Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is the third meeting for the Porter Road Traffic Calming Project. My name is Jeff Hammond. I am a consultant working for the Nashville Department of Transportation. And we'll go ahead and get started here. We're going to have a little bit of an abbreviated meeting tonight because we have covered a lot of this material in the previous two meetings. One of those, you may recall, was a joint meeting with the Greenwood Project. So tonight we'll bring you up to speed on where we are with the final design and what our next steps are as always we encourage you to use the participant participation tools at engage.nashville.gov you can find porter road project as well as a couple of others many others actually there in that clearinghouse called engage nashville so hope you'll make use of that if you desire And as I mentioned, we will just go through the final design concept as it stands today and then talk about the next steps for the project. As you will recall, a little bit of information here about the process, how Porter Road got selected for traffic calming. We use this scoring system that makes use of data that we collect on the street. So about 70% of the score comes from the amount of traffic on the street as well as the speed that that traffic is traveling. And then the other 30% has to do with some of the other aspects, particularly in the case of Porter Road, some of the pedestrian-oriented features of the street. We know this is a highly walkable area of East Nashville, and you all like it that way, and we like it that way, and it's a wonderful neighborhood. And so all of that scoring system rolls, all the scoring points roll together and helping the prioritization process for this program. A little bit of information specific to Porter was shown here. We have a prevailing speed of 37 miles per hour, and then the volume has been a topic of conversation in the previous two meetings. We are just a hair under the threshold at which we look at traffic calming in the form of speed cushions. Our threshold for that is about 5000 cars a day, and we are sitting just below that. But as has been pointed out, there's some development redevelopment projects that may be coming in some of the things we've certainly taken that into consideration. Street with we've talked about the link to the project is about half a mile long and this is the project shown on a on a map. This is, um, you might remember an interactive map that is available at the end traffic calming website. And the red lines just indicate that we are still in the in the design and public input process. The purple lines indicate streets that have been applied for, but are not are not in the program as of today. So you may find that useful at the website. get into uh straight away where we stand with the project this was the this was the concept that we showed at the second meeting the first meeting uh we we showed more of a a traditional um speed cushion based project we got a lot of feedback saying you know we're not sure porter is the type of road for that it is a fairly heavy volume by our standards for traffic calming as we just talked about And also there were some other concerns about more about the crosswalk locations and some of the things that we should take a look at. We have done that and we did that for the 2nd meeting and we came up with this concept that had a really a kind of a choke point at each of those crosswalk locations. And so we've expounded on that a little bit. We also had some radar feedback signs. You see those there with those a little. But diamonds with an R in them, but even since then, we've gone back and we've added 1 more feature and you see that on this slide. This is the current design is our concept as we have moved into our final design. And what we are proposing is no speed cushions on quarter road. And instead we will go back with a 1 foot buffer that would narrow the travel lanes to. Uh, 9 and a half or 10 feet wide. We know it's a transit route and so we have to take that into consideration. The lanes currently are 11 feet. So you may notice a slight narrowing there. We hope you do. We hope we hope it slows drivers down, but not so narrow that you have to yield to each other or anything like that. Um, operations on the street will continue much as they are today. Just with a little bit of additional pain on the road and the presence of those delineators, which we hope will really reinforce. The fact that these are critical areas, these crosswalk locations, but we heard a lot of feedback, particularly at the Franklin Avenue crosswalk. There's the Montessori school there. There are the businesses there, the coffee shops, and those types of things that have generated a lot of pedestrian activity at that 1 little node. And we took that into account and we appreciated that feedback. And so we have gone one step further to implement a pedestrian push button activated flashing sign that would go there. You've probably seen these around. We call them rapid flash beacons. They strobe. They don't just flash like the old circular bulbs used to. This is a LED kind of a strobe light activated. Sign it doesn't go all the time. It only goes when when that push button is is pushed. So that would be just at the Franklin Avenue location. The Benjamin street crosswalk will be like, it is today with the addition of the, um, the markings that we have there, uh, today. Also, we have, we still have the radar feedback signs planned about midway in the corridor just to reinforce and remind people the speed that they are traveling at. And so that would be part of the plan as well. Let me stop there. I know a couple of people have joined if there's any, if there's any comment on any of that, or if you'd like to see more details, I have the, the full design plans here. We can, we can step through if needed.

