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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 07/21/2004REGULAR MEETING MINUTES OF THE TRANSPORTATION BOARD July 21, 2004 5:45 pm. City of Fort Collins — Municipal Building 215 N. Mason Street Community Room FOR REFERENCE: 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: Bruce Henderson Tim Johnson Ray Moe Christophe Ricord Gary Thomas Brent Thordarson Heather Trantham CITY STAFF IN_ATTENDANCE: Don Bachman Cynthia Cass Tom Frazier Mike Herzig Mark Jackson ABSENT: Claudia Eberspacher Dan Gould Neil Grigg GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE: Dale Adamy David Millar, Consultant w/PBS&.T Jeanette Namuth, Senior Advisory Board Nancy York 11. CALL TO ORDER Chair Henderson called the meeting to order at 5:59 p.m. 2. AGENDA REVIEW No changes were made to the agenda as presented. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 2 13. PUBLIC COMMENT —1 Jeanette Namuth, Senior Advisory Board member, spoke to the Transportation Board about the possibility of changing the name of the Senior Center. It seems that the word "senior" in the name of the facility has a negative connotation for the Baby Boomer generation. Ms. Namuth stated that the programs would stay the same; the only change being considered is to the name of the facility only. She distributed a short survey about this issue to the board and asked that they be returned to her. 14. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Isere was a motion by Johnson and a second by Thomas to approve the June 16, 2004 Transportation Board meeting minutes as presented. Discussion: Thomas: Under #9, Board Member Reports, where I report on the Loveland Transportation Board, it says that the council authorized the bus people to proceed with "negations." That should be "negotiations" instead. The motion passed unanimously with that amendment. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT Not present. 16. DISCUSSIONANFORMATIONAL ITEMS -- a. N. COLORADO TRUCK MOBILITY PROJECT — PHASE H NON -ROUTE BASED STRATEGIES (NRBS) — M. Jackson Jackson introduced David Millar, PBS&J consultant and Project Manager. Jackson gave a presentation that included the following highlights: • Background - Phase II is a result of a Ballot Initiative 200, passed in November 1999. - Phase II includes: Assessment and Program Development (complete) and Implementation and Evaluation (next) • Phase II Project Goals - Encourage truck traffic to use I-25/I-80 - Minimize impact of SH 14/US 287 trucks on Fort Collins community - Determine feasibility and effectiveness of NRBS • Process Overview - Outreach - Traffic Studies - Existing Conditions - Revisit Phase I NRBS Recommendations - Phase II Screenings APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 • Issues Overview Page 3 - Potential Impact ✓ Using multiple studies ✓ Truck Volume ✓ Marketing Perspective - Outside Projects ✓ Recently Completed Jefferson/Riverside/N. College upgrades ✓ Planned improvements to I-25 south of Cheyenne and to US 287 in Colorado and Wyoming RESULTS: externalities may affect NRBS results and evaluations Findings Marketing Techniques most promising... - Target Audience (Long haul through truck drivers, local/regional drivers, dispatchers and management) - Message (Interstate route has benefits, including: safety, amenities, ease of use) - Mix of media (Brochure, billboards, media relations, radio advertising, website, ads, safety meeting reminders Next Steps - Project Direction - Study Budget Review - City Update Direction Sought - Are there questions regarding history/background and Phase II efforts to date? - Are you comfortable with implementing the NRBS Program as described? Board CommenWOuesdons: Moe: What happened to the weigh station going south bound on I-25? Millar: Reconstruction. It will be back. Moe: There are discussions about moving the visitor's centers along the freeway and putting it on Prospect. I know that trucks use those facilities very heavily now and the redistribution of those on Prospect -- will that become another problem with trucks? What's the City's position on that CDOT proposal? Jackson: The City's decision is that they are in favor of working with CDOT to move the rest area over by the Visitor's Center. They don't feel that Prospect is going to be a major draw. There's no real attractiveness to the route. Basically the capture for this is going to be the I-25 long haul truck trip. Some folks think it's also a way to speed up the process of having CDOT consider the Prospect interchange a higher priority. Thomas: Would simply aggressive speed limit enforcement help? APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 4 Jackson: It would. The trucking industry is actually in favor of enforcement, but you can't just target trucks. That's illegal. However, as long as the enforcement is uniformly performed, that's no problem at all. Johnson: Certain regulatory strategies had been considered earlier — I'd like to ask why did mobile weigh stations get left out? Secondly, what about safety inspections? Jackson: What it really boils down to is walking a fine line between enforcement and harassment. To bring in mobile weigh stations only to discourage truck drivers is considered profiling and illegal. Ricord: On page 5, truck volumes, 1800 total trucks per day, 600 through and 190 long -haul. Can you help me understand further the difference between the 600 and the 190 because whenever I see those two numbers, I make an aggregate of 790 and I don't see there's a real clear distinction. Jackson: "Long -haul" is a subset of through truck trips if that helps you. A through truck trip is one that doesn't have any business or any stops in Fort Collins. Ricord: On the piece in the packet, it says that the action requested is just an informational update. On the last page, you are soliciting feedback and additional recommendations. How are those going to be used and distributed? I think it may be well for us to copy Council with whatever our feedback and thoughts are, even though it's not an action item. It would seem consistent with our standard procedure. Also, will we have another chance to weigh in on this as an action item? Jackson: Probably not. It's just informational because it's really programmatic and has been approved by Council. We just plan to keep coming to you with key milestones and making sure it's understood why we're doing what we're doing. Your feedback is just as important to us as that of the trucking industry. Ricord: Second page of the packet materials, is says that there was a workshop/focus group and a market advisory committee and that this committee advises the Project Team. Can you tell me a little about who is on the Project Team besides the two of you? Jackson: The project team is basically myself and the consultant team. The Consultant team consists of PBS&J doing the transportation planning and engineering elements, Intermountain Corporate Affairs does the public relations and the messaging, and Rinehardt Advertising, which is a marketing based group. Ricord: So how did so many economic development interests come to be advisory to the project? APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 5 Jackson: Really, to call that group a committee is almost a misnomer. What we wanted to do, was we had talked to the trucking industry and to the people who had crafted the ballot language so we had really good feedback from them, but we didn't really have a lot of feedback from the folks that actually had businesses in Old Town or on the US 287 corridor or who were concerned with economic development activities in Fort Collins. What we wanted to do was specifically talk to them to let them know why we're doing what we're doing and see if they felt that anything we were trying to do would have a potential to have a negative impact on any of their efforts. Ricord: Was it discussed at all in this committee to have other interested parties in the community discuss other impacts to the community such as State and things like that. Neighborhood impacts and such. Jackson: Only through the individual stakeholder types of interviews and the public open house type of process. Safety is always an issue, but the accident data within the Fort Collins -US 287 area really doesn't show that there is a large truck collision problem. Ricord: So are traffic counts being done on Vine or will there be to substantiate any concerns that may exist about that? Millar: We have an evaluation plan concept with the issues that we know we want to try to evaluate, but we have not developed yet any specific evaluations. Ricord: On the next page, the average daily traffic on the Interstate you say is between 12k — 15k total. Can you tell me where the measurement was taken? Millar: That data was based on CDOT's permit count stations and from WYDOT. Ricord: On the next page, you talk about improvements and corridor amenities. What kinds of amenities are you talking about? Millar: Truck stops with fuel, showers, restaurants, parking, service. The primary amenity is a nice truck stop. Ricord: So with the marketing effort what we're talking about is potentially, if things go really well, a 10% reduction and that's with a price tag of $321k? Millar: This is a good time to point out that it's a rule of thumb, a marketing estimate and is just kind of a gauge of where we might end up. The important thing is that we actually implement it. Jackson: I'd like to point out too, that this set of sub -strategies is not designed to solve the entire problem. It's a set of strategies designed to encourage a travel behavior change. This one is focused specifically on truck drivers and is not meant to take everyone off the roadways. Ricord: The noise ordinance in place on SH 14 — is CDOT going to allow that? APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 6 Jackson: The ordinance they're talking about is the compression brake muffler law and that's in place. All trucks that use compression (Jake) brakes, must have a muffler on them. Ricord: Do you know if there is any enforcement data out there about that in terms of whether or not that actually is affected very often? Jackson: Only anecdotally. The trucking industry tells us that the percentage of truckers who don't have some sort of muffler device on their trucks is slim. It's almost becoming an unnecessary legislation. Ricord: Do you know if the law on the books for the City off the state system is a decibel related ordinance that's enforceable? And finally just some feedback: in terms of completeness of the efforts of the non -route based strategy, I would fully support the money spent for a 10% reduction. I think it's important that we go ahead and try this and evaluate it and see if in fact our marketing efforts are successful. We won't know unless we try. A concern I've had for a long time is the truck pass through traffic off system and specifically on Vine Drive because it is a parallel facility to SH 14. I only have anecdotal data as well, but I've watched that pass through traffic there for a long time. It does tend to spike on the Vine Drive facility when the downtown area is already congested. So it seems the truck driving culture knows when to avoid downtown and find an alternative route. That was reinforced with the detour system that we had in place when the North College construction was happening. If you've looked at the condition of the pavement on Vine Drive east of Lemay, all the way to I-25, there are some very bad ruts that are being caused by this type of truck traffic and I just think that in the interest of good stewardship of the City infrastructure, it's important for us to take these kinds of issues very seriously because we do have a state system that is supposed to handle this kind of traffic. I think a big piece that might get us a lot further than 10% is for the City to first designate the SH 14 system as the City sanctioned truck route. We've talked a lot about that off and on. I think it's something that's going to have to come to pass if we're going to take the off - system pass through traffic seriously. I would submit that your numbers of 600 trucks a day on the State system only represents a fraction of the actual pass through traffic that comes through Fort Collins every day on other systems. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 7 My input to you and to council is that this piece you're talking about is great, but it's only a fraction. Another facet we need to put on the table is a designation of an official truck route on the state system and using whatever methods are at our disposal to eliminate or to prevent unsanctioned pass -through traffic off the state system. Johnson: I think it might be worth suggesting that in a brochure, the faster route (I-25) be color coded with green and the slower route (SH 14 and US 287) through town be in red. This would help encourage the routes we want them to be on. Thordarson: Is there any way to improve Sherman Hill? Millar: There is a safety study going on right now to look at it. Henderson: Once these strategies are put into place and you have sort of a base line, could you remove temporarily some of these strategies to look at effectiveness of some of the individual strategies? Henderson: Question for the board, should we send a letter to Council? What do others think? Thomas: Good idea. Let's try it and see what happens. Johnson: And maybe add that the Council asks staff to develop recommendations for designated routes. After a short discussion, there was a motion by Ricord that the Board recommends to Council our support for the marketing endeavor that's been presented and that Council requests data from staff regarding local route usage of pass -through truck traffic. There was a second by Johnson. The motion carried unanimously. Chair Henderson will draft a letter and distribute it electronically for board review. 7. ACTION ITEMS None 18. REPORTS a. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Johnson: Roundabout Article. We put the Kansas roundabout article in the packets and I'll pass around another one for next month's packet. There's also an article in the Fort Collins Weekly worth sharing so I'll have that in the packets too. Thordarson: Roundabout Experience. I also have a roundabout note. I spent a week in Portland and had the opportunity use a roundabout every day and it functioned wonderfully. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board July 21, 2004 Page 8 Chair Henderson: Street Cleaning. I have a question for staff: Is there a set schedule for sweeping the shoulder of wide streets/bike lanes? Specifically I'm referring to Harmony. A friend of mine was riding his bike about 2 weeks ago and hit a piece of 2x4 in the bike path and he broke his collar bone. So, what is the maintenance schedule? Bachman: I'll find out and get it to you. b. STAFF REPORTS Jackson: $Rrigg Canyon Park Design. Chair Henderson sent an email expressing some concern on some issues regarding the new community park that's being planned over on the west side of town between Drake and Horsetooth, basically where Overland Trail ends. The park design process is just getting started. A full traffic impact study will be required. Kathleen Reavis is a liaison for Transportation on this. It's very early in the process so there's plenty of time to weigh in. After a brief discussion, it was agreed that this item will be on the August agenda Herzig: N. College Celebration. August 13 is the date for the N. College Avenue celebration. 19. OTHER BUSINESS I 10. ADJOURN Chair Henderson adjourned the meeting at 7:59 p.m. Respectfully submitted, 4aLl-� &44, Cynthia Cass Executive Administrative Assistant City of Fort Collins — Transportation Services