HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/4/2018 Item 15, Tischler
From:john@tischdesign.
10:49 AM
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Anholm Bikeway Comments
Honorable Council members of the City of San Luis Obispo:
The following are my thoughts and comments about the proposed Anholm Bikeway
along Broad Street:
I disagree with the project in its entirety and do not believe that the local government
should impose unnecessary control over city streets. They are fine the way that they
currently are and safe enough for pedestrians and bicycles. The radical proposal of this
bikeway project would also negatively impact the historic character of the neighborhood.
If safety is a concern, efforts would be more wisely spent on traffic enforcement and
reduced speed limits.
Broad street is a small local residential street, but is part of the local grid system of
streets in the neighborhood which serves to absorb its share vehicle traffic. Closing off
this street will unfairly impact the residents of surrounding streets, which already have
relatively high volumes of traffic, especially Chorro and Lincoln.
The removal of parking spaces along streets as part of this plan would also negatively
impact the residents who rely on this space. All property owners shall have uninhibited
access to use the street in front of their land.
While generally considered good traffic calming measures, bulb outs and roundabouts
are totally unnecessary on such a small street and would be waste of money. I have
seen these measures implemented in similar streets in this City and others, where they
only get in the way and look bad. These make sense on larger arterial streets where
traffic calming and pedestrian safety is a concern. On narrow two-lane streets however,
they don’t make sense. Additionally, these items would detract from the historic
character of the neighborhood. The green pavement paint and tacky roadblocks would
be seen as a blight by many.
The Morro Street bikeway is an example of why this would be bad for the neighborhood.
The traffic diverters and mini roundabouts on this street look cheap, inhibit use of the
grid system, and increase traffic on surrounding streets. The street grid is a design that
was ideal when laid out in the 1800s, and still good to this day. It’s a system which has
been sought as something to return to by the new urbanism movement - as a backlash
against the arterial and collector system. Why ruin a good thing? This is what the City of
Berkeley has done by constructing roadblocks and diverters on many of its streets,
diminishing the use of its grid and turning it into an improvised arterial-collector system.
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In closing, this is another instance of government trying to impose too much
control. The majority of residents are not able to ride a bike every day. Let the bikes and
cars share the road, as they always have, and enforce the laws that already exist.
John Tischler, Landscape Architect
john@tischdesign.com
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