Downtown Parking Committee votes down 15-minute parking trial, reviews VPI plan

[4:22] Joseph Leonard: So I hope nobody's frustrated with bringing this back again. The reason we brought it back was it seemed like there was some, seemed like it was kind of left in limbo. Oh, I'm sorry we had to do the chair for you. I'm sorry, thank you for that. Okay, the typical process for electing a chair is somebody on the committee nominates someone and then everyone votes on that, and multiple nominations can be made, and Joe can no longer serve as chair because he's counselor, so it has to be someone else. So does someone want to make a nomination? I cannot. I'll nominate all so and you all will vote on that. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, so you want to vote? Yeah, you could do thumbs up, sure, and we'll just say I guess three to zero and favors everybody. Yeah, yes, okay, three zero in favor. Is there and sorry I'm not super familiar with the committee structure, is there usually a vice chair or is it just the chair? Well, that's completely new. I think it'd probably be appropriate to select a vice chair, but I mean if you guys want to hold that off to a future date when we have more people, that's fine. It's probably safer to pick a vice chair while we're [5:58] Ann Ross: at it right now, but up to you guys. Does anyone want to make a nomination? What's the full board size. So how many are we missing? Yeah. [6:09] James Robert Finley: So I mean, can we nominate Kelsey? [6:14] Ann Ross: I mean, I would feel bad doing that. Honestly. [6:21] Joseph Leonard: We can't wait till the next meeting. If you want to wait till then I don't think there'd be an issue with that. [6:28] Ann Ross: Yeah, let's let's do that. So that when we have Kelsey, she [6:31] Joseph Leonard: can have a voice as well. Yeah, okay, at least we have right here. Okay, so this first agenda item I was saying we felt like it was kind of left in limbo and wasn't really clear. It seemed like there was misunderstanding as far as he was asking for what, and so we did meet with all the parties to kind of get a sense of things, and it seemed like they were all agreed that they at least wanted to see if the 15-minute parking space converting those two spaces in front of the building to 15-minute parking would fix the situation, and so we proposed just doing a trial of that, and if it doesn't work then it would revert back and they can just pursue other remedies. But we also know that obviously you know after five it can't reasonably be enforced, but we were thinking if we just remove the hours from the signage maybe some people don't know so maybe it would help you know keep it to 15 minutes. So we just wanted to get thoughts on kind of just trying it out and seeing how it goes. I'll [7:42] Ann Ross: Speak first then I feel like I have concerns with doing that for a couple of reasons. I think first we asked for or the volume of the deliveries and things of that nature to really decide, like, are we alienating visitors of Bangor who want parking in proximity of a lot of restaurants and businesses for the sake of a handful of breakfast? And so it concerns me to block those off. And as you point out, it's unenforceable anyway, way but to designate those spots for and what could be just a handful of user users true [8:30] Joseph Leonard: I will note you know though that it is pretty close to the parking garage and like the parking study pointed out we do have an excess parking. I think the only place where it's all maximum usage was on the central street area and then on the parking garage only had maximum usage during certain motorfront concerts. So there's that. I don't know, just putting that out there. One thing that I thought about, and it's actually related to the VPI study, is I know that Main Street is one of the streets that we're planning to do inclusion of bicycle lanes, and that's already going to impact some parking on that street anyway. Actually, it probably would actually impact those two spaces now that I think about it so that on top of the it's not a fact just a notion like I just know this isn't going to make a difference today. I 'm no longer a voting body on this but it's just I get that we're trying to give an olive branch to like really hear the hear these individuals out but we really have no enforcement mechanism to actually make this work besides putting out signage and I mean if the committee is amendable to that and you want to go forward with a new signage I mean I don't think it's really going to hurt anything besides just what we're losing two spaces for people during the day to actually park there and you know that is for me enough to track detractor if I want to if I could vote I [10:08] Kelsi Gabrielle Hobbs: vote no on this but that's just me and I gotta say it's similar exactly what you're kind of saying is are we fixing a problem I don't know but it feels like we're potentially creating a problem by adding a 15-minute spot sign because I mean it's a fact we