Board of Public Utilities - Regular Meeting

Riverside Board of Transportation Commission meeting will now begin. Call to order.

Roll call. Board Member Corey. Present. Thank you. Board Member Joseph. Board Member Karen. Here. Board Member Ignacio.

Present.

Board Member Cynthia. Present. Board Member Oscar.

Present.

Vice Chair Tyler. Thank you. And Chair John? Not here. Thank you.

Does it come on automatically?

OK. We will now have the statement of inclusion and decorum.

Pursuant to the City Council rules of procedure and order of business resolution, the members of all Boards and Commissions and the public are reminded that they must preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting. In that regard, members of the Boards and Commissions and the public are advised that any delay or disruption in the proceedings or a refusal to obey the orders of the Board or Commission or the Presiding Officer constitutes a violation of these rules. The City of Riverside is committed to fostering a workplace that provides dignity, respect, and civility to our employees, customers, and the public they serve.

We would now be having the election of officers, but it has been decided we will put that off for another week so we have a full board in order to give everybody a chance to participate. We'll now move on to the presentation of the MATE report, the quarterly oral update.

Actually, there's the public comment first. Yeah. Number three.

Audience participation is encouraged. Public comments are limited to three minutes. To comment on any matters within the jurisdiction of the Transportation Board, you are invited to participate via telephone at 951-826-8688. and Intermediate ID 92696991265. Press star 9 to be placed in the queue to speak. Individuals in the queue will be prompted to unmute by pressing star 6 when you are ready to speak.

There's no callers in the queue.

I'm sorry, what? There's no one on the phone right now. Okay. I would now go on to the minutes of March 4th.

Yeah, I make a motion that we approve the minutes of March 4th.

I second.

Go ahead and vote. Now we move on to the presentation, the quarterly oral update of the MATE report.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Lieutenant Chad Chinchilla with Riverside Police Department. I am the Traffic Bureau Manager. I'll be providing the update tonight. This will be very brief since it's just covering the first quarter of the year, and I have some good news to share with you. As of May 26th, so just last week, we are only at two fatal collisions since the beginning of the year. Just for comparison, we had eight last year during this exact same time period. So a significant reduction so far this year in the number of fatal collisions. Interestingly, the two collisions that did occur are not related to the actual drivers. One driver appears to have suffered a medical emergency, and another, the second incident involved a pedestrian stepping out in front of a driver who was otherwise operating the vehicle. lawfully on the street. So kind of interesting that so far there's been nothing that's related to the driver's actions in either of these two incidents since the beginning of the year. But again, very favorable numbers. Obviously two is too many. We don't want to see that. But to see that significant of a reduction so far this year is very good and promising and we hope that it stays that way And just one other thing to point out with our actual MATE team, as you know, they do some additional work as well when they're not responding necessarily to fatal collisions. So they have been called out on two additional incidents as well throughout the beginning of the year. One was to a serious collision that occurred over on Magnolia and Tyler back on March 28th involving a motorcyclist who went down. And another incident was on May 24th where they responded to assist our homicide unit with an incident that occurred over off of Franklin Avenue on the 3500 block, which involves a vehicle that was used as a weapon, is my understanding, for that incident. And so in those instances, they are called out to assist with their expertise on collision reconstruction for court and prosecution purposes. Okay. So that is the update so far. Again, like I said, it was very short, fortunately, because I did not have a lot of incidents that I needed to cover. So we are hoping that it stays that way throughout the rest of the year. If there's any questions, I'll... I'd be happy to answer that for you guys. Yes, sir.

Thank you for the report. I'm glad to hear that we're in a good path. The pedestrian that stepped into the road, most likely, do you remember or have any information of what happened? What was the reason that...

I'm not sure we know the reason. I did review the report, and it appears that this individual was along the sidewalk and entered the roadway as the driver was coming down the road. The driver changed lanes in order to avoid this driver, and the pedestrian turned and went into the lane that the driver had maneuvered into to avoid him. I see. And so the primary collision factor on that was found to be... in in favor of the driver because it was the pedestrian's fault for not yielding to the vehicle uh with without giving significant um time for the driver to stop yeah and so uh i don't know that we know the the reason why it happened necessarily but uh the actions were um those were the actions that took place that led to the uh the collision does the report indicate was at the at the intersection or was it the mid street I believe it was near an intersection. I don't think it was actually in the intersection itself. This one was over off of, let me see if it describes it exactly. I don't think it was like in a crosswalk or anything.

Yes. The reason that I'm questioning this is because I have been observing a lot of homeless that may appear either under mental health issues or maybe intoxicated that just out of the blue, just start crossing avenues, like the Tyler area and some other avenues that are four lanes. And it's very disconcerting because the drivers are not expecting a pedestrian crossing without any warning. So that's why I was curious about this.

Yeah, I'm not sure we had the details necessarily. Obviously, we were not able to ask this person why they did what they did, and we had to base it off of just the statements of the driver and other evidence at the scene. Any other questions that I can answer? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for providing the report.

Thank you.

So I'm going to move into the discussion. We will move into our discussion on Linden Street Restriping Project. Audience participation is encouraged. It does not appear we have any audience, so we will just move into the discussion.

Good evening, Transportation Board. I'm happy to present tonight the next item, Linden Street Restriping Project. So just some background information. Linden Street, the segment we're talking about today, is between Chicago Avenue and Iowa Avenue. It's a four-lane roadway in the east-west direction. Two eastbound lanes, two westbound lanes separated by a double yellow stripe. it's 64 feet in width curb to curb it's got bicycle lanes on the south side and a small segment on the north side and there's a student loading zone near john w north high school so this this project also includes a resurfacing component and that project is already funded through the 2526 community development block grant funds and what we're proposing is At the same time, we resurface and provide a fresh new coat of asphalt. We would take this opportunity to modify the striping to provide one lane in each direction, plus a two-way left turn lane, bike lanes, and an enhanced loading zone by the high schools. So for the background, the general plan also identifies this segment as a two-lane collector, even though the configuration it is today matches the characteristics of a four-lane arterial. And this is a clip of our circulation element. The streets on either side of Linden are both two-lane collectors or local roadways. So it goes basically two-lane to four-lane to two-lane again. So part of the reason for this project is to match consistency with the current general plan, which it designates this road as a two-lane collector. This is another aerial to get your bearings on where this is in the city. It's in Ward 2, northern part of the city. There's John W. North High School to the north side. There's... commercial warehouse buildings kind of in this vicinity and residential apartments to the east and the west of this vicinity. And prior to this meeting, we sent out mailers to all the businesses and residences within a 300 foot radius of the project to notify them and invite any feedback on this project. So far, we've received no comments back. This is a picture of the existing conditions with the two lanes in each direction, the double yellow stripe in the center. The bike lane is on the right-hand side, and there's an unmarked loading zone on the left side. That's the school. This is facing eastbound. And I wanted to mention that this roadway was considered for repaving in a prior fiscal year. And we put that on hold because we received a grant through the Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities grant to install a two-way cycle track on Linden here. And that was going to be proposed on the south side, which is the right side of the street. on this picture and the intent was to serve UCR students and the high school students and give them a two-way cycle track that's separated from traffic however when we further analyzed it there's a lot of driveways on the south side that kind of they're so frequent it kind of negates the benefit of having separate a bike lane because you're gonna have to have so many breaks in between it to accommodate the cars going in the driveways and we thought about putting it on the north side by the high school but that's also heavily used as a loading zone and we didn't want to introduce that conflict so at this time it's kind of been We haven't moved forward with the paving for these reasons, but now that we have it scheduled for paving, we have this opportunity to kind of make this proposal happen. So here is the comparison between the existing and proposed cross sections. To the bottom left is how it is today with the two through lanes in each direction, the loading zone and the bike lane. And the top right is what the proposed configuration would be with the painted two-way left turn lane. That is delineated by broken yellow stripes so cars can enter into that refuge area. and stop and yield the traffic before making left turns, whereas in the condition today, they kind of have to stop in the middle of a through lane and yield the cars before they can make a left turn across two lanes of traffic. So we wanted to analyze the collision data on this road and collisions are occurring at a higher rate than normal typical four lane undivided urban arterials. There were 36 collisions over the past five years and They were mostly attributed to improper turning and speeding. The speed limit is 40 miles an hour on this road, and auto right-of-way validation, that's when a vehicle is not yielding properly. So one of the reasons for this proposed change is to reduce the number of conflict points. And that happens when you reduce the number of through lanes and add a two-way left turn lane. Here's a picture of what the conflict points are with the four-lane undivided versus a three-lane roadway. There's just fewer opportunities for collisions to occur because you're just reducing the number of conflict points. So separating the left turns, getting out of the through traffic, and it also provides a wider buffer space between vehicular traffic and pedestrians, and generally kind of spreads out the traffic more. We also, since we're reducing a travel lane, we wanted to analyze what the impacts would be from a level of service point of view. Level of service is how we kind of measure how congested a roadway is, and it's on a grading scale like A through F, just like how you would think in school. A is really good. F is failing. It's like severe congestion. And so we measure... our roadways based on taking counts. And we found that even today, and today it operates at a level of service A, the four-lane arterial is plenty of capacity for the amount of traffic it gets. Around 6,000 vehicles per day is fairly low compared to other four-lane arterials in the city. And so even reducing that from a four-lane to a two-lane Still reduces the vehicular capacity, but even with that, we're still able to achieve a level of service of A. So there are obviously some pros and cons with this project. The advantages are consistency with the general plan, the operational and safety benefits I discussed. We're also able to add a school loading zone. Staff met in the field with Riverside Unified School District to observe traffic and talk about what the proposed projects, what we had in mind. And initially, they're still looking at it, and part of this action is to continue with that conversation with the school. We want to make sure that the school is supportive of whatever changes we want to make out there, you know, So one of the benefits would be adding a striped school loading zone next to the bike lane. And the school seemed supportive of that at the time. And we also want to encourage active transportation to be consistent with the city's active transportation goals. The disadvantage is that we are reducing roadway capacity. So So it still falls within the level of service A, but we are taking away a through lane. So the recommendation is that the Transportation Board direct staff to conduct further community engagement for the potential pilot project that would convert Linden Street to a two-lane roadway and also to recommend that the mobility and infrastructure We bring the findings to the Mobility and Infrastructure Committee. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Yes?

I have a question about the bike lane. The existing bike lane is on the one side. Is that right?

Yeah, for the most part, it's on the south side. It's on the south side. There is a segment to the north closer to Iowa, which is to the east end of the project, and it just kind of stops and doesn't continue.

Yeah, it's inconsistent. Yes, I do like this, and I am in support of this. I have a general question, mostly because of my ignorance. The bike lanes are used in both directions? Typically, yes. Even if you have on both sides of the road the bike lanes?

That's typically what, not necessarily in every case, there might be reasons why there's a bike lane just in one direction. But generally, we want to design our roads to have bike lanes in both directions.

What I mean is that you can have a bicyclist coming and another one going in the same lane.

Yeah. So they are like cars. Yeah.

All right. They will follow the road rules for biking.

Yeah. Bicyclists should follow the same rules as a vehicle. Yeah. In some areas without a striped bike lane, they can take up a full lane of traffic. They should be going in the same direction as vehicular traffic.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. And there are certain situations... On Watkins by UCR, we have a two-way cycle track where it's separated from the roadway and bicycles are able to go in two directions, kind of opposite traffic.

I think you're asking if the bicycles can go in either direction on the bike lane.

In the single bike lane?

In the single bike lane, the answer is no. They're unidirectional only, so the bikes go in the same direction as the vehicles. If we're talking about a two-way bicycle operation, it would be wider. It's the one that Brett was referring to along Watkins. That's called a cycle track where you can do either direction. Markings. Correct. Yeah, the proposal for Linden on this particular project, There's a single bike lane in each direction, and there's only one way that the bicyclists are supposed to go.

Okay, so both sides. Yeah. I've noticed that with the increase of scooters, that some scooters are both in the bike lane and on the regular road, and as well as the sidewalks. Who enforces the behavior of these riders in the sidewalk? Or is it not part of the transportation? Because it's in the sidewalk.

Scooters, like electric scooters, are... becoming much more popular much more yeah you see them everywhere Honestly.

Yeah, for micro-mobility transportation modes, such as scooters, we treat them like bicycles. They can go in the bike lane legally. They're not allowed on the sidewalks. They're just like the bikes. They're not allowed on the sidewalks, at least for our city. And it's the police department that enforces it.

Enforces that dismount if they are walking there.

Correct.

Thank you. That's all.

I think I have my microphone on now. Yeah, I strongly support this, but I do think it's important that you meet with RUSD and the businesses in the area that are going to be affected, because if you're making it one lane or whatever, cutting down the lanes, you know, who knows what's going to happen. I go by there. I use some of those businesses myself. It's hard sometimes to cross in or get out. With the school there, too, it's really hard. So I do make a motion to approve this, to keep on meeting with them and come to some kind of agreement on whether they want this or not. I mean, I think it will help. I'll keep the kids safe for sure, hopefully, with the restriping and those crossings. So I do make a motion to support this recommendation.

And unless any of my other colleagues have comments, I would also second that and call it to a vote as well.

Go ahead and vote. All right. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Okay. So now we get the city council's actions on traffic engineering related items.

I only have one item to discuss for this agenda. As you recall, back in March of this year, we had a consultant present the citywide speed limit reduction project that has advanced to city council in May. um there were two may city council meetings one was to introduce the ordinance and then the second one was to adopt the ordinance and both of those were approved and so we now have New speed limits pretty much citywide. We're going to change about 20% of those speed limits that are considered in the safety corridors. Those are the roadway segments with high speeding collisions. We're going to lower them either 5 miles an hour and in some instances 10 miles an hour. And then along with that project, we also established 36 new roadways that didn't originally have speed limits. Now we're going to install speed limits out there. So you guys are going to see some changes out there. And then I recall there was some comments about a public messaging campaign. So we're working on that with our marketing team. We're going to, once the signage hits the streets, you're going to see some slowdowns, save lives with safer speeds campaigns. We're going to push that out on our social media. And then we're also going to work with our police services department to enforce the signage, not just installing the signs and calling it a day, but also working on targeted police enforcement. We're going to share with them some of the data that we had where We have the highest violators and where the most collisions or speeding collisions occurred. So that is an update for the City Council traffic engineering related items.

Thank you. Moving on to Item 9, Traffic Engineer Parking Services Updates.

All right. I got two items for this one. The first one, we have a project called the South Main Complete Streets Project. It's over in Ward 1. It's on Main Street from 3rd to the 60 Freeway. Today, it's a four-lane roadway, but we're converting that to two lanes in each, or two lanes total. with parking in the middle. And then we're also adding bike lanes and sidewalks and curb ramps. So it's a complete streets transformative project. We had three meetings in May. Two of them were virtual. We invited the businesses and the landowners. And then a third in-person meeting just a couple of weeks ago so that everyone can provide their input on the project and we're moving forward with it we're doing the design plans we'll probably be done with the design at the end of the year and then construction will probably be starting sometime next year maybe in the middle of the year but it's a it's a good project that promotes complete streets throughout our city um did you have a question now

Could you repeat the location a little bit, where exactly it is?

Sure, it's on Main Street. Main Street, yes. Yeah, on 3rd, starting on 3rd to the north, going to the 60 freeway. So where the Riverside Convention Center is. That parking lot going north, yeah. And then the only other item I wanted to share a couple of years ago, we adopted our vehicle miles traveled mitigation bank pilot program. And I'm happy to share that we won an award for that project. It was the highest award available from Southern California Association of Governments, which is SCAG. It's called the SCAG Outstanding Achievement Award in Sustainability for our project. And so I'm very happy to share that and be part of that project. And that covers my updates. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Item 10, items for future transportation board consideration. Any members of the board have any items they'd like to have considered?

I'll keep it really short. I wanted to take a look at the increased traffic and, frankly, cut-through traffic and design issues over on Overlook Parkway and people in the mornings making cut-throughs on I believe it's Orozco Avenue and Ocotillo. They take Orozco down to Hawarden. I could be mixing Orozco and Ocotillo. Right now, now that school's out of session, it's noticeably different. But I've witnessed several instances where people walking with strollers crossing the street have almost been hit. And it's just pertaining to using Overlook as a cut-through to get off the freeway. Um, and it's become in the last couple of years, increasingly dangerous. So I think, you know, possible in future meetings, taking a look at traffic data, um, one of the officers, and I think it may have actually been an officer here, came out to speak to the community, um, and made a comment. I believe that, you know, overlook is one of the most highly ticketed, if not the highest ticketed area in the city, um, and accounted for somewhere out of 300 tickets just in speeding and run stop signs. So want to take a look there if we can. Um, sure.

Did you want us to review it when school is in session? I would. Right.

Right now, it's not an issue now. I can tell you this week from last week, it is night and day. Okay.

You can definitely do that.

Any other input? Any other recommendations? And I guess that concludes the Transportation Board meeting for June 3rd.

Thank you for administering the meeting.

I'm not sure it was such a great job, but I did my best.

And thank you guys all for coming. We needed each and every one of you to have a quorum, so thank you for coming down.

You're welcome.