 All right, well, thank you for everybody participating here tonight. I've turned my video on just because I feel it's a little bit better to see the person who's making the presentation, you know, sort of like being in the public meeting. This is my first public meeting I've had to do virtually. I'm usually better at these in person. So we'll see how this works. I've been on countless virtual meetings, however, over the last seven months. So I've gotten this down pretty well, but this public meeting will be pretty interesting, I think. And I do know that it's Monday night and we now have two Monday night football games. So I'll make sure that I try to get us out of here pretty quick to be able to do some fun stuff after this. It looks like we've got about 12 people online now. So I'll go ahead and get started. And as more people show up, we'll get them acclimated to this. So I'll go ahead and start. Welcome to the Bellard Drive South bike lanes community meeting. My name is Chad Edwards and I'm an assistant director in the regional mobility and innovation officer in the transportation and public works department for the city of Fort Worth. And thank you very much for taking the time out of your afternoon, your evening to sit here with us to talk about this important project. This is a virtual meeting and we are using WebEx and we are recording the presentation tonight. So I just want to make sure that everybody knew that as well. And that recording will be for those who can't attend this particular meeting. So if you're unfamiliar with the virtual meetings, it's important that you make sure that your mic is muted when you're not talking so others can hear the presentation. And then the questions that are asked by others. I do have city staff assisting me and they will be monitoring any open mics that may be causing interference with the speakers and they'll mute them. It sounds like we're doing pretty well tonight. So we'll keep going. You can unmute yourself when you're ready to talk. We'll do the comments and questions at the end of the presentation as for the video. It's up to you if you'd like to have that video on or not. I have a small number of slides to present that will cover the project location, the current and proposed configurations, and then we will get into any community discussion that you'd like to have tonight. You are welcome to post questions in the chat box or ask those questions at the end of the presentation. I ask that you say your name before asking your questions or making your comments so we know who is speaking. You may also send your questions or comments to me at the address on the screen before the close of business on Monday, October 19. This is two weeks from tonight. I should give you enough time to make any comments that you wish to make on the project. So let's get into the project. The project we're discussing tonight is the extension of the bike lanes on Beller Drive south between Oakmont Boulevard and Bryant Urban Road in the southwest part of Fort Worth. The project is highlighted in yellow on the map and I'll zoom in in a moment so you can see that clearly. As you can see, the project is a little over a half mile and the concrete width of the street is approximately 48 feet curb to curb. The traffic counts are relatively low at a little over 2800 vehicles per day using this segment of Beller Drive south. The purpose of this project is besides extending the bike lanes would be to provide a safer environment for bicyclists and to also provide some traffic calming measures like the reduction of a number of lanes from two lanes to four lanes. And there would also be consideration of turn lanes as needed and I'll share some early design concepts in a moment. So I just wanted to highlight a little bit clear the project between Oakmont Boulevard and Bryant Urban Road there so you can see that project. This graph here shows the average daily traffic counts collected in 2018. You can also see the graph shows hourly distribution of vehicles. I've called out a couple of hours during the day where the most vehicles were counted the eight o'clock hour in the morning peak period with a total of both directions of 230 263 vehicles. And in the afternoon the direction is really split and you have in the northbound shown in blue had the most vehicles at 101 and at three o'clock in the afternoon. And the southbound shown there in orange had the most vehicles of 183 at five o'clock in the afternoon during that peak period. Overall this is a low volume roadway with limited or no congestion most of the day would have normally updated the traffic counts to a current year as you could tell is 2018 but we're unable to do so due to COVID. You have probably noticed that the traffic patterns have changed. You've been traveling outside the household at all so your normal peak period travel times are a little bit different now. So on the highways we've noticed that a lot of the morning and afternoon peak periods have flattened out and so it's not as high peak periods as you used to be. And we're also seeing this on the city streets as well. So the city developed the active trust transportation plan to help guide future investments in sidewalks and bike lanes throughout the city. The ATP was approved by city council in April of 2019. An excerpt of the bike lanes map is shown on the slide here. The red circle shows the location of the bike lanes being discussed. The blue line in the center there of the circle shows the proposed bike facility recommendation from the ATP. This map also demonstrates the connections to existing and future bike lanes and trails. So again, I'll kind of zoom in for you there. This is the Bel Air Drive South. This is Brian Urban. This is Oakmont. And so again, Bel Air, you can see it listed. These are existing trails, part of the Trini Trail. You can see the legend here a little bit better. So this is the proposed bike facility there in blue. So this slide, the next slide here shows is an interesting map that highlights the activity of walkers and bicycles. You can see that the section of Bel Air Drive South in that red circle has a pretty high level of activity without even the proposed dedicated bike lanes that we're talking about. Here tonight. The data shown here is from Strava and Strava is a voluntary internet service used for tracking exercise like cycling and running through GPS data and smartwatches. This helps show the connections to other facilities in the area and the pattern of travel by those informing the Strava voluntary data resource there. You can see a high level of activity on the Fort Worth Ranch or the Trini Trails really connecting through Oakmont Park there. A lot of activity, excuse me, I'll zoom in here again. You can see the activity along Bel Air Drive and then part of the Trini Trail is the Fort Worth Ranch there and then the connection to Oakmont Park as well. And then the other connections there in the area. So to help get a little perspective for everybody online here, I've put an image of the roadway that I took from Google Maps to show the corridor, just a cross section, kind of a sample of the corridor and the number of lanes that are there. It's four lanes. On the west side of the corridor, you see that there's some trees. They're planted in between the masonry wall and the curb, not a lot of space there for any additional infrastructure like sidewalks or anything like that. And then on the east side, you do have some sidewalks. This happens to be a part of the corridor that has sidewalks. There are some sections along that corridor that don't have any sidewalks. This particular stretch of road has a park entrance. It has a couple of residential neighborhood entrances. It has a few commercial businesses and driveways and then it also has a school along in this area as well. And although this is a short project, there may be a need for some turn lanes so that people can access those particular land uses a little bit easier. So I've taken this image and I've converted it into a drawing that makes it a little bit easier to compare between the proposals. So this is the current Bella Drive South, very similar with the tree on the left and the sidewalk on the right. And what I'm highlighting here is that the four lanes that are out there today in the cross section of this particular roadway. And so this is a tool that we use to help share some ideas as we plan for these projects. Once we get into the details and finalize a cross section, the engineers get to take it over and put a little bit more details to it. So this is our current setup. And so what we're proposing is very simple is just to add bike lanes on that corridor. And so the first diagram here shows the bike lanes on either side of the street with a buffer between the bike lane and the drive lanes, the vehicle lanes. You can see some notes there at the bottom of the image, noting minimums and maximums and the bike lanes should be at least six feet and the buffer should be at least two foot wide. And the vehicle lanes should be no more than 11 foot wide to help with the traffic calming and slowing of these vehicles. So I have noticed that the speed limit is 30 miles an hour out there. And in some cases, there are some drivers that are going a little bit quicker than that. And so this would be helpful to kind of help slow those folks down through that corridor. So I had mentioned turn lanes. And so this next image here really shows what it might be with the turn lane there. We still have enough space to be able to put the bike lanes and the buffer and then the two travel lanes. And then in the middle there could be a turn lane. It could be 10 to 11 foot wide depending on the actual width of the roadway as it goes through that entire corridor. And then due to the short length of the project and to simplify the lane markings, a center turn lane may be considered for the project. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on a center turn lane. If that's something that is amenable to the groove or if you guys don't necessarily like that or not. All right. So like I said, I had a few slides. This kind of wraps up the short presentation. Before I open it up for questions, I wanted to share our next steps with you. So we'll collect the feedback from tonight's meeting. If it's a it's positive feedback and their support for the project and then we'll need to get some basic engineering on the project done to get the bike lanes, the buffers, the vehicle lanes, turn lanes, all the widths appropriately sized. We'll have to take this to city council. Since this is a reduction in travel lanes, city council has to approve that project. And then I'd like to get in front of the city council before the end of the year. And assuming that council approves the project, then the lanes could be installed as early as next year. Now, as a reminder, and I didn't highlight this on a previous slide, but we're not talking about any major construction. So the width of the road that's out there today is what we would utilize. So we're not looking at digging up anything to put in these bike lanes. So that should be helpful. This is mainly a striping project. And so it's just essentially paint on the ground and there may be some little buttons or something like that in the buffer area to help make sure people understand the difference between the travel lane and the buffer and the bike lane. So just to put anybody's mind at ease, this isn't a major reconstruction of this corridor. So this is a duplicate of the slide I had put in earlier just to make sure that you were thinking about it on the front end. And then as we get to it, if you have any comments tonight, you know, you're more than welcome to put those into the chat or you can send me an email later on. I plan on putting this presentation on our website so that you can watch this again and see the actual slides a little bit closer if you want to. That way it gives you some time to put some comments together as well. All right, so I'll ask Jeff Allen, who's helping me, who's a communications coordinator with the city. Jeff, any comments, questions? So no questions in chat yet. We do have a comment from Dean Johnson that seems more traffic information is needed before knowing if a turn lane is required. It appears that currently a separate turn lane is not necessary. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's a great comment. As I was looking through the slides and I saw the turn lane here, I wanted to make sure that people understood what that was, that it could be just a turn lane into a neighborhood or into a business. But the continuous turn lane down the middle of the corridor may end up being overkill and not necessary. So you're right. There's some additional work that needs to be done on that. So thanks, Dean. And then we have two comments, both from Karen that she supports the bike lanes and the addition of a turn lane. And then with the school, there's often a backup during arrival and dismissal. Yes, I actually spoke to somebody at the school today and they shared those comments with me as well as to make sure that we keep in mind that the school has two very busy times during the day of dropping off and picking up the kids. Yes, thank you, Karen. Does anybody have any comments that they didn't want to type in but wanted to make otherwise? Hey, Kat, good evening. This is Tim Green. How are you? Thank you very much for doing this. This is fantastic. Great. Thank you. Thanks for coming in or showing up. Well, one question I had with respect to on street parking. So I know, again, particularly around the vicinity of the school and the church that there are occasions, particularly on Sundays. Well, I think somebody else has made a comment here where people do like to park on the street. What would the situation be as to regulations for parking if there were bike lanes in place? Yeah, that's a good question. We'll have to look at how the quarter can be striped out. If there is a need for parking, is that a possibility near the school? How much space does it take, you know, those types of things before we actually settle on if that's something that we can provide for or not? Is parking allowed on bike lanes? Not officially allowed on bike lanes. That doesn't mean that people don't do it. So it would be subject to a ticket, you're saying, if people parked on a bike lane? That's a hard question, I think, to answer is that typically the people aren't going to be there very long. They're going to be there for a short time to pick up their kids if they're parking on the school. What I'm thinking about a couple of hours on a Sunday morning for church services is when there's a high incidence of on-street parking. Oh, I see. Which is also when there are a lot of cyclists around. Right. So we need to talk to the school there and see what their activities are a little bit more so that we can get a better sense of that. Okay. Yeah, that's great information. This is where we have meetings like this. Chad, we have a couple more comments and a question. Okay. Stephanie said, thank you so much for the hard work on the project. This is such a positive step towards protecting the safety of cyclists and runners. She supports the bike lane but is neutral on the turn lane and it should also be noted on Sundays there is church parking on the street. Right. We just talked about. George said he supports the turn lane where needed but possibly not the entire length of the road that we're looking at. Okay. Amy said how is this going to affect the right turning lane at the light by the children's courtyard at the bell or light and Brian Irving. So the bike lanes probably won't start until after that short medium that's there. There's kind of a divided area there between the there at the intersection with the median. And so the bike lanes would start just just a little bit north of that so that we wouldn't mess up any of the turning movements there at the intersection. We also have someone from our staff look into whether it is legal to park in a bike lane. Yeah, we can do that. I'm Amy the one in Hawthorne Park that just sent the message about the light. You know lots of cars turned down and come around that Esplanade that center section there with the grass is to come into that courtyard. So yes the bicycle lane could not start there or there will be a lot of people getting hit by cars that are on bikes and stuff. And like with the y'all we're already talking about the school the church outside of our gate to Hawthorne Park is also a school and I come and go out of our neighborhood and see the front of the school all the time and there are they use that They need that extra parking on the street a lot. I see I'm using it a lot. So they must need it. So part of our work will have to be to see how how much parking they utilize along that corridor. How far down do they have to go to park on the street. And that'll give us a sense of where the you know if there is parking that we want to put on the street you know how far down does it go. I on a on a basis I kind of on a normal basis I kind of see the cars on any other events at the school or church or whatever I usually see I don't go there anything I just kind of pay attention but I usually see cars the whole link Park a lot at the church and the whole length of the lot to the right where the basketball goal is they they use entirely in front of their property. Which will be all the way down to the creek where the right goes on the creek yeah. Yeah I've been down there a few times to make sure I'm familiar with the area so. Okay near the creek. And I'm getting a message that if if the bike lanes are blocked they can be cited. Well then that would be a big problem. So yeah well that's what we have to figure out you know is there an opportunity. Is there a way to be able to put some some parking in there. If it needs so. Okay. Okay go ahead. We do have one more question you mentioned that cars. They go a little faster than the posted speed limit is it possible to put some speed bumps as well. I don't waiting for a response from somebody but I don't think we're doing the speed bumps. Tim Green again. Is that a factually true statement that a few cars go a little faster than the speed limit. I think that's a mischaracterization of the. More than a lot of cars are going over the speed limit. Very few cars go obey the posted speed limit is what the data shows. Right. Yeah I don't know on on speed bumps I don't I don't know that the city is putting in speed bumps any longer on on roadways. I guess even in the vicinity of the park Oakmont Park where there's a lot of again foot bicycle traffic children accessing the park. Again it would be and with an advisory speed limit of 25 miles per hour as I'm sure no vehicle adheres to. Right. Again it's a particular safety issue in that stretch adjacent to the park. I did notice that there at the entrance of the park there's a raised crosswalk. Yes at the north entrance at the south parking lot it would be nice to have something similar to that if that were possible. Yes I agree with that on that situation because there is a device there that helps people slow down that other part near that other parking lot. Sometimes they just. Are going pretty fast and jump over it. By the way I know this has nothing to do with bicycle lanes but do you know who we should contact about how. We ought to do like Houston does with some of their neighborhood parks where they are said to be closed at dusk dark and there should be a sign. I do think there's a lot of fishy stuff going on in that park after dark deep into the park on the Trinity River on the clear four drug deals etc etc. Right and I don't think anybody needs to be in there in the deep dark deep into that area in those trees and their car out there. I just I drive by there. There's cars out there at two in the morning and people walking out of the park. Right. I really think in the city all all parks need to close. And cars should not be in the lot for the park at dark. But that's just me. I mean close friends of Brian Bird and city council I guess I could call Brian get him started on that but. That's always an option. The parks department would be in charge of that. I mean I just think there's a safety issue. Right. Trying to see I don't see any. I didn't know if council member bird was going to participate tonight or not. So I was just looking. Okay. Chad we do have a couple of call in people that I'm going to unmute in a second because they can't unmute themselves. Okay. We also got a couple we got a couple more questions or comments and questions that came in for someone to run through then real quick. Okay. From Karen it's a minor idea is it possible to label it multi use for running walking cycling inclusive rather than just a bike lane. All right. Well we can look into that. Okay. George says no to speed bumps. Nice short one there and then Stephanie said speeding the major problem in the section especially during rush hour. And it's exactly during these times that drivers pay no attention to cyclists and runners which is exactly why we need to get rid of the second lane of traffic and install the bike lane regardless of church school parking issues. Okay. Yeah that's that's part of the balance of doing projects like this is you know all the all the different and competing interests how do we balance all that so that's something that we'll have to look at as well. All right. Okay for the two calling two calling users if your phone number ends in eight six I'm going to unmute you in case you have any questions. So you're unmuted. Hello. I'm going to unmute. I'm going to unmute the ends in three one as well. So you're both unmuted if you have anything to share. On the phone you probably you can't see my email address and so I'll say it so you guys can capture it. If you have a pen or something like that to write it down. My email address is Chad C H A D dot. B D W A R D S Edwards at Fort Worth Texas dot gov. So you can send me an email if you had questions or comments about the presentation. Or here tonight. This is Clint from traffic transportation management. I have some insight for the speed hump issue. There was a resolution passed from council in 2009 that eliminated speed bumps from our traffic calming and speed mitigation toolbox. So we're not replacing or placing new speed bumps anywhere in the city at this time due to that 2000 resolution. Okay. I thought I had heard that and I just I couldn't give the details like you did. So I appreciate that's good for everybody to know. I can't take the credit sir but it's been provided to me. Take it take it where you can. All right. Well if if you don't have any other comments or questions like I said you know you can send me comments up until the 19th of October. We'll kind of keep it open a little bit so you guys have an opportunity to talk with your neighbors and friends there to see what kind of ideas you guys have about. About the proposals that we have here for Bella Drive South and the bike lanes. So I appreciate you guys coming tonight or participating tonight. And with that we'll go ahead and close the public meeting and you guys have a good evening. Sorry where will the slides be posted. Jeff where where will we post the slides. Well for sure they will go on our city YouTube page for everyone to watch. We don't have a project specific page for this yet so I'll have to kind of look around and see if there's another location we can put it on the website. Thank you and thanks again for a welcome. No problem. Thank you guys for coming in tonight and sharing your thoughts and comments. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye.