Aiden Heath Cooper.

Ladies and gentlemen, the North Gate graduating class of twenty twenty five.

The final three coming to the stage tonight, Kathy Lee, Davion Batra, and Ola Juni Akinsola.

Hello, everyone, my name is Kathy Lee, and I'm your senior class president.

I'm Oladoone Akin Sola, and I'm your senior class secretary treasurer.

Three years ago, I told myself that there were a lot of bad days, but the good ones outweigh the bad.

Class of twenty twenty-five.

Please remember the good days because they're all that matters.

As we move forward, I want you guys to remember the lessons, the laughters, and the friendships.

We can't wait to see you all at our reunions in the future and see how far you've come.

And as David Harris once told me, your limit is exactly what you make of it.

So, class of twenty twenty-five.

A celebration to last throughout the years.

Miston Call the meeting to order.

So the meeting for tonight for the design review commission will is now in session.

Um, can we have roll call, please?

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Um, Commissioner Case.

Here.

Commissioner Riley.

Here.

Vice Chair Basing.

Here.

Chair Newsom is on vacation, I believe.

And uh, we have quorum.

Great.

So are there any items on consent?

There should be on on the agenda, there should be the um adoption of meeting minutes for September fourth, November twentieth, and December fourth of twenty twenty four.

Um, I can make a motion that we adopt the meeting minutes.

Okay.

Commissioner Case.

Yes.

Commissioner Riley.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Let's see that motion carries.

Moving right along.

Zero action approved.

Are there any public communications for items not on the agenda this evening?

Okay, seeing none.

Are there any ex parte communications that any of the commissioners needs to report on?

No.

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

So now shall we begin the public hearing?

Yes, staff has a presentation.

Uh good evening, design review commissioners.

My name is Stephen Cook, and I am an assistant planner with the city's community development department.

Before you tonight is a proposed amendment to the master sign program for the John Muir Medical Campus located at 177 La Casa Via.

The project is designated as application number Y25031.

For some site context, the parcel is located along La Casa Villa as highlighted in blue on the vicinity map.

The site contains an existing three-story medical office building, which houses the Hoffman Cancer Center.

This site is a part of the larger plan development that makes up the John Muir Medical Campus.

In 2022, the design review commission approved an amendment to the master sign program to include the new medical building on the project site.

That approval included several exceptions to the city's sign ordinance, such as several skyline signs, freestanding signs, and increases in the overall sign area.

Since the most recent approval, the applicant is requesting a further amendment to the master sign program with a few updates, and I'll walk you through those changes beginning with the proposal to modify the existing entry wall signage.

Under the previous approval, the signs were labeled outpatient center and cancer center.

The applicant now proposes to replace those with the donor name, Hoffman Cancer Center.

Each sign will measure 13.5 square feet and will feature facelit internally illuminated channel letters in the color black with the two inch deep aluminum return.

Uh before and after renderings along with their corresponding locations are included in the slide for your reference.

An additional skyline sign is being proposed, which will also feature the donor's name.

This sign will measure 28 square feet, and like the others, we'll use facelit internally illuminated channel letters in the color black with four-inch deep aluminum returns.

While the city sign ordinance limits the heights to 25 feet, the proposed sign reaches approximately 27 feet at its highest point, and as such, approval will require the design review commission to make several specific findings, including that one, the good design criteria is required for a higher sign, two that the businesses identified by the sign occupies all floor space adjacent to the wall where the sign's being placed, and three, that this higher sign enhances the building's architectural appearance.

While staff is confident that the DRC can make the necessary findings, there is some concern about the potential visual impact on nearby residences, especially those directly oriented in the direction of the skyline sign.

And to address potential nighttime lighting impacts on nearby residences, staff has included a condition on the draft resolution that restricts illumination between 10 p.m.

and 6 a.m.

daily.

To summarize the proposed amendments to the master sign program, uh first the applicants again requesting and modify the two existing entry wall signs to integrate the donors' name.

Two, the skyline sign will also include the donor's name, and three to increase the total allowable sign area from 530 to 567 square feet for the 177 La Casa Via parcel.

So CEQA section uh well the sequel exemption guidelines under section 15301 existing facilities is recommended for this project.

Staff recommends the design review commission to move to adopt the resolution approving the master sign program amendment for 177 La Casa Via at the John Muir Medical Campus, subject to the conditions of approval contained therein.

And that concludes the presentation for tonight.

Staff is available for any questions, and furthermore, the applicant is also present and available for any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions?

I don't have questions of staff, but I might have a question of the applicant.

Okay.

So my question is of the applicant.

Did you consider the conflict with the potential nearby residences with the lighting that says the Hoffman Cancer Center?

And are you okay with that limited schedule?

And based on your opinion of that light illumination, do you think it's gonna be an issue?

So the there's currently an address, a building address that's also similarly illuminated.

It's it's the same exact fabrication, same details, it's just the 177 address.

So the idea is that this sign would be the same illumination levels, and in the past couple years, so far we haven't heard any complaints from the neighbors, and so the intent was to match that illumination and then shut it off at 10 pm to 6 a.m.

per the recommendation.

And so that shouldn't be an issue because it is an outpatient facility, and the hours are limited to um regular business hours, and so uh there's no need to search for it in the like middle of the night as a destination.

Right.

Could you state your name for the record?

Oh sorry, this is Nikki San Miguel.

I'm the applicant.

I'm sorry.

Nikki San Miguel with Clear Story, I'm the applicant.

Okay, that was my primary question.

I'll let you guys go and see if something flows up.

So I'm wondering, will outpatient center be anywhere on the building anymore, or will it just be the donor's name?

There is no longer going to be an outpatient center as a destination within the building.

Everything is either identifying the Bering Pavilion as a building and then the Hoffman Cancer Center as the sub-destination within the Bering Pavilion.

So I guess you're I don't really understand.

So there won't be any signage saying that there are outpatient services on the exterior of the building.

So the outpatient specialty center was intended to be a separate entrance from the cancer center entrance, and now that um the cancer center services are expanding and very prevalent in the building, it's become the dominant service, and so uh there isn't a need to call out the two separate centers anymore.

It's just the cancer center, which also has outpatient services included.

So the intent was just to streamline all wayfinding to one destination, which is the cancer center, instead of having to try to parcel out patients to an outpatient specialty center versus a cancer center.

Will there still be blood draws and those types imaging those types of things happening within that building not related to the cancer center?

Correct, there will be, but the majority of the services are at cancer services.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any more questions?

Do you have any more questions?

Um I just wanted to ask, since it is creating a couple of these exceptions, like it's a little bit higher and it's a little more square footage.

Did you guys study what it would look like to stay within those parameters?

So we did study it at the original application, and when we looked at it at the lower levels under the 25 feet, it was either obscured by tree lines or the canopies obscured the visibility to the sign, and so um based on that precedence, we wanted to align the sign so they have this consistent datum line, and it's just uh more architecturally similar.

And then in terms of square footage, uh the size, um, we're aligning architecturally to the width of the windows, and so you can see like it's very intentional, and so that's the size that we're trying to work with, and just uh make it look as architecturally intentional as possible.

Okay, those are my questions.

My question is you're leaving the other signs intact, correct?

And then you're changing the one that says cancer center to include the sponsor's name, Hoffman.

Not entirely.

Uh we are taking down all the cancer center letters and the outpatient center letters on the canopy, because to drop in the new message, you have to.

There's gonna be holes that are going to result, and so there's going to be some metal facade that's going to need to be replaced as a result.

So even though the message is just expanding by adding the donor's name, the Hoffman name, technically we have to put in a brand new sign.

Okay.

Thank you, Commissioners.

So if there are no more questions, what um close the public hearing and move to comments?

Public comments?

No public comments.

Are there any public comments?

Okay, seeing none, do the commissioners have comments.

So I my only hesitancy.

I think that lighting looks good and all of the other adjustments, and I understand it's a large excuse me.

Large building and clear signage is really important.

As someone who uses this facility and my family uses facility, I think that it will be confusing if it just says cancer, the Hoffman Cancer Center on it and doesn't state that there are outpatient services there.

Um I know that that is probably out of the range of this meeting, but I do know that for anybody going to do blood work or going to get imaging, it could be confusing if there's no signage saying this is the building you would go in to get that work done.

There's already multiple buildings out on that John Muir campus, and so it's just getting more and more difficult to find where you need to go.

And so losing that simple sign, I think might make it a little bit more confusing for people.

Thank you.

Um I feel like the criteria that we were charged with making sure Matt some of the exceptions was was met.

I feel like it aligns better with the architecture, and I am imagining it needs a little more square footage because it's a longer word.

Um and I I took a look at the other signs and stuff in the packet, and there it seems pretty consistent with like the family of signs going on there.

So in that vein, I think it's you know, I I would like to trust that you guys know the directional signage that's necessary better than I would.

Um, so I I think you know, design review-wise, it looks good.

Okay, thank you.

Um I have no further comments.

Does anyone want to make a motion?

Um, I liked the suggestion for the timing of the light, so I want to make sure that's part of the condition of approval, which I think you guys already requested, but other than that, I say we approve as recommended in the staff report.

I second, did we make a motion?

That was the that was it.

There it is.

Yeah, so to be so to be clear, was there was there a condition about the timing?

There is, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so it's already in there.

Okay, great.

Um let's see.

Commissioner Case.

Yes.

Commissioner Riley?

Yes.

Yes.

We have a motion passed.

Great.

Yay.

Okay.

Since that was the only item on the agenda, do either of the commissioners have any other considerations?

Nope.

Nope.

All right.

Are there any um staff reports or announcements?

Um, uh schedule by any chance.

No, that's all right.

That's all right.

We have um some staffing issues and and uh and we're we we had an item, I believe, for the next meeting, which I think was the 20th.

The sixth, yeah.

August sixth.

Yeah, the okay, center, please.

Yeah, August 6th.

But um we we that item got moved, um, and I think we're gonna have some staffing issues that day, so we'll likely cancel that meeting, but more to come on that.

Okay.

Otherwise, that's all I got.

Great.

All right.

No other comments.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Hi, this is Cindy Darling, Mayor of Walnut Creek with five things happening in Walnut Creek this month.

It's a new show at the Bedford Gallery called Beyond Color that explores the power of artwork rendered exclusively in black and white.

80 artists' work is featured in this jury to exhibition that runs through September 14th.

If you want to learn more about how the work was selected, you can join us at Cocktails in Conversation in the Bedford on Thursday, July 24th at 5 30 for the inside scoop.

The city is working hard to educate our young writers on how to operate e-bikes and e-scooters safely.

Many of us have seen young folks taking a bit too much risk on the road, and we want to avoid accidents.

We held a bike rodeo in Civic Park on July twelfth and are also sharing tips and tricks on social media.

Parents can help us by working with kids to make sure they're using the right safety gear and are operating the e-bikes and e-scooters safely.

It's an ever-expanding range of e-bikes available, so please make sure the equipment your kids have are the right type for their age and ability.

Did you know that there are now aftermarket devices that can allow speeds greater than 37 miles an hour?

It surprised me.

And all kids should be wearing a helmet.

I was excited to find out that we have flipped the switch on the new lights at Tice Valley Field.

Once we finish some renovation of the playing surface, it will be time for some evening soccer, courtesy of measure O dollars, and a lot of hard work by our public works staff.

If you've driven by Heather Farm lately, you've seen the contractor hard at work with the conversion to all weather turf fields.

This has involved a fair amount of excavation and grading, and so we have a durable, safe playing surface.

We're using organic materials such as cork that are less toxic and can be recycled at the end of their lifespan.

Once complete this fall, the new fields will allow play regardless of the weather.

We're proud to partner with the Walnut Creek Soccer Club to provide this opportunity to our kids.

The other project starting soon at Heather Farm, courtesy of measure O, is the new community center and aquatic center.

The first phase, which is getting underway, is the restoration and expansion of the natural pond, coupled with some filling of the existing cement pond.

That's the one with the big fountain in it.

The restoration of the natural pond is part of our commitment to environmental sustainability and will benefit the natural environment as we make way for the community center and the aquatic facility.

We'll go out to bed on the next phase this fall and expect construction on the pool and community center, along with some stunning new artwork to start next year.

This facility is dedicated to providing young patients the care they need in a setting that works for them.

The walls are decorated with whimsical animals of Eric Carl, and the staff are truly dedicated to helping kids and their families through surgery, rehab, physical therapy, infusion therapy, and a host of other medical services.

Kids are not many adults, and I'm glad they can get the support they need to keep healthy.

So that is your five Walnut Creek happenings for the month.

See you next time.

Um, Hello, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the July 17th, 2025 regular meeting of the Transportation Commission.

Would the secretary please call roll?

Commissioner Ash here.

Commissioner Patch.

Here.

Commissioner Reese.

Absent.

Student Commissioner Kirsch here.

Vice Chair Crowling.

Here.

And Chair Brightman.

Present.

Okay.

I know new last name.

Surprise.

Okay.

So we're going to move on to the second agenda item.

Public communications.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items not on the agenda.

Under the Brown Act, the Commission cannot act on items raised during public communications, but may respond briefly to statements made or question questions posed, request clarification or refer the item to staff.

At this time, I will open this item up for public comment.

Do we have any members of the public wishing to comment on items not on the agenda?

We have no members of the public wanting to provide public comment not on the agenda.

Okay.

We will move on to item number three, the consent calendar, approval of the minutes from the May 15th, 2025 meeting.

Do I have a motion for the approval of the minutes from the May 15th, 2025 Commission meeting?

So moved.

Second.

Okay.

The Secretary can please call roll.

Student Commissioner Kirsch.

Aye.

Commissioner Reese.

Absent.

Aye.

Chair Brightman.

Aye.

I think you skipped Commissioner Patch, right?

Commissioner Patch.

Aye.

And Commissioner Ash.

Oh, and Commissioner, I'm sorry.

Great.

All right.

We're both on board.

Okay.

Now on to uh some of the meat of the meeting here.

Items for consideration.

A is the Treat Boulevard Bicycle Project.

At this time, I would like to invite staff to uh provide their presentation.

So evening, Commissioners.

My name is Brianna Byrne.

I'm associate traffic engineer here at the city of Walnut Creek.

And presenting on the Tree Boulevard quarter improvements is Mo Nasser with the county.

And to help with the presentation, he has brought a consultant as well.

David.

Okay, awesome.

So yes, today we'll be presenting the Treat Boulevard Corridor Improvements Project.

We'll start with project background.

So as you can see here, the absence of bicycle facilities along Treat Boulevard between North Main Street and the city of Walnut Creek and Jones Road and unincorporated Contra Costa County presents barriers for access to and from the Contra Costa Center Transit Village, particularly for bicyclists and pedestrians.

To address these barriers, the Contra Costa County Department of Conservation and Development developed the I-680 Treat Boulevard Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan in 2017.

And the Tree Boulevard Corridor Improvement Project really implements the feasibility study by constructing context appropriate Class 4 separated bikeways along Treat Boulevard between Jones Road and North Main Street in both directions, as well as improving pedestrian refuge islands, crosswalks, traffic signal timing, and signage.

The project is on Contra Costa County's list of approved projects and is in the city's 10-year capital improvement program.

Approximately 20% of the improvements are within the city's jurisdiction, and we will start looking at these proposed improvements in the next slide.

So this is really the section of the project that is within the city's jurisdiction and that is between North Main Street.

Or doesn't work.

Yeah, I guess I'll just uh do you know if we can point any anything on the oh yeah the mouse perfect.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, so I'll use this laser pointer.

Perfect.

That's cool.

Jinx.

Um so yes, uh, the proposed improvements shown here, you see the plan here.

Um, so with the proposed improvements based on 65% design plans, and they are superimposed on an aerial view to see how these improvements fit the aerial and the existing conditions.

So, as you see in both directions, we are going to construct class four bike lanes, which means that they are bike lanes that are separated from the travel lanes with vertical delineators, and also a tough curb XLP, which is a low profile curbing system.

And you see this in the cross section right here.

So this is section A, where the red line is drawn.

So this is looking in this direction.

So this is the westbound direction, and this is the eastbound direction.

North is looking up, westbound this way, eastbound is this way.

So we'll start maybe the best way to go over the improvements is starting with the westbound lane.

Um, yeah, in addition to the, in addition to the separated bikeways, we will also be channelizing the bicyclists onto a new bike crossing, as well as signalizing this right turn lane.

So eliminating free ride turn lanes is a major aspect of this project because free ride turn lanes are just not helpful or less safe for pedestrians and bicyclists to maneuver.

So for this free ride turn lane that we see here in the picture, this is the existing condition.

We will be signalizing the right turn lane for pets and bicyclists to cross at on the red arrow, right arrow.

Also, you see here the pedestrian refuge island being modified to accommodate both bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as we see here darker colored crosswalks, meaning that these crosswalks will be improved with higher high visibility striping, as well as the bike crossings here shown in the green thermoplastic with the ladder um pavement marking.

Also, you notice that there are bike boxes here for the bicyclists traveling in the westbound direction, so bicyclists wanting to go to the southbound north main street bike lane, they can wait here for the traffic signal to go green.

