Bicycle Pedestrian Commission - Regular Meeting

days of 1926, I call this meeting to order at 7 o'clock p.m. and ask staff to proceed with the bill.

Vice Chair Madhupatla.

Yes.

Commissioner Ganga.

Yes.

Commissioner Marcy. Yes. Commissioner Wolf. Yes. Thank you so much.

First agenda item tonight is the approval of the meeting minutes from our July 15 meeting. The draft meeting minutes have been provided with the packet that we received. And I'm asking for feedback, corrections, or a motion to approve those meeting minutes as they were provided.

Thanks.

to make the motion to approve the meeting minutes.

Thank you. So we have a proper motion. I'm waiting for a second on this motion. I can second. Thank you. So we have a motion. Second. Let's conduct the vote. Approval of the meeting minutes. Chair, listen back. Yes. Vice Chair Madhupatli.

Yes. Commissioner Ganga.

Yes.

Commissioner Marcy? Commissioner Wolff?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. That takes us into postponements. Do we have any postponements from prior meetings?

No.

Thank you. Our next item on the agenda is for all communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved. for any topics that are not on the agenda tonight. So anybody who wants to address the commission on matters that are not on the agenda tonight, this is the opportunity. And speakers are limited to three minutes per speaker. Do we have any oral communications for topics that are not on the agenda, either in the room or remote?

We have no speakers, Jim.

No speakers, thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Okay, wonderful. Let's bring in the speaker.

Welcome.

Hello? Hi, we can hear you. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Okay, thank you for this opportunity. I spoke this subject in a bicycle pedestrian commission meeting and park and recreation commission meeting and the council meeting last year, but nothing improved or nothing happened. Bicycle is considered a vehicle as it is a machine used to transport the people and is subject to the same traffic law as motor vehicle. For the reason riding a bicycle on the sidewalk is prohibited because unsafe for the both cyclist and pedestrian. City Memorial Park specific plan said, since the park does not feature any designated bicycle trails, bicycle riding in the park is discouraged due to the potential conflict with pedestrians. However, city has not prohibited bicycle riding in the park. People were injured by bicycle in the Memorial Park. I know people who were injured by bicycle. An elderly woman was taken to hospital. I was almost hit by bicycle a few times. Even my dog was almost hit from back. There are many families with small children, seniors, seniors who use walker or cane, people with baby stroller, people with dog, people are using air pod, and the people using cell phone in the park. Those people cannot move quickly when the bicycle comes so fast. especially especially bicycle come from back and e-bike and e-scooter right so fast as several women were walking in the park then e-bike came from back so fast almost hit um and We do not have enough time to move, especially they come so fast from back. I almost hit yesterday. No longer safe place, especially for people and children who are walking, jogging, and playing. Cyclists and pedestrians cannot share the narrow walkway in the park, and this city built a bike lane just like a street and protect pedestrians. There are many cyclists trail in Cupertino, so they should go trail to Cupertino. ride a bike. Otherwise, there are many more people injured in the park. But especially e-bike, we need some kind of regulation. And people said there's no regulation and no sign so they can park any place they want, they said.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Nori. I appreciate the input. We actually do have on the agenda tonight a topic on e-bike, particularly e-bike safety, which also includes some of the topics around sidewalks and things like that. So we may likely cover some of the topics that we're addressing today in today's meeting, but if it's not sufficiently addressed, we will certainly be able to bring this back to the Commission in a future meeting. We would love to certainly take this seriously in the city.

Is it okay to comment on this?

Normally, we don't comment. We're not supposed to comment normally. But I think we acknowledge the feedback. And maybe as part of the discussion, we can cover this.

The commenter, if she wants, is welcome to attend that other part of this.

Yes, indeed. Nori, if you are able to join us a little bit, we'll stay on for... Okay, sure. back the eBike topic later today, and you are welcome to speak again on this topic specifically. But thank you for joining us tonight, and thank you for bringing up that feedback. Any more topics that are not on the agenda? Any speakers that are looking for presenting tonight?

Thank you. All right. Wonderful.

That takes us into our next topic, which is our first item on the new business side. And the topic is the 2026 Cupertino Fall Bike Fest. I understand you have a presentation from Fairbanks to talk to us about the planning and coordination of this event coming up in September.

Thanks, Richard. Shlopak? Thank you all for having me here today. As you know, Bike Fest is our yearly celebration of all things bike, hopefully, and teaching people how to use them safely and not zoom up on unsuspecting pedestrians from behind while riding them. This year, we're keeping with our same theme of the last Saturday in September. So Saturday, September 26th, the festival runs as usual from 1 p.m. The hub of locations is on Civic Center Plaza, and bike rides go from there, but the main activities are on the plaza. The lineup is similar to previous years, but we've got some new things to keep things interested, kind of generally divided into educational activities and fun activities. On the educational side, we've got our helmet checks. Public health will be out giving...

chosen as they've been.

We're doing bike checks this year. It's a little bit different. It'll be in two parts, kind of going back to what it was a number of years ago. People will get in line. The first step will be an ABC quick check done by one of our local bike clubs. And they'll check for things like, do all you need is to pump up your tires, right? And do like super simple things that maybe the high schoolers can help you with. Or does your bike need actual repair, in which case you have to continue forward in this line and go see the Community Seconds of California for some real bike repair. We'll also have a demonstration from a group out of Cupertino High, kind of a tutorial on how to clean your bike chain. They've done this a couple of times at school now. It's not going pretty well, so we're going to bring it to Bike Fest. We have our usual bike rodeo for the little kids to learn how to stop at a stop sign and look four ways before they cross the street. And we've got bike rides and games and demos. And Silicon Valley Hopper will be there as well with their bike racks so people can practice putting their bikes on the car and realize that, yes, you can ride somewhere on your bike. And if you're too tired to ride home, hey, you can call a hopper and get a ride home. For our fun activities, we've got our blender bike smoothies again. Those are always a big hit. Rock the Bike is coming back with their sledgehammer and their spin art. They were brought as a one-time thing for our 10th anniversary, and people love them so much that we just keep having them back. Button making from the Sustainability Commission. Bike jewelry is back. This is kind of a little bit of recycled use, upcycling, and a little bit of new things combined to make some cool bricks. And I think bicycle handlebar tassels, I'm not sure. Bike decorating, face painting, story time, and then we also have something new this year. I don't know if anyone has seen Climate Carnival yet. The high schools have started having him out. He builds... big wooden versions of popular games like Chutes and Ladders, but then he kind of rebrands it a little bit. So for instance, I don't know exactly what they are, but like you bike to school, so you go up the ladder. You take a car when you could have taken the bus instead and you go down the chute, that kind of thing to start conversations about sustainability and active transportation. So his games are quite fun. So we'll have him spread out under the trees. We'll have three rides this year again. This is very similar to last year. We'll be bringing back the Little Leap since somehow in four hours, preschool-aged children rode 72 miles. So we'll do it again, see how far they can ride this year. We are redoing our scavenger hunt ride to Wilson Park. And then we will also do our Tour de Cupertino. This one, as you can see, we're going somewhere completely new. We've been doing the same general loop for the last number of years. But this year, we have a lot of new bike lanes in town. And it's time to change it up a little bit. So instead of going to the west and going a loop around town that way, we're going to go to the northeast. And so we'll go up Torrey. Go check out the two-way bike track in front of Lawson because, come on, let's face it, that's the first town. Go up and around up Blaney. Go over on Homestead because our half of Homestead has bike lanes, so we can, you know, subtly show that off. Come down Tonto. We'll do a loop through Main Street, both to show off Main Street and because the green is a convenient spot to wait for water, have a little break. and then come back around through Creekside Park and the Red Nut Creek Trail. All of that's about seven and a half miles. And the Black Mountain Composite High School mountain bike team is coming out again to chaperone that ride for us. So that's very cool that we get the high school riders out to kind of demonstrate, hey, there is fun things to do with bikes besides just ride along with your parents. The change this year is the scavenger hunt ride. For those, I think most of you were there last year. It was awesome that we got 270 some odd people to ride that ride, but it's too many. You can't have one ride with 300 people on it. So this year we're kind of reimagining it. Instead of sending everybody off all at once, we're going to send them off in waves every couple of minutes and kind of stretch it out. So the thought is if we have about the same number of people, they'll all leave in about half an hour. They'll kind of go around. And the scavenger hunt in the park will still happen, but it's been reimagined too so that people can come through that in waves as well. So the only difference to the ride, oh, and I apologize, I have the old map here, is that we'll actually go in through Vicksburg into Wilson Park and then come out the bridge so that we don't have traffic going in and out of Wilson on the bridge at the same time. So we'll just de-conflict that. What this does mean, though, is we need not so much bike chaperones as like people to stand on corners and act partly as guide and partly as crossing guard. And we need, we're thinking 18 to 20 people. So we're very much hoping that all of you are available. And if you don't mind spreading the words to friends and other people who might be available and we'll try it out this way. And hopefully this keeps the chaos down a little bit. It'll be more, it's modeled a lot more after the way Parks and Rec does Big Bunny rather than just a straight ride. The timeline is similar to last year. The thing that's changing is the bike rides are being pulled a little bit early to account for that extra, it's going to take half an hour to get the ride off instead of sending them all off in one wave. So the mayor is going to come at 1230 and give the usual address, and that will kick off the raffle for everybody who participated in the scavenger hunt. That's kind of the short synopsis of BIFEST. I don't know if there are any questions.

