This article appeared in the Mad River Union in the September 14, 2022 issue.

For more articles about the L Street Pathway — click here.

Our choice for Arcata: L Street Pathway & Park — or another major road?

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.

The draft Gateway Plan proposes we split the traffic that’s now on K Street and put the southbound traffic onto a newly-created L Street.

Newly-created? Isn’t there a road on “L Street” now?  Nope. Take a walk there and check it out for yourself.

L Street south of Alliance is the old Annie & Mary train line. There’s a 10-block paved bike-and-walking trail, as part of the Great Redwood Trail rail-to-trail program. These days the “road” is a single-width strip, a total of 4-1/2 blocks, in three sections. You can’t drive from section to section. It has never been a through-road.

The Gateway Plan idea is this:  K Street would be a one-way, one-lane street, northbound from Samoa Boulevard to Alliance Road. By removing one traffic lane and one parking lane, there’d be plenty of room for wide sidewalks and a separated one-way bike lane. Left-turn lanes would help with traffic flow, and bulb-outs extending into the street would make pedestrian crossings shorter and safer.

The southbound traffic would be routed onto a new road alongside the L Street Pathway. There’d be a non-dedicated two-way bike lane that doubles as a sidewalk – not ideal for either the bicyclists or the pedestrians. A strip of trees between the road and the pathway. Otherwise about the same as K Street.

“I thought we weren’t going to create any new roads,” you might say. Well, in this case, the planners are making an exception.

Yes, there are advantages to splitting the traffic onto the two streets, one north and one south. Those are listed in the draft plan, and the engineers hired as consultants will praise this design. But let’s look at some other factors.

• The current L Street Pathway is a treasure. If you haven’t seen it or been there, you really must go. A particularly pleasant part of the L Street Pathway is along the Creamery Building, with sculptures and outdoor seating and picnic tables and shade trees. It’s a part of where Creamery street fairs and festivities take place and it’s used every day by people out for a stroll.
• Picture the traffic headed south on K Street, coming off Alliance: Cars, motorcycles, pickup trucks, delivery trucks, a semi-truck. Now imagine all that traffic alongside a pathway where people meet to sit, eat, read, talk in normal voices, and even listen to the birds in the trees. With grass and trees (or maybe a hedge) between the pathway and the road, the engineers tell us, it will all be okay. No, no, no. Putting in a road there ruins the pathway. It would be a sidewalk next to a street. If you’d walk along K Street now, that’s what it would be.
• A Linear Park would be a jewel for Arcata. An area for us to enjoy every day and a noted destination for visitors. The redevelopment that the Gateway Plan promotes on those parcels along the Pathway/Park would have small shops and restaurants on the ground floors – all pedestrian-friendly and car-free.
• Across the country (and all over the world) cities are taking out asphalt in order to create parks for people. We’re seeing this in Ukiah, in Portland, in New York, in Chicago, in Atlanta, in 15 locations in cities in the Bay Area. It’s a definite positive people-friendly trend, and an encouragement for a walkable community. Through strong past efforts we already have the makings of a wonderful Linear Park. We already have what other cities are striving for. Why throw this opportunity away?
• The Gateway Plan is promoted as supporting non-vehicular transportation. Anything else exposes yet another of the many contradictions of the plan. Will Arcata become walk-and-bike friendly or not?
• The Gateway Plan also calls for a park within 200 yards of housing. An L Street Linear Park running the length of the Gateway Area gives a good start to that goal.
• Putting a road on L Street — in order to make traffic flow better on K Street — is a car-centric approach to problems that can be dealt with in other ways. As to the difficulty of crossing K Street, that issue also can be improved through better design, like bulb-outs and designated crossing lights.
• Ideally in 20 or 30 years there will be less intense vehicle traffic, as the promise of walkability in the Gateway Plan comes through and smaller self-driving “pod” vehicles become more the norm. But if a roadway is constructed on L Street – and car-oriented buildings are built on that street – that road will be there for a long, long time. The height, mass, orientation, and purpose of those buildings will be based on facing a road, not facing a park.
• On a one-lane street, what happens to the cars behind a delivery truck – like a UPS truck with lots of stops? With parked cars on one side and a row of hedges or trees on the other, there’s no place to pass and so traffic is stuck. In 2003 there was a movement to make H Street and G Street be one-lane so the sidewalks can be widened. The same delivery truck issue was pointed out, and, as you can see, it did not happen.
• Crucially: A major problem with ambulances and emergency vehicles. On the new L Street as designed, the only place a car can pull over is onto a side street. Other than that, if an ambulance or a fire truck is behind you, there’s nothing you can do – and there’s nothing they can do.
• There is strong evidence that an L Street roadway simply cannot be built. At the north end of the L Street corridor, the City does not have the rights of way to build a road there. And the word I’ve heard is: They are not going to get the rights. So is it time for an eminent domain taking of that private property? We’ll see.

Dave Ryan, Chair of the Transportation Safety Committee, had a strongly-worded accounting of his reasons for keeping the L Street Pathway and creating a linear park – and ditching the idea of making L Street into a road. This was all part of the Transportation Safety Committee’s August 2, 2022 recommendation to the City Council to give up the idea of L Street for southbound traffic. His full statement can be found here.

What you can do

• Learn more to make an informed choice. See the maps, aerial views, articles, and transcripts and videos of meetings about the L Street Pathway and Park.
• Read and watch Dave Ryan’s talking points on preserving the L Street Pathway.
• There are only three members of the City Council who will be voting on Gateway actions. Write to them and express your opinions.
• If you agree that a less car-centric and more people-oriented approach is the way to go, consider signing the petition that’s being started by local citizens.

Links for all this and more are found at the Mad River Union readers’ page at:  arcata1.com/union

Fred Weis started Arcata1.com out of concern that information needed for good decision-making was not being accurately supplied by our City government. He can be reached at [email protected]

The “L Street Pathway” is in transparent yellow.