Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the City of Alameda Transportation Commission meeting for Wednesday, 02/25/2026. We will begin with roll call. Commissioner Kim.

Present.

Commissioner Gloin.

Present.

Chair Weitzi. Here. Vice Chair Suthan Thira is absent and Commissioner Johnson is absent. Commissioner Dara Abrams. Here. Commissioner Nochtigal. Here.

Seeing that we have quorum, will move on to the second item. Second item is agenda changes. Any proposed agenda changes from the commissioners? Seeing none, we will move on to item number three, staff communications with our own Lisa Foster.

Good evening Chair Weitzey. I'm and transportation commissioners. I'm Lisa Foster, transportation planning manager. We'll start with up upcoming transportation commission meetings we have scheduled for March 25 and May 20. Upcoming public events include a transportation one zero one and clipper cards for seniors event on March 6 and also April 3.

I'll start my updates with a kind of momentous announcement for the city of Alameda that is that Gail Payne, senior transportation coordinator and project manager for eighteen years with the city at the total years, has left here. She has moved on to another position that she's excited to, do. I did want to acknowledge she's the former secretary of the Transportation Commission. She did that for quite a few years. And she was the planner for many seminal projects all across the city.

And she will now be at the city of Richmond there. Lucky to have her. And just to note with Gail's departure, we're reducing transportation planning staffing by the third that was of of her time that was dedicated to transportation planning. We're reducing that down. So just because that is necessary for our budget.

So the next announcement is that you may have heard we got the we were the city of Alameda was awarded the gold level bicycle friendly community award. Of the 444 communities receiving awards this year, only 32 were at the gold level and three were at the platinum level. And we have been working our way up. We were bronze in 2016 and silver in 2021. And some of the recent commitments that helped get us here that you all reviewed were the active transportation plan, advancing the Cross Alameda Trail to near completion, and launching our Oakland Alameda Water shuttle.

And I always like to remind that, you know, these initiatives like all bicycle infrastructure projects in Alameda include safety or access improvements for pedestrians as well as bicyclists. Clement Avenue Tilden Way improvement project, as you know, it continues to be under construction. It's in stage one with one southbound lane on Tilden Way closed. And then the next stages are anticipated to begin in late March pending weather. And at that point, there will be a road closure on Fernside Boulevard approaching Tilden Way with a detour in place.

You can ask more questions with our annual report. The water shuttle will launch expanded weekend hours again starting early month early March just in time for the Oakland Alameda Access Project to begin construction. And then this is the expanded service along with continuation of the Tuesday service is paid for by the Alameda CTC grant for nineteen months as part of the to cover the specifically the construction period for that project. And speaking of that, Caltrans and Alameda County Transportation Commission announced that the Webster Tube construction, it is starting in

a

matter of days, I think next week. Although and and that it will be completed in the Webster Tube with full closures on weeknights instead of the all hours single lane closure that you all reviewed and discussed, which is great news. I believe those overnight closures won't start until April though. And then just to keep in mind, Posey Tube construction cannot be done with just nighttime closures. There will be some period of a continuous single lane closure, and we will be working with them to to try to minimize what that looks like for travelers in Posey Tube.

And then SF Bay Ferry has announced a new South San Francisco schedule after their South San Francisco study. It's pretty good news for South San Francisco riders. So you can check that out on their webpage. And that is all.

I will break protocol but I would be remiss if I did not highlight Gail Payne moving on. I interviewed with her when I first joined this commission, a lovely person who did amazing work for the city. So we're sad to lose her, but wish her well. She was great. Moving on next to please.

Go ahead.

You can break protocols while I've already done it.

So I'm a newcomer here and whenever I've asked questions, oftentimes the answer has been, oh, Gail created that project. Or even more often, Gail got the funding for that project just to be specific. Like it's not about money but that's what make things makes things happen. Big organizations often have like you work at a university, there's a list of like the top 10 revenue getters for the university. And and if the city of Alameda had one, I bet Gail would be like way up there.

So I I just want to add on a super concrete, not just a thank you, but just like that is the work that serves the residents and the taxpayers of Alameda and the residents and taxpayers of Richmond will be very lucky to have those capabilities. I mean, the staff are great. You all are great.

I just want to We like Lisa too. Don't worry.

Thank you,

chair. Would would anyone else like to continue to break protocol? Please, commissioner Nachtigal.

I really just wanna echo and lift up the comments that both of you have shared because Gail was really a wonderful asset to the city of Alameda for many years and so thank you for her great work.

And did any of our other commissioners that did not get a chance to meet Gail Payne want to say anything just to keep it going? We are sure you appreciate her service. Don't worry. Okay. With that, we're going to move on. Thank you for your comments, I agree with all of them. To number four, non agenda public comment, which we sort of just did ourselves. These are for non agenda items public comment. Any non agenda public comment?

Yes. We have three speakers. The first is William Morrison.

William?

Good evening.

Very quickly, just a couple of things to bring out or work. I know this is a business meeting for you. And so public comment is somewhat of a nuisance, and that's why I'm here, to be a nuisance. The basic thing I'm after more so than anything else is I want you to remember that you are transportation commission oriented. You're not bicycle, and you're not pedestrian only.

And that's one of the things I've seen as a difficulty is all the great things that are happening basically are making the city bike friendly and also car averse. To go a little bit further than that, another thing that you're doing is you're taking steps or at least, shall we say, not necessarily making allowances for the fact that we used to have railroad service in this city all the way from Fruitvale to the Naval Air Station. And one of the little things about that is railroads are something that once they're there, they can stay for a long time. You take them away, they don't come back. I used to be a development economist.

One of the things we'd look at in things associated with location analysis was the various modes of transportation that a various site had. Eliminating the possibility of rail would have a, let's say, a negative effect. I bring this up because there is efforts at the Tilden Way area to actually eliminate any rail in that actual project area, leaving even a small portion so that it could be connected to if somebody had the bucks and wanted to would be very worthwhile. Taking it all the way all the way, you have to go back and re permit. And I think everybody here knows what what that means.

So basically, I just would like for you to remember that in your considerations. I bicycle a lot, always have. When I came here, I only had one car. I used public transit. And then when the bicycle was faster than the bus, I took it. Alright? So I've been around, and I've done that for a long period of time. But guess what? I like my automobile as well. I got a nice Lexus, and I'd like that.

I like to drive it. So that's kinda where that is. Other than that, the same thing is I do miss the fact that we might be, how would it say, preventing ourselves from maybe getting into something with BART if we get rid of our rail leak into the area. So just leave that with you at this point in time. And like I said, I'm here to be a nuisance. So you'll probably see me again. Have a good evening.

Not a nuisance at all. We thank you for your comment. Next comment, please.

Jim Strelow.

Yes, little louder.

Good evening, Christian. Kind of a little redux from the last meeting regarding Lincoln Avenue and Walnut that you folks are the city is reacting to those incidents where a vehicle was crossing along Walnut and getting broadsided off of Lincoln. And it and it gets it amounts to that a very small minority of things happening affects the whole island. Everybody's gonna affect it's gonna be affected by the changes that you recommend and do. And it's just that sort of trend that I see happening constantly by city staff, by the council, by this commission, by engineers, that it seems like a very small number is overly affecting the majority, and it just seems so unfair.

It it almost sounds un American, that I thought the majority was supposed to be attended to. And I just hate to see how the the bad actions of a couple of, you know, I think they showed two or three of the incidents. Maybe those people were wrong or maybe that, you know, the signage is poor that it needs to say, you know, Lincoln doesn't doesn't stop. You know, that, you know, there's other ways to mitigate other than, you know, the heavy handedness of redesigning that intersection. The other topic I wanna hit briefly is just simply how long it takes for a project to be completed.

Because when we see an earthquake happen and a roadway goes down, that somehow they're able to get things back up and going in a week to maybe two weeks, and these traffic circles seem to be taking three months, four months. And I wonder sometimes if there is a incentive to draw things out long enough so that the people get paid more, that it would be interesting in the annual report or other times that the citizens understand why things take so long when, you know, if you say, hey, and if we give an incentive to do things faster, you get a bonus or whatever. Because to the citizens, time is important. The amount of time that an intersection is closed and not available is so important to the daily lives of people that, you know, are incentives needed or at least justify why things are taking so long. Because I look at the intersection at Pacific and Main Central and hardly see anything ever happening and just wonder what motivates them to get things done so that it opens faster.

Thank you. Thank you for

your comment, Jim. Next comment, please.

Christy Cannon.

Evening. Evening, commissioners. I've almost forgotten why I came, because I'm so stunned by the news about Gale. I'm a volunteer in transportation issues because of the model of staff for this city that Gail set. And I'm struggling to be happy for her. By the time I leave, I'll be really happy for her. But I will miss her, and I'm sure the city will miss her, including the staff. I know how much the staff get along and support each other. But I really did come just to give you some information. I live on the West End.

I'm not sure if any of you live on the West End, but there's too much vehicular traffic in the bike lanes. The bike lanes are just wide enough that even a trash truck can go down them. I've seen an Amazon delivery truck. I've seen a USPS truck driving in the bike lane. A friend who lives in Bolina Bay reported to me today that she saw a fire truck in the bike lane.

Maybe you know, fire trucks are sometimes emergency vehicles, and that may be appropriate. I will say this. My husband told me as I was leaving for this meeting that he rides in that bike lane all the time. I'm more of a walker and a bus taker, but he is definitely a very active bicyclist. And he saw a street cleaner that's properly sized for being in the bike lane, and that put a grin on my face. So I appreciate that a lot. I'm also kind of stunned by the previous gentleman's mention of rail. Wow, that's going to keep my mind spinning around for the rest of the evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Any additional speakers?

No further speakers.

I will close out non agenda public comment and move on to the consent calendar. First item is 5A, to approve the draft minutes of the 01/28/2026 Transportation Commission meeting. Are there any revisions, perhaps commissioners, to the meeting minutes? Commissioner Noctagal, go ahead. Thank

you, chair. I would like to request a revision to the number seven commission communications. I'd like the item that I that quotes me to reflect that I shared that the Otis school issue and the need for completed low stress a completed low stress bike network is a reason why I continuously ask about the Cross Elevated Trail.

Can you repeat that one more time just for the record? Do you have a shot? Okay.

That the Otis School issue and the need for a completed low stress bike network is a reason why she was constantly asking about the Cross Alameda Trail.

Any objections to the revision? Any other revisions to the minutes? Technically, I thank my wife for picking me up at the airport and bringing me dinner, but I will let it go. It's fine. It's mostly correct in here. Seeing that, I would move to approve the revised meeting minutes. All in favor of approving the revised meeting minutes, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion to pass the revised minutes is approved unanimously.

Let's move to, as I find my agenda, thank you, let's move to regular agenda items. Our first regular agenda item is six a to endorse, a voting item, to endorse the transportation 2025 annual report and 2026 work plan. So again, this is, it will be a voteable item and we will go to our own Lisa Foster.

Good evening again. I'm happy to be presenting this report. Our annual report fulfills reporting requirements for council priorities adopted with our transportation plans, including the goals set by these plans, such as eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2035, enabling people of all ages and abilities to walk, use mobility devices and bike safely and comfortably, improving alternatives to low occupancy automobiles, and providing for the mobility needs of a full spectrum of Alamedans. And of course, as you know, in Transportation Commission bylaws, one of the responsibilities of this commission is to review our progress on our plans. So that is why part of the reason we do these as well.

I also wanted to mention and clarify that this report represents the work of a lot of different departments, but mostly transportation planners in the Planning, Building and Transportation Department and engineers in the Public Works Department. And to reflect this, I'm joined tonight by Scott Wickstrom, city engineer and Public Works Deputy Director, and Susie Huffstatter and Rochelle Wheeler, senior transportation planners. Not doing what it's supposed to do. Thank you. So tonight we will start with our 2025 accomplishments and then talk about the facts and performance measures from 2025 and then Scott Wickstrom will take over with what to look for this current year 2026.

But before I launch into all of that, I wanted to put this work in context because there are reasons why we can't do everything all at once. And part of that is staffing limitations. With the production of the one third of Gail Payne, we're looking at a total staff of a little over eight and a half FTE between both transportation planning and public works. And that reflects in part the fact that not every engineer on in fact, most of the engineers who work on transportation also work on other kinds of items. And it also includes time from our department heads.

And then, of course, we have limited funding. Can't do everything. Okay, starting with top accomplishments. 2025 was another banner year. We built 1.5 miles of all ages and abilities bikeways.

We upgraded curb ramps for disability access at 25 locations. We improved safety at intersections at 79 locations. And our Oakland Alameda water shuttle carried over 125,000 riders And our free bus pass program serving older adults and people with disabilities who are low income took over 225,000 rides on AC Transit. We also constructed our first segment of a neighborhood Greenway on Pacific Avenue between Lafayette and Oak. It includes speed humps, crosswalk enhancements, stop signs, bikeway markings, and a neighborhood traffic circle.

And then this year, we are working on design and construction for the next slow streets to neighborhood greenway conversions to complete that process. And that is for Si, San Jose and the rest of Pacific Ave. We also launched a citywide mobile parking payment and enabling people to pay for parking more conveniently at all paid parking locations citywide. And then we also started midweek paid parking and enhanced security at the Harbor Bay Ferry Terminal last year, which has been going well. The Seaplane Lagoon Ferry Terminal, as you know, started this year in February.

The city repaired sidewalks at 8,000 locations, over 8,000 locations. That includes some saw cut trip hazard repairs, but also full sidewalk replacement as needed. And this year we've launched a new program allowing homeowners to partner with public works for repairs, allowing this to happen more easily. And then wanted to highlight our successful Alameda Bike Festival. Last year it was at Payton Elementary School.

We do this in conjunction with Alameda County Safe Routes to School program. It's always fun, always has hundreds of kids and included bike repair, helmet decoration and giveaways, bike education classes and more. So, on to facts and performance measures from last year. As a vision zero city, no traffic fatality or severe injury is acceptable. And we know that they change lives and cause grief to our communities.

Last year, we had one person die on our streets. It was a pedestrian at Ralph Appazado and PogueyCoralC, and is struck by a driver. And then we had eight people who suffered severe injuries. This graph here shows rolling five year averages so that you can see trends by mode. Because if we didn't do the rolling five year averages, it's just all over the place because these numbers are fairly low.

But you can see that since 2009, our trend line for pedestrians has been generally heading the right direction. And I will say that trend line being flat during the pandemic is very counter trend nationwide. So we can feel good about that. We see motorcyclists doing well and bicyclists. It was going well for a while, but it has increased recently.

There might be any number of explanations for that. We can discuss during this discussion time if you're interested. And then in a motor vehicle has been going up. I will say I have not crunched all the numbers to do this, but I continue by reading these crash reports. Think I am seeing a greater number of reckless driving incidents that cause severe injury or death to people in motor vehicles.

City Of Alameda continues to have a lower rate of traffic fatalities and severe injuries than Alameda County or the state. Since 2015, was trending down. It went up with the pandemic, which matches trends nationwide. You can also see California and Alameda. And then it has been going down again, which we're also nationwide seeing some improvements there just in the last year, which is good.

Here are where we've had fatal and severe injuries since we adopted Vision Zero action plan at the very end of 2021. I will say the high injury corridor maps that have been guiding our work have been pretty predictive. A lot of these have taken place on high injury corridors according to that. Although when we do our next high injury corridor maps, I would expect to see Broadway on it, which is not on it right now, and perhaps Central. We're starting to see some of the trends.

All four of those severe injury collisions on shoreline were solo intoxicated drivers. We'll be pending funding availability. We plan to do a Vision Zero action plan technical update toward the end of this year, beginning of next year. And we'll be doing an in-depth analysis of our crash data. The police department increased their moving violation citations and warnings by 72% last year compared to that.

So they really were prioritizing traffic enforcement, and they did that by using patrol officers when possible. They still are a little low on the motorcycle officers that are specifically trained and focused on this, but they really made it a priority last year. And they continue to be doing most of these on high entry corridors where the danger is highest. We also report out on our street safety concern reports. And these are self reported data that people submit to us via C Click Fix.

