Palm Desert City Council - Study Session, June 26, 2025

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[00:05:33] Speaker 1: Everyone, and I see Gina is on Zoom. Is there anything you need to establish with Gina?
[00:05:43] Gina: Yes, I am participating via Zoom due to family care.
[00:05:50] Speaker 1: And is there anybody over the age of 18 in the room with you?
[00:05:52] Gina: No, there is not. Thank you.
[00:05:56] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So, welcome to our study session, Thursday, June 26, 2025, at 3:00 p.m. And why don't we just get going? We have Mr. Flores.
[00:06:12] Carlos Flores: Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council. Carlos Flores, Development Services. I'm just going to tee off this presentation in front of you. So, city staff has been working with Fehr & Peers, our contracted consultant, on updating our circulation element. One topic of discussion, I'll say, that has consistently come up in terms of level of analysis on direction is whether or not to include the Portola interchange into the circulation element and all of what that does or doesn't bring. So, I'm going to pass it over to our consultant here to provide a presentation. And really, the direction we're looking on today is whether or not to incorporate this into our circulation element or analysis. Thank you.
[00:07:02] Jason Pac: Welcome. Hello, it's nice to be here and thank you for having me. So, I'll run through the presentation. Hopefully, it doesn't take too long, but really I'm here to hear mostly from you all, looking for some direction. I think we've got a few options for you to consider moving forward. And, yeah, we're looking forward to getting some guidance from you all on this. So, first of all, I'm Jason Pac. I'm a principal with Fehr & Peers. I've had the pleasure of working in the Inland Empire now for about 17 years of my almost 30-year career. And I was fortunate enough to work on the mobility element back when we worked on it in 2014, 2015, 2016. Wrote most of the policies in that document. And it's nice to be going through the update now. So, we do have an agenda. I'll give a little bit of background on the mobility element, what was included back in 2016 when it was approved, some of the things that we're working on now. We'll go over a little bit of history, as far as I understand it, on the Portola interchange. I'm sure there are others in this room who have other history that I'm not aware of, but, you know, we'll educate each other, I think, on that front. And then we'll go through a proposed scope of work. So, city staff thought it'd be good for us to reach out to a civil, get a quick estimate on what it would take to kind of get a better understanding of the costs, the complexity of implementing the Portola interchange, if it was something that council was interested in. So, we'll go over that briefly. And then I do have a slide at the end for next steps, as far as what we're looking at from council for guidance as it relates to the mobility element. Any questions before I get going?
[00:08:46] Jason Pac: All right. And feel free to stop me at any time as well. So, section one: the mobility element background. So, as I mentioned, the current general plan was adopted in 2016. Again, I was fortunate enough to work on the mobility element at that time. Recently, last year, city staff engaged in a contract with us to do an update just to the mobility element. There's a couple of key components that were necessitating that. So, first was a consistency that we were seeing when the mobility element cross-sections were done, mostly for the roads. There ended up being some conflicts, I'd say, or maybe some inconsistencies, the better way to say it, with some of the area plans and local plans and specific plans. So, the first thing that we wanted to do is clean up those roadway cross-sections in the general plan and make them consistent. Also, since we worked on the mobility element, the city has been doing a great job of updating the active transportation plan, the Vision Zero plan. You know, all of these things are now required by state legislation to be included in the mobility element. So, while we're at it, we're going to go ahead and take care of all those legislative requirements and integrate...
[00:10:00] Speaker: All those new plans that the city has been working on. There's other legislative requirements—SB 330, AB 98—there's a whole host of them that deal with truck routes and other design requirements so that if you have affordable housing come in, make sure they're reserving the appropriate amount of right-of-way on some of your streets. So we want to make sure that the mobility element is set up in such a way as to maintain as much consistency for the city as it possibly can.
[00:10:32] Speaker: So, ultimately, we did hold our first workshop with Council back in February. Brian from my office, Brian Wolf, did that presentation, and we did appreciate the input that we got, and we're continuing to work through the process on it.
[00:10:47] Speaker: All right. So, other just background on what's going on with the mobility element. So, the current element does show the Portola Avenue interchange. What I have here is the graphic from the 2016 existing General Plan mobility element. It shows the Portola interchange. This is the truck route map for designated truck routes. So this is just a depiction of what it looks like. We did circle Portola interchange.
[00:11:14] Speaker: And then we're also aware that—actually, staff made us aware that—in 2024, Council did pass a resolution basically seeking to deprioritize the Portola Road project, mostly because of a lack of funding at the state and federal level for some of these local roadways. Am I doing good so far? All right. So let's move on.
[00:11:37] Speaker: So, a little history, as I understand it, on the Portola interchange. So, a lot of this was done by Riverside County Transportation Department, or RCTD. So, I got a lot of this information off their project status website. It depicts the currently locally preferred interchange configuration on the left-hand side of the screen. At the time in 2018 when this was all done, there was an estimated construction cost of about $88 million. That's 2018 dollars.
[00:12:10] Speaker: If I had to guess in today's dollars, you're probably looking at maybe somewhere between 120 to 140 million would be my guess for this type of project, because costs have escalated pretty significantly since 2018. I just heard somebody choke behind me, by the way.
[00:12:30] Speaker: So, just as far as the project schedule for delivering the Portola interchange, it did go through, I'll call it, the standard Caltrans process. So back in 2018, what we call the PA&ED phase, or Project Approval and Environmental Document—basically Caltrans approving the environmental document—that was finished in April of 2018.
[00:12:54] Speaker: After that phase of the project, it goes into what we call PS&E, Plan, Specs, and Estimates—the final design, if you will, for the interchange. It's my understanding that that was completed in April of 2022. And then I think the project's been fairly stalled, at least that's my understanding, since 2022, mostly because of unavailable or inability to fund it. Or lack of funding availability is probably a better way of saying it.
[00:13:22] Speaker: So, again, first bullet point, the minimal progress is up there. We also understand that some of the priorities changed, so that's delayed the ability to deliver the interchange project. But when we look at this from the mobility element, from my perspective, if you want to keep it in, it's really important that we keep it in and put policies that help guide the city to deliver it. If it's something that the city's no longer interested in, or it's too much of a burden on the city, this is the perfect time to take it out of the circulation element. So that's why we're here having this conversation.
[00:13:59] Speaker: So, we're also aware there's new development, particularly in the north part of the city, that this could potentially serve. And then it's also my understanding from talking to RCTD that there was extensive coordination with the railroad just south of the road and a potential desire to increase the number of tracks on the railroad, which would further complicate the design that you see on the screen here right now.
[00:14:27] Speaker: All right. So, how does this tie to the mobility element? So, again, the big question for us is: should we be including this as the city plans to move forward and over the next 20 years of delivering the city or building out the city? So, when we think about that, this interchange in particular influences a lot of the future of the city, particularly mobility-wise in this area. So, we put together this little table that talks about some of the pros and cons as we see it with either leaving it in or taking it out. So, if...
[00:15:02] Staff: If you leave the Portola interchange in, you know, we do see benefits as far as a more direct travel path of travel. We do find that when we look at new interchanges on the Caltrans system, VMT—the new metric under CEQA—it actually gets better with new interchanges. We add connections, we shorten trip lengths down, and it's just beneficial from a VMT perspective. And then that cascades into your GHG emissions and energy consumption and things of that nature. It would support development in the northern portion of the city. Construction costs, I think, obviously are not insignificant on this, and something that you need to weigh. And then, if you do put in the Portola interchange, it will increase traffic volumes on Portola south of the interchange. So if we were to leave it out of the circulation element, obviously less growth in traffic on Portola. The funding would—you don't need to dedicate as much time, effort, and funds to continuing to pursue Portola Avenue. But also recognize there's going to be additional congestion on Monterey and Cook Avenue interchanges specifically.
[00:16:14] Staff: All right. So, to try and give you all the best information we possibly can, staff asked us to develop a proposed scope of work or to add services to help get better information for Council if you were interested in it. So, we reached out to a civil engineering firm we do quite a bit of work with. It's Mark Thomas and Company. They do freeway civil engineering work all over the state. So what they gave us, and you can see the cost at the bottom, is an estimate to essentially take a look at the design estimates, the Highway Design Manual, which is what Caltrans uses to design interchanges. There's been some updates to that. So, they would kind of dust off the old plans, update them to the new standards, develop an updated engineering cost estimate, as well as a potential schedule if the Portola interchange was something the City ever wanted to move forward with in the future. One of the things that Mark Thomas is also really good at is identifying grants and outside funding sources. So, a portion of their scope of work was to help the City identify other funding streams to potentially deliver the project. And then finally, if this is something that the City didn't want to move forward with, we have the ability to bring them on board to identify if we need to widen Cook or Monterey, or look at other improvements that would be already covered under my scope of work for the circulation—or, I'm sorry, the mobility element update—but get them on board to do some cost estimates of what that would look like.
[00:17:49] Staff: So, I'll pause there. Any questions? I know I've gone through this pretty quick.
[00:17:57] Councilmember: We'd benefit if we go through the entirety and then let's have questions at that point.
[00:18:01] Staff: Okay, sounds good. So, now I'm getting down to my last slides. So, when we look at next steps, this is my ask, if you will, of Council. What we're requesting is ultimately we need direction as to whether to keep it in the mobility element or take it out of the mobility element. We think this proposed scope of work, which I'll go back to before—whoops, go back a couple of slides. Apologies for that. Here we go. So the added scope of work is about $18,000, is what Mark Thomas had quoted us. So our request for that is, of that $18,000, is that something Council feels would be beneficial for you to consider? Is it worth it? How much more information does it provide, and does it provide you the types of information you would like or need to make that decision as to whether we should be keeping it in the mobility element? So we have our next bullet point. You know, if Council were to authorize this additional service, we estimate it's about two months to complete. We would come back with another presentation to Council on everything we learned through the civil engineering going through this, and deliver you guys the information to make a more informed decision at that time. And then my last bullet point: if that's not authorized, I think what we're looking for is Council direction as to whether we should be including it in the mobility element or not. So that's kind of our ask for Council. I'm here, I can provide a variety of information, but this decision does cascade into everything else that we're doing on the mobility element when we run our models and traffic volumes and go through the addendum. Everything we produce from here on out—we need a decision—with or without the Portola interchange.
[00:19:58] Councilmember: Okay, thank you. So let's start with questions, and we'll get...
[00:20:00] Speaker 1: ...to comments following questions. Do you have any questions, please?
[00:20:05] Speaker 2: All right, thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions. So, the final design was adopted in April of '22. In fact, I remember being on that side and watching some of the presentations on Portola Interchange, and they got as far as picking the font that Palm Desert would appear in. I mean, it seemed like it was pretty much—well, the entire design was adopted. We had gotten down to the nitty-gritty. How much of that design—the original design that was adopted in April of '22—how much of that can be salvaged, and how much did we spend on that process to this point?
[00:20:41] Speaker 3: Yeah. So, the second part of your question, I was not involved in that process, so I can't answer that question. But I would say almost all of it can still be salvaged. So, the design is still done to design standards as they existed at that time. The changes in the highway design manual aren't overwhelming, so I think it's just small modifications to that. Obviously, there's an additional process that I think the interchange would ultimately have to go through to revalidate the environmental, since it's been so long since the environmental was approved, and then verify with Caltrans that the current design meets their current standards. And there is a process and a cost associated with that. But I don't know how much into it you were, or if you will were at this point.
[00:21:29] Speaker 2: Okay. So, the final design, like we've said, it's been about three years since it was adopted. In those intervening three years, is that when Union Pacific made their plans formal for their plans to expand their tracks at that interchange, or do these designs that were adopted in April of '22 already include that? I mean, you mentioned—seems like three years is a pretty short window from their perspective, but I mean, so where are we at with that?
