projects that are going to add funding constraints as we see them today. So looking at it in within DC and his broader concept of hierarchy.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:08
We’re still concerned about enforcement.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:12
Yeah, so to give you a sense of enforcement, it’s interesting, I got these numbers, for a different reason. So I think last year, we had about 157,000 calls into 911. Of that 157,000 calls 95,000 were calls that we actually dispatch police to. And to give you a sense, that’s about 260 calls per day, 10 calls per hour. And then the nature of those calls depend on how we dispatch officers. And as you as council knows, probably more than anything. We went to take a car program this year because of recruiting and hiring police officers. And so we’ve been riding this wave of staffing, just based on where we are right now, I did send back a note to talk to me about it, or traffic control division is, is one that can get eaten up pretty fast. So if we have accidents and serious bodily injuries, or fatalities, which got a fair amount on 66, and one of a team’s as they’re investigating that processing, we can lose our traffic control group pretty fast when we have things like that occur. And it’s just compounded by the staffing issue. So I will talk to Zacks dot enforcement I know I’ve seen it a few times because it’s made me check my speed. Last week in some other areas, but you know, when we look at that we’re also managing capacity, the call volume for the entire community as well. And depending on the nature of calls, we can lose three officers immediately. You know, if you know domestic violence calls automatically get to Officer response. So if you look at what we have on the screen, and you get to dBs, we’ve lost four officers in the blink of an eyes. And then depending on the time, but yeah, I’ll talk to Zack and get more information on that.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:24
One last thing, we’ll add it to the grant list and start looking at see that’s coming out with the highway safety grant. Criteria
Unknown Speaker 1:23:41
I still think we should do how your shredders if anybody goes. That’s clear.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:53
In terms of my overview, did I miss I don’t want to miss Council’s direction. Is there anything that I said in that overview the council disagrees with?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:01
Faster, faster, faster?
Unknown Speaker 1:24:04
I don’t see. So do you have what you need?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai