ILC January 26, 2022 Meeting
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
8:53 AM
1/26/2021 City of Alameda-AC Transit ILC Meeting Notes
1 ILC Attendees – Elsa Ortiz, Chris Peeples, John Knox White, Tony Daysog, Ortiz Chaired
Special guest - Alameda School District Representative Susan Davis 2 Announcements/Public Comments – None
3 Comments on Notes from previous meeting - None
4 Free Bus Pass Program for Seniors and People with Disabilities • Gail Payne: appreciation for AC Transit and Nichele's team for working to make for a more expanded program. Although EasyPass isn't the right pass program for their needs, they appreciate AC Transit working with the City to get free bus passes to seniors and those with disabilities; folks with disabilities are some of the lowest income individuals in the City of Alameda • Nichele Laynes: Partnership with City of Alameda offering low-income seniors a clipper card loaded with an institutional pass for unlimited local rides
o Implement a pay-per-ride model assessed by boarding at a senior clipper rate. o If approved, it would be a pay-per-ride model, and would bill the City of Alameda for those senior individual rides.
o AC Transit board will consider on 2/9 and the city council will consider on 2/15. • Elsa Ortiz: is this proposal only for low income seniors? o Nichele Laynes: their preference is for low income senior and disabled riders in Alameda o Gail Payne: they would like to start out with low income seniors because they could fit about 230 people into the program, estimating the number of rides for each because it's pay as you go. Because the budget is limited, they're starting with the lowest low income tier, and then leaving it flexible if there isn't enough interest. It'll be based on the federal HUD definitions and ramping up to be flexible.
• Elsa Ortiz: will this include paratransit users?
o Gail Payne: It is only for people using AC Transit who are capable of using fixed transit service.
A Paratransit Uber/Lyft concierge program is separate.
• Chris Peeples: will the city do the checking about low income status? o Gail Payne: it'll be on the honor system, and will begin with the lowest income level. o Chris Peeples: but we'll be invoicing by number of rides? Fine with me. • John Knox White: want to thank AC Transit and City staff for the partnership and all of the work to make this work.
o Appreciates the trust to start out with this program. • Gail Payne: Planned to go to city council 3/1, but delayed to make sure we do a little bit of work up front.
5 City of Alameda New Signal Policy
• Erin Smith: City recently adopted a policy on traffic signal operations to focus on non-vehicular modes. Signals have a lot of users, and it's a balance of all modes, with a primary objective of accommodating all of those modes.
• Erin Smith: Council adopted an access equity policy -- "the distribution of cycle time will be equitable", pedestrian enhancements like countdown heads, longer pedestrian clearance times, leading pedestrian intervals, bicycle enhancements like detection, timing parameters, and bicycle signals on designated bikeways, transit signal priority, and preemption for emergency vehicles. • Erin Smith: for signalized intersections within 1/4 mile of community commercial land use areas and within 600 feet of parks, a pedestrian walk signal to be grant at every cycle between 7 AM to 7 PM. • Erin Smith: those within 600 feet of schools will be in recall an hour before school start and dismissal times.
• Susan Davis: About the schools, what does a walk signal every cycle mean? o Erin Smith: If you push the button or not, it'll work. The cycle time depends on the length of the intersection and the pedestrian clearance time and the assumed walking speed. o Erin Smith: The cycle is the time between each direction. o Susan Davis: when would this be implemented?
o Erin Smith: engineers are working on it, and we will have it rolled out within the next two months, if all goes well.
• Chris Peeples: I'm sure staff was worried about this, but my problem is when signals are on recall 24/7. This is a nuanced policy with allowances for buses. This is great. • Elsa Ortiz: Please continue working with AC Transit staff in implementation. 6 WETA/AC Transit Connectivity
• Robert del Rosario: With the new streets, there were some operational teething issues and we worked to rectify with operations staff. It's a pilot right now, and we'll be looking at ridership, but we know that the pandemic hasn't gone the way that we'd all planned. It's a 1 year pilot that we're looking at right now.
• John Knox White: Talked about the idea for a pilot to be shown to be effective, and he feels like 1 year wouldn't be enough for people to change habits. We haven't even instituted the parking program out there at the seaplane lagoon ferry. He expressed a strong interest in making sure that we can continue piloting this program during a time of large ridership. Would it have to be permanent or not, or is there flexibility to extend a pilot for another year? • Elsa Ortiz: When is the parking management piece happening? • Andrew Thomas: We are rebuilding our parking enforcement program -- moved it from Police to Public Works. We don't have a date to start the charging of parking yet. The basic steps we have to go through are 1) staff up, 2) put in signage, parking machines, 3) do programmatic stuff with WETA about rates and coordination with riders. I'd guess we're about 12 months out to have a program running and we're collecting money for parking. It's a delicate balance between charges and encouraging folks to use other modes to access.
• Robert del Rosario: This is how staff is operating, but we can check with our general counsel. We need to do a Title VI analysis, which the FTA makes us do. We'd also conduct a public hearing associated with that Title VI analysis. We can make a recommendation to the board as to how to proceed with this.
• Chris Peeples: I think we can do experiments of one year, but if we go beyond one year, we have to jump through the FTA hoops.
• Robert del Rosario: Timing is going to be important due to procedural steps. • Tony Daysog: what's a Title VI analysis?
• Robert del Rosario: Title VI under the 1964 civil rights act ensures equal access across racial lines and there is a related environmental justice piece.
