HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-06-13 Planning & transportation commission Summary Minutes_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Planning & Transportation Commission
Action Agenda: June 13, 2018
Council Chambers
250 Hamilton Avenue
6:00 PM
Call to Order / Roll Call
6:05pm
Commissioners Alcheck and Riggs absent
Chair Lauing: Thank you. I’d like to call the Planning and Transportation Commission regular
meeting of June 13th, 2018. Would you please call the roll?
Ms. Yolanda Cervantes: Commission Alcheck? Commission Gardias?
Commissioner Gardias: Present.
Ms. Cervantes: Chair Lauing?
Chair Lauing: Present.
Ms. Cervantes: Vice-Chair Monk?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Present.
Ms. Cervantes: Commissioner Riggs? Commissioner Summa?
Commissioner Summa: Present.
Ms. Cervantes: And Commissioner Waldfogel?
Commissioner Waldfogel: Present.
Ms. Cervantes: Five present, two absent.
Chair Lauing: Thank you.
Oral Communications
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2
Chair Lauing: The first agenda item is oral communications on any agenda item not on the
agenda. I don’t have any cards. Where there any things not on the agenda that people want to
speak too? Ok.
Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
City Official Reports
1. Assistant Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments
Chair Lauing: Ok then we go to the Assistant Director’s report? Assistant Director Lait.
Ms. Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning: Thank you, thank you Chair Lauing and good
evening Commissioners. Just a couple of times to report one is on your… on the dais, you have
a flyer for a community event that we’re going to host over at the downtown public library. This
is related to the Housing Work Program that the Commission has been reviewing and we’re
anticipating… this will start at 6 o’clock. We anticipate sort of a brief little introduction and this
open house style or idea station sort of layout where people will get some information about
some of the key items that we’re discussing and have an opportunity to offer some feedback
and engage with Staff in a conversation about their thoughts on some of these important issues
that we’re addressing to increase housing production. So that’s going to take place on June 28th
at 6 o’clock at the downtown library El Camino Room.
With respect to City Council, on Monday the City Council supported a PTC recommendation on
the PF zoning change that would allow essential service facilities and City parking garages on
the PF zone to deviate from development standards. This was something that the Commission
had looked at.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Then for the upcoming schedule… oh, I think we’re good on the upcoming schedule but I did
want to let the Commission know that a recirculated draft environmental impact report… at
least exerts of the draft environmental impact report for the Stanford University General Use
Permit was released yesterday. I’ll send you a link to those documents so that you can take a
look at that. Given the Council’s upcoming break in July, we’re going to quickly review that
document and get scheduled for the City Council on June 25th a draft comment letter for the
Council to consider. And so, I’ll shoot you that link so you can take a look at the documents
yourself if you’re so interested.
And let me just take a look and see if I have any other notes here. The only other thing is to just
talk about the… you have an At Places memo with an updated tentative schedule. We missed
the mark by a wide margin I think on this last one. We wanted to clean that up so you had a
sense for what’s happening in the next couple months. So that concludes the report.
Chair Lauing: Ok.
Study Session
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3
2. Study Session on Traffic Safety, Operations and System Monitoring Projects and
Activities Initiated Within Palo Alto in 2017.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Lauing: The first official business item is a study session on traffic safety operations and
system monitoring projects and activities within Palo Alto. So, this is a study session, there’s no
action to be taken but comments would be… are going to be welcomed from the Commission.
Commissioner Gardias did you have a question?
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I had a question and I’m sorry I just realized I should have asked
that the possible agenda changes and revisions. Just when I see the audience I believe the
majority of the audience came to discuss the second… Item 3 on the agenda and I was
wondering if that is true would it be possible to with all respect and I know that I am late but
just to flip this. So, we could just go through the item that we already reviewed at one point of
time and pretty much let them go home.
Chair Lauing: I only have two speaker cards and both of them were for the item that is next up
so I’m not sure that’s the case. Are there a lot of people that want to speak to the second item
which is the map? It doesn’t look like it Commissioner Gardias.
Commissioner Gardias: Can we poll the audience and if they are then maybe I’m wrong so in
this case let’s continue.
Chair Lauing: So, it’s for the second item. Ok so before we take the speaker cards there’s a Staff
presentation on this so we’ll hand that over to Staff.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning: Thank you, Chair. We’re going to have our
traffic engineering lead, Rafael, lead you in a presentation about the first part of this traffic
study, safety, and operations report. And then Ruchika is going to follow in with another
portion of that report and we’re happy to answer any questions that at the conclusion.
Mr. Rafael Rius: Thank you Chair Lauing and Commissioners. My name is Rafael Rius, I’m the
traffic engineering lead for the City and as Jonathan mentioned we’re here to give a brief
summary of the first traffic safety and operations report that we plan on making an annual
report.
First a little bit of an introduction to our team. This is a somewhat recent picture of our team,
there’s currently nine of us Staffed with three vacancies so we have a high vacancy vacant
positions… a high rate of vacant positions right now. But as a team, we cover a wide range from
transportation planning, safe routes to school, CIP Projects and really Ruchika to my right and I
are here to discuss some… really the traffic operations and safety program that we’re currently
in.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Really the goals of our work are to provide an efficient multi-modal roadway network and in
doing so to minimize the impacts to the local residents and the local residential streets. And at
that same time to provide safety improvements for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists also.
A quick overview of the report, it’s really broken up into four sections. Those four sections that
I’ll be covering the first two tonight include our traffic operations projects and some of the
current technologies that we use and future ones that we look forward to using in the coming
years. We also want to cover the Traffic Safety Program where we improve various roadways
throughout the City and how we monitor data. So, a brief overview of our traffic operations
projects generally covers the ongoing maintenance and just upkeep of the traffic signal system
around the City. We do signal coordination on arterials and we are… we do have a few quarters
of adaptive signal timing where we’re actually measuring the actual number of cars and
adjusting the timing on the fly automatically. Then we have just traffic signal projects where
we’re upgrading projects, installing new projects, or doing pretty significant changes. So, for our
general signal coordination project, we try to update signal timing at every intersection. We
have 100, soon to be 101, traffic signals in the City and we update the timing on a bi-annual
basis including the corradiated corridors. All of our arterials except for Charleston and
Arastradero run some form of coordination and then two of the corridors, San Antonio Road
and Sand Hill Road, use the adaptive signal timing program that I was referring too. And
Charleston and Arastradero will have adaptive timing coming this September so at that point all
of our arterials, both major and residential arterials, will have some form of coordination.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Traffic signal upgrades, we typically do one to two major signal upgrades. Most recently is the
Middlefield and Embarcadero intersection and we do a lot of small upgrades just either
upgrading countdown heads, automobile, pedestrian signals or just doing small safety
improvements. Some of the big projects I have it as upcoming but upgrades downtown is going
to modify about nine… it's really updated nine traffic signals. Park/Page Mill is the next
signalized section that’s about to come online. San Antonio/Charleston we’re right in the
middle of the community outreach portion and then a few other intersections. Page Mill and
Hanover is going to be a big collaboration with the adjacent developer as well as the county
Roads and Airports Department.
Some of the technologies we use to collect… either to collect data or to monitor our traffic
system. We are about to roll out a blue tooth data collection system that will help us collect
travel time data as well as some origin-destination and we’re partnering with the county and
some adjacent Cities to get even more robust data. We haven’t implemented yet but there’s a
new method of collecting high-density data at traffic signals where we can measure signal
performance measures more than just a typical level of service but actually how efficient is the
signal operating. And it gives us recommendations and where and how to make improvements.
And then one thing we were considering it’s not yet decided on is the use of cellular data. It
would be something that we would purchase, not something we would collect ourselves. A new
and another exciting technology is changing our emergency vehicle routing and integrating it
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
into the traffic signal system. So instead of a fire truck calling a green light at the signal ahead,
the green light will already know where the truck is going and give it green lights along its entire
route like even around turns and such. And then we also have… we’re one of the very few Cities
in the country that are really progressive with connected and automotive vehicles. We do offer
our signal data through an internet broadcast so automobile manufactures can collect our
signal data and share it with their cars if they have their certain programs going on.
With that, I’m going to hand over this presentation to Ruchika who’s going to talk about the
couple of next chapters of the report.
Ms. Ruchika Aggarwal: Thanks Rafael and good evening Chair Lauing and Commissioners. My
name is Ruchika Aggarwal, I’m an Associate Engineer with the transportation group. I’m going
to talk about some of the activities in the past traffic safety projects that the division initiated in
2017. The first one up is Middlefield Road north, the project limits for this… the limits for this
project is from Menlo Park City limits until Forest Avenue. Council approved a concept plan last
year and the plan is currently in the trial state along this corridor of Middlefield Road north. We
are collecting data and over the… right after the summer, we would bring up to the Council to
make future recommendations for this project. Copper Street/Coleridge Avenue intersection
came up as a part of safe routes to school program. It was identified as an intersection where
improvements were required for the safety of pedestrians and kids walking and biking to
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Walter Hayes School. And the Staff implemented a few pilots in that intersection with the
traffic circle and collected resident feedback. The active project is the San Antonio Road/East
Charleston Road as Rafael mentioned a little while ago. The main goal of the project is in this is
to improve the pedestrian safety and also improve the traffic operations through this
intersection. Oh, sorry. Here are some pictures of the projects that I just described. The upper
right one is the one Coleridge Avenue and Copper Street. The temporary traffic circle that was
implemented for a trial period and the other two pictures are from Middlefield Road north
where the contractors are installing the barricades and the striping as a part of this project.
Some of the other elements that worked for traffic safety is electronic speed feedback signs.
Now we have a total of 17-speed feedback signs that are installed throughout the City along
collector [Note- connector?] and major arterial roads. They have all been… for the easy of
maintenance, it’s… we’ve been updating them and maintaining the same equipment so we
have a consistent equipment throughout the City for those. The enhanced crosswalk
treatments, the rectangular rapid flashing beacons that’s a standard for the City for any mid-
block or an uncontrolled crosswalk to improve pedestrian safety at an area or a neighborhood
where there’s high pedestrian activity. We have a few… we have two locations that are… that
we are working on right now for 2018 and as… based on need basis we are looking into those
treatments. Complete streets project, as a part of the paving project transportation Staff
collected… collaborated with Public Works Department and implemented some traffic calming
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
measures along Middlefield Road. For example, a traffic signal… a new traffic signal equipment
at Embarcadero and Middlefield Road, a fourth crossing leg at Middlefield and Addison and a
two-way cycle track at… to connect the two offset legs off north California Avenue again off of
Middlefield Road.
Systems monitoring, the data collection program, this really is the first year… 2017 was really
the first year where the City is planning to collect turning movement counts and data for 21
intersections throughout the City to help us understand the level of service and the delay for
this during the AM and PM peak hours and we plan to do this on an annual basis moving
forward. The travel time studies are typically done for a case by case for each individual project
as and when needed to evaluate and understand how what the impacts whereof the
improvements that were done for any particular project. Engineering and speed surveys are
typically required every 5 to 7-years for a City for the police department to be eligible to
enforce the speed… posted speed limit by the use of radar. In 2017 we collected data for or
completed the survey for 70 locals… I’m sorry, not local, 70 collectors [Note- connector] and
arterial streets. And 58 of those were certified and there were some others about… some
others that were certified in an earlier survey in 2014. In November 2017 Council adopted a
resolution to adopt target speeds for segments of streets that were not justified for use of
radar during the survey. And Staff is hoping to make a geometric and roadway design changes
along those streets to reduce the operational speed and in the hoping have the use of radar for
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the future. The traffic collision evaluation the City depends or relies on the crossroads
database. This is a web-based portal, it’s a traffic collision database that is maintained by the
Santa Clara County. It is a county-wide database and that’s where we rely upon high incident
locations and other traffic collisions information in addition to the PDs sources where we have
to do for a project by project basis. And I understand that there are some concerns and
discrepancies around this database and we’ll be happy to respond to those and answer during
our question and answers time. And this concludes our presentation and we’d be happy to take
a question. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Ok before we do Commission comments I’d like to take public comment. The first
speaker is Mark Crady, the 5-minutes.
Mr. Mark Crady: Speak here I assume? This is the right spot?
Chair Lauing: Yeah.
Mr. Crady: Great. So yes, I’m here to talk about the report. A little background I live half a block
away from the intersection of Lincoln and Middlefield Road. Craig, who’s here, has kind of
started… well first of the intersection is quite dangerous. It’s a… we hear collisions there all the
time, even today there was a T-bone and in the last two weeks we’ve had three accidents. It
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
seems to be for some reason increased a lot this year. Craig has actually been collecting data
for the last few years and for some reason this year, in particular, it seems to be quite bad.
Anyway, in the course of doing this, I wanted to understand how bad is this relative to other
intersections? I mean is this just how it is in Palo Alto or is this… is there something unique
about this intersection? And so, I contacted Josh on the Traffic Commission… Transportation
Commission [note -Transportation Department?] and he said… he referred me to this report
which is a great report. I’m really happy you guys are putting this together. The… I was
surprised to see our intersection… the intersection I’m concerned about was not listed on the
list of most dangerous intersections on Page something… 59 maybe? And so that leads me to
dive into the data itself. I guess the way this works is that when the police come out to an
accident the policy occasionally… they don’t always create a police report for that accident.
When they do create a police report I guess that gets filed and then at some point these police
reports I guess are supposed to go into… somehow get into this CHP database. I’m not sure…
Ruchika you were talking about this county database. Is that the same thing as the CHP
database or is that different?
Ms. Aggarwal: The source of this database is the [unintelligible] database, yes.
Mr. Crady: You said something about Santa Clara County. Is that… you’re talking about the
same (interrupted)
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Ms. Aggarwal: The database is maintained by the Santa Clara County, yes.
Mr. Crady: Ok, ok. Anyways so I downloaded the data for the years that this table is based on
and I did… I just wrote some simple software. I’ve got a background in software. I worked at
Google for a while and my results were quite different then what the table indicates and so I
guess one question is what… why is there this inconsistency? I mean it’s possible I did
something wrong. I think I did an accurate analysis but anyway there’s a question of why there
are these two inconsistencies. There’s also a deeper question of is this data even that useful in
the first place? Again, you go from an accident happening on the street, maybe it’s bad enough
that the police are called, maybe the police will take a… will actually create a report out of it. If
they do hopefully that data somehow get into this database. It doesn’t seem to be because I
mean just a personal standpoint my… the intersection I mean we get at least eight accidents a
year at our… at the intersection that I’m concerned about. And over the course of 5-years, I
think there are maybe six reports in this database I guess. Sorry, eight accidents I see where the
police are called and you know it’s a significant accident at least. Anyway, so there is that
question and you know I mean I guess… I would be happy to help out if I can help in any way. I
mean whether it’s doing analysis on software. It sounds like there are some interesting things
here that you guys are working on with new technologies. I mean maybe you could somehow
use this, I don’t know, this automated… the assistant monitoring stuff to actually get better
data on accidents. I wonder if there are even sources for insurance information. Do insurance
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
companies provide action information? Anyway, I guess I’d like to get a better sense of… in
particular, I’d like to get a better sense of my intersection, how bad is it relative to other
intersections, and again I’d be happy to help I guess.
Chair Lauing: Ok thank you.
Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) Do you want to ask Staff to respond?
Chair Lauing: Yeah did you guys want to respond or did you want to just have him write to Josh
or what?
Mr. Crady: I can provide a little bit of clarification (interrupted)
Mr. Lait: I think we’ll hear from the public comment first and then we’ll go.
Mr. Crady: Well should I wait till after public comment?
Mr. Lait: We’ll respond to any questions…
Chair Lauing: Sorry?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: If the Commission should have any questions after the public, we’re happy to respond
to those questions.
Chair Lauing: Ok.
Mr. Crady: I guess maybe… I did email Josh and I had a couple exchanges but then it kind of
died out and I didn’t push it too hard. I guess I do have a question of just in particularly this
table. I mean is there someone I can talk to who created the table and can I work with them to
figure out whether I’m wrong or they’re wrong or what’s going on?
Mr. Lait: So, our Staff is happy to chat afterward and get him connected with somebody.
Chair Lauing: Ok great. The next speaker is John… I can’t quite read it, Guislin?
Mr. John Guislin: Guislin, exactly right.
Chair Lauing: Ok great thank you.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Guislin: Hi, I’m John Guislin and I live on Middlefield Road at the section where they’ve had
this Middlefield north traffic report. In fact, I’m one of the residents who congealed the City for
years to get that project going. And I’ll say that we’re very pleased with the results we’ve seen
so far and I’ve enjoyed working with these talented engineers in the traffic department. That
being said this traffic safety report is full over very bad data. On Page 51 it lists the top ten
intersections where there are accidents in Palo Alto and it lists the number of accidents as five
over a period of 5-years. That is just so far from accurate that it’s embarrassing. I had a brief
conversation with Rafael before the meeting started and part of the problem is probably that
accessing this [unintelligible] database. When we put our report together and defining the
characteristics of Middlefield north and why we needed reform we went to CHP and go their
data and collected all of their PDF reports, analyzed the data, and shared it with the City to
show that the intersection of Everette and Middlefield has more than five accidents itself every
year. Not five over 5-years so is there… traffic data is challenging to collect and analyze, no
doubt about that but we’ve got… the data that is being given to you is not sufficient for you to
make informed decisions about what to do. We had a similar situation with an interim report
on Middlefield. It was done in December 2017 by a consultant and the consultant couldn’t add
up the numbers correctly, had miss information about speed and direction, and we met with
the City with Josh and his team and they agreed that they would look at it and correct it and
they did. But we shouldn’t be paying consultants when they give us bad information. It turns
out the citizens are probably one of the most reliable sources of data on traffic accidents
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
available because when we foresee a problem we then band together and we monitor the
intersection where the accidents are. During 2015 the residents on Middlefield north tried to
determine how many accidents were really taking place compared to what’s reported to the
police. We estimate that less than half of accidents actually get reported and we know this
because we took pictures of the accidents as they happened and then compared the data time
and day to the CHP database. In fact, even when the police show up to an accident it’s no
guarantee that it gets reported and I have confirmation from former Chief Burns that that’s the
case. Officers might come to an accident and if nobody is injured and there’s no complication
and the drivers are exchanging information no report may be filed. So, with our… with the
decline or the elimination of our enforcement division that problem has likely gotten worse
over the past year because there are fewer officers available to do that type of work.
There’s another report from the Office of Transportation and Safety that compares Cities of
similar size and in Palo Alto is in the Group of C with 50,000 to 105,000 residents. If you look at
that report for our City we rank Number One in the number of accidents with bicyclists under
15 and we rank in the top ten… by the way, Number One is bad, that’s the worst. We rank in
the top ten in other categories of pedestrians over 65, bicyclists and speed related accidents.
That’s the type of macro data I hope that this Commission would look at and try to understand
what we need to do to take action to correct it.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
And finally, I think that the accident rate in Palo Alto… the accident on Middlefield has dropped
because of the reconfiguration so solutions can work. That’s the good news the bad news is
that there are more and more groups popping up like this group from Lincoln and Middlefield,
like the Crescent Drive and University Avenue that have traffic problems and we’re all coming
to solve our local problem. And that’s one approach but that’s sort of not a very organized
systematic approach. I hope that you, as a Commission, can look at the bigger pictures and
figure out where the most severe problems in Palo Alto exist today. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Great thank you. The next speaker is Neilson Buchanan.
Mr. Neilson Buchanan: Thank you for giving me a little bit of time. I would like to speak a bit
more globally about what you’re looking at tonight. Let me give you a brief history of how I got
civically involved. Six or seven or eight years ago a permit parking program for Professorville
explored on the launch pad and I read in the newspaper and I said gosh all mighty. There’s Ken
Alsmon [note-spelling] was a proponent for the neighborhood and Ken had been my nemesis
when he was Planning Director at the City of Mountain View and I was CEO of El Camino
Hospital. Everything we couldn’t get done was in direct opposition with Ken so I thought that
was a bit ironic. And at the same time, I said what’s this massive from my front yard every day
with cars piling up, trash, slamming of doors and all that is a way of parking that had come all
the way down to the 100 block of Bryant. And that’s how I got involved with permit parking and
secondarily with traffic. I think there’s a generic problem and I remember Jim Keene’s response
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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to the Council when we finally shoved this issue up to the Council. And they were about to
enact their permit parking program and I could read Jim’s body language and his direct
statement that if we start this it’s going to create a lot of others. I could feel the burden that he
felt for here’s comes a lot more work to Staff. If one neighborhood gets it, other neighborhoods
are going to want it and of course, he was 100 percent right. It’s that resistance to change that I
want to talk about and I think it’s rational. I think its rational to Jim’s part because Council is
really in charge of a small City pretending… small town pretending to be a City. And the entire
structure for the running the City is a false premise and I think in a way you’re seeing one tip of
the iceberg here. Where the Staff is not able to produce all the data, it’s not the Staff’s fault and
in fact, I’ve been openly throughout my endeavor with the City Council I’ve tried never to fault
Staff. I’ve tried never to fault Jim Keene. I will fault the Council for piling on more work that can
be done and as a result of that, a lot of things get done in mediocre fashion. In less than 5-days
the Council is going to be considering a budget and in that budget are a number of new
resources that I think are going to be vital to try to circumvent the growth of the City, traffic,
parking and whatnot. There are resources for people in technology and we wouldn’t have to be
going through sort of these retrospective views of problems. It’s kind of ironic when citizens see
something clearly enough on their front door we dig in and we create stuff. I mean I dare to say
that a handful of us haven’t quantified a whole lot of parking data we would never have seen
permit parking. It was driven by residents just as John and the other residents are saying that
they know a little bit about the data. And you are the adjunct to the Council so I implore you to
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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take a look at the Staff reports that are coming to you. I like looking at them because I would
never understand the scope of what the transportation division does without this annual
report. It’s staggering to me to think they can do all that stuff but at the same time there’s a
fundamental inability to do quality work some of the time and that becomes the nub of the
problem because the issues are not executed well. We’re still struggling with the kind of
reforms to make permit parking work and that’s not… this is not the night to go into that but
what we’re talking about on the traffic and safety issues is the tip of the iceberg. I hope that’s
not too confusing, the optimistic part of it is that the next budget is a ray of sunshine. Namely
Staff resources, technologies, and the like to manage these issues a whole lot better and that is
something that you should have been paying attention too because we’re in a constant
negative loop if we don’t change this. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Thanks very much. That concludes the public speakers on this topic. So, I’d like to
now move it to the Commission for any questions or comments. I think we could just couple
those together and just put on your light if you’d like to address your comments or questions.
Commission Gardias.
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. Very briefly can we get a copy or reference of the report
that the gentleman in the green shirt was referencing too, please?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Ms. Guislin: Yes.
Commissioner Gardias: Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Any… ok, any other comments on the document that we have or question to
Staff? Sorry?
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, I have a number of question but I have a question to you. How
would you like me to organize the question because I have then scattered across the entire
report?
Chair Lauing: I was going to suggest that we just jump in because it is a long report. I don’t
think we can just kind of focus it on each individual item and I also was going to suggest that a-
typically we should probably just go with questions and comments. Unless we have a few top
lying questions we could take a look at that and see if there are just to clarify it for everybody.
Did you have any other ones of those?
Commissioner Gardias: Sure, yes no so I will pretty much introduce my questions but they will
be very scattered right? I didn’t categorize them too… along any particular sequence or
anything like this. I mean I probably would like to start with this right? I was just getting to the
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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City Hall and this was the last newspaper from today so you’re familiar with Ross and that’s
another article. So, I would appreciate some date on Ross Street and specifically that the
Commission was involved in this and we approved the plan for Ross biking Bouvard and all the
improvements that are happening right now. So, there are two angles, one is that I’d like to
understand what’s going on so that’s number one but also, I think that if there is a continuing
interest from the neighborhood along Ross Road. The Commission should take a look at this
from our perspective again because we reviewed it but apparently there are lots of neighbors
that are not happy with the solution. So, we should just take retrospection and analyze if there
is something that we could have done better. It’s just a lesson for us to learn because maybe in
retrospection maybe we could have done it differently because it’s been going on for a year
now. Maybe right so my first question is about this and if you can later on respond.
Then the second question is about on Page 18 you’re talking about traffic signal timing. My
question is like this is there a coordination of the green light along Middlefield when it’s getting
to Menlo Park because the cars are stacking there? Right so we have improvement on our side
as you show on this page but later on, maybe you can tell us is there a coordination between
the cars… between the green light wave of Palo Alto and Mountain View [note -maybe Menlo
Park?]?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Next question is about collection of this Packet Page 20 is about real-time collection of traffic
data and then you tell us that this is based on the cell phones that are turned on. And then
based on this you collect this data from the car so if you could just pretty much tell us how
accurate it is I would be wondering how reliable this data is?
On Page 22 you pretty much tell us how this collection… the Bluetooth technology collection
when you connect your phone to car Bluetooth right? How would this be collected? I was
wondering… and then you site that there are [unintelligible] identifiers which is the network…
unique network device identifier that’s connected to the network. I was wondering if there’s
some GDPR that just went live on May 25 and there is some relationship to some data privacy
because you collect lots of data. I just heard you making a comment that you were about to
require some data so I was wondering where is our privacy in all of this data collection? So,
another question would be if somebody gets this data can they identify my personal movement
throughout the City and then understand my personal behavior or example?
Another scattered question would be about Copper and Coleridge Avenue. That is, we had the…
we had a discussion about the roundabouts. And then if you remember it was probably a year
ago and then Commission took a 4-2-3 stand and decided to pretty nix this roundabout in
preference to the four stop signs that were… are installed as an interim solution. The comment
that I have here is related to doesn’t… a way to respond but I just want to make this comment
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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because those are those faces that I see for the first time here. That we discussed this
roundabout and this is part of our policies. It’s part of the Comprehensive Plan if you can find
the reference, we remember specifically this. It is one of the policies that are written in the
Comprehensive Plan and because of this lots of solutions are by default resolved by this
roundabout. What is happening is that when we had this discussion a year or a year and a half
ago about those roundabouts there was no specific scientific evidence presented what so ever
about pros and cons of those roundabouts. There were… there was evidence presented about
roundabouts but this was evidence that’s rated to the large ones in the large Cities. And but
then I have never seen a document that would pretty much talk about the physical attributes
and the safety pros and cons of those smaller roundabouts that are being installed at the
intersection of just two streets. And I would like to see one and the reason is that I was pretty
much thinking for the last few months… I think about some other things as well so don’t take
me wrong… about if there is a hole in this thinking. And then I found it recently and I was riding
a bike and then I was coming to one of our roundabouts and I naturally took a left turn without
going around and I understood that from the bike… this was the first time when I was biking
that route and I understood that from a biker’s perspective when we a biker approaches a
roundabout of the smaller size he’s not going to go around. The car will but the biker will not
and I think this is a gap in the safety of those roundabouts. I’m just making the comment for the
record. Hopefully, somebody is going to look into this.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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Next question is about Packet Page 32, this is about the traffic study on Middlefield Road and I
remember Commission Waldfogel when we had a discussion about this was specifically asking
the question about the daily traffic that was compared between 2016 and 2019. And he made
the case… you can go back to those meeting minutes… that those data were not comparable
because this was a vacation period if I remember… you can correct me. So…
Commissioner Waldfogel: (off mic) Your memory is better than mine.
Commissioner Gardias: So, for this reason, if you present this in the report that there is an
average traffic… daily traffic, ADT, against this Page 32. Pretty much you see a decrease and this
is not truly what’s happening because the observation was done at a different season than the
original reading.
The next question… shall I continue or maybe I can take a break. I have a few more so I can go
through the rest but I can relive the floor to the colleagues if they have some questions.
Chair Lauing: It's getting a little bit longer and I would like to ask Staff are you going to want to
answer these after we all chat or do you want to answer them in a group?
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Mr. Lait: Well not I think I’d like to sort of take them from Commissioner to Commissioner and
answer them. I do think some of the questions that we’re hearing here go beyond what we’re
actually presenting.
Chair Lauing: Right.
Mr. Lait: And so, I don’t know that we’re prepared to answer some of these more detailed
questions but we’re making notes and the ones that we’re able to answer we’ll answer.
Chair Lauing: Ok so we’ll just (interrupted)
Mr. Lait: It's up to you on the timing of course.
Chair Lauing: We’ll just have you continue Commissioner.
Commissioner Gardias: Very good, yes, that’s a correct observation that some go beyond but
they are related to traffic. There is… we also… when we were approving Ross Boulevard around
the same time we were discussion Charleston improvements. And then because there are some
changes I presume because of the pushback of the residents along the Ross Boulevard which
you can tell me later on what the update is. I was hoping that maybe we can revisit
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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improvements at the intersection of Lewis and Charleston. There is… when you get from Lewis
and Charleston there’s a refuge island in the middle of the street and then I remember the
plans that you showed us where pretty much redesigning this refuge island. And also allowing
the traffic from the other side of Lewis to start flowing back to Charleston which is not the case
today. So, I’m asking you just pretty much take a note of this and I was hoping that maybe
because of this changes on Ross maybe there is an opening to revise those plans. The reason
that I am saying this is because if there… if this worked for many years, there was no flow from
the other side of Lewis to Charleston then maybe we don’t really need to change it.
The next question I had was pretty much about the Packet Page 34 where you show the
improvement at the intersection of East Charleston and San Antonio and then pretty much you
show the raised curb extension. That is… my question is there is a number of the parking stalls
along that frontage road that goes along San Antonio. I was wondering maybe by sheer
accident you can tell me who’s cars are those that park along this parking strip? I’d just be very
interested because there’s an office building, there’s a Church, there’s a gas station and I know
this was not the topic of your work but maybe you can tell us. Maybe you know.
A question about the electronic speed feedback signs. Is there… I understand that pretty much
that we don’t have any feedback signs that would be flashing when there is… when the car is
below the speed limit. And when I read this I understand that this is the case but I’m looking for
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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confirmation that truly we don’t have the flashing lights when the driver arrives with the speed
of 34 MPH on 35 speed limit roads because personally, I don’t dislike this sort of warning that I
am perfectly well within the speed limit. It’s just distracting.
And then I think that this would be the last question, just a moment. I’d like to understand what
would be your conclusion of the changes of that you have in the intersection of morning and
evening intersection counts? Pretty much you are showing when I look at those different bars
that there is… that in the peak hours in 2017 we have lesser traffic than we had 3-years ago. So,
I’d like to really understand if this is truly the case. When I look at those bars at the first sight it
looks like this but logically something doesn’t work here so must if… where did the cars go? So,
I’d like to understand an executive summary on this topic.
And the last item I don’t remember the page but I do remember the… somewhere in your
report and you can tell me that somewhere in your report there is a note that once… that while
the traffic density along Middlefield went down there is an increase on the parallel roads. I
cannot locate this within the report. Maybe I can find it later but I remember specifically that in
one occasion it looks that drivers took pretty much the… to avoid taking Middlefield they pretty
much they took some other roads parallel to it. And I will try to locate it to you in the report.
Thank you very much. Sorry for the long time.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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Chair Lauing: I think he’s going to address these questions.
Mr. Lait: So, thank you Commission Gardias. You clearly read the report and I appreciate the
time that you’ve put into it. The… there’s a few items here that fall into these sorts of ongoing…
a bucket of ongoing infrastructure projects. Ross Road you mentioned, Charleston, Coleridge,
and Cowper and it occurs to me that we… I did not send an email to the Commission but I’m
wondering if the Commission was aware of the City Council meeting last night. It was a special
meeting where the Commission or the Council spent 4-hours talking about hearing public
comments for I think about nearly 3-hours about these types of issues on Ross Road and El-
Square. So, the Council… the full Council was present I believe, had an opportunity to hear from
the community, I think about 50 people came to speak about these issues and then they had
their own sort of perspective and guidance to the City Manager on the status of our ongoing
and planned transportation work underway. And so, the… some of the immediate outfalls from
that is that our Staff is… we heard those comments, we’re huddling together and we’re trying
to put together a web page that would respond to the comments that we heard last night. And
over the Council break, we’ll be thinking a little bit more about the program that we have and if
there are some adjustments that we need to make we’ll have that conversation with the City
Council. And we’ll certainly give the Commission an update when we a little bit more clarity on
that. On… you had a couple of other items about the data collection. We actually have a future
discussion planned. It was supposing to be a part of this item but we weren’t quite ready for
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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that discussion. So, I think in the fall you were talking about this Bluetooth data and you had
some comments about how it was… you wanted to know a little bit more about how it was
collecting the information. To sort of peer behind that and we have those same interests as
well and so we’re still looking into that a little bit more and can provide you some more detail
on that probably in the fall when we return to the Commission.
You had a comment about privacy and data collection and we have ongoing requirements with
the City in terms of how we collect data and that is a paramount concern. This is something that
has come up many times before when we’ve put in cameras and we’re trying to count
pedestrians or bicyclists and so we have a pretty… I believe we have an established privacy
policy that Council has endorsed when we take in consideration when we’re doing these types
of things. So, anything that we do would be consistent with that policy.
You asked about frontage road on Charleston and who’s parking there. You know we could
probably spend some time doing that. It’s not something that we’re prepared to answer today
but we’ve made a note of that and we can come back and respond to that. And we heard your
comment about the flashing lights when you’re meeting the speed limit not to be distracted by
that. I have a personal appreciation for that as well. I feel like I’m doing something wrong when
it’s flashing at me so maybe we can have that not flash. Well, it goes when you’re… yes, I guess I
should be slowing down before it starts flashing. Alright so then there’s… I think Rafael has a
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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couple of responses to some of the other things that you had mentioned about some of the
data counts… traffic counts going down or difference over the years? So, on that last point that
you had mentioned, we can… Rafael will respond to that.
Mr. Rius: Regarding the annual data collection and the counts that… and you’ve seen decreases
throughout the years. We’re not entirely sure but I have a pretty good idea of what’s
happening. A lot of these are for signalized intersections during a peak hour or the highest peak
hour of a day and what we’ve noticed over the years is that the peak period is stretching out so
when a… during the most congested times, let’s just take University and Woodland for
example. If there’s congestion downstream in East Palo Alto or on 101 the sheer number of cars
going through the intersection would be reduced due to congestion downstream. And we’re
presenting here are actual counts and it’s not necessarily the man that wants to go through the
intersection but how many cars actually got through during that peak hour. And as we’ve know
we’ve seen University back up and sometimes take 30-minutes to get to the freeway. And
that’s why I suspect a lot of our intersection are pretty close to the capacity so if there’s a spike
in traffic from one year to the next there might be a decrease in counts of actual cars that go
through the intersection.
Commissioner Gardias: Yes, so thank you. If I can make… can interject a comment right so if
your observation is to true it would be nice to start looking into this data differently because if
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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you say that this [unintelligible] of a peak hour is gross right so pretty the population is within
the time as opposed to from 4 to say 5 to 6. It’s going to be from 4:30 through 7:30 because of
different reasons, right? Maybe a thriving economy and for this really truly you should count
the cars within that larger spread. That would give you the comparison of the population and
then although you may just see that decrease within the certain portion of the peak but then
the impact on the entire population would be different. Because in reality, you would decrease
in the [unintelligible] of the cars passing through this intersection because they would just go all
slower during the longer period of time. Correct?
Mr. Rius: Yeah, I would agree with that. Also, in the report, we do represent roadway segments
that have a 24-hour count, like a whole day. That’s also a good measure to look at how many …
an increase or decrease on this specific roadway. I think when you’re seeing the really big jumps
are at the signalized intersections for a 1-hour window. Intersections are usually counted and
analyzed based on the worst hour.
Chair Lauing: Did you have any other answers or are you… ok great. So, let’s move on then,
Commissioner [Note-Vice-Chair] Monk.
Vice-Chair Monk: First of all, I’d like to acknowledge and welcome our Mayor to your meeting
tonight. Thank you for attending and also a lot of members of the public. I think I guess I have a
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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preliminary question for Staff and also to maybe clarify possible questions that the community
might have. It’s clearly marked on here as a traffic safety report and that you’re implementing
processes so that you can come back to us in the future. And I think a lot of those processes are
going to be measuring traffic and congestion apart from the safety concerns. So, I just want to
make sure that we’re talking about two different types of information and study that I think the
community is interested in because clearly safety is important and we’re concerned about it.
But I think what people have expressed in the community is the increase in just volume of cars
and traffic backups things like that and trying to understand what the technology might be to
enforce in the future. So, can we expect to hear more on that piece of it down the road as you
implement some of these newer technologies or I don’t… I think that’s what you’re
implementing it for. Not just safety, I thought it was also for congestion purposes, correct? I just
think the… a lot of folks would be interested in knowing what our plans are for that and rough
turn around time frame.
Mr. Lait: Yeah, thank you for that question. I do believe part of that information we will be
presenting to the Planning Commission in the fall. We do have some interests in wanting to
share with you some technology that’s available that will just give us some information about
how people are moving through the community as sort of origin and destination type of
movements. And that could inform public policy about what sort of decisions we make about
street signal timing or how people are routed around through the City or where we put some of
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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our energies for capital improvements and things like that. So, I think we can begin to start
having that conversation when we come back in the fall and I think when we hear from the
Council after the break and when we return with this transportation reboot, I’ll say that’s my
term, then I think we’ll be able to pull out some of that stuff out too.
Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you for that and so just a few questions in the report itself. A lot of
what I observed in the report Commission Gardias alluded too so I’m glad he brought them up.
So in regards to the adaptive traffic signal control system, I think you first talked about it on
Page 20 and Sync Green the company that you’re using for that? And can you just explain to me
what that is, how that works and then distinguish that between or is that related in any way to
the Bluetooth and/or the carrier data that you’re going to be using? Are those completely
separate functions?
Mr. Rius: It’s completely separate.
Vice-Chair Monk: Ok so if you can just explain the first one when you have an opportunity on
how that works.
Mr. Rius: Sync Green is the…
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Mr. Lait: Yeah so, we’ll…
Vice-Chair Monk: I can go through my questions.
Chair Lauing: You want to do it that way, ok, great.
Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah however you want to do it.
Mr. Lait: Yeah that’s fine.
Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah and actually I’m glad that you are getting carrier data because that too
has the data. Anything other than the carrier really doesn’t make sense and I know that they
anonymize the data before it comes to you so I’m not that worried about it. But if you find that
that process isn’t being followed then myself and I’m sure the entire community is concerned
about those privacy concerns. But if you’re just getting the anonymized cell signal data to
measure movement I think that’s really critical and is probably the best measure versus
Bluetooth in any event. So, I’m glad that you… that was not in the report. You talked about the
Bluetooth company but not the carrier data and as a side note, I was at Mobile World Congress
in Barcelona just as a guest with my husband. And I saw that Nokia has does a whole pilot study
on not only car movement but also bicycle and pedestrian movement. So, they know how many
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and how fast everyone is moving on all the different modalities. I’d be happy to share what I
learned at Mobile World Congress with you later on.
In regards to the concerns about accidents not being reported. Clearly, we know that police are
called out to respond to an incident. They may or may not issue a report and/or people might
not want it disclosed so we have all that as factors. Maybe you can talk about whatever
standard deviations you have in your reporting that if it’s crossed the line how do we know if
these studies are accurate or not. And I think we had some speakers tonight who are interested
in hearing that and/or if you have suggestions on how we could capture these in maybe an
anonymous way or an informal way or some other way. So that we can get a better sense of
the true number of incidents. I saw something just the other day on… I think it was that
intersection on Middlefield were these folks are talking about and yeah, a lot of its just careless
driving which I think your cameras are catching so it’s just something to think about.
There was one reference to a study on page… forgive me for a moment. Page 30 with the
Middle… oh was it Middlefield? Sorry, darn. Yeah, I guess it was on Packet Page 30 and 31
where you’re talking about Middlefield north. It’s not really clear to me why your information is
telling us here in the summaries. I don’t know what it means about the way it’s written. To me,
it looks like more study is needed and I also had a question about the pilot period as
Commission Gardias alluded to. It looked like a lot of that was collected during the summer
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months so maybe you can just kind of look at the report out on those two pages and let us
know if it is really telling us anything. I’m not really sure what to take away from the way it was
presented. Thank you for now.
Mr. Rius: Thank you for those questions. Just to clarify Sync Green is the name of the software,
Trafficware is the developer or manufactory for sales and it’s an adaptive control. Traditional
coordination you know you do counts and you set up your timing and you have a preset cycle
length in green times. What the adaptive timing does it is takes advantage of more advanced
and [unintelligible] technology of detection and you can measure how close the cars are coming
together if there’s a lot more than usual and it could dynamically increase the green time or
cycling beyond the preset maximum. So, when it’s supposed to handle spikes in traffic and dips
in traffic demand and it’s a little bit easier than having a fixed coordinated plan.
Vice-Chair Monk: [unintelligible -off mic] manufacturers that you’re (interrupted)
Mr. Rius: No that’s…
Vice-Chair Monk: Or is that separate?
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Ms. Rius: That’s completely separate. It’s… the same traffic ware company also develops our
connective vehicle modular that broadcasts alright this signal is green for 30-seconds. And
developers or car manufactures can subscribe and get that data in how long the green times
are and it’s up to them to develop their user interface.
Vice-Chair Monk: So, it’s in the pole or signal and it’s seeing how far cars are apart?
Mr. Rius: No, we have a central management system that sends it's to a cloud and
manufactures can subscribe to the cloud. That’s completely independent from the adaptive
control which is measuring and detaching cars. It’s really smart detectors if you will on the road
counting cars like half way… half a block away and saying there’s more traffic than usual
coming. Let’s give them instead of the maximum 20-seconds of green let’s give them 25-
seconds or 30-seconds and it will adjust on the fly which is a relatively new technology.
Vice-Chair Monk: So, both those technologies that you mentioned are both related to signal
timing and how much green.
Mr. Rius: Yes.
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Vice-Chair Monk: Are they also going to be related to the railroad crossings because a lot of
times you’ll see a green light but you can’t go because the guards down or you can’t make a left
turn because traffic stopped again because the train is there. So, some integration I guess with
the rail crossing because that occurs…
Mr. Rius: Our system operates independent of the rail system… of Caltrain system. What it does
is when a train coming it sends a signal and we have to cut off whatever we’re doing, give the
track or just in case of cars on the track we have to give them a little bit of green time to clear.
And then let the train pass and while that’s happening we usually try to let Alma traffic go at
the same time to be for efficient. Then once the train is gone we pick up where we left off.
Vice-Chair Monk: I guess what I’m referring to is if you’re on a parallel road like Alma, cars
should be able to turn down into the neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks that’s not
interfering with… but sometimes the lighting doesn’t allow for that in some instances.
Mr. Rius: Well what happens… I mean we don’t control the trains and it's really hard to judge
because they’re… a train any given day will fluctuate within a 2 to the 5-minute window and
that’s considered acceptable by Caltrain. So, what we do is when the actual train triggers… gets
across a certain point it sends us a trigger that says a train is coming. Our first priority is to clear
the track and then after that we’ll give Alma say at Charleston we’ll give the southbound left
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and through a green light and then the northbound through and the southbound through
moving. That’s pretty standard (interrupted)
Vice-Chair Monk: Right you might be giving a light to turn into the train but they can’t or
whatever.
Mr. Rius: No, not while the track… not while the gates are down.
Vice-Chair Monk: Or should they… still being able to go north/south because that’s not crossing
over the track.
Mr. Rius: Exactly, yeah.
Vice-Chair Monk: So, they do have that ability?
Mr. Rius: Yeah that’s historically what’s been operating and we’re not changing that. Did… and
yeah, did at the timing would have to… that would take president over the adaptive timing if we
added across the tracks. At this time, we’re not anticipating doing that. Just to move on the
collision data, what we didn’t point out from the public… the speakers, we did notice some
discrepancy in our data. We use… Ruchika mentioned that we use the Crossroads Database
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which is maintained by the County. The crossroads database is primarily the same
[unintelligible] data. It also has a capability of incorporating data points from the independent
police departments from the City. Palo Alto’s are not yet in there, they are upgrading… we are…
our police department is upgrading our system hopefully by the end of the year where it will
have an easier integration. We did notice some discrepancies in the counts and the way to poll
the data from crossroads is not… there’s multiple ways to do it and they don’t always produce
the same results. So, we are going to look into this further and likely issue an updated table for
the report. I should say though that when we do specific safety projects at an intersection we’ll
look at data directly from our police department. All the collisions report that they collect and
we’ll analyze what exactly happened. Was it a kid versus turning left and broadsided a car or
what? Our police data, as I mentioned, its… they are updating their database. Their previous
and current to now database is not really easy to compare intersection to intersection. That’s
why we use crossroads to come up with a top ten list because we really can’t unless we go to
each intersection independently. And there’s thousands throughout the City and find out the
total and rank them. Crossroad is supposed to do that for us be we noticed the discrepancy and
the variations when acquiring data different. And so, we’re going to look into that and likely
issue an updated table for the report.
You mentioned the Middlefield North study, what’s in this report is really just a snip summary
of it. That study is actually still in progress. The data collection window is… it’s actually going
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until June 30th so it’s still in progress and we’re going to issue an update… a more complete
report. We did do an in term report a few months back but we’re going to bring a final report
and recommendation. It will be developed this summer so actually, this report was done well
before that it. The Middlefield North study is not even complete yet.
Vice-Chair Monk: Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Commission Summa.
Commissioner Summa: Thank you and thank you to Staff for the report and the presentation
and thank you to the public. So, at a high level, it sounds like it would be really great if the City
could utilize some of the residences that are collecting so much data. I think they make a good
point about especially the accident data which is really important to a lot of people as some of
the other Commissioners have pointed out of course. And because they are there all the time
and of course the Staff can’t be there. Especially when you’re stretched so thin with so many
vacancies in your department. So, I think if you could find a way to work with them and use
them and I’m still confused. Does the Crossroads data come from the CHP Database or was that
the fact that they were using the CHP Database and you use Crossroads? Is what were some of
the discrepancies came from?
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Mr. Rius: The Crossroads its within Palo Alto. The Crossroads database is essentially Switer’s
[Note- spelling?] data. We tried to… you know we’re relatively new to it and we tried to use the
tool that kind of gives you the top ten locations which resulted in mixed results that we’re going
to look into. It … for Palo Alto purposes until our police department upgrades their system it is
essentially Switer’s [Note- Spelling?] data.
Commissioner Summa: Then… so a couple of things, I mean I was also… I looked at the data on
the parallel streets to Middlefield going up and Middlefield going down and it’s on Packet Page
31 that Commission Gardias recommended. And I was wondering if that’s because the traffic is
so bad people are using cut through routes because to someone else’s point, maybe
Commission Gardias, its kind of we don’t experience traffic going down. I mean just don’t so…
and I live on a cut through route so I wonder if that’s partly what’s going on sometimes when
you see traffic going down. Do you have any (interrupted)
Mr. Rius: I apologize, we’re trying to find where in this report. I know we mentioned some of
that in the interim or the mid-point update for that specific project report but not… I don’t
believe or we’re trying to find it in this City-Wide Safety and Operations Report.
Commissioner Summa: It’s just kind of a general impression.
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Mr. Rius: Yeah, in general, we haven’t seen too much of the case where traffic decreases
because traffic is shifting to another street. It’s possible that if traffic is really increasing on the
main street there is some overflow but usually both streets are increasing in traffic. I believe for
Middlefield North without looking at the numbers I believe what we saw is there was some
increase on the side streets but it wasn’t too large of a number but I don’t recall that. Actually,
I’d prefer to hold off on that until we can look at the numbers more closely.
Commissioner Summa: Well it’s Packet Page 31 it says there’s a 30.6 percent increase in the
overall motor vehicle along the five parallel routes to Middlefield Road. That was a specific
reference but (interrupted)
Mr. Lait: Can you give us the… not the Packet Page number but the other page number?
Commissioner Summa: Packet Page 31.
Mr. Rius: I think… I do want to state in the final report for the Middlefield Road north we’re
going to include percentages and total volumes. I know in the interim report we reported
percentages which looked pretty high but we need to look at the gross numbers. Like a street
might have a baseline, a low number and when you say like a 15 percent increase but then it
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was two cars an hour or not so we don’t know. So, I think that’s one thing I’d like to look into
more as part of the Middlefield North project when that comes up.
Commissioner Summa: It sounds like the Middlefield North project is going pretty well though. I
mean so that’s a good thing and it also sounds like we’re getting a lot of new information in the
fall. I had a question about the OTS rankings of the City that we got. We scored very high or in
some of these compared to other Cities of our sizes. If the Staff looks at that and what can you
comment on that?
Mr. Rius: I think… us personally, us Ruchika and I, we haven’t looked into the OTS data. I’m not
sure if there’s something other Staff members or Josh want to or does or want to include in the
future evaluations. To date though we haven’t used the OTS. OTS does involve a lot of collision
rates where you compare the collisions to the traffic volumes. We just don’t have that much
data for a lot of our local streets. Everett, we do because for the Middlefield North project but
Lincoln and other streets we don’t collection traffic data to create a rate on a regular basis.
Commissioner Summa: Ok and then once again I think it’s an opportunity to get that data from
people who live really close by. Especially when they have the ability to create software to…
and take a look at that. So, parking and traffic are really difficult I think both of them because
you know you fix it here and it just goes someplace else so I appreciate that… how hard it is but
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I think at a high level we need to look at getting our… I think the data should match up. It’s kind
of a problem for me that our data doesn’t match some of the CHP data. And I, of course, don’t
know why but I think that that’s an important thing to look into. And I’m glad that you had the
opportunity… that the City… that the residents have the opportunity last night with Ross Road
and other parts of that bike/ped plan and that you’ll be looking into that. And then… oh, I did
want to about just anecdotally about traffic circles because I live right on one on Yale Street and
College Terrace. People go around them the wrong way lot and sometimes it’s because that’s
the only way they can go with big trucks and a lot of times it’s just like randomness but bikes go
around them the wrong way. Especially child all the time and I think just anecdotally another
comment I would like to make is that all those kinds of devices the more you can plant them
the safer they get. I had constant accidents on mine before it was landscaped and it’s just much
more visible and I know you do that now as standards with bulb-outs and those kinds of things.
So, for me at a high level… and I think there’s a problem with the workload in your department.
I keep hearing that so you might not be able to fix some of these problems until that structural
problem is fixed and for me to take away also is… and that’s not your fault and to work with the
neighbors. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel.
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Commissioner Waldfogel: Thank you. First of all, I really appreciate the idea of generating any
annual transportation report. I think this is a great thing and over the course of the next couple
of years, we’ll see some interesting results. One thing that I’d like to suggest, I’m going to stick
to some very high-level comments, if you go back to presentation Page 3 that outlines the goals
for the team. I’d like to suggest adding some high-level metrics to those goals on presentation
Page 3. So, I think that from the discussion, the third goal improves safety, it’s pretty easy to
track metrics against improving safety. I think collision data is probably a good proxy for safety
data. I mean there may be something better in the transportation literature but I’m sure you
can find something that’s meaningful. And we have had some good discussions about data
biases and whether we’re tracking magnitudes versus trends with the data set we have. To be
honest I think we’re seeing the limits of our data science that we may need some higher pay
grades to settle some of those questions. For the second goal, minimal impacts, are you familiar
with the Citizen Survey Data? National Citizen Survey?
Mr. Lait: Yeah certain… I mean yes.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah, I mean broadly I would assume you’ve seen it. I mean one of
the questions on the Citizen Survey is… let me make sure that I get the question right. It’s
Question 5A, traffic flow on major streets and this is on a scale of 0 to 100. And over the last 9-
years, this is tracked from 43.1 which I guess was the satisfaction level or whatever this
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measures in 2008 down to 35.4 in 2017. I mean it’s tracked from 37.3 to 35.4 over the last 5-
years, 2013 to 2017. So that’s within the margin of error so I guess the good news is that the
level of badness is not increasing very fast but for this goal to I would suggest finding some
measure of how citizens perceive traffic flow as a metric on impacts. You know you could use
Citizen Survey data or you could use some other data but I’d like some kind of qualitative
perception that we’ve measured. Because I think that if we were looking at that, that would be
a way to see things like the busy hour is now the busy two hours or the busy three hours. That
basically circulation through the City may have gotten worse. Does that make any sense to find
some proxy or some way to measure that?
Mr. Lait: So, I guess… I see Rafael making some notes and we’ll continue that conversation. I
think that we probably… I don’t know that Ruchika or Rafael can respond to those sorts of
directional question but we can certainly pass that on to Josh and the City Manager’s Office to
understand.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah and the same thing with efficiency. I mean I’m sure that there’s
some professional definition of efficiently. I don’t know if that’s the perfect… if efficiently
measured as the aggregate through out of the network would be the right measure. I’m… my
guess is that’s probably not the right measure but I think you have to lean on your professional
expertise to find some way to track that because otherwise, we’re looking at things like
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upgrade projects and not really understanding are these the right ones. I mean are these really
the ones that are optimizing efficiency or minimizing impacts or improving safety. I mean it’s
hard for me to tell from the study whether we’re doing the right things or not so those are kind
of high-level comments.
Just to jump down into the weeds for a second, I’ve looked… professionally I’ve looked at a lot
of the cellar and Bluetooth data from multiple sources and I can tell you… we can discuss this
offline if you want or you can bring this into a later meeting. I mean I can tell you that some it
that I’ve seen is really good, some of it is not very good if really depends on the purposes that
we have for the data. I mean some of it is 100-meter resolution, some of it is 1-meter
resolution, some of it is 5 second resolution, some of it is 15 or 30-second resolution and just
depending on what we’re doing we really have to be very careful looking at the sources and
also looking at the analytics that wrap around it after it’s anatomized. I’ve seen some quality
degradations, I’ve had long discussions with vendors about how they calibrate the data, and
it’s… all I can say is this complicated and hard and the more help you get the better.
Then if I’m going to go all tech weenie on you for a second are we doing any Vda X Trials [Note-
not sure what that is]? Are we doing any Vda X [Note- not sure what that is]?
Mr. Rius: We don’t have anything in the works right now. Yeah, I’m trying to make everything
compatible but nothing in the works.
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Chair Lauing: Ok I’m going to make a few comments. First of all, I really want to thank the public
for coming in and calling attention to these, you know the perception and the data. It may be,
for example, that police and only should cover and report on half the accidents. We can’t opine
on that but that should at least be disclosed in the data that is being put out to the public. So
that Elected Officials like Council Members, Appointed Officials like ourselves and the public
most importantly understand what’s being reported out. It could even still be statically
significant with 50 percent of the data reporting that could be fine. I just think we should really
on the side of disclosing everything that we know about the data and if only half of the
accidents are being reported and that’s not reported, it can just kind of nullify the whole
effectiveness of the study. So, I’d really like to underscore that in a future data collection and
reporting out.
The second thing is and this is a little bit repetitive but I’m kind of asking a question about your
answer. I’m not quite comfortable with what you’re saying about if cars go somewhere else, is
that a good thing or a bad thing? If there’s at one-point 38 percent decrease they went
somewhere and I would think that that’s just as important to understand where they went.
Secondarily if that’s only three cars I understand that but then is it worthwhile reporting the
percentages at all if it’s only a few cars? So, it seems like it was very positive when you’re
getting North Middlefield much more under control because that was a really big problem but if
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they are doing cut-throughs that could be ok too but let's just find out where they go so you
can evaluate that. That would be my suggestion there.
A third suggestion is that yes, the PTC on June 28th, 17, rejected the recommendation that the
pilot be made permanent and I think the transportation Staff were listening to that and doing
what we think was the right thing. I would just add as a footnote that getting involvement from
people up here either collectively or some liaison on some of these projects earlier would head
off a lot of consternation and make things more efficient for you in your very heavy, heavy
workload.
Not repeating other folks because some folks have covered what I had said but there’s only one
or two more. I won't asked that one. It was referenced some of the data is just reporting and
what is the conclusions so I think we always like to say great, you got the data so now what do
we do with that? Some of that is on 3.2 on Page… Packet Page 30. That one might still be in
process so it’s not ready to go but to the extent that you could report out more than just the
speed went up or down. Tell us why that is meaningful and tell us what we think we’re going to
do with that so, I think I’ll leave it there. I don’t know if you have any response to that. You
don’t need too, just please take notes and pass it along. Any other comments from the dais?
Yeah, Commissioner Gardias?
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Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So, in reference to those items that we spoke and cut
through the neighborhoods, I think that this report is missing on the chapter that would put
some spotlight on the traffic that cuts through the neighborhoods. Let’s just call Chapter
Outside Traffic in the Neighborhoods and so if you could just maybe add that to your report
when it’s going to go to the Council and or the next revision and as much as you can provide in
it. I understand that you may not have the data but knowing the story. That it was a half a year
ago if you remember a couple of the Council Members were involved in the discussion with the
neighborhoods about the traffic that cuts through Crescent Park and pretty much gets to
University Avenue taking Center Drive and Crescent Drive. And actually, I can tell you the story
because I was actually coming from the other direction and I noticed the traffic because at one
point of time I was working the East Bay and I was coming from the other side of the bridge.
And then pretty much getting to my neighborhood exactly through Crescent Drive and Center
Drive and then I at one point I met this wave of the cars that had never been there. So,
something happened and then of course then, later on, there was a rumor and the neighbors
raised red flags and as you remember a couple of the Council Members were involved in the
discussion about the calming of the traffic that has never been there. So, it was [unintelligible]
or some other applications that caused those drivers to start cutting through those
neighborhoods? I will not pretend that I know the cause but I know those cars are not from my
neighborhood. I live in the vicinity and those people were not from those neighborhoods. They
must have been coming either from… they maybe work in Palo Alto and maybe they were
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
cutting through neighbors… this neighborhood or somewhere else. But they should not be
there because there is… because... so just going back to the suggestion so there should be a
chapter that would somehow summarize observations around the increase of the traffic or the
traffic that because of different measure may be pushed to the neighborhoods. We would like
to understand this. If you can quantify it somehow that would be great. There is, of course,
there is an impact on the neighborhoods because of course, we think about the streets as the
transportation platform but on those streets, kids may play soccer or they may play basketball.
In some neighborhoods still do it, they still do and… but because there are cars from the
outside that maybe pass through those neighborhoods indifferent… more aggressive way those
kids may not be socializing on the street because of this reason. If I am a local driver, if this is
my neighborhood, I know everybody, they know me, I look… I drive more safely, more carefully
but if there is somebody from outside they will not stop. They will not care I suspect so my
suggestion is please add the chapter that will somehow quantify and address this problem.
And then just going back very quickly to the discussion on the Ross Boulevard. Director Lait, I
hope that once you’re going to provide the feedback to the Commission I hope that you can
just be frank and just tell us what really, we did wrong by… when we looked into this Ross
Boulevard improvement. I’d like to understand what went wrong. Thank you.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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Chair Lauing: Ok I’d like to just conclude this item by saying this is a very high value so what I’m
about to say don’t forget what I’ve just said. Please bring more. To my mind, this is kind of… we
talk about Car Light in this City, this is sort of transportation lite. You’ve got some other huge
issues that you’re working on and we like to be informed and help you with them. The
Downtown Parking Study with I think seven recommendations came to us over a year ago and
we haven’t seen anything since then. So please bring us more so that we can help and thanks
for the presentation. Ok, thanks.
Commission Action: No action taken by the Commission
Action Items
Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal.
All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3
3. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 2515-2585 El Camino Real [17PLN-00448]:
Recommendation on Applicant’s Request for Approval of a Vesting Tentative Map to
Merge two Lots and Subdivide the Combined 39,953 Square Foot lot Into 13
Residential Condominiums and up to 13 Retail Commercial Units. The Subdivision
map Would Facilitate Construction of the Previously Approved 39,858 Square Foot
Mixed-use Development Project (15PLN-00170). Environmental Assessment: Reuse
of a Previously Adopted Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration Prepared for the
Associated Development Application (15PLN-000170). Zoning District: Neighborhood
Commercial (CN) and Community Commercial (CC) (2) Zoning District. For More
Information Contact the Project Planner Margaret Netto at
margaret.netto@cityofpaloalto.org
Chair Lauing: So, the next item on the agenda is quasi-judicial public hearing on mapping for
2515 and 2585 El Camino Real which is the old restaurant… Olive Garden restaurant.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commission Summa has chosen to recuse, right? So, she’ll be leaving for this portion and then
returning. Just for the record we still do have a quorum present with four Commission
members.
Commissioner Summa: In 2016 before I was on this Commission I participated in public hearings
about this project and I also submitted a letter. So, I felt it would be better for me, even though
this is not the project itself but a map issue, I thought I would just recuse myself. Thank you.
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning: So, disclosures.
Chair Lauing: Yeah, any other disclosures? No. Commission Waldfogel? No. Nope? No further
disclosures.
Mr. Lait: Great, well thank you Chair. Margaret Netto is just going to do a brief overview. You
have a PowerPoint in front of you but I think we’re just going to do this verbally.
Ms. Margaret Netto: Good evening Chair and Planning Commissioners. My name is Margaret
Netto, the project planner. The item before you tonight is a Vesting Tentative Map to combine
two lots into one 39,000-square foot lot. This lot will create 13 residential units and up to 13
commercial lots. The resulting lot… this subdivision would facilitate the construction of a
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
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39,000-square foot mixed-use project that was previously approved. The project would replace
the recently demolished Olive Garden restaurant which is about 9,000-square feet. Staff
recommends that the Planning and Transportation Commission take the following actions and
recommend approval of the Vesting Tentative Map to the City Council based on the findings
and conditions. That concludes my Staff report. I’m here to answer any questions and the
applicant is here as well. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Ok we’ll go to Commissioner questions. Commissioner [Note- Vice-Chair] Monk.
Vice-Chair Monk: I was going to propose making a motion and then through that process to
have dialog.
Chair Lauing: That’s fine.
MOTION
Vice-Chair Monk: So, I’d like to move to adopt Staff’s recommendation to approve the Vesting
Tentative Map to City Council based on the findings and conditions presented in the Staff
report.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Lauing: Is there a second to that?
SECOND
Commissioner Gardias: Second.
Chair Lauing: Moved by Vice-Chair Monk and seconded by Commissioner Gardias. Open
discussion? Did you want to speak first Commissioner [note-Vice-Chair] Monk?
Vice-Chair Monk: If there’s anything you want to relay to us on the parking and BMR units, you
could speak to that but other than that I don’t really have any problem with the project. I just
have some general questions so I don’t have anything to say. I support the project, I think it’s
great that we’re trying to make the best use of this land designation and create additional
housing.
Chair Lauing: Ok.
Mr. Lait: If there was a question there I don’t know if we have any more to add that’s in the
report. As Margaret noted this is a project that was previously approved. It was understood and
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
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anticipated that there was going to be this ownership map… condominium map coming
forward and we’re just processing that map now.
Chair Lauing: Commissioner Waldfogel.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Thanks. So, I’ll vote in favor of this but I do have a couple of
questions. One is that I don’t think we’ve seen this combined residential and commercial
condominium format before or at least I haven’t seen it in the last couple of years. And could
you just example how this association works? Is this a single association that represents both
categories?
Mr. Lait: Yeah that’s correct. The… and you’re right, we don’t see a lot of it here and it’s a
little… in my experience, it was a little bit more common in South California where you would
have mixed-use developments and an interest in wanting to separate the ownership of
different components of a development between the residential and the commercial. So that
those different section can be sold off to different entities but yes, it’s one association. And the
areas where there’s overlap or interest is in the common grounds space or where there’s access
requirements such as the access to the driveways or some other common area spaces. And it
just sorts of sets forth the parameters for how that area is dealt with or regulated.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Waldfogel: So just so I understand so if the roof on a commercial side needed to
be replaced them the assessment would be on everyone, the residential as well as the
commercial? I’m just trying to understand how this works.
Mr. Lait: I think for that level of detail we’d look to the CC&Rs which is required for all
condominium projects. Of course, the City does look at CC&Rs but we’re looking at it for
another discrete set of requirements that are set forth in the Municipal Code.
Commissioner Waldfogel: But I mean that’s a normal structure of an association?
Mr. Lait: Yeah and (interrupted)
Commissioner Waldfogel: I read the CC&Rs and I believe that roofs are counted as common
areas under these CC&Rs.
Mr. Lait: Yeah do you have any further… I mean we do have the applicant here too who might
be able to respond specifically to the question and Albert, do you have anything more to add on
that?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Albert Yang, Senior Deputy Attorney: No, I think the applicant would be best to be able to
answer those sorts of questions.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Yeah well, I guess what I’m asking from Staff is this just a normal
sort of structure for a mixed use… for mixed-use condominium?
Mr. Yang: I think it's not uncommon. A couple of weeks ago… maybe a month ago the
Commission also saw an alternative structure which was to create… actually, create separate
parcels and then rather than having a condominium structure. Within the condominium
structure, you could also have kind of subcommittees within the HOA that deal with the
different parts but this idea of having a condominium structure to deal with both residential
and commercial condominiums is not uncommon.
VOTE
Chair Lauing: If there are no other question we can put this to vote? All in favor of the Staff
recommendation and the motion on the table please signify by raising your hand. And that’s
four and no one opposed so that passed 4-0. Thank you.
MOTION PASSED 4(Lauing, Monk, Waldfogel, Gardias)-0-2(Alcheck, Riggs absent)-1(Summa
recused)
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Congratulations. Good luck on the project. Thank you.
Chair Lauing: Shortest Staff report of the year and see what kind of results you get.
Approval of Minutes
Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3
There are no minutes to approve for this meeting.
Commission Action:
Committee Items
Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements
Chair Lauing: Ok I think now we’re going to go to Committee [note-Commission] questions,
comments, announcements. We’ll or I’ll bring back in Commissioner Summa. Ok, so we’re over
on Commissioner question, comments, and announcements. Let’s take those first and then look
at future agenda items. Are there any questions, comments, or announcements? Jonathan
[note-Mr. Lait] I had a question about if you’ve gotten any feedback from the consultant that
we heard from at our last meeting about follow up items on the parking study.
Mr. Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning: Yes, I did and so based on that… I’m just trying
to remember. The consultant did find that there was some additional data that could be
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
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collected and has prepared a revised scope to conduct some additional work. That includes
addressing some of the comments that were raised here at the Commission I guess last time
that we met. And there were some questions about the distance of the… some of the housing
projects to Caltrain and so there’s some… there will be clarification on that. There will be more
descriptions added to the survey sites including some of the surrounding land areas, land uses
and whether or not it’s located in an RPP. We’re going to attempt surveys of… we’re going to
resurvey I should say the sites on the weekday, late night periods which was the times that had
the greatest parking occupancy. And also include on-site vehicles in the demand calcs and
recalculate those rates based on information received from that. We’ll conduct informal
interviews of some of the tenants there at each of the sites as we’re able to do that and ask
some question that relates to their experience in trying to find parking when arriving home.
Let’s see so I mean and then there’s a little bit more analysis that will go into the report and we
heard some other comments about just how it was presented overall and make sure that we’re
maintaining an objective narrative throughout the document. So that’s something that we’ll be
looking at adjusting and we’ll return to the Commission probably when we come back in August
to continue the conversation about the Housing Work Plan framework.
Chair Lauing: So, when they are talking to people who live there are they going to actually be
doing the interviews themselves? The parking… the Staff of the parking… I can’t remember the
name of the consultant.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Yeah it was Fehr and Peers was the…
Chair Lauing: Is it going to be their personal that’s doing the incept interviews of folks?
Mr. Lait: We’re going to look at the survey questions and understand what those are before
they commence.
Chair Lauing: Right but they’re the one… I was just wondering if they were going to farm that
our or if Staff was going to have to do it or you needed us to do some of that for you to help
things along or what?
Mr. Lait: No, the consultant is going to do that.
Chair Lauing: Ok and what about talking to the development… the department… apartment
managers there?
Mr. Lait: I’m sorry?
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Lauing: Talking to the apartment managers to ask about what their perceptions are about
enough parking or (interrupted)
Mr. Lait: Sure, we can.
Chair Lauing: When it's over parked what’s their theory on that?
Mr. Lait: Yeah, we can engage the apartment managers as well.
Chair Lauing: Yeah that’d be good. I mean like our transportation presentation tonight I mean
when the cars don’t show up they must have gone somewhere. So, it’s always good to find out
what the impacts are like this transportation study tonight as well as parking. Yeah, go ahead.
Commissioner Summa: To add to that maybe even talking to some of the neighbors to find out
about spillover parking is going to be useful because we don’t want to have… it doesn’t feel
good to have a really negative response appear to a report like that but we sure don’t want to
do it again. You know we want to make sure we’re getting the kind of the data so maybe even
once you set up the methodology or the questions, maybe even run it past us because we just
wouldn’t want to repeat that I was thinking.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Mr. Lait: Yeah you know I think that this is not the kind of report that’s going to generate
universal support for it because I just think there’s different perspectives on parking. And but
we want to do the best we can to produce a document that’s credible and so we’ve heard the
questions that were raised and we’ll… we have a path on how to address that. Our next
meeting with the Commission isn’t for… until the end of July. I think we’ll probably be doing
those surveys before then.
Commissioner Summa: And just speaking for myself I would be… I’m extremely open to a report
that really convinces me with good data and good methodology that we’re over parking
buildings. Particularly affordable housing but it’s just… it’s such a… parking and traffic are such
an insurmountable difficult problem in this City. And that it would be… it’s not going to get
better unless the City stops growing or peoples… and Stanford stops growing or people habits
really truly do change so I’m very open. I don’t think that there’s any particular perspective that
keeps me from not being open to that.
Chair Lauing: Commissioner [note- Vice-Chair] Monk you had questions?
Vice-Chair Monk: Mr. Lait I’m just reviewing the report that was prepared by the consultant at
our May 30th meeting when they first came in and it had the timeline of our process to get to an
ordinance. And so, I’m just observing here and you might have just addressed it. It looked like
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
what was supposed to happen by the end of June was to get feedback on an ordinance
framework, so my question is what does that mean and have we already done that? And then
you are giving us July to do more framework for an ordinance and we’re going to do a draft
ordinance review August 8th but yet the same deadline for a draft ordinance is August 29th. And
that’s what’s written in front of us and that’s what’s written in that prior thing so I guess my
question is where… what’s changed? Are we still going through that process and what does
framework mean verses… to me, a framework means discussion versus having a draft in front
of us?
Mr. Lait: That’s correct.
Vice-Chair Monk: Are we behind on the proposal that was laid out on May 30th? The proposed
timeline?
Mr. Lait: Our timeline has to adjust.
Vice-Chair Monk: We are adjusting our timeline.
Mr. Lait: That’s right and so I think we were going to come back… we’re going to have our
community meeting at the end of this… at the end of June.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Right.
Mr. Lait: And then we were going to come back I think it was either at that time or the next
meeting to have a discussion but our consultant, unfortunately, is not available for that next
meeting and I’m not available for the meeting after that. Actually, for the next two meetings
after that so we’re going to… you know we’ve got some work to do after the community
meeting. And with the comments that we’ve heard from the Commission and we’re going to
return on August 29th for a discussion of the beginning of what we think might form an
ordinance and then receive Commission feedback. At a subsequent meeting in September, we
would have a draft ordinance for the Commission to have a public hearing and discuss that.
Vice-Chair Monk: Just so I’m understanding, the community meeting is not happening because
(interrupted)
Mr. Lait: No, the community meeting is happening at the end of June.
Vice-Chair Monk: That is happening at the end of June.
Mr. Lait: That’s what this flyer is that you should have at the (interrupted)
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Ok but you’re saying… right, ok. Right and that’s what… so… but you’re saying
that the consultant is not (interrupted)
Mr. Lait: So, let me just make it even clearer so community meeting June 28th, the next time
we’re going to talk about the Housing Work Program is going to be August 29th.
Vice-Chair Monk: Ok just looking at the timeline that looks like a 2-month delay.
Mr. Lait: Well I don’t really characterize it as a delay. This is the circumstance of vacations and
where we are with scheduling. We’ll still… we still are focused on getting this to the City Council
in 2018 which was the objective.
Vice-Chair Monk: Is there anything that we can do on our end in preparing for the pieces of the
ordinance because I know that there’s a lot of moving pieces? Like we’re talking about parking
just now. Are there any big discussion items that we could pull out of it and have independent
of getting the entire framework all at once?
Mr. Lait: Planning Staff isn’t prepared to have a continued housing discussion until August 29th.
So, if the Commission wants to agendize something and have a conversation you could do that
but (interrupted)
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Well yeah, I’ve heard concerns about parking and I think that is a big concern
so I would advocate for if there’s a way to pull out that aspect and have that discussion over the
summer. That might be useful because we’re looking at changing ordinances in regards to the
parking requirements.
Mr. Lait: Right and (interrupted)
Vice-Chair Monk: Just think about it.
Mr. Lait: Ok.
Vice-Chair Monk: We’re all eager to deal with parking up here. Right?
Chair Lauing: Yeah. Ok, alright (interrupted)
Commissioner Summa: August 29th is the date.
Chair Lauing: That’s a good segue into the next few meetings so this At Place memo charted
possibility based on the pre-meeting that we had yesterday. So next week… so next month is
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
the 27th, that stays the same as what was in the main Packet we received. PTC by-laws and
procedures and the Alma Training Space Gym. Do you want to comment on what that is?
Mr. Lait: Our code requires a Conditional Use Permit for gyms. One was granted by the
Director; area residents were concerned about that decision and have requested a hearing
before the Planning Commission. And the Commission will have that public hearing and make a
recommendation to City Council.
Chair Lauing: Ok and the next sort of segment of this is that you’ll notice the July 7th is canceled.
That’s because we’re squishing them… some items into July 25th and August 8th we’re
suggesting to be canceled to sort of get a bit of a break in the summer as a Commission for the
first time. Next year if we plan that in advance we can have these meeting… consecutive
meetings if we wanted to… if we chose to have two meetings off then we would have a month
off in the summer in parallel with Council. So, the proposal here is to do what it says on July 7
and 8 and have those be cancelations and compress the 25th into those things. And then
Assistant Director Lait as already spoken to August 29th about picking up the Housing
Ordinance. So, if that’s acceptable then that’s how we’ll proceed.
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: As far as the timing on these items we just did the Tentative Map pretty
quickly. Does it make sense to have two separate meetings based on the content that’s listed
on June 27th and July 25th? Do those require two full meetings?
Mr. Lait: I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Chair Lauing: It’s a month apart.
Vice-Chair Monk: If any of the content should be combined on another date so that we could
not have a meeting if one isn’t necessary to give Staff a break this summer as well. They just
look… they look like their light items but I might not be knowing what’s…
Mr. Lait: Well one is a text amendment. Actually, that would also include a parcel map and one
is a parcel map.
Vice-Chair Monk: So, it’s a bigger discussion on July 25th?
Mr. Lait: This is when they’re going to be ready and we’re not going to be… we can’t be ready
on July 11th. If you (interrupted)
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vice-Chair Monk: Ok and you need to get the CUP approved for the other group in June.
Mr. Lait: I’m sorry Commissioner [note-Vice-Chair] I’m not quite sure which date you’re trying
to consolidate or move. Oh, I think… no, I think… I would be reticent to move or cancel your
June 27th meeting if that’s what you’re talking about. That’s a… I mean this is an applicant who
is ready to try to (interrupted)
Vice-Chair Monk: They are waiting for… ok sounds good. I mean I’m available, I was just
(interrupted)
Chair Lauing: Where you speaking about June 27th or July 25th?
Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah but it looks like the applicant wants us to vote on this… on their CUP
which we should do so, that’s why that one is staying. It just looked lite and it looked like they
could be merged in one meeting that’s all.
Chair Lauing: Ok I thought maybe you were referencing the July 25th items.
Vice-Chair Monk: Yeah, I was referencing July 25 and combine that with (interrupted)
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Commissioner Summa: (off mic) She’s wondering if they can be combined, those four
[unintelligible]
Vice-Chair Monk: But then it would delay the… yeah.
Chair Lauing: Ok so is there any other comments on that? Commissioner Waldfogel.
Commissioner Waldfogel: Is there any chance that we can cancel the Halloween meeting?
Chair Lauing: Which one?
Commissioner Waldfogel: The October 31st? The Halloween meeting?
[Many people started talking at once and off mic]
Mr. Lait: To make the decision now to do that.
Vice-Chair Monk: I second that suggested motion and definitely go to Santa Rita Street.
Commissioner Summa: (off mic) Yeah, we can’t meet on Halloween.
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Chair Lauing: I’ve got to take my costume back now if we’re not going to meet. Ok, so we’re
going to go with no meeting on the 11th, the 8th, and 10/13. I see no objections so that’s what
we’ll do. Any other comments about future or announcements?
Commissioner Summa: I have a question for Staff.
Chair Lauing: Question for Staff.
Commissioner Summa: Back to the parking thing is there a chance to survey the lower Mayfield
project which is all affordable housing and it was parked at either a 20 or 25 percent reduction
with lifts because I think it would give us a lot of information.
Mr. Lait: So, if… we can. This is not an agendize item and so I don’t want to continue too much
of a conversation about parking but I’d be happy to have an offline conversation with you.
Commissioner Summa: Ok.
Chair Lauing: Ok great. I think that concludes our agenda tonight so we will adjourn at 8 o’clock
sharp. Thank you.
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Adjournment
8:00 pm
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair,
provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually.
2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission
Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are:
Commissioner Michael Alcheck
Commissioner Przemek Gardias
Chair Ed Lauing
Vice chair Susan Monk
Commissioner William Riggs
Commissioner Doria Summa
Commissioner Asher Waldfogel
Get Informed and Be Engaged!
View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26.
Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card
located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission
Secretary prior to discussion of the item.
Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be
delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250
Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM two Tuesdays preceding
the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through
2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais.
Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the
agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above.
Americans with Disability Act (ADA)
It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a
manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an
appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs,
or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing
ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least
24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service.