Planning Project

The City of Laguna Niguel advanced a multi-disciplinary program of strategies to improve safety for students walking and cycling to Niguel Hills Middle School (NHMS). These strategies are encompassed by the Niguel Hills Middle School Safety Program. NHMS produces a high volume of pedestrians and bicyclists, including students riding electric bicycles, at the intersection of Golden Lantern and Shark Bay. The high number of motorists, in addition to multimodal users on Shark Bay (the roadway accessing the school), creates a lot of conflicting activity on the roadway surrounding the school, particularly during arrival and dismissal times. The City reviewed the traffic conditions and identified funding to install engineering features such as high visibility crosswalks, signal timing adjustments, video detection equipment, and yellow reflective tape on signals. Aligned with the engineering efforts, the City partnered with NMHS and hosted a Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) Go Human demonstration event that served to link traffic engineering, enforcement, and education. The September 2022 Go Human event demonstrated artistic crosswalks at two high-visibility crosswalks at the school campus. Students were then challenged to submit artwork in a school contest to develop painted crosswalk designs at four locations; two on the school campus and two along Shark Bay leading to the campus from Golden Lantern. Using the selected student contest entries, four artistic crosswalks were painted by the City along Shark Bay in November 2022.