Active Transportation Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Do you order for ATAC?

As a reminder, members of the public are invited to attend this meeting in person at City Hall, room 2165. And also you can watch this on Zoom or you can stream through Seabank.

So let's start with the rule. District 1, present. District 2,

Present.

District 3?

Here.

District 4? Not present. District 5? Here. District 6?

Here.

District 7 is vacant. First mayoral? communications.

Would any member of the public like to speak on any

Good evening, Andrea Aguilar of Public Works in the City of Fresno. So some of you recall the City of Fresno received a grant to develop a mobility design guide. The mobility design guide is to provide engineers, planners, designers, and developers, and other decision makers with a consistent framework for designing streets for safer better connected, sustainable, and accessible use for all users. As part of this effort, we are putting together a committee. It's an advisory committee. It does consist of others departments within our public works department and outside agencies. And we would like for someone from ATAC to be represented on there as well. So this is me coming to you on a decision on that. I should probably indicate what the ask would be. It's approximately a year long process. It's a total of five meetings. The responsibilities include reviewing draft documents that are produced or information that's produced by the consultant. We hired ALTA planning and design to develop the plan itself. So anything they develop and analyze would be presented to this committee. I'm sorry, to the Mobility Design Committee for input on that, including outreach efforts as well. So five meetings over the course of a year. And when would the first meeting start? The next meeting would be, I think we're anticipating for end of this year. So late, probably mid-November to mid-December. not at this point you you if you do participate you'd know usually we work with the committee to find the best date and time um and they're typically about an hour and a half meetings and you'd find out approximately two weeks before design guide is this going to replace the City of Fresno's existing standard plans and drawings or supplement to them this would be a guiding document so it would not replace the standards or specifications that the City of Fresno currently has but it would serve as a guiding document just like NAPDO documents okay so the existing standard plans and drawings would continue in force Yes, as a result of the mobility design day if there is something that comes up that requires amendment to those standards, then we would evaluate it at that point, but it's not intended to replace.

This basically had the same status as the natural urban bikeways design guide that you still use.

Yeah, how status you choose, or unless you want to be like, who do you want to vote for?

Do we only put one? Do we have only one person? All right, well, we don't know that yet. I was just, like, before we got there.

I apologize to everyone else. If I called, I would be interested in doing this. I'd be interested, but I wouldn't.

I think it's a good choice too. I saw that Paul, since he has the knowledge and understanding

