I didn't have a chance to go out to the culvert lining project myself today because I had too many other meetings and things to do. But a couple of my staff went out to watch the contractor pour the headwalls. Our concern over this operation has been that the subcontractor chose to completely block the culvert to perform this operation. The project engineer made it very clear to him that he was doing so at his own risk. Today, after the pour, they cut an opening in the form, but from what I was told, it still doesn't open it up to its full capacity. Although there was little threat of a heavy rain last night, a lot more rainfall is predicted for Tuesday, so the contractor needs to get in there immediately in the morning and remove the form and cut out the supports inside the pipe.
Southeast Plan
We've been working with a consultant on a plan of how the area lying south and east of our community will develop. According to boundary agreements with the other cities in this area, the land is anticipated to be annexed to our city. It's somewhat of a challenging location due to some natural topography and roadway and utility connections. So our city chose to undertake an overall planning effort to determine the best development scenario. By doing this, it's easier for developers to more quickly assess any issues that would affect proposed improvements in this area.
So today we met with the consultant to determine the plan's current status and how we want to proceed.
Downtown Planning
I spent the afternoon in another meeting with staff and the consultant who is working on our downtown plan. We explained to him the changes and comments we had on his draft plan.
Today a few of our staff attended a meeting at Sherman Hospital in Elgin. The county arranged for the meeting to discuss bus rapid transit (BRT) along the Randall road corridor. It was a well attended discussion that lasted for most of the morning. A representative began the presentations by highlighting information about the new hospital. They have a 15-acre geothermal lake for heating/cooling that has saved them $1 million in operating costs annually. (You can read more cool facts about the lake here http://www.shermanhealth.com/geothermal_lake.php)
Next Kane county board chairman Karen McConnaughay summarized the county's work and vision for Randall road. Then Josh Ellis from the Metropolitan Planning Council shared with us his organization's work with studying bus rapid transit in Chicago. Earlier this year they released the report: Bus Rapid Transit: Chicago's New Route to Opportunity . His explanation of how they identified potential corridors was interesting and made sense.
Next up was the consultant who has been studying the implementation of bus rapid transit along Randall road – a long transportation corridor that links many of the larger communities in Kane County. It's interesting to me as someone who just moved back into the area a few years ago to listen to these studies and recommendations, remember what the corridor used to look like 30 years ago, then hear the background story of how Randall road developed. Many, many years ago when I lived and worked for the city of Aurora, I used to occasionally drive along Randall road to visit parks and the fairground. So I remember the rural character of the road that existed before development broke loose out here. Having left the area about 1985, I never saw how the road expanded to a four-lane urban section with major big-box stores replicated along it from Aurora to Elgin. But I've been told there was great effort put into making sure the corridor was streamlined for the movement of cars to the point of designing out pedestrian access. These past efforts seemed to have worked – the road moves a tremendous number of cars on a daily basis. However, it most definitely is not conducive to moving peds/bikes. And unfortunately, all those stores and amenities are huge attractions for the large population living on the other side – particularly teens who can't drive (I know from personal experience with my own children). Over the last few years, attempts have been made to bring the pedestrian back into the mix by adding sidewalks and a bus route with stops. But the pedestrian infrastructure has a long way to go, and that doesn't help with navigating the long distances between shopping centers. So, to summarize, the current trend is to "undo" the "success" of initial, car-centric development efforts in the corridor.
After hearing from the county's consultant, we broke into groups to further discuss the feasibility of implementing BRT in the corridor. Everyone seemed to conclude that yes, it could work, but… I think the "but" shows the success of BRT will be dependent on the market, the understanding and acceptance by the city governments and the public, the funding, and the specific characteristics of each area along the corridor. One key change that will have to occur is for the corridor to change from a sprawling retail center to an area of high density, mixed-use developments. This is because BRTs are dependent on the presence of a large population in need of transit. So the question is, do people want this part of their community to transition to a densely populated area with a mix of other uses in order to improve movement of pedestrians along the corridor? It's hard to say.
Finally, the morning ended with planners from PACE demonstrating the current challenges of navigating the current bus system along Randall road. The problems include a lack of shelters, sidewalks, and navigation aids. Fortunately there are plans to install shelters and sidewalks next year so this will greatly improve the experience.
Overall, readers of my blog can probably figure out what was on my mind the whole time – PRTs! or personal rapid transit. With the cost of BRTs at $2.5 to $24 million per mile, it definitely should be cost effective to instead implement a PRT system, and it would be less intrusive to the corridor. There are other benefits over a BRT such as not having to wait for a bus or learn a schedule and not having to tolerate a packed bus with no where to sit or place bags, and I am not so sure a PRT would require the change to high density. But of course, this is what is so frustrating about being in the US – most people here want to hang onto old technology while other countries are already implementing newer and better solutions that we refuse to even acknowledge. What makes it even more frustrating in this situation is that we were not talking about putting in a BRT system today – this is our county's vision for 2040! By that time, every other country in the world will have a PRT system, and we'll just be cutting the ribbon on a new BRT system. Oh well, I embedded a video showing the new PRT system at Heathrow. Maybe by 2040, I'll be retired and can move to a place like England!
Downtown Plan
After lunch we had another meeting to finish reviewing our downtown plan. There are a lot of changes we've made to the draft so the consultant will have a lot of work to revise it. Of course, the focus of our department is more on the transportation sections, but it's still interesting to listen and learn about the zoning and economic development side of it all.
APWA Meeting
At the end of the day I met with a few members of our local chapter of APWA. We have all volunteered to help out at a workshop that APWA will host on November 10th to teach team building and problem solving skills. It was a good and fun discussion, and everyone came up with great ideas to integrate into the day. If you are in the Chicago area and are interested in attending, the link to the information is here: Team Building and Problem Solving Skills
One side discussion that came up at our meeting was the lack of engineers in the US compared to other countries. Although we didn’t get into a lot of theories of why this is, I have to wonder if it does have something to do with what I mentioned in the BRT paragraphs above – the US is behind other countries in investigating and implementing new technology. I realize this is not in every industry, and from what I can tell, our military is impressively cutting edge. But these pockets of innovation don’t get transferred to the lives of the general public.
One suggestion I had made at the BRT meeting was to take the discussion into the schools – after all if they are talking about something for the year 2040, it’s the people in school now who may well be weighing in on the fate of Randall road. Better to have them aware of it and thinking about it now. And maybe it might get some interested in pursuing a career in transportation. But few seem interested in doing this or in seeing the benefits of involving schools in what we do. So we end up with kids in school who see adults implementing the same old solutions, avoiding innovation, and leaving them out of the discussion. Why in the world would they be interested in engineering! However, I realize there’s also the chance that places like China have more engineers because they are making kids study engineering. My co-worker is from there, and she said she had no choice what to study or where to work – that was all decided for her by the government.
On a lighter note, I did discover one of the other volunteers also plays World of Warcraft which also started a whole other side conversation!
One of the many benefits I have working for my current employer is the opportunity to work with other staff members who excel in their profession. And even though they impress me on a daily basis, this week I was totally blown away by the awesome job our city planner did on his report to the planning commission for the hearing held this Thursday. So I wanted to share it here with everyone as an example of how a standard, sometimes perceived as perhaps "boring" document, can be transformed into an attractive, easy to read, engaging, and helpful document. Our city planner said that now he has the template in place, creating each document is not that much more work than setting up one in the old format.
In this particular packet, there were two applications: one for a change in the uses allowed in a zoning district and another from the city itself asking for a zoning change and a special use for a specific property. I like how the beginning of each application has a summary of who the applicant is, the location and owners of the property, the request, and the recommendation. And I think our planner has done a great job with the layout using text and images to explain the background, request, and recommendation. It's a great example of how with just a little bit more work, creativity, willingness to change traditional formats, and attention to detail, we can change even the most common government documents into more attractive and understandable reports.
This morning, I started out the day going through emails – after getting them down to a more managable level, I want to try to keep it that way. I did summarize some of the information regarding the SSA we are looking into and sent it out to other staff members. And then I reviewed the Kane County's Traffic Impact Fee proposal and related documents. A group of us then met later in the morning to discuss this topic.
Right after that meeting, our same group had another meeting to discuss the plan we have been working on that explores how best to develop what will someday be the southeast corner of our city. Right now this area is primarily farm land and rural homesteads with a small number of commercial businesses. It's bee interesting and challenging to plan for and determine the best way to serve this area with infrastructure and the possible land uses.
During most of the afternoon our engineering staff met with the other engineering staff from neighboring communities. We usually meet like this once a month to discuss the projects, ideas, and challenges we are having. Today some topics included drainage (a popular one that is often discussed), road projects, and public education.
Later in the day, I reviewed the legal agreement our attorney prepared related to the parking lot we are planning to construct in the downtown.
I'm late getting this post up because I attended a meeting of our Downtown Master Plan Committee. We are in the process of having a plan prepared for our downtown area which is a big deal for us because we have such an awesome downtown and want to make sure it stays that way. My main input to the plan is more on issues related to engineering such as traffic and infrastructure. Tonight we discussed the 33 areas that were targeted for potential redevelopment within the study area. But at the end we also talked about one of the main routes through our downtown. It's a four-lane state route with approximately 20,000+ ADT and diagonal parking on both sides. We have sidewalks on both sides that are about 10 feet wide abutting buildings constructed to the street line. The point of discussion was that our planners have gotten feedback that people feel uncomfortable walking along this road. However our records show minimal accidents in this area, (see photo on left) particularly related to the parking or pedestrians. But the planners felt they had to address these concerns and suggested some alternatives to the section. One of the designs had some of us concerned about the possible result of losing major amounts of parking for the sole purpose of picking up a few more feet of sidewalk with no proof of an increase in safety.
Based on my experience with walking these routes regularly at night, people can't feel too uncomfortable because this busy route is always filled with people walking or congregating on the sidewalk. And that's one of the things we really like about the area. There's always so many people walking everywhere downtown – even on this busy route. As someone who has not lived here long, I think the reason people say they don't like the busy route as much is because the other main route through our downtown is a unique and charming roadway with five-foot sidewalks, a grass parkway, and buildings set back about 25 feet or more (see example of this part of our downtown below). It's hard for any other downtown road to compete with that one. And adding a few more feet to a traditional downtown sidewalk is not going to transform it into this other type of street environment. But the planners are convinced it will make all the difference in the world. While for us engineers we cannot justify negatively impacting the traffic to increase the perception of a nicer looking road.
And in a way, taking that stand is a little ironic for me because if you read my blog regularly, you know I am somewhat anti-car. Not that I hate them or anything; I just feel they are in their decline as a mode of transportation. The more I read and the more I consider the future of transportation, I am convinced we are on the brink of beginning the transition to a new system – one made up of something along the lines of PRTs co-existing with rail, bicycles, and pedestrians. And I start to wonder each time I design and build something for cars, just how long a life it really has. So part of me wants to plan for something beyond a reliance on cars as the primary mode of transportation. But as much as I am ready to ditch my car for a pod tomorrow, the engineer in me understands that's not the reality of today. So for now I accept the fact that people still love cars and want to use them and my job is to provide the infrastructure for that in the best, safest, and most economical manner. Of course the engineers are only one voice in the entire process – many more have to weigh in before the draft plan is prepared.
The rest of the day
Today was really busy; well most days are busy, but for some reason today seemed even more so. I started out again trying to keep up with emails but had to pull away to work on finalizing the property owner information for the parking lot we are constructing. I wanted to send the map and legal documents over to our city attorney at the end of the day, but will have to wait because I decided to have the interns check over our work one more time to make sure it is correct. Too often, I notice people get so busy and need to push work out the door that mistakes are made. I hate when I do that. So I've been trying to make a concentrated effort to have everything in our office checked by someone if possible. This is how it used to be when I first started working in engineering, and I think over the years this quality assurance check has been neglected more and more in our industry.
Road Project
In the morning, I ran out with the project engineer for our road project. He wanted to show me the condition of the concrete pavement that had been under the asphalt we ground off. One road was unusual in that it seemed to have no cracks. Most older concrete pavements I've seen have cracks so it was interesting to see one that did not. The other road we looked at was cracked in a typical fashion. Over the years, the city had been using an area reflective crack control before placing the asphalt. But last year the contractors told us in the future we will pay more for grinding if there is crack control material under the asphalt. So this year we did not use it. The engineer discussed using a crackfililng material. I was hesitant to do so because another engineer had shared a negative story with me about paving over asphalt that had been crackfilled. So I called him to again hear the story of his experience. He said the hot asphalt will cause the crackfilling material to bubble up through the new asphalt and damage the new pavement. Instead of using crackfilling material, it's best to use a type of sand mixture if you must seal the cracks. We discussed the matter a little more in our office and decided not to fill the cracks.
Annexation Inquiry
A person who lives nearby but not in our city called to see if it was possible to hook up to our water and sewer. This is a common call most engineering departments get every now and then. In our city, we require a property owner to annex into our city if they want to hook up to our utilities. So I explained this and how they could run utilities to their home. They said they would look into it more and call back if they decided to go forward. Fortunately in this case, I had already looked at how to serve this area. But if you get these calls and have not done this, it can be time-consuming because you have to look at all the maps and sometimes the elevations of the area to figure out how someone can get to utilities and how much it will cost.
GIS problem
One of our GIS users had a problem with their map that unfortunately I was not yet able to figure out. We have a line feature class that in my map shows up as a line. However, in their map, it is showing up as a polygon. I could not find this problem talked about anywhere online so will have to keep looking into it tomorrow.
Miscellaneous Tasks
The frames I had picked out last week for those inlets on our road project were delivered today.
We met today with members of other departments to discuss the project I talked about above where we are designing a new parking lot in our downtown.
And finally I had arranged for several engineers in our office to listen to the webinar on PROWAG that was hosted by AccessibilityOnline. It was very good and informative.
This morning we had our staff development meeting where all representatives of all departments meet to discuss active developments in our city. Today we talked about several proposed and on-going prospects along with some discussion of proposed changes to regulations. One of these issues related to the creation and management of historic districts will be further discussed tonight at the council meeting. For those who are interested, here is the link to our live meetings that begin at 7 pm CST: http://www.geneva.il.us/channel10.htm.
Southeast Plan
Last year, the city applied for and secured a grant to study a large undeveloped area lying southeast of our city. This area currently lies outside of our corporate limits. But based on existing boundary agreements most of it will annex to our city should owners decide to pursue annexation at some point. We are about half-way through studying and preparing the plan. Today we met to further discuss access and transportation elements.
Permits and Bonds and Insurance Claims
I had several calls and emails today related to permits and bonds required for the work. One was the followup from last week. Another was a claim we received for alleged damage to a vehicle on one of our road projects which I passed along to our contractor. I also prepared a review letter with comments for a development asking to install an improvement along their parking lot.
Other Miscellaneous Tasks
The other part of my day was spent preparing the property owner information for the block where we plan to construct a new parking lot. Our interns had done most of the research work running down the current owners and copying the deeds. However, I needed to review them and put them on the map in the correct locations. Tomorrow I will finish this up so I can send it to the city attorney. He will then prepare the necessary documents for the areas where we need easements.
I also tried to get through more of my email but didn't make much of a dent. All together it sure seems like meetings and email take up a lot of everyone's day. The key is trying to find the time in between to get all the work done!
