City highlights possible traffic issues in North reconstruction
A section of 25th Street that will serve as the primary drop-off and pick-up location for students at North School. Photo
The City Hermosa Beach has released a detailed comment on a planning document for the proposed reopening of North School, bolstering neighborhood concerns that the project will create harmful traffic impacts.
The comment, submitted earlier this month and crafted by city staff and on-call consultants, is in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the North reconstruction. The 13-page, single-spaced filing details alleged inadequacies in the DEIR, which was released Nov. 2. The city’s comment focuses on congestion and safety concerns related to the car trips North is likely to generate. Alleged shortfalls in the analysis, the city argues, compromise the document’s value.
“Because the DEIR lacks analysis of the project’s main impact, its conclusion remains unsupported, and the DEIR’s potential role as a problem-solving mechanism is thwarted,” the comment states.
Barbara Heyman, an associate principal at Placeworks, the urban planning consulting firm that prepared the DEIR for the district, could not answer questions about city’s comments and said that the firm was in the process of preparing written responses.
The DEIR applies standard “Level of Service” techniques to evaluate the impact of the North reconstruction on traffic flow in the surrounding area. These techniques, widely used in planning efforts in California, document existing conditions on surrounding streets and intersections, evaluate how impacted those roadways already are, and project what the construction of the project would do to them.
Based on this methodology, the impact of “typical school operations” on traffic flow in the area surrounding North would be less than significant, the DEIR states. But the comment claims that relying on these “conventional methods may not fully capture” the impacts of brief but highly concentrated bursts of vehicles associated with parents dropping off and picking up children from school.
“The misidentification of the impact (and lack of disclosure of the real underlying impact in terms of the physical changes in environmental conditions) is a fundamental flaw that undermines the conclusions of the DEIR’s Transportation and Traffic section,” the comment reads.
Heyman, the Placeworks official, said in a public meeting late last year that her firm submitted the traffic study to the city before the release of the DEIR, and that the city “confirmed its technical adequacy.” Placeworks has significant experience in preparing environmental review documents for school districts. They previously handled the EIR for the School Upgrade Program for the Los Angeles Unified School District, approved in September 2015. The firm also produced the Mitigated Negative Declaration for the proposed revamp of Mira Costa’s Fisher Gymnasium, which will triple the gym’s capacity, in November of last year. In both cases, the firm employed methodology substantially similar to that used in the North DEIR.
The firm has acknowledged the special circumstances presented by rushes during pick-up and drop-off times. And the DEIR does indicate that impacts on alternative modes of transportation, including the safety of passing bicyclists and pedestrians, could be significant, even if they do not meet the congestion metrics.
“Those are based on hourly traffic volumes. Now I would be an idiot to say that during those 10 minutes leading up to the starting time at the school…” said Richard Garland, a traffic engineer who assisted in preparing the DEIR. “During those rush hour times, there’s going to be a problem.”
Under draft architectural plans for the campus, a roughly 180-foot stretch of 25th street is designated as the primary pick-up and drop-off zone. The sidewalk will be pulled in from its current location to allow parents to pull off of 25th and keep students out of the roadway. The comment cites “conditions observed at other local schools” to conclude that 25th and surrounding streets are “clearly unable to handle the increased traffic flow during the intense drop-off and pick-up time periods.”
Among the risks associated with a glut of traffic, the comment states, is diminished access by emergency vehicles. Jim Heenan, the city’s fire inspector, reviewed site plans and determined that the most effective way to address North’s “adverse effects on emergency access” would be to modify the design to include onsite loading and unloading of students.
The DEIR does consider several alternative designs with on-site drop-off, but describes them as infeasible, in part because of the awkward shape of the North property. A grouping of a half-dozen private residences jut into the parcel off of 26th street, and including on-site drop-off could force a redesign that would cut off play areas from the rest of campus, complicating supervision of students.
In an email, Superintendent Pat Escalante said the district investigated several possible on-site alternatives. But in the district’s conversations with SVA, the architect that produced the draft plans for North, the firm suggested that creating an on-site drop-off would concentrate parking there, rather than spreading it across other sites besides the 25th street location, as the district envisions will occur.
Other locations, notably the Kiwanis Club parking lot on Valley Drive, have been commonly floated by project advocates as sites that could relieve some of the pressure from 25th Street; The city’s comment states that the Kiwanis lot is currently not configured for this use.
Some criticisms in the city’s comment echo those of skeptical residents living near North, who have long accused the district of underestimating the impact of traffic on the area. During the campaign for Measure S, the June 2016 school facilities bond that funds the reconstruction of North as well as updates at View and Valley schools, opponents pointed to the narrow streets surrounding North and its distance from traffic arteries.
The bond measure passed with 59.7 percent of the vote, driven by concerns about overcrowding. The district is currently over capacity by hundreds of students, and project proponents often characterize traffic concerns as little more than NIMBYism.
“Get over the not-in-my-backyard mentality. We have to take care of our children. My children go to View and Valley, and they are squeezed, squeezed at the seams,” resident Becky Scholten said during the public meeting on the DEIR. Almost all of the residents who criticized the plan at that meeting live within a few blocks of North.
The critical tone of the comment is something of a departure for the city, which over the past two years has consistently supported the district’s efforts at dealing with overcrowding. The City Council unanimously endorsed Measure S during the campaign, and during last fall’s council elections, all candidates said they supported the district’s modernization efforts. But at various points in the city’s comment, it becomes difficult to distinguish between concerns about the DEIR’s analysis and concerns about the North project itself. The comment characterizes the likely effect of drop-offs and pick-ups at North as “intense short-term traffic on a local circulation system that was not designed to accommodate such a high level of activity.”
Both the city and the district relied on a campus capacity of 510 students in their analysis. According to Heyman, the 510-student figure is derived from provisional plans calling for 17 classrooms and the district’s “loading factor,” which establishes a ceiling of 30 students per classroom.
In reality, the number of students on the North School campus is likely to be far lower. A construction timeline released by the district said North will open by the start of the 2019-20 school year, and host third and fourth grades. According to the latest district enrollment figures, the combined number of students now attending first and second grade — who would be in third and fourth, respectively, by the 2019-20 school year — is 271.
North School is a district-owned property that was shuttered in 1987 amid declining enrollment. The parcel hosted a day-care center, preschool and adult school until this summer when the campus was gated off to prepare for construction.
Project advocates point to these conditions to argue that reopening North will not represent a significant change in traffic flow for the neighborhood. But both local residents, and the city’s comment argue that conditions have changed since North last operated. While North was originally a neighborhood school, the reopened campus would draw third- and fourth-graders from throughout the city. As a result, nearby residents say a far higher percentage of students will be driven to school and contribute to traffic
“When I went to school, I rode my bike or I walked. I don’t remember being driven to school. When did that start, 15, 20 years ago?” said Jim Obradovich.
At the public meeting following the release of the DEIR, many speakers announced that they had no intention of driving their kids to North, and said the attitude was pervasive among district parents.
“Have you done any surveys of the bike and scooter parking lot at Valley School? It’s the biggest scooter, bike, skateboard parking lot I’ve ever seen. And it’s packed,” said resident Vince Busam.
Garland, the traffic engineer, said that while preparing the traffic study, city staff had suggested lowering the trips-generated projection based on the high number of kids who walk or ride to school. (He said he declined to do so.)
Escalante said at last week’s school board meeting that in total 45 residents and six public agencies had submitted comments on the document. The district submitted its provisional plans for North to the Division of the State Architect on Friday, said HBCSD Business Manager Angela Jones. The division is not expected to finish processing them until late May — enough time for the district to incorporate changes if necessary, Jones said.