From: [email protected]
To: Council, City
Subject: March 10 Consent Item 5: Delayed San Antonio Road Area Planning Process and Bridging A Worrisome Policy Gap
Date: Friday, March 7, 2025 11:57:08 AM
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Honorable City Council Members,
The San Antonio Area Planning process that City Council has on Consent next week is a three- year contract. This raises questions and concerns.
The Safe System for All (SS4A) Action Plan informs the BPTP Update. The BPTP Update is supposed to be completed April 2025. So far, the SS4A and BPTP draft documents appear to be mostly silent on recommendations regarding San Antonio Road and its crossings.
Understandable, however…
As I understand it, the San Antonio Area Plan, once approved, will be integrated into the Comprehensive Plan. However, that cannot happen for at least three years (term of the consultant contract council is set to approve), maybe longer.
Nonetheless, multiple large projects already have been built on San Antonio, others approved, and more are in the pipeline moving toward approval. It seems to me, we will have a three-year, possibly longer, period when the San Antonio Area development pipeline will be very active with high density projects. Am I correct in thinking the city will have no policy in place
to guide decision-making for those projects during
that time?
Questions:
1. What policy guidelines will the city follow during the 3-year interim period while the city is working on the Area Plan?
2. Planning & Development Services Director Jonathan Lait has said “the city is asking developers” to preserve ROW for future bike lanes on San Antonio, but what force of policy is behind that ask? So far, four large projects have been approved and/or built with no ROW preserved that I see, creating ROW gaps that will make installation of continuous bike lanes difficult. Can staff point me to something that will help me understand what is in place for this interim period to ensure we will have ROW to do what’s needed on San Antonio for foot-powered people when the Area Plan is finally completed and approved?
3. A thought: Might the Area Planning process be rolled out in phases with transportation recommendations for San Antonio and its major intersections laid out earlier as a Phase 1 transportation plan (for instance), possibly in time to be incorporated in the BPTP? The city might also do this for general open space requirements for this intensively upzoned area. Phasing Area Planning (as was done with the city’s South of Forest Area Plan years ago) could enable timely decision-making to ensure policy is in place to require preservation of space and ROW for these important elements without delaying development.
4. If phasing Area Planning cannot be the solution, what language needs to be in the BPTP and SS4A Action Plan to ensure that provisional guidance for bikeways, pedestrians, and parks are advanced sooner to ensure a future San Antonio Area Plan can be fully realized, despite the 3-year misalignment of development decision-making and the horribly delayed Area Planning process?
Two 5-story hotels totaling 294 rooms already have been approved and built in the middle of the San Antonio Road planning area. A 5-story mixed use housing project with 76 units and a 4- story project with 104 units also have been approved, but not yet built. The first two of these moved forward without ROW preserved for bike lanes (EIR for these projects determined sharrows were “sufficient.”) I haven’t checked the other projects yet. More are in the pipeline.
Staff says the city is preserving ROW for bike lanes. Where can the public find documentation of this so that agreements are not lost going forward with staff and Council transitions? How is staff thinking they will plan to create continuous bike lanes and transit stops along the San Antonio corridor with existing gaps in available ROW?
I asked Sylvia Star-Lack about gaps in the preserved ROW at VTA’s recent 101/San Antonio Interchange community meeting. She said the city may have to use the median island to capture ROW. One of these projects is at an intersection on this six/seven lane arterial truck
route. The median islands need to be widened for pedestrian crossing refuge, not narrowed.
How can we plan to avoid problems a 3+ year policy gap may create in this transformational period as we wait for an Area Plan?
Thank you for all you do and for considering my comments.
Sincerely,
Penny Ellson
speaking as an individual, as I have not had opportunity to raise this with PABAC
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