Traffic Commission - Regular Meeting

Live.

Okay. Call the order of the June 17th, uh, 2026 meeting of the Merida traffic commission is called the order with Matt. When we call roll for determination of a corn, please.

Commissioner Beers?

Present.

Commissioner Chavez?

Present.

Commissioner Limogiannis? Vice Chair Bouchard?

Here.

Chair Valdez?

Here.

Let the record reflect all members are present with the exception of Commissioner Limogiannis with an excused absence.

Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Commissioner Chavez. We'll now be moving on to the approval of the agenda. Approval of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda?

Seeing none.

I'll call for a motion to approve the agenda.

Motion.

I'll do that. And Commissioner Burchards made a second. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously.

We'll now be moving on to Engineering Department Administrative Updates.

Good evening, honorable chair and members of the Traffic Commission. It's great to see you all again. At this time, I'd like to provide a brief recap of four active CIP projects currently in design and one project that will be advertised for construction very soon. The design is nearly complete for two CIP projects. The traffic signal modification at Clinton Keith Road and Nutmeg Street. This will allow protected left turns for motorists turning left onto Clinton Keith in both directions. And the pavement rehabilitation project on Jefferson Avenue from Los Alamos Road to Nutmeg Street and Clinton Keith Road from the Wildomar Murrieta Boundary to Whitewood Road. Two projects are in the early design stage. They are the Menifee Road project, which consists of improving Menifee Road from a dirt road to a two-lane paved road, and the limits are between Clinton-Keith Road and Los Alamos. The Whitewood Road project will add a second northbound lane from Hunter Road to Clinton-Keith Road. Lastly, the design for a new traffic signal at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Magnolia Street has been finalized. And we anticipate advertising this project and gathering bids in the next month or two. We currently have two projects in construction. Those projects are the right turn lane at the intersection of Alta Murrieta Drive and Murrieta Hot Springs Road. This is estimated to be completed by the end of August or early September. And the other project is the Myriad to House Springs Road widening project, which is estimated to be completed by the end of the year. Both projects are currently behind in schedule due to various factors, including unknown utility conflicts, utility coordination and scheduling, constructability issues, and addressing RFIs from the contractor. This concludes the engineering department updates.

Thank you Mister was off. We will now be moving on to public comments. At this time we will take public comments. Any person may address the traffic commission on any subject pertaining to city business which does not relate to any item listed on the agenda or the consent calendar. Normally no action may be considered or taken by the Traffic Commission on any matter not listed on the agenda. Speakers are limited to three minutes. Madam Mahoney, are there any members of the public requesting to speak?

We do not have any non-agenda public comments.

Thank you. We are now moving on to consent of the calendar approval. Items on the consent calendar are considered routine and may be enacted by one motion and vote. There are no discussion on these items unless specific items are removed from the calendar for separate motions. Are there any requests from the commissioners to pull this consent calendar item for discussion or abstain from voting?

Seeing none.

I'll call for a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar.

I make a motion.

I'll second. Commissioner Chavez has made the motion to approve the consent. Commissioner Burchard has seconded it. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. We're now moving on to discussion items. Los Alamos Road and Mason Avenue intersection modifications. Staff, may we have a staff report, please?

Thank you, Chair. For the residents in the audience who are watching this live, my name is James Oza, senior civil engineer here at the city, and I am the primary traffic commission liaison and point of contact. It is my pleasure to introduce tonight's agenda items, both of which pertain to the installation of all-way stops and modifications to the intersections of Los Alamos Road and Mason Avenue and the intersection of Poinsettia Street and Nasturtium Lane. Being discussion items, at the end of each presentation, Staff will have a recommended action that will require the commissioners to discuss amongst yourselves and ultimately vote on. Staff has prepared brief presentations for tonight's discussion items, which will be given by our consulting traffic engineer, Mr. Bryan Stevenson. With that said, I'll now turn it over to Mr. Stevenson. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair and commissioners. Can we go to the next slide, please? This isn't working. Thank you. The first intersection that we're going to discuss for the installation of an always stop is at the intersection of Los Alamos Road and Mason Avenue. Staff had a resident contact us with a concern with limited sight distance at the intersection. The road in this area is a two-lane, rural-type road with a posted speed limit of 45 miles an hour, and there's a few curves in the road. Next slide please. As a refresher for the installation of always stops we're required to follow the California manual on uniform traffic control devices referred to as the me tcd. This is a roughly 1600 page document that outlines when you can and cannot install always stops traffic signals how to install traffic control devices and other traffic related items. For always stops, the primary warrants are minimum volumes. The volumes that are required for the warrant are 300 vehicles an hour for eight hours of a day on the mainline road, 200 vehicles an hour for those same eight hours of the day on the side street. So the volumes on Los Alamos do not meet the volume warrants, primarily because the volume on the side street, Mason Avenue, does not have 200 vehicles an hour for the total day, and you need that for eight hours of a day. The accident or collision history requirement is that you have five collisions of type susceptible to correction by an always stop that occurred over a 12-month period. We ran the accident history from the police department, and there were zero reported accidents at the intersection over the last five years. I'm sorry, over the last 10 years. However, there are a number of accidents that occurred along Los Alamos Road, just not at the intersection. Mainly at the curbs, there's vehicles driving off the curbs, not negotiating the curbs. And then the last primary warrant is sight distance constraints. For the speed limit of the road, there's a requirement that somebody turning onto the road from the side street can see a certain distance to the left and to the right when they're trying to enter the road and enter into traffic safely. And that's the primary reason that we're going to be recommending an always stop here is there's limited sight distance. Next slide, please. So we conducted site distance measurements back in 2019 with another request, and it was our determination that we thought that we could trim down some of the shrubbery there and improve the site distance so that it would meet the minimum requirements for people turning onto Los Alamos Road. We determined that at that time it was below the requirement, but if we maintained the trimming, that it would suffice. So over the years, it's been hard to maintain that. Plus, there's also some utility poles in the line of sight, which we have a couple pictures of. Next slide, please. So this is looking to, you're sitting on Mason Road, stopped, looking to the west on Los Alamos Road. This is looking to the left. In the distance, you can see a car approaching. It looks like a black or dark blue vehicle. That meets the minimum sight distance. The minimum sight distance requirement for 45 miles an hour is to be able to see 495 feet in either direction for an approaching vehicle. So we meet the sight distance looking to the left or the west here. So next slide, please. Looking to the east, we're limited by that curve, and there's a power pole on the curve. We were able to trim back some of the landscaping and shrubbery there, so you can see how that's a little bit lower, but it's still difficult to see a vehicle when they come around that corner with the utility pole. The measured sight distance at this location was 315 feet, and the requirement's 495 feet, so we're a little short of that. It is a slower, it's recommended to go 25 miles an hour around that curve, because it is a pretty sharp curve, so you wouldn't anticipate somebody coming around 45 miles an hour, but someone could potentially be driving that fast around the road. Next slide, please. So our recommendation, based on the limited sight distance and the warrant being met in the MUTCD, is to install an all-way stop control at the intersection of Los Alamos Road and Mason Avenue. And this is the work order that we would prepare to install the all-way stop. In advance of the always stop, just because it's a little bit more rural character out here, we want to be able to notify people approaching the intersection of the always stop. So it's not always a requirement to have the stop ahead sign or the stop ahead pavement marking legends. But we're proposing to put in the stop ahead pavement marking legends, stop ahead signs, and then a solar powered flashing beacon on the intersection. stop ahead signs as well as at the stop signs here just because it's a at nighttime it's dark there aren't many street lights along the road if if at all in this location I believe there's one right at the intersection but when you approach it there are not so we would recommend the led advance yellow flashing beacons in advance and then the red ones at the always stop that concludes the staff report happy to answer any questions the commission may have

Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you, first and foremost, for this project that you guys put together. The only question that I have is I noticed that there's a difference in cost between the two projects. Is that because these are new items that you're being installed rather than replacing the signage?

The solar-powered flashing beacons are proposed for this installation, but not the next installation. So the cost for this location would be higher.

Thank you. And is the city still maintaining those bushes or are they not doing that anymore?

We will still maintain it just to keep the site distance, just to have the best available site distance. It's just not happening. Sometimes shrubbery grows faster than you can control it. It's a big city that is maintained. And we want them to get out there as much and as often as possible. But just in the event that they aren't out there, we feel like the always stop would correct this issue.

No further questions. Thank you.

I think we're, I don't have any questions. Thank you for the presentation, and you answered my question ahead. I was gonna ask about the lights on the signs, because it does look kind of dark there, but it's all good. Are there any public comments regarding this session?

I'd like to call Courtney Shoemaker to come make some comments. You have three minutes. Thank you.

Do I have to do something?

Thank you for having me. My name is Courtney Schumacher. I'm speaking tonight for my husband who couldn't attend due to uncontrolled nerve pain. We have lived near this corner for 12 years. We were fortunate enough to have a nonprofit build us a fully adaptable home after his catastrophic injuries suffered in Afghanistan. For the last seven years, my husband and I have advocated for one thing, a stop sign at this intersection. It creates a pause by giving drivers a moment to slow down look, and react. The existing measures were granted after our pleas, which were rumble strips and warning signs, but they haven't solved the problem. The rumble strips have worn down and the signs themselves have been hit. In fact, the speed limit was actually raised from 40 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour. At this intersection, drivers don't slow down in time, and as a result, we've had to repair our fence multiple times. This isn't about us fixing fences. We've got cows, so that's part of normal life. This is about the shaken up drivers that all of us neighbors have rushed to support and comfort until first responders arrive. It's also extremely difficult and dangerous to pull out of this intersection. There is limited visibility, high speeds, and no natural pause in traffic. The intersection is also dangerous for the regular horse traffic in this area, putting both riders and animals at risk. In addition, when Clinton Keith was extended to relieve congestion on Los Alamos, it helped temporarily, but that road is now heavily impacted as well As a result, more drivers are once again using Los Alamos as a cut-through. We could have had our home built anywhere, but we chose Murrieta, California because of its remarkable reputation and commitment to families. This request reflects that same commitment. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Chair Valdez, that concludes public comments.

Thank you. Commissioner's comments, discussion?

How hard is it to change the speed limit on that street?

That, it's not easy. The speed limits are set based on requirements of the state, of the California Vehicle Code, and then the MUTCD. So they're set based on the 85th percentile speed. So if we want an enforceable speed limit out there, it has to be set by radar and to the closest five mile an hour increment of the 85th percentile speed. And then there's other reductions you can do by five miles an hour if it's a safety corridor, if certain conditions exist. So when we last updated the speed ordinance for this location, for it to be enforceable, it had to be increased from 40 to 45 miles an hour. We look at the speed limits every probably two years. We can't do them all at once because there's probably 130 of them throughout the city. It's a large effort. It has to go to council twice to get approved. And then I believe the next update that we will be doing will probably be fall of 2027.

I noticed that when you did those lights on Whitewood, that it caused people to slow down. Could we do something like, you know, the ones you have that were flashing, you're doing this speed limit, and it caused people to stop and slow down. It really did a number. I don't even know if they're still up or not, but people did have a tendency to slow down on that street. Could we do something like that there that would cause people to slow down? One night I went down that street, and it was like, I don't go down that way, so it was new to me. Well, not new, new, but I don't go down there very often. And it's kind of dark. There's not a whole lot of lights. But I thought it would be nice if we had those flashing lights telling them what they're doing, this feeling. Maybe that might slow them down some, you know?

Yeah, so we have radar feedback signs in the city. We have permanent installations by a few of the schools, and then we have temporary installations. The city has five temporary radar signs that, based on resident requests, we take them and place them on streetlight poles throughout the city as needed. Yesterday, we spoke with a resident who had requested that we install the ones on Whitewood five years ago or so, They were removed to place them elsewhere, and he wanted them back. So we spoke with him, and they're going to be next in the rotation to put them back there. Yes, we can place them on Los Alamos Road if there's a place that we can attach them to. So there has to be a street light for us to bolt it to. So we would have to look for a good location. I don't think we have a temporary way to do it, but we can look into that a little bit further. But they are nice in that they alert the driver to their speed. And we can also control that. We can collect data from those and send the police department enforcement team out there when we realize if people are speeding. It pinpoints it down to the 15 minutes that they're speeding the most. So it's helpful for us for enforcement, too.

They're very educational.

Very educational. Those are good questions.

Thank you.

Thank you. I don't have any questions. Good presentation. There's no more Commissioner comments. I'll call for a motion and a second.

Just to reiterate, whoever makes the motion, if you could repeat the recommendation that's before you on the screen, that would be great.

Okay, motion to install an all-way stop control at the intersection of Los Alamos and Mason Avenue. Okay, Commissioner Chavez has made the motion. Commissioner Burcharts has seconded the motion.

Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, staff, may we have a staff report for a second item? Poinsettia Street, and that's the Sherwin Lane intersection.

Perfect, great, thank you. So this other location is right adjacent to Oak Meadows Elementary School. Oak Meadows Elementary School is a Menifee Union School District school in the city of Murrieta. This is in the Mapleton area. It's patrolled by the City of Murrieta's traffic enforcement team too, so we've gone out here a couple times and done some improvements. The principal of Oak Meadows contacted us and asked us if we could consider installing an all-way stop at Poinsettia and Nasturtium, which is just opposite their driveway in that circled area. So we went out and performed counts and the analysis, and I will go over those results. So if we could do next slide, please. Again, the warrants are based off of the California MUTCD, either on volumes, accident history, or site distance. There's also options to install an always stop when you need to control left turn conflicts, or when there's two residential streets of similar design and operating characteristics, such as volumes, or site distance constraints. or where there's pedestrian or bicyclist movements that support the installation of an all-way stop. Next slide, please. So we had our sub-consultant perform traffic counts at the intersection, collected the data out there, and this is a school crossing, so there's a crossing guard out there. There were a number of school-age children crossing there that were counted. So during the morning peak hour, which I believe was 7.15 to 8.15, there were 160 pedestrians that crossed that location during that peak hour. on the east crosswalk of Poinsettia. And then during the afternoon peak hour, it was 99 pedestrians. So what we're recommending is, I'm sorry, next slide, please. Based on that high number of pedestrians there and the need to control the traffic at that intersection to assist with the crossing guard there, we're recommending an installation of an all-way stop here at the intersection of Poinsettia Street and Nasturtium Lane. We feel like It would assist the crossing guard there, and that is a pretty high number of pedestrians crossing there. Something to point out to you, you can't really tell by this aerial. This is the latest aerial we could find. But the city recently updated as part of the annual, every year, every two years, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Project. We upgrade 40 pedestrian ramps every year, every couple of years. and this was one of those locations. So there's new ADA ped ramps at the intersection, which will go hand in hand with this all-way stop. So this location we're recommending the all-way stop with the advanced signage and pavement markings, but not the LED flashing beacons because there's adequate street lighting on the street. And that concludes my presentation.

I have a couple comments. I live right across the street. I live on Bovardia Way.

Did I pronounce Nasturtium right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. So I live on the other side of Keller. I'm real familiar with this area. My kids went to that school. So I've seen the improvements over the years. My question is, by installing these signs, will the school still have the crossing guards, or is that going away?

No, they will still have the crossing guard. It's my understanding they'll still have the crossing guard. They have not said otherwise.

Okay, yeah, because I know that there's a high volume of traffic through there, especially during school. During the summertime, like right now, there's hardly any traffic going through there, except for the residents. But that would be my fear, is that if you install these, the school will kind of pull back on having the crossing guards, and they're very, very... It's very essential for them to be there, I feel, because of the safety of the kids, everybody crossing the street there. I've seen a big amount of near misses because they're not paying attention or whatever, but that was my only question, is that they would still maintain the crossing guards there during the school time.

So I'll relay that concern to the principal, and then there was also a district representative on the emails, and I will get confirmation that they don't plan on removing the crossing guard. I'm not sure of the reason, but occasionally patterns at schools change. They change the way loops work around the schools. They might say, have one part of the loop be the entrance, this part be the exit, then they might reverse them. This is the entrance, this is the exit. There's a school crossing just to the west of here at Gladiolus. I'm sorry, what's the, there's an always stop just to the west of here too. No, it doesn't have anything to do with that. It's just, like, we still want to control our streets and make sure they're as safe as possible.

I think the amount of enrollees has increased over the years also. I've lived in that area for 13 years, so I've definitely seen the increase, traffic and pedestrians. I think this would be a good addition. And you're right. I don't think that they don't need the flashing lights like they did on Whitewood on the other side. On the other side of Poinsettia and Whitewood where they installed those flashing. That was a good installation there, actually, in my opinion, because there was a lot of near misses and accidents, I think. So that's all I got.

Yeah, again, thank you again for this presentation here. I agree. I live across from the school as well. So this is absolutely imperative. The only question I have, and you may not have an answer to this, is it a crossing guard contract that Menifee, this Menifee school district has, or is it just staff that's being the crossing guards?

I can only speak to the Murrieta Valley Unified School District. I know how that one functions. I'm not sure how the Menifee School District works. But with Murrieta Valley, for instance, they're separate crossing guards. It's not staff.

Thank you.

Okay, I think we're good with the comments in our discussion. Call for a motion and a second. Call for a second, motion and second on the agenda item for Poinsettia and that Nass to Radium Lane intersection modifications. I'm sorry.

Do you have to ask for about public comments?

We've done that part. Oh, you know what? Yeah. Are there any public comments regarding this discussion item? I'm sorry.

We do not have any public comments.

Okay.

Chair Valdez, that concludes public comments.

Okay, thank you. Okay, now I'll call for a motion and a second on the Poinsettia and Netserium Lane intersection modification, please. Okay, I have a motion, Commissioner Borcherts, and second by Commissioner Chavez. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Commissioner member comments. Now is the time for any commissioner to provide their comments. We will start with Commissioner Chavez.

At this time, I don't have any comments. Thank you. Commissioner Burchards.

Commissioner Burchards.

I do. On the corner of Rockcrest and Daphne, there are no crossing lines there. The kids use that. They go down Rockcrest or go down Daphne. There should be like those yellow lines there, but I've counted, this is no joke, I sat there one morning at 6.30 and counted 35 cars that didn't even stop at the stop sign. I don't know if you remember when that went in, that four-way stop sign went in, but I'm the one who asked for it. Now I'm asking you guys to put crossing guard lines across so that kids will feel safer, maybe people will stop more. But I don't know, what do I have to do to help those kids?

We would have to take a look and just make sure that the ramps meet current ADA accessibility. When we start upgrading locations like that, then it requires the ADA upgrade, so we might have to upgrade the ramps. I'm not remembering if they meet ADA or not. But we could certainly, there's no reason that we could not add striped crosswalks there. They can't be yellow, they'd have to be white. They'd have to be yellow within a certain distance of the school.

Long Beach has these really cool things that they put in the street for the schools. And they flip up so that if a car goes too fast, it stops, the car feels a bump and knows that it went too fast over a speed bump or something. My nephew is a police officer with Long Beach, and he was telling me all about it, and I was like, give me the information. I want to stop these poor kids. You know, there's been so many misses, real bad misses, that I've watched a couple accidents happen there. You know, people are not slowing down, and kids cross that street continuously. So it's just scary. But anyway, thank you.

If you find that information on what those are, I would love to see that.

Will he's gonna send it to me. Thank you.

Thank you One other comment is there is there a Schedule that the city has for the stoplights as far as recalibrating At any time or

There's not a schedule, but what the city does is for the intersections that we have that are running in coordinated plans, which are typically Myrna Hot Springs Road, Clinton Keith Road, California Oaks Road, and Los Alamos Road, we usually do one of those a year. So we just did Los Alamos Road, and our next plan is to do Myrna Hot Springs Road. The reason for that is the 900... Apartments that are opening in the terraces that just put in a new signal on Mirion Hot Springs Road the widening of Clinton Keith I'm sorry Mirion Hot Springs. It's going on right now We figured we're probably gonna need some new timing plans there because there's also another signal going in down there and then after that would be Probably Clinton Keith again, and then Cal Oaks. Cal Oaks has been running pretty well for us. We've observed, and there haven't been any new large developments that have gone in along there. So usually when a new large development goes in, it changes traffic patterns a little bit, so we do the counts and then the updated timing. The rest of the signals in the city that aren't along one of the main arterials are running freely, and that's based off of the car arriving at the intersection, driving over a looped sensor that's in the pavement, and then the signal will adjust when the timing's available.

Okay. Yeah, the particular intersection I'm asking is because of the apartments that just went in off of Whitewood and Clinton Keith. No, not Clinton Keith. No, it's right by the high school.

Errant Lane? So there were the apartments on the southeast corner that just went in at Whitewood and Clinton-Keith in the southeast. Clinton-Keith, yes. So there's Errant Lane. They put in a traffic signal there just to the east. Yeah, that was the last one. We did that a couple years ago and saw some great reductions in travel time along there. It's a heavily congested road like near to Hot Springs Road. So that's probably the next planned retiming of that is probably two or three years out.

Yeah, they added some lanes on Whitewood, not Clinton-Keith. So after Clinton-Keith opened up through all the way out to Winchester Road, they did it, and I think that was a couple years ago. But now that those apartments are coming up, they redid Whitewood with a couple more turning lanes now. So that was my question.

So when that happened, that put in the dual lefts, northbound to westbound Clinton-Keith. We did update the timing there and just matched the coordination timing. The signals are in coordination all the way to Cal Oaks. So you change one, you have to change them all. So we kept the timing at those intersections and then adjusted the timing at the intersection of Clinton-Keith and Whitewood.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I got. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the briefs and that information. Okay. Anybody else have anything? Okay. Without any further business, this meeting is now adjourned. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody.