Planning Commission Agenda and Packet 2016 03 10

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes February 11, 2016 Page 11 of 18 corridor slightly. It should, in theory, help people move through the corridor, but its primary purpose was not to move as much traffic as fast as possible. Moline says if we look at page 29, and the traffic impacts and minutes, I heard somebody say that those times are in excess of the travel times now. However, that is not my reading of that graphic. Robinson says it shows how long on average it would take you to drive through the corridor during those peak hours. I think what John Leary mentioned is that it is based on existing traffic volume plus projected volume from development in the corridor. At this stage, we did not look at what the existing 2035 traffic volumes would be and then additional traffic. When we did this modeling, it was to compare the alternatives. We tried to get some sense of what the impacts would be from the one story, two story, and three story alternatives, so we used existing traffic. If you are interested, we can go back to our traffic consultant and have them use the 2035 numbers since we have numbers expected along South Boulder Road in 2035. I am not sure what the change would be because additional build out is already assumed in their model. Moline says I think John raises good point. For the future draft of the plan, it might be interesting to see what is projected out into the future. If the numbers are available, we might get them and plug them into the plan. As a reminder, the Comp Plan told us that the road carries a lot of through traffic. We are buffeted by the winds of what is happening to the east. Brauneis says regarding John's comment about once you hit a certain saturation level, then you are in the "muck". Where, if, when, and would that be? Robinson says to a certain extent, any future congestion on the road is going to come no matter what we do in the corridor. It carries regional traffic. Closed Public Hearing and discussion by Commission: Pritchard reminds PC that Staff has a few items they want PC to look at and comment on such as the Santilli open space acquisition and the Cannon Circle/South Boulder Road stoplight. Brauneis says starting at the macro level of the document, this is something that has been worked on heavily over the last 1.5 years. In a lot of ways, it reflects a lot of what people have expressed as a community. We are being pulled and stretched in different directions about what we really value as a community. I am excited to see it move forward. I expect there will be a different level of scrutiny at CC. While I am personally comfortable at this point in time, I expect there will be more questions to come in the process. As far as the two specific issues, on the potential for open space property acquisition, if and when it becomes available, it is a natural for open space. When you look at that piece of property, it doesn't offer huge commercial potential. I would leave it to the Open Space Advisory Board (OSAB) to evaluate it as time progresses. Regarding the additional signal at Cannon, I don't understand the dynamics surrounding it. Typically, I come out in favor of safety so if it makes sense at that spot, I'd want to hear more about it. Hsu says I echo what Commission Brauneis said about the macroscopic view. Looking through this plan, it has a lot of principles and was easy to read. It is nice to see the ideas out there and it reflects the work Staff put into it. As far as the specific issues, with the traffic signal, I lean toward punting and deferring that decision because we can always add that later. I am ambivalent about that much like Staff is. As a driver, I'd like to get through more quickly. I don't like having a light every block because it's frustrating. I do see that without that light, it is hard to cross north and south of South Boulder Road. It may alleviate some of the traffic on Highway 42. Since we can always add it later, I lean toward deferring it and not putting in a traffic signal if we don't have to. As far as Open Space, I defer to OSAB and Parks. Personally, I like the idea of having more open space, especially since we are considering more development in the rest of the region. The property is far away from everything else. Lastly, we talked about getting more numbers on costs. I have a question for the PC. Do we consider this, because it sounds like more of a CC thing to consider? Does the PC generally consider costs as far as land use?