‘We kept telling them “no, no, no.” ’ SLO County, city squabbled over downtown sidewalks
Even in the horse-and-buggy days, traffic was an issue in downtown San Luis Obispo.
Runaway horse-drawn carriages that scattered pedestrians and streets that did not line up were common traffic complaints in the early days of San Luis Obispo.
Local historian Lynne Landwher has an example of perhaps the earliest example of a traffic-calming structure causing an accident in San Luis Obispo history.
On her site, History in SLO County, Landwher quotes a Jan. 10, 1910, Daily Telegram, story telling the tale of then-Sheriff Yancy McFadden, who jumped on a horse to pursue a robbery suspect.
Not taking time to saddle the horse, McFadden rose bareback into the night and “dashed into a pile of bitumen which was lying in the road without a danger lamp being displayed.”
He dislocated a shoulder and fractured his arm but, the article says, “He bore the painful injury with his usual cheerfulness.”
Cars later took over the roads and piles of paving materials were no longer left lying around.
Roads got so smooth that speeding traffic lead to the rise of the new art of traffic calming, an attempt to help pedestrians survive an autocentric downtown.
Roundabouts, speed humps, speed cushions, raised crosswalks and bulb-outs are all part of the current traffic design vocabulary. Also known as a curb extension, a bulb-out widens the sidewalk for a short distance, narrowing the travel lane.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation the bulb-out’s “primary purpose is to ‘pedestrianise’ an intersection” by shortening the crossing distance and allowing drivers and walkers to see each other more easily.
Despite the bulb-outs, pedestrians need to take care downtown. In San Luis Obispo, some of the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians are along Santa Rosa Street.
The story of how the city’s first bulb-out was built downtown was reported in the Telegram-Tribune by Larry Bauman on Nov. 27, 1981.
‘Bulb-out’ blues
County job irks some City Hall folks
San Luis Obispo’s new county building is one step ahead of a San Luis Obispo city beautification plan, but some city officials are not too happy about it.
In fact, a major confrontation may have been avoided between the two agencies only because the city wants to keep on good terms with the county.
The problem is the sidewalk at the county’s nearly completed courthouse and office complex on the corner of Santa Rosa and Monterey streets. A new sidewalk was built as part of the project and instead of conforming to the old sidewalk boundaries, it spreads out 8 to 10 feet into the street area previously used for parking cars, according to County General Services Director Duane Leib.
The sidewalk — built in the rust colored tile and pitted concrete style of Mission Plaza sidewalks — is remarkably similar to the central recommendation of consultants hired by the city to design a downtown beautification plan.
That plan calls for similar “bulb-outs” at intersections — expanded sidewalks throughout the downtown area to give pedestrians more room and slow down automobile traffic.
The City Council has not implemented any portion of the beautification plan, but the council did ask city planners to consider ways to make the plan work.
The county sidewalk project was inspired by necessity rather than by the city’s beautification plan, Leib said.
Leib said the county had to extend the sidewalk into the street in order to create easy access for pedestrians and wheelchair-bound people using the ramp along one side of the new building.
“The handicapped ramp would have had to be totally redesigned” if the sidewalk had not been extended into the street parking lane, Leib said. “It was seen as a (potential) pedestrian bottleneck.”
Leib said people working on the project kept city planners informed of the county’s design plans as the structure was planned and constructed.
Some city officials, however, were miffed because they said county officials ignored repeated advice not to build the sidewalks into the street.
City Engineer Wayne Peterson said the sidewalk is a traffic hazard because it narrows the streets that are among the city’s busiest traffic lanes.
“We told them all along that we didn’t like it and wouldn’t approve it,” Peterson said. “We in our plan checks, kept telling them ‘no, no, no,’ ” he recalled.
“They came along to us after they had the foundation in” asking for a permit to encroach on the city streets, he said.
By that time, the construction of the building had gone so far that the foundation would have had to be torn out or design of the building changed if the county didn’t receive the encroachment permit.
The proposal went to the City Council for a final decision, Peterson said.
“Our recommendation (to the council) was not to approve,” he said. “The streets are too narrow anyway.”
But the council approved the encroachment permit anyway, Peterson said, because the city wants to maintain good relations with county officials.
