Ygnacio Valley Road closure causes huge traffic mess in Walnut Creek Monday morning

UPDATE: Brace yourself, because three lanes of eastbound traffic on Ygnacio Valley Road will remain closed into the late afternoon, as PG&E works to make repairs on a downed power pole, the Contra Costa Times is reporting.  

Police expect another lane to open by 3 p.m. It will be late in the afternoon before the remaining lane is open.

We’re scrambling to adjust our afternoon. My husband was going to pick up my son at school and then take him to a doctor’s appointment at 3:30 p.m.—out on Ygnacio Valley Road. He might have to leave work early to make it to our school pickup place by three (the 7-Eleven on Oak Road) , and then turn around and use the back way to get to his doctor’s. 

EARLIER: If you were dropping your child off at Walnut Creek Intermediate this morning, as I was, you know what a mess it was.  I was probably stuck in traffic moving around the school along Civic Drive and the main post office for close to 45 minutes. Many kids were rushing to make it to first period by 8:30 a.m., and no doubt quite a few were going to be arriving late.

People who use Ygnacio Valley Road  to commute to and from Walnut Creek were also stuck in traffic.

And what was the cause of this? According to the Contra Costa Times, it was a downed power pole on Ygnacio Valley Road. A minor injury crash around 2 a.m. at Homestead Road knocked the utility pole across three lanes of eastbound Ygnacio Valley Road.

There was no estimate for when the pole would be cleared. 

Police were directing motorists to alternate routes along Treat Boulevard and Bancroft Road, which also were getting clogged up.  There was no estimate offered to the Times on when the pole would be removed, and the roadway re-opened. 

Walnut Creek "mobility" gripe No. 1: Mt. Diablo Boulevard holiday shopping traffic

This photo was snapped while I was stuck in traffic along Mt. Diablo Boulevard late this afternoon. There was the slow crawl from west of California Boulevard to Main Street and beyond...

Okay, I really shouldn't moan about the traffic.

Isn't all this traffic, in some ways, a good thing?

It may mean that people are crowding into downtown Walnut Creek, which is, last I heard, still one of the leading retail destinations in the United States. (That is, according to some of those shopping center/retail reports I occassionaly come across.)

People come to Walnut Creek to browse the stores, buy stuff, eat out, and ultimately--our city and business leaders hope--spend $$$.

Would it be better if our main thoroughfares were deserted this time of year?

I guess not...

It will be interesting to see the retail numbers for the final quarter of 2009. Judging by my various recent excursions downtown, including this afternoon's traffic jam, people are crowding into downtown Walnut Creek this holiday season. And, presumably, they are spending money. But are they spending like it's 2006, or are they spending like the sad, depressed Christmas season of 2008? Are they being extravagent? Or, are they being thrifty?

It will, indeed, be interesting to see those numbers...

Walnut Creek braces for holiday crowds, parking, traffic while questions percolate over the health of this year's retail season

Even before the Halloween decorations and other tchotchkes came down in local stores, the Christmas stuff went up.

So, forget Black Friday, the Christmas shopping season is already in full swing. As a matter of fact, some retailers are getting a jump on Black Friday. According to the Wall Street Journal, retailers are turning it into "monthlong parade of promotions" by offering high-profile discounts. So in a post-Great Recession world, Black Friday might be going by the wayside. And, by the way, if you know of any major deals you want to share with readers, chime in.

A few weeks ago, predictions were grim about this coming holiday shopping season. More recently though, some retailers have posted unexpected third-quarter profits, including Wal-Mart stores, Inc., Kohl's Corp., and Nordstrom Inc. Still, the Chicago Tribune says, "although the results beat company expectations, executives at all three chains conceded that they faced a tough selling period ahead." So even though retailers' profits are up, consumers may still be wary, especially with national unemployment at 10.2 percent.

What will this mean for the East Bay's retail Mecca, downtown Walnut Creek? Who knows.? I'm guessing that the crowds will still descend, as they always have; the question is whether they will spend like it's 2006, or spend more time browsing, looking for those deep discounts, and ultimately spending like it's 2008.

There may be more empty store fronts than the same time last year. However, new shops and restaurants have been going in. And, a couple major chain retailers that, some analysts said, were not expected to make it into 2010 have hung in: Cost Plus World Market and Williams-Sonoma.

City staff are making an effort to "tame the holiday traffic Grinch."

The city, the Downtown Business Association, Chamber of Commerce, and property managers for the major retial and private parking garages have "teamed up to create stress-free parking for the season."

According to the city's November/December edition of its In a Nutshell, "the goal is to get cars off downtown streets as quickly as possible by making parking easy to find and encouraging shoppers to 'park once' and walk or use other means of getting around." The powers that be hope to accomplish this by posting new signs leading motorists to parking facilities; police staff directing traffic; and extended hours for the free downtown trolley. Between November 27 and December 12, the trolley will run until 10 p.m., and until 11 p.m., between December 14 and December 23.

Councilman Kish Rajan said this new emphasis on easing the parking and traffic crunch was not prompted by concerns about Recession retail struggles.

"I am not aware of any specific anaylsis/ projection of the crowds we expect," he e-mailed me. "Of course we are hopeful for a good shopping season. The intent here was to take some of the longer term ideas we considered and to put them in place right away -- both to try improve customer experience this season and to test what works best for the long term. "

Federal stimulus dollars at work along Civic Drive

Kevin Collins, the principal at Walnut Creek Intermediate, had warned parents that pickup and drop-off of students along North Civic Drive would be tricky this week. What with road improvement projects, funded, yes, by federal money designed to kick-start our region and our nation's flagging economy.


It wasn't so bad dropping my son off Monday morning, but things were trickier on Monday afternoon. In the afternoons, we usually meet at the 7-Eleven at North Civic and Pine Street, but construction crews had blocked off the left turn onto Pine, which I needed to take to get into the 7-Eleven parking lot. Left turns had been blocked off for much of North Civic and Oak Road, as crews did repaving and other work along this thoroughfare.

Much of the stretch of Civic Drive, at least from Locust Street to Walden Road, is crowded with crews and signs and cones and closed lanes. It looks like this will disruption will be going on through Friday.

The money for this resurfacing work comes from the $1.6 million Walnut Creek received under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The project also involves bringing the thoroughfare up to code with the American With Disabilities Act.

What’s the most annoying, dangerous intersection or crosswalk in Walnut Creek?

Annoying? My vote is the crosswalk on Mt. Diablo Boulevard at Broadway Plaza. This the one where pedestrians, at their fancy, can push a button and start lights blinking in the crosswalk, which tells cars to stop so that pedestrians can then enter the crosswalk.

From my observation, this crosswalk is responsible for causing big traffic backups on Mt. Diablo Boulevard especially during peak shopping times on weekends and during the holidays. The pedestrians, making their way from Broadway Plaza across to the shops on the north side of Mt. Diablo, often ignore basic etiquette. You know, that concept of taking turns? That concept your parents start teaching you when you were 2 years old. Okay, some pedestrians show some grace, and wait to let some cars pass. But most often they don't.

(Oh, and by the way, Soccer Son, took the above photo, while he and I were stuck at that crosswalk for several minutes on Friday evening.)

As for dangerous? Well, I’d need to see police statistics for that. But are there any you feel are particularly hazardous, either from a vehicle versus vehicle standpoint or a vehicle versus pedestrian.

Near our neighborhood, there is the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Newell Avenue, where in June 2007, Corinne Crawford, a UC Berkeley graduate student and member of the Cal Cycling team, was fatally injured. She and a fellow team cyclist were returning from a bike ride to Mt. Diablo when both were truck at the intersection while waiting with their bikes at a red light. The two were struck by a 2002 Cadillac driven by a 74-year-old man.

The Contra Costa Times surveyed readers to get their views on dangerous East Bay intersections. You can access the Times online, interactive map that invites readers to update and share their concerns about specific intersections. You can access the Times map here.