Many of us think of the City of Santa Barbara as a pedestrian-friendly place. Its downtown sidewalks are wide and covered with amazingly beautiful street furniture and artwork. Custom-designed newspaper racks, trashcans, and benches make the mundane seem magnificent. Its beachfront promenade is world-class. So why would Santa Barbara need a Pedestrian Plan?

Savvy and educated residents are clamoring to make Santa Barbara even more pedestrian-enticing, and bring the rest of the City up to the standards set in downtown. In various areas throughout the City, especially around schools, libraries, community centers, and business districts, there is a great need for pedestrian infrastructure upgrades. These include intersection improvements, sidewalk completion, ADA compliance, landscaping, and connectivity. To meet this need, an Alta Planning + Design team -- which includes RRM, Pat Saley, Ralph Fertig, and Dan Burden -- is developing a pedestrian design guidelines, a safe routes to school action plan, and a prioritized list of projects.

Santa Barbara is also known for its "Paseos", or alleyways, on which one finds a treasure trove of shops, plazas, artwork, and other features. As these have developed organically over time, the Alta team is pulling together a Paseo Plan that includes expansion of the system, guidelines for new development, maintenance, and management.

The Santa Barbara Pedestrian Plan will be completed in the Spring of 2004. For more information, contact Santa Barbara Mobility Coordinator Dru van Hengel, or Alta project manager Ryan Snyder.

This is an abstract of an article prepared for an upcoming publication by the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center.

  Thoughtfully designed trail-roadway crossings are an important piece of exceptional trail design. They provide critical links, create opportunities to access the trail, and create a sense of safety and security for trail users of all ages.

A trail designer spends considerable time determining which types of crossing are best suited for the trail and type of roadway. Alta Principals Mia Birk and George Hudson recently reviewed the performance of 28 trail-roadway crossings on the Springwater Corridor Trail, a 16-mile rail-to-trail in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The findings improve our understanding of trail user needs for roadway crossings, allowing us to plan and design the best possible crossing. The crossings on the Springwater Corridor included:

• unprotected crossings,
• marked crossings,
• routing users to existing signalized intersections, and
• and grade-separated crossings.

We discovered few problems with the unprotected and marked crossings, primarily because the original design took into consideration the type of traffic, lines of sight, trail traffic, use patterns, road type and width, and proximity to high trail use areas like schools. The only problem reported was damage to landscaping in the median from automobiles.

No collisions have yet occurred where the trail crossing has been re-routed to an existing signal. Special care was taken in the design of these re-routes to ensure adequate sight distance, warning signs, pedestrian activated signal buttons, and that minimal trail re-route distance. The only reported complaints were that trail users had to cross two separate crosswalks, thus having to wait through two signal cycles.

Pre-trail railroad undercrossings were not designed with trail users in mind. Lessons learned for new undercrossings included placing the trail at the 25 year flood plain elevation, maintaining unobstructed sight lines for trail users, adequate vertical clearance (min. 8'-9"), vandal-resistant light fixtures, and creating a sense of openness under the bridge by setting the bridge foundation abutment back from the trail.

Alta Principal George Hudson was the lead Designer of the Springwater Corridor while at the City of Portland.

  The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has contracted with Alta Planning + Design to help develop a state-of-the-art reference guide and training curriculum for California. The Technical Reference Guide will include a compendium of the latest and most detailed standards, guidelines, and best practices in the bicycle and pedestrian field available in the world today. Caltrans (and eventually local agency officials) will be able to find the latest practices, policies, and designs for virtually any aspect of the bicycle and pedestrian worlds, from collisions to mapping. Potential improvements to existing Caltrans documents including Chapter 1000 of the Highway Design Manual will be identified.

Perhaps the most innovative features of this effort will be a curriculum designed to be taught in one of three possible ways: (1) in a class room with people like Michelle DeRobertis and Michael Ronkin (both on the Alta team), (2) on an inter-active CD, and (3) on a website. Given the size of California and Caltrans, these methods will allow for much greater coverage and flexibility. The Caltrans project is being led by Richard Haggstrom, Maggie O’Mara, and Ken McGuire, along with an Advisory Committee. The Alta team is led by Michael Jones, Paul Smith, Mia Birk, Arif Khan, and Allison Wildman. Alta team members include Dan Burden, Michael Ronkin, Ellen Vanderslice, Michelle DeRobertis, and John Ciccarelli.

  We are pleased to welcome our newest employee, Engineer Kerry Ettinger in our Berkeley office! Kerry is a registered Professional Civil Engineer with over six years of experience. His work has focused mainly on residential and commercial development as well as habitat restoration, grading and drainage design, hydrology studies, and general improvements to infrastructure throughout the Bay Area. Kerry has a Bachelor of Science degree from the UC Davis, and specializes in taking feasibility studies and preliminary designs through to the development of construction documents.

Outside of work, Kerry spends much of his free time during the dry season on his mountain bike. Kerry is also a Senior member of the National Ski Patrol - you might see him weekends on patrol at the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort!

• Pro-Bono Assistance: Alta staff are available to help community groups and agencies on a pro bono basis, whether it is answering questions or assisting with research. Every year we donate hundreds of hours to help our colleagues in a variety of areas. Call an Alta professional today to find out more about this, or come into one of our offices and use our library of resources.
   
• Conference Support Program: Alta offers help to deserving individuals who wish to attend conferences in fields related to bicycles, pedestrians, and trails. This may include plane tickets, other travel costs, and conference costs. Contact Alta Principals Michael Jones or Mia Birk to find out more about this program.