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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 12/21/1994• Draft minutes to be approved by the Board at the January 18, 1995 meeting. TRANSPORTATION BOARD MEETING MINUTES DECEMBER 21, 1994 5:50 - 7:50 P.M. FOR REFERENCE: Chair Colin Gerety 546-0460 Vice Chair — Paul Valentine 493-0100 Council Liaison — Will Smith 223-0425 Staff Liaison — Rick Ensdorff 221-6608 Board Secretary — Cindy Scott 221-6608 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Alan Beatty, Mark Egeland, Sara Frazier, Colin Gerety, Dolores Highfield, Paul Perlmutter, and Paul Valentine. BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Elizabeth Hudetz and Dave Lemesany Chair Gerety called the meeting to order at 5:50 p.m. AGENDA: A. ACTION ITEMS 1. Approval of Minutes 2. Bus Shelter Advertisement 3. 1995 Work Plan B. PUBLIC COMMENT C. DISCUSSION ITEMS 1. North College Avenue Plan - Briefing 2. Fort Collins/Loveland Corridor - Briefing 3. Meeting Summary/Next Meeting Agenda 4. Board Member's Comments 5. Other Business A.1. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion, a second and a unanimous vote to approve the November 16, 1994 Transportation Board meeting minutes as presented. A.2. BUS SHELTER ADVERTISEMENT Daggett noted that the reason for bringing this to the Transportation Board is that this item is going to City Council on January 3. He referenced a letter to the Planning and Zoning Board that was included in the packets. It explains that Transfort is asking Council to put an exception in the Sign Code for bus shelter advertising. Only one of the side panels of the shelters would have ads. Bus benches are excepted in the sign code because their primary purpose is for something other than advertisement, so in this regard, it is the same as bus benches in the sense that the shelter is really there for purposes other than advertising. Daggett said that Council will be asked to except the shelters and as explained in the letter, Transfort is taking about a $120,000 hit from the federal government for 1995 and this is one of two programs that are designed to make up that short fall. This particular program will produce about $35,000 of revenue to Transfort and the other program, putting external advertising on the buses, will produce about $100,000. He went over the packet of information: Page 1 is the letter that explains the two programs he just talked about. Page 2 is an announcement about the advertising. Page 3 shows why shelters should be excepted: they are a much needed customer amenity for transit passengers; shelters can add non -tax revenue to funding for transit services in Fort Collins; shelters can help meet Transfort's ADA responsibilities - it is all farmed out to a private company who are building and maintaining the shelters; shelter capitalization and maintenance can be transferred to the private sector. The concept is to go to bid and select a firm. That firm would agree to build x shelters per year with a long term agreement to be able to advertise on one panel within the shelter. That will pay for the pouring of the pad, construction of the shelter, purchase of the shelter materials and also give Transfort a revenue of about $35,000 a year and generate a profit for the company who is doing it. In the next 5 - 10 years, there will bean increase in shelters starting with 15 and then 20, 25, 30 and so on. There are currently 17 shelters in the city system out of 545 bus stops. Obviously, there is not much coverage from the weather for customers. Phillips added that this is a proposal to exempt the city from it's own rules for the social purpose of providing shelters at no cost to the city and providing revenue to help offset some of the expense of providing transit services. Gerety asked if there are size limits - Daggett replied that it is limited to the side panel of the shelter. The Board asked a few more questions and then Chair Gerety asked if the board would like to make a recommendation to the City Council. He said that there seems to be a general feeling of endorsement with a few concerns such as: making sure to get the highest price possible; that some stops be reserved for Transfort ads; that the funds should be pumped back into Transfort as opposed to general funds; and having limits in the ordinance restricting the types, content, size and style of ads. Gerety will compose a letter with a recommendation outlining these concerns. A.3. 1995 WORK PLAN Chair Gerety stated that he talked with everyone about the past year and where the Board is heading. He heard concerns about how much the board initiates versus how much they track and how the board communicates. He and Ensdorff came up with a similar work plan for 1995 as the one for 1994 that outlines the items that will be tracked by members and lists major projects for direct action. Egeland suggested that there be a place on the agenda for staff to update the board on what has happened in the last month to improve communication. Chair Gerety went over the work plan, briefly going over each project listed. After a discussion, it was agreed that "Major Projects" would be renamed "Direct Board Action" and "On -going Projects" would be titled "Board Monitoring". After a discussion, there was a motion, a second and a unanimous vote to approve the following the 1995 Work Plan: DIRECT BOARD ACTION: - Transportation Financial Plan - One-way Couplet - Transportation Demand Management - Comprehensive Plan/ Land Use/Urban Design - Pedestrian Plan - Downtown Parking Plan - Transit Development Plan BOARD MONITORING: - Prospect/Shields Neighborhood Plan - Alternative Transportation Program - Harmony Road Bike Project Design - LaPorte Lot Operation (Alternative Transportation) - Statewide Transportation Plan - Bus Fares - Timberline Extension - College/Prospect (design) - College/Drake (design) ? - Taft Hill/Drake (design) ? - Vermont Underpass (design) - SH 14/US 287 Corridor - Statewide Plans for Transportation - Bikeway Plan - Rail Feasibility - Fort Collins/Loveland Corridor Plan Cindy will submit the final plan to the City Clerk's office tomorrow. B. PUBLIC COMMENT Sandy Lemberg: My perception of what's going on is that the Board now looks like it is taking more initiative than I have seen, but the main thrust of my comments is going to be to suggest that the board do just that which is to take initiative. It seems that the make-up of the board since I've known it has been basically in favor of alternative modes, but it sometimes gets sidetracked by staff and I was hoping to see the board take more initiative, for instance, on rail feasibility. Specifically, there are a bunch of new stop signs. Some on Peterson by the library