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Home My WebLink AboutBicycle Advisory Committee - Minutes - 12/13/2010 1 FINAL MEETING MINUTES of the BICYCLE ADVISORY COMMITTEE December 13, 2010 6:00 PM Community Room 215 N. Mason Fort Collins, CO 80521 FOR REFERENCE: Chair: Rick Price 970-310-5238 Vice Chair: Cathy Mathis 970-217-9480 Staff Liaison: Kathleen Bracke 970-224-6140 Staff Support: Dave “DK” Kemp 970-416-2411 BOARD/CITY ORGANIZATION MEMBERS PRESENT UniverCity Connections: Rick Reider Economic Advisory Commission: Rick Price Fort Collins Bicycle Co-Op: Doug Cutter Parks and Recreation Board: Dawn Theis Poudre School District: John Holcombe Bike Fort Collins: Jeff Morrell Natural Resources Advisory Board: Clint Skutchan Transportation Board: Shane Miller Land Conservation & Stewardship Board: Paul Mills Colorado State University: David Hansen AT LARGE MEMBERS PRESENT At Large: Cathy Mathis At Large: Dan Gould At Large: Kim Sharpe ABSENT Downtown Development Authority: Kathy Cardona Air Quality Board: Greg McMaster Senior Advisory Board: Bob Phillips OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE Citizen: Chelsea Walker Citizen: Josh Kerson Call to order Meeting was called to order at 6:05 PM. Agenda review: 2 Chair Rick Price reviewed the agenda. Public Comments: Chelsea Walker, Ride Kick International Regarding Electric Bike assist, since you talked about it last month, I think we are good. BAC: Do you actually know when Council is going to do anything with our recommendation. Price: Have they taken it to Parks yet? Thies: In January it is going to be discussed further in Parks. There was definitely communication about it. It came up a lot at our meeting, but we had to table it. There are a lot of other things going on too. There was a lot of discussion. Price: Council has a lot on its plate at the moment, so they won’t do anything soon. Price: Welcome Paul Mills, from the Land Conservation Stewardship Board. Kemp: We have a new member, Bob Phillips, but he is out and will join us in January. Bracke: We have a new liaison from the Transportation Board Shane Miller and Scott Van Tatenhove and I expect he will be coming. Price: We can hope to get even more people. Approval of minutes: Price: Any changes or comments? None. Motion to approve by Cathy Mathis Seconded by Doug Cutter. Minutes were approved. Action items: BAC 2011 Work Plan Price: Before we do that I want to read this and call it to Paul’s attention. This is here to remind us of why we are here. You could glance on through it (read back of name plates). Act as liaison between the City and the community and community groups on issues related to bicycling. Foster the interchange of ideas from existing City Boards and Commissions, as well as other community stakeholders, such as Poudre School District, Colorado State University, and the Downtown Development Authority, and others as appropriate. Promote bicycling as a viable form of sensible transportation. Act as a sounding board for citizens who have bicycle-related questions and concerns. Assist in the development and dissemination of bicycle safety awareness and education and encouragement materials to the community. Develop implementation strategies for recommendation in the 2008 Bike Plan. 3 Assist with the dev. of evaluation metrics for determining the success of bicycle programs and facilities. That is why BAC is structured the way it is with three At-Large positions. I read that because we have a work plan to review and adopt for 2011. Keep in mind that what is on the work plan does not constrain us or require us to limit our deliberations just to that. If there are timely issues come up we are free to do them. But the work plan gives us some focus. City Council and the Transportation Board want to see it so they know which direction we are headed in 2011. I provided an electronic copy. Bracke: I just handed out the current version printed copy of the 2010 BAC workplan for reference. Just to reiterate, it is important that the new 2011 work plan go to the Transportation Board. They have developed their work plan as well. Both the Transportation Board and BAC work plans will be shared with City Council Price: I sent the marked up version of last year’s plan. The only major change, I took out bike encouragement because I felt the bike plan addresses that. DK has that well in hand. We have been talking about enforcement for years. If you read the bike plan it is sparse on that, and Police Services has rarely been involved and if we could find out how to invite them to the table it would be a good thing. I don’t care if encouragement is there but would like to see enforcement in as I have stated Gould: Isn’t that covered in point one of last year’s plan? Price: (Read plan.) I guess it is. I suggested meet with the Police Chief to get him to come to one of our meetings to explore opportunities for collaboration, and to identify how Police Services might cooperate with us. That first line is the change. I think it would get his attention. It is included in one but putting it as a separate line item elevates the priority and attention to it from something of a bigger plan to something we are going to work on. Price: Here is a copy of my proposed changes without the markup. How would you like to do this? The new plan has five points, Bike Education, Funding for the plan, work with others to implement the plan. Number two is similar to Dan’s last year. Bike Facilities was here last year. I put in work with city staff to continue to identify innovative solutions for improving design deficiencies and maintenance are important, bike travel routes to assure a safe or more efficient bike environment. This might include bike boulevards, interim solutions to critical problem areas, signal actuation improvements and similar measures. These are some of the things that came up when we talked about the City Plan and Bike Education Plan. Bike performances have not changed at all in the addition of bicycling and law enforcement. Do you want to go down through these and vote them up or down or vote consensus? Cutter: One of the frustrations I have had with the BAC is that we seem to be rubber stamped on bicycle policies going to council and I would like to figure out a way for this committee to be involved in early development. We should be a think tank for how to do things as opposed to the final review process. I don’t know how we can capture that in our work plan but it is something that I would like to see as an expectation, that staff doesn’t bring plans that we have to review on a particular timeline and we can’t give input early enough in the process. Sharpe: Doug, would that still be related to similar items just earlier in the process? Or are you thinking something outside of those items? 4 Cutter: No I think it covers the existing work plan as it is just the function of this committee. Is it more than just the final review before we pass it on up to City Council? What I am asking for is more involvement early on in the process. Collectively we represent the majority of the bicycle nonprofits as well as different boards in the community. So we should be engaged earlier? Mathis: What about adding to the first paragraph? The first sentence could be re-worded a little to add something about what Doug is talking about. Price: (Read paragraph) Shane Miller from the Transportation Board just came in, welcome Shane. Sharpe: Doug, what would you see that looking like? Cutter: I don’t know the formal process for that to occur, but it’s just that I can come up with examples where we came in at the end of the process and it doesn’t feel like we have the right to be providing community input. Sharpe: Can you come up with what a different vision would look like? I am trying to envision it. We have outside meetings with staff and work sessions to develop some of the language in the bike plan. I am trying to get a picture in my head of what that is going to look like. Cutter: I think its more awareness of the BAC of what staff is working on. We might end up having to do it in an outside committee to provide additional input. I think that the Bike Safety Education Plan that will be presented towards the end of this meeting may be an even better process because we are coming tonight with the first draft of it. We can provide input and it won’t be turned in to Council in January, which is kind of what has happened in the past. It is not on a short deadline and we provide last minute input. I think that the education plan is good because we have a period of time to make revisions while the community is providing some kind of input. Then it comes back to us and we get to see it from the beginning stage with a lot more time before we submit it to Council. Price: Cathy, you started to make a suggestion and we cut you off. What would you like to see added to that? Mathis: I was thinking it provides recommendations early on or in a timely manner, somehow re-wording that to get a little more of what Doug is talking about. I don’t know quite how to say it and I don’t know if that is appropriate. Price: What if we put some language in that addresses the idea that BAC take a proactive stance on recommending some of these things that we put down here. We could also put in a statement or request that reflects Doug’s thoughts and that is that we ask to be informed early on. Certainly the overpass on the Mason trail from the Natural Resource Center did not go through a long review process. There were endless conversations about that. The bike box along Plum Street underwent many conversations among planning staff before it came to us as a done deal. We heard about it after it was submitted and funded. Is that correct? Bracke: I am going to correct you on the overpass at the Natural Resource Center. That went to the Transportation Board multiple times over the last 10 years as part of the Mason Corridor planning process and throughout its entirety, even the alternatives development study for overpass versus underpass. The BAC did not exist at that time and we had to take those to the Transportation Board. If those are the types of things you would like to see, then that is what we are trying to include in the information. 