11th Street corridor study seeks input from community on needed improvements
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Community members who have ideas about how to improve transportation along 11th Street in Lakeport are asked to take part in an ongoing study looking at measures that will benefit bikes, pedestrians, buses and forms of travel besides vehicles.
The Lake Area Planning Council is working with W-Trans, in partnership with the city of Lakeport, to conduct the 11th Street Corridor Multi-Modal Engineered Feasibility Study.
W-Trans and the council also are working on a plan for the Highway 20 corridor between Nice and Glenhaven, as Lake County News has reported.
The work is paid for by Sustainable Communities Planning Grants from Caltrans, said John Speka of the Lake Area Planning Council.
Speka said that program is just for planning grants, not capital construction costs.
The 11th Street corridor is one of the main entrances into Lakeport. It’s busy with vehicles, is narrow, has no bike lanes, is closely bordered on both sides by homes, does not have sidewalks on both sides of the road and, in some cases, sidewalks are extremely narrow and have utility poles in the middle of them.
The plan calls for analyzing transportation alternatives on the roadway, in a study area that has the Highway 29 freeway as the west boundary, North Main Street as the east boundary, with Clear Lake Avenue the northern boundary and extending to Seventh and Pool streets to North Main Street as the southern boundary.
“The product of this study is intended to provide several options to improve multi-modal access through the constrained Eleventh Street corridor,” the request for proposals for the plan explains. That document goes on to state, “Ultimately, the goal of the project is to enable Project Study Reports to be prepared from its products (engineered feasibility).”
Among the project objectives are utilizing the existing right-of-way on the 11th Street corridor to provide multimodal access along the corridor, minimizing adjacent land uses, improving pedestrian safety by planning for improvements, providing a bicycle route through the corridor that connects Scotts Valley Road and Highway 29 with Main Street and the city’s downtown, improving access to public transit and identifying a preferred location for an intersection/junction at 11th Street with a planned collector street that will provide future access to the Corridor from northern residential neighborhoods and Alden Avenue, according to planning documents.
Barry Bergman of W-Trans said the plan will analyze the area’s obvious constraints and topography, will look at accommodating different modes of transportation and will result in a concept design.
Public meetings on the planning began this spring, as Lake County News has reported.
Bergman said the most common input was lack of sidewalks and utility poles blocking them, noting that the existing sidewalks are pretty narrow.
“The utility poles make it that much more difficult, especially for people in wheelchairs,” he said.
Now, they’re reaching out to ask the community to give input on an online map, which will be the focus of public outreach over the coming month as they prepare to draft a plan that will undergo further public vetting.
Bergman said they want more community input before doing the design work. As they gather that information they’re also talking to city staff, analyzing collision and traffic data, and putting all of that together to apply it to the eventual recommendations.
Cayla McDonell of the Lake Area Planning Council said the council is doing community engagement and outreach.
She said the city and the council recently sent out fliers that talk about the project with a link to the Wikimaps interactive mapping tool, with posts also being made on Web sites and social media.
McDonell said they also are finalizing surveys of business and property owners. She said she will be calling and reaching out to businesses along 11th Street and some immediately adjacent or those on perpendicular streets, and then sending out to them the survey link to a separate online survey for property owners.
Bergman added that getting such input from business owners is critical to the study.
McDonell said she will be at two upcoming events, National Night Out in Lakeport on Tuesday, Aug. 6, and at the Lake County Fair on Aug. 31 or Sept. 1.
She said they haven’t yet determined the dates for the next community input event, which is expected to take place toward the end of the year.
Bergman said they are tentatively looking at having more public meetings in October, before the holidays, to ask for input on the three alternatives they are working on, with input from city staff and stakeholders. That input will help flesh the recommendations out further.
Dalene Whitlock, a principal of W-Trans, said at that point people will get to weigh in on their preferences on the alternatives.
That additional input, said Bergman, will help further define what specific things to include in the planning and will influence what, eventually, comes out in the preliminary designs.
He said the alternative with the most public support won’t necessarily be selected, as they have to look at if it will work. Right-of-way and other issues will have to be analyzed before making a final decision.
“We’re really just coming up with facility recommendations,” he said.
Because this is a planning grant, Bergman said the matter of building a project is still to be determined, and that this is a process.
How it’s ultimately funded is going to be based on the opportunities that arise and piecing different funding together, Bergman said.
Speka said there are a couple of potential sources for future funding, including Caltrans’ Active Transportation Program, which funds projects for nonmotorized transportation, like bikes and walking.
He said one of the main goals of the planning project is to be ready to apply for those types of grants, which cycle through every two years.
Similarly, the Highway 20 project now under way would be looking at similar grants, Speka said.
Both planning projects are on a similar timeline, Speka said, with the Lake Area Planning Council expected to get the final drafts and consider their approval in the spring.
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