About a half dozen citizens spoke out against the Chandler City Council considering something that it is not considering.
Confused? So were council members.
Five speakers warned the council at its May 25 meeting against going down a path of embracing road diets – which the city has not planned.
Road diets involve reconfiguring streets, usually by making fewer lanes and making them more friendly to pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass transit.
For example, city officials could take a four-lane road that has two lanes of traffic in each direction, and turn it into three lanes with one lane of traffic in both directions and a center lane for left-hand turns.
Scottsdale City Council is embroiled in a major controversy over that city’s road diets, which some members want to put on a ballot for voters to decide. So far, that idea does not have the support of a majority.
With the additional space available through a road diet, municipalities can add bike lanes or possibly a rapid bus path.
State officials have produced studies that say such changes usually make traffic safer, with fewer accidents.
That transportation approach is not up for consideration in Chandler.
It appears one of the speakers at the May 26 meeting was behind the organized effort to convince Council not to do something it’s not planning to do.
Conservative activist Merissa Hamilton tweeted a May 24 warning to Chandler residents against the dangers of road diets. During the video posted to her Twitter account, she urges people to visit a website dedicated to stopping road diets.
The website asks people to sign up and contribute money.
A day before Hamilton posted the video, she was named by former TV news anchor Kari Lake to head her ballot-chasing operation.
Lake had just lost her second court challenge of the 2022 election for governor and put Hamilton in charge of an effort to identify supporters, make sure they are registered, get their contact information and when the time comes, urge them to vote and confirm their votes are in.
Hamilton was asked in a tweet for the source of her misinformation. She did not respond.
Hamilton’s tweet from downtown Chandler was the source of a news story on the TimCast.com website.
That’s the news service of conservative podcaster Tim Pool. The story incorrectly reported Chandler officials would be holding a hearing “on whether to implement a regional transportation plan by the county to create road diets, which will severely restrict lanes available to motorized vehicles.”
It included a graphic that appears to be exactly the same as one on the website Hamilton promoted, except the headline “Chandler Arizona ‘food diet’ plan” was added.
The only meeting time the story listed was the regularly-scheduled council meeting, where the top agenda item was approving the tentative budget.
“First, let me be clear, there is nothing in the budget before you tonight that includes any sort of removal of lanes, or any roads, or what’s been termed a road diet,” City Manager Josh Wright said. “Quite the opposite, you have quite a bit of arterial road construction that is still going on throughout southeast Chandler, particularly where you’re actually adding lanes.”
The speakers reserved most of their ire for the Maricopa County Association of Governments. They pointed to MAG’s long-term studies looking at improving transportation throughout the county.
Part of those studies looked at possibly extending light rail down Arizona Avenue and perhaps the Price Road employment corridor.
MAG has also proposed a rapid bus service that would operate between Chandler Fashion Center, and Scottsdale Fashion Square.
When asked about it after the study came out in 2021, Senior Transportation Planner Jason Crampton said he thought if the city wanted to go down that path, light rail could be added to Arizona Avenue without having to reduce lanes.
But there is no plan to bring light rail to the city and if a future Council wanted to do that, it would be decades before it could happen.
“There are no projects in your 10-year capital plan that reflect a project of that nature,” Wright said of bus rapid transit routes.
“I think where that notion comes from there is a regional transportation plan that MAG has put together where one of the recommendations could be for a rapid transit system,” he said. “That would not be able to be funded, or even discussed until 2045.”
Most of the speakers were unscheduled, which means Council could not engage with them directly as they were making their comments.
Instead, both Mayor Kevin Hartke and Councilman OD Harris asked Wright to draft an email explaining how the city is not doing road diets.
“Don’t do this, but we’re not doing it,” Harris said. “We keep hearing them say, ‘don’t do it,’ but we’re not doing it.”
In his short statement to Wright, Harris pointed out seven times that the city is not doing road diets.
Hamilton congratulated the Council in a tweet for deciding not to embrace road diets following the meeting, even though none was being considered.
“Another grassroots victory!” Hamilton wrote.