- So we can go ahead and get started, Ryan. We need to, because Mark and Steve aren't here, we need to
- choose a chair for this meeting, correct? Yeah, just temporary. Somebody has to technically run the
- meeting from membership on the board. So staff, until you nominate and elect a chair, we can only help
- you elect a chair. So I accept any nominations.
- Nominate Brian. OK. Second. Second? OK. And then everyone's in person, so we can do this. I'll just,
- all in favor, say aye. Aye. And I'll post. Aye. Sounds like you won your chairmanship four to one.
- Uh, so, oh, I actually, we forgot to recall that, so did that really play, drummy? I've called it roll,
- sorry. I'm going out of order. Attendance or? Yes. Okay, here. Copic. Here. Oh. I can read myself. Yes,
- please, sorry. Let's go, let's go. Yes. Okay, I'll learn that for next time. Davis. Yes, here. And binder.
- Here. Okay, sorry about that, I went out of order. I'll now hand it off to you.
- I will thank you for allowing me to chair. I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure what we're doing today.
- So I will look to staff to help guide me through that process. Thank you. Sure. Thanks. So I will give
- a quick background on why we're here, what are we doing, and then I'll throw it off to our project manager,
- Drew Parker, to go into the more nitty gritty of what this project is, what the study is.
- So essentially we are here to talk about the Roger Street, Madison Street and Kinser Pike corridors
- from on the south side, Country Club Drive to the north side at the bypass. Why are we here? So the
- background is in 2024, the city adopted a goal of Vision Zero 2039. That is essentially eliminating
- all fatal and serious roadway crashes on city roads by the year 2039. From there,
- months later in that year, the city also adopted the Safe Streets for All Action Plan. That describes
- the various action items and needs from the city to reach that goal of Vision Zero. That includes program
- and infrastructure investments, employees in the departments, et cetera. In that plan, there are, we
- prioritized various intersections and corridors based on fatal and severe injury crash history,
- demographic information of folks in the area, and then public comment. That turned into the high priority
- network for the city, the streets and corridors that the city needs to work on as we reach that goal
- of Vision Zero. On that list are a handful of very long corridors, College and Walnut, Roger Street,
- College Mall Road, West Third Street, Third and Atwater, etc. These are the main arterials through town
- that unsurprisingly land on this list. Because this Roger Street corridor is so long and so much of
- it is on that high priority network, we decided to take a more comprehensive look at this corridor itself
- and look not just at the transportation
- the streetscape aspect of it, but the land use around it, get more community focus on how we can improve
- our community's experiences along and across this corridor. So we partnered with Tool Design Group to
- help us do that. And so over the past few months, they have been working on this corridor analysis,
- looking at the crash history, the gaps analysis, the pedestrian quality, and looking at the existing
- conditions
- so we can then move forward and look at what could be on this corridor. Now, you're all's role in this
- study. You all are the steering committee for the study. This is the first meeting we've had for the
- study. We will have a handful of more meetings throughout the spring and summer as we eventually form
- a short-term and long-term concept of what this corridor could look like, both on the street and around it.
- What we need from you all is one, use your position in the community to talk to your friends, talk to
- your coworkers, your colleagues, your people who you know to be that bridge between the community and
- staff. But also, you all are on this commission for a reason. You have different expertises in the field
- of transportation and so what we need from you is to ask those deep questions. Push us when we need
- to be pushed because this should not be a
- staff project, this should be a city project, a community project, and this is where we need you. There
- are a few events coming up that I've requested your attendance, there will be more as well, but again,
- this is what we want from you is to push us, help us make this a community-centric project. Before I
- turn this over to Drew for the more long-form presentation on what we're doing, do you all have any
- questions?
- Did you start the recording? Yes. The second question is, you have events scheduled, so that will be
- more in the public who lives in that area? When are we planning to talk to the people who live in that
- area? Oh, yeah. Great question. So I'm not sure if we're going to get into this much tonight, so I'm
- glad you asked this. The week of March 23rd, that Monday through Friday in the last full week of March,
- is what we're calling workshop.
- That is when we are doing a full press public outreach event for the entire week. We will have various
- small pop-up events on the corridor to just get street users' opinions and thoughts as they're going
- to work, as they're going to their friends' houses, et cetera. Those are unscheduled events to very
- much get the true street user of the corridor. Who's walking, who's rolling, who's driving along it?
- Let's talk to them.
- There will be a formal public meeting that Wednesday at 5.30 p.m. at Switchyard Park. There will be
- a lot of promotion about this coming up next week. There will be press releases, social media posts,
- flyers, mailers, the whole sort. So public meeting, we will be hosting a few strolls and discusses along
- the corridor that you all have been emailed about. Those are essentially strolls along the corridor.
- to focus on not necessarily what could be, but more of what is. What are you feeling in the moment?
- What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What makes you feel comfortable? What makes you
- feel uncomfortable? Let's talk about that. Let's essentially balance that crash data, that hard data
- that we have and that tool design came up with, balance that with the qualitative feedback that we get
- from the community.
- Because there's so much feedback that we can't put into data. We can't put in the near misses. We can't
- put in those situations that we hear and we've experienced where, ooh, that felt a little jumpy here.
- We can't do that. So that's why we need you all to help us with that. Clear. Thank you. OK. Two questions.
- Yeah. Can you go more slowly this time, go through what are the parameters and what's the definition
- of the corridor than where they came from? Yes. So this is the Roger Street.
- Madison Street and Kinser Pike corridors on the south side starting at city limits at Country Club Drive.
- Okay. And then going all the way north up to the State Road 45-46 bypass. Oh wow, okay. And when you
- name those three streets, those are all north-south streets? Yeah. Do we focus on offshoots of that
- or is it just mainly the main
- We are so that is a great question We are mainly focusing on this particular thoroughfare here here
- because it is the one of the main north-south connecting streets through the city that said We we are
- focusing on intersections along that corridor. And so that's where you might find That that question
- of offshoots we could talk about one one that I'm very interested in is third street that third and
- Rogers intersection so we are actually
- analyzing specifically that section of 3rd Street between Rogers and College because a lot of that goes
- together and then I can name other intersections too along with that but for the most part the thoroughfare
- plus a little bit of 3rd Street. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So what exactly are we looking at? Are we looking
- at pedestrian? Are we looking at signals?
- side paths or bicycle paths or what? We're looking at everything, quite frankly. Um, that is one reason
- why we wanted to have this broad corridor study because there is not just one answer. It's not just
- about signal re timing or protected left turns or bicycle lanes or crosswalks. It's about all of it
- and maybe more. And so we are starting off with the approach that it is a blank slate. We are looking,
- maybe 10 years into the future, 15 years into the future of what could be, what could we do here within
- the given parameters, and then going from there. We don't want to propose anything proactively and then
- ask the public to give feedback. We want to get the feedback, look at the data, and then propose something
- from there. So there are two prongs we're looking at. One is long-term vision that I just talked about,
- and then one is short-term improvements. That's something that we haven't done as much of. I talked
- to you all last meeting about
- temporary and quick build improvements, we would like to do a lot of that along this corridor. Things
- that we can do more cost effectively in a shorter time frame that we might not be able to do in concrete.
- And the long term is 2030, right? Or like, how long is long term? Yeah, for this particular corridor
- study, we're looking at about 10 years. That would be when we would come up with a plan and it would
- be implemented and completed within 10 years.
- I mean, in a perfect world. In a perfect world, yes. That's the goal, not come up with whatever's starting
- tonight in 10 years. Yeah. I hope not. That would be a long lot of study. I agree. Hank, what about
- the section of Kinser Pike north of 45, 46, but that is still within city limits? Yeah, that's a great
- question. And that was honestly a discussion we had before beginning this corridor study. Essentially,
- we looked at that section as a different context zone, just the characteristics of that street.
- are different than what you get south of the bypass. And I would also say that the answer or the potential
- improvements for that section are a little bit more straightforward than you get further south. So that
- honestly is something we've talked about as a separate project and we almost definitely will study that.
- I will also say that is not as high on the Safe Streets priority network. And so that was just another
- reason why we focused within this current scope.
- And to the point you just made about how these get ranked, is that effectively just how many injuries
- there have been? So some of it is, yes, we look at the past five years of fatal and severe injury crashes.
- And then we look at, so LATERB, what was it? About a year and a half ago, we went around the city and
- did a similar public outreach campaign called Safety Week, where we
- essentially talk to street users and residents all over the city. We had this grand old map of where
- do you feel safe? Where do you not feel safe? That got incorporated too. And then we look at the demographic
- information of folks in the area. What's the percentage of folks who own a motor vehicle? What's the
- percentage of folks experiencing disabilities? What's the percentage of folks over 65 or under 18? Those
- more vulnerable street users, those are the folks that we want to focus on especially.
- My question could be more basic knowledge, but I'm relatively new, so I'm just curious. That scale,
- that part, whole part, is it the size we usually work with, or it's much longer than you would chunk
- it into? It feels like it's a long part of the city, a huge part of the city. Why would you approach
- that on that scale? Yeah, so good question. I will say this is the second full corridor study of this
- scope that we've done.
- Most of what we do is more short-term infrastructure projects and for those projects we do work on a
- smaller scale more so because of funding For this because we're looking at such a long-term vision it
- all goes together and so There there wasn't outside of what a obon mentioned of north of the bypass.
- There wasn't a clear cutoff of where
- the problem starts and where the problem ends, or where we should look at and shouldn't look at, and
- so we didn't want to say negate the north side of the corridor, or negate the south side of the corridor,
- or the downtown part of the corridor. It's all one corridor with similar usages. Now we'll talk about
- different characteristic zones of the corridor, we'll get into that, but for this we wanted to look
- at it more comprehensively, quite honestly.
- Any other questions before I pass it over to Drew? All right. I will pass it over to Drew Parker. He
- is the project manager from Tool Design. And he will tell us a little bit more about the visions and
- goals and project overview of the study. Thanks, Hank. I appreciate it. Can you all hear me OK? Yeah.
- Yeah. Awesome. I'm going to share a presentation here. I'll just confirm. You can see that as well.
- that showing up in the room now. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, yeah. Thanks for the introduction and
- thanks for the great instructions. Me. My name is Drew Parker. I'm a senior planner of tools. I'm based
- in Ann Arbor. And thanks for the great introduction to the project. I feel like you covered a lot of
- stuff in the first slide that I had here and it was great for me to hear that context as well. I'm excited
- to be here with you all for the Transition Commission. I think I have maybe 20 to 30 minutes of slides
- here. It's about
- 30 some odd slides, and we've kind of broken this down to three different sections. So I'll provide
- a project overview and schedule. Then we'll talk a little bit about the vision for the project, goals,
- and then also design objectives. So I think we can cover those two sections because they're a little
- bit smaller than we can pause for questions at that time. And then I have an analysis summary that's
- maybe 20 slides. And so I think we go through that as sort of the second chunk of the meeting and then
- break again for
- questions at the end of that, if that sounds good for everybody. So probably five, 10 minutes presentation,
- break again for questions, then maybe 20 minutes presentation on analysis, then break again for questions.
- So starting with the project overview, Hank covered this verbally, but yeah, the project extent that
- we're looking at is the Kinser Pike, Roger Street, and Madison Street corridor from the bypass all the
- way down to Country Club Drive. So you can see just a
- corridor extends map here on the right. And really the way that it's been communicated to us, you know,
- the purpose of the project is to evaluate existing conditions and then make recommendations for design
- changes to improve safety along this corridor. So this is to us really a safety project. It may achieve
- other goals, but first and foremost, this is a safety project that's housed under the Safe Streets for All plan.
- And I think Hank mentioned this as well, you know, you really want to focus on what's the long term
- vision for design recommendations that like 10 year window, but then also thinking of in the short term
- or the rapid implementation projects that can do with with quick build materials to achieve some of
- those same goals that the long term design is intended to achieve. Like Hank said, so you all have adopted
- Vision Zero for 2039. So that means we're trying to eliminate serious injury and fatal crashes by then.
- So this is
- one corridor within the overall citywide street network where we were starting for this study. And then
- Hank mentioned this as well. So on the left side here, you can see this is the citywide high injury
- networks. That's where those serious injury and fatal injury crashes occur most frequently across the
- city. So especially along the northern end of this corridor, there's a higher frequency of those types
- of crashes. And then when you look at the priority and kind of some of the other factors that Hank mentioned,
- This corridor, especially the northern end, really rose to the top as the highest priority or highest
- tier of priority. So yeah, to give you a sense of the project overview, we started work in October,
- and that started with kind of data collection and doing this corridor analysis, which we just recently
- completed in a draft form, also coming up with the vision and goals.
- Our next steps as the project advances is to develop some alternatives for design and then move ultimately
- into a concept design and then compiling that into a final corridor study. So yeah, like Hank said,
- this is our first Transformation Commission meeting. We will have a meeting during workshop week that
- we give March 23rd to 27th, and then we expect to have a few more Transformation Commission meetings
- later in the spring and summer. And our public engagement is gonna be
- like Hank said, really focused on that workshop week to just really get as much engagement as you can
- all at once. But we'll also have an online survey that will be open for a month. So if people aren't
- able to attend those events during that week, they'll be able to engage with the project via the project
- website as well. So I feel like I'm repeating some of the things that Hank said, but sometimes it's
- good to hear things all the time, at least for me. So the corridor analysis, like Hank said, it includes
- crash analysis and traffic data.
- a gaps analysis parking utilization data, as well as future land use review. So we'll go through that
- in the second half of this presentation. Alternative development. So our goal is to come up with two
- alternative design ideas, and that could vary depending on different context zones, like people have
- mentioned in the meeting so far that it's a really large corridor that's city-wide, and so it differs
- depending on which section you're in.
