ALAMEDA — City officials are reviewing their effort to keep people active outside while promoting social distancing during the pandemic — especially by limiting traffic on streets so that cyclists and pedestrians are safer — and are now gathering public input on ways it might continue.
Known as “Slow Streets,” the program features temporary barricades that prevent through traffic from traveling on five residential streets that cover about 4.7 miles, allowing walkers, skateboarders, kids on scooters and cyclists to use the middle of the roadway.
The city launched the effort in April 2020, modeling it on a similar program in Oakland. It’s set to end in October.
“We saw people were stepping out into the street and so creating opportunities for re-purposing the streets was so important,” Rochelle Wheeler, the city’s senior transportation coordinator, told a virtual meeting on Tuesday to get public feedback on how it’s been going. “We are trying to figure out what’s next for ‘Slow Streets.'”
About 15 people attended the meeting, which was the third of four that the city is hosting to gather input, mostly voicing broad support for the program. So far, about 1,200 people have completed an online survey.
The next virtual meeting will take place Aug. 30.
“I think it’s an awesome thing for our neighborhood and the city,” resident Maxwell Blum told the gathering.
But fellow resident Jill Staten, who lives near Versailles Avenue, one of the streets, said residents have been using the closed area for middle-of-the-street block parties.
“I almost never see anyone walking or rolling in the street,” said Staten, who added other streets in the neighborhood might be bettered suited for the program due to traffic flow.
While people who live on a stretch of street that has been blocked off can benefit due to less traffic, she said, others who live on nearby streets must deal with increased traffic as motorists search for ways to travel through the neighborhood.
“I just don’t see the benefit,” Staten said.
Theresa Catlin said she lives in Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood near the Oakland Estuary. But Catlin regularly visits Alameda because her grandchildren, ages 7 and 10, live there and they often ride bicycles together on a “Slow Street,” she said.
“I have felt safer on those streets with my grandkids,” she said.
Changes to the program, if it continues, might include the installation of temporary traffic circles and replacing the current orange traffic cones with flex posts, which can be attached to the ground.
Portions of Pacific, San Jose, Santa Clara and Versailles avenues are part of “Slow Street,” as well as Orion Street at the former Alameda Naval Air Station.
Some speakers said they would like the program expanded into a network.
The city’s Transportation Commission will make its recommendation to the City Council on Sept. 22 after city staff report on what they have learned through the meetings. The council will consider what to do next in October.
Meanwhile, recommendations on the future of the city’s “Commercial Streets” program — also put in place amid the pandemic and which mirrors the residential “Slow Streets” — will go before the council next month.Among the recommendations from the Transportation Commission are revising the temporary parklet program to allow for semi-permanent parklets and maintaining the half-block closure of Alameda Avenue until the street is repaved or until the Downtown Alameda Business Association no longer wishes to manage the space.
Other recommendations include allowing the existing citywide conditional use permit for outdoor dining and commercial activities in private parking lots — put in place due to the pandemic — to expire Nov. 1. Businesses that wish to continue to use their lots for commercial purposes, however, could apply for a site-specific permanent use permit.
For information on Alameda’s “Slow Streets” program including on the next virtual meeting, visit https://ift.tt/3sGhYuB. For information on the “Commercial Streets” program, visit https://ift.tt/3xTP2zX.
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August 18, 2021 at 08:07PM
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Alameda: What next for “Slow Streets” for cyclists, walkers? - East Bay Times
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