So these are mainly the improvements in the westbound direction.

Also, I want to note that another element of this project is narrowing the travel lanes from 12 feet to a mix of 11 feet and 12 feet.

So a lot of studies show that narrowing down travel lanes also slow down vehicle or drivers, and that is a major problem on Treat Boulevard.

That is the higher speeds.

So with narrowing down travel lanes, adding these vertical delineators will create some visual barriers for drivers, so in hopes that they will be driving slower.

As for the eastbound direction, as you see also, there is going to be a separate bikeway with a vertical delineator, a mix of also 11 foot and 12 foot wide bike lanes, until we get to this intersection, which is the Buskirk Avenue and I-680 off-ramp.

So I will highlight this here first, and then I'll move to the next slide.

So here we are closing the free right turn lane coming from the I-680 off-ramp, the northbound, and replacing it with two dedicated right turn lanes, one through lane and one left turn lane.

And David in a little bit will be discussing the traffic operations analysis and what how this will impact traffic, especially the concern is the I-680 northbound main line.

So the closure of right turn lanes will be very helpful for bicyclists and pedestrians to cross in a more safe manner.

I'll talk about this corner in the next slide.

Sorry.

And this is also a 3D rendition of how this street section looks like in 3D.

So this is just before turning right onto the North Main Street, the northbound North Main Street.

You see the separated bikeways in both directions.

And this is the right turn lane that is signalized.

And yeah, the through lane, the two left turn lanes, and also the separated bikeway on the uh the eastbound side.

This is the second segment of the project.

So this is between Buskirk Avenue and Oak Road.

Also, we'll start with the westbound direction.

Here there are some distinctions from the previous slide, where you'll notice that here there is a bike lane that is going around the BART column if you're familiar with this area, of course.

Uh so yeah, this will provide a more protected class 4 bike lane around the BARC column and before rejoining the class 4 bike lane in the westbound direction and channelizing bicyclists onto the pedestrian refuge island at this corner.

Uh and yeah, here we are modifying this free ride turn.

We are removing it, and we are closing it with this nicely designed uh pedestrian refuge island, which will also incorporate a new crosswalk, a bike crossing, and also a modified curb ramp.

Then bicyclists will be able to continue on to the bike lane, the westbound bike lane that I showed earlier.

Another distinction here along the westbound lane is that we will be closing this slip lane that is shown here at the right corner, upper corner.

Um, and so yeah, this uh slip lane will be converted to a dedicated bike lane that will later on be converted to a shared use path for pedestrians and bicyclists to use.

And yeah, this shared use path will continue and connect to what is now the sidewalk that is 10 foot wide, so all of this will turn into a shared use path.

The goal of this, again, we are implementing that 2017 feasibility study, and this is more for the casual bicyclists who want to stay within the Contra Costa Center.

So this is the westbound lane, and as for the eastbound lane, the vehicular lane that goes around the bark column on this side will be converted to a bike lane, dedicated bike lane, and then over here there will be a like two left turn lanes, two through lanes, and one through right, and also bike boxes are incorporated into the oak road intersection in both directions.

And this is also a road section in 3D just before the intersection with Oak Road, or sorry, with the Buskirk Avenue.

So here we see the separated bikeway, the Class 4, the vertical delineators, the travel lanes, same on the eastbound side.

What this 3D does not capture is the off-street shared use path because we're quite limited with street mix, the software that creates this.

And finally, this is the Oak Road to Jones Road segment, also an unincorporated Contra Costa County.

So here uh it's also different in this segment uh with the with a couple of constraints.

One of them is the parallel parking that is along the westbound lane.

So in the feasibility study, after, of course, it was vetted for a couple of years by county, city, and Caltrans.

There was a demand to keep this parallel parking.

So we were quite restricted with what we can do curb to curb.

So as a result, it's going to be a class two bike lane here, just in this segment, as shown here.

So this cross section shows the parking lane, the right turn lane, the bike lane, the travel lanes, the turn lanes, and the westbound direction.

As for the eastbound direction, here we are also incorporating class four separated from travel lanes with vertical delineators.

And also finally closing the free ride turn onto Jones Road, also shown here in a picture.

This is the existing condition.

So we are closing this free ride turn lane for again safe, more safe and crossing movement for both bicyclists and pedestrians.

And finally, this bike box for those who want to turn left onto northbound Jones Road.

And this is also a 3D rendition just before turning right onto Oak Road or just east of Oak Road intersection, where this is shown.

This is the class two bike lane, parking lane, and the separated bikeway in the eastbound direction.

Now we want I want to talk about collision profiles.

So Contra Costa County developed Vision Zero.

It's a plan that aims to eliminate fatal collisions and collisions with high severity.

So that's KSI.

So there are a few uh collision profiles in Vision Zero.

So the three collision profiles that this project addresses are collision profile number five, and that is collisions at signalized intersections of major five plus lanes.

And I have the countermeasures in the vision zero that apply to this project, and they are reconfiguring or removing the slip lanes, uh permissive turns to be protected, and that is at the north main street intersection that I just described, and signal timing improvements because we are improving the signal timing for all intersections to incorporate and accommodate all movements, both vehicular and pedestrian and bicyclists.

The second profile that this project addresses is collision profile number seven, and that is bicycle involved broadside collisions at urban intersections.

And this project implements prohibiting right turns on red, bike box, bike boxes, two stage turn queue bike boxes, green bike lane, conflict zone markings, and protected facility on intersection approaches.

And finally, collision profile number 10, pedestrian involved collisions at signalized urban intersections, and the countermeasures that apply to this project or that this project implements are installing high visibility crosswalks, curb extensions, leading pedestrian intervals, reconfiguring or removing slip lanes, and finally pedestrian refuge islands.

And this is the city of Walnut Creek's local roadway safety plan, a path to vision zero.

Also, the city has a vision zero plan, of course.

And the North Main Street, Geary Road, Treat Boulevard intersection has the second highest number of injury and fatal collisions within the city of Walnut Creek.

Actually, similarly, I have also a table with me that has also the intersections at Buskirk, Oak Road, and Jones Road, ranking at numbers two, four, and seven at in the county, too.

So also these intersections rank high in the high collision list in the county.

The city-specific collision trends that are representative of the project corridor include profile two large intersections with slip lanes, profile three, speeding along large roadways, and profile nine, bicycles along wide roadways.

For the next two slides, I have David Mahama with me from DKS.

He's uh the traffic engineer on this project, or in the traffic engineering team.

Uh so David, would you?

Thank you, Mo.

So DKS has been involved in this project right from the beginning.

So I'm happy that we were.

I'm happy that we had the chance to continue with the project.

But I must say that the plan that we have right now is a significant improvement over the preferred alternatives that was looked at.

And the plan that we have, as Mo has said, uh has a lot of safety features incorporated in the plan.

So what we did was uh to analyze the preferred alternative that we were looking at before and the refined plan that uh Mo has showed you.

So we'll be looking at some numbers here.

So what we did was um we use the synchro software to do the level of service analysis, which looks at the performance of the intersections themselves, and then also use the same traffic tool to analyze uh queuing at speci uh you know, interest movements of interest, which I'm gonna point out to you.

So if you look at this table here, we have the level of service analysis results.

Uh the no-build, um, we used a 2020 2040 horizon volumes uh to do the analysis.

So that's what we did.

So, as you can see, we have the no-build uh scenario.

That is if you don't do the project, what would the level of service look like?

And then if you do the project, what would it look like?

So, as you can see, there'll be some, you know, marginal deterioration of level of service.

And of course, you're improving the facility, making it safe for bicyclists and pedestrians.

So there will be some trade-offs, but these are not significant um, you know, trade-offs that we need to make with the safety uh and you know, providing the pet and bike facility that this project will offer.

So next, so the next one is um a direct comparison of the uh preferred alternate the alternate what we call the preferred alternatives and what we are looking at now.

So, what we're looking at now is what we say we have mitigation measures.

Um, as you can see, without the uh mitigation measures, uh looking at, for example, the treat boulevard and I-680 uh basket uh intersection, we're going to have queuing on the northbound approach for like 1240 feet, but you know, the length of the ramp itself is about 1000 feet, so that would uh you know bring traffic to the freeway, which Caltrans doesn't want to see.

So we had to come up with measures to address this specific issue.

And what we did was um we recommended eliminating the um east crosswalk because with the reconfiguration of the lanes, you now have a double right-hand lane, which would help with the operation of uh the ramps, particularly during the AM peak.

So eliminating that crosswalk.

Yes, there's gonna be a trade-off, but we looked at the volume of pedestrians, right?

That are using that particular crosswalk is very uh minimal, and then you also have the oak road um crossing, which is about 640 feet away from that.

So we we think that would provide um an alternative for people who would otherwise have used the crosswalk at the ramp.

So eliminating that crosswalk provided some opportunities.

So that uh helped reduce the queuing from 1240 to 529, which will be contained in the ramp.

So that addressed our Caltrans concern.

And then if you look at the treat boulevard and the Gary Road, for example, uh, with the westbound right as it is today, it's a free ride.

There's no queuing, right?

But we want to make it safe for pedestrians, we want to make it safe for pedestrians and also for uh bicyclists.

So putting the bike lane on the right side of the right-hand lane, and then signalizing that right-end approach is a trade-off.

But then we're gonna have some safety right there.

So with that, the Q in would increase for that right 10 traffic to about 29 feet, which is about less than two vehicles.

But I might add that with the signalization, what we're going to do is we would have the right 10 go on red when there's no pedestrians.

But when there's when the pedestrian or cyclists push the button, then we have a no right 10 on uh blankout sign that's gonna come on to prevent the to want motorists not to make that right 10.

So that's the feature that you're going to have over there.

So we think it's a win-win situation in that front.

And then um let's look at which other intersection uh treat and oak road, right?

So we have a doing the PM peak, we have a relatively heavy right-hand uh Southbound right end.

But even with the recommended improvements and optimizing the signal, we would be able to uh improve the queue in from reduce the Q length from 201 to 194.

So that's about it.

Uh at Jones in particular, we're going to have a reduction and deterioration in the level of service.

This is because that intersection is a split operation for north and south.

So that's a trade-off that we would have to live with.

Uh, you if you look at the numbers closely, you will see that there's probably some slight increase in the level of service at the intersections, but this is due to the fact that when we optimize the corridor, we're giving priority to uh focus priority to the um I-680 off ramp.

Right.

So what it means is that you're now pumping more traffic on um treat boulevard, right?

So that's why you're seeing the numbers on treat boulevard.

But it addresses Caltrans concern and uh it's not too bad, as I would put it.

So that's the result that we got from the project.

Thank you.

All right, thanks, David.

And the yeah, final two slides are on the project status and the project funding.

Uh so the total project cost at the moment is currently estimated at six million two hundred twenty thousand dollars.

The county is funding this project with grant funding and namely the state transportation improvement program, step funds, uh the highway safety improvement program, HSIP, Central County Area of Benefit Funds, and local road funds.

The city's portion of the project is 1.3 million dollars and is expected to be funded by transportation fund for clean air grants, TFCA, traffic impact fees, TIF, and Measure J.

And finally on the project status, um, 65% design plans specifications and estimate have been completed.

And the project right now is at 95% stage, which is considered the final design stage.

The project has acquired environmental clearance, NEPA and CEQA in April 2025.

Final design specifications and estimate are expected in December 2025, and Caltrans has been coordinating this project with us, and they reviewed the 65% design plans, and also we have been uh of course coordinating this project with the city's design team as well.

Uh County is currently coordinating the underground utility relocation process, which is a very lengthy process.

Um, construction is currently expected to be in the fall of 2026, barring any utility location um delays.

Uh the project is seeking additional funds due to the increased estimated construction costs.

And with this, yeah, thank you for listening.

And uh, yeah, we're here for the questions and the comments really.

Okay, thank you very much for the presentation.

Um, I'd like to open it up to the commissioners for any questions.

This is a complicated project, so I'm sure there are some.

Um, we'll we'll start at the end, student commissioner.

If you have any any questions, yeah.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

Uh I was just wondering if you could explain the difference between the different classes of bike lanes.

Um is that just referring to the size or yeah?

Absolutely.

So yes, um, the classes of the bike lanes here and this project uh are class one, which is a completely like the off-street path that is not related to or it's on a different level to the travel lanes.

So um we'll you see them here.

Um so this one, for example, is considered off-street path.

So this one is a class one, so completely separated from traffic, right?

Class four are considered or are called separated bikeways, and they can be separated from the travel lane at the level of the road.

Uh for this project, the separation is using the buffer lane and also vertical delineators.

Um class two is the one that we see between uh Oak Road and Jones Road.

This one is a class two just because of those geometric constraints I was talking about, and class three are the ones that we would definitely not use on tree boulevard, and that is the shared roadway, like you see those tra uh bike markings on the road, uh asking cars and bicyclists to share the road.

So that would be a class three.

Okay.

And then um, I had another question because I was noticing that um on Main Street and then I 680 there would be around like a minute to almost two minutes of delays.

So I was wondering how that would affect um first responders or emergency services and if you had a plan for that.

Right.

So we have sent the 65% uh design plans and uh the traffic impact analysis to uh CHP and the fire district.

Also, they were part of the 2017 plan.

Um, like uh they were one of the many stakeholders involved.

Um, I believe that the choice of the vertical delineators uh part of it was their involvement as well.

Um, but as far as delays, uh David, do you have any question?

Like uh the main uh thought is the trade-off idea that David was mentioning that because we are accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians, then there's a um an impact on the traffic delays.

Um, but yeah, it's it's it's a matter of prioritizing pets and bicyclists on a street that is very close to a BART station, knowing that it will have an impact on the traffic.

Uh we received um no comments from CHP, no comments from fire district, and we're still waiting for comments from the other two uh agencies.

But we we are in coordination with them and uh if they have any concerns, they would definitely let us know.

Thank you.

And then I had uh one final question.

Uh, because you said the project required additional funding.

So I was wondering if that was included in the total cost or if that was um something extra.

That is more for like uh we are ex we are expecting that these costs may uh may uh get higher for 95% design after because of a lot of comments from Caltrans.

Caltrans has been reviewing the plans.

So those modifications may cause higher costs, but at the moment we don't have a value uh in particular, so there's a probably or may increase costs further.

But we will know more uh by December 2025.

Thank you.

Of course, thank you for your questions.

Thank you.

Uh Commissioner Ash, do you have questions?

Yeah, okay.

First, you have me curious.

Who's number one?

What's like the worst intersection?

The priority.

Oh, for the because you said this is like two, four and seven, I think.

So where where's number one?

Right.

So number one is Bailey Road at Canal Road, north.

So that's another in Pittsburgh, uh, Bay Point area, right?

I believe so.

Okay.

Yes.

Just that's the county vision zero plan for Walnut Creek.

It's oh we have different hotspots.

Yeah issue.

Yeah, I was just kind of curious.

Um, so uh my next question is like there is a very nice bike trail, and one of the nicest pedestrian and bike bridges, right in this spot.

It's it's less than two tenths of a mile from what we're talking about.

What am I missing?

Why aren't people taking that instead of coming right through this area?

Um unfortunately I wasn't part of the 2017 study.

Um I wonder how much that was discussed at the time.

Um like the county received this study and we applied for a grant to uh implement what the improvements that were proposed.

Um I personally learned of this path uh further down the line, like in the design process.

I had a similar question to my team and um it's it's about prioritizing Treat Boulevard or adding different modes of transportation along Treat Boulevard.

That was the um the main goal of that study.

And um here are uh trying to implement it.

Um there were discussions about North Main Street also needing to be striped also because right now it's not striped that one segment that connects you to Lesnick Lane the or close to there.

So um yes, uh I mean maybe it can be uh approached like this.

Maybe it's up to the bicyclists then to choose which path they want.

Is it the faster path, the more direct path, the shorter path along Tree Boulevard, or they want the more casual experience um to just go down to that canal trail?

But yeah, I I did have a similar question to uh the planning team, and uh yeah, we're uh okay.

That's an honest answer.

I appreciate that.

Um and then I like how you and this might be for for you is um I like how you did all this analysis and you're talking to Caltrans and everything.

CCTA has about 200 million dollars in grant funds to improve this section of 680, um, with changing lanes, adding in the um the tolling lane, um bringing in the 24 crossing and fixing a couple of these interchanges, and there is in that plans to to adjust this interchange and North Main and what is it monument that's next to improve this traffic flow.

How is that incorporated into all of these because that will change everything too?

Yeah, I would think that is a definite question to Caltrans.

Uh and I'm surprised that with all the teams like there are so many teams that reviewed the 65% plans, uh none of them actually commented about this.

Maybe they did not know about these future improvements uh or when they're going to be constructed, because sometimes the plans stay in the plan phase for however many years.

Um yeah, that is uh probably a question to ask uh for us to ask Caltrans about the future improvements on I 680 and how they would tie into this project.

Yeah, please, because um, yeah, that is funded.

CCTA does have the 200 million from the feds.

It's definitely here.

So 200 billion, you said um, sorry.

Okay, I'll save the rest for comments probably.

Did you say 200 million?

So there's 165.

Yeah, 165 million and then a second for I want to say 62.

So what is that?

That's actually on your mic.

Oh it's um I think there's one for 165 million and one for 60.

Do you know is she coming in?

Hey, it's Midar Portman, City Engineer.

Sorry, I just wanted to help clarify.

So um Jared, yes, we are aware of the uh grant that was received by CCTA for those improvements.

Um that ramp is still going to remain fundamentally the same.

That changes actually a little bit before that.

Um so I with these changes, if anything, the improvements that they're making with that funding, it would actually make this better than what was actually analyzed.

And so again, Caltrans did review the this information as well.

And they also have been privy to it's part of the Innovate 680 project, but doing that braided, it's called a braided ramp um at treat.

Awesome.

That was the answer I was looking for.

Thank you for coming up.

Thanks.

All right, Commissioner Patch.

I that actually answered one of my questions.

Okay.

Can you go to slide six, please?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Okay.

Um on this slide.

You have the one through and one right turn on oak from treat.

No.

Other the that one.

Yeah.

So one through one right.

Um just curious when you did the traffic analysis for making that a through and right and having eliminated the lane that goes around the BART pillar, whatever that is called.

Um, because there's significantly more housing now on Jones Road with future plans to continue to build housing in that direction.

And so I think that right turn, like do we have an when you looked at it for 2040?

Did you anticipate an increase in right turns because of the increase in housing that direction?

Yes.

So you're talking about road itself.

Is it the eastbound right or the southbound?

Eastbound right, yeah.

Eastbound right.

Eastbound right, yeah.

Yes.

So that that was uh the 2040 model took into consideration that uh project that you're talking about.

Okay, great.

Um, sorry.

So I said um the 2040 volume, the 2040 volumes that we uh projected took into consideration that project.

Great.

Um, can you move forward to slides 10, please?

Okay.

Um, so you did say on this slide that you're you looked at some of the signalized timing.

Um, did you a lot of what you displayed is the um west-east bound lanes and not north-south?

Are you looking at the signalized timing for those especially left turns on to treat boulevard?

So, what we try to do is um given the um uh you know the roadway that we have, right?

We we were trying to get the best operating condition that we can have.

So, what we tried to do was to optimize the intersection.

So, this reports shows the optimized operating conditions that saves all movements.

Okay, pretty much.

That's what we try to do.

Okay.

Um, sorry, and can you go back to slide?

I think it's six again, might be slide seven, six.

Okay.

I just have a lot of concerns about this treat oak uh intersection.

So I have more questions about it, sorry.

Um, because to your point, um, while oak or treat and Jones intersects elsewhere, a lot of traffic uses this oak to Jones to get to where those the housing on Jones is.

Um so on this particular intersection on oak to treat from the northbound turning on to left on to treat, right?

That's also where you have people turning right from oak on to treat that and go up to the buskirk, is that how you say that?

Yeah, that which is leads to an on-ramp to 680.

So there's consistently issues with traffic with people trying to get over as far as they need to, um, and those people turning left from oak on to treat frequently are still turning while pedestrians are crossing the crosswalk.

Um and since that is coming from BART to where housing is, I'm did you do a specific analysis on the impact on that particular danger?

So what which crosswalk are you looking at?

So the treat boulevard at the oak intersection that's going north-south.

Those making the right and then the pedestrians also crossing, right?

Yes.

So people from Oak turning left on to treat, where pedestrians are walking across street along Oak.

Okay, so you talk about the northbound left hand, right?

Yes.

Northbound left hand from Oak.

Yes to go west, right?

Yeah.

And then the pedestrians using that crosswalk.

So that is the thing is that left hand is a protected left, right?

Correct.

They can technically go with the pedestrian crossing.

So the pedestrian crossing goes with the true movement.

So those going left, when once the left hand signal comes on, nobody can cross.

So.

Right.

I guess my question is when you did an analysis of like the timing and the delays and such for that.

Because that's a protected left lane, but it's short right now, people make the left, they run a red light or really run a yellow light light frequently, right?

And if you are stopping the slip lane at treat in Buskirk, the delay like the line of that as people shuffle to try and make that turn for the on ramp.

I suspect there'll be even less people for that left lane.

So was there an analysis done just on like traffic pattern there?

Yeah, so I'm glad you asked this question.

So what we did was uh when we are optimizing signals, we look at um every movement, right?

And then we also look at the approach.

So this level of service results that we provide presented to you was just for the overall intersection.

But um, if you look at our model, or the if you look at the report itself, the report gives you all the measures for every movement.

Perfect.

So what we try to do is um side by side, we try to see okay, this is the existing condition.

We want to provide enough time so that we don't get complaints from other people, right?

So we provide uh enough time within the cycle length to meet the needs of all the movements.

So those are part of the decision making in selecting the cycle length for the corridor because we have to select appropriate uh timing for all the movements that you're talking about.

Okay, thank you.

That's that's what I was looking to confirm.

Um okay, on slide 13.

Um you here, what is ramp gore mean?

What is what?

Ramp gore?

You have it in the sentence.

I don't know what that means.

It's where that uh oh, yeah, go ahead.

So it's kind of like um how would I without a drawing?

If I can you get to the area?

Oh, I don't oh, yes, the area, yes.

Like uh oh, so it's not shown here, it's not shown, yeah.

But it's where the the trucks uh decide to go to and uh straight to the truck scales, so that would be the gourd.

Gotcha.

It's gonna scale like a V, yeah.

Right, okay.

Um because I know right now when people use the slip lane and they stop instead of continuing to go the traffic.

Um, so cool.

And um, then on all of these that you're eliminating the slip lane for, are you planning on there being no right on red or are cars still gonna be able to make those right turns on red?

Yeah, so they would be able to make the right ends on red, but then we're also going to put uh there's a a design feature where when the bicycle uh and the bicyclist is detected in the eastbound direction, the no right hand on red sign will come on.

So if there's no bicyclist, people can make a right hand on red.

So that helps with the operation of the ramp.

And is that for all three slip lanes that you're removing or just the one shown on this slide?

So it will be, I think two the two locations.

That would be the northbound ramp and then the um one the westbound right at North Main.

So those are the two places that I know.

Great.

Okay, and then on the two charts that you had, you had letters that were like F through something.

Are those letter grades or F seems to be failing failing and you said F or better?

Confused by that.

It's the ranking from A B C D to F.

Okay.

Right.

So F is the West operating condition.

But you can see, right?

Even with the no-build condition, it's already there.

So it's not lowering the grades, it's just keep maintaining.

Okay.

Thank you.

Alright.

All right, thanks.

Can we go back to maybe the earliest diagram?

Kind of showed the whole scale.

This one?

Okay.

So I'm just gonna preface my questions with lower right hand corner is where I've worked for 10 years.

The off-ramp?

Uh yeah, right.

I've worked at the off-ramp.

No, the Pacific Plaza building in there.

Uh kind of it works on the off-ramp.

Over there.

Treat and oak.

And upper left-hand corner, of course, past North Main and on North Main.

Restaurants, shopping.

So over the last 10 years, I've become I will say an expert user of this stretch of road, both as a driver and a pedestrian.

So that's why I may have a lot more questions or comments.

So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna skip my comments.

I I delineated them because sometimes I get in trouble going into the comments.

So can you show which I thought some crosswalks were getting eliminated?

Can you show those, please?

Yes, it's this crosswalk right here.

Uh the north or the south north uh crosswalk.

Okay.

Um and that's the one that you felt wasn't a lot of demand for.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

Uh that one I would say is a pedestrian was always super dangerous because of the slip lane that was really kind of taking your life into your own hands.

So that may not be bad because generally I hate to see crosswalks go away.

Um, go to this page here.

Um is there a reason why we never had or can't have especially on the bridge that goes over the freeway um eastbound pedestrian walkway.

Is that completely unfeasible?

Um uh with feasibility, um or our assessment of feasibility here is just what the feasibility study explored, and the south or the sidewalk on the south side of the bridge was not one of the elements that were discussed.

Yeah, uh so because it will also require the widening of the bridge, of course, and that comes with the crazy expenses.

And we actually have a uh good document that documents um that what would be that value of money that would require the widening of the bridge, uh along with of course schedule issues with Caltrans and more coordination.

Okay, yeah, it seems like a lost opportunity because that I think that's a sorely missing pedestrian link.

So we'll we're gonna let bicyclists go down that side of the bridge and be protected, but we're basically still gonna ban pedestrians from going down that side of the bridge.

So it depends on where you're walking, it's a big inconvenience factor to pedestrians to have to go up to the other side of the bridge and over and wait for all those signals to cross.

Yes, I understand.

Your very first 3D uh picture might be okay.

Is that missing a lane on the right-hand side there?

Because there should be three there, right?

And the eastbound?

Uh so sorry.

Yes, and the eastbound here, uh it's showing, yeah, it's 11 and 12.

So there are two lanes here.

And the third lane, I believe, is what's being converted to this bike lane and the buffer.

Okay, so we're we're taking a lane of traffic away between north main, all the way through to the bridge to Oak Grove.

Yes, I believe so.

And then are we also taking that lane?

So once you cross the 680 off-ramp, bus kirk intersection, are we also getting rid of a lane for the bike lane, the traffic lane?

So um going back to the question about the lane removal, so eastbound, we're not removing any lanes.

We can actually fit in those two through lanes with just by um two through lanes, the buffer and the bike lane by doing lane narrowing.

So there's no lanes removed there in the westbound direction, though.

We are losing one of the through lanes, but if you think kind of near that sprout shopping center, the lane drops anyway.

So from like a capacity stance, we're just kind of dropping that lane a little bit earlier in the westbound direction.

Okay, so we're not losing anything eastbound.

Correct.

In this view right here at the intersection.

Okay.

A little further down, we're losing one.

Right after the off ramp.

Okay, so off the off ramp and all the way down.

So once you cross Oak Road, there is sort of a right turn only lane that goes all the way up to Jones, right?

Is that going away?

The one that goes around the BART column?

No, that I'm talking eastbound.

Yeah, eastbound.

Yeah, sorry.

Uh so the one that um the eastbound direction.

So this lane right here uh goes around the BART column as well.

Uh so yeah, this lane is being replaced by a the bike lane.

How about when you're so if you're on Oak Grove, northbound, Oak Road, sorry, and you turn right on to treat.

Right.

Currently, right now, there's the traffic lanes, and then there's like a right turn only lane that goes all the way up to Jones.

Is that going away?

Right, yes.

Uh, here uh this uh right free right turn is also being closed as part of this project.

So yes, uh the answer is a yes to the elimination of this.

That entire lane is going away.

Yep.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then the 680, so we'll have signals now.

So you take the 680 northbound, you come off right now.

You have the free slip, which by the way, people slam on their brakes there when there's traffic because they want to go all the way over to BART.

So it's a it's really dangerous sometimes, the way it's configured right now.

Um so there'll be signals there, so if people have a green light, they can kind of emulate the slip, but otherwise they'll have a those two lanes that turn right from the off ramp on to treat eastbound, they would have red lights, and then when bikes are detected or someone's pushing the pedestrian button, the no right turn or red light will come on.

Correct.

So then my next question related to that and any of the signal improvements we're doing in this whole section.

Will those pedestrian buttons take priority over the signal timing?

So in other words, traffic's kind of flowing.

You got I'll just say 200 cars coming along during commute hour, and one bicyclist pushed the button, and all of a sudden, you know, 100 cars have to stop for that one bike, or because I've seen in various places in the city, whether it's for cars or pedestrians, you can be going down a thoroughfare, and just one car will make everyone else stop with no weight for that one car.

Is that is that what we're gonna see with these pedestrian buttons, bicycle buttons?

So even though these are county intersections, um the city actually maintains them uh from the signal timing perspective.

So operation wise, it's similar to Ignesio Valley, where it's it's about um like getting that green wave of vehicles to your point, the the 200-plus vehicles going through.

It's about getting them through in the green wave and then accommodating the pedestrians, those side streets, the left turns around that that major that peak direction.

Okay, that's good.

Because I was gonna tie that into sustainability when we give priority to like one pedestrian, one bicycle, one car, and we get 200 cars idling.

Uh I like to call it idling smog we're generating, which doesn't sound very sustainable.

So okay, I think those are all my questions.

Thank you.

All right.

It's nice being chair because everyone asks such great questions.

Helps me.

Um I would like some clarity.

Um what path are you referring to, Commissioner Ash, that already exists, and you're free to answer that to us.

But clarity on that.

Yeah, just um, if you drive down tree, there is the pedestrian bike bridge.

Yeah that connects into both the that's part of the iron horse trail.

Right, okay.

And then it connects just at the bottom of that, like sort of if you look at the map past Jones Road there, it connects in a tenth of a mile to um the canal trail, which goes from all the way down to Lime Ridge, under Oak, under all of those things.

I I just wanted to clarify that that was what you're talking about.

Thank you.

Um there um plans for um any beautification around this, or are are the bike paths going to be painted?

I'm just wondering um, you know, how clear some of this is going to be, and I think that some beautification efforts might help.

Um so I'm curious if that's part of it.

So the green thermoplastic that we see sometimes uh in the slides are only placed at conflict points where we expect any kind of merging uh between vehicles and bicyclists or at bike crossings.

But to have this like continuous green uh thermoplastic stripe, uh it proved to be a tough on maintenance uh over time and it just wears off.

So these pavement markings are only at the conflict points, other than that there are the vertical delineators that will visually like be like visual barriers, of course, to the drivers and just delineates that those bike lanes.

But other than that, beautification uh I think we were we're thinking more on the practical side and the safety side more than the beauty, but uh, yeah, I wonder how or what efforts can be made on that front.

Okay.

Um and then as far as the lane losses are considered, um for instance the the one approaching main street, um are there plans to have early notice down the block for for people so that they can plan where they're going to turn and avoid chaos and switching lanes and that kind of a thing.

What you know, people are creatures of habit and they're gonna want to do what they've always done forever on their commutes.

Um are there plans to um make sure that that's identified early in the block?

Yeah, yeah, this was a major comment uh during 65%.

So this uh this will be part of the signage refinement as part of the final design for sure.

Like yeah, as you said, people are used to a certain pattern, then things change, then they should be aware of it before approaching the the new configuration.

Okay, great, thank you.

Of course.

Um, this is 95% planned at this point.

Uh, this one is sixty-five.

Oh, this whole project?

Uh right now, yeah, sixty-five percent was completed.

95 will be completed at in December.

In December, okay, got it.

Um, so it's pretty far along.

Um, and I I'm curious um, you know, since this is a project that involves the county and other other groups.

I I'm curious what other review this has gone under, what other advisory bodies um you talked about working with stakeholders.

I'm curious what stakeholders you've worked with up to this point.

Yes, um I would say Caltrans, uh the city of Walnut Creek, we have been in constant meetings uh with uh both.

Um the fire district, CHP, uh uh police department.

So those uh did courtesy reviews.

Um I'm trying to think also.

Um the county connection also we sent these plans uh for courtesy review.

Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

Yes.

And then um, so for the county they have a similar body to Transportation Commission, which is the CB PAC, the county pedestrian.

And bicycle pedestrian advisory committee.

So they've been to them as well.

Okay.

I should have answered that.

I should have remembered, but I completely forgot.

Has there been any outreach to um the local businesses at this point?

Not at this point.

So when we get to the implementation phase, um, like we just assume that all that outreach and feedback from the community was done at the feasibility study time.

So we just like put the designer hat on and we move forward with the project.

Um, yeah.

Okay.

Great, thank you.

Um, any other questions before we move on?

Yeah, Chair, I forgot a question if I may.

So in some of the traffic studies, you talked about the 2040 data.

And you know, we're here we are in 2025 data land.

Is there any do you have any idea what the multiplier is?

So what I mean by that is is the 2040 traffic like one and a half times 2025, one and a quarter times, twice, or is it do you have any feel for that?

David.

Can you help please?

So um what's what the 2020 volume captures is uh what the anticipated growth would be in uh Warner Creek area, right?

So we looked at the land use projection, and that's what we use for the analysis.

But um I don't have the members here with me, so I don't know if it will be genius for me to tell you a specific number, but it's definitely higher than what we had looked at.

Because by the time we're projecting it, it was around 2014.

So from 2014 to 20 um 30, that's 2040, right?

That's uh some almost what 20 years uh horizon, so it's definitely higher than what was then the existing condition.

That's helpful, thank you.

Yes, thank you.

All right, that's it.

All right, thank you.

Um at this point, we'll open it up to um comments from the public.

Do we have any members of the public wishing to provide public comment on this item?

Looks like we do.

Uh, if you're in the audience and you would like to provide comment, please fill out a speaker card and approach the lectern.

Um you'll have two minutes to provide your comment.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Don't start the call.

Yeah, don't start the call.

All right.

My name's Mary Lee Martinez.

I live on Cherry Lane Unincorporated.

I live in this neighborhood.

I sent the long email today.

Okay, so I went to Google Maps and I that one mile between the Geary and um uh Iron Horse Trail over to the uh Geary and the canal trail uh over to the Iron Horse Trail is one mile.

Biking, it takes five minutes.

Um I put in Geary, take the canal and take it over to the Iron Horse Trail.

That's 1.4 miles or eight minutes on a bicycle.

This project went from $4 million in 2014.

And I used to be on the MAC, the Municipal Advisory Committee, but um Kieran Mitchell sunseted it.

So this actually came to the MAC in 2014.

At that time, uh the projected cost was four million dollars, and now it's 6.2, and the city's um uh projected cost has increased and it will no doubt increase again.

Um let's see here.

The uh the canal trail is missing from all of these diagrams, and that's just crazy.

That's just crazy because this is a terrific the canal trail is terrific.

Six million dollars on that trail.

I mean, you could add trees, brand um benches, uh water facilities, all kinds of stuff.

Um let's see, the U-turn.

Okay, so if you um people are coming out of Walgreens on treat, and they go to Maine and they make that U-turn uh because they want to get on 680 southbound.

I mean, that's just crazy.

And I know that they're not people aren't gonna stop and wait for bicycle to come across that 680 entrance.

I was all calm before I came here for this meeting meeting started, but now I'm all worked up.

Um let's see here.

Um I live in the neighborhood.

This whole area is bad, even on a good day.

And um, so just remember Valencia Street and the San Rafael Richmond Bridge, they're reconfiguring or removing the bike lanes there.

So I encourage you to not consider this.

Thank you very much.

Any other public comment?

Looks like we do have some.

Thanks, Mr.

Good evening.

I'm Larry McEwen.

I'm with the Walden District Improvement Association.

We serve a population of about 10,000 residents in and to the north of Walnut Creek.

When this proposal was pitched to us seven years ago, we registered our vigorous objection to it on the basis of it was a two million dollar project then, and now of course it's six million dollars.

Six million dollars for a three-block long section of bike trails.

These bike trails are going to be inserted into a section of Treat Boulevard that handles 40,000 vehicles a day.

It's interesting that a good portion of the funding is coming from the highway safety improvement program, and the and this incorporates several of the highest accident rate areas in this area.

You have to go on city roads until you reach the canal trail, which again mirrors this trail.

The canal trail, two blocks south of this proposed bike path is a dedicated pathway for pedestrians and bikes.

When we held our meeting, some bike groups approached us and said they're not going to use this.

This is a terrible plan.

And we would like to echo that uh that sentiment to this group.

I appreciate the chance to address this group.

Again, we cut we contacted our supervisor seven years ago, and we have not received any feedback from Supervisor Mitchell or Carson in that time.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the city.

Thank you for being here.

Any other public comment?

Do you speak or do you speak?

Oh, I didn't.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, I can do that.

Hi, my name is uh Kathy McKenna McEwen, and uh I live in the area right off of all this stuff.

We have a lot of people that have in the neighborhood that have bicycles.

Nobody thinks this is worthwhile.

Nobody needs to get from here to there and have all of this happen, they just use the canal path.

I don't know why that hasn't been a huge thing.

I'm very curious as to what group is pushing for this, because no one that would be affected by it seems interested.

They don't even want it.

So is there, I don't know if you have that.

Who brought this up?

Who started this whole thing?

Who said we need a bike thing for that?

Who needs it?

Because everyone else around is saying, what the heck are we doing this for?

It's gonna ruin the whole area.

Anyway, that's it.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Okay, we're gonna take it to Commissioner Comments.

Um I can I'll go in the opposite direction this time.

Can I ask a clarification question to something we heard?

Do we have numbers on how many cars, how many pedestrians, and how many bikes cross through this?

I don't know if I saw that.

Yes, yes.

Uh, it's 48,000 a day.

That's like the uh sorry.

Yes, so the average daily traffic on this uh corridor is 48,000.

Um, uh as for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Um I think I'm I'm not sure about those figures, but I believe also that if we construct bicycle improvements on this corridor, it would invite more bicyclists to use it because it'll be safer than the current or the existing condition.

So maybe that count might be misleading if we have a count right now.

Okay, thank you.

In the old study, there were three bikes in the morning and three bikes in the evening rush hour.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Any other comments from the commissioners?

Or comments.

I just want to ask Matt, do we need to let the I think you say something about the student commissioner going through?

Oh, okay, okay.

Student commissioner, please first for your comments.

No comments.

Okay.

So you want to go this way?

Yeah, look opposite.

Give you guys a break.

Okay.

You could guess I have comments.

Um, I know you do, and you know, one comment just for the benefit of the public.

I think, you know, and anyone from staff, please chime in.

I mean, I think we're an advisory commission, so we're gonna give input and uh hopefully some of our input makes its way into the final project, but we're not we're not actually here voting whether or not this project is completed or not.

So I'm just wanna say that for transparency, uh, to set expectations.

Um I do have mixed feelings, you know.

As a pedestrian for the most part, I love the project.

As a driver and thinking about traffic, I've got some really heavy concerns about this project.

Uh, so that's really really mixed feelings, but I guess I have to balance that or tip the scale, you know.

Our our our mission in the city is you know, vision zero and reducing and eliminating pedestrian bicycle injuries and deaths.

That that's that's what we're striving for.

So, you know, I don't know how many people will use this, but I certainly hope there's less injuries for whoever uses it.

Um, you know, and where I one of the places I feel the most exposed, and all the times I've walked up along this corridor is on that bridge.

I'm always worried about a cars going to jump off the curb and hurt me.

So I think now there's gonna be a little more buffer area for the pedestrians.

Um I think that's really good.

Um we're gonna narrow lanes.

I have again I have mixed feelings on that.

Um I know the data shows people slow down, but I don't know.

We have some crazy drivers around here, and then I get a little nervous with narrower lanes and crazy drivers.

Um yeah, I think again, losing that slip lane from 680 to treat I can see both sides of that.

Um I see a lot of danger with the slip lane because the cars come off the freeway, then they slam on the brakes because they realize I would get over all three or four lanes to BART no matter what, and then they stop everybody on the freeway.

So putting these signals would probably stop that behavior.

I would hope it would.

Um, at least on the diagrams, the Oak Road to Jones Westbound bike lane, that looks kind of dangerous because it does not gonna have the vertical separation, right?

At least from what I saw on the correct.

Yeah, so that that one looks kind of dangerous for the cyclists just to be honest.

Um I don't know if you want to consider the the plastic bullards to give a little more incentive for drivers not to get into that bike lane.

Um, in terms of traffic studies, you know, having observed a number of projects in the city, even long before I was commissioner, the traffic studies have generally said, and the data is generally said, you know, things won't back up onto this or that.

So two classic examples, the Chick-fil-A on North Main.

You know, the study said, yeah, that won't back up onto North Main, but it does.

It's it's sort of a traffic nightmare.

When we l had uh Bank of the West leave at Cherry and Treat and let John Muir get there, but we didn't expand the length of the left turn lane there.

I almost got hit three times just the other day by people, it backs up into the main traffic lane, and then everyone juts out.

And if you're in the if you're in the middle lane, you might have to slam on your brakes.

So I would just say whatever you think your traffic study says, I would double it, and that's probably what you'll really see.

That's just Charles's you know, uh empirical feelings.

Um, so when you do in a few any future presentations, this is just a recommendation.

When when we do like the the before and after queuing or things like that, it I think it would be a lot easier to understand if you could take a diagram like this and then superimpose the numbers where it sits.

I get a little confused looking at the tables.

So it's just a little uh request.

And I think those are my comments.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Patch.

Okay, um so you might have picked up on this when I was asking questions, but I live on Jones Road, so this is actually what I use every day.

Um, and I am one of those people that will not go and use the canal trail because it's actually significantly out of my way because it's the opposite direction of where I need to go.

Um, and I also won't use the bridge because again, it's it takes me out of my way to go to it.

I use the uh Oak Road Street Boulevard intersection all the time.

Um people on this commission know that I've had a couple of near accidents with my scooter.

Most of them have happened in the slip lanes that we're talking about.

Um, so I I understand the importance of the safety for pedestrians and bikers and scooters that we are talking about because I am one of those users.

Um, so I'm thrilled that we are taking this seriously.

The fact that these intersections are what you said, two, five, and seven of the county, like that says a lot about how dangerous they are.

Um, so very excited to see this.

I have a couple of suggestions I think that could mitigate some of the concerns we're hearing from vehicle traffic.

Um first one is if we're eliminating the crosswalk where that 680 off ramp is, um, from the northbound direction.

If there's gonna be no crosswalk there, I am I am I guess I'm a little confused as to just if we can do a better job than just completely eliminating the slip lane into a road there, right?

Because that suction and the way to exit there, you have the on-ramp coming from behind you for people who are getting on and then to merge left quickly to get onto the freeway because it comes into a turn only lane, and then you have people on 680 who have to get into that lane to make the right turn, and when traffic stops or gets backed up right now, you have a lot of traffic on 680.

And so I understand that you've been talking to Caltrans, and they say they aren't worried, and your diagram says that the backup won't go past where the split is for the truck off ramp, but in my experience that's not true as the traffic is currently.

So I am pretty nervous about what that is gonna do to traffic on 680.

Um, I used to live in the apartments across from BART, and so I was one of those people that had to make the far over to left to make that left turn.

Um, and my roommate complained frequently about how dangerous that was as a vehicle, and so if you're adding more signals and stoppage to that, um I want that to also be part of it, right?

If you were not worried about pedestrians and it's just the bikers, maybe instead of putting a bike lane on each side of the road, there is a bike lane going both directions on one side of the road on the opposite from that 680 off ramp.

Um I've seen cities that do that really well.

Um it does mean that you have to move the bicycles over for that portion, which can be a little irritating, but if you're already doing that for pedestrians, you already have to put up signage, et cetera, to direct people.

So for that overpass section to eliminate the confusion around the slip lane from 680, that could be a way to work this.

Um the other thing that I am really concerned about is uh what is showing or was showing.

Um, sorry, can you go back to where the parallel parking diagram is?

Um it's one more, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, this works.

So in this section on treat, you have the sidewalk, the parking, the right turn, bike lane, which we uh which uh commissioner uh has already identified as going to be a little dangerous.

Um I'm wondering if we can flip this around a little bit, and I understand you're 65% into this project, so it this might be too late in the game, but I have seen cities where they have a sidewalk, then they have protected bike lane, and then they allow for parallel parking of cars, and that creates safety for those on bicycles.

Um, since there is behavior here of people who are not gonna go over multiple blocks to get to canal to go up, you're gonna have people using the bikes, especially as more and more multi-family housing goes in this area, and so I think that's a way we can address keeping the bike safe, but also keeping that parallel parking.

Um, and then I just I have to address the the like behavior of humans is that they don't want to go out of their way, right?

So we have just finished building lots of multifamily on Jones Road.

There's another plot that is uh has been allowed to build once uh something comes that way.

There's additional housing going in near BART, right?

Like that is a very housing dense area now because it is BART.

Um, and so you're going to have an increase in pedestrians and bikers.

Um I think that it's great that we're prioritizing them.

I'm very happy to see that.

I do think we need to acknowledge that people don't go out of their way.

So that's the behavior that we're trying to accommodate for.

And since that was brought up, I just wanted to acknowledge that human behavior shows people won't go eight minutes out of their way.

They want to go the fastest, especially actually if they're walking or biking, because that takes more energy than driving does.

Appreciate you coming for this presentation.

Thank you.

Commissioner Ash.

Yeah, thanks.

So I want to echo what um the vice chair said that we are not a decision-making body here.

We just get to give comments and receive information.

Um I am all for more bicycle lanes and safety.

Um I think it was a good question to ask because there is a trail that some of our audience has also brought up very close by.

I'd love to even see the numbers on that, maybe as a future presentation from East Bay Parks, like how for all the trails that go through like Walnut Creek, like what's the bicycle pedestrian count and how it helps people get to BART, would be interesting to learn.

Um I wonder what we can do here in the meantime, because this project seems several years off still.

If there's something we could do with the signal timing that you're talking about, um, sooner than later, that we could start implementing here.

I think that if we can get that done in the next six to twelve months, that becomes a win.

Um, and I'd like to point out that we built 1,800 miles of the transcontinental railroad in six years, and this is taking 10 to 12.

Not that that has to do with the two of you, but government efficiency here.

Um, and so if we could do that signal timing, you know, something in the next year that can help with that vision zero goal of saving one person's life in the meantime while we're going to this bigger project.

Is that possible?

I would just suggest to look at that.

So thanks.

All right, thank you very much.

Yes, sorry, I didn't think of one more comment.

Uh for the beautification thing that you mentioned, which I thought was a great question.

Um, if you do close slip lanes, it's a great opportunity to put trees or plants or something and increase sustainability.

It's because you have to build a sidewalk anyways.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

Can I add one more?

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, just building on commissioner patches uh on this same slide.

The other bad traffic behavior I forgot to mention here is that when treat backs up with the red light going this way, many times I've seen drivers then quickly cut over into that right turn lane, right?

And so now they're gonna cut across the bike lane and might hit a bicycle because they're like, ah, I'm not gonna wait here, I'll go this way and zip around.

I've just seen that over and over.

So I'm thinking about I think on Wigget, we've done um the uh sidewalk bicycle lane parking roadway configuration.

That was the word I was struggling for.

So I've seen that on Wigget, and maybe as Commissioner Patch mentioned, that might be better here for the safety of the cyclist.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um this is a very complicated project, and there are so many factors.

So thank you for your work up to this point, and thank you for this presentation and for your patience with us as we try to digest it.

Um I'm all for trying to make this corridor safer.

My husband actually works in this neighborhood, and we walked to lunch just the other day, and I had this feeling of this doesn't feel that safe, like walking this area right here.

Um, and so I'm really happy to see the um the efforts to improve safety and to improve comfort for pedestrians and cyclists.

Um, I I'm a big fan of narrowing lanes.

I do think that helps a lot.

I've seen it done in a lot of communities around the East Bay, and that helps slow down traffic, and I think it it naturally slows down traffic and will naturally help some of these issues.

So I'm a big fan of seeing that.

Um, I like the idea of having the bike lane next to the sidewalk and then the parking.

Um, I think they've done this in Sacramento, and I'm curious to see as they've done this in more communities how successful that's been.

I do think it's important to think about expanding stakeholder outreach and research as you move forward with this project, um, just to make sure that we're covering all our bases.

Um, I hear all the concerns from the community.

I can just imagine unintended consequences from this project, um, the backups on the freeway, etc.

Um I just um bless you.

This is a complicated project.

And I'm glad I'm not the one figuring out all the pieces, but um, but I I just hope that as we move forward, we're we're being really mindful of all the stakeholders and all the pieces that are at play.

Um so at that, um, thank you for your work.

And if there's nothing else, I think we can move on.

All right, great, thank you.

All right, feel like we need a break after that.

I want to take a five minute because.

Do you guys want a five-minute?

Yeah, okay.

The next one's big, so we'll take a quick five-minute break.

Thank you, everyone.

It is good so much.

Okay, thank you so much, which is exactly what I was talking about.

No, I did.

No, no.

No, no, no.

Oh, those are your no one.

Oh, that's what I think.

There were a lot of helicopters practice.

The one with the date of the All right, everyone, we are back.

Hope you've recovered.

I'm just teasing.

Next on the agenda is an item for commission consideration, the downtown curbside management plan draft recommendations update.

Please proceed with your presentation.

Okay.

Yeah, so evening commissioners.

Again, my name is Brianna Byrne.

I'm associate traffic engineer here at the city of Walnut Creek.

Tonight, bringing forward to you guys again this curbside management project.

This is our third presentation to date.

And as Commissioner Brightman mentioned, this is the one where we're bringing the recommendations to you all.

So tonight's discussion, very brief background and then an overview of the data and the outreach findings.

Again, these were brought to you in presentation one and presentation two.

And the bulk of this evening's presentation will be about our draft recommendations and kind of where we are in the project timeline.

And then for any new viewers, so this curb management plan, we're looking to set data-driven standards to optimize the curb by balancing parking, loading, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, placemaking accessibility, safety and equity in our downtown Walnut Creek area.

And again, for any new viewers, uh curb space and curb management, what does that really even mean?

So from curb space, this is the area where maybe you think parking, a parking lane would be, but it could also be bus stops, loading zones, um, space for bike lanes, um, curb extensions, parklets.

So in this lower photos, these are in downtown Walnut Creek.

On the lower left there, uh, this is at the intersection of Maine and Bonanza.

This is actually a bullbout within the intersection, um, and it's kind of a beautifying placemaking way to enhance our curb, our curb, um, our curb space.

And in the middle, we have uh some bike parking, and then we have um a bus stop.

So when we talk about curb management, it's about organizing all of these uses.

The sometimes competing, sometimes they work together, but there's a lot of demand for the curb space, and it's about managing that and balancing amongst all those users.

This effort that we're in the middle of right now is um it's grant funded by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, MTC, and it builds on a previous study that the city had done called Rethinking Mobility Plan.

From that plan, there are three strategies that we're um, I guess adding to.

Um remind everyone, the city of Walnut Creek, we do have an 85% utilization for on-street and garage parking.

Um, and so what this does is it um it balances the asset.

So the curb, we have um a lot of attraction in the downtown area, and so this curb as an asset.

Uh, we're managing it so that people can get to these destinations.

So with this 85%, um, if we're imagining a block base as 10 spaces, two or one of those spaces are open.

This allows for um for someone that maybe wants to pay a little extra to park next to the curb, they can easily get a spot.

There's no need to be rotating around the block to try to find that one space.

So 85% is really this industry suite spot for utilizing the curb, it's uh most efficient, but also leaving space for those that need it.

So our study area that we looked at as part of this project, we went um really as far north as parkside, uh as far south as Think Les Lomas.

There's some meters in that area a little bit past Kaiser, and then east and west kind of extending into our west downtown specific plan, and then Broadway civic along the east side.

So on street uh spaces in this area, we have about 1,500, um just a little bit more than what we have in our city owned and operated garages for a total of 3,000 spaces.

So again, these are the 3,000 city managed spaces.

Within the study, we included um non-city operated lots and garages.

So this is really just to kind of get a big picture of what's happening outside of what the city operates.

This is not by any means all of the private lots, these are just the ones that we reached out to and were able to get some type of data for during our collection period.

So for the analysis that we're gonna talk about tonight, again, that's just a partial private um lots and garages, and that is similarly around 3100.

So we're talking about maybe 6,000 spaces as part of this plan.

So when we did our data collection in October, the top line we have our weekday, so this was a Thursday in October.

There's no events so with good weather.

We saw 88% parking utilization on streets.

So again, this is above our goal of 85, and we're kind of this is where we're gonna start to see people getting frustrated and circling the block trying to find a space.

But at that same time, our garages were only at 57% full.

If we put that into actual space numbers, uh those on street, there's only 117 spaces, but our garages we saw 1700.

So it's just one of those like how do we get these people to the garage?

And then on the Saturday, um, again, typical Saturday in October, the on-street dropped a little bit, and this does reflect kind of how we drew our area A.

The area near Kaiser is really popular on the weekday, but not so much on a Saturday.

But again, on same time, same peak, but in the garages, there's still plenty of space available with the slight caveat that you know some of these garages are are being used a lot more than um than others.

So there's a lot of numbers here, but the one to point out is our South Locust Garage.

So this is the one that's really kind of in the heart of everything.

It's just north of Mount Diablo, bounded by Maine and Locust, and it is also one of the cities, it's the city's smallest gate operated garage.

So again, high-level the data takeaway.

So where we saw over this 85% occupancy was on street in area A, where area A is the screen.

Think about that core downtown area, and then we also saw over 85% in the Broadway Plaza garages, and those that's one of our private partners that we that we worked with, and then the city's South Locust Garage.

Uh staff also did additional data collection during the holiday peak, and this was really to understand what happens to our downtown at the peak of the peak.

So when looking at that over 85%, we saw the same thing under the typical conditions, but we now also added the Lusher Garage, and this is one of our larger garages, but it also facilitates the demand for our Lusher performing arts center, and we have the nutcracker performances over there, so that garage did reach 100% during the holiday season.

Looking at parking duration, area A, we do have three-hour meters.

Generally, people stayed one to two hours within that core area.

Area A, if they were in the garage, people stayed closer to three.

B and C, so B would be the orange on the north side, and then C is west downtown.

People, if you're parking on street at the purple meters, which allow for up to 10, 10 hours, people were staying around three.

During the holiday season, area A, that parking duration shifted closer to three.

People were staying a little bit longer to do their shopping.

And the other note here is while the city does have a monthly parking pass program, it's in very high demand, and there's a wait list of six months to a year.

So taking this information to our stakeholders, some internal, some external.

We wanted to see if this data matched their friction points, what they were maybe having problems with that could that we could see in the data.

So we spoke with the parking enterprise fund.

This is the staff, it's internal and external stakeholders where they manage the fund from like parking revenue.

So this includes public work staff both in traffic engineering, transportation planning, traffic maintenance, we have our garage operators, we have our enforcement officers, we have economic development, it's a multidisciplinary team.

So we spoke with them, we spoke with our parking enforcement officers several times.

Our economic development team, external stakeholders included Walnut Creek Downtown, County Connection, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocacy Groups, our Youth Commission, Transportation Commission, and the general public.

We solicited input from during the locust street fair, and then we also have a survey monkey going on now through August 24th.

This is for both visitors, residents.

Are you a business owner?

Are you employee downtown?

So we are really really still pushing to get input from our walnut creek downtown and the public, especially on the recommendations you're about to see tonight.

So if there's any interest from those viewing, or for the commissioners to pass this on, the QR code will send you to this link, or you can type in the web address there.

So what we really became clear from the stakeholder outreach was there's actually a lot of common uh friction points for our stakeholders.

The first one street parking.

There, there really is people want to park on the street.

Um, and so it did match our data.

Uh, there was mostly just anecdotes about why that preference is around, but generally speaking, it matched it matched the data that we were seeing.

Uh the loading and curbside pickups, so in this photo it's the yellow loading zone, so this is I think commercial commercial loading.

Um, but a lot of these say are in very popular areas and are maybe used by um people picking up and dropping off or just stopping real quick to run inside, which then blocks the actual commercial vehicles from using it, and then now they're blocking traffic.

Um, so that was one friction point, and then also we have 15-minute um curbside loading spaces in the downtown, and these were first installed a little after COVID to help the restaurants bounce back.

There's a lot of to-go orders being put in, and so we had installed at least one on every block face, and just over time it's been increasingly hard to enforce.

Um, and it's it's was a feedback that we see from both the business owners and even just the people trying to use them while visiting downtown.

Parking for employees, this is you know, maybe those driving or using bicycles or scooters.

Again, mentioning that monthly parking pass that we have for garages.

For anyone driving.

They're likely not one of those lucky few that have that pass.

So, what we heard is there's a lot of maybe moving your car around mid shift.

Um, the employees know where they can get the longest free parking, and then they'll have to run and move their car if needed.

For those that, you know, bike or scooter, there we heard just of the popularity of that, but there was an inability for say the businesses to store the scooters.

So there was no space, a secure space for those employees to then store these as an option.

Wayfinding, the city we do have an incredible amount of wayfinding signs, but it's still one of those things where you know maybe they could something needed to be done where even the stakeholders didn't know we had a library garage.

And then the last one, pedestrian and bicycle spaces.

So regardless of like which group we talked to, the pet, the bike, the business owners, regardless, once you parked and you were walking around, there was a desire to have a very comfortable pedestrian space, a very safe feel.

Yeah.

So moving now into the recommendations, as you can see, we have a part one here.

So we'll go through this first section, pause for any questions, give me a chance to drink some water, and then we'll move on to part two.

Okay, so to support our recommendations, we wanted to establish overarching goals.

Um we have two greens here, so that light green.

Again, this is a data-driven plan.

So that light green is that data-driven portion of this plan.

So we want to manage the parking demand, reduce the difficulty for finding parking and improving the arrival experience.

This is where we have that data to back up.

Um, whatever these whatever the plan lands on for these dark green priorities and goals, we can manage it accordingly with that light green section.

So moving, um, starting at the upper left, manage commercial loading to make freight and deliveries more orderly efficient and produce less conflict.

Enhance downtown's economic vitality as a top retail destination for the region, ensure that pedestrians and bicyclists can get to from and around downtown safely and comfortably, use placemaking to enhance downtown's walkability and charm, advanced sustainability through mode shift away from cars, and then the last one consider users of all ages, physical abilities, and economic standing to ensure downtown is conveniently accessible for all.

So these goals they are in line with council priorities, as well as our sustainability action plan or local railway safety plan, a lot of active plans and kind of actions that the city has taken recently.

So now moving into the recommendations.

So for the meters, the first recommendation is to create a new meter zone for those high demand areas.

With the intended outcome, it incentivizes turnover within the high demand areas and encourages drivers to use the garages.

As part of that, extend the meter hours of operation, extending the parking management hours.

Again, we're managing the parking or managing demand.

We want those hours to reflect the existing land uses.

So we have a lot of restaurants that are open past 8 p.m.

when our meters stop.

So we want to the hours of operation to reflect what's currently happening out there.

And then the last one that I have here, improve instructions on the meters or signage for uniformity and clarity.

Um, and this improves accessibility and the customer experience.

Um, you know, they already found a spot.

Let's make that meter as easy for them as possible.

So digging a little bit into the first two, um, where you know, I mentioned that uh third zone as well as extending the hours.

So this is the existing data that we collected in October.

Again, this is an average October weekend.

On that sliding scale, we have green, you know, a lot of open spaces, and on the far side, that dark red, closer to 100%.

You can see we have a lot of high demand on average, again, this is on average along locust and main streets.

So that high demand warrants higher parking meter rates.

Looking at again those overarching goals.

A lot of parking management, lines of parking management, loading.

I kind of mentioned this as the friction point, but with a well-managed curb space and you know, the open open spaces, people aren't gonna elect to wait in a loading zone.

So it actually does improve that commercial loading experience.

They trucks can get into that space.

Traffic safety and sustainability, I mentioned the circling around the block to try to find your space again.

If you can find that parking space, it does really cut down on that excess vehicles on the road.

So we talked about meters now moving to garages on the recommendation side.

Improve wayfinding directly to the garages on the perimeter of downtown.

Again, the garage that we saw experience capacity is really in the center.

Echoing again, that's where people want to be.

So trying to get them to say the outskirts to our Broadway garage.

So yeah, get the outcome, get drivers to a place with higher parking supply.

The other recommendation here, improve customer experience within the garages by creating an environment that feels safe and comfortable to walk to, from, and in.

It will not only encourage visitors to park within the garage, but that safety feeling that they feel on the street that we want them to feel on the street begins as soon as they park in one of our garages.

The last recommendation here reevaluate the monthly parking program and potentially expand the number of permits.

Really just take a fresh look at this and see if it's still serving the needs of our downtown community.

So the outcome reduced curb demand and improved employee retention where parking isn't a daily headache.

Again, looking at goal alignment, each one of these is a great parking management tool.

We can get people off of those on-street spaces and into the garages.

One thing to point out here, placemaking, that improved customer experience within the garage.

We can really treat our garages as a unique Walnut Creek feature where as soon as someone arrives, they're experiencing all that Walnut Creek has to offer, whether that's through art murals.

There's a lot of opportunities within our garages that we can kind of expand the streetscape into these garage facilities.

Okay, moving on to loading and curbside pickup.

So recommendations, uh shift loading zones away from the busy spots.

So again, this is you know, I want to run into Starbucks real quick and grab a cup.

Oh, here's a loading zone.

So pushing those loading zones away from these high highly desired spots.

Um we're gonna improve the loading spaces and kind of avoid that improperly being being used situation.

Modify the 15-minute loading zones to ease enforcement, possibly meter.

This one, it's gonna need a lot of coordination with our enforcement officers, but that'd be some the exact wording and how we roll that out.

Um, would would be in partnership with them.

And so that would improve the ability to enforce the curbside pickup spaces and get that desired um quick turnover that these were intended for in the first place.

Uh, this other one, modify commercial loading time restrictions to end at five, and make the spaces available for food delivery drivers for curbside pickup.

So this is think about a flex loading space, commercial deliveries, they're very, very often in the morning, early afternoon, really at kind of the latest, right around this four or five p.m.

time.

So opening these up as like a flex loading space.

Maybe they're uh food pickup, drop off, or food pickup drivers.

Maybe they're dropping um people off to go to dinner or picking them up after a night of fun.

So there's a lot of opportunity to use that flex space.

Uh the fourth one on the list, establish a staging zone for the food delivery drivers.

So giving them a legal staging area for them to be.

So we can have better management and avoid this illegal parking issue that we're having.

And then the last one on this table, study a digital platform for reserving curbside loading spots.

This is that kind of that future focus looking out.

There's a lot of emerging technologies, and this is one of those where um it would reduce the incidence of illegally parked delivery vehicles and again giving the city a better management tool.

So again, how these fill into that goal alignment, but the um the modify the 15-minute curbside pickup spaces, um, can help with that economic vitality again, helping those restaurants as they were first intended to do.

Uh relocating the loading zones can can help with placemaking.

If we if we can get those loading zones, say on minor streets or in commercial lane, we can then instead use that space for you know that beautiful tree that was an example in one of the earlier slides.

Okay, and with that, I will pause for any questions.

And I will say with me tonight, I do have um some consultants who help supported.

So if I look over, please come help.

Alright, any questions from the commission from part one?

I will start with student commissioner if you have any questions.

So I was just wondering, um, how how are you gonna measure the goals that are in your progress towards the goals are not uh data driven?

Um, like do you have a plan for that?

Not yet.

Um we have talked about um kind of creating a prioritization or some type of metrics moving forward to to really gauge that success.

So it has been part of the conversation.

And then I was just wondering uh what's your time frame for these different goals?

Oh, thank you.

Um sorry, each one of these um beautiful tables, there is this um bold um indication at the bottom.

Um we tried to I guess delineate what we thought was near term, where staff near near term is around five years or less.

So what we thought was a near-term implementation, and as we get into the next section, what is gonna need a little bit more than that?

So looking further out.

Thank you.

Commissioner Ash question?

Yeah, I wanted to know all of these um actions, the parking funds a number of key essential activities within the city.

Does this increase potential revenue, not accounting for inflation or things, does by like making more of these spaces available and metered?

Does it what is the impact towards that fund?

So this plan specifically is about the management piece of that.

Um, the actual fund discussion, um it's not part of this plan.

Fair enough.

Um then you talked about a little bit about the holiday impact.

How do you factor that into the decision making process when you're talking, right?

330 days is one thing, and three and thirty-five days is another.

Um just help me understand your your process in analyzing and accounting for that and what you could do differently, maybe in that short window.

Yeah, and that sweet spot of 85%, it's actually uh a design standard across the board.

Um, so shopping centers, they they would never provide as enough parking as a Christmas day as an example, just because the rest of the year would go completely to waste.

So it's about balancing that asset.

Um, what we can do with this information right now is, you know, we we saw we we based on this data how busy it gets downtown.

So it's you know, we can take these recommendations, guide people to where their space is where we anticipate and know their spaces, we can also push, you know, those alternative modes.

We have that free downtown trolley, like we can really push towards those other those other modes.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Pet.

Um, just curious how you decided on 5 p.m.

for the loading zone change, and could it be a little earlier, or it's like 5 p.m.

the earliest you can make that change.

So that time actually came from talking with our enforcement officers.

They were the one they're they're the ones that are out there and they see it.

Um at one point we talked about a little bit earlier.

I think five kind of felt like the comfortable time for them because again, as soon as you open it up, it's gonna be filled.

So it's it's again balancing balancing the the needs of the users, but five is not a hard time, it was just what was recommended to us from our enforcement officers.

Great.

Um and you mentioned a staging area for the pickup.

Do you have any ideas of where that would be, or is that still a TBD?

So it's still technically a TBD.

Um, so some of the other loading recommendations, um, so shift the loading zones away from busy spots.

So, and again, once that commercial loading is done, it becomes that flex zone.

So, you know, maybe those side streets, um, are those staging areas um commercial lane, even though right of way is really tight, there are some sections back there that we that we can designate as um as these flex zones or as these delivery driver zones, the exact spots would have to um would come down later once we get kind of direction that this is where we want to go.

Cool.

And then I'm sorry, I did see the note that said bold equals five years, but it looks like everything is bold.

Is that just because we're in part one and part two, things are gonna be unbolded?

Yeah, okay.

Yes, cool.

Thanks.

All right, thank you.

I just have two questions.

And it won't be like for anyone who's seen the movie back to school.

I won't say I have two questions in 39 parts.

Um, we talked about new meter zones, and I was really keen on you know, in the table it showed improving traffic safety and sustainability is that are we basically saying, in theory, you know, if we put in new zones and charge you higher prices, you're just gonna go away and all of a sudden we have less cars in that area.

Is that the essential premise?

I wouldn't say go away, but the financial incentive is real, and if there is a cheaper option, and we saw the the garage recommendations, we're not recommending increasing the garages.

So if there's a very real cheap alternative just a couple feet away, that's that's that incentive balance where people are they're gonna you know put their wallet to it.

Have we done or could we do an elasticity of demand study?

So the sliding scale of low to high price, superimposed upon the declining sloping demand based upon price.

So yeah, the the way I guess this, my understanding, the way this plan would roll out, if we do move forward, this plan would not recommend that price change.

There would be additional work that have to be done, and then we would bring that to Transportation Commission.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Um a few questions regarding occupancy, um, and I'm sorry if you covered this in a previous commission meeting.

Um do we know the percentage of employees versus visitors for the occupancy?

So um that's something I'm hoping to get at least like a good figure for moving forward, because that is a question that comes up often.

Um in speaking with like our economic um development team, the we do know there's a lot of employees downtown.

Um and there's there's like a a rough estimate where it's like based on square feet, this is how many retail employees we have, and just for the downtown and the study area, we're looking at like 6700 employees, retail employees.

That's not all at the same time, but it's it's spread out through shifts, and so um it's something we're looking to have information on, but the employee numbers it's not a small number.

Yeah, yeah.

Um are there um you talked about the staging areas, which I would imagine is kind of like a cell phone lot kind of at an airport or whatever where you wait until you get a call or whatever kind of thing, right?

Okay, yeah, yeah.

And are there um any park and ride lots or anything like that that are on the periphery of downtown that could be used for that?

Have you guys looked into anything like that?

So, not necessarily park and rides.

Um, we as part of um another one of the recommendations coming up, we have thought about you know, other private lots near downtown.

Um, one of the challenges, especially with these food pickup services, um, when an order gets placed and a driver is assigned, it's based on proximity to that restaurant.

So a lot of what we're hearing is a lot of these drivers, that's one of the reasons why they're taking up these spaces, is to get that proximity and to get that extra little bump.

Interesting.

Um yeah, I I was curious about those larger lots because I was also wondering if they were considered for employees as well who I see a lot of employees who seem willing to drive and scoot to work from the periphery of downtown.

So I was wondering if you were considering lots on the periphery as well for employees.

Part two.

Part two, okay, it's coming.

Got it, got it.

Getting ahead, sorry.

Um digital platform to reserve curbside loading.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

That sounds like a monster to organize and make work.

Yeah, so I mean, there's it it is an emerging space.

Um I believe San Francisco or maybe San Jose, but one of like the curbside loading uh way ways they've rolled this out is there is a physical sign with like a changeable screen.

So it's you know, from this time, the last four digits of this license plate, they're the ones assigned here.

So from an enforcement perspective, they they can match, you got it.

Um there's other options that are maybe more in a digital space where it's all app-based.

Um we could require delivery like commercial delivery companies to make use of this app, and then the app knows where the tr drivers are located and assigned spaces and charges, potentially.

So there's there's digital space and there's also a physical space.

It is an emerging thing, it's something that we could explore.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Sorry, I do have another one.

I just thought of this as you were talking about it.

When you talk about the number of spaces that we have, especially on street, have you already subtracted the spaces that we'll have to remove because of the new daylighting law?

Yes, so yeah, yeah, the that like data collection was done, we had already daylighted downtown.

Okay, perfect.

Thanks.

All right.

Okay.

So moving now into pedestrian and transit space.

So heads and transit, bicycles to come.

So the first recommendation, study a discount or voucher program for businesses to incentivize using rideshare to get to and from downtown, especially to combat DUIs and improve access for seniors and people with mobility challenges.

So thinking back to our local roadway safety plan, DUI, serious injury collision and fatal collisions with actually one of our top 10 collision trends.

And so this would be one of the recommendations to combat that.

So outcome reduce overall parking demand in the area.

It can encourage, you know, maybe new users to the downtown, those that don't want to drive or don't have a car, and it can provide a safe driving alternative when needed.

So the second recommendation here, improve stops, signage, wayfinding, and operations for buses in the downtown outcome, incentivize that mode shift.

Adding curb extensions, improving the visibility for pedestrians and improve roadway safety for all users.

And then this last one, additional safety improvements for other streets on the edge of downtown.

Outcome makes corridors more comfortable for non-vehicle modes, improved safety for all visitors, even those that drove.

So on the right here, speaking of our local roadway safety plan, another one of our collision trends was we saw a lot of a lot we saw, a significant amount of injury collisions and fatalities, and there are large roadways around downtown.

So as part of that plan, we have a countermeasure toolbox.

So really any one of these can be just ways to enhance the safety.

One of them, we have the leading pedestrian interval.

This is that signal timing that we currently have downtown that gives pedestrians an extra three or five seconds to cross before cars start going.

So this is something that we've already done.

And there's there's other things within this plan that we can roll out to kind of improve that comfortable feeling that even if you drove here, as soon as you start walking around downtown, you you can feel that safety.

So the curb extensions and that additional safety improvements, you know, maybe a curb extension here or there can be done in the near term, but when it gets into those physical improvements, there is some type of funding and design and extra thought that needs to be put into it.

And then one of these goals that is filled for each one of these recommendations is that sustainability aspect.

So again, improving the environment for pedestrian and transit users, getting them out of the single or out of vehicles and into these other modes.

So moving now into bicycle recommendations, uh, so this recommendation add low stress, context appropriate bicycle facilities for getting to and from downtown, such as along California Boulevard, North Broadway, Civic Drive, and Newell Avenue, with the outcome more comfortable and viable facilities will induce that mode shift.

So what from the feedback that we heard, it's those larger streets around downtown serve as the barrier.

Maybe once they get within there, the speeds are lower, they do feel safer.

So really creating that comfortable option to get to the downtown area.

And then the example on the right here is from uh San Luis Obispo's downtown area, where they do have the sidewalk, the bike lane, an additional curb enhancement, and then um just behind that planner box is a green loading zones, like a five-10 minute parking spot.

Um, so you know, you still get the bike lane, you still get some parking.

It's just about playing with what space is available within within our roads.

So other bicycle experience and again, these are if we do have these high quality facilities with that buffer protecting bicyclists from traffic.

So study the switch to micromobility devices for food deliveries.

You know, that could be, you know, food delivery robots, or that could just be, you know, like uh having your food delivered by a bicyclist instead of a vehicle.

Uh so the outcome would be reducing demand for curb space, pairing these new facilities with a micro mobility rollout.

Um, and so Walnut Creek right now, it's very walkable, it's parked once and walk, but as we expand into north downtown, west downtown, um, there is a need to just go a little bit past that walking distance.

So encourage that mode shift, increased accessibility to areas outside of our typical walking radius, um, also as part of these high quality high quality facilities.

We can do secure bike parking, um, we know bike parking lockers that are big enough for family cargo bikes, um, e-bike chargers.

This is one that require additional um infrastructure to complete, and then possibly and uh a bike repair station, and all of these encourages really that mode shift to to using a bicycle around downtown.

And um again, pointing out this bold not bold.

Uh we we elected to show these as not bold.

Um again, there is a lot of physical infrastructure and funds and planning that would have to go into something like this, but looking at our our goals again, sustainability is well represented as well as traffic safety, and then the last recommendation section that we have here placemaking and supportive actions, so additional outdoor dining and placement making features.

Uh, this improves the visitor experience to Commissioner Brightman's points.

Uh, one of the recommendations here is the city help identify privately owned garages and coordinate um shared parking arrangements and take that information and bring it to our downtown connection and really act as the conduit to make that a feasible option for our employees in the downtown.

So it would reduce the curb demand and improve that employee experience instead of having to try to try to find a parking space every every workday.

This other one, expand street closures to other streets.

So think about our local street fair or our farmers market.

So when we do have street closures, expanding them or adding additional hours to it.

So you know, by making it larger, we're incentivizing more visitors to the downtown from a safety aspect, these pedestrian-only streets remove that conflict with vehicles, and then the last one here again uh feature feature focused looking out preemptively study policies needed to regulate autonomous vehicles.

Um these autonomous vehicles, it encourages the mode shift or it encourages away from privately owned vehicles.

Um, but we also do need to consider what happens when these cars need to park along the curb and there's no one to pay the meter.

So there's there's just new challenges that or new puzzles to solve with emerging technology.

So again, where these um recommendations fall into our uh goals getting into timeline.

So we are right here in the middle, lower middle, so July 17th, bringing the draft recommendations to TC.

We are looking to bring these draft recommendations to council in early September as part of a study session.

Uh I've the tentative date for that is September 2nd.

Um, so again, we are still actively in this outreach portion.

So we're gonna take your recommendations, take their uh take your feedback, take their feedback, take the feedback from the survey and the businesses, and come back to TC with um this draft plan and then go again to council with that, open it up.

Okay, any questions from part two?

And we'll start with our uh student member Kirsch.

I don't have any questions.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, one thing on the well, are we just on questions or are we on comments?

What are we at here?

Questions.

Okay.

Um questions.

Did you you're gonna love this one in your future proofing?

Um, have you looked at air mobility as part of your curb management program because Bishop I asked because Bishop Ranch has agreed to build out a hub for Archer Aviation to bring people to Bishop Branch from a couple of other hub locations in the Bay Area.

So Megan, do you want to step forward and and uh help with this one?

Yeah, so um, while she walks up here, Megan Mitman um with Fair and Pears helping prepare our curb management plan.

Um lots of conversations.

Archer's a Bay Area company, so it's um kind of an exciting jobs growth industry to be thinking about the opportunities for that.

Um there's lots of conversations with the California Forever uh project up in Solana County about so it is um kind of in the news and in the conversation.

Um the chances that it would be as relevant probably in downtown Walnut Creek from a kind of way that people would arrive and depart is maybe less so than a larger kind of employment complex like Bishop Ranch.

But um drone delivery could be the version of it that would be more relevant in a downtown context.

We talked about sidewalk robots, uh, but there certainly is um, you know, conversations around whether you'd get Amazon deliveries by drone or maybe food deliveries by drone.

Uh, that wasn't though in kind of the purview of of this, it would provide even more flexibility for the curb use for other things, but yeah, we didn't cover it specifically.

Thanks.

Question Patch.

Can you remind me how long this plan is gonna be for?

Because you have the priorities for five years and then the unbolted ones would be 10 years, 15 years.

Umce this plan's adopted, it's it's in place um for so to the like when we could maybe see these low stress bicycle facilities because so much is driven by funding.

You know, it's as grants come available and and really kind of just working them into that pipeline.

Thanks.

I was gonna ask one question, but I have a follow-up question.

Um the way we did the the bike lanes on Wiggit, where it's the lane, the plastic bowlards, and then the parking, is that considered comfortable bike access, or is it only when we see like what was in San Luis Obispo with a real physical barrier like that concrete?

Yeah, so in that previous presentation about Street Boulevard, we talked about class four.

So both Wiggit, Lennon, and what's shown here is class four.

What distinguishes a class four bikeway is that vertical separation from the bike lane and the travel lane.

So that vertical could be um, you know, maybe the bike lane is at grade with the sidewalk and vertically separated by a curb and the parking, maybe it's vertically separated by a parking lane.

So as long as there's a vertical separation between those two travel lanes, the bike lane and the vehicle lane, it's a class four, and that's the most comfortable for our high-speed, high brain roads.

My other question was about the you talked about the pedestrian leading signal timing.

Do we have any data yet?

Positive, neutral, or negative on its impact?

It uh that we staff has done, no, but like it it's overwhelmingly positive, both anecdotally and within the industry were implemented.

Great, thanks.

Alright, and I don't have any questions for this part.

So if questions are done, yeah.

We will uh move to public comment.

Is there anyone in the audience with public comment?

Okay.

We have no members of the public waiting to provide comments.

Okay.

Then we'll open it up to comments from the commissioners.

We'll start with uh student member Kirsch.

No comments.

Okay.

Okay.

So on the bike repair um stations, I love the concept.

Um I know in the Orchards Shopping Center, as part of their plans on day one, there was a lot of nice um, I want to say like four or five, like bike parking with like tool like tool kits and everything, they lasted about a week before they were like destroyed and the screwdriver, even though it was like on an iron chain was gone and everything.

And so I think eventually they it took three years, but they removed all of those because it was just it looked a mess.

So, um, I'm not saying don't do it, because I do see that there's a use and a need, and that encourages people, but just keep in mind what happened over there, and like that's a very friendly like neighborhood-esque shopping center.

And I just don't want it to be a blight, and then we're wondering what we're doing with these things, right?

Yeah, uh, to further clarify that experience, um, even talking with um bicycle advocacy groups that's happening everywhere.

It's just like giving out free expensive tools for the cost of being stolen, you know.

You just got to do the little extra work.

But you know, to combat that, there's high-quality bike repair stations.

Um, often they're um to use BART as an example.

There's a lot of staffed bike parking stations that dual as kind of like a repair shop where you can go buy a tube or something really, really um, it's not a full bike store, but it's kind of that repair station where while you're at work, you can drop your bike off and have it worked on.

Okay, that's cool.

Um, and then I just love that your future proofing and thinking of autonomous vehicles as part of the equation.

Um, and I like how you don't have all the answers, but you're paying attention and you're just including this into a plan that uh as Commissioner Patch points out, it's there's the five year and then there's the forever part of this component, and as technology is changing rapidly, at least if you're asking those questions and putting it in there, I just commend you for doing that because I know a lot of cities that are like no, you know, or just ignore it, right?

And so I think that's good.

Um, and I do know drone delivery is already happening in suburban areas in North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

Um, and California is actually behind for regulatory purposes on that.

And I actually could see some air mobility commute options that could be good, but I mean that could be in the next 10 years.

Um I think LA is doing really well with the Olympics.

They're expecting to to um for 2028, they're expecting to move 15 to 17% of visitors to LA through localized air mobility transit and make that permanent infrastructure.

So just sharing random thoughts about future and everything that might be useless, but we did say innovation wanted we wanted innovation to be one of the goals on the council priority list.

But um, okay.

Uh on slide 17, you have the, I mean, you don't have to go to it if you don't want, but it the um customer experience with garages.

I would just encourage you to also consider that an accessibility goal win.

Um, because if you improve that experience, especially with lights and stuff, it actually improves the accessibility as well for folks.

So uh just want you to get all of your goal credits.

Um, and then um I I'm I guess a little disappointed that some of the biking stuff isn't the priorities.

Um like it just seems like a lot of that was the unbolded items.

I do understand that costs money.

Um, but in particular the secure biking, bike parking or just bike parking in general, I know is in the sustainability action plan.

Um so it is also a city council priority.

Um, and I don't know, if you don't if you don't have places for people to keep their bikes or scooters, etc., then even if you do have lanes, they're not going to use them, right?

There has to it kind of it's a chicken egg situation where you need both for it to work.

So I I definitely don't think you can do all of these things, but maybe providing less secure bike party parking, but more of it in areas of garages that are unused or something of that nature, so it's a little bit more secure than just the racks on the street.

Um I really appreciate that you took our comments from last time and prioritize wayfinding signs.

I think that was something that most of us agreed on that would be important.

I just want to make sure you're considering also to point out where those biking bike parking facilities are, um, because those can sometimes be difficult, even the ones that we already do have.

So it's not just about pointing people to the garages, but also if they're using micro mobility where they can park their items.

Um otherwise, really feel like this is looking great.

I appreciate you incorporating our feedback.

Um I guess I'm a little curious where the survey monkey is posted, and if you've thought about working with downtown businesses or restaurants for them to have it and have their customers fill it out, just like here it is by the reception or billing area or something to get people, especially those who aren't in the Walnut Creek area but are coming here to shop or eat.

Um and also your side, your slides look very pretty.

I just wanted to say that.

Thanks.

Vice chair.

All right, thank you.

Um, fascinating topic, and I just wanted to at a high level mention human behavior and human factors and how they factor into all of this.

So you know, we have some people that they just want to park close to where they're going, no matter what.

And it won't matter what we charge, what the hours are, they're gonna do it.

Um, as much as we may try to encourage or incent otherwise, no different than the exact opposite.

You know, you go out, you've seen people, you go park at the far end of the target parking lot where there's no cars, and someone else is of the same mind as you to get some exercise and all for whatever reason, they park right next to your car, even though there's 5,000 other spots.

It's and I'm just using these as examples of human factors or behaviors that I think trickle into this kind of analysis.

Um thought, and you kind of hit this in a different area.

What about seeing if the large retailers would um validate or pay for customers using the lots?

I know some restaurants validate, uh, but how about Nordstrom, Macy's, um, or some of the other stores.

That might be a very interesting way, um, especially maybe if there was something on the wayfinding that was like, you know, retailers pay for your parking lot usage to get you to go to the lots.

Um, you know, when we talk about meters, adding new zones, increasing hours, increasing rates.

I'll be the contrarian here, and I I would caution strongly against extending hours beyond what we already have and raising rates.

You know, at a certain point, you know, we live in a pretty affluent area, but at a certain point, even though people will be able to afford the higher rate per hour for longer hours, people will eventually just say, ah, forget it.

Walnut Creek's being greedy.

I'm gonna go shop somewhere else.

I'm gonna go eat somewhere else.

My prime example of that is Danville.

It's a very short drive.

I think somebody mentioned in our last meeting, Danville basically brags, hey, we got free parking.

Come on down here and eat here.

Um so we want to be careful that we don't drive people away just out of pure principle, again, going back to human factors or human behaviors because that could really hurt our retailers.

Um, just sort of going in order uh more monthly permits I think would be a great idea for the parking lots.

I think there's some of us who are residents that actually might take up a monthly permit.

Um, and I'm coming from a perspective of we use the lots, especially the city lots.

We don't like to park on the curb, we find it too painful, and we love the lots and the rates are very reasonable.

Um I think controlling the loading zones and you know doing different scenarios with those, I think that's a great idea.

The only idea I thought you had that I would strongly recommend against is putting a meter on a 15 minute loading zone.

Kind of the beauty of that 15-minute loading zone in front of you know Harold's cleaners is I can just drive up there, park, grab my dry cleaning, and hopefully be out of there in five minutes so the next person can get it.

I think if you add a meter, I don't know, because then where do you stop?

Do you start metering the loading zones?

Because that would be the next logical step, right?

Yeah, and um I guess to further clarify where that um specifically came into is from the enforcement piece.

Um the officers right now, you know, you have fifteen minutes, so you have to, you know, stand there and wait.

Um we discuss actively loading, and then again, it's just like, oh, I'm you know, I'm waiting for my order, just five more minutes.

As soon as you put that meter there, if it's unpaid and the officers know this person is not gonna pay it, it's it gives them a way to write that ticket and get them out of the space.

And that was really the again, the curb management, but point taken.

I want us to think about the messaging though, right?

Kid the mess hang on, what's that?

If the messaging is, hey, our doing this makes it much easier for our parking enforcement officers to give you a ticket.

I don't know if that's again that's where we might start driving away, not just out of towners, but our own Walnut Creek residents are gonna go find the dry cleaners up in Concord because I don't get hassled as much.

I just wanted to ask Um, so is like the issue that it's 15 minutes and then people are in there for 20 minutes, 28 minutes, whatever, and then it's the turnover to occupancy.

Uh sorry, can you put that question?

It is I thought it worked.

Okay.

Um, is it a is what you're saying is like the 15 minutes is becomes an issue with the turnover because it's not being turned over actually in 15 minutes.

I'm just trying to make sure I understand the.

Yeah, so the what they were intended for is quick run in, run out, grab that to go order that you placed.

Um speaking about like what that time should be, five minutes felt too short.

Um, so we after some back and forth, it was laying on 15.

Um, but again, the intention was quick turnover, you're running in, you're running out.

Whether it's 15 or 5, it's a quick turnover.

And really, they're kind of just holding spaces right now with many times people are just sitting in the vehicle, either waiting for that order to get assigned to them, or it's open, it's just an open parking spot for them to be.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um I don't know if there's any way.

I don't know what proportion of on any given day the cars that are parking are walnut creek residents versus non-residents.

If there's any way we can give some kind of discount or allowance, especially in the garages to walnut creek residents, you know, that's probably a huge population of people going downtown.

And that's a could be a great way to incent the residents to use the parking lots rather than the curb.

Um any thing you've you talked about things to reduce DUI, anything you can do to reduce DUI, whether it's autonomous vehicles or ride share, that's a big thumbs up.

Um I think all the biking improvement goals is a big thumbs up and all the outdoor dining possibilities, also a big thumbs up.

But I think my overall broadest comment would be when you start playing with meters rates, hours, zoned enforcement.

We should be very careful of the messaging we're sending about our city to the public.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Um great work.

Thank you for this.

Um a priority for me is um thinking about employee parking um and having affordable options for the many employees who work in retail and and um dining spaces.

Um, and like I said, I've I've witnessed um workers park in neighborhoods where it's free and scoot in.

So, you know, I think it's something that they're they're willing to do, and having a space that could be allocated for something like that that's not a neighborhood, because that's not necessarily the best place for them to be for a number of reasons, but um, you know, might be worth looking into.

Um I think looking at expanding the monthly parking program would be a fantastic idea.

Um, and I think I've brought this up before, but um I think it would be good to look at even having specific um types of permits, maybe for day use or even evening use that might cater to different populations, whether it's working populations for businesses that are only open from like you know, nine to five or whatever, or those who work later, or even those who just maybe come into Walnut Creek for nightlife or something like that who want an easy convenient option.

Um I think that that might be something that that could work well.

Um then um something that uh I was thinking of as we were going through all of this.

You know, um, you say the people like to have convenience and park very close to where they're at, and um, maybe people don't prefer to walk, but we have that free downtown trolley, and maybe doing a little bit more education around you know, you're stepping out of the parking garage.

Here's a sign in front of you that says where you headed today, the downtown trolley might drop you off there or close by might be an interesting option because that would be nice to see that used a bit more.

Um, and in the summer there's AC in there, there's a lot of good things about that trolley, right?

So, I think it'd be good to see that marketed a bit more.

Um, and I thank my colleagues for everything that they said.

I think um I think that's all that I have that's new.

Um any other comments, Commissioner Bets.

You you sparked an idea.

Um, I know the trolley is a county connection, Bass, correct?

Yeah, so maybe there's a way that we can work with the chamber of commerce or something of that nature to get um a smaller but more frequently run like golf cart or something that takes us from takes people from the garages that are on the outskirts into the high priority areas, especially since you have something around like the DUIs and the senior transportation and such, that might be a way to get them to park on the outskirts but not have to walk.

Um that doesn't help with DUIs, but this it was listed with the moving seniors around.

Um, and since they're the businesses that would benefit from it, they might be willing to like co-sponsor it with the city or something of that nature.

Commissioner Ash.

Well, two things.

One on building on that and what the chair said about employee parking, maybe particularly around that holiday bump.

Maybe we can't offer that golf cart all the time, but maybe like during that holiday bump, there's something where employees need to park a little bit further, and it could be free that one month, somebody pays for it somehow, and then we like guide them in via however mini transit or something to help offset all that, and that helps your occupancy goals.

Um the the other question I thought of that I heard from some of the comments was when you talk about the wayfinding, we talk a lot about the signs, but there's apps, right?

And so, like now on my car, it says, like, oh, there's gonna be a fire truck, you know, a mile ahead of you on the highway, right?

And that's tied into Google Maps and Apple Maps.

Where is do you know just where that's going?

Maybe I'm on a future proofing mode, like where that's going though to help tie in my parking to my Google map and everything.

Yeah, so um it's called so as part of this grant, uh MTC one of the requirements is that when we did this existing data collection, we collect information and put it into uh a programming language called CDS curb data specification.

Um so the idea is once this I guess existing conditions is out there, those apps, those new technologies that are looking to improve have this uh like computer language to use.

So this plan is getting us a little bit closer to that.

Awesome, cool.

And uh just one last comment from me.

Um regarding, you know, trying to lessen DUIs and things like that as a person who's been hit by a drunk driver.

I'm passionate about this as well.

And um for those who make a responsible decision and might leave their cars downtown, do they get towed, do they get ticketed?

What happens?

And is there a way to do like a sticker that that you know if somebody makes responsible decision that you know they wouldn't be pinged?

I know that would be really hard to do, but that'd be great.

If somehow we could come up with something like that, that's like don't tell me don't ticket me, I made a responsible decision tonight.

You know what I mean?

It's a great idea.

So what I will say is uh towing does not happen often.

So that's it it would likely just be a ticket.

It's it's not anything that our enforcement officers actively pursue as towing.

Yeah, okay.

Well, anything to help that I'd appreciate.

Okay, I think we're all done with that.

Yeah?

Yeah, okay, lovely.

We are going to move on to, and thank you very much for all that work.

Um, we are going to move on to item C.

Uh, we have an appointment to make tonight.

Um, the commission our commission needs to select a representative to the Contra Costa Transportation Authority Citizen Advisory Committee.

Um, I invite staff to please uh present on this item.

This was just mentioned uh when we did rotations that uh Jared would reevaluate this chair seat um in at this meeting, and so just want to bring it up and see if we're ready for the handing of the baton or if we have other reasons to keep it the way it is.

Uh so I am done with my tenure as chair, uh, thank goodness in some ways, uh, because I serve multiple terms and it was a privilege.

Uh, but I really would like to stay on and at least continue the the rest of the full term here because I'm enjoying it, I'm learning, I feel like I'm contributing and I come back here with knowledge that I gain from there.

So and before we move on, I want to see if there's any um public comment on this item.

Seeing none.

All right, thank you.

Um do um any other commissioners have any comments on this or yes.

Yeah, I think what we discussed last time was we wanted Commissioner Ash to finish his chair duties, but then we thought we also might want to consider rotation so that other people get an opportunity if they desire to sit on the committee.

Okay.

Any other comments on this or questions?

I have no desire.

I will let everyone know that.

I don't have the capacity right now.

I can't give up that evening.

Yeah, I I I also think it's really important that we rotate these um the duties, yeah.

Thank you, yes.

Um I do not have the capacity, so I'm fine if Commissioner Ash continues.

Would you like to make a motion?

Sure.

Uh I have a motion that Commissioner Ash continues on the committee.

Could I ask that we modify that motion to for the next year?

I accept that friendly amendment.

I'll second that motion.

Oh okay.

I think we've been where you've got if I recall.

Um I think we vote on it every year in March, like this committee could reappoint.

So I think, because I think that's when this came up, right?

So we're gonna defer to the next March one?

Okay.

Right, keep so do we even need a motion?

Did we need to keep keep it to July though?

Because isn't that when it was like we want it to line it up with the committee's changing things so we don't run into if our person is we could appoint in March and then you can actually switch in July if that's one that rotates there.

They don't rotate as regularly.

Um most people are appointed for four years.

Yeah.

I think we might be one of the few that do it every year.

I mean, maybe others do, and I just don't know, but I know at least the at-large seats in the county do it every for like a a more longer term cycle, so there's not the turnover.

Can I ask how many years you've been on?

Four.

Since 2020.

Three is chair.

So it might be nice to even with that four-year to give someone an opportunity.

Um but I think everyone's saying they're tapped out, so maybe wait another year before considering another volunteer.

If you want to serve on it, if you are desiring to serve on it yet another year, right?

So I I think the motion basically stands that until March of 2026, Commissioner Ash stays on the committee.

Okay.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Okay, great.

Uh call roll, please.

Uh student commissioner Kirsch, aye.

Commissioner Ash.

Aye.

Commissioner Patch.

Aye.

Uh Vice Chair Krelling.

Aye.

Chair Brightman.

Aye.

Okay.

All right.

Congratulations.

Thank you for your service.

I'm sure my wife, if she's watching, was like, why do you sign up for something else?

All right.

Item number five.

Um at this time I'd like to invite commissioners and staff to provide reports on their activities and or other announcements.

Any reports?

No.

I don't know, I'm tired.

Just a couple suggestions.

Um I may have made this one before.

Um I think it'd be great if the commissioners got like an email notice of events.

There was that uh Larkey Park traffic neighborhood event.

I would have actually enjoyed attending as a commissioner to listen to the public.

Um so if if we can just get heads ups of those items, um that would be awesome.

And the other thing I was thinking about is, and I don't know if we can play a part in this or not as a commission.

Um over the last couple weeks, there's just been really tough traffic around the crossings construction, you know, in Ignatio and Civic.

You know, I don't know if some of that was from the water main break or just and then there's also been at least on next door, people were talking about they were allowed to do loud construction, you know, late at night, but that's I know that's out of our domain.

But what would be interesting is is there any way we can give any input on when lane blocking is allowed for construction projects because what I noticed was one of the left turn lanes from Ignatio Westbound to Civic coming towards the southbound was really right around the morning commute, right?

Like the the absolute worst time, and and it might be nice if the commission could have some kind of input on those types of blockages.

And those were my suggestions.

Thanks.

Didn't we have like a bike safety?

Yeah.

Did anybody go to that?

You'll get an update with the stuff.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Also, just wondering if staff has an update on the woodlands neighborhood study that you guys had put a lot of time and effort into.

All right.

Any others?

Your updates?

Um, yeah.

So since we last met, um the CIP and traffic engineering submitted uh for the state transportation improvement program.

Um I don't want to say grant, but it is like a list of projects trying to get money allocated towards it.

So we submitted a project on um Oakland Boulevard to basically redesign the street, improve sidewalks.

Um, this project is already approved in our capital investment program, so it's in our CIP list.

Um it's also mentioned in the West Downtown Specific plan.

And so here we're just um casting a wider net to try to find funding uh to improve that.

Um we did have a neighborhood meeting in June with the um Larkey neighborhood to hear some concerns and um try to see what we can do to address uh traffic safety.

Um and then uh Brianna and the CIP team have been working on this design on Oakland, which has just been recently installed this this week.

Uh there may still may be some finishing touches out there, but on Trinity, which is just Civic going up the hill, and then on Oakland, there's new uh bicycle facilities.

And then my last update to two parts, and I'm gonna have our newest employee Edwin come on up and share about the bike rodeo, and I'll have him introduce himself.

All right, good evening, commissioners.

Uh my name is Edward Martinez.

I'm the new traffic engineering uh assistant traffic engineer for here.

Uh I started June 2nd.

Um, so far I've had the opportunity to help out for the two outreach events that we did, uh the Larkey Park neighborhood meeting and as well as the bike rodeo that was organized by the police department uh in collaboration with uh traffic engineering.

Uh the event just last weekend on Saturday was uh quite a success.

We had a turnout uh a little bit low just because we had two swim meets at the same time in the general area of the Civic Park area.

Um, however, we did uh well PD got donations from Target that we were able to, you know, go out and procure two little goodie bags to um what is it to raffle out.

Um, since the event was three hours, we did do uh two raffles, one in the morning and one in the late, one in the early morning and one in the late late morning.

Um so the families did have a good time.

Um traffic engineering assisted uh the police department in creating an obstacle course, which that was really fun for the small youth uh bicycle users to use.

Um learned a lot from police, um, the park rangers, and then us in engineering.

So it was quite quite uh successful.

We do have some pictures, but we didn't um create a presentation, but I know Matt will share it at later time.

There you go.

Congratulations on a successful event.

Thank you.

Um, just to get more turnaround of um youth riders out there.

Yeah, great.

Okay, thank you.

Just welcome to the team and um to honor your first meeting.

We're we're letting you out here early tonight.

Oh, excellent.

No, there were some really good questions, so thanks.

Our next regular meeting is September eighteenth, twenty twenty five.

What?

Um, uh Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Until that time, the United States had maintained neutrality.

Although it had since March of that same year, supplied the Allies with war materials through the Land Lease Act.

During the war, over sixteen million Americans served in the United States military.

The European theater was a horrific fight.

Many American soldiers paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our country's freedom.

Following the defeat of the German army in the Arden, the Allies pushed back toward the Rhine in the heart of Germany.

With the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remogen, the Allies crossed the Rhine in March 1945.

The Germans surrendered Berlin to the Soviets on May 2nd, 1945.

After the war, American soldiers returned home to start a new life.

Here are some stories from local veterans who served our great country in Europe during and after World War II.

We were shipped over in September and became part of General Patton's Third Army.

We went into the Third Army at Nancy, was where we first saw combat.

That's southeast of Paris.

And thought through, I was in the artillery, I didn't want the infantry.

When I enlisted, I could pick out what I wanted.

And I wanted to be an ammunition truck driver because there was a little thrill involved there.

Because all it takes is uh round into the load and you make a big hole in the road.

So that was my duty was to keep the 105 Howitzers supplied with ammunition.

There were 12 guns in our battalion, three batteries, three firing batteries, four guns.

And when we got to Metz, we thought we were going to spend the winter there because the information was that it was going to be a severe winter.

The Germans wouldn't do anything.

We got there on uh 14th of December into Metz, and on the 16th, the Germans broke through on the uh so-called bulge, our dens as uh uh event, and General Patton ordered us to go north to just keep going north till you run into Germans.

We had no idea where we were going.

So the way they moved the division was straight uh his idea.

They leapfrogged the infantry, pick them up in the truck, run them up away, dump them out, go back and get the others and leapfrogged them.

And of course, in the artillery, we were hauling our guns, and I had a full load of ammo.

So when we got into uh Luxembourg first, the border of Luxembourg is where we met the Germans, and then it was just misery until January the 20th, 25th when we left.

Because the temperature dropped so low, we were in snow.

One night it dropped at 19 below zero, and we had kids freeze to death in their foxholes.

Uh there was one incident I wanted to tell you about in France before we got to Metz.

It was the night we got captured.

We hadn't had a warm meal for some time.

Bob and I were sitting in our ammo truck.

It was about 10 o'clock at night when Lieutenant Allen, the ammunition officer, came by with his weapons carrier, said, I want he said, I want you guys to hop in the back.

I want to take you back to the battery for a hot meal.

So he went around and picked up all six of us.

Two to the truck.

And the three batteries, and on the way, we were riding along with the back flap down, and all of a sudden the truck stopped.

And the driver, Lieutenant Allen's driver spoke fluent German.

We could hear it speaking to some Germans and German answering.

And Lieutenant Allen lifted the flap and said, Boys, we've just been captured.

Now I don't want anyone, I don't want anyone being hurt.

Be very careful.

When you get out, hold your weapons with a gun, the barrel up, inject your clip and the cartridge in the chamber and lay your guns down, put your hands up.

Don't try anything funny.

So when I threw that flap up and looked out and saw those Germans, it was about 10 30 by this time.

And it was raining as usual in France.

But I could make out these ugly German helmets.

And there they were, seven of them with their guns pointing at us.

So we all followed the order except for Corvell, who pulled the trigger and fired around off and almost got us all shot.

The Germans, what they had us disarmed, turned the guns around and handed them to us, held them out to us, took their steel helmets off and threw them in the ditch, and one of them said, Comrade, haven't he cigarettes?

And we were buddies right then.

I had, I gave uh out cigarettes, I gave out what little candy I had in my pocket.

And uh the we were marching them along the road, followed by the weapons carrier, and Lieutenant Allen said, hell, they're not gonna run away.

So one of the fellas could go with them to the PW compound, which was just half a mile up the road.

We all got back in the back of the weapons carrier, and we hadn't gone very far when the driver ran smack into the back of a six-by loaded with German lands, and we got all tumbled up, and I I was bleeding pretty severely from a cut on my chin, and Bob, my partner, was cut from the gun site, my gun site.

So we were offered the purple heart, and both Bob and I turned it down because I wouldn't want to go through life saying I got a purple heart for a fender bender.

The Germans were coming through, you know, infiltrating, dressed in American uniforms, and driving American equipment.

So one night in particular, I was back at the battery, and I was told I had guard duty from midnight to four in the morning and to take Porky with me.

Porky was very unreliable.

I asked for the password, and the first sergeant said, Heck, I don't know what it is.

He said, think of something.

That's not a very smart thing to do.

So Porky and I were out on this very frozen dirt road.

The fellows were in the barn and the officers were in the bar of the farmhouse.

That was all of us there.

And we heard a Jeep coming from the east where the Germans were.

Porky immediately said, I'll cover you from the barn.

Well, when he got the barn, he couldn't even see me.

Well, he was frightened.

He just ran off.

When the Jeep stopped and I leaned down to look under the top, I could see that the passenger was wearing an American uniform, officer's uniform, because he had bars on his shoulder.

They were gleaming.

And I knew right away he had to be a German.

Because American officers don't wear bars in combat.

There was a man in, somebody in the back seat who had a blanket pulled up to his chin, and I knew he had a gun on me.

I could feel it.

And the driver wouldn't even look at me, just stared straight ahead.

I said, Well, he doesn't speak English.

The passenger spoke excellent English.

I asked him for the password.

He said, Hell, I don't know, do you?

And I didn't know it either.

So I asked him uh who won the World Series in 1940, and he said, I don't follow baseball.

How would I know that?

So I asked him where he was from.

He said, Oakland, California.

I said, Well, my God, I'm from Berkeley.

Right away I thought of a question.

Where's the best place to get a hot dog in Oakland?

He said, Cross from Roller Rink on Telegraph Avenue.

Caspers, across from the Union High, or Oakland High, Oakland Tech, rather, on Broadway, down by Lake Meridado on East 14th.

Well, I knew all those locations.

I said, Oh hell, you're an American, but I knew he wasn't.

He said, What did you think I was?

A crowd?

So I said, okay, you gotta go.

If I'd have tried to stop him, I'd have been a dead man.

That guy in the backseat would have nailed me and off they would have gone.

And basically, what they did was change roadsides around.

Maybe blow up a little bridge here and there, but that was about the most problem they cost us.

So I was glad to get rid of them.

Well, when the uh the bulge ended in January, about mid-January 24th or 25th, we crossed the Rhine, start chasing the Germans, and it was just go every day because they were just falling back.

And they were surrendering by battalions, companies, individuals.

You just tell them keep walking.

We didn't have a way to handle them.

And we went up into Austria and from Austria to uh Czechoslovakia, and on May the 9th, the war ended, and uh we met the Soviet army in Czech Slovakia.

We returned to Upper Austria, where we were supposed to prepare to go to the Pacific, and President Truman dropped the bombs, that ended the war, and I've always said, Thank you, Harry.

Zigzagging around, uh evading the submarines, and one of our troops ships got sunk a mile ahead of us, and we never stopped to pick them up.

That was the rule.

The convoy had to go, you had to go.

I mean, uh two sailors on our ship fell overboard and never picked them up, just kept on going.

I thought it was kind of cruel, but uh that's the way that that's the way it goes.

But anyway, I landed in Lahar, France, and from there on we took a troop train.

I got to Repo Depot, and he said, Well, I'm sorry, he said, There's not enough casualties in the Anna Tank where you took your training in or have to stick in the machine gunners.

But he said, Don't worry, he said the average life up there is a minute and a half, and that scared the living heck right out of me.

So I got to my uh company H, 35th Infantry, in Reims, France, uh, right around Christmas time.

We had a Christmas dinner, and right after Christmas dinner, Patton gave the orders, General Patton gave the orders.

Come on, get going.

We've got to go to Bass Lone.

Where the hell is Bass Stone?

I don't know.

But we found out, we got to Bass Done and dropped me off, me and another fella in a foxhole.

This is right out of Basketball.

And uh we got in the foxhole and this fellow started crying.

And uh he was 29 years old, he had two kids.

And I said, What's wrong?

He said, Well, he said, I'm my feet are freezing, and he said, I'm missing my home.

And I said, mine are freezing too.

I said, uh, what should we do?

He said, I said, well, you take off your shoes and I'll take out my shoes, or rubber feet all night long.

Even circulation.

So there was a lot of frozen feet up there.

And uh, I froze my feet that my bottom of my feet were white for 30 years.

Anyway, in Bass Tone, uh we uh set up our guns and so forth.

And it was snowing, it was about two feet of snow, and uh about 20 below zero is one of the coldest weathers that they had there.

The medics up there in Bastone couldn't get to all the fellows that got killed because uh there was under fire, and there's too many that got killed.

There's so many uh got killed there in Bass Own.

I think the estimate was a hundred thousand Germans and eighty thousand Americans.

Got killed in that one battle within the month.

The medics couldn't get to all the all the fellas, and uh because the Germans would fire at the medics, and the medics uh had the white or a red cross and the white background on our helmets.

No guns whatsoever.

We stayed there for about two to three days, and then we moved up to a ditch along the road with my gun, with our gun, and the rifleman right alongside of us, and we was to to guard that road.

Well, on a machine gun, you're on the guard two hours and off four.

It only takes one man on a machine gun.

And uh so when I was on a machine gun, the rifleman, we heard some noise, and a rifleman said to me, he says, Hey machine gunner, he said, Don't open up fire until I do.

I said, Okay, I'll hold fire.

And all at once we heard some noises, and here come five bare back horses on the road to draw our fire.

So it was my turn to go off.

I went back to a shed about 500 feet, 500 yards back, and uh, where we slept for a couple hours, and all at once all hell broke loose.

There's bullets to start to go through.

So this was in the shed, 500 yards.

The bullets started going through, and Sergeant said, go on and retrieve the gun.

Help the fellow, you know, it takes two fellows who carry the gun.

He said, Go up there and help them.

So I ran up there, and the riflemen were coming back, said, What the heck are you coming up here for?

He said, The Germans are coming, we're we're in retreat.

And the bullets were flying around.

I finally got up to the gun, and when I was pulled a belt out of the gun, I saw three or four Germans take an aim.

I stuck the belt back in and we mowed them down.

And we ran back with the with the uh with the uh gun.

He had the tripod and I had the gun zigzagging, otherwise we got the kill for sure after the war was over in Germany, but uh it ended in you know in August, I believe it was, and uh that's the only thing that saved our lives really was Truman dropping it, atomic bomb.

The division went overseas October 6th from New York, arriving in Marseille, France on October 20th, uh 1944.

Um we finally got online November 1st, replacing the 45th 45th infantry division, all right.

I was an infantry scout, and the division in my regiment was outside of a place called Fortress Du Beach in Alsace Lorraine.

It was a city that hadn't been taken, it was a fortified city, had not been taken in 200 years, and the division finally took it.

However, on the 2nd of January 1945, I and another fellow were sent out as perimeter guards on a uh 30 caliber machine gun.

And uh we couldn't see down the hill to the road, but uh we kept firing at people we thought we saw when they they finally knocked us out with concussion grenades, they being the Germans, and we were um taken down to the bottom of the hill and uh frisked and then sent into the fortress.

One of the interesting things was I had in my field jack pocket uh a German rifle cleaning kit, and the idea was that if they found that on you, they'd have figured you had killed a German, and they'd do something horrible to you.

So anyway, the uh the person that took the frisked me took the um uh cleaning kit out of my jacket, field jacket pocket, looked at it and looked at me and said, Deutsch!

I didn't answer.

He then tried to give it to a private on the side of the road, and the private said, nine nine, which meaning no, no, and then he just threw it in the ditch, which I breathed a big sigh of relief.

As I said, we were taken into the prison.

And then over the next few days we were interrogated.

But unfortunately, the Germans, for their part, could not speak English that well, so they learned nothing from us.

They then marched us to a few villages, put us on 40 and eight cars, which were meant for 40 men or eight horses, and there were 65 men in the car, and transported us to a place called Ludwigsburg in southern Germany, where we were incarcerated.

I was I felt that I uh my life was saved by a Nisi soldier who was a medic with that 442nd regimental combat team.

And uh he examined me because he was the Germans were having him examine all the troops to see if they were able to walk from Ludwigsburg to Munich, which was quite a distance.

Um he told me I'd had to stay right there because I had pleurisy.

But the Germans took it to be TB and they kept me in a room with eight Frenchmen and one pole for the remainder of the war, and um thinking I had TB, and their treatment was opened the windows wide, of course it was snow on the ground, the dead of winter, and uh did a lot of other things that I found out later were things that were done in U.S.

medicine years and years before.

We were finally liberated by the first French Army, and then I was transported to a hospital in Paris and then flown home to Letterman hospital in San Francisco.

We were awakened early in the morning with a roar of thousands of aircraft painted with white stripes, the invasion stripes, to prevent the catastrophe that occurred at Sicily when naval gunners shot down our carriers with paratroopers, and we knew that we were set to go into the invasion, and we had the waterproof all of our weapons and trucks and so forth.

Um the invasion actually began on June 6th with the airborne operation and then the troops landing.

We were moved down into the Southampton residential areas, and then eventually several days after that, boarded the landing craft tank LCTs for transport over to France.

Well, I can tell you going in, we uh we could see the bursts on the beach.

We were firing, we were under the fire of the USS Texas 16 inch guns going overhead.

We hit Omaha Beach and proceeded up the uh, we dropped our ramp and uh went into four feet of water.

The keep went completely under, but we were all waterproof, and then the beach was littered with the wounded which would go back to England on our LCT.

We proceeded up the uh exit off the beach and went into firing position, firing on St.

Lowe, which was a key city there.

Um after that, we got into the hedgerow fighting, which is terrible.

The intelligence people had been informed that hedgerows were in France, but they discounted it because the hedgerows in England were just a few feet high.

We got in there and found 12 foot high, eight to twelve foot high, uh hedgerows, which had stymied the Romans when they came through there.

Each one was well defended, the Germans and our guys had trouble getting through.

And finally, they developed a tank, like a bulldozer that could take down some of those.

We drove the Germans out of there and then went into a stalemate of a type until July 25th, when again thousands of bombers caused a big breakout, and that's when Patton's army came ashore and went operational August 1st.

That's when we broke out of Normandy and zipped around in our own Blitz Krig and headed towards Paris.

We're north of France, run out of gas, which had been transferred over to Patton for a quick strike into Germany.

Eventually we passed on the north side of France.

Patton was on the south side and entered Belgium on the 3rd September and then proceeded.

We were chasing the Boch, the Germans, and went on to Masterkallen, and then we got up to the border of Germany at Herline, Holland, and began firing into the 800-year-old beautiful city of Aachen, which was Charlemagne's throne and birthplace, and destroyed that with uh tremendous fighter.

It had no military value.

It was a psychological victory for us because Hitler had said we would never take a town in Germany.

So after that, we proceeded from there to the Hurtgen Force, which was again not another military objective, but the higher-ups felt that it should be taken, and it was a very bloody, terrible battle, a meat grinder.

And from then, that's when the Battle of the Bulbs occurred.

A good quarter of a million men, thousands of tanks, and proceeded to with an assault against some weak divisions that were in there being refitted, and because they had been hurt in the Rutgern Forest and poured into and made a bulge in the lines, which is where the name come from, came comes from.

From the Ardennes Forest, which is the Ardennes offensive, actually, the real name, and caused panic of all sites.

We had regiments that surrendered and uh it was a cold, cold, coldest winter in 40 years in Germany.

We had no protective clothing.

We had people freezing.

I have frozen hands and feet at this point.

And uh eventually by February 3rd we had pushed them back out of uh the bulge and back into Germany.

We found the Germans to be well prepared, they had better tanks than we had, they had better equipment, they had winter clothing, and uh we were totally unprepared because the IR-ups had felt the war would be over by Christmas of that year and hadn't stockpiled cold weather clothing.

December 16th they poured out onto unsuspecting units and overran them, and uh it finally ended when we got superior forces in there about February 3rd.

Uh Bastone was cut off, we were surrounded.

That was the 101st Airborne was in there with the 10th Armored Division and uh took a tremendous beating, but and the weather was very overcast, like what we have today, and the Air Force could not drop supplies or ammo or anything, but they held out, and finally, Christmas Day, the skies cleared, and the Air Force was able to drop supplies and ammo.

They eventually broke out and uh then the Germans began to retreat back into Germany behind the Siegfried line.

Interestingly enough, through France and Belgium and Holland, we were met by the liberated people holding out wine, throwing flowers, jubilant, as we crossed into the Germany, we saw white sheets hanging from windows, a very dour, depressed people who were scared to look at us.

They had been told that we raped and murdered and uh stay away from us.

So that's what we found a complete difference.

But rear echelon, now they were fighting for their homeland, and the SS troopers committed massacres like Malmadi where they uh gunned down, uh surrendered field artillerymen in a field, and uh we got back at them for that, but uh then as we pushed on we began to break out onto the plains and our tanks could start, and from there we began the big rush towards the Elba River, where we would then supposedly reach Berlin, uh, come across uh prisoner of war camps and concentration camps and liberated them.

Uh the POW camps were not so bad.

Uh they were, I guess, better fed other than the Poles and Russians, which the Germans hated, but the concentration camps were gaunt skeletons that we saw, and without any instructions from higher up sort of to what we should do.

We in our kindness wanted to feed them our high calorie caloric uh rations, our chocolate bars and our sea rations, and inadvertently killed a number of them who just couldn't stand that.

Now they have special rations for people that are in that condition.

So we uh overran those and then proceeded on, getting lots of surrenders, which all we can do is send them to the rear, and we headed for the Elbe River on the big rivers, and we got units across.

We had second armored across, and the Germans tried to knock out the pontoon bridges by floating frogmen down and doing bombing, aerial bombing, and they we first saw the two ME 262 jet planes that came in, and uh uh I got across to see the Russians on the other side, but at that point, by agreement, we were to hold at the Roar at the Elbe River and let the Russians take Berlin.

Eisenhower had been advised he would get have a hundred thousand casualties, and there was a whole political thing involved in the Russians taking Berlin.

Uh VE Day came along and they celebrated.

We did not.

We were emotionally and physically worn out, and we also knew we had to go to the Pacific.

We had already were already scheduled for it.

But the Russians went a little wild on their side of the river, firing flares, weapons, um, uh accordion music we could hear, dancing.

Their war was basically over.

I joined the military seven days before Hiroshima was bombed.

I was a fortune in Illinois.

And there, while I was there, I saw thousands of German prisoners of war, and they were elated that the war would soon be over, and that they would go back to their lives.

I ended up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and took what amounted to a 17-week training program.

I went in as a 135-pound kid, and came out seventeen weeks later, weighing a hundred and seventy pounds.

And I was really uh powerhouse physically because it was very tough.

Ironically, I was trained to be a heavy machine gunner and part of a four-man crew of 81 millimeter mortars.

Heavy weapons, they called it.

Also, I learned everything that they could teach me about fighting in the jungles, identifying Japanese airplanes, even learning 50 or so idioms in Japan because when I went into training, we were still at war with Japan, and the troops now, many of the troops, hundreds of thousands, were being assembled for the invasion of Japan.

Ironically, I ended up in Europe in December of 1945.

When I arrived in Germany in 1945, the end of the year 1945, I saw a total devastation.

Cities had just been razed completely.

There were tens of millions of displaced people.

These people were not only displaced, they had no idea where to go, where their homes were, where their families were.

And uh I saw these people, uh, and wondered how I got there and what could I do to make their life better.

And only as an 18-year-old kid at the time, I realized that this time and place in my life was significant.

I ended up joining the 5th Infantry Regiment in a little village called Ebelsburg, Austria.

That's right outside of Linz.

And the second day I was there, I was in formation, and I saw this corporal staggering.

It looked as if he were drunk, and the first sergeant walked over to him, put his arm around him, and gently moved him away from the formation, and he went into the building.

And when I saw his face, I was astounded.

His face was a death mask, his eyes were piercing, his hands were trembling, and he was walking with the help of the sergeant back to the building.

I was astounded, I didn't know what it was.

And later on that afternoon, I went to the sergeant and I said, That corporal, what is wrong?

What's wrong with him?

And he said, Oh, Corporal Shields.

He was in the advance group of the 42nd Rainbow Division that liberated the cow.

And when he saw the survivors, and he smelled the horrible, horrible death camp, the gas ovens.

He jumped on a tank that had a 50 caliber machine gun mounted.

He saw six German prisoners of war, and he killed them all.

He killed the six men, screaming, yelling, and raged.

Almost insane.

I will never forget Corporal She's face.

It was a mask of death.

Walnut Creek salutes all who have served our great nation.

You will not be forgotten.

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