Traffic Control Plan for the Intersection of Hyde and 190th Street
Meeting Date:
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
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The Ames City Council meets on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m at City Hall. The agenda includes:
- 18. Staff Report regarding Interim Traffic Control Plan for the Intersection of Hyde and 190th Street. Traffic safety at the intersection of Hyde and 190th Street on the north border of Ames has been an ongoing problem, particularly during the 7am-8am hours on weekdays. Responding to Story County and Ames City Council requests to accelerate improvements, staff recommends installing a temporary traffic signal and adjusting speed limits while awaiting a deeper study of this traffic corridor.
- 19. Downtown Parking Permits for Chamber Indoor Events. The Ames Chamber of Commerce has recently renovated an event space for up to 60 people in their Main Street building. But the free parking behind Main Street has a four-hour parking limit, so it isn't well suited to all-day events. Staff is proposing a permit system whereby the Chamber could provide all-day parking passes for these events. Each permit would be priced to cover the cost of a vehicle being parked at a downtown meter all day.
- 20. Resolution approving Agreement for Transportation Data & Analytics Subscription Service with Street Light Data, Inc., of San Francisco, California, for August 30, 2021 to October 31, 2024, in an amount not to exceed $105,666.67. The City currently has a subscription contract with StreetLight Data, Inc., which uses anonymized mobile device data and City fleet/navigational devices to gather vehicle origin/destination data, trip attributes (including "socioeconomic data"), segment travel times and speeds, segment traffic volumes, intersection traffic volumes, truck/commercial truck data, and vehicle route choices. The City uses this information for speed studies, traffic studies, and transportation planning activities. Coming up on a subscription renewal, staff recommends expanding the service to include multi-modal data & analytics for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit (CyRide). Staff anticipates that this would be beneficial for multi-modal planning efforts, including the Ames Bike-Ped Master Plan and Wayfinding implementation.
- 23. Hearing on rezoning property located at 525-6th Street from Residential Medium Density (RM) to Special Purpose Government/Airport District (SGA). Council has supported using this land to provide parking that will be lost in construction of the new Downtown Plaza; this agenda item rezones the property to our "governmental" zone (S-GA) to facilitate the new use.
By the way, the City previously designated this land for affordable housing and purchased it using federal funds for that purpose. However, it eventually became clear that affordable housing developers weren't interested in partnering to build housing here. So, Council voted to reimburse HUD for the estimated market value of $198,000 for this land, freeing it up for the current parking project. These funds will actually be repurposed towards infrastructure for the Baker subdivision affordable housing project, increasing the overall level of support for that effort. We're still eagerly waiting to hear whether our funding applications for the Baker subdivision will be approved at the state level, but that $198,000 should be helpful no matter what happens there.
Communications to Council: None this week!
Thanks for reading,
David Martin
Ames City Council, Ward 3