In this Town Hall topic Online map mess in El Granada John Troyer mentions that he likes sidewalks where he moved to in El Granada.  I’m starting this new topic to separate the sidewalk discussion from the original topic.

There are only a few blocks on a few streets in El Granada which have sidewalks.  Like John, I love the rural character of the unincorporated Midcoast, but I cannot understand why sidewalks are considered by so many to be against the rural character, such that sidewalks are generally not allowed in the unincorporated Midcoast.  (El Granada has two different street standards which can be used, one of which allows sidewalks.)

Isn’t there a way to have sidewalks and not look like Half Moon Bay?  What if we had sidewalks but no curbs?  It seems to me that when you look at the places in E.G. with the historic 100 year old sidewalks, most don’t have curbs, and the rural character is preserved.

A trip through the 1977 Montara-Moss Beach-El Granada Community Plan is interesting.  On a page mentioning Road Standards there is discussion of separate pedestrian walkways, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I’m definitely one those folks who see sidewalks as problematic on the Midcoast. Ironically, I think sidewalks are designed more to accelerate traffic than to keep pedestrians safe. One thing I’ve noticed is that most of the nicest, most upscale communities in the Bay Area don’t have sidewalks:  Los Altos, Atherton, Saratoga.

But it never occurred to me that it’s the curbs and not the sidewalks that are the problem.  Now, I thinking back to pre-war neighborhoods in the northeast and realizing that they have sidewalks and remain humane and livable.

Of course, sidewalks without curbs have to be either narrower, or set back from the road, or both, if they’re going to work.

Walkways in newly designed “green” communities are being designed with water-permeable materials to lessen the effect of hardscaping. We need sidewalks because…? Years ago in Montara (across the street from Barry’s house), I dug up some of the old, original sidewalks on my property. Then decided to cover them back up rather than repair them.

The asphalt, curbs, and sidewalks laid down in Moss Beach not so many years ago are a disaster for the most part. Polluted runoff from the hardscaping into local creeks has been greatly increased, and it comes off in pulses that never make it into the groundwater instead of more gradually. The curbs force streets so narrow that two cars can no longer pass if there are cars parked on both sides of the street.  The parked cars on the narrow streets also make the streets more dangerous for kids and pets running loose. The parking bays along the streets are completely inadequate for the number of cars people have. I much prefer our street, where we voted against the so-called “improvements” and can still walk and park our vehicles off the pavement unimpeded by curbs.

Leonard, thanks for posting the link to the Community Plan. Indeed, the discussion of alternative road standards was very interesting. Unfortunately, these ideas were completely ignored when Paloma Ave was repaved a few years ago. The stretch west (north?) of Valencia is straight, wide, and ugly, and fosters speedng.

One of the issues I have with the existing sidewalks in El Granada is maintenance. Along Avenue Balboa, in particular, the concrete sidewalk is heaved and broken in many places. There are also places where shrubbery partially blocks the walkway. Certainly adding sidewalks of any kind would give the area more of a pedestrian-friendly sense, as long as, as a community, we can address the maintenance issue.

That said, I’m not sure how many of the streets, like our stretch of Avenue Balboa, are private. I doubt that our band of neighbors would have been willing to incur the additional cost to have added walkways when we paved the street a couple of years ago. That may be another obstacle. Interestingly, one of the neighbors was opposed to paving altogether because we’d lose our rural character.

Just to be clear, I don’t think I expressed a judgment about liking the sidewalks, just that I expected EG have more services than Montara, in part because of the suburban nature of the sidewalks.

That being said, I love the unique character of Montara and Moss Beach, but I think many streets are not very pedestrian-friendly. They recognized this in the ‘77 plan on this section on pedestrian trails. (And thanks for the fascinating link!)

I’ve seen more neighbors, dogs, and kids in my one week on Carmel Ave in EG than in a month in Montara, and that’s partly specific to the neighborhood and partly because of the sidewalks.

I’m no expert, but my perception is that traffic calming and urban planning are still pretty much a dark art—you never know what’s going to work or not for a particular community. This small town in Germany just tore down all street signs to make cars slow down and share the road with pedestrians. I’d love to see our rural character enhanced for pedestrians instead of speeding cars.

And as always, Carl is right that in 2008 you can do sidewalks the right way or the wrong way. We have many alternatives to a big slab of impermeable fragile concrete and big straight curbs. However, I’ve only been here for two years, so I don’t feel like I have the perspective yet to tell anybody how to run their street or how to spend our municipal $$.

Considering non-vehicular ways of getting around has been a part of planning for more liveable communities for years. Of course, we get damn little attention along these lines from the county, which is locked into facilitating car-dependent development.

But why not use the sidewalk matter as a way to get the public interested in safe, efficient, pleasant ways of getting around El Granada without a car? This might include sidewalks/paths for walking, bike routes, larger shared paths, etc. The Burnham Plan and the existing wide medians would seem to offer some starting possibilities for a comprehensive community design.

Carl, we don’t actually have to do much in El Granada in terms of designing for pedestrians—the design was done 102 years ago by Daniel Burnham.  We just need to fix things up to implement his original grand design.  One core part of that design is the medians in “The Avenues”, intended to be linear parks.  Burnham’s intent was that everyone could “walk down one of those linear parks to the town center.”  Most of them have ad hoc trails down the middle, they just need some maintenance to keep them smooth.

For the reasons Carl mentions, we can do without curbs.  But I’d like to have some form of sidewalks.  Some water-permeable material should be fine.  Even Decomposed Granite (DG) might be fine.  Meandering DG paths in the linear park medians would be fantastic.

(I’m the one who scanned the Community Plan and made the web site out of it.  The intro page explains why I had to do that.)

I’d like to hear from people who have lived in more than one of the Coastside communities whether El Granada as it is currently is is any more pedestrian-friendly than the other communities.  My gut feeling is “slightly”, until we implement Burnham’s vision for the linear park chains.

Which reminds me. A lot of granite is now going into the landfill from the tunnel bores. Seems a waste, given what one must pay for this rock for landscaping, etc. Probably many times what would be needed for walkways in El Granada.

One of the early accomplishments of the Midcoast Community Council was development of a revised set of Midcoast Road Standards, which superseded those in the 1977 Community Plan. The discussions involved community members throughout the Midcoast. This was before my 10 years on the Council, so I am not familiar with the details of the process, but I think there should be information in the MCC files.