Broadway may be narrowed

Lynette Sauereorn has two girls, Abbi and Emma, who walk on Broadway in Costa Mesa to Mariners Elementary School in nearby Newport Beach.

Every time the mother sees cars driving through the Eastside neighborhood, she worries.

“It’s aggravating,” Sauereorn said. “I understand that people are busy, I understand that, frankly, it’s a wide street, and it’s human nature. The wider the street, the faster people tend to go, so I don’t think anybody who rips down the street intends to hurt anybody.”

Now, something is being done for Sauereorn and moms who like peace of mind when sending their kids to school.

Costa Mesa City Hall is looking to narrow Broadway in an effort to slow traffic and make it safer for schoolchildren, said Raja Sethuraman, Costa Mesa’s transportation services manager.

After receiving complaints from parents and residents who live in the area, the city applied to the Safe Route to School federal grants program, and was notified late last year that it received about $1 million for the project.

Broadway is one of the few streets within its neighborhood that is wider than the rest, Sethuraman said.

Most of the residential streets are about 40 feet wide, but Broadway is about 50 feet.

On May 6, city staff will hold a second meeting with neighborhood residents to share its latest plans based on comments taken in a March meeting.

The administrators plan to show renderings of how the street will look after it is narrowed, Sethuraman said.

Jeff McConville, president of the Eastside Costa Mesa Neighbors’ Group, which has been involved with the city’s project, said he’s pleased with the efforts.

“Our focus is to make the neighborhood a more beautiful place, give it the identity it deserves, protect it from negative influence and make it a safer place to raise our kids,” McConville said.

There are four options to narrow Broadway: add a straight off-street bike path; add an off-street bike path and a median; add an off-street meandering bike lane; or add an on-street bike lane. Each option would include sidewalks.

In addition to the money received to narrow Broadway, Costa Mesa also received $80,000 to create citywide bicycle maps and distribute them, and $450,000 to improve signals, add pedestrian countdown signals and sidewalks near Victoria Elementary School, 1025 Victoria St.

City staff plans to complete the design and engineering of the Broadway project by the fall and begin construction early next year, Sethuraman said.

“I’m grateful that [city Public Services Director] Peter Naghavi got the funds,” Sauereorn said. “I trust that they will come up with thoughtful plans and then the residents of the street can have a thoughtful debate.”