Planning & Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

recording in progress. Good evening everyone. I call to order the November 12th, 2025 meeting of the Planning and Transportation Commission. Mr. Tero, would you call the role? Yes. Uh, Chair Aken here. Uh, Vice Chair Chang here. Commissioner Hecman here. Commissioner James here. Commissioner G here. Commissioner Peterson here. Commissioner Templeton here. For the record, we have quorum. Thank you. Assistant Director Armor, do we have any agenda changes, additions, or deletions? No changes.

Thank you. Um, Mr. Mr. Tveta, do we have any public comments for items that are not on the agenda? Uh through the chair. Uh at this moment, I have received uh no public comment cards and uh no request uh to speak via Zoom. Thank you. All right, then we're ready for item one, city official reports. Um Assistant Director Armor, would you begin?

Yes. Good evening. Welcome to uh what looks likely to be our second to last meeting of the year. Uh so I will dive right into that as we go to the next slide. Our meeting the day before Thanksgiving is cancelled and uh we currently have two items scheduled for your December 10th meeting. Uh one is a housing development project at 21000 Gang Road. The other is a reconsideration of the bird friendly design ordinance. As previously uh mentioned, we did schedule a tenative special meeting for December 17th in case there were additional items that needed to be considered because we only have one regularly scheduled meeting in November and December. But at this time, we do not have any critical items that need to be placed on that agenda. So, I do expect to be cancelling it unless something um something happens on the 10th and we need to continue something, but uh at this point, we don't expect to need that special meeting date. So, thank you for holding it on your calendars. And then, uh the December 31st meeting is also cancelled since that is a holiday. Next slide. A few updates on council items from PTC reviewed items. Uh on November 10th, earlier this week, the project at 660 University was approved with modifications. They accepted the planning and transportation commission recommendations. Um with the exception of changing the pro approval of the project to back to the 70 unit project with the balconies. um but they maintained the other elements recommended by PTC.

In the future, we do anticipate um bringing the rental registry year 1 report to council for anformational item in December. The project at 4075 El Camino Way is also expected to go in December. Um likely the second or third meeting of the month. and the El Camino Rial retail node map will go to council though at this point it is scheduled to go to the retail committee first um in December which means it would then follow to a January meeting for council on consent that concludes my presentation we do have an update from transportation

Mr. Good evening, chair and vice chair. Uh my name is Azie Arce, senior transportation planner and OOT staff leaison to PTC. I introduced myself last time but happy to be here again this evening. Uh a few slides for you all for this evening's update. Uh just a quick note also Rio Lo the director of OOT is present here tonight. Next slide. I mentioned this at your last PTC meeting and this is an item on your agenda tonight. yet a friendly reminder that the public comment period for the draft bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan closes this Friday, end of day. So, if you haven't reviewed the draft plan and the near-term projects and provided feedback, now's your last chance. Um, and again, this is a friendly reminder that the BPTP update uh [snorts] serves as a city's roadmap for future investment in our bike and ped network. Next slide. and also uh mentioned this at your last PTC meeting, but it was a brief mention. So, I just wanted to reiterate kudos to the OOT staff who held a great community meeting for the Alma Charleston improvements in late October. Uh this is a road safety improvements that are separate from the great separation project. Uh next steps staff is currently reviewing the 35% design plans and will bring the public will bring the uh next draft for public review in winter and spring of 2026. Next slide. Uh Addison Avenue uh from Bryant Street to Middlefield Road uh received some recent street improvements. Um, it is a key bicycle priority street and was repaved in fall of 2025. To improve safety for all road users, especially for bicycle riders, we filled this gap in the bicycle network. Um, Addison Avenue was repaved with fulltime bike lanes on the eastbound side. Uh, protected bike lane with delineator post on the eastbound side and shared lane markings on the

westbound. Uh just noting that Addison Avenue, this portion used to be a restricted hour bike lane and it is now a 24-hour bike lane. Um next slide please. Uh also University Avenue uh Elimino Rayal overpass in downtown uh received some recent improvements. This is a key connection between downtown through the Polaroto Transit Center and into Stanford's Palm Drive. Uh Calrans is leading this effort in conjunction with the city and they're uh currently the crews are working to replace the bridge railing at the overcrossing and as well as uh replace and upgrade existing vehicle and pedestrian um railings and curb ramps, sidewalk signals and lights. As you can see from these uh photos, uh the bridge replace bridge railing replacement is scheduled to be complete next year. Um, and just a sidebar note, in addition to these University Avenue overcrossing improvements, uh, there are also additional locations where Calrans scope to closed underutilized nonADA compliant pedestrian tunnels along El Camino Rail. Just wanted to note that that's part of this project as well. Next slide. Uh this um now over to the south side of the city, the uh South Palo Alto bike ped [clears throat] uh connectivity project which will identify locations and design concepts where two new grade separated bike and ped pathways will go across the Cal Train corridor. I believe the PTC saw this project uh recently. Uh, eight crossing alternatives are currently being shared with the community and staff will present these eight crossing designs to the rail committee on Tuesday, November 18th and the city council on December 1st. Council is expected to select up to two concept designs in early 2026. And please visit

the project web page for more information. Uh lastly, I just wanted to also highlight that the in the theme of the grade separation, we're continuing with um the great separation project. Uh and earlier this fall, the city hosted two community meetings at Mitchell Park and uh next steps is the rail committee is scheduled to uh review the 15% designs at their November 18th meeting and following that rail committee meeting, the council will consider uh the project and provide formal direction. Uh there are two council meetings scheduled for December 10th and December 15th and this is for the larger grade separation project and I believe that concludes my OOT updates for this meeting. Thank you.

And I will add one additional note that uh I remembered based on the comments um from Mr. RSA because there is currently scheduled a special council meeting on December 10th which is uh the same evening as our regular meeting at this point. At this time we are scheduled to um have our planning and transportation commission meeting in the community room um out off of the front lobby. So keep an eye that will be noted on the agenda when it is sent out. But um I think it is safe to expect at this point that that's going to be the location for our meeting that evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Very uh comprehensive and useful reports. Commissioners, do you have any questions? So the council didn't want to take the community room. [laughter]

We were asked to relocate. I noticed the work on uh Addison because it's near me. It looks great. It'll be interested to interesting to see how people deal with the change in hours, but the kids are very happy about it. So, all right then. If there are no other questions or comments, Commissioner G. Thank you. Um Mr. RC, I I I noticed that you made a brief statement about the closing of nonADA compliant tunnels, I think is what you said, along Elcom. Can you refer to like which those are specifically? I'm not actually familiar with these.

The specific locations are slipping from my memory, but we can circle back with the commissioners about the details. Uh they are along El Camino Royale. Um and yeah, we can definitely circle back with the commission on those details. Sorry about that. Thank you. No other questions? Then we are ready for our first action item tonight. Agenda item number two, reviewing the draft 2025 comprehensive plan and housing element annual progress reports. These begin on packet page nine. For anyone who's following along, could we have the staff presentation, please?

Yes. Yes. Um, good evening, chair, vice chair, and commissioners. My name is Kelly Cha. I'm here to present the comprehensive plan and housing element implementation annual pro progress update. Next, please. [snorts] So, as you may already aware, as you may be already aware, um we are required to submit a progress report um on the comprehensive plan implementation to the governor's office of land use and climate innovation, that's LCI, formerly OPR, Office of Planning and Research, and to the California Department of Housing and Community um development, HCD, um by um April each year. And so after tonight, um staff will take the PTC recommendation to the city council early next year to meet these um reporting deadlines. And [snorts] as you can see on this slide, um the Palo Alto municipal code specifies the PTC annually review the comp plan um and recommend to the city council any changes or additions as necessary. Um tonight's item is um for annual progress report. Um but this information could be used to identify whether any changes are needed. Um so but tonight um no changes to the comp plan will be considered um and any future modifications to the comp plan will be directed um or needed to be direct directed by the city council. Next please. And um our comprehensive plan um was adopted back in 2017 with 410 pro programs and um it has implementation pri priorities and level of efforts to required to complete. Next please. Um and this is the overall progress on the complet uh completion status and as you

can see we have made some progress from last year. We have about tw 12 28 completed programs and and most majority of the uh programs are ongoing which are something that we have already implemented but um we're routinely implementing them every year and um we have made some changes to uh the status most of them ongoing and complete that partially completed um items have red um came down to 48 and now we have about 10% of the um total programs um pending. Next please. And this slides uh slide is showing um the same information about complete um the status uh by the target completion date. We have um those separated by four categories. Completion by 2022 um completion by between 2022 and 27 and anything after 2027. Um and also we have items that are continuous. Those are um what we call ongoing items. Next please. And this slide is showing uh the progress by level of um effort to complete. And this um is showing the total programs of 382. That's excluding the 28 completed items. And as you can see most of them are under um ongoing category. and we have been making a lot of progress on um implementing them. Next, please. Um and we're switching to the um housing element implementation program. We have um last year have made um great progress. We have a total of 110 programs that was adopted back in 2024.

That is for the sixth cycle of housing element. um that covers the years from 2023 to 2020 2031 and um so this is a third year um providing um progress report on this and so as you can see um over 60 looks like 68% we have implemented either completed or ongoing process and so that rem that um that leaves us about nine pending programs and 26 that have been implemented but in progress to complete. Next please. And this is the progress on the regional housing needs allocation number. Um this shows the housing that has been issued as of October 2025. Um and showing different um showing by different income category. Most of them um we have made about 10% just shy of 10% and um most of them are above moderate but we did um make about 20% of the total of um 592 units um affordable housing. So that is a great pro progress and we have a lot of um projects that's in pipeline that will show up next year's progress. Next please. So next steps are um we will take the planning and development services um sorry um we will take the planning and transportation commission's uh recommendation um and to the city council um sorry [laughter] to the city council for their review and authorization um to submit our um progress report to um LCI and H LCI and HCD no later than

April 2026. Um and so just to reiterate, our recommendation is to for the PTC to review the the progress report on both comp plan and housing element and recommend city council to authorize the transmission. That concludes the presentation and ready for any questions. Thank you, Miss John. Uh, commissioners, do we have any clarification requests for the benefit of public comment? Vice Chair Chang,

um, thank you so much for the presentation. Can you give us can you remind us again what the big kind of uh milestone check-ins are regarding housing and what HCD is looking at. So in other words, if we don't do X by Y time frame, what happens kind of thing. Yes. Uh happy to give a high level response to that. Um there is a midcycle check-in but the primary area where we need to watch and track the housing production is to make sure that we don't get to a point where the number of units produced um is if it is less on a particular site that we allocated for the arena then we could get to okay let me rephrase that let me say that again uh we need to make sure that the arena number the estimated number of units that will be produced over the 8-year cycle uh is consistent with the regional housing needs that was allocated to the city. So if we get to a point where the combination of the number of units produced plus the number of units listed on the remaining sites on our inventory is less than the arena that was assigned to the city either in total or in with any of those categories of affordability. Then the city has 6 months to reszone additional parcels and deleg uh and uh designate them as additional housing element sites to maintain capacity for that arena. However, we can include

sites that are not on the housing inventory towards that. So, at this point, we actually have a number of housing development projects that are going through the process that aren't housing element sites and should help us balance out that um arena allocation. Thank you. I have Commissioner Templeton and then Commissioner Peterson. It's me. Um I was just trying to interpret your chart if you want to put up the one with the percent of Reena permitted. Um

that's slide seven. And as we are waiting for that to be pulled up, an an element that I wanted to share in regards to this, since this is just about the building permits issued, there are a lot more units that are in process right now, even ones that have gone through the entitlement phase and approved through planning um that are not captured here. Um but that is part of our um final reporting. We are currently working on developing a uh a housing dashboard that will give you some of that inner um in progress numbers as well. Uh beyond

you're anticipating my my not my not technical questions but I appreciate that. Um my first my my question really is um I do I do eventually want to talk about making this a better chart and it sounds like you already have plans to do that but right now my question is how did you get 2.06 06 for extremely low income. Did you divide 16 over 592

over 778 or over it might be over 778 which is the the assigned number. Let me check that. But it is it it is because I don't get that number. Oh. So I not going to put you on the spot. I'm sure

um whatever it is, we can figure it out, but I just want to say I know this particular community cares very deeply about these things. Want to make sure the information is accurate. We can get more into that later. Thank you. If if I may, I did just run the calculation and when you divide 16 by 778, not the 762 by 778, that does give you 2% 2.06. Thank you. That's why I was trying to we got to get on the same page. So what what is the remaining? So it's 778US 16 is a 762. Correct. Got it. Okay. Great. Thank you,

Commissioner Peterson. Thank you chair. So the question I have is um I guess a lot of times when I look at these these tables um you know kind of the standard way we look at them is uh the product that's being produced and then the process that goes into it. Um but also oftentimes what's helpful is to to know the organization. Uh so I'm assuming uh Mr. from you're not the only one working on this that there's a there's a team just for a a scale how many people are working on these projects and then what's the distribution across these?

So we we've got as you saw in the um the table for the comprehensive plan. We've got staff from all departments um working on a variety because the comprehensive plan covers things um across the city. And so we do have multiple staff that that are involved in in all of those. Um some of this reporting we have flexibility about how we present the information. In other parts of it, we don't. It's dictated by the state, for example. Um so we do try to show you while we don't say how many staff are working on it because that would be a bit difficult to track we are showing which departments are involved.

So in general about how many staff members if we just put them into FTEES are we looking at the work here? I could not estimate a dozen 100 just ballpark I could not estimate. Okay, commissioners, any other pre-public comment questions, seeing none, Mr. Travetera, do we have any uh comment requests for this item to the chair, I've not received any public comment cards. Um, and there are no raise hands on Zoom.

Thank you. All right, it's time to open it up for general discussion by the commission and we'll begin with Commissioner Templeton.

Thank you. Um the reason I was asking about making sure we are all understanding of the calculations on this table um is because um I think there's a column that would help us interpret this information that's not currently included and I was wondering if we could have it in the next iteration or when you pass it to council. um that column is of uh how are we tracking? So you have the percent uh permitted but not the percent that we are what our target is. So for example, we're currently at 2.06% for extremely low income, but of the numbers allocated at 778 over 6086. It should be our target should be if we were on track with every type of income I mean a housing level um it would be like 12% right so showing 2.6% I can go yay we're at 2.6% 6% but but we should be at 12% if we were on track to build everything we have scheduled in arena. Does that make sense?

That does make sense and I understand the point that you're making. I think I would add some additional context which is the housing element was only adopted last year and so because of the delay in the process the additional process that was involved this 8-year cycle did not get started and in addition to that the policies that are making it easier for housing and encouraging more housing take time to go into effect and as I stated there is a lot of housing that's in process. It takes several years often for these to get through the planning process, the building process and actually to construction. So I would

So we didn't need extremely low income housing before before this cycle. We have done a lot through this housing.

I understand and you're mitigating I understand what you're trying to mitigate. What I'm trying to say is let's just reflect. Um the reason is not not only are there the mitigations of timing and planning and all of those things, but that's literally what we're trying to do. And so we can highlight this is an area that's not proceeding at pace as well as the other areas. And that's an area for council to consider. Why are we not doing as well here? Part of it's going to be the things you mentioned, but there may be other things council can consider like any actions they can take, right? Does that make sense?

It does. It does. And I think my one caution would be if we assumed that the same number would be produced each year in order to get to our arena levels. that that is not necessarily an accurate assumption or expectation since we do expect that in the first 3 years as we have seen it is less than how many we would need if we averaged it over the years but that it's also not my first arena cycle. So, let me just say this is always an area that we're deficient in. And if we don't like stop justifying, Mhm. right, and start looking for how can we take responsibility and do better,

then it doesn't change and we end the arena cycle deficient, right? So, [snorts] so I hear what you're saying and no, there's not this is not about blame. It's about transparency. If you're able to show here's a moment, a snapshot where we're behind here and then maybe two or three years go by and we're not doing any better. If you add that column, you're going to have a a better likelihood of affecting that number. That is a very good point and that is part of why having that percentage is so critical. U we will take the suggestion into consideration. Thank you. Commissioner Hecman, then Vice Chair Chang.

Uh, thank you. So, I think um I have a combination of uh comments and questions and I think I'll just kind of go uh front to back through the staff report. Um first of all um I want to uh as I think I try to do every year applaud staff. there are 520 policies and programs that they are tasked with uh tracking and moving forward uh at various uh stages. And so that's just a herculane herculean task just to document it um which is of course just the most minor of efforts compared to actually doing it um which they're doing across the board. So, so I appreciate that and I also appreciate these annual uh updates, not not because the state mandates them, but because um it shows us the progress we're making and and maybe identifies for us the places where we need to uh make progress more quickly um like on our our you know very very low housing stock. Um so so I think it's really useful uh for that too. So, and I'm I was happy to see this year that you know this we're a few years into this comp plan and we last year we only had 17 completed. We had 11 more in the past year which is great. We don't those are done. 410 minus 28 and similarly on the uh housing side um 110 but I think 30 are done. So great uh now we can focus on the remaining 80. Um, uh, packet page 13, table two is the, uh, completion status. And so this is a question for staff. Um, so, so, um, the first line of that by 2022, um, was the target completion for 97 projects under the comp plan. Of those 92, we've got 13 that are partially

complete and seven that are pending, which means they haven't been started and we're here in 2025. So, I just want to ask staff uh of those those are the ones I'm really focusing on on those 20, which I think this is slide four. Um, is staff concerned have a particular concern about any of those or or staff is comfortable even though the original deadline was by 2022? there's a reason it's not, you know, at least in process and they're comfortable with its status in the overall scheme. That was my first question.

I can start in um the assistant working [clears throat] supplement afterwards. Um those seven pending and 13 in progress or partially complete items were staff are not really concerned at this moment even though this is 2025 and they were supposed to be completed by 2022. Um always as you already know the priorities change, resources available also changes. So it sometimes the the the target date shifts but the target date you're um looking at is what we have um established back in 2027. So that's why there's some changes. We're not 20 2017. Um so we're not um very concerned about these target completion dates but we're making progress so that we make um priorities on those items that are still pending or partially complete.

Okay. Thank you. Um same uh packet page 13 table three. Um we have of our um uh this is the level of effort and we have nine partially complete and five pending in the substantial which is the the greatest uh uh draw on staff resources right those are the most expensive apparently. So, uh, same question. Does does staff have any particular concerns about those that are partially complete or pending that because of the needed resources, we may not be able to accomplish those?

Um, I think we do have some concerns with the the resources, but these are already um implement or the programs that we have discussed to implement back in 2017. So, it's not something that we're not aware of. And so, we're um the staff is always looking for additional resources like budget um or grant opportunities to cover some of those um additional resources we we may be needing. And also, we're making progress also with the staff staffing as well. So, as different departments make those progress, you will probably see more um updates and progress on those. and and what I would add is that the comprehensive plan is an aspirational document. Um it is very common that overall the total number of implementation programs that are included in a comprehensive plan or general plan far exceeds what actually can be done in the period of time. And as previously mentioned, the shifting of priorities means that certain things move up on the list or move down or get implemented sooner because of state law or other things like that. So it is not uncommon. Um and we don't have concerns about about th those numbers in general.

