Last spring, members of of the Mid-Valley Bicycle Club called us to let us know they’d heard a rumor that Waverly Drive in Albany might lose its bike lanes in the city’s transportation plan, to accommodate more car lanes.
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It was sort of true. The city is working on its Transportation System Plan, looking out to the year 2030, and under their modeling assumptions the intersections on Waverly Drive were “breaking down” in 2030 – that is, they were ceasing to function in the models because traffic was getting so bad. (This does beg the question of what the modeling assumptions were: What gas prices would prevail in 2030? How many people would keep driving despite the terrible gridlock? Would driver-discouragement or transit- and bike-encouragement programs enacted between now and then reduce traffic?)
The way that traffic engineers often fix this is by widening the roads leading into the intersections to hold more traffic. Historically this has worked fine because there has been ample federal money for new and expanded roads, and because the roads have had extra space on their margins into which they could grow. But Waverly Drive is different.
Waverly Drive has houses on both sides, and a sidewalk on one side. It has bikes lanes in both directions. To fix the problem at the intersections, the city was considering widening Waverly to five car lanes, which would require so much space that, of the on-street car parking lanes, the bike lanes and the sidewalk, only one could remain. And if the bike lane stayed, the driveways would be too foreshortened to fit cars (that could no longer be parked on the street). Was this road really going to start munching away at the adjacent residences to a handle all the traffic? (If you want to get technical, take a look at the table on page 8 of this memo (4 MB).)
The analyst charged with solving the problem was Ron Irish (who is himself a bicyclist and a BTA member). He was juggling the conflicting demands of a City Council that wanted the intersection traffic problems engineered out, the people advocating for keeping bike and pedestrian facilities, and the neighbors who needed their driveways and front yards.
In case you’ve ever wondered what good Oregon’s Bicycle Bill does, this is a nice example. Sympathetic city engineers and planners who value bike and pedestrian facilities can still get backed into a corner as Ron was; but the fact that bike facilities are required on new or expanded roads by law gives them some back-up. And with a cut-and-dry Bike Bill case like this one, the BTA – or anyone – might sue.
But it didn’t even come close to that. The Albany Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission kept pushing Ron for a better solution on Waverly Drive, and with the help of consultants from Kittelson & Associates, Ron found a way to fit everything on the same street. In his words:
“The downside of the current plan is that we will have some merge movements in the northbound direction at the south end of Waverly Drive, and will need to implement some turn restrictions at a couple of the side street intersections as well. The advantages are that it will all fit within the current right-of-way and curb widths, allows us to keep both bike and sidewalk facilities, will provide enough extra capacity to accommodate the automobile volumes we expect through 2030, and is the least expensive of all of the options we looked at. And, of course, it will keep us from being accused of being anti-bike and getting sued.”
Public discussion on the list of projects, including Waverly Drive, starts soon, and then the City Council will vote on the final plan next year. Nice work Ron.
