On the agenda for the June 5, 2024 City Council meeting on Wednesday is a consent calendar item: To award $1,348,570 to GHD to complete the plans for the two Sunset / 101 roundabouts project.
This article is the letter that was sent to the City Council, to request that this item be removed from the Consent Calendar. In my view, this is a sizeable project and deserves its own agendized discussion.
To: Honorable Mayor Meredith Matthews, Vice Mayor Alex Stillman, Councilmembers Stacy Atkins-Salazar, Sarah Schaefer, and Kimberley White
CC to: City Manager Karen Diemer, City Engineer Netra Khatri
Date: June 4, 2024
Subject: Request to remove Item H from the Consent Calendar: Plans for the US 101 and Sunset Avenue Interchange
Dear Honorable Vice Chair Alex Stillman (as Chair of this meeting) —
I am requesting Item H be removed from the consent calendar.
In my view, this is a large enough issue that it should agendized for the future, for a thorough discussion.
This is the “Award a contract…to GHD… to complete the plans…of the US 101 and Sunset Avenue Interchange Improvements Project….”
Councilmembers: I believe there are unsafe elements to this design — and that the design can be improved to make it safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. The design is good for vehicle traffic flow — but not so good for bikes and walkers.
My strong concern is that with this design there will be vehicle – bicyclist collisions.
My concern is, with the current design, that someone will get hurt.
My request to remove this from the Consent Calendar is based on:
- The Council received a presentation on this interchange on February 21, 2024. The time for the presentation, discussion, and public comment was approximately 49 minutes.
- During the discussion, several suggestions for changes to the design were brought by the Councilmembers.
- Among what was questioned was the use of Class I pathways to handle the combined bicycle and pedestrian use on a single pathway.
- In the design shown in February, the 10-foot wide pathways are intended for bike and pedestrian use in both directions. Given the amount of bike traffic and number of pedestrians at this busy entrance to Cal Poly Humboldt, this is not a proper solution — to have bikes and pedestrians all mixed together.
- I believe we need to see what upgrades to the February design have occured — before allocating funding and resources at this time.
- In my view, this is a large enough issue that it should have its own business agenda item and a thorough discussion.
- In the discussion in February, the question of having separate bike and pedestrian pathways was not adequately answered.
- In my view, we need a 3D model and/or drawings with images of cars and arrows for the bike paths in order to envision how this interchange would work. Caltans has done 3D modeling on other roundabout plans to help visualize the details.
As it is set now, the Council would not be seeing any changes to this design until much later in the engineering process — in theory, not until the design work is 60% complete. At that point, it would be too late to make these needed improvements.
I’ve included some quotes from the transcript of that meeting. On Arcata1.com I have several articles on this issue — with images that show where I believe the danger points are, how things can be improved, and more. The links will be found on your portal page at: arcata1.com/council
Councilmembers, I am very grateful for your hard work. Thank you.
— Fred Weis
707-822-4400
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The danger spots
Interacting with traffic
When going to and from campus to Sunset Avenue, bicyclists and pedestrians will be crossing lanes of traffic 8 times.
Coming south on L.K. Wood Boulevard, a bicyclist has the option of merging into traffic on the two roundabouts (that’s the red arrows), or getting on the shared bike/pedestrian pathway (yellow arrows) and crossing lanes of traffic 10 times.
Coming south on L.K. Wood Boulevard, a bicyclist has the option of merging into traffic on the two roundabouts (that’s the red arrows), or getting on the shared bike/pedestrian pathway (yellow arrows) and crossing lanes of traffic 10 times.
Transcription from the February 21, 2024, City Council meeting
Notes: There are several issues being discussed simultaneously, which adds to the confusion. City Engineer Netra Khatri brings up:
- Putting another bike lane on the bridge — and that would have to go through Caltrans. Adding another bike lane on the bridge is not the issue.
- Adding bike lanes on the outside of the roundabout circle. This is not desirable, and again this is not the issue the Council is discussing.
- Having separate bike and pedestrian pathways. Netra does not address or answer this question.
Mayor Meredith Matthews:
“So what comes next? This is going to go to the Transportation Safety Committee, it’s going to go through another iteration before it comes back to us. And we can look at some of these changes. Is that correct?“
Councilmember Kimberley White:
“I just reiterate that I’d really like to see the bicycles separated from traffic, I think it’s going to be — Yeah, I’m worried.”
Councilmember Stacy Atkins-Salazar:
“And also I like the separated bike path. I’m sure that you have discussed that. So would you could you update us on that process and maybe why you made the choices you did. And is there a possibility to put these in? I don’t want to let “perfect” get in the way of progress on a much needed project but also if we can make some improvements that we’ve heard about that would be great to have. So could you just share with us some of that?”
Councilmember Sarah Schaefer:
“I think, definitely, that if we are going to — because of space constraints — have to combine those pedestrian and bicycle infrastructures, that we really make sure that they are truly separated from the vehicle lanes, and that they are as protected as possible.”
City Engineer Netra Khatri on the shared bike lanes:
“Having a separate bike lane? Yes, definitely, it will be ideal to have separate bike lanes, separate walkways, separate for cars — that’s ideal. And definitely in an ideal world, if we “had the real estate. Currently we do not have the real estate or the right-of-way to accommodate that.
If somebody asked me, Yes, so why don’t you make this 10-foot walkway [be] a five- foot sidewalk and the other five feet for bicycles? That’s possible but that’s already a shared path — that’s the purpose of that. People are sharing that path, bicycles and pedestrians are sharing that. If we had a right-of-way there, definitely, we could have done it. Is there a right-of-way here to do that in this area, potentially? Yes, there is a bike lane that could be — there’s enough right-of-way to add some buffer. But this is again Caltrans’s bridge and to make any changes to the bridge we have to go to the headquarters process. It’s a long process. So we did not consider that. Can we again ask them? Yes, we could ask them.
We talked to a lot of people who ride bicycles, who are avid bicyclists, who are learners. Experienced bicyclists, they prefer to be in the [traffic] lane. In their words, they would not prefer to have a separate bike lane here because, you know, vehicles are always in the curved motion and it’s not ideal to be there at the same time. [Editor: I believe Netra means that it’s not ideal to have a bike lane on the outside edge of a curved traffic lane.] So most of the expert bicyclists, they take the lane and they act like a vehicle and they go around the roundabout. Beyond the roundabouts we can have a separate bike lane in this area and we already have bike lanes in that area.”
City Manager Karen Diemer:
“The action that I think he [Netra] is most looking for tonight is to direct staff to file the CEQA exemption to move the CEQA process forward.”