Nebraska Local Technical Assistance Program

Jamie Bright Author

09/25/2024 Added

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Description

Transportation, whether by car, truck, bicycle or foot, is a key part of making a community a great place to live, work, and play. Nebraska LTAP is a Nebraska Extension resource that may be able to help identify solutions to some of your transportation problems. In this session, Megan Patent-Nygren will talk about the technical assistance resources available to communities and highlight a project recently done in Kimball. Recorded 7/10/2024.

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[00:00:00.000]I'm Jamie Bright. I work for Rural Proud Bird in Nebraska. I'm an education educator in the Southern Panhandle.
[00:00:12.900]And let's see, Cheryl already introduced herself and she is driving, so we won't make her do that again, but Cheryl has joined us as well.
[00:00:24.000]Maria, why don't you go next?
[00:00:28.000]My name is Maria Cantu Hines and I work as a Rural Prosperity Nebraska in the East, Central, Northeast area of Nebraska.
[00:00:42.000]Rural Prosperity Nebraska.
[00:00:45.000]Maria.
[00:00:47.000]Hannah, why don't you go next?
[00:00:50.000]Hey y'all, my name is Hannah Robinson and I am the director at Box Butte Development Corporation.
[00:00:56.000]So we do economic development in Alliance and Hemmingford here in the Panhandle.
[00:01:03.000]Thanks, Hannah.
[00:01:05.000]I think you said Allie, but I'm not positive about that.
[00:01:12.000]I'm Allie Tyree with WNCC.
[00:01:15.000]I'm the director of the Alliance campus for another few days here.
[00:01:21.000]We do have our new campus director. She's just in another meeting right now, but hopefully she'll jump in as soon as she can.
[00:01:24.000]Thank you, Allie. We appreciate you joining us even though you're almost done.
[00:01:32.000]Absolutely. I'm glad to be here.
[00:01:34.000]It's nice that you have a little bit of overlap with the new director.
[00:01:38.000]Yes, definitely.
[00:01:42.000]Jordan, why don't you go next? And Anthony, it looks like you're both in the room.
[00:01:49.000]Hey, I'm Jordan Dietrich. I'm the executive director at Twin Cities Development.
[00:01:52.000]Hi everyone, Anthony Girola, the community development specialist here at Twin Cities Development.
[00:02:01.000]Kathleen?
[00:02:08.000]You're still muted.
[00:02:16.000]Hi everyone, I'm the Alliance Chamber of Commerce director. Is it working now?
[00:02:21.000]Yes.
[00:02:22.000]Hello, sorry.
[00:02:24.000]Thank you.
[00:02:29.000]Brandy, would you mind introducing yourself?
[00:02:33.000]I forgot, you don't have a microphone or camera.
[00:02:37.000]Thank you. Brandy is the City of Fitman, Cheyenne County Economic Development Director.
[00:02:45.000]Joni, do you mind introducing yourself?
[00:02:50.000]Good morning, everyone. Joni Jesperson from Mobius Communications. Nice to see everyone.
[00:03:04.000]And it looks like Sally just joined us. Sally, if you're able to, would you mind introducing yourself?
[00:03:15.000]Good morning.
[00:03:18.000]Good morning.
[00:03:19.000]Good morning.
[00:03:22.000]Would you tell everyone who you are?
[00:03:26.000]I'm Sally Saad. I'm the Director of Business Services at Phelps County Development Corporation in Holderidge.
[00:03:35.000]And what did I miss anyone?
[00:03:40.000]I think I got it. So we will go ahead and introduce our speaker for today.
[00:03:45.000]Megan Sutton-Nygren. Did I get your name close?
[00:03:48.000]Pretty close. I never remember.
[00:03:54.000]Megan worked for LTAP, which is the Local Technical Assistance, that's part of the University of Nebraska.
[00:04:04.000]And Megan, go ahead and add anything and you can start a new presentation.
[00:04:09.000]All right. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks for inviting me today.
[00:04:12.000]I think I've been in one of these before, but it's been a bit.
[00:04:17.000]So as Jamie mentioned, my name is Megan. I am with our local technical assistance program.
[00:04:23.000]So we are one of those federal mandate things.
[00:04:26.000]So the federal highway bill for the last about 40 years has required that every state have an LTAP.
[00:04:35.000]And it's up to the state DOT for how they want to administer that program.
[00:04:41.000]So with a mix of state and federal transportation funds.
[00:04:46.000]We are contracted with University of Nebraska Extension.
[00:04:49.000]So I work for Extension, just like Jamie does.
[00:04:54.000]And our focus is on transportation, specifically our local transportation agencies.
[00:05:01.000]So we're making sure that our city street departments and our county highway departments and our tribal agencies have access to new innovations, technologies.
[00:05:15.000]Low and reduced costs for free training for their crews and their supervisors, helping them be compliant with state and federal statutes and regulations and what they do.
[00:05:28.000]My focus is primarily on safety. I've been with LTAP for just over 10 years now.
[00:05:34.000]I am not an engineer. My undergraduate degree is in ag education, and I have a master's degree in community and regional planning.
[00:05:44.000]I can speak engineer pretty well now, but I'm still not like non-engineer, don't have a P.E.
[00:05:50.000]That's not on the radar. We do a variety of things, so we offer lots of classes.
[00:05:57.000]I spend all spring traveling the state, teaching people how to set up work zones and how to be flaggers so that we can safely navigate you all from point A to point B.
[00:06:07.000]And we can upgrade that infrastructure system at the same time, hopefully in a safe and reliable way.
[00:06:13.000]I spend a lot of the rest of my time focused on the manual and uniform traffic control devices, which is a federal regulatory document.
[00:06:24.000]The old one is about 850 pages, and the new one that's in process of being adopted in Nebraska is about 1100 pages.
[00:06:35.000]And it's all the rules for everything that tells you how to use a road or a street or a site.
[00:06:42.000]Or a sidewalk. So signs, pavement markings, signals, traffic cones, crosswalks, all of those kinds of things.
[00:06:53.000]That really impact a lot of what we do, both on the work side, the transportation agency providing transportation facilities, and as users in the public sphere.
[00:07:08.000]My counterpart or my coworkers.
[00:07:11.000]Work on bridge programs and pavement programs and asset management things and helping agencies figure out how to train their new employees to get their CDL licenses because those rules have all gotten really complicated in the last several years.
[00:07:29.000]We teach soft skill classes.
[00:07:32.000]A lot of our highway superintendents are crew leaders who suddenly get put in those positions.
[00:07:40.000]Because they're really good bridge builders or they're really good transportation professionals now need to make presentations to the public and to their county boards and administer a program and administer a department.
[00:07:54.000]And so really anything that has any role in a transportation agency is a program that we might either deliver ourselves or bring in contract instructors to deliver.
[00:08:06.000]Any employee of a local public agency.
[00:08:09.000]So typically a city, a county, or a tribe in Nebraska can participate in almost all of our programs free of charge.
[00:08:20.000]And that even includes some of their travel cost reimbursements if they have to travel somewhere to do that.
[00:08:27.000]So I'd encourage you to check out our website or refer it to your transportation people.
[00:08:33.000]It's ltap.unl.edu.
[00:08:38.000]One of the things I get to fit in on the side around our conferences and workshops and those classes and those kinds of things are technical assistance projects.
[00:08:49.000]Because one of the pieces where our technical expectations as an LTAP overlap with what we do in rural prosperity Nebraska and my background as a planner is in placemaking.
[00:09:04.000]How do we continue to make those communities that we have.
[00:09:07.000]Communities that we have across the state, places that people want to live, people want to bring their businesses to, people want to travel to and spend their tourism dollars, those kinds of things.
[00:09:16.000]Having a safe, efficient, effective, accessible transportation network is a piece of that.
[00:09:24.000]If you have walkable streets, for example, in your downtown district, those are going to help, you know, boost people's interest in wanting to be in your downtown district.
[00:09:36.000]Sometimes I get to overlap with some of those projects.
[00:09:39.000]Usually those are site-specific, so a specific community has a question, has maybe what they see as a problem spot, and they need some ideas for how they can go about fixing that.
[00:09:57.000]I'm one of those people that firmly believes there's usually more than one solution to any given problem.
[00:10:05.000]So that type of work that I get to do is really a fun piece of that.
[00:10:10.000]So our question came to us actually via Jamie from the city of Kimball about -- it hasn't been a whole year yet.
[00:10:24.000]Last fall, they had an intersection in their downtown area that there was some concern that maybe it needed more stop signs.
[00:10:34.000]To kind of paint the picture, it's a north-south street that at one time was the state highway.
[00:10:40.000]The state highway has officially been bypassed in that part of town.
[00:10:44.000]That's a complicated thing that we'll talk a little bit about.
[00:10:48.000]And there's still a lot of traffic, but there's businesses lining the street.
[00:10:54.000]It leads up to an intersection with a state highway that has a stoplight or a traffic signal, as we call them in transportation speak.
[00:11:03.000]And, you know, a fair amount of traffic.
[00:11:06.000]And so some questions that maybe this would be a good location for a stop sign.
[00:11:10.000]So we reached out to the city through Jamie and said, hey, here's this service that we offer.
[00:11:18.000]In legalese, a stop sign is a regulatory sign.
[00:11:25.000]So a stop sign is a sign that if you would choose not to observe it as a motorist, you could get a ticket.
[00:11:32.000]For choosing not to follow that sign. Right. Things like stop signs, speed limit signs, do not enter one way.
[00:11:41.000]Anything that is a sign that if you see it and you opt not to do it, you could get a ticket.
[00:11:47.000]Those are classed as regulatory signs because they're enforceable by law enforcement.
[00:11:52.000]They're a little bit different than, say, a warning sign that there's a blind intersection up ahead or there's a crosswalk or there's something that you need to be aware of.
[00:12:01.000]Pay a little extra attention. But there's nothing ticketable from a law enforcement standpoint.
[00:12:07.000]So if we're going to put in a new regulatory sign, any one of the hundreds that there are.
[00:12:15.000]There's an engineering process that has to take place in order for that sign to be legally installed and become enforceable by law enforcement.
[00:12:24.000]And the first step of that is an engineering study to see if the sign is warranted.
[00:12:30.000]They're challenging to get done because a lot of our engineers in the state have to carry pretty heavy liability insurance for doing these types of studies.
[00:12:42.000]That's expensive, but they can't charge a lot for the study.
[00:12:46.000]So not a lot of engineers want to do them, and they're kind of pricey for a community.
[00:12:54.000]So one of the things that we can do is collect a lot of the data that the engineer needs.
[00:12:59.000]Free a charge, or we can help the city collect their own data so that they can hopefully reduce the cost of that engineering study a little bit.
[00:13:09.000]So we reached out to the -- I had a chat with the city administrator at Kimball, and we were like, okay, let's talk about your stop sign.
[00:13:20.000]Here's what you need to have an engineering study.
[00:13:22.000]We can pull your crash data.
[00:13:24.000]We can do the traffic study, and then, you know, if the data warrants it
[00:13:28.000]and you decide to pursue it, you've got pieces that the engineer is going to need.
[00:13:33.000]So they said, hey, that sounds great.
[00:13:36.000]So we, as part of that process, decided to go ahead and do what we call a full road safety audit.
[00:13:43.000]And this is a great resource if you have a community that, again, has that spot
[00:13:49.000]or maybe a couple of similar spots with similar characteristics that just people just don't feel safe about them.
[00:13:57.000]And so we can we can do this mix of quantitative and qualitative research to help you find out what your options are.
[00:14:06.000]So the first step of that, of course, is always to collect data.
[00:14:10.000]So I pulled the crash data for this intersection of Second Street and Walnut Street.
[00:14:20.000]No, just Walnut. So the North South Street and then second is this East West Street.
[00:14:26.000]That's where that traffic signal is with the highway down south.
[00:14:30.000]So we have some crashes. We go a block out in each direction for an intersection in an urban area.
[00:14:37.000]And there were 10 crashes that in the previous 10 years that contributed to the study.
[00:14:47.000]This is where I started scratching my head because we'd had all these conversations.
[00:14:51.000]There'd been testimony at city council meetings about stop signs.
[00:14:55.000]But none of the crashes were things that stop signs would have impacted.
[00:15:04.000]So if I have an intersection that is maybe a good candidate for stop signs, what do you think that the crash data is going to show me?
[00:15:13.000]What kinds of crashes are going to happen at that intersection?
[00:15:21.000]One car hits the side of another?
[00:15:24.000]Yes.
[00:15:24.880]Like a T-bone crash where somebody is driving through and somebody runs into them.
[00:15:29.880]As we're turning, we pull out in front of somebody and they tap our back bumper or they hit the side panel, the rear side panel of our car.
[00:15:39.880]None of these crashes were actually in the intersection.
[00:15:43.880]There are a couple that are a little bit close.
[00:15:46.880]All of the crashes in the crash data were people that either were trying to park or un-parking
[00:15:53.880]or while their car was parking.
[00:15:53.880]There are a couple that are a little bit close.
[00:15:53.880]All of the crashes in the crash data were people that either were trying to park or un-parking
[00:15:53.880]or while their car was parking.
[00:15:53.880]There are a couple that are a little bit close.
[00:15:53.880]All of the crashes in the crash data were people that either were trying to park or un-parking
[00:15:53.880]or while their car was parking.
[00:15:53.880]There are a couple that are a little bit closer.
[00:15:53.880]or while their car was parked, somebody hit it. So we need some parking education maybe.
[00:15:59.980]With the crash data and the request really just didn't line up, which was fun for me because
[00:16:08.180]I get to dig a little deeper, right? So we had, again, some were icy road conditions,
[00:16:18.200]some were low visibility spots. A couple were in front of the bar and people left the bar
[00:16:24.700]and somebody hit their car while they'd been parked. One kind of interesting crash where
[00:16:30.520]somebody hit the accelerator instead of the brake and drove into the bank.
[00:16:35.420]That's always, you know, we don't see those every day. None of them were severe crashes,
[00:16:41.400]no severe injury crashes, no fatality crashes, fortunately. So those are things we look for as
[00:16:47.220]well.
[00:16:47.520]Um, so the next step then, um, I went out, one of my colleagues joined me and we did just a
[00:16:56.080]visual assessment. We went to the location, we walked around, what did we see? And here's kind
[00:17:01.460]of a generic checklist that we use in all situations. So some of the things apply a
[00:17:06.540]little bit more than others, but we're going to look at, you know, alignment, do the streets
[00:17:11.200]line up? Sometimes we have an intersection where, you know, there's a jog in the middle.
[00:17:17.500]Or it's not even 90 degree angles. In rural areas, we have a speed issue. We know that
[00:17:27.900]our number one safety concern is people drive too fast. That's the leading cause of crashes
[00:17:34.340]in rural areas. So we always want to see how's traffic traveling through the area.
[00:17:40.700]What kind of pedestrian facilities do we have? That wasn't really a part of the initial
[00:17:47.260]requirement.
[00:17:47.480]But anytime we're in a downtown area where we know pedestrian safety is important,
[00:17:53.140]we're going to check out those sidewalks, those crosswalks.
[00:17:55.880]What kind of signage is there? Is it compliant? Is it in good condition?
[00:18:00.720]Are our roads, how wide are our streets? How wide are our parking spaces?
[00:18:07.100]What kind of angle are the parking spaces at? This is really a laundry list where we
[00:18:12.580]kind of try to look at anything and everything that could be a contributing factor.
[00:18:16.760]Um, so Linda and I did that. We also set up our traffic counter so that we could record
[00:18:23.400]traffic through that intersection from all directions. And we use an electronic counter that
[00:18:30.900]will tell us not just a count of vehicles and give us a timestamp for that, but it'll tell us
[00:18:37.660]a general vehicle type. So is it heavy truck traffic? Is it motorcycle traffic? Is it sedans?
[00:18:45.000]Those kinds of things.
[00:18:46.920]It'll tell us the speed. So we can, again, have hard data to see if we have a lot of speeders
[00:18:52.820]through the area that we're checking. So we set that up and we actually got to do that twice
[00:19:00.480]because we had a technical update that needed to happen with our counter.
[00:19:03.880]So it's a little box and it hangs out on a light pole and hopefully people don't notice it and it
[00:19:13.260]stays there the duration of the study.
[00:19:15.260]We do have a couple of different types of traffic counters.
[00:19:18.740]This one we do because of the software license that's required.
[00:19:25.740]We set this one up, take it down, collect the data and issue out the report.
[00:19:31.760]We also have some DIY traffic counters that we can check out free of charge to a county or
[00:19:39.760]municipality for their use anytime.
[00:19:44.100]They're first come, first serve.
[00:19:45.300]If they're available, you can borrow them.
[00:19:46.920]Otherwise, we put you on a list until they become available.
[00:19:51.680]So that's a resource that would be available to any county or municipality.
[00:19:56.800]Once we've got the data then, so that's our quantitative piece.
[00:20:01.820]That's hard numbers.
[00:20:03.540]The next part of the audit process is to pull together a stakeholder focus group.
[00:20:09.420]So here we want some technical people.
[00:20:12.940]In this particular case, our county superintendent,
[00:20:15.840]who's been there for a long time and is well respected for what he does
[00:20:21.260]by the county superintendent community.
[00:20:24.340]He joined in.
[00:20:25.900]We had their street superintendent.
[00:20:28.360]We also want people from the business community, elected officials.
[00:20:34.520]It's a true multidisciplinary stakeholder group.
[00:20:40.140]In this particular case, we weren't able to get anyone
[00:20:42.820]from the business community.
[00:20:42.920]We didn't get anyone from local law enforcement available that day.
[00:20:46.480]But that's also a group that, you know, they see the crashes.
[00:20:49.900]They write the tickets.
[00:20:50.860]They sometimes have some information that doesn't make it
[00:20:54.680]into the crash reports that are useful to add.
[00:20:58.780]So we kind of do the same thing when we bring the stakeholder group together.
[00:21:02.520]I prepare a packet that has the crash data,
[00:21:05.300]kind of explains the premise of why we're there
[00:21:07.580]and what we're looking for.
[00:21:08.560]And then, so here is the map.
[00:21:12.800]We simplified of the crashes
[00:21:14.640]and I had a summary of each of those crashes
[00:21:16.620]as a part of the packet.
[00:21:20.340]So what happened?
[00:21:22.860]You'll notice they all have parking related.
[00:21:26.680]We give them the same checklist.
[00:21:28.500]We go out and we walk the street
[00:21:30.780]and we do a visual assessment.
[00:21:32.120]What's there?
[00:21:33.840]What do we see?
[00:21:34.640]We want to find not only what's potentially wrong
[00:21:38.620]and gives us an opportunity for improvement,
[00:21:41.860]but what are
[00:21:42.680]we doing well?
[00:21:43.560]In this particular case, there were lots of things
[00:21:46.360]that we were on the right track with.
[00:21:49.500]I'll give you some photos that we took.
[00:21:54.060]This is looking southbound from the intersection.
[00:21:56.540]We can see it's a nice wide street.
[00:21:59.080]There is a hill there
[00:22:00.480]underneath the railroad track
[00:22:03.400]for an underpass,
[00:22:04.300]but you've got a full block of sight distance.
[00:22:06.960]At 25 miles an hour,
[00:22:08.360]that's respectable.
[00:22:09.880]The crosswalks are marked
[00:22:12.560]and we have good,
[00:22:14.360]effective, readable
[00:22:16.220]signage.
[00:22:18.540]Our handicap spots
[00:22:20.520]are marked. Our curbs are painted.
[00:22:22.500]We've got center
[00:22:24.400]lines that are painted.
[00:22:25.340]This is
[00:22:28.200]westbound.
[00:22:29.040]We do have some street trees.
[00:22:31.740]Street trees are really hard for me.
[00:22:33.800]As a planner, I know that street trees
[00:22:36.140]make a street walkable,
[00:22:37.780]pleasant. It reduces
[00:22:40.220]the temperature of the environment.
[00:22:42.440]People that live on streets
[00:22:44.020]with street trees tend to be healthier.
[00:22:45.840]As a road
[00:22:48.020]safety person,
[00:22:48.960]80% of the people that leave their lane
[00:22:52.060]and hit a tree die.
[00:22:53.620]There's a
[00:22:56.040]safety issue there. Not at 25
[00:22:57.880]miles an hour in town, but
[00:22:59.880]when we get outside of town or we get to
[00:23:01.860]faster speed limits,
[00:23:02.960]hitting things on the edge of the roadway
[00:23:05.720]ends badly,
[00:23:07.100]particularly if you're not wearing your seatbelt.
[00:23:09.560]Street
[00:23:12.320]trees are a little hard for me.
[00:23:13.880]There's some conflict there because my
[00:23:16.040]planter self knows that they're wonderful.
[00:23:17.660]My safety self knows that people
[00:23:20.200]hit them,
[00:23:20.720]and sometimes that ends badly.
[00:23:23.460]But we don't
[00:23:25.960]have anything
[00:23:28.100]that really obstructs our vision.
[00:23:29.800]In the photos, it looks a little
[00:23:32.000]bit more
[00:23:33.560]obstructed than it really does
[00:23:35.980]in person in this particular
[00:23:38.020]case. Here
[00:23:40.040]is the southbound look.
[00:23:42.200]And we can see that traffic signal
[00:23:43.700]that I mentioned.
[00:23:45.120]And our eastbound look.
[00:23:50.100]So we've got all four directions.
[00:23:52.260]The trees are a little bit farther off
[00:23:56.120]the stop signs than it appears
[00:23:58.120]in the photos. The stop
[00:24:00.100]signs that you can see that are here for that
[00:24:01.880]east-west street are
[00:24:03.580]new. They're at
[00:24:06.040]the proper height. They're
[00:24:07.800]in good condition. There's nothing
[00:24:09.900]in front of them. You can see them.
[00:24:12.080]And so
[00:24:13.680]initially
[00:24:15.520]things looked pretty good to me.
[00:24:18.080]There's nice wide sidewalks.
[00:24:19.460]There's benches on the sidewalks.
[00:24:22.440]So, you know, some amenities
[00:24:23.980]to encourage some pedestrians,
[00:24:26.080]some gathering kinds of things.
[00:24:28.240]When we had
[00:24:30.280]our focus group,
[00:24:31.460]we were talking about these things
[00:24:34.240]and one of the elected officials
[00:24:36.060]was like, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
[00:24:37.640]We haven't talked about the real issue at all. And I'm like,
[00:24:40.120]okay, another twist
[00:24:41.960]right? Because we started talking about
[00:24:44.020]stop signs and then we talked about
[00:24:45.920]parking and now we're going to talk about something
[00:24:48.040]new. So really one
[00:24:50.040]of the issues that was highlighted that came
[00:24:52.060]up in the focus group that would not had
[00:24:54.000]I just looked at the data, it's why we need
[00:24:56.040]that piece as well,
[00:24:56.980]is there's still a lot of really heavy truck traffic
[00:25:00.180]that chooses this
[00:25:01.920]street instead of
[00:25:03.780]the state highway
[00:25:06.020]that now bypasses on the east
[00:25:08.140]side of town. So
[00:25:09.920]we really talked about
[00:25:11.840]why that was there
[00:25:12.800]and how that impacts
[00:25:14.820]usage of downtown
[00:25:17.260]that didn't show up in any of
[00:25:21.200]the data beforehand.
[00:25:22.620]Here's that overhead
[00:25:25.040]view of that as well.
[00:25:26.980]So we've got
[00:25:29.320]nice wide streets.
[00:25:30.360]Then we come together,
[00:25:37.400]we go back inside. We list, again,
[00:25:39.460]those strengths and weaknesses. We have the conversation
[00:25:41.720]one of my colleagues took a lot of notes for me because I'm a terrible note taker
[00:25:46.720]and so then my next step is to go through and write a report so in the report we identify
[00:25:53.980]the process we share the data that we collected we also list a summary of that
[00:26:02.420]focus group process and then I go through and
[00:26:07.080]and put together what are some options okay again I'm not an engineer I'm not making an
[00:26:13.960]official engineering recommendation I'm just giving you the options that are out there
[00:26:18.840]that you may want to pursue and I'm always going to start with you know what are some inexpensive
[00:26:26.360]or low-cost improvements that we can do that might not solve the whole problem but
[00:26:35.140]might be an intermediate step
[00:26:36.880]so for example on those stop signs that we saw earlier
[00:26:40.320]I'll come back to them
[00:26:42.240]one of the newer tools that we have available is to put a retroreflective strip on the post
[00:26:49.760]that matches the color of the sign
[00:26:52.160]we've seen a lot of adoption of that in some parts of the state
[00:26:56.140]some communities some of the NDOT districts do it some of them don't
[00:27:00.020]there's a lot of research that shows that people actually see the strip
[00:27:06.180]before they actually see the sign
[00:27:06.680]before they see the sign and we can improve our
[00:27:10.640]our adoption adherence to stop signs our compliance with with using stop
[00:27:17.740]signs by up to 20 percent by adding the strips
[00:27:21.560]so they're like a few dollars a piece and another you know 15 minutes to
[00:27:29.480]install it that's an inexpensive safety
[00:27:32.300]improvement that can have a big impact on an
[00:27:35.980]intersection
[00:27:36.480]particularly for our nighttime drivers or where we might have a tree that might
[00:27:41.660]droop down a little bit too close to our stop sign in the right windy weather
[00:27:45.080]so we start with low cost improvements and then we're going to work up to what
[00:27:50.600]are some some bigger things you know if we could
[00:27:53.440]a lot of money or there was a big cash windfall or
[00:28:00.000]right now we have a lot of federal discretionary programs available for
[00:28:06.280]communities related to safety improvements
[00:28:08.500]so local communities have a more direct access point to federal funds for
[00:28:15.920]projects than they've ever had before how many of you've written a federal
[00:28:20.080]grant
[00:28:20.420]okay most of you don't have your cameras on so i can't see you raise your hands
[00:28:26.260]it's an it's an arduous process right it's not for the faint of heart
[00:28:31.100]they're lengthy in this case they require a lot of data
[00:28:36.080]they also require you to have some kind of safety improvement plan
[00:28:40.800]that a lot of our counties and municipalities don't have yet
[00:28:44.080]so that's not easy money to get but there's more of it than there's ever been before
[00:28:51.040]and being a rural community automatically puts us in an underserved population group
[00:28:58.340]so where they're you know all federal programs are going to target
[00:29:05.880]underserved underrepresented populations in a lot of cases being rural doesn't check that box
[00:29:12.620]for us but in this particular case it does because our local dollars available for big
[00:29:20.520]improvement projects just aren't there so there is a there are many of them there are over 150
[00:29:30.460]discretionary grant programs in the bipartisan infrastructure act or bipartisan
[00:29:35.680]bipartisan infrastructure law available to local public agencies related to transportation
[00:29:41.460]one that we focus on a lot is safe roads and streets for all
[00:29:45.760]because if we're going to do big safety projects or if we're going to write one of these safety
[00:29:52.300]plans that's some money to do that with so the in the report the solutions that we propose or
[00:30:01.260]the potential solutions to explore range from yeah
[00:30:05.480]50 or less for strips on our stop sign at an intersection to applying to multi-million dollar
[00:30:13.040]grants a couple of the things that we highlighted here
[00:30:16.940]we could also add some some stop ahead signage on these particular stop signs on the east west
[00:30:26.480]street that don't exist we could add some signage to emphasize the crosswalks more
[00:30:35.280]looking at that pedestrian friendliness there are some changes that are happening
[00:30:39.540]in the ada compliance rules for sidewalks and so they're kind of hard i'll see if one
[00:30:44.980]of the other pictures is better so in here in this overhead view we can see that they have
[00:30:50.000]the ramps with the detectable dots the mats in them which would put them ahead of a lot of
[00:30:58.100]municipalities in nebraska the the new pro-ag rules for ada compliance on
[00:31:05.080]sidewalks is going to want us to split this so we have a distinct north south
[00:31:10.680]sidewalk access point and we have a distinct east west sidewalk access point we don't want
[00:31:18.560]someone who really truly can't see it and is basing their travel on what they can feel with
[00:31:24.860]a tapping cane or their foot to to use the one that's on the corner and think that they can walk
[00:31:31.460]straight and enter the intersection at a diagonal.
[00:31:34.880]So that's an update that's in the final stages of federal approval. We're waiting on the Department
[00:31:42.840]of Justice to sign off on those updated guidelines. That's just one of, again, that's a
[00:31:48.520]thousand page document. That's just one of the little pieces that's there for that one
[00:31:53.720]that happened to pop up at this intersection. We talked about
[00:32:04.680]the traffic data, the traffic counts, the speeds,
[00:32:09.640]the data that we collected do not warrant stop signs.
[00:32:14.220]There's not enough traffic on the East West Street to justify
[00:32:19.660]stopping the North South Street. The data just doesn't, we don't hit
[00:32:24.740]the 300. It's actually 300 cars an hour is the threshold.
[00:32:29.720]And we didn't have 300 cars every day. So,
[00:32:34.480]that was, again, a piece of the report. One of the things we talked a lot,
[00:32:41.120]we looked at a little bit, because this truck conversation had come up, were what
[00:32:46.460]were some options to discourage truck traffic in downtown. So, at one time,
[00:32:51.820]some time ago, I never got a final date on when, it doesn't really matter.
[00:32:57.500]There was a truck route that was identified that predated the bypass being
[00:33:04.280]built. So, since that, since the bypass was built many years ago,
[00:33:09.620]none of those signs have been maintained or updated. So, the truck route isn't even really marked.
[00:33:15.480]Some of the streets that are on the truck route are not very attractive to truck traffic.
[00:33:21.180]If I can choose to take a paved wide street that is straight to where I'm going,
[00:33:28.300]why would I turn off onto a gravel street? Kinds of, a particular
[00:33:34.080]one that maybe could use some maintenance kinds of situations.
[00:33:39.240]So we talked a little bit about revisiting the truck route. We also talked about weight limits
[00:33:45.200]on streets. So Nebraska statute does allow a local agency to put
[00:33:51.160]weight limits on some of their streets. That's kind of an intricate
[00:33:57.240]process. And depending on how your local attorney interprets that statute,
[00:34:03.880]that might be a limited seasonal weight limit or it could be a permanent weight limit.
[00:34:08.260]We have counties and cities in Nebraska that interpret it both ways. And so we always want
[00:34:15.420]to leave that up to the local attorney who's going to have to defend that decision
[00:34:21.060]in their interpretation. So we, you know, we talked about each of the different things.
[00:34:28.840]One of the things I did do too, I measured, we measured the
[00:34:33.680]angle parking on both streets. It seems a little steep
[00:34:38.560]when I'm there on the street, but when I measure it with a protractor
[00:34:43.460]in the overhead, they're actually within the allowable range. So we did look at parking a little bit
[00:34:49.000]too. Identifying some off-street parking is something that
[00:34:53.760]as a planner and based on the crash data as a
[00:34:58.720]transportation professional, I think should be a high priority for Kimball.
[00:35:03.480]As their community changes over the next several years,
[00:35:06.780]access to downtown is going to exceed, access demand to downtown
[00:35:12.960]is going to exceed the parking that they currently have available. Off-street parking in a lot is also
[00:35:17.980]safer typically than on-street parking for drivers to navigate.
[00:35:23.180]But all I get to do is present options. It's up to the city to decide
[00:35:29.280]what they want to do with that. So after I
[00:35:33.280]finished the report, I did present it at a city council meeting.
[00:35:36.540]And I believe they've actually talked about it at least one more
[00:35:39.980]after that presentation. I happened to hit a city council meeting where
[00:35:45.180]there were a couple of key stakeholders that were
[00:35:49.540]out that time. So I know they've talked about it since.
[00:35:53.000]Interestingly enough, when I do these, I rarely find out what they actually end
[00:36:00.180]up doing unless I happen to get back to the community for something
[00:36:03.080]most of them don't report back to me even when I ask. So
[00:36:07.360]I'll be curious to see over the next couple of years to see what kinds
[00:36:12.920]of updates they add or changes they make in
[00:36:17.800]Kimball. So I don't have a I think that gets me to the end
[00:36:22.920]of my slides. If you have any questions about any anything
[00:36:27.720]roadway safety related or how we might do a road safety audit
[00:36:32.880]or assessments in one of the communities you work in data
[00:36:37.880]collection like crash data for example
[00:36:41.880]that's pretty easy for me to get for you if you need them
[00:36:47.900]for a project of some kind. Yeah we're just
[00:36:53.020]and everything that we do for a local municipality or county
[00:36:57.440]is free of charge. So they didn't have to pay for
[00:37:02.680]any of this work.
[00:37:03.700]Megan I have a quick question if that's okay. Absolutely.
[00:37:09.820]So we have our well Panhandle Public Health District
[00:37:15.380]and within that we have Activate Alliance and they do
[00:37:19.200]walking audits which feels similar to this.
[00:37:22.840]I guess I'm wondering if we wanted to like rent out a
[00:37:28.440]traffic counter just in case we want to like enrich that
[00:37:32.480]walk audit to see the traffic around those places.
[00:37:37.340]Is that a possibility?
[00:37:38.780]- Absolutely.
[00:37:40.160]- Awesome, thank you.
[00:37:41.580]- The request would have to come from the city street
[00:37:45.120]department.
[00:37:46.180]- Okay, that's good to know.
[00:37:49.360]Okay, cool, thank you.
[00:37:50.720]- Megan, I have a quick question for you.
[00:37:54.600]Wondering if you have any remedies in a community
[00:37:58.980]for two new stop signs being put up
[00:38:02.280]and everybody really frustrated having them up.
[00:38:05.200]There was a purpose for them, but people didn't take it.
[00:38:09.860]Was going against maybe their rights or something.
[00:38:17.040]And it was really just there to slow the traffic up
[00:38:19.300]in the residential area.
[00:38:20.580]And I was just curious if you've come across
[00:38:22.460]that situation before.
[00:38:23.880]- It's pretty common actually.
[00:38:27.680]So, you know,
[00:38:32.080]a lot of times the transparency of the process
[00:38:35.100]where we get to the stop signs is important.
[00:38:38.940]That's one of the pieces.
[00:38:40.420]So I've done some other projects similar to this.
[00:38:42.880]We used Kimball, the Kimball project for an example,
[00:38:46.800]because of the connection to Jamie, because it's recent.
[00:38:50.580]And because they were, this was a very public process.
[00:38:54.440]It was talked about the city council meetings.
[00:38:56.820]It was, you know, we did the public focus group.
[00:39:00.160]So people knew
[00:39:01.880]that it was going on and that we were,
[00:39:04.560]we were trying to pull information, sorry,
[00:39:07.320]to pull information to help the community
[00:39:10.340]make some decisions.
[00:39:12.080]Sometimes it's a little bit more of a confidential process.
[00:39:14.660]It kind of depends on the local agency
[00:39:16.740]and what their needs are in relation to the project.
[00:39:20.520]And so if we can make those processes more transparent
[00:39:25.520]as they're happening,
[00:39:27.100]that usually helps with buy-in down the road, like all,
[00:39:31.680]you know, decisions in a small community,
[00:39:35.020]who are those key stakeholders that a conversation
[00:39:39.460]might lead to, you know, them adopting it
[00:39:44.640]and being a little bit more of an advocate for it.
[00:39:47.680]I'm always a little hesitant when,
[00:39:52.580]this is contrary to popular belief.
[00:39:56.540]So stop, there's a lot of data out of,
[00:40:01.860]the local road research bureau in Minnesota
[00:40:05.120]that shows that stop signs aren't really a safety sign.
[00:40:09.360]I know that sounds contradictory to what we feel
[00:40:12.840]and what we think that they're for,
[00:40:16.020]but adding more stop signs
[00:40:19.160]doesn't usually make more people actually slow down or stop.
[00:40:24.540]Usually it leads to more people not stopping at stop signs.
[00:40:28.620]So at this point, if they're already installed,
[00:40:31.520]if the city's already adopted them
[00:40:34.640]as part of their sign program and they're installed,
[00:40:38.480]law enforcement enforcing them
[00:40:41.380]is probably your best action.
[00:40:45.180]And that's not a friendly way to get compliance,
[00:40:51.980]but at this point it's probably,
[00:40:55.320]other than having some conversations with key stakeholders
[00:40:58.320]that can subtly advocate,
[00:41:01.120]for more acceptance,
[00:41:03.360]enforcement that,
[00:41:06.100]sorry, you might not like the rule,
[00:41:09.160]but this is the rule,
[00:41:10.140]is maybe your next best chance.
[00:41:15.620]One of the things we talk about in roadway safety a lot,
[00:41:20.480]or the example that we use,
[00:41:23.100]is really kind of the Swiss cheese method,
[00:41:26.420]which you see in a lot of different fields.
[00:41:30.720]We do what we can at each step in the process.
[00:41:34.780]And that process is everything from engineering design
[00:41:38.520]to building to maintenance,
[00:41:40.340]law enforcement of whatever that situation is,
[00:41:45.420]all the way to post-crash care.
[00:41:47.360]We know that crashes are going to happen.
[00:41:50.700]How do we take care of
[00:41:53.500]and how do we get appropriate medical attention
[00:41:55.460]to those people that are involved in that crash
[00:41:57.360]to ultimately save lives?
[00:42:00.320]So we need everything from good design
[00:42:03.180]to good EMTs with access to good hospitals
[00:42:06.380]along the way
[00:42:08.120]to help people
[00:42:09.940]navigate our transportation system safely.
[00:42:13.240]And at this point, you're at the enforcement stage.
[00:42:18.000]Any other questions?
[00:42:24.880]Thank you, Megan.
[00:42:27.480]You're welcome.
[00:42:29.920]If no one else has a question right now, Megan, could you talk a little bit about creative crosswalks and how those guidelines have changed in the updated documents?
[00:42:42.580]Yeah. We still don't have, so you'll notice in some of the photos predating my visit to Kimball, they had painted some of the crosswalks in commemoration of the Lincoln Highway, right?
[00:43:00.420]Okay, so those have really popped up the last several years, right?
[00:43:07.400]We've seen them in lots of places, big cities, smaller communities, all over.
[00:43:12.420]Under the previous edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices,
[00:43:19.780]were big no-nos. Crosswalks are very, they're supposed to look like, you know, these white
[00:43:26.740]boxes across the street or two white lines across the street. There's like four different styles
[00:43:32.580]of approved crosswalks in the manual. There is a little bit more leeway
[00:43:42.180]in the new manual for creativity and crosswalks. It hasn't been,
[00:43:51.540]it hasn't been tested yet, the updated rule. So I'm not officially going to tell you go paint
[00:44:03.940]your crosswalks to look like whatever you want them to look like. But a lot of engineers
[00:44:11.940]in some of our country's largest municipalities have taken the new wording to mean that these are
[00:44:19.300]okay. One of the things that we've, the couple that people have actually asked us about,
[00:44:25.760]most communities just do them and we find out about them later. That's fine.
