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Home My WebLink About11-09-2005 - Minutes TCCITY OF ORANGE CITY TRAFFIC COMMISSION Minutes of a Regular Meeting: November 9, 2005 Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. I. OPENING A. Flag Pledge B. Roll Call Present – Commissioners: J. Beil, N. Lall, J. Pyne Present – Staff: T. Mahood, D. Allenbach, G. Sheatz, Sgt. S. O’Toole, P. Then Absent – Commissioners: F. Petronella Absent – Staff: W. Winthers C. Approval of Minutes October 12, 2005 ACTION: Approved as published by the Recording Secretary. MOTION: N. Lall SECOND: J. Pyne AYES: Unanimous II. ORAL PRESENTATIONS None October ‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 2 III. CONSENT CALENDAR A. Request for the installation of red curb markings on both sides of the driveway at 297 S. Hewes St. Manuel Perez 296 S. Hewes St. Orange CA 92869 ACTION: Approve the installation of 30 ft. of red curb on the south side, and 20 ft. of red curb on the north side of the driveway at 296 S. Hewes St. B. Request for the installation of red curb markings on both sides of the two driveways that serve Orange Unified R.O.P. at 250 S. Yorba St. Deborah Blackstom 250 S. Yorba St. Orange CA 92869 ACTION: 1. Approve the installation of “NO STOPPING ANYTIME” restrictions on the west side of Yorba St. continuing from the existing “END NO STOPPING ANYTIME” restriction, to 30 ft. south of the ROP Center southerly driveway. 2. Remove the existing cargo loading zone (yellow curb) between the two driveways. C. Request for the installation of an intersection vision zone at Harwood St. and Meats Ave. Ernie Flores 2116 N. Harwood St. Orange CA 92865 ACTION: Approve the installation of an intersection vision zone (45 ft. of red curb). Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 3 There being no discussion from the audience or the Commissioners to any of the requests, the motion to approve the Consent Calendar was made as follows: MOTION: J. Pyne SECOND: N. Lall AYES: Unanimous IV. CONSIDERATION ITEMS A. Request for the installation of a “NO RIGHT TURN ON RED” restriction for eastbound Riverdale Ave. at Glassell St. Traffic Engineering Division CITY OF ORANGE (There were no comments from the public on this topic.) ACTION: Approve the installation of “NO RIGHT TURN ON RED” signs to prohibit a right turn on a red signal. MOTION: J. Beil SECOND: J. Pyne AYES: Unanimous 2. Appeal of Traffic Engineering’s denial of a request to implement speed humps on Adams Ave. between Cambridge St. and Tustin St. Kevin Steckler 1012 E. Adams Ave. Orange CA 92867 The oral presentation is based on the written staff report; please refer to your copy. Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 4 Chairman Beil – One of the big issues we’re facing is the criteria that is being used right now is a recommendation basically is criteria that the Commission approved as a recommendation to Council for approval. As far as revising the RNTMP guidelines for qualifications of speed humps on residential streets. One concern I have is that we have made the recommendation of the revisions to the RNTMP program and they have not yet been approved by the City Council. Perhaps our legal representative can tell us what that means. Do we have abilities to use the new criteria without having the City Council formally adopt them? Gary Sheatz, Asst. City Attorney – Before I answer that I’d like to have a little more information about how long has this recommendation been pending before the City Council, where the recommendation came from, have you used this standard in evaluating other projects that have come before this Traffic Commission? Dave Allenbach, Transportation Analyst – So far we have processed this request and one other. Since the Traffic Commission approved these new standards. I believe initially the threstholds went to the City Council about 2 months ago possibly. Tom Mahood, City Traffic Engineer – I believe it went about 3 weeks ago. We brought the thresholds and that is where the discussion began going into the Heim speed hump issue, and the issues of notification and pending resolution of notification issues the Council postponed action on changing the thresholds. Gary Sheatz, Asst. City Attorney – I can’t tell you that by using the stands that have been recommended by this Commission and staff, using it to evaluate this project would be wrong. I can tell you that typically you would use what has been officially adopted by the City Council and those would be what the old standards are. We have an issue through where you have put the new recommendation and the new standards in place and you’ve set that in motion. It seems as if it would have been adopted by the City Council but for the fact than an ancillary fact came up regarding notification. The alternative would be from a staff perspective that they would do something like what you would use in a land use case where you would impose a moratorium. You wouldn’t process any of these types of request until the standard is in place. That would be the purpose of somewhat of a moratorium. That hasn’t been done. You have Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 5 gone forward and I thing gone forward with the anticipation that the new standards approved by this Commission would be adopted they just haven’t been for whatever reason. It isn’t wrong to use the newly recommend standards at all. This is a “tweener”, it could go either way and I would have to defer to the professionals that look at this and make the recommendation and really know what they’re talking about what the standard is and what the need is for that. Your rationale for deciding this, it could go either way. Chairman Beil – Irrespective of this particular issue and after we make a decision on this specific issue can this Commission adopt a moratorium on further requests for speed humps until the City Council adopts these changes? Gary Sheatz, Asst. City Attorney – The Commission could recommend that staff not process any more of those requests, that they halt processing those requests until the standards are in place. The other alternative is more of a solution but wouldn’t be necessarily palatable to the person that appealed it here would be to continue the matter. You can continue the matter until you have something certain in place. We’ve all identified the fact that we are betwixt and between on the standards or what standard to use. If you continue it you wait, let’s find out where the City Council is on this is, do they accept your recommendation and are they going to adopt it or not. Once they adopt it, it becomes the official standard to use and then there’s no issue any more. You can get back into this and take a look at this and then have a definitive as to what the standards should be. Commissioner Pyne – I think it was pretty well spelled out for me, I like the recommendation of putting them off until we have a definitive answer from counsel on this. Chairman Beil opened the public hearing for the following discussion. Kevin Steckler, 1012 E. Adams Ave. – I don’t disagree with Dave’s data I just don’t think his data has taken in to consideration of nighttime 5-8, 10:00 or when they get out of the bars and they’re going through. I also think that if you look at the street to the east of Adams it is a longer street where back then your criteria was different and they have 200 cars, so because they didn’t have the same distance they couldn’t accelerate, or I guess the acceleration showed the 8/10’s Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 6 more than what we have. We have 2 STOP signs and they still seem to get up to a pretty insane speed. Judy Clark, 947 E. Adams Ave. – Oppose speed humps. I think we all know the pros and cons and I just want to voice my opinion. Susanne Gaskins, 1118 E. Adams Ave. – In favor of speed humps. Today I pulled out of my driveway and traveling east up to the STOP sign at California St. and an SUV was behind me and I was fearful he wouldn’t be able to stop in time to avoid read-ending me but as it worked out he did manage to stop. In the next block he passed me and I going approximately 30 MPH by the time I got to the middle of the block. This is not an unusual situation on Adams Ave. We have a high volume of traffic and they go at a pretty rapid clip. I believe there has been a long history of citizen requests to have something done on Adams Ave. apparently the volume of traffic was decidedly reduced when the “NO LEFT TURN” was posted on Tustin St. onto Adams Ave. and it reduced the volume of traffic considerably. The problem is 2-fold it is the combination of volume and speed together. I would request that in this case you use the old standards since officially they new ones haven’t been accepted yet by the City Council. Chairman Beil closed the public hearing and returned the item to the Commission for further discussion and a motion. Commissioner Pyne – It seems that staff’s study of this situation has been pretty thorough, 400+ cars through the surveys, a very significant number to get an adequate read so I’m very confident with staff’s 34.2 MPH rating. There is a large volume of cars, I’m reluctant to put in speed humps in most situations with emergency services in mind. Everyone is looking at this as a safety issue and speed humps as possibly the solution to that but it also slows fire, medical and police responses and from that safety standpoint I think we need to look at that very carefully. All in all it looks like both sides have done a terrific job, the proponent has done a good job and I appreciate his understanding that Dave has done a very good job in gathering and compiling this information. Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. Chairman Beil – The data shows on the speed surveys that there are some instances of fairly high speeds down there. There are some spikes above 40 MPH but that’s occasionally and what the study goes by is purely the 85th percentile so those mesh into the 85th average percentile speed. We are caught between October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 7 changing the guidelines for the program and although they haven’t been officially approved I do know the history on Adams Ave. with the amount of traffic, I also know it looks strange that some of the adjacent streets to the west including Adams have gone through the program under the old guidelines so I would make the motion to go ahead and accept the appeal to allow the survey to go to the neighborhood to really let the survey determine what the neighborhood really want, and then when the results of that survey come back and if they do get installed the trial period would go into effect, and everybody could see how they work and the Traffic Commission can then take action if they should stay or not. Vice Chairman Lall – I agree with your analysis of this, I feel uncomfortable placing this under the new criteria when it hasn’t been approved by Council. Although the new criteria is something we all agree with it isn’t appropriate at this time. Chairman Beil – I believe the timing was really tricky on this whole thing because we’ve been working on and we’ve all agreed on the revisions to the program and it was right about the time the request letter was received from Mr. Steckler. ACTION: 1. Accept appeal and send out a new speed hump survey/petition go out to the proponent to circulate in the neighborhood to make sure all the appropriate information is provided along with that survey and that it go through the process. 2. Enact a moratorium on processing any more requests until the City Council takes formal action on the recommended revisions to the Residential Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan (RNTMP). MOTION: J. Beil SECOND: J. Pyne AYES: Unanimous 777777777777777 End of Consideration Items 77777777777777777 Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper Minutes of a Regular Meeting – City Traffic Commission – November 9, 2005 Pg. 8 V. ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS None this meeting. Chairman Beil thanked staff as the Commissioner’s had requested a map of the Chapman University permit parking areas and the ever growing expansion within that defined zone. It was very informative and it helps. VI. ADJOURNMENT After discussion of today’s Agenda the City Traffic Commission meeting was concluded, and as there were no further requests for action under Oral Presentations, the Chairman adjourned this session of the City Traffic Commission. The next meeting of the City Traffic Commission is scheduled: 5:30 P.M. Wednesday – December 14, 2005 Respectfully submitted, CITY OF ORANGE Phyllis Then, Recording Secretary Traffic Engineering Division pthen@cityoforange.org CITY OF ORANGE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT TRAFFIC ENGINEERING DIVISION 300 E. CHAPMAN AVENUE ORANGE CA 92866 PH: (714) 744-5536 FAX: (714) 744-5573 Tape #CTC-25.09 of this City Traffic Commission meeting is available for your review. Please contact the Recording Secretary at (714) 744-5536 in this regard, advance notice is appreciated. October‘05 [N:/Traffic/CTC/2005 Minutes] Printed on Recycled Paper