Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

¶¶ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Thank you.

bringing to them and giving them the option to consider. At the same time or shortly after the driveway counts happen, we go out and we survey the TMA members. It's a standard survey that we have tried to improve over the years. And it's something that is not part of their conditions of approval that they participate in, but it's something that is a collectively as a group they've agreed to do. And they've for the most part, been receptive to additional changes or additional questions that go in, but it's not something that they're required to complete. But we strongly encourage them to, and we keep after them. We look for things like population counts and occupancies, things that might be able to help us understand what might be contributing to either increases or decreases in traffic. how they manage the TDM at their property, what they do in terms of programs and amenities and services, how they measure their performance, how do they get the information out to their tenants or to their residents, as the case may be, and then anything else that they want to let us know about any issues that they've had either with construction that might have caused any issues and so forth. So we collect that information from them. And then we put it into the report. The findings go into the report. We distribute that information to each of them so that they can learn from it as well. We do a presentation to the board and all their members to make sure that they understand what are the, if they're not doing something, what is someone else doing that might be beneficial to their site? As you can see, bicycling, at least on the bike racks and secure storage, those are the kinds of things that are capital things that they can easily put in at the beginning of a project, and most of them have. And so that's obviously the one that's the most common for them across this. But again, one of the reasons why there's not a lot of consistency in what people are doing across the board is you have a lot of different uses in these places. You have single family residential and you have multifamily, you have below market rate, you have a high school, you've got class A commercial space. What this doesn't show is what are the tenants themselves doing that are the tenants of, say, the Bay Meadows properties or the 400-450 con car that are the commercial tenants. So to drop names, Roblox, a very large tenant. This isn't what they're doing for their employees. We're not surveying them. They're not required to provide any answers. And Bay Meadows isn't going out and asking them what you're doing for your people. It's really, what is Bay Meadows doing? Or what are the owners of these individual projects doing? Not necessarily what the tenants themselves are doing. So I think you would find, especially in the Class A commercial space that's around the Bay Meadows area, There are a lot of programs. There are a lot of transit passes. There's a lot of subsidies. There's a lot of concierge services that are being provided to those employees in those locations. But it's not reflected in the survey because the survey is of the owners and what they're doing at their projects themselves, not necessarily what their tenants are doing. Just as an example of one of the current survey questions of how do you distribute that information? What are you doing for your people to get the information? So is it when they're moving in, when they're signing up a lease, you consistently email them? How do you do it? Or do you do nothing at all? And some people are willing to just tell us they're doing nothing at all. And some of these owners... have tenants who are going to take care of that for them and the owners are hands-off and they don't need to do anything or feel that they don't need to do anything because they're below their trip counts and their thresholds and they feel confident or they put it onto their tenants to make sure that those tenants are providing those kinds of things for their residents and their employees. So just a quick summary. The development is almost complete. Bay Meadows has a couple of parcels that still need to be built out. I don't know where that is in the planning process. I think they're in that process. They've completed the process, but they haven't completed the construction. That will finish the construction in that area. That will be another one of the triggers for moving Bay Meadows into the final development. of their traffic counts. All but two of the projects were below their short-term thresholds, and most of them, even if it was on the long-term, they might be close, but not all. Some of them will have, will struggle when it gets to the long-term. I think it'll be, I mentioned this last year, I think when I was here, that, you know, the red will be a little bit more, there'll be a little bit more red on there, I think, when we do go to long-term, because I think a lot of these projects are gonna be right on the edge of doing that. I mean, you have to really, they will have to start to really work hard. At Bay Meadows, a little bit, a 6% decrease from 2024. And they're still pretty well below their trip count threshold. We talked about the survey. Again, just a reminder, it is voluntary. And it's a little tricky to capture a lot of the information that you might want to capture, especially like origin destination information. kind of information, like where are these people coming from? Where are they going to? If you know, uh, all those kinds of information, but that's at the tenant level or employee level. And we don't have access to that information. And most of the developers and the owners and the, and the TMA members don't have access to it either because they're not their employees. They're not their tenants. With that, I'm happy to answer whatever questions that you might have or ask staff if there's anything that I might not have covered that you would like to make sure that we share with the Commission.

Well, thanks very much. That was a great presentation. We learned a lot. Let me ask real quick for staff, do you guys have any questions before we kick this off? Jay, anything jump out at you? Kathleen?

No questions. Okay.

Good stuff. So from the Commission, who would like to start off with questions?

THROUGH THE CHAIR. THROUGH THE CHAIR. THROUGH THE CHAIR. YOU DO HAVE TO OPEN IT UP FOR YOU DO HAVE TO OPEN IT UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. PUBLIC COMMENT. WE DO NOT HAVE ANYONE.

WE DO NOT HAVE ANYONE. OKAY. OKAY. I'M ERRINGLY ASSUMED SINCE I I'M ERRINGLY ASSUMED SINCE I DON'T SEE ANYBODY ONLINE. DON'T SEE ANYBODY ONLINE. DO WE HAVE ANY PUBLIC COMMENTS? DO WE HAVE ANY PUBLIC COMMENTS?

WE DO NOT HAVE PUBLIC COMMENT. WE DO NOT HAVE PUBLIC COMMENT. YOU CAN GO AHEAD AND CLOSE.

YOU CAN GO AHEAD AND CLOSE. OKAY. OKAY. SO NOW LET'S TURN IT OVER TO SO NOW LET'S TURN IT OVER TO COMMISSIONER QUESTIONS AND COMMISSIONER QUESTIONS AND ANSW I DON'T FIGHT OVER IT. GO FOR IT. I'LL GO.

SO I'M JUST KIND OF CURIOUS, WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES IF THE CITY COUNCIL OR THIS COMMISSION DOESN'T APPROVE THIS REPORT? SO YOU JUST GO BACK AND REDRAFT THE REPORT? YOU FILL IN THE BLANKS THAT WE HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT? WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?

Don't know. I mean, it's never happened. I don't think in the, I think the first report was 2013. And I think it's been, you know, again, it was written by the city before and then we took it over and do it. It doesn't stipulate, this all goes back to the 2005 plan for the Bay Meadows plan. And it stipulates in there, it just says that an annual report shall be submitted. I don't think it says... how, what happens if it doesn't pass muster. So, yeah.

Just curious, the other question.

I mean, I think it's also why we've continued to make sure that we iterate it with staff to make sure that it does cover the things that are important. But it is, again, it just bears noting, it is funded by the TMA and the members themselves. There's no city money in this except for whatever staff time for review of it. But it's not a city document. It's a document that's being presented to the city.

Well, I really do appreciate the information. It's really informative. The other question I had was, is it possible for the goals and thresholds to change under changed conditions, apart from the noncompliance situation, if there are new services, new resources? I mean, commute.org's been around for a long time, but if something came in like that, provided some additional services, it's like, well, we could really drive down the trip count. Is there a mechanism for that sort of thing to take advantage of changes in the infrastructure, services, et cetera?

That's a great question. Right, if... I'm not even sure that countering electrification was really fully baked into some of these plans when they were built in the early 2000s, right? Or 2000s. And so, but I think it would be, it would have to have been in the development agreement for any type of change, because I think those pretty much get locked in. And I think whatever those trip counts were at the time is what they lock it in at. I can't say for certain if the city has any agreement with any of the developers that has any flexibility in it, but that would be in the archives someplace wherever those development agreements are.

Sure. So going forward, new development. you can sort of hammer down those, those kind of threshold, those figures going forward. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it would, I, I, I see where you're getting, I mean, right. It should always be like, you know, let's, let's keep constant improvement. Um, but I think it's, you know, from the developer's perspective, it's like, yeah, we agreed to this number. This is the number we're going to be held to. But the, Commissioner Narita doesn't like when I bring up what the other things that didn't exist in the early 2000s, like food delivery services the way they are today, right? So those are things that they didn't take into account when they did the initial analyses and they're stuck because they didn't know about those impacting their trip counts. So it cuts both ways, I think.

Yep. Great.

Thank you.

Okay. JP, do you have anything? Sure. Thank you for your presentation, john. Just pretty quick questions. How do you know when reductions or increases happen? Why? How do you know it's not because of occupancy? Not because of occupancy?

You don't, you don't. It's a It's a, you know, once a year, one day, two day, maybe, count. And you're just not sure. Again, we have had, let me give you an example. I don't know how many years ago it was when we had, I'm looking over at LA, I won't know the answer to this one. um but we had the smoke remember the fires and it was in october and we had to reschedule the counts because there was a major impact from the from the fires in that october right and that did have a huge impact because people were trying to to stay inside right and so but nobody was really sure what the impact would be on that particular account But when you see something like the 400-450 con car, when you go from, you know, 200 down to 26, we knew what had happened. I mean, when we were at our meetings and we find out that they don't have tenants or we know that those tenants have left, we know those are the major impacts. But small increases or Franklin Templeton was a good example. They lost one of their major tenants. previously mentioned, that moved over to Bay Meadows. And they used to be a tenant of Franklin Templeton. They moved out and went over. That had a major impact on the Franklin Templeton count to the decreasing, but it was an increase on the Bay Meadows side. So a little bit of a squeeze in the balloon there.

And it's the same thing with the Delawares, where I missed the occupancy rate for that one, but that was one that had a lot of reds in it, but I missed it if there was an occupancy.

Yeah, so for apartment residential, that is something that's pretty important, but that has been almost fully leased up since its inception. So those units are almost fully occupied all the time. So when we get our occupancy rates on those, those are kind of in the 96. I mean, most of the residential properties are fully leased up or within that 5% to 10% of being fully leased up. So there's not much fluctuation from that perspective. On the commercial space side, there's a lot more fluctuation, right? Tenants coming and going.

Okay. I think my only, thank you. My only comments are, you know, I think there's the whole, let me ask you this. What is the point of this survey?

Of the survey?

Yeah. What is this point of this entire exercise?

To generate a report to provide to the city to be compliant. What's kind of like the big picture here? What, to do what? The original goals of the TMA back in 2005 when the city said, let's go down this path and let's create this or have the developers require them to create a TMA. and to fund it and to use it. TMAs are very effective at being a way to pool resources among the members to do bigger things than they might be able to do individually. A good example of a TMA, not this one, but other TMAs in other areas, is that they might, well, the North Mountain View TMA is a good example. Microsoft and Google and LinkedIn and a bunch of people are members of that TMA. And they collectively pool their money to provide a shuttle service to and from the Castro Street Station and Mountain View out to those properties. Because it doesn't make sense for each of them to run them individually, but collectively they can do it. They were required by the city to create the TMA. They were required to do that, and they figured out a way to do it, put it together, pool their resources, put a program together, and it's a very, very effective first last mile shuttle program out to the North Mountain View area. That's one of the things that a TMA can do. TMAs can also be used, I mean, they exist all around the country, not so much in California. It's much less so done here. The Emeryville is an example. Emery go around, anybody's ever heard of that? That's also a shuttle service that runs up and down through Emeryville to the BART stations, again, funded through a TMA with mandated participation, and they pool their money. But it's not just shuttles that you could do. You could do rideshare programs. You could do special carpool. You could do anything. Any TDM type of activity could be done through a TMA if they wanted to pool their money and do it.

Would you agree that in this case, hopefully the city can learn from these developments so that one day when more development comes in, we have a good strategy to entice people to come in maybe not use their cars, be much more urban friendly, use all these other modes of transportation you just described to still reduce the number of cars, but still live among one another in a dense area. And this might be a good way to test how we can entice those people to be that way. Would you agree with that statement? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, that's, I think that,

TDM is a constantly changing art. As everything happens, the tools that we apply, the thresholds that we would be setting, and staff is working with new development proposals all the time. And I think that they have evolved a lot. But it's really hard when you got one from 2007 or 2010, that may not be as effective as it would be if you were doing it today, but that's what you're stuck with, and that's what you have. I would just point out, and again, I'm still wearing the TMA hat, but one of the challenges has been to get them to agree, for them to want to do anything collectively, because their interests are so disparate. I told you, you know what the makeup of this is, right? Single family residential, below market rate, high school, class A office space, retail space. What do they have in common? And they struggle to find ways where it would make sense for them to collectively pool their money and charge each other or charge themselves to provide those services across the group. Most of them find it's just easier for them to do it themselves or make it a requirement or have their tenants take it on. But collectively they have not found those things. And because of the proximity to the train stations that exist, and putting my other hand, the compute.org shuttles that already exist. I mean, it's like there hasn't been like a shuttle need, but they've looked at, we've brought up things to them over the years and it's just been really not well received. And it's really up to them to decide if they wanna do it. I mean, it's not something that we can force on them, the city can't force it on them. They as a group need to decide that it's something that they want to do and that they want to charge each other, charge themselves for. And then it becomes really difficult. How does a Wilson Meany owner of Bay Meadows convince Midpen Housing to spend a bunch of money? Really hard to do.

Right. Thank you for that answer. That's made me think. I think, and you can respond to what I'm about to say and agree or disagree. But I think if we're gonna do a report every year and count cars, if the point is to learn from one another and maybe one day inspire a community of developments to to to take up some of these strategies that this model proves can work we might want to maybe just not just stop at counting the cars but count why they're going down or up and maybe have apples to apples comparison so that if a trip count goes down in a place we have uh an explanation that is not just a reduced occupancy but maybe it's because those bike racks actually worked or because these are the things because we're supposed to this supposed to this is supposed to give us insight as to how we can limit the trip count the vehicle count in the road while increasing urban density in the area if this is supposed to be a model for that um this report is just counting cars and we don't really know why things are going up or down we just know that they are not and sometimes we have an occupancy and sometimes we don't and so it's hard to make a big city policy decision based off of a report that is um doing that and please feel free if i'm completely off and disagree with me but that's my question and comment yeah i mean you it makes perfect sense what you're what you're suggesting

It's just not something that's required of those members to go to that level. Right. But I understand what you're, I totally understand what you're saying.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Who would like to?

Hi, John, nice to see you. Thanks so much for the presentation. It was very clear and thorough, really appreciate it. Okay, so I got some, we're supposed to, through the chair, we're supposed to do comments and questions both, right?

We're gonna combine them, yeah.

Okay, great, okay, thank you. So first questions. What is your best guess? And maybe this also is for staff. What is your best guess of when the long-term trip thresholds will get triggered? You said it's coming soon. It's coming soon. But what's our like, is it 2030? Is it 2028? What's the best guess?

Thank you. So for Bay Meadows, as John mentioned, that one is more based off of occupancy as well as things like the Caltrain electrification, the 20 new gap closure, Delaware Safe Routes to School, as well as the MU2 and MU3 that are being built. And then the remaining developments are in line with the more of an arbitrary date but related to level of service impacts on the intersection. So what would be the percentage required to reduce that to make sure that those intersections are still functioning as they should be and what level would be needed to reduce them. THE CITY WOULD BE ABLE TO GO OUT AND TAKE COUNTS TO DETERMINE AND TAKE COUNTS TO DETERMINE AND TAKE COUNTS TO DETERMINE WHAT THE IMPACT IS ON THAT WHAT THE IMPACT IS ON THAT WHAT THE IMPACT IS ON THAT INTERSECTION AND IF THAT LONG-TERM INTERSECTION AND IF THAT LONG-TERM INTERSECTION AND IF THAT LONG-TERM THRESHOLD SHOULD BE HELD TO AT THAT THRESHOLD SHOULD BE HELD TO AT THAT THRESHOLD SHOULD BE HELD TO AT THAT TIME. TIME. TIME. I'M SORRY.

I'M SORRY. I'M SORRY. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANT, THAT LAST PART ABOUT THE MEANT, THAT LAST PART ABOUT THE MEANT, THAT LAST P

Yeah, I can elaborate a little bit. So when we dug into the development agreements and the conditions of approval for every single project, and some of this could span easily over a decade, what we realize is the short term and the long term thresholds are based off of a localized impact. So say a development A comes in and that project, say, creates a thousand trips. ultimately into the network. What the actual traffic impact analysis would say is, say there are three intersections, ultimately, in the first year that they open would degrade to level service C, right, arbitrary number, and then in, say, a future cumulative condition, and oftentimes it's based off of the general plan, so 2030, to your point, Kimmy, that is an arbitrary date, it will degrade to, say, D. So what they do is they backwards calculate the amount of trips you need to reduce as a result of that one localized project to get it back to its current state. So to answer your question, it is really up to the city to update its counts to see how that intersection at every single project is operating in order to trigger, say, a long-term trip cap and go back to the developer and say, we have done our study. This is our conclusion. You are now moving towards the long-term threshold in order, and hopefully, to reduce the level of service back to where it was, say, 10, 15 years ago.

And we're talking when we say intersections, it's like Hillsdale and Delaware and Delaware and 28th? Those intersections?

That is correct. And every single application, every single project that comes in can study back in the day. easily five to 15 intersections.

So you have historical data on the conditions of the intersections as a snapshot of time, 15, 10, 15, whatever years ago.

Yes, that is correct. It took us a long time to dig for a lot of them. We don't have all of them. Yeah, thanks to Ella. But we're working on all of them.

And so does the city have a plan or a timeline to develop a plan in terms of when it would maybe consider capturing a new snapshot of current conditions at our intersections across the TMA service area?

Yes. Transportation and Public Works, we collect data very often. We just haven't consolidated it together to pinpoint it for the use of a TMA as well as, say, a condition of approval for a development project. But we do have that data, and that's something we're looking into establishing.

That's great. And so do you have an approximate time frame in reference? Let me rephrase that. Would the consolidated data around these intersections inform new short-term thresholds of the new MU, MU2, MU3? Or does that not? Does that not play into those short-term trip counts once those are developed?

Good question. Those are different. The projects that I'm talking about are the ones that are outside of the Bay Meadows area. So the counts, and as the report shows from John, it captures the actual trips, and that's the number we're going off of for Bay Meadows. That MU2 and MU3 is captured in. The umbrella is in Bay Meadows.

Okay. OK, got it. Thank you. And then I think, OK, can we go back? So OK, let's go down to MU 2 and 3. Ella, could you confirm the location of that? Were you able to confirm it?

Pardon, the location or the construction?

The location of it, and then provide the public with a little bit of an update on that.

Yeah. So MU2 and MU3 are between East 28th Avenue and then Landing Avenue off of Delaware. And the update for that is that they are expected to start construction this fall. It has 67 multifamily units, as well as... over 300,000 square feet of office space, which Roblox is currently expected to occupy.

Great. And then what happens for those short-term targets? How do those get set? Have they already been set?

Yes, for Bay Meadows, it's based off of the corridor-wide.

Oh, so they just add into the total right now. So their building does not add more short-term. They're going to feed into the Bay Meadows one.

That is correct. They will feed into the corridor counts for Bay Meadows. So right now, Bay Meadows is at a mid-term. midterm threshold and so part of the move to the long-term threshold is the build for bay meadows okay for the mu2 and the mu3 how far away was bay meadows from its current trip sorry i'm trying to like find it now oh yeah oh there was such a nice chart now it is oh there it is i think okay the chart

Okay, so they have 500, they basically have 550 trips based upon like kind of the current trend across those two properties or those two big projects essentially to be within their trip count. Is that right, John? Because the total short term is 2878, right? And they've been at 2311 and before they were at like 2400. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So they're just going to add into it.

Yes. Okay. Those counts, not this October, but further on once those are built will be collected with the corridor wide counts.

Fabulous. OK, thank you. I think those are all the questions for the city. Back to you, John. I have a general question. For the TMA, does the TMA do anything other than talk about or plan for the report and share different TDM interventions that they do towards compliance of their agreements? What are other activities that the TMA does together, if any?

Just a meeting is really all they do. In the meeting, all the minutes are part of the report as well. So that's all available for you to see what happens. And the city's a part of that at every meeting as well, because they're a member. So lots of discussion about what's going on at their individual projects, either new tenants, new developments. expansions, contractions, things that might be impacting them. And then they use it also as an opportunity to find out what's happening in the city, what's going on with various bike projects or things in the area. And then they share what they've been using. If they did have to do mitigating factors, what did they do and how did they do it? What worked, what didn't work? But they're able to share all that information out.

OK, great. But it's kind of like a neighborhood hangout, if you will, like a few times a year where they're sharing out information, lessons learned, city similarly like that. So curious about the thoughts. Have they? Hillsdale is my Caltrain stop. I regularly am in that traffic going to and from Hillsdale Caltrain stop. Like has there been any talk about the level of congestion lately and the uptick as people go back to work, you know, now that we're very, very much post-pandemic? Like along Delaware, like just all the traffic or like observations about that at all across the TMA or that just doesn't come up? Like the just state of general congestion in the area.

Yeah, no, I think that's a, you know, because they're neighbors, right? So it's the same idea, right? What are you experiencing? What's happening? And it's interesting because it is like that get-together where, you know, oh, what are you doing over there? We saw the construction going on at your place, and it's an opportunity for the high school to explain what they're doing with a development or something. So it's just a way for them to kind of know what's going on. And there are some good sidebars. There are some groups that have worked together. individually, but not collectively.

Okay, got it. And then, oh, sorry, sorry, staff, I do have one more question. This is outside the scope of the TMA, and I acknowledge that, but are there any, like, how regularly are signals evaluated for different considerations, like on Delaware? Just curious if, like, you know, if we had left-hand, protected left-hand turns, would that help with traffic flow and other, you know, kind of considerations or timing things? I was just curious if that's ever evaluated. I'm sorry, I just thought of that, but I forgot to send it to you beforehand, and that's my fault.

That is totally fine. That's why we're here. So we do have a really robust capital improvement program for transportation projects. But unfortunately, we have approximately 90 signalized intersections and close to 1,000 just intersections as a whole. controlled and uncontrolled. We don't have a systematic program that looks at every single one, but we have multiple programs such as quick build program that looks at specific intersections that analyze five-year rolling collision data. So we do do that, but not one specifically to optimize and improve a level of service.

OK, SO LIKE WHAT DOES THAT WHAT IS THE OH, GO AHEAD.

I WILL SAY WE DO LOOK AT THOSE THINGS WHEN WE'RE DOING A PROJECT LIKE CORRIDOR PROJECT. AND SO LIKE THE DELAWARE SAFE HOUSE TO SCHOOL PROJECT, WE'RE DOING SIGNAL OPERATIONAL CHANGES AS PART OF THAT PROJECT. SO THAT PART OF THE PROJECT HAS NOT BEEN CONSTRUCTED YET BECAUSE OF THE LONG LEAD TIMES FOR THE SIGNAL POLLS. SO THAT I THINK IS SUPPOSED TO GET BACK UNDERWAY IN SEPTEMBER. AND SO YOU'LL SEE ON THE DELAWARE CORRIDOR THERE'S GOING TO BE CHANGES IN TERMS OF THE SIGNAL OPERATIONS. and more protective signal timing in terms of bikes and pedestrians as part of that project. So we do look at it when we're looking at corridor projects or we're doing like, for example, we're doing Peninsula and Delaware. Right now we're doing safety improvements at that intersection. So we're upgrading signal operations at that intersection to provide specific safety enhancements at that location. So when we have specific projects or corridor projects, then we're looking at that, but we don't have a program that's looking at continuously looking at operations throughout our 90 signalized intersections and making improvements.

Got it. Okay.

I would also add, giving a shout out to our maintenance and operation crew, that a lot of times when we do go out to, say, a red flash, signals on recall, oftentimes we do look at whether our signal timing can be optimized for a specific corridor. So that's more on a routine maintenance operational basis. There's a lot of efficacy that can be gained there, but not specifically to go there for a capital project.

Yeah. No, understood. And that makes total sense. And thank you, Director, for talking about the bike, the corridor, and how that will lead to signal updates. It's just because Delaware is getting really backed up. And I just noticed it as a very clear trend. I assume the TMA members have felt it, and it's visceral. And I'm just concerned about safety and also economic impact. I also am curious, John, in the calculations for the trips, How does one take into consideration potentially cars circling to find parking? Because I do think in the rush hour, if you're trying to like get to field work or if you're trying to get to the restaurants, I imagine you could be circling around. And are those counted as like if they can't find a parking, is it like within a minute they can't find the parking, their license plate is flashed and, you know, they've exited and then it's no longer it's considered a through trip? Or, you know, could you walk me through that?

That's a great question. So the data would be captured, but you'd have to leave the zone, right? You'd have to enter and leave the zone. If you're circling for parking, but you're still within the zone, it's creating congestion and not good things, but it wouldn't trigger another count because you're not coming and going. So in order to... Yes, if you came in from El Camino on 28th and looked for parking and turned around and went back out to El Camino and then down to 25th and came in, that would trigger it a couple of times. But if you came and left, it would probably wash out in a through trip.

Got it.

Yeah, don't really have a good example. No, it's okay. Yeah.

It is a concern that got me to the question I had about MU2 and MU3, which was that's a it's a pit right now because there's supposed to be underground parking. But I think staff, you mentioned that that parking is going to be private and it's not necessarily going to be parking that can be publicly accessible. Is that accurate?

Public Works staff and the Community Development Department are still finalizing the agreement, but currently it is office parking, residential parking and other parking for the stations and residential blocks for Bay Meadows specifically but not public parking.

Okay I do I am curious if there's ways for the public to potentially engage and provide feedback on that just because the parking situation is really really bad and it's only exacerbating the congestion on the streets so I am curious about that as a consideration.

OK, I'll go to comments.

Delaware, Atlantic, and Pacific, great job improving. Amazing. This is the fifth year I've received this report, I think. And I'm so proud and grateful and thankful to staff and for the TMA and for Delaware, Atlantic, and Pacific for getting their trip count down. Keep up the good work. You're so close. Keep going. Really appreciate it. I know I gave you a hard time about DoorDash, but you're doing great. And just wanted to provide that positive reinforcement and appreciation. Franklin, please complete the survey. It would be really great to better understand the whole suite of interventions across the TMA. Really appreciate that if you're able to do that in the future. Like I said, and you can see the sense in my comments. I am genuinely concerned about congestion in this area I personally have witnessed many unsafe moves by pedestrians bicyclists and cars both coming out of parking spots on Delaware and in on Delaware due to the congestion at that five to six o'clock hour on a regular basis and I'M SURPRISED WE DON'T HAVE MORE CAR ACCIDENTS IN THAT AREA, AND I HAVE WITNESSED A COUPLE, SO I JUST GET REALLY NERVOUS THAT, YOU KNOW, AS MUCH AS THE TMA IS DOING, AS MUCH AS WE'RE DOING ON THE TDM PLANS, THE FULL OUTCOME STILL REMAINS A LOT OF CONGESTION AND A LOT OF SAFETY CONCERNS TO ME, AND SO I'M CURIOUS WHAT ARE THE INTERVENTIONS, AND THIS IS NOT THE FORUM TO HAVE IT, AND I UNDERSTAND THAT. But what are the interventions that are possible to still continue to improve that upon the congestion, knowing that the TDM plans and TMA are one piece, one key piece of that puzzle, but not the whole puzzle? Because with increased development in MU2 and MU3, which is great, it's only going to get worse, though. And so the trip counts, while I'm glad that everyone's almost there or under, We might have, I think what some of my fellow commissioners are hinting at, we might have anchored them a little too high in terms of 20 years ago in order to get to the shared outcome we all have, which is less congestion, less emissions, and more safety. And so if we're not achieving less emissions, less congestion, and more safety through the TDM and the TMA alone, WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THOSE OTHER INTERVENTIONS AND I WOULD URGE CITY COUNCIL AND STAFF TO YOU KNOW HELP HELP THINK THIS THROUGH AND WHATEVER THE COMMISSION CAN DO IN ORDER TO BE A FEEDBACK LOOP ON OTHER TYPES OF PROGRAMS OR PROJECTS OR INTERVENTIONS TO ACHIEVE THAT GOAL TO URBANIZE AND DENSIFY SAFELY AND EFFECTIVELY I WOULD FULLY SUPPORT SO THANKS THAT WAS TERRIFIC OKAY WHAT DO WE HAVE

Thank you.

Thank you, John, for that presentation. Also, I think this is my third or fourth year hearing it, and it's very informative. And when you come and report on it, I basically see a multi-year, mandatory, amazing case study of information gathering. I second what Commissioner Narita is saying. The numbers are good. Ideally, being close enough to the train station would take care of everything, keep those numbers low, but more interventions are needed. Sort of stepping off what Commissioner Renaud is saying, You know, my other hat working in the city and also like what was said of what can we learn from this amazing case study and data collection? It is difficult to parse out in the report what is effective and what isn't. For example, one of the projects you said, I think, was installing a bike fix-it station. But under commute.org's TDM, I don't remember exactly, but that may be like a 1% difference. It's really low. You know, this is more of just a comment, but it could be something to think about, you know, trying to do a deeper analysis in the presentation in the report you provide of, you know, trying to show, like, in the table also, like, in what year were more measures added? And then we could sort of start to see, like, did it make a difference or not because i agree proximity and occupancy is probably the biggest drivers for these numbers but um you know to be able to tell a story that the city can learn and other cities can learn from and how to TDM is hard. It's really challenging. But here we have a forced, required case study that we could try and learn from. So I just wanted to encourage trying to think of how to better learn from this actual data that's being collected. And that's it for me. Thank you.

Okay, thanks for that. Well, one of the things San Mateo does is be very progressive and wise, and we have youth commissioners. So I'll go last. If you guys want to step up, and it does two things. Sometimes we get good ideas, and it gives you an early exposure to civics and government. So go ahead.

All right, wait, yeah. I appreciate the introduction. That was very detailed. First, I just want to say that was an amazing presentation. That was really informative. I really got a lot of information. I'm going to keep it short. I just have one question, a comment. Firstly, for the Delaware Pacific and Atlantic, those properties... I noticed like the compliance measures and you might have said this, but I think I forget. I don't know. I think I forget. I forget. Have those been put in place like recently or are those like sort of long time things? And also like, do you anticipate foreseeably like putting in more compliance measures to try and get that number down?

So on that chart that you saw, the expansion of the Samtrans Way to Go Pass is new for the second property. So it was always in existence for the first property, but not for the second property. And the bike fix-it stations, as Seagal was describing, that's new. And the bike education, while we've provided some in the past, I think this is going to be a bit more formal and more structured. So those are some new ones. And just to add on to that, yes, the 1%, you're right. A bike fixation is fantastic. Is that going to move the needle on your trip counts on one day in October? Probably not. But the most important thing that they have been doing is providing the transit passes to their tenants. That's huge. In the TDM world, providing transit passes to your tenants or your employees or whatever is the single most effective way to drive down trip counts.

All right, great. And then also, like, I think this is more of a comment, but for the things that you survey and that sort of voluntary thing, do you anticipate or like? I think it would be a good idea to sort of use that as like a stepping off point for like long-term measures and maybe tools to use that. So do you think like that you would use maybe some of that information and things that they're not doing in when you get to that point of reaching the long-term measures, like, like, I don't know, like just as a starting point.

No, that that's, that's kind of it. I think that goes back to the point of what's working, what's not right. And what can they learn from each other? What might work at the high school, might not work in the townhome community, right? It might be something different, but maybe there is something to be shared between two apartment complexes, you know, that what worked and what didn't.

All right, great. Thank you so much.

Yeah, similar to Commissioner Scott, I only have one question. It's really just to clarify some things for me. Thank you, Chair Krantz, for the introduction. I know we were talking a lot about the relationship between occupancy and trip reduction thresholds. I don't know whether this would be a good question directed to the staff or to you specifically, but I just wanted to ask, are these trip reduction thresholds ever adapted based on occupancy? like do they change once they're established or do they stay the same regardless of what happens to that property?

I can go for the, Occupancy it it's the trip right reduction stays the same regardless of the occupancy. It is just for Bay Meadows specifically for the percent occupancy for these last buildings for the move to the long-term threshold that will be determined everything else it's going to stay the same short and long-term.

Okay, yeah, I was just interested in that because I know it was mentioned that 400 or 450 con car had a really big change in residency. So I was just wondering whether that would be adopted or that standard would remain the same. But thank you.

Yeah, and if I could just maybe just, because it was a great question. Again, it kind of works in both ways. The work from home change that kind of came post-COVID or during COVID and then post-COVID has had a major impact on trip counts as well. But the thresholds didn't change. All those development agreements were the development agreements that they always were. But if you have a lot of people... Working from their residence, that actually generates a lot of local trips because they're coming and going to the gym and the grocery store and lots of other things during the workday that they wouldn't otherwise have made those trips when they would normally have just left in the morning, come back in the evening. Now they're making multiple trips. So that was an impact, but it didn't change the counts, but it does change the impact of what's happening. what's happening during the days. Whether that's captured in October between four and six, I don't know, but that's an example of it. And same thing with the commercial properties. You might have fewer people coming to the workplace on a daily basis because of the ability to work from home. And then again, another flip to it is if you do have those people in the community outside of Um, this, the, the, the rail corridor TMA area, but they're taking advantage of the properties in the eating establishments and the drinking establishments in that area. You might've activated them more because they are working from home. This is like, it looks like a great place to go for breakfast. That there is a great breakfast place over there. I can't remember the breakfast club. Super. Um, but that's going to generate a lot of trips from people outside of the area, but that's what its intent was when Bay Meadows built it was to make this community.

Can I add one more comment, if you don't mind?

It's 50 cents.

Oh, thank you. I just saw it in my notes. This is also a comment, but it was really helpful also how you explain the collective benefit of a TMA, and they're not necessarily taking advantage of that. But just one thought about it was maybe something that they could be interested in and may benefit all of them is to pool their resources and gather tenant information, because that would really... beef up what we understand of how, where people are going and how they're getting there. And maybe that could help inform their own, you know, what works and what doesn't.

Putting my commute.org hat on. We work with a lot of these properties individually and try to do employee surveys. We don't work with the developers, but we work with their tenants and do a lot of that type of work already. So we are doing that work. It's just not something that goes back through the developer And someone brought up, I can't remember who mentioned it, but what have we learned in this long-term case study? It's really interesting for the city of San Mateo to learn this and to gather this and to get all this years of data. And you're absolutely right. It should happen. teach us what is more effective and less effective, and maybe what to put in new development agreements. I was sitting on an airplane today, as I was talking to the chair about today, on my way back, and I saw this headline that says, Burger King housing something. And I'm like, Burger King housing in San Mateo? And it was the strangest headline. I kind of, I was a little tired. I had to read it a few times. I'm like, what are we talking about here? But anyways, I don't really even know what it is, but it might be within the TMA zone in such that I don't know if it's going to be built with the exclusions and being able to be fast-tracked, but it's possible that a housing development project at that location could also become part of the TMA. So the TMA is not stuck with just the number of members that it has today and the development agreements it has. Anyone that's new that comes in, whether it's Burger King housing or or whatever the other projects are that get green lit in that area will be subject to new development agreements with the city and new conditions of approval and new thresholds based on current information. So not everything is back in the 2000 aughts, you know, the old folks before you guys were around.

All right. Sorry. All right. No worries. It gives a whole new meaning to the term Berg.

It was just, yeah.

So a couple of things. I like that you're data driven. I think it really resonates with a lot of us. And data is interesting. Data mining is interesting. But the distilling of the data is just as interesting. And that's where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. A couple of things. I'll try and be brief. I have worked hand in hand with Director Fabry on the 19th Avenue project. And I think once that gets done, that's going to be a crown and your jewel of all those one through six, all those properties down there that are now going to have access to 19th that could get to far and wide more places. I think that's going to be a good thing. But one of the things I took away was kind of what we're doing here tonight, managing people's expectations. The thought was that with 19th, a magic wand is going to happen, and it'll be 1987 traffic. And that's not really practical. We have competing demand for dwindling resources, which are roadways, and a car takes up a certain amount of space. And how do we want to handle that? And I think that's really important, to be able to get people to understand GOING FORWARD, WHAT'S IT GOING TO LOOK LIKE, WHAT CAN WE DO, WHAT'S TECHNICALLY INFEASIBLE, WHAT WE CAN'T DO, AND I THINK THAT'S A BIG PART OF THE REACH OUT FROM YOU GUYS AND WITH THE CITY AS TO WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. SO HERE'S A QUESTION TO DOVETAIL ON TO WHAT JP WAS ASKING, AND MAYBE THIS IS FOR JAY. SO THE TMA, DOES THAT DO ANYTHING FOR OUR CIRCULATION PLAN?

OUR CIRCULATION PLAN IN REGARDS TO OUR GENERAL PLAN?

YEAH.

I might want to get back to you on that.

There's no stumping questions. It was a thought I had like the aggregate, the overarching arch of all this stuff could be somewhat circular that the plan could now get back into the circulation plan and WE'VE HAD SOME EFFICACY WITH BIKES AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT BIKES AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT THE BIG PICTURE? THE BIG PICTURE? I THINK THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD I THINK THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA. I learned today there's a difference between the Clipper card and the Way to Go. Apparently, Way to Go is subsidized. In the Clipper, you just keep putting money in on it. That's a great thing. Transit passes are huge. When my wife worked at the Cancer Center at Stanford, she got rail passes and then jumped on the Marguerite to go to work. It was fairly painless. And she would loathe having to take the car. It's just too painful. But here's a question. It was something that struck me while I was studying this report. When we had COVID, traffic got way better. And now that employers are saying you got to come back to work, there's no work from home anymore, we know you're slacking off, you're playing with the dog. How can we influence employers to take cars off the road and do more work from home. There are some jobs, like my wife is currently at Gilead. If you're a scientist in a lab, you got to be there. I used to work for you. We talked about this. I worked for United. And I kind of have to go to work. It'd be hard to do that remote. What can we do to promote more working from home?

Oh, boy.

Because I think this is the answer. The lower left-hand corner of the big picture, this would fix a lot of things.

I had the opportunity to serve on the Blue Ribbon Task Force for Transit Recovery in the Bay Area. And I was representing the TDM folks. And it was a massive committee of 40 some odd people representing all the transit agencies and so forth. I was the only one that said, you know, this work from home thing, I think we need to keep it going. The only one in the room, and they didn't ask me for another question the whole rest of the time I served on the commission. It's not... Communities want to be activated. Transit systems want to be full. And employers want people in the seats... that they're paying for leases on. When they renegotiate their lease and they can downsize it, then there's some other things. But I think we've come off the peak. It's coming back down to probably be an average of one and a half to two days a week work from home. That's probably where we'll stay. Pre-pandemic, we were about 6% to 9%, depending on where you were, of work from home. So I think it'll probably be someplace in the 15 to 17% by the time we're done, which is a lot better than the six to nine, but not as good as the 50% where we were before.

Right. Okay. Well, here's a question. So do we ever reach out to other communities to invite them into this TDM and to have them participate, even though they're technically not in San Mateo?

No, the TMA itself is kind of restricted in geographic participation. As I mentioned before, though... Non-required members are eligible to join. And I think if the group was providing really valuable benefits that might make sense to lure some other people in, then you might get some people that would take up on that. It's hard to get people to join a club and have to pay dues. And that's kind of what it is. So they've been very restrictive about what programs they want to implement. A couple times when members have brought it up over the years, they've been voted down. Actually, it's probably never come to a vote because they couldn't get enough people to support the idea of doing something collectively and spending money and raising money amongst each other. On that point, I will tell you, it's not only a case study for the city of San Mateo. I've shared... The San Mateo Rail Corridor TMA with my national organization I belong to, which is the Association for Commuter Transportation, and there's a TMA council. And this story has been shared widely in terms of the things that work well for it and the things that don't work well and kind of the lessons learned from it.

Right. Because one of the largest employers, Gilead, is inches over the border. And they're actually pretty good with buses and transportation and bike racks and like that. But I was just wondering if there could be any anecdotal benefits including them, especially with the 19th Avenue corridor since they're...

They do participate in the Commute.org shared shuttle program, and they're one of the big contributors to that program. Gilead is an example of somebody that does that, but it's outside of this core area.

So bike repair stations, is that simply a... What is that? And is there a person that works on your bike? How does this work?

I'll answer this one. But no, it's a self-maintenance group. So it's got all the tools and wrenches kind of hooked onto it. And it's a place for you to put your bike up and do a tune-up on your own bike in those stations. And sometimes they come with a... Well, they most always have the tools, but sometimes they'll be patches and things like that. Tools, stuff like that. Yeah.

CLASSES, INCLUDING E-BIKE? CLASSES, SINCE THAT'S BECOMING VERY POPULAR?

That's tricky. Yeah. The funding that we have for that does not currently allow us to do the e-bike training. Okay. We do bike safety, which can be used for both, but we don't do specific e-bike training currently. The funding doesn't allow it.

Okay. All right. You mentioned bike racks, and I promised not to get in the weeds with this one, but when I rode, one of the things is you go to a Starbucks and you've got your cleats on and you want to walk in, click, click, click, and they don't like it. Having benches alongside the bike racks, especially a place of business, you could change your shoes and walk in comfortably. And again, I'm out of the weeds. We'll stop talking about that. There were a couple of other, got that, got that, got that. So once the financial sector loosens up some money for building and construction loans become more affordable, and we're going to see buildings sprouting up all over the place, how is this going to change your metrics?

Kind of what I alluded to before, which is that each of the projects have their own individual

AGREEMENTS. AND THAT'S BAKED INTO THE AND THAT'S BAKED INTO THE PERMIT PROCESS? PERMIT PROCESS? RIGHT.

RIGHT. THEY'LL BE REQUIRED TO GO THEY'LL BE REQUIRED TO GO THROUGH THAT. THROUGH THAT. WHAT I DON'T KNOW, ARE THE WHAT I DON'T KNOW, ARE THE HOUSING, LIKE THE, IF SOMEONE HOUSING, LIKE THE, IF SOMEONE GETS BUILT UNDER THE NEW, WHAT GETS BUILT UNDER THE NEW, WHAT IS IT, AB 812 OR, I GET IS IT, AB 812 OR, I GET MY NUMBERS WRONG, BUT WERE MY NUMBERS WRONG, BUT WERE THEY ABLE TO COME IN AND THEY ABLE TO COME IN AND CIRCUMVENT A LOT OF THE CITY CIRCUMVENT A LOT OF THE CITY PLANNING PROCESS. PLANNING PROCESS follow the restrictions of that or not?

That's a really good question. That's something we're looking at currently internally with a couple of projects that can be within the rail corridor TMA.

Especially with the below market rate, it loosens, even eliminates a lot of the restrictions.

So yeah, I hadn't thought of it until tonight. Like, what happens if we get a project like that? And they may come into that area. They would be, of course, welcome to participate and join and everything else. But they may not be required to. I don't know the answer.

Exactly. OK. I think I'm good. I've covered. Oh, the last one. This is controversial. I almost didn't want to do this, but we'll do it anyway. one of our um residents part of our um suggested that and again i'm i'm just going to touch on this if we slightly and then get out of here uh mike's wire suggested that we tear down our parking lot garages and stop inducing people to come downtown to make traffic Thoughts? Is it?

Mike's a lot bigger than me, so I guess I have to.

It's not here for me, so we're good. It's really controversial. I don't know any cities that are doing that. I mean, it seems to be counterproductive or counterintuitive.

I think I would just say that we would encourage people to ride their bikes anytime they possibly can. And I think with a lot of the infrastructure projects that are happening in the city, you're making it safer and better. And it will draw people in. I think that's the right answer. But I think the bike advocates will, you know, they pound the table louder than just about anybody else and good for them.

Right.

Exactly. Okay.

Well, I think I'm done. I think it was a great presentation. I like it. To answer your question, if we decide to not go with this, there would have to be something pretty glaring. It's like, wow, this is a... YEAH, THIS IS WAY OFF STANDARDS. THIS IS WAY OFF STANDARDS. SO DOES ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY SO DOES ANYBODY ELSE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? QUESTIONS?

CAN WE MOVE TO THE CAN WE MOVE TO THE RECOMMENDATION SLIDE? RECOMMENDATION SLIDE? I THINK IT'S THE NEXT SLIDE, I THINK IT'S THE NEXT SLIDE, JOHN. JOHN.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. I KNEW I HAD SOMETHING ELSE TO I KNEW I HAD SOMETHING ELSE TO DO.

OKAY. SO THE RECOMMENDATION IS FOR SO THE RECOMMENDATION IS FOR THE COMMISSION TO TAKE A MOTION THE COMMISSION TO TAKE A MOTION AND VOTE ON A RECOMMENDATION FOR AND VOTE ON A RECOMMENDATION FOR THE COUNCIL TO ADOPT THE TMA THE COUNCIL TO ADOPT THE TMA REPORT. REPORT.

WE'LL MAKE A MOTION THAT WE WE'LL MAKE A MOTION THAT WE ADOPT THE TMA AS WAS PRESENTED TO ADOPT THE TMA AS WAS PRESENTED TO US TONIGHT AND AS WE HAVE US TONIGHT AND AS WE HAVE ONLINE. ONLINE.

I CAN MAKE THAT MOTION.

I CAN MAKE THAT MOTION.

OKAY, GO AHEAD. OKAY, GO AHEAD. I MOTION TO ADOPT IT. I MOTION TO ADOPT IT.

ANY OKAY. OKAY. CAN WE TAKE A ROLL?

CAN WE TAKE A ROLL? CAN WE TAKE A ROLL? COMMISSIONER LEE? COMMISSIONER LEE? COMMISSIONER LEE? AYE. AYE. AYE. VICE CHAIR RENAUD? VICE CHAIR RENAUD? VICE CHAIR RENAUD? YES. YES.

YES. CHAIR CRANZ? CHAIR CRANZ? CHAIR CRANZ? YES. YES. COMMISSIONER ARRETA? COMMISSIONER ARRETA? YES. YES. AND COMMISSIONER MICHAEL?

AND COMMISSIONER MICHAEL? YES. YES. MOTION PASSES. MOTION PASSES. VERY GOOD. VERY GOOD. THANK YOU ALL. THANK YOU ALL. FANTASTIC QUESTION AND FANTASTIC QUESTION AND DISCUSSION TONIGHT. DISCUSSION TONIGHT. I REALLY APPRECIATE IT. I REALLY APPRECIATE IT.

JUST THROUGH THE CHAIR. JUST IN TERMS OF UPCOMING JUST THROUGH THE CHAIR. JUST IN TERMS OF UPCOMING MEETINGS FOR THE SEPTEMBER 9TH MEETINGS FOR THE SEPTEMBER 9TH MEETINGS FOR THE SEPTEMBER 9TH MEETING WE ARE PLANNING ON HAVING MEETING WE ARE PLANNING ON HAVING MEETING WE ARE PLANNING ON HAVING FOLLOW-UP ON THE CENTRAL EL FOLLOW-UP ON THE CENTRAL EL FOLLOW-UP ON THE CENTRAL EL CAMINO PLAN. CAMINO PLAN. CAMINO PLAN. THAT'S THE STUDY THAT SAM TRANS IS THAT'S THE STUDY THAT SAM TRANS IS THAT'S THE STUDY THAT SAM TRANS IS UNDERGOING IN TERMS OF LOOKING AT UNDERGOING IN TERMS OF LOOKING AT UNDERGOING IN TERMS OF LOOKING AT HOW TO MAKE

we good okay with that we the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone recording stopped