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HomeMy WebLinkAbout8/14/2018 Item 2, Schmidt Goodwin, Heather From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com> Sent:Monday, August To:Advisory Bodies Subject:Planning Commission Attachments:Anholm bike illust plan planning commission aug 18.doc Dear Commissioners, Please see my attached comments on the Anholm Bikeway item. Thank you. Richard Schmidt 1 RE: “Anholm Bike Plan” determinations Dear Planning Commissioners, As a 46-year resident of North Broad Street, I’d like to offer the following thoughts on this project’s appearance before you. There are three things I’d appreciate your doing: 1. Consider seriously and with respect they have never received the two bike boulevard plans developed and offered to the city by neighborhood residents which staff dismisses and has apparently not analyzed for this meeting. (The one they did analyze, with closure of Chorro at Murray, is NOT among those I’m referring to.) If this requires your asking staff to perform additional analysis they have neglected to do, then please postpone your decision until you have that analysis. These are rough descriptions of these two neighborhood-generated plans: A. “Traffic Calming Solution.” This plan incorporates numerous good-looking traffic calming approaches which actually fit into our neighborhood which are intended to slow traffic to desired speeds and discourage cut -through traffic. These include landscaped “diffuser” islands at intersections to force traffic to the side, speed humps, raised crosswalks, and others. They would be neighborhood assets, not neighborhood detractions such as the Active Transportation Committee k eeps recommending. The plan’s citizen-initiated ideas have developed with guidance of professional planners among us. The staff report before you verifies that traffic calming has worked in our neighborhood already to slow speeds to bike -boulevard- preferred levels. In the table that states current speeds on Broad, you will note that in one section the average speed is 26 mph, while in other sections it is 30 mph. The low speed section is the two-block stretch with 4 speed humps. Our plan contemplates additional measures on that section and others throughout the street’s length which would further reduce speeds. In the 1970s, this 26 mph stretch had city-measured daytime speeds of 70 mph. Traffic calming really works! (FYI, North Broad has been the city’s guinea pig for developing traffic calming. In the early 1970s, four stop signs were installed. In the early 1980s, the city’s first speed humps were installed at the same locations you see them today. All the traffic calming stops and humps you now know had their genesis with experiments on our street.) We believe this plan is worth a try. If it works, it will show that non-textbook site-designed neighborhood-specific alternatives are good solutions. It is the minimally intrusive way to slow traffic and make biking more pleasant. (“Pleasant” is the issue. There are no significant safety problems on our street. I did a public records request for five years of data on bike-vehicle accidents on Chorro and Broad, Lincoln to Meinecke, and the police department said there was none they could provide me. They did report bike hit-and-runs on cars, which unfortunately are fairly common – two of my vehicles have been anonymously hit and damaged – and reflect poorly on the ethical responsibility of some bicyclists.) B. “Partial Closure Plus Traffic Calming Solution.” This grafts onto “Plan A” the additional feature of two partial closures of Broad. It is therefore a more invasive and less neighborhood-friendly solution, but one we believe to be much prefereable to the city’s cycle track and bike lane proposals. Northbound traffic would be blocked at Mountain View – a location selected both to save the Lincoln Deli’s Broad-facing parking lot and to eliminate the easy bypass (Lincoln, Hill, Mt. View, Broad) possible if northbound were blocked at Lincoln. Southbound traffic would be blocked at Ramona, at the same location as the city’s proposed total closure would take place. These closure points take into consideration where through traffic on Broad comes from. • Southbound traffic comes not predominantly from Foothill, but from Ramona, which has developed into a bypass around city-created traffic obstructions on Foothill (namely, the incredibly complicated and long-cycled Broad/Chorro traffic signals). Cutting off traffic from Ramona will significantly reduce through-traffic on Broad and get traffic now on Ramona back onto Foothill. It would helpful if the city figured out how to simplify and make the traffic signals shorter, too. It’s crazy that much of the time nobody is allowed to move in any direction at those signals! Frustration with these signals is a major impetus for impatient drivers cutting through the neighborhood. • Northbound traffic comes predominantly from the freeway. By cutting this off one block from the freeway, most of Broad is free from it. (I don’t understand staff’s thinking that a total blockage all the way out at Meinecke will not encourage from-freeway traffic to drive all the way out Broad to Meinecke, thus doing little to reduce northbound traffic volumes.) Why only a partial closure? Staff’s proposed total closure “locks” us into our neighborhood, and when, for example, we need to go the grocery, must do so by the roundabout congested route of Chorro to Foothill back to Broad. The half closur e allows free exit from the neighborhood, which I feel is a safety issue as much as a convenience. Has staff studied the safety implications, say in event of wildfire like that in Santa Rosa, of the total closure? Neighborhood Plan A: suggested treatment of Broad-Ramona designed to slow and calm traffic entering neighborhood from north. Signalizes entry to a special place. (Dwg. TK Gurnee) Plan A: suggested treatment of Chorro-Lincoln to calm traffic entering neighborhood from south. 