The city of Lindsay plans to renovate the Hermosa Corridor by adding raised bike lanes, crosswalks and beautification projects to the roadway
LINDSAY – With the help of KTUA Planning and Landscape Architecture, Lindsay’s city staff drafted a beautification project for a heavily used roadway, the Hermosa Corridor. It will not only make it more beautiful, but safer too.
On Jan. 10, Lindsay city staff and KTUA lead project manager Jacob Leon introduced plans for the Hermosa Corridor renovation, which extends from Highway 65 all the way to Sweetbriar Avenue. After deliberating with the community for the past year, the drafted plans for the West Hermosa Street Corridor and Neighborhood Enhancement Plan seek to add both safety and beautification projects to the corridor, such as bike lanes and greenery. In total, it will cost roughly $3.1 million to renovate the corridor, but Leon said that many grant funding opportunities are out there for a project of this size. Since the project is still in its planning phases, the construction date has yet to be determined.
“The big idea that we walked away from [in our initial study of the roadway] was making sure that it was a good balance of pedestrian and bicycling improvements, making sure people will eventually feel safer and more comfortable walking, biking and driving throughout this corridor,” Leon said.
The corridor renovation plan involves adding a physically separated bike lane that will be raised up off of the road, high visibility crosswalks and installing flashing beacons at the surrounding intersections for pedestrian safety. Additionally, the corridor will undergo beautification projects, such as adding more lighting, installing either paved buffers or buffers with plants and greenery, and also adding some stormwater management. And the road itself will also get some much needed maintenance. Though the beautification and safety features will be added, the lanes and roundabout infrastructure itself will not be changed.
Leon said sadding safer crosswalk areas resonated with the community during their public outreach. He said that there are hardly any safe, well-designated crosswalks in the city that run north to south. The crosswalk renovations are especially important since both the city’s downtown area and the Jefferson Elementary School will be using these crosswalks, since they sit alongside the Hermosa Corridor.
To make the corridor more functional, there will be more wayfindings and signage added along the roadway, not only to direct traffic, but to beautify the area. The team is also considering adding artwork that would face the roadway, but that is still in the planning stages.
Leon said that his team and the city staff had many outlets to reach the community and receive their input throughout the entire planning process. They had an advisory group, an online project website, a survey, they did pop ups within the community and performed walking audits with the school and with stakeholders in order to hear from the public.
Not only did this help them understand what the community’s needs were, but also helped with transparency, according to Leon. This is because the public outreach helped show the community that the city was committed to listening to their ideas and moving forward based on what the people desired.
“The community engagement portion was incredibly important for this plan, because we recognize that a lot of improvements will be based on grant sources, and they value community engagements very highly,” Leon said. “I really just want to give a shout out to [Lindsay], and all the stakeholders involved that made all of this really rewarding for my team.”
As far as funding goes, Leon believes this draft project checks off many of the boxes that grant sources are looking for, since it entails extensive community engagement and notable safety features. Leon’s team will be looking into funding, and he also encouraged the city staff and council to do so as well. The project has already received one grant which funded the road study that was used to create corridor project plans. It came from the Sustainable Communities Grant, which was quickly awarded to the city by CalTrans.
