City Council - public_hearing

Thank you.

We're good?

We're good.

Okay. Well, I guess I'll wait for her to sit down. okay thank you everyone for coming to our public meeting for the 22nd street bike lane demo we'll go through some slides first and then we'll have question and answer at the end and then we also have a paper layout on the table over there that you can look at if you have questions about i guess your specific block or a specific part To begin, I'm Ryan. This is Brian. We're both with the City Transportation Services. So we'll be setting it up along with our interns and then one other staff engineer who's part of our department. Just kind of the agenda. We'll go over the project limits and then we'll go over some details and what the existing cross-section and then the cross-section during the demo would look like and then what the schedule is going to be. So we're going from Columbia all the way to Ottawa, and that's just going to be restriped to have bike facilities, whether it's bike lanes or sharrows. So we'll have 10-foot travel lanes for cars and on-street bike lanes where the road's wide enough to have those, and then sharrows where when we keep parking, we're only able to keep sharrows and not... have a on-street bike lane and sharrows are if you don't know they're the symbols it's a like a biker and then two arrows on top of the biker and it just basically says share the road with bikers so then they is a designated um travel lane that cars can go in and also the bikers can go in so it just gives a little bit more visibility to bikers than if there was nothing there um So the project prep started yesterday. The interns were out laying the survey lines, just getting stuff ready for temp tape to go down. We'll install everything tomorrow, and then it'll be taken down on August 5th, which is two weeks from tomorrow. So the existing cross sections, there's two typically. There's either where there's no parking on the south side. I think that's more on the western end by the high school. And then there's a section where it's pretty much just no markings at all, 30-foot wide road. So you can park on both sides. And then you have two travel lanes also. proposed. The two main cross-sections we have are either parking on the north side and then bike lanes on both sides of the road, and that's where the road's wider. I think when we're at 35 feet wide, that's what we're going to be planning on doing. When we're more narrow than that, we'll keep parking on the north side and then a bike lane on the south side. And then just on the north side, there will have to be a sharrow instead of a dedicated bike lane there.

Can you give an example of where that would be? You said there are none on that block? So from college to Columbia particularly,

or I guess college prospect, we have a 26 foot wide road there. So if we were to have no parking and try to put a bike lane, it would be too narrow to have a bike lane and then any parking there. So we instead are having that as not being marked with anything, I guess. And so people can park on either side of the street, but we'll have a share on both sides for that block.

Okay, so those folks can park Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

So on, yeah, Van Raalte to Pine, that area is 30 foot wide, and then that section by Black River is 26 foot wide. So if we were able to, we'd like to have a bike lane continuous on the south side, but it's just too narrow by Black River, so we had to keep it to two sharrows instead. Okay, all right.

So the lanes are bi-

The bike lanes? So on the south side of the road, you have bike lanes going eastbound. On the north side, it'll be mostly sharrows going westbound. There's going to be some sections where you have actual bike lane, and that'll be easier to see on that paper layout over there.

So essentially, sharrows are essentially nothing is changing other than some pinking on the road reminding us to share with bikes. There's not a specific lane...

Correct for the most part. The center line is going to be shifted a little bit of the road. So you'll have, I think along 22nd Street right now, there's no yellow skips down the middle of the road. So those are going to be put down as part of this. So I guess that would change. But as far as you driving, you wouldn't have a change on that side of the road.

So when people are parked on the north side of the road, so all the south side people,

So the Shero is going to be The marking will be offset from the curb like I think they laid it out maybe nine feet so even if there's a car parked there that wouldn't be covered they wouldn't be covering the Shero and the Shero would still be able to be seen by cars in the travel lane

areas, say Van Rolpe to Pine, you cannot park during this two-week experiment. You cannot park in front of your house.

If you live on the south side?

If you live on the south side. Correct. Yeah, we'll park on the other side.

Okay.

What about disabled people who can't really navigate across the street or shouldn't navigate across the street? What are the provisions for folks that have emulation issues or disabilities or things like that?

So we would encourage them to park in the driveways at that point. Okay.

