I have decided to add a new feature to the website. I have had many questions as to where I stand on various issues. I will try to start posting the relevant ones on my website. I aim to make my campaign transparent, fully accountable and responsive. I will do the same as a candidate. Please e-mail me with your views on the questions on this page. So, here we go with a couple specific ones starting off the page:
Do you think Lafayette should continue to spend money on ‘traffic calming’ measures given the other needs in the city?
There are two sides to this issue. First of all, we do need to confine our expenditures to our major needs, considering our shrinking budget. This is not the time for new projects that will increase maintenance expenses. That being said, we do have many children and seniors in this community and we need to ensure that people are driving safely in Lafayette. Traffic calming measures should meet 3 criteria before being enacted:
- The measures should be widespread support from the neighborhood. The Council has put them in places where they have received a hostile welcome, such as at Condit and Pleasant Hill Road.
- The project must make sense financially. Neighborhoods should (and have in the past) been willing to shoulder a substantial bit of the financial burden. Considering our current budget, they may have to pay for all installation costs. This also ensures that we are not working against the wishes of the neighborhood.
- We should avoid doing this on major arterials, like Pleasant Hill Road and Mt. Diablo Blvd.
We do need to slow down the driving in Lafayette, though. Our police are willing to sit at any road to reduce speeding. I would suggest Lafayette’s residents take advantage of this. Additionally, I would like to propose an effective tool that is budget-positive for making our neighborhood roads safer: an additional $50 fine for anyone caught speeding more than 5 mph in Lafayette on any neighborhood roads, which I would define as all roads that are not arterials (Mt. Diablo, Pleasant Hill and St. Mary’s).
Do you think it’s appropriate for Lafayette to purposefully mis-time and mis-align signals?
Of course not. We see this at Condit and Pleasant Hill and at Lafayette Circle and Mt. Diablo. There is no reason for cars to be sitting there burning gas at 3 in the morning when no cars are to be seen. Depening on costs, we can either have the lights respond to traffic or, at the very least, have them timed so that the lights are shorter at times that have less congestion. This is a perfect example of a City Council that is no longer in touch with the people and has grown unresponsive.