Okay, great. Thank you. Um let's see. Um on packet page 14 um table five which is the table that uh commissioner Templeton was referencing um and you know I wanted to two observations. one, the table you showed in slide seven is a slight update from what's in our staff report that wasn't mentioned, but I I want to just mention to my fellow commissioners to make sure we all caught that the numbers are u just slightly increased in the above moderate and therefore total um um so but but the bottom line is overall uh a little more than 9 and a half% uh you know call it 10% of our reena numbers 38 of the way through the cycle. And so in in that kind of simple measure, we're behind. We should be I mean, if we were going to be on target, and I don't know of anybody who has ever um suggested that it's realistic to expect that we'll ever be on target with these RENA numbers, but you know, that's kind of a measure of how far we are from the keeping pace with this uh target. the the state set for us on you know questionable bases. Um so but but um we are making progress uh across all the categories and so that is encouraging and as um our assistant director mentioned you know what's not referenced here is the pending right applications pending which which you know I would love to see that next year um so I'm glad you're going to add that. Okay. Um now uh turning uh just to the the the implementation tables. So um so this is a continuing dialogue we have with staff every year. They uh I think the the the first year um well we've had a

continuing dialogue about how to tell us what's new. Um and and so from when I started this is really um uh much improved because as as I've said you know once you've read them the 410 one time in one year you know my next year I don't I I just need to know what's different and so this year staff has uh tried to uh address that with a new column called changes from 2024 and I just wanted to give staff my feedback. Um uh I I think it's helpful um but um it um it could be more helpful. So uh for example uh in that changes it says uh yes status and staff comments and so I'm just you know looking at anyone and so I can see what the status is now but I don't know what it changed from and similarly I can see the staff comments now but I don't know if if it's a whole new comment or you added a sentence and so um I I appreciating that this information is coming from different departments I'd ask staff to consider next year whether you could run a red line. You know, when you bring us a draft amendment to an ordinance, you show us, you know, here's the ordinance with the cross out of what we're saying should go away and underline what we are saying should add. And so, if we could see that in that format, then you don't even need the last column because I can, you know, see with my eyes what's what's been crossed out and what's been added. Again, I don't know if technically that can be done, but uh that would be very useful. And then really the my last comment is next year on the housing element side um same concept right now it's new. This is the only second year we've seen it but next year I'd like to uh be able to focus on what's changed and so a red line of what we have in our packet today with the new version you bring us next year at this time. Uh that would really answer my question and and

just allow me to you know scour the 110 and see exactly what's different. So, those are my comments. Thanks again for a good job on this big task. Thank you, Commissioner Hecman. I second the uh redlinining request. To the extent that is technically possible, it sure would be helpful. Um I was mistaken about Vice Chair Chang's light, so we're now uh on to Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. I uh I put a third on the red lining. I think that's a great idea and I can see how that would remove the the last column uh because it would serve the same purpose and give us that extra detail that would be [sighs] much more information. So the questions I have is two clarifying. Uh one I I heard a comment about priorities and I realized um are these ranked in order of priority? So if it says you know uh C113 that's a higher priority than C115.

No no no that then that is just the numbering that it was given in the document. In general you can look at the year when it was estimated to be completed to give an indication of what was likely seen at that time as the higher priority for implementation more immediately. So, does council do they have a priority list? I know some of the city councils will do a priority.

Yes. At the beginning of each year, they work on council priorities, which is the list of tasks that they want staff to be working on in addition to our our normal work. And so, that is something we have mentioned that in some of our staff reports that will say this effort is a council priority. That's something they revisit at the beginning of every year. So, some of these are priority items from council, but we would have to sit there and put the two lists together. When council is looking at what their priorities are going to be for the next year, if there is room to add new ones, often looking at the implementation programs from the comprehensive plan is an area where they may find additional efforts to add.

Okay. And then my second question is regarding um back to staffing. I understand we don't know how many staff we have on this. So, I assume every city, you know, city staff member is uh applicable. I worked in the county and I worked on probably everything except for the office I was actually in because we got repurposed for everything. So, I understand how uh each week you can all be shuffled around on different tasks, whatever's the item for that week. Um, but the question, I guess another way of looking at it is how many unfilled staff positions do we have? Because you mentioned that of filling staff. How many open positions do you have that you would like to have working on this?

We have an I don't know how many vacant uh positions we have across the city off the top of my head. That's not a number I have access to um in the moment. Uh I know that in our planning department we have um at least a couple of positions that are open that are currently uh out for recruitment um that we are working to fill. Some of them may work on tasks here, some may work on other tasks like reviewing current planning projects. So it's uh not something that we analyze and kind of break down into that form.

Okay. But in general, what we're looking at here is a staffing deficit of a few people. I want to be hesitant in um confirming that because as we said it is across multiple departments that these efforts occur. Okay. My my knowledge is focused on planning and um each of them would some might work on some of these some might work on other tasks. Okay. Thank you Commissioner Templeton. Thanks. Um a quick question. Is is this made in Word or Excel? This table

for updating with um cross departmental staff. Um it is actually Excel and then we um work with Word um to make it legible [clears throat] to make it more legible than it was originally. And there were some instances where the the wording was getting cut off when it was in Excel. Yeah. So, we were trying to produce it in a way that was going to be as accessible as possible.

So, the reason I asked is because of this um redlinining question, which is easy in a word document but harder in Excel. Um, and I was just looking it up to see is there a tool and in in the computer science world we call it a diff. You compare two files and you get a diff. It prints it out and says this file has this, this file has that. um but um that's not uh necessarily a feature of Excel but there is a tool out there to compare two spreadsheets and it will tell you the difference. So it's it's reasonable. I'm just reason I'm mentioning that is um I recognize the feasibility is probably on your mind over whether or not you can do what was asked. So just wanted to say it's possible.

Thank you for that suggestion. The um in word documents you can take two documents and compare them to get a track changes. Sometimes it looks a little funky. Um but there is definitely room for us to explore say even if we're working on it in Excel to then convert it into a word document and compare the two the original and then the updated version to see if that can produce us something like what's being requested.

Sounds like you have a good plan. I mean it's if it's as long as it's feasible. I just wanted to make sure that we discuss the feasibility because it is a big ask but I think it would be very helpful too. Thank you, Vice Chair Chang.

Um, so I have kind of two sets of questions. One is the first area of questions is regarding how how the current status is uh coded. In other words, is it coming in from every single department? Um, okay. So, I'm getting nods from staff. And so, my piece of feedback there is that um it doesn't seem to be consistent across departments, which I'm sure is something that Miss Chaw is battling with all the time. Um so, just a couple things that I noticed. I'm sure there's more. Uh mostly, I think that there's fewer things that are pending than are actually pending. In other words, um, so if you look at packet page 22, item C1.13.1, um, it talks about determining the potential for the city to share use of PAUSD facilities. And it says under staff comments, this is an ongoing task. So then my question would be, why isn't it just ongoing as the completion status? And so I think that it may look worse. I don't know what you know like may look like we're not doing as much as we are doing and so that things um it may be worth checking into some of these um or maybe I don't understand what the definition of ongoing is. [laughter] Thank you for that comment and that is actually something that at a staff level we have identified as something to look at in the coming year um for the next round to make sure that we are identifying that because uh from my perspective when something is either ongoing or completed those are really the same bucket it's saying yeah we're we're doing the work there isn't something that's waiting to be done um

but we want to make sure that we are being consistent with how we portray that there's some things where you do an initial effort and then it is something that just becomes part of our general processes and so it could be labeled as completed. Exactly. So, [snorts] as I went through because um where I was more focused as I was reviewing this was looking at the pending because that's sort of the most concerning like if the city said we wanted to do it and we haven't started doing it, is that an intentional um like dep prioritization? Is it lack of resources? Or is it literally pending? Like we're planning on doing it. We know it's just coming later, right? So I was just sort of scanning the pending items and there was another one for example on P packet page 35 L2.4.6 um talking about exploring the um changing of the transfer development rights and it the staff comments column says the existing TDR process is being evaluated as part of the downtown housing plan. So to me that would be in progress. Um, so again, I just think that it's not like it it as currently presented, it makes it sound like things aren't being done on many of these items and actually staff is hard at work on them. Um, then my second uh set like area of questions sort of around the prioritization. So in in certain items it says um you know this has this has not been create started due to staff priorities. So who determines the prioritization and how is the prioritization determined for all of these?

Thank you for that question and I think that does come back to the earlier discussion of council priorities. Um when there are limited resources, which there always are to some extent, then there is a choice. Uh there are some things that staff can do and incorporated into the way that we do our general work. But if it's a new work effort, then generally that needs to be something that is directed by council um or occasionally by the city manager depending on the level of the task. So then very related to that, you had mentioned that when council's setting its priorities and there's room for more um that they can look at these these programs. Does the pending list actually is that an input into the council retreat or council uh like is it formally part of the inputs that are are for the annual prioritization that council uh creates I I don't know in the last few years whether it has been or not but as I look at what are the tasks um for the planning department um that are moving forward um and we're looking at what are some of the additional things we could potentially do that's one of the sources of information that I would bring forward um at this time because of the housing element and the state laws there really hasn't been an opportunity to bring that um as a suggestion for additional tasks, but it is something that we've talked about for when we do.

Okay. Because I think maybe when this came before us last time, that was one of my suggestions is to include a page of just the items because as I look at this, there was one item where I said, "Ooh, you know, we the PTC have actually seen something come before us where it would be really beneficial for us to to for us the city to make progress on the item." And that one was on packet page 21 C1.6.1 establish a program to facilitate continuing corporate support. And so we saw the project on Copperly and there was some mention of potentially um you know getting corporate support for that and it could be gamechanging if we were actually able to do that. And so I'm not sure that council like based on my interactions with council members, I don't think they're, you know, deep in the comp plan. And I think that the team that like the city, everybody who was involved in the comp plan was very thoughtful at the time. And if we aren't then kind of proactively at the time we set goals referring back to sort of our strategic planning and our priorities, not that those are set in stone, but if we aren't reminding ourselves, then that's lost information and we lose the value of that work, which I see so often, we we put all this work into plans. you know, later on tonight, we're going to be looking at the BPTP, the bike ped plan, and then yet, as we do other projects, we're not necessarily constantly referring back to it as often as we should. And so, I think that just the pending list might be a really good input. Thanks.

Seeing new weather lights and that's a an excellent segue into the uh question I wanted to ask. Um, so I have received personally some feedback from a council member that PTC should be acting more often to maintain and modify the comp plan. Um, now this commission has uh recommended modifications that were proposed by staff. Um, but to my knowledge we haven't initiated any requests for changes. So the question I have is uh for our future reference um what is the process we would use to do that?

So I think there are a couple of [snorts and clears throat]

um techniques or processes that uh come to mind in the moment. One would be if there were policies or programs um that you identified as uh candidates for update as you're doing this annual review that providing those to staff at this time or in the future. Um that's something that you know since we take this report and we report it out to council that is a way to convey those suggestions going forward. Um and as I said then also as we identify things um that are are causing a problem or could have significant benefit um we do try to identify those as potential future priorities when there is capacity for council. When council does have their priority setting discussion, that is an opportunity for anyone from the community, planning commissioners included, to um participate and suggest make public comment as well. So there are a number of different ways. Um doing it during this annual review is probably a strong candidate, though this report doesn't necessarily get to them before next year's priorities. So, I do want to point that out that the timing um ends up being a the opposite order. Um though, I can say as you can see how much work we are currently trying to get done and and really needing to prioritize the housing element and state law implementation. Um at this point, I don't believe there's going to be significant capacity or much capacity to add tasks.

Sure. And I didn't mean to imply that there was a long list waiting of those to be to be sent to you. Um I've got my own list, [laughter]

but just to understand uh what process we should use to do it. Um yeah, this is the annual review is an excellent time to do that, but we don't really have enough lead time to make that work. So I think necessarily um if we had suggestions to give to you um that it would be extended sometime in the future after receiving the uh the annual uh report. Um, and just to recap, what we're saying is the the the sort of semiformal process that's described in the uh uh in the packet for this on packet page 11 if I remember correctly um for this item. Uh what that really boils down to is um suggestions from us to you to staff and particularly to you I suspect as liaison um that's the methodology we should be keeping in mind.

Correct. That is the best process. Okay. Um, [clears throat] I second u the many comments that have been made about the uh excellent work that you have here and we've had some great suggestions for improvement. Uh, my fellow commissioners, do you have anything else you would like to comment on tonight? All right, it's time for a motion. I move staff's recommendation uh with the note that the staff report has a date that needs to be corrected, but the presentation was correct. Second.

Mr. [snorts] Tetto, would you call the role? Yes. Um, Commissioner G. Yes. Uh, Commissioner Templeton, yes. Uh, Commissioner Peterson, yes. Uh, Commissioner Hecman, yes. Uh, Commissioner James, yes. Uh, Vice Chair Chang, yes. Uh, Comm Chair Aken, yes. Uh, motion carries 70. Thank you. Thank you, Cole.

All right. Our our next action item tonight is agenda item number three. uh the PaloAlto link review which for everyone uh paying attention to the packet starts on page 127. So could we have the staff presentation please? Good evening PTC commissioners. My name is Nathan Baird. I am a transportation planning manager in the office of transportation. Um, I also have Ria Hudberat Llo here. Um, Sylvia Starlac. Um, and we also have a representative from VIA are Paul to link um, in the crowd if any specific questions for them come up. Um, next slide. Thank you, Sam. Um, so a little bit of background. um 2017 we have a um Paulo Alto um transit vision um document that kind of really kicked off this whole public discussion about what our transit options are. Um that document really focused on our shuttle systems, our the shuttles that existed at the time and potential expansions that could happen to those shuttles. um council when they reviewed it, they really suggested that we consider flex um transit models. Um in the years after that, there's little there was a little bit more progress made on looking at the shuttle options. Um but then 2020 came along, we canled our shuttle program. Um and then we pursued funding from VTA for an innovative transit service um to pursue um particularly microtransit which was

sort of taking off in the Bay Area at that time. Um we won that funding. Um we began service March 7th, 2023 with um VIA um also known as Nomad Transit. Um we've made several refinements um that I'll get to a little bit later in response to council and the public. Um and then this past June, um council discussed kind of the service continuation, um considering kind of the the unknown grant funds, um that were kind of winding down. Next slide, Sam. Um so on the 16th, um when we had on the 17th the item scheduled, um we were we were told to wind it down, um because we were we knew that the VTA funding was had been all used up. um we had kind of an unknown status on other grants that we were um pursuing. [snorts] Um on the next day, we we said it kind of makes sense to extend the contract um see what the status will be on those grants that we requested um and then have some conversation um with the public, with PTC, with city council um about what to do about our our what has been a pilot service. Next slide. So, that was [snorts] all the slides real quick. Um, uh, our service, um, currently operates 7 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. through most of the city. Um, we don't go to the baylands, we don't go to the hills. Um, it's an ondemand service. Um, point to point usually to the nearest intersection for seniors and disabled. Um, we do provide um, address to address, curb to curb service, not doortodoor, but curb to curb. Um yeah, and we've highlighted in this u map some of the more popular destinations including our Cal Train um downtown um some of our medical centers and some shopping areas. Next slide. [sighs]

Um this was a slide that we presented um to council in June. It kind of summarizes our kind of current understanding of v vulnerable use users um and their usage of it. Um please note this is not additive. Some of these some folks fall in multiple categories. Um but 30% of our users are seniors. Um 15% are low-income, 15% are youth. Um 5% are people with disabilities. Um we also have a significant number of veterans who use the service. Next slide. Um funding outlook and options. Um this kind of summarizes the most recent history. We um through the end of this past fiscal year, June, um we finalized the VTA, innovative transit funds, we also spent down our first um transportation for clean air grant that we received. Um we partnered with VIA to write that application um that focuses on um trips that replace single occupancy vehicle trips, takes VMT off the road. Um SRP began as a $31,000 um subsidy per month. They provide the full fair for all trips into and out of SRP. Um and then we renegotiated in the same time frame. SRP is Stanford Research Park. Um we renegotiated after that first several months. um after their fiscal year ended, which is on a different timeline, a percentagebased um so we went from 31K to around 35 to 45K per month. Um and it's usually it's based on their percentage of the service that they utilize. Um this current fiscal year, um we we did win a second TFCA fund. Um those funds were sort of under subscribed in the Bay Area. Um so

that was made available to us as well. Um those funds are good through the end of this fiscal year or the following fisc fiscal year. Um the current staff plan right now is to utilize all of those funds this fiscal year. Um we also have up to $600,000 from SRP. Again, um fairs are a minor um percentage of the whole cost. Um and then we have a general fund budget of 250. Um that's the same amount that they were um city council was originally willing to fund through the end of December. Um but the additional grant funds we got helped us helps us stretch that out. Um we will utilize as little of that as possible. Um we've really significantly lowered our spend per month um based on kind of council feedback um that the cost really has been an an issue for us as a city. Um and then um that last column really kind of identifies the unknown um funding future for us. Uh next slide. Um so we went through kind of an extensive um back and forth with our current provider. Um we also did some a little bit of research on you know shuttle cost comparatively. It's really hard to compare them. um they there's some real tradeoffs in microtransit versus fixed route and we can talk through some of that. I'm really keen on learning um what you all think what your preferences would be in terms of the transit vision for the city um and what our preferences really are. Um there's a number of benefits to the current model um but shuttle routes are different and provide some different benefits that we can potentially talk through. Um we've also talked about what have we just subsidized um you know via TNC trips you know some

um we have um some of our partners who do that Sanford Healthcare in talks with them um they do provide some trips where they just subsidize um workers who work late um who took transit in they'll just subsidize a Uber lift ride for them and what could that entail um and there's some real trade-offs um cost to that involved as well. Um next slide. Um so currently we're really we're really having this conversation now um because city council has not expressed u much support for continuing general fund subsidy to the service beyond um the end of this fiscal year. Um what amount of subsidy for Pala link or other PaloAlto based transit is most appropriate if any? Um what form of transit is most desirable? Um shuttle route circulators um vulnerable users focus. There's some um express um concern from council that we've been subsidizing just trips for the general public where we could focus it. um in conversations with VIA, there's some real um concern about um writership and what those impacts could be. If we if we focus it just on vulnerable users, potentially that um that really reduces some of our efficiency. Um, so we would probably end up with higher costs per trip, um, rather than the trip rate, the efficient costs that we're at right now for what is a an ondemand transit system that provides a lot of coverage area for us um, but not as much um, stopped in city um, mobility at select locations that a fixed route would do. Um, next slide. Um, that's the end of our presentation. I'm really happy to um take any questions. Um I didn't provide a good

recommendation here. Um but we are keen to bring your feedback back to city council. Um if there is a recommendation that the commission can kind of come together on um as council considers these same um concerns um that is um beneficial.

Thank you, Mr. May. So it's time for uh clarifying questions. pre-public comment. I see we have Commissioner Dr. Peterson, Vice Chair Chang, and then Commissioner James. [sighs] Thank you, chair. So, uh, being the resident walker here, I I don't own a vehicle, so this is something I I actually see the value in. I downloaded the app originally. I never actually used it. Uh, but I think I'm I'm not the target of, as you said, the the the goal was not to have people generally using it. It was for this to be a service for for segments of the community where this really was their only mode of transportation. I typically like to walk I I walk pretty much everywhere in town. I think everybody else does cuz I see everybody else walking with me. Uh, we have a great walking path system here. Um, but I also know not everybody is, you know, able to walk all over town. and I can see the value of this program and that it does get used. Do you have a metric of what percentage of utilization it has? Are the drivers 100% of the time utilized or is is there a percentage of idle time?

So there's a number of different metrics that VIA provides for us to kind of gauge the efficiency of the service. Um one of the one ones is um number of rides provided by driver service hour. Um you know compared to similar services in similar size cities with suburban layouts um we're doing really well. Okay.

Um we provide very high efficiency. Um that has been in part because we've been trying to spend less. Um and so we do have um as I've we've outlayed in the report some cost and some usability concerns because of that. Um but we are very efficient compared to other similar services in term I think it's around 3.1 3.2 um rides u provided per service hour. Um and there's a another metric they look at is the um seat um se like books booked seats um the num the percentage of the time that the seats are carrying somebody that we have um that's above 50% or so which is very good. Um, I know that our shuttle routes had more rides per day, but there was probably um more seats available as well. Okay.

Underutilized space.

So, that's that answers the question I I had, which is this is a service that's being used that's going to be sorely missed if it's shut down. There's definitely a community here that's using this. Um, there's a lot of people that aren't. My wife's a community health nurse and she doesn't use this service. She probably should be. That's probably a demographic where you'd want the community health nurse um somewhat subsidized in their their costs without not relying on a personal vehicle but relying on the public transportation. And this is the type of service that would allow somebody that's at that's mobile as a community nurse to be able to get to each of those individual houses of at risk people in our community to provide that home care. Um, another uh Okay,

I'll hold the rest of my clarifying my question past that clarifying question. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair Ch. Um, so are the TFCA uh grants that you that we've received are they um there are we haven't been able obviously to apply for the future because we don't know what type of system we will have. But are they only available for a service like this or a shuttle? Would they would they be available for something like a subsidy of Uber and Lyft rides?

The TFCA program is fairly open. Um so it does um support ride share. It does support bike and ped programs. It's a their main concern is removing vehicle miles off the road.

Okay. So um then another question I have is um so Santa Clara County has the paratransit service. Is that something that would serve like um is that overlapping uh with the services that we provide at all like for the audience that is disabled for example? I would say that the audience is similar but the different there is a difference between the types of um service that it provides. So those services are booked ahead of time and are often used for medical trips. Some of the same some of the same folks will use this for visiting friends or the library or picking up medication or you know it's a broader use case um for a similar population. Um, those are also more folks who are medically have higher medical need and sometimes those will involve doortodoor help. Um, this service does not provide doorto-door help. Um, you you need to be able to have someone help you or you can wheel if you can wheel yourself to the curb where we pick you up, they the drivers will help you get your wheelchair into a vehicle if needed. Um, but it

Yeah. So are you saying that the paratransit application like the people who would actually um be approved for that is much more limited than say some so not every wheelchairbound person would be eligible for paratransit. Is that correct or or they're they would be eligible but not necessarily use it all the time because paratransit's only allowed to be used for to book ahead. Okay. But can it be used for anything including a trip to the grocery store or is it only to Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you.

So, just to clarify, the answer to that last one was yes, for the record. Yes. Commissioner James.

Um, thank you. Um I guess I was uh sort of focused on and want to get clarification of you you talked about it this service is very efficient compared to other like services. Um and I kept kind of when I was going through and noodling with the numbers I kept looking at it sort of compared to like uh private private sector you know uh ride share. Um and it looked really expensive to me by comparison. It felt like, you know, we were looking at, you know, I [clears throat] don't want you to take my math, but just in my back of the envelope, it like looked like the average trip was like 3.3 miles or something. And I I did the back of the envelope and that looked like it was maybe $30 a ride or something like that. And you know, comparatively, I think you would be even Whimo was like $10 to $15 for that for that length. And and I'm lifting and Uber would be much less, I think. So, I guess my, you know, I'm I'm trying to work out this like what if we've got a certain number of dollars to spend, where can we get the most efficiency out of it. Um, so I'm I'm [clears throat] trying to square that in my head. I also had a question about the I I I realized in the report it talked about like wheelchair access um was kind of the limitation there and I was also interested in the the the VTA paratransit um as you know filling that gap. But I guess maybe let me flip it around the other way and say like what do you see as the drawbacks to like if we were taking the same dollars and putting it in just similar private sector road uh upride share um what's the drawback to that? I mean, if we're getting more trips at a lower cost and we can we can stop gap over here with wheelchair access on VTA, which sounds like it's not perfect, right? It's a little less convenient. You have

to think ahead. Um, but I I just kind of like to ask in a kind of open-ended way, what what is what are the gaps there that you see that we can't fill with what's other things? So, there's a few um a few things there, I think, that are pertinent. Um VTA, we're in the corner of the VTA service area. You know, we're at the very edge of the county. So, even before 2020, they were wanting to reduce the number of trip number of rides that come here. Um so it kind of um TNC's can kind of fill some of that same gap but this helps us um provide a very a public service whereas you know we don't have any control over the fairs. We don't have any control of the kind of context that we provide for the drivers. Um the drivers are highly vetted for this public service. Um the city branding on the vehicles gives a lot of um trust for the users that are using it. Um parents feel very comfortable with the service um putting their kids on it. Um so there's a there's a bit more vetting, a little bit more city control over how this operates. you know, I um am in very frequent contact with our provider. Um an algorithm decided where all the stops should be at first, but we have a lot of high control over those individual stops and we frequently edit them um based on user feedback. Um you know, someone will say, "Well, this spot where it dropped me, where the algorithm dropped me the first time, and next time we're able to change it." um we just know that there's not quite as much high touch with with someone like Uber or Lyft. I think the other real concern is the funding partnerships that we have established with Stanford Research Park. Um Sanford Research Park has been a very good

partner. Um they sub subsidize the entire trip cost of every ride that they utilize. Um and you have to really imagine that that helps um any transit service. The more people using it, the more efficient you can be. there's some scale there that really helps us um spread the city funds, use our city funds more um usefully and targetedly. Um and so, you know, they're they're funding 35 to 45% of the monthly costs and that really does help um lessen the um our dependency upon city city funds too.

Yeah. So with the TNC, you know, if we just threw money at TNC instead, we wouldn't necessarily have that partnership um anymore. Oh yeah, and the other thing is um we are in a most of our fleet is EV. We have seven EVs. Um we have two hybrid vehicles that are the wheelchair accessible vehicles. Um, and we don't have any control over the the vehicle fleet emissions with um the TNC programs.

That's all. That's all for now. Thank you, Commissioner G. Thank you, Chair. Um, I was wondering on packet page 131, you have a diagram of the usage of the service. Um, for those when I ask questions about transportation may sound as like a broken record. Are these origin and destination trips or are this uh just kind of usage like help me understand what this diagram is? Um, I believe that's the hexagon. Yes, that's the one map.

Yeah. So, the hexagon map is useful for us to see um trips that are just spread out across the our whole surface area. So the darker the hexagon, the more trips that are um starting or originating in that hexagon. Um and this really kind of paints a picture of um this type of um coveragebased um area that a microtransit serves versus a if you can imagine any of our previous shuttle routes, you know, where they started and where they ended. You know, there's real good um usage by folks who are closest to where the stops are. um but it doesn't serve the whole area. Um and you know these hexagon densities will change monthtomonth um you know dayto day based on you know what's happening in the city. Um I think since 2020 we're in a much more dynamic um transportation and transit world. Um and the that is a real advantage of this type of service um in the kind of context that we're in. And again at the end of the service area where trunk lines, you know, pass through our city and are potentially ending here with less ridership in seats than, you know, the middle of a a long VTA bus line. You know, by the time they get to the edge of the county, there's a lot of empty seats there. Um, and so VTA, you know, since 2020 has been decreasing the amount of bus service that they send to us.

Can you clarify Starting starting or ending? Yeah. Okay. May maybe let me um get a little bit closer to where I'm going with this. Um I'm wondering do we know where there are very popular trips? So like for example, do we know like oh people love to go from downtown Polo Alto to the research park or something like that because this map doesn't really show kind of like those origin destination pairs. This kind of just shows a general pattern. So I was wondering if you had any information on that. Um, in particular, the way my mind is thinking about that is if we decide that a shuttle may be the answer, we may want to try to like route along those origin destination pairs. So, I was just wondering if we had any information on that and if so, what have we learned?

It is really interesting to see those maps. Um, VIA has provided a number of those maps for us for some of these darker um, hexagons. Um and you have to really imagine that um every single um hot spot in our city has wrership dispersed across the city. Um and and so coming up with a route or two or three or four or five like is is um actually a little bit difficult um for us to figure out and you know via offered a number of services to us to help us like consider that they do provide shuttles in other places. they are used to they used to and in our scope of work are tasked with helping us consider um where those might be or what kind of useful they might be. Um but again because of our location in the county because our c because of where our cow train stops and our job centers are. So our our train stops, our job centers, our medical facilities, those are all places that folks are going, our shopping centers. Um, and then if you look individually at all of those hotspots, they are just they are getting trips from throughout the city and the other hotspots. I think that answer in and of itself was already interestingly interesting enough for me. Thank you.

All right. Um, we'll have a chance to get into this in more depth uh after public comments. Um, so now is a good time for those. Mr. Data, do we have any requests to speak? Uh, yes. through the chair. I have uh one request to speak at the moment. Um I would like to invite Alex V uh to the mic. If I can interrupt just a second, Commissioner Templeton, is this um you're after? Okay. Yes, please proceed.

Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to speak, commissioners, and I want to say uh thank you to Nathan and his team. Um we I'm a what is it 18 years long resident in PaloAlto. Uh three kids, one of whom is a 23-year-old special needs boy. went through the PaloAlto system and at the end of it was a great experience and at the end of it built a really good relationship with the VA up on Miranda and [gasps] we were trying to figure out how he's pretty severely disabled but with a coach he can go and um be guided and directed and so during his postsecary years he developed a they they made a space for him to make coffee for people uh who didn't want to pay for Starbucks basically and uh these folks would come by and it became an just a part of his life, you know, a a contribution that he could make to the community. Um it's been what made that so good was PaloAlto Link. Um, I just want to address a couple things I heard during the general questions. And, um, with all due respect, I just want to say financially in terms of your numbers um, about Lyft, Uber, and, uh, Link, Link beats them all by in spades. Like, if I just did a little R, I just got my apps going. Um, you know, Uber, Lift can be 20 bucks. I can take have my son go from our house on Lewis Road all the way to Miranda for five bucks. Nothing beats that. And that's back and back forth. That's about, you know, it ends up being about $11 a day for us. And uh you add that up, you know, that can be 50, you know, 40 to 50 bucks a month. But you talk Uber, you're talking hundreds of

dollars. So I just want to say I use it and uh can testify to that. We're also we've used paratransit. Paratransit is nothing in comparison. It's a tricycle compared to a uh a Cadillac with um the services we're getting with link. Uh they only give you a window when they can come and if you're not there they just move. They just leave. Um it's very difficult to arrange. my uh wife had a very hard time with it. So, I would say neither of those are good options. Um, I just wanted to make two comments. I wanted to ask a couple things. One, that the committee and the transportation folks would consider actually allowing coaches or caregivers of people that are riding at a disabled fair also to be able to ride at a disabled fair because the only reason they're riding is to be with the person who's disabled. They're not using the service for another means. And um [snorts] shoot, if you just keep it as is, it'll be great. Um but I would really like I would say we won't even be affected if they were to raise the rates. Um if they were able to still keep them lower for uh special needs folks and their caregivers. So I just want to give a massively strong endorsement for this and uh would answer any questions if you want to know from somebody who actually uses the service.

Thank you. and through the chair. Uh, I have no other public comment cards and no other raise hands on Zoom. I'm surprised. I thought we'd have more comment for this item. Uh, I have Commissioner Templeton, then Peterson, Chang, and Hecman in that order. I I believe.

Thank you, Chair. Um, I wasn't sure whether to ask these in clarifying questions or later, but I wanted to to hold off so we can have a little bit of a discussion here. Um, but um, first I want to acknowledge our our public commenter. I appreciate you sharing your perspective. Um, and uh, we definitely need to figure out that use case. So, some of my comments are not going to necessarily apply to that. Don't panic. We'll still figure this out. Um, so how many rides um did the $4.7 million Can you pull that slide back up? How many rides it was We're working on that. See if we can put that up.

What packet page? I am on packet page 131. Yep. in our performance section. Um we've got 3,000 to 6,000 per month. Um since the service began um through the end of October we served 137,000 rides. So in 6 months you did 137,000 rides. No no no no. Um it is 2 years and 6 months. Yeah. 2 years and 6 months.

Okay. Um and and that's the $4.7 million or is that an annual? The 4.7 is through the end of um this fiscal year. So that's an annual there. It's a cost. That's an annual cost. Um there's a bit of an estimate in there. And does that include staff time or is that just the the cost?

Just the driver service hours. Um the reason I'm asking is um you know I'm always going to try and and challenge and try and have a good discussion. So um know that I appreciate and I'm really glad that you came here and we're talking about this. But so if I were to buy um an annual pass for seniors with uh to VTA with that money, I would be able to buy over 14,000 annual passes. Do we It feels like that's a better deal. Um I would say it it depends. Um

you don't have you don't have to answer. I I'm just going to say that. Um it feels like that's a better deal. So the um downsides you were mentioning before um concern me because um we do have a lot of transit options in PaloAlto and I think that one of the reasons that we're hearing um from VTA that they're not as excited about North County is because we're not using it. We're not driving the use of that. And um we have also the Stanford Margarite which is something that Stanford's funding as well. And I'm just wondering if this program goes away would that be something that the Department of Transportation would be encouraging. So in the absence of PaloAlto link and our we still have our goals that are stated at the beginning which is a convenient, efficient public transit system that provides a viable alternative to driving would be met by options like that. And you've mentioned several others in addition to VTA and and Margarite. Um, is there not included in the table of options? Is that something you guys have considered and would state in front of um the council that this is an option but we don't recommend it?

The political link doesn't have any doesn't have much overlap with the Margarite. Um, if the Margarite served the rest of the city, I think Well, it used to go to the research park, does it not anymore? Yeah. So, they they also cut some of their shuttles and replaced some of those shuttles with what the service that they provided. So, if Palo Alto Link disappeared, they would then use their money to reinstate those shuttles perhaps, potentially. We don't know. We don't know.

Okay. So, um, yeah. Yeah. So, that's what one of the things I'm thinking about because, you know, this city has a pretty strong relationship with VTA, right? We've got a council member on their board and um this is a long-standing relationship and if we needed if if one of the push backs of why don't we just use VTA is they don't serve us enough. Why wouldn't we as a city say, "Let's we'll we'll be able to subsidize thousands of seniors and students using the bus if you will increase the routes up here. Um, I know we have routes that go to Gun High School. We have routes that go up and down El Camino. Um, there have been in the past routes that go into Midtown and to Mitchell Park. So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is the case for not using the existing infrastructure is um has not been made because we have the luxury of being able to use this system that's customized for us. And we are really enjoying it and I'm hearing that from the community. uh as well. But what could we get if we poured that into the the system that exists, right? And and if if the answer is no, we need to keep funding it so people can get a uh cheaper Uber from the PaloAlto train station to the shopping mall, they could take the margarita to the shopping mall. It would be fine, right? But to what extent do we have influence? And I think that was the point that you were making that resonated the most is are we able to influence the frequency and the quality of the rides that people would

get on VTA and the Margarite Margarite more frequency. VTA more quality. And so for for the cost, I think that's something to think about. Um, we definitely do have a gap in general for people with um, disabilities and special needs, and that's something that sounds like we could do even better uh, with our current system. But I really want to say that if if we're having what was it 15% were students? [sighs and clears throat] Was it 15% of the writers were students? And What is the number of rides like? Is that something that we could subsidize and have students ride the bus or

We've been actively trying to um discourage um particularly school trips by students. Okay. Um you know, we're open. Yeah, the council directed that. Um if we wanted to, you know, limit it further, we we could. What does that mean? You don't want students car pooling to school with PaloAlto link. They need to be biking. We would rather they be bicycling or walking. Yes. So, um, the or school

use cases that I'm thinking about are people who are at this time of year staying late to do, you know, band or theater or football and biking home at, you know, 7 or 8:00 at night, forgetting to put their lights on and things like that. And there are cases when it would be more appropriate for them to take a ride from um, some other public service. So what I'm trying to say is I think there are um so many people in PaloAlto who enjoy riding their bikes and there are so many people who um enjoy uh would enjoy taking the bus instead of PaloAlto link if that was an option. And the reason I'm saying that is if you really do have to spare this, if you have to cut this program back, can you exchange for certain groups of users of PaloAlto link some alternative for them such as the city could subsidize like Stanford subsidizes the train, we could subsidize the bus or whatever it might be. We're not going to subsidize Uber. That's very expensive. I totally agree with that. But we are subsidizing this and if we're in danger of cutting it back, we should think about alternatives and systems that already exist. So for now, I'll stop. I have more for later. Thank you.

Thank you. That was insightful comment. Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. So I'm going to push back on a little bit on that. Um, from my observation of public transit, most people prefer to take the bus and the Cal Train first just because everybody likes to walk. They like the freedom of that. Um, and to not have to use the u if you're using lift, you know, that's usually the last option. Um, so I would push back that the riders could be served by a bus route simply because if they could be, they would already be using it. They wouldn't be using the service. They would be simply walking to their local bus stop and using that and they probably do as a preference. Um, just looking at the map here, you can see that it's almost equally distributed across the entire city. people coming from individual points going to clusters of businesses and service points and then writing back from those points. And what that's telling me is this is filling the last mile which is all those gaps in the system. This is the glue that fills in all those in between places that allows, you know, people who don't have the ability to um to drive that. This is that that piece that fills in between where the bus route doesn't go, where the Cal Train doesn't go and the Margarite doesn't go. Uh to be able to live, you know, still within that domain. And then that creates a health for our community. Um because you know like you said the the vehicles are are electric um which is also helping to keep out other polluting vehicles. A lot of the um the Uber and the lift vehicles are not wellmaintained. Everyone can has ridden in one has has noticed half the vehicles probably shouldn't be on the road even because they're basically overused taxis

with 500,000 miles on them. whereas now we have just in our community clean vehicles that are safe um serving the community here which I don't think it's a service that we should be looking at cutting. I think it's a service where we should be looking at how do we fund it because I think it's a time problem. It's not that in the future it's not going to work. It's just that right now it's in that early stage startup point where it just needs still to be bridged from the starting point to when it's self- sustainable. And the key piece in that is the Stamford contribution because the Stanford is going to use the general use permit negotiation, which means if they're contributing now, there's a very good chance they'll contribute even more in the very near future when they're negotiating their GU because I think this would be number one to ask Stanford, what are your uh what are your trips per day in and out of campus and to mitigate that impact? uh could you contribute to our excellent community mitigation service which is the link and then on top of that one of the suggestions I want to put out there is we do parking mitigation I don't know what those are TDM TRM what's the acronym for that

TDMs would businesses be willing to uh as part of their TM TDM uh provide a voucher kind of like a parking voucher but instead of a parking voucher it's a public transit you a link voucher where they contribute just like Stanford does and then we as a planning commission give them reduced parking requirements because they're contributing towards the link program especially the medical centers you know we just had one where um over here on El Camino uh we just gave them a TDM uh which could have included the link uh contribution because I'm sure probably a lot of people are going to that facility the you know the caregivers and things like that. So, I see a lot of solutions here and I don't think they're they're actually that far away. I think they're just a couple steps ahead of us and just right now they're not here, but very soon they will be. So, I'll leave it there and I'll have more comments later. [snorts] Is that a response in the works there or Mr. Elected? Uh would you care to uh u respond to uh Commissioner Peterson's um suggestions about TDMs? Uh is this something we have used and could we make more use of it?

Yeah, thanks for the question. Um we have introduce yourself.

Oh, sorry. Sylvia Starlac, transportation planning manager. Um because we haven't because this service is a pilot, we have been hesitant to write it into TDM uh programs. We uh we if we have or if they if it appears in a TDM program, it's part of what the existing conditions are for the current, you know, the current condition. Um and and of course, if it's existing when a building comes online, great. they can use it, but we're not going to rely on it at this point because it's it's un I mean, council has told us to wind it down, so I'm not going to do that. Thanks, Commissioner Peterson. Does that give you the context you're looking for?

It does. So, again, we're looking for a solution for how do we bridge it because they're with Stanford funding now, we have TDM funding that is also, you know, everyone waits to see if something's successful before you you buy in. But it sounds like if the program pencils out, we got a lot of a lot of additional funding sources that are unutilized. Thank you, Commissioner Vice Chair Chang.

We'll get you it. This one seems to be working. Um, Mr. Bar, could you pull up um could could you pull up the chart that showed the co US per year and then the final rightmost column? There was a slide on it. The rightmost column had, you know, kind of question marks. Yes. Um I think Sam will be right back and he can bring it up. But I can um the costs, you know, when we first started were about um I think we're [clears throat] estab.

So the cost I'm specifically interested in is cost to the city. What we were not able to have offset by either grants or by Stanford contribution. Yeah. So it um it's less than 10% over the course of the two and a half years that we've been piloting the program. So cuz I remember seeing something about 200 to $250,000 or something like that. Up to $250,000 of general funds. So that's the cost to the city this year

for this Yeah. this year. But we will we will likely not spend very much of that either. Um, so over the course of the 2 and 1/2 years through the end of June 2026, the cost to the city will likely be in a 5% or less range over the course of the whole pilot. And then if we continued it next year, how much would it be out of the general fund? So that's where the the big question marks are. Yeah, that's why I wanted to see the

Yeah. So there are Thank you, Sam. Um yeah, so Stanford Research Park, they give us an up to amount, but they spend less than that because they they will only spend um based on their usage per month. Um and so we've been in about the um 85 to 95k per month spend currently. When we began the service, we were spending much more per month um because we were concerned about very concerned about some of the the service costs or the the the number of people that were missing rides. We were trying to keep that down. Um you know, we but because we saw the funding, the grant funding coming to an end because we knew city council has been very concerned about the monthly spend. Um we've been asking VIA to get their spend down. um they still will try to allocate their driver hours to the busiest times. Um but yeah, we the the report lays out some of those kind of costs and benefits that we've gone through. But at a large level, um the first full fiscal year of the service was 1.5 per year. The next one we got it down to 1.2. Um and that's about where we are um now.

Okay. So it's 1.2 to and depending on if we get a grant or not, it might that might shave another $450,000 off of it. Is that what we're saying? So really, we did get the a second TFCA grant. I know, but so for the future if we were to I'm just trying to understand like what is it that city council is not willing to spend? It's the $250,000 that city council is not willing to spend. Is that correct? Well, I think Ria Huch Barrett low, chief transportation official, um when council was deliberating on this, it wasn't clear to them um how much Stanford was subsidizing. So they what they were not willing to do was spend $1.1 million.

Yes. So that's what's I think that so my point of feedback because I'm confused on it too and was confused on it and had run some quick back of the envelope numbers thinking, "Oh, this is not a big deal." you know, if we were to subsidize a lift or um a lifter or Uber, and I hear loud and clear what the member of the public said, which is out of pocket for his family, paying for a lift or Uber is too much. Um, so I but what I was trying to understand is how much would it actually cost for just the vulnerable population rides, right? because there's a whole bunch of these rides that are um you know just average people using this and if what we're really trying to do is and and this is something up for discussion. What is our really goal? But our what is our real goal? But if our if part of our goal is to serve these vulnerable populations, how much would it actually cost to pay for just Uber Uber and lift rides for that population? Um, and so it's not clear like when you know we keep saying the $1.2 million price tag, that's not really the price tag to the Steve Palo Alto. And I think that's really important to understand. It's really important for us to understand because when Commissioner Templeton talks about being able to buy 14,000 BTA passes, which is what I thought we could do based on, you know, my reading of the packet, that's actually not true because we can't use the up to $600,000 that Stanford is forking into it to pay for those VTA passes. And so, um, that was not clearly like I didn't get that and now I do. All that said, all that said, from an big picture, um, kind of like how functional is this service as [snorts] a mode of public transportation, I'm really worried that

it is not a viable service for several reasons. The first is that if one in five times you're trying to ride the bus, the bus just didn't show up, that wouldn't work. Like, you just can't use the bus anymore. and you don't know when that might be. And we definitely saw the public comments coming in about that problem as we've scaled back service. And so it's

no no sorry with good. Thank you for the clarification. That's not a problem that the buses have. And although you certainly hear about it from colleers all the time if the train was late, if the bus was late, you hear about it. It's a big deal. So if and it's not one in five of the time. So for this service, I'm worried about that because people can't really rely on it unless they have a lot of flexibility in their schedule. Um secondly, like students are blacked out from it essentially like intentionally blacked out from it. And so it doesn't in terms of that initial goal of sort of a public transit system that takes cars off the street. It might do it for a subset of people, but it doesn't necessarily meet that need overall. I'm really glad we did the pilot, though. [snorts] Um, and then finally, it's $26 a trip. Like, if you were to say, "Do you want to pay $26 to get from point A to point B in PaloAlto?" Like, nobody would go for that. And so that means that if Palo Alto is subsidizing it, Palo Alto needs to be getting a significant benefit from it. for example, like viable public transit for people who don't have cars, which I don't again I question that. Or two, like taking a substantial number of vehicles off the street, which given the number of rides that it's doing, it's not necessarily doing that either. So, I am worried about that. Um, initially as I was without fully understanding the cost to PaloAlto picture, I was thinking, okay, well, maybe if what we're really worried about in terms of cancelling this pilot is serving those vulnerable populations, what's another way that we could do that? Which is why I was asking the question and clarifying questions about paratransit.

And um so I was thinking maybe some combination of paratransit plus city subsidy of um TNC's would would would be a way for us to spend less money overall. I'm not totally clear on that necessarily because if I in my quick back of the envelope that I did last night, I was looking at like the 53% vulnerable population average population of or average number of rides is like 4,500 a year, right? Cuz you said 3 to 6,000 um sorry 4,500 a month because you said it's somewhere between 3 and 6,000 a month. And the number I came up with was something slightly under half a million. And I thought, "Oh, great. That's way less than 1.2 million." The problem with that analysis that I did is Palatoto is not spending h that much money right now um because it's been so heavily subsidized. So I'm not sure I have a solution for this. Um, but I I do think that we have a like it's not really meeting the goals and what we need to do is figure out how we meet the needs of of the vulnerable audience. And then final question is right now how are we able to identify that the writer is disabled or a senior or um you know part of a vulnerable population. So when you open the app or you call a booking agent via a phone line you identify yourself within app um there's a discounted fairs um section where you toggle those on um I have talked to many seniors and disabled about how to do that

and is it just an honor system thing yeah it's just self- selection we talked they via has talked about um they do have some capacity it would take some um their product team would have to do it we could do some means testing required means testing but you do there's some cost involved with that um and you sometimes it just becomes a prohibition to service

right now that's actually very helpful because in that world where let's say we did as PaloAlto decide to subsidize TNC's for vulnerable audiences how would we determine who's vulnerable and there's quite an administrative burden potentially there so right now it's an honor system issue uh I mean that's how we're gathering the data Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, those are my thoughts for now, Commissioner Hecman.

So, I've heard a lot from my fellow commissioners that resonates with me. [snorts] Um, I think Palo Alto link is is a really noble idea that is meeting economic reality as our initial pilot funding um, you know, is finished. Um, you know, public transit is subsidized transit. I think that's true everywhere in the US. I've heard there are some places overseas where it's actually paying for itself, but we haven't figured that out. And and this particular system, Palanto Link, the subsidy, according to the staff report, is 90%. So the the $4 fair that u um standard fair that somebody pays for a ride, that ride is actually costing $40. They're just paying a $4 share of it. And this amalgamation of subsidies is paying the other 36. Um and so actually the the question I walked in here with, which Mr. beard answered [snorts] in his staff report before I could answer it is what is the appetite of our city council to have the general fund cover, you know, um all or or a big chunk of this cost going forward because maybe we can count on Stanford if the program suits them, but these other grants um uh I was not encouraged by the staff report that that yeah, these are pretty likely to be continued or extended or you know in a different name. Um and so it's really falling back to PaloAlto to decide if it wants to subsidize this program and um in a situation where the council has indicated yeah not a lot um or not we

don't want to put a lot of money into this. And so my thinking is that while in this report that you brought to us, we've sort of looked broadly at all the possibilities, I think we have to focus I I think we need to condense and focus this on uh what the vice chair described as the most vulnerable population. And to me that um would be uh a combination of the lowincome people, people who legitimately can't afford the $20 Uber and I think there's a segment of the disabled population that that the market ride share doesn't work for. I don't really understand that, but that knowledge base is out there. Um I mean I was uh on packet page 131 I was really surprised to read that uh of the writership uh over the history of this uh program 57% uh of the writers earn less than $100,000 which means 43% I think earn more than $100,000 and I can't understand why I understand why why somebody making over $100,000 would love a deeply discounted fair. I don't we shouldn't be providing that. Um they should be excluded. Um and and so I really think that we need to focus on I do think that in a in a incomebased and again uh disability based scenario there would be an administrative cost to qualify people um you know very similar to our our housing for for uh below

market rate. Um so there would be a cost to that and so I I guess my thought was uh and and then we have to sort of figure out whether if we shrink it to that level is Stanford a participant

because maybe not maybe not but but and then we have to decide well how much would we have to expand it to get there up to $600,000 and is it worth it I mean if we have to expand it to get there 600,000 to the point where it costs us another 200,000 beyond ond if we exclude them then those are decisions that the council has to make and so I guess what I'm thinking is we need to to to focus in on this you know most vulnerable what it would cost to run uh PaloAlto link just uh for that and then this comparison of how much of that would we more efficiently spend our money by handing out vouchers for the the market rate providers um and then what's left. So I mean that's one sort of route over here is the most costefficient without Stanford and then how can we skinny this down most costefficiently with Stanford. What what writership do we have to include to get them to continue to contribute? So uh that's my thought in how to to narrow this down. um and then have sort of a more focused approach to decide whether any model is going to be workable going forward. Thanks.

Thank you, Commissioner G. Then Commissioner Templeton.

Thank you, Chair. Um and thank you other commissioners for your insightful comments. I also kind of want to approach this from a little bit of a personal level. So I actually when I was growing up here took the cross town shuttle. So the previous iteration of what we're talking about today. So just to kind of like map your in in your head, I went to Fair Meadow and then I did swim team that's kind of like by the VA. So that was kind of my route going back and forth through here. And in the early stage of the cross town shuttle, there existed a route that went all the way down past gun. Um and then at some point it ended up only going kind of through JLS and didn't end up going down that route. But and and so my grandfather would take me uh to swim practice every day after school. And we love taking the bus, but when the bus no longer served it, we biked it. Like I was starting from maybe like age 8, age nine. And to be honest, I couldn't really tell you a difference. I one day I was on a bus and another day I was on a bike. And I think that the conversation around kind of like the other use cases what I I want to hearken back to Commissioner Templeton's comment which is we actually have a lot of different services that cover the city and as like a child where my grandfather could not drive and then I obviously as a child could not drive um leveraged many many many of these different services. So, I have taken the Margarite from like the VA hospital to downtown. I have taken the VTA bus that goes from downtown, the 21 that goes through Middlefield over to the side of town. And uh took the cross town shuttle when that was an option. And then when I grew older, I biked. I biked everywhere. I didn't even get a driver's license until after I turned 18 because in the city I

didn't feel like I needed it between buses, putting my bus my bike uh on the bus and biking for my last kind of like the last mile and walking with especially with the weather, right? Like I never really felt like I needed this service. Um, and kind of like that's a lot of what I grew up with, but kind of looking at the current state of transportation services in in our area. I I do the the Margarite still does service a line that goes kind of from the the Ganish area via Stanford to downtown. They do have a shopping express bus that goes on El Camino. My grandfather now lives in Linton Gardens in kind of on the downtown side and he uses the the senior subsidized pass to come to my house. He is 91. He will walk to the bus station and he will take the bus which is honestly so impressive. Um but I think that my like my family has really grown up using all the existing services um that existed before this pointto-point service and all the the existing services are still there. Um, so I just kind of want to provide a personal anecdote about how all these services intersect. Um, I also want to say that the the VTA does have a couple like for example that 21 line is similarish to how the cross town line used to go kind of like around through downtown through middle field and then around the back um there. So I think that's pretty similar to what the cross town shuttle used to do. Um, so I kind of want to talk briefly about that. Um, and then I also wanted to kind of think a little bit more through what it's like to be a student right now and kind of the different options for there. Uh, as a high school student, I've practice ended at 9:30, selected up, biked home. Um, so

that's kind of the the current reality. That was the current reality for me. But I have a couple of my neighbors whose kids are like high school or kind of on the later side and they actually do take the link, but it's because they don't feel like walking.7 miles. They'll be like, "Oh, I'll take the link from Wilky Way to uh Mitchell Park Community Center, which um is is quite short. Um walking maybe 30 minutes if you're kind of on the slower side. If you're biking, it's probably like five somewhere in that ballpark, right? And so, um, I I do question, right, like if and and they tell me they take the link pretty frequently, right? And so I I I wonder, right, if the service went away, would they just get on their bike and bike the 5 minutes? My guess is probably yes, right? And uh this I guess is a little bit of foreshadow to our next item where we're going to make it easier to bike around town. Um but I I do think that there exists a large swath of population who's using this service that probably wouldn't be that impacted if it kind of just went away on its own in June 2026. Um, that being said, I I really want to say that I I am listening to the community about the vulnerable populations and I want to like exclude all of that from my discussion. I'm just saying um, as Commissioner Hecman point out, right, the 43% of people that are taking this that probably have some other method to get around. Um, so I kind of want to to to end my comment about that for now. I also had a question, Mr. Baird, about the question mark slide. I I I guess we have a lot of questions about the question marks. Um, do you mind pulling that up?

Thanks, Sam. So, um, can you just clarify for me again the TFCA grant? What does that cover? You said it kind of can cover a lot of things like TNC subsidies, bike stuff, like kind of Can you tell me a little bit more about what other cities have done as well for this? The best option for that probably is to go to their their website and just look at some of their projects, but it has covered a wide range of um different kinds of capital projects to programs. Sure. I I um Sylvia might have more to add, more context.

Um yeah, some of the things that it has covered in other cities are um new bicycle facilities, um bike racks, uh signal modification projects. It's a very wide range of things. anything that reduces emissions. So specifically, I remember that you mentioned in the clarifying questions com portion that it would cover TNC subsidies. Is that correct? It it could um maybe maybe

I I I think that some TNC's are really equivalent to a single occupant vehicle. And so I believe that if we were to make a case for that, we would have to restrict it to the pool TNC rights.

Sure. Um I think that makes sense. But I kind of want to talk a little bit about the back of the napkin math that Vice Chang had mentioned, which it comes out to about $450,000, I believe, for the subsidies that you had brought. And and look, there's a number that's about $450,000. That's the TFCA grant here. So I think that there is some options in which potentially if we decided that we wanted to instead subsidize TNC pool for vulnerable populations, uh the TFCA grant could capture all of that from a cost perspective and the city may have to pay zero and we may not have to actually work with Stanford. Um but again, lots of question marks. That's why this slide is here. Um, and I'll end my comments for now.

Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. Thank you. Um, don't touch that slide. Um, when you say, uh, that the TFCA grants could be used to improve bike facilities and signals and things like that. Does that mean using it here is taking away from our ability to use it elsewhere?

No. Um, the TFCA grant is a competitive grant, so we would need to apply for whatever we can. I mean, we could potentially apply for multiple projects. I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you said. So, this money is not a pool of money to be used for various different transportation initiatives. It is potentially pulling from that, but we're using it for this and only this. Is that what you're saying? Correct. We applied. Are we Are we also applying for all those other things? Uh, we could do in incoming years. So, not yet. I've only been here a few months, so I'm not quite sure.

I'm looking at Sylvia, so I wonder if she might know. Uh, I won't put you on the spot. You don't have to answer. But um that's something I I I want to echo what Commissioner G was saying about um understanding the way that people will find a way to get to where they need to go. And if we if this program does end, I encourage the Department of Transportation to recapture that money for other projects for the city. It sounds like a good uh source of funding transportation initiatives. I also want to point out um that Commissioner G has a career in uh transportation and I want to just ask us to think about the importance of being able to experience all sorts of different modes of transit and influence younger people to do more participation in public transit and other kinds of activities. Um, sorry to put you on the spot, but uh, that's exactly why I am going to go back to saying I really hope the Department of Transportation will advocate seriously to expand VTA services here and make it easier for people to use them, especially young people because I know they will take their bikes to school and if they have to come home late and they want to throw their bike on the bus and get home, it'd be great if they could do that. Now, I understand that doesn't exactly address what's happening here. So, I want to um [sighs and gasps] I want to encourage the city to think about the problem one level up. Right now, we're we're talking about PaloAlto link. We're talking about direction from the city to

wind it down. And we're also trying to talk about and a lot of us are looking ahead. what alternatives do we have? How do we make this not a crisis? Because it has been a good program. People have enjoyed it. But the reality is the reality. It's it's going to it's pretty expensive. Um, one more thing I'm going to throw out there, and this is purely presentation. This is not policy. What is one of the places you said this program doesn't go? It's on every single slide. I apologize for the quality of the pictures. I love the pictures. Mostly they're uh

the pictures are lovely. That's why they're they're there. But every time I look at as So as you go on with council and other other commissions like I have lots of um Paul Alink photos on my phone.

That's all I'm saying. I I tease I just I just want to lighten the mood here. But um but but seriously, the the problems that you're solving with this program exist. They will not change whether this program changes or not. And the leadership that you're providing of trying to figure out how to solve these problems. Link is one one way only. And so I just want to say that we really appreciate the work you're doing. And I hope that you're not interpreting any of this um kind of trying to come to terms with reality as as uh not recognizing that. So, all right. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. And then I have a few questions.

Thank you, Chair. So, I still see this not as a as a glass half empty and a place to pour out the rest of the water, but a place where the glass is half full and to figure out how to fill up the rest of the way. And if we look to the rest of the world, I think we would notice that ride share has become pretty significant. And I don't think that us going the opposite direction and going back to a non-ride share world is necessarily the solution. It seems like us providing our own uh subsidized ride share within the ride share network is probably the way of the future. And I think the cost of ride share is dropping as we go forward. So I have two questions on that. One is what's the increase year-over-year in writership? Is this doubling from the first year to the second to the third?

I do not have that off the top of my head. I know that we've had steady growth the entire time. I might ask via staff if they're still here. Do you approximately do you want to speak and introduce? Hello, I am Ton Shukare with VIA. Um, you're correct. It is approximately doubled between year 1 and year two. Uh, but of course that uh trajectory of growth was not sustainable due to funding of course.

Right. Okay. So I spent some time at Stanford Stardex and the one thing I learned was when something doubles and it looks like this would continue to double that's a pretty good growth rate. That's usually means something is sustainable and it's going to pencil out at some point. That's just basic startup 101. So this already has good growth. So it checks that box. And then the other one is startup cost. You know civil engineer and construction mobilization cost and stuff like that is always a big big thing. So I've noticed you have a large uh fleet of electric vehicles. So those are already purchased. So if those are leased or Okay. Is the is was that an initial capital expenditure to start up on those and that's lower to maintain?

Yes. Okay. So we've already incurred the pain of starting the program and so now we're we're benefiting from the program and its its life cycle as it's growing. So the data set that we're looking at here is the startup cost, not the cost of maintaining the program, which is just a very different scenario. He answered it. It's doubling and the startup cost has already been incurred. Thank you.

So just to follow up, that's only startup cost. This is what because that's not what I read in this. So I want you to answer that. Let let me be clear. In February, we we paid $91,000 of startup costs. Um, and I believe the the ongoing leases and ongoing maintenance of the vehicles are included in the cost per ride, cost per month that we incur moving forward. So, that's ongoing. Yes. So there's not some mysterious prepaid cost that we're going to be losing. This is all baked into your ongoing projection. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all. Um, fortunately, a lot of the uh issues that I had planned to discuss have already been covered, but there are some things that I think are still of interest. Um, for the nearby cities that we believe have successful transportation services that are close analoges to link, do we know how those are being funded? My understanding is um every city that has these kinds of programs is contributing some amount and they also have relied heavily on partnership funding. So it's similar um and I don't know

do they have viability issues that we know of? Yeah, I mean our um our cost per trip is lower than all of theirs, but again we have higher um weight times um more seat unavailable messages.

Okay. Um one thing that struck me as I was looking through your uh report is that our partners seem to let's just say they have little enthusiasm for fixed route systems. Uh there could be several reasons for that. Uh I was curious if we knew why they had retreated from uh previous fixed route systems. I will be interested to hear what some of my colleagues say, but I know that at 2020 our our shuttle services had been declining you know. Yes. So 2017, 2018, 2019, writership on fixed routes was falling. Um, postco current what the world that we're in now, transit is at a fiscal cliff across the Bay Area. You hasn't been much federal interest thus far. Um,

so our best guess is declining ridership and second most second best guess might be um fewer subsidies,

fewer subsidies. Everybody's kind of squeezed. Um, you know, we discontinued our shuttles at the and at the same time that Stanford also discontinued theirs. Yeah. So, where I was going with this was uh I was trying to figure out whether I could carve the uh problem down to smaller problems uh per commissioner's suggestion. And uh where I was heading with that was well it seems like the geometry of um demand is such that the fixed root systems uh are not viable anymore. Um that we have people we have a lot of star topologies where people are coming into a single place or leaving from a single place. Um but those high density areas are not necessarily um good nodes on a route. I believe that's what I heard you say earlier. Um so that suggests to me that whatever solutions uh we adopt uh that some kind of approximately pointto-point uh system needs to be a major part of it. Um and uh the whether that ends up being TNCbased or not depends on a lot of the other issues that have already been discussed. Uh but there was one more thing I wanted to throw into that mix which is uh that the service area limitations go away um and that's if service area limitations are a factor that are preventing the link from um acquiring more ridership then that would be a

problem that the TNC's would not face. So subsidizing TNC's might be a more effective solution uh given that that constraint doesn't exist. Um for the benefit of my fellow commissioners, I asked Mr. Baird if uh in a a note to him directly uh whether you had considered dynamic pricing. So, I just thought I'd give you a chance to um comment on that so that everyone could hear the reply. We we have not considered dynamic pricing. Yeah, I'm not very aware of any other system that has similarly

I'm not necessarily advocating that. I just wanted to know if that were a a funding vehicle that might be worth exploring. Um offhand comment far future driver vetting may not be a concern if Whimo succeeds and they are only one of many potentially driverless [snorts] solutions. Uh that does not solve the special needs u community. So we have to think about other solutions for that. And I think that's everything I had on my list that has not already been covered by someone else. So I have next comments from Vice Chair Chang and then Commissioner Templeton.

Um so I just wanted to comment on two things from uh that other commissioners had spoken about. The first is I'm unlike Commissioner Aken, I'm not convinced that shuttle route like rootbased public transportation is dead. Um because um again it depends on what the city's goals are, like what are our goals and how much are we willing to pay for it. Um because when I was running the numbers for the old cross town shuttle system, the cost per ride there was $8 a ride or $8.40 a ride. So if you add inflation, I don't know, it's something like $11 a ride now. That was with back then. I don't it's hard to know what the demand would be like for that now. And that type of service meets a different demand. No, it's not door to door, but it would cut down the distance like when kids are traveling with their cellos, which they cannot put on a bike, right? Or um you know, sometime like I just think that there's other use cases. Um, and it doesn't necessarily make it so that you can go from point to point, door to door, but it certainly cuts down the distance a lot to make it so that um, at least able-bodied people are able to walk a shorter distance. So, like the example from Commissioner G., so it it's hard for me to say that that's not that that's dead. Um, it just depends on what our goals are, how much traffic we're trying to remove from this, you know, what are the goals? Is it getting cleaner air? Is it removing cars from our streets? Is it or is it serving

vulnerable populations? Um, and then in response to what Commissioner um Peterson said about this is just startup costs, my I want to clarify my understanding. the costs per year that we're show we paid $100,000 or like $90,000 I believe Mr. is that what you said in startup costs. Everything else here is ongoing costs. And so if it's costing us $26 a trip, it's not startup 101. Like if it's if every additional unit that you sell causes you to lose money, then selling more causes you to lose more money. It doesn't. So this is not an issue of um not getting up to capacity meaning we've seen that the system is at times beyond capacity like oneif of the time um there's no seats available so we're kind of like at the limit. The only way to increase capacity would be to increase the fleet. there are time there's obviously peak usage times but um just it's the nature of the system so this is like a money losing thing and if we get more successful at it we lose more money um and so that's that's so I disagree with you there um Commissioner Peters I'm not sure that this is a uh issue of it you know just not getting enough demand like we can't even meet our demand at times so I just wanted to make those two points I think I don't I think it's a viable system, unfortunately.

Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. Thank you. Um, do we have the ability to look at that um, hexagon slide? Is that something we can pull up? Oh, it's in the packet, page 131. Thank you. And I love it. I really appreciate you including this. It's not in the slides, unfortunately. That's okay. We can, but it's in the packet page.

We can look at it in the packet. [sighs and gasps] Um, thank you for for providing this because it's so interesting and I think it answers um well, for me it it leads me to believe that um that routes are viable. Um so I wanted to look at it, but for the benefit of the commissioners, it's on packet page 131. Um, while we pull that up, um, [sighs] we got it. [laughter] It loves graphics so much.

Working on bringing it up, but the computer's taking its time. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So, um, well, if you do have it in front of you, I want to say it's very clear where bus route 22 is. very very clear. It's very clear where Gun High School and the VA are [sighs and gasps] and it's very clear where Edgewood and Midtown are. [sighs] And if we had a shuttle that was doing shuttle routes similar to ones we used to have, those are the places where people would go. And so um you know again I just want to validate the work that you have been doing for so many years and and trying to look at this and understand if it is there um you know if you build it will people come right but that's still still loading.

Yeah. [sighs and gasps]

So that's what I'm I'm trying what I see when I look at this map. I I see it's very clear where the destinations are. And if you look at this little area where it says residential, that is code for this service doesn't drive me all the way into Stanford. Right. So that's that's something that would be addressed by the Margarite. So um I think there there's Thank you so much. That's perfect. Yeah, if you want to zoom in on that map. Um the the 22 is the dark blue right down the middle. That's El Camino Rial. That's a destination for many people that is currently properly frequently served. I want to say fewer than 10 minutes between buses um by the VTA. Um and the research park and the VA and gun um definitely are desirable destinations that we could serve with a a bus route of our own. Although there are other bus systems that go there. um Midtown Edgewood and of course downtown which is the transit center right where the train station is. Thank you. Um so I think if we look at this as a heat map you could put a pin in where bus stops should be where these hot areas are and that would be a route. Now the question is can we serve that route frequently enough because one thing we're getting is is on demand means you can go anytime right between 7 and 7. So probably the shuttle wouldn't run that frequently. I know when it was here it sure didn't right. So um that's something we'd have to really understand. So, if you do bring that as an option, because I see it on that list, um it'd be interesting to know how do you do that at a frequency that's useful. Um we're certainly not

going to be 10 minutes apart or 15 minutes apart or half an hour apart. Could you do it for an hour apart? Like, I don't know. Um and that would be um helpful in looking at alternatives to mitigate if this program is discontinued. Uh, thank you so much, Commissioner Peterson. Then Commissioner Jean. Uh, thank you, Chair. Let's leave that graphic up. And, uh, can I have I want to draw on this, which will just take 30 seconds here. Right. We'll try and figure out. I can draw. You can draw. Okay. I will I will draw. Wait,

this will be work. Good. Let's do an XY coordinate here. not not necessarily on the the graph here, but just I'm going to do a uh a rate of growth. So that's why I needed XY.

Yeah. Yeah, there you go. X and Y. Okay. And just draw a 45 degree line going to the right. So there's wrership increasing. And then give a different color.

It's good enough. We we get the idea. Pick a blue or a green or something. And then just draw a horizontal and we'll call this dollars. And then give it a step down. Give it like year one horizontal. Step it down. Year two. Just a horizontal line. See if it shows up there. There you go. And just draw another one above that to the left. If I may, Commissioner Peterson, I would guess that what you're trying to get at with this is that as the cost reduces over time, at some point there is an intersection between the wrership and

well, I actually agree with the vice chair. I don't think they ever intersect and I agree with that 100%. I think the question is how close do they get? I think it's it's the old uh I think it's asotope obsilion. It gets really really close but it doesn't quite ever get there. We know that for sure because it's public uh it's public uh transit and we know public transit never pencils out unless we're in Norway or something. Apparently it does. We all know this. So we're just we're just basing on basic facts here. But we know the cost was more the first year because we had startup cost. So we got a flatline for that cost with a given writership. The second year we had a lower cost because we didn't have the startup cost. And that's why we see the first year is like $100,000 more than the second year, which is probably that startup cost, which means our cost per writer is dropping from year zero to the present as wrership increases and cost stays fixed. It means by definition our cost per writer is dropping pretty quickly if we're doubling. But we've gotten to capacity, which means that's where we question, okay, how far is that subsidy that we're doing per rider, which we just know is is dropping, which just in my mind, that's pretty good math. That's that's not a bad business model. And it seems like going into the future, it's just going to get better, not get worse. Anyways, so that's where I just wanted to come in and just clarify that. That's where I'm seeing that I don't think we're at the point to be throwing it away. I mean, that's what they actually teach us at Stardex. Not to go back to that, but I guess that's what I'm seeing here. And never step away from a good business model just because it doesn't look good right now, especially when it has good metrics that are telling you it's increasing in capacity and you've already incurred the startup cost. So, it seems rosier than the picture

than what we're seeing, at least if you just step back and look at it. um you know from the business school theory. That's all. Thank you, Commissioner G. Thank you. Um I wanted to echo uh Vice Chair Chang and Commissioner Templeton's comment about I think it is pretty clear where the nodes are here. Um, they said it better than I will, so just leave it at that. Um, I also kind of want to talk a little bit about what the public comment said about uh the paratransit being difficult to use. I think that that's something maybe we should just be kind of like pushing a little bit harder. As Commissioner Templeton said, we have a city council member on VTA board and it's kind of inexcusable that they're like, oh, we just won't serve North County as much. I just feel like that's not quite the answer we should be getting. um don't really have any specific kind of actions around that but I think we could be doing better and I think it could be interesting to look into this especially because I think there's general consensus amongst the commission that we are interested in serving the vulnerable population and given that we are in Santa Clara County and VTA should support us that this really shouldn't be as hard for folks as it is. Um that's all. Oh, actually I did want to make one other comment which is um I am uh happy that I think the def like Commissioner Templeton made a comment a couple meetings ago about what is a pilot project and I think what that means is sometimes we accept that what we tried the first time isn't quite right and it's okay for us to pivot to something

else. And I think that um given the options here, I'm happy that the commission is looking to other potential options here and we don't have to just say we committed to a pilot project with X. Oh, now it's too late. We have to do X. Um so that's my other comment. Thank you, Commissioner Hecman. Then Commissioner Templeton. So I'm I'm sort of looking at how we're going to get closure on this item. uh you know it's come to us as an action item and and if this were like a study session I think we we have given great feedback. Yeah.

Um but but that's not going to be enough in this context and so I I you know are we going to need to fashion a motion to give you direction? What does staff need to come away from this session with?

Yeah. So uh I have done a lot of thinking on this. I really have tried to we've tried to treat it as a pilot program and have tried to be um very responsive to feedback as we've gone through. Um that's why we changed the hours, that's why we changed the fairs. We've done a lot of experimentation with it. Um I would say that the feedback so far from this group has been really invaluable. Um it's really helped my mind spin and my colleagues minds spin, I'm sure. Um, I will say we have 6 months more of this pilot program. We have um a vendor that's been very willing to experiment. Um, they've given us some options in the staff report of like ways we could experiment. Um, I think I've heard vulnerable users. I've heard that from the city council as well. Um, there's some concerns about whether that would be hurt the service or harm it, but we could try it. Um I think I will reiterate your feedback so far has been very valuable but a commission feedback is very useful as we go to council. Um you've heard what council has to say. I think they would be really interested to hear what if you have feedback on the six-month timeline. You know the 456,000 is potentially good for I we could spread that money over 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. That's I will try to make that more explicit when we go to council hopefully in January that like do we want to spend that TFCA money through June and really really minimize the amount of city we've not really used much city funds. Um we know it's expensive but we've not used much city funds so far. Um and that's been because we've we've we've heard the concern about the cost. Um I will say um yeah we've heard the concern about general usage not being that important. Um, I have an opinion that partnership money is really important. The Stanford

Research Park has really made this as viable as it is so far. Um, we really want to keep them involved in the conversation as we continue to experiment and we've been doing that and we want to kind of keep making sure it works for them because that that does cut the cost per trip down by a third which is really powerful. Um and we've been in conversations with potential partners and we've heard mix you know some of them some of the potential partners are already getting this subsidy and I think um the conversation can be more pointed now about like if we don't get your partnership now this will decline um and I yeah so I'm interested in feedback so far I've really heard it I I I've been trying to listen take notes on all of it we will incorporate your feedback the as comprehensive of it as it's been so far into um the context that we'll try to give to council about what the options are. Um but if you have as a commission thoughts on you know the next 6 months, the next 18 months or you know that that's also useful. um [clears throat]

h it's going to be difficult to form a consensus given the uh options and the the trade-offs. I want to hear from Commissioner Templeton uh to wrap and then we'll try and see what we can come up with for um a motion or at least um condensed guidance. I think we're also comfortable with just taking the comments to council as well. Um, so if if a motion is difficult, then I I think we have enough information here to present that to council as well. There's a range of

That's good to know. So, in other words, don't take forever deliberating a a motion. I think we can all get on board with that. Um, thank you, chair. I uh the the comment I wanted to make and it sort of ties in with both Commissioner G and Commissioner Hecman. um we we have the data. So we have the data about the needs this program. In other words, the pilot has served a very important function in providing great data and it's wonderful that our partners have been able to build an app that's collecting that data. We have we can do so much analysis on it and we can use that for any number of things, right? You can use that for um expanding or or uh reducing the services of of this program. You can use it as input to um potentially the um the local route and and also you can use it to share um with VTA to say actually you guys weren't meeting our needs and we can tell now quantify exactly what we need that we weren't getting from you. Right? So that's all a huge success. I think it's really important to understand that there are multiple needs that were being met by this program. So if we do um to to go to wrapping it up, if we do uh want to move forward, we should look at a timeline that can continue serving that purpose. How do we get the information we need for the next step? Is 6 months time enough? Do you need 12 more months of data because you want to adjust something with the app data we're collecting so that you can have input to the next program, whatever that might be, things like that. So, I would really want our motion to direct

um uh to ask council to direct staff to um squeeze every little bit of information that would be useful out of this program. Um, I I am sympathetic to the need to keep our funding going, but even if we get funding, it's we're still always at a loss. So, we have to look at the long-term um programs and and getting the data will drive those programs. I promise you that is the environment we're in right now. If you can prove this is a need, then we can find a way to get it funded uh much more easily. So I would say anything you do now will drive the funding for future programs whether it's this one or some next iteration of that. Thank you.

Thank you. So uh technically do we need a formal motion? No, it would not be required. Okay. and was preparing something sufficiently sufficiently vague that it could work. But if we don't need that, then let's not go through that exercise.

Shall we at least recognize our wonderful staff? We can do that. Thank you all. This is great work. This program has been amazing and whatever the future holds for it, we still really appreciate the work you've done and you will continue to do and thank you so much. Yes, I think you've I think you've proven the value and now it's a matter of how can we deliver it. Thank you. All right, this is a good time for a break. Let us return at Let us return at 5 minutes to 9.

Welcome back everyone. Uh we will now pick up our next action item which is agenda item four uh recommendation of the draft 2026 bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan. And for those following along this begins on packet page 135. So, could we have the staff presentation, please?

Hello, vice chair and vice chair of the planning transportation commission. My name is Azie Arce, senior transportation planner. Again, here before you tonight, presenting the draft 2026 bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan, the culmination of a multi-year effort to define the 10 years of walking and biking in Palo Alto. Next slide, please. I'm joined this evening by transportation planning manager Sylvia Starlac and Ria Lo, the director of OOT as well as our consultants uh KDson and Associates uh online Amanda Ley is joining us. Next slide, please. Tonight, I will briefly cover the project's overviews and our recommended action. I'll then summarize the extensive community feedback we've received, walk you through the core recommendations of the draft plan, including the bike network and pedestrian districts, and outline the final steps for adoption. But we are tonight here, next slide, seeking a formal recommendation from the commission. And the recommendation is to simply recommend the city council adopt the 2026 bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan update. Next slide. Next slide. So let's quickly uh start with an overview of the project. Um Palo Alto has been at the forefront of bicycle and pedestrian transportation planning since the early 1980s when the city developed the nation's first bicycle boulevard on Bryant Street. The city's current bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan locally referred to as the BPTP uh was adopted in 2012 and this plan has been successful guiding many of the improvements we see today. But after more than a decade, it is time for a comprehensive update to address new community needs, new technologies, and evolve and our evolving sustainability and safety goals. This is a grant-f funded projects by MTC's Transportation Development Act 3 program. Next slide. Just really quick. So, what is the 2026

BPTB update? Again, it establishes our 10-year strategy for investments, policies, and programs specifically for biking and pedestrian facilities in our city. And I won't read through the entire vision statement, but just want to highlight that the vision here developed with a community and commission and council feedback is to create a comfortable and connected street network that supports walking and biking and rolling for all people of all ages and abilities, building on our leadership in the safe routes to school program. Next slide. This shows just the project timeline that we've been involved in this process since the beginning of 2023 and PTC has been involved in each of these phases and we are currently in the phase for the public review of the draft plan and the draft plan has been shaped by dozens of public meetings as you can see on this on this slide over the past two years. Um, and we are now bringing this draft plan to you. And we recently visited Payback and we anticipate going to city council in December and ultimately in early 2026 to receive a plan adoption. Next slide. Uh, I'd like to spend a few minutes uh going over the feedback that brought us to this point. Um, since it is foundational to the development of the draft plan you see before you. Now, I won't go through each of these points. Next slide. But just highlighting that in phase one, which was the visioning and in introduction of the project, our community was clear safety is the number one priority, especially for students. We heard a strong demand for safer crossings and a seamless connected network. We we hosted a virtual workshop as well as introduce the project effort to the different boards, commissions, and committees. Next slide. In phase two, the existing conditions analysis needs and concerns. Uh in this phase, this feedback became more specific. The community asked us to strengthen the

network by addressing critical gaps and prioritizing key corridors, including San Antonio Road portions of Middlefield and focusing on our bike boulevards. We did a spring walking tour of of downtown and a bike tour in conjunction with Silicon Valley Valley Valley Bicycle Coalition as part of this effort. Next slide, please. Project recommendations phase. In phase three, we presented the recommendations including the proposed bicycle network projects and programs and the pedestrian districts. The feedback was mixed. Uh while big streets uh while big streets projects offer direct connections, the community questioned their cost and return on investment and expressed [snorts] a strong desire for more pedestrian focused recommendations and a clear prioritization framework. Next slide, please. So based on that feedback and with direction from the city council this past June, we developed this two-step prioritization framework. I won't dive too far into this. You did review that initial evaluation based on safety and connectivity but again based on feedback to further refine the uh framework um we created the supplemental evaluation. So projects that scored well moved on to the supplemental which applies real world real world constraints of project fundability, project readiness and project support. So this is how we balanced our aspirational goals with a practical actionable plan. Next slide please. So this process of the uh initial and supplemental uh prioritization framework resulted in this initial ranked list which we then adjusted based on the specific city council direction that we received in June. Council directed staff to focus on low stress residential streets prioritizing bike boulevards and to avoid major arterials

except where no parallel alternative existed such as San Antonio Road. Again, this direction was fundamental in shaping the draft plan. Next slide. And this brings us to the draft BPTP update which was released to the public on October 3rd of of this year. So just a few weeks ago. Uh next slide. Uh just a quick overview of this comprehensive document. Um it includes many chapters but just wanted to highlight that the core chapter is the recommendations chapter which details the proposed bike network for 2026 and moving forward our pedestrian districts and highlighting this near ne near-term projects that will guide our work for the next 10 years. Next slide. And uh I'll spend a little bit of time on this, but just wanted to focus on some of the points that we received from the public and how that helped shape the and incorporated into the draft plan. Uh you can see here that there's a clear focus on high comfort, low stress facilities with bike boulevards now forming the foundation of the low stress bicycle network. I'll get into that in a bit. Other highlights, we prioritize Copper Street over Middlefield as a response to uh the city council and the community uh not supporting moving forward and prioritizing big streets. Rather, they wanted to prioritize our bike boulevards. You'll see that reflected here. And we also address specific corridors like California Avenue and adding the Cambridge Avenue option as well in addition to the Cal Avenue for when the Carfree Street Calav is hosting events to uh facilitate a additional option for bicycle through travel. Next slide please. Uh just some highlights here from our bikeway mileage 2012 to 2025. This work builds on the strong

foundation from 2012. Uh our bike wig miles in 20 2012 were 59 and and currently uh is 73 miles. Most importantly, we've introduced new high comfort facility types such as buffered bike lanes and class 4 separated bikeways which were not a part of our 2012 network. Today the city boasts 3.3 miles of buffered bike lanes and over four miles of separated bikeway facilities. This shable, this table includes that comparison. Just wanted to note really quick that the 2012 lane mile data is sourced from the 2012 BPTP. The 2025 lane mileage is calculated using the 2025 roadway centerline file. Therefore, the class one length has not decreased between 2012 and 2025. It the differences are due only to the calculation method. Next slide, please. Uh just really quick wanted to highlight a few things on how the 2026 uh is different from 2012. Um it it represents a strategic shift away from facility types that no are no longer considered high comfort. Uh we are no longer proposing new sherros except as treatments on designated bike boulevards. We are phasing out the enhanced or restricted hour bike lanes in favor of all day facilities such as my presentation on Addison Avenue earlier today. An example of this again is uh the 24-hour bike lane now on Addison and removing that restricted bike lanes. You see some images of those here. Next slide, please. So the 2026 bicycle network um includes creating comfortable bic and pedestrian networks that can be built by and enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities to build on the strengths of the existing network. The recommended network is structured around these two tiers, the low stress and then the complete vision. So you have the

complete vision at the very top. The low stress builds off of that and then we build the near-term projects off of this low stress bicycle network. Next slide, please. The complete vision. Again, this is our long-term aspirational vision. This is not a guarantee. These are just a vision exercise. Part of this effort was to create this updated 2026 uh bicycle network map. Um while we have this complete vision, in the near term, the focus will be on developing the low stress bicycle network. I can't emphasize that enough. And it this map also just shows existing facil facilities that are not being upgraded to illustrate the full network once fully implemented. So dash is proposed solid is existing. Next slide. The low stress network is the foundation for our citywide connectivity and focuses on the near-term implementation. It's built from the complete vision, but prioritizes 104 projects that create a safe and connected network. Again, primarily using our bike boulevards to expand access with minimal disruption. Um, this approach prioritizes calm residential routes that are already preferred by many community members rather than rely on separated bic bikeways on busy arterials. Um, again, bicycle boulevards were identified as the most comfortable and familiar type of bikeway. So we are looking to prioritize those moving forward. It does include some separated bikeway projects along small portions of large such as middle field. Yet this is done to make a connection between two high comfort low stress facilities on either side of the arterial. Next slide please. Uh and then there's

the near-term projects list. This is the 10-year action plan and is a subset of the low stress network refined by our prioritization framework and public feedback. It includes 16 projects, 23 crossing projects and other key studies. Next slide. Next slide, please. You'll see these prioritized near these near-term projects on the table 9 which is uh on in the draft plan. Um, these include corridors like I mentioned San Antonio Road, Homer Avenue, and improvements to our core bike boulevards like Bryant, Kalper, and Park. The full list is in your packet as attachment C. Next slide. Uh, I won't pay I won't focus too much on this, but the draft plan also includes district areas. Um,

yep, I can pause. Thank you. We're uh getting some water. It'll be quick. Go ahead, Mr. RC. So, just wanted to drive a point here on the near-term projects that this these projects are our priority for the next 10 years. This is our action plan. So, while we have this complete vision, we have this list of hundreds of projects realistically and these these will be our focus. So just I can't highlight that enough. Next slide. Uh because this is a bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan, there are the pedestrian districts that we developed as part of this area. I think the big highlight here is as a response to public feedback we received. We added the San Antonio road area as part of our pedestrian districts as a response to

the housing element, identifying that as a area to receive additional housing as well as the San Antonio area corridor plan as well as frankly SB79 and impacts that we receive from that. Next slide, please. I won't focus too much on the treatments, but the district the plan does provide recommendations by district. Uh, next slide, please. And um the draft plan includes a toolbox of pedestrian improvements, some of which are illustrated here. And just note this is a sampling of the toolbox. This is not a complete list. Um next slide. And really the important part which is the implementation as the adoption of this plan is not the end. It's really just the beginning. As described broadly in the staff report, this BPTP provides the network and policy foundation. Projects will then move into implementation through our standard CIP process from project scoping, design to engineering and construction with community engagement at every step. The visual here is an oversimplification yet generally follows this process. Next slide, please. Now, we have been doing a road show presenting the draft plan. Um, and just wanted to put in front of you some of the feedback that we received during this draft plan presentation. Um, and I won't go through each of these points, but we are hearing strong support for prioritizing San Antonio Road before new anticipated housing arrives. Um, and we've heard clear the desire to add the Castilea Park Wilkkey section to the Park Boulevard project, which is BVL D24. And we've heard support for 20 mph speed limits on bike boulevards and better pavement maintenance. This feedback

aligns with the plan's focus on low stress facilities and we believe this input can be incorporated as we move towards final plan and ultimately implementation. I want to make a point that we will present these points to the city council and ask them for their recommendation on which of these elements we do uh move forward based on uh public feedback that we've received. Just wanted to highlight that. Um and then maybe one last point here we have uh presented a program around uh restructuring payback and their role and the feedback that we've received from them is they would like to establish the formal and direct communication channel between the commission the committee PTC and the city council and so we're working out ways to make that happen and I would say relatively broadly speaking payback is open to looking at that restructure ing. Next slide, please. Um, this brings us to our final steps. Next slide. Um, tonight we are seeking your recommendation uh on the adoption of the draft plan by the city council. The public comment period closes this Friday, end of day, and we will present a the draft plan at a study session to the city council on Monday, December 1st. And in early 2026, based on council's feedback, we will look to incorporate that and produce a final plan that we will then again present to the city council for adoption in early 2026. So to close out and to be very pointed, next slide, please. The recommended action tonight is for the planning and transportation commission to formally recommend the city council adopt the 2026 bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan update. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh commissioners, do we have any need for clarifying questions before public comment?

Seeing none, Mr. Do we have any uh requests to speak to the chair? We do. I have uh two requests to speak at the moment and no raise hands on Zoom. Uh I'll invite our first speaker, Ken J, to the mic.

Uh good evening. I'm Ken Joy. I live in the Ventura District. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank staff and consultants for the work they've done on the project. Um, I'm generally happy with this and I certainly agree that you should uh ask council to adopt it. Um, the main thing before you as Aussie said is the near-term project list that's on packet page 147. I have to question what that attachment B and C might look like if latent demand were done differently. I don't expect anything to change at this point, but I want to ask you to think about why figure five in the draft plan doesn't seem to show anything for the Stanford Hospital, the Stanford Research Park, or the campus itself. You could also ask about the sites that are listed in table one of attachment uh sorry, appendix F, future activity levels. Does that set of sites skew the analysis? Um, another question might be, would the project list differ if intersections with traffic signals are not uniformly marked as LTS1, uh, level of traffic stress level one. Um, for example, if I ride from my house to Mike Mike's bikes, I have to go through the intersection of Middle Field in San Antonio. I I can't see how anyone would say that's LTS1 for someone on a bicycle. Um, I also think you should ask uh why Wilton Avenue is listed on the high injury network. Is it a roadway segment or is it an intersection there? Uh, I u came saying I wanted to advocate two policies which could help. Um, I think that all multifamily residential blocks should have road verge uh treatment as opposed to a rolled curb or a sidewalk right at the edge of a 90°ree curb. Um, and as was uh part of the preliminary key themes, I think a 20 mph speed limit on Bicycle Boulevard would

be an excellent thing. Uh, thank you for your consideration. Thank [laughter] you very much. Our next speaker is Tom K.

Hello, I'm Tom Kellerman and I live on Emerson Street near Embaradero. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Uh overall I think that the plan is excellent. I'm very supportive of it. I'd like to address this one very specific point which is the intersection of uh Embaradero Road, Kingsley and Emerson Street which is not on the list of near-term projects. Uh I had submitted a comment to the transportation department and copied all of you. So I'm will be brief on my comments here. Uh several years ago, the transportation department had a uh specific plan for this intersection uh redesigning the intersection specifically with an eye towards safety for pedestrians and bicycles. Uh that has been discussed and been thought about now for several years. Uh we were told very recently earlier this year that it was going forward. Uh so I was somewhat surprised to see that it didn't make it onto the list of the near-term projects. Uh it is a dangerous intersection as I outlined in my comments and there is a as I said a very specific plan that had been adopted and I think approved by the transportation department several years ago to address this intersection. Um, I would uh encourage you if you're not familiar with that plan that had been presented to take a look at it at least because I think it's an important part of the uh that corridor which is a very busily populated corridor for bicycles uh going to Pali High to Town and Country and going to Stanford uh as well as pedestrians and there's quite a bit of vehicular traffic as well. Uh, one other point I just wanted to make, uh, one of the near-term projects is, uh, adding, um, calming measures to Bryant Street north of Embaradero, which are very supportive of. Uh, it also makes

reference to restricting traffic turning, I think, from Embaradero onto northbound Bryant. is it's not clear what exactly that would look like, but I will say that if uh traffic is reduced going on to Bryant Street, that traffic will inevitably be redirected and in all likelihood redirected to Emerson Street, which as I have pointed out is already a dangerous intersection with uh no signals, etc. And I think that would just exacerbate the the challenges that we have at that intersection of Emerson and Parkado and Kingsley. So I'd ask you to take a look at that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Caliberman.

Uh through the chair, I've received no other public comment cards and no there are no raised hands on Zoom.

Thank you, Mr. Tuhara. All right, then we are ready for uh discussion among count uh commission members and we'll begin with Commissioner Templeton and then Vice Chair Chang and Commissioner Peterson. Thank you chair. Um I wanted to first give uh the department of transportation opportunity to respond to the question about um Emerson Kingsley and Barkadero intersection. Uh I know that I personally toured it in 20 2020 I think. Um and it's been a problem for a long time. It sounds like there was a project to fix it. Does anyone have any um willingness to update us on that?

Um yes this is a it's a considered an active project. Um, it's with the public works department and they're waiting for a pop a project manager to be available. That's great. So, we don't need to have it in this plan because this plan is forward looking. Correct. That's why it was assumed.

Yeah. No, it's very reassuring to hear that and it's very important um that we heard from Mr. Kellerman uh to talk about it because it is frightening. I don't know if you've walked it, but it is terrifying. So, uh yeah, it's a good one to to work on. I'm glad to hear that. Um, I [clears throat] generally am very happy with this plan and I appreciate all the work you put into it and I I really liked your presentation uh and it was very clear. So, thank you for all that. Um, one question I have and it's okay uh if you don't have the answer to this but how are we measuring the success of these projects other than did we implement it?

That's a great question. We do have performance measures baked into the draft plan. Now, they're not project specific, but they are performance measures just generally for biking and walking. The reason I ask is um I was speaking with a constituent today who who asked about this and she was unable to stay and and log in in the evening. So, I'm just going to pass along the question, but there [clears throat] are um tools and devices out there that we can use to measure the effectiveness of any kind of deterrence that we're putting out there. Is this crosswalk, you know, visible enough? Are we seeing, you know, fewer intrusions into the crosswalk? Things like that. So, um that's a technology solution, but I just wanted to throw it out there for you guys to consider. And um I thought it was a really good suggestion because one of the problems we have is our data is limited as far as I know to reports that go through the police and those are usually pretty severe. what we want to see and our hope for this plan which is wonderful and thank you for making it um we [clears throat] want to see um not just a reduction in in collisions but overall improvement in safety and so that means fewer near misses and fewer things that happen but don't get reported. So, um, that that might need some additional measurement, um, automated measurement. So, that's just something to think about. I I'm I'm already reading your minds about where's the money for that going to come from. Um, but, you know, I I hope that that's something that you guys will ask for as a department um, in the upcoming years. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair Chen, then

Commissioner Peterson.

Uh, I just had a question about the pedestrian Well, first of all, thank you for this tremendous work. I'm really excited about the plan overall. Um, really excited to see the pedestrian districts and all those um, tools that can be used because I think they're so helpful for improving safety. I had a question about the pedestrian districts and how they interact with our zoning and the pedestrian overlays since at our last PTC meeting um we were talking about sort of how difficult the overlay process is and so wanted to make sure that our pedestrian districts are actually aligned with our pedestrian overlays um to the extent that makes sense. So, I didn't I I I'm not familiar if I'm not familiar enough with all of our zoning to know if these proposed districts line up with our zoning. [clears throat]

I will try to answer that in a different way. So, our pedestrian districts follow the boundary lines from the city's adopted economic development strategic plan. And we did that as a response to the economic development strategic plan focusing on the areas with high pedestrian activities which are commercial centers. So we followed those lines for our pedestrian districts less the city's pedestrian overlay zones.

Okay. Well then that might be a note for planning that we should just take a look at that to make sure our left hand talks to our right. I think I often say that because we at the PTC will hear um items that are both from planning and transportation and sometimes they're like at odds with each other. So I want to avoid that where possible. Um and it may be that the zoning doesn't necessarily make sense, but then I would, you know, maybe we need to take a look at our zoning. Um so that's my first comment. Um, my other comments are a little bit more specific. I'm really glad to hear um that the the intersection addressed by our public commenter is actually already in the in the queue. Um, so I had a question about the unpacket page 151. Um, the first study there. So this is attachment C. It's the Embaradero Road Corridor study. And the last sentence under the description says that this will determine the feasibility of the full corridor Embaradero road separated bikeway project. And so my question was does is that at odds with the direction that uh council's direction to avoid like the arterials where possible? Um, so just wanted to ask that question.

The Embaradero Road uh bike lane, if you will, is not on our near-term projects list. So, they may still appear on the overall projects list. That's correlated to our complete vision, the the map that shows just everything under the sun. However, our priorities will be on the um near-term projects. So, I guess a roundway of answering that is we are not prioritizing the Embaradero bike way for those reasons because council told us to steer away from those big arterials. So, it's still an option for future consideration and maybe the next iteration of the bike and ped plan. And that's why we have the complete list, but not on our near-term action plan for this draft.

But the study itself is a high priority. Correct.

Okay. So just a point of just because that was such a lightning rod for feedback that last sentence might be something that you want to adjust in terms of the description of the Embaradero Road corridor study. Like I agree it needs to be studied. It's dangerous. We could do all sorts of pedestrian improvements. We need the information. Um but the goal we just people could be sensitive to um the idea of if the goal seems to be um a bike the bike way project which it it doesn't seem that that is necessarily the case. Okay. Um and then I had a question. Okay. Question about the cower bike boulevard. I understand that that was prior. Thank you for the context and the wonderful presentation. I understand that that has been raised up in profile and as a priority because [clears throat] we're steering away from middlefield, but as I was looking at all these projects, to me it seems like it would actually be relatively lower profile among the high priority projects because Bryant Boulevard is two blocks away. Like it's right there. Um versus and then on the other side of Mfield there's Ross Road already. And so while I think it is wonderful to always have additional bike boulevards, that's not as as somebody who's biked from South Pal to under North Pala many times. I don't have a hard time doing so. Um and I just take a little jog and I go past Kalper to Bryant and it's fine. And so that's just, you know, in terms of like glaring or not glaring but things that really jumped out at me. That one was like, ooh, maybe not a highest priority. Many of the other things here, I was like, oh, I would want that first. So, that's a point of feedback. Um, and then the

other one that jumped out at me because I live near there is the El Camino Way um item on page 148. And also we've just recently talked about retail nodes and at at uh the PTC and we've said that El Camino Way is a retail node. It's very very um well used all the all the restaurants and stores that are there are very very wellused. Um it's also very well used by gun high school students as we all know and it's a scary which is why it's high priority here. But again, in terms of left-hand talking to the right, parking has just been removed on El Camino. So all El Camino businesses are at risk now because of that. That wasn't our choice. These poor businesses in the triangle node of our retail node. Um that's the El Camino Way triangle. If we remove that parking, we may be risking all those businesses. Now, I'm not trying to say that the parking is more important than safety. I think safety is more important, but this is one of those like big picture questions for our city. If we if that retail is important, then we need to think about how to support it. Furthermore, [snorts] people the reality is people are going to go to that retail or those restaurants um with in cars and when they can't park there, they will circle. And circling in that area is just disastrous. Like it's already bad enough if you know where you're going. Um, so I understand that adding bike lanes there and removing parking may make it wider for the bicyclists, but this is one of those where like there may be a spillover effect and it's one of the stickier ones I think here. So, it's I just wanted to highlight

that. Um, I I I think that there could be very real safety implications because I found myself in that area um getting shunted out onto Al Camino going, "Wait a second, I want to go the other direction on and I can't and people are going to do crazy U-turn things and it's just dangerous already." And simply removing parking doesn't necessarily make it. There's pedestrians there, too. Tons and tons and tons of pedestrians. Um, so just wanted to flag that one is it's not a clear solution to me, although I'm not sure. I don't have a solution for you. That's it for now. Thanks, Commissioner Peterson. Then Commissioner Hecman.

Thank you, Chair. Can we bring up the um graphic showing California Avenue quickly? [sighs] And we're I noticed that you have California Avenue. It looks like it said South Bridge as one of the priority projects. Looked like it was like number seven. I don't know if I have a visual on Calav. Are you talking about the map? Probably have one somewhere on Calav. Any one of them is fine. Was it an image that was in the staff report or something that was in his PowerPoint presentation? At this point, we've had so much stuff go by. I don't really know. [snorts]

Are you asking about the pedestrian district? Are you talking about this? Yeah, that one works. But there was a list somewhere where you had the priority projects. Oh. Uh, yes. Near-term slum

the only

it was one of your first slides for sure. First, uh, let's see. It wasn't this slide here. There was an earlier one you threw up where you had a list of projects. It was slide 24.

It was the table nine. There we go. Not very legible though. Um and then the slide before is the near-term projects. So slide 23. That's just Yeah, slide 23 has this map. All right, let's just throw that one up. And yeah, that map is correlated with table 9, okay, which is the near-term projects

and Calab is just kind of towards the middle of the map, just kind of heart of the center of the city. We'll zoom in as best we can. There we go.

You know, back in the old days, they only had paper. Just saying. which which is why we've provided you with printed versions of the maps that we may or may not be able to I think he doesn't have that outlet in his mind. Yeah. Yeah. Here I'll get in here. I wanted to draw on this. So that's the idea. Let's see. There we go. All right. So I better use a color that's not on here. Green. Okay. So I'm going to just I don't think I can uh we'll see how this goes. So, we'll we got a give us a moment. Three slides back.

Okay, there it is. All right, this one's it. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'm going to draw on here. So, we go like that. Go like that. Kind of like where that green line is. I picked the wrong color. Let me get a better one than that because you can see it.

It's fine. It's fine. Okay. So, that's the street that goes down past the park from the high school, goes to California Avenue. You can jog over into the Cal Train uh parking lot, and then there's a bridge back there for Park Avenue. And I think I saw that bridge listed somewhere in one of your documents as that's a project area to figure out that bridge. That's what I wanted to bring up. Uh I think I I've mentioned the bridge a couple times. uh here at planning and nobody knew what I was talking about was the first time I saw you bring up the bridge so I can be like that's what I'm talking about. I walk past that bridge all the time and um I I haven't been hit yet but it's it's sometimes a little bit dangerous. I think the bus comes through there. Uh what's the plan for that? And then where I'm getting at is um basically the whole segment of California Avenue just needs help. It's almost like it just was the end of a project that never ever got figured out. And that's and where I'm going to go with that is um one is the plan to make that a throughway over that bridge. And then two, is there a way to basically develop the end of that California Avenue area where the Cal Train station is to make it clear that there's a really awesome commercial street right there with Thursday, well, not right now Thursday music, but hopefully music again soon. Tons of great restaurants, a great nightife there, lots of bars. uh one of the only Michelin restaurants in the area that just cruising by, you think, hey, I want to get off here at this station and go hang out instead of Santa Sunnyvale or Mountain View.

So, short of me designing the project here, we we definitely have a vision to utilize that existing facility, whether to make it a shared use path or define and carve the space for each mode. Uh but yeah, we want to leverage the existing facility there um as an opportunity site. So, thank you for calling that out. I think other community members had also expressed that opportunity [gasps] specific to California Avenue and try to encourage people to visit the rest of the commercial strip including the carfree area. You know, part of it includes wayfinding signage that I think in the biking world we can definitely be a part of that. uh to include wayfinding sign that calls out California Avenue commercial district. Um in addition, I'm sure that the California Avenue uh carfree streetscape project is also looking at opportunities around public art activation or their own wayfinding signs to get folks to the rest of the commercial district. Um, but I hear you in that at that area where you can either go towards CowB this the train station or Park Avenue, there's an opportunity for us to help people uh find their way.

But what I really want to uh point out is that the Cow Train itself, I mean, there's thousands of people on that train. It's it's like a a freeway of people that use that train to go drinking because it's an easy way to get home uh without driving. I mean, I ride the cow train all the time, and I'm not the only one on there a little bit intoxicated, [laughter] and it it really is. Sunnyville and uh Mountain View uh Castro Avenue are those are all drinking destinations, and California Avenue is definitely one of them. And I think you just you don't recognize it when you're on the Cal Train. You just it just looks like a semi-abandoned stop when you come flying by. And from talking with the the business owners on California Avenue, I know they've all been really pointing that out that they feel like they there's somehow they need to to direct people from the Cal Train onto California Avenue. So, it's not just a Palo Alto destination, but a regional destination. So, when I saw that listed on your list, I just wanted to make that comment and just put another pin in there and reinforce it that um it's in the middle part of your list. Does that mean it's maybe happening or is it kind of middle priority?

The near-term list is not ranked. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I have. Great presentation as well, by the way. Thank you, Commissioner Hecman, then Commissioner Templeton.

Uh, so this is this is a tremendous document. Um, and I really appreciate the sort of the collaborative the community collaborative process and the thought that went into making it. Uh, and I also uh appreciated uh the enthusiasm, Mr. Ray, of your presentation. This is exciting stuff and and uh so I'm I'm really uh enthusiastic about supporting it. Um I I do think that uh the name um you know we've got the the BPTP right and we have had it for more than 10 years. And so now are we going to call this the update? Um because it's really a new plan. I mean it takes a lot of the pieces of the old plan but it's only a new plan. And so I was wondering if maybe we want to call it 2.0 No or something other than the update because we're probably going to have this 1015 years and are we going to always refer to as the update and the institutional knowledge will fade away and people will say update of what what what was you know before. So anyway, uh just an idea. Um the only comment really I had on any aspect of this is in the uh near-term projects. Um uh one of them um the most expensive one is the San Antonio road separated bikeway. Um, and you showed that on a couple of slides and one of them and and I think one of them it was it was up at the top and you made reference to the fact that I think at the council meetings fairly recently that's a real focus of council. Uh they're recognizing that our housing plan is calling for a lot of housing where there's, you know, light industrial right now in that sort of San Antonio 101 corner. Um, and we want to be ready with the bike facilities for the bicyclists who will come. And I agree with that. Um, but I, uh, in terms

of the timing for that, I am skeptical that we're going to see appreciable housing in the next five years of this tenure plan. So, I think that's like a back half of the next decade. Um, real need. And and you know, one of the things I noticed in the description is this notion of requesting new developers to reconstruct street according to new design. So when I saw the word request there, I I thought, well, that's kind of a soft way of putting it. I think what we're talking about is conditions of approval. Um, so it's not really a request, it's an insistence if you want your project. Um, and so then you're going to have some nexus issues, but I think more important than that is you're going to have this sort of patchwork. And so for this project, because in the long run, I do think it's really important. I think one of the things the city should be looking at is whether this and I I don't know if the city regularly or ever uses this tool. I can't remember um any planning commission item that has involved it, but I'm wondering if this would be an appropriate place for an assessment district um along this corridor of San Antonio that the cuz cuz all of the properties along this will benefit as well as the the sort of the the properties at the end um you know at the at the far end um uh along East Bay Shore Um, and so I'm just thinking in terms of a because again it's the most expensive one, but I think we have a little lead time on it. And so that is really the only suggestion I have is that that might be the kind of mechanism that would make sense in that particular um location. So thanks again for the great work.

Um, if I could just respond a little bit to that, that's a great that's great feedback. Um, the San Antonio Road area plan will be looking into that as well. They're taking this document's recommendation and then moving it forward as part of their planning. So hopefully, so they will be looking at implementation, funding, assessment districts, all that stuff. Great. That's great to hear. Thanks, Sylvia. Commissioner Templeton, followed by Commissioner G.

Thank you. Um I think we don't need to over complicate it. It was the 2012 BPTP. It can be the 2026 BPTP. So um yeah, I uh I think it's important to include the year so that people are shamed when they let it go over 10 years. So [sighs and gasps] anyh who um uh El Camino Way, I appreciate Vice Chair Chang speaking about it. Um, I I used this for a bike uh with the kids uh when we were learning uh the right routes to school for Fletcher and uh from from their friends at V in Ventura's house and uh it was terrifying and I tried to talk to the parents about what if you go down the other way and go to Los Rob because it doesn't have those cars. So, I I understand the um idea of wanting to remove the cars because it is safer without them. Um but I also recognize that if this is deemed the route to school, um people are going to still go. And so, um I don't I don't know why, um that's the only way you can go cuz it is a horseshoe shaped street. But um I instructed my kids to go the other way because it's safer. And so I understand why we have it on here um to improve it. Now, if improving it means removing the parking spaces, that becomes a zoning, you know, and a planning problem, right, that you have to work out possibly coming through us to really vet it out. We've got a few people up here with some opinions about

this particular street. So, uh it should be a party if you want to come back. Um, nevertheless, um, and I appreciate that it's on here and I think the takeaway is, um, if if it's going to take longer to implement because this has to be thought through more deeply with the parking considerations, maybe potentially work with the safe routes to school to make the other avenue knew acceptable to parents who strictly adhere to those routes. Thank you,

Commissioner G. followed by Commissioner James.

Well, thank you for that warm introduction to the El Camino Way Party, Commissioner Templeton. Um, uh, for those who may remember when this first came to us a couple months ago, I think Mr. our saver members exactly how much feedback I provided on the first iteration of the BPTP that came before us. Um, just for this first round, since I know not everyone has spoken yet, I will hold off on my comments about El Camino Way. Um, but I do have a couple just kind of general comments. Um, thank you for a very very comprehensive plan. I think the staff has done great work here. Um, went through and read all appendices A through P. Lots lots of p lots of work you guys put in here. Um, and thank you for taking into the the feedback also from council about the low stress residential streets. You may recall that was something I also harped on um in our first update. Um, kind of a just a couple tactical things here. On packet page 139, you have the table that has the multi-use plan going down. I think just adding that addendum that you provided in the slide deck, just in the packet, I think could be really helpful because that was my first glance. I was like, why did our multi-use path go down? But we didn't actually lose any, right? Um, so that's that. Um, and then I had the same question as the pedestrian overlay as Commissioner uh, Vice Chair Chang. Um, and then, uh, I had a question about Boulevard 24, which you mentioned in the presentation, which actually on packet page 148, you only reference the portion from Castile to Lambert, but in your description, you said the Castilea Park Wilky section. So, can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Yes, thank you for the opportunity. Initially park uh Boulevard project boulevard 24 just included Park Boulevard after uh re public comment. We want to add the section of Castilea uh all the way down to Wilky across to the uh Mountain View city limit line as a part of that project. And we also learned that the city has plans for that section that we can lean on um and at least try to build off of um as a good step. Sorry, which section do you are you referring to when you say that section? The park casa Wilky to Mountain View.

Yeah. Um which kind of brings me to my next question, which is in the actual BPTP page 19. I and also you can see kind of like in the near-term improvement projects we see that the Park Boulevard like pink dotted line goes all the way to Araso. Um but in your description right it's the Castle Park Wilky Boulevard. So what is the actual expected path for people right because if like if I'm a biker that goes to park and then I get to the end and then I just see Charleston I don't really know what to do about myself at that point. So, I'm just curious what what the expectation is here.

It would be additive. It would it would include that the section that you see currently on Park Boulevard in addition to then the the portion out that cuts into Wilky that then would head into Menllo. I guess my question is like where the cutin is supposed to be. Is the cut in supposed to be like on the MLAN second like oh over there? Okay. Um MLAN is the key there.

Okay. Yes. Um, yeah. I guess like my only comment then is like I guess what is the it may be a little bit misleading if we have kind of like we you can also go park all the way to the end but that there's no signage over there. So I guess like as someone who lives in that neighborhood and knows that Wilky is the bridge. I can find my way there but there is it's very very difficult to find your way there um right now. Uh and then I think rel related to that uh I also was kind of thinking that it like what defines kind of a bike boulevard here because I see that on the BPTP map you've also listed James Road as part of the bike boulevard. So, I was wondering like what the definition is here for that because I guess I've I don't know how much bike traffic there is there. So, I was just curious why that was listed.

So, the one block of James between Yeah, it's a it's a connector for folks to El Camino way. So, that's why and that that's a school route. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's okay. Expected that. Um, and then also, uh, I had a question about the, uh, on packet page 147 SB11A, the Middlefield Road separated bikeway connection to Menllo Park. Um, I was curious how this part of Middlefield uh, we're still ending up keeping a project even though the guidance was to stay away from arterial. So I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more explanation here.

Yes, this is an example. Yes, to your point that initially we had proposed uh entire corridor upgrades to Middlefield as a result of council feedback. We stepped away from those big arterials. We're proposing this section of middlefield not only as a response to council uh feedback that we received in June, but also to drive the point of the connections between two low stress facilities on either side. I guess um for me like I I was reading the description that goes from Everett, but I guess I'm wondering like on Bryant there also is a bridge I believe that goes into Menllo Park. So I guess for me I it this this segment of middlefield here seems a little bit of an island like it seems like it's just kind of there on like on a somewhat arterial that then kind of just goes into nowhere. Well, maybe if we want to facilitate the connection to Menllo Park, it may make more sense um down on Brian

and perhaps I can respond to that. So, um this is a part of town that is very dense and so having a little bit of redundancy in the network is is acceptable in this area. Uh this portion of Middlefield um has more lanes than south of Chenning. And so we're kind of looking at that segment and um considering what the options are. There have been requests on the Menllo side to improve that access by bicycle. There's also been a history of collisions and so we're trying to address multiple issues. It's it's not just the bike facility, but there's also the safety issue.

Okay. Yes. Um thank you for that feedback for that answer. I do think I'm still a little bit kind of a toss-up, right? making it more bike infrastructure there maybe we are encouraging more usage and possibly more collisions. So again um I I am a little bit worried about that. Um and then I also had a question about SB12 the Homer Avenue separated bikeway. So, I noticed that today when I go by that intersection with the tunnel, right, there's one block of bothsided bike support up to high and then the expectation is that the bikers will turn to the right on high and then go up probably channing is my guess. Um, I was wondering in the description here on what you plan on supporting is the idea that then Homer would have both directions would be like the bike road such that you would bike both directions on Homer between Alma and Bryant.

Yes, it would be both directions is the idea here. So, I guess I'm curious uh given the current setup, is there a reason why we cho we didn't choose to kind of just keep the direction of traffic? Like Homer has a bike lane that goes this way and then you can come out of the tunnel on Homer and then just go on Channing kind of the other direction. Is it just cuz we already have the infrastructure set up there? Correct.

Okay. Um my only comment is anyone who's driven on Homer knows that that Whole Foods is a little bit dicey um to to go through. That's kind of my I don't know how to get around that, but I'm just kind of providing that as commentary for anyone who's ever tried to go there. Um, so there's that. And then, um, I want to second the comment about Kalper. I'm unclear like of the projects that are priority projects, probably isn't my personal priority for that. Um, and then, uh, kind of a last comment for this round. Uh, you have a small typo on pa packet page 149. Um, Boulevard crossing number two. It says Carson Streer. So that's it for now.

Thank you, Commissioner James, and then I'll wrap up the first round.

Um, less less um uh questions and just kind of general comment that I'm I'm uh excited about any anything that sort of brings about more more bike safety. Um I tend to gravitate not not that we're you know at a study session, but I tend to gravitate to the ones that I I know know in fear. I used to live at Bryant and Lincoln and I'm super excited about that stretch, you know, just because I know it. Um because my kid bikes there. I mean, it gets very personal, but uh but I'm I'm I'm certainly supportive of like 20 miles an hour and a control speed there. I don't know if I get to say it, but I think I did put before I was here, I put my name on a petition to try and get stop signs at Lincoln and Bryant, four-way stops. Um uh but anyway, I'm I'm I'm excited that that's that's being looked at as as as u something to improve. And and the other the other one that sort of is near and dear to my heart is one other folks have mentioned, which is the El Camino way and the and the gun um pathway to school, bike way to school. And I was I happen to be there today um for a dentist point with my kid. And it it is it is um I used to drive that way every day and it was nerve-wracking to see the kids just kind of run out of room and get up on the sidewalk and go go past the the cars. Um and uh you know I just feel like whatever we can do to kind of make that safer for them. I I'm I'm very sympathetic to the businesses, but I'm probably more sympathetic to the kids. That's all. [clears throat]

Thank you. Uh I will echo all of the comments about how superb this work is and uh how enthusiastically we'll be recommending that it move ahead. Um so I'm going to talk about a few concerns uh ranging from a high level presentation issue and eventually perhaps the next round some of the small uh knits. Um a pattern that I hear uh among us on the dis as well as uh from public comment is that there is confusion about the division of responsibility between the definition of the projects here and how the implementation will be handled. Um I'm going to give you a specific example and that requires some detail but um but it's a more general uh pattern. So um when it comes time to implement a project, we often hear some objections uh because there's a feeling that some consequences haven't been addressed. And the public comment from uh Mr. Kellerman echoes a comment that I gave to you um in the premeating um for project boulevard 2. If you restrict northbound turns from Embaradero onto Bryant, then that traffic is going to go somewhere else. And the question is at what point in the process uh are those consequences dealt with and can they result in modification of the project either by eliminating

parts of it or by extending it. Um and Mr. Kellerman's uh observation was that perhaps things would have to be extended to Emerson. Fortunately, we've got that one covered. And my comment was that perhaps things have to be extended to Waverly, which is the next street on the other side of Bryant. And just to uh to review what's going on there, Waverly's a collector, so it already has a high traffic volume. Um I think the last I recall was around 3,500 vehicles per day, but that was pre- pandemic. Um, it's within 1,000 ft of Casty and Gamble Garden. So, you see how it's getting close to triggering the traffic calming conditions, neighborhood traffic calming program conditions already. Um and most importantly every day it's crossed by at least hundreds of students who are going to Addison to [clears throat] Cassi and to Pali. Um so dumping cross traffic uh across all of those heavily used uh bike routes for the kids uh may be an issue. So if during the engineering study process for making changes to Bryant, you discover that perhaps some traffic calming is needed on Waverly as well. Then I think I would like to understand and perhaps other readers of the projects would like to understand that uh that process will that the process that's used will accommodate those other considerations.

