Transportation Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Please conduct the roll call.

Mr. Strome?

Here.

Mr. Olger?

Here.

Mr. Hurley?

Here.

Ms. Nyer?

Here.

Mr. Webb? Mr. Kruswinski? Here. Mr. Hanley?

Here.

Mr. Yang?

Here.

Ms. Rose? Councilman McBroom?

We have a quorum. The meeting is officially called to order. The first order of business tonight is the public forum. During the public forum, members of the public have the opportunity to address the Transportation Advisory Board on issues which are not part of tonight's agenda. Please keep your comments limited to three minutes. Staff, do we have anyone signed up to speak as part of the public forum?

There are no speakers signed up.

All right. With no speakers, does anyone... No comments to the public forum is now closed. So we do have the written comments. Those are already recorded as public.

Yes, so there was one written comment sent in online that was printed out and sent to the TAB members.

Our next order of business are the reports and recommendations. So first up is agenda item 261041 to approve the minutes of the August 6, 2026 Transportation Advisory Board meeting. I will entertain a motion to have a discussion on this item. Do we have a motion and a second to approve the minutes of the August 6, 2026 Transportation Advisory Board meeting?

So moved.

Mr. Alderman?

Second.

Mr. Krasinski? Do we have any revisions or comments regarding the minutes? All right, staff, can we please call the roll? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed say nay.

Mr. Strome? Aye. Mr. Ulgar? Aye. Mr. Hurley?

Aye.

Ms. Nair?

Aye.

Mr. Krasinski? Aye. Mr. Hanley? Aye. Mr. Yang? Aye.

Motion passes. We approve the minutes of the August 6, 2026 Transportation Advisory Board meeting as submitted. Next, we have 261018 receive the presentation and provide input on the proposed update of the city's bicycle and pedestrian plan. Mr. Prusa, you have the floor.

The city of Naperville adopted the previous bicycle and pedestrian plan in 1997 and completed an interim update in 2006 to prioritize bicycle route implementation. These plans guided the development of Naperville's sidewalk infill program and the construction of the existing bicycle network. In recent years, the city identified mobility as a priority area with the goal of ensuring residents can move about the community with ease in a variety of transportation modes. The updated bicycle pedestrian plan evaluates existing conditions and public input to identify infrastructure improvements and programs that Naperville can implement over the next 20 years to expand active transportation opportunities and enhance user comfort. The recommendations included in this plan will be to incorporate into the city's capital improvement program as new projects to be evaluated in further detail. In 2025, the city hired Epstein & Sons International to develop an to develop an update to the bicycle and pedestrian plan. Over the past year, Epstein worked with staff to evaluate the existing conditions of Naperville's active transportation network and perform a level of stress analysis of roadways and intersections, along with gathering public input. The results of the existing conditions analysis and public comments were utilized to develop project recommendations. A preliminary draft of recommendations was presented to the public at an open house in April, 2026. Feedback from the event was incorporated to further refine project recommendations and proposed routes. At tonight's tab, Epstein will provide a presentation summarizing findings from community engagement events and existing conditions evaluation, and will give an overview of the project recommendations.

Thank you, Mr. Prusso.

Council members, let's open the presentation. Both of us are going to present on this. So we're really excited to talk about what we've been doing over the last 12 months. a full draft of the bicycle plan in your agenda packet, so hopefully you've had an opportunity to look through it. But we will talk, give you a little bit of a summary of what's in the plan. How do I go to the next slide? So first I wanna talk about the goals and the vision of this plan. And initially the goals and the vision were established through community surveys that we did, through stakeholder input, and through working with the the ted group the naperville ted group staff and also the there were comments that we reviewed from the roadway improvement plan that the city of naperville did that talked a lot about bicycle and pedestrian so from from all of that information and from coordinating with the ted group is how we developed these goals and this vision Some of the main points of the vision is to create a network. That's what we heard. People want to feel safe and comfortable when walking and biking around Naperville. And people wanted connections to destinations. Those were the main themes that we heard. In general, people in Naperville want to walk and bike. In a lot of situations, they just don't feel safe doing so. So that was one goal of this plan. Throughout the planning process, the 12-month planning process, we started with online public engagement and in-person events, which Steph will talk more about. And we studied existing conditions. What does Naperville look like today? And then we, throughout the winter, oh okay throughout winter of 2025 there was more public engagement at that point we did a needs analysis so where are the gaps where are the barriers we put together design guidance for the city to use when implementing some of these recommendations and then by the spring of 26 we had an open house and through that open house we took a lot of that input and kind of finalized our draft recommendations, which we then coordinated and collaborated with the city of Naperville to finalize those recommendations and put together a draft plan. And that's what you're looking at today. The process going forward is TAB meeting today, and then final plan preparation, hopefully approval by the TAB and approval by the city council. So I'm gonna let Steph talk more about the specifics around community engagement.

Yeah, as with any good planning process, community engagement is a really critical component to make sure that the recommendations that we're making are meeting the needs and the desires of Naperville residents. So as Greg said, we had some in-person pop-up events throughout the fall and early winter. These are at various community events or locations where people are going to be gathering, going about their day naturally, and we could pull them aside to ask some questions about their preferences on infrastructure types and also what destinations are really important to them. Based on that feedback and some of our evaluations of the existing conditions and the needs analysis, drafted the recommendations and brought those to the open house in April that Michael mentioned. And that was really our gut check to say, is this meeting the expectations of Naperville residents? Does it achieve the goals that they're looking for? Does it fit the vision that they have for a bicycle network and pedestrian improvements? And overwhelmingly, the response from that was yes. I think we had over 90 participants attend that open house, and over 90% of them said that it was really good recommendations that met their expectations and their needs. So that was great to hear. In addition to those in-person events, we also kind of throughout the beginning of the process and sort of middle of the process had a virtual online option, an interactive map for people to provide comments on locations that they wanted to see improvements or destinations that were important to them, providing people an opportunity to at a time that was convenient for them. We got over 500 comments on that interactive map, which is a lot to go through, but very fun to read. We also gave people the opportunity to like comments that they agreed with. We had over 850 likes on the map, too, so lots of engagement on that. That was great to see. Overall, we were really happy with the quality and quantity of comments that we got throughout the process, both in person and online. What we heard from that?

Yeah, so I'm going to talk a little bit about existing conditions and what we found when we were studying the existing conditions. Some of the key factors analyzed. Community destinations and public amenities. What we were looking at when we were looking at the existing conditions was your biking, walking, and transit amenities and facilities that exist today. We did also review the 1997 plan that Mr. Prusa made reference to. and what those recommendations were and if any of those had been implemented or if anything changed based on those recommendations. We looked at your current facilities. We looked at roadway characteristics like width and number of lanes and speed limit and the jurisdiction of the roadway. We also did a level of traffic stress analysis, which the methodology that we used is in the AASHTO bicycle guide, which is a guide that is used by transportation professionals. So it isn't something we just created, it's a methodology that is common in the industry. We looked at crashes and created a heat map of where the most amount of crashes are occurring. And then that led us to kind of determine where some of the challenges are in the city of Naperville. And through that analysis, we were able to come up with strengths and challenges. First, you have a lot of sidewalk, which is great. A lot of your roads have sidewalk on them. And you have a lot of intersections, but a lot of them are low stress. So that is great as well. You have a lot of low stress routes, like the residential streets that are quiet and curvy and bendy and have some parked cars on them, which kind of requires people to slow down and pay attention and be careful. Those are nice low stress routes to walk and bike on. A lot of, most of the roads under the city jurisdiction are low speed, local and residential streets. You have control over those types of roads. And there's a lot of destinations in Naperville, a lot of places that people want to go to, all great things. We did find barriers, which are pretty common in a lot of places that we go to, rivers, railroads, high stress streets, wide streets, fast streets, things like that, create barriers, they're difficult to cross or there's limited crossings. And in Naperville, it's difficult to access downtown as a bicyclist and as a pedestrian because of all the busy streets. And the development pattern requires people to travel on or across busy roads, right? I mean, it's the nature of the cul-de-sac is that now there's limited roads that connect to places. So you're funneling all of the traffic to a limited number of roads through Naperville. It's common. We put together our key findings, and what we found is we wanted to expand north-south connectivity. There are some barriers that are cutting off north and south. We wanted to reduce level of traffic stress throughout the network, so anything we're going to recommend should be a low level of traffic stress. Enhancing intersections, again, those crossings, trying to make them comfortable for people walking and biking. And if there is a busy route, is there an alternative or a parallel route that we can use as a bicycle route? So those were some of our key findings. And then Steph's gonna talk about recommendations.

Yeah, so all of that work culminates in over 100 different infrastructure recommendations. A lot of them are bike facilities. Like Greg said, you have a pretty complete sidewalk network, so there's not a lot of sidewalk recommendations to make. There's a few gaps that we're recommending get filled or evaluated to be filled. And then as a lot of those bike projects get implemented, it's also recommended to look at the crossings, especially those busy streets. because that's where you get the benefit for people walking and biking to fill gaps and make more new connections. Overall, even when something looks like a bike project, it is also enhancing the pedestrian network by nature of some of the crossing improvements that happen naturally along with it. We have the recommendations broken into four quadrants just to make it easier to see, and I'm not gonna go through every single recommendation in these, but we can kind of deep dive in them during the Q&A if needed. So I'm going to just kind of give an overview of each of these quadrants and kind of what the goal we were trying to achieve for each of them was. and we have everything symbolized by the different bicycle facility type, so a bike boulevard, which are those low speed, low traffic volume, mostly residential streets, where we recommend you put pretty frequent pavement markings, signage, Usually crossing improvements, especially at those busy intersections just to traffic calming can be really common on those streets as well. Bike lane, I'm assuming everyone's familiar. It's the striped designated space for cyclists on the roadway. Buffered bike lane makes that stripe wider so there's more separation from vehicles. and the protected bike lane adds a physical barrier in that striped space that physically separates the vehicle, the car vehicles from cyclists. And then, of course, the shared use path, which Naperville has a really great network of already. A lot of the trails along the river and through your, Forest Preserve Space are great representations of multi-use paths wide enough for cyclists and pedestrians to use. So we're making some recommendations for more of those, filling in some gaps, adding some new connections. And there are a couple locations where we have targeted improvements at key intersections that were brought up as really big barriers right now through the public comment and through our evaluation process. So right now we're looking at the northwest quadrant of Naperville. Our primary goal here was to facilitate new connections across the river and improve north-south bicycle and pedestrian routes. Northeast Naperville is where a good portion of your destinations are. Downtown is here, the metro station, some of the really great parks here. We also heard during public engagement that better connections up to Donata Forest Preserve was really important for people. So overall in this quadrant, trying to facilitate movement to downtown from any direction and also connecting to some of those great recreational amenities. in the southwest quadrant. Again, similar, trying to improve connections to the parks and trails that already exist, and then we did hear a couple times during public engagement that people living in this part of town felt a little bit isolated from the rest of Naperville, so we tried to boost connections for people to get out of this neighborhood to the rest of town on the bike network. Lastly, the southeast quadrant, it's again, similar story, connecting to those great trails and parks and then just facilitating better north, south, east, west movement kind of throughout this area and to the rest of town. In addition to those infrastructure recommendations, we also have some policy and program recommendations, which we have kind of said whether or not it requires just some staff time or if it would be staff time plus materials to implement, whether or not it's like a one-time action or an ongoing program that would have reoccurring costs associated. and most of these recommendations are not within naperville's power or really it doesn't make sense for them to implement a loan so a lot of them will be dependent on partnerships with the school district the parks district police department local businesses so really trying to facilitate kind of everyone in the whole suite of jurisdictions and different agencies and community partners coming together to implement some things that will support walking and biking more broadly on a cultural level. And to implementation.

Yeah, thank you, Steph. So the next step is to implement some of these recommendations, right? That's the purpose of this plan. We want to see some of these things get installed. We broke the recommendations down into short-term, medium-term, long-term. You can start focusing on some of those short-term things right away. These recommendations do go through 2050. This is a long-term plan. We don't expect all of this to get implemented right away. It's not practical. It's not possible. And so the partnerships are gonna be really important throughout this process because there are so many different agencies and organizations involved in order to implement some of these things. Some are listed here, but also IDOT is an organization you're gonna wanna collaborate with in DuPage County and Will County. You can see the price tag at the bottom, $54 million of total recommendations. Now this doesn't, this isn't expected to be all Naperville money or all local money. And it's also not expected to be spent all at one time, right? We expect, and we talk about this in the plan, we give some ideas on how to get some funding to help with these recommendations. federal grants, state grants, corporate grants, private grants. There's also an opportunity to create an annual fund dedicated to bicycle and pedestrian implementation. And the plan provides a more detailed list around some of those grant programs. So that's it. We can open it up to questions.

Thank you very much. That was a great presentation.

Yeah.

I will entertain a motion to have a discussion on this item. Do we have a motion and a second?

I'll make a motion.

Mr. Strong?

Second.

Mr. Hurley? Do we have anyone from the public signed up to speak on this item?

We do. The first speaker is Councilman Holzhauer.

All right, good evening, and thank you, everybody. Thank you all for volunteering. The boards and commissions provide so much value to our council. It's really amazing. And thank you for the wonderful presentation that you gave us. I'm excited that our community is investing in bikes, which when you look at pure communities that we always compare ourselves to, whether it's Overland Park, Kansas, or Carmel, Indiana, this is one area where a lot of them have honestly gotten a decade or two ahead of us. And if we want to retain that status as best community in America, I think a lot of it is going to be in the plan that you all formulated. And so I look forward to seeing it. Very quick ask. would hope that a note, a footnote, something like that could be added to the report that eventually goes to city council. And specifically what I would like it to look at is what I call kind of the missing mile. You know, we have this amazing bike connection to the Illinois Prairie Path, which, you know, connects into Jefferson right at the top left corner of the screen, just off the screen. And then you also have this amazing connection to the river trail, which goes south to South Naperville. but I've heard from a number of people and people in commentary have said that it's just not that safe getting between those two trails. So what it does is it fragments the bike network of the city. A couple of weeks ago, a number of leaders in downtown Naperville, including the mayor, the head of DNA, the head of the Naperville Development Partnership, the head of the Downtown Advisory Committee, we took a walk and basically we went on the current bike path through downtown. and the park district was there too, I should say. And one of the main things we identified is there is city land that, I'm sorry, not city land, government land that could be available to potentially help cut out a good part or maybe even the most dangerous parts of that missing mile that it's just really hard to navigate a bike through the area. Just to highlight a couple, the mayor actually flagged this, but right now, perhaps the most harrowing part of the entire bike network is right there at Aurora and Eagle, just outside of City Hall. Take a look at it if you haven't. We have bikes that are expected to cross lanes of traffic in order to get through. One idea the mayor had was pushing traffic on Webster Street and on the sidewalk that runs right on this side of the building. It doesn't intersect with a river walk. That's something I hope we can get done maybe even before your report gets through. Some of these other paths, there's a very long segment of parking lot. It's an extended parking lot. That's the overflow lot of Centennial Beach. That's existing concrete that's already there. It's way wider than it has to be for the existing purpose there. And we went on that walk, like I said, with the head of the park district. And he was certainly very open to the idea of considering including bikes through there. So I am not a civil engineer. Can I solve this all in a day or a week? Can we all solve this in a couple months? Probably not. But my one ask would be that it highlighted on the report that a lot of city leaders, a lot of civic leaders were interested in this, including from the business community. And thank you. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Do we have anyone else signed up to speak?

The next speaker is Rick Hitchcock.

Do I need to do that again? Oh, good. I also own some property in downtown Naperville, retired urban designer, and I've been involved with the Riverwalk since its inception as a consultant, as a commissioner, and as the chair, and now as an advocate, or some might say a nuisance, I don't know. First of all, congratulations, Epstein. Awesome, thorough, terrific document. A couple things I want to highlight in limited time. There's a quick reference to the Riverwalk 2031 plan. It's important, if you don't already know this, that for the first time in the history of the Riverwalk, there's two new sections of the Riverwalk that are planned for the 2031 bicentennial of the city, the 50th anniversary of the Riverwalk. That will include multi-use, in other words, bikes in addition to PEDs, Bicycle access on the Riverwalk. One is east of the DuPage River between Hillside and basically the old Cock Robin property on the college side. And the other is along Washington between Hillside and Martin Avenue where the South Extension is going. There will be some bicycle or dedicated bicycle multi-use path there in addition to the Riverwalk only path. So the report maybe should be tweaked to reference that because it says that bicycles are not allowed on the Riverwalk, which is 100% accurate today, but in the future won't be entirely accurate. Agree with many, many, many of the recommendations, especially three, four, five, and six are all totally solid getting from the south to downtown. Intersection number two, which Councilman Holzhauer points out, is just really nasty and really encourage some creative thinking around City Hall there to avoid Aurora Avenue, which presently is just not set up at Eagle Street to accept cyclists, even a kind of modest capability, but certainly not families. I would also encourage the consultants and you all to have an open mind to about opportunities, as Councilman Holzar points out, between the river where it intersects Jefferson and downtown. There's lots of really intriguing opportunities, some of which are also on the Riverwalk. I'm not representing the Riverwalk Commission. I'm no longer commissioner. But I can tell you that the commission is contemplating how some dedicated bicycle facilities might be incorporated into some sections of the Riverwalk, not across the board, but in some sections that really make some sense, and what's on the board around the screen certainly makes some sense. In summary, encourage the consultant to discuss those opportunities that have been presented, encourage city, you all, and council to prioritize bicycle facilities, they're really important, and make sure that the document references, in addition to the other partnerships that are presently listed, Downtown Naperville Alliance, Downtown Advisory Committee and Naperville Riverwalk Commission because they're all great partners for some of these additional facilities. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Katherine Clarkin.

Good evening. I'm Katherine Clarkin, a Naperville resident, founder of Accelerate Climate Solutions, and someone who regularly walks and bikes to work. During the summer of 2024, interns at my organization did a deep dive on how to make our city more bike-friendly, culminating in a Naperville bikeability report. Regarding the plan being discussed tonight, I'd like to first comment on the costs. Averaged over the period through 2050, this plan costs about $1.9 million per year, and as we heard, some of that is not coming from our tax dollars. Compare this to the $12 million annually that Naperville spends just to maintain roads for motor vehicles. And that doesn't even count, you know, unexpected contingencies or special projects. The Riverwalk 2031 master plan will cost over $16 million in capital expenses. So these plans are cheap by comparison. Sending, I mean the bike plan is cheap by comparison. Spending on safe and connected bike infrastructure has many obvious benefits. Imagine all the things that people love so much about the Riverwalk extending citywide, but also with access for bicycles. Wouldn't that make our city more livable? My main concern about the proposed plan is that it doesn't go far enough to protect cyclists. The safer it is to cycle, the more people will cycle, improving public health, reducing air pollution and congestion, and improving quality of life. So protected bike lanes are proven to save lives and promote cycling. Unprotected lanes do little to improve safety. There is not just one way to create protected bike lanes. There are cheaper alternatives that Naperville could consider. The threshold in the report for the speed of roads where unprotected bike lanes are put is too high. Speed kills. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a person walking hit by a vehicle at 32 miles per hour has a one in four chance of dying, and it goes up as speed goes up, a 50% chance of dying at 42 miles per hour. So please consider alternatives to unprotected bike lanes on roads with speed limits above 25 miles per hour. For intersections, solutions such as bike boxes, all direction stop, and no right turn on red were underutilized in the report and would make biking and walking safer. These could be implemented throughout downtown, for example. Finally, I have a lot of positive to say about this report, too. There's a lot of good things in it, and I'm excited to see Naperville taking steps to create a safer, more connected community for people walking and biking. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Bill Simon.

Good evening, my name is Bill Simon and I've been a resident of Naperville for 32 years. I'm very fortunate to live less than 50 yards from Gardner Road where the DuPage River Trail crosses Gardner and goes down south. My neighbor Ginny, back in this chamber, she's even more fortunate because she lives literally across the street from the bike path And if you're going down the bike path, you can wave and say hi and chat with her just a little bit. But I have two messages for tonight. One is to think about the success of that bike path. When we first moved to Naperville, it was just a foot trail that went down to Pioneer Park. So my sons were little then. We tromped down there. But now it's a hugely successful bike and pedestrian pathway, and for runners too. It's just amazing. So I don't have any quantitative numbers, but I can tell you that it is a huge success. So if you can take that kind of usage and that kind of accessibility and spread it, across the city and give easier access for all the city's residents, it'll be a huge success. My second message is about seasonality, because some people will say, oh, you know, it's too cold up here to be biking all year long. And, you know, you really don't need to be doing it all year long. We're not Canadians in Calgary who do, you know, amazing things. They commute into the city en masse on bikes. We can have facilities that are used for most of the year. We have plenty of facilities in different government entities that are seasonal. Park district fields, courts, pools are outdoors. We have a river walk. It has a lot of usage in the summertime, probably less so in the wintertime, but there's nothing wrong. It's great to provide you know, means for people to get around for most of the year. So that's it.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Justin White.

My name is Justin White, and I've lived in Naperville since 2006. Approximately 10 years ago, a family member was hit by a car sitting on a bicycle at the corner at the light of 75th and MoDAF. Thankfully, our story did not end in a fatality or a hospital visit. Other families were not as fortunate. Isabel Dimas Jimenez, Royal Gorge in Ogden. Micah Ginsberg, former Naperville police cadet. Richard Neyman, senior citizen, Edwards Hospital, 2023. Thad Murillo, commuting from the Route 59 metro station. A bike commuter crossing Route 59. Unreported crashes. People who stopped walking or riding because they felt it was unsafe. Those are the reasons why we're here. Feeling of safety and confidence, those are things that were mentioned in the report by Epstein. I think those are very, very important to consider. Speed, there's a lot of good ideas in that report. Ted is aware of those ideas. Those ideas can be very successful if you recognize how much speed can impact the safety of a person that's walking or biking. That stat that Ms. Clarkin gave is true. It's research. It's proven. Access. This map, the map shown by Epstein, the ones prepared by Ted and Tab, there are certain parts of this community that do not have access. They cannot ride safely with confidence. So the goal is more than a plan. The goal is fewer names added to the list.

Thank you.

The final speaker is Ernest Oxenkay-Schultz.

Hi. My name is Ernest Doxon-Knecht. I've been a Naperville resident for over 20 years. I'm an avid cyclist. Fortunately, I have a foot injury right now. But I just want to say, to me, the biggest concern, you know, the whole downtown access is interesting, but I don't think that's an issue. I personally think that... A big issue is speed differential between cyclists and cars. And I think we have a couple of issues in the city going north-south on the east side of town. Naperville Road, that's been a chronic problem. There's no way to get north-south in that area. We need a route there. Somehow, you know, either a path or some other... Cycling route through there with access to cross the railroad tracks the Burlington or the railroad tracks And then certainly crossing route 59 going east and west over there. That's always an issue I just want to say in the downtown area I have a big concern about these traffic calming measures that have been implemented that interject the cars towards cyclists that are riding on the right-hand side of the road and or where the cyclists are interjected into the cars because of the curbs coming back out into the traffic lane without a lane for the cyclists. I think this is absolutely foolish. These traffic calming measures where they narrow the road creates conflict between a vehicle and a cyclist. We need to change that. That completely creates conflict and that's never good. Cyclists have issues with vehicles always. a small percentage of drivers that seem to enjoy creating danger for the cyclists, and this creates conflict. I'm trying to avoid conflict, and I think we need to look at these traffic calming measures in a way that doesn't interject the bikes and the cars into each other. And either you create a separate lane for the cyclists to get through that traffic calming method or don't do it. I'll just say that there's right now on Jefferson Avenue just east of the river, we've created this widening of the center section, pardon me, that interjects the cars back into the cyclist paths that are riding east or north east or west on jefferson avenue this is this is absolutely absurd and i i hope you guys take efforts to change that because we need to keep the cars away from the bikes thank you thank you there are no more speakers great does the board have any questions or comments for staff for the public forum

I have a question about the safety aspect of the report. It sounds like there's quite a few concerns from our residents about the safety aspect of the report. I also have a concern to add to that. I am very familiar with Quadrant 3 on the map, and there's a couple sections along Plainfield-Neighborville Road where just like the last gentleman was speaking about, there's a lot of variables with speed. There's a differential in speed between cars doing 40, 50 miles an hour, people walking, people on regular bikes, people on e-bikes, and that differential in speed can become really hazardous. When you're exiting Conan Doyle, for instance, to pull out onto Plainfield-Naperville Road, there's a bike path that runs parallel to Naperville-Plainfield Road. And the peripheral vision when you pull up to that intersection is very limited. So you have a very small window of opportunity to not hit somebody. So those kinds of oversights kind of concern me when I think about safety, when I think about the addition of new speeds of these modes of transportation. I think that should be looked at a little more closely with the amount of money being spent on this plan. So that's just my opinion and part of it. I agree with a lot of people here, and it seems like there are some safety things that could be looked at a little closer, in my opinion. Thank you.

Mr. Hurley.

Question for the consultants, and first of all, fantastic plan. going away out, the quality of it and comprehensiveness. But I'm curious from a guiding philosophy when building this. Was it intended to be aspirational, the cost reflected in that, or was it intended to be realistic, so it's achievable, or somewhere in between?

I think it was somewhere in between. There's elements that are fairly easy to implement and then there's elements that are tricky because you have to coordinate with other jurisdictions or you have to somehow raise money to do the project. There are elements that are aspirational. That was the collaboration with the TED group as we were going throughout this plan. It's like, what are you willing to, you know, recommend? So there was back and forth. I don't know if Mr. Pursta has anything to add?

Yeah, I echo Epstein's comments on that. And to that point, yeah, you know, I'm just going to elaborate a little bit more that along with jurisdictionally you know, there's always going to be concerns when you're working with other jurisdictions on kind of the needs being met for both parties, and then also constructability is a big piece of this as well. There's a lot of right-of-way that is challenging throughout the city, so that's all part of the plan, and a lot of that's highlighted in the priority map that Epstein provided on, you know, that priority map's kind of Where do we have a lot of residents' concerns? And then also, what are those easy wins that we could get because of ease?

Thank you. And just as a follow-up question, was there any guidance given on what the cap or max over this period of time should be or not to exceed, keeping in mind things like constructability? And obviously, we can't build... space shuttles for everyone, things like that.

You're talking about a cap on the cost?

Right. I mean, you could have come up with a plan that would be a billion dollars. That wouldn't be realistic. But was there guidance given to you as to not to exceed for a period of time, or was it just additive from what the recommendations were, and that's what the costs came out to?

Right, yeah. There were no dollar values at the beginning that were given to us. The recommendations came first. The cost estimate came next.

Just to follow up on the cost question, what's the current spending for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure? Is the overall $54 million, is that incremental?

Yeah, that would be something that would be – it's a good question. It's really hard to say because a lot of this stuff will be integrated. integrated into our current CIP and other road improvement projects so you know a side path could be put into you know a road resurfacing project and then we have a consistent pavement marking contract that does a lot of our bike and pet improvements and that includes like markings and the the small amount of delineation that we do have So it's all incremental year by year, but it's tough to put an exact dollar amount per year. I will say the 2027 budget is not approved yet, but we do have a request in there to add money for feasibility study purposes from some of the plan elements that we are seeing here today.

Thank you. Does anyone else have questions?

I do have another one. How much of that budget is implemented towards safety devices like warning of somebody coming down a path or someone crossing an intersection at a bike path? Kind of like what we have near Springbrook Path over by Arrow Estates where you can cross 83rd Street safely by hitting the light. Is there any kind of indicators into the budget or any kind of warnings for people crossing paths?

Yeah, so we have two funds that we pull from that are More related, we have nothing dedicated to bike and ped specific, but we have two funds that are for our traffic signal equipment. Those are the funds that we pull from whenever we're adding any RFPs or beacons. Recently on Long Jefferson, we've added a lot of LED lights at our crossings, and that's the fund that that gets pulled from.

Is there one that senses somebody coming down a path so that if, like say you couldn't see, but you could see the lights start flashing because it picks up a certain movement down the path? Are you familiar with any of those types of warning indicators?

Yes, we have nothing, we have everything as push activated within the city. We have nothing like that. Maybe if, When you're looking regionally, I believe in Green Valley Forest Reserve, Bolingbrook, or that may be Lyle Township has something like that along those trails that are crossing Green Road and Royce Road, but nothing in Naperville.

Could we consider a little bit more of that type of implementation along our bike paths where you have very risky intersections? I mean, it wasn't identified as a risky intersection, but I know this to be very risky here, and Like, I think that should be looked at a little closer to make sure that we're covering people.

Of course. So part of this plan, not just recommendations that Epstein has provided, they've also provided a toolkit for crossings. And in that toolkit, there's... for lack of better words, tools for staff to look at on what type of crossing application we should be putting at certain intersections, and that uses speed of vehicles, pedestrian numbers, site distance, crash history, all of that.

Great, thank you for explaining that. As you know, I'm kind of new to this, but I think it's well worth asking, so I appreciate the time.

Mr. Hurley?

Thank you. In regards to the feedback from the public, is there still opportunity to integrate any of the ideas or recommendations from people who are speaking today into it? Or if not, procedurally, what is the best way to either append or make sure it gets considered as part of this process? So I guess that would be first to you, Michael. Is there still room to – is it done? No more budget? to amend anything in the report itself or there's still room to do so?

Yeah, so this meeting right now, you guys are receiving the report with the thought that any sort of direction, recommendations, any sort of comments from the public and then the board would then be given to us and we would work with Epstein to make to get back with the team and see if we can make a few more changes to this. And then the goal is to come to the October tab with the report as a recommendation for approval for city council sometime in late October, early November. So these two tabs are those opportunities along with the city council public forum for us to hear the public and the boards.

Thank you. Just to clarify, so for the many safety concerns and the recommendations for this plan, as the city moves through the plan and implements it over the years, the intention, I assume, would be to evaluate each segment as your budgeting allows for you to focus on that year, and you would reevaluate the safety and crash data at that time and adjust, you know, if it's saying a bike buffer now, maybe that won't be appropriate five, ten years from now when the implementation actually happens. I just want to make sure that's correct, because there's a lot of concern about safety, but we don't know everything, you know, in the future, so it's hard to say today.

Absolutely, yeah, this is just a plan at this point. It is also important to understand that this is not a mandate. These are recommendations, a framework for the city of Naperville to use as they implement. There are other steps to be taken before there are shovels in the ground, right? There's engineering. that has to happen, more public engagement that we recommend happening before you put any shovels in the ground. So there's absolutely opportunities to be making tweaks to these.

I'm gonna elaborate a little bit more. Another piece in the plan is also a recommendation for staff to give a twice a year update to tab on where we're at on the implementation of the plan and next steps. So there'll be plenty of opportunity for feedback through that.

Thank you. And then I just also wanted to touch on the downtown connections that were discussed. Is that something that can be looked at? And I think in the plan it currently says it's a bit open-ended. So I don't know if that's something that we want to refine a bit.

All right. More than happy to. So currently the thought, as has been mentioned, one of the biggest resident concerns that we got was the connection for the DuPage River Trail. Once you get out onto Hillside, heading northbound, the Hillside, Webster, Aurora, Eagle, Jackson, and then getting back onto the trail at Jefferson was a concern for residents, and that's highlighted in the intersection studies that are mentioned in the plan. But it is open-ended, so our next step is to do a feasibility study to kind of see what what would be possible there. And given the comments from the councilman and Mr. Hitchcock, we would take those into consideration for that plan and broaden the scope a little bit on just general north-south connection in that part of the downtown.

Great, thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from the board? Hearing no more discussion, I will close this item. The next up is old business. Does anyone have anything for old business?

We have one item for old business. So as you guys know from the last few meetings, we currently have our overnight parking survey that is still open, and it will be open through September 18th, which is a Friday two weeks from now. We are currently at 2,000 survey responses, which is a lot. And the goal is to summarize those responses and bring overnight parking recommendations to a future tab in the fall.

Great, thank you. Hearing no more, we will close old business. Next up is new business. Does anyone have anything for new business? Hearing none, we will close new business. I will now entertain a motion and a second for adjournment. I will entertain a motion to have a discussion on this item. Do we have a motion and a second to adjourn this meeting?

I'll make a motion.

Mr. Strong.

Second.

Mr. Hanley? Staff, can we please call the roll? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed, nay.

Mr. Strump? Aye. Mr. Holger? Aye. Mr. Hurley? Aye. Ms. Snider?

Aye.

Mr. Webb? Mr. Krasinski? Aye. Mr. Hanley? Aye. Mr. Yang? Aye.

And this concludes the September 3rd, 2026 Transportation Advisory Board meeting.