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Home My WebLink About12/9/2020 Item 4, Cooper Wilbanks, Megan From:Allan Cooper < To:E-mail Council Website; Fukushima, Adam; Schwartz, Luke; Horn, Matt Subject:Letter to the Council Attachments:712_07_20...lettertocouncil.pdf Dear Adam, Luke and Matt - Would you kindly forward the letter attached below to the City Council? This letter pertains to their December 8, 2020 Study Session on the Draft Active Transportation Plan. Thanks and keep well! - Allan 1 Save Our Downtown _________________________________________________________ Seeking to protect and promote the historical character, design, livability and economic success of downtown San Luis Obispo. To: San Luis Obispo City Council, Luke Schwartz, Adam Fukushima and Matt Horn  Re: Study Session Item #20 Draft Active Transportation Plan From: Allan Cooper, Secretary Save Our Downtown Date: December 8, 2020 Honorable Mayor and Council Members - Save Our Downtown is disappointed with the funding plan for prioritizing pedestrian improvements (found on page 135 of the ATP), particularly as this plan almost completely ignores our downtown core. There is mention that the construction of new sidewalks, upgrades to curb ramps and additional street lighting would not be prioritized in this plan. With the exception of parklets in our downtown core, there is no mention of road dieting where widening sidewalks is taken into consideration nor is there any mention of additional mid- block crosswalks which are badly needed where illegal and dangerous jay- walking is already rampant. A side note is that widening sidewalks downtown may be essential to maintaining social distancing in light of the fact that the world is fast becoming rife with pandemics. This draft plan correctly identified traffic speed as a major deterrent for pedestrians. Yet there is no mention of traffic calming. Traffic calming is a critical part of creating a walkable environment and has the added benefit of contributing to safer bike riding and safer motoring. On the other hand, there is mention of scramble intersections and synchronized traffic lights. Of course we support these strategies though their application has not been specifically identified. The following statement which appears in your staff report does not in itself comprise a “pedestrian plan”: There is a “need for more protected crossings along high traffic roadways and more street lighting, especially near Cal Poly as a particular barrier to walking”. And when one examines where these protected pedestrian crossings are most needed, none of them, with the exception of a crossing improvement at Chorro and Monterey, involve intersections in the Downtown Core. There is instead a concentration of proposed pedestrian crossing improvements along Santa Rosa as well as due east of Santa Rosa where only a couple of pedestrian collisions have occurred over the period of 2015-17. Yet in 2015-17 there was one pedestrian fatality as well as 4-6 pedestrian collisions at the intersection of Monterey and Broad and two severe injuries each near the intersections of Pacific and Garden and Osos and Pismo. There were 2-3 pedestrian collisions at the intersection of Peach and Chorro, Beach and Pacific and Marsh and Chorro. Finally there were pedestrian collisions at 18 other intersections located within the Downtown Core. Though bicycle collision trends have been on the decline since 2009, pedestrian collision trends are again on the rise and have averaged 27 per year between 1999 and 2016. This is an unacceptably high number. The high collision rate locations involving pedestrians are divided evenly between the Downtown Core (17) and the neighborhoods surrounding Cal Poly (18). Over the past eight years, Save Our Downtown has been urging the City (and apparently to no avail) to give top priority to pedestrian-related improvements in our Downtown Core. Our outreach efforts back then indicated that high-volume, loud car traffic, the absence of mid-block crosswalks, narrow sidewalks, uneven paving, lack of benches and poor lighting discouraged walkability in our downtown. We recommended traffic calming involving bulb-outs, landscaped buffers, speed tables, traffic circles and traffic diverters. We recommended mid- block crosswalks in the Chinatown portion of Palm Street, a mid-block crosswalk that would continue the creek walk over Nipomo Street to the west, a mid-block crosswalk across Higuera where the Court Street Paseo terminates, a mid-block crosswalk across Monterey between the Government Center and the paseo flanking Buena Tabola and a mid-block crosswalk where the Garden Street Terrace paseo meets Marsh Street. Road “diets”, mid-block crosswalks, scramble intersections, synchronized traffic lights, artistic crosswalk painting and bulb-outs are a necessary part of improving the pedestrian environment. Moreover, at $10,000 each, bulb-outs would be relatively inexpensive to install and would fall under the “quick build” category. You may well ask the question why we continue to place so much emphasis on improving the pedestrian environment downtown. The economic benefits which accrue to enhanced pedestrian safety in our Downtown Core include: 1) increased retail and entertainment activity; 2) increased patronage of hotels along with extended hotel stays; 3) increased patronage of our cultural facilities; 4) increased desirability to locate more offices in our downtown core; and 5) increased desirability for downtown living. Because our downtown normally attracts a higher concentration of pedestrian activity, the benefits of downtown pedestrian enhancements are more far- reaching. In other words, the dollars spent on enhancing pedestrian safety downtown will go further than when spent on pedestrian safety improvements elsewhere. Finally, improving the pedestrian environment in our Downtown Core will not only bring benefits to the retail and employment centers of our town, but will also benefit our local schools including Mission College Prep Catholic High School and Old Mission Grammar School as well as our parks, recreational and cultural facilities. The latter include the Mission Plaza, Cheng Park, Emerson Park, the Ludwick Community Center, the County Historical Museum, the Children’s Museum, the SLO Art Museum and the SLO Repertory Theater. We thank you in advance for the time and consideration you have given us in this matter.