Rob Inerfeld <br />Transportation Planning Manager <br />Transportation Systems Plan <br />City of Eugene <br />Eugene, Oregon 97401 <br />April 17, 2017 <br />We haven't been able to keep up with the number of meetings, plans, developments, <br />and ordinance changes taking place in the last few years; our neighborhood has six <br />developments, oversized and guaranteed to bring traffic and make the Ridgeline more <br />like downtown and less of a forested goal 5 wildlife neighborhood and corridor. This <br />threatens us economically in terms of existing property value, and environmentally with <br />our particular Ridgeline and the Laurel Hill Basin and the Willamette River below. <br />Being involved through volunteer and consultant work with the City early on, and having <br />given promises to some very special forefathers who gave great contributions to <br />preserve what we have naturally, we'll try to state what we hear from our years of <br />meetings with caring neighbors here and in Salem after living here for decades. <br />Coming from much larger cities we always enjoyed traveling through Eugene because it <br />was easy to get around, parking was free. I worked downtown and ate my lunch at the <br />fountain by the magnolia trees, both removed. The addition of bicycles could be a <br />positive force but instead it has added inconsistent lanes, huge bright signs, larger <br />flashing lights, all fighting for attention on our busiest streets and most confusing <br />intersections. It feels like we went from a beautiful forested city guided by a meandering <br />river and two beautiful buttes with Hendrick's Park our crowning glory to a payless store <br />in a bad part of reno or las vegas. We've ridden bikes over a half century each, our son <br />an avid dirt bike rider who rides with professionals, none of us ever wanting to ride on <br />the busiest streets; why not on quieter side streets for the safety of everyone? You can <br />walk a bike across the busy streets to get to the government building, shopping, easily, <br />pleasantly. <br />The signage on the Beltline by Costco can put an epileptic sister into an attack, the <br />signage in our neighborhood alone, Agate and upper 30th, look like counts to justify <br />development and road work ahead of their time. They take away from the beauty that <br />was always here, are brighter and larger than necessary and with the exception of the <br />school grounds, probably did not come from a ground swell of neighbors saying the <br />traffic is so bad we need to do something. They seem more like a count from the LCC <br />Regulator Meetings around 2010 to encourage development outside the UGB. <br />If not mistaken, 30th Avenue was acquired with a federal grant as part of the highway <br />system to take pressure off of McVey Hw. and 15 because of LCC traffic. Because of <br />the curves, unstable soil, and steep slopes it was to be used for the South Hills existing <br />neighborhoods and never intended to be used as a thoroughfare. It was limited access <br />and considered too dangerous for any new roads or driveways to intersect it. Animals <br />