The Walnut Creek City Council certified that the Environmental Impact
Report for the BART Transit Village was complete when clearly it
wasn’t. The study should have evaluated traffic impacts at the
Cole/California intersection. But Cindy Silva and the rest of the
Council were only interested hearing “facts” that supported their
pro-growth agenda.
At the October 16, 2012 City Council hearing for the Walnut Creek BART Transit Village, I attempted to point to an omission from the traffic component of the project’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
Back in 2002, a study prepared for the Mercer condos showed that when
the traffic from that now completed project was factored in, the left
turn movement out of Cole Avenue onto California Boulevard would operate
at, or close to, Level of Service (LOS) F, the worst possible rating –
and the threshold that normally triggers some requirement for
remediation. There was, and still is, no traffic light at the Cole
Avenue intersection. The Council at that time accepted the Mercer
developer’s argument that the intersection might not operate as poorly
as the LOS would indicate, so they didn’t make the developer pay to
install a traffic signal.
Now, ten years later, the Walnut Creek BART Transit Village with
almost 600 units will dump new traffic onto California Boulevard just a
few blocks upstream from Cole, yet the Transit Village EIR didn’t even analyze
the Cole Avenue intersection. If an intersection is already
operating close to LOS F, wouldn’t you think that it deserves a new look
when 600 units are proposed only two blocks away? That’s the question I
raised at the City Council’s public hearing. As usual, the City
Council thanked me at the end of my three minute testimony and asked no
follow up questions – indicating that it was time for me to go sit down
and shut up.
After the public comments were closed, then Council member (now Mayor) Cindy Silva made a big show of “following up” on my testimony with the developer’s traffic analyst, while deftly avoiding the issues I raised. She never asked the consultant about the 2002 traffic study I mentioned. She emphasized the fact that the intersections to both the north and south of Cole operate smoothly, and concluded that it must be valid to therefore assume there couldn’t possibly
be any issues at Cole (conveniently overlooking the fact that the
intersections to the north and south have traffic signals, but Cole
Avenue doesn’t). The Council then voted to certify the BART Transit
Village EIR and approve the project.
Now a draft EIR for a new project down the street at 1500 North
California has been posted and, interestingly enough, their traffic
study includes the California and Cole intersection. The study shows
that the intersection is currently operating at LOS E, but with the
additional traffic generated by already approved projects (12 units on Cole and 600 units at the BART Transit Village) the intersection will exceed the LOS F threshold before new traffic from 1500 North California is even considered. (And since the previously approved projects will already cause an unacceptable level of service, the 1500 North California developers aren’t responsible for fixing the situation, either.)
Our City Council members regularly blame traffic congestion on regional issues. But they themselves are far from blameless.
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