City Council Workshop - Safe Streets for All

Recording in progress. Good evening and welcome to the City Council Workshop on Safe Streets for All. This meeting is officially called to order. It is Wednesday, June 3. And it is 5:39 PM. Can you please call the roll? Mayor Brianne Zorn? Present. Vice Mayor Malhi? Present. Council member Howard? Here. Council member McKillop? Present. And Council member Young will be attending online virtually shortly. Great. Thank you so much. All right. So since this is a workshop, we will have a presentation, and public comment will follow after the presentation after initial questions by Council. Just as a reminder to everybody, the workshop starts at 5:30. We will be wrapping up at 6:30 for the Pride flag raising out in the Ignacio Plaza. So if I cut us off with a few minutes to spare, that is the reason. So with that, how about I open this up to-- Joe, will you be kicking us off this evening? Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Joe Enke, Public Works Director. And I'm here with my Assistant City Engineer, Srinivas Muktevi. Tonight, we're presenting the draft suggested routes to school maps and inviting your feedback. These maps are a key part of the Vulnerable Road Users Safety Action Plan aimed at improving walking and biking safety around our schools and neighborhoods. Our consultant team, AMG, Advanced Mobility Group, led by Christopher Thnay here, has completed the field audits and developed draft maps for all six school campuses. This work is funded through our SS4A grant, supporting both near-term and long-term safety planning. Information on tonight's workshop was shared with our school liaison contacts for distribution to all six schools, with special thanks going out to Andy Cannon with the Martinez Unified School District and Kara DeJong with their help for outreach to the schools. We'll briefly review the project objectives, audit findings, the draft STRS maps, and then the next steps for community engagement and refinement. And with that, I'll turn it over to Christopher Thnay from AMG. Thank you, Joe. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. So I'd like to present several slides here, four items, project objectives to review the few audit findings and get feedback from you and review suggested routes to school maps as well. And the last item, 4, will be next steps. So thank you to City Manager and city staff. All these maps and field audit have been reviewed with their comments, all that. And I'd like to share with you the suggested route to school for six schools-- Alhambra, John Muir, Morello, Martinez Junior High, John Swett, and Hidden Valley. So we conducted extensive field audits, walking the route, meeting with the principals, crossing guards, all that. Two of the schools, we conducted them during the Walk N' Roll Day. John Muir, we conducted twice, once during the Walk N' Roll and the other one without Walk N' Roll. And the other schools are under normal school days. So we make observations and include comments provided by the schools. And a few observations, obviously, because it's a vulnerable pedestrians and bicyclists, we make special observations on the potential conflict points. So the next six slides are the results summary of the issues we observe for each of the school. This might be too small for you to go and look at each roadway. We'll follow that in a subsequent evaluation, some findings. So what the numbers are is that they indicate, for each of the location, what are the issues we observe between potentially bicyclists, pedestrians, and vehicle conflict and what we will be suggesting for further improvements. Some of the improvements for all these six maps, some will be quite readily available for immediate application, like striping, potentially signing, all that. But there will be also improvements where it's more medium cost. And that would prepare conceptual plan and cost it out. And some will be even higher cost. All the different color coding just to differentiate. There's no significance to the different color coding. So these are locations for four of the locations on Alhambra that we identify where we'll be providing further suggestions for improvements. And this is John Muir. We have six locations identified. And so essentially, it's no different than Alhambra in terms of key locations for this. I want to highlight a few locations on this map, John Muir. One of the items we find throughout the six schools is that most of the streets are very tight and not adequate for full parking. So what you see is that, for example, in this case on Vista Way, there's essentially very tight roadways. And on the South side of the school, cars sometimes park and encroaches on the landscape, median area, all that. So that leaves very little space for pedestrians to walk as well. So all those are issues we observe in quite a few of the schools here. And some of the bike improvements that we'll be working with staff here is that the follow up is that locations where we identify for bike route, that pedestrian that bicyclists could go, if there's no right of way available to create class II bike router, that would be suggesting share rows, all that. And also, in this map here, so also key conflict points, at the entry and exit of the school. And Morello, we have six locations that we call out. All the six schools, 500 feet within the entry of the school, by state law, all crosswalks could be changed to high-impact yellow crosswalk. So we are not seeing that everywhere. So that's one of the things we'll be working with Joe and Srinivas to look at improving all crosswalks at intersection 500 feet within the school or further out to about quarter mile, 1,340 feet if we can substantiate that there are high volumes of pedestrians and vehicles used. So it's from 500 to almost 1,340. And at this location, one of the locations that at Morello Drive intersection area, like, key location where signalized, we are looking also potentially to recommend to improve bike access is that we might suggest adding bike triggers for almost like a pedestrian push button, but it's for bicyclists. And also at the intersection itself, if there's room, we might suggest bike boxes, striping so that bicyclists, if they bike there, they will be in front of the vehicles, all that. So all those are bike improvements that we will be looking into it. So that'd be something new here. And this is Martinez Junior High. And so we show six locations. We identify their potential. Improvements that could be added. And so these are a few locations where we would also be looking at adding some RRFB, or Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon, crossing as well as the flashing beacons on top of stop signs. I think City Manager suggested that. And there's nowadays also a stop sign location, the octagonal stop sign, there are LED flashing lights on top of the stop sign as well. We'll be looking into that. And also, we're looking to add additional signs adjacent to school site on the roadway at the median to highlight the fact that this is a crosswalk so that you need to yield to pedestrians, just not indiscriminately, but at specific locations. John Swett-- so there are streets where we see that the conflicting points are that, because the roadway is very long, vehicles are speeding before they get to school. So late last year, the state assembly passed this AB-382. It's called a pedestrian school route, a school area where within 500 feet of a school, the city could post sign such that when the children are present, you could zone it down to 15 miles to all, 20 miles per hour within 500 feet of school. And then the layer you can put on top is that within 1,000 feet before the 500 feet, because let's say, for example, 500 feet, you post it 20 miles per hour, in order to make sure that the transition is not too abrupt, it could go down to 25 miles per hour if you're 500. So we'll be looking into all that as well because currently, nothing has been done for this because the law is not there. But now that we have this law, I'll be looking into that. So Hidden Valley, there's some locations what we found is that at the entry to the school, because it's a one-way in and out inlet from the North and then get out on the South side, pedestrians are also walking into the campus, into the school where vehicles are going in, and bicyclists are also biking. And then there's no clear, signing so that pedestrians are always in conflict at those conflict points. So we'll be looking into that as well to see if we can find a way to clearly mark where pedestrians would be safer for them to get into it. And also, at the exit of the school on Glacier, we observed also that there are a lot of vehicles are blocking the exit intersection. So we'd be suggesting some keep-clear signs of that as well. And as mentioned previous slide, AB-382 on the pedestrian school Assembly Bill with the new law would be trying to apply that here as well. So based on the field audit and input from the schools that we received some months ago, we prepare the following six slides, what we call Suggested Route to School. Once this is vetted and provided input that we receive when it's finalized, you'll be able to give to the schools, and the schools will be able to give to the parents for them to see where it'd be a good route for the children to walk or to bike because all the key intersection control will be shown, as well as color-coded routes where a pedestrian walking route will be suggested route and also bike route and where the marked crosswalk are. And then in the future, if we suggested additional RRFB, all that could be edited here. So this is for Alhambra. And of course, I think, at some point, we'll be having that hawk signal as well. And this is John Muir. So every intersection, we show where the stop signs are. If it's four-way stop, we put four stop signs on all four offer approaches and signalize, all that. And we show where the school entry point is and the school exit point. And this is Morello. Martinez Junior High is very compact, as you can see, right near downtown area. John Swett, you can see is that we did not show any walking route simply because Alhambra, there is no sidewalk all the way down. And this is the last school here, Hidden Valley. And the next step is that once we receive your comments on the audit maps and comments on the safe route to school, even though we have emailed to all the schools for this meeting tonight, we'll send it to them after we incorporate your comments. And then, based on what we are preparing right now for all these schools area in terms of conceptual improvement plan, we would compare that to the top 10 collision location, where I think more than half are adjacent near to the school. We might prepare both together if we can put them together as a project to working with Srini very closely, hopefully apply for the Active Transportation Plan, ATP, project. Yeah, so that's the goal. Yeah. So that's my presentation. Any comments? So just to clarify, we were trying to look in on the maps. And those appear to just be existing conditions, right? Correct. So the recommendations are at the first part of the presentation, and then the maps are just existing conditions. Do you have recommendations on where the locations of those recommended changes might be? Not at the moment. We're preparing for it right now because we call out all the audit, the locations where issues could be. And then the easier to implement the striping, all that, in the next few weeks, we'll be giving it to Srini so that together with-- they could incorporate that into the striping project because it's less costly. They'll be able to do that. And for a few major locations, we'll be preparing more detailed conceptual, where it's 100 scale, so you could see where things are. And we need to cost it out. And if we think that you'll be competitive, those we'll try to prepare for the ATP grants. I'm going to use John Muir Elementary, although I saw it several times. Can you go back to the list of audited items? Yeah, there you go, number 2. It had on that list-- oh, add pedestrian separation. And I think I saw that on a few others as well, is just this idea of cars and pedestrians being too close together. What kind of recommendations and what kind of changes are going to be included in a conceptual plan to address that issue? Yeah. So it depends on whether it occurs at the intersection or it's occurring mid-block. If it's an intersection, I think it's indicated that a lot of cars, because the crosswalk right now are lines, two parallel lines instead of high-impact, almost like a piano keys or ladder that really visible, would definitely recommend that so that vehicles doesn't encroach on it. So that's one. And at key locations, would be recommending one of these vertical signs added on in advance of the crosswalk to say, state law, yield to pedestrian kind of thing. And then, of course, I think if we find key locations, which we're pretty sure is more than 20, because rectangular rapid flashing beacon minimum criteria for one is 20. So I'm sure some of these schools are adjacent and not far away will meet that criteria. So at key locations, we might recommend that as well because with a RRFB definitely work when it's one lane each way because, let's say, it's about 40 feet wide curb to curb. RRFB flashing, you can definitely grab your attention. So we might recommend that as well. Or if the stop signs, we might recommend those flashing beacons that the city manager recommended also. So we are looking into all that. And then only since we're on this and I'm pretty sure this applies to half the city, the curb management and sidewalk widening comments-- I was actually out there when-- I've forgotten her name-- was out doing audit. [? Teviani, ?] yes, correct. Yes. And we were talking and she commented that there's a lot of people parked up on the sidewalk, and that's not allowed. And I said, well, the only reason everybody does that, because if people weren't parked on the sidewalk, it would turn the whole street into a one-way street because you couldn't pass. And so a curb management sidewalk widening sounds great as a bullet, but has potential to be this really huge project. And I assume, if you go back to the element-- or I'm sorry, the middle school, I assume that comment applies as well because I'm pretty sure that Pine Street has people that are parked up on the sidewalk as well. So did it make it there? Actually, I'm not seeing it. So maybe Pine is a little bit wider. But what kinds of recommendations would come into play for that? Yeah. So in this case, if it is-- so there are two issues in terms of sidewalk management. There's another location where there's red curve at the Hidden Valley where there's special no parking area. And vehicles are still parked. So there are three separate issues. One of them is like you mentioned. There's not enough curb right of way. I think if the school wants to look at it more comprehensive, then you need to look at potentially maybe different bell schedules so that not everybody is showing up at the same time. I think this is more of an issue of inadequate parking spaces. So several things-- if we have enforcement to say there's no parking order about, where would the parents go? So I think we need to manage it from several ways. So that's one. And the other one, of course, is that as part of the safe route to school, the map, hopefully we'll be able to encourage and make Walk N' Roll a little more popular so that slowly you cut down vehicles driving. So it's one of those things where you need to have several approaches. But the other approach, of course, among the few that I spoke of is that we need to review the inbound and outbound location. And then whether we could introduce two inbound lanes, if there's space, all that so that parents can wait inside the school while waiting to pick up the children, all that, and overall parking utilization within the school. So without, I think, looking at that in more detail, those are the ideas that are possible. What I find some schools is that if you have different bell schedule, it does help actually spread out the demand on limited spaces. Well, then my only feedback is that everything that you suggested definitely ends up directly impacting or being the responsibility of the school. Some of this does apply to us, but a lot of it is going to be school-related. So let's make sure to set up meetings with the principals, and the parents, and the PTA and all of that. Having a Council meeting where it's just us isn't going to work. We can't force the schools to make any changes without having an actual meeting. And so I don't want this to come back to us without having had one-on-one meetings, sit downs, with the whole staff because there was only one AMG person doing the audits. I checked in with a couple of people at the junior high and at John Muir just to check to see if they'd interacted. And I did see a couple of parents talking to her. So I know that she was out and about. But I don't think any of the principals came out unless you-- did anyone else go to one of the schools? Yeah. I don't think any of the