So the what's listed here is the definition of the project is not the beall and endall that there will be further analysis that goes into the implementation. Um I don't know quite how you want to express that but that's a a general issue that applies uh not just to this pro this particular project but to some of the others that we've discussed tonight and to many others that are on the list. Um let's see couple of suggestions uh for language and possibly for also for um additional policies or programs. Um and then I'll wrap up the high level comments and move on to the smaller stuff next round. Um, page 96, we talk [snorts] about policies and programs and we mention TDM programs and there's there's suggestions there for why TDM programs are important and some characteristics that TDM programs should have. Um, I think it would be a good idea to add improving TDM enforcability to this paragraph as it's a topic that comes up repeatedly and this is an appropriate place for it. Uh finally uh also for policies and programs are there any opportunities that we could pursue with uh for cooperation with wayfinding providers and uh my goals two goals there would be to get them to favor particular uh bike or pedestrian routes and to disfavor particular vehicle routes.

So, are there any opportunities to be explored there? Um, perhaps that's outside the scope of this plan, but it seemed that in to me that it would fit into the policies and programs discussion on page 96. All right. So, those are all my highle issues and we'll do another round beginning with vice chair.

All right. For my second round, it's a pretty quick one. Um, in premeating, Miss Starlac had suggested that we look for anything that we think is maybe a glaring omission. Um, I have to be honest, I didn't read the full PPTP, so maybe this is not a new mission, but in terms of the high priority areas, um, so I'm looking at the near-term improvements map, and you've got the purple dotted line going down San Antonio Road, so class 4 protected bike lane, as well as the purple dotted line that is on Meadow and Fabian. And so there's this little area that goes on Charleston Road from San Antonio to Fabian. And I know that we've done the Charleston traffic calming projects and everything, but gee, it would be really, really, really nice if that little connector there were also safe for safer for bicyclist cuz it's terrifying there. And we know that's another one where I know of multiple multiple injury car accidents there. I think there's a fatality of a senior citizen on the Mountain View side over there and the traffic is only going to get it's gotten significantly worse with all the development in Mountain View um at San Antonio Center. But it's it's um that whole area is where it's currently a standstill like for you know four traffic light changes like rounds of traffic lights during rush hour. And unfortunately for bicyclists there's no real good way to deal with that section if you want to if you're kind of over in that section of PaloAlto wanting to to get anywhere else frankly. Um it's it it's so

um it's so scary. There was one time I went there and then ended up biking all the way back to or this is before the bike bridge. Biking all the way back to Oregon because I was like there's no way I'm I'm going to go any further um to get to the Baylands. Like I you know I added half an hour to my trip at least one way. Um, so if we could just make that little se and that little section is high traffic, high car traffic, but also super dangerous for bicyclist. But I don't think there's any other like we we have to make it good. So I think that we need to that's a whole [sighs]

uh vice chair. Are you just saying just from Fabian way to San Antonio or that whole stretch from middlefield to San Antonio? I mean, ideally, Middlefield to San Antonio would be amazing, but really, like, if we could just go to Fabian, then at least people could go on Fabian and go around. Um, because it's it's terrifying over there. And it's going to be used as we put in the housing and the kids need to go to school. Um, it's just that they've got to use it. Yeah,

I think Steph wanted to comment. Yeah, I just want to just similarly um San Antonio Road area plan is also looking at this. So they've they're thinking about what we might be able to do to enhance safety there. Um, I I totally understand that they are looking at it, but because the San Antonio class 4 bikeway is like on this map as a priority project, um, I just think that it might be a good idea to include something about that connection as a priority project. Um, and I don't, you know, I know we're late in the process, but um, [snorts] it would certainly render the San Antonio bike the class 4 bike way much more useful by adding that little bit as a priority project. So like when I compare Kalper for example, which I was sort of saying maybe I would dep prioritize that to this little little section, I think this is way more important. Yeah. Thanks,

Commissioner G. Thank you, chair. Um, I'll also like kind of talk about some projects that I'm really excited about. So, I think this quarry road transit connection project I think is really interesting. Having been part of the ULI study, I think that um one thing I learned from Steven, our historical resources board planner, is that he actually uses this like this trail. And I think that having some stronger connections from here to the mall, from the transenter to the mall, I think could be is something that I'm really excited about. Um, one thing that's a I was hoping to get a little bit more clarification on is this separated bikeway on East Meadow, East West Meadow. Is that like would it be like kind of concrete on both sides? I think mostly because right now anyone who is awake around school time at those places know that the kids bike like eight bikes wide. and the the injuries tend to occur when they are all of a sudden congested into a tighter space. So, for example, uh you are on the bike path by JLS and all like it's actually narrow and the kids are trying to pass each other because they're like weaving. Um so, I guess I'm wondering for this project here, um maybe maybe it's not a necessary question, just maybe just a comment. I'll just leave it as a comment. is just like I I think that some thought needs to be taken care of in in terms of like the thinking about the volumes that need to pass by here because it is an immense amount of volume um on East West Meadow. Um and then uh so for that okay I guess now I'll talk about uh the El Camino way section which I I'm sure everyone's been waiting for me to talk about. Um Sam, do you mind I sent you some photos that I took since they're right next to my house. [laughter]

Okay, so I have a bunch of photos, right? So this is like El Camino Way. This is in front of uh Paulo Alto Commons, which maybe some of you are familiar with this project. Um but you see here it's like completely uh parked through on this side. And actually at this time of day, which is yesterday, you're not actually even allowed to park on the other side of the street. Um, [laughter] right. So, it's like I I believe the the signage and maybe someone from transportation can comment. I think it's like no parking 7 to 7 I believe on that street on the other side um for the explicit reason that the kids are supposed to be biking um on this in this bike road. Right. So, I I I'm a little bit unconvinced that like saying no parking means that people won't park. um which for the Paul Alto Commons project, we've continued to see um many parking violations across kind of the whole neighborhood there. Um I guess uh yeah, so I guess I won't have to show you. Everyone who anyone who's been there knows it's like completely packed. Um so maybe we can go to the the map photo, Sam, that I have. [sighs] Okay. So, one of the things that I was thinking about here, I know we're like way ahead of kind of the ideation like kind of the actual implementation phase, but uh as I kind of asked uh transportation team like earlier is that James road over here is considered a safe route to school as well. And so one of the things that I was thinking about in kind of looking at this as a big picture for commercial areas is to not through. Like you'll see that in most of the areas that we have commercial area. So university calav and I guess we can include here you want to get to the area but you may not want to bike through the area right so we've decided that Cambridge is where we'll have the bikes or like on Everett or Linton or Hamilton. And so the way I kind of think

about a potential way to get around this is that maybe the kids will bike down meadow, go down Wilkkey, and then go down James. And then if you want to remove the parking, which I think is important, we would only have to end up removing about 300 ft or so of the parking towards the end here at the at the very end corner. And so if we like supported the infrastructure since technically we we do plan on making improvements on Meadow um and that Wilky is supposed to be like kind of a regional bike route and James is already a safe route to school and Wilky and James are pretty calm roads relatively. I think that we could do some kind of El Camino project that kind of we get a little bit of the best of both worlds in that we get to keep most of the parking for a vast majority of the businesses that are here in the in the triangle node, but uh we get kind of a much safer route and we can encourage the kids to go this way. I know that there's a whole theory about desire paths and whether or not the kids will actually bike on this road, but I think that if we can it's if if it's really pretty square, right? Like I I think you're probably losing no more than like 15 seconds this way. And if we I think that there's a pretty um there's a pretty good argument that if we decide to make the Wilky and James road portion a lot like just so much better I think it will encourage people pretty quickly because for example I actually do take this route El Camino way James Wilky on the way back from Gun. This is because those of you who know on El Camino way that going kind of away from El Camino, you are on a sher. You're there is no bike lane, right? And so there already a large amount of kids who do do this route on the way back because it is so much safer. Like if we decide that if we can kind of make this route the like quote unquote best route,

then I think the kids will end up going this route. Um so that's kind of my thoughts here. I know we're like way too early. Yeah. Go ahead. Can I just ask you um is there a stop sign there if you for the kids that are trying to so coming back you turn right but to go to school you'd have to turn left. Is there a stop sign? There is no stop sign but there's one of those like kind of signaling the lights. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's not as good. I This is a halfbaked idea. Yeah. No, no. I'm not I'm not saying it's like I'm not dismissing the idea. I'm just saying I think that could be a reason that it's not currently preferred for a two school.

Yes. No. I I agree. I I strongly agree. and the fact that there's already a bike lane on the way to school. But I'm thinking that like in the the BBTP kind of like time frame, right, there's a world in which we could make this the best route. And if we do so, then I think people will end up taking it because there's already evidence that people do take this route when it is the better, safer way away from school. Um, so that that's my thought on that. Um, and then kind of in addition to this, I'm also like one of the things that I think about when I'm biking on a bike boulevard that I really like about Bryant is that uh sometimes there are those cross streets where when you're biking on Bryant, other cars have to stop for you, but you are the like you don't have to stop, right? But on Wilky, we actually there are a couple streets here. I can't remember the name. It's like Tennessee or Carolina or something where the cross traffic does not stop for you and you have to you have to stop. Um, so I think like in kind of conjunction with these improvements, that's one thing that I would look into because uh I even though it's a residential street, I have seen cars kind of whiz by when I'm like this is like the main bike route that's connecting multiple cities that has a lot of traffic on it, but there are cars kind of like whizzing by turning right, turning left because they don't have to wait. Um, so that's my thought on that. Um, yeah. So, I'll hold off for now.

Thank you. Commissioner Tippleton, you have a followup. Yes. I wanted to ask about the Meadow um improvements. Is that project in the same space where we had a recent severe injury? [sighs] is that that there was a meadow project that Commissioner G was talking about that he had concerns about the style of that bike lane. Can you describe Is that the location where the young man was hit?

Um I'm not sure. I'm I have the right was there a recent collision or is this the one that happened like three years ago? I don't know if it was three years ago, but yeah, it's the young man who was biking back from the library on Meadow. Okay. I don't know if that's the one that I'm thinking, but um Was there more than one? There was one, but I I don't I don't know. I You might know something that I don't know. I don't know something you don't know. This is It's got to be that one.

This is pretty severe injury. He's not passed away, but he's still in a coma. the South Po Alto bikeways um project is um if it's the one that Commissioner G was talking about is the one between um on East Meadow from Alma all the way to Fabian. Um [clears throat] so it would it would be that stretch. Mhm.

So, um, do we think that, um, I I I want to hear, um, Commissioner G's concern about making sure that kids can ride to school beside each other in the protected lane. Um, but I want a protected lane. I mean, kids should be able to get from our neighborhood to the library without being hit. [sighs] Yeah, I I I do agree.

Well, and and this is definitely not about you. I want staff to tell me that that's what this project is. So, I apologize and feel free to say what you need to say, but that's what I'm asking for. If we can get Can you share some more detail? Just I want to know if we're addressing the safety of that stretch from [sighs and gasps] um probably yes. I just want you to confirm it out loud that we would be preventing that situation from happening again.

The situation where a car that wants to bypass somebody who's turning left will not be able to swing into the bike lane and hit an unsuspecting child. Correct. Um but yeah, it would be a separated bike lane. there would be some kind of vertical separation. Um, and that would be different than what there is than what is there today. Um, I don't want to get into the specifics of design. I'm not going to design it right here. I don't and I'm not asking you to. I'm What I'm trying to do is celebrate the responsiveness of this department to preventing future tragedies. Yeah.

But that requires you confirming that that's what we're doing.

Yes, that is what we're doing. Yeah. Thanks. Um, uh, Commissioner Peterson was wondering if we can bring that stretch up on the map and look at it. I can also show you it's this dotted line, purple dotted line here. Oh, yeah. Mhm. Um, thank you for doing that. I think it's incredibly important. Um, that library and community center is a hub. It passes two schools. It's uh got on the way to a park and then on the way to the Baylands via the the bike bridge. So this is a heavily used spike path not just by young people but by all people in the community and making it safer and protecting from overeager left turners or whatever um is extremely important. So thank you for doing that and including that in the priority.

All right, seeing no other lights, I'll make a few comments about minor issues. um related to this not so minor but the uh pedestrian compon component of this plan is really underappreciated and I think there is excellent work there too which um will be of great benefit to a lot of people. So that brings me to uh the first nitpicky question on page 50 when uh we talk about walking activity. Most walking trips are under 5 minutes with a mean of 11 minutes and a median of seven. Uh if the median is seven, then it's not possible for most trips to be under five. So what was really intended here? I appreciate that question and the activity level data is comes from the analysis we did with a company called Replica. Um, and so I will uh defer to the project consultant Amanda to help us answer that question. And maybe the short answer is we can look into it because the short answer is we can make sure that it's accurately represented. Sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, okay. Yeah, this is Amanda Ley with KDson and I will need to recheck the numbers the way it was presented, but I believe we were we could have switched them around. The average trip length could be 7 minutes, the me median five. Um but yeah, we will need to look into the specifics there. I think the overall intent was to say that the average walking trip length is short.

Yeah, thank you. Just to avoid uh anal retentive folks like myself from getting tripped up by that sort of thing. Um page 100, this uh is something that's come up uh in the past. Uh the suggestion is to remove language that can discourage walking, biking, and rolling uh such as requirements to cross at crosswalks. Um now some readings of this that I have seen suggest that the goal is to allow crossing at completely random places by either decriminalizing it or even explicitly encouraging it. And I'm worried about the safety implications of this. Uh so is that the intent? And if not, perhaps there should be a little word smithing applied there.

We can look into that. Thank you. And um let's see page 108 uh the description of project intersection 05 references California Avenue when it should be university. Thank you for that.

Mhm. And last one. Uh page 29 discusses performance measures and one that's mentioned is the annual commute mode share. I'm just curious just about how you measure that. Um we normally use the census data for uh commute to work. Um if we're looking specifically at bikes, we'll also also use our safe routes to school data for bikes.

Okay. Thank you. That's good enough for me. All right, that is all I have on my list. Commissioners, do we have anything else to uh ask or comment upon? All right, then. All right, I'd like to make a motion that um so I'd like to move the staff recommendation that we recommend that the council um adopt this plan. Second, Mr. Tetto. Uh, yes. Uh, Commissioner James, yes. Uh, Commissioner Hecman, yes. Uh, Commissioner Templeton, yes. Uh, Commissioner G, yes. Uh, Commissioner Peterson, yes. Uh, Vice Chair Chang,

yes. Uh, Chair Aken, yes. Motion carry 70. Thank you. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for being a part of this effort the whole two years, not just tonight. So, thank you. Thank you. And we're excited to present this at the city council. Great. We're looking forward to quick approval there. All right. Our next item is approval of minutes for the meeting of September 6th, 2025. And Mr. Tavvada, do we have any public comments on this? Uh to the chair, I've received no public comment cards and no raise hands on Zoom.

Very good. Commissioners, any questions before we move? Can we do these together or no? I was absent for one. Oh, Pardon me. I I dropped the ball here. Do you have a comment or No, the question was, can we vote on these together? I I And my comment was I was absent for one. So, you need to take them separately. Sorry, I misheard you. All right. So, I move approval of the minutes of September 6, 2025 as revised. Second. Um, Commissioner Peterson, yes. Uh, Commissioner G, yes. Commissioner Templeton, yes. Commissioner James, yes. Commissioner Hecman,

yes. Uh, Vice Chair Chang, yes. Chair Aken, yes. Motion carry 70. All right. And next, we have approval of minutes for the meeting of September 10th, 2025. Any public comments for this one? Uh, the chair received no public comment cards and no raise hands on Zoom. Commissioners, any questions? If not, I move approval of the minutes of September 10th, 2025 as revised. Second. Um, Commissioner Templeton, yes. Uh, Commissioner Hecman, abstain. Uh, Commissioner Peterson, yes. Uh, Commissioner James, yes.

Commissioner G, yes. Uh, Vice Chair Chang, yes. Uh, Chair Aken, yes. Motion carries 61 with Commissioner Hecman abstaining. And finally, do we have any questions, comments, or announcements from commissioners? Commissioner Templeton followed by Vice Chair Chang.

Thank you. Um, I have a question that is for staff, but I need to ask the commissioners how they feel. Um, I don't know how how you are enjoying receiving the the giant envelopes uh for some of our packets. And um I noticed that many of you who have this um card have folded it in half and I was just wondering if um anyone would or if people be comfortable asking staff on small when it's the attachments are smaller like this if we could encourage them to use a smaller envelope. Does anyone have a a thought about Well, hold anyone have a thought about it up here? Anyone have a problem with it? Okay. Yes, Miss Armor, do you think that would be a possibility?

My concern is not to have a discussion of something that wasn't on the agenda, but we I see I don't think it's an agendaizable item. I think it's I just want to be cautious. Um, but I think we Yes, we can we can use small. Well, I have tried other channels and we're still getting the big packets. So, I thought I would try this as an option. Thank you. Thank you,

Vice Chair Ch. All right. I just wanted to thank um thank Miss Armor, thank staff because I read the packet for um the council meeting that just happened on Monday and um I read the the staff report for 660 University and I just want to thank staff for um the very accurate representation of the discussion that the PTC had. It was detailed, accurate, and um I really appreciate like the fidelity with which our discussion was transmitted to city council.

Thank you. And Commissioner Peterson, just wanted to uh give staff a heads up that the water district's independent monitoring committee, which is the bond oversight, is preparing in the next few weeks to start reviewing uh the water district's bond and all the projects. Not all that different than what we did tonight, but just for the water district and to be uh uh maybe uh make public comment anywhere that's applicable like the balance Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner G.

Thank you. Um I did find out who's out in the the conference room over out here and it's we have a through our sustainability department. We have like a youth group. Um and they have like a mobility subgroup where they were like trying to work with students to bike and walk more. Um, and I was like, okay, that would be great to get them. Like, as someone who did youth council for the city, um, I'm personally interested in if there are any other kind of like youth related activities through the city. Um, I'd be happy to learn like I think we'd all be interested in at least me learning more about them just so that we can encourage more youth participation across kind of our pie initiatives because a lot of what we're talking about is for the future. So, it'd be nice to have some more input from younger audiences. Thank you. Any further comments, questions, announcements? Then we are adjourned. Thank you everyone.