Hey Denver, it's time for this biweekly meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee starting now.

Good afternoon.

My name is Chantel Luz, and welcome to the Transportation Infrastructure Committee.

Today is Wednesday, February 18th, 2026, and I'm honored to represent the constituents in District 8.

With that, I would love to do a round of introductions, and we can maybe start virtual if we have any folks online.

Not yet.

Okay.

I'll start with you, Councilman of Joseph.

Good afternoon, Flora Titres with Lucky District 7.

Good afternoon, Paul Cashman with Fortune at District 6.

Alright.

Good afternoon, Kevin Flynn's Southwest Numbers District 2.

Great, thank you.

And with that, we have an action item as well as a briefing.

And so we can get started with our first action item from Dottie.

You all can introduce your presentation yourselves and get started.

Thank you, Council Chair Lewis.

My name is Elena McCorder.

I'm Dottie's strategic advisor.

I'll be running through the Mississippi Vision Zero Project today.

And I have my colleague, Molly Lanfier joining us.

Molly, you want to introduce your speech?

Oh sure.

I am also with Dottie, the strategic strategic communications liaison, and I will be addressing some questions we received last time about the Alameda Lane Repurposing Project.

So together, I think you all know that we are your points of contact for all things communications around projects and programs at Dottie.

So we're excited to present some updates today around both the Mississippi Vision Zero Project as well as the Alameda Lane Repurposing Project.

Both are in Lucky District 7.

So, Councilmember Alvidrez, we appreciate your support and your feedback through this process.

Mississippi Vision Zero Project, this is resolution request 260121.

And today we'll run through kind of the project history and background, how we got to today, what the goals of that project are, and how we plan to uh implement safety enhancements along this corridor, and then timeline and next steps for what to expect in the community and on the ground.

Over on the right, you can see the project limits of the Mississippi Avenue Vision Zero Project, and we're talking about the Mississippi Corridor between Elliott Street and Quivas.

So this is between the larger intersections of Federal Boulevard and South Platte River Drive down here by Ruby Hill and Athmar Park.

So this project came out of the state's Safer Main Streets program.

So this was a state program to invest in creating pedestrian and bicycle safety infrastructure along commercial and residential corridors to create those vibrant communities across our city.

And so we applied for this grant back in January of 2020, almost a different world six years ago.

This corridor, this section of Mississippi Avenue, is on Denver's high injury network.

I know you all are aware, but the high injury network is the uh the roadways in Denver that have a disproportionate rate of serious bodily injuries and fatalities.

So we want to target safety improvements to mitigate some of those concerns and challenges.

As part of the grant application for the CDOT Safer Main Streets grant, we had to do an existing condition safety assessment where we looked at crash data along the corridor, traffic volumes and speeds, field observations of general behaviors, and really then tied that to proposed safety improvements that we thought could mitigate some of the top challenges that we saw, and then really tied that to what our anticipated safety outcomes are.

So we're gonna go through a little bit more of what each of those entails.

Really, this is the morning hours between 7 and 9 a.m., and then in the afternoon between 4 and 6 p.m.

What you'll see in this graphic here in these black boxes kind of in the middle along Zunai.

Westbound traffic volume is about 7500 on peak hours of the day.

Eastbound, it's a little under 6,000.

When you go further to the right there, closer to Quivas, the volumes are a little higher westbound at 7800 and a little higher eastbound as well at 6800.

What you'll see in the boxes just below there are the 80th percentile of speed that we saw.

So 85% of the people were going eastbound 27 miles per hour or less, westbound 29 miles per hour or less.

So 16 different intersections where we really wanted to take a close look at the interplay between pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicular traffic.

And then I also just you saw on there, just highlighting for you that we've got Goldrick Elementary and the Athmar Park public library right there as well, where we have a lot of pedestrian traffic on the corridor.

So what did the conditions outlook find?

First, if you look at the table on the bottom, in a four-year time span, there were a total of 109 crashes between Elliott and Quivas along Mississippi.

If you look at figure one here on the top right, the crash types from Elliott to Quivus, what we see is 45% of the crashes were broadside and sideswipe collisions.

So T-bones or side-to-side interactions between vehicles.

What we also saw in the bottom right pie chart is crash types focused at the intersections around Dale and Clay.

And there we saw again a high frequency of broadside crashes.

We also looked into a closer look at the pedestrian crashes on the corridor.

And what we found was that of the five pedestrian crashes, all five were in the vicinity of Raritan and Quivas, which are just one block apart from each other.

So it's a very high pedestrian crossing between the neighborhoods and the commercial hub of the community.

And three of those five pedestrian crosses were mid-block at unsignalized.

So I think people not having safe infrastructure trying to dart across traffic.

One was at the signalized intersection of Raritan, which is a unique intersection in this corridor because it's an offset intersection.

So on the north side, it's further west than on the on the south side.

So you have to do a little L situation to actually get across northbound, southbound.

And then the last one of the five was also unsignalized near Quivas.

So looking at that, we wanted to really hone in on what pedestrian safety improvements can we make both along the entire corridor, but specifically as well at some of these high concern intersections.

Again, Dale, Clay, and Zoonai, as well as the crash picture that we're seeing at that intersection around Raritan and Mississippi.

Go ahead.

So how are we going to create solutions to mitigate these challenges?

Through this process, we identified project goals to reduce vehicle speeds.

So getting people down to the speed limit or below that reduces that risk of bodily harm when there are conflicts.

We're gonna create safer pedestrian crossings through a number of mechanisms.

We're going to bring all of the curb ramps in this area to ADA compliance and more accessible to mobility across and around the intersections.

And we're going to be eliminating the dangerous left turns that we see are one of the main contributors to those side swipe T-bone crashes.

So what are the specific safety improvements?

We will be repurposing a travel lane.

So there are currently two eastbound and two westbound traffic lanes on Mississippi in this corridor.

We will be removing that to be one in each direction.

We will then have raised medians throughout the corridor to control those left turn movements that we want to protect pedestrians against.

And we'll be providing pedestrian refuge islands as well.

So better crosswalk markings, pedestrian refuge islands to provide those safe spaces in between, and then the raised medians as well to prevent the conflicts with the car.

And then adding signal enhancements.

So this can be rapid flashing beacons, it can be lead pedestrian intervals, and it can be signal lights completely.

So a little bit of everything included in this project.

The next couple slides are just some examples of what the designs look like at these intersections.

So I'll go through a couple of those.

But I will direct you if you want to look at what the full design plan is.

They are all on the project website.

So you can look at whatever intersection or area of the corridor that you're most interested in.

On this first slide, what we wanted to really show was what the raised medians and those pedestrian refuge islands look like.

So here you'll see the intersection of Dale and Mississippi, and you'll see another one that is Mississippi with South Taus and Shoshone Way.

And so here you can see the blue are the raised medians.

The orange here are the uh pedestrian refuge islands, so where individuals trying to cross can find refuge in the middle if necessary.

And then I've also starred here that at Taos and Shoshone, really, the bottom right.

Let's see Shoshone at Shoshone, there will also be that rapid rectangular flashing beacon.

So when people try to cross there to that refuge island and the pedestrian crosswalk, there will also be the signal to demonstrate and create that visibility for traffic to see them there.

These next two design examples really show more of what those intersection improvements are going to look like.

So we have, for example, Zunai and Quivas.

What you can see here is the bull bouts of the intersection corners where we are bringing the curbs to make the crossing from north of Mississippi to South Mississippi shorter.

On Quivus, I'm showing that one.

So you can see how the raised median of the blue kind of interacts then as it approaches with the South Quivas intersection bull bouts.

So again, really focusing on the bull bouts to shorten the length of crossing, those accessible curb ramps here, reduced crossing links, and signal enhancements for that added pedestrian safety.

And then again, we've got Vallejo and Quivas both have those rectangular rapid flashing beacons included in their design.

So project schedule, where have we been and where are we going?

I'll spend a little bit of time on the community engagement and the design process, and then we'll move more into the last couple years of what procurement for getting to construction has looked like.

So, in early 2021, we finish the grant application, we get awarded, we move forward and get ready to enter into 30% design, and we begin doing a lot of robust community outreach in Athmar Park and Ruby Hill specifically.

We had three community town halls at Athmar Park Library where people could pop in, maybe they were already there for other programming, and really try to meet people in the community in a space where they were already at to let them know that this project was coming and get their input on what design would look like, what kind of safety enhancements they'd like to see, and how we move a project like this forward in their community.

We also flyed 42 different businesses, the schools, the restaurants, the community centers there, letting them know that this design process was taking way, and letting them know how they could get engaged and understand the design process and decision making.

We also did all of our materials and our surveys for this project, multilingual English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and we had a number of surveys and comment cards to understand what the community really want to see on this project.

What we heard was they recognize and understand that this is a corridor of the high injury network, and they do want to see vision zero safety outcomes and safety investments in this corridor.

Specifically, they brought up concerns around speeding, lighting, and that bike and pedestrian safety in the area.

They had support for the crossing enhancements, the bull bouts, the raised medians, but the median specifically did have some of that concern around how people would make left-hand turns in and out of their neighborhood with those raised medians.

So a little bit of a learning situation of what that would look like and what the new access points would potentially be.

And then the last thing that they really reiterated with us was ongoing communications.

We know that this neighborhood wants to know when is construction going to start, what are the detours going to be, what's access gonna look like, and how are they gonna stay engaged on different timing updates or project status updates as construction goes through.

Moving to the procurement side, stay there for just a second.

Sorry, sorry.

That was what got us from 2022 to 2024.

2024 to now, we recognize that there's some frustration from community.

Why isn't this done yet?

This is a project that initially we thought would be constructed by now.

We expected it to be in the ground, but there were a few hurdles that we had to uh clear before getting to today.

So one of those was getting temporary construction easements and working with DOF and the Department of Real Estate to move those easement contracts through City Council back in 2023.

Then we moved to bidding the contract for procurement in early 2025.

Unfortunately, we did not get any bids that first time around.

So between early 2025 and when we put the bid back out in December, our do business with Dottie Team did a lot of facilitation and outreach to the contractor community to see, you know, did we not do enough marketing?

Were they busy?

Was their scale of work too heavy in January?

But it opened up in the fall, trying to learn why we then turned around and got eight proposals, the second bid.

So got a lot of interest in delivering this project.

I think timing was just a key consideration there.

But after we went through that, we uh finalized those contract details and with your hopeful approval of today's resolution request, we'll be able to move forward towards notice to proceed on the project so that we can start construction, hopefully as early as late April or early May of this year.

The construction timeline is notice to proceed plus 365 days, so they do have a year to deliver to substantial completion.

But depending on summer activity and timelines, we are always trying to accelerate those project deliveries as much as possible.

So, next steps we're here today with your full consideration at committee to refer it to full council on the floor.

Umce we get a better idea of when we will have notice to proceed, and through March, we're gonna be re-initiating that engagement with FMAR Park and Ruby Hill ROs.

We've actually already reached out to them to let them know this project was coming through council, and to let them know that we will have more details around construction coming and the opportunity to present a project status update to them as well.

Going back to the library and Goldrick Elementary to be sure that they have all of the latest and greatest materials to give to parents, to give to anyone coming for programs to give to maybe kids who are coming and hanging out after school so that we can reach as many people as possible.

And then we'll also be doing project yard signs along the corridor where people get that visibility whether they're out walking their dog or driving to the grocery store.

Again, hoping to get notice to proceed for the construction contract by end of April, and then when May really kicks off with construction, we'll be reinitiating that door-to-door flyering of all of the property owners and tenants along the corridor.

So again, really making sure that once construction starts, people understand the impacts to their commutes and their travel around their neighborhood.

So today we're requesting your approval of resolution 020121.

Authorizes a contract with Goodland construction for 2.9 million dollars.

And you'll just see up here, 2.1 million is the match from the CDOT Safer Main Streets program.

And so the city contribution is right over about 800,000 to deliver this project.

And I believe that's it.

Questions?

Yeah.

I'll just add to the I mean you saw it was a competitively procured contract that we are getting to today.

Great, thank you.

Before we get into questions, I want to welcome Council President Sanville Online, Pro Tan Romeo Campbell, as well as Councilman Hines to the meeting.

And Councilman Watson, lots of folks.

With that, Councilwoman Alviders, you're first in the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this.

I'm really excited to see it coming finally.

The delay seems very extreme.

And so I'm curious, like with the whole year of researching why people didn't bid, what did you find out?

I don't know that we have a hard understanding or a clear understanding.

It was some things around just doing the additional marketing.

I could follow up and see if we've got more details, but I think just doing the additional marketing and trying to draw more attention to this with the contractors that we are already working with through do business with Dottie.

Um, it was just making people aware of the project, but I'll find out.

Yeah, I mean I wasn't even made aware that it was put out to bid, so that would be like the bare minimum I would expect.

Um, and after a whole year to not really have an answer is kind of concerning.

I will say this is you know very frustrating, and this when this started, I wasn't even a seat in my mind of running for office, and here I am years in and finally seeing it go through.

So I just want to emphasize that not only that, but people move and average in every two years.

So whoever put input on this no longer lives in the area, most likely, and so there's a lot of concerns when it comes to how long it's taking us to go from getting community input to actually making projects happen.

And I just want to raise up Phyllis, who I see in slide um seven, no, where was she?

Yes, there she is, who is no longer with us who fought for um the people's budget to put in sidewalks that we also don't have still.

Um, and also when I was a young adult before I even had a child, a child was hit by a car outside of Goldrick.

So this has been not only this many years in the planning, but even more years in the needing of protection for people that want to get across Mississippi, but especially those are the few things that we have in our neighborhoods.

We don't have grocery stores, but we have a school and we have a library that people want to get to.

One of my questions, the website nor the slides show the entire plan for the entire corridor.

You're saying you're getting rid of left-hand turns, is it every single left-hand turn?

Is there any place where someone can turn left onto Mississippi?

Um, there are still left-hand turns.

They're just uh specific intersections.

I'll pull which intersections they're at.

Great, that would be helpful.

Um, and then sorry, give me one second.

How was the decision made on the timeline of construction and like waiting an entire year before putting it out to bid?

It's not necessarily that we created a one-year timeline.

It's the number of steps that are needed to take to put it back out to bid.

So again, redoing some of that marketing, another piece that we had to do was we had to go back to CDOT and get approval to extend the time of the grant.

So because of the delay in the project, we needed to extend that funding as well.

So there's some administrative barriers, and then of course, just hundreds of projects that are in design and construction phasing right now that we're balancing through our procurement processes.

Committee chair.

Thank you so much, Councilman.

You want to get back in the queue.

I have Councilman Cashman, and then Councilman Flynn, you're up next.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

Um, I will start by saying obviously there's been a lot of heat directed at Dotty recently.

I'm a great believer in not shooting the messengers.

And uh I want to thank both of you for being as responsive as you are when concerns arise.

That said, I have a request.

Uh in general, um, you know, looking at uh, I think it was the slide talking about 85th percentile speeds.

That doesn't really give me useful information.

What I'd love to get is when you're talking about speeds, literally, how many cars per hour are going over five miles over, 20 miles per over, 40 miles per hour over?

I know the statistics uh from doing this job for a while generally show that the vast majority of cars are um relatively close to the speed limit.

But if we're talking thousands and thousands of cars an hour or a day, even if it's only a few percent, that's liable to be a lot of vehicles.

So I would appreciate it if that might become possible.

Now to get to this per specific project, I'm wondering with uh kind of the elaborate, you know, the uh refuge islands and all that stuff.

I'm wondering how the width of Mississippi in the project area compares to Alameda in that project area.

Uh do you have that or if not, can you get that for me, please?

I don't have the exact width of the right of way, so I will look into that.

Yeah, if you find me the width of the right-of-way comparison as well as uh uh comparison.

I know they're on separate slide decks, but if you could put it in the same response, uh comparison of a volume of traffic on each corridor.

I can't answer that one actually.

So Alameda's uh traffic counts were about 15,000, whereas this one is around seven, so it's a little less than half the average volume at peak hours.

Interesting.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

So as a matter of fact, since I'm asking if uh you could uh on that same response, just so it's all on one QA sheet, um uh the uh serious accident numbers in comparison for each corridor.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Councilman Cashman.

Um, up next we have Councilman Flynn with Councilmember Gilmore up next.

Following up on that, uh on slide uh four of the peak hour traffic uh westbound 7800, eastbound sixty, eight hundred.

How long is the peak?

And is that just a one-hour figure, or is that for the entire AM or PM?

And is this AM or PM?

It's peak hour and a singular hour, but it's collected in a two-hour period, and then the highest amongst the two hours.

So the the peak periods it was collected was seven to nine a.m.

and four to six p.m.

But what these exact numbers within those windows reflect, I'd have to look into.

Okay.

I don't know if anyone else can answer that.

So that is the highest hour of all the four or five hours between the AM and the PM.

Okay, so that doesn't tell me.

All right.

No one here apparently.

Thank you.

He looks very reluctant.

Yeah, yeah.

Please introduce yourself, please.

Yes.

Good afternoon, Council.

Councilman Chair.

Um Tigus Holloway, Chief Treasure Officer for Dotti.

Um, so can you repeat the question really quickly so I can make sure I'm um uh Tigas, I'm trying to figure out on slide four what seven uh westbound peak seventy-eight thirty three eastbound sixty eight oh one.

That's a singular hour among the uh between the AM and the PM peak, which spreads across five or six hours of the day, three in the morning, three in the afternoon, whatever it is.

So that's the highest of all those hours in each direction.

So what's in the dark colored boxes is the average daily traffic, so that's spread out over the entire day.

Oh so that's not a peak hour, that's the daily.

That would be extremely high for a big hour.

Thank you.

That's a great relief because I couldn't imagine 7800 vehicles in a single hour going one direction on Mississippi.

Yes, it looks like uh we can add this, but I don't believe we actually had the AM and PM, which would have been the XX and then in the parentheses XX would have been much smaller.

U Z.

You can see from 10% uh to 20% sometimes for peak hour traffic, and sometimes it's directional depending on if it's traffic headed into town or out of town.

So, but we can provide that.

Okay, so that is that's what I found confusing.

ADT average daily traffic versus the peak hour.

Uh it would be nice to know what the peak hour is, but uh now that now that that's cleared up, maybe we could clarify the language on there before it comes to council.

Well, I appreciate that.

And uh if you can answer this on slide nine, I love the bulb outs, and I've seen a lot of places, a few in my district where we create a virtual bulb out with the little plastic bollards, because we don't have the money or the engineering to redo the street, so we just mimic a ball bell.

But here it looks like you're actually gonna widen a sidewalk and and go out into the existing street with concrete and so my question is the salmon colored areas in the street, is that reconstruction of the street asphalt itself because you have to reduce the profile when you extend the curb out into the street, you're going into the crown of the street, so obviously you have to lower it or you have to modify the grade.

Ultimately, what I'm getting at is the the contract figure if we're gonna do a lot of this work, what it looks like from above, intuitively to me seems a lot more expensive than the two point uh two point nine million.

So are we doing some street reconstruction there?

Yeah, I'm unclear as well.

I can imagine that the area within the Salmon collar is part of the work area.

Um oftentimes when we're reconstructing part of the right of way, particularly intersections, that's where the inlet for drainage is.

Right.

And so some additional reconstruction has to happen.

Again, the the great thing about this one is other people's money, we use C dots funds to help us supplement to actually add the concrete and gutter that's in there and additional uh drainage improvements, but we can provide you more detail if that's just part of the lay down area or part of construction area.

Thank you, because that's that's can be very expensive.

I mean, if you push a ball out into the street, you lose your flow line on your drainage, so you have to lower the street or does any of this work?

Last question, thank you for bringing up drainage.

Does any of this work include relocating any underground uh storm sewers or inlets?

Do we know if any of our at Zoon I or anything like that?

Not substantial.

I think what you'll see is the relocation of an inlet, but not the underground utilities, you know, large scale.

It would be a lot more than uh two point nine or two point eight million.

All right, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

I have you counsel my council member Gilmore and Councilman Heinz up next.

Council Chair.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Uh I'm really confused as to why this started in 2020, and it's taken so long.

And so want to understand are there other projects throughout the city that were perhaps also started way back when in 2020, and if so, you're nodding your head, how many of those do we still have in the queue?

I don't know.

We'd have to get back to you about how many we had.

I mean, clearly the story here is the same for some of these projects where it was COVID, and our, you know, it was a different world, and we didn't think our budgets would change as drastically as they don't know if that's the specific story with Mississippi, but I know that's the story without Mita.

Is I think I mentioned last time that we thought this lane repurposing would happen in 2021 and it just didn't because of our budgets.

Because of the city's budgets and capacity and everything that had to do with um just changing times of COVID.

But I can definitely look and get you more numbers about that.

That would be really helpful because although it seems super long ago to some folks, um, you know, I was council president in July 2020 to July 2022.

So that was right during the time that I was council president.

And so Tychus, do you want to take a shot at answering that question?

Because I could poke all kinds of holes in that we didn't have the financial capacity at that point in time.

We could have done it in 2021, 2022, 2023, up until December of 2023, when all in mile high, got in deep in the city, and that's when the financial issue started.

So, yeah, why did this take um so long to get this off the ground?

Sure.

I think it definitely warrants a follow-up uh for you.

I'll say in general, you know, most projects in the city, they have their own story, their own journey.

Um oftentimes when we get into a concept uh design phase, uh, that's trying to set the boundaries for what the project is, working with the community to understand what their expectations are, uh, and trying to set the amount of budget associated with the project or how much it would cost, should I say, first?

Um, and then often that times that will set a pathway for its potential schedule and timing, because if we don't have the construction dollars lined up, whether it's through a grant or whether it's through the bond cycles, and oftentimes on the bond cycles, it can take multiple years before the debt issuance occurs.

So a project can sit in a design for a while before it ever gets its construction dollars.

The same thing with some of the grants, it depends on when the grants become available.

I know it's not answering your specific question, but I think that we can provide you with more information on why some projects are sitting longer than others, and for the most part, it's it's usually a resource-related item, whether it's a human resource or as a financial one, and depending on the scale of the project.

Some of the smaller scale projects we can do in-house, uh, particularly when they're paint marking uh signals, things like that.

But when they become multi-million dollar projects, we've got to bid them out.

Um, and so that takes time as well.

So the procurement timeline, the funding timeline, um again, all reasons for why each project has its different story, doesn't shorten the time frame.

Um, some of the things that we've been trying to do over the years uh with your help and others is to get to better procurement practices to speed up the timeline it takes uh to get after the the projects.

Um, but oftentimes the funding cycles is what really hampers us from being able to move a design concept into construction.

So we can provide more, I think, details a little bit on what projects are out there and what phase.

Um that's something that we've been working on heavily, uh, within DOTI is to better understand what projects do we have in the sense of a project, meaning that could be a concept of a project all the way to the construction you know, phase of a project, and so we can provide that by phase and where they're at generated throughout the city, and that's what our Denver move, everyone plan is attempting to do.

We still have a lot of work within the even that online tool to be able to demonstrate what those projects are, where they're at, and what phase they're in, um, and then we can describe then from that point forward what is the pathway potentially for that project to get to construction dollars.

Were there um ARPA funds that were put towards neighborhood improvement projects during that time frame.

I would like that information included as well regarding the ARPA funds because I know at the end of 2023 as this council remembers there was a mad rush um to spend down ARPA funds and so I think some funds might have gotten diverted um to other um campaign promises during that time so um would be nice to have that information and then as a follow up I would like to get information on the 30 million dollars worth of medians that are still needed in District 11 um along Green Valley Ranch Boulevard um along to chambers to Pena um medians on tower and then medians on 45th to 56 because those are the raised curb medians as well and we don't have any of those and so wanting to track those as well my final question is to um Alana with um the current um I guess your current team how many um vacancies how many position vacancies are currently held I honestly don't know uh how many vacancies do you mean Dotty wide or on to help the team do their work to market to get information out to meet with construction teams community etc.

If you don't know that information yeah if you would please pull um what who um the numbers laid off um that would implement this sort of work and then also the current vacancies held because we know that those are different numbers so thank you thank you madam chair thank you so much and if you could send that around to the entire committee we'd really appreciate it.

Councilman Hines and then I have you Councilman woman already dressed and we have about five minutes.

Thank you thank you committee chair uh I'll probably just talk at normal speed but um but uh but I certainly would be aware of the uh the time limitation so um when I first saw this as a proposed um consent item uh in committee I what what excited me was that vision zero was mentioned in the um in the in the title um you know I uh if vision zero were a thing in 2008 which was not then I would be a vision zero statistic um uh and so certainly um I want to make sure that other people don't have serious injuries and fatalities at the hands of drivers um and uh and so um that I don't see a lot of projects that come through that specifically say vision zero and uh and so that's like wow this is this is really cool director Ford um a little over a year ago said that we'd have a 50 percent reduction in vision zero statistics by the end of 2026 um so I saw this as an opportunity really to for Dotti to say we're Director Ford is put a very aggressive I believe of an aggressive you know considering we've had eight fatalities um just with scooters um and um uh and our vision zero statistics continue to go up every year since we started tracking in 2017 except for 2020 when no one was going anywhere because of a global pandemic so uh help me understand you this has vision zero in the title um help me understand how this is a vision zero why we don't have a whole lot of projects that actually say vision zero and um and how this is going to help with director forward's um staking the sand so um thanks for the question um you know one of the things that in Dotte we've been focusing on is yes vision zero but also the philosophy behind it, right?

Um projects in themselves, every project that DOTI does should be a vision zero philosophy based project.

So they're all safety based, they should be all reducing uh crashes, but also seriously body injury crashes to the vulnerable roadway users considering all of the impacts associated with it um but this one was specifically named as such because it was part of worn out of the vision zero program.

Back to uh Councilman Gilmore's question.

A lot of our projects come from different sources, come from different areas.

They may come from an area engineer, may come from a 301 call, uh, may have been generated by the Vision Zero program.

And so what we've been trying to do on DOTI is is capture the fact that all of our projects should be Vision Zero in their concepts and their basis for them.

And so this one in particular just like I said it has it named it, named on the website, it has it named as part of it.

Um the Safer Main Streets program from the College of Department of Transportation to Dr.

Cog also focuses in a main part of it is safety.

We want to capture that within the Vision Zero as a whole, not just the program itself, so only the projects in Vision Zero is the ones that you're seeing the state.

We want every project to be able to be that same standard, that same concept, the same rigor to it.

So I think it's just a matter of that it was named uh on the website and it's been a project that's been uh in queue for some years.

Is it is it also perhaps because you're getting CDOT funding that is explicitly for Vision Zero projects?

No, I mean it's specifically for the safer main streets program from CDOT.

Again, this one is named that because that was where the original language came from, uh, as part of a vision zero effort, uh, you know, but again, they come from a variety of different areas from within the city, the different programs, but to us the philosophy around vision zero about reduction of serious product injuries and fatalities, it is a philosophy.

Is is a way of life for us, and we're trying to move that direction.

So you will see more that's within that same domain of the city's vision zero plans and progress.

Yeah.

Well that DOTI has a vision of every project should be part of Vision Zero.

Yet you're calling this one out.

There's not exactly apples to out.

I mean, I it sounds like you're you're sharing that it should permeate every project, yet you're calling this one out.

So just if you're if it is if vision zero is part of every project, then it should be part of every project, not say this is the one that we should have in the title.

Yeah, three more minutes and one more person in the queue.

So thank you, committee chair.

You didn't?

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

Council Nines, Councilwoman, I'll be dressed.

Thank you.

Um, I just wanted to ask one more question um with the length of it ending at Cuevas.

Uh, one of the concerns I did hear from community is that there is now 5280 high school, which is on the pan, and Le Pan is really like where the whole pedestrian quarter ends.

And so I'm curious why was it decided to only go to Quivas and not to go all the way to the Bun?

I don't know that I have an answer to that.

Do you have an answer?

I'd have to look into how long ago was it, was it developed?

So uh 5280 high school was there when this project started, yeah.

And so was another high school which has since closed.

Was right there as well.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful and what the community would really like to see is like what happens at Quivas all the way to the highway of Santa Fe and I-25.

How do we improve that whole part of the corridor as well?

Because although we're very excited about this, um, it also will just emphasize how unsafe just up the street is.

So thank you so much.

That was it, thank you.

Committee chair.

Thank you.

And I just have two questions for you.

Um the first one is similar to Councilman Heinz's question.

So in 2025, there were 93 traffic deaths, and in 2026, so far there's been 18.

And so, to your point, I am curious how you all are looking at this project as a vision project, vision vision zero project.

How are you?

What are the goals that you all are utilizing assessing in order to be able to bring down down that number?

Or do you have one that's attached directly to um bringing down that number for 2026?

I can start.

I would say that we have a multitude of programs and projects that we're attacking that problem at.

It's not necessarily a one path to get to that outcome, and there are a number of externalities that we are coming up against that we can even if I'll just say, even if we don't necessarily see the numbers coming down, which is absolutely our goal and what we're still striving for with these improvements, is that we don't know how much the rate would have grown without the improvements that we've made either.

So we continue to really focus on.

One, our speed program.

So this is a number of signal enhancements, it's controlling speed limits, it's um engineering our traffic signals to control the flow of traffic, it's doing um speed enforcement.

So this comes back to the safe systems approach of vision zero, which tells us that we need to target um design of the roadway to create safe roads, we need to create safer speeds, we need to create um safer roadway users, so safe access for pedestrians and safer infrastructure for them, safe post care, things of that nature.

So being able to invest through the speed program is just one example where we've got this layered approach where we're trying to slow down vehicles and reduce the um the physics, I suppose, and I'm not a science science person, I'm a social science person, but we're trying to mitigate the physics of the the crashes themselves, and so by slowing down the speeds and protecting the infrastructure of the road users, we're gonna help mitigate those challenges.

We also then that's focused, you know, on arterials and collectors, then we have our neighborhood programs where we're trying to create safer neighborhood streets and slowing down our uh traffic volumes in those neighbors' neighborhoods as well.

Um gosh, Tychus, what other kind of safe streets programs do we have?

We've just got a lot of layered approaches where we're really just trying to target the speeding, the environment, and creating safe spaces for all users, whether you're in a car, on a bike, or on a sidewalk.

We want you to have that designated space.

You can build specific metrics into each of the projects from the vision zero program.

So say, I know you track the numbers for high injury networks, and you would see um the number that you you'd be able to see the number year over year.

So 23, 24, 25, 26, and be able to say, okay, we'd like to reduce the number of injuries or deaths in this network and you build specific metrics into those programs or into the projects that you propose.

So um so I think to answer the question, so each project, depending on the issue that we're trying to address.

So safety is broad.

Uh each project has specific issues or challenges associated with it, whether it's the speed, and so if it's speed, we really um focus in on metrics or targets that are addressing the speed metrics associated with it.

Um if it's a series of uh pedestrian-related crashes, you know, Federal Boulevard would be the example where um we continue to vary our tactics and techniques to the signalized intersections to the outreach to the community.

Depending on what it is, uh, we will vary, but it's all under the umbrella of the philosophy of we have to get to the root cause of what the issue are and address that first and foremost.

We're currently undertaking uh post-evaluation studies across the city to further evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques that we're using.

Um we're using techniques that folks across the country are using uh to try to address the the crashes and the series about injuries and fatalities that we have.

Um they're not going in the right direction.

You're pointing out is absolutely right.

Um, and so we're taking a further look at what exactly we were doing as a city to address that, what's within our control where we need help from others, whether it's enforcement, uh whether it's our regional partners throughout the metro area, um, or if there's specific things on our corridors that just are not operating correctly, or state of art technology uh for signal for leading pedestrian intervals that we are implementing on every uh intersection as a signal uh today.

And so it really depends on what it is, but we can provide you, I think, with a better and more detailed response of metrics associated with what what we're seeing and what we're doing.

I appreciate this.

And my final question is um how is the contractor for this project selected?

And can you just tell us a bit more about that, and then we can move on?

I'd have to look into what the RFP details were, but it would have gone through our traditional city procurement process where we put it up to bid, we identified the scope of enhancements that we expected, and then we assessed the bids that we received for the best value to the city.

Thank you.

Um and with that, um, there's no one else in the queue.

Go ahead, Chris.

Um, just one quick comment.

Um right now, if we assume that the pace continues as it is without any increase in serious injuries and fatalities, we were on track for 135 fatalities in 226.

So my hope is that we have a pretty major course correction.

So the director, I would love to do anything and everything in my power to help director Ford achieve her goal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you have something, Councilman?

Yeah, if questions are finished.

I'll move this item.

That was my next question.

Or by noting that I believe the contractors ready for the floor, although there are a lot of unanswered questions that are peripheral.

We're looking forward to answering.

That would be the reason to hold it up.

Thanks, Kevin.

We'd select it, yeah.

So we have a motion.

Thank you.

And so I'm gonna be dressed for a second.

Do we need a roll call vote?

Thank you so much, really appreciate it.

Yeah, um, what's that?

We have a briefing for Dottie with Alameda Lane repurposing.

So you all can introduce yourselves again and dive in.

Okay, I'll introduce myself again.

Molly and Leanne Pier, strategic communications liaison, say that 10 times fast.

Um, Elena McWater, strategic advisor for Dottie.

And Tigus Holloway, Chief Transportation Officer for Dotty.

Okay.

So I'm gonna start um by saying thank you for inviting us back and having us here.

Um, you should have received an email detailing, I believe from the last um committee meeting, there were several data points that we emailed, um, just data heavy questions.

Um happy as we answer questions to dive into any of that.

But um basically today I wanted to directly, we wanted to directly address some of the questions you raised and to specifically clarify next steps in the process.

And I think Elena said before that it was District 7, which it is Alameda, but it also extends um to district six as well.

So tomorrow we will actually be having a working group session.

This is intended as a smaller um discussion with representatives from the community and the neighborhood to really um dive in um on the on the proposed demonstration, which we mentioned yesterday, and I'll go into a little bit more details about, and to actually help us um with defining metrics, and this is metrics of success and then metrics as we deploy this demonstration to really understand more of the concerns from the community.

Um the demonstration is fully to do um a live um deployments of the lane reduction and um do live data collection.

Um the goals of the working group we see as kind of threefold up here.

Um so it's to provide us community feedback in again a smaller setting so that we can have a productive conversation.

It's to create that line of open communication with Dottie and the community with the intention of working in the smaller group and then going to the full community, which I will talk about in a second, and then it's again to identify metrics of success to help with the data analysis that we do on many of our projects, but to allow us to um address concerns and collect some subjective um data through likely a community survey.

So the working group members, I again we tried to um kind of invite people to the table that have been part of this discussion and are representative of the community and the neighborhood.

Um two businesses are on here as well that we've invited on the elementary school, and honestly, it's um the commute the list of organizations on here are the organizations we have heard from petitions and um that sort of thing and meetings throughout the process.

So we have already done some preliminary analysis, obviously, to get us to this point on crashes and volumes and modeled congestion and side street diversion.

Our next steps, as I said, is to do it live.

And the best way to do this, we believe, is to do it in the field with real life demonstration and evaluation of the full lane reduction design, because that will allow us to fully measure the impacts of the lane repurposing.

And so at this point, we are thinking that the demonstration would be a full lane reduction for a section from Emerson to Franklin.

Again, I don't want to be disingenuous with this working group.

A lot of the details, we are still going to be working out with the working group to see what makes the most sense for the neighborhood for the community.

Again, with plans to go to the broader public shortly after we meet with the working group.

Well, not in-house, but with limited in-house resources, it allows us to do the demonstration most efficiently with the resources we have.

But again, looking to the working group to give us feedback on this.

And so you can see a general timeline right here is that tomorrow we are meeting with this working group.

We have an hour and change with the working group.

I don't know, to be honest, if that will be enough time to get through kind of what the demonstration looks like and make sure there's buy-in from the community, as well as to discuss about the metrics.

If we don't have time for all that, we will do another working group meeting.

And then we do, as I said, want to take that to the community, have some engagement that way, again, open for discussion about the format that will that looks like how that is, whether it's in person, on Zoom, that sort of thing.

We're trying to create flexibility there with the intention that we would do construction and procurement pretty quickly in March, April of this year, and then that that demonstration would actually happen the full lane reduction this summer at some point.

And then typically for these construction projects, we do like some time for people to get used to a new travel pattern.

And so we would do our own data assessment, which again includes the metrics that we're used to seeing with most of our projects about crashes and volumes and side street diversion.

So we'll pull all that, but simultaneously the thought is that we would also be surveying and having conversations with the neighborhood directly to really understand perception of comfort, how people are walking the corridor, if they are, if they aren't, what's changed?

So to kind of do our hard data pull with anecdotal or subjective information as well.

And then hopefully that would follow with identifying recommendation and next steps in like spring 2027-ish.

This doesn't mean that we're going to deploy this full lane reduction, and that's it.

You know, that's then we're just gonna let it lie.

I think if we identify problems, we are committing to being flexible to being able to change certain things along the course of the deployment, the demonstration, um, and as we uh certainly if there's safety issues, we would change things.

So this is us being nimble or trying to be nimble.

So I do wanna emphasize, and I think I said this last time that there are permanent safety improvements going in regardless of which what the final design is, right?

Um, and I just wanna be, I mean, you all can read what these are, but certainly wanna be clear that the top two, the um rapid flashing beacon at Franklin and Alameda, as well as the Virginia and Downing improvements, we do have to contract out for those.

So we are trying to do that simultaneously as we do the demonstration, and then the rest of the improvements will happen in-house, and we can do those with our own staff.

Um, so I think that was, I'm sure there are many questions, but that was our very um brief update for you all, and yeah, happy to take questions.

Thank you.

Really appreciate um the presentation.

We have a few folks on the queue so far.

Um, Councilwoman Alvidres and then Councilman Cashman.

Thank you so much.

Um appreciate the follow-up here.

Uh definitely concerned about not doing the whole project.

The full extent.

And I think we can certainly talk about that in the working group as well.

Um it would take the caveat to that is it would probably take us more time.

There's trade-offs of that conversation that we certainly want to have in the community with the community, um, that it would just take a little bit longer because there's signal work from my understanding that we'd also have to do that, it just complicates the project a little bit more.

So it would likely push out the timeline.

Okay, definitely look forward to continuing to talk about that.

Um, when it comes to the working group, um, I'm curious about this homeowners association.

Where is that?

Yeah, the Morning Hill Homeowners Association, that was that is the community that first um spearheaded the petition that we first got against the full lane reduction.

Um, yeah, the HOA was actually from it was like Jill and Schutz and Maureen Hill HOA.

Um, so that is why we actually did not specifically reach like all these organizations is who we reached out to, so it was the Maury Hill HOA is how this petition was delivered to us through them.

Oh, okay.

Um interesting.

I guess I'm curious, you know, since they're not directly along the corridor that this is addressing is what does that representation look like?

Are they is this one person per each of these?

No, so we are this is not we are trying to be a small productive conversation, and I understand, but we're balancing that with trying not to be exclusive and also understanding that this has been clearly a very heated project and allowing representation of both sides at this community meeting.

If we didn't do that, it would not be a productive conversation, right?

Um, but um we have allowed, or my communication has always been hey, we want you representing those organizations that we listed.

Um, however, it's not we're not trying to be exclusive.

So I have said two to three people per organization is totally fine.

We're just trying to manage a productive conversation.

Yeah, I'm curious how many homes are in that homeowner's association.

I do not know that.

I know there were 300 signatories on that original petition.

I think there's probably 300 homes.

I have no idea.

Okay.

But they really do represent that other side.

And I I do feel like in order to have a productive conversation, we have to have both sides at the table.

And again, it's not an exclusive conversation.

This is not, we're not trying to exclude people here.

I totally understand that, and um, you know, why not have Athmer Park be out there?

Why not have Baker have a representation?

Why not have LBC RNO have a representative?

Harvard Gulch asked for a briefing on this, so should we just open it up to like every RNO that cares?

Because there's more.

And a lot of people travel that Alameda corridor.

I completely understand.

And that is why we're going committed to following up with the public.

But again, to only limit this to people that agree with the full lane reduction would do a disservice to the conversation.

I can understand that.

Also, just thinking about who actually lives on that corridor, or if we're opening it up to all kinds of opinions, then why not you know open it up to all of the ROs that care?

Because I know there's more.

Maybe INC also may have an opinion.

I don't know if they're for or against, but when you start including people that aren't directly impacted, it it does concern me.

Um, but anyway, uh back to my next question.

Um I am concerned about doing not, so if you can just back up one step and then we're not doing the full lane repurposing, or we are for the first demo.

So we were um proposing to do Franklin to Emerson, which is I don't know if I have the I do not have a map of it.

Um, sorry about that, but it is the full lane reduction goes all the way to Franklin to Lincoln or Pearl about so it would be shorter again.

It's just because it's more resource heavy to do the full accents, and again, that's a conversation we can certainly have.

Great, and then um we did receive some of the Quora documents and Tychis in an email from you uh it said that the changes are self-evident, and I'm curious what did that mean?

The changes here seem to be self-evident.

I'm not sure what it's okay.

We can send the email and like try and get what we just was after a conversation with the lobbyist.

All of a sudden it was self-evident that changes need to be made, and I was curious about that.

Um I also wanted to ask about there was some more quoras that we actually sent to the mayor's office that were never completed.

I'm curious, are those going to be completed?

They legally have to be completed, so yes, I think they can expect a response to those.

Okay, I appreciate that.

That's all I have for the moment.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate you.

Um, Councilman Cashman, followed up by Councilman Heinz.

Thank you very much.

Just before I ask my questions, uh Maury Hill is located outside the project area.

Uh, about four blocks outside the east of the project area.

The project area ends at Franklin.

Uh Maury Hill is a uh a small group north of homes north of Alameda Avenue, overlooking the uh some overlooking the country club golf course, and they are they do have an a difficult entry onto Alameda because cars are coming up the hill in both directions.

I do understand they have a difficult time getting out onto Alameda and they're concerned about traffic making it more difficult, but it's a very small group of people outside of the project area.

Um, so I'm also while I understand your explanation about uh doing the full uh repurposing as a demonstration, it does complicate things because the discussion has been do we do the full project or uh this new version that has come up, and now we're gonna be studying a third version, so but we'll talk about that.

Um what is a demonstration project?

What are we just gonna be new fresh paint on the ground?

Yeah, that's a good question.

It'll be the same full lane, yep, you just be doing it for a limited period of time.

It's the type of paint, and uh from my understanding, Tegas can weigh in on more technical um aspects than I can, but from my understanding, it's the type of paint that we're gonna put on the grounds can easily be removed or changed, or it it allows us to be a little more nimble than we normally would be if we just put went for it with the project as is.

I guess as far as timing goes, I would hope that it would extend well into the school year.

Yes, we understand that the school, the school impacts traffic and changes it, so does summer with the park being right there.

Um absolutely we so I don't know if I said this and I'm I'm remiss not to, so I'll say it now.

Um we are hoping the demonstration lasts um about nine months.

Um and that's quick for us, but we hope it will get us the data that we need.

And what is our estimated cost of the demonstration?

Oh, that's a good question that I do not know.

Do you know?

I I will get back to you on that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that a lot.

Um tell me how long it would be.

Um will uh reducing so the plan is to reduce, and I assume this is whatever version of repurposing happens that the speed will will be reduced from 30 to 25.

Or we also anticipating uh increased enforcement uh whether DPD officers uh lurking off to the side or um speed camera, whatever.

We can work, uh we can talk to our DPTE colleagues about that.

Again, typically we like to wait until people figure out the new traffic pattern, but I think you know, six months out, we can we can certainly talk to our DPD colleagues about more enforcement or checking it out.

And have you done a demonstration?

I I don't know like this somewhere before.

So I take that as a probably not.

Well, and I don't I don't want to be incorrect.

Um, you know, there's probably some part of history in the city where there's been demonstration type projects, uh, smaller in scale, um, but there may have been, but not in this particular area that I'm aware of.

Yeah, okay.

Um rather than spout off cranky as I've done before.

I'll just say thank you, madam chair.

I will cede the floor.

You know, your best behavior.

Um councilman Hines, followed by Councilman Flynn.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, so uh as you introduced yourselves again, even though you were presenting last time, I'm gonna touch on uh vision zero again, um, just as I had touched about touched on in the last committee.

Uh but in case people are only tuning in to this briefing.

Um, you know, I think uh we continue to set records, high scores.

Um if this were Pac Man or Ms.

Backman at high score it would be great, um, but because these are serious injuries and fatalities at the hands of drivers, um, we want our vision zero scores to be as low as possible, um, yet they keep going up every year uh since we started tracking in 2017.

Everybody stayed home.

So my I guess that's the the value that I think about when I think about um undergoing street projects.

Um vision zero is the idea of you know what it's the built environment, it's not just a crazy thing that happened, um, or the driver fell asleep at the wheel, it's um it's at the urban environment can be changed.

And um, and I I wonder, I have concerns because I hear um that there was robust stakeholder engagement that said full lane reduction because it will save lives.

And then I hear, you know, after we finish the full stakeholder group, now we're gonna follow up, and we're gonna do less than that.

Um and uh I noticed you didn't have the slide that said um uh you know, pedestrian safety, the value statement.

Thank you for removing that.

Um, but I also didn't hear anything from Roddy about um the value statement about how somehow a full lane reduction will be more dangerous for pedestrians than a partial lane reduction.

And so the the premise, and uh as committee chair said at the end of the last uh last committee you know if we're gonna do a uh test we should do the full test um and I would say it is far more important for us to uh to lean into vision zero statistics particularly as we're gonna continue to set high scores with a current rate in 2026 um we should think about that sure money's a reality um but saving lives really that should be our our core driver not um dollars or a um an HOA that has one stream outlet on to Alameda so do you have any yeah yeah yeah um I would say that really something that I hope we will address in the working group and with the public as we move forward with the demonstration is really our metrics and specifically not only the metrics along Alameda that last time I came here I said the major concern we had was Virginia was Wash Park and pedestrians along there and the conflict that um side street diversion may cause um so I am very focused on how we measure that safety on Virginia Ave um because I do I'm fearful that we do this full lane reduction and then we're causing another issue so I fully intend and I think it's on our agenda to work through that question of how do we make sure that while we're doing these safety improvements on Alameda that we are still very much protecting pedestrians along Virginia Avenue.

So okay uh next question is uh I'm gonna couch the first question in the value of vision zero the second question is is in the value of uh stakeholder engagement right we had a volunteer group that met for a long period of time came up with a uh determination and um and now Dottie has suggested an alternative and um and I think that um I think it's reasonable to expect additional scrutiny uh because all these folks dedicated a bunch of time uh and um and they believed in the stakeholder process and then there's a change counter to what appears to be the decision of robust stakeholder engagement so um I think it's I think it's reasonable to have additional scrutiny because now we're doing this new thing and there's this new stakeholder process and so slide three um has the uh the the the attendees in the committee um so the slides are actually not numbered in the presentation but it happens to be slide three in the so it has the working group numbers of D6 D7 city council offices and and uh and the advisory board members has um uh West what Wash Park West Park East Mori Hill homeowners Blackford Public House so I heard that the there was also the idea that um the Maury Hill HOA might have three representatives so I guess I'm just trying to figure out who's in the working group and I think it's worth scrutiny sure um that we're not backing the deck or stacking the deck in any direction.

Yeah um I clarified with I received several follow-up emails being like well who's in the working group I was very um transparent in giving people this list but also very transparent in saying what I said to you all which was you know we um have this list of representation uh at two to three people would be fine to attend um as well as we want to keep this a productive conversation.

So I think having a hundred people in the room, it wouldn't be as it would be a very different conversation.

However, we are not going to kick people out.

It would just be different.

And with the commitment that while we're gonna have this working group, we have committed to having a public meeting as well.

So I think I heard a couple of different things.

You said um it would be unproductive if we had a hundred people in the room.

Um and then you also said you're committed to the uh having the working group productive.

So it's is it is it the intent that this uh meeting will be open?

Like you can have people in the room, and then you have people at the table, like just literally as we do right now.

Um we said that was fine.

I mean, physically we wanted an in-person meeting because I think there's value in that.

Um so unfortunately, like the room we reserved is only capable of having so many people, it's logistically, and again, we want to have a meaningful conversation with both sides represented.

Let me be clear on that as well, and then again the commitment to go to the public, but yeah, and you say both sides that might be because I won a popularity contest like a vote, but I think you mean as many different perspectives as possible.

Like it isn't really a binary Morrehill HOA versus the rest of the absolutely.

I think that there's no, I think that there's a lot of things.

Um about this pro again, that is the conversation that we want to have tomorrow.

I think we're pretty clear on what the concerns and opportunities are, um, but we want to be sure that in this demonstration we are addressing those concerns and more importantly, measuring for those concerns.

Um that I think our metrics are great and they tell one side of the story, but we know that the community that's living traveling along the corridor, walking, biking, going to school, uh, you know, are important and deserve to have a mechanism for feedback as well.

And so that's what we're trying to figure out.

Yeah, I I don't know how you would change the venue if it's tomorrow night.

Um, I would say um this has a lot of attention.

Yeah, we've got media here today.

We've had media um, you know, and other uh of the city council conversations.

I believe there were media in the public conversations, and uh, and I would encourage you um if if you're having if you're preserving things in the future, uh, with the amount of attention that this is getting, um, reserving a room for 13 people.

I don't know how you know, um, you know, it just uh there I think it's reasonable to have some people who are committee members, uh, but it should it should be available to the public and so uh I would encourage you to consider the um consider that when you consider the room reservation.

Thank you, Councilman Hines.

Just do a quick time check.

We have four folks in the queue in about 10 minutes left.

Um with that I have you um Councilman Flynn and then Councilwoman Gilmore.

I'm not sure.

Uh I am still waiting for data.

That I thought I'd have by now on the very similar road diet, where one lane in each direction was done in 2012 and failed, and the community clamored to have it return to four lanes, because it looks like we're on the verge of doing something very similar and expecting a different result.

So I would really like to understand.

Have we not found the file folders that have no?

I'll own that.

I owe you an email that has that information.

I just didn't get to it with the holiday this week.

I've got it for you, yes.

Um, I'll just point out a lot of the permanent improvements that we highlighted that are regardless weren't part of the conversation with that original design.

So that's a major point in the difference.

But yeah, I'll look at all the different other design details, and we've got some follow-up for you.

I'd just like to have a clear picture of how what we're being what's being proposed now is different than what failed in 2012.

The community has a lot of expectations on both sides that something better will result.

I do know that the road diets we did in 2012 on other streets seemed to work, and maybe it was because there was less average daily traffic.

Um I know in my district, Jewel, Florida, and Quincy, we're all done.

And uh very very little negative result.

Um, so I just like to see are we repeating a bad plan, or are we changing something that failed and correcting what failed about it?

That would help me out a lot.

Thank you.

Yes, and if you can send that around to the entire committee, I'd appreciate it.

Council member Gilmar and Councilman Watson.

Uh thank you, committee chair.

Um, I just shared in the um chat um with council members uh um an article that was from 2018, and it was a pop-up that was done at Silverman Park in Montbello.

Um it's now in your council district, um, council chair or committee chair, um, it's right at Tulsa and Andrews, and it's right at that intersection.

They the community had wanted a four-way stop.

And Dottie said, no, no, no, we can't do that, and we were out there.

So I would encourage whatever they do to the roadway, somebody's gonna have to be out there taking pictures, documenting it.

Because we were out there, Pam Diner with Montbello Walks had a speed radar gun.

Uh Dottie, trash truck, lo and behold, went down the road at 89 miles an hour.

All standing out there, and we were like, see, see, we told you, we told you, and we got the four-way, it's not permanent, but it's still out there, and that is on the strip that the community does not enjoy it, but it slows it down, and it was the road diet.

We were the guinea pigs in Montbello, way, way back when it's from um the corner of um Montbello Central Park, let's say for just ease at Crown Boulevard, the entire stretch of Andrews Drive to Peoria.

I'll drive it and get the mileage of that, but I guarantee you it is shorter than doing the entire initial project.

So if you could follow up and get that information, what the entire mileage distance of the original project, what is that distance for Alameda?

Is it like a mile?

Oh, point six.

Well, I think this might be a little bit longer, but we'll make sure folks have that in front.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you, Councilman Watson.

And there's very quick thank you, committee chair.

Um, for the team, um, there are some very specific things you discussed that you're planning on leading on.

Um, Molly, Lana Tychis.

Creation of a working group.

Um there are standards, there are things that Dottie has done.

Um, so it would be helpful, and I'm not on this committee, this makes it to the floor, for you all to have a clearer description of what that means.

A working group is not just an open meeting.

There is a targeted group of folks.

There's usually a sizing that you do.

There's usually some equity demographic targets.

There's stuff that all of our departments do.

It would be helpful for council and for the community that's watching for you to have that kind of specific information because it feels and sounds like it's happening during committee.

That shouldn't be the case.

And so, yes, there should be flexibility, there should be opportunity for all voices to be heard.

But if you're creating a working group, there has to be an expected outcome as to why you're creating that group, what the audience is, what the impacts are on the actual project that you're working for.

If it's proximity to the road, then it's proximity to the road.

Um, so my encouragement is for the team to work that stuff out.

If this gets to the floor, so you can specifically state why you get the input from the working group as to what they're solving.

Again, the timeline of that.

So some of the stuff that sounds squishy to me is concerning that it shouldn't be squishy because this has been done before.

Um, so that's my only input.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

I could respond.

I appreciate you raising that.

Because we agree to put a finer point on what we're trying to do here with this working group.

With that list of the working group members, we think or are hopeful that regardless of what your position is on this project, there should be someone on that list who you feel like articulates your voice and represents your perspective.

So we want to have everyone feel like they've got that avenue through the working group to raise concerns in real time as we move through this demo process.

They're gonna be helping us monitor and develop metrics for how we measure the success of the full lane demonstration.

How do we know that it's successful?

How do we know that there's no unintended consequences to safety on Virginia?

Or how do we know where we draw the line on those safety impacts?

Um, and then to your point, it's not necessarily just all open to the public, but we do recognize that not always everyone's gonna look at that list and they're not gonna feel like there's a person on that working group who represents them.

So we still want to have a broader avenue for those people to feel like they can get involved and stay engaged.

So I get it.

Yeah, we're on the same page.

We're working to catch up on the messaging so that everyone's clear.

Yeah, great.

Thanks.

And I'm just gonna say this as a as a comment.

Um, picking back in from what Councilman Hines as well as councilwoman Alvidres were able to pick up on is the double representation for Moriel HOA because it falls within the WPNA boundaries.

And so since WPA is already at the table, those 10 homes that you all talked about have a disproportionate representation compared to the other impacted areas that remain unrepresented, and so I'd too council member Watson's point, there is some rectifying that you all are gonna have to do to make sure um that there is fair representation.

Um I do have a few quick questions for you all.

Um, the first one is what led you all to selecting um the areas that you all did for the pilot.

I think it was just part it it was really with the resources we have to dedicate to the pilot.

What could we do to do it in a timely manner?

Again, if we extend if we did the full lane reduction, it adds in some signal work.

Um there's signals that we'd have to address and it gets more complicated.

It's just a timing.

What can we deploy and the vastest amount of time?

Um so back to Councilman uh Councilman Hines' point is the priority should be the people and the pedestrians and the safety within the folks within our city.

And so it sounds like that was not actually a priority for this, that you all were prioritizing this from a resource perspective and from a timeliness perspective.

Well, I just I hear you.

The timeline, I mean, we hear you loud and clear.

We're trying to get out and do this as quick as possible uh within reason.

Um, happy to continue the conversation with the working group to see if that segment that we're talking about, which is roughly two-thirds of the overall corridor, uh, makes sense for everyone.

If it still will address the questions that folks will have, uh, to keep it transparent and open, and so we could extend it, but we need to be clear on what extension does, what it helps solve from a pedestrian or a safety side, or just continues to prolong the demonstration of it.

So, happy to to dig in with that working group on it.

And that's the purpose of that working group is to help us vet some of those things, um, and you still have some work to do on the working group, so we have to make sure that we have the right folks at the table for the working group in order for us to be able to get the answers that we need that reflects the representation in terms of the solutions from the community.

The second question I have from you all is what exactly are you sending to construction procurement?

It will be the demonstration, the deployment and the demonstration.

Can you expand on that?

I can't necessarily at this point because we don't.

I mean, I guess I'll lean on you, but we don't necessarily have the details yet.

Again, that's those details we are working out with the working group and eventually, the broader community.

Did you want to add?

No, I didn't.

Her answer was a five for me.

We'll have to give it a her answer with suffice, at least from my standpoint.

We'll have to get back to you on more specific details.

Yeah, I would I and I imagine the entire committee would appreciate a bit more detail than that because you all are asking us at some point to be able to move this forward, but that would not be a sufficient answer for me to vote yes on anything that you would bring forward with that lack of time.

And let me clarify that we fully intend to have more details on what the demonstration includes and what that what we're putting out for procurement after we get community input.

Okay, so regarding the assessment of conditions, whose comfort is being assessed?

Is it the drivers?

Is it pedestrians?

Can you talk about that?

I again these are questions that we need to work out with community of what's going to be on that survey.

Um that we're tracking.

Again, we're um safety is paramount, but that means everyone's safety.

So, but again, like those are the questions we are posing to the community in the working group.

So you're putting a lot of weight on the community that's not representative yet in terms of who is on the committee, and those are the folks that are that are going to come up with the answers.

You guys, you all don't have the answers quite yet.

And so I guess I'll ask you: are those meetings being recorded?

Can you participate online?

What does it look like for you all to let folks know that these meetings exist and what does your outreach look like since that's such a heavy weight in terms of how you want move forward?

Yeah, again, the working group is just the first step, so we intend to kind of talk and pose these similar questions to the working group, but then come up with some sort of community survey.

We will be going back out to the community prior to um the deployment of the demonstration to kind of say, hey, this is what we're going to be measuring, this is what the community survey will entail, and not surveying the community until we do the demonstration for a period of time.

So at that point, after we deploy the demonstration, we then do the survey about six to nine months after the meetings be recorded.

So we are going to do a public meeting, it will be recorded and publicly available.

We will, as well, the working group, we will have a summary of the outcomes and deliverables from that working group.

Thank you.

Can't say Catherine, you can close us out.

Yeah, I I just wanted to be talking about messaging.

Um there's been a lot of talk about diverting traffic on to Virginia.

That's not what Maury Hill cared about.

They cared about traffic backing up, their fear was traffic would back up and make it more difficult for them to pull out on to Alameda.

That's reasonable worry.

That's reasonable worry.

I've been trying to get safety improvements on Downing Street, so kids can cross from one side to go to either Asbury School or Grant Middle School.

Years, not a dime has been spent on that.

I've been promised uh safe crossing across Evans Avenue for kids to get to um Asbury Elementary School, and I can name other safety measures that are not getting funded, but we're gonna spend money on a demonstration project that is unnecessary because a plan was put together that deserved being tried.

Yeah, I um yeah, I don't this is not directed at you, I just want to.

But go ahead.

This is not directed at you.

But what the hell?

Yeah, um, uh I'm uh no, it's it's too serious.

I mean, I am beyond, I was almost not gonna come today.

I was almost gonna vote against moving this through the full body because I'm tired.

Um I'm tired of of uh passing money on for other projects when I'm not getting anything done in my district.

I'm I'm very tired of that.

Um, the rapid flashing beacon that still ain't built, it's been promised and promised and promised and promised.

I could sit here all day with promises because it's been that long, so um I will probably attend the working group.

Um it is beyond frustrating to see an unnecessary intermediate step being taken when other projects that have been promised or pushed farther back in the queue.

So thank you.

Thank you so much.

Councilwoman, you do have some close time.

Thank you so much.

Um again, thanks for continuing to have this conversation outside in public with um, you know, community.

I will echo my colleagues' concern.

It's it kind of blows my mind that I spent like years of my first years being in office with outreach on this project, and like here we are.

And it also scares me financially because all this money that we're redesigning, doing the temporary thing could be that RFB or rapid flashing beacon.

Um, and so I just want to raise that issue up.

Um, and I just wanted to also raise up that I did ask for data in the last meeting that I don't have, so we'll work on going back and looking at that data and requesting it more specifically again that we didn't get in the last meeting, as far as like when is it gonna be considered successful?

And then I just wanted to reiterate the pilot project.

You don't, it sounds like you don't know anything because you're going to go have a community conversation.

Is that correct?

Am I understanding that correctly?

So you don't know if it's going to be the two-lane or the one-lane reduction either.

We're we are deploying for the demonstration, we're doing the full lane reduction.

Um, again, trying to be nimble.

Two-lane reduction.

It will be one lane each way with the middle for left-turn pockets.

We're doing that because it's the only way we can really measure impact in a meaningful way.

And I guess I would just say I am concerned that only doing it partially could lead us to not the right data in the end.

So, um, anyway, I appreciate the continued effort.

Wish that it didn't have to be this long and expensive to get stuff done.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I'll just conclude with this, and we from the conversation that we've had today and the answers and the not answers that we've received during this conversation and the previous one.

We don't um know what we're procuring.

We don't have a design beyond paint.

Uh we don't know where we're measuring or who we're measuring.

If if there's anything, we don't have any success metrics that have been defined or provided to any of us on this council.

Um, we are not testing both options as we asked for at the last presentation.

So I'm not really sure what we're doing here, and I've seen this particularly at the legislature, where we are um looking, where we have a problem and we're searching for an answer, and that's really really frustrating to see that come back to committee over and over again, and committee members really engaged in this conversation, asking for data, asking for answers, and you all keep coming back with the same non answers.

Um with that, we have 11 items on consent.

Um, no one has pulled anything off.

If um no one has any objections, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thanks.