Report from North Coast Highway 101 Streetscape Project

Kate, our reader in Encinitas attended the North Coast Highway 101 Streetscape Project on Saturday and sent us this update:

I went with my son to the Streetscape information session yesterday. Total attendees were under 50 people (most were familiar faces) The focus was Birdrock as an example of a successful community process. I believe one of the goals was to address the phobia about roundabouts.  We arrived late, in the middle of a presentation by Ken Grimes, the executive director of Walk San Diego. His presentation was very thorough and informative when describing traffic calming. I found the portion about psychological calming really intriguing. In my career in design I found environmental psychology study vitally important perspective, especially informing change. The Birdrock Community Relations speaker, Joe La Cava, emphasized the process that community went through to achieve the boulevard design that is so successful. He stressed the importance of addressing each and every concern as legitimate. When people have the answers and the respect of being taken seriously, there can be resolution. The last speaker was a developer, Paul Metcalf, who was very entertaining, explaining his being on the other side of the planning process. He was on the traffic committee. He named one of the most profound changes was the elimination of noise. Living as I do in Leucadia – next to 101 and the train – I really heard what he was saying. And, he emphasized “Try to get community back from cars.” But, alas there was an  San Diego engineer , Pazagod (I missed his full name), who spoke and lost all of the spirit and enthusiasm in the room. Isn’t it dreadful how a terrible speaker can do so much damage? He droned on and on with absolutely no sense of his audience’s discomfort.

My son was there under duress, so the terrible speaker pushed it all too far.  (I think of him and his friend we saw there as citizen novitiates, because being a citizen has become such a rarity in the US of A.) We left around noon in the middle of the question period. I wanted to ask for more specifics on biking – as the three presentations we’d suffered through had not given more than a passing reference. But, there were many hands in the air and the bad speaker kept taking the mic for more opportunities to suck all the oxygen from the room. I was happy to hear Peder Norby (a very important shaker and mover in Encinitas who has sustainability and localization central to his many past projects). He articulated in very simple terms the several main questions the nay-sayers always bring up. The first is the argument that reducing number of lanes and adding roundabouts will decrease traffic, slow traffic and cause drivers to use side streets. The panel of speakers were able to refute the first several points in a statistical and subjective way. The issue of auxiliary streets was one that was answered with examples of dealing with side street calming methods prior to the major 101 changes.

Despite my whining, I believe I learned something Saturday as I have at every one of these sessions. I look forward to studying the drawings better at the next scheduled event on October 8 at the Encinitas library. I spoke with Leucadia 101 activists today at the Farmers’ Market and they said it is another information workshop and next Saturday’s is the most important event for me to visit.  And, I did look at the Walk San Diego brochures at the takeaway table and visited their website. I was very impressed. The 10 year Walk San Diego report included highlights on the path to Walkability. It pinpoints steps including getting critically important funding.

Kate also sent us a link to this story from the Leucadia Blog titled “Every 75 to 100 years.” The essay begins as follows:

Every 75 to 100 years communities get a chance to make a significant difference in their built environment

Read the rest of the essay here. And thank you Kate for the update on the Streetscape session.