On Tuesday, April 26th, the El Cajon City Council will discuss whether to approve the final El Cajon Active Transportation Plan. Please see the agenda here. We worked collaboratively with city staff to develop this plan to the level of safety that it currently provides, and now we want to do everything we can to make sure it is implemented.
While this plan doesn’t include everything that we asked for, it proposes twenty-four new miles of Class I, II, and IV bikeways, many intersection improvements, an expanded sidewalk network, and reduced speed limits on many of El Cajon’s most dangerous corridors. Its implementation would provide a huge road safety improvement for everyone who travels in El Cajon.
El Cajon’s City Council has not been very progressive on road safety in the past, so we will need every voice we can find to help get this plan passed. If you are available, please come give in-person public comment at the City Council meeting. If you cannot come in person, please email the council and tell them that you support this plan!
Instructions:
To give live public comment:
The City Council meeting will be taking place in-person at the El Cajon Council Chamber, 200 Civic Center Way, El Cajon, CA at 3pm on Tuesday, April 26th. The Active Transportation Plan is the 13th item on the agenda, so you will not need to arrive until around 3:30pm.
When you arrive at the Council Chamber, please collect a speaker slip by the door, and submit it to the City Clerk, indicating that you would like to speak on Item 13. When your name is called during Item 13, please plan on speaking for between one and three minutes about why road safety in El Cajon is important to you. Personal anecdotes about how El Cajon’s unsafe roads have affected you will be most effective.
To email the City Council
Unfortunately, El Cajon does not list the email addresses of its Councilmembers publicly. Instead, please fill out the “email” forms for each Council Member on this page: https://www.elcajon.gov/your-government/elected-officials/city-council
Please focus your emails on the following subjects:
Your support for the the El Cajon Active Transportation Plan
Why safe streets in El Cajon matter to you, including any personal anecdotes
Here’s my email, if you would like to copy and paste it directly:
Dear Councilmember _____
Thank you for all of your hard work to help make El Cajon a better community for everyone. I’m very happy that the City of El Cajon has finally decided to develop a plan to allow residents to safely walk and bike around their communities, and I encourage you to support the passage of this active transportation plan.
El Cajon is a flat city with beautiful, sunny weather year-round where everyone should be able to walk or bike to the places they need to go. However, due to years of road planning that have neglected pedestrian and bicyclist safety, many people feel unsafe walking and biking in their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, El Cajon’s residents are correct in feeling unsafe. From 2014 to 2019, an average of 58 people were killed or seriously injured on the streets of El Cajon each year. On average each year, seventeen of those victims were pedestrians, and six were people riding bikes. This is an ongoing crisis of road violence that the city should be doing everything it can to prevent.
By installing miles of missing sidewalks and bike lanes, and upgrading many of the most dangerous intersections in El Cajon, this plan will make everyone safer, whether they are traveling by car, bike, walking, or public transit.
However, while this plan is a great start, it will take continued focus on implementation by the city council for it to begin saving lives. For example, despite the fact that 60 pedestrians and 32 people riding bikes were hit by cars on Main Street between 2014 and 2018, this plan is only proposing to review the possibility of separated bikeways on this road in the future. Those collision statistics demand immediate action; not a vague promise to do something in the future. I encourage you to direct staff to immediately consider separated bikeways on Main Street.
Again, this plan will make El Cajon safer and more beautiful for everyone. I encourage you to support this plan, and to continue advocating for an expedited implementation timeline.
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El Cajon is a flat city with warm, sunny weather year-round. It is a place where everyone should be able to safely walk and bike to the places they need to go. Let’s work together to make that a reality!
