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Home My WebLink About2025-01-29 Planning & Transportation Commission Verbatim 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 ten (10) 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 1 Verbatim Minutes: January 29, 2025 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:00 PM 7 8 Chair Chang: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Planning and 9 Transportation Commission for Wednesday, January 29, 2025. 10 11 ROLL CALL 12 13 Chair Chang: Ms. Dao, could you please take the roll? 14 15 Administrative Assistant Veronica Dao: Chair Chang? 16 17 Chair Chang: Here. 18 19 Veronica Dao: Vice-Chair Akin? 20 21 Vice-Chair Akin: Here. 22 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Here. 4 5 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Summa? 6 7 Commissioner Summa: Here. 8 9 Veronica Dao: We have a quorum. 10 11 Oral Communications 12 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 13 14 Chair Chang: Great. So our first order of business today is public comment regarding any items 15 that are not on the agenda tonight. Ms. Dao, do we have any speaker cards? 16 17 Veronica Dao: Yes, I have one speaker card and one person on Zoom. 18 19 Chair Chang: Okay. Great. Let’s hear from the first speaker. 20 21 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Veronica Dao: [Inaudible 1:02]. 1 2 Chair Chang: Why don’t I see the hands raised on Zoom? Oh, there. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Oh, there it is. 5 6 Chair Chang: Okay. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Okay. 9 10 Chair Chang: So Lisa Lawson on Zoom. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Zoom, yes. 13 14 Chair Chang: Got it. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Yeah. So first would be from James. 17 18 Chair Chang: Hello. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. James Girand: Thank you. I’m James Girand. I’ve lived at 590 East Crescent Drive for 43 plus 1 years. And I have my daughter, Lisa Lawson, who’s on Zoom, and she’s also a co-owner of the 2 property. And she manages a lot of my affairs and she’s a big help to me on a day-to-day basis. 3 And she also submitted a letter to the Commission about the temporary berm that has been in 4 front of our house for nearly four years. She’s here on Zoom, will be speaking with you − 5 speaking to you about how the berm and the State of California’s new daylighting law has 6 limited the handicap accessibility to my house that I rely on a daily basis. I’d like to speak to you 7 about other aspects of this project. The Transportation Department’s plan for the berm at East 8 Crescent and Southwood was a subject of much discussion by this Commission on June 14, 9 2023. The Commission listened to my concerns and the concerns of others about design. The 10 Commission was critical of the design proposed by the Transportation Department. The 11 Commission recognized [it is 2:40] my house − and it is entirely impacted by the aesthetics of 12 the giant berm. Excuse me. Several members of the PTC used phrases like, “[Inaudible 2:51] 13 one in front of my house. It is bizarre and looks too big for me.” [Inaudible 2:56] how it needs to 14 be completely rethought and there are more. 15 16 PTC observed the designers need aesthetic and functional feedback and would not be receptive 17 to a permanent plan unless it is – unless it addresses these issues. The PTC also said the new 18 plan must pass another review by the PTC before it was submitted to the City Council. Can you 19 all hear me okay? Okay. My daughter’s – who’s on [with 3:33] Zoom, has submitted a transcript 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. from the discussion. The Commission directed the Transportation Department to redesign the 1 berm with the input of myself. We had one brief meeting with the Transportation staff and 2 were hopeful that they would take our concerns into consideration; however, they did not. 3 Instead, they sent us a copy of the new plan in November and has not changed the original plan 4 in any meaningful way. The only change they made was to shave off a few feet of the berm on 5 one side and to extend the berm into a place where my caregivers have been parking, which 6 would block me from being able to get out of the car and – period. I’m here to ask you to direct 7 the Transportation Department to take down the temporary berm in front of my house, which 8 has been there for nearly four years, and direct them to redesign it with my disability access 9 and aesthetics in mind. I’m running out of time, it looks like. I only have – I have 20 seconds. I 10 think that’s the end of it. I just would very much appreciate your support and would now like to 11 give my daughter, Lisa Lawson, a chance to comment on Zoom. 12 13 Chair Chang: Thank you. 14 15 Veronica Dao: Next is on Zoom from Lisa Lawson. 16 17 Lisa Lawson: Good evening, Commissioners. Thank you so much for hearing our plight. Can 18 everybody hear me okay? 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Yes, we can. 1 2 Lisa Lawson: Okay, great. Thank you. So I submitted a detailed letter; I’m not sure if anybody 3 had a chance to review it but I wanted to highlight some of the facts and diagrams that are s-, 4 that have been submitted in it. As my father – my 87-year-old father noted, we discussed this 5 berm extensively at the June 14, 2023 meeting. Nearly two years later, we finally have what is 6 now supposed to be the final version of this berm. Even though the Transportation Department 7 was directed to reconsider it and make it more appealing, they have failed to do so. And, 8 Madame Clerk, if you could please call up the first image that I sent to you, I would appreciate 9 it. That’s the very first one of the three. This is the plan that has been submitted to us by 10 [Panchal Chirag 6:10] indicating what the permanent berm will look like. You can see that the 11 red line on the outside of the right side depicts where the original berm was and they have 12 noted that there’s 4 feet that has now been pulled in from that berm. You can see, however, 13 that they have also extended the berm beyond the walkway where my dad currently uses in 14 order to gain access to his house. When Mr. Chirag sent us this final design, he told us that 15 there would be no further discussion regarding it. 16 17 The City was already building construction plans to implement it and he said that we should be 18 satisfied with it because it takes into consideration our concern that the pathway that my dad 19 uses in order to access his house would be still accessible. He said, “This ensures the existing 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. walkway path to your front door, which facilitates easy pick-up and drop-off access, is 1 retained.” That access is, as you will see from the next slide – Madame Clerk, if you could please 2 advance the slides. That, as you can see, is a permanent walkway that my dad uses because he 3 can no longer drive and is dependent on caregivers to bring him to and from his house as well 4 as Uber drivers. He currently does not have a walker but will be prescribed one in March and it 5 is anticipated he will have a wheelchair soon after that. As you can see from – if you’ve read 6 anything about the daylighting laws that were implemented in January of this year, which KQED 7 describes as the most talked about law in California, parking in that space is not allowed. 8 Indeed, parking within 15 feet of the beginning or end of a berm is not allowed. And, Madame 9 Clerk, could you please advance the slides to the third slide? I’ve marked up exactly what these 10 daylighting laws, which is AB 413. I apologize, I said it was Senate Bill; it’s Assembly Bill 413. 11 12 Interpreted how that applies to this berm, which – once again, this berm is larger than anything 13 the City of Palo Alto has ever implemented. And you can see from the second – or actually, the 14 third slide, that this completely eliminates not only parking that is accessible to my h-, dad’s 15 house, but parking far beyond that. And it essentially cuts off any disability access that my 16 father, who is 87 years old, needs in order to access his house. The berm is temporary. It’s been 17 there for four years. I believe that you would have the power to have it dismantled and direct 18 the Planning Department, who has failed to consider the ramifications of AB 413 and how they 19 play out with this design. I believe you have the authority to direct them to dismantle it and 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. come back with a new design. And that’s what we’re asking that you do today. And we 1 appreciate your consideration. If you have time, I would appreciate you reviewing the rest of 2 the letter. I wanted to be short and to the point tonight. And given that a picture notes a 3 thousand words, I thought that these slides would be helpful. Thank you very much. 4 5 Chair Chang: Thank you. Before we move on to the next agenda item, I just wanted to let 6 members of the public know that we cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda nor can 7 we make decisions on them. But we heard your public comment, so thank you. 8 9 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 10 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 11 12 Chair Chang: So our next order of business is Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions. Is there 13 anything, Ms. Armer? 14 15 Assistant Director Jennifer Armer: None. 16 17 Chair Chang: Thank you. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: [Chair 9:30]. 20 21 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Yes, go ahead. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: I just wanted to say I joined at 6:05. Thanks. 3 4 Chair Chang: Yes. Let the record show that Commissioner Templeton is here. 5 6 City Official Reports 7 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 8 9 Chair Chang: And that takes us to City Official Reports. Ms. Armer. 10 11 Jennifer Armer: Yes, thank you. Give us a moment while we bring up the presentation. As usual, 12 we’ll keep this pretty quick. Just some updates on our upcoming… 13 14 Chair Chang: Pardon me. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: Yes? 17 18 Chair Chang: I’m seeing another raised hand online and I don’t know if that was there already 19 before the public comments finished. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Veronica Dao: It might have been just as we were moving on. So do you want to take the 2 comment? 3 4 Chair Chang: Yeah, let’s just take the comment. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Okay. So one more… 7 8 Chair Chang: But I’m not sure – I mean the hand is now gone. So I don’t know if – oh, no, It’s 9 back up. Okay. 10 11 Veronica Dao: Okay. From Mr. John Hanna. 12 13 John Hanna: Hello. This is John Hanna. Can you hear me? 14 15 Chair Chang: Yes, we can. 16 17 John Hanna: I wonder if you had a chance to read the email letter that I sent in to you all on this 18 subject. If so, then that says everything I really need to say. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: We received the letter. I can’t speak as to whether or not everybody’s read it, but 1 we’ve received it. 2 3 John Hanna: Okay. I just want to emphasize one thing that it – from the comments that we had 4 at the Commission hearing that I referred to in my letter, it was pretty clear that almost 5 unanimously the Commissioners did not like this berm and told the Staff so. And told them to 6 go back and redesign it. And apparently, that advice or request has just been forgotten about or 7 ignored and we would really appreciate it if some direction would be given to take into 8 consideration what Mr. Girand and his daughter have said. And they’re – some of the neighbors 9 too are not really very happy about the size of this berm. And there also seems to be some 10 controversy about whether it’s going to really add to safety there. It really narrows the distance 11 between two passing cars at the intersection of East Crescent and Southwood. So there’s very 12 little room for them to pass because the berm juts way out into the street. And we’re not sure 13 that that doesn’t create a different hazard from the one that they’re worried about now, which 14 is cars going too fast around the corner and ignoring the stop sign. So that’s about all I have to 15 say and I hope you will take these comments in a serious consideration. Thank you. 16 17 Chair Chang: Thank you so much. I think we’re not allowed to discuss it but we can certainly ask 18 Staff for more information on it in terms of confirming what the timeline is and what’s been 19 done by Transportation and what the process is before it is finalized. So – and… 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Vice-Chair Akin: [Inaudible 13:21]. 2 3 Chair Chang: Okay. Great. So Ms. Armer, it would be really helpful if you could help us follow up 4 with that. 5 6 Jennifer Armer: Thank you. 7 8 Chair Chang: Okay. On to the Staff Report or the City Official Report. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: All right. We’ll bring that up again. All right. So a quick listing of the upcoming 11 items for your February meetings. On February 12, we expect to have a discussion first of a 12 Comprehensive Plan Amendment to consider allowing Car Free Streets, specifically with a 13 potential resolution to implement that on portions of Ramona Street and California Avenue. We 14 then will also have a parking programs update and discussion. And the Chair has requested that 15 we add a – what should be a relatively short item, to discuss procedural rules, specifically there 16 was a discrepancy in the amount of time that – for public comment and how that can be 17 modified and we want that to be consistent with our other boards and commissions. So then on 18 February 26, we have a Planned Home Zone that is returning to you now that the 19 environmental review is complete. And an update on the bike and pedestrian plan. Then on the 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. next slide, we have some upcoming items. One is – oh, actually a recap update to provide to 1 you from the January 21 Meeting of City Council that they did approve some Zoning Ordinance 2 Updates in relation to the Housing Element. This was something that was recommended by 3 Planning and Transportation Commission back in November. Second reading will be in – next 4 week – no, in two weeks. 5 6 And then we do have a public meeting that we’ve scheduled on February 6, so that’s next week, 7 Thursday evening, about the Stream Corridor Protection Ordinance Update to get some public 8 discussion going, talk with them about what is currently being considered and get their input 9 before we bring it back to you for consideration and recommendation. And then on February 10 10, City Council has scheduled consideration of the zoning change for the project at 3265 El 11 Camino Real; this is one that you considered and recommended at your last meeting. And I 12 believe that is all we have for my report. But if you have any questions, I’m available. Thank 13 you. 14 15 Chair Chang: Thank you. Okay. Then tonight we have – oh, I wanted to ask does the Office of 16 Transportation have anything that they would like to add? 17 18 Jennifer Armer: I believe we have… 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Female: [Inaudible 16:18]. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: Do we have… 3 4 Chair Chang: And I… 5 6 Jennifer Armer: …Rafael available for that today? Okay. Not. So I think we can – if you would 7 like to… 8 9 Transportation Planning Manager Sylvia Star-Lack: [So I have 16:28] – I just have an 10 introduction. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Okay. Go ahead. 13 14 Sylvia Star-Lack: Good evening, Commissioners. Sylvia Star-Lack, Transportation Planning 15 Manager. I’m happy to introduce Lily Lim-Tsao, our Interim Chief Transportation Official. She 16 joins us here from the City of San Jose, most recently. And she is with us until we find a 17 permanent CTO. Lily, would you like to say a few words? You can use this mic. 18 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Interim Chief Transportation Official Lily Lim-Tsao: All right. Thank you. Good evening. Thank 1 you for having me here and I hope to be very productive and constructive in the three months 2 or four months that City is recruiting for the permanent position. I come from San Jose as the 3 Assistant Director over Transportation Department, having overseed the administration to the 4 operations and to the Planning and Maintenance Division. So I’m very well versed in the traffic 5 engineering world and I hope to be able to contribute to the max while I’m here. So thank you 6 for having me. 7 8 Chair Chang: Thanks for stepping in. Okay. Is that it for the City Official Reports? Okay. 9 10 Special Presentations 11 12 2. VTA Speed & Reliability Program Presentation 13 14 Chair Chang: So tonight we’ve got two special presentations. And the first one is a VTA Speed 15 and Reliability Program Presentation. And I’m not sure who’s presenting but take it away, Ms. 16 Armer. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Thank you. We do have guests here. I believe they are joining us online. Let’s 19 check… 20 21 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Female: Yes. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: …and see. And we’ve got – they’ve got a PowerPoint presentation as well. So 3 we’ll bring that up. Go ahead. 4 5 Tamiko Percell: Hi. I’m Tamiko Percell. I’m a Senior Transportation Planner from VTA and I lead 6 our Speed and Reliability Program, which is our effort to make transit reliably faster. I’m here 7 with our Engagement Consultant, Frank Ponciano, from Winter Consulting. And we are doing 8 some public engagement right now for a couple of efforts that we wanted to talk to you about. 9 You can go to the next slide. And hopefully get a little feedback, particularly on our second 10 effort. So just for some context, we are working towards VTA’s Visionary Network. Last year, 11 our Board of Directors adopted this vision for a lot more transit service in the future. We kind of 12 consider it Our North Star For More Service. And at the core of the Visionary Network is higher 13 frequencies, so this is where buses and trains would arrive [sort of 19:07] every ten minutes on 14 our frequent network routes. There would be expanded hours of operation, 24-hour service 15 network, greater service on weekends. So that’s more frequency and longer hours on Saturdays 16 and Sundays. And a larger service area and expanded routes for better regional connections. 17 Next slide, please. So the Speed and Reliability Program is focused on operation and 18 infrastructure treatments that improve speed, which is how quickly a bus travels over the 19 course of its route, and reliability, which is how consistently a bus moves with predictable travel 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. times. Speed and reliability is necessary for us to deliver those higher frequencies in the 1 Visionary Network. 2 3 Because faster transit is much more cost effective, it allows us to save money that can go into 4 delivering higher frequencies and there’s – will also be a lot more buses on the road if this 5 vision – if we’re able to implement the full vision, which means that we need our buses to be 6 operating very efficiently at nice spacing and using that limited space in the right lane to the 7 best purpose we can. Next slide. Just in case you’re not familiar, this is our Frequent Network 8 Map, so these are the routes that we are focused on for the higher frequencies. Hopefully in 9 the future, there would be even more for Palo Alto’s purposes. The 522 − Rapid 522 and the 10 local Route 22 are the two frequent network routes that service Palo Alto. Next slide. So we 11 have two phases of our current outreach. Phase one I’m going to talk about and Phase two, 12 Frank will talk about. So in our first phase, we are focused on what’s called the Transit 13 Reliability Improvement and Performance System or TRIPS. And this particular project is really 14 just a fancy name for saying that we’re developing a countywide transit signal priority system. 15 So we’re figuring out how to make it work across all the jurisdictions in Santa Clara County, so 16 an entire frequent network would have TSP deployed on it. And then the second one is a study 17 to help, hopefully, people transition from paying cash to using a Clipper card or credit card or 18 app or something like that. Next slide. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. So just for TSP, if you’re not familiar – TSP improves transit flow by adjusting traffic signals, so 1 buses get extended green lights or shorter red lights. So it’s not about cutting off everybody for 2 transit to get through an intersection. It’s just about holding the green light a little bit longer, so 3 the bus can make it through or shortening it so the bus is not waiting quite as long. It has a lot 4 of benefits for transit. It reduces the variability in our trip times, reduces our bus travel times, 5 and improves our schedule reliability. It’s really great for rider experience because it minimizes 6 delays, minimizes the bus bunching, which is where the buses arrive at stops grouped together 7 and then there might be a [lull and a break 22:09] and then another bus. It helps us keep them 8 more evenly spaced. And it supports more efficient transit operations in corridor performance. 9 There’s obviously some challenges; bouncing the transit signal priority with all the traffic flow, 10 the side street access to an intersection. Sometimes there’s concerns about there being too 11 much delay there. And prioritizing multiple routes in the corridor. So in this case, on El Camino, 12 it would be both the 22 and the 522 operating the corridor. So we work with cities on the 13 challenges of which route comes first and how do we make those decisions. And then the – 14 probably the biggest challenge for transit signal priority is that the effectiveness really depends 15 on city policies. 16 17 So if the city has a policy to prioritize transit at an intersection, TSP will work a lot better than if 18 a city is prioritizing say vehicles at the intersection. So now, Frank is going to talk about what 19 we’ve heard during the public engagement process that’s relevant for Palo Alto. And then talk 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. about the other project and hopefully get some feedback on how we can engage more people 1 in Palo Alto. Frank? 2 3 Frank Ponciano: Thanks, Tamiko. We [going 23:19] to the next slide and just refreshing folks’ 4 memories. Tamiko – as Tamiko introduced me, I’m Frank. I’m the lead outreach consultant on 5 this particular project. And in the last two months, we’ve been really busy getting the word out 6 and getting a lot of feedback focused on TSP and speed and reliability broadly as it relates to 7 the frequent network − VTA’s Frequent Network. Most of that work has happened in January. 8 All and all, we’ve got 29 events all over Santa Clara County, over 1,000 unique interactions with 9 community members, 10 focus groups in total, 13 community event pop-up booths, 6 10 community meeting presentations, and the breakdown on the geography of it is there listed as 11 well, noting that there has been, actually with this particular conversation, two conservations 12 have happened in Palo Alto itself. So we can go on to the next slide and we’ll talk a little about 13 what we’ve heard specifically as it relates to the routes and the corridors that involve Palo Alto. 14 Obviously, Palo Alto Transit Center – the picture actually we had in the last slide and it comes 15 up again later in the presentation, was the pop-up that we had at Palo Alto Transit Center 16 actually last week. And we heard loud and clear that it is a key transfer point for people that are 17 actually maybe coming from San Mateo or working in San Mateo commuting from Santa Clara 18 County. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 so there is a lot of inter-agency transfers happening and people express frustration about 1 what they understood to be a lack of synchrony between agencies in terms of schedules but 2 also people brought up the bottlenecks that come up all along El Camino Real broadly. 3 Obviously, traffic impacts both the 22 and 522 Routes. People were much more pleased with 4 522 in terms of getting them from end to ends faster because it’s a rapid route but, of course, 5 people were frustrated with the very slow speeds at times with Route 22 along some of the 6 bottlenecks that they find on El Camino Real. Move on to the next slide. And so as you saw in 7 the timeline a little bit earlier, we are at the end of this first phase of community engagement 8 and conversations, specifically on TSP. The conversations, of course, have focused on what are 9 the priority locations, priority corridors, areas and routes that we should really focus on 10 implementing these improvements, so that we have more frequent, faster service. And so, 11 what we’re doing now that we are wrapping up community engagement is we’re taking that 12 data and we’re also combining what we’ve learned on real-world data in order to set priorities 13 and guide future grant applications, policy coordination with local cities. We going to m-, move 14 on to the next slide. And I believe we now move on to talk about what’s coming up. 15 16 So as you see there, starting this month, we’re already gearing up for the conversation on what 17 we call FBS, Clipper Retail Network and Cashless Fare Payment Barrier Study. And that’ll take us 18 through the end of the year with a pilot program that we are sort of ideating around that we’ll 19 be engaging the community around in the next couple of months happening in the summer. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 so it’s going to be more work ahead and much more conversation. We’ll get to that in just 1 a little bit. But I want to give you a little bit of context around why we’re putting on this effort 2 to begin with. So we’re going to the next slide. The fact is that when somebody uses cash to pay 3 their fares as they’re boarding a VTA bus, on average, it takes that person 12 seconds in order 4 to complete payment and board. That’s not necessarily a problem but on a busy stop, like Palo 5 Alto Transit Center, let’s say, where we may have five people that are boarding the bus and 6 paying with cash; well that’s an added minute. And now that bus is delayed. And so obviously, 7 the more that that grows, the more it scales. The alternative is they use a method of payment 8 that doesn’t involve cash and that decreases the amount of time that it takes to board by over 9 90 percent. So that is significant and it plays such an important role in allowing us to really 10 optimize for faster, more reliable service. 11 12 And so we’re really focused on figuring out how can we address this. We’re going to the next 13 slide. Because, of course, accessibility concerns arise when we talk about – so emphasizing non-14 cash fare payment, namely seniors, immigrant communities, the unhoused, and other folks that 15 use the bus – VTA’s bus service regularly, and oftentimes, paying cash as their only method. 16 Don’t’ have the access to devices that are a – enable this kind of contactless payment or may 17 not have physical access to locations where they can purchase a Clipper card or frankly, they 18 may not have the knowhow. There may not have been the information sharing that is needed 19 for somebody to know how they can access these options of payment. And so we want to be 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. mindful of the fact that there are some barriers there. And whatever solution we ultimately test 1 and implement needs to take that into consideration. And if we establish what those barriers 2 are and we address them, hopefully we arrive at the best-case scenario. Now that’s what the 3 next number of conversations are going to be about. We’re going to the next slide. In the 4 months of March and April, we’re going to be back out to the community and going to be 5 having 10 focus groups, 8 community presentations, and up to 16 community event pop-up 6 booths all over the County of Santa Clara in order to have a conversation that focuses on that 7 specific question. 8 9 We want to use the learnings from this outreach that we have in March and April in order to 10 plan and ultimately run a pilot program that tests what approaches can address the concern of 11 lowering the amount of time that it takes to pay the fare, that also prioritizes accessibility and 12 equity. That’s really at the crust of what we’re trying to do. So we’re going to the next slide. 13 And then, of course, we’ll take questions and have conversation here. But just for you all to 14 think about ways in which you can help us to really most efficiently reach communities in Palo 15 Alto and in the – all along the county and North County too. What are some of those important 16 Palo Alto organizations or community leaders that we should include in a focus group kind of 17 conversation or we could go on and have a community meeting presentation to them. That’s 18 one question. And then the second question is are there any events that you know are coming 19 up in March and April that are big in the City that we should make sure to have a presence at? 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Those are our main two questions but we are happy to take your questions as well. Let me just 1 check. Tamiko, is there anything that you would like to add [inaudible 32:22]. Okay. Any 2 questions from the Commission? 3 4 PUBLIC COMMENTS 5 6 Chair Chang: First, I’m just going to give the public a chance to raise their hand if they have any 7 comments about this because this is – we don’t have a stated – on our agenda, room for public 8 comments. But we do want to hear from people if they do have comments. And then in the 9 meantime, why don’t we see if the Commission has any questions or comments. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 32:53]. 12 13 Chair Chang: It works. Commissioner Templeton. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Hi. Thank you, guys, for that great presentation. I’m very interested 16 in getting more activity on VTA up here in Palo Alto and I think that your efforts are going to 17 help with that. The first thing I’m thinking of is early on when Tamiko was presenting, there was 18 a slide that said, “We need the City’s cooperation to do the light timing.” And I’m thinking 19 about the 22 and the 522, which are [riding 33:32] up and down El Camino, which are the state-20 owned street and all of the light timing there is negotiated with the state. So what do you think 21 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 can do? What kind of cooperation from the City are you actually looking for from us 1 for that? 2 3 Tamiko Percell: So anytime we have these conversations − obviously Caltrans is a key player at 4 the table, but these decisions are almost always made with VTA, Caltrans, and City Staff even 5 the Caltrans is controlling the signal. So we’re really looking for Staff support to prioritize transit 6 [inaudible 34:10] intersection − is kind of the key part that would help us a lot. I think Caltrans is 7 actually moving in that direction where they are starting to prioritize transit more but all being 8 on the same page is really helpful. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. I will ask the Staff as well here in the city if there’s anything 11 you need from us in order to support that. 12 13 Tamiko Percell: Thank you. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Do you want to chime in or… 16 17 Sylvia Star-Lack: I don’t think we need anything. I – we – I’m going to say a little bit more about 18 the role of transit, so I mean it’s obviously really important in our town. So, thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: Yeah, absolutely. And then as far as organizations to be working with 1 in Palo Alto, this is potentially obvious or potentially not what you’re looking for. But I’ll tell you 2 that the people that I think could really benefit from understanding and using an improved VTA 3 service in our city – you’ve mentioned a few but I’m especially thinking about the younger 4 people. So I would suggest working with the PAUSD district and the PTAs that are involved 5 there because we are – we really do encourage our students to find alternate ways to get to 6 school. Many of them will bring bikes or they’ll ride the bus home. And figuring out how to 7 make that work better for them would be really beneficial overall for our community because 8 not everybody lives right off of El Camino. So we have to think about what are your connections 9 and how many bike racks and all those many things that I’m sure you guys would hear about 10 from them. Thank you. 11 12 Chair Chang: Other Commissioners? Ms. Dao, are there any public comments that have come 13 in? 14 15 Veronica Dao: I have no raised hands… 16 17 Chair Chang: Okay. 18 19 Veronica Dao: …or… 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Then, I have a quick comment or question. The first one is does all that is going on 2 with the new national administration affect this project at all? 3 4 Tamiko Percell: Currently, no. We actually did hear from the [grantor 36:34] at the federal 5 government and they said that it appears that since our agreement is already executed, that it 6 should be fine to keep this moving forward, but of course, things unfold pretty quickly. So we’ll 7 keep everyone posted if something changes. But for now, we’re moving forward as planned. 8 9 Chair Chang: That’s great. That’s great to hear. And then in response to your question about 10 groups in Palo Alto where that it may be helpful to work with, much as Commissioner 11 Templeton said, I agree that you should talk to the schools but specifically there’s a City School 12 Subcommittee of the City Council that might be valuable. There’s also the Safe Routes to School 13 group, which is a partnership between PAUSD and the City and that’s probably got the absolute 14 key people. And along those lines, the students I know trying to go to Gunn High School have 15 continually struggled with the bus routes with VTA. In fact, my neighbor just last week knocked 16 on my door to say, “Could my student hitch a ride with your son?” Because the bus stop down 17 the street is going away. So I’m sure they – Gunn High School, in particular, I know would have a 18 lot of feedback. And additional groups that are citizen groups that are pretty – like so the Palo 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Alto PABAC, the bicycle coalition, I think, might be really – is that the name of it, Ms. Lack? Palo 1 Alto Bicycle… 2 3 Sylvia Star-Lack: It’s… 4 5 Chair Chang: …Advisory… 6 7 Sylvia Star-Lack: Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. 8 9 Chair Chang: Okay. Pedestrian – yeah, that group. I just know the acronym. And then our senior 10 non-profit, Avenidas, might be a very helpful group to reach out to as well. And then 11 Commissioner Summa. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: Thank you for the presentation. I was – I had a list of five groups that 14 you might want to reach out to. And the ones that have not been mentioned are the 15 Opportunity Center and the gentleman who runs that will be running our new transitional 16 housing wi-, out in the Bay-, basically − lands, which it currently is not served by a bus and we 17 were hoping that that would be an additional bus route that could help out those people. And 18 then Alta Housing is the other one that I was thinking of. And they operate most of our below-19 market rate programs. Thanks. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: It looks like we’ve got Commissioner Hechtman, is that right? 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: No, ghost light. 4 5 Chair Chang: Oh, ghost light. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: [It’s me 39:26]. 8 9 Chair Chang: Okay. It’s confusing. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: I just wanted to piggyback on what you said, Chair. I’m wondering if 12 Middle College – it’s not – I don’t think it’s just Gunn but I would say Middle College needs to be 13 addressed as well. So – which is a new high school located on the [Inaudible 39:42] Campus. 14 Thanks. 15 16 Chair Chang: Yes, more broadly, our community colleges is a good group to reach out to and 17 since they all have partnerships with the high schools. Middle College is the partnership in our 18 area, yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: [Veteran’s 40:00] Association. 1 2 Chair Chang: Oh, Veteran’s Association was another one. Okay. I don’t see other lights from the 3 Commissioners. So then thank you both for coming and for sharing this information with us. 4 And we look forward to hearing more. 5 6 Tamiko Percell: Thanks. 7 8 3. Via Palo Alto Link Update 9 10 Chair Chang: Okay. So our next special presentation is the Via Palo Alto Link Update. 11 12 Transportation Parking Manager Nate Baird: Good evening, City Council. My name’s Nate Baird. 13 I am your Parking and the – or Palo Alto Link Program’s manager and the Office of 14 Transportation. I have two representatives from Via here today to talk a little bit about Palo 15 Alto Link and share with you. There’s no Staff Report. This was a request by Via to just 16 introduce themselves and review what we’ve been doing. The Palo Alto Link Program began as 17 an 18-month pilot for – we now have funding through a little over two years but beyond that, 18 we’re basically kind of still in a p-, in a sort of a pilot phase where we’re kind of making 19 adjustments, trying to take in feedback, trying to find the operating model and the kind of 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. funding arrangement that makes the most sense for us. So with that, I’ll turn it over to Krista – 1 sorry, Krista, I… 2 3 Krista Glotzbach: Glotzbach. 4 5 Nate Baird: …have your name right there. Glotzbach. And Mikhel Dave, who’s supporting her. 6 But thanks so much for coming out tonight. 7 8 Krista Glotzbach: Thank you so much for allowing us the time. It’s great to see you to talk about 9 Link. Krista. I live here in Menlo Park. Mikhel was born and raised here in Palo Alto, so we’re 10 also users of the service. And Via is the company behind Palo Alto Link. We are a global 11 company. We have about 700 different transit agency and city partners that we serve to help 12 make transit better. If you go to the slide – go ahead forward. A little bit more. I’m going to go 13 through the slides at a decent pace to give you a chance to ask questions. I think you’re all 14 familiar with it and hopefully have seen the vehicles around town. These are some of your 15 other neighbors that also have the service. On the next slide, we zone in a little bit more on a 16 few brand new ones in the region. Go ahead to the next slide. The Bayview Shuttle is a new, 17 nine EV shuttle service in the Bayview neighborhood in San Francisco. It’s become very popular 18 in a very short period of time. Silicon Valley Hopper, you might be familiar with. It has been – 19 originally was in Cupertino and then expanded to Santa Clara through a grant from the state 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 has become quite a popular service there and Richmond, California. All of these services 1 emphasize being able to help people get around their neighborhoods but also connect to 2 transit. 3 4 It was really nice to hear VTA speak and talk about increased frequency of buses because all of 5 these systems are integrated and we want to help get people places faster. So we know when 6 VTA is coming, we’re trying to get people to meet the buses to take their longer trips on public 7 transit. That’s a main use of microtransit today. On the next slide – we’ll go one more. We’ll talk 8 a little bit – go into Palo Alto Link and how the service works. Hopefully, you’ve seen it; the 9 Teslas or the minivans around town, application-based. You go in and order a vehicle. When 10 you order a car, it’s very likely that that car will have one of your neighbors in it when it arrives. 11 These are all shared rides that the service is delivering. So it’s public transit meant to reach 12 people that aren’t otherwise on a bus line or a convenient method for getting transit. On the 13 next slide, I put a picture of the vehicle but I saw lots of nods. You have seen them around 14 town. And on the next slide, we show a little bit of a graph about what is going on, what the 15 growth has been like. I love the map that you’re looking at on the left because it shows where − 16 those dots are all where ride requests have come from. So you see how the service is quite a bit 17 different than a standard shuttle but would be along a line and people would get on it when 18 they’re close to it. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Everywhere that Palo Alto Link serves, people are calling it. And they’re going from one place to 1 another within town. They’re going to Caltrain, they’re going to the Stanford Research Park, 2 and a lot of these very poplar destinations around town. It’s grown about − almost 30 percent 3 year over year as you’ve seen. Well March will be our two-year anniversary running the service 4 here. So it’s very popular and it’s grown over time. In fact, it’s continued to grow even when we 5 did introduce fares in December. So it’s − holiday times give it some volatility but the slightly 6 increased fares have not impacted ridership to the negative. So it’s continued to be very 7 popular. On the next slide, we compare a little bit with your neighbors. One way that we 8 measure how good a micro-transit service is is utilization. So how often are these rides shared? 9 How many passengers is each vehicle carrying per vehicle hour? Palo Alto has a very strong 10 utilization over three. And we compare it to a few of your neighbors here just for similar 11 demographics, similar types of services. We wanted you to see that’s a very strong popular 12 service and it’s making good use of the dollars that you invest in it because we’re carrying a lot 13 of people per passenger hour. The demographics of who this serves are an important part of 14 this. We really want transit to reach the people who need transit the most. 15 16 These are self-reported with surveys that we put out over the Palo Alto Link application. Sixty 17 percent of riders identify as minorities, 57 percent say that they make less than $100,000 a 18 year and 23 percent of riders have a long-term disability. We continue to put these surveys out, 19 so that we understand as much as we can about the riders and make sure we’re doing the 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. things in the application and with the service that serve the people that you would like us to be 1 serving. On the next slide, we show a couple of the people that came to visit City Council last 2 time back in November. This gentleman is a fantastic man. His child’s a special needs child who 3 uses the service to volunteer at the VA and is a very important service to him and to senior 4 friends of his. On the next slide, a gentleman named BJ, talks about how he’s come to Palo Alto 5 and he lives here really to be able to access the Stanford Hospital and how critical it was for him 6 to go to and from the hospital without any other ability to drive there himself. These stories are 7 anecdotal but they’re very impactful and residents wrote into City Council as well just to 8 express support for the service overall. Not only are we supporting individuals and what they 9 need, we’re also supporting the City. We’re working to reduce congestion and we’re working to 10 reduce emissions. 11 12 These are measurements that show how many single-occupancy vehicle trips we are taking off 13 the road because these people are going in shared rides instead, so we estimate about 19,000 14 of those in 2024 alone. And then the other estimate, we look at actually the emissions 15 themselves and how much emissions were decreasing. This is from a combination of the 16 electric vehicles that we are using in much of the service – some of the service as well as those 17 shared rides, so not having single-occupancy vehicles on the road. This may be a little bit of an 18 eye chart but I’ll describe what you’re seeing here because it is interesting. The dark green, kind 19 of the center of that dark green space, we have dropped onto this map a person we call Jane. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Jane is helping us measure how long it takes to get anywhere else in the city. So in the map on 1 the left, we’re showing the Link service along with VTA, the buses, Caltrain, using the public 2 transit that exists, how long does it take Jane to get anywhere else in Palo Alto? So you’ll see 3 comparing the map on the left to the map on the right, that green area is how far Jane can get 4 in 30 minutes, basically. So Jane can access much, much more of Palo Alto and she can reach 5 downtown within 30 minutes. So what we’re really trying to do is give people access in a 6 reasonable amount of time. 7 8 And this is an interesting chart showing how many more people now can access much more of 9 town within 30 minutes. We show the same thing on the next slide, looking specifically at the 10 VA. And you can see that 13 times more people can reach the VA Hospital within 45 minutes. 11 Again, Jane in the dark green, and then the expanded green showing a 30-minute window, and 12 then the color outside of that how far she can get in 45 minutes. It’s a really fun tool to play 13 with. Really importantly, I want to mention Stanford Research Park, who’s been a partner with 14 Stan-, with Palo Alto Link since very early on. They originally, before we started working with 15 you, had a shuttle that was fine but wasn’t super effective. They were looking for an on-16 demand type solution in order to serve the park, so they decided to partner with Palo Alto and 17 have the Palo Alto Link service also serve their community with on-demand shared rides. They 18 contribute about a third of the funding to the service. This is again a model for the community 19 because all of our partners in California would really love if a few businesses helped contribute 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. to the transportation service. So it’s a really good example of how this can work in partnership 1 with the community and you can see HP, Tesla; we have strong supporters. The Stanford 2 Research Park. And we go present to them and make sure they’re excited about the service 3 ongoing as well. 4 5 Talking about the funding specifically, about a third today is allocated by the City of Palo Alto, a 6 third is Stanford Research Park, as I mentioned, and the other third we’ve worked with Palo 7 Alto to achieve grants that will help fill that last third. So the – most of that now is the VTA 8 Measure B Grant. That’s a grant that also funds Cupertino, the new Sunnyvale service that’s 9 going in. So VTA has opted to fund these services instead of just running it themselves. That 10 Sunnyvale service is VTA’s own service though, so they are working – looking at running these 11 themselves soon. So this is how the service is funded today. We’re working with your team 12 members in order to figure out that last third going forward. The Measure B Grant − the next 13 one is due at the end of February. You can go ahead to the next slide. And so we’re working on 14 that application right now with your team to make sure we apply for that grant and then we 15 will hear at the end of May whether or not the City has been able to secure that grant. And 16 there are also community groups that we are looking to, again in cooperation with the City, to 17 see if there might be some interest in contributing that last third of the funds to help Palo Alto 18 Link run at the capacity it is right now. It's really quite ideal. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. It’s going to almost – to the – all the boundaries of the city and has the right number of vehicles 1 to have lower wait times, things like that. So maintaining the existing funding really helps 2 maintain the quality of service that we have today in Palo Alto. Lastly, I just want to say that 3 we’re very committed to you and to this service and making sure it runs the way that you want 4 to. Over time, we have made adjustments to it. We try to be very adaptive, helping with the 5 grants, as we mentioned, making it – making the service nimble and adaptable. When it was – 6 when we were told that students were really encouraged to ride their bikes and they – you 7 know not necessarily great to have students depending on this type of service to get to school, 8 we put in some new rules, some new boundaries to help make it so that during the school bus 9 hours, during the hours right when kids – students are arriving and departing school, weren’t an 10 easy time to get a Link. That didn’t make a lot of sense because it conflicted with bike riding, for 11 example. So we worked with the City to implement these types of things to help really meet the 12 goals that you have for the service. We’ve engaged with the community. We visit senior centers 13 and teach people how to use the application, so it’s very easy for them to order it on their own. 14 15 And we use data we get from the service to continue to refine and make the service better. 16 Little things like if a vehicle doesn’t have a passenger, where does it sit and wait, so that it’s 17 anticipating the next ride. Those things are very important to keep the emissions low and 18 keeping the wait times low. So we’re constantly adapting the service in order to be tuned into 19 that. And that’s really one of the reasons we’re here is we’re eager for your feedback, eager for 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. your input, and obviously, eager to do what we can to help make sure the service is able to 1 keep running. And that’s all I had today. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: Thank you. Once again, I ‘d like to invite members of the public to raise their 4 hands if they have any comments about this presentation. And again, in the meantime, we’ll 5 take questions and comments from Commissioners. I don’t see any lights. Oh, Chair Tem-, I’m 6 so tired. Commissioner Templeton. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. Yeah. So I – it’s exciting to see how many seniors 9 you’re serving. So what is the drop-off and pick-up procedure for people with infirmities like 10 that or they may have difficulty entering and exiting? 11 12 Krista Glotzbach: The drivers are trained very much to work with people with disabilities, of 13 many types of disabilities. We also – you’ve probably seen, they’re wheelchair-accessible 14 vehicles. So basically, the drives are trained. We also have notes in the app itself, so that if 15 someone… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: But they like don’t have to go down the street or wait like in… 18 19 Krista Glotzbach: Oh, right. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Things like that. 2 3 Krista Glotzbach: With any-, anyone, if you specify that you need the vehicle to come door to 4 door, it will come directly to your door. It won’t stop… 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 7 8 Krista Glotzbach: …down the street. So yes… 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 54:35]. 11 12 Krista Glotzbach: …those accommodations are in there. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: I’m going to throw you a curveball here… 15 16 Krista Glotzbach: [Inaudible 54:38]. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: And it’s okay if you don’t have an answer for this. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Krista Glotzbach: Okay. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: But what would happen if I called for a pick-up at 590 East Crescent 3 Drive? 4 5 Krista Glotzbach: I need to plug that into my map really quickly. Is that not in the zone? 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: We just saw a picture of it this morning − or earlier this evening. 8 9 Mikhel Dave: [Inaudible 54:56]. 10 11 Krista Glotzbach: Oh. Thank you. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 14 15 Krista Glotzbach: Mikhel was paying better attention than I was. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Well thank you. 18 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Krista Glotzbach: The – if the vehicle like just can’t get to where they’re going to be, they have – 1 you’re on an app, so they have text that they can text the passenger. So they would go as close 2 as they could to the place they need to be and then they would text or have dispatch call the 3 passenger to tell them where they are. But they would – I mean they can see it on the map, so 4 they would just get as close as they can. You’re saying if it’s a rider with a disability and then 5 they need to get out? 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Well, yes. 8 9 Krista Glotzbach: Yeah. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: There was some conjecture about how that is being experienced by 12 a resident and… 13 14 Krista Glotzbach: Yeah. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: …that’s not your issue but I’m just trying to emphasize and give 17 Transportation an opportunity to weigh in about… 18 19 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Templeton: …how this service provided by the city that is agendized would 2 handle a situation like that where given the State laws would prohibit you guys from getting 3 close to that particular residence. Thank you. 4 5 Lily Lim-Tsao: Commissioner, I can answer. Maybe describe the condition in which a standing 6 vehicle would be allowed to get as close to the property as possible. The daylighting law is 7 intended for long-perm parking at a – you can say maybe a two-minute parker maybe is too 8 long already but this is where we anticipate the Via, the shuttle would be staffed of the driver 9 and move as quickly as he or she can possibly do so. So I think you can still get close to the 10 property. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you for answering that question. I think it’s really important 13 and clearly the public wants to know. So it’s really good to get that information out there. 14 Thank you. 15 16 Chair Chang: Just a quick follow-up question because the subject came up. So does the 17 daylighting law in general allow like pick-up and drop-off loading zone in those daylighted 18 areas? 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Lily Lim-Tsao: It is not intended for that purpose but it doesn’t also require [inaudible 57:12] 1 curbs. So the idea is that the space would remain open generally at all times for pedestrian 2 visibility and bicycle visibility, crossing visibility but there are conditions which can void and… 3 4 Chair Chang: Right. 5 6 Lily Lim-Tsao: Yeah. 7 8 Chair Chang: And it’s unlikely a citation would occur. 9 10 Lily Lim-Tsao: Yeah. 11 12 Chair Chang: Got it. Okay. I have a question; it was about the school zone exclusions. So is that a 13 blanket school zone exclusion and so that if there is a disabled student − or students by and 14 large are very able-bodied but they are also very active, and so there’s lots of broken legs and 15 ACL tears and that kind of a thing. And so I was just curious about the school zone exclusion and 16 whether there was a blanket exclusion or whether this Link could have been – could be used in 17 the situation where a student has a disability. 18 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Krista Glotzbach: Yeah. We – I believe that they can in the app if they are indicated as disabled 1 or they can call. 2 3 Chair Chang: Got it. 4 5 Krista Glotzbach: [Inaudible 58:25]. 6 7 Chair Chang: That’s great to hear because I could see it being very useful to families in that 8 situation. And my other question is about funding, which is is – it was unclear, Mr. Baird, about 9 what you said about the funding that Palo Alto has signed up for. Is it only good through the 10 two-year anniversary, through March or does it extend pass that? 11 12 Nate Baird: So we have funding currently through June of this year. 13 14 Chair Chang: Okay. 15 16 Nate Baird: And that is through a combination of the innovative transit grant, a TFCA grant, 17 which is an air quality grant that helped us convert fully to EV and hybrid. And then Stanford 18 Research Park and the City Council funds are both kind of sort of locked in but that – the grant 19 portions are – those funds, we will need to reapply for. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: So… 2 3 Nate Baird: Previously, the innovative transit was only if you were brand new. They actually 4 changed the rule recently, so that we can reapply for that innovative transit grant but we do 5 need to apply for it and that is… 6 7 Chair Chang: So when you said the City one-third is locked in, that’s locked in… 8 9 Nate Baird: Not so much locked in but… 10 11 Chair Chang: …beyond June, then? Or… 12 13 Nate Baird: Well Council has basically discussed a willingness to continue to fund that amount. 14 And obviously, every year there’s funding discussions and so those types of parameters can 15 change. But we expect at this point for City Council to continue to be willing to fund at the level 16 that they’ve funded at potentially, but again those discussions are in flux. There is a lot of 17 movement right now generally with funding and how funding works, right? And so we are 18 working really hard to both get the funding that we’ve received thus far – we we’re going to 19 reapply to both of those funding opportunities. And then as Via st-, Via folks were talking about, 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. we will also be trying to work with other local community groups and businesses like SRP but 1 others in that same sort of parameters who get a lot of trips, we want to see if they could 2 become funding partners in the future as well. So we’re trying to address from all avenues but 3 it is a lot – there is still a lot in flux right now. 4 5 Chair Chang: Can you just remind me what the total budget is for – or how much is – either the 6 Palo Alto contribution or the total? 7 8 Nate Baird: So it’s roughly about 120, 130K per month. 9 10 Chair Chang: That’s the total? 11 12 Nate Baird: That’s the total amount. 13 14 Chair Chang: Okay. 15 16 Nate Baird: Cost. 17 18 Chair Chang: Thank you. All right. I see another question from Commissioner Templeton. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: Thank you. Yeah, just thinking about the funding question. And this 1 is for City Staff but you guys pipe in if you know the information. Just thinking about one of the 2 pieces of information that wasn’t in the presentation is how many students are using this 3 service and I’m thinking about the previous presentation about the VTA increasing the 4 utilization of that. And I’m wondering how much do you think the City is funding for students to 5 use this service versus what it would cost to fund a VTA pass for students? Do we know that 6 comparison? I don’t expect you to know off the top of your head but that’s something that we 7 always grapple with. “Oh, it’s too expensive to get students to have a bus pass.” But we are 8 providing an equivalent type of service that we’re funding from the city. Have we ever thought 9 about comparing those two? 10 11 Sylvia Star-Lack: So because of this concern, as Krista noted, we have changed that, so students 12 cannot use the service to go to school. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Oh, I’m not speaking about school. 15 16 Sylvia Star-Lack: Oh. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Sorry. I’m just thinking about who − what type of people are using 19 the service and whether they’re – many students who are using this service are not doing it to 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. get to and from school during the regular bussing hours. They’re doing it for afterschool 1 activities or going… 2 3 Sylvia Star-Lack: Thank you. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …to study with a friend. 6 7 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah, thank you. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 10 11 Sylvia Star-Lack: Thank you. I’m sorry. Can – so – and you’re – sorry. Can you tell me your… 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: I want to know… 14 15 Sylvia Star-Lack: …question again? Yeah. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: …how – what percentage of the funding that the City is giving to this 18 program like can we put a dollar amount on it versus if we were to subsidize bus passes. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Sylvia Star-Lack: I see. Okay, yeah. I do not have that data. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: You don’t have to have it right now but if that is something – do you 3 guys know how many students are riding – in our chart, like what the percentage of students? 4 5 Male: [Inaudible 62:17]. 6 7 Krista Glotzbach: We – yeah, we changed the fare, so there isn’t a special fare there anymore. 8 So we don’t always know if that’s – if it’s a student that’s riding the service. And we have since 9 made it so that we don’t run during the student hours. So we can definitely do this in our next 10 survey and find out and get a good number. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, I think it would be really interesting. 13 14 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: And not because I don’t appreciate this program but because this is 17 something that we talked about for many… 18 19 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Templeton: …years and we need to understand what is the direction and… 2 3 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …what if it turns out that this is a better value. We don’t know but 6 we should have that information and that may help us decide better how to fund and where to 7 fund in the future. So… 8 9 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Right? 12 13 Krista Glotzbach: Yeah. 14 15 Sylvia Star-Lack: So just a comment about Link and VTA. Link gives access to many places in 16 town, almost all places in town. VTA is very limited in where it runs in town for – right − for 17 where students want to go. We have very few lines if you look – to compare. So a more 18 [inaudible 64:20]… 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: I’m aware that there’s a challenge of being in the north part… 1 2 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yes. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: …of the county but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t need both. I’m 5 just trying to… 6 7 Sylvia Star-Lack: Correct. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: …understand… 10 11 Sylvia Star-Lack: Correct. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: …and [be intentional 64:28] about what we’re doing with that 14 money. Also one of the things we hear from the VTA service is, “Well you guys don’t use it. Why 15 should we run more? Why should we run more routes?” And so if we understood that and 16 imagine if every student in the city had a bus pass, they would… 17 18 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: …use it more… 1 2 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: …and there’d be more routes… 5 6 Sylvia Star-Lack: [Inaudible 64:51]. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: …as a result. 9 10 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah, there is definitely interest amongst Staff in pursuing that kind of… 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 13 14 Sylvia Star-Lack: …situation. So… 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: It’s all… 17 18 Sylvia Star-Lack: …thanks for that. 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: …related in reading what’s popular right now. So it’s just interesting 1 information and I’m glad you guys are looking into it. And I appreciate what you guys have done 2 for the community, not just the seniors and the students, but anybody who needs help getting 3 around when the car isn’t working. So thank you. 4 5 Sylvia Star-Lack: Sure. 6 7 Chair Chang: One more quick question. This is sort of a preview into our next agenda item, 8 which is the study session on the Safe Streets For All. You had mentioned that your data 9 gathering has been a little bit – is a little bit different now because the – it was done based on 10 fares before. And so there was something about − in our Safe Streets For All Plan, that talked 11 about equity and the [access 65:38]. So is there any way to track or to understand what role 12 Palo Alto Link is playing with respect to certain groups of people, be it students or seniors or 13 people who are lower income or – so just wondering what data is available. 14 15 Krista Glotzbach: Sure. All of the origin destination data is available, so that is one just to check 16 that box. We know everything about where every vehicle came and went to. And then any 17 category that is selected as far as youth or senior or wheelchair – need a wheelchair, that is all 18 within the software as well. So we − absolutely we share all of that. Palo Alto has access to all of 19 that data. So we’d be thrilled to help. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. I didn’t know if there was – so what about – I doubt we have 2 this. The income component, right? So there’s a map in the Safe Streets For All Plan that talks 3 about income levels. And if we were to find out, for example, that this is a key part of 4 transportation for people who are lower income, then that might be useful information to all 5 the granting agencies. 6 7 Nate Baird: Yeah. 8 9 Chair Chang: Do we know that? 10 11 Nate Baird: We still do provide a low income discount within the app, so there’s still an 12 opportunity for folks to self-select into that. We don’t do a lot – we wouldn’t get a specific 13 number per se but we do have a recommendation in the app about a yearly amount and you 14 can opt for that for the $2 fare discount. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 17 18 PUBLIC COMMENTS 19 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: There is one hand up now. And so I – since there aren’t a ton of public speakers, I 1 thought maybe we would give that public – that speaker three minutes to… 2 3 Veronica Dao: Yeah, we have one person on Zoom, Penny Ellson. 4 5 Penny Ellson: Hi, this is Penny Ellson. Can you hear me? 6 7 Chair Chang: Yes. 8 9 Penny Ellson: Thank you. I want to express that I think Link is a poorly-conceived City program. 10 Excuse me. It’s an example of the City chasing grant dollars without paying close enough 11 attention to long-term fiscal and mode choice effects of the program. It subsidizes car trips, 12 incentivizing people to acquire the habit of picking up their cell phone to call for a taxpayer’s 13 subsidized car ride when they want to get somewhere in town. This undermines mode shift 14 efforts and transit use. If the City’s going to provide subsidized car trips, it should only subsidize 15 trips for people who can demonstrate financial and physical need for such subsidy. We should 16 use a means test to qualify people for it as most government programs do. Further, the 17 program in its current grant-dependent design is fiscally unsustainable. When the City’s grant 18 runs out, City taxpayers will be paying much more to subsidize each ride. In a year when the 19 City Staff told Finance Committee we can’t afford to restore a fire engine at Mitchell Park Fire 20 Station, it’s disappointing that they approved the luxury of a new, broad-based subsidy on car 21 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. trips. For people with disabilities and financial need, who may really need affordable, on care 1 car serv-, on-call car service, the City might collaborate with or create a program like 2 GoGoGrandparent to help means’ qualified people access rideshare with or without a cell 3 phone. The City could subsidize local car trips through such a program in a more limited and 4 less fiscally regressive way, only for people who have been vetted through means testing for 5 financial and physical need. 6 7 As a taxpayer, I object to paying for subsidies for [well-healed 69:38] residents who can afford 8 Uber and Lyft. Every car and electric car trip to our streets contributes to increased auto 9 congestions, safety risk, greenhouse gas emissions for all road users because making streets 10 creates greenhouse gas emissions. Building cars does all these things for all road users, 11 including vulnerable [inaudible 70:01] students on school roads, not necessarily near the 12 schools, but on school routes that this program uses. It – Link is fiscally unsustainable, creates 13 regressive transfer of budget dollars to people who do not need subsidy. But most importantly, 14 reinforces the very bad habit of picking up your phone to call a car when you want to make 15 local trips. I live near the Mountain View border. It takes me 25 easy minutes on a bike ride to 16 get to downtown. I’m 65 years old. We can do this. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Thank you. Okay. I don’t see any lights from Commissioners nor hands raised. So 1 that concludes this item. Thank you very much for coming to give us an update. And then we’re 2 going to move on to our next agenda item. 3 4 Krista Glotzbach: Thank you for your time. 5 6 Chair Chang: Thank you. 7 8 Study Session 9 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 10 11 4. Palo Alto Safe Streets for All (SS4A) Safety Action Plan 12 13 Chair Chang: So our mean agenda item tonight is a study session on the Palo Alto Safe Streets 14 for All Safey Action Plan. It’s a draft plan. And Ms. Star-Lack, will you take it away? 15 16 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yes, thank you so much, Chair. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Thank you. 1 2 Sylvia Star-Lack: A few words before we get started. I want to introduce this plan and note that 3 we have three main reasons for developing it. The first is money. Cities with a plan like this are 4 eligible for state and federal safety implementation grants. The second reason is our SCAP, our 5 Sustainability and Climate Action Plan. On-road transportation is the largest source of 6 greenhouse gas emissions in town. While electric vehicles are part of the solution to this, active 7 transportation and transit, as you just heard, are the other part of the solution. We know that 8 road safety is the main reason that people don’t walk or bike or roll. So a road safety plan is 9 essential to growing active mode shares. And finally, the City’s new Housing Element adds more 10 people to Palo Alto. These new residents will need access and mobility in town. Providing safe 11 roads for walking and biking as well as transit will help us move more people on our limited 12 roadway space. With that, I’m going to ask our consultant, Ashlee Takushi, from Fehr and Peers, 13 to begin the presentation; she will be delivering it. And we are looking for your feedback 14 tonight. She has a slide that will share that. We are looking for feedback on a target-year date, 15 feedback on the resolution, and then any other feedback you have on the document. Thank 16 you. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Ashlee Takushi: Thanks, Sylvia. And hello, Commissioners. Thank you for having this evening. 1 I’m here to share Palo Alto Safe Streets and Roads For All Safety Action Plan. So here is the 2 agenda for tonight’s meeting. You may have already seen some of these slides at previous 3 meetings that we’ve attended, so I will quickly go over them as a refresher and then spend a bit 4 more time on the slides that I have not presented before. Before we dive into this meeting, I 5 wanted to share a bit about the Safety Action Plan and how it complements but is different 6 from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan Update or the BPTP update. Both the Safety Action Plan 7 and BPTP update had a variety of common data inputs. This included using the same crash data 8 sources from the years 2018 through 2022, input from various community engagement events, 9 such as Bike Palo Alto in October 2023, an on-line survey, and the interactive web map as well 10 as various meetings with an internal stakeholder working group. So now a bit on how these two 11 plans are different. Some key differences include the Safety Action Plan’s focus on safety for all 12 modes of travel, while the BPTP update hones in on bicycle and pedestrian collisions. The Safety 13 Action Plan looked at proposed projects from existing plans and reviewed it with a safety lens 14 while the BPTP is identifying new bike and pedestrian projects. 15 16 And lastly, the Safety Action Plan is mostly focused on setting up the City to institutionalize a 17 new safety framework through policy and putting safety at the forefront of trade-off decisions 18 while the BPTP update will build off of this policy framework for project implementation. So 19 looking at it a bit more through a graphic, I wanted to share the relationship with the Safety 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Action Plan, not only to the BPTP update, but to also – but to other plans as well. As I 1 mentioned on the previous slide, the Safety Action Plan sets up the policy foundation for 2 transportation planning. The BPTP that is underway and will be adopted later this year as well 3 identifies the pike – the pedestrian and bicycle network and the type – and the facility types for 4 implementation. Then upcoming specific or area plans, such as the San Antonio Road Area Plan, 5 will prepare a more-detailed land use and transportation design and implementation plan. All 6 right. So going back into a bit of background on the safe system approach. The safe system 7 approach uses the model to improve our transportation system. It describes five safe system 8 elements on the inside of the wheel as well as six principles on the outer ring. A fundamental 9 objective of the safe system approach is to eliminate fatal and serious injuries for all road users 10 by accommodating human mistakes and keeping impacts on the human body at tolerable 11 levels. 12 13 What separates the safe system approach from the traditional approach to safety is the ethical 14 imperative that not even one death is acceptable on a roadway system. The Swiss-cheese 15 model helps to demonstrate how the safe system elements work together to make sure that if 16 one part fails, there’s a redundance system in place. The holes in the Swiss cheese show 17 weaknesses in the individual parts of the system. But when the slices act as layers or defenses 18 and the holes aren’t lined up as shown on the left graphic, a person is likely to be more 19 protected. As I mentioned previously, the safe system approach focuses transportation system 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. design and operation, on anticipating human error, proactively managing the transfer of kinetic 1 energy, and sharing responsibility to all who use and maintain the roadway. A newer 2 framework in the transportation space takes a look at safety through the public health lens. The 3 safe system wheel showed previously uses a mixture of strategies for redundancy as shown by 4 that Swiss cheese graphic. This graphic here tells the public health framework to point to how 5 much of each of these strategies, highlighted in the different tiers, we want to choose to get 6 the maximum impact and most success. So what exactly does this mean? At the top of the 7 pyramid, an individual level strategy, for example, is posting yard signs to slow down. These 8 have some but not widespread deep and lasting impacts. 9 10 Meanwhile, a population-level strategy, at the bottom, would be road designers physically 11 separately people driving, from people walking and biking wherever possible with fully 12 separated complete streets. Another is slowing speeds wherever possible with traffic calming 13 features on the road and lowering speed limits, so that if and when a crash does occur, it's less 14 severe. These population-level strategies are what we consider an upstream focus in reaching 15 zero deaths and fatalities and having far greater and more lasting safety impacts. Sometimes 16 people think that we can educate and enforce unwanted behavior and encourage people to do 17 the right thing on our roadways. By focusing on the base of the pyramid, we are also centering 18 equity, so all ages, all abilities, modes, backgrounds, and income levels and infusing that work 19 that, for example, the Safe Routes to School Team is doing and that is at the fundamental base 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. of the pyramid. Now that I’ve gone through the safety framework of this plan, I’ll share a bit 1 about what this plan includes. As Sylvia mentioned, this plan is funded through the Safe Streets 2 and Roads For All grant. And the plan must include these nine elements to be compliant for the 3 future [inaudible 79:11] funding. And all nine of these components will be met with this plan. I 4 wanted to share the High Injury Network. A High Injury Network or HIN refers to a map that 5 identifies specific streets within the city where a disproportionately high number of traffic 6 fatalities and serious injuries occur, allowing us to understand areas to focus on to reduce 7 traffic-related injuries and deaths. 8 9 It is based on the crash data that I mentioned previously from SWITRS from 2018 through 2022. 10 The High Injury Network is shown and KSIs or killed in severe injury collisions are highlighted in 11 red and other injury collisions in blue. Sixty-three percent of collisions that occur – or that occur 12 within the city during that timeframe occurred on 4 percent of Palo Alto streets. Now looking a 13 bit into community engagement. As I mentioned previously, throughout the course of this 14 project, we had various outlets to collect community feedback. We had an on-line survey with 15 an interactive web map, two in-person events, and various virtual meetings with an internal 16 stakeholder working group and with the various committees and Council. Key themes from the 17 community feedback included a general enthusiasm for bike lanes, concerns around speeding 18 motorists, the need for enhanced intersection treatments, more bike lanes along school routes, 19 and additional connection to key destinations. Now to talk about the City’s seven safety focus 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. areas. The seven safety focus areas again use the collision data from 2018 through 2022 and are 1 included in the plan to show areas where things like exposure, likelihood, and severity risk are 2 higher through the city. This slide shows a quick summary of the seven safety focus areas 3 included in the plan. We also looked at this plan through an equity lens. Many agencies use a 4 federal or regional data base that focuses on equity communities. 5 6 The Metropolitan Transportation Commission or MTC measures equity using income, race, 7 English proficiency, age, disability, and car ownership to develop equity priority communities or 8 EPCs or designated census tracks with a significant concentration of underserved populations. 9 MTC has not identified any EPCs in Palo Alto. So this plan uses other equity considerations and 10 definitions. The figure here shows the population by census blocks that has a household income 11 below the federal poverty line. Generally, the number of people throughout the city that live 12 below the poverty line is very low. There are some census blocks where between 10 to 20 13 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. These are located near downtown, the 14 Alma Street and East Meadow Drive , Charleston Road area, near Stanford, and in the 15 Southeast corner of the City near Foothill Expressway. While Palo Alto does not have 16 designated EPC areas, adjacent communities that include parts of Stanford and East Palo Alto 17 are EPC geographies. To best serve those accessing and using city streets, this plan considers 18 roadways that serve as connections to the city from these EPC geographies. This includes the 19 City’s suggested Walk and Roll routes for students who reside in East Palo Alto and commute to 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. school in Palo Alto. Transit also serves as the main mode of transportation for households 1 where members are unable to drive or maybe one member of the family needs to use the car 2 to get to work or school and others in the household need to use transit. 3 4 This figure shows the major transit corridors in Palo Alto where bus stops and connections to 5 and from key destinations should be prioritized for first and last mile connections or access 6 considerations to center these equity concerns. Whoops. Sorry. Now looking at safety as a 7 public health concern. I wanted to take some time to elaborate a bit more on the public health 8 impact pyramid that I shared earlier and explain how this is infused into the plan. Much of the 9 top of the pyramid is incorporated in the project list or awareness measures to remind the 10 community to be safety stewards. Along with infrastructure-based recommendations, the plan 11 highlights the importance of looking at the High Entry Network and housing plans together. This 12 includes first and last mile access to transit and safety along El Camino Real and San Antonio 13 that will need to focus – that will need to be a focus in tandem with the jobs and housing 14 balance and improved transit. This is also in alignment with the City’s Safe Routes to School 15 Program and the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy to improve accessibility by 16 embracing walking and biking to, from, and within all of the City’s commercial districts and 17 addressing parking policies and systems. By recognizing and rectifying these gaps in the 18 roadway network, the City creates opportunities for residents to have closer access to 19 employment, education, and medical-related institutions. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 For example, in areas where housing is being planned, the City will prioritize implementation of 2 continuous and comfortable pedestrian and bicycle facilities, which may require the 3 reallocation of space within the existing roadway or the [inaudible 85:14] of parking. We also 4 wanted to highlight how this public health impact pyramid is already in action in the City. And 5 that is through the Safe Routes To School Program. This list is definitely not comprehensive but 6 we wanted to give a few examples of how the City’s Safe Routes To School Program aligns with 7 the various tiers of the pyramid. At the base of the pyramid, the program provides children with 8 tools needed to get to school by walking or biking. Rose, who’s the Safe Route To School 9 Coordinator for the City, shared with me that in the past 30 years, the Safe Route To School 10 Program has about tripled the number of students who walk and bike to school. And that’s 11 something that the City should be proud of. By creating tools like the Walk and Roll routes, 12 students are able to understand how they can take designated routes to and from their home 13 and school. At the built environment level, the City has a 20 mile per hour posted speed limit in 14 school zones. And the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan Update is – that is currently 15 ongoing is preparing an updated project list to implement more bike and pedestrian-related 16 projects throughout the City. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. At the next tier, Latent Measures, the City regularly reviews their signal equipment to upgrade 1 the timings to accommodate bikes and pedestrians when needed. They’ve included all 2 pedestrian phases and leading pedestrian internals or LPIs to give pedestrians and bikes a head 3 start when crossing. At the Active Measure tier, the City hosts annual bike rodeos, distributes 4 bike helmets, and has an extensive list of core education programs but can be found on the 5 City’s Safe Routes To School website. Lastly, having signage like, “Drive like your kids live here” 6 and Child Safety alert figurines are examples of awareness measures that people have in their 7 yards to remind people to slow down. Reaching zero deaths and serious injuries, within the 8 next five years, the safety will institutionalize safety throughout the City through updates, 9 through – to updates of existing policies, programs, and projects. This will really set the 10 framework for Staff to shift their focus to be more proactive and systemic, and trade-off 11 decisions in the project prioritization and design will reflect a commitment to reducing safety 12 risk factors in our transportation system. So what do we want to hear back from you today? In 13 the plan you may have seen two years highlighted, whether it be 2035 or 2040, we would love 14 to hear your feedback on what you think our goal − our zero goal for zero deaths and fatalities 15 should be because that’s what Council wants to hear. 16 17 We also would like feedback on the resolution that’s included at the front of the plan because 18 that will – when adopted, that will really help City Staff push into action these bike and 19 pedestrian and other safety-related projects. And we’re also here to take questions today or 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. have any – or listen to any comments that you have during your review of the plan. I wanted to 1 hand it back over to Sylvia, if you wanted to say anything else about requesting feedback from 2 the Commissioners. 3 4 Sylvia Star-Lack: Thanks, Ashlee. I think you got it. Thanks so much. 5 6 Chair Chang: Great. Thank you. So any clarifying questions from Commissioners before we go to 7 public comment? I don’t even see any hands raised and nobody’s here, so we may not – oh, we 8 have one public comment come – that’s come up. Commissioner Aik-, or Vice-Chair Akin. 9 10 Vice-Chair Akin: Thank you, Chair. Just a few quick ones. We talked about this a little bit in 11 premeeting but for the benefit of the other Commissioners, does the definition of serious injury 12 include concussions? 13 14 Ashlee Takushi: Yes, I can answer that. So we use the definitions from the SWITRS handbook of 15 what a killed or severe injury collision is. A concussion does not count as a KSI if a victim is able 16 to walk away on their own. 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Can I just follow on that question? So in the draft plan, there was something that 2 said that a KSI can include a broken bone, severe lacerations. And so my question is if there is a 3 broken bone, again, is that consider-, automatically considered a KSI or is it if they can walk 4 away, then it’s not considered a KSI in the case of broken bones or severe lacerations or any of 5 the other things that were listed. 6 7 Ashlee Takushi: It is definitely dependent on how the police officer reports the collision. 8 Typically, if there is a broken bone or laceration and a victim will need to go to the hospital, that 9 is by default typically noted as a severe injury. 10 11 Chair Chang: To the hospital or urgent care? Specifically hospital? Emergency Room? 12 13 Ashlee Takushi: I’m not sure but we can get back to you… 14 15 Chair Chang: Okay. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Ashlee Takushi: …on that specific definition, yes. 2 3 Chair Chang: Thank you. 4 5 Vice-Chair Akin: Okay. 6 7 Lily Lim-Tsao: [Inaudible 91:00]. 8 9 Vice-Chair Akin: Oh. 10 11 Lily Lim-Tsao: I don’t believe there’s any distinction as to whether it’s a urgent care based on 12 my report reading; it’s to medical services. 13 14 Chair Chang: So medical services broadly, okay. Thanks. Commissioner Akin. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Akin: Okay. Yeah. Two more. All of these should be quick. It looks to me like the 1 number of accidents along Alma is certainly comparable, if not greater than the number of 2 accidents along Middlefield, and yet most of Alma is not in the High Injury Network. Could you 3 speak to why you chose not to include it? 4 5 Ashlee Takushi: Let me pull up the High Injury Network. So yes, there’s definitely a high 6 concentration of injury collisions along Alma but as we look at Middlefield, there are a few 7 more KSI collisions. So that had a higher rate than having the collisions on Alma. Not to say that 8 it’s not an important corridor that we should focus on. But – oh, sorry. I realized I’m not sharing 9 my screen. But that is why it is – all of Alma is not included on the High Injury Network. There is 10 portions though, more in the downtown area. 11 12 Vice-Chair Akin: Right. So there is a judgment call as to the subdivisions of each of these routes 13 that meet the criteria for membership in the High Injury Network. 14 15 Ashlee Takushi: Correct. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Akin: Okay. And the last one’s rather technical. We – in several places, we refer to 1 VMT reduction as a safety strategy and I’m curious about whether that refers to VMT as 2 measured exclusively within the city limits or whether that includes VMT from potentially very 3 distant places. 4 5 Ashlee Takushi: This should be VMT looked at locally as well as regionally. You could say that a 6 lot of people may need to commute into Palo Alto from further distances to go to Stanford 7 Research Center, for example. With the City’s Housing Element and including more housing. 8 For instance, on the San Antonio Corridor and having more pedestrian and bike-friendly 9 facilities; those are the things at the base of the pyramid that would reduce VMT. So it’s looking 10 at both local and regional VMT reductions. 11 12 Vice-Chair Akin: Okay. Thank you. When thinking about the problem, I found it useful to treat 13 those things separately. So I hope that awareness is there. Thank you. That’s all I have. 14 15 Chair Chang: I don’t see any other hands – Commissioner hands – lights for clarifying questions. 16 So let’s move to public comment now. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. PUBLIC COMMENTS 1 2 Veronica Dao: Yes, I have two raised hands on Zoom. First is from Art L. 3 4 Art Lieberman: Hello. Can you hear me? 5 6 Chair Chang: Yes. 7 8 Art Lieberman: Good afternoon. My name is Art Lieberman. I’m a member of PABAC. I’m 9 speaking only as an individual and myself personally. And I spoke at the January 7 PABAC 10 Meeting and what I said was that the idea of eliminating serious accidents on roadways is really 11 too ambitious for just this being a project of one city, Palo Alto government, the Office of 12 Transportation. If the City of Palo Alto is serious about reducing KSIs to zero, the plan must be a 13 joint plan of multiple departments representing the policy of the City of Palo Alto government. 14 It must find at least several departments, each committing to its goals, to their programs, their 15 manpower, and their budgets. These departments should include the Office of Transportation, 16 Public Works, which is responsible for road design, road changes, and road signage, and 17 building only what are now considered safe roads, needs to be in their plans, including learning 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. how to effectively reduce vehicle speed on roadways. And the third department that I felt is – 1 should be included in here as a founding member of this program, should be the Palo Alto 2 Police Department because they are responsible for the enforcement of the laws. As we know, 3 just stating the laws is insufficient. Laws must be enforced. A proposal to eliminate KSI must 4 include a commitment by the Palo Alto Police Department to enforce speed laws and other 5 motor vehicle laws. 6 7 Several PABAC members at the January 7 meeting made a case that the Planning and 8 Community Development Department should also be part of this proposal since the land use 9 decisions affect traffic and parking. I should also say that the updated projects and policy list, 10 especially ones that would relax the prohibition on street closures, is important. I would hope 11 that the time scale and priority of each project that’s listed on – in the Appendix H and Page 59 12 should be added because some – for example, the rail crossings are very long-term projects. 13 And this list, [inaudible 96:48] it sounds to me like those expected from the BPTP update. If I 14 were a City Council person, I would consider delaying this proposal until after the BPTP update 15 comes along. Becomes – and becomes public. Finally, an important aspect of this proposal is to 16 communicate the rationale and policies to the public. Whoever the – for me, the proposal’s text 17 includes too much of FHWA, safe system buzz words, and too little on specific proposed 18 changes to roadways. I fear that it will not attract the attention of most members of the public. 19 Thank you. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Thank you. 2 3 Veronica Dao: Next is from Penny Ellson. 4 5 Penny Ellson: I should be pretty quick. Thank you. Penny Ellson again. A key concern I have 6 about the Safe System Action plan is the low priority it appears to put on education and 7 encouragement, which are essential parts of a redundant traffic safety system. I mean I agree 8 that all these engineering improvements are wonderful but we’ve learned in Palo Alto that if 9 you don’t teach a kid what that signal means that you put up, if you don’t teach them to be on 10 the correct side of the road, if you don’t teach them to look left, right, and left again, they’re 11 not going to need – know to do those things and they’re not going to be able to use these 12 facilities. There’s just so much [imperfect engineers 98:27] can design a perfect system. There’s 13 just so much they can do to do that. It’s critically important that kids know how to use those 14 systems correctly. So – and I’m very bothered by that pyramid graphic. I’ve said this to Staff 15 before and I’m also bothered by what seems to me to be almost hostile language in some parts 16 of the plan toward education. And I really hope we’re not going to see that reflected in the final 17 draft of it. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 I’d like Staff to confirm that findings from the San Antonio Area Plan will be integrated into this 2 action plan, so that those projects can qualify for – I had a conversation with Sylvia Star-Lack 3 this morning and I think I understand that it will. I want to know that San Antonio 4 improvements that conform with state of the art improvements are going to happen in – on 5 San Antonio Road and actually be integrated citywide into the BPTP. And for the moment, 6 those are my comments. I do – would like to hear from PTC members if – whether or not you 7 received the full set of comments that I sent to Staff. 8 9 Chair Chang: We did receive them. 10 11 Penny Ellson: Thank you very much. That’s all I have to say. 12 13 Chair Chang: Thank you. Okay. Then let’s bring it back to the Commission. 14 15 Veronica Dao: Oh, sorry. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Oh. 2 3 Veronica Dao: There’s one more raised hand. 4 5 Chair Chang: Oh, okay. Let’s take that. 6 7 Veronica Dao: From David Coale. 8 9 Chair Chang: Yep. 10 11 David Coale: Hello, Commissioners. My name’s David Coale, team member for Bike Palo Alto. 12 13 Female: [Inaudible 100:20]. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. David Coale: And I would encourage you to please accept the earliest date possible to 1 implement these safety measures. I cannot emphasize that enough. No reason to delay on 2 having Safe Streets For All. Thank you so much for your time. 3 4 Chair Chang: Thank you. Okay. So I think that concludes the public comments and we’re going 5 to bring it back to the Commission. First up, Commissioner Hechtman. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. And thank you to Staff for bringing this back to us. The 8 first time you brought it to us, it made an impact on me and I’ve – as you might have noticed, 9 I’ve been pestering Transportation Staff about data for the last few months related to the Safe 10 Streets Program. So it’s really exciting to see this first draft, 173 pages, as we start to mold this. 11 So I’m excited to get started. I’m going to start with a couple questions. So one of the issues 12 you’d like some feedback on tonight is our target date, which when this first came to us, it was 13 2030, which apparently that was too ambitious because this is a extraordinarily large task that 14 as one of our public speakers mentioned really will cut across all of our departmental disciplines 15 here in the City – or many of them. And I think that’s recognized by City Staff. But – so now 16 we’re looking at should we be targeting 2035 or 2040. And I guess the question I had is is there 17 a risk of losing grant funding or some other penalty of picking a deadline and then not hitting it? 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Sylvia Star-Lack: I don’t believe so. No. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Then as we up here on the Commission ponder which date to 4 pick, I think − I mean a natural inclination would be well sooner’s better, right? But if it were 5 that simple, I don’t think Staff would be presenting us with a choice. So what are some of the 6 things that we should be thinking about to try to set a realistic goal as we sit up here and maybe 7 give you some feedback by the end of the item. 8 9 Sylvia Star-Lack: So resource availability, staffing availability. Lily may want to add to this. And 10 at the same time, a sense of urgency. What is a sense of urgency you want to convey? Your 11 recommendation will convey a sense of urgency to the Council. Just for your information, I 12 think Caltrans has set their own date for zero as 2050, so just as context there. Those are the 13 kinds of things that I think you would want to include. I don’t know, Lily, if you want to add 14 anything. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Well that’s helpful. I guess as I think about this, 2035 is a 17 decade from now, which seems like a long time but what we’re talking about here is not just 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 time it will take to create a plan that could achieve zero KSI, it’s actually to implement it. 1 And so we’re talking about changes to roadways. Not only, first of all, developing the plans and 2 then implementing them over a course of years with development happening in that context. 3 And so I guess I want to be realistic and set a target that feels more realistically achievable, so I 4 think, given that guidance from Staff, I’d be inclined to lean toward the 2040 and be interested 5 in hearing what other Commissioners have to say on that topic. I do think that one of the 6 clarifying questions that was asked earlier, and I’m moving topics now, what is the definition of 7 a significant injury? It’s kind of fascinating because this isn’t a Palo Alto program, right? This is 8 not even a state – it’s nationwide. This is a comprehensive nationwide program and it – I’m 9 curious as to how we’ll all be operating under the same definition, right? I mean a fatality is 10 obvious but what’s a significant injury? And I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this. 11 12 And so I expect over time as various jurisdictions start to grapple with this, there will be a 13 uniform definition that arises and needs to be implemented, so that we can have a uniform 14 metric of success throughout the U.S. Let’s see. I’m curious about the timeline for data 15 collection, all right? And this goes back to this request I’ve had throughout the fall. We’re 16 getting monthly police reports, can we get another column that tells us whether it was a fatality 17 or a significant injury and we haven’t been able to get that yet. And there was an explanation a 18 few meetings ago at a meeting I wasn’t at but reviewed the minutes as to challenges there. But 19 as we go forward with a goal – once we adopt this plan and we’re moving forward with the 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. goal, we have to have some measure – some metric that can be accomplished in a reasonable 1 time and – so for example, when I look on Page 31 of the draft plan, and I see that the 2022 2 data is still preliminary, right? More than two complete calendar years after the last fatality or 3 significant injury could have occurred in 2022. I don’t really understand and so I – but it 4 concerns me as we are rolling this out and trying to measure, are we always going to be two 5 plus years behind? And why would that need to be? 6 7 Because if I’m in an auto accident tonight going home and I die, that’ll be a part of a police 8 report by tomorrow and within a week, that’s going to be entered into a database. And 9 probably the same is going to be true if I’m only significantly injured tonight. And so I don’t 10 understand how it can take more than a few keystrokes in that process to have all the data a 11 few days after the first of the year for all of the prior year. But clearly, that’s not so. And so 12 maybe help us understand the data collection for this, so that again our expectations are 13 reasonable going forward. 14 15 Ashlee Takushi: I can take that question. So for this plan and other safety plans that I worked on 16 as well, we use the SWITRS database that takes injury collisions and you see Berkeley SafeTREC 17 geocodes them. So it puts it in a GIS database, so we can see exactly where those collisions are 18 located. That is why there is such a lag. SafeTREC only has a certain number of staff as well as 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. budget to input all of these collisionS that they get as the whole state. And so that’s why we are 1 looking at data that is a couple of years old. But also, we want to keep in mind that the safety 2 plan should be updated regularly. Whether that is three years or five years, that’s kind of for 3 the City to decide and for community input as well. But it’s a snapshot in time to look at the 4 collision history that has occurred. Then we can proactively look at locations where these same 5 risk factors like the roadway context or near land use where a collision is more likely to happen. 6 And so that is how we use past data to kind of look proactively at coming up with 7 recommendations to make the roadways safer, so that injuries don’t occur or when they do 8 occur, they do not result in a killed or severe injury. 9 10 Sylvia Star-Lack: Thanks for that, Ashlee. And I just want to add to that answer. I’m not sure if 11 you saw in the draft plan, there was an item for a rapid response team that would deploy soon 12 after a collision to look at what could be done at that location and at other locations citywide, 13 so those collisions would not occur. So regardless of whether or not you’re seeing it in your PTC 14 packet, if we’re able to get this plan through and set up a rapid response team, we would be 15 taking action. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Lily Lim-Tsao: And one more insight to why data – or it takes that long for data. From my 2 experience working with a large Police Department in San Jose, fatalities and severe injury to 3 maybe as close to fatality, that data is available the next day. And we can track that. We can 4 track that day by day internally. And we’re not talking about thousand points. It’s very few. That 5 data we will have in almost real time but anything less than that – less severe injuries, really 6 relies on somebody to report it and then if they don’t – and even if they record it, is the data 7 clear enough for – and consistent enough to enter in the − either statewide system or 8 countywide system? There’s questions as to the accuracy of the data and such. 9 10 Chair Chang: Can I interject really quickly here? Because we also talked about this in 11 premeeting a little bit. So, Ms. Star-Lack, you had mentioned that if there’s a serious accident, 12 you know about it immediately. So what I’m wondering about is in conjunction with those 13 PABAC tr-, incident reports that we received, is it possible to know like is it possible for us to 14 receive that information since Staff knows about it? Even if it’s not connected to the specific 15 data point to be able to say, “This month, none happened. One happened. Two happened.” 16 Because we know about it. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Sylvia Star-Lack: If – I think we need to have this conversation with PD because I might know 1 something but I might not be able to say. Because PD maybe hasn’t finished the investigation, 2 someone might be in a hospital. Like I can’t really say. 3 4 Lily Lim-Tsao: Right. And we’ll know the location. It’s a dot on a map. And this plan is geocoded, 5 right? We’re looking at a quarter and not necessarily at one point. 6 7 Chair Chang: Well I guess what we’re both saying is that we want that information. So even if 8 you know about – you – it’s in the paper. So even if you’re not allowed to say anything, it’s kind 9 of public information. So we don’t need the specifics, what the injury was. We don’t even need 10 necessarily to know where it is if there’s some privacy concern but just to know what 11 happened. And that in and of itself would be valuable. 12 13 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah. And PD puts out press releases when they – there are fatalities that they 14 can report. So… 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Hechtman: So I guess how I’d like to wrap my part on this particular point is – 1 and I’m sorry but I didn’t study the draft plan well enough to know how you addressed this 2 issue of reporting out. But that is something that I think up here on the PTC, we’re interested in. 3 And so as you massage the draft plan, if there’s an opportunity to talk about reporting out, 4 given some of the limitations on data release that we’ve already heard tonight, I think that 5 would be useful, again to sort of set expectations in the plan that will ultimately be adopted. All 6 right. Let’s see. I did want to mention that I did see the PABAC comment letter that Ms. Ellson 7 asked about, so I think it was distributed to the Commissioners today at 12:30. Candidly, it’s 8 long and very detailed and I appreciate the work that PABAC did on that but I didn’t have time 9 to digest it. And it came in this morning at 9, so I expected Staff didn’t have time to digest it 10 either. But I appreciate our other organizations really doing the deep dive and I’m sure that 11 Staff is going to look at those comments and take them into consideration. So I just wanted that 12 group to know that they were definitely heard and appreciated. 13 14 And then one other thing on your bullet list of things you’d like input on and that’s the 15 resolution, which is on Page 3 of the draft report. I looked at the resolution; there’s really not 16 much to comment on. I think the first five provisions are just kind of statement of facts and 17 then there’s a couple things saying the law requires this and then we do it in the resolution. So 18 I’ve given my input that I felt 2040 is the right number for that but I am otherwise supportive of 19 the resolution is my input on that. 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Thank you. I’m having light confusion here, so is it Com-, did – Commissioner 2 Templeton, did you – okay. So Commissioner Templeton, then Summa. Thank you. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. Yeah, I’m just doing a little thought exercise on some 5 points that Commissioner Hechtman brought up about what the implications of 2035 versus 6 2040 are. And I started thinking through like what does that mean to our transportation team. 7 We have input on but Council sets priorities, so that’s not going to be it. And what are we 8 rooting for if we root for 2035 versus 2040? And I started thinking like I assume, but maybe it’s 9 worth validating, that any project that our transportation team is a part of is working towards 10 zero fatalities and KSIs already. So what changes? What does this mean? What are you actually 11 asking for input on? 12 13 Lily Lim-Tsao: I think the biggest change is the focus that we would create resources for. Today, 14 my experience – the fourth week on the job, I’m seeing a lot of our work is reactive in nature 15 and having this plan would be committing us to a path, a direction, and a budget, resources to 16 get us there. If you said 2035, ten years from now, we would be thinking about how do we get 17 us there in 2025. How much money will we need? How many teams do we need? 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Well… 2 3 Lily Lim-Tsao: That calculation. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Okay, I’m going to turn this back to you then. 6 7 Lily Lim-Tsao: Sure. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: How many KSIs do you think is an acceptable amount? 10 11 Lily Lim-Tsao: Zero. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Lily Lim-Tsao: Like that’s [inaudible 117:22]. Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: So in other words, this is not really – you don’t have – you’re not 3 actually seeking input from us on that. And we also agree, we don’t want anybody to die or… 4 5 Lily Lim-Tsao: Right. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: …get seriously injured… 8 9 Lily Lim-Tsao: Right. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: …in our city. 12 13 Lily Lim-Tsao: Right. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: Okay? I think you’re going to find unanimous support for that. 1 2 Lily Lim-Tsao: Sure. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Go ahead. 5 6 Sylvia Star-Lack: I think that the − kind of the – okay, you’re asking what is the difference this 7 will make, right? Right now, we have City policies that don’t necessarily prioritize safety on our 8 roads. We – there are conflicting policies. We have policies that say adding delay to our roads is 9 not okay. What if we have a safety project that adds delay to our roads? What does… 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Right. Like slowing… 12 13 Sylvia Star-Lack: …Council do? 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: …down the timing for crossing El Camino for Gunn students, for 1 example. 2 3 Sylvia Star-Lack: Exactly. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Right? 6 7 Sylvia Star-Lack: So this provides a safety framework for the Council to make these decisions as 8 noted in the resolution. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Right. But I’m going to keep pushing because I think we’re all in 11 agreement here but we need to make it really clear to show our support when you go to 12 Council. That doesn’t take five years. Cleaning up the policy discrepancies is not something that 13 takes five years of work to implement, right? This is something you could do. You are – you 14 have a list of them, you get them cleaned up. You get them cleaned up with a regular basis 15 when you work with Council. So is that not happening? Is that something that you would like 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. our support on? Because I don’t think we’re seeing a lot of those. Those are not coming to us to 1 recommend to Council on your behalf. So how can we help? 2 3 Female: Focus on trade-offs. 4 5 Sylvia Star-Lack: Right. So the trade-offs – there are − this plan will help I f-, will help Council 6 make trade-offs around when there are safety projects, right? We might have to reconfigure 7 parking. We might have to remove parking. We might have to… 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Are the trade-offs lives? 10 11 Lily Lim-Tsao: Potentially. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: And I hate to put you on the spot but that’s what you’re asking us to 14 decide here. That – there’s no decision between five more years of deaths, right? Like that’s – if 15 that’s what’s in front of us, we need to understand that before we vote. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Lily Lim-Tsao: I think there’s trade-off and there’s reality of how much we can do in time. 2 Policy… 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: How do we know that? We’re looking… 5 6 Lily Lim-Tsao: [I’m sorry 120:13]. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: …for you guys to tell us. 9 10 Lily Lim-Tsao: Yes. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: About timing. So what input do you need from us about timing? 13 We’re going to tell you we don’t want any more deaths starting tomorrow. We’re not waiting 14 until 2035. And it… 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Lily Lim-Tsao: And we would – yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: …can’t be done because… 3 4 Lily Lim-Tsao: Understood. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: …you know things we don’t know. So what is it that you want us to 7 know to help decide between 2035 and 2040? 8 9 Lily Lim-Tsao: It starts with the policy changes, commitment, resources, culture change across 10 the organization, and a lot of education awareness in the community too. One of the objectives 11 here is that we all take responsibility for our safety. It’s not just a city. It’s not just a pedestrian 12 or the motorist. All of us have to take a part in this one. So there’s just – there’s a lot of the 13 cultural changes. Even if policy was in place, enforcement of the policy. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: I’m going to throw a curveball here and let you know what my 1 suggestion − if that’s what you want. If you’re looking for the people of Palo Alto to get on 2 board with the programs outlined in this document. I would love to see the Transportation 3 Department engage more frequently with this body to publicly discuss those changes that 4 we’re proposing. Because honestly, that’s not been happening. We have had a dramatic derth 5 of conversations around transportation and safety. We all want it. And we haven’t gotten it. So 6 if you want us to champion the changes, that starts with a conversation with the public and our 7 ability to digest that, reflect it back in a way – have the conversations in our neighborhood and 8 give us a channel through which we can discuss it with you. 9 10 Sylvia Star-Lack: Absolutely. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. Thank you. 13 14 Sylvia Star-Lack: Okay. Absolutely. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Jennifer Armer: And if I may, Commissioner Templeton, just to provide a little bit of an 1 additional response to your earlier questions. I think the Transportation Staff has provided 2 guidance, right? They didn’t suggest that this would be a five-year plan, right? That these kinds 3 of improvements will take time. And so they gave a couple of options, 10 years, 15 years, but 4 with the recognition that there will likely be inconveniences created by this effort to make our 5 roads safer. We had an example of a discussion this morning of a change to a roadway that was 6 intended to make an intersection safer or work better for one purpose and it made it 7 inconvenient – an added inconvenience for a local resident. And so that is something we’ve 8 seen in the past and it is a part of these discussions as well as the impacts to resources, etc., 9 that were already mentioned. And so having that conversation that there are options about 10 how fast we try to move on something like this and getting your support on that is very helpful 11 to this discussion and moving it forward. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: I totally agree with that; however, I will reflect back what I’m hearing 14 is nobody here says that they want to tolerate five more deaths for any reason – five more 15 years of deaths for any reason. So that may be true and it may be difficult to implement things 16 and ask the public to change but that’s not how it’s being presented. It’s being presented PTC 17 chooses five more years of road fatalities to convenience the public. That’s the headline, right? 18 So that is not an acceptable way for us to frame our work and it’s not an acceptable way for us 19 to support your work, right? Nor is it acceptable to the public who – what they really need and 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 reason you’re not getting the buy-in is the engagement. If we don’t listen and we don’t 1 have a way of listening and discussing it – you can have all the neighborhood meetings you 2 want but people are not going to buy in until we’re engaging in a formal way. And so that’s 3 what we want to offer. We’re here because we’re the Planning and Transportation 4 Commission. We love this work. We love making our community better and housing is part of it. 5 Transportation is another part of it, right? And it’s so important to us and we want to hear 6 more from you. We want to engage you and we want to help you figure out how to get buy in. 7 8 Sylvia Star-Lack: Right. And just to respond to that, this plan states outright directly that PTC is 9 part of the “task force” for the enforcement and monitoring of this document. So I have 10 brought the thing to you that you want. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: That’s exa-… 13 14 Sylvia Star-Lack: I am telling you… 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Templeton: And I want to acknowledge that but I – it can’t be the end of it 1 because you have brought us things… 2 3 Sylvia Star-Lack: Absolutely. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …sparingly in the past and not for any nefarious reason. I think it’s 6 you’re busy. But we do want to see more engagement. This is an excellent start but as you can 7 see in the lack of engagement you’re getting tonight, there’s more we can do. And if this 8 becomes a regular part of our conversation, we’ll have more opportunity to engage people, 9 right? 10 11 Sylvia Star-Lack: And I have that same goal. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Awesome. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Well I’m just going to interject here. We would love – we – when the new director 1 is hired, we would love to see them regularly here because poor Mr. Rius just doesn’t have the 2 20,000-foot view because he’s busy doing his job. So we would – he’s just not able to answer a 3 lot of our questions a lot of the time. And so we would like to engage more with the 4 department and Ms. Acting Director [Lily 126:29], if you’re able to come, we appreciate it even 5 if only able to pop on at the Staff Reports for five minutes at the beginning. Thank you. Yeah. 6 Okay. So now we have Commissioner Summa, then Akin. 7 8 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. And thank you to our new acting director for coming and 9 helping the City and for being here tonight. So we’re mostly talking, I guess, at this point about 10 the dates. And I would like to say that I think that I’m – I was very inspired. You probably all 11 know the famous story about Hoboken, New Jersey. They had one – you know it. And I’ve 12 talked about it before here. But they made a commitment because one pedestrian/vehicular 13 fatality − the new mayor in 2019 made a commitment and they had it – their goal was 2030, so 14 basically a decade. I have a strong preference for a decade. With that being said, it doesn’t 15 mean we’re going to wait for a decade to pass before we start making these improvements. It’s 16 just to acknowledge that some of these improvements are really going to take a long time and 17 going to be hard because our streets are already laid out the way they are and there’s – with 18 very few exceptions, it’s hard to accommodate all the needs in a safe manner. And we saw this 19 in El Camino. So I think a decade is long enough for Palo Alto if Hoboken can do it. And they 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. haven’t had a fatality in seven years, a traffic, pedestrian, or bike fatality. If they can do it, I’m 1 sure Palo Alto with our fantastic staff and the way we work with all our various groups, we can 2 get it done. 3 4 So I think that’s a realistic goal. I really want to thank the members of the community, 5 especially Penny Ellson. I’ll call her out by name. And we just – I don’t know when Staff got the 6 information from her and I know she’s been involved all along and that Staff has probably been 7 listening to her. But it really was like responding to her long analysis would have taken a week 8 to go through all of it. But I did try to look at a lot of it and I think – I want to thank members of 9 the public, the very few that spoke, and I am surprised. I thought there would be more public 10 speakers at this. And that is troubling to me because this is a big deal. And I’m – so I think 2035 11 is absolutely imperative that we have just a decade to finish this, knowing that it’s going to be 12 ongoing the whole time. So – and to have zero tolerance – ant to work towards zero tolerance. 13 But I’m worried that more people haven’t gotten involved. But very thankful of the speakers we 14 did have tonight. And I think that the other things you [inaudible 129:32]. I will say at a very 15 high – so 2035, yes. A decade. We can beat Hoboken by one year. But… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Hoboken challenge. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Summa: Yeah. But that being said, I was – I found the report a little troubling. 2 And I think a mem-, some members of the public mentioned this. It’s a very fluffy – if that 3 means anything jargony – report. And the most concrete thing – and I – is at the end. It’s 4 Attachments G or appendices − or Attachments G and H, which have all the projects and stuff. 5 And I think to make a succ-, a report that will be embraced by the community, I think you need 6 to put those things front and center and get rid of some of the jargony language. It was too 7 much so for me and I also − to be honest, I’m sure that Staff knows how to include all the things 8 and our consultant that we need to do to get this to the point where it will be accepted by the 9 agencies that we want to look for grants from. So I trust you there. But it was not what I would 10 call a very informative read in many parts of it. And I agree with the concern about not 11 prioritizing education. I felt like the report in general relied on basic principles that exist in 12 trans-, traffic engineering and safety but wasn’t very specific to Palo Alto. And I think that we 13 have – Palo Alto has a history of being very engaged in bicycle and encouraging bicycle and 14 pedestrian and getting people out of cars and a lot of experience with that. 15 16 And I sort of felt like that was missing. It didn’t feel personalized to Palo Alto. So – as to the 17 resolution, which I think is on Packet Page 3 – I mean the Report Page 3. I think that’s also 18 something that you – Staff knows they need to do so it will be an acceptable document for 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. various agencies. So I think that’s fine. And in − as trade-offs, I think it was Number 8 that was 1 trade-offs that we’d have to make for safety. I think people will have different individual 2 responses to those. I mean I think one thing that’s really missing in Palo Alto, and I’ve said this a 3 lot of times, is there’s virtually no police presence on the street handing out tickets. You could 4 hand out many tickets every day at an intersection I use every day, El Camino, Cambridge, and 5 California Avenue. I am nearly killed there by red stop light running of pedestrian and in cars. It 6 happened again today on my way here. It’s absurdly ridiculous. I would really like to have − the 7 cameras that they have in San Francisco have been wildly successful. I don’t – it was – I was a 8 little confused about what was legal in California and what was just made legal f-, in – for 9 certain cities. But if you read about those in San Francisco, they’ve had a great success in 10 identifying people who run red lights and also quite a revenue producer I noticed. 11 12 And I – running red lights has become really scary to me. I mean I specifically live in my 13 neighborhood, so I would be walkable to Cal. Ave. downtown. And I am now afraid to walk 14 across El Camino because it – it’s so frequent a problem. I don’t know if it’s timing and – El 15 Camino is a problem because our safety standard’s based − there’s a chart in he-, in this report 16 on that too. It’s based on the actual posted speed on El Camino, which is not the actual speed 17 of drivers on El Camino. So I would say that that needs – we need to take that into 18 consideration. So as to trade-offs, I think some will be acceptable and some will not be 19 acceptable. If we could get everybody to slow down by having less – fewer lanes, I wouldn’t be 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. – I know this is going to make people mad but I wouldn’t necessarily be against it because it’s 1 becoming really unsafe. And I would say that red light running is one of the scariest things that 2 people do. People are already using the brakes along El Camino that are – where the bus has to 3 dive in and out once we have the bus and shared bike lane. They’re already using those as right-4 turn lanes. Like there’s going to be a learning curve problem and we know that those right turn 5 – right hook or whatever they’re called − accidents are the worse for bikes and pedestrians. 6 7 So we have to also do – when we talk about trade-offs, I want to make sure that they are really 8 worth it and that they work. That they just don’t sound good on paper. We’ve seen some 9 projects that haven’t come to fruition in the way that they’re real improvements. They feel 10 kind of sideways or they look nice on paper, but they’re not so good. So those would be my 11 high-level comments. And I would like to get more police action on the streets right away and I 12 think that’s something that Council would need to do to – in a Council meeting to have a 13 conversation with the City Manager. I just don’t see them ever waiting to ticket people or 14 stopping people; once in a while but hardly ever. So I think that’s a first step in – and just kind 15 of general ideas, high-level. Thanks. 16 17 Chair Chang: Commissioner Akin. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. I think I’ll start… 2 3 Chair Chang: [Again 136:00]. 4 5 Commissioner Akin: I think I’ll start with the high-level issues as well. What I’m hearing, as we 6 discuss the target date, is probably that we’re posing the problem in the wrong way. And I think 7 about suppose we have 2034 as the year with zero KSIs, are we done? And the answer, of 8 course, is no. This is an ongoing process. We can have any number of years in a row with zero 9 KSIs and we’re still not done. So there is no conclusion date. There is only a set of things that 10 we believe need to be done as quickly as we can manage to get them done. And so if you must 11 set a date, the way to think about it is as a forcing function. So this is how you impose urgency 12 on Council and in particular with respect to budget, right? So if you must, then that pushes me 13 towards the earlier date. Although as I said, I’m not sure that’s meaningful, so you may be 14 challenged on that. Let me talk about a practical case in which that applies, which will lead to a 15 comment about the resolution. I believe everyone who hears about this is going to applaud the 16 emphasis on speed management because we all know that this is a real issue but pursuing it 17 leads to some interesting consequences. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 For example, if you succeed in pushing the speeds on the residential arterials down to 25 miles 2 an hour, you have just created a huge incentive for the traffic to move off onto the collectors 3 and the local streets, which are also 25 miles per hour, and have fewer physical impairments to 4 travel. We don’t want to wait for KSIs to start showing up on those other streets before we take 5 action there. We want to be proactive. And I think what that means is we have to do what the 6 comp plan asks us to do and proactively monitor vehicle and bike and pedestrian traffic across 7 much wider areas than the High Injury Network. Now there’s going to be a challenge in 8 choosing what that area is but I suspect the right answer is going to be sampling around the 9 High Injury Network to start. This is something Council needs to understand. And I think it 10 would be good to make that understanding explicit, so I suggest that perhaps in Recital 8 of the 11 resolution, you make it clear that this is an ongoing effort. It requires ongoing, at least budget, 12 for the programs that we’ll need to do that monitoring and eventually expand our focus areas 13 for mitigation. So that’s what I would add to the resolution − is the sense that this is ongoing. I 14 think the final big-picture point I wanted to make also touches on the trade-offs discussion. Just 15 because safety becomes the highest priority doesn’t mean that other goals are completely 16 ignored. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 I agree with Ms. Ellson that some of the commentary in the report might lead you to 1 believe that other goals have completely fallen by the wayside. You could reassure people and 2 improve public acceptance, I believe, by expressing that those other goals are not lost. And I 3 noticed on Page 159, there’s a bit of language used to discuss the impact review updates that I 4 thought was the right kind of language to use. So perhaps as a model, that might be a start. All 5 right. That’s all the high-level things I have. I’ll let other people talk and then I can cover some 6 more detail stuff later if you need it. 7 8 Chair Chang: Okay. Great. I will take my turn now. So first I’ll comment on the date. I’d like to 9 echo pretty much everything that Commissioner Summa and Vice-Chair Akin said, which is that 10 I’d like to accept the Hoboken challenge as Commissoner Templeton has dubbed it and I think 11 that 2035, ten years, is good. Because this is aspirational and possibly – and very aspirational as 12 one of our public commentors mentioned. And so really this is a forcing function in terms of 13 budget. And if we were to come up with a plan, such that everything here would be done in 15 14 years, that means that City Council wouldn’t have as large a fire lighted under their seats as if 15 we say ten years from now. So that’s what I would do. But I also think Commissioner Akin’s – or 16 Vice-Chair Akin’s way of looking at this as our goal is zero fatalities and serious injuries 17 immediately. And our goal is to do everything in the plan in ten years. So I think that – I don’t 18 know if there’s – I don’t know what’s required from a grant-funding perspective but it – like I 19 wonder if that makes it clear that we’re not doing anything and we’re not viewing KSIs – not 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. even one is acceptable. But there’s also only so much that we can do. And that may be the way 1 to think about it and also will help us prioritize. So that would be my two cents on that. 2 3 In terms of my overall feedback, I’d split it into three levels. There’s the biggest-picture 4 feedback, there was next-level stuff, and then there’s some kind of more specific details. On the 5 biggest picture, I think that we need to be clear about the KSI definition because as we 6 communicate to the public, what’s a serious injury? Like if my child had a concussion or my 7 child had a broken arm and they’re still able to get up and walk and that they went to urgent 8 care and – the next day and not immediately from the accident scene, that’s still a serious 9 injury to me. Now if that’s not being classified as a serious injury, we’ve got to somehow make 10 that clear. Because I don’t really know how to tell any member of the public, “Gee, that 11 concussion wasn’t high enough of a priority for us to follow whatever process that we would 12 follow.” I was Googling what other cities did, and Seattle, I believe it was, said something about 13 anything more than kind of a ma-, anything that would – anything that’s not described as cuts 14 and bruises. So I – that’s the opposite extreme. So then also I – w-, there is something that 15 Commissioner Summa said sort of about how the most important or action-oriented pieces of 16 the plan are at the end. And so I think we need to communicate urgency. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. So if we look at the – I think it’s Page 10 or there abouts. Let’s see. Page 9. So Key Policy and 1 Program Changes. A lot of these things are about making more plans and yet there are key 2 policies listed, I think, on Pages 58 and 59. Those are the things that we get for signing off on 3 this plan and to the extent that we can move those up kind of into the more of the executive 4 summary territory, I think that that would be really valuable. And then similarly, there’s this – 5 like this is an ambitious plan, and so one of the key things – I don’t – this actually is a question 6 for Staff. How much has this been circulated within different city departments? In other words, 7 has PD seen this? Okay. So I’m getting nods from… 8 9 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah, in the presentation that Ashlee gave, she mentioned an internal working 10 group – an internal stakeholder working group. That was all Staff. We’ve given it to them. 11 We’ve met a few times. 12 13 Chair Chang: And have each… 14 15 Sylvia Star-Lack: And circulated… 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: …working group then report it out to their department because, I think, that’s the 1 – like it doesn’t end at the working group. It needs to be lived and breathed. So I think that 2 there’s a piece of this that – I don’t know if it’s our City Council and then to the City Manager to 3 say that this is really a priority. And it really will require concerted effort – concerted and 4 coordinated effort. So – and then there’s a piece of this that when I look at – this is sort of the 5 tone of the plan. It doesn’t feel action-oriented enough to me in that it’s not that specific to 6 Palo Alto but if you look at the pyramid image that Ms. Takushi had showed us, it talks about 7 sort of engineering roads properly. Absolutely. We [shouldn’t not 146:33] do that. At the same 8 time, Palo Alto is a built environment already. And so the reality is that engineering roads 9 properly − well that was already done. They were engineered properly or improperly seven 10 years ago, fifty years ago, and now we have them. And it’s really expensive to start over. So 11 what’s missing in this is sort of the trade-off like on – at the big-picture level, sort of the trade-12 off between – so many of our projects often have sort of a near term/long-term type 13 classification as well as a dollar sign classification or ease of implementation piece. And those 14 things at the bottom of the pyramid, many times in a built environment, are the hardest things 15 and most expensive thing to implement. 16 17 And so while that certainly makes sense, the reality is that we are also budget limited. If there 18 were unlimited funds, then it would be a different question. So somehow in all of this it needs 19 more like a laundry list than a prioritization. So that kind of takes me into the second level of 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. my feedback, which is around like the practicality and the trade-offs and I think I covered most 1 of it already. And then finally on the details, I read quite − we skimmed a lot of Ms. Ellson’s 2 comments and I really think that they’re – a lot of them are spot on. For example, San Antonio 3 really should be included as a part of a High Injury Network if that is something that we are 4 going to be using for prioritization purposes. Because we’re supposed to be proactive, right? 5 Similarly, like we talked about – we talked recently about making nodes on El Camino here – 6 retail nodes on El Camino in the PTC. We’ve talked about special setbacks in the PTC. And 7 because we have individual planners seeing projects that might not be – and they’re – they 8 might not have yet taken the Hoboken challenge and signed off onto this plan. Like we’re 9 making those trade-offs. We – I remember Director Lait actually said, “Well there is no bicycle – 10 there’s no bike path plan for Middlefield, so we don’t need to worry about the special setback.” 11 And I would disagree. 12 13 Because if we’re really thinking about Safe Streets For All, whether it is for a wider sidewalk, 14 whether it is for a separated bike lane, whether it is for a pedestrian island – a wider pedestrian 15 island, we need to be thinking about those things and we should be treating some of these 16 things in a sacred way. And the plan needs things that will sort of be guidelines for the other 17 departments in terms of what does that mean in your operations, how – what would you do 18 then if a developer comes and says, “Well I want to go [in the 149:41] special setback and you 19 say, “Well you know, no, that’s sacred. We’re not going to be doing that.” So that’s kind of at 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 detailed level. And then we spoke about this beforehand but I love those quick build rapid 1 response team ideas because they are things that we can do in a built environment that would 2 show that we’re not just going to sit and plan for the next five years but we’re going to try and 3 do things. And if we really want to do those things, if that is really critical to our success, then 4 we need to put that front and center, so that City Council funds those things. All right. That’s it. 5 Commissioner Templeton. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 8 9 Chair Chang: And Commissioner Hechtman. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. I have to leave early, so I wanted to just chime in because I 12 wasn’t included in your list of people you agree with. But I said it first. I want us to have these 13 as soon as possible, if not tomorrow, so I’m going to suggest 2035 because it’s really rare that 14 we get so much agreement. Okay. Have a good night. 15 16 Chair Chang: Commissioner Hechtman. 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah, thank you. So I’d like 2025, and I’m not adverse to 2035, of 2 course. And I do like the way that it was explained by Vice-Chair Akin that the goal is tomorrow 3 but let’s put some teeth in as a reason to go to 2035. My concern is again trying to be realistic 4 and recognizing that the easier part of this, in my view, is going to be to rewrite the book, the 5 policies and the programs. The hard part is going to make physical changes to our network of 6 roadways that runs throughout the city. And that just takes time. It doesn’t – it’s not going to 7 happen – we’re not going to do a blueprint for the whole city and then send out crews on a 8 Tuesday to start the work and be done in a month. And then the whole city will be different, 9 right? It’s going to be piecemealed here and there and we’re going to start with the high injury 10 roadways. And so, for example, I live close to Embarcadero. That’s one of our high injury 11 roadways. And the reason is in part, you have high speeds combined with many cross 12 intersections that are unsignalized. And you compare that to Oregon Expressway, which has 13 probably higher speeds but fewer of those intersections, so what are we going to do on 14 Embarcadero? 15 16 Well we may end up closing off some of those roads where they meet Embarcadero, so that 17 people who are at the end there are going to be kind of right by Embarcadero but at a dead 18 end. You’d have to go out to Channing or California and loop around to some other place. And 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. so this gets to another point that the Vice-Chair was making and that is you’re going to shift 1 traffic and when you do that, the places that have been high injury roadways will maybe be 2 tamped down and we’ll have new high injury roadways and we’ll need to address those with 3 more physical improvements to get to zero KSI. And so that is a very iterative, time-consuming, 4 slow process and that’s why I’m thinking of 2040. But having said that, I mean I – obviously, 5 there’s not a person in the city who doesn’t want fewer injuries sooner. And I guess part of 6 maybe the way to solve this – and I think this is the Chair’s suggestion – is to look at the 7 language of that resolution to make clear that the goal is everybody wants this to end 8 tomorrow but when can we realistically have it happen to our city. The only other thing I 9 wanted to mention because it – this concept of education has been talked about a bit – quite a 10 bit. I thought it was interesting in one of the early slides from our presentation, this – in the 11 Safe Streets Program, it’s kind of a paradigm shift about – in how we are thinking about making 12 our streets safe. 13 14 And so – and we have that graphic that showed the old way and the arrows to the new way, 15 right? Well one of the old ways was education, right? We’re going to teach people don’t speed. 16 We’re going to teach people look both ways. Well what we’ve learned is even though we’ve 17 taught them, people still speed, and even though everybody knows to look both ways, 18 sometimes you forget and people make mistakes. And so now we are going to assume that 19 people make mistakes and try to protect them essentially from themselves through traffic 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. calming, slowing speeds, those sorts of things. And it may be that the draft plan – I really didn’t 1 look for this, doesn’t emphasize enough the fact that there’s still going to be education. I mean 2 that’s still critical. But obviously, that’s a component of it and we heard Staff tonight just in 3 answering questions, talk about education. So maybe take a look at the draft plan and see if we 4 made it… 5 6 Sylvia Star-Lack: Yeah. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Need to make that clearer that, of course, a robust education is also 9 a critical component of this even though it’s not one of those five new arrows. 10 11 Sylvia Star-Lack: Okay. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: So those are my comments. Thanks again for a great start. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Sylvia Star-Lack: Could I comment on that? Thanks so much for that comment. Yes, when I – 1 yes, that is how – that is exactly how I read the plan. And then our Safe Routes to School Lead 2 Coordinator read it and – read it completely differently and read it the way that I think that 3 Penny Ellson read it thinking that we were going to stop educating children. That is absolutely 4 not what we are going to do. And if you noticed in the slides that were presented tonight, the 5 pyramid actually doesn’t have education at the top; it has awareness campaigns or something 6 like that. And I think that misnomer – that’s a misnomer in the plan. It’s not education. It’s 7 awareness campaigns that don’t really – oh, thank you for putting that up. Thanks, Ashlee. 8 Awareness measures, that’s what it is. So Ashlee and I have talked about this. We’ve talked to 9 leaders in the fi-, internationally in the field. They agree that this education name – that up 10 here. It’s wrong. So we’re going to fix it in the document. Thank you for pointing that out. 11 12 Chair Chang: Commission-, Vice-Chair Akin. 13 14 Vice-Chair Akin: Thank you, Chair. So I’ll wrap up with a few quick and mostly easier 15 observations. Things that I really liked. The references to proactive data collection and analysis. 16 Upgrading the traffic calming program as part of this effort; a big plus. It’s interesting to see 17 bicycle traffic calming mentioned in a few places, which is the first time I’ve run into that. But 18 given feedback that people have expressed to me personally, I think they’re going to be 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. receptive that way – that addresses issues that some have raised. And last but not least, the 1 safe system pyramid really just doesn’t work for me. Graphically, the pyramid shape clashes 2 with the arrows. It’s really hard to tell which direction is important, which layer is important. 3 Are they all equally important? I can’t tell. So as a tool for communicating, I don’t think it 4 succeeds. And I toyed with a few other ideas and didn’t come to any conclusions but even if you 5 had a simple list that’s unordered, you could probably express the key concepts more simply 6 and less ambiguously. All right, I think that’s all that’s on my list. 7 8 Chair Chang: Let me just chime in quickly on the pyramid because when I read the down arrow, 9 I thought that that was like decreasing impact [inaudible 158:52] a benefit and I don’t think that 10 was the – it was like the impact increases as the arrow goes down but that is not intuitive. So it 11 took me a while to just kind of – yeah. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: I will pile on to the – normally, I like a pyramid and I also want to point 14 out on Page – wait, what is this? Sixty-three, the funding visual. I had to ask several people with 15 PHDs, some of whom I live with, to explain that to me and couldn’t do it. The – some of these 16 graphics, they’re pretty but they’re m-, hard to understand. And this isn’t what – it’s on 63, the 17 existing spending. I mean if those are supposed to be – I just don’t think it’s clear. I think some 18 of the graphics were getting a little overly clever or something. So – and there’s a lot obviously 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. in here that’s good. I do feel slightly bad that I will not have time before the end of this meeting 1 to go through all of the details in Ms. Ellson’s work because she seems to have a very keen 2 understanding. And not that she got everything right but a keen understanding and a lot of 3 experience in Palo Alto with these issues. But I don’t think you want us to go through it in that 4 level of detail anyway. I mean that would take a week, like I said. So I think making this report 5 more action-oriented and clearer − and I’m down with a decade. 6 7 And I like – I didn’t think of the ideas about how to improve the resolution but I like what was 8 mentioned before to give more urgency. And yeah, I think it needs to be simplified and the dis-, 9 the paragraphs on kinetics and why it’s bad to be hit by a car if you’re on a bike or a person 10 were a little bit unnecessary to me. I think it could just be – I think it would be easier for the 11 public to consume if it was simplified and more action-oriented. So thanks. 12 13 Chair Chang: So I just wanted to do two really specific things. So for Page 10 – so the first bullet 14 says, “Create a citywide speed management plan.” Great. But why isn’t the first bullet like 15 address the problem area or address the High Injury Network in – so that’s what I mean by – 16 like we already know where the problems are, so that’s what I mean by action-oriented. And I 17 know that the citywide speed management plan is [inaudible 162:13] to addressing the High 18 Injury Network. But I think that in terms of – this plan talks a lot about the things – the cost that 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. we will have to pay. Loss of parking places, slowing things down, maybe losing some lanes here. 1 But if we get to say like, “Oh, but we’re addressing these injury networks,” I think that will make 2 people – that’s a good trade-off, right? Similarly, it might be helpful to have a few boxes in your 3 executive summary section that kind of talk about some of the successes, right? So for example, 4 concretely, earlier today, we talked – or yesterday, we talked about the Charleston- 5 Arastradero, and yes, we had a little bit lower LOS but we also increased throughput, decreased 6 accidents, and that’s an example of what implementing a safe systems approach does. And so 7 that could be helpful in sort of explaining what the trade-offs really are because in reading it, 8 it’s hard. 9 10 I mean you assume that we’re not going to take traffic speeds down to zero. That would make 11 things infinitely safe and also like would completely not fulfill our transportation goals or – but 12 that kind of gives maybe – makes it a little more concrete for people what we’re talking about. 13 Okay. So that’s about it for me. And I’m not seeing other lights, so I think we are done. Do you 14 need a motion for the 2035? Okay. Yeah, I know it’s a study session but sometimes they like 15 motions. Okay. Great. Fantastic. 16 17 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 18 19 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 5. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Summary & Verbatim 1 Minutes of December 11, 2024 2 3 Chair Chang: Then I think we’re onto our last agenda item, which is the – or second to last 4 agenda item, which is the approval of the minutes of December 11, 2024. Anybody want to 5 make a motion? 6 7 Commissioner Summa: I’ll motion to move that with any corrections that were made. 8 9 Chair Chang: Second, please? 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Second. 12 13 Chair Chang; Great. Any discussion? Nope. All right, Ms. Dao, can you call the vote, I guess, 14 because I’m not sure what we’re allowed to do here. But Commissioner… 15 16 Jennifer Armer: You should be able to just say all in favor… 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 Chair Chang: Okay, great. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: …say aye. 4 5 Chair Chang: Just noting that – yeah, just noting that Commissioner Templeton had to leave, so 6 she won’t be taking part of the vote voi-, taking part in the voice vote. All in favor of approving 7 the minutes of December 11, 2024, as corrected? 8 9 Group Vote: Aye. 10 11 Chair Chang: All opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, great. 12 13 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: And then our final agenda item is Commissioner Questions, Comments, 1 Announcements, or future meetings and agendas. Anybody have – Commissioner Hechtman. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. So I just wanted to mention for the vast audience 4 I’m sure is still watching and everyone here in the room that if you haven’t recently done it, you 5 should go see the new Mercedes dealership building, which is rising at the – well, it’s risen at 6 the corner of Bayshore and Embarcadero, the former Ming’s site. They have – so it’s almost 7 done and they have this beautiful green wall on the Bayshore side that wraps around the 8 corner of the building and it’s gorgeous. I don’t know that we have another green wall in the 9 city. I’m not aware of it. But it – anyway, this one is freshly planted, so everything’s living and 10 it’s a great time to go see it. And if you’re going to go do that, I would encourage you ride your 11 bike because if you do that, you will experience the new bike lane that wraps that corner; ten 12 feet wide. And as you might recall this project came to us and I was hoping that we could save 13 the ten trees along Bayshore for a somewhat smaller path through there. That didn’t happen 14 but they planted everything and it’s really nice to have that path, particularly at the corner 15 where if you wanted to ride the sidewalk before to stay off the kind of dangerous street, which 16 narrowed there, you had to make your way around a utility pole, so it was kind of challenging. 17 18 So now it’s super easy, and if you’re already there on that corner on your bike, you should just 19 keep pedaling over to the Renzel ponds where earlier this week, they completed the trim back 20 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. of all the vegetation around both ponds, which had been seriously overgrown to the point 1 where you really almost could never see the pond even though you’re right next to it because it 2 was so successful and lush. And it was kind of closing in on the trail and making things feel not 3 quite safe but now it’s wide open. And so I appreciate our – I don’t know if that’s Public Works 4 or Parks that did that work but they did a great job and so continue your bike ride through the 5 Renzel pond area. 6 7 Chair Chang: All right. We are adjourned. 8 9 Adjournment 10 8:48 PM 11 12 /ls 13