Jan 07, 2019 Traffic Safety Commission on 2019-01-07 5:30 PM

to establish a speed limit along the newly constructed section of FM 2499 from interstate highway 35 southbound frontage road to FM 2181. The item that we're going to talk about is FM 2499. I'm just pulling up the map together. But as most of you know that 2499, the segment south of I-35E where it was state school for the longest time, it was state school road was recently widened and there was a new connection established between I-35E and all the way down to FM 2181. I think the city limit is Corinth at that point. So this is the new segment I'm talking about. So this is the new segment between I-35E all the way to 2181 and I think our city limit is somewhere in this area where it ends. So typically what happens is once a segment, text dot segment for example, similar to FM 2181 currently under widening or 377, any new street that is widened, the most recently completed was 380. I got that item in front of commission a while ago. I think it was middle of last year that this portion of 380 was widened. And then text dot typically once they do that or install a new facility like in this case, they do a speed survey. What they do is they go out and start counting how fast are the cars going and what's the comfortable speed on which these are traveling. Are they traveling at a speed higher than what was designed? I think typically all these design speeds are around between 45 and 55 miles an hour, especially for these straight FM roads. And they conducted a speed survey along this segment and initially they got a report back to us for staff review at the city and they were recommending anything south of Robinson be posted at 50 miles an hour. But when we looked at it, our main concerns were there were several intersections, Hickory Creek and Special, and they were smaller. I think Pine Hills comes in here. That's a smaller intersection. These are having some serious concern about side distance. The turns and the horizontal and vertical curves are so that vehicles cannot be seen when they're waiting at the intersection to get out onto the main lanes. And currently one lane in the southbound direction on this particular segment has been shut down by text dot because anyone that wants to get out cannot really see any traffic that's coming southbound. So there have been a few accidents here. So that one lane has been temporarily shut down until we widen Hickory Creek and then install a signal. So that's the plan. It's in design currently. But based on all the accident statistics and what we know about the area, we shot it back to text dot saying 50 miles an hour is not going to work. We want it down to 45. Because south of this whole segment is 45. North was 45. It didn't make any sense to have people speeding in people's backyards. This is mostly residential. And we didn't want traffic, especially when you have access points where people are going to slow down to be traveling at 50 miles an hour. So based on that recommendation, they came back and they're now recommending 45 miles an hour for the entire segment from 35 to FM 2181. And yes, we're part of that. We're currently working on also fixing Hickory Creek, widening it and installing a signal. So that's happening. This item pertains to the speed limit. Once we get a recommendation to move forward, we'll take it to council. And once an ordinance is passed, we can actually go and post the speed limit and enforce it. Currently we don't have any ordinances or anything to back us up policy-wise to enforce any speed limits on this brand new piece of roadway. Any questions? I drove it today and I was doing 50. We can't say that here. Well, there's no speed limit. So I was talking to that and I was talking to Sergeant Briggs. He's one of our traffic PD guy. And what he was mentioning is if a roadway technically does not have a speed limit posted, they assume it to be 30 miles an hour because it's an unposted street. And then they can actually take it. I was just having a discussion with him. Lesson learned. Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Go ahead. You had a question. Sorry. Lesson learned. I was wondering about the lane that was closed. Would taking it to 40 help any of the accidents or any of the... One of the things that we really walk a fine line is, as you mentioned, if people are doing 50 miles an hour and if we posted a 40, we run into risk of enforcement. We have to have, it wouldn't really slow people down. It would be more a fan. How do you enforce something that is not practical? Since 85% of your people are doing 45 miles an hour, then how do you bring that many people down to 40 as opposed to being somewhere in the middle saying, "Okay, 45 miles is a comfortable speed limit. It is a speed limit that most of the streets can be accessed in a safer manner." Then all of that is taken into picture. If we just willy-nilly say that we're going to post 20 or 25 or 30, then it becomes a burden on the officers on the enforcement aspect. Yes, no one's going to really adhere to it. If you go south of this, there's 45. On the bridges, no one really goes 45. Everyone's 55 or 60 because there's no friction on the side. There's nothing on the side to tell you, "Yeah, you need to slow down or you're entering an urban area." It looks like a highway. The side friction, the type of uses, the interaction, the spacing of driveways, access points, all of that counts into what kind of speed you define and what's comfortable for most of the drivers. I'm fine with 45. Any other questions? 45, sounding good. We need to make a recommendation to City Council. Does somebody want to make a recommendation that we send that suggestion of 45 miles an hour to Council? I move that we do. Do we have a second? Second. 45 miles an hour in this section, send it to City Council. Everyone in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Okay. Unanimous. All right. Perfect. All right. That gets us to 1C, which is TSC 19-003, which is to receive a report, hold a discussion, and make recommendation to City Council regarding the prohibition of electric scooters on city rights of way. Mark. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Mark Oliphant. I'll be talking to you about this tonight. So electric scooters, this is something just in the last, I'd say, 18 months to two years has really taken off across the country. There are both electric scooter services, and they can be bought individually and used by individuals, and I'm just going to talk about both aspects of e-scooters. So here are some examples. On the right is a type that you find in the rental fleets. This one's made by Spin, but you can also purchase very similar models individually. On the left, these were available on Amazon and go for about $400 to $500. The scooters typically go max out at about 15 miles an hour and are built for an adult. To talk about the scooter share a little bit, it's like bike share. They're dropped off in cities, put on sidewalks or different locations. People can come by with an app that's on their phone, and they check out the scooter. Usually, it's about $1 to check it out, and then 25 cents a minute or so beyond that. There are a lot of arguments that this is a good mobility option for cities. It's simple, affordable, environmentally friendly, and the numbers do pan out that it is very popular in many places, often 10 times more popular than bike share. But there are a lot of concerns about safety, and that's something I'm going to talk about. So these are headlines, just recent from different newspapers and so forth, leaving broken bones and bruises, doctors seeing spikes and injuries, emergency rooms having specific data point spikes from scooter injuries. These are two articles from the New York Times talking about the same issues. There have been enough injuries, and they've been popular enough across the country that the Centers for Disease Control is actually they're working with the City of Austin to specifically look into all this. I know also, as I've talked to the police department about these, they're very concerned about mixing young college students, alcohol and scooters, and really see the potential for disaster. So here are just some of the differences. You think, "Well, hey, what's so different from a bike share bike or something?" Well, they have very small wheels, and so those don't go over bumps like a large wheel on a bicycle does, not nearly as easily. The center of gravity is higher, and it's further to the front than a bicycle. They have very squirrely steering or tight turning radiuses. They can attain high speeds. Because of their smaller size, they often get used on sidewalks as much as they would on streets. When they mix with vehicular traffic, people don't know how to do that. Then also, they are so simple to use, you just stand on it, that a different demographic of people uses them versus those who might already know how to use a bicycle and be familiar with it and so forth. So these are just some of the reasons that we run into these problems. Talking about what the regulatory landscape is for this, and Trey can correct me if anything's wrong here, but under the state code, municipalities have the option to prohibit these types of things. It's up to the municipality, so that's in the code. Some things that other cities are doing right now, we don't have a regulation currently. Many other cities have allowed these but they're also dealing with the fallout of the injuries and so forth. Fort Worth is the prominent nearby city that does not allow scooters. Has them banned under an ordinance. Now, just for a little bit of clarification, there is a restriction currently just for the downtown area about bicycles and other toy devices not being used on sidewalks, but otherwise there is no prohibition or anything. So the policy options on it, right now there's not really any type of restrictions to your far right there and your far left. You can have a prohibition and then there might be options as far as dealing with scooter shares and so forth. There's something in between potentially. Now this is a very important point I think is that because this is a college town with lots of students around and so forth, I think it's important that the city be in harmony with the universities or that they at least communicate and work together about this and in talking to the universities, neither university at this time has said that they are ready to deal with scooters. UNT actually has on the books, they prohibit motorized vehicles inside of the campus other than mobility devices for ADA or something. And so that's a big driver here too is the safety issues and then that the universities don't want them yet because if we were to allow scooters in the city but not on the universities, it would be very difficult to regulate that. And then also they're very new and cities are figuring out how to regulate them, where they're best operated and everything like that. So from the perspective of traffic engineering, from our perspective, at this time we feel that Denton is not ready to accommodate electric scooters. We'd like to see some more research about it, some more information about safety, you know, once the CDC does their report and study and so forth. And perhaps in the future it could be accommodated but at this time we don't feel that Denton is ready for that. And so that's our recommendation to the commission. So are we coming in and preemptively putting in a ordinance to prevent Bird and these other companies from coming in? I'd say it's close to preemptive but there have been more than two inquiries from scooter share providers. So this is running in parallel to real world actions. And I know in many cities they will just show up overnight and put the scooters on your streets. And if you don't have something in place, you may not have a mechanism to regulate it. So on the scooters, like on a bike, you would have like a light in the front and a light in the back, which is required. Hopefully the shared scooters do have that. I don't know if those individual ones that you buy from Amazon are equipped with that. I know there's federal law that bicycles have to have reflectors, but that's not the same case with scooters. So I don't know. Okay. So we don't have anything that says that they would have to have some sort of reflector, reflective device so that people can see them. Right. That is, that's not a requirement like it is for bicycles. And so do we, do we allow scooters on the road? Cause my first thought would they be on a sidewalk? Trey, you want to help me? Are they toy devices currently? I think it's a little murky how currently they're being regulated. Trelien's for deputy city attorney. I am not the city prosecutor, so this is not my area of expertise. It's my understanding that vehicles are, it would be considered a motor vehicle because it is not self-propelled. It does have a motor that propels it. However, because it travels 15 miles an hour or less, it could fall under the toy device prohibition that we currently have that is only covers the sidewalks and only in the downtown area. So if someone were to try to ride one on a public street, well, they may, and again, this is not my area, but I would think that they might, would still be questioned and possibly talked to about impeding traffic or something like that. But I don't know that we have a strict prohibition right now that stops them from operating on a street directly. And it's my understanding that council has looked at this and wants us to kind of go with the universities for now. And the prohibition that's being proposed is not against the companies and it's nothing, nothing against the businesses. It's against the action of the scooters themselves. Thanks. And so I'm going to give a contrarian point of view. I taught my seven-year-old dad to ride scooters in Tulsa a couple, a few days, two or three days ago, and we rode them over to the park and rode them back. And I ride scooters all the time. Every city I go to, they're a great form of transportation between areas. I've never found them particularly dangerous. In fact, I find most of these cases to be, I find them to be blown out of proportion because they're new. People find these injuries and I find every single thing that is being brought up around scooters, I find happening with other things. Cars are more dangerous. The streets we build are more dangerous. We block sidewalks ourselves. The city ends up blocking sidewalks all the time. And so I found most of this just resistance to change. Now I'm not saying that the CDC reports are going to be interesting because I know that there have been cases of broken bones and things like that, and that's a real concern. But I think scooters are perfect for a city like Dalai Lama because what we have is we have these gaps in the core right between UNT and the square, and that's a perfect scooter distance. It's a perfect scooter distance for somebody jumping off of the DCTA who travels that and taking it to one of those campuses. Now the problem is our streets, not the scooters right now, that our streets are too dangerous. And so one thing, an argument a lot of people have made is these scooters, as they become part of the modes of transportation, are very much operate like bikes and are going to force us to start taking, if more and more people start using them, will force us to start taking, making safe spaces for bikes and scooters and alternative forms of transportation. Most people in scooters are not dumb enough to say I'm just going to take this thing on Bell. I ride them in cities all the time. No one rides them on dangerous roads because they're dangerous. What they do is they do against violation in every other city, is they go on the sidewalks. It's just like we do with bikes too in this city where people perceive the threat to be too dangerous, which is not a good solution. We obviously should fix that. So I'm just personally would be against banning them and I think I would love to see more conversations about it because a lot, there's a lot of college towns that are using scooters. In fact I've been to several in the area and rode scooters around college campuses and they're great ways to get from point A to point B and reduce time without having to jump in a car or a cab. So they really can take traffic off of the road. So that's kind of the case for it. In areas like the square where it's slower, it's just like a bike. It's easy to ride along the traffic. And they don't go that fast. They go, I was riding a Lyme this weekend and it hit, topped out at 15 miles per hour. So it's not like these are zooming at like 30 miles per hour or anything like that. I would support the staff recommendation. They're gonna pass the ordinance tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. I think we'll move that item, but yeah, it's pretty close. The feedback we received from council is pretty straightforward. At this time, as you mentioned, we as a city are not ready to look at legal liabilities, look at all the issues that are concerning. Do we allow them on street versus sidewalk? All these questions need to be addressed. And if some company shows up tomorrow morning, we're not prepared. That's why we're taking this sort of preemptive strike and get this in place. And then yes, we can still continue the conversation. It's not that we're against it. It has to have the right platform. It has to have the right setup to make it happen, make a pilot program, think of different routes, places that can be used. And then yeah, we'll continue looking into it. We're not completely saying that the city will never look at scooters, but we have to set up ourselves both legally as well as infrastructure wise to make that happen. Let me ask a question. What further information would we need that's not already been tested out in the hundreds of cities that they've been dropped off in already? So as you mentioned, most of the cities are still struggling. Would we allow it on sidewalks? And absolutely no. Sidewalk is not the right platform, at least from an engineering perspective, to say that you have people walking and then you have someone zoom by at 10 or 15 miles an hour. So that's an unsafe situation. Sidewalks also tend to have smaller lifts where those tires get entangled and zoom off. So we're talking about the conditions of the sidewalk at that point too. So it becomes a big liability issue. We're not ready to have them on the sidewalks. Now, are we ready on the streets? No, because we don't have the infrastructure. So we need some time to figure out in the long-term plan, what are street segments, what are our big picture mobility goals, and then slowly incorporate that. So it's not something that we want someone else, some other entities forcing on the city, but we want it on our terms where we try and test some of these. Of course, UNT and TW are big partners and we'll work with them as they get ready. If I could chime in. The city is currently in the test phase or the pilot program for the bike share. And I know that the bike share provider that's currently permitted in the city, they do also have a scooter program and that they are interested in educating the city and the universities about it. So as an advocate for non-automobile modes of transportation, it does pain me a little bit to say, "No, none of these." But I do see that there is some logical arguments to be made for the city getting out in front of this, saying we're not ready for it, the university and the city needs to get together and talk about it, things like that. But I'm optimistic that there's a way that it can be incorporated into the city before too long. So is there, just from a policy and from a legal perspective, is a moratorium a softer landing? Would that do what we want to do? Because banning sounds kind of, you know, so if a city is, if a scooter company is looking at Denton and saying, we would like, oh, dang it, there's a ban. Versus knowing that we have a moratorium while we are working through a lot of kinks. Is there any difference between the two? Would a moratorium be a better solution or what would we? But what he mentioned is we're not banning any of the companies to come in, we're banning more of their use. So we're open to getting them talking. That's what I mean. No, you're not banning companies. Yeah, I know, but we're open to- But you know what I mean, right? Any somebody- If they can't use their product, why would they be coming in? Right. But we're open to talking to them and we're open to making sure that we're on board with UNT and TW as they go through the process of education and other pilot programs that they're thinking about. So this, yeah, it sounds really bad to ban, but- Yeah, it's harder to step back. So to unban something, do you have to go through more procedural hoops than to say, okay, moratorium is over because we have answered our questions, we've fixed our problems and now we're ready to entertain a company coming in? I think the way that this is set up isn't like that though. The way that it's been proposed is that it would be a city ordinance prohibiting the action of riding the scooter on the city street or the sidewalk. So it's not really so much a set up as a temporary whatever. It's just like any other of our criminal type statutes, it's something that you can receive a ticket for and receive a fine for. And then once it's decided that we've got a new plan in place, we would come back through the same steps we're taking now to change that ordinance and would probably change to be putting in where you could ride a scooter. So there aren't any additional steps or anything like that on that. Okay. I think the process will be same. It won't be a long lengthen out. It's not like, well, once a ban is placed, you can't go back. It's not that. It's more of, okay, now that we know what we can do, we can start adding to the ordinance saying we're amending that ordinance to allow usage on these routes or allow usage in this area. That's all we're doing. Oh, so it could be geographic. You could tie it to geography if you want to. Exactly. Because I realize that this also affects people who do go on Amazon and buy themselves a cute little scooter. Well, and my understanding is that the companies can also restrict where the scooters go, right? Because they can put like red zones on it. And so they could actually put the campuses. So what students would do is ride them up to the campus, drop them off on the edge of campus there. But they can also do it outside of the core to me. I guess one thing I'd say, I've just seen these drop. It is chaos everywhere they get dropped. I've seen it when I've been in cities when it happens. But it just settles in and either the city, you know, either bans it or they keep it. And now it's just kind of a normal part of it. And I go to Oklahoma City a lot. And every time I'm up there, I ride them all over the place, six, seven miles every time I go. And they're, I just really enjoy them and see people riding them all over the place. And it's made a lot of places more accessible. I'm just I guess the thing that's unclear to me, I mean, I think sidewalks are banned. I think they're banned. I've never seen a city where sidewalks aren't banned. It's so to me, I'm just unclear the things that we have to clarify. They're available in the streets. And I mean, it would make sense that they're available in the core. Like to me, I guess I'm just unclear how much more research is needed for that. Seeing them dropped in other places. And people aren't going to ride these out, you know, across 35 and stuff like that. So people generally keep them only two places where they're rideable anyway. I guess I'm unclear. So what do we what more research would we need to do if if they're banned on sidewalks in almost every city and we kind of know that we just need to restrict we need to do research on which streets they're allowed on? We need to work with the UNTNT. There are main users. I mean, city is such we have one or two locations that they would even work in. But since UNTNT that they are not on board, we'll wait and work through them to set a pilot program similar to a bike share and see what areas work. And then once that happens, we'll bring in another ordinance in agreement with UNT, similar to the bike share, through council saying, yeah, these are the areas that we've decided to move forward. So it's more working by and from those universities. Exactly. It's more working with them. Do you know the contact is at UNT? Yes. Yeah, Dr. Clark, he would be the the top of the pyramid. Yeah. And then I think Christopher Phelps. Clark and who? Christopher Phelps. Okay. And they're, what's their capacity? I don't know. He's very happy. Yeah. Something up there. Christopher Phelps, I think he's the director of transportation. Yep. Okay. You're on it. I want to say also, I mean, we're thinking about the universities. What about high school students? Wouldn't that be something that they might want to utilize if you if you're a high school student and you don't want your mom to drive you to school and you don't have a car? Wouldn't that be an option for liability issues? Most of the apps and the companies that I'm aware of do limit them to users 18 and over. Now I know from being in cities with scooters available that's not the case and kids either their parents download it or they get a parent's credit card or something. But typically from a legal standpoint, you're supposed to be 18 and over to use them. But so that's if you that's if you're well, I'm sorry. Right. So that's if you're using a shared a shared service. Otherwise, right, anyone could order one from Amazon and their child could use it. I'm never I mean, honestly, I've never seen anybody right in line. But I've actually seen one or two in town since Christmas. I think we're right on the end of it. Yeah. Like three fourths up the dart. I've never seen him make them all the way up here from Dallas. They're Dallas. They're all they're all over Dallas. I write them when I go down there too. Yeah. What position is this going to put the kid that got one for Christmas in? Because I see him in neighborhoods, you know, sometimes rarely past that neighborhood. I think that we've already seen the bike dump in Denton. And I think this is their the council's opportunity to try to get ahead of of the scooter dump. Yes. And we are getting inquiries about from companies about what's the policy with what does Denton's board? What do we need to do to get there? So we are getting inquiries from quite a few firms. And I think council in one of their bike share work sessions, the last one we did clearly stated that they want to not go that route the way we did with bike share. So they want to do a preemptive and say, we want to do this and then figure out our steps and move slowly. So I agree. Yes. And I know this is just off the top of my head, but I know it in Stillwater at Oklahoma State University, they had a ban. We made an agreement with the company and then reopen them on campus with a specific provider. Because once they come in, it's correct. They just drop drop them in. And now I like it. But I understand some of the concerns with it. But so there's a lot of precedents for cities working through it and coming up with solutions. I've actually heard too, it's a selling point for some university. Oh, absolutely. Incoming freshmen tell me, hey, we got scooters on campus. And it's I would argue it's gonna be a huge economic boon because it will get people traveling locally instead of jumping in their cars to go somewhere they may jump on a scooter and go to the square as opposed to jumping in a car and going to, you know, a chain that doesn't bring as much local dollars. Can this be passed with the recommendation to mobility that this be looked into seriously for future planning? Yeah, we're definitely going to work with the UN with the campuses. So definitely, we are going to be on this. It's just a matter of how we rolled it out as as one of the universities getting ready, then we'll work with them definitely. I personally wouldn't want to be on one on these streets, much less the sidewalks. Okay, so we need to make a recommendation. Somebody have a recommendation? I will move that we accept the staff recommendation to ban scooters, the use of the scooters until can give the city council an opportunity to to look at this a little further. Okay, we do a second. I'll second. Okay. So everyone in favor of proceeding with the ban? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay. And I just want to qualify and say that, you know, I'm a reticent yay vote, because I think we need I think we need to have the discussion. And I'm hoping that the ban does not then you know, you know, push potential companies from exploring Denton, and that we don't say, Okay, that's done. Because I think they have a place. I would agree. I'm willing to go with this. I agree with that sentiment and with Mark's that as an active transportation advocate, it pains to make that kind of vote. But I've also been following this issue for a while. And there's a lot of people, particularly with the ride shares that just do not have the skills when they first get on one. And you can go on YouTube and find all kinds of accidents. And head injuries are some of the big things that are coming out of this. And for somebody to survive a head injury and the impairments that can follow from that. I just don't think scooters safely operating on our streets at this point is viable. I would like to see it though. You know, happen. It's just that our streets are so bad. Yeah. And with those small wheels, you know, it's hard to navigate. The one thing I'd point out is riders are aware, trusted, like when you ride them on a bad street, you get off the street because it is, I mean, you can't take big bumps and stuff like that. So like if I was riding them, I wouldn't ride down Hickory. I would ride down Mulberry, which has bumps, but you can go around them. They're not nearly as bad. Yeah. I mean, I agree it's a concern. I just think it's, it's something that like there's, there's a little bit of a danger to it. And if people ride them irresponsibly, there's more of a danger. It's just like a, it's almost like a motorcycle in that sense that there's more of a danger. And I just, I'm not sure that we can stop that. You know, if they come in, like, I think that risk is always going to be part of it. And you hope people learn to be responsible, but training a whole city how to do it is I think beyond what we can do. I'm sensitive to it. I just don't know. I think the best thing we can do is build better bike lanes. Scooters can ride in. So let's get, let's, let's move that up the agenda. Yeah. And it wouldn't be perfect for downtown. Yeah. And Melissa's suggestion or comment about are there lights and reflectors on them. That could be something that if a company is looking at Denton, I think they do all, I think all the companies have, have little front lights and back. Yeah. It's just the personal ones that may not the people, but all the company ones have pretty bright lights on them. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And moving on to one D TSC 19 dash zero zero four, which is to receive a report and hold discussion regarding the U S three 80 street lighting feasibility and photometric study. Pretend. All right. Good evening again. Uh, I know, uh, I think there were a couple of meetings ago, there was some discussion about safety and concerns on safety and, um, somehow we landed, um, lighting and this is something I really wanted to bang forward. This, uh, item that was presented to council recently a couple of them, I think a month ago, um, last December, uh, council meeting, we talked about street lighting. So quickly what happened, as I mentioned earlier in the previous item that I talked about, uh, three 80 was widened between, uh, I 35, um, actually west of five 35 all the way through town and up until, um, U S 77 Locust and home. And it was widened into a six lane facility. Typically when tech stock goes through that process, they don't really focus on street lighting, no matter what section they don't pay for street lighting. They don't design street lighting. If the city wants it, city has to design it. City has to cough up the puns. So that's their policy. Currently you can see all the new ones, three 77 21 81 and even the 24 99 that would just opened up. None of them have street lights. Moving forward, things may change and we may see a big change from tech stop, but right now that's not going to happen. So once the road was opened up, council started receiving, um, and, and so did staff. We started receiving a bunch of, um, concerns, complaints about how dark it is with the six lane facility. It's super dark. There are a bunch of driveways. You don't see people getting out of the driveway, just jumps in front of you. And then, uh, other than the intersections, um, all along the segment on three 80, it's completely dark. So council asked staff to look at what are the conditions, what's happening between, um, I 35 all the way to the other side of Louv, Mayhill. So I 35 in Mayhill, it's a five point four mile stretch. It's quite some, quite a long segment. So we hired a consultant. What they did is look at what are the current lighting levels, what are, what is required, what type size, different types of street lights, what is required and then what, what is the cost estimate going to be for lighting up the entire corridor? So we, we couldn't do the survey of the entire stretch. It's 5.4 miles. So we picked two, um, pretty different, uh, unique characteristics, but then they, those two segments pretty much cover the whole corridor. So the first segment is about a hundred feet wide. It's in the commercial area between Bonnie Bray and I 35. This is right in front of a razor ranch. They looked at this particular segment. They studied it, collected data and everything. Then they also picked another segment, which is a combination of commercial and residential between Carol and Bell. This is part, portion of it is a TWU. There are some houses here. There's a retail on this side. So these two characteristic segments were picked. This one is a little bit less wider. It's 80 feet wide. Uh, the commercial one was a hundred and then they studied the existing conditions. So existing condition pretty much, there was no consistent lighting. Anything, anything in blue is dark. Anything with the red is bright. So you can see everything is dark along the segment and there is barely any lighting. There's no lighting under the bridges on the loop. Um, there are some lights on the existing roadway network that are not working. They're really, uh, older lights. It's high pressure sodium lights, which are, uh, which generate a yellow hue. And then there are two 50 Watts, but pretty low wattage for, for the width and the side of the street. And then the height is variable. The mast arms, the length of the arm that's projected out. It's also variable. Some of them are really small. Some of them are long. So fairly inconsistent lighting throughout the corridor. What are the standards? So in order to meet the continuous illumination standards for a commercial area, it's 1.6 foot candles average per text out standards. We're meeting 0.22. It's so poor. Same thing. If you go with a commercial residential, which is a combination, the second segment, you have to be at least one point, excuse me, have to be at least 1.2. We're at 0.29. So if you look at some of these numbers, I mean, it's pretty clear that there's no, um, continuous lighting. So what is required? They have proposed a 400 watt bulb, which is an led. It doesn't take as much as, uh, energy that's required for the sodium, high pressure sodium light. It's LED, so it's efficient. Uh, a 400 foot at a 40 feet height with a mast arm, which projected out into the street for 12 feet. And then for the commercial section, the spacing is 175 is recommended. And for the commercial and residential makes is 275 spacing. With that, we can achieve some of these averages above the minimum standards. So we're getting into 1.84 and 1.79. So this is what was recommended by the, based on the design. Now, if you look at the whole stretch, it goes from a blue, which is completely dark zero to an acceptable. If you look at the foot candles around here, 1.5 and 1.8 is what we're running closer to. So that's the, that's the 1.84 and 1.79 that we're hitting throughout the corridor. Similarly, this is the other segment between Carol and Bell. You see there's, uh, around the commercial area, you get a lot more. And then along the residential and the campus area, it's a lot consistent. That means you'll continually see the light, um, without hitting any dark spots. So this is another way of looking at it. This is all dark. This is completely brightened up, just the same segment. Now, um, what is the, at what cost? So the total cost for lighting up the 5.4 miles is a little over $5 million. It's five and a quarter. So that's the cost that we took to council there, um, where we're lighting up the commercial section is going to be that long and then the rest of it is going to be, um, excuse me, combination residential and commercial. We were told by council to move forward. This is our tentative, um, schedule. If we move forward, they've asked us to look into design and how we can start funding, at least get the design going. Excuse me. So design is about six months and the cost is going to be half a million dollars. And then we will, after that, look for cost for constructing or implementing the lighting. Excuse me. There are options that we looked at. How can we fund this in bits and pieces? There are several, for example, this particular area needs it more, especially it's a lot more commercial, a lot more driveways, a lot of businesses and interaction. I think even there are some pedestrians at this level. Same thing around Elm and Locust by the Kroger. There's a lot of activity pedestrians. So we looked at different options. Phase one is going to 1.2 million, phase two a half a million. So we made it out for council as to, you know, different options and different things, um, along this corridor. We'll take it back once the design is complete. We're going to design the whole thing and we'll take it back for council which phases, or you want to fund the whole thing, what we want to do. But this is the direction that we're going to move forward. Just to think about project city, we're currently working on Bonnie Bray Mayhill and Hickory Creek West. We are going to start implementing street lights as part of these projects. So on city projects you will start seeing street lights, but on other tech stop major corridors we don't have that. So as I mentioned we don't have anything on 2499, 377, or 2981. And this is the, these are the ballpark numbers for funding some of those projects depending on their length. And so this is a bigger item I think needs to go to council for discussion of how we're going to fund it. But as far as adding safety, I mean a little bit of light adds a ton of safety, especially if you can see that one person that's in the crosswalk that's crossing at night time. It does a lot. I mean even one person is way more than whatever numbers you can put here. So that's, eventually our goal is to get there. Right now we've started with quarter 380, evaluated it. We're definitely incorporating lighting as part of our, all of our city projects. And then also on top of these we've identified intersections that need to be upgraded. The ones that were brought up in that meeting, Hickory and Carroll. So yes we're moving in the right direction at least from the safety perspective. Any questions particularly on 380? Yes? What's the accidents and pedestrians, people being hit and all that, or the police stuff? So there is a component that they looked at the accident, I don't have the exact numbers on top of my head, but I think the accidents that are happening at the, how do you say, at night time are not as that many compared to or as high, how do you say, in comparison to the total activity of collisions, not a whole lot of percentages in the night time. But yes we've started receiving complaining, complaints that if there is better lighting it makes a better intersection and people will feel more safer. It's more of a safety from people's perspective than the collision data. So yes, I mean there is some, I can give you the collision numbers but. Well do you think, do you think you need more light where there's more growth, raise a ranch, you know all that, that segment? Yes definitely. We're no longer a small community, we are growing into an urban environment and where I used to be before, majority of the urban corridors, like all the FM's, they need to be lit up. Especially when a driver is driving or entering an urban environment, the strain on his eyes is taken off if you have ambient lighting in the back, so he's not too focused. And I think that should be, moving forward that should be our goal is all the major highways in the city and a lot of these arterials and collectors need to be looked at in a different perspective, get them lighted, get the strain out of drivers. I understand that residential streets can remain at lower lighting levels and not so much lighted up in someone's backyard or front yard, but all these arterials that actually are designed to deliver vehicles and people from one place to the other, those need to be lighted up, especially in the urban environment. Given that some of our street has 40,000, 50,000 vehicles a day loop and 380, we need to light them up. I would agree, I was at McKinney in the loop during the holiday break and I remember watching these two women cross the loop at that intersection and I was like how does anybody even see them? See them, yes. Now I think that would be part of our McKinney project, we are definitely designing that right now. So we're going to widen all the way from loop to the east end of McKinney, Grissom, I think. To clarify, was phase two, so did you say Hickory and Bell, it's along those streets or between them? It's along 380. But all the intersections will be upgraded, so they'll get extra lighting. I know for phase two you could use better lighting from T.W. over toward Carroll, that's pretty dark and there's a lot of student traffic there. I think one of our focus and we're working closely with T.W. and their master plan is to get that area just north of 380 where they have that parking, this area. That parking lot, yes. So particularly from Riddell all the way to Bell, get this, there is a sidewalk on the south side very poorly lit and a lot of students don't really use that at night because it's that poorly lit and that's one of our goals is how can we light it up so that it becomes a better point or access for pedestrians, but at the same time I think T.W. is looking into punching another access here, they're thinking of it. What's the sidewalk look, is the sidewalk have anything between it and 380 or is it right along that? No, it's right on the edge. Oh, well, you're not going to feel safe no matter what. That's where it runs me like, you know, stay. Yeah. I mean, if you go away from the bridge, this is fine, but when you get to the bridge, I mean, there's no, it's constrained, but then it gets better here. But still no like trees or anything behind, so you're just exposed psychologically. I think that's pretty hard to walk along roads like that. And you do have a lot of traffic, north and south on Bell, foot traffic and bicycle traffic. Yes. Because there's a lot of people that walk toward. So in the interim, we are going to add lighting to that intersection particularly, so that we don't wait for this phase two to go in. We're just going to go in and upgrade the lighting at that intersection as far as the crosswalks being lit up. I think there's a couple of locations where it doesn't have an arm going up. So I think this corner can definitely, there can be definitely an arm going this way to light it up, either both ways actually, so that they have enough. And then there's some overhead issues, but there's a light on this pole that they recently installed. I'm glad you have evidence of a cyclist there. Depending on what view you're looking at, it's hilarious. We'll always see the cyclist when we see that car and we don't see the cyclist again. There he is. He's made it almost. So when we're talking about a 40 foot height on street lamps, how is that determined? Okay, so that light that I'm looking at, TWU, the fancy light, on my left, how tall is that light? I believe it's somewhere between 20 and 25 feet. This is between 30, I think this is about 30 feet, so it will be a little bit higher than that, but then what happens is it gets diffused and it covers a larger area. So that's the whole intent of going higher is that's more of how much can you spread the same amount of light, and that's why you get an overlap in this. So that's why you get that overlap at that height. If you don't go at that height, then this area that is covered by each of this light will reduce, so that's why. And then they are spaced, so the spacing is 167, let me see exactly how much. So 175 and 275 is between on one side of the street, so this is 175 or 275 and then 175. So they are crossed out, so they are alternately spaced, that way you have... And is the city looking at specific lighting that would follow with the dark skies idea? Are they going to be fully hooded? So on these, yeah, they don't shine up to the sky, they're only focused on the street. So they completely are forced to just, the light should only fall on the surface, not even ambient on the side. So there are places that they can be hooded, especially neighborhoods. Some of these highways go behind someone's houses, so we make sure, like we installed some new lighting at Robinson and 2499, the intersection. We got some complaints initially and we had to hood some of the certain areas so that it didn't reflect back in their backyard. So yes. Have you looked at the new lights that they're trialing on, Stewart and Bell? Yes, so DME is trying out new lights and they need feedback, so any feedback from... Okay, how are they different? They're different levels from yellow to white, that's the easiest way to put it. What type of light do you like? Do you like on the yellow side or a little bit over the lighter side or the blue white? It's how they define the Kelvin, 4,000 Kelvins are the white and then you get into 12,000 is the whitest, like a blue white almost, and then the rating goes down to, if you're yellow, it's low, 1,000, 2,000 Kelvin. I'm really interested in, obviously, lots of light, but only where it needs to be. And I was even looking in the city of Austin development code to see if there were guidelines because it's a little crazy. You could just barely, barely in the outskirts of Austin and you practically cannot see the city because of the lighting design, but when you're in Austin, it's extremely well lit, but you're just barely outside and it disappears. I think we should shoot for that. It's going to be hard with Fort Worth and Dallas right there, but I like that idea. Go down to Dripping Springs, it's a dark skies city. I think this item is just informational, so if you have any questions, let me know. But I want to make sure you're aware that we're moving forward with some of the safety enhancements that are much needed for the city. I think some of that needs to also extend. I know right now we're looking at the major thoroughfares, but some of that needs to extend into our older neighborhoods. Yes, the arterials, yes. I was walking down Linden the other day and didn't realize how much space there was between lights. It's a pretty wide street. It's a wide street, people drive fast. Anybody else have anything on this? Thank you, Preetam. That will move us on to 1E TSC 19-005, which is to receive a report and hold discussion regarding Texas Department of Transportation on system projects in the Denton area to include the 35 Express project. Good evening. I'm Tracy Beck with the transportation division. And tonight, as you