Slow down.
That was the basic conclusion of the $18,000 Neighborhood
Traffic Management Program report that was presented to City
Council this week.
While the document that addresses ways to improve residential
streets and to better safety is well-intended, it was the wrong
avenue to go down for a number of reasons.
Slow down.
That was the basic conclusion of the $18,000 Neighborhood Traffic Management Program report that was presented to City Council this week.
While the document that addresses ways to improve residential streets and to better safety is well-intended, it was the wrong avenue to go down for a number of reasons.
First, this study should have been compiled in-house by city staff so that the $18,000 could have been better spent.
The origin of the study stemmed from complaints the city receives about traffic woes, the majority of which are about speeding. We don’t believe the city needed to hire an outside firm to come to this conclusion.
The report also provides strategies to alleviate the problem, beginning with law enforcement, speed limit signs, stop signs, speed-monitoring trailers and so forth. All of these are basic ways to curb the problem, and are not $18,000 answers.
The study goes further, offering other strategies such as pavement treatments, speed bumps and tables, medians, traffic circles and raised intersections. Answers, we believe, our city engineers could have developed.
The study, however, does include several important aspects. The goals are to improve residents’ sense of well-being about their streets, to increase safety, and to study a neighborhood’s traffic problems and develop plans for each.
Residents place a value on the livability of their neighborhoods, and an increasing number of people are concerned about the conflicts between vehicles and other uses of their streets and neighborhoods.
But the report fails to address the larger issue that more and more vehicles will be leaving and entering Hollister – because of its growing status as a commuter-based location – along major corridors and artery avenues, and will use these neighborhood streets to do so.
The city has taken some action to address the problem, with the Highway 25 bypass plan to ease traffic congestion in the downtown district and the Westside Boulevard extension.
But the bypass plan is seriously outdated because it would funnel traffic to one of the busiest intersections at Airline Highway and Tres Pinos Road.
What the report does emphasize and calls crucial is working with residents about traffic concerns in their neighborhoods and developing ideas that are acceptable to them. And to that end, city officials plan to hold neighborhood meetings to address residents’ concerns.
We urge you to attend or to contact your City Council member with your concerns, because it is your neighborhood.
In the meantime, it would also help if everyone slowed down and obeyed the speed limits.
To respond to this editorial or comment on this issue, please send or bring letters to Editor, Hollister Free Lance, 350 Sixth St., Hollister, Calif. 95023 or fax to 637-4104 or e-mail to
