Video Description:
Transportation Advisory Board – March 2024
Read along below:
Unknown Speaker 0:03
This officially sucks. Right, exactly. Good.
Speaker 1 0:08
All right. Let’s get started with the transportation Advisory Board meeting of March 11. At six o’clock. Let’s do a roll call please. Chair laner Here. BOARD MEMBER Wicklund, Vice Chair McKee. Burroughs. Board Member McInerney, your board member Kim. Okay, let’s take a look at the Proving the minutes of the preceding meet. Meeting. Any comments on the February 2024? minutes?
Speaker 2 0:52
I have just a few minor comments. And then it’s page two line 22. I think it should read Tebow properties owns not runs on Minutes page four line 30 BNSF. Not DNS. And minutes page 10. Line 38. Our intention not our intention to be working
Unknown Speaker 1:50
sorry, anytime I have something to say.
Unknown Speaker 1:52
You’re just telling
Speaker 1 2:00
me in the comments if we can get a motion to approve the minutes with those corrections.
Unknown Speaker 2:14
Motion to approve. I’ll second.
Unknown Speaker 2:22
All those in favor say aye.
Speaker 3 2:34
Here we are, this is great. I’m Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager with the city of Longmont. Just to let you know, we have some quick communications, you’ll see on your in your packet or on your packet, I guess there’s a little handout, each one of your desk for the agenda for tonight. And one of the items is just to remind you that on April, in April, excuse me, in April, we will be moving the TB board meeting from the eighth to the 15th. So please don’t show up here on the eighth that’d be I would not be good. But we’ll be here on the 15th. During our regular business, we’re so busy, we can’t really cancel. So good for you all for keeping us going and the work. The work plan is pretty well filled up. So wanted to let you know that we update on micro transit you may have heard in the news, I think there’s a story dropping today actually, it’s just just came in is we just received a million dollars from congressionally directed spending, it was kind of a long shot. But we thought we’d just apply and see what happens. So we’ve applied for some money and looks like even with all the turbulent things going on in the federal government these days that the Congress will pass that or has passed it, and it’s now on the President’s desk for signature. So once that happens, that money will start flowing directly to Longmont, they used to be called earmarks. And I think that was a problem with a lot of people to call those earmarks. But they are the idea about your marketing dollars directly to your district. And so I think a lot of different people saw that benefit. And so we’re gonna be recipients of that as well. So that’s exciting news. So that goes with the $1 million that we have from the partnership program from our TD, and then we budgeted about $640,000. So it gives us a pretty good starting point anyway for microgen. So we really wanted to try to be as successful as possible early on, and so that people will become early adopters. So we’ll see how that goes. What’s on your desk tonight is the handout that we had for the recent Amtrak demo train or special train that came through town on Thursday. We were pleased to have the governor and some pretty high ranking officials from Amtrak some pretty high ranking officials from BNSF Some pretty high ranking officials from the Federal Railroad Administration on that train to kind of see what that route look like, we probably went half speed. So was a slow train got up to about 49 miles per hour, I think top speed between here in Boulder, but it was a huge success. Everybody seemed to really see the benefits. And understand that if there’s a way to do this sooner, and there should be a bill that’s going to drop later this week in in the state legislature about how to fund more of this Front Range passenger rail, part one, which is really Denver to Fort Collins, and then part two would be the south leg down to the Colorado Springs and pueblo. So some interesting and exciting things happening right now. We also wanted to just let you know one last thing is that well, not one last thing. But before we do our last thing, I just want to make sure you’re aware that in tonight’s agenda, we need to move info item a six a US 27 Vision Zero safety and mobility study recommendation recommendations to our action items. So we’d like to ask you for action on that tonight. And if that’s okay with the chair, we just wanted to check in and make sure we can make that change. Yeah, I concur with that. Okay, thank you very much. So we’ll be moving that item, you’ll see that info item letter A first invite on will be the transportation mobility plan update. So we’ll do that right away. And then there’s one thing from Kyle, well, maybe more than
Speaker 4 6:37
just one thing for tonight call our traffic engineering administrator. In response to I believe they’re January, February, I believe Cherry Lane was asking about speed radars out on Clover basin. We placed those out a few weeks ago, we’re collecting down those and we’ll be reviewing the speed data and ingrain that into our action plan for Vision Zero, as well as just south of Ninth Avenue on Alpine. And so those will be out for a few more probably in like a week or so. And then we’ll be rotating those out to more locations where those have been requested.
Speaker 1 7:12
Great. And I think in lieu of the public invited to be heard, we’ve got an email that Diane was able to print for everybody. And I think we’ve kind of decided, let’s make comments to that email on our comments at the end of the meeting. Rather than kind of hash it out now, because I think everybody’s got a copy of it. Phil, is you have any issue with that? No,
Speaker 3 7:35
that works well. That’s exactly what we would do if it was if the person was here in person. So we couldn’t address what they were telling us what telling you directly. You could do it at the end. So thank you.
Speaker 1 7:49
Great. Excuse me, so let’s move on to the Oh, yeah. Any public here that needs that would invite it to speak
Unknown Speaker 8:08
for five minutes, oh, you’ll
Speaker 5 8:09
have five minutes for the board. Wow. Thank you for hearing me transportation advisory board. My name is Diane Crist. I just wanted to remark about the Amtrak pulling into Longmont. I just wanted to remark on how well Jim and Kyle and their staff coordinate everything off Guardian with the the key personnel there to make sure everything ran smoothly and our own field Greenwald rode the train from Denver all the way here. I have a good picture. I’m on the same to you feel of you stepping off the train. I think that it just seemed looking on the internet. That was the first time we had passenger train in Longmont since Roosevelt pulled into to do his politicking. So that was fairly impressive and important and feels like maybe we may eventually have rail here coming through long Martin. So all the other councillors are National League of Cities. So I’m filling in just to take notes and share what’s going on in the board arena. So anyway, thank you for all that you do. And I’ll try to represent everything I hear here at our at our study session. Alright, thank you so much
Speaker 1 9:37
Okay, no more public, we can move on to the information items and since we moved to a down we’ll go to the TNT update set correct? I think so.
Speaker 3 9:52
Well, good evening. Members, our Chair and members of TCB just wanted to introduce currently safe from Farren piers, and she’s our consultant team lead for this project. And we’re very excited to have her explain a little bit kind of where we’re at and where we’re going. So thank you very much. Thanks, Carly.
Speaker 6 10:23
Thanks, Phil. So just an overview of what we want to talk about this evening. Quick project recap a little bit of background of what’s led us to this point today. And then we closed up community outreach on March 1, so wanted to share our initial findings, who we talked to and some of the main themes we heard from the community and from stakeholders. And then I’ll share some existing conditions a snapshot in time of transportation today in Longmont, and then talk about next steps. So Project Background, most of you probably know this, but just to kind of catch us up to where we are now. So the first multimodal transportation planning long that was in 2005. The most recent plan was in 2016 as a part of Envision Longmont that was the M tip the multimodal transportation improvement plan. Obviously, a lot of changes have taken place in the last eight years, both in Longmont and across the region. So thus the need to update the transportation plan. So we’ve seen evolution of the demographics in Longmont, it changes in travel patterns, changes in technology, changes in how people want to use transportation, and most importantly, a kind of a reprioritization a great desire to walk bike and take transit in Longmont and regionally so want to make sure that the transportation plan has a set of infrastructure projects as well as programs and policies that reflect this change in community desires and the change in the state of transportation. So an overview of the timeline and planning process for the transportation plan. So we kicked off last fall, we started with an existing condition snapshot that I’ll share with you today and kind of the state of the practice and reaching out to the community. So we call this the existing conditions phase of where are we right now. So both on the data side, as well as on the qualitative side are what are the community’s needs and desires today? How do they see their current travel patterns, but also their latent demand? So how people would like to travel but unable to because the infrastructure the programs aren’t there today. So we’re just wrapping up that phase one and moving on to phase two. So that right column. So we are compiling everything we heard from the community and synthesizing those existing conditions to come up with recommendations, those recommendations are going to be very multimodal in nature. So talking about where do we want to fill in sidewalk gaps, upgrade deficient sidewalks, add new bike facilities, upgrade by facilities that exists today but aren’t considered low comfort, make enhancements to transit through First and Last Mile connections, bus stop amenity upgrades, micro transit, as Phil referenced, and then come back to the community and say, here’s what we heard from phase one. Here are our draft recommendations, is there anything we’re missing? Does this capture kind of your vision and goals for transportation, and then wrapping up that document in the fall and winter of this year. So a summary of community outreach, many of you participated in that. So thank you for for your role. So we ultimately got over 1000 touch points of engagement, it’s hard to say if we heard from the same person a few times, so don’t definitively want to say over 1000 people. But those touch points were provided a great cross section of the community, residents, visitors employees. And we captured that input through many different mediums. So we had in person engagement and an open house. Just next door at the library, we had virtual engagement through a survey as well as an online web map where folks could drag pins to the map and let us know where they have challenges crossing the street where they want to take transit. So they’ll see a summary of those spatial recommendations. And then we also have a steering committee that we’ve been working with of people kind of on the technical side who are able to advise from their various agencies or departments as to how we can move the transportation plan forward. So the goal of this phase one about reach, as I mentioned, is to make sure that all of the existing kitchens data is correct. We’re filling in the gaps in that quantitative data with qualitative data. So where we don’t capture volumes are understanding where people want to travel. latent demand is a really great example of that. And and then being able to inform those recommendations kind of set the stage. So walking out and then one more piece of we’re taking focused outreach to a specific group. So center for people with disabilities is a great example. We went to the economic summit to talk to employers large employers who really understand what are the barriers to recruiting or to getting employees in Longmont we’re speaking to the Latino Chamber of Commerce, as well as obviously various boards and commissions. The E cat as well, equity group, representing folks who are monolingual Spanish speakers, lower income populations, we were up Back to Work Day. So those who we didn’t hear from the general public making focused outreach over the next month or two. So the spatial comments we got in that online map, there were, say go back to that pie chart. In the 200 range, we got over 400, and that we got over 400 survey comments. So you can see it broadly covers the city, each different color represents a different mode. So we have a breakdown of those heat maps by mode as well to understand those locations where we’re hearing specific challenges, but to just show you the heat map of all comments. Unsurprisingly, downtown is a big cluster as well as the larger intersections of Ken Pratt, where we’ve got a multi Lane higher speed intersections with sometimes complex geometries on pace and the the commercial nodes there, as well as near McIntosh lakes. So not as surprising of a array of spatial comments. This will be really crucial as we start to dig into recommendations. And then when we move to prioritization of those recommendations, we’ll be bringing community input back in to make sure that we prioritize locations where there’s the most community support. So a breakdown of who we heard from. You can see here and accurate representation of lung that there are some missing groups or some underrepresented groups that we’re making sure to reach out to, but just to show that we’re looking at the demographic breakdown of who we heard from to see who we did not hear from make concerted efforts to reach out to those groups. So some of the responses to the 409 survey responses. Most folks who responded drive alone. This mode split is is also reflective of Longmont but we want to hear from the community of folks who are walking and biking were so it’s a lot of our focus group outreach over the spring and summer. And so we asked folks for each mode What is your biggest challenge for that mode. So for people walking and rolling in Longmont, crosswalks and sidewalks are the biggest gaps so that will be a focus of of our recommendations for pedestrians and then for biking and scooting and vis General Comment if people don’t feel safe biking or are rolling a lot about trails to where people want to see gaps in trails, filth, completed access to trails, improved crossings of trails to become lower stress. And then on the transit side, making sure that coverage is addressed. So a point to point micro transit service or On Demand micro transit service really addresses the most common response that we heard here. And then frequency of transit as well. And then concerns about driving is congestion. So this is something that you know, it’s we draft our vision and goals framing what the vision is for, for driving in Longmont and how we use transportation demand management and build up the multimodal network to shift trips from driving and provide alternative options is going to be a key way to address this concern. And it’s interesting going back when the second responses, there are no challenges and driving along, which is interesting too. And then prioritization so starting to think about what’s most important, limited funds in the city opportunities to find additional resources. But given the current funds, where do we want to prioritize investment, so the most popular responses focused on biking, connectivity and comfortable options. And then third is improving traffic flow and congestion. We had a lot of open ended responses as well. So just wanted to capture some of those that weren’t in the multiple choice, speeding, a lot of conversation about enforcement, increased enforcement inclusivity of all modes, so reinforcing the vision of this effort before we kicked off, which is prioritizing, walking, biking and transit. And so really consistent community feedback about creating a multimodal plan and a multimodal vision for llama jumping into existing conditions, so we collected streetlight data, which uses
Speaker 6 19:34
connected vehicle data to understand where people coming from and going to we split that data into two pieces. We looked at regional travel patterns, those who are coming to Longmont from outside of Longmont, where they’re coming from and then we looked at local travel patterns of those traveling within Longmont, what are their origins and destinations, snows snapshot of those regional travel patterns we’re seeing the thickness of the lines on the left that a lot of folks are coming up the 119 core are coming from Boulder. A lot of people coming south from Larimer County. And a lot of people coming from the northern part of Weld County as well are probably the most common destinations, we split up destinations to the south into a number of different sub areas. So those lines are a little bit thinner based off how we broke off broke out those geographies. But interesting to note that the southern destinations are less frequent. And then we looked at the destinations in Longmont for those regional trips. So this was a little bit surprising that the North Main and South Main zones have a are lower on the destinations, together, they make up less than a quarter of those regional trips, the most common destination for trips coming from outside long match are to the southeast, southwest, those geometries or those zones are a little bit bigger. There are a lot of regional destinations in there as well, but something that we’re breaking down because the streetlight data we use just as vehicle data. So these regional trips are likely being made on transit or in a vehicle but wanting to think about walking and biking trips as well, especially when we look at local childhood patterns. So out of all of the trips being made 70% of trips start in and did long month. So a lot of short trips, we’re seeing a lot of those trips being driving, so a really great opportunity to shift these short trips to walking or biking. Yep, exactly. So seven years of over three quarters of them are between one to five miles, which we consider to be kind of within a bike shed. And then 11% Less than one mile considered to be within a walk shed. And then you can see on the right the thickness of the arrows reflective of those origin destination patterns. So again, North Main and South Main didn’t come up we think, kind of getting some bicycle and pedestrian, big data to better understand those travel patterns will help us
Speaker 7 21:55
Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. 11% Is that part of the 77? Or is that in addition to?
Speaker 6 22:02
Great question. I think that’s a that’s in addition to because we framed it between one and five. So it’s quite a high percent, so that are less than five when you sum those together. Okay, so ATA is less than five miles Yeah, and long wasn’t that big so so I’ve got a map of each mode. So for the roadway network, we’re showing speed here pretty intuitive that the arterioles are going to be your higher speed streets and also have have higher volumes. And then we looked at travel speeds. So got some great data from the city of Longmont on speeds during the peak hour and speeds during the off peak hour. So the lightest pink shows the difference so you can see which corridors in some have the most congestion. And so this is by speed so you can start to see that it’s pretty similar in both directions on most corridors. The highway 66 eastbound has the biggest difference in peak and off peak speeds can Pratt westbound but not too dissimilar across these arterioles. Basically that works that we’ve mapped the bike facilities next step is to create what’s called a level of traffic stress map to understand based on the speeds and volumes of the roadway is this facility considered comfortable for all ages and abilities so great to know that there’s a pretty connected network but a lot of these roadways, especially with bike lanes, or bike routes, need to be upgraded to make sure that people feel comfortable ivali just the pedestrian network not that many missing or deficient sidewalks so our recommendations for the TMP in the pedestrian network are going to be through a pedestrian prioritization process to understand which parts of the city is there the most demand for walking are the most other largest percent of population that are vulnerable users whether that be because of age, mobility challenges access to a vehicle so overlaying that prioritization over where the missing sidewalks are so the city can begin to prioritize where to upgrade sidewalks and fill in those missing gaps. Then the transit network both regional and local routes, transport and RTD and then flex ride polygon was overlaid with that and then ridership as well. So we can see the bolt, highest ridership from those regional routes, and then the two stops and of the Flex Route what ridership is in those two compared to each other and then across from 2022 to 2023 as well pretty similarly, ridership and then collision so we have a map of pedestrian involved collisions and bicycle involved collisions both look pretty similar with the highest density of collisions taking place on Main Street, which makes sense based on destinations. And then similar to the pedestrian involved with a few key hotspots at at specific intersections as well. So as the Vision Zero plan progresses, it’s going to be really important to bring in crash data both where the crashes are taking place, severity of those crashes and the cause of crash to start to break down crash patterns come up with countermeasures to be able to address and reduce those crash types in particular breakdown of crash types, so most crashes are rear end crashes, which tend to be low severity. So thinking, again, as I mentioned, not just about where those crashes are happening, but where the severe crash is happening in those fatal crashes to be able to invest resources in those locations, at a higher priority and think specifically about the recommendations in those locations. So the TMP will be working closely with the Vision Zero action plan, obviously two are very related. And then just to go over next steps, we have draft vision and goals that we’re working with Phil on collaborating based off of what we heard from the community, and then recommendations for each mode, and then coming up with policies and programs as well that our our multimodal nature, will be coming back to the stakeholders and the community to present these draft recommendations for feedback. Any questions or anything?
Speaker 3 26:25
I think that for me, I just really appreciate the the presentation. And there are some new slides in there that I haven’t seen. So that’s exciting to see the the new stuff to use. So you can see there’s been a lot of work put into it so far. Obviously a lot more outreach, this isn’t the end, end all be all for their outreach. We’re doing a lot more events. One of them is coming up April 20, I believe. So we’ll be out there more and more as you as the weather gets warmer.
Unknown Speaker 27:01
Why don’t we start down if you have any comments?
Speaker 8 27:09
I don’t really have a comma. And I’m excited for this process. The one question is because kind of at the beginning of the presentation, we focused on envision Longmont and you know, a comprehensive plan kind of gets reviewed every 10 years or so how does that then transform itself into the TMP but then also looking into the future? Is this a 10 year process that we’re looking at? Or are you know, I like thinking that is ongoing, and we’re constantly learning and improving? So just any comment on that.
Speaker 6 27:46
And communities generally tend to update their transportation master plan every five to 10 years depending on how changes how rapidly changes have taken place. But I don’t know. How the Comprehensive Plan, the timing for the next update to the comprehensive plan. They’re often TMP and comprehensive plan done together. But also not not always the case.
Speaker 3 28:09
Sort of levy currently that was not correct. That was a bit late. But I did want to just say that. Usually they are done at the same time. You’re correct. But they this time, we did have to take them apart because we felt like the comprehensive plan in the land use pieces really had. They have an amendment process. And so those go through amendments as needed for the land use piece of it, but we don’t amend the transportation components. So that’s why we felt like we needed to do this one more recently. And if there’s other parts that I question that I missed, feel free to restate them and I’ll answer them better hopefully.
Speaker 8 28:48
Now you got it. Thank you
Speaker 7 28:57
I didn’t really have any specific comments or questions because I asked my one question I had it the data is pretty interesting. I’m not very surprised by it just from my experience of traveling around Longmont, but it’s nice to see that you kind of collected the data that I’m kind of see all the time. So that was good to see.
Speaker 2 29:25
Yeah, thanks for that presentation, Carly. The outreach programs very impressive. And I noticed that there were 1000 engagements, and the arithmetic is pretty simple since Longmont has about 100,000 people based on your experience is 1% participation pretty good for a survey of this type. Yeah,
Speaker 6 29:51
it really varies. In some of the smaller towns that we work in in the mountains especially we get a higher percent Denver For Collins, we get a lower percent. So I’d say that’s an average for, for the city of Longmont kind of type of community if not on the higher end. So anecdotally, especially at the open house, we saw more in person attendance than we see in most of the communities that we work in. And then pins on the map as well.
Speaker 2 30:17
Interesting. I looked through the comments on the online survey. And it seems that most of them were pretty small scale, and focused on the here and now what people encounter in their day to day travels right now. In fact, I submitted a comment like that myself. But it seems like planning is about looking forward and thinking about the future. So I’m wondering if there’s some sort of way for big picture or futuristic concepts to be included in the tmp? And if so, where would they come from, from the consultant or from staff? Or does that not happen in this type of planning.
Speaker 3 31:10
But I think it’s a combination of both. We listen to the consultant, and they have some ideas with what they’ve seen in other cities that have worked or might be something we need to consider. We did talk earlier about the train piece, obviously, that’s one of those things where we’re going to incorporate that into our planning document and start talking about how, you know, like a transit center. It’s not that far off anymore, but we used to be, you know, 20 years off, and now it’s two years off, hopefully, at the most. And that’s for bus rapid transit, and for train. So we know it will cover bus rapid transit, at least for sure. So but those bigger concepts, I think those higher level concepts, we’re really just trying to stick with within maybe a five to 10 year timeframe at this point to really have this key in on the capital improvement program, and how we prioritize those projects coming up fairly quickly. So that was the purpose of what we’re doing here, we still have that longer range piece, that’s part of the M tip that we talked about, it’s part of the Envision Longmont process. So that has a lot of that bigger vision piece. And we’ll probably keep a lot of that, as we move forward with this plan. Unless we hear differently from the public and from the different boards and commissions, that there’s a bigger target out there some some higher level of a thought that we need to start taking on. But we’re assuming that a lot of that’s still in place for the longer range piece. But for the five to 10 year range, we’re really want to start zeroing in on projects that are going to start addressing the vulnerable population issue and flip the idea of always doing kind of, you know, what’s best for the automobile or the roadway user in an automobile, a single occupant vehicle. And to kind of flip that as the bottom priority, because that’s what we’re hearing from all our policy folks, including this board, though, you want to talk about the pedestrians, first bicycles, transit riders, and maybe there’s a freight component after that we’re all obviously the transit component, the freight and then maybe single occupant vehicles. So we’re at least changing the narrative a little bit, but I don’t think that gets to your long arrange piece. But if we hear things or if you have an ideas of what we should be looking at, let us know. And we’ll see how we can incorporate those.
Speaker 2 33:26
Yeah, I was just wondering if there would be a scenario planning type part of this plan. I’ve heard stories about cities that were completely surprised by scooters appearing on their streets overnight, things like that. And it got me to wondering if, say, within two years if fully autonomous vehicles became ubiquitous, would Longmont have a downtown parking and curb management strategy or plan in place to handle that? Or what if? What if it became possible and there was a demand for Vance brand airport to be an air taxi hub? Or for the airport to be a drone package delivery? Senator, does this could this plan accommodate that? Or do we only react to things and say, well, we’ll address it in the next plan?
Speaker 3 34:24
Well, all those things we have talked about as part of the planning process. So we are talking about them at least, we’ll see at what level they enter into the plan. But I think that we’re really thinking about, especially the dynamic curb piece of that where you really need to like think we think your curb space, especially on Main Street here where we have a lot of places that it’s getting more and more difficult to get into them as for ADA access, we’re talking about micro transit that’s going to be very close to an Uber Lyft type system where those people are going to be dropped off as far as location to where they need to be and how they hammock that curb is, as far as is it just parking? Or is it something else on top of it. And then we’ve talked about the airport quite a bit with this plan, but we’ve also couched that as we’re really looking at the surface transportation. So really be the, the connection to the airport area and getting people to and from, or packages to and from the airport. But we feel like we have all the infrastructure in place for that. And we’ve made some pretty significant improvements already. But in autonomous vehicles, we talked about that as well. But it turns into, how is that going to? How’s that gonna change? Realistically, with all the with the curb space, it does change, but with the number of lanes and those kinds of things where we’ve got a policy directive to really not increase the number of lanes in this town, in the in the future in the near future, and the long term future. So we’re trying to stick with those policies, and make all this work within those.
Speaker 6 35:58
And there’ll be an emerging mobility section that will talk about these changes and trends of travel patterns, what we anticipate to come in the next five years, knowing that you don’t update this plan every year. So how can we make sure it doesn’t go stale, and setting long run up for success in the next few years to come. So there are a lot of great policies that you can start to think about putting in place in advance of autonomous vehicles to set the community up for success and the roadmap for kind of related to greenhouse gas emissions as well. So fleet electrification, and so a lot of things as we look forward into changing technologies and transportation, how to create that foundation for long bond.
Speaker 2 36:39
Okay, great, I’m happy to hear that staff and the consultant team are, are kind of looking out into the future.
Speaker 9 36:52
I don’t have any comments, really just a question for the next steps that says reach back out to stakeholders and community members for feedback. What does that look like? Yeah,
Speaker 6 37:03
so similar to what we did in phase one, we’ll have an open house. And we’ll have a virtual component that consists of an online map where we share the draft recommendations, as well as surveys to get feedback from folks as well. And then these focus group meetings that we’ve been having in phase one. So those are, oh, and then intercept events, where we go to an event where the community is already to capture a broader cross section of community members who might not attend an open house. So that same multi pronged approach that we’ve taken in the winter, for phase one will take again, in the face to element.
Speaker 9 37:42
Okay. And would this include information just regarding the feedback from the survey or possibly answers for people regarding existing plans that are in place for some of their concerns? Yeah,
Speaker 6 37:55
I think engage long that’s been a great platform for the latter that Phil’s been very responsive.
Speaker 3 38:01
Right? We’ve been responding as soon as we can’t, all those different questions on engage in so we’ve been pushing people to that site. On that site, we also have all our existing plans and different things you can kind of research as far as looking up where we are today, before this point was complete. Thank you.
Speaker 1 38:24
I guess I have a question, but it’s probably a little bit of a comment, because I just I wrote down three things that kind of struck me and I think there’s opportunity here. The first was the idea that 77% of the trips are driven along. And I’m assuming that’s cars. And then the other thing I saw, of course, speeding. And then the last thing was the 88% of the trips. Thank you, for the extra 11% of that are five miles and less. So there’s some opportunities here, right? Whether it’s public awareness, and getting that out to, you know, possibly the shorter trips, either whether it’s pet, or bike, and then the idea of course driving, which I don’t know how we move the needle on the first part, driving in a car. Right, that’s gonna be very difficult, no matter how much we change the paradigm. But I think these two other things, we have the ability to make some public awareness that hopefully would affect that ladder, that that first thing. So that’s my only comment and question about, you know, I know the speeding side of it. We can’t really address that in the TMP so much as it just being a concern and something we’d like to look at. Are there any other things around speeding that that we’re looking at other than obviously posted limits and all that? I know, we’ve talked about red light cameras, and I don’t want to go there but
Speaker 6 39:45
I think change the roadway design is going to be a big part of the TMP road. Yeah, and just kind of visually narrowing our roadways, curb extensions and of the suite of treatment treatments that are really going to be important to supply It’s not just enforcement but making our streets feel more comfortable or feel like those drivers need to drive at a slower speed as well.
Speaker 4 40:11
Yeah, and I say during our Vision Zero planning as well, both the TMP evidence zero will go hand in hand. So as far as speeding congestion, spouse safer signals with bikes and peds we’ll be continually updating those and looking for safety improvements as both these plans progress, but then once this time has progressed, we’ll be presenting more ideas and feedback for changes on our roadways. Great,
Speaker 1 40:38
thank you. Thank you as well as good, great presentation
Unknown Speaker 40:51
Phil any more information items?
Unknown Speaker 40:55
No more information items from us. We’d like to move into the Action section.
Unknown Speaker 41:01
Yeah, that’s good, too.
Speaker 3 41:08
So to start off, I just wanted to Wayne All right. So when is going to do the presentation for this? Us 287 Vision Zero and mobility study. Either way, however you feel comfortable, you can sit against him and have it set.
Unknown Speaker 41:33
What do you prefer? I’m gonna stand to do it.
Speaker 3 41:43
So I’m trying to find your so the the push button thing should work at this point.
Speaker 10 41:55
Or maybe this works. Yep. Yeah, that’s okay, good. Hello, everyone. My name is Landon Hilliard. I’m a senior transportation planner with Boulder County. Go ahead again. Hello again. I’m Landon Hilliard senior transportation planner with Boulder County and I’m here with my colleague, Alex Hyde, right, who’s the manager of the regional multimodal transportation division with Boulder County. And together we have about a 20 minute presentation that we’d like to walk through with you. If we see arise fluttering, we’ll speak more quickly. And if you would hold the questions till the end, I think we’ll have time for discussion after that. Okay. I’ll start with the origins and the content and the findings of this project. And then I’ll pass it to Alex to talk about the meat of the project versus the safety analysis and recommendations. And maybe there are few themes that you can listen for about this presentation. And one of them is that us. 287 is a key corridor, both for local and regional travel. A second is that it is how would I say growing and evolving fast, so we need to adjust to the changes. And the third, and perhaps the most important is that they’re serious safety issues that you all are aware of that Alex will talk in detail about. Okay with that.
Speaker 10 43:35
All right, we’ve got a group of stakeholders that represent different levels of government. You see long month, they’re situated between Lafayette and Erie, all the way up to the national level of the FTA. And this group has formed a coalition over the last several years that has an interest in coordinating planning, evaluation and advancements for us to 87. The coalition meets quarterly feels irregular there. And we it’s all about collaboration. So I didn’t tell you, but it’s been a surprise here. This is a two for one deal. We’re I’m going to talk briefly about phase one of this project, and phase two, leading up to things. So what’s important about us 287 Broadly speaking, it has social, economic and environmental significance. And if you look at the details, we’re talking about things like air pollution, traffic, congestion, and safety and mobility. And growth, as I mentioned, is a big part of this. A 20 year horizon done by Dr. cog modeling for traffic and land use shows an increase of population and jobs of 75%. So according to this statistic, we have about 150,000 people living in this study area In 2024 2045, it could be as many as more than a quarter of a million people. About 10 years ago RTD led a study called the Northwest Area mobility study goes for Namsa short. And in that study, it identified us 27. And the study area that we’re talking about as a key corridor prime in a primary isn’t because of centrally located. And basically, it’s a backbone for connectivity. North South, obviously, but also east and west. And so the phrase that we use to describe the importance of this corridor is everywhere to everywhere in terms of mobility. So here’s the first part of the two for one bus rapid transit study, feasibility study that preceded the safety and mobility study. The objectives had to do with understanding travel demand, and making recommendations for infrastructure improvements that would support better transit. This is a schematic of the service patterns. And note from Fort Collins to Denver, could be a one seat ride, but just as important are the local trips between communities, again, the importance of us 27, tying communities together. And this shows investment, possible investments and patterns or roots. From public participation. We learned what you might expect, which is connectivity is key, also multimodal connections to transit and otherwise, and safety. So now we’re getting to the meat of things. This is phase two, which is the safety and mobility study. And a little bit of background, as I mentioned, the study area come goes from Broomfield in the South 24 miles to Longmont, basically, where the border of Larimer County begins. And what’s interesting here is the variety of land use context, urban, suburban, and, and rural. We think rural probably stay tight given the open space regulations. But what’s changing rapidly is the feeling of urban and suburban. A few years ago, Dr. cog identified this as a high entry corridor and a critical corridor. It took about 15 months to complete the study. And in December 2023, we posted a final report on the Boulder County website. And that’s the basis of which Alex and I are talking to you about tonight. That study again is available, all 2000 Plus pages of the appendix to if you’d like details. For public participation, we use a variety of methods and went as extensively as possible. So online, pinpoint maps, online surveys, and then focused outreach. However, we did have one set back where a postcard sent to residents along the corridor in the old fashioned US Mail had a 0% return. So when we go back to the drawing board, we’re going to think closely about public participation and how to gather more information. That’s not to say that we didn’t pick up valuable information but that’s just was one of the hiccups. The the results from the public participation confirm what we thought we should safety stands out. Also important are the first and final mile connections to transit improving intersections in a way to reduce traffic congestion. And then moving into the interest in having a walk bike path that’s separated and comfortable for people for local trips and longer commuting. So to wet walk bike paths survey was introduced, though almost everybody’s uses the LBL as a primary mode of transportation, there was interest in using the facilities if they were safe and comfortable. So about three quarters of the 60 people were would be used the bicycling facilities if they were appropriate. This initiated a feasibility study. And this is a map that’s not meant to for you to read closely. It’s just for you to understand the extent of what we’re doing, which basically is an inventory of existing conditions over future conditions including Bus Rapid Transit locations, and a white walk bike path alignment. And we know that there’s interest from long monitors and a connection by bicycle from Longmont to Lafayette and back and forth. So that’s one of the primary reasons that this feasibility study was carried out for impediments alone. On the way, the environmental analysis showed that there are low lying areas need for public utility relocations, historic sites and so forth considerations that would have to be taken into account. In the end, the alignment on the west side of us 37 between Longmont and Lafayette was the chosen placement for that walk bike path. Of course, there’s much more work to be done in the walk bike path area for planning, design, and funding. However, because we think that there’s a low impact environmentally, it’s likely to miss the environmental assessment, which causes a great deal of extra work. So again, that was just an overview of phase one, the BRT feasibility study, and an introduction to set the stage for Alex to talk about the Vision Zero safety and mobility study, which he will do now. And I’ll sit down. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 11 51:07
Thank you, Landon. My name is Alex. I’m the regional multimodal Planning Division Manager for Boulder County. And I’m going to talk about the safety analysis and recommendations that were identified as part of this study. So as Lenin said, the US 37 corridor is a dangerous roadway, think every jurisdiction that’s ever looked at this corridor has identified more or less that same high level conclusion whether that was the Boulder County study, the city of Longmont, or the Denver Regional Council of Governments as part of their regional plan. I’m not going to read all the statistics. But us 37 stands out in all of Boulder County for the number of serious injury and fatal crashes. And unfortunately, this problem is only getting worse. So this plan is both a set of recommendations as well as a call to action and underscoring the urgency of the work ahead of us. For the crash analysis, we looked in detail at the different segments of us 37. As Landon alluded to, the land use context varies, and we have truly rural suburban and urban adjacent land use context. And so we divided the US 37 Corridor up into a number of segments according to their adjacent land use. Just showing an overview of the crashes along the the intersection crashes along the corridor. And then in addition to all crashes, we also looked at Bike Ped crashes. And the purpose of these three images is just to highlight that the vast majority of bicycle and pedestrian crashes on the 27th corridor occur within the city of Longmont, which is the most urban of all the land use context in our study area. Looking at the safety analysis, we used as our consultant used a software system called DOCSIS that looks at the different crash trends. And the screenshot is just to show how one of those crash types is identified. So that red box down near the bottom identifies an approach turn crash probability that those those types of crashes are over represented at the particular location that this report is for. So for, for all that analysis, we distilled the existing conditions down into a number of common crash types. So left turns against an oncoming vehicle or left turn conflict with a bicycle or pedestrian failure to yield right turn on red conflict between a vehicle and a bicyclist or pedestrian. And then a right turn where the motorist did have the green light and a conflict between bicyclists or pedestrian, red light running or broadside head on rear end, fixed object and Sideswipe crashes. And then for each of these common crash types, we identified recommended engineering mitigation measures, including signal improvements, signage, train movement, improvements access management by compared and then a center medium barrier. And so looking at how we structured these recommendations, so identified where those common crash patterns are occurring at each of the intersections along the 27 corridor, and then paired each of those common crash types with those key engineering recommendations that were from the previous slide. And then that call out on the right is showing an example of some of the detailed analysis for one particular intersection with the observations as well as the key recommendations. And those were identified for all of the intersections along the corridor. And then just showing another one on the southern extent. In addition, we took a deeper dive at 12 locations along the corridor. These were selected for both their high crash history as well as looking at a handful in each community. So several in Longmont several and unincorporated Boulder County, several in Lafayette in Erie and then a couple of Brimfield and then just to zoom in of which locations we looked at within the city of Longmont. For these for these number of concept locations, within Longmont we’re working with Longmont and CDOT.
Unknown Speaker 55:17
Alex, I’m sorry, can
Unknown Speaker 55:18
you go back to that last slide? Yes.
Speaker 11 55:29
No worries. So, at these different intersections within Longmont, we knew that CDOT was already working with the city of Longmont. CDOT had conducted an intersection prioritization study, and was already working on several concepts for intersection improvements at a number of the locations that we selected. And so this work was really building off of and confirming the work that CDOT and Longmont were already doing a partnership. And then I’m gonna show just one example. So looking at us 37 and 17th Avenue, we have a call out for the top countermeasures, and then additional countermeasures such as showing the detailed recommendations, or the types of recommendations that were identified for these locations.
Speaker 11 56:27
Next, I’m going to talk about the center median barrier in the rural areas of us duty seven so the four mile stretch north of Longmont up to the Larimer County line. As well as the eight mile section between the city of Longmont and Lafayette, we observed a very high number of serious injury and fatal head on crashes, resulting from drivers crossing the center median. Our study looked broadly at three different types of potential medium barrier to mitigate these crash types on the left cable rail, in the center of guard rail, and then on the right a cast in place concrete barrier. We also looked at the impacts to emergency services operations. Because right now that center median functions as a left turn lane, for those private driveway accesses along the corridor with a median barrier in place those left turns both into the driveways and then out of the driveway would no longer be possible, start to x to have a full movement access, you’d have to overshoot, and then make a U turn at the nearest intersection downstream. To get back to that side, our median barrier proposal is to have gaps in the barrier at all of the intersections in the rural areas to both the signalized and the NS signalized intersections. And the intersection spacing is about every mile or so in those 12 miles of rural segments. So it doesn’t result in a huge amount of outer direction travel. But we do understand that for larger vehicle types, there’s going to be some impacts. And that’s an ongoing item for us to continue to work with those private landowners and the farmers and the emergency services to figure out how to best accommodate those large turning via those large vehicles and they’re turning movements. Next steps on the medium barrier. We’ve been pursuing grant funding for the construction of a senator median barrier. We’ve submitted a couple of different grant applications. Unfortunately, none have been successful so far so far, but we have a number of other opportunities in 2024 that we’re continuing to pursue in partnership with CDOT. Elsewhere on the corridor, CDOT has been doing a pilot speed study looking at an alternative means of setting the speed limit within the city of Lafayette as you may be aware of common technique is using the 85th percentile, which tends to drive the speed limit higher over time. And CDOT has recently developed a new protocol for looking at an alternate alternative means that relies more on context to set the speed limits. And we expect the results of that study to be available later this spring. We’re continuing to explore opportunities for speed photo radar along the US 27 corridor. As you may have heard, there was a new automated vehicle enforcement bill that passed in the legislative session in the previous session, and we’re working with CDOT and other partners to identify if there’s opportunities to pursue that. In addition to or as an alternative to Officer enforcement on the corridor. We have coordination between CDOT and Longmont to continue the design and implementation of the intersection recommendations within the city of Longmont as well as working with CDOT on traffic signal timing improvements, visibility has been enhancements. And with that we our requests are requested action of tab tonight is to recommend that the Longmont City Council endorsed the US 27 Vision Zero safety study. And with that Lena and I are happy to take any questions you might have
Speaker 1 1:00:00
I’ve got a just a couple right off the top with the countermeasures, such as no right on red, and the yield to pet or bike. And those sorts of things. Is there any data that talks about these types of countermeasures? How long it takes for them to be adopted or integrated by the actual driving? Public?
Speaker 11 1:00:25
I don’t have that off the top of my head. No, with any changes, there’s a certain break in period.
Speaker 1 1:00:34
It’s a radical break. Because no, no, right on red, I know is fairly controversial in some other areas. So I’m just curious if if data is being gathered around that.
Speaker 11 1:00:44
I’m going to defer to Phil and if there are any right turn on red location within the city along one already,
Speaker 3 1:00:51
we just added one that what’s it called? Bounty, bountiful harvest drive at Costco and 119. Harvest Moon scuze. Me. Thank you. So that northbound direction to 119 because we couldn’t add an acceleration lane? That’s no right on read. And it’s taken some time? I’ll be you know, I’ve been monitoring it. Kyle has been monitoring it. It’s taken some time for people to learn, but I think so It’s been four months, five months. Since that’s a year. Oh, geez. Here we go.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:31
Well, time flies.
Speaker 3 1:01:32
So it’s, it’s taken almost Yeah. Almost a year for people to learn that. So and we that’s without much enforcement at all. So that’s another piece of this is that we’re looking at different ways of enforcing those no right on reds. Great, thank you.
Speaker 9 1:02:01
Regarding Senator median barrier, you mentioned how it would be a solid concrete, are there any discussions or possibilities of it being more green or eco friendly, medium barrier, something where it’s not entirely solid, it’s something where things can grow, or it’s more open and more spacious to allow, you know, some grass, possibly.
Speaker 11 1:02:25
So the three types of barrier skip back to that. The three types of barrier that we looked at within the study would all fit within the existing it’s about 14 or 15 feet wide, the striped comedian that currently functions as the to a left turn lane. So none of the options that we looked at would have required expanding the median because that drives a pretty costly expansion of concrete if you’re adding more pavement to the roadway. And with the number of contributing factors going into those head on crashes. I don’t have the breakdown in front of me. But it varies between drivers losing control on snow and ice, texting, distracted drowsy drunk drugs, and probably forgetting a couple. But the long story short is that there to really prevent all of those crossover crashes, we need a impenetrable barrier that’s going to stop vehicles in their tracks that relying on rumble strips or other sort of software features to divert folks back into their lane is not going to be sufficient to to mitigate all of those crossover crashes. And I think with the with the available space in the roadway, or with the available space in the meeting that we have, we don’t really have the room to do sort of a swale that you might see more on the interstate context, where there’s just a lot more room for, for vehicles to naturally come to a stop without some kind of low wall. And then the other consideration is that CDOT, who would be responsible for maintaining any kind of meeting barrier has a very strong preference for concrete due to the nearly zero maintenance cost of it. So basically, you set it and forget it. Whereas with the cable rail and guard rail, it’s cheaper initially, but there is an ongoing maintenance consideration except for drivers hit it, it has to go out and be fixed for it to maintain its effectiveness.
Speaker 3 1:04:20
Additionally, costs are a huge factor in this. And so as we’re asking for grant dollars, to come back through there and have to dig out what’s already concrete and change that into something greener, though preferable is going to cost a lot of money and add to the project costs whereas putting the barrier median on top of that concrete is kind of the cheaper solution, but more as effective.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:48
Well, thank you. I was just curious.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:56
Sir
Speaker 2 1:05:01
Thanks for the presentation. It’s it’s a very impressive study. The crash statistics for the Longmont segment are shocking and sobering. And I agree with you that no time is too soon to start addressing those safety issues. Now, did I understand you to say that the county’s safe streets for all grant application was not successful? That’s correct.
Speaker 11 1:05:39
So we applied, we saw it. Last year in the USDA, it safer streets and roads for all call. We asked for just under 17 million for the 12 miles of concrete median barrier. And unfortunately, we’re not one of the projects selected. Is
Speaker 2 1:05:54
there any other funding source secured for the median barrier?
Speaker 11 1:05:59
So right now we have about, I think, 4.4 million identified out of roughly 21 or 22 million total that we need. Most of that 4.4 million is money that CDOT has identified what’s in their 10 year plan, which is essentially their version of a sea of a capital improvement plan. And then a little bit of Strategic Safety money that they’ve identified. They’re also we’re working with traffic engineering staff from region for the CDOT region that includes Boulder County, to apply for some internal funding that’s only available to see that later this year. And so we’re hopeful that in the next year, in the remaining nine months or so of 2024, that we’ve got a few more opportunities to pursue some that are only available to the county, some that are only available for CDOT to apply to some that we can both but between the two agencies. Our strategy is to leave no stone, no stone unturned and seeking for funding.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:57
Just real quick,
Speaker 1 1:06:58
can we leverage our congressional delegates to kind of move this along? Because obviously, this seems like it’s affecting a lot of communities, and we’ve got a single representative.
Speaker 11 1:07:08
That’s an excellent segue to one of the options that we’re pursuing. There is there’s a current process for submitting congressionally designated spending requests to our congressional designation, more colloquially known as earmarks, and the county has a internal vetting process where we’re gathering all of the ideas and then the county Commissioner’s Office is going to be deciding which ones will submit. And so we have submitted a letter of interest to our commissioner’s office to pursue this and based on Commissioner Levine, who represents the district covering Longmont, it was her recommendation or encouragement to submit a letter of interest for this project. And so while it hasn’t been determined, which earmark requests the county will be submitting, we’re fairly optimistic that this will be one of them based on already one of our three commissioners supporting it.
Speaker 2 1:08:05
Going back to the funding, will the $4 million that’s in hand be spent on barriers for high priority locations? Or will nothing get built until the whole 22 million is in hand? It’s
Speaker 11 1:08:18
a good question. It there’s kind of a there’s several options, in order to leverage that four and a half million and secure more federal grant funding. We couldn’t spend it now and then use that as leverage for later. Because if you if you get a grant, nothing that you spent before your grant agreement is executed is eligible to be considered part of that. And to access almost all federal transportation funding, you need to have some local match. And so right now our strategy is to is to use that is leveraged which means that unfortunately, we can’t go out and spend it right now because we need to be able to show that we have available to cover the general 20% required local match for transportation funding.
Speaker 10 1:09:04
David on a positive note, the fact that see Dodd is willing to put up nearly four and a half million dollars is an indication of the recognition of the urgency of the problem, on the other hand was discouraging, and Alex could talk about this is the vexing difficulty of finding funds. We’ve identified funds but finding funds and actually scoring grant money to implement the medium barrier project, which is odd given the great number of funding sources and volume of money that’s available.
Speaker 2 1:09:40
Okay, you’ve explained the reasons for selecting a solid concrete cast in place center barrier. I’m wondering if as vehicles become larger and larger and heavier and heavier, and traffic speeds get faster and faster. Has the design of that cast in place median barrier been updated?
Speaker 11 1:10:07
It’s a CDOT standard, and I couldn’t speak to the last time that they have updated it. But my understanding is that it would be the same type of concrete barrier that they would use on a interstate application, if the if the the amount of deflection space that you have is too small to use another type of barrier.
Speaker 2 1:10:27
Okay, and those are steel reinforced, cast in place concrete,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:33
I believe there’s rebar in there. Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:36
Thanks, sir.
Speaker 8 1:10:41
Well, the thank you for this presentation. And thank you Board Member McInerney for those questions, because those were my questions. Specifically on the center median barriers. And then I think, generally, it’s, you know, if it’s hanging on a grant application, we may or may not see that this year, maybe next year, maybe the following? Is there anything that we could do in the short term in terms of what what can we do tomorrow? type of thing.
Speaker 11 1:11:15
So one of our short term items is that CDOT is working on using one of their continuing continuing services contracts to bring aboard a consultant to move into final design of the medium barrier. And so our, our study was about a 10% level of design, not enough to go out for construction. And so CDOT is gonna pick up where we’ve left off with one of their consultants and advanced that into final design so that we have an ad ready package.
Speaker 8 1:11:45
And then next question is the intersection improvements. I know what I’m suggesting is a complete overhaul of intersections. You know, I’m more roundabout friendly, because of the stats purely. But is there any thought of that into the future, maybe, as we have to, you know, replace the road, maybe we do a complete redesign, when that opportunity arises. If there’s any thought behind roundabouts,
Speaker 11 1:12:14
that more for the city of Longmont or in the rural sections, rural
Speaker 8 1:12:19
sections? I would say at any, because it will make it easier for turnaround for emergency vehicles. Also, you’re more sideswiping people instead of the head on collision. And there’s less conflict points and other countries have had experience with it’s called turbo roundabouts for kind of your highway areas. So just, you know, I just want to always kind of envision and invent kind of the new the new thing that we should be doing. It’s
Speaker 11 1:12:54
all answer for the rural areas. And then I don’t know if Phil wants to jump in. For the urban areas within Longmont. We did look at roundabouts as part of the study. And ultimately, they were not included in our key recommendations. I believe due to a combination of cost. We’re rebuilding the intersection, given that we already have signals at the larger intersections as well as right away. And then I think also with the speed on the corridor seat and the volumes on us 287 CDOT was not supportive of converting the larger intersections to roundabouts.
Speaker 8 1:13:27
Okay, unfortunate in my mind, but we’ll get there someday. So
Speaker 4 1:13:33
yeah, then commenting on to within llama to a sevens pretty tight corridor as it is with to a 70 large freight corridor as well. I would say it would be a hard ass with CDOT to convert some of those main intersections to roundabouts just between the right away takes space and requirements about say outside of the to ace Ms. Lamarr as a whole. Staff is entertaining several options and roundabouts is one of them for safety improvements of many intersections throughout the city. So you’ll see more of those plans through Vision Zero, as that plan comes together because it will require some community engagement and consensus to provide those improvements, those areas as they will drastically change in the future.
Speaker 8 1:14:20
Well, thank you. That’s, I believe that’s all I have for now. So thank you. Well,
Speaker 7 1:14:31
Taylor kind of preempted my question about roundabouts. So it’s no surprise I have a lot of experience around bounce hub having come from England and roundabouts everywhere, including extremely fast roads. 70 on our roads, so really common to have roundabouts, you just have multiple lanes and some of them even have traffic lights open on those are really fun ones. But I would love to see more roundabouts on the route and I think just based on about the safety issues and the things that Taylor has nicely brought up, I just want to second that. I would love to see roundabouts more considered even within Lamont and but also on the rural areas, because safety is really important as what we’re talking about. My other question was, what’s the next steps for BRT? So you did the presentation about BRT, what’s the next step after? Where are you at now?
Speaker 11 1:15:27
It’s a challenging question. Us 37 For lack of a better way of putting it is sort of third in line with our NAMS corridors in terms of transit improvements. So first in line right now is how I want it in the diagonal highway linking Longmont and Boulder. As you’re probably aware, later this year CDOT is going to be going to construction with several transit improvements, and then also a commuter bikeway. Linking Longmont boulder. Next up in all of our names corridors is highway seven, linking Boulder and Brighton. Obviously, that one does not go through the city of Longmont and then us 37 is our third corridor in line. So we don’t have immediate next steps for short term, significant transit improvements on the corridor. RTD is significantly limited in how much service they can restore with their ongoing operator shortage. They’re down by a significant share of their funded bus operator positions as well as their mechanic positions. So unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of good news right around the corner in terms of how much service we can expect from RTD.
Speaker 10 1:16:41
I would just say there is reason for hope, given the collaboration of stakeholders, including in Fort Collins to transport public transit agency that is a willing partner and runs the flex ride now. And so there is as a platform, this collaboration through the coalition that allows us to think through options and draw on resources of stakeholders, so that there is nothing definite, as Alex suggested, but there is a launching pad to do better. And as we mentioned in the presentation, there’s a great, there’s more and more need for mobility by transit, and to reduce reliance on the automobile.
Speaker 11 1:17:23
Another brightspot, that wasn’t really in play when the original Northwest Area mobility study was done back in 2014, as CDOT. And so at the time, CDOT was just getting into the transit business with their busting system. And over the last seven or eight years or so has built out a rapidly growing and fairly extensive network of statewide transit, and is now a significant player in the inter regional and statewide transit game in a way that was almost unthinkable a decade ago. And so we don’t know exactly what opportunities might lie with CDOT. But CDOT is on the cusp of an update to their 10 year plan, which is essentially their their short term transportation master plan after the state. And so transit funding is a top priority for Boulder County and, and our communities. And so we’re going to continue beating that drum as part of the 10 year process. And so that might yield some more funding and options, that that RTD is unfortunately not able to deliver in the short term.
Speaker 7 1:18:27
Okay, thank you for that detailed answer. I would love to see, well transit, of course, I guess I would want to use it all the time. But I have to I’m forced to drive, because it just takes too long to get anywhere. So my last question, because all my other questions have already been covered. Is there was a lot of data in your presentation, I was just wondering if there’s somewhere that we can go look at that information, because it wasn’t in that packet. So I was just wondering if we can see that information, because it was lots of good information.
Speaker 11 1:19:02
We have a website on the county’s website that has the full report, as well as an executive summary. And then appendices a through ah, I believe, a significant number of appendices, and covering all manner of topics that we looked at, and we can share that through Phil, we
Speaker 3 1:19:21
didn’t include it with your packet. So the website was the was the attachment. So that was the link. So sorry if that wasn’t evident.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:32
Okay, I didn’t spell that thing.
Speaker 11 1:19:34
Our website has both the phase one bus rapid transit study as well as the phase two safety study.
Speaker 10 1:19:40
Thank you. And naturally, please feel to feel free to call on us if questions come up and you’d like to have some discussion. And we’re open for that anytime. Thank you.
Speaker 1 1:19:53
So, as David pointed out again, time is of the essence so I guess really the best thing we We can do is if we see the obviously the validity in your statistics and what you’re trying to do, we shouldn’t be endorsing this safety study. So are there any more questions or comments?
Speaker 2 1:20:15
Yeah, I’d like to go back to the roundabout idea just for a moment, you’ve explained that you considered it and rejected it. I recall, you showed an image of a U turn turning radius at an intersection, I didn’t look at it closely enough to be able to tell whether you’re proposing expanding some of these intersections to accommodate the U turns that are going to be generated by the median barrier barrier. Can you explain that. So
Speaker 11 1:20:48
that’s something that will need to be resolved in final design for the medium barrier, we are probably not going to accommodate a web 67, which is the prototypical semi truck, being able to make a U turn at the intersection, the U turn radius for those types of vehicles is fairly significant. But what we’re looking at is more how could we accommodate a single unit, you know, a standard 40 foot box truck. And if a vehicle like that would be able to make a U turn from the left turn lane and still clear the intersection and at some of the intersections, it will be able to some of the intersections will likely require some modifications where the signal pole or something on the opposite side is in the way of this swept path. And so there needs to be some changes there to be able to accommodate those.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:39
Okay, thanks,
Speaker 10 1:21:40
David. Just to follow up a bit about we’ve spoken to the emergency responder representatives. And evidently, they use a kind of preemption system, I think it’s called Opticon to build a switch the lights that can allow through movement or a YouTube movement. So as far as emergency vehicle access, and mobility goes, We’re cup recovered there.
Speaker 8 1:22:18
If we could go back to that previous slide. Yeah, the U turn. So like, is this purely for emergency vehicles or we we are, we’re also kind of planning for general, people are using the corridor,
Speaker 11 1:22:38
both. So one of our other next steps for the median barrier is to do more engagement with the landowners and the farmers and other folks that are currently using the existing median as a left turn lane to access those private driveways. We did some outreach as part of the study, but we didn’t get a great level of response from the landowners adjacent to the corridor in the rural sections. And so we know that’s an area that we need to spend some more time and energy with, to really understand their needs. There’s a number of different ways to potentially accommodate the movements that as it stands, our medium barrier would prohibit those being, you know, an alternate route where you could go around and make three rights instead of a left turn to access the property. Or you can make a U turn at a downstream intersection. Or if there’s driveways where we really have a significant number of movements, potentially a gap in the median barrier at a private driveway. But to figure out which of those is going to be appropriate, we really need to understand how many what the left turning volume is at all those all those driveways, and understand what the needs are. And so that is an area that we’ll be spending more energy on in the coming year to really get a handle on on how best to accommodate those movements that we’d be restricting. Okay.
Speaker 8 1:24:01
Yeah, the as I see, kind of the, the general theme of this study is to reduce the conflict points that, you know, reduce the head on collision, reduce, you know, the, the drives with what we like to call Austroads. Now, I think the Federal Highway Administration now acknowledges that term. But uh, you know, I’m a little concerned about the U turn, philosophy here, just, I just think it might produce more conflict points. So maybe a light structure, maybe that’s what fix it, but just Just a thought. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:39
Thanks.
Speaker 7 1:24:46
Just a follow up on my roundabout point, sorry to ask more questions you talked about that. Cost was one of the reasons why it was ultimately rejected. And I was wondering if the long term costs Like, for example, the signalizing is an expense. And how was that considered as one of the potential savings not having to signalize an intersection? Because you have a roundabout instead? Was that one of the maybe you didn’t know. But I was just curious. So in
Speaker 11 1:25:15
broad terms, I think our study proposes to leave the existing on signalized intersections on signalized that we looked at, I think there might be one, maybe two, that we’re proposing to signalize. But for a number of the other intersections, we did evaluate those. And the study revealed that they’re not really close to meeting one of the difference signal warrants that CDOT would require to convert it to a signalized intersection. And so for most of the intersections that are already signalized, they would stay that way. And then for most of the signalized intersections, there wouldn’t be a cost a signalized, since we’re not proposing to signalize them.
Speaker 7 1:25:57
Okay, that wasn’t actually my question. Thank you. I was asking about so if you did a intersection change to a roundabout, for example, you no longer have to pay to have those lights anymore running all the time. And that is that there is a cost associated with that was that one of the costs that was considered as the point that that would no longer be a cost for that intersection? Because a roundabout doesn’t require any electric?
Speaker 11 1:26:24
I am not sure off the top of my head if the maintenance and operations cost of the signal was factored into the roundabout. consideration. Kyle,
Speaker 1 1:26:35
why don’t you explain how much it costs to do a roundabout because of the right away costs? And those sorts of things that maybe we’re not, we’re not understanding?
Speaker 4 1:26:42
Yeah, so it can be a range. So it’s kind of generally speaking for smaller, maybe two to four lane roadways, might be the talking of sort of the range of four to $600,000, for a single for four approaches, and all the equipment for roundabout depending on theirs right away. That could be anywhere from 1.5 to $2 million. So we’re talking about projects and spending, solar power will spend, you know, $500,000. Now, except the maintenance costs a few $1,000 a year, versus spending the upfront capital of making around about it plus the years of construction, our signal could be a few months of inconvenience. So a lot of those factors come into whether it’s roundabout or signalization. So and in terms of CDOT, since they’re so flush with cash, and have also money for capital projects, usually completing the ones that complete the needs of the project, in a short amount of time with the littles budget usually is the one that wins out. So that’s generally how it goes. And so if there’s any questions about that stuff, I’d be happy to answer a little more specifics that are
Unknown Speaker 1:27:57
causing signalization versus random.
Speaker 7 1:27:59
Yeah, I mean, it does, yeah, it’s just, you’re always putting a price on the extra fatalities you might potentially have at that intersection. But the cost of implementing it, yeah,
Speaker 4 1:28:12
and part of the way in is if they spend, say, this intersection, for example, this one would probably be upwards of two plus million dollars, versus if they spent the money across the entire corridor, you’re improving more sections of the roadway at once. So you’re hitting more people versus was one area is one one’s getting improvements. So you look at a lot of the crashes, we’ve had on to a seven along minute different stretches of the road. And so what happens is you make one improvement to one side of the road. But then because of lack of funding, you can’t accomplish the rest of the road. And something happens there. Versus if you’re able to complete a project, let’s say the medium barrier at some good costs, you somewhat protect the road and maybe eliminate more of those fatalities. So unfortunately, on the 27th corridor, especially in rural areas, it’s not so much a single point. It’s the entire segment that needs to be addressed. Because the randomness of where those crashes occur are pretty evident from locations versus we look at our signalization we know where those happen, because what’s happened at the intersection. So we made those really big improvements at intersections. So hope answer your question on that one.
Speaker 7 1:29:21
Yeah, yeah, sorry. Sorry. Is this Yeah, the safety differences is pretty considerable change to say thank you
Speaker 1 1:29:36
can we do we want to get a motion to approve the Vision Zero safety study on us? 287 Or do we need any more questions?
Speaker 2 1:29:49
I’ll move that. The board recommend to council that the 287 Vision Zero safety study be done are adopted endorsed by city of Longmont?
Unknown Speaker 1:30:06
Do I have a second?
Unknown Speaker 1:30:09
I’ll second that.
Speaker 1 1:30:11
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
Unknown Speaker 1:30:18
Thank you so much for your time
Unknown Speaker 1:30:44
excuse me, sorry. No, I
Speaker 1 1:30:45
was just gonna say that was our action item. Since we move that down. We can move to number eight it and we can discuss the the the email comments on this. Perfect
Speaker 3 1:30:57
we also have the woman who wrote or the person who wrote the email in the audience, Jen bell. And so if if the chair sees fit, you can reopen the public invited to be heard. And have her speak to that well as common with all our public invite, right, are we do a five minute maximum length on that? Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:31:24
I’m just wondering, since we’ve all have a copy of it. I would prefer to get our comments actually, if that’s okay with misspell or if you’d like to speak and add additional commentary to this, that’s fine as well. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 12 1:31:53
My name is Jen Bell. I live in the north of Longmont very excited to hear we have a transportation advisory board. I honestly did not realize that until yesterday. So since everybody has a copy of the email, I won’t rehash all of the content, I mainly wanted to mention a few other things that I thought about during the course of observing the meeting. The biggest of which is that I think there’s lots of excellent discussion about about the short term fixes, especially with regards to safety. I would hope that the board keeps in mind long term vision at the same time as fixing the short term problems. So when we talk about when we talked about signalization we talked about no right on red I think that taking the taking immediate action to improve the safety for cities a fantastic move. However, in parallel to that I would hope that we’re thinking about you know what it what does that do to the city long, long term, you mentioned the term of strode I quite freaked I think I used it twice in the email. I would hate I would hate to see measures on our on our city’s turn roads into more of a slow down blended environment as opposed to striking a delineation between this is a corridor this needs to be fast and separated where pedestrians and cyclists are on it in the first place. And establishing secondary routes that are very pedestrian forward cycling forward, versus trying to force everything in one spot. And then having additional mitigation efforts which slow it down even more, kind of get my point. I think that it’s important to keep the short term and long term in mind in parallel. And if we’re thinking about things that are going to be safer, but slow down the road, hopefully in parallel, we’re also thinking about what could we do to route to 87 Not through Main Street in the first place. What if it went down over I mean, I may be completely out of the loop. And hopefully these are things everybody’s already thinking about. But I just wanted to emphasize that of the keeping the short term and long term in mind. I also wanted to comment on the the median barrier that we talked about, hopefully, as part of that we can leave small gaps so that gravel cyclists like myself don’t become completely blocked along the highway I crossed 287 Yesterday on my ride, I think that gravel cycling around Longmont is one of the selling points of the city we have fantastic gravel access, which often feels trapped by the surrounding highways. If there’s now a barrier that forces me to go several miles out of the way that gravel the wonderful gravel we have around North Longmont East Longmont southwest Longmont becomes inaccessible. So even if there’s not going to be a gap for a car to turn left, we could have a small gap for animals for cyclists to keep it from being a complete barrier. And having a median would make that crossing so Much safer, but still an option. Let’s see. I also wanted to comment that, you know, I’m so excited to hear about all these plans. I’m sad that this is the first time I’m hearing about it. I’m sure that the teams involved have been very diligent in getting things out to the community. So I’m sure this is mostly on Bing. I guess I’m just like, I am wondering, what what methods we’re using to engage the public. If I don’t know about an open house ahead of time and have it on my Google Calendar? I’m not just going to stumble upon that. I don’t know if there’s a there’s a Facebook group I should be following on Instagram or I don’t even have a Twitter, right. There’s a lot of this is probably me being out of the loop. But I would be curious, why was there not a single respondent under the age of 24? In the transportation mobility plan? What about high schoolers who want to get to school around here? What about middle schoolers? You know, what if we do we ever want to attract young people who tend to have tend more to flock to Boulder? I think all of those are all those are things that got me thinking. And I this seems like a very capable board. And I’m very excited about the teams that I heard speak tonight. Seems like a very competent group. So I don’t throw any of this out as an accusation of incompetence. I just want to ask the question, What am I what am I missing as a citizen to become more engaged in this because I care a lot and would like to be able to help more. Let’s see, I think when the one other thing I wanted to comment on, and I talked about this, some in the email, but additionally talking about not all bike paths, and not all, not all connectors are created equal. I’ve biked along the connector parallel to 36. And it is a fantastic connector. I used it to commute to work for a long time. And it’s great. But the Lobo trail so much better, because you’re not right next to the road. Even having a strong buffer, the road noise can be stressful, especially for a new cyclist. So thank you all so much.
Speaker 1 1:37:15
Okay, so I think what we had talked about is we’ll move to our comments, and if anybody would like to address the email, and these additional comments, I think would be appropriate now. And I’ll just start Taylor with you.
Speaker 8 1:37:32
Well, first offer the two presentations, then thank you, you all did a great job. And now you know, the other two left. As I say that, I realized that. And then also for the public comments. Thank you, Jennifer, I would, I would recommend, you know, been keeping tabs on the TMP and the process. You could even because obviously, it sounds like Avid cyclists. So there’s also a bike Issues Committee, you could join that I would email Ben Ortiz to join on the mailing list. He’s front row to talk to him. So but yeah, just just and the deck, I’m a member of BiC. There’s two of us here that are members, we’re working on some exciting things. And I think generally the city is working on very exciting things. And, and that’s why I’m here because I want a better future. So. But thank you for your comments. And it was a great meeting today. Thanks.
Speaker 7 1:38:42
So I want to thank the presenters who have already left. But super, lots of really good information today. Some of it was affirming of what I’m sure most of us are have already experienced. But it’s good to have the data behind what you’re seeing every day. As regards to your comments, as well. I am a only cyclist, I only cycle in Longmont. It’s my primary form of transportation here. And I only drive when I really have to. So I have noticed all of the things that you talked about. And I feel the same way as you do for for most most of the way. I’m part of a bicycle Issues Committee, as Taylor said, and I strongly recommend if you really want to be more engaged with bicycling here in Longmont and have have your say on where the city is moving on which paths are being connected and how those connections are going to look like. Definitely consider joining because that’s the conversations we’re having as part of that committee, as well as you know, attending tab as well because we talked about that swing almost every time so mainly because I’m here. Okay, thanks
Speaker 2 1:40:06
Two good presentations tonight a lot of useful information. I also want to thank you, Jen bow for your very thoughtful comments and your interest in Longmont transportation.
Speaker 9 1:40:29
Yes, to echo what everyone’s already said, very informative presentations, I did learn a lot tonight. And to comment on the email, I want to express that I resonated with it a lot, because for me, I like walking pretty much everywhere I live over at the corner of third and Ken Pratt, those apartments over there. So that’s a lot of new development happening. And when I first joined tap, that’s like the one thing I wanted to learn about what’s happening around me, like, what can I do? And I learned that for county line, that the new Sandstorm marketplace that’s being developed right now next to Walmart, they will be turning that into a crosswalk. So that information is something I learned after joining tap. So I don’t know if there’s a way to increase the awareness of existing projects that are happening. But that would be something I recommend, because now that I have that info, I’m like, Okay, well, it’s gonna be done. I don’t have to be, you know, questioning what’s the city doing? I could just wait it out and still run across really quickly while there’s cars going by. So I really appreciate it the email and thank you.
Speaker 1 1:41:52
Tyrian great presentations by our guests who have left. And you know, again, misspelled great email. I think what’s interesting is we touched on a lot of these kind of items within the discussion on the TMP as well as with the safety study. And I guess the one thing that always comes to light for me when we talk about safety dollars and safety in dollars is the challenges, as Kyle mentioned was we have an entire project that we’re trying to make safe for everybody. So putting all the money into a single improvement versus making sure that we do it for the whole thing is much like all the projects that we’re trying to either endorse or look at. And I think that’s just a challenge. And it’s a weighing of, yes, would it be nice to have a gap between the concrete barrier for animals and cyclists? But is that you know, something that CDOT can’t do, nor will they endorse, it’s not part of their standard. It’s just this balancing act of money versus you know, pay off and unfortunately, you’re right, until Vision Zero safety wasn’t as much the consideration where I think we have kind of flipped that script a little bit. So engage, Longmont is a great site to go to for projects, right, we we would have had the crosswalk on any gauge long line is our rifle. The word member Kim mentioned, that’s
Speaker 3 1:43:18
actually a little different spot. But we do have our current developments that you can go to and look at all the current developments for the city engaged long months, a great place for the Vision Zero and the transportation mobility plan. We also do a lot of advertising on you have to it’s best to subscribe but on Instagram, Facebook and ex are all places that if you just type in city of Longmont and start following the city of Longmont, you’ll see all these different chances to engage with whether it’s next light, whether it’s you know, a certain transportation project or if it’s planning. So there’s a bunch of different things out there. If it’s library, even, you know, it’s different, different aspects, but it’s a great place to get that information.
Speaker 1 1:44:03
And then I guess the last thing I would say in regards to all this is that if you are passionate about something like cycling and what have you let your friends and neighbors know as well. And because the more that know about this the the more conversation that can be had the better it could be for everybody. So thank you everybody for good meeting tonight. Items for the upcoming agenda
Unknown Speaker 1:44:35
think you had a list on your sheet there? Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:44:38
we still intact the RTD planning update and then the 2024 CIP update correct. And that will probably have a third reminder April 15 94th reminder.
Speaker 3 1:44:56
We also plan on we have some parking code amendments we might be talking about as well, we’re changing the parking code to maximums and minimums and a lot of different areas, but we’re also changing, changing some of the multifamily minimums. That’s the last place where we have when we’re talking about minimums as multifamily, and single family, but single family, pretty easy, but we’ll just let you know about those. We’d like you to see them before counsel, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna see about timing on that first, so we’ll let you know. Thanks. Great. Okay,
Speaker 1 1:45:31
with that, I need a motion to adjourn. He’s quick to the trigger. Right.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:38
Motion to adjourn tonight’s meeting. I’ll second.
Speaker 1 1:45:44
All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you. Have a good night.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai