Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Is the chair's volume on? Vice chair, I mean, on the screen?

I can hear you all very well.

Can you hear me? Yes.

All right, wonderful, wonderful. Thank you. Are we ready to go?

Yes, got a thumbs up.

All right. Okay. Thank you all. Good evening, everyone. Apologies that I am remote and I love to be there in person, but thank you for accommodating me to chair the meeting remotely. This is Transportation Commission meeting, Wednesday, July 22nd, 6.31 PM, we are starting the meeting. And turning over to Lisa for roll call.

Good evening. Commissioner Dara Abrams? Here. Commissioner Gloin?

Present.

Commissioner Kim?

Present.

Vice Chair Suthamthira? Present. Remotely. Yes. Joining remotely from a publicly noticed location. We need to ask you if you have anyone over 18 in the room with you.

No.

Thank you. And just a reminder to keep your screen turned on during the meeting. And then Commissioner Whitesie, or Chair Whitesie is absent today. Commissioner Johnson?

Present.

And Commissioner Noctegal? Here. Thank you.

All right. Moving on to any, is there any agenda changes? From the commissioners?

No.

All right. And that takes us to staff communication, item three.

Good evening, Vice Chair Suthamthira and Commissioners. I'm Lisa Foster, Transportation Planning Manager for the City. I'll start with updates on City Council actions on items that the Transportation Commission has reviewed or considered. Just yesterday, the City Council approved amendments to create a citation for parking in any type of bike lane, and they also approved agreements for another two years of the water shuttle. Our upcoming meetings are September 23rd and November 18th. Some potential Transportation Commission agenda topics include the mid-year transportation report as an action item so you all have time to discuss it, water shuttle pilot evaluation, and possibly Alameda TMA annual report in the next couple of meetings or so, and maybe a speed hump update. Some upcoming events. On July 30th, we have the Traffic Safety Open House at the Mastic Senior Center. We'll have staff from police, public works, transportation planning on hand to share information about traffic safety and what we're doing in this city, hear people's concerns, and newly having information about safety for e-bikes and e-scooters and e-motos. The very next day, on July 31st, midday, we'll have an Oakland Alameda Water Shuttle two-year anniversary celebration. There will be some suites and a short program, short and sweet event, so to speak. And then on August 7th and September 4th, we have Transportation 101 and Clipper Cards for Seniors events at Mastic Senior Center. So for updates, you all have a status report on transportation on your consent agenda. So you have updates on all kinds of things. So I'll be brief right now. But I just wanted to make sure you're aware that Central Avenue Safety Improvements Project is nearing completion. The roundabout at Main Street, Pacific Ave, and Central Ave is slated to open in the coming weeks. And the entire project remains on schedule to become completed later this summer. West Midway between Pan Am and Orion, opened past tense? Yes. The portion of West Midway between Pan Am and Rainbow Court is complete and open to the public, eliminating the detour that some visitors were encountering at Alameda Point. So this was part of on-site preparation for the reshape project. And it's the first components of the multi-phase West Midway development. Also, the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, SafeTREC, recently interviewed yours truly about our work to become a gold level bicycle friendly community. So the link is in the staff communications if you're curious about reading that. And then I have an additional one that came up since we published the staff communications and that is that the Caltrans run I-80 truck access study has just entered their second round of public engagement about this study that is looking at what it would what the ramifications of removing the heavy truck ban on 580 would be for both 580 and 880 and You can Google I-580 truck access study and get to the information. There's an interesting interactive map showing their initial study findings about traffic noise, air quality, etc. Bay Farm is included in their study area and Alameda Northern Waterfront. is not, but they did look at it kind of at my request and didn't find any changes in cancer risk from air pollution in any future 580 scenario for people living in the northern waterfront. And that concludes my staff communications.

Thank you, Lisa. Congratulations on getting the Gold Level Bike Friendly Community Award and as well as the water shuttle anniversary and also for the extension. And moving on to item number four, non-agenda public comment. I see there is one attachment, but do we have any public comments for non-agenda items?

If anyone online or present would like to make a non-agenda public comment, please let me know. There are no hands raised. Oh, we have one hand. One moment. Arsh Hathi?

Yes. Hello, commissioners. My name is Arsh Singh Hothi. I'm the general manager of the Alameda Transportation Management Association. You may colloquially know us as the Alameda TMA. I just wanted to share, like Saravana just said, Our phase two for OAWS was approved in the consent calendar last night's meeting. So I just want to share some good news and then also let the commissioners know that a preliminary 2025 report is incoming. Thank you for your support.

Thank you, Arsh. All right, that takes us to the consent calendar. Number five, we have two draft minutes, one from February 25th and then the other from May 20th. And also the status report on transportation for half of this year. I understand people who were absent for the meetings can't move it. Lisa, is that correct?

Usually people who are absent for the meeting, the minutes are from abstain. Yes.

Would the chair like two motions to adopt?

Or just one? Go ahead.

Sorry, Lisa, where are you?

It could be just one motion to accept the consent calendar. And those who need to abstain, we'll do a roll call vote because we have somebody remote. And when you do your vote, you can say if you're abstaining from any of them. And just for memory, 5A, February minutes, Vice Chair Suthanthira and Commissioner Johnson were absent. 5B, May 20th minutes, Commissioners Noctigal and Gloyne were absent.

And before the motion, do you want to say anything about 5C, Lisa, why it's on consent and what the plan is for that?

I'd be happy to. So our bylaws require you all to receive reports on our status implementing transportation plans and policies at least twice a year. So you have received your mid-year status report on transportation in this year. But we put it on consent because we have a very full regular agenda. And with discussions with the chair and vice chair, decided to put it on the regular agenda at the next meeting. So you'll have time to discuss and then vote to accept it.

Basically, they're complying with the requirement, but at the same time giving us an opportunity to still discuss and vote to approve it or vote to accept that at a later point in time. So with that, I think we are open for a motion.

I'd be glad to make a motion to adopt the full consent calendar. Thank you.

I'll second that.

Commissioner Glein seconded if you couldn't hear.

OK. Any abstention? I abstain for 5A because I wasn't there.

I'll go ahead and do the roll call vote. Sorry, I paused. Yes, please. Commissioner Der Abrams. Aye. Commissioner Gloyne.

Aye, but I was not present in May, so I'll abstain on that one.

OK. Commissioner Kim. Yes. Vice Chair Suthamthira.

Yes, and I abstain for 5A.

OK. Commissioner Johnson.

Yes, but I abstain from 5A. Is that correct? It's going great.

And Commissioner Noctegal.

Yes, but I abstain for 5B. Thank you.

Chair Weitz is absent.

Thank you. That takes us to regular agenda items, item 6. And we do have a heavy list of items today. And all the three items are important. like Lisa mentioned that heavy items here and the item 6A, I think we have AC Transit staff here in the room. So 6A is to review and discuss the 2026 state of AC Transit and the AC Transit contingency service plan. That I will request AC Transit staff to begin the presentation.

Right. And my mic's hot, okay.

Yeah, and you do have a little slide forwarder if you want to do it yourself.

It should work.

The presentation on the screen seemed different.

Yeah, it's not quite the right presentation. All right.

Thank you for coming over and making the presentation today.

One moment. We seem to have last meeting's presentations loaded up, so I should be able to fix that for you.

If you want to start talking about without the slides, probably we can start with that.

STEPHEN JONES- Yeah, I can do that. So good evening, commissioners. My name is Stephen Jones. I'm Director of Legislative Affairs and Community Relations, AC Transit. It's nice to see some of you again. It's a real pleasure to be here today and to share the essential role that AC Transit plays in the everyday lives of Alamedans. We'll also directly tonight address some current budget challenges that, frankly, without a long-term solution, will impact the bus network that our cities depend on every day. But first, if I could, I'd just like to give you a quick reminder of who AC Transit is. We are the Alameda Contra Costa Transit District. We're not an agency of any East Bay city. We're a special district serving 13 counties and, sorry, 13 cities and eight unincorporated communities across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. We span 364 square miles. We carry more than 3 million riders each month. And we're governed by a publicly elected board of directors. Three out of four of our riders are people of color. And nearly 2 thirds are low income. And that makes AC Transit an essential service for all the communities that we serve. And it's why, for more than 65 years, we've strategically operated bus facilities in Oakland, Emeryville, Hayward, and Richmond, keeping buses close to the communities that rely on them every day. It's also why we're proud to have received a top honor as Outstanding Public Transportation System in the United States in 2023. Being a top transit agency, Here we go. I can do this. I can catch up.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Here we go. Side three. Perfect. All right. Being a top transit agency translates into more than 40 million rides every year. So let's unpack that number. That means more than 140,000 riders board on a typical weekday. And we deliver more than 160,000 rides every weekend. Each weekday, more than 9,500 riders use our Transbay lines, which is a critical service that connects East Bay communities to jobs across the Bay. And when school returns, at least 30,000 students will depend on us to get them safely to and from class every day. Writers recognize our affordability and our value, and the numbers prove it. February, March, and April of this year delivered the first three straight months of year-over-year ridership growth since the pandemic. We're also a workforce-first employer. We support more than 5,100 jobs across the East Bay, and more than half of those jobs are created outside of our agency. Together they generate over $600 million in annual wages, and they inject nearly $1 billion into the East Bay economy every year. So every bus we operate creates jobs, supports local businesses, and strengthens our communities. While fueling the East Bay economy, we're also cleaning the air. For over a quarter of a century, we've led the nation in zero emission buses. Today, our fleet of 58 zero emission buses are eliminating any tailpipe emissions from our streets. That leadership earned AC Transit a $40 million federal investment to launch the transit industry's first ever zero emission bus university, or we affectionately call it ZEBU. Alongside Chabot College and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, Zebu will help our employees earn associate's degrees while preparing the clean transit workforce of tomorrow. Riders recognize our value because we're making transit more affordable, faster, and safer. Our Easy Pass program provides unlimited rides at deep discounts for participating employers, colleges, and communities. Clipper Start gives income-eligible adults half off every ride. We redesigned 104 bus lines last summer under our Realign network, cutting travel times. And AI-powered cameras mounted inside buses help keep bus lanes and bus stops clear, improving safety and reliability. I mentioned that three out of four of AC Transit riders are people of color, and nearly two-thirds are low income. So let's put those numbers into perspective. More than half earn less than $50,000 a year below the federal poverty level in one of the nation's most expensive regions. Many are already struggling to afford the essentials like housing and transportation. And that helps explain why 65% of our riders are transit dependent. So any cuts to service would not just be an inconvenience. They would upend the lives of those who most rely on AC Transit. You often hear the phrase, good stewards of public dollars. Simply put, it means making every taxpayer dollar count. We know that when fares go unpaid, the cost does not disappear. It creates a funding gap. And that's why this month we launched the multilingual fare required campaign, fare compliance campaign. And the message is simple. Pay the fare, protect the bus. Also, a comprehensive state audit found that AC Transit syncs service well with other East Bay agencies. Our collective real challenges are sustainable funding, not mismanagement. And what's more, an independent review confirmed that average annual savings of $33 million since 2020. And this commitment to making every taxpayer dollar count is why we have a top-tier credit rating. When the cost of running our buses rises faster than the revenue supporting it, the result is a fiscal cliff. And so what's behind it? Well, federal pandemic relief funding is gone, regional sales tax revenue has flattened, and fare revenue growth has slowed. Fuel costs are up 28%. Bus maintenance parts have increased 14%, and the cost of buying new buses has surged 35%. You can see it's lopsided, and it's not sustainable. But we're not standing idle. Instead, we're taking action. And in the past fiscal year alone, we tightened our belt by $9 million. How? We're hiring only for positions that directly support service. We scaled back temporary staffing, saving roughly $2 million annually. And we brought outside professional services in-house. We're partnering with other agencies to purchase goods and services for less, and we even temporarily restructured payments to the pension plan to preserve cash. We're making every taxpayer dollar count. The dollars must count because AC Transit faces a projected $200 million deficit over the next four years. That translates into an annual funding gap of at least $50 million beginning in 2027. Without long-term sustainable funding, service reductions of up to 16% are unavoidable. And so would the human impact, potential layoffs affecting as many as 300 employees. So as you see, we're facing a looming fiscal crisis, a looming service, workforce, and community crisis. But we've been thrown a lifeline, but it's not a permanent solution. It's a state bridge loan, and it's exactly that. It's a loan. not a bailout, and it must be repaid with interest. AC Transit's share is $55 million, enough to close this year's budget gap and avoid service cuts today. But next summer, the loan is gone, reserves are exhausted, and the funding challenge returns. That's why hope now rests with the Connect Bay Area, or Senate Bill 63, SB 63. That measure would ask voters in five Bay Area counties to approve a 14-year, half-cent sales tax, or one cent in San Francisco. And if approved, it would generate an estimated $980 million annually for Bay Area transit. AC Transit would receive approximately $52 million each year helping to protect existing bus service and to prevent layoffs. Without long-term funding, our bus network remains at risk. To show what that could mean for our riders and our communities, I'd like to invite my colleague from our planning team to provide a more detailed overview.

Good evening, vice chair and commissioners. My name is Owen Christofferson. I'm a transportation service planner for AC Transit. So you've heard from Mr. Jones about the local and regional importance of AC Transit as an agency. and the very challenging financial situation faced by the agency. So going into this, our strategy is really plan for the worst and hope for the best, which is why we're here before you today. So we have to plan for these potential service reductions because it's the right thing to do in terms of protecting the investments we've made, continuing to use our tax dollars wisely, delivering the best service that we can with a plan that has been received and has gone through a community feedback process, public hearing. And what we're really trying to do is just protect as much bus service as possible. So going into the development of this plan, we had some guiding principles. One of them was to maintain the Realign network. So as you all probably know, AC Transit conducted a very significant comprehensive operational analysis called Realign, a multi-year project. And what we didn't want to do was just throw all of that out and start from a clean slate because of all of the work that went into that of really right-sizing our service for the post-pandemic reality. We wanted to miminize, if possible, complete service eliminations and instead focus on span and frequency reductions which at the very least will provide a basic lifeline level of service for many folks. We also looked to restructure some of our high-cost services, and we had to scale our impacts proportionally across the communities within our network. So I'd like to talk about our primary route network. This is really the backbone of AC Transit service. These are the high ridership, high productivity trunk lines. And these aren't just our highest ridership or our highest productivity lines. These are also lines that serve equity priority communities and are very important to the community. Of course, here in Alameda, we have the 51A, which is included in that primary route network. So that was one of our biggest goals, was to preserve that as best we could. And we are able to preserve the routes that you see on your screen here, including the 51A, at 15 minutes or better on weekdays, and other routes in our primary route network. maintaining our minimum service standards of every 30 minutes and daily service hours no worse than 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. so I'd like to walk through some of the changes in Alameda and there are there are quite a few changes so I will I will you know do want to take some time here and of course I have some more details and we can we can go back and forth in the Q&A as well so lines 30 and 31 are We'll see their frequencies reduced from 30 minutes to 40 minutes. And we'll also see some small hours of operation reductions. Line 30, after 7 PM, will only operate that north-south Park Street Fruitvale corridor. Line 51A, as I mentioned, there are no proposed reductions for that line, so that line is going to see the same level of service as it has currently. Line 96, the frequency is reduced to 40 minutes on weekdays and 60 minutes on weekends. The 851 Owl line, that's our all-nighter line. We are not proposing any reductions. And now we'll get to some of the kind of more detailed recommendations. So line O is proposed to operate peak direction service only. So that means into the city in the morning, back out here in the afternoon. And that route will be shortened to run between San Francisco and Bridgeside Shopping Center via Broadway, Santa Clara, and Webster. Unfortunately, due to the situation and needing to preserve service on other routes, we have to eliminate service on the O on weekends. Line W, we are eliminating one westbound morning trip and four eastbound afternoon trips. And then as part of this proposal, because of the eliminating, you know, truncating the O, what we're proposing is a new line in Alameda, which would have all day, weekday, weekend, 60-minute service running between Fruitvale, BART, and South Shore Shopping Center to maintain that level of service that would have been lost with the O. That line would serve those destinations via Fruitvale Avenue, Fernside High, and Sonoran Park Street. So I'd like to talk about what the road ahead is going to look like. So on August 12, which is coming up, the AC Transit Board of Directors is expected to set a public hearing, which would then take place on October 14. As well, on both August 12 and October 14, we will be offering an open house at our general office in downtown Oakland for folks to receive more information and provide feedback. around this proposed plan. Obviously, as you all probably are aware, the general election will be November 3rd. And if needed, the AC Transit Board of Directors will meet on November 18th and approve the contingency service plan on December 9th, which would then lead to a service reduction date of June 13th, 2027. So if no new funding is secured, the service reductions would happen in June of 2027. Of course, if funding is secured, if sustainable funding is secured this fall, this plan would not move forward. The board of directors would not move forward with this plan. And we would operate our existing service levels. And with that, I'll invite back Mr. Jones.

I know they're going to have questions.

So just to wrap it up, we really want to hear from folks, from Alabines. So here's how to engage. Folks can scan the QR code. It takes you to a survey. You can provide input and feedback there. You can also send us an email at planning at actransit.org. And of course, just visit our website at actransit.org to learn more. So just thank you so much for having us here tonight. We appreciate your time and attention in accommodating us. And I think we're happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Mr. Jones and Mr. Safferson. Before opening up to public comment, any clarifying questions from the commissioners? Clarifying questions.

Chair, could I ask one clarifying question?

Sure, go ahead.

City staff, could you remind me, line 19, does that depend also upon city funding or TMA funding? Is that a factor for consideration? Okay. Okay, my memory is old, but I must be conflating. So thank you, that clarifies it. Nothing more from me.

OK. Anyone else? Other commissioners?

I have one clarifying question. In the contingency plan, you mentioned potential 300 job losses. What percentage of total staff does that represent? I know there was that 5,100 number, but that's not all in-house, is it?

Roughly 2,200 total staff. Math is not my native language. It's about 15%.

