Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

For the city of Alameda for Wednesday, 02/26/2025. We will begin with a roll call.

Thank you. Commissioner Kim.

Present.

Commissioner Dara Abrams. Here. Commissioner Gloin?

Present.

Chair Whitesea? Here. Commissioner Johnson?

Present.

And Commissioner Noctigal?

Here.

Roll call has been taken. Let's move to any proposed agenda changes. Any commissioners ask for any agenda changes? Seeing none, let's move to the next item, staff communications. Take it away, Lisa.

Thank you. Good evening Chair White Sea and Transportation Commissioners. I'm Lisa Foster, transportation planning manager. On February 4, the city council approved the $16,000,000 safe streets for all federal grant, which you all have reviewed for the Lincoln Ave, Marshall Way, Pacific Ave project, which you all have reviewed and endorsed. Though staff did note that this funding is very uncertain in the current federal administration.

And our upcoming transportation commission meetings, we have one on March 26 and May 28 and then no regular meeting until August 27. Though we do ask you all to continue holding the off months if you can, although we I think we released June. So we're not expecting a special meeting in June. And then potential transportation commission agenda items at these future meetings include our next biennial budget capital improvement plan for transportation. We are in a budget year, so it's a big year for that.

The city of Alameda paratransit free bus pass program making that a permanent program after it's been a pilot and communications for the Oakland Alameda Access Project. Public events we have on March 7 and April 11, we're having transportation 101 and Clipper Card for seniors events at Mastic Senior Center. And then the Alameda Bike Festival is scheduled for April 26 at Payton Elementary. The rest of the updates, the project updates, I'll keep very brief because we have the annual report on the agenda. But I did want to say that just this afternoon, the full Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which includes our mayor, endorsed or approved rather a $5,570,000 funding for the Starjal Complete Streets Project that you'll hear tonight.

So that is great news. These are not federal funds. This is yeah, regional funds. So I will stop there.

Great. Thank you, Lisa. Moving on to non agenda item public comments. Are there any non agenda item public comments, either in person or virtual?

Yes, we have one in person. If anyone on Zoom would like to make a comment for the non agenda item, please raise your hand. And first we have Jim Strela.

Good evening, commissioners, city staff. Today, when I was on my bicycle going down Buena Vista, going near Park Street, noticed the huge traffic jam because the Park Street Bridge was open at 03:52 in the afternoon. So I know that the Alameda Channel has, boats have priority and stuff. Just simply, is there any link on the city webpage that points people to known scheduled openings of any of the bridges because I was coming from Webster Street and if I had known and had a need to go into Oakland, I may have wanted to try my hand at going through the Posey Tube rather than going down to Park Street and then find that traffic mess and stuff. So just interesting because it's, it's bad when it's done during commute hours.

But I had been coming from the West End and I had been going northbound on 5th Street turning right onto Buena Vista. There was a, what appeared to be a student just heads down kind of walking. And I had stopped and then made my right hand turn. But it seemed as if that student was just gonna go plowing right through that, through the intersection in the pedestrian walkway. But when I grew up, it used to be people were told to stop, look both ways before proceeding.

And it seems as if this generation, and I'm generalizing, generalizing, generation of at least teenagers and youths, so bicycle pedestrian, no more education is needed to remind people to stop, look both ways and stuff before proceeding. So I'm just wondering what the city or this commission or BikePen down at Alameda, BikeWalk Alameda is planning to do these sort of educations because it seems as if it is desperately needed. Because again, we're all trying to avoid, have safety in mind and stuff. But if the people that are driving cars or walking and bicycling and stuff aren't knowledgeable of the rules or not being reminded to be safe, then we're gonna have more accidents. Thank you.

Thank

you, Mr. Strelo. Any additional public comments on non agenda items?

Yes, we have two online. First is Kyle Wolf.

Hi there, thank you. You'll have to excuse me if I missed that this is updated on the agenda. I didn't see it originally. It was recently brought to my attention that the Oakland Alameda access project which is scheduled to break ground this year may cause closures to the pedestrian walkway in the Posey Tube during its construction. This is an important transportation corridor for people who do not use personal vehicles to get on and off the island and it would be particularly impactful as it coincides with lane closures which will create massive delays for bus lines traveling through the tunnel.

I urge the Transportation Commission to consider alternative options to facilitate getting people between the West Side Of Alameda and Oakland. Specifically, I urge you to look into allocating additional funding for the Oakland Alameda water shuttle to extend service to Mondays and Tuesdays, increase the frequency of service. This has proven to be a massively successful transportation option that reduces congestion in the Posey Tube, especially during commute hours. We're in desperate need of more options like this. Thank you.

Thank you, Kyle. Any additional public comment?

Yes. And Nick, next we have Nick Koziak.

Hello. Can you hear me?

We can. We can.

Okay. You know, so I did see that we've got the cross Alameda Trails, you know, nearing completion, and there's, a few other things. One thing that I really would urge the commission is, like, how can we start adding, you know, access to that to be able to increase the value of it for everyone? One area that I'd really appreciate getting looked at is Poggy Street. You know, that's not too long of a stretch from Ralph Appazado to sort of the end of that street near the back entrance of Academy of Alameda, but it is quite a very dense area with a lot of very large apartment buildings and you have a lot of kids either going to the Academy of Alameda, Nia, ACLC, or Ruby Bridges in that area and there's just one, there's not even a sidewalk on both sides of the street.

There's only a sidewalk on the western side of the street, and it's pretty narrow. And you also have several large driveways that go through it that could use some daylighting. But I think Pogie's probably large enough that you could do a quick build type of bike lane on the west side of it and still keep, you know, two lanes of traffic with all the parking there. And narrowing the street would also probably make it a little bit easier so that, yeah, you don't have people going as fast through it and everything like that for drop off. And the kid the kids in the background making noises would appreciate, you know, a little less hectic way to get to school on Pogie.

I'm so happy

he will

Sounds like you'd appreciate a little less hecticness too as well. Any additional public comment?

We have no more speakers.

Great. Thank you. Moving on from public comment, we're going to go to item number five, the consent calendar. Consent calendar item 5A, approve the draft minutes of the 01/22/2025 Transportation Commission meeting. All commissioners were present, so all commissioners are certainly welcome to vote. Please review any changes. Go ahead, commissioner. No. All good.

I'll second.

Any additional changes, revisions? No. All in favor of the motion to approve, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion to approve carries unanimously. Let's move next to item number six, regular agenda items. Item 6A, this is a voting item, recommend adoption of the 2025 climate action and resilience plan, the CARP, mid cycle update and accept the 2024 annual report. And we will be having a presentation with, I believe, Danielle Mueller. Hi, Danielle.

Good evening, chair, white sea, and commissioners. My name is Danielle Mueller. I'm the sustainability and resilience manager. And I'm here tonight to present to you, our draft final draft climate action and resiliency plan, which also includes our the city's hazard mitigation plan update as well as our 2024 carp annual report. The carp was originally adopted in 2019 by the city, set really ambitious goals, and, we have been setting out to achieve those goals.

CARP called for a five year update of the plan. And part of the it was also good timing. It got us allowed us to evaluate where we where we are as a city, where we wanna go next, to align with a lot of local developments that have happened as well as state laws and regional advances that have been taking place. And the update was part of a city council strategic priority. So we are here tonight to present the final draft climate action plan.

The update included a revision to our vision and goals to better capture our community values. We completed a greenhouse gas inventory for 2022, which was the latest year that data was available, and we'll share that those results with you. We've updated the greenhouse gas mitigation measures and created detailed greenhouse gas action plans. We aligned the resilience component of the carp, which was in 2019, with the local hazard mitigation plan that was adopted in 2022. So we've streamlined those two planning efforts and put them onto the same planning cycle.

And one of the components of the 2019 CARP included strategies for priority based flooding locations, and we've updated those locations as well. So with that, I would like to turn it over to Sammy Taylor joining us from Radian Consultants. They were the technical experts along with Pathways Climate Institute who helped us with the plan update. And if Sammy's available, she's going to go through a few slides, and then I'll come back and conclude.

Great. Thanks, Danielle. Confirming everybody can hear me?

Yep.

Okay. Great. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Sami Taylor, and I'm the senior sustainability planner with Raymene Associates, one of the lead consultants on the CARP update. So like Danielle mentioned, we completed a inventory, of emissions for Alameda for calendar year 2022, to measure the overall progress Alameda has made since its last inventory, which took place in 2015 or was for the calendar year 2015, and to lay the foundation for the CARP update, on the mitigation side.

So Alameda's emissions were estimated to be about two hundred and sixty seven thousand two hundred and sixty seven thousand nine hundred metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022. Nearly two thirds of the emissions are from transportation, and you can see those sources in the light blue and darker blue colors on the graph. And about a third were from building emissions, related to energy use, and those are the light green and darker green colors on the graph. And the remaining 6% are from solid waste and water. You can also see in this graph that the the distribution of these emissions has been fairly consistent over time.

So overall, the city has reduced emissions by 29% compared to 20 2,005, which is the city's baseline year. The goal is to reduce emissions 50% below, 2005 levels by 2030. So therefore, we know that implementing the update CERC along with the expected reductions generated by state policies will help the city achieve this goal. Next slide, please. So like I mentioned on the previous slide, Alameda has achieved a 29% reduction in total emissions compared to 2005 despite population and job growth.

Per capita and per service population, so jobs and population together, are also down 3120% respectively. The most significant drivers of these reductions are 100% renewable power provided by AMP, a 6% reduction in natural gas usage, especially in the residential sector, a 25% reduction in transportation related emissions driven primarily by cleaner vehicles, but also due to a 6% reduction in vehicle miles traveled. However, it's unclear if EMT may be increasing again as travel rebounds after the COVID pandemic. Next slide. Moving right along into the CARP update.

As part of the CARP update process, we conducted a series of community engagement activities, and these included regularly convening the city's green team and holding departmental meetings and touch points with the community through stakeholder meetings, a community survey, pop ups, and two community workshops. Our aim was to connect with the community members through a variety of methods and at different times throughout the process. So this process also helped form a youth climate ambassadors pilot program for representatives of clubs at Alameda Middle and High Schools to meet with the sustainability staff, Daniel, and to learn about the climate work being done and to engage with their fellow students on campus. Next slide. In addition to the CARP specific engagement, there's also been a robust engagement process for the sea level rise adaptation projects and the long term plan.

And this is consisted of more traditional workshops as well as interactive community events, and that work has been folded into mitigation plan update. Next slide. So the first step, in this mid cycle update was to refresh the vision goals to make sure that they still reflect the community's ideals. And so the vision statement is an umbrella for the entire plan, capturing key values and aspirations. The revised vision is rewritten in simpler language and clarifies that equity, is central to this work.

The vision statement was revised with input from the community through the through a survey, stakeholder meetings, public workshop, green team, and department specific meetings. So this is the new the new vision. Alameda aims to be carbon neutral and to build community resilience in ways that enhance our quality of life and reduce environmental burden on vulnerable communities. The whole community is a vital part of this effort. Next slide.

So next, goals broadly define what we want to achieve in the future, like carbon neutrality and community resilience. The 2019 CARP included one goal for greenhouse gas reductions, six goals for climate adaptation, and one goal for implementation. The revised goals streamline the goals, by collapsing six adaptation goals into one related to community resilience and splitting the implementation goal into one for community education and activation and the other into city into and into city leadership. So streamlining streamlining the the adaptation adaptation goal goal recognizes recognizes that, that, one, a number of the strategies to improve resilience are crosshazard. Two, many of the goals were really actually written as strategies.

And three, making the goal language more aligned with the existing and revised GHG related goal. We also incorporated language from the existing, Oak goals, which is the, flooding and sea lions related work, being done, alongside the GARP. And then finally, we wove equity and environmental justice language into the goals as a whole. So the goals were revised with input again from the community through a survey, stakeholder meetings, public workshops, and our green team and departmental meetings. So the first goal is carbon neutrality. The second goal

is

community resilience. Goal three is community education and activation. And goal four is related to city leadership. Next slide. So next the CARP update aimed to clarify the greenhouse gas reduction targets. It maintained the CARP's target to reduce emissions 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 and clarified the city's goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, which is in line with state targets and policies. Next slide. So the C. P. Includes strategies, grouped within six within six different focus areas, and implementing these strategies will help, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help, the city reach its reduction goal.

So the areas include city leadership, community activation and education, transportation, buildings, waste, and urban greening. The focus areas are shown here in dark blue boxes up top, and each includes specific strategies listed below with more detailed actions, included in the actual CARP report itself. So the light blue squares, show the strategies that were included within the 2019 CARP, so existing strategies and ongoing, and the gold boxes represent new strategies that we developed throughout this process. So some of these are brand new, and some were broken out of the existing strategies into new stand alone strategies. And we did the latter to be able to better track progress, of these strategies and align them with best practices for measuring greenhouse gas reductions.

And based on discussions with city staff and the community, we added the new topics for land use and transportation, parking and curb management, public transit service, goods and services, and city facilities and operations. Next slide. So similarly, we worked with Pathways Climate Institute to revise the resilience components of the CARP, which are now aligned with the local hazard mitigation plan update, and that planning cycle. And the 2019 measures and the reevaluation of the climate related hazards, outlined in your screen, with the red, boxes have now informed updates to the LHMP. Next slide.

So furthermore, like Daniel mentioned, this process also helped the city update its list of strategies for location based priority flooding. Currently, it's identified 16 priority areas and projects to reduce the impacts of sea level rise, groundwater groundwater groundwater wise, excuse me, and flooding. With that, I'll hand it back to Danielle. Thank you so much.

So just a quick update on our related to the 2024 annual report, the accomplishments, that we, as a city, have done in the last year related to, CARP implementation. We completed this CARP update. AMP continues to provide a 100% clean electricity, which is really foundational to everything in the in the plan. As Sammy mentioned, we, launched this, youth climate ambassadors program, which has been, really fun, meeting with high school students monthly to, help them understand what we're doing as a city to implement, to do climate work and how they can, take some of that work into the the clubs, environmental clubs, on their own campuses. We are we've begun development of a pilot program to expand public EV charging across the city.

We have a provider, for curbside public curbside, charging as well as a second provider for, park public parking lots that are city owned, and we're gonna be looking to, bring an agreement to city council, later this spring to, to allow them to operate within the city, and to deploy chargers, later this year. So we're looking forward to that. AMP continues to offer a wide range of clean transportation and home electrification incentives and rebates to many customers. They've been growing the list, pretty pretty significantly. Last year, we held our first annual home electrification fair.

It was at Faction Brewing. We had about 200 participants, and we're looking forward to doing that again this year. It's going be May 3, again, at faction brewing. We've presented a draft urban forest plan to boards and commissions. We'll be bringing that to city council later this year.

And the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee has been hard at work. Approved two design concepts for our estuary adaptation project and our Bay Farm Island adaptation project. The focus of this coming year is going to be on our shoreline adaptation plan. And then finally, we are working with to develop a CARP dashboard so that we can have a more interactive view for the public of what's in the CARP plan as well as the strategies and metrics and they can see progress. And when we do our annual plan, our annual reports, we'll be able to present all of the metrics and see how we're doing as we go.

And so with that, the next steps is that we're going to be going to planning board on March 10. We'll be bringing this to city council on March 18 and asking for them to adopt the plan. The actual adoption of the hazard mitigation plan will come a little bit later because following council's recommendation, we will need to send it to the state for review. And then we'll bring it back to city council once the states determine that it meets the requirements. Then we'll be going to public utilities board on April 21. And so with that, I'm happy to take questions. Our recommendation is that you recommend city council adopt the plan and accept the 2024 annual report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Danielle. Any clarifying questions from commissioners before we go to public comment? Questions of fact?

Great. Actually, can I ask Please? A clarifying question that actually Danielle has answered for me previously. So thank you very much for this. I had not realized that those single stroke small off road engines are under the transport sector, right?

Yes. You're talking about things like leaf blowers. Some of you may recall we had a, the city has a leaf blower, a gas leaf powered leaf blower ban. Lawn equipment, landscaping equipment and generators are considered transportation, off road transportation. Who knew?

I've never tried Thank to for sharing that. The context this came up in was I felt guilty about renting a gas generator for a jumpy house for my kid's birthday party at the park, And that's under transport emissions.

Any other clarifying questions from commissioners? Is there are there any public comments for this section, either in person or virtually?

There are none in person. If anyone would like to make a comment on Zoom, please raise your hand. And I see no comments.

We're zipping right along. I'll open this up to commissioners. Any questions, comments, ideas? Please, commissioner Gwyn.

Thank you. Yeah. My question is really, and thank you for the presentation and the update. It's all super helpful to see. And obviously, it's great that we are have made a lot of progress in already reducing our emissions by 29% since 2005.

The remaining 21% to get to the target, I noticed in the information maybe half of that is expected to come from state policies and maybe half from local policies. So my question is what specifically are we targeting to achieve that 11% reduction? And as it pertains to transportation, how much do we expect to come from reduction in VMT? How much of it is expected to come from exchange of combustion engines for EVs? Do we have specific targets for those particular metrics so that we as a commissioner, as a city can obviously take action that will achieve that.

So I can start the response and I think Sammy may want to add. So in the strategies section of CARP, there are a number of strategies under the transportation sector. And many of them have metric ton equivalent amounts, volumes that are related to those specific strategies. So our projections for achieving our 2030 goal include implementing these strategies so that we can achieve that metric ton volume. And many of them are related to implementing plans that the city has already had.

One of the biggest updates between 2019 and 2025 is that the city adopted a lot of plans. And so CARP sort of became an umbrella to a lot of other plans. And one of the significant plans for you all is active transportation plan as well as the Transportation Choices Plan. So a big piece of achieving the greenhouse gas reduction goals in CARP is implementing those plans, which transportation is luckily working really hard to do. And then in addition to that, transitioning to cleaner vehicles for those trips that cannot be taken by other modes.

Okay. So to clarify, it sounds like those we do have those numbers. As I said, I didn't see them in the material that I reviewed.

They are in

They are somewhere, it sounds like.

They are in the last column of the strategies table. And we did not reevaluate those numbers for this mid cycle update. So these are the same numbers that were in the 2019 CARP. We'll be doing a more extensive update of those projections in the 2030 update. And Sammy, I'm just looking to see if you wanted to add anything to that response.

Yeah. I think you pretty much covered it, Danielle. The other piece I can add to that is in terms of the modeling done related to the state policies, we are pretty conservative on our estimates related to the reductions associated with those. We only measure and measure the impact of policies that have been adopted or and are continually implemented, and those include the triennial building code updates, the RPS, which is the renewable portfolio standard related to energy, which isn't so much, isn't impactful here in Alameda with AMP, who already has surpassed those requirements, and clean fuel clean fuel standards for vehicles. So those are really many of most of the three policies that are being implemented at the state level that have reductions that we can account for locally.

So that's the other half of that equation.

Thank you very much. Additional commission questions.

Yes.

Quick question. So on you mentioned for the EV charging infrastructure, you're targeting, like, public lots, public right of way. Has there been any work, with, like, for private lots, even HOA buildings, things like that? Yeah.

I know that AMP is working really hard on trying to promote and encourage and support implementation of their EV charging incentives. Particularly, they've rolled out a new multifamily technical assistance program to try and help that sector. And they work really closely with private businesses to try to help them install chargers on their on their locations as well. Just

just to briefly add, actually, Amp worked with us at where I live to do exactly that, and they they were great, actually. It was it was a project that was unattainable without their help.

Cool. Good to know.

Any additional commissioner questions?

Please comment. So I'm glad that we got into kind of how the CARP and the active transportation plan and the Vision Zero Action Plan all kind of fit together. And just my outsider's perspective on this is that the first half of the cycle really benefited from bold action on by AMP on electricity generation. And from the perspective of the Transportation Commission, it looks like achieving that for the second half requires bold action on transport emissions. And I'd be glad to be corrected on this, but my understanding is the majority of trips are short trips, less than four mile trips in the city.

And those are the trips where all of our documents say we should aim towards mode shift. We should aim towards supporting walking, supporting cycling. And I just want to express hesitancy to endorse the, a CARP that rests on the Vision Zero Action Plan and on the active transportation plan, not the plans themselves. These have been very well done. This is not a comment on staff or consultants, but on the city's leaders in enacting those plans.

And that if we actually want to get to the goals that are here, we can't stop pushing projects past 2030. And so this might not be the right forum for addressing that, but I want and I think these are concerns that are more city council and the city's staff leaders. But I just want to express that the first half seems to have worked very well with local action on energy and that for the second half of the CARP to work with local actions, not just piggybacking on state actions and no comment on federal actions, but that it's going to really require following through on the vision zero action plan and the active transportation plan. So I wanted to share those thoughts and I'd be glad to hear it in the context of the overall CARP, but from the perspective of the Transportation Commission's focus, those are my concerns.

Thank you, Commissioner. Any additional comments or questions? I have a couple quick ones. I'll be very brief. I'll try to be brief, uncharacteristically brief. Are we going after federal dollars for any of these reduction projects in the next four years?

We have been going after federal dollars as aggressively as possible. I think that we will all need to think about what that looks like going forward and and what that means for for our projects.

But as as of now, there would probably still be the desire to get federal dollars in the next four years. That we have not discounted that possibility? No. Okay. I have to ask an awkward question. So a significant portion of the wording in the CARP is about equity in vulnerable communities. And we all currently know the political situation we're in. And I was curious if there's been some thought to revising the language given that those specific uses of vocabulary seem less likely to be funded in the current situation or if that is something we are going to wait out for four years.

At this time, that's not something that we have discussed changing. Okay.

That is my only question. I wanted to make one comment. I went to a couple of your stakeholder groups, and I thought they were great. I thought you did a really good job. With that, are there any additional changes or revisions? Or should we go ahead and vote to endorse? Okay. Someone make wanna make a motion?

I'll make a motion to endorse.

It's for

a second for that motion.

I second.

All in favor of endorsing adoption of the 2025 climate action resiliency plan mid cycle update and accepting the 2024 annual report. Please say aye.

Aye. Any

opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Let's move on to Item 6b, endorse the design concept for Willy Stardoll Complete Street Project. Again, this is a voting action item. And first off, we are going to hear from Susie Hofstadter. Susie, come on up.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Susie Hofstadter. I'm your newest senior transportation coordinator, the new project manager for the Starsal Corridor, taking over from Rochelle, who has led us fearlessly for the past four years on the project. So just to give a quick overview of the presentation, we're first going to walk through the background and goals of the project, go through the corridor concept plan. Then we'll zoom in a little bit more on the roundabout concepts, walk through a quick engagement summary, and then discuss next steps.

And just as a reminder, this is an action item to provide feedback and consider endorsing the design concept for city council consideration. So to go through background and goals, project location is Willie Stargill Avenue. I know this group has discussed this project last year already with the grant applications. But the project extends from Main Street to Mariner Square Loop. The context from Main Street to 5th Street is more residential.

And then it transitions into a more commercial context near the Safeway there with the College of Alameda as well. So the project goals are to improve safety for all roadway users with an emphasis on traffic calming, improving safe routes to schools, improving transit service with the new rerouted Line 19, increasing walking and biking connectivity, and reducing flooding through green infrastructure. So just a little bit of history on the corridor for those who aren't familiar. Stargell was originally planned as a four lane roadway that would extend to connect Alameda Point with the Webster Street corridor. In around 2005, it was built out with only half of that width as a two lane cross section.

And then the remaining right of way on the north side of the street between 5th And Main Street is vacant currently. And then the section from 5th to Webster, including our section to Mariner Square Drive, is much wider with four to six lanes and turn pockets. And many folks might be familiar with the way that this resulted in an offset intersection at 5th Street. And that's been a subject of some community discussion lately with some speeding incidents there. So we'll talk more about that in a moment.

We've done or Rochelle has done a lot of outreach over the past few years on this corridor. The key concerns really focus on speeding. This is a corridor where we've also observed through data collection that there's vehicle speeds around 40 miles per hour even though the posted speeds are 25. There are two uncontrolled crossings at Moseley and Coral Sea. And we've heard a lot from the community that it's difficult, especially for school children crossing there.

And then, of course, that section of the corridor only has marking between 5th And Main. And most people don't feel safe or comfortable biking there. So just to kind of recap the project evolution, the last time this group saw the project, it was more focused on those active transportation components, really this zeroing in on that vacant land on the north side of the street to provide bicycle and pedestrian paths. And then in 2023 and 2024, there was the realign process with AC Transit. And so that's when the discussion started happening about incorporating transit stops on the corridor.

And then meanwhile, there was a citywide roundabout analysis. And there were two locations on this corridor identified there for potential roundabouts. And so now here in 2025, we're taking all three of those components and combining them into a single concept for endorsement, by this group and also to take to city council. So this is just a linear version of that same timeline. The engagement kicked off in 2020.

And then in 2022, the community was able to review that initial active transportation project. 2024 is when we incorporated the bus stops and the roundabouts. And now we're here approaching more detailed design, and then we'll focus on construction goal of 2027. So let's dive in on the concept. This is the original cross section for the segment from fifth to main.

You'll see this undeveloped land on the left, which is on the north side. So we'll see here we have a new walking path, sidewalk, a new bike path, as well as green infrastructure. And then on the existing roadway section, the plan is to narrow the travel lanes and add a painted median to calm traffic speeds. And there are some other traffic calming elements as well. So yes, some of the updates since that original project concept is more traffic calming.

That's really in response to the community feedback. An extended separated bike lane in the segment between 5th Street and Mariner Square Loop. Even more pedestrian enhancements and those transit stops and roundabouts we discussed as well. So this is showing the new routing of the Line 19 with the realign project. It includes two new stop pairs at Moseley and Coral Sea, which we'll need to incorporate into the project.

And then the city is also coordinating with AC Transit on identifying what stop upgrades will be needed in the interim because that service will be starting this summer. So just to walk from west to east here, the Main Street intersection is going to be substantially upgraded through the West Midway project at Alameda Point. And so this project is really going to be able to piggyback off of those improvements to tie in our paths to that intersection with the new ramps and crosswalk on this leg. The shared use condition there at the corner will transition to separate bicycle paths. And that will really be very similar to how the Cross Alameda Trail departs from the intersection at Webster And Ralph Appazado today.

So that's a really familiar type of design for Alameda. This is the area around Moseley Avenue. You'll see these two new bus stop pairs. One is adjacent to the path and the other is just standalone across the street. The crosswalks are proposed to be upgraded with median refuges, flashing beacons, and high visibility striping.

And a feature that's new in the project is this horizontal deflection. This is essentially kind of like an arterial style chicane where the travel lane is shifted a little bit to the left and a little bit back to the right to encourage slow speeds approaching the crosswalks. And then those median refuges help to really restrict the vehicle path of travel and encourage yielding there. This is the vicinity of Coral Sea. Again, similar crosswalk enhancements and median refuges.

And then you'll notice that the separate paths consolidate into a single shared path that's existing today. And that also ties into the existing shared path at BET. This is the segment of the corridor where it widens out. And this shows the two roundabout concepts that we'll talk a little bit more about next. And then it shows the extended separated bike lane that goes currently westbound in the concept from Mariner Square Loop to 5th.

I know this group also discussed at the last meeting more looking in detail at this segment of the corridor and what we can do to connect that bikeway in both directions. And so that's really going to be a priority in the next phase of the design to really look and see what we can do to have that bike lane connect and how that ties in with the existing infrastructure. So I know this group has also discussed roundabouts quite a bit in the past. So I won't rehash like the full roundabout training or drop my water bottle on the floor. But I do want to note that this corridor is a high injury corridor in the Vision Zero plan.

And there is pretty substantial crash history at these two intersections, including seven broadside crashes. And this type of crash is really indicative of red light running and also speed issues. And so this is part of the reason why this was such a high priority to consider roundabouts here is to reduce that incidence of red light running at these two locations. So just to zoom in a little bit at 5th Street, this is the location where we've been hearing lot from the community members specifically who live West Of 5th Street about the speeding into their neighborhood westbound from the wider segment. So this is kind of like, if you can imagine, coming through the tubes and then hanging it right onto Stargell and just continuing to cruise.

So we really want to use the roundabout to narrow that down, create a gateway treatment, and slow those traffic speeds going into the neighborhood. It also provides an opportunity for us to come up with some innovative designs related to transitioning that two way bike facility to the one way bike facilities going north south and create some safer and narrower pedestrian crossings at each leg. So this is pretty responsive to the feedback we've heard and we're looking forward to getting into more design detail on it. And similarly, the Mariner Square Loop location has a lot of safety need and the roundabout concept is similar here to provide those benefits. So just to kind of quickly recap some of those benefits of roundabouts, they substantially reduce the number of conflict points in the intersection.

They slow traffic speeds. And they help to reduce the life cycle costs and maintenance needs of a signal. At this location too, there's need for green infrastructure and climate resilience. And so they provide more space for that green infrastructure as well. So just to give a quick look at some of what we're thinking about for project phasing related to these roundabouts, since as we know they're really huge and costly project types.

So what we're planning is to have the first phase focus on that full corridor of bicycle and pedestrian improvements and bus stops and then prioritize the Stargell And 5th Street location for near term implementation. The current plan with the funding available is to do the outside corners of that Stargell And 5th location permanent and then potentially use quick build materials that's kind of similar to how you discussed for the paving plan at the last meeting at those median refuges and the interior circle. And then that second phase would build the second roundabout at Mariner Square Loop and then upgrade the one at 5th to include that green infrastructure and landscape in the center. So this, again, is an image of what that can look like. The type of installation on the right is more similar to what we're thinking about with those concrete elements at the corners and then quick build elements in the middle of the roadway.

So just to, again, quickly recap some of the community engagement, Rochelle and the team took this out to the community all the way back since 2020. Since then, there have been two community workshops, four sixty online survey responses, more than 20 stakeholder groups involved, and five focus meetings with affordable housing communities, of which there are several in the area. And just to kind of reiterate the feedback heard across those engagement events and platforms, high focus on speed school access. In the latest meeting, was good support for the roundabouts and some good discussion and questions on their operations. And then again, reiterating the emphasis on the discomfort with walking and biking in the existing condition.

So just to kind of rehash the cost of funding. Again, big applause to Rochelle for writing all of those successful grants that Lisa announced earlier. We're estimating the project costs between 10,000,000 to $12,000,000 Those successful grants that we just heard about add up to around $5,000,000 And then Rochelle will speak a little bit more in a moment on the next item on the Alameda CTC Measure BB project. But we expect to have an additional $4,000,000 in funding from that source. And then the remaining will be through local match or potentially other sources.

But this is kind of the main external funding sources that we're planning on for the project for Phase one. So as next steps, we're kind of right now in that funding plan finalization and concept approval. We took this to ILC in January. Tonight we're here at the Transportation Commission. In a couple weeks, we'll be at the Commission on Persons with Disabilities and then tentatively slated for April 15 at City Council for endorsement there.

As a reminder, the Line 19 service changes will begin this summer. Stay tuned from AC Transit when exactly that is. And then we'll be moving into more detailed design and environmental later this year, moving into plan specs and engineering in 2026, and then aiming for construction in 2027. So our recommended action is to give feedback and endorse the design concept for city council consideration. I'll take questions.

Any clarifying questions from commissioners? Questions of fact? Mister Boyne.

I have a clarifying question about the intersection at Stargell And Moseley.

Mhmm.

I might be wrong about this, but I believe you can't turn north at that intersection because Moseley is closed.

Mhmm.

That that neighborhood is closed from that side.

Yep.

So is there when I saw the plans, I noticed there is a it looks like you can turn north there. But is there an expectation that you will be able to?

Open that gate.

Yeah.

No. I I my understanding is that the access points to the housing that's the Coast Guard housing there do open sometimes, but that it's effectively like a private driveway into that development. So it's shown like a driveway in the plan set, but the access to that street won't change with the project.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

Can I

ask a clarifying question about that then? So given that this is essentially a privatized street that is free I assume that's privatized street within the Coast Guard area? Or is it a public street?

I think

so. Yeah, I'll let Rochelle speak to that.

Yeah. I believe that's and maybe Scott knows but I believe it's federal because that's Coast Guard. And the active transportation plan does actually include continuing the neighborhood greenway that would be on Mosley through the Coast Coast Guard housing with the hope that we would be able to get approval for that access. We haven't had any of those conversations, and that's in the future. But there's no discussions internally about opening that road up to car traffic.

So I guess my clarifying question then was, so as drawn here, we're we're building we, the city, is building essentially access to Moseley with no end which has cost and but has no expectation of that gate opening. So and again, I realize the street is not that big, but we are we as a city are putting in funds towards that, but no clear expectation agreement that that gate will open. Is that fair?

Yeah. I mean, the the access is east west along the corridor primarily. I I think that maybe there's a pedestrian gate that sometimes opens and some students, I believe, exit that housing development.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's where all the schoolchildren come through that gate. So on bikes, and walking with parents, so that's a huge crossing right there, mostly through that pedestrian gate. I think there are larger gates that could be open for vehicles through there. I can't exactly picture that. But that's a huge crossing point for school access.

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions from commissioners?

I do. I have one clarifying question specifically to the quick build. Could we look at the quick build slide, please? And I think you addressed this, but

I can flip down. There we go.

So this is the one on the right, you were saying, is the one that's generally the idea that would be utilized for the quick build, correct? The full modular roundabout design, that one?

Well, more or less. I think that this one has concrete elements on two corners, and we'd be doing all four.

Okay. And this one doesn't really have lovely pedestrian or bike access. Right. No crossings.

So it's just an illustration of the kind of modular product that goes in the medians and the center. But we would have bike ped facilities. Yeah.

Thank you. Sure.

Other clarifying questions? I have another quick one. Sorry. I'm gonna be super granular because I love talking about this area every couple weeks or every couple months. As I understand the roundabout at near Safeway essentially, so the bike access, the two way bike access is gonna end before that street and there is no specific plan to have a bikeway between the roundabout and Bette Street.

And I ask that question, it's a loaded question, because I have said many times, one of the structural deficiencies in the city's plan has always been, how do you get bikes to this incredibly popular boat that is going back and forth to the estuary. And as I read this, there's a I mean, again, it's not large, but there is a gap between the roundabout and Betty Street where there's no bike lane. There's kind of a shared area. Correct? Am I reading that It's diagram

not a gap. That's an existing segment of the path. It was built with that development. So there's a pretty substantial shared use path there already. And then the project will pull it like all the way west and then we'll connect via the roundabout to the other bike facilities.

On a shared path though.

So the shared transit I'm going to actually have Mike from Kittleson to talk a little bit more about the transitions. But in the next phase of design, we're going to be looking pretty closely at all the different bike movements, who's going to be coming East West and transitioning North south. But yeah, I'll let Mike speak a little bit more to how bikes are accommodated in the roundabout.

And I promise I will stop being in pain about this as soon as we do it.

Rochelle could jump in, too. Sorry.

You're all trying to get to the mic. I'll just add that in terms of the design, that segment where there is the existing shared path, since it's existing, we were thinking about costs in developing our project. And we thought it was not necessarily worth tearing out not just the path, but all the existing landscaping that's there to continue that separated bikeway and sidewalk. We thought this probably is going to work for this facility. And so that's why that existing path, a shared use path, remains there.

Was hoping Yeah.

We could actually look at you're talking about Sergeant Fifth, right?

Yeah. And to be clear, honestly, question was more a clarifying question. We don't need to justify this now. Think that's more of a question question. I just wanted to understand, make sure I understood the diagram. And I think I did understand the diagram. The diagram is there is no dedicated bike pathway that is just a bike pathway between the roundabout and and Bette Street. Correct?

Yeah. So green is gonna tell you where there's dedicated bike space, and gray will indicate where it's a shared path. Mhmm. And then uncolored means we're not changing it from

the existing condition. Cool. Awesome. I'll I'll be good and save my other questions for the discussion. I need Bright green. Bright green. Yeah. Yeah. I almost asked that, but I'm like, I've asked like four clarifying questions. I should just shut up. Any additional clarifying questions that are not from me?

I think this is probably

a clarifying

So this is on the other round about the Mariner Square one. Is it purposely showing the right turn lane continuing the one that goes into the In N Out?

I don't think it's purposeful, like, in the sense that the design is not detailed yet. Okay. So this is a very preliminary concept, and all of those turn movements to the in and out and everything. And then Mike can also

speak to it.

So I agree with what Susie said, there were some conversations that happened before she joined the project where we've definitely heard feedback about the cues related to that. And so we are intentionally showing that a right turn could still be possible into that to account for that. We haven't solved it yet, but we were intentionally showing that to kind of draw draw your eye to that basically to spur that question, spur more comments about what people think the solution should be.

Great.

Thanks.

Yeah. Quite a few clarifying questions. Any additional clarifying questions?

Since we have the screen up, can I ask if, what is the history? I know this is out of Project Scope, but just to the north If

it's out of Project Scope, then

it's going to

be a

fine part

of the discussion.

It's not

a clarifying question. Sorry. Let's move to public comment if there Fair are any enough. Public You can ask that question. Just, you have to wait.

Yes, we have one in house and so far two hands are raised on Zoom. So first we have Jim Strelow.

Can you bring up that Mariner Square Loop slide again? Thank you, Commissioner and staff. I've mentioned this to the city before because the section of Webster to the Mariner Street, Mariner Square Intersection, you're creating, you're engineering gridlock. The draft shows one lane going from Webster to Mariner Square Loop. And you already have two lanes now and if you've ever been there, number one, you've got pedestrians crossing the streets, Stargill Avenue going over to In N Out Burger all the time.

But for hours, you will see backup from In N Out Burger onto Stargill. And if you reduce it to one lane, you have now closed off Stargill. You need to keep two lanes on Stargill between Webster and at least Mariner Square Loop. Otherwise, you are creating mellow of a house. Secondly, I happened to be driving in Burlingame over the weekend and I was amazed when I was going along California Avenue returning home that they actually had a traffic loop that was two lanes.

And I was amazed to see that there was an early entrance into the inner circle and then I just continued on in the outer circle to go continuing along California Avenue. But that I'm amazed constantly that the city doesn't discuss two lane traffic circles because it exists in other places, it makes sense and given congested areas, especially where there's shopping centers and other mitigating circumstances. I would hate to be the Chase Bank or even the In N Out Burger in this type of plan of reducing down to one lane, at least the westbound and I hate to see the eastbound because my God, I see that backed up all the time trying to get onto Webster Street and going into the tubes. So definitely you should be considering two lanes and not reducing one lane in any of your draft discussions between Webster and Merida Square Loop. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment Mr. Strelow. Additional public comment.

Yes, next we have Nick Kaziak.

Hello. Nick Szczak here again. Just a few comments about this. So one, I think very needed on it, fixing Sargil. I've probably ride three, four thousand miles a year, on my bike around here.

The only place on the entire island I won't ride is from Coral Sea to Main Street on Stargill. By any time I've ever tried to ride that, like, I've almost gotten, like, in fights, run over, pushed off the side of the road in accidents. Like, it's incredibly dangerous on a bike, and it's got, like, a there that's, like, probably taunting and, like, also, you know, some unwise you know, some person unfamiliar is gonna think that that's a safe route for them to ride, and it's probably the worst one in Alameda to ride on. The other things are crossing Stargolt 5th Street, that intersection where that second roundabout is. I hope that roundabout is huge and obnoxious to slow traffic down.

It really is unpleasant standing at the corner there waiting across, and you have cars flying at you coming you know, going west trying to beat the light, and then also make that sort of turn into the one lane and, you know, you're just standing there with your kids. Not very fun. You know, also, I hope this improves the 5th Street on both north and south of Stargill. Like, north of it, it's too wide, and the bike lane's not protected. And then going south, like, trying to cross from Alameda Landing or from, you know, the future Alameda Housing Authority developments or from the, Admiral's Cove.

It's like playing a suburban game of frogger, and it's, like, not very fun, crossing that. And, like, you're not gonna get people to reduce their, like, car trips from those areas, which you should be, you know, able to walk, you know, a few blocks. But, like, crossing that street is no fun. The other thing for the Moseley Intersection part, that is a huge crossing place for all those kids in the coast guard housing getting to the school, so it's like a really important place to improve the crossing there. And then one other thing is as this is looked at, I'd also hope they look at Singleton, and I think a lot of traffic will start going down that, especially like Singleton and Bette in that area is the road work happens on Sargon.

Like, I think another, you know, little small temporary roundabout there would be appropriate. But I really, you know, hope and, you know, we'll be very excited when construction starts on the roundabout and also on the bike path between, 5th Street and Main Street. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Additional public comment.

Next we have Bennett Chatz.

Good evening commissioners. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me and for taking time to hear this out. Just a couple comments. I want to make sure when we're doing these sections of streets that we're looking at how bike lanes exit. This is kind of in response to the Webster Street restriping where, like, you have a bike lane for a while and then you just get spit into two lanes of traffic.

And I want to make sure we're not doing this in any of the corridors or, like, sort of the eastern or westernmost parts of this because it's really unpleasant. And, like, it sucks to have great new infrastructure that is borderline unusable because it puts you into danger the second that you leave the area of focus. Another thing is, yeah, just thinking about the roundabout at 5th And Stargel, I just wanna make sure that, like, going north south on 5th, we're really thinking about how we can keep cyclists safe, protected, and, really, like, establish the cycling path because that's how you get from the Cross Alameda Trail to the water taxi. And right now, it's kinda sketched. You know, I live on the West End, but I go up 5th from, Ralph Appazado, and I just wanna make sure that we are kind of prioritizing that.

