All right. Welcome everyone to our first virtual meeting for the Traffic Safety Commission.
Just a few points of housekeeping. In order to keep on track one, we do have a hard stop
at five o'clock. Is that correct, Becky? And so that's our allotted time. We will be, I'll
be transitioning this to Mr. Krutka in just a few seconds, but just to establish if you
have a question, I think there we can use the chat function or you can raise your hand
or one of the things we did like to has been working out well is if we could hold the questions
as much as possible to the end and let the presentations complete and then come back
and have a question and answer session. I believe that's been working better. So again,
welcome and I will now hand it off to Mr. Krutka. Chairman.
Okay. Thank you. And it's been a while since we've met. So hopefully I'm not too rusty
on running one of these meetings, but please let me know in this virtual environment if
there's anything that I get wrong. If my audio is slow at all, please let me know also I
can turn off my video to make sure that my audio is clear. Okay. So I think we're going
to start right into it. The first item on, well, first we, we do have a quorum, sorry,
for there's a little bit of noise in the background here. So we do have a quorum to start the
meeting. So call to order. And so our first item that we can go ahead and do is we have
a presentation from members of the public. And I do believe we have one submission from
the public that we could hear now. No, we do not have any callers for presentations
from members of the public. Okay. Good deal. Sorry. I thought we had one. Okay. Well then
we'll just go right into item A TSC 20-010 and consider the approval of minutes for the
March 2nd, 2020 meeting. Do we have a, for the approval of minutes, are there any corrections
that need to be added to the minutes? I didn't see any corrections. All right. All those
in favor of approving the minutes, we can use an I, I guess we can do an I or a hand
raise too. Either way. I see Clay, Melissa, Connie, and I all approve. Okay. Seems like
then that one passes and we are on to item B TSC 20-011. Receive a report, hold a discussion
and give feedback regarding staff's recommendations to update the speed and parking ordinances.
Sorry, I was on mute. That's on me. Actually, we've got to take a roll call vote because
we're doing it by zoom. Okay. So we don't show everybody at every moment because we
just can't show it all. So we've got to do a roll call vote. You've just got to go down
the list of those who are here. Sorry. Okay. So I'll just go down the list. Kevin sample's
not here. Um, let's go with, uh, clay, Connie. Yes. Is Jeff here? Jeff is not here. Jeff
is absent. I correct. Yes, that's correct. He's, he's not here. Okay. Thank you. Sorry.
My video was slow for a second there and Melissa here. Okay. And, and I also vote I, um, does
that satisfy everything, Trey? You're muted, Trey. You're muted. I'm still muted there.
I looked on it, but it didn't undo it. I guess I'm supposed to be able to do a space bar,
but I can't ever get to the work for some reason. Okay. Um, going down the roll and
then just, you announced that it passed and we can move on. Okay. All right. So, uh, item,
item a TSE, uh, 2010, sorry, doing it like this. We've got to see your face while you're
the one talking. Okay. My, my, my video is, is running slow, which is why I'm turning
it off. So hopefully you can, sorry, everyone. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Sorry. The,
my internet connection is having some problems and that's why I turned my video off, but,
um, it seems like, uh, we ran down the roll and there's approval. So, um, item a TSE
2010, uh, passed. And so if that's okay, then we will move on to item B TSE 20 dash zero
11, or see report or discussion and give feedback regarding the staff's recommendation to update
the speed and parking ordinances. Hi. Good morning, everybody. I'm going to go ahead
and share my screen and go through our presentation. See here. All right. And can we all see the
PowerPoint presentation? Yes. Perfect. So, um, I'm Haley Salazar with capital product,
capital projects, and I'm here today to talk about an update to our speed and parking ordinances.
And the objective in doing this is to improve our transportation management, uh, as far
as the ordinances go for both of these areas. So both of our speed limits and our parking
ordinances. And we're doing this, um, Haley, this is Billy with the TV. We need that full
screen please. Thank you. Is that better? Yes. Perfect. All right. So in order to understand
why we're proposing the update, I want to run through how we currently handle the ordinances
for parking and speed limits. Right now, the way it works is each time we pass a new rule
for either parking or a speed limit, it gets passed as an ordinance. This is an independent
exercise. The language is gathered. The recommendation is made. It pounces passes through council,
any other governing bodies, and it gets adopted and stored into laser fish, which is our repository
for all of our ordinances. And there's all specific to certain areas. So each street
typically gets its own ordinance. Each parking rule gets its own ordinance. And therefore
we're left with the transportation system that's governed by many separate ordinances
that get passed over time. But what we would like to do in order to streamline the process
and not have to make sure that we're in accordance with all these separate ordinances, we want
to make one holistic ordinance for all of our speed limits and another for all of our
parking ordinances. And what we'll do is we're going to divide them into tables. So for example,
if we're talking about the speed ordinance, we have a table that calls out all of the
speeds for our park streets, our textile roads, city streets, and school zones. And it's all
listed in one table. So you can get a glance any time we deviate from prima facie, which
is the 30 miles an hour that you can assume you can drive a road unless listed otherwise
by an ordinance. You can get one quick glance at all of these changes to that 30 miles an
hour. Anytime we make an update, we would actually update the entire table and put that
into the AIS that we bring before the group. And then that way, when the updates are made
and the presentations are made, we're actually okaying an update to the entire table and
nothing gets lost in translation. There's no singleton ordinance out there that can
get stored in laser fish and not applied to the whole table. We know we've got one place
to look as well, which is really going to help the organization. In order to do this
overhaul, it is going to be quite a process. The first go around, we're very invested in
just making sure that the table we pull together as our master table is of the highest quality.
So what we did with the speed ordinance, and we're going to do with the parking ordinance
as well, is first we're going to visit the code and find what codified tables are there.
And we're going to QC them to the best of our ability. Then we're going to go into GIS
and pull all of the centerline data reflecting our streets and compare to the table and then
make any amendments that we need to the codified table based on what we find in GIS. We're
also going to research all of our existing ordinances compared to the data set we have,
really do an overhaul through laser fish, which again is our repository. We're also
going to drive the streets and compare what signage we see out there, just in case there's
some signage that doesn't have an ordinance that we can find to back it. We're also going
to QC all of this data against Cartograph, which is our asset management system for our
traffic system and our street system as well. Once we reviewed all of these separate areas,
we're going to compile all that data and then put that into the master table that we're
going to work off of going forward. And that'll be what we take to the boards and to council
for approval. And so the next steps are going to be pretty aggressive because we feel this
is very important to get all of our data in one easy source of truth to reference. We
want to shoot for August, September to get our speed ordinance table pulled together.
And then we're going to repeat that process, kind of figure out what did we learn in doing
that and then apply that to our parking ordinances that we would hope to take before the group
in October. And essentially that's it. We just wanted to share our plan with the group
to get any feedback. Any questions or comments? I have one question. So can you tell me just
kind of practically what kind of will this result in like changes to existing speed limits?
Can you just kind of give me like some of the practical applications of these changes?
Absolutely. So there should not be any surprises for a motorist out on the road. Right now,
if you go to our municipal code and you look up where our speed limits are listed, where
they deviate from prima facie, so where they're not 30 miles an hour, there's a table of maybe
about 12 streets listed in there. And I think most of the people on the call here could
probably think of at least 12 streets off the top of their head, if not quite a few
more that deviate from that 30 mile an hour. So we really just want to make sure that we
have the ordinances to back up what's on the road. And so really, it's just a better articulation
of what's out there. And also, we anticipate that we might find some old outdated ordinances
that don't necessarily have street signs representing them on the road that we really haven't been
following and there's no reason to keep them. Some of them are quite old. We've got some
ordinances from back in the 70s and 80s. We're even finding where the context of the road
and the development around it has changed. So really, the implication we hope for is
just kind of better management and a better source of truth for those enforcing the management
as well as our residents driving on the roads.
Does anyone else have questions?
Are you saying that this is going to help you with continuity also?
Yes. Yes. It will definitely help all of us. And I think it's going to be huge just being
able to have one source of truth in the code instead of all of these independent ordinances
out there.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Haley, one thing we've had a discussion about in the past was even the idea of a more uniform
speed limit around the square, like surrounding the square area. Some cities have started
to do that as a way to give motorists a more clear sense they're entering a more pedestrian
active area. Is that something this process could be aligned with this process or would
that be totally separate? Is that something that could be considered?
Well, I think certainly any changes we make, we'll want to make sure that that's reflected
in this table of ordinances. Any changes to existing speed limits and signage we have
now, that would be some additional effort and probably some studies that we would have
to go through and just collaboration with our department. But the transparency of these
speed limits and rules will definitely come into play with this project.
Thank you.
Is there any other questions?
Okay. If there's no other questions, then we can move to our next item. Our next item
is CTSC 20-012. Receive an updated report and hold a discussion regarding initiatives
to reduce wrong way driving.
Hello, everybody. That would be me again.
Haley, can you make the screen big again, please?
I hit share. There's a bit of a lag. Is it, can we all see it on full screen now?
Yes.
Fantastic. All right. So this item is just us talking about our initiatives to reduce
wrong way driving on one way streets. And so the objective of the wrong way driving program
is to increase our public safety just within the right of ways. And it's through the implementation
of countermeasures that reduce wrong way driving on one way streets. Some background on why
we're working on this. This initiative was one of the initiatives we did not satisfy
in the 2019 policy bundle submission. For those unfamiliar with the policy bundle, it
is funding that we can get through cog if we satisfy 20 initiatives that are part of
mobility 2045. And we did, we satisfied over half of the 20. So we got $750,000 in credits
that we could use towards projects, which was really exciting. One of the board members
in mobility had mentioned if there were any initiatives though, that we did not satisfy
that we should look into and initiatives to reduce wrong way driving really stood out.
So we decided to take a deeper dive and see what, what this means and how it could be
applied to the city of Denton's transportation system to improve everything we have on the
road. Um, a little bit of statistics in wrong way driving that we found as we studied this
initiative was that in 2018 we had 170 wrong way crashes on rural roads. So that's roads
through cities, much like the city of Denton. We're not talking highways here. Um, they
are typically head on collisions, which means they're the most fatal cause you can double
the speed of the two cars, um, that collide, but most of them do occur between six at night,
six in the morning. And there's an even smaller window between midnight and three AM where
these crashes occur. Um, they're most often on weekends, most often they involve alcohol
and there's an over-representation of drivers under 25 or over 70. And when we consider
that we have a population that's relatively young here in the city of Denton, due to the
draw of the universities, we also have a very vibrant nightlife here as well as, um, with
these new drivers kind of here in town, a lot of them, it's their first year and they're
not sure, um, how to drive around one way roads. And so we thought given the statistics
and the fact that we do have a few one way roads, we wanted to go ahead and adopt this
program and just make the most of it to keep our drivers safe. So the first step we did
was we targeted all of the one way roads within the city of Denton. And so you can see a map
that we highlighted from our GIS system with just some of the one way roads we really want
to target first. So of course we've got the service roads along 35, but Elm, Locust, Oak
and Hickory, um, Shady Oaks, Mayhill, Teasley, Carroll, and Loop 288. And there's also several
more roads we want to continue to target, but these, because they're so heavily traveled,
we thought what a great opportunity to increase safety on these roads first. And we've already
installed some countermeasures at Stewart and Loop 288. So for those not familiar with
this intersection, as you head north on Stewart towards Loop 288, we had one, and you can
look in the picture in the top right hand corner, we had one little signage that was
an arrow that said this way only. But if the driver was distracted, they could easily make
a left turn going the wrong way. But if you look across the bottom of this slide now,
you can see the new wrong way driving signs that our traffic crew has installed in that
area. So if a driver does in fact turn left or coming southbound, if they turn the wrong
way as well and miss that arrow, these large reflective signs are there letting the driver
know that they need to turn around quick. Luckily, another statistic with wrong way
driving is that the majority of drivers do correct and turn around before any incident
is had. And so if we do in fact have motorists going the wrong way, we're happy these signs
here are here to help alert them. The next area of focus is going to be Locust and Parkway.
So this is going at the intersection of Locust and Parkway. We actually just got word today
from TextDOT that we have approval to go ahead and install some signs here as well just to
let the driver know if they've turned the wrong way. Similar to 288 and Stewart, all
we have here is an arrow. So these red signs will help communicate that the driver is going
the wrong way if they do in fact miss the arrow. We also wanted to partner with our
citizens. We do have a lot of roads we're trying to manage and our citizens have been
fantastic letting us know where opportunities lie. So our webmaster Sarah Fullwood has done
something really cool. She set up an area on the website where wrong way driver people
can go and log where they think a wrong way driving sign could be of benefit to be installed.
Let us know. This is live on the website and then we'll get our crews out there right away.
Our traffic team is fantastic. We can actually print signs in house. So the turnaround time
once we see a need is very quick to get those signs out there especially if the opportunity
is within a city of Denton right away. So that's really exciting as well. Another project
that we're looking into is called a FLIR sensor product. Sorry, project. And this FLIR sensor,
what it does is it actually has a sensor that will pick up on vehicles going the wrong way
and it will illuminate with LEDs one of those wrong way driving signs. Instead of just being
a reflective sign, this is a bright flashing sign that really gets the driver's attention.
Where Avenue A and Hickory Street meet, that used to be a two-way street that we very recently
converted to a one-way street. And so this area is one of the targets that we're looking
at installing this sensor because many drivers who have been used to turning down Avenue
A where they can no longer turn might just happen to not see that arrow sign and then
the no longer the one-way sign as well. So this will be a huge countermeasure to prevent
folks from kind of going on autopilot and turning the wrong way down the street. And
so our recommendations are to continue our focus on a proactive wrong way driving prevention
program. We really want to get out there and find all the areas that can be improved with
those wrong way signs. We do want to continue to use a variety of preventative measures.
So as nice as that sensor sign was with the LED edge lit, it is a bit cost prohibitive,
but the signs, the static reflective signs are not. So we want to use those everywhere
we can and on key areas where we can provide additional safety, we want to look at those
alternative tools like the LED edge lit signs. And then of course we want to continue to
partner with the public to get signs communicating the correct directions in the wrong ways wherever
we can. And that's it. Any questions?
Thank you Haley for that presentation. I do have one question. Is part of the one-way
road initiative also to identify like unnecessary or unsafe one-way roads that could potentially
just be made two-way? Have we looked at that as part of the solution too?
That's a great question. So right now the scope of the program is just to install the
signage. However, in doing that, we are definitely going to take note in any roads that don't
make sense to be one-way. If we see something and think, this really should not be a one-way
this is very dangerous with or without signs. We will certainly take a look at that and
then do any studies we have to to confirm whether or not we should continue as such
or look into making it a two-way road. Haley, can I ask a question?
Yes, sir. Okay, I grew up here. So I was here when they
changed these one ways, Locust and Helm, which was a lot of fun for even the people that
lived here. The only one that I see that they have problems at is that Locust and University
right there where the CBS is that little shopping center. You catch people coming out of there
and going down to the light, you know, pulling out of the parking lot either way, both ways.
Excuse me. That's the only thing that I've noticed the other day that was dangerous and
I've seen somebody do it, I think it was the day before yesterday, come out the wrong way.
He got a surprise. There was a policeman sitting there. So, but that's a bad intersection.
That's about the only one that I've really seen that everybody seems to not really pay
attention to when they come out of either one of those parking lots. That one's very
dangerous. But I would like to say I was here when they had Locust and Helm were two-way
and they were deadly. Even back when I was growing up here and like I say, I ain't gonna
tell my age, but they were deadly. But when they changed them to one ways, it helped the
traffic. It really did move it, in other words, University back to the square. So, and like
you say, there's some that, you know, you just have to look at. That's the only intersection
that I really see that's kind of dangerous right there. You know, everybody wants to
go down to University and go, you know, yes, unfortunately, I've witnessed that several
times as well. And I've only lived here 17 years and I can probably tell you quite a
few times. I've seen that but we are working on getting the permits for that intersection
as well. These, some of them do take a little bit longer to get the permits when we're coordinating
with TechStop right away, which I believe that is, but we are absolutely working to
secure the authority to put signs in there as well.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Sorry, go ahead.
So to Connie's comment, I go down that street pretty often to go home. When I used to commute
from TWU, now that we're home, I don't do it as often, but yeah, absolutely. People
always, so you know, I end up flashing my lights to get people to realize they're going
the wrong way. That one, absolutely. But then I was going to ask, are you guys going to
try and do anything with the downtown square? Because I've actually stopped somebody who
was going the wrong way on Locust. They were going south, not north on Locust. And so I
was curious if you guys were going to do anything about that or talk about like different kind
of signage for that space. Thanks.
We can certainly look into the intersections along Elm and Locust to see if any of them
would do better with that LED edge lit sign. Right now, all up and down the Elm and Locust
corridors, we're targeting to get permits for wrong way signs. We had a resident reach
out to us just mentioning the opportunity to put them in at Parkway and Locust, how
I showed earlier. And as we looked at that, we kind of thought, well, let's look up and
down the corridor. And there certainly is a lot of opportunity up and down the entire
corridor to improve safety. So we'll keep in mind and definitely give the committee
an update if we find out there are certain areas within that corridor that we want to
go ahead and use that edge lit signage on.
Thank you.
Are there any other comments?
Okay. Well, we look forward to hearing back on that. So, okay, our next item is item,
let's see, DTSC 20-013. Receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction
regarding the 2020 Ditten Mobility Plan update with a focus on the one-way versus two-way
traffic analysis. So I'm following right on into that same topic.
Exactly. So I will be presenting this as Brian, let me share my screen. Okay. Can everybody
see that now? Making sure I'm not on mute. Okay. So I've changed this presentation. Originally
it was one-way versus two-way, but there's really no versus because both one-way streets
and two-way streets have an appropriate use. So I'm really, today I want to talk about
the characteristics of one-way and two-way streets and how they might impact the mobility
plan as we move forward. So one of the requests that council has made of our mobility plan
is that we evaluate Elm, Locust, Hickory and Oak relative to one-way operation as they
currently are and two-way operation and what would be the impacts of those changes. So
if you ask any two traffic engineers are two-way streets better than one-way streets, you will
get three answers. Yes, no, and it depends. And so it's this, it depends answer that I
want to focus on today because it does depend on the goals of the community and the leadership.
So several goals are listed here. Safety is always the highest on our, this is from the
traffic engineering standpoint, that's our highest priority is to make our roadways safe
for all users. And so we look at pedestrian safety, cyclist safety, the number versus
the severity of crashes. So is it better to have fewer crashes, but some of them may be
more severe or is it better to have more crashes and just with a less of a dollar impact and
a life impact. So, and again, lower versus higher speed. So safety is very important
to the determination of how these roadways need to operate. Economic vitality. So how
do the businesses that are on a given roadway, how are they affected by a one-way versus
a two-way operation? Ease of access, shorter travel distances. Mobility options. How do
one-way streets differ from two-way streets when it comes to offering ped and bike facilities,
when it comes to serving transit and even on street parking. And then the last one,
which typically would have been the first one, maybe 20 years ago, is decreased congestion,
but now we're learning to live with a little congestion. And so do we look at a roadway
network that provides less delay, improve vehicle flow, and then the negative side when
you get to congestion is this traffic migration issue. Are we pushing people from the roadways
that we have and intend for the drivers to use? Are we pushing them to parallel facilities
that may or may not be appropriate? So I'm going to go through these one at a time. Safety
again is the first and foremost concern. Relative to pedestrians, if you're crossing the main
street and it's a one-way street, you only have to look one direction. So that's a plus.
Two-way streets, you've got traffic coming from both directions. You need to make sure
that there's a safe gap or that both drivers see you. The streets that we're talking about
are all multi-lane. So there are two lanes in each direction or more, and they're currently
one way. So one of the downfalls of that is for a pedestrian is as you start off the curb,
you see a gap in the traffic, you're going to start walking. That first car stops, it
sees you, it comes to a stop, and it may shadow you from the car on the other lane. So that's
a concern of not only pedestrians, but cyclists as well. On two-way streets, because again,
we're talking about these four streets, if you convert them from two lanes in one direction
to one lane in each direction, you've opened up that visibility so there's not that shadowing
issue. It's a little bit safer for pedestrians. You've got better visual contact with drivers.
One-way streets typically will have very, very few or much fewer or much lower number
of conflict points. If we have a two-way main street and a two-way side street, when you
add in the vehicular and the pedestrian/cyclist conflict points, you've got over 40. Roughly
half of that if you've got a one-way main street, even with a two-way side street. Every
time we have a conflict point, that is a potential crash. It's a potential crash location. You've
got vehicles or pedestrians that are basically trying to use the same piece of pavement at
the same time. One-way streets. Can I ask a quick question on that? Do we know how that
plays out? Is there good data on not just the potential, but the actual results of the
number of wrecks at those conflict points versus one-way versus two-way? I'll get to
that in a second. Yes, it's a trade-off. On one-way streets, you have fewer but more severe
crashes because your speeds are typically higher or certainly have the potential for
being higher. On two-way streets, because you've introduced those conflict points, you'll
typically have a greater number, but with the slower speeds, you'll have less severe
crashes. It's kind of a trade-off. It's certainly something that we have to take into consideration
when we look at the main street volumes and the side street volumes and what our crash
history is. I do have a slide on crash history in here. Just a few slides ahead. We talked
about the higher speeds and greater severity of crashes on one-way, slower speeds, and
less severe but more frequent crashes on a two-way street. Here's some crash history.
This is from 2010 to 2020. This is all the crash data that I could gather from the TxDOT
online system. Oak and Hickory, you can see you've got fairly consistent crash numbers
throughout the corridor. You've got 617 crashes during those 10 years. No fatalities on record,
but 110 injuries. Elm and Locust, much higher volumes. I'm sorry, but north is to the right.
You see that 219, that's University, 380. You've got some hot spots. Downtown around
the square, 322. You get up to Congress or so. You've got 104, 113, and then up to University,
you've got 219, but you've got fairly low crash volumes in between there. That's just
something to look at. We've got almost 1,100 crashes in 10 years, the two fatalities and
362 injuries. Not all of those injuries, some are minor, some are severe. I don't have a
split of the severity of those injuries. That just gives you an idea of the crash history
that we see with the current one-way configuration.
These include cars? Yes, these are all modes. The next goal or topic is economic vitality.
This is one that a lot of people don't think about, but one-way streets, and I think Haley
did bring it up in the one-way wrong way, they're not as easy for visitors to navigate.
If you're not from here, you don't know which streets are one-way. You don't know if there's
a parallel one-way in the other direction, or if there is, you don't know which side.
Is it to the east, to the west, to the north, to the south? It's confusing or potentially
confusing for people trying to drive in and around town. Two-way streets take a lot of
that away. They allow access from all directions. You know that you can go one block over and
continue in the same direction, or you can take a U-turn and head back in the other direction.
There's no confusion as to whether or not the next intersection you come to is going
to offer a turn restriction. Another item that's related to the friendliness of one-way
versus two-way. So what I've picked here, and I just picked Giuseppe's Italian restaurant,
and a depiction of the travel distance on a one-way system versus on a two-way system.
So the orange line is with the current one-way configuration. If you're coming from the east
on University, you come over, you take Elm South, you cut across, and you come back up
onto Locust to get to your destination versus just simply turning. If Locust was two-way,
then you simply turn on Locust and travel to the restaurant and turn. So this is just
kind of an example of how that can add travel distance and travel. The industry, we try
to minimize vehicle miles of travel. It helps on emissions, it helps on congestion, and
it eliminates some potential crashes. So again, this is just a depiction of how a one-way
system is a little bit less efficient than a two-way system. So mobility options. On
a one-way street, typically you will have a bike lane in one direction. On a two-way
street, the expectation is that there will be a bike lane in both directions if you're
providing bike facilities. So it becomes again a trade-off or a balance as to how do we provide
all modes of travel on those streets that really want it. So Hickory and Oak each have
a bike lane in one direction or the other. If those streets were converted, now we have
the question, do we take away on street parking to provide a bike lane in the new direction,
or do we simply say we're going to maintain a bike lane on Hickory that is eastbound and
will maintain a bike lane on Oak that is westbound, and that serves as a couplet. But for people
using a bike, it's a little bit more confusing because you expect, again, if I'm on a roadway
that provides bike lanes, typically if it's a two-way road, there's going to be a bike
lane in each direction. So that's again another consideration that has to be taken into account
when we talk about converting from one way to two-way. This next one relates to primarily
deliveries, but also to transit because both maneuvers are very similar. The delivery vehicle
tends to park and either load or unload, and it is the same maneuver for transit, although
typically a much shorter time. But if you see on the left-hand side of your screen,
it's Hickory currently. We've got a delivery truck, and he's blocked a lane, but we have
that second lane eastbound where motorists can drive around and not have to wait for
that truck to move. So the other side of the screen is also Hickory. It's a two-way section
of Hickory, and you see a delivery van. I believe that's a FedEx van. And that vehicle
is blocking a lane, but there is no other lane. So anybody who's traveling eastbound
has to wait for this vehicle to clear or has to wait for a gap in traffic that's large
enough to provide a safe maneuver around that parked vehicle. So that's just another consideration
again that takes because the assumption that as we looked at the conversion from one-way
to two-way, one of the base assumptions is that we're not reconstructing these roadways.
So the curb-to-curb distance is what we have. We're not going to widen to get another lane
or to put an extra rule of parking. What we have is what we have, and how can we best
utilize that? And does it make sense to convert from one-way to two-way? And again, this is
talking about the on-street parking may limit or preclude an on-street bike lane in either
direction for one-way or two-way. And that again goes back to the goals of the community.
What is most important? What are our priorities? Is it mobility or is it parking? And that's
just another element that we have to weigh. So decreased congestion. This is again, this
is what would be the traditional traffic engineering concern is how do we move more cars faster?
So one-way streets provide up to 50% more capacity per lane. So if you think about locusts
and how many cars it can carry, so you've got locusts in one direction and elm in another.
What we're saying with this is that those four lanes of travel, if you convert them
to two-way, just the friction that you introduce by allowing left turns in all directions significantly
reduces the availability, the capacity that's available to move cars in those corridors.
So you're not going to be able to see the same throughput that you have with the one-way
streets on a two-way system. One of the other things, and this is very closely related,
but the one-way streets allow for what we call progression. So if you're in a signalized
corridor, it's much easier for us to give the basically that what we call a green band.
So if you get to one light green, you get to the next light green, you get to the next
light green instead of start, stop, start, stop. Again, when you introduce those left
turns, that decreases the availability of that opportunity to offer that green throughout
the corridor because you've got to offer out green time to the opposing direction. So left
turns can inhibit that available throughput. And this point is very, very important, especially
as we look at Oak and Hickory. One-way networks, because they offer that additional capacity,
because they are better at moving cars in a corridor, tend to retain that traffic in
that corridor. When you introduce that congestion and that delay, or even if it's just perceived
delay for motorists, people are going to try and find a quicker route, or at least the
route they think is quicker. And typically that will push them on to parallel facilities.
Now on Elm and Locust, we've got a lot of parallel facilities. We've got Bell, we've
got Carroll. Eventually Riddell will be improved and offer some more capacity. But on Oak and
Hickory, you really have residential streets that you're going to be pushing this traffic
through. That's something that we don't want because that's something that is these roadways
were not designed to carry through traffic. They are local residential streets that you're
supposed to get people from their home to a collector or to an arterial using these
roadways and not use them as cut through. So we get a lot of those engaged debt and
requests for speeding through the neighborhoods and cut through traffic through the neighborhoods.
And by converting or by introducing that congestion, by converting one-way to two-way, we're going
to see more of that. And that's something we try to avoid.
So what I've done here is we've asked our consultant to do a comparison, prepare a comparison
of the one-way streets and their traffic volumes that our traffic model expects, and then convert
those streets. And what we're looking at is all four, Oak, Hickory, Elm, and Locust, convert
those to two-way and see what the impact does through the modeling process. So this is kind
of the baseline. This is the 2045 model with one-way roadways. And you can look at -- and
I don't know if you can see my cursor, but Elm and Locust, 15 to 20,000 vehicles a day
north of 380 and about the same, a little bit higher when you get south of University
and through downtown. Oak and Hickory are carrying about between 6 and 8,000 each direction.
So when we go to a two-way system, just the friction and the congestion, if you want to
call it that, that is introduced with cars now traveling in both directions and the left
turns that that introduces, we see the Elm and Locust north of University drops about
11,000. So you look at where those cars went. Well, it looks like most of them went to Carroll
and/or to Bell. So out of the 11,000, you've got 8,000 accounted for just in those two
ways. But that's okay, at least especially on the Carroll side, because that certainly
is designed to accommodate the traffic volumes. When you look at Oak and Hickory, you lose
8,000. But there's no -- and I apologize, the model is not detailing -- the printout
that I had didn't detail it. But these 8,000 cars are now migrating through what will be
neighborhood streets. So for traffic engineers, we see that as a negative one. Much rather
accommodate those vehicles. Even though Oak and Hickory are residential streets, they
have morphed into something a little bit different. The expectation is different. But when we
push those volumes through two-way, two-lane residential streets, we begin to see increased
crashes, lower pedestrian safety levels. So the Oak and Hickory is much more of a concern
from a safety standpoint when we talk about that migration from the main corridor to the
parallel corridors. And I just have one more slide here on parking. And I want to talk
about a couple of things. We talked about the potential of conflict with bike facilities.
That's certainly an issue we need to consider. And then we look at is it angle parking or
parallel. And so parallel offers a lot of flexibility. It gives you fewer spaces, but
it offers the ability to approach that parking space from either direction. So if you're
-- I mean, if we convert the roadway from one way to two-way, if we have parallel parking,
we don't have to restripe anything. They're just going to park in that area. Angle parking
takes twice as much of the pavement width, but it gives you more spaces. So it's kind
of a tradeoff. You're giving up something, either a bike lane or a travel lane, the ability
to provide a turn lane to add angle parking. And typically, it is associated with one direction
of travel. Now, the exception is the rear, the back end parking, which is sometimes not
as popular with certain drivers. So the angle parking and the parallel parking is something
we have to look at. If we decide to convert, how can we, if parking is a priority, how
can we optimize the utilization of that pavement to provide the greatest number of parking
spaces we can? So just as a summary, I know it's a lot of information. One-way streets,
higher capacity, a little bit less congestion, allows delivery and transit to occupy some
space and still provide a bypass, fewer conflict points. Negatives include the increased travel
distance, potentially higher traffic speeds, which could be, you know, we're talking about
pros and cons. Some people see the higher speed as a pro. Some people see it as a con.
Because of the association with the severity of crashes, I see it as a negative. And that's
what the next slide, the next line says, fewer but more severe crashes. And we certainly,
we don't want to introduce, you know, nobody wants to introduce more crashes, but we certainly
want to reduce or eliminate the fatalities and the severe injuries. So two-way streets,
lower speeds, that's a plus. Reduction in severity, but increase in number of crashes.
We talked about the reduction in vehicle miles of travel. Just because it's easier, you can
go either direction. You don't have to make that U-turn and loop around. More convenient
access, a little more intuitive for visitors. Better visibility for peds and cyclists. Overall,
more conflict points. That's, and every time we have a conflict point, that's a potential
crash location. So we try and minimize those. And then the potential for increased delay
and congestion. We may introduce the need for doubling our bike infrastructure if bike
facilities are deemed a priority on a roadway or in a corridor. We talked about lower capacity
and that negative impact for traffic to migrate to parallel streets. If the parallel streets
are adequate and designed to carry the traffic, that's not a negative. But if they're residential
streets and they're not really designed to carry high speeds or high volumes, it certainly
is a negative. So just to give you an idea of why you're seeing this today, council has
asked us to take this to, and we have taken it to the downtown Main Street. We've taken
it to the economic development committee, and we took it to COPWD last week, the committee
on persons with disabilities. And substantial support of retaining the one-way roadway network.
Some were based on the concern about pushing motorists into residential areas. Some concerns
about why are we doing this now? They're working fine. The COPWD was fairly unanimous in support
of the one-way because of the safety factors that they lend to pedestrians and cyclists.
So what we are here today to do is just present this information and get -- there is no formal
action. The action that we're looking for is basically a consensus on does this group
support the one-way or support the two-way or however you want to attack that. So I'll
leave that with questions and comments. Just discussion on any of the items I've presented
and then basically a consensus of do you support the one-way, the two-way, combination or further
study. So I'll open that up. >> Okay. We can open up to questions if -- for
Brian. >> It was a lot of information in a very short
time, I understand. >> Can I ask a question? Like I say, I've
been here and I've seen them change. Why are they wanting to go backwards? They want to
go back to two ways on Oak and Hickory. They'd like to go in backwards, not forwards on all
these. >> Well, so this request came from city council
as part of the mobility update. And I think it's just -- staff had made a presentation
and I think the mayor wanted us to hire the -- get our consultants to look at the impact,
do the modeling and see exactly what would happen or what we think would happen with
this one-way to two-way conversion. I think it might have just been a fact check. And
so the data seems to support in some areas the one-way streets as a better, safer option.
But there is that -- I was always that concerned about the high speed and severity of crashes.
So I think they just wanted to look at it again and have this current mobility plan
take a stand on whether we're going to retain the one-ways or if we should consider all
or part of those roadways to convert to two-way. >> I'll add a comment. Connie, this I guess
speaks to your question. I actually think one problem with one-way roads is it's actually
hard to see, to me, the damage they've done. There's been a lot of research that one-way
roads are very bad for the local economy, right? The Giuseppe's example is a great example.
You get more people who drive past our local businesses as opposed to stopping or seeing
them and so you get this fast. But the other thing is the loss of -- if you go on Locust,
it's probably one of the streets I'm most concerned with, but Elm would fit, too. It
is a very uninviting street for pedestrians and cyclists, right? You just feel -- you
feel unsafe. So we are really losing the ability to have a multimodal transportation network
because these streets feel unsafe. I'm very against all one-way streets pretty much except
for in extreme circumstances. I think they're very bad for cities, particularly in the core.
And I think the recent changes to Locust, in particular, are -- I'm very scared we'll
have a death there soon. When you come off the hill, off the square, and you pass Oak
off Locust, you hit a downhill area where we've removed a stoplight and we don't have
a crosswalk at a new -- we've got a new ramp right next to Barlin Board and we did not
put a crosswalk there. So people are now going to be running across and there's also a library
there that children and families frequent. So I'm just really concerned. I think our
one-way streets are bad for Denton. And so that's my argument. But there's a lot of research
to back up the harms they do. And you can't see the harms they do because it's lost opportunities,
lost economic opportunities, lost transportation opportunities that would be there if we didn't
have one-way streets. So that's -- so I just would like to state that I would love to see
those all moved to two-way streets. And I think it was a mistake to ever move them and
Denton would see a lot of economic growth if they went back to two-way and see more
bicyclists and pedestrian use.
>> May I speak?
>> Yes. Melissa, go ahead.
>> Okay. Thank you. Well, looking at the data that was presented, it looks like to me -- and
I know there's a lot of balancing that goes on with that. But it seems like to me that
one-way streets have a slight -- to me have a slight edge over two-way streets. But I
would like to ask because I am a cyclist and people do go very fast on those one-way streets.
And I've ridden down them before on my bike. I always -- generally when I do it, we're
in a group. So we have a lot more people. I'm not alone. So a lot of times we'll do
a two-up. But that's not always the case. So what can we do to make those streets safer
for cyclists and for pedestrians?
>> So my response would be, when TXOT hands Elm and Locust back to the city. And that's
in the process right now. We're taking that 77 overlay. We're taking them off system.
The city is going to take ownership. And we'll have a freer hand to make modifications because
those will be city roads and not state roads. What we can do, certainly, is look at the
viability of something like what we've done on Hickory where we've got -- we took parking
off one side and put in that separated buffered bike lane. And that can -- we can replicate
that on Elm and Locust. We can also, to Mr. Kretke's comment about the pedestrians, one
of the things we're doing at Parkway -- and I'm not sure if we've ordered the hardware
yet, but it's in the process -- because we took the signal out and people were used to
being able to cross with the traffic signal, we're going to put in the edge lit LED crosswalk
signs so that you activate or passively activate. But when somebody wants to cross, those signs
-- and we're going to have four of them, so you'll have a lot of LEDs blinking at one
time -- but we're going to have them give a visual cue to the drivers that something's
changed. They're not going to blink. They're not going to flash all the time. But when
somebody activates it or when somebody's there waiting to cross, if we use a passive sensor,
then the signs will go active. And we can do that as well throughout the corridor. And
Haley talked about the one way/wrong way. We can look at some modifications to the speed
limits. There are a number of tools that we can utilize to calm the traffic in those corridors.
A lot of it is visual. If we could do something like the Hickory bike lane, just having taken
the parking off one side and having those pylons -- which I'm going to ask -- what do
y'all think of those white pylons that we've installed on Hickory?
I haven't seen them yet. I'll be honest. So we've talked about it so many times with
this group. Now that we actually installed them, we're just trying to get some feedback
on do they work? Are they too far apart? Are they too short? Just some general feedback.
But that certainly -- I can add, Brian. I've seen them. I was very excited the first time
I saw it after all of our talking to see them there. So I'm glad to see that. I'm very curious
to see how cars react to them. I think the physical, you know, the vertical nature of
them will hopefully lead to it. But it'll be interesting to see. I'm very interested
to see about their durability if they're hit and when they're hit. So that'll be interesting.
You know me. I'm always for bigger structures for bike lanes and things like that. But I'm
interested to see how they work.
Okay. So, again, to answer your question, how do we make those more friendly for cyclists
and pedestrians, there's a number of tools that we have. But on Elm and Locust specifically,
it's going to be a lot easier for us to utilize those tools once the city owns those roadways.
Thank you.
Daniel? Okay. I'm kind of with Melissa on the one ways and also with Connie. I appreciate
Connie's historical lived experience here. And I think that those are good. I've written
Elm and Locust on my bicycle quite often. And those shoulders, could those be part of
the bike lane?
Certainly. And we've looked at, again, we're talking about utilizing the existing pavement.
So we're not going to widen. But you've got shoulders on both sides. So what if you move
the traffic over and put a wider shoulder on one side? And I've actually measured some
of those and I believe in most of the areas where you've got those shoulders, if we combine
them, that we could do a fairly decent bike lane. It may not be quite as substantial as
hickory. But we may not be able to put the same size of pylon. We may have to go to something
a little bit smaller. But I think we can accomplish something.
Right. I would encourage us to do protected bike lanes with bollards there. And that will
be another very good, highly visible point for all of our road users to see. And it will
start getting some of our people that are hesitant to be on streets to be more comfortable,
to be on them, see that the city's taking these connected, protected bikeways seriously.
And one of the other things that we can do is just overall narrowing the roadways of
the travel lanes. So when tech stop stripes a road, they like a 12 foot lane and then
the outside lane wants to be 14. When the city takes ownership of Elm and Locust, then
we have a much freer hand of providing an 11 foot or a 10 and a half foot lane. Narrowing
those lanes typically has the effect of slowing traffic down as well. So not only does it
give us more room for the bike facility, but it also makes those drivers, even if it's
a one way facility, drive a little more slowly.
Right. And downtown also, I don't think two way would work very well, particularly with
all the deliveries that, you know, one beer truck takes up a whole lane. And if you make
that two lanes, then you're really stuck. And I was actually improperly ticketed on
Oak for off or unloading my mobility impaired wife, because I had to pull over to the side
lane because there was no parking access. But there is that issue also.
If I can, if I can piggyback a little bit on your comments, Clay, right now, I mean,
Elm almost has a bike lane because there's parking kind of on the street. It's not so
unused that I usually bike in that. So I, Brian, I agree with your comment that there's
a lot of road space to use and Locust coming off of Eagle, you know, going towards the
square too. It's just so wide when you're coming down that street and you can sometimes
take a picture with three lanes with no cars, you know, in it all the way down the stretch.
And so some of some of these don't really have the traffic counts needed for that many
lanes anyway. So I think we do have some road to work with. So I doubt that. But Clay, I
wonder, I can't answer your point to about a good drop off place, particularly for, for
someone with disabilities. I wonder if more loading could happen in the alleys. I was
going to ask about that. It doesn't really answer the second part of your point, Clay.
And I think that's a well, this was in front of a medical office where she services. And
eventually we did get a handicap spot put over there. But then I also saw the someone
who works in one of those buildings park there all day long.
There are there other comments. I have one more thought that just came to me. And that's
because I work for Texas Women's University. But I, I know that they've talked about trying
to close Bell and I don't know where that's at. But it sounds like to me, correct me if
I'm wrong, that if we, if we went from a one way to a two way on Locust, that could affect
Bell? Would that be a yes or a no?
So we do have a study underway that's, it's the same consultant and we're using the same
travel demand model, looking at the Bell Street closure. Basically part of it right there
in the middle of campus. I think it's from Chapel to Texas. No, anyway, forget for sure.
But what the impact that has is actually because the Bell traffic can no longer go through,
it pushes more traffic over to, to Locust and Elm. And so the only countermeasure that
we've, it is, it is a good one is the improvement of Redel to a four lane roadway. So, and those
plans are underway. I don't know that there's construction dollar that have been identified,
but we are looking to widen that facility from that two lane wide, two lane with parking
to a four lane roadway. And that will more than offset the, the traffic that's displaced
from Bell. Bell doesn't really carry the same traffic loading because it's for, it's one
lane in each direction, but as, as Elm and Locust do, but providing that improved Redel
offsets that displacement. So we're looking at that. We'll be presenting that to council
in the future. Okay. I guess I was just thinking in the sense that if there's less, if there's
less traffic on Locust because now it's a two way, would it get pushed over to Bell?
And if Bell got closed, then would that make it even worse? That's where I was going. Right.
And we've looked at all the scenarios and the consultant has looked at all two way,
all one way, half two way, half one way, and then all of those same scenarios with Bell
closed and without it closed. So we've, we've got, we've got a matrix of traffic volume
maps that show the impact. None of them are deal breakers and none of them are just throw
everything into complete failure. But again, it's, it's, it's okay. If, if Bell wants
to close and we convert Elm and Locust to two way, then that really heightens the need
to improve the Redel corridor so that it can carry that displaced traffic rather than push
it over to two streets that now have a less capacity than they had before. Okay. Thank
you. Melissa and Brian, is there talk of Bell closing still? Is that a, is there movement
on that? Yes, definitely full steam ahead. We're, we're looking at the, the university
is trying to create a pedestrian corridor, a wide pedestrian corridor through the heart
of campus. What we're looking at is creating some mini roundabouts on either end of that
so that your traffic is, is diverted East West instead of North South. Obviously it's
going to displace some people who use Bell as a through street, not associated with TW
and I think that's what Melissa's concern was. Well, if you're going to put, you take
that and then you're going to push it over to Elm and Locust and if they're two way with
less capacity, then what's that going to do? Because Carroll is pretty far to the West
to carry somebody who's, you know, wants to, wants to be on Bell. That's several streets
over and my response was that is what's going to heighten the need for us to complete and
implement that Redel corridor improvement. That's, Senator, I guess I don't understand
the closing of Bell because it seems like cars and people actually interact there like
they should in an urban environment. Cars move very slowly through the center of campus,
not once you get off down the hill that those areas can be a little better. But I'm surprised
to hear that's, that's moving forward because I think it's a good, it's a good safe way
to move traffic and keep pedestrians, bicyclists and, and cars that interact very, very smoothly
there from I worked there for, you know, four years right on, right on Bell and never really
noticed the problem. So when I say it's moving full speed ahead, our portion, the study is
moving. Gotcha. I, I don't think there's, there's, there is no guarantee that council
will adopt that change or the university will push that to occur. But the study has occurred.
We do have a final report and those travel demand model runs have been, have been made.
So we have the answers. Now we have the information to present to council for them to weigh and
make a decision. So that's when I say it's, it's moving forward. Our portion, the analysis
portion is moving forward. Will that come to us? Certainly. Okay. Cause I believe it
came to us earlier and I think then it'd be a good time to address it. We're kind of addressing
it a little bit now, different traffic of east and west. All this ties together. Yes.
So we kind of have to discuss it together. And my concern is less Riddell. Cause I think
the traffic you're pushing out to Riddell is going to be more eastbound. And once they
hit university, they're going to come back. But the other point is I'm concerned about
the traffic that would go through the neighborhood between Bell and Locust down Oakland and some
of the side streets there. You could be putting quite a bit of traffic into those neighborhoods.
So anyway, for next discussion. I think it's a good point, Clay, that this will come back
to us. We are being mindful of time where, you know, got about 35 minutes before we have
a hard stop. Are there any other comments or questions on this item? Okay. Brian, do
you need anything else from us? Right. And this is, this was just a discussion, correct?
Unless you want to, and again, it's just a consensus of, is the commission in support
of or one way or in support of two way or, and I think we have a mix. So I'm not sure
if we have a consensus, but we can probably just rely on the minutes to reflect the comments
from each of the commissioners present. Right. This was posted as a give staff direction,
not make a recommendation. Okay. All right. Well, if there's no more comments, then we
will move on to our next item. Another presentation. ETSC 20-014, receive a report, hold a discussion
and give staff direction regarding an update of the all walk crosswalk pilot program at
the downtown intersections at Oak and down Oak and Locust, Hickory and down and Hickory
and Locust. All right. And that's me again. So, and I'm going to make a change here on
the fly because we took this presentation to the committee on persons with disability
and they made the comment that it shouldn't say all walk, it just say, we should say something
else. And so we're choosing all way crosswalk. So in your packet, I included some spreadsheet
information and what this presentation does is just basically summarize the public input
that we got through the online survey and through the other means that our, our public
outreach people gathered this data and it shows the response from a driver or pedestrian
or from a cyclist on whether or not the all way crosswalk is a positive or a negative.
So it's a series of questions and I just picked some of the ones that made the most sense
to graphically represent, you know, and I use the pie charts, obviously. So the first
question was I am a and a visitor resident employee student or business owner. And this
70% is the Denton residents. So primarily the people who responded to this survey are
residents who were simply visiting downtown either for work or for dining or entertainment
is this just kind of gives you an idea of who's answering the questions. The second
question is have you traveled through an all walk all way crosswalk intersection and 92%
of the people who responded were positive and eight had not. And so most of the people
who responded to this actually abused it. So we can trust that they're familiar with
the way the operation the signals operate and the way the crosswalks operate. And then
this is the question that says are you are you an auto driver a cyclist transit passenger
or pedestrian 44% were drivers were motorists and 51% were pedestrians. So primarily pedestrians
and drivers very limited 5% total on transit and cyclists. So we didn't see as many cyclists
as we probably hope but we got a lot of pedestrians and a good number of drivers as well. This
question is regarding the safety for pedestrians and is it safer than before which is if you
remember that's the way we had these crosswalks working as the pedestrians and drivers would
move at the same time. We did have the potential for what we call a vehicle initial interval
so that the pedestrians get a signal first but with the with the all way crosswalk nothing
moves except pedestrians and then nothing moves except vehicles. So we've isolated those
two and remove the conflict points 55% of the pedestrians thought it was safer 35% thought
it was about the same and 10% thought it was not as safe as the previous operation. Again
pedestrian oriented question how safe do you feel using the all way crosswalk intersection
when no vehicles are moving 86% thought that that was higher safety level and 9% were neutral
and then 5% thought it was less safe than moving with the vehicles. Again predominantly
in favor or in support of the safety that we think the all way crosswalk brings. So
this is the drivers how safe do you feel 55% safer 28% less are neutral and then 17% less
safe. So my expectation is that the 17% is primarily due to the elimination of the turns
on red. We got a lot of feedback about how are you going to you know we can't turn on
red anymore and there's a lot of negative sentiment regarding that restriction. And
then this is for all users and you think the all walk crosswalks are safer for all modes
of transportation 78% yes and 28% no. So again significant support and significant finding
of increased safety with the all way crosswalk. And then this if you'll remember one of the
things that one of the negatives potential negatives that the all way crosswalks introduced
was because we're taking away that overlap when pedestrians and vehicles moved at the
same time and isolating into discrete movements. It adds a little bit of delay for drivers
for both drivers and pedestrians. So it's about a three or four second delay or a longer
wait and this question is do you think that's worth it and 75% of the people thought that
that additional delay that it takes before your signal comes up was worth the enhanced
safety that the all way crosswalks bring. Do you think that there are benefit to downtown
again the same 75 25 75% of the people who are using these crosswalks think that they
are positive for the downtown around the square. And then would you like to see us employ these
in other locations and I would say that the other locations that we're primarily looking
at are somewhere where we've got high pedestrian volumes around the universities around entertainment
districts two thirds of the people said yes and basically 25% said no and the 8% are people
who made a further comment about which roadway they wanted to see included. But again we're
looking for areas that have high pedestrian volumes fairly high vehicle volumes where
we want to separate the vehicles from the pedestrians we don't want to move it at the
same time we want to eliminate those conflicts. So with that I'll take questions or comments
and again we're requesting feedback in the form of is this group supportive of the all
way crosswalk. Do you think it is an enhancement. Do you think it is a detriment. There is no
formal action again we're just trying to get feedback from the different committees and
commissions and user groups that are affected by the all way crosswalk. So with that I'll
open it up for questions. Okay I like it and as both a driver and a pedestrian I haven't
gone through my bicycle yet but I think I would appreciate it as a cyclist I appreciate
it as a pedestrian and I think it helps quite a bit particularly with people with some hindrances
in moving fast to get across the street. I like that and there's nothing that precludes
anybody from doing a diagonal during the all way is there. No not at all in fact we had
that question that came up at the COPWD and actually in the survey as well why don't you
stripe the diagonals but if you remember this is a pilot program and so we did not want
to spend any capital money to make the changes that are going to be required to make those
diagonal crosswalks safe and legal. So we're going to have to add additional ramps on the
corners and markings on the street and it has always been our plan if this is something
that council decides to make permanent in which you want to continue the operation of
the all-way crosswalk then we're going to identify dollars come back and make those
changes that are needed to really invite that diagonal because that's truly the benefit
of having the you know another way to another common term for this is the pedestrian scramble
so you can go any direction you want to when it's you've got the green light and only you
have the green light and you can go diagonal or across in each direction what we did initially
with this pilot program is try and provide enough time so that you could cross two legs
so when we open up that diagonal we actually bring we may be able to bring some time back
into the vehicle mode so we lessen their delay and still provide safe crossings for everybody
because it takes less time to make the diagonal crossing than it has to make two single leg
crossings so again that's something that has always been the plan to include in if this
is determined to be a worthy operation and it becomes permanent then we're going to come
back and add those diagonals right I remember that we just got through reworking those corners
not too long ago yeah so I hate tearing it up that fast but I just want to make sure
that is any body out there can be unafraid of crossing diagonally and even if we put
the if we put the the markings down that would certainly invite the majority of the population
but for anybody who is disabled then we certainly want to be able to provide a safe crossing
detectable surfaces so that the unsighted person can find it easily we still have to
I know we just finished not too long ago beautifying those corners and making them nice and new
but we really need to add those if we want the diagonal crossing we really need to add
those ramps is there any problem with painting a X in the middle of the diagonal X that doesn't
go all the way to the corners maybe about four or five feet each direction none at all
and we can do that initially even before we put the ramps in but again we didn't want
to put any capital dollars everything we did was operational change we didn't add any hardware
we didn't there were no the only things we added were some no turn on red signs and I
think council did not want us to spend a lot of money going out and remarking if three
months remember this was supposed to be a three to six month trial well we passed that
but they'd have to go back and remove them so what we didn't want to do is have to mark
something or creates or build something and then have to go take it out if this was not
selected to go for a permanent operation I'd like to say that I'm part of it I really like
it I like the fact that you know when the cars stop everybody gets to walk it's your
turn you get to go and as an automobile list you know I know that I can't go anywhere and
I know I'm not gonna hit you buddy I'm just there and I'm waiting my turn I like it this
is Jeff go ahead I'm so thank you I'd like to Jeff excuse me Jeff you have to be visible
if you choose to speak in the meeting please okay I can't get my camera to come on so okay
thanks Trey how do you want to handle that I mean it's the open meeting Zach says that
if they're gonna if they're gonna speak and they're on the board they've got to be visible
I don't I don't have an exception to that it is it worth pointing out that I think he's
calling in by phone which does not have a visibility option I don't know if that makes
any difference as opposed to being on the zoom app which does that's okay my comments
were consistent it's okay I'll I'll add two quick comments I'm a little bit of a contrarian
today probably always I guess right I'm what I've my only comment is I'm concerned that's
the the all walk way it's set up has increased car speeds through the square which I think
puts more risk to pedestrians while I know it sounds really great you get to walk both
ways and everything like essentially that's how it used to be too because when I would
walk up to the square if I was going if I needed to cross both sides of the street I
could cross one and by the time I got there I could be able to cross the other so I mean
I think they're fine overall one thing I would say though if we really want to understand
what how the public feels about it is we might look at how we do those questions because
the questions we asked were pretty leading and so they wouldn't be very scientifically
reliable if you notice they were all framed as a new whenever you frame something as new
people tend to say yes that's great and so if we were able to frame the questions where
we actually pose some of it we didn't pose for example how the all walk the dot any downsides
really of the all walk or any threats and so as people read through the questions they
probably tend to get a very favorable perspective from the very questions that's all walk is
an innovation or an improvement so it's hard to really tell how people feel unless we develop
sign kind of more reliable and scientifically valid questions but but yeah if we do do it
I would love to see us to the earlier suggestion I would love to see is maybe even do some
kind of mural in the middle that really marks the square as a space that shows arrows across
and the all work or crosswalk could be really cool
so I will take this opportunity sorry let me add one comment about and that's something
you had mentioned the last time we talked about this and I wanted to bring up a point
that I think you asked if we could do a passive detection where you don't actually have to
push the button so we've had this and this was a result of the the cove it environment
not so much people not want to push a button they just don't want to touch anything anymore
but we're actually testing some hardware at Riddell and 380 probably 30 days out because
we're working with the same vendor who did the with the FLIR sensor for the one way wrong
way but we're going to be testing some passive sensors at that intersection that's a fairly
high pedestrian crossing of university and it's a long crossing but we're we'll be testing
and tweaking that hardware to see if we can fine tune it my biggest concern on on utilizing
that hardware is that around the square people are often opt to stand on a corner and talk
because the corners are I mean we've got benches we've got landscaping they're very they're
inviting and so you've got these wide sidewalks and you've you've got kind of a nice space
to be people are going to eventually cross but they may meet somebody or they're with
somebody and it's they they they're standing in the place where they want to cross but
they aren't ready to cross yet but the the detection system doesn't know that so what
we're going to try and figure out is we're going to we're going to learn how to place
those and where we can put them so that if it detects a person there's no question they
are ready to cross and instead of doing a more generalized wider sensory area we've
got one of these on the ground already on elm right across from the diesd facility and
i've seen it false call a lot of times because we've got and again this is just where it's
a learning curve we've got parking along the same side of street as we've got the sensor
so people coming in and out of their cars that's that space that's closest to the sensor
are often detected so that's what we want to learn with this hardware is how can we
deploy it till minimize the false calls we're going to do that up on university and then
we'll bring that to council and say okay we know how to use it here's what it costs do
we want to deploy it because it's pretty expensive it's eight to ten thousand dollars per intersection
to put those sensors out so it's it's not terribly expensive but if we're talking about
130 intersections and it will make this our standard then it does become a cost of and
maybe we only want to focus on certain areas where we do the all-walk crosswalks i don't
know but that's something that we are testing is that passive detection hardware and and
just to clarify i would be okay with it just always stopping like i mean i've been fine
with it stopping every cycle whether there's people standing there or not because i think
deferring towards the pedestrians is in our most pedestrian friendly area is um creates
a lot safer environments it also deters people who are wanting to speed through an area right
they say oh i'm not going to go through the square you get you stop at this you get stopped
on the square as opposed to thinking they might be able to speed through so um but i
think if that is software is doable it could be a good compromise
other comments i i this is on the topic that brian just brought up but i would like to
say to his comment about having i guess a system in which you could automatically have
the lights change is that's what i'm getting from that as somebody who was riding up oak
street going west and hitting carol in my car i watched two people cross carol even
though they didn't push the light to cross where there's all that construction right
now and they just like ran for it and the one was it was a couple and the man just like
walked in front and the car started to slow down and then he made his way over and then
his wife eventually made it and they didn't hit the signal which i don't understand but
with this technology in the right places that could be helpful right
any other comments
and again i don't think we need to you don't need any feedback from us formally on this
or any kind of votes on that so that is our last item brian are you good was there anything
else you need to say in response to anything before we move on the only question we had
or in concluding remarks or closing comments is our next meeting and there's still some
discussion about are we meeting and i'm going to let trey maybe are we meeting only if we
have time sensitive topics because as we have moved into this virtual realm we now have
to have daytime meetings and there are we're competing with i think becky said 27 other
committees and commissions and groups and we need to if we want to have an august meeting
we need to have that placeholder we need to grab that spot early we can so i think we've
got the third thursday in august tentatively penciled in for this committee i think it's
at 11 a.m becky is that correct yes so i don't need an answer now but look at your and i
think that's the 21st of august at 11 a.m if you could check your calendars and see if
that works it's actually the 20th okay august 20th just so we we don't want to lose the
spot we've we've kind of tentatively grabbed it we don't know that we're going to have
a meeting but if we are that's the date so if we get feedback on whether or not that
date works it'd be great okay i already have a conflict okay on that day would it be best
best to address this by email so that way everyone can check their schedules and sure
i don't need an answer now i just um and again moving forward we're not sure if we are only
having meetings if we have time sensitive issues for council or if we're just moving
into opening up for general agenda items we're still getting clarification on that but if
we want to have an august meeting we need to start and if that august 20th date doesn't
work we do need to start nailing that down so becky will be working with you and i think
email would be fine just so we can at least put one we can hold a place if we don't have
a meeting we'll cancel but and then that's no harm no foul so we just need to we need
to start thinking about our meeting dates they're not automatic anymore and so we need
to start thinking about whether or not we're having a meeting in the following month and
the current month so now is the time to start looking at our calendars and saying okay does
that work if it doesn't let's pick another date and time okay so we will look for those
emails so thank thank you brian um i i had a couple items i wanted to potentially just
add for when we next meet not necessarily uh it's not time sensitive but a couple requests
um becky is this an okay time to go ahead and and add a couple items to for potential
future agenda i believe that is correct as part of our concluding items trey right yes
this is the place to do it we just can't have any discussion on now yeah so i had a few
items that came out of today i'll say them really quickly one is i was just curious it
was brought up early in the discussion about the possible report on the feasibility of
a common speed limit around the square that had come up so i was going to see if there's
any way we could look at like what that would look like and again that's not time sensitive
but i think with the changes we're looking at that'd be interesting another is i was
i was wanting to to see if we could potentially get a report on the area i mentioned locust
going north off the square and those couple blocks there i'm very concerned about the
safety there's a new ramp there with no crosswalk um and there's the light area which we we
did get some of that but i was wondering if we might get some more advice on other safety
um uh possibilities there and just see if that could be something that could be brought
to us i'm i'm just very worried about that area and then lastly is just uh something
that didn't come up today but there's there's still a persistence in a lot of um construction
crews are placing you know whenever there's construction on the street they're placing
they're blocking sidewalks with their construction signs saying a lane is closed and they block
the full sidewalk is there a way that we could get a report on the city policy um on that
because it seems to be a widespread policy that sidewalks are good places for construction
street construction signs um and that just is a i was seeing if there's we could get
a report on the possibilities of reducing that practice um if if it is problematic and
that's it for me anybody else have items to add
okay with that and with not a lot of time left only 10 minutes it was great to see everybody
that that concludes all our items and that should adjourn our meeting so thank you everyone
for joining. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.