Arroyo Grande council adopts Active Transportation Plan, directs staff to refine key connections

The Arroyo Grande City Council voted Jan. 28 to adopt the city’s first Active Transportation Plan (ATP), a multi‑modal framework intended to expand walking, rolling and biking connections across the city, prioritize corridors for improvements and position Arroyo Grande for state and federal active‑transportation grants.

Consultant Jacob Leon of K2A presented the plan, describing it as “a roadmap for transforming our city into a pedestrian, rolling and bicycle‑friendly community.” The document reflects roughly 18 months of fieldwork, mapping, traffic stress analysis, and public engagement that included three pop‑ups, two workshops, five working‑group meetings and a special council study session.

Key features of the plan adopted by council: a proposed citywide bike network that adds up to roughly 50 miles of bikeway improvements over time, including about 7.5 miles of class‑1 multi‑use paths, nearly 20 miles of class‑2 bike lanes, approximately 11 miles of class‑3 bike routes on quiet streets and roughly 10.5 miles of class‑4 separated bikeways or buffered lanes. The plan also contains pedestrian recommendations, intersection treatments, school‑focused cut sheets for five schools (Harlow, Ocean View, Fair Grove, Poulting, Arroyo Grande High School) and prioritization criteria intended to help staff choose projects when grant or capital funds become available.

K2A recommended three priority corridors for extra planning detail: Grand Avenue, Elm Street and Fair Oaks. The plan includes planning‑level cut sheets, planning constraints and planning‑level cost estimates for those projects to support eventual grant applications.

Council members asked staff and consultants to make a handful of clarifying edits before projects are advanced: specifically, to preserve and further study the Struthers Park/Coach Road crossing options (participants asked that the Struthers Park access remain a candidate, with alternative connection routes noted), to remove Miller Way/Mercedes as a primary bike route due to steep topography and right‑of‑way constraints and to add explicit language that allows staff to evaluate parallel‑street alternatives to major corridors such as Grand Avenue rather than assuming all improvements must occur on the main corridor. Council also asked for clearer explanations of the plan’s prioritization methodology and suggested adding performance measures and future traffic‑study guidance in the document.

Members of the public commended the plan’s community engagement and urged stronger protections near schools: a student who said she had been involved in a bicycle collision urged council to prioritize separated class‑4 bikeways around schools. Another resident asked staff to avoid any strategy that would require eminent domain across agricultural land; the consultant and staff noted that crossings across agricultural parcels were included in the plan as options but would require separate environmental review, right‑of‑way agreements and likely costly infrastructure such as bridges and would not proceed without additional approvals.

The council adopted a resolution approving the ATP and found adoption exempt from CEQA; the vote was unanimous. Staff said the plan is intended to guide future grant applications and the capital improvement program and to inform the ongoing general plan circulation element update.

The council asked staff to return refined language and maps that clearly show alternative local connections (Coach Road/Struthers Park, Tally Ho/Larchmont neighborhood links) and to ensure prioritization and project descriptions are suitable for inclusion in grant applications. Staff also added planning‑level cost estimates for the three priority corridors to help with grant packaging.