Like, looking at the plans, it's hard to see, like, if you're a cyclist going through that roundabout, like, are you gonna have to use the crosswalk? Will there be a will will the crosswalk turn green? Like, how are we gonna make it so that cyclists can do that North South trip without having to worry about cross traffic. And then final thing is, yeah, just thinking about the in and out driveway, like, I can guarantee that many of those people are not gonna be paying a ton of attention because they're thinking about their tasty burgers, and they're gonna turn right as they have to cross a bike lane. And the idea of having a bike lane between the street and In N Out kind of terrifies me.

Not that that will be the most used, because that's not the best place to spit out onto if you think about following Stargill through there. And like I said, you'll probably transition to the Cross Alameda Trail at some point, but just some things to think about. Thank you for taking my time.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional public comments?

Yes. We have two more speakers. Next, have Amy Kim.

Hello. My name is Amy Kim, and I actually live right on the corner of 5th And Stargell right across the the Safeway where exactly the roundabout that intersection is where corner where I live. I have I've been here since 2018 and I have seen and heard and my nest camera has recorded so many accidents of cars coming through that that intersection so fast. I know you guys also received an email that I sent not too long ago, a few weeks ago with a video that showed a car literally palling through and hitting and breaking the walk signal and I've seen that. I've heard that so many times already being a resident here.

You know it's not only just that what I've seen but also just last night around nine p. M. I heard probably 10 plus motorcycles just speeding down because they're trying to get to the Alameda Point maybe they're doing some races down there I have no idea but it's just a very very dangerous intersection if we you know we keep if we don't build that roundabout. I really really think it's important that we do get that built out. Now I have three young kids and I'm so scared every time to be parked outside and to walk through to walk through our front door because I'm scared that some cars must be down and go get on the on the sidewalk and hit one of my kids or or anything like that.

And so just for the sake of the community and everything, please, the roundabout is would mean so much for the safety of our kids, just everyone, this whole community. That's it.

Thank you for your comment. Next public comment.

Yes. And last, we have Nadia Aired.

Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Great. Hi. My name is Nadia. I live actually further down on Stargel, around the Moseley Intersection. So I greatly appreciate this effort into reducing traffic, speed in this area and to increase us pedestrian safety. However, I'm concerned about the effect of what that the that the proposed changes will have in that space between the intersections at 5th and, and then the northern, Mariner Square loop.

Basically, at Moseley and Coral Sea, I hear throughout the day cars just picking up think that that couple couple if if it's it's not not coming with accompanying changes at the Moseley Intersection and at the Coral Sea Intersection, then what we will probably end up with is more motorists picking up speed, which they already do, between the two areas where traffic has been slowed. I'm particularly concerned to hear that there we are adding bus routes to Stargill before the traffic slowing measures are put in place. The reason that concerns me is because if we expect these bus routes to be effective, we would hope that more pedestrians are coming to those stops, and that increase in expected pedestrian foot traffic will be at exactly the two intersections where I'm concerned that there is no traffic slowing measure in effect or, proposed, and where, like, the speed will probably be even higher than we see at the at the intersections currently. Because right now, at least, motorists do have to at least stop at 5th And Stargill. They pick up speed, and you can tell by the sound.

You can tell by the crashes of people trying to turn left and someone just rear ending somebody, at Moseley and at Coral Sea. So I think we do need to slow down traffic, and I I echo all the bike comments as well and Amy's comment about how dangerous that intersection is. But I'm I'm concerned that, without slowing down speed at Moseley and Coral Sea, we're gonna end up with a situation that's very unsafe for children that are currently crossing those intersections to get to school and whatever pedestrians start to use the proposed bus routes. I also wanna add that currently on Moseley, there at Coral Sea, there are some indents in the in the current road, so there are places where, bus stops would make sense. On Moseley, it's just one lane on either side, and it's a very thin lane on the southbound side.

So hearing that there's going to be, like, an additional bus stop there, I I I don't see in the plans or in the way that it's been discussed where that would actually make sense. So I think that we need more increased bus routes, maybe add a different inter like right above that or even on that

additional public comments?

We have no more speakers.

Hearing no more speakers, no more public comment. We can move to commission discussion and questions. Who has a question or a discussion? Take it away, Drew.

Okay. Well, first congratulations on the news at MTC today and for everyone involved in that. I know that money is hard to come by. So that's great in state and regional funding. I know Lisa already emphasized that just to keep on emphasizing it. So congratulations. And also Susie, thank you for presenting this project to us. Maybe this is your first time presenting in your current role. So welcome and thank you for joining. It's great to see when this came to us last, it was mainly about the straightaway portion and I think lots of us were kind of wondering, well, what about the intersections?

And so it's great to see this coming back in this current form. I'm really glad to see some hard features in that straightaway like ped crossing islands, maybe the first chicane for Alameda. So I think hopefully that can address some of these concerns that are being raised by folks about the straightaway. I did want to follow-up on some of these questions about the roundabout design in particular. And cause I think some of it is, we all are still kind of like we know some of the criteria for like what the size of our traditional intersection looks like but less so on a roundabout.

I did want to reemphasize that I have heard the city speak to a commitment to single lane roundabouts and I want to echo that that their focus really should be on moving autos, but also allowing pet and bike access and having single lane is important for that. Could I ask one of the engineers to sort of speak to some of these questions that have come up about like how much space is needed for bikes to traverse and also speak to the size of the center island too. Because like one of my novices questions is just, are we designing this for the one truck that's going to go through there per day or are we designing this to maximize space for pedestrians and cyclists who probably need a bit more space on the exterior?

I'll reintroduce Mike.

I'll start with the last question first and then we can work back through the other ones in more detail. So the question about what size is really needed and what are we designing for when we pick the size. So right now that roundabout, I don't remember exactly, but let's say from the white edge of the travel way to the white edge, the diameter of the actual roadway space is typically going to be about 120 feet, something like that, with circulatory roadways between fifteen and twenty feet. So that leaves that central island, so the green and then the I I don't know what that is, orange, roughly about an 80 foot island in the middle. So in general all else equal, the larger the roundabout you actually are able to generally control the speeds a little bit more.

There's essentially more to aim drivers in certain ways to control the speed. So a smaller roundabout can fit in more places but you're going to have to work a little bit harder to get the speeds down. It's all about controlling the speeds. Related to that, you asked a question about the design vehicles. So the design vehicles for this, the ones that we designed to make in lane like not having to use the truck apron in the middle, that's the Is 45 foot

the red or orange part is

the Yeah, apron referring not empty mount that orange thing in the middle. That's the 45 foot AC Transit bus, which we know would have to make movements through here. So if we didn't have that large vehicle, we could basically be a little more creative, smaller entries and that sort of thing and get the speeds down more. So those are intention. So I guess in general, the principles are a larger intersection takes more space but gives you more natural speed control. The entries themselves like the right turns, those become a little bit more difficult with larger vehicles. So think about that as a separate issue. Maybe I'll pause there and see if that answered that question or if it raised other ones.

That's really helpful. Can I just ask on, so given how infrequent like AC is going to be, does the city have the discretion to have it go up on that apron to design an intersection?

Yeah, so city stack and correct me if I misstate this, but I think they would have that discretion. In general, when we're designing roundabouts for the city of Alameda or anywhere else, I don't really want passengers to get jostled when the bus goes over that truck. It actually is a vertical element. You could do it, but we really try not to. And I think that's something that we hear from AC Transit as well.

Okay, okay. So good to understand the dimensions on the interior. I wonder, I know you all have spoken to sort of needing to get into details in the future on the but bike wonder if you could speak to, so like I have a cargo bike and it's not a 40 foot bus but it has some of the same smaller scale constraints. And so I wonder if like looking at a design like this, you can speak to the, what sort of clearances would be needed so that folks can stay on their bike rather than have to dismount to navigate.

Yeah, and actually, Susie and I have been going back and forth on this. Again, appreciating that it's early, but so we have more design details to work out. But in general, I'll say maybe two things. If you look at each corner, you can see a big curve. There's one corner where there's a separate bike lane and then there's three corners where there's like a gray shared use path.

In general, like the guidance will tell you you want that to be like at least 25 foot radius and we're bigger than that. So those corners themselves I feel okay about where it can get a little challenging. The separate part is actually getting into and out of the crosswalk. And that's where we've talked about opportunities from to change what you see here to like flatten those corners a little bit so that you don't have to make this sharp 90 degree turn. So like in a perfect world we could like flatten all that stuff out.

We are right up against the right of way in the corners so we don't have infinite space to play with. So for my money and so it's helpful to hear that. For my money the corners are actually okay. It's those entries into the crosswalks that are a little bit challenging for those cargo bikes and those front loaders. And we do have a little bit of leeway to play with moving forward to kind of cut those corners a little bit. I hope that helps.

I think it does. Okay, can. And finally, if you could speak to sort of, so some folks are still going to choose to be vehicular cyclists for like the, for those types of situations, especially like we heard one commenter talk about going northbound, I guess. Are there any ways to design, like I know a traditional intersection we've got like bike box, whatever the term, turn boxes. Are there any ways to potentially design this to make it a little more understandable or to encourage turn taking when there are vehicular cyclists?

Yeah, so you're asking essentially to make the process of taking the lane more comfortable. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, with the asterisks that like if given that it sounds like in certain directions we might actually need to support that more

than in I I see. Yeah, what I'll offer is, so to be a bit of a broken record it's really all about the speeds. So a single lane roundabout we're designing it such that not based on the presence of other traffic but based purely on curved geometry and side friction factors you really cannot do more than 25 miles an hour there entering and circulating. And that's like someone who gets there with no traffic in the middle of the night type of thing. There are other tools in the toolbox like raising the crossings to a tabletop to slow vehicles down further which can help a cyclist like find a gap and take a gap and take that lane a little bit more easily.

There's not really like I mean for reasons that might you don't really want to stripe a bike lane in the circulatory roadway because that creates new conflicts. So apart from that, I would just say we can just double down on trying to control the speeds. And I think that's kind of the best tool in the toolkit.

Yeah, thanks for those details. Can I ask one of the project managers at a high level like will, is the plan for this body or council to be seeing some of those details in the future? I'm just forgetting what the timeline is for when those plans

we will be made. Haven't discussed yet whether or not we'll come back. I think that the idea is to have the city council this year approve the concept and not need to ask for more approvals in the future. It very well may be that there are design details in the future that will need to be discussed more. And in that case, we would bring it back.

But I would say overall that's not decided yet. And the general idea is to have this concept approval kind of give the green light to move forward. But one thing I did want to add about the vehicular question before we all sit down again is just that the people approaching the roundabout from the two way bike path, the opportunity to enter vehicularly is a little bit different in that context. And so we would probably not like actively encourage entering the roundabout vehicularly from that contraflow approach. And so you can see there's these little like ramps where the directional bike lanes you can kind of choose to enter or not.

But people using that bike path need to kind of like use the bike crossings until they're at a place where it makes sense to be a vehicular cyclist again, if that makes sense. That's the preference at least in the design. Okay, great.

If I could add, we don't habitually bring later designs to the Transportation Commission. We usually get your endorsement of the concept and your input. And your input is very important toward developing final designs. I don't know exactly how we'll handle this project as we move forward. If we have questions that we think a transportation commission that advises the city council could be useful on, we we could think about that, but it's not how we normally proceed because you are advising the city council on approving the concept.

Okay, thank you, Lisa. I need to correct myself on this. All my comments are about how can we deliver more and more quickly, please don't. Let me instead rephrase and say, it sounds like this project and it sounds like the team already knows this project. There are a lot of different roundabout projects across the city.

It sounds like this project is maybe the one that will involve fleshing out some of the details around pet access. And so therefore let me rephrase instead of asking if it would come back to any bodies, just say that it sounds like you all will have an opportunity to use this as a test case and go as needed from there to kind of develop patterns that might be reusable. That's it for my thoughts.

If I may, John, to prolong this, but just to add that as we are finalizing design, we will have roundabouts that will be installed in Alameda. And a lot of the questions you guys are talking about are things we've grappled with as we've dove into these designs for the roundabouts on Central, on Clement, Tilden. And so you will be seeing kind of how we've addressed a lot of these similar issues, like the turns and the cargo bikes and all of that. So it's possible that some of that real world experience then will be able to feed into this newest of our roundabouts.

Thank you. Additional commissioner comments or questions? Please.

Thank you. So I want to echo I think it's great that there's dedicated funding now for this project. I think that's wonderful. And in general, I really appreciate the significant active transportation improvements that are shown here. And I think it it's a it's a good design and I think that it's going to be a much better place for folks to utilize.

I do because it probably won't come back. I do want to make a few comments where especially with that quick build. I think I said this recently about another proposed quick build roundabout. Make sure there's some of that that vertical, that height in the middle. Because if really what you're trying to do, even with the quick build, is manage speeds, you don't want it to be so flat that people think they can just go straight through and ignore that it's a roundabout.

Additionally, I would say, you know, echoing what we heard from public comment just a bit ago, Those long straightways in between safe crossings. I see in the staff report it says for traffic calming staff will explore further traffic calming treatments during detailed design. Please do that. Because I live on a roadway that has stretches that people are used to going really fast. And even with the incredible improvements that we've received along that roadway, people still want to try to go too fast.

People still honk and drive around when it's unsafe. So, you know, if what you're trying to do is mitigate the conflict at the crossings and slow traffic, do take that into consideration when you when you go into detailed design but like by and large, I think it's really great and I look forward to seeing some of these things built.

Your comments, additional commissioner comments. Sure.

Sure. Yeah. I wanna thank staff for the presentation. I've I think I've comments on like kind of two specific sections. The first would be the the startle runabout and kind of echoing some of the stuff about in and out, long queues, making sure that there is a turn lane as well as the traffic lane. But I'm actually more concerned about the turn off of Webster because I know a lot of cars do take that turn pretty pretty high speed. And if they are just going into, like, one lane of traffic that which is and it's I don't know if this makes sense, but it's kind of a blind roundabout because it's you're going into a low blind. So figuring out a way if we can, you know, calm speeds from that turn would actually be very helpful to me. Like, yeah, it would be kind of, you know, off the bottom part of this page. Right?

