A doubled price tag didn’t stop the San Luis Obispo City Council from approving a $6.1 million construction contract for the long-planned and hotly debated North Chorro Neighborhood Greenway project.
In a 4-0 vote, with Vice Mayor Jan Marx absent, the council took the final step to approve the new bike boulevard that will connect downtown and Foothill Boulevard with various bike facilities—including a two-way “cycletrack” on Chorro Street that removes more than 50 on-street parking spaces.
Agendized on March 7 as a routine consent calendar item, the greenway contract drew more than 100 public comment letters, with some residents demanding that the city go back to the drawing board and others urging it to move the project over the finish line.
“It seems like everybody is just as passionate about this greenway, one way or another, as they have been over the past 10 years,” SLO City Councilmember Michelle Shoresman said at the meeting. “I realize this isn’t the plan that everybody likes, and people would like to continue to tweak it, but this is what we’ve decided as a community. We’re here today to approve the construction contract.”
The final construction bids came in at nearly $3 million more than what the city budgeted last year—and nearly $4 million more than 2021 estimates. In 2021, the city received a $1.7 million state grant for the greenway, which, at the time, was expected to cover 70 percent of its cost. The City Council approved the project’s final design in 2018.
“Inflation has been horrible,” Shoresman said.
To make up the funding gap, the council is pulling monies from 13 different city accounts, which SLO resident Anne Hodges lambasted as being like “shaking the city couch” for coins.
“It’s like college students looking for pizza money,” Hodges said.
Proponents of the greenway reminded the council about the years of outreach and engagement that led to the project’s design, and the substantial bike and pedestrian safety improvements that will result from it. The greenway includes a mix of protected and shared-use bike paths on Chorro, Mission, Broad, Ramona, and Ferrini streets, as well as accessible curb upgrades and new pedestrian crossings.
“The first time I stood at this podium … I was among over 100 people who signed a letter because we were all concerned about the children in our neighborhood being able to get to the elementary school safely outside a car,” resident Kim Bisheff said at the meeting. “Those kids are all in high school now. And there’ve been tremendous improvements in bike infrastructure around town … but the gap through North Chorro still exists.”
Project opponents, on the other hand, decried the bikeway as unnecessary, expensive, dangerous, and detrimental to the neighborhood.
“It really represents a very expensive want, rather than a documented need,” resident Keith Gurnee said. “It will diminish the livability and functionality of a great neighborhood. It will take away funds from other necessary projects. It doesn’t address the real problem: the documented dangers to cyclists on Foothill, Santa Rosa, Los Osos Valley Road, and Higuera—streets that have experienced fatalities.”
Gurnee and others suggested that the city consider a less expensive and impactful project alternative that saves street parking and uses a shared-street design instead of a protected cycletrack.
“The two-way cycletrack—with 16 driveways, drivers coming out of their proprieties, crossing two lanes of bicycle paths to get into the travel lanes—is an accident waiting to happen,” Gurnee said.
While acknowledging that she had concerns about the project, Mayor Erica Stewart said that she trusted transportation experts and the research showing that such bike facilities are safe and effective.
“They do work,” Stewart said. “We are looking at how can we make this safe for pedestrians, bikers, strollers, scooters, everyone involved. That’s my goal for the long run.”
Councilmember Emily Francis invoked her personal experience living in Germany, where bikeways and cycletracks are common.
“They were pretty much everywhere, and it was just part of the fabric. … All these different types were integrated into society and used fairly seamlessly,” Francis said. “I know it’s an incredibly challenging thing to adapt to, and it will take a little while, but I trust we can get there together.” Δ
This article appears in Mar 9-19, 2023.
$6.1 MILLION? For green paint? Boy, have I been living all wrong. I thought logic and fiscal planning was the right way…
Thank you SLO. another step in the right direction!