Item A: South Willamette Street Improvement Plan

Home Browse Search

Mr. Henry, thanks for the opportunity to send you input. I hope you don't regret opening yourself up for the barrage of communications I suspect you will receive. I wrote before but I'll try to be more specific this time. I'd like to see one lane each direction, bike lanes both directions, and TURN lanes at every intersection. NOT a (what we used to call) a suicide lane! Drivers use those lanes to pull out of driveways and stop in them to await a chance to merge into traffic which is illegal but done all the time. There are so many driveways, you'd have cars facing each other constantly, trying to turn into and out of driveways. Add a few pedestrians who can't or won't walk to the nearest intersection and we'd have mayhem out there. Each turn lane should consume about 1/3 of every block in each direction and the middle 1/3 would be given to bus stops. Bike lanes would go out at these bus stops toward the center but still to the right of the driving lanes. There was a letter in today's R-G from a guy who says if there were just one lane in each direction commuters would cease using Willamette. I say, GOOD! There are plenty of alternatives which should be used for commuting because they have many fewer commercial establishments. I was present when a northbound "commuter", in a hurry as so many are, switched lanes to get around someone trying to make a left to head west and crashed into a driver headed south and trying to make a left to the east. The carnage came very close to involving several pedestrians. South Willamette also needs a lot more police presence, incidentally. Or make the speed limit 15 to keep people under 25. People drive through there like maniacs. Have you read this: http://www.walklive.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ITE-Complete-Streets-Article- April-2011-Burden-Litman.pdf I might have told you that I was part of a Willamette study that Dan Burden did nearly ten years ago. He proposed a complete streets design then. I have asked the lead for the community outreach about this and she said she would look into it. Can you find that work the City paid for?