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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 01/17/2007MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD January 17, 2007 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins Municipal Building 215 N. Mason Street — Community Room FOR REFERENCE: CHAIR: Vacant VICE CHAIR: Gary Thomas 482-7125 STAFF LIAISON: Mark Jackson 416-2029 ADMIN SUPPORT: Cynthia Langren 224-6058 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: James Clausen Sara Frazier Neil Grigg Jeannette Hallock-Solomon Bill Jenkins Rick Price Ed Robert Garry Steen Gary Thomas Kevin Westhuis CITY STAFF: Kathleen Bracke Nicole Hahn Mike Herzig Mark Jackson David Kemp Cynthia Langren Larry Schneider Brian Woodruff ABSENT: Don Edmondson OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE: Judy Dorsey Tim Johnson Nat Burnett Ryan Pooler 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Vice Chair Thomas at 5:58 p.m. 2. WELCOME NEW BOARD MEMBERS Introductions were made and processes explained to the new members, Garry Steen and Bill Jenkins. 3. AGENDA REVIEW Kathleen Bracke will give a brief explanation of the application process for CMAQ projects. This will be the first discussion item, placed before the snow storm report. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 2 4. PUBLIC COMMENT Tim Johnson: Darin Atteberry put together a group before Christmas and New Year's to talk a little about the reorganization of the city and I was invited to participate. The major elements that I could see as it pertains to Transportation are that we will be enveloped by a larger planning department. The concern that I had and some others as well, is that prior to Transportation being organized in the mid-90's, all the elements were scattered all over and I didn't like that. That isn't likely to happen with this reorganization. The key thing for us, in a planning environment, I'd like to see the Transportation Board always looking at Transportation as it serves the city, not as it serves new development. I don't mean to put down new development, but I think we want to be looking at the whole city's needs all the time. This group will have to be vigilant in looking at that. With regard to the Rural Transportation Authority (RTA), this is something new in the state. In Denver, we have an RTD, a Rural Transportation District, which elects its own members and collects its own taxes. An RTA is supposed to serve the rest of the state. We have one other one right now in Colorado Springs and some of you have heard the presentations. It's a way to look at regional transportation under the guidance of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is most of Larimer and Weld counties. The way it would work in the area, the legislative authority, is a way to find money for transportation for the whole region by way of a sales tax, a vehicle registration, and also a road tax if you will for people staying in hotels. The focus for raising money for this organization so far is probably on the sales tax. You have before you a report that was done by the RTA principles committee, which was a group of folks that they selected from Larimer and Weld counties and also from the different cities that were involved. They tried to get representation between environmental community groups and business folks as well. From Fort Collins it was David May from the Chamber, myself and Gordon Thibedeau from United Way who were representing different areas of Fort Collins. There was similar representation from the other entities as well. We tried to come together to look at large principles that would be served by an RTA. The first seven or eight were arrived at rather quickly and received unanimous support. The remainder was significantly difficult for us. We met during the months of October, November and the beginning of December to arrive at these. You can read these on your own at your leisure. Other items that we arrived at that were difficult as we go forward I think it will cause difficulty in the region because we are diverse in our needs in these two counties and how we raise money. What Greeley wants and needs and the way they do things even compared to Weld County, current practices for raising money with regard to things like impact fees are very different from what we do here. Johnson agreed to come back to the board periodically to give updates. S. APPROVAL OF MINUTES (November 2006) There was a motion and a second to approve the November 1006 Transportation Board meeting minutes as presented, Garry Steen noted that his last name was misspelled on the first page. With thatrevision, the motion carried by a unanimous vote, l0 - o. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 6. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. Page 3 ACTION ITEMS a. REVISIONS TO THE LARIMER COUNTY URBAN AREA STREET STANDARDS — M. Herzig Mike Herzig stated that in 2001, City Council adopted the Larimer County Urban Area Street Standards. This was after 3-4 years of work involving Loveland, Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins to develop common technical standards, one document, to be used by all three agencies. The first revisions to these Standards were adopted in October 2002. Staff is now proposing the second set of revisions. There is a list of proposed changes in Exhibit B that was included with the Agenda Item Summary. Much of the changes are fixing typos or adding clarity, not really a lot of substance to them. The only proposed change that creates a potential cost increase for developers is in Chapter 22, Section 22.4.2A 1&2, where the strength requirement for concrete sidewalks and curb and gutter is proposed to increase from 3500 psi concrete to 4000 psi concrete to help eliminate a spauling problem. The contractors have actually asked for this standard, but staff wanted to make sure the developers support it as well. Staff has heard no objections from the developers because they talk to their contractors and staff believes they're convinced because the developers have had some pretty expensive items to repair in the past. The City of Loveland has gone ahead and endorsed these revisions even though they didn't have the same amount of problems with concrete as we did up here. The public process included several informal meetings that were held with the affected interests in developing the revisions. There were also two open houses to allow for review of the final versions of the revisions. Several consulting engineers attended to review the changes and make comments. Board Discussion: Price: We have a lot of cyclists who both commute and ride recreationally in and out of the city. When the county redid north Overland Trail and made nice wide bike lanes/shoulders, there were some real serious problems when you came out of the city and into the county. All those gravel roads made for lots of drag out onto the shoulders so the bikes flying down those beautiful bike lanes had to swerve out into traffic or go right through the gravel. My question is 1) do the Standards address these kinds of issues for bicyclists or do the Standards address any sweeping or maintenance issues? I guess this is a question as much for DK as anybody because this is the type of question that he should be able to answer if anyone asks him. Herzig. The answer is no on the maintenance standards. We don't have maintenance criteria; these are design and construction standards. We do have a rural detail showing some detail back into properties so you don't get sloughing of the gravel that far into the street. I know that on our capital projects, such as South Taft Hill, we paved some of those gravel driveways because we didn't want gravel getting thrown up on the sidewalks. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Page 4 Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Price. How do address that? How do we complain and to whom? Herzig. Since its in the county, you'd have to call Mark Peterson in Larimer County Engineering and see whether they'd do anything about that. Our standards apply to the Urban Growth boundary, and then the County has its own rural road standards. Robert. City Plan changed the streetscape so that there will not be a roll curb sidewalk, there will always be a separator. Has that impacted the standards of how you build curbs? Before they were tied together so they were stronger, but now it's two separate things. Herzig. We have a standard for curb and gutter that stands alone from the sidewalk standard. We do allow on residential streets that they do a drive over curb with no sidewalk and they can separate that. They have to dedicate an extra foot of right-of-way on each side in order to have an 18-inch curb instead of a 6-inch curb. That is a standard that is allowed, they have an option of doing a vertical curb or a drive over curb, but they have to dedicate more ROW for it. The sidewalk is still detached from the curb. Robert. Roundabouts. I read in here and it doesn't have all the details, but it appears that we're using the same roundabout standards that were established by Loveland. Herzig. Loveland has had the most experience with the design and construction of roundabouts. I should add that there is a new appendix being added in here thats labeled as "I" which is Roundabout Design Criteria and our Traffic Engineer, Eric Bracke, has decided from what he reads in that, that he wants to be a part of that too. So we're taking Loveland off of that and it will be for Fort Collins too. Robert. Good! He has some pretty good designs and I would not want to be held to some of the Loveland designs. Thomas There are several pages in here that without reading the entire document, we don't know what we're voting on. We're sort of taking it by faith that all the changes in here are administrative, typographical, housekeeping and that the only real hand grenade, if you will, is this increase in the concrete. Is there anything else in here that as it goes through the review that someone is going to raise the flag and say that you've really changed the world on us. Herzig. We don't expect anything. We've had the public involved throughout, in fact many of the changes came from the users and thats the consultants who use these standards to design by. They find our mistakes. We've also had two open houses and invited the public, the development community and consultants and they've come to those open houses. The books were set out and they sat down and read through the whole thing. Keep in mind that this is a living document and that there are ongoing changes. Hallock-Solomon: You took this to Planning and Zoning Board, right? What was their response? APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 5 Herzig. A lot less than yours tonight. I will also be going before the Affordable Housing Board next month. Grigg made a motion to endorse these revisions to the Street Standards. There was a second by Hailock-Solomon. The motion carried by a majority vote, 9-1. Thomas asked