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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 01/21/2004REGULAR MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD January 21, 2004 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins 215 N. Mason Street Community Room FOR CHAIR: Bruce Henderson 898-4625 VICE CHAIR: Heather Trantham 206-4255 STAFF LIAISON: Don Bachman 224-6049 ADMIN SUPPORT: Cynthia Cass 224-6058 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Joe Dumais Claudia Eberspacher Dan Gould Neil Grigg Bruce Henderson Tim Johnson Christophe Ricord Gary Thomas Brent Thordarson Heather Trantham CITY STAFF IN ATTENDANCE: Don Bachman Cynthia Cass Tom Frazier Randy Hensley Mark Jackson Cam McNair Ron Phillips Lucinda Smith ABSENT: Ray Moe GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE: Bob Felsburg Nancy York APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Page 2 of 12 Transportation Board January 21, 2004 1. CALL TO ORDER Henderson called the meeting to order at 5:48 p.m. 12. INTRODUCTION OF NEW BOARD MEMBERS Chair Henderson introduced and welcomed new board members Claudia Eberspacher and Gary Thomas to the board. 3. AGENDA REVIEW Chair Henderson reviewed the agenda. No changes were necessary. 4. PUBLIC COMMENT None. 5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion and a second to approve the minutes of December 17, 2003 as presented. Discussion: Johnson stated that on page 7, second paragraph, where it says" north/south moving," he would like the word "moving" to be changed to "movement". Johnson stated that in the middle of next paragraph, the line that begins with the word "area" should read as follows: "area and one of those happen to be an integrated pedestrian network." Johnson stated that two sentences down, the sentence there should read as follows: "I would also be talking about sharing fees in lieu of with building the transit capacity on Mason Street before I'd be talking about things like bicycle showers." Dumais stated that on page 5, the word "perpetual" should be changed to "potential" revenue. The question was called and the motion to approve the minutes, including the above stated amendments, carried by a unanimous vote, 10-0. 6. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 3 of 12 7. DISCUSSION ITEMS a. MASON TRAIL UPDATE—Reavis, Frazier & Felsburg Reavis introduced Bob Felsburg, lead consultant and Tom Frazier, Transfort/Dial-A-Ride General Manager who have been working with her throughout the project. Referring to aerial view maps of the corridor and starting at the north end of the corridor, Reavis gave a comprehensive summary of all the project elements including the Preliminary Engineering/Environmental Assessment phase of the project such as the Bus Rapid Transit system, plus the roadway and bicycle/pedestrian improvements proposed for the full length of the project corridor. Board Comments/Ouestions Grigg: In terms of approval for this to be a corridor framework plan, where we can get pieces put in one at a time, are more approvals needed in order to start making this become a reality? Reavis: From my perspective, when the Vision Plan was approved was by Council, that laid out the framework and the policies behind the corridor. What we're working on are these various stages and taking the implementation to the next level. I hope we don't get into the dilemma where we have to go back for each design step and get more approval. Frazier: I think there might be some of that, because of the issues with the priority of the Capital Improvement Program. There are certain pieces that people want. Thomas: During the tax initiative, I had reason to talk to the guy that owns Drake Office Park and the fellow who owns County Cork. They were very much against an underpass seeing as how it impacted their businesses, although earlier you said that something had been worked out with them. Is that subsequent to the campaign? Reavis: When we were having our conversations with them, the concern they had was access on Drake and crossed access within their office park in this location. We worked through a lot of the realignment of the access points and moving the CSU access into the vet campus to align with their access into their office park and that seemed to allay some of their fears that somehow their access was going to be cut off from Drake if we were to do the underpass. We were able to realign those driveways on the north and the south sides to make sure they did have access. What they were asking for upfront was a signalized intersection and we can't promise them that. Johnson: So the Park n' Ride at the old University Mall is not something that will happen with this phase of construction is it? Reavis: No, the Park n' Ride here was related to the BRT station — when the BRT line went in and when the station was developed. Then the Park n' Ride was going to be done in conjunction with that. What could be done separately in this area is the underpass that connects the NRC with the University Mall. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 4 of 12 Gould: On the Cherry to Laurel segment and the future reversion to the two-way streets — in order to revert, is it a precondition from the railroad that there be fencing? Reavis: The fencing now is a completely separate item relative to what we're working with the RR now on getting the license agreements. The City owns the ROW on Mason between Cherry and Laurel and we thought that through improvements in that area we could trade for the value of the railroad ROW that we need on the south end of the corridor. That was our initial game plan. But, since we weren't moving ahead with the piece of the downtown for financial reasons, we didn't have that card to play with the RR. So, we just proceeded to work with them on a license agreement for the trail system separate and independent from whatever the City decides to do downtown. Dumais: If Drake were to be grade separated, would it force the dead ending of Redwing and McClelland? Reavis: There are all kinds of alternatives and must be a half dozen design options. Thordarson: Do you have a probable date that the first segment of the trail might be open? Reavis: Optimistically, hopefully this Fall. Phillips: I would say more realistically that it will be next year. b. AIR QUALITY POLICIES —Smith Ms. Smith introduced herself and stated that she manages the City's Air Quality Program. She said that her objective is to get the Board's input on where staff is going with the Policies and Strategies. The draft Air Quality Plan will be going to a City Council study session on April 27 so there is time to keep the board informed and up-to-date over the next couple months. Ms. Smith went over the Air Quality Plan Draft Outline/Attachments A-F in detail. Board Comments/Ouestions: Thomas: How do the trains figure into the emissions problem? Smith: I haven't seen an emissions inventory for Fort Collins that looks at fine particle emissions from locomotives. That's a good question. With as many trains that go through Fort Collins, it may not be that small. In the Strategies, under the research heading, we talk about trying to put together a better emissions inventory for Fort Collins, trying to find the right balance between too much study and not enough action, but having enough study to justify the action. Grigg: Can you find out the source of that ammonium? Is it agriculture? Smith: I don't recall. There is a report, the NFRAQS (North Front Range Air Quality Study), and it may address that question in it. It could be livestock and it could be related to fertilizer. If you're interested, I could put together a summary of the visibility sources and send it to the board. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 5 of 12 Thomas: I saw a presentation at CSU on two-cycle engines. They're doing something to improve them. Smith: That's right. They're doing some really exciting work to clean up two- cycle engines and taking their work to the Philippines and other places where two-cycle engines contribute hugely to air pollution. Dumais: You mentioned smoking gasoline vehicles, but there's nothing you can do about diesels? Smith: Actually there is. There's the State's Diesel Emissions Program and that requires that the diesel vehicles meet certain standards and is usually 35- 40% opacity for a certain time period. And the diesel vehicles have to be inspected more frequently to pass that test. Some of the issues have to do with enforcement of the program. If you have a truck that's passing through and is not registered in Fort Collins it's difficult to enforce it. Another possible way to get at some of the diesel emissions is to consider idling reductions. About six years ago our department did a study on idling of vehicles and we determined at that time that there wasn't a significant problem. We could potentially look at that again. Johnson: I have a neighbor who gets up and starts his truck up and goes back inside and must have breakfast and reads the paper. It's out there idling for half an hour to an hour. Smith: We tried to address that a little through public education articles. We're working on gearing up an idling reduction campaign and it started with the railroad idling, but it can expand to and we've been talking about expanding to that issue of idling vehicles in the morning. There are lots of issues with it that aren't related to air quality. There's the potential for theft and it's illegal to leave vehicles idling and unattended, so there is more we can do there. York: I'm from the Air Quality Advisory Board and the Natural Resources Department sent out an estimate for radon invasion and hired a consultant. The consultant came up with very reasonable costs, so the cost isn't enough to drive housing out of the city. Smith: Right, the cost for passive mitigation is depending on a variety of things. Johnson: With regard to the City being active in some of these areas, and proactive, I think that if we just think back to the woodstove issue, there was a time back in the 1980's when Fort Collins was in love with it's woodstoves and I'd ride my bike down some of the streets on winter nights and I would smell like wood smoke when I would come in the house. The City then took a very proactive role on stoves after that. If they would do the same with lawnmowers and two-cycle engines, perhaps we could find alternatives, it seems to me to take a role we've taken before and taken very successfully. Smith: Yes, that's a great suggestion. We could look at the analogy of how becoming active and actively promoting behavior change has worked to some extent and actually, we have seen the wood smoke emissions pretty significantly decline. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 6 of 12 Johnson: With regard to some other things, such as policy ENV 1.4, the Air Toxics Coordination -- I know that in the summer, we have a lot of spraying going on and there are all kinds of herbicides and weed killers. I think there is some kind of policy where people aren't supposed to be spraying when the winds are greater than a certain amount, but it isn't enforced as far as I can tell. That might be something to look into; this wind drift problem. I'm referring to Homeowner's Associations that hire these lawn companies and such. Smith: Great, I'll make a note of that. Dumais: The last one where you say that the City will assist citizens in finding information, I would like to see it be stronger that there is a yearly report issued for water quality and I'd like to see if nothing else, a summary in with the utility bill and at least show the trends and if nothing else then a line in the utility bill that says "here's where you can go to get a copy of it". A link to further information, if you will. Johnson: Compared to price mechanisms in green building ideas, does the City have some sort of a policy that talks about pay back time so they can get ... and these green things and give them pay back times of say 20 years or a whole new life cycle of the building? Smith: Right. Life cycle building is one of the other options that we're trying to look at for the cost benefit. The issue about that is that it's actually really broader than just air quality protection and we thought that discussion of life cycle costing might unfold as the City works on developing its sustainability action plan, which is another initiative the City is looking at. Life cycle costing and/or looking at external costs, air quality related decisions are what's being considered now for the cost benefit policy. I think that is a key one. Johnson: I think it is too, because if you can show for instance, how the life cycle pay back, with a one month cycle and you get health benefits on top of it, it seems that to me a definite plus for the community. Sustainability is critical. In terms of transportation, we have all kinds of ways to deal with that as a department. How we look at paradigms of movement of people in the community. I think that's a real critical thing. The bus system that we operate, I think it's been a complaint for a long time of people on bicycles behind them and have to deal with the diesel smoke of the bus. Even though we like the transit system, we would like to see the City lead the way with clean air vehicles and this is one of the obvious ones that's out in front of people a lot. One other thing that I just generated a little data here that has to do with carbon dioxide reductions and if you talk about how many pounds of CO2 that a vehicle will generate as a function of its mileage. And by what ever way you choose to not use a vehicle, whether you roller blade or bicycle or walk, you can challenge the community by saying lets save our weight in CO2 by using any other mode. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 7 of 12 Smith: I know we did something in the past along those lines with Ben & Jerry's a little bit, but we could potentially do a lot more with that, so that's a great suggestion. Henderson: Lucinda, since we're pressed for time, if you want to give out your email, then people could contact you with further comments. Plus you're planning on coming back before April, right? Smith: Definitely. My email address is: lsmith(a fc o¢ v.com and I would welcome your input at any time. Johnson: I have just one more comment. I would challenge Lucinda and the community to recognize that we are living in the solar zone of this country. There are a lot of things we could do in terms of using solar energy. Think of all the swimming pools that are being heated by natural gas. You could use the sun and it would be a lot more cost effective. c. NEW PARKING CHANGES FOR DOWNTOWN —Hensley Hensley stated that staff is in the implementation phase of the Parking recommendations of the Downtown Strategic Plan. Next week he will be rolling out a media campaign. Hensley stated that the purpose of tonight's meeting is to show the board what he will be telling everyone next week and to gather comments and feedback on the presentation so he can do a good job next week. Hensley reviewed the schedule of events with the Board. Source materials and references: The Downtown Strategic Plan can be found at www.fcgov.com/advanceplanning/dsp.phy Hensley gave a Power Point presentation that covered the following: ➢ Letter from a Downtown Business Owner (negative tone) ➢ Letter from Employees of a Downtown Business (negative tone) ➢ Letter from an Out -of -Town Recipient of a Parking Citation ➢ What We Do and Why - Safe and Orderly Parking - Support and Promote the Economic Vitality of Downtown ➢ Conclusions of the Downtown Strategic Plan ➢ Conclusions of the Occupancy Survey ➢ $ Each Parking Stall can generate annually ➢ Cost of Long-term Parkers using Short-term Parking Spaces ➢ The Objective of the New Parking Program ➢ What Are We Going To Do? ➢ The New Fines for Overtime Violations ➢ The New Technology - Ticketing Management System - License Plate Recognition System (Vehicle -mounted computer system, cameras, GPS and OCR) APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Page 8 of 12 Transportation Board January21, 2004 ➢ The New Codes ➢ New Alternatives for Long-term Parkers Parking structure permits The Downtown Parking Cooperative New educational materials ➢ Residential Permit Program Board Comments/Ouestions: Grigg: I think it's a great presentation. However, maybe you need to put a little more in the front end. Say earlier in the presentation that short term parking is vital. Don't need analytics. Go right to the bottom line. Phillips: One way to say it is: If only 5% of these short-term spaces downtown loses $2M..." that's the message you want to get across. Henderson: If you really want to keep it there, put it in an appendix, which is a common way to do it. Johnson: It looks like your numbers are definitely showing a conservative estimate of how much we would lose. Dumais: The $300,000 sounded awfully generous to me. I guess if that's what the marketing guy said. Phillips: We're showing this to capture people's attention. This is not to say that every single parking space generates $300,000. It says each one "can" generate... Hensley: I can see that this slide is going to cause problems for you engineering types! Henderson: One way you could leave that slide in is to bold or emphasize the word "can" and the word "$300,000" and make sure people understand that it's an approximation so they don't go into analytical mode. I would also recommend with your other quotes, definitely keep them in, but look for key words — don't read the quote, let people read it themselves. Paraphrase talk your way through it. It'll have more impact. Hensley: Would someone else comment on Bruce's perception there? I've been in presentations where those types of anecdotal quotes are very effective and reading them back to the audience makes everybody follow along with you. I'd be interested if anyone else feels they shouldn't be read. Dumais: I've had people say that they should be read because otherwise you're saying something that means something else so you can get people splitting their attention between you and what they're reading. Hensley: Do you feel the quotes are too long? Dumais: The only thing I thought was the letters started out putting it in a negative position and that was a concern. Maybe put something out there to balance it out. Thomas: That was my thought Randy. I've been using the structure and they're great. You're in and out. It would be nice if you had some testimonials on the positive side. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 9 of 12 Thordarson: With respect to each of those negative "problem" statements, do you have something positive you could add to the end to off set it? Dumais: My main thought was to try to establish something more positive and more motivational; where you're going before you lay that out there. Then lay out the complaints and you could do something like the Power Point where you show them turnover and talk about why it's important — because it allows money to be generated — why is money important? — Because it allows you to have a job, etc. You could do all three of those in a row, but try to lead more into it upfront. Grigg: One way to bring a positive forward is to bring the alternatives for long- term parking before the slide that shows the fines. Gould: It seems to me there is a group that has a real aversion to "big brother" technological approaches. Do you have a defense for that? Hensley: I was wondering why that didn't come up before. Everything else you said I don't think I'm going to hear about. I think I'm going to hear about this slide here. That's the one that the reporters are going to grab onto and grill me about. Dumais.• It does have a bad look to it to be honest. I mean it's a black vehicle with cameras on top! Maybe you shouldn't have that slide in there. Hensley: Well, they're going to see it soon enough on the street and I want them to have a chance to see it before then. We have a team that's been working on the legal aspects of this. The City Attorney has verified that everything we're doing is legal. Maybe this didn't come through clearly enough, but our primary objective is to make downtown more inviting to customers and visitors. That's what we want to get the reporters to print. We're lowering our fine to a warning. Everybody gets a free ticket the first time around! That's what we want them to print. If you missed that message, then I need to go back and rework my presentation. Henderson: There's nothing like redundancy to re -enforce it. You could have it in the beginning, in the middle and at the end. Hensley: I should also add that the vehicle we're getting isn't black, it's white and it's not an SUV, it's a small, economical, 4-wheel drive pick-up truck. Ricord: Since this picture really misrepresents a lot of what you're talking about, why don't you consider just taking it out of the presentation? You can have a discussion of the procedure, but not a visual. The visual is what people are reacting to. Hensley: I agree with the color black and I have a picture of a white vehicle I can put in there although it is a minivan. I just think that people need to see what I'm bringing to the streets of Fort Collins. I don't want to go out and surprise them on day one by driving my vehicle down the road and people not knowing what it is. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 10 of 12 Dumais: On #5, the middle one, of the objective of the new parking program — is it more that we're trying to reserve prime on -street spaces for customers and visitors? The second bullet says reserve on -street. We really want to get the prime ones opened up, right? The storefront ones? I think that's missing. Thomas: I was the person who used to drive around the block five times looking for a place to park while driving right by the entrance to the parking structure all five times. But now that I started working and going in and using it, it's easy. Johnson: I still think you ought to market the fact that there are many pros to parking in the structure like being out of the weather. Hensley: There are some of those in the brochure. d. CAPITAL PROJECTS PLANNING — BCC EXTENSION — Bachman Bachman explained that two BCC sales taxes will expire in December 2005. There is a memo in the Board's packets from the City Manager requesting that the Board review the projects from the newly updated Transportation Master Plan and provide them with feedback on the projects in the following areas: Feasibility, Urgency, Need, Desirability. The Board needs to come up with a prioritized list of projects that they would recommend for inclusion in the tax measures. It basically creates a field of projects for the Council to choose from after getting public input from surveys and open houses and such. Each board who is submitting a list of projects is supposed to submit based upon their area of responsibility. So in our case, it's transportation and of course we have the most projects. Bachman added that the bad news is, is that it's on such a short time frame to turn this around. The City Manager's Office wants this done no later than the end of February so the Board needs to give final approval of whatever is decided to submit at their February meeting. Included in the packets was the work that's already been done in the CIP as a starting place for the Board. Bachman suggested that since this is a lot of work for the entire Board that perhaps convening the sub -committee should be considered. After a discussion, there was a consensus of the board to hold a Finance Sub -committee meeting on January 28 at 6 p.m. and post it as a Special Board meeting, open to the public and to any other Board members who would like to attend and observe or participate. Cass will find a meeting room that is easily accessible after hours, preferably the Community Room or the CIC Room and let the entire board know the logistics once finalized. Bachman will attend and support the board staff wise. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 11 of 12 8. ACTION ITEMS a. DOWNTOWN STRATEGIC PLAN LETTER —Board Chair Henderson reminded the Board that at the last meeting they voted to recommend that City Council accept the recommendations of the Downtown Strategic Plan, and that they also decided at that meeting to generate a cover letter at this meeting with the most salient points from that meeting as a starting point. A draft letter was distributed to the Board to review. After a brief discussion, there was a motion that the Board approved the letter in principle and that they will email modifications to Chair Henderson. There was a second. The motion carried by a unanimous vote, 10-0. Chair Henderson will then incorporate the modifications he receives and send out a final version to the Board and staff. 9. REPORTS a BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Dumais: Article. This came out in July and was written by Susan Kirkpatrick. It's her opinion on Bike to Work Week, which is really negative. (Copies were distributed.) Thordarson: Signals. I just noticed that there area few traffic signals that go to flashing yellow at a certain time of the evening and stay that way overnight. 1 wondered if there is a certain criteria which would lead a signal to be operating that way and if it's possible to get more signals to do that. (McNair said that he would check with Traffic Ops and get back to Thordarson.) Trantham:: Semi's Parked on Caribou. I've seen several of them parked on Caribou near Timberline. There are always a lot of tractor/trailers parked there and I was curious if anyone knows why and if it's legal. (McNair will check to see if it's construction site related.) Thomas: Glad to be here. First of all, let me say I'm glad to be here officially! Loveland News. On February 11, the City of Loveland and the Loveland Transportation Advisory Board are inviting the City of Fort Collins, the County, CDOT and anyone else they can get to talk about the possibility of regional transportation on this side of I-25. Also, in Loveland, they tried to take out one of the bus routes, and that met with quite a bit of citizen resistance so a study is on the way now to examine citizen desirability for buses and decide what they're going to do about it. Johnson: Idea of Sustainability. I was wondering from a staff point of view how that plays out. Is it at a point now where sustainable City efforts to each department is a function that is being considered and how will that be developed? It's just a question to staff. Phillips: That's a project that Natural Resources is looking at. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 21, 2004 Page 12 of 12 Snow Shoveling. One small thing that I called McNair about earlier is that when people shovel their snow, instead of shoveling it in the gutter/street, it should be encouraged that they shovel it into their yard because there are benefits. Ranking of Mason. My alarm bells have gone off over and over again with regard to Mason and the ranking of Mason in the Bicycle CIP priority list. I don't understand and have asked Jackson to comment on this issue. Jackson said that Mason won't be the "largest use" project; W. Elizabeth is the highest use and priority bike corridor in the city. He added that construction fees aren't tied to funding or feasibility scoring. Rankings must be defensible and based on objective criteria. Grigg: New Members. I was appointed liaison with the Chamber Transportation Committee. I have some information to give to Cass for the record so the rest of the Board can have the contact information. b. STAFF REPORTS Bachman: Next Agenda: ■ BCC Project List Approval for City Manager • 2004 Cone Zone Report • Election of Officers 10. OTHER BUSINESS None. 11. ADJOURN Chair Henderson adjourned the meeting at 9:05 p.m. Respectfully submitted, hIGt .( to Cynthia Cass Executive Administrative Assistant City of Fort Collins — Transportation Services