2. Consider whether the General Plan amendment is really needed and whether it’s even a desirable/proper way to treat the Anholm residential district’s residential streets. Staff proposes redesignating Lincoln and Chorro as arterials solely because traffic volumes may exceed desired levels for collectors. However, the General Plan’s street classifications involve functional issues beyond mere traffic volumes. I suggest to you that those functional issues will not have changed even if staff’s guesses about future volumes are on target, and thus the change in designation appears both unwise and unwarranted. Background. As the staff report states, traffic volumes on Broad and Chorro are way down from the 1980s. Even with the hypothetical increase staff’s private traffic mode l suggests, traffic volumes will remain way below those of the 1980s. So what’s the rationale for changing the street designations to “arterial” vs. maintaining them as “collector?” As a planning commissioner and as a resident I had asked then -staff how they could justify acquiescing to traffic volumes of 7,000 to 11,000 on streets designated for 3,000 maximum, and why the city didn’t do whatever it must to achieve the lower number. Their replies were interesting and consistent: the city had no idea how to get traffic down to 3,000, but stating that number for these neighborhood residential streets and classifying the streets as classified represented an aspirational goal to accomplish that if they ever had the means or opportunity to do so. The mere fact of this inconsistency was viewed as a planning tool, they said, to keep alive the goal of making these streets more livable. It seems current staff have abandoned this future-oriented optimistic view of planning’s potential in favor of a bean counter’s approach to the inevitability of the future’s following present hypothetical projections. Which seems odd, does it not, given their simultaneous touting of modal shift’s reshaping the future, a future our mayor refers to often as “driverless” or “carless?” (To me, modal shift as promoted and understood in SLO actually fits with the bean counter approach, as listening to the story of forcing the public to do what the “city” wants sounds more like forced drinking of castor oil than enjoying ambrosia.) So I’d request you consider the following: • Is a projected possible increase in traffic sufficient grounds to change the General Plan’s classification of Lincoln and Chorro in a manner that gives up any pretense of city caring about reducing excessive traffic volumes on those neighborhood streets? • The street classification system is not a stand-alone planning policy, nor is it a hierarchically superior policy. It is intended to work in harmony with other portions of the General Plan. The General Plan (Housing and LUE) contains numerous policies for protecting neighborhoods from harms, one of which is excessive through traffic. The requested change appears to be in conflict with those more important General Plan neighborhood protection policies by giving priority to counting only traffic volumes over more inclusive neighborhood wellness policies . • The Broad Bike Boulevard is delineated in the new LUCE of the General Plan. Staff says creating the boulevard will violate the LUCE, thus the need for GP revisions. How can that be? Are we being told the LUCE was put together with such lack of care that it is internally inconsistent and thus so deficient it must be modified to achieve its own implementation? Is that a position the Planning Commission really wants to endorse by making the General Plan changes staff requests? It seems as if staff is opening a large can of worms with this ill-thought-out request. • Is there no longer a place in our city’s planning for “aspirational planning” that leaves doors open as reminders/incentives/pressure-points to make a bad situation better when possible? Is not maintaining the present classification of Lincoln and Chorro a way for the city to say, “Even if this hypothetical volume increase actually happens, it remains our intent to find ways to reduce it to make this neighborhood more livable?” • Does not making the requested classification change throw residents of these streets under the bus by removing policy-based pressure on the city to work towards getting excess cut-through traffic off these residential streets? Designating these neighborhood streets as arterials seems like a radical and very narrow act by the city. I feel strongly this requested General Plan change is not just bad policy, but an about face in the city’s stated commitments to neighborhood protection and wellness. When a requested policy change is in conflict with major portions of the General Plan, as this one appears to be, it should not be approved. Therefore I urge you to reject it outright. 3. CEQA. Please consider whether the city should do specific detailed CEQA compliance studies for the Anholm Bike Plan (ABP). Staff has said the project is categorically exempt because it poses no potentially significant impacts, and is covered adequately by the LUCE EIR. However, the General Plan amendment staff has brought to you undercuts their contention the ABP is adequately covered by the LUCE EIR. Since, according to staff, the LUCE itself needs to be modified to allow the ABP, how can staff still claim the LUCE EIR is adequate? In fact, all versions of the ABP clearly have potentially significant impacts which have never been evaluated under CEQA. It is not my intent to list all, but to throw out a few examples so you can understand the magnitude of what’s c overed by CEQA and is being ignored. • The cycle track proposals (and I believe this is the Council’s true direction, that the boulevard before you this week is a mere diversionary tactic) involve constructing raised physical separations between cycle space and vehicular space. Said physical raised separations will create tripping hazards and effective blockades for pedestrians, the elderly, the young, the disabled. They will also cause hydrological blockages, which in a flood zone, is a serious impact. • Cycle tracks or dedicated bike lanes, both of which the bike lobby is pushing, would take up to 2/3 the width of Broad Street away from other users and make that the exclusive domain of a handful of bike riders.1 This is a significant impact on public facilities, and a fascinating negation of the concept of “complete streets” shared by everyone. • Cycle tracks or dedicated bike lanes will involve wholesale removal of on -street residential parking on which residents depend.2 The plan the Active Transportation Committee is currently promoting would remove all parking from BOTH SIDES of Broad and Chorro. Some of us have no off-street parking, others (in this early 20th century subdivision) have inadequate or unusable off -street parking. There are three households with disabled persons in my block that have no off -street parking.3 These are all potentially significant impacts the city has refused to study under CEQA. • Such wholesale removal of parking raises other issues: how are deliveries large and small made; how do trades people service our homes; how do those of us who need help, from housecleaning to health care, get help to help us; what do moving trucks do? These are all potentially significant livability impacts the city has refused to study under CEQA. • No safety evaluations of potential alternatives have been carried out. The cycle track proposals, for example, ignore the well-known fact that cycle tracks with dozens of driveway intersections such as the city proposes, are unsafe and aren’t proposed today by bike designers who know how to design safe facilities. Since the city has refused to carry out a CEQA analysis of project safety, they avoid the inconvenient fact their favored solutions place cyclists and residents in greater danger than present conditions do. These are examples of impacts the city’s failure to do CEQA analysis of the ABP leave undaylighted. 1 This is not, and never will be, a major route – it doesn’t connect any two points with large potential ridership – so why this has gone to the top of the bike project list seems to have more to do with politics than with fulfilling the greatest bike riding needs, like getting safely to and from CalPoly. 2 The city has done some low-ball parking saturation studies, included in your report, and even in those low-balls our block has 68% of its parking spaces filled overnight by residents. 3 Staff has said – I kid you not – that these disabled persons can park 1,000 feet from their homes and walk home with minor “inconvenience.” Such arrogantly careless assumptions about which sufferings matter and which don’t matter have cropped up thoughout the ABP process. The way CEQA works, if there’s significant controversy over potential significant impacts, a CEQA study must be done to resolve that controversy. There is significant controversy over the impacts of the ABC, as exemplified by extensive prior public testimony, by items in the press, by social media discussions, by my comments above. This controversy cannot rightfully be ignored by the city’s co ntinuing to refuse to do CEQA work. The purpose of CEQA is idealistic – to lay out before decision-makers the potential environmental problems a proposed project presents, so that through project design those problems can be eliminated or at least minimized. But if the city sticks its head into CEQA sand instead of doing its mandated problem-seeking study, there’s no methodology for reducing impacts. I hope you agree there are unstudied potentially significant impacts a CEQA study would reveal and help resolve by examining a range of alternative solutions. I believe such a study would help shift focus away from the radical street-grabbing solutions towards the sorts of gentler solutions our neighbors have attempted unsuccessfully to get into consideration. Therefore, I request the Commission tell the city to do a focused EIR on the ABP prior to giving any of the alternatives further consideration. Thank you for plowing through these thoughts. Richard Schmidt