. >> good evening. I would like to welcome everyone here to the august 25th, 2026 city council meeting. It is now let's see. It is about 631. We are right on time. We're going to go ahead and open up this meeting. Rgular city council meeting and also sitting as the local re-use authority.
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unfortunately this service is not available if you're watching a replay of this meeting. >> thank you very much. So for everyone here please review tonight's agenda for instructions on how to participate. The public will have the opportunity to participate in this meeting via public comment that is done in person as well as on zoom.
tonight's meeting will have a general public comment period at the beginning and each item will have a public comment period after that anything any public comments beyond the 15 minute period, the initial 15 minute period will be done at the end of the meeting. I will now ask the clerk to call the roll council.
councilmember benevento is absent. Councilmember hoffmeister here council member over here. Vice mayor albano. Mayor nakamura I am here and vice mayor aliana will you please lead us in the pledge? Pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which
it stands one nation under god indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So I won't thank you. I will now open a 15 minute public comment period. Madam deputy clerk, how many comments do we have? How many cards? I have nine speaker cards. Okay. Let's go ahead and do two minute public comments tonight.
and if the public comment last more than 15 minutes we will continue those at the end of the meeting. So go ahead and I'll have you let me just read one more thing. If you would like to speak via zoom you must select join as a panelist tonight and every night hen you're doing this by zoom.
so when you're prompted select join as a panelist if you decline to be promoted. We will move on to the next speaker. Also I do want to note that tonight if you are here to address automatic license plate readers or floc cameras you will need to do so during public comment as that topic is
not on the agenda tonight. City clerk will you please call the speakers names? >> the first the first speaker is mariana moore. >> good evening. My name is mariana moore.
and looking through my bank statements the other day and my expenses and I noticed how many many dollars I spend in concord you'll be happy to hear this is my favorite place to bring my grandchildren to have a restaurant meal. I was at fenway mall last weekend at the other big mall the week before that. So I am a dedicated shopper in your city.
what I want to speak about tonight is something that I actually spoke to the board of supervisors about this morning which is the dire growing need to protect all residents of this beautiful city including those who are newcomers and those of all immigration status .
when I was at the board of supervisors this morning they had their truth back forum. Many, many people spoke. And one of the dominant themes was for the last couple of years we've talked about what if right. What might happen or things that's happening now. We know what we've seen the terror we've seen the injustice.
we've seen the brutal kidnapings we've seen children showing up in court alone. So we know the shape of this. And it is time now to take action not to ontificate or to put it off or to ask for more data. It is time to have a non-cooperation ordinance that is strong in this city.
it is time to prohibit ice from staging on city property. Period. Clear it's time to develop a public communication protocol in collaboration and partnership with the community.
so you as leaders and as leaders together it's time to create a standing committee that gives the opportunity for the city council staff and the community to develop protocols and policies that deeply protect those we love about and care in this community. Thank you. >> >> the next speaker is robin kaulitz. >> good evening mayor. Council member staff my name is robin coolidge and I live in district three of the monument.
>> and I'm here tonight to ask you to put sb 580 requirements on the agenda. >> we need a robust public input on this item because many of our residents are scared.
right? I teach in the public schools and you don't know how heartbreaking it is to hear a third grader overhear a third grader say I'm scared of being deported. >> how am I supposed to continue teaching after that? How are we supposed to do anything as a community after knowing that atrocities that are occurring in our community we cannot continue this way. >> e need to have robust public input on this item.
concord is a place where families come first. Please stop sitting on your hands while our families are being torn part. >> thank you. >> the next speaker is john green. >> hello. City may like more than city council has done. My name is john green.
I am the founder and president of a local nonprofit called green ties and I am assistant commissioner of our 20 giants league concord. I'm here is public announcement that a green ties is going to especially well we were going to be having some public workshops about two in the next couple of months that are coming up.
just want to mic guys where that what we're going to be doing in our backyard and how great things are going for our community. Thank you. The next speaker is anthony mitchell.
>> if you could call the next couple names so they can queue up there is a two black lines on the floor so I'm going to ask our city clerk to go ahead and call the next couple names so that people can queue up. >> thank you. Okay. The next one is molly debris. Then I have natalie and natalia. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Good evening, council mayor staff. My name is anthony mitchell.
I am the president and founder of echo green solutions. We are a energy services company registered with the federal department of energy and a trade professional with the california public utility. >> and I'm here today because we are currently I've been here before and we currently just finished a fairly large project with the city of walnut creek.
richard the public works director at walnut creek said that concord was interested in the services that we did for walnut creek where we got them well over $1 million of funds through the public utility commission with no money out of pocket, no budget impact.
and I was told legal counsel called first and so I called your office a couple of times and so we're just trying to coordinate a meeting with the city. There's no out of pocket every time the city pays an electric bill, about 10% of those funds goes into an account that's controlled by the public utility commission.
we have access to those funds. We actually are the design firm for the utility for the program sponsoring those funds to the city's municipalities. There's state funds as well as federal funds for energy reduction, energy upgrades, ev charging and infrastructure.
and so I'm here today just because we are finished with the first handful of contracts already with walnut creek. There's about five others that we're about to go back to the board to get their final blessing onto and install those and implement those. And we were able to do that with no money upfront, no money out of pocket, no budget impact to the city.
and so when we started that with council they said concord called us and said how did you do this? >> so I'm here today just to say I'm the guy.
so our team was one that did it and we would love to sit down with the city of concord to tell you how we did it, how we went through the process and what we could do for the city of concord as well. >> thank you and thank you so much. If you could mic sure that our our city clerk has your contact info. >> yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Good evening.
my name is molly debris and I'm a concord resident. >> I'm speaking tonight because I'm deeply troubled by how quickly a surveillance network has been built across concord and our neighboring communities. >> over the past week I've been corresponding with our assistant city manager mr. Aczel about the city's flock cameras.
>> I asked for three basic safeguards an independent audit of who accesses our data. >> penalties if it's misused and transparency about what's collected and shared. What I learned during that correspondence matters tonight when I asked how the city verifies its data secure.
>> the answer was that the police department audited itself and when I raised an independent third party audit option, the written response was that city staff are quote not familiar with third party third party audits. >> I have to take that in good faith. >> but it does mean that the standard tool for overseeing surveillance technology is one the city hasn't considered.
I raised this because of item four c on tonight's consent calendar. Set to pass without discussion a four year $1.3 million renewal ith peregrine technologies. >> paragon merges separate police data feeds into one searchable map. >> concord already uses it. That may help solve real crimes. >> and I'm not disputing that.
but a system that merges everyone's movements into one searchable profile deserves public discussion, not a silent vote. >> so I have three questions. One does peregrine combine our flock data with other location data on residents? Two can outside federal or out-of-state agency search that data? >> three who independently verifies any of it?
>> pulling this item and answering those questions first would not be unusual. Other bay area communities have already done exactly this. Mountain view had its flock data independently audited and that outside review found roughly 600,000 unauthorized searches by more than 250 agencies which the city's own internal checks had missed.
>> alameda county and marin county both postponed their peregrine votes this year rather than rush them over these same privacy concerns. >> I'm asking concord to do the same. Tonight you're being asked to approve four more years of this surveillance tool. >> very much molly. Thank.
>> I do want to remind the public that the open that the front cameras can be spoken about here at the at general public comment. The peregrine item four c is later on. Thank you. Yeah.
so sb 580 you have to have your policies in place not only for auditing data collection and training but that has to be done by january 1st. So you only have four months left in this year. You only meet two times a month. You might only meet once in december. I don't know what your schedule is like but the point is is you don't actually have a lot of time left.
if you're going to schedule a public comment section and then an official reading f the policies and perhaps even a second reading of the policies to have the final vote. Secondly, there needs to be a moratorium on data centers here in concord.
as other cities place moratoriums and bans the companies that build these data centers are going to look for municipalities that don't have moratoriums in place. And if we can't it will be hard for us to say no if we don't have an official moratorium or ban in place and you know, in a hypothetical future when this technology is greener and
doesn't mic so much noise and doesn't use much water in the next generation of these data centers, perhaps you can lift the ban. But right now the there's a lot of problems with these types of centers. >> third is restore the human relations commission.
as you can see in meetings lately, there is a growing segment of the community who has an interest in discussing very complex social issues and that commission which did exist the human relations commission should be reinstated so policies can be drafted so the
people have a place to go to speak their mind and then policies can then be written and then sent forward to city council for consideration. >> thank you natalia. Consent of district two I am here to keep every single one of you accountable to meet the sb 580 attorney general january 1st deadline to implement the immigration enforcement
policies in our city like a sanctuary city and an ice free zone ordinance. I am ashamed to live in a city where I live work and spend my money and and I can't protect me.
my family, my community with my own tax money during my participation in the concord academy I learned that 55% of our city budget is invested in police. Over half of our budget is going into a department that does not protect us or create safety. But much rather criminalizes front ends and go after our communities.
we need to look at our neighbor neighbor cities and work with them to ensure safety in our communities. Like councilmember mendoza from brentwood that has stopped and ordered the sheriff's department to stop and collaborate with ice. We need our city to ensure us that it is not cooperating at all with ice or dhs. You as our city council needs to hold ken call center accountable on the county level and express its concern.
>> its constituents means flock. The city of concord utilizes flock safety license plate reader a a l p r system to support police investigations and public safety operations but has statistically proven to track everyday movement without warrants creating a de facto mass surveillance system.
what does this look like for a city that has an immigration court? >> thank you. >> are there any more cards? >> I have three cards left. One, two, three, four, five, six and 14. I will entertain one more public comment. >> okay. I have hernan soto. >> hello. My name is arnon soto.
that was my sister that just went up so I don't need to say anything else but I am an undocumented immigrant currently benefits from dhaka and just hearing all that things are happening around across the country and across the state.
I do feel uneasy because I'm also the main source of income for my family after my dad passed away. Right. So I'm deportable although I have dhaka I am still deportable and I want to live in a in a city that prioritizes our safety that prioritizes our dignity not just as not just as people but as human beings right. I think I've said enough with that but please prioritize the dignity of immigrants.
we didn't come here because we wanted to. We came here because we needed to. >> we. I came here as a seven year old. I can even say I came here right because I was brought here as a seven year old after fleeing violence in my in my home state. So please center the dignity of immigrants.
I know ou all are capable, able and willing to do that nd I look forward to seeing what comes of this. >> thank you.
I'm going to go ahead I'm going to go ahead and close public comment actually no, I won't I am not going I'm going to continue public comment to the end of the meeting tonight for anyone who did not speak or for anyone who might be on zoom.
I do want to think so far thus far anyone who's come to speak tonight both written and verbally there have been some comments about sb 580 and I want to share that I am in conversation with our city manager and we do know that there is a deadline of january 1st that needs to be met.
so I just want to let you know that those conversations are happening but we can't speak about the context of it all and so I'm going to go ahead and move on to our next item on the agenda which is our presentations. So changing it up here a little bit, I want to share a little story about something that happened in april. I gave a my state of the city address.
I shared a story about the missing people in east africa and their greeting to each other is not not how are you it's how are the children and the responses is meant to be the children are well and that has stuck with me ever since I heard it and so tonight I'm
really excited to present for checks to four organizations who o work in our community with our children because collectively it's not about just it's not bout your children. It's not about my children.
it's collectively it's about all of our children here and I'm really proud of these organizations who who do the work on the ground to reach people in different ways. Maybe it's athletics, maybe it's through education. But there are some amazing organizations in concord.
so what we're going to do tonight is I'm going to 'm going to read a little bit about each organization and then the council is going to come down will present some checks, some nice big hefty checks and then I will let them speak about their organization and we'll open it up for public public comment on this agenda item.
so first up tonight is the concord junior giants with anna villalobos excepting concord junior junior giants is a free noncompetitive coed baseball program for underserved youth ages 7 to 13. Players learn the junior giants for bases of character development, confidence, integrity, leadership and teamwork as well as the importance of education, health and bullying prevention and concord junior giants gives families a positive alternative
free of cost and healthy activities too at youth risk. >> so we'll go ahead and pause for a moment for applause. >> and I should mention that these these recipients were part of the mayor's cup back in may the mayor was able to meet the mayor was able to choose organizations that would be
recipients of the beneficiaries of the mayor's cup fundraiser. So on a very beautiful mayoral sunny day in may I'm sure linda would appreciate that the weather was perfect. We had we had 140 people play golf and raise funds for these organizations. >> second up is matt galindo.
matt is here representing concord recreation and youth services, the concord recreation services youth scholarship program. How helps to mic summer recreation more accessible for concord young residents. It's open to concord youth who who are under the ages of 18 who qualify based on income.
and the program offers partial scholarships towards popular summer activities ike swim lessons, day camps, splash camp backyard explorers, east bay explorers and eadership programs like counselor and training families pay a nominal fee which reduces financial barriers and gives more children the hance to learn, plan grow through our amazing programs here at the city. So matt, thank you for accepting tonight.
>> we'll go ahead next step bridgette builder is going to be accepting representing mount campbell education foundation, the mount diablo education fund foundation or mount diablo ed fund for short offers enrichment programs for 29,000 students in the mount diablo unified school district. It's run by parents and community members. The mount diablo ed fund aims to enhance student experiences through science, technology, engineering, art and math initiatives. They collaborate with local groups.
they bring professional artists into classrooms like at ren avenue and they fund advanced robotics and biomedical projects. Their goal is to ensure every student from kindergarten to two high school has access to quality education and brighter future. >> thank you very much.
>> and lastly, it's brandon grcia lawn is here representing first tee of contra costa youth golf program the first tee contra costa teaches kids ages 5 to 18 to develop a positive self-image, work with others, set goals, grow through challenges and use good judgment all while having a great time learning golf first tee is now serving over 12,000 youth in contra costa including here at diablo creek golf course.
>> so thank you. >> okay, so the moment we've been waiting for the council is going to come on down and we're going to present some checks coming down. You want to hold all of us? Yes. Thank you. Please. Oh, okay. Somebody is going to go for it. But we do everything together your day.
so now they can um here's the real one the bank deposit. This is a big check. I need help here. W're squishing. One, two, three. >> thank you. And I'll tell man next year. >> yeah. When I sit down we're going to get better as a son. Next up, I guess you I thank you.
>> next up is first contra costa. >> come on over, brandon. Come on down to the photo you're really just trying to hold about and you go yeah, just do I need to go on the other side? The number of one, two, three you're right. Next up is the amount tableau education foundation year.
someone put that in your pocket. You're absolutely right. I know you actually go to the bank. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well well, okay. You got it. Okay. And lastly we've got concord recreation and youth services. Oh, all right. So I give you a minute or so anyway. Sure. I just gave him the check.
yeah, I'm just happy to get hold the big can I think. Man one, two, three. >> yeah. And matt. Matt. Matt, stay here since you're up here first I'll go ahead and have you say a few words about the program.
I didn't know I was going to speak tonight so several years ago for a number of years the recreation services department had a youth scholarship program that gave access to our summer swim and our summer day camp program to concord residents during the economic recession.
that program just suddenly went away and over the past couple of years we've ad the ability to bring it back near and dear to my own heart I've been in aquatics for over 30 years. Te second leading cause of accidental death for kids between the ages of 2 to 14 is still drowning.
and the fact that both the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics recommend swim lessons as one of the best tools that we can use to safeguard kids against that are youth scholarship program helps offer those programs to kids who wouldn't normally be able to afford swim lessons.
and then in terms of our summer day amp program, we often serve as that much needed gap for parents when the kids get out of school. Where do we send our skip course kids for positive organized activities? They're out of school.
tey come to our summer day camp programs and our scholarship program has revitalized offering that opportunity to families who normally wouldn't be able to afford to do so. >> so that's our concrete scholarship program. >> thank you very much, matt. And brandon, do you want to come on up and say a few words ? Oh, totally. Of the check.
myor nakamura, council members, thank you again for your generosity with first tee contra costa and believing in the work we're doing as of today we're up to over 18,000 young people in our program from central contra costa and east contra costa. We have a waiting list for all classes primarily at boundary oak but also a dial creek.
we're constantly looking for volunteers and coaches. If there's anyone in the building that would like to spend 2.5 hours a week we could definitely use the help. Part of these proceeds go to our financial aid program which still if a family cannot afford the classes or the equipment, 100% of that is covered. So thank you again.
come hank you for what you're doing. Thank you. >> and bridget builder would you please come on up and tell us about the mount diablo education foundation. >> hello to the mayor, to the council members.
thank you on behalf of the board of the mount diablo education foundation and more importantly thank you on behalf of all the students in the mount diablo unified school district especially all the students in our onquered schools that will benefit from this generous donation he the education foundation is a is a the the goal of the education foundation is to provide enrich ment opportunities to all students in the district
regardless of zip code primarily focused on equity type of enrichment for those schools that wouldn't otherwise have the resources to do things like field trips to outdoor education, field trips to the leisure center to see the nutcracker for the first time robotics at ignazio valley high school that have gone on to create this great program with
those high school students. That's what we raised the funds for and that we work with the school sites to identify the the types of enrichment programs for those students o that we mic sure that all the students are getting an equity based education. So thank you on behalf of the foundation. Thank you.
>> pretty and last up ana villalobos. I have to go. >> this course is not I can reach well mayor laura nakamura and city council members you know me and the most important thing you know junior giants junior giants is a league that's been running for 15 years.
>> we are unbelievable roud and thankful for the opportunity to serve our children this year. It was an amazing success again,our league is run completely by volunteers. Nobody ets fail. Everybody said with their hearts we were expecting 300 children.
>> we ended p with 512 and from those I have to say probably 72 of them with a special needs those children that usually they will not fit on the box. I guess what e ask is no boxes and they're more than welcome. We want them, e need them, we love them and they are running union giants is not possible.
like I say, we are volunteers and I have some of them with me today but I would like to acknowledge them to go to I acknowledge you and your support because without that also we couldn't mic it. But thank you dean margolin for everything you do for us. Thank you.
jonathan green as assistant commissioner steve fisher my ambassadors gabby rena and grace and the people that I have on the fields bob, alejandro and santi they are the main team. They ant to keep everything together. >> I am a use a humble servant now looking for recognition and hopefully everybody who works with us understand the same thing.
like I said we are going for next year close to the I think we will pass this 600 and this year is also the year that we started softball league and the children that we serve actually are 5 to 13 now seven inside the 13 and we started softball with an unbelievable success. We couldn't believe it.
we're very thankful and grateful for it in georgia. >> yes. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to o ahead and open it up to any public comment hat is here or online at this time on this item. Is there anyone that would like to speak on this item? Addie, go ahead and come forward.
>> you left here right for me and I think you I came here to support the speakers of sb 580 but didn't ic the public and cut off so to my surprise annabella was was here and I love seeing her face everywhere I go my kids are recipients of te junior giants since they
were like 5 or 6 years older now 16 and 13 including one being he concord player of the year their eighth grade year and one being the $10,000 scholarship winner this year. So I cry because I feel like they help raise my kids.
so these programs are really important to teach kids leadership and life skills and how to be part of a community. So without junior giants I don't know what my kids would do every summer. Okay so thank you for funding these organizations and raise more money next time. >> yes, thank you.
>> is there anyone else that would like to mic a public comment n this item? Madam clerk is there anyone online? No, mayor okay, great. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and close public comment on this and I'll bring it back to he council for any comments that they might want to mic and I don't have any lights on. Okay. No okay.
as far as the mayor this was the mayor's cup item and I am so thrilled to be able to help provide some funding for these organizations through that fund organize that fun event with having people play golf and do good in our community.
so thank you all for the work that you do and veryone ave a good night on that one. Okay, I'm going to go ahead nd move it on to our the next item on the agenda is our city council consent calendar item.
w have items a through e is there do anyone does anyone want o pull any items I don't to okay is there have any items have been pulled okay okay I am going to four items a through e I'm going to go ahead and open it up for public comment and I am going to is there anyone
here in in the chamber that would like to mic a public comment on items a through e? I would like my comments that's possible and just just for clarification, this is on an item that is on the consent calendar. Correct? The paragon technology renewal. Okay. Yes. Foresee thank you.
foresee so pulling this item and answering these questions first would not be unusual that the three questions I had outlined arlier other bay area communities have already done exactly this. Mountain view had its flock data independently audited and that outside review found roughly 600,000 unauthorized searches.
>> I'm sorry to interrupt but for the mayor peregrine is not flock they're entirely separate so they're separate but they're related. Right. But but I continue my statement. >> please. I need you to understand that you're not speaking on alpers because you're separate items. They are separate items.
>> so so I would but I would like to ask for you to pull for c which is here to do that which is paragraph eight paragraph four of the re yes I'm aware and if you're speaking about flock it's not the same I know that it's not the same I guess so so tonight
I'm asking for you to poll item four c and postpone the vote until staff can answer the questions that the community deserves to have answered because there is no independent oversight. The public doesn't know how this data is being used. It's been proven nd to be misused across many cities around the country.
>> so I just want to let you know that this is public comment on an item that is on our consent calendar and I'm losing my train of thought here we have that is that's not how the vote that's when you pull an item it is for public comment and so you she is
allowed to mic the request that we know so she's allowed to request that an item be pulled and she's allowed to mic public comment on it and you're allowed to address her questions because it is an agenda item on a vote. Thank you molly. My apologies.
I'm I'll let you continue and I don't know how much time is left on her. >> let's give her a little I just have a few more comments, that's all. Okay. So yeah, I'm asking that you postpone the vote until you can answer some of these questions.
> I'm I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you one more time. Would you like us to pull the item? Yes. Okay. Thank you. We are pulling the item. We are going to go ahead and move move the other items and we will we will open up public comment on that item on the fourth on that line. Yes.
okay. My apologies. Okay. Thank you. >> so I'm going to bring it back to the public comment. Is there anyone else that would like to mic a public or an item or pull an item? Thank you. Okay. No one's on zoom.
okay, so I'm going to go ahead and close public comment on a, b, d, e not see I guess I would I would want to affirm also that request to pull it so yeah I comment on I will come back
to it just a moment where we're going to vote on all the rest of the consent calendar items and then we are going to focus only on four c thank you council member okay so I am closing public comment on a, b, d and e bringing it back to the council for a vote.
>> I go ahead and move a, b d in e of the consent calendar and I will second that motion and I will ask for the vote to be called council member been have been to is absent council- member hofmeister yes. Council member bring her yes. Vice mayor alfano yes. Mayor nakamura yes.
so the remaining item now is item number c and I'm going to ask the council if anyone has any questions on this item. I'd like to hear the public comment first please. Mary okay. And then we will go now to you have done no okay.
so we will go into public comment on item four c so that's kind of come up and speak to something I like to look again. Yes, we'll start with trash. It's over. >> okay, molly, my apologies. Everyone gets in here at three times. Okay. So over the past week I've been corresponding with our assistant city manager mr.
aczel about the city's flock cameras. I asked for three basic safeguards an independent audit of who accesses our data penalties if it's misuse and transparency about what's collected and shared.
>> what I learned during that correspondence does matter for the n conversation tonight because when I asked how the city verifies its data is secure, the answer was that the police department audited itself and when I raised an independent third party audit the written response was that city staff are not familiar with third party audits. >> so I do take that in good faith.
but it means that the standard tool for survey overseen surveillance technology is one the city hasn't considered. I raised this item because of item four c on tonight's consent calendar set to pass without discussion a four year $1.3 million renewal with peregrine technologies. Peregrine merges separate police data feeds into one searchable map and concord already uses it.
that may help solve real crimes. I'm not disputing that but a system that merges everyone's movements into one searchable profile deserves public discussion not a silent vote.
so three questions one just peregrine combine or flock data with other location data on residents to can outside federal or out of state agencies search that data three who independently verifies any of it pulling this item and answering those questions first would not be unusual other bay area communities have already done exactly this. Mountain view had its flock data independently audited and that outside review found roughly 600,000 unauthorized searches by more than 250 agencies which the city's own internal checks had missed.
alameda county and marin county both postponed their peregrine votes earlier this year rather than rush them over these same privacy concerns, I'm simply asking concord to do the same tonight you're being asked to approve four more years of the most powerful surveillance tool the city owns in a single consent calendar vote with no discussion scheduled and these
questions unanswered before the city commits us to four more years, we deserve to know the answers so if we can pull item four see and postpone the vote until staff can answer these questions in public exactly what those other bay area communities already did with the same company.
I'm not asking concord to be first I'm just asking us to not be careless and go going forward put in place with the city has admitted t doesn't have independent oversight so that residents can trust their data isn't being misused. >> thank you. Thank you. >> is there any other public comment on this item? Yeah. Yeah.
good evening. Kristy loughlin with east bay alliance for sustainable economy, a concord immigrant protections network. And I really just want to reiterate the request to for a public a little more time for public discourse around signing a contract that does involve more data collection.
I understand the difference also between this and floc and yet this is a perfect example where it feels like some of our mechanisms and contracts we're doing proceeding with business as usual and there's a great dissonance with what's happening in the community with ai and data sharing firms and companies moving at an accelerated pace and it takes
some time for other folks in the public to understand what is happening, what are the consent potential consequences and also in five 8580 also requires us to look at the city and all municipalities to look at what what data sharing is happening vis a is ice.
but as my colleague here mentioned, there's also ramifications with other companies that look a little maybe and are just targeted and known as floc but are also part of aggregating data.
and I do think that this is just such a key topic that it has such implications for the community members that I would urge the city to slow this own and have more public discourse around that so it can also inspire more confidence.
I think we're also seeing from other comments that we actually need the you know, the city of concord with all the ramifications of the community here in concord and how data is shared to slow this down and have us look at this and also do it in light of things like sb 584. We can also understand, you know, what are the barriers that exist for data sharing.
and also know that the city's in a you know, fiscal is being very fiscal conservative and constrain and is to just automatically look at a contract in excess of you know $1 million matters also. So thank you. Thank you. >> is there anyone else that would like to mic a public comment here tonight or online ? >> no one on zoom. Okay.
I'm going to go ahead and close public comment and I'm going to bring it back. I do have a couple of questions and I'm wondering if our if staff can help me out with these.
I was wondering, mayor, if we could maybe we could have just staff give us a presentation in that presentation they can maybe address the questions that were raised. >> I'm not sure if it's greg or the police chief or combination. Hey greg, do you have a greg taylor from I.t services. >> do you ave a presentation for this tonight? I don't think I'm just going to speak.
I don't but I did hear all the public comment and and I think I can hopefully add to the call so a couple of things that you can answer you can ask answer whether peregrine is a surveillance tool.
yu can answer questions about the data, whether it's searchable, verifiable when we've had an audit who does the audit? Do we have do we know how many unauthorized searches we've had with our technology? And you probably took some good notes there too. >> did I miss anything or did you talk about explaining learning o the public how the data is used? Right.
so to bring that up so let's go ahead and get ome explanations from you and from our chief here as well. >> thank you for being here tonight. No problem. Good evening mayor council greg taylor it director I'll start by with the first question.
peregrine does not integrate with flock I just want to throw that out there so so they're two separate platforms for two separate purposes. There was a question on on sharing without a state folks we do not share with out of state we share with california law enforcement agencies. We comply with all california law to include sb 5434.
>> yeah. Now I know you had a couple other questions and I want to mic sure because the three that she had were flock out of state and independent audit. >> there was two others I asked if it was a if paragon is a surveillance tool it is non pragon really is is a staff multiplier.
what it does is it allows pd to quickly and efficiently access multiple data sources. An officer can go into paragon type in police case number and it'll hit stuff in paragon one of the huge benefits is peregrine obviously is able to access to the of the case
report system or record system but it also can hit our evidence system so what that allows is let's say we want to electronically file a court case with the district attorney .
so what we used to have to do is we'd have to print out all the case files, we'd have to gather all the vidence and police personnel would actually have to package that together and drive all the way out to martinez with paragon we can digitally package that and we can electronically file paragon is the only system that contra costa county d.a. Will allow that to happen which is one of the reasons why we use it. Yeah.
and lastly data collection it does not collect data. Paragon does not do that. What paragon does is it takes the data we have certain data and it allows officers to hit it quickly and efficiently in this question I know there was an audit yeah there is an audit
question that unfortunately that's that's a little bit out of out of my okay I have a question. >> I'm not sure if it's for you or the chief you talked about that the the enforcement basically it's a report writing to all the sounds like because it's gathering information that
we already have in a couple of other file modules so they don't have to go through it manually put it together into the report that's necessary to file at the electronic yes district attorney's office right now we're taking a hard copy. >> not anymore since we have paragon now we used to do that before paragon.
so now that we have paragon we electronic so we've been electronic. >> in the old days we were putting it off currying it over and dropping it off. This now lets us drop it into their electronic drop box of of some type.
>> and you said the county only accepts this particular technology to be used to provide that report that is transmittal is that then done in a fashion that the county's not able to back into our system to tamper or do anything with it? It's kind of like getting a pdf file and you're kind of stuck with the information for
operations all it okay but no no we do share with other california law enforcement agencies but the way that works is no, no we package it and we send it off to the district attorney. >> okay. All right. Maybe the chief can enlighten us. Mark shields, chief of police I can. Good evening. Our here for paragon.
so when I I'm going to back it up a little bit for education for you guys as a reminder because I know we've had this discussion in the past when I got here six years ago I couldn't tell you what our solve rate on crimes was. Everything was manual.
I couldn't tell you what the arrest rate was in particular areas of the city, things that a olice chief and I was being queried at the time because the moment then was a different moment.
but you know why don't you know this and we went out in search fr a tool because this data exist in a police database. Some of it's code enforcement in various places else within the city peregrine allows us one stop shopping to get all that information when we build cases with the case number all at the fingertips.
in addition, when officers are in the field being dispatched via their mdt you guys know they have computers in the car when they go to an address they get the immediate history now of what have we been there before? Have we made arrests there before? These are all critical to the safety of an officer responding to a house.
you go to a house you don't know what you're oing to do other than whatever the 911 caller has projected onto the phone now with paragon it's integrated our room as a records management system. We've been there three times for domestic violence. We've made two arrest now at least I know what I'm potentially going into.
>> I look at as I'm going to the all persons names the same victim from the three previous times I might think okay, it's a domestic violence.
this is the type of thing where paragon help with our safety in the sense we're going in with more information on the investigative side, same thing you're logging in with the case number you're now looking at maybe a drug narcotic activity at a particular residence. Oh look now there's three code cases. There's been funny smells. There's been things previously you would have to go talk to code talk to the county.
have they been out as nimal control been out there? There's a series of hecklists basic investigation would take paragon does that for us and I would add the final thing is it gives us the statistics that I share with you in terms of the
rate that we arrest, how often we were able to get a conviction on basic crimes and our response times and when I present every april on he crime data that's all been aggregated by paragon that's what we use it for investigations information thing and look down into the disparate kind of software systems without it I'll need
more officers, more records, clerks, people we're going back to manual mode and I don't want to go backwards. I'd rather go for it o and then the part on the county we file it electronically with the county sheriff's office nd do they have access to go backward into our system to get information?
the sheriff's officers it just kind of a stagnant report like no, it's a one way road they would then call the detective you know actually I need more evidence or I need which is often the case I need more a more detailed interview of recording of the interview.
the detective then takes that digital evidence sends it over having packaged many cases in my career, it's an onerous task because it's literally for those you're putting together a packet you go and you not only go to the you stand in line and wait you might pittsburgh might
be in front of you antioch, whatever and that's detective time where they're not investigating. They're waiting. Paragon gets rid of that the sense of the efficiency of sending it digitally and it's basically almost like a pdf file you drop it off yeah chronically to them they can
read the information,review the information, they can't manipulate it and they can't get back into our system or know anything. Okay when they want more they contact you, email contact and you can send a more thank you. Councilmember member thank you.
and so just to confirm we're not doing our own audit of what's going on so we do have a third party that's just making sure we're not sharing data with department of homeland security or something unexpectedly they don't have access to our we control our
data so there is no way that they would you're conflating floc with what peregrine is and as is the public. >> okay. Okay. Well I will I will decouple them so and so just so you know when we do an investigation there's a case number attached.
>> okay so we look back what was there's an officer's badge number case number and generally what type of case. Now isn't this tool also helpful to identify patterns not of people but of challenges? So for example areas where there are quite a few crashes for example or duis or
something's happening so that there can be partnership with our engineering and transportation department to try to address those community concerns. >> yes, that's absolutely how we use it. Yeah.
so that again we're using the data provided by department of transportation our own data in terms of accidents citations written into intersection we create internally a top ten so that we know again we've talked many times we have to work smarter. You're not authorizing me more. We used to be 160 to 140 officers.
I'm not under any illusion I'm getting 22 officers back so we have to work smarter and part of that is what is the data say? Where are the intersections, where are the accidents where we writing tickets, all that information lives in our databases. Paragon helps package it. Where's my top ten? When's the last time we were out there? We have tools that my captains use retty robustly.
so when was the last time we patrolled in a certain area and wrote a ticket because you know we'll get complaints or you guys get complaints that trickle down to me. I haven't seen a cop in six months. Wow. I can look and go we know we rotate tickets in that intersection last week.
that's what paragon does for us. So but again, since everybody wants a traffic officer everywhere all the time and you have to be very strategic so you're using the data to see where they could be the most effective.
yes, we issues we are trying to be the most data driven police department that we can be so that my officers who are very expensive and I admit that are out doing police work where they should be, when they should be and doing the maximum effort that we can do with the information that we're able to glean. >> okay.
>> thank you, councilmember hoffmeister you have more yet just to follow up regarding the debt the way ou talked about how officers would use it in the field where they can find out information, types of calls for service that may be at that same address.
I assume also if you've been out there if there's a mental situation and of a family member that you've had to go into and it may be that's what you're saying you can also alert core a3 or get some additional assistance to mic sure that we have the proper response to what could be absolute situation. >> that's how it ties in other database systems. A3 has been out the house three times.
>> we've made core referrals to individuals maybe stopped out in public somewhere. We've made several dozen perhaps core referrals. So if the person's known to the system itself that's absolutely how we use it. It's the most information so we can be the most efficient and each call that we go to great.
thank you and okay so I don't have any ther lights on here. I'm going to just a couple couple additional question. Sure. And this may let me know and I'm sure ou will if this is a flock versus peregrine, the audit that we're hearing about there, we're hearing questions do we audit the the peregrine system?
it doesn't sound like we do because it is a it's an information. Tell me a little bit more about if we do and you're conflating audit is flock okay when you start udit when the public starts talking about audits they're talking about flock and
you talk about peregrine we're talking access to see gic which I the california database we go through and I don't know if it's biweekly or once a month records does a seed compliant check again you have to have a case number. You have to have a adge number attached to it.
there's a need to know right to know more in terms of what information you're able to access and why. And we're consistently audited by the state in our internal records manager does that and that's with peregrine. >> that's a secret which falls into peregrine okay.
I just want to ask one more question about the the the people who are touching and I had this conversation earlier with staff in the medical field when I work in my day job the I but also the the emr, the electronic medical records every time I badge in my my
digital fingerprints are on certain things and it's in I have very strict access to certain things that relate to just my job is that something that we have as well with peregrine or am I conflating something? >> no, we have that's the case number and the badge number it's used for.
>> so any access to the to the system of peregrine there's there's a digital fingerprint. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. I just wanted to understand if it was similar to electronic medical records in the modern era, everything you're leaving a digital fingerprint on everything literally. Thank you. Anyone else have any other questions? No.
we'll go ahead and thank you very much. Thank you. Three those and we've heard public comment and I bring it back here to any anything any other discussion items? Nope.
anyone want to move this forward? I will again, I do want to thank the public for the questions, the good questions and the concern and I do just want to say as well that you know, this system has enabled us to pull reports and you know, we as the chief said we really can't afford more officers unfortunately.
so I do think that this is a is what I would call a workforce multiplier and it's something that has shown some success in our community. So I'm going to be moving forward item four see so that we can can continue to have this system in place so I'm moving item foresee. >> great. Thank you. Second we have a first and a second and madam clerk will you please call the vote council? Excuse me.
councilman benevento is absent. Councilmember hoffmeister? Yes. Councilmember over. Yes. Vice mayor albano. Yes. Mayor nakamura. Yes. Okay. So we're moving on to item five a this is the considering the approval of artwork for six utility boxes as phase four of the utility box artwork program. And tonight we have we have a presentation tonight on this meeting. Yes.
who's going to be oh, alex, go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know about the program. >> okay. Good evening, council. My name is alex steele's daughter.
I am the city urban forester for the public works division and tonight I have you with me from the concord art association and we are going to be presenting in phase four of the utility utility boards artwork project. And tonight we're going to be talking about presenting six new utility box artwork projects and looking to get your approval on those and showing you the artwork.
and before I get started I want to mic sure that I give special thanks to councilmember brinker for helping to initiate the helping to initiate the work with the concord art association to initiate phase four of this project. So thank you.
and a little bit of background on the concord utility box artwork project we're looking for the council approval for this artwork and with the approval of this artwork we will have 40 utility boxes of artwork throughout the city of concord which is really, you know, amazing to see and also a little bit more about the utility artwork.
it's really had a lost indifference with the city of concord, the artwork it's really beautiful. It brings a lot of life to the city. It brings a lot of life to the streets and also a lot of artwork tell the story of the city of concord so it's a lot of beautiful artwork. I look forward to showing it to you and with that I'll introduce you.
yeah, that she could go through some of the artwork and give it. Ijust want to say thank you. It's been a great crowd partnership I said between the city and a I've been lucky enough or privileged enough to be part of the pilot program in 2019 and be a part of this
staff and we have support from our board members that came to see this and it's been a great collaboration of letting local artists to show their artwork and we have some beautiful artwork tonight and so alex and I have been working a ot on this and getting it ready and
so I don't know how you want to start this but we'll just start going through I don't know how to work that out.
so the theme of this project was the beauty of concord and we had a lot of applicants and it was very difficult for our judges and so this will be the presentation of the six that were selected. So the first one is on lane and concord. >> could you just speak a little bit into the microphone please? So folks following at home oh, we got to say yes.
>> the first one is and so lane and concord avenue we concord heart association is sponsoring this box and the artwork chosen for this a great colorful celebration of life and music and you can see all of the things that are celebrated in this artwork.
the next one is on the alameda and clayton excuse me for the interruption are you able to tell us a little bit about the artist for each of these as well? Let me think.
we've kind of kept the artists secret because we haven't revealed them and we'll tell them tell hem tomorrow I'm sorry what they don't want to give them correct. Okay. But they are all local concord contra costa artist and that was one of the requirements so yes some have een previous and some are new artist. The second one is the alameda and clayton and buy.com.
>> so I just want to highlight that is it's very interesting that there is two alameda and clute road utility boxes because it's a circle. So just to be clear that's not the one. That's right. >> we got the correct one. Yes. So yeah e were aware of that today. Yeah. So thank you.
we will correct that here we have a bench photo as well. Yeah. Yeah. So later. Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. Okay. And the artwork selected for this you can see that it's is very much environmental friendly of capturing the cranes and butterflies and dragonflies that are seen
throughout and this one the third one is concord boulevard and mendocino and our sponsor is laura hoff hoffmeister and you can see it's right next to the concord park by concord high school. Concord high school, yeah. >> and look at that. There's somebody playing a saxophone which I played at concord high. >> hey, hey, hey.
my brother played the drums there and we thought it was perfect because that's where all the music really started in that park. >> so this one was chosen specially for that box. Yeah.
so that's really celebrates the whole music on that next one treat boulevard and turtle creek sponsored by the turtle creek hoa and this one you can see celebrates concord and new hall park. You can see the memorial here and all the beautiful celebrations on that.
this is our last one right or count diamond boulevard and willow pass our sponsor is mce and you can see how colorful and exhibits the nature and that was the whole point of we wanted all the artists to be have a colorful exhibit. So it really captures oh and here's their last cow and north lawn avenue sponsored by catherine henson and this captures mount diablo's and poppies and it's a very colorful box.
yeah, yeah. So any questions? I'll go ahead and open it up for questions here before we go to public comment. Go ahead. I'm sorry councilmember, I keep forgetting you're the mayor. >> okay. Tonight apparently yes.
>> I just wanted to ask what's the timeframe are you looking at I know this takes a while and I assume these are painted offsite and then they're brought on site. Are they going to be in the field base? They will be painted on site. Okay.
and we've been working with as soon as they get primed the artists will be painting and hopefully start in september and october free for I know I just heard the news too. >> yeah I just heard the news. It may be a very bad el nino october for us. >> that's why we're trying to get ahead of it. >> so yes, we are planning to try to wrap it before the rainy season.
>> yeah. Yeah right. Yeah. And they're all artists will be painting on site. Okay. That's great. Thank you councilmember over there. Thank you. So I'm going to save my comments for comment but asking guess it's a yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes.
so I'm I have comments later but my question right now is so you did identify sponsors so are all of these and I know I haven't paid my sponsorship yet and I need to do so but the point is all of this is funded externally. Correct.
so there is no city money other than alex's time which alex has done an amazing job but there's not we're not being asked to apply city funding toward this project. No, these were all privately funded projects. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you.
and then one other question because folks will be doing the painting in the field so do you need or are you looking for volunteers to help support the artists in the field? So for example helping to provide them with water or there are there ways that if a
volunteer wants to not just watch the art in action but support the artist, how could they do that? Well, thank I well we ave our mentors that are on our staff that we all took on a couple of artist and boxes and we'll be in contact with them and we will be supporting them if
water or you know breaks or whatever if somebody wants to come out we really want to kind of be protective of our artists so right no 1 to 1 and they will have a contact number for a person to hey, I need some help or I want to take a break and we're going to be going as
they paint we're going to be onsite watching and helping them are watching them whatever they need. Okay. So if someone would like to be part of that protective helpful process, who do they email they can contact? Concord artist aviation on yahoo.
com yeah concord art association at yahoo dot com okay okay thank you is there might be a whole yeah because there might be people who want to they might e helpful so and since they're going to be in the field it is a different process previous phases it is thank ou. Thank you very much.
I'm going to go ahead and open it up to public comment now. Okay? Okay. Thank you. Madam clerk. Do we have any public comments on this item? No. Mayor are there any online? No mayor no. Okay.
so I'm going to go ahead and bring it back to the council and close public comment and open it up for comments. Well remember over here has her light on first. No thank you. So again, I just want to say thank you to alex who did a really amazing job.
I know that this was the first time you were shepherding this project and just really doing a fantastic job for you pretty much where he point person and I appreciate the board being receptive because I think we started this conversation maybe in february or january and the conversation was okay, do you want to do phase four or do you want to do a phase four? How do we do a phase four right?
and then and then having the conversation and I just I want to think just our assistant city manager as well because justin, you've been pretty much supporting this project off and on not just this phase but all of the previous phases and so you knew you know, the some of
the the the roadblocks that could occur shall we put it that way so I really appreciate again the you know the process that took place to find out okay, where are the sites that are safe right for the artists and what was the process going to be? Where were you going to be in the field this time?
were you going to be painting offsite as before? So I just want folks to know there was a lot of coordination that needed to happen and it wasn't just as simple as we're going to paint six boxes and then I do appreciate as well
you know mce was approached after it became known that they were funding a mural and and another community and so they did step up and sponsor a ox which which I very much appreciate and I appreciate all the sponsors and so again you know I think that when this
program was started really over a decade ago, the goal has always been not just to have this kind of beautiful artwork in downtown but also expand it to all neighborhoods in the city. And so I just I really appreciate this continued partnership because other cities they've got their art commission and they've got their big art fund.
we ain't got none of that but we have each other and we work well together and so I look forward to seeing phase four come to fruition and when the time as appropriate I would like to move forward for approval.
item five a thank you and I have got councilmember hoffmeister heading right on to I just want to well just a confirmation that once the artwork is done it's sealed so that it's at least minimize from graffiti and the weather so that it stays in good condition as long as possible.
I will say on a comment side that I do enjoy sometimes being caught in traffic on clayton road at farm bureau so I can admire the box that's there and I remember one was just a plain old dirty utility box that nothing was on it.
so you know it does bring a smile to my face and I know others that get at those intersections that are sitting there that there's something to you know, gaze upon that it looks nice and is is attractive. So I appreciate all of the work and the efforts that goes into all of this because it's a lot and it does have a purpose and it is something that's beneficial in our community.
just add some enlightenment and some enjoyment in a positive component at a relatively inexpensive cost. >> a lot of labor and a lot of love and the costs really covers you know, some of the artist time and the materials and the painting component.
so I'm very glad to have been able to support and sponsor one of the boxes this time around. So I look forward to seeing it in all of its glory when it's done.
thank you and I just want to say thank you all so I see the one that said kirker pass and a concord boulevard and I think about lorrie rutledge whenever I drive by there and I came across some a a card that she had painted as well a greeting card that I still have but I do remember lorrie and the work that she did on the one at kirker pass that's when they roll.
I'm sorry renee johnson my apologies. Thank you for the correction. I can see her face. Okay. Um yeah, thank you for that. So I will I will second this motion if I haven't heard a second, you know? Okay.
and then I'll have the city clerk would you please call the vote councilmember been appointed absent council member hoffmeister yes. Councilmember oh bringer yes. Vice mayor alfano yes. Mayor nakamura yes. All right.
we are going to move on to our next item which is item five b and we are considering the approval of the I 60 corridor ramp metering memorandum of understanding and authorizing the city manager to execute the mou in a form acceptable to the city city attorney and here tonight to present is avishek perry. >> good evening counsel abhishek parekh, deputy director of public works.
today you are going to receive a presentation for me during memorandum of understanding and we have cdd staff stephanie hue caltrans staff greeting please say that sorry and then henderson from the consultant group who are jointly going to do the presentation and I'll turn it over to stephanie you I'm sorry I'm kind of short. Thank you.
good evening mayor number one council members thank you for having us this evening to present on proposed ramp metering along 680 it is doing this partnership with caltrans on ramp metering implementation on the corridor unlike other ramp metering deployments that have happened around contra costa county, we're taking this more collaborative approach and developing an mou amongst partners along 680 which includes all the cities on 680
as well as cta and caltrans and this memorandum of understanding mou is basically a result of a collaborative partnership over the last 18 months that really formulated this document that presents to to document the collaborative approach and how we will implement and how we resolve issues developing policies and common understanding of rules and responsibility.
>> so just a little bit of history of background 680 is a very congested quarter. As you know this is a diagram or a chart that made it into de san francisco chronicle back in april listing the top ten freeways segments that have heavy congestion and northbound 680 made it to the top number seven on the list.
so it is a well known corridor that has a lot of congestion specifically pm peak in the northbound direction and then southbound in the am peak. >> so why are you contemplating or considering around metering? It is a tool to regulate flow of traffic entering the freeway is smooths out the traffic flow
on the main line of the freeway in discourages those that maybe sometimes want to get off the ferry and getting on right away just to cut through traffic. It also helps to improve safety by reducing crashes during those erging zones when people get on the freeway and those who are exiting like the along the treat boulevard exit
there's a lot of that going on and also having a more reliable travel time on the freeway will help reduce the desire to cut through the city streets to get to their destination faster and it also improves the system of the freeway system without doing more widening or
increasing lanes which is now harder to do with new state policy under sb 743 which the goal is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. So there are two proposed metering projects being proposed on the corridor. One is implemented by caltrans and one by kia.
so first the caltrans project which is called aam you will hear later this evening is adaptive ramp metering they had proposed a caltrans did program state dollars to implement implement ramp metering along the entire 680 corridor it is a a newer ramp metering system
versus the time of day where it's set time in each day when it will turn on it is sort of the next generation of ramp metering, adaptive ramp metering or arm the proposal was to do the entire 680 corridor both direction and is funded by the state highway operations and protection program of shock funding.
meanwhile ccj has been implementing a program called innovate 680. It uses various strategies to improve congestion on the corridor and coronated adaptive remedy ramp metering or calm is what they will be implementing is a demonstration project for three years and the limits of calm is between a costa and willow pass road in a northbound direction.
so kay was able to partner with- caltrans to carve out a piece of 680 to implement this new technology called calm on this map ut blue is the calm project and the light blue is the caltrans arm project and through the partnership we've had we've been able to identify areas that we can cost, we can
share cost and scope and we're both committed to doing performance evaluation during and post the implementation of both ramp metering systems. So just a little bit of innovation.
680 the car project is part of the larger program that involves various strategies to improve congestion on the corridor ranging rom completing the express lane to deploying different strategies to promote transit such as part time transit lane and share mobility hubs.
calm or corney adaptive metering is under the advanced technologies project and calm really achieves those three strategies we have in the program cooling the hot spots in the corridor using innovative operational strategies and also preparing a corridor for the future with technology calm is a primary tool in the managed wait managed freeways concept it avoids costly widening or capacity expansion which yields a higher igh benefits and operational improvements with lower costs and again being consistent with the state policies on reducing vehicle miles traveled you will hear
from next from chris from caltrans who will talk about their arm project after chris it will be darren henderson who is a subject matter expert on calm chris just okay.
thank you mayor vice mayor, council members all my name is chris and on behalf of caltrans deputy district director of traffic operations I'm here to give you a brief introduction of adaptive metering project. Right. Okay.
mtc and the caltrans we have implemented a deputy remedying system for about 300 freeways on ramps including around 44 in I-80 around 134 in I 8080 we have 4480 we have 134 and about 120 in cimetiere in santa clara county and also it was implemented in 2016 for the san francisco bay oakland bay bridge and in the caltrans e are expanding the coverage of around metering for the major corridors including the I-80.
I six 8237 and stay around or they said that 85 and marine one one and solano 80 those won't be implemented in the next few years so caltrans currently have around 700 plus meters and we have already have 300 implemented adaptive metering the system.
>> so basically this a newer adaptive remediating it does not activate based on the time of day in the past we meter based on the peak hours right but now and in the problem verbalized that when this accident happened in the middle of the day we cannot do anything to prevent that from happening or mitigate it so it was this system activating it.
it was automatic turn on and off and it proactively changes the metering rates based on the potential traffic bottleneck for me we use that downstream look detectors you set p the local load detectors so we can proactively manage the metering rate and we arms this based on
like I said the downstream loop detectors in the next few slides I'll show you that the scope of the the rate meters I 121 and 80 so for 1 to 1 we basically activated from all the way to the gilroy to be spent it was activated last year and then I 84 and so I'm
saying let's say to oakland in 20 to 2022 and this is the before and after performance evaluation for a frank redwood redwood maple avenue to haney way we can tell from this graph that we save about ten minutes of travel time before and after the activation.
similarly for the I-80 which we activated in 2022 from it to 80 to 80 interchange to the grand avenue, we the state statistics shows that we save we could save about ten minutes of travel time. So that's what we have.
it's a I'm doing implement is sort of a I will implement the algorithm so we could calculate the metering rate to adapt to the system, the traffic conditions and next I'll have darren introduce you to the common project. Great. Thank you. And darren, there's a switch on the podium that can raise the whole podium up for you. >> I appreciate that.
I m the door one so the work that caltrans is doing really gave us a really great opportunity as part of the kta innovate 680 program to try an even newer approach to ramp metering. So we are moving forward with implementing what we call coordinated adaptive ramp metering.
it builds on the capabilities that chris talked about with sort of the version 2.0 metering that the caltrans currently uses with arm and adds in some additional components that mic it more accurate, that mic it more flexible and mic it more comprehensive in terms of working at a corridor level.
so the coordinated part all of the ramps basically in the current system are working together and that allows them to more effectively manage the queues on the ramps themselves.
so if one ramp is having trouble keeping a queue and it's starting to look like it could spill back, other ramps can step in and start to take some of that load so that we can accelerate the traffic moving off of that one ramp that's having trouble and start holding traffic back on others.
so we still get the effective ramp metering on the freeway itself without the impact that you ight otherwise experience on on the main line. And so it's that added capability that really makes it a more effective solution and is why we're so eager to test it here in contra costa county as stephanie mentioned, the intent is that it will be a three year pilot program as a proof of concept.
let's mic sure it actually works and that will take place on six ramps n the northbound side as stephanie talked about,there is a bit of good news. We aren't the first ones to be doing it here in california there is a project down in riverside county in the city of temecula on northbound I-15 that actually started
operations a couple of months ago. So we're able to benefit from their experiences as well both in terms of how they implemented the project and also now are seeing how the project is benefiting that corridor and then applying those lessons to the projects that we have here in in contra
costa county and if you are interested there is a qr code on here you can scan it, it takes you to their website and gives you a lot of information about their roject and certainly we're happy to share more information about that in the future if you're interested.
>> so so as a foundation to all of this, the first place we start is the vehicle detection systems that we use. So for the calm process we install more frequent detectors along the corridor.
these are measuring the number of vehicles that are crossing at a point in the speed that they're traveling and we can then use that information to determine how the freeway is operating and then mic changes to the ramp metering in order to ensure that we an continue to operate the freeway effectively.
we also add additional detection on the ramps themselves that allows us to measure how much traffic is actually being queued on the ramps at any moment in time and that then allows the system to adapt and to change the metering rate so that we can ensure that the ramps don't start backing up onto our arterial streets and becoming a problem.
>> all of that information is getting fed into a an advanced traffic management system. There's multiple detection points that occur along the corridor. That information feeds in the ramps themselves.
all of those ramp detection points feed into this system every two seconds it calculates what's happening in the corridor and makes adjustments to the ramp metering at every one of hose ramp meter locations long the corridor and to ensure that it's working optimally. So it's a very advanced system.
it's taking in a lot of information, very data intensive and able to appropriately respond almost in real time to changing conditions so that again we can minimize the impacts on the local streets and maximize the benefits that we're seeing on the freeway itself. The other advantages that information can be presented in a dashboard format. So this is the actual dashboard that was developed for the riverside county project.
so this is just a snapshot from that project a couple of weeks ago a similar dashboard will be developed for the project here in contra costa so that that way you and your staff will be able to access some level of this information and see how the projects performing at any moment in time.
>> so in addition to the technology side there are some physical improvements that are that are part of these projects here in the city of concord we have improvements that will be taking place on the willow pass road north ramp northbound ramp to I-15 to I I 15 I 680 I mean
the wrong county we will be widening that ramp to increase the amount of storage that we have on the ramps so taking it from two lanes to three lanes and then obviously we'll be installing the ramp metering equipment on the ramp in order to allow us to do the metering
and those things in combination will allow that ramp to work very effectively. >> so stephanie alluded to this and I think you've sort of gathered from the presentation that there is a lot of collaboration that's happening as we implement these ramp meters.
firstly the caltrans project doing ramp metering in the corridor gives us the opportunity as part of the current project to then build upon that and to do something a little bit more different. But that also means that there's multiple parties that are involved in that process.
it became apparent very quickly and at the request of a lot of the local agencies that we needed an mou to formalize some of those arrangements and so we went through a very robust process of developing that mou that included multiple rounds of review by your technical staff. So obviously was able to provide us a lot of comment. In fact I think he provided us more comments than anybody else. So thank you for that.
and that fed into what was ultimately included in the in the final mou. We also did go hrough a series of one on one meetings where we actually came to each of the cities and sat down with your staff in that final review process to mic sure that we
were appropriately capturing their comments and their concerns and that those things were reflected in the document. >> it's intended to be a foundation for exactly what we're doing what is the metering that we're doing? How do the different systems operate? Who's responsible for what?
it also sets up the framework for how we'll measure the success of the projects basically how we monitor the performance of the of the corridor lines of communication so that if you do have questions and concerns you'll know how to contact either caltrans or kta to express those concerns and questions and it also establishes a
governance structure for how we will oversee the implementation of these projects and the operations of these projects and where your staff will be involved in that mix and you can see that illustrated there on the bottom left of the image and that document then becomes
foundational to sort of the next document that's currently being developed and that's what we call the operations and maintenance procedures document that really becomes like the user manual for for rent metering in in the 680 corridor ccj caltrans and the local agencies will again be involved in developing that that document again we expect it
will go through multiple reviews review cycles so we'll be getting input from your local staff as well as the agencies involved. It gets into more details on terms in terms of the specifics on the operations of the different metering systems, how we manage incidents, how your emergency services can contact
if there is an incident and they need to have access to the facilities maintenance responsibilities who pays for what, who does what? Again, reiterating the performance monitoring requirements for the project protocols for stakeholder communications all of that is expected to be completed before the project goes live.
so the goal is to have that document completed by early 2028 so that it is in place when construction is winding up and we're actually getting to the point of readying the project for for activation. >> my last slide.
so in terms of where are we today if you've driven the 680 corridor particularly in the southern part of the county you may have noticed that there is some construction that's occurring on the outside shoulders of the of the freeway that's actually the caltrans arm project already underway. That project was let back in nvember of last year. So they've started staging construction along various places along the corridor.
at some point they will end up in your in your backyard doing the ramp improvements on the project ramps in terms of the current project that is currently in design. So we're getting close to wrapping up the final design for that project.
it's anticipated that that project will get lit towards the end of this year with an eye towards having it awarded early next year. So you'll see construction on the car components taking place starting next year. The goal is to have both of those projects completed by construction completed by the end of 2028 and that will allow them both to start going into operations in early 2029.
I will point out that because the project is already underway there will be locations where ramp meters get installed or they may turn on to green and be left on green for a period of time.
the intent is that all of the ramp meters will get installed and then the systems will all get activated at the same time. So if you do see ramp meters, particularly on the southbound side that get installed and get activated again, they will rest on green until the entire system is ready for full activation.
there will be obviously a lot of outreach that takes place before that so that your community is aware of what's going to happen and then again the projects are anticipated to go live in early 2029 so we are here tonight to ask your blessing on the mou and to allow you to execute that document on behalf of the city of concord to hare in the
benefits that we'll get from rent metering in the corridor. Great. And we'll happily answer any questions you may have. Thank you. I'm sure we have plenty. I'm going to go ahead and open up to my colleagues.
council ember hofmeister you've got questions? Yeah, I have a few here just to start off with you talked about the the last program the crm program which comes later than the rim. Is that correct? There's kind of two steps there, two pieces ultimately they'll be implemented at the same time. >> okay.
I thought arm was going to go forward first and then arm is already part of the arm part is already being constructed because it is a bigger project. There's more locations that are being constructed as part of that.
>> so construction of the arm project is already underway but the intent is that both of them will come live at the same time. >> what I was saying is you may see some of the arm ramps, the- meters get installed and caltrans may turn those on to test them and mic sure that the that the lights and that are working but they won't tart
operating until everything is ready to go at the same time. >> okay. I guess I'm a little confused because I thought in the mou that there's certain ramps some say arm and only one says calm. >> yeah in in the city of concord yes. There's only one ramp that will be operating using the calm system.
that's the one that will pass on the northbound side all of the other ramps in the city of concord that are getting ramp metering will be operating on the arm system at least in this initial phase and the two are not interconnected and the two of them are not interconnected. That is correct. >> okay.
and then on the calm system what happens you said it was a three year pilot. I guess I'm a little concerned about the timing of the mou with the timing that you want to go live, that it puts a tight timeframe on trying to get all the paperwork done just
before you go live that that should be done. >> so it worked on t much sooner. Yeah. So the mou is is now know and that's kind of a foundational document.
the intent is that we build upon that to create the operations and maintenance procedures document that one will have completed in in the early to middle part of 2028 which will still put us ix months ahead of it going live so that that way we've got those procedures in place that when we do go live we know exactly what we're doing and you'll know exactly what we're doing.
>> and then as far as the will pass road northbound calm program I thought I heard you say in the presentation that it would need a third lane. You need to add a lane. Yeah correct.
I'm looking at some maps in your presentation and it looks like it's a restriping are you actually needing to add pavement or is it a restriping? >> yes there will be some for instance there will be some pavement added to the wall. >> should we have got to come up and speak it into the record? >> sorry I knew the answer but I wanted to mic sure it was correct.
>> please go ahead and step up to the microphone. Identify yourself please for the mike down and tell us who you are. >> good evening mayor, vice mayor and council member. My name's francis lowe. I'm with paper consul so I'm a consultant to the city. So in answer to your question the ramp will be widened.
there will be a retaining wall constructed on the east side and currently the ramp starts with two lanes and then eventually merges back into one single auxiliary lane and under the future condition that we would be free lanes at the beginning and then eventually we also purchase also merge back into one single oscillatory lane.
so the intent is to provide more storage at a ramp to avoid backing up to the local streets and right now there's not a retaining wall there. Is that correct? Is just it just shoulder with some rough sort of vegetation that is hurt? >> yes. >> okay.
ad then let me ask then since you're going to be putting down new pavement, where does the drainage go? Who's going to put in the c-3 and who's going to be responsible for the maintenance of it because that all looks like it flows downhill to the city of concord that that is a- very good question.
>> so the answer is yes right on the east side of the of the retaining wall kind of between the freeway and the parking lot for the for the shopping center there is a ditch so there will be safety and other treatment that would be installed as part of the project so that way the
the project itself would not impose any and a special maintenance or additional application on the city of concord. So that's all part of the project responsible pretty and the whole entire facility will be maintained by caltrans okay but just putting the water in a dirt ditch that flows downhill is not an adequate c-3 treatment.
the last I looked in the manual I mean the the design already accounts for the for the flow and the amount no, that's not flow it's infiltration.
>> you have to hold it put it in a pond like you seen in some of the other reeway areas where they've had to design an area where all the drainage goes into it and it percolates down into the ground and it has a particular soil mix that has to be done. >> you have to put plants in it and you have to maintain it including the litter.
>> yeah there will be planting and other other type of improvements and that's art of the project. We do what this call I mean we do a a fairly good drainage study that look at the well I'm concerned that that goes downhill in concord doesn't want caltrans drainage I don't
so I would want to see that covered in the mou as to how that's being handled, how that's being maintained that you're caltrans is responsible. >> it's there infiltration. They report on it to the water board. They maintain it.
they maintain that all the studies, all the ongoing annual maintenance on it and the reporting to the water board. >> yeah. The all the work that's being proposed and performed will be covered and the question from it before what about yeah but you're going to have to design it to where it doesn't come on our property into our drainage areas again like I said it is designed in that particular
fashion and I'm just thinking that you're not going to get that flying through the water board at the end of the day and I don't want it on us that all of a sudden we have which has happened in other locations where you guys go out there and design something and then the
water ends up being discharged into the jurisdiction, the local jurisdiction without any written agreement, any approvals, any payment to the city to maintain that stuff. So that's hat I'm concerned about that that gets covered in the mou that sure. Yeah.
well what I'm trying to say is we are designing all the drainage system, all the associated elements of the metering per caltrans standards. It is not our intention to flow drainage into the ity proper.
we will we will confirm without designer ic sure that's one and then to frances's point the permit is all going through caltrans project development process and will ensure that c three is complied with so we can take that back and mic sure that's happening in terms of the mou is really specific to ramp metering operations, the drainage concerns that you have don't really shouldn't be addressed in this mou which is really about metering operations and implementations.
but your comments will take it back to the design team and mic sure that your concerns are taken because the problem happened up until span cinco when the intersection as redone there years ago with target city hill got the drainage water and then they
all of a sudden had to be responsible for trying to come up with a solution to address it and it was feeding off the caltrans on the ramp and off ramp there into their drainage system.
so I don't want to see that coming into our drainage system that you comply with everything you need to do to self treat self retain that on the caltrans right away property understood will mic sure that some e will double check on that doesn't happen and then the other question I had was the technology that you're using to detect backups what's
being done you talked about loops but is it loops or is it cameras or is it a combination ? It's it is it is loops. So on this diagram you can see the series of yellow sort of dotted squares.
those indicate the locations that we would be installing detectors on the ramps and it's the combination of all three that actually allow this particular system to calculate in real time what the q is on the ramp. It's not just waiting until traffic hits the back of the ramp to to activate a response because it's taking multiple points.
it can triangulate and figure out okay, the ramp is currently half occupied or three quarters occupied and then adjust the ramp metering rights accordingly so that it can prevent the ramp for backing up entirely and the loops are being used for both arm and calm. >> correct. Okay.
because we have loops out there now on the current metering so I assume I ean to install those you got a block of traffic we have construction delays so it's it's going to have to do work in the lanes.
>> it's that is correct but but as part of the design stage you know those are being those are being designed so that the closures that would happen would most likely happen overnight to minimize the impact to the communities. >> okay. And that takes you down to the back of the loop detector. So you got loop detectors.
you go all the way down to the bottom I guess of the ramp or somewhere close to there and when that achieves back up because things are gridlocked, what happens? What tell me if I'm a motorist sitting there do I have to sit there a lot longer? >> does the light turn green?
what what is achieved with both of these ramp metering strategies they're measuring for those occurrences and they will start to accelerate the ramp metering rights, the release rate of the meter, the amount of quickness that it goes green to start to reduce the amount of traffic on the ramp and if there's the accident on the freeway that
the people that are sitting at the front of that light can't get on the freeway because there's an accident or there's something else opening it up green doesn't do anything correct. >> so obviously in a circumstance like that if the freeway itself is blocked or congested just like rain, it wouldn't it wouldn't do anything.
now we do have as part of our of the calm system we install variable message sign at the head of the ramp. So on the approach as you're coming down the street and turning before you turn onto the ramp and we do install a variable message sign that can be displayed with message
like ramp closed or ike accident head exit in the head or something like that to warn motorists and discourage motorists from getting onto the freeway in those circumstances because you're right, f there is an accident or major accident on the freeway or the
frame is blocked, there's nothing that we can do with our control system to to avoid that. What I will say though is that having a ramp metering system like that in place can help the freeway to recover more quickly once the accident is removed and the freeways opened up to traffic again.
so it has been found that these can be very beneficial in improving that recovery and right now some of those technologies already in use on the ramps because we have ramp metering like at four and willow pass in some other areas. So you've got ramp metering, you got the traffic light there.
it sounds like that's an analog kind of program system basically where it's set for a certain amount of timing based upon a certain time f day and this is going to be more of a dynamic program that's being driven with the loop detector information being now fed to a computer rather than basically going nowhere to the box.
but it doesn't do anything at the box the box boxes just on a timer that has the settings. So is that am I correct in kind of capturing that going to them so the system on for that you're referring to yes time of day very rudimentary ramp metering 1.
0 the arm system that caltrans is implementing has those adaptive capabilities that you were talking about. So it takes the information from the sensors and will adjust the metering rates accordingly but that generally happens at the local level so that happens at each of the ramps and individually the calm system 3.
0 is taking that rm capability and then now applying it on a corridor wide basis. So the coordinated aspect of it so all of the ramps are working together as a single unit to manage the traffic along the corridor. >> so basically the arm technologies actually just sending the data back to basically the control box that's right there at he ramp so to speak.
and then it has a higher level. It's not analog, it's digital. It can mic adjustments to it so it's not being looked t as a computer database at a centralized location where you can look at the whole corridor. It's just adjusting on its own at its own location.
you're talking about an integrated system where then the data's not being I guess decided upon by the electronics at the box on the ramp ou're feeding it all into some sort of central computer system. That is correct. That's the the 3.0 or 2.0 calm system. Okay.
and then what happens about emergency vehicles trying to get through on some of these ramps because right now they're pretty wide and you know the 911 folks can get right up on to the freeway in the freeway shoulder to respond.
is there enough room for them to access through so so in designing these we are maintaining the shoulders so that even when the ramp meters are operable on most of the ramps, emergency vehicles should be able to still access along the shoulder with the current system.
it is a it is an active management system so there will be staff monitoring the system during particularly during peak hour operations when we would expect the meters to be on and so if there was an incident that required the ramp to be closed or to to remove the traffic from the ramp, emergency services could contact the operators and allow
that to be overridden so that that way the the emergency vehicles could access the facility and then the arm program. >> how does that work for emergency responders? I assume they just sneak by on the outside or inside free lane similar caltrans they can
similar like they do no trains and override the system if that was necessary kind of like they do now and then if the power goes out because know this has happened or I've been sitting at a ramp now and the power has gone out to the boxes basically you lose the the
lights or I because I don't know that all of them are in battery backup. I don't know if I was there in the battery ran out or if it never had a battery backup.
so I'm just not sure what what's in place for power outages or is it just so some of them will have the capabilities to continue to run if the system is isolated or if there's a communications failure or a power outage that's not allowing for the current system, not allowing information to go back to the to the central processing the
system can operate similar to arm at a local level so the meters can continue to operate under those conditions. Obviously it depends on sort of the length of the outage and the severity of the situation but there are redundancies built into these systems so that it can allow them to
operate under some conditions where there's a redundancy out in the field where the where the control boxes on the ramp that you have battery backup in it or is it no, there's no battery backup and we just wait for the power to get restored. It can be that can be both.
there can be some that are on battery backup. There can be some that are not and that the system will just shut down and some of our detectors actually will be using solar power so they won't be relying on the power grid to to pull energy those of generate the energy themselves and have a battery backup to
allow them to continue to operate and that's with the arm system as well not with the arm system. >> now with current because arms coming faster than you're coming years down the road we'll all start together arm will roll out probably sooner.
so what happens with arm when it activates do we have battery backup? Do you guys have battery backup or is it not not going to have that I need you to like sorry. So caltrans arm we do not have a battery backup system.
we typically get those response very fast so we would send a maintenance crew to fix it real quickly or have a generator to power up the location unless the power's out and I'm talking about pge outage and you know the power goes out at the intersections and everything so here's your goes out as well yeah we'll go okay I know some communities have battery
backups in their signal light system but you guys don't have it for the armed program. Um and then what happens if this what happens at the end of the pilot period three years from now like especially with the arm program car is the you know, the best best thing since sliced bread what happens with that technology?
what happens with it or if it's a failure and both are failure what what what happens with the we can stick on calm I don't know if arm but for calm we have security enough funding to do a demonstration project for three years and what happens after that the goal is to
demonstrate its effectiveness that it works really well and convince a state investor shop dollars to on your system like calm that's the goal like darren mentioned our riverside is implementing their own calm and that's the same sort of goal showing that it is very effective and that so my question is if is it's not effective what happens?
worst case there's no money to do it later or to continue on. >> worst case scenario if it does fail it will revert to arm which is the state's metering strategy. So that's to nswer your question that's what will happen.
and then with the state be responsible for those locations and they've agreed to do that it will revert back to the arm that they were originally doing. So remember they were already doing arm in the whole corridor, right? Che stepped in and say hey we got this money for some technology that can help do this 3.
0 and we've found money to do so and we're implementing we're operating them and for some reason we cannot ontinue caltrans will come back and put the arm in that they were already going to do without us. So that's what's going to happen and the state will fund the arm program that they have and that's going to be in the mou. It's written in the mou. Okay.
>> state promises a lot of things so I'm just making sure that you know well I think it was originally their project to do the whole corridor with arm. >> it was us convincing them and partnering that got us here. Okay, that's all I have for right now. Thank you mayor councilmember obering or you've got questions.
thank you so I have had the benefit of seeing this presentation and I think four times serving as your representative on innovate 680 so I'm glad you're finally here ,right because we've been talking about this so I'm going to have just a few basic
questions because I know that it's a concern that's been raised, you know, cross the mic up of the innovate 680 so what happens if things on't work, you know, as we anticipate right best laid plans and the system is backing up traffic into city streets right because think that's our biggest fear of implementing this technology
and we're going to get a lot of complaints from our constituents. So what is the process for addressing that? What kind of are you going to be working with our transportation director or how how will that get addressed and adjusted so as part of the mou it states that there are two
committees or two groups that will be formalized, formalized and one that's more of a technical group in nature that will involve the traffic engineer of each of the cities where we'll meet regularly at firms. I'm sure when we first implement this there will be questions.
there will be an opportunity to kind of assess what's going on or how it's going so that group is he first place that would- bring up issues or concerns.
challenges what what's going well? What's going not well hopefully none of those none of that but that's the first group that we would have to kind of tackle those technical issues and we will convene as much as we need to. The other level is more of the more senior more executive level where you know we're trying to resolve things at the lowest level possible and there are things that are unsolvable by the technical staff.
it will be elevated up to that specific group. So there the whole point of the mou is allow a forum for the technical staff, the city staff and agencies to come together and talk about issues if there are any and this is a way that
we feel would be the most collaborative versus other corridors that have been just implemented without metering, without things like this to be able to talk to someone when things are not going well. So to your question, that's what will happen if that's the first step.
like if we see something that's wrong we convene the group we talk about it trying to resolve it as soon as possible, mic changes to our to our integration or whatever the technical side of things and see how we can resolve any challenges that we see.
and I think it is that okay yeah we might have the same so let me just ask the follow up. So can you be a little bit more specific about like I think about you know like trans pac and innovate 6 or 8 like they have the cadences of when they meet and tac and all of that.
so you know rather than it sounds like your approach is being responsive to an incident is there like more of like a monthly for something because that's what I want to know is right the frequency I think we were hoping that you know if not quarterly of us monthly at
first what I was I the vagueness is because it's not I don't think we've nailed down the cadence of those meetings it is more establishing those working groups and the technical committees at first and we already have attack under innovate 680 just so that
you all know you serve on the isc advisory committee which is other ike one elected in each of the cities in parallel we have a technical group that meets at first almost every month when we were developing the calm and arm partnership but so far we've been not meeting as much because there's we've been working on this.
so I think it will ramp up as we are about to implement throughout metering did right and then you know when things are going well we may not meet as often but there is at least I feel we think this is more collaborative.
there's people are at the table discussing things are not going right versus in the past things kind of get implemented and there's no one to turn to when things are going wrong and you're just trying to find someone to still hear you ut. So I think let me just ask an additional follow up question.
I want to I'm looking to here is how nimble this project is going to be. How quickly is the reaction or- the fix know are we talking we have to wait we have to wait 30 days for this. Oh no, I hope not. No.
or is there is going to be a two day response time if there's issues that are being identified. I just want to know how nimble this situation is in my I don't I will defer to the experts on how quick we can change certain programing of the meters.
I work on the our project can tell you with the current project and again from the riverside county experience like we are dealing with tickets all he time so if there's if there's an issue that's raised whatever it is it gets logged into the nternal
project management system and gets dealt with immediately and so we can mic changes to the to the parameters within the operating system instantaneously.
so if we're made aware of something that requires that sort of a change you know there's a detector down or something's been mis calibrated,we can do that fairly immediately and then to stephanie's earlier point about the sort of cadence of meetings we would expect to be doing technical type meetings very frequently when the project is about o o live and then when it first goes live because that's when you find these
things out you like once it goes live you know the gremlins will expose themselves and so w'll do our best to tackle them. But then after a few months of operations we're starting to see things stabilize and e're becoming less frequent with the need to intervene on anything the systems now being pretty
much fully tuned and so we're we're in a pretty stable operations phase and so those meetings can start to reduce in terms of their frequency and deal with issues as they arise.
>> so I think I think and I follow up there to your question yes, I'm done with that question you talked about how responsive are karma? Karma can be in terms of what you're doing because it's based upon a centralized computer database.
but the same question I would ask that the mayor just asked of alm in terms of your responsiveness because that's going to be out there in the real world sooner than current maybe so that they're starting at the same time go ahead else but what it's going to be so I have a beautiful program on my tax top I can oversee all the rent meters in bay area can you speak up I'm sorry.
>> so I have a computer program that sitting on my desktop I monitor every single rate meters in bay area. Tere's another branch chief on the back.
he oversees half of it I oversees have of it so the best way is if something happens typically I that shows colors so when the color turns I know immediately so I would contact the maintenance to mic a repair so you have to do a field dispatch which I have a full staff. >> yeah you have to contact them to have him go out in the field. Yeah.
and go requires somebody to know about t back in the office. Yes. Okay. And then the calm system is a little bit more higher level automated that that as a centralized computer data point I assume yes yeah oh wrong would have no no I hear him
nodding his head so that was I just training on the nature of the problem. >> yeah you'll probably know basically a programing issue not a somebody knocked over the equipment with heir truck. >> that's a different issue. Okay go ahead mira I'm orry. Councilmember obering or go ahead with your thank you.
>> thank you so so another question which is related to, you know, backing up traffic on the concord street. So some of our ramps are kind of short that have been identified, right? Like barnett avenue I think is a good example.
so have each of these sites that ave been identified have they been, you know, thoroughly studied to mic sure that there's enough room on the ramp like we just heard from councilmember hofmeister about all those c three requirements that I appreciate you bringing up because I didn't think about that.
so each of the proposed ramps that you've identified have you evaluated them to mic sure that they have the capacity to do what you want to do with arm and calm? >> I just I would just say for willow pass road that's the only car ramp that's being operating with our calm as you saw we are adding an extra lane pavement so we would have adequate storage.
I will have chris address the rest of the five ramps that are operating on arm and how they plan to do that. >> okay. State invested over $100 million for this I 680 corridor our staff oversees every on ramps to see if there's room to widen it and if there's no room we have to ask for the
headquarters approval and also our district deputy approval it's we explore all the ideas that could maximize the storage. >> so either is the volume is low or we don't ave the right of way if there's right away and the demand is high we typically will mic sure we widened our so but my question
is so with with these ramps that have been identified for alm yeah so so burnett avenue for example it's kind of short so so there not the capacity to you know add a lane and so so is it is it going to be capable of holding the capacity you know like because again my
concern is the constituents concern of we're implementing this and then the unintended consequences of backing up into so so I'm worried about the ones that are shorter, right? So so do they have he capacity to do what you plan to do? Okay.
so generally the minimart remy to raise 240 per hour and how the what two 140 vehicles per okay oh thank you. Thank you. That's 15 seconds. You were there for 15 seconds. That's the lowest the fastest is not I mean meaning you park there for four seconds. That's the fastest. Okay.
so that's how we at the stage manage it is 900 is really, really fast. You park there and then the next car is coming up.
>> that sounds great so that's very fast and t the end of the ram and has a few detectors we detect if the occupancy rate reaches a low the higher threshold we ill increase the metering rates. For example if the current meter race 500 increase could be increased, could be we could add 550 of them or we can set it to increase the faster use the 100 so that next cycle it will increase to 600.
so that's that's that's typically our caltrans how you how it functions for the meters we have a mechanism to deal with the queue acking up to local street mechanics. >> okay I see so how does all this how does how do you arm and calm play into you know we we've worked very hard.
I can't wait to see our adaptive signal system really fully functional. I mean people are asking me for this six years ago when I first ran for city council so so my fear is that we implement this and then like the systems aren't working together.
>> so how does this work? How does arms ensure standing here? Chris how does arm work with if a city has an adapt adaptive signal system so simple solution oh a simple answer is we try to maximize the existing infrastructure and maximize that use so we the state's plicies that we don't widen the freeway anymore want to use
the current infrastructure but when the demand is so high then what we can do is to manage it. So the way to manage it the only tool we have is read meters.
so you might not feel that but from point a to point b you might typically it takes you 20 minutes arm you implement arm you probably can save two minutes. You might not feel that to be honest but two minutes it's it's even consider all the vehicles save two inutes that's a lot of savings in terms of the pollutions and you
know so but is there okay but but I think I think my question is more of okay so we're putting these adaptive signals on you know clayton road so I can get all the way from here to there right now I'm like hitting every light yet but someday I hope I can just go
straight and it should only take five minutes from my house. Yeah right. So I am going down clayton road or I'm going down concord boulevard so everything's streamlined.
so is that system that the city of concord has invested in how does that interplay with arm? Are they talking to each other for now no we don't right now we don't talk to each other but the ad ran at onramp the intersection it's controlled by caltrans. Okay. But I'm saying if if if the city of concord like everything's going efficiently. Yeah.
what it sounds like to me is if there could be some negative interplay. Right. If something's not working, if they're not connecting right because then then the traffic could be backing up and impacting the adaptive signal. So that's just my concern as you see.
so our signal ops it's a different branch the manager, the intersections so the we could connect the traffic egineers in a city and with the single signal ops chief so they can talk I would like to can we put that in the mou because again it's taken us 20
years like I'm not exaggerating to get to this point. We're on the threshold of connectivity and I just don't want okay and I would just concur and back you up on that because I don't need caltrans running in its own environment and space on the on ramps and we've got our thoroughfares interconnected and working with
the adaptive signal like technology and then there's a you know there's a conflict there and we don't have any coordination or any way to have caltrans at the table to help work through or to have that put into place.
if it's not in the mou t doesn't exist and there's no ability to try to keep that communication, that coordination in place and required other than by your good nature you may want to do it but there could be another governor or another head of caltrans that may say something completely different next year.
so I think that's what we want to see in the mou is that there is a commitment to that coordination by the way. So at the the way you signal avs operate is it's not really real related to the mou that red and both use if you think yes it will help if you know we as much as we want to help the
cities right but the mou of this remy to operations is really doesn't affect you're saying that I want to mic sure of it so that you can put that into the mou that you're saying you're ramp metering will not affect our city streets and any backup for traffic flow in our
city streets which are already being worked on for you know the adaptive signal light technology. So I want to mic sure that there's a way to really understand if there is a problem we hold somebody's feet to the fire and can connect so I can talk to the current
perspective on this and I can also talk to the cats program that car is also doing that is with the goal of getting that interconnected signal systems at the arterial level car is capable of integrating with cats.
the applications that exist in australia, the two systems signal systems and metering systems are integrated so the ramp meters can call on their adjacent arterial signals to either slow down or increase the flow of vehicles depending on what the situation is at the ramp.
>> we are not actively we at this time designing calm to integrate directly with cats but that is definitely a long term intent for the two programs and so when we do get to do the some of the cats pilots pilot programs, one of the features that we will be testing is the ability to integrate those with car.
I will point out though that we are doing arterial integration at one location where we have a small ramp that's the one at oak and buskirk in walnut creek we have a very short hook ramp that we know the ramp itself is not able to store sufficient vehicles so that is being
coordinated with contra costa county who control that signal so that that will be integrated into the car ramp metering system and the signal will operate with the ramp meter to esure that vehicles can get onto the ramp hen they're coming from certain directions
and that vehicles are able to be stored in the in the in the turn lanes on the on the streets themselves as part of the ramp storage. So we'll have additional detection on the on those turn lights so that integration is absolutely possible with with calm because it is an active traffic management system.
it's a broader sort of its management system. So the goal here is to prove that calm is effective. Some of these little sort of first tests of arterial integration are effective and then we can start to look longer term at doing full integrations with the arterial network which which is lso calm sounds great. Yes.
we've got we've got the stumbling block of the growing pains of alm before we get the car understood so I'm trying to figure out what we do with arm in the meantime and then obviously with calm there's some other issues but still is there in defense of caltrans
they they have allowed cti and partnered with cti to allow us to do the current project here otherwise it could be an alarm. The other thing is they are working with cti also on the cats program where there are caltrans signals that are involved in he corridors that are being identified as as
candidate cats corridors coordinated arterial traffic signal systems. Caltrans is a partner and they are allowing those to be integrated in potentially be integrated into the cat solution as well. >> so they are they are working with us to try and help find the right solutions for you. >> thank you.
and we've got abhishek standing standing in the aiting in the wings to put his input in here as thank you council members for all the other great questions. I did want to point out that the adaptive system starts at the first intersection the city controls and then continues on.
so the concern is valid that if there is a backup from the rams that goes beyond the first intersection that controls controls, it does impact our adaptive right.
but the offer of working with the traffic ops guys at caltrans and maybe even exploring the option of how we can include the r intersection into our adaptive system makes the whole system work much better. So we definitely would love to you know since they've offered we would love to work with them and figure out how we can connect our adaptive system to the last point where before the ramp in takes on and based on the conversation that we've had tonight, the rams as soon as
the cues extend beyond he last detector they will be flushed out. Is that a correct exemption? So want to let you know the threshold that we said 30% to 40% at the end of the queue. That doesn't mean the car is going to be parking there at the end. That's 100%.
so when 30, 30% and 40% actually cars and moving and we already start increase the rate we don't wait that week but wait until the vehicle get to the end of the queue which is 100% so we started increased the rate by year starting t 30 to 40%.
that's with arm that's how are you doing that? >> oh look the computer box is doing it. Got it. Okay so you have it. It's an adaptive variable program that can adjust based upon what its inputs are from the loop detectors and you set the parameters. Yes. And it can adjust. Okay. Okay.
I just have a few oh, did you have something so so I would just say that you know as part of the working group we will definitely explore that option of making sure some of those things are in the operational guide. From the perspective of just the mou tonight, I think that's that is not necessary. >> okay.
thank you. So I just have a few more questions. You know, you've heard the theme of data tonight throughout our council meeting so I have some data questions here as well. So we're starting at point a right now without arm so we'd like to see if arm is effective or not. Right.
and so what kind of so it's a two part question. So what kind of data is being collected as part of arm implementation and will that data be shared with the city of concord so we can, you know, better improve our traffic flow so mtc is sponsoring this project? Okay. I'm project all over the bay area.
okay so their use in inrix they use data collections they produce data and we caltrans that's all the loop detectors on the freeways as well as on ramps and off ramps so those are data are available it's called pam's pam's he seems he missed that and he does see that call.
