Safe Streets Petaluma

Advocating Safe, Healthy and Affordable Mobility for All

Sign our petition asking the Petaluma City Council to make Safe Streets a top priority.

Here's what's happening:

D Street:

The City’s D Street Traffic Calming & Active Transportation Quick-Build Project was intended to reduce vehicle speeds, increase pedestrian safety, and provide safe bike lanes. Subsequent to the most recent (April 26th) zoom presentation, City leaders received comments from area residents (and others) objecting to the consolidation of under-utilized parking spaces and questioning the need for bike lanes.

We believe that this apparent divergence of views indicates the need for a more focused design effort. We know it is possible to have slower traffic, safer sideways and crosswalks, and bike lanes. With trees and planting areas!

The Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition has put forth this petition. If you are in agreement, please consider signing!

City Thread update:

For those who haven’t been tracking this one: throughout most of 2022, Safe Streets Petaluma was in communication with City Thread, a group of consultants that had recently worked with the cities of Austin, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Providence to help them accelerate the build-out of their bike/ped (or “non-automobile mobility”) networks.

With financial support from the City, Safe Streets Petaluma secured a $50K grant to get the benefit of City Thread’s expertise in helping our city realize our long-held bike/ped ambitions. In March of this year, City Thread principals came to Petaluma to listen to a wide range of community stakeholders, including our Mayor, council members, City Manager, Public Works staff, and others. Their Final Report was presented to us in May of this year.

Among their recommendations, these stand out:

Success depends on a close partnership between the City and the community.
Despite all our studies, reports, and resolutions, we don’t have a shared vision of what we want out streets – our “mobility networks” -- to be in ten or twenty years.
To be most effective, the shared vision needs to benefit from the input of a broad range of community partners.
We need to set goals that are ambitious but attainable.

City Thread’s Final Report can be found here on the City’s website.

And the slide deck of City Thread’s final presentation can be found here:

Next up for Safe Streets Petaluma: together with Cool Petaluma and other community partners, we’re working to coalesce a broad coalition of community members – we’ve been calling it “A Coalition of Everyone” -- to help craft the shared vision for our streets.

Email Pete Gang at pete@commonsensedesign.com if you’ve got any juice to help with building the coalition and crafting our vision!

The Active Transportation Plan (ATP) interactive mapping tool:

The City is in the process of updating our 2008 City of Petaluma Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan (our Bike/Ped Plan). The update is being called the Active Transportation Plan, or ATP. This page has good information. While we continue to be disappointed by the lack of community engagement in the process, our input and comments are being sought on an interactive draft project map that shows both existing and proposed bike infrastructure.

But you’d better hurry! This interactive map was just released a few days ago and the deadline for comments is July 30, 2023! The timeline for the ATP suggests that a draft of the ATP will be released in Summer 2023 and a Final Document will be adopted in Fall 2023.

What’s missing? The Goal of our 2008 Bike/Ped Plan called for a “…safe, comprehensive and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system throughout Petaluma that encourages bicycling and walking and is accessible to all.” The interactive map shows individual proposed projects but we are utterly hornswoggled to see no indication of a “comprehensive and integrated bicycle and pedestrian system.”

An ”Active Transportation Plan Update and Interactive Map Feedback Tutorial” is on the Agenda for the next PBAC meeting: Wednesday July 5th @ 6:30 in Council Chambers.

Comments can also be addressed directly to Bjorn Griepenburg, the Project Manager for the ATP, at bgriepenburg@cityofpetaluma.org.

Click here to join the City’s mailing list for the ATP.

What Public Works is up to:

The City posts on its website information about specific street projects, about how to file a complaint, about the Active Transportation Plan, and much more. It’s full of information but is less than helpful in locating the information you want or need. Go here or here and see what's happening.

AND: check out the Staff Comment section at the end of every PBAC meeting. The latest (June 7th) update is here starting at 2:45:38.

Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee (PBAC):

The next PBAC meeting is Wednesday July 5th @ 6:30 live-and-in-person in Council Chambers.

Our regular First Friday at Five bike rides:

Bring your bells and your smiles! Friday July 7th is the next First Friday at Five community bike ride. The rides are in/around town, mostly flat,1 to 1-1/4 hr in duration, moderately paced, and a whole lotta fun. If you haven’t yet ridden around town in a pack of bikes, you don’t know what you’re missing!

We roll from Walnut Park (corner of Petaluma Boulevard South and D Street) at 5 PM.

Our regular monthly SSP meetings:

Our monthly meetings are on the second Sunday of every month at 4 PM. Our next meeting is at 4 PM at Grand Central Café on Sunday July 9th.

We keep the meetings to one hour. Please join us!

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