HomeMy WebLinkAbout5/22/2020 Item 1, Sundra
From:Carrie Sundra <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Feedback on OpenSLO proposal
Hello, I'm Carrie Sundra, I've been resident of San Luis Obispo for 16 years and live near downtown, neat the
High St. Deli.
I feel like much of this proposal has its heart in the right place, but I really worry about implementation. I just
heard about it and read it this morning and know I'm up against a 10am comment deadline, so I'm just going
to bullet-point my thoughts.
While in general, I love the idea of pedestrian-only streets (even at only certain times), this
definitely encourages more people to congregate in closer proximity.
Being able to use the entire lane for bikes is better than buffered bike lanes, especially on busy one-
way streets where you might have to cut across 2 lanes of traffic to make a left, and dodge parked
cars opening doors on both sides of the street. When I bike downtown, I almost always do the the
majority of my traveling on Pacific Street (low traffic), and then cut across Marsh and Higuera to get
directly where I'm going. Opening Pacific for full-lane bike use, or as a bikeway, in my opinion is a
better solution than making bikes lanes on busy streets. Or implementing both would be even better!
I definitely worry that cutting parking downtown will have an adverse affect on the community
surrounding downtown. I already notice more parked cars even as far as High St on Thursday
nights. And I don't want SLO to turn into a place where residents and friends who are visiting them
need parking permits. In another time, I'd say that opening up parking lots outside of downtown and
bussing people a mile or so would be great. But public transit isn't a good option now.
I don't think you can do the "parklet" outside seating and still keep pedestrians on the sidewalk 6 feet
away. Doesn't seem feasible.
Opening downtown is going to draw crowds. People are not going to maintain distance. Have you
thought about how you're going to enforce distance? Also, it would be nice if downtown SLO was a
mandatory mask zone. Of course, dine-in restaurants kind of throw that out the window, so ???
A lot of the re-opening is geared towards business that can already operate in some capacity and also
draw tourists - restaurants, retail shops. What about people who can't work at all right
now? Masseuses, salons, etc. These are people that serve primarily the local community and don't
have as much of an outside draw. Working on between-client cleaning and safety procedures so these
folks can return to work is really important, AND doesn't draw crowds from out-of-town.
Thank you for your consideration and continuing to work on making SLO a great place to live and work.
-Carrie
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