Walk to school for Earth Day? Not until roads are safer, says one Petaluma family

‘The roads are too dangerous,’ says Petaluma’s Oh family.|

As Earth Day approaches on April 22, McKinley Elementary School – where East Petaluma couple Brian and Emily Oh send their children, Charlotte, 6, and Teddy, 4 -- is taking part in a worldwide campaign to encourage students to walk or bike to school.

“Walk and Roll: Good for you, good for the earth,” says the cheerful banner hanging at the school entrance. McKinley Elementary is one of the dozens of Sonoma County schools participating in the Sonoma Safe Routes to School campaign.

But the Oh family will not be walking (or rolling) to school with their children this year.

“As a father, I don’t feel safe letting our children bike or walk to school right now,” said Brian Oh.

The Ohs moved to Petaluma from the South Bay three years ago to be near Emily’s family, who’d relocated from the Midwest.

“It worked out perfectly,” said Emily, who grew up in a small town near Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Brian was born and raised in Los Angeles. He earned a master’s degree in urban planning and social work at the University of Southern California and worked for the city of Los Angeles as a transportation planner. He’s now the Comprehensive Planning Manager for Sonoma County, so he has a professional as well as a personal interest in transportation issues, the need to address the climate crisis – and the dilemma he sees in the Safe Routes to School campaign.

The Ohs enjoy the friendly community on the east side of Petaluma, where neighbors stop to chat while they work on their garden. They love being outdoors and support the campaign to encourage children to be more active and reduce carbon emissions by driving less. They (mostly) like going on walks together, as long as they don’t cross McDowell, Ely or Caulfield, three busy roads with speeding traffic that surround their neighborhood.

“People also speed in front of our house because it’s a straight road that connects Ely to McDowell,” Brian added.

The pedestrian route to McKinley Elementary School from their home is dicey. First they have to cross four-lane McDowell Blvd., where cars, trucks, and buses whiz by.

“It’s like a highway out there — one time I almost got hit by a car twice on the same day while walking our dog,” Brian exclaimed. A couple of blocks away, at the intersection of Caulfield and McDowell, someone regularly lays flowers to remember a pedestrian killed by a car. Up the road, the intersection of E. Washington and McDowell is one of Petaluma’s worst collision hot spots.

After crossing McDowell, an unappealing pedestrian overpass provides access to the other side of Highway 101. It is covered with graffiti and often littered with broken glass. The overpass leads to the back of Target. Next, a person walking must navigate the busy strip-mall parking lot to reach the intersection of E. Washington and Ellis — another dangerous intersection with a history of collisions. As part of the 2010 negotiations to build in Petaluma, Regency Centers — which developed and manages the shopping center — promised to spend $40,000 on “bike, pedestrian and traffic control improvements.”

According to SafeTREC, a UC Berkeley Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS), between 2017 and 2021, there were 845 traffic collisions within the city limits of Petaluma, not including ones that occurred on Highway 101. About 19% of those vehicle crashes involved people who were walking or on a bicycle. Based on 2021 TIMS data published by UC Berkeley, Petaluma's rate of fatal or injurious pedestrian collisions - 3.13 per 1,000 residents - far outpaces nearby communities of Rohnert Park (2.46 per 1,000 residents) and Santa Rosa (1.84). That puts Petaluma’s 2021 pedestrian/cyclist collision rates at 21% higher than Rohnert Park and 40% higher than Santa Rosa.

On the website Walkscore.com, which gives “walkability” ratings used in real estate listings, zip code 94954 scores only 2 points out of 100 and is described as “car-dependent,” in stark contrast with 94952, the west side of Petaluma, which scores 98 points and is described as “a walker’s paradise.”

The Ohs’ neighborhood is rated “somewhat walkable,” scoring 65. Brian Oh believes that modifications could be made that would accommodate walkers and bicyclists, as well as people using skateboards, scooters, and wheelchairs.

“But traffic lights might be needed to slow down speeding car traffic on roads like McDowell or Ely,” he said. “When you're driving, you miss so much of your surroundings. It’s really difficult for people who are focused on driving to remember how vulnerable people walking and biking are. We need to figure out a way to design our streets to develop a culture around safe mobility for all.”

At a recent PTA meeting, the Ohs reported, parents discussed how to help their children walk or bike to school safely.

“We talked about getting people to park further away from school so students could at least walk part way” Emily recalled. “We talked about meeting as a group, so that there's a bit more safety with the numbers. We also discussed having traffic guard volunteers.”

Brian observed that this approach would still leave traffic guard volunteers vulnerable to collisions.

“Any solution like this puts the burden on individual pedestrians when it should be addressed at the level of infrastructure,” he said, adding, "It's my passion to make the roads safer.”

Brian grew up in Los Angeles. He likes cars and does not think they are going away anytime soon.

“I am not an anti-car person at all,” he said. “The utility of cars is going to be hard to come off of in our lifetime. But if we have the right infrastructure, could we go down to one car per family? Most local driving is less than two miles to places like Target or Safeway. If everyone walked, biked or used public transportation and took fewer car trips, imagine how much we could reduce our carbon footprint! However, for that to happen we need roads that are safer for everyone.”

Emily remembers her very different childhood in the Midwest.

“My brother and I used to walk or bike everywhere. It felt safe,” she said wistfully, wishing it were safer for her children to have the same kind of freedom she had as a child. Traffic has increased enormously since that time. The Ohs believe more awareness and more improvements are needed if students are to Walk or Roll to school in safety.

Sonoma County has made a Vision Zero pledge to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2030, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. The tagline for the effort is, “Traffic deaths are preventable … saving lives is not expensive.”

“Petaluma is the first city in the country to ban new gas stations, which is a wonderful forward-thinking policy intervention,” Brian Oh pointed out. “Why not follow that ‘energy’ and put it now into safe mobility, not just cleaner mobility?”

Petaluma City Council member Brian Barnacle agrees. In a phone interview, he said, “Traffic safety is an equity issue. Residents who do not have the means to afford a car or who cannot legally drive — youth, elderly, disabled — have no choice but to face unsafe situations on streets and sidewalks just to be mobile.”

Adding context, Barnacle revealed that at the City of Petaluma’s goals and priorities workshop on March 14, street safety was not among Council’s Top 10 priority list. There is still an opportunity to address the matter, however. On May 2, the City Council is scheduled to select a final set of priorities. “It is all in the council members' hands now,” Barnacle said.

Barnacle encourages people to email the city council at citycouncil@cityofpetaluma.org to encourage making traffic issues a priority.

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