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Home My WebLink About2019-08-05; Traffic Safety Commission; ; WORK PLAN VALUE SETTING WORKSHOPItem # 5 Meeting Date: Aug. 5, 2019 To: Traffic Safety Commission Staff Contact: Doug Bilse, Senior Engineer Doug.Bilse@Carlsbadca.gov or 760-602-7504 Subject: Work Plan Value Setting Workshop Recommended Action Information only. Background City Council approved Resolution No. 2018-052 on April 17, 2018 affirming the following City Council goal: By April 2019, amend the duties of the Traffic Safety Commission to include advising the City Council on matters related to implementation of the General Plan Mobility Element. Staff is preparing a draft work plan consistent with this goal. At the March and April 2019 TSC meetings, staff solicited input on the work plan. A workshop is scheduled to be conducted at the August TSC meeting to identify values that will guide future discussions towards developing the work plan. A follow-up workshop is scheduled for the September special TSC meeting. Future TSC agenda items will be added to upcoming meetings as needed to complete the work plan. The TSC will vote on the work plan before it is taken to City Council for approval. Necessary Council Action The City Council must approve the work plan for the TSC before it is implemented. Next Steps Another work shop is scheduled for the special September TSC meeting. Exhibits None. Traffic Safety Commission (TSC) Commissioner Report/Commentary (Steve Linke) Meeting Date: August 5, 2019 At our July meeting, I raised the issue that multiple items of business central to the General Plan Mobility Element were being planned for City Council meetings later in July without review by our Commission. I subsequently provided public input at the July 9th and July 16th Council meetings, and through this report to the Commission, I would like to briefly summarize what transpired. For more detail, I encourage everybody to watch the meeting videos and review the documentation from those meetings through the links included below. In both my written and verbal communications to the Council, I made it clear that while I am a Traffic Safety Commissioner, and while one of my main goals was to encourage development of a meaningful work plan for the TSC, I was not formally representing the TSC. Had the TSC been given the opportunity to formally review and provide advice to the City Council on these mobility-based items of business, which I contend would have been the appropriate path, then I would not have commented as a member of the public. July 9, 2019 City Council meeting (Item #14) • http://carlsbadca.swagit.com/play/07092019-1681 (video) • http://edocs.carlsbadca.gov/HPRMWebDrawer/RecordHTML/552902 (Staff Report, correspondence, and presentations) In this informational meeting, Staff presented the following topics, all of which are central to mobility and implementation of the General Plan Mobility Element: • Growth Management Program (GMP) background o Vehicle congestion performance standard o Street segments to be monitored • 2015 General Plan Mobility Element update o Multimodal level of service (MM LOS) o Staff's decision to eliminate intersection vehicle LOS analysis o Updated street segment vehicle LOS analysis method consistent with Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) o Street typology scheme o Exemptions from vehicle LOS for street segments that fail standard (deficiencies) o TOM and TSM as alternatives to directly increasing street capacity With regard to street segment LOS, Staff made their claim that the old Carlsbad method was valid and consistent with the HCM for GMP monitoring. However, I pointed out that the original street segment LOS guidelines, which were developed for Carlsbad by experts based on the HCM back in 1988, determined that failing "E" grades should be triggered by roughly 500 to 1,000 vehicles per lane per hour (vplph), depending on the type of street (e.g., 2-lane local, 4-lane collector, 4 lane secondary arterial, 6-lane arterial, etc.). Yet, those expert guidelines were discarded and replaced by the Carlsbad method, which was used for about 30 years. It included a failure point of 1,620 vplph for every lane on every street in Carlsbad, even though it was based on rural highways with their high speeds and lack of intersections. Interestingly, the new HCM-compliant service volume table method, wh ich is customized for individual Carlsbad streets, uses a range of roughly 500 to 1,100 vplph for ne<;1rly all streets, almost identical to the original 1988 guidelines that were never implemented. Similarly, the Carlsbad ICU method-for intersection LOS analysis used 2,000 vplph for through lanes, while the HCM recommended 1,500 vplph, and Los Angeles County used 1,600 vplph for ICU analysis. At our May and June meetings, I presented several of my own predicted LOS grades and street failures based on traffic count data I obtained from the City, and I emphasized that past GMP monitoring reports had significantly under-estimated congestion with misleading LOS grades. Those grades were far different from the typically stellar grades generated by the old Carlsbad LOS methods. In addition, the 2015 Fehr and Peers memorandum from our June agenda packet directly showed similar LOS discrepancies for intersection analysis. At the July Cit'/ Council meetings, a very similar set of street failures was reported by Staff when their new service volume table street segment LOS method was applied. That included deficiencies in eight directional segments on five different street sections. July 16, 2019 City Council meeting {Item #4) • http://carlsbadca:swagit.com/play/07162019-2010 (video) • http://edocs.carlsbadca.gov/HPRMWebDrawer/RecordHTML/553276 (Staff Report, correspondence, and presentations) This second meeting was intended for the City Council to take various actions on the deficient street segments identified at the July 9th meeting and reported in the FY 2017-18 GMP Monitoring Report. The recommended actions included a declaration of exemption from the vehicle LOS standard combined with TDM/TSM measures to try to mitigate the congestion for some segments, street projects for others, and a development stoppage in a small area for a couple of others. I believe it would have been appropriate for the TSC to review these Staff recommendations to advise the Council. I went on to point out that the valid new LOS method shows that many street deficiencies have existed for a number of years. In addition, I pointed out that because the cu,rrent list of deficiencies was derived from only 18 different monitored street segmerits, and because there are probably around 50 street segments that should have been monitored, there are many more potential deficiencies. In fact, when I applied the new LOS method to traffic count data collected at some of these other segments, I showed that several of them are al ready failing, and that the City Council should be prepared for several more deficiency declarations when the next GMP Monitoring Report is released . . / .. '::.. My qualifications to report LOS results were questioned at the July 16th meeting, and it was suggested that I have a conversation with Staff to ensure the accuracy of my data. I subsequently contacted Senior Engineer Doug Bilse to review my LOS approach. Mr. Bilse believes my results accurately reflect the new service volume table-based LOS methodology as applied to the corresponding traffic count data, although he did not wish to validate independent LOS results or necessarily concur with my conclusions. I believe that, unlike the old Carlsbad methods, the new service volume table LOS methodology is an accurate reflection of the intent of the HCM and the reality of vehicle congestion on our streets. It also makes it very easy to generate and confirm LOS grades from traffic counts. However, Mr Bilse and I agree that it is preferable for Staff to generate the LOS results, while the TSC reviews/confirms them. Hopefully, LOS results from the old Carlsbad methods will never again be used for any projects. And, hopefully, Staff will begin generating LOS results for all major streets in Carlsbad for comprehensive tracking purposes. But I also think it is very important for the TSC to review the method, as well as the accompanying Transportation Impact Analysis Guidelines and GMP Monitoring Guidelines, among many other guidance documents. The July 16th meeting ended without the City Council taking any action, either to confirm the deficiencies or implement measures to address them. It is imperative that we request staff to present all LOS analysis related to important traffic projects, including these future GMP decisions, before they go before the City Council. Our work plan must clarify our role reviewing these results and the methodology used by all Carlsbad staff members. And going forward, I hope I can reach a point where I feel comfortable simply reviewing Staff's work, rather than conducting LOS analyses myself.