Plans to Narrow Colorado Boulevard Are Not Under Consideration by City

A city official said Tuesday night that a recent article in the Los Angeles Times suggesting Pasadena is considering plans to narrow portions of Colorado Boulevard by as much as two lanes was “premature” and there are no such plans actively under consideration by any city committee.

The January 20, 2014 article by Hailey Branson-Potts also reported the city was considering  widening sidewalks along that portion and creating tiny parklets with seating and greenery and that the plan was “expected to go before the City Council soon.”

“That’s premature at this point,” Pasadena Transportation Director Fred Dock said at last night’s Municipal Services Committee meeting. “It’s just an initiative at this point that the Playhouse District is looking into.”

Dock explained that the designation of Colorado Boulevard in the new “Street Types Plan” as a city connector would make it possible to reduce the street to three lanes.

“The Times article is way out in front of anything the City is considering as a project,” Dock said. “The designations we were discussing today of a ‘road diet’ of that portion of Colorado would not be inconsistent with the city connector design, but before something like that could happen the Council would have to hear it.”

Dock did say, however, that city staff is currently studying the feasibility of the parklets on Colorado Boulevard brought to the city for consideration by the Pasadena Playhouse District. The city does have regulations on outdoor dining and curb use that are currently being studied.

“It’s already been going on for a couple of years, the Playhouse District has been working on this for a long time. And it will probably take at least another year for somebody to decide to do it,” Dock said.

The Playhouse District’s “private use” plan on public property would convert the five blocks between Los Robles and Hudson into several parklets, add angled parking spaces and bring the road down to one lane in each direction with a central turn lane.

“I don’t know if it will work or not but I think it’s a terrific idea to talk about, this whole idea of parklets to add open space, and angled parking. It has a lot of merit, but it needs a lot of careful discussion,” Councilmember Terry Tornek said.

Tornek supports the needs of more pedestrian friendly spaces, but realizes not all of his constituents will have positive things to say about shrinking Colorado Boulevard.

“Colorado Boulevard is the heart of our city and it deserves a more prominent role than just moving cars from one end to the other,” Tornek said. “It demonstrates again what they were talking about today that streets are not just for cars — cars are important but they’re also for pedestrians and bicycles.”

Tornek noted that because the plan has very little infrastructure and is mostly painted lines, the parklets could serve as an experiment that could easily be reversed if it impacted traffic too severely.

The plan designated the streets as either a city connector, neighborhood connector or access road, giving specifications for each type of road overlays of suggestions for bicycle routes, transit routes and truck routes.

The city is creating the Street Types Plan as part of the new requirements by the State that mandate municipalities to update their general plan with a complete streets overview.

“The street types plan is simply one way of looking at the streets, setting up a framework within which the designs can be balanced for pedestrians, bicycles, transit and autos in this kind of urban environment,” Dock said.