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September 2, 2021 MinutesTransportation Safety Advisory Commission Minutes Thursday, September 2, 2021 5:30 PM The Transportation Safety Advisory Commission (TSAC) convened for a meeting on Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 5:30 PM in the Council Chambers, Building #4, 1400 Schertz Parkway, Schertz, Texas 78154 TSAC Commissioners Present: Dziewit, Richard, Chair Bowers, Bill Heasley, Tyler Heyward, Ferrando Ragsdale, Roy Stevens, Ronald Sullivan, John TSAC Commissioners Absent: Cornelisse, Chuck Garcia, Mateo Winter, Michael Staff Present: Armstrong, Colton, Police Corporal James, Brian, Assistant City Manager Kelm, Charles, Assistant City Manager Letbetter, Doug, Public Works Manager Simmons, Cyndi, Administrative Assistant Williams, Suzanne, Public Works Director Woodlee, Kathy, City Engineer CALL TO ORDER at 5:33 PM by Chair Richard Dziewit. He asked for a moment of silence for the military that was impacted this week and for the areas affected by Hurricane Ida. ROLL CALL HEARING OF RESIDENTS There were no residents signed up to address the Commission for this meeting. 1. Minutes: Consideration and /or action regarding the approval of the minutes of the June 3, 2021 Meeting. A motion was made by Commissioner Ferrando Heyward to approve the minutes of the June 3, 2021 Meeting. Seconded by Commissioner Roy Ragsdale. Motion passed. Vote was unanimous. 2. Crosswalk Request: Update on the Status of the Request for a Pedestrian Crosswalk on Savannah Drive near Willow Ranch Street. Kathy Woodlee reports that we've been looking at this request for a few months and the residents have come back several times and were here at the last meeting in June. This request has been reviewed again and we conducted some field observations. (Please refer to PowerPoint.) There are sidewalks on Schertz Parkway and there is a drainage channel and there isn't room for a sidewalk on the existing road bridge. There's also 9 -2 -2021 Minutes Transportation Safety Advisory Commission a drainage feature in two other locations and essentially there isn't any way without extreme cost to make a connection from one pod to an existing sidewalk. We looked at this initially and judged that a mid -block crosswalk that's uncontrolled across Savannah Drive was probably not safe, but because we continue to get requests, we decided to take a more rigorous look at it. A group of us went out and put some eyes on it and took some measurements. The red line represents a possible location for a crosswalk just before the bridge. The blue lines represent different locations and different distances from that crosswalk and then based on the speed where you would need to be to be able to stop in time to not hit someone in the crosswalk. We looked at a crosswalk farthest north, one right at the entrance to the subdivision pod, we looked at one south of that entrance. Option #4 is the farthest south before it gets to a point where people who live here will not walk all the way back to that point to cross the road and then go up. The next step is to take some traffic counts to find out exactly what speeds we've got there. Savannah Drive is posed at 30 mph and we have a feeling that it's regularly traveled faster than that. We don't get a lot of speed complaints, generally folks don't travel superfast when there are lines of parents to pick kids up, but it's a wide street, fairly straight, and on a slope. Some folks think it's kind of fun to drive on it, so we're pretty sure that there are speeds that exceed the 30 mph, so that's why we're looking at the distances from there that would be safer. Obviously the faster you're going the longer it takes to stop, so you need to be able to see a person in the crosswalk from farther away. We continue to study it and these studies take months and months, but that's where we are on this request. John Sullivan asked if it was possible to narrow Savannah Drive and put a sidewalk across the bridge. Kathy Woodlee responded that it could be looked at, but probably not. They visited the site and after school started its session, motorists back up across the bridge queuing up to get to Paschal during rush hour traffic and it could create a bottleneck if it was narrowed. John Sullivan commented that it has been really successful with the lines on Belmont and Fairlawn, narrowing the lanes to keep speed down. He has ridden that area many times (on bicycle) and it's pretty wide there. It was also suggested that a crosswalk sign be installed. Kathy Woodlee advised that we could incorporate signage if we do establish a crosswalk, however, a sign by itself won't solve the problem. We wouldn't want to say there's a crosswalk if we haven't established a safe crosswalk and unless you have the adequate site distance, even with a sign it's not enough of a factor of safety. It would help most people with awareness overall, but it's not a sure thing. People get used to seeing a sign and they won't notice it after a certain amount of time. Even with a solar flashing light? That helps sometimes, but people get "blind" after time. The bolder the better, but the critical thing is having that clear line of sight to know whether there's enough stopping distance. Richard Dziewit also suggested that the school could provide an adult crossing guard to help with the kids for navigating the roadway. Kathy Woodlee advised that we could approach the school district about that, however, there is a limited number of residential units in that area. It was suggested that it could be an interim solution until a permanent solution could be formed. Right now, the children for Paschal are supposed to cross at the light where there is a crossing guard and come down the far side. The only children (the "walkers ") are supposed to come down so they don't have to cross the drainage ditch. Not all of the children do that. Some of them come down and cross mid block, but according to the school and working with them, they're supposed to cross at Schertz Parkway and Savannah and then walk down the far side. Kathy Woodlee also suggests that even with a crossing guard, we still have to have that sight distance to protect the crossing guard and the children, so it's almost as if you would need multiple people so that you can have an advance warning to flag motorists down to slow them down. It really becomes a traffic control issue. 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 2 number of different areas they have concerns about. Over the last 6 -9 months, we've conducted about 15 different speed counts at about 11 different locations to try to get a feel for what's going on throughout the neighborhood. A few of the locations do show speeds above 25 mph for the 80th percentile. We look at the 15% fastest drivers and what speed they are doing. What we typically look for on a residential street is 5 miles over the posted speed limit or 25 mph. There are some locations in the neighborhood that are higher than the 5 mph so we do have an issue in a few locations. There are also some anomalies in the counts that we want to make sure we fully understand. We think there are some cars passing at the same time which can skew the data, so we've redone counts a number of times to get a feel for what's going on. Also, the residents have asked for us to study two additional locations so we're going to do those. If you remember, we like to do those speed counts during the school year, which is what typical traffics is — typical volumes, typical driver patterns, folks are running late for work, trying to get kids to school, things like that so we can get an accurate picture. We want to redo a few of those counts and check a couple of different locations the residents have requested. Given the data from the counts and given what we've seen, one of the things that we want to make sure we do is that if we come up with a proposed solution, it doesn't just shift the problem. Because of the way the streets are laid out, we want to make sure that if we put in speed humps, it doesn't cause residents to turn on another street and go down sooner and now those folks who didn't have a speeding problem, have a speeding problem. The other thing we tend to run into is that folks, at times, folks will go their normal speed, slow down to go over the speed hump, and then make up that time by speeding up again, so you don't really solve the problem. Once we have clean counts of all of the locations, we will try to figure out what's going on — why they're speeding at certain locations, what the appropriate solution really is, and it could be that speed humps won't really do anything. If they don't really do anything to help the problem, then we can say we've something, but people will still see the same behavior. We will reach out to the HOA and walk them through that data to see if it's consistent with what they're seeing. When we come back to the Commission, we will probably have a few challenges because we do have some higher speeds in some areas and there's probably not going to be a good solution. We may have to send postcards to neighbors, dynamic speed signs in some locations, and could include some speed humps. Richard Dziewit summarized that we will need to take a longer look at this issue and get with the HOA board for possible solutions. It was suggested that dynamic speed signs get people's attention and have a positive effect on speeds. However, as mentioned earlier, once you get used to seeing it, you tend to ignore it a little. One of the things we've talked about doing is looking at the effectiveness of those dynamic speed signs over time and when we know we're putting one up, do a couple of tests. Do some counts before we put it up, put it up, do additional counts one week, 6 weeks, 3 months, and see to what degree we believe they are effective and each time frame. 6. Summary of New Requests to Staff: a. Request for Signalization at Schertz Parkway and Ashley Park. Kathy Woodlee received a request for a traffic light at Schertz Parkway and Ashley Park. About a year ago we had a request for a crosswalk there and after the studies were done, it was concluded that it wasn't a good location. Savannah is approximately 1300 feet from Ashley Park and 2000 feet from Woodland Oaks. The ordinance has a standard warrant analysis that's done to find out if a traffic light is warranted at a particular intersection to control traffic and we don't believe that will be met, but we will take some counts on how many vehicles pass there on an average daily basis and determine that will be the first check to see how many vehicles are entering and leaving Schertz Parkway there and how many vehicles are going through the 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 4 intersection in a north/south direction and that might rule it out there. There are other things to look at — crash data, pedestrian traffic, etc. We'll take some counts as a first step. b. Congestion, School Zone and No Parking Issues on Fairlawn near the new School of Science and Technology. Kathy Woodlee presented a slide showing the area. The school has one access point to Fairlawn — they have no access to I35. The one access to Fairlawn is a right - turn in, right -turn out only situation. There is a median on Fairlawn Avenue and they are not able to get a cut through that median, so it's right -in, right -out. There is an emergency access only drive. During construction and at the end when they were starting to bring kids in, this was not secured and there was a big problem with folks coming out of there and instead of traveling around the roundabout one way, they would cut across (which is essentially going the wrong direction) to head out to I35 faster. A lot of the issues we're seeing with the traffic there is highly likely because folks don't know how to navigate this area. It was a bit of mess during the end of construction and the beginning of school and there was also an issue with folks bringing their kids to school and instead of getting in the line to drop them off, they would park all along the roundabout and park along the road. We can try various solutions, but, ultimately, we need to wait a little while until everybody gets into their routine. Parents self -meter themselves so not everyone shows up at the same time and they figure out if they wait ten minutes they won't have to sit in the line or if they go early, they'll be better off, etc. We had a very productive meeting with the school. The school is committed to doing their part on the site. They have very long queuing lengths and line cars up two lanes wide all the way around the school and they have multiple teachers helping with the loading and unloading process so there's great expectation that this situation will maybe not fully resolve itself but go a long way to resolving itself without much intervention such as establishing no parking zones. We will possibly look to establish a school zone for awareness. If so, it will need to be done by ordinance. We have a follow -up meeting with the school in about a month and if there are any suggestions, we will bring them back to the Commission for consideration to take to Council. Roy Ragsdale added that he lives in that neighborhood and when the school first opened there were a lot of complaints on Facebook, however, he hasn't seen anything for the last couple of weeks. 7. Chapter 86, Article VI Proposed Amendments: Consideration/Action on proposed amendments to Chapter 86, Article VI Operation of Bicycles and Play Vehicles. Brian James thanked the members of the Bicycle Subcommittee who helped us with this amendment. We had comments from Commissioners that we really needed to look at our bicycle ordinance and conduct an outreach program. We met several times and most of what we did with the ordinance changes were to make the ordinance clearer to the average person. We pulled ordinances from New Braunfels and others and we modeled our ordinance after theirs. We spent a lot of time on reflectors, lights, etc. We explored a few different options and one we had to discard was the "Idaho Stop" for cyclists. The Idaho Stop allows for cyclists not come to a complete stop at a stop sign, however, that is not allowed in Texas under State law. Therefore, cyclists have to come to a complete stop at stop signs. The big change is the addition of the Vulnerable Road User provision in Section 86 -84. If you are going to go around a cyclist and there's not another lane you can get into, you need to stay clear 3 feet for a typical passenger vehicle. Larger vehicles need to keep it at 6 feet. A lot of the changes that were made to the bicycle section were really intended to tell cyclists that they need to follow the rules as well and ride appropriately and within the laws. There were several other "common sense" provisions added such as how many riders can ride abreast, reflector and light rules, rules regarding races, etc. The idea is for that everyone using the road to be respectful and within the law in how they ride. Most of what 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 5 we've done is a clean -up of the working and minor modifications with the biggest one being the Vulnerable Road User provision. Motion made by Commissioner Heyward to forward the Chapter 86, Article VI Proposed Amendments to City Council for approval. Seconded by Commissioner Sullivan. Vote was unanimous. 8. Stop/Yield Sign Request Program: Consideration/Action on a Stop/Yield Sign Request Program. Note: Agenda Item No. 8 and No. 9 were combined. 9. Chapter 86 Proposed Amendments: Consideration/Action on proposed amendments to Chapter 86 Traffic and Motor Vehicles. Brian James reports that we periodically have an issue with residents coming forward and indicating that there needs to be a stop sign/doesn't need to be a yield sign/doesn't need to be a yield sign. For example, there are many 4 -way stops along Savannah and the issue is that in the past, before we had TSAC, residents would come forward and complain of a speeding issue and then a 4 -way stop is put there. The issue that creates is that for many of these that are collector roads like Savannah and Woodland Oaks, the road doesn't function the way it should which is that it is intended to handle that greater volume of traffic to move traffic through at a safe speed. If we have a speeding issue, the solution is not a 4 -way stop sign — it's something else. The problem we have with putting stop signs where they're not warranted or meet the criteria, people will pull up, stop, and then think this is kind of weird — there's nobody every coming the other way, but alright, fine, I'll stop. They do that for a few weeks, few months and then they start getting frustrated so they start to roll through. That behavior grows to frankly they're slowing down but they're not rolling through, they're slowing through and maybe even picking up speed and at times start ignoring it. There may come a time where there is a pedestrian, a cyclist, another vehicle — the driver that's used to blowing through doesn't tend to look, maintains that behavior, and now you've got a conflict. Unlike speed humps, we didn't have a process available for residents to request a study for the need for a stop /yield sign. The form has been created to give residents a tool by which they can request the consideration of a stop /yield sign on a particular street. Once received by the city, the steps will be taken to determine if the situation meets the criteria for installing a sign. Some of these criteria include a certain volume of cars coming each way, speeds, turning movements, accident history, etc. Unless you meet the criteria or some extenuating factor, you wouldn't meet the criteria for installing a 4 -way stop. This process says you can put in the request, we'll go through it, if warranted we'll go through TSAC, then City Council. Our hope is that residents will feel like they've been heard, there's an outlet for them, and yet that we will go through the proper process for making decisions. City Council will ultimately make the decision if they want to remove or install a new stop /yield sign. If the ordinance changes pass, we have a couple of spots that after we verify the counts, we will recommend taking out some of the 4 -way stops because they are just not warranted A lot of the changes were made to be consistent with state law. There are a lot of things that the state traffic code says you have to do, you can't do, etc. We wanted to make sure that our ordinance is in line with the state law. We had a problem with our ordinance pertaining to funeral processions and parades. In addition to our various celebratory parades throughout the year, we learned that a parade can also be a march or a protest. In that sense, a parade is protected speech and our ordinance didn't treat it that way and so we would have a problem if somebody came in regarding a march/protest and we wanted to make sure our ordinance appropriately covers them. We took it out of the section it was in, took out the funeral part, and we've described it as a moving event and put it at the end of the ordinance. Credit for this goes to the police department who did the bulk of the work on it, but this provision recognizes that it's 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 6 a free speech issue and yet it has the ability for us to have certain requirements to ensure it's done safely. The other change you'll see that looks drastic, but isn't terribly drastic, is that other cities often put where they list speed limits of certain streets, stop signs, no parking zones, one -way streets, etc. Rather than embed them in your ordinance, put them in an Appendix after the section so that when you make a change, the ordinance itself looks the same, but your appendix changes. The city attorney advised that if we want to issue a citation to someone, Council needs to have approved the changes made to the appendix. There are a few that we will have to re- examine to ensure the accuracy of the list. All the other changes were basically "clean-up" — clarifying what the City Engineer does, clarifying what Public Works does, and how they work together, and then making some of the modifications going forward. But it's not radically different. Assuming TSAC recommends approval, when we go to Council it will just be one ordinance and we adopt both the bike changes and all of these changes at the same time. Thanks to the police department, engineering, public works, and municipal court for their hard work in reviewing the ordinance. Ferrando Heyward had one minor /major question. The reconsider part — stop /yield sign removal/placement. Shall and should are two big dynamic and the form reads "placement shall not be reconsidered for a period of three years ". Would it be better worded "shall normally not... ". Brian James responded that the intent of that section was that if a resident comes in and says they want us to look at this stop sign and we go through that exercise, that we don't revisit that if it's within a three -year period on the request of that group, unless staff feels there's a changed condition. The intent was staff is not necessarily constrained. For example, if there's a neighborhood here, a resident came and requested us to look at adding additional stop signs, we do the study and it's not warranted, it goes to TSAC and they also deem it unwarranted, and it's denied. We don't want them to come back a month later and request consideration again and that's what the "shall" was intended for. The intent was that if the city attorney looks at it and we had accepted a neighborhood adjacent and they've just built houses /apartments in that location and that happened two years after the initial request, the intent was for staff to be able to come back and reexamine the location. If that concept is okay, we can revisit the language, make those modifications to make it clear, but the idea was to prevent a neighborhood to come back month after month with the same request, but we didn't want to entirely close the door for staff to be able to look at it if the conditions change within the three years. John Sullivan asked about the "moving event" section. Please clarify whether the "walk to school day" or "bike to school day" would need a permit. Brian James responded, no. Under 86 -300 Definitions, "Would interfere with the normal flow of traffic on the roadway ". For those types of events, we wouldn't think they would interfere with the normal flow of traffic on the roadway, so there is a judgment call to be made there with we think it's needed or not. If someone has an event, we want them to be safe doing that event and that's part of what the regulations are for. Typically, a moving event is periodically private groups (not the city) will do a 5k Run that's on the street or even the sidewalk crossing streets and they would need to get a moving event permit because it's not safe to cross or the volume of folks is so great that it inherently going to create a problem for traffic. He would be surprised if we had more than a couple of these a year. With that being said, if there was an event a "walk to school day ", that's something the city would be involved in and wouldn't require a moving event permit, but PD would be notified and they would have more people focused on it to keep it safe. John Sullivan responded that the extreme example he's thinking of is San Antonio has a social ride where they ride their bikes down the street and they try not to interfere with the flow of traffic, but it's a big group of cyclists. Brian James responded that one issue with those organized rides is that a 09 -02 -2021 Minutes % couple of cyclists take it upon themselves to stop traffic and that becomes a problem. That would be something that we would want to work with them on. You can get 100 -150 cyclists at those events as mass moving, so that kind of event would warrant a moving event permit to coordinate with the city to have officers there to make sure it is safe. Tyler Heasley asked if there is a group of cyclists approaching a stop sign — do they all need to stop individually? Brian James responded that part of the bicycle revision limits how many folks can ride abreast. So, you don't want people strung out over the road where they would all pull up at the same sign and go because cars can't past and we get frustration and issues. Normally, most bike groups keep it under 15 cyclists. Everyone is supposed to pull up and stop at the stop sign. If you get a bigger group than that, that's really where they need to contact the police department who manages that moving event and let them know they are having a bigger ride and we can get officers out there to manage the traffic. John Sullivan commented that he's read recently where a state passed a law that if there is a group of less than 15 cyclists, they can all go through the stop sign together, but if it is larger than 15, then they need to stop individually. Brian James responded that the problem you get into is that if there's a cyclist that is a little behind who thinks that it will be okay to roll through. John Sullivan commented that the motorists that are waiting for the cyclists to stop are not happy. Brian James responded that it becomes a road courtesy and cyclists need to be courteous and follow the rules too and if they do that as opposed to take the attitude of "I've got a right to be here and I'm going to take as much room ". Our bicycle revision stipulates they should be over to the edge of their lane where safe which better allows for motorists to be able to pass more safely. Richard Dziewit also commented that one of the things Brian James said that is very important is that if you have a large group that has these rides periodically, they should go through the city and police should be notified and if it is a consistent route, that would be very ideal for the police department to be able to control that section. It is difficult when you have a group and a few go through, some are trailing in the back, next thing you know you have the cars rolling through as well and it may become a serious issue. In any case, his feeling is that it should definitely go through the city and through the police department to make it safe. Brian James commented that the idea is to do better with publicizing events, to reach out through the bike stores and cycling groups to look at some of the data where we tend to find more cyclists riding. This will also affect the need for determining the need for street sweeping and road maintenance to make routes safer. Richard Dziewit asked if these items need to be approved by the TSAC Committee. Brian James responded that yes, TSAC can approve and recommend the Stop/Yield Sign Request Program as well as the amendments to Chapter 86 Traffic and Motor Vehicles — and add for staff to clarify the shall/should verbiage and any other clean -up modifications staff finds as we do a final tweak. Motion made by Commissioner Heyward to approve the StoplYield Sign Request Program as well as the proposed amendments to Chapter 86 Traffic and Motor Vehicles. Seconded by Commissioner Heasley. Vote was unanimous. 10. Staff Comments: Brian James reports that the Boards & Commissions Appreciation Banquet has been cancelled/postponed due to the number of COVID cases rising. 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 8 Brian James also reports that we've changed the way we're doing the agenda. Cyndi Simmons will start using the AgendaQuick® software program to create the agenda and you will see changes on the City's website. In addition, rather than have a lot of items listed under Staff Comments, we want to list them through the agenda. That will accomplish two things: 1. It lets the public know specific items being discussed. 2. It helps staff remember the individual items and keep better records. He also mentioned that the minutes will be more detailed. One of the residents in the community commented that they can't figure out what we actually did or talked about, and so thanks to Cyndi who has picked this up and will produce more detailed minutes that reflect where the issues were raised, this is where we left it, this is when it's coming back. 11. Future Agenda Items Requests/TSAC Pending Items List:. Roy Ragsdale inquired whether there are any plans to repave Old Wiederstein Road. Kathy Woodlee reports that there isn't an immediate plan to repave the section of Old Wiederstein Road between FM 1103 and Cibolo Valley Drive. It is the number one priority project on our roadway /capital improvement plan to use roadway impact fees once we have enough available. It does need to be reconstructed as well as widened, which means we need to acquire right -of- way. Little by little when properties come in through the platting process, we get some right -of- way there and when property owners contact us about a variety of things, we take the opportunity possibly purchase a small strip of property. There isn't a timeline yet and we don't have anywhere near the amount of funding, but we are well aware that it is in poor shape. Public Works will continue to fill potholes and possibly even do some base repairs and resurface small areas. We just want to make sure that we're not putting too much effort into that knowing that the whole roadway is going to be reconstructed; therefore, we will continue to keep roads that are in better shape from deteriorating further. John Sullivan commented that he was not present at the last meeting and watched the presentation on traffic crashes and appreciates the work the police department has done. He had asked for more information on traffic data and one of his ideas behind that was that the trend toward improving roadway design for safety and how can we take data and use that to improve intersections, etc. He learned a lot from that presentation. However, he was hoping to focus more on where there are frequent issues such as statistics on fatal crashes, pedestrian conflicts, etc. and if they're on our roadways if there's things we can do and what we might be able to do to be a liaison between the police and engineering on a semi -annual or annual basis. Tyler Heasley commented that she's still thinking about the Paschal School issue. Has there been any thought to adding a bus stop? Brian James commented that he will bring that up to the school district at their meeting tomorrow. He thinks that the item wasn't just about what was mentioned — students walking — it was also about the residents of the neighborhood wanting a solution. Again, if the speeds prove to be under a certain mph, it is potentially appropriate for a crosswalk there. Once we have that data we will come back and revisit. 12. Adjournment: Motion made by Commissioner Roy Ragsdale to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Commissioner John Sullivan. Motion passed. Vote was unanimous. Meeting adjourned at 6.•56 PM. Attest: f! jf Richard Dziewit, Chairperson 09 -02 -2021 Minutes 9 lyinsimmon ,Recording Secretary