Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Is the time and place for a meeting of the Beaverton Planning Commission? For the record, I will do a roll call to verify which commission members are participating this evening. Commissioner Winter? Commissioner Speck.

Here.

Commissioner McCann.

Here.

Commissioner Mettler. Here. And commissioner Mc McEvoy. Here. Let the record show that commissioner Holmes is excused and absent from the meeting tonight. We are now at commission communications. Commission, any communications? Looks like no communications. We are now at staff communications. Staff, any communications?

There, yes. I'm Brian Martin, long range planning manager with the City of Beaverton. I have three short items. The first is I just wanted to let you know the city council adopted the town center maps that the Planning Commission considered recently. This should be effective next month.

And then a couple of citywide interest items. Regarding fiscal sustainability, like many Oregon cities, Beaverton faces a structural budget deficit driven by expenses outpacing revenue growth, further strained by tax limitations at the county and state level. Despite significant efforts to improve our financial position, funding gap remains. To address this, the City Council is actively exploring additional strategies to stabilize the finances in both the near and the long term. These include a potential revenue generating options such as a city service fee, a local option levy, and a street maintenance fee.

The next discussion that the council will have will take place at 6PM, December 9. Council will review further financial research and explore additional options. They won't make any decisions that night, but the conversation will help shape the path forward. So anybody watching, is welcome to attend that. Also, we have a way to celebrate the season. The winter lights and tree lighting event is coming up. You're invited to kick off the holiday season at the at that ceremony, which is 4PM to 8PM, December 5 at City Park in Downtown Beaverton. Full details are at beavertonoregon.gov/winterlights. All the announcements. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. The first item on the agenda is a work session on the transportation system plan. The order of the work session tonight will be as follows. We will begin with the city staff presentation followed by discussion and questions of staff by the commission. The Planning Commission will then hear public comments regarding the work session item. Individual comments will be limited to five minutes and must be directed toward the work session item. The commission may ask additional questions of individuals providing comments or staff. We will now begin with the staff presentation presented by senior planner Jessica Engelman.

Thank you for having us this evening. My name is Jessica Engelman. I work in the long range planning section for the city, and I'm managing this update to the city's transportation plan. I'm joined by Rob Zeller. He did a lot of the engagement work, coordinated it over the summer, so is here to really, answer any questions about that that you may have at the end of the presentation.

So I'm gonna just jump in right away. We have a lot to cover, and I I think that you'll be interested in hearing about it, and we're really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. We've been working on two fronts over the past six months. We've been analyzing what's out there today, so looking at what works, what's not working. We've also been talking with community by community members about where they like to go, where they would like it to feel safer.

And in general, we've just been listening, mapping data, learning, looking for patterns, synthesizing what we're we're hearing and learning into a coherent narrative that I'm gonna be, presenting this evening and which is gonna influence a lot of the work. Sure, no problem going forward. So I'm going to walk you through a handful of takeaways, but first I'd like you to turn your attention to the map that is going to be on the screen. This is a great example of how that analysis work and the engagement work, really went hand in hand and interfaced with each other. What you're seeing is, on the left, we have a map of Beaverton Street Street System.

It's color coded according to how many traffic crashes have occurred and how severe those crashes have been over a five year period. We looked at information from 2018 to 2022. That was what was available to us when we were doing this analysis. You'll see that the darker color the darker the color, the worse the crash crash history. Blues and purples, that those are streets owned by the city or, sorry, by the county or the state, and reds and oranges are streets owned by the city.

And then on the right, you can see locations where people told us they wanted it to feel safer. And if you compare the two maps, you can see that there are several similar locations that light up. I'm looking at Allen Boulevard, Denny Road, Cedar Hills Boulevard, Canyon, Farmington, generally our downtown. And what this is telling us is that people instinctively know the conditions, in which they're potentially at a higher risk of harm when they're trying to get around the city. There are also locations on this map that, by the, like, one seventieth over by the nature park, where there there was not as much, historic crash data, but people were telling us that they still were not feeling safe.