Getting about 400 a year seems to be about our standard. So we get quite a few. And most of them last or the biggest chunk of them last year were related to unsafe crossing followed by speeds. And staff do use these reports when we're planning and design and doing design for projects. And then we also, we have a Vision Zero implementation team, which is an internal staff group.

And we review clusters of these reports each month. Bus ridership, we are waiting on data. So we can send that to you guys when that's available. We're hoping that we will have it for the version that gets published for the city council. So look for that.

And then importantly, last year, AC Transit's realigned service changes went into effect in August in coordination with some bus stop changes by the city. Ferry ridership grew 18% in 2025 compared to 2024 to July boardings in 2025. In 2025. And then system wide, SF Bay Ferry is at almost 90% recovery to 2019 levels. And now I'm going to pass to Rochelle Wheeler to discuss our active transportation plan performance measures.

Thanks, Lisa, and good evening Chair YTC and Commissioners. I'm Rochelle Wheeler, senior transportation planner. Part of this annual report includes our Active Transportation Plan Performance Measures Report. This is our third year doing this. It's at the very end of the report document that you got after the Vision Zero report.

And just I'll highlight a few of the things that are in that report. We look at different areas that align we would develop different performance measures that align with our goals in that plan. And so for equity, we look at what we're doing in equity areas and this past year we found that 11% of the intersections where those safety improvements were made were in equity priority areas. None of the bikeway corridors were this year. We do expect that to be changing in future years, and 31% of the events were in those areas.

A total of 2.1 miles of new bikeways were constructed in 2025, so that brings us to 600, that would be nice, 61.3 miles and almost 50%. We're getting closer, 41% of those are low stress facilities. And I am happy to report that this is maybe the second or third year that the majority of the new bikeways we're building are low stress at this point. We also have all of our public schools enrolled, all 18 in the Countywide Safe Routes to Schools program. And along with our partners, we had 13 walking and or biking events or campaigns last year.

So I'll just review a couple or highlight a couple of the performance measures. Both of these from the report, both of these are under mode shift, the mode shift category. So for counting bicyclists and pedestrians at count sites, we have three automated bike and ped counters in Alameda. Two of those are owned and operated by the East Bay Park District, one at Bay Farm Island near the Bike Bridge, and one at the Crow Memorial Beach. And then we, the city, own and maintain one on the Cross Alameda Trail near 5th Street.

Unfortunately, due to some functionality issues, we did not have continuous bike and ped data for the whole year. And so what I was able to extract was January through March only the bicyclists counted at those counters. And we did see year over year increases for all three of these locations between 514%, with the highest percentage increase being at the Cross Alameda Trail counter. And you can see that number has gone up every year in the past three years. And then another way that we're measuring, we're looking at mode share from multiple different performance measures for this because we don't really have one good performance measure unless we were able to do like a statistically significant survey every single year in Alameda, which we cannot do.

So we look at multiple things, and one of the things we look at is the American Community Survey data. We take three year averages of how people are getting to work on bike, walking, and driving alone, And we set target percentages in the final column there for those. And we look at three year averages because these are so these are also rolling averages, just like Lisa was mentioning, for the fatalities and severe collisions. And what we're seeing is in 2024, we are seeing some, I would say, a trend in increasing in walking commute trips, kind of holding steady for bicycle trips and then the drive alone percentage going down. Commute trips are not the majority of trips that people make, but this is just another data point for us to look at.

And there's others that are also in the report. And with that, I am going to pass it over to Scott.

Thank you, Rochelle. Good evening Chair Weitzi, members of the Transportation Commission. Scott Wickstrom, City Engineer. What to look for in 2026? We'll talk about the big projects right off the top. Obviously, Central Avenue completion, we are targeting completion sometime this spring. And for those, I always like to remind that spring actually technically ends in June 20. So we're looking April, May ish kind of timeframe for that, hopefully for most of that work to be done and wrapped up. Clement Tilden is underway. Lisa, Ms.

Foster mentioned earlier that we're about ready to start Phase two, which is going to be the much more impactful stage where we actually start closing Fernside. We are going to keep two way or continuous travel lanes through for the Tilden Avenue approach. So that should certainly help the people on and off the island. And we're working with the parents and teachers at Edison Elementary to kind of help facilitate appropriate routes for school children to get to work and also kind of managing the detour that works around that area as well. Repaving, this year's paving project is a lot smaller in size than the 10.6 miles that we did last year in 2025.

We are really focusing on a couple streets, Fernside, which has been before this commission before both as the two way cycle track, but there's some interim striping improvements that are going to be done on the section between Tilden and High Street, essentially to eliminate the two way left turn that's there now and go to a single lane each direction with buffered bike lanes. It's equivalent to what's in place East Of High or East Southeast Of High. And then on Fernside, do have a Neighborhood Greenways project coming up that's looking at for sorry, for San Jose. We have a Neighborhood Greenway coming up for San Jose and the pavement is in horrible condition and we want to get some treatment on that pavement before we invest in our Neighborhood Greenway. So that's the other focus on that.

And then there's a few other minor residential streets beyond that. Oakland Alameda access project will be a tremendous impact to the city and a long term benefit, which I always like to add and make sure that's brought forward. The impacts in 2026 should be relatively minor. As Ms. Foster had already mentioned, the big thing is that when the Webster Tube work is done, that work will be done at night from I believe we're looking at a timeframe from 10PM to 5AM, and that should take about eight months during that time frame.

During the nighttime and overnight hours, Sunday night through Thursday, traffic will be detoured down Lincoln across the Park Street Bridge and back onto the freeway. The next big stage, which would be much more impactful, is actually looking to take place in early twenty twenty seven, early to mid-twenty twenty seven. And that's the single enclosure of the Posey Tube. We have had good working relationship with both Caltrans and ACTC and looking for ways to how we can, one, keep all of that information communicated and then also kind of work to minimize the length and duration of that closure specifically. Last thing that needs to be done and maybe I'll have this pulled together before the next Transportation Commission meeting.

There are six or seven planned fifty five hour weekend closures of both tubes. Those are necessary closures because there are superstructure elements that need to be dropped down and there's no safe way to do that with the roadways open. The contractor does have a schedule out there and we can begin to start putting them out there about when those closures are going to be occurring. Clearly, that timing and schedule is subject to change as they work through progress, but at least give a little bit of awareness to the public about what impacts may be to the public here. Lastly, on those little note, we do have e mail lists and you can click on them.

There's project specific web pages for Central, there's project specific web page for Clement and Tilden. And then in a minute or two, we'll get to OAP specifically and there are some there's a project specific web page that as well in which you can receive updates. Jumping to the Cross Alameda Trail, the little red circle that's there at Pennzoil arguably is complete because the two way cycle track is open and you could access as a pedestrian the sidewalk on the south side of the road. The sidewalk on the north side will remain closed. The contractor is pulling building permits and they're going to start work going vertical on the buildings immediately north and that requires that sidewalk to remain closed for safety as they contract those buildings.

And so that's a big gap that's closed. And obviously, Tilting Clement is in construction right now. So it's a big piece for us as well. Repaving and safety improvements, talked a little bit about this for both San Jose and for Fernside. We will have traffic calming and painted curb extensions, bicycle facilities, particularly improvements on Fernside and also on San Jose.

This year represents a one of the blocks on Fernside where we're going to basically create a pseudo pedestrian refuge with a paint post bulb out and kind of a little bit of a diversion to kind of do a little bit of traffic calming in the area as well to both shorten the crossing, give a little bit of protection for pedestrian if they feel like it halfway across and they go through. So it's an example of some of the types of improvements we're looking to do. Bike racks, this is something that's long been on our agenda. Our staff has built up. We're catching up on some of our later projects and we're looking to knock a few more out.

So we are intending to install 100 racks throughout the city, focusing on schools, businesses, other destinations where they're most commonly used and seen. Then Oakland Alameda Access Project, I probably went out of order, should have left all those updates to here. But on the bottom, ww.oaklandalamedeaccessproject.com is the website. That is Caltrans. So Caltrans, in particularly, get a three week and a six week look ahead schedule from the contractor.

They will filter that and they are will be very clear about trying to get as much information out to the public as they can about when closures are going to start, the duration of closures and when they may end. And in particular, fifty five hour full week closures are going to be a big deal and will be communicated out through this channel and as many other means as possible. And this one is even worse than normal and one of my favorite slides. We've lots of things going on in the city here. And I can't hardly read that even myself here.

But I'll point out a couple of big ones here. The orange are the stuff that's actually in construction right now. The big ones that are up there working on the West is you've got West Midway, which is on in Alameda Point. That's a developer funded project. We are working with a developer to continue to advance that project.

You have Central Avenue, which is well under construction, again, hopefully finished by spring this year. San Jose is also kind of a nice prominent East West one. The North South one, you have Versailles, which is a neighborhood greenway as well. And you have Pacific, which is the third neighborhood greenway that we're looking to get done in 2026. To jump a couple of other notable ones that are on here, you do at Gene Sweeney Park construction and some fencing has started about those the new access points, the Gene Sweeney Parale from the business park to the north, and then we're also going be working on the access points to the South.

Caltrans has awarded their contract for their State Route 61 maintenance project. That's the line that goes down Broadway, East on Otis across the bridge and out Doolittle. That work the preconstruction meeting I know happens in early March. So I would anticipate them to get started, within a month or two after that. Always be mindful that, that is a large project for them that extends all the way into San Leandro.

Not clear whether they're starting on the East End, the West End when they'll actually be in Alameda. Through a lot of the work of our transportation planning group, we were able to work with Caltrans to do improvements at Mound and Versailles, yes, Mound and Versailles, where we're going to basically be heading in rapid rectangular flashing beacons at all four crosswalks. We'll have crosswalks at all four legs, two at each of those intersections. Our RFPs at each of those crosswalks and we're also going to have a pedestrian refuge island in the middle so that pedestrians as they're crossing that busy street can cross two lanes, get to a safe protected place then cross another two lanes. Not quite as beneficial perhaps to say a road diet, but it's what we were able to work with Caltrans to get implemented into their SHOP project in a relatively quick manner and will be a substantive improvement for the pedestrians in that neighborhood.

And then we talked about OWAP, so that's the bulk of the projects here. The blue are the ones that are in design and those are the ones that are coming. So way off to the west, that is base reuse Phase two, as we like to refer to it. You've been out, you know we're a former of Palladium now, the hub and so far and Almanac, all those road reconstructions that the city does a capital project. We are in planning for that second phase, which extends those improvements all the way out to Monarch or Spirits Row or Spiritali.

And that's really functionally dependent on the city being able to sell buildings to fund the capital projects to get that done. A little bit to the east of that, you have Stargill. That is a grant funded project that we are in 35% design right now, looking to get that moving forward. In 2027 or 2028, we have to look at timing about conflicts with other projects as well. The blue is Lincoln Marshall Pacific.

We are at 95% design. We have to work with our federal partners about our grant and what we can actually accomplish with the money they're going to provide with us. There's an ongoing story and there'll be updates provided in the future to this commission. But we're at this point, we're looking at that being a 2028 project somewhat deliberately because what we're also trying to be mindful of is the Posey Tube will be closed for much of 2027 and we don't want to be giving a double hit to a residence of Alameda. So we are somewhat deliberately looking at a 2020 start for that project.

The blue line going north south, that's Grand Street Phase 2. We are at 65% design pushing forward to 90% and are able to squeeze in with a lot of effort and work and elevated two way cycle track on the east side of the road and largely make that function. Those are big highlights of the projects coming forward. There'll be opportunity for questions on any of those projects come forward. So transportation links appear on the page. And then lastly, staff recommendation endorsed the annual plan and report and work plan. I think all three of us are available for questions.

Any clarifying questions again? These are just questions of fact about the presentation. I have a couple, if it's okay. I think it would actually serve the commission well to understand how you define an equity priority area. We haven't talked about that for a while.

Can I add something to that? Also, if we know how much of the city is defined as equity priority area, like percentage wise?

Transportation group uses the BCDC social vulnerability maps. We had somebody do a lot of research for us on various equity priority definitions that are available from different agencies and even considering doing it ourselves and found that that one used a broad spectrum of factors in identifying the areas. I do not know what percentage is covered. Do you have a sense? I don't know.

I can find out.

Could you talk a little bit

more about what those factors are? We talked about those factors, but specifically what are the factors that defined equity priority areas?

I'm going to start. And then if any of my colleagues can think of others or we can look them up. I know they include low income households, access to vehicles, disability status, households with nobody who speaks English, factors like that.

Additional questions on this item? Sorry, please go ahead. Clarifying questions.

Yes, think this is a clarifying question.

I'll stop you, I promise.

You mentioned that in the last couple of few years that both motor vehicle and bicycle accidents have been increasing. You mentioned that both motor vehicle and bicycle serious accidents have been increasing over the last few years. And I think you said we're going to do some analysis of that data. I just wanted to clarify that's what you'd said.

Yes. What I said is pending funding availability. We are planning and hoping to do a technical update to the Vision action plan for our five year Vision Zero action plan update late this year or early next year. And that would include a new high entry corridors map because our existing one relies on 2009 to twenty eighteen data. So it's time to see what's happened since then.

And then the scope beyond that, in terms of a really solid analysis of our crash data kind of depends on our access to resources. And we would likely bring to you some kind of scoping discussion for that.

Thank you. And one other clarifying question. You showed some numbers, which I believe were violations or citations by APD. Did you also say that number has gone up since previous years?

I did indeed. They did per our analysis 70% more citations and warnings with traffic stops last year in 2025 than the previous year in 2024. And to my memory, the 2023 number was similar to the 2024 number. So this was a big jump.

Okay. Thank you. I could ask another clarifying question, perhaps over reading into a picture that was shown. So it was mentioned that 100 bicycle racks are going to be installed. Per the picture, it looked like they are not the bicycle cages. And I just wanted to confirm that that's the current plan to have the horseshoes, if you will, but not the cages, correct?

Yes. Think you're referring to the lockers?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay.

The cages for the bikes, the lockers.

There are bike cages, but they're usually, they're massive. So, yeah, it would be 100, mostly probably single U racks, we call them, which each hold two bikes. So that would be 200 new bike parking spaces. Yeah, this is purely just a rack installation program.

Thank you. And I just want to confirm one more thing that was said, but I think it's important to repeat. So the plan to continue the build out of infrastructure to Monarch, understood as what you said was planning is going to continue in 2026 for construction to begin in 2027, but there is no way that construction will begin in 2027 without sales of the buildings. Correct?

That is correct. So Alameda Point is kind of a self funded portion of the city where sales of buildings get reinvested into the infrastructure. And so yes, we're continuing the plan, the design process, but yes.

Great. You. Appreciate it. I have no more clarifying questions. Anyone else have clarifying questions? With that, seeing no more other clarifying questions, let's move to public comments specifically. Oh, except Lisa Foster has one more comment. Then we'll move to public comment.

Rochelle Wheeler kindly pulled up a little tidbit that answers partially your question. When we did the Vision Zero action plan, 30% of our roadways fell within a equity priority area defined by the BCDC social vulnerability areas. But I will say that that has been updated since then. And Alameda has a somewhat smaller coverage now.

Is that good, Commissioner Kim? Good?

That's good. Great.

Seeing no other clarifying questions, let's move on to public comments specifically on this agenda item. Are there any public speakers?

So far we have two in person. William Morrison.

Report with a little bit more of an attempt to get into various things. And kind of like a semi apology, one of the things that I'm not supposed to talk about is in public, in the non agenda comment was something I did talk about, which was the railway the railway bridge. I see a comment in here on page 20 of the draft report. Army Corps Fruitvale Rail Bridge Hazard Removal. Okay.

