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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 09/21/1994Draft minutes to be approved by the Board at the October 19, 1994 meeting. TRANSPORTATION BOARD MEETING MINUTES SEPTEMBER 21, 1994 5:45 - 7:35 P.M. FOR REFERENCE: Chair - Colin Gerety 229-2523 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, Sara Frazier, Colin Gerety, Dolores Highfield, Paul Perlmutter, and Paul Valentine. BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Mark Egeland, Elizabeth Hudetz, and Dave Lemesany. STAFF/COUNCIL PRESENT: Rick Ensdorff, Ron Phillips, and Cindy Scott. Chair Gerety called the meeting to order at 5:45 p.m. AGENDA: A. ACTION ITEMS 1. Approval of Minutes 2. Election of New Officers B. PUBLIC COMMENT C. DISCUSSION ITEMS 1. Congestion Management Plan - Update 2. Regional Transportation Plan - Update 3. Meeting Summary/Next Meeting Agenda 4. Other Business A.I. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion, and a second to approve the meeting minutes. Board Member Valentine asked that the last item in section C.3. be amended to read, "Valentine asked for information on one-way streets and to have one-way streets become a discussion item for the Board at some date in the near future." The Board unanimously voted to approve the August 17, 1994 Transportation Board minutes as amended. Ensdorff asked for clarification on this item. Valentine stated that he would like to know why we have them, the history, what their economic impact would be, and what would it take to change them back? Ensdorff stated that it would not be unreasonable to have it on the next agenda as most of the information has already been gathered and is easily accessible. Chair Gerety noted that there have been other items that the Board was to have revisited, but hasn't, one of those items being tax issues to replace the 1/4 cent sales tax in Choices '95. Ensdorff responded that he is working with Alan Krcmarik on that to generate some numbers and that it just isn't finished yet. A.2. ELECTION OF NEW OFFICERS Chair Gerety asked the Board if the current structure and the current level of officers is sufficient. Highfield asked how Gerety feels about this question. He responded that he hasn't felt uncomfortable, he would like to spend more time on the issues that come up, but in terms of the function of the Board, he feels that it is up to the other members of the Board to decide whether or not it is functioning okay or not. Valentine stated that he sees no reason to change and Perlmutter seconded that. Chair Gerety stated that he doesn't mind chairing, on the other hand, if someone else wants to try it out, he would not mind. Valentine nominated Gerety as Chair and stated that he would not be adverse to being vice chair. Gerety asked if there is anyone else who would be interested. There being no one, Perlmutter made a motion to elect Gerety as Chair and Valentine as Vice Chair. There was a second by Highfield, and the vote passed unanimously. Ensdorff introduced Ron Phillips. Ron stated that he has been with the City for a few months as the Director of Planning. City Council recently extracted four departments from existing service areas and created a new Transportation Service Area. Steve Burkett named Mr. Phillips as the director of that new area as of last week. He stated that he is here to meet the Board, get acquainted, and observe. He is excited about the direction transportation is going with alternative modes. He explained that he was also the Town Manager for Vail for 8 1/2 years which has the second largest bus system in the state, carrying about 3 million passengers a year. There is a lot of emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle movement in the community and there are village cores where vehicles are not allowed except for deliveries so he has had some background in this area. The new Transportation Service Area is made up of Streets, Transportation, Transfort, and Engineering. B. PUBLIC COMMENT None C.I. CONGESTION MANAGEMENT PLAN -UPDATE Ensdorff stated that the last Congestion Management meeting was somewhat difficult, in that there were differences of opinion as to where it should go next. We have been trying to find a comfortable place that everyone can agree on. He mentioned that Gerety was a part of the Congestion Management Plan group and should feel free to add to the discussion. -2- Background: This whole thing started off as a project to do a Congestion Management Plan (CMP) - a CMP is a term that was developed by the federal government and a requirement for certain communities. We were one of those communities, but that has changed. We don't necessarily have to have a CMP. Our CMP has turned into a lot more than that. It is a land use plan and more. He asked what the Board would like to hear on the different issues. Valentine stated that he would like to have a discussion on Chapter 8. Ensdorff said that that is the part that is changing. Valentine stated that there is one term he doesn't understand - parking cash out. Ensdorff explained that it is a concept where instead of having a parking place for employers at a larger business, the employee gets a certain amount of money for not bringing their car to work and therefore the employer doesn't have to put the money into developing and maintaining a parking lot. The concept is, "If you don't build it, they won't come." One of the major concepts of this plan has been the land use, transportation, and air quality (LUTRAQ) relationship. It is a given that what this process has identified is that you can't do one without the other. In the past, there have been attempts to do a transportation plan and then work out the details of land use. What we really have a good handle on is that the relationship is so strong that we have to look at those issues together and if we make changes or set policy in one area, then we have to understand and deal with the implications it has in the other areas. Many communities are moving in this direction and are making the commitment to look at planning as a unified effort in all those areas. Denver, however, is working on a CMP, but they have specifically said they are not going to deal with land use. The reason is political and complexity. They realize they can't do much with land use when they are dealing with 36 different governmental agencies that are members of the Denver Regional Council Of Governments (DRCOG). Ensdorff stated that we have been tweaking different land use models and using different transportation scenarios, spending more money, trying to achieve a different mode split and then seeing what those mean for some of our transportation and air quality policies. We think we have refined the process so we have a credible effort of looking at those relationships. Gerety stated that there was a broad representation on the group and they voted on areas that they thought should be addressed or could be addressed. The land use was one area that very early on, generated a lot of interest in the citizen group. They were cognizant of the fact that land use has something to do with transportation and air quality. Part of it also revolved around already adopted city goals, such as reduction of VMT and improved air quality. Ensdorff stated that the citizen group has developed into a real good microcosm of the community with different points of view. We have looked at a variety of different land uses in transportation: Sprawl - doing things the way they are now; Doing a land use pattern that would be strictly in keeping with our existing policies, we believe that what's happening now is not a strict compliance with our existing policies; Growth Management - a significant intensification of density in the community. On the transportation side, the group looked that the existing system; changing the amount of money we spend - double the amount of money; changing the mode split. All those were measured against existing transportation and air quality policies. In all our efforts, we could not achieve all those policies. -3- There are a lot of issues adherent in that statement, but that is accurate, we weren't able to meet the existing city policies, so what the committee did as a next step was look at another land use model and we called that "activity centers". This was sort of a hybrid between the existing policies and high density. Instead of putting high density all over the community in vacant areas, but to consolidate it in activity centers, so in fact you would be creating a synergy in these higher density activity centers, we then have the ability to achieve more alternative mode types of transportation. In these activity centers we would expect a significant increasing mode split because of the dimensions and the ability to walk, etc. The rest of the community would still have relatively the same density rate, which is three units per acre. The higher density would be somewhere on an average of 6 units per acre. This activity center concept comes the closest to meeting the existing city policies. Gerety stated that it should be pointed out that in that scenario that there was also an increase (doubling) of the amount of money spent. The results aren't anticipated or expected to come up with a solution. This process was an attempt to better understand the relationship. Currently, after discussions with the committee, we have taken Chapter 8 of the Plan and broken it into two parts. One is more of the congestion management part and the other would be the land use, transportation and air quality relationships part. The reason we are proposing to break them into two parts, is that most importantly, the LUTRAQ part needs more processing through the community. City dialogue is creating a forum and an opportunity to the community to talk about where we want the community to go, what we want it to look like and hopefully get into a discussion about how we want to get there. We believe that we can't come to closure on the LUTRAQ part of this, without the other process moving ahead. The work we've done can serve the community well as background information to help in understanding those relationships. The LUTRAQ, with some policy change recommendations to Council, will be in one package and the other package will be more of the pure CMP components - strategies for dealing with congestion, a monitoring system, and a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Program. Chapter 8 will be re -written in such a way that shows the separation of these two things and packages them differently. One part will go into the citizen process, the other part will go to City Council with a proposal to adopt a TDM program, to fund the monitoring process, etc. At this point it is unknown how the citizen input process will take place. Gerety stated that the notion of an activity center is exciting, because if you want people to use alternative modes, then places have to be close enough so that they can either walk, bike or use transit. He sees this as one of the plans that really have the potential to succeed. Beatty asked for the basics on an activity center. Ensdorff responded that there are existing centers (the makings of ones) - downtown and CSU. They are the focal point of jobs, businesses, restaurants. Downtown lacks in residential, but it is something that we can build from with the existing structure and densities there could handle intensification better than anything else right now. There are six or seven activity centers total in the city and in those activity centers, we would expect the majority of new growth over the next 20 years to happen there. The concept is to intensify residential (higher density that would necessitate a high percentage of multi -family development in those centers) and retail. It could be looked at as a "town center". Transit would become more efficient, taking people from center to center. The Board discussed activity centers further. Ensdorff stated that the CMP is going to a City Council Work Session on October 11. This issue will then have to come back to the Board at the October meeting. -4- Frazier stated that she is sitting in on the review and assessment of consulting firms for the Larimer County Transit Development Plan. She asked if there is anything that she should bring up regarding transit in the activity centers. Ensdorff stated that Transfort is aware of this concept. She invited the Board to stay and look at the proposals and give her any comments that they may want her to take along to the interviews. Frazier asked if anything has been done on the carpool voucher plan that the Board submitted. Ensdorff suggested that she ask Daggett at the interviews. C.2. REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION PLAN - UPDATE Ensdorff presented an update on the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). He distributed a hand out that explains the Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Plan in more detail. He stated that the North Front Range Transportation & Air Quality Planning Council approved the RTP at their September 15 meeting. The concept of what the NFRT & AQPC approved was a significant shift over the next twenty years in how we spend federal funds and dealing with transportation. Beginning in 1998 and in incremental periods after that, the numbers start changing significantly as far as how much is spent on roadways. In the period of 2007 and 2015, if the funding remains the same, no money will be going towards roadway building at all. It goes to transit and TDM. The most critical thing that came out of the plan as a short term issue is that the Council committed $2.4 million to support TDM in the region. He then went over the TDM hand out. The $2.4 million will not be spent by the NFRT & AQPC, it will be given to the locals (Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley) to implement and enhance TDM programs yet to be determined. In the first part of this fiscal year, starting October 1, we are going to be working on the development of that program(s). The first task (described in the hand-out) is to evaluate the existing - we already do existing TDM work, such as vanpool and carpool. They have been increased over the last year and we want to analyze those more definitively and find out just how effective they are and move on from there. Transit is involved in that. The second task is to research and evaluate existing TDM programs. TDM is an umbrella term for all kinds of different things. We are researching how others nationally deal with the issues and we also have some good information on local examples such as Boulder and Colorado Springs. The Board will be provided with some background information on what we have researched. We believe we can get a 4% reduction in SOV trips over a three year period through this type of a program. The NFRT & AQPC's goal in the RTP was to achieve a 10% reduction in SOVs over the next 20 years. Some feel it is too low, some think it is very high. To put it in perspective, it is the highest targeted amount of any transportation plan in the state. The next highest is 2.5% in the Colorado Springs MPO area. The third task is the monitoring system. If we are going to set these targets, we need to have a monitoring system that can tell us how we are doing. We have very poor data right now. We have some traffic volume numbers, but in the area of trip making, we don't have anything. -5- The fourth part is what we are going to do. Public relations, marketing, education, and outreach are all critical. This identifies employer based trip reduction programs as a specific target. There is variety of different percentages on how much of the total trips are work oriented, but we believe it is about 25%. There is a caution on how much effort we should put into changing trip behavior for commute trips, but it is also the type of trip that has a tremendous opportunity to show a change sooner than later. C.3. MEETING SUMMARY/NEXT MEETING AGENDA Upon Perlmutter's suggestion, it was agreed that Board Members should think about the current meeting day and time, does it still work best for everyone? The Board will discuss this at the beginning of the next meeting. The primary Action Item will be the Congestion Management Plan. One-way Streets will be a discussion item. Information on the bike surveys may be ready and placed under Discussion Items. The Board's opportunity for input on the TDM Program will be on the November agenda. CA. OTHER BUSINESS Ensdorff stated that City Council tabled the paratransit item, so Transfort is creating a citizens group to re -assess the plan. They have asked for a member of the Transportation Board to participate in this group. Highfield volunteered and Cindy will provide Transfort with her name and number. There being no other business, the meeting adjourned at 7:35 p.m. Cindy Lj$cott, Secretary