Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Eve good evening, everyone, and welcome back to the Transportation Commission for the City of Alameda, Wednesday, 09/24/2025. And we will begin with roll call. Lisa Foster, take it away.

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

Here.

Commissioner Gloyn?

Here.

Chair Weitzey? Here. Vice Chair Sutham Thira is absent. Commissioner Johnson?

Present.

And Commissioner Nochtigal? Here.

Seeing that we have quorum, we will now move to item number two, agenda changes. Any requested agenda changes? Seeing none, we will move on to item number three, staff communications. Take it away, Lisa Foster.

Thank you. Good evening chair, White Sea and transportation commissioners. I'm Lisa Foster, transportation planning manager for the city. I'll give you a few updates starting with a couple of actions the city council has taken on items that the transportation commission reviewed since our last meeting. So in July, the city council approved construction contracts for the Clement Tilden improvements project.

And the first and the neighborhood greenway, the first segment on Pacific Avenue. And then in September, the city council accepted Alameda County Transportation Commission grant awards for Stargill Complete Streets Corridor and for neighborhood greenway crossings. We our next transportation commission meetings are a special meeting October 22, and then our last regular meeting of the year is November 19. The agenda topics that we're looking forward to include Caltrans will present to you about the I five eighty truck access study. And then we will also be talking about the Gibbons Drive High Street and Fernside Boulevard intersection design and phasing recommendations.

We have some public events. Speaking of that, tomorrow, September 25, we will have a community open house regarding Gibbons High Fernside Intersection proposed changes. So we have completed a traffic study, and we look forward to sharing the outcomes with the community and hearing their thoughts. We have two events on Saturday, the sea level rise planning fair and the family fun ride around Alameda, which will be in Bay Farm this year. And then starting on Monday, September 29 through August 5, we are we'll the week without driving will take place, and the city is encouraging community members to participate this year.

This is a national event organized by excuse me, America Walks. It was started by disability advocates so that those who have the option to drive can learn firsthand about the barriers and challenges non drivers face and work toward creating more accessible communities for all. On September 30, we will have the virtual workshop for the Gibbons High Fernside public outreach. This will be the same presentation as the open house. So for people who prefer a virtual setting or can't make the open house, that is another option.

And then we also have a survey, which is open right now through, I believe, October 5 for that project as well. And then on October 3, we have the transportation one zero one and clipper cards for seniors event. And then I just got a new one. I believe it's October 7. We are having a travel training event for older adults and people with disabilities hosted by our paratransit coordinator with the Center for Independent Living.

They're planning to go to the Farmers Market by bus. And then in terms of updates, you know, we have our status report on transportation coming up. So I'll just be really brief on that. I think it's the one thing that's not in there is that the SF Bay Ferry is has a South San Francisco service study happening right now. They're seeking input on it.

They're considering changes to their South San Francisco ferry route, which go which serves Main Street and Jack London Square right now to ensure its financial sustainability. So people who use that route or would like to use that route are encouraged to go to the URL in the staff communications and fill out a survey and find out about events. And that concludes my staff communications.

Thank you for the updates. We will now move to agenda item number four, non agenda public comment. Anyone may speak for three minutes if it is not on the agenda. Do we have any speaker slips?

Yes. We have three in house. And if you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand if you'd like to speak. But first, we have Gordon Williams.

Hi there, and welcome.

Hey. How's it going? My name is Gordon Williams. I'm a resident here in Alameda. I live on Bay Of Est Avenue.

I have a lot to say about the Gibbons Intersection project that's being talked about, but there are two things I wanna bring to your attention now, right now. One is the survey that's out. If you read through the questions, there's a lot of inherent bias in it that is I don't know how it got that way or why it is that way, but they're very leading questions that I think are problematic and should be addressed. There's things in there that are saying like, hey, like, here's the data from the transportation study. Here's how the here are the increase in numbers of traffic going through the neighborhood.

And then it goes ahead and interprets those numbers for you and then ask your opinion on it. And I think that that's wrong to put in a biased interpretation into the data and then ask people's quest people questions about it. The other thing that I felt was really biased in there was at at the beginning, the first question is like, here is just the Gibbons Fernside High Street intersection. This is what we're looking at doing. Don't think about anything else outside of this. Only think about this. Do you think this is going to improve safety? And I think that's a flawed question to be looking at, not looking at the picture. And that is the big big issue here. So let me just hit it real quick.

The biggest issue I see is that we're talking about closing off Gibbons so there's no left turn from Gibbons into the intersection onto the High Street Bridge. We said that's gonna push traffic elsewhere. The traffic study showed that's gonna put traffic elsewhere. We are taking away the only traffic light protected turn out of the neighborhood to get towards the High Street Bridge. We're gonna get rid of that to push traffic, and we know we're gonna push traffic on the smaller streets.

Most like, I'm concerned about all of them. There's a lot of safety issues there with bikers, kids walking to school. But you look at Bay Of Vista. Here, it says 55% of the the traffic is gonna get diverted from Gibbons onto South Woods and Bay Of Vista that has more dangerous intersections, and then they're gonna be forcing people to take a left turn onto High Street that's unprotected. And I I I just do not see how in the world that could increase safety. It's not gonna increase safety for pedestrians. It's not gonna increase safety for bikers. It's not gonna increase safety for cars. And talk about congestion. It's gonna build up congestion.

Like, we have a protected turn now, and we're gonna take that away, the only protected turn away. And so I'm not sure how we got to this point. I'm not even sure why Givens is part of the Fernside study. I would rather it just not be. It seems weird to me that it is and I'll leave it with that and thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please.

Next we have Jim Strelow.

Mr. Strelow, welcome back.

Evening commissioners, I'm here about I've said this many times, bike laws that are not being enforced are being taught. Since our last meeting, there's been at least two times when a bicyclist has been in my bike lane, I'm going westbound, they're going eastbound. Straight at me. And that's not safe. Why are they, oh, that's a bike lane.

No, it's a bike lane in the wrong direction. So that there's people not being educated. And it's the people not the design of the streets because it's the people that are not obeying. And there's nothing you can do. You construct whatever lanes you want.

And if they're not gonna pay attention, I'm gonna have more and more of these incursions. Today, there was a vehicle making a right hand turn on red where prohibited and it blocked another vehicle from going forward from entering the intersection on Green. My niece bought an e scooter because other friends got e scooters at Christmas time for her nine year old daughter without educating her. After seeing her daughter not abiding by my education, how to make the right signals and slow down and say that you're passing on the right ahead of time. Luckily that my niece took the scooter away from her, but how many other parents are gonna do that?

How many parents don't educate their kids? Oh, here's an e scooter have at it. So I'm concerned about Oakland's new e bike program because Oakland will probably rent to some low income and I foresee them coming into Alameda. And I just do not see enough education of adults as well as youth about the bike and pedestrian laws and it's just gonna get worse. Thank you.

Next speaker please.

Next we have William Morrison.

Hi William.

Hi, good afternoon, good evening. I basically want to talk about a little situation that I've seen over like Gordon, we became very involved with the Gibbons Burnside situation and the intersection. He has a different opinion from me. I believe that this is a favor done between various members of staff to address a problem that was personal. That being said, that's not a that's not really my issue at this time.

My issue is where does the public stand in regard to being able to have input into these various decisions? We can attend meetings, we get two and a half, three minutes. That's it. And that's all. No input whatsoever.

There was a real big effort apparently to perform a study associated with this specific situation. The only problem is we never had any capacity or avenue for any input, any suggestion, any review. And, of course, I then turn and say, well, that's probably the purview of the commission. But I have to ask you the question. I think you get deals that are done, and that's it.

And unless somebody really comes in and talks to you about it, you will rely upon staff. To be honest with you, these guys are getting paid. I would think they would know what they're doing. I don't think you guys are getting paid. I know I'm not. However, I was a consulting economist, so I do know something about studies. And like Gordon, I've seen things where everything that comes in is we have a problem, this is how we wanna fix it. Let's do let's put up the data and make certain that we have the answers we won't. Not the answers. In other words, not study.

I would call it propaganda. As Mark Twain said, there are three types of lies. They're lies. They're damned lies, and then there's statistics. And I think, unfortunately, that you guys get fed a lot of statistics. And I I I would say I I somewhat pity you because, again, you're kinda like the last acorn in the hose pipe before they dump whatever they want to own us at any time. So from that viewpoint, this is just something I would like to discuss or at least present. I don't think there's enough. Let's collect public input. Now the main difficulty is a lot of the input is nothing but clamor.

And I can see any any way to, shall we say, get rid of clamor, but there we are. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. I would direct the speaker to the Gibbons High Fernside Virtual Public Workshop on Tuesday, 09/30/2025 from twelve to one p. M. Where the city is studying design concepts to improve safety at the intersection of Gibbons Drive, High Street, and Fernside Boulevard. That would potentially be a good avenue to give feedback. Do we have another speaker?

We have two more in person and one on Zoom. Would you like to do the Zoom?

Sure. Let's do Zoom.

Attendant, last digit, 764.

Hello, can you hear me?

We can.

This is Jim Myers. I've got a request regarding speed bumps. So I didn't know if this is appropriate now or to save it for the speed bump, speed pump policy discussion.

Yes. If it's on the agenda, we so this is going be for non agenda items. And so we have regular agenda item on the draft speed pump policy. So if it is related to that, I would request that you hold your comment for that period. We will take public comment on that item.

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Next speaker please.

Next we have Mitch Ball.

Hi Mitch.

Hi. With construction on the Webster And Posey Tube about to begin, Alameda will likely be facing high traffic congestion in the next few years before the Oakland Alameda access project I work in between these two tunnels and often pass by the congestion that already exists when I bike to and from work. The city has made meaningful progress in enabling people to use other modes of transportation in its recent years from bike lanes to the water taxi, and vehicle miles traveled have been reducing. However, there are still ways that people are being artificially incentivized to use cars, and the city can end these incentives by simply enabling enforcement of a thirty year old California state law. For those of you who don't know, parking cash out law has been on the books since 1992, but often goes unenforced like it is here in Alameda.

The intent of this law is to prevent employers from subsidizing car use more than they subsidize any other modes of transportation. This law requires qualifying companies to offer employees who don't drive to work the ability to cash out their parking space and receive cash or alternative transit subsidies instead, equivalent to the cost of parking space. This could be huge for individuals who can't afford to own cars or families who can't afford to own multiple cars. Additionally, for those who currently drive to work but could use other modes, this could be a great incentive to stop contributing to rush hour congestion and road maintenance costs. These people deserve to be properly compensated for the true economic consequences of their decision.

Alameda just needs to do two things to enforce this law. Firstly, adopt a financial penalty for businesses that do not comply with this state law. The state law explicitly grants cities the powers to do this. Secondly, change zoning to require that new commercial leases have their parking space unbundled and listed as a separate adjustable line item in the lease. This makes calculation of the cost of parking easy and allows businesses to save money by reducing their parking footprint.

Additionally, it also benefits commercial lessors as it allows them to identify land unclaimed by lessees that is primed for infill development in the form of new jobs, homes, and property tax revenues. As you are well aware, we have huge slots of pavement all over Alameda. Much of this goes unimparked and is for all intents and purposes vacant land, but just hasn't been formally recognized as such. Unbundling parking is not a radical policy and is in fact already required of all new residential development in most of California. Alameda can go farther by requiring that all commercial and residential leases in Alameda on development both new and old offer only unbundled parking.

It's not fair that tenants and employees who don't or can't drive are made to pay for parking that they don't use and don't want. It's a distortion of the market that encourages speculation of effectively vacant lands. Unbundling parking and enforcement of parking cash at law reduces car congestion, protects the environment, encourages new development during a housing crisis, doesn't have any high construction costs, and instead actually increases tax revenue and provides financial relief to the city's road maintenance budget as well as Alamedans who need it the most, So it should be implemented here in Alameda. Thank you.

Well timed. Next comment please.

And our last speaker is Marie Kodawoski.

Hi, Marie.

Hi, I'm Marie Kotowski. I'm here representing the 300 block of Santa Clara Avenue, which was a slow street. And this morning we had the traffic accident. A child was hit on the street, the one that we've been expecting ever since construction happened on Central Avenue. Luckily, the kid is okay or not badly damaged.

But we've all been expecting this and the Santa Clara construction is just kind of a nightmare that goes on. And of course it will be over eventually. But for now, I think we asked for more police enforcement. I haven't seen it happen. We have asked for a review of the Greenway policy.

The city has said, no, we're just going to be a regular street again despite the fact that there are schools On the West end is Encinal, on the right end is Payton. And of course, I live right near 4th Street and you have many, many people walking to the marina. So it's a busy place and I think we need to do everything we can. So besides the enforcement, I'd like you to review the Greenway policy. And then the other thing is right now the bike lanes on Central are pretty much done but they're not paved.

I think it would make a huge difference if they paved the bike lane only as far as can, which I think would be to 3rd Street. After that, they're still working on the construction there. But that would help a little bit. What we're seeing basically is those people who sped down central, when it was open after the pandemic going forty, fifty miles an hour, do it on Santa Clara. And the odd thing has been when school was out, things got much quieter.

So I think we can all assume it's the parents who were in a hurry, who were dropping off their kids. And I'd like to urge you to do what you can to try and fix this before somebody is really hurt. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Any additional comments? Seeing no other public comments or non agenda items, we will move to item number five, the consent calendar, item 5A, to approve the draft minutes of the 05/28/2025 Transportation Commission meeting. This is an action, a voteable item. I believe that Commissioner Nachtgal was absent for this.

So you could recuse yourself from this. Please take a moment, review the meeting minutes for the twenty eighth, sorry, May 28 if you would. Any changes, any revisions proposed? Seeing none, would move to approve the draft minutes of the 05/28/2025 Transportation Commission meeting. Do I have

a second for that?

All second. Seconded. And all in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously with one abstention. Let's move to item number six, regular agenda item six a, review and provide input on the draft citywide speed hump policy. This is a discussion item but not a voting item, so a discussion item. And I believe we will have a presentation.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Susie Hofstadter, Senior Transportation Coordinator, and I'll be presenting on the draft speed home policy. Next slide, please. Oh, I can use this. Sorry.

So just as a reminder, today's action is not really an action item. We'll just review and provide input on the draft speed hump policy. So we'll first jump in on background and goals. So just to kind of set the stage with what we're talking about here, what is a speed hump? A speed hump is one of a few types of raised traffic calming devices shown on the left side of the slide.

It differs a little bit from a speed cushion, which we have here in Alameda. A speed cushion has cut outs in it so that the wheel base of a fire truck can more easily go through without slowing down. And a speed table is similar, but it has a flat top that coincides with a cross walk. As a team, over the course of some of the neighborhood greenways planning and also during the development of this policy, between public works and planning, we've selected a speed hump as the typical design that we sort of prefer consistency citywide. Staff have observed and talked with other cities about speed cushions and generally agree that drivers tend to kind of swerve to try to have their wheels hit those gaps and avoid slowing down.

And it's really most appropriate on streets where we expect to see larger numbers of fire trucks needing to access. And of course, a speed table is for a location with a crosswalk and is a little bit higher cost. So a speed hump has in our neighboring cities and we see it as a pretty good typical design to use. So the history of speed humps in Alameda. We currently have very few.

There are some on singleton, but otherwise we see mostly speed cushions in Alameda. And there hasn't been in the past any policy or program for systematic installation. They've been sort of one off for specific reasons. But despite many community requests by email and on C Click Fix, we have not been able to consistently implement speed humps, which we would like to do, because there hasn't been any policy or prioritization framework and not really a fair or clear way to decide where to do them. So for some background on policy, the general plan does include a policy action to install traffic calming on neighborhood streets for safety and livability.

As I mentioned, there hasn't really been a program or mechanism to do so. And then the City of Alameda's active transportation plans and Vision Zero action plans have items in them that relate to neighborhood traffic calming, and I'll talk more about that in a moment. So the objectives of the policy are to improve street safety and reduce vehicle speeds, enhance livability of residential neighborhoods, provide transparent process for speed hump implementation, to prioritize that implementation to ensure equity and effectiveness, to leverage existing programs for implementation, and to maintain effective emergency response times. This relates to the street classifications from the general plan. The policy does address all street classifications, including the citywide circulation types.

But because the speed hump is most appropriate on a neighborhood local street, that's really where we're focusing for the prioritization and that's where we see the most requests. Some corridor projects might include raised traffic calming of some kind on a citywide circulation corridor. But this is much less common. And so our policy will include an appendix which will outline design guidance for when that might be appropriate. But really, the prioritization framework we're talking about today is for neighborhood local streets, which are the light blue lines on this map.

So the timeline has been relatively straightforward. In the spring, we started doing research policy development, including a review of our peer cities neighboring here in the Bay Area and some out of the region. Then this summer, we've been working on the draft policy and prioritization framework. Here tonight, we're here with you for the Transportation Commission feedback. And then in the wintertime, we'll make revisions, add those appendices, and then it will be finalized at the staff level by the city engineer.

So let's dive in on the prioritization framework. There are three location types that we've identified in the draft policy, and I'll go through each of these in a little bit more detail in a moment. Type one, plan priority locations, are priorities because of their designation in adopt the plans. Type two eligible locations are eligible for speed humps but need further prioritization using scoring criteria. And then type three ineligible locations do not qualify for speed humps.

So one at a time, type one plan priority locations are neighborhood greenways, school frontages, high injury corridors, and locations where, if relevant, needed for the fatal crash response program. We don't expect and of course we don't want that to be the case, but we want that to be in the policy in case needed for some reason. High injury corridors is also not so common for neighborhood local streets. Right now, only Pacific Avenue is the only neighborhood local street that's a high injury corridor. But that analysis for the Vision Zero action plan will get refreshed in the future, and so that's there to preserve the possibility of having more of those corridors there if that's warranted.

And I want to mention on the planned priority streets, and I'll go into this more in a little bit, but just because they're planned priorities designated in this way, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would get implemented before the other type. It's more just that they don't need to be scored or prioritized any further once they meet one of these criteria. So type two is the most common type in our city. It's kind of if you haven't been screened out and you haven't been screened in because of the plans, then your location would get scored and ranked. So those would be based on destinations, proximity to destinations, equity need, cut through risk, and unimpeded length.

And I'll talk more about what all of these are in a moment, but that unimpeded length is slightly different from a block length because it's between traffic controls or other types of traffic calming. In the Q and A, I'd be happy to answer more questions about why we don't have speed, volume, and collision history as the primary criteria. But the short version is that collecting speed and volume data is very expensive and can be time consuming. And we didn't want that to be an impediment to implementing speed humps or moving the process forward. And then collision history on neighborhood local streets is quite sporadic, and patterns can be difficult to identify.

And so we want to have these as possible data sources, but not necessarily primary criteria. Type three locations are ineligible. There are actually not too many criteria that we have for ineligibility because we think that most streets in Alameda are kind of similar to each other, but we don't want to be necessarily prioritizing streets with a dead end, very, very short distance between stop controls or other traffic controls, or where the fire department gives us the feedback that it's very critical for their access into the neighborhoods. And it's not listed on the slide, but we also won't be doing any on private streets. So just as a little visual for what we mean when we say unimpeded length, this is essentially distance between traffic controls.

And the reason why we're not calling this block length is kind of demonstrated by that horizontal segment where there is a stop control coming in from the side street. So technically your block is short, but the distance between traffic controls is long. So we see this as an opportunity for drivers to pick up speed. And so the longer that unimpeded length, the sort of higher priority. We would see that as a place for traffic calming.

So this is kind of the slide sized version of the flowchart that's in the policy. Essentially, even though Type three comes third, that's kind of the first step is to do that screening of whether it's on a very short length of unimpeded or on a dead end, and that would get screened out. And then from there, the location would be screened for this policy designations, and then those would sort of go into their own special list. And then if they're not one of those either, then they would be placed on a candidate list for prioritization and scoring. So the scoring system is currently under development.

We wanted to come here for feedback on the criteria overall before we kind of got way too deep on the methodology here. But this is kind of an example of the types of thresholds we will be setting in the next few months as we refine this. We think that there will actually be a need to do kind of a two point system per criterion because the number of ties would be very many if you had only one threshold, so we'll probably end up having a two point system, but felt that that was a little bit over complicated for discussing today, so we'll just kind of assume that there's a single threshold for a sort of theoretical discussion here. And then cut through risk is one that we'd discuss with you all and hear feedback on. We see this as a vehicular desire line to a destination.

So this is kind of like a parallel street to maybe a major corridor that accesses a bridge or a parking area. It's a little bit qualitative, but not all parallel corridors are actually on the desire line because maybe they don't go through or maybe there's a reason why the permeability to the destination is not really there. And so we would expect that it be within a certain distance and that it's also actually a street that takes you there. So looking forward to your feedback on that. And in general, these are meant to be maybe edited in the future and we want the policy to allow us to do that so that if there's too many ties or if it's just not working, we can adjust our methodology.

Happy to go into more detail with you in the Q and A. And then how would this look at implementation? So again, we'd have these two category lists and then we would be evaluating these different locations that score high or that are a plan priority. And then there's kind of this additional layer where they have to be feasible. So there's a few different aspects that would get assessed at that point once we're doing project development. And that would be primarily outlined in our forthcoming design guidance. But this is things like it can't be too close to driveways and drainage inlets and things like that. And sometimes a block just doesn't have a particularly good location for a speed hump because of those factors. So that's kind of that piece. And of course, funding is very limited.

We don't have a specialized program for this. And so part of the goal is to create a prioritization framework so that when that funding is available, we've got some locations to implement. So what are those project opportunities? As I mentioned, we don't have a dedicated program. So right now, this policy is really meant to slot into other programs.

I'll talk more in a moment about the paving project, but there's also dedicated programs like neighborhood greenways or the Safe for Us to School infrastructure. So some of those planned priorities would also have their own projects. And then we have the street safety CIP. So that's a funding source that's really meant for the fatal crash response program and some of the Vision Zero safety projects. It could be a potential funding source for speed humps as well.

And then just a general consideration is that the money that we might spend on speed humps means that that's money that we don't have for maybe crossing enhancements on a larger street that might have higher traffic. So it's all kind of trade offs, we want to be doing more speed humps, and we also want to be doing safety enhancements on high injury corridors. So that's another point for discussion as well. So each year with the paving, what we'd like to see is to have both of these types, Type I planned priority and Type II eligible candidate lists, kind of reviewed against our paving segments and really using available funding to identify how many we think we can reasonably implement in a year. And the goal is really to choose from both lists as makes the most sense for the project.

So, for example, if in a given year there was five neighborhood greenway corridors and none of them had had any planning work done yet, but there were also some very high scoring community request locations, we would probably not just do all of these neighborhood greenways because they might need their own planning and design process anyway. And so we would be looking to balance those plan priorities with the community requests and with the goal of pulling from both lists. So the next steps are to finalize the policy, develop the appendices that include the design guidelines and the prioritization scoring methodology, and then we hope to finalize that this winter so that we can begin developing these location lists next year for future implementation. So it's a little technical, but happy to answer questions you might have.

Technical is great. Any clarifying questions? Again, these are questions just of fact within the presentation. Any clarifying questions? Seeing none, let's move on to public comments specifically on this item. Do we have any public comment requests?

Yes. We have three in person and one on Zoom so far. If you'd like to speak on Zoom, please raise your hand. And I believe I have all the cards in person.

Let's do the in person first.

First, we have Gordon Williams.

Hi, Gordon.

Hey. Thanks. Thanks again. That was a great presentation. I've been an Alameda resident for fifteen years. When I moved in, I remember you could get a t shirt that says like Alameda Drive 25. I remember having to like warn, like, friends or family that weren't familiar with Alameda, hey. When you get here, just so you know, like, don't drive over 25. You'll get a speeding ticket. And that was fifteen years ago.

And I don't know what happened, but that doesn't seem to be the case today. I see I hear it from a lot of neighbors, like this whole given situation, there's a whole another discussion about high street in my neighborhood. It seems like it's all about the speed of cars. And so it seems like this this tool, the the speed humps or I don't know what it's called when there's the space in between cushions. I'm not sure if the cushions fit in this or not, but that seems like a great tool that we can use in addition to better enforcement to slow people down.

So I'm very much in favor of this. This is something with the given situation that we've been suggesting as an alternative. It doesn't seem to get any traction for some reason and maybe it's because we didn't have a policy on it. And so maybe having this policy approved would make that easier. Like the whole concept, I got hit on the Gibbons thing again is like if we cut off the head of the Hydra, right, in mythology, two more heads spread out, right?

If we shut off Gibbons, we're gonna push traffic onto other streets. That's what that traffic study says. People are not gonna slow down. I heard this like ridiculous comment from somebody in the March meeting that was with the city that said like, oh, well, people will push traffic onto other streets, smaller streets. Yeah. But they'll have to slow down because it's more narrow. That's really wishful thinking. I wish that were the case. But having like these speed humps out there could actually slow people down and instead of cutting off the head of the Hydra, the traffic Hydra over on Gibbons, just put in speed humps or even a stop sign I think could go a long way. But I very much support this. I think it's a great idea and I'll yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next speaker please.

Next on Zoom, we have Denise Trepenier.

Hi,

Hi, sorry. Thanks, Commissioners. My name is Denise Trepanier, and I'm the Board President for Bikebuck Alameda. And thanks for the opportunity to speak on this today. It seems like very detail oriented and mundane, but I think, as you all know, this is Alameda, and people will care very, very deeply about this once implementation starts.

So appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. And I also want to thank staff for their work on this policy with hopefully more and more slow street conversions to greenways in the very new future. There's going to be a lot of conversation and feedback about their implementations. And I think having this clear prioritization in place that we've discussed and endorsed as a community will help with that. So I guess we don't often get to have these proactive conversations around stuff we know that's going to be contentious.

So appreciate that. I really have no input on what staff's presented so far and fully endorse their work and hope you will as well. And we're about to get some firsthand experience with this as well. Staff, I think we're getting ready to implement this on PACIFIC in the relatively near future. So we're going to get some direct feedback on how these are working.

I expect that we're doing some monitoring and traffic in the preconditions so we can monitor their effectiveness in meeting our goals around volume and speeds safe street networks. My only apprehension, and it's a slight one, and it's only about the design, not the policy, is that my understanding is that we will not have cut throughs for cyclists as they do as we currently do on Bayview. And it just seems to me that we should be doing all we can to make our low stress backbone as inviting and as comfortable as possible for especially for new mode shift users that we're trying to encourage. But I'm very curious. I'm hoping we'll get that feedback before we move too far forward with Appendix A, which is about the implementation.

So yes, again, just want to thank staff for this work. Again, think it will be a really important conversation to have on what we're doing, where, when and why. Maybe we'll even get some staff to do some PR around this. Like I said, it seems mundane, but I think this is something that you'll be surprised about how much feedback you'll get on this. So thank you for starting the conversation, and I'll yield the rest of my time. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional speakers on Zoom?

We have three more on Zoom and two in person.

Why don't we roll with Zoom for a little while?

Next we have Carl Mijette.

Hi there. Can folks hear me?

We can, Carl.

Hi, everyone. My name is Carl Najet. It's actually my first time being in this meeting. Thank you to those who just told me about it a day or two ago. Thank you, I think the structured framework for how to implement this is fantastic. I'm as a I'm a we live in the Bayport neighborhood. It's a neighborhood with lots of young kids. Kids ride their bikes. We're trying to load our kids in a car in the morning to get going, and it's just really helpful to know that maybe this Coral Sea Street will be safer in some near future. My only question is we're fairly increasingly organized community here. Is there any way for the community to help or make this happen?

So this is definitely not a q and a, just a three minute period where you can give your statement.

Well, that's what happens, I guess, when you do this for the first time.

I said You're doing you're doing great. Keep going.

Next time I'll embarrass myself in person. Then I'll say I'll throw my support. Really happy about this and thank you for the invitation to join.

Thank you for your comment. And please do come again. Next speaker on Zoom, please.

Next we have the caller, last three digits, 764.

Hi, 764.

Hi, this is Jim Myers again. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you and the commend staff and the commission on the draft policy. It sounds really well put together. I wanted to draw your attention to Garden Road on Bay Farm Island. This is a shortcut, a cut through for the draft policy between McCartney and Island Drive.

So it's a short little street that is between, if you know where the Catholic church is on McCartney and Safeway is on Island Drive, it's this little short street in between there. And folks take that street to avoid going by Starbucks in the corner there, and so they reach speeds of fifty, sixty miles an hour sometimes. So coming out of your driveway, kids going to school, it's quite dangerous. So I would request that for the policy that this street be one that you look at. And it seems that might be an eligible category with additional scoring criteria.

So I really appreciate the opportunity to bring it to your attention. And with the policy you have now, hopefully, something will some speed humps will be added to that street for increased safety if it meets the criteria. So I want to thank you for that.

Thank you for your comment. Last speaker on Zoom, I believe.

Have two more.

Two more, excuse me.

Zhao Wang. So they went away. Next we have Karen Bay.

Yes. Do you hear me okay?

We can, Karen. Go ahead. Doctor.

Nancy Yes, thank you. First of all, just wanted to thank you for all the work that you're doing on Central. It's really looking great. The roundabouts are beautiful. So, thank you for that.

One of the concerns that I have as a result of the roundabouts, unfortunately, is that we're finding that people, drivers to avoid the roundabouts are turning right onto 5th Street, which is where I live, to avoid the roundabouts, and they're speeding. 5th Street is almost it feels like it's becoming a highway. And I would love if you would consider speed bumps on 5th Street. I'm talking about 5th Street all the way to Lincoln. It seems like that's where they're going.

I'm not sure where they're headed after Lincoln, but it's just crazy. And of course, we're close to a school, paid in school, and so I don't know if that's part of your how we score in terms of your priorities. But I would love if you would consider 5th Street. It's really becoming it's a whole different experience. All of a sudden, I've lived on this street for a very long time and I can hear it.

This weekend was really, really bad. Anyway, I just wanted to ask you to consider 5th Street as street that you would put the speed bumps. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional speakers on Zoom that have popped up?

Zhao Wang.

Hi. Can you hear me?

We can. Go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Hi. I'm I'm Zhao Wang. And I by the way, I also live in Santa Clara, per the other in person speaker. And I really appreciate the staff's work, and I appreciate

progress

'm

the that's And

very I really appreciate pleased more so when as soon as I thought about the policy as it is drafted, I love that it would cover the two candidates I had in mind immediately. So where the kid was struck on Santa Clara Avenue today, as well as at Poggi Street at REMP where a driver caused a fatality earlier this year. And of course, another fatality, I believe, three years ago. From what I understand and like the CCLIC fix tickets that I've read, there's just overwhelming public support for speed humps in particular. Just regardless of their feelings about other traffic calming devices, even if those work better on paper.

So even the folks who pay bike lanes, they want speed bumps. And I would love for that public desire to actually be captured by location specifically on paper. And I think a good example of that might be something like the CCliq fixed ticket category specifically for request to speed hump. Oakland then also has like an actual application form for request to speed hump. I also appreciate the goal of transparency in this process.

I mean, that would be one way great way to do it. I think Oakland sets another example in publishing a spreadsheet, like a PDF that just gets updated periodically with the current priorities of the various speed hump locations where folks have requested and sent in applications. And I would like to see that in Alameda, and I think it would be a really low overhead for staff to offer that to the public on the website. And I would also ask to carefully consider the funding as far as being bundled with certain other projects just because of our current jeopardy with federal funding for various transportation projects. And so and where I feel that speed humps are meant to be quickly quick to install and quickly quickly and implement.

And finally, as far as the cost of gathering data, San Francisco has a semi official partnership with a Dutch company called TelVom for their slow series program, which produces an automated camera based speed sensor that identifies road users and traffic speeds without transmitting any video. Looking at their published pricing, they're quoting EUR 200 per sensor as a start cost and EUR 15 per month per sensor, which is vastly cheaper than anything else that we could be implementing. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. I believe that's it for Zoom.

One more on Zoom.

We'll keep going. Next one on Zoom please.

Bharat Sin.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Framework seems to be pretty robust and I appreciate that. But one thing that I would like to know more about and would urge the department to consider is looking at alternatives that are there that actually reduce the speed by design rather than intervention. So areas where you could look at narrowing down the streets, we also consider I live on Bay Farm.

It's fairly quiet as such, but the streets are so wide that you do see vehicles speeding by through neighborhood streets. And it's always I scratch my head is why is it so wide out here. So I would like to also see in that in the framework some sort of an understanding of where streets are too wide, what can be done in order to reduce that width, either tactic we're using some tactical urban interventions along with speed bumps, but also speed bumps not being the be all and end all, but there should be an actual plan post this framework to actually narrow down those streets so that they are genuinely safe streets for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Do I dare ask? Are there any more speakers on Zoom?

That is all on Zoom. And next we have Jim Strailo.

And thank you to the robust conversation virtually. Appreciate everyone attending in person. Hi, Jim.

Measures and staff. What are the minimums to be met before implementing such speed bumps? I. E. That you can install devices that temporarily measure the speed, says speed limit is, your speed is so and so. And does it have to exceed 10 miles an hour above or six miles an hour above before? And then you have X number of traffic tickets issued before then considering that speed hump is needed. Instead, there are cities that are authorizing the speed cameras. Almeda should first adopt the speed camera policy and install on such troublesome streets before considering the speed humps. Why?

Your presentation slide stated that we're not gonna collect stats and data. I consider that criminal. That allows for biased because we, the city, says so planning. Last year, saw the city planning speed humps, bumps for Versailles. I asked the city, did you notify the residents near the city's planned location?

No. Did these residents ask for it to be installed in front of their homes? No. Such humps make or increase the noise twenty four hours a day in front of people's houses. So when on your slide it says does enhance livability, I say it does not enhance livability for those that live right where the humps are installed.

That's a misleading statement in your presentation. The misuse of choosing where to install speed humps as retaliatory method can target citizens who argue against the city on certain policies. You should always, and that's enough on that, you should always have a cut through for bicyclists. For fifty years, I've been going to Lincoln Park through Fernside, and there are bumps, humps already there, been there for as long as I've been around, to slow down cars. But I'm on a bicycle, and there's no cars coming from Fernside into the park.

And I, as a bicyclist, have to slow down from eight miles an hour to maybe three miles an hour. There are no vehicles around at all. So there should be cut throughs for bicyclists because where they exist and that there's no traffic at all, it is quite a hassle. It slows down a bicyclist for no reason whatsoever. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shrillo. Next speaker in person, please.

Yes. This is our last in speaker and that I've just been informed there's one more on Zoom. So William B. Morrison.

William.

I had the opportunity to look at everything associated with this proposal, read through everything. And the one thing that I have a particular difficulty with is that everything seems to stop at the city engineer, and he makes the decision. I would think that review by this commission or something like that should be part of the procedure. Or at least, let's say, a method set up for, shall we say, challenge or, you know, a request for redress or reexamination. I don't see that in there and I think it should be something in there.

