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8-3-23 TSAC Minutes08-03-2023 TSAC Minutes Page 1 of 5 Transportation Safety Advisory Commission Transportation Safety Advisory Commission Minutes Thursday, August 3, 2023 5:30 PM The Transportation Safety Advisory Commission (TSAC) convened for a meeting on Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 5:30 PM in the Bob Andrews Conference Room, Building #2 1400 Schertz Parkway, Schertz, Texas 78154 TSAC Commissioners Present: Dziewit, Richard, Chairman Heyward, Ferrando Hormel, Chris Martinez, Will Ragsdale, Roy Stevens, Ronald Wiley, Paul TSAC Commissioners Absent: Cornelisse, Chuck Dominguez, Andres Icke, Steven Winter, Michael Staff Present: Mark Davis, City Council Liaison Brian James, Deputy City Manager Kathy Woodlee, City Engineer Larry Busch, Public Works Director Robert Martinez, Streets Superintendent Travis Westbrook, Graduate Engineer Cyndi Simmons, Administrative Assistant CALL TO ORDER at 5:30 PM by Chairman Richard Dziewit. ROLL CALL HEARING OF RESIDENTS James M. Hough, 5133 Black Horse, Schertz – He’s here to put a face to their request to your committee. He understands that your committee advises the City Council and that your vote is very important. The neighborhood he lives is just south of Northcliffe in Schertz. Black Horse has a cul- de-sac that has about 18 houses. They don’t have any place to have their children and residents to play anywhere in their cul-de-sac or neighborhood. It becomes problematic because in their cul-de- sac has a 20 MPH speed limit and people are driving faster than that. They are requesting for the speed limit to be reduced to 10 MPH which they believe is reasonable because there are children and adults playing and playing basketball. They would like to have two more signs to be put up that read, “Slow Down 10 MPH, Children at Play”. He also thanked Robert Martinez for speaking with him about this request. 08-03-2023 TSAC Minutes Page 2 of 5 Transportation Safety Advisory Commission 1. Minutes: Consideration and/or action regarding the approval of the minutes of the June 1, 2023 meeting. Motion was made by Commissioner Ferrando Heyward to approve the minutes of the June 1, 2023 meeting. Seconded by Commissioner Ronald Stevens. Motion passed. Vote was unanimous. 2. Staff Updates on Various Requests and Studies: Kathy Woodlee thanked everyone for their patience with them as they work through the backlog of projects and issues they’ve been looking into. They did get some good news recently – Larry Busch has been named Public Works Director officially which frees us up in the Engineering Department to work on finding a replacement for him. They now have three vacancies: two PE’s (Professional Engineers) and one Graduate Engineer, so they are still quite understaffed. Travis Westbrook, our other Graduate Engineer, has been helping behind the scenes all this time, but we’re going to make the transition to him being the staff liaison principally for TSAC and this will be his first presentation. Note: ADT = Average Daily Traffic • Wild Cherry (Greenshire) Recount a. 2827 Wild Cherry, ADT - 444, 85% - 25.0 MPH b. 2842 Wild Cherry, ADT - 496, 85% - 25.0 MPH Study Result: Counter does not meet volume criteria, 85% speed at limit Next Steps: Deploy mobile dynamic speed sign, higher PD presence, follow-up with requestor and provide results Commissioner Will Martinez asked, who determines the criteria for the volume. Travis Westbrook advised it is in the UDC Ordinance. It has to meet the 500 ADT and be 85% 5 MPH over the posted speed limit. Commissioner Ferrando Heyward remarked that when school starts again, the numbers will likely increase. Commissioner Will Martinez commented that the threshold should be based upon the density of the neighborhood, because you only need one to have a problem. Kathy Woodlee advised that they can add it to the list to be checked again once school begins. Brian James commented that the other thing to keep in mind is that it’s a good point to say that you only need one to have a problem, but we look to see if there’s anything unusual here relative to any place else in the city in a residential neighborhood. A couple of things on this is what we find is the issue is that most people are driving under 25 MPH through the residential streets. Relative to most cities in Texas, Schertz sets a very low speed limit in residential neighborhoods. Not that there’s a right or wrong, but we set 20 MPH. City of San Antonio, it’s 30 MPH. In addition to looking at the 85th percentile, what we also look at is to see if we have a few folks who are driving significantly faster to try to determine the nature of the problem. In this set of counts, he doesn’t recall seeing this. It wasn’t as though we said, yes, we have a few folks that are driving significantly faster or there was a period of time during the day where you tend to have most of the speeding happen (peak times in morning and afternoon). Part of the issue on this one is that when we look at it, we would say there’s not a speeding problem. This wasn’t a route that when we looked at it, that the volume of trips seemed to make sense being fairly low which you look at who would tend to drive on that road. It tends to be residents or deliveries in that area as opposed to what we’ve seen before is where you have people trying to get from one place to another through an area where you tend to see higher speeds. Again, that’s not to say we can’t revisit things, but relative to what we tend to see, this looks pretty good in terms of compliance. 08-03-2023 TSAC Minutes Page 3 of 5 Transportation Safety Advisory Commission • Riata (Livingston/Red Tip Drive) a. 536 Livingston Drive, ADT - 95, 85% -24.4 MPH b. 516 Livingston Drive, ADT - 182, 85% 24.6 MPH c. 2820 Red Tip Drive, ADT - 130, 85% 24.7 MPH Study Result: Counter does not meet volume criteria, very low traffic counts, 85% speed does not meet limit Next Steps: Report results to requestor • The Village (Westchester) a. 621 Westchester, ADT - 2096, 85% - 24.7 MPH b. 505 Westchester, ADT - 980, 85% - 27.2 MPH c. 309 Westchester, ADT - 457, 85% - 22.0 MPH Study Result: Counters warrant speed hump Next Steps: Respond to requestor and explain the process for petition to request a speed hump This concern was brought to our attention due to people cutting through the neighborhood. Brian James commented that this is a good example when comparing this one to the previous one, the ADT in that one location is 980, so significantly more cars going through there than the last one. If you know the area, what you get is people coming around from Curtiss, from Schertz Parkway to get to the Library or the YMCA, or school traffic; so not necessarily traffic from those who live in the neighborhood. When we look at the test for speed humps, what we want is the speed hump to have an affect on behavior and at times when you don’t necessarily see that volume or those speeds, we tend to think the speed humps are not really going to do a whole lot of good in the neighborhood. They’ll drive the speed they drive, slow down over the speed hump and get over it, and then get back up to speed; try to make up time. This is one we’ll be curious to see what happens. • Crest Oak (Circle Oak) a. 1410 Crest Oak, ADT – 793, 85% - 27.7 MPH b. 1320 Crest Oak, ADT – 918, 85% 30.4 MPH This was a request to increase the speed limit from 20 MPH to 25 MPH. We initially did a sight study using Google Earth to formulate whether there was enough sight distance for 25 MPH and looking further into it, to increase the speed limit for an intersection turn, there needs to be more confirmation to validate that increase to 25 MPH due to safety reasons. Study Result: Street segment is not a primary neighborhood street segment with only 1 property frontage. Consistent speeding throughout traffic study. Intersection sight distance concern exists. Next Steps: Further field measurements to identify current available sight distance. • Pending Traffic Counts: a. Columbia b. Turquoise: Received counts on 7/28/23 and need to review c. Mobile Villa Estates d. Greenfield Village Alley e. Rhine Valley o Mulhouse/Alsatian Way: Counts to be set 8/7/23 o Alsatian Way/Bening Valley: Counts to be set 8/7/23 f. Aviation Heights: Aero/Oak g. Woodland Oaks and Kline Circle • Traffic Signal Warrant Study at Pecan and Schertz Parkway (referred to consultant, data collected) • Belmont Crosswalks 08-03-2023 TSAC Minutes Page 4 of 5 Transportation Safety Advisory Commission a. Celtic Ash Run and Cloverbrook b. Crusader Bend at Noble Way (All three crosswalks painted) Brian James commented that he’s not sure if we’ve contacted the homeowner to ask them not to park their truck at the corner. He will check to see if contact has been made and if not, will do so before the next meeting. 3. Staff Comments and/or New Requests • Brian James reported that in response to Mr. Hough’s request for a reduction in the speed limit. He will chat with him after the meeting, but as it relates to that, there’s a couple of things that are important to remember. o One is that for us to drop the speed limit on a street below 30 MPH, we have to conduct a study that demonstrates effectively that there’s a safety issue present that would be resolved by dropping the speed limit. One of the challenges we have with that study is that if we’ve not had any issues or near-misses, we’re not likely to find a basis to drop that speed limit down. The other is that 10 MPH is significantly slow and what we tend to find is we’re not likely to get compliance with that, it’s just too slow. What you don’t want to do is set something artificially too slow and then people tend not to follow it. Secondly, it’s about expectations about what our streets are. I, like every other kid, played in the street all the time as a kid. In the summer we’d try to fry eggs on the pavement, and play touch football, kick the can, SPUD, etc. One of the things again is the expectation set. Our streets are for our cars to drive down and don’t want to set a false expectation that the street is a place to play. Honestly, it’s not likely that we can get a study to drop down to 10 MPH. On a sidenote, there was a bill before the State Legislature this time that would’ve allowed cities to drop the speed limit in residential neighborhoods from 30 MPH to 25 MPH without a study and that bill did not make it through. o The other is we had a question about the entrance to the drive at Dollar General and Arlan’s. He reached out to one of the property owners who seemed open to it and the other property owner was not as open to it going forward. What staff would recommend at this point is let’s see if there is any accident data and if there isn’t, he’ll reach back out to the other property owner on the Dollar General piece for some better signage and see if they would do some striping to make clear what is there. But the idea of the right of that median to be in and the left is out, is probably not viable. What we can do is on the left is to have signage to make clear that it’s a two way. There doesn’t appear to be access easements across those properties so there’s some concern expressed about increasing traffic on property that doesn’t have a right to be there and creating issues and challenges. • Robert Martinez reported that they’ve been in the neighborhoods taking care of painting all the school crosswalks and stop bars. They’ve been in the Belmont and Fairlawn area as well. We are going back into the Belmont to address the two pedestrian crosswalks that meet up with the parks and walking trail. They are about 80% complete. Just have a few areas on Live Oak and Curtiss to finish. • Commissioner Ferrando Heyward asked about the proposed Westchester speed hump in relationship to the Fire Department. Brian James responded that the speed humps we use – the cushions and the spacing – are designed to allow emergency vehicles to get over them relatively quickly. What you would find is that we’re okay with them, but if you talk to the battalion chiefs or fleet personnel, speed humps are causing issues at times. But again, it’s 08-03-2023 TSAC Minutes Page 5 of 5 Transportation Safety Advisory Commission like everything else, there’s a balance – good and bad to be found – and he thinks it does back to balancing a fire engine or ambulance slowing down a little bit and adding some damage versus having this thing go unchecked and then having a kid hit. They’re not opposed to them. •Commissioner Chris Hormel asked that as a part of these studies if we are pulling accident reports or just going by the numbers of the speed studies. Brian James responded that we go over them as a group and rely on PD and A.J. Arriaga to recall if there have been any accidents in a location. At times we will pull specific accident data. For instance, the Schertz Parkway/Pecan, we specifically had A.J. pull the data and went through it. Most of the time what we do is ask in our pre-meetings if anybody has a recollection of accidents at a location. Commissioner Chris Hormel also asked if when they do their traffic checks if they’ve done a traffic check in an area of concern and what the results were – how many tickets, etc. Sometimes we’ll have them go out and enforce in that area and then A.J. will report back. It’s not as formalized as you’re asking, but we do it more informally and that’s why PD is part of the team. 4.Future Agenda Items Requests from Commissioners (Next meeting scheduled for Thursday, September 7, 2023): •Commissioner Ronald Stevens had a request from his HOA and noticed that many of these surrounding cities have ordinances that prohibit basketball goals in the street and Schertz does not. Has that been considered and rejected or never come up? Brian James responded that there have been a series of meetings where this has been discussed at Council. His recollection is that we do have an ordinance that prohibits it, but he could be wrong. We will add to next month’s agenda. He believes the direction was that we’re not going to heavily get out there and actively enforce basketball backboards on the edge of the street and maybe it was a case-by-case basis where we had a problem. •Commissioner Ferrando Heyward asked if the property owner has been contacted at Schertz Parkway and near 35 where people have to turn right but some are still turning left. Where are we on this issue. Kathy Woodlee reports that we still need to make contact with the property owner to work on doing some enhanced signage and possibly some landscaping/striping to work on that. 5.Adjournment: Motion was made by Commissioner Ferrando Heyward to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Commissioner Roy Ragsdale. Motion passed. Vote was unanimous. Meeting adjourned at 6:10 PM by Chair Richard Dziewit. Attest: