OK, good evening and welcome to the Thursday, October 12th,
2023, regular meeting of the Walnut Creek Planning Commission.
At this time, I'll ask our commission secretary to please call the roll.
Commissioner Riser. Here.
Commissioner Nathan. Here.
Commissioner Lisek. Here.
Commissioner Pickett. Here.
Commissioner Anderson. Here.
And Chair Ward. Here.
And Vice Chair Strongman is absent.
OK, thank you. So we have a quorum and we're ready to proceed.
Next up on our agenda is the consent calendar.
And I'd like to confirm that there are no items on the consent calendar today.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
Excellent.
With that, I'd like to move on to public communication.
The public communication portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on items not on the
agenda.
This means comments that are not about the Yoga Center conditional use permit or the
North Main shared use path rezone.
Under the Brown Act, the commission cannot act on items raised during public communications
but may respond briefly to statements made or questions posed, request clarification
or refer the item to staff.
Additionally, I would like to remind everyone that all speech is not protected and I will
not tolerate or allow hate speech during public comment at any meeting that I chair.
Hate has no place in our community and our words must reflect our community commitment
to equality and inclusion for all.
With that being said, do we have any members of the public in the chamber who would like
to make public comment at this time?
Okay, seeing none, do we have anybody online?
We do not have any attendees online.
Okay.
All right.
Last call.
All right.
Thank you.
With that, we will move on them to public hearings.
Next item on our agenda.
First, I'd like to ask the members of the Commission if you've had any ex-party communications
related to items on the agenda. Yes. Madam Chair, I have not had any
ex parte communication but I'll need to recuse myself from item 4A. The applicant
is a member of my neighborhood and based on property location I think it's
appropriate for me to step out for that item. Okay so we're doing 4A right now
so we will see you in moments. All right thank you for that. Appreciate it. All
All right, any other comments from commissioners or issues?
All right, seeing none.
Let's proceed then.
We have first up a staff presentation
by Gerardo Victoria, our assistant planner.
Good evening commissioners.
My name is Gerardo Victoria, assistant planner
with the community development department.
The project before you today is for a conditional use permit
for the Mount Diablo Yoga Center,
which is classified as a personal improvement service.
The site is approximately a little bit over an acre big.
It is located at 2121 Ignacio Valley Boulevard, excuse me, Ignacio Valley Road, Tenant Space
E-207.
The zoning of the property is zoned office commercial.
The general plan designation is office.
Generally, what you'll see at the doctor's park is a medical office and a professional
office.
The tenant space is approximately 1,029 square feet in size.
The business hours are Monday through Friday,
8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday are by appointment only.
The business offers, excuse me,
services 25 to 30 clients a week,
and offers approximately 12 to 14 classes a week.
The project is not proposing any exterior modifications,
and I did wanna show the floor plan here,
if I can just make it a little bit bigger, excuse me, oops.
As you can see, this is where the entrance is right here.
There's stairs that lead up to the second story.
This is their floor plan.
This is the yoga studio right here.
There's an entrance right here.
This is like a lobby area where there's,
they do sell yoga items,
accessory to the existing yoga studio.
There's an office here in the back
There's the hallway here.
The project is subject to conditional use permit findings
contained in the Walnut Creek Muni Code.
Staff finds that this project is consistent
with the general plan and the zoning
upon approval of a conditional use permit.
Staff also finds that the existing tenant space is active
and is compatible with the existing neighborhood
as no exterior modifications are proposed.
Staff also finds that the proposed project
is not detrimental to the public health safety
and welfare of the community.
No anticipated adverse impacts such as noise later
or other nuisances are expected.
There are no additional findings required
under the zoning district.
Staff recommends to move to determine
that the proposed yoga studio is exempt from CEQA
and staff proposes to move to approve
conditional use permit application Y22082 subject to conditions of approval.
I am available for any questions.
The applicant is also in the audience, Monique Pickering, who is also available for questions.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Any questions of the commission?
Commissioner Anderson?
Just to answer the quick one, on the floor plan, I understand how the yoga studio works,
but it's a second floor.
Yes.
And there's a little staircase indicated floating up there
in the corner somewhere.
But what is in fact actually,
I assume the building continues on above that drawing.
It's a two-story building.
The building does continue farther out.
Is that what you're asking?
I'm just trying to figure out where they're entering from.
Oh, so this is the entrance to the building.
So the stairs, these stairs are located right here in front.
You just go up the stairs
and you're on the second story right here.
Okay, so stairs, okay.
Yes.
And that hallway is an interior hallway?
This hallway is an interior hallway.
So you can enter this.
I'm sorry.
Oh, this is an exterior hallway to other businesses.
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out
what's going on where the arrow is.
Yes, this is an exterior hallway
to the building on the second floor.
Okay, thank you.
That's good.
Okay, any other questions from the commission?
Commissioner Pickett.
Yeah, just a quick one.
On your staff report you mentioned
that the project would generate pedestrian traffic
along Ignacio Valley Road and Walnut Avenue.
Is that really expected to,
that just seems unlikely to me,
but is there some expectation that we're gonna get?
No, so the Expected Traffic is only for clients
that have signed up for the yoga classes.
What page is that?
I mentioned pedestrian activity along Ignacio Valley.
Can you point me to the page?
I'm not sure if that's, it's on page,
two of your staff report down at the bottom.
Page one?
Page two, bottom.
Under analysis use, it says which will generate
pedestrian traffic along Ignacio Valley Road and Walnut Avenue. So struck me as
curious as to how that generates traffic. It was poorly worded
and I can change that. You don't have to change it. Just wondered if there was
something I'm overlooking. No, no, you're not overlooking anything. Okay, that was
my only question, thank you. Okay, great. Anything else? No? All right, thank you.
At this time I'd like to open the public hearing and the applicant
will have 15 minutes to make a presentation if they wish.
Nothing to add. OK.
OK. We can't hear you from there.
If you want to come up to the microphone and say hello maybe
that would be great.
Come on up. Introduce yourself. Hello.
Hi my name is Monique Pickering.
I'm the applicant for this yoga studio.
Fantastic. Okay.
So any commissioner questions for the applicant?
Come on, I dragged her up here now.
Yeah, I don't have a presentation.
I don't know. No, that's fine.
You don't need one, but it's nice that you're here to answer questions.
And we do appreciate it. All right.
So it looks like there's nothing now.
So if you want to sit down, that's fine.
But thank you for having me. Thank you very much.
OK, there being no questions from commissioners,
it's time to ask if any member of the public wishes to provide
public comment at this time regarding this agenda item.
I see no one in the chambers,
do we have anyone online who is looking
to make public comment?
We do not have any attendees on Zoom.
Okay, excellent.
So this would be when I give you the opportunity
to respond to any public comment,
but being that there is none,
I assume that you also have no response.
So we'll keep moving along here.
So I'm gonna close the public hearing at this time
and bring it back to the commission
for any comments, questions, or deliberations,
possibly even a motion.
Commissioner Anderson.
I'll move the approval of application Y22082.
I'll second it.
I'll second it.
OK.
We have a motion and a second.
Commission Secretary, can you please record the vote?
Commissioner Reiser.
Yes.
Commissioner Nating.
Yes.
Commissioner Pickett.
Yes.
Commissioner Anderson.
Yes.
Chair Ward.
Yes.
Thank you.
And Commissioner Lezak has recused himself
and Vice Chair Strongman is absent.
Okay, excellent.
So let's take one or two minutes
to retrieve Commissioner Lezak
so he can come back and rejoin us.
To move on to agenda item 4B,
which is the North Main shared use path rezone,
zoning map amendment application, little words here.
Y23-052, 2211 North Main Street.
And it looks like we're gonna, again, pinch-hitting
for Simmergill, we have Chip Griffin.
We're gonna get you walk-up music pretty soon
if this keeps up, right?
Check, check, yep, okay.
Good evening, I'm Chip Griffin.
I'm a principal planner here
with the city's current planning division.
Thank you, Chair.
Tonight we're going to do a study session,
hopefully make a recommendation to the city council
for a zoning map amendment.
We're calling it the North Main Shared Use,
or North Main Road Diet,
depending on what you're looking at.
Zoning map amendments, it's application number 23052.
The scope would include just an amendment,
the zoning map has a couple different versions,
not versions, but sheets.
and sheet two of the zoning map includes a couple things.
I think it has some building heights on it,
but among other things, it has future street setbacks,
which are, think of them as right-of-way wits.
And the North Downtown specific plan increased
some sections of the right-of-ways,
in this case, it increased at eight feet.
So this zoning map would change that section
of North Maine back to, from approximately Parkside Drive
to right where it transitioned to the North California,
transitioned it back to 60 for that half anyway.
The action eventually caused elimination of a vehicle lane.
There's two lanes, there's four lanes,
two of them split down North Maine,
two of them split to California.
And that would ultimately,
the intent is to accommodate the space
for a shared use path that's visualized
in the North Downtown specific plan.
Context, we've got, here's an aerial view here
and you can see, where's my, here it is.
Here would be the northerly extent
of this area and this yellow line.
That's just a couple of hundred feet north
of the Parkside intersection, just north of the Marriott.
That would become a channelized right-hand turn lane.
And then from here down would be,
would be that, is that other section of road.
And you can see here for context,
I think we all know where this is,
but this is the Marriott here.
This is Jack in the Box, Taco Tuesday.
Then we've got, I think it's, is it's,
that's the Bentley motor cars
or the Lamborghinis, whatever they're.
And then down at the end here,
we have 2211 North Main,
which used to be the home of La Verage.
And since that building went away,
it's been a parking lot for various uses,
vehicle storage, parking.
I believe we, this planning commission
granted us special use permit for food trucks and the like.
So it's been underutilized.
There has been a project that's approved on it,
was found to be unbuildable, and the new owner,
Sean Joy, who's here, is looking for,
was looking for ways to, he's looking to develop it,
but that eight foot of dedication
really hurt him a little bit.
So we looked at ways to, looked at things,
what we could do, what could be done,
and this kinda became a, you know, well,
let's take a look at this.
So the zoning there is mixed use plan development.
Of course, the roadway isn't zoned that way,
but the properties on that west side of the roadway are.
And it's, of course, mostly in the general plan mixed use
golden triangle area with a lot of office buildings.
And this graphic on the right is taken from the road diet
traffic study.
So here's the zoning map.
This is zoning map sheet S2.
And this square is over here.
and you can see the lavender-colored section,
and that's the section we're talking about.
And down here, you can see the lavender-colored section
is 108 feet.
That's the full future right-of-way width.
And it has an asterisk there
because typically a right-of-way would be 50 on this side,
50 on that side, or half on this side, half on that side,
which is, for example, this 100-foot one
is just like that.
It'd be 50 and 50.
But where there's an asterisk they're split.
They're not 50-50.
So in this case, in the 108 foot case,
you can see that up here in this graphic,
you would have 40 feet on the east side, that's this side,
and then 68 feet on this side.
So we're talking really, if we want to boil it down,
we're talking about that west side,
that 68 foot portion of the right of way.
So these are sections of this roadway
as envisioned in the North Downtown Pacific Plan.
On the left is the current situation.
You see, we've got the four travel lanes,
these two North Maine, these two North California sidewalk,
and then we have the one-story commercial buildings here.
What's envisioned is the same four lanes,
but right here, of course,
we're going to increase this pedestrian bicycle area
for a protected shared use path.
And you can see that in order to do that,
you needed a take.
In this graphic, that building is,
the frontage of that building would be right there-ish.
So what essentially what we're doing
is taking away that eight foot
and the drive lane and putting the,
let's say this is the portion of the 14 foot,
or 18 foot section when you get
the landscape buffer in there.
The map amendment would eliminate that eight foot dedication
along this entire stretch.
It preserves the lot depth for potential
future assemblage of these properties
and preserves the development potential of these properties.
that eliminates an underutilized traffic lane
and preserves the vision of the North Downtown
specific plan to provide that shared use path.
In your packet, you have a focused transportation analysis
and that's the road diet, the road diet study.
It finds that and it finds that it would repurpose
underutilized lane. It could accommodate parking or loading, if necessary, depending on how
it's designed. It's not forecast to result in any significant effect to traffic. There
were found to be no environmental impacts. And it would provide additional buffer between
vehicular traffic, pedestrians, and bicyclists. This is an actual photo of it. This property
So here is 2211 North Main and you can see this is the underutilized travel lane.
The findings, there's really no required findings to do a rezone to do this map amendment.
We like to make findings.
These findings are similar to the findings you would need to make or to adopt a plan
development zoning, and that it furthers the intent of the general plan.
It complies with the regulations and provisions of the general plan and specifically a specific
plan in this case, the North Downtown specific plan, and it provides the standards for general
public health, safety and welfare, and that would be, of course, it's a shared use protected
path.
that staff would recommend that the Planning Commission determine that this
project is exempt from CEQA and approve well that shouldn't say approve that
should say recommend approval to the City Council for the proposed zoning map
amendment. Here tonight also is Smidar Boardman she's our traffic engineer and
she's she's available for any questions you might have with that questions of
staff. Okay, thank you for that. Much appreciated. I do have a question, I'll
start off. Can you speak a little more to the situation with regard to
pedestrians specifically with the old and new situation? As it appears that
currently the pedestrians are protected from all vehicle interaction, but in the
new plan there is no protection for them with interaction between their vehicles
in the form of bicycles.
So let me go back to the section from the Northbound Town Pacific Plan.
So what this does is let me go back one more.
What this includes is a shared use path for bicycles here in the blue, pedestrians here
in the yellow.
Of course, this is conceptual.
And then there is a buffer here with a raised curb, and landscaping includes trees, and
that would be the buffer.
That's the safety.
I see the buffer between the cars and the bicycles.
That makes sense to me.
What I see in the existing plan is a buffer
between pedestrians and vehicles,
and I don't see any buffer between pedestrians
and vehicles in the new plan.
I know you consider a shared path to be protecting them,
but I have concerns with regard to cyclists
and pedestrians interacting.
Being cyclists and broken.
It does not bode well for the pedestrians generally,
and I wondered if there was any physical or paint
or anything that separates the pedestrians
from the cyclists in the shared pathway.
Yes, some of our board men, traffic engineers.
So this is just a concept plan
from the North Dantown specific plan,
but best practice for providing a shared use path
that is separated between having a pedestrian space
and an area for the cyclists.
So what this is showing is, and it's a little small,
and I may pull up.
It's really small.
Some of us have old eyes here.
I have old eyes.
So the numbers are a little bigger here.
And this is the option, which is part
of what we're bringing to you tonight.
But at least you can see here.
So there's six feet of sidewalk, and then there
would be an eight-foot bikeway that accommodates two-way bike
traffic.
That would be delineated with some kind of striping,
or we can use a different type of material
to make it very clear that that area is
specifically sectioned off for cyclists.
Likewise, the sidewalk would probably just be
your typical sidewalk looking area.
And so depending on how we design it,
depending on the volumes, the bicycle volumes we may use,
which again is typical for like best practice
in this type of design.
We could use planters and like in between
or some other type of material
to separate those cyclists from the pedestrians.
So there's a possibility of a physical barrier
between the cyclists and pedestrians,
but there's nothing required with regard to this.
But it does look like there's a difference in materials
or paint or something.
It's not 14 feet of free for all here.
There's actually a delineated space for pedestrians
and a separate space for cyclists.
Is that correct?
That's right.
OK.
All right, thank you.
All right, other questions from the commission
for Commissioner Pickett.
Yeah, so the drawing that's up,
this is, this fits in that 60 foot right of way,
existing 60 foot right of way.
Yes, so that should add up to 60.
Okay, so this shows four lanes,
and there was my understanding we were eliminating a lane.
So this is showing parking, which would be eight feet.
Okay, so the park, oh, I'm sorry,
parking is that so it's three travel lanes so it just seems a little bit
contradictory that we're giving up a space for traffic when traffic is one
of the biggest problems we have in Walnut Creek and I understand that the
traffic report says we can we can afford to lose the lane today but how far
and I mean how far did they forecast this not being a problem because I once
Once we give this up we never get it back.
So right now people would love to have more right of way on Ignacio Valley Road and as
congestion and everything increases, development occurs downtown, in ten years the traffic
on this is going to be much different than it is today, it would be my speculation.
So what thought has been given to that?
I'm very, I know that the specific plan said do something like this but their solution
was to get the right of way.
If we give that up, we'll never get it back.
So what kind of forethought was given to that?
Absolutely.
So the traffic report does forecast into 2040, year 2040.
And I can bring up that right now.
So here you can see the analysis that was conducted.
And so this is for the Parkside North Main intersection,
just looking at levels of service, what would change.
And so you can see the change, the difference here
under the four traveling condition
versus the three traveling condition.
And again, this is looking at level of service
and then delay measures the number of seconds
that vehicles typically experience at the intersection
and are assigned a letter grade.
And so you can see the difference during the morning,
you know, given this existing traffic volume condition,
it's about a half second increase.
And then during the PM, it actually reduces.
So what this amount of delay
is barely quantifiable fundamentally
from the methodology that we actually use.
So I know it shows negative 0.1 seconds.
It's actually because we actually have
a higher turning volume going southbound,
making a right turn from North Main onto Parkside,
giving them their own right turn lane
where they're able to conduct right turns on red.
Not having to wait for the green light
actually helps things out.
And then you can see in the 2040 condition, similarly,
it's plus half a second and then minus three seconds.
Again, this is because of that condition
where there is an expectation that that right turn volume
would increase over time, providing them with their own
lane actually functions better in terms of the way
that we do the methodology that we use
to do this type of analysis.
OK.
Something I didn't understand on this drawing
You've explained it to me.
On the four-lane scenario, on the left side,
it has a red something or other that shows it straight ahead
and a right turn.
And in the three-lane scenario, it shows just a right turn.
So do we have a drawing that shows
what this lane realignment is going to look like?
Do we have something other than a schematic?
So no, we don't have anything like that put together.
is really a concept level discussion but we do have that cross section that I
showed previously which I can bring back onto the screen. Okay so this this is
what it would would look like and the lane that is shown as an 11 foot lane
third one over from the right is the lane that would proceed forward on
California, correct? That's right and then after you get around that 2211 North
main parcel it would open back up to two lanes so there is no change to the
Pringle and and California intersection. So what happens is on from the
intersection with California north it bottlenecks down to one lane for that
section and then it opens back up to that single lane will then merge into
to two lanes south of Pringle.
Sure, it's not exactly a bottleneck
because at the north main park side intersection,
as you're going southbound from the freeway off ramp,
let's say, you're going towards park side,
you now have a dedicated right turn lane.
So typically when we talk about bottlenecks,
it means that we're doing some kind of merge maneuver
on a segment and that can cause a lot of ripple effect.
But this is a situation where we're actually taking care
that at the intersection itself and pushing higher volumes into a lane
that's dedicated. So you see I'm looking at the map here. Thank goodness for Google
Maps. Never have to go anywhere to look at stuff anymore. Anyhow, so but what
happens if somebody is in the right, currently if someone's in the right hand
lane heading south, they have the opportunity to go straight or make a
right hand turn. Yes. If they want to go straight, they are going to have to shift
over a lane, therefore the definition of a bottleneck, you're merging two lanes
into one in that section of North Main Street. So it actually can be just a
trap lane, it's almost like an auxiliary lane so we can stripe it that way. I drive
it all the time and I go straight ahead. Sure. You know and people do and they
are juggling around, there's a lot of confusion, people going southbound where
they need to be if they want to go on main or if they want to go in California.
You're eliminating or reducing the maneuvering opportunities by cutting a
lane out of there. So I would say actually from a traffic safety
perspective this this section in particular because of the number of lanes
and given the volume that actually uses this segment we actually provide more
opportunity for folks to speed which makes it more difficult to maneuver
between the lanes. And that is part of that underutilized lane sort of
justification is that that lane is providing additional capacity that's
actually excess. And so what it does is in turn gives people more space to be
able to speed and make these dangerous maneuvers. And so by eliminating this
lane it provides it can help direct traffic in a way where we're actually
functionally using these lanes to not fully to its capacity but just to a
level where we're not exceeding what is necessary. What's the speed limit there?
It's 35. Do we have a speed study that's I mean again I drive on that section all
the time and I haven't observed any of the things you're talking about
speeding people or danger or anything else it's just there's there is
maneuvering people who are in the right-hand lane need to get over to go
straight up they don't understand they have to go straight on Main Street so
I'm not really kind of and that I don't was that addressed in the traffic report
he just do traffic counts so the the traffic report itself looks at traffic
accounts and level of service at the and looked at level of service at the
intersection. We have our own engineering traffic surveys which dictate what we
post our speed limit at and that is a separate document that has that's not
part of this application. And then in addition we do have our local roadways
safety plan which I think I've mentioned before to you all but that really speaks
to you some of the types of conditions that we are able to look at from a
systemic standpoint understanding that we have certain issues in the city by
providing wide lanes, wide travel lanes and multiple lanes it does result in it
can result in increased speed and so that is called out as one of our crash
profiles in the local roadway safety plan. So the motivation of this is that
the specific plan came up with this idea and their idea required that taking up
some property and now we have a landowner who wants to develop the
property and it impinges his ability to develop it feasibly because of what
somebody dreamed up in the specific plan however many years ago that took
forever to do
Is there another solution besides giving up our right-of-way? I just think it's a bad idea to give up right away
We'll never get it back. And
How many places around Walnut Creek do people complain about not being able to put in a something we need for traffic?
Anyhow, so the motivation is that
We have a landowner who would like to develop some property and this has a significant impact on his opportunity
Was that what started this thinking?
So yes
Okay, I have a better understanding of it. Thank you
Okay other questions from commissioners
Leading needing I'm sorry I can't speak this evening commissioner needing sorry, I'm looking at the
Attachment 6 and I think I'm confused because I thought what you showed here was that the
That would the last travel lane which is underutilized would become parking
so just uh, oh
I see so what's shown in in that attachment is just the existing conditions and the proposed
Future conditions based on the north downtown specific plan
what the alternative is that we're presenting this evening
is just on the PowerPoint.
But just to clarify, yeah.
Just to clarify,
the way that we're able to eke out some parking,
which we could use that space for,
is by narrowing the travel lanes.
So there is a benefit to that too.
But there's not enough space
to be able to still provide a fourth travel lane.
so we could use that space for parking that would,
and loading which is already occurring right now
in terms of operations.
There are plenty of folks who already park
in that travel lane currently.
So, where you guys would like to do is,
sorry, can you go back to the-
Oh, the cross section?
Yes, please. Sure.
So that would move the sidewalk buffer,
buffer it moved the buffer with the trees the landscape buffer in this condition right because
the 10 10 11 is existing and then the eight decreases from a 12 so the four foot buffer would
move in is that correct yeah we got closer to the median by a few feet got it um i'm digesting i'm
gonna stop i'm turn this off all right i have a question while you have this up um could the
Bikeway and the buffer be swapped. I
Would know
No, it can't. Okay, because the parked cars provide a buffer between the bikes and the
cars
But there's no buffer. There's still some required
Distance between the door opening space and the bikeway and we wouldn't be able to fit
All of those things if we swapped that okay
other questions
Commissioner pick up one more question. Why don't we just change a specific plan?
It's a lot of use with the in with this with this map amendment the intent of the specific plan would still be met
Okay, but if we change a specific plan, we don't lose a travel lane
Well, it's the zoning map though. That shows the numbers that shows the 68 and right now we only have 60
Okay, so the zoning map has been changed
but that's that's that's what that's that's owning an app changed the result
of the specific plan yes so the zoning map was changed to be consistent with
the specific plan so we'd have to change the zoning map then that's what we're
doing tonight that's what we're making the recommendation on tonight but that
requires the elimination of a travel lane correct so how do we accomplish this
without losing and traveling how do we how do we preserve the setback on the
private property, how do we avoid taking land out of the private property and
preserve the travel lane? You don't get bikes. Are you asking me if why
does the specific plan not to be not need to be amended? I just want to
know why this is the I mean I would think there's other solutions in this
than giving up travel lane, on a key roadway
into downtown Walnut Creek?
Sure, so just looking at this cross section again,
there is no opportunity to preserve a travel lane
and still fulfill the vision
of the North Downtown specific plan
if you were to preserve that travel lane
and not get rid of.
I'm suggesting that the vision of the downtown,
what was this?
Of the North Downtown Specific Plan.
North Downtown Specific Plan might need to be amended.
Maybe the vision is the problem.
Are you suggesting that we shouldn't have space
for a bikeway or sidewalk?
I don't know how you design it differently,
but that might be the casualty.
The casualty might be the bike line
that doesn't exist today that isn't there
versus a travel lane that does exist and gets used every day.
So I think we're maybe setting our priorities wrong.
OK.
I would just throw out there that this is well within range of BART.
And this was envisioned, again, in the North Downtown specific plan
as an access point to the BART station and the other uses that are there.
There are some restaurants, bars, whatever else.
And does align with the city's sustainability goals.
do appreciate that it's an access point to BART and getting people on bikes to
BART is really nice so I recognize that. Thank you.
Mr. Needing. So here we're looking at it's a directional bike lane you're
assuming, is that correct? You're asking if it's a bidirectional bike bike way?
Yeah. Yeah. It looks like it was, what's the smallest bike lane? Is it five feet?
So a one-way bike lane is five feet depending on where you are but for the
purpose of what we're talking about which is a shared east path four feet is
the minimum for a single direction eight feet is the absolute minimum that you
can go for a bikeway for this two-way bikeway because this essentially is
acting like a class one trail that's it's a class one it's a class one it is
yes where it's actually we've separated out the pedestrian and bicycle right
but yes and you're saying that it couldn't be a class three trail because
of door swings do you mean class four maybe I'm I mean I knew this was a
classic on it's the one where the bikes have their own in the street like an in
street bikeway yeah so you still have to between between the parking and the
bicycles you need three feet of clearance lateral clearance so that's
not a lot so we we could do that but the intent of this plan is long-term vision
is to actually provide a super high quality connection to BART also
connecting to the additional future development
in the North Downtown area.
So it's not supposed, it's not intended to be on street.
It's not envisioned to be on street.
And then this plan that we see here would change it
from, did I see LOSD to LOSE?
Maybe I read that wrong.
Yeah it's it's just D to D basically stays the same except for the during the
a.m. under existing conditions it goes from LSC to LSCD. It goes from C to D
during that a.m. condition existing. And then 2040 in the p.m. we're looking at
it's already it's already going to be yeah yeah thank you sure other
questions from commissioners okay is the city the applicant or is there an
applicant applicant Sean joys here he did not prepare a presentation I requested
that he didn't.
OK.
All right.
I should say I suggested that he didn't.
So he's made an application with regard to his property,
and this is connected with that regarding
the developability of it.
It's not the city on its own initiative
trying to implement the North Downtown specific plan
through this realignment.
OK.
All right, so no presentation.
No question.
You could ask questions of...
You can ask questions.
Yeah.
Do any commissioners have questions for the applicant at this time?
No.
Okay.
So now it's time for members of the public who wish to comment on this agenda item, three
minute time limit.
And I think we have somebody in the chamber.
So let's start with you.
I'm wondering if I may get an extension if necessary
because I came here with a certain understanding
of the roadway widths and things like that
and what was online and all the documents prepared.
I'm finding out they're different
than what I had been making comment on.
But just, if you think necessary, that's all.
I think three minutes is a good start.
So why don't we stick to that?
Okay, it certainly is a good start.
Thank you.
I'm Michael Vecchio.
I'm a resident of Walnut Creek and I'm a bicyclist.
I like the idea of the proposal to get rid
of the moving line of traffic.
I think that's fine.
It's being used largely as a truck parking zone anyway.
So that component of the project I'm fine with.
The issue that I have concerns about is the shared use path.
And I have some comments, I'll go through them,
but again, some of my comments have changed
and maybe I'll just have to make those written,
to submit them separately
because of the information I got tonight
that was not available.
Okay, I have three comments.
One is how would the bicycles coming from both directions
enter and exit the shared use path?
That's always an issue with shared use paths.
And I'm not sure how that would happen,
especially for the standalone section,
maybe in the final project of the shared use lane
from California in Parkside all the way down to BART,
maybe that would be resolved.
But the stand-alone section is a concern for me.
Second point, the West Downtown Pacific Plan calls for a Class II facility south of Pringle.
I'm wondering if it would be wise to, in a better thing, to have the proposed shared
youth facility to start at Parkside, go down to California, go down to Pringle, even go
a little bit further down to the existing mid-block pedestrian crossing at the BART
station. That way you get good connectivity and everybody from BART can see it and get the
benefits of a shared use bike path. Number three, you know, I'm not sure how pedestrians
and bicyclists and the doors that are opening
from the fronting businesses, you need,
now that I see the plan, some of my comments
aren't maybe as relevant, but there's a four-foot
planter strip that would have the fire hydrants,
the street light poles, the signal poles,
the street signs, those types of things.
So you've gotten that, that wasn't presented
in any of the materials, so I was concerned about that
with a four-foot plan of maybe that's going to disappear.
Finally, I'm thinking that there may be some other ways to, you know,
I whispered that, you know, maybe use the 11-foot
to the median that's there and eat into that a little bit
to get some extra width to be able
to accommodate the Class 1 facility even safer
and separate it from the businesses.
The bike master plan was approved in 2011.
I don't know if there's been any updates to that or not.
And if not, then I think this would be a time to update
that bike master plan to reflect what's being proposed.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Do we have any other members of the public wish
to provide comment at this time?
There are new attendees online.
Okay. Thank you.
All right, seeing no additional speakers, I guess this is the chance for the applicant
to respond to public comment or the concerns of the Commission, if you'd like.
Come on up.
How you doing?
Great.
I'm Sean Joy.
I'm the applicant here.
I think the main point of the bike lanes, whether this proceeds or not, it stays the
same, right?
The idea is to preserve that bike pedestrian traffic getting towards BART, right?
whether it's a class one or four,
that's not the issue.
The issue really is preserving,
upgrading that pedestrian bike access through that area.
That's the intent of this, both what I'm proposing
and what the city wanted with the north downtown
specific plan.
So I don't know if that...
Okay, thank you very much for that.
Appreciate it.
All right, do we have any additional
commissioner questions or the like?
Oh, I'm closing the public hearing
and bringing it back to the commission for comments,
questions, deliberation.
Commissioner Anderson.
Well, I like to disagree with my esteemed colleague
to my right.
I live north, north end of town,
and I work in the south end of town.
So I drive this area quite a bit.
tonight coming here. And I think the fact is it isn't underutilized, the four lanes
are underutilized. Also as you come over the hill from North Main Street farther
up, it's, you've got four lanes and you can see everybody's trying to figure out
where the four lanes are going. It's not entirely clear and as you get
past Taco Bell and toward that intersection, then there's the final sorting. I think actually
three lanes would be a little bit easier to handle, especially if it's signed and the
right turn lane is marked as a sole right turn lane, so forth. But I think there's not
much traffic, quite frankly. The only time this ever slowed down is like going northbound.
Sometimes it backs up to the light for a bit, but not with the four-lane sections.
I don't think that fourth lane is necessary. As far as redoing the specific plan,
you know, specific plan has been there for a while. A lot of work was put into it.
this whole kind of bike access is in the bike plans as well as the specific plan.
I've also provided my bike sometimes and if I come down on Parkside the chance to go down
Main Street, my office on the south side is on Main Street so that would seem logical but
I try to avoid places like this where the traffic does speed up
And so when I ride my bike I actually go about four or five blocks over to the east to the Iron
Horse Trail down to Newell and cut back over. It adds about a mile and a half I think to the
route but it's safer. So I think this is, I think it's a good plan. I think it works.
as pointed out you know trucks do stop in that lane anyway and making it a little narrower and
four stops traffic helps a lot the idea that you know you don't really need the bicycles
they're well if bicycles do want to know that thing instead of being on a separated bicycle lane
they're riding in the traffic because there is no bike lane in the street there's no separation
at all and, you know, trying to ride in an automobile lane where people are going at
least 35, because that's the speed limit, it's kind of a dangerous place to be.
So I think this is a much improvement and I suspect that over time as the bicycle pedestrian
way gets extended further out. It's going to be a great benefit and work much
better than what we've got now. So I'm in favor of it.
Anybody else? Commissioner Pickett. Yeah good arguments Brent but I still
believe that it's inappropriate for the city to conceive a plan that is
ultimately going to sacrifice a travel lane that you know does it does the loss
of it does impact traffic, you know, a C to a D in the morning traffic, you know,
maybe that's not bad, but I think it's a wrong solution to the problem. The
problem is the applicant, the property owner is penalized by the vision of the
specific plan and I think there were the failure is that and we shouldn't have to
be talking about this, so I don't think it's the right solution. I think the
The solution is deeper than that,
and so I would oppose this as being our solution.
I don't want to penalize the applicant,
just because he owns property,
we want to take some from him to make our dream work.
We ought to come up with a better solution.
Did anybody look at eliminating the median?
Look at what's happening on the east side,
I don't think so.
So I wouldn't approve or support this.
All right, well I'll just reiterate my prior concern that I think shared use lanes are
not safe for pedestrians and I think that there has to be a better way to protect pedestrians
and I do live in this area and there are a lot of people walking around, a lot.
And it's not a particularly safe street and so to take away, to force interaction with
vehicles on pedestrians in an already dangerous area does not seem wise to me.
So it's disappointing that that appears to be the solution here.
Any other comments?
Commissioner Lezak.
So a lot of great comments on both sides.
You know, there really isn't an easy or ideal solution here.
Clearly the lane itself is a problem just because of the there's no access to these
businesses that they are double parking and that parking piece solves what's already an existing
problem. We do need, I do support the vision of the specific plan in terms of the bicycle
connectivity and the trail. I do agree that you know that that eight feet is a fairly is you know
as described as a minimal amount of space and I don't have one yet. One day I will have an e-bike
And I will be traveling this path at higher speeds
than maybe I'll need to be in the street at that point.
But I think that that's a concern.
And Commissioner Pickett's concern about giving up a lane
to future traffic is real.
Like we need to not be just planning
for the next couple of years.
We need to be planning for the longer term.
So while I personally am generally supportive of the concept,
I would agree that, you know, maybe there should be some further thought and analysis to the
entire section. If literally we're talking about a foot here or a foot there, maybe there is a
possibility to look at the median. Maybe there is an opportunity to look at the other side of the
street, though I think the median maybe is the better spot. So I'm not completely convinced
that because of the way the application came forward,
that the city has considered this
as well as they could have.
And maybe I'm supporting a different direction,
which is, you know, rather than maybe it's denial,
but rather than maybe it be denial,
maybe it'd be direction for the city staff
to go back and study this a little bit more
and come back with some additional options.
I suppose if you showed me all the other options
and convinced me that this is the only way to do this,
I could be supportive because I understand
that this is just a challenge of trying to balance
a lot of conflicting interests.
So those are my thoughts, thank you.
Okay, thank you.
We have other commissioner comments, questions.
All right, seeing none at this time,
I would entertain a motion.
Do you have a motion?
I like the idea, I don't really have a motion,
but I do like the idea of having the city
evaluate alternatives to this.
I don't think it's the best solution
and I appreciate what Peter had to say
and I do appreciate what Brent had to say
and I do appreciate that this is a pathway
in the future to BART.
So accomplishing that vision of the specific plan
is an optimal solution, but I think in terms
of how we accomplish that in the long run,
I don't think the proposal, the drawings
and the study that we've done is adequate to convince me.
So maybe we can craft something that allows us
to ask the continuance with staff studying alternatives
to this solution in order to accomplish
the dream of the specific plan.
And we could do that.
We could vote on the resolution that's before us.
Another option since we're being asked to forward
recommendation to the City Council. That recommendation might be evaluate
other scenarios with bicycle separated pedestrians for example or you know
there's just kind of I think the idea of getting you know getting options. Maybe
the City Council it's just the recommendation have the staff go back you
look at other you know to get to bring to the Planning Commission options 3
4 different bill address some of these questions first day Claire hello welcome
to the Planning Commission so if you could give us a little bit of guidance
with regard to our options in terms of so the Planning Commission you could so
so you could make a recommendation to the city council
with those directions,
or you could choose to continue this item to a future date,
to a date uncertain,
or if you like to bring back at a date certain,
and with the directions that city staff
further look into alternative options
and then present it back to the planning commission
so that at that time you can make a recommendation
to the council with that information.
So if you like, there's an option
that the commission prefers,
could you could do that or we can just you or you could vote on tonight and not
and not not make a recommendation to the council okay I don't like punting things
to the City Council every time we run into an obstacle so I would either
support denying the application or probably prefer the continuance with
some additional work on it I think that's a more efficient way for our city
to operate. Maybe we can address some of the other issues that were raised about the suitability
of an eight-foot double bicycle lane and everything else.
I support our continuance. So let me try to craft this.
I was going to say, could we have this in the form of a motion, please? That would be
Yeah, so I would move that we continue this item to an unspecific date to allow the staff
and the applicant to study some alternatives to this solution in order to accomplish the
goal of getting the sidewalk that we want to see based on the vision of the specific
plan.
Is that clear?
Yes.
Okay.
That's fine.
All right, so we have a motion, do we have a second?
I'll second.
OK, thank you.
So we have a motion and a second.
Commission Secretary, can you please take the roll?
Commissioner Reiser?
Yes.
Commissioner Nating?
Yes.
Commissioner Lizek?
Yes.
Commissioner Pickett?
Yes.
Commissioner Anderson?
Yes.
Chair Ward?
Yes.
And Vice Chair Strongman is absent.
The motion passes.
Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate the thoughtful comments and alternative solutions.
So at this time, I'd like to move on to agenda item five, commission considerations.
Do we have any anything to consider from our staff?
None at this time.
Okay, thank you. And so we'll move on to six, commission member and staff reports or announcements.
Anybody have a report or announcement to make
Staff does not
I don't know what it is. All right. This is your time for
the last I
Don't know ten or twelve years. Maybe maybe less. I've been I've been serving as a city Walnut Creek's Planning Commission
representative on transpac
which is a
regional transportation advisory committee to
the Contra Costa Transportation Authority.
And I'm doing this way in advance.
My term is my life is up as a planning commissioner,
I believe in February or March.
You could run again.
So somebody is gonna have to step up.
You don't have to.
But I'm just saying, there's gonna be a vacancy.
If you wanna learn about traffic,
it's been a fascinating role.
You don't get a vote.
You get to express your opinion.
but the voting is limited to elected officials.
So the city council members from five cities
participate in that and one county supervisor
for this area participates in it.
And they are an advisory committee
to the Contra Costa Transportation Authority.
But that position is gonna be vacant
come in the beginning of next year.
And whoever has a penchant for traffic problems,
that's a good place to go amuse yourself.
So, she has four months to think about it.
Well, I think you know that many of us
are very enthused about traffic and the like.
So, I appreciate that.
We'll start our wrangling and maneuvering for that spot.
Experience on the Transportation Commission
was highly recommended for that.
Hey, I'm not the only one, do you want to look at me?
I wasn't, I was looking.
The one who's not here.
Yeah, that's right.
The one who's not here gets appointed.
That's the way it works.
I move that Commissioner Strong
would be appointed to that position.
I would vote in favor of that.
Okay, wow, we're going off the rails totally here.
Any other announcements, comments?
All right, with that I will adjourn this meeting at 7.06.
Thank you all, appreciate it.