BNSF at Gray Railroad Crossing, West Belmont grade separation, and August Capital Projects Summit. So, Assistant Director Hummerjeet. Yes, good evening. Sorry for being a little late. Got tied up with the meeting at Capital Projects. So, this project here is some, so the reason we're doing this project is there was an old assessment district out in the Fig Garden Loop area that had some fees in there and there's certain amount of, there's only special work that's allowed under that assessment district or what can be done. So looking at the area and it was specific to the railroad improvements and the intersection here on what that assessment district had collected for. So from that, we looked at it and figured out, hey, there are improvements that can be done to the intersection as well as the controller cabinets. If you can go to the next sheet, please. Um, so we are and and so what we're doing with the project, um, capital products is going to design the project for us. And then the work will be performed in house by our, our city crews. So, what we're doing is upgrading the, the signal cabinet is going to get upgraded with newer technology. And then all the pedestrian countdown heads will be replaced with the countdown version of the heads. And this project is being coordinated. So, once it's fully designed, being coordinated with our paid more now project, which happened East of. Santa Fe, and then we have a federal project, which is West of the Santa Fe crossing. So this project will come in, it'll have some paving, which is not on the project plans, but it'll pave the remaining section. For the city to get a railroad permit, it's a little bit easier for us to get that railroad permit than it is to have a contractor on a federally funded project to do that. So the city is going to do that paving work and then do some of these signal modifications. City Council Chambers, And that is the project so we're looking coordinating with since it's paid more now project is near completion we're going to coordinate next spring when the fig garden drive project west of the tracks is nearing complete and then city crews come in and finish up the intersection here. City Council Chambers, open that up to any questions. Thank you. Oh, Belmont. Yes. So that was one of the other items on here. So I think the last meeting we had talked about trees and hey, the trees were there and they were relocated. So the trees weren't relocated. We were just working with the contractor. They had them out there. They got to be inspected before they're planted. So trees have since then been planted in the areas that they can be planted. They're going through the 30, 60, 90 day inspection period for establishment before they're accepted as city trees. And so that the trees were installed, this is on the. East end of the great separation, this street that runs north south is suffered Avenue. This will be the new. It's a French road, which is going to, and we haven't officially named it yet, but this frontage road will connect. Belmont back down to Weber and 8th Street. So I think we've shared the Belmont plans before, but as you're coming down the Great Separation, there'll be a new signal at Belmont and Safford, which we're going to allow you to get to this fringe road. And then on the very far end of the fringe road is where Weber is going to go underneath the Belmont Great Separation and then connect to 8th Street. So you can go either south into downtown or go north up to Olive and it'll be underneath Olive, but eventually all the way up Weber. it actually will get you all the way up to Clinton because it's going to go underneath McKinley as well. And so this is the east end, the trees have been installed, the landscapes have been installed, it's going through the establishment period. So you may see the contractor out there removing some stuff reinstalling it's because it's not passing the 3069 day inspection that the city does. So still some work to be done and there's still more trees that have to be planted in the area that are still not fully 100% in yet and we're working with the contractor. TPZP is the main contractor, but they have a sub that installs the landscaping and we're working with them on making sure all the landscaping that's required is installed. And then here is, so this is the Belmont circle, which was the old circle, which is now how you get from Being at grade where all the businesses are south of Belmont, and then you come up circle. To get up to Belmont to go over the railroad tracks, high speed rail and then and Weber Avenue, and then eventually get to the East end. So, this area has all been landscape trees have been planted. They're going to the same establishment period. So you and then furthermore, there will be some more trees that are planted back on the on the backside of the circle underneath the great separation and near the flood control basin as we work. As the contract finishes up the basin and clears that area of any further construction, you'll see more trees planted down near the basin as well. That's just a zoomed out version of what that looks like.

Any questions, I think the question still remains the trees on the north side of the frontage road.

Yes, so the team working there, there was some, so with High Speed Rail, and as they installed the utilities, Um, and street like conduits, there's been some conflicts on where the tree walls were. So there, we did work out a path on where the trees can be planted. So, I'm not sure if that plantings happen. As of the last week, but discussions as we have given direction for trees to be planted there. So that should be happening soon.

They have stakes for where the tree wells are. Yeah.

There should be slight movement of that because based on the direction we've got of how far away from the gas line we can we can plant the tree, but in terms of like numbers. I don't know the exact number, but there will be as many trees as we can install and then in the area and then there's trees if they can't be installed there, then there's other locations. They have to plant additional trees. There's a certain amount of. Trees that the project has to install and then every tree that they remove, they replace as a 2 to 1 ratio. So, if they remove 1 tree, they have to plan to new trees and up and trees place. within the project footprint. So it's not like if they remove the tree from here, they can go west of 99. It has to be near the project corridor. So in the same vicinity is where the trees will be, the new trees will be relocated to.

I'd still like to know what the plan is for that at some point. Yeah.

I would like to update you, I don't know if you guys want to continue adding this on, and we can do this every month, or if you want to send an email, we can share via email, whatever works best for you guys. I mean, I'd love an email if there's a quicker response, but if there's... If you don't know if you have my contact information or you have songs, it's on Conforto to us, but I will have, if you remember the last time we went over the entire corridor, my project manager, Freddie Cervantes, was here.

Yeah.

And you can be in touch with you on on exact placement. He's been working very closely with the contractor and locations, not just on Belmont. There's trees and voting part on all of and. Downtown as well that we're working with them still continuously on making sure we get this right location and that they make it do that 90 day maintenance period of where we can then accept maintenance of the tree.

August capital projects question.

Oh, yeah. What's the actual street? We're going to be the actual bridge itself.

So Belmont is nearing that that part of of completion. They should, I believe I was told they removed some of that barrier on the West end of the great separation. So, it looks like it's all been complete. So they're working through that area. They have to redo some street lights. They're doing that, I think later this week, early next week. So. We're working with them. The goal is to get Belmont accepted and transferred to the city for maintenance. So we are hoping that it's sooner rather than later. I can get you an updated schedule.

The reason why I'm here, the last time I drove that was well over a month ago, that through bike pocket had not been put in. And then when you went down, You know, the road considerably narrow. You went off the bridge.

West end or east end?

West end. Going west. The road considerably narrowed and it basically looked like you had no space for a bike lane.

Yeah, so the other part of that project between the Belmont-Great Separation and actually to the west of State Route 99, it's going to be a road diet with one lane each direction to match the grade separation with the two-way left turn lane and Class 2 bike lanes and I believe with parking as well.

As you exit from the bridge, it gets real narrow. Is there going to be any attempt at some point in time to widen that?

No, it's because there's cable set up for it to be narrow so they can construct the south end of the structure. But that south end is all constructed now. And I was told that they removed some of that barrier there. So now it should be widened. And they just got to work through getting it all striped and to that ultimate alignment where the bike lane will be, the full bike lane will be available.

Okay. So that's the reason why I'm asking. I would like to drive it.

Yeah.

You know, uh, They see what it looks like.

We'll get you a song. If we can, we'll get just remind me and Freddie, we'll get a timeline of, we can share that what the completion timeline of the full Belmont, the great separation, then continue all the striping with the bike lane facilities.

The surfaces are done. It's driving spots. If you drove it today, you would see all the cement already there.

Yeah. And then the striping is so that they can't just since the surface, they got to go and remove all the existing story. Seal it because they opened it in phases. So, there's certain requirements they got to meet before they can just re stripe. So we're working with them and we'll get a timeline on. Hey, when are you going to have it? Sorry sealed. And then once it's there, you don't have some temporary stripe the markers down and then they'll come with the final thermal striping, which has all the bike bike lanes. And the new bike lanes that are going to go all the way to the West to stay around 99.

Okay, thank you very much.

Yep. Thank you.

in those items we will now move on to the world day of remembrance

Medical Representative, City of Fresno Public Works, Police, Fire Department Representatives, Families for Safe Streets Rep, the Fresno Right of Silence Representative, sites along Frank Road.

We have two major asks.

At this point, again, it's kind of if the full ATEC has anything else, we definitely pursue that. But the two main tasks are listed as A and B on the memo there. So if there's any other ask that the full committee wants us to consider as a full committee, the event itself so it's really based on that we develop a press release as well as the invitations to our elected officials are on there that is the one page a memo or email that is sent by our BTAG chair, but really it's an invitation from the task force.

The attachment three is the same, but it's to be

somebody in the department, public works, medical representative, and others who may be invited to the event itself.

And then those are the attachments. What we will come back and ask for too, because we're going to have

things like handouts or posters if we come up with something like that but we are really looking into posters that we had last time that we're considering to do again and maybe develop it a little I don't know if it's going to be the same or

to the full committee for action. It would include the names of the crash victims is one thing that we're looking at. We're also looking at other things like a handout like we did last year, which is

And then I can hand it off to some of the other committee members to talk about. You know, some of the. organization started holding its meetings this month on the 12th of August. It's kind And so at this point, we could have discussion before we take action on these tasks.

Sarah, do you have anything to add to what Paul said? No, thank you.

We're thinking people would go to either ride the bike around the park or do the walk. We're not expecting people to do both and they're not going to be very long. Right, yeah, we're thinking we'll go for it. We're looking for a covered facility in case it rains again. We got a little gunshot.

I had an idea that had occurred to me the last time we met as far as potential elected officials to consider inviting.

And I wanted to kind of run it by the ATAC.

Esmeralda Soria, a former city council member, was very involved in sponsoring the Scott Superspeeders Intelligent Technology, which unfortunately did not pass.

So Mohammed was there, Laura was there, Jacob, and then Eric.

I totally forgot it was today, wasn't it?

