Eureka survey shows deep divide over planned G Street bike boulevard
Eureka’s new G Street bike-boulevard survey drew 1,050 responses, and nearly half of respondents said they strongly opposed island medians.
Eureka now has hard numbers showing just how divisive its bicycle-boulevard strategy has become. A two-week survey on the planned G Street bike boulevard drew 1,050 responses, plus additional comments by email, phone and door-to-door conversations, and the city says the results show deep resistance to the very traffic-calming tools it uses to make bike routes safer.
Nearly half of respondents said they were strongly opposed to island medians, and almost two-thirds rejected vehicle-limiting installations. That matters because G Street, between 7th and Henderson streets, is being positioned as the next test of whether Eureka can build calmer streets without repeating the backlash that followed C Street. The city says most respondents primarily drive cars, a detail that helps explain why the project has become so politically charged.
City staff have tried to reassure skeptics by saying the G Street project is expected to be a "light-touch" bike boulevard design, with no one-way directional changes and no reductions in parking. The city also says the final design has not been chosen. A draft will go first to the Transportation Safety Commission and then to the Eureka City Council for public comment, leaving room for changes before any final decision.
The project sits inside Eureka’s broader 2024 Bike Plan, which the council adopted unanimously on Sept. 17, 2024 after work with the Mark Thomas consulting firm. City staff have described that plan as a "living document" meant to support grants and future network-building. G Street was picked from that plan as a potential future corridor, and the project is being funded through the Linc Housing Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, which required sustainable transportation improvements.
The tension over G Street cannot be separated from C Street. Eureka says the C Street Bike Boulevard received a Caltrans Active Transportation Program grant for about 8,900 linear feet of improvements from First Street and Waterfront Drive to Harris Street. The city describes C Street as a two-way local street carrying fewer than 500 vehicles a day, but the project still triggered one-way motor-vehicle restrictions at 7th, 14th, Buhne and Harris streets beginning Oct. 1, 2025. City planners say the corridor is meant to link Old Town Eureka and Henderson Center and connect to the 6.5-mile Eureka Waterfront Trail.
That backdrop helps explain why the G Street survey landed so hard. Earlier bike-plan outreach in 2023 drew 356 responses, far fewer than this year’s G Street turnout, and the city now faces a sharper political test than it did when the 518-page bike plan was adopted. After a split, contentious contract award for C Street in May 2025, the next round of street design will be judged not just on engineering, but on whether Eureka can win public buy-in before construction starts.
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