Council Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Well, people like that when I'm on mute. When the chair calls your name to provide public comment, if you are participating via phone, please press 6 to unmute yourselves. So if they're not here, how could they understand what we said? Members of the public wishing to comment on an item via email. Oh, okay. We don't need to worry about that. Okay. Roll call. All members of the committee are here. Oral communication from the public. Is there any none here? Anybody online?

No hands raised.

Okay. No one from there. We will go up this. We will go now to item four, the consent calendar. As any of the any members had any changes or corrections to the meeting of September 2?

I have no changes or corrections to that. I have a quest a friendly question about Safe Routes to School finals report.

Well, we're not there yet. Okay. I just wanna make sure you didn't skip that. We're only at four point one. We got that.

Okay.

That's down their ways there. Okay. Sarah, any appearing no corrections, do I hear a motion to accept the minutes?

Sure. Motion to accept. Second.

Second. All

in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Okay. Unanimously passed. Four point two, your the Transportation Committee meeting schedule. Now since we don't know who's gonna be on the committee next year, we'll approve it and give it back to those people. Any corrections or additions to it?

No. Okay.

Do I hear a motion?

So moved. Second.

Okay. All in favor of approving meeting minute meetings and the calendar for the next 2026, say

aye. Aye.

Passes unanimously. 4.3

Safe Routes to School final report.

We received a report. And is there any kind of a staff memo on this or participation or presentation? No.

It is a consent item. Okay.

Well, that doesn't mean okay. I hear council member Hicks has I

have a couple of friendly questions about it since I have you all in front of me. I I will accept. I do intend to accept it or not change it. But I I've been on the committee. I don't remember taking a deep dive into it in the past.

So my first question is, is this the way we we just get it submitted to us to read and and receive is the way we do it on this committee. We never do a deeper dive. So it was so I'm just gonna make a a couple of comments. It it was fascinating and and, you know, helpful because when at least when I was last running, there was a lot of concern around safe routes to school, and we talked about it a lot. So I liked being able to review it.

It was interesting to me that it it talked both about safety and about mode change. I thought the highlight would be on safety, but there's actually no safety data in it. I believe we get that through some other forum through I know you do safety metrics on the in general. But so one comment is it might be nice to have some safety reporting in the in this report since it's called Safe Routes to School. And then the other thing is it would be nice to show more than one year change.

I found the all the tables fascinating, but it was only two years. And so it showed that biking decreased from last year, walking increased, and there was virtually no change in driving alone. So no mode shift out of cars. All fascinating, but only one year is not much of a trend. And it would have been nice to see multiple years.

And my comment for our chair, because I know that he he's involved in in mass transit issues, is that talking to school board members of MVWSD school board members, there's a big there's an interest. They use the shuttle, students do. And there's an interest in getting more getting more transit access. So maybe you could put your thinking cap on that. And then the my it also says that I noticed that only 4% of grade schoolers bike, which makes sense because mine were too little.

You know? Don't try to bike a five year old to school. But that goes up in middle school, and then it's almost 20% of high schoolers. So it seems like all this training is mainly, a lot of it's focused in grade school. It's training them for later years. But my other comment is that it also I was very happy to see that it shows how many people scoot to school on scooters, and that's how I brought my grade schoolers to school, because grade schoolers can scoot. And I would like more of a focus on that in the training. So those are all my unsolicited comments, and I move to accept the report. Second.

Okay. Discussion now. There is no reason that this committee cannot look more into the details of the safe route to school since it's a high priority to a lot of people. Yeah. Never, as long as I'm sure, you could bring up anything at any time.

Okay.

And we can dig into it. And I had some concerns about what I read too that the metrics of how they showed what was good or bad. And I thought the numbers were pretty low, and so they didn't put it in context of some of this what I saw. I go, okay. 98% of the schools participated. So 98 so how does who's that 2% that didn't participate? These are rhetorical. You guys don't have to. Who was in charge of this? I'm gonna ask.

Yeah. We have, so I'll invite her up to speak if you have specific questions.

No. Not at the moment. No. Oh, okay. Are these are no. These are observations that

I direction. Understood. Yes.

But if you wanna come up and say what but so how do you okay. Come back. How do you get

how do

you get 98% of the schools participate?

So yeah. These are the students that they have to do a permission slip. So if to do a safety training, bike rodeo, especially bike rodeos, they're bringing in bike, and we also provide loaner bikes. And then they have to turn in the permission slip to join the safety. This year past years, we also can do they also do pedestrian safety, but the bike road, they they check if they're actually on bike and stopping and looking and all of those other areas.

Because the way it was worded, it said 98% of the schools participated, and that's you so the wording on it was a little confusing for me.

So all schools this year participated. All elementary school and middle schools participated. It's the number of students.

Okay. So a 100% of the schools participated.

Yeah. Public

If I find that.

Yeah. Public schools.

Okay. And, also, the when I was reading it, it said staff. So was it the staff of life or bike moves or whatever? Is that their staff versus city staff? What was there did you use the same people, or was it their staff that participated in some of these things versus city staff?

So does and anything that happens in the school so that's the safety training and bike rodeos are provided by SafeMoves. They are the safety trained professionals that they bring their bike and all the props and set up the rodeo and the safety training, and they go through the students. So their staff, meaning their staff of the program as part of the consulting team.

Okay. Yeah. So a lot of it when I saw it, there wasn't sometimes there was very I wish I had more there. I won't dwell on it since I didn't yeah. But they had oh, here it is. What year is this? Oh, March 4. Never mind. But, yeah, a little more clarity of if you only had 20% is is it was a 20% and here's an example of how you interpret numbers. 20% could be the same as two out of 10.

So when you say two out of 10, that doesn't sound like much. But when you say 20%, it gives it more meaning. So that's why when we look at the context, is I always like to see the transactions or how many people actually participated in the whole thing versus percentages. But, yeah, next next year, Al's oh,

no. Next year, we want none of

us would be on the committee. We don't know. Yeah. We don't.

So I think it would be nice for this committee to look at to have it as an item to discuss.

Do you train on scooters? They do train on scooters as part of their rodeos. Oh, that's right. Yeah. So they because most lot of the kids, as you said, second, third, and fourth graders bring their scooters to school, so they have that. Right?

I have an item, but I don't know if I wanna bring it up to 6.2. It's ebikes. So would ebikes be under Safe Route to Schools or a total different category? Well,

it's in the report.

Yeah. So e have been kind of a topic with the middle schoolers and high schoolers. And last year, we saw a really big number of increase. So this year, we are working with couple of things with the high schools. First, understand how many ebikes they have, kind of talking about the volume, in in terms of how many students are biking and how many of them are ebikes.

Second, we are working with the schools to do sort of a webinar type of educational. So somebody will be on a virtual and talk through the different safety measure that the school can play various times of the day. That's one way to kind of really reach that high number of students that high schools have. And the third one, we are working with PD to distribute the flyers and all the educational materials within our the events, the safety training, the bike rodeos that we have. So those are the three ways we are currently addressing kind of the ebike safety concerns.

Okay. The Monday before Thanksgiving, I was sitting at my Starbucks, enjoying cup of coffee, and all of a sudden, I heard a crash. And the crash was a seventh grader wearing on his ebike, broadsiding a Highlander. So the kid was going rather fast. And I've and I was talking to the chief about this, and I go, how can we get their resource officers?

Because this is we're this is gonna get more. We're gonna see a lot more of these accidents occurring. And I said, how can we be proactive to educate and also to follow the laws and so forth? Los Altos has done some, tweaking of the their code, and we need to do this same thing to get on board because we're just they're riding all over the place. They're, they're enjoying our sleeper, Franklin bypass.

They're zipping right now, but they're all you know, they're wheeling. There are people on them. I see people aren't wearing their helmets. I see not lights at night. And so is that something that the safe routes group that can do the education work with the resource officers But if we need to bring PD in to start citing kids for that, can this your group, your staff can bring that down?

We certainly will work with them on the education education side of things. And things you said, helmets, lights at night, and, you know, follow the rules of the road. Those are definitely we have developed materials and information that we'll do, whether they're siding or not that I think for PD to, you know, determine.

So with the to to middle schools or the high schools, are you working with administration to are they are they realizing the what's happening with e bikes and and potential out there to harm and riding all around? Yes. And are they addressing it, or are they relying on us?

I think it's we are trying to find the right level of approach that works for both of us. One of the issue with high school is there's 3,000 students, and they have been we we haven't find the right venue to kind of approach them. So for elementary and middle school, we do it through PE. We go through the whole PE for two weeks, and we do safety training and bike rodeos. We haven't had that type of structure with high school students just because it's so big.

So one of the ideas is there's two. Right beginning of the school year, we'll do kind of whoever has a ebike, they'll take some sort of a training with us. And that's when we talk about how fast your ebike can go, importance of wearing helmet, lights, rules of the road. And then we do this webinar approach where we develop something that's evergreen, and they can play it throughout during assembly, during you know, they have, like, a flex period. So they just have a little bit more flexibility of how they would educate.

But they're very well aware of this as an issue they are trying to grapple because I think it's a pretty like, it started, and then lot of kids now got it. So it's a you know, the change what had happened quite rapidly. So they're still kind of figuring out what is how they can address that. But they're they're very well aware, and they're willing to work with us.

Can they can they require kids that use z bikes to

Pardon?

Get a permit or record in there on campus? Have they started looking at consequences of how to enforce?

We have definitely talked about having a permit and consequences meaning either citing or if you don't have a help you know, some sort of a enforcement that even school can do. But I think they wanna see a little bit more education approach rather before they go into that.

So are you on a timeline, or is it just sort of sporadic? Or as we say, at our next meeting, you could give us an update on ebikes? Is that something possible if you're making conversation with PD and the schools?

So the program the reports we have presented today, it's yearly. So my program has started

with,

you know, school year, and I'm working with the schools too. So the goal is really to provide education throughout the year throughout the school year with those two different venues. Yeah.

So I think what the team is trying to say is that an ebike is still a bike. So all of the training that is being provided for the bike training will apply to ebikes. There's just this additional nuance of the motorized bikes and the speed that they can go at that the team is looking to now incorporate because it's becoming more of a trend to see the ebikes for the the older kids.

And I would like us to be proactive on proper use of an ebike. The the back of the helmets and lights and not doing pop up wheelies and not and two people. And that entails the PD. Are we is there

We can start some conversations with PD. I I don't know that, you know, we can promise on their behalf that they will do certain enforcement actions, but we can certainly start up the conversation with them.

Is that something that I like this committee to be helpful or proactive, bring it to counsel and so forth. So if we get some updates on that as I say, I'm already in communication with the chief about the last one when I saw the kid hit the thing. Fortunately, he was wearing a helmet. He got up, but he did go to Stanford or a checkout and or something. But this is not gonna be the first one we're gonna see. So Yeah.

Okay. It is a yeah. It's a trend that's being monitored, and we're looking to kind of continuously tweak our education programs to incorporate the trends.

Okay. So in our next calendar twenty sixth, could we have an update on this?

I Yeah. Think we can include some information.

I mean, it could be written. Yeah. Oh, okay. Thank you.

Anyway, so very oh, sorry.

I think the the only question that I might, like that I reflect on is this is focused so much on, like, the youth, but I think from what I've been hearing and observing, a lot of it is those who are in the car. And so I'm not sure what the city can do to kinda address, like, that component because we have, you know, 25 miles an hour in your school zones, and yet I see people flooring it past schools all the time. You know, there's a couple areas particularly right, like the Crittenden area where people have reached out to counsel quite a bit. And so I I know we're gonna be talking about our active transportation plan, etcetera. I'm just wondering how we kind of address the side of things in the educational component in conjunction.

Like, we try to let people know we have a vision zero. We have a safe routes to school, but the onus isn't just on, like, the youth. Right? It needs to be those who are behind the wheel as well.

Yeah. So as part of the back to school, that's when we really push out the driver education. So that's when we we have, like, how to do drop off safely. Like, we know you have to do sometimes dry drop off, but how to do it the safest way. So we do do that during back to school night and throughout the year, especially our citywide events. So Monster Bash, Earth Day, that's when we really try to talk to the adults to say importance of staying within the speed limit and pay extra attention because it fits their own bike and walking. Yeah. So those are the ways we are doing. I mean, Vision Zero campaign, that was that was another venue to reach drivers and educate about driver safety.

Yeah. I

just If there's any Oh, okay. I I think that that's a trend that we can monitor too with, like, other jurisdictions on how they may be, like, tackling that component outside of just you know, because those are kind of really isolated events. But it feels like, you know, like, the holiday season, daylight savings, it just you know? Is there something we could be doing, for example, like, tree lighting or other events where we can, like, reemphasize that?

Because I'm just will be back at tree lighting. Okay. Perfect. Yeah.

Because I feel like web

head game, which focuses on driver and paying attention and all of that. It's more focused. Yeah. A little bit older and then teen and the parents.

Yeah. And then interesting too, the tracking on the the shuttle. So I think that kinda goes in line with what I've heard too about youth not wanting to to drive. And so, you know, the utilization of the shuttle and continuing to monitor that, I think people have really kind of, like, used our shuttle even more with our expanded hours and expanded routes. So do we need to does council need to do even more there and invest in as we're monitoring that? I'd just be curious.

They would like us. The school would like us to. And, John, you're a big advocate of school

bus. Oh, I am. But this but the school board does not wanna touch it because of the cost and Right.

The consequences. An item.

It's But I always yeah. Conversation. The super due superintendent. So I was in up when he was at Los Altos. Yeah.

I think it and if we wanna do that, we really have to start seeing where we get money or save money to increase our shuttle service. I when I was on the PTA board before, we were able to take a bus over in Los Altos that went past the one of the middle schools in the homestead, and they were taking a stop at 07:30 in the morning at a senior home. They go, how many people are getting on a from a senior who's getting on the bus? And they go, oh, about zero, but you're still stopping. Well, we were able to convince VTA to change the route to instead of us going to the senior home, they picked up kids from over the Highlands, over Grant area, and take them to the middle school and to the high school.

So but they they had a bus already going there. So if we can work with VTA or if we can increase our capacity of

Right. Shuttle. I mean, I think those are the kinds of adjustments we should be thinking about. I would like

to see the data,

and you can see where people are getting on and off. Right?

Just just the congestion, the drive time, the emissions, and so forth. So Anyway,

I was gonna say great job. Yeah. I wish this program were around when my kids were in school. It's really training for life, I think. Thank you

so much. Any other comments from, was it STEAM body?

Well, just I would like to just you know, I think council should check-in on this and know where it's going because I think it's something we've all been concerned about.

Do you wanna run it past CTC, or you wanna do it the council? How would you like to you don't need to have two reports. So I'm I agree with I'm just saying Yeah. Let's pick one or the other for staff so they don't have to do it twice. Or

My understanding is typically in the past, it's actually only stopped at BPAC. It was just this past

past

cycle or past year or something like that where it got requested to be elevated to the CTC.

So maybe this

is our first time.

So maybe so maybe when we do our item eight council reports as chair, you

could talk about how we

discuss safe routes of the school at our CTC meeting and highlight it and elevate it, and then you can, via our clerk, pass the report out to most of our colleagues. That would be my suggestion.

We are gonna change the culture a little bit here. So, yeah, we'll talk about how we best way to do it. Is that fair? Sure. Okay.

We can do that.

Thank you, Good. That was a good way to start. Okay. Did we pass that? Yeah. We have to pass the consent calendar.

Okay.

It was just an inform well, wait. It was informational. Whether the action item

I don't

think it's done, then it's done.

That was an informational item. Yeah. Prove what we had to do. That was the action item, and the other two were just and 443 was Yeah. It's just information, so we don't need to put it on that. Correct?

It was part of the consent, so I would recommend it's part

of the whole consent motion.

Okay. I

move to accept the

We did 4144. Second. Okay. Any discussion? No. All in favor, say aye. Aye. It passes unanimously. Okay. We're on to new business. Paul, please stay. Kids have kids. We all have kids. She has kids. She she wants about oh, no. That's why he went to a part of it. Okay. New business. Transit center grade check transit center grade separation access project. Interim improvements.

Okay. Then I did saw we got a do we have a city staff report

in?

We do have a presentation.

Do have a presentation. Joey Houghton, senior civil engineer.

Okay. That looks like poop.

On to me. Good evening, chair and committee members. Before I start, I wanna confirm that the public is seeing the slides.

Double check. That issue

with for putting that up there.

Is it showing?

You just got one letter from our former interim city manager.

One from someone here. Because you can see it. Horse content. Yes.

Yeah. You can

start. We'll get a meeting if it's not.

You do.

Yep. Good evening, chair and committee members. My name is Joy Houghton, senior civil engineer with Robert Gonzales here, principal civil engineer in public works. And we are here to present and receive input on the concept design for the transit center grade separation and access project or what we are now calling as the Castro And Evelyn interim improvements. To start with some background, grades separating Castro Street from the railroad tracks has long been a high priority for the city aimed at improving safety for all modes of travel.

Starting in 2015 when city council authorized the development of the transit center master plan, which includes the transit center grade separation and access project, and I will outline the scope of that project on the next slide.

2015 was a good year. Mhmm.

Design work for the transit center grade separation and access project began in 2022 with Caltrain leading the project delivery, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority providing measure b funding, and the city serving as the project sponsor. In September 2023, at the 65% design milestone, Caltrain provided the city the updated project cost, which was significantly higher than the Caltrain provided cost at the 35% design stage. In January 2024, city council received an update on the status and cost estimates for both Castro and Ringsdorf grade separation projects. City council selected to prioritize Ringsdorf and move forward with the Castro interim improvements, to implement improvements at the at grade crossing at Castro Street. In June 2025, staff received the 35% design submittal, and today, we are continuing to progress design to 65%.

Now I'd like to share some background regarding the Castro Street closure. Temporary signage and barriers remain in place to prohibit fecal movements and queuing at the rail crossing for southbound traffic on Castro toward Evelyn Avenue to support both the Castro Streets program, which was implemented in June 2020, and the Castro Pedestrian Mall, which was established in October 2022. The transit center grade separation and access project is the first element of the transit center master plan implementation. The grade separation and access project proposes to eliminate eliminate the vehicle at grade rail crossing, construct a new vehicle ramp from West Evelyn to Shoreline, a shared use path on the South Side Of Evelyn between Franklin and the West Side Of Shoreline, and under crossings underneath Caltrain tracks and Central Expressway with access points at Castro, Sterling Road, and Adobe. As previously mentioned, council selected to prioritize the Ring Surf grade separation project, recognizing interim improvements can be implemented at the rail crossing at Castro.

And with council support, staff has shifted focus on the interim improvements at Castro Rail Crossing with what we now refer to as the Castro And Evelyn interim improvements. Castro Street, including the Evelyn Avenue crossing, is a critical gateway to downtown and a key access point to the Mountain View Transit Center. The existing crossing at Evelyn Avenue and Castro Street carries heavy pedestrian and bicycle activity with more than 1,700 pedestrians and 800 bicyclists crossing the railroad tracks each day. The Castro And Evelyn interim improvements project will remove the vehicle at grade crossing at the Caltrain tracks at Castro Street and provide a safer crossing for pedestrians and bicyclists across the rail corridor and Central Expressway, improving access to both downtown and the transit sun. The proposed improvements are organized into three segments and will be implemented altogether.

Segment one is Evelyn Avenue between Hope Street and Bryant Avenue. Segment two is Moffett Boulevard between Central Expressway and Jackson Street. And segment three is the Castro, Evelyn, and rail crossing area. Starting with segment one, Evelyn Avenue east of Castro between Holt and Castro, the project will install a class two buffered bike lane on the North Side Of Evelyn for westbound bicyclist and the class four separated bikeway on the South Side Of Evelyn for eastbound bicyclist. The bike lane improvements in this section will result in elimination of two parking spaces along Evelyn Avenue.

In addition, the traffic signal at Evelyn And Hope Intersection will be modified to accommodate the elimination of the eastbound vehicular traffic between Castro and Hope. Continuing on with segment one, Evelyn at Castro. The project will install class two buffered bike lane on the North Side Of Evelyn that transitions to a class three bike route West Of Castro for westbound bicyclists, and a class four separated bikeway on the South Side Of Evelyn for eastbound bicyclists. Landscaping will be installed on the North Side Of Evelyn, which will include curb and gutter to restrict vehicular access and green storm water infrastructure, and also on the West Side Of Castro, which will include trees and planter boxes. These landscape areas will not only serve to enhance the area, but also channelize pedestrian traffic to the marked crossings.

The two pedestrian crossings on both side of Castro will be upgraded with Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA compliant curb ramps, pedestrian crossing signage, high visibility crosswalks, and streetlight. On the westerly part of segment 1, Evelyn Avenue west of Castro. This is between Castro and Bryant. Class three bike route markings will be installed on the North Side Of Evelyn between Castro and Wild Cherry Lane for westbound bicyclists, and class four separate bikeway will be installed installed on the South Side Of Evelyn for eastbound bicyclist between Castro And Wild Cherry Lane. The bike lane improvements in this section will result in elimination of 10 parking spaces along Evelyn.

Next segment is 2, Moffett Boulevard north of Central Expressway. For orientation, Jackson Street is on the right, and Central Expressway is on the left. The project will convert a portion of the existing southbound class two bike lane to a class four separated bikeway utilizing the existing southbound vehicle lanes, which are currently closed due to the Castro Street closure. No changes are proposed to the northbound traffic or bicycle facilities on Moffett Boulevard north of Central Expressway. Future improvements will be addressed through the Moffett Boulevard precise plan, which is currently in development and will include recommended street cross sections for this segment of the corridor.

Continuing on to segment two, Poffitt Boulevard at Central Expressway, the intersection will be converted to a t intersection with the elimination of the northbound vehicular crossing at Castro. The project will modify the in the intersection's traffic signal to remove the rail preemption, which is a safety feature that links the railroad equipment to nearby traffic signals to clear vehicles from the tracks when the train approaches. Eliminating the rail preemption will shorten the pedestrian and bicyclist wait times at Central Expressway as their crossings will no longer be delayed by the gate downtime during train activity on Castro. The project will also refresh the Central Expressway crosswalks and install ADA compliant curb ramps on the south side of Central Expressway. Additionally, green bike lane striping and bicycle ramps will be installed for bicyclists crossing the intersection.

Next is segment three, the rail crossing at Castro Evelyn. Again, for orientation, Central Expressway is at the top, and down at the bottom is the Evelyn connection at Castro. The proposed improvements at this location include elimination of the northbound vehicular access at Castro and removal of the crossing gates, traffic signal, roadway asphalt concrete, and concrete track panels, elimination of the westerly pedestrian at grade crossing and widening of the existing easterly pedestrian at grade crossing from 10 feet to 15 feet, installation of curb, gutter, and concrete surfacing on Castro South of Central Expressway to permanently restrict vehicular access, installation of decorative fencing along Caltrain tracks and right of way to enhance safety, and upgrades to street lighting to improve nighttime visibility. Staff is currently exploring the feasibility of adding landscaping along Central Expressway to further enhance user experience. As mentioned, the project will enhance pedestrian and bicycle experience by reducing wait times at Central Expressway and eliminating the westerly at grade crossing, minimizing the conflict points at the railroad crossing.

These changes will result in a minor adjustment to the bicycle or pedestrian circulation. For for pedestrians heading southbound from the Northeast Corner of Moffett And Central, No change is proposed in circulation or access to the transit center or downtown. There is a minor adjustment for bikes and peds heading southbound from the Northwest Corner of Moffitt And Central. Bikes and peds will cross Central Expressway and head east to the widened at grade rail crossing and continue on to Evelyn Avenue to the transit center or downtown. This new path adds a short distance up to the travel path from the West Side Of Central Expressway intersection.

No change in circulation is proposed for bikes and peds on the East Side Of Castro heading northbound from downtown or transit center. For bikes and peds coming from the West Side Of Castro Street heading north, they will need to cross Evelyn Avenue, head east, and cross at the easterly upgrade rail crossing to continue northbound. Similar to the bike ped circulation, there are also some adjustments proposed to the vehicle circulation as a result of the elimination of the northbound vehicular access on Castro Street, Westbound vehicles on Evelyn heading northbound to access Moffett Boulevard or Central Expressway will be routed to Villa Street through either Bryant Street or Franklin Street. From Villa Street, vehicles will use Shoreline Boulevard to connect to Central Expressway to head northbound on Moffett Boulevard or continue on to Central. Similarly, southbound vehicles originating from the North heading into the transit center or downtown will continue to have access via Shoreline Boulevard, Villa Street, and Hope Street.

Staff presented the design concept to the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee on 11/17/2025. The BPAC made a motion to request the CTC to have staff convey community desire to keep both pedestrian crossings at Caltrain right away. In addition to the motion, the BPAC provided the following feedback, including anticipate high pedestrian and bicyclist counts, convert easterly crossing on Evelyn to a diagonal crossing, remove parking between Wild Cherry Lane and Castro Street, conduct a walk audit with design team and the public, add bike lane improvements on Northbound Moffett Boulevard, North of Central Expressway, add the bicycle ramp near the easterly crossing on Evelyn Avenue, add signals at the two Evelyn Avenue crossings, and add bollards to the South side of Central Expressway. Based on staff's initial assessment, staff will incorporate the I the elements highlighted in green, and staff will continue to evaluate the items in gray and need further feedback from the CTC for inclusion in the project scope. Moving on to project costs and next steps.

The project is funded through final design utilizing the 2,016 VTA measure b funds. The current project cost based on the 35% design plan is 6,600,000.0. The project has sufficient funds to construct the project when design is complete. For next steps, staff will evaluate BPAC and CTC feedback, and we'll forward a recommendation to city council to approve the design concept and advance the final design in early twenty twenty six. Final design of the project is expected 2026, and construction is anticipated to begin early twenty twenty seven.

To conclude, I'd like to display staff's recommendation to the committee on the screen. We've staff has presented the project update, and we welcome your feedback on

regarding. Yeah. Thank you. I'll ask. Okay. Okay. Does any members of the committee have I'll follow-up. Does any members have the well, let me ask a question. Does any members of the committee have questions?

I have questions.

Okay. Only one? I have more than one. Good. Thank you. Okay. Go for it.

So I think my questions fall into two categories, kind of the this is a gateway to the downtown, so ones that that talk more about that. And then just sort of more of the kinds of things that BPAT covers for a second. Although, maybe other people have the same questions, so maybe I maybe I'll even let other committee members ask those. So I'm wondering oh, first, I have one that is not about a gateway. Since we're not doing the grade separation, I read an article on the train station in Palo Alto that they're gonna use because they can't do their grade separation right now either.

They're gonna use AI for safety. Basically, what that seems to entail is that traveling with trains is they can stop on a dime. So they get an advanced warning that there may be somebody or something in their way. And is that something that we're looking at to enhance safety? Yes.

So that software package, I'll call it, is called RailCentury. It's already being deployed in other places. The city and VTA are looking to enter into agreement where VTA would give us some corridor improvement funds in order to have those installed at Sunnyvale not Sunnyvale, Mountain View locations.

Oh.

Sorry. I was there for thirteen years.

That's habit. Going. Yeah.

Great. Great. Since we can't do the gray separation, I think that's a good safety step. That's the answer I wanted. Then since this is a gateway to the pedestrian mall and to, hopefully, an enhanced mop it, you know, back and forth, Okay. My first question on that is what kind of planter boxes are these? Is and what's the reason for them? Is it because we step to continually upgrade the area, maybe do a great separation at some point? So So you want the trees to be mobile or okay. See, had Exactly. An

Yeah. In the event that we find the funds to construct the great separation in the future, we wanna minimize the impact the trees in the future by being able to relocate them at a different location rather than cutting them down. And then are you having we have a designer for the downtown, and

we did in the past. Are you running any of this, you know, the decorative fence and the the the container, the planter boxes. Are we running it through someone for, you know let's see. Not an interior decorator. An exterior decorator?

Not at this time. The decorative fencing will be consistent with what's already out there, which is the Caltrain standard.

It's the

black ones with kind of the circular pattern on top. Do notice. And as far as the planters, we have, I believe, other projects we can look into that have used them in the past that we can consider for this.

But this kind thing consideration that it is a gateway and that. And then the other thing is the the the pictures you showed

I don't know if I

they when you showed the separated bikeways, it was shaded in brown, I would say. And I think that it was I think that what you were showing when you were showing the separation for the bikeways was stripes on the road, I think, but I might be wrong. That's how I was

incorporating the graphic. And it will also have vertical elements.

Oh, it will have vertical elements too. Yes. What elements what are the oh, like, I don't know the technical name for them, but the black rubberized humps Or Barbadillas.

Barbadillas. Vertical elements, some bollards, and it will be consistent with the other bollards proposed for the downtown area.

Okay. I just you know, there's there's many ways to do it. And since it's a gateway, since it's not frankly, the way we used to look at Moffett was this is a roadway off to Nowersville, and there was no thought put into it. And I think that makes a difference. That was not true, you know, in our downtown.

There was a lot of thought put into how the sidewalks were designed and and trees and so forth. And I think it's time for us to look at this as what's it's right in the scent part of our city and to have some consideration of what it means to be a gateway. So I guess that's that's where my question is going, but I'll make the that would be a statement, not a question.

So

the rest of my questions are that we had two residents make various kinds of requests, but I don't know if I don't wanna dominate the questions. I'll let I'll let It's okay. You want me to ask? Because I'm just reading off. So we had a we had a mister Bozels suggest a quiet zone. Is that something that could be looked into or is being looked into or cannot be looked into? Let me answer the rest of this question.

We have a Quiet Zone project on this year's CIP. The team that would be delivering the quiet zone has had several vacancies recently in recent times, and so that'll be looked to get started up sometime in spring or '26. Okay.

So if mister Bozzo's listening, he now has a timeline a yes and a timeline. He also asked whether it would be possible to do a pedestrian scramble. I And think if other committee members can help me, think he means over Central Expressway. You thought that's what he said

to me.

Where they are vertical to the one side. It's he had a triangular photo. I guess that was in Stafford. But

yeah. To our knowledge, this is a well well, first, this is a Santa Clara County Mhmm. Intersection. So they would be be managing. We can certainly communicate that to them as a as a question. To our knowledge, I don't think there's another expressway intersection in Santa Clara County that has a scramble.

So that would make it super fun if it was here. People would come just to scramble.

Possibly. We could we could do that at Village.

Well, ask the question and see. Who knows?

We can do that, but it won't be part of this project.

Okay. Just ask. Answered it for you.

Okay. Just ask. And then he also asked, but I don't know if this is in the category of future improvements, Moffett Central Expressway curb extensions.

The right turn, if you're coming west on Central Expressway and you're making a right on the Moffett, you're going right into the like, if you bring up the slide.

Yeah. So the the project limits will not include the expressway. So we then we may do some striping in the expressway based on the county's approval, but we won't put bulb outs into the expressway. So if the question is, would we consider bulb outs into the into Moffitt? That is also part of the we can communicate that out to For future. Future. We are we are working together with the precise plan. Okay. The Moffitt precise plan is also in development. Okay.

So he's referring to the lower left hand corner where you can see the the crosswalk basically is where people are turning right. So people would be going into the crosswalk

on cars, potentially. Okay. So we have three answers here. The curb curb extensions is refer for future improvements. Pedestrian scramble is we'll ask that question just as a point of interest and the quiet zone as we're working on it.

Okay. And then mister Kussmaul asked some questions as well. Can the new updated signals provide a separate right turn phase for traffic coming from Moffett and implement a no right turn on red. So this, I imagine, was the BPAC question about signals, maybe related to that.

This is something we can discuss with the county, but as principal civil engineer Robert Gonzalez mentioned, this is a Santa Clara County owned and operated intersection, and any improvements to the signal phasing will need to be coordinated.

So similar to El Camino, we asked, but they said no. Okay. Just to help you out on that one.

Okay. Okay. So the answer to that is maybe. Then there was a request that sidewalks on Moffett use smooth paving. I suppose that's rather than the the paving type that is on Castro Street on sidewalks.

That's how I read it too. Yes. So, yeah, we'll communicate that. That's a design detail we haven't got to, but I agree.

Will buses be able to use the new westbound Evelyn Avenue connector? Yes. Yes. Okay. Can crosswalks across Evelyn be raised crosswalks?

That has been considered substantially between our our transportation group, our traffic group, and the other design groups. For this particular layout, we think the the speeds are already low enough because of the two turns, and visibility is already high enough. We don't think there's a added benefit to raising the the crosswalks. There's some detriments to raising the crosswalks. Now you have to deal with drainage changes. So we didn't see that as a as a marginal improvement. So we have a lot of imp we have a lot of pedestrian focused safety elements in the for those two crossings, and we didn't think the raised crosswalk would would add a lot of a lot more to that.

Okay.

One one thing to add is that VTA because of where the crosswalk is located at Castro, it's right at a bend. And VTA buses, as they're going that way, then each wheel goes over the crosswalk as they're making the bend. So it's, like, double the rocking on a bus, which is pretty disruptive for a bus versus if it's just a raised crosswalk on a street. It's just over and over.

So we've answered you've answered all the residents my questions and the residents' questions now. And that so I'm done. Questions?

Great. Am I allowed? Okay. Well, there's not too many people here. So, yes, you are up.

So my questions so can you Can you walk me through the decisions on the bike ped circulation, the vehicle circulation? So I think I don't wanna, like, teeter into comments, but I think, like well oh, how about this? First question, how long do we actually think interim is going to be? Because I I think that affects right? Because I think prior, we thought interim might be ish years. I don't I

mean, guess what I mean? A grade separation is several $100,000,000.

So I

think So it

now we're until we find the money.

Yeah. So I

think now it's kind of like this we're calling it interim, but we're not sure how long interim is going to be. So in a lot of ways, we need

to be thinking of it.

I guess my scope has changed in that I'm thinking about things from a more permanent perspective. And I just wanna confirm with staff, this is likely, you know, asking about the trees and the planner boxes. It's about. I don't think it's a year. Yeah. You know? So I I don't know what what staff's thoughts or what you're, you know, willing to say publicly on on all that. But I think as this has gone on, it's I feel like, is it truly interim anymore? I don't I don't know. And I don't know if how staff feels about that.

So our approach, it has been it needs to work. It needs to work on an interim basis and a permanent basis. So elements Okay. So it's amazing. Such as trees, we can think of as temporary or interim, and those things need to be moved. But, certainly, any any pedestrian vehicle safety elements need to need to function as if they were permanent.

Alright. Great. Thank you. So that kind of goes into my questions about the bike pad circulation change and the vehicle circulation change. Can you just so as we're making these decisions and I was trying to look through on the staff report to see, like, if I had missed it. So can you just share a little bit, like, how we is there data that we evaluate that leads us to this? Just a little bit more color on on it. That something Scott can provide? Or Let

me start.

Like, I I see that it says it'll reduce wait times as illustrated in the figure, but then that's it, and then it goes right into vehicle circulation. So I just like,

I felt Let me start with vehicle circulation because that's kind of fundamentally where the grade separation began as well. One of the benefits of the great separation is that you are eliminating conflicts with the vehicles separations that we're recommending here, the circulation patterns, is that we're closing the crossing of the rail of the the the rails to the through direction of Moffett and the right turn onto Central Expressway. So there won't be vehicle access there. So that kind of fundamentally redefines how circulation for vehicles is gonna go. So everything else kind of is a domino effect, is a is a downstream effect from that decision.

And that was really keying off of the original grade separation intent.

Yeah. So we're still thinking about it from that original design that we had all seen where it's raised and then kind of the under the underneath where, you know, we're telling residents even though we're not at grade separation, that's the direction we would go to because that's right.

Yeah. That's exactly right. Okay. We we see the same fundamental purpose is pedestrian vehicle safety. Eliminating the rail crossing fundamentally improves that for vehicles.

So that's that again, that's how we get the vehicle circulation. The pedestrian circulation, similarly, just like the the original the the permanent Castro grade separation, our intent was to maintain and, in some ways, as we could improve the the pedestrian circulation or bike circulation across this corridor, through this corridor. So with that, we're improving elements, you know, from Evelyn all the way up to Moffett and essentially showing how pedestrians and and and cyclists would use the corridor. Caltrain emphasized that when they look at it, they look at it from a from a rail corridor perspective, and they see the elimination of a crossing as a net benefit. So that's why the the elimination of the Western crossing, was identified, from them was one crossing is safer safer than two crossings, and then that, you know, have defined some of the circulation constraints that we have.

I think we should think of it as that would it would it would only be one crossing anyways because people would be going underneath the grade separation from the original design. So it's kinda like same same Yeah. Idea.

Yeah. That's a good way to look at it.

Okay. I'm I'm just trying to put the puzzle pieces together with, I guess, the the hope that one day we will get that great separation. Yeah.

And I think be

able honestly, to be able to tell the stories to be able to tell the story to residents about why we're doing the approach that we are. Because I I just in reading this report, I just felt like maybe I don't wanna to your comments. But I think connecting those dots to the original design and why.

There's a lot of moving parts in this design. Yeah.

Okay. So that's that's helpful.

Alright. Okay. Those are my questions. Oh, one last question. Can we for the community outreach, I know that typically we only do it in the notices mailed to residents and businesses within the 750 feet. But given that this is, like, in our heart of downtown, everyone uses it. Is this something that we can expand or send to all our res you know, at least the listservs, emails? Because I I do think people would that. Would have an interest in knowing what we're doing. Community groups. All the community groups because I I say this

where I wouldn't want it to

get to council and then residents feel like they weren't. This wasn't daylighted enough given it's our you know, it's one of the most highly utilized transit stops along. Thank

you. Take care. Okay.

Okay. Ask questions, comments with them later. Pick up our first slide on two. So 2015, I was here, and it took seven years to get to where just to get started the project design. So I remember it was Ed, were you here in 2015?

I was.

Okay. Let me reminisce. So because I remember a design that was presented at the time to do things, and it looks like things are changing a little bit. So just curiosity. Why did it take seven years to go from 2015 to '22? Anyway

Seven years to go from 2015 to

'20 Yeah. What why did it take seven years to get started on this project? Did the council just kept kicking it down the road? Okay. You can get back on me. It was just curiosity on that one.

We we can we can come up with an answer on that one, but I I did not prepare for that question.

Oh, well, we'll figure this out soon. Yeah. I'm looking at this, and it let's go to go to the numbers where you show 17 pedestrians and 800 bikes. You know I'm big on data, and decisions should be based on data, not on a committee saying you should do this. So when you say 700 1,700 pedestrians a day, where are they coming from? What there's many access points. So where are they coming from? They're just 1,700 pedestrians. Right? Or 700.

1,700. Okay. Where what direction are

they coming from? This is both directions.

When you say On the passenger's okay. So they're coming

okay. The counts were taken exactly at the tracks. So the bikes and peds are coming from both directions, southbound and northbound crossing the tracks.

Okay. So it's not east or west? Correct. Okay. So these 1,700 pedestrians are coming from Moffitt, and they're also coming. So they're coming both? Yes. Do we have a distinction between the two?

We do. Okay. I don't know off the top of my head, but I can Okay. You're interested.

Well, I have because you're doing a lot of design, bipeds, and all this stuff. And so I like to know if we're gonna do things just like on the the shoreline when you said 19 bicep you know, pedestrian engine. I like to get a better idea to put the con the concept there because you gave us $6,600,000, and it could change. So if we're gonna build this interim, let's do it sufficiently and effectively so that we know where people are coming from. And the 800 bicyclists, same deal?

They're coming from Moffitt or whatever? Yes. Or okay. And do we know are they taking light rail, or are they taking just transit, or are they taking buses? Do we know how they're divided up between light rail, Caltrain,

I don't have that data.

Okay. But is it important to know that?

So that information may have been in the original transit center master plan. Some of that data may have been taken as a snapshot. For this particular project, when we initiated it, we were decide we had the decision to go into an into an interim direction kinda dictated some of the design choices K. Such as eliminating the rail crossing, moving everything in one direction. But we did not we did not pull additional data, particularly with destinations or origination points. We the the data counts here were specifically at the rail crossing, so we did not track whether they were going downtown or to light rail or to Caltrain.

Do you determine between morning and afternoon?

I think we have some of that data.

This is a full day twenty four hour count.

Mhmm. Okay. Okay. So at some point, there's a big rush of note. That's why it's I always like to know in any real station. I like to know, okay. We're doing this, then all of sudden it gets quiet. Do we do we spend money for the whole day, or do we just spend let's take care of the half an hour slam period and and build and go

from there?

We'll look for AMPM peaks.

Yeah. Yeah. See. Oh, looking. Oh, shit.

We have the council. We can can share with you after the meeting.

Going forward, I personally, for this committee, I like to see the data of where how people are moving around. So on your slide here, on this one, just take this one. At Evelyn, eventually, cars will not will cars always be able to make the s turn from Evelyn to the west side of, Castro? Yes. This design. They'll always be able to do that.

Yes.

Even if they're cutting off separation. So they're okay. So that will continue. I on this thing, one thing when we were initially looking at the design of this on the North Side of Central Expressway, we were looking at a spot for the commuter buses. So help me understand.

We if things get back to somewhat normal, these commuter buses are picking people up. And right now, you're gonna have them going all kind of convoluted, or once you get it figured out, routes, and they're gonna be going here. And I just see a lot of noise, congestion, emissions. So how are we gonna move these and do we know how many commuter buses are coming in here now?

I do not have that.

So with that, how do you expect the buses to do this? Are you you gonna use that diagram where you showed that they go this way and then go this way and then go back south again, then we go I mean, we need to find an effective way to get them in and out. And that's why with the original design, we were looking at something on North North Of Central Expressway. And, also, we were looking at a site on Central Expressway so the people could get them locked that way. So are

you gonna handle commuter buses? The commuter buses will

the northbound commuter buses will have to take the route as presented on the screen. The southbound direction follows what's existing right now since there is no southbound

access to Castro. Slide if don't mind why we're talking about that, please.

Yeah. So that shows that the buses will will remain at the transit center. We're not proposing to move those shuttle bus stops onto the expressway side.

Well, I mean, this is the bus shuttles for North Bayshore. So they're gonna be taking this potential route?

Yes. So it this follows closely what was proposed with the grade separation project. The only difference is that they would continue on to Evelyn. That would eventually include a ramp that connects onto Shoreline.

Okay. But does this and then the reverse for, well, would they Well, some of them may not go back on the Moffett. They may just stay on Shoreline and goes. No. It's not here. They won't go. We mopped at that

ramp couple.

They used to, didn't we?

The Evelyn Ramp? It made sense at the time, but it's still okay.

So They won't go back, John. They'll go straight up to Shoreline to go.

I think they'll I think they'll take that ramp that we I can't was it this year or last year? I can't remember. But we talked about the ramp. Right?

So To Evelyn. So they'll be coming up Evelyn, get on to Shoreline? Yes.

And So they won't have to kinda go

that way. Jerry man around town. Yeah. If you got a 6,600,000 project, does that include the ramp?

No. It does not include

the ramp.

So the ramps this is what they'll be doing now.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's what I was trying to put things. Yeah. You guys have been involved. I'm just seeing this for the first time, and I'm concerned about the flow of the bus transit. Okay? That one so if you go back to some earlier ones So when you count your and this and the BPAX suggests that they're gonna be high volume. Are people going to start going on to Evelyn and riding their bikes? Where are you go back to the 17, that part, please. Where do you expect this heavy concentration of bike riders to be and pedestrians coming from? Why all of a sudden when you do this crossing that you're gonna have a heavier amount of people?

No. It's the same people who are it's the same people who are crossing now.

Okay. No.

Well, Deepak mentioned two specific factors that may increase pedestrian traffic. One is that there's a school on the West Side Of Shoreline connecting to to Evelyn that's heavily used now. So if that school expands, then there's more traffic there. Second is more of a statewide initiate initiative, which is encourage encouraging higher density housing near transit. So if there's higher density so if if if more development in the transit area ends up coming in the next several years, that would that would by implication, that's that's more foot traffic.

But those numbers are for right now.

Correct.

But okay. So the transit center because we were looking at developing the Caltrain and the VTA lots there. So there wouldn't be potential where you're saying they would get on transit or they would just live there but take bicycles and leave the transit center to go throughout the area. I'm trying to anticipate and you're saying you're gonna increase the housing. So, like, on Moffett, Prometheus project is gonna potentially add people to it. You think they're gonna this is where they're getting these high end anticipate high pedestrian and bicyclist counts?

Well, like I said, BPAC identified two specific factors. One was increased housing, and the other one was the school at the Western End Of Evelyn.

The Western End Of Evelyn, you mean the co what's his name?

That's Yeah. That campus there.

And they expect that to grow significantly?

BPAC mentioned those two factors. I I don't know if they've mentioned the growth rate

or Okay. Account. And the reason well, you sounded like you were gonna incorporate their comments in there, and that's why I was trying to get a better understanding of just two things that you went ahead and anticipated there.

I don't know if that comment specifically changes anything as part of the design. That was one of their comments back to us Okay. To kinda keep in mind. But it doesn't say change the width of a rail crossing or the size or type of of bike bike infrastructure when you're working. Okay.

Okay. Let's go then and see here. So if I look at slide six, please. So is the bike lane gonna be on both sides of the street or on the north side of the street?

It's on both sides of the street. On North Of Evelyn is for westbound bicyclists, and then the the South Side Of Evelyn is for eastbound bicyclists.

Well, I'm looking at the arrows right where it says 18 feet. The arrows are all heading north and mids. So where's are those why are those arrows there? What they indicate flow?

For vehicles, it's for westbound traffic only.

That's for cars? Yes. Oh, okay. So that's cars. That's not the bike lanes.

The bike lanes highlighted in yellow, the green light arrows? Or He's looking at the existing arrows.

You looking out the arrows?

Grayed out arrows in the background?

Yeah. I guess I have arrows. Yeah. There's this yeah. So the yellow ray. So the yellow is the bike lane going No. That's the bike lane going that direction. Okay.

It goes that way. And then this one is going the opposite direction.

Why is that so much greater than the other one?

There's a bigger buffer to make sure that the bikes are protected from the larger vehicle movements as they approach the s curves at this area. And that's why there's also vertical elements proposed to protect the bicyclists even more. Because that area is needed for buses and larger vehicles to make the

turn buses are coming from Evelyn, and they're gonna make the s turn. Yes. Right? And so you have a bike lane on the right hand side for them. So that's narrow, but I you would okay. But I understand that that it seems like the bike lanes that are going, southbound is much larger.

The the buffer is much larger, so you can see the hatched area is much larger, and that's really to accommodate, like, bus and large vehicles swing as they're making around the corners.

So they'll swing. So the bike

yeah, the bike lane itself is not super wide, but the buffer is much wider to accommodate the the larger vehicles that are gonna make that movement.

You just said that there's gonna be class two and class four buffered bike lanes. If there's no cars coming down east on Evelyn, Why do you need buffered bike lanes?

If there's no cars coming east?

So it's, like, behind the police station in there, or where you're losing the 10 parking spaces.

I mean, it's still to protect so as you can see the vehicle lanes sneaking up through and making that s curve, it's really still to protect the bicyclists from that vehicle overhang swing as they're making the turns.

So, refresh my memory on a class two and a class four buffer.

Alright, Lance. A class four will have a vertical element.

Okay.

Class two two does not necessarily have it. Class two is your basic striping. Class two buffer has the basic striping plus additional striping, additional paint on the ground, so to speak.

Okay. Because I'm trying to learn what type of conditions make you put a four in and where the two would suffice. Okay? Seeing that. Okay. Then six, we're okay. That's where those spike lanes are coming. Let's go to the next. Alright. Okay.

On slide seven, parking is tremendous for businesses. So why do you need to pick up 10 parking spaces if you have no trap? So the cars well, if the cars you've taken up parking spaces, where are the cars gonna turn around? So that sort of yes. You don't need parking because there's no cars that are gonna be able to turn around.

Correct? Yes. Cars would have to

go southbound on one. Can you put that?

Cars would have to go cars going east bound would have to turn on to Wild

Wild Cherry Lane is where you're losing the 10 parking spaces.

Yes. Between Wild Cherry Lane and Castro Street. So a couple on the South Side of Evelyn and then a few of the perpendicular parking in between the boxes you see where the trees are. So our cars I mean, I'm not

that refresh my memory. Are cars able to drive through there and go onto, Central Expressway now? No. So right now, there's

There is no connection to Coucher on this side of that line.

People parked in them? Yes. So then they just sort of do the

It's essentially a dead end.

Dead end. And then you just gotta figure out how to turn around. Yeah. Okay. Is there any way to save some of that parking? Yeah. I wondered that.

We are evaluating replacing the total 12 parking with additional maybe parallel parking on the north side between Wild Cherry Lane and Castro because we are losing the perpendicular parking between those trees. It's too close to the crosswalk. We don't want the vehicles to back into the bike lane and the crosswalk, but perhaps some per parallel parking could be reintroduced.

If if your no traffic is a dead end, is it are you putting in the two, class two buffers?

The class four on the south side.

Why if there's no cars coming through? Why couldn't you do class two and save the parking? If there's no if it's a dead end street, cars aren't gonna be going there in a lot. So what protection are you? That's what I'm asking. Can a two since it's a dead end, you won't have traffic versus the four where I see the cross marks. Is that correct? That's gonna be a four versus a two?

Yes. So the the two there are two parking spaces that will be removed on the south side between Wild Cherry Lane and Castro Street. They are proposed to be removed because if we do not remove them and if they park there, we don't have a way to kinda get them out safely

again. How are they in and out now?

So we are proposing Evelyn as a one way street. Okay. So oh.

Right now, there's no opposing traffic.

So right now correct. Right now, there's no opposing traffic. If I'm if I'm traveling eastbound towards Sunnyvale, I have to make that u-turn because there's a there there's a there's a stop bar. We need to think about the circulation for those vehicles now. All of those vehicles are turning onto West Cherry Lane.

If we were to turn that into a a a class two to accommodate additional parking, you still need to have that vehicle circulation going on to West Cherry. You Wild Cherry. Thank you. So what we don't wanna do is we don't wanna create a situation where we're inviting eastbound traffic to try to park in those parking spaces. So we need to be thinking about how to create a a safe environment for pedestrians and bikes.

And just in that Wild Cherry to Castro Mhmm. That's a very tricky location. So if I knew that only westbound traffic was traveling there and only westbound drivers were going to park, it would be safe. But my concern is actually the eastbound drivers who choose to cut through the Wild Cherry, go around the barriers, and try to park there.

Okay. Now you may be thinking, Can't you make this parking available to the people that are going westbound?

We would be making it available. So if people are going westbound, we might do that for parallel. We we mentioned that. So we can look into that. But on the south side.

If they're going that way, so we still keep your dead end, you're still gonna have limited people going in. Okay. I would appreciate if you could save some parking. That would

On the South Side, meaning where the buffer is?

Yeah. Yeah.

Gotcha.

We we can explore that.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

No. I just

wanted to make

sure I understood.

No. No. I thank you. Because we gotta keep an open mind, especially for small businesses. We keep saying we're small business, but I guess, and we're taking out 10 spots. Okay? That and Wild Cherry, isn't that a lane versus a regular road? Right. It's an alley. Alley. Okay. Yeah. So let's distinguish Wild Cherry Lane as an alley, not a street. So that's it's not intended. Are you intending to bring have the buses come down Wild, Shirley? No. Okay. Thank you. Go over to, number nine, please. Okay.

Ed, remember there was a conversation that on the westbound crosswalk, there was a young lady, Lisa and myself, around the CTC and said, Fayad wanted to eliminate that. And we said, can't we just have him walk from the Northwest Side over to the Northeast Side? And they said no. And so they put in a that crosswalk for $1,600,000, and now you're eliminating it. So, I find that interesting. I just thought you guys, and here's an example where you sit okay. Where you're actually telling people you've gotta change your route a little bit. K. President has been made. Okay.

That's a comment. I shouldn't be doing that. Yeah. On slide 11 where you put the big x. Yeah. That whole lane was did that way. So are we doing any accommodation? Are we who's responsible for the signage? GTA or us to help guide people around this area?

The project will include signage too

Mhmm.

To guide the bikes and pets. Mhmm.

Okay. That's that's slide 11. Okay. Again, buses. Slide 13. Oh, okay. This is the B PAC recommendations?

Yes.

Yeah. I'm still concerned about it. Okay. So it sounded could you show where now you're incorporating those into the project, or you're considering those into the project?

We can incorporate those items without much impact to the project budget and schedule. Okay. I'm

a little concerned about you guys getting direction from BPAC, but there are recommendations in your okay. That's a comment. Never gonna be back to that. You know where I'm coming from on that one. Okay. Okay. So you're okay. And then the 6,600,000.0, when was that budgeted? This year. So that money was so the the cost estimate is this year?

This year, but includes cost escalation anticipating construction will begin in 2020. Perfect.

Okay. That's the end of my questions. We will go to virtual comments. Would any members of the public joining us virtually or in person like to provide comments on this item? If so, please click the raised hand button in Zoom or or approach there we go. We will take him per okay. Never mind. You have three minutes.

Bruce England.

Hi, everyone. Bruce England on Wismon Station Drive speaking for Mountain View Coalition for sustainable planning. We did listen to the the BPAC meeting, and there was a lot of really good discussion there. So in general, we are supportive of their recommendations over to you. There was some discussion when they talked about what counts as a recommendation and what counts as a comment and how things are recorded.

They realized that that the the formal recommendations come from you on CDC to counsel, but there's hope that their comments and everything would be taken seriously. So we echo that at NBCSP. A couple of specific comments or things to emphasize. Have to go to my notes here on this. One is among their comments, the ones that perhaps are most interesting to us are the removing the parking between Wild Cherry Lane and Castro, because it's probably not needed, and it just helps to enhance safety for bicyclists and pedestrians moving through there, particularly the bicyclists.

We like the idea of a walk audit. Those have been done in the past by the city, and this would be a great opportunity to have that done in that area. The improvements to the northbound Moffett Boulevard bike lane are incredibly important, has been pointed out many times. There used to be a bike lane that went through, and now it just stops abruptly, and then it goes into a vehicle parking area, which forces cyclists out into the the roadway. That's not great.

We for sure wanna see that no right on red implementation at the Northwest Corner of Moffett And Central Expressway, realizing that, that's gonna involve work with the county. There was a comment, I think, that council member McAllister made it that El Camino, it was asked for an El Camino, and they said no, but they actually did put some right no right on red. I'm not sure exactly the locations, but I know there's one at Calderon, and it's adequately signed and everything. It's great really improved safety at that intersection and perhaps at other intersections along the way. We do strongly support keeping both pedestrian crossings across the train tracks and central.

Again, knowing there's gonna be pushback from the county, but we would like to see the city really push forward on getting these things done and, you know, just trying to be optimistic about what the county will approve. I never know unless you ask. Two other things are the lighting in the affected areas. We really want that to follow the anticipated requirements and guidance in the in development, dark skies ordinances. So you don't have to light the Bejesus side, everything in there to make people safe. Actually lighting needs to be done very thoughtfully, and that will be reflected in the ordinances, I'm sure. And then lastly, we'd like to see no use of artificial turf in any of the new landscaped areas. In any dripping or cone dropping trees, any of that sort of thing should be avoided around walkway and bikeway areas. That's all I've got.

Thank you. Anybody else? Yes. The Taylor Brown. Is that the Taylor Brown that used to be our former police chief?

We don't know. I saw the name there. That's why.

I think he's a consultant with Joseph Cervantes.

So do we have any more?

Yes. Adrian Brandt. Good

evening, and thank you. My name is Adrian Brandt. I serve as the chair of the Caltrain Citizens Advisory Committee. I used to commute, to and from the Mountain View Station. Very familiar with that area.

I wanna commend, the city of Mountain View for coming up with a very reasonable, affordable interim alternative at $6,600,000 versus nearly 300,000,000 for the full grade separation and ramp to Evelyn. So that's that's really good thinking outside the box, something we can implement much sooner. And as I think people have alluded, I have seen a lot of projects in my lifetime of this nature, and I believe there's a good chance this may be the permanent solution. So I second, any concerns or comments around the concept that this may be permanent. I wanted to comment on the RailCentry.

That is primarily aimed at as a staff idea aimed at preventing and and and well, not preventing, but reacting to a veal vehicle intrusions off of the crossings. That's really not applicable for bikes and pedestrians because they don't get stuck on the tracks by accident by turning onto the tracks at night, which is the primary motivation for that system. The other thing is the bollards, the vertical delineators that they've been using, again, also to discourage people from at night mistakenly turning onto the tracks. I am sympathetic to the idea of keeping both crossings across the tracks. Currently, it's a full width crossing, and so there's really no compelling reason I can think of why it can't continue to be a full width crossing only just for bikes and pedestrians.

They could also be two separate pedestrian bike crossings that act as one with the great great crossing circuit tied together. So those are those are definitely possibilities. There was a comment asking for a scramble. That makes no sense at Central because you effectively have a scramble with that little plaza between the tracks and the crossing. I think on figure nine, it shows very well what I mean by that.

So there's really no reason for a scramble on Central. I also agree with I'm a Redwood City resident. I agree strongly with trying to ban the right on red as was discussed earlier by a number of people in Redwood City. Caltrans and the city together have have done some no right on reds near high schools and so forth at busy crossings where there have been pedestrian safety issues. So that is something that's quite doable, and I would encourage pursuing that.