Um, here are some project details. We'll go through these slides pretty fast. There's mostly for the people, if there's anyone online, so they can kind of see, um, what it would look like. Again, the paper over there is going to be an easier way for you guys to see the, see the road and the proposed layout. So this was Ottawa to Van Raalte. Then we have Van Raalte to Pine and then Pine to State and then State to Columbia. We'll have these on-site posters, so people using the bike lanes, you guys, anybody driving by can scan the QR codes and provide feedback, say, yes, we like these, no, we don't like these, give comments on what they think is good or bad or what could be better or changed. We're just looking for feedback from everybody and try to get, I guess, an idea of how these would be accepted by the community. So if there are any more questions, feel free. We'll do some group Q&A first, and then we can go to one-on-one, and you guys can head over to the paper layout and have more questions if you want. If you have questions, can you use the mic also? Thank you.

So how come this doesn't go all the way down to Graskup? When I called the transportation department a little more than a week ago and I asked what the boundaries of this, I was told it was to create an east-west corridor going all the way from Graskup to Columbia. But this is only going to Ottawa. So how come it ends there?

Sure. So currently, if you look at our existing network, we have bike lanes on Ottawa. We don't have bike lanes on Graskup. I think that's probably some serious feedback. Sometime in the future, maybe. But at this point, we just stopped it at Ottawa to connect into that existing infrastructure. Anybody else?

I mean, is this something that if you get enough feedback from people that we don't want this, that this is something that would still be considered? Because personally, I mean, I think everyone who actually lives in the city knows that we have like maybe one, well, for sure one lane to park. Some people have shared driveways. And I mean, we need that parking in this city. I just, I don't see the benefit as a taxpayer of, why I'm like now not able to use my parking in front of my house or guests be able to do that. I think it's gonna make it so much more busier. I mean, I was just on Saturday now that I've seen this. On a Saturday on my block, there were so many cars parked on both sides of the road for my block. And now I'm thinking, okay, they take half of it away. Are people having to walk a block and a half just to get to my house? Or even for me, if we've got things going on using our driveway, we don't have big yards. So sometimes we even use the driveway. So for me, I'm really opposed to this. So I'm just wondering, do I need to start knocking on doors to get people to really know what's going on?

Sure, so again, that's why we have the feedback, right? So we encourage you to utilize that and put in your comments. You want to put that? Yeah, so that.

Are you talking about that on 22nd Street with the Aquatic Center?

Yeah, so there's already parking restrictions around it. Yeah, we are. There's already parking restrictions around the Aquatic Center on 22nd Street. Right, right, there's already it. Right, right.

So they won't be able to do that, but they were parked all the way from Van Ralfy, from Washington, all the way up to two houses in from Van Ralfy.

Sure.

What is going to happen to that?

Where are those people going to go? Yeah, and there is, so again, I would encourage you all to put in the feedback, right? It's a great opportunity to do that. There is a potential that we would do Bike lanes with parking on both sides, right? So that we wouldn't take that parking away again. I think we would probably do some parking studies As we get closer to when we would touch 22nd Street again, this is just to get input We're assuming that parking is part of that input And that will do that

So when you talk about this being a two-week study, are there cameras up recording the bike traffic? Are there time-lapse photography of how many bikes are actually using 22nd Street? except for the Pelotons leaving the bike shops, who are only going west and not east. I mean, what are the measures? Are there interns stationed at different corners recording the data, drones, satellites?

Yeah. Okay, so we're not quite to the drone level. So with this last one that we did on 17th Street, it was a two-week trial similar to this one. It's just wrapping up now. We've had interns out at various times of the day, at various days of the trial, just counting usage. We're going to do the same thing with 22nd Street, where we evaluate and just take numbers, basically.

Are those studies being done on the existing bike lanes? I live close to Columbia, and I travel that corridor a lot. on foot and in the car, and I don't see it getting a lot of use. So I'm just curious if there are studies going on right now as to how much use the bike lanes that have already been put in are being used.

Yeah, so that's a fair question. We haven't done any recently. I can tell you that typically when we do... like introduce something like that. Sometimes we do do those studies. It's been a little bit of time since we've done that. I think the latest project, the most recent project we did was Columbia, you know, through Black River and Hope College. I don't believe we've done any counts there, but that's probably a good idea just to count that, right, to see utilization. Now, I will say that because of the notes there being Black River and Hope College, there's probably going to be a fair amount of traffic, right? So, again, I think it's all relative, it's all contextual. I do know that 22nd Street, right, when you look at the Aquatic Center, when you look at the parks, when you look at Black River School, and some of the existing north-south bike lane facilities, you know, that's part of the reason we're doing the trial, where we're doing it, and the limits and the extents of it, right, just to try and make some connectivity with some of the infrastructure that's already out there.

What do you do during spring and fall cleanup?

Yeah, so spring and fall cleanup happens as normal. The leaves and sticks and things go out into the curb as normal, and the biking community just needs to navigate that. So nothing changes from the pickup standpoint, the amenities there.

That's what I was just going to ask. I feel like I just heard somebody got hit. A car, like a biker, I think maybe going downstate, didn't they? There was an accident with like a garbage can and a biker. So yeah, are we just still keeping our garbage cans on that bike lane?

Yeah, so the garbage cans go out as normal. And there's some pretty unique characteristics to that accident. We're all aware of that. And I would encourage you, and I can share with you, Some of the details on that, it really was a unique situation. It's unfortunate, certainly. But yeah, I think rather than discuss the details there, I can just share with you maybe the UD-10 on that that explains what happened there. It really wasn't bike lane related.

Is this proposed year-round?

So these bike lanes would exist? Yeah, it's a good question.

So, Brian, are these proposed to be year-round bike lanes? So, for instance, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, Super Bowl, Easter, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day?

Yeah, so it would be. So the bike lanes, they're constructed, they're painted, you know, pavement markings, laneage, all that stuff. It's not a seasonal thing. Basically, you install them or you don't install them.

So my follow-up question would be, so I live on the south side of the road.

I have a driveway that, if I'm lucky, I can put one car three inches from the garage door and a second car with its butt hanging into the sidewalk. We've gotten ticketed for that before during October 15th to May 15th. So if I have family members over, and the neighbors across the street have family members over, and the neighbors next to them have family members over, and it's a holiday, and you park in your driveway, if I've got two cars in my driveway, but then I have three kids coming home and a brother coming from St. Clair Shores and a brother coming from Chicago. Are there some variances allowed for us to park on our lawns or come park in somebody else's driveway? Are there shuttle services to go back and forth from the aquatic center? What are the provisions the thinkers behind this have put into it? Sure. The entirety of the South Side Road is taken over by all the guests visiting.

Yep. Yep. So fair question. And basically, we understand that there are instances like that, right, where you have a parking demand that is more than the parking that's available. I would argue that that may exist now to some extent, right? What I can tell you is that... for the majority of the time. And we've looked at this on the other streets where we have put in bike lanes and basically have left parking on one side. We really don't see a lot of pushback from residents once that gets implemented. I can appreciate the hardships during those unique times. Maybe it's holidays, maybe it's an event, right? Maybe it's the World Cup, right? Where people may have to park longer and farther away than they would otherwise normally have to if they had parking on both sides. I can appreciate that. We will look at parking on both sides with bike lanes, but that does tend to widen the road quite a bit. And we really want to try and keep that roadway as narrow as possible. And so that's why it's been a pretty good cross-section for us on the areas where we have implemented it To basically leave parking on one side put in the bike lanes and then the two travel lanes So but again, I would encourage you all, you know experience it put input, you know provide input to us through the QR code and That'll be taken into account as we move forward. Again, there are no plans per se for work on 22nd Street. This is truly just a demo to try and gather input for at some point in the future when work does occur on 22nd Street. This is input that we would use to help form the design of the road.

Is there a reason why 22nd was chosen versus?

Sure, yeah.

I just have concerns about traffic. It gets really busy during the school year, and so is that partially why? Because it is a well-traveled street, and people are going to Baker Lofts and Black River, and so it made sense to add it there.

Yeah, so the question is 22nd Street. Why 22nd Street? So certainly I talked about the nodes, connecting up the nodes. There's other... reasons when you look at trying to get across River Avenue. Is there a light to the right? And there's a light at 22nd Street, which is kind of unique. So we want to make sure that we're smart about what corridor we choose to try and make this east-west connectivity with the bike lane. So that does narrow things down when you look at some of the uniqueness and context of the different east-west streets.

Heard on the light at River, crossing 22nd at State Street with that hill right there is pretty brutal, especially during the school year. Is there hypothetically a light that would go in? Has that been discussed? If this bike lane were to permanently be put in on 22nd Street, it's going to likely increase traffic. and you're adding bikes that are trying to cross state now with that hill right there, I just wonder about increasing traffic at an already busy place if that would end up requiring a light there.

Sure. And I think one of the thoughts is that the bike traffic would replace some of the vehicular traffic. I wouldn't think that we would add vehicular traffic by adding the bike lane. And typically, when you add the bike lanes and they're used, I think there's a calming effect. And I think traffic generally slows down when there's a biker present. So it's anecdotal. I don't have any documentation per se that would support that. But I just know how I feel when I come on a biker in a car. I tend to slow down. So point well taken on the geometry at State Street. I certainly get that, and that's something that we'll take a look at. College, maybe?

I don't know. Central? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

I've gotten T-boned at least almost 10 times.

10 times.

I'm not even joking.

Every time I come, I have to look both ways, kind of slow down. And many times, cars went over the speed limit, just zooming right through it. And there was just an accident there a couple months ago. It is a very, that stop, and usually they're coming down central from 32nd Street, coming that way. Those are the ones that mainly don't stop. But it is very constant right there. It's very dangerous.

Sure. Yeah, all this stuff we're going to be looking at and looking in more detail. But, again, this is a trial. We're going to roll out the trial, get the input, and then that will be used.

It kind of sounded like, Brian, like you were saying, if you build this, they will come. We all live on 22nd Street now.

And, I mean, I've lived there. We know how dangerous it is. We know how dangerous it is.

I mean, I've lived there for 31 years, so I don't see the bikers. I don't see the bikers. There are, and I'm up five o'clock out watering. I see one guy riding toward the aquatic center. I see the pelotons in the evenings. So this is later in the afternoon, early evenings, leaving the bike shops, riding three and four and five and six abreast down 22nd Street, taking over the street. But I don't see a huge amount of bikers. I see hardly any. And I'm kind of wondering, so if there are no bikers, or very few, right? And I'm talking from my area, right? Barbara and I walk every night. We don't see a lot of bikers. We see a lot of bikers, but not a lot on the sidewalks. We see them around Holland High and some of the neighborhoods down there. Where does the idea come from that this is a good idea?

Sure, sure. And so that's part of the reason why we're doing it, right? is let's do this on a trial basis and see, you know, we're going to be monitoring and having people out there documenting usage, and we'll see, right? So that's part of the reason we're doing the trial.

Is this an effective use of taxpayer money? And I'm a biker, and I think this is a really bad idea. I live on 22nd between College and the park. And it's just not wide enough. I mean, we moved in that house in 1954, so I've seen vehicular traffic changing over the years. And people, those are little tiny lots for the most part. And there just isn't space to try to involve more vehicles, whether they're two-wheeled or three-wheeled or four-wheeled. I don't think that's safe. When I walk to Evergreen or bike to Evergreen, 22nd Street and State is to be avoided because the people coming from 24th down the hill turn left onto 22nd heading west with no concern whatsoever for anything except maybe not getting in a head-on collision. It's just not a safe space. And why would you want to put bikers

Yeah again, it's it's a trial We're gonna put that out there. I will say a couple things with regard to cost This is a really inexpensive way to demonstrate it. We're leaving the curbs where they're at that does provide with that some limitations on what we can and can't do right with this so That's why we're bringing forth the concept of Shiro's right and things like that so that we don't have to make any major changes or do any construction per se in order to move ahead with this trial and try and get some feedback. And so that's basically what we're trying to do is inexpensively demonstrate what things could look like. and try and get some input on that.

