Traffic Committee - Regular Meeting

Test, test.

All

right, here we go. All right, I want to call this order of the traffic committee to order on 09/09/2025. Roll call. So by department, is PD here? Yes. Fire? Yes. Planning? Yes. Public works? Yes. And I am representing engineering. Please remember to unmute your microphones when you're speaking or unless Laura has you do that. So go ahead,

Members of the audience who wish to address the traffic committee are asked to submit a request to speak form located on the podium at the back of the council chamber and submit it to the clerk ideally before the item is called. Speakers will be allowed three minutes. If you intend on using technology for your presentation, please leave a copy for the record.

Members of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed on the agenda today may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes. Please identify yourself and the city of residence. The committee will take will not take action on any item that is brought to their attention at this meeting at this point. If it requires action, it will be referred to staff or listed on the next traffic committee agenda. Laura, do you have any requests?

Yes. We received an email from Caitlin Bishop regarding agenda item F2. The email was received by the 10AM deadline and forwarded to the committee members and added to the agenda packets. We also have one request to speak form. I can call up Brian Larocque to the podium to my left.

I'll stick with Brian. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wanna thank you very much for being here. Within the past, I have met with mister Michael Belton. You remember this gentleman? Thereafterwards, we end up with the other gentleman, mister Mike Wegli. He was here.

Then we have begun with the new gentleman, Dariel Jarden. That you, sir? Okay. And of the three people I've spoken with these people before, because of our minor problems from our street down to West Donna Drive down to M Street, Now people, when they decide they're going up to Merced College, the people do not want to deal from the main streets from Yosemite Avenue. They won't make those right turns.

They drive through West Donner Drive. They're driving multiply so fast, which is ridiculous. Now the city timer said one time they've had this up to 35 miles per hour. They took care of that. It's down to 35 miles per hour. But the people, they still do not want to deal with the signal stoplights over there at R Street and Yosemite Avenue. Then they do the same thing. They don't want to deal down at M Street in Yosemite. They come back through to West Donna Drive again. And then the people, they drive too fast.

It's unsafe. Now, I've done the proper paperwork, and I've met with over 42 people, hand their names, street address, everything. And everything was handwritten down with their all thoughts, what they think, and what we do need. But nothing happened. You just become here, sir. But I felt like everything stopped again the first, the second, the third time. My mother and my father had nine kids. Now my father always said it was like a baseball game. If it's called strike one, strike two, strike three, they're not getting a hit. So you have to stand up and let the people know.

I'm very worried about these people down onto West Donner Drive. People are still driving too fast. Number two, I have came up with the idea, the possibility of bumps on the street. But the other fireman, he had spoke with us. And he said, well, we don't have to go the hard bumps. We can go down a little bit of smooth bumps. So I've been told that they're not going to do that. It'd be very intelligent to have it at least two places down there. Brian, I'm sorry.

Your time is up for comment today. Can you resubmit your application so we can bring this up and take action on it the next

few Well, did within the past. We always had the original hard copies, which I do have them in here.

Great. Would love to take this up so we can actually discuss it as a panel on the next meeting

if Okay. You'd it's the idea as a busy street. They don't want to deal with signal stoplights People it's crazy.

Great. Thank

It's the idea to keep things better safe for the people until somebody just gets hurt. Make sure I got this right.

Now Brian, we only have three minutes, and your three minutes is up, I'm afraid. Your three minutes is up, has expired for discussion today?

I'm not understanding what you're trying to say.

You only have three minutes

for your Okay, I'll make it fast.

It's already over. Time's over? Yeah.

Well, all right.

Like I said, we'd love to be able to have all of us engage in that discussion at the next meeting if we agenda support.

Well, just need all I'm saying here, we need the stop signs at San Jose Street and these other three places there because they come pick up the kids at school from our street. They go through Buena Vista, make a left turn. It's too busy going down M Street. What do they do? Make a left turn over here. I guess it's De Anza or something like that. And the people don't stop. I've had

We have

him here. Times when people already got me.

Thank you very much, Brian.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Appreciate your time. Okay. If we had a chance to look at the consent calendar, do I have a motion from anyone?

I move

that we approve the consent calendar.

Second. All

in favor?

Aye. All

opposed? Passes.

I finished on mute myself. Okay. Agenda item E, reports. At this time, it is appropriate for any committee member to give an informational report of any work completed, training, or other items to share with the members. Please be brief, and no action may be taken on these items.

Nothing.

Agenda item F, business. Agenda item F1, request 20Five-twenty6, requesting a four way stop at the intersection of G Street and 12th Street. Citizen shares concerns of the difficulty of trying to make a left turn from 12th Street onto G Street due to speeding cars and obstructed views from parked cars. Currently, there is only one stop for East And West 12th Street. Citizen is requesting stop signs to be added on North And South G Street to create a four way stop at that intersection. We do have one request to speak. Can I have Mary Lou Torres to the podium, please?

Thank you for hearing me out. You know, I brought this up over a year ago. And finally, I tried again for the second time, basically the third time. But the whole thing is that street has changed a lot. There is a lot of traffic there, people going to the fairgrounds, people going to the flea market. There is a four way stop on 13th in G. There is one on 11th in G. But ones stopping at 11th, they speed to get to 13th. The 13th wants speed to get to 11th. And so if you're making a turn from 12th Street to G, left turn, there's a lot of little apartments, and there's new people living there.

They have pickups. They have SUVs, parked cars, and you can't see the traffic coming this way heading towards the fairgrounds. You have to go way out in order to make that left turn. And then you have the problem that the cars on 11th Street, they speed up. So you can either get hit from the back or the front.

And so I'm requesting that you would please consider making that four way stop on 12th And G because we're trying to have no accidents there, and being able to make a safe turn is important. I know that it's short space in between, but when you consider the amount of traffic and those apartments that are there and all the people that are probably sometimes you're lucky. If you scoot far enough out, you can see through their windshields. But then you have to scoot way over and speed up and make that turn to avoid being hit. So I'm asking you to reconsider putting a four way stop there.

So that is my request. Thank you for hearing me out.

Over at the podium? Okay, let's discuss it. Okay, thank you.

Well, can I say one thing?

Yeah.

The officer that I talked to that I believe his name is McKinney, he told me he's aware of that section because he patrols it. So he knows how difficult it is there. And he knows how fast those cars speed up there. They shouldn't be that way because you do have those stops on the eleventh and thirteenth. But they do anyways.

I understand.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your time. Can I bring it back to the committee to discuss?

When do you give a decision on this?

We'll talk about it right now.

Oh, Okay. Do I sit?

GREGORY Sure, yeah. Bring it back to the committee to discuss. Any comments, please? Fannie? GREGORY

I DELL: would want to know the warrants to hear what the We

do have collision data that the PD provided for me today. It looks like at first glance that it most likely will meet warrants, which means we can implement the four stop sign request. A lot of times, these requests do not meet warrants, and we legally cannot place a stop sign. So what I will do after we have this discussion is I'll take this data, and I will calculate the state requirement for the warrant. And if it meets the warrant, then we can move forward on that. But I'm going let the other members of the committee speak to this.

Do you mean by a warrant?

A warrant is a finding that a certain intersection is at a safety risk based on data, not on seeing people drive fast, not on feeling that people are driving fast, but actual data of collisions, incidents that have been recorded by the police department. They report that to me as the city engineer. And then if a certain amount of collisions happen within a certain period of time, it meets a warrant which regulates us to be able to put in a stop sign at an intersection. We can't just put one in anywhere we want. That would not be legal for us to do that.

Yeah, if you want to speak, I'm sorry. I'm going have to have you come back up here so we can record it. Yeah. Let me bring it back. I'll have you up there, and we'll get back to you in a minute. Any more comments from the committee while she's coming up?

Yeah, Darryl, just because of the nature of just a stop at every intersection and the gridlock that happens there, like she said, because of the school, I'd like to propose maybe looking at just a right turn only, right turns in, right turns out. And we just restrict the left turn movement. We put something at twelfth here where it's a four way stop If we do or when 13th is developed and becomes an intersection, we don't want to stop sign one block from a traffic signal. It's a main quarter through town. We have a lot of people south.

And to have that stop every block, it's restrictive to the flow of traffic. So I think with public works, what I would suggest is that we do look at a right turn movement only coming in and out of there. The neighborhood would quickly learn that their left turn options are either go to 13th or go to 11th. So it doesn't put that much burden on those people traveling on 12th to do that.

So the thing is that I've done that. When you go is it Okay to speak?

Go

ahead. So if you go to 13th, you have to go down to the end of 12th in H, then make a right on 13th and stop at that stop sign. And because you have those cars coming from 13th from 59 down, it's super, super hard. And you have this whole line of cars. If you go this way, then you're going to have to right on 12. You're going to have to either go and make a turn either left on 11th, come back around this way on 12th to make a right to go to 13th. Or you have to go all the way the other way, and you end up in the same boat going down to 13th.

