The city of Lompoc recently released a draft bike and pedestrian plan that proposes projects that’ll help students walk or bike to school more easily.
The 71 projects proposed in this plan include items such as building sidewalks, improving crosswalks, creating bike paths, and designating bike lanes on roads, city Civil Engineering Associate Joshua Leard told the Lompoc City Council during its May 19 meeting.
Creating a document where all of these projects are listed and prioritized will help the city’s chances of securing money for them in the future, Leard said.
“This plan makes us more eligible for grant funding and it also helps the engineering division package those projects and prioritize those projects so that when we do go out for grant funding, we’ve already got something to move forward with,” Leard said.
The city received money to put plan together through the Santa Barbara County Association of Government’s Measure A program, which is funded by a sales tax measure that voters approved in 2008.
Although the plan focused on creating safe walking routes to school, many council members expressed interest in taking tourism-related improvements into consideration as well.
As a city located along Highway 1, Lompoc receives a number of out-of-town bicyclists en route. But the stretch of highway that runs through the city on H Street and Ocean Avenue doesn’t have designated bike lanes.
Mayor Jenelle Osborne said that although the roadway is owned and operated by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the needed improvements along the highway should be noted in the plan.
“I think it’s a failure of ours not to at least document that need and make the appeal with Caltrans that that needs to be something they need to look into,” Osborne said.
Additionally, some on the council, including Councilmember Jim Mosby, raised concerns about the plan not including the need for improvements on Robinson Bridge, which carries passengers on Highway 246 above the Santa Ynez River on the east side of the city.
Mosby said the city spent $300,000 to $400,000 a few years ago studying ways to improve the narrow bridge where at least two pedestrians have been struck by vehicles over the last few years. Since then, Caltrans has acknowledged the bridge needs replaced and the project has been added to its State Highway Operation and Protection Program. But Mosby said the city needs to continue pushing for this project to be expedited.
“In the meantime, we still have a bridge that’s a 1939 bridge that is sitting there and we’re waiting to get pedestrians across there,” Mosby said.
Leard said city staff would add these projects to the plan. But first the city has to go through the bureaucratic steps of amending its general plan to allow for these projects to be included in the bike and pedestrian plan and then update that document.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to clarify that Measure A did not result in a tax increase when voters approved the measure in 2008.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2020.