08-07-2014 I MESILLA VALLEY METROPOLITAN PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION
2 TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
3
4 The following are minutes from the Technical Advisory Committee of the Mesilla Valley
5 Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) which was held on August 7, 2014 at 4:00
6 p.m. at City Hall Council Chambers, 700 N. Main, Las Cruces, New Mexico.
7
8 MEMBERS PRESENT: Mike Bartholomew (CLC Transit)
9 David Wallace (BLM) - proxy for Bill Childress
10 Steve Self (NMSU) — (proxy for Greg Walke)
I1 John Gwynne (DAC Flood Commission)
12 Larry Altamirano (LCPS)
13 Louis Grijalva (CLC Public Works)
14 David Wallace (BLM)
15 Jack Valencia - arrived 4:24
16 Willie Roman (CLC Transportation)
17 Jolene Herrera (NMDOT)
18
19 STAFF PRESENT: Andrew Wray (MPO Staff)
20 Orlando Fierro (MPO Staff)
21 Tom Murphy (MPO Staff)
22
23 OTHERS PRESENT: Greg White (NMDOT)
24
25 1. CALL TO ORDER
26
27 Meeting called to order at 4:06 p.m.
28
29 2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA
30
31 Larry Altamirano motioned to approve the agenda.
32 Louis Grijalva seconds the motion.
33 All in favor.
34
35 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
36
37 3.1 June 5, 2014
38
39 Bartholomew: I had a, just a couple of corrections, I think Tom just little grammatical
40 things throughout it. Page 5, looks like line 24 it says "gonna', it should
41 probably be going to. On page 7 there's also a couple of other "gonna's"
42 in there on line 28 and line 40 just, going to.
43
44 Murphy: Okay we'll do a universal find replace, but I probably short-cuffed on my
45 speech patterns.
46
1
I Bartholomew: And on page 8, line 5 1 think it should be the Policy Committee, instead of
2 the Police Committee.
3
4 John Gwynne motioned to approve the minutes of June 5, 2014.
5 Jolene Herrera seconds the motion.
6 All in favor.
7
8 4. PUBLIC COMMENT— No public comment
9
10 5. DISCUSSION ITEMS
11
12 5.1 Coordinated public transit-Human Services Transportation Plan
13
14 White: Mr. Chairmen, good to see you, members of the Committee, thanks for
15 giving me the time to speak today. I promise I won't go through the slides
16 one by one and read them. What I'm here to do essentially today is to
17 describe the process and ask for your help and for your input in this
18 planning process. Seven years ago the NMDOT did a coordinated public
19 transit human services transportation plan. A coordinated plan is a
20 requirement for transit agencies to receive certain types of funding.
21
22 Bartholomew: Mr. White are you doing a presentation, I don't think we've got it up here
23 on the ... or we don't have our monitors up here.
24
25 White: Oh I see, well I'm so sorry. I've got one right here. I'm going to give you
26 the gist of this presentation that I have in front of me and it's up here but
27 I'm not going read every slide. You know as I was saying a few minutes
28 ago, seven years ago the New Mexico Department of Transportation
29 Transit and Rail Division did a coordinated Public Transit Human Services
30 Transportation Plan. A coordinated plan is a requirement for transit
31 agencies to receive certain kinds of funding 5310. In addition though, we
32 consider a coordinated plan to be an invaluable tool for any entity involved
33 in transportation planning; whether it be a social services agencies, the
34 education systems, the hospital, the systems for the elderly care, for any
35 entity that needs to justify getting funding for regional transit, coordinated
36 plan is invaluable. And what we do through the coordinated planning
37 process is come out to the entities, come out the agencies that RTPO's
38 (Regional Transportation Planning Organizations) and the Metropolitan
39 Planning Organizations and request input. We've based our planning
40 process on the RTPO boundaries throughout the state because RTPO's
41 include every area of New Mexico. Metropolitan Planning Organizations
42 are all included within the boundaries of a MTPO in one way or another.
