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Home My WebLink About5/6/2025 Item 7c, McKenzie (3) John McKenzie < To:E-mail Council Website Cc:Schwartz, Luke; Fukushima, Adam; steve kahn Subject:Re: 5-6-25 Meeting - Tank Farm Rd Improvements Dear City Council, With regards to my 4/29/25 email to you, I had prepared my letter based on what was recommended for approval by the ATC (I assumed it would be carried forward for your Council's consideration). I am happy to say that assumption was wrong. Two of the three issues raised (flex posts and crosswalk relocation) are no longer an issue with the new proposed Alternative 1. My only remaining issue relates to maximizing unrestricted flows for eastbound traffic between Broad Street and Poinsettia. Thank you. John McKenzie -----Original Message----- From: John McKenzie < Sent: Apr 29, 2025 10:07 AM To: CityCouncil group email <emailcouncil@slocity.org> Cc: Luke Schwartz-City of SLO <lschwartz@slocity.org>, Adam Fukushima <afukushima@slocity.org>, steve kahn < Subject: 5-6-25 Meeting - Tank Farm Rd Improvements Dear City Council Members, With regards to the proposed improvements for Tank Farm Road, there are two items I hope the Council will pay careful attention – flex posts and retaining maximum unrestricted eastbound traffic flow between Broad and Poinsettia. I hope you agree with the following discussion to save the City money and make it safer than what is currently proposed. I have lived in the project area for over 30 years with daily walks across Tank Farm with my dogs. Proposed Flex Posts – I appreciate Public Works offering two alternatives for Tank Farm (east of Poinsettia) that exclude flex posts and I support both of these alternatives. While the City’s presentation will include stats on bicycle/vehicle accidents citywide, it is important to point out that for this section of Tank Farm, there have been NO REPORTED BIKE/VEHICLE ACCIDENTS over the last 10 years (PRA request only asked for the last 10 years so it is likely no such 1 accidents occurred well beyond the last 10 years, if ever). Likely reasons contributing to this wonderful stat is there are very few potential driver ‘distractions’, minimal cross-street intersections, no driveways, no street parking, low traffic volumes and great sight distance. While flex posts could be helpful in other parts of the City where conditions are not as favorable to the cyclist, with zero accidents currently, it is hard to improve upon this stat. The following is a list of reasons flex posts are not warranted at this location: 1. Installing flex posts costs additional money to initially install and then maintain, and will create driver inconvenience during expensive maintenance traffic control to remove and replace these posts when damaged (which would likely be multiple times for each flex post over the life of this newly surfaced road). 2. Please also note that many existing flex posts elsewhere in the City, that are five or more years old, are in a state of disrepair (bent or broken off posts or missing posts) – it is clear repairing such posts is not a City priority. As such, it is likely the same would occur with the proposed flex posts, creating an ongoing unsightly condition. 3. If the Road Diet option is selected, the lane removed will provide for greater separation between bikes and vehicles, as well as provide a wider bike lane, improving bike safety for a road section that already has no bike safety problems. This option will include bold striping to show this increased buffer area. 4. As mentioned by staff, exclusion of the flex posts will allow fire and life safety vehicles to more easily pass, or allow passenger vehicles to move over to allow emergency vehicles to pass. 5. The installation of flex posts would degrade vehicle/pedestrian sight distance on each side of the road. As there will continue to be jaywalkers between Poinsettia and Morning Glory, drivers will not see these pedestrians as easily. This could potentially reduce reaction times and increase the potential for a vehicle/pedestrian accident. 6. Installing such posts will also introduce an unattractive element and will detract from the existing beautifully landscaped parkway. When the City is continuously scrambling to find funds with bids continually exceeding expected costs, why spend money on something that is not needed and will create unwanted conflicts? If the intent of the flex posts is to alert distracted drivers that are veering out of the travel lane and the need to have something physical (e.g. hitting the post) to get the driver’s attention, it is recommended that rumble strips be used instead of posts. These would be imprinted into the pavement initially (at a fraction of the initial post cost) and would have no maintenance requirements or costs. Further, there are certain designs