[00:44:28.880]We're not, I'm not the traffic police. Like this, this one that we can see in the photo
[00:44:36.500]has the white lines on the edge. So we clearly have marked
[00:44:41.700]where the crosswalk is. And then we have the creative graphic in the middle. So we still have
[00:44:49.180]the regulatory markings per the manual plus the ornamentation. So I would continue to say,
[00:44:58.940]if you're going to do creative crosswalks, make sure you've got the white lines on the outside
[00:45:03.240]edge. So you've got those clearly marked or do something of contrast in between the white,
[00:45:11.460]boxes in between the white boxes. Still have a traditional crosswalk built into your design.
[00:45:20.100]And those white lines need to be retroreflective paint so that they're visible at night.
[00:45:27.300]That brings me up to two MUTCD things I want to mention. We're in kind of a limbo space.
[00:45:41.220]In Nebraska right now, so the update to the 2009 edition of the manual was adopted by the
[00:45:48.580]federal government in late December of 2023. Upon that adoption, Nebraska has 24 months
[00:45:57.820]to adopt it as is, adopt it with a supplement, or write their own. So we are waiting for the
[00:46:05.140]Nebraska DOT to adopt the updated manual. So technically in Nebraska, we're still
[00:46:10.980]under the 2009 edition until they adopt. They're not calling it the 2023 edition,
[00:46:17.460]they're calling it the 11th edition. The updated manual, I just actually touched base with our
[00:46:25.200]state traffic engineer this morning, and he's not thinking that they're going to be, we have a
[00:46:32.060]supplement in Nebraska, so they have to update the supplement as a part of the adoption. And
[00:46:35.960]he thinks it's going to be mid to late 2025. They're going to use their full two years,
[00:46:40.740]before we have that update adopted, and our state supplement updated and adopted.
[00:46:51.120]So we're still kind of in limbo for at least another year, it sounds like, with that process.
[00:46:59.080]The other piece about the manual I always want to mention, there's not like an OSHA for MUTCD.
[00:47:10.500]There's not some sign force that's going to come out and inspect your signing program
[00:47:17.660]or inspect your payment markings and, you know, fine your agencies or issue a ticket
[00:47:24.200]or shut down your street.
[00:47:25.440]How our, we as agencies need to be compliant with the manual because what's in the manual
[00:47:35.980]is proven to control traffic in a safe way.
[00:47:40.260]A safe and efficient and equitable manner.
[00:47:42.220]And it keeps people safe.
[00:47:45.720]When we deviate from that, the effectiveness of those deviations are measured by the courts.
[00:47:57.800]So there's a crash, somebody's injured, somebody dies.
[00:48:01.280]How much liability is assigned by the judge because the city, county, state, whomever didn't uphold their
[00:48:10.020]end of the bargain and have compliant traffic control?
[00:48:13.940]So it's a long, drawn-out process.
[00:48:17.380]It's not always an even process, like what one judge does in one case may or may not be exactly how another
[00:48:25.500]judge interprets a similar case in a different location.
[00:48:28.360]So it's on us as a transportation industry to be compliant with what the adopted rules are.
[00:48:39.780]And the deviation from that is going to come down to how the courts interpret what our intent and what our execution was.
[00:48:46.320]Thank you, Megan.
[00:48:51.600]You're welcome.
[00:48:52.800]Does anyone have more questions?
[00:48:56.000]Does anyone have announcements of things that are upcoming in their communities that you'd like to share?
[00:49:09.540]I don't really know.
[00:49:17.720]This is more of just a general comment.
[00:49:19.580]We were talking about the graphics in the crosswalks.
[00:49:22.580]And Megan, good thing you're not an enforcer because I don't know about ours.
[00:49:28.140]But we have a few around Alliance.
[00:49:29.800]And they're done through Carnegie Arts Center.
[00:49:32.080]So if anyone has questions or is interested, Corinne could possibly guide you.
[00:49:38.520]And then we could also.
[00:49:39.520]Know that Megan has some more info or Megan has resources to more info to make them more kosher.
[00:49:44.920]But I just wanted to let you all know that you can contact me and I can put you in touch if you're interested in the creative sidewalks.
[00:49:51.520]I know PPHD has really been working with communities with the activate group.
[00:49:58.960]Yeah, that's a placemaking initiative.
[00:50:02.920]The planner in me loves them.
[00:50:07.340]The rules don't love them.
[00:50:13.500]If you, I think I shared it with Jamie a while back, like way back in January or February, there was a really good article in either the Washington Post or the New York Times about creative crosswalks.
[00:50:30.480]I think you did email that to me.
[00:50:32.860]I'll try to find it and I can send it out when I do the recording.
[00:50:36.280]Okay, if there's nothing else, we can let you all go a few minutes early.
[00:50:47.120]Thank you very much for your presentation, Megan.
[00:50:49.920]We really appreciate it.
[00:50:51.220]Thanks for having me.
[00:50:52.780]I love to come to the Panhandle.
[00:50:55.760]I also have a colleague who's based in Scotts Bluff, one of our peoples in Scotts Bluff.
[00:51:00.660]So I don't always have to drive out to you, but I don't mind coming out at all.
[00:51:06.060]We're the pretty part of the state.
[00:51:11.500]We like having people visit.
[00:51:12.800]All right, everyone.
[00:51:17.560]Have a good rest of your day.
[00:51:19.380]Thank you.
[00:51:21.100]Bye.
[00:51:21.900]Bye.
[00:51:22.260]Thank you.

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