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Council adopts traffic-calming policy but members ask staff to refine petition process
Summary
The City Council approved a tiered traffic-calming program that sets objective criteria and a petition-based path for more invasive measures; several council members and residents urged staff to revise petition definitions and signature collection to avoid barriers to warranted safety work.
San Rafael ' The City Council adopted a new traffic-calming program policy on July 20 that creates a tiered approach to managing speed and volume on residential streets and establishes an objective petition-and-survey process for more intrusive measures.
Traffic engineer Saeed Fakhri presented three tiers: Tier 1 (signage, striping and low-cost fixes implemented via CyclicFix), Tier 2 (passive measures that require a petition and 24-hour speed/volume surveys), and Tier 3 (active measures such as speed humps and traffic circles that can affect emergency response times and therefore require greater neighborhood agreement and engineering review). The policy sets a simple-majority (50% + 1) petition threshold for community-initiated Tier 2/3 requests and outlines a process for petition verification, survey procurement and advisory-committee review.
Council response and public input: While councilmembers praised the move from ad-hoc requests to a clear policy, several members'including Vice Mayor Kurtz and Councilmember Hill'raised concerns that requiring physical signatures and narrowly defining the petition's "universe" could disadvantage some neighborhoods or create an advocacy burden. Community commenters and walking/biking advocates urged staff to reconsider the petition requirement or ensure engineering criteria can initiate action where data show danger, noting traffic calming is fundamentally a public-safety issue.
Actions and follow-up: Councilmember Bushey moved to adopt the resolution approving the policy; Councilmember Hill seconded and the council approved it 4-0. Staff said they will work with the city attorney to finalize petition language, consider technology-enabled signature collection and return with more details on petition design and implementation to respond to the council's concerns.
What to watch: Implementation details for petition boundaries (who counts as the universe of signers), how multifamily units are treated in counting signatures, and the timeline for surveys and installations will determine whether the program is accessible to neighborhoods with less organizing capacity. Staff said the policy will be revisited as the city gains experience.
