Thank you. We'll start over. I'm out of practice. Welcome to the Thursday, May 15, 2025, Walnut Creek Transportation Commission Meeting.
I do not believe we have any commissioners that wish to attend remotely so we'll skip to, would the secretary please take a roll call?
Commissioner Ash.
Present.
Commissioner Patch.
Present.
Commissioner Reese.
Student commissioner Kirsch, present and vice chair Crelling, present. Chair Cagle, absent.
All right, thank you. So moving on to our next item, public communications. This is
for items that are not on tonight's official agenda. So if there's anyone from
the public who wishes to speak to the Commission for something not on the
agenda this is your opportunity and not we have no members of the public waiting
to provide comments great thanks then we'll close that public communications
moving on to the consent calendar the only item is our minutes of March 20
2025 for approval does anybody wish to pull that from consent for discussion
I'd like to move the consent calendar all right we have a motion made do we
have a second? All right motion made and seconded can we take a roll call vote on
the consent calendar please. Sure student Commissioner Kirsch? Aye.
Commissioner Ash? Commissioner Patch? Aye. Commissioner Reese? Aye. Vice Chair
Krelling? Aye. Okay motion passes. All right I did notice we had a member of
the public join well we can always move to reconsider to open public
communication sir did you have something you wanted to speak to tonight on the
agenda or something that's not one of the two agenda items all right hang on
one second then are the I'd like to make a motion to reconsider opening the
basic public communications if the commissioners are willing sure we open
to allowing him to speak.
Sure.
Okay.
All right, sir, if you have something you want to speak to that's not one of the two
agenda items, here is your opportunity.
And if you can bring your speaker card up, or you can fill it out after.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yep.
And you get a whopping two minutes.
You guys were much quicker than I thought.
The public comments about the bicycle master plan, it's-
And can you state your name for the record?
in Clavecchio, resident of Walla Creek.
Thank you.
I just had really my question about the comments
is about the status of the city's bicycle master plan.
And I understand you can't talk about things to make it,
but I'm wondering if one of the staff members
could very soon give me a name and a contact
as who I can talk to to get an update on
where's the bike master plan.
I worked for the city many years ago
and I've worked on the bike master plan.
When I go online, I don't see any information
to where it is, what the status is, how it's used to help get grant funding and that type
of thing.
Great.
So, yes, you're correct.
We can't actually discuss it as an item because it wasn't on the agenda, but I'm hoping one
of our staff members, they're happy to meet you outside and answer those questions for
you.
All right.
Thank you, and we'll close the general public comment once again, and thank you for the
commissioners for your generosity there.
All right, so we did the consent calendar moving on to our consideration items so item a bike to wherever day
2025 I believe we're getting the staff update
Do we the presentation?
Good evening commissioners. My name is Henry rude transportation planner for Public Works today
I'm gonna be giving you a brief update on today's bike to wherever day formerly known as bike to work day
And the general national bike month of May
So to begin with this year building on some feedback from last year's Transportation Commission hearing
Advocating that we do more interfacing with schools and try to be more accessible to students as one factor
We moved our location traditionally our Energizer station where we provide snacks
Prizes information has been in front of City Hall
However, this time we moved to Broadway and Newell to catch students on their way to school
better and also to help give an update about some proposed improvements at Newell and specifically
at the intersection where we were so that we could talk to people about that directly
and get feedback from them.
For the second year, our sustainability team collaborated with us as well.
They had information at this Energizer station and they were very helpful with preparing
and staffing at the station.
And this new location was wildly successful.
We had 223 visitors this year, which was almost four times as many as last time.
So I would say it was a smashing success.
And here's a picture of the group bike ride from City Hall.
Because we were not at City Hall for city staff and other people around, we organized
a group bike ride at lunchtime.
So everyone biked over to the station to, you know, log in, who biked to work, and here's
a nice picture. So staff is seeking the transportation commission's thoughts and insights. Last year
we were able to build some great improvements out of those and other considerations so we would like
to hear what do you think we can do to make bike month 2026 even better and there are some you
know potential questions to go over there about what you'd like to see at next year's Energizer
Station and any organizations that would be a good fit for collaboration. Thank you.
Great, thank you very much. So let's start with commissioner questions of any
Why don't we start with commissioner Reese
I know
Uh, thank you. Could you um talk about what was at the energizer station this year and
Could you share a little bit about what was popular and not so popular?
And do you have samples for us to try?
We had mainly, so 5-1-1 Contra Costa is the organization that kind of
helps all of the energizer stations, so we got our usual supplies from them with
bike lights, bells, and then we also had, and pins, we also had stickers, poppy
seeds, the snacks were mainly fruit, we had a lot of oranges and bananas, some
granola bars, I think some of them may be upstairs still if you are sincere about
looking to sample the wares, and that was also provided by 501 Contra Costa.
They gave us a hundred dollar Safeway gift card to supply, so that lets every
station kind of have some say in you know picking out their unique snacks.
Right, Commissioner Hash. What times were you there? I didn't think I saw that. Oh
yes, thank you. So that was actually also new this year. Typically, traditionally we
We would start in the morning around 7 and go until about 11.
This time we stayed open longer.
Our station opened at 7 o'clock and we continued until 1pm, so we covered lunch as well.
There was kind of a big rush in the morning when students on their way to school, people
biking to work, and then we had kind of another swell around lunch with the City Hall Group
bike ride and also you know people not affiliated who are coming by on their
lunch break and did you get a sense I know you referenced the students going
to like Los Lones who else was stopping by where were they going did you just
get any official or unofficial information yeah so we got a lot of
unofficial information with people stop somewhere in too much of a hurry to
really want to chat but of the people who did kind of speak to us a lot of them
Some were on their way to work.
A lot of them were biking recreationally,
whether or not they were aware of the bike tour every day.
A lot of them were, some were not.
We had two big group rides that I believe were trying to hit
all or most of the Energizer stations.
And some individual riders were doing that as well.
So we were just, you know, a stop on the list.
But in order to continue on the Iron Horse Trail,
you need to cross an intersection,
and that went right by where our station was.
So we got a lot of people who were not already aware
of the event, but got to be pleasantly surprised
when they biked by.
And sorry, last question on that.
That's great, thank you.
Was the people going to work,
were they people going to work
in like the Walnut Creek retail?
Were they going to work in offices in Walnut Creek?
Were they headed to Bard?
Any sense?
I know you didn't take an official survey,
but just whatever you got.
The two people I talk to most that I recall
about where they were working,
one of them lived in Walnut Creek and worked in Alamo.
Another one worked for the county in Martinez.
I'm not terribly sure about many of the others,
whether they were working in Walnut Creek offices
or elsewhere.
Okay, thanks.
All right, Commissioner Patch.
I just have two questions.
You mentioned that you were able to talk to people
about the changes coming to that area?
Were there a lot of people who were interested
or was that kind of a small group?
No, that was a lot of people.
Yeah, in fact, we had some people even ignore the snacks
so that they could just jump straight into talking about it.
That's the benefit of targeting events like these.
We're improving that intersection,
improving the Iron Horse Trail Crossing on Newell.
There we are right there.
There are the people who use it most,
who are going through, who are most affected by it.
So they were pretty interested as it turned out.
and then rough estimate, what was the ratio of students?
Because you said that there was more.
Yes, there were a lot more.
The total fraction wasn't super large,
mostly just because most students didn't have time.
They were rushing to school.
So we saw a lot of them go by who didn't have time to stop.
And I would say of the students that came by,
it was maybe a quarter who could stop and grab a snack
for, you know, talk with us.
They were not as interested in the intersection improvements,
which I know must come as a shock.
Thanks.
All right.
Student commissioner Kirsch.
No questions.
All right, thank you.
Just a couple questions.
I originally was gonna ask, you know,
what other alternate locations could we use in the future
in other parts of Walnut Creek,
but realizing that people are going through
the Iron Horse Trail probably limits.
Was there somebody else that might have been up near,
kind of by the Pleasant Hill Bart,
that end of Walnut Creek that maybe somebody else was manning?
Cause then the Iron Horse Trail
kind of goes right up through there.
I am not positive about that,
but typically there's always an Energizer Station
at both Bart's.
Okay.
Yeah, so that's usually the case.
Okay, yeah, because I'm not thinking there may be
many other places between that would make sense.
And then this is if anything stands out for you
or other esteemed staff that were there.
Feedback from people who came by,
like I was just gonna ask,
what's maybe the best piece of feedback you got
and maybe the worst piece of feedback you got,
if you can even remember any of that stuff.
I was less involved with the outreach
about the intersection and roadway improvements,
which is probably where the most useful
actionable feedback did come in.
Brianna, if you'd like to speak on that a bit.
Yeah, so Brianna Byrne, associate traffic engineer.
Like Henry mentioned, it was overwhelmingly positive
for that new corridor and that diagonal crossing
that we have as part of that project.
I mean, some of the feedback was about time,
so maybe you know, add that to the,
kind of on the harder side to hear,
but otherwise it was all positive, absolutely positive.
Great, thank you.
All right, then we will move to public comment
for this agenda item.
We have one member of the public
who'd like to write a comment.
Michael Vacchio from the city of Wilder Creek.
I'm always thrilled when the city does an event like this.
I've worked for the city from 2000, 2008,
and we started bike energizer stations back then,
and I'm really thrilled
that there's so many people participating,
especially it's a great location to do that too.
If you go to Bike East Bay,
you can see a map of all the energizer station locations,
And usually they would have one at the intersection
of the Ironhorse Trail and the Contra Costa Canal Trail.
As far as getting information about where people are going
and why and this and that, it would be a great opportunity
to work with East Bay Regional Parks District,
City of Walnut Creek and the other cities in the county
to actually go out there and do surveys.
I know they've been done in the past
and it's always helpful to get an idea
of where people are coming from,
where they're going and that type of thing.
but otherwise, like I said, I'm really happy
to see if being so successful.
Thank you.
Great, thanks.
Did we get your speaker card last time?
I have three of them.
I'll give them at the end.
I think you only need to give one.
I think we'll be fine.
I already got three sort of filled out.
Okay, we'll take them then.
Thank you.
All right, we'll close public comment on this item,
and we will now move to commissioner comments.
So we'll go with commissioner Reese again.
I think you should rotate it and it'd be more fun that way.
So yeah, I mean, I know that bike to anywhere day,
it's pretty exciting and there's a lot of people
and it gets more popular every year.
It's great.
I guess there's a balance that needs to be made
but I'll go ahead and mention two items
that I think would be nice to have
if there's personnel and they can handle it.
One of those is back in the day when I was riding
from East Walnut Creek and Concord area
into downtown Walnut Creek, I always use the canal trail.
And so it was always nice to see an energizer station
at the intersection of the canal trail
and the iron horse trail.
Although I would say out of those two,
they're very different rides.
You get a very different group of riders
at the two stations and that might be why
it would be interesting to have them at both.
And then that leads to the second question or comment
is that you're passing multiple Energizer stations
so I could see that it would be somewhat annoying
to take a survey at every single station.
But I think it would be very interesting
If we could have survey information
to start to understand where people are riding from,
that can help us in our master planning
for the bicycle network.
It can help us in the general plan
when we get involved in that.
To have that information and it's a good way to capture
people that don't ride every day.
People that wanna ride and so they pick that day.
I'm gonna be a rider today
and knowing what their origin destination is,
what kind of routing they're taking can be really beneficial.
Because it's those riders that we want to capture
and turn them into more frequent riders,
not just bike to anywhere day riders.
So I would say it would be great if there was some way
for us to capture survey information.
And I think having those two stations
really would capture people coming into Walnut Creek
from the south, as well as the students,
and then people coming in from kind of the north and east
as well.
So those would be my two comments and additions
that I would add if I had unlimited staffing and money.
So thank you.
And we'll take up your suggestion.
I'm gonna mix it up.
I had one more, I'm sorry, one more very important piece
for next year.
I think Commissioner Ash would really appreciate
some French fries from Burger King.
And bike lights for the entire commission.
All right, how about,
let's go with Student Commissioner Kirsch.
I think having the Energizer Station at this location
was a good idea, because obviously we could attract
students and I actually walked by it on my way to school so yeah I think it's
good to attract like a diverse group of writers.
Commissioner Patch. It's confusing. I just want to say great job to staff I mean four
times as many people that's fantastic especially given it was a pretty warm
day. I mean, I hope people were taking water from you or at least add water
with them. I loved that you chose a location where we're actually making
changes because I think that's a great way to get community feedback from
people who are going to be directly impacted. So while I also agree the
Canal Iron Horse Trail intersection is a good way to get both of those trails,
Next year, I definitely have a location
where we're continuing to make improvements
so that we can continue that community outreach
and involvement.
I'm really excited that like you said,
about a quarter were students.
Great job, because that was one of the things
that I felt we were missing last time.
So good to know that high school students
are biking to school.
Sorry, they didn't stop and speak to you as much.
Maybe you can just toss candy at them next year.
No, don't do that, don't toss candy.
And then I think in terms of getting feedback,
I'm wondering if there's any coordination
across the different energizing stations to do a survey.
So maybe if people are making those stops,
you don't keep asking the same questions
and then folks can share, sorry,
share the information across participants.
So you get some of that information,
but you're not asking the same five questions
if they do stop.
Commissioner Ash.
Well, it's about time.
So along the lines you've already heard,
I would definitely encourage a survey.
I do think to what Commissioner Patch said,
I would coordinate with 5-1-1 and the whole Energizer thing
because I think it would be,
I think any data localized and then countywide
is just helpful, right?
You want to know what's happening at the BART stations
if there's Energizer.
It'll just help you guys do your job a little better,
even if it's anecdotal, more than it's scientific,
but the more info we have when we're stopping people,
even if 100 of them don't answer the questions.
And I would say for a second station,
love everybody's ideas.
the Contra Costa Canal Trail, where it meets the Iron Horse
before it hits the Pleasant Hill BART station.
That intersection, that bike-specific intersection,
probably gets a lot of traffic.
Now I know you're hitting everybody on the Iron Horse anyway,
but just a thought on that.
And then I didn't know if there's anybody
who specifically actually takes,
have we ever thought about any youth commissioners
maybe volunteering on a school morning
to collect data from student bikers.
Like I know going to Northgate and Foothill,
there's three different places where they cross Ignacio.
Some go through the tunnel on the Ignacio trail,
some go, I don't grove and a lot go on via Monte,
but like, and there's a ton on electric scooters and things,
but I would love to know like, what is the number?
How does that relate to the percentage?
And I think that would just be good data to have
because it goes to managing Ignacio.
And also that Oak Grove in particular intersection,
which I know is one of the busiest intersections
in the county.
So just some feedback if there's any way to get that
at some point.
It doesn't have to be on this bike to whatever day
that could be at any good school day, right?
At a good spring.
I think we have further comments from Commissioner Reese.
Of course you do, sorry.
We welcome them.
No, it's not, but it's a compliment.
So, Commissioner Ash, you mentioned electric scooters going to the high school, and it
just rang a bell for me in that it would be really great if we understood how many scooter
electric devices are being used in future years.
something that the Trail Committee is constantly complaining about regarding
electric scooters, electric bikes, and mixing with pedestrians and regular
bicycles, and I just occurred to me that connection, and so thank you, and I think
that would be a great piece of information to start collecting. I would
actually add to that, I think a majority of at least the middle schoolers are on
electric something. They are not pedaling or pushing. They are hitting the gas.
Electric, yeah. Electrons? Along those lines, if you do something to investigate that, make
sure you have street locations because I think there's a fair amount of people
who ride them on the streets because they're aware it's dangerous to ride
where the pedestrians with dogs are walking. That's a great point about the
dogs. I got everybody right. I would first congratulate you for figuring out
the sweet spot of a location. I mean getting four times attendance from one
year to the next is a phenomenal stat no matter what the event is so that's
It's awesome.
Maybe something to think about for a two-insent survey
participation is maybe you can have a few little grand prizes
and a short survey strip could be,
and people would have to put their name and email
or something and it goes into a drawing.
And then the next day, you can pick a few winners.
And maybe, because we're talking about bicycles,
maybe you go to places like Encina Cycles
and ask them if they're willing to sponsor.
Like here's a gift card for a free tire change
or something on the bicycle or maintenance.
But I think that's great.
And then the other thing we were talking about schools.
So we have obviously a lot of schools,
a Walnut Creek that kids are biking to.
I was a bike to school sort of kid.
I very much enjoyed that.
And yes, I see all the electric scooters and everything,
but maybe the venue for hitting all the schools
to both educate and get information,
it's not gonna be these energizer stations.
Perhaps a commissioner or a couple commissioners and staff
or a couple staff could go to some of the high schools,
possibly get on one of their assembly agendas
to talk about, encourage cycling benefits,
talk about safe cycling but the kids ask questions
or express their frustrations they have trying to,
if they already cycle to work.
So that's just an opportunity for outreach, I think.
And those are my comments.
So I think we were done with this agenda item.
All right, so moving on to the next agenda item,
which I believe is community input
on the curbside management plan.
so I believe we have a staff presentation.
And I'll just mention really quickly to the commissioners
that our secretary was kind enough
to put some chocolate snacks in the back.
If anybody's interested, don't want you to miss out.
Okay, good evening, commissioners.
Again, my name is Breonna Byrne.
I'm associate traffic engineer here at the city.
And tonight I'll be presenting the second update
on our curb management plan.
So tonight's discussion, we're gonna be kicking it off
with very high level goal, timeline, and project overview.
And this is really just for any viewers
that missed that first one.
We're not gonna do as much of a deep dive.
So we are gonna look at existing data findings
and then really kick into the identified stakeholders
that we've talked to and the feedback
that we've received from them so far.
So project goals and background,
we received about $200,000 from MTC,
Metropolitan Transportation Commission,
to study the downtown parking demand
and create a curb management policy plan.
So going into this, we want it to be data-driven
and focus on optimizing the curb space
for the many, many users that need it.
So we have listed here, parking, loading,
pedestrian, bicycle, place making, accessibility,
safety and equity.
And really the work, this data driven work
builds upon the city's rethinking mobility plan,
which came out several years ago.
And in that plan we have, I have four bullets here.
So the goal, we have a stated goal of 85% utilization
for on street parking and garage parking.
So what this means is this is really the industry sweet spot
where on any given block phase,
say there's 10 parking spaces, one's open.
And so if there's someone who really needs to pull in
or is willing to pay that rates of that curb,
they can get in space very easily.
It cuts down congestion and people circling the block
and kind of that friction that can happen
if people can't find spaces.
And then three strategies here.
So improve parking and curb management signage,
evaluate zone and demand-based pricing options,
and consider municipal garage pricing and demand.
So note here, while we are looking at the curb,
which is in the street,
obviously parking on the curb goes hand-in-hand
with how our garages are operating.
So timeline-wise, we started the parking data collection
in fall of 24, and several months been analyzing the data
in our existing policies.
We came to you all in March
at the March 25th Transportation Commission meeting,
and we really did a high over big data dive
into the data of our existing conditions
and general curb management, different options
and how the city currently implements several strategies.
So tonight, we're going to be covering feedback
that we've received from our stakeholders,
their challenges and kind of desires
for what they wanna see downtown.
And then looking out towards July and September,
either one or two more additional meetings
where we'll bring either another update
or really get into that draft plan and policies
with our end goal being late 2025 to get this to council.
So kicking off the discussion,
So what is curb space in the realm
of what we're talking about?
So this is the area where you would usually see
a park car, bus stops, travel lanes,
loading zones for alternative modes.
It could be bike lanes.
It could be extra sidewalk that's extended
or extra curb that's extended into the roadway
to give a pedestrian better visibility at crossings.
It could be parklets, it could be outdoor dining.
From the management perspective, it's organizing all these uses, and balancing them, you know,
through kind of industry standards, and then also community goals. So, and we're seeking to find the
balance among these users. So yeah, 85 percentile goal here, and we have a picture of some bicycle
parking downtown, transit, and then a very active pedestrian crossing downtown.
The study area that we're looking at as part of this project is definitely the larger
downtown area.
So area A, that green area, that's what users generally consider the downtown area.
It's what we think of as the core.
It's where we have a lot of attractions and demand for parking, which makes sense why
why we also have a lot of parking garages.
So included as part of this study,
we have the Lusher Garage.
This is a city garage.
It's right by our Lusher Center.
We have the Library Garage.
This is underneath the library.
At the Broadway Garage, this is off of Cypress on Broadway.
And then the Locust Street Garage.
This is just north of Mount Diablo.
And partnering with the Broadway Plaza
So there's two Broadway garages.
So the Broadway Plaza, there's two that they oversee,
and there's one on Main Street and one on Broadway.
So that's area A.
Area B is what we consider north downtown.
It's right by a bar.
There's a lot of dealerships, a lot of office space.
And then the blue area, area C,
makes a residential as well as some commercial.
So for this full area, we did data collection in October
and what we're calling typical conditions.
So 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on a weekday and a weekend.
We had drivers with license plate readers circle
the downtown and just collect user information
about where people are parking and for how long.
And then staff continued this effort in December
for several more days.
So getting quite a lot of data
about how our curve is being used.
And a quick overview, so these are typical conditions,
what we're calling typical conditions.
So on streets, on a weekday, we had 88%.
So this is over that stated goal
and kind of where we need to start thinking
about additional curve management strategies.
So at that same time, at that same peak in our garages,
we were only seeing 57% occupancy.
So there's some need for a balance here.
And then looking to the weekend,
that area A, that downtown,
it dropped to about 82% a good spot,
but similar story, the garages were not as,
not as impacted as their streets.
And then just a very quick note here,
Not all garages are utilized quite the same,
so locusts in this typical condition
reached 100%.
The Main Street garage,
which is one of the Broadway Plaza garages,
also got over that 85%.
And then other key takeaway in this,
so we'll talk about typical
as well as the findings from the holiday season.
So where we saw over this 85% in October
on a typical weekday, typical weekend,
it was on street in area A,
and then the Broadway Plaza Main Street Garage,
and then our Locust Garage.
And then during the holiday peak season
where we saw this over 85%,
on street area A, Locust, Lesher,
and the Broadway Plaza garages.
Looking at parking duration,
area A, on street, people generally stayed one to two hours
And then if they were in one of those garages, more like three hours, and B and C of those
outlying areas, around three hours as well.
And then another key finding from the data summary takeaway was there is clearly a demand
for the city's monthly parking pass program.
Okay, so getting into the stakeholder engagement, we took all the information that we had presented
to you all in that meeting one,
and brought it to our stakeholders.
So the list of stakeholders that we identified,
it's similar to what you saw last presentation,
but then we also incorporated the addition of
soliciting information from the youth.
So our general public, we've expanded
to include the Youth Commission,
that's our way of trying to engage.
And then additional tabling at public events.
So reading down the full list,
we have the Parking Enterprise Fund Group,
Parking Enforcement Officers,
our Economic Development Team, Walnut Creek Downtown,
County Connection, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Groups,
and then that general public aspect.
And we're not gonna dive into what each group said
as really five big trends kind of came out of each one.
and they were street parking, loading,
and curbside pickup concerns, parking for employees,
wayfinding, and then this pedestrian and bicycle space.
So what we heard, and it's always nice to hear
that our data matches what people are experiencing
and can back up that source.
So people wanna park on the curb,
people wanna park on the street.
So we were trying to ask reasons why.
So these just some quote people want to see their car
from their table when asked directly.
It's just something I prefer to do.
They want to be as close as possible to their destination.
Later in the evening, the garages are just not as well lit
and as comfortable feeling as our streetscape.
So getting into the loading,
we're going to cover a couple of different facets.
The first one is gonna be food and passenger pickup.
So think about those app-based drivers.
They're essentially idling waiting for their next
either order or their next passenger to get called.
So when they're idling, they're either finding a free space
and not paying the meter,
or they're finding these 15 minute
curbside pickup spaces.
If those are, if they can't find those,
they'll generally hang out in the yellow commercial loading
zones, which we'll cover, and then the commercial lane area,
which we'll go into as well.
So one quote that we had heard from the business owners,
the 15 minute curbside pickup was a good idea in theory,
but it isn't enforced.
And just it absolutely is enforced.
It's just a very challenging thing to enforce.
That 15 minute pickup, our enforcement officers
are not going to stand there and wait for 15 minutes
to prove that they're not, that they're there for longer.
So this is something that staff knows
and we're working with our enforcement officers
to make this a more usable space
for what it was intended for.
So the commercial loading.
So I think for this conversation,
the larger delivery trucks, food for restaurants,
dealerships, getting in a new set of vehicles, UPS, FedEx.
So if they can't find a yellow zone,
that's near their destination
or if there's someone already in it,
they will elect to park where they can.
So that can be next to a red curb.
This photo is right at Broadway in Cyprus
during that 5 p.m. commute time.
It's a red curb, it's at the intersection,
and the delivery driver is just crossing
in advance of the intersection.
So in speaking with the business owners,
They they have varying level of control over when these deliveries are made
And from the enforcement side this again, this is something that our parking enforcement officers are they are ticketing
The issue is that these tickets go directly to the company and the company pays them and so there's no
Financial incentive for the drivers to change their ways
Okay getting into commercial lane and this is something we didn't quite touch in that first presentation
But commercial lane is Walnut Creek's only alley.
And as an alley, it serves a multitude of purposes.
So first here we have the Blue Stars.
One of these is a city managed lot and the other three are privately operated metered
lots.
So each one you have direct access from commercial lane.
to clarify this is commercial lane between Civic and Bonanza.
So the little green circles are tenant parking spaces.
So it's spaces right behind the building and from this area,
you can kind of see there's some tandem parking happening.
There's organization and then if needed,
there's just additional cars pulling in where space is available.
And then when this area was taken,
You can also see trucks pulling over where they can to unload into these businesses.
What not seen in the aerial is there's also a bunch of trash enclosures.
So from the street level, this was taken just yesterday.
So we have those vehicles for the tenant spaces.
We have a car idling somewhere in that travel lane.
We have a vehicle approaching me and at the distance
there's a truck loading.
And all through there we also have these trash enclosures.
So what we heard, this area is very busy in the morning
when the restaurants are getting their deliveries
and that trash pickup is usually during that morning window.
And then otherwise there's lots of double parking
or people using those tenant spaces
and staff of these app-based drivers
kind of just hanging out back here waiting for those calls.
So, the parking for employees.
This first quote came from one of the business owners
where if you solve the problem of where employees park,
you solve the parking problem in the downtown.
So, that's just to say from they hear their employees,
it's a large issue for our businesses downtown.
So in speaking with several of the business owners
about our monthly garage parking pass program,
they have done the wait list process
and they do have a couple for their establishments
so that they can give them to the management staff
or they let their staff decide,
I get it for a month, you get it for a month.
So it's they're kind of self-monitoring
how those passes are used among their businesses.
But so for those employees that do not have a pass
but drive, the feedback we got is those employees,
they know where to park for free
and how long they need to be there before they have to move.
And when they move, this is during shifts,
they can middle their table service,
they ask, hey, can you cover my tables?
to move the car. So, and then the feedback that we got for the employees that use e-scooters,
this is actually in line with kind of what we heard from that first presentation.
It's a very popular form of travel for a lot of our restaurant staff. And the issue that
they were having is where to store them on site. And so, you know, workers come in the morning,
they would load them into the dining room but then the dining room space is needed so it's they
had an issue where to put them in the hallway can't put it in the kitchen so it just became again
something else our business owners had to manage. Another thing was wayfinding so one of the garage
locations that we had mentioned was the library garage. We heard on multiple occasions that
that stakeholders didn't know this garage existed.
So another thing we heard,
there is a desire to have a central location
with parking information.
This was more of a general statement,
could have been physical, could have been online,
but just somewhere that users can find all this information.
And then also, when a parking garage is full,
there is some desire for guidance to garages
that have availability.
So if someone somehow missed that first wayfinding sign
and they're at a full garage,
they can find themselves to a different location.
So then the desire for pedestrian areas.
Interest in outdoor dining and congregating spaces.
So we have a couple of these downtown right now.
We have a nice shaded fountain with benches
and as part of the Locust Street,
we've added some tables at locations.
We also heard a couple times that families were interested
in areas to congregate and maybe let their kids play
while they are enjoying those outside amenities.
Desire for wide sidewalks and comfortable feeling spaces.
And then this last one, desire to activate the curb.
We were at the Locust Street Fair yesterday,
which it can be considered activating those streets.
closed down the streets and had a plaza experience.
And so as part of that, there's interest in maybe using, on the day to day, areas that
maybe don't see a lot of curb activity and trying to activate those spaces and bring
users to them.
And then for the bicycle connection that we heard for downtown, we heard that once you're
in downtown, you know, cars are going slow. It's a more comfortable cycling experience.
And we have the Iron Horse Trail near downtown, but getting across these major streets, that
was the hard part, that was the barrier. And then as for parking, you know, bicyclists,
they'll get to their destination, and then they'll just look around to see what's available
for them to tie up to, and so not necessarily secure parking options.
And so with that, what we're looking for today is, you know, does any of this surprise you?
Does this match what you're hearing?
And then, of these issues identified, is there one or more that jumps out to you that we
just need to make sure our strategies and our implementation or policies address?
Great.
Thanks.
I'm going to mix up the order again.
We can do a survey at the end to see what the commissioners,
if they want, sequential in the future or not.
Actually, can you start with the student commissioner?
Sure.
That's a.
Oh, thank you.
I did not know that.
So student commissioner Kirsch, you're up.
I think, so for the 15-minute curbside pickup,
are you working on a way to enforce it?
I know it's hard to enforce, but are there,
like any strategies or ideas?
Yeah, so the issue that we're coming across
is not a common, or there's many agencies having this issue.
And so one way that other agencies have looked at this
is shrinking down that window to maybe five minutes.
They've reworded their muni code to say actively loading.
And so that's just one way, if someone's just
sitting in their car waiting, they're not actively loading.
So there's, yeah, those are a couple options
that we've talked about and some success
that other agencies have had with this issue.
All right, Commissioner Patch.
So along those lines of double parking
and waiting for too long,
am I correct that the fees,
should that be enforced as $45?
Oh, for unpaid meter?
Yeah, or like a ticket for double parking
or something like that.
Last I heard, I believe so.
$45 for a fee.
Okay, let's just say it is.
I feel like it is.
When you were talking to the parking enforcement team,
did it come up about increasing that fee at all,
especially if it's going to companies
that have large budgets?
That would be a conversation
that the Parking Enterprise Fund,
like that team would be overseeing.
And it would also likely have to come
from something within our meeting code,
which is not really within this plan.
So it's outside of my...
Totally fair.
And then, has staff ever considered working
with an app like Parking Hero or something
to coordinate and tell people where parking spots are.
I know they usually do that with private entities, but.
Yeah, so within the rethinking mobility plan,
there was that like investigate dynamic parking
and some of those technologies.
When you go into like reserving a parking space,
there is some infrastructure that is needed,
like that changeable sign that says this is reserved
for this person.
So that's just like that much more infrastructure.
We've also kind of investigated a couple
that are just completely app-based,
and that's less about reserving
and more about being able to pay, kind of find spaces, yeah.
So it's something we've looked into.
All right, thanks.
Commissioner Ash.
On questions, do you personally feel in the garages
that it's not enough light in the evenings?
So I would say, typically, I leave downtown Walnut Creek
at 515.
So I usually, I don't see the darkest dark downtown.
I do know that the Parking Enterprise Fund,
Like part of, they've had a mission for the last couple
of years to improve the lighting in our downtown garages
and I know they've completed and done that.
They've also repainted and done some murals.
So there is some beautifying.
Me personally, I am not here that late that often,
so I cannot speak to that.
Who runs that committee?
So the parking enterprise fund, it's staffed by,
It's a multi department city staff.
So public works, parking enforcement,
our city manager's office, public works of this includes
traffic engineering, transportation planning,
our actual meter shot maintenance.
And then we also have our leisure.
So they let us know if there's any large events
coming to town and what they're planning to do
to accommodate within that garage.
and then we also have LAS,
which they operate our garages, the city garages.
Okay, I'll have more comments on that at the comment period.
And then my other question is the outdoor dining,
do we know how many curbside parking spaces that's taken up?
For outdoor dining?
So there is the city's outdoor dining
like active program right now,
And that's really just the main street kitchen,
and that took up one space.
Thank you, Commissioner Reese.
I thought you were going to skip me.
Never.
So a couple of questions.
It would be good at it would be interesting
that I don't know if it's part of this study or something
that you would come back to us and give us an information
item on the parklet or the outdoor dining space
and how it's set up and managed, I
think that might be interesting information for us
and to understand some ideas about how much when you have,
you mentioned one space at the one restaurant, Main Street
Kitchen.
But conceptually, if we were to convert information on it,
if we were to convert spaces, how many spaces
as a ratio would that be to the total downtown
and just some information about that
because it seems like we ask questions about this
but I don't feel personally knowledgeable about that
so it'd be helpful to just have that as an information item.
That's sort of a question.
I mean, there's a question mark at the end of it.
You made the comment, or you said that people
feel comfortable riding when they're
in the core of downtown because it's slower traffic.
And I thought I heard you say that you
were looking at connections.
Can you share what kind of connections,
where you're looking at connections at this point
to the main trail system?
Oh, I think.
You can say you don't know yet, too.
Yeah, I guess when looking at connections,
It's more of, so we have our North Broadway road diet.
That's one that we've successfully acquired funds for.
Within our North Downtown specific plan,
I believe there is a couple off of Pine Street as well.
I guess that's East West, Lincoln might be in there.
So within our planning documents,
there are some identified to kind of try to break that,
that barrier into Downtown.
Okay.
Yeah, Trinity Ave, Oakland Avenue.
Okay, great.
I'll have a comment about that then.
When you talked about your different spaces,
different types of parking,
and I, you might've even had a slide on it.
I didn't hear, and maybe I missed it.
When people were being surveyed,
did they say that there was too much 15-minute spaces
there were too many loading zones,
there weren't enough loading zones,
there was, was there any issue, questions about that?
I'd be interested in hearing what you've learned.
So what we've learned, so we placed about one
of those 15 minute curbside spaces per block, per block face.
Really the feedback is they're not open to be used generally.
So again, if we're trying to have a space
for those quick user interactions,
they're just not being open.
So yeah, we've heard some people say that
I was just trying to run in real quick,
they could only find a meter spot.
And in that time, a parking enforcement officer came through
and the space, this gentleman got a ticket
was right next to a 15 minute,
which there clearly was not open for him to use at that time.
So they're there.
It's just, we can't really say if there's not enough
or because they're not being used as intended at this point.
We don't really know that if we've hit the sweet spot
with how many yet.
What about the loading zones?
So the yellow commercial loading zones.
So we do get, just through our day to day,
we'll get businesses requesting additional curb loading,
like maybe a new business moved in.
And so we do evaluate that, see where some are located.
As part of this, we are taking inventory.
And so there, some areas do have a lot of additional yellow
that we're looking to see if that site right now
still needs that much yellow curb
running their businesses.
But it's, right now it's something
that we're constantly looking at
because it serves a demand of those nearby establishments,
which can be changing.
Right, do you have a,
is there a program in place where a business can say,
you know, every Thursday morning at between 7 and 11 a.m.,
I need this much space?
And can they, do you have a program
that you can reserve that space
for that special one time use or one time each week use?
Is that even possible?
Yeah, so I mean,
I would say there's maybe a couple that sounds similar.
We have valet.
So some restaurants do have valet
that we've actually combined with commercial loading.
So say it's like a restaurant
that needs valet for dinner time.
They're not gonna need that space for the daytime
so that it's, I know of at least one
that we've paired commercial loading
with kind of these valet spaces.
We have one that is specifically a parking space
in front of a trash enclosure.
So there's a specific trash time
that people are not allowed to park there
so that people can get their trash bins picked up.
So there are custom locations.
It's from the parking enforcement side,
they do not necessarily like it when we do these.
The signs, they get confusing,
and it's very easy for people just to park there by accident
and not realize they're violating,
and so the tickets are very easily tossed.
Okay.
And then you mentioned the commercial lane
and talked about the congestion
in the different activities that go on back there,
the loading, the trash, et cetera.
Is there a documented safety issue on that corridor
or is it just annoying because it's so busy?
I would say it's more of a friction point.
The speeds there are low.
So if there is like any collision history,
probably property damage only back there. Okay. That's all I had.
Thank you. One of my questions got answered. I was going to ask who the parking enterprise
team was. So thank you. Out of curiosity, when there was the comment, I want to see
my car from the table at dinner time, did anybody ever mention crime as a reason for
that? No, it was, I think it was more of a comfort, like a sense, the way I
interpreted the comment was it's a comfort. It's the same reason why people
like to park their car right in front of their house and maybe not around the
corner. It's that comfort of seeing their vehicles. Great. Are you guys tossing
around any ideas, anything creative maybe the city can do to help, pardon the pun,
curb the double parking and issues related to the you know the the door
dashers the uber eats etc cuz I know I see them out there all the time double
parked and it probably bothers a lot of people including the businesses so the
question is have we I guess figured out a way this again is not a unique issue
issue to Walnut Creek, I would say, like, one of the tactics agencies have employed
is kind of dynamic pricing, where even if with dynamic pricing and depending on, like,
which approach you take, you can charge to even be in that commercial loading space or,
you know, in those parking spaces.
So if you de-centivize idling in those areas
because you're gonna get charged no matter what,
it kind of pushes them away.
But it's one of those things that it's an issue
that we're still kind of trying to work through.
And would our parking enforcement officers
if they saw somebody double parked,
will they stop and tag those people immediately?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Common practice?
It's, yes.
If the car's unoccupied a lot of times,
if the car's occupied, like those drivers,
they see the enforcement scooters around the corner
and they're all for it.
Like they're looking in their rear view mirrors.
So it's one of those things where if that car is there
by the time the enforcement officer gets to them,
yes, they're getting a ticket.
When you talked about commercial lane,
one of the items you talked about
was the small, commercially owned metered lots.
Is there a reason that we actually allow those in the city?
And I ask that because anytime I've used one,
they tend to be exorbitantly priced
compared to a city meter.
And have we ever considered saying,
even if it's not our land,
we don't allow for commercial metered parking.
So I guess to clarify, we're talking about
the blue star locations here,
the ones that are the privately operated?
That's right, yeah, the privately.
Like there's one by SOST right behind it, right?
So they've got meters
and they're very high priced meters.
And I don't know that,
it seems like that might be a less attractive thing
for the city to allow.
Yeah, so those we have, those are operated by Park Smart.
And as part of this study, we were able to get their
like parking utilization information.
So they have, I'd say, I don't know, 19-ish spaces
around the downtown, and they really are just those
tiny, tiny lots that are spread out throughout the downtown.
As for the history, I know there is,
there's some like agreement on the,
as far as I'm aware, some agreement on the rates
at the time of that Park Smart took over that.
So maybe there's something to think about
in our future planning.
Like, you know, as a city, we don't allow private metering.
And then my last question is,
so someone else asked a question about the parklets
and how many parking spaces have been taken up.
And I believe the answer was one.
So corollary question, do you happen
to know either the number or the percentage of street spots
that were willing to give up as a part of the Parklet plan?
So what I will say is from the curb management perspective,
it is about trying to reach that balance.
And that's a balance that we don't really know yet.
But I mean, we have the findings of,
we do have parking spaces in the downtown.
So it's about, it really might just be kind of something
that we just have to wait and see as we manage our curb.
Great, thanks.
Any other commissioner questions
before we go to the next section?
All right, then we will open up public communication
for the current topic.
We have one member of the public waiting for my comments.
Okay, so I can start?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Well, these studies are always important
because you need data, you need information
to decide what to do, and it's a balancing act
that's really hard for everybody.
I wonder if I could get the names of the people,
the bike and pedestrian people
who we're contacting and work with,
and also I'd like to be on the list
for any future mailings and things like that,
If I can better understand who had commented, um,
parking lanes are really important. Not only for parking,
but then if the city wants to advance their bicycle master plan for improving
connections to the downtown, they may require losing parking.
So that's why it's important for the city staff to move forward with what's the
reality of bike parking versus,
I mean bike access and bike lanes and their needs versus, um,
street parking. Let's see, Art and Wine Festival is going to be in Civic Park
this year. There'll be bicyclists coming from Iron Horse Trail and also
maybe from Bart portions west of the city. I will be doing the bike parking
there, Free Valley Bike Parking and because of this meeting I will be asking
a survey, I'll be doing a survey of where people are coming from.
Also, were bicycles parked counted, that parked in downtown?
I'd like to know about that.
Electric bikes, I've been doing valet bike parking at the Walnut Festival and Art & Wine
Festival for the last many years, and electric bike parking is now about 25-30% depending.
Surveys would be great to do if I don't think they're appropriate for bikes everywhere days,
But if the city could work with East Bay Regional Parks, other cities, and have a concerted
effort funded by MTC or something like that, I think that could give you a lot of valuable
information, not only for the city, but for the other cities and East Bay Regional Parks
and everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you, and we appreciate your valet parking services that you're doing.
Thank you very much.
We will see you there.
I will close public comment on the current topic and we will move to
Commissioner comments and now that I understand the new role
I didn't have a student commissioner in the prior Commission I was on so student Commissioner Kirsh
Thank you for the presentation. I think I think it's a good thing to get the youth Commission involved in as
part of the stakeholders and
To get their input
And then I think for about like the outdoor dining,
I think that during the pandemic,
that was a really nice thing.
So hopefully if we could bring that back in any way,
I think that would be great.
I think a lot of people would be interested in that.
Commissioner Reese.
Thank you.
Great presentation.
I saw a lot of stuff from last time,
and I was thinking I wouldn't have too many comments.
But I think this slide, whoops, that slide right there,
it reminded me during the presentation
and after the private lots.
And one of the challenges that cities
have with parking in San Francisco
has this problem in the Marina district,
or I don't know if they still do, but they used to.
And that's that parking is free on Sunday.
And so every space is full.
You try to go to a restaurant or visit friends or family.
You can't find a parking space on Sunday
because they're all free.
And therefore, there's no parking available.
And my concern about not allowing businesses
to charge for parking means that if it's free,
then I'll just park there instead of parking on the street
or in the garage or anywhere else.
And so we will, they'll be full.
And then I'll speak a little bit to my libertarian bent.
The parking lots are not the cities.
They're private.
And I know that there are regulations, and there's
guidance, and there's zoning around use.
But it's an economic, it's an asset to that business,
it's an asset to that property owner.
And it leads to some degree they should have flexibility
to use the space as long as they aren't harming properties
around them or being a nuisance.
And I wanted to just share the libertarian piece.
I'm not always a libertarian, but in the case of parking, I am.
Some thoughts that came to mind as I was listening to everything
is, for example, the issue of the 15-minute parking.
I agree it's long.
It seems long to me at least.
Sometimes I have parked there and not realized it
because the signage in this, you know, it wasn't bold enough.
Maybe having some greater coloration.
One of the images you had in the slide deck had a,
actually the parking space had a big 15 minute on the ground.
I don't know if you do that on the streets or not.
Maybe you do, and I just parked right over it.
But I got out of my car and almost hit the sign that
was in front of the realized, oh, I'm in the wrong.
I shouldn't be here.
I got back in my car and moved and had to park somewhere else.
But it happens.
One option you have, I think, is to have parking meters.
And I believe you could set your parking meters so when
you put the nickel in or the dime in,
it gives you five minutes.
Or it has an adjustment.
So that first $0.10 or $0.05 gets you the five or 10 minutes.
And then you put in a quarter and you only get five more minutes
because that's the standard parking rate.
And then that way, the Uber eats door dash people.
They don't have to always be putting quarters and $0.50
in.
If they know they're going to be five minutes or 10 minutes,
and that's what they usually are, then that's the number.
And we make that a nickel.
And then it gets priced after that at the regular rate.
That might be a way of keeping people from just sitting there
or keeping people from parking there knowing
that they aren't going to get a ticket because the parking
enforcement people don't and can't monitor that short-term parking
without having some sort of a meter to tell them
that they've been there too long.
I really heard something about flex space.
You had mentioned commercial loading, going to valet.
Great idea.
And I would encourage you to think about FlexSpace's space
use throughout.
You can make use of FlexSpace potentially in the morning.
I know we don't start charging for parking until 10 AM,
but maybe there's something from 10 to 11
that might help the businesses.
And then in the evening, having those commercial yellow zones
become passenger or valet, I think is a,
those are really out of the box thinking, I think,
kind of a best practice of utilizing the space.
The connections, I would encourage this sort of a,
I would encourage us to have something in here
about making the bike connections to the trails,
or I don't know when we're going to do the bike master
plan again, but starting to understand where those are.
And I would encourage them to be, as drivers,
we like grid systems, right?
We like to be able to drive and get near to where we're going,
and then turn and go into the community.
But we don't do that for bicyclists.
For bicyclists, we say, well, you're coming to downtown,
and we'll give you this one corridor that connects you
to the entire downtown that you can use that's
safe and really nice, but we're not
going to give you any other ones.
I like that Walnut Creek is taking a different approach
and saying, OK, well, downtown is long going from south
to north, and so maybe we need three connections
from the trail to downtown in order to be able to get,
as a cyclist, a little closer.
And then with that, I'd like to see more information on bike
parking supply and demand.
I know that it's not technically curb management per se,
but if we're trying to get people to come to downtown
and park people that have bikes or are also parkers.
They're parking.
And it would be good to know and understand
how the bike parking is being utilized as well.
I bring that up because some cities will actually
convert a motor vehicle parking space to a bike parking
because there is demand for bike parking
in that particular area that outweighs the ability
to provide the bike parking on the sidewalk
or on the side streets or something.
And so they'll actually take away a parking space
because the parking space could be used by seven bicyclists,
say.
I have trouble with my own writing.
The issue of your imbalances, I think
it would be good to think about dynamic pricing.
And I don't mean like at one moment it's a price
and then it changes, but maybe quarterly,
being able to adjust the hourly rates by $0.25 or $0.50
or something in order to try to, in relatively real time,
be able to adjust and maybe push the parking
demand into different areas.
And so like, for example, the Locust Street garage
is always 100% full, but people keep going into it.
Well, maybe if we had a dynamic way for you
to adjust parking on a quarterly or six-month basis,
you could say, well, the pricing's not working in Locust.
We have too many cars trying to get in there.
So we're going to have the authority
to bump up the parking without having to come back to,
I guess, it's the Transportation Commission that
makes that decision.
I think providing some flexibility to the city
so that you can make those adjustments
would be a good management strategy.
I mentioned this at the last meeting.
But the monthly parking, I think the employees really
do need parking.
And having them pay market rate parking
is tough for a lot of employees in downtown.
And if you look to the west of downtown,
that street parking is not being utilized very well.
And so you add the blue zone.
It's not being utilized very well, and so could you
provide monthly parking for employees in a zone?
And so they can park in the blue zone,
and you can give out extra passes.
But in the green zone, we try to retire the passes
because we want our customers and the people that
are going to spend money in downtown to park in the green zone,
and we want the workers to be in the periphery.
Because the workers are long term.
They're there all day or well into the evening.
And the people that are coming to downtown to spend money
are only here for, depending on what they're doing, an hour or two.
Then I don't know if you would be able to do this.
But I find it interesting that the two parking garages on Locust
Street have such divergent occupancies,
even though they're within walking, they're just close.
And so I don't know, and I don't know the industry well enough
to know if you could charge more in one garage than the other
and that users would understand that and then adjust.
We do that with on-street parking and parking garages.
We raise the on-street price in order to make it more financially
and to provide a financial incentive to park in the garages.
I don't know if we could do that on a garage basis,
But that's a thought.
And then that is it.
Thank you.
All right, thank you, Commissioner Ash.
OK, there were some great points there.
I particularly liked, and one of the points that I had first
was employee parking issues.
If you go to the chamber, if you go to downtown Walnut Creek,
they often talk about it's a problem that's really impacting
recruiting the workforce here.
This is like a sexy place to work,
but then people will leave after like a month or two
because they're like, whoa, I'm paying for parking all day.
Like, I could go work in the veranda or Bishop Ranches
city center and things like that.
So I actually like the idea of taking some of those,
that blue zone or maybe part of the orange and offering it.
like, hey, we could sell you a monthly pass to this
and you could park at a meter and do that.
I know that's easier said than done,
but I would suggest staff to do that.
So I really liked picking up on that as an issue.
Yeah, I will agree the private meters are expensive,
but maybe there's just some,
maybe the compromise is just some way to,
they get a bright sticker that says,
This is triple the price, but park here anyway.
I don't know what the sticker would say.
Not that, but it is very expensive,
and so I do note that, but I also know that if they go away,
then those spaces will get utilized or work.
So people will stay all day or whatever.
That won't be good either, so I'm okay keeping them there.
I just personally want to avoid them,
And I don't think I know what the difference is, right?
Like maybe I do because I'm sitting up here,
but like my wife doesn't, right?
Because she's not exposed to that info, a meter is a meter.
So maybe there's a way we could designate that.
I would encourage the parking enterprise fund
to organize a parking walkthrough
with the police department sector commander
who covers this, and there should be like the,
like it's great that there's all these updates
to the lighting and stuff,
but I want the cops to go through and have their eyes.
If you get the sector commander and maybe Sergeant Hobbs,
who's in charge of operations, to go through it
and just give their eyes like in the evenings, is it safe?
Don't forget in the winter, right?
it's dark out a lot sooner than it is now.
And so like that should just not be a concern.
Anybody getting physically assaulted
or worse in any of our garages, none of us just want that.
And if that could be fixed with a little bit of electricity,
that would be green and clean.
That would be great.
Just improved quality of lights
is so much better these days.
And that could also be tied into
a lot of law enforcement tools.
So I would encourage that to be there.
I would encourage the, you kind of said like
there was a whole lot that the parking enterprise fund
had done in like the last year at looking at some of this
and having some conversations.
I would love them to come present to this group
who they are, what they do, what they've come to
as these resolutions in the past year, three years post COVID.
think that would be great. I also I think you might have mentioned this or it was
in some of the questions from our acting chair that the ticketing price that I
wouldn't change the price on the like overdue meters or people at the meters
but some things that I caught is, yes, we could charge more for certain companies
that are specific delivery drivers that are doing that. I would also say in those
15-minute zones, I would point out like I think it used to be hard to see them.
Now I think the new signage is better because I know they were redone in the
last few months. But I would do some sort of dynamic pricing on those as well.
Because there's no reason those are totally free if they're a food vendor
doing it. And there's ways that like you could set it up to charge their account.
Like, if they go into SFO or Oakland Airport,
those drivers have to pay an extra fee.
I mean, to get charged to the customer, that's fine, right?
So I think we should limit that free spot,
especially if there's clearly this problem where somebody's
taking a nap in it or something.
And I would also say the same for the garages.
If, I don't know what the rates are on the garages,
but there's no reason Locust Street can't be,
do you guys know what the rates are offhand?
Are they the same in every garage?
Yes, they're the same in every city garage.
Yeah, so I think that would be an action item.
I would love to see in front of this committee.
I think that's actually, we do have that.
That's like the one actual power we have,
statutory power we have is to raise rates.
I would consider if it's back on information,
Raising the locust street garage fees if we think that will
Help alleviate some of that congestion at that garage
But I want to see it tied to our goal of the 85%
Parking and some recommendations for that before I would agree to do that
But I'd love to see that and I would consider that motion
Awesome that was what I had. So thanks commissioner patch
Okay, um so I understand it's not in your preview but maybe have a conversation
with parking enforcement and about the fees just because like double parking it
if you keep doing it and there's no incentive to change people are gonna
continue to do it and to make a holistic approach to things if this is causing us
problems with curb management then like that's a conversation that should be had
especially given that the city is looking at its budget right now and that
might actually help increase our funds. The bike parking obviously is needed and
not to sound like broken record. It's hard to find the bike parking so we need
to prioritize wayfinding for where those parking things are. I don't know why
words just left my brain. Also in terms of scooters really excited that there's
a lot of employees that use scooters to get to their work and I think the cages
that are by GART work really well for scooters because you can actually like
fit them in so maybe some of the bike parking can be those full size cages as
as opposed to just something you put a U-lock on.
And those can easily fit in some of the
unused spaces in garages
or in those weird, I know you have a picture
of a bike in a spot on a, yes, here,
on this little area that couldn't fit a car,
you could put those little cages
and the bike link cards work really well for those.
I would love to see that.
In terms of pricing, I know we talked about this
a little bit last time.
If people are only using zone A for one to two hours,
like maybe the pricing needs to be adjusted
so it's not that three hour limitation.
Or it increases in cost when it gets from two to three hours
to encourage turnover.
I also love the idea of putting meters
at the 15-minute zones
because I don't think anybody should just be sitting there.
There are places that you can have free parking for an hour.
So if they really are just sitting there
waiting for their next order to come in,
they could go linger in those garages
and not the 15-minute spots.
I also think 15 minutes is too long,
But if we're already having a difficulty enforcing that
because parking enforcement officers aren't doing loops
that are within 15 minutes, which I'm assuming they're not,
I don't see that it really is going to help us
to lower that time zone, right?
Because you'd have to redo all of the signs
and all of the paint work that you've done.
So I'm not sure that's a great use of our budget.
I would want to know more about how often
the parking enforcement officers are circling,
like how long that circle takes for them to notice
if somebody's there for longer than the 15 minutes.
I'm also gonna contradict my other commissioners
a little bit on the employee pricing at parking.
I understand it's a business issue,
but the harder it is to park in the city,
The more people use public transit and scooters and bikes.
So there's a reason why if you work in Oakland,
you don't usually drive your car, right?
Like you use BART when you can
because it's really expensive to park in Oakland
and not every business gives employees parking.
So I do like the idea of at least creating an employee zone
in less used areas to leave the more in demand spots for people who are coming and spending
money.
Maybe those could be along the free shuttle routes so that they're not driving to downtown
but to the outskirts if they are driving.
It would also get them kind of used to maybe thinking about taking BART and then taking
the free shuttle to the BART station.
Also increasing parking, bike parking, and scooter parking, I think will help with that
a little bit because it will discourage people from driving to their work here.
And then I have a slightly off topic comment, but I really want to make it.
Can you go to the map that has the stars and circles?
I really appreciate this. This is the most accessible map that I've seen from the city
because it uses shapes and not colors alone. And I just wanted to say that because yay
digital accessibility. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm fairly light on comments. My fellow commissioners had a lot of really good
comments. So I really appreciate that. I do want to add, I was thrilled that my comment
on the private meters garnered some feedback
from the other commissioners and so a clarification is,
because based upon your feedback,
I think you interpreted that I thought the spot
should be free and actually wasn't advocating for free.
I was advocating more for either the city
operating the meters and or at least setting the rates
so that there's still metered spots,
but Commissioner Ash's wife doesn't accidentally
put her credit card in there and pay $24 to park.
So thank you for your points on that,
because that, if you're watching honey, I love you.
That helped me think to clarify it, so I appreciate that.
Can we go back to the slide
that shows the stakeholders,
I think it was really in the beginning,
might've been slide one, or close to slide one.
Okay, on the general public includes youth commission
and tabling at public events.
I probably should have asked the question
in the question phase, but I'll go ahead and ask
on the, was there some sort of survey or something we did?
How did we get basic general public comment,
if I might ask?
Yeah, so for the Locust Street Festival last night,
it was like a dot activity is what we call it.
So there is, we gave them two sets of questions.
One of them was like,
what goals resonate with you for downtown?
So first one, is it easy to find parking?
We had a bike one, we had a ped one,
we had a transit sustainability,
economic fatality for the downtown.
So yeah, it was curb management
and tying in with the council's priorities.
And so that was a goal question.
And then we also had, like, what features do you like
seeing around downtown?
And so it was really similar, but it was,
so it was, do you like bike lanes?
Do you like parking?
Do you, like, again, those same options?
And we haven't, with all the activity today,
we haven't quite had a chance to digest,
like, how everything broke down.
But what people like to see really clustered,
and it was where those goals kind of separated.
So what they like seeing is really similar
and maybe why they like seeing it is a little different.
Got it.
If we're gonna get any more public input on this
or if we're gonna do something like this in the future,
I might suggest some sort of advertised online survey
because I think it'd be really good to get
not just Walnut Creek citizenry's input
users of downtown, but you know we have a lot of towns around us that people flock
up here, you know, we're sort of the jewel of the East Bay, so they even though they
have nice smaller downtowns, people like to come up here. It'd be interesting to see,
you know, if a Danville resident said, yeah I want to have dinner in downtown
Walnut Creek, but parking's so hard I'm just gonna eat in Danville, or kind of
interesting to get that kind of data if possible. That's actually a big issue. It
comes up in a lot of meetings in multiple ways and there is a theme at
their city council where they actively make fun of Walnut Creek and
they advertise themselves as the anti-Walnut Creek come and eat in Danville
where it's free parking.
And you will find that where people from 98% of this county
and 20% of Alameda County come shopping in Walnut Creek
for most of their shopping, people in Danville
will go south because of what is perceived, at least,
as a parking situation.
So you're right.
It's not theory.
It's actively talked about and promoted down there
as different come-do business there.
It's free parking.
San Ramon promotes it too.
That's a really good feedback and I appreciate that.
I think that's on point.
I know we're, I mean, we're very highly desirable
because I've seen an article that was talking
about why restaurants are flocking to downtown Walnut Creek
because I think they said we have
six plus million shopping visitors a year.
It was a pretty impressive number.
But I think what you're saying sort of resonates
with things I've thought about or I've heard as well.
I think the number's higher than that, but yeah, you're right.
It's a big number.
OK.
Thank you for that.
And then one other comment.
When we were talking about Commercial Avenue and the one
alley and the double parking and stuff like that,
that one seems like a pretty easy one to enforce, right?
send the, send the parking officers down there, you know, every morning for an hour or half
an hour, and they probably can find lots of violators and make some revenue, and hopefully
people start, stop doing that if they're repeat offenders, because it's self-contained
as opposed to the myriad of parking spots throughout all of downtown.
So that's just something I thought about when you were talking about that.
Other comments?
Commissioner Patch.
Sorry, I thought of one more comment.
The parking lot light and safety issue might be a good thing
for our newly created safety subcommittee
just to have a conversation about,
as a single female who walks around by myself,
often I can relate to that comment.
And I just, while I understand it's not totally up
to us to determine that it might be a good conversation
to continue to have.
Great. Any further comments?
Yes, Commissioner Reese.
Yeah, I had forgotten.
You had made a comment during your presentation
that it's hard to change the Meany code
and so maybe we don't do that.
And I would encourage you as part of this,
it can be recommendations.
You know, we don't have to say this is what we're gonna do,
but we can say these are the changes
that we think need to be made
in order to better manage our resources and our assets.
So I would just suggest that your recommendations,
I think, can and should go beyond
just what you guys have been doing in previous years.
Take advantage of setting the stage
for even bike connections,
use this as an opportunity to start to set that stage.
Otherwise, when we do a general plan
or we do the bike master plan,
I mean, people are gonna bring up these issues anyway,
but at least you have a starting point
and you have a history and you have documentation
of ideas that go beyond just the parking asset.
Great, thank you.
Last call for comments.
All right, they're being.
Staff rocks.
I mean, this was great.
And to my fellow commissioners,
like this was actually a really great conversation.
I liked everybody's thoughts and ideas
and just the level of conversation.
So I'm complimenting everybody in the room
and everybody at home too.
Thank you.
And I was gonna close with something similar
to what you said, so I don't need to say it now.
You took care of it.
So thank you, Commissioner Ash.
Good teamwork, enjoyed the conversation,
thanks for the presentation.
Okay, so the next agenda item is,
do we have any commissioner reports
on activities or anything else?
We'll just go down the line.
Student Commissioner Kirsh?
No.
Commissioner Reese?
Nothing.
Commissioner Ash?
I was gonna mention the Art and Wine Festival,
which our public comment made.
There is free bike valet parking and there is free shuttles from any of the now eight
hotels in Walnut Creek and the BART stations have free shuttles.
So easy to get to first time it's downtown and not at Heather Farms due to the construction.
Are you aware if some of the other shuttles that existed?
So I'm up in the Northgate area, and we used to have one, a shuttle kind of up near the
Safeway, one of those parts.
Part of the executive park?
Yeah.
That's now moved to the BART and the hotels.
Okay.
Thank you.
Commissioner Patch?
Nothing from me.
So I have a suggestion for a future agenda item based in part on a comment slash question
I received from a member of the public actually today.
So there are those yellow borders being put around traffic signals.
If we could have maybe as an agenda item to that plus maybe just to talk about, you know,
why we do that, why it's helpful, and anything else new or different we're doing to signal
displays that are you know safety enhancements or improvements and maybe just in general
things that would be good for the commission and more importantly the members of the public
to learn about traffic signaling and that's my only item do we have any um reports from
staff yeah we have a few um first um yeah so ignition valley road has seen some base
repair so essentially just between San Carlos and all the way up to city limit
up the hill past Oak Grove. We've made base repairs of the pavement essentially
digging out where the pavement has failed and replacing it and then that
preps us for the work next year where we're gonna repave Oak Grove to city
limit up the hill. But as part of that we've made some striping and some
delineation improvements.
This is based on the LRSP data,
the local road safety plan that you've all seen
and collision history.
So there's some clear demarcations of the lane lines,
try to prevent side swipes and that sort of thing.
And then we also have some slip lane changes
so that the right turn free lanes encourage people
slow down be aware of bike or pedestrian activity that's there today we had a
great staff bike ride down to the bike station that Brianna organized and we're
thankful for the police department to help us with the escort with the motor
motorcycles on the front back so that was very handy and I guess lastly is
next week is public works week and we're excited to celebrate that and we have a
couple events throughout the week. So just FYI. Thank you. And where might we
find a list of the Public Works celebratory events? I don't know. I think
it's mostly internal staff stuff, but it is Public Works Week. Okay, great.
Alright, well hopefully they do. I'm proud. Alright, well then our last item of the
evening everyone's favorite we are adjourned