So if somebody wants to do the math on that, yeah. All right. Thank you.

Any other questions?

People are shaking their heads now. We'll have more later, but no clarifying questions. Thank you, Chair.

All right. Do we have any public comments?

We have one in person, and so far one on Zoom. So in person, we have Mitch Ball.

Let's invite Mitch Ball.

Hi. So I would first like to explain my outfit. This sign and this hat are what I wore when I was collecting signatures for the ballot initiative to save AC Transit and fund public transit across the Bay. Out of the 186,000 signatures required to collect, we collected over 300,000, 77,000 of which were collected by volunteers such as myself. The signature collection was so successful that we were asked to stop early, so I'm very hopeful that we will be able to pass this ballot initiative. Well, I think it should be quite clear to you and our representatives from AC Transit, thank you for coming tonight, that I certainly don't want us to have to follow through with the contingency plan. There is one part of it that I think should be implemented regardless, and that is eliminating line 19 to free up resources elsewhere. AC Transit needs to increase its ridership, not only because it improves funding, but also because it means that it is providing more service to the community. While AC Transit gets reliable ridership from people who don't own cars like myself, new ridership can only come from people who have cars as an option. This new ridership can be obtained by competing to provide better service than cars, which AAC Transit already does with many of its lines. Public transit routes that circumvent traffic congestion by rail or bus lane, offer more direct travel by water, or save time that could be wasted searching for parking in a high density area, provide a value proposition for potential riders to leave their cars behind. The transit services that provide this to Alamedans are BART, any bus that uses the Webster bus lane, the Bay Ferries, and anything that connects you to downtown Oakland, downtown San Francisco, or two commercial districts, Webster and Park Street. However, whenever buses come in frequently, lack transfers to other transit services like the Bay Ferries, or travel along long circuitous routes, this time saved is lost and the ridership is lost as well. Long circuit routes are also doubly bad because they take up more resources to bring riders the same distance. So why eliminate Line 19? Line 19 uniquely has less than half the passengers per bus service hour of the next lowest used route in Alameda because it's infrequent, very windy and indirect, especially near the point. It doesn't compete with cars, but even more importantly, it doesn't compete with other buses. Its entire length along Buena Vista is only three blocks away from Alameda's most used bus route, the 51A. My workplace sits at a Line 19 stop, but my coworkers avoid it to wait for the 96 or walk to a different bus stop. Instead, I would like to suggest that in place of Line 19, Line 30 gets extended from Webster along Lincoln to the point where it can offer connections to both the seaplane and Main Street ferry terminals, and then cover Alameda Landing and Marina Village before heading into the two. This would additionally allow Line 96 to become more direct by getting rid of the needless loop around Alameda Landing and use Ralph Episodio rather than Lincoln to get to the point more directly. This, of course, is only a suggestion, but any change to make buses more frequent and direct, including eliminating seldom-used lines, is something AC Transit should be pursuing to improve service and recover additional revenue. Thank you.

Thank you for the comment.

Next, we have Suzanne Diers.

Good evening. Hi. I'm an longtime Alameda resident and have used the bus throughout my life, and especially when I lived overseas. I would challenge the AC Transit folks to consider how buses are actually useful in other countries and other cultures. Waiting for 15 minutes for a bus, that's a long time. I lived in Scotland for a few years. The bus took 10 minutes to wait for. After hours, it was a really long time of 20 minutes, not an hour, not a half hour. We are not encouraging use of the bus system. Is there even any social media or advertising to, hey, let's all use the bus? But instead, we're cutting, cutting personnel, cutting routes. Possibly we need shorter routes. Maybe that's a good idea. But make it easier. Why are people using Uber and their cars? It's because it's not convenient to use the bus. So please, AC Transit, look at the other cultures. See what's working elsewhere. Thank you.

We're going to go online. Thank you for the question. We have Jim Strelow.

Good evening. I have ridden AC Transit since the late 1960s to get to high school and college and have really enjoyed the service. Wish that they could raise the rates just enough so that it could cover some more costs. But also as I write it, I see how many times the driver just says, come on in, don't pay type of thing. So a lot of writers are getting used to drivers that are not collecting. I know that's not a big deal, but it's all part of the situation. I live in the East End, rely on the EO quite a bit, so having that new line operating 24 hours, because you didn't mention that it was not 24 hours, going on the East End loop should be able to handle those that need the bus service. Now, the other part of this discussion is simply I joined in at 7 o'clock because Zoom no longer works on certain Chrome laptops. It took me a long time. And then when I tried to log in using my smartphone, it needed a password. And of course, I didn't have a password. So the people who are designing the logins for getting onto Zoom, they need to realize that now you're omitting a certain population. I might have to buy a new Chromebook just to get Zoom because you say you always need the latest and greatest version of Zoom to connect up. Why did by Android need a password that of course you didn't provide? So then I'm logging in on my Windows 11 machine to get in but I'm just letting you know that there are a certain population That may have difficulty connecting to this meeting.

Thank you Thank you, Jim Next we have two more speakers online next we have Leo Esclamado and

Hi, Leo.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, good evening, members of the Transportation Commission. My name is Leo. I'm a Marina Shores resident and I live off Clement. I used to take the Line 19 pretty often when I first moved to Alameda, but then it just got really infrequent. I mean, it was the most convenient really for me, especially to go like downtown Oakland and do a couple of business meetings there. But then eventually, you know, line gets less frequent and then it really expanded to the east. So I, you know, when it I wasn't privy to like why the changes happen, but there's like mixed messages here. You know, it's like One, we just opened up a new stop, the J Street in Buena Vista. So I was like, oh, maybe that's a signal to the new Star Harbor neighbors of the usage there. So I'd just be curious of how is the city coordinating for the added growth. There's incoming housing developments that's going to be online in Clement and I don't know how filled or the usage is from Star Harbor. So I really hope that there's just added looks to the ridership and there's just added foresight to the additional transit options that will be available for the incoming workforce. and communities coming in. So I really just, one, I do hope the ballot measure passes, but I do hope there's additional consideration to really how are we going to be managing the growth and that need for public transit. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

And last, we have Kim Kettle.

Hi, Kim.

Hi, it's Kim Cagle and Benjamin Grass. We are residents here in Alameda and I wanted to have a couple of comments regarding the Line 19. First of all, I think that there are a lot of additional, previous citizens' comments that there's gonna be a lot of additional housing that's built along the line 19, certainly within walking distance, and I'm hoping that AC Transit and the city can take that into consideration, so what percentage of those folks may use the public transportation resources of that line. So thanks for hearing that. Also, as the previous citizen mentioned, there were some parking spaces that were recently removed to accommodate the Line 19 bus stops at J Street and Buena Vista near J Street and Entrance Drive. If it does end up that the Line 19 is eliminated, Parking is short in our neighborhood and throughout a long point of this stuff, I would hope the city would be able to take advantage to reestablish those parking spaces for where those bus stops were. Thank you for hearing me and my comment.

Thank you. we do have um you know item 6c related to clement revenue and and the truck lane and parking spaces just want to remind the folks out there and do we have more comments on this we have no more public speakers all right okay and now uh turning over to the commissioners for Who wants to go first?

I'll go first. Question for Steve. You know, I'm a big AC Transit supporter. I ride AC Transit every day. I actually remember when the line 51 was one big long line and we had to divide it up into 51A, 51B. I am very observant when I get on the coaches, and I realize that the operators have to make a decision with someone who doesn't want to pay. It's usually a school age kid, or it's someone who is really struggling. And so instead of trying to convince them to pay, they let them get on free so that they can keep the buses moving. Because the 51A is a very, very busy one. A lot of wheelchairs. elderly people, it has to snake through Chinatown, and it runs pretty regularly. And I would imagine, Steve, that is probably one of the most frequently used lines that you guys have.

Yeah, it's definitely one of our higher ridership lines.

Yeah, so I just want to kind of defend the district a little bit. Those are my people. Steve, my one question, and you might have answered this at other platforms before, but can you help me again I know that Measure BB had passed a long time ago, and it's supposed to sunset in 2045. So can you kind of talk about how the Measure BB funds are used in terms of if the SB 63 is passed, in terms of how you guys use Measure BB funds now versus how SB 63 funds will be used and how they sort of work together to help you guys out?

Yeah, to a certain extent, although just – I'll say that the SB63 dollars are really geared primarily towards our operations and just keeping us, like, operating on a basic level. I think Measure BB offers some support, not the not the degree of support that SB 63 would offer or I think the duration. You said 2040?

I think Measure BB is going to. Actually, it might be. 2045 maybe? Somebody can correct me if I got that wrong.

But I also know that Measure BB supports some other transit related programs as well. So stuff that's not maybe directly related to transit operations. I'll be candid. I'm not entirely conversant, and so I don't want to misspeak. But I'm more than happy to go back to our team and make sure that I get you a detailed answer that I think speaks to that great question.

And then my second question, Steve. We look at ridership before the pandemic. I guess that's 2019 pandemic to March of 2020. How does ridership look now? Has ridership returned to any sort of comparison to what it used to be before the pandemic?

Yeah, our ridership is roughly 75% of what it was before the pandemic. And it's probably stabilized around that, although I will say, just earlier this year, we saw back-to-back-to-back strong ridership gains. I think in June, I don't actually know if you recall off the top of your head, but June we actually saw, I think, a 5% jump in ridership as well. So the demand is there, and certainly the need is there, so we're seeing, again, the 40 million rides a year. We know that our riders depend on us. And yeah, roughly 75% of what we were before the pandemic.

OK, and Steve, I'm being a little selfish here. So when I saw your list of backbone lines, I didn't see the temple on that list. Is the temple on the backbone lines? Is it?

It's in there. It's definitely in there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

OK, thanks a lot, Steve. Appreciate all your good work. Go district.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Commissioner Johnson.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation. Yeah, I think at first I want to say SB 63 is super important. I believe the city's already endorsed SB 63. Is that, do you know? No.

Not officially.

Not officially? OK. But, yeah, so it's very important for AC Transit. I want to note that I think after what Commissioner Johnson said, I've actually been seeing more fare compliance on 51A recently, especially getting off at Fruitvale, boarding. They've been not letting people board without fare. So I have been seeing a lot more of that, which I think is really going to your point of um kind of uh compliance and strengthening kind of public support for ac transit and things like that i think one of the questions i had was you mentioned that if the ballot measure does pass there would be no service reductions uh in june 2027. um i was curious though um what do i guess um I know there's typical service changes at AC Transit. Are those routes kind of frozen for a year, two years, three years before you start making other service changes? I'm just kind of curious.

Yeah, good question. So we periodically will, throughout the year, we will make kind of minor service changes, minor service adjustments. I think really when we're thinking in the context of these larger service changes, it's more of a conversation around financial resources, right? If the funding is secured, we will have the financial resources to continue to operate our current levels of service. Within those levels of service, there's of course potential for tweaks or changes. And in fact, in the contingency plan as well, it's really just looking at it as we have this much money to deliver service and then we have less money. which is why we're coming here and why we're doing outreach. We are, of course, open to changes to the plan or, as I said, if funding is secured, to changes. We just can't commit to, even if the funding is secured, we can't commit to offering a higher level of service than we operate currently.

So I guess then, does that mean, are there still potential cuts on the table if SB 63 does pass in November? No. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Kim. Okay, thank you.

I have a question about the service, the potential service cuts that you mentioned, particularly concerning the lines. I don't know if we're able to pull up that slide possibly. But I noticed there was, among there we had line 19 would be eliminated and line 96 would be reduced. I just, I think my question is, I see that you're potentially adding a line on the east end to make up for the reduction in line O. So what I'm interpreting here is severe cuts on the west end, where some of our equity priority communities are, but very little cuts on the east end. And I'm just wondering if there's a reasoning around that in terms of rider numbers, or why were those decisions made?

Yeah, as kind of previously mentioned, the ridership and the productivity on Line 19 is, I think it's the lowest or among the lowest out of all of our routes. And, you know, we – I will also say that this plan, when the – board of directors will consider the plan in August. There will be a full Title VI disparate impact equity analysis that will be conducted irrespective of whatever's happening at the federal level with Title VI. And so we will have that, and we will have that kind of information to make sure that we are not kind of going about this plan in a way that does result in disparate impacts. But really, it was just a matter of Again, trying to preserve within those bounds the most amount of riders and the most amount of ridership. And the cuts that we had to do on the cuts that are proposed, rather, on the O, it does leave quite a gap. And it just really seemed like with the ridership patterns that we see with what we had to do around the evolution of this trans-based service for this post-pandemic reality, it seemed really important to have that new line there. And as mentioned, there are lines such as the 51A that are still somewhat accessible in the West End.

Yes, okay, thank you. No, I can understand the logic with the line 19. I know that ridership is low. It does also have that kind of circuitous route, which is a little bit odd. But as I say, I'm looking at this and thinking that in combination with the reductions on the 96, That feels like quite a severe cut, as I say, at least on the West End. But thank you for the answers.

Again, I will say that this plan is not set in stone at this current moment. This is why we're doing this outreach. And we are open to making these types of changes. As I said, the extra, whatever we want to add back in, something else correspondingly will have to come out. So whether that's a reduction on the 51A or a reduction on... further reduction to 60 minutes, say, on a 30 or 31. It's just this very challenging kind of financial game at this moment.

Okay, thank you. I have one or two other questions which might suit Mr. Jones slightly better. You mentioned a $33 million saving. I forget which slide it was. It was a couple of slides earlier, I think. And I was wondering if you would be able to give us any more color on how that saving was accomplished.

I think it was maybe...

Couple of slides later, I think. Maybe there, yeah. SB 63, bottom left.

Oh, the efficiency review. Yeah.

There is a $9 million in savings delivered in FY 26. That's on 10.

Correct, on line 10. So, yeah, that's correct. In FY26, you know, that delineates there the number of different ways that just in that year alone we were able to achieve the $9 million in savings. What this slide, slide 8, refers to is the state mandated – actually, as it – SB 63, the legislation actually mandated that the transit operators undergo a financial efficiency review before, you know, to make sure that the savings were, I'm sorry, that the transit agencies were actually to determine the degree to which they were using public dollars wisely. And in that review, they confirmed that, on average, we were able to, since FY20, save $33 million. The specific savings of that, I would have to go back to the financial efficiency review. And I'm happy to provide multiple examples of the number of ways in which we did that. I just don't have them off the top of my head.

Okay, fair enough. Understood. Thank you. And I guess my other question is, you mentioned, I think you said, rider levels are maybe 75% of pre-pandemic numbers. I think I looked at the charts in the last few weeks, and it looks like it is creeping up year on year, which is great to see. Obviously, we want to get those numbers up. I wonder... Does the agency have any programs or initiatives planned or in motion to increase rider numbers? Because obviously, the more riders you have, the lower the cost is per ride, and it makes it easier. Funding becomes easier. I know fares are only a portion of the cost. Increasing rider numbers has so many knock-on exponential benefits that I was wondering what, if anything, the agency is doing to try to increase rider numbers in general.

Yeah, I mean, that's, I think, our everyday kind of mission is making sure that we're providing the best damn service we can provide to get people to where they need to go when they need to get there. So I think we kind of lead with that. I think the entire organization in lockstep is committed to making sure that we're providing a service. And in doing that, that's how we help grow ridership is people take advantage of a service that they can trust, that gets them to where they need to go. And they think it's a virtuous circle. More often, we're able to do that. More often, people are going to choose transit over their single vehicle. I also mentioned, well, Owen talked a little bit about our Realign system. I'm sorry, our Realign initiative, which really kind of right-sized our service to meet the post-pandemic needs of our riders. And that's worked out. In that way, we're helping to grow ridership because we're meeting how demand has changed, how the needs have changed in the face of the pandemic. And I'll also point to our camera enforcement program, which is a pilot. And we have 100 buses currently outfitted with cameras that enforce illegal parking in transit-only zones and at transit stops. and the idea there is to change behavior. It's to discourage people from blocking our transit-only lanes, from blocking our bus stops, because obviously that interferes with our ability to run the buses on time. It interferes with the ability of people to safely get on the bus, especially if you have some mobility limitations. You're a senior, for example, and it's kind of hard to bridge that gap between the sidewalk and the bus. So a number of initiatives like that, I think, speak to the things that we're doing to try and deliver a service that people can rely on, that people want to take, and that ultimately grows ridership.

I very much agree that providing an excellent service is a big part of that. I also wonder if there's anything that agencies can be doing, obviously within resources and budgets and that sort of thing, just to increase awareness. I know from conversations I have with my neighbors and even I, as someone who rides AC Transit almost every day, when I moved to the island, it even took me a little while to know what are all the routes and the lines and the options that I have. And I wonder if awareness is something that could be improved. I'm not going to try and say how that should be done, but I wonder if that's something that the agency is looking at.

Well, I mean, if you're offering to partner with us to encourage people to get on the bus, please reach out. But yeah, we do have, I mean, I mentioned initially the fair compliance campaign, just making sure that people, when you pay the bus, you're supporting the service. through supporting the bus. So there's that. We are out at community events and festivals. It's summer season, so I think almost every weekend we are out in the community reaching potentially new riders, certainly our current riders who have questions about our service, and helping to make our service more accessible, more attractive to them. We have our online mobile app, which I think is incredibly handy for somebody, especially if you're, well, which I think is especially handy because it has the real-time arrival displays, for example, so you know exactly when your bus is going to arrive. And then, you know, we partner with a lot of different organizations as well. Coming up next month, we and BART are partnering to have a transit night at the Oakland Ballers. In Oakland and we think that's kind of a fun way and just one example of the ways in which we reach out to community organizations We partner with them to elevate the profile and the value of transit in the community I will say I will tell you last year 2025 was our 65th anniversary and in addition to a number of different things we did to kind of promote that is we wrapped one of our existing buses in an old school wrap. So it looks like a bus from, I don't know, the 70s, rolling through the streets. And it's a simple thing, but it's also something that really connects with a lot of people. Because I remember the caller who mentioned they had been taking AC Transit since the 60s to school. And people see that bus, and they know that, like, They took Aunt Clara, you know, to get them from school and back. And it's just a way to, one of the many ways that we're, you know, always trying to connect with the community to underscore, you know, what a vital resource we are for people.

Makes sense. Well, thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation as well.

Sure, thanks. Thank you. Is it Commissioner Day at Abrams?

Sure. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to the AC staff for being here today. If I could zoom out and just share some thoughts of, you know, COVID changed a lot, but this is hitting every single metro region around the country. Same challenge everywhere. New York is solving it. State of New Jersey is solving it. Boston is solving it. Minneapolis, St. Paul are solving it. A lot of other places aren't. And the way they're solving it is by asking people and businesses to reach into our own pockets. And no, I don't want to pay more in sales tax, but I want to be able to ride BART. I want the people I buy lunch from every day at the Knob Hill in Alameda who I know come there by AC. I want them to be able to get to work so I can buy lunch from them. And just for broader context, BART is going to shut down 10 stations, at least 10 stations completely. the oakland airport connector it's going to be shut down completely i know that's not part of ac's you know your mandate to do this worst case scenario planning but transit grows when it connects like one of our commenters said when it's frequent frequency is freedom that's what gets people to Hop on the bus. That's what gets them to say. Hey kids. We're taking the ferry today And you know I was I I signed the petition I was glad to be one of like a hundred eighty thousand people and I hope to be one of The folks across the five counties who vote for this because hey, I don't want to pay more in sales tax but this is the solution that our region has and to be like some of those others, like New York. They're figuring this out, and for better or worse, not every metro region is, because it's a big ask. And just to be super specific, I'm really glad AC's going through this. I hope I can kind of underscore and echo some comments others are making, where, like... Alameda is a good partner to AC. We love it when your service planners come here, because frequency, reliability, density, interlining, it's good for AC, it's good for Alameda. And I know you're hearing some, like, the doomsday scenario is going to bring out some hard choices, hard choices hopefully that don't have to be made, but also hopefully this is underscoring how Alameda has the right geometry to not just continue to operate this, but to make it better, to make it so that even if the wall time on some of these routes is not so great, Interline as much as possible. Folks know they can show up at the 51A. And you all heard how much our staff and stakeholders pushed so much to keep that service to Kaiser for our older residents. You all know we shut down our paratransit service and shifted those dollars to AC. So it's money going directly to AC. It's super efficient. It's like the lowest cost ride for everyone involved. Huge ask for voters, but the partnerships are here. I hope this works. I hope you all are able to keep on sending your staff here and that this is about fine tuning Alameda's service. It's about those trips to Kaiser and Oakland. It's about BART connectivity. It's about the folks going across town and taking into account these new developments because You know, it's all about building up the core of the Bay Area, and we're right here in the core with you. So thank you for taking these thoughts. And yeah, I'm just going to say again for voters, I don't want to raise my sales tax, but I want Bay Area Transit to work. whether I'm riding it or I'm driving alongside and someone else is on the bus, or whether it's the person serving me the sandwich or the person I'm meeting up with in San Francisco for a work meeting. So let's keep this working. So thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Nachtigall, do you have any comments?

I do. Thank you. I'm going to say thank you to the folks from AC Transit for the great presentation. And thank you, Commissioner Dara Abrams, for the big picture comments. I'm actually going to bring it back in very narrow and make a comment myself on line 19. I've lived on line 19 on that route for 17 years, and I've watched its service ebb and flow over those years. The headways were more frequent, then they were less frequent, the route changed, it stopped altogether, it came back, and I remember that it came back relatively recently because there was a need. There was a perceived need for line 19 to return. I want to lift up one of the comments made by the public here tonight, that if indeed that service isn't needed in the same way as anticipated, then probably best to repurpose the resources on that line. So that's my two cents, as I truly have seen line 19 go all over the place over the last many years.

Thank you, thank you commissioners for all the comments. And thank you to the AC Transit staff, Mr. Jones and Mr. Christopherson for making this presentation. It's a great presentation and it's very painful to see that we are all considering this alternative scenario and it's very painful scenario. But needlessly, I can also see why we are doing it, so that it sends a message and also you are prepared for the worst-case scenario. Commissioner Dara Abrams provided a high level and then we heard different levels of the impactful comments, impact to the riders across Alameda and also for Bay Area. I'm just getting down to specifics in terms of your Calculation is a very narrow word, but how you are estimating the trade off and then in that developing your plan, how you are considering two elements. One is the transit dependent population. I know Commissioner Blount touched upon that. Because they are totally, we need to consider them and there are so many metrics out there or so many ways like MTC's equity priority communities and there are many ways you can analyze them and then identify how they're and what level of or who you are serving and who are your transit dependent population and then are they still in your in the new network that you are proposing? Are they included in that? And so that is something we want to hear and people want to know. And also overall, what is the ridership impact for all these changes that you are proposing for Alameda? These are two specific question I have. Of course, personal story, I started when my kid was, that was 20 years ago. There was a bus line that came near my house and then it went to downtown Oakland. I was riding it with a little one. It was so convenient. Then once that bus was cut, that line was cut, And I stopped and moved away. I mean, that's how I can totally see the impact people will have. And of course, I was able to move to other options, but there are some people who may not have the option. So we need to really consider them. So with that, I will turn it over to AC Transit staff, if you're able to respond to any of the questions from other commissioners and mine as well.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Yeah, I'll try to respond. I mean, I think a lot of the response to your question kind of ties in with what we've been talking about earlier around our real line comprehensive operational analysis, as well as our primary route network. As I said, these are not just our highest productivity routes or our highest ridership routes. These are also routes that have been identified in equity priority communities. And these are routes that both meet these kind of performance standards in terms of metrics like passengers per revenue hour and the things that we look at when we look for a productive route, but also serve incredibly important populations, whether that's equity-party communities, other folks, folks that don't have access to a car. The challenge with developing this plan was that we have to preserve that network and we have to make decisions like eliminating the 19 that we know are going to have adverse impacts, but the Financial reality is so dire that if we don't protect the network that is kind of the real backbone of AC Transit as an agency so we can really ensure our long-term kind of survival and effectiveness as the agency that everybody knows to be AC Transit, that is just what we had to do in this plan. These were incredibly painful choices that we made. We know that there will be a reduction in ridership. And in performing the cost analyses of this plan, we are planning for a reduction in ridership and a reduction in overall fare revenue. And another point that I wanted to make regarding some of these finer points around connections and all of this, the BART situation was mentioned. This is going to be, if this funding is not secured this fall, this will be an unprecedented and a very challenging time across Bay Area transit. This plan, per our existing timelines, as I said, we will be implementing this in June. And to one of the other points around what does this look like in terms of what else we can do, this is unknown territory. So the planning is not necessarily just all said and done when you come out with those June changes. Because we know for a fact with what we're hearing about what's going to happen with BART, what we're hearing about what's going to happen with other agencies, we are probably going to have to make changes. We may have to fill certain areas that are just being completely left out. And it's because of how unprecedented, because of the level of service reductions, which really hasn't been seen in the region, We just can't tell. We can't read that into the future. So again, that's why we... And I also want to say we really appreciate working with Alameda staff, commissions. I will also say our ridership in Alameda consistently outperforms the system as a whole. You should be very happy about that. You're doing really well with your ridership. Those new 30, 31, those redesigned lines are seeing double digit increases year over year in ridership. So I think that speaks to the collaboration, the willingness, which we see and we hear of this community to prioritize transit. And we want to absolutely continue that relationship. We know this is not the end of this.

story and there will be you know future opportunities and a lot of future planning that will be needed thank you I I know this we can just go on and on on this and but we totally understand the challenging the trade-off that we are all looking at and we really hope we don't need to go there keeping our fingers crossed and and yeah thinking big for the Bay Area transit as a whole. With that, we really appreciate you both coming to our commission and making this presentation. And we hope you go out and make more presentation and outreach to the district wide so you get better participation and support, more support. So with that, good luck to all of us and good luck to you. Okay. Moving on to, we have item 6B and 6C in front of us. I would like to ask Lisa or Jennifer about the number of public that we have who have submitted. Anyone can say, because accordingly I would like to... take the item. Lisa, probably I should just ask you, is it possible, or if we have more number of public for one item, I mean, 6C here, is it possible to take it out of order, or we have passed that? We have to just go with the sequence?

Sorry, thank you. Normally, the agenda changes happen in the agenda change part of the agenda.

All right. So we passed that. Okay. All right. So now we are moving on to item 6B. 6B is to endorse design concept for Pacific Avenue Wilma Chan Way neighborhood, neighborhood greenway crossing improvements. It's an action item. With that, we have a staff presentation on that.

Yeah, good evening, Vice Chair Sutantira and commissioners. My name is Susie Hofstadter, Senior Transportation Coordinator. We also have Andrew Lee from Parametrics, our consultant on Zoom, in case anyone has technical questions on the technical attachments. And Scott Wickstrom is here as well, the city engineer. So just off the bat, the staff recommendation for this item is to endorse the proposed design concept for the Pacific Avenue Wilma Chanway Neighborhood Greenway crossing improvements. This is a sneak preview of what that looks like, and we will see it a few more times in the presentation, so no need to stress about the details at this stage. Thank you. OK. I'm going to have to ask you to advance them, I guess. So the project location is at Pacific Avenue at the crossing of Wilma Chan Way. This is a neighborhood greenway that's kind of the very beginning of the phase two Stage of this project as part of the community engagement We also discussed the 8th Street and Pacific Avenue segments shown in the darker purple in this graphic The outcome of that engagement is going to be on the neighborhood greenways website won't be discussed with this group in the future and tonight We're going to focus on just the Wilma Chin way crossing Next slide please So just to review what neighborhood greenways are, these are our network of streets that are designed to give priority to people walking and biking and allows users to share the street in a low-speed and low-volume context. And the goals are to lower vehicle speeds, vehicle volumes on those corridors, and improve crossings. And that third point will be critical in this conversation this evening. Next slide, please. So the project location is part of our 2030 low stress backbone network for the bikeway network. As you can see, the orange line that crosses the entire island is Pacific Avenue. And that crossing of Wilma Chan Way, which is labeled Constitution Way on this map, is a critical crossing point for that network. Next slide. So the goals for the project are to improve safety for all road users, make bicycle and pedestrian crossings of Wilma-Chanway safer and more comfortable, and to maintain low traffic volumes on Pacific Avenue, which is a neighborhood greenway. Next slide. The existing conditions on Wilma-Chanway are four lanes going north-south with 30-mile-per-hour prevailing speeds. Pacific Avenue has a side street stop, and the site distance is somewhat limited for people going northbound on Wilma-Chanway, especially those who are traveling above the speed limit. For those traveling at or below the speed limit, it's adequate, but we know that from our data collection that that's not the case. And the existing crosswalks are high visibility markings with signage. There's also advanced signage, but there's no flashing lights or stop control of any kind for Wilma-Chanway. Oh, it worked that time. The intersection, unless you did that. OK, we'll figure it out. The intersection has a history of collisions. These are actually all auto collisions. And from an earlier period, there have been fewer recently. But there was a cluster of nine injury collisions. Earlier in the decade and almost all of these were broadsides caused by people who are going through on Pacific Avenue or turning left on or off of Pacific Avenue So that's just something we want to keep in mind as part of the project design since we are trying to improve safety for all users and broadsides as a collision type is not one that you want to have in general for safety reasons So as we went through the community engagement, the intersection design alternatives really focused on three key components of the design, and then we're trying to figure out what people's priorities are for these and how we can put them together in the safest and best option for the community. So those are the vehicle turn restriction options, traffic control, and bikeway alignment. The first is the turn restriction. We analyzed a median diverter that would add a hardened median across the center that would prohibit turns for vehicles. going left and through on Pacific Avenue, and it would allow bikes, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles to go through. And then we also analyzed doing a project without that. The median diverter is a really strong safety benefit in the intersection. It eliminates most of the high speed and high-risk turn movements, including those left and through movements. And it also creates more space for the bicycle and pedestrian crossings to have refuges and helps to kind of simplify the number of traffic movements happening in the intersection at the point that we're adding a new traffic control device, which comes next. So the staff team analyzed the potential traffic diversion with this new median option and found that the traffic volumes doing the turn movements that would be prohibited are extremely low. The one that's a little bit higher is the northbound left with about between 30 and 40 vehicles in the peak hour depending on the a.m. or p.m. period or the morning or afternoon period. But because we have, the markup shows poorly on the screen, but because we have these left turn options onto Lincoln Avenue or Buena Vista Avenue that access the same neighborhood on a grid, the team has assessed that those would split fairly evenly and result in very few vehicles diverting per hour to each of those corridors. So we believe that that's a pretty moderate level of traffic impact. So the staff recommendation during the outreach process was to include the median. And as we'll see in a moment, this is important for how we decide about the other components of the design. But because of these benefits, we did go into the community outreach with that recommendation that helped to kind of drive the other components of the design. So the traffic control options that we presented and analyzed were a pedestrian hybrid beacon or a traffic signal. These were presented much more neutrally during the engagement process than the median was. And I have a little checkbox there to kind of have a look ahead that the traffic signal is recommended. But these were the two alternatives presented. And so for folks who aren't familiar, a pedestrian hybrid beacon is a traffic control device that is kind of similar to a traffic signal in its general infrastructure, but instead of having a red, yellow, green signal head, there's a flashing yellow that's activated by a pedestrian push button, and then it becomes a solid yellow, and then it becomes solid red, and then it During the pedestrian countdown, it becomes a flashing red, which is essentially a stop control so that a vehicle can proceed if they see that the pedestrian has cleared the intersection. So it's a little bit of a lower impact design than a full traffic signal for the traffic flow, but it stops the vehicles more than a flashing beacon does. So happy to answer more questions about the pedestrian hybrid beacon, but they're pretty common in the East Bay. Almost every neighboring city has at least one. So I think many people who we talked to had seen it in Oakland, San Leandro, Berkeley in recent history. And then, so finally, the bikeway alignment options are to, so just as a reminder, the Pacific Avenue corridor has a shared bike and vehicle lane. It's just a sharrow, and it will be in the future. But the design at the major intersection is often aided by having the bikes channelized into a certain area. And so we looked at doing that to the right or into the left of the travel lane. And this can be seen in these photos as kind of what that looks like. The left one is in Arizona with a PHB and the right one is in Berkeley. And what this really does is allows us to have the bicycles alone activate the signal rather than the bikes and the cars together activate the signal.

group.

So just before we go into the concept itself, I just want to clarify that the three features we discussed can be theoretically mixed and matched all in different kinds of combinations, but some of them are less feasible technically and some of them have potential drawbacks. So for example, if we did a traffic signal with no median, that could potentially encourage a lot more through traffic on Pacific Avenue, because that's essentially creating a new signalized crossing for cars, too. That's the kind of thing that we need to think about when we're mixing these features together. And so when we did the community outreach, we were kind of saying, hey, this is one option where we think that this can meet all the project goals. So the diverter is reducing conflicts and keeping traffic volumes low on Pacific Avenue. The traffic signal provides a full stop on Wilma Chan Way so that people walking and biking can cross. And the bikeway on the left side allows a separate space for bicyclists to activate the signal while having right turning vehicle separate from them, essentially not crossing over. So that's the way that we laid it out. And I'll go through the community engagement feedback, and then I'll share a little bit more about why staff ultimately does recommend this concept. So we had a community workshop in late May with a good attendance of about just under 30 people. We did an online survey with 122 responses that ran for about a month. And I also met with the grocery outlet proprietor, and we had a lot of internal stakeholder meetings with the fire department, things like that. So the community engagement, many people agree that the fast moving traffic and poor visibility are the top issues on Wilma Chan Way and that crossing is very difficult. A few people were worried about how difficult it is to drive, but mostly the context had more to do with the bicycle and pedestrian access and visibility. When we presented the median option, about half of the people are just pro. And then this green chunk you see, 16%, a lot of folks were saying, this looks good, but it's not enough. We'd like to see other types of interventions on the corridor. So for us as a staff team and the way that we usually see feedback, this is pretty strong in terms of the positive response. And then the signal versus PHB, oh sorry, I was gonna mention that when you see a bar graph, that means that there was multiple options allowed, and when you see a pie chart, that means that there was only one option allowed. just so that that's clear. So the signal versus PHV was much more mixed. This is from the online survey, and we see a little bit of a preference for the pedestrian hybrid beacon, and a lot of people saying either would be a big improvement. At the community meeting, there was really strong conversation kind of more in favor of signal. So that was kind of a mixed opinion, basically. And then for people who bike or would like to bike, the views on the position of the bike lane was totally mixed as well. And many people were kind of picking up on the connection with the traffic control device and saying that if it were a signal, they'd prefer it on the left. And if it were a PHV, they'd prefer it on the right. So from a technical standpoint, that's also how we would make that decision. And then looking at the overall concept, I was personally actually kind of blown away by this because we don't usually see more than half of people just saying, yeah, that looks good. Because sometimes stuff like this can be just everybody has a different take. But we had a lot of positive reaction to this. design concept, and we had some really interesting commentary from folks, but the 57% support was to us a pretty strong endorsement from our engagement process. Some of the specific comments that we discussed with community members, we had various conversations related to traffic diversion, both related to where people might drive differently because of the median and also where people might turn or drive differently because of having a signal stop control. So some folks on Pacific Avenue concerned about people turning onto their street to avoid the signal. Some people worried about congestion at Buena Vista. And these are all things that, from a technical standpoint, we think is a pretty low risk for those diversions. But we still would monitor them closely in the post-project condition to make adjustments to the signal timing as needed to help address those. Some folks, actually quite a few commenters, are interested in what we can do on the Wilma Chan Corridor as a whole for traffic calming purposes and speed management. During the next phase, which is design, we'll look at what we can do in the approaches to this intersection and then that may piggyback into a larger discussion about the whole corridor, but this project scope is just the intersection. And then a lot of people are very concerned about the visibility of any new features for folks driving northbound on Wilma Chin Way. So our technical engineering team is looking at that closely, and we'll have the adequate signage and mast arm length and all of that to make sure that people can see. So yeah, just to kind of go back to the recommendation and why we're recommending the signal and not the PHB, given what a mixed opinion that was from the community, one thing that we've talked about a lot from the technical standpoint is that flashing hand for the pedestrian signal and the flashing red that coincides at the end of the cycle. This is a little bit technical, so if folks have not encountered a PHB in the wild, we can always revisit this during Q&A, but that's the part of the signal design where there's more user judgment involved, so a vehicle has to look and decide whether there's a pedestrian still clearing. And they have to make the judgment of whether to treat that as a stop control or how long to stop and all that. And this is a bike route also. And so we know that bike riders are moving faster than pedestrians. And because there would only then be a pedestrian hand and not also another type of signal head, then we might see bike riders coming in in that countdown. We also know that this is a higher speed roadway with a curve that is one of the higher volume streets in Alameda. And so for the first implementation of a PHV We think it's a great tool. We know that it works. We know that it supports pedestrians. But we're not convinced that this is the right place to do it for the first time. So that's kind of the reason behind the signal recommendation, even though a PHV is a viable option. So happy to go into that more. And I know Scott can also speak to it as well, if anyone is interested in the city engineer's take on that. And my clicker isn't working. Could we go to the next one? So just to kind of touch on next steps. So today we're looking for feedback from this group. And the recommendation is for an endorsement. And then city council has recess in August. So we'll try to go back as soon as we can after that in September. And then we'll do final design. And construction will depend on what's going on with Oakland Alameda Access Project and some other things in the area. It should be ready for construction sometime next year and with the exact timeline to be determined. So with that, I'll take questions.

And just to clarify, we are looking for an action on this tonight.

Yes. And any clarifying questions for Susie? Thank you, Susie. It's a great presentation.

All right. Commissioner Nachtigall would like to, through the chair.

All right.

I do have a clarifying question. Thank you. I understand that we are looking tonight, the scope is this one intersection. However, I have a clarifying question about traffic signal versus PHB. If we were to consider a full corridor concept along Wilma Chan, Would a PHB be able to be managed in a corridor concept? Or is it really a traffic signal that could be managed in a corridor concept?

Yeah, that's a great question. Both a signal and a PHD can operate with interconnect, which is the system that connects the traffic signals. My understanding is that the design of that is more straightforward with a signal, but that a PHB can also be done with interconnect. Scott doesn't seem to be standing up. Yeah, so if you're familiar with like San Pablo Avenue and Berkeley, there's a bunch of them. And that's a Caltrans corridor, and Caltrans is managing those with interconnect. And if you're crossing San Pablo Avenue and Berkeley like at Virginia Street or something, you wait a fairly long time to cross. I'll say that because the traffic on San Pablo is prioritized. We would be dialing, whether we do a signal or a PHB, we would be right-sizing that timing. Wilma Chenoweth is not San Pablo Avenue, but it's also a high-volume corridor in our city. And so we would be trying to monitor that to do it so that it's the right balance of vehicle delay and pedestrian and bicycle delay. So either option would have interconnect in the design.

Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner McGloin.

Thank you. In the case of the PHB, and I think I know the answer in the case of the PHB, in the case of the stoplight option, would the light on Wilmer Channel Ray remain green unless, forever potentially, unless there was something on Pacific, or is it timed as well?

Yeah, we call it rest on green unless actuated by the side street traffic.

Thank you.

One clarifying question, um the so the the Lincoln corridor Project I know considered different scenarios for Lincoln Wilma Chan am I remembering correctly that the current thinking is retaining the current design for that intersection One one down. Yeah, because I know way back when like I things like roundabouts were on the map, but current design, but was there maybe like adding another leg, a ped leg, like some little things, but no major changes?

There are changes. It's still a signal. There's no roundabout at that intersection, but there will be a westbound bike lane and that bike lane will have a signal protection in that long-term design so yeah those signals will be coordinated but the changes on Wilma Chan and Lincoln do not add a crosswalk to that north leg if that makes sense so the crosswalks Because that right turn movement from Lincoln on to Wilma Chan is so heavy that we're not adding a crosswalk on that leg. And so that's part of the reason why the Pacific Avenue crosswalks are so important is if you are going to that Lincoln crossing as your closest one, you'd actually be crossing three times. So, yeah, if that makes sense.

Okay, gotcha, yeah. So just to confirm, Lincoln, like the base of Wilma Chan is going to continue with like a U, not...

The shape of the crosswalks? Yeah, the crosswalks, sorry.

Yeah, for the ped-access. Yeah, from a ped-access standpoint, it's the same, yeah.

Okay.

Okay, yeah, that helps clarify. And just, I don't think this affects our discussion tonight, but does that mean you all are going to have to wait on that project to add the new signals at that intersection to do some of the pairing you're talking about?

No. The signals will be, both of the signals will be modern signals, and we can change the timings and coordination later. So whichever order happens, we can coordinate them in either order. Is that correct?

This is a minute concern.

I don't even know. The Pacific Avenue project is ahead a little bit, yeah.

I apologize, I didn't quite catch the full question.

I was just wondering if, because the different projects are going to replace the signals at the two different intersections, are you going to have to wait until both projects are complete to realize some of the coordination that Susie was speaking to?

No, they could be done. So if the Pacific Wilma Cheon project goes first, we can implement the coordination. And then, presumably, the Lincoln Marshall Pacific will likely follow, just from a timing perspective. We could also just adopt a similar coordination pattern with that new signal as well.

It would work in both scenarios. It's always great when projects are coordinated but not tightly bound together.

For the uninitiated, that was Scott Wickstrom, city engineer.

No more clarifying questions for me. Thank you.

Any other commissioners' questions, clarifying questions?

Looks like a no.

All right. One quick question from me. In your presentation, Susie, I didn't see whether you addressed the speeding issue on Wilma Chan.

Yeah, that's correct. I breezed through it a little bit quickly in the existing conditions, but we're seeing 85th percentile prevailing speeds about five miles above the speed limit, around 30. And of course, there's then 95th percentile higher as well. So if people are observing very, very high speeds, that's probably the higher percentiles. But yeah, we see about five miles per hour over the speed limit in the 85th percentile.

Actually, the question is very able to address it as part of that in identifying all these three different components as solution. Was that in the mix? in addressing the issue?

Yes. Well, the speed is part of the decision to only be focusing on the PHB or signal alternatives that fully stop the traffic, especially since it's a multi-lane corridor. If we had lower speeds and volumes and a single lane configuration like we do in many other locations. We might be looking at flashing beacons or other kind of lower intervention levels, but because we have those higher speeds and the multi-lane corridor, we need the kind of decisiveness of the full traffic control. So that's the reason for focusing only on those two alternatives. But yeah, the speed is certainly part of the recommendation for the signal, because it's the least ambiguous traffic control device that we have.

OK.

Thank you. That, we will move on to public comments.

So far, we have one in person and one on Zoom.

OK. Let's start with the in person.

Denise Trepena.

Hi, Denise. DENISE TREPAGNE- Hello, Vice Chair. Thank you, commissioners. I hope you had a chance to read. My name is Denise Trepagne, and I'm here on behalf of Bike Walk Alameda tonight. I hope you had a chance to review our comments that we sent in earlier this week. But just to quickly reiterate, we strongly support staff's recommendations for the safety improvements at this intersection. If you've ever tried to cross Wilma Chan at Pacific, it's terrifying. I wasn't surprised to see the really low collision numbers there for bikes and peds because nobody uses it. It's terrifying. And in all our planning documents, including the general plan, And the active transportation plan is identified as a neighborhood greenway. So it's really important that we get this crossing under control. We need to make it safe for all modes, ages, and abilities. We also would like to see a standard traffic signal installed there instead of a PHB. And the reason there is simply that our drivers have proven that they're not really good at adopting new technologies. There is a right prohibition. on the Cross Alameda Trail, both at Wilma Chan and at Webster. And they're continuously ignored. And that's pretty obvious what you're not supposed to do there. So something that's new. I would be very afraid we have low compliance. And if we don't have compliance at that intersection, it could be tragic. In addition to what staff's recommended, I'd also just like to make a request, not specifically for this project, but as we move forward with the design of neighborhood greenways going forward, to put markings in the roadway. I think the diagram that staff showed, they had some arrows going across. And we have sharrows on all of our bikeways. But we really need something to designate these things as neighborhood greenways. And I think this body has requested that treatment in the past for our neighborhood greenways. But I really think it's important that moving forward, that becomes part of these design conversations and projects. Because we really need to separate out for drivers. And those are just much more effective than the signs that you put on the side of the road there. being used effectively in Emeryville and Oakland and Berkeley. And I think if we're going to be serious about these neighborhood greenways, we should have them there too. That's it. Thanks. Please endorse staff's recommendations.

Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Let's move on to the online phone.

Yes, we have two now. First, we have Jim Strelow.

Hi, Jim.

Good evening. The city is well skilled in increasing favorable votes because of the anonymous surveys. So a high favorable percentage could be higher than it should be. What are the percentages for just local Pacific Avenue residents? The no through traffic is a horrible design for local residents. There has been no mention yet if the fire truck three blocks away will be able to cross Pacific Avenue. then other vehicles are bound to also attempt to make that crossing. There will also be an effect on grocery outlets use where more vehicles will exit onto Buena Vista when they may not make the left turn onto Pacific at Wilma Chan. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim.

And next we have Hamil Saran.

Hi, Hamil.

Hi, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Great. Yeah, so thank you, Susie, for all your time on this. Obviously, we've spoken a number of times on this intersection. I live on the three houses down from Wilma Chena Pacific. For me, I think one of the main issues, I think, you know, the survey did capture that I think a number of residents in the neighborhood are supportive of something happening at the intersection because I think it's something that they felt, people who are longtime residents have felt like it has been unaddressed for some time. I do think, you know, I think what my ask would be is And, you know, Chair, to your point, addressing the actual speeding issue, which is taking place on Wilmington because this does not do that. In fact, the median that would go in between and impede the left turns I think will actually accelerate the speeds at which people are going through the intersection because they are no longer concerned about left-hand turns that would be taking place. I understand that there was a methodology being used for kind of percentiles of speed that were taking place, but as somebody who can look, you know, sit on my porch and see people driving by, the speeds seem to be much more than, you know, they're well in excess of 25 miles per hour. And so I would ask the Commission to be supportive of potential speed humps being put onto the street, which would allow for emergency vehicles to you know pass on you know pass over without being slowed down but also actually you know address the issue which is speed on wilma chen right if we introduce something like speed humps and by speed humps i say speed humps not speed bumps something that is um narrow enough for a fire truck to pass, but you know, why that a car would need to actually slow down, you can actually start looking at things like, you know, pedestrian beacons versus just the traffic light alternative, which we've been presented with. And so addressing speed at this intersection, I think is really, really kind of the crux of the issue. While I do think obviously this is an improvement from having nothing there without speed humps, you're still are, are putting, I think, bikers at risk who are looking potentially to change in the event of somebody trying to catch a light, you know, going north down on Wilma Chan during their commute in a time when they're, you know, looking to accelerate and go into San Francisco or do whatever else they need to. So that's my ask. It sounds like obviously we're pretty far along in this happening. I think the residents are generally okay with this outcome but we do still have this underlying issue of speed on the street not being addressed whether that's through radar detection or speed humps that's something that i think as a resident of the area we'd like to see address thank you thank you hamid right um any more public comments there are no more public speakers okay thank you uh all right now turning it over to the commission for discussion

Who wants to start?

I can go first, Chair. Okay.

Commissioner Abrams.

I appreciate the design staff is bringing. I'm also glad you all are funding this with grant funding, right? Just to underscore, this is not local funds. This is just always going to remind the public and everyone, this staff punches above their weight in terms of bringing regional, county, and state funding here. I'll just say I grew up tooling around Santa Clara County on a bike, mainly on roads I would not trust my own kids on these days. But the first bike boulevard was built in Palo Alto, of all places. And by chance, I tooled around on that, too. And it has an intersection just like this, I think. And it works. I don't know. The houses are probably, like, $100 billion next to that intersection now. And there's a private girls' school that they get into fights with the neighbors about their permit rights. But the intersection works. And I think it actually has this left So it's on Embarcadero's road, kind of arterial coming in, and right when the Bryant Bike Boulevard crosses Embarcadero, I think it has this exact same design with the bike lane going across on the left side. I will echo the point some speakers have said, that drivers have gotten stupider and bolder since then. So I would encourage staff to think about features that make it clear that emergency personnel can cross that median. But you all, vertical deflection, that's a term I've learned from our city engineer. Any ways you can make it extremely obvious where cars are not allowed, I think unfortunately we just can't assume that drivers will read the signage. And then finally, I just want to share, I like learning all these details. I still don't understand how the... the pedestrian hybrid or Hawk beacons work like once it starts the other flashing and I know Caltrans loves them like because they think it will allow more auto throughput, but I I think staff is on the right foot here of thinking that like I It's always about, is a second person going to enter the intersection from the other side? Or is a bike going to come from the other side? And as a driver, I've been on San Pablo or El Camino Real. It's flashing. Should I go? And the person next to me is like, it's flashing. I don't know. And then someone else speeds through. And you're like, oh, OK. So anyway, my comments would just be based on regional experience that this intersection design, I think, really addresses meaningful Safety concerns, the traffic signal, I think, seems saner. I'm curious to hear others' questions, because I know always the details really matter. But just in terms of the overall proposal you're bringing, it looks like a very straightforward set of improvements proposed. But yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Dara Abrams. Who wants to go next? Commissioner Gloyne?

Yes, thank you. And thank you for the presentation. It was very helpful, very clear. And I can see that a lot of thought has gone into the recommendation As I think about this specific intersection, and I am primarily within the island cyclist. I like to think of myself as a relatively confident cyclist in most of our streets. This particular intersection is, as I think the representative bike walk, Alameda, pointed out, terrifying when you're on a bike. And I wouldn't even attempt to go across it if I was on Pacific. But what we have here is a neighborhood greenway, which continues theoretically across both sides of Wilmanshan Way. And Wilmanshan is a... It's a major road on our island for lots of reasons. And I look at that, and I think... Ideally... I don't want any conflict between the traffic on Pacific and the traffic on Wimbledon because those are two very different ideas. And so, for me, I think... How do we... minimize traffic on Pacific, and I think eliminating the left turns will help with that. I also think, as we've heard, the traffic on Wilmington Way is far too fast, and unfortunately, as we've noted before, we live in this strange dream world where it is impractical for us currently with the way the laws work for us to effectively enforce our own speed limits in most cases because we are not yet allowed to have speed cameras. This would be a perfect place to put a speed camera if we were allowed to, but we're not yet. And so I would like to know if staff considered and if it's practical and would be affordable to have a pedestrian and bike bridge over Wilma Chan Way. And I don't know how the cost compares to a signal, but I know signals are not cheap. So is that something that we've considered?

From a cost and right of way standpoint, no. Well, I guess just to kind of step back, I think that from a standpoint of the principles of street design, the concerns raised by the speaker in the neighborhood on the speeds on Wilma Chan and how that affects quality of life and safety for the auto drivers and the people who might walk. I mean, we don't even have really pedestrian facilities I guess we do on both sides. So people who are walking along it. And so it's a surface street. It's not a freeway. And so from a design principle, we're trying to lower speeds, improve the safety of the crossings, improve the context on that street, rather than separate modes in such a way that enable kind of just free flow. We see this a lot in our suburban communities, and it requires just a massive amount of investment in order to keep those cars moving. And we want to have the balance. We want the signal design to keep the traffic on Wilma Chen moving adequately and not degrade the access to the tubes, but we're also not going to be investing in a grade separation for the sake of separating so far that it's no longer a complete streets approach. And then I guess just from a practical standpoint, there's single family homes abutting that intersection on three sides. And there is not sufficient right of way to build a grade crossing. So you have to slope it up and everything. So yeah.

Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. I think those are most of my questions. I tend to agree with Commissioner Dara Abrams that the hybrid signal is not one that's super familiar to me. And I do wonder about, as somebody else pointed out, compliance. And so I think what staff is proposing is probably the best solution based on what's been discussed. That's everything from me.

Thank you, Commissioner Gloyne. All right, Commissioner Kim.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks for the presentation. I think the design is great. I think initially I had the same question about the hawk signal versus the typical traffic signal. I think once you actually walk through the presentation, it all sunk in to me. So yeah, I think I'm on board for the full traffic signal at this point. But and also note, I biked to Grocery Outlet once. I thought it was terrifying. Decided never to do that again. So this is a great improvement to kind of maybe make me do that again. We'll see. But I did have a question. I think the Bike Walk Alameda comment included a question about kind of the share rows that are there and markings. The thing about this, I think, I don't know if it worries me, but my safety concern is what's going on at the west side of Pacific in the westbound direction. Because you have the bicyclists that are crossing, coming in, and potentially right turns from southbound Wilma Chan to westbound Pacific that are kind of going in the same place. And I guess I'm wondering, are there any thoughts about additional markings there to kind of denote, other than the shero, that there are bikes coming in here? There's space for the bikes here? Are there thoughts about not having a no right turn on red on Wilma Chan in both directions? I'm just kind of curious if there's ways to prevent any conflicts there.

Yeah, that's a great question. So you're talking about the drivers who are going southbound on Wilma Chan going right into Pacific while a bike rider's coming across. Yeah.

And I guess it would be on the other corner as well, going east on Pacific and then northbound on Wilma Chan.

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, that is a potential conflict point. I think that a no turn on right is a total option there. And we also could provide a kind of channelized like receiving bike lane in the center for the bikes, I think that that's a lot of tight stuff, maybe not necessarily. So yeah, that's a good note. And we'll look at the turn volumes. We'll probably make a judgment based on how many drivers are making that right turn, on whether to consider that right turn prohibition. It's a pretty low volume turn, and it's meant to be a low volume corridor, so I think that that is definitely an option we can look at during design.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair. So thank you for the presentation, for sure. I am in agreement with lots of things that we've heard this evening. I will say that I'm in favor of the improvements as proposed, especially as some of the questions have been answered throughout the evening. I, like others, find this to be a highly problematic intersection that I avoid whether I am walking, biking, or driving. And I did cross it the other day to go to a grocery outlet with my son, and we ran as fast as we could. But I wanted to see, yeah, it's still really bad. So in general, I feel that any improvement is good improvement in this case. However, I also recognize that change and change management, whether it's good change, change management is hard. And I mean, really just look at the beneficial changes of the Cross Alameda Trail at Wilma Chan. I think that people are still using that intersection wrong. So I would say that as far as these proposed changes go, as and when they're implemented, I highly encourage staff to be very mindful about the visual indicators about a diverter. and make sure that signage, anything on the roadway, whatever can be put in place to make it clear to drivers that there is no longer a clear crossing. That would be really critical because otherwise that median diverter is either going to be ignored or become a hazard. So that's a key piece that has to happen. I'm also in the camp of those who are concerned with the northbound Wilma Chan traffic, especially during busy commute times and the possibility of any sort of stacking or you know, problems with folks being able to see pedestrians and bicyclists or know that there's an intersection there that they have to stop for. Because I don't want there to be a false sense of security that people can cross there when the drivers don't actually realize there's an intersection there. So I do appreciate that in staff notes and in the presentation, to quote the staff report, the final design will incorporate sufficient signage and signal position to ensure visibility. Please take that to heart. And I think that's all of my comments on this, so thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Nachtigall. Any more comments from the commissioners? All right. Okay. So thank you, Susis. Thank you, staff. It's a great presentation and we heard a lot of comments, good comments. I agree with the comments you heard and also want to echo that this is the much needed improvement and any improvement over there is the good improvement given the current situation. Unfortunately, I've been a driver most of the time on that. On that location, even as a driver, it scares me. One thing I do agree with specifically Commissioner Ranaptikal is that how are you informing the drivers and the signage and then projecting the message on the signage is really important because you don't want that to be ignored. what you don't want to happen happens over there with the drivers. So that's an important one. In my thinking, your recommendation is right and whatever the community input drove that in terms of traffic control specifically. if the signals really gives a decisive action and the curve or the lack of line of sight is not conducive for a PHP over there. And I think Signal is the best one. San Pablo or even within Contra Costa County, the location I've seen, they have more straight roads. And between two Signals to offer a safe crossing is where PHB or RRFB, the rapid reflective beacon. are provided, so not the curvature where we have where there is bad line, no line of sight, and then speeding cars, right? So the signal, I really agree with you providing signal. But having said all that, you know, the three elements are good combination, median diverter, signal, and bike lane, but having said that, I think you do need to look at at least, you know, look at how you are addressing the speed. I don't know whether the speed hump will be an option because this is a gateway extension into Alameda from the tubes. You have to accommodate the traffic coming on but Once it gets to the heart of the neighborhood, like here in this location, we need to see how you can tamper down the speed. So any thoughts on that, I would just love to hear.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, I think what we need to do is coordinate with the public works paving schedule and talk about the pavement markings for the corridor as a whole. speed management on multi-lane arterials like this is really challenging because vertical deflection or speed humps is typically not a possibility, especially on a corridor like this that's carrying so much regional traffic and emergency access. So typically what we would do on a corridor like this is lane narrowing. We would potentially consider adding kind of like buffers to the median area to try to narrow the visual size of the lanes. And we can coordinate the signals. So I think the concern about the median potentially reducing friction, our team really thinks that the new traffic control device will add some friction and attention in such a way that will hopefully help to bring more kind of attentiveness along that stretch. But yeah, we'll definitely be talking as a team about how we can calm traffic on the approaches and use the signal coordination effort to potentially serve that. But yeah, I think that that's a larger conversation about the full corridor that brings in other projects and larger conversations about the striping long term on that corridor.

Okay, thank you, that makes sense. So I'm glad to hear that you'll be considering traffic calming. That seems more appropriate for this corridor. So with that, I think we are open for a motion here. So the action is to endorse design concept for Pacific Avenue Wilma Chan Way, neighborhood greenway crossing improvements proposed by staff, staff recommendation.

I move to endorse the proposal.

I second.

All right, do we want to go for roll call?

Commissioner Dara Abrams? Yes. Commissioner Gloyne? Yes. Commissioner Kim? Yes. Vice Chair Suthamphera? Yes. Chair Weitze is absent. Commissioner Johnson?

Yes.

Commissioner Nachtigall? Yes.

All right. Thank you all. Thank you to staff for all this good work and great presentation. Now moving on to item 6C. This is review and discuss restriping of Clement Avenue between Balsa Street and Paru Street, eliminating on-street parking and creating 14-foot wide travel lanes, including additional modification at Clement and Stanton Street, where existing concrete bulb outs further constrain the lane widths. This is a discussion item.

Commissioner Noctegal, just a reminder that, excuse me, Commissioner Noctegal will be recusing. A reminder to Vice Chair Suthanthira. Thank you.

Thank you. Do I need to say anything?

Do I need to say why? OK. Do I need to say why I'm recusing?

Yes, thank you. Okay.

For the record, I'm recusing because my home is on Buena Vista and it's within 500 feet of an area that may be impacted by this decision.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Right. Good evening, Vice Chair Suthanthira. My name is Scott Wickstrom. I am the city engineer and fellow commissioners as well. I will be giving a presentation tonight about the Clement Avenue truck route and associated parking loss. This all relates to the recent completion of Clement Avenue for the Skyline project. Basically, the portion from Grand to Hibbard Street has now been paved. We have maintained that closed because we have a concern that we will bring forward and talk a little more in this presentation. So our recommendation is asking the Transportation Commission to review and discuss the restriping of Clement between Balsa and Peru, eliminating the on-street parking, and creating 14-foot wide travel lanes to accommodate the truck route. I've got a few slides, so a bit of an agenda. We'll talk a little about the general plan, some history, which is important. We'll talk about truck routes, turning templates, some alternatives that were considered, recommended action. We'll get into a parking study, and then kind of next steps and timeline after we talk about the community club. Some of the time, huh? There we go. So this slide here represents the general plan street classifications from our most recent Alameda 2040 general plan that was adopted in 2022. It clearly shows the truck route on Clement with a temporary truck route designated on Buena Vista. So that is the condition that exists right now within the general plan. And to zoom in a little bit, I'll give you the point. And zoom in a little bit about the study area. So we basically bounded the area in blue as considered our general study area. And because of the curves that you can see within Clement, and I'll talk a little more about the truck turning and the off-tracking of the rear trailer, we are proposing new red curb between Balsa Street and Peru Street, which would result in the loss of 21 on-street parking stalls.

Hey, that time it worked.

So a little bit of history, early days, 1990 general plan truck routes on Lincoln, Buena Vista, Clement East. I highlighted them here in yellow just to kind of pull them up a little bit for you. Atlantic, Grand, and Sherman. So there's quite a few overlapping truck routes. You even look a little further south there, and Central was a truck route, and Sonoma was a truck route. So there were a lot of truck routes. We'll jump forward a few years here. 2000 was when the Marina Cove tentative map came before the city council for review and approval. That's the development that exists between Hibbard and Balsas Court. It was developed in phases. The tentative map was brought forward in the year 2000. And the Clement Extension, at that point, there was a condition of approval that noted that the Clement Extension may be designated as a truck route. It gave that potential future. In 2021, they amend the plan. They basically created this roadway configuration, kind of 5-foot bike lanes, 12-foot travel lanes, 5-foot bike lane, and 8-foot parking that's on the south side as it exists today. So moving forward here to 2003, around this time frame, there was a considered action to reduce the number of truck routes, and particularly to relocate the truck route off of Buena Vista. And ultimately, what we ended up with the truck route after a general plan amendment that took place in 2003 was a truck route on Clement that makes a hard left on Grand, goes down one block, makes the right on Buena Vista, makes the right on Sherman, and continues around. It's functionally the truck route that exists on the northern half of the island today. You can see in this picture that the truck route on Lincoln has been removed. The truck route on Central has also been removed. and it's a little tough to see here, but the truck ride on Buena Vista has always been, was also removed as part of this outside of the highlighted section. 2003, 2005, now we start 2003, the Clement Rideway was established from Hibbert to entrance. It had a 250 foot radius at the roadway center line. That is the curvature that exists today. It's the center line curve. And then in 2005, Marina Cove phase one was complete and the first component of the Clement extension was constructed. Also in 2005, the Cross Alameda Trail Feasibility Study was approved. At that time, there was broken up into a transit corridor and a recreational corridor. At that time, the recreational corridor was shown on Buena Vista or Pacific. It was an early preliminary feasibility study. We jump forward to 2009. There was an update to the general plan transportation element in 2009. And as part of that update, the truck route was officially shown on the Clement extension between Grand and Sherman, in addition to maintaining the truck route on Buena Vista at that time. Moving forward here, we get a little closer to our current time. Bike Master Plan was approved, and it had a cross Alameda Trail shown on Clement with Class II on-street bike lanes. Three years later, in 2013, the city adopted standards for the cross Alameda Trail as a Class I separated and protected two-way cycle track, functionally what exists out there right now. It was 2014 that the city requested Marina Cove II, which was then in construction, but they hadn't really finished building Clement. They asked the project to construct the two-way cycle track, and the developer complied. And that's what we have that exists there today. So a little bit of recap of all this. Clement was identified as a potential truck route in 2000. Marina Cove 1, that's the first phase, it was potential. Marina Cove 2, by the time Marina Cove 2 CCRs, they have a disclosure right on the CCR that Clement is a truck route. And the homes fronting Clement have recorded disclosure. So this is an issue that's known. The 2009 general plan defining the Clement extension as the truck route did have a full CEQA analysis that was completed. Similarly, the 2022 street classifications perpetuated that truck route on Clement with CEQA as well. Moving on to trucks, truck trade template. This should be hopefully not completely surprising. But to look at a truck, I kind of outlined it in red. Obviously, the trailer, the path of the inside trailer tire is much wider than the width of the vehicle itself. This shows a truck making a 90-degree turn. But even as you get to a 250-foot radius curve, there is off-tracking that occurs with the rear trailer. And you have to be considerate of how wide the travel lanes are. For this road, because it's a truck route, we consider what vehicles we'd be looking to analyze against. A control vehicle is basically the largest that you would anticipate using the corridor, which is a WB 67. It functionally mimics the largest, the legal load in California. So we at least need to accommodate that. It doesn't necessarily stay within the lanes per se, but it needs to be accommodated within the roadway. And then the design vehicle is one that you'd want to maintain within the lanes themselves. And so we ran a turning templates. And this is auto turn. And I will say, this is the bigger truck. This is the WB67. But it's pretty clear that as you, and these were in the agenda packets. I hope you looked at them as well. But it's pretty clear that there is a significant overlap with the existing parking lane as you come around the corners. This is the WB67, so this is the larger truck. We also ran it with the WB50, and we still have an issue where we're exceeding the lane widths. Stanton Court right now has bulb outs and a crosswalk. And we recognize at Stanton Court, we would like to preserve the bulb outs. And we believe that we can preserve the bulb outs, at least the eastern one, which is where the crosswalk is, most of it. We'd have to trim off a small portion of the western crosswalk. In order to also accommodate that, we would basically need to narrow down the width of the bike lane or should say the cycle track within a vicinity of this intersection. If you're familiar with the Cross Alameda Trail, particularly east of Grand, there are sections where the cycle track is 12 feet wide, then it narrows down to eight and a half or nine feet wide in sections as you approach intersections and a variety of other reasons. This would be similar to that where we keep it relatively narrow in this limited area so that we can maintain the bulb out, and particularly where the crosswalk is on the eastern side. Continuing east, we have overlaps again between Sacas and Ohlone and to Peru. And then as we get east of Peru, we start to get that tangent section and we're able to preserve the parking again. So truck routes, max vehicle width, 8 1⁄2 feet, common 50-foot-long truck exceed 11 1⁄2-foot lanes. When you run the analysis on the ones that are designed vehicle, it's wider than what you have out there. And really the conclusion is that two trucks cannot safely pass with the existing parking. There would be vehicle side swipes, whether it's a moving vehicle side swiping or a moving vehicle side swiping of parking, but that would be an expected outcome, which would be... unacceptable on a design truck route as an arterial. So then from an engineer, I throw out these as a problem statement. We have a general plan that identifies the truck route in Clement. The truck route does not fit the existing roadway that's out there as it's laid out. So we looked at a few different alternatives. The first one, which is the recommended action, is to eliminate the on-street parking from Balsa Street to Peru, kind of as shown in that highlighted area before. We also looked at eliminating the two-way cycle track and converting to Class 2. That's not recommended due to safety issues, as you have a two-way cycle track and expecting cyclists to then jump to the other side of the street on a fairly heavily traveled street at that time. not recommended from safety. There is a possibility that this cycle track could be relocated to the north, if you will, above the curb. But what that means is that actually it would move into the park itself. And so there'd be significant park impacts. There'd be some mature trees that would be lost. And there's also permitting considerations to keep in mind, because that is a BCDC jurisdiction. It's within 100 feet of the water. Permitting might be challenging and maybe not be approved at all. So that's another thing. So not recommended for that as well. And then the other one is to maintain the truck route on Buena Vista and not have a truck route on Clement. That would require a general plan amendment, and there may still be impacts on Clement. I'll talk about those a little bit later, more minor impacts on Clement, but nonetheless potential impacts on Clement. And I put others out there in the sense that we're open to hearing what commission has for ideas. We've had a community meeting, what they bring forward. Definitely want to keep this open for what may work. So let's talk a little bit about the parking study. It was conducted in January, February this year, looking at those 21 on-street parking spaces that were proposing to be removed with red curb. The parking inventory was established for the area, so we went on both on Clement, but all the side streets and all the way down into Buena Vista, the entire study area. We collected parking counts midweek and on the weekend, 9, noon, 3 PM, 6 PM. We did length of stay calculations. And we used a key consideration about that 85% occupancy as kind of that sweet spot in terms Having enough capacity out there and still having one to two empty spaces per block face is kind of what the goal is with that. So above that is perceived as full congested. Below that, underutilized is a soft term when it's a spot in front of your own house, I appreciate. But there's spaces available on the block. So this is a summary map. There's a lot of information. The entire parking study was included in the agenda packet, so there's a lot of detail in there. I just pulled up the one summary map, which is the average occupancy of all times and all three days, right? and to take the takeaway on this is on clement for three of the four blocks that where we'd be removing parking our average occupancy is less than 50 and there's the one block that the occupancy is between 50 and 70 percent um and then moving down you know some of the block faces have more um utilization, and others have some more capacity. And to note, just as a call out here, there is parking existing on the south side of Buena Vista. And one of the considerations is if the truck route is relocated to, or if it's I'll say, established on Clement and ultimately removed from Buena Vista, that we could add in up to 15 parking spaces on Buena Vista. So that would offset the 21 spaces that are lost as well. So that's another consideration. So that would be on the north side of the road where there's no occupancy shown at the moment. So more observations. Capacity is generally below 64%, less than 50% for all periods. Highest occupancy was Saturday at 6 PM. I kind of talked a little bit about this. We did also look at driveways and consider that driveways are often not used, and they do provide some flexibility for homeowners. It can be a challenge if people are tandem parking. We understand and appreciate that, but it does provide a little bit of an outlet if necessary. And most of the vehicles are parked at a relatively short period of time. There's a fair amount of turnover, with 17% being there for more than the nine hour, the single day kind of period. The study basically concluded that the area has sufficient parking to accommodate the removal of on-street parking stalls. Without the additional 15 stalls on Buena Vista, the count is about 85 to 86, depending on how you round your numbers. It's right at that threshold. If we added in the 15 stalls on Buena Vista, that occupancy drops down to 78%. So it does creep up. It is pushing towards that limit. But it does indicate that it is feasible. And as I note here, some individual block faces may have higher occupancies. Driveway provides for the buffer for the residents. And then, obviously, the potential for those 15 stalls to be added on to Buena Vista. Switching gears a little bit, Alameda Municipal Code, the Public Works Director is authorized basically to remove parking whenever necessary for safety. This is delegated to the Public Works Director in the Municipal Code. Public noticing is not required and the decision by itself is not appealable. we however recognize that this is a significant impact to this neighborhood to this community and so we posted a neighborhood community meeting last Tuesday and we're coming before you today to kind of bring forward what our recommendations are just to hear feedback and discussion again we're not asking you guys to to make it a determination but but that is the input and the feedback is certainly gonna be about value valued communication plan so we did notify council members of the truck route conflict so they're aware that this issue exists we did send notification letters to everyone within 300 foot of the study area we have a plan to meet with the the marina shores HOA board the we did have as I mentioned we have a community meeting last Tuesday and here again tonight And a couple key considerations, takeaways, I know there's several people here in the audience that were at the community meeting that I expect will get up and speak here as well tonight. These are just a couple of things that I heard that really stuck with me. It's really more than just the loss of the parking. It's the concern about the safety and health impacts of the truck route on Clement. And then parentheses, oh, yes, and there's still concerns about the parking study. It was conducted in January, February, not in the summertime, not at some other consideration. They can speak to that as well. And then the other one was to consider reclassifying Clement Avenue and maintaining the truck route on Buena Vista, which is Going back to my alternatives alternative for maintaining the truck route on Buena Vista which in and of itself would require a general plan amendment at some point to facilitate that So next steps, parking does not require council action. Staff recommendation at this point may become staff determination. And we will definitely do additional outreach to the community, the whole 300 foot within the study area, before any action is taken. And we are in communication with the city manager and just kind of getting a sense of where things are. So we're aware that this is a potentially It's a subject held close to the neighborhood's heart. You'll hear that soon enough. And so we're being thoughtful about how we go through this decision-making process. The ask of the Transportation Commission is feedback on staff's recommendation and comments on the parking study. But before we get that, I want to go forward one more slide, which is I want to be clear that if Clement is not the truck route, we would switch things. Our design vehicle would no longer be the WB50. The control vehicle would be a smaller vehicle, but we'd still have to do some analysis that we haven't fully executed, we haven't fully completed. But my expectation is that the 11 and a half foot lanes that are out there might be too narrow. And so that puts us in this position again. Are we then losing the parking or potentially narrowing the cycle track? We've looked at options about how we can narrow the cycle track. And what I showed before was a relatively limited narrowing of the cycle track between, in the vicinity of Stanton. In this case, we would basically look at narrowing the cycle track. from Balsa all the way to Peru by approximately 18 inches to accommodate an additional two foot of lane width to accommodate vehicles coming through. A consideration to keep in mind is that trucks can go on any street in the city. But if you're on a low volume residential street and a large truck is coming at you, most people usually pull into the nearest driveway approach and let the truck come past. This is an arterial road. It's going to have a lot of traffic on it. That's really not a viable option. We need to accommodate the occasional WB50, and we need to make sure that two buses can pass each other, or a garbage truck can pass a bus, or an S230 can pass each other. So there may be some additional work. completely done that work, but I just want to be clarified that there is some extra work. And the other thing that I don't have in here on the slide is that even if the truck route is maintained on Buena Vista and the designation is ultimately removed from Clement, this will still be open to regular passenger vehicles. And the volume of traffic will definitely increase over what is being experienced today. There should be no question about that. So keep in mind. So I will go back here. I'll leave it on this. And that concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions.

Thank you, Scott. All right, commissioners, just one note, quick note here before asking for any clarifying question. It's about two and a half hours since we have been here. If you want a quick five minute break, let me know so we can come back and resume on the clarifying comments and then go to public comments and start our deliberation. And again, this is a discussion item. I'm just waiting to hear from you. All right, if you want to.

But I defer to anyone else. I think, go ahead. I think Commissioner Gawain would like, yes.

Yeah, I think that would be appropriate.

Five minutes, thank you.

All right, five minutes. Five minutes, okay? Or do you want a little more? But we need to be back exactly on the time. Okay, all right, five minutes.

Thank you, Chair.

Lisa, can I turn off my camera and audio?

Okay, all right. Thank you very much. Five minutes.

Chair, the four of us are up on the dais, so just for your information. Are we all back? All right. We've got your four members and Lisa.

All right, okay. So we are looking for clarifying questions now.

I do have one question specifically about you have the four different alternatives was it yeah and alternative three relocating cycle track north of Clement you kind of listed out some of the issues And you recommend it's not recommended due to cost. Is it actually, or I guess, can you talk more about what the process would look like if we actually went through with that? I'm just kind of curious. What does it mean to remove park land and put a bike lane in there? What does it mean to get a permit in that area? I'm just curious how difficult it will be.

Yeah, I think the first place to start would be going through BCDC, because it is within their jurisdiction. Their charter, their mandate, is to basically improve the public access and the public use of the shoreline. And a park is a perfect example of that kind of use. That's really what they are looking for. And so we'd basically be asking them, hey, can we reduce the size of the park and that ability for people to enjoy the shoreline. We haven't gone down that road, but I don't think it would get a very warm welcome from them, so that would be a permitting challenge right off the bat for sure. Then one of the big things that the neighbor will talk about is access to the park is one of their concerns, and if we are in the position of Reducing the size of the park, you're reducing a lot of the draw to get there. So that's another component. That would be why it's not recommended.

All right. Chair, a couple clarifying questions. You all know I love zooming out first. So first on parking, my understanding is there are a number of different eras of developments here and kind of almost different parking paradigms. The single family houses, would it be fair to say those were built under the city's parking minimum requirements and have, would that be like two or a minimum of 1.5 spots per unit?

I don't know exactly the zoning at the time, but each of the houses does have a garage and a driveway. There's a few houses that front clement who actually have access off the rear. So they have a rear alleyway and the driveways are in the rear. But all of the houses in this development have covered parking and a driveway.

OK, so that's one paradigm. Then we have Del Monte, Star Harbor has parking on site, but is it maybe unbundled?

That is correct. So Del Monte does have unbundled parking. and which is really the parking lot really towards the west, almost closer to Sherman. If you drive by it, there's plenty of parking spaces available. What unbundled parking means to people who don't know is they basically have to pay an extra fee for the privilege of being able to park in the parking lot. And so what we see, what's pretty obviously observed, is west of entrance, the parking spaces are almost always filled every single evening, presumably, with residents of Del Monte that are not paying the parking fee for that unbundled rate.

That's sort of the second paradigm. Just to flip it on its side, that means people are able to potentially rent housing at a lower cost if they don't have a car because it's unbundled. Then third paradigm of the townhouses, those may be built now that parking minimums have been removed, or at least different zoning conditions. They are all townhomes, correct?

It's really the last block. It's Balsa Court that has the townhomes. I believe they all have parking. I don't know the count. I do know that Balsa Street, Balsa Court, has very limited, if any, on-street parking.

Sorry, I meant the new the Pennzoil buildings those am I correct to think that those are all townhome format Not not the stacked flat format those are townhome format each of which has a garage and they have internal parking I Don't know off the top my head the parking count that was used for that development I like context. They all, I believe, are in the TMA. That is correct. They are. I just like flagging. We've got three different generations of parking paradigms here. spare my opinions here, but I think it leads for some different conflicting priorities. The one other set of clarifying questions I wanted to ask right now are about entries to the truck route. So just to confirm, right now the Tilden project is building out a dedicated entry point to Clement as a truck route, right?

Yes. So you're talking about the roundabout at Tilden and Clement? Yeah. So that will still function as a roundabout. It's been designed to accommodate a WB-50 truck or designed vehicle. There is, I'll say, a right turn that comes off of Tilden onto Clement, and then the vehicle could continue westbound on Clement. So yes, it will function for that.

But just like not to ascribe too much purpose, but like the reason for that is Clement, the city's plans for Clement to serve as a truck route. Correct. The reason why there's that new pavement that is currently appearing.

Well, it's more than just the fact that Clement is the truck route. It serves as just an overall connectivity. So it serves for the passenger cars as well as trucks. I think there's a larger connectivity issue that we're solving predominantly, and then we're designing it such that it functions for the truck as well.

Okay, great. Thanks for that context. And then the one other clarifying question I had is on the other end. So for what's designated as the temporary truck route on Buena Vista, Buena Vista-Sherman, I know that intersection has kind of changed over time, and the city took out some ped crossing islands there. Is that related to its temporary designation, or is that related to other developments underway at the time?

I can't speak to the full detail or the full kind of rationale, but I will say that there was a, we'll call it a free right, a pork chop island at that northeast corner, so the westbound Buena Vista movement that turned north onto Sherman. there was a free right around that corner. That was removed. It's really more of a removed predominantly because it's for traffic safety considerations that those are considered less safe than a shortened intersection forcing the vehicles to stop and make the turn. So clearly, that change was made. And it still accommodates trucks because that change was made several years ago with no kind of solid end point state at which the Clement truck was going to be done. So it had to accommodate trucks for several years. And so it was designed to accommodate trucks. It's just a different method of making that right turn.

Sorry, I'm not entirely following. I get that there was a Crossing Island. Yeah, there was a Porkchop Island that's been removed. Little John Commons, the public housing development. And it's not there now.

That is correct, yeah.

Was that change made in order to accommodate that as the temporary truck route?

That truck route has been... been there for a long time. And that change was made really more for just head safety and good traffic design principles. In its current configuration, it still accommodates trucks. Because the trucks have been using it for the last several years, last four to five years. So it was done predominantly as a traffic safety improvement. It is also designed in a way that it does accommodate trucks as well.

Okay. Well, clarifying questions. I won't say my opinion on if it's a pet improvement or not. But, oh, and then I, finally, does the city have, I know you've talked a bit about the properties involved. Like, has the city counted residents along any of these alignments with the, Would that information be available at this time, or is that in the class of information you would, depending upon where things land, you would consider collecting?

I did not count the number of residents along the temporary Buena Vista truck route and tried to compare that to the number of residents on the Clement truck route. No, I don't have that information. The only thing to keep in mind is Buena Vista has residents on both sides. Clement would only have residents on the one side. There are some higher density areas. But I've not done a detailed count.

Okay. Yeah, thanks for getting into these details. Those were my clarifying questions, and I'll look forward to other folks' questions and public comment, because I know we've been holding folks.

Commissioner Gluck.

Thank you. I have a clarifying question. You mentioned in the presentation that the homes on Clement mentioned in their disclosures that Clement is a truck route. Is that correct? That is correct. Did the disclosures say anything about parking, as far as you're aware? Not to my knowledge. OK.

Thank you. Any other clarifying questions? All right. Okay, so I was going to ask about the residents, the population along Clement. And Commissioner Dare Abrams asked about that. And so I think it is an important information. So then other question I have is when the protected bike lane or the cycle track or the cross Alameda Trail was constructed, what was the thought from the staff side? Because you know that this is also a designated truck lane.

Those discussions and that decision was done in the 2010 to 2014 era, and I don't have insight into what was thought through at that time. I can only basically say that as I look at the issue now, we look at a situation where we cannot accommodate trucks with our existing roadway configuration.

Okay. Thank you. So let's move to the public comments. I would like to ask how many we have in person and also online who want to speak on this item.

So far we have eight in person and eight on Zoom. We have 16 total.

OK. So we have a threshold, right, where we have three minutes, and then at some point, we go into two minutes per person? Yes.

Anything over 11 goes to two minutes. So we will have two-minute public comment this evening.

OK. All right. And then we also do in batches, like five in person, and then go for five Zoom, and then back and forth, right, until we get through.

I can do that. I can do five in person, and then five on Zoom.

OK. All right.

First, we have McGee Young.

Thank you for the presentation and for hearing about this important issue. My name is McGee Young. I actually live in Skyline. I was the first resident of the new condos there. And we moved from Lafayette. I think we're you know very excited about Alameda and obviously the city's changing really quickly Especially in that area with the other new construction both are complex and on both sides And there does seem to be you know a tremendous influx both of new residents, but people enjoying the bike path the park and It seems like this is something that has been not really thought about all that much, even though it's been in the kind of zeitgeist that there's a truck route here. We built this little windy road on what we knew was a truck route. We made improvements to the park on what we knew was a truck route. very dense condos. And I'll say the low income townhouses in our community are just single car garages. And so if anybody is going to be impacted by the parking situation, it will be those who have the hardest time living here in the first place. But I think generally this is a good time for us to pause. to think about the big picture, to consider how do we want to commit to resources in this part of the community that's growing, that's thriving, that's bringing people like me to the island. Before we sort of let the past determine the future, think a little bit more holistically about what we want that future to look like on this part of the island. So thank you. Thank you for your comment.

Next, we have Steve Grogan.

My name's Steve Brogan, and I've lived in Fortman Marina by Clement Avenue since 1988. I worked for a nearby trucking and crane company that did jobs often in Alameda, but also all over the country. As a superintendent and estimator, I learned to do the right thing. Spend a little more on this or that or plan a little bit more. Don't try to cut every corner. It always paid off. And I saw people that didn't follow that and trying to save every dollar and do things more quickly. And some big wrecks. And one that I know of was half a billion dollars, and it killed a person. And there was saving money on $1,000 strut support. So anyway, in 25 years, I never had a wreck or lost time injury or a lawsuit. I went to last week's meeting and learned a lot about this situation, about the 30-year-old general plan and the city's urgency to change this truck road over. And at that meeting, it was sort of indicated it was because it was a difficult corner at Grand and Buena Vista. And I just happened to be at that corner a few days before I went to that meeting, and I saw a 65-foot-long truck that this change wasn't designed for. pulled out there, and the car ahead of me had pulled through the whole back line and was right up against the intersection there. So I held back. knowing that the truck driver would get around there and couldn't make that car back up. So he comes around there, and he misses that car easy. He's doing a good job. And then I got a perfect eyesight on how his rear trailer wheels are against that curb, and he misses that. And he didn't show any agitation about the driver being in the way. It was just another day at work for that guy to negotiate that thing and continue on the Buena Vista haul route.

It's three minutes. No, two minutes today. What I would recommend is you can give the letter. You have it written?

I just want to say that the thing that... Can you give it to the staff?

They will keep it as part of the public comment.

Well, it helps these other people not waste time if they hear that basically design for this curve, that is a chicane. At a race course, they design that for cars.

There are people. There are people waiting. Sorry about that.

Okay.

You're cut off. I can't hear your audio.

So basically, I think they... Sir, we have a lot of people who want to speak.

Please give your comments to the staff.

Next, we have Rick Stewart.

My name is Rick Stewart. I have some commercial properties along Clement between Grand and Willow. So we're outside of the zone we're talking about here today. But it is impactful because we are talking about the cycle track. Thank you, Scott, for your history and input. I was at those meetings in 2010 through 2014 with Cale Payne and Andrew Thomas and Greg McFann. The implementation of the cycle track is well-intended. It's a beautiful design. built in the wrong spot. This is the truck route, Clement through, if you go downstairs to the first floor of this building, look at the zoning map from early 1900s. The industrial zone goes from the estuary through Clement halfway to Eagle. I feel for the residents on this section of Clement about losing their parking or were narrowing the cycle track. My point is the street was built too narrow to begin with. Should have been a better design from the front. And the cycle track should not be there at all. Pacific, Lincoln, there are other options. As it relates to us and my tenants, we have done a lot of work to get trucks to do the loading for our spaces off of Clement. It's so narrow now, we cannot make the turns onto Minn Turn, Union, Stamford Street. So now we're back loading in the street. Not a safe situation. Forklifts, pallet tracks, inclement, people honking. Wintertime's the worst. Sunrise coming up from the east, right down the middle of Clement. Can't see, blinded by the light. Commissioner Abrams, I know you talked about cars not always following signage. We're relying on a no right turn on red at Broadway, Park, and Oak to protect people coming from your right on the cycle track. who hasn't made a right turn on red when they shouldn't have. We've all done it. It's an exception to a law. I'm worried about safety for bike riders. I'm a bike rider, but I don't want to ride in this thing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Mitch Ball.

Hello. So looking at the plans, I see that the proposed proposal is to trim back part of the bike lane and part of the ball boat at the intersection with Stanton. I would like to propose that more of the ball boat be taken and less of the bike lane, and I have two reasons for this. One, the purpose of ball boats is to reduce vehicle lane width. So if the vehicle must be a certain width, then the ball boat doesn't really have a purpose. Number two, the ball boat is on the inside of the curve. The whole reason why the road needs additional widening is because the road curves here, and the sharper the curve, the more it needs to be widened. If the inside of the curve is trimmed more, this expands the turn radius, meaning that less total is required, limiting the lane width that a pedestrian would need to cross. Now, I imagine the argument against trimming the inside further is that it might require removal of two trees at this intersection. But these trees are pretty young and not very big, so I think the removal would not be a huge loss. Overall, I would prefer a wider bike lane and a thinner road width over keeping these trees around. But overall, I don't think that difference is a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is the suggestion that the temporary truck route be made permanent. We have so many people from Clement here who would prefer the truck route take a detour on Buena Vista. However, if that decision gets made because of public comments tonight, this will lead to a city council meeting, which will gather a number of people from Buena Vista who will also publicly comment on how they also don't want to lose parking. If we treat public comment like a vote, the decision that gets made will not be the best decision for the community overall, but a decision that prefers the most politically engaged. Simply put, I don't want this to turn into another Gibbons Drive fiasco, where the wealthiest neighborhood on the island since redlining got preferential treatment and extra funding from the general budget. Public comment is great for the community to detail concerns and share ideas that allow you to make the best, most informed decision, but it should not be treated as a vote because it is not representative. Public comment is very often dominated by older, wealthier, and whiter homeowners, and following them blindly often leads to inequitable decisions that lead to the detriment of the less privileged. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Meredith Levens.

Hello, thank you for taking the time to listen to us speak. My name is Meredith Levins. I live in Alameda. I've lived at Balsa and Clement for 10 years. I just want to speak about how government makes decisions and kind of to a point earlier. Public service is not just about administering plans or maps or policies or even understanding the history of how those decisions are made. The role of government is to take those existing policies and compare them against existing realities to determine if they still make sense today. I've got more to say, but I only have two minutes. So I'm just going to skip to what the ask is. I would encourage everyone on the commission and the staff to go experience Clement Avenue as a pedestrian so that you can walk the corridor, you can observe the cyclists, you can see what a 250 degree curve actually is and how that impacts people every day. Common sense is probably the best way to make a decision in this instance. When you step outside the conference room and you get out of planning documents, you can see what the actual experience is of a truck, a pedestrian, a bicyclist trying to navigate this corridor that the city has spent a lot of money and effort to create. So government works best when it combines those things. And it asks, what does the plan say? does it make sense, and will this improve everyone's daily life, versus just looking at something from 1990 that says it was supposed to be a track route when the road wasn't even built, or in 2003 when the road wasn't built, or in 2008 or in 2007 when the road was a straight line but ultimately was built into a curve. So I just ask that you take the time to do that before making your decision, and thank you for your service to our community.

Thank you. So are we going online?

Yes. First online, we have Leo Esclamado.

Hi, Leo. Hi, can you hear me? Yes.

Hi, good evening again, commissioners. My name is Leo Esclamado, father and homeowner located on the corner of Clement and Entrance Road across from Marina. Last week, there were over 40 residents of us who packed the community room at the firehouse, really with concerns beyond a parking issue. I have a concern that this proposal will undo a thriving and growing neighborhood that the city approved in itself of Marina Shores. The city designed the curving street on Clement, placed our homes on the curb, built the park and the children's playground. Note that children's playground is really for really small children, zero to five. So this general plan, a thriving neighborhood moved in. Some context, per our census tracts, Our children under 10 make up 12% of our neighborhood. We are a minimum 1,200 households, roughly 4,000 people, and at least 500 children. All my neighbors in our townhomes have young children under 10. So now our proposal is to rebuild Clement for truck traffic, remove parking, affect the pedestrian protections, reduce the bike lanes, affect the trees. We haven't even talked about the mailbox. And I can conclude this proposal can make our neighborhood unsafe and dangerous. As a parent of a four-year-old daughter, I'm concerned of the safety of the proposal, especially if it's made a clear way of a 14-foot channel through passing through the curbs. I believe the city's own general plan policy ME6B forbids degrading safety features without documented necessity. Residents haven't seen any justification for degrading these safety features. So I really implore the city staff and the commission to withhold this design and reconsider the truck route designation between Sherman and Grand and consider other alternatives such as maintaining the existing truck route that the staff listed as recommendation four. I look forward to working with all of you and yeah, let's figure this out together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Alex Wolff.

Hi, Alex.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great. Representatives and community members of Alameda, my name is Alex Wolff. I'm a lifelong Alameda resident, and I live near Clement Street with my wife and kid. Like many families there, I walk Clement frequently, and I know its traffic patterns well. I'm here to discuss the proposal to implement the 1990 City Plan's trucking routes on Clement Street. The plan is over 30 years old. Riddle and Clement was industrial, not filled with families raising young children, housing developments, playgrounds, and busy bike paths and walkways. Since then, the city has approved changes to the shape of the road, which is S-shaped in parts, million-dollar bike lanes, and the 2014 Housing Amendment that brought large-scale residential development. These contradictions create traffic, safety, and residential problems and serious legal concerns. The proposal I reviewed last week was unconvincing. Even with partial removal of the bike lane and all parking, it has, as an engineer myself, obvious issues. First, the study assumes an ideal scenario for speed, visibility, and room to pass. That scenario does not exist in real life. Second, no safety studies have been done. And precise 3D modeling could prove beyond a reasonable doubt this plan is not feasible at all. Third, a large fire truck opposing a 50 to 65 foot big rig on this road creates a safety hazard unlikely to be overcome. Meanwhile, three additional large developments are almost complete in that area, putting more families with children directly adjacent to the narrow street. And years of precedent show the current truck route works safely, including with opposing trucks and emergency vehicles. One aside, the parking study excluded evening hours and ignored five new housing developments one to two blocks away. And all homes do not have driveways, including mine. I urge you to reconsider this plan based on the reality of 2026, not 1990. This plan is not feasible. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next, we have Danielle Brooks. Danielle Brooks, sorry.

Hi, thank you. I'm also a resident in the neighborhood who attended the community meeting last week. Much of what I wanted to say has already been said very well, so I'll try to keep this brief. Please, if possible, I would encourage you to read the meeting notes and the comments from last week's community meeting. I'd like to highlight that this is about safety and the degradation of Marina Cove Waterfront Park, as you've heard tonight, not about parking as the issue. And I'd like you to reference you to Speaker Six from the community meeting who lives on Buena Vista, the current temporary truck route, who highlighted that her and her young kids like to walk to the Marina Cove Waterfront Park. And she asked for consideration that the truck route be kept on her street instead of moving over to Clemente. So, yeah, I think I'll keep it at that and just encourage you to please consider and make recommendations to consider an amendment for the general plan. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Next, we have Paul Ting.

Hi, Paul. Paul, can you hear us? Do you want to go to the next person? Then we can get to Paul.

Next, we have Cindy Johnson.

Good evening, commissioners and staff. I wanted to offer some thoughts on behalf of Bike Walk Alameda. We appreciate the complexity of this issue. There are no easy answers. We're not enthusiastic about narrowing the cross Alameda Trail, creating extraordinarily wide vehicle lanes that will encourage higher driving speeds and make pedestrian crossings less safe. reopening the general plan, or any of the alternatives that have been proposed. That said, we want to offer one constructive suggestion should Clement be restriped with 14-foot travel lanes. While we appreciate the inclusion of curves and hatch striping to create visual friction, we do not believe those measures alone are sufficient to counteract the speed-inducing effect of lanes that are considerably wider than current best practices and our own visioning plans recommend. We encourage the city to include additional physical traffic calming, specifically speed tables or speed cushions. We understand there's a reluctance to install these treatments on streets that accommodate larger vehicles. However, we encourage the city to revisit those assumptions. Other cities have successfully done so. In nearby Oakland, for example, both 35th Avenue and High Street are designated cut routes and have received speed cushions in recent years without adverse effects. These examples suggest there may be more flexibility than is often assumed. Finally, we'd like to offer a general broader observation. We understand that accommodating large vehicles involves legitimate engineering considerations. But engineering only answers one question, what does it take to accommodate this vehicle? It does not answer the larger question, should this be the top priority for the street? This is ultimately a policy choice. We hope the City will consider whether there are operational solutions, not just geometric ones, to accommodating large trucks. If the only way to accommodate the largest and least frequent vehicles passing each other is to widen the street to the detriment of everything else, perhaps we should also be asking whether occasional delay, operational constraints, or other management strategies could achieve the same objective while preserving a safer, more human-scaled street. Clement is a designated truck route, but is also the residential street bordering a park, the Bay Trail, and the Cross Alameda Trail. The fact that trucks use it shouldn't mean every other use or the safety must be compromised. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Paul.

We're going to try Paul again. Paul Ting. Hello?

Yes. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Hi, thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Paul Ting, and I'm a property owner in Marina Shores. Thank you for the chance to speak. I want to raise two points tonight. First, the compatibility of converting the stretch of Clement into a truck route with the city's Vision Zero Act. Vision Zero aims to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities to zero. with a special focus on protecting vulnerable road users. It emphasizes safer crossings, slower vehicle speeds, and protection of children, elders, and people with mobility challenges. The stretch of Clement between Sherman and Peru is the main crossing our community uses to reach natural beauty of the Marina waterfront. The children's playground at Clement and Stanton is a popular spot for young parents and toddlers, and every day we see families crossing near that intersection. Every day we'll also see retired elders crossing Clement to enjoy the serenity of the waterfront. Converting this stretch into a truck route presents an escalator risk of accidents and serious injuries. This is not an occasional crossing. It is a daily essential gateway for the entire neighborhood. Before moving forward, the city should provide a safety study fully consistent with Vision Zero, showing how vulnerable residents will be protected. A second point is the loss of fundamental character of Marina Shores community. Marina Shores is named for the proximity to the marina. The properties were marketed on the basis of walkability to the waterfront. The neighborhood's identity, serenity, and value come from waterfront enjoyment. Homes closest to the water, especially along Clement, were originally priced at a premium because of the safe, walkable access to the shoreline. Turning these blocks into a truck corridor destroys that character. It flips a waterfront premium into a truck route discount.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comment. Let's move to the next person.

We're moving back in person. We have Ken Levins.

Hi. Thank you very much for your time this evening. My name is Ken Levin, 16-year Alameda resident, 10 years at Marina Shores. I'm the HOA president for the Marina Shores development. I just want to start and correct something that Scott said directly first. Only less than 50% of our homes in Marina Shores actually have driveways. All the homes do have garages, only some have driveways. Those alleyways behind the homes that do not have driveways are all fire lanes. They may not be parked in. None of our townhomes, which represent about 50% of the build, have driveways other than the fire lanes to get to their own homes. So we're pretty constrained on parking. A lot of our homes are three-person households. I had a lot to say, but in two minutes, I think I'll say this. The city has been pretty selective about which parts of its general plans it focuses on, approves, and builds. If you look at that 1990 plan and some of the later iterations, in fact, on slide 10 of Scott's presentation, he showed Clement as a stylized, idealized, straight line between Peru and Balsa, an entrance, actually. And yeah, if that had been built, that would have been a great truck route, no doubt. We wouldn't have this conversation because we wouldn't have those tight radius curves that we need to accommodate the cross-tracking for. But we didn't build that, right? We built something very different. We built basically a chicane, as somebody said, a series of four 250-foot radius curves that don't really suit tracking for trucks. Then in the 2007 amendment, which discussed uses for Clement, we said we were going to set residential buildings back from the road, which would be appropriate for a truck ride. But we didn't do that, maximize tax revenue and maybe make the developers happy. We built right up to the curb. And then in our 2040 Vision Zero plan, what we said was we were going to limit street widths to manage speeds, and we were going to maximize the protections for pedestrians and for bicycle riders. And now we're going to degrade those protections. So we're basically going to unwind the things we said we would do. And we've already done the things that we said we wouldn't do, building right up to the curb. And we're going to destroy the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Next, we have Adrian Abouyan.

Good evening, commissioners and staff. Thank you for all the work you've done. I'm Adrian Abouyan. I get to serve as the CEO of the Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter. We're located at 1590 Fortman. And I'm glad to be here this evening. So I want to share a couple of things, is that I have some concern and just request for more engagement as we consider such a change for Clement Avenue. Marina Shores happens to be the primary area where we get to exercise both frightened abandoned or sometimes reactive dogs. We don't have a green space, so our parking lot times is where we get to exercise them. We're in a difficult to find location. So as we rehabilitate or sometimes try to rehome or service these animals, we walk those streets seven days a week. So as a pedestrian taking in the impacts of such a change, you can talk to our staff or hundreds of volunteers to understand how we navigate those particular neighborhoods. We are oftentimes a source of noise, and disturbed animals make disturbances that we get complaints about. Particularly in a 1984 pound-style built building, it's difficult. Noise gets in and noise gets out. And so I ask that you just consider more engagement in particular and understand how this will not just impact the residents there. But we may be out of the study area. But the streets that surround us are Clement, Fortman Way, and Alaska Packer Way, right? Nine spots to park in in front. And we don't allow staff to park in them because it is a public service. a service that we get to partner with the city to provide, an animal shelter in a full-service city. It becomes increasingly more difficult as we have more population increase, meaning we have more increased population of animals surrendered. And these are the most difficult animals to work with that we hope to rehome one day. So I ask that we understand it from the perspective not only as a provider, as a 501 , partnering with a city, but understanding the opportunity is that we are a community-minded organization, which means we recruit and retain volunteers. The conditions in which they operate allow us to make sure that can happen in an increasingly more difficult service to provide. And this kind of change bring that kind of impact. So I ask that you just consider more engagement now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Suzanne Diers.

Commissioners, my family's owned a property at the corner of Lafayette and Clement since 1974, when it was industrial in that area. Now, granted, that's not the area in question, but I've seen a lot of changes along Clement through the years, and especially lately, where there's children walking up and down Clement now where there used to be none. This area in question, portion of the road, I've driven it myself many times. That curving portion is not going to be adequate for large trucks of any size. Even the smaller trucks, it's going to be difficult. The width of the lanes, even if you take out parking, it's still going to be tough. You have not considered the portion that used to be Pennzoil. That portion of the road isn't even open yet, so how do you know how the traffic's going to go there? Really, truly, nobody wants a truck route on their road. Buena Vista doesn't want it. Clement doesn't want it. But when you think about the best safety for the route that would be sticking to Buena Vista.

Thank you for your comment.

We're going back online. Next we have Anna Meyer.

Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I am. Hi, Anna Mayer. I am a resident of Marina Shores. I do live on the Buena Vista side of the development, so the number 19 bus stops in front of my house, so I'll be throwing my support towards AC Transit, but... You know, what I really did want to underscore is just I appreciate all the comments about kind of taking a step back and considering the full context, because I do not think there's a perfect answer here. But I think we need to really consider the industrial needs, the general plan, but also the priorities around Vision Zero. I just... have listened to several hours of discussion about how can we protect pedestrians and bikers. And so I am the parent of an eight-year-old who goes to Maya Lin. I also have a three-year-old and a dog. So I'm out there walking every day. And I will say that I take my kids to all three of the playgrounds. The little playground, as we call it, is the one that toddlers and the little guys really like. And there's a family daycare in the neighborhood that uses it every day. When I take my kids to Little John, I always go over to the flashing crosswalk that allows access there, which is really set off the street, as is Jean Sweeney. So this is like a robust waterfront area. People are walking their dogs, they're exercising, they're going to the playground. And it's really scary to cross with faster traffic, bigger lanes. I worry about the exposure of truck pollution to all the little kids who are playing on the playground that's right up against the street. So I just would ask that we take a step back and really think about the general plan and how it's fitting with all of the other priorities that we've identified as a city.

Thank you. Thank you for your comment.

Next, we have David Casey.

Hi, David. Hello, can you hear me? Yes.

Hi. I just think we're saying a lot of the same things, but it seems like some series of half decisions all the way back to 1990, moving the truck wraps from Buena Vista to Clement, removing them from Atlantic and Sherman, and back again, have been a bunch of small decisions thought of individually, and I'm hoping that the commission can review them a little bit more holistically allow that safety study along clement to be commenced for even autos not not only large trucks which it sounds like maybe there are some safety issues as of now which is my opinion as well but we'll let the studies commence and have additional traffic studies done for potentially the whole island to see where the best truck routes would serve for the burgeoning uh uh island of alameda as it's been developed all along clement uh on the naval yard and all throughout um the tilden avenue intersection as well just make sure we are doing a holistic approach for this solution versus solving it street by street thank you thank you next we have jim strelo hi jim

Originally, the Marina Cove housing design was to have no plans for vehicles to encourage bike, walk, bus. Gladly, that was scrapped. Most of us know whom to blame for the design of the Cross Alameda Trail. When will the section between Hibbert and Grand be available to vehicles, particularly long trucks? How much did it cost for the new housing development to buy that portion of Clement Avenue, closing it down for all motor vehicles? Thank you.

Thank you. And last, we have Dan Fredenberg.

Hi, Dan. Yes.

Okay, wonderful. I'm a Marina Shores resident. I think you've heard a lot of the voice of the community in Marina Shores as far as safety. concerns about the beauty, the waterfront, etc. One of the things I'd like the Commission to consider is the community development tax that we've already put in being here for 10 years as a resident, understanding that this is part of being part of this community, developing the park, the waterfront, and the bike route. Now we're asking for the same community to pay for the retrofit. So I would vote for the GP amendment and your option four of keeping Buena Vista as the truck route, which would be a really low, if not low, no cost to the community and also the city. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for your comment.

We have no more speakers. OK.

Thank you. Now we are looking at the commissioners, commission to deliberate on this. You have heard the public comment. And we have a lot of materials in front of us. Who wants to go first? And again, this is a discussion item.

If you want, I'll start. You all know I say a lot, but I'll start with just a little fraction. And Chair, can I say, could you give the right to any other commission member to interrupt me and cut in if they want to build on comments?

Probably, I will let you know.

Your discretion. First, I just want to thank everyone. You all waded through a number of other items we heard tonight. And I want to thank staff who've worked quite a lot on an iceberg of an issue with a lot underneath the waterline. um earlier this week i was flying back from my own little vacation and i spent the entire flight with this packet so i i spent i i made sure to spend time with uh i know a lot of written public comment i know um scott wickstrom or city engineer has just been tired tirelessly engaging with folks with the nitty-gritty um and we're gonna keep on doing that so i i trust This will get into details. But I just wanted to start off with that real thank you. Because the city's tasked with this citywide transportation network. And the most challenging of issues are the ones that have a zero sum aspect in that. So at least my own personal perspective is the city would do best to identify how to honestly identify trade-offs, honestly identify work within constraints, work within both what can be measured, work within what's possible, but then find ways to honestly, whenever possible, spread impacts wisely and with... various concerns in mind all that said the one point I did want to make from my own perspective and I then I'll let other folks add in and I'm sure we'll do some back and forth is I don't think parked on street parking is an operative issue here the the the city did a thorough analysis I think we can have decisions guided very carefully. There's always measurement error. Things always change seasonally. On-street parking is a valid concern. It is the lowest of the city's priorities. Explicitly here, neighborhood connector street, on-street parking, very bottom of the list. I Understand that parking is a quality of life issue I also wanted to flag that we've got a really unique set of Developments here that have each kind of represent just different points in time I think the city should try to support everyone who lives there but I would like to personally propose that the city has done sufficient due diligence to identify that Should parking be removed, the neighborhood currently has capacity to meet needs there. I'm going to say I have a ton of other issues I want to go into, but I'm just looking for a very concrete aspect to flag here that I think on street parking concerns specifically for parking usage. parking usage as opposed to other concerns about how on-street parking narrows roadways and mitigates speed factors that I'd like to return to later. But in terms of parking supply, I would like to offer that the city has done sufficient due diligence here that I personally feel that is an issue that the city is is enabled to make decisions that remove or shift publicly accessible on street parking all that said there's a lot else i'd like to touch on i i know others do too i i don't want to hog the mic so please uh

Yeah, I just want to actually add to that. I think based on a lot of the public comments, I kind of agree. It feels like most of the public comments were about public safety as opposed to parking. While I'm not saying there were comments about parking, and we do want to recognize that, but I think parking is also one of those things that you can find ways to find parking in other places. Do you know what I mean? not be able to park in front of your house. You're parking around the corner, which I know kind of sucks. But I think there are ways to kind of alleviate the total parking needs. But I think that being said, I would be kind of curious to understand when the parking needs are heavy and when they're needed. I think listening to this, something I was trying to figure out Are there ways to have it be truck route during the day, parking at night, or some combination of that? Could you do temporary bans on parking to allow for trucks at certain times and vice versa. Mostly because I'm trying to see if there's a way to have your Kiki needed too with this, which I know is difficult. But I'm wondering if there is a way to allow for parking when it's needed and still allow for the truck access.

Are you looking for any response?

Is that a question?

Yes, that is a question. OK.

It is possible. It's a subtlety, but on the 1990 general plan, there were designations for 24-hour truck routes, and then there were basically daytime truck routes, and that was Buena Vista was set up that way, such that as you're going down the residential streets, you're not bringing the trucks down there in the evenings when they may be making the most noise. So yes, that is possible. It's usually done for that context for noise The challenge is when you have parking that's available for certain times and not other certain times is what if somebody's late getting up in the morning and don't move their car in time and then the truck route opens and then we have an issue and That gets to be I think it's it's a layered operational challenge to do that. So when we've typically seen hours-based restrictions on truck routes, it's predominantly around the noise and not necessarily about the width, the access width. Got it.

OK, that's helpful. And maybe I'll jump to a different point. I think something I want to note is the Cross Alameda bike trail. I think one of the commenters mentioned that it felt like it And a lot of decisions were made almost not in concert together. Decisions were made at different times by different people. And we ended up having this project, or the status of Clement how it is today. But that being said, we can't really change anything that was done in the past. The cross-Alameda bike path is one of the best things in Alameda. And I don't think we can touch that at all. even trying to shift it a little bit or reduce it just doesn't seem to make that much sense. So I guess what I'm saying is I think any of the solutions we find kind of needs to leave that hole would be kind of my recommendation, which I think then starts to limit what options we do have. But that does feel like, to me, in terms of priorities, that is one of my priorities, to kind of keep that hole as is and operating really as great as it does today.

Okay, Commissioner Bloyne.

Thank you. And I echo Commissioner Dara Abrams' comments. It's always great to see so many public comments. It's now after 10 p.m. and most of you are still here. So I appreciate the helpful input on this obviously important topic. I tend to agree with the comments that have been made already that the parking aspect of this is a relatively minor concern, primarily because, as the city engineer explained, we're probably talking about net six spaces. which is not a great deal. I also note that while not every, I'm looking at the satellite image, not every home in this neighborhood has a driveway, it appears that the ones that don't have a driveway have a two-car garage. So I would like to think that the parking issue is relatively minor. I think, as we've said, the more serious question here is safety. Cross Alameda Trail is and will be even more so in future a very important aspect of our community. I use it myself regularly and that stretch along Clement past the waterfront park. it's a very attractive part of the island. It's an attractive street. I can see why people like to spend time there. But if I look at this, the different aspects of this, As we've said, it's sort of a zero-sum game. There's no perfect solution here. A perfect solution would be trucks don't exist. We never have to move anything around that's bigger than I could carry in a bag or on my bike. Unfortunately, they do exist, and we do need to get them around from time to time. Probably this part of the island... I'm guessing this part of the island probably has less truck traffic than certain other areas, partly because it's sort of in the middle on the north waterfront. So maybe it's not the busiest area for trucks in general, but the city can tell me if I'm wrong about that. But I think as I look at this objectively, If the two options are the truck route has to be on Clement or the truck route has to be as it is today on Grand Buena Vista Sherman, then there are clearly far more residential homes on the Grand Buena Vista Sherman route. I know there's the waterfront park there on Clement, but there's also Little John Park on Buena Vista Avenue, and the current truck route cuts that off from the large Star Harbor development. That's obviously not ideal. I think... The truck route is longer if it has to go via Buena Vista. There are four turns if it goes that way. As I say, objectively, it looks like Clement is the logical route. But I think, as someone else mentioned, Having the bike track next to a truck route is obviously not what you would do in an ideal world, but I think given where we are today, that is probably the more logical solution based on what I'm seeing and based on the information that we've been given so far. But again, whatever solution we come to, it's not ideal for everybody because unfortunately that's the nature of these kind of decisions.

Commissioner Johnson, do you have anything to add?

No.

All right, okay. I'm going to ask a few questions and then I'm going to give it back to Commissioner Dyer-Abrams. Is that okay? Oh, of course. Just questions. Okay. Can you put up the slide that's number 19, alternatives considered? I was at the public meeting, and I think I was there for a whole time, I want to say. I saw how Scott was really trying to do his best and then say that his heart is with the community and he's trying to do his job from the city staff perspective and how, you know, Aaron and Scott really love their job. That was quite touching. I understood the emotion over there in the room. So here we have a couple of questions. What was the comment from the Buenavista residents on keeping the truck route? We heard from one person. But what about the general feeling?

We only did hear from the one person that evening. There's another woman tonight who spoke who lived on the north side of Buena Vista. It's fair to say that we haven't really reached out to that full neighborhood to ask the question about the possibility of maintaining the truck route on Buena Vista. So that's a bit of a different outreach component. And that would be one of those things that would only be really fully undertaken should we, and I'll almost put it in this context, should council decide that it's appropriate to consider a general plan amendment.

Going back to the starting point, what triggered this process? Because it's been working well, except for on paper you have this truck route marked on the Clement Avenue, but what triggered this process to evaluate again after looking at moving it back to the permanent one as in the plan?

Yeah, and just a point of clarification. It's helpful to be delivered about using these words. Clement is a truck route, is the truck route. The Skyline development, former Pennzoil site, as part of their development is to close that last gap on the Clement extension. It is complete. The roadway is done and built. We have, we, I, city, basically told them, leave the fences up and don't open the road, because we're not sure that if we open it up, And it is a truck route that we're going to have the side swipe issues to the west, if you will, to the Kirby portion. So what's precipitating this whole discussion is the fact that the final gap on the Clement extension is complete, and we want to open the road. And to open the road, we need to either have the regulations in place, i.e., there's no signage on the westbound direction on Clement directing trucks to turn left on Legrand, because it was a closed road. They had to turn left, right? So we'd have to do that signage. And then I come back to my last slide in the slide deck, which was, You know, even considering the truck route being maintained potentially on Buena Vista, we still have to do a little more detailed study about can we, you know, using like an SU-30 and a bus, for example, can those two trucks or two vehicles safely pass each other with parking in place? Or does something need to be done? So but to answer your question directly, what's precipitating this whole discussion is the fact that the final gap in the Clement extension is complete. And we're getting pressure, and I say rightly so, from some of the neighborhoods, let's open the road. We're ready for the road to be open. So that's driving it.

And I saw in one of the, this is a different question, saw in one of your slides like the 2009 general plan transportation element was updated, not the full general plan. is in your alternatives being considered, when you say that then general plan amendment could be an option, could be one of the options, is that the transportation element alone? Or are you looking at, again, in the alternatives considered option? I think it's, again, the ninth slide you put up first.

That's too far to go back.

But to answer the question, The general plan, the updating of a general plan is a holistic, very large multi-year effort to do a whole general plan. Then you can focus on specific elements, such as the transportation element. That's a medium-sized task. You could also focus on the housing element. We recently redid our housing element, right? Those are, I'll say, medium-sized tasks. A general plan amendment is much more of a surgical, change to a specific portion of the general plan, right? So we would not, there's no talk or discussion about updating our transportation element here, because that's a bigger, far bigger undertaking that we'd ever even consider. But a general plan amendment theoretically could be a surgical kind of component to look at this one specific issue and make a ruling on this one specific issue.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for clarifying. With that, I will turn it back to the rest of the commissioners and then I will tell my points.

Chair, if you're all right, I'll share a few more thoughts. Actually, could we have that alternative slide up again? That's helpful. So I started off by, you know, Scott came with two questions. I gave my thought on the second, the parking aspect, but that, leaving that to the side, two thoughts I wanted to share. First, just historically, like, Maybe Scott can add color here, but this is just... In the past, American traffic engineers thought that bike lanes were clear zones. You need to ditch, you can ditch in the bike lane. You can ditch on a kid. But that's sort of my post hoc read of this. That's what a class two bike lane is. It means that's flex space. It's the rest of the world would not allow that. In the meantime, North American standards caught up to Europe. And now there's a general consensus, and I know I love the, like, the public comment, the written public comment got into the city's resolution that adopts the NACDO guidebooks. Like, that's what you all are following now, and a class two painted bike lane. I understand that it would solve some geometric constraints, but the reason that it's just... It wouldn't fly in Europe. It no longer flies with American standards. And I appreciate, though, that that's a wrinkle that the various actors over multiple decades did not take into account. The main thoughts I want to share now is I think given I don't think on-street parking is a concern here. However, the on-street parking is a real mitigation for speed factors. This commission, the city, is working on a multi-year, maybe it's going to be, it's going to probably stretch into the next decade to repair Fernside Boulevard. which is also one of these historic rail alignments, it's too large. It's just too wide. People speed because it's wide. The city's working on quick build and permanent build stuff to really get at the one way you can control, well first, Speed control, top of the list for ways to lower crashes in a place like Alameda. And second, my non-expert read is top of the list is people have to feel like they're driving next to other stuff. They can't see wide open roadway. That's also why those painted bike lanes are not They're not good for motorists either because it looks like spacey conditions. So even though I think to the second, Scott, to your second point, I think the city has done its due diligence and gone above and beyond to document what's necessary to remove on-street parking. I don't think that is a wise move from a safety perspective for this corridor. specifically for that alignment. I think it might be turning something that's naturally working into more of a firm side that presents a future problem to solve. That said, I understand that approach four is just organizationally, it's a different ask. And staff aren't making that ask. I'll give my frank read. You've got enough interest from council that this is going to get a follow up at that level. The way that I would like to provide my own input into that is by saying that This outreach has been effective in reaching folks along the Clement alignment, but it has not systematically reached people on the Buena Vista alignment. If the city does pursue an amendment, literally just one figure, right? Yeah. I know there's a lot of process to it, but that needs to take into account. I'm sharing my own perspective here, but I think that needs to take into account folks on Buena Vista. And it needs to think about mitigations there. There's a park there, too. We've heard a lot there. Super in the weeds process question. The city's updating the noise ordinance next fiscal year, right? You're already in a general plan update, right? Sorry, I went from like 30,000 feet down to five feet.

The other reason why I pause a little bit, right? So these are all good questions about the general plan. You have to realize from my perspective in our role, what we do here predominantly in public works is plans are these bigger, higher arching documents that are created and we implement. We have a general plan. We have an actual transportation plan, all that kind of stuff. So we implement. When we start talking about general plan, whether it's the noise element, whether it's the transportation element, housing element, that effort is led through the planning department. It's traditionally not led by public works. So it's not our group here. That takes the lead on it. To your point, I think it would probably best serve to keep any amendment to the noise ordinance completely separate from this one here. This discussion about the truck routes, Very valid and very clear, we have not engaged those residents in a sufficient perimeter on Buena Vista. If we would consider a general plan amendment, they would have to be noticed and have that same outreach done. There's a question, though, that do we need to basically notify the entire city with the same degree? And my gut feel says no. We don't necessarily need to let Bay Farm Island opine on whether we're going on Buena Vista or Clement. So divorcing a noise ordinance, this would come in as a standalone one would be my expectation. But I would have to reach out to our planning department and understand what those steps would be specifically.

Okay, thank you, and I appreciate that. As a non-expert, I'm diving way down into the details, but to the concerns that, you know, a general plan can only be updated so often or amended so often. And also just, you know, I want to be super mindful, like... every ask that goes in to staff gets added to a queue. And we have to be mindful that every neighborhood has very unique and valid concerns, but we can't infinitely add to that. And so I'll just frame my comments by saying I think the city as a whole is collecting feedback that points towards council considering option four here, but That would need to be done in a manner that is as efficient as possible in order to minimize costs and minimize impacts on all the other ongoing commitments.

I hear you. Thank you.

Okay. And yeah, thank you to other commission members for letting me hog the mic. But I just want to, I know we're presented with a number of overlapping issues here. You know, the city as a whole and city council will consider how to proceed. But just to, if I could summarize my thought, I think the... I think the city's made a valid case for the parking removal should it be relevant. I think the engagement process as well as the city's experience with the negatives of very wide auto travel lanes would indicate some potential net benefit to a carefully, very surgically constructed general plan amendment process. Thank you.

Can I actually ask a follow-up question that's related? Because I think Commissioner Darryl Abrams' comments made me think a little bit more about what it means to be designated as a truck route. And does that actually conflict with a bicycle corridor? And I guess what I'm getting at is it feels like with a bicycle corridor, you want to have things that are traffic calming on it. to kind of work with that. Does that conflict with a truck route designation? Like a truck route, are you not allowed to have X number of stop signs or speed humps or things like that? Or could we put those on Clement and have it be a very slow truck route?

All good questions, all good points. There is no necessarily reason to exclude a truck route from a bicycle corridor. I would point out specifically for this area, there are no crossings or limited to no crossings of the two-way cycle track. In particular, this section, there are none. So any trucks or any vehicles, there will be an increase in traffic. Let's be very clear about that. The road opens, there will be an increase in traffic, whether the trucks go there or not. The advantage of the way the Cross Alameda Trail is set on Clement is that there are very few, Fortman Marina being one, but there's very few entrances to the north and none in this little immediate stretch. So that by itself is not a conflict.

For example, there's a lot of comments about people getting to either the cycle track or to that north part of the area, walking across Clement and things like that. In my head, I feel like you want a lot of traffic calming features to allow for more of that, right?

um so uh one one thing that we did deliberately and in anticipation of the roadway opening is we did install a flashing beacon um at uh the stanton so right at that bull box so there's one that's in place now it's functioning it's in place that is one things that we've done um there's a lot of talk i hear it all the time about oakland and they've really a little bit of a headache for me. Like, oh, they did speed cushions. Speed cushions on truck routes, speed humps on truck routes, a lot of transit haulers don't really care for them. You may have potentially a sensitive load. If you're hauling dirt, there may be dirt that comes out of the truck at those locations. It's generally not desirable on an arterial and specifically not on a truck route. So those kind of traffic calming measures Probably ones that I'm not going to look at favorably. Now, we're talking about widening lanes. And this kind of goes back to Commissioner Gary Abrams' point about the old school. The original alignment was a 12-foot lane with a 5-foot bike lane. That could have accommodated a truck because the trailer would have tracked right on over the bike lane, right? Is that a problem for the bike? Yes, potentially, right? Hopefully, the bike and the truck are going the same speed. If we were to take parking out and widen the lanes, we could stripe. to kind of keep the visual lane narrower. That does a little bit. That's traffic calming. It's not effective as a parked car there, for sure. But those are the type of traffic calming things that we would be looking to add in is some additional striping to visually narrow the lanes, still yet allowing the larger trucks that come through, their trailers can track over the inside stripe, if you will.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So I think the end of my comments would be, as we consider things, to add in what traffic calming features we can along with whatever improvements we're doing to kind of both promote safety as well as whatever else we're doing with Clement.

Commissioner Klein, do you have any personal thoughts to share?

No, nothing additional. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Final, Commissioner Johnson? All right. Okay. So can you go back to that same slide again? Can you put that up? This is a discussion item, right? I want us to remember when we started the meeting, Lisa mentioned that Alameda was recognized at the regional level being a goal level bike friendly city. And we also had this item right after for a neighborhood greenway project implementation. where we are all looking at safety, it's clearly. Then one aspect in this presentation, we said that, okay, we provided disclaimers or CCRs to the new residents. I don't think that does justify proposing to implement or up. It's actually not implementing. It is a truck route but functioning, making it functional as a truck route. In reality, what's over there, it's a thriving young community with many amenities, waterfront that actually attracts not just Clementine new residents, it's attracting further larger extended community area beyond even Buena Vista, I'm sure. So what we are trying to do is we are trying to, or in this, in exploring all this, trying to enforce a historic designation of Clementine as a truck route that was adopted when the land was empty. And we live here in an innovative region of the world. We adapt personally and every day to new things. We adapted to COVID and now hybrid work and then technology, just there is no limit to it. It is time, it's clearly my opinion. time we look at this as well, given the new context, how it is. To me, parking is a very small, I know it's a big issue for many people, but it is small given the the massiveness of the remaining safety compromisation and then you have this huge beautiful cross Alameda Trail which I loved biking and which got the gold level recognition for city and all that. So I think it's time we looked at it differently, which means that I'm eventually moving to the number four here, but which means that Buena Vista residents need to be outreached really well. So I think that would be the best approach. Again, it's my opinion. So we have this beautiful community that was developed and then so many things were done and we built that. cross Alameda Trail right there, and then we are now looking at redoing it. That really doesn't make any sense in the economical point of view, too. So that's my thinking.

I would just like to say thank you for all the commissioners. Did ask for discussion, and I appreciate your feedback and your comments.

And thank you very much for your presentation. I saw this community outreach and you have done it more and very much appreciate the commitment and more outreach that you'll be doing.

Chair, could I add just another thank you, because, you know, we see the city deliver so much, but the staff here is really small. There are people juggling many hats and many projects, and, you know, I think I'm just going to just say thank you again. I know, and especially to the city engineer in particular, who has just been at so many of these events and talking with so many members of the public and us and electeds, and probably in addition to keeping running a whole bunch of other projects in the mix.

Yeah, absolutely. Totally second that. Okay, so moving on to the last but one. So commission communications. Do we want, I think, is Commissioner Noctegal still here?

She is not. She left, but we still have quorum.

I figured, okay, okay. All right, any commission communication?

Chair, I have a brief one, if I may. OK. Sure. I wanted to share, as a resident of Alameda, last night city council took action to put a infrastructure bond on our November ballots. It's a topic that's come up here often. The city engineer gives a great paving presentation and just understanding the constraints the city is under and how each year less and less pavement is purchased and the city is gradually falling behind in its pavement quality. At the same time, I've appreciated everything staff have shared with us about just the reality of the costs of building these integrated programs that both maintain streets and improve safety. And so that is a component of the SAFER Alameda Act. SAFER stands for an acronym. I'm sure voters will know. See what that is on their ballots, but I just want to say as a community member and a voter I am glad that the city is making This ask of residents. I think it is a big ask But You know this body has seen Both the importance and the unfunded liabilities on the city's streets And this measure crafted by the city council gives voters an option to invest in streets climate change preparation and safety improvements. So I encourage anyone who is interested to learn more in advance to Go to the city's website where there is educational information about the city's infrastructure needs and this Option being presented to voters in November.

Thank you for your time Thank You commissioner Okay, any other comments from other commissioners I Do we want to adjourn? Can I have a motion?

Yeah, I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I second. OK. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a good night.