Pre-Assignment Summary (June 21)

The busy street I observed was Taft Street in San Luis Obispo, California. Taft is a commercial strip with a boba shop, deli, barber shop, and many more eateries. On the other side is a mixed-use development with commercial spaces on the first floor and high-density housing on the second floor. Taft Street is 0.5 miles from Cal Poly, a university of aproximately 21,000 students. It is a 5 minute drive or a 10 minute walk from campus. Most students access Taft Street from the adjacent streets: Kentucky, a residential street, or California a very busy arterial. The intersections of Taft and Kentucky and Taft and California have no pedestrian infrastructure and very limited bike infrastructure on California. Taft is treated as an extension of the freeway as it leads up to a freeway entrance and exit.

I observed pedestrian crossings across Taft, vehicle counts for the freeway entrance and exit, and vehicles turning right into the commercial parking lot. Over the course of two hours only 12 pedestrians crossed the street. As someone who has experienced Taft as a pedestrian it is extremely dangerous to cross here as vehicles do not stop or have any regard for pedestrian circulation. 290 vehicles exited the freeway, 434 entered the freeway, and 43 turned into the parking lot.

My club, Cal Poly Urbanists, is writing a proposal to advocate for Taft St. to be included in the active transportation priority site list along with California. There is a proposed roundabout on California with plans to narrow Taft. CPU is proposing a raised mid-way crosswalk on Taft to provide pedestrian infrastructure where people are already crossing to make Taft safer, and more pedestrian friendly. For our proposal we conducted pedestrian and vehicle counts in addition to my data for two weeks three times a day.

To understand what the data means I met with transportation planner Jennifer Rice. She works for the city of San Luis Obispo, specifically on active transportation improvements. She informed me that our data meant that a significant number of cars use Taft Street and our pedestrian counts from our cumulative data would warrant a crosswalk. I am excited to be in countries that prioritize pedestrians and cyclists instead of cars.