Durango City Council canceled the city’s plan to add temporary back-in diagonal parking on alternating sides of Seventh Street after residents voiced their objection at several council meetings and meetings with individual councilors.
The back-in diagonal parking was to be installed for 12 weeks to test effectiveness of the design at reducing speeding. It was one of three pilot demonstrations, the others being planned for Goeglein Gulch Road and Riverview Drive.
Councilor Kip Koso, who introduced the resolution to remove Seventh Street from a speed management plan at an earlier meeting, provided just a brief explanation for his support: “A neighborhood that’s united in opposition cannot possibly be the best place for a pilot on parking.”
He said there are residents of other streets who would be interested in results of a future traffic calming demonstration in their neighborhoods.
The results of the demonstrations will inform the city’s developing speed management plan, which will include a list of traffic calming features deployable to neighborhoods at the request of residents.
But City Council, at the request of residents, voted 4-1 to remove Seventh Street from the study. Councilor Dave Woodruff was the lone “no” vote.
Woodruff said the data gleaned from observing traffic behavior with back-in diagonal parking present would provide valuable insight into if and how the traffic calming features impact speeding and if they can be duplicated elsewhere. The city would additionally learn how emergency responders deal with them and hear residents’ impressions of them in action.
He also pointed out the proposed demonstrations, if approved, would be temporary.
Councilor Jessika Buell supported the removal of Seventh Street from the plan, but she was also wary about caving to pushback on every occasion.
“I must caution us, City Council, against a precedent where every instance of pushback on a proposed change leads to the immediate pulling of a project,” she said. “If we were to adopt such a policy, we would frankly accomplish very little.”
Mayor Gilda Yazzie said straightforwardly the proposed parking change would disturb the neighborhood, and she completely supports keeping neighborhoods intact and comfortable.
Seventh Street resident Sarah Shaw, who rallied the neighborhood when she learned of the proposed parking plan, told The Durango Herald she expected narrower support from council.
She and resident Beth Lamberson Warren attended the meeting on Tuesday to make final pleas for keeping Seventh Street as it is.
Warren told the Herald Koso’s and Yazzie’s comments at the meeting stood out to her.
She said the acknowledgment of the neighborhood’s concerns made her feel like an involved citizen and City Council’s vote was a sign of respect for residents.
“I knew we had the convincing position on this from something that was just going to be so disruptive,” she said. “The pressure from the work being done on College Drive and other streets, it wasn’t going to be an accurate test.”
She was referring to the College and Eighth Road Diet project to reduce College Drive from four lanes to three, which residents said has caused some traffic to reroute onto the grid, including Seventh Street, to avoid College Drive.
Shaw also said the road diet project likely would have skewed any results from the Seventh Street parking demonstration.
And she, too, said it felt good to get engaged. She had never involved herself in city government or civic engagement before. When she learned about the Seventh Street proposal, she took to the street to inform her neighbors and ended up with a mailing list of 101 people.
“It was a shock that nobody knew about this except me. I mean, not one single person,” she said. “... It was really community building for me. I met a lot of people that I didn’t know.”
She said she created ties with other residents she never would have crossed paths with otherwise.
She was motivated because the city’s approach to the proposed parking demonstration was “backward,” she said.
“Reaching out to people once something’s been implemented is not the best way to get people on your team because they feel unimportant and like they got sideswiped,” she said.
Councilor Shirley Gonzales said at the meeting on Tuesday she wants to explore how residents are notified of upcoming projects at a later time. But when she asked for support at another meeting last month to place the subject of pilot projects on the agenda, she received no support from her colleagues and her effort failed.
The city had not yet installed back-in parking when residents took their concerns to Smith Council Chambers. But its plan for community engagement was to seek feedback from residents during the temporary parking features’ installment.
“Residents at Seventh Street feel like we are at the very end of this project where city staff’s view is that we are at the very beginning,” Sarah Hill, transportation director, said. “… A plan for really robust community engagement is in place for the demonstration projects.”
Shaw and Warren said they appreciated councilors taking time to meet with them and to understand their perspectives.
cburney@durangoherald.com
