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supposed to do. He said the chart shows the congestion is bad right now, so significant capacity has been lost due to trying to get people on or off the freeway. His understanding is that more cars would be going through Pleasanton because ramp metering would not allow a significant number of cars to get on the freeway. Mr. McKrank said the idea is to keep the traffic flowing smoothly by allowing the vehicles to enter the freeway at a intervals, rather than in surges, therefore raising the capacity on the freeway. Ramp metering will allow more vehicles to enter the freeway in Pleasanton and vehicles will be able to reach the off ramps going to Dublin easier. In most areas it is not expected to get a major increase in the bottle neck capacity. By metering, it regulates the amount of cars entering and spreads the vehicles among all the entrances. Ms. Michelotti asked if, the 2010 scenario assumes that everything will be built, i.e. flyover, auxiliary lanes on 1-580. Mr. McKrank said it includes some of the improvements. He said any time ramp metering is looked at 20 years into the future it is really a guessing game. Ramp metering is dynamic and it has to be managed. Ms. Michelotti asked what is done when the traffic starts to back up on city streets. Mr. McKrank said someone from Caltrans would go out to investigate the situation. Mayor Tarver asked if he could guarantee that ramp metering would indeed make the traffic congestion better. Mr. McKrank said Caltrans does not want to do something unless it benefited the City. Caltrans used to enter into a cooperative agreement with each city. Caltrans does not do this anymore because it became adversarial. Caltrans now will deal with a group of cities to say how they want it done. He said this is not just a freeway project but rather a way to improve the situation for everyone. He agreed there needed to be some kind of performance measure. Caltrans is trying to make it a more formalized process by getting the local agencies involved and setting up the process to deal with the dynamics of changing traffic patterns and growth. He predicted once the ramp metering is installed, freeway capacity will increase and more traffic would be allowed to get on from Pleasanton. Ms. Ayala asked if the traffic did not improve but rather got worse would Caltrans turn the ramp meters off. Mr. McKrank said yes. Pleasanton is the f'trst City in the east county to receive ramp metering so Caltrans would like this to work. Pleasanton City Council 12 05/21/98