Title
Grand Street Resurfacing and Safety Improvement Project Final Concept
Body
To: Honorable Chair and Members of the Commission on People with Disabilities
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Grand Street Resurfacing and Safety Improvement Project is a plan to improve the condition and operations on a 0.7 mile segment of Grand Street in central City of Alameda (City). The project goals are to improve safety for all users, improve mobility for all modes, including AC Transit buses; and improve pavement condition for enhanced street operations and user experience. The corridor is identified as a high-injury corridor in the City’s Vision Zero Plan. The corridor is also a critical link in the City’s plan to create a low stress bicycle network for the City of Alameda.
On May 25, 2022, the Transportation Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council proceed with the staff recommended resurfacing and restriping plan. The Transportation Commission recommended striping plan is shown as Exhibit 1.
Staff is available to answer questions about the proposed design, and staff will transmit comments and recommendations from the Commission on People with Disabilities to the City Council when they consider the recommended design in late June or early July.
The project webpage is www.alamedaca.gov/GrandStreet <http://www.alamedaca.gov/GrandStreet>
BACKGROUND
City staff is working to develop improvement plans for the Grand Street Resurfacing and Safety Improvement Project, which is partially funded by the One Bay Area Grant (OBAG 2) program, administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which distributes federal transportation funding from the Federal Highway Administration to projects and programs throughout the Bay Area. This project is included in the State Transportation Improvement Program, with $827,000 in federal funds for construction in Federal Fiscal Year 2022-23. The City will need to expend the federal funds by October 2023 to receive reimbursement for project expenses. The project limits are Grand Street from Shore Line Drive (just north of the intersection) to Encinal Avenue (just south of the intersection), and excluding the concrete bridge deck between Otis Drive and Palmera Court. The intersection of Grand Street and Encinal Avenue will be resurfaced with a Caltrans project expected to begin in mid-2022.
Grand Street between Shore Line Drive and Encinal Avenue has been identified as a high priority for safety and mobility improvements. The Grand Street segment is approximately 0.7 miles long and is a major north-south multimodal corridor. It is identified as a high-injury corridor with high crash intersections at Otis Drive and at Shore Line Drive in the City's Vision Zero Action Plan and General Plan. Wood Middle School, Rittler Park and the Alameda shoreline are adjacent to Grand Street, and Franklin Elementary School, Franklin Park, and St. Joseph’s School are within ¼ mile of Grand Street.
Grand Street is also an important link in the City’s plan for a citywide low-stress bicycle network. Grand Street provides a critical north-south connection to the east-west bicycle facilities on Shore Line Drive, Otis Drive, Encinal Avenue, Central Avenue, Pacific Avenue and the Cross Alameda Trail on Clement. Grand Street is the only continuous street from the south shore to the north shore of Alameda between Park Street in East Alameda and Webster Street in West Alameda.
On Grand Street, vehicle speeds are often higher than the 25 miles per hour (mph) posted speed limit, with 32 mph for 85th percentile speed. Crash data from 2015 to 2019 showed that 35 percent of injury bicycle crashes involved children. Approximately 55 percent of children cyclists were observed riding on the sidewalk or in the parking shoulder.
Observed parking occupancy was approximately 30 percent of capacity.
DISCUSSION
On May 25, 2022 the Transportation Commission held a public hearing to consider the proposed restriping plan for Grand Street. Approximately 26 spoke in favor of the recommended restriping plan and 15 spoke in opposition. Upon considering all the testimony, the Transportation Commission voted 5-0 to endorse the recommended restriping plan.
The recommended striping plan is designed to implement General Plan goals to reduce serious injuries and deaths on Alameda public streets and to support active transportation modes of transportation as critical to addressing climate change. The recommended restriping plan implements the General Plan goals and policies. General Plan (2021) citywide mobility goals are to:
• Equity: Provide for the mobility needs of all Alameda residents, workers, and visitors regardless of income, age, ability, or neighborhood.
• Safety: Eliminate fatalities and severe injuries on Alameda’s streets, sidewalks, crosswalks and trails by 2035.
• Choices: Expand and improve alternatives to low occupancy automobile trips to incentivize mode shift to more environmentally sustainable modes of transportation while recognizing the diverse needs for mobility.
• Sustainability: Reduce the impacts of transportation systems on the environment, and transition to a more resilient transportation system to address the impacts of climate change.
Mobility Element Policies include:
Policy ME-6 Vulnerable Users. When designing, redesigning or resurfacing streets, provide safe and convenient access for vulnerable users, including children, seniors, people with disabilities, and people walking and bicycling.
ME-6 Actions:
Safety First. When designing streets, the safest treatments should be considered the default starting point and be degraded only if necessary and after documenting rationale for the approach.
Space Priorities. When allocating public right-of-way space, the first consideration shall be for people walking, bicycling, and using transit. Space for on-street parking shall be the lower priority
Self-Enforcing Design. Design streets and rights-of-way to support vehicle speeds of 25 miles per hour or less, efficient bus movements and safe bicycle and pedestrian movements, to reduce the need for active enforcement and the risk of bias.
Policy ME 14 Action H Low-stress Bikeways. Prioritize low-stress biking infrastructure such as separated bicycle lanes, bicycle boulevards (Slow Streets) and bike trails, which is comfortable for the majority of the community. Build these facilities with enough width to comfortably and safely support all people and devices into the future, including cargo bikes, electric bikes, and scooters, all operating at different speeds. Provide separated bicycle lanes instead of unprotected, standard bicycle lanes, unless not feasible, and optimize the experience of bicyclists on bike boulevards by minimizing stop signs along these routes by opting for mini-roundabouts or similar treatments that allow bicyclists to travel unimpeded while slowing vehicle speeds.
The recommended plan includes the following improvements:
• Repair and resurfacing of the street. The street resurfacing includes curb and gutter repairs to address storm water flow, and improved curb ramps and intersection grading for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility.
• Pedestrian safety improvements. To improve pedestrian safety, the plan includes rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB) at the Wood Middle School mid-block crossing and at the intersection of Grand Street and San Antonio Avenue. Rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB) can reduce pedestrian crashes up to 47 percent, and can increase motorists yielding rates up to 98 percent. In addition to the flashing beacons, both options include high visibility crosswalks, which can reduce pedestrian injury crashes by 40 percent and advanced yield or stop markings and signs, which can reduce pedestrian crashes up to 25 percent, daylighting and curb extensions to improve pedestrian safety. Both options include a reduction in on-street parking to accommodate daylighting of intersections consistent with adopted City Council policy.
• Transit improvements. Enhanced bus stops AC Transit provides service on Grand Street between Shore Line Drive and Otis Drive. Bus islands at Grand Street and Shore Line Drive (north of the intersection) and at Wood Middle School (midblock between the pedestrian refuge island and Otis Drive) will be added.
• Speeding. Narrower automobile travel lanes to reduce speeding, and
• Separated Bike lanes. The recommended plan includes Class IV separated bike lanes between Shore Line and Encinal. North of Otis Drive, the bike lane is located adjacent to the curb. The parking lane is placed between the bicycle lane and the moving vehicle land to separate the bicyclists from moving automobiles. Due to the width of the street north of the lagoon bridge, it is not possible to provide parking on both sides of the street for the entire street segment. Therefore, the plan provides separated bike lanes along the curb lanes with parking alternating between sides on each block. A 2019 statistically significant survey of Alamedans’ walking and biking attitudes and behaviors, showed that separated bike lanes dramatically increased the comfort of respondents with biking on streets with faster, busier traffic - 65% are very comfortable biking with a lane separated from traffic by a curb, posts, or parked cars, as is recommended for Grand Avenue. (In contrast, by adding a standard bike lane to a busy street with no bike lanes, while comfort levels increased, only 35% are very comfortable.) The same survey showed that nearly half (46%) of Alameda residents are “Interested but Concerned” about biking, meaning they would like to bike more, but are not very comfortable on standard striped bike lanes. But, they are very comfortable on streets with buffered/separated bike lanes.
• Parking. The recommended plan reduces the number of public parking spaces on the street. However, the remaining number of public parking spaces aligns with the observed peak occupancy, as shown in the table below.
|
Segment |
Parking Supply With Concept |
Peak Parking Occupancy (Weekday PM) |
|
Palmera/Dayton |
4 |
4 |
|
Dayton/Clinton |
7 |
8 |
|
Clinton/San Jose |
4 |
4 |
|
San Jose/San Antonio |
7 |
6 |
|
San Antonio/Encinal |
10 |
6 |
• Access for People with Disabilities. To make our streets usable for people of all capabilities, the proposed project provides the following Americans with Disabilities (ADA) improvements: two new bus islands for bus boardings/alightings with ADA compliant curb ramps, high visibility crosswalks with minimal cross slopes to facilitate usage by people in wheelchairs, upgraded truncated domes/detectable warnings at street corners to alert people with visual impairments, shorter pedestrian crossings to reduce exposure to motor vehicles, flashing beacons with accessible features by Wood School and on Grand Street/San Antonio Avenue as well as a designated on-street disabled parking space by Wood School and Rittler Park. More on-street disabled parking spaces are possible to install along the corridor on the side streets, near corners and where parking will remain along the curb through the City of Alameda Residential Disabled Parking Zone Program.
Conclusions: Staff believes the recommended design will reduce injuries, reduce automobile speeding, and increase the use of walking and biking by enhancing the comfort and convenience for pedestrians and bicyclists of all ages and abilities, which will support the City’s climate action and transportation goals. Staff also believes that the recommended plan will improve safety for people with disabilities.
An alternative concept was considered by the Transportation Commission. It would replace the separated bicycle lanes from Otis to Encinal with striped bike lanes, similar to the existing condition. This alternative retains the parking on the street next to the curb and places the bicycle lane between the parked cars and the moving cars, which is similar to the current conditions. This alternative provides less safety and comfort for bicyclists, but preserves a larger number of the public parking spaces. This Alternative is shown in Exhibit 2.
Consistent with Policy ME-6 (cited above), if the Commission wishes to recommend the alternative plan, the Commission should specify the rational for the recommended change in the design. Staff will present the Commission’s rational to the City Council for their consideration.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
The project team submitted required environmental clearance documentation to Caltrans and received a signed California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption/ National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) Categorical Exclusion Determination Form in September 2021. Caltrans determined that this project has no significant impacts on the environment as defined by NEPA. As such, the project is categorically excluded from the requirements to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under NEPA.
The Grand Street Resurfacing and Safety Improvements Project is categorically exempt pursuant to CEQA Guidelines section 15301(c) Existing Facilities (Minor alterations to existing facilities including bicycle facilities) and Section 15304(h) Minor Alterations to Land and the creation of bicycle lanes on existing public rights of way. In September 2021, Caltrans determined that this project has no significant impacts on the environment as defined by NEPA. As such, the project is categorically excluded from the requirements to prepare an EA or EIS under NEPA.
CLIMATE IMPACT
Since vehicle miles traveled in Alameda is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Alameda, City staff is expecting that the proposed improvements to Grand Street would have a positive climate impact. The concept is being developed to make it safer and more convenient to ride a bicycle, use the bus and walk and to reduce congestion and idling motor vehicles.
RECOMMENDATION
Review and comment on the recommended Grand Street Resurfacing and Safety Improvement Project Final Concept
Andrew Thomas, Director of Planning, Building and Transportation
Robert Vance, Public Works Deputy Director/City Engineer
Exhibits:
1. Proposed Street Configuration (Recommendation)
2. Street Configuration (Alternative)