Price if he'd like to state why he is opposed, not that he has to. Price: I'm opposed because of lack of clear direction and time to consider it. This seems like a rubber stamp. If I'd had 30 more days to ask questions; the bicycle issue is a good example. You may not want to insert any bicycle standards in this round, but that would be a nice step forward. This is a complicated document, very detailed with lots of changes, none of which are very substantive for this group to address, yet it sounds to me like a rubber stamp. If someone on Council gets upset about one of these things and says, "What does the Transportation Board say about this?" it would be zip, because we really didn't have time to consider it in depth. Hence, I wonder how valuable this particular action is from this group. If our rubber stamp is really that important, then we should have seen this 30 days ago. Grigg. We are only endorsing the revisions, not the whole entire document. Thomas Fair note. You did raise a point, and I want to thank Mark for doing this. We are now getting a one -page summary, the Agenda Item Summary, that at least gives us a heads up going into these what we're going to be asked to do and what the issues on it would be. Did everyone find this of any value? (Many members responded affirmatively.) Robert. This is basically what we're rubber stamping right here (referring to the AIS). Herzig: Just a reminder that all of these are available on the Internet and they're all in there with the red lines and strikeouts. Thomas thanked Herzig for coming and for taking the time to know what's in the document. Herzig said that if you "Google" street standards, these standards are the number one item. Calls come in from all over the country. Price stated that that deserves a "congratulations"! 8. DISCUSSION ITEMS a. CMAQ PROPOSED LIST — K. Bracke Bracke stated that staff is gearing up for the next cycle of Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funding that is administered through the North Front Range MPO. This cycle is for 2008-09. The MPO has added a new step to the process and their overall turnaround time for the applications is short. The extra step is that staff now has to get endorsements from our City leadership first. It's still not clear what exactly is expected, whether it's a letter of endorsement or what. Bracke said that she wanted to make sure that she is prepared and the board is aware of what projects are being submitted, she put a list of projects together, which was then distributed to the board: "Proposed Project List — City of Fort Collins Transportation Services." She APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 6 explained that this is a compilation of ideas and proposals from several different departments within Transportation Services. The purpose of tonight is just to share this list with the Board. If anyone has input or further questions, call Kathleen. b. SNOW STORM REPORT — L. Schneider Jackson introduced Streets Superintendent Larry Schneider to the Board. He added that these storms were very unusual for Fort Collins and stressed how amazingly dedicated Larry and his crews were/are. Many departments pulled together and there were many sacrifices made. There are some drivers who still have not had a weekend off since the snow started. They gave up their Christmas with their families and New Year's as well. Some worked 12-hour shifts and doubled those at times if needed; amazing dedication. Jackson expressed his appreciation and stated he's very proud to be associated with such hard working dedicated employees. Schneider stated that in his 26 years as Streets Superintendent, this has been the biggest task that he's faced. This was different from previous historical storms because of the sub -zero temperatures that hung around. Schneider presented information on the December 2006 snow storms via PowerPoint. Highlights included: • Storm #1: December 20, 2006 - Total Accumulation: 23.5" - Snow Emergency was declared - Historical snow even, record total snowfall in 24-hour period - Cost: $740,000 • Storm #2: December 28, 2006 Total Accumulation: 10" Cost: $135,000 • Snow removal was completed twice in the downtown area • Crews tackled 20,934 lane miles • 244 blocks of alleys were cleared • City labor hours — 11,000+ hours (Crews worked 24/7 for the past 4 weeks, through the Christmas and New Years holidays) • Calls received by staff: 4,000+ calls • Snow removal efforts continue from sidewalks, school areas, bike lanes, residential requests, drainage issues, asphalt potholes • Many City departments lent a hand and Streets is very appreciative of their help The Board thanked Schneider for coming. Thomas voiced his thanks to Streets on behalf of SAINT because their volunteers were out Tuesday after Christmas, in their private cars, and thanks to the crews, they were out there doing their jobs on back streets and everything. It was a remarkable accomplishment. Thank you. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 7 c. 2007 BIKE EVENTS — D. Kemp Kemp presented a Power Point that included the following highlights for the 2007 Fort Collins Bikes Events, Programs and Campaigns: • Roll into Spring (March 17tl' — May 17ti') • List of various events that start with the St. Patrick's Day parade on March 17 and ends with Adaptive Cycling, 4:30 — 5:30 p.m. May 3 — 17. • PrimarvGoal: To attract and support new bicyclists • Bike Week Events (June 25"' — 30a') Primary Goal: To offer fun, entertaining and creative events that emulate our rich local bicycle culture Back to School Events (Fall 2007 — Spring 2008) PrimaryGoal: To encourage and provide support for school age children to bike and walk to school while working to create safe routes to school and better school environments • Bike Winter Fort Collins (November - ?) PrimaryGoal: To support and encourage bicyclists to use biking as a method of transportation through the winter months OTHER 2007 INFORMATION • Bicycle Friendly Community: Spring campaign drive Apply for "gold" level LAB status & install 10 bicycle friendly community signs Create marketing and advertisements that reflect BFC • Be Seen! Encourage cyclists through marketing and peer influence techniques to ride at night with front and rear lights Spring and Fall campaign drives Working with City of Fort Collins Police Services Working with CSU campus police • Ride Responsibly! Encourage cyclists through marketing and peer influence techniques to ride responsibly in Fort Collins Summer campaign drive Primary Goal: To reduce scofflaws while maintaining a Bicycle Friendly Community atmosphere in Port Collins WEBSITE CORE • FC Bikes e-newsletter: "Momentum" Keeping FC bicyclists informed with bike news E-newsletter matches other city department newsletter -multiple sign up location Advertisements and marketing promote e-newsletter APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 8 • Accident and Close Call Reporting: Citizens are able to report close calls and accidents through website Track problem areas Closures and Detours: Webpage offers information on all current bike trail/bike lane closures and offers detailed detour routes • Bicycle Registry: Self help web -based bicycle registry allows citizens to register their bicycles with Police Services Primary Goal: To equip bicyclists with necessaryinfrastructure support and disseminate information The board thanked Kemp for his outstanding work and enthusiasm d. MOBILITY MANAGEMENT REPORT — B. Woodruff & J. Dorsey The topic is how to best reduce the growth rate of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in Fort Collins, also known as "Transportation Demand Management". This is an important goal of City Plan. The goal stated in City Plan says that our combined efforts to reduce VMT growth should be in the top rank compared to other comparable cities. The Natural Resources department wholeheartedly agrees with this policy, primarily because VMT is the biggest source we have of air pollution in Fort Collins. ThaYs what led us to initiate this project to study best practices. Staff could not complete this project without a lot of help from colleagues in Transportation Planning, SmartTrips and Transfort and we acknowledge their hard work and support. The consultants included Judy Dorsey of The Brendle Group who is here tonight and Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Polity Institute. Staff asked the consultants to look at the best practices of comparable cities in order to point the direction for the City's programs to be the best that they can be. Dorsey discussed the report which was completed in August 2006. The report highlights future demographic and economic trends that will drive City progress, evaluates City mobility management efforts relative to best management practices from leading US cities, discusses potential management options and strategies available to the City and recommends several types of programs that can help Fort Collins achieve its transport planning objectives and provide other economic, social and environmental benefits. The report also identifies needs associated with improving overall best practices in Fort Collins. In particular, it is paramount for the City to secure reliable long-term funding for alternative transportation infrastructure, services, and promotion programs in order to achieve its transportation improvement goals. Woodruff stated that the Natural Resources department role basically ends with the release of this report. The information in the report is available for use by various City departments to use as a guide for further work. Staff hopes that perhaps one of the best uses for the report is in the next round of the Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) process. The report can be used to design offers that can effectively compete for the limited city dollars and the principle here is that mobility management can APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 9 reduce the government's expenditures on transportation. These ideas in the report should be competitive in the budget process if they're packaged as mobility management strategies. They also have the ability to reduce consumer expenditures. Woodruff added that this was an intense report that's 111 pages. Staff encourages the board to look into the full report as there is a lot of valuable information. Board Discussion: Grigg. How does the board move forward with something like mobility management? How can we integrate this? Jackson: This is absolutely a tool that can be used in the upcoming budget cycle and even more importantly since we are undergoing a major reorganization, this type of systems level thinking really opens up a lot of opportunities given the proposed organizational structure. We already do some collaboration in Transportation and Community Planning and Environmental services, but now there will be ways to strengthen and build upon that. Price: Will the Transportation Board be getting a primer on BFO? Last time it happened, I was on the outside