5 Price: I think that is what Doug is asking for. If DK has a great idea, or Matt, rather than finalize it and package it and present it to us, correct me if I am wrong Doug, we would like to hear about it before it is fully wrapped. Bracke: I will just say on the bike box that it is the same thing. There is no done deal on the bike box. It is still under development, no final decisions have been made. Staff brought the concept plan and idea to you early on. I am just trying to get the gist of what you are looking for. There are some items that we may control more inside the City. They may be Transportation Planning related, or they may come from other city departments. And there are other issues that come forward from outside organizations, too. I am just asking you to think about the whole variety of things you may see, not just from City staff but from others too. CDOT is working on the Share the Road collaborative. At some point they will be in a position to come forward and share that information. So please think broadly about how you would like to see information and be involved in these different things. Not just from things that get generated internally in our department but the larger community wide aspect as well. Gould: It seems to me that a lot of this is in the mechanism that we asked the chair for as an agenda item. That is, one or several of us see something on the horizon that might be of interest or on the other boards or commissions. It is a matter of including it in the agenda. We can have a discussion among ourselves, or we can ask the staff for a report. What is the status of this emerging issue? It seems like it is in our power. It is just that we are citizens with day jobs and we have a certain amount of frustration. Skutchan: I don’t mind putting in something about being proactive, but comments about getting information earlier on, I don’t necessarily share. I think some of it is that there is a new board coming on and many of these projects we are looking at came in arrears based off the work in Transportation Planning. One thing that might alleviate that is if we did adopt or ask for some kind of planning document or 6-month planning calendar like the Council has. Is there something like that in the Transportation Planning Department that might help us look forward to identify those key issues? If we were going to put something in the work plan, I would hesitate to put that staff does not bring us information timely. Theis: I would like to see us put something in to put some initiative on us as a group to bring forward some things ourselves. I like the proactive initiative new emerging ideas. I think that we should make that a number. That is what we are here for. And it is not staff’s responsibility. It is our responsibility. Price: You would like to see that as a numbered item in our list. OK. Gould: I would also like to somehow elicit more response from the public. Last month the issue of electric assist bikes was a perfect example. We were very proactive but we had to be led to this trough, that the electric assist bikes are good including the whole program behind them and allowing them on trails, etc. That went to City Council (or will be) and we were being proactive even though it was brought forth somewhat from the outside. I like the idea of keeping our eyes open for new ideas we see which should be brought to the attention of the Council, and maybe some minor language that says we need to be more proactive on things that we know about. I know Kathleen at the city is doing a good job letting us know on things that are happening. Not that we are going to get every detail because that is just not available every time. Specific language I think is 6 not needed in the plan because, if you start getting into too much granularity with the plan, then it loses its freedom. Price: You all know how I feel about the CMAQ process for funding. Miller: The context I would like to provide is that I have been on the Transportation Board for three years, and when I started there was a philosophical discussion the first night about whether the board’s job was to be proactive or whether its job was to review plans and provide some last minute advice, or ask for improvements or recommendations. I think that the board moved a little bit philosophically from basically reviewing plans from the city to trying to be more proactive. So what happens to the staff is that when the board moves more philosophically, the staff has to revise their process to accommodate the board’s needs. If the needs are to be a review board then they can get items on the night they are supposed to take action, review them and discuss them, and then they would take action. But if your job is to be more proactive, then you have to change the process. You would need information further in advance, because you have to develop policy or ask questions that will change what you will see at the end to discuss. So, the issue is not whether the staff has been providing you information on time, it is whether you are going to be more proactive. If so, you need it sooner and how that process could be changed so you can have it. Saying you are responsible to get it is insufficient because you don’t have access to it. And saying that the staff isn’t doing the appropriate job would not be correct because they have been doing what has been asked for. So it’s just a question of ‘are you going to change the paradigms somewhat for your board, and if you do, how can staff accommodate that.’ Gould: It seems like a good framework to think about. There is also the notion that staff in their professional ability is keying in to a whole lot of things that we don’t know about, such as potential grants, proposal deadlines, etc. That is the kind of stuff we can be proactive on. In a many ways we will be following because staff will be keyed into the professional activities. We aren’t going to see the beginning of those things. Hansen: Is there a project list that staff holds that come up three months in advance? Bracke: There are probably two sources of information that could help. Our annual work plan states the projects, plans and programs that we are going to be working on for that year could be one source. Again, please keep in mind, that it is not just all about us because there are things going on in other city departments and out in the community. But we could certainly look for bicycle related programmatic work plans that are going on around the organization and share that information. The other source that would be helpful for the future are the Plan Fort Collins (City Plan and Transportation Master Plan) action items, in particular the short term items for the next 1-2 years for our current budget cycle, and the future action items that have been identified for implementation for 3-5 years and beyond. That is another tool to look at. Those are not going to get into all of the small details like a work plan would, but the action plan would hit those high level action items, and the intent is to be more centered on those that are more cross cutting that would link transportation, economy and parks and natural resources. I am trying to brainstorm what tools we can share with you to inform you of the things that are coming and ask if you want to plug into any of these. We do have a 6-month planning calendar for the BAC that is online and it has been more of a planning tool for us. We have been trying to plug those in, but we could use that more effectively and get ideas from you to put on there just like we do with City Council and Transportation Board agendas. 7 Something we have noticed is that we could load up your agenda every month just with things we are doing. That may or may not be where you want to spend your time. We could use the tool both directions getting input from you. Sharpe: It sounds like our job is going to be a mixture addressing issues brought forth by staff because of processes and deadlines. Then there might be other instances where we have the opportunity and time to have more input up front. Then there might be other things that we want to bring forth as well, given our experiences riding. Price: But what I am hearing is a request from Doug to tweak our work plan in the slightest, and I hear from Shane that it is a possibility if we can let staff know that we would like to maybe be put on notice and look at the 6-month planning calendar. Skutchan: Getting back to what Cathy brought up, that sentence in the first paragraph, do something along the lines that “the BAC reviews, recommends and when appropriate works proactively to identify potential…” Inserting what you were talking about. Price: Is that adequate? Could you email that to me sometime? Thank you. Doug, does that satisfied your concern? Cutter: Yes. It doesn’t have to go into the work plan. I think it is something we can strive for, and kind of morph into what Shane is talking about by working closer with staff. I like the idea of working from a planning schedule because then we can kind of work backwards and say ‘this is when you are taking it to council’, then we realistically want to have a look at it and get an early peek at it. BAC: Is this simply modifying on our agenda number 8 and making that grow a little bit with a calendar connection? Bracke: That is definitely the intent of that section of the agenda, so each month would be an opportunity to plan ahead with a month-by-month approach. We could provide the attachments of the BAC 6-month planning calendar along with the agenda each month. Then see what is on the horizon. If you want to add or change anything around, we could do that. That is what we were hoping to accomplish with that section. Price: This example came at my suggestion because this is what the economic advisory committee does, and that too is a new group dealing with big picture problems. We are not dealing with LaPorte Avenue, and just second guessing what City Council is going to be thinking regarding the economic policy six months from now. So we have a running list down at the bottom. Some of them come from staff, some of them come from members of the EAC. Do any of you have examples of how any of your boards operate in this arena? Do you have a way of identifying things that are out there, things that you ought to be looking at? Does staff bring them? Mills: I think what I perceive is that it depends on how you view this group. Do you come with an early fill in of projects phase to get valuable insights, feedback and ideas? Or is it to get it through the motions, get approval, buy-ins, change a couple words down? The name is bicycle advisory group. Where does that stop and start is a good question. Price: Personally if I was here just to advise staff on things I see going through, I would not be here. I think this group has an opportunity to advise council and we are advisory to council, although we do it through the Transportation Board, and they have told us that they will send anything on without debate. So I would like to see this group be more proactive. I have brought some things that I have some comments on the Bike Safety Education Plan that I consider to be proactive, though also supportive of what has already been done. I would like to hear from others on what they are thinking. 8 Mills: An example from my board is that Natural Resources may bring some concept or idea to our board early on. We will discuss it then they will go away and come back later and have a massive plan to be developed further, more towards the end where you can see how your feedback as a board was incorporated or didn’t based on basic merits and why. Then see the final plan. That is how it has happened on the Land Conservation Board. It is a two phase process. Price: You are getting early input and you can provide feedback. Mills: Later on in the creative process it is really resistant to hear any change. I am a designer, so early I can get input from all the others and it can really strengthen the project a lot, if they come in early enough. If they come in later it is painful. It is like you are just working through the motions. It is basically that people react to your professional abilities, your opinions are different then, too. So you are trying to give someone an idea, and if it is way into the process they think ‘oh that’s great but we can’t do this because of this,’ etc. All you keep hearing is ‘that we can’t do this because of this’. I think that getting in early, getting some ideas, and having a brainstorming session has been very helpful on my board. Price: Does the language that Clint came up with take us far enough to address these concerns? BAC: I don’t think it does. I still feel it would be a question to the rest of the board if we go philosophically and want to take a more active role. I have not been here that long, but I feel like we are more of a review board at this point. So do we feel like we could be taking more initiative? And, if so, then I think we should make that stronger. But if we don’t want to do that, then obviously the wording that has been introduced is fine. Price: I am with you and I am with Doug Cutter. I would love to be a more proactive group. Do we need to determine that before we decide what language goes in here? I would be fine with adding a paragraph on that. In fact, I would be all for that. Anyone else? Skutchan: I would just that it is good in practice, and it is very different than saying it. The Natural Resources Advisory Board has struggled with this concept for years. We finally came around to ‘how do you get to be proactive?’, because each one of us around this table could be proactive on a different issue and there is just no way of achieving anything. You end up spinning your wheels as a committee, and then the proactive aspect becomes very frustrating. There are items that people want to see addressed that are not on a continuum. Especially those people who have been on this board for a long period of time. So, you have to balance that out and figure out if, in practicum, is there one or two of these proactive things that the group in whole can agree with. But then do you have the appropriate level of staffing to give support and get it through? It comes back to the systemic question that was brought up by Shane. So, that is why you leave it loose, try and work through beyond the work plan. See how that works and then, if it develops, implement it into the work plan as you work through it. It is easier said then done, is my experience on these committees. Price: Shane, did you want to respond to that? Miller: I am reading the current work plan and I see bicycle advocacy group. Advocacy is not review necessarily. Then I see innovative solutions. Innovation is not review. And I see opportunities for collaboration, and collaboration isn’t review. So, the reason I point that out is within your work plan you have really already identified the idea that you are 9 not strictly a review board. And so I think there are two elements. One is the philosophy, are you a review board or are you a proactive board bringing stuff to the table so it can be worked through the system? Do you have the skill and experience of the city helping make that a reality or not. The second piece is the process part. The process part won’t really be in the work plan, very well delineated. But if you are proactive, the process is just a little different. You need stuff earlier as you were saying because then you are collaborating. If you are getting it later, you are not really collaborating, you are essentially approving. So, once the board decides among themselves, are they proactive or are they review, and then you have to figure out what the process piece needs to look like so that we can effectively be what we decide we are. So, it is two pieces. Philosophy is not enough, and the process part follows whatever the philosophy is decided on. So, let’s decide the philosophy and then try to figure out what the process needs to change so you can do it. City staff will respond to that I think as best they can, and Kathleen has already given three tools that are available now that can maybe be integrated into the process. Price: I would like to just draw a poll. Nobody wants to vote then that is fine too. How many would like to see this group move more towards a proactive group, whatever that means. And by the way, we don’t have to define that this evening. We can do that over the course of the year. I would love to have the problems Clint that you have identified. I am afraid that is not going to happen. Raise your hand if you would like to see this group be a little more proactive or a lot more proactive. Nine. Anyone want to continue the way we have been operating? BAC: I think we can be both. Price: And anybody like to abstain? I am seeing though a consensus that the group would like to take a more proactive position on some things, which means changing how we put things on the agenda, hearing about some ideas on your 12-month planning calendar. Is that 12 months Kathleen? Bracke: The work plan is 12 months. It is basically set on an annual basis as part of the budgeting process. Price: 12 month work plan and a 6 month planning calendar would be useful to us. We review on the EAC the 6-month planning calendar for council. I don’t know if any of your other commissions do that. BAC: Do you think that we will have the knowledge to know what we need to be proactive with that information? Price: So now the questions is do you want to put this in the work plan as a simple change to the sentence, or put it in as a bulleted item? Sharpe: As Shane pointed out it is already in the work plan with the wording we have with these active verbs, and if we add the phrase that Clint said, I think it is done. I don’t think we need to belabor it any more. Price: Everybody agree? Ok, can we get to the bulleted items? Do you want to leave encouragement in? Can I do a straw poll who wants to see encouragement left in? Raise your left hand please. Dan? Gould: I think it is in here. It is a little garbled right now. I would like to see it stay in. Price: Which plan are you looking at? Gould: Your modified copy. Price: November 7, 2010? 10 Gould: Yes. Bracke: The one I handed out is the one dated November 9, 2009 and is our current 2010 work plan. I just wonder if it would be easier for the group… Price: Thank you for bringing that. My printer was out of ink. Which item are you looking at Dan? Gould: Just going through that in item two, and then promotes high quality bike facilities. That seems redundant to me. And then the rest, a lot if it seems like encouragement too. In fact it talks about robust bicycling culture, bicycle events, recreational bikes. And so to me that reads encouragement and promoting the bike culture. Price: So my leaving out number two in last year’s plan dated November 9, 2009 we are not throwing encouragement out, it is still in here in number two, 2010. Gould: Just to get the quality of bicycle facilities could be in number three. Price: Alright. I am going to jump (you can pull me back if you like) to bicycling and law enforcement. Skutchan: If you are going to strike two, I would like to see it in there somewhere about bicycle encouragement, because as you alluded to it is something that is key and something that is being done by staff. So I think we want to maintain that it is important to us for them to bring it here so that we are viewing it and sharing it with our constituents. I don’t want to see it struck just because we are not working as proactively on that issue as others. It is still an important part of the review process and information gathering that this group needs to see. Somehow it needs to be left in. Skutchan: Maybe it doesn’t need to stay in as its own point, but I would like it to be clearly stated that bicycle encouragement related activities are something that are important to us that we see what is going on. I don’t want it to drop off altogether. Price: So you disagree with Dan’s point that it is covered adequately in the new number two. Is that correct? Skutchan: I don’t know that I disagree with him, I just think that what you were saying does not explicitly state bicycle encouragement. Price: Ok, does anybody else want to see that in as a separate bulleted numbered item? The encouragement from 2009. Skutchan: That is not what I am saying. Sharpe: Are you saying that you want to see the word encouragement in what Dan is saying? Skutchan: Yes if you can put bicycling encouragement in somewhere that is all I needed. Price: Then the new three is bicycle facilities. Dan was talking about economic development and affordable transportation. You would like to see encouragement in the paragraph, correct? BAC: The bicycling encouragement aspect is what we want to have maintained. BAC: Would it hurt anything if there were six bullet points? I know five is the optimal number for many of us. Those people love the number five, but if you took the encouragement part and threw it into say number three or four and have six of them would it destroy the…(break) Price: Shane wants to see the separate encouragement paragraph. Miller: I am saying it is a simple way to solve it. Price: Hypothetically, is anybody else with Shane? 11 BAC: I was also thinking, why are we limited to five? Price: We aren’t limited to five by any means. BAC: It seems like encouragement increasing is implied but it isn’t specifically stated which is Clint’s point. Why not just drop it into number two and make it three or four and have six? Price: Anybody else want to see that? BAC: I am fine with it. Price: You are fine with it, but I want you to say yes I want to see it. BAC: Yes I want to see it. Encouragement can’t hurt. It is a good word. Price: Ok, I am bringing encouragement back in. I am moving bicycle facilities from two to three. BAC: It is part of the 5 E’s that we are rated on when we go for a platform, right? Price: Alright, facilities is Engineering that is adequate for the measurement metrics. What about law enforcement? My new number five is bicycling and law enforcement. Do we want to leave that in there? BAC: It is important. It is one of the E’s. Price: Yes but as chair of this committee for the next three months, if we are going to leave this in there, then I would like to see us make a commitment to do something about it. It has been in the bike plan since 1997. It got re-upped in 2008 when it was re- approved. Price: Can I have a commitment from this group that we will somehow, (and remember we are a citizen’s group, we don’t have to ask staff to call the police chief. We can do that.) Bracke: As staff liaison, it is my role to help get you what you need from the City organization. If you want to meet with the Chief of Police, let me know and I would be glad to extend an invite to him and explain when you would like him to come and how you want to proceed. That is part of my role. Price: Do the rules say that we have to do that through you? Bracke: You don’t have to do anything. But I am offering that as my role, and that is to provide you with the services from the City rather that each BAC member trying to call the Police Chief to get a meeting. Kemp: What is going to happen is: BAC is going to call the police, and they will say we already have people talking to city staff on this. Why do you need me to come to this? He is going to designate his staff to take care of our needs. Price: Ok, how about this: we leave this in here and work out the details later? Can we agree with that? Bracke: I am asking that as an organizational courtesy, if you do need something let me know and I will do my best to get it for you first. If that is not effective, we can try other channels. We need to try to respect the channel of communications that we have. And rather than us projecting what the chief is going to do, let’s let him try to respond. BAC: We want to apply the protocols of communication. Kemp: It is good to know that staff is working pretty close with law enforcement, CSU and the City on a variety of topics. If there are specific topics that staff is not covering with law enforcement, then as the group working with police, I don’t know what those topics are. Over the years there has not been a lot of Police Services involvement in terms of coming to meetings like perhaps the BAC. But staff has made a lot of headway as far 12 as working with Police Services. For the sake of consistency we should be included in those conversations so we can get further along as contacts. BAC: I think that one of the issues is, that however much progress staff has made, if this group is not privy to that, they don’t know what questions to ask. It is not possible for them that this is not getting covered and it is an interest to us, because they don’t actually know what is covered. Price: This goes back to Mr. Cutter’s comment. From what I hear there is lots going on with Police Services. You and others are doing a lot of work with them. We have never heard about any of that stuff that I recall. Anybody here aware? BAC: Not formally. It would be a good example of a topic for January, right? For you to present what you are doing and plan to do. Kemp: Absolutely. But it is not a question that staff is purposely keeping the BAC out of the loop. This is a day-to-day aspect of my job. It is not the big picture. I think the BAC is focusing on the big picture. I would be happy to bring an update to what we have been doing with Police Services. And I am proud to say they have been very attentive and supportive of the bicycle movement. Price: I am writing this down and I hope that it will get in the minutes that DK is going to give us a report on Police Services. Kemp: I am not sure it will be January at this point. BAC: Say in the next couple meetings. Price: I would like to get the vote in the next two minutes. Mathis: I guess the answer is that I would like to see that stay in. Price: Ok. Mister Morrell. Morrell: I think it is already in the existing plan in number one. And again, if we go into too much granularity then it becomes too restrictive. What I would like is to strike number five of the 2011 plan and leave it in the original item number one. Price: Let’s make this as simple as we can. Clint has made a couple of changes to sentence number three. Shall we just say we are going to do the same thing this year as last year and keep last year’s work plan? Ben: I don’t know what the intention of five is exactly, because in a way it looks like it is oriented to promoting more input specifically into the Bicycle Safety Education Plan. It already looks like it is on that planning to develop the whole plan with specific input from Police Services. BAC: Which is also in topic one of the 2010 plan. BAC: I don’t mind highlighting this as discovering and then promoting more interaction with Police Services, but it is too specific to meet with the Police Chief, to do this and that. And specify the Bicycle Safety Education Plan. If it is going to be a specific bullet item, it needs to be more general. That would achieve the purpose of giving this bullet visibility. BAC: One of the things I like about the proposed change to the work plan is that it gets a bullet item for each of the 5 E’s. Whereas right now we don’t. We lumped education and enforcement together in number one in our current plan. If I were on the League of American Bicyclists, and I looked at how we work at a community prior to the work, it sounds like DK has been doing a lot of work since we got goals. But enforcement is one of the areas where we still need to do a lot of work. I like calling it out as a separate line item. They match exactly. Education is the first one, encouragement is second, 13 Engineering is the third, evaluation is the fourth, and enforcement is the fifth. It’s what we are trying to do in terms of the League of American Bicyclists. You would have 6 E’s. Bracke: They are in the bike plan, Environment and Economics. Price: We are missing Environment. I would entertain a motion. We have to get this done. BAC: I know at least one alteration that there was agreement on. Was there a second? Price: One alteration was your change in the paragraph and the sentence. BAC: It would be just to change the sentence to be ‘The BAC reviews, recommends, and when appropriate, works proactively to identify potential and actual improvements in order to strengthen bicycle policies and bicycle plan priorities.’ BAC: I am working off the strike-throughs, so that is where I am confused. Price: Ok, there is the one change and then there has been the suggestion that we are adding. If we are going to add law enforcement, that would stay as number five, but there has been some discussion about whether we keep that or not. BAC: Keep the number two from 2010 and put bicycling encouragement back in. Price: So keep bicycling encouragement. Can we add law enforcement? BAC: Good idea, but can we say to meet with the police chief to explore? Or would that be too much detail? Price: How about identify how Police Services might cooperate with community groups and city departments? How about strike the first 1 1/2 lines. Work with Police Services to achieve goals. If there is nobody else to make a motion, I will make a motion. I move that we amend the 2009 plan per Clint’s language change to make us more proactive that we basically adopt the language of the new 2010 plan putting back in #2 from 2009 keeping 5 from 2010 but eliminating the Police Chief. Is there a second? Gould seconds the motion. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Miller: How does it read if you take out the Police Chief? Price: It reads something to the effect of number five: Bicycling and law enforcement work with Police Services to cooperate with community groups, city departments, and law enforcement organizations to implement the Bicycle Safety Education Plan. So it addresses implementation be set, basically. BAC: It has to say something about enforcement, too. Price: We throw out ‘meet with’ and use “work with’? BAC: And you are taking out ‘explore opportunities for collaboration’? That is an important element both for the BAC and also for the Police department. Price: So start that sentence with ‘explore opportunities for collaboration and identify how Police Services might communicate with the proper community groups, city departments, and law enforcement organizations to implement the bicycle safety education plan. Sharpe: I don’t want the word cooperate in there because it makes it sound antagonistic like we are telling them they are not cooperating with us now. That is exactly why we put collaboration back in. BAC: Is it our job to interact directly with Police Services? I understand from talking to DK that he is doing that all the time. It is our job to work through staff who are already 14 doing that job. Is it our job as an advisory committee to go around DK and work with Police Services when he is the point guy? Price: I wish Greg McMaster was here from the Air Quality Board. If you go back a couple of months and read their minutes they had a council member at one of their meetings who said to them, ‘if you ever need anything call us’. I don’t know if that is city policy or what, but this idea that we cannot pick up the phone and call a council member as a board I think is erroneous. We could do that if we need help. I am not saying that we shouldn’t be working with staff in terms of protocol etc. But there is some opportunity for direct communication I think. Bracke: The other thing I would suggest is communication through the Transportation Board. We should think about the roles and relationships between the committee and the Transportation Board. Shane is our new liaison to the group and they are very interested in bicycle related issues. They have been very supportive of bicycling over the years. I hope none of my comments are considered restrictive. I am just trying to figure out how we leverage those roles to be used most effectively. BAC: Can we just clarify? We do have a motion and a second on the floor right? Price: But the discussion is focused on item number five in the new plan and what level of collaboration (cooperation) with Police Services. BAC: And that is the key I think to making it work for the people who maybe felt it was a criticism. Explore opportunities for collaboration and cooperation with Police Services and community groups will kind of solve that issue a little bit and I think it includes everything we need. I think it is really more what we are trying to say anyway. So perhaps that would be a way to make that work. Price: Can you email that language to me tomorrow? BAC: I am not comfortable voting on something when I don’t have specific language. Can we just outline what we just said? BAC: ‘Explore opportunities for collaboration and cooperation with Police Services, city departments, and law enforcement organizations to implement bike safety plans.’ What we are losing is identify. BAC: Can you just have law enforcement agencies and no Police Services? That would cover the Sheriff, CSU, police etc. BAC: ‘Explore opportunities for collaboration and cooperation with law enforcement agencies (include city departments?) BAC: City departments is in number one. We should have ‘to promote bicycle safety education on the rules of the road’ at least. BAC: City departments in this section is really redundant. Price: You wanted to see rules of the road in number five? BAC: Yes BAC: I will read it again ‘Explore opportunities for collaboration and cooperation with law enforcement agencies, city departments, and law enforcement organizations to implement bike safety education plans.’ We have some redundancy there. Price: Can we drop the second reference to law enforcement? Kemp: And perhaps at the end ‘with respect to share the road? Or rules of the road? BAC: Read again: ‘Explore opportunities for collaboration and cooperation with law enforcement agencies and city departments to implement bike safety education plans on the rules of the road and sharing the road promoting bicyclists’. 15 BAC: Now we really have duplicated it because that is #1. Price: I would really like to hear about the Bicycle Safety Education Plan tonight. I would like to finalize this. Will it help if I withdraw my motion and just say the only change we adopt is that we be more proactive and keep last year’s work plan? BAC: My only concern with that is that I feel like nothing was accomplished last year. Or it just is a long process. BAC: That might be even more reason to keep last year’s plan because we haven’t accomplished it all year. Price: We are really talking about all of the same stuff. Does it matter? BAC: I think we all know we want to be a little more proactive so we will get the information. It is all in the original one. Price: If I withdraw my motion, do you want to withdraw your second? Gould: Yes. Price: Gould: I move we adopt last year’s plan with the change to sentence three in the top paragraph. Sharpe: I will second it. Price: Moved and seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. All those apposed raise your right hand. I abstain. Motion passed. Last year’s plan with the language that Clint is going to mail me, right Clint? Whoever is doing the minutes will get them in there. I have a procedural question. We have 45 minutes left. I think we don’t have a lot to do under number seven. I would really like to hear about the Bicycle Safety Education Plan. We have all had a chance to review it, so I would like to hear discussion about it. Can we go to that and any remaining time to Plan Fort Collins Transportation Master Plan, or is that unacceptable? Bracke: I want to offer on the procedural side just so the BAC is aware of the schedule for Plan Fort Collins. What we will coming back to in January is part of the formal approval process. So that is what will be different in January vs. tonight. We were hoping to have time to discuss and get your comments. But the comment time for Plan Fort Collins is open through December. So in terms of where you want to exercise your time tonight. It would be helpful for us to get your comments in the month of December so we can incorporate it in revised documents presented in January. I want you to know so you know what to expect if we don’t get back to it tonight. Price: Shane, as representative of the Transportation Board, is there anything the Transportation Board is particularly interested in hearing from this group on the Transportation Master Plan? Miller: Yes. Price: Well, we are there and it is not scheduled as an action item, just information and discussion. What is the consensus of the group? Would you rather hear about the Bicycle Safety Education Plan first, or the Plan Fort Collins Transportation Master Plan? Cutter: I would like to spend 28 min on the Bicycle Safety Education Plan and 18 minutes on the Transportation Master Plan. And someone needs to watch the clock. 16 Price: Can we start with the BSEP first? Ok, let’s do that and at 7:45 we are going to cut off discussion and go to the TMP and City plan. Bicycle Safety Education Plan (BSEP) – David Kemp and Matt Wempe Part of the effort to create the plan was collecting the information from various Boards and Commissions and City departments. The process has been a catalyst into opening and rejuvenating discussions with the departments. Many are very receptive and recognize a need for bicycle safety. The plan has areas with themes where we can really focus with BAC members and flush out some details. By the end of the process this will be a very solid plan. Matt and I have identified a few recommendations. The recommendations part of the plan is broken into different categories we might want to discuss. Producing the plan into Spanish is an area to discuss. Also, to maintain a database of high profile crashes with a follow up of the details is another area to discuss. Discussion BAC: What is high profile? Kemp: It is a crash that involves serious or fatal injuries and has been reported in the Coloradoan. What I believe I heard from BAC was that we hear about them and they are not followed up on and we do not find out the major cause of the accidents. An investigation can last months. This is a way to record and provide public access to the data. With that we can collect input with the rest of our time. We will also have focus groups on Wednesday, December 15 from 5:30 – 7:30 PM at 281 N. College, Conference Room A, and Thursday, December 16 from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM in Conference Room D. You can attend one or both of them. We can also meet with you individually to discuss the BSEP and hear your input. Wempe: We were looking at working with Traffic Operations and Engineering to have a monitoring section working whenever there is a construction project. Adding a bicycle education component to that regarding how you can navigate the construction area and after the improvements are done. There is a good opportunity to provide information on how to use the more innovative infrastructure, getting the benefits of having them, and that people know how to use them properly. Kemp: The bike box will be a great example of that. Discussion Price: Does anybody have any comments based on what you have read so far? BAC: I think it represents a lot of time and thought. Cutter: About the block crossings at Horsetooth and Powerline, you have them as current status with flashing red and I don’t believe that is the case. Wempe: I believe it is flashing yellow. Cutter: I would just update that to the accurate status and add that it is planned but are you waiting on funding? Wempe: We are waiting on railroad approval. 17 Kemp: To clarify, update the status to flashing yellow with the intent to change to flashing red. That is part of our recommendation. Cutter: I would like to meet with both of you together as a representative of Co-op and flush out the master cyclists beyond where we are right now. The one you captured is not what the vision was. Miller: Some time ago I asked the Transportation Department, after a presentation, on bike crashes using Fort Collins data. What I observed is that the probability of being in an accident when you are riding against traffic is higher than when you are riding with traffic, but the probability of being injured or killed if you were in an accident is higher when you are riding with traffic than when you are riding against traffic. I asked the question of the staff and BAC if they had noted this interesting anomaly and had anyone taken it on to determine why. My speculation is that the people who ride against traffic are making a risk trade-off which is ‘I get to see accident happen and I get to lower the speed.’ It appears on only Fort Collins data and I don’t know if national data would reflect it. My question is ‘has the BAC researched this question, has city staff researched the question and is there an answer forthcoming?’ The thing that alarmed me is looking at the data in Fort Collins that is used to create some of its policy. I think the anomaly needs to be explained. Is it just statistical or does it reflect something that is going on? And if it is, does something need to be changed? My other concern is cyclists must obey the same rules of the road as motorists. And that is great unless you are ten or seven years old. My concern is the universal message that those in the bike lane who are small and easy to miss at the speeds that they are navigating on Fort Collins roads. I think some thought needs to be given to how that will play out. Kemp: That is a good question. Riding against traffic, the broadside, as commonly known to the engineer accounts for about 70% of all the accidents in Fort Collins. If we can make a dent in that type of accident that would really help out as far as injuries. BAC: This has to do with the speed of the vehicle. In a broadside collision someone is pulling out and they are not expecting someone coming from the right side. The car is not traveling very fast so the cyclist has a better chance. Price: The generic term broadside does not identify wrong way cyclists at all. They may be a mistake. I would love to see Joe take those statistics and put them into the language of the League of American Bicyclists and the Kaplan Study which studies 35,000 bike crashes and is the basis for what we teach on crash avoidance. It would be wonderful to have this Fort Collins data commensurate so it is comparable to those major national studies. Some are old but there is a lot of discussion around this. And it is admirable Shane that we have this data. That is one of the reasons laws across the country require bicyclists as vehicles to ride with traffic. Kemp: We can work with Traffic Operations to translate the types of accidents from our terminology to the national standard as set by the National American League of Bicyclists. on this. Miller: And, I don’t that it is appropriate in the BSEP, although, since this is supposed to be for law enforcement as well, for everybody, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion except in school zones on the effect of speed on injuries and deaths. I don’t believe when I looked at the recommendations that we are being supported, like the City Plan Outreach regarding bicycling, that there was any mention of reducing speeds in Fort Collins (not systemically). Did I miss something? 18 BAC: There were suggestions in the process of doing that. Bracke: We don’t currently have any recommendations to do a city wide speed limit reduction in the Transportation Master Plan or City Plan. Price: I would remind everyone that Dan Burden has made it 100% clear that the more reduced speeds in narrow lanes, the fewer crashes and fatalities you will have. Bracke: We have said in multiple places in City Plan and Transportation Master Plan the importance of contact sensitive designs and having more flexible new design techniques and methodologies available to look at the right fit for the right area. That would include lane width, and all of the urban elements that are there. It doesn’t specifically address system wide speed reduction, but it does address the fact we are trying to look at what the right design treatment is for the area. As an example the speeds downtown and the treatments downtown are very different from the area south of Harmony Road. That is very different design sets. Wempe: Speed limits designs have to go along with road design otherwise you can end up with a 12 foot wide lane with a 25 MPH speed limit. The two have to be commiserating with each other. Bracke: Maybe that is one thing we can be focusing on in this plan and make a connection between the two. Price: I would also like to suggest that the Master Cyclist Program, all the Safe Routes to School curricula, everything that is being taught to kids in school and anything we develop to teach in the school is really developed by the League of American Bicyclists over four years of study. I think the plan should address that. I think we should adhere to the philosophy in certain areas. Back to Shane’s question about seven versus ten year olds, the league differentiates. Ten and under has a certain set of rules and they should be taught a certain educational component and way of behaving. Ten and above they are treated as adults although Mom and Dad will decide if and when they ride on the roads and which roads. By the time they are in high school the league treats them as adults and considers them adult cyclists and a whole philosophy of educating them. One of the things I would like to ask is in terms of engineering safety. You have two league cycling instructors now in Transportation Planning staff, so take a look at new engineering plans in light of your new knowledge as league cycling instructors. When the courts call in expert witnesses to comment on bicycle/car crashes, etc. very often it is league cycling instructors who come in as a small cadre of folks who have built a little consulting business out of it. That would be a consideration. You put on the league cycling instructor cap and take a look at that design. The example is the conflicts we have built into the existing designs will all the bike lanes and the right turning vehicles. How could we correct that before it happens? Wempe: That falls into the development review process where I am involved. Also we are going to be updating the Larimer County urban area street standards next year which is a great opportunity to look at how we design streets, bike lanes, bike facilities and pedestrian facilities around town. Bracke: Also, when there are capital projects that come for review, they are reviewed by are staff as well as Engineering, Traffic Operations, Utilities and others. There is an interdepartmental review process that happens. Kemp: Your facility here uses the league philosophy of bike education. 19 Price: Yes, maybe even to the point of explaining what the leagues philosophy of vehicular cycling is. This is a philosophy that will permeate all of the education initiatives that are recommended by this plan. So maybe you better lay it out somewhere up from that where the educational recommendations in this plan are based on the League of American Bicyclists vehicular cycling philosophy for X age level and the appropriate instruction for the younger ages. Kemp: There is no doubt that we all follow the same curriculum. Price: No matter how you twist it, it is going to be all derived from that stuff. Kemp: I think our goal of achieving platinum and the league’s designation for a bicycling friendly community all ties together well. What you are saying is to better define the philosophy for vehicular cycling. Price: I have some written comments that I am passing out to you (Appendix I) and will hopefully get in the minutes. What I did is take the strategic planning process and put it on paper. It helped me understand and read your document in order to help me pull together all the stuff I have been thinking about and working on. It begins from the left with the end in mind: goals. I identified the strategies to achieve those goals, identified the objectives to implement those strategies, and it ends with tactics. So if we were going to look at this and start tomorrow you would start on the packet, the long list. This is what we could really do tomorrow, but the goals are over here. So I am going to share this with you. Wempe: I think that is a great format as well, because that is what we are trying to follow and we took that out of the Transportation Master Plan showing the vision all the way down. Then we took it one step further where it is monitoring techniques. Again, we are trying to show a correlation between what we are doing and what we are measuring. If there are any gaps, like measuring something, that we don’t need, it will show up. BAC: There is something we need to address in the BSEP regarding electric bicycles for Josh? Kemp: That is a timely issue right now. It will most likely to go council for the decision. I talked to Craig Foreman about this as well and there is a process to figure this whole thing out. We might possibly want to get this plan adopted and the decision made by March. But it is not to say that this document is done once it is written. I think it will be a living document. Cutter: The reason I ask is you can put something in the recommendation to acknowledge the fact that we have this outstanding issue regarding this electric bike usage on city trails and the safety concern, and you will work with the community to say that you are going to work to address it. It might be there by March when this plan goes through. Wempe: We will get plans for accountability. This is one thing we did not send out because we are waiting to hear. Once we get an implementation or an action plan similar to Plan Fort Collins where it identifies what we are going to do concurrent with adopting this, what are we going to do in this next year, what are we doing to do in longer terms, then that is a good spot where we put that action plan. Price: Do you want to comment on this? Please feel free to send me any tactics or any tools you think should be on here. Send them to me. I would like to fill this out. There are plenty of things that we could and ought to be doing. One of the key things I will say under strategies is number four: Imbed program in existing institutions. I really think we 20 need in the spirit of House Bill #1147 where the state wide curriculum is that will be available to us next year, get that curriculum imbedded in Poudre School District. How do we do that? Under objectives lets figure out a way to fund a ½ time bicycle coordinator in PSD. They have a grant out there now to develop a health curriculum for a half time person. If we can fund another half person they would have another full time person in Health and PE to work on a healthy curriculum and bicycle safety education. But these are the kinds of things that will imbed this kind of stuff. And among the tactics since I started working with the folks at Strap and Snap and the Safe Kids Larimer County, they have figured out that program. They have set a 77% penetration last year of third graders to do a five minute bike helmet safety program. Start from there and build that out and you have a pretty cool program. Number 2 under tactics I did borrow the blast terminology from Boulder. If you can find a better one please tell me. We probably should develop our own acronym. Bicycle lessons and safety training is a program they do in Boulder to all 4th and 5th graders in all Boulder School District, etc. Does anyone have any comments for these guys to take away? Skutchan: Will we offer them some new messaging? This is easier to say, but some of these messaging items would resonate more with the casual bicyclists. There is not any messaging for places like Target and Wal-Mart and places where the message would resonate a little more readily than those who are maybe not found in the bicycle stores? Kemp: So maybe we could encourage Wal-Mart and Target to attached bicycle messages as a tag with a phone number that has some kind of outreach? BAC: Just something that raises a level of awareness. Kemp: We could do more with the bicycle shops in town as well. We could use that recommendation to go out to the big box stores. Price: I loved DK’s idea last year when we started the neighborhood bicycle shops. I don’t know what become of them, but Putnam tells me they get half their students from two trailer parks. There are a lot of Hispanic folks and they are people like Mom and Dad riding to work in the dark. Let’s go take some neighborhood bike clubs or shops to those trailer parks where we can impact that community. Anything else for Matt and DK? Thanks gentlemen. We are finished and we will see you at one of these meetings in the next couple of days. Kathleen it is all yours on Plan Fort Collins and Transportation Master Plan update. Plan Fort Collins (PFC) and Transportation Master Plan (TMP) Update – Kathleen Bracke I have copies of the presentation. If you prefer to just have a conversation about the documents, I can just hand these out and we can talk about it, or would you prefer I go through the presentation? We have 15 minutes and the presentation could take all of the time. This includes City Plan, Transportation Master Plan, Master Street Plan, and Capital Improvements Plan updates. This combined document is much smaller than our current Transportation Master Plan. One of the goals of the project is to get the Master Plan document redone in a way that is more user friendly to read, review and serve as ongoing reference documents. So, in addition to the hard copies another big part of the effort will be updating all of the plan information on-line so you could skim through the Transportation Master Plan. If you are interested in biking you can click on that section 21 and it would take you to the Bicycle Plan link. We are trying to make it easier to get the information you want in the particular topic areas instead of wading through volumes of material. The ultimate goal right now is asking people to go on-line and look at the documents. I would encourage all of you to take a look at these. The month of December is when this round is open for input. The more we get at this stage the easier we can incorporate that information into the revised documents. This is one of the projects that is not ideal from a scheduling time line. But I have been here multiple times during the planning process so hopefully this is not new. It is packaged differently than what you have seen, but the key messages should be the same as far as: the importance of bicycling, the integration of all modes, the policy statements and how we are linking transportation of all modes to land use planning. There is an on-line way to summit your comments. If you just want to call me and tell me your concerns, that works too. (Gave out the printed copies) Gould: Could you clarify there are three sites with the Master Street Plan to build out for automobiles: Corbett, Keenland and Union Pacific, and Troutman and Burlington Northern? Are those still on the old Master Street Plan build out for autos? Some of those sites and neighborhoods are opposed to the automobile build outs. Bracke: We emailed copies of our current Master Street Plan again. The sites Dan is referring to are: The Keenland railroad crossing at the UPRR which is down in the southeast part of town; the Troutman connection which is across the Burlington Northern Railroad. Both of those are currently shown on our current MSP as grade-separated roadway crossings. The road would go over or under the tracks. We have multiple locations like that shown on the Master Street Plan. Typically they are on arterial streets like Drake, Vine and Lemay, Vine and Timberline, and others in the Mountain Vista area. The two they are proposing to take off the MSP per this update are on collector streets. They are neighborhood level streets. Both Keenland and Troutman. When the neighborhoods were originally planned, those streets were intended to connect at grade (at ground level). Since that time the Public Utilities Commission and the railroads have determined that any street crossing will have to be separated with an overpass/underpass. A number of years ago those locations were changed on the MSP to show those grade- separated locations. With this update we want to use the more holistic triple bottom line analysis that we discussed before. When you look at the economics, the cost to build grade-separated crossings for streets that are going to carry possibly 1000 to 2000 cars a day is not very cost effective. It also has a large human or social impact on a neighborhood environment. There are definitely concerns about the road connections and they did not seem to make sense for the environmental trade offs. We are recommending those two locations come off of the MSP and in lieu of the roadway connections they would retain the bike and pedestrian connections. The one at Troutman is currently under design with the Mason Corridor Improvements, and the trail crossing at Keenland is being developed by Parks as part of the Power Trail Project. These are sound recommendations in terms of the cost benefits and the neighborhood and environmental. Plus the adjacent streets can handle the traffic volumes without those roadway connections. Gould: Is there storm drainage money at Keenland or is that funding source unknown? Bracke: It is being funded through the trails program and not through stormwater I believe. 22 Kemp: As an update on the funding, we have the funding, but one thing we are waiting on right now is the railroad approvals. Then the underpass will be built. 2011 is the anticipated year for the projects. Gould: Then the proposal looks like it is going to delete those two. BAC: Corbett is the only one that is still contentious. Bracke: If we want to talk more about the MSP, Matt Wempe is in lead on the changes. In the packet we sent, I included this document which is the MSP documentation. It is part of the appendices of the TMP and it goes into more in-depth analysis of each of the 14 locations that we are looking at updating and amending in the MSP. Matt, do you want to speak to the Corbett project? Do any of you have questions about it? BAC: I don’t know if it is particularly bicycle related. There is a bike path there. Bracke: Yes. There is a bike/pedestrian connection there now. I will mention two things on bikes if it will help wade through all of it. The cover memo I provided was meant to be a how-to guide on how to go through the TMP, what chapters you might want, division principles and policies are listed and also included in the City Plan under the Transportation section. There is consistency between the two documents. The TMP document includes a brief summary of the 2008 bike plan. It does not go into all the details of information that is in the bike plan, but it covers the key messages. We are flagging additional information and we are trying to summarize each section with what we have accomplished in that area since 2004. In the bike section it will say what has been accomplished since 2004. The update to the bike plan is very important. We need to add the accomplishments since the bike plan was added in 2008. In the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) which identifies all of the difficult projects we will be prioritizing for the next 25 years, we have taken the bike list from the adopted bike plan. So we have not reinvented the wheel on the bicycle facility list. If there are new ideas for projects, let us know and we can add them. This is a good time to add projects we might have missed. Skutchan: We talked about the transportation corridor concept, what become of that and how does that fit into the things we talked about at the BAC level? Bracke: In the MSP section one of the things we have added to the update to the TMP is an overlay map that would help designate the enhanced travel corridors in the community. We currently have four adopted enhanced travel corridors: the Mason, Timberline, Harmony and the Mountain Vista/North Corridor. In part of this update we have added the connection along Prospect from I-25 to CSU and then connecting to the Mason, and added an enhanced travel corridor connection from CSU at West Elizabeth to the Foothills campus and Hughes Stadium. The one along W. Elizabeth was added to be consistent with the new Transfort Strategic Plan, and the one on Prospect was based on public input. What we have identified is the recognition that each one has to go through its own MSP process. There is not a one-size fits all design. If it was a cookie cutter design it is not highlighted on the map. The idea with the overlay is to proactively designate corridors that need a special design treatment to fit the context and purpose of the corridor. BAC: So how would that be envisioned with the bicycle amenities? Bracke: It would be auto, bicycle, pedestrian and transit amenities for each of those corridors considering utilities and land use as well. This area is highlighted in the MSP document. The map has more detailed information in the Appendices. It is not just the 23 enhanced travel corridors. We continue to look at the overlay map and designate these corridors where we have an access management plan or corridors that have already had a specially adopted plan for design. Prospect falls into that category. Staff Report: Bracke: In closing please send me your comments and we will be back in January to seek your approval or recommendations and move forward to the Transportation Board. We are scheduled to go to City Council in February. We are on the City Council work sessions. Tomorrow night we will be on the Master Street Plan so if you are interested there will be more information there. We have subsequent meetings with them in January. The whole transportation piece will be on January 26. Bracke: I would like to make a report that Gail will not be with us in 2011. This position is one of two that is being eliminated in Transportation Planning in 2011. We will do our best to provide top quality support to the BAC but it will need to be adjusted in the new year. If you have suggestions on how to provide support, let us know. We will not have dedicated administrative support for the department or the BAC. I am asking for ideas and patience going into 2011. If you have a chance to thank Gail for her service, it would be great to send her an email. Kemp: Winter Bike to Work Day is on Wednesday. There will be twenty breakfast stations throughout the city. We are encouraging people to brave the winter conditions. The reason we do this in December is to encourage that behavior. People biking all year long is a major goal for us. Board Member Reports/Comments: No comments. Share the Road / BPEC No comments. BAC Summary for the Transportation Board None. New Business/Future Agenda Items: Bracke: We provided a list of items for January if you could give us your comments. Price: This is a wish list? Bracke: This is what we have scheduled to date for January and February agendas and one item for March. Please let us know if there are things you would rather see pushed back or added. One of the things we cannot move is the process for new members in March. Price: I have a question about the Share Bike Best Practices. Is that a part of the BSEP? Kemp: It is not. I took a trip to Portland, OR in the summer and learned about facilities and I was going to share it. Price: If there anything you would like to see added, send it to me, Kathleen, or DK and please copy me on it. Mathis: I feel like there is going to continue to be more comment on the electric bike issue. Can we make that a new item for a little while? 24 Price: If we get comment or get a BAC.com comment, we will consider those. We can drop them in here if necessary. Do you want to put it in here as a standing item? Mathis: It feels like it is going to be a big community issue. People who went to meetings (like Josh at the Parks and Recreation Board meeting) in the community want this to happen, and they are going to have to keep doing that. There is education outside this room that needs to occur. If we want to help support it as our letter stated, I think we need to keep it on our agenda. Price: Can we put that down as a tentative item for February? No items discussed. Other Business: None Adjourn: Adjourned at 8:08 PM. Meeting adjourned at PM. Respectfully submitted, ____________________________ Rick Price Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair 25 26 Appendix I Fort Collins’ Bicycle Safety Education Plan Summary by Rick Price Goals Describe where we want to go. Strategies Describe broad approaches to develop permanent programs to achieve our goals. Objectives Are achievable and measurable tasks to create those strategies. Tactics Are the tools in place and those we need to put in place to achieve our objectives. 27 1) Make Fort Collins the safest bike town in the US. 2) Reduce bike crashes & injuries to 95% of current numbers. 3) Reduce Traumatic Brain Injuries from bike crashes to 0. 4) Achieve Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community status. 1) Educate everyone on the principles of “vehicular cycling.” 2) Engage law enforcement in both enforcement and in educational outreach. 3) Engage transportation planners and engineers in safety education. 4) Embed programs in existing institutions (City, PSD, CSU, Driver’s Ed, after school programs, Municipal court system, etc.) 1) Everyone means kids, parents, adult cyclists, seniors, CSU students, teachers, police, planners, traffic engineers, professional motorists. 2) The City should fund a half-time Bicycle Education Coordinator in PSD and adopt HB 1147 curriculum. 3) CSU should hire a Bicycle Education Coordinator. 4) Engage the legal system in this education process. 5) Allocate 50% of FCBikes resources to BSEP. 1) Expand the Strap ‘n Snap program to include 100% of PSD 3rd graders. 2) Develop a BLAST (Bicycle Lessons and Safety Training) program to reach 100% of K-8th graders through Safe Routes to School. 3) Create BEASTs (Bicycle Education and Safety Trailers) for schools and after school programs. 4) Reach 600 children in summer bike camps. 5) Offer BLAST programs in all after school programs. 6) Create bike clubs in after school programs to teach BLAST, Bike Mechanics and mentoring (older to younger students) 7) Offer 3 Saturday classes in vehicular cycling for adults, weekday classes for fleet drivers, professional development classes to government staff & for drivers ed teachers. 8) Develop a Master Cyclist Program to support the above programs via volunteers and paid/part-time teachers. 9) Build a bicycle safety town or more than one. 10) Create a bicycle diversion program in the court system. 11) Engineer solutions to bicycle, motorist, & pedestrian conflict zones. 28 12) Build volunteer & paid/volunteer corps to sustain programs (Bike Co-op, EMTs, Boy Scouts, PTOs, CSU Practicums, etc. 13) Create neighborhood bike clubs. 14) Make an annual Bike Safety calendar (k-5) 29 Appendix I Fort Collins’ Bicycle Safety Education Plan Summary by Rick Price Goals Describe where we want to go. Strategies Describe broad approaches to develop permanent programs to achieve our goals. Objectives Are achievable and measurable tasks to create those strategies. Tactics Are the tools in place and those we need to put in place to achieve our objectives. 30 5) Make Fort Collins the safest bike town in the US. 6) Reduce bike crashes & injuries to 95% of current numbers. 7) Reduce Traumatic Brain Injuries from bike crashes to 0. 8) Achieve Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community status. 5) Educate everyone on the principles of “vehicular cycling.” 6) Engage law enforcement in both enforcement and in educational outreach. 7) Engage transportation planners and engineers in safety education. 8) Embed programs in existing institutions (City, PSD, CSU, Driver’s Ed, after school programs, Municipal court system, etc.) 6) Everyone means kids, parents, adult cyclists, seniors, CSU students, teachers, police, planners, traffic engineers, professional motorists. 7) The City should fund a half-time Bicycle Education Coordinator in PSD and adopt HB 1147 curriculum. 8) CSU should hire a Bicycle Education Coordinator. 9) Engage the legal system in this education process. 10) Allocate 50% of FCBikes resources to BSEP. 15) Expand the Strap ‘n Snap program to include 100% of PSD 3rd graders. 16) Develop a BLAST (Bicycle Lessons and Safety Training) program to reach 100% of K-8th graders through Safe Routes to School. 17) Create BEASTs (Bicycle Education and Safety Trailers) for schools and after school programs. 18) Reach 600 children in summer bike camps. 19) Offer BLAST programs in all after school programs. 20) Create bike clubs in after school programs to teach BLAST, Bike Mechanics and mentoring (older to younger students) 21) Offer 3 Saturday classes in vehicular cycling for adults, weekday classes for fleet drivers, professional development classes to government staff & for drivers ed teachers. 22) Develop a Master Cyclist Program to support the above programs via volunteers and paid/part-time teachers. 23) Build a bicycle safety town or more than one. 24) Create a bicycle diversion program in the court system. 25) Engineer solutions to bicycle, motorist, & pedestrian conflict zones. 31 26) Build volunteer & paid/volunteer corps to sustain programs (Bike Co-op, EMTs, Boy Scouts, PTOs, CSU Practicums, etc. 27) Create neighborhood bike clubs. 28) Make an annual Bike Safety calendar (k-5) 32