Over the past five years, 14 people have died in San Luis Obispo in traffic crashes, according to Active Transportation. Now city leaders plan to make some roads in the area safer.
“Year after year we've seen accidents,” Chris Wesney, McCarthy’s General Manager said.
“A couple of weeks ago we had someone get hit by a truck and their car smashed the rear end of another car,” Colt Turpin, Goodwill assistant manager said.
Turpin thinks change is needed to increase safety along Higuera Street.
“I've watched people with motorcycles get hit out here just trying to leave,” Turpin said.
“San Luis Obispo is facing a traffic crisis and a safety crisis,” Adam Fukushima, City of San Luis Obispo active transportation manager said.
The city is surveying areas with the highest injury rates.
“We found that 85% of our worst injuries are happening on 7% of our roadways,” Fukushima said.
As part of the city's Zero Action Plan to eliminate all deaths on the roads by 2030, they’ve come up with three different Complete Street Projects focusing on road improvements.
The three streets are Higuera, Foothill, and Broad
The Higuera Complete Street Project is the furthest along. A major focus is the area from Bridge Street to Margarita Avenue.
“Rear-end collisions are a high factor,” Fukushima said.
To help, the city wants to reduce the four lanes to only one lane of travel in each direction so they can put in a center turn lane with a signalized intersection at Elks Lane.
“To help provide better flow and traffic and safety benefits on that roadway,” Fukushima said.
A protected bike lane will be added as well as a crosswalk and ADA curb ramp improvements.
“We rely on a lot of drive-by traffic,” Wesley said.
A couple of yards away over at McCarthy’s, Chris Wesney is concerned about what the change might do for business.
"They will have a couple of extra seconds to look at the inventory but it could also create a different traffic flow where they have to concentrate more on what they're doing because there is going to be more cars and fewer lanes,” Wesney said.
The Foothill and Broad Street projects are still in the early phases and the city will be reaching out to the community for more input.
“We're designing our roadways now to address speed,” Fukushima said.
Active Transportation is planning to do more outreach on all three projects in the fall.
For the Higuera Complete Street Project, there will be one more meeting in the fall where the community can comment on the designs of the project before they bring it to the city council for approval.
If all goes as planned, Active Transportation hopes to start construction on the Higuera project near the end of 2025.
