Item B: River Avenue Improvements

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3. Brief Review of Staff Proposal and City Council Response Ms. Cahill pointed out that Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart and City Councilor Gary Pape were in the audience. She introduced the Public Works staff members who were present and thanked Mr. Ruffier for allowing the meeting to convene at the Wastewater Facility. Ms. Cahill noted that the stakeholder notebooks were missing some public comments and indicated that copies of the comments had been distributed to group members for inclusion in the notebook. Ms. Cahill provided a brief overview of the project. outlined in the attachment entitled River Avenue Improvement Project; Project Background Iltformation. She explained that the City had been considering road improvements to River Avenue for 20 years and reviewed the history of the project from when it had been included in the TransPlan in 1986 to the present activities of the stakeholder group. Ms. Cahill reviewed the council direction - of four options ranging from abandon the project to move forward with forming the local improvement district and constructing the project the Council chose to direct staff to substantially modify the design and rebid the project if necessary. Ms. Cahill highlighted the outreach to the community staff had undertaken, including the mailing of 6,000 postcards. She stated that, to date. 243 comments had been received. Staff had also presented at four public meetings and provided surveys to those in attendance. She said the surveys were summarized for the group. Ms. Cahill explained that traffic analyses to measure the car and bicycle traffic had utilized tubes stretched across the road at several locations and a traffic analyst who observed traffic patterns during the peak traffic time of the day. In response to a question from Ms. Rojas, Ms. Cahill said bicycle traffic was counted on the bicycle path and not on River Avenue itself. Mr. Samer asked if any effort had been made to make a seasonal adjustment to the count. Mr. Henry replied that there was a method to do so but it had not been applied in this case. Ms. Cahill reviewed the "crash history" of the road and the pavement rating. She said pavement was analyzed by a person walking the road and scoring points for wear and tear. A road could be repaired with an overlay if it scored at least 70 and would require complete reconstruction with a score of 50. She indicated that River Avenue had scored 69 at the west end, 59 in the middle, and 54 at the east end. Ms. Cahill underscored that the TransPlan was a metropolitan-wide planning document that the three agencies, Springfield, Eugene, and Lane County, worked through and adopted. She stated that the TransPlan integrated reasonable response to growth, fiscal responsibility, and community expectation with an emphasis on all modes of transportation. The result of the TransPlan was the 20-year fiscally constrained list of projects and the trending and anticipation of future needs beyond 20 years. County Commissioner Anna Morrison arrived. Ms. Cahill reviewed TransPlan maps and tables included in the stakeholder notebooks. She noted that one MINUTES-River Avenue Stakeholder Group - Public Works Department August 24, 2005 Page 3