And so this is really helpful to understand because we not only want to be reactive, we want to be proactive. So this was very helpful to hear from the community and understand what the historic data wasn't telling us. So moving forward, our task is to re the next task is to reexamine what we'd like as a community for the transportation system, and propose a future network and future street designs that can help us reach our goals, one of which is safety. But before I jump into more findings, I want to talk a little bit about the community engagement activities that we did in those six months between April and September. The real the purpose of this was really to hear from community about their travel experiences getting around the city, and we asked three questions.

The first was, where do you go? The second was, where would you like it to feel safer? And the third was, what do you think of some future street types? And we brought out designs and showed them to folks. Community volunteers took a lead role in developing and implementing that engagement strategy.

I believe some of you are familiar with the project's transportation ambassadors, but just to recap, staff recruited for a group of volunteers, and they conducted culturally relevant engagement activities, and also considered ways to connect with the broader the broader Beaverton community. They spent a year getting up to speed, learning and building their skills with the guidance of city staff and the consultant team, and each of them drafted their own engagement plan and went out into the community this summer with the support of staff, really engaging folks in a number of different ways, which I'm going to talk about. We used a variety of tools oh, I did not well, go to the next one. We went to a variety we used a variety of tools, both in person and virtual, to engage with folks, and some of those tools asked all three engagement questions, some of them really just focused on one. For example, we had an in person activity where we set up large printed maps and easels and invited participants to place pins on the maps, showing us where they like to go, where it wasn't feeling safe.

We also used written questionnaires, one on one interviews, focus groups to gather information. We had a very few, we had a couple of very specific activities, so we had, like, a piece of paper that people could mark up where they had safety concerns. We also had this lookbook that people could look through all of the different street designs, leave sticky notes in it telling us what they liked, what they had concerns about. Online, we had a story map and a survey posted, that allowed people to do very similar things, zoom in and out, leave digital pins on a map, and then also leave comments for us. So between April to September, those six months, we received 2,800 responses from folks, so we had a pretty good response rate.

The ambassadors engaged people through a variety of means. We had those focus groups. They tabled at citywide events, like, the library, meeting with they met with business owners, and they attended a neighborhood association committee meeting. Staff also led events, so we met with, for example, a focus group for the Safe Routes to School high school advisory committee, and then overall, we connected we feel like we connected we believe we connected with residents from all around the city, all the neighborhoods. We were able to get out to many of those NAC meetings, and then also just hear from people at the citywide events as well.

So let's jump to the first thank you, Rob. I appreciate that. The first community takeaway, which is that travel is essential for living beyond just getting to work. Community members said that they need to travel for shopping, and recreation, and jobs, and school, and social activities, and lots of things, and importantly, they conveyed that these trips are often not discretionary. They are truly necessary for meeting the daily needs and maintaining an overall sense of well well-being in their life.

So we have the top 10 destinations up here. These are the the places where is it oh, there's a delay. These are the top 10 destinations where folks told us that they like to go. We often heard how, a lot of these popular destinations also serve as community hubs for people where they like to gather. Places like the Beaverton Library, Farmers Market, Cedar Hills Crossing, they're really valued for both their mix of services, but also for that social connection and opportunities that they provide folks.

And our analysis work reinforced what we were hearing out in that in the community. Trip information gathered from census data and state travel surveys and regional modeling information showed us that resident employees regularly make local trips under three miles, and they're traveling for lots of reasons other than just going for work going to work. Of trips that begin in Beaverton, 71% are taken for purposes other than going to work. So, for example, going to school, running an errand, shopping, recreation. And what we heard from community members and what we saw in some of the data that we had access to is that grocery stores are pretty universal, and their importance to community members, in addition to schools and parks, it's gonna be really important to to consider how our pedestrian, our bicycle, our transit networks can connect up to these retail destinations.

Most students looking at schools take the bus or driven to school. Walking and biking are less common, but some schools do have higher rates. They tend to be North Of US 26 in neighborhoods that we see higher household median incomes. When considering work trips, most people about two thirds of people drive to work, and a significant number work from home. About one in five folks work from home, and the people who are working from home tend to have higher incomes as well.

