Loading...
11/06/2023 - Meeting Minutes SALT LAKE CITY TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY BOARD Minutes of the November 6, 2023 Meeting Present from the Transportation Advisory Board were Dave Alderman, Jon Larsen, Josh Stewart, and Suzanne Stensaas. Electronically present from the Transportation Advisory Board were Daniel Mendoza, Jim Espeland, John Close, Justice Morath, Pat Casey, Steve Wooldridge, and Leo Masic. Absent from the Transportation Advisory Board were Isaac Astill, Julie Bjornstad, Greg Sanchez, and Johnnae Nardone. Also Present was Heather McLaughlin-Kolb. Also Electronically present were David Jones,Amy Lyons, Matt Gray, Craig Buschmann, Julianne Sabula, Becka Roolf, Martin Cuma, caller 8oi-g**-**91, and Chip UDOT. The meeting was held both electronically and in person and was called to order at 4:01 p.m.by Suzanne Stensaas. Welcome and Introduction of Guests — Suzanne welcomed everyone. Leo said his time on TAB is coming to an end as he's moving. He said Matt Gray is planning to apply for the UTA position on TAB and then Matt told everyone a little bit about himself. Craig Buschmann also introduced himself. He applied to represent HEAL Utah on TAB and has his interview with City Council tomorrow. Motion: Dave Alderman moved to approve the minutes of the October 2, 2023 meeting. Jim Espeland seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. Public Comment—There were no public comments. BAC Monthly Update Pat Casey, BAC Vice-Chair Pat was out cycling so Martin gave the BAC update. He said they covered two things at the last meeting, one of which was the City Creek closures for the water treatment plant construction. The discussion got a bit heated, and the BAC members felt like Public Utilities should have approached them about a year before they started the project. They would have liked to have had a better discussion about how the project could have been adjusted so the recreation in City Creek could be accommodated throughout construction. BAC wasn't satisfied with the answers they received from Public Utilities, so Martin's plan is to draft a letter and have it up for a vote at their next meeting. They want to let Public Utilities know that they should have involved the stakeholders before they start designing the project. The second topic was the Transportation Master Plan which everyone was basically happy to hear about. The plan is proceeding and it's more multi-modal oriented than the previous one. Suzanne asked if they were aware of the changes being made to City Creek after the initial plan regarding how the use of City Page 1 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes Creek would change to accommodate bicyclists. Martin said yes and that their plan is to open it on weekends and holidays up to wherever they put the gate, and they still don't want to open the hiking trails even though it's a mile away from the construction site. He's not happy with it and he thinks they should have set up the construction plans to keep it open all the way to the top. They basically just seem unwilling to change their construction plan and he understands that now,but they should have discussed this with BAC a year ago and perhaps set up the closures in a way that would be more accommodating to users. Suzanne asked if there was any potential flexibility and Jon said they were involved in Bonneville Drive and keeping the pathway there open, but Transportation hasn't been involved. She asked if Transportation could take the side of the hikers and cyclists and Jon said TAB and BAC can if they feel that strongly about it. Jon said Public Utilities left the BAC meeting saying they would be willing to evaluate how they're doing it,but the top priority is clean water. Martin wants to draft a letter to the Director of Public Utilities, and he would be happy to do it as a joint BAC/TAB letter which TAB can review and vote on it at their next meeting. Justice asked if the BAC would be addressing the cyclist fatality that occurred with the Frontrunner. Matt said it happened at the goo South crossing and it was a situation where there was a Union Pacific train at the crossing and a Frontrunner train, and the deceased individual did not see the frontrunner coming in. Justice said there are some questions about visibility and design, and it seems it might be set up for failure. Jon said as part of the g-Line design, they have funding to set up some safety features at the crossings which should be implemented in the spring. Mapping the 5+5 Program with Pavement Condition to Find Cross- Department Collaborations Becka Roolf, SLC Transportation&David Jones, SLC Engineering Becka recapped a prior discussion with TAB related to project selection. She would now like to speak with them about how this scoring and the resulting projects overlap with the topic of pavement condition and the overall condition index of roadways that the Engineering Division tracks. While that is somewhat embedded in their scoring process, there's more opportunity to look for projects in common that are of interest to both Engineering and Transportation when looking at the pavement condition in more detail. She introduced David Jones who is going to tell them a little bit about pavement conditions, how it's scored and evaluated and then they will show a mapping tool both divisions are using to help identify opportunities to partner. David said they know the roads in the city are in poor condition and they wish they had more money to address those roads. He said the last year was very difficult on pavement due to lots of snow, lots of infiltration of freeze/thaw cycles, and heavy use of snowplows. In 2017 they conducted their second full city survey using a van with measurement instruments and in 2018 those survey results were presented to the City Council. At that time, 65% of the roads were rated poor or worse. They rated and ranked roads based on 2 functions, and he explained that rating system which included counting faults in the road. The Mayor and Council then decided to move forward with a bond that was set aside just for roads. They are now about 3/4 of the way through that $87 million bond and have 2 more years of pavement construction based on those results. In October 2021, they did another full city pavement survey, and the good news is that the overall condition went up. The bulk share of the roads are local roads, and the remaining are arterial collector roads. They had decided in 2o18 to put the bulk of their funds into arterial collector roads and keep those in good condition. They are now going to make a proposal that with this next funding cycle, if approved by voters, they work on local roads rather than arterial Page 2 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes collectors. Becka showed a map which overlays the road condition information along with the projects Transportation tentatively has on their slate to propose for funding. She said this is kind of their roadmap for things they want to apply for funding for. There are two things on this map, one is all the projects Transportation has in mind to pursue for the next io years. Also included is pavement condition and David has suggested they look primarily at the streets that are already failed in addition to serious condition or very poor, as candidates for reconstruction. They try to find streets that, if it makes sense for both Engineering and Transportation, they can both ask for funding and work together to improve them. Becka explained again what 5+5 is which is a io- year program of projects that Transportation is working on collaborating with Engineering and other Divisions of the city. It is a io-year program of projects that they would like to apply for funding. Jon said they are also working on improving collaboration with Parking, Public Lands, Public Utilities, street lighting and other groups that impact the right of way. Becka answered some specific questions related to the map and Suzanne asked if they could send this to the TAB, so they had time to look closely and digest it because it's a lot of good effort and a lot of good news. Martin asked how recent the map is as some of the streets showing bad have been redone. Becka said this is a snapshot in time from 2021 so it is not completely up to date, they just need to swap out the data but it's not quite ready. Engineering has also worked out a deterioration curve so they can estimate what condition a street will be in based on the rate at which streets fall apart. Daniel said since they are discussing road deterioration, are they considering UTA bus route changes and Becka said they are not yet doing this. David reported that the Mayor has said given the state of the roads, she would like to push up the pavement survey to occur sooner rather than every 5 years, so they are on track to have another survey in 2025. Martin asked if they were willing to visually inspect roads that seem worse than what they are ranked, and he gave some examples. David said they do look at citizen requests but even though the roads Martin mentioned were bad, there are worse roads. He said he would be willing to go out and look at Martin's areas of concern with him or at least discuss this offline. Suzanne asked if David would be willing to be a liaison for BAC and help them with perceived road issues and he said he would be willing to do that. Annual Elections Discussion TAB Members Becka wanted to discuss the TAB election process and how it's going for them. Becka asked how they do their elections and Amy said they nominate candidates and then the Board votes. Her other question was if there is a job description and the members said they aren't aware of one. Suzanne said in the past, if someone has a topic they are particularly interested in, they will form a sub-committee or investigate the subject on their own and bring it to the Board. Becka said BAC has used an alternative process for elections in the past, but Amy said BAC has been doing it the same way as TAB. Becka said when BAC first started, there was an alternative process for elections that would sometimes help with leadership if that were a challenge. She explained the alternative process which includes job descriptions. She shared those BAC job descriptions and asked the TAB members if they would like to re-write those to reflect what TAB does. Overall, the members felt these job descriptions were general goals for all members and not specific to the Chair or Vice Chair. Suzanne said it wouldn't hurt to circulate those descriptions before they vote next time to make sure the people who were nominated agreed to them. Dave said they aren't really what the Chair does such as run the meeting or set the agenda, it looks like a member description. They discussed some Page 3 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes potential changes and Becka took notes. Suzanne said if they're going to have a description for the Chair and Vice Chair, they should also have a description for all board members. Suzanne said to restructure this, should really be offline and she and Greg will go through them and send a draft to Becka or Amy to distribute prior to the next meeting. They will make this an agenda item for discussion and a vote at the next meeting along with elections. TAB Priorities for Discussion in 2024 / Meeting Schedule Approval TAB Members Suzanne and Dave talked about the updates they've had in the past from various entities. Jon said the most important function that TAB can fill is on project and funding priorities, topics where they weigh in and there is real change. Suzanne asked how the Board can be most helpful, if there is a particular area they can focus on. Jon said reviewing the projects and providing feedback. Josh asked if the map they looked at earlier was for upcoming projects. Jon said earlier in the year, Becka showed the entire 5+5 list which are big project decisions. Jon said CIP and project priorities go hand in hand and Becka said some of the funding sources are ones that select projects which won't be funded for 5-7 years but, CIP is a fairly quick turn around on funds. Suzanne asked what month they would be most helpful on CIP and Becka said there was originally a schedule for them to review these in the spring. She said then a draft list would be available around August,just in time for some of the funding applications. Right now, they are applying for CIP in between September and November. There are quite a few in the fall but she'd like to get on a cycle where they look at a draft in the spring and then finalize that list. Jon said another layer to consider is to coordinate with the BAC like at the June joint meeting. Suzanne asked if it would be appropriate for DOT to make a list of topics they are most interested in having feedback on and what month they would like that. Becka said that would be reasonable and having the yearly suggested topics is hard because things are a little more fluid and open to opportunity. Josh asked if Transportation gets money from new real estate development and Jon said they do get impact fees, but they can only spend that according to their impact plan. There was some discussion about utility fees and possibly having that as a future agenda topic. Motion: Dave Alderman moved to approve the 2024 Meeting Schedule. Justice Morath seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. Report Out — By Members Dave said Daniel previously brought up the issue of buses on local streets and that there is one road in the Avenues where it is very steep, and the bus really is tearing the road up. He thinks most people agree that they want to keep the bus service, but those big buses aren't built to climb steep hills and there needs to be an equipment change. Jon said if it's a pavement issue, that's something they need to talk to the Engineering team about. He said they've talked about overlaying the bus routes on the map and seeing if they need to put thicker pavement or move from asphalt to concrete on those routes. Josh asked what the process for going back and seeing if the pavement condition map was successful and Jon said it's a brand-new program, so they haven't fully set up the before and after analysis. Josh said a couple of good factors would be if the speed was lowered and what the public perception is. Dave said Reid's graduate students have gone out and done studies like that in the past. Jon said their statistical analysis helped bring that program back. Jon said Transportation staff can go out and measure speeds Page 4 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes and Josh said he would highly recommend that to see if it's working. Suzanne brought up a concern about the bulb-outs related to cycling. Jon said there are pros and cons to every mitigation effort. Jim said on goo West and California Avenue, they installed some triangular curbs to separate the bike lane from the cars and they are all completed but he's heard some complaints about cars not being able to turn right on red if someone is going straight in front of them. He said it looks like they've been done with those for about a month,but they still have the barrels on top of the curbs and there's also a lot of tire marks on the curbs. It also seems like the bicycle lane that is left is almost wide enough for a car. He's wondering if they're leaving the barrels because cars are not knowing where to go. Jon said there's always a lag between when the concrete is down, and when they put the signage and striping in. It's usually a subcontractor that does that, so the City often leaves it up to them and leaves the barrels until they get the final formal signage in place. He said the signage is forthcoming. Suzanne asked Jim to report back next month and let them know if it's been done. Daniel asked about North Temple from 30o East moving eastward, the bus lane and the bike lane are essentially shared. He's wondering if they are shared on 200 South because quite frankly, the bike lane is dangerous, it doesn't get swept and it rises to meet the bus stop so there is basically a ramp going up and then a ramp going down. He has run into other cyclists who have asked if they can ride in the bus lane. He just wanted to bring that up for consideration because it doesn't look like a street sweeper could sweep that section and it is very slippery with all the leaves and debris. Jon said the reason they put the bike lanes behind the bus stops is because there are so many buses along that corridor, they didn't want the bikes to have to fight the buses. He doesn't see any reason not to use the bus lane if there is no bus. Motion: Josh Stewart motioned to adjourn the meeting; Jim Espeland seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 5:35 p.m. and the next meeting of the Board is scheduled for December 4, 2023. TAB WebEx Meeting Chat from Sabula, Julianne to everyone: 4:04 PM Welcome @Matt! We'll miss you dearly, @Leo! I hope you'll continue sending us cool bus stop photos. from Sabula, Julianne to everyone: 4:07 PM Welcome @ Craig! from Lyons,Amy to everyone: 4:15 PM Since it wasn't on the agenda, you can't take action. from Patrick Casey to everyone: 4:i6 PM I have things to say but I'll share them with Martin and contribute to the letter from Roolf, Becka to everyone: 4:19 PM The very similar fatality in the past was during the 999 ride in 2O18. from Roolf, Becka to everyone: 4:27 PM Page 5 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes thanks to the Whale! from Martin Cuma to everyone: 4:39 PM I am wondering how recent is the map you are showing, Becka. For example, 1700 S between 170o E and igoo S is red, but it was rebuilt a few years ago and is in perfect condition. On the contrary, 1700 S between 1loo E and 130o E has large bulges that make one on a bike "hop" going downhill, which is very dangerous at speed with loads (sometimes "precious loads"), and it's showing as orange. from Craig Buschmann he/him to everyone: 4:44 PM I had the same question, Martin. Kensington Ave. between 8th E &9th E was completely repaved earlier this year. from Sabula, Julianne to everyone: 4:56 PM Ranked choice! from Justice Morath to everyone: 5:00 PM yes, they look more like qualifications instead of job duties from Jones, David to everyone: 5:04 PM Thanks to everyone. I (David Jones from Engineering) need to jump off. My email is david jones(&slcgov.com from Roolf, Becka to everyone: 5:20 PM For most of our projects, the maximum impact fees are io%. from Roolf, Becka to everyone: 5:21 PM Good questions! from Sabula, Julianne to everyone: 5:33 PM This is great on-the-ground info and a good question. This is a new design for us in SLC, so feedback is really helpful. Approved by the Transportation Advisory Board 12-4-23. Page 6 of 6 TAB 11-06-2023 Minutes