Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Visaya City Council.

Uh, we're gonna call to order the special session.

We're gonna go ahead and get started with public comments.

This is the time for uh citizens are now invited to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visayas City Council and items listed on the closed session agenda.

The council asks that you keep your comments concise and positive, creative criticism presented with a curve appropriate courtesy is welcome.

Each speaker will be allowed three minutes, and a timer will notify you when your times expired.

Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence.

Anyone wishing to speak?

Seeing nobody, we will close public comments, and we will go directly into our special session items.

Item number one, council presentation for the Houston Community Connectivity Project.

Staff report, please.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members.

I'm Jason Huckleberry, the Director of Engineering and Building for the City.

I'll be joined today by our city engineer Chris Crawford and assistant engineer Rudy Lopez.

Uh, and I'll kick it over to Rudy for the presentation on the Houston uh multimodal improvements.

Hello, Mayor and Council members.

I'm like you said, Rude Lopez, associate engineer with Celio Vicelia.

And uh today we'll be presenting the um Houston Connectivity Community Project.

And this slide, uh let me see this one.

This slide right here, we have the project timeline of events for this project, starting from when the project was first presented to the public back in 2022, when the council authorized the ATP project application submission, the project funding uh funding approval, award of design contract, this year's uh first public outreach efforts, research and investigation of the proposed concept design, second public outreach meeting in the uh month of April, and bringing us to today's presentation.

Now, starting with the project's background, the active transportation program is a state-funded initiative approved back in 2013.

The program emphasizes in active transportation for biking and walking projects managed by Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission, CTC.

The goals of the programs are to get more people to walk and bike for transportation, to create a streets that are safer and more accessible for cyclists and pedestrians, to promote walking and biking as accessible forms of daily physical activity, and to ensure that state funding for city projects that improve this type of infrastructures in the city.

With this goal in mind, city staff conducted public outreach efforts to gather the Houston community residence input back in April of 2022, with the goal of assessing if the residents in this area would be open to a project like this.

Those efforts consisted of three online surveys, one pop-up event, and two public workshops.

The information gathered in these outreach events consisted on questions such as what is the resident's primary mode of transportation, where 18% of the responses were walking and 0% responded biking.

How often do you, your child, your student or self walk or bike to and from school?

Where 46% of the responses said at least once a week, and with 30% saying they never walk or bike to school or from school.

Then we asked the following question.

What prevents you from walking or biking to school or other destinations within the Houston Avenue community?

Where 47% of the responses said it was traffic safety concerns.

40% said speeding costs was the reason, and seven percent responded no crosswalks.

Then we see nine percent with no sidewalks, five percent of the responses said no bike lanes.

This is where we start seeing a pattern for no biking or walking around the Houston community area.

We also asked them what would encourage you to walk or bike to school and other destinations more.

Where 67% of the participants agreed on more trough and calling measures, 13% said more marked crosswalks, 10% said more sidewalks, and another 10% said more bike lanes.

Another question we asked them was would you be okay if the street parking on one side of Houston Avenue was removed to have safer bike lanes?

Where 70% of the participants responded yes, and 30% said no.

Lastly, in this event, we concluded the QA session with the last question asking the participants.

If improvements were made, would you consider practicing more walking or biking?

Where 49% of the participants strongly agreed, 21% agreed, and less than 7% disagreed.

The public input gathered in these events highlighted the need for safer pedestrian enhancements in this area, and it also played a key role in securing funding for a project that could bring this type of improvements to the Houston Avenue community.

Therefore, once the type of needs in this area were identified, city staff submitted an application to the ATP Cycle 6 regional and statewide grant competition in May 16 of 2022.

This identified enhancements became part of the application outcomes, in which the city must meet in the project design and also deliver them in construction to keep funding eligibility.

The outcomes in this project consist of intersection crossing enhancements, construction and reconstruction of ADA compliant ramps, new bike lanes, and filling in gaps of missing sidewalks.

Crossing enhancements with this project include protected intersections at the signalized intersections of Houston at Giddens and Houston at the Visadero.

The protected intersections are those that use physical barriers in their design to separate cyclists and pedestrians from cars with the uh with the use of concrete corner islands, as you can see in the picture, where it says mountable.

A concrete corner lane and a protected intersection is a design feature where cyclists can travel through the intersection without being squeezed by turning vehicles.

And these physical barriers are designed to be mountable so that um larger vehicles can drive over them when needed.

The other identified enhancements submitted in the application were two new types of bike lanes along the Houston corridor.

Bike lanes class two on the north side and class four on the south side of the street.

The class two bike lane is smart and signed bike lane that is not physically separated from traffic, but is defined on the road with painted lines.

Excuse me?

Yes.

I struggle when you see this picture right here.

Because there's been no class four bike lane that we've done a bicycle that's look like this, but we keep getting shown this picture right here, and this is what I have an issue with.

We look like Killery, we first got pitched this.

This was the picture that we were shown.

This is the class two.

This is a class two classes.