Recommendation to Approve Joining and Participating in the United States Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Mayors Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets.  (City Manager)
Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the City Council community members. I'm Gayle Payne, Transportation Coordinator of the Public Works Department. This item before you is a staff recommendation to join and participate in the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mayor's Challenge for Safer Streets. Safer People. Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Initiative. The challenge is a yearlong effort and begins on March 12th with a kick off event. And it requires the city to make a public statement about the importance of bicycling and walking. It also requires us to form a task force and to take part in seven challenge activities that are shown up there on your screen. The first one is to take a complete street approach. The second one is to remove barriers for all road users. The third to collect data on bicycling and walking. The fourth to use best practices designs. Fifth, to implement bicycling and walking improvements with maintenance projects like resurfacing. And six out of the seven is to improve the laws and regulations. And the last one is to educate and enforce road user behavior, working with the police department on that one. We're really fortunate in the timing of this challenge because the Public Works Department is just embarking on an update, a required update of both the pedestrian plans and the bicycle plan. So we can easily fold this effort, this national effort, into our local effort that's required to update these plans. And we can use this as a national best practices checklist. And so we will be starting the work scopes of those updates next month. And so we don't foresee too much additional staff work on that on this effort at all. The questions and comments. I remember Ashcraft. Thank you. Thank you for that update. I. I thought, too, when I read this and I know it was recently added to the agenda because we just got this information. But I thought it was great timing because we're just about to do the ribbon cutting on this fabulous shorelines cycle track project. And I was just at a workshop that you led last week on the Cross Alameda Trail. And. But I did have the question in my notes about how much additional staff work and time and resources would be necessary. But it sounds like. What did you say that that Public Works is about to embark on. That we're about to embark on on required updates for the bicycle plan? Okay. That was and also the pedestrian plan to the bicycle plan was update was back in 2010. So it's required every five years. And then the pedestrian plan was back in 2009. Okay. And and I would just like to say that I would certainly want to see Miss Payne as a key member of this effort, because she is so knowledgeable and has been at the forefront of some really great projects we've been doing for bicycles and pedestrians in Alameda. And I think you did mention the police department because that was also my thought about the educating and enforcing proper road behavior would need to get law enforcement in on that. So other than that, I think this is really exciting. It's timely, and I think Alameda could be a good leader in this in this effort. So thank you for bringing this to us. Any other member comments? Up the nation. So I personally would like us to do this. However, I want to clarify my understanding that we can do as much as we can do. There are some things that would have to the issuing the public statement. My understand that does have to happen and then forming the look. The top three are things that I think are supposed to happen and then you do as much of the challenge activities as you can. You're not expected. You don't have to do them all. And it's not as so they'll be following up and seeing if we in fact are able to do all of these, but that we try to we try and we do balance depending upon CASM, whatnot. But the top three issue, a public statement about the importance of bicycle pedestrian safety, form the local action team, and then take local action through challenge activities. So, yes, I do understand. We do need a motion to do this. Moved. Well, okay, it's has been settled because I want some clarification about what it is we're voting on. So that we can sign up as it actually says. One of the steps to signing up mayor or a top elected official has or gets approval or and support from their city or jurisdiction to join the challenge. So I think we do. When when I read that, I think we do need council approval to sign up. Yes, I agree that we need council's approval. I would certainly not want to see us limiting our goals before we've even begun, because I, quite frankly, think we're capable of doing all of them. So I think you you start out and you set your sights high. And I think I have a feeling we've already done more than three of these and, you know, probably aren't that far away from doing all seven. So I think Alameda is equal to the challenge. Let's do it all. So we have a motion to the motion members. I just wanted a quick comment, you know, kind of second. What was their second to the motion? No, I'll do that. But then also I continue my comment. Councilmember Asker We can't just say we're going to do this and give lip service, do that to this. And you know, the mayor make a statement. Yeah, I commit to this, blah, blah, blah. You know, we want to have safe, convenient roads and then we don't do anything about it. It just seems kind of kind of silly if if we're not going to actually go, you know, full in 100% of this. We have emotion a second. Any other comments? All those in favor, I suppose, and passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And now we have City Manager Communications. None this evening. Oral communications, not agenda. We don't have anymore. No council referrals. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. Yes, sorry. We missed this. Came in. Carol Goldstein, City resident I just had a question because that was on the last slide. It was about the transportation plant. It said that it was to make streets better for not just bikes and pedestrians, but also personal mobility devices.