Unlike some residents, I appreciate several aspects of the transformation of Chorro Street: using plant containers to separate bikes from cars, planting trees, decorating the underpass to make this once dreary stretch more welcoming for pedestrians. My main objection—and it’s a big one—is the unreasonable cost for a project that may not have been necessary at all.
There has never been any bike death on Chorro, and the number of cyclists has always been low. Even now I see very few bikes when I walk along the street, so the question is: Was the $6 million expense undertaken for aesthetic or for safety reasons? If it was for safety reasons, using Lincoln Street all the way to West Street would have been more efficient and would have eliminated the dangerously confusing switch from right to left at Chorro and Lincoln. And it would have cost much less.
We have been waiting for more than 50 years for attention, and if it means waiting a little longer so the city can figure out how to make this boulevard finally safe and more appealing, we will wait a little longer.
Now let’s take the case of Foothill Boulevard, the longtime neglected boulevard that sees hundreds of student cyclists commuting to Cal Poly every day, risking their lives in the narrow unprotected so-called bike lanes. Two of them have already been killed—Kennedy Love in 2017 and Andreas Kooi in 2021. Since the day I moved near Foothill Boulevard almost 50 years ago, no effort has been undertaken to make the boulevard safer—except for a pedestrian crossing at Ferrini after Kennedy Love was killed. Speeding cars, nonstop noise, pollution, narrow unprotected bike lanes and sidewalks, bare vegetation, all of this was already there 50 years ago. The recent dramatic influx of bikes has added another dimension to the many dangers presented by the boulevard.
The city is finally studying various improvements for Foothill, but money is an issue. After spending $6 million on the controversial Chorro project, there is a big hole in the treasury, and we are left scrambling for crumbs when it comes to something important like Foothill. There are talks of using quick fixes and ugly cost-effective physical barriers such as flexible posts to separate bike lanes instead of the attractive and much more efficient boxes used on Chorro. This worries me and should worry everyone. I do not want to see a low-cost, quickly slapped together “improvement” that leads to another death. I am sure most residents don’t want it either.
I hope that all the neighbors, cyclists, Cal Poly students, and parents of students work together with the city and demand a thorough, safe, and attractive job as was done on Chorro, with boxes where needed, trees and bushes added to the bare landscape to calm traffic, roundabouts with plants to slow it down, etc. We have been waiting for more than 50 years for attention, and if it means waiting a little longer so the city can figure out how to make this boulevard finally safe and more appealing, we will wait a little longer. But, please, in memory of those who lost their lives on Foothill, do it right. ∆
Odile Ayral writes to New Times from San Luis Obispo. Send a response to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sept 17-24, 2026.
