Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,

As Glendale residents that live on, near, and visit N. Brand Blvd. regularly, we thank you for exploring design options that make our street more vibrant, welcoming, people-oriented, and safer.

With the help of the Southern California Association of Governments’ Go Human Quick Build Program, Glendale residents were able to experience a designed street with everyone in mind, including improvements for pedestrian crossings, reduced speeding, and the city’s first-ever parking protected bike lane.  Over the last few months, we too have learned and experienced first-hand challenges that came with the project, and we hope that the next steps in design will mitigate those challenges while still advancing a design that has community safety as its top priority.  

We support a version of the N. Brand Demonstration project that mitigates these concerns, and do not support reverting back to the original design that only prioritizes the movement of cars.

• Parking widths should be restored to the pre-project widths.  
  We understand this will result in a net loss of parking spaces, but the benefit is worth it.
• Bicycle lane width should be reduced.  The bicycle lane is excessively wide - so much so that cars can fit into the bicycle lane.  The excess width gained from this reduction can be reprioritized to the car lanes and to help with getting in and out of parking spaces.
• The main pinch point is at Brand Blvd and little Glenoaks where a large bulb-out reduces the car lanes from 2 to 1 near Glenoaks and Brand.  We hope a slight design change can accommodate 2 southbound lanes and keeping the bicycle lane.  Can this short section be converted to parallel parking for better traffic flow?
• What can we do to prevent drivers from parking in the center lane?

We urge you to consider options that preserve safety and not consider this as a binary choice - either to remove the project or keep it.  There are many design considerations that could significantly improve the existing project that do not require complete removal.

We hope that you can work with staff to mitigate concerns while also making streets safer to cross, to drive, for kids to be able to walk to school, and for people to ride a bicycle if they choose to or need to.

Thank you for thinking creatively for a solution to this - we support a safer Brand Blvd for all users!