I fought for and was a lead sponsor for a transportation plan when I was on the council, therefore, Mayor Dave (and therefore staff) opposed it. Now we have a Mayor that is more interested in doing what is right then what is politically expedient. The plan commission got an overview last night. I guess that’s what it means to be progressive – to be out in front of issues – sometimes too early for others to be able to accept it.
OVERVIEW, WHY DO THIS?
David Trowbridge, Transportation Planner says that the city is in the middle of developing a scope of work for a Comprehensive Transportation Master Plan for the city. He welcomes their comments.
– He says this isn’t new, we have individual transportation plans for the city for various modes, streets and roadways, bicycles, pedestrians, public transit of various types, but not a comprehensive all mode plan that looks at inter-connectivity.
– It’s not just about transportation but to also look at the neighborhoods that it creates in terms of walkability, livability, transportation choice and use it to realize our land use vision.
– They want it to be a strong guide to transportation decision making.
– They want priorities and an implementation plan to come out of the process.
– They are developing a scope to be put in a request for proposals and they are asking consultants to come back and propose how they would do this planning effort. They have a budget of $500,000. (Wow, they said it would cost over $1M just to do this for the isthmus when it wasn’t supported by the then mayor) He says that sounds like a lot, but when you are talking about all the modes of transportation and the modeling involved, that is a limited budget so we need to be careful how we use these resources to get the work product we want.
– It will take about 18 months to do the plan.
– There will be an ad hoc group appointed to manage the process and guide the work of staff and the consultant team.
– They will also check in with the committees and commissions as they go through the process.
– They are also going to coordinate with other agencies that do transportation work in the area.
– There will be a strong stakeholder and public outreach process.
– Since they don’t have a budget to do everything they would like to do, this will build on existing plans we do have, we have done a lot of work with other agencies at the staff levels. They will start by reviewing what they have, what they still support, look for gaps and inconsistencies. Both transportation and land use sides including neighborhood plans, special area plans, comprehensive plan, etc.
– He’s hoping the comprehensive plan with its goals and objectives will be a good start to look at the transportation alternatives.
– They want to improve connectivity and look for conflicts in the plans.
– He shows of picture of a freeway going through the central city and says this is not one of the options they will be revisiting, and points out several cities did make those kinds of choices and had negative impacts.
– They will look at the Madison Area Transportation Board or the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which is the federally designated planning entity for the region and they do detailed transportation planning on the highway and bicycle system side. He shows a map of the recommendations and although they are regional, they have recommendations inside the City of Madison. (Stoghton Rd, Beltline etc) They will review these plans and make sure they are something we are comfortable with.
– He says the bicycle plan from the MPO will be the starting point for bicycle planning the cities. We have a lot of great off street paths and on-street facilities. They will develop a route and system plan map that uses this as the starting point and connects to regional facilities.
– Transit corridors will also be looked at, we have talked about commuter rail, streetcars, express buses. There is a transit study that is going to be underway in a few months, led by the Capital Area RPC led by the MPO staff that looks at Bus Rapid Transit options and there are a number of corridors where that might be an option. Many of the corridors are high usage corridors and we will be looking at that in the plan in the study.
WORK TASKS
– The key work tasks he mentions, as opposed to what is in the slides (not in legistar yet), he says there are lots of words to describe what they want to happen, but it is up to the RFP proposers to put that into a detailed plan and timeline – but we do know what work products we want to come out of the process. But it is important for them to use their expertise to come up with the deliverables. So the project management plan is the first task for the consultants to do.
– The second work task is the public outreach plan, to stakeholders and interest groups as well as public meeting formats. They have general ideas (websites, newsletters) for what would be in that outreach plan, but they want the consultants to point out what they might do. Focus groups are good to target specific groups of users so they think they want to use them.
– Third is reviewing the plans in place and the objectives in the plans to see if they are consistent with the growth management plans. Are they the direction we want to go in terms of transportation. They are not reopening the plans, there are lots of discussions, tradeoffs and compromises made and they don’t want to revisit all that, but they want to look at them to see if they can augment them mostly in terms of density and intensity of land use.
– They want the consultants to develop two future land use scenarios for 2035, one would be “current plans” and the other would be a more “compact growth” scenarios. He points out a map from the comprehensive plan that shows infill areas and plans and says it is very dense development at 10, 12, 15 stories along E Washington Ave that is appropriate, but in some of the other areas there are infill opportunities that might do something different. Those are the things they want to look at – not just in terms of livability and how transportation will affect that and what tools we can use to meet neighborhood needs. The maps will do travel demand forecasts so they can understand how the different growth scenarios will affect transportation plans.
– The fourth task is to look at the comprehensive goals, objectives and policies – are there holes, do we want to re-order or modify them, are there inconsistencies.
– He says there are also regional and modal specific plans that they will want to look at for connectivity, relevance and consistency.
– And finally the most intensive work is to develop the draft plan and recommendations. They want not more than 5 system alternatives for all modes, having them work together. They also have to incorporate the land use plans in that. The alternatives would have a different investment priority, one might be based on bicycling, another public transit. They also want them to use system performance measures, to compare the alternative, using qualitative or quantitative data where they can.
– There are some areas of the city were they want more detailed analysis, such as the central area of Madison, including inter-connectivity to coordinate modes of transportation.
– They want a detailed arterial and road system plan at the end, including cross section plans and circulation in the city – they want a central area circulation evaluation in the plan. A lot of talk about one-way streets, its hard to look at a few streets without looking at how it affects traffic regionally and in the central area of the city. (HALLELUJAH! They finally get it! Or now they can admit they get it! 4 years too late in my opinion.)
– Pedestrian list of facilities need to be prioritized, they are not starting from scratch but need priorities.
– Bicycle facilities, there is a lot we can do, we have good facilities, but we have to look at how they work together, are there gaps. Are there new technologies they can use to make it more convenient and safe. We have invested a lot in this in the city and have had a good response that they want to see more – this will be important.
– Public transit we want a system map plan, we will rely on the corridor studies underway and work with Metro to see what they plans are and what the costs are that are involved.
– They also want to look at public parking, look at the connectivity, different technologies that might help with usage.
– Transportation Demand Management is an important way to get people to use non-automobile transit, they need to look at what alternatives are available and appropriate for different parts of the city. They want a prototype program developed as well as a prototype Transportation Management Association developed. To help organize and implement the ideas.
– They want an implementation plan and recommendations including costs, priorities, funding sources and a timeline to move forward.
– Lastly, they want the final report done.
PUBLIC PROCESS
He says that last month and this month he is going to committees to get input and comments
Jan 24 – Pedestrian-Bicycle- Motor Vehicle Commission
Feb 6 – Plan Commission
Feb 8 – Transit and Parking Commission
Feb 16 – Long Range Transportation Planning Committee (Lead Committee)
Mar 7 – Madison Area Metropolitan Planning Organization
The hope is the council approves and then they would work on this timeline
April 2 – Release of RFP
April 26 – Pre-planning meeting
May 22 – Deadline
week of June 11 – Consultant Interviews – Selection
week of June 18 – Consultant Contract Negotiations
July 3 – Council resolutions (select consultant and authorize contract)
July 5 – notify they can proceed/start work
If everything goes well, they can start work in early July.
COMMENTS FROM PLAN COMMISSIONER
Eric Sundquist asks about it coming back to council, will it come back to committees.
Trowbridge says that it is up to council if they want to refer it back to committees. He’s hoping that they could take care of the public input during this round of input.
Sundquist asks why an ad hoc committee being set up when we have 4 of 5 transportation committees including one that seems to be obvious, Long Range Transportation Committee – why staff another body.
Trowbridge asks Steve Cover to answer that question.
Cover says they felt it was such a major undertaking that they should put an ad hoc group together to focus just on this, they recognize there are other groups they will need to keep apprised of what is going on, but this is a special group focusing just on this. This group will be flexible instead of monthly meeting schedules. It will help them stay on schedule.
Sundquist says that as a LRTPC member, he wonders why he is going to those meetings if the biggest thing that comes along in transportation planning goes somewhere else. Maybe we should disband it. It may be the best thing, for what it is worth. He has two big pieces of feedback. He is glad we are doing this, it will be a valuable exercise and he is glad we have the money and resources to do this. It is sorely needed for a number of reasons. He says that as he read it, it made the public participation part is the largest deliverable, it looks like we would start over and redo the documents we have through charrettes and visioning when we have the comp plan and neighborhood plans – that’s not the way it came across in the presentation, but it is what the consultants will see. It might be better to be explicit about filling gaps and devote more resources to policy and planning. His other piece of advice is that the policy part is light, we have policy in subdivision ordinances, how we do assessments and a million different ways, and a real value could be looking at policies, which is a much more grand look than just looking at the comp plan. Last thing, may be too late, just spent $300,000 on government east and now another $500K on this, couldn’t some of this money go into staff capacity so it is not xyz consulting company and then they are gone. We have 20 land use people and one in transportation planning, we are light on the staff in that area and rely on engineering for planning policy advice and if we had planners we might get different advice.
Marsha Rummel says that she agrees with Sundquist on role of LRTPC. Liked the different scenarios on what we have now and building out to more intensive uses, it will help us see that in ways that will be helpful since she is a visual person, not a text oriented person. This is very exciting, people in her neck of the woods will be very excited about this and they will pile on every little thing east of Butler St, so be prepared.
Michael Heifitz says that he agrees with comments from colleagues, especially having a current committee look at it until he looked at how big the is supposed to be, its supposed to be all things to all people and he is not sure how well that will succeed. This is huge, its supposed to be, but there are multiple plans and committees and how that comes together will be fascinating. At first $500K sounded like a lot on this, but given what they are supposed to be doing, he is not sure that it is enough, but he is not advocating more money given the $300K they spent earlier. He is hoping the money is not for a report that sits on the shelf. He has a question about the current scenario and more compact scenario.
Trowbridge says that is something they will check back in with plan commission on. They left it kind of vague, if you ask 5 people in a row what “more compact” is you’ll get 5 different answers. There will be a special subcommittee of the blue ribbon task force to figure out what gets modeled. There will be a check in with plan commission in that.
Heifitz says that plan has no substantive role in that and he is not sure what we will do with the two scenarios, so he is struggling with the scope of it and how it will interact with other comprehensive plans. He is worried about this plan conflicting with other plans. If we were able to implement this, and we often can’t implement these grander plans, how will be do that? But, he will not be here in 2035 to discuss that. He has concerns on how to manage the scope of this and hopes that is managed in the RFP process and the deliverable is well defined and not sitting on a shelf in the end. He thinks that the question of consultants vs staff is important, we know these projects are coming. Consultants are here and leave town, which can be good because they deliver bad news and that can’t always be delivered by the internal folks, but we do need to monitor that closely.
Nan Fey says that on page 5, work task 3, plans to be evaluated, she thinks that they need to name Neighborhood Development Plans for the periphery should be on there even tho the list says it is not limited to the plans listed. They are important because that is where there might be more compact development in the future. In general, the language about recommendations to be made doesn’t speak to implementation strategies – she is looking for budget predictions for the plan.
Steve Cover says that this will be a challenge, but knowing David and the staff he knows they are up to it. He says on selecting the consultant, they will be looking for a consultant that is not conventional – they want one that is innovative and will come up with a plan that will work for the City of Madison. He says they will emphasize heavily the implementation plan and strategy with funding opportunities that will be more than you would typically think of. They will look at what needs to be implemented and in what order and look at funding options outside the state and federal options. Looking at what we can do locally to reduce our reliance on state and federal government. He has faith in the staff and their ability to select a top notch consultant. This will be quite different than plans you have seen in the past. It will not sit on a shelf, but it will be a great road map for the city and city leaders.
Tonya Hamilton-Nesbit wants them to address in-line skating which is not pedestrian or bike, it is different. She is also worried about not having more than 5 plans, she says when WISDOT did the Stoughton Rd plans, they were very different, they were mild, medium and extra spicy. She says those meetings were very heavy public review process and that seemed like that was a good number otherwise people will pick and choose. In terms of the consultant, they should have worked with cities similar to us in terms of our landscape, special features (lakes), probably not an isthmus, but she thinks that is important.
PUBLIC COMMENT
Glen Hovde is the only registrant, he is a real estate broker and developer. He is not in support or opposition. He says that with the goal to minimize parking they distinguish between minimizing demand and having adequate parking. He says on the more walkable and livable city, think about skywalks. Think about Minneapolis, he says with the square with 8 blocks we could put skywalks to have a more livable and walkable Madison if you want to go from one building to another. He says when he did Manchester Place in 1987, which seems like yesterday, he laid out the building to have a skywalk to get to the Concourse and the condos that are there, you could just loop it all the way around the square. Think about monorails if you are doing all modes of transportation, we have airspace above the rail system and bike trails, monorails should be considered. Downtown, the Coliseum, Monona Terrace, Camp Randal, Kohl Center and Airport are destination points and they are all on rail corridors. The travel channel just replayed a show from 2009 and monorails are going high tech, they can serve on one rail, hang off the side, without electrical power. Plans are visions, there is no reason destination points couldn’t be connected 25 years from now.
Is anyone else thinking about the Simpsons right now?
