STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment
October, 2002
Living Lightly
Rails
to Trails
By
MYRTLE OSNER
It may be years before we
get it, but the bicycle trail along Virginia Avenue, from Bangs Ave. to
downtown, is inching closer to reality. Ever since the Union Pacific stopped
running its trains down this corridor, we’ve been waiting for it to remove the
tracks so we could get started with the long-planned linear park and trail.
Meanwhile, plans have been
made and neighborhood meetings at various spots along the tracks have attracted
neighbors and cyclists to give their opinions of what they want the trail to be
like. You can view plans at Tenth St. Place in the Parks, Recreation and
Neighborhoods Department.
Some of the discussion
revolved around what will happen to the backyards and parks and schools along
the way. Some of the answers:
The corridor will be opened
up to foot and cycle traffic at the schools bordering the trail: Beard School,
Roosevelt Park, Roosevelt School, among other possibilities. At the park, rest
stops can be incorporated easily. City staff says opening up the space to view
increases safety. Having a trail with people going by daily increases the eyes
and ears watching what’s going on.
Yes, numerous trees will be
planted. Shade is important for cyclists and joggers who get very warm without
it. Several major streets cross this trail, which could be a recipe for
disaster. At Briggsmore, a possible overpass is proposed, but that’s a big
ticket item. Other streets will get flashing lights embedded in the pavement
like those at Modesto Jr. College which have already proved their effectiveness
in preventing accidents to pedestrians.
At the shopping center,
planners envision possibilities for a restaurant oriented to the trail instead
of the unsightly back ends of shops (no plans have been discussed with
businesses yet).
This trail will also be
useful to pedestrians. It is also a way to cut down pollution when we get people
out of their cars. The trail provides a straight line to downtown from north
Modesto joining the Dry Creek trail that now takes riders from Claus Road thru
some very pleasant parks and neighborhoods.
Cities all over the country
are building bike trails. Why not us? Senator Barbara Boxer boosted the whole
project when she came here with promises of Federal funds. The project is part
of a nationally organized “Rails to Trails” program (read their magazine
which details the many US trails created through this program; www.railtrails.org/).
The city should be
commended for inviting residents to share in the planning of this long-awaited
park.
How to kill
a neighborhood
By
LILLIAN VALLEE
I
have lived in the La Loma neighborhood for almost twenty years. This
is where I would like to stay to the end of my life. It is true that I may not
know all of its history, good and bad, and it is also true, as one neighbor has
mentioned, that we could use a family grocery store nearby, but for the most
part, it is a gentle place, one of the loveliest in our city, with large trees,
shaded streets, and a fabulous green belt at its northern border. It has been,
to my mind, as close to an ideal neighborhood as mortals are allowed to get.
La
Loma—and I am not dividing it into its eastern and western portions as City
Planners
like to do—is not an exclusive, gated community, but an area as diverse
economically as it is culturally. Within its borders you can find mansions with
sweeping views, units of subsidized housing, and various bungalows in between.
You can find people of all ages, incomes and denominations. My neighbors are
children of Italian immigrants, of Dust Bowl migrants, and of Mexican farm
workers. Sometimes you can hear more recent immigrants and their children
speaking Spanish, Russian or Ukrainian.
Teachers
and attorneys live here, as does a librarian and a fisheries biologist. There
are people who do landscaping and landscape photography. There are doctors and
mechanics, bank clerks and truck drivers. Many of us know each other just from
passing one another on morning or evening walks because La Loma is a place for
walkers, above all. On these walks we admire one another’s children,
grandchildren, gardens, or well-behaved pets.
There
is a vineyard in the neighborhood that has been worked for decades by the same
family. There is a junior high across the street and not too far away an
elementary school. Children can walk or ride their bikes to these schools. The
bike racks are full. The children who mingle at the junior high come from some
of the most affluent and some of the poorest homes in the city. Neighbors keep
an eye out for them; they break up an occasional fight or call a police officer
if there are suspicious persons lingering.
In
the junior high schoolyard stands one of the few spectacular heritage oaks that
remind residents this area was an oak woodland before it was planted to walnuts.
It was in this woodland, on the terrace between Dry Creek and the Tuolumne River
to the south, that native peoples came to gather acorns, one of their staple
foods. Their granite mortars and pestles, often buried in the roots of old oaks,
have been found here in the basements of houses built in the postwar housing
boom of the late forties.
Grizzlies
roamed here, killdeer still haunt what must have been seasonal wetlands, and
many small strands of the Great Pacific Flyway crisscross in the sky above so
that it is not at all unusual to hear cranes calling to one another in the fog,
to see a string of freshwater pelicans silhouetted against a full moon, or to
find in one’s modest backyard an assortment of raptors (owls, hawks, falcons)
and hummingbirds, in addition to the usual visitors (flocks of goldfinches,
cedar waxwings, robins, and bushtits) and residents (magpies, crows and
mockingbirds and jays).