So just kinda making sure that it's not just the roundabout itself being like traffic calming, but, like, actually calming all the speeds into the roundabout. And not just this one, but the other one as well. The other comment I had was related to commissioner Noctagal's comments about speed calming. Right? Like, I noticed on the the straight portion, the the two intersect the two major intersections are you you added yield lanes or yield lines to them.

And I'm just kinda wondering why didn't propose just actual full stop signs for those, mostly to help promote the traffic calming, but as well as with the locations of the bus stops. And I know these concepts aren't finalized, but the current stop designs are like in lane stopping. So I'm kind of worried about a bus stopping at a bus stop and a car that does not see a stop sign rear ending the bus because it's kinda going going at speed. Yeah. Like, this is a this would be a good this is a great example.

Right? So the bus would be stopping at that new bus stop. And if a car is going westbound, it, you know, it if there's no stop sign, it may just kind of speed into it. So I would say, yeah, ask, can we put stop signs at those locations if that's feasible? And then work with AC Transit on the bus stop locations around here, making sure that they actually like the in lane stopping or if they prefer something like those bus duck outs that where that it that stop is currently located. Just that there's a better way of kind of making sure that, you know, these bus, this new bus route is kind of set up for success. You know, it's operating here.

Your comments, other financial comments. Mister Blind.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and I just wanted to say last time I looked at this project, which was at the public event back in, I think, October, the roundabouts were very much hypothetical. And so it's obviously exciting that we are now talking about potentially making that happen. I like a lot of the design here and the fact that a lot of thought has gone into obviously the speed of the roundabout and the geometry and all of that. And I think looking at the information that was shared, I'm also encouraged by the data that shows that the traffic time delays at these intersections should improve at all times of day to differing extents.

That's really exciting that the idea that the throughput of these roundabouts will be better than the intersections as they are today. I have two, I guess, question type comments. One is, and I think I'm following up on Commissioner Nacheco's comment about the quick build, which is, is the quick build going to be to the exact same dimensions as the final permanent infrastructure? Because I think there's obviously some advantage in people starting to use that intersection and getting used to the speeds that they need to adhere to to go through the intersection while it's a quick build. Then obviously at some later date where it's more of a permanent infrastructure.

I assume that's the case. But perhaps you can comment on that a little bit.

Yes. The quick build design would use the same geometry as the permanent design. And it would only change if there was something in implementation that we found that would need to change. But the idea is to implement the geometry the same way with the temporary materials.

Perfect. Thank you. And then my other question is about the section really between 5th And Main, those intersections at Moseley and Coral Sea. I think from experience of the two way bike path that we have on Clement, which obviously was finished last year, which is fantastic. I came that way on my way here.

I recall in the when it was newly finished, there were cars either probably mistakenly using the bike path or parked there or perhaps let's assume they would thereby mistake. And I think that has been resolved because there are now sort of plastic posts at entry, at each intersection. So it's more obvious that that is not a path that a car should be on. And again, as I look at the plans here, because the bike path we're planning is relatively wide which is great because it gives more space for cyclists. I want to make sure that we that there's no danger that a car approaching any of those intersections might accidentally end up on the bike path because it was not immediately obvious that that was not a travel lane.

Yeah, super appreciate that comment. I will say that because we're fortunate to have the excess right of way off street in this segment, the design is much more similar to the cross on the trail siphon on Ralph Appusato Memorial Parkway that has ramps up and it's kind of like set back from the street. So we're hopeful that that really kind of like separate path design with the ramps and everything will be obvious enough. And there's no like existing parking in the area that is now gone, that kind of thing that can sometimes cause confusion. But that's a good note.

And if we see encroachment on other off street paths, we might think about implementing like a bollard or something. But some bike riders don't like that because it's like a hazard. So we'll be thoughtful in the design to try to make sure that we limit encroachment in this area. Yeah, thank you.

Great, thank you very

much. Commissioner Johnson.

Yeah, thanks Susie. That was a great presentation. Good to see you earlier today. I had a question about the, I guess, community outreach. Did we reach out I would be curious about their feedback.

The College of Alameda, In N Out, the Safeway gas station management because it's it's when you make that right turn on Moliestra, it is really interesting over there. I I just don't like to drive over there. I mean, it's it's you have to really be it's it's it's different over there. So I'm just I'm just curious, like, in terms of their if they had any feedback or they participated in the process or or or if they wanted to be involved in the process.

Yeah, that's a great question, Commissioner Johnson. We definitely reached out to them. I believe for the shopping center, we never really heard anything back. And that's something that Susie and I have already talked about, like trying to be a little more aggressive in those conversations. And then for College of Alameda, I believe that Gail may have met with them and brought up the roundabout in terms of talking also about adaptation projects. But we definitely haven't heard any concerns from the College of Alameda side.

And I I know it's only once a month, but the antique fair, just don't do it.

Don't do the fair or don't do the

Don't just stay away. How does I mean, I know that's a once a month event and my understanding is people come from all, from multiple states to attend that event, if I have it correctly. So how does this, I can't imagine people who are not from this area trying to sort of, Do we think about that in terms of like notifications or letting the antique people know what's going on? Because it is gonna be That's gonna be even more interesting when we get all these improvements and we have that antique fair.

Are you thinking in particular of the roundabouts and the impacts? Yeah.

I mean, just in terms of the the the the backup and, you know, I was at the Presidio in in San Francisco and they have a roundabout. And it's interesting to be near a roundabout on foot because some people don't really understand sort of the taking the turns and you see some horn honking and some middle fingers and, you know, so I'm just I'm just kinda curious, you know, about that.

Well, think in terms of analyzing the traffic, I feel like that is something we talked about. And I don't know, Mike, if you want to come back up and talk about that. I mean, as you sort of inferred, Commissioner, the antique sphere kind of blows up everything in Alameda. So it's a challenge everywhere. And we don't expect to have free flowing, easy traffic on those Sundays. Yeah.

Yeah. So just to say a couple of things. It might be obvious to you, but as you mentioned, it's a once a month situation. So that's 12 times a year. So in terms of designing infrastructure, that's typically not what we design for, right? You weren't implying that, but it's worth mentioning that. And then the second thing to say is you identified that it's already quite challenging to drive in and out of there. And so it's often helpful to just reduce traffic engineering down to a series of that the pipes are not big enough to serve that single traffic today. And so what we're doing with two roundabouts of these locations, as Commissioner Gloyn pointed out, in terms of actually serving the traffic, they can serve it as efficiently as the signal can. We are reducing the amount of pavement.

So the pipe gets smaller just in terms of physically where people can sit while they wait for their turn to get to and from the antique fair. And so that's probably for a few thousand feet 12 times a year. So it's in terms of are people free flowing now at a roundabout is going to slow them down? Definitely not. What it will do is with reducing the number of lanes, it will reduce just the amount of sheer parking lot that's available to them to wait in and out. I think that's probably the way to describe it.

Okay. Okay. I was just thinking in terms of you're right. We can't design stuff for one event, but that is a big event in terms of if there's some kind of way we can communicate to them of these changes. Because people don't like change. And I I just don't wanna see something happen where it's like, you know, I don't know. So that's that's my

yeah. Thank you. Happy reminder to Commissioner Johnson when when they close one way one lane in the tunnel for eighteen months, no one's gonna be able to get on the island for the fair anyway. So we're gonna be fine.

Well, they'll try. They're gonna try.

Let's go back sorry. Let's talk about In N Out a little bit more. So could we go back to the roundabout? That's the In N Out Roundabout, which will be fun to say. Oh, man. So is is the plan here to essentially keep the same approach? And so there's, like, this kind of, like, sec like, just below the pink shape. Is the plan to have sort of this this turn off lane, but it comes from the same all from the same lane? Is that is that is that changing? Because I just wanna ask there was a public comment about it.

It's been implied here several times. That backs way, way, way, way up. And if we're doing a big project anyway, and I'm not trying to expand the scope of this project, but that does not work. Like, it just does not, especially on a busy Saturday. And so it seems like this is an opportunity to come up with something else that is not just hope that the in and out take out line doesn't get too long because that's kind of what's going on right here, quite frankly.

Yeah. So I'm told honesty is the best policy, so I'll be honest and say we haven't solved it yet. What we have done is solve for the intersection itself. I think you're right in stating that it's probably worth further detail of how long does that queue actually get to the in and out and can we serve the storage for it? So the intention to get back to the first thing you said, the intention is to keep people going into the In N Out out of the way of the people going to the roundabout.

That's the intention. And that's why you see that lane to the right of where the bike lane is. It's like, Okay, let's let them store. Let's get out of the way of the people trying to get to the intersection. The question, which is currently unanswered, is like how much storage does that actually need to be? Lane or how many feet of storage does it actually need

to I can tell you it goes back past the light around to Webster.

Then the key will be for us is figuring out how to keep that roundabout lane from being starved is the term, basically, to where people who want to get to it can't compare to the existing condition. And that's so I mean, not to speak on behalf of city staff, but in terms of bringing this here and wanting the input in addition to sending along the city council, I'm certainly hearing that loud and clearly as a design challenge that we need to face.

I would almost argue it's a mildly existential design challenge in the sense that that is an area where everyone in the city complains about it. And if the roundabout doesn't make it better, people are going to perceive that as making it worse. And if I think we're the lack of public comment on roundabout at these commission meetings has been a delightful surprise from five years ago, and that's a great outcome for the city. Simultaneously, if this screws it up or doesn't fix it, is really what I'm saying, we're gonna start having that conversation again. And that makes this kind of improvement, which is an improvement generally, really hard for us.

So, yeah, that should really be part of this project. Like, figure something out because roundabouts are great, but they're only great if they're not perceived as making a bad problem worse or at least not better. Sure. Second question for me, if that's okay. I just want to understand the transportation department's position or the city's position or someone's position.

What's the long term plan? If we could go back to my favorite roundabout spot and Bette Street and 5th Street, thank you, I wanna I wanna get a definitive statement. What is the city or the transportation's position on? Is Bette Street how we're getting people from the bike lanes on 5th to the boat? Or is 5th Street how we're gonna get people from the bike lane? What is the preferred outcome in the medium and long term? Because to be honest sorry, I'm rambling. I've kind of heard both, but I think we just need to make a choice and make it good as opposed to two things which are okay. So what's the what is the position? What is the plan that the city has or the transportation department has?

Well, I don't think that the city has, like, a specific alignment that we want everyone to go on. I will say that I think anybody who's going to point east from the water shuttle, it's not really realistic to ask people to go to over one block west and then back again. So we're going to definitely be talking about 5th Street and trying to figure out how to improve that. I will say that our conversations so far are more focused on the segment between Opposado and Stargill rather than in the segment that's relatively newly constructed. But those bike lanes do exist.

And I think that we've been talking quite a bit about trying to improve the connection all the way to Alpezzado with, like, a separate effort. But I don't think that we're trying to say, like, people must go over to bed and then back again if they're trying to go east. But if someone's going west, I think this is a really great connection to go west by connecting on bet to this path, if that makes sense, or into the housing developments over there.

Your your position will be it's most likely that Fifth is going to be the main

I think that's a desire line. I don't know from the ATP if there's like a specific corridor.

Half of city staff jumped up for this question. So clearly I struck a nerve.

Well, I don't know what Scott was going to address, but I'll address what's in the ATP, which is that we would have separated bike lanes on 5th Street between the Cross Alameda Trail and Stargill. We had hoped to be able to have I think it was a higher level of bike lane north of Stargell.

But it's very

constrained there. And there's the bulb outs. And so that is a much more major project. It's just a narrower street. And we've already got these nice bulb outs there. And how we would improve that section to make it basically a low stress facility seems pretty unlikely. So Bette Street would be the low stress facility because it's got the path on it. And that path connects directly into through the housing development at Bay 37 to the Bay Trail. And then you can hang a left. I think that section is built. I've been told it's been built. I haven't been through there, but I'm sure Jamie knows.

You can get through. Yeah.

So if somebody really wants to do the low stress facility, that's what they could I think kind of the challenge of 5th Street in the near term, like having a protected facility from Sargil all the way to the water shuttle is not really on our radar to create that, to create a low stress protected facility through there. Not to say that we couldn't add that in the future active transportation plan as a project.

So as drawn on the sorry, Lisa, go ahead.

Just to clarify, that is the official city position is the active transportation plan. And so if you look at the 2,030 low stress bikeway map, then you can see the alignment with the I mean, we are not telling people where they can bike. But if they want a low stress facility, this is what we are planning to do as soon as we can. And then it's the protected.

And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can we say what what we are planning to do? The plan being fifth of the plan being Bette, which which of those is the fifth?

Fifth is South Of Stargill. Right? And and then it's north of that is Bette.

And so the city as defined now, we are I just sorry. I really should have said this. I just wanna make sure I'm right. So as of now, we would want to push bikes in an ideal world to fifth to get to the boat or bet to the boat. Which which of those two?

We haven't built that yet.

That's been

ideal plan. I'm asking a different question. In an ideal plan, when we have to think about long term plans, medium term plans with a very successful boat where we're trying to get people from very popular bike lanes to the boat, which of those two streets, as of now would be the one they want to get to? Scott Wickstrom, he wanted to say something earlier. Come on up. Come yell at me. Tell me I'm wrong. It's fine.

Good evening, Commissioner. Scott Wickstrom, City Engineer. I'm just going to basically kind of reiterate what was already said. But it really is going to depend on the cyclist. So if you are cyclist that wants to be on a low stress network, you're going to be coming up 5th Street, in the active transportation plan is the low stress network from across Alameda Trail up to Stargill, then you're going to traverse to the West and go up Bette Street on the trail. If you're an accomplished cyclist or a confident cyclist, you're most likely just going to stay on 5th Street and go straight up to the boat. So really it depends on the cyclist and their desire to be on a low stress network and their comfort level being on a or a street with more traffic and they'll say less protection for the cyclist itself.

So can I ask you a follow-up then? So if we're identifying that as the low stress option for less experienced cyclists, do we feel it is weird that we are throwing the low stress the wanna low stress pathway cyclists onto this kind of mixed use, not unbusy gap. It's a gap between fifth and bet. There's sidewalk. We're talking about landscaping and protecting landscaping. Is that kind of contradictory, it seems like?

It's consistent with the shared use path that's on Bett. But I can let Michelle wants to add to it. Yeah.

Yeah. Mean, from an active transportation perspective, all of our trails, most of which are shared use, those are considered low stress facilities. So there are needs to separate users. The more people you have, the more users you have, and the more you have speed differentials. So the Cross Alameda Trail does a good job of separating that. We have higher numbers of users. But the shared use path is definitely considered a low stress facility.

It's off the street. It's shared with pedestrians, bikes and peds together.

I don't wanna be a Debbie Downer, but we still have to go past the pilot phase on the lovely boat.

Yeah. You're right. Also, not gonna win this argument tonight, so I'll stop arguing. I have no other comments. I still think we should fix this. Any additional commissioner comments? Okay. This is an action a voting item. This is to endorse the design concept for Willie Stardler Complete Street Project. Does someone to make a motion and a second?

I'll make a motion to endorse.

Is there a second?

Seconded.

All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Aye. No one opposed.

Motion carries unanimously. With the commission's permission, take a five minute break. Stretch our legs a little bit. Come on back and knock these other two items out. Project from the Ralph Hapazado Memorial Parkway Bus, Q jump lane to three transit focused multimodal projects.

And presenting will be the city's Rochelle Wheeler. Take it away, Rochelle.

Thank you, Chair White Sea, and good evening, Chair and Commissioners. I am filling in tonight for Gail Payne, who had something come up suddenly. And so please forgive me that I'm a little unprepared for this presentation, but happy to do my best. So as Chair Whitesey just mentioned, this is an action item and we are asking the commission to endorse our recommendation on repurposing these $9,000,000 into three transit focused multimodal projects. So some background here.

In 2014, Alameda County passed Measure BB, which is codified in what's called the Transportation Expenditure Plan. It's the $01 sales tax that we have in Alameda County for transportation that is dedicated to many different types of projects. And there is a group of projects called named projects in here, which are for specific projects in specific localities. And Alameda has one of these. And it's a $9,000,000 project category under the named rapid bus projects.

And you can see it on the right here. This is a clip from the actual expenditure plan. So Alameda to Fruitvale BART rapid bus service to provide fast, reliable connection between Alameda and the Fruitvale BART station providing service to the new development proposed for the city of Alameda. And a lot of that was new development meant the Alameda Point development that was anticipated in 2014. And there are multiple, as you can see, multiple bus rapid transit projects, named projects in the expenditure plan.

And they all have to enhance the reliability and speed of bus transit service in the East Bay. They include implementation of bus rapid transit and transit priority projects. And the funds can be used for everything from development to construction and access and enhancement along those corridors. So after that was passed in 2014, the city sixteen requested that we use our dedicated $9,000,000 to add dedicated bus lanes on Ralph Appazado Parkway because at that time we thought that there would be dedicated transit service coming into Alameda Point along there. And certainly as you all know, there's a lot of capacity for that on Apazado Parkway.

So that was approved in 2016. But then in 2023 AC Transit started working on their realign plan. And it became pretty apparent that there wasn't going to be definitely wasn't going to be any bus rapid transit in Alameda. And there wasn't really going to, at first, be any new bus service on Ralph Appazato. And so we started thinking about, well, we have this $9,000,000 Alameda CTC has project delivery requirements and started nudging us and asking us, what's happening?

What's happening? Are you getting that project going? And so what we started to do is work on developing an alternative project for that. We worked with Alameda CTC staff and AC Transit staff. We worked with consultants to come up with recommendations, which is what we're presenting tonight, to repurpose those funds.

At the 2024, AC Transit did adopt their realign plan and they did end up rerouting Line 19 at the last minute, which means that it now will go along both Appazado and Stargill. But it's only going at one hour frequency, certainly not something where you need dedicated transit lanes. So with this, our recommended projects, we did bring this more recent in January to the ILC meeting, which is where the city and AC Transit elected officials get together for comment. So the three projects that are transit focused that we developed, we worked with actually a team with Kittleson. Mike, who you just saw earlier helped us out with this, to develop project proposals and looked at a bunch of different projects and ranked them.

And what we came to the conclusion was that the three projects we're presenting tonight were the ones that would serve bus lines, where new development is expected, where we could think about reducing bus travel time, and also continue momentum on other high priority city projects. So the first of these three is the Lincoln Marshall Pacific Corridor Improvements Project. We're looking at dedicating $4,000,000 for this project. On the West End, the Line 96 runs and will continue to run along Pacific. And the project funds will be used to support a bus island at the Academy of Alameda, which is a Pacific and fourth consolidated bus stops between 5th And Webster Streets for improved efficiency, some bus stop amenities, and intersection improvements to improve access to these bus stops.

The second project, which would also put $4,000,000 on is the one you just heard about, the Stargill Avenue Multimodal Improvements Project. And what we would be using these funds for are to do those those four transit stops, and to do improvements, and do the access improvements, including the crossing improvements and things like bus shelters. We would also be making the improvements at those two roundabouts at 5th Street and or at Mariner Square Loop, basically working within this constraint of this $4,000,000 that we have. We cannot build both of those, we don't believe, with this $4,000,000 And so that's why, as you just heard, the focus is on implementing 5th Street, which we see as much more urgent and needed and more beneficial overall. And the last project is just for $1,000,000 and that gets us to the total of $9,000,000 And that's a project that comes out of our transportation choices plan which was adopted in 2018.

And that's to add a transit only lane on West Line on 8th Street between Otis and Portola Avenue. So that's before 8th Street really tightly narrows there. And add a transit only lane so that kind of a queue jump lane in the northbound direction to allow buses that are traveling towards Central Avenue to bypass traffic that backs up along that section of roadway. So this is our proposal. The next steps will be that we're hoping that the Transportation Commission will endorse this recommendation tonight.

We are planning to take this to the city council for approval on May 6. We do need to get AC Transit the full board to approve this. And with those two approvals, then we can submit that request formally to the Alameda CTC full commission to consider they will actually amend the transportation expenditure plan. And that's a formal process that requires them voting to do that, opening a forty five day public comment period, and then at the end of that voting to approve that. And at that point, the projects, three projects, would be approved and the funding would then be available for us. So again, this is an action item to endorse our recommendation. And I'm happy to take any questions.

Any clarifying questions, questions of fact from commissioners? I just wanted to understand a little bit better. The bus jump lane on Westline, that was the corner of Westline and Otis. Where specifically is that?

It is Westline north of Otis to Portola, which the street kind of that's where it kind of starts to curve to the west. And again, before it narrows down, it's next on the West Side is the East Bay Park District. And then there's the Washington Park on the East Side on the West Side. Sorry about that.

So essentially, sorry, essentially just I think you just said this between Portola and Otis.

And Otis? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. That was

And there's some parking there that would be removed to help do that. And our understanding is that parking is fairly underutilized. Any

other clarifying questions?

On that project, the docs mentioned bike facilities. I wonder if you could speak to that. And also it sounds like, just to confirm, this is not reaching all the way to Central? Is this just

That's right. The queue jump lane would just there's no space to get it all the way to Central. So it would just be using sort of that excess space we have there so that if the cars are queued up, the bus can kind of jump in front of some of those queued up cars. Yeah, the active transportation plan calls for a separated low stress facility between Otis and Central Avenue. So connecting our we already have on West Line south of Otis, we have the two way cycle track.

And then we're going to have the two way cycle track on Central. So there is a connection planned there. We see this transit project as a way to kind of start the planning on adding in the protected facilities, particularly on that section between Portola and Otis, which initially we think probably could be done in street. And then north of that, we're pretty certain we will have to bring a path through Washington Park and then connect into the Central Avenue bike lanes. So we would use this million dollars to the extent that we can, given this is a transit funding pot.

But we'll use it to the extent that we can to kind of move forward the bicycle project as well.

Okay. Thanks. Clarifying questions, so I won't say more. Yeah.

Sorry. This is clarifying. With the so so it seemed like some of the money was put into projects that we were kind of already envisioning before and there was a funding gap and we, you know, put these money into it. Were any of these projects modified to provide better transit because of this money? I guess, yeah, were the questions modified because of this new funding

Well, for the Westline project, that's the total amount of the funding. For the Lincoln Marshall Pacific, we had already been envisioning these transit improvements. The $4,000,000 is kind of overall really helping us to get towards our local match for the hoped for $16,000,000 from Safe Streets for All from the federal funds. And then for the Stargill project, it's actually adding in more robust transit amenities at those intersections. Because when we first envisioned the Stargill project in 2020, we didn't know that there would be a bus transit there.

In 2024, we knew that that might be coming. And so we knew we could at least do some basic transit improvements there. So this will help us to kind of bolster those. And then the roundabouts is completely new.

Any additional clarifying questions? Let's go to any public comment.

Yes, so far we have one in house and I don't see any hands raised yet. So Jim Strelow.

Good evening again, commissioners and staff. Back in 2014, I mentioned this and I guess it's been a while, wow, eleven years, I'll mention it again. Bus and rapid transit just do not fit in the same sentence. If you want bus services for the masses, it's bus service. If you want rapid transit, then you're not gonna serve everybody.

Because I have ridden many AC transit bus where it took seven and a half minutes to load a person in a wheelchair, strap him in, get the bus driver out of his seat, all of that stuff before the bus then moved along. And then about a mile down later, took him four minutes to unload that wheelchair person off the bus. So bus and rapid transit, not in the same sentence, they're mutually exclusive. But I wanna get it to kinda understand that in the next two to three years, we're gonna be dealing with the Oakland Alameda access project and all the mess that it's gonna cause along the West End. And now you wanna do this project at the same time.

Most of the West End needs some breathing room on some of its side streets, access ways and stuff. And if you're gonna be doing all this extra work on these other roadways at the same time, I just, I have nightmare scenarios of doing all of this at the same time. I hope you are spending your money wisely and aware of the other conflicting projects at the same time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Strelow. Any additional public comment?

There are no other speakers.

Thank you. Any commissioner comments, questions or discussions? I got one but I don't like to go first. Who's got one?

I'll just turn my clarifying question into a comment that I'm glad to hear the, that space at Westline being repurposed because you now understand like the experience of being on the cycle track is great. You're going along the bay, you got the breeze, you curve up and then you hit Otis and you have to make a choice and the choices are bad. So I appreciate the planning and the opportunity to reconsider that. And also I had not realized until recently that bus only plans of the past and there is sort of that legacy out there at on West Atlantic. But anyway, I'm just speaking to as a newcomer being glad that there are still funds left to repurpose towards something more suited for the current purposes.

So those are all my thoughts. Thank you.

I have a question. I totally understand if you don't have the context to answer this question. So I guess I'm wondering why these were the projects chosen. And mostly from the context of, you know, I think in Alameda, the kind of the bus routes that most people really know are the 51 a, the o, like, those are, like, the big heavy ones when and we're targeting routes that are not those. Right? And so I just wanted to understand if there was a reasoning behind that.

Yeah. No, it's a good question. And one of the attachments was kind of our analysis of the different projects. And we focused on streets and possible projects on bus routes. And some of our major routes, like on Webster and Park Street, have historically had a lot of improvements made on them.

And we also did connect with AC Transit. And there's kind of not a lot more to do there given kind of how we're using the roadways and the constraints of those roadways. And Park Street has had some signal improvements on it already. Webster Street had a lot of bus bulb outs put on it. And so we were looking around for transit projects. And this is kind of what we're able to come up with. And these are the ones of the few that we found that scored the best.

And so just to reiterate, it sounds like AC Transit was asked, and these work, even with AC Transit, but these were still kind of the floaters at the top of what we're looking at. Okay. Great.

Yeah. We worked closely with them. Yeah.

I can add that AC Transit has a grant right now to do more signal, transit signal priority on Park Street.

Okay.

So that's underway.

Additional questions, comments? I I got just one. The Westline project weird? Like, we often talk about how we don't want want to design things for the very infrequent problem. Like, we just had that whole conversation about the once a month fair day.

We're building a bus jump at a place that I think gets backed up infrequently all the way back there. It just looking at this thing, it like, I understand I totally get there's there's a crazy backup half the time trying to get out to Central, but, like, that backup often kinda ends at Portola from at least my anecdotal stories, which I hate anecdotal stories. So is this a strange project? Is this like, do we have a measurement of how much time that saves on a typical day? Because it it seems like it seems like a lot of project and a reasonable amount of money for something in which generally this would not save a real bus that much time on almost every day.

I understand we're using some of this as funds to explore bigger projects. I get that. I know how it works. But that seems like a strange place for a jump right there.

I think we're kind of mixing opportunity where we have extra space with where we have the transit running. There are two lines there. At least there will be with the realign, the 20 and the W. I'm not sure with realign what their schedules are, but it looks like maybe twenty and thirty minute frequencies. So definitely more frequent than line 19.

And two buses along there. I don't know. I know that this is where Gail, I think, is much more fluent in this project. It did surface in the Transportation Choices Plan in 2018 as a project. So it's been something on our our list, to do list, for a very long time. But I don't think that was deeply analyzed. There might be a little more information in the Transportation Choices Plan about delays and how frequently it backs

Yeah. And I'm sorry, I'm not actually trying to be difficult. It just seems like if building jumps, we should definitely have some sort of and maybe it's there. I'll go look. But we should definitely have some sort of data on, like, investment versus time saved on a typical day and on a worst case scenario day, like that, I think, is really how this kind of product should get presented. Because otherwise, we're making a queue, but, like, we as a commission, it's it's tough to analyze that if we don't know if it's if there's a genuine traffic problem there a third of the time or an eighth of the time or 90% of the time or if it saves forty five seconds. Like, none of that's here. And so it's a little I mean, I get it, but it's little hard for us to for me, personally, to be like, good project because I don't know. It's it's a queue and it's jump queue. Great.

But I don't know what that saves us or gets us, quite frankly.

