Traffic and Transportation Committee

TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION April 24, 2018 A meeting of the Committee on Traffic and Transportation was held this date beginning at 2:33 p.m., at City Hall, 80 Broad Street, First Floor Conference Room. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Seekings, Chair; Councilmember Moody, Councilmember Wagner, Councilwoman Jackson, and Mayor Tecklenburg Staff: Keith Benjamin, Robert Somerville, Matt Compton, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary Chairman Seekings stated that someone who was usually there was not there that day. Robert Ballard had planned to be there and at some point in the previous night he had passed away. Mr. Ballard had encouraged them to do the best thing they could, to work hard for the community, which he had done every day of his life. Chairman Seekings stated that Mr. Ballard had been leading the charge in a way that only he could do. He wanted them to keep Mr. Ballard’s family in their thoughts. In the spirit of Mr. Ballard, they were all there to fight the good fight for the City. The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Chairman Seekings. APPROVAL OF MINUTES On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilwoman Jackson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the April 10, 2018 meeting. Traffic Calming Speed Humps for Approval  Gadsden Street – Harleston Village Neighborhood (Deferred) Glenn McConnell Multi-Use Path LPA Project Termination and Transfer Matt Compton stated that it was paperwork, the County was taking over what the City was going to accomplish with the grant. They were incorporating that into their scope of work for the Glenn McConnell widening. They didn’t want the LPA funding as part of their project, because it came with strings that they didn’t have to deal with otherwise, so they said they would take care of it all. This was the official process of turning the agreement back in, so they could then apply for it to go somewhere else. Chairman Seekings said that they might essentially have funds to go towards something else, because the County was taking over the connection project and Mr. Compton confirmed. Councilwoman Jackson said she was assuming that wouldn’t be a change to any of the scope. Mr. Compton said they would actually be doing more. The City was doing just enough, because that was what they could do with the grant, but the County’s intention was to do more than what the City would have done. Councilwoman Jackson asked if they knew what that looked like and Mr. Compton said no because it was early in the phase. The City’s focus was to provide a dedicated bike/pedestrian access over the railroad tracks. There currently wasn’t one and the only spot someone could legally cross the railroad tracks on foot was at Sanders Road, which was an unregulated crossing. Mayor Tecklenburg said that his recollection was that the City had already gotten approval from BCDCOG regarding the transfer, it wasn’t a potential transfer. Councilmember Moody said the City would turn the grant back in, and they would apply for it. Mr. Compton said that the BCDCOG was the one that allocated the funding. Mr. Benjamin said that in 2011 this was set up, about $498,000 specifically for the multi-use path. County was doing a $25 million widening project. The County agreed to do what the City intended to do, plus some, within their widening scope of work. They hadn’t seen design, but the City had a letter saying they would put that in their scope. In order to make a transfer of funds, the request of the BCDCOG was to identify an opportunity that was close to the area where the original grant was for, and have a project. They allowed the City to change the money over to Sanders Road and help in the completion of the sidewalk, as the library and school was going up. Hopefully, they would be able to do something major for the entirety of Sanders Road. Councilmember Moody said some of his concern was what kind of agreement they had and if turning it back in would cause it to slow down. He knew they had been working on this for awhile. Mr. Benjamin said that the City had to make a presentation to the Council of Governments and the Committee had to vote yes or no for them to be able to transfer the money. They had to do paperwork to say that the money was being transferred, and all that mattered now was how it got incorporated into all the development that was happening on Sanders Road. His understanding was that, because Sanders Road was on SCDOT’s resurfacing plan and the work that the school district wanted done, this would be a big help to fixing that entire road and the connection. Councilmember Wagner said that Sanders Road ran to Bees Ferry Road and it dead ended. It was a 2 lane road and not a very good one. As they were talking about building a new library and school, he asked why they weren’t talking about widening Sanders Road, as well. There was a lady that was trying to get the train whistle silenced as it went through that area and other people seemed to be having a problem with it. Mr. Benjamin said that his understanding was that the school district and the SCDOT were talking, because in order for the school to go there, they would have to upgrade the road, because buses couldn’t be accommodated. They were possibly going to widen it, and were definitely going to resurface and put sidewalks in. Mayor Tecklenburg asked if the number was $298,043.20 or $398,043.20 because the cover letter said one thing and the termination agreement said the other. Mr. Compton said that it was $398,043,20. Councilwoman Jackson asked where the school would be and the Committee pointed it out on the map. Mr. Benjamin stated that there was a pending apartment, the school and the library coming in on Sanders Road. Both of those projects were supposed to include sidewalk, but it wouldn’t come all the way to Bees Ferry Road, so the idea was that if they transferred the money to Sanders Road, they could make sure it was completed all the way to Bees Ferry Road. Chairman Seekings stated there wasn’t transfer of money, it was just the City foregoing the transfer to it sometime in the future and allowing that money to flow back through the County, but it wouldn’t foreclose the City in the future. Mr. Compton said that was correct. The match was already set aside for the Sanders Road project. The match was a little over $100,000 and it was set aside for the project. Councilwoman Jackson asked when another road of funding would be available and Mr. Benjamin said it was through the transportation alternatives. For South Carolina, it was every 3 years, so they had about another year before they announced the grant dollars. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilwoman Jackson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above item. Roadway Safety, Speeds and Streetscapes (Discussion) Councilwoman Jackson stated that in her newness of exploring complaints and ideas from her constituents, it seemed like the process stopped at the SCDOT and the regional level. Mr. Benjamin had educated her about how that had worked in the past, and how they were making progress. They had the Committee on Urban Design at the State level that they were participating in. The City had done a great job at putting the wheels in motion to be more pro-active, in a way that they could help the State appreciate the differentiation of an urban area compared to other jurisdictions. She didn’t know when or how their guidelines were updated, but she knew it had been frustrating, especially to the Re-think Folly Road individuals. Folly Road had as many fatalities as any other road in town and it seemed like the City tried to go through the process that was provided, working with the State, and the State told them the rules and that they couldn’t change them. If they, as a combined City and County, made their best case, they could help the State learn that it was a different place that they needed to be planning for, very much like growth management. She didn’t know how holistic they could make the progress, but at the very minimum, they could survey the Council to give the Committee the top 6 areas of concern that weren’t already on the list for improvements. On James Island, they had Harbor View Road, but there were some challenges there in safety. They had the Ellis Creek Fish Camp hairpin turn up to the bridge where people were speeding. They had the N Shore Drive that was supposed to be restricted to right turn only onto Harbor View Road, but people were still turning left. They couldn’t put a stop light in, but they should have a barricade to prevent people from turning left. A friend of hers was sitting at the intersection of Camp Road and Folly Road, where the crosswalk was going to be installed, and she was worried that it wouldn’t be wide enough. There was a person trying to cross that intersection in a wheelchair and he almost got hit three times by cars that were speeding to go on a right turn only. There were a lot of things that were endangering the citizens, and it would be helpful for people to know that they wanted to contribute to their own districts with collecting the safety ideas, and then put their heads together on how they could make one big appeal to the State. Councilmember Wagner asked if they were done with the widening on Harbor View Road and Councilwoman Jackson said they finished it, but now people were trying to break what was fixed, so they needed to go back and make things safer. Councilmember Moody said he had been frustrated about this for a long time. On Folly Blvd there was a left turn arrow that had a red and green arrow. His question was why they couldn’t have a flashing yellow light, because when the bridge was up there was no traffic and someone had to sit with a red arrow. That same thing was on Farmfield Avenue. In Avondale they had a flashing arrow, and sometimes the traffic was so bad there that they couldn’t use the flashing arrow. He didn’t know where they came up with the ideas. They had a drainage issue in Westwood close to the Methodist Church where he attended. There was a house that they owned back there that they wanted to use for storage, but every time it rained, it flooded. The City had a drainage project about 10 years ago and the Burns Down project included the parking lot of the church. They needed to run a drainage line from the church and tie it into the drainage system which was on the SCDOT Right-of-way and they wouldn’t let the City do that. He had called Robbie Robbins, the district commissioner, and he had Mr. Somerville draft some comments to send to Mr. Robbins. In talking with Eric Adams in the County, Mr. Adams had told him that his relationship was the same, it was always ‘no’. Mr. Adams had said that what worked better was, rather than send something to them, to contact them and talk with them beforehand so that when it was submitted they were already familiar with it. He was going to try that if there were other issues. They could get staff to draft something to go to the Engineers and see if they could get a better relationship. This had been a problem forever. Councilwoman Jackson said she agreed and had been learning from the staff. She thought they could continue to go case-by-case, but it occurred in collecting her things, that they would all have similar concerns. They had the Urban Design team now and they could make an effort to make it more holistic. They needed to make the State aware that they were in a new era of transportation planning. They could create a process to facilitate their individual problems, but not make them all seem like they were trying to get their own way. Chairman Seekings said he agreed and it was the great conundrum when they had a City with roads and they couldn’t control everything on the roads. It was no surprise when they saw the reports that Charleston County led the State in bike/pedestrian injuries and fatalities. They needed to make sure to keep that on the forefront. Director’s Update Mr. Benjamin stated that he tried to give them knowledge on how dire the concern was about safety overall. The State DOT was focused on systems and the City’s focus was how they could move people. They would consistently have issues like this if safety wasn’t a concern. He would be in Columbia on the 25th, and there had been some great things that had come out of Columbia that had not been transferred to the District Offices. When they received requests, they went to the District Office to have a meeting and talk through what they wanted to see. Their ‘bible’ was the 2009 Engineering Manual and if things didn’t align with that, then it wasn’t going to be allowed. When they have seen a ‘yes’, it was because they had done their due diligence in sending things to Columbia to get the request for them to call out the district office. It didn’t make sense that for a crosswalk or a signal change that they had to go to headquarters to request it. To get crosswalks in the Crosstown and no turn on red signs required a letter from the Secretary, and he didn’t think that should be the case. He was trying not to walk into situations thinking it was an ‘evil empire’. He was thinking about how they could work together. They were trying to get consistent times to meet, instead of just when a crisis hit, to give context to what things should look like. Their first time connecting would be on May 11th, and they were hoping it would be the beginning of having a different relationship. There was a disconnect between the mantras coming from Columbia and what was being translated at the District level. There needed to be a re-connection. They were getting mandates from the district office that weren’t necessarily policies, but practices that they had decided to do that weren’t congruent from what they were hearing from Columbia. That was problematic, because that was who had to sign off on what they were doing. Councilmember Moody said there wasn’t anyone to blame. It was the way the process was working. He was thinking about sidewalks, for example, and the County had CTC money. The City requested money from that to do sidewalks, and last time they asked for a certain number of sidewalks and only got a couple of them. Instead of just sending 20 projects, if they were more strategic in the planning and put more information with the request, as well as saying they had money, it might be easier. A lot of other communities were putting money with their request and giving more data. Mr. Benjamin said they needed to have a serious conversation about what the City’s place was in the conversation regarding transportation. It would put them in a better position for existing money if they did come to the table with matching money. They currently didn’t do that, but they had the system in place that they could be leveraging to do that. Councilmember Moody said that rather than just making a request, the City needed to see what they were looking for and check the boxes. Councilwoman Jackson said she agreed and sometimes better things were coming out of Columbia and weren’t just being translated here. It should be the opposite. The City should be the learning lab for the State. They had an opportunity to put their heads together to come up with framework for strategizing how they could best work with the State. Councilmember Wagner said they had a housing project near the Angel Oak and there were sidewalks in front of that property. He couldn’t find anyone to fix that sidewalk. One of the streets was a County road and the other was a State road. He asked how they could get it fixed when it was the City’s housing project, but the roads were the County’s and the State’s. He had talked to people on the County side and was running out of options. Some of the sidewalks were broken and patients couldn’t get across. It was frustrating. Chairman Seekings said it was a lot of government involved and they needed to work on that. Mr. Benjamin stated that Council would be given a proclamation. May was National Bike Month and there would be people from the Awakening Conference there. On King Street, there were decorated crosswalks. He had just gotten the numbers from the Park and Ride and in the last week they had 808 riders. They were excited about how that was coming along. Their staff was trying to put flyers out for that so it would continue to grow. On that Thursday, from 12-5, the consultants from the parking study would be in town. They were having meetings with City staff to talk through what had been going on. They would then be taken on a tour of the City, because part of their scope was what parking would look like in the future. They would be doing data aggregation while they were in the City. With the City- wide Transportation Plan, on May 16th, he would be bringing it to the Planning Commission to update them. They thought it would be a good idea to tell them what was going on and then it would be brought back to the Committee level and hopefully to Council for approval. Stantec and their Staff had finished the report for signal re-timing and so they would be at the next T&T meeting to give a full report and recommendations. The original scope was for West Ashley and East Bay Street, but they had some money left over, so they added the re-timing of the Crosstown and the Medical District. Councilmember Moody asked who was paying for the 14 crosswalks and Mr. Benjamin said that they were. The only thing the City had done was the white lines and upgrading the signs. They went through the process to get approved to paint. Councilmember Moody said that they had talked in West Ashley about the creative crosswalks on the Greenway and the Bikeway. Mr. Benjamin said that they were bringing some dollars to the table, and since it was already a raised crosswalk, the City didn’t have any plans to put dollars in. The intersection they asked about was Farmfield Avenue. There was already a raised crosswalk there and they were asking if it can be a decorated crosswalk and they wanted to duplicate it in other locations. Councilmember Moody said a lot of the crosswalks were 90 degrees or at an angle and that made it hard to negotiate with a bicycle. When someone went through it, they had to turn [pretty quick on their bike and there was going to be some effort to re-align them, but he didn’t know what that was about or who was going to pay for that. That may involve taking down a raised are. Mr. Somerville said he thought they were going to try to get in touch with Mr. Compton to review the path and see if it could be realigned with the crosswalk. Councilmember Moody said that there were shorter bars that they could fold down. Mr. Somerville said it could be laid down. CWS and the Parks Department had keys for them. Mayor Tecklenburg stated that he wanted to share some of his frustrations, as well. At the next meeting, there would be a number of requests from the Public Safety Committee, because some of the development projects were being held hostage, to get the certificate of occupancy, by the DOT. They no longer accepted the City’s lighting if it was in their right-of-way. The City had agreements with developers to put sidewalks in and plant street trees, and now the DOT is saying they won’t sign off on the construction because there was a street tree in there and they didn’t accept that anymore. If the City wanted to get a Certificate of Occupancy, it had to agree to accept the maintenance responsibilities for lights, trees, and the sidewalks. They had gotten to a point where they were at a crossroads, and a dramatic shift needed to occur. DOT needed to come to an agreement that they would give some local authority about safety and building in the right-of-ways, or the City would have to make a hard decision on whether they wanted to be in the street and sidewalk business. It reminded him of HUD, in the way they were trying to pull away from providing housing. The impression he got was that the DOT was trying to get out of the road business and the responsibilities it came with. Different rules ought to apply, because in an urban area, they didn’t always have 1300 feet between stoplights. It would play out in the next year or so in discussion they needed to have. Councilmember Moody said it was maybe something the Municipal Association could help with. Chairman Seekings said they all wanted to help in any way they could. All of them had many examples of this. Mr. Benjamin said that he wanted to make sure they directed their frustrations. He believed that the SCDOT headquarters in Columbia needed to be holding the district offices accountable to what Columbia was putting out. The headquarters pushed them to the district offices to get the answers and that was where the problem was. The answer couldn’t just be ‘take over the roads’ when they had a higher pedestrian death count than cities that were ten times their size. That wouldn’t work. Councilmember Moody said that it seemed like that there seemed to be a mindset in other districts of ‘let’s see how to make this happen’ as opposed to ‘no’. There was something going on that had been happening for a long time. Chairman Seekings said it would have to be a shift in the way they thought. They needed to approach every conversation with the fact that there was a public safety element to all of it. They had tried to get a stop sign at Bennett Street and the DOT said that the accident report didn’t support it. They were waiting for something to happen before they implemented a strategy to stop bad things from happening. That was the wrong way to do things. They needed to get the SCDOT to think about public safety. Having no further business, the Committee adjourned at 3:27 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary