September 12, 2022 — Transportation Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:03] foreign ER the transportation Advisory board meeting for September 12 2022. and I'll start by kicking it over to Nathan for our rules for tonight thanks Alex I'm just going to run through the standard rules really quickly um we're pleased to have you join us to strike a balance between meaningful transparent engagement and online security the following rules will be applied for this meeting this meeting has been called to conduct the business of the city of Boulder activities that disrupt display delay or otherwise interfere with the meeting are prohibited the time for speaking or asking questions may be limited no person shall speak expect being recognized by the person presiding and no person shall speak for longer than the time allotted each person shall register to speak at the meeting meeting using that person's real name any person believed to be using the name other than the one they are commonly known by will not be permitted to speak yes no video video will be permitted

[1:00] except by City officials employees and invited speakers and presenters all other participants will participate by voice only the person presiding at the meeting shall enforce these rules by muting anyone who violates them if the chat function is enabled it will be used for individuals to communicate with the host it should be used only for technical online platform related questions if an attendee attempts to chat for any reason other than seeking assistance from the host the city reserves the right to disable that individual's access to the chat and only the host and individuals designated by the host will be permitted to share their screens during this meeting thanks so much back to you Alex thanks Nathan our first order of business is the approval of minutes we've got two to approve first up are the minutes from our regular August board meeting I saw that there maybe were some earlier comments and I sent Meredith some credits today that Meredith are those in the most recent ones or should I read those into the record

[2:02] um is that showing yes okay there are the first um changes replace dangerous driving with vulnerable Road user whoops um additional enhancement to this comment when originally presented the justification for Birchwood placement was to avoid his structural collapse and the loss of property and life it was flavored determined the bridge sufficiency rating have been inaccurately communicated by CDOT and

[3:00] the bridge is not deficient care people would welcome a case for bridge replacement and if staff thought it was justify your quote thank you Meredith yeah perfect are there any other edits from tab on this one not seeing any and then for our uh if we need to can we do these together sure sure I can pull up the other minutes I didn't hear many tickets okay thank you and then the second minutes are from the second half of our Retreat which also took place since our last regular board meeting okay so any tab members have additional edits for those minutes

[4:04] seeing none can I entertain a motion to approve both minutes I moved to approve both minutes thank you Tila it's like seconds all those in favor of approving both the August regular board meeting and the second for three minutes that's unanimous five with five votes thanks Meredith uh next up is is public comments later tonight we're gonna hold a public hearing about our design and construction standards update but if you're here to speak about any of the other matters before the board tonight or any other matter dealing with Transportation now would be the time to speak so we're soon going to talk about mobility and access for all ages and abilities a West Pearl update and the transportation Improvement program if you're here to speak about any of those now is the time to do so

[5:00] if you're interested in speaking please use the raise hand feature and anyone interested in speaking will be permitted three minutes to do so let's see give me one second to arrange my windows here and we'll go to the folks who have their hands raised in Zoom starting with current um Kurt I'm going to allow you to talk and then I'm going to start with the timer whenever you're ready great uh thank you I'm Kurt nordbeck speaking on behalf of community Cycles we recommend that you request a council that the West Pearl pedestrianized space be maintained as such pending further study through the pandemic this space has served as a safe unstructured outdoor space for Boulder rights free both from

[6:00] the threat and disturbance of Motor Vehicles and from the more highly programmed format of the mall as a result it has attracted a wonderful diversity of users anecdotally it's popular with young people and a wider racial demographic than we typically see in Boulder it's arguably the most urban place we've created in the city we believe that the pedestrianized space enhances economic Vitality by furthering the boulder brand of a creative Innovative City for people it improves safety by removing Motor Vehicles entirely from these blocks it improves accessibility by increasing space for pedestrians including mosing wheelchairs or with Mobility challenges and by providing a completely car-free space for the blind or others who particularly want to avoid Motor Vehicles it improves Equity by creating a completely new kind of urban space that many people prefer and it seems to pose no operating difficulties for buses or traffic

[7:00] signals staff's recommendation to reintroduce Motor Vehicles appears to be based largely on input from some surrounding businesses and their narrow self-interest but the space belongs to the city as a whole not just to the businesses we do see room for improvements in particular it appears that there may be a need for more or better placed parking for people with disabilities and 10th Street south of spruce remains configured One Way requiring access via the alley this could use study to consider allowing two-way travel and possibly better signage the street has brought car free joy to thousands of people as our climate crisis intensifies and joy for many remains hard to come by now is not the time to push people to constricted sidewalks and allow back the noise dust danger and pollution of Motor Vehicles we can continue to study it but in the

[8:02] meantime we should let it remain a space for people thank you thank you great next I have Craig then we'll go to Jonathan and Callan Craig um I'm going to allow you to talk and reset the timer whenever you're ready great uh thank you uh Trini Alex Ryan Rebecca and Tila thank you for your efforts to make Boulder streets safer I am a citizen of Boulder living in the orchard Creek neighborhood just south of Celestial Seasonings with my wife and seven-year-old son I know that the board has an ongoing challenge to service competing requests from the public in the face of a limited Transportation budget however I urge the board to please

[9:01] revisit the speed reducing efforts already considered for the section of spine Road adjacent to my community Orchard Creek and the Deerfield community on the east side of spine a few years ago this section of spine north of Jay Road and south of Gun Barrel Avenue was identified among the top 10 projects in Boulder's neighborhood speed management program that program has been discontinued but the traffic speeds on spine continued to exceed the posted 30 miles per hour and the volume will grow with the planned Celestial Seasonings development of the most significant concern is that elementary and middle school buses now stop at two sections on spine Road kids are now Crossing spine on a regular basis when they exit the bus and when

[10:02] they uh leave in the morning to get to the bus I urge you to please follow through with the speed reducing changes expected from the neighborhood speed Management program please Implement two raised quas crosswalks on spine at the intersections of North and South Orchard Creek Circle thank you I yield back my time foreign next we have Jonathan Jonathan I've just requested that you speak whenever you're ready good evening my name is Jonathan singer and I'm a senior policy program director for the boulder chamber I were writing today and speaking today to say that we stand with the downtown Boulder partnership in support of reopening West Pearl Street as soon as possible while keeping the door open for

[11:01] future considerations historically the city of Boulder has been Innovative transparent and Equitable in their deliberations concerning new regulations and use of public spaces the business Community has always worked to participate constructively in the cities Associated public processes and input sessions and we all understand though the recent public health emergency forced fast necessary and life-saving changes with respect to West Pearl the business Community acted as partners and made costly sacrifices in support of those Community needs those sacrifices during the pandemic included the fact that West End Pearl Street was hit unusually hard in terms of business viability with impacts that reverberate to this day Visual Evidence of business closures reinforced what the numbers tell us sales tax revenue for West Pearl continues to lag behind other parts of Pearl Street in the community sales tax levels are only 78 of what they were pre-covered eating places stand at 81 percent

[12:01] and comparatively all of downtown Boulder registers at 95 97 percent those same numbers are at 123 and 99 across the entire city the boulder Chambers policy framework emphasizes developing spaces and creative policies for small businesses to locate grow and flourish our framework also asks for a comprehensive review of any processes impacting these qualities a decision to permanently close West Pearl would clearly violate those policy tenants forcing local area restaurants and retail stores to abruptly review their business model and profitability this is aside from the sign of disregard it would evidence for the parking impacts in residential areas and the challenge accesses for those with limited physical Mobility retail stores and restaurant ownership are particularly risky Fields margins are thin and even before covid's success was far from guaranteed many of our beloved restaurant and retail shop

[13:01] owners hung on because they love their Community their employees and our customers they also share the want to share the rich cultural experience that accompanies their culinary talents and unique retail experiences they create let's show them our appreciation by heeding the strong plea and compelling evidence of the negative business impacts to reopen uh and reopen West End of Pearl Street in short now that the public health order has been lifted let's hit the reset button and if further exploration is warranted let's take a look at West Pearl Street and commence a traditionally deliberative analysis and review process thank you very much thank you Jonathan next we have Callan Callan I'm going to allow you to talk whenever you're ready hi thank you very much um I would just like to encourage you to consider putting at least two raised

[14:00] crosswalks on spine and North Orchard Creek and South Oyster Creek and Wellington roads the traffic and speed continue to increase as you've already heard and we do have Young Elementary and Middle School students Crossing that road every day twice a day and waiting minutes and minutes because cars will not stop for them so I would just like to encourage you to do that there's also two Trails on that road and there are not crosswalks on either section of those Trails including the Lobo Trail so um please if you can listen to the community here and I encourage you to put those raised crosswalks in to slow the speeds and to provide a safe passage for our students here in Boulder Valley thank you for your time and consideration thanks Kellen that's all the raised hands I see awesome thank you for hosting Nathan are there any of the comments we heard from the public that staff would like to

[15:00] respond to right now thanks Alex can you hear me okay because my okay great um yeah we have received a couple um messages from folks and I think some of the folks that spoke here tonight about spine and um speed mitigation along the spine and that I believe you know at this time our response has been we're focusing on the can and so we haven't continued with any kind of speed mitigation on other streets um but we'll could we can take that back and talk to the team to see if there's any opportunities to do anything Devin did you want to chime in here yeah thank you Natalie spoken uh with some of the residents that live along spine and had some correspondence and uh transportation and Mobility is committed to doing a few um data collection items along spine Road

[16:02] we're going to collect speed and volume data as well as vehicle classification data and then at the South Orchard Creek intersection with spine road we are going to conduct a pedestrian Crossing study to understand the cross number of Crossings there not only during school bus pickup hours but also during the lunch time and later in the afternoon as well after work foreign keep coming back with this matter and with the direction from Council this sort of thing has been shelved for a while but um thank you Devin for for reaching out to them and and committing City resources to studying that and with that we'll move on to our next agenda item item number four which is a presentation from Boulder County on mobility and access for all ages and abilities

[17:04] I'm going to go ahead and share my screen can you see my PowerPoint slide yeah okay awesome thank you so much uh good afternoon everybody my name is Dr Jessica Vienna Sanchez and along with Angel Vaughn and Cami Echo I'm gonna talk we're gonna talk to you about the um recently adopted mobility and access for all ages and abilities plan um so I'm going to start talking to you a little bit about the project in general so this project um seeks to improve the mobility of all communities including seniors people with disabilities and low-income individuals youth in general people who are not conventionally um Target in plans um we coordinated with different organizations

[18:01] um the ones who provide and coordinate transportation services so they were all consulted throughout this plan the Federal Transit law requirement for Section 5310 uh this is the part of that um the law that's funding our project and we really focus on this project that needs to be locally developed and coordinated um and it's very exciting that we have this plan that is the first of its kind in Boulder County so to give a very quick overview of this plan uh we have a short video that I want to share with you so if I can still share this to this screen and start sharing my YouTube page let me know if you can't hear it

[19:00] not everybody can just jump into a car and get where they need to go that is why Boulder County has developed the mobility and access for all ages and abilities plan this plan serves as a guide for all Boulder County multimodal transportation policy for improving transportation services for a wide range of people throughout the planning process we heard from you and we developed strategies to address your unmet needs we took your ideas built on our past successes and turned them into recommended actions for us to address in the future here are some of those suggestions it would be so important to have a reliable safe option for our family I would like to see a little bit more Paratransit I'd love to see a high-speed Transit is I think of Transportation a lot differently these days everything's

[20:00] logistical when you have a walker without Mobility where we really aren't anything you know we need to get to the doctor we need to get to the store we need to get to Social Services you want the elderly disabled to get out and about you know have some kind of form of life decency common in life but how can they they can't afford to get around my experience when I was trying to help my boys navigate when they were going to and from Lafayette for school was I was having a hard time trying to figure out what time the bus was going to come what time they were going to get picked up what time they were going to get dropped off I really only got to and from places by car with my family and I didn't really know about the other options that

[21:00] were available to me throughout this process community members and partners highlighted that we are moving in the right direction by expanding multimodal Transportation programs and services we'd like to build upon some of the progress that we've made I think there's real progress being made in Boulder County with flex ride being added onto our TD I don't think the city really realized how much fun they have given us by by setting up that pathway under the road and then up to the lake your ideas and thoughts were heard on the many current successes and remaining unmet needs now is the time for us to work together with Community Partners to coordinate funding streams continue Equitable investments in transportation and promote community services and Mobility options around Boulder County for all ages and abilities

[22:02] [Music] it gives me my PowerPoint okay uh now the overachieving goals and objectives of this plan there's six the first one relates to accessibility so we want to support other Transportation um options not just car and uh Equity too is important to listen to other to marginalized populations determine what are the major areas that we need to address with mobility issues uh regarding the reliability we need to recognize and support uh personal who the drivers who are running this system and also help increase the regular program and service in use related to

[23:00] efficiency we need to reduce strain increase you know Effectiveness in the system um we need to look at the boulder counties future social and financial growth and also address climate impacts and um and help improve air quality by using other modes of transportation or giving people the option to use them and then also safety two um we want to continue embracing the philosophy of universal access and make people feel comfortable when they use only their modes of transportation who was involved in this process it was a long process that we had to go through we had a technical advisory Community Committee with different partner agencies I believe from the city of Boulder we had Transportation mobility and housing and Human Services we also had Community Partners from many different areas and agencies who gave us their feedback and also affinity and focus

[24:00] groups young people disabled people people from different backgrounds and with all of that information we created a first draft so that was the first part of the process and then that draft was submitted for a public comment um so throughout my February and March and um during that period we received about 110 comments which were included in the next iteration of the plan which was finally adopted um by the blcc in July 28th so that was very exciting uh so now I'm gonna pass it along to Cami she's gonna talk about the existing conditions of the report so tell me thank you Jessica yeah thank you all and thanks for giving us some time tonight um in your full agenda um like Jessica mentioned um there were

[25:00] multiple parts to this planning process um and part of that why we were putting together our first draft of the plan we were also going through and um creating a separate document kind of the existing conditions like what we know about the transportation providers around the county um and some of the programming that are going out there to help increase access um as well and so some of the takeaways from whether we heard it through feedback specific to the existing conditions report or just feedback kind of about what the future plan might look like these key findings for that you know kind of preaching to the choir here but we know transportation is a crucial issue um which intersects with a number of other crucial issues for people whether their priority is around climate or on social Equity around you know housing and transportation affordability around Public Health needs we know transportation is very intersectional with all of these priority areas we also know that there are a lot of unmet needs that go beyond the County border so we have a many municipalities

[26:02] obviously on the east side of the County as well as the west and the mountains that blend between different counties so those invisible lines and where Services can go and do not go can create additional challenges for our community members and that we now know um whether it's anecdotally or firsthand that there's not enough Supply to meet the demand there's not enough buses there's not enough drivers there's not enough whether they're volunteer drivers paid drivers whatever it might be to kind of meet the needs of the citizens across Boulder County especially those that might be the most vulnerable um next slide please um through the art analysis and in our existing conditions report and I wonder if angel or Jessica might be able to put the link to the existing conditions report why I'm talking but you can find this chart um in our existing conditions for report um it's taken from the American Community survey the ACs sort of um

[27:01] data um and the thing is or what I wanted to share is that this doesn't include the most recently available 2020 data so we were using the data prior to this but we wanted to highlight the orange I think it's orange orangish row here of just comparing what Boulder County looks like to the state which is the blue bar above and to some of the surrounding counties um is that we're really close to the state average but we have more than um the average for older adults except for a few counties around us um we are close to the state average with a percent of the population also with the disability I know a lot of people and I'm sure city of Boulder hears us a lot assumes that Boulder County or Boulder has a lot of money and that we don't have a lot of poverty for actually quite on par with the state average 16.9 to 16.4 is very little difference there um we have a lot of Youth in our County

[28:00] um and some surrounding counties actually have more um we don't have quite as many as the state average um but we still have over a quarter of our households that have young people in them so knowing that this report um and this plan wasn't intended to meet all of these vulnerable populations that we talked about the older adults folks with disability low-income folks um and youth we wanted to make sure that we had these comparisons so um you can find that in our existing conditions report next slide please there's also demographic data available this is pretty readily available as well next slide please go through some of these we created a number of new maps which are in our existing conditions report which might be of interest to the planner types out there or those who are just map Buffs but we looked at we created a Transit propensity map that took into account where are the most older adults disabled folks low-income folks and youth kind of

[29:01] put all of our populations together and that way you would read this map is the darkest blue areas or where the highest concentration of folks are um and to some it's not a surprise that we see the highest populations within you know our largest municipalities being Bolder Longmont um and Lafayette Lewisville um there's another some of the other we'll just kind of skim through some of the maps we have available for you here but we have kind of jobs and housing balance map um it doesn't necessarily drill down um as closely as maybe you know all the municipality detail levels um but this is something that if people were interested in looking and figuring out wanting to talk about how did we build these Maps we can definitely um share that information next slide please okay and so as we kind of moving back to um the other so we have the existing

[30:00] conditions report and then we also where Jessica left off was we developed a draft plan and based on the feedback that we got from all of these 40 to 50 different partners throughout the way um feedback was organized into strategies and we'll talk about strategies very synonymously to what would be recommendations in another plan so strategies recommendations can kind of use the interchangeably so we prioritize the strategies that were sort of determined and developed and brought forward collaboratively through all of our partners in this process about where are the biggest needs um and what we did was essentially organize them into tears and we have tiers where water programs or processes or policies or good works already going on that are in progress tier one strategies are the ones that are maybe the most likely to be implemented or addressed within the next two years among partners and tier three

[31:00] are really those implementation items those strategies recommendation items that could be implemented a little bit more long term in the next three to five years our final version of this plan has strategies recommended recommendations for the next five years and the key thing is that even though Boulder County LED sort of the organizing effort for this this plan was really built or developed in Partnership and collaboratively very intentionally and very purposefully so that all of us in Partnership can go through this report kind of find these strategies that might be parallel or support your efforts within the city of Boulder so that you can help adopt some of these strategies and we can all be sort of mutually responsible into helping these strategies get addressed over the next few years whether they're you know like we said in progress sort of of um short-term or more longer term implementation strategies um we know obviously right now the

[32:00] shortage of drivers and sort of the shortage of enough um Capital whether it's the buses and the drivers themselves is obviously a challenging need or a challenging issue for everyone and that may change some of these recommendations change the likelihood of whether some of the strategies that we're going to present to you here shortly will be able to be addressed in the next three to five years um and that there's going to be some policy and ongoing needs that still need to be sort of addressed but we wanted to come to you today as the city to really walk through what the strategies are so you're all aware of them because we're we know that not all of you participated directly in these planning process the next slide in the draft plan or excuse me in the final plan which you can also find on our website I think Jessica or angel can share too the number of strategies that Partners came up with um collaboratively totaled 25. but we broke those down into

[33:00] these seven different categories that you see over here on the left we have data strategies access strategies cost strategies resource strategies service Gap strategies awareness strategies and ongoing policies and I think the first six pages of the plan you'll see a large chart like these colorful images over on the right that outlines all of those 25 strategies so if you just want a quick review um I think it starts on like I said page five or six of our um final plan and then the rest of the plan outlines more details for each of these 25 strategies next slide I'm going to just kind of start um reviewing a couple of the strategy categories and then we'll have Angel Bond kind of finish us out so data strategies um like we said there's tier one and tier two tier one are more short-term strategies tier three are the longer term strategies but collectively and collaboratively partners um identified that work around Transit

[34:01] planning and working around safe routes to school and sort of an action plan might be a priority the safe reps of school action plan is something that we are going to be seeking a tipped around for application for to really re review where our schools and the you know where are they as far as crash data Public Health Data a lot of the um the equity factors so we can kind of rank order where within municipalities should we be working with school projects and so we can help get those onto Capital list plans in the next few years to fund but be a little bit more proactive with them than reactive Boulder County already has I think a hundred thousand dollars has committed a hundred thousand dollars to do a Transit plan um and we'd be looking to obviously partner with some of you in the transit information that you all have and then tier two is really looking at where can we formalize some data analysis collection or reporting a little more strategically together um and do some studies and look into

[35:01] more of the cost effectiveness of subsidizing taxis and ride healing especially since the bus shortage and the bus driver shortage May linger for a while next slide please our access strategy identified really looking at paved access routes and upgrades to the stops that really need some of that work being done and then really reviewing and looking at how can we improve the year-round maintenance to some of these um routes and bus stops that are often riddled with challenges for those folks who are needing to access the buses but can't necessarily get to them easily or at all or safely which we know many of you understand are kind of ongoing challenges mm-hmm and then last slide for me um is cost strategies one of the tier one sort of the shorter term strategies is really to look at how can we expand the affordable um and or free transit fare programs that are already in existence and successfully being used across the county

[36:01] um as we know there's other places around the county that people are interested or in within municipalities where the demand is greater than what could be met right now and tier two is really to look at how can we do more around covering the costs of reimbursing for bus pass requests that are being made by Community Liaisons especially within the school districts or some of our other social services Partners who may not have the budgets to cover the needs through bus through reimburse excuse me through bus pass requests right now if we can collectively work together around how can we come up with ways to support those efforts so more people can get access to Transit that need it and I'm gonna kick it over to Angel Bond at this point to finish this out around the rest of the strategies and kind of next steps great thank you Cami and I apologize in advance I'm on my phone I'm having an

[37:00] outage with Comcast so I apologize for that in advance can you hear me all right okay great um so this resource strategy um I'm in the interest of time I know that we're only on the agenda until 6 45 I'll just touch on a couple of the highlights here so um in tier one as Cami had mentioned supporting drivers driver retention and training is um going to be a huge lift and it's not even just RTD it's also the volunteer driver programs the school districts so there's really a general need to just raise the profile of drivers and just make sure that we're celebrating and celebrating their accomplishments and the roles that they play in society additionally um we have acknowledged a need for grant writing assistance so a lot of the municipalities they might have some grant writers but some of the local non-profits or the county programs they may not have grant writing assistants or people who specialize in that so really trying to

[38:00] Echo that need of grant writing so that we can have community-based Transportation Solutions well-funded I'm going to skip to tier 2 here we've identified the need for a pot of competitive funds perhaps that can be used as local match for federal grants as many of you know there's a lot of different programs that are coming up with the bipartisan infrastructure law and not all of the organizations are in a great position to be able to take advantage of those programs so really acknowledging how can we work collaboratively to be able to take advantage of those next slide please the next slide here is really about the gaps in service I'll just um highlight a couple of these so in tier one there was a gap in service for accessorize so I'm not sure if you're familiar but a lot of passengers with disabilities have to travel to Denver in order to get certified for their Paratransit service so really trying to address that and see how can we bring some of those certification options to Boulder County

[39:02] another one that I'll highlight in tier one is collaborating with the tmos and tmas it's a survey major employers to really understand the needs of essential workers what we heard throughout the process is a lot of times essential workers need to travel either before RTD starts running or after so really trying to get a better understanding of what are those needs and gaps and how can we fill them with things like band pool or maybe e-bikes that can operate outside of the RTD hours for tier two I'll just highlight the hybrid connector services and underserved areas by fixed route so a couple of examples of these would be the ride free Lafayette service that Boulder County Partners with the city of Lafayette and Dr Cobb to fund or even the gun barrel shuttle that the Chamber of Commerce is promoting um or trying to get off the ground in Gun Barrel next slide awareness strategies are basically

[40:01] addressing the fact that a lot of people don't know what's out there and a lot of people even if they know that it's out there they don't know how to use the services so really trying to Target um expanding travel Training Services for special needs populations in particular I think youth is what we brought up here because there are travel training options for older adults and people with disabilities the younger generation I'm interested in how to write Transit was one of the tier one priorities and then tier two we talk about promotion of vocational training so this is a two-fold here one is to promote CDL programs so that we have more drivers or people interested in being coming drivers for RTD or via Mobility Services and the other was a bicycle repair program with high school students so that high school students can graduate with a vocational skill of how to maintain bikes next slide the ongoing policies these are ones that

[41:00] we won't be able to accomplish in the five-year Horizon that this plan really addresses but they're super important to the success of Transportation I think the number one isn't going to be a surprise to any of us but thoughtful land use planning which also promotes coordinated transportation is at the top of these policies so how can we as a county really take into consideration that the most eco-friendly way to travel is if you're close to where you need to go so really trying to think about like how do we develop um and how do we connect that to Transportation there's also others that we talk about like Universal Design for Transit stations so that disability access isn't an afterthought like with a ramp on the back of the train station or something like that but where we're really intentionally thinking of the experience of the people who are attending or going to the transit stations um there's also continuing Equitable investment in transportation and so we really understand that transportation is a linchpin to achieving an equitable Society so as

[42:01] much as we can continue those investment in underserved communities next slide these next two slides they're just kind of a snapshot of what we've already begun to incorporate so there's a few things that we've been trying to incorporate as we were doing the planning study so things like earn a bike workshops partnering with a human services organizations to do tabling and raising awareness of what's out there doing a youth Transportation School travel study that is underway or wrapped up and we have Cami partnering with us new Denver researcher on trying to understand families Transportation needs and ride free Lafayette those are a couple of the ones that we've already started implementing next slide thank you next we're really seeking funding for how do we start a volunteer driver program in the mountains how do we really kick start bicycle safety training for Youth and Kimmy already

[43:02] talked a little bit about the vision zero proposal that um that we're applying for for the tip round four and then just really understanding um how we can have a Transit service study in Boulder County so we as Kenny mentioned we already have identified two hundred thousand dollars for a county-wide Transit study plan and so how do we find more money so that we can have a pretty robust Transit plan next slide this is just a summary of all 25 strategies um and I'll go ahead you can leave this on that and I'll just turn it over to you all I know we only have a minute or two left but are there any of these strategies that seem most relevant to the city of Boulder thank you for joining us tonight Jessica camian Angel this has been very informative and I see a lot of great

[44:00] strategies here that are I think rooted in both data and best practices so that's really exciting and especially to see how near-term some of these can be with some of them being ongoing with funding secured and even a second tier that's only five years out which in our role this is pretty quick um does tab have any feedback or questions or I'll read through these 25 strategies any of these that jump out in particular I love the idea of the work with safe routes to school I think that that's a really great initiative and touching on the grants um there is a grant that's available right now that closes on the 15th just in case you guys still have time to submit an application it's the Safe Streets for all and I can provide the link for that because I think this Falls right into that scope

[45:01] yeah great thank you I do believe that our vision zero crew at Boulder County is collaborating with a couple of municipalities to submit a Grant application for that okay awesome okay great thank you thank you Brian um Angel Jessica thank you for this this is incredibly interesting material for us and I'm afraid sorry we don't have more time to really go into it um I guess a couple of quick things uh one of the topics we've uh discussed well I I provided input on maybe so I'll put it over the over the last months is um is is Imagining the idea of like how can we imagine when we look at the city of Boulders TMP goals the motive Vision zero VMT climate probably at the top of those what what are what are the um what are the ways in which we prioritize the

[46:00] work that needs to happen so you could think of that as like change process or change model or strategy or whatever and we're having an active conversation um about advancing something that looks a little more like that so it's such that anybody could which we all just know what those are for each of those areas uh it would be I mean just these for me to say but it would be wonderful to have the county involved in that type of a dialogue and figuring out answering your question in those terms like how how can we that's the two um organizations work together so um I don't think I'm allowed to volunteer that to occur but I just anyway that's I'd love to support that if I could and the second I agree I was trying with tiny on um schools and I think maybe the boulder uh School District bvsd I wish they were more involved in policy making for for safe routes through defining everything that we do maybe

[47:00] that's a place where there's also kind of an intersection um so they're just I don't see them very engaged in our city transmission policy making um but maybe that's an opportunity um and then the final thing I actually raised this a couple of meetings ago and I was I think somebody said hey come the County's coming talk then so I'll just say now um just as one example I happen to live near a County City Line on Linden and you know it's like you you it's there's all these facilities in the city next to an open space area and then you're on the open space and you sort of walk up to Lyndon and you're on this County Road with with no with no shoulder bush is hanging over the side and these just massive trucks just flying up and down and and maybe um there's I don't know I I mean this takes resources obviously but but some kind of a assessment of um where at least do we have these kind of friction points where the city and the county are kind of close to each other I know this isn't novel but um so

[48:00] anyway a pitch for Linden specifically but then also more generally this kind of this this that idea I'll I'll sit down thank you so much thank you so much well thank you and um Cami I don't know if you want to address the issue of bbsd's involvement in policy because I know you work most closely with them so sure um and just yeah introduce myself one more I'm the youth transportation coordinator with Boulder County and so I work with bvsd regularly and we do meet regularly so I'm happy right to facilitate then like some greater connection whether it's around specific projects or just more ongoing connection but I can follow up with you or or whomever else would be interested especially around the school youth pieces um and we can definitely make some of that coordination and co-planning and all of that um become a reality so I they are very involved in bbsd when it comes they actually have two staff which is very rare to kind of focus on youth mobility and family Mobility um so they have capacity and they have the desire and their two point people are actually quite excellent Partners so

[49:01] we can we can rally the troops no problem sounds good and then I I did hear um what you said about the coordination not knowing where like open space ends and the city begins in the county I think that that is not just in biking but that's universally like around Transit as well right because the public doesn't necessarily see jurisdictional boundaries they just see where they want to go so um I will pass on this information to our Trails planner and see if there's a way that we can holistically address that I know that we are over time and I apologize for that um but just next steps is for us to continue doing our speaking tour and um involve um try to incorporate these strategies into our applications for the Dr Cog tip applications uh work on program specific work plans to incorporate all of these strategies and then also as you may be aware the small urbanized area we have program of projects and see if we can like if we

[50:02] can can embed these strategies into the program of projects so the final slide is our contact information and I know that it was sent out to you please don't hesitate to reach out to any of us all of us we're always eager and happy to collaborate thank you so much thank you for me what jumps out is with the imbalanced land use we have in the County Transit studies and subsidies seems like a good way to address some of those issues now and the county is also in a unique position to help coordinate changes to land use moving forward and then of course being partners and all the other programs but the the land use in transit seems like where the the counties uniquely situated to help help coordinate amongst all the municipalities great thank you yeah thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you having a wonderful night thank you everybody next up for tab is agenda item number five which is an update on West Pearl

[51:02] welcome Chris Jones good evening tab I'm gonna start sharing my screen and try to talk at the same time I am here for the West Pro update item and um it's going to be both myself and Natalie presenting are you are you seeing my screen great all right um good evening tab I am glad to be here today to share with you all um where we're at in our conversation regarding West Pearl um it's been obvious the past couple weeks that this is a very passionate topic for a lot of folks in the community who've come to love the pedestrianized nature of the space and what we've done uh in response to the covid-19 emergency and so I look forward to having a discussion with you all this evening as we contemplate how we can learn from the good parts of the West Pearl closure as we contemplate work

[52:01] plan items that can help to generate possible pedestrianized spaces elsewhere or on the west Pearl area in the future um so to start I'll give a little bit of background on um just what's guided our work thus far on West Pearl as well as some timeline considerations before we get into some of the issues that we've been identifying the key considerations um that have helped to guide our current decision making in this work then I'm going to hand it over to Natalie who's going to talk about some upcoming work items among various different Departments of the city including transportation and Mobility as well as next steps before we come back together for questions for tab and discussion so I think it's really important to start out with I'm looking at cities sustainability equity and resilience framework outside of Master plans and all of the documents that really point to the work of the city and and why we

[53:02] do what we do the sustainability equity and resilience framework really is the The Guiding goals and themes of of the work that we do and and includes all of the the strategies and and thoughts that we want to incorporate in decision making and within that Community Vitality has three uh pillars to our work or what I like to think of as a three-legged stool access for all district vitality and cultural vibrancy while everything in community Vitality just like any other department is serving all of the goals of the the framework we also have these additional Focus areas where if we are not doing well in one of these areas we're not able to to best fulfill the work of community Vitality in the in the district that we serve so for Access for all this is things like multimodal access and parking availability acknowledging that a number of folks still want to access our key economic centers via car and we want to make sure

[54:00] that their experience is reliable so they're not spending a lot of time searching for parking if that's their their mode of choice as they are visiting our our commercial centers and we want to make sure that we're thinking about all different types of mode users and how they're going to access our special places that work can lead into some District Vitality where the the less space that's that's dedicated to storage of vehicles provides more opportunity for businesses to open up and thrive in a successful commercial center and with that when we do that really well it leads us to a space where we can focus on cultural vibrancy and invest in the special events and arts and culture to make sure that our our districts our key economic centers are representative of the cultural vibrancy of our community and this has been something even before the the sustainability equity and resilience framework existed and this is something that our predecessors thought

[55:00] a lot about in the original planning of the four blocks of the Pearl Street Mall some 50 years ago making sure that while a lot of decisions were being made around four blocks it wasn't just about those four blocks that they were thinking they were making sure that they were they were including the context of all of the blocks that surround those four blocks to make sure that it's not just a plan for a park in the center of the city but also a plan for all of the downtown and so as we're thinking about the decisions that we're making for West Pearl it's important for that for us to also think about the decisions that we're making on two blocks of downtown Boulder and how they affect all the blocks that surround them so now catching up a little bit into the background of the the West Pearl closure um associated with the kova 19 emergency um in May of 2020 a couple months after the the initial lockdown um the community Vitality Department uh

[56:02] had formed a partnership an alliance with folks like the boulder chamber the downtown Boulder partnership the Latino Chamber of Commerce the convention and visitors bureau to really respond as quickly as we could to a very Dynamic situation this led to a lot of Rapid actions including the closure of West Pearl also the creation of our temporary outdoor expansions program we had over 100 businesses throughout the city participate in throughout the pandemic that program was then extended in October of 2020 including some new requirements around winter Provisions that led to Jersey barriers surrounding all of our outdoor dining areas next to travel Lanes those those emergency orders were extended again last year last fall as staff started thinking about the future of of what uh what types of programs would we want to contemplate um once the emergency orders Ended as we were anticipating at that time that uh

[57:01] we would want to to learn from the good things that we had been able to accomplish in the height of the pandemic and make sure that we're able to continue those things into the future um the emergency orders were again extended earlier this year through August 31st of 2022. in that time we got direction from Council that they want us to develop a city-wide outdoor dining program and we have since done that we work with Council to establish some ordinance changes that established a five-year pilot in advance of the emergency orders ended ending and on September 1st that pilot program has launched and we have um there were 32 applicants we have 27 that have completed or near completing through the the application process so that they continue their outdoor dining um into the the fall and winter um so the emergency orders have now ended and so we're turning back to the decisions that we made on West Pearl that were intended to be temporary in

[58:01] response to some uh Dynamic business needs where uh indoor capacities have been reduced during uh the initial phases of the pandemic emergency and folks expanded out into the street and we've now transitioned into a space where a lot of those folks have discontinued their outdoor dining and we need to think about what our next steps are in in West Pearl so when we think about West Pearl these are some images that might come to mind and some of you maybe have seen before of a dynamic um much loved popular space and it's important of course to yes appreciate that uh many members of the community have come to to view West Pearl in this way but it's also important to recognize that especially with the reduction in the amount of outdoor dining that we've seen on West Pearl that there are a lot of times that it looks more like this where there's not a lot of of activity it's not an activated space much of the

[59:01] day when folks aren't outside dining and we're down to four businesses here on the north side of pearl between 10th and 11th Street that have continued with the outdoor dining program some other images that I've been collecting over the past couple years of some other issues and considerations that we want to take into account um first you know we've got some high designed bus stops that were just built in 2015 as part of a 1.2 million dollar streetscape Improvement project on West Pearl it was the first major investment on West Pearl and in decades since probably since the the Pearl Street Mall has was built and then we've noticed some other things especially in the winter time with ice buildup and some accessibility concerns and these are just a few images they're not it's not a comprehensive uh series of photos of some of the the challenges but we also regularly do see Freight Vehicles using

[60:01] the crosswalk there at 11th and pearl to do deliveries lacking any other accessible way to do so so these are the areas of key consideration that we included in the memo and I'm not going to go through each of these in detail and they certainly are not necessarily comprehensive in the sense of we haven't done um there hasn't been a full work plan item to analyze what uh what we should be doing and how we're going to move forward on West Pearl but it's important for you all to know that these are some of the things that we were looking at in deciding that we wanted to proceed with reopening uh West Pearl to vehicles one key area is economic Vitality I'm going to get into some of the numbers there again considering the fact that our actions that we took on West Pearl were related to helping businesses survive that is one metric that we have done a lot of work on surveying and taking a look at sales tax revenue to

[61:01] see if in fact we were successful in that effort We performed a survey of downtown businesses earlier this year specifically targeted to West Pearl businesses and we've we've got a lot of perception around increased foot traffic and more activity in the area and increased sales which is consistent with what we're trying to accomplish with the closure but we've also heard that there are some challenges around increased parking challenges and decreased visibility of businesses when we take a look at the actual sales tax receipts however it's showing us that perhaps West Pearl is not benefiting from the closed condition where other parts of downtown and the city Beyond when it comes to Total retail sales tax collection as a percent of 2019 West Pearl is lagging behind almost all other areas of the city

[62:00] whereas Pearl Street Mall while it was significantly impacted in the the first year of the pandemic is largely recovered and accelerated Beyond several other areas of the city so you can see here for total retail receipts West Pearl is at 78 as of June year to date uh this year of 2019 levels whereas the East downtown area is at 130 percent and uh the Pearl Street Mall is 110 to 2019 levels so what this tells us is that uh at least from from the way that we're looking at it is that a pedestrian space done very well can Thrive uh and and survive very well despite the challenges that we Face these last few years but perhaps the the closed condition of West Pearl as much as folks might really enjoy it um we're not seeing that same level of activity returning um to those spaces when we look at

[63:00] eating eating places in particular you can see here again in 2020 eating places across the city were impacted relatively equally with the East downtown being kind of an exception there where it's it's continued to outperform almost all other areas of the city but when you think of West Pearl and the Pearl Street Mall and uh in the city as a whole everybody did pretty poorly um equally poorly in 2020 and again the Pearl Street Mall has recovered very rapidly and is doing uh better almost as well as as East Pearl where the West End continues to lag behind at 81 percent of 2019 levels so it's important for us to also think about in the context of all of the decisions that we've been making um you know as much as folks are enjoying the pedestrianized space and and it made a ton of sense early in the in the pandemic when we had 17

[64:01] businesses in that area participating in the temporary expansion program we're now down to six businesses having applied and I mentioned the four on the north side of the Thousand block of Pearl Street there are 66 parking spaces in this closure area with six of those spaces designated as Ada if if folks are able to access them that's the highest concentration of ADA parking spaces on Street in all of downtown two spaces are dedicated as loading zones in this area and one space is designated for a bike Corral moving forward with their current applicants for the outdoor dining pilot program about eight spaces will be dedicated to the outdoor dining pilot program we do anticipate that additional businesses are going to apply for the program in the next application window come next February so with that I'm going to hand it over to Natalie and she can share with you all about some other upcoming work both planned and tentative among many

[65:02] departments of the city thanks Chris everyone hear me okay cool um so yeah I will kind of dive into what work is kind of upcoming or what's currently in the work so as we think about the future of access and mobility in downtown there are a variety of planning and project efforts currently underway or planned each of these will help inform near and long-term possibilities for transformation throughout the downtown and surrounding areas of note to tab is the can identified downtown Mobility study and this work is currently slated for mid-2024 given existing staff and budget resources this study will consider multimodal connections throughout the downtown and in connection to other activity centers in Boulder like the University Hill and CEO it's likely that the study would

[66:00] also look at mobility in the area that we're discussing tonight next slide Chris so you're probably wondering you know what can we do in the in the more immediate future so in the immediate term staff is proposing that we conduct a multimodal analysis focused on the West End to evaluate options for the West End including West Pearl Street this process would consider Transportation climate and other community goals that we recognize are are important to inform the future of this area it will include a robust engagement process to ensure we're hearing from a diverse set of Community Voices that we've we've heard loud and clear that we want to make sure that all voices are considered in this process and it would inform future decisions about how space is allocated on our streets so transportation and Mobility would lead this work with support from our colleagues in community Vitality Communications and engagement and other

[67:00] departments across the city that have a role in planning operating and maintaining the downtown for now we're tentatively planning to begin this work in early 2023 and recognize there may be a desire to complete the work by next summer that said we need to consider through our work planning process how to prioritize this work among the can work plan priorities that I know you all are very interested in as well as you well know we're already underway on the Baseline Road Transportation safety project and are preparing to launch engagement activities for Iris Avenue later this year and with Tab and council's input Folsom is slated to begin later next year Transportation staff wants to stay focused on can priorities so we look forward to hearing your feedback tonight on how we approach this additional work plan item that's up for consideration next next slide Chris all right so next steps as we move forward from tonight in

[68:00] our discussion with Council later this week we will plan to end the temporary closure to Vehicles assuming Council would like us to proceed with the West End multimodal analysis staff will continue scoping that work to be ready to begin that work as soon as possible we will also continue work that is already underway with downtown Boulder partnership on the Downtown Vision plan which will provide an update in an upcoming meeting on that work and other efforts related to the downtown so at this point I'll hand it back to Chris to wrap up the presentation with questions for you thanks Natalie and thank You tab um for hearing our our presentation and we have a couple questions for you that were included in your memo and the first one is in consideration of the planned end of the covid-19 related temporary closure of West Pearl Street what questions does tab have regarding the staff recommendation to begin a new work plan item to pursue a West End multimodal analysis to inform possible

[69:01] options for future reconfiguration of streets in the West End of the Pearl area and then second what uh questions does tab tab have regarding the current and upcoming planning processes that will help inform near and long-term possibilities for West Pearl Street and other areas in and around the downtown and I'm glad to stop sharing my screen if it would be helpful thanks Chris and Natalie to members of tab have any questions based on the prompts or any of their own thank you Alex before I I go into that I just wanted to clear a question I have regarding those receipts I mean we know that since 2020 a lot of these businesses have had to shut down so in that chart I mean are we comparing like to like because it doesn't seem

[70:01] I mean I just have that clarification um that's a really good question and we don't have um Joel Wagner on the call with us but it is something that he looked at making sure that that we are keeping track of businesses that did close um I think it's important though to note that um a lot of our first floor uh vacancies that that um that existed all over downtown and Beyond have been released and we do have a lot of openings actually occurring um maybe not in a few spaces on uh the West End the the Oscar Blues space for instance continues to be vacant and does not has not been generating any interest um as well as that I think there is some movement on the old Chipotle space and that went through a couple Renditions of a business open during the pandemic and closed during the pandemic but I think as time goes on we're seeing a lot of

[71:00] first floor retail spaces getting occupied and leasing throughout the downtown and and but we are still seeing vacancies persist in this part of downtown another question on the sales data I guess I'm wondering how we know it's it's a the relationship between the street conditions and each of these sections and the Revenue data how do we know that's causal yeah I'd say when I presented these numbers to tab or sorry to council back in April I certainly did provide the caveat the correlation does not mean causation however I would uh caution that that one of the largest differences between this space um and the other spaces that we are measuring is the closed nature of the street and so there are certainly other factors the higher concentration of

[72:00] restaurants that existed in this area a number have closed and and are not reopening and haven't turned into anything else to generate even retail sales tax revenue whether or not they're not becoming occupied because of of the closure or or because for other reasons I have heard anecdotally that one of the complaints that the potential tenants who are looking at these spaces is that there is not enough available Ada access for customers it's leading them to to pursue other vacant spaces so on that note it would be interesting to know how many of these these spaces have been you know utilized since the closure like opposed to this particular segment of Pearl Street like where if any um are all these spaces being taken up on I mean any new restaurants that are being chosen too

[73:02] yeah I don't have that information right now but we can certainly yeah I guess as far as the sales tax data I'm just like it's like I feel uncomfortable making assumptions on it without knowing you know like the different composition of the business and I understand there wasn't capacity or to to do that kind of in-depth study or analysis like that I understand like operationally that just couldn't be done and that makes sense but it just also simultaneously like in a way for me I'd rather just say well we don't know you know we don't know what happens the survey data doesn't match the sales data we don't know that the street caused the sales tax changes you know because there's also differences between the other sections and we just have no way of knowing what that was without doing that finer grained analysis so I'm just really hesitant about you know continuing to use and share this data when we can't we can't make that connection

[74:00] um though yes I'm very sympathetic to the the amount of work it takes to do that kind of in-depth analysis well and we are going to continue to monitor these numbers when the street does reopen and we might see that maybe the numbers continue to lag and then that would provide a really good uh data point saying that even when we reopen the street um sales tax numbers did not improve or we might see um the opposite and so we will certainly continue to monitor these numbers as we make changes on West Pearl and I think even in that event we should still be thinking about like you know is it causal even if the numbers go you know because the numbers could be fluctuating for other things and um regardless you know and so just like continuing to make that assumption if we don't know that for instance the composition of the types of businesses and other factors involved you know we would just need that additional contextual information to use sales tax data for decision making

[75:02] thank you Alex and thanks Becky for articulating so well um sort of my hesitancy of her drawing conclusions from from some of these um these answers and these data points um and I appreciate Chris the uh the transparency of what went into your considerations and how you're weighing um things and this sort of goes to a question Ryan had submitted uh last week I think um about to what extent did decision making prioritization um what how were you considering elements of the TMP um Natalie responded to those questions earlier today um and I have to say I found that response pretty lacking um in particular because it looked like some of the things that Community Vitality was thinking about and framing um as say safety concerns are things that we talk about you know in the transportation sector and as Tab and it's not about an errant

[76:01] um moped that's able to go around the barriers um I think there's a pretty good answer for Access for emergency vehicles which has been raised a few times by a few different people in respondents that their access is available via 10th Street um but by and large we have years of data showing that the most dangerous things on our city streets are the large vehicles um I am definitely um hearing and I think there's quite quite a good um that'll lend a lot of credence to critiques of ADA accessible um designs in some of these um restaurant uh you know Street enclosures for the restaurants um and being able to access the street the sidewalk and differences in grade um being a challenge I think those are not insurmountable um but when you say uh Chris that Equity means an even playing field among businesses um I I just viscerally revolted that that is not what Equity means that is

[77:00] not with the citywide's equity standards are supposed to be weighing it is not about um do businesses have Equitable access on this street we're supposed to be talking about equity for the community um so I'm just sort of concerned that in in sort of crafting um the criteria by which to judge um and which to make a decision and a determination on what to go forward that we're you're not actually applying a lot of the things that I would like to see applied um and I think that Brian's question about how does this serve the TMP goals is pretty well placed you know how does this make travel safer how does this prioritize The Pedestrian that's one of our top things that we're supposed to be doing how does this help vulnerable populations how does this you know I'm hearing a lot of outcry from different members of the community and generally they are the ones that have the disposable income and the Disposable time to pay attention to this to write to us to go and spend a lot of money at the restaurants and the whole um Equitable argument about the use of

[78:00] streets for people um which tab had outlined in a memo to city council submitted in June of 2020 arguing for street closures not just in West Pearl but uh throughout the community was based not on sales tax revenue not about um a particular Street benefiting a small group of businesses but as a as a sort of a more of a community-wide uh response to covid and using covid as uh the impetus we have needed for years to try something new and different and so I think that the the myopia that I'm seeing in the criteria for whether this closure should end or continue exactly as it is um is false binary but it's also I think not paying attention to the larger Community context um that tab was urging this kind of experimentation um and has for years and is reflected in a lot of the community impact that we've

[79:00] our responses that we've heard in support of this kind of closure so uh I think tonight I would love to explore thinking outside of just you know thumbs up thumbs down does it stay or does it go um but really to take advantage of um the lessons that we should have already learned the things that we have picked up one of those lessons clearly is that it's beloved by you know some segment of the community um but also I'm mindful that and Natalie isn't completely right we should we've identified some bigger targets and some things that are really having a bigger safety and quality of life impact um throughout the city and so I don't want this to be you know this shiny squirrel that we drop a whole bunch of other well-intentioned and long and progress plans I think that there's room to do both but I'm quite hesitant to um bless or recommend um a fresh new micro Mobility study um because one of the arguments the tab

[80:00] had made in the June um 2020 memo to council was we've already done a lot of his planning effort we have everything that we need to justify street closures like this in our current TMP we've got our low stress walk and bike Network plan we have identified areas that this is not one of them but we have identified areas where we want to improve The Pedestrian experience we have a lot of background um efforts that seem to be rebranded restarted reinvented reinvigorated year after year and I really would hate to see this one become another planning to plan exercise when we've already acted um and I think that we have won some really valuable insights already without having to sit down and study it I feel like there is a way for us to preserve some of the gains um that this street closure has has demonstrated are possible and necessary and that we don't have to have it all be all or

[81:02] nothing there is a way to tweak what we've done and re read think what we've done without um scraping it all off and starting fresh thanks Sheila Natalie do something yeah I was just going to address some of the things you said Tila and um you know I appreciate your thoughts on this I I think so a couple of things and I appreciate you being kind of mindful of the the can work and how this would impact that um you know I I won't speak directly to I mean I think there's Merit in doing some additional study around the West End so um I'll kind of leave that there um but I think you know some of the things that we we are discussing you know or that we've kind of considered around um the West End you know having the parklets out there like there's there's the potential for more parklets right so

[82:00] I think that is certainly something we've learned that works well and that um you know some of the businesses along the west end were um interested in continuing and so that definitely will consider as part of the five-year outdoor dining pilot right as businesses are interested they can apply so that certainly will continue and I think that that's something that we should just recognize as you know that is a change right that's something that we've accepted and we're um excited about and we want to have more of that in in this area um and in the downtown so and then one of the other things that we are um considering and and Chris you can certainly kind of kick me if I say too much but I I think we um you know we're considering how we can program the space there's there's limitations obviously from a staffing and budget standpoint but have some type of like temporary um kind of Street event type programming out in this area because we have seen

[83:00] that the community really appreciates having that like Plaza community space um and so it's not you know I think one of the things that we've talked about right over the last couple weeks as we hear more from the community is that we're not you know saying that we want to go back to pre-covet and never do anything again um and and we but we do want the chance to to have a little bit more analysis around this um and then you know I'll shift to your point around just that that we've we've already said through the TMP and some of like The Pedestrian action plan or The Pedestrian master plan um that there are areas that we're interested in to have more you know basically close to vehicles or a more pedestrian activated area um and and so that's something I think we can think about for like future work items too right that we would spend more time looking at how do we Implement things like this across the community we

[84:00] obviously don't have time in our current work plan over the next couple years to focus on that um but that's something that certainly we would be open to and if there's a desire to prioritize that over something else then we could talk about that um but anyway that's what I've got for now I guess thanks Natalie I might chime in real quickly on that and there as far as I can tell Zoom does not have a kicking uh that I can uh send your way but I I appreciate uh on what you shared and I'd say that one thing in community Vitality that we've learned from uh the long-standing four block closure of the Pearl Street Mall is that closure did not make cars disappear it just changed the locations and the circulation that all the vehicles that are arriving in downtown Boulder that are part of the vibrancy of our space because those cars are carrying people to their jobs uh to their their out going out to eat as much as we work

[85:01] really hard to encourage folks and enable folks to use other modes of transportation we know that while we close four blocks of the Pearl Street Mall it did not make those cars disappear and so even though we've closed uh two blocks of pearl west of The Pedestrian Mall does not mean that those cars aren't operating on other streets and acting safety considerations elsewhere and so just want to make sure that we're not forgetting about yes that the closed nature of of West Pearl does inherently make that space uh less dangerous when it comes to interactions with vehicles but those vehicles are now operating in other locations and we need an opportunity to take a look at that and understand the safety implications of the movement of that traffic to possibly residential streets where we don't have infrastructure in place to help slow traffic down and make that safe spacer that's yes space safer foreign yeah if I could just respond a little bit to the the planning everything my

[86:00] my point is that it feels like we're just planning to plan some more um and I you know I've been working in this place for a little while I've got the report on progress from February 2012 which notes you know in 1956 a couple of um City Architects proposed closing the downtown to cars from 9th to 17th from crying to Arapahoe um that same document highlights the paint the pavement program which wasn't really happening anymore um but it helps transform the roadway public space into neighborhood assets this is not a new idea it's been something that we've been talking about for a long time 2011 TDM efforts for ceclovia that closed parts of Pearl Street on the on the Eastern end of what we're talking about wildly popular still not happening the 2014 TMP talks about the very very first thing on its very top priority was um pursuing uh exploring opportunities for shorter term rights right sizing and repurposing projects as part of the

[87:00] living laboratory approach well that has kind of evaporated as well they also wanted to create vibrant public spaces that encourage walking by publicizing the paint the pavement and part flip programs um the current pilot is sort of a revitalization of the parklet program that we had I'm glad to see it come back but we just keep having great ideas and not coming not following through with them and I'm just worried that this next effort is going to be the same thing 2016 access management and parking strategy document acknowledges that a lot of people don't walk because they don't feel safe March 2016 a transportation report on progress objective nine wants to nope back page oh the future of travel in Boulder new influences and choices will allow encourage and sometimes require people to travel differently we are at this moment this is what cab was talking about this is the time to require people to do something differently and not think about it and twiddle our thumbs a little bit longer oh yeah 2018

[88:01] Transportation report on progress talking about how we need to be much more aggressive to reach our greenhouse gas emissions we need an additional 40 reduction in the transportation sector this ghd is directly related from reducing VMT providing the opportunity for more trips to be short trips made by walking or biking spaces like this require more walking and biking I'm just hoping that now that we have you know over a decade of thinking and planning or stuff like this and now we've done something like this that we keep the good parts of what we've done instead of going back to the drawing table well said Tila anything from staff on where we are in this point in history if not data and history of this have interested me I think the the data is pretty incomplete with how many things are changing and I appreciate what we

[89:01] have but I think it's it's not fair to place the blame of any vacancies on just this closure to minimal Auto capacity and minimal parking spaces I guess the Oscar Blues place closed but so did the World of Beer that inhabited that space beforehand and they racked up six figures in back rents before a pandemic was was taking away those parking spaces one of my favorite restaurants was wild standard later rebranded as pepper and it was on life support before the pandemic with all of the parking available and now I can't get a table at ashkara which has taken in that space uh Chipotle was one of the first casualties of the pandemic and I suspect that might be because there are fewer people working downtown and therefore looking for that fast casual type of lunch and when the botany place came in it also failed and so I think there's a need to adapt with or without a pandemic

[90:00] just a decade ago on the south side of the 1000 block it was taken up by The Daily Camera they even had a surface slot that would be unfortunately for print journalism uh one newspaper can't take up a whole building in a downtown and of course we would never build a surface lot in a on the Main Street in a downtown and so as as times change I think we need to adapt and I think the the history and the data show what success looks like and it's the mall uh the mall has has bounced back as your data indicate it looks like restaurants are bringing in more Revenue than ever before I think it's important to note that the mall isn't hasn't been reverted back to what it was it's what a good pedestrian closure looks like and it has additional outdoor dining space that wasn't there before and so I think with the 1000 block where there's clearly interest and we've seen investment from the restaurants it would be a huge step backwards for at any point in time that

[91:02] closure to be reopened to vehicle traffic when there's such an appetite for this type of experience and the history and the data show that when we do it right it can work and I know that doing it right from an infrastructure perspective is going to take time and money but we should use this time to experiment and learn how to make that that permanent closure a success and of the the recent concerns that we've heard I think think 10th Street is still underutilized and could be used to to address many of these as teal already mentioned but that we could locate Ada spaces there we could locate a pickup and drop off Zone the barriers could be temporary in a way that allows emergency vehicles in and out there could be scheduled delivery times in off-peak hours when there aren't as many people walking I think these are very solvable problems and to backtrack on This would

[92:00] run counter to so many verticals I can't imagine us doing this work starting in q1 and being like Oh the way we help mode shift is by making it easier to park where you're going the way we make our community more environmentally friendly is having more cars on our streets where people are trying to gather it just seems so obviously counter to so many of the things that we're trying to achieve that I think as a board we should we should indicate to council that they do what they can if they're interested to keeping as much of the closure in place as possible if there's no response from staff I'll thanks I know this is something you've been thinking about a lot lately

[93:01] Brian are you ready yes uh thanks Alex okay I agree with what I've heard from I think everything I've heard from my tab colleagues and I think Tila did a good job demonstrating why this decision has more on the line than just the with the curbside businesses have to say and they are an incredibly important part of this but it involves more than what they have to say uh I also want to acknowledge Becky I think she's onto something uh very important uh in that to the extent this is about business impacts do we have an empirical factual basis on which to move forward or is it more of a Feeling uh and in which case are we ready to have this conversation um I have quite a bit uh from here tab has been asked to process an extraordinarily large amount of

[94:00] information in the last couple of weeks on this measure um council members are proactively asking tabs advice uh and I don't know what to do other than to take it seriously so um so ask some questions and comments um Chris I and now I want to acknowledge that you have an incredibly difficult job with this um you have to optimize for a very complicated decision uh and that's a decision that involves values and the direction of the city that are of a very political nature um I am scratching my head a little bit about what seems like such large decisions that have happened behind so many closed doors or at least so quickly without the kind of process that we get with um Much More Much More provincial things I I I think um so Chris and I thank you for responding to that I did send some written question like I said two written questions and Natalie I'm very grateful for you responding today

[95:01] um dutifully in writing and I know that that didn't that that wasn't free to um spend the time with that I sincerely appreciate um just helping to kind of clarify a few of those things so um I think Chris I just have if I could a few questions uh just just for clarity uh to you and I don't want to be too hard here but I just just to try to get a little bit of clarity um and then I I will have a few comments um so my first question is is just um I'm trying to locate where where we are in this in terms of the dis where the decision rests um I I think I saw the phrase that this is the planned in and my question is is it would you consider this as something that your your joint departments have decided and the decision is done or is this something that you're actively seeking feedback back from Council on and I'm referring specifically to the matter of closing West Pearl now sorry opening rest West Pearl to cars now so where are we on that decision has it been done by your departments are you seeking feedback from Council or

[96:00] something else all right thanks for the question Ryan and the answer is yes we are seeking input um from you all from the downtown management commission tomorrow and Council on Thursday regarding the very um passionate positions on a decision like uh reopening West Pearl Street to traffic I do know and I don't want to speak to Natalie and the transportation Mobility team the the work lies in in transportation's hands as far as what you know what streets are close to traffic and what what ones are open based on a variety of things whether there's a construction project um going on we've got 30th and and Colorado is getting shut down right for a period of time to accommodate Construction in that area so um I do know the ball is in motion we are planning to reopen the street and that is within the authority and the purview of the city as an enabled by the

[97:01] boulder revised code and the the rules and delegations associated with um what the city traffic engineer has authority over and So based on the fact that the closure in in existence in the first place happened very rapidly at the um at the request of the businesses on West Pearl it was closed in a manner that we never would have imagined ever closing a street as such an import important segment of Street in such rapid order without a thorough comprehensive exhaustive engagement process I mean just think about what this community went through on Folsom not so long ago where there was there was a lot of intentional Outreach done and it still did not pan out the way that we all would have hoped and so the original closure did not benefit from that level of work and we need to acknowledge that and that's why we we did present the the four categories in

[98:01] the way that we did is is these are things that we know are impacts from the closure itself there are certainly a lot of benefits and we've been hearing a lot of the both the perceived and the real benefits associated with this rapid action that was taken but when it comes to thoughtful inclusive intentional planning processes to transform and impact any area of our community all staff is asking for now is is let's end this this uh temporary closure that was associated with um uh Public Health Emergency and given the community's obvious appetite for um exploration and desire for these types of spaces let's create space for having that intentional comprehensive uh process and conversation so that we can um so that we can do this in a manner that does help to mitigate a lot of the the issues that we are hearing with the

[99:01] the format as it currently exists without all that having to be happening in the background while we're having that conversation I cannot imagine sending my staff out to have a genuine conversation with the business owner about thinking about landscaping and programming of the possibilities in the public right-of-way when the thing that they perceive to be the barrier between their success and failure right now is some concrete barriers that makes that really challenging for staff to have a genuine conversation and engagement with a business owner in this current state so if I just I just just want to try to clarify the answer to the question of where how where is this decision I think I'm actually not sure what I heard you say I think but what I'm trying to understand is are you asking for direction from tab or from Council on just on the question of yes we're going to Envision you know a broader strategy but but for the immediate term in terms

[100:01] of different things we could do including keep the default as cars out while we're still in the emergency order are you seeking Direction on that or would you say that you have made the decision Natalie see your hands up you wanna yeah I mean I'm happy to chime in here I think we're looking for input and we will certainly share that with Council that's that is where we're at at this point um and we're going to have you know a similar conversation with the Council on Thursday night so certainly we want uh you know our what we're trying to to Really for the policy question is we're trying to understand if there's a desire from Top End Council for us to move forward with a further analysis and engagement process around the West End and if you have input to also share about us immediate you know our you know work to close the or to reopen to Vehicles then that certainly share that input as well okay thank you yeah that's

[101:00] the author in the room for some reason it seems like it's just really getting hard to talk about them yeah that's the elephant in the room that I think is animating um at least the comments I've heard so far so yeah just on the question of closing closing Pro while we figure out what to do Westboro so I guess my second question this probably is we're going to get um just my guess and I know the hours is ticking so my next question is the last count I saw of public comments that went to Council on saying let's let's keep this open wow I can't believe what this is this is happening this is like the greatest thing that happened to Boulder since I moved here the last count I saw was it I think 300 what is that do you have an updated count on community letters of support so I think we we are we are aware that there's probably a couple hundred or so folks that have written in I don't know you know what the like breakdown is on that so um but but we are aware that lots of folks have been engaging with

[102:00] Council over email um and our Communications and engagement director is working on those responses to them okay um so thank you for that um so there's not an obvious update on that but um then the um I guess sort of a follow-up is did you anticipate it like like did did Community Vitality or Transportation Advisory Board did you anticipate this level of community just just enthusiasm and say wait you know let's keep it like like we did I mean is that did you expect that um I'll so I'll I'll take that I mean we certainly know that that Boulder loves um public spaces and and you know the four blocks of the Pearl Street Mall are probably some of the most loved uh uh public pedestrian spaces in the country um and we have long benefited from that so I don't think it's a surprise at all that Boulder rights understand and

[103:01] appreciate the value of well-designed pedestrianized spaces and I think that it's inspiring that so many folks do see possibility on the West End um and the concept of an extended mall and that is perfectly and it's acceptable and and can and it's appreciated that we have folks in our community um who are who think about the world that way um there are but a number of cities across the country that have tried pedestrian malls and pedestrianized spaces and they've been unsuccessful so we are very fortunate to be in a space where we have a four block very successful Pedestrian Mall and there is certainly an appetite for exploring additional pedestrianized spaces and maybe that is on the West End maybe it's somewhere else maybe the East End which hasn't had any uh Capital major Capital investments in over 20 years is the ripe location for um exploring pedestrianized spaces and

[104:01] again I'm what we're asking for is input on on what are the what are the planning processes that Tab and Council would like staff to pursue that can open that conversation to exploring those possibilities we'll get to that yeah great we'll get to that I'm working on it you know it's just we've got um we've got some Charter Duty Charter duties to understand this so um I guess I'll move on from this question I'm not sure I heard the answer to are we finding ourselves surprised with with the community enthusiasm to keep to keep it I I don't know that I'm surprised but I do sort of feel taken about fact that this happened so quickly and now there's this this great you know sort of rising of of uh of people saying wait what that's going away um so in the case I guess that's a comment I'll um but I'll move on because I just have a couple more questions and then Chris I'll get to the feedback thank you for your um your patience um so I guess the the next thing is um I uh thank you Chris for sharing the

[105:00] survey so Chris here you shared the um the survey results itself via hotline today's and I believe all the time members have that and so that just goes a little more in detail on the question by question of the survey and then it has a compilation of 60 of the the written comments um I I did sort of jam on that and um was trying to just sort of read it as if I was doing the analysis and um I I ended up kind of having a hard time squaring with the um I guess just the story that there's a preference for business wanting it to go back to cars so so for example um what I read I can share this but it was more than 60 of all the businesses wanted some form of vehicle closure on the West End 44 wanted to be permanent that was of the of the 177 response question uh I read more than 50 percent of Westland businesses want some form of

[106:00] closure on the west end and that was from the of all the West End businesses in particular question um and then I read about 65 said they just they said don't open it now in terms of either either either leave the streets closed until a final decision has been made or until October 31st so that was the of the West End businesses in particular question um I also read through the the survey comments the the itemized comments and I I did this fast so I may have you know please forgive me if I'm a little bit off on this but what I read was there were 60 comments 25 of them were favorable to keeping Westbrook closed the cars 20 were favorable to reopening your cars um there was about 12 that were just they sort of said different things they were either not very decisive on that you know exact question or they had where they were mixed um and then three just they said thanks you're wonderful um so I'm just wondering you know I don't want to duel on like you know the exact

[107:02] statistical sort of um summary of it but I think no matter how you look at it there's quite a few businesses who were saying this is working great for us we love it let's keep it so I'm just wondering um what does what do we say to them and and you know in particular these are these are folks and some of these comments you say who are saying you know this is this is uh We've adopted we've adopted The New Normal and we're this is great so what's I don't know what's the message to them and are we are they are they reflected in this decision or or you can sorry you could actually push back on my you know sort of analysis and premise if I've said anything else thanks for the question Ryan um so I would first caveat the the all the surveys that have been performed are data inputs they're not the data that we have used to to move forward with an

[108:00] unpopular decision um they are they are inputs to the conversation and what they tell us is that there's no consensus um we were not asking those questions or working with the downtown Boulder partnership in order to reach consensus we wanted to get an understanding of of the dynamic of of how folks were feeling about the the closed nature especially after our April 19th meeting with Council where we also got a mixed uh responses from Council on on what they desired for West Pearl once the emergency orders ended um and so it it it just helped us as another data point to communicate that there is no consensus on this issue but all things equal in knowing that the reasons that we closed the street in the first place was associated with the kova 19 emergency orders in order to benefit largely restaurants who needed to expand

[109:01] out into the right-of-way in order to deal with reduced indoor capacities now that that that situation that cause has is behind us largely now um that is really what has led to um our our work to end the temporary closure associated with that and does not mean that we can't have a conversation about reconfigurations and one-way possibilities I know that there's a lot of ideas out there and and we've heard a lot of it tonight and we certainly want to create space for those conversations and and and pursue those possibilities if they rise to the top um through an intentional thoughtful comprehensive process okay thank you Chris so I think what I'm hearing is a little different than what I maybe have to go back and read or maybe it's an update but I think what I'm hearing is it it's not you wouldn't assert that the the business Community is is overwhelmingly or even majorly supporting this is more just that it's kind of mixed it's people are all over the place and the default is just sort

[110:00] of go back to where we were and that's the the reasoning okay got it so let's get back guys one more question and then I'll I'll leave you I'll take I'll take you after that um and I'm not an attorney I feel something feel like I'm doing like uh anyway um so I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable but um I'm being asked the question so I have to we have to we have to get this so my final question is and this kind of gets to like why I'm pushing at this like what's the default like why is the default the cars coming back and I'm just imagining the scenario where we do them we do this multimodal analysis and we decide yeah let's oh yeah it turns out um basically the comments all the comments creating now of City through city council are reflective of what the city wants and holy cow let's double the footprint of the car free space in downtown Pearl um because that's what we're signing up I'm just imagining the scenario that I think seems pretty pretty feasible or you know foreseeable um and if we get to that place can you imagine us going back to the it's let's

[111:00] say we brought the cars back to West Pearl then we're going to go back to those business and say turns out we actually have to we have to take the cars we're getting rid of the cars again or in some configuration addressing this with the stakeholders the ones you know the third half-ish whatever who do want the cars to come back going back to them and having a dialogue and saying you know what we sorry um or does it not seem like a more you know um I guess kind of like a safer and easier and a thing that would make it easier to say for staff to have a dialogue if we kept it the way that it works given that we're having a discussion about a wider analysis so that would support a more objective kind of a final conclusion so I guess critique critique my my idea um no I do not foresee that uh being an easier conversation uh keeping it closed especially through the winter months I'm having a productive conversation with the businesses who are impacted most

[112:00] significantly by the closure in its current format again the road was reconstructed um uh in 2015 as a vehicle Transit multimodal serving Street um it is our uh very careful recommendation that it be allowed to return to its intended State as we explore possibilities for reconfiguration through the work that we've proposed ahead okay and doing that acknowledge is to tie back to what you said before just doing all that acknowledging that it would be an uncomfortable conversation to go back to the businesses that are associated with the West Pearl side who have said bringing the cars back and go back to them and say we're gonna we're actually gonna go back to the no cars thing I don't know that that's the conclusion uh that we I think that's a possibility I know that we want to explore um uh in the work ahead a number of options that could include seasonal weekend closures perhaps there's a

[113:01] possibility where we put automated bollards and it's a you know Rel compared to you know turning into a pedestrian space like the four blocks of the Pearl Street Mall perhaps it's as easy as putting in some some uh bollards that can come and go very easily without um all of the the work necessary to get a jersey barrier out there and and removed that allows for these closures to exist when folks are Desiring to be out in that space um so that it can be more Dynamic that's a possibility um and one of the many that we want to explore in a process got it okay so I see there's two hands up I have a few more so but if I could just quickly respond to Chris and then and then try to deal that time but Alex if that's okay um so I guess I'll just make a comment on this which is when when the new Council the newly formed Council came on board uh November December 2021 and they took on can there was a big discussion about the um can we do this can we have

[114:00] connected a corollary Network the new plan for a city-wide protected uh Bikeway there was a lot of discussion about um can we do this because in the past uh count staff and Council have kind of been or I should say staff has tried has undertaken multimodal car light oriented initiatives and then and then then pushed back and then the council at the time or for I don't want to point for the years but they were told go back and there was I think I think there is a modern consensus that um that was that that sort of caused um some trauma to the to the to the city government that's that's trying to do multimodal initiatives and the discussion in December 2021 was um okay we got be bold and we got your back uh I think city council saying to staff um and and we it's important that we have a steady you know just sort of forward motion on all this so I would just offer the opinion that um I I'm concerned if if we are saying let's have

[115:02] a multimodal study for for Pearl like the downtown core and that puts staff in the position of having to go back to to businesses who we've just sort of given them Whiplash twice and now to say we might have to do this again to me it just feels like it would be setting stuff up for um a very very awkward if not worse process so um that's just my opinion um I have more comments but let me defer did you want to go and then Tila um I'm sure I mean I'm just gonna Echo what and give my opinion because I hadn't given my opinion I mean as a you know as a safety Advocate as a someone that's trying to look out for vulnerable users if you want to use that word I really don't like that word but for users that are not in cars and someone that wants to reduce our carbon footprint and wants to help the city reach our vision zero goals I believe this space is so important because it sets a precedent it's something that we

[116:01] have you know we're seeing that people love and that people are cherishing as part of a community and to go back to me is just it doesn't make any sense whatsoever and like Ryan said I mean maybe one of the solutions would be in the meantime um instead of close of opening just remaining closed to see what's going to happen what what we can fix of the things that these businesses that are opposing um this this closure how we can how we can better um like cater to them and but what we could do I mean I I just don't see that you know something that has been successful in our four block Mall cannot be replicated here as a permanent thing I think that we need these spaces and our community is very very happy so I just don't so my my opinion if you know is to just

[117:04] keep the place closed I mean it's just I think it would be going back and not moving forward so to you thank you um Chris I recognize that uh yeah the survey results I think it's a it's a fair thing to say that you were you didn't see unanimity for sure um but I think that uh Ryan's point is pretty well put that there there kind of was a consensus um to keep them to keep the streets as they are uh for a little bit longer uh maybe through the end of this summer um and maybe not stopping right now I think you have an excellent point about it being less popular over the winter um but I I think that there's an opportunity here to uh take the next month or two to sort of tweak the designs to feel out what does it look like to um allow access for you know bus service or shared ride

[118:02] Vehicles you know along the 1100 block um no 10 1 000 block um and then exiting through 10th Street or something and they could re-access those um pre-existing Ada spaces there there are ways to be a little bit creative and to scale back what's happened without um reverting entirely back to normal and I think that would give this this at the kind of signal that we're hoping you would give that was saying yeah we learned something pretty good here we're on to something we didn't get it perfect on an emergency basis no big surprise but I'm just cautioning that to revert it completely back to what it was before um is is giving up unnecessary ground um and then my neck I have a question basically I haven't heard a whole lot and I don't recall what kind of Lessons Learned or Outreach or um whatever you have done with colleagues in Louisville where of course they have a seasonal street closure and

[119:00] park program in the city my understanding is the city of Louisville provides and stores those platforms so that there's some unanimity in our uniformity in the design and their you know the curb height and so some of the Ada and accessibility concerns are ameliorated what have you learned from lewisville's example that we have already applied or have yet to apply here thanks for the question Tila we are so excited to be able to offer a new outdoor dining pilot program for the first time you know it that is a that is a huge accomplishment and something that we are very happy to be coming out of covet and being able to offer some transformation in the community we have of course definitely been in conversations with our colleagues in Lewisville it's a different scale um they have a very uh small area it is the the bane of some of their existence um they will admit that but I think it does contribute to the Vitality of the space and nobody could argue with that and that's really the model that we are

[120:01] trying to go for with our outdoor dining program of the 32 businesses that applied um a third of them are participating in the city's bulk purchase and so we will have a high quality uniform parklet extensions all over town um uh most I mean mostly in the downtown there are a few on the hill and then some applications on private property elsewhere around the city but we are very much looking forward to being able to to deliver a very similar type program for businesses that are participating in that Becky um yeah thanks everyone for the questions and I'm really helpful um and and Chris I was interested to hear when you mentioned that you know like the survey data wasn't necessarily the overriding fact or any one of those survey data points um but I think what what makes it kind of challenging

[121:01] to you know have to feel good about this sort of discussion around this information is that a lot of like especially in the memo we received is very heavily focused on on the business performance and what the data says and It quotes the downtown Boulder partnership and and a quote that actually says you know that their belief is the main criteria for reallocate the success of reallocating space on a public Street is the success of the businesses around it and while I strongly want the success of the businesses around it and I actually my office recently moved to downtown Boulder after being away for a couple years and I was ecstatic right because it was just so much more fun to be downtown and way more accessible from in terms of Transit and bicycling than our old office was in East Boulder but I I don't like the idea that the number one criteria is the success of the business is because the number one criteria is is safety it's people

[122:02] staying alive on our streets and it's people not getting hurt and it's Equity between people traveling in different ways and I Echo Tila's point about Equity is not cannot just be about business Equity it's about Equitable access for different modes and we know that that's not the case right that's not how our our city was not built for Equitable access for different modes like no city in the US really was um at least cities that were you know built in the last 80 largely last 80 years so so you know I I think that emphasis on this is what this group says and we've talked to this group a lot and here's their data and here's the plans they're going to do it just feels so like heavily weighted towards one it's it sounds like there is community engagement but only with this section of the community and it's not necessarily representative of that entire Community either and so that just makes it feel really imbalanced and I would have loved to see for instance the other data we know

[123:00] about crash data and injury data on the whole length of Pearl Street or the parking analysis that we saw a few meetings back that showed that there's quite an oversupply of parking when you look at how empty a lot of the parking garages are in downtown we saw 50 um you know use and so there's actually quite a lot of parking downtown but maybe people aren't getting to it you know in an efficient way you know we discussed some of that a while back um or for instance how we evaluate the safety of this street with cars on it um you know it's having that much car activity doesn't make it in all ages and abilities safe street so you know if that information were also part of this context in addition to this sort of this kind of very business-centric perspective it would feel like a more complete conversation and that we are thinking about our goals but without that it it just feels so weighted in One Direction

[124:00] that um it's it's it's hard to feel like we really are trying to achieve those stated goals when those all the facts we have related to them are you know not included in any of this conversation I'm sorry go ahead yeah and Chris definitely um jump in here too I I mean I I don't think we disagree with anything you're saying I think the um we want to so first I'll just say you know the what we are fo we we have been focused on the businesses because that was why we put the closure in place and so um you know whether that it's good or bad that has been our Focus because they are recovering from the pandemic and that has been the focus but but I would say you know we we absolutely agree we need

[125:00] more analysis we want to engage with more folks across the community um here for from other businesses and and get more data around you know other goal areas like safety so I think we want to do all that that's just we're proposing to do that through the analysis and um and so I you know I think we're we're largely we agree you know largely around what needs to be studied and what what we need to be looking at and who we need to be listening to um it's just a matter of during that time we're proposing that we have the street read into vehicles um so I'll leave it at that Christine I mean I think some of that exists right like the parking study was done so we know about parking utilization I realize not necessarily in on a sort of micro scale for these few blocks but like it would just be context that would be

[126:01] really helpful or like I would especially if it's going in front of council I would like Council to know that the design of this street as it was for cars was not created for all ages and abilities multimodal access it's that's like with the high utilization of parking and the amount of volume of cars like that's not how it was designed initially and so you wouldn't necessarily expect someone um like a lot of people feel comfortable biking on it necessarily like that kind of information to give context on you know what this sort of balance is between what we do know um even though there are things we don't so I just love to see more of that sort of brought in when during these these conversations it would just feel more balanced using what we already have I think those are all great suggestions I'd certainly welcome um a look back onto any sort of documented crash history on this segment of Pearl Street versus uh East uh

[127:02] downtown segment of Pearl Street and I'd say that as Natalie said that would be something that we would look into in this analysis of understanding are there actually realized safety improvements on this stretch that have mitigated some sort of of Crash that's happened in the past um or are there other locations that are are having now crash experiences as a result of the closure or you know what is the problem that we're trying to solve here when it comes to serving the businesses I think it's really important to clarify that when you look at the four blocks of the mall those improvements were paid for by the adjacent Property Owners the businesses built the mall in the first place I would probably if we were to venture into a Pearl Street Mall extension we would likely again do a property tax assessment on the adjacent properties to build such a thing on the west end and so um building off of that history and that

[128:00] knowledge that the downtown businesses built the improvements that we've all come to love it is so imperative that we take into consideration uh their success in these decisions that we're making because if they are not successful then they're not going to be able to produce the the revenues that are needed to help pay for the infrastructure that we are possibly envisioning for the space foreign yeah I guess the last thing I'll just add I mean I think there's a lot to discuss there but I think I'll just um add lastly that um not just the crash documented crash data but also what we consider to be a standard for an all ages and ability accessible Street based on volume and you know frequency of curb usage um other factors that um you know whether or not the crashes happen like whether or not we consider that makes somebody comfortable being on that street thank you right thanks Becky because Iris doesn't have much of a crash history

[129:00] um but it's sure not all ages and ability facility for instance Ryan I think you had some questions earlier and some concluding thoughts now thanks Alex okay yeah I have a few constructive comments and it's late uh well it's late in the hour for today and it's it's late in the hour um for Chris you Natalie to get prepared to get to talk to council and then for them to take it up so I'll just um I'll get right into it um and I have four comments uh Okay so the first one is what do we have here um it's what are we what are we talking about and I think it's clear that that part of it is the emergency order and that that's over and that some kind of transition needs to happen so I think we can all stipulate that um but there is a profound decision a profound values decision here or at least the Strategic decision regarding what is going to happen immediately to West Pearl Street with respect to

[130:00] opening back to cars or leaving it as it is that decision will have a lot of consequences or a lot of potential consequences with respect to the public opinion uh for future support of multimodal initiatives and our staff's ability to work on multimodal initiatives in that space story of what we're doing as a city um it's it's a it's a it's a far-reaching decision on on what it what it means um and when we say in the same kind of the same memo or the same you know sort of proposal that we're interested in a staff's interested in a wider movement or a study towards a multimodal direction um it it acknowledges that the stakes are for this are pretty high um so this is an incredibly complicated decision has a huge breadth of issues on the table um a bunch of subjective decisions and values involved that are political in nature so my first conclu conclusion of my first comment is I think you should rework the question to counsel to say we acknowledge there are some real

[131:00] consequences to Bringing cars back right now um and and Council you have a decision to make you have a decision to make about how you want to proceed um given the way that this could potentially impact um those broader issues including um talking to the public who have just just beating down your door to to hear about this uh so that's my first my first comment um second comment is um I I just I want to express my opinion that I think this process is moving out of sequence and it's not clear to me that we've gone through the procedural steps needed for staff to have a recommendation that's so centered in parking and traffic management and which affects so much of our community um without having involved tab today um just for the record uh it is established in Taps Charter uh in code section 2-3-14 that we have a stat tab as a statutory responsibility to review

[132:01] Monitor and propose changes to the transportation master plan including without limitation policies for automobiles pedestrians bicycles Transit parking lights uh also to work with individual citizens neighborhood groups and transportation staff to develop and recommend criteria by which to guide neighborhood traffic mitigation projects uh thirdly to advise this is not exactly the code but I'm just picking the key points thirdly to advise Council and the planning board about alternative transportation programs and to track the Mobile Shift goal of our TMP and also to review and provide recommendations to the city manager concerning policy issues including with that limitation traffic engineering parking and alternative transportation so this this decision um yes this is about dealing with the sun setting of an emergency measure but it's also about transportation and I don't I don't think we need I mean I need to make a case for that but I will just point out that it is literally about cars and parking in the center of

[133:01] our town and the and and the whole town is interested in the topic um and I I don't expect transportation and certainly not to have to dictate what happens but this issue straightforwardly has an impact on our tnp goals on council's work plan item of can and it's a transportation issue major interest to community members far beyond the downtown core businesses um we didn't get a recommendation on this until 5 PM last Wednesday essentially three business days ago uh and council's hearing matter this week um and moreover I read about this decision than already having made in the Press last Wednesday morning um with it with a quote Chris from you the staff have made the decision and that was before we even got the um there been any any official no doubt including the tab so um Oh and before and after that tab has asked to be involved in this decision at multiple points um this body I don't have to I'm seeing accolades but this this tab body has a significant expertise in transportation that include includes professional

[134:02] discernment about how Transportation impacts all of the systems of our community including business but critically not just business um and taking more of assistance view um so we are required by Charter uh to advise Counsel on these on these matters um and we're we're just we're trying to do it but I don't feel that we've been we've been properly engaged in it so um we've asked to be we asked for a public hearing um we're declined last week being told there's no formal counsel or tab action on this at the moment there's no need for public hearing uh when accounts take action takes action uh then we would ask for tab to make a recommendation Council in that case we would all the public hearing I'm not sure that would work since the decision is Thursday but um just want to express that I foreign I don't think this process that we're following is associated with the intent or the requirements of having an Advisory board for transportation um and I just don't know how it goes to council as a recommendation

[135:00] um in this form so you could anyway I'll leave it at that you can you don't have to respond but I want that to be on the record that um I don't think this decision is ready to go to council that's just my personal opinion um I've got two more and then I will I will get off the the floor here um the third one is I also for the record um they're in in the memo there was a reference sorry that was back here um I'm not sure we said this but it was a reference to this quote from the downtown Builder partnership which said the criteria for success of repurposing any Street in the public right-of-way within the commercial District needs to be measured by the revenue of the impacted business as obvious as that assertion might be it cannot be overstated um based on this available today data today West sensory closure has not been a success um that that quote is attributed to urban planner and author of The acclaimed book walkable City just Beck

[136:01] um and it and it really boils down to one of the key kind of reasonings of the document um I read that maybe the second or third time and I thought wait a second Jeff would Jeff spec really come down would he really come down on bring back the cars um and he and no he has since clarified and there's a there's a Twitter that's the best we could get was it a Twitter thread on on Sunday but um he had said um no there's more to it um you can well you can see the swear that he said I also suggested the DDP DBP um two other things do a proper Apple apples test of Revenue with with and without personnel and determine at the city council level whether other priorities might Trump business revenue for example sustainability and Equity um so I think I think that that's the correct answer which is the decision about the Theta West Pearl what we do with it right away um concerns not only that are a question

[137:00] of business revenue for the curbside businesses but but really the direction of the values that that the city goes with respect to its plans for the for the can and the DMV so um I'll leave it at that I just want to offer that for the record um and I suppose the fourth one and this is my final thing um I mean I sort of have a summary of observations and recommendations um that I uh circulated with with tab just uh individual tab members just prior to the the meeting I don't expect anybody will have had a chance to look at them um but I I there I was sort of imagining what what the questions and answers would look like in this hearing I haven't heard anything that really changed what I'd sent there so um I think that the hour is so short that I don't know what to do other than say um if folks want to send me one-way feedback on that um please do and then I can incorporate and if there's any cosigners Let's Do It

[138:00] um alternatively if this decision were to get pushed to another council meeting or delayed we would have more time to I think do this together um but anyway that's that's sort of where where I leave it at that and I'm happy to if there's any kind of like procedural questions or thoughts on how to tackle that on on actually tab actually giving our advice to Council on an issue that we don't have a hearing for but which council is hearing on Thursday um my ears are wide open so Ryan there's definitely nothing stopping you from sending this on your own behalf um as opposed to representing that it you know is representative of the views of tab um I haven't had a chance to fully read it because we've been in the meeting um so whether you get you know substantive feedback or not from Individual members of tab if you just decide you want to take it and and submit it on your own uh there's nothing stopping you from doing that and you would be I think an influential voice

[139:04] but I will do so I think let's use our time from let's respect staff's time and proceed with our our business that we have and then later we can hopefully everyone can give that a quick look if they haven't done so already and we can figure out who if anyone wants to co-sign that as well as think through if you want to send a representative from tab to the council meeting on Thursday if if invited or if welcomed to share the perspective and so thank you Natalie and Chris I know this ran long and Meredith we all always appreciate what you do I don't know how you're going to summarize this one thanks everybody all right next up we have a public hearing on our design and construction

[140:00] standards update this is the second phase of this most recent Endeavor this is a public hearing so Garrett Slater's going to provide us with a presentation on the topic then there will be an opportunity for members of the board to ask clarifying questions at that point we'll open it up to a public hearing where interested members of the public will have up to three minutes to speak and then tab Irving asked to make a formal recommendation here um so at the end of our discussion we'll provide Our advice to council trying to be good thank you um Garrett Slater principal Transportation projects engineer and first I'd like to make sure that you can see my screen we can Garrett okay thank you all right um I am joined this evening with uh Edward Stafford the uh from the planning and development services department who

[141:00] is the development review manager for pnds and so we're here to talk about the DCs update as well as requests a recommendation to planning board and city council and so the agenda for what we'd like to review with you this evening is to talk about the purpose and background the timeline and Community engagement and then the final proposed changes where we've landed and then hold the public hearing and then have your consideration of a recommendation to planning board and Council so the purpose and background of this effort is to update portions of the DCS as well as the boulder we buy code so that our practices and our standards are consistent with um best practices for safety Mobility sustainability and quality within our transportation infrastructure

[142:00] and for the members of the board that are newer it might be beneficial to understand that all public improvements constructed within the right-of-way whether they be funded by public dollars which come through our Capital Improvement program or through private investment an example of that it would be in the Boulder Junction area where there's been significant private development investment that when there are improvements happening within our public right-of-way that those improvements are implemented by a set of common standards and guidelines and the design and construction standards are a subset of the boulder Revised Code that we follow on implementing these projects and so the effort over the last year plus has been focused on updating our street geometric standards our Landscaping standards site triangles which are contained within the boulder revised code and the associate Associated

[143:00] drawings that go along with the narrative sections of the standard documents which are found in chapter 11. so this Phase 2 update has been part of a lot larger effort of updating the standards in an incremental way I will get to the next slide here and talk about our timeline which describes that we started this effort in the spring of last year and we spent from spring and summer of last year through spring of this year working toward the 60 level recommendations and then have worked since that time to update and move toward the 90 recommendations that we have gotten concurrence from our executive sponsors and are now here this evening to seek your recommendation on the update and carry them forward into city council with a work plan item identified in 2023

[144:02] to carry on additional updates of the DCS and the Builder Revised Code throughout this effort we have had various points of Engagement with the community and that's taken place with uh an online questionnaire uh We've held office hours with project staff and we've also met directly sometimes one-on-one and sometimes via a virtual format with members of community Cycles CDOT RTD the center for people with disabilities and with the development Community represented primarily via the Chamber of Commerce so key areas that we have heard from include near the desire to Narrow Lane widths to slow vehicle traffic minimize the number of left turn Lanes supporting additional race Crossing details

[145:01] minimizing Corner radii to make intersections safer for all users and building facilities that we can maintain I'm pleased to say that these are all items that we have updated within the DCs and other items that have been identified for updates are concern about pedestrians and people with disabilities being able to safely and navigate traffic circles there are a number of other items that we expect to be able to address and future updates of the DCs foreign so the primary principles which we have used as we go through this incremental update effort is uh obviously keeping Paramount the transportation master plan Envision zero goals to reduce through and turning speeds to increase the separation of users and to reduce or eliminate conflict points in both time

[146:01] and space and then to be mindful of our sustainability framework of making sure that we have a forest that is both sustainable something that we can maintain and that we also have consistency in our plantings and our Urban Design so the key areas as noted that are included in this update are the street geometric design the streetscape design and Tree locations as well as the associated standards and the site triangles and Landscaping included in the boulder Ray Vice code so we'll take a deeper look at each of these areas now So within section 207 the street geometric design we have updated content related to Lane widths and separated bike Lanes Corner radii road with tapers as well as left turn Lanes

[147:01] okay so with specifically on Lane widths we have reduced vehicle Lane widths with the anticipated benefit to yield slower vehicle speeds and we've also provided Clarity on bicycle lane widths providing standard widths as a function of the type whether they're conventional buffer separated parking protected to prioritize bicyclists safety and comfort and as an example here is an entire entirely new updated table two five within the DCS that provides an illustration of the type of content that has been updated to reflect our goals of having DCS standards that are consistent with our TMP goals and policies as well as the low stress walk and bike Network and also uh just an example of how we've

[148:02] also integrated feedback from various stakeholders to align the variety of perspectives with our best practices so separated bike Lanes the benefit here is providing designers with more nuanced information about that bike lane design to yield more consistent uh expectation on health separated bike facilities are implemented and are comfortable for all ages and abilities with Corner radii uh the anticipated benefit is slowing turning speeds at intersections as well as reducing Crossing distances for pedestrians and cyclists at intersections to make it a more comfortable and safe experience so this is a an example of a table this uh we even that reflects the revisions so

[149:02] um when you have intersecting streets as well as the typology that accompanies that type of streak well you can see the type of radii that uh are being recommended and and with the goal being that we want to pay attention to actual radius versus effective radius and you can see that on this next illustration with these new figures that are now added to chapter two that depict how Corner radii can be designed and implemented to give that additional space for the all all users uh at intersections with regard to road with tapers and left turn Lanes we have eliminated bike lane designs with abrupt tapers to make uh shifting uh from uh within a bicycle lane a more comfortable experience and within left turn Lanes reducing the number of left-hand turn Lanes at

[150:01] intersections helps us to reduce Crossing distances and just as a point and an example of how we have given consideration to community input and feedback the 60 recommendations included left turn lanes that uh that said that when there's a triple left being considered that that should go for director approval only and so we've added a statement that dual Lanes also should be only approved by director approval alone foreign and I want to make the the point here that uh the majority of our Focus has been on Section 207 with the purpose of making sure that we're updating the geometric standards that are directly applicable to making pedestrian and cycling facilities more usable for all ages and abilities and when we make

[151:00] these changes sometimes there's a ripple effect throughout the entirety of a document and so as a result of that we needed to make sure that we provided additional Clarity and guidance and some other sections as a result of these changes so in section 211 we have some revisions that are Incorporated for bike Lanes at driveways and separated bike Lanes at intersections and so what we want to do is make sure that we're providing good examples of how to maintain good sight lines and distances at driveways and intersections and making sure that we're keeping being users in there and space and separated in a way that they uh and again achieves the goal of providing a comfortable facility for all users this is illustrated by these new figures that have been added to chapter two um that depict the interaction with a protected bike lane in a driveway as well as at an intersection on Corners

[152:02] where we're showing how to incorporate various treatment types whether it's with raised concrete or paint and flexible delineators foreign we've also added section 214 which is focused on traffic calming to provide guidance on neighborhood traffic circles and the purpose here is to provide a standard way of implementing them so that they're consistent throughout the community and so this is a new section and then further we've added new content with regard to raised Crossings at mid-block Crossings as well as at intersections so that we have a consistent treatment yielding compliance benefits at these locations so the chapter 11 content that's been updated is drawings that correspond to these intersection and protected treatment facilities as well as we've

[153:01] provided updated drawings that uh cover multi-use path separated bike Lanes bike cross sections for for bike paths and Street cross sections for non-residential examples so those are all included and the appendix that was provided along with the memo so moving on to the other chapters that were updated um the last landscape and streetscape revisions uh we updated this to be consistent with our green infrastructure plan for land Landscapes and transportation right-of-ways and corridors and to be consistent with Parks and Recreation and pnbs work efforts all to make sure that we're being consistent with our overarching community and city-wide goals for being sustainable with the type of plantings that we're putting in place to make sure that they can Thrive and be successful so here is a listing of the summary of sections and tables and topics that were updated as a part of both chapter 3 and

[154:00] chapter 10. and uh further providing an example of how the uh the document was updated from the 60 Milestone to the present we've Incorporated um a standard drawing here that depicts how bus stop shelter which is highlighted here on the lower left bus stop shelters and boarding areas would be configured with relation to adjacent plantings foreign and then moving on to the updates of the site triangles we have updated the 15 by 15 foot site triangle to be based upon the adjacent physical features such as a building previously it was based off of a right-of-way line and that made it challenging for staff to know precisely where to base that triangle on and so we are modifying this portion of the code to have it based upon the physical feature

[155:01] and then we've also updated the interaction with alleys and driveways at multi-use paths to change it from a 15 by 15 to a 15 by 96 foot triangle to increase the visibility of users of the multi-use path and interactions with driveways and alleys so that's an overview of the changes and how we've modified the the update effort from the 60 Milestone to the uh the present and where we're currently at is looking to go to planning board in the first part of October and then go to city council for a public hearing and approval and um in December and November and then look to implement in 2023 and make it formerly part of the documents so I'm happy to take any questions that you might have about the information that's been presented getting scared any clarifying questions from Tila

[156:02] thank you Garrett um I think occurred to me in with respect to the the optional truck apron uh shown on the um traffic circle design uh but the bigger question for me sort of is do these changes specify what the default design should be so for instance should we usually assume that there's a truck apron and then have to justify taking it out or should we assume it's usually a traffic circle with no truck apron but for whatever reason we might opt to put one in do these um revisions answer that question yes I believe that the standard is showing that the apron would be optional uh depending on the the nature of the specific geometry located at the particular intersection at which it's being implemented okay so does that mean

[157:01] it says you know we're an intersection where the two streets are of XYZ width you should include a truck apron correct okay excellent um and I I think that the change to have both a double and a triple left turn be approved by director I think that's that's new right it was previously just a triple correct I love it thank you uh last question kind of along these lines um do these changes suggests that for a street of a particular width or speed um that a level of protection for bike Lanes should be default you know should it be buffered versus protected based on the strict geometric criteria of the street that is not a part of the update here so that information would be found in the low stress walk and bike Network okay gotcha and are these changes I know that

[158:00] they're not sort of retroactive we're not going to go and rebuild anything um but they would be the new standard if an intersection gets redesigned or redeveloped is that correct that's correct thank you very much that's all I have thanks Sheila I was also glad to see that double left turns required director approval because those things are they prioritize cars in our detriments to every other cause we have it costs a lot of money to maintain and they're they're unsafe especially for people crossing can you say which director has to approve as a director of Transportation Mobility or a different director within the public works department so the way the DCS reads right now it's the director of the public works department and so that that that's an item that is being reviewed by the city attorney's office and I as I noted I'm joined by Edward Stafford here and um he might be able to speak to that particular issue more directly uh as I I

[159:01] believe um and uh I should just say Edward could you please chime on this I don't want to say anything that's not correct certainly so the DCS itself is the Public Works director which is a defined term credible to Revised Code with the some of the reorganization that's not as clear so we're looking that we will update that definition of the definition section to make it clear that it is as has been designated or delegated by the city manager which is fairly typical on the rest of the Builder Revised Code we would anticipate in an issue like this would likely be delegated to either transportation and Mobility or to uh what a director who has responsibility ability to the DCS in any case the director of Transportation Mobility would have a strong input to that decision and again likely would be the one to make the decision okay thanks any other clarifying questions from members of town sorry I just forgot to

[160:01] put my hand back down I'm done there aren't any more clarifying questions from tab I'll turn to Nathan to help us open up for a public hearing wonderful if members of the public would like to speak on this item we'll do the same system we did at public comment where you will raise your hand using the raised hand function in Zoom I will call on you and allow you to speak and you'll have three minutes and I'll put a timer up on the screen so go ahead and raise your hand now I see Chuck is the first to raise his hand up Chuck I'm going to ask you to speak I'm going to start the timer and say whenever you're ready uh thank you very much my name is Chuck Brock and I'm speaking on behalf of the community Cycles advocacy committee over the last several months and really years uh disrupted by coven we've been

[161:00] communicating with Transportation staff regarding these revisions to the design and construction standards these are mine numbingly detailed standards but together help to Define how our streets are designed and really how safe they are the current revisions are really limited to very specific subsections of the DCS and we're very pleased to see this process moving forward and we'd like to thank the transportation staff who have been very willing to consider our detailed comments on these limited revisions um there's been a lot of back and forth with Community cycles and we truly appreciate it we don't necessarily agree on all the final decisions from these discussions but we do feel that our input has been appropriately considered and in good faith so thank you um we support many aspects of the dces revisions including uh standards for separated bike infrastructure the bicycle language requirements uh the reduced turn radii Corners improvements to the link with tables for residential streets and many other really thoughtful improvements um we do have a few criticisms um I

[162:01] guess our largest disappointment is really um with the scope of the revisions because it results in very incremental rather than wholesale improvements to how our streets uh are going to look uh for example traffic calming elements are not considered in the current revision but they should really be integral to Street typologies and not add-on features um we're also disappointed that the revision did not address sidewalk standards at all even though some very simple changes could really do a lot to improve builders walkability including just sidewalk with for one another disappointment is that the size of the truck that's considered as a design vehicle to be accommodated on residential streets is the existing large su-30 UPS truck rather than the smaller dl-23 delivery Vans as recommended by macto we feel like we should build our streets not to accommodate UPS's preferences but to achieve our desire to have 20 years plenty environment

[163:00] so we do ask the tab advice City staff to include the comments in our written statement to the maximum extent possible during the next stages of DCs revisions for those topics that aren't covered by these revisions uh in particular we feel the revisions discussed tonight should not be considered to be written in stone but there could be Ripple effects from further uh changes to the DCS as it's updated and we should allow these current uh change standards to be updated as needed and we hope this could all be followed by further revision to the Builder Revised Code that would describe the specifics of when and where these engineering standards should be applied so that we can achieve our transportation our vision zero our climate availability goals these standards control really how our streets are designed and we need to consider the larger picture of how the code interacts with them to achieve all objectives thank you thank you Chuck for speaking with us tonight and the involvement you've had

[164:00] throughout this process it's helped us get some important perspective that's all the public comment hands I see raised oh one more moment I see another hand Lynn I'm gonna ask you to unmute I'm going to restart the timer whenever you're ready yeah um I think it'd be great if you had some kind of um technical details explained to in either in some kind of a workshop for the public because you know I don't know what an apron is except the one that I wear in the kitchen and um I can see flashing by you know your imagery but I'm covering you know I'm following eight boards here you know and there's that's a lot to do and so I need things like really clear to be able to understand the technical details to be able to make the recommendations that the person before made um but I can tell you from the elephant in the room

[165:00] situation is cu South is gonna change all of this everything um and put you know narrowing streets is something you can do when you're shrinking your community and CU is expanding their their uh their enrollment not shrinking it and it should be shrunken not stabilized shrunk and um as far as the West Pearl situation to all all these improvements that that Garrett was bringing up tonight are great but when when in fact you're providing more parking you're you're putting more demands on the system and more infrastructure and these things cost my tax money and I don't want that spent inefficiently you know we have a nice small you know like I guess there's been outrage about it which of course I

[166:01] was outraged as well as everyone else I mean my brother said well hell let's take down the Pearl Street Mall why should we have the Pearl Street Mall at all let's get rid of it too you know and it made me think yep it's like these guys are just you know I guess we just need another epidemic that's a really bad one this time that'll like really Force us to do things differently but you know I I never suggested this outdoor situation at all that we need to heat recovery ventilators systems for the indoor part of the restaurants for the winter too but it happened to be a nice side trip that that the outdoor space is opened up and it gives us some of you know I've just been listening to the budget and it's like it's all based on sales tax revenue and what parking is going to give us more than sales tax revenue when we've got enough parking in the Cajun places like what is wrong with this picture

[167:00] um you know and you want 20 is 20. um you're not going to get 20 is 20 when you support CU South and when you're not even consulted on the west Pearl Mo um you should have had electric shuttles coming from Way East decades ago that's how you do a Pearl Street Mall um yeah it's all about the money it's all about the budget and are you joining us on that's all the public comment I see thank you Nathan with that I'll open it up for tab deliberation I think I'm ready to support this how do others feel it I'm just curious if staff has any response to Chuck's critique about the the design vehicle not being the ideal design vehicle supported by neck I don't know anything about it

[168:02] so the the su-30 is one that is uh and we appreciate the the comment that uh we heard from Community cycles and uh and also just want to uh explicitly state that we appreciate them being a partner in this process and for their passion for uh having a set of standards that help us fulfill our goals as a community um uh to to answer your question specifically uh we wanted to make sure that we uh uh as we went through this update uh we're able to provide a set of standards that work for the smallest typical truck type that we we typically see and we appreciate the um the guidance that's included in the um in the nacto street side or Street design guide that makes reference to the to the dl-23 um so I think as part of our community engagement effort we'd heard uh for British folks on on the chamber Commerce side of things about the desire to

[169:00] accommodate that that su-30 as a smaller vehicle because of it being representative for example um trash trucks um and emergency vehicles and perhaps as well uh uh representative of the Turning movements required of Transit Vehicles so um that was sort of the the thought that went into the su-30 as opposed to the the dl-23 um and so I I I'm certainly mindful of of the the goals that the dl-23 would comprise uh for for and I think that would be a point of uh conversation for a future update in the other tab discussion I just wanted to add my um thanks for the

[170:00] um the changes that were made since our last discussion of this so thanks a lot for incorporating this thanks Becky there are no more comments I'll open it up to a motion foreign how to phrase it but uh I'll give it a try I moved to approve the new DCS standards in the in our memo it provides the recommendation that sap recommends approval of the proposed revisions to the DCS to the excuse me planning board and city council thanks I was looking through the memo to see where that page was it wasn't where I was expecting it to be

[171:02] CKY do you accept my friendly Amendment oh yeah sorry yes I second the motion awesome I it sounds like a recurring thing with this is that there's always an appetite for an expanded scope and we certainly understand and respect the limited scope of this one I would hope that that the next go around we perhaps look at the the structure of the document itself and then some of the additional things that I think could be pretty simple like like sidewalks have come up both last go around and this go around so hopefully we can get to all of it foreign thanks passes unanimously thanks Garrett thanks Edward thank you and with that we'll move to matters first from staff it looks like Valerie Watson's here and

[172:00] unmuted to share an update on the call for project number four foreign share are you seeing a presentation okay well good evening members of tab I'm Valerie Watson Transportation Planning manager with the city of Boulder I'm joined tonight by Garrett Slater principal Transportation projects engineer this evening we'll focus in on our staff recommendations for the Dr cogg Transportation Improvement program call number four and before that we have some updates to share on the tip call number two and number three and we'll conclude with next steps for call number four and seek your input and feedback first we have some great news to share

[173:01] as Gene Sanson had previewed in August if you haven't already heard we had a very successful application cycle with call number two leveraging 1680 000 in local dollars plus a one million five hundred thousand match from CDOT on Broadway we were awarded six million four hundred and two thousand in Grant dollars for all three projects that we applied for and we received full funding for the Broadway Transit priority intersections project and the 30th Street preliminary design project for Baseline just a slight reduction of funding um just about three hundred thousand less than the original ask which will still allow for a very robust scope for that project and although the full Dr Cog board will vote to approve these projects later this month on the 21st that is more of a procedural vote and we expect that this will remain the outcome for these

[174:00] projects and we appreciate tap's feedback on this cycle we're excited to see work on these projects commence once they have been formally adopted into the Dr Cog tip and stip which takes around eight months and once the intergovernmental funding Agreements are in place so we're anticipating around spring 2024 when we can start work and now let's turn our attention to tip call three as a reminder this is a regional call Cycle where municipalities coordinate together on joint applications for projects of regional benefit projects that have already been approved by local elected officials are eligible in this call cycle and each sub-region is only allowed to submit three applications total and this must be agreed to by the governing sub-regional forums so we should know that these projects have gone through the approval process with the sub-regional TAC technical advisory committee and onto the sub-regional Forum on which our Boulder council member Nicole spearsets

[175:02] so for this cycle call number three we will be participating in three potential applications first Boulder County is the lead on an application for the diagonal that will focus on multimodal bus and Bikeway improvements between Niwot and Airport Road second the city of Longmont is partnering with us to bring bat Lanes to Colorado 119 within longmont's boundaries and a number of improvements along 119 within city of Boulder boundaries relating to bus efficiency and bicycle connectivity at the Terminus of this Regional project and third Boulder County is the lead on an application for a brt starter service along Colorado 7 that will serve Brighton all the way to downtown Boulder we're excited at the prospect of these applications contributing to these future brt and Bikeway connections that are of such high value to our transportation master plan goals of reducing single occupancy vehicle trips

[176:00] related to Inner City travel okay so let's switch gears to the main topic tonight call number four so as you remember from the presentation in August delivered by Gene Sanson we're anticipating the opening of this call Cycle later this year with applications due in January early next year because this is a sub-regional call we'll be seeking your recommendation after we conduct the required step of community engagement followed by city council endorsement in December and as a refresher these are the criteria that you have seen before just like sub-regional call number two there's a strong emphasis on sub-regional impact and we're also applying essentially the same internal criteria for project selection as in call number two um just as another refresher staff shared our initial staff project list with you in August and we've since added the additional projects to the evaluation based on your input in that

[177:02] meeting and we would like to thank tab for your proposals on potential corridors to look at for this call especially your local knowledge and insights here are the results of our evaluation and before we dive into more details we wish to note that there are limited dollars in this fourth call cycle and relaxed requirements as compared to the second call so we expect more applications and competition overall in this cycle amongst the different cities that means we need to be really strategic in both the number and the scope of our submittals one other thing to note is that there will be a wait list formed in this cycle and a good chance that if projects on the wait list they could be called up when or if there's additional funding that's freed up all this said it's a staff's recommendation that we submit no more than three capital projects and I think we can squeak in a design only project to maximize our success

[178:01] lastly note that one of the projects offered by tab in August Colorado 119 from 28th to Independence Road in Boulder um that will be covered by The Joint Longmont Boulder call number three application that I just presented a couple slides back so all right the four projects that we would like to initiate the required Community engagement process on are highlighted in yellow here on the screen and as you can see they are scoring markedly higher than the other projects under consideration and it's our hope that we can maximize our competitiveness with these selected projects so here's a closer look at the projects that staff recommends be the focus of this fourth call cycle so Colorado um and Colorado Arapahoe Avenue and 30th Street multimodal intersection West Colorado Avenue multimodal improvements from Regent to Folsom 30th

[179:01] Street multimodal improvements from Baseline Road to Colorado Avenue and Folsom Street multimodal improvements pre-design covering Pine Street to Colorado Avenue the four projects shown in the solid blue lines on this exhibit um there and then there's also the non-selected projects that are shown in dashed blue the can network is shown in that glowing yellow color at the high level these four are all found along a nams or a canned Corridor or both a good blend of competitiveness for the application and meeting our Council priorities to accelerate implementation of arterial improvements next let's look at these four projects a little closer and some updates since we last spoke in August as shown on this map the projects recommended by staff for this fourth tip call for projects complete key connections along the core arterial

[180:00] Network aside from scoring well in our project selection methodology these projects are also of high value to not only the can but our transportation master plan goals of creating low stress connections that will contribute to mode shift and thereby reducing vehicle miles traveled in greenhouse gas emissions when you look at how these four projects relate to projects that are funded in call number two shown in light blue on the map as well as the pending applications in call number three shown in light green as well as projects that are recently implemented or in final design shown in a salmon color you get an even better picture of how these four selected projects close critical connectivity gaps in the can Network and it's really exciting how this focus on 30th Colorado and Folsom will address some pretty important parts of the network and give us the capital dollars we need to continue building world-class infrastructure let's look at Colorado Avenue as shown

[181:01] in this exhibit we have a lot of ongoing work from Regent to 30th shown in the salmon color and there are key connections to cu's East Campus via buff bus along this segment as well shown in yellow and multi-use path connections to critical off-street bicycle and walking infrastructure shown in dark green for this call Cycle we will focus over on the west side of this Corridor um with both the West Colorado project from Folsom to Regent shown in the solid blue as well as the pre-designed application for Folsom shown in the dashed blue with the West Colorado project there is the potential for a sequence of four protected intersections from Folsom to 30th through the near term and the tip projects and there are bus only lace proposed for all projects to serve bus buff bus routes that Loop into CU East staff is currently working on scope revisions for the application due in January that will hopefully shave anywhere from one to two million off the

[182:02] total project cost and we now have a high level of confidence that we can reduce right-of-way acquisition costs through reconfiguring the layout and Lane striping or the operational concept for this project and again we want to thank tab members for your feedback along the way on this project so we can use our local dollars in the best way for the 30th Street Corridor the segment of focus is Colorado to Baseline we're currently constructing improvements along 30th from Arapahoe to Colorado and we were funded for Arapahoe all the way up to the diagonal in call number two and note we're also seeking funding in this call for the 30th and Arapahoe intersection which we should remember is valuable not only for the Arapahoe Corridor but also for completing this almost three mile long 30th Street corridor as a reminder this project will construct raised protected bicycle lanes

[183:00] and improve sidewalks for the Arapahoe and 30th Street intersection project we're also looking at how we can configure turn lanes and other operational considerations to reduce project cost the overall intent of this project is to improve safety for bicyclists as well as people walking at this intersection although changes to Arapahoe would require coordination with CDOT we're looking at the approaches to the intersection along 30th Street and how we can perhaps pursue a smaller scale project that can meet up with a project already underway from Colorado up to Arapahoe that will stop short of this intersection so we're channeling some don't give up at the intersection guidance from nacto with this over the next couple of months we'll be refining the concept and looking at how we might reconfigure the left turn lanes and the bend of the bicycle lane approach to see if these refinements can lessen those right-of-way costs so we're aiming for a cost more in the range of

[184:01] two and a half million with this one about half of what we originally presented to you all in August and we'll know more by November when we revisit you all at tab on our way to council for Folsom Street we'll be looking at the can identified segment from Pine to Colorado meeting up with the existing protected bike lanes and Crossing improvements north of this segment between Pine and Valmont and we wish to think tab for nudging staff to considered tip as a source of funding for this can priority Corridor seeking pre-designed funding aligns with our overall can work plan schedule and because we have not yet completed any pre-design or conceptual design work in Associated Community engagement staff recommends seeking design dollars in this tip call as we would not have a competitive app if if we had really sought construction dollars due to the project Readiness and application criteria so um although oh and on another note

[185:02] um Iris another can priority Corridor scored similarly to Folsom um and although it did score similar that we're already initiating design and Community engagement on Iris this winter um that's part of our can work plan schedule so we decided against selecting it for this cycle of tip as it would slow progress that we hope to make with the local dollars we've already allocated so with that let's look at the other projects that staff and tab had elevated for consideration that are not recommended to move forward for this tip cycle other fun funding opportunities on the horizon could offer potential to consider these projects that are not Advanced here in the tip call for and these include multi-year grant funding that the landscape of opportunities such as federal state streets for all cdot's Transportation Alternatives program tap revitalizing main streets and safe routes to school those kinds of

[186:01] grant funding opportunities and also one of the Tad proposed segments from Moorhead Moorhead from Table Mesa down to over to 27th way that's prioritized for the city's pavement Management program and there's a potential to include safety upgrades along with roadway resurfacing in the next couple of years and as a tie-in to the CDOT funding opportunities mentioned just now an improved connection at the North End of Morehead between 27th way and the existing off Street network is being considered as part of the upcoming tap cycle additionally many of our arterials are likely to receive attention from the current Vision zero Action Plan update which will identify priority segments and projects for crash reduction strategies and as I just mentioned the federal Safe Streets for all Grant opportunity will have future call Cycles so the vision zero Action Plan update is likely to identify an arterial like Table Mesa in the systemic safety analysis and lead to safety

[187:01] countermeasures that could be funded under Safe Streets for all and future Cycles lastly some of the projects not recommended to advance for this call number four have work that's already underway via our core arterial Network um to advance conceptual design and to ensure that there is necessary pre-design work and Community engagement to support future funding requests so a great example is iris from Broadway to 28th which is set to initiate Community engagement and design later this year and another is Valmont road which is also on the can work plan right so let's talk about next steps to stay on track four our applications submittal early next year we would conduct the required Community engagement around the four selected projects starting in late September through October we then come back to tab for public hearing and request your recommendation to Council in November then in December

[188:02] we'd visit Council for public hearing and their official endorsement that process will allow just enough time to assemble the four applications by the January 2023 deadline with that we invite you all to offer your feedback on tip call for so um we'd like to know does Tab support the next steps for these four selected projects and if you have any additional feedback on the non-selected projects that's the end of the presentation thanks thanks Valerie it was really clearly presented and it was cool to see the the build of the map to really show that we're we're building a network that wasn't even conceived a year ago so this is very exciting um Tila uh if if people have clarifying questions before we get into the weeds of the individual projects if possible that might be great but go ahead Taylor thank you thanks Valerie um can you I'm

[189:03] still not quite understanding why um Iris even though it scored pretty well you didn't want to include it in this call because it would delay why would it delay action what I'm not understanding that foreign the the thinking is as we had developed our can work plan earlier this year we had always slated for us to start that Community engagement in that design process um the same thing would be seeking funding through tip um we had already allocated some of our budget to start that work this fall and and really ramp up on that early next year if we were to seek tip dollars then we would have to delay that entire process until the funding Agreements are in place and that funding is available for us to use um so that's just one of the

[190:01] considerations when when you seek this tip funding is that it takes a while to get the dollars in hand to start the work and we didn't want to delay the same exact process that we've already funded through our um the the reallocated budget that we had already decided on this year okay I'm I'm feeling very dense because I still didn't clear it up for me so we'd already decided to do some Outreach and initial design and like sort of concept design level so why can't we ask for tip funding to take that design to the next level of fishness on Iris I see um part of the requirements of tip funding is that you have advanced some level when you're seeking construction dollars you have to have advanced um some level of conceptual design and Community engagement to support that and so that

[191:00] that work has not happened yet on Iris so we wouldn't be able to seek construction dollars through tip for either Folsom or Iris so we've chosen Folsom because it has it was already kind of further out on our timeline to initiate that Community design and conceptual design work Community engagement um and kind of aligned better with the work plan schedule we had already landed on earlier this year um Iris or Folsom we wouldn't really be able to go out for construction dollars with this cycle of tip we're just not ready so what is it we're asking for money for on Folsom to advance the conceptual design and the community engagement to support that and inform that not construction Iris I'm lost I'm sorry I don't understand I'm not asking the question right I guess um Natalie would you like to take us back I'm happy to but I'm just going to probably repeat what Valerie said so

[192:01] um so we we are planning to do the and start the engagement and planning work the design work this fall for Iris we have that you know allocated in the budget and staff time is assigned for that so um if we were to do that through tip we have to wait till 2024 at least right to start that work okay um and and then the other clarifying piece I think is we are we are recommending that we go after that design work funding um for both full for you know for either one but for for Folsom because um you you have to do some level of that to go after construction dollars through tip and we don't have that on Iris or Folsom right so we have to take that first step with tip won't let us go after construction dollars without that design work being complete did that help at all I don't know

[193:01] I'll listen to the tapes and see if I they get through okay with Folsom I was wondering why we're asking for 1.5 million in total costs there it seems like it's a similar length as the 30th preliminary design grant that we got and called to and that was about 1 million oh that was one billion dollars so why the fifty percent um cost yeah I think you know um with Folsom there's that segment that we're focusing on for this application does have different considerations in terms of right-of-way constraints so it would you know I think involve um a deeper level of of Investigation around that Garrett is there anything you'd like to add on the cost sure uh two things I I guess I would add and in addition to that would be that

[194:00] for a portion of the 30th Street Corridor we had done some preliminary work um the uh the last effort had done some work from Arapahoe to Pearl where it is on Folsom we don't have that same benefit and um we are also anticipating that the level of public engagement on Folsom will likely have a higher level of robustness than is going to be required on 30th Street between Arapahoe and Highway 119. okay thanks and I think tonight's the first time I can remember mention a Valmont being an alert plan can you tell us what a remind us what what's involved in that yeah Belmont um is is I think uh further out in the work plan schedule um and that's why we mentioned it as you know one of the the corridors that that tab had um that you all had uh proposed we look

[195:01] at for this call Cycle um you know it's it's also um it doesn't have that kind of uh Readiness in terms of uh Community engagement and pre-design work to seek construction dollars so it's just further out um not a good fit for this tip cycle okay thanks any other questions from tab or just wondering if maybe we go projects by project and have a have a round table so um maybe first with Folsom I'm excited about finally going through the robust process it'll take to get a viable design here so this is one that I'd be I'd be glad to support any other thoughts or objections to that CNN

[196:00] uh South 30th seems like that's a soon to be a gap in our core arterial Network as the the map showed um I was curious why the what the range on that one I think it was like six to seven million is there uncertainty with the product costs in this early stage that that was the uh the estimate Alex from the corridor study effort and so we have a consultant that's supplementing staff efforts on that right now to take a look at the uh the design and um and see what a realistic cost estimate should be for um the work entailed so we're working on getting an updated estimate um and should have that in Hand by the end of the month awesome it only seems like it it'll cost what it costs and there's really not much flexibility on a street where we're we're that constrained and already conceded a lot of the elements that are in the other parts of 30th Street and Colorado Avenue

[197:02] any tab opposition or is this another one that people support sounds like we're supportive of this one uh West Colorado that one number keeps changing on me um it was six and then five and now we're down to maybe three to four million in Project test I I can speak to that Alex so the original six million dollar number came from the uh the corridor study efforts and then we took a look at it and said well the 28th and Colorado intersection project that's currently under design and uh its footprint is actually going all the way up to the intersection at Regent um is going to be taken away some of that scope which is why then it went from six to five and then with some of the the recent engagement including with yourself there are a lot of really great ideas uh

[198:02] about what we can do to reduce the footprint and so um we're hopeful that uh first blushes will be able to shave further uh cause from that project uh again we have external resources helping us with the cost estimate review for that segment of work and we expect to have updated cost information in hand by the end of the month awesome with with that project I think for me the Crux of that design will probably be what ends up happening at the Folsom intersection it's a location where there are a ton of people walking and biking today and moving from one facility to another so it's a little chaotic and even has the pedestrians scramble and I think it could be hard to to get that design right without looking at Folsom as well and I was wondering if there's potentially an opportunity especially with the lower cost to look at Folsom working within the existing curves from

[199:00] that intersection down to Boulder Creek if not Arapahoe and just seeing what we could do for like a low-cost retrofit and that stretches well and I think in turn if we were successful getting that money then the amount of Folsom that's left is is much less which I think will have a more focused Community conversation and design effort we've shipped away a little bit on the North side north of pine up to Belmont and if we could handle it maybe the next easiest piece which would be from Colorado to the creek which is a meaningful connection or to Arapahoe which I think might be easy and just rack up the or reduce the amount of distance left that's something I would like to consider for a variety of reasons um getting as much done as we can on Folsom as soon as possible but ensuring that we have the right vision for that that essential intersection where there's so much happening with pet like Transit and um

[200:00] and cars but I just like the second one Alex just said on on West Colorado it just um it seems a little unnecessary except for really there could be a lot of better treatment right at the intersection and so making making more sense of people's movements and our use of Street space closer to that intersection with Folsom it's kind of critical I guess we'll we'll see what you have in mind when we when we start the public engagement but um I was kind of a head scratcher when I looked at the at the map like what would we do there why would we do anything it's more about the intersection for me yeah at that intersection one thing that I wonder about is the corridor study shows a similar configuration that we have today with a southbound double left and that's just inviting cars to turn into a bus only lane and I think that's something we could

[201:02] think through and if that's not a good idea then maybe we could ask do we only need one left turn lane if there's only one left turn lane and the cross section of Folsom changes entirely I think if we shift one or two assumptions at that intersection we could end up with in a totally different place and perhaps a a cost-effective better place so can I ask um I'm assuming because that intersection and being right on the University um border you know that there would be some coordination with the university does that make this project more or less attractive more or less feasible more or less ready does it have any impact on that I I can respond to that so I can say that um working with the university as a project partner and uh we have approached the university just for the record about being um not just a a cheerleader on the project but actually putting some skin in the game and being a financial partner with us as well and they are withholding a decision on that

[202:01] until we have better updates on the cost estimate so the University is also eager to see where the updated estimates are like you will but uh having the university be uh both a project as well as a funding partner makes this application a whole lot more competitive and interesting to our sub-region thank you thanks for that hopefully we can find something satisfactory for them to get involved and and Alex if if I could I just want to comment also about um your observations about the the signal operation as as we've uh indicated at 30th and Arapahoe there's um certainly staff willingness to take a look at that as a part of the design and Analysis effort uh should the project become funded to to look at what we can do if that's something that is feasible for

[203:01] implementation then certainly it would be a part of what's actually constructed mm-hmm with that we can maybe turn to 30th and Arapahoe unless there's any more conversation about West 30th so the fourth one is 30th Arapahoe and for me that seems like an opportunity where if we plan for success in in mode shift and we need less roadway capacity we'll we'll let me see it and we'll have more money left over to invest in in more success and so without seeing a reduction in the number of left turn Lanes I think it would be a pretty hard thing for me to support and I understand it's kind of complicated by the fact that there's preliminary design work happening on Arapahoe from 28th out to Foothills and then on 30th as well from Arapahoe North to diagonal so I think it might be the

[204:01] wrong time to make a major commitment there and I see that it's scored high it's undeniably on a cam Corridor an intersection enam Corridor there's a a reason an equity reason to take action there Transit and bikes are involved but with serious and fatal crashes it's I guess undeniable that they're happening there but I'm not convinced that as the the schematic depicted in the corridor study would actually do anything to prevent those crashes for the the drawings are going to help us with product Readiness but I'm not sure we're really I'm really ready to support that approach so without some certainty that we can we can help narrow The Crossing distances and and not build an intersection at a high cost to support peak hour vehicle capacity this is the one that I'm I'm

[205:00] wavering on Tila thanks Alex so I have two questions on this uh number one I was listening Valerie but I had some bedtime duties and so I wasn't watching all the slides um has the price estimate on this one changed from the from the slides that we were sent on over the weekend or is it still at five million dollars for this Arapahoe and 30th um Garrett can speak to specifics more but we're currently looking at this one to see where we can find some cost Savings in terms of minimizing right-of-way acquisition right okay I think that's the one you were mentioning and I was that's what I thought was going on and secondly um as a general question so let's say tab says sure let's look at all four of these things you begin the Outreach and then we come back in November and realize oh there were some real big you know concerns or snags or whatever is it a possible outcome that we only proceed with three of these uh as full applications um or are we pretty sure we want to be

[206:00] applying for four and if so the answer to that that is yes then should we pick a fifth one to be a fallback or are we pretty certain these are going to be the four you know I think um that that question and and Alex's previous Point kind of speak to that that process right so we go through the community engagement over the next month through October and then we will come back to you for your formal recommendation in November um so you know between that time um we would be conducting that that Community engagement on these four projects that we're recommending so um that you know that I think that is our recommendation is that these are the four and and we do want to submit for all four and if I could add and to what uh Valerie just said um uh we got confirmation today from the Boulder County Sub region that there will be another um one-page abstract process with the call for opportunity and October 20th or

[207:01] plus or minus a date or two uh will be the time frame for those to be submitted with the expectation we get feedback on our project abstracts by um the second week of November um so uh our first week of November rather so that would be also good information for tabs consideration as we move toward project application development yes okay um I just have I have similar feedback on this one which is just that I'm just nervous about that that cost and then having to say we get the funding and we build these improvements and there's some improvements but then really we'll have to go back another time later to if we build it out as it is shown we'll have to go back later to make it safe again because it won't be safe yet it'll be improved but it still won't be

[208:00] safe because of how wide it is and um all of the turn Lanes so um yeah so that just makes me very anxious about asking for for dollars for something that doesn't really fully achieve her goals ultimately it kind of gets this part way there um so I guess if I felt more comfortable with that those potential um alterations were more of a sure thing that we could do and I feel more more confident supporting this one yeah um I think we'll have more information as we continue to work on refining those um so you know I think it's safe to say that we wouldn't be um applying for the concept that you saw in in August um we're actively working to refine that right now and so by the time you would make a formal recommendation in November we would be able to Circle back with you all on what that refined concept looks like to address your feedback yeah and I'll just add we we certainly

[209:01] had some discussion around the slides and how we presented you know what's currently still in flux around cost estimates and the design um and we just left it as is because it is still we're working on that the Consultants are working on the design and cost estimates and so um by the time we come back to you we'll have Clarity around all of those kind of questions thanks foreign feedback from tab about any of the four projects that were included ones that were included or general questions about the process yeah I just in looking at this uh scoring Slide the candidate project evaluation slide with the empty circles half circles and full circles um it didn't I I was confused about why some things got a full circle versus a

[210:00] half circle for instance located on a can nams quarter maybe it's a half a circle for can and a half a circle for nams is that way in the Colorado and uh or the Arapahoe and 30th Street got a full circle where whereas Iris only got a half and Belmont only got a half is that what's going on there okay that's right okay and then again I have a similar response on the safety uh or a question on the safety some of those are full circle some of those are half circles is that the difference between fatal and serious injury crashes or are we also representing sort of the kind of um sort of failure to accommodate uh vulnerable users and modes for instance like on Iris Avenue where it's definitely not comfortable and safe it's just no one's there no pedestrians are getting hit because they're not Crossing that street so I If all we're looking at under the safety bullet is you know what is our body count or how many people are

[211:01] getting injured there I take some issue with that being the sole criteria for safety on these projects okay and that's it thank you thanks for that feedback Tila thanks if there's nothing else on this we can see uh Natalie are there any other matters from staff no I think we're good in the 30. we're a little over time I think we're good to go cool yeah thank you uh from the board first a retreat debrief um I've had a follow-up conversation with each board member about their individual priorities and have tried to figure out how each member can lead and be engaged in those areas and so that's something I think we can talk about but in reflecting on their tree there are a couple things that I want to

[212:01] discuss and and really going into the tree what was top of mind for me is what Tila had coined ethics Candor and transparency especially during interactions between staff and the board and those interactions have perpetuated a strained relationship and I think caused some distrust and I was disappointed in in prepping with Heidi the facilitator that she decided not to include that as a topic um and told me that those concerns weren't valid and that was disappointing because I've tried previously to voice this with Department leadership and gotten nowhere so I viewed The Retreat as an opportunity to to finally view that and during the first part of the retreat we heard from employees from various City departments and it was frustrating to be schooled in how things are supposed to work without actually being able to talk about how things happen working

[213:01] and we heard a very contrived fireside chat about how staff and tab and city manager and Council are all supposed to work together but from experience there are times where staff is are so far out of those bounds and similarly we heard from the engagement people about how to have meaningful and inclusive engagement but again their experiences where we have members of Staff telling us what the outcome of a process is going to be before it's really concluded or the things being offered to the public are not actually options and so therefore I don't think it was really worth their time or effort to to be involved and I found it hypocritical to hear from staff that they have reasons to not trust us but it's time for us to trust them and that we need to assume positive intent from staff

[214:00] but in this past year multiple members of Staff have accused members of tab of not assuming of staff has not assumed positive intent of tab and it was startling after the retreat to hear from the interim director that they had no idea what I meant by ethics Candor and transparency and fortunately I think City leadership are and will take those concerns about ethics Candor and transparency seriously um and we have a recent perfect example I think to help uh confirm that that's worthwhile we just got to talk about the prospect of advancing our community's vision for 30th Street and in doing so filling a really important Gap in this network as the map showed and to finally give Folsom the intense scrutiny it deserves and needs for us to accomplish anything

[215:01] on a street that this community's been interested in for a decade and tab has worked as hard as we can to elevate and so through these tip applications we have these rare and transformative opportunities for our community but unfortunately those opportunities are products of distrust I don't think any tab members have any experience working in Bridge structures however some of us have experience in being undermined by Department staff after being warned about the East Arapahoe bridge and how it could collapse and result in loss of life it was quickly revealed that that wasn't true the motives for that Discovery weren't because of what was presented to tab they were based on who presented the info and how it was presented distrust is what uncovered the truth there distrust is why we are going to be able

[216:01] to better advise counsel in this upcoming tip process and distrust may actually better the lives of our community members so I think there's been this ongoing failure by Department leadership to address those concerns about ethics Candor and transparency and without addressing that I think that the distrust will continue and I wish we could have had this conversation at the retreat but it was not a facilitated conversation about both sides concerns I felt it was much more of a lecture Series where staff had to say in what was presented and and tab was really really Limited Alex I'm sorry you felt that way um I know this has been a concern of yours for a while you know we've tried to elevate it and have conversations

[217:02] um sometimes more successfully off off the grid and out of public View um and to the extent that you have been able to sort of Make Your Case better outside of public view I want to acknowledge that that has happened and that it's uh it's been a lot of work on your part um but I am one thing that I think came out of the retreat um was not just an appreciation for council member Speer being so involved in watching us but that she was able to give sort of an outsider's perspective which is like whoa boy I can smell the tension um and so it's not that we have to you know want to be dinner party Buddies um but but I think that there is a path

[218:00] forward to being able to constructively work together um but it does involve you being able to speak your mind and make a case and be heard and validated and I'm hoping that um that that's still of the track that you're on um I have said for years the Retreats are the my least favorite thing to do the staff um and uh I didn't you know we were we didn't really feel like the first round was very productive we agreed to do a second round and I have to say I didn't find the second round I didn't think that what we were missing was some kind of virtual Post-It note exercise um so I I still struggle to figure out a way to make uh the Retreats substantive and useful um as opposed to just sort of an exercise and going through an exercise because it's always been done that way um and so I think we'll we'll continue to to watch that and try to learn I like

[219:00] how Council has has changed up how they've been doing their Retreats I was hoping we could copy some of the things that they had done and also in the time of covet it's a little hard so let's just keep on keeping on and hope that it can be better and more productive but um you and I were both kind of tearing our hair out like why are we doing this um so it really dampens my appetite for doing more of them yeah and I hope there's some some byproducts of of the of the Post-it notes and it's kind of up to us as to whether those are those lead anywhere or not but yeah it was we it took so long to get there and what what it if we can't talk about these things in our regular meetings and staff's not going to have those conversations outside of the meetings I didn't I didn't know else else when to do it and so that's when I tried and the it's I find it troubling that people are claiming that they don't know what I'm talking about if they've actively avoided the conversation so I felt

[220:00] that's been weighing on me and so I made a point to note that not the honor the debrief Ryan well just this is a little more light-hearted but I really liked that posted on exercise and Alex I know you had other things that are important to you until you thought it was a waste of time and you know I'm grateful for everybody's a willingness to to start at this with um different ideas about how we can fulfill our mission so um I uh I just want to acknowledge the team for making space for that and I'm hopeful that others uh maybe even with staff I found that to be um useful I do plan on going back to the Post-it notes and referencing some of that I think there was some um strategic ideas and Concepts that uh frankly we should be focusing more of our um kind of reasoning around so in any case um not to debate but just say thank you for

[221:00] um Alex with so much to to potentially do including what you just talked about um that we did have time for that um and then I guess on more just just to add to the substance of what you had raised I I don't um I don't have any good answers but I I just think um you know it's I've just kind of acknowledged sort of agreeing with Tila that we um there's a lot that we individually and collectively want to do and believe is our job to do through this process and I think the the ins there's not much of an instructions manual and I think you know if I just go like to the West Pearl thing I mean I think there's just we have we have different ideas as professionals here about the just sort of the procedurally appropriate you know way to take all this so um I guess I'm just offering that this isn't this isn't very straightforward and when we were only legally allowed to talk about this in public meetings you know like the essential Team Dynamics between multiple organizations it's just it's just it's

[222:01] just very hard to do and so um I'm thankful for you being you know direct and um but you know making your ideas known and I'm grateful to Natalie and the team for you know just like listening to a lot of this and and I know that they're they're doing a lot of um they're really applying a lot of work to this so I don't have a lot more than that foreign I guess I just want to Echo Ryan and to say that you know I'm really grateful to be a part of this and for all the work that you guys put into this individually I mean I saw so much passion from Ryan today and and and from you too Alex and you know I just I wish things were different and we could communicate without any misunderstandings but ultimately I think the way you're conducting yourself right now Alex I think it's it's commendable and I think that if we don't talk about stuff then

[223:00] now what's the whole point of this you know it's just we need to be up front and that's the way things get cleared out um so so thank you guys and yeah I appreciate that and here we start with Wes Pearl how complicated these things can be but we just need to know that everyone's doing their best to do it in a the most ethical way possible no absolutely so we've gone on for long enough if there's oh well yeah I do I do just want to say um one thing that I think so there was a time when I was not aware of some of your ethics concerns Alex and that was a conversation that we had um prior to the retreat and um I had you know at that time said that I wasn't aware of the details that you were concerned about and obviously over the course of the last few months that's changed and those things have come to light and you and I have had one-on-one

[224:00] conversations outside of tab meetings where you've communicated your concerns and I definitely have heard them a lot of the your concerns I wasn't around for and we've talked through that um and I've tried to you know really focus on just going forward that we want to conduct ourselves in the most ethical and transparent way and obviously with Candor too I think I bring that pretty plainly to these conversations so I think think I just wanted to definitely get that on the record that you and I have had those conversations one-on-one and um you know I think just acknowledging that there's work to do um but there but you haven't you have been heard by me and and we've talked about how we can address some of those things going forward okay I appreciate that I just wanted to State this because so far the record of the retreat is is something that did not take into consideration and

[225:00] did not give Credence to to what I think are have since been determined to be very valid concerns and the the facilitator was very dismissive of those concerns okay I appreciate that feedback and Ryan I'm also glad that we did the the Post-it note exercise uh my first conversation was with you we talked about uh climate that's an up front of mind for you and thinking through how to work on the messaging on that how to best align climate with the things that the department is already working on and Ryan and I had some preliminary ideas about how to engage the climate office with our efforts and I think we'll we'll regroup on that and then Natalie that's something we might run by you about how some of these things that we talk about can be if you buy those types of professionals through through that lens and then I talked with Trinny about transparency and data and that seemed

[226:00] like something that Becky also had interest in and so I've encouraged both of you if you have any interactions with with staff to to Loop in one another it's always nice to have some beats somebody working with you and it sounds like and hearing from staff that there are things under underway that could lead to more transparent data which in talking to Becky it sounds like it'd be nice if we could see what type of crashes are happening for example at 30th and Arapahoe so that when that product comes to us it's really easy for us to look that up and think about how a proposed design might um may or may not uh improve things and then training you and Tila have both expressed interest in messaging on traffic violence and how we talk about safety and education so I would encourage both of you to think about how moving forward you could both you could be effective both in things that come our way and then think through if there are any initiatives that members of tab could take on I feel like you also had mentioned uh

[227:02] messaging on parking and Community Vitality so I think there's a bit of a theme with um the the messaging and communication strategies that we use and Becky we talked a bit about um the desire for an ordinance which is something that's come up that would fast conversations about how it'd be great if when we invest in a street we are required to build it up to TMP standards and that's something that I know the city of Cambridge Massachusetts has done so well that a lot of people would like to see that um in Boulder and we talked about all the the funding mechanisms that would need to be created for that and that's maybe a little bit more of a long-term play but it's essential that that as people come and go from tab if there's somebody who can continue pushing for that especially with new councils and with you being the one with the the most guaranteed time left on the board I think you being a champion of that would be fantastic and then we both shared an interest in

[228:02] parking reform or I don't know if I did during the retreat but that's something I've expressed interest in previously and I think um we've been plugged in with some Transportation Advocates who who are taking that matter pretty seriously and so we're hoping to see what what traction we can get um there so I wish we could have had that conversation sort of during the retreat but we we ran out of time um and if if any of you have anything I missed it's hard to sum up a bunch of hour-long conversations in five minutes but um that was the gist of it as far as I can tell from my notes I just want to acknowledge that Natalie has been very very um very good about sharing all the data crash since the retreat and you know just whatever happens I think we we got a message about it so thank you now yeah I appreciate you taking time out of your data share that as soon as possible because we start getting questions from

[229:01] time to time about what happened so that's all I've got for retreat debrief any other comments from tab on this if not we can maybe turn back to West Pearl that seems to be the most pressing matter before us um I heard from Aaron he said that it would be okay for a tab representative to bucket Council Thursday night most likely I think I have a Time conflict with part of the evening so is there anyone from tab who'd be especially interested in speaking to council on Thursday to share your perspective but some of the ideas that were brought forward by the rest of the board as well I nominate Brian I'm happy to be doing this uh dealer Becky wants to go to Charlotte it doesn't happen I I assume I'll Circle

[230:02] you know I can continue I can circulate this the stock I have a couple edits and then okay anybody can take it on but or I can so is this the last time Brian went and talked to council they asked you a question and you answered it and they didn't like your answer it's a different Council there you go newsletter you know what you should take it if you want no it's fine um there's there's I I think you're you've been clearly thinking about this you know we've we've been talking about it you've been talking to council members we've there's many tentacles on this in this since I'm happy to have you be the head of the Hydra if you want do we have to determine this now can we because maybe Becky or Tio want to think about it for you I guess you can't do that we need to not we need to figure it out now to avoid a discussion on this Becky what's your interest level

[231:00] um I I really feel neutral light if it's helpful I can do it but I don't feel like a burning need to be that person so okay I you know I maybe maybe somebody should do it besides me since I'm I'm if I'm working a letter or some you know somebody else can provide a different approach and I mean I don't know do you like I think you're you're kind of chewing on this one me yeah oh uh sure I always like talking to council I was pretty impressed tonight with Becky though I don't know um but yeah I'm happy to I think with with Ryan's uh foundation and the letter um we'll figure out in a minute who's gonna sign on to that but um see that you bring in some of the points that you've had that'd be great I can but people know that that's our girlfriend that's great

[232:00] thank you for doing that maybe do a straw poll to see who's interested in I mean I've barely skimmed it um but a straw poll of who's interested in hashing out Ryan's letter at whatever time it is 10 o'clock um to a good point now or do we want to just do is there interest in sending a letter I guess we could start with that yeah I I yeah I think there's interest in sending a letter um I think we could do it one of two ways we could have everybody send one-way edits to Ryan or we could just nominate two people to be the co-authors of it and let them go based on what they've digested from our discussion tonight and so then they can work more directly on editing stuff I like the second one which one was that that was two two

[233:01] people working on it two people two people work on it cosign it and can we see this one tab or is it on can we only say it's on behalf of the two or does it matter I think technically we can send one-way edits to one person to Ryan say and then Ryan can work with one other person in real time one one of the one of us in real time to to iron it out with no further back and forth from anybody else I think Becky would be great at doing that like you guys compliment each other really well at doing what sending one-way edits well with working together like I already sent well I made some edits but not really anything meaningful but I think what Becky brings into the table would really complement what you have because I did have a chance to read what you have Ryan so um nothing together

[234:00] you would put together a really really powerful document what do Alexander think I support that if Becky's willing to do that work thanks yeah I'd be happy to work with you on that right great I think it's it's pretty compelling read I love the organization on it but it definitely needs to be cut down um because they get Council they don't have time to read all of it so um focus on brevity but I really love the directions going in and the just the organization of it really the bullet pointed bolded stuff and just to clarify it can be on top of all of us right I mean even if they just work on it and you can all sign them together okay yeah I think right if we if we get if if the if the group here agrees to say you'll the the framework overall is good you'll send minor comments to me Becky and I will work on them and then we're going to add over its name if the overall framework Nicole yeah

[235:01] um one way that it has happened is you've sent around the final product and without any further edits a person can either say I I do not want to sign don't put me on it or just be mum I think that's what we'll need to do okay hopefully that's that's on the transparency rules hopefully it sounds reasonable as long as yeah so while while we're being transparent on on the uh on the record and all that um at the end you have three proposals four proposals three proposals and number two uh says use this opportunity to make our town core for the car free and car light um and I I think my my main comment about this one is uh thinking back to tabs overall um urging at the beginning of the pandemic to the that Council to

[236:02] shut down some streets not just for outdoor dining but also for outdoor recreation and place making and safe spaces to to be the the parks were closed and all of that but really to take advantage of what we've learned from this downtown pilot street closure or reuse um and think about how we can apply it to other neighborhoods um not not necessarily tying it to the needs of businesses but to tie it to community needs for similar car light car Free People First plazas so I would just Urge number two to not be restricted to just this particular thing that would be my main substantive edit any other substantive edits at this point okay so the time is pretty short if we I mean the council meeting is Thursday

[237:00] ideally they did it by Wednesday right like maybe ish I mean they already have it but if we were to try to hold to Wednesday midday is it too late to ask by tomorrow midday-ish any comments and then Becky I I don't know what you have going on tomorrow but do we can we kind of work this together tomorrow afternoon or with something like that in mind yeah yeah I'm pretty flexible tomorrow so that that works for me it's great and um I don't know if Natalie or anybody on staff has any questions concerns or thoughts about all this what we plan but I'm happy to entertain any other ideas or I don't have any concerns I think this is all within your purview to do okay thank you sounds like we'll be well represented in writing into the person yeah well but as Ryan noted Council has asked for us you know for input from us so I

[238:01] think this is what we're at least certain members of council have yeah okay so then Alex Attila will um you'll let Aaron know that teal is going to represent us and then um I'll let him know to expect her okay thank you any other matters from the board comments I have something super minor I just well it's not minor it's it's short I just wanted to acknowledge and thank um Valerie and Devin for meeting with me we had a meeting that um was a follow-up on the discussion about the uh crash investigation design factors and crash investigations which was a previous meeting topic and um they followed up and with Natalie uh but I met with um Valerie and Devin and we just shared shared some information with back and forth and including some um best practices from other cities on both um post-crash investigation teams and sort

[239:01] of like what's happening um with some best practices in that space and then also in the police department side um some research on how um to to include crucial forensics in bike uh crashes that are often not included so we had some some sharing I don't think there's any action item but I thought it was productive meeting him and I wanted to thank them for that awesome glad you've got some assistance from them and thanks for pursuing that yeah thanks Ryan okay the only future agenda topic I see is next month there will be a performance-based pricing and Trailhead access management recommendations and then as we heard tonight we will be having a public Hearing in November for the the tip call for projects and as always feel free to email myself or Ryan if there are any things that you

[240:00] would like to get on that schedule and we can see about that at the agenda meetings this might fold into the access uh Trailhead stuff next month um but Natalie one of our first walks when you were new to your then role um the city had just Incorporated Knollwood um and I had said you know Knollwood when it was its own little fiefdom didn't want outside cars parking on the streets but now it's a city street and should we be expecting the usual on-street parking to be available like it is elsewhere in the city and you um I don't remember if we knew who even to talk to about that um but there's still no on-street parking there and in fact there's some brand new signs saying no Trail parking so I'm just curious what the status is of that like why are these streets different from other streets yeah thanks for bringing that up we did see that and um we we went ahead and had our science team take those down we are we don't

[241:04] believe they have the that they are allowed to post those signs we are going back and making sure that that's true that they can't negotiate anything differently as part of the annexation agreement right um but we're we're pretty certain that that is not allowable so we saw one yesterday so I don't know when we went out this morning okay cool yeah so I mean it's likely that they'll put them back up so we'll do some additional investigation and then um hopefully try to follow up with somebody to have a conversation so that we're not just in the circular yeah thank you great anything else or can we entertain a motion to adjourn I second so much

[242:01] okay I'll motion to adjourn in 20 seconds all those in favor unanimous thanks everyone have a good night