>> what does that stand for? What does pmc stand for a performance monitoring system. >> okay. And you said that this data is I'm sorry to interrupt here the data is collected and available. Is there a cost for it? >> no, it's it's it's it's online. Okay. Yeah.
and I heard you say something on mts has the data so how does the consultant work with us so for arm project typically we collect the before data we collect mvc or send consultants to collect data we have the before data and we'll have after data and afterwards 3 or
4 months later they will they will do an on off studies. So we have all evaluation just like the what we what I presented to you we have the studies to prove it does it work or not? So that's just to compare arm to see if it works better than the local response at the top tables.
so we're building our data system so we have a transporter ocean management center that we're building in concord. It's pretty xciting. We've had to get some earmarks from the feds and everything o again I think this is similar to the the systems like we want to mic sure the systems are talking so how easy so so first
of all is a baseline going to get taken before arm gets implemented and calm? So we see okay, this is how it is today. So are we doing I see you two nodding heads about calm so as arm doing the baseline as well to see caltrans we maintain we have the data lake right now. >> yes. Okay.
okay. And so how hard is it for so so to the mayor's point so if if our transportation director wants to you know, is there a way to feed some of this data into our our transportation management system so we can see how it's working, you know, because there's always problems
with this data is in this form and this data is in this form. So how hard is it for us to get this data? Data is very important to this city.
>> I agree it's very important but to be honest caltrans is everything is a goal by the book all governing the data we there's some cctvs for example we can just release it kay but a lot of information can be reached through the public information request. >> right. So we have the data.
ari, you just mentioned we have to go through it's you know, we have our it has very strict rules in terms of how the data flows in the out. Okay. So that part I'm not sure to be honest.
so is there somebody we can get connected with just like we're talking about making a connection earlier somebody that our staff can talk to just see okay so what what has been title of that person what are they that it will have to for now if it goes through I can can tell me that. Okay. So you're going to help us with that. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. And then just my very last question. I promise.
so so do we know kay because you've already talked about this the our model has been operating in other places. >> right? So has this led to people just kind of ignoring the freeway and routing through city streets and other areas? You're smiling because now we try it.
I mean I happens of course I'm not going to deny that people won't run through a red light just like the local street people run through a red light. >> no, no, no.
but I mean what I what I'm asking is more of because of arm implements motion you know, has it led to people choosing to use surface streets? So like right now in concord our challenge is that people come they use they don't use highway for in many cases right like coming rom east county so they come down kirker pass or
they come down you know clayton road concord boulevard, willow pass road is a good example to avoid the freeway so where this has been implement hood has this led to a greater utilization of the freeway or a greater utilization of cutting through city streets?
so the purpose of arm is really to facilitate the flow of the main like thick right and when you facilitate the main like traffic you reduce the amount of congestion on the freeway. What happened is that people would be able to utilize the main line freeway more. >> is that what you have seen already? Yes. Okay.
that was my question is what have you seen thus far? Okay. I'm going to stop talking and I'll let others thank you. I do have a just I just have a couple of questions but I do see councilmember hofmeister, your lights on.
>> well, I just wanted to follow up on a question that councilmember obering or brought up because you sounded like she was asking about the data collection in before and after and how we could get information about that.
you know, kind of test its validity and it kind of danced around it while you weren't sure it was it was his you weren't sure and mtc and that so mike it's a government agency. It's public data unless you're using proprietary sources are using proprietary software or equipment or any of that type of stuff that then hinders our ability to get to the information so we can validate it and we can see for ourselves if it's working the way you're saying it's working.
I mean taking your word for it is great but I don't want to say it's caltrans but it's caltrans. So how do we validate and independently review the the data that shows the outcomes that you're saying are going to happen when they happen and we say no, it's backed up. You're saying no, our program shows it's working.
how do we get to that information? That's why I'm asking when you kind of danced around it you said well it depends on this and that depends on that and that that software we got to talk to the city people.
> is this a proprietary system ? >> no, I think that no, it is not a proprietary system. >> so nothing in that arm system is proprietary? No. Okay. So this it's a complicated system. Okay. So when you talk about data sharing I was when I answer the question about data sharing that's typically when the I.t.
or a concrete city and the city state how they talk to each other that's what I meant. There's data sharing but if you give us an answer and you tell us it's 500 and we want to see how did you get to 500 what was the the equation what was the inputs and the underlying data
that gave you that answer? Are we able to be able to get to that source or is that proprietary? So in the past caltrans maintain something called t d tables at each rate meeting locations that part I can share if you if you want to if you want to know kay this hour and
locations do you want to know how what a meeting rate is I can share it with you but for the arm system it's a little bit tricky because it adjusts the meeting rates every 30s you think you evaluate occupancy and then send a corresponding remington rates.
okay so I get that yeah it's a software it's a software program that you know is dynamic so it's making adjustments is that software program that you're utilizing then roprietary? I don't think so but even I don't have access to that to report so so how do we get
access to that information to public information request and that's what I think that's the way the other way is to put it in the mou as I mentioned, mtc is contacting the the studies so they rely on the data from the consultants to collect them. Mm hmm.
so the other way is we can talk to mtc but like I said that yeah but you know and the traffic engineering world if you don't know what the math formula is that's giving ou the data and you have a question about the data output without knowing the formula you
you can't really see and show where the problem lies. And so that's what I'm trying to get at. You keep telling us it's working fine. Here's the number. It's like no. How did you come to that number? Well it's a proprietary formula. We can't give it to you. Well, we don't agree with your answer.
well, you have to take it because that's the way it is and I want to avoid that. So that's what I'm rying to get at and that's why I'm asking if it's proprietary software package that you guys are utilizing or if it's not adaptive metering we have we
we're caltrans are working with our consultants and we have a system that we work together to develop this well that's why I'm wondering consultants often have proprietary programs and I'm wanting to mic sure that we have access to getting to the background on the source data that we're have to get back to you. Okay.
because that's what I think is important to have covered in the mou. Sure. But that the mou already addresses that local agencies partners can request data.
I think what you're asking of caltrans is how you how valid those data are, how you arrived at, how how your data I arrived at the data maybe that's more of a technical question.
I think maybe I would offer maybe caltrans would help the city talk to mtc who is generating or gathering the data and see how they can come to a and understand yeah what that's also something we will address in the ext while I go ahead for the next one.
>> yeah I'm just trying to figure out the here and now so I guess I'm a little confused because the mou the mou basically lays out sort of the goals the let's see who's doing what, who's going to maintain, who's going to operate. I think a lot of the questions are very technical and that will be lights to operations and the technical part to operation. And then I'm confused because you're saying well it's mtc and I'm like well I think because it's not in this agreement.
well I think mtc is maybe a funding partner of trance. Yes. To implement aam and they have done it through those various corridors that chris mentioned in his presentation and I think the questions are valid and good I'm not sure chris can
answer because they he's I think the next document that we will work on it's where the technical staff will be at the table abhishek and his staff or will he post those really technical questioning of abhishek oh there you go I mean he can save the day maybe he can shed some light on my question.
>> I don't know. >> so I think councilmember hofmeister the he intent here is to ensure that what we are seeing is what caltrans is seeing and the decisions re made based on common understanding of what's going on the ramp and it's an important question given that
there is going to be a lot of operational process written out in the next round. We will ensure that that is taken care of in terms of how the data exchange happens between the city and caltrans and then so that we're all on the same page in terms of what's happening at that happens okay comfortable thank you.
okay, great. Okay. I have a couple of questions. You mentioned a another pilot program in temecula and marietta that is that mimics or is very similar to what we're doing here basically the same. Yeah.
so are you talking about the the the proximate to the off ramps we're talking about one two there's about four different areas here with these six different on ramps and off ramps. Are they that closely spaced together and I'm thinking specifically about burnett avenue which is this one that's really that's really short and has a you know, the lowest amount of storage here.
when I went through the report I started burnett is one where it's such a short on ramp and it's if there's is the flow going to be is what's happening in temecula similar to what we would see here in concord especially with how close those on ramps are.
>> so okay, so so at a high concept level it's the same program. It's the same system that's being used in temecula that's being that will be used here for the calm program, not our calm. The temecula project only has four ramps involved so it's a much smaller project in terms of its scale.
but even with only four ramps they're able to demonstrate that we can manage the queues on the ramps. They're not spilling back onto their general streets and we're- seeing positive impacts on the freeway main line we're able to reduce travel time just goes away.
to answer your question more specifically so in the segments that are operated under calm we are able to enter the ramp characteristics into the control system so if it is a short ramp that only has a certain limited amount of storage that gets entered in.
so the system knows that I've only got like 500ft to deal with here and so it becomes more sensitive to controlling the queues on those ramps. S the one that I talked to before down at oak and buskirk and in walnut creek that's a very short ramp that will work the system really hard.
but what the system is able to do is when that ramp starts to become utilized it then looks at upstream and downstream locations to see if it can balance those. The burnette ramp is going to be on the arm system.
the willow pass will be on the calm system so it is on that line so those two systems won't be necessarily coordinating with each other calm will now we will have detectors on the main line extending further north of willow pass so we'll be able to use calm to control
the flow into the burnette location if we're starting to see congestion forming on the main line down there and I, I know with the armed system that they can similarly enter the parameters of the ramps into their system so that it knows that, you know, when that ramp
starts to get occupied as chris was explaining, the ramp accelerates the metering rate so that it can better control the queues on those locations. Now again if we get to a situation where we see that that ramp is not operating effectively over a period of time, then we'll have this governance structure in place
to report that back and then to collectively come up with a solution and maybe that's one that we accelerate getting it on calm so that that way we can get that higher level of control. >> so okay thank you for all of that.
is is temecula spaced those spacing from from off from onramp to onramp this is a tight section between these these three that I'm I'm think you've got a couple that are within a mile of each other there yeah they're very close and if you've got a short on
ramp and they're close together and stephanie you and I have talked about tension on roadways and trying to engineer that out of the of the roadways is are we are we helping the system or are we are we inserting more of attention wen people are, you know, short on ramps?
should people these on ramps are very close together. I just want to I want to engineer out any tension on our roadways. Yeah. So the ones the four that we're working with in temecula are more probably more spaced than the ones that you're talking about here.
I think there's a mile and a half between temecula parkway and rancho california and then there's another mile and a half to winchester road. So they're a little bit more well spaced but that by itself doesn't really matter.
I again with the arms system the benefit is that you start to break up those platoons of vehicles that are running the freeway so you still get benefit even if the ramps are still relatively close to each other by metering the ramp you're going to get a benefit on the main line because you're better controlling how those vehicles are able to merge if
you've ever been on a I mean I'm sure you've all driven a ramp particularly ones that have relatively short wave areas it can get difficult to merge onto the main line because you know there's multiple vehicles in front of you.
it causes a lot of disruption with the vehicles that are in the right lane on the freeway and that then compounds itself once it becomes congested then you've got a bigger problem. So the act of doing ramp metering helps to alleviate those problems. It makes the merging easier, it makes it safer so that the freeway can be more effective and it doesn't matter how closely the ramps are spaced that can be effective regardless.
calm then gives you the added dimension of being able to coordinate all the ramps. So if you do have a series of ramps that are relatively close together, the system can work together to help resolve those problems. >> okay.
this is also a situation this this region is where you've got this situation that we've just described nd then there's a lot of cars moving to the right because you've got highway four interchange coming up. I don't know if any of you have driven how much experience you have in this vicinity, but there's there's there's a lot of tension. >> yep.
now it is definitely a complicated corridor and I will tell you right now that like all this while everything that's collectively being done with both of these projects are going to mic improvements that doesn't mic solve the problem like if it was all that easy we would have done it a long time ago.
as you described, there's a lot of complex issues that we deal with in this corridor. You have the wave hat comes off of 24 goes across the 242 goes up to four like there's a lot of maneuvering that has to happen in the raffic flow. You know, that causes disruption.
there's a lot of ramps as you pointed out. There's a lot of high volume ramps so it is a complicated problem to fix. This is a good step towards solving that problem.
other aspects of the innovate 680 program are going further to help, you know, with other aspects of solving those problems and collectively as we start to piece all of these things together we'll start to see benefits in the corridor.
does it mic all that congestion go away tomorrow? Probably not but it will mic it better and in every step that we mic it better makes a etter quality of life for our residents and makes it safer to travel. >> I'm excited about the potential. I do want to add one other question.
there is a technical I just want to confirm there's a technical committee and the city will have then the city will have staff on that that yeah the second one they're the technical committee. I was shocked I would assume would be involved in that and then there will be a working group that's at a higher executive level.
the public works director or some equivalent to that would likely be involved and as stephanie pointed out, they would be engaged if we had issues that couldn't get resolved at the technical level it's not dissimilar to the process that you go through with pac. You know they get dealt with at a at a technical level nd if they can't get resolved then it gets elevated to pac for for their input. >> okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Councilmember hoffmeister, you have more? Yeah.
just to follow up on one of your last ones there because you were talking about the technical group and if I understood correctly that was related to the calm program. Is that correct? All right. Metering all right, man so there's one for arm and then at a later the mou covers both thank you. >> okay.
and then we talked about and you mentioned that this is ramp metering. It doesn't do and the city's got ts inner adaptive signal light program on its corridors and then there's that signal light that's right at the bottom of the off ramp or the on ramp that's not the city's light.
it's a caltrans light but t's not part of the ramp program. So how does that fit into trying to mic traffic flow better if you're doing from bottom of the ramp to the freeway and we've got everything up to that last signal light and I'm thinking like will it pass road at you know, interstate 680 here
caltrans has the light on both sides of the freeway. We have the signals that come up to that point you're talking about ramp metering enhancements to help traffic flow getting on the freeway but everybody's backed up at that signal light. That's a caltrans light at the bottom before you get on the ramp.
so where does that signal light? You know that's there that's a caltrans light and a lot of the intersections as you get on to the freeway on ramps are caltrans. >> where does that fit into all of this improve traffic flow? >> it seems to be quietly overlooked in all of this presentation.
>> you know, I'm a driver so I understand that sometimes we go back up to the local street at times but lot of times it is because the main lights congested a lot of time it is because the main lights congested caltrans. We don't want to hold the traffic back.
trust me, I don't want to hold the traffic back because I. I received complaints and I have to deal with them so from my point of view as a metering people I want to mic sure traffic does not go back to local street.
so in terms of your question from the local traffic and the coordination of our signal ops people, for me that will be different issues because I I'm pretty confident that I'm going to mic sure that it doesn't go back to the local street.
so by doing adopting the adaptive metering we can mic sure that the freeways flowing as long as freeways flowing well there's two things one is the signal ightly take the willow pass road one which is actually years caltrans um the signal light at that onramp going northbound is a caltrans light so you've got the free right turn lane basically and
that may be you know further signalized if if that's what you do to get on the onramp with your loop detector program but then you've got the through traffic that's going underneath the overpass that needs to circle back on the freeway to go the other direction and
you've ot those two signal lights on either side of the freeway and you could do all you want with ramp metering. But how does that interface with those signal lights because you've got a queue f traffic that you're responsible for that queue in that you know 75 yards we've got ours all
flowing and correct you know timing going up to your light and that caltrans light isn't part of this program. We can't control it. It's not our in our adaptive system it seems to be all by itself and forgotten about.
>> so you can do everything you want with me hearing but that signal light somehow seems to be that that programing of that signal light also has to be taken into account as you do your ramp metering and so far it's being ignored. >> um yeah go ahead. So we recognize that issue.
councilmember hoffmeister so you may know that case during smart signals program and that first phase of getting everybody's every count every agency is signal system to be upgraded nd not the antiquated system. So that was our first step as we explain it at our board.
the second step is recognizing this problem that you're talking bout through this program and really collaborating with caltrans, being able to have this partnership to do what you just said I mean all over the place obviously there's a it's an issue that we recognize no, it's just it's a gap. >> right? There's a gap there. We we know that and we recognize that.
but I think through this collaboration we are in talks of trying to find locations where we could address that gap through the program that darren talked about the courtney adaptive traffic signals or katz program and interface 680 but also for our next tranche of federal money to do a smart signals phase to identifying those locations where there is
this gap and working with caltrans to also have their signals talk to the locals that also these traffic system as well as calm hopefully to fill that gap and it is one that will take time to address because there's not just the one that you spoke of. There's others that location for example.
>> yeah, I happen to be stuck at it the other day I went down will open this road very nicely and I got stuck and I realized the signal lights not totally not talking or not doing something it was way off and traffic was all backed up.
once I got back to the concord lights it flowed fine but I had two lights on either side of the freeway overpass and I spent literally 40 minutes trying to go about 100 yards.
yeah I yeah so that's one thing we notice and recognize and it is one that we're trying to solve through the next money that it will take time to address all of this as darren said.
oh just it's step you know one step at a time and I think we can leverage the collaboration that the fact they are here they're listening to our concerns this is the first step to really solve these kind of issues that we do see and it will take time to get there. But it's one that we recognize that when you're riving it's in a local street.
everything is timed, everything is coordinated is great and once you get to the city, you know kind of that limit where it's another jurisdiction or it could be caltrans or the next city you're kind of like you know, in a void early in the gap. Those are the things that we know and we are trying to fix with monies that we see coming.
but it will take a while for us to address all of them and that's how I appreciate the work that kids is doing. And I know you know councilmember obering are there as well that you know the vision is and it's easy with concord and walnut creek and pleasant hill where we connect
because it's all local streets but we have the bisecting of caltrans through our jurisdictions as part of those corridors and it's like where do they fit into right. Sure. >> because we can do everything we want. But if they're not yes. If we on't have their signal lights in the system, we're not.
and then just for information we're doing a you know, a demo more of a arterial corridor in the summer I'm sorry one a creek san ramon the was t got danville etc.
more valuable over that crosses three cities and there's a couple of caltrans interchanges and we're in the talks of seeing how we can connect as a pilot as a demo because we don't know how you know the system need to be compatible. Maybe the caltrans traffic signals need to be upgraded as well.
the first phase of that smart signals program we try to mic it easily implementable by not including caltrans you know signals because that just be hard to be honest. I think so in our first step is really to upgrade everybody's city's every city's systems to be up to date o be the latest and greatest.
and the next step is how to have that connectivity, how o talk to each other, other cities and entire cities as well as with caltrans. So that's our next step. Do recognize what you're saying because I'm a driver. >> I appreciate it that somebody knows about it and it's something that's on the radar screen and is something that is going to be worked on. Okay. I believe we have one more question. Okay.
I think this is yes, yes, yes, yes. So I just wanted to clarify earlier I think my question before as a little bit too simplistic about whether people would, you know, cut through city streets.
you know what I wanted to clarify was, you know, so concord is unique, right? Because we've got monument boulevard and we have concord avenue and clayton road. So hat I'm trying to figure out is is there a way to monitor for, you know, what's going on because people have choice, right? They can continue ou on 680 and north and then eventually go on the 242 or they can get
off on onument boulevard. Right. And they can just say I don't know what's going on on the freeway but I'm cutting through the city streets.
so what we're trying to understand I think is is there a way to have a what's the correct term? >> yeah, well we'll just like is there a way to also monitor what's going on on these, you know, parallel arterials. Right.
to to ensure I guess what I'm trying to do is ensure that arm is working the way it's supposed to as opposed to pushing traffic or encouraging traffic to go off the freeway and go down monument boulevard. Right. So so that's what that's what my question was supposed to be. Okay. >> I will reiterate chris's point though. If we can get the freeway moving better with these ramp metering systems, it keeps them off of the arterial streets and puts them on the freeway to where they need to go.
but to answer your question directly, we have discussed this because we know it's important to not just you but all the way down the other end in san ramon. There's a lot of parallels down there as well. Danville has parallels so they're obviously all sensitive to the same issue.
>> there are some big data sources that we can leverage to try and understand how travel patterns are being changed by doing these metering operations. And so the intent is that we will be doing some of that monitoring and that's universal .
that doesn't matter whether it's arm or calm measuring the performance on the arterial streets is affected by either system. So so that is efinitely part of the intent that we'll look at some of those alternative sources and and utilize those to see if there's a before and after impact on the on the local streets.
>> so what kind of alternative sources since we were we were talking earlier about ordering or trying to get data from mtc. >> yeah so this is a question that's also come up in riverside or one of the sources we're using is called compass. >> it uses he autonomous and autonomous connected vehicle data. It actually is able to retrieve real time connected vehicle data from vehicles that are moving around in the network.
it is anonymized so we don't know whose vehicle it is but we can track an individual vehicle as a truck versus a network. I want to be very clear on that. None of the data that we use and collect is is sourcing individuals not identifiable. It's all anonymous so we can use those vehicle data.
so like if a tesla is driving down the street and we can track what path it takes and by aggregating that information and before and after the project and seeing if here's any significant changes in patterns, we can draw some conclusions on whether there's been an impact. >> okay. I think that's helpful.
do you agree, chris is this okay this is also applicable to caltrans because I'm very interested in arm because car is very you know they're able to do for the most part what we asked.
but I know caltrans is there's I mean chris talked about pims- I mean we we actually use some of the data from pims as well and our alarm system isn't out there today so we can't collect data today. >> right.
but we can collect data through the system and so we do periodically archive that information because that then becomes a basis that we use for comparison that will be universal on both sides of the freeway. So there are others inrix I think stephanie touched on or maybe chris mentioned that we can use things like compass to also do some performance monitoring as well.
so there are there are tools that we can utilize in addition to the ones that we'll have on the current project to help with the analysis of the of the caltrans arm project and again a lot of those will get fleshed out in more detail as we develop the omb of the next the
next phase document where we get into some of the specific details on how we're going to do some of these things. >> okay. Thank you. If I may follow up on that, is there a I would assume because we're not quite to where councilman rob riggle was talking about in terms of data collection.
but in the meantime I'm assuming that there's traffic counts that are being generated on highways and you know what the baseline is say baseline pre arm pretty calm but pretty arm and then you can do traffic counts post arm and especially at the off ramps because if
people are bailing off the freeway and cutting through town we'll see it on you know clayton road as they pop up clayton road to go cut through over to get to pass or bailey because they don't want to deal with it so is there a way to get a pre arm installation you
know I don't know when the last traffic set of traffic counts were and get a post one you know sometime down the road after it's up and operational.
>> so pams is always collecting data and archiving data every day all the time and anyone can request the pam's account to log in and retrieve that information so I mean you can have your traffic engineer do it if you want or you could do it yourself if you wanted o. That's how we do it to retrieve the data that we need to do the before studies for these projects.
so that is always available and caltrans does a very robust job of maintaining that system so it's there and that can be retrieved. I would ask actually of of you if you have data collection systems on your arterial streets and you have a location that's of concern, mic us aware of that because that could
become a tool that we utilize to help analyze your arterial streets. We don't have very easy access to those the information that the local citizens are collecting.
and so if there is a particular location that you're concerned about and you have a data source that that you're spending money on collecting, please mic us aware of it and we'll be happy to utilize that to help inform our decision making.
>> it sounds like the going back to the earlier comment that was made about the technical people meeting on a regular basis to be able to share this type of information, ask these questions would be- very helpful and in terms of coordination and we're at that right stage. So I think as we develop some of those as we go into the mou making sure that those things are put into place. Absolutely. Thank you. All righty. Okay. So I think thank you.
thank you all of you to for answering all of our questions. I think it's been a good a very good discussion and presentation.
I'm just going to bring it back to abhishek to is there anything you'd like to add tonight before we end? Any questions that no thank you for the you know all the great questions and all the robust discussion. I think we pretty much have everything covered in terms of what is in the mou and there are some items that we will mic sure they are included in the the operations manual. Great. Okay.
so I'm going to go ahead and open it up to public comment now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So is there anyone here that would like to in the chamber that would like to mic a public comment on this item so hello, good evening. Good evening.
I would love to say that wow the enthusiasm and close to an hour and a half of redundant questions because I think it was answered many times and attention that was put to this I applaud you.
I do wish that the same amount of ttention was put to the intangibles of data that we were talking about earlier around peregrine because while an hour and a half to grill around buskirk like for those that live in concord and have been around here forever like wow if you find yourself getting on buskirk like you've been lost because there are a lot of traffic on buskirk like holy anyways, well done.
is there anyone else that would like to mic a public comment tonight on this item that is here in the chamber? Seeing none madam clerk is there anyone online? No mayor okay, great. Thank you. I will close the public comment, bring it back to the city council member for may.
>> I want to just confirm with our traffic engineer and the director of transportation you heard the comments and the questions we had tonight. You have the ammo use in the packet. Is there anything that you feel we need to mic any adjustments or changes to in terms of our motion this evening? No.
ibelieve the mou has everything that we need or now. Okay, great. Thank you. With that said I'd go ahead and approve the staff recommendation on the mou. >> I'll second that motion and I will ask for a vote. Council councilmember benevento is absent. Councilmember hoffmeister yes. Councilmember bringer yes. Mayor. Vce mayor alfano. Yes. Mayor nakamura. Yes.
thank you very much everyone. Moving on to the next item did we did we did do public comment that I mean reopening the public your general public's right. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I I'm well I'm working my way through correspondence. We do have a68 correspondence reports and announcements.
do I let me just check in with the city attorney in order to continue that public comment- from earlier is that before adjournment or does it come when does that it's before adjournment as mayor you have discretion to place it where you'd like in the order of the remaining tems. >> okay.
I think we will do that now before we go into reports and announcements so we'll go ahead and open that back up for open up the public comment one more time. Mayor I have two cards. I have anna and linda oliveira okay.
linda olvera is not here and okay, are they online? Did they go to go online? Yes, eddie's online. Okay. So go ahead and oh, do e have public comment here? Oh, hi anna. Come step forward. Thank you all right. Hi, my name is anna. I'm a resident of concord.
>> I also have been working here for over a year and I'm here to talk about the california sb 580 and how security is a lifeline of a cmmunity. >> ours gets threatened whenever ice presents, occupies public property creating hotspots of danger for those trying to access vital institutions whether they be schools, immigration courts or health facilities these actions can create distrust in the community.
however, sb 580 allows that trust to grow through the guidelines limitations surrounding data sharing nd the access to public places on ice property. All of this is enforced and guided by the california constitution.
article one section one all people are by nature free and independent and have innate inalienable rights among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty acquiring possessing a protection of property and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness and privacy a key component of 580 a protection of these rights are vital as it allows all people to be protected as the option to for federal agencies to purchase data creates the
data broker loophole and can create potential violations to the fourth amendment rights of all people. This of course is able to be fixed through public participation between the populace and the local government is taking action with trustworthy communication systems.
>> this would be like the stand together contra costa organization that has ice hotlines to help inform people for when there is activity to ensure their safety and then allowing for a committee to form where voices can be heard, those who have been impacted by ice to allow that there is this connection that knows that city council wants to care for the
conquered population, immigrant population and so on and this would all allow for the concord to continue and prevail with liberty and justice. Thank you. Thank you, anna. And we have we have one zoom. Okay, go ahead.
and then again, she needs to accept and restate what she needs to do place she has to accept join as a panelist. Okay. When she's prompt. Okay, great. So anyone who's on zoom needs to accept as a panelist when you are prompted this is ideal. Where can you hear me? Yes, hi. This is are the olvera concord resident and I was there earlier to mic other comment.
I really wish the public hearing was 30 minutes like back in the day so the families come back, get back to their homes. It was really inconvenient to have to wait that long f it was in person. So I do appreciate at least being able to get home.
and jim lonzo, I would like to urge the city council especially since many of you have been showing up to rallies in support of our undocumented community, you know, show support in implementing a plan for the law for sb 580 that says that we have to comply ensuring that police is not working with ice.
we need a plan that is strong that guys are police and how to act and how to behave and mic them accountable when they break those policies and also the support for them to support their community that makes them feel build trust so they can help the community hen ice is
wearing masks, when ice is dressed up as them, when they're unidentifiable and knocking on people's doors we need protection undocumented community and brown families who even are residents of the city need protection because we're all at target. You don't even have to just be brown. You can be black for any other color your target.
and so they're coming after everybody even if you have citizenship. So we need protection from our from ice in our community. It's ramping up here. We're seeing more of them and it's really affecting the economy in the monument. It's not fair that they're the only ones targeted by a lot of things.
so please step up our game and I like you like to shop rallies and support and take pictures with everybody. We need you to set a plan quickly and hold a town hall that is open for everybody to give you feedback. >> thank you, sir. Anyone else online? Monica williams okay. Okay.
hello? >> yeah, we can hear we can hear you. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity I was able to jump on after work. My name is monica williams and I'm a music educator and teaching at concord in pleasant hill and I come to all the rallies and I've been in your words 25 years and I'm super
concerned about the 8580 I've seen the fear in my students and talking to them about this and I've seen the effects really up close to my studio every single week.
I have young students and kids whose families are scared and scared to come too out in the community and I've been following closely what's been happening and I just wanted to say that I hope that we can step up and really do a noncompliance with our police department so we can all feel safe. Thank you. Is there anyone else don't know,mayor okay, great.
I'm going to go ahead and close the general public comment time, bring it back to council so reports and announcements are there any closed session announcements? >> no they're not. Are there ny city manager staff reports and no city manager reports? Are there any council reports when anyone okay close with that I'm going to adjourn the meeting.
>> thank you everyone.