Traffic and Transportation Committee

TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION October 22, 2018 A meeting of the Committee on Traffic and Transportation was held this date beginning at 5:15 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 Wagner, Councilwoman Jackson Staff: Keith Benjamin, Robert Somerville, Janie Borden, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary Also Present: Rick Reif, Katelyn Love, Richard Turner The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Councilmember Wagner. APPROVAL OF MINUTES On the motion of Councilwoman Jackson, seconded by Councilmember Wagner, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the August 21, 2018 meeting. Application for Original Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity:  Charleston Taxi, LLC (Taxi) On the motion of Councilwoman Jackson, seconded by Councilmember Wagner, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above Application for Original Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. Traffic Calming Speed Humps for Approval  Barfield Street, Daniel Island Mr. Somerville stated that this was the second request for Barfield Street. They had denied it in July based on the average speed recorded. The neighborhood requested them to do another study, indicating that they thought the study was a little skewed due to slow-speed vehicles such as golf carts. They did the second study and the average speed went up from 23.5 mph to 27.5 mph. The requirements said that that the 85th percentile could be at 20 mph to be qualified for speed humps. He thought it was about 410 vehicles recorded at 25 mph or under. 25 mph was the speed limit. Chairman Seekings asked where they were on the budget and Mr. Somerville stated that this was budgeted for when they had submitted it the last time, so they had money to do this. From there, it would be maintenance. Chairman Seekings said these came in order of a que, so they were not ranked. On the motion of Councilmember Wagner, seconded by Councilwoman Jackson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above Traffic Calming Speed Hump. Charleston County US 17 Corridor Study (Information Only) 1 Richard Turner stated that he had Rick Reif and Katelyn Love, from Ramey Kemp & Associates, Inc, who was the consultant for the study. Mr. Reif stated that as part of the sales tax program, the County had put this long-range plan for US 17. They were looking at existing congestion, as well as future congestion. They were looking at what the corridor could look like in 35 years, in 2050. Chairman Seekings asked what the eastern most boundary was on the Peninsula. Mr. Reif said that the hospital district was included. They were looking at short-term, low-cost projects, as well as long-term, high-cost improvements. One of the long-term improvements was the replacement of the bridges across the Ashley River. They understood there had been a number of projects going on, and they were trying to build off of those. The next step, engineering wise, was to get some of the projects completed. They were looking at four different categories. The first was travel demand management which included helping to enhance things like carpools, ride-sharing, and van-sharing. The second category was modal option which was seeing how they could get people out of their cars and into different forms of transit such as biking and walking. The third category was traffic operations, which were the low-cost projects in the study network. The fourth category was capacity improvements which included things like bridge replacements. They had done a lot of work that year and had several state-holder meetings. They had a public meeting in June and right now, they were developing improvement strategies in the four categories. They talked to the hospital district, the neighborhoods, emergency groups, public agencies, etc. The County was funding and leading this, but the City was a huge partner. At the public meeting, they had asked people what the most important area was to them. The highest area of concern was the Wesley Drive area, the intersections with Hwy 17 and 61. That was a big bottleneck area and would be one of their biggest focuses moving forward. Another big concern was the bike pathways across the bridges. They weren’t looking to redo the application for the bridges, but they were looking at how the connections worked on either side and what they could do to improve those in the future. The colors of the stickers matched the color schemes of the projects. Red stickers were vehicular traffic, blue was bike, black was bike/ped, and the yellow was mass transit. They were working with the BCDCOG on everything surrounding mass transit and the Bus Rapid Transit. They were looking at more than 60 intersections in the study area. They had a public meeting scheduled for the first quarter of 2019 to present the results of the study. Councilwoman Jackson asked what the end result of the study would be and if the jurisdictions had to adopt it. Mr. Reif said that they wanted to come up with a Master Plan that each entity could use to incrementally build to find a solution. Everyone would be a partner in the build-out. It wouldn’t necessarily be adopted by each jurisdiction, but it could be a guide to move forward. Mr. Turner stated that they had a Project Advisory Committee that was made up of the municipalities, traffic and transportation, and the planning department, BCDCOG, and Carta. The end result was to have a plan and recommendations for near-term and long-term. The long-term things allowed them to dream a little bit. Chairman Seekings asked if the idea was whenever they came up with the ideas and plans to put them into the line for funding. He asked where the money would be coming from. Mr. Turner said that with the short-term improvements, it could come from the half- cent sales tax. They would coordinate that with the City and the State, as to which projects would be priority. Chairman Seekings said that if they would be looking back to the City for prioritization, whatever projects they put into the US 17 corridor needed to be multi-modal. He would never vote for a single-modal project again. Mr. Turner said that was part of their charge, to show those opportunities. Mr. Benjamin said that a lot of their work wasn’t trying to create something new. It was using the existing planning processes that were going on to help inform or co-sign what the prioritization should be or what projects needed to be looked at. 2 Chairman Seekings said that this dovetailed with a lot of different projects such as, Rethink Folly Road, connecting the Greenway, etc. One of the most important things was getting across Folly Road safely and connecting the Greenway. He wasn’t sure how they would figure it out, but it couldn’t be at-grade. Mr. Turner said that it would become a funding issue in the long-term. Chairman Seekings said that Mayor Riley had looked at a walkway that went over and it was estimated around $17 million because utilities would need to be moved. Line Street Update Mr. Benjamin stated that they, post-April when they had the death and other injury to a wife and her husband on Septima Clark, began to work with SCDOT and the County to figure out how they could make some improvements. They sat down with Staff and the Line Street Corridor had come up. The City owned all of Line Street from Rutledge to King Street. A study was done years ago, and there had been approvals, but little to no action had been taken to make something happen even with just paint and signage. So, they connected with the Civic Design Center and started brainstorming what they could go ahead and make happen with markings, raised crosswalks, and signage to move forward on something that was approved years ago. They wouldn’t be taking away any parking. They went back to the board and presented to them. Last week, he had presented in front of the community and they were excited about this. They wanted to bring this as information to the Committee and hopefully proceed in making it happen either before the year was out, or by the top of the year. They had Rutledge and Line and the biggest concern there was the speed and the line of sight coming off of Line Street. There was a tree that was made very clear not to touch. There would be painted lines. There was a light at Coming Street that they were already upgrading and they had a co-sign for permissions from SCDOT. They had a few dollars left from the markings work and wanted to incorporate that. They were thinking about a raised crosswalk from the parking to the church area and the park space. St. Philip Street was a major corridor for bike/ped and the People Pedal Plan. They were not touching anything in terms of the Right-of-Way but were adding in markings. They were looking at two different forms of crosswalks there. That area and the community were also looking at decorated crosswalks. They now had design standards in place for that. The intersection at King Street and Line Street was one of the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in the City. There had been 8 incidents there in the last few years. A major project needed to happen there. They felt that they had an opportunity to move on something, instead of just sitting on it. Chairman Seekings asked if the work would be done by the City. Mr. Benjamin said that the only thing they would be paying for was that there were some dollars left over from the original study budget, and so they would be paying for Engineering to do the markings plan for them. Chairman Seekings said that they needed to do something with Line and King Streets, because it would only be getting busier. He asked when they would be doing this. Mr. Benjamin said they just wanted to present it. They had already gone to the neighborhoods and the Board. It had already been approved. Parking Study Update Mr. Benjamin said that most of them had been a part of the work the previous week with the drop-in and the public meeting for the Parking Study. They were doing a comprehensive look at all areas, not just the Peninsula. They were trying to make sure that the public was as engaged as possible. They had the survey piece and had almost 3,600 participants. There were very specific comments from peoples 3 living experience. The issue was that they weren’t maximizing the parking they had. They had a few stakeholder meetings where different key people in the community could bring their ideas to one-on- one meetings with the consultants. They had the drop-ins and the public meeting. The fourth aspect would be an expert roundtable, where the consultants would be bringing in representatives from other cities they had worked with to hear what was going on. They were looking at having representatives from Seattle, Columbus, Wilmington, and Asheville to come in and express their experiences in the beginning of November. From there, they would look at finishing up the recommendations and presenting to Council before the year was out. He wanted to emphasize how they were using their density of parking and what needed to change for the maximize that. Also, in terms of managing parking at the City level, so they could be effective in their recommendations. He thought there would be a number of recommendations that would challenge them, but would help them in a big way, especially in linking parking to the mobility goals. Those things were uniquely linked. Chairman Seekings said that one of the things that this study would not recommend was an increase in capacity for parking. So, they needed to manage what they had. SCDOT Pedestrian Enhancement Project Mr. Benjamin said that his office, along with the District 6 SCDOT office, and the County office had all been meeting on a regular, monthly basis to talk about projects, priorities, how they could work together and what ideas could come out of it. One of the ideas that had come from the District office was their maintenance dollars. They didn’t spend all of the dollars every year and in light of their concerns around the safety within the right-of-ways, they needed to look at how they were specifically addressing that. He gave credit to Josh Johnson, the District Engineer at SCDOT for bringing up the idea of the maintenance dollars being available to do some pedestrian enhancements around the City, or figure out how to incorporate those enhancements into potential projects coming up like the US17 work, or the 526 efforts. They had moved forward with that and his office would be doing signal plans for about 10-11 intersections for them to immediately move forward on, and then there was another list of intersections that would include pedestrian signaling, completions of crosswalks, ADA-compliant ramps. The intersections they were moving forward on now for pedestrian signals were Broad at Ashley, Broad at Rutledge, Calhoun at Rutledge, Huger at Rutledge, King at Romney, King at Huger, King at Sumter, Meeting at George, Meeting at Wolfe, and Rutledge at Beaufain. Projects that they were hoping to have completion of other things included in other projects outside of the peninsula was Carriage Lane at Ashley River, Playground at Ashley River, Savage and Tobias Gadson, Sycamore and Saint Andrews, 17 and Coburg, 17 and Markfield, and 17 and West Oak Forest. They were excited because it wasn’t at a cost to the City. They got reimbursed for their signal plans and so the execution of those projects would be done by the District office. It spoke to the collaboration between the City and the District Office. Having no further business, the Committee adjourned at 5:45 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary 4