Traffic Commission

The City of Morgantown 389 Spruce Street Morgantown, West Virginia 26505 (304) 284-7412 Fax: (304) 284-7409 www.morgantownwv.gov Traffic Commission October 2, 2019 Traffic Commission Minutes Voting Members Present: Erica Bowe, Martin Dombrowski, William Blosser, Chip Wamsley, Matt Cross, Frances Brownfield, Dave Harshbarger, Sam Zizzi Non-Voting Members Present: J. Andrew Gatlin, Sgt. Bill Runyan Members Absent: MATTER OF BUSINESS: Chairman Matt Cross called the meeting to order at 6:30p.m. and held roll call. PUBLIC COMMENTS: None MEETING MINUTES William Blosser moved to approve the July minutes. Erica Bowe seconded. Motion passed unanimously. COMMITTEE REPORTS: No reports for the Bicycle Board. Matt Cross: We will be having our final steering committee meeting for the Alta Design and planning group coming up here they will formulate all our recommendations. This has been about a year in the making. And that will be I believe October 17 on a Thursday that will be the steering committee meeting the previous day Wednesday, October 16 will be a public input session at Marilla Park from 6pm to 8pm. Discussion ensued. The other thing from the Ped Board is we went ahead and discussed the Lead Pedestrian Interval at our meeting last month. And we unanimously voted to approve this plan going to the City Engineering. Regarding the five controlled intersections, lights at intersections, within our jurisdiction in the City of Morgantown and give them at their prerogative if they want to implement any of the LPI’s. Discussion ensued. DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS: Drew Gatlin: So, I see well last month. I'm going to require printed reports for anybody to speak in terms of departments or whatever. And, committees. At this point, I am not holding fast so that clearly. It's important to hear from the best friend and safety and bike boards, but we need to move towards written stuff so that we can keep track. I also am going to be hoping to get this to you sooner than immediately right before the meeting. This is not a draft of a department reports. We're going to have some statistics; I'd like to hear at some other point maybe we're email from your regarding what's type of statistics that you'd like to see on this report. I'm planning to tabulate every single request that we get through request partner. And, you know, through the month before putting it up here. Martin Dombrowski we'll talk about a little bit later but in 2017, I think you release effort to sort of formalize this major spreadsheet. I will emulate that in this future meeting that we're going to set up soon crash reports, hopefully, we'll continue to do this, perhaps Sargent Runyan and I will discuss about who will be taking this over I need to get some training basically. Before I jump back into it, it's very difficult to work with that database. The current closures and imminent travel impact’s I thought that would be a reasonable thing to alert you all to right so this month. I don't know if you're aware of its White Avenue been shut down since about January, it continues to be shut down We're very sorry. We anticipate issuing a request for qualifications to get a design so that we can then bid out that design and get it built. Hopefully that RFQ will get out soon. We've had unforeseen delays issuing that I know that frustration is mounting. We are sorry. Public Works supposedly began repairing his slip-on Deckers Creek Rail Trail yesterday, I have not been down there to check that is also something that has sat unaddressed for a while. We experimented with a certain type of wall design recently that we had success with, and we are using there. So that's a cool thing it's cheap and we can do it in house. Instead of again you know sort of issuing these requests for qualifications and all this stuff so that's cool. That should be done no longer than three weeks. We are not closing the trail down for any appreciable amount of time but there could be intermittent closures of the trail over the three weeks. So, we urge anybody that uses the trail for commuting to just be flexible. And if you are coming from Sabraton or going to Sabraton, you can bypass that section of rail trail by using the Pedestrian Bridge, and then going up Decker Avenue and then East Brockway through a Marilla Park and hopping back on the rail trail near the Greer building that whole section isn't impacted by this closure but that is the most straightforward detour and for bikes and peds. Anybody else that uses the rail trail. Okay, so this is a, an abbreviated list of current projects, 2019 paving projects were supposed to be finished on September 30 and is not finished we are currently in negotiations trying not to sue our contractor for twenty thousand dollars of liquidated damages I don't think anybody wants that to be the case. But, yes, we are attempting to finish. It's 99% complete. And we're just doing tiny little things clean up, making sure that the quality of work is where we want it to be. And it is not quite there yet. So, public works is almost done installing crosswalks, I don't know exactly where they are at this point with those. The Laurel, Parkview, and Elmhurst intersection we had to pull back from that