Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 03/15/19950 Draft minutes to be approved by the Board at the April 19, 1995 meeting. TRANSPORTATION BOARD MEETING MINUTES MARCH 15, 1995 5:50 - 7:35 P.M. FOR REFERENCE: Chair - Colin Gerety (970)546-0460 Vice Chair - Paul Valentine 493-0100 Council Liaison - Will Smith 223-0425 Staff Liaison Rick Ensdorff 221-6608 Secretary Cindy Scott 221-6608 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Mark Egeland, Colin Gerety, Dolores Highfield, Elizabeth Hudetz, Ray Moe, Paul Perlmutter, and Paul Valentine. BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Alan Beatty and Sara Frazier. STAFF/COUNCIL/GUESTS PRESENT: Eric Bracke and Cindy Scott. AGENDA: Call to Order Approval of Minutes B. ACTION ITEMS C. DISCUSSION ITEMS 1. Statewide Plan 2. Board Member's Comments 3. Update from Staff 4. Summary/Next Agenda 5. Other Business Chair Gerety called the meeting to order at 5:50 p.m. There was a motion and a second to approve the February 15, 1995 Transportation Board meeting minutes as presented. Comments: Perlmutter asked Bracke if he was referring to an overall 95% confidence level (page 2) or on just one part. Bracke explained that it is overall. Perlmutter expressed his surprise that 95% is hoped for, it seems high considering the usually poor response to surveys, etc. Gerety wanted to clarify something he said on page 3 about the access to electronic information. 1) He thinks the City should make information available through the "worldwide web" as opposed to Internet and Fort Net is fine because it is a worldwide web site. 2) The City ought to get onto an electronic mail system so that people in the City are addressable through normal Internet electronic mail. There was a motion and a second to approve the meeting minutes as amended. The motion carried by a unanimous vote. A. PUBLIC COMMENT None B. ACTION ITEMS None C.1. STATEWIDE TRANSPORTATION PLAN Bracke stated that he has been in Transportation Planning for 15 years and has never seen a "boondoggle" such as this. He passed around a copy of a letter to Bill Vidal, CDOT's Executive Director. The letter states the MPO's position on the Statewide Plan. He explained that ISTEA requires each state to develop a transportation plan and Colorado started their plan about a year and a half ago in conjunction with the 15 Transportation Planning Regions (TPR's) throughout the state. It started off as a policy plan, trying to identify issues of state significance, ways to enhance revenues, establishing some policies and strategies for financial investments. All of the regional plans that were completed, including ours, were to be incorporated by reference, which in each of those plans there were preferred plans/vision plans and the financially constrained plans. He said that we prioritized our financially constrained plan, but we did not prioritize our vision plan. Half of the TPR's probably didn't even prioritize and everybody did them differently. Everyone has different issues and needs and there was not good coordination between all of the TPR's. For instance, the Upper Front Range Planning Council adamantly believed that 1-25 should be 6 lanes, we didn't - there's a block there. Boulder County believed that US 287 needs to be widened and bypass around Berthoud. We didn't think that it was worth our financial resources to do that, it was too big of a chunk out of what we thought we were going to receive, so you can see that there wasn't good coordination. r • . In late December, Governor Romer required that the State Department Of Transportation come up with a list of projects for the state in priority order and by mode, which means that we need to find a way to prioritize bikeway projects in Durango against roadway projects in Baca county against Transit projects in Fort Collins and decide what's the most important and come up with a list. If you take all of the 15 TPR's vision plans, there is approximately 34,000 projects that are listed - which comes to approximately $32 billion worth of projects. To make it more manageable, CDOT decided on looking at the vision plans, taking only the top 35%, of which we didn't prioritize, and looking at it instead of a 20 year plan as a 6 year plan. There is a State Transportation Improvement Program, for us it's just called the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) and it automatically becomes incorporated into the STIP. Those projects were counted as givens because they are funded they are the most important. If you take a look at the list, the money runs out in the year 1995-2000 (Line 27). The rest are the wish lists. We are a part of CDOT's Region IV, they were in charge of determining what the priorities were on the highway side and the Denver office was responsible for the priorities of all the other modes. This entire process is intended to be completed by June 1 to have a Statewide Transportation Plan. The way it's going now, there is a State Transportation Advisory Committee (STAC) that says if the State continues on its current path, they're going to have a state transportation plan that absolutely nobody buys off on. Within our Region IV, Doug Rames (CDOT) deals with 4 TPR's: Boulder county as a portion of DRCOG; the North Front Range Council; the Upper Front Range Council; and the eastern plains. Bracke distributed a hand-out that represent his priorities for his region. There have been a number of comments that relate to all of these lists and we can go through them, but we don't have a problem with 1-27, that is what we're funding, but then if you take a look at what we've got within our region (blue lined), it's pretty blank, not much in there. We have never answered the question as a region, if we had more resources, is that where we want to put the money: US 287 Berthoud Bypass; US 287 north to the Little Thompson to SH 402 - Berthoud Bypass; Greeley Business Route Expansion; or Greeley Bypass. According to the region, these are our priorities. Bracke then went over each list by mode and answered questions and comments from the Board. He said that the major reason that this list is being compiled is that at some point in the near future, this list is going to be the foundation to go to the voters asking for some type of revenue to pay for it to show that there is a major shortfall. We expect in the next 20 years, about $11 billion dollars to come into Colorado and there is about $32 billion worth of needs. He said he doesn't think that anybody would argue that we do need more money to complete what we need to complete to provide an efficient transportation system, but we need to make sure that the projects that get paid for are the ones we really want. Each of the six regions combined are responsible for the 15 TPR's. There is some overlap such as DRCOG. Our number one priority was to develop a Transportation Demand Management program. They didn't have the space for it and it was dropped. A new category has since been created to accommodate the TDM, but unfortunately has become a catch-all. Bracke said that on Monday, this list needs to be combined into multi -modal priorities then into one list by April 1 and submitted to Denver. There was a meeting on Monday afternoon with reps from the other TPR's and the group went through each of these. Bracke said that at this point we are at the top of the list in one category - we got most of the transit projects moved up higher as a result of that meeting. Chair Gerety asked if the Board would like to recommend anything to City Council on this issue. Bracke said that the North Front Range Council is responding with a letter to the Executive Director at CDOT, Bill Vidal, with copies to affected interests. The State Transportation Advisory Committee is in the process of sending a letter to the Transportation Commission asking them to put the brakes on the process, saying let's do the process right, etc. The other 2 major MPO's are equally upset as are a number of county commissioners. Bracke further stated that the MPO would like to see this take at least through the summer to do it right. Perlmutter said that a comment to Council should be that the US 287 Bypass issue is one that should be recognized - it needs to get done. Egeland said that the fact that this project isn't on the list doesn't disturb him because he was hoping that it would be possible to work something out between these entities that are dealing with it. He said that the message he would like to send to Council is that Romer seems to be in there stirring the pot and he's basically screwing up the plan. This is supposed to be citizen based, the people closest to the issues, that knew the most about it, it was their input and now, he's getting in there and stirring it and messing things up. Don't circumvent the process!l Moe said that FTA had a conformity hearing a couple of weeks ago on the process and how it works and they allowed people to speak out on whether they felt that the process to develop these plans was adequate, primarily dealing with ISTEA which seems to him could be a big issue associated with that process. If anything, "cc:"ing them regarding these lists and complaining to the appropriate people would be the thing to do, get them involved. Chair Gerety said that the options are: - Letter to City Council suggesting that they do something; - Letter of support to MPO Council's letter; - Letter saying that we have concerns about the process or about individual projects that are on/off the lists; or - Ignore the whole issue and allow it to be dealt with through other means. Valentine said that the Board should send a letter supporting the MPO Council and many board members agreed. Gerety asked if anybody is thinking about the state as a whole? Having a bottoms up process is a good idea in that you conceivably get the most amount of citizen participation from the people closest to individual problems who know what's going on. On the other hand, for a statewide transportation system, he would think that somebody ought to be looking at the thing top down. Is there anybody doing that? Bracke replied that this is a good question. Perlmutter asked when the powers -to -be agree upon some sort of prioritized list, how will we know that after the money is allocated and received that the prioritized list will remain sacred. He then said that he will pass on making a recommendation on this issue. Valentine said that we may not necessarily like the rules of the game, but we can't afford to be out of the game. We have to participate. We did score points in getting transit higher on the list. Chair Gerety suggested that he would drop a short note that basically goes to Council and presumably goes in one of their packets for a work session asking them to support the North Front Range's efforts. Egeland suggested that the note be attached to the list the board reviewed tonight. Bracke said that Will Smith is the rep for Fort Collins on the MPO and he will share the letter with the City Council as well as the members of the MPO. C.2. BOARD MEMBER'S COMMENTS Valentine said that the Bikeway Focus Group is still plugging away. He asks Betty Drake about the survey results at every meeting. Egeland said that he will mention to Betty that perhaps the group ought to prioritize their vision plan in light of the statewide planning issues. He said that the Focus Group is trying for a May 23 deadline for City Council. The meetings have doubled in order to be ready. Highfield said that in regards to paratransit issues, Care -A -Van (CAV) versus Shamrock Taxi, the CAV issue is still in the appeal process and on March 30, they will appeal the decision that was made to oust them in favor of another company. The appeal on March 30 will be to the Financial Director and this is the last step that they can take before they go to court. Egeland said construction will start on County Road 9 soon. The idea is to have partial closures starting in the next couple of weeks and then sometime in April, they will close the whole thing down. Valentine stated that the connection is being put in for north Fort Collins down through Vine Drive. There will be a way for bicyclists to get from the north side of town to downtown without going on College or Lemay. There will be a path through Redwood. C.3. UPDATE FROM STAFF Bracke stated that the Board will be seeing some work that's been done on the one-way couplet next month. Bracke said that he had hoped to have a copy of the survey for Origin & Destination, but it wasn't quite ready. He will have this available at the next meeting. There is a press conference scheduled for March 30 to kick off the TDM study at Kodak and announcing what we going to be doing. By the second week of April things should be underway. CA. SUMMARY/NEXT AGENDA - One-way Couplet - Update on Statewide Plan (?) C.S. OTHER BUSINESS There being no other business, the meeting adjourned at 7:35 p.m. AX7 Cindy L. cott, Secretary