BeautifulPB filled in the Pacific Beach Town Council this month on its goals as well as progress being made on one of its high-profile projects: PB Pathways.
A project to make the beach community more bike- and non-motorized friendly, PB Pathways is a phased-in network of safe neighborhood routes. Such pathways encourage people to walk, bike, scooter, or skate to their destinations along with traffic-calming measures and other features to improve safety.
Formed by a group of residents, businesses, and property owners in 2011, BeautifulPB is a grassroots nonprofit that works to create a more sustainable, equitable, and beautiful Pacific Beach. That is accomplished via projects like slow streets, community murals, PB Pathways signage, and climate-action advocacy promoting the lessening of the community’s carbon footprint.
Implementing PB Pathways is accomplished by creating pavement markers, signage, and road striping. The introduction of these improvements in PB dates back to February 2016, when bike lanes and street repaving came to Cass Street in North PB, eventually being extended south on Cass Street to Reed Avenue. Improvements continue as funding becomes available and staging with other road work allows.
“We’ve been gradually implementing PB Pathways throughout the community in phases over time,” said Ryan Stock, beautifulPB’s vice president. “That has involved repaving roads and putting in signage. The idea is to create beautiful and desirable pathways for bike- and pedestrian access to relieve traffic congestion without widening the streets. To do that, you need to make it safe so people will be encouraged to take a bike rather than their car to do everyday around-town activities. The next phase will be to upgrade PB Pathway’s network of streets.”
At beautifulpb.com, the group notes that “When we prioritize positive outcomes in equity, resilience, and climate protection we build vibrant, thriving places for everyone to work, live and play. PB has the opportunity to create and test innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our region today: income, education and health disparities, climate change, and ecological degradation.”
Stock noted that beautifulPB’s objective is to “Propose positive, community-based solutions focused on forwarding safe, sustainable infrastructure projects provided for in the community plan.”
One such progressive project is PB Counts, a neighborhood traffic count focused on non-motorized vehicles, an annual tradition done annually since 2015. The count is conducted by volunteers and community members in the western central area of PB. It is the only community-led traffic count conducted regularly in San Diego County, and one of the few that consistently tracks all modes of transportation.
Another ongoing project of beautifulPB is the promotion and creation of an ever-growing number of murals around town. “It’s part of establishing a sense of community, culture, and art, which plays a major role in creating a sense of place, belonging, and beauty in a neighborhood,” said Stock. He added beautifulPB is always seeking grants to fund mural projects. “We’re also trying to get an arts district formed in PB,” he noted. “As part of that, we’re planning to do a neighborhood block party type of event with bands playing and art booths set up.”
Stock pointed out that beautifulPB’s goals are twofold. “Level one is promoting safe and sustainable infrastructure, as well as doing projects around town to create a thriving and family-friendly environment,” he said. “Level two is providing another, better layer to conversations within the community by soliciting community input. We want things in PB to be done by consensus.”
Stock added it is always necessary to try to get more people involved in all the various community organizations, to facilitate the community conversation on important issues. “We want to know what people want to see in their community,” he said concluding, “The more voices we hear from – the stronger the community we can build.”