PD, any comments? Corey, do you know if there's any plan to paint the corners of the intersections over there? I know what you're saying. There's a lot of cars parked in the area, especially with the amount of apartments and whatnot in the area. It's very easily to block the view of oncoming traffic no matter where you're at in the intersection.

I think we have, what, 20 feet that has to be clear from the intersection. If that's the direction the traffic committee wants to go, then yeah, absolutely, that can be done, where we can give at least that visibility.

You know when you get to the corner of H And 13, you have the 13 traffic this way. Well, those houses there, there's pickups there, two or three pickups there. So you get to the same problem. You have to stretch yourself further out to be able to see those cars coming behind you to get to the corner of G And 13th. And sometimes you have to race to beat them because they don't stop.

Thank you. Fire, any comments on that?

I share some of the similar concerns from public works. Adding a stop sign right there in such close proximity. It's going to being that it's a major thoroughfare, G Street has commonly traveled for us for emergency response to the entire South Side Of Merced at a station 51 there. So every time we have to come to a stop sign, even if we're running code three, we have to slow down and basically make sure that intersection is clear. So I see warrants are I see it's warranted by the warrants.

But I think I like the idea better of ride in, ride out. And I think that's going to kind of solve the problem. I know it's an inconvenience, but we're more looking at the safety aspect of things for the traffic, not so much the convenience of having to go around the block. I'm more inclined to support that idea. I

know that the ride in, out option would restrict most of the t bone accidents, because you're not crossing traffic anymore. You're going with traffic. You may get rear ended or whatever with speeds, but it will take out the t bone aspect of the which are typically I believe PD is the more egregious type of accident, the t bones versus the rear end. But is a state law, ma'am, that 20 feet now from the corners, you're not supposed to park. It's almost impossible for us to paint every corner throughout the whole city.

That would be thousands of corners. But I like public works idea of maybe, number one, painting those corners red to get those big trucks off the edge so you can see around the corner and have that visual safety. We call it the safety triangle where you can see oncoming and other cars can see you coming too. It's not just you can't see. They can't see you popping out either. So we need to clear those intersections to make it safer. We can look at a you understand what he says, right in, right out only restrictions? So you can only take a right. You can no longer jump across that intersection.

Right. That means that we have to go around the block to the right or around the block to lie right on the end of it.

And that may require us to put in what we call sometimes a pork chop, which is like a little V of concrete in that intersection. So you can't run across that intersection. It forces you to go right. But that's something I think that we could look at as well as an option in this area in lieu of the warrants. Or if that doesn't work, we could also look at warrants, too.

But it sounds like the committee likes painting the curves red first, getting a point to where you can actually see what's going on. So you take that restricted vision issue out. We'd look at a write only option for you first. And if for some reason maybe PD or us find that that's not creating the safety that you requested today that we move to at that next higher level, we can move to an actual signage issue.

About how long would that take? You have to wait several months to see what's going on with that right turn mark or what?

Yeah, we need some time. We need three months or so to see how that's working. Public Works is very quick on getting out to painting curbs. I can't say which day that they're available to do that, but they're pretty quick on doing that. I'll let him speak to that. But that and signage, we do our own signs. He does our own signs. He's the man here. So we can make those signs next week.

And did I understand that thirteenth is also hard to see around parked cars,

too? Yes, yes. Because on this side of the freeway, there is a lot of cars lined up. There's two little areas there where they have car repairs. So all the cars and trucks are parked on this side. And if you're coming from H Street and going to make that right turn, you have to really extend yourself because all those cars are parked on that curb. That's us.

Would it be within our purview to kind of look at it a little expansion?

Not on the request today.

No? Okay.

GREGORY But engineering and public works can take a look at that. That's no problem.

GREGORY So for right now, your answer to me is hold off. Let us check this out. If it works, we'll stay with it. If it doesn't, we'll look at the other option.

We're going to have the committee vote on that today. It looks like we have three levels painted curb, signage, and actual signs. So we'll see what the committee will get started on that for you at some level after they decide.

Well, the write in and write out and

the painted curtain. Whatever we Yeah. And

that's after this meeting is finished?

Yep.

So we're not going to be here while you make the decision?

You can be here right now. We're going to make a decision right now.