Yeah. I mean, may be that it is not percentage of overall time a high amount of time. But if it's during those peak times when people are trying do a commute trip, then it has the benefit of making transit a little more appealing to people than driving.

That is what I love. Yeah, that's what I'd to see. Okay, thank you. Any other additional questions or comments? Being grouchy tonight. Alright. I'm gonna go ahead and someone like a motion to endorse.

Make a motion to endorse.

I'll second.

All in favor of the motion, please say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

All in all opposed? I will say nay. I actually don't agree with the inclusion of Westline on this. It'll be the rare nay, non unanimous vote. Sorry. Okay. Let's go to our next item. Item six D, endorse the transportation 2024 annual report and 2025 work plan. Again, this is a voting action item. Let's go to our presentation with Lisa Foster and Scott Wickstrom.

Good evening again. Chair Weitzi, Transportation Commissioners. I am very proud to present our report on what we did in 2024 and what's coming up on 2025. This report fulfills reporting requirements council adopted plans. And some of the goals in those plans include eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries, enabling people of all ages and abilities to walk, use mobility devices, and bike safely and comfortably, and improve alternatives to low occupancy automobile trips, and promote equity in transportation.

And of course, as a transportation commission, this is part of what you do is review our progress on these plans. It is in your bylaws. This report represents the work of many talented people across multiple departments, but of course largely undertaken by the transportation planners in planning, building, and transportation and the engineers in public works. And so to recognize this, this presentation will be me. Rochelle Wheeler will join.

And then Scott Wickstrom, our deputy public works director and city engineer will finish us off. We'll start with top accomplishments from last year, talk about some of our performance measures, tell you where we're at, and then what we are looking forward to next year.

So

2024 by the numbers, 1.4 miles of all ages and abilities bikeways constructed, three ninety five sidewalk trip hazards repaired, 92 upgraded curb ramps, 89 intersections with safety improvements across a bunch of different projects. And then the Oakland Alameda water shuttle, as we all know, had 51,400 people in less than half a year. And our very busy riders on the free bus pass program for seniors and people with people with disabilities took over 200,000 rides last year. And the aforementioned Oakland Alameda water shuttle, after more work than the public can imagine and a great collaboration with project partners. This did launch in in July 2024.

It's free. It's ADA accessible. It operates five days a week. And in addition to all the passengers it carried, it carried over 10,000 bicycles last year.

We

also completed construction on the Clement Avenue Improvements Project, which opened with substantial construction completed in fall last year. It's two way bikeway, sidewalk improvements, traffic calming, crosswalk enhancements, and it's 1.2 miles of our Cross Alameda Trail continuing to grow. Our maintenance programs did a great job increasing safety and maintaining our streets. So with the pavement management, 52 of those intersection improvements happened with that. And then the sidewalk maintenance also added to that with curb ramp and sidewalk trip hazards fixed.

We kicked off neighborhood greenways planning and design. We developed implementation strategy and concept for Pacific Avenue. We held several public outreach events and had 2,000 touch points with people providing their input on neighborhood greenways. So here's our snapshot. You know, we are a Vision Zero city.

No traffic fatality or severe injury is acceptable by city standards. Sadly, one person lost their life in a traffic crash last year, which is, of course, both unacceptable and also the lowest it's been since pre pandemic. But at the same time, ten people suffered severe injuries, which is a little high for us. And notably, half of them were on bicycles, which is very high for us. And you can see on this, even though this is a rolling five year average so it should be smoothed out a bit if there was this it shows a spike in 2024.

The kind of good news part of that is that later when we get to active transportation metrics, you'll see that cycling appears to be up. So part of that might be just that. And I will say that none of the severe injury crashes with bicyclists happened where we have protected infrastructure. And then we continue to, you know, compare very favorably to the county and the state in terms of our rate of traffic fatalities and severe injuries. Between We 2015 and 2019, some of you know this, we went counter trend.

We were going down when county and the state were going up. And then we all went up with the pandemic. And then we've kind of gone down and a little bit up again. This is where we the last three years of fatal and severe injury crashes where they happened. It's the three years since we adopted the Vision Zero Action Plan.

A few kind of trends starting to look like they're emerging just based on looking at this. One is that our high injury corridors that were adopted with the Vision Zero Action Plan continue to be relevant. Nine out of eleven of these incidents happened on high injury corridors this year. With the exception of Broadway between San Jose and Central has been kind of a hot spot. All four of those auto severe crashes, severe injury crashes on shoreline were intoxicated drivers.

That appears to be a trend as well. Our traffic enforcement team and police, continue to substantially prioritize high entry corridors for their traffic stops. Although their their actual traffic stop number was down last year, but, they have been prioritizing it this year. It's a chief of police kind of priority for this year. So we should see more.

We did get over 400 reports of street safety concerns via C Click Fix. This is self reported data, so we always keep that in mind. But it's really useful, and we appreciate the people who submit this. We use these reports for planning and design. Bus ridership is continuing to trend upward.

So ridership on lines serving Alameda has grown 36% since 2021. The this data, to be clear, is boardings on the entire line. So it includes some Oakland boardings. Ferry ridership in Alameda also continues to increase. We grew 6% in 2024 compared to 2023. And system wide, San Francisco Bay Area is at 72% recovery of 2019 ridership. And for active transportation plan performance metrics, I'm going to ask Rochelle to come up.

Thank you. Lisa, I'll just take the next two slides. So we have specific performance measures in the active transportation plan. And so this is reporting on a few of those and some highlights from the report. In the equity priority areas, 52% of the bikeway corridors that were implemented this year were in equity priority areas.

And then 20% to 30% of other improvements, intersections, and events were in those equity priority areas. We total constructed 2.3 miles of new bikeways last year. So that means we have almost 60 miles of bikeways total and 40% of those are low stress facilities. Almost all of the public schools are enrolled in the Countywide Safe Routes to Schools program. ASD continued last full school year to not be included.

I think they are in the process of joining. And next year we might have 100% of schools enrolled, which is exciting. And we had 16 walk or bike events or campaigns that happened led by the city or by the Countywide Safe Routes to Schools or by others. As Lisa mentioned, mode share. We have six performance measures in the active transportation plan that are trying to get at mode share and changes in mode share over time.

We have so far three of those performance measures we have data on and that's included in the full report. Overall looking at where we have data, the trends seem to be showing that biking has been increasing over time. Going back to the furthest dates we have, generally it is increasing. So that seems very hopeful. We have been building a lot of amazing facilities in Alameda.

And so I'm kind of optimistically looking at this as like people are using those new facilities. And we're getting more people on bikes, which was the intention. Walking has been increasing since the low of the pandemic or like the 2020. And so that seems generally kind of to be a trend of increases in walking. That's a little less firm there.

Alameda CTC does do counts throughout the city, throughout the whole county. And there are seven intersections that are counted in Alameda and have been in the same manner since 2016. And what we've seen is that bicycle the numbers of bicyclists has generally increased with a couple anomalies. But you can see that 20% number from 2016 to 2024. Walking, looking back to 2016, came down a little bit, but has definitely been increasing over the past three periods.

And then if we look at just the work commute trips and walking and biking, we are seeing an upward trend there generally. And while it's not shown in this table, we did actually in 2023 hit our goal of 3.6% of commute trips being by bike for that one year. And what you see in this table is three year averages. So it'll be interesting to see if that continues. And the walking number was also quite high in 2023. So it's just a lot of, good promising, trends here. Thanks.

Evening Commissioner, Scott Wickstrom, City Engineer. What to look for in 2025? Cross Alameda Trail is nearly complete. Most notably there's two gaps circled in red. What was formerly the Pennzoil site is now a housing development.

Part of their first occupancy of the first kind of residential building, the requirement is that they have that commence street section completed along with the cycle track through that. The gap is from Hibbert to Grand. The cycle track will continue and fill the gap from Hibbert to Ohlone Drive I believe it is as well. So that will be a complete section. And then the Tilden Clement roundabout intersection project that we are looking to go to bid in April or May of this year.

And that will be an exciting time to get that one going as well. That won't be complete until 2026. Central Avenue improvements Construction has begun. The one way temporary construction circle if you think about Central Avenue went into effect last Monday. We had a little bit of a challenge this Monday when school came back into session and we made a couple tweaks and think the parents are quickly learning.

We modified some signal timings already to kind of help adjust and account for that stuff. But as you guys well know, this project includes road diet, travel lanes, three roundabouts, separated bikeways, bus stops and trees, rain gardens, etcetera. Project, ten years in the making. Neighborhood greenways implementation. So we're going to start construction on Pacific Avenue this year.

We've a couple interim things we're going to do at the intersections of Walnut and Willow making those four way stops. And then the first phase will go from Oak to Lafayette. And then as we come back through the capital budget process, we'll seek to get additional funding to extend Pacific. And then we're also going to look at the next couple streets to be done will be Versailles and San Jose. We are currently designing those.

All of these complete streets we've been or sorry, these neighborhood greenways we've been talking internally and have a pretty, I'll say at this point, well developed toolbox of some curb extensions, some traffic circles, not a roundabout, much, much smaller, slowing traffic yields around these things, speed humps and some additional stop controls as I mentioned. And we are really looking to put these out in really that first section of Pacific as a pilot, assess, continue to get feedback from the public, their thoughts how it's going as we continue to design both for Zai San Jose and the Western Half of Pacific. Coming up to Grand Street project construction, there's two phases on this. Phase one is shoreline to Otis. We are going to counsel to award the construction contract next Tuesday, March 4 and look to be set into construction sometime in about April.

That coordinates extremely well with Wood Middle School. They've frankly asked us to wait until about April to get going because they had some construction activities they would like to get done. We've been coordinating with them. Our project will improve the bus, bike and walking connections. Wood Middle School will dramatically improve the vehicle drop off with their driveway that's going be coming off of the new circulation for drop off is to come in off of Otis, drive south on the East side of Rittler Park, make it west left turn or right turn I should say and then exit out onto Grand.

And so all of the pickup and drop off will take place off street in that scenario. So that will be a big improvement for that school. Phase two Otis Drive to Encinal, we are in design with a 2026 construction target. And the 2025 pavement program we talked about this at length earlier so I won't delve into it too much here. 12 miles of pavement preservation, Island McCartney and Veterans Court pathways.

We do have the separated bikeway on Ogdenba. Safety improvements on McCartney. We're doing some improvements as previously discussed at Island And McCartney Intersection. And we do have our modular roundabout that we're going to put at the Maitland, McCartney, Melrose Intersection. The very bottom part that got cut off, there are going to be lots of daylight at intersections.

So almost every street that is highlighted up there will end up with daylight at the intersection corner. In accordance with state law we will be doing a lot of daylight in all the intersections. And Oakland Alameda access project construction I'll say is anticipated to start in 2025. This is an ACTC sponsored project that will be managed by Caltrans. They anticipate going out to bid in, I believe it was May, think at this point, they're looking at with a start at this point probably in about October.

I always like to remind people there are some substantial long term benefits for Alameda residents and businesses as well as a much reduced impact to the Chinatown neighborhood in Oakland with this project. So there will be some short term pain. That's the next bullet item. There will be lane closures within the Webster Posey Tubes. And we are continuing to work with Caltrans and ACTC to help both better communicate the impacts and look at ways that we can possibly mitigate that.

One of the callers that left a public comment this morning was talking about the public pathway. I will clarify that the first phase of the project will be to construct a new pathway in the Webster Tube which is coming into the island. That pathway will be bidirectional so you can use it either direction. That will be constructed and completed before the walkway and the Posey Tube is taken offline to deal with all the improvements on the Oakland side of the Posey Tube. So just to be clarify about that.

And then lastly this was talked a little bit a couple times now but AC Transit does have some service changes. The realign changes will go into effect August. WNOX lines will be combined. Line 19 gets rerouted to Alameda Point. And we'll be working with AC Transit to kind of upgrade some both temporary and permanent bus stop improvements with some paratransit funds that we get from Measure BV.

And capital projects, there's a lot of information on here. There's no way you can read it on the little screen. But it is available on the website and we encourage you guys to look at it more deeply. This really is a compilation of everything that's kind of in the construction phase and the planning design. It's a very helpful diagram for people to look at and certainly for members of the public.

And then some additional links, transportation pages. We always encourage people to use CCLIC Fix to report street safety issues. That's the second line down there. And then if you want get on our mailing list, there's a couple of other lists in there as well. With that, we have a staff recommendation to endorse the Transportation 2024 Annual Report and 2025 Work Plan.

Thank you, mister Wickstrom. Any clarifying questions from the commission? Questions of fact? We are we are on it tonight. Any public comment?

We have one hand raised. Kyle Wolf.

Hi there, thank you. Yes, this is Kyle again, one of the first public commenters from earlier this afternoon. Thank you everyone for all of your time tonight. And also thank you to the last speaker for clarifying about the closures of the public walk way in the tube. That hasn't been communicated very clearly with the public.

So it's helpful to know that and I definitely urge more communication public outreach about those impacts. I do still want to reiterate just how important and wonderful this little yellow boat that we've all come to love has been. I use Woodstock multiple times a week to be able to commute to Oakland for work and whenever feasible I just love taking it. And obviously the Oakland Alameda access project is going to make that potentially a lot more popular and have a lot more ridership. And so I'm concerned though to see that in the 2025 work plan that it's not really addressed to do anything to make it so that more riders are going to be able to use the Oakland Alameda water shuttle during the Oakland Alameda access projects.

And I see this as really an emergency item. And I know that we're working within the funding constraints of this two year pilots and granted I'm very unfamiliar with these funding processes and timelines. Perhaps it's too late to be able to gather more funding and be able to extend service. But it's just interesting to me to see in the context of the Open Alameda Access project, that's a $130,000,000 plus project and it's only, correct me if I'm wrong, dollars 2,700,000.0 over this entire two year pilot projects period for Woodstock. So it's just kind of unthinkable to me that we can't get just a fraction of the funding of the OpenAlameda Access project to extend service to seven days to help mitigate these impacts that are going to happen due to the single lane closure.