Let's see. I think let's see. What was the other I had some other comments, but so oh, yes. And on train corn train train horn quiet zones, Atherton has it. Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Mateo are pursuing it, and I'd encourage it here too. Thank you.

Thank you. How many are in the queue?

Three more. Okay. Daniel Halsey?

Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. So I've got a few thoughts on this.

I I really think that's a good idea, and I I grew up to the area, and I have a lot of coworkers who do that same thing via bicycle. And a lot of them came off it. And I I try to take care of well groups, but a lot of people take off it. It is unsafe, but it's the most direct way from the Caltrain station to the Moffett Field on a bike. And I'm worried about some of the some of the improvements in this just being not playing mark, particularly at the intersection between Moffett and Central Expressway.

You know, if you look at what is it? Figure seven have a merge that the bikes have to do go themselves to get into that bike lane, to get on the other side of cars who are turning right. That doesn't make real sense to have a protected bike lane when you first have to do a merge with cars. And it's not necessary. We we could just have the bike lane on the other side of the turn lane with a gore on then.

That would be much more in line with how the city designs this kind of intersection in other parts of the city. And, you know, there there's other problems here. I I was I've been very adamant to request more on the northbound, and think kind of a a broader point that that that we need to have is thinking about how how do we phase this with the precise plan where there has been in the the public engagement, very strong support for claims. And, you know, can we maybe do that sooner when this project happens so that we aren't tearing up the street with something worth looking into. Other thing I I would say, you know, there there some things at that intersection that we would want that staff keeps saying, oh, we gotta we gotta have the county do this.

And so I I would encourage the electeds who are on this committee to talk to the county because it would be a really missed opportunity, say, if we can't put the things that we want by Central Expressway while the project. And so that that's my comment. Please the county and and help them to give a better project. Because we're maybe getting rid of both of for a long time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mary Dadeo.

Good evening. I would like to ask that you actually consider making both sides of the the bike lane be class four that you maybe let go of some of the buffer that's currently on the south side and add that buffer to the north side. Because as buses are heading north and then making the turn around that corner to go west, there's at least on the on the staff report or the staff memo, whatever, it the the entire buffer on the westbound bike lane goes away and buses are kinda coming right at you there until they make the turn. So that looks pretty scary. I think both sides should be class four.

I really highly recommend that some walk audits be done of this because until like, there were some questions from council about, you know, what are the use cases here. So I'll just give you my use case. I use this intersection to get across town, across Central Expressway when I'm trying to head north and west on my bike because crazy as it sounds, crossing Central Expressway here feels safer than a lot of other places. So I actually take Franklin northbound because there aren't any traffic lights, and then I'm heading east on Evelyn. So if you're looking at one of the diagrams, I'll be heading east on Evelyn, and then I guess I'm gonna have to make a sharp turn to take the crosswalk across traffic to get to that plaza on the south side of the tracks.

Then I go over to the 15 foot wide crossing, which I don't know if it could be made a little bit wider to help separate the bikes and the pedestrians. That might be a good idea. Then I'm gonna go ahead back over to the West because I'm trying to get to Sterling Road. There's a bike path over there, a short class four separated bike path to Sterling Road, which then connects to the whole East West Bikeway that we have up there. So I'm gonna be, I guess, sort of taking the bike lane, but in the illegal direction, if it's illegal, I'm not sure, to cross to the Northwest corner of Moffett And Central Expressway.

So I'm at the Northwest corner now, which is where I wanna be so I can get on that class four bike lane and head up Sterling, which feels pretty safe. So because I'm riding sort of against traffic on that left side, I'm not sure if that's part of the design because the the the circulation that was shown in the staff memo wasn't didn't cover everything. But any case, I'm also a big proponent of no right turn on red from Moffett onto southbound Moffett onto Central Expressway. So, again, I think it would be really interesting to hear a lot of other people's cases about how they go through this area. And And so I highly recommend a walk audit. Thank you.

Before we

get to the next person, what's a walk audit? A walk audit? In LA. A

walk audit is, an effort that designers will often use to look at existing conditions and observe how pedestrians any any types of users are using the space currently. And you can from there, you could kind of imagine benefits and improvements and adjustments, but it's

Isn't that standard procedure?

Recently, we've been inviting

the public for residents. Yes.

Yes. So the the clarity here is is Including like to be included in part of that or members of the public.

And a follow-up. Does your walk audit include a bike audit Are bikers? So the last speaker just walked us walked us through how she bikes through the area. Would that be included as well?

As you were saying, as a standard procedure, like, yes, that's how a designer would would look at the space. It's like all the users and how all the users

They actually go to the site and stand there. That's the expectation. Yeah. Expectation. Thank you.

Because I imagine you would invite people for a walk in bike order, if that's a thing.

Right. So for for city staff, our projects, it's it's standard practice to go out and and observe any normal abnormal conditions, different days of the days, time periods, daylight conditions? No. I mean, it makes common sense. Makes great sense.

Okay. I just thank you. Sure.

And the last raised hand is April Webster.

Hi. Thank you. I've been biking through the intersection at Moffett And Central for about fifteen years, and I personally experienced several near misses at that spot, once almost being hit by a large truck and once by a truck towing a boat. And this is north of the intersection on Moffett. At the last BPAC meeting, staff stated that safety improvements won't be considered for several years and instead addressed through the Moffett Boulevard precise plan.

However, that still needs to be completed and approved. Only after that, a capital project created, then added to the CIP, prioritized for funding, and then finally designed, engineered, and constructed. Realistically, we're looking at about at least five years before we see any sort of substantial change to fix these safety issues, and that timeline is just too slow for issues that were actually worsened by some pandemic air design changes the city made when they created that class two hanging bike lane just on the East Side of Moffett north of Central. In the meantime, what happens is current design forces people biking northbound to merge directly into a forty forty five mile per hour traffic lane where the bike lane ends and parked cars begin. And this represents a noticeable safety regression from the previous design where bicyclists were instead encouraged to take the lane before the intersection, which meant they were already aligned with traffic before they passed through and didn't have to merge into fast moving vehicles after drivers had accelerated fuel light.

This new configuration shifts that merged after the intersection precisely when car speeds are highest. And new the new design also exposes bicyclists to a right hook risk from drivers turning right from onto Moffett from Central. A quick build solution could address some of these unsafe situations, paint only fixes, continuing the bike lane, maybe a paint road diet, extending the protection, maybe removing parking. All of these are reversible and low cost and fully compatible with any future capital work. I don't think we should wait years for a long term plan to address these hazards.

You know, as Daniel mentioned and also Mary, there are a lot of issues at this intersection. I would also like to ask if staff has conducted a recent traffic and speed study and any other sort of field observations to evaluate driving driver behavior, etcetera. And because, you know, as Heather mentioned, this geometry creates a really predictable right hook conflict at central, and at the other, turns, a no right turn on red restriction definitely would be great. And as others mentioned, a community walk audit would be would be a great benefit for this particular project given how critical the corridor is as a gateway to downtown, you know, with an area with significant plan growth, etcetera. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Anybody else in queue?

Normal questions.

Okay. I will bring it back for any additional questions.

I'll move the recommendation to city council approval of the design concept for a transit center and grid separation and access project. Just but but including, I think, considerations that we all put forward.

Yeah.

And then I thought some of the things that

I don't know if we needed to list them. I'm sure staff has. I mean, there's the the BPAC recommendations. I think we all made some recommendations.

Yeah. And I thought mister I guess it was mister Brandt said, in particular, banning right on red, looking into that. Many people have said that. He also said the two crossings keeping the two crossings might not be a safety hazard. And the one of the residents, when she was walking us through her bike ride, it seemed like losing one of those made it it make if I'm tracking what she said right, getting onto the stair stair lane steering. Am I saying it right? Very nice. Bikeway, which a lot of people I imagine would be trying to do would make her loop back and forth a lot.

So Go north and make your left. Gonna be like a right there where the Yeah. Sterling is.

Anyway, I was interested in looking into that since, I guess, Mr. Brandt said it wouldn't be I don't know. You seem to be disagreeing with him. But

going back to your first question, Mary Tadio, just to clarify, yes, it would be a longer distance compared to what what she's experiencing now. Right now, it's an interim condition. The whole thing is open. So that's that's not going to be how it's that's how it's laid out as as as it's proposed.

And I bet you maybe do the thirty second delay that gets to be on the bicycle.

Reflecting back on some of the BPAC comments, there were pedestrians that described that they're

Oh, pedestrian. But this is Pedestrian community. Could you bring us that one where you're cutting out the one the proposed purple route.

Oh.

So what I was gonna just to finish my thought, for a pedestrian, that that can feel like an a cumbersome

route if you're if you're kinda

detouring yourself across a plaza northward and then back across to get to Thurl. So that was the comment that came across at the BPAC meeting was for a pedestrian that might feel cumbersome. This one can judge for yourself for the for for that.

So they could go diagonal? Yes. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. I think she's just talking about that she would go. She's coming down Evelyn. She would cross the street then take the diagonal. So it's some back and forth. Mhmm.

So there's that accent there. You guys don't have. Okay.

I just I tried to move the. I know.

But I'm not But I didn't get a section.

Well, we we say I've also comments too that if people would like to make some comments. So I you got comments developed or did my comments appear?

I can I mean, my main comments are, you know, we can move the staff recommendation, but I guess nobody seconded so you

can

do it later? My main comment is I agree with what was said on getting more community input because this is a really central location and also some and also it's likely to be permanent or nothing is permanent in this world, but semi permanent. And then getting in some maybe through the community input, but some more design input because I would really like to make sure that, you know, the things that we choose for it are not are the things that you would put in the center of a city that might be there for a while, things including planter boxes and bollards.

So Oh,

and the right of the no banning right on red. Yeah. And, oh, the one on both sides being class four, is that something that's of the pipeline having more I think she's saying a little more equal buffers so that I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah. All things being equal, that makes perfect sense. On this particular condition and this layout, It's really the bus turning movements that are really dictating the size of that buffer.

Okay. I'll go with what

you say unless you get more community. But yeah. So it's community input, design for a gateway, and banning right on red are my three big ones.

Thank you. I'm a minimalist. That's Robert. Shakes his head. I see this particular just for this example here.

We need to make cost decisions, not jeopardizing safety, but we wanna get projects done. This particular route looks perfectly sensible to me. We can't if we accommodate everybody saying we take a walk here, take a walk there, we're never gonna get to the point where it makes sense dollar wise. And I'm not trying to say safety is more important than dollars, but we cannot do both. And this route, as I say, works fine.

And going that point, I don't think I would like to see bike lanes at the and I, this is projection or observation, and I can be totally wrong. And if you guys say this is what's required, then I'll go with it. But you're putting bike lanes. They want class four bike lanes everywhere. And do we really need it? Is there the data? We don't have the data yet to say we justifies this. And everything I like to see is data that justifies. A no read on Moffett onto Central Expressway. How many bicycles are going that way?

I'd like to see the data on bicycles going and turning westbound on Central Expressway. If we don't have that money, it doesn't justify it. Because we are still this is still a major thoroughfare, this East East West Central Expressway. So we want traffic to flow there. Was the parking on Moffett Boulevard gonna be taken up, the the removal of parking on the Moffett precise plan, or is it involved with any part in this discussion tonight?

The this project does not include any removal of parking North of Central.

Public input, I would like to see strategic public input. I'd like to see it early on where they give us their input, and then it goes potentially staff then it goes to CTC, it goes to council. If we wanna get any project and I say, look at this seven years. We need to be strategic in our public input. Get it?

And make it go through the proper channels and not go back to one. So, oh, we wanna look at maybe said, well, we wanna look at it. No. You had your opportunity to give us your feedback, and then we need the professionalism of the staff to evaluate it to say, this makes sense. This is makes financial sense, and it gives us safety, and it keeps us on the timeline and keeps us on our budget.

Because every time we delay any project in this town, it's gonna cost us tens of millions of dollars because of inflation. So I'd like to keep us on track as much as possible. I'm still concerned about the buses moving around, and that's a concern of mine. Comments from the public over the BFAC, their inputs. I appreciate there's putting the input, but I like to make sure that staff recognizes that it all it is is input and it's their recommendation and that not to anticipate putting things in unless you can justify it.

You they have had their input. They gave it to us. But I see the council is the ones that say, yes. We accept them or we don't accept your ideas. So I don't wanna get the horse in front of the car, the car in front of the horse.

And I've seen that done too much in my short time here that staff will take this. And that could be very valid, but I'd like to have it vented a little more before us because we sometimes they are concentrating on this. We, as a council, have to look at a big picture of what's what's gonna work for 80,000 people in this community, and we need to make sure that our dollars are gonna be spent wisely and effect efficiently on these things. And so doing all these things or thing and the the walk, conduct a walk audit, I I experienced when we had a situation where a walk audit really didn't take place to see a project. And then once we get out there, it looked a way to move it around.

So I would hope that was somebody is on the ground that is always looking at it. So would that be planning, or would that be traffic? So planning looks at it, goes out there, and visualizes it, or is there another department that goes out and also looks at it visually?

And who would conduct a walk audit for this project?

For any project going going for any project that's involved with traffic.

For this project, it's a capital project, so it would likely be a combination of staff and the design team. And then if we chose to invite the public, then

they could attend. Okay. Okay. I just want clarity. But that yes. I appreciate that doing that. Okay. Let's see. Any other comments? I mean, I heard the public, but, again, they're I'd like to get this moving smoothly. And if you say twenty six construction? Mhmm. Okay.

One of them.

Oh, '26. Design in '26.

Okay. Okay. Maybe I can make a motion including your comments, John.

Sure.

So that would be a motion recommend city council approval of the design concept for transit center grade separation and access project with early strategic public input and design with the possibility that it may be a permanent gateway to the city.

And I like to also just one point of data of how many people they expect on Evolent. Now just saying highly anticipated. I like to see potential if you're do you have current data on people going wherever they're going? Let's see if that actually pans out to what we anticipate. You can do that.

You're asking for not data in the motion, but data as side information to you.

I would like data in the motion.

Motion. Okay. So you want the motion to include that next time it comes back to us, the staff report includes data?

Data where people are coming and going

that would be. I think they could take it outside of the motion.

We don't have a next time. I mean, this is concept that we're taking to you. And then if bids come in, great. Uh-huh. Right? We're Okay. I'm sorry.

I thought it was coming back to us. So you would like a memo on that. Maybe I'm not sure that has to be in the

Well, I think if if okay. We're getting to the design point. I wanna see data that supports what they're doing.

So I think that earlier when I was asking questions, part of what I was asking was, you know, telling the the story behind this project. You know, it's it's interim, but as I was mentioning, it's gonna be probably, you know, semipermanent. And so my request is, you know, that we would tell more of that story in the stock report when it comes back to the full council. I I think that some of the data points and the information that the two of you are asking for, staff can provide offline or can provide in that meeting. So I don't think we need I think that things can could if the the idea is to keep things moving, then I would suggest that staff just incorporate our feedback and bring it back to council.

And that would be an opportunity as as staff was saying, they could look into they had I I was taking notes. They had some data on the the interim improvements, and they could probably just aggregate AMPM, and they can get back to us. So I don't think that they need to do any more data collection. I think it's just maybe perhaps sharing it with the CTC. Yeah. So I I think that when this comes back to counsel, perhaps that could be as an attachment or however staff would like to do that. I think there's a way to move this forward. And

Yeah. I I agree. So if it comes when it comes to council, have the data included in the staff report.

Yeah. And I

think that's a way to to to include that. Okay. And so that was that's my my motion.

So what Allison said that we didn't think it was coming back to us.

So my motion seconded.

Maybe

One last question. Would it be going back to be passed? You don't have to answer. Go back. Okay. Okay. Oh, hi. I thank you for to add to the conversation, please.

Hi, Arango, assistant public works director. Thank you for recognizing me. I appreciate Kami's comments. I'm not providing clarification. I mean, I wanted just to provide context on timing and sort of public input as well. The b pack, input and then the CTC input is part of our public effort process, you know, to get get input, to gain information. And so, you know, I appreciate that context of, you know, there's a there's a desire to do a walk audit. And I'm hearing conflicting points on, go fast, you know, but get public input. So Mhmm. BPAC and CTC are are opportunities for public input, and we wanna use these venues for that.

And we absolutely can consider this going forward, you know, for just for walkout. It's early in the process. We are currently in design for this. You know, you heard senior engineer Houghton speak to you know, we got 35% this summer, we're now 65% design. We wanna kinda give a layout, to VPAC, which we did, into CTC on what it looks like on concept level and allow us to proceed forward. So next stop is planned to be council approval of the concept.

And that would be another opportunity for public to give their input? Correct. Yes. Okay. So there's three opportunities for public to put input. Yeah.

Okay. So at that point, though, what I mean, effectively, what kind of input can you put in, or is it too baked to really make any changes?

So it's time is not our friend.

Mhmm.

As we, you know, develop projects, we try to get, keep them moving. And so early in the design concept, if we can include, input, and that's why we use BPAC and CTC, that's the time. Now is the time. So we heard BPAC's input. We heard the public's input.

We're getting more input tonight. We're trying to incorporate all this into the next stage. If we're at you you're asking us to go to council and recommend a walk on it, that means, what happens if we get input that is inconsistent, and then we're coming back to CTC and council for a change in recommendation, that slows down the project. And just to give you some context of timing, and that wasn't our intent. You know, if council do access to do that and there's a recommendation from CTC, We just need to provide that informational impact of the project as a result of that walk on it.

I can support that. But the question on the walk, I mean, isn't that part of the just the normal but you said it's not normal process to walk, not opening it up to everybody, but just to walk it and see it.

Is that correct? The normal process is for the design team and users and, like, oftentimes, we'll we'll work with the transportation team or other internal staff. Okay.

So the staff does that anyway?

That's correct. The staff staff is on the ground in the field evaluating current conditions every

every time he do it. My concerns.

Good. One more Without the public.

Correct. Correct.

One more element that came up at BPAC. They made a motion for CTC to consider the two crossings. And so we we'd like some input on if CTC supports that or not on putting more emphasis to Caltrain to identify an opportunity to keep the two crossings or or just going for one cross.

We should give some context on Caltrain already stated l.

Yeah. Yes.

I'm in favor of the one. I don't We

just wanted to get clarification.

We say go out and be active, and then we go, well, here's a shortcut. It doesn't take much to do the thirty minute, thirty second across the street to so I support that not to do the two crossings.

That was all I had. I just

want some clarification. Thank you.

There's a motion on the table, or shall we any clarification on it, or we won't move ahead? Take the vote.

Am I seconding? I'll second. Okay.

All in just staff.

Yep. Can we clarify exactly what the motion is again? Sorry. I got lost along the way.

At what point as soon as I start.

Okay. So I think it's the staff recommendation.

Everything Ed said

Sure. I was writing it down. If I if I can help. Oh, plea okay. Yeah. So we heard a motion for the staff recommendation. And then, after some clarification from council member Hicks, additional input on the additional emphasis on providing design input for the gateway element of the project. So

and then,

again, this strategic public input evaluating that, and so sort of it's it I'm hopeful that it could be going forward on projects as, you know, as I mentioned, BPAC and CTC here is a a part of the public input.

So

we get clarification on the second part.

No. You're good. I got a third part, but DGA has given out money for art, so we'll bring that up at another time.