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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08/04/2025 - Meeting Minutes SALT LAKE CITY TRANSPORTATION ADVISORY BOARD Minutes of the August 4, 2025 Meeting Present from the Transportation Advisory Board were Ari Tepper, Daniel Mendoza, Jon Larsen, Justice Morath, Kelbe Goupil, and Matt Gray. Electronically present from the Transportation Advisory Board were Julie Bjornstad, Miranda Bradshaw, Solomon Brumbaugh, Suzanne Stensaas, Turner Bitton. Absent from the Transportation Advisory Board were Craig Buschmann, Isaac Astill, Josh Stewart, and Steve Wooldridge. Present were Maxwell Hoagland, Dave Iltis, and Julianne Sabula. Electronically present were Amy Lyons, William Davis, Rebecca Bauer, Mili Pioquinto, Troy Saltiel, Becka Roolf, Geoff Dupaix,Allison Parks, Henrique Da Cruz, Sofia Jeremias, Greta Sommerfeld, Mary Sizemore,Angela Price, Brian Conley, Ivana Vladisavljevic, Tyler Lang, Kerri Nakamura, Orion Goff. The meeting was held both electronically and in person and was called to order at 4:02 p.m. by Justice Morath. Welcome and Introduction of Guests — Justice welcomed everyone, and Board members and staff introduced themselves. Motion: Daniel Mendoza moved to approve the minutes of the May 5, 2025 TAB meeting and the June 9, 2025 Joint TAB/BAC meeting. Turner Bitton seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. Chair Report • Quorums are critical,if TAB fails to meet a quorum by 4:15,the meeting must be canceled. If the meeting starts late, it cuts into the agenda time and creates a meeting that is rushed. Please be sure to be in attendance on time and if you know you aren't going to make a meeting,report it as soon as possible. • There is an open seat on TAB which they are hoping to fill with someone representing the disability community. Justice has been reaching out to multiple organizations, and it looks like the City's Accessibility and Disability Commission may be interested in potentially sending someone to participate in TAB meetings. • Summer retreat:A time was never found that would have a quorum. They will try again in the fall. Report Out — by Members Solomon Brumbaugh introduced himself as the new representative for the U of U. He said the U finished a study this spring that looked at the forecasting of their campus Pagel of 5 TAB 08/04-2025 Minutes population. Based on the President's growth goals and their study, they determined that if they don't do anything different, they would need to build 7,000 more parking spaces, which is unfeasible. He said the fun part is now they start implementing some TDM strategies and are working on an operational implementation plan. Matt Gray said with the"state of good repair"that's been a work in progress for the red line, TRAX has not been going up to the U of U this summer. This work should be done in the next two weeks so the red line should be running before the school year begins. Suzanne Stensaas asked about the crosswalk timing at Foothill and Stringham that does not allow an elderly person to walk across without the signal going red. Amy said UDOT has submitted a response to that, and she will put it in the chat. Public Comment Dave Iltis said squelching public comment is really a terrible idea because TAB is supposed to act as a face for the public and the Committee and staff. If they want to squelch public comment and make it more difficult for people to comment, that's not a good direction for the Committee or the City. He disagrees strongly with how they're approaching that. He also wanted to bring up SB195. There's a report in Building Salt Lake, a local website, that a lot of what happened with SB195 was fueled by a report written by a member of this Committee. It was basically saying things like speed bumps cause aggressive driving, air pollution, and that the road diets are no good and because of South Temple, there is more traffic on lath Avenue. Most of this is just not true, and that report was very sadly used to take SLC and basically make the job of Transportation and UDOT to have to run everything under the lens of this bill. There are some people that screamed about how awful South Temple was and he thinks it's absolutely terrible that a report like this would be used to put a backdoor into having SB195 pass. This has hampered SLC and really, it's already destroyed the 70o East project, it's destroyed the bike path that was supposed to go on 300 West to 300 South,but it's stopping at 400 South. He heard rumors that it's stopping another project in Sugar House. He's sure TAB will discuss this later on the agenda, but for someone on this Committee to go ahead and put out something like that which was then utilized to create a bill that hampers safe streets in Salt Lake City, mentions nothing about safety, and basically has falsehoods about how speed bumps cause aggressive acceleration, and caused more air pollution, and was utilized to pass SB195 which is just absolutely hamstringing stuff in SLC. It's an international embarrassment with the Olympics coming and he sure hopes that this Committee would come up with a statement against that particular paper. They can read the report in Building Salt Lake and write a letter to the legislature asking them to repeal this because this is such a terrible bill that is just going to lead to more deaths, more injuries, and honestly greater traffic, it's just absolutely terrible that a report like that was used to influence that. School District Transportation Brian Conley introduced himself as the Boundary and Planning Director for the Salt Lake City School District. The goal of closing schools was to keep vibrant and robust opportunities for elementary school students. This can be achieved more effectively if there are multiple classrooms at every grade level in each school. He went over the challenges with the new boundaries which include bussing of more students and difficulty finding qualified bus drivers they can retain. The change has created more balanced access to their dual language immersion programs as well as their magnet Page 2 of 5 TAB 08/04-2025 Minutes programs. Brian is in the process of speaking to all school principals to see how the last year of changes has gone and will send the new boundary map to the Board members. Urban Trails Miranda shared updates on the PNUT joint committee. The joint committee has members of PNUT, TAB, SLCPD and there is interest in bringing in other members. They are moving towards online meetings so there is better attendance. They have been working on their vision statement (see below) and success metrics. "To cultivate a vibrant and interconnected urban trail system that seamlessly integrates transportation and recreation, making outdoor experiences accessible and enjoyable for all. They envision trails that are discoverable, safe, and inclusive, fostering community engagement and connection while providing standardized and multilingual signage to guide diverse users of all abilities." With help from the City, they put together the first digitized map of the City's trails, there is a link in the chat. In addition to online discoverability, they have some ideas to connect people to find trails while they're out and about within the City. Their definition of trails are hardscaped trails that often interconnect to the transportation system of the city. There was discussion about adding additional TAB or BAC members to the Sub-Committee, replacing members whose terms are timing out. Becka said the City is making short lists of projects for which they will be seeking funding in the fall. She went over potential funding sources and the due dates for those applications. Kerri Nakamura said they will discuss these types of projects at their August meeting. SB195 The City and UDOT are collaborating closely. A UDOT public survey is currently open (closing August 6). SLC's study will include before-and-after analyses and evaluate impacts across travel modes, safety, air quality, and the economy. The bill was not initiated by UDOT but by activists.A diverse steering committee is in place, and SLC plans outreach efforts exceeding legislative requirements. Suzanne raised concerns about the bill infringing on local control and questioned the necessity of dual studies. She and Justice emphasized that the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) should play an active role, possibly reviewing the agreement and providing formal feedback. Suzanne suggested TAB dedicate significant upcoming meeting time to this issue and consider writing a position letter. She stressed that TAB should be a key stakeholder in related City decisions. Turner asked Daniel to clarify his involvement with a white paper linked to SB195- Daniel explained the letter was co-authored privately, not as University of Utah faculty, and unintentionally became public. He noted his expertise is in vehicular emissions and construction impacts, and he does not believe the letter significantly influenced the bill's passage. The issue will appear on TAB's next agenda, with potential for formal action. Members interested in forming a subcommittee should contact Jon. Page 3 of 5 TAB 08/04-2025 Minutes Motion: Justice Morath motioned to adjourn the meeting; Matt Gray seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 5:32 p.m. and the next meeting is a joint TAB/BAC meeting scheduled for September 8, 2025, at 4:00 p.m. TAB WebEx Meeting Chat Amy Lyons 8/4/2025 4:12 PM • • The signal timing for pedestrians at Stringham and Foothill needs to be longer.A member tried to walk across with someone with a cane and said it's impossible to get across,you just hope you don't get run over. o UDOT Response: After reviewing the intersection we saw that the crosswalks are timed properly in accordance with UDOT's signal timing guidelines, but they are timed using a 4 feet per second walking speed-which is probably too fast for someone crossing with a cane. We have now retimed these crossings with a slower walking speed. Another thing worth mentioning is that the yellow and red times are considered part of the crossing time.A common misconception is that peds need to finish the crossing when the countdown hits os. But they have a 7s walk time + clearance time (countdown) +yellow + red to cross from start to finish.At this particular intersection, a ped has about 30s to cross the south leg (with the updated timing) if they actuate the pedestrian signal - only 20s of this will be in the countdown. Just a heads up -these higher crossing times will result in ped phases being oversized and us needing to increase the side street splits. This will equate to less time on Foothill Blvd, which may mean more congestion during peak times. Miranda 8/4/2025 4:36 PM • https://slcgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=297c836285024 6a7b2c45b6fc3fb7652 Brian Conley- SLCSD 8/4/2025 4:38 PM • Thank you for the map link-looking forward to exploring that. Miranda 8/4/2025 4:40 PM • https://bikeways.utah.gov/?center=- 12452135.4976155&zOOm=13 Troy Saltiel 8/4/2025 4:41 PM • OpenStreetMap has the best bike data available and that data is accessible in the Transit app through their biking directions. Here's a layer that gets frequently updated online https://www.cyclosm.org/#map=13/40.7452/- 111.8692/cyclOsm Roolf, Becka 8/4/2025 4:41 PM • There is urban trails data that is already maintained by the city. I don't know if Linn knows about that dataset or if you are creating a new set of data? Hopefully Linn has checked in with Steffie in the Transportation Division. Brian Conley- SLCSD 8/4/2025 4:42 PM • If you're looking for a city employee to serve on the committee then I can't help you,but if you want a school district person on your committee then I'd be willing to do that. Mary Sizemore 8/4/2025 4:44 PM • This urban trails shapefile seems to be the City- maintained file,but it's worth a check Page 4 of 5 TAB 08/04-2025 Minutes Kerri Nakamura 8/4/2025 4:45 PM • I am online now Roolf, Becka 8/4/2025 4:47 PM • Johnnae resigned from TAB in January or February. Roolf, Becka 8/4/2025 4:57 PM • SB195 report from UDOT will be presented at the October 15 - Utah Transportation Committee (legislative interim committee). SLC has until November 1 to respond to UDOTs study. UDOT and SLC's studies are separate,but the two agencies are collaborating. Roolf, Becka 8/4/2025 4:58 PM • Here is a link to the survey: https://surveyi28.arcgis.com/share/7o64dg8o l5l 42of8o i7C. 2d4cf6421 Approved by the Transportation Advisory Board on io-6-2025. Page 5 of 5 TAB 08/04-2025 Minutes