Traffic enforcement part of cities solution to improve Mace Boulevard
There will be increased traffic enforcement on Mace Boulevard and Cowell Boulevard each Thursday and Friday from 3 to 8 p.m, according to a March 26 statement by the Davis Police Department. The increase in traffic is related to the city’s Mace Boulevard Improvement project.
“The traffic in this area is an ongoing issue that has resulted in many concern for our Davis residents,” the statement said. “The main goal will be to increase visibility, perform selective enforcement, (specifically gridlock violations), and monitor other unsafe behavioral driving.”
The Mace Boulevard Improvement project began in 2013 when the Davis Joint Unified School District completed a survey among its students about their transportation to school. They found that students who commuted through Mace Boulevard had the lowest rates of walking or biking in the district.
“The cars kind of go kind of fast on there, and there’s like an overpass and people are merging onto the freeway and coming out of that street so it can get kind of dangerous,” said Michelle Acoba, a second-year electrical engineer major and Davis resident of 19 years. “There can be a lot of traffic if people are trying to merge in and out of the freeway.”
Today, the project is still ongoing. A report released by the City of Davis Public Works department in January stated that the work should have done by March.
“In order to perform the final paving and striping, dry weather with temperatures in the high 50 to 60 degree range will be necessary,” the report said. “It is presently estimated all of the work will be done by late February, or early March pending acceptable weather.”
According to Acoba, while the majority of Mace Boulevard is fine to navigate through, the intersection of Mace Boulevard and Cowell Boulevard has had a lot of traffic.
“It’s really irritating because there’s a lot of restaurants there like [Taqueria] Guadalajara and Wok of Flame, and when when I’m trying to get food or hang out with friends it’s really annoying,” Acoba said. “The streets are kind of weird — like where to turn left or right — like you don’t really know where you’re supposed to go.”
According to Idan Shemy, a second-year computer science major and former Unitrans trainee, the area of traffic enforcement — Mace and Cowell — has a very difficult intersection to navigate through.
“We call it the Mace curve, which is the curve from Mace to Cowell or Cowell to Mace,” Shemy said. “It’s a school zone, for a really long time, but there’s reason a student would run out into the street anyways, and the school is so far away from the street, so maybe it shouldn’t be a school zone for so long.”
According to a different Facebook post released by the Davis PD on April 2, there is still some work to be done. Paving and striping on Mace were done on April 3 and 4.
“We are in the process of working on urgent and long-term solutions to the Mace traffic problem,” the report said. “[…] Paving must be completed now and temporary striping will be added immediately with final striping will be added immediately with final striping to follow.”
Written by: Hannan Waliullah — city@theaggie.org
