Recommendation to Accept Update on Recently Installed and Ongoing Traffic Safety and Traffic Calming Activities.  (Public Works 96013)
Nice to meet you. All right. Thank you very much for your good work. All right. Thank you. So then we move on to item six P. Recommendation to accept update on recently installed and ongoing traffic safety and traffic calming activities. All right. And presenting this item is our city engineer, Scott Wickstrom. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Scott Wickstrom. I am the city engineer. I apologize. What did I say? City attorney. Or. Engineer? I did. Okay, good. Apologize for my voice a little bit. I've been fighting that cold from so tonight. Presenting with me will be Don Emery. To use your microphone. Lean in as much as I can. I know I'm taller. When? Tonight presented with me will be Donya Mary, who's a principal engineer with us, and she will share the presentation with me. I want to start really kind of, you know, laying out why are we here and how this item came before council. Between August in November of last year, there were 16 bike and ped pedestrian collisions involving minors. The photo on the right was a silent protest that members of the community concerned parents held before the November 5th City Council meeting, where this body adopted the Vision Zero policy document. And then two days later at on November 7th, the active transportation plan kicked off along with its open house. And I think you started the meeting tonight, recognizing that the unfortunate tragedy that occurred on Friday brings poignancy to the efforts that we're trying to achieve here. So. They would acknowledge that together these items have really highlighted traffic safety as a significant and immediate concern of both the community and the council. So we're not here to talk about Vision zero per se, but I want to at least bring it up in terms of a context. It is the guiding principle for our planning, design and maintenance for all of our transportation activities. The goal is really safety for all modes and all users. And really the underlying goal is eliminating fatalities and serious injuries through education, enforcement and engineering. One of the things I want to least broach tonight is that it really is a data driven approach. We look to existing data to the best extent we can, and we use that data to to hone in our efforts where they can be most effective and have the greatest impact. I'm going to show you a map that you can't read, but this is really collision data that has been gathered for the last ten years. And the little dots represent incidents for either bikes, peds or vehicles. It really is part of the vision zero effort. There will be more discussion about this as the Vision zero item comes before City Council. A key thing to point out, though, is the idea of high incident corridors. And these are areas where we want to begin to focus our efforts of how we can make improvements as quickly as we can to have the maximum impact. So those are the colored areas that get you to. The colored area, so that the two blue lines obviously on the west we have Webster and Park Street to the east and then there's Lincoln and Central and Grand Street are ones that have already been identified through the visual process, and you'll hear more about that in the coming months as that whole process comes forward. But that that serve to help us as we as we go through our process for immediate and short term responses. This is really the same data in a slightly different format. On the left, you'll see the total number of collisions a year. And it's and if you look at it, there really have been close to 800 collisions every single day or every single year. That's over two collisions every day. It's a significant item. It's also as you look at that graph, of course, of ten years, it's stubbornly persistent. You can be generous and say there's a slight downward trend, but it's not that significant. You look at the pedestrian and bicycling involved collisions and for our most vulnerable users and those are also holding steady. One of the things that we have committed to our staff and as obviously council is committed to as well with the Vision Zero, is to do what we can to bring those numbers down. And that's really what the Vision Zero policy is intended to do. One of the things I want to caution the public and also council is to recognize that this is not going to be accomplished over the course of weeks or months. It's a it's a many year effort that through continuous improvement and continuous efforts, that we will gradually look to reduce both the number of collisions and, almost most importantly, the severity of those collisions that lead to permanent life altering injuries. So with that, I'm going to hand off the presentation to Dana, who's going to kind of walk through what we have done in our short and near term to address traffic safety, don't you? Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Good evening, Madam Mayor, and members of the City Council. Tonight I'm here to let me to my slide go over two major topics. One is our immediate response to the children involved collisions. And secondly, to go over our next steps and our near-term plans. On October 28th, 2019, the city manager called for an immediate an emergency meeting in response to the data that's shown on this map. This map depicts the 16 locations that, unfortunately, children and and minors were involved in collisions throughout the city. The green dots depict the additional nearby locations that we looked at. The very first thing that we did was form an interdisciplinary response team, including members from our city managers, office engineers, planners, police officers and school officials when available. What we did is that the map that I showed earlier, the 16 identified locations, we visited each site as a team and determined what happened, what was the what we knew of the cause of the collision. But what else could we do in terms of traffic safety improvements at that location? Our lieutenant showed us how the collision occurred, additional information that was available to him. School officials also joined us in the field and explained to us typical traffic patterns around the schools and school drop off zones and other concerns they had around their school. Since we were there doing this investigation, while we, in a period of 6 to 8 weeks, visited all of our sites and gathered information, the police department also ran a special enforcement effort on overtime in the month of November to issue over 400 tickets around the locations of the known collisions. All in all, we developed 25 work plans, which included the original 16 plus the nine nearby locations that we developed work plans and scheduled the work through our contractor. And some of that I would quickly go over some of the some of the things that we did that we were able to achieve pretty quickly. One was daylighting. Daylighting was adopted by city council, and it's basically red painted curbs at intersections to improve visibility. We thought this was a pretty simple improvement that we could do in almost all the locations we looked at opportunities to either extend or introduce red red curbs for the first time. Part of Daylighting is a notification process, which is a courtesy letter that we send out to the residents who are losing parking or businesses that were losing parking. So the notification letters went out in two phases, and we did that in two phases because we wanted to quickly start the work scheduled with our contractor. So some of our residents got this notification letter, but the next thing that we did, as you can see, is add ladder crosswalks and do a striping refresh. So this is the intersection of Encino Avenue and High Street. Here we refreshed the striping at the crosswalk with a thermoplastic, yellow thermoplastic paint and a ladder of stripes. As you can see, it really enhanced the safety, the visibility of the crosswalks at this location and really brightened up the look intersection. Another safety element that we introduced through our project was an advanced stopper, so that the stop bar basically pushed the vehicles further away from the crosswalk by moving the stop legend further down and making vehicles stop further away and of course, refreshing the the crosswalks and the center lines. This is a before and after picture of Lincoln Avenue and Sally's Avenue. So those are basically the three top things that we did at the 25 intersections, which was our immediate response to the children involved collisions. We knew that that wasn't going to be the end of our traffic safety efforts in Alameda. So right now, I will go over what our next steps are, which are basically our near-term improvements. And given that our concern, and rightly so, was due to the collisions involving children, mostly around schools, walking and biking to school. Our number one focus right now for near-term improvements is around schools. The next focus will be intersections and corridors known, as Scott mentioned, to have high collisions and speeding and other intersection issues that we have data on already. The third is a traffic signal timing updates for increased safety at the intersection. And lastly, it's infrastructure modernization to give us the capabilities to run the special timing, I guess, controller features that would be available to us to make the intersection safer in terms of how it is timed. So quickly, go over these four things in terms of school. Our number one priority, I have great news to share that we have seven assessments already in hand. This kind of gives us a good head start or a boost in our efforts. The assessments that we have in hand are called Safe Routes to School Assessments funded by Ictsi Safer Afterschool Program. And I won't go through the list, but I have listed the seven locations that we have already and our plan is to actually implement the striping plans. I'm sorry. Our plan is to implement all striping recommendations that have been given to us through these school assessments. However, if you could just focus on the fine print on the bottom of this exhibit, which is an example at Franklin Elementary School, the consultants from Ictsi that gave us the assessments basically said that these are just our recommendations and actual engineering analysis are required for some of the things that we're putting on a map, basically. Which is which brings me to my third bullet point here, which is perform engineering analysis as needed. So depending on what was recommended to us, the ones that require engineering analysis, we would do that next and seek funding for the warranted recommendations. Typically, things that require engineering analysis or if there is recommendations regarding traffic signals, a stop, a new stop control intersection and our fobs, the flashing beacons for the crosswalk. And there is a combination of all those three things mentioned in the seven assessments we have, but we will start off with our striping and work our way down. But definitely safe routes to school assessments will be our starting point in addressing our first goal. And in terms of intersection improvements, we have Lincoln and Walnut listed as a location. Unfortunately, this location has been known for collisions. We recently had another collision here and what we're planning on doing here, sorry, there's a lot of information here, but just focus on the green boxes, which is the first thing we want to do is do a lane drop west of the intersection. So so right now you have four lanes total two lanes in each direction. And we want to get that to one lane in each direction. And in order to do that, west of the intersection, we have to drop the lane 2 to 1. So as you're approaching the intersection, there's just one lane plus a left turn pocket that we want to add on both sides. So we want to have two left turn pockets, single lane with enhanced crosswalks so that you see the it'll be a ladder crosswalk as well as yield lines before the crosswalk for vehicles to stop for for pedestrians crossing the intersection. And lastly, we have a hatch painted bulb outs, so we want to shorten the crosswalk. So the distance through the crosswalk is shorter, vehicles are stopping and the lanes have been narrowed down. This is just an intersection improvement and we do believe that Lincoln Avenue needs a further all corridor evaluation. And like I said, these are just our near-term goals, that that is a future goal for us to look into the full corridor at a later time. Another example of an intersection improvement we are doing near-term and this work actually got done yesterday. I was in the field verifying it is at the intersection of Burnside Boulevard and High Street here. For the first time we are introducing a new crosswalk leg and pedestrian. Signals. And in addition, we are doing ladder crosswalks all around the intersection to add visibility and just bold, you know, crosswalks for pedestrians where because this intersection has the, I guess up to date controller cabinet and controllers, we're able to run lead pedestrian in a interval for all the phases of this intersection. What this means is kind of like along Park Street, pedestrians are able to start crossing the street while all vehicles are at a stop. And in terms of corridor projects, I will just highlight and repeat what Scott brought up in terms of the data that we have regarding our high injury corridors, which are shown as Webster, Webster Street, Park Street and Grand Lincoln and Central. Two of our corridors have, I guess, existing projects that just need completion. One is the Webster Street Corridor Project. It's I've learned has is a ten year project. And we have some technology to implement or install in the cabinet to basically run signal coordination along Webster. Likewise, Park Street received the technology needed in the cabinets and we just need to complete the signal coordination portion of that. So in terms of signal coordination and timing update, those are the two corridors that we're focusing on this year. And in terms of other improvements for our high injury network corridors, we were planning on Daylighting all along Lincoln Avenue Central and Grand. And so I'm going to combine my third and fourth point, which is traffic signal timing for safety and modernization of our traffic signal system. So there are features that we can run at our intersection that would enhance our safety at the intersection greatly, in my opinion. And one of it is I've listed them there as basic signal timing updates that we could do for traffic safety. An all red phase is a it's like a safety buffer to to basically have all vehicles, pads, everyone at a stop before the next phase gets their green. It kind of gets everyone a chance to, like, recheck themselves, be aware of their surroundings, and then the next phase will go. It is a slight delay at the intersection, but a one or 2/2 stop is very important and increasing safety at the intersection. The next bullet point I have is a minimum green time for bicyclists. This is great for bicyclists and not so great for vehicles, but that is okay with this signal timing changes. What we would be doing is looking at every intersection in the city and ensuring that a bicyclist has the sufficient time to safely cross the intersection to the last leg, making a left turn, basically the longest trajectory from one direction to another versus the view of vehicle. So right now, our traffic signals are timed for a minimum green time for a vehicle to get to an intersection. I don't think that is the safest programing and that is another effort. So what we would have to do is re time, all of our signals increasing our minimum green so that if a bicyclist were there, they could make it to the intersection and not get stuck in a yellow or red halfway through the intersection. The third thing I already mentioned is lead pedestrian interval. This allows pedestrians to get into the crosswalk in advance of vehicles. And lastly, it's time of day signal timing plans. So right now, our city, all of our intersections are timed, fixed. So what that means is that it's regardless of an afternoon peak traffic time or school dismissal time or 2 a.m., when traffic is very light, we are running the same exact times throughout the day with no differentiation for the change in traffic. So while we are like I have a picture of an old cabinet, that's basically what most of our city is like in the picture. To the right is this traffic signal cabinet, which is which has the equipment needed to run some of these things. But running the time of day signal plans would be something that for the most part, we have some of our controllers that can handle this change. So I believe this would make our corridors more efficient and help greatly with our traffic safety efforts so quickly. There are some other things that I would like us to implement near term, and one is a yellow reflective border around signals so that you could see from afar that you're approaching a traffic signal. The pedestrian countdown signals. I know we have them mostly everywhere, but not all intersections have it. And lastly, we have some intersections where the crosswalks are missing. The signal head for a pedestrian. So this is a matter of purchasing equipment to ensure that if a pedestrians crossing the crosswalk, not only are they getting the information of not only are they getting an API to safely cross the intersection, but a countdown to tell them how much time they have to get through the intersection. And so I will actually pass it back to Scott to continue. Thank you. Great presentation. And I want to ask, I don't think this was included in our packet. Will you be able to make that available to us? I think that's great. And I also wanted to just let the public know that in the back of the room, we have Lieutenant Matt McMullen from APD Wave to the people . So thank you. He came particularly for this item. Thank you, Mr. Wickstrom. I'd like to continue and build off what Daniel was saying. So we have a very active program to improve traffic safety. But there's another component to traffic safety, which is basically good maintenance of our existing infrastructure. So signs and striping anyone who's been anywhere west of Grande Street has noticed stop signs, stop legends, crosswalks that have been re striped. We re striped over 250 intersections west of Grand. Focusing on those three components. We are moving on to our next phase, which is really looking from grande to park and then eventually park to the east and the island and eventual kind of work away into Bay Farm Island as well. I will say that payments is also a component of traffic safety in the sense that while we've revamped our our our paving program, we're doing more than just 2 to 3 miles the streets per year with a lot of preventative maintenance. We're going to be doing ten miles of pavement maintenance this next year or this year or 2020. And with that comes all new striping and opportunities to look at ways to improve our our striping crosswalks, potentially painted billboards where appropriate. So that's another major component. And then I want to talk about sidewalks, because sidewalks are a critical component of our transportation network. There's a lot of dots on there. So this is kind of what we call zone four, which is between Grand and Broadway. You notice we tend to work left to right across the city with our with a program. We're going we've transitioned to a new kind of method for sidewalks where we're doing a lot more cutting of offsets. And it's going to help us go from a several hundred remove and replaces to over 2500 potential trip and fall hazards that will be removed just in this section alone. Staff report should be coming to you in two weeks to award that contract, which we'd certainly appreciate. It just approved it for the next agenda. I yes, it will be next two weeks from now. Yeah. Want to talk a little bit about some capital projects that are in construction that are near nearing completion. Obviously, the cross Alameda Trail is set for a grand opening on the 29th. They took half of the fences down for the remaining section today. They're down tomorrow. So if you want to ride the cross Alameda Trail on your bike or walk it from Webster to Main Street, you should be able to do that on Wednesday. But certainly by the end of this week, the business park over at Harbor Bay has that long had some concerns about traffic and the ability for their workers to leave safely. At the end of the day. And we are in progress of installing two new traffic signals on what are called A street and B street or Penumbra Street. Those are in progress and should be operational by the end of the month or not early into March. So those are well under construction as well. And perhaps a couple of things that you might not be as attuned to from, I'll say, a city council perspective, but we do have a fair amount of design that we're working on in the background. So Island McCartney Intersection has long been on our, I'll say our our work plan for a capital budget. And originally the idea was to install a signal here. We've been working with one of our traffic consultants who did it recently completed an intersection control evaluation, if you will. What is the best way to manage traffic here? And there's the idea came out about what about possibly doing a roundabout at this location. This is something that we recognize. We're going to go back and make a visit by the Transportation Commission, bring this idea through them and get a little more input and feedback from them before potentially bring it back up here to council. That's something we're working on in the background as well. Hopefully that will be to Transportation Commission this spring. And then I do want to talk a little bit about protected intersections. Most collisions occur at or in the vicinity of an intersection, and the latest practice or latest guidance is to protect the intersection as best possible, to separate the pedestrian movement from bicycle movements, from vehicular movements. And these are sometimes referred to as Dot's intersections. We currently have eight of these in design. Seven of them are out on Alameda Point. A lot of them are with the base we use project which we hope to kick off in in 2021. The one that's going to come first is likely going to be well is going to be Otis and Grand as part of the Otis Street Safety Improvement Project. So there's a lot of exciting stuff that we're working on in the background, and I also want to at least put some thought through that. Traffic safety happens as part of development projects as well. Side a, phase one that was really early in the morning when I took that photo. But they have the pavement down. They're beginning to get the sidewalks and the bike paths in there. It may depend on a couple items we're trying to work through open to the public as early as April this year. And you'll have access through to see play in the ground and potentially access back between the north and south of Alameda Point and then Del Monte Construction. The new developer pulled permits last month and they have actively begun construction. And the big carrot there is that Clement Avenue will be extended from its current terminus at Entrance Road and carry all the way through to Atlantic. So that'll be a wonderful addition for it. So that kind of concludes our presentation that Danny and I had prepared, and both of us are available for any questions, anyone we might have. Thank you very much, both of you. That was a great presentation. I do we have public comments on this item. Speaker Okay, well, shall we hear a public speaker and then have to have comments and questions? Okay. Jeff Not. Good evening. Evening, mayor. Council members. I'm Jeff Canals and I live at the corner of Lincoln and Walnut and I feel like I've hit the lottery. After hearing that presentation about what's going to happen at Lincoln and Walnut, but I'm going to go ahead and read this anyway to put an exclamation point on why the work needs to be done. According to Alameda transportation statistics, there have been 47 collisions at this intersection in the past five years. In one, one of my cars parked at the curb was totaled. In another, my fence was taken out in four separate crashes. The neighbor across the street has lost two cars parked on the curb and two fences. To be fair, the city has implemented traffic calming measures. Cornered parking spaces have been replaced with red curbs to improve sightlines when crossing Lincoln with a newly repainted crosswalk, a neon yellow pedestrian crossing signs. But the collisions between cars trying to cross Lincoln keep happening. In the past six months, there have been four accidents, all resulting in personal injury requiring ambulance transport to a hospital. In one recent collision, it resulted in a car crashing through the front bedroom of a house where a mother and her two children were sleeping. The house has been red tagged and the occupants displaced, still not back. There are several conditions that make this intersection so difficult for drivers. We already know that drivers regularly exceed almeida's 25 mile per hour speed limit. On Lincoln. It's more like 35 to 45 on the stretch between Willow and Oak. I know because I live there. As speeding drivers approach the intersection going east from the light at Willow, they have to merge from two lanes to one. The merge happens right at the intersection of Lincoln and Walnut. Going west from the lighted oh. There's a split from one lane to two drivers behind a slower car step on the gas at the split. And that acceleration happens right before the intersection of Lincoln and Walnut. Drivers already exceeding safe speed limits in a hurry, distracted on their cell phones, often encounter cars on Walnut wanting to cross Lincoln, not to mention students from Love Elementary. Love the name of that school. By the way, I'm a retired principal from Alameda Unified and Alameda High School, just two blocks away, one to across the street vehicles , including the mail truck who parks there every day at the red curb, obstruct sightlines and they never get tickets when there is an event closing Park Street, a default detours Walnut Street, which exacerbates an already difficult crossing. And I promise that I did not have any prior knowledge to your presentation. One obvious solution is to change the lane configuration on Lincoln from two lanes each way to one. I just wrote this tonight. It's brilliant. With a middle lane designated for turning cars, Broadway has this configuration. My neighbors and I have been in contact with the city as vice mayor and city manager. To their credit, they have met with us to discuss the accidents that have caused significant property damage and personal injury. We have heard there may be a plan to mitigate the danger. I'm almost done last sentence to indicate the conditions that link in a wall and we would love to know what the plan is. Thank you very much for that tonight. And I would love to know how soon it might be put in place. Thank you for your comments. Okay. These are all our public comments. Correct. Okay. We we will close I have a comment and I was thinking I didn't know we had a retired principal in the chambers, but I was thinking how nice it is to have all these students from middle school and high school listening because it's for all of you. You're one of the reasons we want to keep our streets and our sidewalks safe so that your parents will let you walk and ride your bike to school. But we want to have safe ways for you to do it. So with that, and thank you to to both of our folks from the city engineer's office, because this is a it's a big issue for this council, for our city. And so with that, let's let's start out with our comments. So we just go down the line or to somebody somebody just itching to go first. Vice Mayor Doesn't matter to me. Okay. Well, okay then on my right. Okay. So couple questions since since I got the mic first. So that gentleman raised some interesting questions. Can we get some answers to those? Oh, you know, you. Are schedule for Walnut and Lincoln is. So we have the plans, as I showed, and it's a matter of getting our contractor crisp company to schedule the work. So we are expecting it in in spring, so within a month or so. Thank you. Yeah. All right, you heard it here. So then what's our long term? I'm sorry. I mean, what's our long term? Because it's not just that section of Lincoln. I mean, all of Lincoln is kind of a speedway. Right. So as I mentioned, we do believe that Lincoln Avenue needs a fuller full corridor analysis. And we expect that there's a lot of community outreach required, additional funding and design for what could be done. Narrowing the four lanes to two lanes with some billboards are just things that we're imagining. The lane shift actually would offset some of our traffic signals and the location of the signal heads. So there's some modifications along the corridors that are needed and each traffic signal modification is a few hundred thousand dollars at the least. So we are hoping to revisit or scope out this project. And this year, like we want to look at the full corridor and have like a ticket, an item, I guess a price tag to what we need, how much we need to fully address the full corridor. And are there things we can do on an emergency basis? You know, like, for example, temporarily shut down lanes if kids are getting hit lower the speed limit in school zones, because I thought we had that authority under the state law. So. Sure. So regarding the speed limit we are I'm putting together an RFP to do a citywide speed survey. I'm working with our police department to determine the segments that need to be surveyed. Once we have that data, the Council can and we will share that with you. And there there is some ability for the agency to lower speed limits around school zones. Now, there's I think I know of Sacramento who has done it, but in order to get that far, we need our speed survey done first. And the speed survey actually also it's very tricky because the speed survey could show higher speed limits. And in that cases, lowering it where it is, you're kind of tied to what you could do there. But we do have more ability around school zones. Okay. And then the other thing I think I asked this last year when we had this discussion, I remember working in San Francisco, and if you were a pedestrian, you could pretty much walk down some of the major arteries to Market Street because the lights and the crosswalks were time to pedestrians. I mean, if we thought about implementing something like that to make it, I mean, we're doing it for bicycles, but making our main streets park in Webster and so on. A little more pedestrian friendly. Yes. Great recommendation. And that is something where I'm looking at and considering all the safety improvements that we could do with traffic signal with our traffic signal system, some of our intersections have obsolete technology, obsolete cabinets and controllers. We just don't have the ability we have the ability to replace the cabinet and by the cap, the controllers, basically the computer running the intersection to install these features along certain business districts like Park in Webster. We are definitely considering additional pedestrian timings because we know the volume. Is there more? Not at every intersection in the city, but definitely along certain corridors. There's a need and it's being considered. Definitely. Well then I'll just make some quick comments. I appreciate your presentation. I appreciate the fact that our staff has prioritized working on this. I mean, to me, this is the one thing we cannot get wrong because I don't want to look in the face of a parent or a child who may have lost their mother or father . You know, some of us that are not kids also get hit in the street. Right. I see one of our surviving accident victims in the audience. So I'm intrigued by the, uh, the roundabout. On on Harbor Bay, I think there are a number of places in the city, that High Street intersection being one of them. I think there's one on Gibbons where that comes out. So I think this is something that's not just European. I know, Malia, when you were prepping for your wedding, I was driving around and I didn't cover a lot of roundabouts. So I think it's a much safer way to deal with some of these dangerous intersections. I'm excited to see that. But let's let's keep up the work. Let's keep prioritizing this. This is something we have to do now. We have to do it right. And we we have to just get it done. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember de SAG. Well, great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. I think one area where I'm interested in is for all the 25 locations that you've identified as well as. The various corridors that that you've identified. If we can make sure to get, uh, ample data, you've already gathered the data, ample data so that you can compare in a statistically significant manner, have the, have the, you know, approaches that you've adopted actually resulted in statistically significant improvements that are outside of chance. I think we need to know that, you know, that I think the public needs to know that the the tools that we're adopting are going to be effective. Um, and, you know, I have no doubt that, you know, if you put a stop sign, you stop the car. But, but, but you also want to know, are you diverting traffic to elsewhere, other parts of town which did not exhibit, you know, high traffic incidents? So I think that's the type of data that we need is not just to collect trends data, but be able to put into some kind of context that allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of our decision. And I think it's not it's not difficult to just, you know, to, uh, put the data all together and just, you know, run simple statistical significance analysis. Unfortunately, what that means, though, is once the the techniques are put into place, we won't be truly able to measure the the statistical significance impact for at least three or four years, because we have to gather like a number of data, but we can do some preliminary basis. You know, we can compare five years before with five years after. Um, but I think it's important that we at least put, begin to put some kind of remedies in place. But, but at the end of the day, though, we need to know that the remedies are truly effective. And I think we owe that much to to the residents. Otherwise, we're just kind of, you know, making people feel good and saying, oh, hey, you know, we're going to put all these ball balls and I'm going to put all these are one, two to let two days to one lane remedies. But at the end of the day, we need to know that that what we're putting in place will be effective. But like I said, though, in order to make that kind of comparison, it's going to take some time. But these would be lessons learned that future councils can can look to and draw on when it comes to saying, you know, what are the remedies that work? So thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Next. WHITE Thank you. So I believe this is Ms.. Mary's first council presentations. I wanted to welcome her and also recognize that when she started last fall, she came in at probably one of the most horrific times for a traffic engineer to start in Alameda, because not only were children being hit at a shocking rate, but a council who was prioritizing street safety was screaming, do more, do something now. Holy cow. And I just wanted to, you know, thank you. Thank thank Mr. Wikström as well for the work that has been done, because there's been a lot of it. And I know that sometimes and I'll say this personally, but I'm sure you're hearing from other people, we are always saying more. But but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're not also recognizing the hard work and the work that's being done out there. I also wanted to recognize that the courage in pronouncing it for sales took me five years to get there. So, you know, I've been trying to think about how to how to talk about this. Maybe one of my former neighbors who grew up in Alameda, you know, really wanted to bike. She really wanted a tricycle. And she was an older adult. And, you know, our neighborhood came together and bought her that. And she felt so unsafe riding and riding on the streets of Alameda that she would only ride on a few sidewalks in our neighborhood. And so when I think about, you know, where we need to get to as a city and again, thank you for doing everything we're doing. But also, oh, my gosh, we need to do so much more. You know, I think this is an example of we are trying to not just make it safe for for students to be able to walk to school, but for people to just have mobility around their own neighborhoods and whatnot. You know, we have decades and decades of decisions that have led us to the city that is unsafe and doesn't feel right now. And we don't have decades and decades and decades to undo that work and fix it. I said at our council workshop for for me, the word of the year is transformational. And, you know, as we move forward, I do see a lot of repaving, repaving projects and whatever else actually starting to transform our streets. And I really appreciate that there's been a lot of proactive work done there. I, I am still curious when we're going to start. I have seen that. So if you go down Broadway to Bayview, the first protected interstate or first clear intersection with bollards in Alameda has appeared. But when I see us clear zoning and doing projects on Lincoln, etc., I'm not seeing the use of bollards. And unfortunately, I know, I know they're not the most beautiful things. But unfortunately, people who drive seem to as, as Mr. Chernoff mentioned, park in those red zones with quite a imputed community. And we have to, unfortunately, have to put a physical barrier to tell drivers that the red zone is not a place for you to park for 15 minutes because you're just running in. It's a safety zone for for our for our neighbors. And I'd like to start seeing I'd really like to start seeing that as a part of our ah toolkit coming out because I think we need to not just create the space, but we need to protect the space. Yeah. You know, I we we started this meeting with with a moment of silence for the fatality that happened on Friday night. You know, one of the tenets of Vision Zero is that all fatalities are avoidable. Right. That there are changes we can make, whether it's providing better protection on sidewalks, whether it's slowing the speed limit down . It is it is not a shock that that fatality happened on one of our four and that many of our fatalities happen on our fastest streets. That is a 35 mile an hour street. We have had many conversations kind of at the community level, not within the city, about just removing the four or five streets that are 35 miles an hour and making them safer at 25 miles an hour. And just having to be in Alameda, we drive 25 and I would like to see that as a part of our conversation as we're going forward. Again, acknowledging that you're doing speed service for 50 mile an hour school zones and. Right. This is not a let's bring it back in March. But but, you know, let's keep that in the mix as well as as we're thinking thinking things through. San Francisco has done a lot of work to extend pedestrian crossing times for seniors. Alameda as population is, you know, aging quickly. County's population is aging quickly. That doesn't always come at the cost of extending the length of time that the light has to stay green. It can actually come out of sometimes if the green area just means, you know, a longer yellow. But it gives that it gives seniors a little bit more understanding of how much time they have if we just program them for a slower crossing time. And that's been shown to have some safety impacts as well. You know, I guess I want to say I appreciate Councilmember D's call for evaluation and whatnot. I want to make sure we have the right metrics. For me, the metric isn't we divert traffic to somebody else's street. For me, the metric is are people getting hit less? Are the behaviors we're trying to change changing? Because sometimes these numbers are not going to go to a place where somebody where there have been, you know, 15 collisions over five years and find a statistically significant change over five years. But you can go and measure whether or not people are more slow and stop slowly making the corner or people are yielding for pedestrians, etc.. And those are the behaviors that that, you know, we know yielding speeding illegal turns and running red lights and stop signs are typically the five things that lead to people getting hit. Are we are we are we reducing those incidents so that there is a reduction in the chance that we're going to be hitting people? My guess is we're going to find that, yes, we have kind of reduced it, but we haven't eliminated it. And that actually a lot of the things that we're doing, which I appreciate, are quick and effective. Right. These are best practice, are not enough that we're not going far enough. And that gets to the long term and the more transformational things that I know you're working on. And I will stop here in basically just saying, you know, I am proud to serve with the council I serve with because I think you have strong partners in safety. You know, I think you have you have the council that you can come to and talk to about the fact, you know, we have 1950 stoplight traffic lights and we're trying to implement 21st century safety things. We need to have that conversation. And I think we're here to to support you. So, you know, ask us for the tools we need. Bear with us when we seem impatient again. I mean, me, you know, but I also know that it's done. It's done with support and and appreciation for the hard work that's come in and that we want to be here for you, because you guys are doing a great job for our community and we all want to work for the community, you know, to become what we what we have always said we are. But when I talk to people, people are not feeling that we are the small town, that you just feel like you can send your kids to the movies anymore. People feel like they they have to kind of armor their kids up to just, you know, have them go hang out with some friends for an afternoon. So thank you. Councilmember Vela. So I want to thank staff for the quick turnaround on this. I think whenever and it may have been a few months, but the reality is with city government and all of the things that we have to look at and take a comprehensive approach, a few months is a very quick turnaround, so I really appreciate that. I'm also somebody who used to live at the corner of Sherman and Santa Clara, and while I lived there and multiple cars drove up over the curb and we actually put in a rock wall of sorts, which has even since then prevented cars from careening into the house. But I was also there when cars hit rope, drove into the house across the street, and I saw that happen a couple of times and was the first person out making the call to 911. And I think, you know, a lot of these changes have been a long time coming. Many of these intersections were just on the cusp. And I think we need to and I think we are doing that as a policy, kind of changing how we're looking at this from a problem solving standpoint and who we're trying to make. Make it safest for a couple of questions that I had was. You know, we've I heard you speak about the obsolete obsolete traffic signal technology. There have been a few intersections that I've been at where the as a pedestrian, I see a lot of pedestrians walking against the pedestrian light because they haven't hit that button. They either don't know to hit the button or. And in fact, when I was over at Love school early one morning with the mayor and the vice mayor. Out in the. Rain. Out in the rain, I think we all witnessed this where the that the pedestrians didn't hit the hit the button and so the pedestrian light didn't turn on for them to cross and they basically missed a cycle or were walking against the pedestrian light. And so that's something that I would just like to see gone. And I see it happen all the time. I live near Washington Park and it happens all the time where people kind of miss the pedestrian signal and then they have to either choose between waiting for another cycle or crossing against the signal. And I kind of hold my breath whenever this happened. And I see a lot of parents doing it with strollers and things like that. And as a new parent, you know, in fact, the other week I was out there telling people, no, you have to press the button here, otherwise it doesn't change for you. So those are the types of things that I would just like to see gone. I think there are a hold over. Obviously there's a cost associated with them. But to that point, when when looking at these zones and I know we're focused on school zones, but I would also like my question is, are we looking at kind of the zones near these major parks and thoroughfares the same way? Because if there's a dog park or things like that that we know are kind of heavy pedestrian traffic, it seems to me that we should be. Obviously, there's limits. You said that. Is that part of the overall consideration in terms of what we're focused on? I'm seeing Scott not. Okay. Thank you. The other the other question that I had was the roundabout or the intersection, I guess, at and Snell Central and Sherman, which is where the three streets kind of come together for streets, I think , come together and what the plan is for that. When I say roundabout, I'm I'm hoping that hopefully we'll think about that at some point. That specific intersection and one of the things I'm going to make and I'll I'll yellow get your. Voices softer tonight. Yeah we didn't talk too much about some of the longer term plans and actions that are going on. I know the active transportation plan will be in front of this council and next month sometime and they will be talking about a lot of the larger corridor projects. The specific intersection you're talking about is at the end of the Central Avenue project. And so that will be incorporated into that project. We're looking at it. I know a roundabout has been discussed. There are some challenges, geometry that will be presented and evaluated as part of that larger Central Avenue corridor project. Okay. Appreciate that. The other thing that I've seen a lot of is the illegal double parking. My colleague, the vice mayor, mentioned parking and red zones. I've seen a lot of that. But there's also been a lot of illegal double parking. I've seen everyone from delivery drivers to people on, you know, picking up food and things like that, running into restaurants, illegally parking, double parking. And I know that while it's convenient for them, I also see them doing this in our bike lanes and seeing cyclists have to bike around this, seeing cars have to drive around it in an unsafe manner. And I'm hoping that we can also be looking at that in some of our plans. And I think to staff's point, when we're looking at new structures and new kind of areas of commerce and things like that, making sure that there are delivery, ample delivery of 15 minute parking, that sort of thing, so that people can actually have a spot to to safely double park or not to safely park rather than double park. Excuse me, because it seems in some of our districts we don't have those types of spaces which mean that there isn't an ability to stop for a few minutes, drop something off or pick something up. You either have to park in a in a regular parking spot or double park. And obviously, I would like to see that cut down because I think it's incredibly unsafe where it's happening. Thank you. Thank you. And so I will just echo a lot of what my colleagues have said, but I also want to start out and recognize both of you. I think we're lucky to have both of you on Team Alameda. But Missouri, I have to say, it's always a pleasure. It makes me proud to see a woman engineer. You're a great role model. We have a lot of young men in this room, but I'm hoping there's some girls watching do. And even for you guys, she's an engineer, isn't she? Awesome and great. Just a great presentation. So so thank you for that. I had a few questions that I made in my margins when I was reading I'm reading the staff report. So one of them is when I'm out and about in the community, people come up to me and talk to me about their intersections of concern, and I will just throw out that Councilmember Vela and I get our nails done at the same salon. It's this is not an advertisement, but it's at the corner of Central and Ninth Street. And I cannot tell you how many times I've been there, a captive audience. I'm always happy to talk to me any time that they come up and talk to me about and especially the women who work there because they saw a window and they see so many near misses at the corner. This is at Central at Ninth Street. And so they've asked me, you know, what's being done about this? And so I promised them I would bring this up during this report. So you heard it here. You can tell my manicurist. And then the other intersection that was brought to my attention is at Central and page. And page is that little street you might know where Spitzer's cafe is just down from Washington Park on central. And so it's a popular coffee place. But also just down the street in that same block is a is a center, a day center for adults with developmental disabilities. And that intersection has, you know, nothing just some pain on the ground. And I, as an able bodied person, always feel that I'm taking my life in my hands when I'm crossing the street to to meet someone for coffee. And so that was that's been brought up to me, I think, actually, by one of the parents of an individual who uses that center. But it's I would like to to know what's being what, if anything, is being considered there. And then I think at the Open House workshop you did at the library last year, which was great and very informative, I asked. The question is, would it be possible in a couple of intersections in our downtown area and I'm thinking especially at Park and Central and Park in Santa Clara, to do what is done in some other business district. Scott Smiley He knows what I mean to say. I know it is a scramble intersection. I think there's other terms. But just today, the city manager and I were coming back from a meeting in Oakland and we were driving down Webster Street through Oakland, Chinatown. And for years they've done a very successful and actually very beautiful with the decorative pavement scramble intersection, which means at one time pedestrians can go every which way. And they really seem to honor that and observe it in for even longer than the one in Oakland, Chinatown, in the financial district in San Francisco. There's a couple of those. And so, you know, I realize everything costs some money, but I'm wondering if that's something that could be considered in time. And then I will just close with saying I cringe when I hear about the antiquated signal boxes. And so just be sure that you're letting the city manager know because our mid-year budget cycle study is coming up. So we want to be able to to fund these necessary changes and improvements because safety is just the top priority for for everyone on this council. And I know for all of our city staff. So with that, I thank you for your time. Do you want to come and address any of the inquiries you heard or did you all you got the notes down and. Okay, so with that council, what we're being asked to do on this is to accept the update on the recently installed and ongoing traffic safety and traffic calming activities. So do I have affirmation? So we do a motion move. Okay, get a motion second. Got a second. All in favor. I okay. I think that was unanimous. Right, that was unanimous. Thank you so much. Now we're going to do a little bit of housekeeping audience. I beg your pardon? Process safety. Sure. Process. Question Can I assume that what's coming forth in March to the council is is essentially the response to the council direction in September to bring back an intersection equity access policy, street lane with how we're doing traffic calming? Uh, I can't say yes to all of those things, but several of those things will. Be. Are, are being developed right now. Things like the lane with study and what's what was referred to for March 17th is the active transportation plan. Active choices plan annual report. Okay. Okay. Got that answered. All right. So here's my my housekeeping and we are going to take a break. Let's say. Uh, yes, Mr.. That one option that we've discussed is. Since you have a lot of speakers on Sunshine. I'm getting to that. Thank you. I'm one option we have. We're going to take a break and take a ten minute break. What I would appreciate from the audience, could I get a show of hands because we have a couple more items. What do we have, madam? Quick. We've got three items. Yes. Okay. So I'm guessing that we have a lot of speakers on the last one, which is item six is about the Sunshine Ordinance five. So it is there. Raise your hand if you intend to speak on item six. E Okay. So that looks like one, two, three, four, five. Okay. So that is five. Okay. And what about we've got item six. C is looking at four weak requests for qualifications for West Midway Project. Two speakers, any more than two, raise your hand if you wanna speak for Ms. on West Midway. And then there is the one about the personal wireless service facilities in public right away zero which. Is in one speaker on. 9a9a Okay. So Counsel, I would suggest that we take that in with the most speakers first, but I am but one person. What does everyone think? I'll move for that to change the agenda to do so. Second. Okay, so then that would be should we go in the order of the speakers? So we do the Sunshine Ordinance, the West Midway and then the small cell. So just move 60 next. Yeah. Okay. Does that work? All right, so we have a motion. We have a second all in favor. I, i okay. That is, that carries four to nothing. I miss village. Just had to step out, bitch. So she didn't vote. Okay, ten minute break. We'll be back and we'll start with such an ordinance. Yes. When? Just take their seats, please. We will get started. The staff hangs on my every word. We all. We all do. Yeah. I have children. I'm used to being ignored. It became. So high. Audience I apologize for the delay. Usually when I say a ten minute break, it's 10 minutes. But just we had some housekeeping details that couldn't be avoided. So. Counsel, you're not going far, right? Vice Mayor Okay, you and we have had a little agenda, possible agenda change come up. But I want to just take your temperature, as it were. So on the West Midway item, that's item six. See, there are some couple of possible ways we could proceed. We could continue this to a date certain, uh, we could. Mr. City Attorney, help me out. We could move forward tonight. You could. The Council could choose to move forward tonight. Or you could choose to take a vote to continue the item to a date certain you have flexibility in how you could choose to proceed. Okay. So, um, well, we have two speakers, but we're not going to hear from them if we're going to continue. So first, I want to do the housekeeping from the council. So counsel, your thoughts. Just go down the line. Now, I won't start with the prison history on my right, Councilman Brody. I just moved my seat. I'd actually like to hear it and then figure out why we might want to continue it or not. Councilmember dissuaded Councilmember Desai. Well, you know, if if it's a matter of crossing our T's and dotting the I's, then I'm all in favor of continuing it to a later time.