So then how do you deal with the problems you're creating? Because coming down from 22nd Street to 17th on Columbia, what used to be people went straight ahead and stopped at the light. People who wanted to turn right, they walked to the right. Now they can't. There's a bike lane and a hash line area. So now you've cut people's ability to turn right. If you're not...

yeah again some may see that as a benefit some may not so just so that there's not multiple multiple movements at an end yeah so trying to restrict the number of different movements at an intersection generally makes that intersection a little more safe so But again, I understand from a convenience standpoint, it's not, right? I get that. I guess I would argue that the queue there outside of, granted, the school pick-up and drop-off at Columbia is busy. I get that. But outside of that, I think traffic is pretty minimal.

But that doesn't address the ability to not be able to turn right at all.

Yeah, you can still turn right. You just have to wait in the queue, right? Yeah. But why?

Why would you create that problem for a

Yeah, so we want to keep the road as narrow as possible and still provide that bike lane amenity for the folks that utilize the bike lanes. Yeah, right. So as you get close to that stop sign, you can't have the parking there anyway, right? So that's just being hashed out. Oh. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Again, that's why we're doing this as a demo.

Yeah. And I would say...

I would say we've gotten some pretty good feedback on Columbia. So we're viewing Columbia as basically a positive. So understanding your input, appreciate your input, but we've had a lot of really good feedback about Columbia and the folks that are using Columbia. Yeah, they are.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's... Yeah, I think that'll be good.

And do we, on the QR code, do we have...

comment about resident non-resident yeah okay on both this one and 17th there was the got it so we'll be able to share that data right um and i think that's good data right so are you only taking data from like people that scan or like if there are enough of us that are against it because we have like a sign sheet that's like hey we don't want that there's a lot of elderly people that i don't

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're welcome to do that. We want to gather the input, right? So feel free, right? If there's written communication, we want to get that, right? And we'll include that. The QR code, from our standpoint, it's just a good way to have it accessible, right? But certainly we're not going to turn away any feedback. We want to take any and all feedback. It's the whole reason we're doing this, right, as a demo. So we would encourage. Sure.

Right. Right.

I'm going to turn this off.

I have one online question too.

I'd be interested in the pre- and post-study data. So what observations have the interns gone out and collected now as opposed to usage before the start so we can compare? Is there any of that available?

Yeah, we're going to gather on that.

So there's nothing available now?

You don't know how many guys are using it now.

Well, we can certainly check after the study, right?

But we can't say an aggregate... Prior to the study, there were three bikers using it, except for the Pelotons leaving the bike shops, right? And those were only going west. So we don't have any pre-study data to compare it to. Right. Just...

The question was, how will we be compensated for a loss of half of our on street parking, which is worth so much for our section of the street? Did you hear that? No, I did not. His question was, how will we be compensated for a loss of half of our on-street parking, which is worth so much for our section of the street?

You need the mic for that one.

You need the mic for this one because it's the online guy.

Again, it's a temporary demo. There's really no compensation. We're making sure that we maintain parking on one side of the street. We think that's going to be adequate for the majority of the time for folks. We'll certainly evaluate that as well, how many people are actually utilizing the parking, because I think the vast majority of the time, there's plenty of parking available out there. But again, that's something that we can document and do. So yeah.

but I would encourage you to maybe document outside of the two weeks to look at how many cars are actually parked out there over the weekend, just during the week, and then also when they have trim meets at the aquatic center, that is insane the amount of cars that are down there. So it's a different time. It's not going to be during these two weeks, but I don't know. I think I'd also look at how many cars actually use the space compared to the

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Certainly portions of 16th Street. Yeah. You know, I think we're kind of getting away from we're kind of covering a lot of the same territory. So I think we'll close the comments. We're going to have the plans out and certainly be able to talk more on a one-on-one basis with the folks there about the plans and look over the plans. Again, just to review, the demo is going to start tomorrow. It will go for two weeks. And, again, we would encourage input from everyone on that. So thank you very much.