The
neighborhood (la loma or “hill”)
and many of its streets bear Spanish names. Roble and Encina are two examples of
how a feature of the natural history (the distinction between Valley and Live
Oaks, respectively) is preserved in those names. I mention Encina with another
purpose as well. Encina is a street that currently deadends on mine, North
Conejo, and the City of Modesto’s Planning Commission would like to make it a
thoroughfare connecting El Vista to La Loma, jeopardizing the integrity of the
neighborhood by introducing what would be its undoing: a shortcut for cross town
traffic that would speed by the junior high to join the La Loma artery on the
other side. The statistics tell us there would be fatalities, most likely
children. Encina is already well-traveled, with low visibility in foggy winter
months. Cars parked by people who enjoy Kewin Park already crowd the street at
its western end and undermine safety and visibility.
I
have gone to great lengths to describe the experience
of living here because I simply cannot understand why the Planning
Commissioners—fixated on grids that focus on nothing but efficient traffic
flow—would attempt, three times in the two decades I have lived here, to
destroy one of the best and most loved neighborhoods in Modesto. The first time
they wanted to introduce a four lane freeway bordering the junior high on the
west. This was going to connect to a bridge leading traffic to Brighton Avenue
on the other side of Dry Creek. City Council members saw the injudiciousness of
this plan and sided with La Loma residents. Another attempt in the eighties to
inject traffic into the neighborhood by forcing the Encina thoroughfare failed
when residents again rallied and defeated that plan. On August 27 of this year
La Loma residents were once again forced to organize against the Encina through
street (Planners were given a petition with 571 signatures protesting the
thoroughfare!) and presented the Planning Commission with rational, heartfelt
and clear arguments indicating they would accept the planned subdivision for
their neighborhood but could not accept more traffic because of serious safety
issues and loss of the very cohesion, beauty, and tranquillity that lends this
community its integrity and identity.
One
would think that five hundred and seventy-one people attached to their place and
appreciative of it would be rewarded with some sort of municipal recognition;
instead, they are being told they need to accept more cars—the most
destructive element in any neighborhood, especially when driven by folks with no
other reason to be there than their rush to get to the other side of town.
This
story is further complicated by the fact that residents on a street to the north
of Encina, Edgebrook, are weary of (surprise, surprise) “cut through”
traffic from El Vista that zips over speed bumps and ignores stop signs to get
to Encina. The Planners are facing pressure from this group of residents, who
think a thoroughfare on Encina would eliminate their problem on Edgebrook. The
sad thing about this group (other than their bad manners at Planning Commission
meetings) is that they are trying to solve a problem (the unwanted traffic
created by an earlier, shortsighted planning decision) by creating an even more
serious one, a hazardous situation in front of a school and near two parks.
In
an effort to muffle protest on all sides, the Planners suggest
introducing (read “increasing”) traffic, then “calming” it with stops
signs, turnabouts, and variations on the speed bump idea, and by, let’s be
honest about this, rerouting traffic to a less vocal part of the community. This
is simply unacceptable.
Let’s
face the hard truth: the best neighborhoods are those in which unnecessary
traffic is kept out. To increase the number of cars is to decrease the safety of
pedestrians and cyclists. Cities all over California and the country are
implementing dead ends, narrower streets, and more islands with trees and shrubs
to decrease and eliminate traffic. To increase traffic and then “calm” it is
to create a worse problem than exists now. It is questionable whether speed
bumps or stop signs can be considered effective “calming” devices when
drivers can and often do choose to ignore them. I have attended City Council
meetings in which parents who have lost children near schools told their
heartbreaking stories; posted but often unenforceable speed limits help very
little. Right now La Loma Junior High has a zero fatality rate. So far the
traffic toll has been paid mainly by pets. Which one of the Planning Commission
members or disgruntled Edgebrook residents wants to take the responsibility for
the first human fatality? And the ones that follow?
Why
the Planning Commission chooses to repeatedly engage in these attempts to
destroy a neighborhood that is, for all practical purposes, functioning rather
well, is a mystery to me. Is a neat grid on a map or traffic flow efficiency
reason enough to increase the number of cars in a neighborhood that already has
enough and that values the walking and biking safety of its children more than
speed and efficiency of local commuters? And
safety is, of course, the primary reason NOT to go ahead with this ill-conceived
project.
Surely,
the Planning Commission has more enlightened things to do than to succumb to
pressure to kill a neighborhood. Each time La Loma residents are put through
this exercise, they lose a little more confidence in municipal government and
its appointed civil servants. City planners create the impression that they are
always eager to dismantle a neighborhood rather than to learn the lessons so
obvious to those who live there: give people of all backgrounds and economic
levels a few old trees and tree-lined streets, affordable housing on a human
scale, schools to which kids can walk or bike, not too much traffic but lots of
room for pedestrians and cyclists of all ages, including room for the mistakes
kids will make when they dash into the street for a ball or run their
skateboards into a curb.
What
we are in danger of losing in La Loma if the Encina thoroughfare goes through is
not just the integrity of the place but the dynamic, participatory spirit of
those who live there. When you kill a neighborhood that expresses its attachment
so thoughtfully and eloquently, so
consistently, you are killing the very best reflexes of small town
democracy.
