Santa Clarita residents spoke out, and the city changed plans.
The city was trying to accommodate pedestrians, wheelchair users and cyclists, among others, with its safety effort on Orchard Village Road.
A grant-funded “temporary demonstration project” sought to bolster safety with an 8-foot-wide path from Lyons Avenue on the south to Mill Valley Road on the north, about a mile, using waist-high white paddles to mark a nonmotorized lane near Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.
After it was criticized by several corners of the community for being an aesthetically unpleasing interruption to a Sycamore tree-lined main road to the hospital — even a local safe-cycling advocate said the move put the group in a “difficult position” — the design has been modified.
“City staff completed initial data collection and removed the vertical delineators on Tuesday, April 22,” according to a text Wednesday from Carrie Lujan, communications director for the city of Santa Clarita. “The temporary raised curb is remaining for the rest of the pilot. Staff is collecting data and feedback for the modified project.”
There were three goals identified for the “quick build,” which cost $763,000 to put up, $750,000 of which came from a state grant as part of a billion-dollar push on nonmotorized vehicle safety from the state.
Improvements of that nature were identified as a need by residents in the area during the city’s creation of its 2020 Nonmotorized Tranportation Plan.
City officials wanted to: increase pedestrian safety on Orchard Village Road by providing a protected path where no sidewalk exists; provide viable active transportation and first mile/last mile transit improvements along an existing transit corridor; and provide residents and health care workers from the nearby hospital and medical offices on the route with a convenient outlet for breaktime exercise and access to local trails, parks and retail, according to the grant application.
The grant application also reported that, in the previous five years, Orchard Village Road been the site of seven collisions, which involved either pedestrians or bicyclists, including one that killed a 9-year-old girl.
But during a February City Council meeting, when city staff reported the paddles were intended to be up for six months for data collection and feedback, council members already had plenty to say.
Mayor Bill Miranda called it an obstruction. Councilwoman Marsha McLean lamented no one ever uses them. The design was pilloried in opinion columns and public comments.
Those calling for the project included a survey undertaken by local students at Hart High School, which determined that about 150 nonmotorized users take the path daily.
Nina Moskol, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Bicycle Coalition, wrote a letter endorsing the effort behind the grant, but she said later in a phone interview the group was not shown the design prior to installation.
She said she didn’t want to see residents have to choose between “attractiveness or safety.”
Lujan said Thursday there is no impact to the grant funding based on removing the delineators Tuesday. The city announced Nov. 24 that the six-month project’s installation would take place over the ensuing few weeks.
