The City Council spent two hours Wednesday staring a solution in
the face but not getting the picture.
The City Council spent two hours Wednesday staring a solution in the face but not getting the picture.
The problem is that too much traffic at too great a pace roars through downtown, detracting from its pedestrian-friendly personality, sometimes threatening the lives of children, dogs and adults alike.
To slow traffic and force much of it over to Butterfield Boulevard, the city’s traffic consultants, Fehr & Peers opened up its “toolbox” of traffic-calming, well, tools to see what could make driving through downtown unpleasant or slower.
The intent is to have motorists heading for southern parts of town to use Butterfield, leaving Monterey Road between Dunne and Main for those with business in the downtown.
Inside they found speed bumps and speed tables – a broader, less-intrusive bump, lights in pavement, signs, banners and narrowing Monterey Road to one lane each way from Dunne to Main.
Mayor Dennis Kennedy favors the one-lane approach but the fire department practically jumped up and down in opposition, saying anything that calms traffic also slows down their engines and paramedics, which would be a very bad thing.
What we don’t understand is why the city hasn’t tried harder to get people to use Butterfield. It was, after all, designed to be the primary north/south arterial, or throroughfare, west of Highway 101.
Before the city spends its meager funds narrowing the Monterey corridor, a plan that could involve diagonal parking in the abandoned lane, there should be a dedicated effort to move motorists onto Butterfield.
Business bypass signs at Cochrane and Tennant could encourage drivers with no interest in downtown to avoid several traffic lights and a smoother course.
What would help even more is extending Butterfield, the city’s newest four-lane arterial route, to Madrone Parkway making an easier connection from the north – and south to Watsonville Road, its eventual destination. Now that would truly change Butterfield’s unfortunate moniker, “the Road to Nowhere” to “The best place to be.”
An unknown factor is how much of the traffic, diverted to Butterfield by an unpleasant downtown driving experience, would be potential custom for downtown businesses. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.
Let’s use Butterfield as much as we can and leave downtown Monterey Road alone except for some sensible traffic-slowing measures. Yes, we know the restaurants want to expand outside to the sidewalks and we love dining outside but, for now, the city doesn’t have much money to do anything significant.
Those slowing measures, including regular enforcement of traffic laws – by our admittedly understaffed police force – could also help convince drivers that downtown is a destination, not a racetrack.
