Good afternoon, everyone.

It is Monday, October 12th.

Welcome to the Transportation and Environment Committee.

We have four items on the agenda today.

The first being executive regulation twenty-five twenty-five, the adoption of context sensitive road design standards repeal.

And then there uh second item immediately after that closely related is executive regulation twenty-six twenty-five regarding complete streets.

Uh streets and roads, and later by the complete street design guide.

Um and these guidelines and regulations um are proposed changes that would help us enhance our roadways for uh and make them safer for all users, not just motorists.

Um and so with that uh I will uh invite invite uh members of the MC DOT or planning up or turn it over to Mr.

Kenny to walk us through the details.

And everybody was in the front row, they just popped right up.

That was very easy.

Primed and ready to go.

Um all right, thank you.

So uh yes, we have uh uh agenda items one and two uh today.

Um executive regulations twenty-five, twenty-five and twenty-six twenty-five, uh with which essentially function as one item, uh repealing the pre-complete streets code rewrite executive regulations and adopting new regulations in their place uh to match uh current county code uh as adopted in twenty twenty-two um and in the complete and and the principles and design standards put forth in the complete streets design guide.

Um we'll walk through a little bit of background just of the statutory nature of how we got here.

Um we have some slides on that background.

Um I will uh am happy to do a summary of the uh items uh of of the the new regulation twenty six twenty-five and what it changes.

Um there's a longer summary in the staff report.

I won't go into a ton of detail because this has been reviewed by the council again through bills and complete streets design guide and in master plans.

Um so these are a pr are principles that that uh you all should be very you know, that you all in the public are are are familiar with um and uh use regularly, just these get into a bit more of the nitty-gritty.

Um we have an abridged slide deck with uh the background and a couple slides highlighting specific points.

Um, but there are slide deck as there are slides prepared by MC D OT for all of the topics um in the regulations.

Um if uh members of the committee have questions, um we can unhide those and bring those forward.

Um and then there are uh some some technical uh tweaks, uh some of which have been brought up by the planning department, some of which have been identified by MC D OT uh after uh transmittal.

Um we will uh we will get to those, we will mention them and and provide options uh for how the committee uh can address them now or in the future.

Um just some background.

So just some background.

This is all gone on really in the past five years.

In 2021, the planning board approved a new set of brand new design standards for complete streets.

In 2022, the council approved Bill 2422 streets and roads to carry those many of those principles and other ones into effect.

And those code rewrites took place or took effect in 2023.

So these designs, design standards are both for private developers that are building roads as part of development, as well as when the county ourselves build roads and streets and other transportation facilities, these are guiding construction as well.

2024, an updated complete streets design guide was approved by the planning board based on the updated code.

And also in 2024, the curbless and shared streets design guide was approved by the planning board to again carry the this law forward.

And these regulations are getting more specific.

As we mentioned, there are two two regulations to implement the old to implement chapter 49 of county code.

These regulation, this regulatory language was written in close partnership with planning, DPS, and the Office of the County Attorney.

And as with all regulations, it was put out in the county register in October 2025.

I've highlighted the item about bikeable shoulders and bikeways.

Oh sorry, the the third bullet should be highlighted, not the not the fourth.

Anyway, we'll get that we'll get to this later, talking about the simplified table for side paths.

Fiscal impact statement for the regulations showed no fiscal impact on net for the county over the long term.

Some design standards would result in increased costs, some would result in decreased costs.

The exact numbers hard to know, and could be a wash over time.

So no fiscal impact was the result.

And procedurally, this is a method two regulation.

The council upon receiving it in late May as we're wrapping up budget, decided to extend the deadline for approval to December 31st of this year.

As I mentioned, executive regulation 2525 repeals.

A full full repeal.

Great.

So in addition to providing legal and regulatory backing for the existing complete streets design guide and principles, it provided a lot of specific context for the context sensitive system applied, approved in bill 2422.

Members of the public may and council certainly heard these names, these systems of breaking down our county into downtowns, town centers, and other areas by land use and context, and then applying a hierarchy of street types of boulevards, streets and connectors, as well as alleys are classified here as well.

And then there are a lot of the text of the regulation which is included in the in the staff report, addresses minimum and default widths for street types and all the different zones, the street zone, active zone, buffers, bikeways, sidewalks, medians, travel lanes, and bus stops, as well as some additional specific standards for bus stops, standards for crosswalks, uncontrolled crossings, street trees, and stormwater management as well, are all uh covered in the regulation.

So I guess that's just a very broad overview.

Uh we can get into uh specifics uh of the items.

They they are a fairly straightforward translation and specifying of uh county code chapter 49 and the complete streets design guide.

Um but if the committee would like to dig into any of those pieces uh we can we can do so before getting into some of the technical corrections.

Uh