Item A: River Road/Santa Clara Transition Project

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Streets Current Situation Information reviewed concerning neighborhood desires with respect to streets and transportation (such as the 2002 River Road/Santa Clara Urban Services Committee report) indicates that preservation of rural streetscapes in the face of urbanization is second perhaps only to parks and open space as a transition issue impacting the two neighborhood’s rural heritage. The challenge in River Road and Santa Clara is to assure public safety and avoid problems as traffic volumes growth, while sustaining physical elements of the neighborhood’s rural heritage, such as older treed street sections. Safety and traffic flows are obviously paramount concerns, but other values can be given significant consideration. The City of Eugene is reasonably compelled to require full improvements at the time of redevelopment or redevelopment, simply because an adjacent new housing project can be required to make such upgrades as part of an overall development approval, or for traffic or safety considerations Nonetheless, given that (at least with local streets) the issue of rural vs. suburban standards will often be most strongly felt in older developed neighborhoods, there may be opportunities for the City to facilitate the preservation of “heritage” streetscapes by balancing neighborhood needs with City-wide standards. The surface street transportation systems in both neighborhoods include County and City jurisdiction roads. County and City built roadways differ somewhat both because some County roads are older and reflect the standards of the past, and because current standards are not necessarily consistent between the two jurisdictions. More recently constructed roads exhibit common standards irrespective of jurisdiction, as the City of Eugene has exercised functional transportation planning authority over River Road and Santa Clara for nearly 20 years by intergovernmental agreement with Lane County. The City and County have developed a series of other agreements for coordinating street maintenance and improvements in River Road and Santa Clara, and in other areas within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). Maintenance agreements specify individual streets as a City or County responsibility irrespective of legal jurisdiction. The most current agreements identify and assign responsibility for a long list of specific streets in the Santa Clara and River Road neighborhoods. The City and County also enter into agreements to fund and construct upgrades to roads in “mixed” jurisdiction areas. There are some distinctions that can be made between the two neighborhoods when it comes to streets, primarily based on the pattern of older development and the opportunity for new or more recent development. These are described below. For the purposes of discussing transition and heritage options addressing streets and transportation, however, the two neighborhoods will be treated herein together. With the caution that these are generalized descriptions with many exceptions, the pattern (and attendant implications) of neighborhood street patterns, could be described as follows: River Road River Road, particularly south of Horn Street, is characterized by long east-west blocks. Between Horn and Howard Street, there are many long north-south blocks and some long local streets that simply dead- end. These street patterns would “date” the area as older than other parts of the neighborhood. River Road north of Howard to Beltline Road exhibits a subdivision and local street pattern that looks more typically contemporary and urban than areas south of Howard (e.g. blocks are shorter, there is more regular pattern of connectivity between streets, etc.), although the pattern is still very grid-like. A subdivision to the west of Bramblewood Park is an exception to this characterization, exhibiting a mix of cul-de-sac and curvilinear streets that indicate a more recent subdivision. There appears to be only a couple of tracts left in the River Road neighborhood that could accommodate substantial new residential development, therefore most opportunities to upgrade streets through 35 River Road/Santa Clara Transition/Heritage White Paper DRAFT 11-24-05 Service provider Review