Well, let's get this informal meeting going.

And uh Mr.

Duhaney, if you can get it.

Yep.

All right.

So, Mr.

Mayor, members of the council, the first presentation will be a briefing on the Independence Boulevard and Wakefield Drive intersection project.

As you all know, this project is a stoplight project, and we've been getting some um feedback from the constituents and council went in and staff with to make sure that the council was inoculated in terms of the warrants and the reasons for this project.

So the next voice you hear will be LJ Hanson.

They kick off the presentation.

Welcome, LJ.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of City Council.

It's my pleasure this afternoon to introduce Wes Parker from VHB.

Wes is the project manager for the Independence Wakefield Signal Improvement, or not Signal Improvement, Intersection Improvement Project.

This project has been around for a while.

It is not normal that we would come to you to talk to you about an intersection.

But it's generated a lot of attention, and we thought it would be wise for us to give you an update on what's happening and where we're going from here.

Wes.

Welcome.

Thank you, LJ, and good afternoon.

So the purpose of today's briefing is to provide an overview of the project and a history of the project as well as the purpose and need.

Provide a public meeting summary from a public meeting that was conducted in March of this year.

Discuss an alternatives analysis from a more in-depth traffic study that was conducted subsequently from that public meeting and uh correspondence and outreach from the community.

And then last but not least, any questions and answers that our uh council may have.

Again, this is an informational briefing only.

We're not asking for any action at this time from council.

So project location, if you're unfamiliar with the intersection, um, this is uh Independence Boulevard and Paul Revere and Wakefield Drive.

So there are two different side street names on either side of the intersection.

Um it's just north of Haygood Road, but south of Pleasure House.

So a little bit of project history.

So back in 2018, the Thoroughgood community reached out and requested information and assistance from city and traffic engineering because of a perceived um concern for safety and other hazards of the way this intersection operates.

So subsequently in 2018, public works traffic engineering set out, did traffic counts, and did a traffic study and evaluated the intersection for the warrants that may necessitate or could um encourage the installation of a new traffic signal.

Those warrants were met in that 2018 study.

It met three warrants specifically.

And then subsequently, two additional traffic studies were connected or excuse me, conducted in 2022 and 2024 after, and I do apologize.

There's a typo on this slide we noticed right before the meeting that third 2018 date should actually read 2020 when the project was put on hold due to some discussions.

But in 2022 and 2024, those traffic studies were updated again and reevaluated and again confirmed that a signal warrant um was appropriate for this intersection.

So continuing on to 2024, a design for a new traffic signal was started.

Um, and the design has progressed subsequently.

The purpose and need for the project has been safety first and foremost.

So the idea was to enhance motor safely, specifically uh for left turning maneuvers at an unsignalized railroad uh unsignalized excuse me, intersection crossing.

And also with an additional enhancement of any type of pedestrian accommodations that could be done at this intersection if a signalized intersection was installed, would benefit this connectivity east-west across Independence Boulevard because there is no pedestrian crossing currently that is protected at this intersection.

So you heard me before mention earlier, back in March of this year.

Uh uh citizens um excuse me, a public information meeting was held.

It was very well attended.

We had 84 attendees at the elementary school where it was conducted, where we received 45 comments in writing, 106 total public comments, 96 of which were from unique households who received as part of this.

The image you see on the screen here is a quick um summary visually representing where the households were that commented.

The red pins, which I know it's a little bit hard to see here, but the red pins are those that were not in favor of the project, and the blue pins were those in favor of the project.

Basically, the split was 63%, excuse me, 61% were not in favor, with 63% of the total comments all being from the Lakesmith Terrace or the west side of the intersection.

The east side of the intersection or the Thoroughgood neighborhood were very uh almost entirely in support of the project.

So subsequently from that public involvement period, there were a lot of conversations and good questions that were asked, and we wanted to go either even further in depth to study this intersection yet again to make sure that we evaluated even more obscure alternatives that had not been more thoroughly looked at in the past, up to and including using some traffic data that I'll explain here in a second.

But those five alternatives were conducted, and the analysis of those five alternatives really focused around the three yellow dots or the three intersections.

What does it do at Haygood?

What does it do at Wakefield and Paul Revere?

And then what does it do at Yule?

Alternative one was doing nothing physical to the corridor except doing uh revised signal timings that uh correspond along the corridor.

Obviously, these signal timings were conducted at Haygood Road as well as at Yule.

And so, again, the goal would be here to improve safety at the intersection with Wakefield and Paul Revere by creating gaps by basically throttling back the flow of traffic along independence.

Alternative two, which is the current proposed alternative, as we discussed before, that started in design in 2024, was to install the traffic signal as shown in this diagram here, a traditional signalized intersection.

Alternative three was to close the median entirely.