and one at Cherry/Sherwood. The traffic light on Mountain and Shields were changed so that it's only green for one direction at a time for east/west. I don't believe that this board knew about any of these things before they happened, the city just does these things, I don't think that this is right. It seems as if it is the policy of the city to put up more and more stops, causing congestion, pollution, totally unnecessarily. The board needs to adopt a policy stating that it needs to see those things first. Regarding the Statewide Transportation Planning (Regional Transportation Plan), the MPO was told in no uncertain terms by 50 people that that is not what people want. First of all, their public outreach process was inadequate and Citizen Planners and some other people are now going forward and asking the feds to rework the plan because they didn't allow adequate citizen input. Basically, they met for a year and a half and pretty much did what they pleased, they put their notices of meetings as a 2" x 2" ad on the back page of the newspaper. They called that their process saying that they did everything they could, but they continued to do the same thing, so we finally asked people to come. We put up posters, sent out mailings and got 50 people to the meeting and every person that came, except staff, wanted more in alternative modes and did not want more roads built and now they are talking about widening 1-25. Phillips interjected that it is not the MPO, the MPO is not pushing for widening of 1-25. Lemberg: Widening of 1-25 is going to do nothing, it will not have any positive effects, so I feel that Council should (and this Board should ask them to do that) make a statement to CDOT that they are concerned, this is unacceptable and that they will do whatever they can to fight it. Phillips stated that there was an article referring to 1-25 between Colorado Springs and Denver and Senator Ray Powers is from Colorado Springs and he is the one that is going to be pushing to take the 80 million dollars that now comes off the top of each HTF monies and put it back into roads, but there is no discussion of 1-25 north of Denver. Lemberg: I was hoping that this Board would just take the reins and look around and address these and other issues, because I think that it is critical. C.1. FORT COLLINS/LOVELAND CORRIDOR AREA Planner Clark Mapes stated that this presentation was scheduled 6 weeks ago when it was thought that this board would be in the "critical path" of the approval process for both the Fort Collins/Loveland Corridor and the North College Avenue Plan and as it turns out, this is not a critical time for the board after all. He said that he will go ahead and bring the board up to date. He then gave a slide presentation. To touch on the basic highlights, they were: 1. Community identity - separate identity, each have own history. 2. Rural character - open land, natural areas 3. Identity of exactly where the corridor is rd 0 r 4. Support transportation systems that compliments the land use plan without more stop lights on major roads 5. Support land use "clustering" to maintain separateness Mr. Mapes stated that the adoption process was supposed to be done by now. However, it will go through the City Councils, then a joint meeting of the Councils and County Commissioners in late January and then what comes out of that will be a final draft that will go to the Planning & Zoning Board and the boards of the other agencies for a recommendation. The plan might be adopted in March. Gerety stated that in looking back, there has been talk of the plan going to the voters for a number of years and they have yet to do something about this. We missed a great opportunity. People talk about the government taking and down -zoning land and by making it so that the property seems less valuable tomorrow than it was today. Then the other half of that is the government up -zoning of property. One of the things that encourages development is the government providing the infrastructure and over a period of thirty years, all the infrastructure which was necessary for development was provided and now we say, now we don't want anybody to develop, despite the fact that there is sewer, phone, and electricity already there. The only thing which is missing in the corridor for development is a fully developed transportation infrastructure. We missed the boat on the corridor because we didn't decide as a government and as communities where we were going to provide infrastructure and where we were not going to provide infrastructure. Now we have to pay again for the increased value that we put in it by putting the infrastructure in it. In regards to the new sewage treatment plant, Gerety asked if we are going to be providing sewage treatment to people outside of the urban growth area. If so, then in the next few years then the city may be providing a sewage infrastructure which encourages urban sprawl outside of the urban growth area, and there is no Council policy against this?! Phillips responded that there could be. He said you have to try to balance the fact that there is already sewage treatment in areas outside the city which is not doing a good job of treating, so do you ignore that and have a water quality problem or do you say, well it's already happened so we're just making it better? Gerety stated government has traditionally responded exclusively in the direction of providing additional service. C.2. NORTH COLLEGE AVENUE PLAN - BRIEFING Due to time constraints, this item has been deferred until another meeting. C.3. BOARD MEMBER'S COMMENTS Egeland: - The Vermont Underpass design contract has been signed. The underpass will hopefully be done before the new Fort Collins High School is open. - The Hickory/Redwood project will be done in about 3 months. - The last sign has been posted in the Bikeway Signage project. - Bikes on buses is coming in 1995. - Bike Parking project - he would like to hear more on that. Valentine: - The bike survey results should be ready next month, there was a computer glitch causing a delay. The most popular message overall was that there needs to be a much larger education component than even the focus group thought. CA. SUMMARY/NEXT MEETING AGENDA - N. College Avenue Plan update - Congestion Management Plan Recommendation - Beatty stated that perhaps the Board should be informed about what went into traffic changes like stop light and signs. This will be on a future agenda. - Egeland suggested that the public comment portion be conducted the same way as City Council so as not to get involved in discussions or arguments. C.S. OTHER BUSINESS There being no other business, the meeting adjourned at 7:50 p.m. &0• Cindy L. cott, Secretary 0