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03/04/2024 - Meeting Minutes SALT LAKE CITY TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY BOARD Minutes of the March 4, 2024 Meeting Present from the Transportation Advisory Board Greg Sanchez, Johnnae Nardone, Jon Larsen, Josh Stewart, and Steve Wooldridge. Electronically present from the Transportation Advisory Board were Craig Buschmann, Daniel Mendoza, Jim Espeland, Julie Bjornstad, and Suzanne Stensaas. Absent from the Transportation Advisory Board were Isaac Astill, John Close, Justice Morath, Matthew Gray, and Pat Casey. Present were Dan Bergenthal, Becka Roolf, Mary Sizemore, and Joe Taylor. Electronically present were Amy Lyons, and Martin Cuma The meeting was held both electronically and in person and was called to order at 4:02 p.m. by Greg Sanchez. Welcome and Introduction of Guests — Greg welcomed everyone, there were no guests. Motion: Daniel Mendoza moved to approve the minutes of the February 5, 2024 meeting. Julie Bjornstad seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. Public Comment — There were no members of the public present. Designing for Kids: Prioritizing a Child-Friendly City Benefits Everyone! Josh Stewart, TAB Member&Architect Josh said SLC recently issued a 5-year housing plan and there was something interesting that came up with that. They were talking about generally child-friendly designs, one of the things they shot for was to build a more equitable city and they talked about a mismatch between types of housing the market is producing and the needs of the community. One of the comments that came back in this plan is they noted residents want more missing middle housing and more family size housing. They have some data on population and the growth they've seen in SLC is that there are 14k more residents in the past io years,but this growth is mostly attributable to adult migration. The children's demographic has shrunk so they're less inclusive and less diverse. The result of that is the school district must close 4 elementary schools. He said in the news they talk about bringing in a baseball stadium or NHL and that is not being more inclusive. The average person buying a baseball ticket is 43 years old. He showed a chart for the consumers of sporting event tickets and said the average age for a resident of SLC is 32 1/2. There are wide streets, fast cars, not a lot of crosswalks and the potential impact on children is not being taken into consideration, fewer children are walking to school. Josh said there are infinite opportunities to build child friendly cities and he gave some examples of how that as well as examples of unfriendly city practices.As schools are Page 1 of 4 TAB 03-04-2024 Minutes closed, there won't be the community interaction there previously was. He shared some recommendations that could be taken to the Mayor including narrowing and reducing lanes, minimize crossing times, preserving school sites for future use as a school, using zoning to assure a 15-minute walk to the city, and requiring new housing to include significant walkability improvements, among others. School Closures &Revised Walking Routes Dan Bergenthal, SLC Transportation Dan introduced himself and said he's going to talk about what's going on with the school closures and how SLC Transportation is addressing it. There are 4 elementary schools that will be closed at the end of the school year, he showed the school boundary map. SLC Transportation is trying to answer the question of where the students are going to be walking,where they weren't walking before since a lot of existing school boundaries are now larger. The school policy says if you're within a mile and a half of school,you walk, and kids will be bussed outside of that. SLC Transportation created maps of every school that will be affected by this and figured out the mile and a half radius. They are looking at the areas where the kids will be walking to new schools and will monitor this and figure out where they need to change traffic control elements such as school crosswalk signs. They have also gone to the schools and have gotten locations where the kids live. This will allow them to eventually overlay that with their radius maps and they'll hopefully be able to make some decisions on where they think there will be impacts and can make some changes before school begins in the fall. A lot of fieldwork will be done once the school does begin to look for patterns they couldn't see on their maps. The school's responsibility right now is to update their own walking maps. There is a committee that works with the schools and is overseen by the school district. The schools put together their walking maps, submit it to that committee to get comments and then finalize. They are also responsible for updating their bus maps. Transportation will do their best this summer to figure out what changes need to be made but it's a moving target and they won't know until school begins. Safe Streets &Roads for All Grant Joe Taylor&Mary Sizemore, SLC Transportation Safe Streets for All (SSA) is a discretionary grant from the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highways Division. They were awarded just shy of$1 million; the grant was put together by a non-profit group called Children's Media Workshop and was done through the Mayor's Office. Mary and Joe are the folks working on it from the Transportation Division. What the Children's Media Workshop intends to do is figure out a plan with the Salt Lake City School District to get into as many classrooms as they can and have a digital mapping exercise. Students will mark their own journey to school and code it with how they got there. The focus is as much on safety as it is on carbon neutrality. This program should run the full length of the next school year. The benefits are twofold, Transportation planners have some experience with computer mapping which has amazing benefits and then the way the grant is written, they will have self- reported data on what route and mode of transportation students are using to get there. Mary will take that data and tie it directly into the safety action plan done with the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Mary said the Children's Media Workshop has been doing this in classrooms for a while now and has all sorts of promotional materials showing the success rates. They also do a little bit of a workshop with the students and come back and talk about why they choose the modes they choose when others are available and how they can turn the routes into biking or walking and encourage the Page 2 of 4 TAB 03-04-2024 Minutes children to try other modes. The Federal Highways are essentially asking for proof of concept that it does work. Panel Discussion / Q&A— and Potential Action? Johnnae asked if the grant was all for programming rather than creating anything on the streets. Joe confirmed and said this is to inform them down the road what changes they should make. Julie said there are implementation grants that cities can apply for, the SSA is an ongoing program. Martin wanted to provide an anecdotal demonstration of what he perceives as a failure of the transportation plan on behalf of the school district. In his neighborhood, the closest school is about .8 miles which is probably a 2o—minute walk. The school his child is assigned to is about a mile and a half which is about a 3o-minute walk, so most parents from his neighborhood are driving their kids to school. The fundamental problem is the layout of the schools within the neighborhoods and how close they are to the residents. Unless there is more density of smaller schools in the neighborhoods or reasonable transportation, he doesn't believe they'll cut down the driving of the parents. Josh asked if the SLC School District coordinated with SLC Transportation prior to making their decision and feels it is egregious to make these decisions without professional input. Johnnae said there will be more cars on the road even if some students are still walking because a larger group of students will be going to each school. Greg asked if Transportation would revisit this frequently or just this first year and Dan said they will revisit it for several years. Johnnae asked how this overlaps with Livable Streets and if there is a pot of money set aside for this school closure deal. Dan said there is not money set aside for this but there is money for Livable Streets. Johnnae said this should shift Livable Streets money and wanted to know if there was a timeline for when the school routes would be completed and if they are taking public input. Dan said it is something the schools do individually, and he isn't sure if they are accepting public input. Suzanne asked if they had an idea of the new bus plans because they are going to have to bus students across Foothill for it to be safe and she asked how well it is being coordinated in the overlapping zones with the UTA bus routes. She believes they need to coordinate the school bus system and put pressure on the schools to provide appropriate routes and to provide the students with passes. Johnnae said every student in the school district has a pass. Lt. Wooldridge said UTA changed the route for West High School students and now him and his wife drive several students to school because the new nearest bus stop was in a bad area and further away. He said it would be a good idea to get a good assessment of what's going on around those intended routes. Johnnae said this might be a good opportunity for an SSA grant to have a pilot bike bus program. It may be a contribution Transportation could make to facilitate moving these people in a less car dependent way. Martin brought up the weather challenges with that and said there needs to be a solution that works all year. Johnnae wondered if there could be a pilot program of vans driving kids to school rather than large buses. Julie would like more encouragement at the school district level to partner with Safet Streets or Bike Utah to support the bike programs. Suzanne said they are really putting disadvantaged students at an even greater disadvantage by them not being able to get to school. She thinks the school district should pay parents or volunteers to do a safe walking bus with students. After additional discussion, the Board decided to write a letter to the Mayor, City Council, SLC School District, UTA, SLCPD, and UDOT expressing their concerns. Motion: Craig Buschmann moved that Greg Sanchez write a letter on behalf of the Board summarizing their concerns. This letter would be sent to the Board members for Page 3 of 4 TAB 03-04-2024 Minutes feedback prior to sending it out. Jim Espeland seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. Report Out — By Members TAB Members&Bicycle Advisory Committee —Pat Casey This topic was postponed due to time limitations. Motion: Jonnae Nardone motioned to adjourn the meeting; Josh Stewart seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 5:37 p.m. and the next meeting of the Board was scheduled for April 1, 2024. TAB WebEx Meeting Chat Martin Cuma 3/4/2024 4:22 PM • Radius is not equal to the actual distance, which is likely larger due to grid layout of the streets. Approved by Transportation Advisory Board 04-01-24. Page 4 of 4 TAB 03-04-2024 Minutes