Miscellaneous thoughts

The City Council has had its first direct discussion of who the seventh council member might be. While they weren't able to agree on a selection, they handled the process with decorum. There may be several sessions on this topic before a final selection is made, but it seems they will remain civil. The mayor is trying to keep it that way.

Eventually, as both blocs recognize that their favorites won't be selected, the reality of compromise will set in. I'm sure there are four or five candidates who are truly neutral or at least who don't already have their minds made up about what type of future projects are acceptable.

At the least, it appears the process will succeed without the council getting into mud wrestling. Both sides should then be able to move on.

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I'd like to put in my two cents on the issue that started all this: the committee assignments.

I don't think there was any concern about Councilmember Tiffany Ren?'s ability to serve on the county transportation committee. I think the basic concern was whether or not she could be an advocate for highway projects considering her strong feelings about bicycle facilities and global warming, which the committee also handles.

There was a situation similar to this many years ago. I recall the council adopting a policy allowing it to give direction to their representative so that the council position, as presented at committee meetings, wasn't determined by the politics of the appointed representative.

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This has me thinking about the non-auto-friendly projects the council has approved. I'm thinking about the road diets where lanes are taken away from auto use and turned into a combination of parking and bike lanes.

Where there is excess auto capacity, the roundabouts and reduced lanes haven't caused any serious problems. The fact that the reduced lane projects made room for parking and bicycle lanes has mitigated most problems for now. So far, so good. Looking ahead, my concern is that the city will accept these as permanent changes and not be willing to revert to the original street configuration when the number of vehicles and bicycles prove incompatible.

Bicycles aren't a problem on non-road diet streets at this time, as there aren't enough to cause a problem. Autos can easily move into the next lane and pass. As bicycle usage increases, autos will be unable to change lanes to get around bikes. This will reduce two-lane directional roads to one lane, causing congestion.

Consider the impact of just one bicycle on East Washington Street between Petaluma Boulevard and the freeway. Every car in the curb lane would have to change lanes to pass the bike rider. Imagine if there were four or five bikes present in any short time frame.

With road diets, cars that could pass through an intersection in one minute in two lanes now take two minutes in a single lane. Eventually, this will slow side streets' use of the intersection enough to cause a problem.

The strange thing, considering the source of these road diet projects, is that by making the streets less efficient, more engine pollution is generated.

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Reading the story in the Argus-Courier about the council locking down redevelopment funds to keep the state from grabbing them for its own purposes, I thought it strange how swiftly the council passed action to hold on to these funds. It showed how quickly the council could act (and unanimously) when it had money at risk. Perhaps they could keep this in mind when processing development applications.

(Jack Balshaw is a retired transportation planner and former Petaluma City Council member. His e-mail address is jbcolumn@sbcglobal.net. His blog is jacksblog.balshaw.com)

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