a little bit we received major pushback as the date approached, and we realized we did not involve our communications team, as soon as we needed to. And we also just did not do a good enough job alerting the public. So I've got a neighborhood association meeting Suncrest Neighborhood Association meeting got a lot of input, input there, and we were already planning to put some additional pedestrian signs around there with the change we've considered doing the sort of low impact rumble strips were basically we're going to change the intersection. Right now, install some center lines and study it as we said very carefully for how it affects the intersection and if we need to do anything different. We will continue adding stuff or changing as we need. We will report back as we as we change the intersection. Drew Gatlin: The price prospect intersection, that you all approved in July. We went back and forth with WVU for a while they needed to send it through their bureaucracy, they have agreed to remove that spot or have us remove that spot we've agreed to move, remove the spot we haven't contacted Metro properties yet to see if they are willing to remove that spot but we haven't scheduled this work yet. Drew Gatlin: Ross and Grand traffic calming study. Still doing that. We explored the center line, we're still planning to install the center line after you left the traffic commission decided to go ahead and install a center line, and perhaps edge lines that would create a parking lane to sort of visually narrow the roadway along that stretch. Clearly, we haven't done that yet. There might not be enough room to put a parking lane there. It's tight, yeah and so I thought I mean there's a couple spots where it's just like a half of a foot too narrow and the cross section of the roadway. And so, I don't know we're just kind of slowing that down a little bit, not traffic yet but slow in our process down so anyway sorry again. Forest Avenue traffic calming This is a storied project, I went out there and did a traffic study. I know that you all have radar it out there. We found zero evidence of excessive speeding on Forest Avenue. We recognize the that there are major stakeholders there including a very popularly used daycare center and Early Childhood Education Center, that would like to see something done. Coincidentally enough, the Presbyterian church itself just recently submitted a permit to seal their parking lot and repaint their parking lines and they suggested, or in their permit that they were wanting to modify their parking layout to widen their parking spaces to bring them closer to code. We saw this as a as an opportunity to work with them to maybe reconfigure the parking lot to provide a formalized pedestrian infrastructure. This is a good example of a non-conforming parking lot, with very limited control on how vehicles enter and exit. Into it. Typically we want to have driveway entrances, no wider than 22 feet at the property line This helps to sort of control where traffic goes and gives people a predictable idea where cars are going to be entering and exiting and it in some ways helps to improve pedestrian reality there, right. Maybe this parking lot, contributes to slowing down traffic because you don't know when people are going to be entering and exiting and there's like tiny children running in between cars onto the street. So, I don't know but we're working with them to maybe push back those spaces a little bit. Provide a formalized pedestrian path in front of those cars. We're thinking right now to formalize a crosswalk into that parking lot, because that is where most of the drop off pickup happens for that day care, and a lot of pedestrian traffic is crossing there. And we think that sort of more visible pedestrian infrastructure might help to slow cars down even further. Most cars were traveling under 20 miles an hour a lot traveling 16 miles. There are no speed limit markings on that street as far as I can tell. So, I think it's just a perception of going fast and just type in 25 miles an hour when you've got cars, pulling in and out and kids around that's too fast. So, there is four vehicles that were speeding that we observed over a one-hour period, versus know about hundred others that were passing there. Discussion ensued. Drew Gatlin: Okay so future projects that might yeah there's lots of other projects, one that you have coming soon. Richwood and Darst in Sabraton you endorsed Yeah, supposedly the poles that we wanted to put the signs on maybe structurally deficient and so we, and there's not really good place to put a sign posts, where we need to put one, and so I didn't realize that that's why it's been slowed down. So, that is unfortunate. Mr. Zizzi this is essentially a very old project that has been approved by the traffic commission for a long time, numerous times to install, no right on red at Darst, Richwood, I think, Richwood, turning down the hill on Darst and also Darst turning up the hill on Richwood. For those movements. So, those are very old traffic signals and the anyway we're trying to figure out what to do with that. Drew Gatlin: Okay, so the vault project. I may have mentioned this here, we have vaults sidewalks in front of here. So, given that you all come to City Hall and your transportation users here, pedestrians probably when you're walking into City Hall. We are going to have major construction projects and massive holes in the front of City Hall, starting very soon. So that'll be interesting. That project is likely going to require some modifications to Spruce Street for a couple months I don't know if the DOH will allow us to do that. Discussion ensued. Matt Cross: What is the status of the Beverly Avenue Project? Drew Gatlin: It is not completed. This is a Sunny Side improvement projects I think it is part of the TIF the tax improvements fund district over there. It's slow it's long, and it should be done. I think before snow flies, but they are in the middle of it. Because we have no written reports from the DOH and the MPO. I'm going to skip that. Discussion ensued. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Leading Pedestrian Intervals – Matt Cross: Does anyone else have any other questions coming forth from our last meeting? Dave H: Would a pilot be the next step as opposed to multiple intersections? So, would we be considering maybe the best intersection that we would want to pilot? Drew Gatlin: I don't know if it's appropriate for me to seek a specific movement from you or a motion from you, but if I was to seek something specific it would be something like your explicit support of this as a crash reduction technology that is affordable, and that in general should be considered for every appropriate intersection. Just by default. I mean, of course, I think, given that we've never done it in fact, nobody in the entire state of West Virginia has ever done it, whatever we did would be a pilot, just by definition, and we would be scrutinized internally as well as I think the Federal Highway Administration or local office has taken a keen interest in the fact that we've expressed interest in this, and the DOH as well. I'm excited about the prospect of beating them to this technology. Dave H: Sorry, do we have, do we have outcomes that we want to measure for baseline to post implementation. Drew Gatlin: Yeah, we are exploring those outcomes or those performance measures. We don't have a comprehensive crash analysis program in the city in Morgantown. So, if we wanted to do safety outcomes right, then we would need to sort of build that initial infrastructure first right in order to just have a good hold on how to measure that. I'm currently working with an undergraduate research group at WVU who's interested in this technology and interested in studying Oakland and University in particular. And, you know, I've thrown out to them and their literature review process to come up with some suggestions of things that we should study, and they are interested in going out and doing some behavioral analysis, that's interesting. Discussion ensued. It all of the guidance says that these things to me are mean you need to be careful with them, particularly with your turning movements, you need to be really, you know, really considering right turn, restrictions, right turn on red restrictions, at least one pedestrians are present. But other than that, they are a pretty straightforward intervention that costs almost nothing and that has not really been shown to have any negative impact, and even yeah even on the capacity I mean as you're suggesting that there could even be improved capacity. Generally, you know you think about, well, this is a minimal impact on capacity, negative impact on capacity. Discussion ensued. Matt Cross: Speaking about the sign that says, “no right turn on red” I wonder if we should just make that sign no turn on red, because there are in the city intersections which we don't control there are left turns on red. So, would it just be more universal to say no turn on red when pedestrians are present, instead of no right turn on red? Even though it probably wouldn't apply on those intersections but just to make it universal. Discussion ensued. The other question I had again is I'm still thinking about the activation process. Will the LPI come up automatically every single time, I will be activated by the push button for the pedestrians? Drew Gatlin: All these things would be decided for each specific intersection and would be presented to this commission before they were installed. I have not designed the intersection yet. I'm not sure but it might require an ordinance change, but yeah, we're kind of exploring that with the legal department. Frances Brownfield: Would it be possible that when you decide to. I mean, are you rolling them out, all at the same time, or doing, would there be a different timeline for each intersection where you're going to implement. Drew Gatlin: Again, I would come to you with a proposal. Frances Brownfield: Okay, I just was wondering if it would be possible for us to while it's being tested for us to know when the testing occurs so that we could observe, because I'm having a little trouble conceptualizing this whole thing. Discussion ensued. Dave H: So are you suggesting a motion at this point. Drew Gatlin: I don't know if I'm allowed. Dave H: I move that we as a commission support the pilot of an LPI at a proposed intersection to study to effectiveness. Sam Zizzi: I suggest we amend it to say all that have been identified, all four. Matt Cross: Yeah, to try to get you there is free information controls by well, Drew Gatlin: so, I removed Darst and Richwood, because I don't know. William Blosser: Is this still a pilot program? Erica Bowe: I don’t think it was ever proposed as a pilot program. William Blosser: It's just going to be implemented, Erica Bowe: right after he tells us this is what I mean. William Blosser: I think go ahead and propose the motion to proceed. And then on a case by case basis, bring in the intersections. So, you may bring all five at one time, as you see fit, or one at a time, as the opportunity arises. I don't think we should limit it to just the four that are proposed. Matt Cross: Drew did specify where appropriate, you know to be used, which is a lot of the places. For instance, Laurel and Elmhurst, we don't have sidewalks. It’s hard to put in infrastructure to integrate. So, those are considerations. Drew Gatlin: I identified the all the, the intersections, that are even remotely feasible to install this on right now, they happen to all be high pedestrian corridor. We may take over ownership of some of the roads at some point again. William Blosser: So, the motion is put forward to approve? Drew Gatlin: Would you restate? Dave H.: The traffic commission supports the adoption of LPI’s at our owned intersections the four intersections you've mentioned as appropriate to move forward. Sam Zizzi: seconded the motion. William Blosser: Why don't we change the four that have been proposed to something that is open ended. Drew Gatlin: So, I had suggested earlier, You, indicating your support for the city, adopting the LPI as a default treatment for any appropriate intersect in our jurisdiction. William Blosser: I like that. Okay, so I second that motion. Matt Cross: The motion has been seconded already by Mr. Zizzi. Sam Zizzi: I take it back. Matt Cross: There was a rewrite on that. Sam Zizzi.: Well however you want to take it. Drew Gatlin: Do you? Because we're editing your initial motion. Dave H: We can rework my motion to that, that's fine. William Blosser: Then I’ll second it. Matt Cross: Any other questions discussions on the edit of this as we go forward. Motion passed unanimously. Matt Cross: I think this is a really good step forward and again this does have gravity to it because it's going to take a really strong educational push to get across the walkers, you know, how they need to utilize the traffic control systems and drivers as well. You know we've had crashes we've had injuries we've had death. So, we do not take this lightly anything we can do to make our transportation system safer as Drew said nationally this does have data to support that it does reduce crashes, provide better pedestrian safety so thank you all for that down through the procedures now. And we want anybody to be safe. And we want to be able to justify our decisions which I think we have, and any recommendation to change an intersection will come back to this commission in time. And we can have further discussion about the specific details of a specific area. So, thank you for that. Moving on to the new business now talk about the workshop to get more efficient for our show anything we can do to make this easy for him and affected the citizens of the community is really good at thanks to Jay Redmond, years ago he stated the city councilor from the sixth ward. He put in a lot of effort to put together the spreadsheet so forth, which I don't understand I'm not too much of a computer. But Martin is also been very forthcoming as well. So, let's go ahead and open that up. Do you want to introduce it? NEW BUSINESS Workshop Planning Drew Gatlin: Sure, so I passed out and not distributed over email, As Mr. Dombrowski asked me to, I will send it after this meeting to you all electronically and the spreadsheet itself. This document was produced as you can see an August of 2017 or last updated in August 2017 builds on previous documents and previous procedures. I would like to have ideally, you know, an in-person workshop with you all where we're not worried so much about Robert's Rules of orders and all this stuff, and we can really hash out some of the details here. We can also do over email or virtually. Yeah, I think it would be it'd be good thing. I also want to move beyond this and actually talk to you all about how we're going to evaluate stop signs internally, and speed humps internally and traffic calming in general, and what the criteria are going to be for us to seriously consider anything. This document deals with some of that, but not as explicitly as I would like, I want to make it very clear. I, you know, right now I'm looking for perhaps we could schedule a date and a time to do it, or we could I guess another doodle poll to you, anybody not wanting to schedule. Prefer doodle poll over email, or do you want to do right now. Alright, so we'll do that over to doodle, or some other sort of anything. Discussion ensued. I might try to hire a formal facilitator for this meeting, so that we can get a bunch of stuff done and not be dominated by each other who tend to talk more like myself. I want to have, you know, hopefully prepared some recommendations for how I think we should do things internally right; a stop sign for example, you know should be considered. If brought by the citizens should be supported by a certain number of households in the neighborhood or on the streets that are adjoining, you know, if, if not, something right. And similarly, any traffic calming devices I think probably should be considered not just on a street basis but on sort of a neighborhood basis because of all the cut through traffic right. This is not rocket science and overall, I've dealt with a lot of this, but we have not formalized these procedures. So, I would like to formalize them. And, hopefully go over our current forms and our current website that we have and control trying to improve that because right now there's, it's very obtuse even just finding citizen request tracker, for most people is a difficult task. Discussion ensued. Okay, so I don't have a formal agenda to propose to you right now. Does anybody have things they would like to see on the agenda that I have not mentioned so far. Discussion ensued. COMMISSION COMMENTS Erica Bowe: Welcome our new member, thank you. I wish we had some more representation from the other wards, I don't know how to get out that information about the vacancies any better, but maybe if you all could talk to your networks if you know other people in the city it'd be great to have these seats filled with people who are like minded. I'm like a happy clam now the College Avenue is paved so I really have nothing to complain about now. It seems like the culmination of my reason for being on the traffic commission in the first place has been fulfilled. So, they just they just painted the lines, it's great. I also noticed they added some crosswalks throughout them across College and on University several more were installed, one at Over Hill which I was surprised about, I don't think people are used to that one yet. But I'm just glad to see the crosswalks getting installed after all the paving and stuff from the summer. Martin Dombrowski: Thank you Dr. Zizzi for joining us as well. And, Councilman it means a lot to have that representation on our board. Drew outstanding job on the, on the documentation thank you for bringing this all to, to this group. Thanks period your or your, your AV people for allowing us to pump the map up I think that, yeah this is great. No, it's like a broken record but it's still like to see representation WVU come to the table as well as DOH, and it’s not fair to put you on the hot seat to answer. I love this departmental report; the idea, I like your format looks good looking forward to the group discussion on the workflow. Dave H: I had a question from a constituent about, I think all of us probably share similar frustration with the truck traffic coming in around seven through town in question was the weight limits on the bridge coming from route seven across Pleasant Street Bridge. And when there are loaded trucks on that, like Has it ever been estimated what the weight load on that bridge is when you've got a couple trucks loaded in both directions and it's backed up traffic coming into town, like how close are we to pushing the weight limit? And does that limit change with moving traffic versus stop traffic so for example is it more dangerous if they're crawling across the bridge or if they're 30 miles an hour or if they're stopped. Discussion ensued. Concern to be directed to DOH at 304-842-1500 Frances: Thank you for the efficiency of this meeting tonight, everybody. I just had I started to mention once before, I have a concern about pedestrians on sidewalks when there are people on bicycles, who are using sidewalks. Oftentimes, you don't know someone's approaching. And, you know, just one turn to the left or someone looking at their phone not paying attention, and these are not my prejudice, these are not cyclists, who, who use the bike lanes and have helmets on these are these are people who are just casually riding their bikes on sidewalks and somebody could get hurt. And that's all I have. Sam Zizzi: Yeah, thanks for welcome it's nice to feel welcome dear happy to be here, learning. I just assume that it functions efficiently and organized. This is my first meeting, so I have no idea. So, this is very useful for me. Of course, I was just wondering if there was any data back from the box that was on grand there was some a little bit of collected there in the 400 block, even when I'm outside. Yeah, the buggy. Sargent Runyan: We did go out there and radar several times, me included. I didn't see a speeding issue. I was there. One of the guys did stop a car for 38 I believe he cited the vehicle. We went over several times. I think it’s a narrow road and it seems faster, not just because its narrow but just the hill seems faster than what they're really going to me. Sam Zizzi: I mean there is to be no reason it couldn't be 15 in a pedestrian area the best practices 15 miles an hour so neighborhoods should be 15. So, 25 City, fine. Personally, 15 would be what I'd prefer to see in a neighborhood that prioritizes pedestrian so I know it's not that now but something we ought to at least consider South Park, Suncrest, all the major neighborhoods where we're trying to make it pedestrian oriented. I want to get a little clarification from Drew about the. What I miss maybe when I left the meeting last time was the idea of a center line or, you mentioned like a parking lane. I think on Grand, so could you talk just a little bit more about that. Drew Gatlin: Sure, so we do not have the minutes from the meeting, so I don't know exactly what the motion was haven't reviewed the video yet. But I think the motion was basically do something now do something fast that something being a center line, this is a thought internally that we had about your section of grand before you raise the concern. Okay. Right now, it's just a very wide lane there’s no pavement markings, and the idea with the center line is that it sorts of visually narrows the travel lane. And then, you know, further if you put, you know, edge lines, even just right on a curve a white edge line where there's not parking and then a parking lane line, next to where the apparent parking lane is that would further narrow the roadway. Sam Zizzi: Could the methods be combined where like at the top there where it turns off of Ross as a center line but there's very little parking, there’s no parking there. So, could you have a center line where there is no parking. And then could you have parking lines when there is parking it was sort of get around yet, you don't have to have both room for. You know what I mean so like it would filter you sort of flow you, because that was the idea of chicanes or alternate side parking, that would create a bit more of a flow and individually you would feel like oh I got to have my car over there because there's the center line and oh wait a second here comes the parking. So, it could create a same sort of effect. Drew Gatlin: Yeah, we likely are not going to install any type of chicane ever on Grand that is way too much of a, you know, almost an artery for the city, you know, it's not really a neighborhood Street. Despite what you might think. So, but yes, we are very interested in slowing the traffic down, and very interested in attempting to visually narrow the lane so the drivers will be more in compliance, you know, to us, 33 is a problem. 30 is a problem. You know, particularly when it's like most of the drivers traveling 30 miles an hour. Although I didn't run the radar guns out there and I also did not see a lot of people speeding. A couple people you know 25,26, 27 here and there but 25, you know, again, might be too fast for the conditions, and it is a heavily residential area with a lot of pedestrians. And so, lowering the speed limit I think is a very reasonable approach. Sam Zizzi: There are a lot of neighborhoods around the country that 15 with pedestrians, where their kids are present and obviously having other pedestrian markings crosswalks every single intersection. So, we can do a lot better, you know, in terms of those neighborhoods. Matt Cross: So just a quick couple of quick points. Yes. For instance, we had this discussion on the sidewalk this summer, thank you for that. I totally agree, there are some folks riding bicycles on sidewalks. And it's bad, somebody could get seriously hurt. As it is the city sidewalk code 913 bicycles on sidewalks in central city which I believe is Chestnut to Spruce, Willey to Pleasant Street. If you want to get on there and look specifically sorry, I don't have it I thought I did but there is a restriction in the central city for bicycles on sidewalks which is interesting. At the Suncrest neighborhood association, it was good to have a representative from the WVU running team they apparently run a course which is in a loop over there in that Suncrest neighborhood which is about a mile loop. So, the stop signs which will be affecting the running loop, so I just bring this up to see the consequences of our decisions and it's a good thing. And so just some thoughts. We want pedestrians on the road we want runners on the road we want our neighborhoods to be safe as you said, we need to get the drivers under control. recommendation for you if you're not aware of this, you probably are. And I always say to people driving in a city street put your car in second gear if you have it, particularly if you are going downhill. So that's something you could say to other people in the neighborhood if you see them. A good way to keep the speed down. And last thing I have is I did see in the paper that the Appalachian CBD store that we talked about is in somewhat of distress that we eliminated their parking so these decisions that we take upon the Traffic Commission, they do have gravity, particularly when it's something like that. As I saw in a detailed report from city engineering. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic. The sidewalk is right on the parking lot so I thought was justified to eliminate that parking that was my primary concern which was my primary concern was pedestrian safety, although at the same time, we do not want to create hardship for businesses. So, we'd like to continue to be an open system, continue to think about possible remedies for their dilemma Now regarding pedestrian safety and business parking for that area. Adjournment: Erica motioned to adjourn. Sam seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously.