On Tuesday, Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales (D5) and City officials broke ground on an improvement project for Frio Street, which stretches from the intersection of West César Chávez Boulevard all the way to Houston Street.
The intersections and crossings on Frio Street are mainly frequented by UTSA students and professors, who walk daily from the university’s Monterey building to the Frio building across the street to get coffee and food.
“This project is to help walkability and to help promote safety for the students coming back and forth here to UTSA and connecting with the building of architecture,” Gonzales said. “We want to promote this area as a walkable, safe environment for all users.”
The $5.1 million improvement project, made possible by funds from the 2012 bond program, includes reconfiguring existing travel lanes to accommodate bicycle lanes, four vehicular lanes, and a median that will serve as a center turn lane. Additional amenities include sidewalks, a traffic signal update on Commerce Street, pedestrian lighting benches, a traffic signal at UTSA’s mid-block crossing, and Zona Cultural streetscape enhancements. The project is slated for completion in December.
“We’re thrilled about the safety enhancements and the overall beautification of this area and we’re so excited that in a few short months we can come back and see the fruits of the labor of the design team and the City … to make a more beautiful, safe campus,” said Benjamin Perry, UTSA director of planning and development.
Some UTSA students and professors, however, said the new street design won’t solve existing problems and could even make them worse.
“These improvements along the street are a situation that isn’t as good as it ought to be,” UTSA professor of architecture William Dupont told the Rivard Report in a Tuesday phone interview. “The shortest path to get across the street is the [current crosswalk], but in the future design [pedestrians] have to cross at the intersection of Frio and Buena Vista [streets]. You will have to cross diagonally through the parking lot, and it’s awkward.”
Dupont worries that students will continue to follow the path of the old crosswalk since it’s the shortest route between the two buildings, making the situation more unsafe.
“I think it’s good that they are trying to improve the street and add the trees and the median, but right now you just go straight to where you are going and you don’t have to go into an ‘L’ shape like in [the new plan],” said one UTSA architecture student who didn’t want to be named. “[If this] will become the permanent way of crossing, I don’t think people will do it. Why walk to the corner when you can walk straight?”
Several students and faculty members sent concerned emails during the solicitation process, Dupont said, but none of the suggestions were implemented. In Dupont’s view, the design process did not balance pedestrian and traffic needs equally.
“The new median design blocks that left turn for vehicles arriving to the parking lot now, so it forces all the traffic to where all the pedestrians are forced to route now,” Dupont said.
UTSA associate professor of architecture and interior design Stephen Temple agreed. He said the new crosswalk would likely see disabled individuals forgo using the handicapped ramp at the original crosswalk and opt for a ramp made specifically for car deliveries, which is too steep.
“The pedestrian path should remain in the same place,” Temple said. “It looks like no one from the design team stood on the street and figured out what’s going on.”
UTSA student James Rivera said the enhancements will make the crossing safer.
“It’s a facelift, basically,” he said. “In my view it’s going to make it better, more scenic, and better for people to walk around. The opposition I heard was that handicapped people will be able to cross the street but once they get to the other side of the street, they’ll have to go all the way around to use [the ramp at the original crosswalk].”
Temple said the project was more about beautification than solving the core issue – safe pedestrian flow.
“They’re dumbing down things that really were fine before,” he said. “All we really need is to make it safer. The best thing would be to put a flashing light and slow the traffic to 20 mph … They can still do the aesthetic experiences … and making the lanes narrower may slow the cars slightly but not that much.”
Perry told the Rivard Report that better traffic and pedestrian signals and elements such as the median and bike lane will make the crossing safer and slow down traffic in the area.
“There’s also a median that will keep the traffic separated, which is inherently a safer design,” Perry said. “I do believe it is a safer environment.”
Potentially, this project will address some longstanding ADA pedestrian access and AAMPO ‘pedestrian safety’ issues along Frio Street north of Buena Vista to Centro Plaza related to narrow/subnormal sidewalk widths and poor crossing conditions (some of the intersections, particularly at Houston Street, could be timed as all-direction scrambles) — and it’s a shame the work wasn’t completed when Centro Plaza was opened to the public in 2015(!) when there was development interest in the Scobey buildings on Medina north of Houston.
The delay in public works on Frio Street is astounding considering that planning for this $5m project (a high priority project according to Federal ADA requirements, noting the pedestrian paths along Frio lead to a major transit center and a public university and other areas of ‘public accommodation’) commenced in 2010?
It’s also disappointing that the current project doesn’t envision the pedestrian work needed on a few blocks further north on Frio to at least Martin as well as on Martin to help link UTSA and Centro Plaza with downtown San Pedro Creek wor. Or explore a few blocks of Frio south of Buena Vista and possibilities to connect with new revitalization work on South Laredo Street (People Fund & Maestro Center) as far west as Trinity — where there are severe ADA pedestrian access barriers, including in terms of links with the Apache Creek trail system and Martinez Park further south.
Pedestrian crossings are needed on Frio at Travis as well as Salinas to help restore the urban grid and serve Centro Plaza users boarding buses on Travis, as well as to support improvement along Medina; crossings also are needed at Perez, Haven for Hope Way/ SAISD, Leal, Arbor and Rivas on Frio north of Centro Plaza, including to support safe access to existing paths, apartment complexes and VIA bus stops as well as eventual Martinez Creek trail work (due by 2019). Bike lanes and possibly on-street parking slots are needed on Martin east of Medina to support access to and from downtown and San Pedro Creek as well as to address sections of Martin that are too wide (voided out with paint) and might encourage speeding. Crossings are also needed on Frio at Vera Cruz, Colima, El Paso and San Fernando to restore the urban grid, support revitalization and existing residents and improve access to Zima Real bus lines as well as new Bexar County offices.
In addition, BCycle stations are needed at Centro Plaza (as long planned) and Buena Vista and Leona (as removed; there’s still a slab in place). Other stations are needed at Martin & Camaron to support San Pedro Creek access as well as at Cafe College (El Paso near San Saba) and the Bexar County offices on Pecos south of Vera Cruz to connect the network; BCycle is also needed on the Apache Creek trail system, and a pedestrian access point to the trail is needed on San Marcos south of Tampico. A pedestrian crossing of Buena Vista is needed at Leona to further improve pedestrian conditions near UTSA and in this ‘Westside gateway’ area.
The tardy Frio Street work should be re-considered as part of a pedestrian mobility plan for the overall Zona Cultural (phases II & I) as well as a larger UTSA / Westside gateway area that could be framed as Laredo & Trinity north to Frio & Cypress, connecting two of the City’s 2017 Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) fund REnewSA ‘target areas’ of Ave. Guadalupe and Five Points with San Pedro Creek work as well as Apache Creek work. The $5m should be at least tripled, including possibly with existing CDBG funds, to support pedestrian improvement work from South Laredo Street as far west as at least Trinity to Cypress at Camaron – a distance of only 2 or so miles.
An abandoned rail bridge lane spanning the distance from Ellerman to Tampico (crossing Apache Creek) currently provides opportunity to link revitalization efforts on South Laredo Street (People Fund and the Maestro Center) with this Westside gateway and the Westside Creek trail system. The delay in 2012 bond spending provides Council the opportunity to assess current conditions to create a better inner Westside (and therefore ‘downtown’) pedestrian mobility plan involving improvements on greater Frio Street connecting key recent public investments – including Centro Plaza, Bexar County offices on Pecos, Cafe College, Apache Creek and San Pedro Creek north of downtown. The key to serving existing residents as well as encouraging investment in long vacant sites in this part of downtown is to re-connect and improve the urban grid for pedestrians (at minor cost) – including with crossings closer to every 200 feet (and never more than 400 feet).
The same urban design crossing standards could be applied to Cesar Chavez east of Alamo Street and Alamo Street south of Commerce to help form a much-needed Hemisfair pedestrian mobility plan (and to address severe and longstanding ADA pedestrian access issues on Cesar Chavez east of Indianola) as well as to improve Broadway north of the I-35 for pedestrians.