Dear City Council,
Once again, you all have shown your distaste for public comment. I received social media criticisms by Mark Landman a week ago, trying to request more public input, a justified public hearing on the matter, on the addition of speed bumps to West Cotati Avenue. For many years now, this is an issue of Mark Landman doing city business improperly on private social media groups...we've been in court on this issue already.
However, getting to the point of this, is that not holding a public hearing on any of the additions to the West Side Street Pavement project has resulted that one of the key stakeholders not being consulted--the Rancho Adobe Fire District.
This has lead to two problems:
Despite my calls for a public hearing, four speed bumps were installed on West Cotati Avenue. These speed bumps were an addition to the west side project and not in the plans. Staff reports they are "speed cushions", which they are not, they are speed bumps. The problem of them being an addition not on any plans, is that Ghilloti Brothers marked the additions as speed bumps, not speed cushions. They installed four speed bumps. Three of the four speed bumps do not have any overhead lighting nearby. Two are right after blind turns.
The installation of speed bumps will delay response times by approximately 9 seconds per speed bump according to my research. Speed bumps, as installed, are meant to decrease speed on the roadway to 5-10 mph. Speed cushions on the other hand, can decrease emergency vehicles to about 25-30 mph through the speed cushion. The heavier the fire apparatus or other EMS equipment, the more chance of damage to the apparatus to handling the speed bump and more distance the apparatus needs to be able to slow down with.
The proper procedure for even putting in speed cushions is included in this link, which was not followed by the City of Cotati:
https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-designelements/vertical-speed-control-elements/speed-cushion/ Not only does the installation of speed bumps instead of speed cushions impede response times, it also will add discomfort and harm, to people in ambulances going over the speed bumps. My 85 year old mother has had multiple calls to the RAFD because of falling. Last November, after a fall, she had a fractured vertebrae in her back. If taken from our house to the trauma center at Memorial Hospital in the future, she will have to endure the pain of the four speed bumps while on a stretcher in an ambulance.
I also emailed you with another stakeholders public input, the wheelchair users on paratransit that regularly ride my paratransit bus that is going to Petaluma. You ignored their public input too Speed bumps are painful when riding in the back of a paratransit bus for a wheelchair user. After the installation of the four speed bumps on Thursday morning on West Cotati Avenue, my paratransit driver refused to subject the wheelchair users to the speed bumps after the first driver of the day went over them. The paratransit driver diverted the route by approximately 10 minutes to take the West School Street hill entrance through downtown Cotati, putting him off-schedule to Petaluma. And this was only the first day of speed bumps being installed.
Next concern I have with the additions to the West Side Street Project is that the pathway installed. One danger, is it is a steep hill that has pedestrians/bicyclists going downhill straight into a busy intersection at West School Street and West Sierra Avenue.
The other danger is that this part of West School Street is the only fire access from a road to the freeway. There is a break in the sound walls at West School Street hill (see pic).
In my family's 50 years of living in the neighborhood, there have been quite a few fires that come up from the freeway on the hillside. I think the last one was about 3 years ago. RAFD has used West School Street to defend against the fire crossing over West School Street quite a lot of times. Now with the new pathway, there are curbs and other obstacles, plus a narrowing of the road on a hill where you can't see the other side of the hill and vehicles coming. I have no idea of how the RAFD would be able to maneuver their fire engines into position to fight the fire with the new pathway obstacles and narrowed street configuration.
This is how the configuration was before....and it helped with storm water being absorbed by the grassy side. West Sierra Avenue and West School Street hill has been known to flood in heavy rainstorms.
I do not feel safe in my home on Maple Avenue because of these "additions" and "improvements". How much money is this going to cost to fix, because of your refusal to ask for public input or take into consideration the public input of many stakeholders?
Sincerely,
Laurie Alderman
Maple Avenue