looking in. This time I would like to be on the inside pushing up. What role will this board play? I think there are certain issues this board ought to take a proactive role in especially in BFO. Jackson: I would love to involve this board if they are interested. I'm happy to bring you along as we go through the process. Price I'd like to know BEFORE you go through the process, because once you get into the process, it's almost too late for public comment and participation. Jackson: I will see what I can do. Thomas I remember when they did the first BFO, they said there were constrained by time and would do it with City employees, but next round, they said they would include the citizens. Price Please pass along to management, on behalf of the board, that would like to know sooner rather than later and would like to be part of the process. Jackson: Yes. I will pass that along and we're definitely going to need your help. Thomas Would it be unfair for us to ask you to give us a report next month on what citizen involvement is planned with the understanding that we reserve the right to write to our bosses, the City Council, and request a change? Jackson: Will do. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 10 9. REPORTS a. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Westhuis Employee Survev. Is the City Manager's Office going to release to the Coloradoan the survey that they've been begging for? Have you heard anything? Jackson: The City Manager's Office has refused to deliver those documents to the Coloradoan based on what we believe is to protect the anonymity and confidentiality of the employees. Until a judge tells us differently, we won't do it. We feel its very important to maintain that trust with the employees. Frazier. UniverCity. The last one was very good. Kevin, Gary, Ed and I were there. We started out with a tour at 3 p.m. and went around the city and the university to see what's going on. Then we came back and had reports from Downtown, Beet Street, Northern Colorado Clean Energy, Transportation Planning department projects, Poudre River project, cycling park, velodrome project, and CSU projects. I have information on all of those so if you're interested I'm happy to share it with you. Our homework for our next meeting on February 1, we're supposed to come with ideas of our own after we've heard all this input from all the various groups. I have come up with what I call a legacy parkway for the Poudre River walk and the Mason Street Corridor when they converge, which will be close to LaPorte Avenue. This is what I will be passing out at our next meeting (distributed a handout), which is February 1. Price: UniverCi . I'm on the writing committee and managed to catch the transportation writing responsibility as well as the UniverCity Integration Education responsibility. With the group's permission, I will send a copy of what I've written. Robert: EVSAG. I'm no longer a member of EVSAG because there is none. It closed its doors last month. Jenkins VMT. I do have a comment on the report on the VMT since everything is focused around dollars, is there some way this board can come up with some kind of deal to say that we reduced VMT by "x" percent and put "y" dollars back into the economy or something to that effect because that would get a lot of attention I would think. Thomas It sounded like they alluded to that in the report. Jenkins I think we could emphasize that. Just struck me as something we could do. Thomas Letter of Thanks. Ed and I talked about this earlier. We gave the Streets guys our appreciation tonight and I understand that City Council did something for them last night; do we need to do anything more formal to recognize what they've done? Jackson. I don't think that it ever hurts. People never get tired of hearing that they're pretty and given the magnificent effort that they've put forth, I think if the Board felt that was an appropriate thing to do, it would be very well received and it could be shared with City Council and certainly shared with Larry and his crew. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board January 17, 2007 Page 11 There was a motion by Robert to have Thomas drafta letter of appreciation to the Streets crews which he will send to the board for review and comment first There was a second by Grigg. The motion carried unanimously. b. STAFF REPORTS Jackson: Reorganization. It is morphing almost daily and is very interesting to go through. In the end I think it's going to be a good thing. If you want to talk more about it, I can report next month or you can contact me individually if you'd like. New Transfort Fixed Route on Harmon. Route 16 is up and running very successfully. We're getting kudo after kudo after kudo from people who have been waiting for that route on Harmony for years. In March, we will be adding two new routes; one on Timberline and one on Prospect. NEXT AGENDA: - Transfort/DAR Report - Downtown River District Update Future Presentations/Field Trips: - Velodrome (Jackson will work with Kemp to get this set up) - De-icing Facility - Traffic Operations Center - Transfort - UniverCity — Mason Corridor - Downtown River - Re: RTA, have a joint meeting with Loveland and Greeley Transportation Boards, perhaps at the Ranch to talk about mutual interests and how we see things developing 10. OTHER BUSINESS None. 11. ADJOURN The meeting adjourned at 9:38 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Li )zL 0e,-A � Cynthia L. Langren Executive Administrative Assistant