7 Commercial Streets Program
• Andrew Thomas: commercial streets is intended to help our businesses in light of the pandemic.
The program is extended for a 2 year period, and then the City would come back with a permanent Webster and Park striping plan. We'd continue to improve the situation out there for business users, and then other users (bikes, pedestrians, transit users). We'll be back to council on March 1st, with a plan for protection of the parklets with concrete barricades. We want to come up with a plan for concrete barriers to help funnel, streamline, and clarify as to where cars should go.
Situation on Park Street is a little bit chaotic out there. 8 AC Transit Service Recovery
• Robert del Rosario: We're working on service recovery -- looking back to the beginning to the pandemic, we reduced service to about 65% of pre-pandemic levels, and have recovered service to 85% of pre-pandemic service levels. We've brought back half hour frequency on Line O, and we're continually working on this. There is an item on service recovery priorities going to our board tonight, and what the process and methodology would be. It's really about maximizing opportunities for riders, people of color and low-income demographics. It'll be a slow gradual process, but we're making incremental progress.
• Elsa Ortiz: Can we talk about supplementary service?
• Robert del Rosario: We brought back nearly all of the routes for this school year, and it was a lot of scrambling to ensure that we would have all of the service in place to get kids to school. There were many school districts last year in May who didn’t have a good sense of what bell times were going to be and we did the best we could, made adjustments again in December to better match school bell times, so I think we're in a better situation. Ridership for school service has come back pretty well. For next year, we're looking at further refinements. We reach out to schools in March for bell times with the hope for turning around those bell time coordination efforts in May. The ultimate job is to figure out what the bell time adjustments are going to be like before schools go dark in the summer. Nearly all of the school service is close to pre-pandemic service levels. • Susan Davis: Thank you for your partnership and patience. 9 Rockridge BART Connection Line 51A
• Robert del Rosario: John Knox White had mentioned interest in this. We're doing a study about how to improve connections between the Line 51A and 51B. Before 2010, those lines used to be one single route, and the on-time performance was typically below 60%. Buses would come two at a time, and sometimes three at a time. And so staff split the route into two in 2010, which was a controversial decision because of the transfer penalty. Director Peeples and former Director Harper had asked for near-term and long-term options. Interlining (or having a 51B change into a 51A at Rockridge, for example) would be one option. The other thing we're looking at is if we can have communication between the 51A and 51B operators so we can help facilitate connections. We also looked at a transit center option in the long term, but that would take a lot of capital funding and coordination.
• Chris Peeples: We did a very extensive study in 2010 to understand how we came to that decision, collaborating with a lot of different people. That report is an excellent one. • John Knox White: I have heard from a couple of 51A riders that the bunching is back, with 3s and 4s when traffic is down right now. When the split happened we know that the 51A went from being one of the worst lines to one of the best lines previously. The 51B was the more problematic part of that line, so we'd want to make sure we don't make things worse for the majority for the sake of a few folks transferring.
10 AC Transit Ridership and Missed Runs
• David Berman: Ridership's up, we're grappling with operator availability efforts. 11 Developments Update
• Andrew Thomas: We're building new housing -- Alameda Marina, Del Monte project, Northern Waterfront projects, and Alameda Point. In the next two months you'll see block 11 being built at Alameda Point, (final 220 units in site A phase one). Harbor Bay Business Park and Marina Village have new jobs coming to town.
• Andrew Thomas: All new developments pay into the TMA that help fund partnerships with AC Transit, paying for transit trips/service through TDM fees. 12 Safety Projects
• Gail Payne: Working with David Berman most actively to ensure projects work well with transit.
Many of the projects are road diets, moving from 4 to 3 lanes. Roundabouts per the FHWA can reduce fatalities by 90%. Starting a Caltrans Encinal Ave project, which will impact service by Alameda High School. Caltrans will do all of their warnings for construction, and that's the nearest term project.
13 PEPRA and RM3 status
• Claudia Burgos: When we set the agenda back in December, there were a number of items that would impact AC Transit finances and our ability to impact service on the road. The first one involves the federal challenge to California's pension law. A lot of federal grants and relief funds were being held up and we were facing serious challenges. We're happy to report that the issue has been partially resolved in the interim -- in February, there's a court date for PEPRA. For Regional Measure 3, the toll increase came into effect, but those funds ($4.5 billion) are being challenged and making their way through the courts. President Ortiz did a lot of advocacy for our projects in that measure.
• Elsa Ortiz: Can you talk about SB 878 by Nancy Skinner? • Claudia Burgos: Sen. Skinner has brought forward a bill to fund school transportation -- we were in contact with her office last week, and she's potentially looking into yellow school bus service and public transit service that provide service to school. We're going to be looking at options. • Chris Peeples: Money will continue to flow as the higher courts take a look at things. 14 Hybrid Meetings
• Michael Hursh: We don't really know about what's going to happen with possible new variants, the governor keeps pushing hybrid meeting requirements because of the pandemic. • Chris Peeples: in many ways these hybrid meetings have been very successful, especially for the public. Our district secretary is considering continuing hybrid meetings for board meetings. We should continue doing so as well for ILC meetings -- we'll have to figure out how to make the technology work, but there's a significant benefit. That's just a thought, and I haven't brought it forward formally but I'll consider doing so.
• John Knox White: Fully agrees with Chris Peeples, and virtual participation has been really good for City Council meetings.