Item A: South Willamette Street Improvement Plan

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Please add me to the mailing list. Also note that I am really concerned about the impact of the potential bike lane thereby reducing lanes for cars and emergency vehicles. All one has to do is to look at the traffic back up on 29th, especially from Amazon Parkway, to go west, to see what might happen if the same configuration is used for north-south traffic. It is difficult to get onto East 29th from Southtowne without going several blocks east to cut over. Willamette is already backed up at 5:00 hours often to 27th. Will it be backed up under the new configuration to 24th? Will it make it even more difficult to cross a lane to get to a business on the other side? Likewise in an emergency where will cars pull off to...the bike lanes? Doesn't seem safe to me. Willamette is the major north-south road for South Eugene. Don't do to it what happened in the Crest Drive area! Dangerous to navigate. While I understand the plight of the bike, I think there must be a solution off Willamette to accomodate them, a beautiful connect with the already exciting bike path to the north of us. They are small and more flexible than a car and can easily cut off to arrive to a certain block on Willamette. They don't really need all the roads designated for them. Please give the impact of more crowded lanes some consideration. The public involvement plan illustrated on the City's web site shows the process terminating with staff recommendations being proposed to the planning commission and to City Council. During the last community forum, you mentioned that (if I understood correctly) the project was listed on the CIP because the TGM grant was obtained prior to the street bond measure passing (is this correct?). And (continuing with my foggy recollection) that now that we have the funding through the bond measure, it is conceivable that you could use a different process (not the CIP??) that bypasses the council. I'm sure my description lacks accuracy. But if not it brings up an interesting question: is there a way this whole process could be accomplished without requiring the approval of the City Council? If so, would your team be willing to consider that alternative? In my mind, this would take a lot of pressure off of staff and make the process less susceptible to special interest pressure. Is it possible to have the bus stops moved off the road in this redesign? Entirely off the road, not blocking a travel lane or a bike lane? