Athens in Motion Commission

Athens in Motion Commission Tuesday, April 27, 2021 – 4:00-6:00 pm Online via ACC WebEx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3O4pdgiuw PRESENT Aaron Redman Mark Ebell Teresa Friedlander Lauren Blais Roswell Lawrence Craig Topple James Barlament Daniel Sizemore (Bike/Ped Coordinator) Rani Katreeb (TPW) ABSENT Jake Maas 1. Call to Order a. Meeting called to order at 4:02 pm 2. Agenda Additions and Approval a. Agenda approved (Teresa moved; Mark seconded). 3. Public Comment a. No public comments. 4. Approval of Minutes a. Minutes from 3-3 Special Called Session were approved. Teresa moved; Lauren seconded. b. Minutes from 3-23 were approved, with highlighted areas filled in with info regarding provided by Lauren and Daniel. Teresa moved; Roswell seconded. c. Minutes from 4-6 Special Called Session were approved. Teresa approved; Mark seconded. 5. Housekeeping a. Adding Meetings to Calendars (Daniel) i. You can add the WebEx invitations Daniel sends out to your calendar. You can always get to the meeting from your calendar once you add it. If there’s an issue let Daniel know.  b. Next Meeting on 5/25 (Lauren) i. Close to Memorial Day – will we have a quorum? ii. Roswell will be out and Aaron may be out, but we should have a quorum. Meeting will take place at the regular time. 6. Complete Streets Policy (Lauren) (12:12) a. If possible we would like to take a motion to approve at today’s meeting – next step is for it to go to the Manager’s Office. b. Discussion and Questions? c. Carol: the original goal was based on the ratings provided by Smart Growth America Lauren: the main issue was that our policy had no teeth. There will be diversity and inclusion language and an equity toolkit. d. It has been almost 10 years since the last CS policy was passed. e. Roswell would like to take longer to review; he won’t be at the next meeting so he will email his thoughts out [Roswell emailed approving the CS policy as written on 5/18]. f. Carol has taken steps to move this forward with M&C after we approve it. g. Mark: is it going to be a problem to delay the timeline? Lauren: we will be able to vote in the next meeting -- we will have a quorum. Craig: what does the amendment process look like? How often will this be revised? Carol: It can very easily get revised by the commissioners in different ways. It would be better to send the final version forward. Teresa: having been involved for a long time, it is in pretty good shape. We should have unanimous agreement going forward and avoid getting bogged down in process. h. Lauren and Aaron both enjoy certain songs of popular musician and Archer guest star Kenny Loggins (29:15). 7. Coordinator Report (Daniel) (31:00) a. Repavement Schedule 2021 i. There are no adjustments to the schedule and it can move forward as planned. ii. There are some roads that are being repaved but not repainted; these could be potential future bike boulevards or have other bike/ped markings with future repaving. iii. Mark: what about Child Street? Daniel: This will be considered for a future project (e.g., sidewalk) but would not be part of the repavement program. Next step will be a roadway safety audit. iv. Lauren moves that the AiMC approves the CY2021 Pavement Maintenance Program as presented, with the additional recommendation for a roadway safety audit of Child Street and would encourage coordination between repavement schedules and those findings. Mark seconded. Motion passes unanimously. b. AiMC Applicants (40:30) i. Will be approved at the next M&C meeting. 13 people applied. ii. [Conversation about terms and who is expiring. This info can be found here: https://www.accgov.com/8884/Athens-in-Motion-Commission] iii. Lauren: We can all recruit non-Commissioners for our committees. c. Priority Scoring (43:45) i. Stephen: one of our serves was struck by lightning and TPW lost all of their data since December 2020. Daniel’s progress on this project was lost. ii. Bumped to another meeting. d. Barber Street (48:50) i. Daniel provided a visual sneak preview.  e. Can we go to in-person meetings? i. Stephen: not in the near future. ii. Daniel: could we distribute in-person surveys? Stephen: yes, we can put some money toward printing some stuff. Daniel: are we planning on tabling any time soon? Teresa: It would be good to have signs in strategic locations like we did for TSPLOST. But hard to determine efficacy. If there are places where we are starting to gather we could have postcard-sized flyers. Daniel: We are sending out postcards and there will be a link on those postcards. Stephen: in future surveys, can we ask about how they learned about the project to plan strategy for future outreach? Daniel: Absolutely. And you can have location-based QR codes with GIS’s help. Lauren: it would be great to have materials in Spanish. Stephen: PIO (Jeff Montgomery) really wants to do this, but in a standardized way and ability to call in and ask questions in Spanish. f. Tallassee Road will have a safety audit soon, with bridge construction coming in the next few years. Changing from rural to urban creates a full spectrum of issues for high-speed driving. g. Daniel: I have sucked up a lot of time. 8. Todd’s Report (Todd) (1:06:00) a. Concrete is still being poured on Phase II Firefly; bridge over overpass being built in next couple of weeks. b. Trees coming down at Trestle; demo in next couple of weeks. c. Testing and planning still happening with Greenway Trail cemetery section. 9. Chair Updates (Lauren) (1:07:30) a. Firefly has reached out to us about partnering to find ways to establish connections between trail and East Athens community. b. Firefly also wants to partner on a Bike Day in October. c. Lauren met with SORBA – great opportunities to collaborate; interested in establishing connections. Nothing CONCRETE yet. [Lauren and Aaron collaborate on a Loggins callback.] 10. Prince Corridor Committee (Mark) a. The committee went through and rated items from surveys. The main points: i. Bike lanes highly rated ii. 3-laning highly rated iii. Improving intersections for ped safety iv. Raised medians v. Mid-block crossings (lots of input including mid-road beacons) vi. Reducing curb cuts to reduce conflict zones vii. Realign Park and Talmadge – a horrible intersection for peds. b. Meeting tomorrow for further discussion; moving toward public engagement phase. c. When should AiMC weigh in? Daniel/Stephen: before June work session would be good. This would be before public comment. d. Mark will send Jake this list. 11. Atlanta Highway Corridors (1:18:30) a. Transit projects were underrepresented. Only 2-3 actual transit users responded. 10-15 responses on transit projects. In order, most responses were: ambiguous, against, pro. Survey failed this population. b. Roadway improvements: very popular in general. Jennings Mill flyover not popular in Kingswood due to increase in cut-throughs.  c. Bike/ped: 12 projects. This section got the most traffic. Mitchell Bridge in support or bridge/M-U path. Timothy Road responded strongly in the positive (as many as 114 for one project!). d. Next meeting May 19th. 12. Grants & Data Committee (1:25:00) a. Pursuing RRFB grant on Little Oak St. Focus on a neighborhood left out from projects in the past. There is already a social (informal) trail connecting neighborhood to trail. b. Next step is to write the grant. c. Jake created a template that is in the Google Drive folder. Daniel needs to know what we need from TPW/LS. d. Deadline is May 31st. e. Stephen can facilitate getting specific study data (pre and post). f. Daniel and Stephen and Alex will work on crossing evaluation worksheet. g. [Next meeting is on May 14th.] h. Daniel will send out info on Inglewood Planned Development. 13. Policy Committee (Lauren) (1:36:00) a. Has been working on Complete Streets. b. Next is identification of Tier 1 projects. c. Small sidewalks line item for next year’s budget; needs to be submitted by October for the following year’s budget 14. Education & Communications Committee (Teresa) (1:37:00) a. Open Streets meeting next week. b. Daniel and Mark were quoted in the Flagpole; AiMC got nice press, and not just Barber St. c. Teresa was in Atlanta Highway video. d. Daniel is trying to get broken link fixed. Lauren has Flagpole connections. 15. Other Matters (1:44:00) a. TSPLOST (Aaron): Rani presented on paving ($27M in TSPLOST). A lot of good paving is being done, but they are going to request additional funding. Aaron and Lauren pointed out these need to be special purpose projects – not just maintenance. TPW is getting less money because of lowering of gas tax. i. Great progress on Greenway trail. ii. This matters because it competes with bike/ped funding. iii. Hope for an infrastructure windfall to offset local dollars. b. Greenway Commission (Daniel): Greenway Network Plan update is in progress. The written report will focus on corridors rather than maps (which are updated separately every two years). Will focus on prioritization. Relevance to AiMC is identifying most useful “urban trails” for Greenway trail network. [Jake suggests giving Susie Haggard 10 minutes in an AiMC meeting.] c. The Commission discussed the continuing opposition to the Macon Highway launch from a small minority of local residents. 16. Meeting Adjourned at 6:02 pm.