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Commissioner Blank noted that he has read in the newspaper recently that BART is considering expanding retail footprints within the BART stations themselves as a revenue-generation mechanism. He inquired if this was true. Mr. McPartland replied that this has been mentioned in Board meetings and has been given to staff to experiment with to determine whether revenue can be developed. He indicated that he has seen retail on the platform in other countries and stated that this will never happen with BART because of safety considerations. He noted that BART currently has contracts for retail within the downtown San Francisco BART station which may be expanded in the future. He indicated that there are no plans at this time to do the same in the Dublin/Pleasanton area. He stated that in the Concord area, retail entities within the immediate vicinities of BART stations protested as soon as this subject came up. He added that BART Directors have indicated that they would do this in a balanced way without threatening existing businesses. Commissioner Blank inquired if there would be no retail in the platform areas. Mr. McPartland said yes. THE PUBLIC HEARING WAS CLOSED. Chair Narum called for a break at 9:17 p.m. and reconvened the meeting at 9:27 p.m. Chair Narum referred to pages 19 through 21 of the Traffic Analysis and requested Mike Tassano, City Traffic Engineer, to explain Options Ala and Alb for the Owens Drive lane reduction and why he is not recommending Option Alb. Mr. Tassano stated that his analysis addresses some of the safety elements that occur with lane reductions proposed is Options Ala and Al b. He indicated that the traffic model was run primarily to determine whether or not there would be level-of-service (LOS) failures at any of the locations. He noted that there were no LOS issues but that there was a reduction in the number of vehicles with the land use change. He added that from a circulation standpoint, lane reductions defer traffic, although in very small increments, and there are other parallel arterials that support traffic. He noted that there was an increase of 30 to 40 vehicles, the equivalent of about one or two extra vehicles per minute, which is not noticeable on the parallel arterial system. With respect to the difference between the two options, Mr. Tassano stated that the first option, Option Ala, reduces the six lanes to a single lane in each direction with a six-foot wide bike lane, a six-foot wide landscaped island, a second lane, and then a parking lane. He explained that the benefit of this option is that the angled parking separates the parking area from the traffic and bicycle lanes and provides a protected interaction so that vehicles can easily back out of the parking space and into the traffic lane without having to worry about pedestrians or other vehicles. He added that it also moves cyclists to the through movement as opposed to having to ride behind vehicles that are trying to back out of the parking space and driving back into the travel lane. EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, January 26, 2011 Page 16 of 40