We haven't had a chance to meet yet. Mohammed is kind of the chair of the task force.

I thought there was a meeting today that I missed.

But we are kind of a little bit at an impasse because Public Works is also very eager to Work on safe routes to school events or bike to school events so. Since Mohammed is not here, we still have to discuss about it because they want to meet with us and I still feel like we should have at least a conversation before we work on the city project.

So, maybe before next meeting right. a meeting date prior to the next exact meeting, right?

Well, I think Thong and the team has a little urgency behind their request. So, and you have some meeting suggestions for the rest of the week, so I guess my suggestion, and I'm sorry Mohamed is not here, my suggestion would be if you guys are available at those meeting times, maybe we can say we meet and reserve The first half of the meeting just to talk about the committee and then talk about the bike to school event. Would that work for everyone? Just so then there's a little bit of a time pressure.

We just want to provide clarification as well because I know we have shared about the kids crossing update project update from the last ATAC meeting. And we wanted to invite ATAC, and we thought the committee would be the perfect time to just invite you to attend and support the walk to school event. I'm sorry. To attend the meeting and just provide input if you wanted to, or just participate. We are actually pretty on the walk to school event, and so we just wanted to provide you the opportunity to provide any input if you had it. Yeah, so we just actually had our 1st test 1st meeting and we confirmed that it would be Wednesday, September 23rd. It will be at 7 o'clock in the morning.

And our ask from. Anybody on the safe for us to school is come out and volunteer with us. We're doing all the leg work. We're putting it all together. If the task force would like to attend, volunteer, join us, that'd be great.

It's open to all of their staff now. What school again? Columbia.

And how's the event going to look like? So we're still in the development of that, but Columbia has held walk to school events in the past, and it's going to be very similar to what they've done in the past. And that is meeting up at?

So we're meeting at Fink White Park, which is about half a mile from Columbia. So we'll be starting that as a starting point and then working our way. And what's great about it is we'll go through the traffic signal that was just installed there and that just got completed. We'll walk through that and then go and meet at the front of the school.

What time are we meeting there?

we're hoping for at least the big group to get set up and everything by 6 45 and then start the walk about seven o'clock that way the kids you know can get to school on time and not be late so meeting at the park at 6 45 okay and all of that is it's not set in stone but it is very likely that that's the case

Let us know if you'd like to stop by.

I guess I just have a comment, and I feel bad because I don't want to talk things down. But for me, the idea of meeting and park to walk or bike to school really defies the purpose. What we're looking to do is replace trips from home to school And I know we have challenges around schools with safety and different neighborhoods have different safety on infrastructure on the roads. But to really have the transformation, at least that I'm interested in seeing here in moving towards active transportation, you just really change the location of where the cars are parked if you need at a park and go from there then just everybody takes their big trucks and you know takes a kid's car a bike in the back of the truck and then you know we'll find parking and have a little traffic jam around the park and then everybody walks it's it's not really creating the habits of changing um our transportation system um and really we do have a lot of challenges and even safe routes to school getting kids to walk to school um high schools are usually a little bit further away middle schools as well elementary schools are really from my experience places where we can learn how to walk to school from home to the school and um so i would love to see more walk to school events that actually encourage kids and parents to walk from their home um and and have ideas around that um it's nice it's a fun event i've been to walk to school events that are you know starting at a park um but it's a little bit gimmicky um if we really talk about changing our transportation system so I just want to make that comment about walk to school

okay we can move on now to our member reports and comments so we'll start with the district one and now president april have any comments yeah actually we had a fabulous back to school event for our community had probably 2200 people of what we think the turnout wasn't about um thank you public works for attending so we had public works we had office of traffic safety

We had our Fresno FACS team and we had our STEP grant, which all are presented.

And we did get over 200 comments back about transportation and access and ability. So it's very great that we're having input from the community coming in about those types of things. And I apologize for my tardiness. I was meeting with the school district and I had a conversation with Sam. So we will be working on doing Um, the, the idea of the bike rodeo that is part of a grant requirement has now been, um, maybe expanding as far as having a week long bike camp during winter session for the school district. So the fact that they are interested, they're excited that there's things about that, that we would have conversations about the bikes that kids could actually by completing tasks would be able to, um. their names entered to win things like a new bike or bike helmets and those types of things so the conversation is really ramping up about kid safety in our area so that is basically our report is that we've you know we've got the school district now invested in what's happening and they're seeing results of the different projects that our nonprofit and community are involved in and so we're starting to reap a few um you know leaves off the branch

We're centrally unified.

So in the district, we hear about the five camps that Tommy and I have for three years.

Is it three years now? In cooking and working with the transportation student for the state, right? And that's who they're... That's a dream come true. I mean, that's how this whole thing started, right? Yeah. Tommy and I have had the conversation and then...

a day or two even to start and then we'll build on it so um the school district now does um when intersession and sessions for kids where half the day is curriculum and they are they're catching up on things and then all afternoon gets to be subject matter of fun nature or doing things and so there's opportunities to do this winter spring and summer

Thank you.

Yeah, District 2, school is back, back to school. Fresno Unified has changed their bus plan and they have these, all the kids are getting picked up at like magnet schools, the high school students at high school to middle school students at middle schools and the elementary school kids that are in magnet schools have their hub middle schools where they're getting picked up and dropped off as you can imagine this is a little bit of chaos all over the place um what i'm a little concerned about and that's just one school and um i'd be happy to hear other people's experience um on tanaya which is located of bullet the morning drop off is now on bullet So that's right in the bike lane. And Bullard is a heavily used road. I'm a little concerned to see three buses. The way it works out for my family is that we are going to Baird, but I've seen, while I dropped off my kids, two buses behind each other there on Bullard. That also means that parents are parking on bullet to let their kids out. So I guess my question for Public Works is if you guys were consulted at all on these plans and if there's a conversation about safe drop-off locations around the schools.

Amy Scribner, chief engineering technician. Schools typically

design their own drop off and pick up so they will have locations where um they want they want parents to drop off and pick up and typically it's within the school so usually they'll go around you know inside and come back um but you know we can't tell them that they can't have pickup at a certain location because they they typically um pick which areas and sometimes we'll put in you know bus zone signs and things like that but that's about that's about

okay well um i guess i'm schooled from the green building industry where it said you know you should all talk to each other and work with each other i feel like for the safety of all it might be an improvement to have some conversations around this especially since there's so much safe routes to school work going on between the city and the school district and um i'm Not in all of those communications and committees and don't know exactly how you guys work with each other, but it would, from my perspective, everybody would be served if there's some form of communication around safety and bicycle infrastructure.

Sandra and I go with public works. Typically there is the conversation. If they revamped all locations, it's probably just something wasn't considered at the time but thank you for the info and we'll take it back to have a conversation in particular about this location if you see anything else throughout your districts that you represent let us know make sure that the bikes the buses are dropping off in the bike lane in that case yes the buses are dropping off in the bike lane so the bus pulls up to the curb line therefore in the bike lane

I mean, I think they have like some signs that say that it's a drop off location, a bus drop off location, but it doesn't change it that there's not much space and a lot of traffic. I don't know exactly how long it's there for.

You set it to nine minutes, right? Okay, we'll take the information back.

Okay. And then I have another comment. I'm concerned about the public communication on active transportation and multimodal transportation. We just had an article in the Fresno Bee wondering if the protected bike lanes on Belmont led to the death of that palateria that was there because it took the customers. We have this big political fight around Measure S, which I'm sure everybody here is still in favor of, even if it might not be the perfect measure. But we certainly need money for a road project. And within this political fight, there's certainly the one side that is down talking active transportation and all make it about that car drivers pay the taxes that are used for a lot of infrastructure projects and making it seem like people that are walking and biking are not contributing financially to the system. And they make them seem like they're not car drivers. And I think most of us drive a car. and we get gas and we pay our taxes but that doesn't take away from the fact that everybody should be safe on our roads and that we know that we need more active transportation infrastructure meaning pedestrian walkways and bike lanes and that we need money for this so i think it's up to everyone to speak out in a positive way about biking and walking and the benefits of that and the need for more investment because that area has been under invested in and I think everybody is an advocate for this and we should all do whatever we can to move that public discourse towards a more positive conversation. In all my work in education around active transportation, when you talk to people about biking and what they think about it, most people say that it gives them freedom and it makes them happy when they're walking and biking. And I think that should be something that we all invest in. April is heavily invested in her neighborhood in this topic. whoever speaks out right determines what the conversation is about things and it's really important in this time where there's a little bit backlash against active transportation and multi-motor transportation um that we kind of have a counter narrative um so i i thought it was important you know to bring that up uh because you see more and more articles and

big story in the news was the death of the in my district. I've been commenting on it. And I think there's a few things that are important takeaways from this particular issue. One is that that store did not die because of the bike lanes. It died because of disinvestment in the local infrastructure. And that started before the bike lanes went in. very long time and you can see it in the burnt buildings, the knocked down buildings, the absentee landlords. We have a whole tower district business community with a non-profit attached to it that doesn't extend to Belmont. And if you look at redlining maps and where the racial deed restrictions existed, it lines up with where that disinvestment is and it's continual. And the thing that was done to Belmont was that a really poor active transportation infrastructure was dropped on it without much thought to the people that lived there. And the actual infrastructure that was put in place is poor quality. You can ride down a lot of streets on your bike and have a fairly decent time of it. over and you can feel it in your car too the street surface is awful and the enforcement is beyond awful of bike lanes and every time we do something poorly in that way especially somewhere that's so like visible it makes the active transportation argument harder because they look at it and they go, this is a big failure. And that's because public transportation is the problem, but it's not. And it hurts my heart that it's in my neighborhood because it really could be beautiful. And you can see just one city block up on Olive what happens when you do put some effort And as we look at solutions to the Belmont corridor and we're funding things towards the Belmont corridor specifically But the trees and the grass on the areas around the new Belmont Overpass are lovely and they're going to be really nice protected in the future. Very great active transportation infrastructure for the small,

Today there was an event on Fresno State campus with District 4 about, well, the bike lanes that bring students to campus, notably the one at Barstow, which is great.

And the fact that if you didn't know, Fresno State has banned scooters on campus, which starting this semester. So part of it was awareness about that. how students are going to cope with that, and so they've kind of put a bunch of racks and space to store and lock e-vehicles along the periphery of campus so that you can get to campus and then walk once you're on campus. You can still actually bike and ride on the streets within campus, it's just there are a lot of collisions happening on the walkways, which was not safe.

district five is my district and i also have not much to report but i do want to make some comments and i'll say thank you for uh and jake that's good this was actually lucky three four times now this discussion about the belmont came up in that article and laura your point to And I think, you know, we don't have a lot of necessarily voting power to, you know, prove something in the city of Fresno, but we do have our voice. And maybe that's something that we consider is to a unified message or something.

I noticed there was something with the grand jury indicating that the changes made to Friant and Shepherd are not enough based on their opinion. So I don't know what that will mean in the future. I guess we'll wait and see. As you know, that's one of my favorite interstitials to talk about. But that's all I have. And I think we all need to do our part of speaking out.

Yeah.

Again, it's very astute.

um and you know really it's it's an important measure for the city for the county and it's a i think it's unfortunate that really they go after you know active transportation uh you know to to try to you know turn the police against it against it um so i mean we could do our part seen as more positive for, you know, the general opposition also be voting for it?

Well, I think, you know, and I, like I said, when I just, you know, took me to a meeting, right, or when you see in that meeting, you hear the opposition, right, it's very loud, and there's not, usually not a lot of people

it was not true i'm glad to hear it more it's kind of like the same paper but that's right yeah i would just say too like in that article yeah it's just easy to blame somebody like that's just such a scapegoat easy outlet thing to do it's not the leader better thing to do you should at least entertain both perspectives like the article attempts to do that but it only says well the business never engaged with the city

when they were developing plants. planning a community Q&A meeting in the west area regarding Federal Road, State Street, whatever it is, right?

So that people understand that we're waiting to finalize what comes out, the outcome tomorrow or Friday in court.

But should everything go okay, we're actually planning on doing a community meeting where people could just come and understand what the different percentages mean. what that would go to, especially in our area, pretty easy to show the facts, and then we'll be doing it in English, Spanish, and Punjabi. So we're going to start doing sets and series of educational series, not telling anybody.

You can't obviously as a nonprofit tell people how to vote, but we can definitely educate on the issues and explain

Yeah. Andrea now with Public Works. My update on grants isn't beyond what I provided last month. We are working on a lot of grants that are coming up. It's grant season. We, as I mentioned, we previously submitted the ATP at the state level. We'll be submitting at the regional level. in November. Come November we also have the local highway safety improvements program and we're developing projects on there, on that. We've got a long list to choose from. That will be for November as well. We hope to have the ability also to submit for a sustainable transportation planning grant with GowTrans, the SDPG. And then at the beginning of the next calendar year, we've got potentially OTS, Office of Transportation Traffic Safety grant, and the Fresno COG CMAQ and STBG. So if you've got projects that you'd really like to see happen, take a look at the guidelines once they become available. HCIP is out there if you'd like to take a look at that one. But that one focuses on safety and addressing fatalities and serious injury type of projects.

Thank you for the update. Is there any questions from the committee? That's from the public. Okay, we can now move on, close this item and move on to 8B. Discussion about the 20 miles per hour in school zones.

Andrea with Public Works again. So this item was requested by the ATEC committee just to give an update on what that is, where it kind of came from. So Assembly Bill 382, which was signed in October, on October 10th, 2025, by the governor, mandated that states reduce speed limits at school zones down to 20 by January 1st of 2031. City Council or local City Council, Councilmember Esparza took initiative to do it well in advance of that date. um so we we have staff and public works received direction to to to start that with their um motion on an ordinance in february of this year any questions we we can answer or

So as of now, PD can cite.

They can write tickets for anybody who is not following those.

Again, it's all going to be up to PD. So as of now, I think there's, I want to say, close to 650 signs that were placed on the main streets.

Once you start looking into neighborhoods, that's where we're currently working on because they're The local streets are permitted AC 25. We now have to add 20 mile per hour signs, which we did not have to do in the past. So we now have to add a decent amount of signage. So that will slowly start to happen as well. But it's going to be up to PD who wants to enforce it. So I have a son who is now driving. And I told him if there are some areas where it still say 25 and some that say 20, just go 20.

do not know and there's been outreach to the school districts as well so they're aware for example we were at Columbia last week two weeks ago and we provided information to the parents that were there

And part of the Vision Zero action plan, right? Safe speeds. It was one of the priorities on the plan itself and specifically called out 83, 82 to identify that opportunity and council did. So there are going to be some agencies that are not going to do it right away. Just be aware. So like I said, if there are some UCs that are still 25,

You know this.

I'm happy to see it, actually.

Yeah. It's science, right? It's not math, right? Yeah, you've got 25 people below 30, 35. You've got 20. You're going to go slower, so.

only enforced during school hours but you know kids are at schools all hours you know kids who are at practice and band and whatever and those kids are still a danger of streets that are 45 the rest of the time um and signs are great that's okay it might lower some things a little bit but i think there's they're the next level of things where the city could take that next that create friction, that create constriction, and diversion to literally, like physically slow traffic and stop that speeding all the time. Because our kids deserve to be safe around their school, whether it's between 8 and 3, or they have a late practice for football.

Isn't it supposed to be Any time children that go to school?

Yeah, a very interesting thing. I have seen the signs around, so I was amazed at how fast they went up. That was quite remarkable. I did observe drivers actually observing that. I think it's really challenging on some of the arterials that go right by these.

Some unfortunate schools that I go to have local streets about them. As a motorist, I was just kind of, oh crap, I'm at 20 miles an hour.

I've never slowed down, so I don't know if there's, I mean, obviously the word is out about this, but I don't know if there's any way to, I mean, you have to look for the signs, and they're pretty small, so I don't know if there's any other things for those arterioles where there's reinforce this in some way. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like.

But I can see that it's going to take a while for people to adapt to it. So we'll see. Do we know if PD still has that division? There used to be the division that would do enforcement before school. So focus.

officers who'd sit there just randomly but it was enough that like you wouldn't want to get you know today that you got caught but at some point i remember hearing that that division had completely been disbanded so do we know does anybody know if that's still something that could be you know on some of those fast arterial roads it would be really nice to have that presence just for a while

no but he's going to we can we can reach out to him and ask the question maybe just uh just some getting some data right and does is there a way to say all right how many you know how many people are being ticketed in that in those zones right and what's their speed limit right just kind of get some information and see you know has there even been an increase in

We'll reach out. I'm sure they've got a method to how they select at what locations, at what schools, or when they're out there.

So if they still have that division, then we can ask the question.

And just, you know, start on a small area, right, and track that area and just start looking.

I think that's a great task for the task force to look at and tie into. We can move on to item 8c, an update on the sustainable transportation project grant for west of 99.

Andrea with Public Works again. So West of 99 STEP project. STEP is the Sustainable Transportation and Equity Program. This grant was a partnership between Public Works and FACTS, with FACTS being the submitter of the application itself. So they took the lead on it. We did assist we we partnered and a part of the aspect now at the first portion of the project there was a lot of community outreach and april can talk to some of those components but the the end goal here was for the community through that public outreach to select locations where the west of 99 area would like to see or need hawks constructed and fill in some gaps in sidewalk. Fax, again, is the lead on this one, but the project manager was able to give me some information that I need to provide ATAP with. So that included Fort Hawk installation, two sections of sidewalks filled in. The project's currently in design. They do anticipate the design phase to be completed this year to be able to move forward. As part of the program as well, there was bicycle amenities, bike racks to be designed by the community and locations to be selected by the community. And again, April can answer some questions on the details on that one. April did mention the bike rodeo that is included, which sounds like there's movement on that possibly in the winter. Sidewalk locations is over on Hughes between Hedges and Haman. There's a gap there that goes from sidewalk to no sidewalk to then page surface again. So the grant is going to fund some of that completion there. The other sidewalk segment is on Brawley between Courtland and Fedora.

Again, you go from sidewalk to these larger

parcels that don't have the sidewalk curb and gutter this grant will be filling in that curb gutter sidewalk connecting bike lane and finishing up the the roadway there uh brawley courtland uh just almost fedora it's like slightly south of uh fedora there's a gap there um those sidewalk uh projects as i mentioned include the curb the gutter the sidewalk construction street trees with irrigation and signing and striping that goes with the full street. Hawk locations, there was a lot of hawk location requests that came from the community. Fortunately, we can't do all of them, but we were able to select the ones that would be most feasible and most desired and most effective for the community. Locations are on Cornelia at Griffith. Raleigh at Fountain Way, Bryan at Holland, and Holt at Connor. These hawks will include new or upgrades to current curb ramps, so accessible curb ramps, high visibility crosswalks, signing and striping to enhance the crosswalk there. And one of the locations at Brawley and Fountain Way, there's a median in the street. So that would be designed as a pedestrian refuge island.

That's all I have. Unless you've got some questions that I can try to answer.

Okay, for this month's collision report, between January 1st to July 31st, total collisions 2,218, of which pedestrian involved were 126 and bicyclists 107. Compared to last year, we have an increase in total collisions, a decrease in pedestrian involved collisions, and an increase in bicycle involved collisions. Of all of these collisions, six, this year between January and July 31st, six collisions, pedestrian involved collisions were fatal. We don't have any registered bicycle fatalities with the exception of a e-bike collision, fatal collision. These numbers are a reduction from last year. Pedestrian involved, fatal collisions were 11. Last year's bicycle involved, we didn't register any e-bikes, we registered two.

Do you know offhand if we were to look at

to it i'm just curious half the numbers we'd be able to put it together next time it would be nice

Just one comment. It does look encouraging to have less numbers.