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 December 11, 2019 Traffic Commission Minutes Voting Members Present: William Blosser, Chip Wamsley, Matt Cross, Frances Brownfield, Dave Harshbarger, Sam Zizzi Non-Voting Members Present: J. Andrew Gatlin, Sgt. Bill Runyan Members Absent: Erica Bowe, Martin Dombrowski MATTER OF BUSINESS: Chairman Matt Cross called the meeting to order at 6:30p.m. and held roll call. PUBLIC COMMENTS: MEETING MINUTES September Minutes approved with Correction to the spelling of Dave Harshbarger’s name. COMMITTEE REPORTS: Bicycle Board Chip Wamsley - I think our next big point of business will be addressing re upping our bicycle friendly status, which should be probably considerably easier because of the Alta study they've quantified a lot of things that we have done and what we plan to do so we actually have them do all the legwork for telling us how many miles of this trailer that type of trail we have so that's good. Right now, we are at Bronze level for the city. And we did fairly well on last application. And so I think with some of the progress we've made and actually having things down on the streets and some things in place as far as infrastructure, you know, we might be able to up it to Silver this time so we'd be happy to do that. Pedestrian Board Matt Cross - just a couple of things I would like to mention our thanks to the robotics club for the county that came out and presented at meeting two months ago about technology to detect pedestrians by vehicles, it's really great to see the sun crest middle school students who were involved, applying their attention observations and intelligence to this issue. I've been trying to get into the public school system for a long time and it's difficult in this current society, but I greatly appreciate any chance to reach the youth and their participation in our transportation system, if we could get started on these people earlier at a younger age, I think that would really help our communities to understand our Community Systems. So, we had a meeting this past Monday. One of our members of the board is pursuing getting in touch with our representatives on the state level to focus on attention for funding for our complete streets program, which was passed statewide in 2013 and woefully it's been neglected, but that would greatly help our abilities to provide more money and infrastructure for pedestrians and bicycles, so I'd like to remind everyone your vote counts, depending on who you're sending an office and what you want to have done. So, thanks to Bill Regernash day he's been a stalwart on the Ped Board for many years. Lastly, I will say that on the way home from that meeting, it was dark and rainy, I did see both RFB’s, that is Rapid Flashing Beacons being activated at Falling Run and at Evansdale Drive on University Avenue so it looks to me like students are warming up to them and utilizing them as they should. And so we've been trying to get an education campaign out on their usage to provide safety and education continues, and thank you to the engineering department, and others who were helpful in the funding for this RFP, particularly in these cold winter months when it gets dark earlier. So good to see those functioning efficiently, matter of fact it looks like in my rearview mirror I saw the one beacon being activated on the other side of the street. That one was in question about malfunctioning. So, seems to me it's functioning correctly now. So that's all I've got for the Ped Board. Any questions? Traffic Calming Committee Matt Cross: I did email Martin to see if he had any feedback about the intersection at Elmhurst Laurel and Parkview. He did not get back to me. I did, however, speak with a former chairman’s Chris Gluck, who lives on Laurel, and Roy Nutter, who lives on Elmhurst, and they say it's functioning as planned. There is more traffic on Laurel Street now, and the speed humps keep them at a decent speed, less traffic on Elmhurst, which Mr. Nutter was happy about Mr. Gluck up just said it was efficient, he wasn't too happy about more cars on Laurel. But that is the design of the, the stop signs change, and which it should be because it's a major corridor. So, thank you to those former I Traffic Commission chairman's they live right in that neighborhood they are feeling the immediate results of that change. Thank you to engineering for properly adjusting that I have not heard any negative feedback. We heard any negative feedback. Good. So, if I could just ask instead of departmental reports, is there any intention to follow up on traffic counts on that just to see about the impacts of it or is it even necessary? Drew Gatlin: Yes, as I, as was part of the agreement. You all requested that the Department of Engineering monitor that change and report back after things have leveled out when you make a change to anything in the transportation industry, it takes a while for people to get used to it. So you don't take immediate behavior after the change as indicative of what will be behavior six months down the line, but you do monitor it say there's a bunch of crashes right after a change and you got to do something a little bit different. I haven't heard of the crashes yet. I have seen a lot of near misses, as a people getting used to the new stop sign, and the lack of an old one, a lot of people, slowing unnecessarily, where there used to be a stop sign, but there is no longer. We are tabulating and actually gathering data based on one to two hour counts of observation behavior compliance with the new stop sign and, and then unnecessary stopping behaviors, where the old one was. We will be presenting that again after things even out. Right now, we're looking at a similar compliance rate with what was before about 20% compliance, noncompliance rate with the stop sign. So, there are interesting high-profile individuals in our community that refused to obey the new stop sign on Elmhurst. And I would love to just rake somebody over the coals right now, but I probably shouldn't do that. But yeah, so it's interesting. Some people don't like to obey the new stuff, but most people are. And that number appears to be improving over time. In general, you know as we remove unnecessary stop signs, again, the idea, and put them where they're supposed to be right, based on the characteristics of an intersection, we should expect more compliance with stop signs overall in the whole city. Right now, unnecessary stop signs and stop signs that violate basic transportation engineering principles. Breed noncompliance. And actually, in certain instances will increase speed because people are stopping unnecessarily. And so, they're speeding in between stops times right. So, this is all part of an overarching campaign to bring our intersections up to compliance with the MUTCD. DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS: Drew Gatlin: I am open to taking questions if you all would like to hear about outstanding projects. At this point I did hear some requests to talk about other items that were outstanding projects including our response to, or where we are with the Forest Avenue traffic calming slash school zone and then also a recent complaint that we have received, and a tentative traffic calming study that we have going on Linnehurst Street. There's not a whole lot to report, we have not gathered data yet on Linnehurst, other than observational data, it is pretty clear that there is a speeding issue for people coming out of the school. This body installed stop signs to control speeding, a few years ago, probably, 2009 or so, as we've been over many times stop signs are specifically not to be used as speed control devices. So, we're really looking at things that we have done before. Interestingly on Linnehurst Street, Linnehurst was supposed to be a temporary access point for the Trinity Christian school and was never intended to serve as the permanent entrance into that school. Yeah, we are looking into our options, they were supposed to build a new road that connected on the backside of the school to Dug Hill. That never happened. I'm not sure why. Probably property acquisition issues or. I've also remembered of geo technical difficulties. We are looking at opening a dialogue with the school to see if there is an option to remove their continuously growing traffic from the neighborhood, or to provide some different access point. So, you all may have been aware that there's a pedestrian killed on Listravia recently within the past month or so. That was not by somebody that was speeding. But there is a lot of pedestrian traffic over there and that neighborhood. A lot of people that don't necessarily have access to cars. So, anybody speeding through that neighborhood is presenting a pretty serious risk to the residents of the neighborhood. Forest Avenue, as I mentioned, I think in October. We have developed a design for the parking lot, which we, the engineering department and the city see is as much a concern or a threat to safety there as the protection of speeding traffic, which our counts did not verify the average speed of traffic on that road is about 15 miles an hour, which is where it should be. Right now, the posted speed limit is 25 miles an hour on that road, which is probably not where it should be. But there are certain people that go is as much as 29-30 miles an hour on that road, which is way too fast, but it's a very small number of people. And it typically doesn't happen when you have kids walking back and forth. So, to us, we review the crash data, and three accidents the three accident have occurred on Forest Avenue over the past 10 years have all been related to that parking lot. And people entering and exiting that parking lot. There's also a lack of a continuous sidewalk, because of two parking lots that are associated with that church, the parking lot itself does not have a single space that meets our criteria for what is a parking space, they're all significantly too short and too narrow. They have received our new design proposal for the parking lot which consolidates the entrance and exit to a single 20 foot wide driveway and provides a dedicated pedestrian path in front of where cars now currently pull into the parking lot and it removes unfortunately about eight spaces from their lot, most of which I would say are unusable because they're a lot typically is never full. And so, to us, it's a very logical suggestion we have not heard from the council of elders of the church as to whether or not they will engage us with that I that design or not. Theoretically, it would reduce their number of spaces they'd be able to lease out, and they depend on that for revenue. It would be a much better product for their customers, and also for the community. Our part of bringing better accommodations to that parking lot would be the addition of the speed table, which has a crosswalk on the top of it. So, this is a, what's known as a raised crosswalk. It gives you a little bit of the benefit of a speed hump, a little bit of benefit of, you know, highly conspicuous crosswalk. Right now, our city code does not recognize that daycare as a school, despite there being 80 some odd students that go there. So, this commission and city council could work together to redefine what a school is, if we would like to attempt to make a school zone in places like that just because of the presence of that which would allow us to then set a speed limit of 15 miles an hour, theoretically we could also set a speed limit of 15 miles an hour. We will have to do it recursively or iteratively, I believe, five miles an hour at a time, or we have to go through some different process. But that is an option. So right now, I think the upgrades to the parking lot would be the best step forward for Forest Avenue. That's, you know my judgment and it's shared by my department. If we can't get that. Then we'll continue to look at other things. But there is not a significant issue with speeding there as far as we can tell. Discussion ensued. Drew Gatlin: The other thing that I would like to report to you all, which is pretty exciting is. The DOH has agreed to an experimental treatment for a crossing at Laurel across Patteson. So, this is where Krepps park is, the entrance to Krepps park is. The Alta team that was doing the bicycle and pedestrian safety plan update came up with a pedestrian refuge island at that intersection that T intersection, noting that it is used constantly by pedestrians to cross Patteson, and this was supposed to be a pop up project where we would install temporary cones or flexible bollards things that would be able to be removed. I think the DOH has agreed to move forward with more permanent if not completely permanent infrastructure to just go ahead and establish that project. WVU would be expected to provide a connection. On the other side of that up to the CAC or to the Evansdale campus. But, that's pretty exciting. That's another thing to report real lot of outstanding projects, continuing to work on crash data we've talked a lot about crash data. And we'll have some good stuff in the New Year. Discussion ensued. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Matt Cross: Just the one that I would mention is too late in the year but I came up to me the other day before you were here we developed a plan for dividing the two lanes a left turn lane and a right turn lane. Coming up 8th Street on to University Avenue with a pedestrian crosswalk but at this point I think it's too late for thermoplastic. Drew Gatlin: We are looking at the intersection. It is a problem. Drew Gatlin: More recent projects that you all have engaged us with would be the two-hour parking on Green Street. That was initially intended to be business parking, but we're not allowed to provide business parking on a public right of way. That's public parking on the public right of way. So, we just went ahead and made three spaces. Not delineated but enough room for three standard parking spaces at 18 feet long apiece. took away the blue curb parking there. And just in the past few days installed a sign saying to our parking from you to curb that curb, that sounds a little bit ambiguous, the curb. Is the curve with arch will try to clear that up? Depending. But so that took a while took about six months to do that. I'm sorry, but we are working in our process internally. Discussion ensued. A similar project, no parking on Overdale, there is an issue that was raised a complaint that people were creating an informal parking area on the side of Overdale, one of the local landlords, Tim Guminy had noted that people have been parking there and blocking safe access into Overdale because of the presence of blue car parking on the other side of the street. That also took us a long time, but we finally painted that curb, well, the edge of pavement yellow. NEW BUSINESS Sidewalk parking/stopping education campaign Drew Gatlin: So, my goal here is to present to you all a problem. That is a little bit more, that's black and white on some levels, but it's also an examination of existing policy, and whether or not we are appropriately enforcing that policy, and if there's anything that we should or perhaps could do to help support that policy and enforcement of that policy from an educational standpoint. I'd like to remind the Traffic Commission and other folks that the Traffic Commission, part of your duties is specifically to help in educating the community on traffic related issues. Other parts of your duties are helping to coordinate traffic and transportation related actions of the city, but because you're a citizen volunteer board and not an official set of officials that's together, likely a larger share of your responsibility should be focused on helping to educate the public, at least according to the model traffic ordinance and the Uniform Vehicle Code. So, yeah, I'm not going to read this. If anybody watching would like to find this document this sort of memo to traffic commission, it will be released on the website with the documents, supporting documents for this meeting, but basically received a lot of complaints recently about people parking on sidewalks, and I took it upon myself to whenever I was moving through the city. Going to some meeting or checking on something. Just keep my eyes out and start to look for, for things like this so if our videographers could put, what's up on the computer on the screens I'd like to turn your attention to the screens. Matt Cross: So, as we seen over the years, particularly for the longtime residents. We all have developed habits and traits in the city that don't necessarily comply with our laws and regulations, so this is one of them. This is pretty important. Some of us may even do it, know people who do it and I think it's time that we get a little bit of handle on this and as the staff engineer said try to educate the public about. It's inappropriate to park on the sidewalk it's in state code right here. And if somebody's going to do it you think about why you're doing it to make it easier on yourself, you got to realize it's making it very difficult when on other people particularly who might be wheelchair bound, putting them in danger of having a walk on the street. So, as we do this, I imagine they're going to be a lot of folks who think it's creating a hardship for them. So, we can also look at ways methods to try to ease that hardship, that's what they consider with maybe some loading zones or what have you. It's all up for discussion. But it is a big problem in town, I'm sure you've all seen it And Drew is going to give us some direct pictures here, some of the effects around town. Drew Gatlin: It's not just sidewalks that we're talking about here it is generally improper locations of motor vehicles in our system. We've got, of course bike lanes to this is on Richwood Avenue people blocking bike lanes. Pleasant Street. This is a serious issue. Some businesses have consistent violations of this at least it's right next to some businesses, this is sorry call these people now but this is a 10202 you'll have a US food truck out here for an hour or two at a time, on a regular basis at least once a week, blocking the sidewalk completely. This is clearly not a big truck so it's not completely blocking the sidewalk but imagine being a wheelchair user trying to get through there. Discussion ensued. High St & Foundry Street intersection Matt Cross: So as I'm sure a lot of you were particularly Frances you will see a walker that comes from the first ward area that intersection of the Foundry Street the bottom of High Street where the new post office has been relocated horrible sightlines there in fact I just walked down a before the meeting and scouted it out. Almost saw two accidents, almost got hit by a car and while I was in the crosswalk up on Kirk Street. It's just amazing to me how intense that area of street is I don't spend a lot of time down there but I'm glad this have been brought up to our attention as we know it's a DOH jurisdiction on High Street so as we're looking at it here now we have a visual of it so those of you at home probably know this intersection as well. So, Drew you want to give us a little oversight on the problems? Drew Gatlin: So, this commission has addressed this intersection, a lot in the past. You will see in your packets, I believe, yes, December 2009. A Stop sign was suggested to be installed to move into section three or four way stop ending on who's writing a memo. This intersection is fully owned by the DOH they own High Street here and they own the bridge. We have to request that somebody that has jurisdiction, greater than us address this issue. This is a classic example of a type of problem that gets brought up a lot in the Traffic Commission with roadways that are not under our control. And that we have no direct influence over. When we deal with issues like this on a frequent basis. The research shows that citizen boards like this become burnout and people feel disempowered, right. So, I bring this particular intersection up tentatively and hesitantly because I don't want to burn you all out, because I can't promise you anything will be done to this intersection, despite the fact that it is regularly, one of the most dangerous in terms of crash count intersections in the entire community. The greatest number of bicyclists and pedestrians have been hit at this intersection, it certainly has a high rate of usage by bicycles and pedestrians. But I would say that other intersections have higher usage of bicycles and pedestrians and have nowhere near this amount of accidents right also really overrepresented in the vehicular accident category. And it has been that way since before the Justice Center, so these issues are both old and new exacerbated by certain issues right. This particular complaint that came recently was the fact was pointing out the fact that, lots of folk’s park in the no parking area, showed you some images of people doing that. And it's the claim was at the Morgantown Police Department has done this, we have established the Morgantown Police Department used to park here on a monthly basis and