introduced, we're going to be talking a little bit about just one of the projects, which is the I-35E project near Loop 288 Brinker and Mayhill. Getting regular updates, we have a group called Innovative Transportation Solutions. We may have worked with them before. You may have worked with them before. I've worked with them a lot, worked for them for one point in time. And they provide some updates, and this is the current one that they've got is provided in your packet. They're running a little bit behind schedule. They provide a month-to-month update and starting as of right now, they were looking to do a lane switch. But as it turned out, that lane switch is going to be postponed until next month, the first week of February, second week of February, when the traffic switch is expected. And this is for that I-35 project, giving you a little bit of background. The plans were actually completed in August of 2016. The letting date for that construction was in September of '22 with some utility relocations handled in July of 2016, September 22nd in 2016, excuse me. Let me correct all those dates. I'm foggy in my head this evening, so I'll start all over again. The plans were completed in August of 2016. The environmental clearance was in May of 2016, and oops, excuse me. >> Sorry, I just want to bring a map so that people know. >> Oh, that'll be great while I step aside. The right-of-way acquisition was done in July. The 100% plans were done in August, so that was about three years ago, two and a half years ago. The complete date is July of 2019. So we're just around the corner from that, but I do believe that that date has changed a smidge because of the weather that we've had. What they're referring to is the entire project had 442 working days, which is about 17 months of work, so it's been moving quite quickly. They're in what they're calling the phase one of step two configuration, and they believe that this current phase that we're driving in right now is going to maintain until the 2019, February 2019. They're working with OHL, the contractor, to expedite the brinker portion of the project. And the funding for information is about $2.1 million for this project. The activities that they're working on right now, the high needed project activities are more of the walls that you see at loop 288 and 35. What they're going to be proposing to work on in the next month, you're going to see more of the work along the temporary shoring along the brinker road. They have a wall construction that they're going to be building. Checking for anything more valuable for tonight. That's going to apologize for the silence. That's going to complete pretty much the update, is that we're just within about a month from seeing some traffic switching and probably about summers when they anticipate to be completed for that project. I drug that out for a long time, mumbling through some dates. I appreciate your patience with that. I read them out of order thinking that that wasn't the order I planned on. So just a quick backup as to why we're presenting this. There was a request from commission and members about what is going on with the 35th project, how long is it going to go, what's the status, and what do we expect. So there are three interchanges they're working on. They're done with the Mayhill. All it was was they were going to put a U-turn in there on the southbound direction at Texas U under the bridge at Mayhill in state school. The second, the remaining two are, one is the interchange at Brinker. That's a connection to the Buckeyes, and then the other one is Loop 288 upgrading the whole interchange. So what Tracy presented was a quick schedule of where they're at, and they're not going to be done until July. July is what they're telling us, but it's not probably, it's going to move on all the way to towards the end of fall. That's what we're thinking, realistically. But I think they're going to shift the northbound traffic to the northbound side of the bridges. So Loop 288 on the closer to the mall side, and then Brinker closer to the city side, not the Buckeyes side, is both of those bridge segments are getting ready to be completed. And from a traffic perspective, once those new lanes are open, that will relieve a lot of congestion and traffic. Right now we're really working off of the old infrastructure, but once the new is in place and you have a go over, I think it's, traffic is going to be much better once the switch happens. I think it's February. February. It was supposed to have been this week, actually. The information that we got in was a little bit dated, and they said it's switching the second week. And I said, that doesn't look like it's switching today. And they came back and they said, nope, that was last month's report. So I think the weather has put them a little bit behind. So once that switch happens, I think the traffic will ease down a little bit as far as congestion, but we're still going to be under construction until almost the end of fall. That's the update. I think that's the last segment of 35. Once that is completed, 35 will technically be completed. Of course, Citi has other projects that we're going to pursue, and I think we're going to come back with the Mayhill project that's going to redo the interchange anyways. But for now, I think we'll be done with the 35 widening that started three, four, five years ago. Yeah, back then. So I got a question. It's close. If I'm going down Colorado and I take a ride on Brinker to go to Bucky's, how long is it going to, when's that going to happen? So that's our next project. We have a -- you see that curve that comes in? So our next project, currently our Mayhill project ends around here, our widening. So we'll pick it up here, and we'll have a bridge go over the DCTA track, and possibly this interchange or intersection will be reconfigured as part of that. If we can quickly come down and manage the grade, we will. If we have to redo some of that, we will. But this is going to go away. So we'll no longer have a at-grade crossing at DCTA. This street will be straightened out to just continue on this way, and then Mayhill actually will divert off and connect here. That's the next project. It's currently under design. We're still -- I think the funding has been secured, but we're going to have a bridge over. We're going through the property acquisition part or condemnation part at this point. But this project will be our next, and then following that, we'll continue upgrading this infrastructure because the pavement is pretty bad. It's in bad shape. We'll upgrade that. And then the next project, which will begin design -- I think Tech Start is hiring someone to design -- is upgrading this whole interchange, similar to what we did with the loop. This will be completely redone to tie into our project. So this interchange and then Mayhill connection all the way to 380 as a widened street will be really a relief for traffic along the loop. So this takes a lot longer. I mean, it's a stop sign, and then there is a signal that people sit at. But once this connection comes in, this intersection will be improved, and then ultimately this interchange will so that there will be a lot more people going through the interchange, reducing the delay. This probably project is two, three, four years ahead. This is probably the next year or so we should be able to get under construction. >> So Buckies is still going to have to take the service road to get in the front entrance? >> Yes, so this is a separate interchange. Buckies still has to go through here, make that -- it will be signalized at both these intersections to get in and out that project of their site. And the signals will probably be the last thing to go in, so it won't happen until towards the end of fall, most likely. >> Of this year? >> Yes, of this year. >> Okay. >> All right. Anybody have anything else? Thank you. That brings us to our last item, which is 1FTSC19-007, which are the staff reports, the matrix, and the street construction report. >> Awesome. So this is something new that we added, and we wanted to make sure that, you know, members are aware. Every week we have a street construction report go out to the public, and it's published as an attachment to the Friday packet for council reading. We thought it might not be a bad idea to bring it forward, and, you know, if you have any questions, if there are any particular concerns, this would be a good way to start some of the projects, or even push some information out there. I think a lot of times people contact you as members saying, "Hey, what's happening in my neighborhood?" Or, "This street, some sign showed up on my door. What's going on?" So this is a quick way of, okay, this is an upcoming project, or it's a current project, and they're, you know, laid out. I think current projects are in the front, and then as you move forward, they'll tell you what the upcoming projects are. It makes it a better communication tool. You can push out more information saying, "Hey, you know, it's going to be under construction for three weeks. If you have any -- if you need any information, you can just let us know. We'll pull the right people in and get you." But this is something that we've started not advertising, but pushing out more at different levels and platforms that just make it better for everyone. That's the first. And then -- So I have a question. I was looking at it. Yes. Like, there -- on Scripture, for instance, between Thomas and Ector, there's an Atmos utility relocation, and currently, Scripture is all torn up, and there's little stakes all over the place. Will there be -- will that just be simply road-related, or will there be -- is there potential sidewalk, since everything is torn up on Scripture right now? So there are two different elements. It is -- when a street is -- I know how I've talked to you about this, but when a street is looked at, or when we look at the reconstruction or rehabbing a street, what we're looking at is a maintenance activity. So within the curb-to-curb, we do not touch the curbs and gutters, but within that, we remove all the asphalt, redo the whole segment, so it's more of a maintenance. So when we went to the bond committee and through the bond elections, we said, "These are the streets that we need to maintain. We don't have money." And they allocated money. So when we defined what the project was, it was defined within the curb and gutter. We won't touch anything else. The minute you touch something else, it becomes a bigger project. Just to give you a quick example, some of these projects, some of the older neighborhoods, the right-of-way is against the curb, or some of the right-of-way is very close. I mean, literally a couple feet from the curb. So the minute we say we want to put a sidewalk, then it becomes a big issue of right-of-way, easements, acquisition, all of that. Everything that has to do with right-of-way is at a start, at a minimum, three-month process, and at a regular panned out, it's about a year, just to go through the legal process of noticing people, making sure that they understand what their rights are, making sure that this is just an easement versus we're acquiring the right-of-way and all that. So sidewalks are typically capital projects, long answer short. And this is more of a maintenance project, and we try to keep them separate because they do become involved. You know I had to ask, that's what I do. Any questions on the street reports, I mean, if there are any specific ones, we can take it back and we can give you specific answers, but this is a start. I don't want to make, you know, put you under the gun or anything right now, like give me some questions, but it's just a start that anytime you see anything that pops out that doesn't really look well or has not happened or what's happening in my front yard, let me know. We can get more information. So getting to my favorite topic, the matrix. All right, so the first item, comprehensive downtown parking plan. That will follow the Oak Gateway parking. I think there are some recommendations according to the Oak Gateway and then I think I've talked to planning. They'll start looking into how to update the downtown comprehensive plan as part of that. I'm not sure if we want to continue keeping it here, but it was something that was brought up previously and they wanted to continue, I'll leave it up to Petrice if she wants to continue with it. I'm trying to clean up the matrix because this matrix is kind of getting longer and longer and I'd rather have it, you know, quick ones that we can really knock out in some of the long term. I don't have a lot of investment in that one. Gosh, that's five years old. Five years old. What are we doing? Oh, geez. History lessons. Yeah, so. All right, but there are some alternative parking solutions that were brought up as part of the Oak Gateway, so we can definitely look into that and how we can implement it in the downtown area. Mingo Road sidewalks, now this is something that we are working with TW as I mentioned. We had a recent meeting December in which they said that they are willing to provide us some kind of support and even right of way or a non-cash option to help us fund the traffic study and understand the closure. And part of that was what can we do along Mingo and how can we open up our current golf course area by the trees and ways to install. So yes, this is still a project and it will continue being a project. I'm not sure if we want to leave the date in there. It's almost a year and a half, over a year. Or do we want to refresh the dates and say, yeah, this is, I mean, it is happening. We can bring back whenever we get to TW, you can bring updates, but not sure if that needs to stay. >> Yeah, if you're talking and you're feeling good about it, we can move out. >> I'm feeling good about a lot of things. >> I was going to say, so number three here, the Fort Worth Drive at Collins, yeah, since we're working on, with the small area plan. >> Yeah, so I think part of that traffic study does recommend improvements at that intersection. >> Yeah. >> And it'll fix these left turn issues at that intersection. So when UNT decides that, hey, let's close down some of these streets, then part of that discussion will be, then implement new lanes here. And we'll get money from UNT to do that. So maybe yes, we can take it off. >> First of the year. >> I just, yeah, new books, I want to clean it up. So next is number four, Northside Hickory near break. Now this is, we're looking into the feasibility of putting the ramps in. We do have some funds available. One of the concerns is how far do we have to do the sidewalks to make it AD compliant. The sidewalk is not AD compliant and the driveway is in, so part of that is do we have to reconstruct the whole driveway because the driveway portion is really not more than 2%. And then if that's going to be that expensive, then is it a feasible project with the limited funds that we have. So we're looking into that. I'm okay to keep it up because I don't have an answer that says we're doing it now. That's why. >> Which business is that? >> It's right in front of, what's the breakfast place there now, right by the theater, yeah, upper park, yeah, right if you go just west. That direction, that driveway, there's just two curbs, so if you're in a wheelchair, strollers, anything. >> And I'm pretty sure this will be brought up by the new ADA compliance committee. I think it's going to council. >> The disability committee. >> The disability committee that's going to council next. >> Tomorrow. >> Yeah, I think it is tomorrow for nominations. They can, I think they're a better platform to bring these up, and we, earlier today we just met Val, I'm not sure if you've met him, but he's applied to be on the committee, so he's aware of a bunch of stuff, and he's like, yeah, we'll start pointing out things, and we'll take it to city manager and council and see how they want to fund it, but that would be a better platform to push some of these. >> The reason I've targeted that one, too, is because it's the only spot along that whole street like that, so if we fix that, then we have a fully continuous street you can use a wheelchair on, parkway down the street, whatever you want. >> So station motor is the next one. >> We are following up with enforcement, I think initially they started moving it, now they're back, so when they were told by enforcement, they moved it, and there was some clearance, so we got the sidewalk opened up, then after that, they started parking, I think Becky is working with enforcement to make sure that they continually, I mean, we've also given them an option if we want to paint it, paint a line for them to really restrict them to park beyond, but our first stop is enforcement, we'll see how it works. That area is really where it comes to right-of-ways, it's convoluted, it's hard to establish a right-of-way without a survey, spending thousands of dollars to make sure that we tie in every aspect, so we don't want to get into the legal aspect yet, we want to see what we can do up front, because that's going to be a long drawn, and it won't get us anywhere. >> Lines would help the pedestrians too, because one of the biggest problems is it's unclear where you're supposed to walk, except walk out into the street, and we know that's where the traffic, the speed really picks up for cars coming off the street. >> No, I think that's our next step, is once enforcement starts doing that, we'll just let them know that we're going to come in and strike where your lines are. >> Temporary improvements to Hickory for bike lanes until the project is complete. So this one is more of while the project is under design, just a section between Welch and Carroll? >> Yeah, just right now the road is really bumpy, just rode it on the way here, and when at night it's completely dark, so you don't see the bumps if you're on a bike, unless you have a light on your bike, which some people do and some don't. But for pedestrians too, it just is really dark in spots along that, so just something, I'm worried about injuries in that area. >> Okay, so as far as, do you want, I mean, temporary improvements, do you want markings on the pavements? I mean, I'm just trying to, what's the best way, you can't really help the bumps. >> Yeah, I don't, well, I think the lighting is the first issue, right, because even if the road's bad, at least you can see that it's bad. That's the one concern. Now, because if you ride in that bike lane, you know, what's left of it, you're avoiding things kind of all the time, and so people can still avoid it if they're riding it once the sun goes down. I ride, I'm pretty shifty on my bike, and I feel like I'm about to go down, like half the way in the middle where there's no lights, it's, it's, and I've hit like big concrete things that get stuck in the bike lane, you don't see them. I've hit those before and amazingly, like, sort of not gone down, so it's just, it's a concern. I don't know, I think a light would help temporarily, I mean, how long till that part of Hickory is fixed and the bike lane is restored to some kind of initial-- >> Yeah, we're under design, I think the primary design aspect is lighting. We're adding lights in that segment, and that's why we had to go and redesign it. Initially, it was, as I mentioned, it was just a maintenance project between the curb and curb. Now, between Welch and Carroll, this new segment, we're doing lights. We're doing those historical type of lighting on the north side. On the south side, there is lighting, but on the north side, there is nothing. And we're moving the curb, we're redoing the drainage, we're, the design, I think, should be completed later in the summer. So we are scheduled to get to construction sooner, but we're designing light where there is no light currently. So it's kind of hard to have a temporary lighting situation where there's nothing right now. And as far as markings, what we can do is put down tabs. I mean, when a street is in construction, they typically have tabs that follow their little pieces of plastic that stick out. And they do help at night a lot. So what we can do is put tabs, some of those, so that they become reflectors and show the-- Along the bike lane? Along the lane. That way, you know exactly, this is your bike lane and these are your travel lanes. So the street's being repaved? Is that correct? The street will be repaved completely. As the same time the lights are going in? Exactly. Okay. Everything will be redone that same. On a side question on that is the-- 'Cause on parts of that lane, we actually have the bike lane is fully green painted, but a lot of other areas, we have the bike lane without green paint. What's the policy? So the green paint was only to show the conflict areas. That was our intent for the green plane. Because the right turn was shifted and the bike lane was supposed to shift and get into the middle, that's why that whole area was green initially to identify this is a conflict area. Cars and bikes can commingle and exchange or going back and forth. There's no intent to completely paint it green. I think initially it was more of a educational effort for people to understand. We may do a little bit different on that particular approach at Carroll. We may, since the bike lane is I think between six and eight feet wide, we may have a buffered bike lane with six feet in the middle and two feet on either side that would help actually isolate the bike lane and looks like a bike lane. People right now, it didn't really feel like-- So we might have some minor changes based on just what we've learned, but ultimately it'll be a better product. Is it a cost issue for doing green paint on other bike lanes in that area? No, not necessarily a cost issue. It's more of a maintenance. You put it once in a year and a half, it's gone. It's pretty bad out there. The thermo and the paint doesn't last. With the conditions in Dallas, we go there and typically we have to replace thermoplastic at a latest every four years. It's pretty bad every four years. Typically it lasts only for the first two years, then it starts fading off. It starts blackening out, chipping away. So typically we'll have to do green paint every two years if that's who we decide to go with. But if we go with more of an educational effort where initially we put it in and say, this is where you have to follow and then people start following, we don't have to really maintain the green paint. We just have to maintain the other paint. That's much more easier for us. All right. So poor signage in Welch, yes, we identified there were two intersections where it drops and we're going to start installing some of the signage in there. We've asked to put that on the schedule. So if you can remind me, we'll go back to Terry. The quarterly report, we are planning on bringing that PD report for collisions in our April meeting. So that way we get every three months or every six months we have an idea. But what we're going to plan on doing is we're going to take last year's full data, 2018, and what intersections have the most collisions and then the types of collisions. Are they pedestrian oriented, bike oriented, or even if it's a side swipe, head on, what type of collision? And then our goal eventually is going to be what are the fixes that we can do. We have started looking at some of our intersections and done similar things. Last year we applied for highway safety improvement program funds from TxDOT and federal government to fix a couple of our intersections. I think we applied for Kings Row at Loop 288 and then McKinney at Loop 288. And there are a couple more intersections on McKinney west of the Loop. So we applied for funds, we received funding, I think it's about a million dollars, to upgrade all these intersections starting this year, 2019 and 2020. So we're going in that direction as part of this. We'll start presenting some of the issues, we'll come up with solutions, and then if the committee recommends we'll move forward and apply for funding to get it fixed. I think number nine we can take it off, I think no curve on Elm and Mulberry. I think we put in paint at that corner on Mulberry. That removes me entirely from the matrix. Really? We're addressing your comments or concerns more faster than anyone, see? I think that's what it is. There's no bias here, zero. Request more information on MUSE, I think we talked to their project manager, he's going to come in next month. So we're planning on bringing a whole, I think they're doing workshops and they're doing some community and public meetings right now, but he's going to bring a whole item next month, so we'll get a better update. Interaction in areas with higher amount of collision, yes, that's review and discuss, that would be part of our PD report. Yeah that one, that one's tough, I looked at it. Yeah because of the way that intersection is set up. Were you talking about mine? Yes, Welch and Eagle. So I think there is a, if we pull it back, there is a site issue with pedestrians crossing on the other side, but there was something, we can pull it back, I think a couple feet. We just need the one lane, we don't need the right lane. Okay, so you want it stacked. If you're going, I got that bus and I'm trying to make a left hand turn, you just need the left lane. But I'm a bus driver, got a 35 foot bus, so we're talking about Welch and Eagle, I come up out of the union and I have to take a left to go to Colorado, and so I stay back because somebody over here could be another bus, could be a pickup, they got to come in and take a left off Eagle, and they make an S turn, they don't make an L turn. So they're crossing the line, and people have a propensity just to go out even beyond the white stripe that's there now, but when I'm coming the other way, coming up Eagle to take a right to get onto Welch, and they're sticking out over that line, I have to swing way out to the left and then try to make an L turn with that bus coming back in. Sometimes even have to block both lanes until that person leaves or backs up or whatever. So what I'm saying is you move that lane, that left lane, back, that white stripe back. So you're talking about just this one lane go back here, but then this remains here? Yeah. Because my whole concern of pulling that back was an issue, but we have to just have this as one lane, I don't have an issue. Yeah we can pull it back a few feet. See, because that curb cut on the left hand side on the corner there, that sticks out because of the handicap. So you're making this right? Yeah, I'm making that right in there. And then if this is back here, that way it gives you enough space to turn. Right. Isn't Welch also going to go on a road diet? Yes. So there wouldn't be two lanes coming in. Right. So part of our thing was this would go away anyways, but I'd say it's a quick fix. Doesn't need to wait that long. What about the stop bar? Yeah, stop bar in the left lane for the southbound left. Just say southbound left to the stop bar, so there are two items we need to stop to carry. If you can fix that, I'm off the matrix. Wow. Joining me. That's right. Out there in the hinterlands. No, you still have parking. I still have some parking out there, yeah. We're in the, almost in the hinterlands. So on number 13, we are looking at protected bike lanes. I think part of our Windsor project is going to be protected bike lanes. We're also working with the UNT to add protected bike lanes on Highland. So that's a project that's coming pretty soon on Highland between, I forget the name. How will the cars park in the bike lane if we block it? Nice graphic that you had, Mark. The best part of that is because the bike lane goes contrary to traffic. They all park it and then you have to go head on into traffic on your bike to get by. So it's a good spot for a protected one. So we're on Highland between Avenue C all the way to Welch. This whole segment is going, actually Avenue D, no Avenue C. This whole segment is going to have a protected bike lane, two way protected bike lane on the north side, which will be 12 feet wide with a buffer, delineators, no one touching the bike lane. On the south side, we'll have two lanes going through and a loading zone all along the south side. Wow. Nice. So that anyone that wants to stop, stop, drop people off, do not touch the bike lanes. And it works because there's very few access points on the north side. So I think these two and these are the only access points on the north. That way people trying to get out are looking at both directions and I mean slowly kids will get used to it that want to cross across, but the cars are the ones that are major issue when they are leaving and entering the driveways, they're not anticipating bikes from both directions. So that's why this was a perfect area for the bikes to be on the north side. So that's the plan. He had a nice sketch. It would have been nice. What's the timeline for that? We can't get the material. There's going to be rain for the next two, three weeks, but we're hoping to, when we talked to UNT, we were hoping to get it done before UNT and the classes started, but it's not going to happen given the rain, but in the next month or so we should have something down there. I'm going to ride up and down that every day. Even when you don't have to. I know. We'll get you right from my building to that little vegan cafeteria. I know. I mean there was no point having the loading area and the bike lanes and people are going to stop anyways, so just give them a place to stop. Makes sense. That was the idea. Now they can shut down that Instagram post. It was all about the Highland. And you said Windsor also? Yeah. If we can take that item out, that would be ... Do we have clay completely off? No. Oh, man. All right. We still have ankle. Okay, okay. So we got the request for update on 35. We presented that item. Number 14. Yeah. On number 15, yeah, that's another place, the 88 ramp. [ Inaudible ] And then the timing of signals on the square in coordination with pedestrian access. So just a quick update. We met with Val, as we mentioned, and then we also met Council Member Armenter, and we talked about options. We have options in mind. There are several things we're going to do. Currently the pedestrian phase starts a couple seconds before the green on the same side starts. So if you're traveling on Hickory, if you're crossing Locust or Elm, the green signal for the vehicle shows up a couple seconds after the pedestrian signal hits. What we're going to do is add more timing to the pedestrian, so we're going to start at four seconds before the green for the vehicle. That way they're already in the middle of the crosswalk as opposed to just barely starting. Better targets. That would help. Put a full recall pedestrian, which means you don't really necessarily have to hit the button. You just show up and it starts. So that would help, because a lot of times the frustration is you get into a point where you hit the button when the cycle's already going, and then you have to wait through the whole cycle for all the -- you don't have to do that, even if you show up no matter what time. One of the phases will throw you, whichever starts gets you going on the pedestrian phase. So we're going to put that in there. And we're adding some signage yield to pedestrian signage at the square. So that's what we're going to do, and I think that should address a lot of these. I think the frustration is we sat through the frustration. We sat at one corner waiting for the signal to go and it didn't go, because we barely missed the timing by one second or two seconds, so this should be addressed before the next time we meet. All right. Any more things to -- I just wanted to clean up the matrix. Any more things you want to add, talk about? >> I've got two quick things. One may just be a question that doesn't actually go in the matrix. So I brought this up with my councilman, Hutzpeth, and he said he would look into it. I'm not sure if he has to, but the bike share that we have, VeoRide, which my understanding is there's -- is there a contract with the city? >> Yes. >> And so one of my understandings is that when they sign that contract, that part of the understanding was that they would have bikes available by DCTA somewhere in that area and -- >> I think Mark can address that. >> Yeah. >> All right. Yep. I'll address this. So there's not a contract between the city and VeoRide. There's a permit. There is a contract between VeoRide and DCTA. There has been a request for bikes to be available there at the station here in town. I know that they are talking to DCTA and working with them. There's some question. I think the legal people have been involved as far as this sole sourcing or something if they let the company, but we have identified an area on the edge of the DCTA where the city owns the property, and I have reached out to VeoRide to ask that they put bikes there. It's not right where you get off the train, but it's fairly close. I don't think they've done it quite yet, but we are working on that, and hopefully DCTA will figure out how to do this. I think they just in the past haven't dealt with an arrangement like this, a bike share company, and so they don't know how to approach it, but we are working on that. I've been in touch with them both, and so hopefully here in the near future we will have bicycles available right there at the station. Thank you. That'll be great. Back to the bike lanes on Windsor. What sections are we looking at? It's primarily the wider section of Windsor is in front of the Strickland Middle, so we're looking between I think it's Locust and Stewart, or I think it narrows by the time it gets to Stewart, but Bell definitely. We don't have the plans yet, but once we have a plan, we can share it. We're working on the plans. Are you thinking of going at Bell, is that what you're saying? Up to Bell, yes, between Bell and Locust on Windsor. I thought there was already bike lanes there. Yeah, there are bike lanes. There are bike lanes. Some protected bike lanes. Oh, protected. Okay. There are some issues I think it's the same issues that Highland was facing is the people trying to park and loading zone and everything using the bike lanes, so we're trying to fix that similar to Highland. So the other issue I was going to bring up real quick was one I brought up before, so I don't know how it fits with the matrix, but it's the areas on Long Carroll, near Hickory, each direction a couple blocks, I think from Oak probably to Mulberry would probably be on that, and then similarly on Bell from around the similar streets probably from Mulberry to probably McKinney. I think those are just two of the biggest problem areas, as you know, I've met with Council member Briggs and Hutzpeth about those areas after the pedestrian was hit on Carroll, because the street's dangerous. It's not just simply an accident. It's set up that we could have that, and I just don't want to see a worse injury happen. So they brought before the council a bunch of possible solutions, and basically what we were told is none of them would work. One of the things was about congestion and things, and I don't know. I live right there. I'm in the eight-squared apartments. I look out on Carroll. I don't see the congestion that bad in that area. In fact, the biggest problem is people fly down that street because it's like a highway. I mean, it's wide open. There's not much traffic, and so they fly through there sometimes going 60 miles per hour because there's just no other cars around. You can walk out there, I walked out there at 5.30, took video. I tweeted it out to just show you can stand in the middle of the street. It's just not that busy of a street, and maybe there's some times you actually have to wait for a light. My point being, I actually think we need to figure out ways to slow down the traffic there, and so we got the opposite response that we would cause the slowing down of traffic. So I think we're seeing things differently. I'd really like us to see. I don't know what the answer is. There's lots of urban principles for slowing traffic. This is for just the pedestrian crossings you're talking about? The crossing, but also for about a two, three-block area there where really you have the intersecting of everything of the things, businesses coming off the square, pedestrians. Pedestrians are on Oak Street. Pedestrians are on Mulberry Street. Pedestrians are on Hickory. I would argue, one of the arguments was that we don't have enough pedestrians. Well, part of the reason is because go stand at that corner, it's scary. It's physically scary to stand at that corner. Zoom by, you feel no protection, and so part of the reason I think we have less pedestrians is because we've created that environment. So I just would love for us to explore what solutions there are, whether it's putting up signage that slows cars down, that again alerts them, having a speed limit that encircles the entire square where you slow down, I don't know, to 25 miles per hour for those four blocks or whatever. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not an urban designer, but I know there's a lot of answers that have been done in other places, and the council people brought a lot of them to the council. The only one that kind of said, "We'll look at it," was lighting, which that's fine, but that's not going to slow cars down that much. It'll just help them see better, which is good, but we know that the best way to stop fatalities is to slow cars down. When they're going 40, they kill people. When they're going 20, they usually don't. So I'm just figuring, what can we do to slow down cars in those areas that have pedestrians on them, that also could allow those areas to get more pedestrians and more cyclists? Because I think those are great areas for that. I would just like to see something done, because right now I feel like we're not getting good answers on that. There's several people I know in the community who are concerned, mothers who come to us said that they're still worried about being anywhere right off the square and walking with their kids, that they drive from the Methodist Church onto the square because of fear of the danger in walking with their kids in strollers. I just think that whole core area, it's not a big area, could be safer, but those two little sections, I wish we could, I don't know if we need a focus group to come up with possible solutions, but the council members have tried and just didn't get any answers. I think if you're just talking about pedestrian crossings at Carol and Bell, if that's the case, we have signals there, and then we have pedestrian phase. One of the things that was missing was lighting, so from a protected signal or a protected pedestrian crossing, I'm not sure if we can do more, but if you're talking about people crossing in the middle block and slowing vehicles down, that's a different story. If you're talking about, in general, slowing people on Carol, that's a different story, but you're probably, I think, you're mixing two elements. You're mixing crossings at intersections, which are already protected, with crossings in general and pedestrian activity and creating that core that you're talking about. Urban planning and the urban core making it more pedestrian-friendly, making it more bike-accessible, and different other modes is slightly different than focusing on the intersection and pedestrian crossing. That's where it's getting lost in translation. I think engineers are looking at it at different principles, like, yes, there's a pedestrian protected phase. What else can we do to protect pedestrians? There is already a phase. There's already a light. Everyone stopped while they're crossing. Everything's in place. Lighting is something missing. Okay, we'll add some lighting. That's the response you got. If you're looking for a whole big picture of urban planning, then that's where we get into planning, and if the uses are designed that way, then we'll get the streets to flow that way. It's a combined effort between how we plan the core. I agree. If we plan it, that anyone that's entering the core has to slow down. For example, Elm and Locust need to slow down as they approach, then we have to do a better job on what are the uses approved and permitted, and how do we have the complete street segments approaching the square area. I think we're already looking into that, how we can convert those into complete streets as some of these properties on Elm and Locust are pulled out of the floodplain, and they're going to be revitalized anyways. I agree. Big picture, we can do something and plan and set it up, but the questions you're asking are, "Yeah, I'm basing it off of one of these accidents or one of these issues, but what else or what more do you want us to do if cars are speeding?" Yes, they're getting a green, but pedestrians have a protected face to cross. That's where it's getting lost. We can reduce and have the elements in place, reduce the speed, make sure it's an urban core and do planning-level effort where we look at not only the square, but anything on Elm and Locust, anything on Oak and Hickory, and make that whole segment between Carol and Bell a complete urban area where parking is looked at, where speeds of the street, where width of the street, how wide do you need street? They can be narrower and you need wider sidewalks or bike lanes. All of that can be looked at, and it could be a downtown plan, as you mentioned, but there are two different things. One is a long-term, big picture, and this is more of how do we address our immediate issues. I think it's a big feel thing, because crossing Carol, it doesn't feel safe. Even when you see your little white pedestrian flashing at you and the cars are coming to a stop, yes, it's supposed to be protected, but it doesn't feel safe while you're crossing six-plus lanes of traffic, and I think that's huge, the feel. I definitely appreciate the long-term vision and know that that can all happen at once, so I guess my - well, one clarification, what do you mean by uses? When you say uses, are you talking about uses for different forms of transportation? No, uses as far as land uses, what is entailed, what type of - for example, are we putting in more office that requires a big parking lot and our car is going to come there, or are we putting in these smaller shops that are going to be front end on these smaller streets and parking is not the primary focus, the focus is attracting people from UNT, from other places, just people and bikes and walking, or attracting people from the square to my shop here, as opposed to I have a huge parking lot and now there's an office in front of it, so that's the way you define it. If you create more parking lots and offices on the fringe, there are going to be a lot more cars. Right. I think - so my last comment on this is to go forward, I think my two things I'd say is one of my big goals in being on this committee and being involved is I want the urban part of Denton to have urban principles, not - I've noticed every time we talk about anything outside the core, I say you're quiet, I never say anything, I don't care what we do anywhere else in Denton, but the urban areas, I want to be urban, and so I think that goes for parking and cars and things, and it's just the one area I think we don't have to prioritize cars in our city, we should prioritize pedestrians and bikes, and that's - most great cities across the world that people want to travel to be in are like that, is their urban cores are walkable, and there's a lot of other ways to get around. So that - and most of you probably know my goals at this point, that's what I'm really interested in, my - on this project, my short term goal is are there any traffic calming measures that would work here, whether it's art, whether it's - I mean it's like things that - I don't know what they would be and that's what I'm asking, is there anything in the short term that we could potentially look at? So when you say traffic calming, there are several signals lined up on Carol, it's primary goal is to carry traffic, so the goal defined in our mobility plan itself says that it's an arterial. So now you're contradicting your plans. If we have to do that - so the best way of going around it is if we're defining this urban core, let's work on the land use component. If you change that, then you do not require the access and the freeways and the arterials that are going in the areas that you don't want. So that defines, okay, this area is different, it's not going to attract a whole lot of traffic, you don't need a six lane facility here. Let's get it down to a four lane. Now we're talking about we have an extra width, we slow people down, we protect the bike lanes, all that is a possibility. So the best way of handling it is look at what are the uses, what kind of growth is anticipated, and then how does our transportation system tie in. That's how I look at it or we look at it as a big picture is currently that facility is designed to carry people. Bell is designed to carry people to TWU, to different destinations. Now if I just go in and say everyone slow down and it's narrowed down to two lanes, I will have some serious congestion in most of the streets every morning and evening. And there will be a lot more outcry as opposed to two or four people, I'll have the whole city at me saying what were you thinking. So before we can do that we have to come up with a plan, we have to come up with a plan, what is an alternative? What are we changing, TWU as a destination, are we changing it to something else? If we're not, are we providing an alternative route? Are we putting in another facility that's separate, that does not co-mingle with the core? All that needs to be thought out as part of our mobility plan and we're embarking on updating that pretty soon. I think we'll hire a consultant pretty soon next month. But these are all nice discussions that we can have at that plan because unless we come up with a plan, we can't go in and say okay we're going to slow you down here immediately because I think there is a big safety concern but when we designed it and we put it in place and all these years the primary function of that particular facility was to run vehicles up and down at a fast speed. So there's no doubt that's the problem. That is the problem. I don't want to move vehicles on that block section and it's designed to do that. It is designed functionally as well as in our mobility plan and so when you say I want to slow down someone on Carroll I'm like it's a six lane divided facility that carries vehicles and the whole idea is get the vehicles outside the downtown area and then let them move north south so that they're not using Elm and Locust as their thoroughfares but they're keeping to. So it's like water. If you reduce capacity somewhere you have to give it somewhere else and yes we have to do a better plan, we have to do a better job in planning upfront before we go implement some of these things. Well I think the way we use Denton has changed dramatically just in the past maybe ten or twelve years because and you know Carroll Boulevard is a barrier for me and I'm not a frightened walker but Carroll is a barrier so people did not use to go, you're going to stop me aren't you? It's not in the agenda. People used to go down to the square from UNT, that's a different persona, you didn't know that was me. No sorry if I don't stand up here I'll get yelled at by the TV guys but yeah I've kind of let it go because I thought we were going to wrap it up but we're going to keep going and we are not posted to fully discuss it so I'm going to have to cut it off sorry. In general discussion ideas, that's tough. We have to have specific topics to talk about. Changing Carroll from an arterial. That would be part of our mobility plan so definitely you're more than welcome to join the mobility team. You were trying to clean up the matrix. I don't think we actually have to do anything to it. No not officially. We've got ideas for the next one. Okay so is there anything else to add to the matrix? All right then we will adjourn at 728. Thank you. Thank you.