 My name is Jeremy Williams. I'm a senior transportation planner with the city of Fort Worth transportation and public works department. I'll be serving as your moderator this evening for the presentation and the discussion period. We'd ask everyone to meet yourselves to avoid that pesky echo and disturbance during the meeting for questions or comments that you have for the presentation. We'll be addressing those afterwards. And if you could use the chat box, we'll be able to read those out to is called for response. And we also like to recognize the attendance of council member Kelly. I'll engrave this evening for the meeting. We really appreciate you being here. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to is called for the presentation on this very important project. And it's go, you'll need to unmute yourselves there. Hello, everyone. Thank you all for being here and we'll make it really quick. Yeah, well, we'll track that. Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. This way back is for East 4th street and East 1st street striping and trial trial improvement. Community engagement meeting CD project number one zero two six zero one and I'm my name is again, it's called test. I'm the city project manager for this project and Kim Lee horn and associates is a design consultant for this project. Today, today, December 10 2020. It's about 605 p.m. The agenda for today's meeting is I'm going to briefly describe about the project background. I'm going to Explain what the purpose and goal of the project. I'll also give you updates about project and his funding. I'll also explain about the project schedule and at the end, we'll take an equation that you may have. And at the end of the presentation, I will provide my contact information if you need to contact me. If you have any questions or any suggestions regarding the project before I go over the meeting. And then I want you to introduce the project team to you all again. I want to introduce myself. One more time. My name is is called Tresta. I'm the CD project manager for this project. I will be responsible for day to day operation of this project today. We have Julia Ryan sees a TPW completely straight program manager. We also have Jeremy Williams is a TPW senior planner. And we also have Nolan Pierce. He's a design engineer for this project from Kim Lee horn and we have Jeff Whitaker. He's a traffic plus a planning engineer from Kim Lee horn. And we have Jeremy. I'm sorry, Jeffrey Allen. He's a TPW communication specialist. I want to move along with the meeting agenda. Again, the corridor of the project is on East 4th Street and East 1st Street. The limit of the project is in between I 35 at where West to Lake Havasu Trail on on East and the project corridor is located in Council District number four and and Council District number eight. The demarcation between the Council District is big street. East of the street is on Council District number four and the waste of the district is on Council District number eight. The goal of this project is to provide a safe and comfortable, comfortable user experience for all travelers along the project corridor, whether by foot, bicycle or vehicle. And another goal is connectivity to connect the existing bike lane, which terminates at the Sylvania Avenue to the existing trail system provided by the Gateway Park. This project has two different phases. The phase one is the off the street serious path. The limit of the phase one is the from Halston, Halston Road to the Lake Havasu Trail. And overall, it's a little over half a mile long, both design and construction is funded by the city. The phase one is funded by the city. And the anticipated construction is start for the phase one is fiscal year 2022. At this point, the design is 60% complete and consultant has recently submitted 60% plan for for for a series review. Phase two is on the street bike lane. The limit of the phase two is between I 35 and Halston Road. It's about approximately two mile long. Design is funded by the city. However, the construction is funded by the federal grant anticipated constructs construction is start for the phase two is fiscal year 2024 again. The design is 60% complete and consultant has submitted 60% plan for the for the city's review. I want to give you the brief overview of the phase one again. As you can see on on on your screen, the limit of the page and the entire phase one is on concentration number four. The limit of the project is between Halston Road and Lake Havasu, but the most of the work is going to be done between Halston Road and the Gateway Park which connects to the existing trail system and the small sidewalk between the Oakland Boulevard and Lake Havasu Trail. The trail is about 10 foot wide. And it has two two to three foot soldier. There's two different scenarios on phase one. It's one trail being in the very close vicinity to the roadway and another one is being away from the roadway. If you see on your screen that the the typical section that's shown on the left is for the segment that's going to be in the close vicinity of the roadway and one on the right is for the section that's going to be away from the roadway. In both scenarios, the trail is going to be 10 foot wide with two to three foot soldier. If you are wondering what they're going to look like these pictures are here only for example that's how this is how they're going to look like after it gets constructed. The picture in the left is taken at the Eden Road Park at Arlington and the picture on the right is taken at South West Boulevard at Fort Worth, Texas. Now I want to go to the phase two of the project. I want to explain the existing condition. The roadway section are there's two roadway section for the phase two. If you look at the red one that's the red one indicates the section between I-35 and Sylvania Avenue. It's a three lane roadway with the one lane in each direction with the share lane on the middle with the dedicated bike lane. We are not proposing any changes on the lane configuration on this red segment. However, the blue one is between Sylvania Avenue and the Halton Road. The existing roadway is a four lane, undivided, two lane each way section that's existing. What we are proposing is two lane, one lane each way, undivided with the dedicated bike lane. I also want to talk about the police data as an existing condition. The police data was collected between October 2017 and March 2018. The posted speed limit of the corridor of the project is about 35 to 40 miles per hour. There were about 14,900 vehicles were counted. An average speed over the speed limit was 19 miles per hour. That being said, the people who were speeding were driving at around 59 miles per hour on average. However, the average speed for the entire 14,900 vehicle was 45 miles per hour which is well above the posted speed limit. That being said, the existing condition is the people are driving at a higher speed than the posted speed limit. In the last past five years, there is one bicyclist fatality, two injuries and one possible injury. This picture is taken at East 40 Street, looking east of I-35. As you can see, the pavement marking cannot be easily seen but it is a three lane roadway with one lane each way with the shared lane in the middle with the dedicated bike lane. There is no clear demarcation between the travel lane and a bike lane. What our project team is proposing is this. We are not changing any lane configuration between I-35 and Sylvainia Avenue. Hello? Can you hear me? What we are proposing is there are still going to be three lanes, one lane each way with the shared lane in the middle and a dedicated bike lane. All we are doing is restriping and putting some signage as part of this project between I-35 and Sylvainia. For the section between Sylvainia Avenue and Holstam, there are two different scenarios. This is for the yellow segment highlighted in the screen. Between some 40th Street, between Varvine Street and Sandler Drive, the existing is four lanes, undivided, two lanes each way. Our project team is proposing it to be two lanes, one lane each way, undivided with the parallel parking on the outside lane and dedicated bike lane between parallel parking and a travel lane. As you can see, this picture is taken at 4th Street, somewhere between Varvine Street and Sandler Drive. This picture is looking at East. It's four lanes, two lanes each way, undivided street. You can see the people are parking their car on the outside lane. Even though it's a four lane, two lane each way, it's not working as it's intended for. Therefore, our project team is proposing this. It's going to be two lanes, undivided, one lane each way with the parallel parking on outside lane and a dedicated bike lane between the parallel parking and a travel lane. The blue on the image, the light blue indicates as a parallel parking, red as a bicycle lane. There's another scenario, and this scenario is typically true for the blue segment zone on the screen. It's between Sylvania Avenue and Halton Road, except for the section between Varvine Street and Sandler Drive. Existing is again, it's a four lane, two lane each way, undivided street. Our project team is proposing it to be two lane, undivided one lane each way with the dedicated bike lane at the outside lane with the full foot of buffer. This will be much safer and comfortable for bicyclists. As you can see, this picture is taken on 4th Street. This picture is looking at East. This picture is at just waist of Railway Track Bridge. It's a four lane, undivided, two lane each way street. What our project team is proposing is this. It's going to be two lane, undivided one lane each way with the dedicated bike lane at the outside lane with full foot of buffer. Again, this will be much safer and comfortable for bicyclists to ride through the corridor of the project. Again, you can also see on the screen that the sidewalk is at the approach of the bridge. If there is a pedestrian that are walking along the corridor of the project and there is no sidewalk available, pedestrian can use the bicycle as a sidewalk lane, wherever the sidewalk is not available. There are three signalized intersections on this project. One at Sylvania Avenue, another is at Riverside Drive and Beach Street. Our project team is proposing the protected intersection. It offers safe and comfortable crossing for both pedestrian and bicyclists. This protected intersection will be the first in the region. One of the reasons we were able to secure the federal fund is because we are implementing protected intersections as part of this project. We are also proposing the facility transition. As I mentioned earlier, the phase one is off the street and phase two is on the street. The facility transition is going to work for pedestrian and bicycle to cross the street safely. We are implementing an innovative element as part of this project. We will be installing some sensors to count the bicyclists, on-street bicyclists. As part of the project, we are proposing a protected intersection with the bike signal as part of the project. Again, the facility transition for safely cross for both pedestrian and bicyclists to cross the street. We are also installing sensors on the trail to count both bicyclists and pedestrians. We are repurposing existing processes to reduce the cost of the project. You may be wondering what happens when we reduce the number of lanes from four-lane, undivided, two-lane each way to the two-lane, one-lane each way with the dedicated bike lane. We did ask our consultant, Kim Lee Horn, to perform the traffic analysis. Traffic analysis was focused on right-sizing of the street and also the intersection traffic operation analysis. What they concluded was the level of service is roughly the same even by reducing the number of the lanes. As you can see on the image today, meaning it's a four-lane, two-lane each way, undivided street. It's occupied 27% of the time by the car, 1% by truck, and 72% is not being used at all. Now, future meaning two-lane, one-lane each way with the dedicated bike lane. On that future, the car that is occupied 53% of the time is occupied by the car, 1% by truck, and 47% is still not going to be used. That being said, even we are reducing the number of lanes, the level of service is roughly the same as they are now. Before we go, we take an equation. I want to circle back to the purpose and goal of this project in case someone joined in the middle of the presentation and didn't have a chance to listen to the early part of the presentation. Again, the goal of the project is to provide safe and comfortable user experience for all travelers along the project corridor, whether by foot, by cycle, or vehicle. Another goal is connectivity. Basically, to connect existing bike lanes, which terminates at the Sylvania Avenue to the existing trail system provided by the Gateway Park, which is almost two miles east of it. That being said, our team is ready to take any question you may have. Thanks, Escal. So we have a question within the chat box from someone labeled DLS, asking if you can again show the proposed design for 4th Street between Barline and Chandler. I think that's where we're proposing to keep that on-street parking and then adding in the bike lanes with the excess right of way there. Yes. Let me bring back the slide right here. Or maybe this is the proposed typical section between the Barline Street and Chandler Drive. Yeah, I think you can go back to that where you're showing the colors on the road. I think that's helpful. Okay. And DLS says thank you. So I think we're good. Yeah, basically, the existing is again the four-lane, undivided, two-lane each way. What we are proposing is two-lane, one-lane each way undivided with the parallel parking on both sides of the street with the bike lane, dedicated bike lane between the parallel parking and the travel lane. Basically, the light blue color means it's going to be parallel parking. The light red means it's a dedicated bike lane. And that was the only question we had in the chat box so far. I have a question from Council Member Kelly. Council Member Kelly. Helen Gray, thanks. Cars are not always parked on East 4th Street. Why are we creating parallel parking? Again, the pictures is- This is typically only true for the between the Barline Street and Chandler when we had a several side visit and we saw people parking their car. But other than that, other segment, we are not proposing parallel parking. Only the segment between Barline and Chandler, that's where we are proposing the parallel parking. Everywhere else, we are not proposing. Okay. So I have a question Ishka. So you've chosen Barline to Chandler. And you've chosen, I guess you were there on days for whatever reason that people are parked there. For 95% of the time, people are not parked on East 4th Street. And actually, this is between Jepkins and Retta, where you're showing this picture. And people are definitely not parked there often. And it concerns me that we're going to take this piece, which is the commercial piece, and make it two lanes, put the bicycles right in the middle, and then parallel parking on the outside. But if you go over the railroad passing, where it turns into East 1st Street, when you come down the bottom of that hill in front of that store, in front of all of those houses there between... And I'm drawing a blank on the street, but just as you come down the bottom of that hill, all the way to Beach Street, there is lots of parallel parking there. And my concern, which is what I said the other day is we're putting the bicycles right next to the traffic where there is... This is a commercial delivery route, so where we may not have had a lot of 18-wheelers coming using 4th Street during this pandemic with all of the businesses that are trying to service different customers, it is getting a lot of traffic. And we have more traffic now than we have bicyclists. And I understand the need to make sure that everyone has a safe route, but it concerns me that we're going to put the parallel parking next to the curb so that if someone opens the door and they're not paying attention, that actually could hit the bicyclists if it's... The cyclists, if it's coming through, then pushes them into the street if they're next to a car. I want us to think this whole thing through, and I know that you're really far down the road, but what you're using is data from two and three years ago that may not really be relevant. So just putting it out there for everyone who is on this call to consider. You make a very good point. Thank you very much. Yes, we will take that as a consideration and I will talk to my design team and see if they can propose a better design. Council Member, thank you again for your comment. We do plan on getting a meeting set up with you very soon on this matter, and we're not too far along. That's why we have the public meetings. But I'd like to ask Julie or Ryan to get in here and talk about some of her experiences with these residential streets and the mix of the commercial use and the residential use. Yeah, thanks for that. The real impetus for this is we want to make sure that where there's residential fronting the roadway that they still have that ability to park there. I know that often what happens is if we take away that ability for those fronting residents to be able to park there, they will still park there anyways. And it can create a blockage. But what we can do is look at, you know, like in this instance where we do see cars parked on one side, but not on the other, we can look at ways to maybe separate the traffic a little bit. Provide that separation from from the heavy trucks and the. The more vulnerable road users and Jeremy is correct. We're still really early on in design. So we can definitely this is the time to make modifications where, where we see the need to make those and we can definitely look at the areas in which we can. We can do that. We have a question from Mr. Tamayo. He asks, is there any changes from Beach Street to open Boulevard. So that's partially the phase 2 and partially phase 1. If you'd like to answer that scholar, bring it up on the screen again. Sure. And while you do that, we do have another comment from DLS that commercial traffic has increased more than 50% often 18 rulers delivering to the food bank have a difficult time navigating the streets. Okay, let me answer the first one between the. Between the. Yes, between beef and. Yes, we are there will be changes on in terms of the length configuration existing is again, it's a, it's a four land tool and each way what we are proposing is to be too land. one lane each way with the dedicated bike lane with the four footer buffer. However, the east of Halsam Road, there won't be any changes of lane configuration of the roadway because east of Halsam Road, the trail is off street and the bicycle is not on the street. Did that answer the question? Well, can you hear me? Hello? Okay, because right there is a congregation of traffic between Beach Street and Halsam Road. That's where everybody's coming into 4th Street or 1st Street. So if you're gonna make only one lane, there's gonna be a problem right there. When you say that, can you get it? Let me hear you. Let me hear you. Jeremy, did you hear me? Did you hear me? Can you hear me, did you hear me? Yeah, yeah. And Mr. Tomeo, when you're not speaking, if you could meet yourself. Because we have an echo. We have an echo. Okay, right here close to the, okay. The main traffic coming into 1st Street, East of the beach is right there, the entrance, because you have three major intersections coming into going east. There's a lot of traffic right there. So you're gonna reduce to one lane. It's gonna make a lot of damage. So we need to keep that open to a full lane, full traffic, full lane. So we need to keep that open to a full lane, full traffic. And the other thing that I have in mind is they're building a lot of apartments right there on Silmania. And they're gonna use a lot of these streets. So there's apartments, more traffic. But then you are gonna take off, take off the lines for traffic and give it to the cyclist. Then that's gonna be dangerous for the airport there. And it's gonna be bottlenecks everywhere. Yeah, we understand, sir. Yeah, what we're gonna ask our design consultant to look on the traffic data and make any necessary changes that's need based on the traffic data, sir. So Ishka, I wanted to say Mr. Webster, I'm not sure if you all are aware of this, but we just today, there was a site plan that went to Zoning Commission for an apartment complex at the corner of I-35 and East 4th Street. So he's absolutely right. Where he's talking about at 4th and Silvania is a little further, it's a block off of this, but there's actually going to be a new complex that's sitting right on 4th Street. So I think we need to take that into account as well. No, you need to go a little further west on 4th. Right, yeah, right here, right where you were. What's the problem? You showed the two cyclists, yes, it's just west of Topgolf on the exact same side next to Encore. Yes, ma'am, we understand the concern. Yes, we will make sure that we work with our consultant and then before we finalize our design, we will work with you all. And this is, I think we have several, we still have several community projects. And again, the other concern is... It's an existing, existing here is a real one lane each way with a shared lane in the middle, I think this thing. And we are not making any changes. Okay, and I have another concern is that we haven't spent millions of dollars on the trails right there, but the gateway, another way from west forward to Dallas on the trails for bicycles. Why are we spending so much money if you are going to make the traffic for the bicycles on the streets? Got that one? Yes, Carl, would you like me to respond to that? Would you like me to respond to that? Yes, please. It's hard to hear, he was raking up on my part. Sure, so he's referring to the Fort Worth to Dallas trail that the council of governments is looking to put in place and we've been a good partner with them. And the council of governments is the agency through which we receive funding for the on street part of this project as well. The, this is an alternative route for the Fort Worth to Dallas trail for people who are walking or biking. So it's a more connected straight forward route to get through East Fort Worth and to make sure that people in the Riverside neighborhood have access to the trails as well. The trail that is in existence as part of this regional project goes through Gateway Park and puts you a few miles out of the way of your destination. So that's why we're looking to make a more direct route to connect downtown to East Fort Worth into the Riverside neighborhood. And while we're here, I was wondering if Nolan Pierce is on the line and I'd like, if he is able to explain to the group traffic analysis and what it is that we look at before we make determinations on what a roadway configuration should be. So what's the data Nolan that we look at and what kind of time period do we review? Jeremy, I think that's there for, we'll decorate in the line too, if you may. Okay, or Jeff, yeah, there you go. And there are consultant teams, yeah. Yeah, we looked at many factors. We looked at historic data that was collected over the years. And we also looked at 20, 15 numbers that Texas has run a model on here. So we were both looking at existing data and future data before we made design decisions. So using standard FHWA standards to know what type of road was, we were trying to create a safe and slower speeds. As the data showed, there was speeds that were up in the 50 miles an hour that were speeding. So we were trying to create a connection that provided slower speeds while maintaining the adequate capacity as the graphic that was shown. This road currently has quite a bit of extra capacity on it. So based on the volumes and projected volumes that we had, we felt comfortable enough recommending that we could operate this roadway with one lane and still maintain an adequate level of service for the users that are currently using it and provide a safe and comfortable environment for the bicycles that use it. So it's really... That was helpful. Yeah, it's really actual traffic data plus traffic projections based on TechStock's model taking into account future growth and future development that might occur in this area. Thanks again. I want to make sure that everybody who has a question has the opportunity to ask it. So if you have one, please unmute yourself. Oh, here we go. This is from Frank Crumb. Can you describe the current project at the Old Fourth Street Bridge? So, Iskall, would you like me to answer that one or would you like to? Yes, go ahead please. I'm on a way of that project. Okay. The Old Fourth Street Bridge, when, when, let's see. When, I believe you're talking about the first, yeah, the one over the Trinity River, Mr. Crumb. So when First Street was reconstructed by TechStock, the Old Bridge was taken, was preserved for the use of the Fort Worth to Dallas Trail. So it is currently being used for biking and walking. It's under construction right now from the park department to make sure it's all good to go but that's a park department project that's unrelated but we did include it in our project application for funding to show to the council of governments that this corridor is important for us and that we're doing everything we can to cut costs. And if you have any more questions on the bridge project, I'm gonna put my information in the chat box. So you can email me directly and I can get you with the correct people at the park department for further details on that one. That's all the questions that we've gotten this evening is called. So I'll leave it up to you. Unless council member Kelly Allen Gray, would you like to say anything to close? The council member is asking when we'll be back with updated information is called. Right now we are in the process of reviewing the 60% design. We will take all the comment from today's and community is meeting. We're gonna sit down with the consultant again as part of the schedule goes. I'm hoping to get that the comment back to consultant sometime next week. I will have the second round of some medals. Again, it's in two different phases and two different phases are in two different packets. I can, as soon as I have the updated information, I can reach out back to you council member. We are planning to submit our comments, including from today's meeting to consultant sometime next week. Okay, what I want to make sure that we do is that we keep everyone updated of what's going on as we move forward. I don't think there's anybody here who is opposed. We just want it to do. We want to do something that makes sense for everybody and still keep everyone safe. So I want to say to you Ishkel and to Jeff and to Jeremy and everyone, all of our staff and our community members who are on the call, thank you so much. Also Alicia Ortiz was on here and she might still be on here from council district four. So thank you all. And if I don't see you any before the new year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody. Thank you council woman, great. Happy holiday. All right, thank you. Again, if you have any questions that you can, this is my contact information. You can contact me at any time regarding the project. I'll try to respond as best as I can. And I think we can adjust on this meeting. Again, happy holiday and New Year. Happy New Year. Thanks everybody.