then they were told not to, and they no longer typically park there. So that's good. We have, you know, more influence over own folks that we do other people. The sheriff's department and state police do park in this, no parking area. And then I've seen ambulances waiting there I've seen Morgantown Printing and Binding you all saw that image there as well, and other folks just parking here because they see other people do it again this sort of broken windows effect. I don't know if you'll trust my engineering judgment or my engineering judgment says that you should definitely not be parking there, and that it decreases safety for the intersection inherently when people parked there. As I further described in this email. The best practice would actually eliminate all parking there. Because of the speed at which people are traveling down High Street, after they get out of the congestion of downtown and go across the bridge to see this really nice wide lanes of the DOH has provided to them that are wide enough to find that you could find on a freeway. They tend to go a little bit faster than the speed limit which is 25. But even if it was 25 miles an hour, best practices is 288 feet. William Blosser: Years ago, we petitioned the DOH to signalize that intersection. What happened to that? Drew Gatlin: I don't know I have not heard of the signalize request, but I did hear the four way stop request. DOH never responded. Discussion ensued. Matt Cross: One thing off the top of my head, I'll mention while I've got the floor here is this no parking zone that is currently being used for drop offs I think I'd walked down there once and saw some handcuffed prisoners being escorted into the building is that they use for that. And they pull out there because it's close. Sargent Runyan: Yes, at times. Matt Cross: At times, so what I was going to mention during the striped zone is no parking. If you do want to force it what about flex poles that keep people out of there. Drew Gatlin: As I mentioned in Pittsburgh flex poles are not always respected but would likely deter. Dave H.: a quick question for clarification please, so can the city change parking spaces on High Street? Is that within the jurisdiction of the city? Drew Gatlin: I do not know. I don't think so, Dave H: because that would be an obvious quick solution to the two or three spots closest to the hash marks to create police or Sheriff parking only. Drew Gatlin: We may be able to. I mean, we do, I believe, control the meters there. So, we do have enforcement powers over the meters on High Street and over the operations on High Street. so perhaps we could change their use for moving meters and just have that be the loading zone or remove a couple of meters. Dave H: I think if we did that and put the flex stops in the hash, I mean that's going to least create a much safer line of vision in that intersection. Drew Gatlin: So, it would be interesting if we had better crash data we could dive into some of these crashes where you kind of see the geometry of them and how they worked and how many were dealing with sightline issues from the bridge versus these from this. The bridge to me you have a, you have at least a chance of seeing people and you can kind of inch forward into the, into the crosswalk and block the crosswalk. But you really can't do anything about cars parked here, particularly because people want to fly on down, downtown, think about speed versus slowing down the bridge. To me, if we suggested something that was within our power. Right. We recognize previous attempts to engage the DOH in discussion, basically said you need to do XYZ right we can't do anything else right but perhaps that we do have the power to, you know, increase enforcement in this no parking area, maybe we could put up a sign that says no parking or stopping at any time. Just to reiterate, by anybody. Maybe you know they would see that as a good faith effort for us to put forth some energy into helping to improve the reality here and then we could make other requests in which they could put their own effort into it. So, we also have a formal body which we are probably supposed to go through right it's called the MPO, and the MPO helps the interface, our community needs with the state's resources, right and the federal resources. So perhaps we should engage the MPO issues like this, we can, you know, use the traffic commission to take the finger of the pulse on neighborhoods, and what the citizens of Morgantown want right or think would be a good idea. We can compile that into a memo, as Traffic Commission, or perhaps to the, to the City Council's to see if council would support the issue and then send that directly to the MPO rather than sending it into the black hole which appears to be the DOH. Dave H: I would propose that if it's if we're just looking at a line of vision issue and we want to correct a few parking spots and really enforce the no parking and the no parking area that that's a city issue that that could be done through this body and council, but if we wanted to change that intersection that you go through the MPO the state and that channel. Discussion ensued. Dave H: If its within our jurisdiction as a city I would propose the first two spots if two are needed. Immediately beyond the no Park hash marks, and then a stronger enforcement of those no Park hash marks towards the intersection of concerned. Sam Zizzi seconded. Matt Cross: Could I maybe do some different wording? Instead of loading zone I mean is that going to include any inventory drop offs, Morgantown Printing and Binding? Dave H: Law Enforcement loading zone, emergency responder. Sargent Runyan: I was thinking it was tried before. I can't remember. I can't remember what the details were of. I know we believe he tried to get more designated parking for law enforcement. We were told no, but I can't remember the details. Dave H: Well if it's state controlled in and out of our jurisdiction, but if it's city I'm sure we could pass that and make that change. Drew Gatlin: Can you restate your reword? Matt Cross: I want it to be specified for law enforcement, as opposed to just an open loading zone for retailers and delivery. Dave H: And I agree, that should be added to my recommendation. Drew Gatlin: Is there any reason why you chose two instead of one? Dave H: I would base that on the people using the no parking areas suggestion, is it that there are normally two people needing to park, two vehicles at a time or is it just one, or by having the two would that just be safe and say that that's going to keep people out of the no parking area? Drew Gatlin: What about the bollards flexible bollards if we can do that for the no parking you're stopping at any time? You all think that would be useful if possible? Matt Cross: Actually, I do like the flex bollards to just to keep people out of there. If those spaces are occupied by law enforcement and ambulance needs to go in there, they can go over the flex poles. They'll have a space to point immediately right in front. Chip W: So, I use the post office downtown lot, and I used to come down to Sheetz and come up to this intersection, which is horrible. So, I modified my own behavior so now I come up at Pleasant Street and come down. If that was one way, going from this intersection down to Sheetz, there'll be no one sitting at that intersection. That's the primarily disadvantage personally if you're coming down the bridge, you can see everything if you're coming down from the top of high street you can see everything if you're coming out of Little Caesars, you have a little bit of a problem seeing the cars coming around the corner of the bridge, but that's not nearly as bad as if you're the person on Foundry. So, if you made that one way or if everyone just modify their behavior like I did. And now I don't have to fool with all of the sitting there waiting trying to see what I'm, you know, if I got a clear space I'm coming down I can see everything I can turn into the post office, and come back out and go straight on down Foundry to Sheetz and back down Beechurst. Matt Cross: We are talking about making it one-way from High Street to? Chip W: from High Street down, because then you're eliminating, the people that are having the problem are the people that are coming up to that intersection. Anyone else can see, well, it's not a problem. Drew Gatlin: So that would be interesting as well because right now there is two-way traffic on Kirk Street. Right. Which is the next block. And that's how you access High Street. And there's been issues with people coming down Kirk Street people getting into accidents where you're taking your right from High Street onto Kirk, and then also the all the requests we get for a four way stop at Kirk and Chestnut is people coming down you can't see that. We make Kirk Street into a one way and, you know, going to High Street and then Foundry into a one way just for that one block section. William Blosser: I just don't think that making Kirk Street into a one-way is going to solve any problems. If you did that, then you just have to make everything around the courthouse, one way. Drew Gatlin: Why would you have to make Chestnut one-way? And why would you have to make High Street one-way? Right now, I mean the proposal on the table would be to, you could enter into downtown from Foundry by taking a left onto Chestnut and then turning… William Blosser: The problem is taking a left onto High Street from Foundry. Drew Gatlin: Yes, so you'll be eliminating that you would take a left on to Chestnut and take a right up to Kirk where you then just likely go straight to the intersection. William Blosser: Then you would have to signalize Kirk Street. Okay. If you can’t get a signal or signalization at Foundry Street, they are certainly not going to give you one for Kirk. Then you would have to Signalize Kirk and Chestnut to because you’re going to have all that traffic there. Matt Cross: That is a fair point because there's a heck of a lot of traffic at that Kirk intersection it's actually hard to cross as a pedestrian during these high-volume times. Drew Gatlin: I really don't know it's the volumes would justify a signal. William Blosser: Well, people who are trying to get off of University Avenue, up to the city, just haven't started discovering Kirk yet, they use Foundry, but if you push traffic off Foundry you are going to push it up to Kirk. Drew Gatlin: You would still use Foundry and you would come over and then only use Kirk for a short section of it. Frances Brownfield: Even if this, even if this didn't come to fruition. We still could, that would be another case for DOH to see how we've been trying to work around this problem and doing everything we can try to do before saying, you know, hey, we need help here. Drew Gatlin: You could get a formal engineering the study by an external company and hey would study the volumes, etc. and draw it all nice up in MicroStation or AutoCAD. Sam Zizzi: Can I motion for that? Drew Gatlin: I don’t know if we have the resources to do that but, we can try. Sam Zizzi: What do we need a motion for? Dave H: We still have my motion on the table with a second, that we were discussing that morphed into this. And I'm supporting this in terms of looking into it but if we want to do something quick. This motion would be a quick option if we have jurisdiction. Matt Cross: So, that motion as it is, was put out by Mr. Hershberger seconded by William, I chose a change of editing, to say it specifically for law enforcement. Drew Gatlin: Can you please restate the motion for the record? Dave H: If within the city's jurisdiction to take the first two or all based on law enforcement recommendation to make the curbed metered spaces on High up to the no-parking zone law enforcement loading and unloading, and to install flexible bollards along the no-parking zone. Motion passed unanimously. Drew Gatlin: Is there any other motion on the table for us to consider the one-way proposal that Chip described. Chip W.: So yeah, I move that we get a, maybe a third party engineering firm to, possibly city engineer first, to look at the feasibility of making a one way system around the courthouse with Foundry not exiting on to High Street to eliminate the site problems near that intersection. William Blosser: Might we be just a little bit premature with putting that into motion at this time? Should we take another look at this question? Matt Cross: I had considered that although it's only a recommendation to do study on it. William Blosser: the shareholders of the county we might want to get their input on this before we make a motion for it. Matt Cross: That's a fair point as one of the planning commissioners fair point taken. William Blosser: Surely, you know, just went down there and started asking them about traffic flow. So, around their buildings, they will be able to give you a good idea what problems they have. Chip W.: And that can be part of the initial investigation with city engineer to check with them, to see what the, what their requirements are, how they think this might impact them how they from their viewpoint is that I mean they're living with a day to day we drive by it occasionally, those people that are in that building are there all the time. Matt Cross: So, in I don't see anything too constricting with that you know approaching them first saying hey we have an idea for a change. What do you think, before the study is undertaken? And at that point, if they have recommendations observations requirements that would nullify the idea. Then, not much time wasted. Is that what we're thinking. So, does that need to be part of the wording with a recommendation to actually approach. County Courthouse employees to get some of their input about this before, we engage a traffic study? William Blosser: we can do that just say the to initiate the first step of having the city engineer. Look at the possibilities of this one-way system and engage the stakeholders. Number one, the county since it's going around their property for input. So that way, just like we do anything. We always try to come up, we talked to the city engineer, he looks to see what the situation is, he comes up with a plan, and then contacts the stakeholders to see what the plan options sold and what the plan options are different. Therefore, changing something out in Laurel street or whatever be come up with a plan that works within the confines of what engineering can do, and what applies to MUCD and all the other things that are employed place and then talk to the stakeholder. Francis Brownfield seconded the motion. Motion passed unanimously. Neighborhood traffic calming program formalization Drew Gatlin: My suggestion is that I didn't share with you the amazing document that you all have already sort of, this commission has already kind of developed. Which is traffic calming guidelines in December 2017 and as definitions and theories and public involvement plans, etc. Okay, so you have heard of this document was produced by the Traffic Commission. Okay, on the Traffic Commission website, this is not posted. There’re some slides that formed this. But this is a separate thing, so nobody hear is familiar. There's no institutional knowledge of this. So, we need to get back on the same page. And so, I encourage you all to join the traffic common committee, and to meet at some point, and they call me. And we're going to figure this out, we need to pass this or something like this, that would enable you all to more efficiently, gather input from the neighborhoods and prioritize requests from your own neighborhoods and help the city to calm its traffic according to its desires and needs, because right now it's just whack a mole, and not, it's not very efficient and it's not very equitable and we don't really have theories of why we do certain things why we don't do other things. We need to kind of get on the same page we need to; I think having a policy. If you all can agree to force the Traffic Calming Committee to meet and talk about this and give you all a suggestion or do you can join it to make a movement. Discussion ensued. Sam Zizzi: So, you're looking for guidelines around a policy that we would look at the criteria to rate the priority around the type of road the speed limit amount of vehicular traffic pedestrian usage, etc. to prioritize what we want to target first. Drew Gatlin: That would be one part of this policy. Another part potentially of this policy would be the types of traffic calming solutions that we would use this option. Right. Another part of this policy would be. And this practice would be how we conduct an outreach to the communities, right, or to your neighborhoods. Right. Another part of this policy may be digital things that exists that helped to explain to people what traffic calming is right so that we can help to spread literacy and other part of the traffic conditions. You know, express purpose to help spread literacy and transportation issues around the community. I know this is a lot, but you all need to do this all the, all the successful communities do this. They have a clear policy in place, and clear prioritization lines they have clear cut offs for when you're allowed to request, and how many people you need to have on your side. In order to request. Discussion ensued. Matt Cross: So, cover questions I have just for our consideration as a travel commission this would look like more work from the traffic calming committee, do we want to dedicate more time to this as citizen volunteers, just pointing that out, one of the items I read from the links that you put out there from Charlotte North Carolina how they pursue this agenda is neighborhood associations generally go around and they are the ones that notify the neighbors in the immediate impact area of any changes that might be coming in I don't see neighborhood associations here having that much capability in that respect or desire to do the notification or this one thing I saw on all of them. So, I just put those points out there do we want to spend more time on this says traffic commissioners to go ahead and to get more involved with the traffic calming process with notification education and if so, you know, when I think about how we want to do that, as it is now we've got three vacant seats and awards we don't even have full representation from the community so we should definitely work on that. I mean I'd be willing to spend some time on it. I'm highly vested in traffic calming so if we can figure out a way to do it. Discussion ensued. COMMISSION COMMENTS Dave H: The only comment I have is that on January 13, I believe the MPO will be doing a working session, reviewing artists plan to start to help prioritize the, all the recommendations that have been made. it will be at the mon county commission chambers at 6pm. Chip W.: I think I brought this up earlier but I think I talked with Drew about the great number of people blocking intersections and again I think it's a learned behavior and you get one or two people doing it. And the main places, down at features and pleasant street pleasant and spruce Street. There's only so much stalking that's designed into that whole system. And that's when everything goes awry so I don't know if we can do something to do more enforcement in some of those areas. There sign saying there's fines for walking they're sexually. It's funny when you got a person that totally two cars are totally blocking Pleasant St and no one coming across the bridge can go across. You know, you're blocking also University or Beechurst or some people can't go into South University You know everyone just sitting there. So, I think maybe some enforcement, you know, might spur on maybe redirect some of that learned behavior from the bad scofflaw drivers and encourage the good drivers to obey the law. Matt Cross: So, to wrap it up just a couple of things. Congratulations to the Motown police department so you've got the child safety Ward again from the American Automobile Association. So, we know that police departments and the staff there they do what they can to keep our family safe in the neighborhood and we can all do what we can to learn the laws respect the laws look out for each other, particularly when it comes to peds and bikes. So, let's just continue to do what we can. In that respect. I would like to thank our videographer and crew; I know that Xavier has been with us for a while and he is planning to graduate. A couple of weeks so greatly appreciate yourself. Good luck to us. And Janelle as well as been helping us out, so appreciate all of their efforts, I have gone back and look at some of these archived meetings online to get some points and verify what has been said and I think they do excellent work with camera angles, capturing what happens here is important work so take the copy some good things in 2019. Looking forward to 2020 some new formats coming along and sounds like we need to sort of step up our input if we can. Let's try to get these three seats filled for words 3, 4, and 5 is where the word. And I thank you all for your representative community motion. Adjournment: No Adjournment made.