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Mr. Dolan stated that staff was made aware of Commissioner Ritter's concern earlier this week and noted that staff has looked at this from the beginning. He added that staff knows that the Safeway center is busy, which is exactly why people would choose to go through one of the other entrances rather than through the Safeway entry. He pointed out that traffic is like water; it goes through the path of least resistance. He noted that if he lived there and got off the freeway, he would not go through the shopping center but through the free right -turn at Valley Avenue and be down to those traffic circles in a matter of seconds, whereas he might not even get past the bank if he pulled into the retail center. He then deferred to Mike Tassano. Mike Tassano stated that he agreed with everything Mr. Dolan said. He noted that when staff first did the traffic study back in 2008, staff looked at how many vehicles would come through there in stages, and where it is right now with the traffic flow is actually right where the models said it would be. He indicated that the way that signal was designed is not at its full build -out potential, so if the office complex went in, the future build -out numbers for that northbound left -turn, coming out of the Safeway complex with all the office that is leaving during that PM peak hour, was going to be over 300 vehicles per hour making the left -turn alone. He added that the 300 - threshold per hour is about the time a second lane would be added. He continued that one of the reasons it was designed to prohibit the southbound left turn was because it would potentially need an additional two left -turn lanes; if an unusually high number, say 100 percent, of all the traffic leaving that residential development went to that exit, the solution would be to put in that second turn lane. Mr. Tassano stated that it has been busy each time he has been there, but the queue clears almost every time; and the only time he has not seen the queue clear, either for the left turn or the right turn, is if there is southbound incoming traffic and vehicles coming out from the gas station that cannot make that left turn through that short intersection because it can only stack five vehicles. He noted that this is something that staff looked at, but the volume of right turns is high enough that he does not want to make both lanes a left turn because then that would slow down the right -turn movements. He added that staff is aware that there is a lot of congestion there, and people tell him that is a good thing to have for a retail development that has a lot of turnover and a lot of vehicles. He noted that the level of service is good and does not fail at any point; the queues are long but it is performing pretty well with 1,500 vehicles going through in each direction on Bernal Avenue, which is tough to do with that size of intersection. Commissioner Ritter commented that this is probably more of a parking lot management strategy. Mr. Dolan indicated that staff is working on some of those things in the parking lot and that probably having less restaurants at lunch -time would give some relief. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, August 14, 2013 Page 8 of 17