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El Dorado
Hills Citizens Alliance
News, October 26, 2007 www.edhca.net
email:
alliance@edhca.net
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El Dorado/Elk Grove Connector meeting
Monday, October 29, 7 p.m. at EDH Library
Town Hall II: Traffic safety trouble
| Next meeting reminder, Monday: El Dorado/Elk Grove Connector |
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Some of the discussion at Town Hall I was about the Connector. An opportunity to follow up in greater depth is the Citizens Alliance meeting on Monday, October 29th, 7:00 p.m. at the EDH library. Speakers are our three R.'s for Roads: Russ, Richard, and Rusty:
- Russ Nygaard, County DOT Deputy Director with responsibility for the Foothill Division (our area)
- Richard Shepard, County DOS Director with responsibility for the County as a whole
- Rusty Dupray, County Supervisor for District 1 and the County's representative on the Connector JPA Board.
An example comes from a
presentation at today's JPA meeting. The City of Rancho Cordova has
several major developments in progress south of US 50 that will build
about 35,000 units of housing, adding about 100,000 to its population.
For most of this area the Connector will be the most convenient way for
these residents to join US 50 to travel eastbound, toward El Dorado
Hills and on toward Tahoe. The only current plan is for the Connector
to run through El Dorado Hills on White Rock Road, crossing an
already-congested area centering on the intersection of White Rock and
Latrobe Road. Russ Nygaard acknowledged at today's JPA meeting that
this intersection already reaches LOS F ("gridlock"). One of the EDC
DOT's challenges is to improve White Rock and other streets in this
area fast enough to move this intersection out of LOS F and to keep it
out as traffic continues to grow.
Many of us think Connector Planning needs to provide a good way for through traffic to bypass EDH surface streets and needs to provide well defined paths to and from parts of EDH that do not all pass through the congestion-critical intersection of White Rock and Latrobe. This meeting is an opportunity to talk it over with those who can lead the Connector JPA to a final plan.
Town Hall II: Traffic safety trouble
The Town Hall II meeting on October 24th placed traffic safety problems front and center, dominating all other public safety issues. Our rough guess is that about 75 people attended, with the meeting running overtime to a total of 3 hours.
Complaints came from residents ranging from Bass Lake to areas along White Rock Road. Many complaints were about increasingly aggressive and careless driving habits. Some were about risky road conditions. Not all comments were about driving: One was a narrative of safety challenges faced by bicyclists that sounded like an old Looney Tunes cartoon, except that in real life a squashed roadrunner doesn't just bounce back. Another area of concern is street racing, especially where motorcyclists on Salmon Falls Road have boosted our rate of fatalities and serious injuries.
The most dramatic comments came from the next to last speaker, who lives on the south side of White Rock Road and who made a highly emotional and anguished appeal. She expressed concern for our community's children and noted frankly that people are being killed and injured. She expressed extreme frustration with lack of tangible response from the County to deal with the situation, despite her 4 years of seeking improvements. At one point she asked whether development takes precedence over public safety.
This was a very important message. The intensity of her comments conveyed a sense of desperation that many of us have shared, not only in the area of traffic safety but also in other areas of public affairs. Her observation about development was on target: For example, the word "economic" occurs 37 times and the word "safety" is simply not present at all in the Statement of Overriding Considerations for adopting the County General Plan's Environmental Impact Report