Earlier this month I published a memo from Public Works Director Dave Barber to Second District Council Person Barbara Van Auken outlining four options for improving safety along the West Main corridor east of University Street. The Bradley Scout has since published an update with some interesting information:
…Van Auken said Option 4 from the memorandum has been selected, and city council will not vote about it unless the issue becomes much more costly. She said the decision was up to those who use the area, which includes the West Bluff Council, area businesses and Bradley.
The selected option includes lowering the speed from 30 to 25 miles per hour from Bourland Avenue to University Street and painting three and five feet buffer zones between sidewalks and the road.
“This is a way to get people to start thinking about stopping driving so close to the curb,” Van Auken said. “Ideally what we want to do is expand the sidewalk wider in that area, but we don’t have the money for it right now.”
So the changes can be made without any vote from the City Council (I find this somewhat surprising), and the plan is to move ahead with implementing Option 4, which looks like this:
As you can see, one east-bound lane of Main Street is being removed, and the remaining lanes are being shifted slightly to the south, moving traffic away from the sidewalks on both the north and south sides of the street. No on-street parking is being added between University and Underhill (shown above), but there will be some parking added to the north side of the street between Underhill and Bourland. Lowering the speed limit to 25 mph for these two blocks is the weakest part of this plan, as it will have no practical effect. If the speed limit is 30 east of Bourland and west of University, the odds of someone slowing down for 700 feet is nil.
But I’m glad some action is finally going to be taken to start making Main Street pedestrian-friendly. Getting cars further away from the curb and eventually widening the sidewalks is a small step in the right direction. It has long been suggested that an easy and cheap way to begin is by simply restriping the roadway, and that appears to be what they’re finally going to do. The changes are being made thanks to a state grant of $48,491. (This is the new trend — we use state money for basic City services, and we use City debt to subsidize private development.)
There’s a lot more that needs to be done, but this is a good start.