Again, this goes back to my theme about who's running the city, you know, or who makes the decisions or who provides the data that we work from. The other thing I find myself unbelievably at, you know, in agreement with is Bike Walk Alameda. I kinda feel like these guys are really big on bikes and walking, and they'd rather everybody that have a car die in them. That's their attitude as best I see. They go about limiting roadsides, everything along that line.

But at the same time, speed bumps offer what I call instant summary judgment. You go too fast, you pay for it. And that, I think, makes a real big difference. It's it it solves the difficulty of police enforcement, which unfortunately runs into even more budget difficulties. I I guess the only other thing I can say is there's a a degree of concern over how much everything cost.

And I just got to thinking, and you know, a pothole is kind of like a poor man's speed bump. So if you want to go through on your paving program, you can pick spots where you don't have enough for speed bumps. Let's go ahead and leave the potholes for a while. That's kind of like anarchistic, so I'll stop and not go any further. At the same time, policy really does come into a need, and it's good to see. And my basic thing is I kind of follow anybody else who likes speed cushions as opposed to speed bumps. Thank you.

Thank you for your creative budget solutions. Next speaker on Zoom please.

And our last speaker, they're phoning in. Last number is 271. You'll need to unmute on your end.

Hi, my name is Kelly Becker. I live on Fairview Drive, right at the intersection of Fairview Southwood and Bayo Vista. And I just wanted to make some comments. I've only lived here a couple of years, but my front window faces that intersection. And I can just tell you that the amount of almost misses is really concerning.

And to think that you would be pushing more traffic onto those intersections that are already hard to navigate is unfathomable to me. To take them from a road that was two lanes with parking on both sides, that has a light at an intersection where we have no stop signs, we have no crosswalks, and then people going down Bay Of Vista to make a left on the High or Fairview to make a left on the High. There's no lights there. I keep hearing that people this is all about safety, but yet it seems like we're putting people in harm's way by doing this, and it just doesn't seem to make sense. The other thing I'd like to note is that with the speed humps on Gibbons, if we put them, it's one street versus having to put speed humps on multiple streets when we know something that is going to become a problem.

We're not solving the issue, we're just pushing it to further streets. And with a limited budget, why would we not correct the one street versus all of these other small narrower streets that I don't have children, but I sit here and I see so many families biking, walking to Edison, going the other way to Lincoln. It just I we're putting these kids and families in so much danger by proposing these changes. And Gibbons really is the only intersection I feel comfortable going down there with my dogs. There's a pedestrian crossing, there's a light.

I have a much harder time just going across to my neighbors often through a huge intersection. And so I just would like to say that I'm not in favor of the Gibbons closure. And I really think something like speed humps would be a much more profit, budget friendly idea and would suffice everybody.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional in person or on Zoom comments?

No more on Zoom and no more in house. Okay.

Let's move back to commission discussion. Any further clarification questions that have come up? Who has a question? Who has a comment? Commissioner Johnson.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for that great presentation. I have a question. I used when I worked for the City of Oakland and it was a request for a speed bump, they would go to the neighborhood, they would come up with a survey for all the people who were in favor of it. But the interesting thing was is that where the proposed speed cushion or hump was, if it was in front of someone's house, they had veto power. They could basically say, we don't want this in front of our house. Also, there was a review on the fire department, the traffic engineers. There was this whole process. Now North Oakland was a little different because we had a lot of activists in North Oakland. It's a very unique place.

But I just remember that if you wanted to put a speed hump or a bump in front of someone's home, no matter what the fire department said, no matter what the community said, they could say no. So I know we're in a different time. But I didn't hear or capture in your great presentation. How does the public or how does the community what role does a neighborhood play in yes or no in getting a speed hump or cushion. I apologize if I missed that.

No, you didn't miss that. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to like emphasize the aspect of our policy that's pretty different from the city of Oakland and many other cities where there's that whole petition process. And so I'll get to the part about the no, but also it's important on the yes side as well because we're trying not to have situation where neighbors are compelled to get a certain percentage of their block to sign a petition. This makes it extremely difficult for neighborhoods that are maybe a little less organized or maybe they have a lot of renters or maybe they just don't know each other.

So we don't want to be disadvantaging neighborhoods where there isn't that level of organization. In Oakland, I also lived in a neighborhood where we were all renters and we couldn't access everybody in the building, so it was really hard. But in terms of the no, we actually have been talking quite a bit about what level of appeal or maybe noticing we want to do. And I think we haven't quite landed on that, so if you have feedback that would fantastic. But I think we'll probably have some level of noticing.

And we probably wouldn't create a super formal system, like the parking thing that comes to you all if somebody wants to appeal a red curb. That's something that there isn't much appetite for internally. But we do want to have some way of noticing and for people to give their feedback if they have specific concerns about the location.

Thank you.

Can I

ask a follow-up question to that? Sorry. So I guess what we kind of got just got to was there's going to be a no, but it's not going to be brought back to anybody other than you, the city? I didn't understand where no went exactly. It sounds like it's in development, but I didn't really get a sense of like direct who's saying yes, that's fine that you have a no and we're going let you continue with that no. I don't get that. What's the plan? Or what would be a plan?

You mean in terms of an individual homeowner not wanting it in front of their house? Yeah, I mean, I think right now that's something that we haven't quite finalized yet. And I think, Scott, if you want to also chime in, you can. But right now, I think that we don't want to be necessarily creating a formal way for an individual to have veto power over something happening on their street. That's not how we really do anything else.

And so we wouldn't want a speed hump to be so different from a crosswalk or a stop sign or any other type of infrastructure we think is appropriate. And at the same time, I think if there's a situation where one person was the one doing all of the C click fix requests and then a bunch of neighbors are all kind of like, what is going on? We would probably want to revisit that. But But it's walking a fine line in terms of engineering appropriateness versus community feedback. The community input is one piece of it, and it's also not all of it.

For example, like a school or any of these other metrics where we think there's a safety and livability need, we don't want it to just be like a popularity contest only. So it's a balancing act there. But in summary, no, we don't have a formal plan yet, and we definitely will be adding that piece in. I will also say that there was a comment earlier about the city of Oakland, how they publish, and we do plan to, like once a year, publish the list of requests and sort of some tiers of how they've scored so people can kind of see their relative priority.

Do you have anything else?

Good evening, Commissioners. Scott Wickstrom, City Engineer. Susie covered it really well. Think the only couple of things to add is Mr. Streeler brought up the point that yes, in fact, a speed hump does create noise if the car is going to break and maybe some suspension compression and then acceleration beyond. So it is not an all good situation. There are some drawbacks to speed humps. That being said, when we look at a block, when we would look at a block, try to space out speed bumps at an appropriate kind of spacing. We have a little bit of flexibility of moving it back and forth, but it's not an unlimited amount of flexibility. We're not going to want to put a speed hump 30 feet from an intersection.

We're going want to put up mid block so it'll slow the cars. We're not gonna leave big gaps between them. So we may have some opportunities to move things, but we don't have an unlimited ability to move things within a block. So we are still looking to develop that policy. And as Susie mentioned, your comments and feedback is certainly evaluated. It is appreciated. We don't want every single speed hump to come to this body. I think that would be a lot of work for this body and a lot of work for staff to

do all

the presentation on that But what would be an appropriate amount if something did? We'd love to hear your comments and feedback.

Great. Thank you. Since we're in the opinion section, I actually agree with making sure no single person has veto power over this kind of thing. Mr. Kipp?

Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. I actually want to kind of a follow-up question because it seems like there's these kind of two sets of kind of what's eligible. Like, so there's the priority and then there's what's eligible. Do we have a sense kind of like, I guess, what percentage of the eligible streets are in the plan priority? And then I'm also wondering how, like, implementation works with those two different sets. Right? Because I'm like, for example, if something's in the priority set, can you just not veto it? Or does does not get vetoed? I'm kinda curious, like, how the priority, like, bumps things up. Right? So yeah.

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so the plan priority, so like neighborhood greenways and school frontages, is your question kind of how many of the community requests are also those?

Well, guess the first one would be like, so there's like, we'll say like number of miles of eligible streets in Alameda, right? Like how many miles of that is in the priority set?

I actually don't know that number off the top of my head. I think it's decent amount though. Mean the neighborhood greenway network is pretty extensive and that's kind of the primary place where you get lots of mileage. What we're hoping for is that there are some responses to community requests and construction to community requests moving forward. And so we didn't want to have the policy say only the plan priorities are going to be done first.

That would be extremely expensive and take many years to do. And the goal is actually to implement some speed humps based on requests. So I think that the goal is to have it be about fiftyfifty with each year. We don't even have a dedicated funding source to say how many speed humps are necessarily implemented each year, so that's kind of just conceptual. But as I mentioned during the presentation, I think with the neighborhood greenways, some of the corridors have had planning already and some of them don't.

But I'd say that, yeah, community engagement on the neighborhood greenways, for example, is individual to those corridors, and the treatments recommended are spaced a certain way to achieve the speeds and volumes we want for neighborhood greenways. So as Scott mentioned, speed humps can move around a little bit within the block, but if that's the treatment, that's the recommendation. So, yeah, I do think that the community engagement for neighborhood greenways will kind of stand alone. But, yeah, with school frontages and stuff like that, we want to be calming traffic where kids are walking. So I would say policy is intended to sort of set those as priorities and not give too much ability to kind of throw it out. I

can actually do have one Keep rolling. More question. Alright. This is actually about costs. I'm just kind of curious. I like, you know, you don't have to tell me the actual cause of the speed bump. I'm kind of wondering if it's aligned with, like, the payment plan. Is it like a very marginal cost to add these speed bumps? Is it more expensive than you think? Like, does it feel like there's only a limited number of speed bumps we could put in a city each year? And then I was also wondering about the maintenance cost of speed bumps versus speed cushions, if there's any, like, difference there?

I would say the cost is not marginal. It's in the range of about $10,000 per each just for the construction. And we always are planning our paving program to kind of maximize the amount of segments where we can do our asset management and rehabilitation for our corridors. So in that sense, there's almost no marginal wiggle room in the paving program because there's always a trade off of where we can't pave if we do that. So that's why we've been sort of thinking of it in terms of the paving program as the bucket or container for implementation and then the expectation is that there would be some supplemental funding.

Yeah, I mean a dedicated program would require council action and that doesn't exist right now. But as far as maintenance for the different types of treatments, I don't know that there's a big difference. There might be a little bit difference but Scott.

Sure, I'll be happy to answer a couple questions about cost. So we have a couple different types of speed humps, speed cushions. The speed humps that are built out of asphalt, we got pricing recently and and Susie mentioned about 10,000. I think it was $11,000 per. But then you gotta factor in some signage and some other stuff and some mobilization cost that could factor in.

So I tend to look at close to like about a 15 to 15 to $18,000 per. The rubberized speed cushions that we had installed, so we have some of those on Bayview, and then we also have a few that we recently installed on Orion north of West Midway. Those ones are actually more expensive than the asphalt speed humps. Those are pushing in the order of $25,000 per installation. We also believe that the asphalt speed humps will last longer than the bolted down rubber ones.

At a certain point, the rubber will degrade, but it's really more the bolting to the asphalt and the impact of that over time that we're looking at that. So we'd assume that these things should last the same length as what we assume our pavement life is, twenty years. And when we repave, they would presumably just be ground up and put back in their same locations.

Okay, thank you.

Good questions. Alicia, go ahead.

Thank you. So thank you for the presentation. It really helped to clarify. I do appreciate there being a policy for this and a framework. I think it's important to be mindful about it.

I also appreciated the fact that you've flagged that most of the most would fit into the type two. Because when I was originally reading it and I was looking at type one, I was starting to feel like I had a Venn diagram that was like this. So here's this and there's this and they weren't really coming together except for neighborhood greenways, you know, because neighborhood greenways are an obvious fit. Because otherwise, because it's focusing on the neighborhood streets, the neighborhood local streets, there's thankfully, in a lot of ways, there aren't the Venn diagram doesn't come together as much. However, then when I started to look a bit more at type two and wanted to understand it better, I hit a bit of a wall because you don't have the prioritization to, you know, yet.

And I know you've you flagged that you wanted to get feedback on it on this policy first. However, that made it harder for me to better understand the policy and how it could actually be implemented because that wasn't in existence yet. And then I was concerned because building on cost, if this is going to pull from major projects and most of the major projects we have aren't on neighborhood local streets except for the pavement and we know that pavement doesn't have a lot of money, I kind of hit a wall like, well, okay, are we going to have a policy that can't actually get implemented because there's no funding. So just being mindful of all of that so that we have a policy, we have a framework and we can actually get speed bumps in the places that make sense to have them and have a noticing, you know, notification. I think that's a great idea as well so that folks know once they actually are put into a plan of action and there is funding for them.

I feel like this is several years down the road. But once you actually get there, you can let folks know, hey, this is what's coming down the pike for you. Unless of course you're in a neighborhood greenway and that's story. So those are my thoughts. Know, it's complex. Generally this speaks to it really well. I think it makes sense to have a policy and framework. But there are a few areas that feel a little bit uncertain and some wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

Thank you, Commissioner Nachal. Go

ahead. Thank you. So I have two questions. The first one is, I think as a couple of people have mentioned, speed ups are not necessarily without any downsides. And I think in an ideal world, we would be able to reduce traffic speeds without having to implement speed humps.

And so my first question is, we've talked purely about the policy for these speed humps today. I'd like to understand how this fits into the larger city policy on traffic calming in general? Because obviously there are other ways to reduce speed, other methods, different types of road design and lane widths and all sorts of things. So I'm conscious that perhaps speed humps are relatively inexpensive relative to certain other things that could be done. But I'm interested to know how we're thinking about this specific policy in the sort of larger context of other interventions that the city could do perhaps even within the sort of paving projects that we talked about and how sort of speed humps fit within other possible interventions.

Yeah, thank you for that. So yeah, there are lots of different ways to calm traffic speeds using design. The appendix will reference some especially for our citywide circulation classifications. And a lot of the time, we're doing traffic calming on major corridors using lane narrowing, road diets, curb extensions, that kind of thing. There are also other types of traffic calming that are more appropriate for neighborhood local streets.

Sometimes there's toolboxes that include things like chicanes, which kind of moves the lane over and back. On neighborhood greenways, we're going to be using neighborhood traffic circles and that kind of thing. I think there is a desire to, in the future, develop a more sort of diverse toolbox. One of the reasons why we're focused on speed humps right now is that we've developed a typical engineering design for the neighbor greenways project. We also receive a lot of very specific requests.

And we know from neighboring communities that speed humps are effective. And so we really wanted to take this typical design sheet that we have and be able to say, Okay, yes, now we have a way that we can actually implement these without needing to do more complex sort of treatment selection process and that kind of thing, especially since neighborhood local streets in Alameda are so I mean, especially on the main island where it's a grid, they're very, very similar to each other in width and character. And so there was an interest in having a kind of consistent treatment and just sort of creating a relatively simple prioritization scheme for those. But yeah, there are many other treatments. We do use them on neighborhood greenways.

During paving, we very frequently will do painted bulb outs and other types of crosswalk enhancements, that kind of thing. So there are other treatments. And this is really focused on helping channel that community desire along with the effectiveness to be able to kind of put that into action.

Thank you. That's useful. I appreciate the extra context there. So I do have a second question which is as I read through the supporting documentation that was provided with the policy within the agenda, I saw that we have different street types designations within the city. We have, I forget the names of them, but the streets that connect us to other communities.

There are obviously connector streets which are generally not eligible at the moment for this treatment. And then we have, I think what we call main streets which in Alameda are basically primarily Park Street and Webster which is our main commercial streets. And I thought it was interesting that they are considered arterial streets, which I can see why that is. Those busy streets which handle a lot of traffic. But I think it's and I'm not saying that they should be included within the eligible streets here.

I don't necessarily think that speed humps are the right the right thing to address traffic speeds on those streets. But I do think it's worth noting that in this city, two of our main arterial streets are also our busiest commercial streets where we would assume that pedestrians and people in general will congregate. And I wonder whether at some future date we can consider traffic calming and ways to reduce conflicts, let's say broadly on those streets which are unfortunately, as I say, both arterial and our commercial, main commercial corridors. Of course, whether we can reduce traffic without pushing it onto other streets that may be even less appropriate for that, I don't know. But as I say, I think As I think about this sort of traffic calming in general, it would be interesting to consider the bigger picture of our The irony of having arterial streets that are also our main commercial corridors here.

If I could just gently redirect the response. So specific to the topic at hand, which is speed humps, there's no current plan to implement speed humps on the specific streets that Commissioner Gloin is speaking about, correct?

No, that's not imminent. I will say that the design guidance appendix will include some general guidelines for what types of raised traffic calming might be appropriate on arterial streets or our citywide circulation streets. So that wouldn't rule it out by any means, but it is a little bit more case by case. We have to do much more coordination with bus transit, AC transit, and fire in particular on major corridors. But it can be done, especially like, for example, the Clement Tilden Roundabout will have a raised crosswalk on one leg, kind of entering Blanding Avenue.

And fire department and AC transit can handle a speed table like that, and they're usually amenable to it, especially if there's a compelling safety need. So our guidelines will include some information about what types of treatments are more appropriate on those citywide circulation corridors, but it would definitely be part of a larger corridor planning process to identify what treatments are appropriate along the entire corridor to manage speed and safety. And if one of those treatments were recommended, it would be part of its own design effort within that corridor.

Thank you. That's helpful.

Street Classification Subcommittee. I'm getting nostalgic. Go ahead.

Thanks. Okay. Thank you to staff for this. And let me just start by saying I'll focus my comments on our agenda item of speed humps, but appreciate comments across the city. Look forward to a future agenda item on Fernside in particular, but my comments tonight on the speed hump policy.

I think this morning's driver on cyclist crash on Santa Clara is a really unfortunate example of why this is so important, especially given that that is on a segment of roadway where my understanding is public works used its authority to remove those barricades citing a safety concern. And it's unfortunate that as a side effect, we have traffic like this. That said, ultimately, it's the responsibility of the driver at fault. At the same time, I think tonight's agenda item really gets at the need for the city to have a citywide toolkit. The neighborhood greenways program has been really valuable, but it has it's taken up a lot of oxygen around city hall, a lot of staff's time, a lot of consulting time and budgets.

I trust the results are gonna be great, but I really appreciate that this effort here is zooming back out across the whole city putting together a toolkit. I do want to agree with Commissioner Nachtigal that if this is a policy without a budget, as for better or worse it is at this moment, that is not a good thing. We have to, you know, trust that there's a larger process here. But putting in place a policy so that it can be used with the annual pavings, Maybe so this is a hypothetical, but maybe if something like this had been in place, staff might have had some more options when choosing to remove barricades. So, my I appreciate a lot of comments that have been made tonight.

By going last, I get to just echo them and agree. I do want to kind of ask, like what is the actual timing here? Like are we talking about a policy that can lead to that's going to affect next summer's paving? Or is this a little further out on the horizon and dependent on budget? So Scott, if I could turn that into a question for you.

Well done.

Thank you. Susie did have a timeline up there that we're looking to complete the policy by the end of this year, early into next year. And if we have the policy in place, there's no reason to say we couldn't start implementing It does bring up the question about budget. That's not to say we are completely without budget. We do have a budget category called street safety.

It's primarily for vision zero rapid response after collisions, serious or fatal collisions. But we have been using that to implement other traffic calming and street safety measures throughout the state. Now that's not a very large pot of money and there's a lot of other desires for uses of that money. We could also potentially use a little bit of our paving money, but as was previously mentioned, that truly is an opportunity cost. Our pavement PCI has been declining and money not spent on paving is fewer streets and just further degradation of our paving system. The intention is that we'll have it in place by early next year with the possibility that we will be implementing speed bumps next summer.

Can I ask a follow-up question directly related to that? So we keep talking about how this is taking money away from paving streets because money in money out, speed bumps cost money or speed humps cost money. Is there any evidence that the reduced speed on the streets created by speed humps lengthens the amount of time? It.

Okay. No, I'm sorry. There's no savings you're going to find there. I appreciate the thought.

If I could

add a

little bit about that policy without a budget point, which is a really well made point that we will, you know, take back to the team. But I do want to say this policy gives us an opportunity, even with a limited opportunity, to at least start. Because with limited funding and the number of requests we get, it's been a little paralyzing. And so this gives us a system, even if it's only half a dozen blocks a year, even if it's a little less than that, at least we're able to do some and have a process to get started. And then we can, you know, get that rolling and then be able to have conversations with city council about what kind of program they might want to fund in the future.

Mr. Dabry, keep going,

please.

Yeah, if I could just ask actually both a hypothetical here. Susie spoke a bit to how there are many possible treatments. And I know at one end of the spectrum, neighborhood greenways bespoke design for each corridor, whatever treatment is the best for that point. This end of the spectrum is one treatment, which I think more efficiency is in order. At the same time, if we only have hammers and nails, have in staff's opinion, is it worth considering any other treatments to have two options at hand?

Or does that turn into scope creep that might defeat the efficiency what Lisa speaks to in terms of beginning a process that can use resources at hand?

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I think at the base level, the cushions and humps are kind of two treatments in the case that the fire department asks us to use cushions. And for the other types of treatments, I think that the Neighborhood Greenways program is really an important springboard for other types of traffic calming. So you mentioned kind of the amount of resources and energy and the kind of bespoke design, which has been true up until now. But part of the effort that has happened to date on neighborhood greenways is to create this toolbox and typical design that we plan to be copy pasting over more miles of greenways.

We haven't talked about having a citywide program for traffic circles yet. I don't know that that's really a priority given how many neighborhood greenway miles we want to be doing with that type of treatment. But the paving program on Bay Farm right now is going to be doing some sort of mini roundabout type treatments at some larger skewed intersections and things like that. So I think the city and the paving program are open to using these types of lower cost construction methods for traffic circles and mini roundabouts where it's appropriate. So we haven't quite created a whole toolbox for implementing based on community requests, but the paving program is flexible enough to be able to respond to specific conditions.

And I think that the process of the traffic circles at the neighbor greenways has kind of given us a second tool for when we have an intersection where that might be necessary.

Scott has other things.

Yeah, I want to add on a little bit. Just in the last three years, we've kind of taken a very deliberate pivot with our paving program that we're being much more inclusive of complete streets approaches. You can see that most recently last year when we repaved Central Avenue. We repaved Central Avenue, now we have high visibility crosswalks, we have bike lanes with stripes on both the driver side and on the parking side, we have a lot more green paint added in there, There's a lot more paint and post bulb outs. We're continuing that same effort, the additional level as we go to Bay Farm.

That is an additional cost. That is taking away from miles being paved. But at the end of the day, we think it's a net good for the city that we're improving the safety. So we, with our paving program, have been doing a lot of these other treatments that we talk about. The paint and post, the higher, higher visibility crosswalks, etcetera.

It's just we've stayed away from the speed humps because frankly from my standpoint, unless we had a structure to kind of like start prioritizing ranking and putting these down in certain spots, it gets to be everywhere, everywhere all the time, right? And then there's no way to kind of define when and where these things go down. So I think that prioritization is going to be super helpful for us whether it's a part of our payment program or whether it's money that we capture elsewhere. But we've been very deliberate to look at a lot of other means to kind of incorporate traffic safety, particularly with our paving program. And I think you'll definitely see that with our Phase 43 program. They'll be really starting to go in the next two, three weeks.

You mean Bay Farm paving?

Bay Farm, yeah.

Okay, great. Okay, thank you. I appreciate to hear that staff are considering a lot of these trade offs. It sounds like maybe now's the time to take learnings from in the toolkit from neighborhood greenways citywide, but over time maybe bring some of those treatments along like, you know, a mini neighborhood roundabout that may in the future be possible to cookie cutter as well. Let me just to just because I don't even physically understand some of this. Do these have to be installed while paving repaving the roadway? Or can asphalt just be put in place?

Scott is so excited.

Yeah. Paving. Be happy to jump up. They do not have to be placed on new paving. So what they will do is these things are gonna be 14 foot wide. They combine, they grind down about two inches on either end and then they basically pave in there so it doesn't thin down to nothing. Basically has a nice two inch edge and they can build it on older asphalt. We'd be mindful if the roadway is due to be repaved in a couple of years that we might want to hold off and maybe not do that so we don't put it in, put up $15,000 investment and then take it out two years later and have to repave it. But it can be placed on existing payment. And this is a question I'm going

to ask again on the status report on other projects, but who can do that? Do you actually need a specialized contractor or can public works staff

We need a specialized contractor. Yeah, it's more than we do not have a paving machine in house. We do popover repairs and fixes, but that's about the extent

of it. Okay.

Thanks for that information because, again, to speak to the point of policy is great, then you need budget, then you actually need delivery and securing the contracts at a reasonable cost to do so. So, anyway, those are all the thoughts I wanted to share and thank you again. I again, just to echo the point I keep making, I'm glad we're jumping back up to the citywide level because this is a citywide concern. Thank you, Chair.

Well said. I was hoping we could kind of conclude this item with going back

to

slides sixteen and seventeen in the presentation. So let's do seventeen first, if we could. Type two draft scoring methodology. One more. Thank you. Honestly, just wanted to open this back up. Of our mandate with this item is to give specific feedback. And so this is a great chart. It defines scoring. It talks about specific things to look for.

And I just want to open this back up briefly to the commission. Is there anything here that we would recommend would change or be removed or be added or is missing? Or is there something that is not a column on here that should be added? Because I think that that that's part of our goal here tonight. So anything that doesn't look quite right and you would recommend change.

Mister Kim.

I do have a question specifically about like kind of how cut through risk is defined. I know in the presentation you also mentioned this. I think it was a public comment related to that kind of cut through street on Bay Farm that people speed on. So I'm wondering if it could, I guess to me it should be defined as, I don't know how this technically gets defined, like a street people are gonna avoid like Park Street and go down instead or something like that. I feel like the definition here isn't exactly how I would define it in my head. Right?

I would maybe follow-up with that. I think one of the things we hear on this commission a lot fairly is when we're when the city does something, I'm worried that traffic's gonna get pushed into my neighborhood. Mhmm. And so some way to think about cut through risk is when a new product is implemented that defines certain cut throughs, be it public feedback or be it the city identifies that. And so that could also be a criteria or I guess it kind of folded into the cut through risk. But it's not just attractiveness of like it's 0.5 miles away from something. It is also we change something so we should reevaluate what are new cut through risks that come with that and keep that as part of your scoring criteria. Commissioner Abrams.

This is something I think about when I see people driving a block from my house or a block off of signalized intersection. So, some folks cut the corner and I think to myself, well, cut through traffic is traffic. Traffic is allowed on roadways. The issue is the specific behavior. It's like, are people coming to a complete stop?

Are they, or are they rolling through a stop sign? Are people speeding or not speeding? And so like, I mean, I think there are a lot of meanings we have here, but ultimately, I assume I'm open to others thoughts. I assume this isn't about changing the volume of traffic. This is about encouraging good behavior for drivers who they have a target in mind. They want to use this other route. They're welcome to, but they they need to know that they're on a local neighborhood street. They're not they're not in the tube yet. They're not, you know but yeah. Please. Go ahead. No. No. No. That's my thought and I

Christian Nachtka, please go ahead.

Thanks. I wanna add on this as well because part of the cut through risk is, is it going to be ongoing? Because some of this is, if we know the different plans and projects in the future that could change the cut through risk, then being mindful that

Yeah.

So I have an example. We know that there is a piece of Clement that is still closed. But when it opens, Clement will be the truck route. Until it opens, there is a cut through that happens as folks are on Buena Vista heading toward Grand. If they don't wanna sit in a light, they will go up and around and cut through a neighborhood. However, in the future, when Clement is a through street, that cut through risk will be mitigated because there will be another through street. So it's being mindful that it isn't just cut through risk, it is ongoing cut through risk that won't be changed in the short term.

So your recommendation for column four would be durable cut through risk or something like that. Good. That's smart. Other things on this chart that we would recommend change or be clarified. Now it's a great chart.

If we go back one slide to Slide 16. So Slide 16, again, so we just looked at Type two, what makes them eligible. I think we're pretty familiar now with what the plan priority for type one is. Anything on here that we feel is not appropriate or is insufficiently defined. Sounds like another great chart.

I will get to my last couple of questions real quick. One question that was made by the public was if 5th Street qualifies. I believe as I look at the street classification, it would. But if we could just clarify that. It's not Q and A for public comment, but I thought that was a fair question. So could we clarify that 5th Street would qualify under this criteria?

Yes. It would need to go on to for the scoring. Yes.

Okay.

And I and the other question that came up or the comment that came up several times was about bike access and speed humps. And you may have gotten into this briefly. I got a little distracted, to be perfectly honest. But if you could just help us understand why or why not that's really being considered as part of this. And if there's criteria that would be set up, would there be different kind of speed hump, then also whatever you call it when you had a cut through for a bike? Just help us understand why or why not. That's a good idea.

Yes. Thanks for revisiting that question. We talked about this quite a bit also with City of Oakland staff who've gone back and forth on the cushions versus humps. Those cutouts are really specifically meant for fire access. Some bike riders like it because it creates a gap where they can ride through.

The position of those gaps within the lane and within the roadway is always determined by the fire access and not by the bicycle access. It's just what it's for. And so there isn't necessarily a good way to have that double purpose also position the bike rider well. But that's kind of secondary to the primary concern that we had as a staff team, which is just about the concerns we saw in other communities with the swerving, really. That's kind of the big one.

There's cushions on 35th Avenue in Oakland, and there's some by the Emeryville Marina and a bunch of other locations where staff have really observed that people are very intentionally moving their vehicles so that they can go through without slowing down. And so it creates this kind of double thing where they're not only not slowing down, but they're also doing something erratic. We have talked pretty extensively with City of Oakland staff who have really been working on their standard detail over the years on the profile of the speed hump. And so they've worked on creating this, what they profile, which makes the conform to the roadway much smoother than kind of an older speed hump that's kind of just like asphalt plopped on top. They actually, as Scott mentioned, dig in a few inches into the roadway, lay the asphalt, and then conform it down.

So people have had positive feedback in Oakland on how kind of rideable they are for bicyclists. But yeah, the Pacific Neighborhood Greenway is our opportunity to give feedback on that. So if something is really, really uncomfortable or not working about it, we'll certainly have the conversation. But right now, our priority is making sure that it's safe. And the speed cushions will primarily come in where the fire department asks for it for the neighborhood access. Yeah.

And I'm sure there robust is public process. We'll give some of that data about what you hear about the specific greenway hump. Correct?

Yeah. There will be a major process on neighborhood greenways. Yeah.

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

That's it. All I have. Any other questions? Any other comments? Okay.

With that, we will close out this discussion item and we will, with the commission's permission, take a four minute break. Everyone stretch your legs. Get your brains back and come on back about 08:19, 08:20. Welcome back from our break. We will now do regular agenda item six b to accept the status report on transportation.

This is an action item, a voting item. If I could give gentle advice on this item from historical precedent, This is not necessarily an item that we need to talk about how great a project is. We are looking for progress and any specific questions about progress on these items. So gentle advice. Lisa Foster, please take it away.

Thank you. Good evening. I will give a highlight report on the status report of press of transportation. As you all know, as the transportation commissioner, it is part of your work to monitor the city's progress on our on implementing our adopted plans and policies. That includes our active transportation plan, vision zero action plan, general plan, transportation choices plan.

So the efforts within this are all related to those. I will get us started and then Scott Wickstrom, city engineer, will finish off. Starting with programs, our annual bike festival in April, sorry, chair wide seat, it was great.

Suppose Lisa said, they're all great Lisa, they're all great, keep going.

It was a paid in elementary this year, It was well attended. We had free bike repairs, helmet getaways, bike rodeos, and bike safety classes and more. We also did continue our ongoing education for both children and adults. And as of the end of, August, I think we had reached 160 adults and children this year. And with, parking, we have taken steps toward our goal to launch, increased security, at our ferry terminals with paid parking at Harbor Bay and Seaplane Lagoon ferry terminals.

We did launch the security at Harbor Bay in May and the pay stations, but they weren't activated because we were awaiting a merchant bank transition that I'm glad to say is now complete. So you should be seeing communications pretty soon about upcoming paid parking at Harbor Bay. And then we're looking at Seaplane Lagoon sometime in the winter, maybe early next year. I'm not sure. For public transit, our water shuttle continues to be a really popular service.

Last in August, it served over 1,500 or 15,500 passengers with over 6,000 bicycles. It did have an expanded service that we launched in July and is now operating six days a week. We also secured grant funding to continue the pilot for an additional two years. And we are awaiting a response from a funding application to retain our expanded, schedule during the Oakland Alameda Access Project construction. AC Transit launched its realign service changes on August 10.

The city helped out with getting the word out about that and is continuing to work with them to upgrade all the new bus stop locations, including ADA upgrades and interim landing space on Stargel ahead of the corridor project there. And as you know, this did come with some changes for the city, some reductions, but with, you know, advocacy from the city and and this body and community members, the 51a trunk line is unchanged and continues to be our, biggest service to this to, Alameda residents. Oh, I wanted to say the city's paratransit program is now called Alameda Connect. And our big milestone for this year is that we extended the AC Transit Free Bus Pass program contract for an additional two years. And then this map, you guys have seen it.

It's always a little hard to look at. The lines in blue are the capital projects that are in the planning and design phase. So I'll go through a few highlights of those and then pass to the city engineer for the construction phase projects. So for Fernside, traffic calming, bikeways project, the final design concept was approved by city council in March. And of course, from that came the direction to study the Gibbons High Fernside intersection more and we're working on that right now to come back to you and then the city council again with a lot of public input possibilities in between.

And then Lincoln Marshall Pacific project, city council recently approved a contract to finish the construction designs with existing funding. And so we are moving very quickly forward with that. For neighborhood greenways, we broke ground on the Pacific Avenue neighborhood greenway in April with a few key interventions and then the construction on the first section of Pacific will be this fall. And oh, no, I'm just moving on. Slides are not.

And then Stargill concept, the Stargill Complete Streets project, was approved by city council in April and we're moving forward with design for that. And I also wanted to let you know that the Oakland Alameda Estuary Bridge, we're moving forward on our next step for that planning process which is a waterway study of the Oakland Alameda Estuary. And, we released an RFP and are working on, bringing a contract to City Council for that. And now I'll pass to Scott Wickstrom.

Good evening, commissioners. Pretty pictures. A couple of projects that recently completed. Grand Street Phase 1 was completed about a month ago and almost immediately after we finished, cars were parking in the bike lane. So we are looking to add in some additional striping, some additional bollards to kind of make it a little more clear to vehicles that they need to park kind of out on the road and not in the actual bike lane. But otherwise, that is ready to go. Grand Street Phase 2 is in design, which is the connection from Otis all the way up to Ensignal with the expectation that we're going be going out to construction in 2026. On the right, see Central Avenue. There's been a lot of talk about it. I know there's been a lot of work and effort into it.

Paving starts is scheduled to begin next Tuesday and go through next Friday. Shortly after that, basically perhaps even as early as next week and if not, certainly the following week. The roundabouts at 3rd And 4th will be open to traffic. That's a big milestone, big achievement. They are going to be paving from Sherman all the way to Lincoln Avenue and then they'll follow it up about a week or two later with all the striping details that go on with that.

Such a big thing. Following that, the next step will be the closing. We're gonna physically close Pacific and Maine to allow that roundabout to be done. We looked at that a few times over and because of the configuration of the road and the pre severe jog that exists right now, there wasn't really a way to properly keep that open. We're preparing all the public outreach for that and that'll be going out in the next few days, few weeks. People going to the ferry terminal are going to make a left on Oriskany. We're going to open up that roadway. So if you're coming up Central Avenue and you want to go the ferry, you will go left on Oriskany, which is now closed with the white barriers. That will be opened up to traffic to allow that. And if you're on north of that, you'll be going in through Atlantic.

Some other big projects coming through, Tilden Clement. We had our preconstruction meeting for that last Thursday and they anticipate getting started in October. The first couple phases of that are not gonna look that terribly impressive. There's some environmental soil remediation, some cleanup on the old railroad that needs to be done. And then they're gonna be basically building a temporary roadway to the north of the existing roadway so that we can facilitate continuous two way traffic on Tilden throughout the duration of the construction.

When the construction gets going in earnest, is probably going to be early in the next year, access to Tilden from Fernside will be closed to allow construction of the roundabout. So people will have to do a detour. We're going to try to get most people as much as possible to detour on Encinal, but there will be some that will go through the neighborhoods as well. There's a little discussion about Clemente Cross Alameda Trail Gap west Of Grand Street. That is a developer sponsored, developer funded project.

So our control, if you are, leverage is the fact that we're holding occupancy on their first building until they get that Clement Avenue complete. They anticipate that towards the October this year. So it's coming and it's coming soon. And conveniently, that'll be in time and in advance of the Oakland Alameda Access Project. Bids were opened in, I wanna say, July, and was awarded by the by by, Caltrans, awarded the project.

They are now in discussions with the the select contractors, base cities, and they're working with them to work through schedule. And with our partners Alameda CTC, we hope to be have a chance to review that schedule, understand the impacts to Alameda specifically, and be able to push out communication to residents, businesses that will be affected by that project. At the moment, the best guess, and I'll say that that is actually a guess at this point, is that construction may start in about January. This might have been talked about before this group, but just as a reminder, the project is staged as part of the design package. The first stage will be work within the Webster Tube, really working to build that new pedestrian and bike facility in the Webster Tube along with some concrete work on the North Side in Oakland, a little bit of connections on the South Side as you come out of the tube to connect to 5th and sorry, Stargell And Mariner Square Loop.

That phase or that stage is anticipated to take about six months. And then after that, they'll move into the second phase, which is going be much more impactful, we believe, which is most of the work is actually north of the tunnel in Oakland. But the work there is so intensive. There's a couple of retaining walls to be demolished, reconstructed, some bents to fuel the structures for the aerial freeway have to be removed, that they will basically require a lane closure in the Posey Tube, which we anticipate may last up to a year. Again, when we get the contractor schedule, we'll have a chance to digest that and we'll push that information out when it's available.

And then last big item to talk about here is phase 43, which is paving on Bay Farm Island. If you live out on Bay Farm Island, might have seen some concrete work that's been going on over the last two, three weeks. Starting next week, they will be out there doing crack seal, which is basically larger gaps in the asphalt will be sealed up with a with a plant filler. And then they'll be coming by with the the cape seal and the slurry seals. The paving work will probably trail by a few weeks, but that that work is going to start in earnest really beginning next week with the slurry, which is the most impactful thing occurring in the next two to three weeks. Any questions? Or any other small projects that I might not have covered?

We can get to that discussion. Any clarifying questions from the presentation? I had one quick one because I'm going to be asked by my HOA. Sorry. Anticipated closure at Pacific And Main, that entrance what was that date again?

Mid October.

Don't have

the actual date yet.

Thank you. Any other non HOA clarifying questions? Please, Commissioner Johnson.

Don't know if

it's a clarifying question.

Ask it and I promise I'll stop it if it's not.

I noticed on Central there are, how should we say, individuals parking where they're going to sort of probably do the work. I know it's a common sense thing that they shouldn't be parking. I think people are parking there because they can get away with it. But will there be any sort of reminders, notifications? This would be

a discussion item. So I'm going to move to discussion. Okay, okay. Thank you. Appreciate your patience, everyone. Seeing no other clarifying questions, let's move to public comment. Any public comment on Zoom or in person?

Yes. So far, we have two in house speakers. And if anyone in Zoom would like to speak, please raise your hand. So far none on Zoom. But first we have Mitch Ball.

Hi Mitch. Hi. I

would like to comment on parking curb management on page two of the report. Commissioner Gloyn, I think you'll find this very relevant to your last comments. Last Friday, I decided I'd like to get a burrito from Caulafia Taqueria on Webster Street, so I stopped by there on my bike home from work. Along the way, I got stuck behind not one, not two, not three, but four individual cars parked in the bike lane. Depending on how far in they decided to park, I had to decide between trying to scoop between a narrow gap between car doors that were opening and closing or passing by using the car lane and holding up cars behind me.

This all felt particularly dangerous to me as I currently have a broken toe. My podiatrist recommends biking over walking because it's a more low impact activity. But if I were to be hit by a car or a car door, well that would be a high impact activity. Now the impulsive request here would be to ask for more enforcement and there probably does need to be more enforcement in general. When I parked my bike, noticed plenty of cars parked without any time left on their meters.

However, labor is pretty expensive and prevention is always more efficient than retaliation. So in the name of prevention, let's ask why so many people are illegally parking. I think the answer is pretty clear. There's no available parking spots. Now there are plenty of parking spots lined up and down Webster Street, Park Street, their side streets, but they're always full like they have been since 2014 when the city performed a study to determine if parking meter rates needed to rise to achieve the city's claim goal of 85% parking occupancy.

The conclusion of the study was yes, the city is far from achieving this 85% parking occupancy and parking rates should rise, but instead unfortunately they were kept at the same rates that exist today, a dollar and a dollar and 50¢ an hour on Webster And Park Street, which is far below the rates of comparable neighboring cities. The park commuter rates are quite underpriced, and they're so underpriced that the city is actually losing money every year on its parking budget, special budget two six five, I believe. Clearly, people want to visit small businesses on Park Webster and Park Street, and some are even willing to break the law to do so. Some of them want to stop shortly to pick up food quickly or their kids, and some wanna stay there for hours on the tax payer's dime when they could have easily parked further away or just chosen another mode of transportation. If parking rates were higher and enforced, parking turnover would be able to meet customer demand and the small businesses there would benefit.

The fifteen minute green spots are an improvement, but they still clearly aren't meeting demand. Personally, I would suggest a variable rate scheme like they do in Long Beach, free for the first fifteen minutes with the tap of a single button, and then $2 an hour for any time after that. I don't want to negate the positive things listed under parking curb management, but steps to reduce parking congestion should be on this list to meet the city's vision zero goal. A current parking policy encourages people to break the law and puts people's lives at risk. Parking encourage management is part of Vision Zero, and these policies should be changed so that safe parking is intuitive and not a hassle. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Next public comment, please.

Next we have Jim Strelow.

Hi, Jim.

Good evening,

commissioners and staff. Similar to Central Avenue, where all of a sudden people were surprised that, oh, there's gonna be one way limitations and closures and stuff. There was a one quick little statement made by the city engineer about Tilden saying, oh, we're gonna close it at Fernside. So I would like a little clarification there because the O bus is highly used between Fernside getting up to Fruitvale BART Station. And if the O bus can't use Fernside to get to Chilton Way, it'll add ten minutes to the route and will make a major impact on people who use the O bus.

The main reason why I'm here is that I went shopping at Encinal Hardware at Encinal and Versailles. Didn't find what I wanted and I headed down Versailles. That one block is not a slow street now. But as I saw the sign ahead of me, I was on my way to Home Depot in Oakland and it said slow street, close to through traffic. The only icon there was a pedestrian.

I'm on my bicycle. I thought that the slow streets were for bicycles and pedestrians. And therefore, why isn't there a bicycle on the signage for the slow streets? Because I actually went through along Versailles to go to Home Depot, block by block by block, and I guess against the law or something on my bicycle because it said closed and only had a pedestrian figure there. But I thought that it was supposed to be open for bicycles and pedestrians, but the signage is not that. And the reason why I'm here is that if it's confusing to me, it's gonna be confusing to somebody else. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Any additional public comments?

There are no other speakers.

Okay. With that, let's move into commission questions and discussion. Who has a question or a discussion item? A point of view. Commissioner Johnson, I cut you off and moved into this section. Please restate your question and let's get back

to it. To

put you on the spot.

Sorry,

Brian. I think I was asking about Central. I think where they're going to pave, it has become a de facto parking area because when I walk home, I see it and food deliveries and everything else going on in that lane. And I'm just wondering if there's going to be a reminder or is there any way to sort of remind folks that they shouldn't be doing that?

Yes. I

don't know if you can or you can't, but you know.

Yes, but what we have the contractor do before they would go out to pay is they'll put door hangers on the doors

Oh, okay.

For all the residents. And then the morning that they would pay, they if there are any cars sitting out there, they will often knock on doors, hey, do

you know

whose car this is? And as a last resort, then we would tell a car.

Yeah. Because I know that there's I don't know the percentage, but there are a few apartment buildings over there that you may or may not they may or may

not Yeah. Those are the hardest ones because it's there's a lot of doors to But look that that's it's really notifying them in advance. We'll have new barricades out and then we try to knock on doors if particular single barricades.

Getting your car towed and people won't be happy. It wouldn't be a good idea.

Thank you.

You for your patience, Commissioner Johnson. Additional questions. Mr. Kim.

Just one quick one. The Gene Sweeney cross connector trails like, just wondering the status. I know that it was like delayed for a couple reasons and so just kind of wondering where it is in the process now.

Still delayed. I don't know the details behind it, but I know it has to do with DTSC and some environmental clearance and you know their approvals. So we're we're waiting upon BTSC before we

move So

we're waiting for approvals for the BTSC?

Correct. Yeah. We thought the we thought the approvals would be forthcoming when we went out to bid and it's it's been delayed and extended process, but I, yeah.

Additional comments or questions about the status of these projects? Commissioner Gwynne, please.

This is almost a clarifying question, but on Central, the improvement works there, I'm aware that the slow streets barriers on, I think, Santa Clara were removed currently. Is there a plan to reinstall them? And if so, what's the timeline for that given the other work that's continuing?

There is no plan to reinstall the Slow Street barricades on Santa Clara. So when the whole Slow Street program went in, obviously we had them on Santa Clara back in the start of the pandemic. As we developed the neighborhood greenways and went to council with the transition from slow streets to neighborhood greenways, Santa Clara was not added as a neighborhood greenway. The thought being that one block away in parallel, there's going be a two way cycle track on Central. That's going to provide that protected safer route for and preferred route frankly for bikes.

Thank you. Commissioner Nachtigal.

Thank you. Can you please speak to the Cross Alameda Trail bike crossings at Webster and at Wilma Chan Parkway. I believe the report says that they're complete. However, I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for ongoing monitoring of those because I still anecdotally see people turning right on, right turn on red.

Yes. And I will say that I ride my bike through that intersection twice a day. So I am very familiar with it. What we have done a couple times and has helped out in a couple of different situations is provide more green time for that right arrow, particularly at Wilma Chan. It was about a month and a half ago that we split the westbound phase that we now have a protected left.

And so when there is no protected left turn for westbound Atlantic traffic, the overlapping right turn arrow comes on. So that's increased the total amount of green arrow time. But yes, can be challenging. I think it's a little more challenging. We don't have quite the same opportunity at Webster, but fortunately my observations are the right turning traffic volumes are a little bit there as well.

Yeah. Because I will share that I see that there have been changes. There's additional signage. It's still not evident to all the drivers, and that puts the bicyclists in peril.

I'd also add the police department is leading an effort to put a few pilot, red light automated enforcement cameras in the city, and I believe one of the spots is Webster. So that will be another way to reinforce the fact that people shouldn't turn right on a red arrow.

And if there's it it may not be feasible because if the, you know, if the project is considered complete, however, the the large no right turn light up signal that's at Sherman. And

That's Clement Atlanta Sherman. Yeah. That little intersection there. That is something we may consider as

well. You.

Additional commissioner question.

Well, thank you as always to city staff who punch genuinely punch above their weight like the size of the planning department, the size of the public works department for this city. It's small compared to other Bay Area cities, and you all accomplish so much every year. I I think we just have to say that on repeat up here. I I did want to ask. I was kind of pleasantly surprised to see a midterm solution for the wooden bridge mentioned in the staff report.

And I wonder if staff could speak to we we've heard a lot about the risks to the wooden bridge that's this kind of hidden critical link. Maybe I'm asking a question that is for Rochelle. I can instead just say I think the public's very interested in the future of that. And if there is a solution that keeps that going, keeps East Bay Regional Park engineer from red tagging the thing and shutting down the commutes of a huge number of Lincoln middle schoolers. Like, please do make that happen If it can be done at the expense of East Bay Regional Park District, all the better.

But anyway, I just I'm glad to see maybe there's a midterm solution on the list here.

You. We They are working with are very clear that just regular maintenance falls to them and then replacement of the bridge would not. So, I think it is more the city's goal to keep it going for as long as we can so that we have time to plan, fund, and construct a replacement access point. So we're working with them, but it's it's negotiation.

Okay. Thank you, Lisa. And I'm glad that Lisa also you brought up the red light cameras. I'm glad that's part of the city's toolkit. I was going to ask, I know the state level pilots for speed enforcement is limited to just a handful of cities, but does staff know if there are any defined windows when Alameda could potentially enter that program? Or is that more just an open item for the city's legislative staff to follow?

From my knowledge, it's an open item for the city's legislative agenda to follow-up on. The

only comment that I would add to that is that the no write on red cameras that we are installing also have the capability to function as speed cameras as well at those particular intersections.

Okay, great. Great. Yeah. Because, you know, I think, again, everyone's looking for more tools here. And can I ask if staff know how many APD staff are available or assigned to traffic enforcement at present? The numbers vary between one and zero. And I know this is beyond our scope, but it's just it's part of the questions people ask when they wanna know about the city's approach to transportation.

Yeah. It it is they have had a hard time keeping enough staff or officers, to be able to keep the the motor officer group, staffed. It is just a handful. But I will say this year, the chief of police has prioritized traffic enforcement and have been sending regular patrol, to do that when they can. So they have, I think as of the first maybe half of the year, I don't remember exactly, but you know, it was not too far into the year when they had already exceeded the number of traffic citations that they gave out last year.

Okay. Thank you for that context. And the final couple questions I want to ask are really about project delivery because I know this has come up a couple times of budgeting of how I believe, Scott, you've said in the past five years, construction costs 40%, 50%, something to that effect. There seem to be hints that that's either that's not abating or there's just such a question I'm going to ask is, is the city having problems getting enough qualified firms bidding on projects? You know, you've got like like if you could speak to the Safe Routes to Schools program and just in general, does the city need to think of some strategies to either widen the pool of potential vendors, bring work in house or do like it's just looking like the city is not able to get done what you all want to get done using outside If

you could just give the public some context to that question. The comment, I think, that's being referred to in the report is that there was one project that essentially no qualified realistic bids were received despite city efforts. I just wanted to give that context.

Yes, absolutely. And thank you for the question. So when I did make a comment that construction cost based on this is like the Bay Area construction cost index has gone up about 40% over the last five years. It's a pretty significant increase. Really to go back five years, we are 2019, 2020 pre pandemic, right?

So we're really looking at that pandemic increase. During the pandemic and then coming out of the pandemic, there was a huge influx of a lot of work going on, a lot of things happening, a lot of disruptions, a lot of supply chain issues, variety of things that really drove up costs. And we were just seeing costs really spiral pretty quickly. In the last year, and I will speak to civil projects predominantly, so what we do, roads, concretes, storm drains, etcetera, We have been very fortunate on our larger projects. So our Tilden Clement, our Central Avenue, even the earlier Clement project, our Phase 43 paving, we have had multiple bids.

And from my standpoint, when we see six, seven, eight qualified big name bidders coming to the table, we know we're at least getting some aggressive pricing because they're going in. So that's been reassuring within the last year. Two years ago, we weren't seeing quite as many. It was a much smaller crowd. So it's reassuring to see we have a much larger pool of bidders.

The one project in the staff report is the Safe Routes to School project And that is a much smaller scoped project. And I think we learned a couple of things through that process. So these other projects I was talking about were the $5,000,000 to $14,000,000 construction range. You get a lot of big name contractors. The Safe Routes to School was intended to be a less than $200,000 project.

And there are a couple issues with it. Number one, it had a mixture of both striping and concrete work. So you had to have a general contractor bid on it. You cannot have a specialty contractor who only does striping because they can't do the concrete and you can't have a specialty concrete because they can't do the striping. And then we start getting that lower volume as you get some of the bigger general contractors elected not to bid on it.

There's another feature. It did have some grant money associated with it. And while we love grant money because it extends our dollars, it also adds requirements that contractors and the city have to comply with. And there were some local business requirements that were a requirement of this grant that a couple contractors that we had worked with that we had sent the bid package to elected not to bid on as a result of those requirements. So we hope, we believe that the Safe Routes to School project was more of an anomaly and that what we need and what I think our takeaway is, we're going to go this route with a smaller project is to try to scope it in such a way that a specialty contractor can bid and complete their scope of work, perhaps break it up in that manner or package it together, be a little bigger project that would be more enticing to more general contractors.

Okay. Thank you for that context. I'm glad to hear it's maybe perhaps more the exception rather than the rule.

I sure hope it is.

Could just a final question on that. If kind of looping back to the speed humps we were talking about earlier, could it do any of these treatments maybe lend themselves either to mapping on to current bench contracts you have or other benches you could potentially set up just to give the city kind of, you know, more variety of vendors and the upper hand when it comes to having some established selection here?

Yeah. And I think that's exactly what we would look to do. So the idea that we're going to go out and bid for two or three speed humps is we're not going to get a lot of bids and it won't be very competitive necessarily. I think we'd be much better served. We already haven't planned for our phase two neighborhood greenways next summer that we could, if we do have additional areas we want to do speed humps, we would basically look to expand that contract and have the money, the source of the funds come from potentially a different location, but to basically add on to that contract to have it done.

In a similar way, when you're doing a 4,000,000 or $5,000,000 paving project, it's relatively easy for them to bring in a sub to whether it's four or five, even 10 speed humps. So we'd be looking probably to kind of add the scope onto existing larger contracts as opposed to going out on their own.

Oh, I see. So you already have the year cycle and maybe you throw on a bit of stuff elsewhere in the city. Correct. Okay. Even if that's not the sector. Correct. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you for the detail. And I'm yeah, fingers crossed that the price increases abate. I'm also glad to hear that, you know, city staff are really giving thought here because it's a little bit heartbreaking to know how much work and delays went into these safe routes to school projects. And, you know, I everyone wants to see those happen. So I hope the city can kind of figure out the right way to resource them.

And if I may, this was mentioned at the city council meeting last Tuesdays, but I'll mention it again here. So that Safe Routes to School project, we did reject the singular bid and we basically broke the project up to basically focus on the striping aspects because that's a much greater safety benefit, immediate safety benefit. So we're going to basically look to get those striping improvements done this fall before the end of the year. And then we'll come back later sometime next year and pick up the COMBIE work later on.

You. Thank for your comments.

All finished. Thanks.

Any other additional commissioner comments? Mine are very brief. There's a reference in here to trying to get more money for additional boat service with this impending Oakland Alameda access project which we're all deeply worried about. I wanted to see how that's going, if there's any feedback so far, if there are additional things that are being done by the city perhaps within the scope of this project to help us understand what's done with that? I think there's a reference in there to try to get more funding for more boat service, correct?

Yes. So at Alameda County Transportation Commission's request, we submitted a proposal for them to fund the continuation of the current expanded schedule on the water shuttle during the year and a half. They expect to have lane closures in the tubes for the OAP construction. We haven't heard back yet. I think we're hearing back pretty soon. So we'll be able to report back on that.

And so if that's successful, it would essentially be it would be continuing the current expanded schedule but not an additional on top of that amount of trips? Right. Okay. Just want to clarify that. Great. Thank you. I hope we are successful in that. My last comment, I apologize, it's a little bit of editorializing. Again, the Oakland Access project has much of Western Alameda, quite frankly, a little worried. It is, if I understand the current schedule as communicated today, deeply unfortunate that it appears it will knock out not one but two summers in the West End.

And that's kind of a financial problem, quite frankly. So I would advocate for, if at all possible, for any amount of scheduling that can reduce the impact on summers, which are very financially successful to West Alameda. We should do that as a city. That is all I have. I think this is an incredible amount of work, small and mighty, as someone said over there. And I'm always proud of you guys, quite frankly, because you guys do a lot of really, really good things. With that, I am going to move to accept the status report on transportation. Do I have a second for that? Seconded by commissioner Nachtabal.

I'll second.

All in favor of the motion, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. With that, I'm going to move to regular agenda item six c, Transportation Commission Chair and Vice Chair elections. This where we need to essentially nominate and elect a Chair and Vice Chair. Speaking personally, I'm happy to continue doing it. I'm also happy if someone else would like to do it. That is I'm good either way. Does anyone want to nominate someone?

Happy to nominate you for a chair again

if you'd like

to keep doing it.

I mostly happily accept. I think that probably needs to be seconded. I'm not sure if that's how it

I'll second that.

Okay. I feel weird calling up for a vote for that, but I think I technically have to. So I will call for a vote to reelect Chair Weitzey to the Transportation Commission chair position. To note that we need to elect the Vice Chair. I did speak briefly with Vice Chair Susan Thira who expressed interest. She sent me an e mail. She is happy to do it again. But again, anyone can nominate anyone. So take it away.

I'd be glad to nominate Vice Chair, Suth and Sierra.

I second.

Any additional nominations? Okay. All in favor of the motion to reelect Vice Chair Suthanathira to the position of Vice Chair for the Transportation Commission, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. With that, let's move to commission thank you, by the way. Let's move to commission communications item number seven. Any commission communications specific to transportation issues? Commissioner Johnson.

Well, did have a comment. Don't know if it's transportation. Can I

Give it a shot?

Well, mean, as many of you know, one of my transportation Jedi masters, Chris Peoples passed away, former AC Transit board member. I knew him for a very long time. I'm pretty sure a lot of you know him up here and it was just a sad, sad news to hear that Chris had passed away. I worked with him on numerous campaigns, the BRT. He was just a really good wealth of knowledge for transportation.

His memorial service is coming up. I don't know if you guys I have it written down here somewhere. It's at the Frata Lasagna Club on Friday, September 26. Doors open at eleven. It starts at twelve. That's off of San Pablo Avenue. It's located at 1140 66th Street, Oakland, California. They said you were supposed to RSVP but I'm not sure if they're really, how official they are on that. I just wanted to mention that Chris was a really, he walked the walk. Sad to hear about Chris. Yeah, that was it.

Thank you for that remembrance, Commissioner Johnson. Anything else from commissioners? It is good to be back. I look forward to our meeting next month. With that, I will move to adjourn our meeting. Any second for adjournment? Second. Second by Commissioner McClain.

All in

favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Everyone go home and have a great night. Thank you.