- But as we develop those alternatives, what we'll do is develop some sort of cross-section. You can see
- this example on the right. This is just from a different tool design project. But we'll come up with
- something like that and have multiple alternatives and plan new concepts to show. And we'll then evaluate
- which alternative we think meets the project goals and design objectives the best. So then from there,
- when we pick a
- Alternative that we want to move forward with, we'll develop plan view concepts up to 10 intersections.
- As you can see, an example right here, this is just a typical from another project of what our concept
- designs generally look like in plan view. So looking at how we can reconfigure intersections and what
- kind of safety improvement elements we can add there. And then our public engagement approach, as mentioned,
- it's really focused on the workshop week. You can see these couple of photos from safety week.
- the safe streets for all find where we had struggle discuss activities and pop-up activities where we're
- just trying to meet people were there they're at do a quick you know 30 second activity and give them
- a snack and send them on their way it's a nice way to get quick feedback of people that have time to
- come to a public meeting for an hour. All right so that kind of covers the overall project overview
- at a very high level of what we will be doing from now through the summer.
- The next section I want to move into is the project vision statement, goals, and design objectives.
- So these are in draft form. These are statements that we've come up with working with city staff. So
- we're really looking for you all as commissioners to provide feedback on if you think this is headed
- in the right direction, if you agree with the vision statement, goals, and design objectives. So the
- vision statement that we've come up with is to say,
- The Rogers Street, Madison Street, and Kinser Pike corridor will become a safe, accessible, and connected
- multi-mobile street that supports existing neighborhoods, advances Bloomington's values, and guides
- future growth towards walkable, people-centered places. So you can see it's really focused on safety
- first, but there's all these other goals that we're trying to achieve with the corridor study, which
- is really taking a broad look at the corridor.
- So I think I'll run through the goals and design objectives as well and then we can pause and I'm happy
- to kind of move back and forth between these slides to talk about each of these with you all. So as
- far as goals, we have six goals that are intended to support this vision. So the first one is we have
- a goal to eliminate fatal and serious injury crashes. So we'll do that through really street design
- changes that we know can help reduce the chances of fatal and serious injury crashes.
- We also want to support multimodal travel for all ages and abilities. We know this is an important
- north-south corridor that connects all throughout the city, and so we need to ensure that our concepts
- support travel for all modes and for all ages and abilities. We also want to align the street design
- with existing and planned development and make sure that any changes are supporting existing development
- as well as known future planned development.
- We also want to deliver cost-effective and implementable improvements of our concepts to be feasible.
- And we also want to look for opportunities to have short-term options that can be installed soon to
- make those types of safety improvements sooner than the long-term improvements may be when they may
- be feasible. We also want to build community consensus through inclusive engagement. So we want to make
- sure that we're reaching a broad cross-section of folks that use Roger Street depending
- on how they may use it and how they interact with it, whether they live, work, visit this corridor.
- And then lastly, we want to support economic vitality and community development. So in addition to those
- project goals, we also have eight design objectives. And design objectives are really intended to support
- the goals and the goals support the vision. But the design objectives are
- In my mind, the way that you evaluate the different designs to say, is this achieving the things that
- we're trying to do with this project? So the first one of these is to reflect community values and corridor
- identity. The second one is to advance safety through proven street design. The third is to create a
- context-sensitive street that calms traffic. The fourth is to build a continuous multimodal corridor
- for all users. And then the fifth is
- ensure universal accessibility and comfort. The sixth design objective is to support redevelopment and
- local economic vitality. The seventh is to strengthen connections to key destinations and the city-wide
- network. And then the last design objective is to support safe routes to school. So each of these design
- objectives can be evaluated, and we can say whether or not alternatives that we're proposing are achieving
- one or all of these eight different
- objectives. The next thing I wanted to mention is that staff have also kind of already, oops, did not
- mean to advance, sorry, staff have already taken a cut at splitting the corridor up into different contact
- zones. As people have mentioned, it's very different along the corridor depending on where you're looking
- at. And so city staff have already at a draft level said these are what we think are the four different
- contact zones within this corridor.
- The first section is the area north of 17th Street to the bypass. And then the second area is from 11th
- Street to 17th Street. The third area is from Wiley Street to 11th Street. And then the fourth area
- is south of Wiley Street, down the country road drive. So I know there's a lot of information to throw
- at you all. But I want to pause there and see if folks have initial thoughts on any of those things
- that we just presented, and we can start.
- for overflow 20. May I jump in? Yeah. Thank you so much, Drew, for this presentation. Would you mind
- going back to your previous slide where you showed the four segments? I think commissioners would maybe
- just like a moment to take a look at these four context zones for just a second. Absolutely. As a follow
- up, I think I would ask maybe we can
- give more context on how they were originated? What is the reason behind them being like that? So there's
- no perfect answer here. And also, this is very much a back and forth. These are the contact zones, and
- this is what we're going with. If you have other feedback, please give it to us. Essentially, how we
- defined it. So I'll start south and go north from there. From Country Club up
- to Wiley. It is almost primarily residential. There are some businesses over there, but it's residential.
- And that's where you see less of that downtown, more urban context. And it feels a little bit more suburban.
- You have long stretches without crossings in there or major intersections. You have a couple with Patterson or
- What is it? Rockport, thank you. But it's not too many. But then once you get into that third section,
- the Wiley to 11th Street, that is your downtown area. Wiley is where you have, is the beginning of the
- Hopewell development where you have the new police station, where you have these businesses coming up
- and you have just a much denser urban context going through downtown.
- And then 11th Street, to me, is that barrier of, OK, you are leaving downtown, and you're entering more
- of a residential space again. 11th to 17th, this is a smaller contact zone. But to me, that is an area
- that is delineated on both sides by 17th and 11th, where it feels different south of 11th than it feels
- different north of 17th. And then 17th to the bypass.
- is, again, you could arguably combine those top two, one and two, into one. But to me, they just feel
- a little bit different than each other. There is no perfect science to this, I do want to say. But looking
- at the aerial view, looking at the land use, and looking at the street as a whole, that's how we initially
- defined it. All right. Thanks. Yeah. Does the network system
- relate to anything or I mean is one the top priority or? No it's just north and south that's all. Okay.
- I think it would be also interesting to see how the slide about the injury ranking or something and
- like it would be interesting to see it once again after we have we see it move so this zoning. Are you
- talking about this one?
- would you say that the bottom part it's like it's different shade right so it's it's less right yes
- it's so the from second to Country Club that's southern half of the corridor that is high and then from
- second north to the bypass is highest
- Those two, first and second, they have no difference, and injury is basically the same, even though,
- yeah, interesting. But as you can see... Oh, sorry, Andrew, go ahead. I would say when I get to the
- analysis summary too, we have much more detailed crash data to show as well, if you're interested in
- that. Like the actual locations of crashes by mode and severity. I'll show a few more maps, but this
- is just comparison to city-wide.
- Also, I think I have more general question. In general, when did we do anything to that corridor or
- to those parts last time? Great question. I don't have that information on me right now, but that is
- a part of what we in tool talked about over the past couple of months of where are projects that we
- have done recently? What might skew the data in one way or another or has anything improved after we've
- completed something. And the answer is we've done some things, I will say. Rogers and 17th is an intersection
- that we improved in the past few years. We installed a pedestrian island at Allen and Rogers. So there
- have been a handful, but nothing really to change the entire scope of the corridor. Yeah. So basically,
- like recent years, we've done some work. It's not like decades in the past. OK. Thanks.
- It's going to be too high an elevation question, but has the city council weighed in on this and said,
- we want you to look at this? Or is this something where we could come up with a plan and say, yeah,
- it's a great plan, guys, but we're not doing that? This is something that right now we are not planning
- on going to council with. This is not going to be an adoption into the transportation plan. Whatever
- this final study is, this would be reviewed by the Transportation Commission. That is the body that
- we would like
- review and approval from once we get to that point. But from our end, the initial council approval of
- the impetus for the study was the approval of the Safe Streets for All action plan, which listed this
- as one of the highest priority streets in the city. And then eventually presumably come from
- the Transportation Commission as a recommendation to further the Safe Streets for All plan.
- So when it says weighted scores, corridors, how are those scores weighted? Yeah, great question. I won't
- get into the full scoring methodology of it. That is available on the full Safe Streets for All Action
- plan. It's there, and it's honestly quite interesting to look at. But in a short sentence or two, it
- goes back to fatal and severe injury crashes over the past five years of when we included this data.
- demographic information of nearby residents, and then public comment. Those are the three main categories
- of data that we used. And then weighted is essentially standardizing those different data sets to make
- them weighted. I forget what we weighted them. Call it 33, 33, 33. That's not what we weighted it, but
- it's an example. And then that is the standardized data set. What about traffic volume? Is that in part of the
- I mean, traffic and pedestrian, because the north part of Kins or wherever you get those apartments
- up there, you're going to have a lot more people walking through there. Yeah, for sure. And so that
- is one reason why we're studying this in the first place, of looking at oncoming or future developments
- that we'll get into actually in a few minutes here. But the methodology, I would have to go back and
- look to give you a for sure answer. But it does talk about the profile of streets and the risk profile,
- that being number of lanes, traffic volumes, et cetera.
- But also, then you're getting into compounding variables of, well, the risk profile aligns with the
- fatal and severe injury, the crash data. And so maybe we're double weighting this part of it. Should
- we jump back to the vision statement? Do folks have thoughts on the vision statement?
- My reaction is just that this seems fine. I mean, it seems to align with the state streets for all action
- plan as well as the transportation plan. I mean, I assume that that's most of the inspiration and where
- you kind of borrowed the language for the vision statement from. Yes. Yeah. I think my reaction.
- that it's aligned with everything pretty well, but it covers so many different things. So it's phrased
- pretty nicely, but then you will have a priority when you will be deciding on things. So I think if
- it's important to highlight it at this stage, maybe it's something we should do. But otherwise, we can
- keep it that general, trying to fulfill all the goals we have. But I don't think it's always possible.
- That's why we'll end up prioritizing something over another. Is that something
- you'd like to get into when we talk about the goals of this project? Because the goals go into this
- vision even more. Would you like to prioritize or create some kind of prioritization list of these six
- goals? I think, in a way, it's a question also based on the past experiences.
- the way other projects work. Maybe my assumption is wrong. Maybe we can't achieve all the goals when
- we work on any project or research. If that's not true, then I think we may want to explore the priority
- of it and decide what's more important. That's a great question. I don't have a good answer right now.
- I'll be honest, but I'd like to look into this more. Maybe that's something we can talk about.
- from now between this and our next steering committee meeting, and maybe we could come to you with something
- more then? OK. And also, maybe we'll have more data, like more information. And once we are more into
- the process, we'll see where it will be leaning towards. And that's it. More naturally. I'm really glad
- you brought that up. I think our goal is to align design objectives with evaluation criteria to look
- at the two different alternatives or different alternative designs
- And I think we would definitely want your input on both goals and design objectives of which of these
- are higher priorities should be weighted higher when we're evaluating those things. Because right now
- we're just sort of saying these are the eight design objectives, the six goals, and it's kind of all
- being equal, knowing that overall the vision is eliminating serious and fatal injury, excuse me, serious
- injury and fatal crashes. But I think we'll definitely want that kind of weighting input
- So yeah, we can bring that back from the next meeting. So would you give us your design options? You'll
- give us the why you chose that design. Yeah, of course. Are there any design objectives missing at books
- that we need covered?
- I think we have plenty for now. I think we will decide on whether it's achievable. OK. And also,
- if you, after this meeting, if you all think of anything, I'll be sending this out to you all. If you
- think of anything, anything you want to combine, add, prioritize, please let me know. This is not just
- a one-time question by any means. OK. Any other sections on this?
- front matter in the first section or are we ready to move into more analysis content? Let's go for analysis.
- I will make one comment. Driving down Roger Street is one of my least favorite. It is very stressful.
- Why? It's just every every section of it has its own like like today I went to the cleaners before I
- came here and so that it's just I feel like there's lots of things coming at you from
- Lots of intersections, lots of pedestrians. It seems, feels narrow, but not in a designed way, but just,
- yeah, it's just not, it could definitely use some improvement. Okay, that's fair. Any other? Is there,
- are all things on the table in terms of like acquiring property to make the road wider and things like
- that, or is it,
- Limited in we are not you know, we need to work within the right away. We currently have I would say
- right now all thing all things are open obviously once we get into that phase of Conceptual design and
- even maybe a full full design Things will get narrowed down. But right now I don't want to say no to it
- then I'll move into the analysis summary. This is about the 20th slide, so I think maybe it'll take
- about 15 minutes to get through these, and then we can ask our questions at the end and then jump back
- to any slides that we want to jump back to. So there's quite a bit of information here, but we'll start
- with safety, because that's our number one priority, just being a safe streets for all type project.
- So to start with safety analysis, what we did is looked in more detail at 10 years of crash data. And
- in that 10 year period, there were 80 crashes that resulted in serious injuries. There were no crashes
- resulting in fatalities along the project corridor extents. So that's a good thing. But there were 80
- crashes that resulted in serious injuries. And what you can see from some of these charts here is that
- where there are crashes involving pedestrians,
- much more frequently result in serious injury type crashes. Whereas crashes with bicyclists a little
- less so as a percentage and same with motor vehicle only crashes. And then you can see from that map
- on the right, the highest serious injury crash intersection is the bypass intersection. I think that
- probably comes no surprise to anybody. But then the sort of tie for second is 17th Street and Country Club.
- We also looked at it just year by year to see how our total crashes and serious injury crashes trending
- over that time period. And you can see that there's a big dip in 2020 for COVID. That's just the case
- across the board of all crash analysis. I think what's interesting is that the number of minor or no
- injury crashes almost dropped in half, but the serious injury crashes didn't drop quite as much as you
- would expect.
- Some of that is just a very small sample size, but some of that could also be attributed to when there
- were lower traffic volumes during COVID. We know just from nationwide studies that there was more speeding
- and more risky driving behavior happening in 2020 during COVID. So, but, you know, generally looking
- at that yellow line, serious injury crashes are slightly trending downward in that 10-year study period.
- And then there was a slight uptick
- in 2024. The most common serious injury crash types are right angle crashes. So when someone drives
- into the side of another car, so typically at an intersection that could be from running a red light
- or other types of failure to yield type behaviors that result in those more severe type crashes. The
- second most common serious injury crash that was rear end crashes
- And then the third most common was pedestrian-involved crashes. Oh, sorry. Can I just interrupt for
- the quick question? Could you briefly explain the items that are labeled non-collision as well as other
- explain in narrative? Yeah. I can't speak directly to that, knowing the in-dot crash data sometimes
- has some of these
- you know, categories where it's not clear exactly what happened. Non-collision, I am not exactly sure
- what that is. It could be, like sometimes that's something like a medical emergency or it could be just
- things that kind of like don't fit into another category based upon how things work in other crash data
- sets. Other explained narrative is just, you know, it didn't fit into one of the standard crash types
- that are on the form. So then there would be more detail
- And again, those tend to be ones that are more obscure types of crashes, like maybe a vehicle caught
- on fire or something. Sometimes that happens and can cause serious injuries. So those are my best guesses.
- I don't know exactly about looking in detail at those three crashes. I think those are just check boxes
- on the police report. Yeah, it could be. It's just a couple of them out of a whole list, so not a big
- deal. But just figured I'd ask. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for the question.
- Looking at, so this map shows just the crashes involving pedestrians. So 11 of these resulted in a serious
- injury. It's a small sample size for 10 years. So there's not necessarily like a clear pattern, but
- there were two at the bypass. So that was the one that had the most serious injury crashes. And just
- in generally kind of see where crashes, whether they be
- minor or no injury or serious injury are clustered and they're counter more clustered. North of First
- Street, which is why in the safe streets for all plan that was that area was. Higher priority. And some
- of that also has to do with just more people walking around in that area. I started around that question
- about so. Is there a reason that the data is limited to 10 years?
- And the reason I ask is I have a memory of at least two fatalities at 46 in Kinzer, maybe as in the
- last 15 years. But I thought they were relatively, I mean, that's a bad intersection. But if we know
- of it, does this only include what's listed in police reports? Or if we have information of other injuries,
- do we include that data? So that's two compound questions for you to answer. I apologize.
- No, no need to apologize. Yeah, this is just crash data from police reports. So if it's not there,
- then yeah, we didn't have access to that data. And as for why we would be looking at 10 years, we actually
- typically look at a five-year window. We try to look at the last five full years of data. We looked
- at 10 years just to have a bigger sample size, honestly, to try to draw more conclusions. So that's
- why we did that in this case.
- Any other questions on this one? So crashes involving bicyclists are 18 in that 10-year period, one
- of which resulted in a serious injury. And that was on the south end of the corridor. So this is a pretty
- limited data set, a pretty small sample size to really draw a lot of conclusions from, I think. But
- our goal is to have no crashes where a pedestrian bicyclist is hit.
- crashes involving only motor vehicle drivers. 68 of these resulted in a serious injury. You can see
- similarly, you know, the bypass had the most serious injury type crashes and 5% of the crashes during
- the study period resulted in serious injuries. So looking in
- more in-depth at safety, kind of getting to the systemic safety and priority analysis that Hank was
- talking about previously in Safe Streets for All. When we don't have tons of crash data or very clear
- conclusions on where we think there are safety problems based upon looking historically at crash data,
- we can also look at speed data, because we know speed is a factor in the potential for severe crashes
- to occur. So in this case for the corridor, we have two different
- traffic counts that had speed data recorded. And so the map we're showing here shows what the speed
- limits are in the corridor. So north of 17th Street and south of Patterson, currently the speed limit
- is 30 miles an hour. And then in that middle segment, the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. So there
- were two previous traffic counts done and the city plans to collect additional traffic counts to supplement
- this. But of the two that we have, currently traffic volumes are, motor vehicle traffic volumes are
- between 9 and 11,000 vehicles per day. In the section between 8th and 9th Street, the 85th percentile
- speed was 33 miles per hour. And the 85th percentile speed is the speed at which 85% of the drivers
- are driving at or below that speed. And it is typically used as the speed to set the speed limit. The
- other count we have, the speeds are a little bit higher. So down between Hittleside and Wilson Street,
- south of Patterson, the 85th percentile speed was 38 miles an hour. So from a safety perspective, these
- are pretty high speeds for areas where there's pedestrians and bicyclists crossing. And so those higher
- speeds create the potential for more severe crash outcomes should a crash occur. And looking more in
- depth at the motor vehicle traffic volume. So we like to look at kind of hourly capacity of
- of streets to understand how existing traffic volume is compared to the capacity of the street. So what
- this chart shows you is at that location where the traffic volume is a little bit higher between Hillside
- Drive and Wilson Street, the capacity of a signalized two-lane street is 720 vehicles per hour per direction.
- Because there's turn lanes, we really consider this to be a three-lane signalized
- corridor, which is that green line versus 864 vehicles per hour for direction. So breaking down that
- traffic out that we have, we just wanted to show that the traffic volumes are well below the capacity,
- carrying capacity of the street. And typically we say with a two lane street that has left turn lanes,
- usually the upper limit of motor vehicle traffic lines is about 25,000 vehicles per day. So even with
- that higher volume being 11,000
- significantly below the capacity of a two-lane stream of left-term lanes at intersections. And one reason
- we like to bring this up sometimes is because when there's excess capacity or the volume is significantly
- below the carrying capacity, that means that in off-peak periods, people can actually speed because
- there's no other cars to get in their way. And we know that can be an issue in some communities. But
- the takeaway point here is that the carrying capacity
- The traffic volume is significantly below the carrying capacity of the street. So we also mapped existing
- sidewalks and missing sidewalks along the corridor. And for the most part, there are sidewalks all along
- the corridor. But when you get north of 17th Street, there's a couple stretches that have missing sidewalks
- on one side of the street or the other.
- We also mapped all of the existing bicycle facilities. So south of Patterson, there's a multi-use path
- on the west side of the street. But north of there, there's not really any bike infrastructure. There's
- occasional bicycle lanes, which are sometimes only on one side of the street. And there's no bicycle,
- all ages and abilities bicycle connected that goes across the railroad tracks on the north end.
- We also mapped the existing pedestrian and bicyclist crossings. So this map here, you can see we showed
- all the locations of crosswalks on the corridor as these dots, and they're color-coded by what type
- of crossing infrastructure there is at that crosswalk. So either rectangular rapid flashing beacons,
- I think there's one of those at fourth, and I think one other location on the corridor. Or if there's
- a crosswalk with a crossing warning sign, just the orange pedestrian crossing sign,
- if there's a crosswalk and an always stop or if there's a traffic signal. So looking at all those crossing
- opportunities, we also mapped the distance between those crossing opportunities and then divided that
- distance by two to say, you know, if you were halfway between one of these crossing opportunities, what's
- the maximum distance you would have to walk to get to a pedestrian crosswalk? And so you can see there's
- a couple of locations where there's
- pretty long stretches between pedestrian crossing opportunities. And we picked that threshold of 900
- feet as the top threshold because that's about a five minute walk for a typical walk speed. We also
- mapped all the streetlights along the corridor. So there are two different types of streetlights along
- the corridor. There's standard streetlights, which are those red dots. And that's kind of more of a
- large overhead
- street light that's intended to illuminate the whole roadway. And then there's also yellow
- pedestrian-oriented lights, which exist in a couple of different stretches along the corridor, one being
- between Switchyard Park and 1st Street, and the other being between Kirkwood and the Beeline Trail.
- And there's a couple of intersections that don't have any lighting at all. So those three intersections
- listed, Howe Street, Smith Ave, and 3rd Street. And so as part of our proposed
- alternatives, we propose adding additional lighting at those intersections. We also map the bus routes
- along the corridor. So most of the Lillington Transit routes that run along the corridor, they just
- run for a couple of blocks and, you know, cross the corridor so they're not exactly running or south
- along the corridor. The exception is Route 2, which does run along Rogers from 1st and 2nd Streets down
- to Graham Drive and Rockport Road. It kind of makes a loop.
- and then comes back up. We also looked at existing parking restrictions and on-street parking opportunities
- along the corridor. There's a very limited amount of on-street parking allowed on the corridor. Most
- stretches of the corridor don't allow on-street parking, but there's these handful of pockets of on-street
- parking where parking is allowed along the corridor.
- And then we also did a parking utilization survey just to see how much is this on street parking being
- used along the corridor. And the answer we found is that it's very underutilized, almost not used at
- all. We looked at three different periods of morning, a midday, and an evening survey period. And the
- maximum number of cars that were ever parked along the corridor for the entire stretch was seven cars
- in the evening period. And there was one
- one block between University and First Street in one period where there are three cars parked there.
- So overall, the takeaway is that though there's a little bit of parking permitted on this corridor,
- people aren't really using it partly at all. We also mapped the existing land use, and I think Hank
- talked about this a little bit as this is a way to think about those contact zones. So there's a really
- wide range of land uses along the corridor.
- Single dwelling housing, multi-dwelling housing, mixed-use areas, institutional and civic areas, and
- park areas. And it's a real mix depending on where you are along the corridor, which makes sense because
- we're looking at a whole city cross-section in this study. The future land use plan includes proposed
- urban corridor on the northern end, downtown, in the downtown area.
- And then most of it is mixed urban residential, but then there's also pockets of institutional and civic
- employment center in parks and open spaces. And then the last land use thing that we mapped is just
- known ongoing and future development areas. So there's really three major ones, which are the Aspen
- Heights redevelopment, the trades district and the Hopewell redevelopment. So those are three major
- areas that are
- redeveloping currently and in the future. And so we just want to keep that in mind as part of the study
- and how the street design can support those developments. So all that being said, what we did is we
- pulled together seven key findings that we think are important to take away from all this analysis.
- And so the first one is that the Rogers corridor is a top priority for safety improvements.
- In the last 10 years, there were 80 serious injury crashes, and 11 of these serious injury crashes involved
- the person walking. So it makes sense that it was a high priority corridor in the Safe Streets for All
- plan. We also think that speed is likely a contributing factor to some of these safety concerns, with
- those 85th percentile travel speeds being 33 and 38 miles an hour, which are significantly higher than
- the posted speed. And we know at that upper end, 38 miles per hour becomes a pretty dangerous speed for
- crossing pedestrians. Another finding is that some areas of the corridor are really comfortable and
- walkable, but outside of those pockets of nice areas with street lighting and really multi-path and
- nice sidewalks, there are quite a few sections that are less pleasant to walk along and have missing
- sidewalks or deteriorating sidewalks and not great pedestrian lighting.
- Our fourth key finding is that the southern portion of the corridor has a nice multi-use path on the
- west side, but moving north of there, there's gaps in the bicycle network, and there's no low-stress
- bicycle option to connect over or under the road or tracks in this stretch. Our next key finding is
- that on-street parking is allowed only along several blocks of the corridor, and utilization of this
- very minimal on-street parking is very low. In most cases, 0%.
- are six key findings that there are these key redevelopments happening and improving the streetscape
- design can support the city's goal for these new developments to support safe streets and walkable access.
- And then lastly, one thing we think was a key finding is just that this quarter is an important north-south
- connection across the length of the entire city for all modes. So this is one of those streets that
- everybody has to use no matter how they travel to get through the entire city north to south.
- So that's a summary of our analysis findings thus far. And yeah, I'll open up to questions, and I'm
- happy to jump back to any slides as needed. Mr. Chair. Oh, yes. Thanks very much, Drew. A couple comments,
- questions, corrections. The slide about street lighting was interesting to me. I just want to note there
- are, in fact,
- intersection streetlights at Howe Street and Smith and Third Street. I know that because I spent a long
- time trying to get Duke Energy to reinstall the streetlight at how it was improperly removed when Duke
- replaced a utility pole, and they did not install a new streetlight until I filed a report to get that
- reinstalled.
- There's one at Smith, but it is frequently burnt out. So it was probably just not illuminated when somebody
- was looking at that one. And then third street, there is now a streetlight there, but there used to
- not be one. And then another comment on the third street intersection. So that's gonna be a
- major intersection because that's a high pedestrian volume, that's a high vehicle volume. There is a
- streetlight there thankfully now.
- I think it's at the southeast corner. But someone crossing the street on the north side or the east
- side of that intersection, I mean, they're crossing five lanes of traffic. And so it's a big intersection.
- There's just one streetlight there. I would suggest that when considering streetlights along this corridor
- that we get a little bit more detailed than just whether there is a streetlight there.
- because I think its exact placement is pertinent, especially for larger intersections or wider cross
- sections of this corridor, whether or not more than one streetlight would be appropriate for larger
- intersections and that sort of thing. I was pleased to see that there's at least a distinct, you're
- distinguishing between, I guess what you're labeling
- a standard streetlight versus a pedestrian-oriented light. But I would be curious as to know what that
- actually means, what the definitions of those are. So I'll stop there, though, because that's a few
- different comments and questions. Yeah, first of all, thanks for the feedback on there being streetlights
- there. I think we were provided data from Duke Energy, so I'm guessing their data is just out of date.
- Yeah, it's no surprise.
- Yeah, and as far as the definition of standard versus pedestrian-oriented, I think the pedestrian-oriented
- ones are the ones that are lower, kind of more decorative streetlights. But they illuminate the sidewalk
- much better than the overhead streetlights, and they're more frequent, as you can see on the map. Yeah.
- I live in the neighborhood, and a common complaint, I would say,
- from neighbors and from the Prospect Hill Neighborhood Association is the lack of pedestrian scale street
- lighting along Rogers between Kirkwood and First Street. For sure. And I can say, I mean, you can see
- it right there that that's, it's kind of ironic because that section is, you know, the closest to downtown
- and yet it has the most poor lighting of most of the middle of the corridor.
- Thanks for that comment. Yeah. Since we're looking at this slide, I think I'm just curious. So we can
- see that there are plenty of pedestrian-oriented lights in those two sections. What can we conclude
- from that? Can you elaborate more? Is it good? Is it working? Or do we need that many? Or do we need
- more? For me, out of context, it's interesting. Yeah. So the question of is it working,
- I think that would be more based on qualitative feedback that we would get in a few weeks.
- But like with data, if we compare it with any other data you mentioned before. Right. I'm interested,
- especially when we have either events in that area, either pop-ups or public meetings in that area,
- or strolls and discusses on those sections of the corridor. What people think about, and these strolls
- are going to be in the middle of the day, but I'm curious about
- local residents of, how do you feel walking here versus south or north of this area without lighting?
- And I don't think it's that hard to come to the conclusion of you feel a little bit more comfortable
- with pedestrian lighting than without pedestrian-scale lighting. But that is one piece of feedback that
- I am especially interested in in terms of pedestrian comfort. Can I say something else not pedestrian
- lighting related? Drew, would you mind?
- I'm jumping to the slide about land use. Does that exist anymore here? I guess either one. I'm not a
- parent, but I think if I were, I would probably want to point out that there are a number of schools
- along this corridor. And I recall that one of the, I can't remember if it was one of the design objectives
- or the project goals, but it had something to do with supporting safe routes to school.
- And so I think highlighting the locations of schools, so we're talking Arlington Heights, Fairview,
- Tri-North, et cetera, the fact that there's many schools along this corridor, I don't really see that
- highlighted in either the land use. Maybe it's on a different slide and I missed it, but I think that's
- important to consider where those schools are along this corridor and that those should probably be
- fairly high priority sections if, in fact, we are wanting to support a safer outstreet school when looking
- at this corridor. Because I see a lot about housing and mixed use and parks and things. 8th Street is
- quite tricky, Fairview School. Yeah. Crossing there. Same with 6th. And in fact, at this commission's
- last meeting, we heard from a member of the public about 6th.
- who pointed out specifically Sixth Street and how difficult it is to cross there. I appreciate that
- feedback. I think what we can do is just add the schools to all the maps as a destination to make it
- clear where they are and so it's not getting lost in the noise and other things. Appreciate that. Can
- you jump to the future land use slide? I think it's one over. So we can look at this for a minute.
- I think it's kind of interesting to have a bit different categories. You can map them back, but it looks
- a little bit different, not exactly one-to-one correlation. That's why it takes a minute to compare
- and see the differences. Not all of them, but some of them, I think. Yeah, so I think just kind of getting
- more detailed here, I think that Fairview Elementary is labeled on here as just
- institutional slash civic, which doesn't really tell you about how frequently people are accessing that,
- or when, like what times of day, and the fact that it's children walking to school and so forth. So
- definitely would encourage a little bit more detail around looking at the locations of schools.
- And also, I think that maybe in some cases, there are nearby schools that are maybe
- You know, it may be more than a block or two away from the quarter, but that are obviously still important.
- You know, I'm looking at that map where it says employment center down there to the south of Patterson
- and Long Rogers. The city had a study or some guidelines or something like that years ago that
- It had to be developed in a certain way to the street, in the streetscape. And that's where a lot of
- those pedestrian lights are, which I assume are the ACOR style of lights, instead of the overhead lights
- with the mast arm. And so I think that was a requirement for that area. So that might be something to
- look at in there. What is that? Or is it just vacant?
- What's that? Is that area vacant currently? That's where Novo Nordes Catalan is. OK. Yeah, it's across
- from the warehouse. Yeah, the dermatology center, and then there's some kind of data place there that's
- just south of dermatology. I was also curious, is there any way you mentioned that there were some projects
- from the past years? Yeah. And also, there was the chart about injuries, and there was the trend of going
- down with time over years? Any correlation with those projects and the data? It would be interesting
- to hear. That's a good question. We don't have that yet. That is something that I'm interested in looking
- at. The projects that I'm thinking of, since I've been at the city, I wouldn't necessarily want to use
- before and after data because we don't have a
- full five-year sample size of data yet, but I'm sure there are some projects along the corridor where
- we could look at it before and after. I think it would be interesting what worked basically and what
- didn't. We don't want to have more lights or something if it didn't work. Another thing, I was perhaps
- in this slide deck and I missed it, but in case it's not in here, I would also say that considering
- we don't have any representative today,
- here from Bloomington Transit, but if John or Shelley were here, they would say, what about Bloomington
- Transit? That's, I think, something important to consider here as well. Oh, OK, we do have it. OK, I
- missed it. Thank you. Yeah, we have the routes mapped, but I mean, you know. But not the stops. Yeah,
- if there's anything else that we need to know, yeah, I would appreciate that direction as well.
- The stops. Yeah, stops and, you know, perhaps future transit service. I mean, BT has.
- a number of different projects they're dreaming up for future bus service. So I think considering how
- a future design of this corridor would support the long-term Bloomington Transit goals I think would
- be also important to consider, useful to consider.
- I don't know if this is the right place for this, but pedestrian versus vehicle accidents that happen
- at crosswalks that are poorly illuminated. I'm sure they happen here just as much as they happen in
- some of these other high injury or fatality corridors.
- Bloomington has a couple of hawk signals, but there are other technologies, like the in-roadway warning
- lights, but other things that alert cars with lighting that the crosswalk is going to be used. And I
- just think that there are so many ways to do crosswalks better in terms of illumination.
- But also from an accessibility point of view, the United States does not do much except truncated domes
- for warnings. And it's going to be a long time before the United States has a true tactile paving network,
- if it ever even does. But we should be thinking about the fact that there are plenty of blind people
- who do use fixed route
- transit and making sure that there are at least tactile. We could do minimal tactile indicators that
- are more directional than just warning. So this is a bus stop. And of course, making sure that the warning
- indicators on one side
- line up with the crosswalk on the other side, which is not always the case. So I don't know how much
- renovation we're doing in the future of this or remodeling of this corridor we're doing, but those are
- things that are not always required, but could really help with the safety of our citizens. No, these
- are the comments that we want. This is great, quite honestly.
- I will also add just on the BT front, I've been communicating with their transportation planner to get
- stop data, future service data, frequency data, some of the things that you've already talked about
- because these are the things that people want to know. We want to make this a more transit friendly
- city and this is a key corridor to make it more transit friendly.
- You know, one of the big elephants of the room here is that a lot of those vehicle crashes are at the
- 45, 46 bypass, which, of course, is INDOT jurisdiction. I'm wondering if either of you, I guess, would
- care to comment about if Tool or if the city has had any discussions with INDOT recently about that
- intersection and how
- Hopefully, INDOT realizes that that's a problem also. I don't know if INDOT themselves have any concrete
- plans to do improvements of their own about that intersection. Because I also understand that being
- an INDOT intersection, I suspect the city has a lot of limitations that we have to work within or around.
- there's probably a few things we just simply can't do anything about because of jurisdictional issues.
- So I don't know if you guys would maybe comment on that a little bit. Yeah, I can do that. Yeah.
- So yeah, for the city at least, we know that this intersection is a problem. This was, if not the highest,
- one of the highest priority intersections noted in the Safe Streets for All action plan. Which one?
- Oh, that one. The Kinser and the Bypass. The 23. Yeah, exactly.
- This is an intersection that we hear about all the time. We see things happen all the time, and we have
- the data to support that there needs to be improvements. That's that, A.O. Bond, as you mentioned. This
- is an in-dot intersection. We do not own or maintain this intersection, and we rely on the state to
- proactively do something. We have had talks with them. Mainly, our engineering department with their
- engineering department have talked with each other, and I know that there is a common understanding
- that improvements need to happen.
- In terms of timeline, I'm not too familiar about that I have a note to follow up with you all about
- that because this is something that I'm Interested in as well. I know they've talked about it. I know
- that in dot has put in a couple of Temporary improvements at that northwest corner some I think some
- delineator posts to help the turn turning movements a little bit but that is a small small fix in a
- big problem of an intersection and
- We are limited on what we can do, quite honestly. We rely on Indut to fund improvements at this intersection.
- Now, once they do, then there will be talks about what we want, what they want, how we can work together.
- But this is just one of those intersections that, as a city, we are incredibly limited at what we can
- proactively do. Did that answer your question?
- Yeah, I mean it's just it's too bad Let's just say because I think you know this I mean, it's it's it's
- actually skewing the data, you know, you know in a big way here I mean, that's it's that intersection
- is I think we would all agree is is terrible and There's a grocery store is an elementary school there's
- this is yeah, I don't want to focus on this intersection too too much but
- This is the dividing point for a lot of folks who not just want to go to this grocery store, but that
- need to get to Bloomington North High School about a mile north of here. And Aobahn, you were asking
- at the beginning of this meeting of why not include the north side of this corridor in this project?
- And quite honestly, without improving this intersection, no matter what we do north of this intersection,
- there can still be major improvements.
- you are still dividing south of the bypass from north of the bypass, and whatever benefit we would like
- to see from any kind of project is limited because of this dividing line right here. Okay. Different,
- but kind of similar question. The bridge, the Madison Street Bridge over the CSX tracks. Yeah. Does
- the city own this bridge? Does CSX own it? Let's say,
- there need to be some changes made to the configuration of the street that's running on the bridge.
- What kind of constraints or I guess leeway do we have there? That is a good question. I don't have a
- good answer for you. The county would own the bridge. The county owns all bridges over 20 feet. Okay.
- So Monroe County would need to be involved in
- Right, yeah. That Madison Street section. That is an interesting section, and this goes before my time
- in Bloomington, but, and some of you all might know this, but Rogers used to go straight north and connect
- with each other instead of swerve over and connect with Madison. That was a project, maybe,
- I don't know. I think it was the 90s or something. 30 years ago or so. So there have been changes there
- in the past, you know, half century, but you're right, this is another dividing line for folks who live in
- the Maple Heights neighborhood and north of 14th Street versus coming down to the downtown trades district
- area. That would be a tough project, quite honestly. So it used to be at one time it was a wooden bridge,
- one line wooden bridge before they replaced it. But probably the only thing you could look at there
- would be some type of pedestrian bridge because I would doubt that the county would want to hang a pedestrian
- sidewalk on the side of their bridge.
- Because it creates some other issues, but you know there are pedestrian bridges that you can like at
- Country Club down there something like that might work Just something to factor in yep I just want to
- say this is a great start and appreciate the The work that's already gone into this initial presentation and
- Definitely excited to learn more and see how this progresses. Any other questions from the group? I
- had a general question. So we talked about our responsibilities in the beginning. So I'm curious when
- we will be voting or approving anything. Will they be short and long term? Will they be different?
- or it will be like a package of things to approve different initiatives as well, like how granular it's
- gonna be. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't have an answer for you yet. Again, this is the first
- quarter study in which we have combined those short-term immediate improvements with the long-term vision.
- I would imagine most of this study will be one package, one final document of a study, but there are
- also points that we would like to include in there of
- temporary improvements at this intersection or along this part of the corridor, something like that.
- And I imagine those are items that you will have questions and comments about and want to possibly approve
- one by one. And so I think it all depends on what we end up proposing. Again, as we go through this
- process, the timeline that we're looking at right now is, Drew did a good job of lining out or laying
- out what steps need to happen. I think right now,
- for a final study to be reviewed and approved by the Transportation Commission, we would be looking
- at about mid-summer. Let's say around July, I think is the goal, things change, but summer's the goal.
- And so as we move forward in this process, and especially after we get this public outreach data, then
- that'll give us a much better direction of where we need to go both short-term and long-term, and then
- we all might have some more
- I would say clarity on what you all will be reviewing come summer. Along the same lines, are we going
- to see it in one big report, or are we going to see like one, two, three, and four like the sections
- that they had up on the screen? So it will be eventually in one long report, but the final concepts
- that you will be seeing will be different sections of the corridor. It will not be the full corridor itself.
- So we'll be looking at, call it 10 different cross sections along the corridor. I forget what the exact
- number is, but 10 different cross sections that essentially are the characteristic of that area.
- So one, maybe one between Country Club and Rockport, because that is an area. Maybe one for a certain
- intersection. So it won't be the entire corridor laid out, but it will be representative of the corridor.
- But will that be presented to us as
- in the sections or are we going to get everything submitted to us all at once? Like here's the preliminary
- report for country club to 45465. Everything will be submitted in one report. You also mentioned like
- two versions of designs, like two alternatives. Yeah. So does it mean like for each section or like
- even for each smaller components? I think it depends on what
- What feedback we get? I know a lot of my answers are, it depends, but right now it very much does depend.
- If you have any assumptions, it's all right. I mean, if it turns out that there is one direction that
- the public wants to go and that aligns with the planners and project managers' visions, then we don't
- need to do two concepts. Usually, there comes, I think you were talking about earlier, those
- dividing points where we might prioritize one goal over another, one objective over another, that's
- usually what these concepts try to entail. But they will be per segment, right? Just to add to that
- a little more context, what we said we would do is in the alternatives phase, we'd look at three different
- locations and come up with these
- typical sections like high level plan view concepts and before and after bug renderings. And then once
- we decide on, you know, this is the approach we want to move forward with, then we would look at plan
- view concepts at 10 locations. So that, which is what Hank said, you know, 10 places we would draw something
- up like this to say this kind of represents this area generally. Something scalable as well, I guess,
- right? You don't really want to decide, design one item per case.
- Thanks, everybody. We're two minutes early, so I'd like to end my meetings early. So is there anybody
- have any other input, questions, thoughts, concerns? Anyone want to move to adjourn the meeting? I move
- to adjourn. Any seconds? Second. All in favor? All right. You guys have it, unless you need to poll
- everybody. All right. Adjourned. Thank you, everybody.