CASE STUDY: Keep Pasadena Moving

UPDATE: We won! The city of Pasadena has decided to reevaluate the plans for Orange Grove, and they have abandoned the road diet! Thank you for your support, calls and emails. We did this as a community, together.

To meet the provisions of the California Complete Streets Act elected officials in Pasadena had proposed to remove lanes from major city arteries, including Orange Grove Blvd.  They had proposed to remove lanes on Orange Grove Blvd by installing a “Road Diet”.  As we have seen in Playa del Rey and Mar Vista “road diets” on major boulevards increase accidents and actually make our roads less safe.  The city and a well funded advocacy community were pushing for this change and they were using bad data and skewed statistics to support it.

And they were doing it without giving us realistic alternatives. As happened in Playa del Rey and Mar Vista it would have created traffic and gridlock and stolen time from our lives in a misguided and dangerous plan that would hurt families, communities, and businesses. 

"Road repurposing" as they call it, should be done thoughtfully, not spitefully. We need solutions that help us embrace a multi-modal future without making it impossible to live here now.  

KeepPasadenaMoving is committed to fighting for safe and  smart improvements to our streets. When the data doesn't support installing a road diet -- as is too often the case --  neither do we. And neither should our elected officials. 

As seen in the map above the debate isn't just about a few miles of Orange Grove Blvd, it's about the future of Pasadena and whether or not some of our busiest streets are going to be "dieted" and "repurposed", taking away car lanes and replacing them with bike lanes.

Data from the CHP shows that fatalities and injuries to cyclists and pedestrians has been very rare in the past 10 years.  When one looks into the details and the contributing factors that lead to these accidents it becomes clear a road diet would not have prevented them.

On their website the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition is skewing the data, implying that there have been over 400 people injured on Orange Grove east of Lake in the past 5 years.  The numbers they quote are for the entire length of Orange Grove Blvd, from Columbia Street to Sierra Madre Villa, but you have to read the fine print to pull out that detail.  When you compare their numbers to actual CHP data it's clear that this portion of Orange Grove, from Lake to Sierra Madre Villa, does not need a "road diet".

According to standards set forth by the Federal Highway Administration in “The Road Diet Information Guide”  and the city of Pasadena, which is quoted in the guide, Orange Grove is not an appropriate candidate for a “road diet”.  The FHWA states that roads with more than 875 cars per hour during the peak commute hours are not suitable candidates for a 3 to 4 lane "road diet". 

The Pasadena Department of Transportation website contains a Traffic Count Database and data from 2017 shows that measured daily and peak hour volumes of traffic on Orange Grove Blvd exceed the standards for a road that should be "dieted".

The "Pro Road Diet" advocates pushing this plan consistently cite speeding as a major problem on Orange Grove and say that speeding drivers are injuring pedestrians and cyclists, children and the elderly.  Like their other claims, this one doesn't hold up when we examine the CHP data. 

As shown in the graphs above speeding was cited as a factor in slightly less than 10% of the accidents that led to injuries of pedestrians and cyclists.  And the overwhelming majority of the pedestrians and cyclists injured on Orange Grove have been between the ages of 20 and 54. 

Safety for all road way users is important, and it's something that everyone wants for their city.  There are real safety improvements that can be made to our streets, that will make pedestrians, cyclists and drivers more safe.  A road diet on Orange Grove isn't one of them.