22X NCPC Traffic Working Group -- July 7 Meeting Notes

[Daniel Swafford]

Subject: 22X NCPC Traffic Working Group -- July 7 Meeting Notes

Hi All,

Thanks to all the folks who were able to join us on the 7th. We had
about 5
from our prior discussion early June, and another 4 new folks joined
us.

Sue Piper, from Jean Quan's office, joined us to present the 4 E's
which is
how the City categorizes input on traffic items:
Engineering
Enforcement
Education
Empowerment

We reviewed our prior list and slotted each of those items in one of
these 4
E's and then subsequently talked about what our priority could be for
this
month. She suggests that we obtain the "approval/ratification" of
these
priorities at the next NCPC (scheduled for next Monday, July 14) and
then
Renee will be our facilitator for submitting those to the City as
being "an
NCPC priority". She suggested one priority for Engineering and one
priority
for Enforcement since they are managed from two separate departments.
Please see attached list which I assembled by the 4E's categories.
Notice
there are no items in Education and Empowerment -- sounds like a good
topic
to discuss at a future meeting of the working group. I listed the two
top
priorities as #1, all others as TBD so please don't presume that the
order I
listed them is the actual priority order. The priorities for this
month:

ENGINEERING: Boston and MacArthur corner -- the issue is for the
people
crossing MacArthur from the Lincoln Court Apts from the east side to
west
side. Sight lines are poor and traffic doesn't stop for pedestrians
in the
crosswalk. Request is for Traffic Engineering to study the corner and
recommend solutions for slowing traffic down so that it improves
safety for
seniors and all pedestrians in crossing the street at that corner --
usually
to catch AC Transit.

ENFORCEMENT: Issue is traffic flow on Fruitvale between MacArthur and
Montana -- double parking much of the time, people turning left into
FJ's.
Request is to enforce and ticket those who double park and impede flow
of
traffic. Presumably tickets for parking in "no parking zones" would
also
occur.

For the Engineering items, Sue requested that we submit a description
of the
"problem item" versus what we expect our solution to be. In essence,
we are
requesting the City to evaluate the situation and recommend options
for
improvement. Presumably we can choose from the set of options, but
obviously there could be times that there are no options, just one
recommended solution.

Other notes:

1. Jean Quan's office is doing a pilot on radar gun training with
objective
of getting residents' involvement in helping to identify speeding
cars. The
training class is 3 hours in length and she'd like to solicit folks
from our
beat. Requirement will be for teams of 3 to spend 1-2 hours a time,
6-8
times during a 6 week period. Teams have the radar gun, a camera, and
cell
phone (for safety purposes). License plates will be recorded, picture
taken, and information given to Traffic Enforcement. They will send a
letter to the license plate holder informing them of the violation and
reminding them about the speed limit. No tickets are expected to be
issued
with the letter. We can as a group put a particular site on the
Enforcement's dept list for a focused effort for a particular period
whereby
citations would be written for violators.

2. Sue Piper would like to be copied on any Traffic Requests
(spi...@oaklandnet.com)

3. I made an error in our prior list -- I indicated an interest for
another
speed bump at 1800 Clemens. But that address doesn't exits. Would
the
person that provided that request please let me know the real address?
Thanks.

4. I asked for any volunteers to run this working group as I
originally
planned to oversee it for about two or three months. Also the NCPC
would
like to solicit interest in people wanting to be part of the steering
committe which will manage the business of the Council. We will
solicit
names of folks to be involved at the meeting next Monday, so please
think
about this and let me know if you're interested.

5. One other item that will be mentioned on Monday. Daniel et al are
almost finished with a website for our Council. As part of that we
will
implement a google group for traffic. As soon as that's operational,
I'll
send you an email to ask that you go and "register" with it and we can
get
started using that as our primary means of communication and staying
in
touch.

6. We need to have a presentation on Fruitvale Alive project which
should
shed light on the traffic mitigation on Fruitvale between Peets and
FJs.

7. We did not identify a date for our next meeting, but I believe we
should
have one -- I'll send a note out after Monday's meeting with some
suggested
dates. Please call me if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks,
Pat
510-967-5977