Walkers, joggers, bikers, and other interested Lompoc residents can participate in a community survey to provide input on a pedestrian and bicycle master plan for the city.
The goal of this plan is to assess the existing conditions of sidewalks and bike paths throughout the city and to identify where improvements are needed. According to a statement from the city announcing this project, an important part of this plan is to create safer routes to schools and other city amenities.
“The plan will seek to improve pedestrian safety and access to popular destinations including schools, shopping centers, employment, public facilities, and parks by assessing needed safety improvements … at locations with heavy pedestrian traffic,” the release states.
According to a bikeway network map, most of the main roads throughout the city have on-street bike lanes. However, some areas of the city have off-street bike lanes and in other parts of the city, bikes and cars share road lanes. Many of the city’s smaller side streets don’t have any dedicated space for bikers.
Unlike bike lanes, most of the city’s side roads have sidewalks. However there are significant areas without pedestrian paths near Lompoc Valley Middle School, Hapgood Elementary School, and Johns-Manville Park, according to a city map of missing sidewalks.
The city is working on this plan with the Lompoc Unified School District, Allan Hancock College’s Lompoc campus, the California Department of Transportation, and various county and nonprofit organizations in the area.
The bicycle portion of this plan will serve as an update to the city’s 2008 bicycle transportation plan, which outlined numerous projects the city planned to implement to make it easier to bike throughout the city. In this new plan, the city will assess the projects that have been completed since 2008, while proposing new ones.
Residents have until Sept. 30 to complete the survey either online or in person. Following this public-input period, the city will complete a draft plan and submit it to a stakeholder subcommittee sometime early next year. The plan will then go through the city’s planning commission before presenting a final plan to City Council for adoption in May 2020.
This article appears in Jul 4-11, 2019.