principals came out. So I think that's really, really important. We'll get a report out the next time this comes back to us on the feedback that was received-- and not just an email, please. I'd like to make a note that an actual meeting occurred to review all of this information. Yeah, we will. Yeah, we'll follow up. Thanks. Sorry, I kept talking. Anyone else have any comments? Well, yeah. I had a comment, and you hit on it, Mayor, just understanding the process. And it would make sense for this body to decision based on this being presented to the schools and folks who are going to be most impacted by it. It feels a little premature for us to be decisioning, and we haven't heard back or gotten feedback from the schools that are going to be impacted by this. So that's a comment. My question is, based on the audit findings, do all of the audit findings need to be solution for some, none? How does that process work? Because based on the audit findings, there are quite a few things that came out of those findings. So I'm trying to understand, based on what was discovered, do all of those issues need to be addressed some, none? What's that process? Yeah. So each of the findings are bullet points there. As we talk to the school, we will highlight to them, some of them are essentially not-- does not involve physical improvement. For example, there should be school staff out there to make sure that parents doesn't drop the kids in the middle of the street and make a U-turn, that kind of thing. So we definitely need to highlight that to the school. For those audit points where we could suggest and recommend physical improvements or signing striping improvement, we would recommend. So we'll bring all the points when we meet with the school principal and the staff and go through them. So all of them will be addressed, but not all of them will be actionable items in terms of fiscal improvement or signing striping. OK. So thank you. So yeah, this goes back. And like I said, I'm new to in this process. But it sounds like the dialogue needs to start first with the principals and the schools. And then based on what they have determined based on the audit findings and what they want to do, then it comes back to this body. And if I'm off base, then please tell me. I've got broad shoulders. No, we'll do that. We'll bring it back to you after we meet up with all the schools. And that was always the plan. I want to confirm, as I was working with the AMG team, and Joe, and Srinivas. This was an advance look. We didn't have the school liaison subcommittee meetings. This would have been an item if we brought that forward. We were looking at having one earlier this spring. It didn't work out. So we thought we could bring it here first, invite everybody in case they wanted to attend. We did get that information out. I'm not sure who's online. I don't know of any comments we received. But we are working towards a July 22 workshop with AMG. And that would include whatever updates we have on this, and then also get feedback to finalize those top 10 conceptual drawings like we've talked about before. But yeah, and I appreciate that. But it seems like the priority, first and foremost, needs to be with the schools. And if the schools aren't locked in, then and it's really nothing for this body to do. So while it was good information and it was an awareness piece, it's nothing we can do. Yeah, agreed, and didn't know to what extent they might participate tonight because we did send out the information. I checked in with a couple folks, and they said they didn't hear about this. So I don't know how-- how did we communicate it Out? We communicated it out through Cara, who had all the parent volunteer contacts and school contacts for four sites, and the high school and the junior high through Andy Cannon. Oh, but-- Sorry to interrupt. Can we take these meetings to the schools? Can't we do something where we're there? Because I don't see them coming here. Well, we could try. But again, the AMG has worked with them before. They're going to work with them following this with all this information to have that dialogue. We don't have space this summer to get that six meetings together out at school sites reasonably. So there could be another process to come back after they've already-- Disagreed. We have to schedule all six meetings with the individual schools. There's no point in having a July 22 workshop if we haven't had one on ones. And it doesn't have to be all of us, just AMG, and Joe, and the principal and-- No, no, that, yes. No, absolutely that. I wasn't sure if you meant joint council meetings. So thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. Yes, no, absolutely. No, I have a few comments and questions. But just to pick up on what Council Member Howard said, the unfortunate thing about tonight is the timing of this is coming basically, I believe-- when is the last day of school? Was it today, or tomorrow? So I mean, people aren't focused on, oh, I want to go see what AMG is putting forward. No. They're thinking, oh, my god, my kid's graduating tomorrow, and I got to make sure I have all my ducks in a row for that. So respectfully, I mean, the timing unfortunately is not the best here. Can I actually clarify? Yeah. Everybody who does bicycle Walk N' Roll is at Del Cielo right now because they're having their first bicycle event of the season-- so first Wednesday of the month, yeah, which is even more funny. So they're all together. Yeah. But I'm just saying, it's an incredibly busy time for parents and students right now. We're in the last throes of the school year. There's ongoing multiple celebrations going on. So it just really underscores the point that before we can take any meaningful or concrete action on any of what has been proposed-- and don't mistake me. I very much appreciate the efforts that have gone in here. But to Council Member Howard's point, we need to be going to the schools. And this has to be more than here's a survey, here's an email. It needs to be an actual dialogue with the stakeholders themselves. And what I'm talking about is letting the parents know and saying, hey, there's going to be staff, there's going to be engineering professionals here on this day and time. Please come. We want to hear from you directly. That's the type of thing that I'm envisioning here. Not, hey, principal so-and-so, send out a survey and tell parents to give us their feedback and call it a day. That's insufficient. So I just want to be clear in terms of what the expectation is. And I'm thinking, that's the kind of robust stakeholder input that we want to get. I appreciate the fact that you had staff out there, and maybe they may have interacted with a couple of parents and what have you. But I really want to make sure that the parents and staff are given an opportunity to truly be heard. And I think that if we were to move forward without doing our due diligence and doing that stakeholder engagement, we would be doing a disservice to our community and to our children, quite frankly, because that's the reason why we're here. We want to make sure that their safety is put first and foremost here when they are traveling to and from school. Yeah, no, I agree. I think, as you recall earlier, I did mention that after your input, we'll be going to school to get their input. So that's the whole intention. I want to be mindful of the time, so I will try to be quick with my comments here. So is there an option at all amongst any of this to-- when Caltrans puts forward-- when they have construction zones, they're able to designate it and say, this is a double-fine zone. Do we, as a municipal body, have the ability to institute something similar in and around our school sites during school drop-off and pick-up hours as an added deterrent to try and get people to slow down? Because obviously, this is an important component. The other component to it, of course, is the enforcement piece. And my concern is that just knowing where we are with our police department, we're not where we want to be. So I'm trying to think ahead, what are some added tools that we can implement in and around our schools? And I'm like, OK, a double-fine zone in and around school drop-off and pick-up, is that something that's within our purview? Is that something that we may wish to consider? Yeah, that's a good question. I think I mentioned AB-382, so we'll revisit that. I'm sure the fact that the bill was passed late last year is because of complaints of all these issues during the school. So I think I'm not sure if that is a double-fine zone. But I do know is that once we designate that zone 500 feet within the schools with the signs and everything, all that, we'll work closely with the PD for spot enforcement, all that. That could do a lot of impact for safety. And if I could add a little bit-- so there are opportunities. I don't have the details in front of me on exactly how much and exactly the percentages. But there are pathways to set increased fines and increased points on your license for moving violations in school zones. So we can put together a primer on that information in partnership with Chief White and bring that back as part of this as well. I would welcome that. I think it's something that warrants further study and evaluation just so that we can try and utilize all of our tools at our disposal to just try and get people to slow down. Easier said than done. But if that's what it takes, then so be it. So anyways, I just wanted to just put that out there as some feedback. I'm not saying necessarily that we have to go forward to it, but I would like to get some more information just so that we can make an informed decision. One thing that I saw-- and forgive me if I may have missed this in terms of some of the recommendations there. But I understand the concern about putting things like speed humps or rumble strips on major thoroughfares. Case in point, Center Avenue. But what about the streets that feed into that thoroughfare that lead to the school site? Are there opportunities for us to put those types of things, again, to try and get people to slow down? Yeah. So that's all part of What we call traffic-calming tools. So we'll be looking into that. So several locations, we did mention traffic calming. So having rumble-- obviously a speed hump would be the way we recommend. Speed humps different from rumble strips, all that in the center. Speed hump, the mid section where a fire truck could straddle it without slowing down. So it's a little bit easier for fire trucks or fire station and fire people to agree to it because they don't like to be slowed down. So let's say a street is more than uncontrolled segment more than 1,000 feet or so, that would be a potential candidate for using speed humps like that because to keep vehicles speed below 25 miles per hour, you want to keep uncontrolled segment to less than 600 feet or so. Yeah. So we'll look into that for if their location is more than 1,000 feet or so, we'll look for that. But of course, ultimately, we like all those recommendations would need to be approval from police and fire. Completely understood. I know that-- and I may have mentioned this when you initially came before us several months ago. So our neighboring city in Pleasant Hill, for instance, at two of their school sites, Pleasant Hill Elementary and Sequoyah Middle School, They have instituted speed humps and I believe some rumble strips around their school sites. So I would like to see if that could potentially be replicated where appropriate in some of our school sites, provided it does not impede our first responders. But they seemingly found a way to do that around their school sites. So I think the question is, if they could figure it out, surely we can perhaps do the same. The last question I had-- I don't know what the technical term is. But on some of the bike lanes, they have these big, white barriers. They're cylindrical. Are they boulders? I don't know what they are. But the bulb outs, like the-- Like ballards? Ballards, yeah. Is that what I'm thinking of? They're narrow. Yeah, they help separate the bike lane from the rest from the main street. Class 4 bicyclists. Is that what-- OK. Yeah. Class 4 bicycle lanes is what I was referring to, fully separated. Yeah, yeah. Ballard? Plastic K-rail, maybe? No, not K-rail. Huh? Yeah. If it is vertical, plastic is essentially delineators with a reflection. But what I'm looking at is-- yeah, yeah. So it seems like we're all thinking hopefully the same thing. But again, if we're looking at, the bike lanes, for instance, how do we delineate and distinguish so just to make it for visibility, right? So that's something else that I would like for us to be considering as well where feasible. And the only other thing, I guess, because I did recently run into a constituent at the farmer's market who lives right there near-- I think, just off of Spring Lake near Hidden Valley Elementary. So this has come up in some of our previous discussions. But I think what I've been looking for are recommendations to help obviously harden the school site the area around there with traffic mitigation, traffic safety, whatever. But it's also like, how do we work our way to a more circuitous route? Because that area, it's a huge bottleneck right now because the parents are coming in, and then it's a really tight turn to get out of there. And then that all that traffic is having to be directed straight back out on Glacier. And we had talked about that. And I know you had noted it. And I don't want to get into the whole Spring Lake, but it is something that we are going to need to discuss at some point. I think it warrants at least a conversation. But I know that some of the neighbors around there had most recently approached me and talked about how the fact that particularly during around school drop-off and pick-up hours, people are just driving their block ways. They can't even get in and out. And in some cases, it's led to some confrontations between the parents and the residents because the residents are like, I got to get to work. You're blocking my driveway. And then the person who's in the blocking the driveway is, well, I'm waiting for my kid. Where do you want me to park? So we got to figure out. That's another thing I just wanted to highlight there because one of the constituent who flagged me at the farmers market had said, if we could consider getting some more red cabbage or something to deter that sort of behavior, because it's a real hardship for some of those residents in those impacted streets around the school sites. I'm just giving Hidden Valley as an example, but I'm sure this also plays out at some of the other school sites as well. So I just wanted to pass that along. But again, thank you for the efforts that have you've undertaken. But let's bump up that outreach again to our school partners. Great. Will do. All right. Thank you. Hello. I don't have too much to add. I really agree with my colleagues up here and the comments that they've previously made, and I just want to also state that I think it's important to talk to all the schools individually, because they all have their own unique challenges. They're all in different areas. And I know one of the schools on here, John Swett, has had historical problems with speeders because it's on a very busy road. It doesn't have side streets for approaches like you do in some of the other schools, and they're in neighborhoods. John Swett is a little more unique. It's not really in a neighborhood like the junior high. And it's a pretty well-traveled road that people go pretty fast on. They probably go faster than they should. And so just like Satinder was sharing, there's a lot of traffic impacts because the parents line up, and they block the road. People can't get by, those types of impacts, and people trying to do strange maneuvers. And that's when people can get hurt if they're trying to go up on a sidewalk or go around a car and they don't see a child. That's when you're going to have problems. So I think there's a lot to unpack and really look at to see what the best solutions are for each of the schools. And I really appreciate what you've shared so far. But I think getting the impact-- I'm sorry, the feedback from the people that actually take their children to school here, they see the impacts every day. And I think they'll have a lot to share and some things maybe we haven't even considered. I mean, it's been a long time since I've driven my kids to school, John Swett or the junior high. But there's challenges. The good, old days, we had buses. And so it wasn't the same type of traffic impacts because the bus took you home, the bus took you to school. So anyway, just appreciate what we've started here. And I think that there's a lot of-- I kingdom, you'll see a lot of animals that are mitigation efforts moving forward. I look forward to being part of that conversation. So thank you. I appreciate the work that you've put into it. And yeah, that's a bit. That's all I got. I really appreciate this report. And this is something that is near and dear to all of our hearts. We are all super concerned about that. Being mindful of the time, I want to piggyback on what the Vice Mayor was saying. And I know for a fact, from previous engagements regarding speeding in this town is that we are all concerned that we need to reduce the speeding, and that's not going to happen through paint. So this has to be robust. We have to do our delineators, our ballards, our rumble strips, whatever that is. It has to be more than paint. If you look at the list of wrecks in the city, I live on the number 3 highly most interactions, wrecks on that intersection. And we did paint it and at new intersections, but it hasn't changed a thing. So again, more robust speed reduction, whatever that takes. We have to slow them down. We need much better improved separation between pedestrians and vehicles. That's what really scares me the most. And if you go back to what Council McKillop was talking about on John Swett Elementary School, coming northbound on Alhambra Valley Road is very scary. And what happens is the people get backed up who are trying to turn in right into the school, and then other people are on their way to work or whatever they're doing and not paying attention because everybody's either on their phone or thinking about what they're going to do for the day. And they run into those backed-up cars. And so something has to be done upstream. We have to go after that. My wish list would to be hire three or four more Officer Kings, so we had more pedestrian patrols. We're working on that. But another thing that really scares me-- and I appreciate you highlighting this in your report-- is blocked visibility due to parked cars. And I'm sure you guys get the same thing. I get more calls about people trying to turn or cross the street, and they cannot see the oncoming traffic due to a van, a truck, or a car blocking their visibility. And so that is one of my biggest concerns. And I see it in action every day because I live two houses up from the corner. And you can hear these interactions, and it's usually [IMITATES TIRES SQUEALING], and then a [IMITATES CRASH], and then here comes the ambulance and the police. So we have to get those cars slowed down. And I agree 110%. We have to take this to the schools because we need their buy-in and not just the principals, but the parents because the parents are the ones we're going to hear it from. That's all I have. Thank you. Yeah, go for it. Just one last, quick thing-- something that you mentioned in your presentation earlier, you talked about a bell schedule. And so I thought that was interesting. I mean, we can't control the bell schedule at a school. That would have to be the school district to make changes. But what I think I'm hearing you say is if the people are spread out over an hour as opposed to a single point in time, that mitigates the traffic. It would mitigate some of the congestion problems. And I think that's an interesting solution to try to dilute out the traffic, is definitely something that should also be considered as another measure of-- They do that right now at Hidden Valley because they have so many students. They split it K through 1 or 2, and then the rest of the school comes later, I bet 20 minutes or something. But yeah. Really quickly, it is a 6:30, so I know we want to wrap up. I just want to vocalize that I appreciate people being concerned about speeding, but I don't want this to go by without us acknowledging the fact that the backup around schools is stopped cars, not speeding cars. So I don't want us to be too obsessed with speeding because in most of the schools, that's not the issue. So I don't actually support increased fines in school zones. I'd much rather have us be concentrated on infrastructure improvements because, as we all said, we don't need to give the police officers more work in these areas. Happy to talk about it more, but that's not my priority. I also wanted to request that any time that we say painting is something that needs to be done, like a crosswalk that needs to be done, a crosswalk that needs to have new paint-- that doesn't feel like something that needs a 30% conceptual design or any design whatsoever. I feel like we should just be able to pluck it off this PowerPoint and just go paint it. So I would rather we not put any effort into painting in the report. I would much rather the report be concerned with innovative infrastructure improvements and that we just have Public Works go paint. We have plenty of times where Engineering just goes out and does stuff without it coming back to us. And I would love painting crosswalks to be one of those things. And then, lastly, just to speak to your point, Satinder, about the bike lanes, that's something where I think it might be really helpful if we put together a bike lane policy because what always happens is the decisions have to be made at a given point. And if maybe we had a better policy that said, we shall always do class 4 bike lanes, that might be the direction that we need to go. So I'd be happy to talk about that moving forward. OK, there are no members of the public here. Of the people that are online, is anyone member of the public that would like to speak? If so, please use the Raise Hand feature. I do have people online, but no one is raising their hand. OK, great. Well, they might just be listening, which is absolutely fine. So we will have opportunities for them to provide input at the local school meetings and then at a workshop later once we have some more conceptual designs come our way. So with that, I want to thank everyone for all of their comments. Thank you so much for coming and presenting your initial findings of the audits. And we will be adjourning this meeting, and we will regroup at 7 o'clock for a regularly scheduled meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you.