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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006 04-18 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meetina April 18, 2006 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 5:30 P.M. on Tuesday, April 18, 2006 by President Councilman Shaun Wardle. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Shaun Wardle, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. Staff Present: Bill Nary, Steve Siddoway, Bruce Freckleton, Clint Dolsby, Kenny Bowers and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X Shaun Wardle X Charlie Rountree X X Joe Borton X Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we adopt the agenda as published. Borton: Second. Wardle: It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as published. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Access Management and 20-26 Corridor Study Update with Phil Demosthenes: Wardle: I apologize for that, Steve, if you could help me out with that pronunciation that would be great. Siddoway: Thank you Mr. President. It is Phil Demosthenes and to make a quick introduction, he with Parametrics and comes to us from - is it Denver? He is an national expert in access management and travels all over the country and he can tell you a little bit more about his credentials, but he has made presentations in the past to the COMPASS Board and to Artack. It is an issue that continues to come up for us on our Council agendas as we implement the Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18. 2006 Page 2 of 26 new ordinance for access management along state highways and we have asked him to come tonight and to take advantage of the fact that he is in town for another consulting project and invited him to our meeting. So, we are very pleased to have him with us tonight and with that I will turn the rest of the time for this on over to Phil. Wardle: Thank you. I would like to also welcome Councilman Rountree here and Phil, I apologize the mispronunciation of your name. Demosthenes: The only reason I am here is Parametrics is working on the project for 20-26, which Tricia will talk about later and we are also working on the 44 project all the way across from 84 into Boise. Yeah, I have worked for a Colorado DOT for 28 years and I ran their whole state wide access management program and during that time I got associated with the National Academy of Science and I follow a lot of the national activities. I am the chairman of the research committee for the national committee. All of the national research for access management comes through me and I help get the funding to do it, which is millions of dollars now for the last 20 years. Some of what I will show you today is all the lessons I have learned and hopefully from what I have learned and how I think about those issues. It has taken a long time to get there. I can help you understand what some of these are for you. I mean, one pattern doesn't fit everybody. Colorado's doesn't fit Idaho's. One city's doesn't fit another and so I am going to try and give you a lot of the background (inaudible) for what I feel are the most important aspects of access management to help you understand when your are making decisions some of the things that are affected by your decisions. So, first what it is is simply intersections, driveways and public roads, freeways and everything that is an access point from one point to another, whether it is public or private. The purpose is to control or limit roadway conflict for when you are driving down and how many conflicts you come across and that helps you improve safety and capacity and performance. If you look at it in terms of - it is a kind of a theoretical pattern that generates - it is a hierarchy where you have your freeway, which is direct, pirate access or whatsoever, just interchanges and you have got your major arterial and again, no private access, no driveways and the only you would have are collectors or minor arterial, collector arterials and then you drop down to the collector level and then starting at the collector below is where you really have driveway access. This has been planning and engineering science since about 1952. The fact that arterials have collected thousands or hundreds of thousands of driveways over the last 50 to 60 years has been countered to the engineering guidelines for the last 50 plus years, but nevertheless that is what happens. I like to think of it this way. Roadways are the most dangerous (inaudible) facility on the face of the earth and it comes basically because of these numbers. About every week you lose about 800 people. Farm highways 75,500 crashes everyday, nationally. The leading cause of the death of a child, a non-driving child age one to fourteen is a traffic accident. In fact, over their lifetime six out of every ten children will be injured in a traffic crash and many of them more than once and on the average if Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 3 of 26 we keep the same rate throughout the United States, which is like 1.4 per million, every one child of every 84 will die today in a traffic accident and not for any other reason. When you look at all the other things that bring us down, motor vehicle accidents are way up there and suicide, homicide and cancer and all the things we often think about and hear about in the newspaper are much lower compared to accidents for ages 1 to 34 and for those of us that are lucky enough to be over the age of 34, traffic accidents will most likely cause your accidental death, but things like cancer and heart disease and all those other things start picking up on you. One of the reasons we are focused on access management, to hear from the Federal Highway Administration, over 27 percent of all reported accidents are in intersections. I mean no surprise. That is where people are going perpendicular to each other. Twenty-five percent of the fatalities are in there because it is a high velocity kind of crash and all 50 percent of all the injuries. So, if you don't get killed, maybe you just got injured. When you look at access related numbers, which are driveways, intersections inside the intersection and intersection related like rear end accidents and those kinds of things, on average you hit about 55 percent of all traffic crashes and this has been pretty firm throughout the United States, you know assuming maybe Wyoming is kind of different because it is such a wide open country. You get about 40 percent in rural areas because there is more drive off the road and single driver accidents and you hit about 65 percent in urbanized areas and some are even higher. Example - the work we are doing right now on 20-26 and looking at - this is about almost 80 months of data, we had 218 intersection related crashes of 240 people injured and 3 fatalities during this time period on our project. Driveways counted for 56 accidents and 45 people injured and two fatalities. This is high. In fact, after looking at those percentages, we got 67 percent of all crashes are related to access on 20-26. It is way above, especially for a rural highway like that. 70 percent are injuries; 285 injured and five fatalities, which is 62 percent and that should be below 50 and the 65 percent of all property damage only accidents and that is combination because it is in that change over. It is still a high speed, two lane, but the volumes are picking up and we are starting to see more access points connecting to it so that when people connect on the roadway, you come on at two or three miles an hour, people are zooming by you at 45 to 65 miles per hour, so you can have a pretty high velocity kind of activity if you make any mistake. One way to think about and sort of visualize these crash patterns and what we call conflict points are looking at (inaudible) gas stations, a couple of gas stations on a major four lane or two lane road, it does really matter. If you just start adding up all the places where people can run into based on whether you make a left turn, a left turn this way or maybe you don't even finish your left turn, you are always cockeyed to the traffic. When you start looking at this, it really starts adding up. I am working in Louisiana of places this last year and look at this. They had this major arterial and if you really were to add up all these conflict points, there are just thousands of them. Their problem because you have talked a lot about (inaudible) and service roads and those kinds of things, they have no secondary system. They put everything on the arterial. They put everything and all these driveways are there to stay. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 4 of 26 Well, what design for safety is is about limiting this conflict point - getting all those conflict points farther apart so that as a driver you are experiencing less conflict points per minute as you drive down the road whether it is 65 or 25, your rate of conflict arrival is less and so your accident history is going to be less. So, reduce that rate. Reduce the number of conflict points and you get a really good response in terms of accident history and other performance measures. So, the question keeps on coming up, well how does it translate? What is access points per mile? If you look at a number of driveways per mile on a commercial area and you looked at the number of accidents how does that work, up / down? So, this is a composite we just finished about three years ago on a major research project of where we looked at 50 or 60 different ones from different parts of the country and then ran the old analysis within the research program and it is just kind of logical that the more access points per mile, the more accidents you have. This almost - all of them go up it is just the matter of the rate change. And this is interesting too. As it actually gets dense, you get above 40 percent a mile, your accidents rates starts actually increasing and then increasing again. It gets so messy. It gets so complicated people have a hard time getting beyond it. So, one way to kind of measure this in gets your arms around it is you take a messy like that - this is just an example, but say this is three miles long and you run about 37,000 cars a day, so it is a pretty good roadway and you count those conflict points I told you about and just add them up. You know, it is kind of theoretical addition, but you do about 1,600 and based on this kind of averages out of Colorado in the Denver area and this kind of road and this kind of conflict level, we are running about 12.5 crashes per million vehicle mile, which adds up over five years to almost 2,500 crashes I would expect on a road like that as being average. This is the loss over five years and your average speed and then when you go to the next level and you just start emphasizing half mile, quarter mile, but whatever it takes simplify this (inaudible) driveways and look at the drop in conflict points, the drop in accidents over five years. So, if you are in a community and you are looking at a road like this that is three miles long, would you like to have 2,400 people in your community involved in an accident or only 680? This is all based on rural studies in the Denver area in terms of looking at typical kind of roadways. They are typical, less than quality, you know low end kind of five lane cross sections, lots of driveways in Colorado is running about 12.5 per million vehicle miles and the better roads signals are ride and ride outs that still (inaudible) grade of major arterial with good control is running about 3.5. What happens when you take these and you look at your grades and you can do this on your own roadways and just imagine once you have a rate and you are losing maybe a couple of hundred people per year and you look over the next ten years - could you imagine? Well, take Fairfield and think about ten years and how many people are going to be affected over the next ten years based on the current design on Fairfield? And the numbers really get big. Because these are permanent decisions. Canning: You mean Fairview. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 5 of 26 Demosthenes: Fairview, I am sorry. But it is not a Fairview; it is kind of a messy view. That is Baton Rouge and my emphasis here is the way they develop their pattern along this road, whose name I forget, sorry is these are permanent decisions between the land use pattern, the subdivision pattern, how the people laid out their properties and got their building permits. There is no secondary supporting road system, so about the only thing that the Louisiana DOT can do is do median control down the center. Their hands are tied. What is important about this is you come back to this in 20 or 30 years from now or the last 30 years, this accident pattern and history (inaudible--) keeps on happening. These are very permanent decisions. How can you within government even begin to try and clean that up? It would be almost impossible. So, the emphasis here and my planning friends because they pick on engineers too often - I always start off my presentation is how planners kill. What I want to get across like that Louisiana picture is the land use patterns establish the conflict points - all those conflict points I showed you. Like Louisiana those are necessary. Without those, those people wouldn't have access they would be landlocked. So, you have to give it to them. But, the initial stuff that created the situation where you had to access the road was the land use, the site design or subdivision design or the layout and I am pushing agency planners to say that you have to think in terms of long-term community conflict. Whether it is part of pedestrian conflict or car to car conflict. How many conflict points are you generating with your land use plan? Glenwood at State - here is the Wal-Mart down here and here is where I had lunch and here is where I had breakfast - anyway, these patterns you can't re-change them once they are installed whether you are Louisiana or whether you are in Boise, they are there to stay a long time. The angle of the road, the skew that is through here, the driveway patterns, so be real careful on your decision making. Here is Eagle, which is now wonderfully given an interestingly bad name in terms of well what is happening to Eagle? Well, the decisions on how - between a river issue, the bridge being in here and where you are going to - now here is a signal at this location, which doesn't really work very well from here to here, especially in long term capacity. Those are decision that everyone has got to live with for a long time. So, part of what you try to do in access management is set your standards early, let the development community know what they are so they are not surprised and they can plan for them. Colorado has been doing a pretty tight access control since 1981 and we are fine and economically we are healthy and retail is healthy, the development community is healthy because they know what to expect. There is not last minute decision- making that throws them off of their plan. You know, I went back to the 50's when (inaudible) said we need a hierarchy, we don't need driveways. Even in 1935 you are going to read this on your handout, they are already facing stripped development on the roadways and it was causing a lot of problems. The accident history, the frequency way back in the 30's is almost as bad as it is now and they had what a tenth of the population or even less? (Speaker unknown): They were having major problems. Meridian City Pre.Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 6 of 26 Demosthenes: So what happens when you do access management, especially when you do a retro fit you get 30 to 60 percent reduction in accidents and you get a 20 to 40 percent increase in capacity? Capacity increase means you don't have to go back and rebuild roads as often. They last longer. So, the old way of doing it is if you gave away all the access your capacity ceiling actually starts coming down. So, you design the road a nice good five lane out there, you know a two way left turn lane and over the years with the signals going in, the driveways going in, your ceiling is going down as your demand goes up and they start to hit and they come to you and say build me some more roads. What access management does is try to pull the ceiling up. I mean, it will come down as you add a few signals here and there, but holds it up pretty high. So, the point you have to reinvest in your public infrastructure are further delayed, you take that money and go somewhere else. But what a key on this picture is that people have a tendency to say well you know 95 to 98 percent of an accident is the cause of the driver. They were drunk, they were stupid, they did something wrong, they weren't paying attention, the sun was in their eyes and 98 percent of the time you can say it was the driver's fault. But, if you look at this number here, the drivers haven't changed, they ages, their inability, their DUI, all of that is still the same on this Boulevard, yet it got a 30 to 60 percent reduction. So, it is the design. It is the signal system. It is the driveway system and if we make those things less complicated no matter what your status of driving, you have a better change of making it through without an accident. Here is another - Memorial Drive - pretend this isn't here. They have basically a seven lane highway, so they have a center crash lane as I like to call them with six - three lanes in each direction. They did a four and one half mile project. Look at what they got. They got a 37 percent drop in total accident rate throughout the whole project; a 48 percent drop in injury rate and that is just lovely; 60 percent drop in mid-block injury rate, well there is a median there now. One of the interesting things is they had 15 fatalities the ten years prior. In six of those or nine were pedestrians walking across the road into the center lane and getting taken out, but now they run across the road and they sit in the median and they get a little refuge and then they take another six lanes. You go back a notch. One of the problems is there is not enough sidewalks is one of the problems in Idaho from time to time, people have a tendency - see these folks right here? They have a tendency to zip across because who wants to walk through the grass and the dirt and all that along the edge when you are really going down here, rather than just taking a quick walk at the signal? So, the lack of sidewalks have encouraged people to go across and you are being hit. But, they haven't had one fatality in the last - well, since they built the project, basically. So, it is great in saving lives. So, here is the merging guide throughout the country - no driveways unless there is a necessity for one. Every driveway is dangerous. So, why should you have one? Well, you have to have one to get through a property. So, what is your necessity? Do you need two and will one do? Because two makes a higher accident rate than one. Driveway spaces as an example, 250 feet at 35 mph, but it also geometrics, like do they want left turns? How far apart do you have to have two left turn (inaudible) and still have adequate left turn storage and slow Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 7 of 26 