Construction on the massive overhaul of East Washington
Avenue from Blair Street to Theirer Road is slated to start next April. Billed as a makeover, the stated
goal of this project is to turn the corridor into a gateway street, a grand
approach befitting the grand dame on the hill - the state capitol. What it appears we are getting for 61
million dollars is a lot of new concrete, perhaps a fancy bridge and not much
else.. Oh, we will get cars,
perhaps a lot more cars.
East Washington sees a peak traffic load of 54,000 vehicles per day,
enough to make any traffic engineer salivate. The street is being widened to include a bike lane that will
run between the parking lane and a traffic lane. It is noted that in the future, this lane may become a
transit lane, or for that matter, another traffic lane.
Soon after being elected Mayor, Dave Cieslewicz proposed
some new ideas for the Avenue. His
ideas appeared to include sound urban planning. He proposed a grand boulevard,
one with calm frontage lanes dappled in shade. These side lanes would serve new communities he hoped would
one day be built along the corridor.
Unfortunately, Dave was elected one term too late. When this project was in development it
appears our elected officials were under the spell of the engineers – or
at least the vision of our leaders was focused on other things. What Dave will get for his
efforts are a few curb bump outs and some colored pavement at crosswalks.
So perhaps we missed our chance. Those who were savvy enough to know about public meetings
went. There are comments from many
of you on the city web page for this project. It is clear there are many concerns, from crossing the
street, to noise, air and light pollution. Clearly people wanted calmer traffic. However, there weren’t enough of
us, or perhaps, not enough in high places to make a difference. On the bright side, we will get a bike
lane. Though I’m not sure who will be brave enough to use it. We will also get some new park benches
on the avenue for those who like to get their carbon monoxide close to the
source.
Is it too late? Perhaps not. We should all write our mayor and our elected officials to
let them know how we feel. Why
should Dave or Brenda Konkel go out on a limb unless we are there to support
them? Perhaps we could
start by educating the users of East Washington Avenue (and Gorham/Johnson and
Williamson) about our issues. Here
are some ideas straight from the traffic engineers who posted tips on how they
will help motorists deal with reduced lanes during construction:
Though, I must say that
these tips are on the same report where engineers state that if we don’t
facilitate more traffic, energy (fuel) consumption will increase due to traffic
congestion. I think these folks
are from Los Angeles where mass transit never really caught on.
The thought of reducing capacity strikes fear not only in
the hearts of engineers, but it is also scary for people who don’t want
stressed-out drivers taking shortcuts through their neighborhoods. The fact is, there are 54,000
cars daily on E. Washington, 42,400 on Johnson/Gorham and 21,600 on Williamson. That’s a lot of traffic flowing
through the mile-wide Isthmus neighborhoods. The traffic safety and health issues with so many cars in
such a small geography, makes me think twice about raising my son on the
Isthmus.
We need as a community to reduce the amount of cars on the
Isthmus. Why not reduce the number
of lanes on East Washington?.
Let’s dump the $61 million we save into education and mass transit
. With the tips mentioned above by
the city engineers, perhaps we could reduce traffic and thereby save energy and
have cleaner air.
Certainly those crafty engineers could think up some devilish devices to
keep frustrated drivers out of our side streets.
For more information, including how to get involved or to
find out more on this project,
please see the links off my neighborhood web site at http://members.aol.com/mifflinstreet
. If you don’t have access
to the Internet, give me a call at 251-7713. Also, you can call Brenda Konkel who is on the Oversight
Committee.
- David Waugh
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Fall 2003 Table of Contents