that would have low decibels, and there is currently an effective residential sound wall along this entire length of road. However, for the reasons listed above, proposed paint and additional separation will be enough to improve bike safety for a section of road that has had no bike/car accidents. It could also be designed to make it easy for cyclists to cross (and avoid the rumble strip) when they need to make a left turn at one of the three road intersections. Marigold Center/Necking down to one lane – Please direct Public Works to make changes to leave the Marigold shopping center segment of Tank Farm as unrestricted as possible (at least for east bound traffic). Please refer to the attached graphic for the following discussion. Tank Farm Road between Broad Street and Poinsettia Street is extremely busy during certain times of the day (usually weekday afternoons) and being able to turn left is a problem. Adjusting the left turn signal length at Broad will help, but during the time it will take to cycle through all vehicle movements, the following problems will likely persist. The first problem is for eastbound traffic wanting to turn left into the shopping center. I have personally observed multiple times where the left-turn queue lane (westbound traffic) onto Broad is 2 backed up well past the main entrance into the shopping center. As this left turn lane is also intended to serve those wanting to make a left turn into the shopping center, sometimes there is no place for a left-turn queue to enter the shopping center. When this happens, vehicles use one of the through lanes as the left-turn lane. So far, I have only seen a few cars in this impromptu queue and I have not yet seen it spill into the Broad St/Tank Farm intersection (but could be an issue as overall traffic increases). Currently, when this occurs, the second through lane is used to allow all through- traffic to get past this situation and seems to work fairly well. The project is proposing to start necking down to one lane BEFORE this main shopping center driveway with a solid white line. Drivers may know that crossing solid white lines is legally discouraged but can be crossed to avoid a hazard. For some drivers they will see this white line and determine the vehicle blockage as a ‘hazard’ (and cross over the white line to get around) and some will not. Those that don’t will wait for enough width to open up to avoid crossing the white line, which will create a bottleneck for through traffic (and possibly result in through traffic backing up into the Tank Farm/Broad Street intersection). Furthermore, vehicles coming out of the business park driveway directly across from the shopping center driveway will be inching out onto Tank Farm to turn left at the first opportunity since there is no longer a second travel lane at this location as it is necking down to one lane, further limiting through traffic to pass at this location. This is going to create a significant bottleneck during peak times. Lastly, there are vehicles in the shopping center that want to turn left, which is impossible when the westbound left-turn queue onto Broad is backed up past the shopping center driveway, and then this turning lane is immediately filled by those wanting to turn left into the shopping center. One solution would be to keep this outer lane open to Poinsettia Street, but make it a ‘right-turn’ only lane (hard stop – see attached graphic). This would eliminate the solid white line stigma (when outer lane needed for through traffic) and keep business park driveway traffic from venturing out onto Tank Farm as they would otherwise inch out to try to make a left turn during peak times. Based on my 30 years of observations I would guess between 15-25% of east bound Tank Farm traffic will turn at Poinsettia Street justifying this approach, which is not far from the one-day assessment performed by the City’s traffic consultant. Poinsettia Crosswalk – Please direct Public Works to move the existing lighted Poinsettia crosswalk from the west side to the east side. By doing this, it will allow left and right turns for eastbound traffic onto Poinsettia to occur while pedestrians are crossing Tank Farm. This would further reduce potential eastbound queuing restrictions for the shopping center segment of Tank Farm. If protected large bulb outs were added, the crossing distance would be shortened, reducing pedestrian exposure on the roadway and reduce the amount of time the flashing lights would be on. Such an enhanced protected bulb-out for eastbound traffic would visually show the proposed new right-turn only lane ends just past Poinsettia. Thank you for considering these suggested changes to make the project less expensive and safer. Please let me know if you have any questions. John McKenzie 813 Bougainvillea St. SLO 805-441-5894 3