Community Corner

Santee Rated Least Walkable City in the County, Again

Kudos were given for a focus on Safe Routes to School in Santee, but it wasn't enough to get out of the bottom spot.

For the second year in a row Santee ranked at the very bottom of a Regional Walk Scorecard of San Diego County cities, which was released Thursday by WalkSanDiego, California’s largest walk advocacy group.

Santee scored 44.9 out of 100 possible points in the study, which is said to measure the extent to which cities in the San Diego region are responding to the call for more walkable neighborhoods. It was an improvement compared to last year's score, but not enough to get out of the bottom spot.

A large reason given for the low score was a technical issue that the City hasn't "updated the policies analyzed for the Scorecard," according to the report.

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Many Santee residents commented about last year's low score, saying they thought the report was flawed because Santee has many options for walking and a Trolley stop. While Santee does have many trails and spots in town are easily walkable, issues such as pedestrian access along certain streets, sidewalk conditions, and bicycle friendliness played into the low score.

From the report:

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"The two cities that scored lowest in the 2012 report—Santee and El Cajon—continue to hold those rankings. Whereas these cities received higher marks this year for walkability improvements and pedestrian safety education programs, other cities simply outpaced them. In addition, Santee and El Cajon have not updated the policies analyzed for the Scorecard, such as Complete Streets and Transit Oriented Design policies. This is not to say there are no such policies – indeed, both have focused on increasing walking, bike safety, traffic calming, and transit use in key areas such as residential neighborhoods, Main Street corridors, and trolley stations. However, their policies lack the strong language and incentives we found in the other cities."

La Mesa emerged with the highest rating in San Diego County, closely followed by National City and Imperial Beach. 

Santee got points for having a trolley stop, but suffered in the rankings because of issues such as missing sidewalks in places like Prospect Avenue,  which will be largely remedied by the Prospect Avenue redevelopment project.

Santee was one of the only cities not to list an "innovative pedestrian improvement" made this year. A Safe Routes to School improvement was noted in town. New sidewalks in the Atlas neighborhood were installed to improve safety around Prospect Avenue School. 

"Cities including Santee are creating a comprehensive Safe Routes to School Plan to outline infrastructure needs around schools," the report stated.

On Santee's 164 miles of streets an average of 55 accidents involving pedestrians have been reported annually for the last five years, which is about average for the county. 13 percent of trips outside the home in Santee were classified as having used public transit or walking, according to the report.

"It was a very tight race this year," said WalkSanDiego Policy Manager Kathleen Ferrier. "There are a lot of local cities putting strong policies in place and building infrastructure that supports walking and biking, so La Mesa had some pretty tough competition."

La Mesa has catalogued local walking conditions, especially around transit stations and schools; upgraded intersections and other facilities to better alert drivers to the presence of pedestrians; and instituted incentives to reward developers for designing buildings and neighborhoods with walking in mind -- especially in the downtown village and near transit stations, according to the organization.

-City News Service contributed to this report.

COMMENT: Do you think the report is accurate about Santee's walkability?


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