Planning Commission - Special Meeting

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Recording in progress. Welcome to the special meeting of the Sustainability Infrastructure Commission this Thursday evening, April 30th. I now call this meeting to order. Madam Clerk, please roll call the roll. Certainly. We have Chair Michael. Yes. Vice Chair Kearns. Here. Commissioner Reno. Here. Commissioner Robbins. Here. And Youth Commissioner Singh. Here. All right. And then Commissioner Norita and Youth Commissioner Scott are absent and excused for today. Thank you. At this time I'll ask the Oh, that's not needed. Okay. So, we're excited to be here in person with options for those who choose not to be in person to still participate virtually. For those attending in person, complete a yellow request to speak slip and hand it to the clerk. If participating remotely, use the raise your hand feature in Zoom and you'll be called on at the appropriate time. If calling in via phone, press star nine to raise your hand and when called upon, press star six to unmute. These options for public comment will remain available until I close the public comment period for that specific time. Um we're going to move on to our agenda category old business, 19th Avenue Fashion Island Boulevard Multimodal Improvements Project and I'm happy to um have Bethany Lopez, senior engineer, presenting tonight. Hi, good evening. You guys have the presentation, okay? Okay, thank you. Um my name is Bethany Lopez, senior engineer um in the Public Works Department. I'm here presenting on the 19th Avenue Fashion Island Boulevard Multimodal Improvement Project. Um I uh am the project manager on behalf of the city and we have some counterparts um with our consultant team as well as with the SMCTA that we're working alongside. So, tonight we're going to be looking

for uh your input on the final design um and so we're looking for just uh feedback on the overall design, any other considerations um for us as we close out the design uh part of this project and then any um aspects about the upcoming construction phase that we're going to be moving into. For the agenda, I'm going to go over the project goals. We'll talk a little bit about the history and about the outreach that we've conducted for this project. I'll walk through the project design, talk through the funding element of this. This is something that we're really excited when we get to the funding part of it, excited about. Talk about next steps and then we'll go into the discussion. So for the project goals, one of the main goals for this project was to provide congestion relief, improve traffic flows for this area. So if you guys are familiar, you may be aware that the eastbound traffic in the afternoon is particularly bad in this area. And so that was one of the goals with this project was to try to work to improve that. We were also looking to improve safety and access for pedestrians and bicyclists. And so that's another key element of this project. By improving a lot of the traffic flows through here, we're also looking to improve transit access and the travel times for those for for transit. And then also to the extent that we could, we wanted to limit parking loss. So that was another goal of ours. Jumping into the project history and walking through the outreach. So this project has been going on, not this specific phase of the project, but some form of this project has been going on since about 2019. That came in the form of congestion relief where we had completed a corridor study and we were really trying to see what sort of improvements we could that we could do to address some of the congestion elements on this on the on the corridor. In 2021, we had a grant to coordinate all the signals along the corridor. And while there was some optimization that could be done with that, the infrastructure was really one of the

biggest limitations out there. And so again, that's one of the things we're looking to address with this project. Moving into the bicycle and pedestrian improvement realm, the bike master plan identified a protected bike facility on this corridor. And so that's something that we've incorporated. And then also our pedestrian master plan also identified pedestrian improvements along the corridor. Then more recently, from 2023 to 2025, there was a big undertaking to complete the mobility hub and smart corridor plan in this area. And what that did, one of the goals of that was to identify the bike way alignment. So the bike master plan had identified this as being a protected facility. This effort as a planning effort was here to identify the way in which the bike facility would be laid out on the corridor. And this again, it took about two years. It included a pretty good amount of community outreach. There was a handful of community meetings. There were pop-up events trying to get feedback from the community in different formats. So moving into the design, the design part of this project started last June. And what we're looking to do is complete the design by this coming June. So we're we're approaching that time at this point. And so as we look at some of the work that we've done again from June to June essentially, we've completed a large amount of outreach for this project. I'll walk through all of these right now really briefly. So again, starting in June, we started that design. This includes trying to understand some of the background what the prior plans had identified. From June to July, we opened an online survey and the goal of that was to get community feedback about what their priorities were for the corridor. So certainly building on the last phases of the planning phases, but now getting a little bit more into the weeds about what they really wanted to see on the

designs. From there, we went to a community workshop in early or in mid-July. We came to you in mid-August to present on some of the early feedback that we had heard from the community as well as the initial designs that we had at that time. From there, we went on to council in mid-September. And one of the things that we provided to council was some of the early information about the traffic analysis that we had done and how we were incorporating some of that into the design. We went right after that to the PTA for College Park Elementary, which is right there along the corridor. It backs up next to it to again get the word out about the project. We held our second community meeting in early November and around mid-November. And we had an in-person and a virtual meeting. And the goal for this for having the two meetings and again trying to mimic both the online format for the with the in-person format was to try to reach as many people as possible. You know, certainly people can't always make it out to the in-person meetings. So the virtual option was a way to provide that accessibility. In a little bit later in November, we met with a student coalition. In some of our earlier council meetings, we had a sorry, in the earlier council meeting, we had at least one student there who was very interested in the project and she helped lead gathering a group of other students to meet with us and talk about the project. And so it was a really good way to get information from the students about the project, but then also hear about what their interests were. So and then just last week, we had our last community meetings. Again, an in-person and a virtual meeting. And then we are here today on the 30th obviously for this second commission meeting. We will be going to council later in May. And again, we're

looking to complete the design in June. So coming back to this long timeline, just to sort of synthesize this. To date, we have completed five community workshops. For each one of those workshops, we sent out about 10,000 mailers each. So to date, we've sent out about 30,000 mailers. Each one of those mailers were done in English, Spanish and simplified Chinese. Along with that, whenever we had these community meetings, we would place these A-frame posters along the corridor. And we would also place them at community interest points. So Trader Joe's for instance or Hayward Park train station. Just so that people who were in the vicinity of the corridor could have a chance to see that this was happening. So it doesn't it didn't mean that you have to be on the corridor directly to have been able to see those. By the time we're done with our council meeting in mid-May, we have we will have had four council and commission meetings. In addition to the public meetings, we've also had a handful of targeted meetings with local businesses and local interest groups. And then by the time this is all said and done, we'll have done 12 months of outreach for this project. So from here, diving into the final project design. As we've done all of this outreach, we've heard a lot of common themes throughout the entire thing. So some of the things that we've heard are about multimodal connectivity, the desire for better access along the corridor. We've heard concerns about safety. A lot of concerns about safety in different areas of the corridor. Obviously, the congestion relief element was a really strong part of it. That came out of the first community meeting that there was such a strong interest in that. And so that has evolved to be one of the focal points of this project. And then lastly, street lighting and landscaping improvements. So I think some of these lend themselves to again safety. Some of them are sort of a beautification type improvement. So we'll talk about these.

For the multimodal connectivity, so we're going to dive into sort of what we're doing with the project. So some of this you may have heard from the last meeting. So I might be repeating a little bit. But what we have here is what the existing bike facilities look like today. The green lines represent where the bike facilities lie on the side of the road. So they're you know, they're not obviously kind of floating out there. Um And so what the project proposes to do is establish the rest of that connectivity all the way to the Hayward Park Caltrain station. So this will take the bike facilities all the way to Pacific Boulevard. And so that would be in both the westbound direction and the eastbound direction. When we're talking about the facility itself, again, the bike master plan identified this as a protected bike lane. And what that is is it provides a physical separation between the bike lane and the travel lane. So not only just a buffer space, but also some sort of vertical element. And so for this project, we have a combination of something like you see here, the delineators in a smaller portion of the project, but the majority of this is being done with concrete medians. In addition to this, one of the unique aspects of this is I was talking about the the planning effort. It identified the bike alignment. And so one of the one of the key parts of this, and you can see one of the reasons why this last piece on the westerly side wasn't completed, it had to do with the ramps. And so the the Delaware ramps. And so one of the unique components of this is that we switch from a typical one-way bike facility on either side of the road, on the north side and the south side, to what's called a two-way facility where they both lie on the same side. And so again, this was the goal of this was to be able to avoid the Delaware ramps. And we'll talk about the safety element of that shortly. So this is an example of what a two-way facility looks like. They're side by side and they lie on one side of the road. And so that's what we're going to see on the westerly side of the

corridor. And on the easterly side, we'll see a more traditional bike facility where you have the facilities on both the southerly side and the northerly side. So they're split and they align with their direction of traffic. Moving on to the pedestrian facilities, what we see here is where the existing sidewalks are. And so what we see is that on the northerly side, there's large gaps. A lot of those gaps are due to the nature of the roadway being adjacent to the freeway. So they're just not there. There's not really anything on those sides otherwise. But, the other thing that you'll see is that there's the majority of the sidewalk lying, you know, through them Sorry. Most of it's on the southerly side, but there is a gap here over Seal Slough Bridge. And so, this is what that gap currently looks like. We do see that there's a small section of raised concrete. A lot of people use that as the sort of makeshift sidewalk. That element actually is for some of the structural structural safety of the bridge itself. It's not actually a pathway. And so, one of the things that we're going to be doing with this project is creating a new pathway on that southerly side and also establishing a new crosswalk on the southerly side of the Norfolk intersection to complete that full length of the corridor on the southerly side for the pedestrian facility. We're also going to be doing safety improvements along all of the intersections, all of the key intersections along the corridor. And so, what some of those look like, this is an example. This is at Grant. You'll see new curb ramps. For some of these, you'll see bulbed out. So, we're reducing the radius in some of these areas to help slow down traffic. Um something like that as well. These are going to be some other elements that you'll see. We're adding These are sometimes called biscuits or footballs.

Kind of funny words, but what they are is this infrastructure that goes into the roadway to help again reduce the radius coming around those corners. And the darker parts are what we call truck aprons. So, most of the vehicles would go all the way around the you know, kind of darker brown part of it. But, we do have these elements that are lowered a little bit to be able to allow trucks to be able to go over them. Most passenger vehicles, this would be a less comfortable experience. They would more likely go around the whole thing. But, what this does, and you can kind of see it in this image, is it creates a protected space for bikes and pedestrians in advance that is sort of like pushed forward from where vehicles would stop. So, vehicles have better visibility of them. And so, when vehicles are making their turning maneuvers, they can see these bicyclists and pedestrians already in front of them and be more inclined to yield to them. Some of the other changes that are being made are some parking changes. And so, while again our goal was to try to maintain as much parking as we could, the widening did lend itself to some parking loss. And so, this is just one segment between Delaware and Grant. There's another segment segment between Pacific and Grant where there was some additional parking loss in that area. But, just going back and forth here, you can kind of see some of the changes where adding in that two-way bike facility has required us to push northerly push those lanes northerly. And as a result of that, we are losing some parking spaces through here. So, in this area, we are originally Sorry, there's existing 64 spaces between Pacific and Grant. Originally, with our original design, we had um shown loss of about 21 spaces. And again, in an effort to try to reduce that as much as possible, we were able to gain back five of those spaces. So,

we're netting a loss of 16 spaces in this area. This is another area. This is west of Seal Sorry, east of Seal Slough Bridge. This we've identified as largely being underutilized parking. And this is one location where again there will be some parking loss. This one is more substantial percentage-wise. But again, because it's been identified as being underutilized generally, we wanted to maintain some. But, we thought the safety improvements for the bicycle facilities, you know, made sense to be able to add here. And so, here we're losing 14 spaces compared to the existing 25 that were there. We to date have not heard any feedback about the parking loss for the project. We haven't gotten any comments from the community about that. For safety, one of the biggest challenges was with the Delaware and SR 92 ramps. This is one of the places where we heard the most community feedback about safety challenges. And so, digging into the safety challenges in this area from 2019 to 2025, we identified that there were 80 collisions in this area. And so, this is sort of this whole vicinity that vicinity that you see in the map, not including the freeway itself. And so, some of the challenge out here has to do with the gas station that's out here. And some of this is related to some of the challenges getting in and out of the gas station. So, we have the gas station driveway that exits onto 19th Avenue. We also have the freeway traffic coming off the off-ramp here. And we also have 19th Avenue um coming through this small area as well. Right here at this location, we identified that of the 80, 47 of the collisions were happening at this location. And that's compared to 33 of them that were happening at the intersection itself. So, pretty substantial amount compared to the intersection where you

actually have a lot more volume coming through it. There's also some additional complexity with this intersection. So, you know, obviously we have the two one-way you know, 19th Avenue is a one-way street. 92 on-ramp is also one-way. And so, we have to facilitate the movements to those from the north and south direction. And so, what we proposed through here, which I'll go through right now. So, this is what the intersection change looks like. What we proposed Sorry. To be able to address specifically the safety challenges at the gas station is a new median that separates out the off-ramp traffic. That median comes all the way up to the intersection and it restricts the movements coming in and out of the gas station to interfere with that off-ramp traffic. And vice versa, that the off-ramp traffic can no longer make that turn into the gas station from this location. So, what that So, moving on from there, you'll also notice some of the way that this is being facilitated is through widening. And so, we're widening north into currently sort of like unused space. And so, this is kind of what this area looks like. And so, as a result of that, this median, we're having to create a new movement at the intersection. So, this is going to be what we call a new phase. This is going to have its own green light that's going to be separate from the off-ramp movement. And so, that movement will have the ability to do all the same maneuvers that they would have if they were coming off the off-ramp and coming back into these lanes. So, they'll have the ability to make a left turn or through and a right when they come up to this intersection. One of the other changes to this intersection, again to try to optimize this now that we have this new phase, was this modification. This is currently what this signal looks like in this middle lane. It has the two left turn

lanes. And then also the through movement is shared in this middle lane. And with the new configuration, we are proposing to remove that. And that will help us optimize this signal a little bit better. You'll also notice the two-way bike facility here. So again, the goal with this was to avoid that freeway traffic. That's why it was proposed as a two-way facility through this area. And so, what again, one of the important things for the safety improvements through here was with this new median, it'll also protect the bikes that are going to be coming through here on this facility. So, we will no longer have those maneuvers conflicting through this area. One of the things that we had heard from the community was a desire for additional signage and just awareness from the gas station itself. And so, some of the things that we're looking to add are some additional signs. And we're also looking to see if we can make these a little bit more robust in some sort of electronic flashing type of devices. So, we're still looking through the feasibility of that. But, that's definitely something that we're trying to make work as a result of some of the community feedback. We're also going to be connecting to the Delaware Safe Routes to School project. You guys may be aware that that project is already under construction. Through this and the addition of the bike facilities right here on the south leg of the intersection, we're going to have to remove an existing median. So, that's what this is in red. And then further north, we are not formally connecting to bike facilities further north. But, eventually, when we do establish these bike facilities, these will be off-street shared paths on either side of the roadway. And so, what we're doing with this project is helping to facilitate the widening that needs to happen on this side of the bridge deck. A similar type of widening will need to happen on the other side of the bridge deck. And that will have to be done with a separate project. But, we're getting this part of it done while we are in the area. So, if this is your favorite gas station, as

it is for a lot of people, some folks have asked, "How do I access this gas station now?" So, this is what this looks like. You will come off the off-ramp if you're coming from the off-ramp, obviously. Coming off the off-ramp, you would make your right turn on your green light. It would not conflict with the the new 19th Avenue movement. You would make your right turn into the gas station. You would make your right turn out. And then you would have your signal to be able to get you out and on your way. So, one of the one of the changes as a result of this new phase though is additional delay at this intersection. And so, what we're seeing in the morning is that there will be another 25-ish seconds of delay coming through here in the afternoon. We're seeing an increase of about 12 additional seconds. And this is measured as the average delay for every vehicle coming up to the intersection. And so we did also want to note that yes, while this is an increase, the city has a standard where we measure all intersections where we try to maintain 45 seconds of delay or less. And so we're right there at that limit for this intersection. So we think that while yes, there is an increase in delay, the safety benefits of what we're looking at are going to be measurable in making this improvement. One of the other safety improvements that we're making is here at the northbound ramps. There were concerns identified by the community during one of our community meetings about the westbound bicyclists and conflicts with the westbound right turners and eastbound left turners. And so as a result of that, we are adding new signage. This is also going to be something that's going to have flashing lights kind of like our flashing beacons that you may see around town that will be activated and it'll be activated for both of these directions for the both vehicle movements to be able to warn them that a bicyclist is is approaching.

All right, moving on to the congestion relief part of this. So right now what we found in our traffic analysis is that the length of the existing congestion, the delay, the backup extends out about 3,000 ft from the Norfolk intersection. We've identified that the Norfolk intersection is the bottleneck at this corridor and I'll talk about why that is the case. And with our improvements, which I'll talk about shortly, we're seeing a really substantial reduction in the overall amount of congestion as a result of these improvements. So one of the reasons, just to talk really quickly about why this is identified as the bottleneck, has to do with this single lane that's coming in the eastbound direction that kind of opens up at the intersection. And what we see that happens is that when vehicles get a green light, that it tends to be that other vehicles back up and block certain vehicles from being able to come through the intersection. So you see there's a through movement green light and because the red movement, the left turns have a red movement, but they've backed up into that lane, these vehicles can't actually get through the intersection any longer. So there's a green light there, vehicles can't get through, it's a wasted time, it's not optimized. And so this similar situation happens with the through movements blocking the left turn movement. So again, we have a green light, we have no vehicles that can actually access that turn pocket. And so what happens is when we see these vehicles not getting through the intersection, over time we see that back up all the way down past Grant approaching Delaware. So what we're doing about that is we're modifying the intersection approach. So currently these turn lanes are about 100 ft. We're proposing to

narrow the median coming through here to be able to add an additional lane. And we're extending that additional lane out another 550 ft. So a substantial increase in that. And so again, just to show this graphic again, we're seeing that congestion reduce very substantially as a result of adding this additional storage at the intersection. And so what this means tangibly is a reduction in travel time. So we're seeing a a reduction of about 23% in the morning and about 48% in the afternoon decrease in travel time. A really substantial amount compared to what's out there right now. Now that said, this is a balance between the east and the westbound directions. And so there was never going to be a situation where we could make modifications and not have some sort of rebalancing or recalibration. And so that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing some pretty substantial decreases in the in the eastbound direction in travel time, but we are seeing nominal increases in the westbound direction for those same peak periods. Some of the other changes that we're making at the intersection are as you may be familiar with, we make we're making changes over the Seal Slough bridge to add two travel lanes. So we're switching the directionality of the travel lanes. Currently there's two westbound travel lanes and so we're flipping that to be two eastbound travel lanes. What we've identified is that the volumes in the eastbound direction, even in this single lane, are higher in the afternoon than the westbound direction. So we're accommodating that by switching the travel lanes through here. And then one of the other things that we're proposing is to reduce one of the travel lanes in the northbound direction. That lane actually drops about 500 ft north of the intersection anyways. And we're proposing to modify that and change that to an additional southbound left turn lane. And what that'll do is allow more vehicles to get through every single green light. Again, trying to reduce the amount of delay at the intersection by getting

more people through. And so we're also facilitating new bike facilities. So there's existing bike facilities north of Fashion Island Boulevard in this area and we're going to be establishing the connections to that. Oops, wrong way. So north and south through there, we have the other bike facilities that are coming through just as part of this project. And again, we're facilitating the connections to the existing bike facilities further south on Norfolk. All right, moving on to street lighting and landscaping. One of the requests that we had heard quite a bit had to do with the lighting over Seal Slough bridge. There's currently no lighting out there right now. And so it tends to be quite dark. We actually did have a fatality out here unfortunately at the beginning beginning of last year. And so we think that the street lighting will help with safety improvements. And so we are we have identified that we will be able to add street light street lights onto these structural bends that are out here. And so those will be elements that we're including. And in addition to these new street lights, for the street lights that are along the corridor, we'll be upgrading the existing fixtures to be brighter fixtures that are more appropriate for an arterial. There's also a handful of landscaping elements to the project that we were able to add in. Over in this area, we due to some of the widening that we had to do here, there were some trees that were removed. And so what we'll be able to do is actually replace those. Personally, I think these trees are nicer than the ones that are out there. These are called pink trumpet trees. And so these are going to be replaced in this area. And a little bit dotted along the corridor, we will be adding what's called green infrastructure. But this lends itself to new landscaping elements while also providing some of the filtration that the green infrastructure provides. On to funding. So I was mentioning

earlier, this is a little bit exciting for us. And part of the reason is is how much the city has contributed so far to this project. And so the overall project cost we're looking at this being around $28 million. Pretty big price tag so far. And so what our funding is comprised of to date is we've had $20,000 in SamTrans funding that was provided earlier on for some of the planning phases. We have $3.8 million in federal funding um that is something that the TA helped us secure earlier on in the project. Because of those federal funds that were secured early on, we were able to leverage that to get an additional $21.5 million from the TA. This includes a $16.5 million grant that we had applied for last year and received word earlier this year that we had in fact gotten it. And I think we were ranked maybe third on that list. So this was a big grant for us obviously to be able to accomplish the project. And then in addition to the $21.5 million or the $16.5 million grant that we were able to secure earlier this year, the TA also recommended an additional $3 million in RM3 funding for this project to be able to get us to the finish line. And that said, all of that has been leveraged by the city's $500,000 contribution. So this is all the funding that we've provided to date. We're contributing less than 2% of the overall project cost, which is a huge deal for us to be able to get how substantial these substantial improvements along the corridor. All right, for next steps, this slide is familiar. So moving on from here, we have a handful of things that we need to do to close out the design phase. So we need to complete the design. We've been in the process of getting the Caltrans permit for this. Much of this area is in the Caltrans right-of-way and this process is going to take about a year. So we're a number of months into it at

this point. We're about eight months into it at this point. We'll need to wrap everything up to be able to achieve and get that Caltrans permit by August. After that, there's some additional paperwork that's related to the grant funding. And by December, we're looking to submit the rest of the paperwork for the last $3.8 million in federal funds and be able to move the project into the construction phase formally. So when we're looking at the construction phase, again we're looking to get that last amount of construction funding by the end of this year. We're hoping to bid the project early next year. So right now we're saying spring. If we can pull that date back at all, you know, move it into closer to the winter, you know, early part of next year, that would be the goal. But realistically, I think we're looking at spring. We would look to award a contract in the summertime. One of the big challenges with a project like this, especially because we're doing some widenings, we're moving some of the signal equipment out there, is we need to procure that equipment first. And that equipment tends to have really long lead times. 6 to 10 months is what we're looking at for some of that. And so, we would need to go ahead and start procuring all of that equipment. And once we have it in hand, that's when we can actually do some of the ground breaking. And so, that's what we're looking at right now is end of next year to spring of the following year uh to be able to actually get started on the construction itself. And then looking at the priorities for when we get into the construction phase, uh there's a few different things that we're already looking at. So, one of the biggest things is here at Norfolk. We're trying to phase this to get these improvements in at Norfolk first before everything else. And we think that this is really important to be able to provide the congestion relief for the community really immediately. And then also, because there will be additional improvements and construction along the rest of the corridor, we can realize those travel um travel travel time benefits earlier on rather than waiting towards the end uh for these improvements to happen.

And so, some of the other priorities for uh the construction phase of this work is um we realize that this is a really important corridor for the community. And so, to the extent possible, we're looking to maintain access through the corridor for the duration of the construction phase. But that said, there will be sometimes when we have to do some lane closures, we have to close directions. And so, what is we're proposing all of that work to happen at night. That doesn't mean that we're not conscious of noise challenges and things like that. And so, we're looking to try to strategize how best to do that so we can reduce the impacts to the community. And then just generally try to minimize overall vehicle delay. All right. Um so, as I mentioned at the beginning, we're looking for just general feedback on the overall design, anything else that we may have missed on that. And then um again, we're looking to move into the construction phase in the project. And so, if there's any feedback about that, um we would certainly welcome that. And that's it. Thank you. I feel like that deserves a standing ovation. That's very good.

[laughter] Thank you, Bethany. Um okay, um do we have any like to open it for uh public comment? Clerk will call on um is there anyone to Yes. Officially, we do have one person online. Max, uh you will be the only person. So, that would be 3 minutes for him. Okay, great. Thank you.

Max, can you hear us? Yes. Yep, I can hear you. Uh I'll I'll try and keep it brief. So, it's not 3 minutes. Uh thank you for the presentation. I'm really excited about this project. I really really appreciate the prioritization framework of it being a multimodal corridor first of all, safety being second of all, congestion relief being third of all. That being said, the funding stack reflects that prioritization order. With the bulk of the funding being devoted to the multimodal and safety aspects of this project. But it's odd to hear the construction prioritization placing congestion first and foremost. So, I'd love to hear a reconciliation of why congestion relief gets priority in the construction order and while safety and the multimodal aspects do not. So, that's my one comment. Thank you. Great, thank you. And Bethany, would you mind answering that? Yeah, certainly. So, we're anticipating that the majority of the construction time is actually going to be spent on the bike facilities. The majority So, um the bike facilities run the entire length of the corridor. And so, the way that our construction phasing was originally laid out was to do um some of that work uh earlier on. But what we were finding is that there was likely going to be a lot of challenges with the continued vehicle congestion um coming through this area. And so, there was a desire to try to get some of that work done first because it's a quicker, relatively quick item to actually get completed. And then later in the construction phases, it provides some of that additional congestion relief as we're doing the bulk of the work after uh after that signal improvement is done. Great, thank you. Um I think we could close public comment. Yes.

Great, thank you. Okay, and bring back to commission. Um do we have some questions? Okay. Um commission Commissioner Kearns. You bet, thank you. But first, but first, I was at the meeting at the school last Monday, I believe it was. And I wanted to thank Bethany for such a professionally well-delivered uh presentation. The people really resonated. And it made a lot of sense. It was easy to follow. So, thank you for that. Um So, yeah, uh a couple of things. Uh Parsing this out, it appears to be a safety-driven capital construction project disguised a little bit as uh as a multimodal upgrade. I think that's what the last caller was was referring to. He seemed to think that there's is more emphasis on the the safety-driven. Um The uh It seems sound. Um it seems compliant with uh Federal Highway Administration proven safety countermeasures. It also looks like um it complies with a lot of Vision Zero design principles. Um Some of the things I've noticed, especially around the gas station, um it's it's not only just reducing the crashes. It looks like you're changing the angle of the crashes. So, instead of having um if we could speak engineering for a second, a high delta V where there's a lot of speed coming off that ramp. Plus, you've got the potential energy of it being higher and people descending not scrubbing off a lot of speed and then trying to make a turn, that's where the fatal crashes happen. So, if you could keep the cars going straight, it sounds like from a safety standpoint, we've now changed the angle of the accident to rear-ending as opposed to t-boning somebody, which is more survivable. So, extra points for for thinking that out. Um I'm seeing where we got a a 30% AM peak improvement, 50% PM improvement,

and uh a 15% degradation going uh westbound. Um Is the capacity redistribution, or is this partly due to expansion? That's the question. I'm trying to make sense of your question in my mind. Sorry. Okay. So, is it a capacity redistribution um or what was the

So, it seems like there's a lot of we're redistributing all the the LEGO pieces around so that we have more uh capacity going in this direction at the Here's the deal. We've got 10 lb of traffic in a 5-lb bag, and we're trying to make magic happen uh by looking at currently what's going on traffic-wise and then trying to That's where I come up with redistribution. And there's not It doesn't seem like, if you could speak to this, much capacity expansion. We haven't eminent domain any property. We haven't taken over any spaces that were previously unused. Can you speak briefly to that? Yeah, absolutely. So, I think uh it's there's probably two keys to that. I think you're absolutely right that there is a capacity redistribution. That was the look over Seal Slough bridge to try to get an understanding of how well it's being utilized. And that's where we found that underutilization in the westbound direction and overutilization in the eastbound direction. And so, by balancing that out, we were able to uh reprioritize the existing space that's out there. But that said, there's a lot of other modifications that are being made at the signal, for instance, that are new improvements that will lend themselves to reducing that congestion. Um so, it's not just the redistribution of the existing space. It's reconfiguring the signals to optimize them to the best way that they can maneuver or the best way that they can function to be able [clears throat] to increase the amount of traffic flow through there and utilize that redistribution of the capacity to its fullest extent. Perfect. So, we're making it more 2026 as opposed to 1963 when it was first put out there.

Um I love that it's a $20 project. And our our kick in this is 1.8%. That's leveraged. Nicely done. So, here's a question. Um If in your mind's eye, if you could look be coming down from uh uh Trader Joe's down 19th, you're approaching uh 101. We've talked about this before. There was property on the south side that belongs to Caltrain. And you informed me last week that uh we weren't able to get any of that. Can you tell us what the procedure was, what happened, who's in charge of asking for that, and why we got turned down? Yeah, generally, a lot of it actually had to do with the timeline component of the project. So, obviously, being able to leverage the $500,000, the 2% city contribution in order to be able to get these grant funds comes with timeline restrictions associated with the use of those funds, right? So, that was part of the That was part of the conversation that if we were to really want to pursue taking some of that right-of-way more seriously, it was going to push us out of being able to actually utilize these funds in a timely manner. Okay.

So, that was the reason.

So, you couldn't have a foot on both horses. No. Yeah, it was going to it was going to open up this whole discussion with Caltrans. And that was that lengthy discussion. It it's not a simple So, it's the paralysis of analysis again, once again. I noticed on the other side of that intersection Caltrans actually leases that out to Condin Lumber and he's parking RVs there and his trucks and stuff like that and it doesn't seem like it's affecting Caltrans much. They're not hurting for it. Which is what it would have been way to have 10 lb of transportation in our 7 lb bag. You would have got a little bit more of it. Going a little bit further and I I I apologize if I'm if I'm beating this to death, but I I just don't see this. At that intersection at the southeast corner, there's a bent. We've talked about this before. I can't in my mind's eye picture how you're going to how you're going to put a bike lane in there. The The road is here. You have a very small It's not even a sidewalk. It's It's I think it's 14 in. And then the bent and then you've got a a guardrail. Is the bike path going to go around the backside into Condin Lumber's property or how's that going to work? So, there's a small amount of unused space in that area that is partially going to be utilized for some of that. And then generally a lot of it has to do with the narrowing of the median that's out there right now. So, not only is that existing median on that east leg going to be it's going to be shifted certainly, but it's also going to be narrowed and that will help provide the additional space for that.

So, by slimming the street you can actually make the bike lane bigger and then shoehorn it shoehorn it in there. Um [clears throat]

I know we've talked about this before and it got shot down. Um About putting the bike lane in on the bents over the bridge. Um and I'm willing to let it go. If it's If the answer is no, it's it's no, but if we can keep that in our back back pocket for maybe future administrations if we need to it just kind of flies in the face that that concrete's not strong enough to hold a very lightweight pedestrian bridge. Sure. But it doesn't it doesn't seem it doesn't seem to pass the sniff test, but anyway. A couple of the last questions. Have we thought about limiting access cutting across bike lanes for people accessing businesses, you know, shops? Is that something that's that's doable? Sorry, you're referring to when they go into their driveways? Yeah, kind of sort of. You know, there's you have some I wouldn't I wouldn't call them commercial buildings, maybe apartment buildings Sure. that has multiple cuts through the bike lane. Could that be an additional safety addition where we just limit the amount of space you're allowed to cut through a bike lane? Yeah, so I would say that's probably facilitated in two ways. You know, we we ran turning movements throughout the entirety of the corridor to make sure that we're providing sufficient space for the vehicles that need to access these driveways, but what we are doing is pulling those medians as close as possible to those areas so you're not getting, you know, those real steep cuts across the bike facility. And then in addition to that we're providing the conflict striping, so you'll see the green conflict striping through there. So, it just provides awareness for the drivers that this is the bike facility. This is where they will be. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Um You also mentioned you took away a bunch of parking spaces there, but that theoretically should be absorbed by the well, living space, the apartment buildings that theoretically have their own parking structures. Is that Is that about right? Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. Okay. A

little bit further down by Harbor Town, you talked about underutilized parking spaces. I live over that way. Absolutely. The only thing you see over there are food trucks and tractor trailers waiting to pick up a load. It's It's a good idea that you captured that. Um Arco gas station. I saw in your presentation that you had certain um bicycle signaling abilities where passive and aggressive That's not the right word. Passive and active That's the word I'm looking for. Um where you'll um a bike can trigger an an event. Can you do something like that at the gas station to have like a stop sign with the red lights in the corners to let let a car know that a bike's there? Yeah, so we're looking at what types of detection we can do through there. Right now, I think it would be something some sort of warning sign to indicate that bicyclists are approaching. And so And again, the goal is to warn the people coming from the gas station. And so yes, we are looking into that. We think that it would function a little bit similar. Well, we're we're looking into the appropriate technology for it. How about that? So, we have a handful of different options, be it, you know, push buttons, which I don't think is the right approach for that location. Something like video detection that we have at a lot of our traffic signals, but there's also other things like radar and microwave types of technology out there that can also detect the bicyclists coming through there. And so that's where we're at right now is we're trying to identify the appropriate technology for that. And you were quite on point with all the carbon fiber bikes out there that are virtually undetectable. You had to come up with something um That was one of the reasons why we're pretty adamant about utilizing the video detection these days is it provides much better visibility for And another good example is if you leave the parking lot garage on downtown San Mateo, one of the ideas we had was to have that stop sign that lights up to

Yeah. let the pedestrians know cars coming, let cars know that pedestrians are out there. Um Got that. Got that. Um Got that. Is the Fish Market restaurant production going to chip in on any of this? Um

Well, when a building goes in, you ask them for Yeah, so there's Yeah, so there's a good possibility with that largely being a vacant lot that they would be required to pay a TIF an impact fee transportation impact fee. Um and that would be associated with the number of units that they're proposing. And so that does They do pay into a portion of the overall implementation of the bike master plan. So, maybe not specifically for this project, especially because we are fully funded at this point, but generally yes, they would pay into the bike facilities going in throughout the city. Okay. Overall, you talked about equipment and and delays waiting for certain equipment. What What equipment would that look like? Namely traffic signal poles and traffic signal cabinets. So, anything having to do with steel in particular tends to have a really long lead time. The traffic signal poles are manufactured after we order them. They're not something we're pulling off the shelf. And so that's part of the reason and it's just a real common industry challenge that the poles have these really long delays. So, if we find a missing in San Carlos, we'll know where they went. Okay. Um and lastly, the Fashion Island bridge construction. You mentioned that the there's concrete on the side that's not necessarily a walkway. It's more of a It's a non-mountable curb. It's for safety and it's part of the of the retrofit for the um So, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to add onto the concrete to make it wider, make it a bike path or Yeah, so to your question, we looked into the, you know, what the what the bridge itself could facilitate structurally and it cannot facilitate much actually. And so we were proposing, you know, a new 6-ft sidewalk to run along the entirety of that side and it's too much weight ultimately. And so what we are going to do is maintain that 2-ft path that is there. Sorry, it's not a path. It's a It's just a buffer space. So, we're going to maintain that. And then adjacent to it

we'll have 10 ft of space along with the buffer space between the travel lanes that will be split. So, we'll have a pedestrian walkway and then we'll have the bike lane adjacent to it. be at the roadway level. So, it'll be two levels. You'll have the one walkway up here and then roadway level down here.

