Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Everyone, welcome to the City of Alameda Transportation Commission meeting for Wednesday, December 17. We will begin with roll call. Lisa Foster, take it away.

Commissioner Dara Abrams? Here. Commissioner Kim?

Here.

Commissioner Gloin?

Present.

Chair Weitzey?

Here.

Vice Chair Soothan Thira? Here. Commissioner Johnson?

Present.

And commissioner Nochtegall?

Here. Seeing the presence of a quorum, we will continue. Let's move to agenda changes. Any proposed agenda changes from the commissioners? Seeing none, let's move on to the next item, staff communications. Staff communications from Lisa Foster.

Good evening Chair Weitzey and Transportation Commissioners. I'm Lisa Foster, Transportation Planning Manager. I'll give a few updates. Since our last meeting, the City Council did review one of the items that you all have taken action on, and that is for the Gibbons High Fernside project and the Gibbons Area project. So their motion was to accept the staff recommendations for Gibbons Drive traffic calming phase one, quick build traffic calming and neighborhood improvements.

And phase two collection of data after traffic calming, and direct staff to return to the city council with data and present options for future traffic calming measures which may include making the roundabouts permanent, eliminating the left turn from Gibbons to High Street, or other options based on the data and staff recommendations. Our upcoming transportation commission meetings pending approval of the calendar later on this agenda are January 28 and February 25. Some potential agenda topics for those two meetings are update from AC Transit on our transit signal priority on their transit signal priority project on Park Street. Some planning for Lincoln Ave and Walnut Street and in February our transportation 2025 annual report and 2026 work plan. Our next transportation 101 and clipper cards for seniors event is on January 2.

So starting off the new year. And then in some project updates, the water shuttle began its winter schedule on November 2 with continued service on Tuesdays. I'm glad to say it's still six days, but shorter weekend hours. And then we'll bring back that fully expanded expanded schedule that we were running last summer back in the spring, and we'll be continuing that for nineteen months during the Oakland Alameda Access Project with nearly a million dollars of funding from the Alameda CTC. And then the Oakland Alameda Estuary Bridge, a city council approved a consultant contract to undertake a waterway study to analyze the number of types of boats using the estuary and model how met vessels might navigate a narrower opening and we anticipate completing that in 2027.

And I think Scott Wickstrom, city engineer, might give us some construction updates.

Evening Chair Weitzey, members of the Transportation Commission, Scott Wuxford, City Engineer. Just a few construction updates. If you've been driving around town, you might have seen these yourself. If you haven't, I'm not here for you. Central Avenue, the roundabout at 3rd Street and 4th Street are complete and open. The striping work is largely complete, not 100%, but largely complete. And really the project by that extension is almost done between Sherman Avenue all the way to Lincoln Avenue. If you're savvy eyed, you'll recognize there are some traffic signal improvements still need to be done with the mast arms and the signals at 8th And Central and also at Webster and Central. But those will be forthcoming long lead items when you've got mast arms and stuff like that. So they'll be coming.

The Pacific Main Intersection is closed for that roundabout. We fully closed that to allow them to expedite the construction. Assuming we have a decent weather window, they are looking at early spring for completion and opening up with that section as well. So that's moving along. Our paving project, our annual paving project, which is primarily focused in Bay Farm Island, a couple of things on the East End. We are complete with all of the slurry work and all of the paving. The bike paths are in the process of being repaved. So that's the pathways along Island and also McCartney and also on Veterans Court. Those are in process. Again, we're getting caught up here by weather.

We got a little bit late start this year. Striping will occur as weather permits. And again, that's likely going to be in early January along with a roundabout that ends up at Maitland, McCartney And Melrose. One of the things that we are going to take back and kind of take us a little bit of lesson learned is we came before this body and kind of presented our striping options and changes and modifications. We were going to consider about what level of notification we wanna get from the community.

We did receive a lot of feedback in the last few days about our cat tracking that's on the ground. So we wanna evaluate how to best do that going forward to make sure we get that we have both an expedited or or streamlined process, but we still have that notification and input as appropriate. A subtle little small thing. If you're a cyclist, probably noticed this already, but the Cross Alameda Trail, the section at the former Pennzoil site is now open. And so the Cross Alameda Trail is complete and fully functional between Seaplay and Lagoon all the way to Broadway.

So that's a small but pretty subtle and important big deal. And then lastly, Tilden Clement. They've been doing clearing and grubbing on the north side of the roadway between the roadway and Nob Hill, pulled out the old railroad tracks. Last night, city council approved the formal removal of a bunch of the trees. So those will be coming out in the next couple of weeks along with some concrete work.

You'll start to see impacts. The first impacts that we're going to see is that the southwest inbound lane on Tilden will be cut back from two lanes to one lane before it approaches the intersection. And then as we get into late January or early February, again weather and a few other scheduling things we're working out with the contractor, there will be some more significant impacts where we're going to have to close Blanding for a portion of time and allow Fernside to have to basically come into a T intersection. Then we'll likely have to flip that and close Fernside for a fairly long time, basically the duration of the project and have Blanding open during that timeframe. When we get close to those bigger closures, there will be a fair amount of outreach on our website and to Knob Hill, the shopping center and the local residents as well.

Available for any questions.

I'm going get my brain together. Thanks for that information. That's really great. I noticed on Central between Webster and the first roundabout, we have the bike lane and it hasn't been striped yet. And there's a lot of delivery trucks. There's a lot of people that are parking in those that space because I walk by it every day. One of my questions is are we going to strike the curb red as an indicator that it's no parking because people are just parking in those areas like it's

Yeah. We'll take lessons learned from both Clement and most recently Grand Street. And for Clement in particular because that is my bike route and I was on it most every day. There was a lot of vehicles that parked in that area until it was paved and striped. And the parking stalls that are proposed outside of that were striped as well. So it's until we get the full striping in there, a lot of, I'll say drivers might not be fully aware. As soon as we get the striping in, we'll basically start monitoring it. We can talk to our parking enforcement. Start doing targeted enforcement on that. We're also putting delineators at the start and

the finish. We

did on Grand. This is a dilemma that we sometimes have is the wider the bike lane which is, say, more pleasant for the bikes, it's easier for a car to drive on in there. So you'll see them on portions of Clement where we have the three rather thin kind of delineators mid lane. We have those in on Grand as well along with some bumper stops as well. That seemed to work. So we're well aware of that. We need to get our striping and then we'll start pushing that enforcement and pushing if we need to do additional work we will.

Thank you. Thank

for the update. And my question is on the payment in the Bay Farm area. And you mentioned about community outreach and community feedback. Can you expand on that?

We've got a fair number of emails that are concerned about traffic capacity, concerned about the loss of going from two lanes to one lane on McCartney and also some of the lost turn restrictions. There was a double right turn from Island onto McCartney. Now there's going to be a single right. There's concern about capacities and delay. There's also some concern about the we removed the left turn pockets at Ogdenbaugh and McCartney.

There's concern about the impacts that has when people come off of the, when the ferry comes back in the afternoon and a big line of cars comes through and that potential impact on Fire Station four which is right there at that intersection as well. So we're looking at those things. We may have some opportunities to make some adjustments. But I think from the other thing that we heard through a lot of this communication was the notification and their ability at least to be heard or to have some kind of awareness and input was kind of a big component.

Now what is the timing for, I mean you mentioned of course weather permitting for the markings to be done. Because right now it's a temporary marking and that's fading away. And I see many near misses because people confused with whether it's one lane or some people go as two lane and so.

Yes. For striping to adhere to have a good quality product that you want the asphalt to be dry for twenty four hours prior to. And we just finished up some of the last bit of paving this last weekend or this last week. And you look at the weather forecast, it's basically ten days of showers, right? So that doesn't bode well.

So we might be into early January. That's a, you know, is one of the issues that we'll talk about in terms of our end from a notification standpoint. We to add in more outreach, we push later into our construction season. What we're planning on doing is to start, if you're planning two years ahead, is not what we have traditionally done with our paving plan, but that's I think what we need to do in order to get ourselves a little bit further ahead. Ideally we're paving in mid summer, striping comes shortly thereafter. Yes, it was dry for a bit. We caught up on all the paving. Now we're kind of in a wet window and we're kind of forced to wait.

Okay. Right. Thank you.

Thank you. With conclusion of staff communications, we're gonna move to the next agenda item, non agenda public comment. Again, this is for public comment on transportation related topics, not specifically on this agenda. Do we have any speakers?

If you'd like to speak online, please raise your hand for the non agenda public comment. We have one online and we have one in person.

Let's do in person with Jim Strelow.

Good evening commissioners. The other day I went to Alameda Point on the North End, stayed there in the afternoon then left on the South End, Main Street to Central. And I'm talking about Central, I'm talking about at nighttime, that even though I'm very familiar with the roundabouts and stuff, that's the first time I had to drive it at nighttime. And as I was going westbound along Central Avenue, that I noticed, where's the signs telling me that there's a roundabout ahead because all I can see is darkness. And then when I'm down looking at the street, that I see the reflector eyes, those little square things that are for the pedestrian crosswalks.

But when you see those that you're not sure if those are for the pedestrian crosswalks or whether or not it's a detour that it's gonna be a lane shift type of thing. So I entered in the first westernmost cross roundabout, saying what the heck is going on and stuff. And then see, it's just normal roundabout. Nobody is there and stuff and I could enter in safely. But again, the lighting is so poor in that area.

It's not well lit and not seeing signage that there's roundabouts. I wonder about other people that are not familiar with the area, how easily that they can decipher what's there on the street because it's heck. And then I get to the next roundabout. Now the guy's coming off of 3rd Street going over to Bayina Bay and he's going at 25 miles an hour because he's local and he knows the area. So he goes zooming right through it.

But again, I'm not seeing signage. I'm not seeing it well lit. And seeing the reflectorized things again on the ground that realize it's the pedestrian walkway areas. But at night, it's completely different. And I'm just wondering how many other intersections are like this or gonna be like that because lighting is important for safety. And if you're making safety improvements, that wasn't safe. I felt very uncomfortable and strange and not in my normal comfort zone encountering those two at nighttime. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. We have any additional comments online?

Next we have Jay Garfinkel.

Jay, we heard you for one second. Come on back.

My concern are you hearing me now?

Very quietly, but yes.

Talk louder. My concern is with the specifics of the current projects Are you hearing me?

We are.

Okay. But the system used the planning process. You know, planners plan. That's what they do. That's what they're hired to do. And, generally, they do a good job. Unfortunately, after they are satisfied that their plan is, you useful, they then, strive to have it, approved by, the appropriate authorities. They defend their plan as if they were prosecutors intent on winning their case or having their plan adopted. They don't involve the, residents of the area. They don't look at the consequences to the residents.

They simply move ahead. And when they do, contact the residents, it's usually after the plan is so complete that they're just waiting to get their first rubber stamp from the relevant commission, be it the transportation or planning or whoever, and then their second stamp from the council. They don't really involve the residents. When they do have a meeting, they don't accept questions from the floor. They will talk to you individually, but they don't want anyone else to hear the points that individuals are are making.

They tend to justify their plan by presenting surveys. I have never seen a statistically statistically significant survey from any of the planning projects. There can be no statistical significance to them simply by the way they're constructed. You know, individual residents are really at loss here. We're not organized.

So when something is gonna happen to our neighborhood, we can't really do much about it, especially when we're, going against the city's most organized special interest group, Bike Walk Alameda. Since the, the last few years, everything is being done to, satisfy them. And the individual, motorists were being thrown under the city's bus. I think it's high time that we took a more positive and constructive approach to planning and involve the citizens at a point that we can actually contribute to what's being done. The recent, Gibbons, fiasco came about only because the planners were exceeding to the wishes of Bike Walk Alameda with a two directional bike path.

Thank you.

Thank you

for your comment. Any additional comments online?

There are no other speakers.

And none other in person as well. Okay. Seeing no other comments for non agenda public comment, we will next move to the consent calendar item five a approve the draft minutes of the 10/22/2025 Transportation Commission meeting. I will recuse myself from voting for this.

I move the approval of the minutes.

Second.

Third.

You take it all in favor of. So motion has been made for approval. It has been seconded. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any against? And I will abstain. Abstaining as Thank you. Okay. Let's move on to item six. Six a, regular agenda items. Receive an update on neighborhood greenway implementation and provide input on the Pacific Avenue pilot. This is a discussion item, not a voting item. Let's go to our first presentation with Rochelle Wheeler.

Hi. Good evening Chair Weitzey and commissioners. I'm happy to be here tonight. I'm Rochelle Wheeler, senior transportation coordinator. I'll be presenting this item tonight and I am joined also by our esteemed project manager from Tool Design, Alison Mills, who's the project manager on the consultant side.

So as Chair Weitzey mentioned, this is a discussion, not an action item. I'm here to give you an update on the Neighborhood Greenways implementation. The last time I came before you was over a year ago in August 2024 and a lot has transpired and I'll review that. And then also, one of the things we've done is implemented and constructed a pilot section of Greenway along Pacific Avenue, and we've collected some input on that and would like to hear your input as well tonight. But to step back for a second and just again ground us in the larger context for these greenways.

The neighborhood greenways come out of our active transportation plan which was adopted by the council in 2022. And that plan has a broad vision to make Alameda a city where people of all ages, abilities, income levels and backgrounds can safely, conveniently, comfortably walk, bike and roll to their many destinations. And the greenways are really a key part of that. And again as a reminder, what are neighborhood greenways? They are bicycle and pedestrian priority streets that are designed to allow bicyclists and motorists to safely share the road together.

They're on low volume, low speed local streets. And there also is a goal to make the crossings of the larger streets easier and safer for people walking and biking. We have some specific goals or targets around speeds and volumes also for these streets, which we are monitoring. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. So again, why are we using this new tool for Alameda, this new facility type called Neighborhood Greenway?

A really important reason is that the Neighborhood Greenways help us to create a connected low stress bikeway network, again allowing people of all ages and abilities to connect to their destinations: schools, shopping, transit, recreation. The neighborhood greenways are a piece of that connectivity fabric, I guess you could say, along with separated bike lanes and off street paths that all together they create this network which is essential for meeting our climate safety and transportation goals. Also can help encourage more people at being low stress facilities, more people to bike. We do know from our the survey we did with the active transportation plan in 2022, which was a statistically significant survey, that 46% of Alameda residents are interested in biking but concerned and they really need to be desire to bike if they can be either further away from cars or there are fewer cars around them. So yeah, these neighborhood greenways which are shown in it's a little hard to see the colors here, but basically the dashed lines are the neighborhood greenways on this map.

You can see how they really fill in a connected network. There's the darker pink color, which is our separated bikeways that are either constructed or very close to being constructed, like Central Avenue. And then our pathways, which are in green. And the neighborhood greenways are a key part of kind of connecting all of this together. Our active transportation plan includes nine neighborhood greenway streets, which total 10 miles that are part of the 2,030 Low Stress Backbone Network with the goal of implementing those by 2030.

So I'm going to talk now about implementation and where we're at in our implementation strategy for the Neighborhood Greenways which was first presented to you last year in August, and we've made a lot of progress. So we separated this into three phases. Sorry that this is I did make it darker, but it's still a little bit faint to read. But we have three phases. And the first phase we're starting with is implementing the slow street segments of Pacific Avenue, San Jose, and Versailles.

And those were chosen because there was a desire to accelerate the removal of the slow streets and so that's partly why we're focusing on those segments. And the goal here is to have those completed by next year. And so to that point, we have done a lot. In the last year we collected existing conditions data that's on speed and volumes on all of these streets and also on some nearby parallel streets. Just in summary, this is in staff report, but we did find that generally these street segments are meeting our volume targets, but they're not meeting our speed targets.

The speeds are generally, which is 20 miles per hour on neighborhood greenways, and the speeds right now are the ninety fifth percentile, which means 95% of the cars or 95% are going well, let's see, 95% are going at or below 25 to 30 miles per hour. There are few that are going over that. But that's kind of the range that we're seeing it in, so we'd like that ninety fifth percentile to be at 20 miles per hour. We also developed draft concept plans for all three of these street segments. And in developing those and in developing the designs, we've been collaborating with our fire department and others including ACI which collects the trash.

So we're very much integrating their needs into our plans. We've engaged with the community through three pop ups, one for each of these street pop up events, one for each of these streets, one community workshop, some online surveys, and an interactive web map to collect input on the existing conditions. We secured funding that the council allocated to fully implement this phase one. And as you know, we constructed the Pacific Avenue pilot. Still underway in this phase is to refine the traffic calming treatment designs based on that experience with the pilot, which is in part why we're here tonight to get input on that.

And then to finalize those plans, bid the project, and construct these remaining Phase one streets by the fall of next year. Phase two was projected to be completed between 2026 and 2030, but we have actually been doing some work on this phase two. And this is to implement those remaining six neighborhood greenways that are part of that 2,030 low stress backbone network. One of the things we did in this last year is applied for and were awarded a $2,000,000 grant for making improvements of four of our major intersection crossings. I'll mention those in a minute but they're listed on the screen.

And then also the City Council did with their budget this year allocate 1,200,000.0 for one mile of phase two neighborhood greenways. There are another after that would be another about five miles to implement. But that gets us started on some of the phase two. So what we'll be doing from 2026 to 2030 and starting next year is doing outreach design and construction, starting with the outreach, at least, and the design on the Pacific Avenue Wilma Chan Intersection. That's one of those that was funded by this grant.

Right now, we are tentatively thinking that would be a pedestrian hybrid beacon there. We will be doing some community input and we're doing a lot of data collection on that to start. The other major intersection crossings will be implemented, one of them with the phase one greenway, which is to put the improvements at Pacific and in Sherman will be done in concrete there, not in quick build, but we're able to do that with quick build bulb outs and also put in an RFB. And then the other two intersections at 9th And Lincoln and at 3rd And Pacific are part of the Lincoln Complete Streets project and would be implemented with that project. We will also next year be deciding on what that additional one mile segment of phase two would be.

We'll be looking at particularly thinking about where we have some gaps that we would like to focus on and then after that designing and constructing that. And then also we'll be developing the implementation approach for these remaining Phase II streets and importantly securing funding so that we can implement this. Phase three is for the implement the remaining greenways in the active transportation plan. These are a lot of short little kind of connector segments and those are anticipated to be implemented after 2030 and we'll be developing a more specific approach to that when we update the active transportation plan, which is anticipated for 2027. So with that overview, I'm going to go into the Pacific Avenue pilot neighborhood greenway.

This pilot, as you know, was constructed between Lafayette Street and Oak Street. And we did this section in part to kind of match the funding we had and also to be able to try implementing the different newer traffic calming devices in one segment so that we could see how those work both from a staff perspective and community perspective. That was completed this year over two phases. We did the stop sign installation in April, and then in November we completed the rest of this, which includes everything listed on the screen: the quick build neighborhood traffic circle at Chestnut, some painted curb extensions with bollards at four intersections, six asphalt speed humps between Chestnut and Oak, new four way stops, as I mentioned, at Willow and Walnut. Hardened center lines at two intersections.

Painted sharrows, daylighting at all the intersections and crosswalk markings, including some high visibility crosswalk markings at intersections. So we are now, as I said, collecting community input and your input tonight and doing some internal department review and input before we finalize the designs of this traffic calming devices and then take that forward into the designs for the remainder of the phase one implementation. So we're really focusing on three new traffic calming features that we have tried out on this neighborhood greenway. A lot of the other things have been implemented before, like painted bulb outs with bollards and sheroes. We've seen those before around the city.

We've been using those for many years or multiple years at least. Then the three features that are newer that we particularly wanted feedback on from the community and would like feedback tonight are the neighborhood traffic circle, which is at Chestnut the asphalt speed humps which is a design that we have some plastic speed humps in Alameda. We do have some older asphalt speed humps but this particular design is new. It's actually the same design that the City of Oakland uses and so we have installed that here. And then we also have the hardened centerline which in this photo is on kind of the far left.

It's the centerline of the street. There's kind of a bump, a black and yellow bump in the middle along that centerline. And a lot of people, I'll just say now, have been confused about the purpose of this. And that's something we heard in the survey. And the purpose is really to it is something that is a proven vision zero or traffic calming device.

And it's to slow turning traffic, particularly left turning traffic, both off of the neighborhood greenway and onto the neighborhood greenway. So people can't kind of cut the corners when they're making their turn. So it requires a slower, more thoughtful turn. So we did conduct a community survey, and the results of that were posted to this agenda item today and they're also on our website, the results of this survey. The survey, we had two twenty one responses during our survey period from December 4 to the fourteenth And we just asked a few questions, the same questions that we're focusing on with you guys tonight.

One of the first things we just asked to understand who we were hearing from is how respondents had experienced the street. We allowed people to choose more than one mode, so whether they were driving, biking, or walking or scootering. And you can kind of see that it's about a third, a third, a third of how people have experienced the street. Again, this is not individually people could have experienced the street by biking, walking, and driving. But when we look at kind of those experience, how they've approached the street, think it's useful to see that we've heard from a wide variety of users.

So overall, in all the responses, we asked how the Greenway is working now. And again, people were able to select multiple choices here. You can see the highest percentages around people saying they liked itfifty 2%, it's working well. People are feeling safer, been traveling along the street and at the intersections. Obviously it's not at 100% for all people, but those were the highest responses we got overall.

And then we broke that down by mode to see how people are experiencing the street who are walking, biking, scootering versus people who are only driving along the street or have only driven on the street. So again for this first column, people who experience the street, they could be biking, walking, and driving, say, but we looked at people who selected at least one of those non driving modes. And of those 153 respondents, quite a few like it. A higher percentage here, 62% like the neighborhood greenway, say it's working well. 57% say it feels safer.

Generally, they do feel safer. They like the changes and they have fewer issues with the overall design. 20% had some issues with the overall design. When looking at people who experience the street only by driving, that was 63 respondents, you can see generally they have more issues with the design. 43% had issues with the design.

They feel less safe compared to those people who are biking, walking, and scootering. 30% say they feel less safe on the street, less safe at the intersections, and they're less likely to kind of like these changes overall. 32% of them thought it was working well. So that's a summary of the individual kind of checkbox responses. And there were a lot of freeform and you probably saw this.

If you glance, there's many pages of comments. We tried to kind of summarize. Heard a lot of feedback overall and tried to just summarize at the high level kind of what we were hearing the most about through those free form comments. We heard a lot about the traffic circle, the neighborhood traffic circle, which is not surprising because this is a new device in Alameda. Majority, or many, many people I would say, said they liked it, that they're effective, they're slowing traffic, would like, people would like to see more.

So I'd say that was quite a high number. We didn't count to every, you know, categorize each of them, that was a lot. There were quite a few comments from people saying that actually it wasn't slowing the traffic enough, that some modifications needed to be made to slow people even more through this intersection. There were some people who felt like drivers are confused about how to navigate the traffic circle. They're not yielding. They're going the wrong way. In some ways this is not surprising to me. We've been hearing that about the roundabout. I think people in Alameda are getting used to circles in general in the city. So hopefully that will improve over time.

There were people who were wanting the traffic circle to be more visible, particularly with something more vertical elements in the center of the circle, maybe some better signage approaching it. Some folks felt like the lanes are too narrow. They're forcing drivers towards the crosswalk. And a few people felt like a four way stop would be better here than an all way yield. But again, overall I would say that there was a lot of support for the traffic circle. Same for the speed humps. A lot of people like them and feel like they're great. We should install more of them. They're slowing the traffic. There were some comments from folks that they're not quite tall enough or they're not slowing the traffic enough.

They're not kind of abrupt enough. They're not harsh enough. They're a little too easy to go over at a high speed. There maybe should be more of them or they be more frequent within one block or just more of them in general. A few people were suggesting that we add cutouts through these traffic circles for bicyclists to not have to go over them.

The heart and centerline, again, I mentioned, some confusion. We didn't receive quite as many comments on this device, but some confusion about why we're using it. A couple of safety concerns that bicyclists might hit them the wrong way and that would be dangerous, although nobody had actually experienced that. And some people like them and would like more of them. Finally, overall, other comments that we received.

Again, overall, many people like the changes, said they love it, they want more of it, they're glad we're finally implementing this. Yeah, and just asked for more of these kind of traffic calming devices around the city in general. There were some comments about considering adding more bollards within these painted bulb outs. There were a few comments which I thought were interesting about the slow streets, both people feeling like the slow streets, they kind of wish they were still there because they did more to slow the traffic and reduce the traffic. Also we heard from some people who are very glad they were gone, the barricades.

And then there were a couple people who felt like overall this was not a good use of city resources. So we are requesting your feedback tonight. Again, these are some questionsbasically the same questions we asked in the survey but just in different language. Kind of how do you feel like this is working as an overall corridor, particularly for people walking and biking? Is it helping people feel safer and more comfortable? And then any specific feedback on these individual traffic calming treatments. And with that, I can take questions and look forward to your feedback. Thank you.

Thank you, Rochelle. So we'll start with clarifying questions. These are just questions of fact in the presentation, not ways to improve the project, not opinions about the project, just questions of fact in the presentation. Do any commissioners have clarifying questions? Commissioner Gwine.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. That was all 99.9% very clear. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was you mentioned the speed of the traffic being too fast, let's say. Is that since these changes were made or was that prior?

That was prior. That was our pre existing condition.

Yeah. Thank you. And we don't, I'm guessing have an update on that since. Okay. Thank you.

That was an on point clarifying question. Thank you, commissioner Gloyn. Commissioner Kim.

And thanks for the presentation. I was looking through the materials and for the Pacific Avenue draft concept, it shows speed cushions while the other two showed speed humps. I just wanted to clarify and you've only showed speed humps in the presentation. So on Pacific, are they speed humps or speed cushions?

So since that design was, that draft concept was developed, we further iterated on the design and decided on using speed humps, the full length of the street rather than cushions. So speed humps is what is on the streets and what we are planning to move forward with at this point.

Okay, great. Thank you. Also on point. Any additional clarifying questions? Let's go three for three. Commissioner Darrell Abrams.

Excuse me. Sorry. Thank you for the presentation Rochelle. I just wanted to clarify if you could point out where the locations for that 2,030 plus tranche you were hinting at?

What those locations are?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wasn't clear if

Yeah.

I'm not sure I can rattle those off my head, but there are a lot of, I would say, one, two, three block segments that are really kind of connecting between separated bike lanes or connections just to make a continuous network. So I'd have to look at a map. And I don't have that map in this presentation. Yeah, sorry.

Any additional clarifying questions? Okay. Let's move on to public comments on this agenda item. Are there any public comments?

If you wish to speak online on item six a, please raise your hand. And so far we have two in person and two online.

Let's go with online first, please.

First, we have Cindy Johnson.

Commissioners and staff. I bike down Pacific pretty frequently and really appreciate the changes. I still see people driving faster than I'm comfortable with between speed humps and around the traffic circle, but with some tweaks, I feel like we're on the right track. I'm eager to see the feedback you've been getting incorporated into the design and more of these rolling out throughout our city. Thank you.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to share a point that was made in a letter from Bike East Bay on an item that was before council last night. The item was referral about a 15 mile per hour speed limit for bikes on trails and paths. Bikey Space supported the limit for the multiuse trails where bicyclists and pedestrians mix but did not support it for facilities like the Cross Alameda Trail, which have separately striped and otherwise delineated bicycle lanes exclusively for bicycles. How this relates to neighborhood greenways is an appointment made at the end of the letter. I'll read it verbatim because I don't think I can say it better.

We also encourage Alameda to investigate 15 miles per hour posted speed limits on neighborhood streets, not only trails with a priority for shared lane cyclistdriver bike routes. Cities in California are now allowed to lower posted speed limits to 15 miles per hour on any local road, I. E. Non arterial material or collector, without the need for a speed survey or any other justification. Not many cities have taken advantage of this opportunity yet, but UC Berkeley's SafeTrek has confirmed that it is available.

If 15 miles per hour is a good idea for trails of people on foot and on bike share, then it certainly follows that it's also a good idea on neighborhood streets around town that people in cars and on bikes share, there's where no dedicated bike infrastructure. These shared lane bikecar streets are associated with much more significant traffic safety issues compared to multiuse trails. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Next we have Denise

Hi, thanks Commissioner. My name is Denise Trepene and I'm the Board President for BikeWalk Alameda. I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight about the neighborhood greenways program. As you know, greenways are critical to our low stress network, and I want to thank you and staff for your continued support for this program. I know you've been hearing a lot of opposition to the neighborhood greenways from community members that are concerned that they'll see increased traffic or diversions and parking losses on their roads that they live on as we continue to implement this critical safety feature.

But I'd like to highlight a couple of points about those comments. First, you and council have affirmed over and over again as part of every document driving this design that our priorities are safety and climate change. Even though our priorities are not parking and driving convenience, it seems like at least 90% of the discussion, both in the community and from the dais, is about parking loss and driving convenience. So I I implore you and city council to remember why we're making these changes and why we're getting our low stress and why getting our low stress backbone built as soon as possible is critical if we have any chance of meeting our Vision Zero and climate goals. It would be great if we could stop talking about traffic diversion concerns or parking loss and focus on the focus the discussion on what we've agreed are our priorities.

While it's important to recognize that there are downsides to these implementations for drivers, and I think staff's been very upfront about those, those downsides do not outweigh in any way, shape, or form the benefits that we've all said we need to prioritize, specifically road safety and climate change. And lastly, I just wanna take this opportunity to thank this commission and express our our deep gratitude for the work that staff is doing on this. This has not been easy. We know that there are some community members that are deliberately spreading misinformation, making personal attacks, and just honestly flat out lying in their attempts to derail these improvements. And we want you to know that there's a strong large majority of folks who support and applaud your work and are extremely grateful for your staying the course and achieving our communities agreed upon objectives.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional online comments?

There are no more online speakers.

Let's move to in person, please.

Next we have Mitch Ball.

Hi, Mitch.

Hello. First off, I wanna say that I really appreciate this project and the fact that this pilot is complete. Overall, this is definitely an improvement, and I'm impressed with the price as well. While 300,000 sounds like a big number to some, I'm sure you are all well aware that it is a lot smaller than many other transportation infrastructure projects and is much cheaper than the cost to the public when a fatal crash occurs. I first visited the pilot on a Friday evening after work after the summit set, which is typically one of the worst times for traffic accidents.

While riding my bike through, I stopped to take some notes. With my notes, I also took some photos and drew some diagrams that you can refer to in my written copy of this comment. I recommend taking a look at these images as a few of these notes may be somewhat hard to follow without the visuals. Number one, the hardened center lines seem really helpful for keeping left turns wide with a wide field of view. I've never seen them before, but my first impression is that they're even better than speed bumps as they're not intended to even be driven over.

Number two, the beige bulb out painting seems very visible but not unpleasant to look at. The lack of beige paint on the crosswalks was a really nice touch that I think will help make the pedestrian pass more visible than just a bulb out throughout. Now I do wanna offer some opportunities for improvement. Number three, I did see a car partially parked on the outbound bulb out, which did not contain bollards. There was enough room for them to move a few feet forward and not be in the bulb out, So I feel like this could have been prevented by having the ball boats end at sharper angles or by painting a separate white line after the ball boat to denote where parking begins.

Number four, when cars go straight at intersections without traffic circles, they successfully avoid the ball bouts. However, when cars go straight in intersections with traffic circles, they successfully avoid the inbound ball bout with bollards, and they successfully avoid the traffic circle, but they often drive over the outbound ball bout without bollards. Likely because driving over this outbound ball bout allows them to make their turn out wider. While it appears that bollards are only necessary at inbound ball outs for intersections without traffic circles, I think intersections with traffic circles could benefit from bollards placed in the center section of the ball boats nearest the traffic circle. I did not observe many left turns at traffic circles, but I believe that the same concerns with vehicles driving over the outbound ball boat to widen their turn applies to this use case as well.

In total, I believe that while the current design could use a few tweaks, they are very effective and I'm excited to see the implementation throughout the rest of the island. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please.

And next we have Jim Strelow.

Hey Jim.

Good evening, commissioners. I've been riding my bicycle, also drive, but riding my bicycle across Alameda, East West since about 2000. When 2,009 happened and they said every street in Alameda is bikeable and walkable, fantastic. And they then said that there is a bike boulevard along Pacific. So I said, okay, let's see what's special about Pacific and using it as a bike boulevard.

I hated it. There was so and sometimes there'd be stop signs and sometimes there'd be yields and what it was so mismatched that I didn't feel safe at all riding it on my bicycle. So when it came around to say, hey, we're gonna build a project on this, I said, I don't know why you're wasting your money on it. Nobody uses it except the people who actually live there. So you're kind of wasting your money on it.

Anyway, the other day I was on Clement, needed to go over to the public library. And so I was westbound on Clement, decided to turn up Chestnut, happenchance, and saw the traffic circle there. And it looks like you can just kind of go straight and not worry about the yield side. You don't really see the yield sides. A lot of times I see yield ahead before yield.

I don't remember seeing any yield aheads and the yields are like right there at the end. And it's like an afterthought. But the traffic circle is so small that it just seems like you can go straight if you're going northwest, north, south or east, west and not need to slow down. Kinda are mesmerized more by the traffic circle than by the yield signs. And in fact, if you just had yield signs, people would say, Oh, I see the yield sign.

I'm gonna slow down to 15 miles an hour because I know what a yield sign means. So I hate to say it, but I think the money's been wasted on this as a pilot project. People that ride bicycles are gonna be using Clement going East West. No reason to use Bike Boulevard, so to speak, anymore along Pacific. There's gonna be other improvements on other streets like Lincoln. So I just say what a waste of a project. It only is gonna affect mostly the people who live there. So I think you should be mostly concentrating on the people who live there comments to see how it really affects their neighborhood. Thank you.

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

Yes. We have one more speaker, Catherine Hunch. Catherine? Hi,

Catherine.

Thank you. I've never done this before, but it seems important enough.

You're doing great.

And I'm sorry I came late because I read in the Alameda Post that this meeting started at 07:30 and I was wrong, so sorry. I have a lot of concerns as do the neighbors specifically about the traffic circle at Pacific in Peru. I live on that corner. I have cameras on my building that are registered with the Alameda police, and sometimes they call me because there's stuff that they want images of. What happens at that intersection is people come from below Lincoln, and when they have a clear way to get across Lincoln, they zoom up Peru Street, and they don't slow or stop at Pacific.

They just zoom straight through to Buena Vista. And we've had many incidents there where people, especially kids riding their bikes along Pacific, the cars don't stop to look or check that there's cyclists or pedestrians. My concern is that with the traffic circle, the pattern is that the traffic circle just ends up being part of a slalom course to zoom around. And it doesn't slow enough, and it also has I went and looked at the new one. It has a visual impediment for the cyclists, the cars, the seizure in particular, cars seeing the bikes coming.

And people don't slow or yield. So what we did is we did a petition around the neighbors one block in each direction. And along Pacific towards Littlejohn Park, we only did half a block because that's like a really long long block. And of the neighbors that answered their doors over a weekend, 85 of them were strongly opposed and signed that petition that we submitted to, I think, y'all. I got a lot of comments from the neighbors, and one of them told me that, some of the residents, like the traffic circles seem to work really well in places like Gilman or larger trafficked areas.

But in small residential neighborhoods, there's kind of a kerfuffle because I think motorists don't know how to yield or even to stop to look. So what we're proposing is to just, and I know this doesn't help with the climate change issue, but I do think that safety should supersede the climate change issues on this one. So the neighbors are all telling me that they want, I thought, speed bumps to really slow the cars, and they all pretty much said, no. We want a four way stop there. That'd be cheaper.

Thank you for your comments. Any additional in person comments?

There are no other speakers.

Okay. Thank you. Hearing all the public comments completed, let's move on to discussion with the commissioners. Who has a question, a comment, a suggestion or an improvement? I do want to highlight that the request here is really three questions. Is this working? Is it safer? And design critiques of phase one of the Greenways Project. So is this working? Is this safer? And design critiques. That's sort of our scope for tonight. Who has something within that scope? God, did I I make the scope too small? Sorry. Please, commissioner Nachtergoth.

I think I can follow those

guidelines. So

thank you for the great presentation and thank you for providing just this afternoon the survey responses. I didn't make it through all of them, but I think in your presentation you did capture it pretty well that they were sort of like all over the place, know. Some were good, some were bad and there was some feedback as well, some good feedback. I would say that in general, I am in favor of a low stress bike network consistently been so and I believe that pedestrians benefit from it as well. I'm going to speak to my experiences with the new Pilot.

As a pedestrian, I have experienced some of the benefits of the new increased visibility for the crosswalks and also the additional stop signs such that when I was ushering a big group of scouts for scouting for food and trying to get them all across said crosswalks, it was a real benefit because everyone could see us, everyone could see the crosswalks. It was they were really they were two thumbs up in my perspective. Also additional stop signs at some of those dangerous intersections are a real benefit as well. I will say that as a driver, I regularly drive through the new Chestnut Street traffic circle. I'm a relatively slow driver anyway and I really do slow down to go around this traffic circle and I'm very mindful because it's a tricky intersection, it's hard to see bicyclists in general there and you want to be able to see pedestrians too.

I think it does its job as far as helping to control traffic flow and I would be concerned about putting anything very vertical because anything vertical in that traffic circle may obscure the the folks who are walking and rolling. So I haven't had a chance to bike the full pilot yet, but today I made a point before this meeting about 04:30, so it's still light out, To drive the full length of the pilot to make sure I understood the different elements that had been implemented. Some of them are, you know, I'm familiar with some

of them

are straight forward traffic humps, things like that. More stop signs. I would say that I'm in favor of how they worked. I think they worked well for the most part. I had compared them to some of the other placement for future plans and I think they make sense.

I would say that the hardening line is one that as a driver I actually fumbled with today because I was trying to go around and give birth to a person who was running in the road and I didn't know if I was allowed to straddle a hardened center line and so I just kind of stopped. And so it's it's a new thing. Sure, we all have to adjust but it was a it was a sort of awkward placement for me of that and I didn't wanna hit a person running. Also, on the way here, I saw somebody at Oak turning off of Oak onto Pacific. Really have a hard time with one of the hardening line hardened hardened lines such that they went so far around it and so slow and then finally went into so there's a a serious learning curve with these is what I'm trying to flag.

And so if we're going to have a lot of them, you think we're hearing about traffic circles now, we're going to be hearing about hardening.

Yeah.

For sure. So in general though, I think that they're all good benefits to the greenway. I think that I look forward to the flashing beacons at some of the problematic intersections for sure. I would personally say that greenway is a bit of a misnomer because there's no green. But, you know, I get it.

I think that's all my feedback. So, as far as safety goes as a pedestrian, I definitely felt safer. Haven't had the bike the opportunity to bike yet. Kinda like this as a driver. So there's my my 2¢.

Great. Thank you for your comments. Actually, if it's okay, I think we would all benefit from talking about two items and then get back into comments. So one of the things that came up in multiple public comments that came up in the presentation today, it came up in public comments today is specifically this traffic circle and why it's not a four way stop. And so I think just a brief discussion from staff and from experts we have here on why that choice was made as opposed to a four way stop right there would really maybe help neuter some of these questions. So could we talk about that a little bit? Sorry, Commissioner Hakal.

Want to clarify because we're talking about Paru as one, but there was also Chestnut. Yes.

Okay, thank

you. Happened to my mask, but yeah, I'm happy to answer that. The traffic circle is proposed at Peru. It's not installed yet, just to clarify that. We've only, we haven't done the work that far to the west yet.

So the traffic circles are generally proposed at intersections where we had stops along the Greenway. So there was a two way stop, not a four way stop, at Chestnut along Pacific. So Pacific Avenue traffic stopped. And as someone mentioned, there are a lot of stops along Pacific which makes it not a very comfortable biking route. There are a lot of stops with high speed cross traffic, and it's really pretty irregular.

So you don't know, like as a cyclist, am I supposed to stop here? Is there a cross traffic stop? Or do I have to watch out for the crossing traffic or not? So that is one of the reasons where we've selected where the traffic circles go is to be able to remove those stop signs but slow down the traffic, make it easier for everybody to navigate those intersections. So the two way stops along the greenways is generally where we've proposed the traffic circles.

Traffic circles, unlike roundabouts, are meant to slow people through the intersection. So having stop signs at them is a bit redundant because you might as well just have a four way stop and not have a traffic circle as well. Maybe if you had some greenery in it, it would be pretty. It might kind of reduce the visual long straight corridor view, like if there were trees in them with the stop signs, I mean. But otherwise, we feel like the traffic circle and generally the intention with the traffic circle is that they're all way yield.

Now other cities don't always install them that way or they put them in where they already have a four way stop. That's been done a lot in Berkeley, for instance. But we felt like the idea is to slow all the traffic and also particularly the cross traffic on the greenway and then also to make it easier for cyclists to kind of travel more continuously and not have to do a lot of stopping and starting and that's about making the greenway more comfortable. I want to see if Scott or Alison want to add anything? Okay.

Yes, Rochelle covered it really well. I think what I just want to add is that it's four way stops are specific in the manual of uniform traffic control devices. Basically the thing that normalizes all the traffic control throughout the entire state are not meant for traffic control. Four way stops are not meant for traffic control. They're for right of way control.

And in recent times and for certainly as long as I've been practicing, there are now warrant analyses that are required in order to substantiate new stop signs. The fear is if you overpopulate a corridor or stop signs, they basically are the the they're they're not people drive through them. They don't stop, right? They they basically will skip through it. And so our concern is to not have that and not create that tendency for people roll through a stop sign or not stop at all.

And we felt that the traffic circles were a great solution that basically as even Jim mentioned, will say as when I've written through that, it's really awkward if you don't know the side street stops. But when you come to a traffic circle, it's very clear that everyone's yielding. We did add two all way stops on this pilot corridor. Those are both at Walnut and Willow. Those roadways in particular are very narrow And they're so narrow in such a way that we could not fit a traffic circle within that right of way and still get the traffic around to manage that. We did make that exception specifically for those two because of the narrowness of those roads.

Please. I

have a follow-up question on that. In terms of positioning or deciding to place traffic circle, Did you look at the space and you said below and below intersection is too narrow and then you decided to go for four way stops. What about this location where Chestnut And Pacific?

Chestnut And Pacific was we found it was large enough to accommodate the traffic circle so that's why we put it in. I did drive through. Our preferred approach if we're looking to kind of if we will remove the stops on the neighbor greenway and particularly where it's a two way stop is to add the traffic circle as an all yield condition. And that is precisely one of the things that we did part of this pilot project and also to get the feedback. And yeah, it is definitely a change.

To be very clear, it's a little bit for the public. But we have roundabouts which are what we've designed on central at 3rd And 4th and these are traffic circles. They're really meant to be just slow traffic on a very small neighborhood thing. It's a slightly different approach but what that we looked at and specifically why we selected it.

Any additional comments specifically on the traffic circle there? Mr. Gloyn.

Specific to the traffic circle, I'm a big advocate of roundabouts and traffic circles and the main reason I'm an advocate is because you don't have to stop. And I do like in this instance the fact exactly as the city engineer described, the fact that it's predictable in a way that some of the stop signs on Pacific are not because as you say, some of them are four way stop, some of them two way stop. When you're traveling on the street, unless you are really really paying attention, it's not always obvious until you get to the intersection whether you're at a two way or a four way stop and that is confusing and a little disorienting potentially. Whereas I agree that the traffic circle in this case does eliminate that confusion. I, having traveled that way on the way here today, I do agree with some of the comments that the and I know this is a quick build which is is perhaps part of the issue.

Visibility of the traffic circle itself could maybe be a little more obvious. We talked a little bit, I think one of the comments talked about the bulb outs and the fact that drivers might cut the corner on the way out of the traffic circle, which could potentially be resolved if this was a permanent installation with curbs and and that sort of thing. But in general, I do like the traffic circle because it makes you slow down, it's predictable, you don't have to stop and it's easy to navigate once you've done it a couple of times, right? There's always a bit of a learning curve. That's what I call it.

Thank you. Any additional comments specific to traffic circles? Commissioner Kim.

Go ahead. You've been waiting. Or Commissioner Kim, let's roll. Sure.

Yeah, yeah, please.

Comment about this traffic circle which it is interesting that this is the first one we've installed because on Chestnut At Pacific, this is at least of this first phase of implementation, this is probably the busiest street that we're installing a traffic circle cross street that we're installing a traffic circle on. Maybe there might be one other street that would have this. A lot of these streets are going to be much lower volume. So that's also just something to keep in mind, that there's not going to be as much traffic. It'll be much more intermittent than what we're seeing at Chestnut.

So in some ways, maybe the way that the street, that intersection feels and works is not necessarily going to feel the same as the other intersections, which will generally just have a lot less cross traffic on them.

That's helpful. Thank you. Commissioner Ken.

So this is kind of going back to the traffic circle versus four way stop discussion. So I know you mentioned with the four way stop, that's kind of a space constraint and that's kind of part of the reason why we're chosen because you couldn't fit a traffic circle in. Is there I guess I'm trying to ask, is there any additional benefits to a four way stop? Like, is there any reason where if there were space to put a traffic circle, would we put a four way stop? Or do we feel like the benefits of traffic calming are about the same? Or I'm kinda wondering if there's a yeah.

I can start on that. So at this point, I don't believe we're recommending for any of these phase one streets any additional all way stops. We're not. So some intersections already have all way stops. We're going to leave those in. We're not going to add in a traffic circle. We're not going to remove the four way stops. The four way stops are not, just to reiterate what Scott said, they're not a traffic calming device. They're a traffic control device so that to indicate right of way like who gets to go first. So we would not be installing always stops for traffic calming. Does that answer your question?

I think so mostly.

Yeah. You wanna know what the what the positive use case would be?

Yeah. I I guess I'm just trying to figure out is there under what conditions other than space constraints would we put in a four way stop as opposed to traffic circle, or is there any?

Along the neighborhood greenways? Yes. Or just in general in the city?

Let's say along the neighborhood greenways.

Well, I guess if it were warranted, if there's enough traffic, if there's enough people, and that's done through a traffic study. Like if you have enough people going both directions and it's like people just don't know who has the right of way, then we might change that to a four way stop. But again, at this point for the phase one, we're not anticipating adding any additional stop signs.

So sorry. Just want to confirm one point that I So think is implicit in what we're saying the space where we're talking the space where there is a traffic circle installed that sounds like it's not popular has not because you made the comment that this is probably the busiest place we're going to put it. Right? This is one place that's the busiest place we're going put it, but it also does not reach the traffic warrant necessary to put a four way stop. So it's in that weird sweet spot where it's high? So it's like, but it's the highest we have, but it's also low because it doesn't quite reach the four way stop? Like, is that just the coincidence we're dealing with?

Yeah. I'll let you sit up so I'll let you answer that.

Yeah. In the stop sign warrants, there's the major travel direction and then the minor travel direction. So in this, as Rochelle described it, Chestnut has probably the highest crossing volume but the volume on Pacific Is not enough. Largely by design because it's a neighbor green light is not gonna be high enough to trip the warrant. So you really need to have them in both directions.

That's super helpful, thank you. Any additional questions about traffic circles? Please go ahead.

Yeah, if I could combine just a few general thoughts on traffic circle and then I'll turn it back. I just super high level. I'm thank you to staff and everyone who's been working on this project. I know it's been a while since we last saw it, and I I just want to speak again to how important this is as a means to enable more of Alameda's seventh graders to ride their bikes to school every day. The Alameda Post called me out on that as being a little overly specific at our last meeting, but I think it makes it super concrete.

I'm using that as an example use case because I think we can kind of imagine seventh graders as standing in for a lot of other attributes we want to cover here. And that means like a network. It means collecting kids where they live. They might not live on one of these nice cycle tracks. They live where they live.

They might not be going to a place on a cycle track or maybe they do. Maybe they are going to Wood Middle School but they need to first get to one of those those great new cycle tracks. And also, so I do want to kind of also reiterate the point that a network is only as good as its weakest link. Because I think, you know, you can appreciate this as a motorist too. You're like, why isn't there a connection from this freeway to that off ramp?

It's the same when a kid gets to a spot and they're like, how do I get from here to there? So I I would like to give some specific feedback and ask if staff would consider doing a review of those 2,030 plus spots and the next time this comes back. Just making everyone aware of what to realize the full network. Like, what are some of those key points? Because that's just some of them might be costly.

Some of them might involve other work. But I think everyone who cares about realizing the network will benefit from knowing sooner rather than later at that level. And, yeah, again, like that's where I just think, like, this example of, like, you send your seventh grader. I don't have a seventh grader, but I will. And I just I wanna have that confidence to be able to let them let them roam free using this network.

Now, just to the round the mini neighborhood traffic circle. Is that it? Neighborhood traffic circle at hand. The one part I wanted to ask staff about that kind of echoing some of these thoughts is, as we saw different iterations, the actual physical feature got that marks that circle got shorter and shorter and shorter. And now it's it started out as a continuous ring that seemed to kind of look like something you wouldn't want to drive into.

And now it looks like something you could drive over. And I'm curious to hear just what are the constraints you all were working with when building that unit right now?

One benefit initially that comes to mind when it comes to something like lower profile, and I know what you mean when you say like, when you think of the renderings and how they progressed, and it went along with our continued discussions about the different quick build materials that are available to create a traffic circle. So one thing the lower profile does is it adds more flexibility for the larger vehicles we're trying to accommodate. And so we felt the vortex kind of struck this balance as far as high enough to be a deterrent from vehicles, like regular passenger vehicles, which is what you see the most at the intersection, to avoid hitting it. But larger vehicles like a garbage truck or a delivery truck, If it needed to make some of those turns, would be more difficult for them. They could mount it without any fear of damage or anything like that.

Another thing that we considered was just what we knew as far as durability of some of these materials. So specifically that material that we showed in like the original rendering from our experience that dislodges more easily. And so the maintenance costs of that would be greater and staff time included. So yeah, those are a couple of reasons that we landed on this Vortex project product which in our experience is sturdy and shouldn't require as frequent maintenance as other quick build materials might have.

Can I ask a follow-up question to that? So with this lower profile for all the reasons you just talked about, is there any evidence that cars are going to start ignoring it because it is lower profile and therefore it's not going to serve its purpose?

I don't think there's any evidence of that. I mean, I think so far from the observations the team has made, largely people are shying away from it. So, so far, it seems to be doing its job as far as being something people want to avoid.

Additional comments? Commissioner Davis.

Yeah, thanks for the detail. I think also a lot of us have appreciated learning about some of the maintenance constraints that drive the choices you all make. It's just, it's it's fascinating to know. I'm but I'm just gonna speak as someone who's now walked ridden rid a bike and driven down that street. I I think there are real trade offs to I think the profile

Yeah.

Would be more effective.

Mhmm.

And I think some of the concerns that are being voiced about entry speed of motorists and the exterior could be addressed by considering something with a different profile in the future. So those are all the comments I wanted to share on that. I have thoughts on other treatments, but you can take us through.

Well, if it's okay sorry. If there are other questions about the traffic circle, we'll finish up with those and then move on to our other most controversial topic, hardened central lines. So who else has questions about the traffic circle or comments? Okay. Seeing none, let's move on to hardened central lines which seems like a good portion of the feedback both in person and what was emailed in. Could you talk us through the uses of a hardened center line? And also I actually thought Bike Walk Alameda had a really good suggestion which was can we raise the profile of those with flags or something to prevent them from being easily driven over or not spotted spotted by bicycles? Tell us why that's a bad idea.

Yes, I'll reiterate a couple of the points that Rochelle had made earlier. So

the point of the

hardened center lines is not only to slow vehicle turns, but also to make where the vehicle is turning more predictable. It can really vary as far as where vehicles are turning when they take a left. So that is part of what the safety benefits of the hardened centerline are.

I can add on to that with the vertical. I mean it's an interesting point what bike walk Alameda suggested. I think that it's something we're thinking about. I think we have concerns that people would probably hit them. They'd get knocked over.

You may remember with the when we still have some of the barricades up, have a flex post on the centerline. Those often are getting replaced. They're getting hit. So know, these the heart and center lines are a much more durable product. But we are, you know, it's an interesting idea and we have been talking about that.

I wish you could

little something. Sorry, add come on.

I can add

a little something to that. I had the privilege of getting toured around the city by a New York City DOT a couple years ago. And we talked about turn calming and this hardened center line quite a bit. And they you know, it's a big city, lots of intersections. They've had the opportunity to test a lot of different materials for them. And initially, they were doing ones with quite significant vertical elements. And then their most recent ones, they were just doing exactly pretty much what we've done here. And they said it is they're finding them just as effective for safety. And they are finding them, the turn turn calming, the hardened center line to increase safety significantly.

Did they see so I guess one of the concerns of Bike Walk Alameda was an increase in potential bicycle accents when they're not spotted. Was there any report on that that they saw that or did they look for that? And I realize you had a conversation with them so it's an unfair question but did that come up?

No, I haven't talked to them since then but it definitely didn't come up.

I can

say that.

Can can I ask if you can?

A clarifying question. Sorry to Yeah. Jump in. Are the heart and center lines designed to be rolloverable, if that makes sense? And so and I just wanted to clarify that. Is it for access and things like that or is it just so if someone hits it, they're not gonna flip completely flip off their bike? It's like so I'm just kind of wondering like kind of the give and take of the low profile versus a higher profile. Right?

Yeah, so there's overlap with some of the things I was explaining about the choice around the profile of the traffic circle material. But again, that lower profile hardened centerline material is going to make it allow for the larger vehicles like fire trucks going through. Feedback that we've received or I've received over the course of multiple projects is it can be damaging to fire trucks if they have to go over something that's like a vertical element. So again, that's trying to strike that balance between the tools we can use to achieve the goals and still vehicles, but also make sure that the intersections are still accessible for those larger vehicles.

So it has a beveled edge on it. It's not a hard 90 degree edge. That's also a benefit for bicyclists, right? You're not hitting a vertical curb. And again, this has been used in two places along the neighborhood greenway.

It's not used at every intersection. It's used at Oak Street, which is a major street. So really wanting with a lot of traffic, so wanting to slow the traffic there. And then we also have used it at our paint and post intersection, so at Lafayette. We have been talking about is that maybe we are a little more selective in where we place these and maybe we consider some thresholds. Maybe it's around traffic or major streets. I mean traffic volumes or major streets. So something just that we're thinking about.

Mr. Comments, Mr. Derry Abrams.

So I really like the goal here. I think hardened center lines, lot of utility around the city. I think that that Oak Street location, it's exactly that that type of scenario where ton of traffic on on Oak. It's really tempting for people in cars to to take a tight turn. I I think this is one where where it seems very reasonable to just take a fully wait and see evaluate approach where, like, I I, you know, I I think we had some more concrete feedback on the traffic circle, but in this case of the hardened line center excuse me, central line hardening, I think it would be just interesting for you.

You don't have to tell us, but the next time, you know, what's it like in a year? I will say I debated this a bit with an SFMTA staffer who said, these are these help x percent. And they sent me a web page, I looked. I'm like, well, yeah, that that's great. You 50% improvement in these certain safety conditions and the there's a picture of flex posts as part of of that treatment.

It it's recessed. Like, it's like like, there's, like the centerline hardening starts at maybe the crosswalk. I don't know if you and then it goes and then back a ways is where there are maybe one to three flex posts. And so, like, I'm not a professional in this. I don't have the confidence to recommend that, but, like, I I it just struck me as, like, maybe if you had an opportunity to put something like that, maybe this is a treatment where just some more observation of behavior would would help target the locations where it's going to be most beneficial.

Other commissioner comments? Commissioner Northville.

I'm gonna lift that up and say I agree.

Say a lot?

I'm gonna lift that up and say I agree. Being mindful and and seeing what the best approach is for these center lines.

Hardened center lines.

And it sounds like we have spent all the time we need to spend on hardened center lines. Who else has other topics they would like to bring up? Commissioner Sudhun Thera, sorry, Vice Chair Sudhun Thera.

Thank you for all the work and all the comments here. I know we are looking at, this is the pilot project and we are discussing the treatments and the effects of the treatments and how the responses we have received. And again, the pilot is part of the network. I'm just taking a step back and looking at the purpose. And in implementing this, do we have any data in terms of because the purpose is, again, making it more low stress for the bike and walking and rolling.

Right? So any before and after data? Because the parallel roads are pretty, you know, speeding roads in general con you know, opinion, and which means that the bikes or bikers should have shifted once this pilot is implemented. So do we have any data of the before and after?

Sorry. Could I ask a clarifying question to you? Do you mean in addition to the survey data that was Yes.

Okay. Numbers, traffic counts.

Great. So this was installed in mid November is when it was finalized. So about a month ago is when it was installed. So for this particular pilot section, we have not collected post installation data in the last month. We have seen there's been suggestions to do that. We've talked about it internally. We've shied away from doing that partly because it's just so recent. We feel like people are probably still adjusting to it. We made a lot of changes at one time. We removed the slow street barricades and we put in these new devices.

