Adoption of Resolution Establishing a Vision Zero Policy to Work Towards Zero Traffic Deaths and Severe Injuries. (Transportation 4227287)
Took the words right out of my mouth in a second. It's been moved by the vice mayor, seconded by Councilmember Vela. All in favor. I. That was five. Okay. All right. So then we agreed that we would first hear five m correct. Adoption of resolution establishing a vision zero policy to work towards zero traffic deaths and severe injuries. Good evening. Hello, Mayor Ashcraft, members of the city council, members of the public here tonight. I'm Andrew Thomas, planning director, and I'm here with Lisa Foster from the transportation staff. Lisa and I are going to introduce the item for you tonight, and we're available to answer any questions, along with Richelle Wheeler, who also helped put this together for us tonight. And if I might just interrupt you and counsel, you tell me how you feel about this. But I'm thinking that perhaps we would take our public speakers first just because we have a lot with children. Or do you want to hear staff report first? We're fine with hearing this from the speakers. First that be okay. Okay. If you don't mind, Mr. Thomas, we're going to go ahead because I try to defer when families have children, because I know that the hour gets late quickly. So. Seven speakers. So don't get. Okay. So when we have seven speakers, it means you each get 2 minutes. But 2 minutes is really quite a bit of time. So the city clerk will call your names, just listen for your names and come on up and so that everybody can hear you, including those who are watching on television. Be sure you're getting close enough to that microphone up there. You can bring it down or up to your level as needed. Okay. Take it away. Suzy Hofstetter, Britney and Mia Schrag and Jennifer. I'm sorry. I'm having trouble reading. Your last name starts with a t t. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Suzi Hofstetter. I'm advocacy manager with Bike East Bay, member of Bike Walk Alameda and a resident of here in Alameda. While I don't have kids in our school district, I'm really proud of everyone who's been outside tonight. And I really applaud our school communities for standing up for traffic safety here in Alameda. I'm just here to speak in wholehearted support of the Vision Zero program. And I'd like to encourage everyone who's here to participate in the outreach process for the active transportation plan in Alameda. This is an opportunity to really envision how our city can be safe and accessible for people biking and walking. And I also hope that parents will keep having your kids bike and walk to school. There is safety in numbers and the fewer parents have cars out there, the safer it will be for everyone. So keep keep biking and walking. And if you're driving out there, just slow down and please be more careful while we advocate for more systemic change. Thank you. Thank you. Who's your next speaker? Brittany and Mia Schrag. Come on up. Good evening, everyone. My name is Brittany Schrag, and this is my daughter, Mia. Unfortunately, she is one of the statistics in our city. The very first week of school, she and a vehicle collided right outside of Wood Middle School. We've lived here for approximately a year and we came from northwest Arkansas, where we were working really heavily on a Vision Zero. So this is definitely a passion that I have. And one thing I will definitely applaud the city is the changing in the wording of Vision Zero, not just deaths and injuries, serious injuries, but life changing injuries because even though she was not seriously hurt, she only had some minor physical injuries. Even myself, I felt injured because my safety, my ability to protect my 12 year old daughter on her path to school was completely shaken and felt like the rug was pulled out from under my feet. I know there are a lot of families that walk with their children and and have expressed, you know, near-misses and close calls. And so this Vision Zero really is a bold move for the city. I think it'll help us shine in this area. And to whatever extent that we can push the envelope and really help us shine, I think will make us better for it. Help. Thank you. Thank you both. Jennifer Teague, then Jill Deer, come and cut her. Hi. Come on. I remember the microphone. Okay. Yeah, my name is. Nicholas, and I was one of the kids. Who got hit. And I just want to say that this bike safety, bike safety. Car awareness thing needs to happen because now every time every time when I go to the go to the place where I got hit, I on my way to school, I feel paranoid that I'm just going to get hit again. And I don't want that parent paranoia to happen. And I just I just really, really need this thing to happen for my four kids safety, my safety and all other people's safety and how and how and how other people feel about what happens when people get hurt. Thank you very much for sharing that. Mom, did you want to say anything? He said it all. Thank you so much. Thank you. And you know what, everybody? I have a rule in our meetings and it is my goal is always to get us out the same day that we started and we've got a bunch more items so we don't apply. We don't Bill, we don't do the wave. We just speak and listen. We're really good, respectful listeners and then I'll get you all home on time. So our next speaker is. Jill de Giacomo Alameda resident. My two sons are back there, third lot too shy to come up, but my oldest son, Paul, is 11. A couple of years ago, he was almost hit by a car in an intersection. I was with him at events and all and Burnside. And the thing that really struck me about what happened was that when we were on the sidewalk, there was not a car on the other side. It was only when we were in the crosswalk that a car approached the intersection and clearly somehow did not see him and only stopped because I stepped in front of the car and put my hand up and screamed, stop at the top of my lungs. So that was a pretty scary occurrence and my kids do not bike to school. I'm too fearful. I don't know if an intersection like that could have all reds when there are pedestrians in the crosswalk. But that was the first thing that came to mind for me. Having experienced that in San Francisco, the all reds, I don't know if that is an inexpensive solution and expensive solution, but it seemed like a very practical one that would make a really big impact because if the car had been at a stoplight, it would not have been taking a left when we were in the middle of the intersection. So I just wanted to share my experience and really hope that nothing like that happens to another child or family. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. POTTER Then Rachel Pluto, then Lauren Geringer. Lo Potter bike walk Alameda. Love the vision zero but I do think the that the city really needs to step things up. I think the trouble with the plans that we. Put forth is that they take too long. We really need to get this done. We need to lower the speed limits at schools to 15 miles an hour. We need to have proper signage. And there really isn't any excuse to delay it. So on behalf of Bike Walk Alameda and the parents and the kids who have suffered through this, please do it now. Don't wait until the Vision Zero gets finalized. Thank you. Thank you. To hear Rachel Potter, then Lauren Gehringer. Come on up. Good evening. I'm Rachel Plato, concerned parent and PTA president at Loeb Elementary School, as well as the host of tonight's Rally on the Steps. We have had six children hit by vehicles on the street since August. This is unacceptable. We as parents are extremely alarmed that our roads are lacking the flashing signs and there is no special speed limits for these zones. I personally believe the speed limit should be lowered to 15 miles per hour during school hours, as was recently adopted in Sacramento. We are not traffic engineers. We don't know what's best, but we do know that our children's safety is number one priority for the city. We need to make these changes to save their lives. At left school, we are situated between two busy streets Lincoln Avenue in Santa Clara. Currently, there are no school zone signs or road paint on our side for our school. We have 550 students that crosses four busy corners every day with only one crossing guard. This needs to be addressed immediately. Love School, formerly Henry Haight Elementary, is 100 years old. Why don't we have a school zone? This is unacceptable. We are optimistic that the city is hearing and sharing our concerns. What? We are thrilled about this voting on the Vision Zero initiative. We need immediate school zone safety improvement for our children. Safety. Please do the right thing. Thank you. Next speaker is Lauren Geringer. Can you. Can you hear. Me? Hi. I'm here tonight because eight months ago, while my kids and I were walking home from the elementary, a car sped through the crosswalk at Chestnut and Lincoln to turn right on red coming within an inch of hitting my son. If this had been a fluke, I would not be here tonight taking up your time. But I had seen so many close calls at this intersection prior to our incident and have seen so many since. Sadly, it turns out this problem is not limited to love elementary. Already the school year, six kids have been hit by cars on their way to schools throughout the island. Well, I'm heartened and optimistic about the Vision Zero initiative, and I look forward to participating in active transport planning. And while I truly appreciate the expressed intentions from the city to be making these urgently needed safety improvements, I can't wait quietly and patiently for those changes to be made while our kids are getting hit right now. Last March, at the time of my son's close call, I emailed the city to express my serious concerns. It was explained that nothing could be done until a new traffic engineer was hired. Eight months have since passed, and it's my understanding that that person has recently started work. I'm hopeful that means no reason for any more delay. I have to believe the city can do better than what is currently in place to protect our children making their way to and from school each day. We need immediate action before the ultimate tragedy occurs because we're getting really close. So thank you. Thank you. And that was our last speaker. Was there anyone else who didn't take the speakers to Baton wants to speak? Okay, then I'm going to close public comment and then we'll have our staff report. Now, usually we do it in reverse, but like I said, I just want to make sure that people with children. Somebody wants to make a comment. Okay, come on up. Make your comment and then you can fill a speaker slip afterwards. Oh, hello. My name is Denise Nelson. My son is James. He was hit in a crosswalk October. 1st at Lincoln and Willow going to school at Lev Elementary School. And it was a miracle that a neighbor saw and came and got me. I was able to get there before the ambulance. When I arrived. My son was bloody. And scraped head to toe. When I asked how he was, he had to wipe the blood out of his mouth just to say, Mom, and this isn't a shock, actually, because we live on Lincoln Avenue and we watch cars race up and down Lincoln Day and night. But the mornings are horrifying. It is difficult. I cross three streets to get to Alameda High School for work and every day I have close calls every day. And I want my son to be independent. He's ten years old. I don't want to walk him to school. And the unthinkable happened. And I have to let him go out that door every morning. And my greatest fear happened. And I don't I don't want it to be. Too late for someone else. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Those were sobering. Thank you all for sharing your views. And Ms.. Plato, I know that we emailed about the rally. I tried to move closed session along, but we we went to all seven, but we were thinking of you. So now we are going to hear our staff report. So Mr. Thomas said, come on in. All right, listen, I'm going to tag team. This will move through this. Quickly so we can get to your questions and comments. The the tonight what we're bringing for for you is a council policy. This is a policy to sort of establish and clarify sort of once and for all how the city will plan for operate and maintain our local roadway network for the Alameda public. As all of you know, but and certainly public employees, we know our basic purpose here as city employees is protect the public health, safety and welfare. So there is nothing more basic than this than this this idea. Vision Zero is, as the slide says, sort of it's an international movement. It's it's something that more and more cities are sort of grappling with. And it really comes down to this very simple idea. It's not okay for a single person. Therefore, the goal should be zero for a single person to be to be hurt, to die, God forbid, or have life changing injuries on the public roadway system that we're providing for them. Accidents are not inevitable. We need to be working as a city and as a staff to make that number zero. This is not something that just sort of popped on us yesterday. The city of Alameda and the city council as early as 2017 started integrating this idea of Vision Zero into the general plan. Just this year, the City Council has approved the active transportation plan contract and the funding to really move this initiative along faster. On September 3rd, this council said there was a referral saying we need to move some of these issues and Vision Zero was one of those issues and really move things along. Shortly thereafter, at your request, we brought forth a change to the muni code so that we can start daylighting intersections. What that means is making it preventing obstacles and parked cars from being within too close to sidewalk crossing so so that we can improve the visibility. So we have less of these kinds of situations where people just don't see each other. And then we brought forth this policy which your council or your transportation commission considered on September 25th and unanimously recommended that that we move forward with. So with that little introduction, what I'd like to do is introduce Lisa Foster, who did all the heavy lifting on this, to just take you through about six or seven slides, sort of describing what this policy does in a little more detail. Thank you, Andrew. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council members. I'm Lisa Foster. So the policy that we are presenting to you today makes safety the explicit highest priority in Almeida's transportation efforts. It requires the city to prepare a Vision Zero action plan that would be based on collision data to show us where the streets are most dangerous and develop specific actions to make the streets safer. That action plan would be developed by a multidisciplinary task force that would include members from staff members from planning, building and transportation, police, public works and the fire department, plus other stakeholder organizations like AUC DE and people who can represent senior disability, pedestrian, bicycle and other interests. The policy also requires city staff to immediately start looking into a few specific policies and standards that can be implemented quickly to make and inform our paving program to make our streets safer, such as crosswalk and bulb out placement and lane widths. It also requires us to implement Vision Zero equitably and to bring an annual report to the Transportation Commission and the City Council. The United States has the highest traffic death rate per capita in the. Compared to peer nations with 40,000 people dying every year on our United States streets. In Alameda between 2011 and 2018, 16 people died on our streets, an average of two per year, and 82 people suffered severe and life changing injuries, an average of ten per year. In addition to people being killed and severely injured, more than 1700 people reported pain or endured mild to moderate injuries from traffic collisions from all modes . And I do want to emphasize emphasize that Vision Zero is about all modes. I'm going to stay a little closer to your microphone. Okay. And for 2019, that would include the seven children who have been hit by cars for this school year, five of whom were going to and from school. I wanted to take a moment to talk about what the city is doing about that. Right now, we we're putting together post collisions, site visits with police department, public works and. This is new information, actually. Yeah, no, I'm aware of it. Is there a slide for the audience? Yeah. All right. I'm sorry. And planning, building a transportation in the cases with schools involved will invite the principal as well. The idea is that we will review any potential short and long term safety improvements from the standpoint of engineering and maintenance since enforcement and education. This is a new cooperative approach for the city and a bit of a practice run for Vision Zero. If that policy is adopted. The police department is also planning to do enhanced enforcement around schools during drop off, and the city has added a transportation safety effect on its website. I think U.S.. Back to Vision Zero. A core principle of Vision Zero is that traffic deaths are unacceptable and preventable. We have long as a society, accepted that traffic deaths are a part of the cost of transporting people. But we need to shift our mindset and this policy will help us do so. Equity is baked into Vision Zero. And that is because there are disproportionate risks for seniors, children, people of color, people with disabilities, people in low income communities, and people walking and biking. In fact, between 2011 and 2018, half of the Alameda traffic fatalities were people walking. And of those people, all of them who all of the pedestrians who died were 59 years old or older. Making it safer for seniors will be particularly important for Vision Zero. Vision Zero is uniquely multidisciplinary, bringing together engineering and street design education like a safety campaign or education maybe for truck drivers and enforcement. We know that people will always make mistakes. The idea is to create an environment where human error does not cause death or severe injury. For instance, we know that reducing speed saves lives. A person walking has only a 50% chance of living at all if hit by a car traveling 42 miles per hour. But that same person has a 90% chance of living if the car is traveling 23 miles per hour. We recommend that the City Council adopt this resolution establishing a Vision Zero policy to work towards zero traffic deaths and severe injuries. As we move forward, the policy will affect, of course, budget requests and priorities, and we believe it will increase partnerships across the city. The policy will not immediately achieve all of the necessary changes, but it establishes a framework to guide the years of work and effort that will be required to protect the health and safety of people using the public. Right of way in Alameda. Thank you for your time and we welcome your questions. Thank you. Council any clarifying questions about staff report before we go into our discussion. Seeing then discussion motion. We'd like to start. Vice Mayor This maybe next week. Thank you for that lovely staff report. I'd like to thank all the parents for being here. I'm sorry that you have to be. I've met with a number of you, have spoken with quite a few of you as well. And I think before I make my comments, I just want to make sure that it's clear that while there is a lot of work ahead, I think it's really also very clear to me in the first nine months that I've been here that you finally have a council that is taking this very seriously. You have a staff that is taking this very seriously. And we are making giant steps forward in the last few months on this issue because of the collaboration that we're doing. It doesn't mean that everything is going to get better tomorrow. This is a big battleship. It's going to take a long time. We need the community pushing us forward to do better, to identify issues as well. But but I do want to make sure that it's clear that, at least from my perspective, we have your back and we're here working on this. Vision Zero is really important. You know, it is shocking to me that it's actually now seven kids in the first two months of this fall, September and October have been hit in Alameda. Those kids were trick or treating. They were walking in their neighborhoods. Five of them were going to school. We pride ourselves on being the community where it's safe and family friendly. And I think people having to feel scared crossing the street just to visit neighbors to get to their schools is really, really important. I really, really problematic. We need to do more and we need to do more really fast. We need to change the way we are doing enforcement on our streets. We need to prioritize our enforcement on our streets on things that cause injury and death. We have the data to to to make those shifts. And we need to do it fast. We need to speed up. And in February, we unanimously directed staff to come back with a traffic calming program that didn't have requests for making things safer in our community. Take for 18 to 24 months, but actually started doing some things fast and, you know, being available, being able to make mistakes. One of the things I think we know and I worked for the city of San Francisco in my day job, one of the things I think some of us up public servants sometimes make the issue we make is that we are so afraid of making mistakes that it