Traffic and Transportation Committee

COMMITTEE ON TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION March 28, 2017 A meeting of the Committee on Traffic and Transportation was held this date beginning at 3:32 p.m., at James Island Recreation Complex, 1088 Quail Drive. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Seekings, Chair; Councilmembers Moody, Wagner, and Wilson, and Mayor Tecklenburg (arrived at 3:35) Staff: Robert Somerville, Interim Director of Traffic and Transportation, Janie Borden, Assistant Corporation Counsel, Rick Jerue, Senior Advisor to the Mayor, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Councilmember Wagner. APPROVAL OF MINUTES The minutes of the September 27, 2016 Committee on Traffic and Transportation meeting were deferred on the agenda. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the February 28, 2017 meeting. APPLICATION FOR ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE OF PUBLIC CONVENIENCE AND NECESSITY:  Gloria D. Johnson DBA Ms. Gloria Express Cab (Taxi)  GE & S LLC (Limo) On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the applications for Original Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. APPROVAL OF TRAFFIC CALMING SPEED HUMPS  Congress Street (Hampton Park Terrace Neighborhood) Chairman Seekings asked what district this was and Mr. Somerville stated that it was Councilmember Lewis’ district. They met the requirement and they had gotten the petition signed by about 89% of the residents on the street. This would be on Congress Street from Hagood Street to President Street. Councilmember Moody asked if it would just be the one speed hump. Mr. Somerville stated that he thought it would just be one. He had been discussing this with Chief Brack. One location would probably be enough. It was a state maintained road. Chairman Seekings asked if they had notified the property owner directly in front of the speed hump and Mr. Somerville stated that the actual location had not been determined yet, but they would notify the person when it was determined. Chairman Seekings said when that location was identified, particularly if they hadn’t signed the petition, they should let them know. Mr. Somerville stated that they normally tried to put the speed hump in front of where someone had signed the petition. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the Traffic Calming Speed Humps for Congress Street. Chairman Seekings asked where they were for the budget for speed bumps in 2017. Mr. Somerville stated that they were fine. They had only approved two streets thus far and they had been doing repairs. They had about $40,000 left in the account. Councilmember Moody said that the problem would be the repairs, because that would eat up the money if they weren’t careful. Mr. Somerville said that they were trying to be careful. Councilmember Moody said that he had been watching the speed humps and a lot of them were getting rough around the edges where you would go from the street to the hump. They were breaking up. REQUEST PUBLIC HEARING TO EXPAND CHARLESTOWNE NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL PARKING DISTRICT B TO INCLUDE THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF MURRAY BOULEVARD FROM KING STREET TO TRADD STREET Mr. Somerville said this was a request from the Charlestowne Neighborhood Association. The current boundaries of the district had the center line on Murray Boulevard from King Street down to Tradd Street. Mayor Tecklenburg arrived at 3:35 p.m. Mr. Somerville said that they were discussing item number 5. With the Battery Sea-Wall project, the neighborhood was requesting to extend it to cover the south side of Murray Boulevard. Chairman Seekings said that it would be for at least ten years and they were still waiting to see what would come up with the final design for the park. This would be an interim measure, and there wasn’t any plan to sign it; it was just to control the parking district. When the plan unfolded, the project would start east and go west. There had been small-scale design and they were all hoping that decisions would be made as to what the project would look like on the sea side and land side, and Murray Boulevard would fall in from there. Councilmember Moody said that they were just extending this on the other side of the street and asked if it would be 1 hour or 2 hour. Chairman Seekings said that they were not going to do anything with it right now. They would just include it in the district so that at some point in the future, there would be availability to put it that way if it was necessary. Councilmember Moody said that he knew that the issue was construction workers, and everyone else parking there and walking downtown. He said he was assuming that they were trying to save that for tourists or temporary people who would spend an hour on the Battery. Chairman Seekings said that short term it was to be able to do the construction. Long- term, they would have to see what the design looked like. If you count from the corner to the Coast Guard Station, there were 206 parking spaces, which were all unmarked and free. Principally, College of Charleston students were using the spaces. It was just putting it in the District. Only about 2/3’s of the streets were signed, but they were in there and have the ability to sign if they want to. Councilmember Moody asked how many were signed and Chairman Seekings said that he would guess 2/3’s. There were still some areas that weren’t signed. Councilmember Moody asked if there was any reason they would include them in a district other than sign them at some point and if there were any other purposes in signing them other than limiting parking. Chairman Seekings said that was the only reason. Mayor Tecklenburg asked what it would take after this action to add it to the district for signs to be put into place. Councilmember Moody asked if it would come back to this Committee to approve. Chairman Seekings said it would go to Mr. Somerville’s desk through the Charlestowne Neighborhood Association. Mayor Tecklenburg said that next month the Association could meet and decide they want to post a sign, all they would have to do would be to send a letter to Mr. Somerville and request it. Chairman Seekings said that they would have to get 50% of the signatures on that street. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he had been to some of the meetings they had done about this. When construction was going on, nobody would be able to park there whether it was in the district or not. He said he believed the recommendation would end up being that the parking was removed on Murray Boulevard on that side of the street. The long range was that this was fine. He questioned whether it made sense to do this prior to the construction. It would depend on what they wanted to do. Chairman Seekings said there would be nothing that would preclude from charging people if it was in the parking district. That was something they needed to look at. Councilmember Moody said that something that Mayor Tecklenburg had said was new to him. That was the expanding of the Battery. He saw $3 million for the lower Battery. He said something at the time about how $3 million didn’t seem like a lot of money. The answer was that it was $41 million. Mayor Tecklenburg said this was going to be a ton of money. Councilmember Moody asked at what point they got to look at that. Chairman Seekings said soon. Councilmember Moody said that what he was hearing was “there goes all the money from the hospitality tax for a long time. What about West Ashley and James Island?” They had plans there too, and he didn’t know about all of this. He would like to see the plans. Mayor Tecklenburg said that when he came on board this was already being talked about and how it would be a lot of money, like $45 or $50 million. Allen Davis, did a mini-study, and they wanted to study the traffic and parking flow, before they brought it to Council. He asked how far away they were from accomplishing that. Mr. Somerville said that they were still a distance away. They were working with Mr. Davis. Councilmember Moody said that he wasn’t saying this was a bad project, but asked if it should be funded through the hospitality tax or through something else. He asked if there were other ways to look at it. Mayor Tecklenburg said sure. Mark Wilbert and his department were going through a 6 month process of taking every recommendation from the sea-level rise strategy and ranking them. They would come to Council after that process, and tell them what should be prioritized. That would be late summer or early fall but they were meeting every other week and were making progress so far. This was related to sea-level rise and drainage. He believed that parking would go away because there seemed to be unanimous agreement that it makes more sense to raise the whole sidewalk up a couple of feet. They would be building a berm and it would be high Battery all around. Councilmember Wilson said that there was potential for vetting federal resources. She hadn’t heard anything about being pro-active and seeing what might be available. This was iconic and major enough that there ought to be resources that they could tap. Chairman Seekings said that was an excellent point and they would have to look at it. There was an engineering report that was 11 years old that said that the low battery was in failure mode. Councilmember Moody said he had heard pieces, but if it was to save a historic area they should go for it. Mayor Tecklenburg said that one thing that he and Mr. Somerville were discussing was requesting proposals from the engineering community of doing a parking study for the whole peninsula. They had talked about parking being a part of the regional COG traffic study but they didn’t want to go that far. It would be better if the City did their own study for parking, independent of the regional traffic study. They were going to try and accomplish that by the end of the year. He questioned whether they wanted to make that change prior to the study. Chairman Seekings said that this was single instance of a linear parking lot that was free in the City. There were 206 parking spots. They should look at putting it in the district, and then look at the options to put meters or 4-6 hours parking there. They had people parking there for weeks at a time, which had been problematic. This request was to do a public hearing. Mayor Tecklenburg asked if it were residential if they could charge in a meter or station. Chairman Seekings said that those parking spaces reflected about $500,000 loss of revenue every year. Councilmember Moody asked if they were trying to turn them over so tourists could use them or were trying to gather revenue. Chairman Seekings said it would be a combination of the two short-term and long term they would see where it would go. Councilmember Moody asked what they were trying to stop and if they were trying to keep the college students from free parking that was one thing, but if they were freeing it up for tourists then they could put signs up. Chairman Seekings said there was no request for it to be anything other than the district but they had talked about 4 hours. They would wean people off free parking for college students, and give access for tourists. It would make people look for other places to park, which they would have to do anyway. They would keep the Committee informed on what was going on. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilmember Wilson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the request for a public hearing to expand Charlestowne Neighborhood Residential Parking District B to include the southern boundary of Murray Boulevard from King Street to Tradd Street. DISCUSSION Councilmember Moody said that in the last meeting or the workshop, they had discussed the problems with the parking and the workers downtown. They had the DASH that ran around, and asked if there was property that they could build a parking area at and provide a restaurant/hotel shuttle. Mr. Somerville asked if he was talking about something like a park and ride. Councilmember Moody said yes and especially for the hospitality workers. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he had gotten a letter from Helen Hill and the CVB that she and CARTA were doing just that. There was privately owned land, but they owned 14 acres on Herbert Street that they weren’t using that they could temporarily use for free. Councilmember Moody asked if they would have to spend a lot of money to use it. Chairman Seekings said they would have to grade and sand it. Mayor Tecklenburg said that was something they would have to do if they were going to use the site anyway. It might be money worth spending sooner rather than later. Councilmember Moody didn’t know if this was under Traffic and Transportation but it seemed like somebody should start this. He was in a meeting and a contractor made a statement that he was in Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach in the last month staying at hotels. If it was 100 room hotel, only 60% of the rooms were rented because they didn’t have workers to come in and clean the rooms. He started thinking and it seemed like they had a problem and they needed to do something with the traffic. Chairman Seekings said that he was spot on. There were 40,000 workers in the hospitality industry in Charleston County. 65% touch the peninsula at some point in their work week. They needed to give them some relief and so CVB, CARTA, and the hospitality industry pulled together a small amount of resources to do a survey of the industry. That had been completed, but of the hospitality workers who worked on the peninsula, 83% drove there alone to work. The solution was to park and ride them. They were committed to that. It dovetailed with what the Mayor had been working on with hotels and the workers in hotels. They would have to locate where workers go centrally to be brought onto the peninsula. Councilmember Moody said that everyone had talked about how bad the traffic was and they could stop building, but they already had a huge problem they needed to work on. Councilmember Moody said that he had gone to meet with Steve Bedard about something and he said that he needed to get money to keep the Gaillard at $1 million. It was going up, and they needed to raise the parking rates. They needed to do something with the special events from $5 to $7. He thought that made sense. He wasn’t sure where to start that. Chairman Seekings said Revenue Collections and Mayor Tecklenburg. Mayor Tecklenburg said that they could ask Ms. Carducci to do an analysis. He thought that when they did the parking study, they needed to look at the policies of where the meter prices were versus the garage prices. It should be an incentive to park in the garage versus the street. They wanted people to park in the garage when they went to a performance. Councilmember Wilson said that they had just done that and that the garage and street parking were equitable. She said she just wanted a place to park. She wanted to know if they were closing the financial gap there. It had zapped a lot of money from the budget and she wanted to know how they were going to run the facility and make it work. Councilmember Wilson said that she was at the Coastguard Station and there was a sign that said 1 hour parking, but not 30 feet down it said 2 hour. Chairman Seekings said that was the transition. Mayor Tecklenburg said that he was at the Gaillard Center and they had bagged the meters in the surface parking lot reserved for the Gaillard and there was nobody parking in the lot. Councilmember Moody said that if you belonged to the foundation you would get tickets for the event. Having no further business, the Committee on Traffic and Transportation adjourned at 4:07 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary