Monday, August 13, 2012

Moulton Meadows Trail Project

Ref: "Path to get more study", Coastline Pilot, 10 August 2012. The Complete Streets Task Force met early as September 2009 to select a route for this path from four alternatives. One route amicable to both street users and Sommett du Monde private community residents led the route away from the private development. City government now chooses to ignore CSTF recommendations and locate the path where it will irritate residents most.

Further, the route taken for the present design and it's alternate does not consider project requirements reviewed by CSTF committee, those requirements specify path location, grade, width, usage, cost, impact on Sommett residents and more.  The project criteria are also ignored, here are some of them: 1) Path width maximum 5-8 feet to prevent visits by rogue motorvehicles. The path is now 10 feet wide. 2) Minimize project costs to $50k (no ADA) to better posture for council approval. New cost $350k. 3) Hold the slope to 10% grade to allow access by all anticipated road users. Now the illegal path follows 34% terrain with stairs.

The project manager Wade Brown is apparently unaware of the previous study on this path called the Moulton Meadows Trail project. City directions  would be more cost effective by leading Mr. Brown to early results produced by the CSTF including two computer renderings of the trail, prepared by Sebastian and Associates, that meet the objectives and requirements of the MMT and delivered to Councilwoman Jane Egly in November 2010.

Both the proposed path and its alternate ignore objectives for the Moulton Meadows Trail. The City would serve their residents better by starting from the early work results instead of starting from scratch. The records, notes and maps produced in years of meetings with city officials are available to anyone by visiting the Laguna Streets Blog, scroll down to  "CSTF DOCUMENTS" and select from the documents found there.

Laguna Streets

1 comment:

  1. Translation: Volunteers of the task force spent months of donated time to find an agreeable solution for road users property owners and residents. The city disregarded those recommendations. Instead the city will pave the existing illegal trail, build a retaining wall and add stairs to a 34% slope. This plan totally disregards the objectives of complete street policy yet starting costs are $350k.

    ReplyDelete