There's about 10% of residents who use public transportation, walk, bike, or take a motorcycle or taxi to work. Of that 10%, 5% of that is public transportation. The second community takeaway is that safety is a major concern for folks. We classified participant responses into five main categories: streets, intersections, transit stops, schools, and parks. On streets, we heard about fast moving traffic, poor lighting, missing sidewalks, unprotected bike lanes.

At intersections, we heard about long crossing distances, inaccessible ramps, drivers not yielding to pedestrians. And then when driving, people were talking about observing unsafe driver behavior, such as speeding, reckless driving, and they wanted more visible, well defined spaces for people outside of the car, people who are walking and biking. And while not on this slide because of space limitations, transit stops were often described as feeling unsafe, especially along busy or isolated stretches of road. Community members noted that safer routes to school and parks, those are also very needed. These are the top 10 streets where people said that they would like it to feel safer.

The streets probably aren't that surprising. We've got Canyon, we've got Farmington, Cedar Hills, TD Highway. These were all frequently mentioned as places where people wish that they could feel safer, and similarly, the top 10 list for intersections where people said that they wish that it felt safer. You might notice some common themes. Again, a lot of these intersections are on the streets that I just mentioned, Farmington Canyon, Allen, Murray.

If you don't see an intersection up there that you would have put on this list, I can say that the the 11 to 20 lists were very close behind the top 10, so it was all very close, and there are several more that came up. I just want to emphasize here and talk a little bit about speed. Speed is just very dangerous. The black, blue, and purple image on the screen shows how several factors combine to heighten or lower risks for a person who is walking. So, if you look all the way to the right in the black column there, you'll see how things play out if someone is driving at 40 miles per hour.

At this speed, a person has a limited cone of perception, meaning they essentially have tunnel vision, they can't mentally process what they're taking in outside of a very narrow view. So if someone unexpectedly crosses their path and they need to stop, it's going to take them over 300 feet, so about the length of a football field, to actually come to a complete stop. And with that speed and that volume, that comes an immense amount of force that is all discharged into the car that they into the thing that the car hits, in this case, a person walking who does not have a protected shell around them to shield them from that actual impact. So as a result, the person has about an eighty percent chance of dying from the collision if they're hit by a car going at 40 miles per hour. As the speed gets lower, the cone of perception widens, that stopping distance lessens, the force from that collision is reduced, and so the person's chances of survival does go up.

That's the purple column. However, at 30 miles per hour, the odds are still not great that the person is going to be able to walk away from that collision without a serious or incapacitating injury. Once we get all the way over to the left in the blue area down to speeds of 20 miles per hour, you can see that the cone of perception is far wider, the stopping distance is a third of what it was at 40 miles per hour, and as a result, that survival rate is actually going up exponentially to a ninety percent survival rate. So it's basically the inverse of the death rate at 40 miles per hour. So what this is showing us is that getting traffic speeds down to those less lethal speeds can really make a difference in helping people be able to keep each other safe because generally, when we were out there talking to people, people want to keep each other safe even if that is not always obvious in all of the behavior that is witnessed.

There is really a sentiment that no matter how people are traveling, they do want to keep each other safe. So these laws of physics really came through when we looked at where injury crashes occurred on streets in Beaverton. Nearly all crashes where where someone was injured occurred on a street with a posted speed limit of greater than 30 miles per hour. And, unfortunately, crashes resulting in injury are pretty common in Beaverton. If evenly distributed over ten years, crashes that resulted in any kind of injury occurred approximately every ten hours in the city, and this is this is when we're taking out crashes that occurred on our two major freeways, US 26 and Oregon 217.

More severe crashes involving fatalities or those seriously incapacitating injuries happened roughly every eleven days in the city. And as the previous graphic explained, pedestrians and bicyclists, they really share they they take on a disproportionate share of that risk. When we looked at the crash data, and considered past crashes in Beaverton, forty per forty two percent of pedestrians and twenty eight percent of bicyclists involved in a crash were killed or seriously injured. That is compared to six percent of crashes involving motorists. Most of these serious injury or fatal crashes, they were occurring at intersections and on major roads, particularly arterials with multiple wide lanes, high traffic volumes, and those elevated speeds.

So the third takeaway is that people are are feeling forced to drive for all the trips they're taking, or they're feeling disconnected from parts of the city. Many said that they feel forced to drive because they don't feel safe traveling in other ways, walking, biking, or taking public transportation. Others who can't drive or don't drive indicated that they they're feeling cut off from parts of the city, because of the safety concerns that are out there. So those risks really translate into where folks feel comfortable walking and biking. These high speed street speeds high speed streets, are essentially acting as barriers to getting to the key destinations that people wanna get to.

To illustrate this, we created a map of Schiffler Park located in Downtown Beaverton. You can see in the center of the map, the park, you can see several red lines on the map. These are streets where the posted speed limit is greater than 30 miles per hour or 30 miles or or 30 miles per hour or greater. So using this park as an example, we wanted to understand a couple of things. The first thing we wanted to understand was who could access the park in roughly ten minutes without having to cross over one of the 30 mile per hour streets, so that's the dark blue area here.

The second thing we wanted to understand was who is within a ten minute walk, but they're being cut off from it because of the the 30 mile per hour roads, and you can see this in the hatched area. So these are areas where you're gonna have to cross over, you know, fast moving traffic to get to it. You can see the entire South Side Of Allen, so that neighborhood, and then East Of Hall Boulevard over by Elsie Steuer Center also is it has one of these streets. The third thing is is if you're trying to get a make a crosstown trip, you can see that there are several, of these streets that you would have to traverse, and contend with, all of which that create real and and also psychological barriers for a person who is traveling. So we heard this from a lot of folks that just crossing these large, noisy, fast streets just feels really uncomfortable and safe unsafe.

Even if they're doing it, they're not necessarily feeling great about it. So slowing down speeds on these streets, redesigning intersections to get folks across it, providing more protection for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, we're really seeing that these actions could potentially help expand people's comfort zones, right? And in turn, when you expand that comfort zone, you're also expanding connections and opportunities for folks. But we're not starting from scratch. We do have some things to build on.

For example, 87% of the sidewalk network has a basic level of completeness, so meaning that means that pedestrians can be physically separated from traffic on a raised sidewalk, walking or rolling around the city, that does not mean that they are 80 accessible or that they're all well maintained, and I'll get back to that in a minute, but in general, 87% have a sidewalk. On the right, you can see a map of pedestrian facilities in the city, All the areas with blue, pink, or purple lines are areas where there's either a sidewalk on both sides. Those are the blue, and if there's a trail, it's pink or purple. Areas with red and yellow lines are areas where either there's a sidewalk gap on one or both sides, and you can see that we do have pockets, where this is the case over in the West Slope area, for example, but, in general, most streets in the city have sidewalks. In terms of access to destinations, all destinations are accessible by car.

And thinking about transit, downtown has several lines serving it, many converging at Beaverton Transit Center. Beaverton Transit Center is is the third most busy transit center in the entire Portland Metro Region, so it does see a lot of activity. Fourth takeaway is that community members do have a strong interest in walking, biking, and taking transit if it feels safe, comfortable, and connected. Most people said that they would choose to walk, bike, or ride public transit more often if that experience made them feel safe and if it was more convenient. And this interest really spanned all age groups, especially, when talking about, short and local trips.

So the quality of the facility really matters. Having something people will use is more, is is about more than just the existence of that facility. A great example of this are bike facilities where we have painted lanes on over half of major streets in the city, but we still heard from folks that they don't actually see them as being viable, because they still don't feel safe, using those facilities. The fifth community takeaway was that different groups have different needs, but the common theme that we all want safer, more accessible streets. You know, we heard from young people, they want to get to better ways to get to school, part time jobs, parks, places to hang out with friends, older adults, people with disabilities want smoother sidewalks, safer crossings, accessible transit stops.

Caregivers, we heard, they're wanting to feel confident that they can, send their children or older adult family members out there, and that they can travel safely and independently of them. And then the sixth takeaway is that people supported the the future street designs that we put out there, the the designs that prioritize safety, comfort, and community. Again, for this activity, we have participants look at the images, and we got their thoughts on them. And, generally, people like wide sidewalks, high visibility crossings, those tree lined streets, and that idea that streets could be a place for gathering and for community. Many also expressed a desire for for having spaces defined for each travel mode, and the speeds and designs that reduce speeds, and and help protect folks outside of the car.

So with this in mind, I'm just gonna go through each of the modal networks, pedestrian, transit, bike, motor vehicle, and consider how it aligns with the vision for the updated transportation system plan. So we'll start with the pedestrian network. While the pedestrian network should arguably be the most accessible to everyone, it is currently not accessible to all. We have missing or inadequate sidewalks. We've got missing or inadequate ramps, unmaintained sidewalks, for example, where tree roots might, you know, pop it up, creating a hazard, and this is preventing some folks from being able to use the network, either forcing them to forego travel altogether sometimes or to move into moving traffic, right, causing a safety issue.

Considering safety, the risks are particularly heightened, as we talked about, for people walking, particularly at intersections and driveways where there is a potential for that collision to happen and in areas where lighting is low. It's the least expensive and least environmentally impactful mode, but if the quality is lacking and we have a lot of negative externalities like noise or exhaust, it can keep stress levels pretty high for folks and keep people from thriving when they're actually engaged in the activity itself. Transit access is mixed. It's higher, like I mentioned, in the downtown, and higher and denser, more connected areas. In areas that are less dense and less connected, there is less access to public transportation services, for example, in single family residential areas.

So taken from the perspective in a person's entire trip, that completion and quality of the pedestrian network really affects the reliability of being able to get to the transit stop itself. Likewise, the reliability of transit service can be fraught if transit vehicles get stuck in in the general purpose traffic. Taking the bus or train, it's pretty affordable way of traveling. TriMet does offer reduced fares depending on a person's circumstances, and it's pretty safe. Taking the bus or train is pretty safe.

It's something that TriMet's thinking about all the time because even if it is safe, if people don't feel like it's safe, which we know can be the case, particularly if folks are unfamiliar with the service or don't take it very often, then they're probably not gonna consider using it. So we did hear that from people as well. On the sustainability front, TriMet is making progress toward electrifying their fleet, replacing diesel buses with electric buses, and I just wanna do a shout out to Beaverton School District. They're not a public transportation agency, but they do transport a lot of children in buses, and they are also making great strides to electrify the school bus, the school bus fleets. The bike network is the network that needs the most work in Beaverton.

As it stands now, it offers some painted separation from moving traffic, but not typically barrier or grade separation. The facilities are often located along this fast moving traff along that fast moving traffic, and even spaces that are dedicated or delineated by paint, it often drops off once you get to the intersection. So it's not taking people all the way through the point where there is the most conflict. Biking is a relatively affordable mode of transport compared to owning a car, but it's not as affordable as walking. Again, it's generally a low impact mode, but the way the network is designed today, similarly to the pedestrian network, If the quality isn't there, it's keeping stress levels high and keeping people from thriving while they're they're engaged in that activity.

The motor vehicle network is the most complete of all the modal networks. From a connection standpoint, it's a high level of completion. Destinations are accessible by car. However, from a user perspective, approximately one in three people can't drive, so it's not directly accessible to about a third of the population. It's also a really expensive mode of travel both from an infrastructure standpoint and a user standpoint, standpoint, costing people on average about $12,000 a year to own, maintain, and operate a car.

Assuming a household has two cars, that means that they're spending about $2,000 a month on on being able to get around, and that's a pretty major expense for folks that they could be investing in other things, like housing or education and health care, and it hits households on tight button budgets particularly hard as a percentage of their income. Finally, car travel is the most environmentally harmful mode from every angle. Noise, air, water, greenhouse gas emissions, nearly half, so 48% of greenhouse gas emissions in Beaverton are coming from vehicle travel. That's a pretty steep price to pay that's going to have both immediate and long term consequences. Those numbers were just updated through our climate action plan update.

Seventh, final takeaway is that community members want action, and they want clear communication. Many are ready for change. They want to see changes sooner rather than later. Some suggested quick build projects, pilot projects to test new ideas. We also heard that people, are frustrated, and it's unclear what the responsibilities are between various entities. We have so many different responsibilities, city, county, other agencies. We heard that from folks as well. So I'm gonna pause here. I have a couple more slides about what's going forward, but I wanna stop here and, open it up to hear if you have any, interested in knowing if you if any of the engagement takeaways, caught your attention, if you have any questions, if you have anything to add.

Any questions? Yes. Commissioner Metlower.

You in in one of the takeaways, it said that the community members were looking for safe crossings. Did they define what safe crossing meant to them?

Okay. That meant, it meant many different things to people, but people did provide examples. One might just be the timing of a signal. A lot of older people and children just can't make it across very fast. And so that was certainly something that came up a lot. I think something we heard from people with disabilities is that we have inconsistent signals at different intersections, even at the same one, and it can be confusing for people moving through the city having to think differently at every single one. Those are a couple of examples.

I would say there are probably many.

Any other questions? Commissioner McEvoy.

Yeah. Thanks for that. That was a a lot of information. I appreciate you sort of making it digestible. I thought it was an interesting observation, the number of different jurisdictions that have some sort of authority over various streets in Beaverton. And I wondered, are there any of the main roads, are there any in particular where that's the case and where, you know, where sort of working across or collaborating with those different partners is problematic, not because of the partners, but but just because of the complexity of working across jurisdictions? Are there any sort of hotspots for that in the city?

We have a lot of streets that we have partners owning and maintaining. There are a lot of the big streets, so BH Highway, Canyon, Murray Canyon and BH Highway State. Right? But a lot of the other ones, Murray, Shoals Ferry, those are all county. And we in some of the material that we'll put out, on the website, you can look and see who owns what.

I think we even have that in some GIS file somewhere on our website outside of that, but we'll have that up there. I think, really, the city can advocate for what it wants on those streets. Right? And that's gonna be really important because we we we have the land use authority, around it oftentimes. Right?

And usually, I think they defer to us for what's above the curb, and then they control, usually, their design, what's below the curb. So I think being able to communicate what our expectations are as a community for how that street fits into the place is gonna be really important. Whether we have control over all of that, not necessarily. As we move into prioritization and thinking about the network, I think that it'll be really important to consider how to get folks across them because they are really serving as some major barrier points within a larger network. And so while we might not necessarily be able to, like, have a stretch designed differently.

I think knowing where our priority points to get people over safely and continue those journeys and not have it be be such a barrier is gonna be really important.

I have a quick question. How did they determine who will be the governing body for the street? I never would have guessed Murray would fall under the county as opposed to the city of Beaverton.

I have no idea. I'm not sure how the how it originates. I know that, you know, there are areas where where there has been conversations, especially at the state level, about jurisdictional transfer. You've probably maybe heard about that in, there's, like, 82nd Avenue over in in Portland. They just went through a huge process, and it is a huge process, and it's an expensive process to do a jurisdictional transfer transfer and basically get control over it.

And, so there are places where that is possible, but you are also taking on all of the maintenance responsibilities and costs and all of that. You get control over the design, but you get also control over all of those expenses. So I think, you know, there's something to be it's a conversation to have with our partners, and I don't know the the original I don't know how that gets determined originally. I don't know where that gets worked out.

Anas Lutinski?

Thank you. Anas Lutinski, playing division manager. Hi. You might not have seen me sneak in. Was late.

I just wanted to add a little bit more basic information for the Commission's benefit. Some of the jurisdiction of our roadways is really a legacy over time. As Beaverton grew as a city, the city boundaries, moved to incorporate areas which were previously part of unincorporated Washington County, and the practice of taking over jurisdiction of all of those streets is not necessarily completely consistent over time. However, when it comes to major arterials and state highways, those are actually part of more regional or statewide networks. So, for example, when we look at Beaverton Hillsdale Highway or Canyon, these are actually seen by the state as state highways, and they serve a purpose, which is that larger scale network.

Likewise, major arterials in Washington County are frequently not just currently under their jurisdiction of the county, but the county has a policy interest in managing the countywide transportation network. Now, there's a lot of crossover there. Obviously, the city has a lot of interest in what happens within city boundaries, and we have lots of coordination. We have shared responsibilities as well. But I hope that provides a little bit of the context about kind of who has responsibility and the authority to make decisions about those streets.

It does, and it raises another question, at least for me. It's like the question I have is a TV highway is probably one of the worst roads I've seen as far as safety goes, and you can hit major areas there where it's just dark. That would fall under the state. So how does our how does the city of Beaverton address the safety issues there then?

So we do work with them on several things, and there are two projects that are ongoing that you're gonna see changes hopefully along parts of this the street. So there, I believe between Hawken and where the other boundary is, maybe one seventeenth. I'm not sure. There's gonna be safety, pedestrian crossing, safety enhancement, investments going in. Then there's also, the TriMet has been working with a number all of the jurisdictions up and down on the BRT, the bus rapid transit project for the Line 57.

And that that that with those projects, often comes upgrades or investments in a lot of the other things that support people getting to the transit stop, so sidewalks and lighting and things like that. So, hopefully, between those two, there will be some changes, some sooner than than than others. The the safety project I mentioned is is going forward right now. BRT project is still trying to find funding and and getting off the ground more.

That was my next question is funding. So in that situation, would the city pay for those improvements, or would that be a state thing, or would it be a

So larger projects like that often have, multiple funding sources coming at it. You gotta piece together a lot a lot of of of money. And, typically, the city does provide some contribution to a portion of that, but that that all that gets worked out in the details as the project moves on.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions?

We talked a lot about speed, and I just wondered, you know, for instance, I'm looking at at Hall up through sort of the center of the city and Cedar Hills, and that's all within city jurisdiction, it looks like. What would it look like to change the speed, whether it be through changing posted speed limits or through traffic calming of some kind? Is that feasible, and what are the trade offs that are associated with that? Are there other sort of changes that would need to accommodate changes in traffic then as well?

Yeah. That's a great question. So in further stages of this planning project, we are gonna look at a couple of different major corridors that we have control over, that being Cedar Hills Boulevard. Right? We're interested in looking from basically TV Highway up to Walker.

That's the part that we control. Then also Milliken, so from here, essentially, out to TV Highway, and then also Hall Boulevard, so picking up where the loop left off, essentially, 5th down to around the 217 area. And in all of those cases, we're really interested in in considering what the trade offs could be for being able to reallocate space, do some of those traffic calming measures in in that area, and what that could look like at a very high level. It's not gonna be a corridor level study. It's just gonna be more of, like, what if.

Right? And, generally, it's if traffic volumes are around 20,000 ish, give or take some, there's there's considered to be an opportunity to be able to, like, actually reallocate some of those space, and all of those have have traffic volumes at a level that it's worth looking at for us to kind of have that conversation and begin to kind of open it up as a preliminary one.

Interesting. I've got one more follow-up. Sorry. This is just fun stuff. There was a really interesting comment in the report too about how a lot of these corridors are designed for peak travel times. That sort is, like, I think it was seven to nine and then whatever the quote is. And that inefficient use of space the rest of the time, the majority of the time. Right? Just speaking sort of high level, how what what solutions are there? What creative solutions are there to make more efficient use of that space so that it still can accommodate that sort of pulse in traffic but isn't just otherwise an empty four lane highway the rest of the day?

I'm trying to understand exactly the angle. Like, mean, people are still gonna use it. We still need to move vehicles through the city. Sure. So I think the other part is is that it's always there's always gonna be a lot of people wanting to travel at those times. Like, those are very popular times, and we're growing as a city. So we don't have a lot of space also. So those things are always just gonna be true. You know? It's always not gonna be the greatest ride at those times of day, and you can't really build your way out of it, to be honest.

So I think part of it is demand management. Right? So how can you make it so you take some of those folks off of there and open it up a little bit, right, or provide more more alternatives for people to be able to go. So that's that is part of it. And then the other part of it is, and sometimes these can be related, is also really thinking about the speed controls, right, like, can you do to prevent when it is a huge wide open street because there's no traffic on it?

It's giving cues to drivers to go really fast because that's what they're feeling. Like, how can how can what design things can we do when we're looking at sort of reallocating that space to that, like, that can give people different cues, psychological cues when they're going down a street that's that is wide open.

Any

other questions? All right. Thank you very much.

I have a couple more slides if you want to know what's going to come next.

Would be great.

Is that okay?

Those.

Okay. So this is talking about where we're at in the process. We completed the existing conditions part of it, and we are on schedule to begin taking a look at what those those those modal networks look like, so the pedestrian bicycle transit motor vehicle networks, how they're gonna look, how they could function in the future. We're gonna begin that in this coming month, and then you can expect to see us again sometime in the spring, with with some of these ideas. So as we move into defining what a future system should look and function like, we'll be doing that in a couple of different ways.

First is by defining what's included in a complete network, so we'll be finding that for those modal networks. We'll also be looking at how a network functions on its own and in relation to other networks. Right? So the good example, again, how the pedestrian network can support somebody trying to get to the bus network. We'll be drafting maps and definitions, what could be included in these complete networks, and expectations for various components, like street crossings and street designs that are in alignment with the vision and goals for for the plan itself.

So second way is really thinking about that quality of experience for users, so defining what we want for the future in a complete street way. And then finally, I just want to wrap up with some key actions that can advance multiple community goals at once, and you've seen these before, but they're I think they're really important. I want to emphasize it. This is what council voiced support for back in April. These actions include reducing vehicle speeds, completing those networks, the pedestrian bicycle transit networks, completing streets to really achieve those target speeds, that separation and comfort for those vulnerable users, redefining and repurposing public right of way, and placing focusing attention on getting people to where they need to go for those short trips that they're making around town.

So what we heard from the community, we had these actions. We proposed those six months ago, and, we heard from the community really reinforces our commitment to use them, to guide future stages of work for this project. So that is all I've got. I just wanted to show you what was on the horizon.

Great. Thank you. We are now at the public testimony portion of this agenda item. We will take testimony for those attending in person first, followed by those attending via Zoom webinar. For those of you viewing via Zoom webinar, please communicate by using the raise hand feature in your Zoom menu bar. If calling in, press 9 to alert the chair that you would like to speak. As a reminder, testimony is limited to the work session item. Do we have any yellow cards? Alright, no yellow cards. We have no one testifying in person.

We will move to the Zoom webinar. Via Zoom webinar, for those viewing via Zoom webinar, please communicate by using the raise hand feature of your Zoom menu bar. If calling in, 9 to alert the chair that you would like to speak. Is there virtual public testimony? No. Alright. Staff has stated that we do not have any public testimony via the web. Does staff have any final comments?

Thank you for having us this evening.

Yes, you're most welcome. We'll move on to the next agenda item. The final item on the agenda is approval of the meeting minutes from 10/01/2025 and 10/15/2025. Do I have a motion? Here, I move to approve the October 1 meeting minutes as submitted. And do we have a second?

I second.

And we'll open it to discussion. Any discussion? Alright. A vote will be taken by roll call. When your name is called, please say a or nay. Commissioner McEvoy. Aye. Commissioner McCann.

Aye.

Commissioner Mettler. Aye. Commissioner Speck.

Aye.

And commissioner Winter. Aye. I I'm an aye for chair Adams as well. Motion passes unanimously. We are now adjourned at

We did meet, chair. Due to October 15. Oh. Set of minutes.

I couldn't combine them. Okay.

We need a second motion.

So we need a second motion on the 10/15/2025. Chair, I moved to move to submit October 15 minutes as submitted for approval. Right. Do we have a second on the

Second.

Perfect. Any discussion? Perfect. We'll now take a vote by roll call. Your name will be called. Please say aye or nay. Commissioner McEvoy. Aye. Commissioner McCann.

Aye.

Commissioner Winter. Aye. Commissioner Mettler. Aye. Commissioner Speck. Aye. And I'm an aye as well. It's by unanimous that passes. So at 07:18, we are now adjourned.