[00:21:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, that—I again, I don't have the background on that. I didn't work on the interchange project, so I do apologize for that. And this is also some of the reasons why we thought it'd be good to get a civil on board to help us go through that process and help us understand exactly the key design requirements, where they came from, and make sure we have that information for you as well.
[00:22:15] Speaker 2: Okay. And then last but not least, and this may be more a question for staff, but maybe you know the answer. I understand Coachella Valley Association of Governments periodically—I don't know what the—it's a TPPS, right? They do a priority of proposed interchanges at various projects along projects on the interstate here in the Coachella Valley. When will the next study by them be done, and how much does that play into where Portola stands in getting funding and everything else?
[00:22:47] Speaker 3: I do know the answer to this one. So, TPPS is ongoing right now. CVAG just brought on the consultant, I want to say like in the last four to six months. So, that process is ongoing. I actually worked on the previous update 10 years ago, or maybe longer than that. So, it's in process. Typically, if interchanges do get ranked and prioritized as part of the TPPS, or Transportation Project Prioritization Study, I think is the acronym, then there's a formula that CVAG uses where you determine how much of the traffic is local versus regional, and then it splits the funding—CVAG regional funding versus local funding. So, split amongst the cities, too, depending on which city uses it. It's a whole convoluted formula.
[00:23:35] Speaker 2: Got it. Yeah. And actually, I do have one more question. I want to understand the total price tag estimated. I mean, this is at very nascent stages here, but $120 to $140 million at this point? Just a rough estimate, that's kind of spitballing, I guess.
[00:23:48] Speaker 3: That would be me taking the previous cost estimate, accounting for current construction, and that's my best guess with what I know right now. If there's anything we're not aware of, any requirements from the railroad, that could change that dramatically. But I would say $120 to $140 million right now, based on what I know, would be my best guess.
[00:24:10] Speaker 2: Perfect. And isn't there a requirement on these types of projects for a city of either a dollar amount or a percentage that a city must contribute to the—
[00:24:19] Speaker 3: That's the formula from CVAG.
[00:24:21] Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. So, in other words, we wouldn't even know at this point what we would be on the hook for as a city, and we're not even sure who the lead agency would be at this point. Is that accurate?
[00:24:33] Speaker 3: I would suggest the lead agency under CEQA is typically Caltrans. And it's very rare where Caltrans is not the lead agency on an interchange, especially a new interchange.
[00:24:44] Speaker 2: Okay. And I see Councilmember Neandi's hand is up. So please, if you have any questions, and you're still muted again. There you go.
[00:24:59] Speaker 4: There we go. So, in...
[00:25:02] Councilmember: In your presentation, you mentioned part of your scope of work would be to see if you could obtain grant funding for the project. Is that correct?
[00:25:10] Presenter: That is correct. So our civil engineering partner we had reached out to, Mark Thomas, has a whole group within their company—that's all they do is they go out, they look for potential funding sources from the state, from the feds. They look at a wide range of potential funding sources and look for opportunities to utilize those sources and evaluate how this might compete in each of those potential funding sources.
[00:25:41] Councilmember: And so how likely would you be able to raise millions and millions in terms of obtaining grants? Is that at all likely? Is it, you know, could you say is it 10%? Is it, you know, what, 70%? Because Tom Kirk from CVAG about four or five years ago basically came back to our council and said we're millions and millions short of doing the Portola interchange and basically scrapped this project. And so that would be my question: what's the likelihood that perhaps we could raise grant funding to do this project?
[00:26:26] Presenter: Yeah, I could always reach out to Mark Thomas and ask them what their success rate is. I know they have a very good success rate of doing this for their agencies, trying to tailor the funding source for what this type of project would compete best for. That's what they specialize in. As far as the percentage of projects that they work on that are actually funded, I don't know that number. I would say it's probably—I mean, it's just my experience working with them is when we work together, it feels like 25 to 50% of the projects we're involved with they find some level of funding for. Whether it's all of it, half of it, 20% of it, you know, it varies by project and the merits of the project, but they do have a what I would consider a very good success rate. And again, that's just based on my own impression of the projects I've been involved with them. I don't know statewide exactly where they sit or the types of project or types of funding that they feel this project would compete well for.
