In business session, our first item is approval of minutes for business session from the prior meeting.

Is there a motion?

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Motion passes.

Our item today is staff presentation on resolution 230625.

I think I was proud to co-sponsor that late sponsors, Councilman Bunch.

This is about transit exclusive lanes on the streetcar expansion project.

Gentlemen, hi.

Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor Lucas, members of the City Council, City Manager Platt.

My name is Jason Waldron, and I'm the transportation director in public works, and I'm also the project manager on the Casey Streetcar Main Street Extension.

With me today is Tom Guerin, Executive Director of the Casey Street Car Authority, and Dick Gerald, the deputy CEO of KCATA.

We're here to uh present on council resolution 230625.

Uh the main two components of that resolution is to uh explore uh transit only exclusive lane opportunities and alternatives, as well as expressing a support for a 30 mile an hour speed limit uh in the corridor.

The corridors from Persian Road to 51st Street on Main Street.

Uh I'll give a quick background and then hand it over to Tom and Dick.

Uh, if you guys don't know by now, you know, we do have the uh main street extension, uh active construction out in Main Street corridor.

It's a three and a half mile extension from Union Station to 51st and Brookside, also at UMKC stop.

Most of the alignment is outside or curb running, and you're gonna hear how that uh influenced some of the things we've done.

Um, in addition, even before this resolution, uh baked into the design, we already had 22 percent of uh transit only lanes.

And just a couple points I'd like to share before handing it off is in addition to the transit-only lanes, uh another thing we have baked in the project is traffic signal priority.

So recognizing that the streetcar is coming full of people and giving it a little more green light.

Um, and then you're gonna see in this presentation that uh transit exclusivity comes in a couple different forms.

It's hardscapes with physical barriers, but also soft scapes with paint, plastic, and signage.

And uh lastly, I can't help but part with this words to be successful, it will require the three E's engineering, education, and enforcement.

Uh with that, I'll hand it over to Tom.

Thank you, Jason.

Uh Tom Garrin, executive director with the Kansas City Streetcar Authority.

Uh, thank you, Mayor and Council, for the time this afternoon, and really thank you for your interest in uh investigating uh exclusive lane opportunities for the main street extension.

At the end of the day, we're building a 350 million dollar uh capital improvement.

It's a 50 year investment in transit connectivity in the heart of our city.

It's gonna be a generational connection between downtown and UMKC through Midtown, and we've got an opportunity to try to maximize the benefit.

So this conversation and the resolution sort of directing this investigation uh was really an opportune time to think about how do we push the envelope and make this project the best it can be.

As Jason said, uh really following uh adoption of the resolution, our three-party partnership got together.

Uh we advanced a process uh that included a formal due diligence of design options.

Um that process uh yielded three goals that really built on language in the resolution, but we um but we sort of took those the next step, and those include uh improving the efficiency and reliability of our transit investment, not just streetcar, but but all transit on Main Street.

Um obviously calming traffic and and produce and improving the pedestrian environment in the corridor and reducing vehicle speeds and improving corridor safety for all users.

Those were the overarching goals.

Uh, we we brought in a uh again a design and consultant support to help with the investigation, and then we also conducted really extensive public engagement up and down the corridor with stakeholders and neighborhoods, and that process is ongoing.

We'll tell you about it in just a minute.

Um, really to set the stage for uh the conclusions, and I'll show you some pictures if you move to the next steps.

Really, the proposed characteristics of the plan uh that we're gonna share in just a slide or two is that we would really convert obviously the streetcar lanes uh that would become exclusive for transit use, uh, with some exceptions for auto access, parking, and turning movements.

So, really the the goals at the beginning were how do we utilize the current design and construction of the project that's moving forward without major capital right modifications or changes to design?

Uh we have a project that's 60% built, moving to really substantial completion by the end of 2024.

How do we use that and make the most of it?

So no restrictions to business access, parking or turning movements are assumed in the design.

So we want to maintain access to driveways, businesses and left turns, and parking allowances.

We do think there's some areas where we have on street parking planned, or we have multiple curb cuts where we think it's worth looking more closely.

Are there opportunities for consolidation or streamlining which will help protect the exclusive transit lanes and reduce the need for autos to access those zones?

But the starting point for this for our work was no restrictions and access.

Obviously, auto traffic on Main Street would still have capacity through dedicated or or multi-use traffic lanes, those would be the inside lanes that helps to really move the traffic off of the curb.

It's where a lot of the pedestrian benefits come from.

And then again, we would implement manageable solutions to modify behavior and encourage compliance.

So Jason talked about signage striping, lane markings, the use of rumble strips is an example.

And then he also mentioned, and this is important, one of the benefits of this is that it helps us to leverage and maximize the benefit of the traffic signal or transit signal priority system that we're building as part of a part of the main street extension.

So a few pictures from of the due diligence.

The consultant team looked at best practices around the country, and these are just some pictures of sort of low impact executions, low cost executions that we think fit well within our upside running configuration.