Yes, I think I'll yield my time. That's all I need to say. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional public comment?

There are no other public speakers.

Thank you. Commissioners, any comments, questions?

We're first

of one. Able

than the we normally do. So Last year, five.

Yeah. So I'm just kinda curious. Was there a reason is it just more bicycle traffic in general? Or do we I'm just wondering if we have any theories about what's So going

the Vision Zero Performance Metrics report has descriptions of each of the fatal and severe crashes. So you can look at those if you want. The causes of the severe injury crashes of bicyclists were unique to each other. There wasn't like a general trend that was noticeable. We are a small city. These are small numbers that we're talking about. So it's noticeable that there was a lot. But it's also hard to say whether that's a trend at this point. It's important because it's people's lives.

Additional commissioner comments or questions? Commissioner Gary Abrams.

Well, thank you as always to the city that punches above its weight. Small, small PBT department, small public works department delivering so many services. The bulk of my comments are going to be on working backwards from 2030, putting that into context because we've set ourselves lots of goals. And so I did want to ask a bit on one of the big open questions is how do we have a safe North South cycling connection across the city? And I know that's not what's on this on here right now, but I'm just curious if thinking out to the next time we hear this or the next two times we hear this, when and where will those opportunities come?

One of it, part of one is on this year's work plan which is the Grand Street project construction.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. I thought you said there wasn't any.

Sorry for But we just don't like, this is me looking backwards from 2030 and seeing that having a safe complete north to south is, it's not the only question. It's just the probably near the top of the list of questions. And again, I know I'm speaking out of the context for this year but more asking ahead to like when does the planning for the planning need to start to evaluate North Grand Street or a park in Oak Couplet or revisiting North Webster and so on.

Yeah, I would just kind of add on a little bit to what Lisa said is obviously Grand Street is right in the middle of the island as a primary North South connection. First two phases are funded. Really finding funding for that third phase is going be very critical. If you wanted to look way on the East side of the island, that connection would be the Fernside. You guys were brought forward a few months ago about the long term plans for Fernside.

Granted those are big ambitious plans that were going to require grant funding for that kind of stuff. And I think if you went further to the West you'd be really looking at Main Street connections. And we're starting to piece some of that stuff together. The Central Avenue project is a kind of a portion of that. When West Midway goes, they're going do some improvements to kind of the, I'll say the side path that exists on the West Side Of Maine. So we are working on, I'll say, some big North South connections. To your point valid of course. What about Park, Maine or Broadway or how do we get those? Yeah, good questions. That's a big piece of it. It's a piece that needs to be done.

Okay, well thank you for taking the questions and the feedback there. I was curious to ask if, because speaking of North South, if Broadway, Lisa, you did flag Broadway between San Jose and Central, if that did raise any specific concerns or if when you were responding in terms of all of these crashes being unique that at this point little to derive there.

Again, yeah, they're all kind of different from each other. So it's a little hard to generalize. But I will say three of them happened in 2022 at Broadway and Encinal. And that intersection is a little bit different now. And then two of them this year happened at Central And Broadway before the pavement program put in improvements there. And at least one of those I think would have been helped by that. That timing's not great, but at least we have done improvements already at that location.

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. And then to the public commenters thoughts on the water shuttle. I wonder if a staffer could speak to the current pilot phase versus seeking long term funding. And also I imagine part of this is there's a step function of going from one boat to two boats. So I wonder if you could speak to that longer term.

Yeah, thank you. This is my project, so I'll speak to it. So definitely we are starting to think more long term, seeing the incredible success that the water shuttle is having, which is excellent. We don't have all of our solutions lined up yet. But several things that I can talk about are we did already advocate last year with Alameda CTC to basically provide access to a grant that we already had that we weren't able to fully match to actually get the remainder of the funds, which was about $250,000 And basically they lowered our required local match so we were able to access the full grant.

That funding will be used to increase service on the water shuttle starting in the summertime, sometime in June. We still have to figure out how we increase the service within the constraints of having one boat and limited numbers of crews and crews that are all unionized and all of that. But we do hope to increase the service. And that would then align with the Oakland Alameda Access Project, those single lane closures and the tubes. Our two year pilot funding that we have right now ends mid-twenty twenty six.

We already applied to Alameda CTC for an additional two years of funding. Again, our private kind of slash nonprofit funding that comes from the Transportation Management Association and the Port Of Oakland and others, that funds about 75% of the cost of the water shuttle. So the public grant is a small amount, but it is really key to kind of piecing the whole project together. So we'll know in May if we get that additional funding to continue the project for another two years and we'll continue to be looking for other funding sources.

Okay, thank you for that detail. And I'll just share because the public commenter mentioned $130,000,000 going to the tubes. My understanding is it's gone up to over 150,000,000 now, but doesn't get newspaper headlines when auto oriented projects go over budget by that amount. So the one final thought I did want to bring up is it's interesting to see the numbers about enforcement actions. I wonder if the chair and Lisa could think about enforcement as a topic for a TC meeting because it just comes up regularly both for speed control, also for parking enforcement which I know are slightly different topics.

But I could imagine those being topics that we all and members of the public would be interested in understanding the constraints a bit more, understanding long term trends as well. Because an annual number, well, there's a lot to unpack there. So anyway, go ahead Lisa. I just wanted to share that as a thought for the future.

I was coming up to ask you to clarify a little more what you would wanna hear, then you started to talk about it. That's why I started going back to my seat. So thank you for your input. We can talk further and consider it.

Okay. And can I just follow-up real quick? And just for clarity, actually, any member of this commission, if they want to put a topic on the agenda, I think typically you want a month's heads up, if I remember correctly, something like that. I I think typically we want if if a commissioner wants to add a topic to the agenda for city staff to present, we can all do that. I don't remember if it goes to the chair or not. I'm happy to move things forward. My recollection is you guys wanted at least a month's heads up so there'd be preparation time. That's how it used to work. But I know what the current status is of that lead time.

To look into that, I think it was more than a month.

It probably was. I was acting like I was nice, I was being a jerk, sorry.

And for this one to be meaningful, we would need to bring in another department. So it would probably take more lead time than that. So I can ask and look into it. Thank you.

And I would definitely encourage anyone to do that too. If there are topics of interest, we should put them on the agenda. If it's okay, just gonna move to other commissioners. If you have others, I'll definitely move back. Any other questions, comments? Commissioner Goin.

Thank you for the presentation and obviously, congratulations on all the great work that was done in 2024.

I wanted to talk a

little bit about the Oakland Alameda Access Project, which this is a long question with potentially a relatively straightforward answer. But bear with me as I kind of think out loud. We started off this meeting. The first agenda item was about the Climate Action Resolvency Plan. And we talked about the targets that we have to hit by 2030 and beyond involving reducing miles traveled, etcetera.

We also talked in the previous agenda item about the rapid bus transit improvements that can be made here in various places. And when we talk about the Oakland Del Amedisys project, I think it feels to me we spend a lot of time talking about the next twelve to eighteen months of disruption and the water shuttle and the lane closures and the walkway and various things. But I think my question really is to what extent following the completion of all that work do we expect a reduction in congestion particularly for the Posey Tube leaving the island. And I'm thinking particularly about peak times because I feel like there's an opportunity for more usage of transit if the bus could get from Alameda to Oakland quicker at peak times. And so what I'm interested in, what are the long term advantages that we anticipate from that project?

Because probably we should be talking about them more than maybe we have been doing lately.

Thank you Commissioner. I very much appreciate the question. And it's kind of nice to actually think about what the benefits are long term. You know this project has been on ACTC's books for close to twenty five years. So they've long studied it. A couple big things, and I don't know the details, I'd like to talk at a high level what the benefits are. I came through and left Alameda on a Saturday afternoon about two, 03:00. And the tubes are fully backed up going 10 miles an hour all the way through. You get to 7th Street on the far side into Oakland. You're waiting for everyone to kind of scooch over, merge over, get that right turn. You make the right turn. You go two blocks. You're on Jackson. You get another stoplight. And you kind of circle around that and then you're merging.

And there was no backup on the freeway. It was all just a big kind of slow kind of snake through Chinatown to get there. The big advantage for this project is as you come up in Oakland on the Posey Tube, you'll basically functionally have almost a freeway entrance there. You're gonna turn off to the right on 6th Street on a lane that'll be functionally dedicated, do a horseshoe below Jackson and go directly up onto the freeway. That'll eliminate that backup.

It'll eliminate a lot of those people trying to squeeze over and get in that lane at 7th Street. And what it should do is free up the capacity for buses to go through onto 7th Street and actually open up that traffic. Most of the bus, only a few buses go on the freeway. Don't know how many do. But most of them go straight into Oakland.

So that will definitely help there. So those are a couple of big issues that help with the traffic as as well. And it should even help on like a Saturday afternoon because you have a more direct access with less friction to get directly onto the freeway that you won't have that back up in the tube as a result. And so everybody else who's going into Oakland will not be held up as much as well. That's in addition to just the other environmental benefits with reduced overall delay which is reduced greenhouse gas emissions and wasted time and all that kind of stuff like that. Those are a couple of high level benefits.

Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. As I say, I'm conscious we've there's obviously advantages for Chinatown. There's going to be less traffic there. There's obviously advantages for if you are if your aim is to get on the freeway, clearly, will be easy. But as I say, I wanted to clarify that there will be an additional benefit through traffic into Downtown Oakland. Because as I say, that could be a major additional benefit for transit as well as.

Yes. And that should be a significant improvement with the project. You.

Mr. Johnson? Yeah, and

I just wanted to add, I worked on a project in the city of Oakland with AC Transit and I worked with a lot of Chinatown community activists and they refer to that when you're coming out of the tube beginning as the toilet bowl because that constant circular motion is creating just all that stuff. So this is gonna be really, really great. I had never heard of that term before, before, but that's what they referred to as the toilet bowl. So this is going to be great.

I want to add, there's really significant pedestrian access improvements for the folks who live on the other side of the tubes on the Oakland side.

It's okay. Just had one quick question, which I think is a change in from 2024 to 2025. So in 2024, we ran a more or less unsuccessful pilot of the island hopper is my understanding. And as as I see here, 2025, is the island hopper still happening again in 2025, the bus from the boat around Alameda Point, or has that been discontinued due to lack of ridership? Because it looks like it's been discontinued.

They actually provided a the Alameda team wrote up a summary report of the 2024 Island Hopper operations. It might be on the web page for the island hopper on the city's website. I haven't checked there. And I happened to read that report. And it said it was TBD, if it would be coming back in 2025 or not.

And they kind of looked at where it was more successful and where it was like which stops people were using and how people were using it. And I think, again, continuing to feel like we're understanding more what people want and maybe that service is not actually exactly what people want, but maybe being able to home in more on what people would use.

Do we have a guess when that TBD is D?

I really don't know. I think that other people may know that more than I do. This project really comes out of the TMA and our economic development department. It's not really coming out of the transportation department.

Other commissioner questions, comments? Please. Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. So as I've said in years past, I do want to comment on and say thank you to the city staff for all of the different projects because there's really quite a bit that you move forward every year. So thank you. And it's always good to be reminded of what has happened in the last year and what's forthcoming.

I certainly appreciate the different traffic safety improvements, improving safety for folks who are walking and rolling and all of the intersection improvements over the last year. And as well as the visibility improved visibility for drivers at intersections in the daylighting. I really also want to say, forward in 2025, while I hear Commissioner Dara Abrams' concerns about North South access, safe access, I am very excited that the Cross Alameda Trail is almost complete. I think that's really spectacular. And I'm hopeful that you'll be able to identify and secure funding to move Woodstock beyond the pilot phase.

That's it. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner. Additional question, Commissioner questions, comments?

Please pause. At the very bottom here, it does mention Caltrans Broadway Otis Doolittle. And just wanted to ask if staff have heard any updates from Caltrans regarding the status of that project.

If I need to jump up here next to that question. So we have been working with Caltrans. I'll say it is a little bit of a slow drawn out process. But they have committed to reevaluating a hybrid or partial road diet from Broadway to Fernside, at least a portion of it, not necessarily including those intersections. That would be something that would happen a few years down the road.

They are in a position with their funding that they have that they have to basically execute that project. And they don't have the time to pause to go back to redesign in that level. So we city staff provided comments to Caltrans on their most recent set of plans that they will be looking to incorporate in. And a couple of the highlight items are instead of there's going to be rapid flashing beacons at the crossings of Mound and Versailles. And we're going to actually add in concrete pedestrian islands at both of those crossings.

So it will actually basically create a little bit of a chicane in Otis Drive. You're coming up. You kind of divert out. There'll be a center island for pedestrian passageway, a little bit of refuge if you will for them as they cross four lanes. The other items that we ask for and we're seeking confirmation that it will actually be in the plans is from as Baywalk comes around and comes up to High Street, expanding the width of that sidewalk to the east so that bicyclists can very easily go from shoreline to Baywalk onto that widened concrete, we'll call it a shared path at that point, to get to the bridge over to Bay Farm Island.

And we even asked for a little bit of a bump out to help facilitate that. So we've yet to receive full confirmation of that that last component is in. But they have accepted our comments and they are looking to bring forward a subsequent project to further evaluate a road diet in that area.

Thanks very much for that update.

I'm just going to add that

we are talking to them about a date to come back to the Transportation Commission to give an update on this project and perhaps a future project. So we haven't figured out that date yet. It would either be March or May, or perhaps I'd reach out to you all and ask if you can do a special meeting in April.

Okay, well thank you both for those updates. Can I, this is probably too soon to ask, but who is expected to foot the bill for that hypothetical project on their publicly owned right of way? I'm there right away.

The transportation 2024 annual report and 2025 work plan. I will quickly just say, as always, an amazing job by city staff on all the projects they do, all the answers they share here in this meeting. Good job by the commission side as well. Great questions. Do I have a motion to endorse?

I make a motion to endorse.

Commissioner Kim, is there a second? Second. Is everyone in favor? Aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All in favor of the motion to adjourn at 09:34, please say aye.

Aye. Good night.

Aye. Good night.