[00:27:33] Councilmember: Thank you.
[00:27:34] Mayor: Okay. Any other questions?
[00:27:39] Councilmember: My question for you is, have you heard of any of the ongoing discussions in the impact of replacing Measure A funds if we make the long-term investment commitment to going to electric vehicles and we don't have gas tax funding where a lot of these transportation projects were typically where we could say, 'Oh, got it. We can look into the Measure A piggy bank.' The projections or some of the discussion points were that it would be based on funding that through DMV with your registration, looking at miles driven to have some sort of equity of user versus access. Have you heard anything in terms of how that has progressed right now? It's still very hypothetical, and I think that weighs very heavily on our willingness to take a big risk if we could be looking at a consultant that found some funding, but it's only 15%.
[00:28:38] Presenter: Yeah, and I totally understand your concern. I mean, it's something we've been studying for years as far as, as fuel economy has gotten better, switch to electrification. I mean, I drove my electric car out here today from Riverside, so I'm part of the problem. But we are seeing the need and the funding mechanism, and even as the fuel economy has gotten better, just the purchasing power, if you will, of gas tax has just dramatically decreased, right? I'm sure you all are seeing it; we see it in our profession. Obviously, the state is looking at ways to try and counteract that and looking at different opportunities. I do know the landscape is changing. I heard, I think today on NPR, I heard that some of the fuel economy standards in California have been essentially eliminated now, right, by the federal government. So, maybe that's my long-winded way of saying it's a changing landscape. Um, I don't exactly know what it's going to be in 10 years. I do know the state has a desire, and I think a lot of local agencies have a desire to and the need to replace that funding mechanism. I'm not sure anybody's figured out the best way to do it yet.
[00:29:50] Mayor: Any questions?
[00:29:54] Councilmember: I just want to make sure I'm framing my question or my decision correctly.
[00:30:01] Council Member: If we approve the scope, you come back and you explain to us, 'Here's how the project has changed, costs have changed, and here's the costs if we don't do it,' so that we get both the pros and the cons. If we don't do anything, it's basing it on whatever confidence we have that the price tag is so astronomical that we just don't even want to entertain it. Is kind of the framing I'm looking at this.
[00:30:27] Staff: Yeah, you are correct. That's the way we've tried to set it up is kind of the last component of their scope would be looking at a cost estimate of if the interchange is not delivered, what improvements are needed to Cook? Are there any improvements that we can squeeze out of Monterey? It's a little more constrained there. But exactly what would it take, primarily on those two roadways, to serve the increase in demand when Portola is no longer there.
[00:30:51] Council Member: So it sounds like you guys have started your initial look, saw that the Council had made a determination, but have encountered new information that you guys, the Council, might want to look at this and reaffirm or get more information and re-evaluate.
[00:31:07] Staff: Yeah, I'd suggest we're at the point in the mobility element now that if you wanted to take it out and just eliminate it from the circulation element, now is the time to do it. If it's something that's important to the city and we want to keep it in, let's keep it in the circulation element. But we felt like it was a good time to approach that because this is the time when we should be addressing it.
[00:31:27] Mayor: Thank you. Are there any other questions?
[00:31:33] Council Member: Gene is not... Okay. Um, I'm going to add a little information, if I may, some little... You know, the VMT is a big issue, and we are seeing it develop quickly because we understand that gas tax isn't the answer anymore. So the VMT is a big issue, and how you presented it in your matrix kind of showed how important it is. Previously, the Portola interchange was in the TTPS, or TPPs, because there was so much residential planned. Then we hit a tough economic time. All of it stopped, and that was back more than a decade ago. So that's why we slowed down on that. Yes, UPS and Metrolink are both looking at and entertaining the additional track. So what we have may not be adequate in the design if there is an additional track added. So there will be some design dances going on. The other thing that had happened, because at one time Palm Desert recognized that Portola would be the last interchange, and as we've seen in all the other interchanges, there is design work that states the city... and we had worked with one of our local artists, Philip Smith, to come up with something that would create an exceptional design that would say, 'This is the heart of the valley, and this is Palm Desert.' So there was work done on that. If we don't have a Portola interchange, then yes, there has to be additional work on Cook and on Monterey. We know the thousands of homes that have been put in there and that Rancho Mirage has put in, and we are already blocked up on Monterey, and we are seeing thousands of doors come in across that area. So, and if Portola is not put in, then what we're doing is putting all the traffic on those east-west arterials, all of those feeders, and we are putting those on in our residential areas, and that will, in fact, create issues. So I think what we have to look at is it must be part of the mobility element update. How we fund it will remain to be seen. And I cite this because I think it's important for us all to remember: the Monroe interchange two years ago was 117 million; today, it is $177 million to do. So nothing's getting cheaper. Yes, it's going to be expensive, but that's how it works when you're building a city. And...
[00:35:01] Mayor: So we have to look at putting it in the mobility element update just so that we can plan for it. Whether or not we are able to get the funds because of the capacity issues that Sacramento has mandated that there's no new capacity, those sorts of things that will bring difficulty. But the fact is we want it in the element to at least understand all the rest around it. If we get the funding, that's a wonderful thing. We're going to be looking for it. UP is not always easy to deal with. So we may see more, and if we get that train that we so want, that may increase some design costs as well. But for us not to have it in the mobility element, then we can't accommodate the rest that will be impacted by that interchange. And one of the things we have to think about is when Portola gets up here near Lincoln Elementary and near those schools, it's a very narrow street. So if we're looking at a mobility element, we have to figure out how we disperse that traffic off of Portola so it doesn't stay on Portola. So it's important just to understand and to put it in there so we can figure out solutions before we have big hairy problems, so we can avoid some of those things. So, I feel like my voice should go up at the end so I could make like that was a question, but I had no question. I wanted to add that. And that's my feeling is, yes, we put it in there. We're going to have to, like with all construction projects, we've got to find a way to design and to fund, but we need to plan. And all good projects begin with a good plan, and that's what we're hoping for with the mobility element update.
[00:37:06] Council Member: I think you make excellent points, Mayor. I think that just looking to include Cotino where I think a lot of cities we look at what our own growth is and we know what we've got coming in North Palm Desert. Half of Monterey belongs to Rancho Mirage, but we still deal with 100% of the traffic that comes on our side of it. And we don't know at what point. That very old, probably the oldest interchange in Palm Desert, that's probably the oldest bridge at one point. It will need work. It already is way overdue for work in my opinion. And when we get to that point, we will need somewhere else to route all of that extra traffic. And whether I think we need to at least have it in the plan so that when we decide to pull that lever, we're ready to go instead of we should have gone 20/20 hindsight, this isn't the place for it. And just to add, 10 years ago, they upgraded Monterey. They upgraded it and it is already, you know, behind. So, we need to take a look at least. Let's make the plan. I support that, Mayor. It makes perfect sense and it sounds like Council Member Quintanilla also supports it. Am I correct?
[00:38:28] Council Member Quintanilla: That is correct. Keeping it in the mobility plan. Yes, I concur. I concur.
[00:38:34] Mayor: That was easy.
[00:38:40] Staff: Thank you so much for all the information.
[00:38:48] Mayor: Okay. Do we have any more or is that...
[00:38:50] Staff: That's it, isn't it? It's just the interchange.
[00:38:55] Staff: That was it. That's the only item, ma'am. Uh, Madame Mayor, that was the only item.
[00:39:01] Mayor: Okay. So, we will meet back at... we're back at 4:00. Is that accurate?
[00:39:06] Staff: Uh, we're going into closed session.
[00:39:07] Mayor: We're going into closed session. That's what I meant to say. Okay. And I have no public comment for closed session. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll go into closed session and we will be back out at 4:00 and if we need to continue closed session items, we'll come back after.