FROM: Carl Stoffel DEPARTMENT: Planning And
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
STAFF REPORT
TO: PLANNING & TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION
FROM: Carl Stoffel DEPARTMENT: Planning and
Community Environment
AGENDA DATE: January 21, 2004
SUBJECT: Downtown North Traffic Calming Project--Recommendations to Remove Current Trial Plan and Implement New Traffic Calming Plan
RECOMMENDATIONS
Staff recommends that Commission recommend that the City Council:
(1) End the current Downtown North trial traffic calming plan;
(2) Approve permanent implementation of the Downtown North Mixed Measures Traffic Calming Plan, provided that achievement of the performance measures is certified by the Director of Planning and Community Environment after seven months of implementation;
(3) Consider and approve the attached negative declaration for permanent implementation of the Mixed Measures Plan.
BACKGROUND
The Downtown North neighborhood is located between Alma Street, Lytton Avenue, Middlefield Road, and San Francisquito Creek (including the businesses and residences on the neighborhood side of Alma, Lytton and Middlefield). The neighborhood consists of approximately 1500 dwelling units with 2500 residents, plus about 80 businesses in the west end of the neighborhood and along Lytton. For years, Downtown North residents have been concerned about cut-through traffic and parking problems. The Downtown North neighborhood study was included on a 1979 list of Council-approved neighborhood traffic studies. A mid-1990s Planned Community zone project at the corner of Lytton and Waverley coincided with increased neighborhood concern about traffic impacts of downtown development. The developer of that project offered a public financial benefit for the City to hire a transportation consultant to conduct a traffic-calming study for Downtown North. That funding was subsequently incorporated into the approved Transportation Division budget for that purpose.
Staff and a transportation-consulting firm began the study in 1999. A project advisory committee (PAC) was formed with representatives of Downtown North (including officials of the neighborhood association), a representative of the Lytton neighborhood east of Middlefield, a downtown business community representative, and City staff from Transportation, Public Works and Fire. Through an open, publicly noticed process that included a project web site, e-mail address, voice mail box, four neighborhood meetings, and three neighborhood advisory surveys, a “preferred alternative” was selected for Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) and City Council review. In February 2001, the City Council approved a six-month trial of this plan, along with a set of performance measures. A majority of PTC and Council members supported implementation of the trial. Budget constraints delayed implementation of the project until commencement of design in 2002 and installation in June 2003. Full details of the project planning are described in the October 11, 2000 Transportation Division staff report to the PTC (http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/ downtownnorth).
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The six-month trial traffic-calming plan includes seven street closures, three gateway features and one intersection bulbout (refer to Figure 1).
FIGURE 1
The Council-adopted performance measures (Attachment A) provide the framework for staff’s evaluation of the trial plan. The trial started on June 16, 2003. Staff began the project evaluation at the end of September 2003. Two informational meetings were held in November and December 2003 at which Transportation staff presented preliminary evaluation results and options for the future of the project. The meetings were advertised in local newspapers and by mailed notices (refer to Attachment B for mailing area details). A total of approximately 240 people attended both meetings (some attended both). Comments and questions from meeting attendees are summarized in Attachment F. The information presented at the meetings and a notice for the January 21, 2004 PTC meeting were mailed to the same area on January 6, 2004.
One of the evaluation items was a resident opinion survey that had been scheduled for December 2003. Staff was preparing to use the standard survey methodology used for all its past traffic calming projects (including the earlier surveys in Downtown North), as detailed in the adopted Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program guidelines used for the “spot treatment” projects. In this procedure, each household, business and non-resident property owner with a postal address would receive a survey card and be allowed one vote per household, business or owned parcel. Staff has a mailing list for this purpose. Those who did not receive the survey card or misplaced it would be able to obtain one at City Hall. Staff required a return address on each survey card in order to insure that only one vote per address was allowed and that the address lies within the survey area. Staff prepared a survey card with a two-part format that (a) provides a clear indication of opinion on whether or not the trial plan (augmented to help correct its problems) should be retained or not; and (b) if not, which of the other alternatives was most preferable. This format is shown in Attachment E. Residents’ representatives strongly disagreed with staff’s proposed survey methodology, especially who should receive the survey cards, despite repeated meetings and discussions between all parties (refer to a later section of this report about DTNNA and Unblock representatives). Staff was unable to develop a consensus about the survey methodology and content. In the end, staff decided that other workload responsibilities precluded further efforts to reach consensus, and reluctantly cancelled the survey. The mailing list and survey format that staff developed are available for any future surveys. At this time, staff believes that the survey would add too much time to the process of ending the current trial plan and implementing its recommended substitute.
Why the Current Trial Plan was Selected
When this proposed plan was first reviewed by the PTC in October 2000, some Commissioners thought that less aggressive measures should be tried first, and were frustrated that there were not other alternatives to choose from. Many Commissioners were not in favor of street closures as traffic calming measures. During the planning process in 1999-2000, the first resident opinion survey showed that Downtown North residents’ top three concerns were excess traffic volumes, cut-through traffic and speeding. Data showed that cut-through traffic exceeded 60 percent of all traffic on Hawthorne and Everett. It is well known that there is strong driver desire for east-west travel along the Willow-Sand Hill corridor, including to/from downtown Palo Alto. Staff and residents considered many alternatives at that time, ranging from less to more aggressive than the current trial plan. Residents believed that only a street closure plan would stem the tide of cut-through traffic. Comprehensive Plan Policy T-33 discourages the use of street closures, but allows them when there is an overwhelming through traffic problem and there is no acceptable alternative. For practical purposes, staff interprets “overwhelming through traffic” to mean an average daily level of 60 percent or more.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT ISSUES
Evaluation Results
Evaluation of the current trial plan centered on the 12 Council-adopted performance measures. These measures and the evaluation findings are listed in Attachment A. PTC can determine if a measure should be considered as a guideline or an absolute in weighing the overall performance of the plan, and can evaluate the relative importance of each measure. Staff considers the safety-related measures (#6 – #10) as the most important, followed by the primary project goal of through traffic reduction (#1). Staff considers two measures as specific quantitative significance thresholds in environmental analyses: #2 (25% maximum volume increase threshold on local streets) and #4 (minimum acceptable LOS D at intersections). Two performance measures (#1—65% through traffic reduction, and #5—15% average speed reduction) derive from the projected effectiveness of the trial plan. Staff adopted these as goals--they are not mandated standards. The response time goals in measure #8 are from the official mission goals of the Fire and Police Departments. The performance levels in the other measures were determined by staff based on professional judgment and are not mandated standards.
The trial plan has surpassed its primary goal of through traffic reduction (#1). However, it has caused unacceptable volume increases on a few street segments (#2). Even though it has not caused unacceptable increases in Fire Department response times, it has the future potential to delay Fire Department access to the neighborhood (#8, #9). Staff and many neighborhood representatives believe that these inadequacies should be corrected if the project were to remain on a permanent basis. One of the important measures remains unevaluated formally—neighborhood acceptance by means of an opinion survey (#11), as discussed earlier in this report. Notwithstanding, hundreds of residents have expressed a variety of unsolicited views during the trial, both in favor of and against the plan. Refer to Attachment F for a summary of these comments.
Fire Department Access
The Department found no significant increase in response times from the year prior to the trial period in the Downtown North neighborhood and the times are within the Department benchmarks. The Department also found that the closures did not cause any serious impediments in emergency activities during the trial period (refer to memo in Attachment A). In that literal sense, the performance measures were met. There were relatively few emergencies during the evaluation periods. A better determination of impact on the Department’s response time goals would require that response times for a fairly large number of incidents be averaged together, probably requiring a multi-year trial period. The Department estimated that there would be a delay of at least one minute if a driver entered a closed street and had to unlock a bollard, or detour around the block. The designated response route from Fire Station 1 to the Downtown North neighborhood is Alma and Lytton, then using north-south streets into the neighborhood—i.e., a route that would usually avoid any street closures, thus typically avoiding the extra delay of entering a closed street. A delay of one minute could still result in a response time within the Department goal, given that Fire Station 1 is located within the neighborhood.
Any extra response delay, even if it falls within Department goals, has consequences, as detailed in the Fire Department analysis. Residents and decision-makers will need to decide if the infrequent possible delay in responding to emergencies (even if the response time goal is met) is offset by the continuous traffic calming benefits of the project. Even though the current trial plan has not had an immediate impact on the Department’s response times during the limited time of the trial period, staff believes that the trial plan should nevertheless be modified to reduce any possibility of occasional future delays. This could be done either by reducing the number of closures and/or changing their design to be more “permeable” (i.e., cause less delay). Staff recommends the first approach. Refer to Attachment C for more discussion of closure design options.
Arterial and Local Streets
Some residents on arterial streets bordering the neighborhood, especially Middlefield and Lytton, believe that the current trial plan has ignored their street. Indeed, the trial plan was designed to discourage cut-through trips from using interior neighborhood streets. Staff expected that these trips would be diverted to the arterial street system around the neighborhood. In fact, changes were made to the Lytton/Alma and Lytton/Middlefield intersections to enhance such use. It was also understood that some neighborhood trips would unavoidably (but not desirably) be forced onto arterial segments because of the discontinuity of the interior street system. Staff anticipated that arterial volumes surrounding the neighborhood would increase about 15 percent, but intersection levels of service (LOS) would remain at acceptable levels and accidents on Middlefield at Everett would decrease (performance measures #4, #7). In the hierarchy of streets in any city, arterials (including residential arterials) are the designated and desirable carriers of through traffic and are expected to receive through traffic that has been diverted from local streets by traffic calming measures (refer to Comprehensive Plan policies T-24 and T-34). Palo Alto has a separate program for residential arterial traffic calming, employing measures quite different than on local streets. The current Charleston-Arastradero study is the first such project. Staff feels that the best way to improve residential arterial conditions (more capacity, less queuing) is a significantly advanced “adaptive” traffic signal system. Council recently approved an application for grant funding for such a system for all the City’s residential arterials (the funding itself has not yet been approved).
Downtown North Neighborhood Association (DTNNA) and Unblock Downtown North
In neighborhood traffic calming projects, staff has always worked closely with neighborhood representatives--usually with members of the neighborhood association, as they are typically the only “official” neighborhood representatives. DTNNA was the primary proponent in getting this project started in 1999. DTNNA representatives were on the project advisory committee and staff has worked closely with them throughout all phases of this project. After the trial plan was installed this year, other residents in the neighborhood who did not feel represented by DTNNA formed a new residents group, Unblock Downtown North. After Unblock was formed, staff began to coordinate the trial evaluation with representatives of both groups. Transportation staff conducted two “summit” meetings with three representatives of both groups together to try to hammer out agreement on the resident opinion survey and future options. In addition, Transportation staff met with individual members of both groups in an attempt to resolve the differences. Mutual agreement was reached on a few issues. In the end, however, after Transportation made necessary decisions to move forward with the evaluation of the project, both groups continued to disagree with staff and each other. Staff continues to work with both groups as representatives of neighborhood residents.
Future Options for this Project
After evaluating the performance of the existing trial project, the Transportation Division looked at about two dozen options other than maintaining the current trial plan as is. One goal was to find options that could correct or at least reduce the problems with the current plan. The options ranged from removing all the trial elements to fully closing off neighborhood access on the east and west sides. The Transportation Division then distilled this large set to a more workable five options for PTC consideration, using a set of guidelines (Attachment D). All five options are consistent with Comprehensive Plan policies as described under “Policy Implications” later in this report. Transportation staff met with and considered the opinions of representatives of the Downtown North Neighborhood Association and Unblock Downtown North, although neither group endorses all the selected options. Four of the options were presented at the two neighborhood meetings for feedback. All five were described in the January 6 mailing to residents, but there was no mechanism for comprehensively gathering residents’ opinions on these options. The five options are summarized below. Details and illustrations are in Attachment D.