4/13/2022 City of Alameda-AC Transit ILC Meeting Notes
1 ILC Attendees – Elsa Ortiz, Chris Peeples, John Knox White Chaired, Ortiz (no Daysog)
2 Announcements/Public Comments – None
3 Comments on Notes from previous meeting - None
5 Line 78 Update -
Elsa - What about the parking?
Andrew Thomas - we're working to implement paid parking, transitioning enforcement away from police to public works. Recognizes the importance of having the enforcement piece and pricing forward.
Elsa - Glad to hear that the timing is happening with the one-year extension. That will be the real test for Line 78. Are people really keeping their cars behind and taking the service that will take them to the ferry?
Andrew Thomas - we're going to start a public outreach effort around the paid parking and the parking enforcement, so there will be a lot of public announcements and warnings. It's a great opportunity to announce these things.
John Knox White - our goal is to have this up and running by the end of the year, Andrew, yes? Andrew Thomas – Yes.
6 AC Transit Service Recovery
Robert del Rosario: Continue with service changes with our sign-ups. We have one coming up in June and another coming up in August. The main impact for the city is the removal of the service in the summer-time and bringing it back in August. Right now we're working with all schools in our service area to make sure we can accommodate them when school starts. In the long term, there are some items that staff has brought back to us about how we'll look at longer-term service recovery, more specificity to bring back to our board, including any outreach that's necessary about that. We're looking at building a new network that better responds to what new travel patterns emerge in the post-pandemic era. The network redesign is probably an 18-24 month process for AC Transit.
7 Smart City Master Plan
Carolyn Hogg: Effort to make our city as smart as possible on the technology front, boosting transportation, and improving technological equity across the city. We're first building out our communications network, building a fiber ring to improve different programs, like transportation, offering sensors, or potentially offer WIFI throughout the city. We're going to first separate our existing fiber network from AMP, so the regulatory framework will be similar. Ideally, we'd interconnect with other municipalities throughout the bay area. First cost estimate would be about $6 million. Just to give you a perspective on funding available for cities, during the ARA in 2008, there was about $5 billion federally for broadband, but with the current recovery bill there's about $100 billion federally for broadband expansion.
Gail Payne: one out of the ten recommendations is for the TSP, which is a high priority along with emergency preemption, expected to ost about 3-3.5 million.
Elsa Ortiz: Carolyn, you'd said that the way you're building it out the network won't require some approvals?
Carolyn Hogg: Right now AMP manages the entire network -- right now we fall under utility regulations because they're bound by very particular requirements.
John Knox White: can we continue looking at transit preemption instead of just priority? The more we can give the buses the freedom to move, the better.
8 AC Transit Ridership and Complaints with Actual Missed Runs The operators we have today -- we have short term issues we're trying to ameliorate, and so it's related to COVID leave. When someone calls out in the morning, and we're struggling with that.
Elsa Ortiz: we still don't know the consequences of the vaccine mandate and our staffing -- that's going to have some implications on operator avaiability.
Salvador Llamas: the numbers with vaccinations haven't been as promising as we were expecting. I was on the APTA operations committee this morning -- this is impacting transit operators nationwide.
John Knox White: as a twice weekly bus rider now with return to work, your operators are doing a great job.
9 Developments update
Andrew Thomas Alameda Point PDA, Northern Waterfront PDA, moving along, and if we can keep Line 19 and 78, the housing and the riders are coming. We wish they would be coming, but we know ridership will be there in a few years. So we want to keep those going. All of these developments pay in to the Alameda TMA as each project comes online , the financial resources available to the Alameda TMA will grow. In our minds we're here as a partner, especially in coming years as the
Elsa Ortiz: AC Transit always recognizes Alameda as a model on the TDM front. 10 Safety Projects
John Knox White - Intersection priority model hasn't quite been implemented Chris Peeples - Question about where intersection where Supervisor Wilma Chan was killed at Shore Line and Grand.
John Knox White - That incident was related to sun exposure. But we've heavily engineered the street, relative to other streets. If anything people complain about the street being too narrow. 11 Commercial Streets Program
Andrew Thomas: How do we juggle all of these needs between bicyclists, transit, and pedestrians -- looking increasingly at a longer term solution. There's a lot of support for continuing with the outdoor eating piece. They will include some sort of concrete barriers on those corridors.
Elsa Ortiz: In Oakland, with parklets, cars often seem to park in the travel lane -- is that part of your parking enforcement scheme forthcoming?
Andrew Thomas: That'll be part of the enforcement ramp-up. We'll have to get people following the rules again.
12 Next Meetings and Discuss Potential for Hybrid Meetings Tammy Kyllo: We may have a hybrid meeting and we would host it at AC Transit. In person with a remote access option.
Elsa Ortiz: For both members of the ILC and the public? Chris Peeples: Still unclear as to whether committee members would be able to participate or not remotely. At this point it's looking like it would be an issue. There's additional legislation in play. 13 Announcements
John Knox White: Referral to oversized vehicles to the council (commercial vehicles and transit vehicles won't be considered)
Chris Peeples: AC Transit is putting forward a climate action plan, at Director Young's request John Knox White: Alameda can't retreat.
Adjourned at 10:10 am