would be losing two permanent spots if we change the 15 I don't know what we're gaining out of it except for the olive branch of we heard from a local someone was unhappy about something and we're kind of just not giving in but kind of yeah give them an elephant at a real benefit or kind of a [10:52] Jake Berkowitz: Yeah, no, I agree, we want Beggar to be welcoming, we want people to be able to come in and park, and there's nothing more frustrating than trying to find a place and seeing an empty 15, and now we're actually for two 15 adjacent spots, but I know that we had during Covert we had those 15 minute slots and they stayed that way for a long time afterwards, and it was really frustrating to see that on other parts of town, so we've dealt with this is now what the fourth time we've dealt with this, I don't I Agree, I don't, I don't know what we're gaining, and given the impact of the new parking changes and the bike path, it's important that we really look at what the parking needs are across and make that accessible, okay, make that possible for them, and I just kind [11:48] Speaker G (unidentified): Of have a worry that unless we have a date by which we like check back on it and the data to compare to see if it's doing anything, we would just be asking them like is this doing something, there might be disagreement about that, and then we still have a problem, you know, it's not clear [11:59] Jake Berkowitz: And they still haven't been able to answer a question, so if we give them a date and then say how is this impacting, they won't have any answer, that's actually a very valid point because [12:09] Joseph Leonard: Without giving us true data and then coming back to us and like if they say that oh it's fantastic, it's helped us out completely, they have no basis to actually showcase to us like why [12:22] Ann Ross: It's actually impactful at that point, and I would worry one of them would say it's helping one [12:31] Joseph Leonard: Sounds like everybody's in agreement on that, so we need to put forth a motion or sure it might be good for the record, okay, does anyone want to put forth a motion to [12:45] Kelsi Gabrielle Hobbs: Not change the current signage and leave it as permanent spots, if I can just say so what I'm leaning [12:58] Joseph Leonard: So what I would do is recommend to motion it in favor so that everyone knows that you just vote no on that, because if you recommend to not vote it, everyone has to vote yes. It's just interesting. Yeah. [13:13] Kelsi Gabrielle Hobbs: If you want to do it that way, I know my notion is to go forward with the 15 minute side. That's what I recommend. [13:22] Ann Ross: It just makes it easier. Easier, sure, and all in favor of moving forward with the 15 minute temporary, all opposed [13:36] Joseph Leonard: Just as a policy question, you know, something we heard during the public meeting feedback was the need for more 15 minute parking spaces around town for delivery drivers, so I guess I just kind of want to see what people thought about that, was brought up, yeah, I mean, I would again, I'd be [13:56] Ann Ross: interested on having the data on like because my instinct tells me that is maybe true during very specific windows and those specific windows lunchtime dinner time weekends half or there are two-thirds of those times are unenforceable times anyway and so that would be my thought like i 'd be interested to know the data but something tells me it wouldn't and again i think our at least my goal is to do what's right for the downtown as a whole [14:33] Joseph Leonard: And so I just, I don't know if I see the value there. I think somebody mentioned that, you know, if they're just stopping downtown to, like, pick up some food real quick, I guess their thought is if you have more long-term parking spaces or people that are trying to use those spaces long-term taking up all the parking spaces that are convenient to get to a restaurant to pick up their food, that's kind of taking away spaces from people that do just want to stop there quickly. [15:02] James Robert Finley: And get something, you know, does that make sense? I mean, like, could we identify a spot where we think. [15:10] Speaker G (unidentified): It would be like central to multiple takeout businesses, because I would worry that we'd be like privileging one over the other or something, and I don't know how. I mean, maybe do a lot of ideas about, like, what would be a good place for this sort of 15-minute spot, identify those. [15:27] Jake Berkowitz: Because you have a sense of who some of these players are that want that 15-minute. [15:31] Joseph Leonard: Where Harvest Moon was one spot that was picked out as a problem area. Yeah, it's a challenge sometimes out there. Yeah, and I think some other prominent locations might have been like the Indian place for takeout, the old Indian place, can't think of any others right off the top of. [15:51] James Robert Finley: My head, but yeah, but. [15:56] Joseph Leonard: We could, we can try to pinpoint some locations and come back with that. [16:01] Ann Ross: If that would make sense. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. You know, a couple of proposed spots, I mean, I think for me personally, we're thinking or I'm thinking like single spots and maybe a couple of locations, definitely not two next to each other, like, yeah, no, but to your point, I think we can get them so they're kind of strategically centralized so that we're not. [16:29] Speaker G (unidentified): We could figure out even if it's just on the streets and places to see if people are actually using it. Yeah, just go. [16:41] Speaker H (unidentified): Back to 128 Main Street. I know that the committee voted to not have those two parking places, 15-minute parking spaces. However, I think it's important to for the committee to provide guidance to those two entities to say the committee voted no, but this is what we believe that he should do, right, to be able to, I mean, obviously work together, and so that we can have a very statement from the committee. What do you guys think? [17:14] Ann Ross: That's fair. It's being dismissive. Yeah, okay, because like any time a planning board member for [17:19] Joseph Leonard: example votes no on something, it's, I don't think it's required, but strongly encouraged, so they give a reason why they're voting no. So I think that's appropriate for us to at least make it very clear why we're voting now, which I think we already all can summarize our thoughts [17:35] Speaker H (unidentified): pretty succinctly yeah we're voting no one just kind of like a guidance as to what we think he should do going forward okay but is that working you know meaning just like a simple i just think it i don't know this is the staff recommendation right it 's received better when there's more guidance towards amicability right like you want to be amicable we want you guys to kind of work it out yourselves because the dismiss the just the straight dismissal of what they wanted could be received wrong and be offensive, and they potentially come back. So to just be able to say, hey, the parking committee believes that this is, that the reasons why, and I believe that you should work together as two businesses and try to work things out. [18:25] Ann Ross: I mean, these are things you do. You understand what I'm saying? Just so that we 100, but basically not [18:31] Joseph Leonard: really giving staff guidance, giving them guidance for staff to relay. Absolutely. Sure. Yes, from the parking committee, 100, yes, absolutely. And actually, I do like what you summarized there, which was giving them clear direction to, hey, look, if you want, we can facilitate a meeting of you two too, to try to figure out how you can fix that privately. But you guys, you see your involvement to either not help or make things worse, basically. I think that summarizes what our conversation was. But we can certainly be facilitators in trying to privately solve the problem, because we probably could. [19:17] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't know, we don't want to offer too much particular guidance, right, because we don't want to introduce ourselves into the litigation in any way. So I guess, yeah, just saying, like, be friends. Or, like, come back with the data or something. [19:32] Kelsi Gabrielle Hobbs: Because we have tried to get both parties together, right? It hasn't happened, right? One guy showed up and didn't have the information. [19:44] James Robert Finley: Well, Jace told us that they couldn't get the data, but you can pull how many deliveries [19:56] Ann Ross: you've had in a day. Like, every time you do a DoorDash, it shows up in your little register and you can pull it. I know because we do DoorDash and you can see. I mean, even that data would be helpful to the committee, I think, to help justify that. Because I think that the, at least my concern, is volume based, right? I don't want to lose two spot or even one spot potentially if there's just this very limited volume that would be utilizing that space. Yeah, I think what was unclear was like [20:30] Joseph Leonard: for the adjacent property owners being able to monitor who was parking in there a lot and how often and all that. I think that's what they were saying they couldn't get, because that was the problem, was the people parking on their lot. But I don't, I don't know, anyway. [James Robert Finley: Were you] trying to ask if the committee had a particular like suggestions for the communication statement? I [21:08] Ann Ross: think our stance is that at this time we don't quite see how changing the designation of those two spots is going to alleviate their problem. However, we're happy to try to come back to the table and have productive conversations, or we hope that they would go back to the table and have productive conversations, and if there are further parking related potential solutions, to bring those with some data that we can use to make the best informed decision for the community at home. And that's really what we're here for. Yeah. [21:53] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, no, I'll take that. [21:59] Ann Ross: We're going to take that. Okay, so I agree. I do not want to be caught up in any living, yeah, right. We're going to move on that. Do you think that suffices? Or I do, yeah. And does everyone [22:15] Joseph Leonard: agree? Yes. Okay, so we will approach you pull the tape. All right, are we good to move on to the VPI [James Robert Finley: recommendations? Okay, hopefully] everybody had a chance to look over this, but I'm just going to go through the main summary points and the main recommendations. Let's see if we can minimize [22:50] James Robert Finley: this stuff here. We utilize these screens. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I [23:06] Joseph Leonard: Want this? Okay, so the gist of the VPI, and sorry I'm presenting and not Jeff, he had another engagement, but I'm gonna do my best. So the gist of the study, it's called the Village Partnership Initiative. It was funded through Maine DOT, and it was to study downtowns, or essentially village cores, you know, to see how we can revitalize those through changing the transportation network work, and adding more things like pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and making it safer generally for everybody. And so they did this in a lot of different towns. And the idea was to, after the study was done. Oh, and the other thing too, is it was supposed to be paired with upgrades to like the water and sewer infrastructure, because we do have needs for that downtown. And so it was like, if we're going to be tearing up the roads to do that water and sewer infrastructure, let's improve it in these ways. So the idea was, once the study was done, the city would apply through the DOT for a federal RAISE grant to implement it. At this point in time, that funding is kind of, I'm not sure if it's completely gone or just up in the air. So we are looking at ways that we can implement it kind of piecemeal in simpler ways. I mean, it would be ideal to implement it all at once, but you know, we're looking at how can we use the processes and the funding that we do have access to make these changes. So as I go through, I'm going to point out a couple changes that were simple changes that we're going to be making with striping this summer to implement a few of these recommendations, not major changes. And then also, I believe DOT is planning a major project on Main Street, and so Jeff and engineering is trying to work with them to implement these recommendations on Main Street, since they're already going to be tearing up the road and everything. So that is planned. So I'm gonna skip forward a bit here, and this process involved a lot of public engagement. So they had, I think, listening sessions with people. And VACS, the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System, helped out a lot and went out to different events like the Sidewalk Art Festival and a bunch of different festivals and other groups to get feedback. Let's see. So this plan kind of includes some different things in here as far as traffic calming, at intersection improvements, bike lanes, and you know, different street improvements, like using bump outs to kind of narrow the road and make it safer for pedestrians crossing the road. And then they also propose a couple different options for changing the traffic patterns downtown, and we'll go through that. And then also doing a shared plaza of sorts where Broad Street is, and then also making the Kanduska Plaza behind the parking garage into more of a waterfront park. So this first part is about the traffic pattern. So they had different options here. The first was to maintain the existing one-way traffic pattern with intersection streetscape improvements, and then next was changing patterns to two-way and improving those intersections. And then third was keeping the one-way but using roundabout intersections. So they described here that the most favored approach, I believe by the public, was option C, using roundabout intersections. But the second most favored was option A, keeping the one-way with traffic, with intersection and streetscape improvements. improvements. And B here, using two way traffic was least favored. And I think the consultants also recommended here, option A, with the one way traffic pattern and improvements. And that does happen to also be the cheapest one. So the roundabout one was going to be quite a bit more expensive. Yeah. So just looking at this one, this is the one they recommended. And kind of shows that same kind of loop around town, but with the bike lanes and the bump outs and things like that included. And they did also and I'll I'll show you more the details later. But on certain streets where we have diagonal parking, they did recommend to remove that and change to parallel parking. And some people said that was a safety issue too in the public meeting that we had, but they do have some diagonal parking here. This was a pretty big change to Harlow Street here, where they would kind of be creating this new parking section and separating it from traffic to improve the safety there, and then the bike lane would kind of be going through the middle here up near the sidewalk. So and I'm going of skip further ahead, I just wanted to show the traffic and parking comparisons here with The different traffic layouts, so the level of service is a way of, in transportation circles, kind of showing the amount of congestion and traffic delays that would be on a road. And so it's like a height, it's like a school grade, you know, A is the best and F is the worst. So with the option A, it's kind of like middle of the road, and then option B was worst, and then option C the best. And with parking, as far as how much parking would be left, option A actually increased by one space, and option B had the least amount of parking. Here's our 15-minute parking spot. [James Robert Finley: Yeah, okay. And] so this was one of the striping changes that we discussed with public works, and it's a pretty simple change. But right now there's, I believe, two lanes here, there's a right turn lane, and so just using striping, no curbing changes or anything, we would be removing this turn lane and adding parking spaces here, and then doing a bump out here just with striping and some temporary bollards. And the bump outs are really there to improve safety for pedestrians crossing here. I believe they added a crosswalk down here because there's not one currently, actually, which I think poses some issues. I think that was the main solution there. I think they did kind of narrow some intersections here, and then with the Union Street and Main Street intersection section, they proposed using a no turn right on red sign for safety purposes. And then again, narrowing these intersections up with bump belts. And this is another narrowing of the intersection. This area here on Harlow is another place we were looking at doing some striping changes to implement some of these. So this bike lane here, we were looking at doing a bike lane from over here up to, I believe, the courthouse area, because once you get there the road then narrows. So I mean, it's not great for it to not connect to another bike lane, but it's kind of just like, let's do what we can now and then hopefully in the future we can connect it to other bike lanes. And then this intersection was actually supposed to be have this layout already with this parking space removed, but it just was never painted that way, so we would be painting it that way this year, and then also narrowing this up, having this bump out here so pedestrians can see traffic coming. And then another thing this study talks about is using what we call sharrows, which is the symbol, you can't see it well, but there's like a bicyclist here, and then there's arrows here, and including those on certain segments of road where it wasn't going to be possible to put a bike lane, just to make it obvious to people that bikes can share the lane. With you, by state law, bikes can share the lane anywhere with traffic, but this is just to make it clear in these circumstances. And in addition to this segment here, there were a few other roads that public works was going to put these, and one of those was Central Street, and I think with the widths on Central Street we could feasibly put a bike lane, but I'll get more into it later. But the other point that was brought up by engineering was like, traffic speeds are pretty low on Central Street anyway. So it might be okay to just put a share of there. Up on Park and Center Street, the proposal was to just narrow these intersections up. It's pretty wide for pedestrians to have to cross up here, and then adding some green space. space. Washington and Broad, the proposal was to create, you know, another pedestrian access area here, and then also make a pedestrian exclusive light here, because there are issues with people trying to walk across here. With the way the traffic lights are set up, traffic can still be going one direction and turning while somebody's in the crosswalk, which is a significant safety issue. And I just wanted to show the overview of what they're proposing closing for bike lanes, so the solid lines would be where bike lanes would be added, and the dotted lines would be where sharrows would be, so bikes would share the road in those locations. I do want to note though, for Union Street, I'm not sure why the consultants didn't recommend this, but you know, I discussed it with engineering, and there seems like there's plenty of space for bike lanes on that road, so they're actually going to Trial painting a bike lane in at least on the side going uphill because that's, you know, the biggest issue for bicyclists, and there shouldn't be any loss to parking on that road at all. So this is the proposed layout of bike lanes on the roads. So it is best practice to have buffered bike lanes and have the bike lane be on the interior next to the sidewalk and have it be protected from the parking lanes to prevent people from being doored essentially by people getting out of their cars. And then it does protect them more from oncoming traffic. And so their proposal here was if we had two-way traffic on roads like this, then you would have a five-foot bike lane over here, a two and a half foot buffer, and do the same thing on each side. And there was, I think, enough width on this road, this is Central Street, enough width here, without doing curving changes to implement that. [35:10] Speaker G (unidentified): Those medians, they have like a little plastic pole, is that the idea? Or is it just... [35:14] Joseph Leonard: They show multiple options. Yeah, there's a couple different things we could do. For a temporary, you know, if we wanted to do something temporarily, we could use those flexible bollard things, you know what I'm talking about, because post but with the one-way traffic flow they proposed doing a five-foot bike lane just on one side and then a median and then parking and travel lanes. So yeah, you could have a buffer with paint, but it's not super recommended because people ignore paint. These are the flexible bollards and then a median here and some artistic ones here you can also use planters pictures. One thing I've seen in other areas is doing kind of like a hump, you know, a shallow hump, which would allow snow plowing up the bike lane too. It might make it easier for public works, but you know, you would have to pay extra for that curbing. I don't know what the cost comparison would be to doing some of these other things, but. And then as far as how it would flow with traffic. So when you get up to an intersection, there would be a bike box here so that bikes have can be in front of traffic to make their own turns and stuff before traffic goes and then they would be behind these bump out areas here so they would need to yield to pedestrians though when pedestrians are trying to cross and these are the sheroes i talked about let's [36:55] Jake Berkowitz: See, yep, and it's probably not relevant to this right now, but it looks like this is a little different place for downtown in the future. Is there work to connect like downtown to Orna going out from Union Street or going out Broadway? Because what do you do is [37:16] Joseph Leonard: Right, yeah, now this was just focused on downtown, but I believe they did design it so that in the future, we could connect it to bike lanes or whatever that are going on in those areas. But that would be a much larger study we would have to do to do that, yeah. [37:33] Speaker G (unidentified): And is the money right now just to re-stripe it, or is there money to consider stepping in and thinking about those sorts of things? [37:39] Joseph Leonard: Right now, we're just looking at the re-striping because our thought was, if we're already gonna be painting the roads, why don't we just change it, change the way we're doing it, you know? So we can't do major changes with some of the bike lanes because we would have to change some of the curbing. And so we looked at where we could just add bike lanes just with the striping feasibly. Let me see. Oh yeah, the other bump out that we were looking at doing with striping was here turning right up Center Street. I believe we had one there previously and it did pretty well to slow down traffic. So we would just be putting that back in place. [38:19] Ann Ross: Do you know why it was removed? [38:21] Joseph Leonard: I think it would well it was just a pilot demo project so and this will be kind of the same thing to be honest because it'll just be using temporary materials but the hope is when you do pilot and demo projects that they can become permanent you know as long as they work out well yeah so we already talked about the parking changes here nothing really significant on [James Robert Finley: Exchange State] Street again you know they were talking about changing this diagonal parking parallel which would lose some spaces but I think they're making up for it by adding spaces in other locations and it would make it safer for people and then just adding a bike lane on one side of the road is it two-way one way this is a one-way yeah and some of the intersections or the crosswalks here the consultants did recommend adding speed tables [39:28] James Robert Finley: That was one of them same [39:32] Joseph Leonard: Thing with Central Street really same layout and [James Robert Finley: Then obviously] Franklin's has the two-way, so that would stay the same. And then Hammond is another one where we were looking at doing some striping changes to add the bike lanes, because we wouldn't need to do curbing changes, at least in this portion, to add the bike lane here. So we are looking at just adding bike lane on this side to go uphill, and it would end here at Court Street, and then also narrowing this crosswalk here and adding it. Well, I don't know if we would be adding a speed table right now, but right. What was