takes us forever to get to a place because we know that everybody's going to be mad at us. And so I want to say to our staff who I know is working very, very hard on this, that it's okay to make mistakes and I'll have your back if we're pushing this forward and we're trying to do we're trying to help people. You know, I and I'm confident my other colleagues will also have your back when we make those additional those mistakes. And we have to rip something out after we put it in because it didn't work quite the well. But we need to start moving faster. We need to start seeing changes. You know, I. Okay? Yeah. Oh, hang on. You know, to the two kids, I was hit by by a car when I was 13 on a bike. It it's not fun. It's going to get better. But as a community, I think we really, really owe it to you to build a place fast, build a place soon, so that before you're out of high school, you can feel safe and your parents can feel safe letting you go to your to go to school. You know, again, I feel like this is the start of a movement in Alameda. This is I really appreciate, you know, one of the I'm not going to name you, but one of the meetings I had yesterday said, you know, said, you know, I feel like encouraging kids to walking back to school and walking back to school days is almost criminally negligent. It is so unsafe out there. How are you telling kids to get on bikes and ride on these streets? We need to do better. I also you know, we had a school meeting, Tony and I, Councilmember de SAC and I met with the school district today at that. We talked about how we can start partnering with them better. We need the school and the school community's help as well. Visiting Love School. Last Tuesday I walked out. There was a big sign, says no double parking and there were two cars parked in front of it. Blocking traffic and now a bike lane. Know we need parents to also be aware that we are we are all in a hurry and whatever else but we all have a role in this. And lastly, I'm just going to say five of the four out of the five kids who were hit walking to school were hit by drivers that were found to be at fault. This is not a problem of kids darting into traffic. Kids on their phone, kids not paying attention. 80% of these kids were hit by adults who made bad decisions. And it is up to us as adults, especially those adults who are behind the £2,000 vehicle that does the harm to to take responsibility, whether we're parents or not. And we need to hold each other accountable and we need to hold each other up. And we need to encourage each other to be better. But again, mistakes are going to happen and we're going to have to change the way our streets look in order to to solve this. And I'm here for it. I think our whole council is for it and I'm looking forward to approving this. Thank you. Councilor Vella. I think it's a sad statement of things. You have two council members that have been hit while cycling. I was hit while I was in living in London. I used to ride from central London up to the boathouse every day because I was a poor college student and who couldn't afford travel fare on the tube. So I would wake up at four in the morning and ride my bike out and I had no other way to get to the boat house after my bike after my bike accident. So I literally had to get back up on the on the bike again. And I can relate. It's very difficult to do that and it's very triggering, having to ride past or go past places that you've been hit. I can't imagine having to do it as a younger individual. And I think that it's, you know, certainly a concern for all of us. I think actually the safest is to walk and bike to school. Are those days, the walk bike to school days because we have the critical mass and everybody is paying attention and looking out for that. It's sad to me that those are the exceptions and not the rule. Right. And I think that that's what we're all trying to get to with adopting Vision Zero. I'm looking forward to adopting it tonight. I, I also think there's a couple points. One is one of the things that we said we were going to look at was collision data. I think that it can't just be collision data that we're looking at. We also need to take into account the near-miss data because I actually think some of the most dangerous intersections are the ones where we have those near-misses. I think it's great that we want to work with the school district. I want to work with the PTA, not just the school district. I think that there's a lot that parents see in here that doesn't necessarily get translated to, say, the school board unless it's kind of the last step. And I think we need to engage with a lot of the parent group, parent groups. We have very active parent groups here in Alameda. And I think the types of things, the types of behavioral training changes that we need to see like around the double parking. And I think, John, I also sent a photograph of that to our city manager. Those are the types of things where if we engage with the parent groups, we work with our police department, we can kind of talk about the traffic calming and traffic safety things that we can do. I think one of the things that would be helpful is if our our traffic groups can actually look at the drop offs and do an analysis of how we can improve them and make them safer, whether that signage, whether that's enforcing the double parking and PTA. I would love to have your support with that because I also know that we're going to get some angry parents potentially that come out and say, hey, I got a citation. And you know what? I'll take a citation every day of the week if it means that it's safer for our kids that are going to school. So that's me. But I want to make sure that that we have the buy in from all of you and that that continues and we can continue to reinforce this narrative and get the behavioral changes. Another thing that I would like to see with the implementation of this is making sure that there is a place for people to report the near misses. I think that if that's something that we want to track, we need to have a venue for for actually tracking that. I see them all the time. And part of it is also we have these great east to west streets and that means at certain times of the year, the sun is directly in your eyes and it's directly in your eyes at drop off time. I have seen so many near-misses on Lincoln. In fact, I'm the one usually leaning on my horn who's stopped, and I am rolling down my window and trying to like wave cars that are driving eastbound. They can't see. We've we're starting to address these with their FAA cues. But I also think that we need to build in places for people to report it. And I don't think that Alameda peeps is that venue. I know that a lot of them get reported there, but that that's not really a solid way of tracking it because otherwise it looks like these this collision data is kind of sporadic and spread out in a number of different places. I also think that we need to be focusing around our schools because those are areas where we know we have a congregation of people at certain times of day. And so if we can, you know, our vice mayor talked about how we can kind of take steps to do this effectively and quickly. Those are areas where I think we should spend the time and start implementing now to have that effect that we want. So I'm very excited about this moving forward. And I the other thing is the 15 mile per hour I did have a question about the enforceability of that. I know that there's a bunch of different decisions that have been coming down from Sacramento on potential state preemption issues. I just want to make sure that whatever signage we have posted is 100% enforceable. And so if there's a reason that it can't be enforceable, I'd like to know why. I'd like to know what steps we can take to maybe either lobby for that change or something to that effect. But I hear what people are saying. I think obviously short of having people and the other thing is there's a lot of distracted drivers. Sometimes when I'm leaning on the horn, the person's literally looking at their cell phone, which is just completely unacceptable. And I do hope that we can start enforcing that a little more as well. Thank you. That's Councilmember Desai. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for coming out this evening during the meeting as well as prior to the meeting, I think one telling statistic. That staff had given was that when someone is struck by a moving vehicle at 25 miles per hour, the likelihood of survival is, I think the number was 90% or so . And so what that means is that in a city where practically all the roads, perhaps except for five, in a city where perhaps all the roads are 25 miles per hour, they really should be no fatalities when it comes to unfortunate collisions where individuals are hit by a moving vehicle. So as a council member, where I want to focus my attention on is certainly an enforcement. There are that typically we talk about the three E's engineering, which is road configuration and a variety of other physical road diets, engineering, education. But I believe where we really need to step up is, is enforcement. And this is no knock on police chief where, Larry, I know he and his staff are doing a yeoman's job, but I certainly appreciate the fact that he is putting together an elevated or an enhanced enforcement package. So I look I certainly look forward to that. If we can get perhaps an off agenda report on the status of that, as well as the current status of our enforcement when it comes to dealing with traffic issues, the current status, you know, where we're low or not with regard to staffing and how the in Hance enforcement will will help and towards dealing with traffic issues particularly at the areas where they are most pronounced and clearly around eight school around out of school traffic fatal accidents are definitely pronounced. I actually on Friday morning I bumped into a friend Bob Poulos and he indicated that the week prior or maybe sometimes as soon on Lincoln and Walnut, a car had went into someone's front house. So clearly there's something about that area. I think what it has to do is with a narrowing of those streets, those cross streets and people driving too fast. And the reality is people should, should and must drive 25 miles per hour, because that's that's a great way of enjoying our built environment. Is that 25 miles per hour? There's no reason for us to rush through our city, and we should do that for the sake of the kids. And, you know, as as the lawn sign says, we should drive as if we're driving in our own neighborhoods. So when it comes to Vision Zero, certainly I support that. But most important, the area where I want to focus my attention on is working with city staff when it comes to elevating our enforcement. You know, it used to be back in the days in the seventies and the sixties, you know, Alameda was renowned. Certain parts of Alameda streets were renowned for cops. And we knew who the cops were who were just hiding out there on Otis Drive west of Grand Street or Otis Drive near near, near Know Park. And, you know, back in the day, as a as a kid or as a teen, you knew that. I don't think that that same culture is there anymore. And, you know, I get, you know, the engineering type of changes that we want to want to look at. But, you know, sometimes one of the answers is the thing that's the lowest hanging fruit. And I think that has to do with with enforcement. So that's where I'll focus my efforts. Thank you, Councilman Brody. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for everyone who came out and who rallied. I wish she didn't have to do that. So I guess. Well, answer the question first. I mean, I, I appreciate all the work you've done. And, you know, Vision Zero is critical, I think. Before the vice mayor was on the council, we had a chat about this. And the transportation plan is will make sure you get Vision Zero in the transportation plan. So we got that in there. But I mean, this. No offense to all of you. This is like completely unacceptable to me. So I would like to know what we're doing now. I mean, a post I mean, post collision, you know, review is great, but we shouldn't have post collisions. You know, what are we going to do? What are we doing now as a city to fix this problem? So I'd like at least if we give if we approve this to give some direction, to have some, you know, report back quickly, you know, I can be a little passionate up here. I know. And I'm glad this meeting was not Friday morning when I woke up to the text that a three year old was hit trick or treating, because my first reaction was stop all truck cars in Alameda and give everyone training to recognize kids like WTF people seriously. And I've calmed down a little bit now, but I mean, I might. It was said in the slide and it was said in the speakers, this is our only job as a city is to take care of people and keep them safe. You know, depending on what number you look at, 70 to 80% of our budget goes to public safety, safety, safety. If we're not doing that, we're failing. And for these six kids, we're failing. There should not be any more. So I really want to know what we're going to do about it, because I am not the idea person. I'm the priority setting person to me. I'm telling you, we need to make this priority number one, stop kids from getting hit. So. Just be glad it's not Friday morning because it would have been a lot worse. So. There is no price tag either. You know, we cannot put a price tag on the life of one kid or one adult or one senior or one person of color or one disabled person or one anybody. And John, the vice mayor hit on it. You know, we're telling people, get out of your cars, walk to school, drive to school, reduce greenhouse gas. But then we're not creating an environment where it's safe for them to do so. It almost is like negligence. So we need to do better. And I want to I want to know what we're going to do now to do better, because six if that average stays up six and two months, you know, we're going to have another one in two weeks. Vision Zero is not going to solve that problem. I'm going to vote for this. I'm glad we're doing it. But it's not going to solve that problem. We're not going to stop a kid from getting hit two weeks by passing this today. So, I mean, whether it's the 15 mile an hour or any of these other things, you know, you drive down the street in this day lighting and you see a ten foot high truck parked. Nobody can see next to that. I mean, we need to start implementing these things today. Now, granted, we can't, but what can we do tomorrow? What can we do next week? What can we do? I want to know what we can do to fix this problem. And if it's a resource problem, I expect to have to come back to us and ask us to give them the resources, because I will do that. This is our number one job and to me this is our only job. But I know I realize we have other priorities, but to me this is our number one priority. The community has spoken and you know, to me and Nicholas out there, you know, you will recover from your physical injuries, but you are always going to be afraid. We can't have that. We can't have a generation growing up where they're afraid to cross the street or they get traumatized every time they walk past the intersection, especially if it's a young kid that's going to have to do that for five or six years. This just has to stop. So I expect our staff, they're really good at what they do. They're really talented. I expect them to come back and give us things that we can do now to fix this problem. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brody. And so first, I want to thank staff for putting this report together and all the work that went into it and this presentation. I also want to thank our city manager, Eric Levitt. And I think you might not all be aware, but he called his staff together and he oversees almost every department head in the city and and wanted to know what can we do immediately to start addressing this? And here and some of those points were brought out by Mr. Foster in the presentation. But but I would say as a city, I am sure that we are taking this very seriously. So I guess we have a council majority of council members who were hit by a car because when I was a senior in high school, I was crossing a street on a green light and a driver ran the red light. A driver ran a red light and hit me in the crosswalk. It happened in Oakland, but nonetheless I was thrown through the air and landed on my face and broke my nose and went off to college at UC Davis with my nose bandaged because they have to wait till all the swelling goes down before they can do the surgery. And I had a bandage and black eyes. It was a great conversation starter. But aside from that, I would say that to this day when I cross the street, my heart just kind of clutches for a minute. I'm amazed that my children have grown up to be independent young people because I held their hands crossing the street much longer than they needed me to hold their hand because I needed someone to hold my hand. So it's a terrible experience and I wouldn't want anyone, especially a smaller child. I was even a little aside. I was walking with a good friend of mine and she was of a more frail build and she had some health issues. And I told her to this day I was always so glad that I was the one closest to the car because she might not have survived. But anyway, so and I told Ms. played her when we were emailing about this that I, I am one you've heard me many times up here urging people to choose to walk or take your bike rather than to get in a car, because we need to do that for congestion, for our air quality, for in greenhouse gas emissions and all those things. But we have to provide safe opportunities for pedestrians and bicyclists and we are moving in that direction. Not fast enough, I will grant you that. But I'm really excited about the improvements we're going to see on Clement Avenue and eventually on Central Avenue and some things that we've done already. I want to say that I think there are things that we can all do when we're out and about, because sometimes even if we walk and bike, we're we're also drivers. I call it mindfulness. It is so easy in our fast paced, busy world to just your mind slips and you're somewhere else besides just doing that one thing, being behind the wheel and someone I think it was Councilmember Vella mentioned that as the time changes now there are times in the morning when you're driving straight into the sun, you have to compensate for that and just slow down and be extra careful and education programs are always so helpful. Bonnie Wayman I'm not trying to do product placement anything, but Bonnie Wayman does a program for school children and adults actually of all ages on how to be a safe bicyclist, because you just you have to be a very defensive driver. So I would love to see those programs incorporated in the schools. But we're the city council, not the school board. When I'm out as a bicyclist, I try to reinforce the positive behavior of other drivers. So if a driver stops for me in the crosswalk, they get a wave and a smile and I ring my bell. And so, you know, let's do that. Let's reinforce good behavior. And and then as far as the near-misses and reporting them, I agree. Alameda peeps possibly not your best venue, but if you're out there and you happen to be taken a cell phone video, you can forward that to the army, the police department. And if you've got I mean, don't be don't be confront, you know, don't be confrontational. We don't want to escalate into something dangerous. But really, if you observe something dangerous and you have a cell phone at the ready and you're not driving while videoing that, that is something that the APD should know about. And as far as the one of the moms asked about, is it possible to do? I think it's what's called a scramble intersection where the pedestrians and all that can all cross at the same time. You see it in Oakland, Chinatown, you. It in some intersections in San Francisco in I think I see our our city engineer Scott with extreme is probably ducking down when I say this but I have said to him a residents have asked me could we do that on Park Street at Central and Park Street, Santa Clara on Park Street. Anyway, I he now has someone on his staff who has some experience in that regard. And so it's not. Nothing is ever as simple as Yeah, let's just do this here. But it's certainly something in the toolkit to be to be looked into. So I again, I thank everyone for coming out tonight. I also am concerned about these the collisions we've had because the pedestrian and the bicyclist is always going to get the short end of the stick. And so we we we need people to get out of their cars, but we need them to be safe when they do . So I certainly support adoption of this resolution and all the other good input from our council. Do I have a motion to adopt this resolution? So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second I've got a motion from Councilmember Vela, second from Councilmember Odie. All in favor I and he opposed your abstained hearing. Then that motion passes unanimously. Thanks, everybody. Okay, now we're going to move on. We are still on the consent calendar. We are going back to is it five C? Yes, because. Again, we have a speaker and five secre. Do you want to announce. Our recommendation to authorize the purchase of 35 vehicles consistent with the revised vehicle replacement policy in an amount not to exceed 1.311421 billion from Ford. Folsom. Ford Lake Ford 281,606 from Winter Chevrolet and 160 645 from Rebate Chairman.