Thank you, Birgit. Do we have any clarifying questions from the commission first before we go into discussion?

Are there chaperones needed for the long ride, or is it just the Black Mountain composite team that's going to take care of it?

I will get back to you if something happens. But as of right now, the mountain bike team will do that. All of their coaches, they go through a rigorous training program, which is really cool. So they do first aid and safe sport and wilderness first aid training kind of as part. So they have their own way of chaperoning. And then we have our own way. So that one year we mixed it. It didn't work so well. So we're separating.

What do you think we as commissioners can be most helpful?

We really need the chaperones crossing guards on the short ride, if you're available. If you're interested in being... The short ride being a scavenger? Yep. And we're also looking for photographers, if any of you want to... The ride photography is tricky because I can't have a high schooler do it because a lot of those pictures are taken from the road. So we need an adult to take ride photography pictures.

So I don't have any more questions.

Yeah, no, I always enjoy doing this, but unfortunately this year I'm going to be missing it. I've been traveling to India and I'll be returning on that day.

Oh, so you can return.

I'm coming. I checked my calendar.

So it doesn't mean we have to, uh, I mean, if we stagger it out, the scarages are up for over a period of 30 minutes. So that means we kind of block those roads for 30 minutes. Is there kind of support from the sheriff? Because even last year, it took probably 15 minutes until we got everybody through. But now, if we stagger it out, it's probably going to be, what, 40 minutes that we have to stop this.

So we're hoping that by staggering the start, it won't be one mass of bike riders that lost the whole road, right? We're hoping, we're trying to send off only about 50 at a time, and then they'll have instructions stay to the side. And so that even though the ride will take longer, we'll be less intrusive on the city.

Do you think in between those rates, there will be park traffic in the city?

I mean, there's not going to be too much car traffic that follows the ride. But there would definitely be car traffic going across traffic, right? And that's why we want the chaperones and the watching, because we'll, in addition to keeping the riders safe, like asking the cars to stop, there will also be ask the riders to stop and let a bunch of cars go through before they dispatch. So that's, again, not something uncomfortable asking a bunch of teenagers to do. So I'm really looking for adults for that, those positions.

I mean, from experience, even in every wave, there's solid riders, and there's riders that take off holding in support. So I think we will probably block the roads for quite some time.

Yeah, and I'm kind of expecting the waves will kind of merge, and the faster riders will make their way to the front, and the slower riders will separate themselves. We talked about if there was a way to get people to self-select from the get-go. There's just no way. You ask people, well, are you a slow rider or a fast rider, and they're all going to say that.

It's all relative, right? So. Okay, understood. The sheriff is present as well?

We do not typically have the sheriff there. We find it's overkill. If this doesn't work, then we might have to go back to that.

Looks like it crosses Bellini twice. Yes. Because I've done this in the past, and I think what happens is that, well, when you have one group, the drivers start to get upset if they wait too long. So you kind of have to use your judgment and then stop the riders and let the traffic come through for clear out, and then you go across again. So even with two groups, you might have to do that.

Right, but that's the hope, right? If we're sending groups out, that the riders will be more patient and be told, hey, you're going to have to wait and let cars go through.

So, but again, why- It's a little bit of an experience, so we'll see how it's- Yes. Some risk to, I mean, I think we probably, we as chaperones probably have to also help manage the- a lot of the contracts in the past as well. Walking paragraph 45. Exactly.

It has to be both ways. And hopefully this will be less of an impact to the residents than it was last year.

We have people at the Shepherd Resorts that have the rivalry that they have to go.

So we're going to do, we didn't do route arrows for the short ride last year, but we'll do them this year. So people will have the route arrows and then at all the big intersections, there'll be a chaperone, right? And then you'll have a front person and a sweet person and then a couple in the middle. A lot depends on how many signups we can get. Yeah. So. But I'm hoping people won't get lost. It's the batching people that I'm concentrating on.

Yeah. Before we go into the further discussion, let me ask if there is any public speakers from the public in the room or on the video on this topic.

We have no speakers here.

Thank you. So getting back into the commission, if there is any more discussion or questions, Anything else you would need, hear it from us here in terms of preparations, support on the day. It sounds like chaperone for the scavengers is really our mission there.

And then just general advertising too. Oh, I forgot to put it on the slide. So for the first time, we're having food. We'll have breakfast burritos being served. They will actually be served all day for people to buy. But if you looked at the timeline, the ride doesn't get back till 1230. And then the festival's over at one. So we were afraid if we advertise food and people think it's lunch, everyone will just get mad at us because there's no way you can serve 700 people in half an hour. So we're going to market it as breakfast burritos, eat before your ride, fuel up for your ride. And that gives us a couple of hours to serve people. And then the people who don't go on the bike rides can, of course, eat whenever they want.

Is it sponsored by someone or do we're spending money?

So we did find a caterer. It took us a long time, but we found a caterer who's willing to come. So they're charging the festival goers, but they're not charging us. So they're taking the risk that they're going to make enough money that day on their burritos. And we're

It's not subsidized by the city. No, exactly. I'm sorry.

So they're not charging the city, but we don't have to pay them a fixed fee or guarantee them a number of purchases. So that part's really good for the city, but they will charge people who want a burrito. I can't remember what their price list was. I think it's like $11 for a burrito or something.

Okay. You said it was free? No, I don't think so. I believe it's attendee paid, right? Attendee paid, okay.

Just the burritos part, like everything else is free. So we're having to be very careful with the advertising because usually everything is literally free.

So this is the one thing. Food items, pay for it. Right.

But that's also how other things, like Earth Day has done this, pay for your lunch, but there's no fee to participate. Right.

But it's really been put to buy or what it was to buy or something like that.

Great. Very much looking forward. All right. Any other topics on this discussion on this topic? Otherwise, I don't think there's any emotional decision necessarily. It's just more relational. So thank you very much, Birgit. I'm going to close this topic up then. And we are moving into our next item tonight, which is around e-bike and e-moto safety. So this is about the current state of e-bike safety and steps to encourage safe and legal e-bike e-moto safety. Thank you. I'm going to hand it back to you, Birgit, again. Thank you.

So this was...

I think this is a really important topic. I think we kind of touched on it a few times as a commission here on the safety topic, especially on the invite. So I think we're really looking forward to this. Hopefully we can, in the city, make some progress and some steps to improve safety.

So the kind of thought behind this was there's a lot of interest, as you just said, about doing something, but no one's quite sure what to do, like what's effective and what's allowed. So this was designed to, or this was intended to be a, think of it as like a white paper, a literature search on what's out there, right? What are others doing, jurisdictions doing? I wanted to start off with some of our resources. Of course, when we had our e-bike community meeting back in May, the recording from that is available online and will remain there in the foreseeable future. That's all of the great resources that people who want places. And then we also have our flyer of all the summary of all the different classes and types of bikes and the rules around what you can and can't do with them. specific to your email. I know it's an eye chart. That one's also available online. We are also working on an e-modo information campaign based around something like that picture we're working with. The communications team and the video team are working on this because they're way better at designing visual campaigns than just an engineer is. So the big thing here is learning what's an e-bike and learning what's an e-moto. Kind of in general, e-motos are not street legal, so they shouldn't be out there at all. There's a lot of people who don't understand the difference. One thing to put on your radar screen is I don't know if any of you were ever part of the Traffic Safe Communities Network. It was a county-wide effort to talk all things traffic safety, not just bikes, but all things traffic safety from the county perspective. I don't remember when they disbanded. Was it COVID? It's been a number of years, so they're kind of bringing that back. And their first topic is going to be e-bikes and e-motos. And they're targeting a workshop on December 11th to talk about it. More details to come. I don't know exactly what time or how long, but it's coming. So. There's a whole lot of stuff out there about e-bikes and e-motos, so I wanted to start. I don't want to, these are kind of eye charts. We have in your packets, there's a handout that has these that's probably way easier to read. So I just kind of wanted to go over these quickly. This first page is recent California legislation that has already been passed. Some of them seem really straightforward and basic, like wasn't this already a law? But e-bikes must now have a rear red reflector and a white light, or rear red reflector active at all times, not just at night. 8547 makes it illegal to buy a legal e-bike and modify it, so now it's an e-moto. That makes that illegal. The retail restrictions is the big one that they've passed. Places like Amazon and Costco were selling things that were e-moto. Amazon in particular was selling e-motos saying, hey, we're just a pass-through. So the legislation made it, no, sorry, that is your fault if you're selling something illegal. So I don't know if you have any questions on these. I wasn't going to go through absolutely every one because you'll be really bored.