that? Yeah, so the mural will be repainted, and it will just become part of the bike lane. Yeah, all. [James Robert Finley: Right, Hammond.] Street, they had two different configurations for bike lanes here because the road changes after Court Street. So this portion above Court Street, I'm sorry, yes, that's right, it's above Court Street, would have the five foot bike lane on each side with the median and parking on each side and one foot traveling lane. This next section that's closer to central, they were proposing to have expanded sidewalk and still with the bike lane and median traveling because there is no parking along this section. Currently, but there was, there's a lot of road width there, and on Main Street again, possibly that might happen sooner, but one of the bigger changes was that they were proposing to get rid of this traffic signal here and instead do a pedestrian signal here. I think they can't, think of the right term for it, but I think it would actually stop traffic so that people can cross the road here, and then obviously adding the bike lanes and things, changing the parking to parallel. This is their proposed. Configuration for Main Street. And then they do have the configuration that you mentioned of getting rid of the parking spaces here, but I think they're proposing to add parking spaces here in front of the theater, accessible spaces, so. [42:33] Ann Ross: Adding spaces or just re-zoning those? [42:40] Joseph Leonard: I could be wrong, I thought they were, yes, they're looking at adding them in front of Penobscot Theater. Because I know one topic about those spaces that we had was that we needed more handicap accessible, specifically, so that would make sense, I. Don't think this area was going to have major changes except for adding a bike lane and this one either, and this is where on Union Street I was talking about there being an up with here to add a bike lane, and honestly it could go all the way up to the Hammond Street intersection because there's enough road there, and I had measured the road at some point with GIS and it seemed like there was honestly enough space to do a bike lane on both sides and keep the parking there, but engineering is drawing up plans to see what's feasible, but they're going to prioritize this side going uphill. [James Robert Finley: So this] is the piece about the shared plaza, and their proposal was to convert this into a shared pedestrian and vehicle plaza. They used this term from Germany called a Wunnerf, and basically they would separate, you know, vehicle spaces from pedestrian spaces using bollards. I think they have some examples, but this is kind of like just a rough sketch of what that would look like from above, and this is just examples from other places, but it would still allow people to drive in here for deliveries and what have you. In some places they close it off just during events and leave it to pedestrians only. I think some examples are like Burlington, Vermont, they have a place like that and it opens up at certain times a day for deliveries and stuff, and then at night time it's closed for pedestrians only. A question on that, and you might not be able to answer this, it might be a Jefferson question, but did you know if that planned plaza is gonna have like gutters and perms, and I asked that specifically for plowing purpose, I know this is yeah, parking related, but I figure might as well. I'm sure they have some type of, they would have some type of stormwater drainage system. I'm not sure, and one, you know, one thing that we're trying to do with the plan is to implement more green infrastructure, so things like bioswales and stuff like that, so that could be a piece of it. I don't know if curbing, much curbing would be involved. Yeah, I'm not super in on like how this concept will work, but I was expecting Jeff to be, so I completely understand. And then the last one was the waterfront park proposal in this area. So this parking is usually pretty underutilized and pretty low traffic back here. So their proposal was to make this all into lawn and trees with a path going here, and then to have parallel parking along this line with the travel lane, keeping the current lawn and sidewalk over here. That's just a kind of overhead sketch there, and these are just some examples of other places that have done similar things. I did have a comment on this, which was, I mean, I love the imagery, and that would just absolutely make Bangor so much more beautiful, because there's going to be a lot of shuffling of like parking spaces in URD one, right, it's downtown, right, the downtown development district, yeah. So and because that's where we're having the most parking requests, I mean, because all the other ones, we have availability in parking in the six other URDs, and this area, and I'm just very familiar with this area, because I frequent this quite a lot, it is immensely. And that to me is an area that I think can be sort of a catch all for a lot of these parking spaces that