The Pasadena Department of Transportation (DOT) is proposing a contract with local consulting firm Evan Brooks Associates, Inc. to provide neighborhood traffic management plans (NTMP) for the North Raymond Avenue and Mountain Street corridors.
The proposed contract, which comes before the full City Council on Monday, will cost the city about $130,000, including a base contract amount of $108,149 and a contingency of $21,851.
Explaining the need for the NTMP, the Transportation Department said the city is constantly exploring ways to enhance traffic safety, bicycle safety and walkability through community-requested traffic investigations and through the Citywide Complete Streets Program identified in the capital improvement program (CIP).
“The Citywide Complete Streets Program covers a range of traffic safety projects, from small-scale traffic calming improvements such as speed hump investigations and refurbishment to larger scale NTMP projects,” the transportation officials said in an agenda report for Monday’s council meeting.
“Traffic investigations can produce straightforward, easy to implement improvements such as signage, striping, and signal adjustments. However, some investigations do not result in straightforward solutions. As such, a larger scale Neighborhood Traffic Management Plan effort is required,” the report states.
The report mentioned three corridors where the NTMP is required due to their histories of safety concerns without obvious remedies: Raymond Avenue between Montana Street and Washington Boulevard; Mountain Street between Fair Oaks Avenue and Los Robles Avenue; and Mountain Street between Lake Avenue and Hill Avenue.
The process of preparing the NTMP involves a number of rounds of public engagement and engineering analysis before producing targeted, effective, and locally supported improvements, the report said. The process is time-consuming and labor-intensive and will require individual efforts for each of the three corridors. To ensure a consistent approach and work effort, the Transportation Department said it is proposing a contract with only one firm to conduct all three efforts.
Evan Brooks Associates, Inc. was one of two contractors that submitted proposals after a request for proposals was published in April. Staff from the Transportation and Planning and Community Development departments evaluated the proposals and Evan Brooks Associates scored the highest overall points.
According to the report, the Pasadena-based firm has successfully conducted business with the city in the past and has fulfilled its contractual commitments. In 2020, the company was awarded a purchase order for the Rosemont Avenue NTMP in the amount of $38,286 and completed its report and analysis for the project in June 2020.
The contract will only cover outreach, public engagement and preliminary design components since final design and construction components are currently unfunded.
The three NTMP efforts will take about six to eight months per corridor and are anticipated to be completed 18 to 24 months from the time the contract is executed, the report said.
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2 thoughts on “City Aims to Improve Traffic Safety on North Raymond Avenue and Mountain Street Corridors”
Is this proposed waste of money part of the City’s ongoing efforts to slop the local contractor trough, for the kind of bad planning we have become used to, that has been increasing traffic congestion on our major arterials, and forcing the resulting cut through traffic into our local neighborhoods? Heckuva job!
A good first step for traffic safety. For too long, the city has been happy to let streets like Washington, Orange Grove, and Allen into speedways while safeguarding the “nice” neighborhood streets. A focus on improving safety in important pedestrian and cycling corridors, especially in underserved areas, is long overdue.