So it is 875 informing. So the police can inform the vehicle and keep it for 48 hours.

Exactly.

No citation, nothing.

It depends on the jurisdiction and what they impounded it for. But it's like a car, right? If you get pulled over for driving without a license, you can't drive that car away. It's impounded, and you have to go fetch it.

I mean, practically speaking, are any of those legislations actually enforced, or is this just a discipline? Most of the legislation, there is no really... I have not heard of any of the patients.

It's starting to be, but you're right. It's giving law enforcement the tools they need to go after things. A lot of the problems that I'm seeing personally is these laws sound really good and they sound really straightforward, but then you talk to the sheriff's officers and they're like, but if a Emoto rides past us and we just see it, we can't be sure it's an Emoto. Right. So I need something more specific to pull them over for. So the bike rides by and it's speeding. Now they get pulled over for speeding. And oh, by the way, this is an Emoto, so I'm going to impound it.

But if it's over 20 miles per hour, it's fine design.

Right. But that's why, like, so they're going to be pulled over for doing specific things that are very concrete. Not because their bike looks like a motorcycle. Yeah. So a lot of these laws are giving them the tools to make things stick.

Those laws cover scooters, too? Or the same model?

No, e-scooters are kind of their own thing. So for the most part, a law that's about e-bikes and e-motos will not be talking about e-scooters. Some of them do, but not all of them. They go pretty fast. I mean, much faster than 28 miles an hour. But oddly enough, there's no speed limit on them. But you do have to have a driver's license to drive them.

It's very weird. A driver's license, but no license on the scooter. That seems...

I didn't make it up. How is the enforcement handled? Like our city can ask to request our city county police or county sheriff to do the enforcement on behalf of Cupertino?

So if we wanted to do some kind of crackdown, I imagine we'd have to work with them. But for the most part, the traffic division's job is to enforce the rule, the vehicle code of conduct. So the vehicle code. So as long as it's in the vehicle code, they should already be doing it.

I guess the operational key word is they should be already doing it. I mean, is it practically happening or... who we as a city have any opportunity to encourage and support enforcement action.

How much back and forth is there with the sheriff's office?

I think you can always engage the sheriffs and plus certain focused enforcement as a partner. It's always up to them to design their own work. Right, but we can certainly have a conversation

There are a number of laws that are in pending legislation, like kind of working their way through the process. It's very interesting. This was a list of 11 at the beginning of the summer. Things have been condensing and going away and kind of coalescing into just these four so far. One is that youth will require an e-bike safety and training program that the CHP will have to design. So all students grades 7 through 12 working at public schools will have to take it. Speedometers, lights, labeling, and speed limit. It's very odd that these bikes don't necessarily have speedometers already or lights. So it's mandated that those are going to be integrated. Just a reminder, these are still pending. So this could still change by the time they become laws, or they could drop off the face of the planet. But it's interesting to know what's going on. San Mateo County is once a pilot program to prohibit children from under the age of 12 from riding an e-bike. right now the only way to do that is to request a special carve out like this there's no legally we can't do that um just willy nilly so this is on a county level could cities also have their own rules or is that really not an option i don't see anything to prevent it but since it's a state of law I don't know that it would be worth the effort to try and get that passed. At the county level, you have a lot more support. San Diego County and Marin County have similar things going, and it's kind of understood that all three of these are pilots and see if they work well, they'll be rolled out to the whole state.

group that you mentioned earlier that's being reformed again called the TSCM. Is that group, is their goal to actually propose legislation like that or what's the goal of that work?

So the, it's Santa Clara County Public Health who is sponsoring that meeting and her goal is, it's really hard to put e-bike laws in place at in individual little pieces, right? Like there's a city piece of it, but there's also a school district piece of it. And since the school district boundaries and the city boundaries don't line up, right, it gets really, really messy. So she's trying to come up with a response to e-bikes and e-motos at the county level so that all school districts and all cities are part of this. And it makes it a little bit easier. Sheriff's Office can enforce it. Right, because it's not, wait, am I sitting in Mountain View or am I sitting in Sunnyvale? What's the law here? Right, that gets a little bit unwieldy.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking right now. If every city has their own rules, right now we need to get all on top of the bond.

Yeah, it's very difficult.

These things we needed at the same time.

Yeah, county levels is the one. Maybe it's the state level. Maybe it's state level.

So those are those, and now...

These are a kind of, think of it as a literature search. I wanted to see what was out there. So these are example school district policies, and there is more information in your packet. I didn't, it needs to be somewhat readable on the screen. So they kind of fall into different classes and different school districts have done different fine details to each of these. But almost every school already has a dismount zone rule, right? You can ride to school, but once you get on campus, you have to get off whatever your wheels are and walk them. Some schools will have a designated bike path that you can ride on this path, but nowhere else. But that's the most, most, almost all schools are you have to walk your bike once you get to campus. Different schools are doing different things with the classes. Some middle schools are allowing class one, but not class, but no throttles. So throttle bands are really big. Other schools are saying, well, okay, 20 miles an hour is okay, but no more than that, right? So there are different variations on what schools are allowing. It kind of goes without saying, but the e-motos, they're not street legal, so they should be banned from campus by default. But school districts are saying, I'm going to put this out in black and white so that parents can question, right, and parents can't. say hey i didn't know it's it's sitting there in black and white a lot of schools are experimenting with registration programs like you have to register your bike before you're allowed to bring it on campus it sounds really really good in practice or sorry in theory but the cities that we know that have tried it it just becomes a barrier to biking right you you have to register your bike and take a class and do all this, I'm not gonna bother. So that has to be tempered a little bit. And then helmet enforcement, again, this is something that is already legally there. Anyone under 18 on a wheeled device has to have a helmet on their head. But again, a lot of school districts are just reiterating that.

That's good, but do you have any of those policies in place?

So we have two school districts, the CUSD and FUHSD. Am I allowed to bring in members of the public who happen to be here? I don't know if I'm...

They can speak during that public comment period.

Okay. So then I will just say that Stanley Kau is here. He's the chair of the FUHSD board.

Great. So we'll invite you, Stanley, once we have the opportunity for the public. Great.

It is my understanding that... Hold my question.

Perfect.

So any other questions on the school district side? Okay, and then these are the ones that are perhaps more interesting to us. What can we do on the city side? We're somewhat limited in what we're allowed to do legally allowed to do because we can't override a vehicle code. So Minimum age limits. So there's a minimum age to ride a bike, an e-bike or an e-scooter, especially on the sidewalk. Sidewalk riding bands. These come in a lot of different flavors. Cupertino already has. You can't ride on the sidewalk over the age of 12 or unless you're accompanying somebody that age. But you could do more. Like you could limit that. You could do away with the little kids. You could make it more. Other cities have allowed sidewalk speed, sidewalk riding, but given it a speed limit. One city, I cannot remember which one, but it's in your packet, did something super interested. They've limited it only little bikes. And there's a size limit on the bike that can be on the sidewalk. And the theory that it's the little kids riding the little bikes who need to be on the sidewalk. And by the time you're in a 29-inch bike, you should be on the road. So that was an interesting twist, I thought.

So the Cupertino regulation is everybody above year age 12 cannot be on the cycle. Right.

So the only way they can legally be on the sidewalk is if they're accompanying a little kid. Right. And then the sheriff's office will usually do an exception if you genuinely think it is too dangerous on the road because there's something in the road or there's construction or something's going on. And so you hop up on the sidewalk to avoid it and then get back in the lane. The sheriff's office will not... penalize you for trying to stay alive. There's interesting ways to do dismount zones. A lot of cities are trying, like downtown, if there's a big crossway where there's lots and lots of people going, sorry, you have to get up and walk. I don't care what you're riding. There's all kinds of trail riding bands. These come in all kinds of flavors. We have some on our trails already. There are others like anything from just no e-devices on a trail, which is what Midpen does, to speed limits, to age limits. So those come in lots of different flavors. Some cities are really aggressively cracking down on the emotos. They're explicitly going out and saying these devices are banned, these devices will be impounded, and things like making it very black and white what the consequences are going to be, and then working with their law enforcement on bigger lockdown efforts on these. California, our law already prohibits passengers on bikes if they're not designed. Like a cargo bike that has two extra seats, that's different, right? But the e-motos where you've got the second person like just kind of perched on the back, that's already illegal. But some cities are finding it's useful to reiterate that in black and white, again, to give the law enforcement more tools. Dangerous riding is the same thing. It's obvious that this should be illegal already, but they call it out specifically. And the interesting one is there's a couple of cases making their way through the courts right now, cases where a minor has been riding an e-device that was illegal and somebody got hurt, whether it's the minor themselves or whether, in one case over on the East Bay, a elderly gentleman was killed. And the courts are holding the parents liable for that because they knowingly bought their kid something that was illegal and dangerous. And then also corollary to that is endangering a minor. So those are some interesting cases to watch. Those are the ones I called out. I think there's a couple more in your packet, but these are the ones that seemed at least unique and different.

So is there any proposal from the staff that what we could do in Cooper?

I made no attempts to propose things. There's so much up in the air going around. I didn't know who would be interested in what. So I wanted to start with these are the types of things that are out there. Obviously, it's an ongoing conversation.

Some cities have. At least they claim success on some of the initiatives like Maureen. I think I've watched this one hour event that the city had out in May, I think. And there was a couple of representatives there from the city who successfully implemented some of those things. So I don't know if... if we should be considering some of those model cities and looking at their specific Because some of those seem like the state will probably regulate over the next few years. But the question is, is there anything we can do proactively as a city to improve safety? Personally, I'm not so seeing the issues with the pedal assisted bikes that go 20 miles an hour. I think it's everything about the throttle assist, it's the faster ones, it's like the illegal ones. Those are the real problems. Question is, do we have the tools, does the sheriff have the tools to crack down on those or not?

And I will say, if you look at the models where they have been successful, it's because the city, county, law enforcement and schools all work together, right? That's when it works because otherwise the kids are amazing, right? They just find ways around, right? So you have to close all the loopholes at once.

Yeah. Any more clarifying questions on this topic before I open for the public? If not, then let me just invite members of the public to speak on this topic, either in the room here or on Zoom.

Would you like to speak?

All right. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Stanley Ho. I'm currently serving at Fremont University as a student, ride a bike or walk to the school campus. It's something where I really encourage and Unless it's street illegal. Otherwise, we really encourage students walk and bike to this campus. And currently we just learned that we have about 10% students are back to the school and we want to increase that. So that's why I come here to learn more about how the city can support students walking back to the campuses.

Yep, thank you. Thank you. Can you ask questions as to what FUSSD is doing? Like some of the examples, enforcement trial policies. Are you proactively considering any policies for eBuy incentives?

Yeah. Well, currently, we don't have any policy. We just follow the city code. We have five high schools, so we are covering six high, six cities, including, but you know, we have three schools. And also we have one school at West San Jose, and one school at Sanibel. And we are not really, up to date for e-bike policy yet. We do have a lot of e-bikes and some of the e-motors in the campus. And we always have our school administrators educate our students and parents. E-motor is illegal. They cannot come to the school. But we don't have a staff or manpower to enforce that because we are open campus. So we are not really having any staff following up if there's a emote who came to the school. As long as they are able to get into school, there's no way we can block it. So basically, we're counting on the CD code if the student writing emotives actually is illegal. And eventually, I think that we should putting out some up-to-date policy as long as city has some policy on that. And we can definitely update our policy to reinforce that.

Would it make sense to do the enforcement through the sheriff right now? I mean, if the students are riding illegal bikes to school, that certainly is not ideal. Of course, there are ways to have the sheriff being a little more present arrival times and departure times.

So, we work with, you know, sheriff very closely. We never call RSO, which is school officials. But they are helping on campuses, general events, or school as some speak. situation happening and sheriff, resource officers will call in. But I don't think that they have the power to come to the school because the ratio is really low. Like Homestead, I visited several times just trying to count the emotives, probably just less than five. So with 10%, which is about, we have at Fremont, at Homestead High School, we have 2,000 students. And the 10%, which is 200 students riding bikes to campus. And probably only have less than 10 e-motors. We have about 50, 60 e-bikes there. Yeah, very few. And sometimes it's hard to, like you just mentioned, sometimes it's very hard to see how they categorize, right? So unless they are really spatial, obvious shapes, otherwise, you know, without professional way to identify them. And that's something that our administrators also need to learn about that. So they need to know how to categorize, right? So identify that's a emotive or a bias.

Wonderful. Thank you, Stanley. Thanks for joining us today.

I have some questions. So you said, you know, you have 10% of the people come by, right? So are you trying to encourage biking, e-biking or both?

Um, well, both, both. Yeah, yeah. So, so it depends, right? So we, we also, some of the students are living a little bit farther away from the campus. So, so e-bikes is a way to save them, you know. um we're also trying to improve our campus so we're going to have a a covered uh bike rack uh will encourage arc there so they will get some coverage so far right now all the the bike ramps are under the sun and we're trying to improve that as well so do you have a breakdown of you know

How many of the 9th graders, 10th graders, 11th and 12th, in that 10%, which is the highest population? I think you can answer this.

So the travel tallies... start to answer that question but can't really because there's no good way to count right if we count bikes you don't know whose bike that is and when we look at the travel tallies there are a lot of classes that at the high school level that are mixed grades and you can't ask the teachers to say okay all ninth graders who bike to school right that's that's too complicated so we don't really have an answer to what grade there is a report out from last february on how many bikes and how many e-bikes and how many e-motos so i can get you a copy of that if you haven't seen it and then at the county level they're talking about recounting that in september so we'll get another update on that i think it would be really fantastic if we could get this discussion on the counts before where the past bikes was just one kind of

unit and we didn't break out regular bikes, e-bikes, e-motors, I think it would be really important for the county to get a better understanding this year And track, but I know this is a little bit off topic. But I think because it's related to it, I think it would be really important to you have another member of the public waiting to speak. Okay. Wonderful. Let's just any, any other questions for Sandy. I have 1 more. And it's just 1 year. Give you a question and then.

Yeah, so what is that? You know, the school district can do to integrate more by, like, for example, the idea that I was thinking was. to give off some credits to them. Like, you know, hey, you guys don't buy this many days a year or whatever, you get this extra credit or whatever. So that might entice people to buy more. But the kids that buy at the early age, they have a tendency to stick to biking, you know, for the rest of their life, right? So we want to catch them at school, middle school, high school level. So if we can do something to encourage them, like, you know, you get a bonus credit here, a bonus credit there for biking, that might encourage people to do it. Just an idea.

Yeah, thank you for your suggestion. Actually, just after we had a safe route to school, work group, working group meeting. And each school within Cupertino city, we have a student representative to attend. And also we have each school, we have administrators attend as a safe route to school. working group meeting and the students are doing a lot of activities encouraging other their, you know, their peers, their classmates to ride by. So at the school district level, we normally having the individual schools, like we mentioned about Fremont High School, which they are Many students are living far away, and they are taking buses to the school, and so it's harder to convert them. And back to lack of homesickness, participation rate is still declining, and we're trying to educate our parents, encourage their students to walk all back to the school. And that's a district can do, but the students are doing a lot by themselves because of high schoolers. Thank you.

Thank you, Sandy. Thank you very much. Let's just switch over to the second speaker.

Our next speaker is Nori. Welcome, Nori.

Thanks for this opportunity. Very quick questions. What about in the park? The e-bike or e-moto or e-scooter, can they be allowed to ride in the park? And the second question is, they should be banned in the park. And the second question is, in Moro, why don't they require like a license plate, just like a motorcycle? Because if there was an accident on the road or a parkway anywhere, we cannot claim to shelf because they run so fast and there's no proof for them, got a license, no license plate. Thank you.

Thank you, Nori. Okay, excellent.

Thank you so much. Let's just bring this back to the Commission now for a discussion on the topic. Obviously, it's a complex topic, but I think it's important for us to keep this as an ongoing topic. I think there is accidents to be waiting. Other cities have taken action. And I think we should, as a city, be a leader, figuring out how we can actually be proactive about it. So I think if there's any discussion that members want to have, I would welcome that.

Yes, I would like to. So there are multiple of the safety issues, especially the kids who are riding these e-bikes or e-motors. not being responsible to themselves as well as to the public. The sense like people on these devices, they are not wearing helmet, right? And then they are weaving through the streets. They're riding on the sidewalks. In the last week, I was in the city of San Jose. And so in a residential street, a small residential street, there was a kid was riding, I couldn't categorize whether it's an e-bike or an e-motor, but then he was just coming in the middle of the road while we were driving and he was not wearing a helmet and we were just weaving through the street. So either he's putting himself in danger or he's putting the motorist in danger or both. Because people wouldn't expect that and try to suddenly stop or do something which may not be safe for either. So that's And same way in the city of Cupertino, I've seen kids, you know, riding on sidewalks. And it's illegal, and that's something that we should look at it. I mean, it's been happening for some time now, and I think this is a good time that people are taking notice of it. And as a city, we should do something about it before some untoward incident. We don't want a KSI because of... e-bikes or e-motors in our city. It's too late. I think it's better for us to do proactively as to whatever we can do as a city, like the city ordinance or something that we can, as a bicycle competition commission, we can recommend to the council. If not in this meeting, at least we should start to draft it and ask the city staff to come back with the proposal so that way it's easier. It saves time for us to delegate this or we can have a subcommittee to go and look into this and then come up with a proposal. Either option is fine. So that's my proposal.

Do we know anything about the ages of These kids that are driving these e-motors and e-bikes, how young are they?

So you can see they're just really starting to hit middle school. I have seen one or two in an elementary school, but very, very few. Middle schools, they're not really there yet, but they're really hitting high schools. So it's the, all the data I've seen is high school, college.

So in Cripple Canyon, you can ride an e-bike on the side of Is that correct? I mean, if you're 12 and under?

Yes.

So, you know, I have a problem with having any bike on the sidewalk just because they have so much, you know, power and acceleration. You know, when somebody's pedaling a bike, it's one thing. When they have a bike that's electrified, it's like, they can go pretty fast. Yeah, that's why I asked what age they're, you know, But, you know, when you're going down Stevens Creek, if you're walking down Stevens Creek, there are kids that are on the sidewalk on Stevens Creek Boulevard on e-bikes and sometimes going pretty fast. I've been walking a walk down Stevens Creek Boulevard, and that is, it really is, I think, a serious safety problem because, you know, they miss you. I mean, they haven't been hit, but, you know, you can do some serious injuries. And the other thing I would say is that there's been this explosion in, you know, I've heard it read or seen in the press where explosion of injuries of kids on e-bikes and e-motives. Sometimes they don't distinguish in the press, the national press. They just throw it all in one bin. But, I mean, they're talking a factor of like 20 times what the accident rate was before. you know, just an explosion of injuries and serious injuries and deaths. So I don't know if that, if parents are aware of that. Usually if the parents are aware of some of these, you know, the injury rates that are associated with some of these things, they're more apt to take action. And, you know, Cupertino is a pretty, I would say it's a pretty protective town. I mean, overall, but I'm just shocked at the number of, you know, that what I see going on in Cupertino with e-bikes, e-motos, and e-scooters too.

The numbers here really show that e-motos are everywhere you see. You see them everywhere. just need to watch, especially like Stephen Street Boulevard. Those are the throttle assisted parks that go like 40 miles an hour or more. That is, I'm really wondering, the laws are here already. You don't need to develop new laws. It's just the enforcement of the law seems to be the problem. I mean, there may be some tuning on regulation and whatnot, but even if you could enforce the existing laws, Like from the school here, it looks like there is no way for the school themselves to do any enforcement about the . But I could be encouraged to help us here to bring safety to those schools. I don't think we should regulate too much bikes, per se, the Class 1 bikes. I think those are great tools for the students that come from a long distance and work out there. But I think it's the other ones that are .

So it is my understanding that the sheriff's office cannot give tickets on school property. So what Stanley said that they can't enforce, that they can't. The school district is responsible for enforcing things on school property. Sheriff's office can do getting to school property on public streets. So that's why it's a joint handshake situation. That is also part of why the sheriff's office was so interested in bringing back that juvenile diversion program, right? Because that's a place to send these kids.

The other concern I would have is like, if you have a protected bike lane and you're on a regular bike, some of these, you know, they're just, if you've got somebody on an e-motor or e-bike, they can easily overtake you. And then there isn't really, sometimes the bikes are just too close together. If one wants to, if the e-bike wants to pass the person on the standard bike. And I don't know if the traffic engineers really have looked into this issue of what's happening when you mix e-bikes and regular bikes together.

I think that's probably part of why some of the districts are restricting use of e-bike. I think it's, what's the, Open Space Authority, Big Ben, is completely blocking any invites, for exactly that reason. That's a little bit aggressive in many ways, but I think the fast ones, the fraudless system, the one in the class threes and whatever, those are the ones that I think they have no place in those spaces.

It's not a black and white topic. It's very gray in many ways. It's an interesting one because it's going to strike a balance between not discouraging kids to take their bikes and what you want to provide some level of safety for the community as a whole, and not just the kids themselves, but also pedestrians and everyone. I think if you look at kind of what, where, to where, and how fast. I think there are questions that we can answer. Some we cannot. But the what, I think to your point, it's very hard to regulate that. Oh, this is a class B or a class 1, class 2. Nobody can differentiate that. So as a city, I don't think we should focus on that. Where people would ride their bike, I think, is a more pertinent question. I think having low electric bikes on sidewalks makes sense in general. And if the parents want to accompany their children on a bike, they don't need any bikes. They can take a regular bike. What I think is important, and I want to go back to the speaker, today's speaker, who mentioned that, you know, there were a lot of people coming by bicycle and having e-bikes, e-scooters, and that person did not feel safe. Heard that also, that feedback from some other members of the community, so it's not the first time. But it's also a question of, OK, if, for example, you take your bike to go to the park, how do you get there? So you're not going to forbid e-bikes in the park. Then we also make it harder for people that we remove an incentive or cyclists to actually take their bike to somewhere and they might think, oh, if I cannot park my bike here because the rack is going to be outside, for example, because bikes are forbidden, then I might go as well with my car and then move an incentive. So we need to be very careful as to what we can want to forbid or not because, again, the incentive should be to make it easy for everyone to ride their bike. But I think the one question that no matter what is relevant for that conversation is how fast. And I think that that's where we all, I think, whether it's a class A, B, C, D, E, it doesn't matter. If you cannot go faster than 20 miles an hour, for example, on a bike lane, then I think we're good. Problem is if these devices go fast, then that's when we're a problem. So that will be my question to staff and Prashant. Is it possible, and I know that might be some issues with A, B, and C, right? some bumpers in the parks to prevent kids from going very very fast that'd be possible we don't know that kind of we didn't saw anything like that having a bumpers okay we'd be innovative and say hey we're gonna do some bumpers in memorial park to prevent these kids from going too fast you mean like speed bumpers it would have to be

How are you going to make sure that they do some tripping?

I'm thinking of older people who might not walk with some issues, but just trying to think out loud.

I guess it's something that will be... Why would we not at the park entrance have a bike right where those bikes can be stored? There's no reason why you have to ride exactly to the park. You can drop your bike at at the entrance of the park.

I can tell you one example of that is if you go, for example, on the Raymack Creek Trail on Wilson Park and leave on the side of, for example, Portal or Price Avenue, you just want to go to the... I'm sure there's always more than a case to be found. I'm just talking about, I mean, Memorial Park was brought up as a place today. Some exits and entrances on multiple ways. and you can go literally through with a bike. And if the bike cannot come, then you have to go all the way.

Just to see the challenge of lots of pedestrians walking at the same place as those 40 miles an hour throttle assist bikes. I mean, that's an accident. There's no question about it. So the way is to keep those fast bikes away. Maybe that's to... I mean, I think you can see, like some cities, I think have completely blocked for all this advice, right? Some counties.

From the public, sorry, from the pathways. I don't think they can do it from the roads.

If you have a license, then fine, probably as well.

Well, no, because something going 40 miles an hour, you know, though, is probably not street legal in the first place. So it gets very gray.

So I think we can on the fly and come up with a solution. So I think there are a few things that are already listed down in this example, city audiences. So our city can do similar ones. So maybe we can take some other cities, a model city, one or two of them similar to our size and then bring forward. So that's what I would recommend the staff to really come up with a proposal and then have a future agenda item where we can specifically discuss it. So they can come up with what are the pros and cons and what are the pitfalls of going one way or the other. Because some cities have done it. It's not that they're banning bytes, any bytes, in fact, not just, you know, e-bytes on sidewalks. So that's one of the things, because the 12, it's very hard to go and ask someone, are you 12 years old, are you like a 10 or, you know, 15? I mean, I see kids here, like high school kids actually riding on e-bytes on the, you know, pedestrian sidewalks. It's quite obvious. I don't think that it's very hard for anyone to really find that. The best way is having a black and white. If they want, they can just write on the street. That's the thing that we could do. I would let the staff really come up with you know, three or four concrete ideas, and then also say what are the pros and cons of either one of them, each one of those ideas. And that way we will be able to have a meaningful discussion here and then make a specific recommendation to the council.

I would like, ideally, I think that it would be more efficient if commissioners could provide some idea of what they would like to see. you know, pros, cons, what might be legal, what might be not. We've sort of presented you all with a list of ideas of what other jurisdictions have got to say. We'd like to hear from the commission what we feel would be appropriate for the team of citizens. If we kind of just develop, you know, we've shown you it's possible. It would be challenging for us to come back to your floor and the commissioner would all agree on it.

So for me, what's important is, you know, as one of the speakers spoke, you know, so I personally have seen it as well many, many times. Mixing bikers and walkers on the same trail is disastrous. And I've tried a few times before during COVID. There are a lot of, you know, new bikers that want to take on the biking. They were not comfortable riding on the road along with me on the road bike. So I took them on the steels. So the issue there is, When you're going at a reasonable speed, like, you know, 15 miles or something like that, and you get closer to the walker, you don't know which side they're going to swing. They might have a dog, right? They might have something, right? So they swing to the wrong side, you know, it's a collision that happens, right? I've seen too many of those, and I avoid going on trails. I stick to, you know, my road. I have a road bike quite a lot. I stick to the roads, right? So I think, you know, there's a memorial park here that one of the residents So we don't want somebody getting injured and suing our city because they got paralyzed or whatever. So that's a serious issue we need to look at. We really need to make everything in Cupertino safe for all types of people, walkers, bikers, and the cars. So with that in mind, we need to come up with ideas. you know, offered by things, right? Giving enough space, right? So that, you know, the cars stay on the car lanes and, you know, but at the same time, bikers, there's a space, enough space between the fast-moving cars and, you know, the bikers. At the same time, the bikers have the ability to get out and get back into the lane, right? To me, that makes sense, right? And so, that's, you know, enforced to some extent no bikers on the walkways because you know yeah at least less than 12 you should allow right because you know they're too young right so we don't put them on the road so it's okay for them and they're not going to go that fast but you know anybody above 12 they will belong on the road not on the sidewalk right so we need to enforce that we need to have so and i think you know if uh sheriff's sites, some of those, we will see, you know, there are parents who get involved, okay, and they will say, no, no, you can't do this. You know, we are seeing people, you know, getting tickets for those now, right? So I think, you know, it's more of an enforcement. I'll give you an example. Woodside, Kenyatta Road, you go up and down. I do that every Saturday. There are two stop signs. Most of the people, most of the bikers stop there. They call, I stop. I've seen enough people get into it. I know exactly what you're saying. There's a car hiding there in the bushes, and you run past that stop sign, you go to the command area. So what I'm saying is, you're coming too fast. It doesn't matter what are the speed, I stop it. As I know, I've seen enough people getting tickets. I think that's one way to change the situation, where we have to enforce the rules, and we need to create Because we really want to be safe for pedestrians and bicycles, as well as cars. If somebody gets injured, right, I don't think the other people in the car will get nervous. They will struggle to drive for some time because of what happened.

I think we as a commission, and I heard from pretty much all of us here, that we feel like this is something we need to tackle as a city. Safety is... one of the things we need to pack. It seems like there is some issues coming up there. There's enough data. I think we are also probably well equipped to help the city as a commission. The question seems like in the room here is, should we as a commission come forward with a set of recommendation or is the city coming forward with the staff coming forward with a set of recommendation as the basis for discussion? We take it on as a permission, you would probably have to form a subcommittee I'm assuming. Because this requires probably a lot more depth discussion and analysis if we're not there. So I will be willing and considering such a subcommittee if this is what we want to do as a commission. or we can push it back to the city and ask staff to come forward with a recommendation. I'm open for both. I think both of them have some advantages and disadvantages, but I think either one of the two is we should move into.

In either case, it's the commission who's going to make the recommendation, but then I would say maybe the staff can take lead and then put forth at least a list of ideas, not three or four. They don't have to narrow down the ideas. They can say, this is what CTA, BRC has done. I think we should be doing it. Already, we have ideas right now. We said that, what do we do about the parks? What do we do about the sidewalks? Whether they should be wearing helmets. Right, so we already know, right? I think that's right. Those are all the things that we already have talked about and that's good enough for them to start with as their starting point, plus compare against, you know, you mentioned about Marin County, right? So that's another example, right? So they could take two model cities, around Bay Area and then come back with this list of ideas and then we can deliberate and shortlist in our own activity.

So on the parks, for example, the walkways, right? A lot of elderly population in our city and they walk, right? So definitely, you know, bikes won't belong there. So should we be putting up, you know, signs on the walkways to say there's no bikes?

Yeah.

No, as this speaker spoke, there are a lot of places for the bikers to bike, not on the part of Wahoo, right?

Park walkway, take Charlemagne Park, for example, right? It's a circular walkway. A lot of elderly people come there to walk. They just go four or five miles.

And if you as a biker really have to be there, you can walk.

Yeah, the biggest issue, I think, would say it's not the bike itself. It's more the speed. And the speaker mentioned that people were zooming from the back there. I think that's more the biggest problem to me. than it is the bike itself. And if we can reduce the speed at 10 miles per hour, for example, and say, hey, bikes cannot go, and they can go how fast they want, however fast they want on the street, like, let's say 20 miles actually per hour, that would be a nice limit so that, for example, in bike lanes, you just have like 20 miles to go further, faster than that, you have to go on the regular road. But I think, yes, putting a sign at the entrance of the park saying 10 miles per hour for bikes, I think that would double make sense to me.

It's a lot harder to enforce than somebody asking to walk. Walking is, I can, yeah, walk your bike, or no, you walk 11 miles. It's about time to, you know, make sure that people are incentivized.

Well, I mean, I understand incentivizing people to bike is one thing, but now what we are talking about is a safety issue. And your safety issue for even the bikers, it's the pedestrians. A lot more pedestrians are there And similarly, you know, the motorists as well. So I think we need to consider that.

Yeah. It's also a big question, and it's a broad issue, so we have to take everything into account. For example, you mentioned Spring Street Park. that's like is there a park is that a trail and should we ask the people to because it can be really convenient also for people to ride a bike on here so it's like okay what do we do here is that we ask people to respond the back or in those cases you can find some other solutions i think you know trails are a different beast where you know

the Steven Street Trail that cuts across various cities, those, you know, I don't know if we can enforce anything. So I'm talking about the parks which are within our city. We should be able to, you know, have enforced some laws that say, hey, parks are meant for, you know, walkers, not for bike riding. Kids, young kids, biking is fine. Less than 12, you can bike around and look, right? Dad is walking, you know, the mom is walking, and the kid is, you know, biking around, right? But for adults to be biking on those park walkways seems like, you know, uncomfortable.

I am very often in this park, and I can see it all the time, but it's... And they don't, some go fast, but not all of them. They may just go through and use the park, as you were saying, and also, so again, it's not a clear cut of, you know, it's only for pedestrians. It's definitely only some park. It's also a crossway for people to go.

But it's not stopping them walking by, like, you know. Exactly.

Again, you put the hurdle. It's a short distance, really. I mean, it makes no difference. I think.

14 years old might disagree with that statement, and you're not going to incentivize, or are you going to make them something that's against their relationship?

I think we don't want to take... Let's come up with a proposal, and then we can collectively make a decision what is the right thing for the city.

Sounds like the kind of idea on the table would be that the city staff will be coming forward with a recommendation and then we will be reviewing this in an upcoming meeting. That's what I heard pretty much is the recommendation coming out of this meeting here. Do we need a motion or is this just acceptable to write it down that way?

Thank you.

I think we should probably do a motion so that it's properly documented in the meeting minutes. Moving to approve a motion to take a detailed look into the bike and motor safety issues. And doing so means we expect a follow up meeting from tonight to review staff recommendations for eBike, e-mobile, safety improvements, or for discussion. Sorry, that was a long ramble. Did it capture everything? Yep. Yes. Yeah, one more.

It can be broader so that they have the flexibility to come off it. Yeah, yeah.

What were the recommendations? Come up with a set of recommendations to improve CFP. There's something called safety issues.

Safety, right? Yeah. E-bike and e-moto.

E-bike and e-moto. Safety issues. Safety issues, yeah.

Presses capture. Want to put scooters in too? I think they're on the remote. But I agree. I think they should be.

Press it, you know, follow up.

Yeah, follow up meeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, ideally, I think there is some sense of urgency. Ideally, we could do it within the next few months. Ideally, I would... or just to move swiftly on this one. So I would say before the end of the year. I think that covers it, yeah. One second. Do we have a second point? Yes, I can. Okay. So we have a motion. We have a second. Let's do a vote on this matter.

Who was the first? I'm sure.

I'll make a motion.

I'll fix that. to approve the motion, staff to take a detailed look into e-bike and motor safety issues and come up with a set of recommendations to improve safety within Cupertino as a follow-up meeting by the end of the year. How do you vote for this motion from Chair Eshelberg? Yes. Vice Chair Madhupatla?

Yes.

And Commissioner Ganga?

Yes.

Commissioner Marcy? Yes. Commissioner Wolf? Yes. Okay, motion passed 5-0.

Excellent. Thank you very much. I think it was a good discussion. Thanks for the input also from the public speakers tonight. So that covers that topic. Now we are on to our next item for tonight, which is item number four on our agenda. And its title is Safe Routes to School, Fiscal Year 26-27 Budget. I think it's back again to you.

Thank you. This is a follow-up on what I presented last February, March. I presented kind of an overview of what we were doing.

and then got questions back to the financial aspect of things.

So I don't want to reiterate all of what we talked about then. I just wanted to put this back up and show you all the things that Safe Routes kind of covers because it's easy to say. I mean, we developed the word Safe Routes to kind of make it a handle, like a way to talk about a very complicated subject. just wanted to remind you that it is actually really complicated and that it's not one entity it's a coalition of everybody in in town um this is our budget i started with numbers that uh mayor had mentioned what at this point it's about a year ago So I kind of started with her 1 million number that's been around a lot and I'm kind of working backwards. A lot of our budget is things that we can't control from the city. So it is cost allocations to other groups, right? So things like we get charged for a certain percentage for legal fees and a certain percentage of the secretarial fees and all of those. employee compensation. So my salary and Chelsea's salary and our benefits. So that's that dark gray budget. So yes, it's part of our budget, but I don't really feel we have a huge control over that. The other giant piece of what goes into this official Safe Routes budget is the crossing guard contract. That is by far the single most large item that is per year for all 16 crossing guards in town. And then there's what I consider the actual Safe Routes budget, like our working budget. So I blew that up for you so you can kind of see. Most of our working budget is currently spent on education. We run All of the K through eight education we run and then some of our high school education as well. That is all 100% grant funded at this point. So that is not city funds. We also run Bike Fest, which as we've grown, it's really cool. But we've also had to grow the budget with it. So that's the orange piece of that. And that is mostly grant funded at this point. We fund that mostly through Measure B County. And then we also have a small pool of program expenses. This covers mostly those encouragement incentive type items, the safety vests that we give out when we do bike workshops, the stickers we hand out to incentivize a kindergartner to walk to school, that type of thing. Apparently should have paged through because I'd forgotten that I had more details on each of these. The education contracts, if you don't know from previous, we went over. So we do kindergarten pedestrian education along with second grade pedestrian. And then we do bike education for fourth graders and middle schools. And e-bike education is starting to be folded into that category. We started with the middle school. It's clear that that probably has to go to the high school level, and we're still figuring out that piece. This is the Bike Fest that kind of breaks into the big expenses for Bike Fest for us. A couple of years ago, we started hiring out. We rent the tables and chairs and canopies and pay the same company to set them up and take them down for us. It is the best money I've ever spent in my entire life to not have to set up 30 canopies that morning. So it's pretty awesome that we have money for it. There's some permits and insurance, and then we do spend some money on volunteer food, keeping them happy. Some of the rides and games cost money as well. We do an awful lot with volunteering, but at some point you have to pay people to come back year after year. And then this is what I'm saying about our program expenses. The bulk of it is in encouragement programs. We also, the high school representatives Stanley was talking about, that we have two at each school who are putting on programming themselves. We give each of them a grant to the tune of $500 every year to do something with. It is amazing what they managed to do with $500. There's a bunch of outreach and conferences, little things like that. That is our budget in a nutshell.

Excellent. Thank you, Birgit. I was wondering if we have any questions, clarifying questions from the commission on this topic. If not, then I'm opening up for the public for any comments and questions on this topic specifically.

Yeah, so one moment while I bring up the timer. Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so I'm here on the topic of any crosswalk to cross-border thing. So we discussed this in this meeting like three months ago, right? And I proposed a program like years ago so there are there are there are several acts that happen on the sale because of the crosswalk then prospect road and uh so yeah um i'll show you guys like the pictures about extent and lots of bikers going across streets and also walkers uh study the universe

So the topic actually we're covering here is the Safe Routes to School program, but I think I know your specific item is about the prospect road and some of the issues that developed before the meeting. We have an agenda item tonight where we're talking about the September meeting, and it's not scheduled yet, but we're going to discuss in the September meeting if we can include this topic in the September meeting.

Mr. Kammerer?

Yes. Okay.

Sounds good.

It's not confirmed yet. I'm just saying. Got it. And we'll discuss when we talk about the topic tonight. My proposal will be tonight that we discuss this topic in this opinion. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for joining us again tonight. Any other public speakers on this topic of the St. Francis School topic?

We have no remaining speakers here.

Excellent. Thank you. So bringing it back to the commission now for a discussion on this topic. Any questions? Any follow-ups from the previous presentations? Can you please mention the overall chart, which has total budgets?

So here, the majority of this expenses is going through the crossing guard contract. So how does this work? And is it, yeah, maybe you can explain. How does the crossing guard contract at 420 for the 16 crossing guards, how does this work?

So we hire, we contract with a company called ACMS all I'm not sure what ACMS stands for. All city management. All city. And they provide the crossing guards, all oversight. Somebody calls in sick, they manage the whole thing.

That's defaults. Okay. So are the crossing guards paid for? for the wars.

Crossing guards are paid and they're employees of ACMS.

We just pay them on a monthly basis.

I think the question for me would be how much of that billion dollar is actually grant funded versus what the city actually has to cover?

Of the million? I did not calculate that specifically. I only calculated 85% of the working budget.

Okay, I see. So about, what is it, 200,000? Yeah, a little bit over, maybe 225. So is that crossing guard, you know, that is also covered by grants or it's not?

I have not found a grant to cover crossing birds. It would be super cool if we found one. And we did ask, we cannot use the OTS grant to cover crossing birds. We asked. They said no.

So it's the green section. It looks like that's what's covered possibly by some grants. All the gray areas are not covered by grants.

Roughly 25% of this chart is what is covered here. Correct.

So the gray area, if you take out the gray area, this chart is now those three little pies. And so then you can see the hatched area or the non-hatched areas grant funded.

So this one pie is $266,000. The age of a person of $266,000 is what is called the grant, right? Correct. And is this $266,000 part of the premium? Yes. OK. So it's roughly 200K, 200K out of a million is what?

About 20%.

Is that including also the bank accounts? So there's part of the green bucket as well.

Yeah, that would go into the blue bucket, I guess.

Thank you. Very helpful. Any other questions?

Are there things that we would be doing to this grant fund? Are there sources that we are not tapping into?

I thought we tapped into everything. All right. We're very active. Communities that have other grants, we're giving our state grants, we're holding a VTA award. We just have all the resources.

The alternative way of asking is like, you have the 25% of it, who is the working budget and is there a possibility for us to increase the work budget? And if, let's say, what is increased, what would you do to improve the safety?

Business life?

No. I'm not joking. I'm not saying anything productive.

get more, what can we do to improve our safety? Or alternatively, are there things that, you know, you felt like, you know, damn, you know, if I had more money, I would have done this?

In the past, when we had the Apple funds for the school, we did the work audits and we did a lot of improvements. around the school area like Lawson bike path is one of the example of it and lot of things and even like in this budget like if you get any complaint from the school where they want to do any improvement installation of signs or something like that that the installation of the sign and everything comes from the general funds so more than this there is some funds going into the safe route to school but yeah there is something like that also happening which is not shown in this chart most of the complaints that I have seen

In general, it's now intense. When crossing guards start to move or their hours start to cut us in half, then usually we're not safe. They took away this crossing guard and that crossing guard. It's now dangerous. So I think the community loves the crossing guards.

but we do get $40,000 from school districts to offset the cross-country. So of that 420,000, I'd argue that 40,000 of that is grants. And just another note that we could actually sharpen the pencil grant funding out of um say the bike fest or some of the program expenses but a lot of the things that are when he's used for are small persons um a lot of small persons things that you're going to mention the other prices um and it would literally cost the city more in staff time to submit and administer paperwork that we would get reimbursed for those items So it's actually cost the city less money to not select 10% of the total non-reimbursed administrative costs.

So I'm very impressed that the bike fest only costs $32,000 for the city. Given everything we saw here today that's organized and stuff, that's super impressive. We'll be good then for the bike fest.

We had a lot of volunteers.

Yeah, yeah.

That's great. And on the crossing guards, we have 16 inside. Is that adequate, or do we have some places?

Well, if you're asking, I would love to have more crossing guards. Yeah.

It's a tough task to switch an intersection, to cut off a crossing guard from one intersection and then transfer them to others. Yeah.

We had more crossing guards, more people would walk to school.

I'm not sure I can prove that to you, but... Such cars. It helps, right? It gives the appearance of safety. Like, in front of Eaton, the Suisse and Farallon, we had more. That really is hard. It's...

Also for the cars, because then it helps us to solidify the traffic, because sometimes cars just get in your log jam, and just having someone tell them what to do.

All right. Okay, thank you. Thank you for sharing. One more comment on this. I mentioned it before, but if we do the bike count again this year as part of the Safe Routes to School program, I really hope we can break out the bikes, bikes and motors as separate categories. I think it will help us get this discussion last year and present with the data. Now the new count is coming up there. Let's make sure we have this broken out this year so we have a better understanding of the real data between the three, Because right now everything is bucket and the bike. Right. It's not a very good way to.

Okay. Yeah, I can certainly, when we do our bike counts, I can put the different buckets in. That really only became a thing in the winter. So we kind of missed our fall bike count. So we did the spring that way, but not the last fall one. And as I said, the county is doing an independent count. They've contracted an agency. I can't remember which one. And they're going to start counting every fall and every spring. And so we will also get access to their counts.

Okay. And they break it off as well?

That is the whole goal is to break it out and count very rigorously what's an e-bike and what's an e-moto. Just more than I'm going to be able to do. That's perfect. That's perfect.

I think it helps us to make better decisions. All right. Thank you. Unless there's any more comments or discussion on closing topic. And moving on to our next item on the agenda, which is item five, staff update and commission activity report. Do we have any reports from staff or commissioners?

I can report on the public prosecutors. We are doing our biannual warrant analysis of all of the locations, all of the intersections of the city where we have guards and where we request guards so that we can prioritize this every two years. We're going to be doing this this fall. Potential changes that would come out of that would 27, 28th Street. In other news, Steven Street, 2A, the pipeline project should be completed in a couple of weeks. We still have some minor single nests big variance signs all the strivings but that's potential zero will be heard by the city council either latest that carries the first of the 15th of september Right now, we're looking at putting it on the 1st. Yes, which dates? Either the 1st or the 15th. Right now, it's looking like the 1st. So, that's all here.

Lawrence midi arc.

Any other Commissioner reports?

Yes, I went to the meeting back meeting yesterday, or not last week. Nothing specific to Bertino. Just one thing that caught my attention was that we've done so there was a bunch of projects for TDA, which is the pool of money that's distributed from the county or from TDA to the cities to the agencies. And there were three buckets of money. So TDA funds, the transportation fund for clean air projects, and measure B funds. Big projects like, for example, in San Jose, Pascom Street is going to be entirely renovated from a not very inviting street to a complete street with bike lanes, buses. That's a pretty major project that's funded directly by this measure B. And so, yeah, from a TDS fund standpoint, I think the decision from the person who was to bank the fund is 190K. You can add some color or not.

Yeah, so TDA Article 3 is guaranteed money. Every city or county gets a certain amount of TDA3 money guaranteed to And the money depends on, I think it's sale tax revenue. I forget exactly the ultimate source, but the big plot changes a little bit every year. So the individual cities, the population is a little bit every year, but it's population. Anyway, every year the city has the option to take that money and use it. And PA3 money is like, you know, so every city can take the money and use it or bank it use it in a following and the next year's pot gets added um and we're allowed to bank it for four years for when you have to return it so is there any restrictions on it on how this one can be used it's got to be by competitive related and there's certain there's certain criteria on types of like

projects.

For example, the ATP is knowledgeable and we are using $330,000 of previously banked money in its entire. So that's a great example of why we're basing the money because oftentimes you want to bank it by a pot big enough to do a project in completion rather than So this year we expect that again, subsequent years, we will look at how much are the radiological projects that are worthy of consideration and decision. And these projects cost . So we have decided we think that PDA money

The TDA money comes from a charge on the license plate registration. License plate registration.

It's very important in the population size. More the drivers, more the license plate. I think Sanoso gets the big chunk.

There's also different vehicle registrations as well.

It makes sense. Anything else? If no more additional reports, then I'm gonna close this item here and move on to future agenda settings. I think we have our traditional running list here. I think as part of the new process, we also have the preview of the next meeting already. So let's maybe cover this first, the next meeting, which is the September 16 meeting, where there is two agenda items currently on. One is bicycle facilities improvements, and the second one is a Vision Zero action plan update report. And I'm recommending that we add on this topic on Prospect Road safety issues that we have got from public speakers before. So to add this as a topic for the September 16th, unless there was any objections, we should probably. I agree with that.

Our residents have been coming and speaking, so we'll be talking soon.

Yeah, yeah. Great, we're going to stop. Is that something that... Excuse me?

There's three potentially large items in single B, so that's the only .

I would be willing to maybe shift things around. I think we have, the residents have been coming to us regularly now, frequently, and so it's definitely on top of their mind. So I would prioritize this topic if we can.

Would you like to keep the other two on as well?

I'm comfortable to even moving one of the other two out there. Maybe the bicycle facilities or the Vision Zero plan, maybe down to the double bases, I think.

I prefer to actually try to choose the Vision Zero next month. Okay, that's fine. We've been spending some time preparing.

Yeah, that's totally fine. Let's do Vision Zero and the CrossFit safety updates. That's on September 16th. So this is a new process, actually, that we have to do this, the concrete items for the upcoming meeting, in the current meeting, so to say. This is a new change. That's a good idea. Yeah. What's coming there, yeah. That's a change process. So now let's go back to the other list, which is our running list there, where we have all the big topics, so to say. see if there's anything that should be moving in or out there.

We should choose another kind of definitive project for October. So I can add that future agenda.

Well, one is bicycle facilities. I mean, it looks like ATP can move from this list here. I think from that perspective, ATP is completed from a commission perspective. And hopefully for the city.

I can remove safe route to school or a program and budget application. Yeah, we can take this on as well.

Why don't they bring back the eBike eMoto?

If we can do that already, that would be fantastic for October. That would be awesome.

I think we can do that.

Yeah, that would be awesome. In October. That's fantastic. In October, yes. So then we can move up to the top. Then we have two topics for October when you identify yourself. Yeah, that's great.

But it's not an education.

By the fact thing is, right? Exactly. Exactly. That's the second thing. All right, any additions to the list? I think we have been pretty up to date anyway, but if there's anything that comes to mind. If not, we'll close this matter as well. And This is a topic where we usually ask the public as well. Any public speakers on this topic?

We have no speakers, Jim.

Wonderful. Thank you. Now closing this item out, that brings us to the end of this meeting for tonight. Our next meeting is on September 16, here in this kitchen. And I'm adjourning this meeting at 9.01. Thank you all. Have a good night.