Safe Routes to Indian Hills

This post was delayed at request of Moscow Attorney Randy Fife and Community Development Director Bill Belknap until the rezone and PUD process had run their course. The development passed P&Z and Council.

I went to two meetings on April 23, a presentation by Safe Routes to School, a joint UI/Moscow grant that is working on education and programming for school children and opinion gathering among parents regarding non-motorized ways of getting to school. The lion's portion of the grant is being used to build sidewalks in several areas near the JrHi that will make travel to the school, Eagan, and the pool safer. We got here because of a series of, probably small, choices years ago that let developments take place that didn't provide sidewalks. Now Safe Routes is looking at how development has unfolded, where public facilities have located, and seeing routes that seem unsafe or undesirable for walking. And that has become more important as we've come to recognize child obesity and diabetes might be linked, in part, to changes in exercise. Not only is walking probably good for kids, at $4/gallon for diesel it could be good for the District bus budget if we could reduce the number of bus routes, and could be good for our collective carbon footprint if we quite driving kids to school. From many angles, Safe Routes seems like a good thing.

Then I went to the P&Z hearing on Indian Hills 8th addition, a proposal to create a 20 acre R4 zone on Palouse River Drive behind Columbia Tractor. I voted against both the rezone and the preliminary plat for reasons I'll outline.

The Comp Plan sets out the area as Medium Density Residential, which suggests a zoning up to R3. R4 allows higher densities , but the topography of the site was said to preclude achieving those densities. For reasons I still don't understand, staff recommended the R4 classification as the developer requested. R4 is stated in the zoning code to be appropriate for areas near the University and central to the city. Given the site is just over a mile from the UI admin building, and a mile (as you could walk along the abandoned part of Main) from 6th & Main, it does not seem to meet either criteria.

In addition to the items above, which seem to belie the intent of the R-4 zone, the zoning of adjacent parcels is a key consideration in zoning a new parcel -- so one could expect to see requests for more R-4 going east on Palouse River Drive, an action that, I think, would be less likely by having zoned Indian Hills 8th to R-3.

Finally, the safe routes issue. I foresee the same problem that arose at Peterson Dr and Hwy 8 near TriState happening at Styner and Hwy 95. A poor intersection with increasing pressure from pedestrians attempting to walk to the University. That is a second reason I find high density zoning in Indian Hills 8th unwarranted.

As for my vote against the preliminary plat. The proposal created a single 14 acre block, and another large block. Large blocks without pedestrian rights of way across them are antithetical to pedestrian uses, which therefore promotes automobile use. I regret that I missed seeing, and arguing for, a pedestrian ROW from Indian Hills at its extreme western turn around down to the Myrtle St ROW. That could have offered a pedestrian route where the alternative is presently very long.