down and all that. Signal space in half mile and urban areas, even greater when you get outside of the suburban and rural areas. Raised medians and almost all arterials. For example, Colorado DOT and urban areas does not rebuild without a raised median. It is just a policy. They just don't do two way left turns anymore. You go with a two way left turn lane to a raised median and you get a significant decrease in accident history. Proof of necessity, again a little more detail is the access - these are the kinds of questions we ask in Colorado. Is it necessary? Are you landlocked without it? What is arterial? Each new access will increase your access history. So, prove to me why you need it. If you have good reasons we will work with you. Is there a reasonable access alternative? If there isn't we will have to work with them and give them that access. Is it to a lower function road? The issue there is the higher function road with higher volume and higher speed, your likelihood of an accident is greater. You tie them to a lesser - the cross street it is a lower volume, it is a lower speed usually and a higher expectation of the people on the road that they have a stop condition at the main highway. So, they have a tendency to anticipate more conflict. Here is a real interesting question a lot of people don't understand that traffic signals are not a safety enhancement. They are just the opposite. We just finished this study in Colorado in the summer of '03 and most traffic engineers know that when you go from a non-signal to a signal, your property damage accidents go up. Let's say you have got 20,000 cars a day going down the road and there is no lights, no traffic signals and suddenly you throw them up and every minute or so you turn them all red and you are telling all these folks it is a stop. Well, how often does it take one person not paying attention - you got an accident. So, your accidents go up, but meanwhile, it is safer normally than (inaudible) to stop on the main line, you on the cross street, you enter traffic and get on your way and that what the purpose is. But, what is scaring people, especially those that have less immunity to tort is the injury rates are going up. We always thought the injury rates also went down. Well, severity goes down a little bit, but the injury accident rate goes up and it doesn't matter whether you are urban (inaudible) you can't see it very well. This is a study of 88 urban intersections and this is the study of 28 rural intersections. So, that is scary in terms of risk management and some other issues that we don't want to tell the tort attorneys about. Also, on progression speed, this only compares a half mile space into a third mile spacing, but when you are doing progression on half mile verses quarter mile say, you get almost over a 20 mile an hour difference in terms of just good engineering if you had a quarter mile spacing verses a half mile spacing. So, you could imagine the travel time and how well in our trail of served people. If you are quarter mile, it is just not going to work very well. They got a less of passing and certainly a lot longer commute to where you are going, which affects market area. If your business in this area, your market area is smaller because of your travel time. If your business is along a half mile, the travel time is shorter; your market area is larger. If you look at the national - large, large companies are doing shopping centers throughout the country. They don't put shopping centers on arterials anymore. They only put them next to freeways. All the big guys. The only square feet, huge block shopping centers because they know no signals are Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 8 of 26 going to go in on the freeway system. Their market area is maintained other than congested during peak hour. Here is a study on half mile verses quarter mile - make it through quick here - 60 percent difference between using half mile verses quarter mile in terms of travel speed over five miles. A lot to be gained. One of the ways to approach these signals because they are problematic, is that when you are doing your transportation plan, your transportation plan could include where you want your signals and where you don't and then try and hold on to that. If you tell everybody what you are willing to live with, you sell folks with what you are not willing to live with and hoping people gravitate to where they can fit in with you the best. Market area, I mentioned that briefly. I use this with the developers a lot. The market area is really the life blood for retailers. If your market area is shrinking, your customer base is shrinking and with the margin on profit getting smaller and smaller it is critical. So, as the public agency, which is ACHO or ITO can maintain it, but if you drop it from a 45 mph average speed to the site of the Chinese restaurant to a 30 mph average speed, look what you lose and you lose it very quickly. So, basically this diagram means a 45 percent reduction in your customer base, assuming the average customer will drive about 20 minutes before they say forget that I am going the other way to the other competitor. So, what does it look like? My first access project was this two lane road running about 8,000 cars a day and notice this little stuff in here and Denver is down here and it is growing out sort of like 20-26 is today. So, what has happened over the last 20 years, Steve, is here is the same road that - that building was right here and this is about eight years ago, this photograph and the county and the city are working to have parallel systems and the land value and here and somewhere up in here it went from ten dollars and now in parts it is hitting 200 dollars a square foot. This area is very healthy and we had tremendous amounts of support. This is half mile spacing, a little bit of quarter mile right in and right out. We had tremendous support here because they realize the value of all this is going to be depending on the capacity of this state highway and the value of what they can sell for, the tracking industry to attract labor - how is the labor going to arrive at the site to get to work? They saw that this connection to the Interstate, which is right along here, was vital to quality and the ability to sell land and the density of that land in the future. This is the kind of pattern, which I think a lot of the Treasure Valley is trying to get into now, rather than have you strip development along the highway; we have a limited amount of distance on each side that really has commercial value and property value. You take your highway and you come back into a secondary system or whatever you want to call it, rear-age, frontage electors and look at the depth you get. You get this amount with good service, rather than this which is kind of shallow. The kind of pattern, a lot of these are - some of these are different states. This is Colorado. Here is the highway and you can see a shopping center and you can see what the city is doing. They are developing this secondary system here. They have a buffer between the residential. I will go pretty fast here since I am getting close on time. The City of Colorado Springs, same thing. They are doing this secondary back in here, so the hot people are up here in front with great visibility and you turn in, you shop and you Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 9 of 26 come back out and this road runs about 75,000 to 80,000 cars a day, but again the secondary system. So, you have a lot of depth and on the other side they have density for residentiaL City of Fort Collins, it is a major state highway and they run about 40,000 to 45,000 a day and see this secondary route? Motels back off and even the commercial upfront they are getting cross easements that connect everybody so you can move this way and limited access on their arterial. So, this can congest up a little bit, but once you get on the arterial it moves pretty quick and the designs of each major access are pretty well done. You can flow people safely into the commercial area. This has developed a tremendous amount of value for the city in terms of the overall scope and the density and the scale of this business area. Another city in Colorado with a shopping center. See all these out lots? None of them have driveways. It all circulates in and comes in behind. Hey look, it's a McDonalds and they come back around or whatever it works - McDonalds destination location. You are having (inaudible) on this side and you are establishing the same thing on the backside, Here is the frontage across the business here. Here is the merger road and again having a good (inaudible) length. This is the old stuff in here. This has been here like 30 years. That is some of the patterns. This is in Tennessee and I was flying by on a little 747 and leaned out the window and I was like wow what am I seeing here? This is interchange. No direct access at all until you get here and not even any driveway access until you get all the way down in here somewhere. So, here is Tennessee working hard, but look at the density and look at the quality of development. There is going to be another shopping center in here. There is Wal-Mart or something. Great out parcels. Great visibility. Hey there is whatever you are looking for, food or Walgreens. You come in and you circle it within the shopping center or with inside this shopping center here. Great use of land. Great pattern and tremendous amount of value and obviously all these retailers are kind of equal on the market place. None of them have direct access. They all have to rely on visibility and the circulation pattern in the rear-age road the collector. That basically what this with the shopping centers are collectors and distributing the traffic in. I zoomed in on this one, but you can see the quality up here and they are all well occupied. A tremendous amount of volume and capacity on the roadway because of that. Industrial office area at Colorado Springs is part of their space center. This is what the City of Colorado Springs is doing it in terms of collector systems in high employment areas and you can see they are setting up the pattern ahead. There is going to be a box here, an office space here, here and here and spins off. Back at Fort Collins the same patterns. Even the gas stations don't have any direct access, but the folks know if you are driving, like you see the gas station you go around the block you get it and you come back. They are kind of equal in the market place and making sure you treat all the retailers, whether they are grocery stores or gas stations the same really helps. Let's go onto the next one and see what else we have got here. 20- 26 was it on the intersection? All right guys, all right just testing you. I know it was 20-26 I took the picture and it was raining that day. That was a lot of fun. What pattern are we going to establish here? Are we going to have that Tennessee pattern or are we going to have rear-age roads, frontage roads? Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18,2006 Page 10 of 26 What secondary kind of collector levels should be established in this area ahead of time? And, how would you communicate that to the development community so you don't get plans that are something they pull out of Texas that they just want to plop down here and say weill got it in Texas, why can't I get it up here in the Treasure Valley? It takes planning and it takes time to get your collective thoughts together early in terms of trying to tell the realtors, the brokers and the consultant folks that help them get it all together. What to expect when they are in your neighborhood and what your expectations are and what they are not. If the game plan is pretty much laid out and that is the way we did it in Colorado on the state system anyway, we said here are the regulations from 1981 and you know there was some pain for the first couple of years, but everybody kind of gets into the swing of it after a while and starts going a little bit smoother. Part of the concept when I talk to developers, it is just by doing sewer lines and all sorts of things - don't go from the inside out, go from the outside in. Go to lTD. What is and who is willing to get (inaudible) for a driveway? Can you get a signal? And if you don't find good answers, go get another site even before you start your site design. So find a site that is going to fit into the environment that you want it to. Don't just look at market. Look at what you can do for the infrastructure, then when you find out what your connections are then design in. Don't put a building right where Sue wants to put a driveway because that is going to be the best place for it and then have to complain because when it costs you $100,000 to move the pad and redesign the parking lot because you moved it around or fight because you don't want to spend $100,000 to move it. If you want to know more, we are hosting the National Conference up in Park City, not too far away, this August with around 300 to 400 folks that will be there from all over the country. A lot of city government folks coming and that is it. Questions? Wardle: Great, thank you very much Phil. Questions for Phil? De Weerd: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: You had mentioned that when you signalized it doesn't necessarily mean safety. What is better a signalized intersection or a four-way stop? Demosthenes: Signalized intersection. Well, generally a signal is better. So, the issue that comes down is not that you don't have to have a signal as a solution, but can you do a land use plan and a transportation plan in a community that minimizes the number of signals. De Weerd: And that is through collector systems and back-age roads. Demosthenes: Right. Especially when your signal is on a major highway where it is 35-40 mph, verses a signal on a collector where your post speeds may be 25-30 because you won't get the serious injuries on a minor to minor or a Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 11 of 26 collector to collector. And of course, the magic word round-a-bout always comes to mind as a real good solution, which is why you are hearing more and more round-a-bouts. New York and now California and Maryland are starting to walk away from signals as signals only being a solution of last resort. So, a very interesting dynamic of how to treat signals on the national level, but to answer your question if you have to do a signal, you have to do a signal and the effort on planning is what could you do to have a good collector system to minimize how many you have because you know they are going to be problematic over time. They are expensive - a quarter of a million dollars plus maintenance and so every time you plop one down, you lay a long time hit on your budget. But, the only way you get around that is to have better planning, so you make sure every signal you have maximizes the service area so you don't have to do another one because people can't get to that signal so they need a second signal. Those are the kinds of things that J come up with. De Weerd: Is there a threshold of the amount of trips through an intersection where a round-a-bout is not practical? Demosthenes: Probably about 5,500 to 6,500 an hour. You are talking about arterials that are hitting 45 to 50,000 per day. That is total volume, so couple that would be 2,000 each leg plus 2,500 each leg into that per hour. I designed one that was 6,500 an hour in Tumwater, Washington and it was either they were going to do a round-a-bout at 6,500 an hour or they were going to put in triple, left turns. You know, what do you do? The answer is you do another arterial. You have got too much in one place and that was the problem. At about the same time signals started to break down, round-a-bout started breaking out. The problem with a round-a-bout is you may not have the right of way to do that where a signal can fit into a smaller footprint, a round-a-bout starts sucking more of corner land, takes out your gas station and (inaudible) a million dollars or so for some gas station on the corner because you don't want a signal? De Weerd: But where you have green field development, that's your opportunity. If it's in plan. Demosthenes: Colorado has about 200 round-a-bouts now and it is interesting, the City of Bend, Oregon has 21 single lane round-a-bouts and it is a population of 65,000 folks. Bird: They have about eight on one road within two miles. Demosthenes: Right. Most cities are just really committed to round-a-bouts and some things and signals and that is going to be very interesting watching this over the next decade as everyone struggles with these decisions on how to best have an intersection. What is the best intersection design in your community that is going to work in that location? Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 12 of 26 Wardle: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Welcome back, Mr. President. Your discussion on the accident rates peaked a question that I didn't have an answer for, so I will ask this for Mr. Borton and it relates to access control. When we have a developer just has to have an access at a point and you are talking about immunity to tort, has any community or any place put a condition on an access that, yes you can have that access if you provide immunity to whatever the transportation entity or the community is and you bear the cost of any future accident? Demosthenes: Well, two things are happening, but one thing only the State of Pennsylvania I know does that with every permit they issue, so if they issue a permit and I think they have a lot less design immunity than the states out west. Pennsylvania has very little design immunity, so they say if there is an accident and someone wants to sue because of the driveway, you have got to sue the property owner first. But they have never seen any action on it. The problem with that routine is it is an engineering decision. You can't delegate your engineering responsibility to a private property owner simply because they say oh sure I will sign anything. So, Pennsylvania is also worried about that. They say that, which helps enjoin that property owner into the fray, but usually the property owner is the next guy that bought it five years later and says I never signed anything. I didn't know that existed. I didn't know the previous owner signed away my insurance for the next 200 years. Go sue the state; they are the ones that allowed us to have it. They are the engineers. So, they have done it, but they don't think it's really worth a whole lot legally because the agency initially made the decision to say yes under these conditions. How did you arrive at the decision? Rountree: In our particular case, we see a lot of engineering done by. the applicant. I assume their engineers are stamping that. Demosthenes: Colorado - one way we got around that is everybody comes in for the application. Permit process requires a stamp for (inaudible) engineer. Rountree: And Gary is shaking his head yes in the case of ACHD and Sue, I don't know what we do, but you are saying no. (Inaudible discussion) Rountree: Dan ought to be able to tell us. I mean, there is some liability there, I would think if - Demosthenes: See part of the problem on it is if you get crashes you can always blame the accident, almost always do, almost 99 percent of the time on the person who is drunk or something and so the accumulative approach, which is what this is talking about is we know that with less of them, you will have less Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 13 of 26 accident history in the community, but you can't find anyone (inaudible) or maybe you can once in a while, but it's actually hazardous and doesn't meet engineer standards. (Inaudible--) one piece of trash on the road verses 500. One piece of trash, you know - one good set of engineer drawings might be fine, but five in a row makes the driving experience pretty complicated and people start being unsuccessful, you might say. That is why the engineering issue hasn't really played a strong role, unless they really do a bad job and hopefully your staff keeps that (inaudible). Wardle: Any other questions? Rountree: No. Bird: I have none. Wardle: Thank you very much for the presentation. Demosthenes: Okay, you have got the handout and if you have any questions feel free to get a hold of me. De Weerd: Thank you. Demosthenes: Thank you very much. Item 4. South Meridian Meeting Summary with Lynda Friesz-Martin: Friesz-Martin: Good evening. The purpose here is to explain the results of our public meeting for a community (inaudible) event in the south Meridian, north Kuna area. What I am going to cover this evening is what we did as far as the meeting process. What we did as far as notification, meeting attendance, material presented workshop activities, what we found out and then Steve will present some area of impact options and we will briefly go through the next steps in the process. Okay, closer to the microphone? Is that better? We had two purposes for the meeting. First off was to discuss community identities and priorities for the area between Meridian and Kuna and then to provide accurate information regarding the sewer and water services within the study area. For notification, we mailed 1,152 announcements. These were mailed to the property owners within the study area, elected officials from both Meridian, Kuna and Ada County, agencies including ACHD, ITD and COMPASS. We had news releases and public service announcements to area media. Fox 12 did a news story. The Idaho Statesman did a small article in the community page and the Valley Times did an article as well. During the meeting we had 176 people that signed in. We know that there are some folks that attended the meeting, but did not sign in, so we know of a higher number than that and we had 76 comment forms returned. We had displays from Public Works, the Meridian Fire District and discussion maps. Public Works did a sewer presentation on what is in the Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 14 of 26 plans and what is in the future. We had an agenda form. We had frequently asked questions and Ada County Tax Assessment estimate that was taken off of Ada County's website. You will see all this information in your packet that you have up there. When we designed the workshop we had two plans. We had a plan orA" and a plan orB". Plan orA" was to have a facilitated work groups at ten tables, but with the number of folks that showed up, we were not able to handle that one, so we did what we call a self-facilitated system where we asked each table to help facilitate their own individuals. There were packets on each table that would have dots. A blue dot signified that they identified with Meridian more so than other communities in the area and a yellowy, orange dot signified that they identified with Kuna and then a white dot was other. This is the - you will see also the real boards over here. At each table we had an aerial map and then we had the overlays on top of them. The participant could put their dot and the idea here was that they put the dot on their own parcel or their property, so we knew about where they were at of which communities they identified with. With the self-facilitated process, we do know that we had some stacking so to speak. We had a few tattlers that came up and told us that so and so stole more dots than they were supposed to and put them on. So, we did have some stacking and we know that occurred. I am pretty sure I can track it based on the comment forms as well. What we found out in the highlights is that we have 45 people. These are the 76 comment forms that were turned in that identified with Meridian. Twenty-one identified with Kuna. Ten identified with other, seven being Ada County, one Nampa, one neither and one undecided. These were some of the - on our comment forms these were some of the highlights that we took off of why Meridian? Work there, shop there, do business there. Better Planning and Development service. Higher property values. Rural area with city conveniences. Support Mayor's visions and values. Vibrant, forward looking community. Moral, rightful and caring farming community and then on the next one these are those that supported Kuna. Everything I do revolves around Kuna. There is a small town atmosphere. A rural way of life. Beautiful, rich crop lands. Cares more about the quality of life than money generated by growth. More conservative leaders. Less commercialized and rural, but closer to big city services. Then with the other, it was rural community. Support sustainable agriculture. No big box stores. Quiet country with own water and septic. Better schools. Less traffic. Slower pace of life and five acres or larger property to maintain a rural or agricultural feel. One thing that was interesting that was a string that went through all of the comments was that even if - it didn't matter if they were in Kuna or Meridian or the other, there was always somebody that said better schools. So, their perception is whatever community they identify, they generally believe that their schools are the best in that area. I thought that that was very interesting and that was a line that went through there. We got a lot of duplicate comments back and forth. The rural way of life, but close to city amenities was at least one, no matter where they identified we at least one person that has said that somewhere along the line of that, too. These were some other highlights from there. Several people when they comment why they identify with one community over the other it dealt with which community, their Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 15 of 26 school that their children attended. Several identified that their - they identified with where they paid their taxes or what kind of district they are in, whether it was a fire district, library district or a school district and we also found that the topography out there at Lake Hazel and west of Meridian Road at least kind of lends itself to a natural dividing line. There were comments that I got from - that were on there and some would be people saying nice, one guy very nicely wrote down that when I drive down Meridian Road and I reach the crust of that hill, I know I am home. This is somebody that identified with Kuna. Then we had another one that wasn't so nice, but basically said the same thing and that was just say Meridian, don't go on your side of the hill, come over your side of the hill. So, that was that topography there that seemed to lend itself to a dividing line. One of the most disputed areas would be the northeast corner of Columbia and Meridian Road. There are lots of comments that Kuna saw as a potential for commercial development and a gateway to the city - comments like Meridian already has enough commercial development, we need some. But, for Meridian it has been a part of the area referral for over a decade. That is this area on the map right in here and you should see that in yours. We are pretty sure this is where some of the stacking occurred because I think there are two parcels - isn't that what you thought, Steve? Siddoway: There was a 16 acre parcel on the corner that is owned by the Church, the Lyman's College with the power poles and things is just north of that and then beyond that is an area that Greg Johnson has tied up, so I believe there is only one --? Is there one parcel or two? Just the Church is really the parcel that is there, so why there are so many dots on what should have maybe had one dot is perhaps suspicious. Freisz-Martin: It is not a mystery. Okay, I think the next slide is you. I am going to let Steve take over here. Siddoway: Now is when the fun begins. We are in need of determining at least preliminarily a line - Public Works is in need of a line for their facilities. Planning, we will be in need of a line - what I have done is I took the information this morning that was provided as the summary and just started drawing some alternative lines to generate some conversation - (Tape turned over) Siddoway: We can hopefully get rid of the glare. The blue dots don't show up very well on this overhead. Can we maybe try shutting off some of the lights, Will? Okay. You can make out some of the blue dots. Okay, the first thing I did - this is not a proposal. This first one is for perspective because this is the easy lines to draw. Most of the Kuna dots in the area here break at Lake Hazel and if you add that line at Lake Hazel to what is currently our area of impact or our area of referral, this is the area that you would come up with. However, there are still several blue dots down in this area that we will want to talk about. For Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 16 of 26 perspective, a lot of comments seem to focus around the school district, so I thought I had better at least show where the school district lines are currently drawn. This is our current area of referral at Columbia. This school district line is actually a half mile north of that and any line that truly followed it through here would give up a half mile of our current referral area to Kuna. To the west, however, it is drawn along Lake Hazel and the west area along Lake Hazel from McDermott over to at least Linder, there seems to be a clear line there between Meridian and Kuna. The area where it starts to get grey is when you start getting near Meridian Road and it has some alternatives here. First if we were to look at the - I called this one the maximized area and what this does is it looks at the area that really had the most blue dots - to the rest it is along Lake Hazel and then this line comes down a half mile west of Meridian Road. Meridian Road would sit right here. It follows that line down to Hubbard and then it cuts across. Now there are a couple of Kuna dots down in this area. Another problem with this is the area along this line is Kuna's current referral area and we would then be encroaching into what Kuna already has as an approved referral area. So, my first idea for at least for a preliminary recommendation for discussion purposes has the line drawn along Lake Hazel until a point that is a half mile west of Meridian Road and it then drops south one mile to Columbia and then continues east. This is our current referral area in that area. As an alternative, I have an alternative "B" here. This looks very similar and the only difference between this one and the last recommendation is that it extends a half mile south. So, this point is the same. It is a half mile west of Meridian Road on Lake Hazel, extends straight south, but instead of ending at Columbia, which is here it would continue a half mile between Columbia and Hubbard and abut Kuna's existing referral area. So, whether or not we choose to end in the south at Columbia or in line with our existing referral area or to push it a half mile south to align with Kuna's existing referral area, maybe one of the main points of discussion the corner with all the dots that is a Church at this time is right here at the corner of Columbia and Meridian Road. I will turn some time over to Anna. Canning: I did want to make one comment about the half mile being the dividing line. We have discussed or you all have discussed sometimes the frustration with not having a road that is the definitive dividing line of the area of city impact. The City of Kuna requires half mile collectors exactly on the half mile. They don't meander through a subdivision or wander off that half mile at all. That would be something that we probably want to look at for those areas where we share a boundary with the City of Kuna, eventually to go ahead and have those exactly on the half mile collectors. So, if you did choose a boundary that was at the half mile it would be divided by a road is what I wanted to articulate to you if that was a concern. That was all. Siddoway: One final point and the question came up how do these lines relate to the annexations that are currently going through the City of Kuna and they are on their City Council agenda tonight, so I did look at that. The areas that I have drawn in here and here are the areas being considered for annexation by the City Meridian City Pre.Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 17 of 26 of Kuna tonight and the lines that we have proposed go along Lake Hazel, which just skirts the top of this one and this point is that half mile between Meridian Road and Linder Road and then the only other question that would remain would be whether to stop at Columbia or to continue a half mile south of Columbia and with that I will open it for discussion or questions. Oh, a couple more slides. We will let Linda finish first. Friesz-Martin: Basically just to wrap up our next steps in the study process and that will determine the study area and boundary. Additional public workshops that will focus on the values and land use and - land use and market assessment that would then be done by a sub-consultant to our firm and then update the Comprehensive Plan. So, with that we will open it up for questions and discussion. Wardle: Thank you Linda and Steve. Council any questions? Rountree: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Just a fundamental question of the timeline. Canning: Council President, Councilmember Rountree exactly what do you mean about the time line? Rountree: Well, they have next steps. What can we anticipate and what is coming next? What is the time involved and when are we going to get to an updated Comprehensive Plan? A year from now? Six months? Two months? Canning: We are hoping for the December cutoff for the Comprehensive Plan Amendment. We won't be able to make the June one, so our next one is in December and that is what we have been targeting toward. Rountree: Okay. That is alii needed. Thank you. Wardle: Any other questions? Bird: I have none. Wardle: Thank you Linda and Steve for your presentation and your hard work. Item 5. US 20-26 Corridor Study Update with Tricia Nilsson: Nilsson: Thank you. We have a presentation and it seems like it gets out of date everyday, but it will kind of give you a good snapshot of where we are right now. I did have Steve distribute - we have some public meetings coming up on May Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 18 of 26 10th and May 11th. J will be begging for some help from staff. Similar experiences on projects like Three Cities River Crossing, we could expect up to 100 to 200 people at each of those meetings. We are planning those right now. We are going to have presentations on the half hour and some small group discussion time. So, I guess we have the resources to be able to hopefully accommodate a large number of people. Canning: Councilmember Wardle can I briefly interrupt this because we need to know whether the consultant should stay for the south Meridian study. We had specifically asked for some directions on a study boundary so that we could get moving forward with the study as quickly as possible. Did you want to schedule that for a different day or postpone that discussion until after this one? Nilsson: I will wait. Wardle: J guess what you are asking is do we - does the Council at this time want to draw that line? Is that what you are asking? Canning: Just for the study boundary. It is not a final line, but we need to know what we are moving forward with for a study boundary. Wardle: Tricia if you can give us just a second before you give your presentation, I will ask the Council their thoughts. I heard alternative "A" and I heard alternative "B" I I believe for lack of a better term. Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Mr. President, my suggestion would be to look at alternative "B". We can always pull it back, but it would be tougher to expand it. But, I came to another question and it's more for Anna and Steve, I guess. The basic impression of the meeting? Was it congenial, cordial or did you have sides, taking names? Canning: The tone of it - having been to the Kuna Town Hall one and then having been to ours, the general feeling and the tone was very positive. Now there were some individuals who spoke and who asked questions and spoke in a very negative manner, but I think staff was able to handle it positively and the feedback that we got back from folks individually was all very positive. There was approximately - Linda probably went through this, but there was really two tables that had a significant number of yellow dots, but then the other six tables were all pretty much folks that were interested in being as part of the Meridian community, so it was a very positive meeting, I felt. Rountree: Okay, thank you. Borton: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Borton. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 19 of 26 Borton: Anna, I agree with Councilman Rountree on alternative "B", but I wonder (inaudible) or Steve do you know where Kuna's current line in the sand is? I mean, is it academic for us to do a study south of Columbia at the half mile if Kuna is intending on being there or north. I forget where they said the (inaudible). Canning: They have spoken of Lake Hazel as being their boundary and their - Borton: Did that go to Meridian Road or I think that went south? Canning: Right now they were looking at Lake Hazel to a quarter mile past Meridian Road. So, it would be right there. (Speaker unknown): I thought they were going to Cloverdale. Canning: That is what they have shown on - that is my understanding of it. Nary: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Nary. Nary: The meeting that I was at and the line that they had as to what they believed their future planning growth is, is Lake Hazel from McDermott to Eagle. They didn't have a jog in any of it. It was straight all the way across is what they were discussing as their (inaudible). Borton: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Borton. Borton: I guess regardless of what Kuna's line was, I agree with alternative "B" and study of the larger area. Canning: Madame Mayor and members of the Council, I think the confusion is that their line doesn't - I don't think that the maps that they were showing went further than a quarter mile passed Meridian Road. Did they go to there? Apparently there is some confusion on that. We are sorry. Wardle: Thank you, Anna. I guess just my recollection of our last joint meeting with Kuna was that whatever their line was they were not really willing to discuss additional lines. So, we are making that decision knowing that we probably won't agree, I would assume. Rountree: That is for the county. It gives them something to do. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 20 of 26 Wardle: Mr. Bird, I would agree with both Councilman Rountree and Borton. Bird: I do too. Let's have a motion and vote on it. Rountree: If we need a motion, Mr. President, I move that we direct staff to proceed with alternative "B" for the advancement of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment. Wardle: I will second that motion and just to clarify alternative "B" Lake Hazel to one half mile west of Meridian Road, south to one half mile south of Columbia. Is that correct, Steve? Siddoway: That is correct. Wardle: It has been moved and seconded to approve alternative "B" for our study area. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Canning: Thank you and sorry Patricia. Nilsson: Was it ten years ago when Will and I were working on those lines and I was at Ada County. It never ends. Anyway, for some of you who may not remember I am Tricia Nilsson with Community Planning Association and in partnership with Idaho Transportation Department, we are - I have to figure out the right words to say. The study isn't really the right words. We are really in preliminary project development on U.S. 20-26. We also have another study going on State Highway 44, but I am here to talk to you about 20-26. This is a federally funded project. We are required to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, so if you think some of the information I am going to show you may not make sense, there is really good reason and please ask me any questions. Next map. The study area and it is hard to get a 17 or 18 mile corridor on one map, but basically we are going from Eagle Road all the way to the Interstate in Canyon County. We have identified (inaudible) an initial study area that conforms with consensus block groups and informational so we can start getting kind of the social economic data of the study area - who would be impacted and pull all of that together. Talk about the regional significance of the corridor. For those of you that have been involved, engaged in Communities in Motion, which is the new regional, long reach transportation plan. There are recommendations in that really long range plan that are really ambitious for 20- 26. It does talk about it as a critical regional corridor with grade separations at a one mile spacing. I mean, this is kind of a pyridine shift for some of our arterials in the area. I think the last long reach plan called for interchanges on Eagle Road and we couldn't quite see ourselves that. For 20-26 that is the vision that that plan sets out. Now, the initial project or widening in improvements, we don't have the financial wherewithal right now, I think, to build that, but hopefully Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 21 of 26 through the study we can show how we can evolve that corridor to a much greater facility when the demand is here decades from now. The other significant part of Communities in Motion is the land use or growth scenario that it has chosen, which we then have once adopted will use in our transportation model and that is the communities choices scenario. It does focus growth to the areas of city impact, but we did kind of look at - did the initial traffic analysis with the adopted demographics (inaudible) and we are looking at this type of facility, which is kind of the bottom of the funnel. The differences between the scenarios are really less great. They are probably a little bit greater on the 44 study because of you have more cities and more growth along that corridor and community choices, but really 20-26 it doesn't make much of a difference. It's still a lot of people or everyone in that area are going to be using that road. Next slide. The planning process - we have kind of organized ourselves and I guess the last thing with two corridor studies going on with Communities in Motion, Blue Print process going on and try to keep the committees to a minimum. We have a Corridor Preservation Committee to give policy, input. We have had one meeting of that committee and so far it was great. Actually people enjoyed the meeting, which is always a good compliment. We are using the existing Regional Technical Advisory Committee, which is one of the staff of transportation and land use agencies for technical input when we need that. Obviously, public input is planned at these meetings coming up. We have a whole public involvement plan for this whole project. We are really looking for adoption by the local jurisdictions when the plan is complete. We may have some even stop cap measures and Sue Sullivan from ITD do spend a lot of time at ACHD tech review and other meetings with developers. Basically with the goal to prevent bad decisions from being made. So, if we have a need to insert ourselves in that process in a constructive fashion, we do that and we have had with rare exception very good communications with developers at least on two or three cases. Then we kind of have the rare exception and maybe Sue had that today even, but it is really nice when you walk into tech review at ACHD and they see you there and they say we have given ITD 100 feet of right-of-way and we are not taking access to the highway and it is great that they just offer that right up. That is a good thing. You could have that happen every time, that would be - we would have a pretty good corridor to work with. Next slide. The study process is a ten step plan by coincidence. We are just before step three. Step one and two was a lot of work over the past several months. The stakeholder interviews were really to identify the issues - dozens of interviews with stakeholders, developers, property owners, agencies, I believe the Mayor and staff of Meridian to really understand and really flush out what the issues were, the expectations of the public and the nice thing after the end of those is that we found a pretty clear consensus of what the expectations were for 20-26. This study is kind of easier because you have a specific facility. You have people who drive it all the time and they want to keep driving it that same way. They don't want to see that facility degrade in terms of the speed going down or having a lot more access points. They really want to - they use it as an alternative to 1-84 and they want to keep using it as an alternative to 1-84. I think that message was heard loud and Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 22 of 26 clear. The technical data, we have had Parametrics is the prime consultant on this and I know (inaudible) and Phil had to leave because Phil had a plane to catch. We have done a preliminary traffic study that Phil put together - preliminary safety analysis showed you some of that crash information and really try to understand the real guts of the corridor. From the land use level, we - one of the slide shows in looking at the zoning map, looking at the demographic projections and really kind of getting our arms around the corridor. We take a lot of that information - we had environmental scan done by the consultant as well to see what kind of issues were out there. As far as transportation corridors go - this should be pretty straight forward, we haven't heard a lot of differing public opinion on which way to go. Now we get to 44 that is going to be a different study. 20-26 it is really clear what that expectation is. The hard thing, hopefully, will be delivering that expectation in terms of the financial restrictions of the agencies. We will take out - at the first meeting there on May 10th and 11th, we are taking the - the other thing coming in that is in August we have a new transportation bill that was passed at federal level and that puts requirements even on this process. So, we are taking what is called a purpose in need statement, which is kind of stating the obvious. You know, having a lot more traffic on here, a lot of urbanization in this area and we see a need to widen this road and preserve its capacity long term. We will take that to the public. Share with them the information that we found and start getting some information from them that will help us decide alternatives on solutions to 20-26 and you know we won't be drawing lines on them if we have a line - but, where the line might have to go a little bit north or a little bit south those alternatives will be flushed out. Let me get cranking here. You can go to the next one. We will be back to it before we get too far along to give you an update. The existing conditions in terms of traffic, you are looking to 14,000 to 19,000 trips a day kind of in your area - a little bit less as you - it decreases as you head out toward Canyon County. Next slide. That is just zoning. I guess the assumption is that it is basically going to be urban. I think everybody agrees with that in looking at the demographics. Particularly even on the western end of Canyon County, we are just saying this is an urban corridor long term. Rural is there right now, but it is not an expectation that it is going to stay that way. Crash history, Phil kind of went through all of that. I won't repeat it, but we do see particularly looking at not so much on the Ada County portion, but as you get out to Exit 29 in Canyon County, there may be a little higher rate than what you would normally expect, but there will be a more detailed analysis as we go through the process. Next slide. This is the scary slide. The future conditions are looking at basically almost doubling the traffic volumes. Phil was talking about round-a-bouts so put that into perspective in this section of Meridian and now we can see over 50,000 cars a day. That is a major highway. Part of and hopefully we will be able to present this to help people determine alternatives on 20-26 is I try and understand how important this road is to the region. I had the traffic modelers at COMPASS do what I call my (inaudible) so you have to hear it again - a little doomsday scenario of what happens if we fail to protect these corridors? I will say failure is defined as the speeds going down because we have totally been unable to manage access to Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 23 of 26 those corridors and the first step of the three step process was to show Eagle Road to 45 mph because it will be that, but the pathway will hopefully stay the same or be more because of intelligent transportation systems and you still will be able to handle the traffic there, but just what are the ripple effects of that? Not so much. We didn't see so much. A little bit on 44, but basically people didn't divert. You know people kind of stayed the same travel patterns. Then we failed 44 and dropped that speed and the model down to 35 mph and basically blew out every bit of capacity north of the river. But, people were pretty trapped because of the river crossings on 20-26 still maintained its function. We got and dropped 20-26 down to 35 mph. We really didn't know what we were looking at. I didn't know what I was looking at with the model results. I had to ask for help from the modelers and they said that the model was - because the volume started dropping on 20-26 and intuitively that didn't make sense to me. I said why is it doing this? Is there a mistake in the model or something? They said no the model is retaining trips. I said tell me what that means in real terms I can understand as a planner not an engineer? They said well there is no capacity left on the system, so it's refusing to put cars out on the road. Which means it is really, really bad. You saw at Exit 29 in Caldwell, you saw 6,000 trips divert, not even get on 20-26 because there was no capacity. Every little segment that we have in our network where it might show volumes today, you know, less than a 1,000 cars was just blown out to several thousand vehicles. So, that is all the information that I needed to really protect 20-26 and that is why we spend time trying to prevent bad decisions from being made particularly on access points. Next slide. The other future conditions or projects that we obviously have to pay attention to is the Highway 16 extension as it would cross the corridor and try to (inaudible) with the city in the North Meridian Plan and has described an interchange there and would also show that in Communities in Motion - try to pay attention and hopefully not duplicate efforts with those other studies. The same thing - ITD is currently upgrading Exit 29 at the very western end of the corridor and actually will make some good use out of the environmental document that was for a large area around that intersection in that part of the Caldwell area. Next slide. This is what happens when you get a committee of consultant and planners to write a vision statement, but hopefully at the end of the process it might be a little more concise, but basically the last part is - I mean the first part talks about all of the deliverables in the project, but basically we want to preserve a regional multi-middle corridor that allows travelers to efficiently and safely travel all the way between Caldwell and Boise. I think Phil has talked enough about the gains to capacity and efficiency with access management as well as the safety gains and part of the other importance of 20- 26 and why capacity is really important is that with those gains that represents a lot of money if you had to build that capacity, if you had to buy right-of-way, if you had to lay the asphalt down and as you all know, you know, nobody is swimming in a lot of extra money for transportation right now. All of the construction costs have gone up, so it is just really important that we really squeeze out the capacity that we can with good access management. Next. Public involvement is kind of the major benchmarks that were the interviews that I talked about. We are Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18,2006 Page 24 of 26 planning three public -- we are really two public meetings, the third is a public hearing, which will be hearing what the public is saying, not really giving them information at that point. We will have information on the ITD website. They have an area on their website to post information on current studies. We also obviously will use the COMPASS website to notify people. We are developing our stakeholder database as well at COMPASS that will use, especially when we get the first flush of folks attending the first meeting, but we will be mailing postcards to a zip code drop and then a personal post card to anyone that has fronting property on 20-26. Next. You know, I will just - probably -- why don't we just stop here. Phil kind of went through the access management in much more detail than I can do justice to, but I guess with that I hope that you will come to the public meeting, hope your staff can help out and can encourage them with a turkey sandwich or something for dinner, but with that I will stand for any questions. Wardle: Thank you, Tricia. Questions? Bird: I have none. Wardle: We look forward to the project and the corridor and seeing it mold into its new urbanization. Rountree: Mr. President, I do have a question. You indicated that communities - - as Sue wants notice done - that you want the communities to adopt the plan. Will a portion of the plan deal with suggested ordinances or techniques to deal with the issue of access or encourage those things like Meridian has in place with their ordinance to submit and that is a good thing and you need to maintain it and by ordinance adopt the plan as either an addendum to or an amendment of or some other vehicle that the city can enforce? Nilsson: Madame Mayor, Councilman Rountree, yes, but there are other efforts going on at COMPASS right now where it might even try to get some of that stuff even sooner than later. As part of the work that Para metrics, Phil will be putting together an access management plan for this corridor, which will include recommendations for ordinances. There is an effort - boy there is several - it is hard to feather them all out, but COMPASS is working with ITD on developing an access management coordination with land use decisions or how we can better integrate those processes. I have spent a lot of time just the pass week talking to attorneys with their staff. Before I can put pen to paper we really need to listen to people and I got to the point where last Thursday, Bill Gigray who represents some of the Highway Districts and Canyon County just took it upon their selves to write a joint powers agreement. We have met with Eagle and their attorney. I think we have Meridian scheduled - I have this panic, it's not on my calendar - to meet with Bill and the staff, but we have actually identified just some short, easy fixes to help close the gap. It won't be one magic bullet, but probably several. We will probably line out from Comp Plan to conditional use permit to rezone, Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 25 of 26 development agreement, all of the things that would make everyone's life a little easier, particularly ITD's and preserving corridors. Phil described some of the legal handcuffs on ITD and I think everybody is, even at the Corridor Preservation Committee very happy and willing to assist ITD to protect these corridors. Everyone sees the long range benefit to doing that. We will give - it is important to give the local jurisdictions those tools, even to the point with access management ordinances, which you guys already have adopted, but I even offered to write the staff reports for some of the other jurisdictions to speed things up a little faster. Rountree: Thank you. Wardle: Thank you. Sue would you like to --? Sullivan: Quickly, I just wanted to briefly add that while in general we have had pretty good success with the access spacing and acceptance from the development community. There is one development that has submitted a permit for an access point that is not in the site plan and I just wanted to let you guys know we are a bit vulnerable because of some of the things related to our access policy verses the rule that we are trying to take care of right now and as always we haven't come up against it yet, but on a lot of our corridors we have deeded access points and some existing access points that come with some different levels of implied access rights. I would like to hope that you guys can use your land use authority to help us out with that because sometimes just because we approve the permit doesn't mean we think it's a great idea. Sometimes it just means that we don't have the funds to by access right. So, I just wanted to give you a heads up on that and we can talk more about it if you want to at a different time. Maybe again, really briefly, there is some - a few developers concerned about the 200 foot right-of-way that I have been asking for. Wardle: Additional questions? Council that brings us to the end of our agenda and the end of our appointed time. I would consider a motion to adjourn. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It's been moved and seconded to adjourn. All those in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:57 P.M. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting April 18, 2006 Page 26 of 26 (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: G / Z:t/ c 6 DATE APPROVED