Moraga Canyon Specific Plan
Having worked for 50 years in the East Bay as an architect and planner I am sure that very few of you understand very much at all of the technical analysis in the Specific Plan; I know that I still do not.
To get a more intuitive, even visceral understanding of what is being proposed I would like to suggest that you take a 30-minute stroll up and down Moraga Avenue. You don’t even have to go at rush hour, just mid-morning would be good enough. It is scary to experience the breeze of the cars zipping past; how narrow the Blair Park strip really is and how the 6-story buildings will be jammed between the south canyon wall and the street; and what the “choke point” at Red Rock and the rest of the tarp-covered landslides on the canyon’s north wall feel like close-up.
If you have more time, you might also be interested in a full scale mock-up of traffic congestion along Lincoln Avenue at Head Royce School. The drop-off population there is more or less equivalent to what the 197 new units will generate on Moraga. There, another 2-lane road is jammed with two brand new short left turn lanes, three stop lights in quick succession, and a host of about 12 yellow-vested traffic marshals waving arms to direct the traffic on Lincoln and keep them from finding alternative routes through the neighborhoods. It seems to have gone fairly smoothly so far, but in an emergency on Moraga we won’t have those yellow vests; what we will have is emergency vehicles, a free-for-all and sheer terror.