No, it'll all be the same Well, the the sidewalk, the bike bike path and the travel lane will all be on the same elevation. They'll all be at the same level. And because we were not able to add any additional structural elevation, no new concrete onto the bridge deck because of the weight. Okay. Here's a question you may not and it's not a gotcha. It's just a question. So, according to DOT maximum gross weight for an 18-wheeler 70,000 lb. 2 3 4 5 6 7 You could have about 10 of them on there. So, it's 700,000 lb. Could you get some of the um weight back that you need to build this thing by limiting the number of trucks? We could have. Yeah, that was a that was a consideration that we were looking at, but considering the commercial facilities on that side, you know, you have your Bridgepoint Shopping Center and all of that. That's not an option that we wanted to explore considering we thought that the pathway on the bridge was probably sufficient to close that gap. Okay.

So, yeah, it was going to be a big restriction that we weren't ready to to facilitate.

Okay. Well, it's comforting to know that you guys turned over every single rock and and you really did a a good job. In my view, this is a high quality, safety-driven corridor reconstruction project that uses modern multi-modal designs, delivers real and necessary safety benefits at the same time. Congestion relief component relies part on the assumption of travel behavior. And this is something my wife and I have been actually become more aware of. When we're coming down on 19th and some guy could be Max passes us on his bike, by the time we get to where we need to he's long gone. And I I mentioned this at the last S and I meeting. We need to get our heads around the fact that bicycles, electric bikes it's a legitimate form of transportation. And we we really it would be beneficial if we kind of included it because it's it's not practical anymore just drive yourself around in a car. It's It's kind of to the point where you know, until we get back to work from home, the traffic is just going to be insane. So, um uh I'm impressed. I'm I'm kind of a proponent of this. So, thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay, go ahead. Um Commissioner Arena. Just a few quick questions. Um I I call my fellow commissioner. That was the most incredible presentation I've ever seen. I want to learn how to how to actually put these things together uh for my own. Um so, I'm just going to go down um in order of the presentation. Just a few questions. You had talked about how you engage with students to get some feedback. I'm just curious what what what was some of the feedback they were giving. Yeah, there was a lot of interest in the technology components in particular. Um they were wondering about how uh vehicles can be made aware of bicyclists. So, we talked about, like I was mentioning, some of the video detection components.

Um we talked about, like the green bike paths, the separation. So, some of it was a little bit more on the fundamentals side about how you do some of these designs. We talked a lot about the planning efforts that go into things like this. Um and so, a little bit more education about, I think maybe just city government generally. Um and so, that was the kind of stuff that we had talked about. That's really nice, and it's great that you involved students so that they're they're part of the solution here. Um quick question about the the bike lanes. When they all connect with each other, are they all going to be the same class? It's going to be a consistent experience? Yeah, that's correct. It's a class four um facility, a protected bike facility um all the way through. I'm just trying to think about that in my mind. There is um a section that we're looking at right now that it might convert to a class one facility, which is a shared bike ped pathway. Um this is the section I I can probably pull it up if you have an interest in in seeing it, but it's the section between the YMCA parking lot and southbound the southbound ramps. This is where some of the big columns come down from the freeway right in that area, and it gets really tight. And so, as a result of that, we weren't able to put the bike facilities on the roadway. And so, that's where we jumped them up onto the sidewalk elevation and had them share a path. Some of the feedback that we've gotten from Caltrans so far is that we um need to modify that a little bit. And so, we think that we may actually be able to accomplish separated paths, separated sidewalk and bikeway paths, but they would still both be at the sidewalk elevation. The feedback from Caltrans about modifying is because they do want that consistency? No, it was more about um the class one facility per Caltrans requirements. And so, one of the challenges is that in that area, it's all Caltrans right-of-way. So, we must meet Caltrans specs or Caltrans standards. And one of the standards has to do with the buffer distance, the separation between the travel lanes in that actual shared class one path. And

again, because it's so tight, we weren't able to accomplish that. And so, we're looking at how we can realign that bike path to be able to get that. Okay. Um I'm just curious about you had the the slide about um the trucks and that wedge where a a truck can kind of go over it, but then it gives visibility. You had a whole You had a whole conversation about the theory behind how it actually provides visibility and safety. I'm just curious um how do we know that? Is that Is that Is that best practices? Is that something that's been It's been practiced in other cities? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, um again, one of the I think one of the biggest things um to note, like I was mentioning, is this ability to get your bicyclists and pedestrians out in front of where the vehicles would be, which they would be back this way. Um and so, by having the vehicles back here, having the ability for your bikes and peds to get out here, one, they get a head start because they'll get a green before the vehicle even gets to that area. Um and then, two, the vehicles have a better visibility of them generally. And so, one of the goals with a lot of this these protected intersections and things like that is to change the angle approach that vehicles will reach the crosswalk or any of these crossings so that it's not an acute angle, but rather a right angle. So, that way the vehicles are not seeing the pedestrians, you know, where maybe their A pillars are, but rather straight in front of them. And so, that's one of the goals is getting them to approach these areas in a right angle to have the that visibility right in front of them. Do we have this same setup anywhere else in the city, or would this be the first one?

this would be the first one. Okay. Mhm. Um quick question about parking also. Um you said there was no feedback about, you know, the loss of parking. Just making sure it's on the record. It was asked, there was just no feedback? We presented it. I believe we presented it um in earlier meetings, and yeah, it's just not something that came up during those meetings. Um you know, it could be because the folks who are living in that area didn't actually come out to the meeting. Um but yeah, between our surveys, um the survey that we put out where we asked if parking was a priority, it was not um or it was ranked the lowest um in that. And then again, just in the course of the feedback, we just didn't hear about it. Yeah, basically, I just wanted to make sure that it was directly asked, then no answer. Um and then finally, this might be a question a little bit higher level, but what happens if there's cost overruns? You've got got a budget, seems to be you've got the money, but you know, things happen. What happens if it goes over budget? Yeah, it's a good question. Um I think that there would be efforts for us to work with our funding partners to see how we would manage that. But even before we get to that point, um one of the things that we're trying to do is strategize how we would bid the project, um strategize which items may not be appropriate so that we have a buffer, an appropriate buffer between the total project cost and the total project budget, obviously. Um and so, that's some of the stuff that we're looking at right now. Um and then again, looking at how we bid certain items to see if, you know, there's an option to do a less expensive version of some of the things that we're doing, or maybe not as robust, something along those lines. And so, those are things we called bid alts um or bid alternatives, where we might select the cheaper one if the overall cost is a little bit more expensive than we were anticipating. So, we're trying to to front-load some of that consideration before we get to that point. Okay.

Um those are my questions. My only um comments are that this looks like a very well-thought-out plan, and it it's clear you've gone out of your way to to get as much feedback as possible. Um and that's that's wonderful. I will thank you for adding more trees into this. Um and yeah, congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioner Robbins. Thank you. Uh Bethany, great presentation, and I would say how amazed and surprised I am, except that I've been on this commission for a thousand years, and you've always been fantastic. Much appreciated. I'm just looking over at the head of the department when I say that. Uh but uh uh much deserved praise. So, thank you very much. Uh I am a huge fan of the separated bikeway. Uh I'm convinced after all these years that they're really the only thing that's safe out there. As much as we do with green paint and everything else, and I know the bike folks love every bike lane they can get, and that's fine, too. But it's the separated uh bikeways that you know, I mean, any kid going to College Park Elementary uh is cannon fodder on anything other than a separated bikeway. So, I think that's great. My only questions, I would love a little more information on the end points um in the design. I was trying online to see, and with your presentation, uh I know on I think at the west end, the the bike lane will you know, the terminus is the Hayward Park station, but I'd like to see how that's being designed and planned out. And then the same on the east end? Just like to understand that a little better. Yeah, so I have a few slides. These are earlier versions of the design, so I

apologize I don't have the the latest and greatest up here. Um this is what these bike facilities look like here at Pacific Boulevard. So, this is the westerly terminus. Um so, the two-way bike facility will approach the intersection. Um there will be new all-way stop controls here uh to help facilitate the turns into and out of this area. Um and then you can see that the the rest of the pathway con- continues as a class three or a um bike boulevard up to the train station on this side. Um so, that's on that side. One thing to anything south uh Not currently on Pacific Boulevard.

Nothing else on Pacific. And And the only thing north it's not that far to the station, but it is the bike boulevard is what it is. Yeah, that's correct.

It does um I will note that once you get to Concar, it converts to a class one bike facility. So, it's a shared bike lane on the northerly side of Concar Drive. Okay. And then here at Mariner's Island, um again, this is a um an older version of the design, but it's not too far off from this. Um the bike facilities in this area were actually on sidewalk. They were This is a 10-ft walkway on the southerly side here. And so, there were in theory existing bike facilities through here, and they were shared with this path and so that's where you know we're obviously putting them on street through here but that bike facility does continue further east in this area. So the bike lanes would continue back up on the ramps you know they would they would come up on the ramps and they would continue that way and then vice versa. I wouldn't call them the highest quality bike facilities but I think we had to find a terminus for the project it wasn't something that we'd be able to you know obviously continue doing. So so we did want to make sure we are connecting to existing facilities though. So what is your sense of the the actual traffic not necessarily in large numbers but are we talking kids going to College Park are we talking folks going to the train or coming from the train or the neighborhood to go shop in Bridgepoint? What what do we think is going to is there now and what will be able to use this much improved facility? Yeah I think it's a variety of things we heard a lot from the community about middle schoolers who are going to Bayside and so they are tending to use this facility already which is you know pretty brave of them and so we're excited to be able to provide that. One of the big things that we're seeing is that the majority of traffic actually coming through the corridor from the in the eastbound

direction they live here they live in this area and so by providing this it's not just cut through traffic we're you know obviously facilitating their ability to get to transit and then I think you know importantly to the Bridgepoint Shopping Center here also. Okay lastly on that that Arco station which is heavily utilized cuz they quite frankly are about the best price around they usually make it on the radio report for lower prices. There's a lot just anecdotally I mean a lot of utility a lot of utilization coming off that ramp and and going in and out. Are they going to see reduced business or is it just going to people are going to have to try and figure out how to to approach it from the the other entrance? Yeah I mean I think our hope is the latter obviously is to try to facilitate that. One of the things that we are or that we have worked out with them is that we're going to widen this driveway on Delaware to help facilitate these turning movements into the site better. Some of the other negotiations that we had with them had to do with making sure that their tanker trucks could get off site and so the median design itself was shifted quite a bit and changed in order to be able to facilitate that and so our goal is for this to remain a very viable business. By all means and so you know we've tried to do what we can to both improve the safety and then also be able to to maintain that as a goal. Great thank you Bethany thank you very much. Thank you Commissioner East Commissioner Singh sorry.

[laughter]

Okay sorry I can't really see you from over here but yeah I just wanted to say thank you Miss Bethany I think your presentation and the way that you showed us the project is very thorough and neat and just referring back to community outreach I know you presented at College Park Elementary to the PTA. What kind of feedback did you receive more on like the safety element near the intersection near the Arco gas station and the Exxon gas station because I remember I think it was in August when you came and presented with us I know that there were some concerns raised about parents and their kids going back and forth through this area? Yeah I think a lot of the concerns really had to do with how much traffic was coming through there and just how busy it was in this really small area and then obviously we're proposing this new bike facility in the area and the prospect of putting this new bike facility within that sort of environment I think was something that a lot of folks were nervous about and so that's part of where the median we've gotten a lot of good feedback on the median that we've proposed to help eliminate a lot of those conflicts. Okay yeah that's great. Just as general feedback I do think that safety should be prioritized I think it's wonderful how you're implementing and you're adding more greenery and just nature to this area and you're also focusing on making the roadway accessible to like different kinds of transportation but I do think safety has to be prioritized because I know that was a major concern and I don't think anyone would be able to use these facilities to the maximum extent without those being there so definitely a consideration but besides that I think the project looked amazing. Thank you. Great thank you and yeah Bethany I echo a lot of the comments heard and thank you for making the time also to stop

just to bring this to the commission before it goes to City Council and you hear a lot of support for it. I just have a few clarifications. First cuz we're on this slide I agree that I'll be going to that Arco gas station slower but will definitely feel so much safer I've never felt confident having to to make that turn with all that traffic and I really like the idea of activated lights I mean signs at those intersections knowing that it's going to be hopefully a well used bike lane. Do you mind just taking me back to I I missed a little bit where the bike lane switches from both sides on together versus on separate sides of the road? Yes give me one moment.

Sure. So here it is. So originally what we had proposed was for these bike facilities to shift right here at the YMCA parking lot and so what we would have had was the two-way bike facility start right here at the YMCA parking lot. One of the early pieces of feedback that we heard was that there was a desire not for that shift to happen here but rather at Grant so this is what it was originally proposed and so as you can see on the design we've maintained the one-way facilities here all the way to Grant and now those bike facilities shifts are happening here at Grant. And so if you were a westbound bicyclist you could cross on two on either side of the roadway so you'd be able to cross southbound here and then continue westbound here or you could cross all the way to the opposite side continue southbound here and again continue westbound. As an eastbound bicyclist it's all just on the same side. Great okay and then staying here so at Grant is also where you're we're going to have those biscuits and footballs is that also going to occur at Norfolk? Yes. The same sort of um Similar ones I think

bulging out and Yeah one of the challenges at Norfolk is there's larger trucks going through there but you can see that there are some of those here as well but we're having to facilitate wider radii or larger radii to be able to facilitate those truck turns but the the protected components are still going to be there. Yeah that congestion fix here feels really smart and I think just overall the experience of driving through this route now will just feel more organized all the way around for everyone. Um and then just one more question will all these bike lanes be painted green too? I mean I know they're separated but does that mean they'll still be painted? They'll be painted there will be components of them being green so we put in the bike symbol you know every couple hundred feet and so those will be green and then you'll see the conflict striping you can kind of see it here the entire bike lanes were made green for these exhibits but you can see the conflict striping coming through here um that wouldn't you would have the stripes kind of and so here at the intersections yes I think between it would be a little bit less frequent a lot of that has to do with the cost of the green the green striping is actually quite expensive.