We think for some of them, are it's going to maybe take them a while to get used to what's on the street now versus what was, how people are learning about that, how they navigate it, learning that there are speed humps on the street. So we have not collected post data yet on this. The survey is kind of more qualitative and we were hoping to see if everybody said this is way worse or you haven't done enough or something or there's speeding cars all over, then I think that would be very informative to us. I don't feel like we heard that. We heard a few people saying that, but it wasn't universal.

Also, you know, we're trying to tweak and refine these designs as much as we can with the understanding that the neighborhood greenways will be monitored over time. We have a data collection plan which calls for a year after installation to then do additional speed and traffic counts and bike counts and ped counts to see how those match with the before counts. And so we will be doing that. And then at that point, we may come in and need to do additional changes to the street. So we kind of see it as an iterative process to install these neighborhood greenways.

And then once the changes have been in place for a while, it may be that it's mostly working well, but there's like a couple blocks that still are not working well, right? And that we need to do further traffic calming efforts on or potentially the next step could be some semi diverters or something like that to reduce the traffic volumes. Although as I've said, the volumes have not, at least with our pre project counts, not been the biggest issue as the speeds have been.

And just in case it wasn't clear, before data, since you asked about before and after, the before data was collected. And the record greenways do have specific volume and speed targets that they can compare against.

Yes. So we have the before data for all three of our slow street segments. We've already collected all of that. And that helped inform also the concept plans, yeah. And we've also collected data on the select nearby parallel streets where we have thought we might see diversion. So we've collected that baseline data as well. I will say that having also at the same time removing the slow streets barricades is sort of messing with things a little bit in terms of the changes, the before and after data. But yeah, we do have that.

You still have barricades, isn't it?

Not on this pilot section. So we've removed them on this pilot section. They're completely removed from Lafayette to Oak. But the other the existing segments that we haven't implemented yet, yes, that was been the council direction is to leave those barricades in place until we implement the greenways.

Okay. I drove just before coming here and it was pretty dark. And then a couple of locations I had difficulty because it was not well lit, at least the center hardened center line. And so because I read the staff report, I knew what I am coming up against. So I was able to navigate better.

But you know, that's about the specific, you know, the treatment, comments related to specific treatment. But still I'm thinking about the purpose again, know, and it's just one month old, as you say, and we are fresh and we are just getting a response and then survey you have done and and and we are trying to move forward based on this. So I think it's a little too soon, is my opinion, to make a decision on which is really working well, which is not. You know, as I think it will be better. It may be better, like, in another few months, check it out and then go forward for the or identify how you want to move forward for the next phase.

So that's one.

You for that.

May I just add around the purpose that these are neighborhood greenways, perhaps a misnomer there, at least for now. And in the future there could be more greenery installed. But these are similar to bicycle boulevards which are a vetted bicycle treatment, bicycle bikeway type proven to be effective, proven to be low status, to encourage more people to bike just like we've we're not inventing something totally new. Obviously, we're tailoring it for Alameda, but it is a typical bikeway kind of device.

I'm totally for that. Yes, I agree with that. But I was just in terms of the timing is what I was commenting. One other related comment on the network. For the future, yes, like Commissioner Dara Abrams mentioned, this is I'm looking at how the school kids access it. And it's really important for this network to connect and serve all the schools. And I noticed that AHS is not properly connected. I think you have identified Work Street, but it's like it's not really in the next phase per se. So I'd like to hear a little bit about that.

I think I can also add regarding the timing. We don't have a lot the benefit of a ton of time on this. There's a lot of pressure to get those slow streets barricades out. And so this was the timing that worked best to be able to get some feedback before finalizing the designs. But like Rochelle talked about, there will be other touch points where we get to continue to iterate these designs. Sorry.

Yeah, sure. I've asked JB to bring up the slide of our 2,030 low stress network. And this addresses a point also that Drew was making earlier I'm sorry, Commissioner Terry. I'd rather

everyone just call me Drew, share's rule.

Was making of, you know, again we're striving towards a connected low stress network. Definitely in designing this, we did try to connect to schools in addition to you know shopping districts and senior centers and libraries and you know major destinations, transit major transit like the ferries. So this is the 2030 the goal to get to where this is not fully funded but this is the goal to get to by then. And so this is fully connected. There are none of those kind of what we're talking about those know those little missing gaps.

And this was designed to be connected network. Obviously it's not all of our facilities. It's not connecting everywhere. We have bike lanes. They're not showing up on here because those are not low stress facilities. A lot of people are not comfortable in biking in bike lanes, especially with higher traffic volumes. Oak Street is on here or Oak or Park and so that would go by Alameda High School. That is kind of a separate, very tricky complex project of deciding if the low stress facility is going to be on Park or Oak and that's something that needs further study, but that would the idea is that would connect to the high school.

So there will be one connecting to the high school, right? Yeah.

Any additional commissioner comments? Mr. Kim?

Yeah. I just wanna say things again for the presentation. I think a lot of these treatments are great. I think we're, I'm fully supportive of most of them. I think the one that I, kind of going back to the heart and center line, I agree with commissioner Darri Abrams. I, like, admittedly, I think I've rolled over it multiple times. So it's maybe it's not doing as much as it could be doing. Right? So I would love to maybe see if there's kind of alternatives that maybe work a little bit better kind of for that specific treatment. I think a lot of the other treatments seem to work pretty well.

I've driven through the Chestnut traffic circle a couple of times and it I instinctively, I think the first time I stopped before I went in just as an instinct. But I so I think it's one of those things people are gonna have to learn. I think a lot of the public comments kind of noted that as well that people just kind of have to learn how to use these things. And the more of them there are in the city, the more people will learn to use them, right? So yeah, do think these are all kind of great treatments.

Additional commission comments. Drew, please take a Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Scott. Full respect. I wanted to ask two final thing. One on so speed limits. I know a speed limit is you know, it's not it's not why we're here. We're here to, you know, help improve the physical design of the road to encourage good behavior. But I just since it came up in public comment, I was curious to hear staff's thought on if at any point it would make sense to consider signing these at twenty or a different speed limit. Again, I'm just interested in the clarity of if that's relevant to long term plans for these

corridors. Yeah, I think definitely the goal is 20 miles per hour for these streets. And so we have talked about and it's possible that we could sign them for 20 miles per hour. I would say since that's the goal speed, we probably wouldn't sign them at like 15 miles per hour.

Yeah.

So it's something we've considered, yeah. It's not ruled out, but we're not doing it. We haven't decided to do it right now.

Okay, fair enough. Because to be honest, from my non expert perspective, a it's bit of a distraction from the actual work at hand of like, if the signs just changed, well, didn't do the real work, hard work. But if at the end evaluation is showing that these are working, maybe there is a place for that to be part of a city making or a city decision making process. The the one other thing I wanted to ask about is, we didn't see I know Rochelle, you spoke to traffic volumes not being a problem on Pacific. But in this toolkit, we're not seeing diverters or modal filters.

And I'm just curious to know when you're thinking of the toolkit for this broader network. Are there some options that might be coming up there? I know just like an extreme example I did when I lived in Berkeley, I lived on one of those streets where there were planters diagonally across an intersection that were meant through movement for cyclists and pedestrians, and motorists could only take right turns. I know that's the most extreme of these interventions, and there are less extreme forms. But just curious to hear if that may be in the toolkit in the future.

I would say yes, definitely. I think that our sense was let's start with these traffic calming devices. And it's been interesting to see that the volumes are generally within our targets, which speaks to not necessarily that we kind of made the right decision not to focus, which are as you can understand, those can be a lot more controversial to be installing diverters. I think we also didn't want to wade into that if we didn't feel like we really had to at this point. And kind of we can see how this works.

Again, do the data collection a year out. And then I feel like it's probably going be something that's just going be a little more targeted to specific spots along specific sections of greenways. Not something that we necessarily need to do universally. But we'll monitor it and we'll see and they could be considered in the future.

Okay. Yeah, because, and again, I'll just say just from the Berkeley experience, I worry that is a little too extreme and it encourages a zero sum type of thinking where like ideally ideally, these greenways are benefiting the people who live directly on their street, but not not overly impacting side streets. Just, like, those Berkeley planners, like, they do they're great at their spot where they are, but it reconfigures the network. All that said, like, just, like, I I think folks would be curious to know, like, if on future the future green ways, if there is an opportunity for, like, a selective modal filter or, like, these write in, write out type of things where, like, motorists can it's not dividing the city. It's just trying to do a little bit of surgery.

So, but anyway, those are all my thoughts. Thank you, Chair Weitzy.

You're welcome, Joe. Additional comments from commissioners? Mitch Glynn.

Thank you. I have some slightly fluffy comments about the way that certain things make me feel. I think might be relevant here. First of all, I just wanna say, isn't it kind of wonderful that we live in a place where despite society's addiction to cars, we have an active transportation plan that encourages more biking and walking and we have a low stress bike network throughout the entire city which is well underway. This is all fantastic.

As I travel to the transportation commission each month or two, I come along Pacific even though arguably as a cyclist, would make more sense for me to take Clement. And I do take Clement often. But for some reason when I come here, I always take Pacific. And as I was thinking about why do I do that? It occurred to me that there's something aesthetically pleasing about Pacific because it's a neighborhood street rather than Clement which is more like a connector, I guess.

It feels like a, it doesn't feel like a neighborhood street in the same way. And so, as I was coming here on the way today, I obviously noticed that the parricades are gone, we now have the traffic circle that we've talked about. We have the speed humps. And I think what I realized was with the barricades gone, it's no longer as obvious when you are traveling along Pacific that you are on a what we used to call a slow street, we're now calling a neighborhood greenway. And even though the speed humps are there, which I'm sure are having an effect and obviously we will try to find out what the speed of the traffic is and whether we need to take additional actions.

I just wonder if there's more we can do to make it feel like this street is primarily for walking, biking, people on skateboards, one wheels, hoverboards, whatever other methods of of of transport we have and that cars should be very much secondary to that. I don't know exactly what that looks like. I know I remember from previous conversations, city engineer telling us that green paint is one of the most expensive substances on earth. So that's probably not the answer. But I just wonder what else we can do to remind people at all times, not just when they're reaching a speed hump, not just when they're, you know, turning on to Pacific.

How can we make it feel like this street is different from all the others? And because the more we do that, the more it's gonna encourage people to bike, the more it's gonna feel safer, more comfortable. You know, we talked about bike boulevards. Bike boulevards to me don't feel that safe. You still get a lot of traffic. The traffic doesn't necessarily slow down that much. So as I say I don't really know what the answer is but I wonder if there's more we can do to make it visually obvious that this street is not like others. And that is my comment.

I'm gonna second that comment. I think the aesthetics are actually a good idea and I agree that it is a little different without the barriers because you are again it's even probably a safer street with all these implementations. But it does not quite feel like you're on a separate street. To your point, I want to make sure I was right about this, San Francisco installed those damn 49 mile scenic drive signs with the seagull on it, I don't know at this point, fifty to one hundred years ago, they're still mostly up. And it's the kind of thing that the city should look at as like, here's our greenway. Here's where you take bikes because it's a more permanent thing. And it's not green paint, which is helpful as well. So yeah. Other comments?

I like the fact that we can do this within the $300,000

Well said. I have a couple of very last comments and then I think we can wrap up actually. I wanted to understand the location of speed humps, speed bumps, how those were chosen especially because there's several comments about public outreach and I think we all drove through Pacific on the way over here and did definitely notice there's There doesn't seem to be any sort of spacing away from residences. And that may just be because they need to be where they need to be, which is fine. I get that.

But I was curious about first why they are exactly where they are. Because there are some downsides to speed pumps and bumps from an aesthetic but also just like the person that lives in that house point of view. And I was curious a little bit about actually, I think we talked too much about outreach, my own opinion. But I was curious about the outreach specific to those property owners that abut those places that we had speed pumps, speed bumps because that is a pretty big change in potential lifestyle there. So I was those two questions, if I could understand those.

Okay. So one thing we considered is spacing. When it comes to treatments in general along these neighborhood greenways, we're going for 300 to 500 foot spacing between the traffic calming elements, a stop sign and so on. So that was definitely part of it, like making sure that when they were placed we were getting within that particular range. Another thing is, you can see there's a lot of driveways And along these so it was actually pretty limited where we could place them.

But in these places that where it ended up being feasible, we were looking to get them at least, I believe it was five feet from driveways. So yes, in these cases there actually weren't a whole lot of options for places where we could put them that they wouldn't be obstructing a driveway on one side or the other.

And was there specific outreach to those places that were most impacted by the location of the speed bumps?

I will answer that part of it. We did not do specific outreach for the placement of the speed humps. Through the survey, through people reaching out, we have not really heard from any homeowners who have complained about the location of the speed humps. You can park on a speed hump.

Not restricting parking at all. Yes. Sounds like success so far. I do want to follow-up on one of the comments. I think it was a submitted comment about actually was here today, cutouts for bikes to get through these speed pumps. I actually disagree with that comment. I'm generally personally very pro bike and pro bikes in this location. I do actually think the comment that was made was illuminating because they wanted cutouts because going over the humps is uncomfortable over 15 miles an hour. I'm actually very comfortable with bikes having to be less than 15 miles an hour. So let's keep doing that.

That's perfectly fine. We can all share the road in equal directions on that. My other comment is pointless. I'll let it go. I'm good. Any other questions? Any other comments? Great. Great. So the questions at the beginning of this were, is this working? Is it fair to summarize that commissions feel that it feels like, at least as a start, it's working, generally speaking? Does it feel safer? Data is not quite in yet, but it certainly sounds like from our own experiences here at least and from at least some of the community feedback, it feels safer. We definitely offer design critiques as well. Good job, everyone.

I think we can, with your permission, close off this item and move to item six b, approve the 2026 Transportation Commission meeting calendar. This is an action item. Lisa Foster, please take us through this.

Thank you.

Every year, at the end of the year, we approve the calendar for the regular meetings. And you know, as you all know, our general schedule is the fourth Wednesday of every other month on the odd numbers months at 06:30. But we do ask and we continue to ask this year that commissioners hold the fourth Wednesday of the other months in between months in case we need them for special meetings, which we frequently do. I think our last just the way our agenda items worked out the last couple meetings, we've canceled the regular meeting and held a special meeting. So we really appreciate your flexibility.

But it still makes sense to for us to just adopt the every other month schedule. The recommendation we make this made this year of meetings on January 28, February 25, that's additional meetings so that we can do our annual report. We've been doing this for the last few years. March 25, May 20 is a little earlier, third Wednesday because of to avoid Eid al Adha. And then July 22, September 23, and then November 18, avoiding the Thanksgiving holiday.

This is a little bit different than what we've done the last couple years, few years, in that it calls for a July meeting and does have an August meeting. So before our reasoning was our since for the fourth Wednesday, everybody's back in school by the August, but they're not in July. But this year we're recommending that we go have our normal odd number July meeting because council takes a recess in August and we've had some questions about why we meet in the month that councils on recess. So recommend that you guys adopt the schedule.

Any commissioner comments, questions, suggestions, revisions? I will be unable to make the January meeting, but you guys do fine without me. So good luck.

Actually, me too.

Oh, interesting. Is that a is that a problem?

I will think that through.

Why don't we why don't we follow-up with on email and if we need to revise

it, can do that. Cancel if we need to adopt it.

Sounds good. With that follow-up action, I'm going to make a motion to approve the 2026 Transportation Commission meeting calendar. Do I have a second for that? Seconded. Commissioner Gloin. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Passes unanimously. Let's move to item number seven, commission communications specific to transportation commission issues. Does anyone have any comments? Commissioner.

Two things. First, happy happy Hanukkah, happy upcoming Christmas, and all other winter holidays. I want to briefly share some thoughts for parents of other parents of kids, specifically parents of teenagers. This is about battery powered vehicles. Unfortunately, federal regulators have failed you.

Amazon.com is failing you. And the state of California is failing you. I'm gonna keep this short and targeted, but every Currently, it's really unclear what sort of e bike can be purchased for a teenager. Unfortunately, this is falling back onto parents to understand what they're purchasing. The classification system is broken.

It's not even adopted by a federal regulating agency. I'm sharing this as a fellow parent who knows that it is ineffective to rant at kids. I'm personally very concerned about adults who are going who see kids on e bikes and make a lot of assumptions and want to enter into this topic. So I just wanted to personally share this from the perspective of for parents who probably have already purchased presents for Christmas. It's already what was it?

Fourth night of Hanukkah. But unfortunately, we have to do our own checking. If it's an e bike with if it's a battery powered device with a throttle or sorry, if there's no throttle, it's clear. It's fine. If there is a throttle, parents need to understand if the device can be hacked.

There are TikTok instructions for how to override the controls and parents need to understand the wattage of the motor. And again, unfortunately, this is the nature of the products that are being sold and are entering the Bay Area. I I've think been talking over the last eighteen months with any parents of teens I can find who just want to talk one on one about this because I don't think it's yet a productive public conversation. It's very much about where people are at, what And so I am going to just finish this thought by saying I would very much be open to any parents who are challenged by these issues to drop me an email. I'm just curious to hear how everyone's navigating this.

And I think it should be pursued from the perspective of trying to regulate these unregulated marketplaces, not lecturing kids in a way that's just not going to work. It's going be counterproductive. So those are my personal thoughts. And for anyone listening, feel free to reach out to me if you would like to share a perspective, because I think this I'm just fascinated for the parents I've spoken with. So thank you.

Thank you.

And happy holidays.

You too. Thank you for your focus on safety.

Chair Weitzey, I'm not a commissioner, but can I add to that?

You can, Lisa Foster. Jump on in.

I just wanted to let everybody know related to this topic that the police department has recently published a webpage with information about rules around e bikes and e scooters and advice about how to spot a legal e bike versus one that is not street legal, one is actually an Emoto. And that URL is alamedaca.gov/edevices. And just today or yesterday, our city public information officer did a post on on Facebook for anybody who's on Facebook with some advice for parents who are shopping for their kids as well.

Very relevant, timely information. Thank you, Lisa. Any additional commissioner comments on transportation issues? I have one quick one. I wanted to compliment the responsiveness of the transportation commission or commission, how you guys do, transportation department and also especially public works in the city.

You guys know that there is a roundabout going in corner of Pacific And Maine. That project has essentially shut down that street. I will say the first day of that project was enormously bumpy for that entire portion of the West End due to sign placement, to other issues that diverted essentially every car in Northern California onto one street which was an amazing sight to see, almost worth living through. But there was a lot of community feedback. And I will say the next morning, there had been a ton of work to fix it. And it worked. They moved signs. They changed things. They moved barriers. They put up other notices. They did great. And so I think it's easy to have people complain about things. There was a problem. It got fixed literally in twenty four hours. And then going forward, it's been great.

So I just wanna compliment. Great job public works. Great job transportation. With that, I would like to motion to adjourn. On that very positive note, let's all go have our holidays. Anyone want a second and motion to adjourn? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone want to skip their holiday? No. No one

says no. Happy holidays.

Happy holidays. Happy holidays.