we are moving around, and this gives us a lot of potential availability to have those diagonal parking spaces if we really need to add more parking downtown. town i just want to throw that out there because it is a really underutilized strip of main and so you know i would be privy to that but also i love green downtown so i just want to put that out there like that 's just something i've been thinking about for years It [48:22] Jake Berkowitz: is underutilized. I see that. Also, do keep in mind that the further out we go becomes a flood zone down the road for parking. So it won't be a long-term solution. So there's a point where this is only where we're going to be able to go to. [48:42] Joseph Leonard: Yeah, the flood zone actually goes encompasses part of the parking garage, so yeah, and I mean I think converting a part of this into a park would kind of help with that too though. [James Robert Finley: I think] that was actually the end of what I was going to present, so any other thoughts? [49:11] Speaker G (unidentified): So then is there like an ETF point engineering for [49:17] Joseph Leonard: the striping changes just they should be working on that now if it's not already done, because I the plan was that public works do the striping this summer, yeah, and [49:32] Ann Ross: it sounds like it's not going to drastically [49:33] Joseph Leonard: Change the parking situation, not the striping changes. Yeah, you know, we may look to get together later on to see, and this would obviously come before council and you guys, but to see if we can implement other pieces of this that would change the parking to implement this. But you know, obviously that's a really big change, and we would, you know, want to run that by everybody. [50:02] Jake Berkowitz: So it's a plan now just to look to start with the striping and not build bump outs and right all [50:09] Joseph Leonard: of them. Yeah, and only in a few areas. Yeah, because making these changes and a lot of locations would [50:16] Ann Ross: require curb changes. It looks beautiful. This driving would include the bike only in some places, [50:26] Joseph Leonard: right, because places like, I'm trying to find a good example, yeah, places like State Street, the way they have the bicycle lanes configured, because it is next to the sidewalk and behind find these bump outs, you would have to change the curbing, and then like we couldn't, there would be a lot of funding involved I think too to create the buffer from the bike lane, so I think that [51:01] Ann Ross: might be a later project. So is the plan for the striping bike lanes this summer to just do painting barriers, or are they going to put like balance or something? I [51:15] Joseph Leonard: think we had talked about doing bollards. I'd have to ask Jeff for confirmation, because DOT actually has a lot of bollards that we can use, they have for municipalities to use for free, and I think we actually also have some in storage, so as many as we can use we can try to implement buffers. I have to confirm with him that's going to be the plan, but it will just be a couple streets, so like the Harlow Street bike lane here, the Hammond Street one I mentioned, and then going up Union, those were the critical areas. So and not so you're not doing the ride, not yet, no. Yeah, so it's not a lot. I wish we could do more, but it's just not super feasible right now, so just doing a few changes that [52:14] Ann Ross: looks great. Okay, is there anything that staff needs from this committee with [52:21] Joseph Leonard: regards to this, or we just wanted to make you aware of everything and you don't get any feedback? So it looks great. I wish we had more money. Yeah, but you know roads are always being worked on, and you know after Main Street I'm sure another project will come up affects downtown and we can implement even more. So yeah, awesome. So the next item was just to discuss the next meeting date. We did postpone or ask for postponement of the next meeting date to either July 30th or the week after, August 6th. Whichever works for everyone, I cannot do July 30th. [53:13] Ann Ross: First day of the thing or something, I also could not do July 30th. I could do the 30th, but I would actually prefer the 6th. [53:39] Jake Berkowitz: How do we get a job? How do we know what the agenda is going to be, or what are we going [53:47] Joseph Leonard: to include for agenda items? Oh, for that meeting, we would be hopefully providing you with the parking report that was discussed at the last meeting on proposed new rates for off-street parking, what paid parking might look like on street parking, and then also increasing the ticket price. So it was supposed to be a comprehensive report to provide to you all. So yeah, but if you have other, anybody can ask for an agenda item if you want to propose other things, anyone [54:27] Ann Ross: have anything else that needs to be discussed? We do a motion to adjourn. You don't have to, you just adjourn. All right, beating a jerk. Thank you, everyone.