That's back to what I'm talking about. I would caution you, and I would also like to, shall we say, recommend to you that you don't be too, shall we say, accommodating for the US Army Corps of Engineers. They have a odd sense of capacity to stiff you right and left. I've done work with them in the past, so that's kinda like where we are. And, again, from the viewpoint of just in time or just in case, just in case somebody really wants to develop something that requires rail into Alameda, that bridge is gonna be very expensive to replace.

If it's there, it's going to be cheap. If it's not there, nothing's going to happen. That's one. The other little thing is, Scott, if I'm correct here, everything that's going to happen on Fernside is paint. Am I correct? You're not going to go out there

and So say the way that this works with public comment is you just direct it directly to the chair.

The basic point is then, if it's paint, I have no problem with what is going to be done at Fernside. If you start constructing, again, that's spending money that you might want to change later on. I am of the opinion, which is a little bit different from what is being stated in here, that the Fernside, of, let's say, restyping, calming safety situation is still a, shall we say, a concept influx. And so I recommend to the Transportation Commission that if there's something you want to cut, do it there because it's still there. I have at least 50 people that I can bring in here to talk to you about how they feel about this.

I know you've seen them already once or twice. And I'm not trying it's just a point. The last time we thought things were still not settled but not cast in stone. This looks like it's cast in stone. So that's the only other comment. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Next, we have Jim Strelow.

Hi, Jim. Good evening. So if injuries are no longer are lower in Alameda than the California statewide numbers, then why is it such a priority in Alameda? And I also just don't understand that you should be eliminating DUI and medical accident, you know, from your statistics because right now, you're including, oh, well, that included two DUIs. I don't understand how Vision Zero is ever going to stop a DUI or someone who has a heart attack while driving.

Vision Zero should include a year round education in all representative languages. Safe route to schools is simply, you know, not addressing ninety five percent of the rest of the people that need to be educated. You know, whether or not it's at Massock senior center or at the library or other things, that should be a pretty high number to be included in a budget or in a priority because people are not being educated. It's the people wearing black at night, not carrying flashlights or, you know, all those sort of things that affect some of the accident rates and are not being addressed because the public is not being educated about these problems. I'm glad you mentioned the the parking meters because I mentioned at an earlier meeting that I can barely read the parking meter when I try to put money into it, at least at the one at Santa Clara And Webster near Cafe Gelie.

And I think that they're kind of all that way and whether or not that the readability of them needs to be addressed during the year because it's not fair to the people paying to not be able to see what what's happening. My personal vehicle preference when I'm driving is to avoid all intersections with the dedicated bike signal either left or right. Those intersections are so messed up with those signals that I just simply choose my route to avoid them. And that I wonder how many other people are doing it. In other words, when you're making these changes, you are doing traffic diversions because people are just gonna be sick and tired of waiting too long at these intersections and that it's, you know, you're you're just frustrating drivers.

Then when you install speed humps, your track record so far is to not inform the impacted residents in front of their residents where those speed humps are going to be installed. I mentioned that because of Versailles and that one of the speakers here on the commission said, Oh, Oakland has a resident veto. Alameda does not. If you don't if you feel that, you know, the speed hub makes a noise while you're trying to sleep at night, and you don't have a veto Thank you

for your comments. Any additional public comments?

No. None. None at this time.

Seeing no other public comments, let's move on to discussion questions by the commission. I usually try to narrowly focus on a specific issue. This is one of those meetings where there's lots of issues and you can talk about essentially anything you want. So here's our opportunity to do that thing. Any questions from the commissioners? No. That was Commissioner Daryl Abrams. Drew, please.

I've got tons. This is Do my favorite thing

a couple and then we'll

No, I'm serious. I actually was going to propose that. I wanted to just speak first to the topic of traffic safety and then I'll But mix it just wanna underline that so this is good news and bad news. One fatality in in the calendar year is compared to previous years is a meaningful improvement. But it happened at the, at an intersection with a similar pedestrian fatality.

And so that's bad. I I do want to thank staff. I know Lisa Foster puts a lot of work into this. The report has a table that describes and maybe other staff are involved too. So thank you to the others.

Thank you, Susie Hofstedter as well. But, well, because like police records are opaque to the public. The public can't know what happened other than seeing, you know, the flashing lights. And so having these stories about, well, what happened in terms of just the relevance to understanding how that situation could be avoided in the future is very useful. I just wanted to flag that again, the good news of the number of of fatalities being down.

But this this hits the trends of the youngest and the oldest are most vulnerable. Pedestrians, Pedestrians, people people outside outside of of vehicles vehicles most most vulnerable. Vulnerable. I'm not gonna read this aloud, but the 88 year old senior hit in a wheelchair by a driver at high end Encinol is it's shocking. It's not like these are issues beyond these are societal issues, but I I think these stories really can kind of help direct resources towards where they can make the most most impact.

We can see a lot of factors here like cars are too big. The city can't regulate that but the city can put engineered solutions in the right places. So I I just wanted to begin by really just maybe grounding a little bit of that, appreciating the work staff does to dive into this and flagging that it's bad news that two pedestrians have been killed along Ralph Appusato Memorial Parkway in very close proximity to each other. If If staff have something to add there, I'd be curious to hear what options might be on the table for ramp.

We are planning, as part of the fatal crash response program, we are planning to look at this corridor as a whole. And we have started that work in the Public Works Department. When we have a fatality and we go to the site and we review what happened, we stand in silence and think about everything that happened. In this case, we had just done improvements at that intersection right before this happened. And so we saw no low hanging fruit.

The fatal crash response program is intended to be things we can do relatively quickly and without public outreach. And so a change to the configuration of that roadway is a much bigger project. So we do have it on our docket, but not for this year because of that staffing and funding limitations and also just general working on a lot of things for the community as well.

Completely understand the limitations. I appreciate the context, Lisa. I do want to just say again, one of the kind of non expert positions I like sharing of just that harder materials are more effective. And it's it's interesting to see when Public Works makes those decisions. So like at Park Street and and Blanding where drivers have taken out the control box for the the signals multiple times.

City engineers put in hard metal posts there. It's the clear zone, but they justify putting in hard metal posts. There are concrete barriers protecting the wrought iron fencing at Lincoln Park now. I'm just sharing these examples to hopefully maybe equip equip engineers with examples of how the city can deploy harder materials. Again, many factors go into these understood that you're balancing many priorities.

But I just wanted to begin some thoughts this evening on the the both on how the good news of having such a short list of of fatalities and serious injuries, but also needing to continually reevaluate the toolkit that can be deployed to address those. So I will pause there and let you mix

Thank it you. For your comments. Mr.

Kim?

Yeah. I I kind of have a related question kind of about the data and different things. But so the agency I work for actually defines accidents as avoidable or unavoidable, but we you know, we do it for various other reasons. Right? Is there, like, a way of doing that for this data or is it just way too subjective to do it? I'm just kind of curious.

One exception we make, you know, as a matter of policy is that if somebody has a medical event and they get into a collision and they're the one that dies, we don't include that in our Vision Zero data because that is where you really are talking about an accident. And whereas the Vision Zero world, you talk about collisions and crashes. They're generally considered preventable by some means. But Vision Zero is very expansive. It's not just about roadway design.

It's also about enforcement and car design and culture, attitudes about driving and safety and being a pedestrian and a bicyclist as well. So it would be very difficult to come up with another clean way to pull more out of the data.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was expecting. I just wanted to kind of ask anyways. And then the other question I had is the data that we're showing is really just pure number of incidents. While it kind of feels like a lot of our numbers are showing like a big increase in bicycling, a big increase in walking, a decrease in driving. Is there well, I guess, what I'm wondering if we normalize the data by like actual amount of travel or something. Is there a way to make would would the data look a lot different to to us? Like, would it change our the way that we're making these decisions? I'm just kind of wondering Like

like how many accidents per bike trip?

Yeah. Or something like that. Or like auto accidents by BMT or something like that, yeah.

That would be nice. We don't have the denominator. It's expensive to get. But yeah, when we look at the increasing number of crashes involving bicyclists, you do ask like how many more bicyclists do we have on our roadways now? Maybe this statistic is not as bad as it looks.

The state does some data looking at pedestrian and bicyclist collision rates in different cities. And Berkeley frequently shows up as the worst city for bicyclists. But we all know that they have a whole university and a lot of people who ride bikes. And so if you did it per mile of bike riding, they would not be at the top bad. We have a lot of suburban places where it would be much more dangerous per ride, but it's just hard to that kind of data.

Sorry, don't you have proxy data though for the actual increases in bike trips? Because you showed an intersection that it's gone up by whatever it was, 134 to 153. And it seems like unless we know differently, that's a great proxy for, we probably have a similar ratio increasing throughout the city. And so you can just use that number and look at the bike crashes and see if that number gets better over time.

Yeah. I think that same slide showed like a mode split change and things like that. So I I don't yeah. I am I would defer to staff, like, if that is a good proxy or not, you know, but Yeah. Yeah.

It's the kind of thing we'll be thinking about with our scoping. I will say there is no just. You know, we we probably There ways for us to come up with this, but it's not going to be that simple. Rochelle is standing up.

Yeah, I'll just add that I think we are kind of trying to get to what you're talking about, Commissioner Kim, but in a very qualitative way. Like in looking at these different data points for mode share, and I know for bike and head, each year we're like, Okay, overall, seems like things are holding steady or they're going up. And then we can kind of then in our heads think about what was happening over here with the crashes and kind of do some sort of comparison, but trying to get to take that and get some specific numbers, I think, would be a much bigger effort that may not actually be that accurate.

I can add one thing, and that is when it comes to fatal collisions and severe injuries, our goal is zero. So we can normalize data, but what we're trying to achieve is zero.

Comment on that topic, is I'm looking at the state and county comparison and relative to that, the city of Elimetre is doing better. But that's because at the state level in the last twelve years, that number has gone up by about 40%, which is a lot. And I wonder if the state has any research, shall we say, on why that might be relevant to this discussion.

Probably we can do more digging in. I will say the states line looks more like the national line. Alameda has gone if you look at what happened between 2015 and 2019, we were counter trend. So that could be because we are making safety efforts. And when I look at this, just for more context, it's not quite a fair comparison because we don't have freeways.

So what I'm looking at more are we farther apart or closer than we were? And we farther apart overall since say 2015.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. No, I think I guess my point was we've talked about the fact that it's pending funding to do some of this investigation in more detail. And I guess my point is at the state level and as you pointed out, at the national level, there is probably a lot more funding for those kind of investigations. And I just wonder if, as you say, we'd sort of countertrend there, but having that information from a much larger dataset might be instructive.

Sorry, isn't the dataset similarly sized cities in California? Like it seems like it's fine to compare against improvement is good, but it's also like we actually we are spending correctly, by the way, lots of money to make these things safer. And it seems like the actual comparison is supposed should be what do cities of our size that are doing things or not doing the same things we are, where are they at on the number? And does that mean what we're doing is really working relative to the cities? Anyway, Commissioner Nachtel.

And through this discussion, it reminded me of a thought I had as we were looking at this during presentation. And to clarify, both Alameda County and the state include freeways. Is that correct? So, it's not quite apples to apples in that regard. But we do want to see lowering into Chair Weitzi's point, if we were able even to compare more comparable cities that might help to give a better picture. That said, is good that it's lower. But they aren't quite apples to apples.

Other commissioner questions or comments? Please go ahead. Go in some

more specific directions because now I I should have begun with this. This annual report always shows how the city punches above its weight. Know? I know it's fewer than 10 staff members on so many different topics. So if could I ask about so I'm I'm glad the city is working on demand based parking pricing and just managing parking across the city. I was curious to know the Civic Center garage work was flagged as coming along. And is that going to involve moving monthly pass holders over into that garage?

That decision is not made yet. Staff did a review of that monthly parking pass, the business district parking pass program. And that was the recommendation was to move those parking passes that are currently in the surface surface lots, which are more popular for people who are coming and going and giving business to our businesses, is because the garage didn't exist when the permit program was created. But we held off on bringing that recommendation any further until we could make improvements in that garage so that it would be a better place for people to store their vehicles while they work. And so, the next steps, we'll have to finish this construction and then we'll consider next steps.

Okay. I'll just say as a I can appreciate that there's something to navigate with the with the businesses that have those monthly passes. But the just the value of that surface lot is like you like you said, it's very useful to promote high turnover there. So I think if the city can, you know, with both carrots and sticks, move monthly pass holders over into the garage, That that will really just benefit the the experience and the, you know, and like also a lot of what we all hear about and think about are the, you know, the appearances and the availability of parking in that surface lot will be beneficial. Anyone else wanna talk about parking?

If not, I'll move on to neighborhood greenways.

Good.

Thank you. I am So I'm curious to hear about the San Jose repaving, what length that will cover? And the annual report flagged a question of where the next mile will go of the program. So also curious to hear how you all are thinking of picking that mile. Sorry, two questions, different.

Yes. So the first question I'll answer and I'll have Michelle come up with a second. The San Jose, we are looking to essentially go from Oak Street all the way to the far West end of San Jose, which is the limits of the neighborhood Greenway for this segment anyway that we're looking to do. And then so for the next segment?

Yes. And it actually will continue up Morton. Morton is one of the additional streets that is going to be repaved as well, so beyond even the current slow street. For the second phase, Phase II, we haven't determined what that additional mile will be, but the ideas that we have right now are to look at where we can kind of fill in the network. And so, they might end up being like some different smaller segments that can create more connectivity rather than another long corridor.

For instance, we have a project to do some traffic signal or some crossing improvements at Wilmachan and Pacific Avenue. We got grant funding for that. And that's only two blocks from the current end of the neighborhood greenway on 9th Street, which well, the end of the slow street, which is what we have the funding to to the east to to implement. So we're looking at, well, maybe those two blocks or another good two blocks to continue between 9th and Wilma Chan. And then once we're in that area and we know that now the Gene Sweeney projects, the connector paths are opening, and then what one of those connectors is on 8th Street.

So the neighborhood Greenway, there's a planned neighborhood Greenway between Pacific and, Jean Sweeney Park on 8th Street. So we're looking at maybe that would be a good segment to target. So we'll be looking at the network, to see where there are other opportunities like that to implement.

Great. Glad to hear that maybe a mile can go a long way.

It's okay. I'm just going just go for just second. Any other commissioner questions?

Yes. I'll jump in with one. A question about the transportation capital projects map and kind of what's coming up. Like I noticed it kind of shows like a lot of projects in construction and a lot less projects in planning. And I guess I'm curious, is there, like, a reason for that? Like, are we doing too much right now, or is it just available funding? That's just kind of how things are shaking out. I'm I'm just kinda curious, like, because I guess it feels like when you look at this, a lot of stuff is happening now, but I don't know how much stuff is going be happening like four or five years from now.

It's a fair question. And to look back at a little bit of history and background, Central Avenue was a ten year gestational process until we got to construction. Clement, I think, was five or six, Tilden, four or five. We're getting more efficient in terms of initial kind of outreach to construction. But what that means is we have this pretty big compression of projects and work.

Really it's a fair question what are the next large grant funded projects? But these are projects that are going to be out of beyond 2028, 2029 construction, 2030 construction. That's when we start talking about Burnside, two way cycle track of which we have to still look for and secure funding for, etcetera. But yes, that is a fair statement. The other thing that you're not seeing on here is we did not include the planned repaving projects, which adds a lot of blue in the background and makes it look a little more impressive.

I will add that we did kind of in response to a lot of the public input we received over at McCartney are going to break up our paving project a little bit differently. So we have a little more public outreach and engagement. This next year, just as a high level, Fernside and San Jose are the highlights with a couple of the residential streets, Morton and I think Peru might be the one. Then in 2027, we're going have a series of smaller residential streets on the West End. But really when we get to 2028 is when we get to some more larger streets.

And again, 2028, that puts us beyond OAP. That is when we're looking at Ralph Appazato Parkway, right, from Webster all the way to Maine. It's also where we're looking at from Atlantic going East to Sherman, Challenger and Marina Village Loop. And those streets have much more opportunities to do substantive kind of changes in street safety improvements. It's a couple of years out, which means that with being mindful of outreach and timeliness that later this year, we'd want to come back in front of this body to kind start bringing those kind of proposed changes here to the public. But yes, those we did not include the paving down here, this particular one.

Yes, that's helpful. Thank you.

Commissioner Blank?

Feel like we're jumping about a bit, but I wanted to go back to the Greenways just for a moment. Just to reiterate something that we I think sort of touched on when we talked about Pacific in a recent commission meeting, which is that obviously it's fantastic that we are expanding the Greenways as we have discussed and in multiple places. I would like to know if we have given any consideration to the fact that these streets were for the most part previously slow streets, which meant they had at every intersection a barricade, which made it very obvious that driving was discouraged on that street. And once the street becomes a greenway, the barricades go away. And obviously, we introduced new traffic calming measures.

I would like to know if there's anything additional we can do to make it more obvious that those streets are discouraged, shall we say, for through traffic? Because my sense is on the section of Pacific where this has happened, it is now less obvious, even though we have the speed humps and everything, it's less obvious that this is a street where driving is

discouraged? You want better branding essentially on Greenways?

I do.

Thank you for the question. That's something that we are considering as we move this forward. And we haven't landed on what that will be or the timing of that yet, but we are considering that and heard those comments. We did partly as a result of the community input, take some speed and volume data on Pacific on that section that was implemented. I don't have the full data in front of me, but in general, we found that some of the volumes did go up a little bit.

But our threshold of 1,500 cars per day or less, we're still well below that on Pacific. We started off pretty low before with the slow street barricades. And so it's still well below that. And we did find that the speeds have come down by multiple digits. So, so that was good news to see that.

Okay. Thank you. Other commissioner questions? Please. Oh, go ahead. Commissioner Nachtogal, go ahead.

So I feel like this is kind of an easy question.

It's not a test.

With the Oakland Alameda access project and the weekend closures, Please just tell me that when the city is working with Caltrans on planning those closures, none of them will happen on the first weekend of the month?

Yes. We made that very clear early on that antiques fair, which includes a lot of traffic on and off the island using the tubes, happened in the first Sundays of the month. And so yes, it's been very clear to the Caltrans and it's in the contract. It's actually written in the contract as

such. I

actually have a follow-up question on that. First, thank God. Second, so what changed? So how I guess so the so Caltrans came in here twice, I think. And they're like, we've gotta we gotta shut down one lane. It's gonna last forever. It's gonna happen on both sides. There's nothing we can do. And then here, last week, they announced great news. At least half this project, we're gonna shut down just at night completely, but we're not gonna do single enclosures twenty four seven. Who did that? How did we do it? What changed in their minds? Help me understand how something that was like basically impossible suddenly be maybe it was Lisa. Was basically impossible and now suddenly it was like, we can do this. So what did what did we or someone else do?

It's a combination of multiple kind of things. And I'm there's a little bit of guesswork I'm going on here. But we, and I'll say Lisa, early on, we, the city of Alameda, pushed the Alameda County Transportation Commission about like, hey, this is critical to us. The duration of these closures directly impacts both our residents and our businesses, functionally the well-being of the City Of Alameda. And so we were really aggressive with working with Caltrans like, hey, what can we do?

What can we do? We did bring a consultant on board that proposed functionally exactly this situation and was basically kind of told that they weren't sure Caltrans basically said that they were not ready to do that. Now Caltrans from their part, I'll give them their due. They're very concerned about safety and worker protection. That's a big deal for them. There's far too many highway workers that have been killed over the years, right? So they have a policy that they institute essentially called positive protection, where you want a physical barrier so that there's no delineators to protect workers, right? You got to have something more positive than that. You have to have cable functionally. And so that was really what was proposed.

Now the big concern they had with the work that our consultant was proposing was it's not so much that you couldn't get positive protection. You close the tubes and nobody gets through there. You've got positive protection by default. It's how do you actually do the construction and then open up the roadway, two lanes of the roadway in the next morning safely for the motoring public. Right? We've got formwork. We got demolition. We got formwork. We got curing. We got other facets and and things that are happening to build that walkway that are going to extend out into the roadway a little bit.

And and that really, was the the biggest concern. Now from a consultant, you're like, well, here's what the contractor may do. It's only when you have a contractor that they can basically definitively say, hey, here's what I'd want to do. Now here's me kind of doing a little bit of surmising, which is to say Caltrans idea of putting a K rail in there, you had a six foot area to work in. How are going get your people and your equipment down there to actually do that work during the daytime?

That's the challenge. And I think for the contractor, it probably works out easier for them to get their materials and bodies and men to get down there to do the work with the full lane closure driving down the lanes and then have much more elbow room to work during the nighttime, then they just got to make sure they make it safe for the neighbor. That was the big, big difference. On the other end, we've been on the Posey Tube, we've been pretty clear them to what can be done to reduce the timing that minimize the duration. And initial engineers estimates were at eighteen months closure for Posey Tube.

That is now that from the engineering standpoint, which pushed down to twelve. And the numbers we're seeing in there, the critical path schedule by the contractor are in line and factually a little bit less than that. So we're looking at we'll be on the lower end of that twelve months.

Okay. Additional questions?

I have one more, but I just want to underscore this more that like the amount of work the City of Alameda went into on behalf of residents like, I mean, Scott said consultant. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, the city hired contractors to effectively argue the That's case true. With sufficient or at least to make an informed case. Sorry. I'm going I don't wanna actually open All I wanted to do let me let

me Please take some praise. Get up there. It's fine.

No. Let let me just say that I, from my position as a resident, it looked like the city went above and beyond on behalf of residents for a smaller city in the region to work, to effectively work with larger regional bodies. And I take back all I said that may have been mischaracterizing details more just to say, I think residents can be pleased by the city's advocacy.

Exactly why I wanted it said out loud in this meeting. Any additional commissioner questions? Lisa, please. Go ahead.

If you wanna buy somebody a beer, you can buy them for Scott and me.

Okay. That's fine.

I actually Of ask one more final

course.

I I want this is actually going back to Scott's earlier point on kind of further out in the pipeline of projects. And I I I think this I know you all have resource constraints, but I did want to flag. I think the city should be thinking about when Webster and the park corridors are on the enter some amount of pre planning. Some in terms of like 2,030 is coming sooner than we all think. The there continue to be like the city is doing great with the East West corridors for all modes and just keeps they're just these these geographic constraints like to get back to even even this the the our public commenter mentioning the legacy of the rail lines has led to to these sufficient corridors for East West travel.

I will say the future of rail is link 21. It's underground, but we've we have flexibility for East West corridors. And it's that North South that just keeps on being a challenge. And so I I'm curious to hear if there are any thoughts tonight, but more just to say that like, if there are ways to start the right amount of planning the planning for those, the Park Oak and the Webster Corridors. I wonder if that could prime the pipeline for the future.

Rhetorical question or question, question?

I'll just say I think that it's a good point and we can take that into consideration. And we're always thinking about grant opportunities and this is definitely an area where we would need grant funding. So that would be the planning before the planning. Yeah.

Well, you for taking an open ended question. I'll just I imagine I know Webster And Park are very important places for lots of stakeholders. So maybe there are opportunities to just for the city to think strategically about what is the right type of conversation that starts planting the seeds. So I'll I'll leave it at that. And those were all my thoughts other than to say the city punches above its weight and thank you to staff for all this work.

Thank you, commissioner. Additional commissioner questions or comments? Mr. Cohen?

I have one that's somewhat minor and probably doesn't have a simple answer. But we talk a lot about the various bike infrastructure that has been implemented and is on the calendar to be implemented in the next year or two. And all of that is fantastic. But I wanna just briefly touch on all the other streets in the city that don't have explicit bike infrastructure. And I want to bring up one point which is at many, I don't know if it's most intersections in the city that have stoplights, Many of those stoplights are responsive to the traffic that arrives at the intersection normally due to an, I think, an induction loop in the roadway itself.

And if you are traveling by bicycle, those that functionality doesn't respond to the presence of a bicycle, which means there are a number of intersections in the city where if there is no traffic, there is only, at least in the direction that the bicycle is traveling, there's only a bicycle, that light will not change in favor of the direction that the bicycle is traveling. I'm sure that is a very difficult problem to solve because street lights are very expensive and have not replaced very often and the technologies that even do that is complicated. But as we think since this is a very wide ranging agenda item, I wanted to bring up that topic and see if the city engineer had any thoughts on it.

I totally understand the question. And one of the things is whenever you have a bicycle facility, so if you actually have a strike bike lane, it's required that you have detection for that bicycle facility. As a matter of practice, we want by detection at all the intersections. So there's two different there's multiple different ways things set up within the city. We have a lot of older traffic signals, ones that have technology, frankly, that are from the 1980s and 1990s, really old and outdated.

Detection systems are old. They're functionally going just fixed time, thirty seconds one direction, thirty seconds the other. You show up, you're going to wait twenty nine seconds, and that's the fact. There are other ones in most of our network, we are moving away from the induction loops and towards video cameras. So if we have the infrastructure, if you will, the computer, the controller at the intersection that could accommodate video detection.

We prefer that in most of our intersections are set up that way. That can detect, bicycles and cars, and it's pretty effective in doing so. And so what I would recommend that anyone do, and this is both for you and as commissioner and for anyone in the public, if you do come across, specific signalized intersections where a bike is not being detected, submit a C click fix, request, and we will into look that and try to get a sense of what that is. And again, some of them may be fixed time that you'll have to wait around, but you should always be detected as cyclist. If you're, in the lane, now you have to be careful.

Sometimes if you're way too far over by the park lane, could be out. One of the things we also can do is it's a little bit tricky on areas where there's no bike lanes, but the indicator bike, right? You see the little line there with the bicycle, that indicates where you should position your bike such that the camera can see you and be detected. So we do endeavor to have detection at all signalized intersections. It's quite possible because I don't ride every intersection nor do our traffic signal techs ride every intersection. So that having that information coming from the public is beneficial for us.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Additional commissioner comments or questions? Mr. Nachtigal?

So, would be remiss if I didn't comment on the fact that the Cross Alameda Trail is nearly done. And I think that's great. And after all my years of asking when is the Cross Alameda Trail going to be done, it is almost there. And, I also wanted to say that the continued fine tuning of some of the trickier spots along the Cross Alameda Trail, I'm glad that's still occurring as well. I think that it will be a great asset for the community when it's really truly complete.

And then it fits together with the low stress bike network. So, thank you. And to lift up what Commissioner Daria Abrams has said, the city does a lot. So thank you. The staff does a lot.

We have a world class Viking city and getting better every week, which is great. If it's okay, I have a couple of comments, a couple of questions. First, this might be mistaken, but I believe we have always had one or two holdouts from the Safe Routes to Schools school list and to see 18 of 18, way to go. That's great. Getting it past that one yard line. So that's that's great to see a literal perfect score on that. That's exciting. It came up in public comment. I don't know if we have the information at hand, but I remember the number is large. I believe there was a study that was the cost to rehab the Fruitvale Bridge and there was a ginormous number back in the day.

But if and if we don't have that, that's fine. We don't have that, which is okay. It's a large number. I promise you. It's on the Internet somewhere.

I wanted to talk a little bit about a decision that I maybe don't agree with. So so these 100 bike, let's let's find out if I do agree with it. These 100 bike racks that are being installed at various points in the city, to have none of them be the cage, I found a little surprising because, you know, there are some comments about bike theft. It feels anecdotally like bike theft is down, which is great. But I was curious why that option was not considered or if it is still on the table because it my understanding is those are popular with a certain segment of people with expensive bikes that are a little uncomfortable leaving them not in the cage.

Yes, it's a good question. I mean our goal is to do both. So it's not an eitheror. We have not been installed a kind of a we've been installing bike racks more like one or two, but we have a long list of requests. And we definitely have areas where there really are no racks, like some of these kind of station districts like along Ensenault. And so we really want to fill that in. And so we feel like this is important. It's something the community has been asking for a lot. At the same time, we know the community would like more of the bike lockers. They're much more expensive per parking space.

We not only have to pay to purchase the locker and have it installed, we then pay an annual fee for maintenance of

all of those

lockers. If the door gets broken, which happened a couple times this year in two different locations, the city pays to have those replaced. And so it's a little harder to just to go out and do that. But there are some grants that we look at and decide if between the grant and what that will cover and if do we have other funds that can supplement that or not. So we'll definitely keep our eyes on where we could put in more of the lockers.

And then also, there are now larger lockers that will more easily accommodate the longer bikes and the wider bikes. So we're definitely eyeing opportunities for where we could get funds to put some of those in and where we would put those. And then the other thing we're doing is our thinking about whether or not our current bike lockers are in the right places. And some of them, like the ones in the back of the garage, for instance, I don't know if any of you have been down there. It's not a very pleasant place.

Those are some of the first lockers that were installed in the city in 2015. So they're kinda starting to reach the end of their life. But what part of this garage project is going to do is we're going to pull the lockers towards the front of the garage so they're much more visible, much more accessible. There are not people sleeping behind the lockers. There are not trash isn't building up around there and other awful things.

And we're also going to pull out half of them because they're not being used efficiently. And we're looking at ways where we could, after doing some refurbishment of those lockers, where else we could put them. And so those are some of the other things that we're thinking about is just how to use the ones. We have 134 bike parking spaces and lockers right now. And I think there are some ways that some of those are used much more highly than others.

Can I ask a couple of follow ups, if it's okay? Just when we say it's a lot more expensive to ballpark, what's the I realize there's maintenance and ongoing thing, but just on an installation basis, what's it? Is it a tenfold? Is it a one hundredfold difference? What's the difference between the horseshoe and the walker?

That's a good question. I would say at least 10 times more expensive to purchase and install.

And you said there's 134 spaces that are in the How many locations is that though? There's four per location, there's eight per location? It's about

maybe 10, I'm going to say.

10 locations. Yes. Okay. Interesting. Okay. That's helpful. Speaking entirely for myself, I actually think one of the ways to support a certain segment of nervous ish bike riders is to give them this opportunity because there are going to be people that have spent a lot of money on bikes that they will not want to let out of their sights unless they can very securely lock them up. And so we have this significant commitment to infrastructure and quite frankly culture that involves biking, I would definitely recommend the city continue to pursue that, at least that option. Certainly not all spaces can be lockers. I get that.

But there's going to be some people that just probably will not bike and will drive if they don't have a place to securely put their bikes. So thank you. That's actually very helpful comments. Yes.

And I'll just add that we do have one of the see click fix categories that we have is bike parking request. And so anybody can submit for either a rack or a locker via that, and then we put that add that to our continuous list and keep that in mind.

That's great. Thank you.

Christian Boin.

Can I

ask a related question about I bike think you said 100 racks that are being planned? Can I ask how they will be attached to the ground? Because there are certain racks that are set into the concrete and then there are certain bike racks that they appear you could remove from the ground with a wrench. And I imagine I'm not the only cyclist who is nervous with some of these racks that look like I could remove it myself. We

at the city try not to do that. I will say there have been some developers who have put in some that we're not very fond of. But they will not be in concrete, the Citi's ones. And we use a combination of bolts and what is the name of the other thing that you hammer into the

hammer anchor.

And hammer and anchor that you can't yeah. Could have Scott come up and describe that in more detail.

Have one installed next meeting here right in the office. Great.

Yes. Well, the ones outside the City Hall potentially could be improved in that way. Okay.

Good to know. Maybe we should have one installed during a meeting. Additional comments or questions? Excellent, rigorous, and actually very focused conversation. Great job, everybody. So I'm going to move to endorse the Transportation 2025 Annual Report and the 2026 Work Plan. Do I have a second for that motion? Second. Seconded. Do all in favor of the endorsement please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Let's move on to number seven, Commissioner Communications on Transportation Related Issues. Any Commissioner Communications? Seeing none, let's adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn at 08:19 p. M. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Have a great night, everyone.