Transportation Safety Committee

The joint City Council / Planning Commission study session introduced big problems when an elated City Council considered the Transportation Safety Committee's strong recommendation for an L Street Pathway and Linear Park and tossed it out the window -- well, sent it back to the TransSafetyComm for them to review. This presentation was the cause. Is it filled with misleading and possibly false information? Read it, and you decide.

The Transportation Safety Committee at their September 20, 2022, meeting discussed how the City Council had asked the members to revisit and reconsider the strong recommendation to not construct the L Street - K Street Couplet. Instead, the TSC committee stated, the L Street Corridor should become a permanent Linear Park.

The L Street pathway could be a community jewel in the heart of the Gateway area. The City wants it to be a high-traffic road, taking all the southbound car and truck volume from Alliance Road to Samoa Boulevard.

This page contains an assortment of photographs and aerial views of the L Street Pathway area. It will be updated as new images come in, so be sure to check back to see what's new.

Transportation Safety Committee January 18, 2022 The full discussion on Gateway-related Transportation Safety issues started at about the 20-minute point on the original audio.  This section...

It’s a question of priorities. What do we want to see in Arcata? Do we make our roads better for cars, or do we make the Gateway area better for people? Yes, it is that simple.

A major component of the December 2021 draft Gateway Plan involves splitting the vehicle traffic on K Street and making a new L Street for the southbound traffic. Does the City have the rights-of-way to do this? Who knows?

At the August 2, 2022, Transportation Safety Committee meeting Chair Dave Ryan spoke for 9 minutes on just why the plan's L-K Street Couplet should be abandoned -- and replaced with an L Street Linear Park and walking pathway -- and why this is the heart of a successful Gateway plan for Arcata.

The draft Gateway Plan calls for making a new L Street for the southbound traffic from Alliance Road. But Arcata doesn't have property rights to build a road. Community Development Director acknowledges this.

If indeed L Street were to become a through road carrying truck traffic from Alliance Road, there would be some pretty major issues.

Excerpt from a letter from Fred Weis to the Arcata City Council.  August 16th, 2022 -- prior to the joint CC/Planning Commission study session on August 23rd. At that meeting very little was accomplished. The recommendation from the Transportation Safety Committee was not accepted.

New proposed bike lanes for K & L Streets and for 8th & 9th Streets. Could we do without a K Street bike lane and instead keep L Street bikeable, walkable, and protected from vehicle traffic?

The "couplet" created by making K Street and L Street be one-way, one-lane streets seems unlikely to happen. And if it were to take place, the joyful humanity of the current L Street Pathway would be destroyed. Why does it seem that the City is not being forthcoming on this? Why aren't we presented with alternatives?

The City wants to destroy a quiet strolling pathway so that car and truck traffic will be split between L Street and K Street. Meanwhile, cities all over the world are attempting to get rid of car traffic in favor of walkable public spaces. A "Plan B" has been promised since January. So far, nothing.

8th & 9th Streets are proposed as one-way streets with bike lanes. That sounds good. But it comes with a 30% reduction of parking on those streets. That sounds bad.

We've been promised to see Traffic Studies for getting close to a year. Do they exist? Have they been started? Can we see them? What is going on?