Uh Jimmy Peluso.

No clapping necessary.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for coming out here.

I know it's relatively late on a Thursday.

There's a lot of things going on this evening.

So the fact that you want to show up really means a lot to me.

It either shows that you are very, if you're like me, you're hopefully very supportive of the idea of more bike pedestrian friendly communities and neighborhoods, especially in our urban core.

And maybe you just have questions about the project.

Maybe there are some concerns.

Maybe there's things that can make this project even better.

But regardless, I'm so grateful that you're all here this evening.

And if you go to some of the oldest cities on Earth, you can go to Paris, or you know, you can go to some places that were built hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, and they have made bike pedestrianism far more a part of the fabric of their society.

And so naturally, I figured Jacksonville, Florida can do can definitely do the same thing.

These are projects that are low cost.

These are projects that can make a resounding difference for the community.

And as we talk about the Emerald Trail, this connects to that.

As we talk about slowing down traffic, it can do that.

As we talk about making sure that neighborhoods are more connected to each other, this does that as well.

And we just put a ton of money and attention into the McCoy's Creek project, daylighting the creek, and to the uh the the river walk on the north bank.

I mean, there's a reality here where you can wake up in the morning in Brooklyn and walk all the way to the other side of the South Bank to where the district is and the uh DCPS building.

That kind of connectivity is something that this city is now gonna have, which I find very, very like great.

That's progress.

Beyond that, if you look at the Monroe uh project, um, what's great about that is we've just opened up um the new La Villa Heritage Trail, right?

This these beautiful markers that are celebrating the history of an incredible part of our city, La Villa.

And what better way to get from one part of the trail than to the next?

Getting on a bike or getting off, getting out of your car and walking from one to the next to see what has happened in this city.

I mean, these are the kinds of things that that that big cities do, and and and I'm I'm just grateful to to Lee, to Chris, to everyone here this evening, to Osiris who who put this together.

Um, and and I'm I'm interested to hear what your questions are, if there are any concerns, and uh, and and I hope to uh to to see us break ground on this, break ground.

It's really just paint.

Uh pull out the pull out the paintbrush, I suppose, in a couple of months and get this going.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, so why are we here?

Uh we're gonna talk about why we think these projects are good ideas.

Uh we think there's a lot of benefits to them, but we want to know what you think.

You know, we we miss stuff, we make mistakes.

So if you think we missed something or that we made a mistake, please tell us.

Um, you can fill out a comment card, you can send us an email.

Uh we'll have time for questions at the end.

And if you like these projects, please tell us as well.

Your your your input is very important.

So everybody here, you know, has some connection to these neighborhoods.

Uh, you might live there, uh maybe you work there, or maybe you just visit.

Uh but I think everybody's here because you're interested in in making these streets better.

So, how are these projects going to make Brooklyn and La Villa better?

So they're gonna provide better access to local businesses.

So on Monroe Street, we're gonna two-way Monroe Street.

So that means drivers will have an easier time getting places.

It'll also make businesses more visible because drivers will see them when they're going both directions.

On Riverside Avenue and Forest Street, uh, we're adding lots of on-street parking, making the bike lanes better.

So that'll help people get to local businesses and attractions.

Um, these projects are gonna make the the sidewalks better.

It's gonna make crossing the street better.

Uh, we're gonna put in safer bike lanes and new bike lanes that aren't even there at all right now.

Um and this builds on other recent successful projects that have happened downtown.

Uh projects like the road diet on Park Street that was just finished, uh, the shared use path on the Fuller Warren Bridge, uh the Emerald Trail on the skate park.

Uh all the we thought about how these projects will connect um with all of those attractions.

Uh these projects are also really low cost.

We put a lot of thought into how we can not spend a whole lot of money on these and make a really good investment with your taxpayer money.

And they're a fast timeline.

This isn't something that you're gonna have to wait around for 10 years to enjoy.

Sometime in 2027.

So this is Monroe Street.

And some of the there's there's some issues with Monroe Street right now.

So it's it's three lanes and it's one direction of traffic.

So when you have a road that looks like this, it encourages drivers to go really fast.

And they don't even think about it.

They just see this type of road and and they go faster.

So speeding is a problem here.

Also, the one way traffic, you know, makes navigation confusing.

It makes businesses less visible.

Um there's no there's no bike facilities, and all this high speed traffic is right next to the sidewalk.

Um, and if you cross the street, you have to cross three lanes at one time.

So, how can we make Monroe Street better?

Um, so what we want to do is make it two directions, two lanes and two directions of traffic and install bike lanes.

Um, what this is do this will do is it'll slow people down because it'll make it look more like a neighborhood.

Um it's not gonna feel like a highway where drivers are supposed to go really fast.

When drivers see a street like this, they'll naturally slow down.

Um there's no bike lanes there now, but these bike lanes are gonna connect directly to the Emerald Trail, and they'll go almost all the way to the courthouse.

So it'll be a nice connection from the United Trail, you know, into the harder downtown.

And you know, this is just gonna make this a much nicer place to walk around, we think.

So here's a here's a side by side before and after you know picture of Monroe Street.

Okay, Riverside Avenue.

Now, what are some of the problems on Riverside Avenue right now?

So there's it's six lanes, so a six-lane road encourages lots of speeding.

Um there's no on-street parking at all.

Um, the bike lanes are too small, and there's no protection for them.

And the you know, the these high-speed cars are really close to the sidewalk.

So this is a really nice sidewalk in this picture.

Um, this bench looks like a nice place to sit, except for you know, just a few feet behind you, you have really fast moving traffic.

So if we could move that traffic further away from that bench, this sidewalk might be a nicer place to be.

Um, it's gonna slow down traffic a little bit.

And the park cars will be between the moving traffic and the bike lane.

So the park cars will protect the bikes on Riverside Avenue, and then it'll also move the fast traffic further away from the sidewalk, so it'll be nicer to walk around.

So, this is a before and after picture of Riverside Avenue.

Okay, Forest Street.

Forest Streets got a lot of the same problems that Riverside Avenue has.

It's six lanes.

Uh there's a lot of high-speed traffic, there's no protection for the bike lanes.

But one thing that's really interesting about Forest Street is that there's a at Magnolia Street, there's no crosswalk, uh, but people really want to cross there.

I see people crossing there all the time.

And if you look in this picture, and it's kind of hard to see, but you can see in the grass, you know, where people, where the grass is gone because so many people have been walking through there.

So, as part of this project, we're gonna put a pedestrian crossing there.

Um, and that'll be a really nice connection uh for Brooklyn.

We're gonna convert the outside lane into parking.

Uh the parking will protect the bike lane for moving traffic.

Um and again, this will this will provide just make this a better place to walk around.

So here's a before and after uh picture of Forest Street.

Okay, so we're taking away these vehicle lanes.

You know, so what is that gonna do with traffic?

How is that gonna affect traffic?

You know, how much longer is it gonna take me to get to work or to my house or wherever I need to go?

Um so we did a detailed traffic study, and Satcha is gonna talk about that.

Good evening, everybody.

Thanks for coming out here.

Um so, like Lee was mentioning.

Uh the first question everybody is gonna ask is okay, we are repurposing some of the lanes, how will that impact traffic?

Am I gonna be sick sitting in these lights longer?

Or how is my operations gonna be uh if it's an a pm peak hour or it's a weekend when you're trying to use this facility.

So in order for us to do that, we did a very detailed study.

Each one of these three projects, the reports are available with the city.

Um we need to first establish the area of influence.

We call it where traffic is gonna be influenced with this project.

We looked at the traffic data on the project corridor.

We have to look at each major junction where traffic is turning left through right, document that we have to go out into the field.

We did a thorough detailed field evaluation, understanding how this uh corridors are functioning, both with uh vehicular traffic as well as pedestrian bicycle and transit operations.

A lot of these pictures that you actually are seeing are our drone videos that we collected when we were doing the study.

Those were the ones that we are actually used from live conditions.

So once we uh develop a thorough understanding of how the corridor is operating right now under existing condition, we uh we want to look at how they're gonna operate down in the future.

So we look at the growth in the area, all the establishments that are gonna become what we look at is a 20-year window.

We look at an opening year and a design year.

We establish the traffic volumes for those and run detailed operational analysis to finalize how the operations are gonna be on these project corridors once these changes are implemented.

And obviously, we don't want to jeopardize or promote any unsafe behavior, so we look at these and come up with solutions to address problems.

So this just gives you a detailed overview of the process that was used in the study, uh, how we looked at things and how we uh enhance operations and safety on the project corridor.

Um the metrics that we presented in the report is called uh level of service.

It's almost like a report card.

Yeah, A is good, level of service A, you can see in this where you have enough gaps.

Uh through F, they measured the traffic operations A through F.

F is bad, meaning that it's extremely congested and you need to add wider lanes.

So that in a nutshell, we wanted to present A through F is how uh the evaluations are gonna be presented on each one of the corridor.

So let's talk about Monroe that Lee just presented.

Um the top row is showing existing operations, bottom row is showing 2030 year horizon and 2050, 20 years down the line, how it's gonna operate.

As Lee pointed out, those three lanes that are out there, the traffic on uh Monroe itself is very low.

So we are not seeing any traffic operations impact all the level of service that we are documented through the 20-year horizon is level of service A or B, which is extremely good.

That's the reason why taking away that extra lane is not gonna cause any detrimental impacts on the project corridor.

So it keeps the travel times the same with the proposed uh reorientation of the lanes.

We are also providing uh the much needed pedestrian bicycling enhancements on the project corridor.

So now I'm gonna talk real quick about uh Riverside Avenues.

Uh this metrics, by the way, our aggregate on the project corridor, it's an average per intersection.

Uh our detailed report shows how each intersection is gonna operate.

Again, um we are looking at level of service C or better operations uh through the designer lifecycle.

We are not seeing any significant increase on the travel times.

Uh we are also providing the much needed pedestrian bicycle features on the project along with parking.

So I just brought in a quick simulation.

You can see, hopefully, you can see the little cars moving.

Um this is Riverside Avenue from just down on the Acosta Bridge near Layla Street where the Whole Foods is, all the way down to Forest Street and across Forest Street.

Uh, this is this is showing the uh additional lane being taken away.

However, this is PMP cover.

PMP cover was the significant peak that we uh we thought for the region.

So we are showing PMP covered operations, all the traffic is flowing pretty fine.

We're not seeing major congestion.

So effectively taking that lane away and repurposing is not causing any major uh impacts to operations.

Forest Street, here are the metrics for Forest Street.

One of the key things on Forest Street that was causing some failing operations is Park Street and Forest Street.

Uh, there is a significant non-bound left un in the PMP cover.

That's why you can see uh there is level of service E on there with the uh orange shade on it.

Um that improvement, I believe DOT is looking at it.

It's a project outside our realm, so that's why you will see a level of service E.

But outside of that influence of that intersection, the corridor is functioning very well.

Uh there is no major critical locations that are backing up on Forest Street itself, and your travel times are unchanged between the two.

When we do the job or when we don't do the job, the travel times are exactly the same.

So I'll pass to Matt to talk about some of the safety features.

Hey everyone, I'm I'm Debbie Downer.

I'm gonna tell you how dangerous Jacksonville is.

So I apologize for that in advance.

Um yeah, the the impetus behind these types of transformative projects is really that Jacksonville, the data doesn't lie really with Jacksonville.

The latest dangerous by design came out this year.

And Jacksonville was ranked the 16th most dangerous city in America for pedestrians, and this is based on reported fatalities.

So that's that's a bad position to be in.

Um, although it is an improvement from last year, we are actually 15th, and we've been really moving in the right direction with all of this for a while now.

We're actually on a three-year downswing in pedestrian fatalities, which is really great.

I mean, the traffic engineer folks, public works, all of us planners, you know, we're really excited about those numbers, but we don't celebrate too long because we know that this really means that we have a lot of work yet to do.

Um, but we are moving in the right direction with this.

Um, due to the nature of our roadways right now, um, in 2025, we rolled out our safety plan, our vision zero action plan.

We have a couple of banners here if you want to read more about it and visit our webpage.

It's it's a really good plan, and and there's a lot of great recommendations in there for actionable items that we can take to start to make things safer.

One of them is great designs like this.

So, what we're you're seeing in the photo here is what's called a parking protected bike lane, and this puts the cyclists over on the passenger side between the sidewalk and the vehicle lane.

So you have that extra added buffer of vehicles that are protecting cyclists as they go by.

Um, and we all know every car has a driver, so 100% of those folks are gonna be opening a door on the other side there.

But when you put them over on the passenger side, give them a little buffer, it really reduces the chances of a cyclist getting doored, as they called it and thrown in the wrong direction.

And if they do, they don't get thrown into vehicle traffic, they end up on the sidewalk, which is not great, but it's a lot better than the other consequences.

But yeah, the designs that you're looking at today on these storyboards really have so much of those great safety measures that are simple and cost effective and and move Jacksonville in the right direction.

So I'm I'm really excited and supportive of this project.

So thanks for showing up today and giving us your opinions.

You go.

All right, so to summarize these projects will provide better access uh to businesses and attractions downtown.

We're adding new parking, we're two waying Monroe Street, which will make it easier to drive around, it'll make businesses more visible.

Um it's gonna provide friendlier walking conditions.

It'll make these streets a lot nicer to walk around on.

Um we're providing safer, you know, more comfortable bike lanes.

These build on the success of recent projects like the skate park, the Park Street Road diet, the Emerald Trail.

And these are low cost.

You know, each of these projects is only going to cost about a hundred thousand dollars.

You know, we've really thought hard about how we can you know do these projects and make them good investments and not spend a lot of money.

And there's a fast timeline, so we expect them to be finished in sometime in twenty twenty-seven.

So with that, uh, we will we'll answer questions for the next twenty minutes and and then we'll have an open house again.

So yes, sir.

Will you be the asphalt is a lot lack of we're not resurfacing, it's just striping.

And that's part of the reason the cost is so low.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sorry.

So the yeah, so we when we do the traffic study, uh, we apply a growth rate, so we project traffic growth into the future.

And the growth rate we don't need to afford most of these changes.

Um we have local here in Jacksonville, so we are able to we are at JSON we're at a small business in Jacksonville, so we understand all uh the growth is planned around here.

We are also aware of the Haskell building also that's uh empty right now, but uh the plans for maybe a redevelopment there, so we accounted for all the unforeseen circumstances that could happen that are bringing more traffic or adding more to uh to this corridor.

So that growth rate that Lee has talked about, and also being looking at uh scenarios where some of these development could redevelop into uh a different land use is what has been planned already.

Uh and the numbers, everything uh reflected our evaluation and analysis takes in factors into that.

Uh however, it's a factor.

Uh if it's lower than what's projected, you're good.

If it's two ten times what's projected, then it might show up a different number.

But we did factor it up.

Um really how many have we got uh three separate projects?

Right now we are able to afford all three of them, but we have forced the choice.

We had to choose, I don't know how that would turn out.

Um R S bad we use all the time.

Oh, it's in our uh really back it up to the uh one buttons.

Yeah.

Um would it be multiple by the level of concrete on the side of the other class or then uh on the other side so that in case that somebody does hand to misconduct more than that and not even park it?

Yeah, that's a good question, because it is a concern.

You know, or if nobody's parking, somebody just drives down that area.

So what we're gonna do is put uh concrete.

We'll we'll put a little concrete islands at the beginning of the parking line.

Also put green symbols at the beginning of the parking pipeline.

And that'll tell drivers, you know, don't come here because it's not for you.

Oh my mistake it mistakenly drive down.

So that's there's a better ring here in here, but you know, where a driver makes a turn, that's where they're most likely to make a mistake and drive down the parking lane.

That's where we would put the concrete.

So there's total.

And they're really gonna destroy it.

I don't think they're gonna have very much.

Um so the concrete's trying to use concrete wherever we can instead of it looks nicer, it's less of a manus problem.

Um sometimes we just those are a perfect video.

Unless they change the law.

I think the reducing the number of things are involved.

Yeah, we really like it.

Yeah, we're having that five.

We do have a triviation problem that we've got things as well.

Um so there's a problem.

That probably isn't the perfect one.

I think we want to things have to be put almost like a ignore.

Um they all go in there for the walking sound because we'll be coming out.

But right around there, of course, we've got um we do model uh park area.

Uh I believe this will also help the activity that area.

Small um small three products or yeah, yeah, that's the other thing.

That's kind of what we can have to do.

Um consideration I think I actually have just parking with project.

How wild would this be that you mean it is kind of there any um space that means over it's gonna be sort of like just before like the people go into the model?

I'm not familiar with people.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, uh you're tricking on the fact that sorry I know.

This does nine five and ten.

I mean the cars are what you go followed at the intent.

You've got two major highway right there.

I don't know.

I don't know if I agree.

That's a much more this is just this is still a pretty path.

I just want to also get the part.

It's meant to make it still.

Obviously, this is a good one.

In New Orleans, it's on the major main street.

And it's still long for people who are walking in the line to have like a respect.

Or if you're walking your dog or paper that it's in the end less big thing is community.

That's right.

Uh not saying it's that.

But um just through because maybe you could be really called.

Um I know that we might play that problem.

There's a lot of people who get the actual right there.

Um just like oh no, I get back to five.

I mean that's what I think.

Or you have people that are sick of the traffic, I guess.

If I just walk in.

So you have one thing by traffic area.

So right now this is kind of the best we can do with what we have right now.

But there's also a driveway there that you don't side up on currently legal for that right now.

We can bring a user and more time.

Um that's gonna be just like I did forgive it and people can provide high planes.

Are we going to put any money aside to actually market implementation?

Oh, it works.

So that's that's all we're doing with these projects right now, but you know, there's other efforts around this.

Yeah.

It's one thing to make it show up.

But there's another thing to let everybody know why it's showing up.

And the people in this movie uh are very we're all interconnected.

That's a fair point.

Not all things are neighbor.

I don't know.

One of the reasons why I'm so adding about it's a project.

We don't get people to permission to buy.

But I think if we want people to run more to replicate and move it from band, we can do the wrong word, we will sell.

I think we need to have these numbers.

I I believe it's technically especially for a great job of trying to draw.

Yeah, I mean it's uh one thing I would say is driver doesn't believe that would say all the roads can next to my own.

So it's really building out and uh connected network to give people logic.

Well, I know these five blocks are four by sidewalk.

There we go.

So there's no signals on the part on our three.

So I'm not sure.

If you have a remote, we will have the parting plan.

Uh we do have the problem as a new other people done uh we are using it.

This is a lot of harm for email.

I think we're not very closely.