I've heard. And then how can you give us just an idea of the concrete barrier is it high low medium? Yeah it'll be a a 6 feet sorry not 6 feet [laughter]

6 inch curb so it'll be a 6 inch curb and it'll be a standard curb adjacent to the travel lane so it'll be like a standard curb and gutter adjacent to the the vehicle travel lane on the bike side of it it'll be a beveled curb and so you'll have like a I can't remember if it's a 45 degree angle but that'll come down and the reason for that is just safety of bicyclists you know if you happen to clip it that you're not coming up against a vertical element. Great okay thank you I also really excited about this and great job with the funding that you guys were able to get so much grants acquired for it. Thank you. I'm sure go ahead and Commissioner Crantz. Promise to make it brief. So one of the things I noticed is that we're hoping for a mode change where people will get out of their cars and get on to their bikes. Do we have a way at some point of measuring that and for the overall project are we going to include include any type of like a KPI framework where we can get feedback to see either from either North Star or from an aggregate how we doing with this project? Did it meet metrics? Can you speak to that? Yeah. I mean I can speak to it from a volume standpoint. We took a substantial amount of traffic volumes through here in order to be able to complete the traffic analysis for the project. And so we do anticipate that we'll take after counts. So after the project is complete, we'll come back and take more counts. See how the traffic is moving. I mean there's going to be a you know a lot of continuous observation certainly as we implement it. But yes, we will be taking additional after volumes. And that's really a one-to-one direct comparison. We do have the ability to use things like big data, cell data to try to get an estimate of it. Right now there's still some challenges with that data when you're trying to

look at the active transportation modes. So looking at bike and ped data, it's not quite as accurate as you might get for the vehicle data. So it's a resource that we have available to us. We do have a subscription subscription to be able to access that kind of data already. And so you know whether or not we use it I think is still up in the air. I don't think there's any harm in using it. I would just want to make sure that we're verifying the accuracy of it. Right. I think it's always amazing with these projects that you try and you try and use critical thinking and you think one thing and then you find out like for instance we were convinced that Waze was directing traffic bridge traffic through our little neighborhoods and you you figured out that using cell phone data that no, it's actually people who live here. So it it exploded that you know incorrect theory. And I think being data-driven especially using some sort of a a KPI index the next time there's a project we can call this up and say hey, we did this and then we got that and we we're now noticing mode changes where people are getting out of their cars and and into their onto a a bike, skateboard something. And again not to be redundant. But I think it's this is the wave of the future. I think as we especially coming from Sacramento essentially dictating that we're going to have to build build build. It's it's not going to be cars we're going to be getting around in. This is going to be more like where I come from in Queens, New York. It's just uh Yeah, it's it's sometimes faster to walk. So anyway, well thank you for all your hard work. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. I don't believe a motion is being requested. Okay, well thank you and we'll look forward to seeing the project progress. Thank you. Are there any other reports or announcements? I'll just

[clears throat]

first express appreciation to the commissioners for accommodating the special meeting time tonight. It gives us a little bit more time to be able to reflect back what we heard tonight to the council when we take that on the 18th. And also helped with with some of our staffing conflicts that we had with the regular meeting. But the regular commission meeting still is proceeding on May 13th. And so at that meeting you'll hear hear from Andrea Chao on some of the climate action plan and sustainability stuff. And then I believe we're going to be coming back at the June meeting with another visit on the storm drain master plan. And that will be the last meeting for Commissioner Robbins who is terming out. It'll be the last meeting for Commissioner Michael because her term is ending. And then our youth commissioners also are on a one-year term and so that would be their last meeting as well. And then we go through the process of reappointing new commissioners and new youth commissioners. So we will address the departures of commissioners and whatnot at that June meeting. So happy to take any questions or comments on any of that. I have a question. So we just finished training for commissioner training last week. And we found out that now is the time to ask if something could be put on the next agenda. Is that about correct? Yeah. Yeah, during reports or announcements is always a time that a commissioner could put something forward. Typically you're going to need to get a couple of nodding heads from your co-commissioners to add something to the agenda or request that staff look at it. So not to be adding to our workload but something we can handle internally. I'd like to revisit the standard operating procedure, the SOP that we wrote a number of years ago. It's it's a living document and I know we've made some add-ons to the to the pump station, the level gauges and stuff like that. That's that's not in the SOP. So I'd like to at least have a maybe a report and have a look at it. In terms of a commission meeting to It's that Okay, so part of S&I so I I thought it would be the the appropriate spot to put it. Yeah, so I guess I would look to see if

there are other commissioners that are interested in having that added to the agenda. Can I make a motion or is it just For the benefit of other commissioners, can you say that without acronyms? What was the SOP? Yeah, so back after we had the flooding concerns that happened on New Year's Eve 2022, one of the things that we did is we worked with Commissioner Krantz you know before he was a commissioner in a volunteer capacity to help us write new standard operating procedures for some of the activities out at the Marina Lagoon pump station where we had some of the challenges on New Year's Eve. So I believe Commissioner Krantz is is asking for a revisit of those SOPs. Maybe Commissioner you can be clear about I guess about what it is that you're asking come before the commission. In any kind of a safety culture you you look back at what you have and now that water is gone under the bridge is that document still safe? Is it doing its job and are there are there things have things modified out from under it that we need to to talk about? It's just simply a review and a a talk with the appropriate stakeholders, maybe Mr. Baltadano and Mr. Yeah, so I I guess you know open to what whatever the commissioners desire if you want this to potentially be a commission item. But I'm also happy to work directly with Commissioner Krantz and staff you know to to revisit things as opposed to having it be an item that comes before the commission. We could handle it that way if that's acceptable.

I'm quite resilient to go either direction. I'm just I'm just trying to just trying to do a good thing here. So what do you think? I I my recommendation would be is that we work separately from having it be a commission item just given that it's highly technical and I'm not sure that there's necessarily a a rate a piece for the commission to to look at on that. These guys love technicalities so yeah. I I think I agree with our director. Okay. [laughter] I knew if we have enough smart people we'd come up with a good answer. So yeah, that'd be that'd be happy to do that. Okay. Perfect. In that case, looks like we're ready to adjourn our meeting. Okay, meeting adjourned. Started Recording stopped. [laughter]

I like it that it was the minutes of the meeting not the hours of the meeting. Yeah. I'm joking.