CCMinutes - 10/25/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Nathanson did not think the City had alternatives in this area as it did in the Garden Way area given the neighborhood topography. She did not think the City had the ability to change reality in this case. Motorists had no other routes to take. Ms. Nathanson agreed with Mr. Poling that the council was discussing labels rather than actual street improvement projects. Mayor Torrey agreed with Mr. Kelly that the City was not ready to go forward. He wanted the council to consider the issue in terms of what it wanted to achieve in the neighborhood. The City should design what it wished to achieve, and find a solution that allowed for that. If the City did not currently have the rules and regulations to achieve the design, it could change them, and the council could change the assessment criteria in a way that allowed the City to take access to different sources of funding. Mayor Torrey said such changes should not be pursued frivolously, but the neighborhood was unique and the issues worthy of further review. He commended staff for its work with the neighborhood. Mayor Torrey solicited a second round of council comments and questions. Ms. Bettman maintained that the streets in question met all the standards for exemption in the Arterial and Collector Street Plan. She believed the council could already affect the street design, and could choose not to pursue the plan amendments. Given the neighbors were willing to be assessed for a local street, the City could then move easily move forward with a local street design that met the criteria for safety and mobility. She thought that would be the best approach. Ms. Bettman asked Mr. McNeel to discuss the other criteria on the matrix and their significance. Mr. McNeel said that connectivity was one of the most important criteria. Each road in question carried a significant amount of traffic from small local streets and placed it out onto the arterials. He noted that McLean Boulevard was not raised as a topic of concern, and he suspected that was because it was fully improved to City standards already; all that was changing was the classification. Mr. McNeel said that McLean Boulevard gathered a considerable amount of traffic from the area between Lorane Highway and McLean Boulevard because most of those streets did not connect to Lorane Highway and tended to shed traffic downhill. Those streets that collected to Lorane Highway tended to carry traffic down the hill rather than up the hill because that way was more out-of direction. The road also carried considerable traffic to Chambers Street and 28th Avenue, but it was not much different from the other streets in question. Other criteria include spacing between similarly designated streets and the length of the segment. Speaking to the issue of the length of the segment, Mr. McNeel said that could be more than the street segment in question, and really needed to be considered as the route. In regard to spacing between similarly designated streets, Mr. McNeel pointed out a perfect grid would have equally spaced collector streets, but there was no perfect grid in the south hills. For that reason, one has to do some meandering, and staff concentrated on the segments that people actually used, which made the issue of average daily traffic important. Travel demand would seek the least line of resistance. Ms. Bettman, seconded by Mr. Kelly, moved to extend time for the item by six minutes. The motion passed unanimously. Mr. Kelly agreed with the remarks of Mayor Torrey. He said the City should design what the council wanted to achieve for the neighborhood. For that reason, he did not think the council needed to amend the map now. MINUTES--Eugene City Council October 25, 2004 Page 7 Work Session