Agoura Hills planners open scoping period for programmatic EIR on Bicycle Master Plan

The Agoura Hills Planning Commission held a public scoping meeting to collect input on the programmatic environmental impact report for the city’s proposed Bicycle Master Plan, staff said. The city published a Notice of Preparation on Jan. 13 and is accepting scoping comments through Feb. 17.

City staff described the Bicycle Master Plan as a proposal to expand the local bicycling network and identified projects and environmental topics the EIR will examine. Denise Thomas, Agoura Hills community development director, said the meeting’s purpose was to confirm the environmental issues the draft EIR should analyze rather than to review the plan’s design details.

Senior civil engineer Charmaine Yambo and Taylor Freeman, a senior environmental planner with Rincon Consultants, outlined the plan’s background, outreach, proposed projects and the CEQA process. Staff said the plan seeks to build on the city’s existing bicycle network (staff reported an existing network of about 1.3 miles of bicycle routes and 9.2 miles of bicycle lanes) and proposes new bikeways and bikeway improvements. Presentation slides and remarks referenced both “about 30.1 miles” of new bikeways and, in a later slide, “11.5 miles of new bikeways and bikeway improvements”; staff did not reconcile those two figures during the presentation.

Staff identified two projects prioritized for early implementation:…