Thank you. Okay.

So we've heard kind of three levels of mitigation here today. I'm willing to take any direction if somebody wants to motion today on how we may want to proceed with this request.

Well, I move that we put in a write in and write out entry to the intersection and paint the curbs, the daylighting portion of the curbs around the intersection as a first phase.

I have a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second it. Okay.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes.

I want to say something to you. When there's that all that traffic for the Fairgrounds, whether it comes through or not We

can't have the I'm sorry. We got you sitting down again. It has to be recorded if we have a discussion with the committee. Yeah. Or we can speak we'll be done here in a few minutes. We can speak with you right afterwards. It's not agendized, so we can't speak on that now. Okay. Next item, please.

Agenda item F2, request 20 five-twenty seven, requesting a yield or stop signs at the intersections of H Street and I Street on West 23rd Street. Citizen states they have witnessed multiple collisions at the intersections of H Street and I Street on West 23rd Street. Citizen believes due to the lack of yield or stop signs at these intersections, motorists drive at a high rate of speed. And they feel West 23rd Street has a higher rate of traffic due to the Amtrak station. Citizen has concern for the safety of neighborhood children and an increase in traffic due to the Starbucks being developed on the corner of 23rd Street and G. Citizen is requesting either yield sign or stop sign be installed going north and south on H Street and I Street.

Okay. Committee members, do we have any comments on this request today?

I did check the accident data for H in West 23rd as well as I in West 23rd. So for H and West 23rd, we did have a hit and run accident 11/01/2023. The driver failed to maintain their lane and was arrested for DUI. 10/27/2022, we had a oh, that was a I'm sorry. That was a hit and run accident, the first one.

The second one, 10/27/2022, was an injury accident. The officers were unable to determine the cause. However, after reviewing the report, it appeared that both drivers were not paying attention and failed to yield to each other. There was another non injury accident 09/18/2021. The driver at fault failed to yield oncoming traffic. I only went back five years for each intersection.

K.

And that was it for 20 3rd and h. I and twenty third, there was an injury accident on 08/25/2025. Driver at fault failed to yield to the other vehicle already in the intersection. And 09/16/2020, there was a non injury accident that involved an improper turning movement by the at fault driver.

Well, by that data, officer, it looks like we don't meet the warrants for a stop sign in these areas. Do I have any comments on what the request is? It looks like they're also requesting yield signs at these intersections, which I'm not sure that's warranted either. Public works, any comments on this one?

No comments. I mean, the California vehicle code says that yield to the right right away.

True, true. There's no claim of sight distance visibility issues like we've had on the last intersection. The pictures show that there's no cars parked at the corners, so that doesn't reflect that perhaps that there's red curvy needed there. Any other insight from the committee members?

I was going to note, I drove through this area this morning just to check the area. And I didn't notice anything unique about this intersection versus other uncontrolled intersections in the area. I didn't notice any obstructions as far as line of sight or anything like that. So I'm inclined to not support this request. Think we're opening ourselves up. One, we're not beating the warrants, but there's a lot of uncontrolled intersections, especially in that downtown area. Think it's an issue with folks not knowing how to navigate uncontrolled intersections, unfortunately. Thank you. Fannie?

If it doesn't meet warrants I mean, don't know the warrants for yield. But if it doesn't meet warrants for the stop, I agree that we wouldn't put the stop signs there. But I think you're right. We have a lot of intersections that have nothing. And so if we do yields here, then what about elsewhere? I mean, it'd have to be, I think, more of a larger city downtown exercise than one at a time. So I will go at the committee's pleasure.

Okay. PD, any other comments? Okay. As far as engineering, I don't see any need to put in a yield sign here. As public works had noted, the vehicle code says you're supposed to yield to the person on the right in these unrestricted intersections.

And so we can't any type of signage in this type of vicinity is not going to stop somebody from not following the law or not following the proper procedure for safe driving. So I don't see this would help in this situation. Unfortunately, PD mentioned some of these collisions were DUI. Whether you have a sign or not, whether you have speed zones or not, it doesn't help with DUIs or being under influence. Nothing you can do when people are driving like that. So I'm ready to take a motion if anybody has one.

I'll make

a motion to deny this request.

Do I have a second?

I second.

All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Motion passed.

Okay.

It's time for adjournment now, but we'll need a motion to have a motion from one of my commissioners today. Motion to adjourn. Second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. All opposed, no. Adjourn today at 02:41.