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Annie Van-Maaren of EverMay Garden is part of a group of business owners, Donnie Figone, left, of Mario and John's Tavern and Andy Cordano of Complete Auto Service who are protesting Petaluma's plan to convert Wilson Street at D Street to a bike corridor complete with roundabouts to accommodate more bicycle traffic. KENT PORTER/PD
By LORI A. CARTER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A Petaluma plan to turn a historic neighborhood street into a bicycle boulevard similar to Santa Rosa’s Humboldt Street is being met with opposition from businesses and neighbors.
City engineers stress that the plan is only in its preliminary stages and nothing has been decided.
Still, business owners said they are ramping up resistance so their input is considered before the process is too far down the road.
“The idea is to install the interim bicycle boulevard and evaluate it over the course of a year or so and see how it performs with respect to traffic volumes, traffic safety, operational issues and pedestrian and bicycle issues,” city engineer Curt Bates said.
“We want it to be a … safe situation for riders and vehicles.”
The focus is a quarter-mile section of East D Street between Pay-ran and Wilson streets, northeast of Lakeville Street.
In the 2008 general plan, the city’s long-term planning blueprint, the segment was identified as a test location for a bicycle boulevard where bikers can safely and comfortably ride through town. It is considered a safer route than the crowded East Washington Street thoroughfare it parallels.
The area is a mix of homes from the early to mid-1900s, some newer homes and a few small businesses.
The city received a $50,000 air quality grant through the Sonoma County Transportation Authority to design bike-friendly changes that include lane striping, corner curb reshaping and signs at East D Street intersections with Payran, Vallejo, Edith and Wilson streets.
The theory is that by converting stop sign-controlled intersections to all-way yields, vehicles idle less and create fewer emissions. The changes also reduce the number of vehicles that go through the area, Bates said.
Annie Van Maaren, who with her husband, Dennis, owns EverMay Garden Center on East D and Wilson streets, is spearheading resistance to the plan. She has started a petition against it and so far has about 150 signatures, she said.
“We don’t want the traffic circles,” she said. “People are going to get killed.”
The owners of all three businesses at that corner have expressed opposition to the plan.
Van Maaren said, based on comparisons to Santa Rosa’s Humboldt Street setup, the three businesses — hers, Mario and John’s Tavern and Complete Auto Service — and an apartment building would lose two dozen parking spaces in a redesign of their intersection.
She said EverMay receives soil deliveries in 53-foot-long trucks. They couldn’t maneuver through a traffic circle, she said.
“That’s the entire length of our East D Street side,” she said.
Longtime auto shop owner Leo Lavis isn’t happy about any possible changes either. “I’m against it. It’s right in the front of my yard,” he said.
He said most bicyclists he sees don’t obey the existing traffic signals. “Why do they need a circle there anyway?” he said.
A community meeting to discuss preliminary plans is planned for late September, Bates said.
Changes to the street would have to be approved by the City Council.
“This is meant to be an amenity to the neighborhood and the bicycling community,” Bates said. “We absolutely want to work with the businesses and residents in that area to make sure whatever’s put in is an enhancement.”
Some of the opposition apparently stems from a recent payment to the Petaluma Community Coalition from the developers of the nearby East Washington Place shopping center.
To settle two lawsuits involving the city over the Target-anchored center, developer Regency Centers, among other payments, set aside $40,000 for “traffic calming” measures on East D Street and East Washington, where the coalition’s leaders live.
Van Maaren said the coalition doesn’t speak for all East D Street’s residents or business owners.
The Regency payment is unrelated to the traffic circle and bicycle boulevard plans.
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I wondered why bikes are suddenly the ‘in’ thing and need streets remade for them? I did check out the ICLEI and sustainable development and I was alarmed at what I read. It’s not tinfoil hat stuff, but I wish it was. It’s crazy to call this ‘calming’ when you’re really endangering every user of the street including bicyclists. I’ve been alive long enough to see the trick of calling it one thing while it’s the opposite. So if enough bikes are on the road and the stop signs are removed and someone, god forbid, is killed, will the bike boulevard really have been a success? Is that the goal? To remove cars entirely? It’s not enough for these people that cars will be electric or fuel cell. No, they really do want to remove cars.
Frankly as a woman, mother, and grandmother I see private cars as personal protection (didn’t councilwoman Jacobi get attacked when she was on her bike and suffer theft and a broken collarbone?), a means to carry more than one person safely and protected from weather, a means to haul groceries and equipment, long range travel etc.
This sustainable development thing is out of hand when it defies logic. Building up the city center with lots of condos and then having unregulated streets creates chaos. The businesses and residents object, rightfully, to being used for an ideology.
Aggressive bicyclists need to find a velotron or something to recreate on instead of creating chaos in the streets.
Petaluma and Santa Rosa are members of ICLEI. Dues are paid with our taxes. Can anyone deny this? ICLEI and UN Agenda 21 are all over the internet. Press Democrat, time to do a story. Let’s get this debate started. In Spokane, Washington, there’s a effort to ‘Kick ICLEI Out’ and similar efforts are underway in some of the over 600 cities and counties in the U.S. that are members. I don’t think this site can handle a 300 page document from the UN. Go ahead, Google it.
“One World Govt is coming our way” (!) Please Ted Do Something!… before the evils of bicycles and sustainability kill more innocent people! How many lives must be lost to this sinister menace that threatens to eliminate all cars (even the electric ones!) and take away our property values ?! The “Bike People” are coming….Help!
What our posters forgot to add was that they’re buying up all the worldwide stock in aluminum foil because everyone will need it to make hats and listen to space alien chatter.
My wholehearted appreciation, support and thanks go to Annie and Dennis Van Maaren.
I have lived in this neighborhood for many years. “Calming” was achieved by adding stop signs along East D Street maybe 10 years ago. At present, it needs no more “calming” measures. However, if and when the nearby development with Target gets built, this may change. Potential traffic issues were ignored in that project’s grossly incomplete EIR.
But if they become needed, there are much simpler and efficient methods for controlling traffic on East D street than traffic circles. Traffic circles have a huge potential to DECREASE pedestrian and bicycle safety. Consider that if the cars don’t stop, they never relinquish their right of way to a pedestrian or a bicycle.
If the Humbolt Street experiment is such a success, why does one intersection have two stop signs and why is the circle near the grocery store slated for removal? Traffic circles don’t work too good on Humbolt Street in Santa Rosa and they won’t work at all on East D Street in Petaluma. We’re not gonna take it!
Jason Valez broke the big secret about ICLEI and UN Agenda 21. The plan is to eliminate the private automobile, thus the proliferation of bike paths and bike streets. But it gets worse. UN Agenda 21 Sustainable Development also calls for the elimination of private property because they say it causes social injustice. If you haven’t checked your zoning, general plan designation, area plans, corridor plans, redevelopment plans, and on and on, you might not know that your property rights are already mostly gone. There’s been a planning revolution in our country which the proponents are winning. International groups like ICLEI (International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives) are assisting in developing policy in almost every city and county in the northbay region and elsewhere.
Member cities and counties pay dues with our tax dollars. Also the United Nations has a branch here called United Nations USA Sonoma County. The bike boulevards are just one of the visible signs that this agenda is being implemented unbeknownst to most people. Time to wake up and read the blueprint for our future.
Jason,
I appreciate your passion, but telling your reader to “look it up” or “check it out” is poor form. If you’ve got an argument to make, make it. Don’t expect your listener to do your research for you. Be an advocate for your cause.
Here’s a good example of wasteful spending on an unecessary project. Santa Rosa’s bike boulevard has been an utter failure and about 400 people signed a petition to take it out. But the bike people control our City Council and it’s like some kind of religion to them. They won’t be happy until there are no more private cars. Their agenda is United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development. Look it up. Most bicyclists have never heard of it but that’s the plan to eliminate all private cars among other things. Petaluma is a member of ICLEI Sustainable Development an NGO tasked with implementing UN Agenda 21 Worldwide. Unbelievable? Check it out. One world government is coming our way.