LB City Council Approves Modeling Carmageddon

How do you like Laguna's traffic congestion so far? Get ready for more because Tuesday night the Laguna Beach City Council voted 5-0 to guarantee increasing more car traffic in Laguna Beach. Agenda Item #16 Task Order for a Traffic Analysis Model says in brief:

“Our City is near build-out, there are several large re-development projects that propose use intensification within the City that may increase local traffic congestion.”

Our LB Public Works department is preparing for traffic congestion caused by these re-development projects – some of them scheduled for construction simultaneously. LB Public Works relies on a consultant to embellish a computer traffic model of Laguna’s main road corridors through downtown. The consultant's traffic model is car-centric, they measure transportation success by moving more cars faster so get ready for more traffic erosion through Laguna Beach.

Reading the consultant's traffic modeling manual shows how car intensification occurs:

“saturation flow rates,” “pedestrian interference,” “Intersection Capacity Utilization (ICU),” “Level of (car) Service (LOS),” “Conforms to Highway Capacity Manual (HCM).

The keywords "transit, bus, trolley, rail, lightrail, and cyclists" don't appear in the consultant's manual.  "Pedestrians" are considered interference to car traffic; a delay in signal timing. Two arterial highways already slice through Laguna Beach, does Laguna want more of the same?

Once again our Council neglects the core problems: how to move those 6 million visitors and provide alternatives to cars. Once again Public Works overlooked the Laguna Beach mobility plan itself: the Circulation Element of the General Plan. Now is the time for the City and Developers to change traffic models otherwise Laguna Beach is modeling Carmageddon.
 

"If you do not know where you are going it does not matter which way you go" Lewis Carol

-LS

Bike Lane Protests and Why

Here's a title from the Santa Maria Times:

 Solvang residents protest bike lane through Rancho Santa Ynez Estates neighborhood

Council adopts SYV bicycle master plan

(click) Santa Maria Times Article

And the story line that followed:

Mayor Jim Richardson joins call for more bike lanes at Mayor’s Bike Ride Cyclists of all ages and abilities gathered at Solvang City Hall just before noon Thursday to join the Mayor’s Bike Ride around several blocks…

After more than a year of community planning, isolated community members respond to bike infrastructure like this:

“If the city wants to continue to put bike path in our area you should get us involved,” said Bud McCoy, who like many of his neighbors, hadn’t heard of the bike path until construction workers were cordoning off Fjord Drive in preparation for road work. “We feel that you just ramrodded that down our throats.”

"The master plan was developed by the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments over more than a year of planning, including four meetings of the Technical Advisory Committee, meetings with schools, public health and business representatives, surveys, interviews, and a series of public workshops held in October 2018 and March 2019."

Thankfully the Solvang Council saw through the residents uninformed protest. After staff reporting, public comment and brief council deliberation, the city council voted 4-1 to adopt the Solvang portion of the Santa Ynez Valley Bicycle Master Plan.

-LS