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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-12-06; Traffic and Mobility Commission; Minutes Page 1 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Virtual Meeting Council Chambers 1200 Carlsbad Village Drive Carlsbad, CA 92008 Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, 3 p.m. CALL TO ORDER: 3 p.m. ROLL CALL: Perez, Linke, Penseyres, Fowler and Coelho PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: Chair Perez led the Pledge of Allegiance. This meeting was conducted virtually via Zoom due to the stay-at-home order for COVID-19. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Minutes of the Regular Meeting held Nov. 1, 2021. Motion by Commissioner Coelho, seconded by Vice-Chair Linke to approve the minutes for the Nov. 1, 2021, meeting as presented. Motion carried unanimously, 5/0 PUBLIC COMMENT: None CONSENT CALENDAR: 1. ESTABLISH TRAFFIC AND MOBILITY COMMISSION SCHEDULE FOR 2022 – Support staff recommendation for the Traffic and Mobility Commission Special meeting schedule for 2022 to be held in July 5, and Sept. 6, 2022. (Staff Contact: Nathan Schmidt, Public Works) Motion by Vice-Chair Linke, seconded by Commissioner Penseyres to approve Consent Calendar Item 1, as presented. Motion carried unanimously, 5/0 DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS: 2. POLICE MONTHLY REPORT – (Staff Contact: Sergeant Scott Meritt, Police Department) Sergeant Meritt presented the report and reviewed a PowerPoint presentation (on file in the Office of the City Clerk) Commissioner Penseyres inquired about the citations at the schools and whether they were both given to e-bike riders. Sergeant Meritt responded that both citations at the schools were given for helmet violations (not wearing a helmet). Page 2 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Chair Perez asked Sergeant Meritt whether we are seeing an influx of children not wearing helmets while riding bikes to school. Sergeant Meritt answered yes and said that the Police Officers are working on educating the children about the importance of wearing a helmet. They are joining forces with the schools to get the message across. Chair Perez inquired if we have any challenges in the community with students not being able to acquire helmets. Sergeant Meritt responded that in the past they have received grants and worked details with other community members in which they handed out helmets to families that could not afford to purchase. Commissioner Coelho inquired if the school personnel is required to take action if they see kids riding into school without a helmet. Sergeant Meritt answered that schools do not have enforcement authority beyond their disciplinary process, but all of the schools are strongly encouraging students to wear a helmet and follow the rules of the road. 3. CARLSBAD RESIDENTIAL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT PROGRAM UPDATES – (Staff Contact: Miriam Jim and John Kim, Public Works) Staff’s Recommendation: Receive an informational presentation providing an overview of the Carlsbad Residential Traffic Management Program (CRTMP) and provide input Senior Engineer Jim and Associate Engineer Pham presented the report and reviewed a PowerPoint presentation (on file in the Office of the City Clerk) Commissioner Coelho asked how CRTMP is being implemented and if traffic circles are being included as a chief measure for calming traffic. Senior Engineer Jim answered that traffic circles are being considered as a traffic calming measure for all new developments, but it is decided on a project by project basis. Past experience shows that traffic circles are cost effective and can be a desirable option for residents. Commissioner Penseyres inquired why 32 miles per hour, or mph, was chosen as the speed limit. He also asked if it was time to consider reducing this speed. City Traffic Engineer Kim responded that 32mph, was chosen as the speed limit based on different factors including discussion with the Carlsbad Police Department. The Police stated Page 3 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t that between 30 to 35mph was the threshold that they would consider citing a vehicle for speeding on a road with a 25mph limit. Staff took this feedback and applied it to a number of neighborhood streets that had been complaining about speeding vehicles. The 32mph threshold seemed appropriate in determining which of those streets would benefit from traffic calming and those streets that would not. The traffic calming program gives the ability for a neighborhood to seek an exception to this threshold through the Traffic & Mobility Commission, or T&MC, and it has been done a number of times for streets that have a critical speed lower than 32mph. Staff does not recommend lowering this number any further because residential streets are generally low volume and have a low collision rate and streets with lower speed limits would not benefit from Phase II traffic calming measures. From an engineering perspective it is not as much of a safety issue as it is a quality of life issue. The 32mph works well for that purpose with the understanding that streets with special conditions can seek an exception through the program if appropriate. Commissioner Penseyres inquired about Phase III which also uses 32mph as a starting point for speeding. He also inquired as to whether there will be a follow up to Phase II issues if they are requested by the residents. City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that they have not yet implemented Phase III on any street in Carlsbad because Phase II has been very successful. All streets that have been given Phase II treatments have been measured to have critical speeds lower than 32mph and are considered complete in regards to traffic calming. Conditions do change and some neighborhoods may need future adjustments and at that point Phase III could be considered. Staff will make a note to re-evaluate the Phase III criteria. Commissioner Penseyres asked if the information on speed measurements prior to traffic calming and post traffic calming and Phase II are available and can be provided. He noted that it would be beneficial to see how effective each measure was on traffic calming. For instance, is there a major difference between speed bumps and traffic circles in how effective they were in regard to speed surveys. City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that he will be sure to include that information when they bring this item back to the T&MC. Vice-Chair Linke followed up on Commissioner Penseyres question regarding any exceptions that were made by request of the residents. He also inquired as to whether there was specific language provided in the traffic program guide for residents regarding the exception process. Does it state that a community has the ability to appeal in front of the T&MC? City Traffic Engineer Kim confirmed that the exception process is present in the current version of the program. Furthermore, all requests for traffic calming are given an electronic copy of the program for their reference. Page 4 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Vice-Chair Linke stated that he thinks the program is excellent and well managed. He agrees with all of the proposed changes and mentions that most of his past concerns have been resolved. He inquired as to whether there is an update on the past backlog of projects that were waiting for Phase II to be implemented as reported in 2019. City Traffic Engineer Kim mentioned that in 2019 there was a backlog of approximately ten streets. That number is currently down to two. The last two streets, Harwich Drive and Segovia Way, will be under construction soon. He mentioned that Covid-19 introduced a new challenge as we have not been able to schedule public meetings since 2020. There are currently six streets that have qualified for Phase II but are awaiting the next step, which is a public meeting. Staff has had discussions with the Communications Department regarding this issue and will let the T&MC know of any decisions on this matter. The plan as of now is to wait until public meetings are reinstated with social distancing. Meeting in person is the best way to communicate and achieve the objective. Vice-Chair Linke inquired about the communication process to get the community updates on projects that affects their neighborhood. City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that they have not implemented any web-based notifications. He mentioned that staff is very good at responding to any requests from residents on the status of a project. Vice-Chair Linke asked about the traffic calming methods that are used on non-residential streets. He asked if there is a protocol for defining when a non-residential street would be subject for analysis for traffic calming. He asked if it would be possible to set up a similar process as we have for residential streets. City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that residential streets are unique as they can be posted at 25mph regardless of prevailing speeds due to the ratio of single-family homes. This makes residential streets natural candidates for traffic calming since prevailing speeds can be significantly higher than the posted speed limit. Non-residential posted speed limits are based on speed surveys. He stated that he is not aware of any agency in the region that has a traffic calming process that applies to non-residential streets. Vice-Chair Linke suggested a formal protocol for how residents can elevate their concerns regarding traffic and speeding to the City of Carlsbad. City Traffic Engineer Kim said that current process evaluates streets on a case-by-case basis and utilizes the guidelines found in the Mobility Element as a basis for recommended improvements. There are currently no established thresholds in the engineering field as to what qualifies a non-residential street for evaluation. Page 5 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Commissioner Coelho inquired on how a private resident can communicate their concern about an incident on a specific street. They could potentially report this observation on the website. City Traffic Engineer Kim agreed that this could be beneficial. Staff is aware of concerns on specific streets as reported by the public. There are other ways that incidents can be used to implement improvements. The Local Roadway Safety Program is looking at collision activity to help identify patterns and create criteria for safety projects that may include non-residential arterial speeding issues. Chair Perez inquired about the Carlsbad Connect app and the possibility to use this application as a tool for the residents of the City of Carlsbad to report safety issues on non-residential streets. City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that he believes that they already receive speeding complaints via the app. He will check to see if there is a specific field for speeding and other traffic concerns. Deputy City Manager Gomez shared that there are many opportunities for the residents of the City of Carlsbad and business owners to reach out to the City via email to the City Council Members and others on the website. The emails are forwarded to staff and then all emails are responded accordingly. Chair Perez requested an update in the future on some of the past projects related to traffic and mobility that we have done. 4. VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED ANALYSIS GUIDELINES - (Staff Contact: Jason Geldert and Jennifer Horodyski, Community Development) Staff’s Recommendation: Receive a presentation and provide input on the informational report and status update This item was pulled from the agenda due to the late arrival of materials relating to the item. Staff needed additional time to review and draft responses to the material before presenting this item. 5. TRAFFIC IMPACT FEE UPDATE: DRAFT SCOPE OF WORK - (Staff Contact: Nathan Schmidt, Public Works) Staff’s Recommendation: Receive a presentation and provide input on the draft scope of work for the update of the City’s Traffic Impact Fee program. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt presented the report and reviewed a PowerPoint presentation (on file in the Office of the City Clerk) Page 6 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Vice-Chair Linke noted that the Mobility Element Policy 3-P.5 which requires developers to pay their fair share toward improvements. The staff report implied this was exclusively for the Traffic Impact Fee, or TIF, program. The TIF is meant to fund general projects to mitigate the cumulative indirect effects of development. He wanted to clarify whether the direct impact development has in a local area would also be covered by Policy 3-P.5? Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt replied that this was correct, and that Policy 3-P.5 covers both the cumulative projects under the TIF and the direct projects. Vice-Chair Linke mentioned that the municipal code says that the City Council is to review the designation of circulation improvements and the amount of the fee on the TIF, on an annual basis to ensure that there is sufficient funding. All projects and the level of the fee are to be reviewed annually, but all we have done is bump up the fee by the inflation rate increase. It has been over 13 years since the TIF program has been updated. With the currently proposed schedule to complete the TIF update in April 2024, it will have been 16 years since the last update in 2008. At that time, councilmembers, including then-Mayor Bud Lewis, expressed concern that the TIF program had not been updated for the past 17 years, and that perhaps it should be updated every two years, or there would be an unfair burden on future developers and taxpayers. Vice-Chair Linke suggested that the ability to collect meaningful fees may be reduced as Carlsbad reaches build out. We need to take into account which projects are going to be subject to the TIF. We need to examine what concentration of projects will be infill and redevelopment rather than big new projects that would be required to pay a substantial fee. We also need to consider the small projects that may normally get screened out, but cumulatively could add up and have an impact. Another concern is that we need to fully complete all projects that were on the original list from 2008. An example would be the College Boulevard extension. Our city funding this project is a direct impact of cars coming from other places, and a TIF should have been collected for many years already but we have failed to do that. Vice-Chair Linke noted that he is in agreement that Vehicle Miles Traveled, or VMT, based fees should be considered. He believes that the number of local trips should be added as a component as well. He thinks that would be a good idea going forward to specifically call out TDM and TSM in the statement of work. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt replied that this new fee study is essentially an entirely new fee. The focus of this fee would be more multi-modal projects versus the traditional roadway projects that were previously identified as part of the TIF. We will clearly identify that this new fee needs to be updated on an annual basis and will have clear procedures for staff on how to accomplish the task. Average Daily Traffic, or ADT, should also be added as a metric to analyze the impacts. The Traffic Signal Master Plan will be a part of these programs as well. Page 7 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Vice-Chair Linke asked if there is a way that we can do a more minor, routine annual update on the current TIF in the absence of creating the nexus between all of these new multi-modal programs. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt replied that they have considered the update but due to the legal requirements of the TIF nexus study it is not something where there can easily be an interim update until the new TIF is adopted. Commissioner Penseyres asked if the city can collect enough from this fee alone to do any good with respect to all of the projects that we need to accomplish. Since the city is pretty built out, in the future we will have smaller projects which probably won’t be able to contribute much. Is there another way to fund these projects? Could we investigate State or Federal grant funds? Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt replied that as part of the TIF update the city will be looking into other funds to help with the programs. Funding won’t be limited to just the TIF but other funding sources as well. Transportation Director Frank shared information regarding the SANDAG regional transportation plan. To read more about it search the website under SANDAG regional plan. There is a lot of information in their new plan. This could be another mechanism for funding mobility improvements. Chair Perez asked about task two regarding the anticipated public and stakeholder outreach. Are these different attendances with the T&MC, Planning Commission, City Council, and more, all in one meeting or separate meetings? Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt replied that these would all be separate meetings. Chair Perez asked if the meetings could be condensed and an advisory committee created? The advisory committee could gather input from the different Commissions and present information to the City Council. This 360-degree approach will help differing point of views and expedite the process. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt answered that they will look at possibly condensing some of the commission meetings down and using representation on the ad-hoc committee. Commissioner Coelho asked if they could provide an estimate on how much revenue we think we can collect from this process. Page 8 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt answered that yes, they will provide an estimate. The process will be to solicit a consultant, select a consultant and then when we are ready to move forward with the fee study and we will kick that off with the T&MC. This would allow the city to get the T&MC feedback on the scope of work. Vice-Chair Linke pointed out the following: 1) The Municipal Code and Growth Management Plan requires that we have a TIF program and therefore we can’t eliminate it. 2) He believes that the city can still collect a significant amount of money from the TIF, it just won’t be as much as we could have collected over the past decade if we had kept updating the fee. Vice-Chair Linke inquired on how a new development is required to pay the TIF even if they are not generating any additional traffic from when the old development was in its place. Is this policy still valid? Will this be looked at by the consultant? Transportation, Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt answered that yes this will be explored as part of the nexus fee study. CITY TRAFFIC ENGINEER COMMENTS: City Traffic Engineer Kim noted the recent passage AB43 and the resulting changes to the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices as it relates to speed zoning. CALTRANS should be releasing a traffic safety bulletin on or before January 1, 2022. We will be able to see what opportunities there may be to lower some speed limits in the City of Carlsbad. We are also working to finalize the informational memo to the commission that will be sent out on a monthly basis. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt mentioned that on December 7, the City Council will appoint two new commissioners to the T&MC. Transportation Planning and Mobility Manager Schmidt spoke about the multi-modal level of service and mentioned that they have been working with the ad-hoc committee and a consultant to provide an updated tool so that we can move forward with the testing. We can then provide examples on actual updates that have been made. Chair Perez asked if there are any new traffic laws coming into 2022? City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that he does not have a list of any new traffic laws for 2022 except the one previously discussed regarding the process for setting speed limits in California. Page 9 of 9 Public Works Transportation 1635 Faraday Avenue  Carlsbad, CA 92008  760-602-2746 t TRAFFIC AND MOBILITY COMMISSION COMMENTS: Commissioner Coelho inquired about tracking open items that are mentioned as items of concern. Can we create an ongoing tracker that is part of the agenda each month? City Traffic Engineer Kim replied that the memo that will be sent out monthly will include items that have been brought up under public comment and by the commissioners. Vice-Chair Linke added that he submitted a letter on July 2021, as well as a PowerPoint presentation on December 2021, regarding his concerns with the VMT analysis guidelines. He would like the opportunity to discuss his concerns with staff in a public meeting. He would like this to be added to the agenda soon. Transportation Director Frank replied that the VMT analysis is a part of the work plan so it will be presented to the T&MC for comments. We will add this to the next T&MC meeting agenda Motion by Cahir Perez, seconded by Vice-Chair Linke requesting staff to agendize Vehicle Miles Traveled Analysis Guidelines to the January 2022, T&MC meeting including responses to Vice- Chair Linke comments. Motion carried unanimously, 5/0. ADJOURNMENT: Chair Perez adjourned the Traffic & Mobility Commission Meeting on Dec. 6, 2021, at 5:50 p.m. ___________________________ Eliane Paiva, Minutes Clerk