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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 05/15/2002REGULAR MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD May 15, 2002 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins - 215 N. Mason Street Community Room FOR REFERENCE: CHAIR: Christophe Ricord............................472.8769 VICE CHAIR: Bruce Henderson..............................282.1319 STAFF LIAISON: Don Bachman....................................224.6049 ADMIN SUPPORT: Cynthia Scott....................................224.6058 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Dan Gould Bruce Henderson Tim Johnson Tom Kramer Brad Miller Christophe Ricord Heather Trantham CITY STAFF IN ATTENDANCE: Don Bachman John Daggett Gary Diede Randy Hensley Mike Herzig Mark Jackson GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE: George Walton 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Ricord called the meeting to order at 5:50 p.m. BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Neil Grigg Edward Jakubauskas Ray Moe Brent Thordarson CITY STAFF CONT. Cam McNair Ron Phillips Kathleen Reavis Tom Reiff Cynthia Scott Peter Wray Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15,2002 Page 2 2. PUBLIC COMMENT None. 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion and a second to approve the April 2002 Transportation Board minutes as presented. Discussion: Johnson stated that on page 4, second line under the comments he made, the line should read as follows: "the number of rides from that have been shifted from Trans ort to DAR?" - Chair Ricord stated that on Page 7, where his comments are, the word "cost" needs to be inserted between the and estimate. - Chair Ricord also asked that the minutes reflect that he made a statement during the roundabout discussion that staff needs to continue to look at ways to make roundabouts more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. The above stated amendments were approved by the board and the motion carried by a unanimous vote. 4. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. 5. MASON STREET TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR UPDATE - K. Reavis Ms. Reavis stated that as project manager, she would be coming to the board on a regular basis to report updates instead of Hensley. She stated that three staff members traveled to Eugene, Oregon last month. They are putting in a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System that is very comparable to the type of system that is being looked at for the Mason Street Transportation Corridor (MSTC) project. It was an incredibly valuable experience to go and talk to them firsthand, see the corridor, learn all the issues they had gone through including the details on funding, traffic issues, university issues, etc that staff will be facing with the MSTC project. She encouraged members to check out their web site: Lane Transit District. Staff also attended a workshop that was put on by the Federal Transit Administration about financial planning for New Starts projects. Again, it was incredibly helpful to learn what other communities are going through and learn from their experiences. Troy Jones has been working on the land use component to go along with the Mason Street work from the transportation side and he is making progress on putting together a Scope of Work. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15,2002 Page 3 6. DOWNTOWN STRATEGIC PLAN (DSP) - R. Hensley Hensley reminded the board that the DSP is a plan to look at several critical issues. Each member received a copy of the original proposal to explain what the DSP is designed to accomplish and what it will look at. Hensley stated that he needs a volunteer or two from the Board to serve on the Citizen Advisory Group. He would like to have a Transportation Board member as the Plan includes several critical transportation elements. Examples of those are an update to the Downtown Parking Plan, a Truck and Freight Delivery and Mobility Study, and a general Traffic Circulation Study. It was further explained that there would be two major groups as part of this effort. The Citizen Advisory Group as already mentioned. These will be citizens at large, people that have an interest in the downtown and bring some sort of perspective or expertise to the group, which everyone here does as part of the Transportation Board. There will also be Technical Advisory Committee, which will be made up of people who are more day-to-day data driven, operationally oriented types. Ideally, the person from the Board that is on the Citizen Advisory Group will bring a multi -modal transportation perspective to this group. Lacking somebody that can do that, he stated that the group would like two Board members; one that would bring a general transportation perspective and another person to bring the multi -modal perspective. Either way, staff would like to have at least one person and perhaps a back-up as no one person will be able to attend all the meetings. The Citizen Advisory Group will be meeting about once every six weeks. There is talk about having this meeting early in the morning, perhaps as early as 7:30 a.m. The length of the project is 12-14 months. The participant would then report to the board. John Daggett is the project manager on the transportation side of this. He then asked for volunteers. After a brief discussion, it was agreed that since several Board members were absent, it would be best for Hensley to return next month and ask the question. 7. ACTION ITEM a) STREET STANDARDS, REVISION - M. Herzig Herzig stated that he came before the board about a year and a half ago. At that time he presented the Urban Area Street Standards originally going to Council for adoption. The Standards were adopted by Council in January 2001 and went into effect on March 1, 2001. The Standards are the adopted technical street design and construction standards for the cities of Fort Collins, and the Larimer County Growth Management Areas for Fort Collins and Loveland. Within about six months, staff started accumulating revisions and started meeting formally about eight months ago to start doing a revision process for the document. For the revision process, there was a committee that put out a couple of newsletters that were mailed to the development community that included an Internet address so people. The entire document is on the Larimer County web site and there is a link on the City Engineering page to that web site. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15, 2002 Page 4 The revision process will be an ongoing process as it is like the Land Use Codes that require changes on a continuing basis in order to keep up with policy changes and different things like that. He stated that he asking for the Board's support and recommendation to Council to adopt revision No. 1 which actually contains several revisions listed as a in the Revision Summary that was sent to the board in their packets. Some of the changes were meant to improve the document itself such as transferring it into a stable Word document and expanding the Table of Contents making it easier to find elements of the Standards more easily. Johnson asked Trantham to share her thoughts as she was part of the team and reported to the board on a regular basis. Trantham said that the most positive part of this effort is having the same or similar street standards for Fort Collins and Loveland and the area in between. Trantham moved to recommend that Council approve the Lorimer County Urban Street Standards Revision No. 1. There was a second by Kramer. The motion carried unanimously. 8. DISCUSSION ITEMS a) E. MULBERRY CORRIDOR PLAN UPDATE - P. Wray and T. Reiff Wray stated that staff and the consultant technical committee (TAC) is seeking input and comments for the draft Principals and Policies and the preferred Framework Plan relating to transportation issues from the Transportation Board. As listed in the memo that was included in the board's packets, there are two questions that the TAC is interested in: a) Are the principals and policies statements relating to transportation consistent with City Plan? b) Do the statements relating to transportation and land use cover all of the issues within the study area? Wray and Reiff explained the Framework plan, Framework Plan Overlay, Proposed Street Network, Proposed Bikeway Network, and Proposed Transit Routes in detail using colored maps. The tentative schedule for joint adoption from the City and the County is mid to late August. Staff would like this board to forward a recommendation in July. Wray stated that staff would more than likely have a draft Plan ready to show the Board at their June meeting. Chair Ricord asked the board if anyone wanted to respond to the two questions posed earlier. He acknowledged that there is a lot of information to digest. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15, 2002 Page 5 Johnson inquired about what the points of contention have been in the public process with this plan. Wray stated that one of the main concerns is about the recommendations for access management. Two other big areas that have been dealt with in the process is the Cooper Slew area/Weiker Drive and logistics of the short and long-term scenarios with the airport area. The board thanked staff for their informative presentation. b) CSU STRATEGIC PLAN UPDATE - J. Daggett Daggett gave a Power Point presentation on the Strategic Plan and hard copies of the presentation were given to the members. Highlights of the presentation included: • How CSU compares citing the findings of the University Transportation Survey. (Twenty-three universities nationwide participated in the survey.) • Auto analysis: Traffic Volumes Laurel Street Parking Analysis - Five Parking Alternatives Peripheral Et Neighborhood Parking • Bike/Ped Analysis On Campus Bicycle/Ped Facilities System Connectivity City Systems - Improvements • Transit Analysis Option 1: Transfort Plan - Full Implementation Option 2: Campus 8 Parking Circulators • Land Use Analysis Land Use - CSU Vicinity Land Use in Fort Collins/around CSU Housing Factors to Students and Housing Locations Daggett stated that the CSU STP is considering three recommendations: 1. Establish a University Planning District 2. Explore the feasibility of developing University Villages in the residential areas adjacent tot he CSU main campus 3. Increase residential density on and adjacent to the University's main campus Daggett described the numerous outcomes of the Null Alternative, then went over the Next Steps, which are: 1. CSU Steering Committee - May 10th - Strategy Development .-. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15,2002 Page 6 2. Follow-up and Development of Three Transportation Alternative Scenarios 3. City Transportation Board - June 4. City Council - July 5. State Board of Agriculture - August There were some questions from the board, mostly clarification type questions. The board thanked Daggett and is expecting another update next month. c) TRANSPORTATION CAPITAL FUNDING - D. Bachman Bachman stated that last month he was here with the Council long term Transportation capital sub -committee and their request for a notion of how money we should be looking for to solve this transportation problem. The Transportation Boards' recommendation was somewhere between 40-50% because less is not enough to solve all the mobility problems with. Bachman stated that a Power Point presentation was given to the full Council by the committee that contained that recommendation in it. He added that tonight there is no request for additional input from the committee. However, the Board's finance committee met a couple of weeks ago, went through this, had a good discussion on this and may want to toss around some ideas. Bachman presented the same information on funding via Power Point that was contained in the board's packets and he stated that this is not new information. Generally speaking, Council seemed to think that it was a fairly balanced approach. The next steps on this are that surveys are being conducted and we should have results of the survey just in time for the next council SS on June 11. Another thing going on right now is the ballot is being crafted. There are a couple schools of thought on the language. Our marketing people are putting together suitable for public consumption marketing package on this, but we don't have anything that we can give you on this yet. After a 10-minute discussion, the board concluded with an agreement to send a letter to Council with their thoughts. Henderson made a motion using similar wording as the last time: the Transportation Board believes that Fort Collins is too congested now and with so much growth, it will only worse unless we specify a funding percentage that is sufficiently higher than 25% so we can make progress. While we think the Council committee has done a great job in preparing the current proposal, we feel that the funding level of 37.5% is too low and we would like to propose that we raise the Excise tax percentage to 201o, which yields an overall funding percentage of 45% and further that the Council would investigate how to bind the Transportation Maintenance Fee of... 1 .-, Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15,2002 Page 7 Johnson intervened and asked if he could offer the following: how to link the General Fund money displaced by the Transportation Maintenance Fee to Transportation Capital. Miller suggested that the wording for this recommendation start with it's own beginning and could use a little streamlining. For clarification, the motion was reread by Miller: The Transportation Board believes that the funding level of 37.5% is too low and recommends increasing the Excise tax to 2%, which yields an overall funding percentage of 45% and further that the Council would investigate how to link the General Fund money displaced by the Transportation Maintenance Fee to Transportation Capital. The streamlined wording was approved by Henderson. There was a second by Johnson. The motion carried by a majority vote, 6 —1. The dissenter stated that he is in agreement with the Council Finance Committee's recommendation and is certainly not opposed to an Excise tax. 9. REPORTS a) BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Johnson: Citizen Planners/COPirQ. I was invited to give a discussion to Citizen Planners and CoPirg on financing. It was an interesting discussion with lots of good questions. Don had Diane make a transparency package so that if anyone else has the opportunity to give a talk like that, the package would be available. b) STAFF REPORTS Jackson: Transportation Master Plan. The RFPs have been released for the last 4- 5 weeks and just last week we conducted interviews. The selected team was PBSJ. City Plan. Three different teams were interviewed today and two of those are very strong. Next month I'll be able to report more. McNair: Construction. Many construction projects will be started after school is out, so be prepared for cone zones to pop up. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes May15,2002 Bachman: Next Agenda: • CSU Strategic Plan • E. Mulberry Corridor Plan • Downtown Strategic Plan • Transportation Master Plan Update • Mason Street Transportation Corridor Update • Transportation Capital • Pavement Management (August ?) 10. OTHER BUSINESS None 11. ADJOURN Chair Ricord adjourned the meeting at 8:40 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Cynthia Scott Executive Administrative Assistant Page 8