43 We are currently working with all of the RTPO's except for the mid-region
44 and the reason is they've done their own planning process. We'll integrate
45 our plan with there's and the end process for this planning project. We're
46 looking at what kinds of steps, what kinds of information are available to
2
I us. Statewide Multimodal Plan, local governments, general plans, long-
2 range plans from the Regional Transportation Planning Organizations and
3 on....can you all see this slide? Okay great. I've included these particular
4 types of plans because what they are indicative of the types of planning
5 documents that useful: hospitals, schools, other entities can also put their
6 comments into this long-range coordinated plan, and we urge that. The
7 reason we urge that is, we know that if an entity is going forward with a
8 request for funding for public transit and they can say not only is this in our
9 planning document, but it's also in this entities, and in this entities and in
10 this entities, your chances of getting the funding are just significantly
11 stronger. We believe that this kind of planning process is essential to the
12 future of this state. Several reasons, one: we all know funding is tighter
13 and tighter and tighter and demand/need is higher and higher and higher.
14 What we're trying for within the transit and rail division is to create a model
15 planning process and a model planning outcome that can be used locally.
16 We know we're going to have to fight every other state' we're going to
17 have to justify it. We're going to do our best and we're doing that by
18 coming out to meet with you.
19 The update of ... the planning process is an update of a 2007 plan
20 and graphics will be developed and I'm going to kind of skip a little bit
21 here. Actually I'm going to go back. I thought I had it. Sorry I won't be
22 able to go back, but the planning process that we're involved in now is two
23 parts, one: meeting with the committees and commissions and the other is
24 we've hired a consultant to do demographic research. They're currently
25 looking at population trends, population needs, existing services and gaps
26 between the needs for services and the existing services. That's the first
27 phase. Me coming out here and them doing that research. We are going
28 to have four chapters, four sections on this. I'm not going to read all
29 those, but we're also going to go in and include a section on input that we
30 received from the different committees and commissions that we had to
31 meet with. We're looking at a timeline of preliminary meetings in August
32 and September. I will be coming back out to meet the policy committees
33 in November and December and a final plan will be developed in January.
34 Final plan will be sent to each of the organizations that we meet with.
35 We'll also send the draft out, and I said you know we're going to ask for
36 help from you, I'm asking for help from you. What I need is when you look
37 through the existing policies and recommendations at the end of this
38 document, tell me if they're still valid. If they're not valid, tell me why. If
39 they need to be expanded, tell me that. If they're new goals, objectives
40 and plans that need to be added to this planning document, tell us. We'll
41 integrate those into the document. We'll then send out a ... we've already
42 gone over this. Existing strategy, these are from the 2007 plan. We will
43 also go in and when we integrate the comments that we receive from you,
44 we'll put in an analysis of why these are important. We will send out the
45 draft plan to this committee and to the other committees and we'll ask for
46 your input. Timing is essential, it's a very tight timeline and we know it.
3
I Our funding stream is contractually limited at this time and so we are
2 going to stick with this process.
3 And essentially that's what I came here to do, give you this input. 1
4 will be sending out a revised set of slides and I'll ask that those be
5 distributed, PowerPoints and so that each of you will have the existing
6 goals and objectives. The 2007 plan is also available online, so you can
7 go online, you'll be able to look at the plan in its entirety and you'll be able
8 to take some time I think with that. I'm always available, my phone
9 number, my office phone is right there, my email address is there. If I'm
10 not in the office, feel free leave a message. I'm really good about getting
11 back with people within 24 hours unless I'm just not available. I think that
12 this is an essential kind of a project. For those of you who don't know me,
13 my first job was as an intern with Dona Ana County, I became senior land
14 use planner for Dona Ana County, went on to work in Socorro County as a
15 land use planner and I've been in transportation planning for the last 12
16 years, totally committed to this process and to the future of Dona Ana
17 County. We support transit and we support the processes of planning for
18 transportation issues in the state. I thank you all for your time, but I'll
19 stand for questions, if you have any.
20
21 Bartholomew: Thank you Mr. White. Are there any questions from the committee at the
22 moment? And you said your timeline; you're going to be coming back to
23 RPO's and MPO's in ...
24
25 White: November and December.
26
27 Bartholomew: Okay and then the final draft in your timeline ...
28
29 White: I'm going to send out a draft in late November
30
31 Bartholomew: Late November
32
33 White: And then I will have a final document in January.
34
35 Bartholomew: Okay thank you.
36
37 White: Thank you also, thank all of you.
38
39 Bartholomew: Thank you Greg.
40
41 5.2 Transportation Alternative Program Process Discussion
42
43 Herrera: Mr. Chair, I guess I'm up. So before the meeting I handed out a piece of
44 paper, it's the draft FY16-17 transportation alternatives programs
45 schedule, so if you can just pull that out. The stuff that I'm going over isn't
46 on that piece of paper, but it's good to know kind of where we are in the
4
I process. I don't have a formal presentation plan; I was just going to go
2 over some of the points because we are still internally developing the
3 criteria and some of the guidelines for the TAP program. But so far there's
4 been some major changes based on some feedback that we received
5 from the MPO's and RPO's back in May. We had a meeting and got a
6 bunch of feedback and so we try to incorporate a lot of that into our new
7 process. The first big change, I don't know if you all remember the
8 ranking sheets, but the very first kind of section was asking for
9 certifications, and that confused I think a lot of the agencies, because
10 without funding it's impossible to kind of have your certifications already
11 done and we were awarding points for that. And so it really wasn't fair to a
12 lot of the programmatic types of applications like safe routes to schools,
13 transit stuff and so we took that section completely out, so we won't be
14 asking for certifications ... if you happen to have them for some reason
15 you can always put that in your application, but it's not something that's
16 going to be given points anymore. And it's also a way for us to not ding
17 the programmatic applications.
18 Another thing that we're doing is we are reducing the number of
19 planning points that were ... that are going to be allowed, so there was a
20 section that said you know for every plan that you have in your project you
21 get one point, and what we kind of discovered is that the larger entities
22 tend to have more plans, they you know comprehensive plan and all kinds
23 of things that maybe some of the smaller communities don't have and so
24 we felt that that was a little bit unfair maybe for the smaller communities
25 who just don't have the capacity for developing a lot of the plans. So we'll
26 be reducing those points. Again we haven't really discussed how or by
27 what factor, but we won't put as much emphasis on having your project in
28 a slew of plans.
29 So now the really big one, we're going to a statewide process for
30 selection, so that's something that we heard good things and bad things
31 about at the meeting in May. The decision was made based on the fact
32 that it seems like a lot of the smaller projects that were submitted were
33 kind of piecemealed together. Whereas if maybe more funding would
34 have been available, we would have received larger requests, they would
35 have been able to do complete projects. That's kind of the basis for it.
36 The other thing that happened, is we got a whole lot of projects and that's
37 not a bad thing by any means, but it's really difficult to try to track and get
38 all these projects through the process when you're tracking $120.000
39 projects, whereas if you had one one-million dollar project, it's easier to
40 help the entity get through that process. With that being said, there still
41 are population goals that we'll have to meet, so there's the rule category of
42 TAP funding, there's the small urban category, and then the flexible
43 category. There's also a large urban, but that goes exclusively to EI Paso
44 MPO and to the Albuquerque MPO region, so we won't see any of that
45 funding here.
5
I So one other thing that we're requiring is that all TAP projects apply
2 for both design and construction unless you receive ... your entity receives
3 prior approval from the design regions and so for all of us, it would be the
4 south region design local government project development engineer who
5 would kind of make that call whether they think that your local government
6 could handle doing your own internal design without requesting funding for
7 that. And the reason that we made that call is because we had a lot of the
8 smaller local governments this year who didn't request design and didn't
9 realize all of the things that they had to do, and so we ended up pushing
10 their projects and giving them a design phase. We want to try and make it
11 as easy as we can for everybody and we found that that's one thing that
12 could possible help.
13 Again with the statewide ranking process, we do realize that we
14 probably will be funding higher dollar projects, but that does not mean that
15 we're excluding the smaller dollar amounts, so for instance Las Cruces
16 Public Schools got the safe routes to school coordinator for $30,000 a
17 year, we're by no means excluding those kind of projects. If you have a
18 sidewalk project that only costs $100,000 but it's going to make a really
19 big difference, apply for it. We're just I guess kind of taking the cap ... the
20 ceiling off of how much you can apply for. And that's kind of the major
21 points. Like I said, we're still developing the guide, it should be out
22 probably towards the end of this month in preparation for this September
23 call for projects and that will be for fiscal years 2016 and 2017. The intent
24 being probably to have your design funds in fiscal year '16 and your
25 construction in fiscal year '17. So if there are any questions I can try to
26 answer them more ... talk to our TAP coordinator and get back with you.
27
28 Bartholomew: Yes Louis?
29
30 Grijalva Mr. Chairmen, Jolene. How much money is going to be available
31 throughout the state?
32
33 Herrera: Oh, I'm sorry. I should have started with that. There's just over five
34 million dollars available. And again that's broken up into the different
35 population categories, but that at least gives you some sort of base point.
36
37 Bartholomew: Any other questions from the committee?
38
39 5.3 Truck Routes Discussion
40
41 Murphy: Thank you Mr. Chair. As you walked in, you were passed out a map that
42 was created off of some of the MPO shape files that were labeled as truck
43 routes. Some correspondence I've been having back and forth with Willie
44 and figure that this is probably a good time that we want to update this. 1
45 wanted to get this out to the committee and start thinking about what we
46 want to change as far as this. The history of truck routes within the region
6
I and I believe the city council adopted a truck route map back in the early
2 '90's. At some point in the early 2000's the MPO inherited the ownership
3 of those shape files, but I couldn't find any evidence of us formally
4 adjusting them or adopting them as an MPO document, so I would ... 1
5 want to do that at this point and I thought this TAC meeting would be a
6 good opportunity to introduce it to the technical staff in the region and then
7 we can keep bringing this back until we've refined it to a point where we
8 can adopt it through the Policy Committee. With that I'd like to entertain
9 any discussion.
10
11 Bartholomew: Any questions from the committee on this? Mrs. Herrera.
12
13 Herrera: Mr. Chair thanks. Tom can you just tell me what the intent was or what do
14 they mean by truck route exactly? Is that just trying to limit the trucks to
15 those routes or ... just so we're all clear on what exactly that means?
16
17 Murphy: From my vantage point, I think it's ... where local governments ... where it
18 allows them to place restrictions on larger trucks entering into various
19 neighborhoods. I believe that the last time there's a portion of Alameda
20 from Madrid to Picacho that was specifically prevented from having trucks
21 on them. Those of you familiar with the area have seen that that place is
22 signed for no trucks over six wheels. What this map does is enable that.
23 We do understand that NMDOT and USDOT routes have to be on the
24 truck route map, but beyond that I think there's local discretion.
25
26 Bartholomew: Mr. Altamirano.
27
28 Altamirano: Tom I have a question. On hazardous cargo and stuff, would this also
29 pertain to the truck route? Is that designated in this particular document?
30
31 Murphy: This doesn't specifically address hazardous cargo. Historically within the
32 state, we've been hesitant with ... to designate specific routes with the
33 exception I think of the WIP route as it goes around Santa Fe. I'm not
34 aware of any other hazardous routing in the state. I think that we have a
35 lot of military instillations within the state and so there's really been a little
36 ... there's been hesitation because of that to limit where hazardous cargo
37 can go. And then you know additionally the same thing applies with the
38 US routes and the interstate routes is that those can't be limited.
39
40 Altamirano: I'm sorry, did you say can't or can?
41
42 Murphy: They cannot be limited. We can't place a hazardous cargo or truck
43 restriction on a US route or interstate highway route.
44
45 Bartholomew: Mr. Roman.
46
7
I Roman: Mr. Chair, I think it might help the committee here to understand a little bit
2 more about how this affects us and some of the sections or departments
3 or agency that you all represent. We get various calls from residents who
4 want restrictions placed on roads, namely for 18 wheelers and even
5 buses, because they feel like these types of vehicles don't belong in
6 certain areas or that maybe even potentially the roadways aren't built to a
7 specific standard to be able to accommodate the larger vehicles. And in
8 communicating with Tom, what we do when we get a question like that or
9 a concern is we want to look at whether a roadway is on the truck route
10 map, because if it is we're not going to restrict it because there's already a
11 general understanding somewhere that these maps are available and the
12 information is available for public use and so people generally make their
13 routes based on this information. That being said there probably should
14 be some kind of mechanism and this is probably the best arena to do ... to
15 discuss this because R does effect bus routes for example, it will effect
16 school bus, the decisions for school buses and I think even to the point of
17 public works and the pavement conditions of some of these roads,
18 because if we allow these trucks to go on to some of these facilities then
19 we have to be agreeable that it's sufficient to accommodate them. So in
20 saying that, that's how it effects our operations. We are mostly a
21 maintenance type of operation, but as far as traffic engineering is
22 concerned, if we ... we will consider restricting if we have knowledge that
23 trucks or buses or anything that's considered a larger vehicle such as that,
24 if they're using that facility more often than you would expect then we will
25 go ahead and put a restriction like that, so hopefully that will help to
26 understand where this stems from.
27
28 Bartholomew: Thank you. John.
29
30 Gwynne: Yes, just one quick question Tom. When it comes to the restrictions that
31 are potentially being proposed or are already in place, is it based on the
32 vehicle size, vehicle weight? How does all that play into that?
33
34 Murphy: Mr. Chair, Mr. Gwynne. The MPO itself does not impose any restrictions,
35 we just merely ... we'll merely designate what's a truck route. I believe it'll
36 be up to your local ordinances to define what those restrictions will be.
37
38 Gwynne: Thank you.
39
40 Bartholomew: Mr. Altamirano.
41
42 Altamirano: Mr. Chair, Tom. I understand the side ... the part from the city. Now
43 county wise, for example; let's say the East Mesa where you have several
44 trucks that are going up 70 and coming down either way. Somewhere
45 down the line someone had told me that the frontage roads were built in
46 that particular area, which would be North Main all the way up to the pass,
8
1 that the frontage roads were built ... there's more construction put into
2 them to account for semi-trucks off of the frontage road, would anybody
3 have information regarding that? I don't know if that's a DOT or New
4 Mexico Highway or whom, but because we're seeing more and more
5 semi-trucks coming off of 70 getting on and off of the frontage roads, so 1
6 was just curious especially with the construction that's up there right now
7 as to the frontage roads and possible lot of wear and tear that hadn't been
8 anticipated.
9
10 Herrera: Mr. Chair, I can probably try to answer some of that. So US-70 on the
11 frontage roads are an NMDOT, well they're USDOT routes and the
12 frontage roads are indeed designed to handle the traffic from US-70,
13 should something happen. Should there be a wreck or anything ... that
14 there purpose is to detour traffic onto them, so they were built to withstand
15 trucks, the lane widths and that kind of thing were determined based on
16 semis. We can't restrict them from using the frontage roads. I hope that
17 sort of helps.
18
19 Bartholomew: Tom I had a question. You said this was developed in the '90's this one
20 that we're looking at?
21
22 Murphy: Mr. Chair, yes from my research of that I found a city council ordinance '92
23 or something like that. Mr. Valencia probably voted on it where it was
24 adopted, that was the last official action I could find. But I think here at
25 this level, what we want to do is you know have it periodically reviewed
26 and ratified by this body.
27
28 Bartholomew: And once more, what are the criteria that ... was it strictly empirical stuff
29 like, you know the ability of the street to handle this or was it neighborhood
30 concern involved with it too or?
31
32 Murphy: I imagine the bulk of it were the neighborhood concerns, the connecting
33 industrial zoning to the major cross country and cross regional routes and
34 then once those factors are decided, I think the construction standards will
35 look to this map to as far as then now they do construction on any
36 particular facility.
37
38 Bartholomew: The reason I ask is if you know there was neighborhood concerns, as
39 Willie knows there was one and he was eluding to it in the Mesquite Street
40 neighborhood, that I only heard from one person that city's community
41 liaison, Jaime, had commented that there seemed to be some issues with
42 the type of traffic on Mesquite Street, the heavy traffic and I don't know
43 whether that's something to work with her with to get more of the sense of
44 the community sense of what the Mesquite area should be.
45
9
I Murphy That's a good ... I think I'll forward this to her for some comment. That's a
2 good idea.
3
4 Herrera: Mr. Chair. I had another question Tom. Will this be in any way connected
5 to the MTP update? I mean will you be taking maybe this as a portion of
6 out for public input?
7
8 Murphy I think that that would probably ensure that we do look at it periodically if
9 we start including this, it would be similar to the functional classification
10 procedure thoroughfare. So I think absolutely that's something that we
11 can and probably should do. Thank you.
12
13 Bartholomew: Jack.
14
15 Valencia: Thank you Mr. Chair. First I'd like to apologize for being late. I had the
16 wrong meeting location, so I was rushing around town. But in respect to
17 Tom's comments and going back to the '92 ordinance, there were a
18 couple of things that were evolving at that time; one with regard to the
19 Mesquite Street stuff, is that they had some weight requirements only for
20 delivery trucks only, as I recall to be allowed in that historic area.
21 Secondly there were two projects that were going on simultaneous with
22 regard to that issue; that was the main street reconstruction ...
23 reconstructing it again but back in the '90's in Picacho Avenue also were
24 main construction projects of interest that had high truck traffic and so
25 there was a desire to utilize the interstate system and now that the
26 interstate system is improved with the ability to take traffic down 1-10 with
27 the most recent improvements, that should you know create greater
28 opportunity to move traffic that way.
29
30 Bartholomew: Any other comments from the committee? Mrs. Herrera.
31
32 Herrera: Sorry just one more. It's something that the policy committee of this MPO
33 talks about a lot, is how to restrict trucks going down US 70, Main Street
34 kind of through town and I know that that's mentioned a lot. Jack is the
35 upgrade of the interchange and how trucks are able to go around now and
36 maneuver that interchange without issues, but like Tom said earlier, until
37 legislation really changes at the state level, we're not allowed to restrict
38 trucks on that route, but it definitely is a discussion that happens often.
39 The DOT is aware of the desires of the city to do that and we're not
40 against it we just don't have the ability to do that.
41
42 Valencia: So it requires state legislation as opposed to adopting a city ordinance
43 restricting truck traffic.
44
45 Herrera: Yes, because it is a USDOT route.
46
10
I Valencia: Okay.
2
3 Bartholomew: Any other comments, seeing none, thank you Tom. Did you get some
4 good information?
5
6 Murphy: Yes I did. I think we'll finish this up ... we'll include it in our upcoming
7 public involvement, which ... at your September meeting, hope to have the
8 finalized meeting schedule so everyone here can attend it they so desire.
9 From the staff request and I think I know, Mesquite Street, but I'd like to
10 you know any other roads that should be included or should be excluded
11 from this map from the standpoint of this committee would be helpful for
12 staff to hear in the next couple of months. Thank you.
13
14 Bartholomew: Thank you Tom.
15
16 6. COMMITTEE AND STAFF COMMENTS— No comments
17
18 Bartholomew: Next, comments from the committee at this point in time? Seeing none,
19 are there any staff comments?
20
21 Murphy: Just in case, I guess we had some change in staff since we last met in
22 June. Chowdhury Siddiqui was hired by the Mid-Region Council of
23 Governments to work as a modeler for them, and so currently our
24 associate transportation planner position is vacant. We'll be having
25 interviews on that I believe beginning next week, so we hope to have that
26 position filled rather quickly, but I think you all missed being able to tell
27 Chowdhury goodbye.
28
29 Bartholomew: Thank you Tom.
30
31 7. PUBLIC COMMENTS — No public comments
32
33 8. ADJOURNMENT
34
35 Meeting adjourned at 4:42 p.m.
36
37 Jack Valencia motioned to adjourn.
38 Larry Altamirano seconds the motion.
39
40
41
42
43 Cha'
12