Livermore Proves Safer Streets Can Happen Sooner, Rather Than Later
Painting a high-visibility crosswalk. (Source: Tactical East Avenue.)
For the last two years, Livermore, California, has been welcoming pedestrian safety improvements along East Avenue. Utilizing low-cost, short-term methods to visually calm traffic and catalyze long-term change—a strategy known as tactical urbanism—has allowed locals to expedite long-requested interventions to the corridor.
While the road has long possessed a reputation for being unsafe, particularly at night, the recent initiative was catalyzed by the death of Yaneli Morales, who was fatally struck by a car while crossing East Avenue in 2019. Her family launched a petition calling for small improvements that would make a big difference for pedestrians: better lighting, speed bumps, and improved visibility. “This is something that I believe has to get done right away so no other families have to mourn the loss of a loved one,” the petition stated, adding that safety improvements shouldn’t be limited to one intersection but implemented throughout Livermore.
Frustrated with the city’s inertia, the family—and the petition’s nearly 1,500 supporters—hoped that Yaneli’s death would finally prompt some change, and so they took their demands to city council. In the weeks after the tragedy, however, the intersection looked the same. “Even though that intersection is 30 mph, drivers very well go faster than that, knowing there's a school near, apartment buildings, a church, a store, where pedestrians are always at crossing,” the petition described. "How many fatalities is it going to take for them to do something about this.”
Livermore Takes Action
“When it comes to street projects, two years is impressive given the expected bureaucracy. Six or more is normal,” explained Director of Community Action Edward Erfurt. “At the same time, these are things you could do in a weekend.”
While it ultimately took Livermore longer than a weekend to study and implement changes to the corridor, the city chose to act fast and it did so by embracing tactical urbanism. Shortly after issuing a Request for Proposals, Livermore engaged Street Plans to help materialize a bike lane on East Avenue. “From the outset, the city was willing to test several prototypes and adjust as needed,” shared Anthony Garcia, a principal at Street Plans, and the project’s lead.
The city’s openness proved indispensable when the project’s priorities pivoted. Early on, Street Plans recognized that the foundational question being asked was not the most appropriate one given the residents’ needs. “The question to ask is not whether we can fit bike lanes here. That’s an engineering question and this is not an engineering problem,” Garcia explained. “What we have is a design problem.”
A painted median. (Source: Tactical East Avenue.)
A high-visibility crosswalk. (Source: Tactical East Avenue.)
Thus, Street Plans and the city of Livermore engaged the community with a new question: What do you want out of this corridor? For the most part, residents wanted cars to slow down. With this in mind, the first changes to the corridor focused on curb extensions rather than bike lanes.
“We started out with curb extensions while still leaving room in the future for ceding less asphalt to cars, whether that means lane reduction via bike lanes or something else,” Garcia said of Tactical East Avenue, the pilot project’s official title.
Notwithstanding pandemic-related delays, once the project reached its implementation phase, the building and painting process took less than a full week. The efficiency of it all has not only gotten city staff interested in expanding the project area, but also residents demanding more aggressive traffic calming. While Garcia conceded that Tactical East Avenue isn’t without its vocal opponents, the overall response has been encouraging.
East Avenue Before:
East Avenue After:
What Tactical East Avenue Got Right About Its Look
When Edward Erfurt first came across images of Tactical East Avenue online, he identified a surprising advantage to the project’s sterile appearance: “it looks exactly like a road project, rather than an art project.” For Erfurt, using materials and striping within the visual lexicon of public works departments lend the project not only credibility, but relatability. “The goal is street safety, so anything that distracts from that mission can be a liability when it becomes time to debate the permanence of an urgent and thoughtfully conceived project like Tactical East Avenue.”
It’s not that creative and colorful traffic calming should be avoided, he clarified. “If you could phase this out, you’d ideally want to get the more sterile but sufficient changes approved by the engineers who go by the book, and then introduce the public art component,” Erfurt added. This way, the most important element—safety—is guaranteed, rather than something bundled up in a beautification project whose credibility can be debated.
“That’s one of the reasons we do what we do, in the manner that we do it!” Garcia disclosed. He notes an additional advantage in the visual presentation is its relatability to maintenance crews and the entirety of the public works apparatus that maintains and builds streets. “They’re out there implementing this work and in fact, when they can do it on their own, without us, that’s a huge win.”
Subsequently, the community members who help build the tactical interventions are trained to keep the momentum going. They not only learn “the language” of municipal agencies, but through experience become equipped to champion changes to happen over the course of a week, rather than half a decade.
Information about Tactical East Avenue can be found on the project’s website at eastavecorridorstudy.com.
IT’S TIME TO MEET YOUR MOVEMENT.
Learn how to implement projects like this one in “Take Back Your Streets: Tactical Urbanism in Kansas City, MO,” at the 2023 National Gathering!
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.