Okay, welcome to the September 19th, 2024 regular meeting of the Transportation Commission.
Would the Secretary please call the roll?
Chair Rhys?
Here.
Vice Chair Cagle?
Present.
Commissioner Ash is absent.
Commissioner Creeling?
Present.
Commissioner Patch?
Present.
Youth Commissioner Yau?
Here.
We have a quorum.
And I just wanted to mention that item 4B
has been pulled from tonight's agenda
and has not been scheduled for a future meeting.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Thank you.
This portion of the meeting is reserved for comments
on the items not on the agenda.
Under the Brown Act, the commission cannot act
on any items raised during the public communications,
but may respond briefly to statements made
or questions posed, request clarification
or refer the item to staff.
At this time, I'll open the item for public comment.
Do we have any members of the public
wishing to comment on this item, not on the agenda?
I put a card there, thank you.
My name is Michael Vecchio, resident of Walla Creek
and a member of Bike Walla Creek.
And two things, if I may.
One is that agenda item 4A was something that prompted me
to speak on something, not on the agenda.
And I'll be here to make comments on 4A,
but the reason it prompted me is that it's dealing
with Ignatial Valley Road traffic signal type improvements
and a bunch of other improvements along the quarter.
And I'd like to recommend that the commission consider
and the council and staff consider doing a study
along the quarter of Ignacio Valley Road
dealing with pedestrians and bicycling activity
that is similar to something that was done on item 4B
that was pulled.
And so by doing, looking at Ignacio Valley Road,
especially between Iron Horse Trail and BART
and some of the residences and offices along that quarter
and the residences west of 680,
I think it's really way past time
for the city to consider something that can be done
along that quarter that benefits bicycles and pedestrians.
So, and like I said, I'll talk about my comments
on item 48 when that comes up.
The other item I'd like to talk about, if I can,
is just being a member of Bike Wallet Creek,
we're hosting the Free Valley Bike Parking
at the upcoming Wallet Festival this coming weekend.
So it's free, it's supervised.
There'll be people there the entire day
from 12 o'clock until seven o'clock Saturday
Sunday so if anybody is interested in riding your bike there or know somebody
who is we will be there. Thank you. Great, thank you. Are there any other public
comments in the audience? Any comments, public comments on zoom? Are we doing
zoom? We don't have zoom. We don't have zoom, okay. And just for the benefit of
anybody who came in a little bit late, item 4b is no longer on the agenda so
If you have any public comments related to that item,
the now would be the time to make those comments.
Now's the time to say comments on 4B or?
No, it's just great.
We can talk, you can speak with staff outside about that.
Oh, OK.
I just wanted to make sure people,
I just wanted to make sure that people
who came into the room a bit late
had heard the announcement that item 4B was not
on the agenda, thanks.
The next item is the consent calendar.
I'd like to the adoption of the July 18th,
2024 meeting minutes.
Motion to approve the minutes from July.
Is there a second?
I'll second.
All in favor?
Sorry, roll call.
Thanks.
Okay.
Youth commissioner, oh, sorry.
Commissioner Patch?
Yes.
Commissioner Carolling aye. Vice Chair Cagle aye chair chair Reese aye. Motion carries.
Next on the agenda is an item for the commission consideration the Ignacio Valley Road update
at this time I invite staff to provide their presentation.
Do we have the slides over good evening commissioners my name is Matt Redmond I'm an associate
traffic engineer here at the city of Walnut Creek.
And tonight I'll be presenting on Ignacio Valley Road.
And basically we realized we have a lot of different projects
on this street.
And so we wanted to kind of bring those all to you tonight
and weigh in on your considerations.
So for those of you who don't know,
Ignacio Valley Road is one of our busiest arterials.
And so I'll be talking a little bit
about the pavement projects,
some equipment upgrades through various projects
with CCTA that we have,
as well as some single timing operations.
And finally, I'll close with some grant pursuits.
So the Wanda Creek General Plan
considers Ignacio Valley Road a route
of regional significance given the amount of cars
and the thoroughfare it cuts across the city east-west.
It's designated for that.
Ignacio and Treat are our busiest corridors.
It's five miles starting with basically the BART station
in the west and going up the hill after Oak Grove in the east.
It's essentially three lanes in both directions.
Speed limits range from 25 up to 55.
And there's 18 traffic signals and carries
over 60,000 vehicles a day.
Keep that last part in mind when we
talk about the signal timing.
So the Capital Improvement Projects Program,
they have various paving projects.
So just recently, just this week, actually,
we did an arterial overlay on Whigat.
And this goes from Lennon Lane all the way up
to Ignacio Valley Road.
So not exactly on Ignacio, but just quite touching it
on the southbound approach.
And so that's actually completed as of a night or two ago.
It's new striping out there, new pavement.
And then in 2025, we're looking ahead.
CIP has planned to do some base repairs
as well as some re-striping on the section of San Carlos
all the way up to the city limits.
And then in 2026, we have a big project planned
for Oak Grove, on Ignacio from Oak Grove
all the way up the hill to the city limit
to make some significant repairs to the roadway there.
And so these are some big, heavy projects
that take place at night usually,
and so CIP is leading those,
which you've already seen actually last meeting.
They came here and presented on a lot of these.
So in traffic engineering,
CCTA has a smart signal project.
This is many different counties within,
many different cities within the county,
Wanna Creek just being one of them,
but they applied for a grant through the MTC's
One Bay Area Cycle 3, OBEG 3 grant,
and this was to modernize traffic signals
and improve efficiencies and safety
along different corridors.
So overall in Walnut Creek, it's a $1.7 million project,
and the city provided $180,000 matching funds.
Currently, this is actually in design and construction.
I would anticipate to start late next year or into 2026.
CCTA also has another project called Innovate 680.
This is mainly focused on the Highway 680
in Contra Costa County,
and they have multiple projects within this,
including shared mobility hubs,
part-time transit lane operations on the freeway.
And the part that interests Ignacio,
which is the coordinated adaptive traffic signal system,
where they could essentially deploy
more advanced timing operations
that could improve multi-jurisdictional commutes.
And so that's just one piece of that larger project.
And then Wanna Creek was awarded $2.5 million
from a federal earmark to improve fiber communication,
to add fiber communications to Ignacio.
Currently we run Twisted Pair Copper,
which is like a telephone wire.
And so this would increase bandwidth,
allow for higher bandwidth communications such as video
and other data streams and currently this is in the process of finding a consultant and then we
will start design and then we will move into construction around 2026 if not sooner. So to
summarize those three projects essentially we would be upgrading detection and CCTV cameras
with the smart signals project. We could then with a CCTA smart signals project we would also
run analytics on some of that video to understand pedestrian and bicyclist safety and making
sure that we account for those improvements over time.
And then with Innovate 680 we could run more advanced signal timing operations such as
adaptive and then all of the above would be helped out with the fiber project with improved
communications along the corridor.
So to jump into the signal timing operation on Ignacio, essentially we run various cycle
links throughout the day. Since these are coordinated signals, we run one common cycle
length along all of them, ensure that we cycle through each of the traffic signals phases.
So it varies. You can see a graph here showing over the time of day with 160 in the afternoon,
160 seconds in the afternoon for that peak demand. In the top right, we allocate about
40 percent of our time for the east-west through movements on Ignacio, given that we have to
to serve the north-south streets
as well as the left turn phases.
And then, we also in the midday,
kind of like at 9 a.m. to about 2.30,
we run a traffic responsive.
And so this actually, the chart doesn't actually show this,
but the cycle length could vary depending
on traffic volumes.
So if there's an unexpected event or something like that,
we can actually notch up or knock down the cycle length
according to current traffic demands.
And then in the far bottom right,
we have a little bit more colorful picture
showing a screenshot from a program called Synchro, which
helps us coordinate our traffic signals.
And so I screenshotted a section between Marchbanks and San
Carlos on Ignacio.
So you can see there's this big blue waterfall of, essentially,
vehicles that go through these four intersections
in the green space.
And then at the bottom, you can see
San Carlos has that smaller amount of green time.
And so San Carlos is what's considered our bottleneck
location along the corridor.
And you can literally see how it just has less green time
allocated and so less vehicles can get through
at that location.
And so I'm taking a step back.
I know commuters and drivers, they probably
don't care about that stuff.
And they probably just care about this.
They see a lot of red lights, they see traffic,
and they don't go anywhere.
So I wanna kind of address it
from a traffic engineer's perspective,
and here's what we see.
So we see the whole corridor as a system,
and so we'll see, I'm gonna dive into each of these,
but essentially we have startup loss time,
which is inherent in each of the vehicles
that are traveling on the roadway.
We also have crosswalk timing considerations
that we have to account for,
and we have side street delays.
And so I'll break each of those down here.
So with start-up loss, essentially when the light goes
from red to green and you're allowed to go,
it takes a few seconds to start up.
And so essentially that's what that is.
And the first vehicle may take up the three seconds
and then the following vehicle's about two seconds.
So if you allocate 40 seconds to a green time,
you may only get less than 20 vehicles through per lane.
And so your time essentially is cut in half,
essentially, for moving vehicles when
you convert seconds to vehicles.
And so there's this to deal with.
And then with crosswalks, so as you add more lanes on Ignacio,
you would essentially increase crosswalk lengths.
And so then when the crosswalk is served,
you essentially have to allocate more time.
So according to the CAMU TCD, the Manual of Uniform Traffic
Control Devices, we allocate 3.5 feet per second
from curb to curb.
And so that's about 30 seconds that we're giving to that phase.
And so you could imagine delaying the traffic
on Ignacio for that pedestrian time.
That can also lead to more delays.
We also have some startup walk times.
So we actually add a little bit more than 30 seconds
for pedestrians to cross safely.
And then the third thing is the side street delays.
So a lot of times people will say,
can't we just run five minutes of green time
on Ignacio and move all the cars through.
And we also have to just consider those side streets
where it's not the major arterial,
but it's maybe like Walnut Boulevard or Oak Grove,
where they're coming north-south and they want to go on Ignacio
or go through across Ignacio.
And the time that they wait, they're expected to wait some,
but that first minute that wait, they wait,
does not feel like the third or fourth minute
they could be waiting.
And so time compounds, and it feels different
the longer you wait, and it's not linear,
is what I'm trying to say, I guess.
And so, well, this may, you know,
if you're in a rush, the second term feels like minutes,
or maybe I said that backwards, flip that, reverse it.
But essentially, yeah, so essentially,
we've got to serve all the different phases
and make sure no one's waiting too long.
So those are the different kind of constraints we have.
So any kind of solution still has those
fundamental constraints within it.
So a lot of the time people bring up AI or new technology.
And I think those are great,
and we're always considering those applications.
But these are the fundamentals of the roadway
that we can't really get around.
So I want to mention,
I showed you earlier a picture
of a time-space diagram in Synchro.
And that's a model that's in our desktop computers,
and then we implement that in the field into the controllers.
However, that process may lose something or miss something.
And so we used the program earlier this summer
called WaySync that allowed us to actually verify
that that was the operation correctly running in the field.
So this is an iPad app that you can essentially
mount on your dashboard and drive the corridor.
You can see the camera view, you can see the map.
And then you can also see the time space diagram
and verify what you're driving is what
you modeled in your program.
So this was very helpful for our corridor,
and it also has some optimization features
to look at other things that you can do to a corridor,
especially when ours is oversaturated.
So I know it may be difficult to go faster than the speed limit
on Ignacio during the day.
However, at night, it's very common
that people go above the speed limit.
And so to address this, we are looking at this feature
called rest on red, where instead of the intersection
having just green lights for everyone,
we would actually consider some lights go to green on purpose,
even for no vehicles.
And we would do that to ensure that some vehicles come
to a complete stop and slow down.
This is a speeding countermeasure
that really we think could be effective.
And I just want to bring it up to the public
and make sure that everyone is aware and get
input on that. I'll close here with some grants. So my colleague Brianna and Rashad, they put a
great application in for our HSIP, our local highway safety improvement program. So this is
a very technical application that requires a bunch of calculations to determine what improvements
you're going to make and then calculate a benefit cost ratio to ensure that you actually will make
make the roadway safer, essentially.
So our grant application included
upgrading four left turn phases so that essentially
the pedestrians and the left turners
at four intersections on Ignacio would not
go at the same time.
And so we can separate those out over time, essentially.
And so improving the safety for those pedestrians.
Overall, that's a $2.1 million project.
and we just applied two weeks ago, I think.
The last grant is a affordable housing grant.
This, however, does at 699 Ignacio Valley Road.
This, however, does has a transportation component.
And so with that, we actually are looking
at adding a transit signal priority on Ignacio
at about five intersections with some of those funds.
So mainly a housing grant,
but we did make some transportation improvements
And for Ignacio, the only thing is the TSP we would add.
So I'll leave it there, thank you.
Thanks very much for the presentation.
Commissioners, do you have comments?
Let's start with student commissioner.
Yes, thank you so much for your presentation.
I just had a question to clarify.
Could you go over the fiber communication technology
and how that would impact traffic?
the install of it or just having it there?
Just having it there and what it would mean like for us to install it as well.
So we actually already have a lot of the conduit in place underground so we
actually just be running new cables that would transmit the communication.
Essentially what it does it allows us to open up future technologies to have
have high speed data transfer.
And so right now, we are pretty bandwidth
constrained on a lot of our cameras that are out there.
They may jitter or skip.
And so upgrading that, it would improve the video streams.
But it could also transmit data related
to traffic signal congestion along the corridor
and possibly improve operations that way.
It's also much more reliable.
So oftentimes, if one intersection or if the copper communication is cut,
then you lose the signals for everything downstream of that,
where fiber would actually have some redundancy built in.
And so we could possibly route around those kind of situations and that.
So it could be more redundant.
Thank you.
Commissioner Crowley.
Thank you.
Couple questions.
There's the CCTA smart signal,
and then there's the coordinated adaptive signal system.
My first question is, is the smart signal,
is that something we talked about before
that is giving priority to buses and public transit,
or is that different?
It's a CCTA project, but that's a different project.
So that one was just in our downtown,
and yeah, totally separate set of funds,
but it is similarly being executed by CCTA
with Walnut Creek as a partner agency.
And then what's the difference between smart signal
and coordinated adaptive signals?
Good question.
There's definitely some overlap.
Smart signals, we see more as technology upgrades,
so that the adaptive on, coordinated adaptive
on the Innovate 680 can better,
better, can run better.
So what would be like a,
can you describe a real life example
of what this coordinated adaptive signal system would do.
Yeah.
So right now, we have some loops on Ignacio Valley Road.
However, loops fail, and they're hard to diagnose
if they're failing.
And so our thought is to upgrade to video detection, as well
as possibly radar.
So we get a lot richer data set from vehicles
approaching the intersection, as well as better bike detection.
And so then with that, all that detection information
feeds into the adaptive algorithms
to give green lights accordingly.
So it essentially just makes the adaptive.
Like adaptive is 100% functional dependent upon detection.
And so our thought is to upgrade detection
so that adaptive can be best performing.
Great, thank you.
You have a pie graph showing YVR versus non-YVR green to red time.
That one right there.
And what caught my eyeball, would non-YVR green time,
would that translate to cross street green time?
Yeah, so like California Boulevard and the left turns
on California, off of California, on to Ignacio.
And for that, it actually includes the left turns off
of Ignacio.
so I'm just talking about the third movement.
I just wanna give you an idea,
like if you have a whole pie of 160 seconds,
you know, how much time,
how much are we prioritizing Ignacio
versus the other streets?
And again, there's a lot of other conflicting phases, right?
There's typically eight at intersection.
And so essentially two of them would have 40% of that time.
Yeah, it's the opposite of what I would have expected.
One of my observations for years has been,
like if you're driving down Oak Grove
and the majority of the cars are going up and down Oak Grove
and one car just shows up to make a right turn
on a residential side street, red light.
So then you get all these cars backing up on Oak Grove
for one car to make a right turn.
Is there any statistics or data
that would suggest overall traffic flow would be better
if the straight through higher capacity roads
actually got more green time than all the side streets?
I don't know of any studies, but typically what we do
is we collect counts of vehicles,
and then we allocate as much time as we have of the pie
for each of those phases based on those volumes.
Again, you take a snapshot with counts of vehicles,
And then there's this other hidden demand
that you never see.
And so as you fix things, that's just filled in.
And so next year, when you take counts again,
assuming no recession, you have essentially more vehicles.
And so then you reallocate your pies.
But essentially, it's an allocation issue.
And yeah, you generally try to give as much time
as you can to those through streets,
but I haven't seen anything with over 50%
for the through streets.
Okay, so, I mean, it looks like there's some possibility,
even if we got to 50%, I wonder what would happen.
It'd be interesting, kind of an interesting study
if we could ever do it.
You know, it really varies by intersection.
I just pulled a couple and checked.
It varies between, I think, 40 to 50% of the time
was allocated for the third movements.
And then you brought up, so second to people,
once I got a transportation commission,
second to the public saying, talking to me about potholes,
everyone's favorite topic when they find out you're on this commission. You
called it rest on red. I get a lot of questions about that because people are
driving down Oak Grove as an example. It seems to happen a lot of times at the
canal trail. I've even had it happen to me. I'm coming back from somewhere one in
the morning. There's not a car in sight. There's not a pedestrian and I end up
waiting for a good minute at the red light on the canal trail and I always
get asked hey why is that now is that because we're doing some of this rest on
red stuff right now or is there something else we haven't implemented
rest on red yet for that it would seem like sometimes the detector could be
falsely placing a call and so you know that's something you can reach out to
city staff about and we can investigate okay but right now we're not
implementing purposeful rest on red and the rest on red it would only delay you
sit and stop maybe for a few seconds, where you sound like you're waiting a
bit longer. Yeah, it's almost like there was a pedestrian there. And then on the
rest on red, if we were to implement that, would we be able to do any kind of
study? So I totally agree people, it's much easier to speed down solid green
lights on Ignacio, right? It's almost saying drive faster. But are there any
Any studies we could avail ourselves of that say, okay, we know people are speeding late
at night when there's no traffic with the solid greens, but are we getting more accidents
or injuries with our primary purpose, thinking about, you know, pedestrian safety, and then
probably next to that vehicle accident or collision safety, I'd kind of be interested
in some kind of data before subjecting folks to rest on red that says, hey, this actually
makes a positive difference on safety.
Yeah, I think we definitely would supplement it with our observations data and we would
use any data source we have, especially our friends in the police department and understand
their observations who are out on the roadway at those kinds of times.
But yeah, I mean, overall, I think the goal is safety.
And we've had had incidents on Ignacio that I think this would counteract.
And so I think it's a good start.
It wouldn't be every intersection, just a few key ones.
And it would be limited time from midnight or 1 a.m.
till 4.30 or something.
So just in those really early morning hours
when you don't have too many people driving.
Great, thank you.
That's all.
Commissioner Patch.
Okay, couple of questions.
You mentioned that the crosswalks
are tied to pedestrian walking.
Whenever I talk with my friends that are like bikers and such we comment that you know
We can get across intersections a lot faster than pedestrians and so just in general
I know it's not in the plan currently, but is there any discussion about having like a different walk option like signal options
Like you can indicate. I'm a pedestrian bursaries a biker to cross and shorten that time
Yeah, you know we don't have any really in this city
But there's basically a button that would be facing the street for cyclists to press and then essentially they're placing a vehicle call
And so they would only get the green light
And so yeah, I think that's a great suggestion
Especially on some of our bottleneck locations where every second matters and you know
We could reduce it if a cyclist doesn't need all that time
And so yeah, that's a great suggestion. Thank you
Great. And then I noticed that it wasn't mentioned in this, but I have curiosity around it
I know that there's like a couple of streets
Homestead for example where we said no right turn during commute hours on to YVR
But I noticed that people still do it. Is there any enforcement?
Measure is being taken
Yeah, that's that's definitely more of a spot enforcement thing. It's very hard to enforce
But I I know PD is aware of that situation and you know, they as their staff allows they try to enforce that
But I know it's a very desirable right turn at the same time
and so yeah, it's
One of the one of the long-standing no right turns in the city that we're faced with
Vice chair Kegel I have a few questions
It sounds like you have kind of a two-phased approach for improving the signals on YVR.
There's this initial project and then Innovate 680 implementation.
Have you done any studies about what kind of efficiency you anticipate getting with
the two phases of project as far as throughput on the corridors?
We haven't. We haven't. That's a, do you have a suggestion about how you would study that?
I mean, we have volumes, you know, we do collect counts occasionally, and so we could see how
those counts change over time with different technologies added.
I think it might be worth considering, looking. It's hard to tell because volumes vary, you
know, by up to 10 percent a day, and so it's hard to know for sure. I was wondering more
along the side of testing coordination plans or looking into research as to if you get,
if you gain efficiency because of your current system has loop failures which then cause
inefficiencies and so do the cameras provide, I know the cameras provide a lot more certainty
that the cars are being detected, but is there an efficiency we gain by shifting from loops
to cameras in operations and breakdowns and that sort of thing?
It might be useful for the community to understand some of the benefits
that they're getting with the two phases.
Clearly, there's questions about what adaptive is
and what coordination is and that sort of thing.
Yeah, so I think the metric would be some travel time.
Yeah.
So understanding travel.
Yeah, and so we have some historical ones.
We do those whenever we do new timing plan updates.
But I think maybe just continue along that
as we make these upgrades, continue
to run those travel time studies to understand
how that changes.
And along those lines, you mentioned
the different operational characteristics
that affect coordination.
I notice you didn't talk about incidents that happened,
crashes, wide loads, things of that sort.
Is that considered in your analysis
that you've looked at for these projects?
Will any of these projects help with incident response?
I think essentially, yeah, that's a great point,
the anomalies events, yes.
And these are, you know, big.
Usually you'll see a Nixle or something go out
for these kind of things.
And I think the biggest thing is having eyes out there
so we don't have to physically leave,
but we could still communicate to the traffic signals
through, you know, fiber infrastructure that's redundant.
And then seeing the CCV camera feed
or the video detection feed
to understand what changes we can make accordingly
to, you know, move vehicles, move people,
or possibly reroute.
Would you be able to do that with the first phase,
or would you need the innovate 680 phase
before you could implement that?
I mean, we do that now with what we have.
And that works because we have communication,
we have some cameras.
I think it's a matter of having more cameras
so you can see everywhere, because a lot of time there's
some blind spots where you're zooming in super far
to see something.
So there's some blind spots, so filling in those gaps,
and then just having high speed communications
that can be redundant so in case something you know tree knocks down
something and you don't have communications having another path back
to City Hall so we can make changes and then yeah so video detection
communications the adaptive I don't see I mean adaptive you could set up you
could set certain plans flush plans and that kind of thing so you know events
get out of Concord and they flow down Ignacio at 11 at night you know we could
We have certain plans in adaptive that could account for that to move vehicles at unexpected
time.
And similar with events like this, there's events, I mean, Innovate 680 is considering,
hey, if there's an event on 680, people are going to run to the arterial streets, including
Ignacio.
So then we have adaptive plans that would account for that, adjust cycle lengths up,
move additional volume vehicles through, again, considering the side street delays and all
that, given it's an emergency event or something like that.
Yeah, okay, thank you.
And then sticking with YVR, just for a minute,
you mentioned four intersections
that you're improving the left turn phasing.
Which four intersections are those?
Yeah, so, Wanna Boulevard,
that's where the school is, the middle school.
So a lot of pedestrians there.
And then, further down the corridor, Wimbledon.
And I'm sorry, and what are you going to do there?
Oh, so we're gonna add left turn phasing.
So right now it's permissive left, north-south.
Oh, okay, got it.
to add protected left turns for vehicles so that they would have their own phase so they
don't have that pedestrian left turn conflict.
So it's Walnut Boulevard and then Wimbledon, next signal, Wigget, next signal via Monte.
Okay, great.
And then on the rest on red, since it's a new item, and I can imagine people wanting
to understand more about it, it would be, well, I have to ask a question.
Have you considered incorporating looking into coordination on Rest on Red or looking
at the benefits, if there's a safety benefit, like with crash modification factors, that
that sort of thing, or other aspects,
or is this just sort of an initial introduction
and you're going to be providing
more information down the road?
Yeah, definitely that latter half.
I haven't looked at coordination with Rest on Red,
but I consider that and look into that.
Really, if we turn this on,
we would get a bunch of emails and calls,
I think, the next day.
And so this is part of that first effort
outreach getting this information out to the public about why stuff is occurring like it is.
And to get feedback, that kind of thing to make sure that we're progressing in the right direction
on this. Yeah, well I'm glad you're continuing to look at different options for improving safety.
that's all I had for questions. So at this time I'd like to open up the item to public comment.
Do we have any members that want to speak? I think you have hit the car to fill up for
public comment and for this item so I'm all set. Okay, okay. Again Michael Vecchio,
residents of Walla Creek and
remember bike at Walla Creek
Thanks for the report Matt. I know I've talked about other issues and maybe I can talk to you afterwards about those other ones
But I like all the things here. I used to work for the city of Walla Creek 24 years ago
I remember that was a big thing trying to get fiber optic and
Taking quite a while to get there could it can be pretty expensive especially back then
So I'm happy about all these things on here one thing about rest on red when I did work for Oakland
We did rest on red there in Oakland.
And a couple of isolated intersections
would work really well.
But I can imagine on YVR, Oak Grove, or other streets,
it could be a little bit of an issue.
But if you have advanced detection,
whether it's loops or video or something like that,
that that can slow people.
They'll see the red, they'll slow down,
and they'll maybe be a little upset.
But they slow down, they get to the signal,
And they got a green, that type of thing.
So I applaud your looking into it and seeing how effective
that can be in keeping people moving, but hopefully controlling
some of the speed too.
That's all I got to say.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
I'll close the public comment and commissioner comments.
student commissioner chow now yeah thank you so much for your presentation it was definitely very
interesting to learn about the new technologies that would be implemented and yeah thank you so
much commissioner krell yeah thank you so uh you mentioned in one of your answers earlier nixle and
we get those alerts when there's incidents the signal breaks there's an accident pole falls down
And there might be something there that i'm just not aware of but it might be nice to also alert the public to
Planned lane closures on a road like ignacio valley. So for tree cutting, you know, I would imagine we know ahead of time
We're going to close a lane for a few blocks because we're cutting trees. We're doing landscape maintenance in the
Center median or things like that. I think um people would find that useful
commissioner patch
uh thank you for this presentation thought it was very educational so good for the public
to hear include and us um one thought that i did have um was just why san carlos is the bottleneck
um and how we can encourage the public to understand that um maybe in some future material
that can go a little bit more into depth um about why it gets impacted and then i'm actually
really excited by the the rest on red aspect of it because again that makes it safer for pedestrians
and bikers and other people that use the roads besides those in private vehicles so thanks.
Vice Chair Cagle. Thank you for the presentation appreciate all of the work um this is such an
important corridor for the region and we all know when something happens it
impacts so many lives in so many different ways whether it's a you know
an accident and somebody got hurt or somebody's just late to their meeting or
getting to school or what have you so but the most important part for me I
think is safety and every time I hear about something happening usually from
speed I think it's heartbreaking for families so I look forward to updates on
this moving forward and how it relates to our local roadway safety plan. That's a priority of
mind in hearing how it all relates back to that. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, excellent presentation.
Very thorough. I think moving forward, I think hearing some of the questions,
like for example the chart that's up there now with the green time allocation it might help to
illustrate the side street and the left turn delays that happen you you had mentioned and
I had forgotten to note it you had mentioned that that green excludes the left turns from YVR
onto the side street and I think that's an important piece because we all think that
that the side streets are the cause of the problem.
And if you just let the through cars go, it'd be okay.
But we also have cars that are on YVR
that want to turn left off of YVR.
And I think it's important for the community
to understand the impact
of those particular movements as well.
So I would, going forward,
I might share more of that information.
I think that something that occurred to me
is that we're doing all of these improvements
on signal timings, but like Commissioner Kralich said,
we also don't always know when something's happening
in the corridor.
And it occurred to me that if there's room
to do changeable message signs with your signal upgrades,
especially with innovate 680,
so that if there is an incident,
say there's something going on YVR east of Oak Grove,
and I could hear about it or see it
or have a message at California,
I might take off and go up California
and go over to treat, for example,
or go into downtown and have dinner.
So, I would look into if that can be incorporated.
I know Innovate Sickness 80 is still in the planning.
It's not in the design and implementation stage,
but I think that would be an important aspect to include.
I also think that innovations that Walnut Creek is doing,
and I started to make a comment
when I should have only asked questions,
so I'm sorry for that.
I think the fact that Walnut Creek traffic engineering
or transportation engineering is looking at innovations
and ways to move forward, you mentioned Rest in Red,
I think those are excellent.
And I think we really, I commend you for,
and all of you for continuing to look at ways
to move transportation forward,
to not only look at moving cars, but looking at the safety,
looking at how to address pedestrian and bicycle safety,
the protected left turn phasing
that you're doing on Walnut that you just described
and the other intersections is critical to our safety.
Just those improvements are gonna do wonders
for the people that are walking in those corridors
and have a small effect on overall traffic operations,
But a small effect compared to the safety benefit
that comes out of those.
So I commend the city for moving forward
and doing that rather than just focusing on moving cars
through the corridor.
And yeah, that's about it.
It was a great presentation.
And I really appreciate that it had the detail in it.
It was good to hear all that, so thank you.
At this time, I'd like to invite commissioners and staff
to provide any reports on activities and or announcements.
And I'll start with Commissioner Kralick.
Yeah, thank you.
I can't remember the exact dates Madara probably does
because she was there.
So, two of our city council, Cindy Darlene and Kevin Wilk,
myself, Commissioner Ash, and Smidar and her team were,
we had some, there were some requests
from a Woodlands resident to come out
and actually look at pedestrian safety and traffic flow
at Dogwood and Citrus and that general area.
So we all got out there at Odark 30
and gathered and watched and talked
to kind of observe what's going on.
And so I think Smidar and her team
are taking whatever follow-up steps
go with what we saw.
So I just wanted to report that we did that.
Do you want to share a bit of that?
In case people didn't know,
it's public transit month this month.
So I've been going to some events
throughout the county and Alameda County.
It's been fun and interesting and supportive
like be at BART and bus events. There's a couple of more, I think like bike from
BART or work events throughout the rest of the month, so if you're interested you
can look up those various events. There's like a general website for Bay Area
public transit. Vice-chair. I would report that we had the council breakfast in
July and I think that the most exciting part of that breakfast was hearing about
the the Heather Farms improvements and how that's moving forward and I would
encourage everybody to pay attention and get involved in and it's an exciting
project and it'll be great to see the new facility when it's fully designed
and constructed. So, that's all I have. Staff, do you have? Yeah, evening, Commissioners. So, my name
is Brianna Byrne, Associate Traffic Engineer here at the city. October, it's pedestrian awareness
month. So, we do have a couple events kind of in line with that and as part of that, at the first
council meeting this month will be we'll have a proclamation along the lines stating this is now
we're celebrating pedestrian awareness month 2024. And then next kind of in line with this
October 9th is walk to national walk to school day. St. Smart's Diablo they throughout the whole
month of October they'll host kind of pop-up events at many of our schools. I recommend any
families out there check out those dates and make sure you participate in those events.
And then as Commissioner Crelling had mentioned we met with some residents over in the Woodlands
neighborhood and that was kind of in conjunction with but also as a follow up of a workshop
we had done with that neighborhood in July.
Our next step is the actual pop up demonstration where we're going to take over a couple locations
in that neighborhood for a couple hours and demonstrate some traffic calming options for
the community. Because we need good weather for that event, the date has not been sent,
has not been determined yet, but we're eyeing early October. And if there's any residents
who want to be informed when the date's been picked, you can email duty, d-u-t-y, traffic
at walnut-creek.org.
And we can get you in the email list.
And then the last one kind of for our outreach in October,
we're doing trunk retreat again.
The traffic engineering team will decorate our car,
Mario themed and we'll get out candy.
So come chat with us, ask any questions, we'll be there.
Great, thank you.
With that, I hereby adjourn the September 19th, 2024
regular meeting of the Transportation Commission.
Our next regular meeting is November 21st, 2024.