We like what you're putting down Jeff.

Okay, great.

Well, I hope we have been, um. Responsive to the feedback, I feel like we've had 3 really good meetings and really good feedback. And so we appreciate the neighbors really joining in on that. I think it'll be a good project. I think we'll get good results from it and we'll, we'll continue to monitor it as we do all of our streets. And, uh, and I'm always glad to have feedback even after it's implemented. Let me just let me just show these plans just so, um, you'll you may be familiar with them. These will go on the website. And so anybody who wants more detail in the days ahead, as we, um, lead up towards implementation of the project can have this. Um, this is just an overview slide here. These are a little technical because this is these are actually the plans that we will give to a contractor to install. So, you see here the Franklin Avenue intersection with the rapid flash beacons, a little bit of the detail on the striping. The radar feedback signs are given in a lot of detail, so you can see exactly where we're proposing that those signs go, referenced usually off of people's driveways. We try to keep those at property lines and try to make them as unobtrusive as we can, kind of blend in, but Uh, 1 of the main things we're looking for there is good South facing solar. So we don't have those things going dead all the time. So we design them accordingly. And then there's the Tillman lane, uh, or the Benjamin intersection there with the buffer. Just and then finally, just some details in installation details on the rapid flash signs. Um, let me talk a little bit here before we, we sign off on the, um. The next steps, because it is a little bit different when we had the 1st, 2 meetings, we talked to some about the online ballot process. Of course, we're in a 3rd meeting, which doesn't even show up on our sketch, but typically we would, we would go from tonight straight into the ballot process because the design plans are already done in this case. So we were a little bit longer getting back to you for this 3rd meeting, but we're going to make up for it here. We don't have any more design work to do. Um, in this case, I think we can make up even more. Um, we, we typically ballot when there is a speed cushions or something vertical involved the traffic circle or speed cushions or something like that that that we know there can be differences of opinion on. When we don't have that as we don't hear, there's really, there's really no need to ballot that. And so we were proposing just moving straight in to having the project go straight into the, um, the construction queue. We'll have the design plans. Uh, within dot, and they will get those to the contractor. It still won't be immediate by any means. It'll still await its turn, but that'll cut off a couple of months of of, uh, Tom that we would normally ballot. Uh, we also are assured of the outcome since there is no ballot. We will just move forward with implementation of the plan that you just saw. So that's our. That's our stance on this. There's because there's really no, no speed cushions. We don't ballot these projects. I think with that, that's all the information I have. There's our contact again. Always continue glad to hear from you and continue to participate in that engage page. Any, any final comments and it was a short meeting, but. I hope you don't mind that.

Hey, Jeff, thanks so much for sharing. You mentioned a potentially shorter timeline for implementation. What does the timeline look like for the construction with the proposed changes?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, this one's different in a couple of ways. Obviously, we don't have the ballot, but we also, in this case, I'm pretty sure I'm right in this, that the improvements that we are proposing In theory could be done in house by in dot cruise. That's different than someone having to order the materials and be on a contract to go out and install them. This is striping. It's the installation of delineators and it's the installation of those radar feedback signs. All of which can do in house. That's a good thing. Um, I think at that point now we have the option to, we can still go out to a contractor to do it, but if in dot crews can work that in, uh, that could substantially quicken this. I don't have that. I don't have that timeframe for you. I can say typically after the ballot, if it were to pass, it would go into the construction queue. And as you see here, it's still a substantial amount of time. I don't. Even that has gotten a lot shorter. We're hearing of projects that are being installed within probably four to six months from the ballot. I would guess this one could be at least that quick, if not quicker. Unfortunately, I don't have a real solid timeframe on that.

Got it. It sounds like we could see some construction potentially before the end of this year if that timeline were a little sooner than what's on this schedule.

I think that's very reasonable.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

Anything else?

Again, we appreciate working with you guys on on Porter and surrounding streets. Uh, this will be a very successful, um, project and I hope it hope it meets your, uh, your expectations for what you wanted to see and will be an asset to again this wonderful street of East Nashville.

So, with that, we'll say, thank you very much and, uh, we'll sign off and, uh, hope to be in touch soon.

Thanks again.

All right, thank you all. Thank you.