Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010 05-04 PreMeridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 6:04 P.M. on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, by President Zaremba. Members Present: Keith Bird, David Zaremba, Charlie Rountree and Brad Hoaglun. Staff Present: Jacy Jones, Bill Nary. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird O Mayor Tammy de Weerd (arrived at 6:40) Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Hoaglun: On tonight's agenda we have item 3, a presentation of ACHD regarding roundabouts and we would like to add an item 4 and if we have time that will be an executive session pursuant to Idaho Code 67-2345 (1)(c). So with that, Mr. President I move adoption of the agenda. Bird: Second. Zaremba: We have a motion and a second to adopt the amended agenda. All in favor say aye. Opposed. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Presentation from Ada County Highway District (ACHD) regarding Roundabout Policy Discussions: Little: Thank you honorable councils, it is my privilege to be here tonight to present our roundabout status and policy at ACHD and I will proceed with that. Basic outline. Talk about what a roundabout is and why we feel it is important to go to using roundabouts, why we need a policy and why did it take us forever to develop it? Your staff participated in helping with this. What is in the policy and where do we go from here? What is a roundabout? Essentially it is a circular intersection with counter clockwise flow, yield signs for the entry; traffic has to yield, it has islands, splitter islands coming into it that direct your path around the roundabout. It is a very slow, efficient, safe intersection. Why go to roundabouts? Safety is a huge factor and I will go into that in a few minutes. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 2 of 11 But, they just tend to be very safe. Congestion delay, air pollution is a mainstay of a roundabout. They just move traffic through very smoothly especially in off peak hours. When you would be stopping at an intersection waiting for your light to change and that sort of thing and you can just move right through. Community values, esthetics, slower traffic flow along the street in some cases is an advantage, but predictable traffic flow and there is just some things there that ends up being a real advantage to communities. The growth has been incredible. I checked about roundabouts about 15 years ago thinking that yeah, this might be an answer and it really wasn't ready at this point in the US - a development. They were into research stage. England and Australia use them and France a little bit differently, at a faster speed and I kind of waited a long time and this is what happened in terms of growth since that time. It has gone from say 100 roundabouts since about 1998 to over 602,006 and has continued to grow at that pace. Roundabout usage in the region -becoming very common. Washington is using them a lot; Oregon, Utah, Montana, Nevada in DOT's on the State Highway system and the locals and especially Kennewick, WA if you have been up in that area. Bend, OR has over 20. They have just gone wild with roundabouts. Idaho Falls has had several for probably ten years over there. Coeur d'Alene has one right in front of the high school. I was up there last fall and they were building the one just down the street at the next intersection. So they are finding that they work very well. Nampa has built the one on Happy Valley and Amity and Canyon County Highway District is already developed a policy -they are ahead of us. So we are kind of slow in coming into this. Public attitude toward roundabouts. This is the insurance industry report. You see that the dark green -this isn't consultants that sell roundabouts or anything this is the insurance agency that pays the bill on accidents. But they found that going in the public tends to be very negative or at least negative -almost 50 percent negative; then neutral and the light green is after they have been in for awhile and they poll the people. Some are still neutral, others are positive and others are very positive. So it shifts as people get used to them. I mean, what is this strange thing? And then as people drive it and it works just fine and they can just zip through it, they really tend to be very positive. This is the accident picture and I had comparison of signals verses roundabouts because that is what we are really looking at here. Normally where we would use a roundabout is where we would normally use a signal. The accident picture -about 48 percent of accidents disappear with a roundabout compared to a signal at an intersection and that the property damage is the yellow, the injury are the fatal and that is the red and you can see where the huge advantage is is where the reduction is over 3/ in the injury or fatal accidents -from 17 percent down to about 4 percent, which is just astounding and let's just look at the cost of those. The cost of injury and fatal accidents are what are concerning everyone. Some states aren't even looking at property damage only. Some of the key states, Washington, Missouri - Idaho is brought in to be the sample states to look at as prototypes. They are not even looking at property damage accidents. You can see why. They cost $6,000 and ruin your whole day, inconvenience you maybe for a week, but the injury accidents the dollars go up and sometimes injuries are for life to even fatal. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 3 of 11 It goes $6,000 up to $6 million for typical fatal. These are federal highway numbers. ITD uses them and we use them to judge the value of safety improvements. Incapacitated injury $300,000 and that is all costs -societal and individual. This is the Happy Valley and Amity intersection and you can see it before and after. We looked at what has happened there because it went in 2006 and so we have three years before with a four way stop. We have three years after with a roundabout and say what is the accident rate look like? Total 13 before and actually more with a roundabout, 19, but the difference is almost all of them with a roundabout are in the property damage only realm and two injury accidents -the four way stop actually had four and we think of that as our safest intersection, but once in a while a person will blow through a four way stop and won't see it and catch a person broadside. That doesn't happen much with the roundabout - as you saw the conflicts, I kind of brushed by that, but there is very few accidents in a roundabout place and have a collision and they tend to be sideswipes. They are the minor not the t-bones. The cost, we generally use numbers to run through these costs below and you can see cost per a million vehicle miles going through the intersection and used the volumes before and after to make it fair and that was 42,000 per million vehicles with the four way stop, 15,000 for a roundabout. About athird -cut out about two thirds of them, reduced it 27,000 per million vehicles and for the intersection for the year, 162,000 -that kind of gives you the idea -how much can we save? 162,000 and we can build a traffic signal for about that. But that is every year that savings. Roundabout capacity and delay. Delay is very low until you get close to capacity typically. Capacity is movement specific and its variable. The intersection may be running free except for one way is backing up a little bit. So the roundabout does depend on what direction you come in. In rough terms a one lane roundabout can handle about 20,000 cars. That is both streets and that would be like Linder and Ustick that we just built over here - a brand new intersection of about 20,000. So at that point you are starting to need a two lane. 40,000 that is like Meridian and Cherry and Fairview -you are starting to be about the limit of a two lane roundabout with that just to give you an idea on the amount counting both streets. Pedestrians and bikes. Pedestrians very low accident potential and severity, especially at one lane. They are just really easy to get across and convenient - with a pedestrian at a signal you may push the button and wait and wait - at a roundabout you have got the right of way and one car may not stop for you, but it is usually not very long at all. ADA may require us to signalize multi lane roundabouts - we are kind of waiting for the access board whether they are going to come down. We developed this hawk signal - or we haven't developed it, we start using this one and you have seen it over here on Linder Road where it is - I think that will work well with the roundabout for minimal delay if we go into the multi lane and we have to start controlling the approaches. Bicyclists can travel either as a pedestrian or a vehicle, low speeds mixing very possible. Let me just show you what that looks like. Here is the pedestrian, short distance to cross. One direction to travel and the cars are coming relatively slow, probably 30, 25 or even 20 mph at that point, easy for a pedestrian to get across. The bicyclists approaches on a shoulder or a bike lane Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 4 of 11 and then directed either into the pedestrian route to share it with the pedestrians - they have a little bit nicer facility there to get them through a little wider or they become a vehicle and most of the bicyclists, serious bicyclists would feel very comfortable at 20, 25 mph mixing through the traffic stream. You see this over at Pine at this new semi roundabout without a street. Corridor applications. Washington DOT is doing this on an entire corridor where they are doing an island in the middle and roundabouts at the node. Montana has got one. One of them is five and one is seven. I don't remember which one. But up in the Billings area they are doing one like that where you can do narrow roads, put it like a narrow median in there and don't have any turn lane and you don't use very much right of way in between and then go and make u-turns at the corner at the roundabout. Golden, CO is a great example. They put one in about 1999 and you can see they have four of them there and have the four different ones through kind of a strip commercial area and in some of our western cities that is your Main Street -but they put those in and this was the accident results -the threes years before - (inaudible) up to about 120 per year and after it was down to 20 to 30 and even by the 2004 it was dropped below that. The main thing is the injury accidents, the ones that really cost and those are in the 10 to 12 accidents a year. Maybe 8 to 12 accidents a year. There is 31 of them in three years that dropped to one. Pretty amazing results there. The corridor went from two signals to four roundabouts. The volume increased 30 percent over this period of time that we are talking about the accident comparison. The travel time decreased 10 seconds and if you look at the overall through the corridor through travel time - no waiting at signals. It actually went down even though you had four roundabouts. Sales increased 60 percent in six years and they were the only area of Golden that had sustained sales growth. Business egress -time actually improved. It went down from like 28 to 18 seconds getting out of your business and one business actually asked them to close the median because people were blocking traffic and they would go down and come back around and they were getting used to doing it and so they made that modification. Emergency vehicles -that is always a concern and this is just an example of a roundabout back East -what happens when this (inaudible) goes through and actually comes on the left side of the circle and doesn't slow down - (inaudible) great big trucks going through here - a big one making a u-turn to one of the Mike's Sand and Gravel with a 30 foot tongue on the thing and I think he actually stayed in his lane around there. But they do work very well. This is a two lane and you can see that concrete ring around there is not very wide on this one because it is already a two lane road. So they use the whole two lanes when they go around -like they do a lot of times at left turns at our intersections. This was the tests that were done early on. Nampa took the lead on that and we got together on that at the Idaho Center. That is one of your fire trucks having fun seeing how fast they could go around there. They really did fine. We wanted to make sure these dimensions work for our usage and (inaudible) - we tried different ones in both the entries and the circles itself. Why policy? Here is four key things that we think are important in planning the right of way. It really isn't feasible to go in and plan conventional intersections and say oops we want to Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 5 of 11 build a roundabout. Now we have bought right of way for conventional and it would be the same the other way around, but the conventional is what exists. A lot of them they are already built up from the corners and there is just no way it is going to work out. Apples for apples it does work out; if you compare green field type like Nampa and Canyon Highway Districts just did a presentation of their roundabout corridor - Ustick from Middleton Road, I think, all the way to McDermott -three of those we have jointly with them -Star, Can Ada and McDermott and they come out about equal -signals verses roundabouts because the can move the roundabout a little bit and not bother the house too much and if you are going to rebuild the road anyway, it is about six in one, half dozen in the other. But in an existing developed area it just isn't going to happen very often, possibly could be considered. Design consistency that is where it is really important and that is one of the reasons that we have stalled as long as we have because there is such an inconsistency out there in design and we needed to have a consistent design process developed and I think we can get something that is very high quality, consistently. Development direction. We need to be able to give direction to the developers and some of them would like to have roundabouts. A lot of them are building them and they are inconsistent and we are getting into all kinds of problems. They are owning the circle and they won't cut the landscape back and people are complaining they can't see and somebody whips around it and so we really need to give the development good direction and a capital improvement program - if we plan for this sort of things, we can fund them when they happen and we can do great partnerships -the McMillan and Ten Mile and Linder were great partnerships of developers saying we will come in and say we will do it and we will work with you and the impact fees work for their benefit and ours where the public really benefits as well as the developer. Why so long in policy development? 2006 we actually had our committee -heavy lifting done by a committee of 17, including Boise, Meridian, Police, Fire, Planning - it was a great group to really look at the issues, thrash them out - PEC Consulting Engineers did a lot of research on what was out there, but unfortunately the state of the practice was maturing big time. In 2007 the report came out that looked at almost every roundabout that was built at that time that had any traffic on it in the country. They sent a team around, took measurements, speeds and safety and things and they came back and one of my staff happened to be on that team and he went around and did a lot of that, but they are incorporating that into the capacity and guidelines, so our staff should take advantage of that. Staff development. We have got two people on staff that happen to have expertise in roundabouts, one is Andrew Seabore who is behind me from Kilson Associates, who is developing these national standards, both capacity and operation. So he has some good experience. Phil Rust who helped me prepare this and he worked for Washington DOT and doing it for several years. Unfortunately he is in our signals and so we don't get to use him much. But, we have got some good staff expertise and we have been using these drafting guidelines that the committee developed and the developers have been looking at them and using them; we have been using them and have been able to refine those and we have been able to develop an accurate methodology Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 6 of 11 for allowing consistent reviews so that we get the same product every time. What is in the policy? This is the key feature. Objective comparison with a traffic signal. So the plan is to do a comparison, evaluate the intersection. If we are going to do an improvement we look at both alternatives fairly. Specific methodology for analysis - we have a way to do that so it is objective and consistent. Concept design for build out strategy. What are we going to do? If it is going to last for ten years, if it is not going to last for ten years we are going to build it to whatever will -two lane. If it will last for ten years, we kind of look at it -what is the safety factor? What is the possibility of building it small and expanding it and should we build it out and just use curbs? That is in the policy. Design concepts - a roundabout is very complex compared to a standard intersection. I have been designing those for 35 years. I wouldn't design a roundabout. I mean, they have three concepts that come up that are used. Key things -fastest path -how fast will your neighbor's teenager drive through it and stay in the curbs and be safe? The next one is swept path or natural path and that is your mother driving through it smoothly staying in the lane and being able to travel through it safely and comfortably and the other one is swept path -that is your brother in law driving the big rig and he can go on the truck apron or whatever, but you have got to meet all three of those and you have got to meet them for every movement - so you are coming through and you are turning left on this approach and you have to be able to bring them through there and measure the speed while you are doing it and it was very subjective. We have an auto cad method to do it now, but that is a little complex. Design features - curbs and islands -the top one is a truck apron -you need enough room for the big low boy to traipse across there and pull great big trailers - 53 foot trailers, depending on the intersection. I mean some may not need that much, but a lot of them you are looking for the WD 67, which is that 53 foot trailer with the big long king pen rear axle length that you are dealing with and that is used. The island on the left is to slow them down so that you get them down to speed before they hit the roundabout, so the key thing is having the speed similar to the circulating car and the entering car and have them both low and if it is a high speed you are going to have to do them longer type entry island and then the splitter island itself points in the right direction comfortably, keeps the speed down and provides a good refuge for the pedestrian as well. Policy features, pedestrian and bike accommodations is detailed there or given in a general way. The policy is something that is approved by ordinance. We don't change that very often, so those are generalities. The design guide is something that will be more of a living document. Not all the time, but it will change as practices change. Site distance, important landscaping considerations, these are -the things that they haven't read are more important to the cities, how these things are landscaped and still get our site distance involved there. Signing and striping, the lighting is key; it has to be laid out right to get safety and a good visibility for the approaching motorist and the pedestrian and of the pedestrian. Access control - basically we try to keep the same access control that we have for signals. We don't want driveways or streets close to the roundabouts if possible. We can live with them if they are, but it is a little slower speed of course, but we try to keep Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 7 of 11 the same standard. Submittal and review process. Preplatting is important to do a preliminary design of the roundabout before we plat because if we have already platted it is too late to make the circle bigger. It just makes a huge difference in a roundabout if you don't have enough room and designing inceptions are covered. The design guide, screening guidelines are in there and I think cities are probably pretty interested in what ones are chosen to be roundabouts and what ones are signals and how that is going to work. Design details are there for the consultant. The single to multi lane expansion is there. I talked about that and wonder what circumstances we build to the ultimate originally and what ones we might want to go small and think it is going to be many years and widen it later and design review process. Why don't we just do them everywhere? Sounds good. There are some real big things and I don't want to over sell these things and that is why I put this slide in. A lot of times existing right of way and roadway footprint are just going to make it so it is cost prohibited to do. Sometimes traffic volumes are just too high. As you know, Meridian and Cherry that is the two lane; and it is not going to work at Fairview and Eagle. We have got double the volume over there, so there is a point just too much without going -stacking your roundabout or something that you can do and we are not into that. Optimized signalized corridor. If we have a signal at every mile and half mile, we can get a decent progression on it. If you throw a roundabout in the middle, it is going to throw off your platoons and break it up. So there will be ones that we won't want to do because of that and then a two way stop - if it works, it is not broke, don't fix it. You are going to cause delay, you are going to cause your emergency vehicles to slow down for no reason if we just put it in for a two way stop. So a lot of times that will be sufficient. Where they plan in the near term. Pine and (inaudible) which is the future street out here that is kind of built halfway in the near term. Warms Springs and Park Center will be one. There will be a whole corridor like we are talking about out in Harris Ranch out to the east of Boise. We will see a corridor very similar to the one I showed you although, at least physically but it will be new development. Ten Mile and Amity is one down there and I think it is in for 2014 in our program. Hill 36, Katalpow to Boise -that is one of those five legged intersections. It is really an unusual one. Black Cat and Amity is in for preliminary development. So that is looking for a corridor, Amity being a corridor. Some of these were flushed out in your South Meridian plan where we had identified some of these locations for roundabouts. 30t" Street extension over by the new park that Boise is putting in and also Ustick corridor I might mention that is being planned out over here and we are looking at sharing three of those intersections with Canyon County and the Star intersection needs warrants right now for a new signal, so it is a good candidate for a near term, if it is determined to be appropriate for a roundabout. County wide evaluation process --- we are going to go through a process and we are starting it now. Andrew will kind of be taking the lead in that - locations by volume -then we look at the ones that are already built and then we look at corridor operations and for signals like that and then look at right of way restraints and then we say these are what are left for roundabouts. But those are the things that we would be taking into account and that will be a Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 8 of 11 master street plan update and we will be talking with your staff, working with you on the various cities with these locations when it is not a technical thing - as we get through the technical we will need to deal with the planning process as well. That is my quick run through of roundabouts and policy and design guidelines. So, I am open for questions and comments. Rountree: Terry you mentioned on one of your earlier slides the cost savings if you will and my question is somewhat a societal cost savings, but what portion of that is then available back into your budget for additional improvements and if there is additional monies that would go back in the infrastructure and improvements, do you factor that annual savings that you are talking about in your planning process and in your five year capital improvements plan or have you gotten that far yet? Little: We haven't got that far yet. I have done a couple before. I looked at societal costs and actual costs, agency costs and we can't recoup that accident savings or air pollution savings or congestion savings, that is the public that will recoup it, but we have looked at a comparison and it has got to be a cost benefit and see what that will be, either a signal or roundabouts and if the roundabout is going to cost a lot more, what is the savings to congestion? What is the savings to accidents and savings to air quality and that sort of a thing? We haven't even started to quantify air quality, I just throw that out - I am afraid if we go non attainment that might be something we are looking at. Rountree: Follow up - it just seems to me that if you are talking about a $2,000 cost savings over a roundabout in the instance that you identify - in ten years you are talking some real money and it may not all be available to you, which obviously it is not, but you have got some partners in that that you could go out and team up with and build a group of folks that could maybe get some interest in utilizing these funds that are generating more funds to do more of this stuff whether it is the insurance companies or health providers or whatever, but to me that is a consortium of people that are going to save a lot of money over time. Little: I agree. I think there may be great opportunities for partnerships in some of those areas, especially if this goes on attainment I really see this is going to be a good tool, but just in general State Farm funded a few years ago three of our intersections to study -- $20,000 to study Fairview, Eagle and Fairview, Cole and Milwaukee because they were the worst in the state at that time. But I think those kind of partnerships are probably out there to look at and if we can combine it with land use elements too that would be beneficial and innovative and desirable for livability and that kind of thing. Hoaglun: Anna if we could go either if before or after that aerial view of the Happy Valley, Amity I was just kind of curious -what type of land - I think this is a single lane -what type of land area does that take? Is that an acre, if you have Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 9 of 11 a single lane? Is a two lane an acre or what - it is definitely additional land that you need. Little: Actually in the standard look as we analyzed it with PUC's work, it came out to about a push because with an intersection with a three lane road you widen it out to a right turn lane, left turn lane and a departure lane - so you widen it out so you require more land on the four approaches, where the roundabout you require it all at the node. So it actually came out right there - if it was green field environment -depending on whether it was a three by three, three by five or five by five road, but they were a push at that point. They may have gotten some extra and it sure looks huge here, but the beginning one doesn't have turn lanes and it is not close to what a signal would look like at an intersection. Hoaglun: You kind of answered my follow up question and as you go out, increasing like you did at Ustick and Linder a full build out then they would be approaching what a roundabout would be, but to follow up, ladder truck and maybe this is for Joe Silva too, it looks like if a low boy can get through that, I think our ladder truck shouldn't have any problems going through that. Does that work? Silva: Yeah, we worked with ACHD staff on that and in some instances we have utilized that apron that he alluded to in the presentation that as a safety feature I am sure we can make the turn. One of the things that we have been cognizant of is any vertical obstructions that may be present on the outside portion of the roundabout. So in other words a light post, we want to make sure because you have a basket in front of the apparatus that sticks out about five feet in front of the bumper, we are very cognizant to make sure those light posts sit back off the outside as we go around in case the driver should error, we don't want to have any potential conflicts there. But for the most part as you saw in the presentation our apparatus went through this. At the time we did not have the aerial, but we have worked with these manufacturer specifications to ensure that that will function for the needs of the aerial truck. Hoaglun: You talked about traffic volume and screening and looking ahead on what the future needs are. If we put in a roundabout and let's say you plan for two lanes and you go to two lanes and it goes beyond capacity, is that something that you can change to a signalized situation? I would think you can, but you are the expert on that and I didn't know how that works. Little: It could at a longer range financially. I mean, if you are going to end up - time to rebuild the road - if you have got the appropriate right of way - I mean think about the length of the turn lane, like Isaid -enough to have both the right of way for the turn lanes and the right of way at the nodes - so in order to keep that option open it would take a little more right of way, quite a little more right of way probably. But, we look that way because right now we are staying in the two lane realm as much at all possible because the US data doesn't tell us how to Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 10 of 11 even analyze the three lane and we have tested the English and Australian against capacity against the Americans and ours are designed tighter for safety, the Europeans are just flying around those things and they are doing a higher capacity, but they have a lot higher accident rate too, especially with pedestrians and that. Yeah, it takes a little creativity to preserve the future, but it could be done in the future if you think that through and that is part of the early on - we look at 20, 30 volumes and project what we are going to need. Hoaglun: I won't tell you -well, what my wife thinks about multi lane circles because we lived back East in Washington, D.C. and having her go around DuPont Circle four times before she could figure out how to get off, she won't do that again. Thank you Terry. Rountree: Terry you mentioned esthetics -one of the considerations that you had in developing the roundabout policy -specifically what provisions are you making in policy with respect to landscaping and spatial landscaping? Little: This would fall under our normal cost sharing TLIP policy in terms of - or in our mind or they would have to be some basic - if the city wasn't interested in the landscape element or participating of it, the very basic type thing is what we would have to have. Rountree: Do you have a guideline or a policy statement that explains what basic is? Little: I don't think so. I think probably hardscape. Rountree: That would be my guess. Little: We really need to break the site line of the head light and deal with that. But that is a good point. Zaremba: Any other questions? Thank you very much. Item 3. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c) - To Conduct Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire an Interest in Real Property Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency: Bird: Mr. President, I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1) (c). Rountree: Second. Roll Call Vote: Bird, aye; Rountree, aye; Hoaglun, aye; Zaremba, aye. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting May 4, 2010 Page 11 of 11 ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. (Into Executive Session at 6:42 p.m. and out of Executive Session at 7:05 p.m.) Zaremba: Councilmen I would entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session. Hoaglun: I would move that we come out of Executive Session. Rountree: Second. Zaremba: All in favor say aye. Opposed. I will note for the record that Mayor De Weerd did joint us for the Executive Session and she is now here. I will entertain a motion to close the special meeting. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Zaremba: All those in favor say aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:05 P.M. (AUDIO ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: ~~~ ~o ~ ZZ~ /y DATE APPROVED UGLV i c~ -~avt.e rt-6A, aG~ ~ ~~~ ti ~~, ATTESTED: o ' CE . HOLMAN,~I LERK ~~~~ ~`~' '''~~~/lllllllltlttt~~,`,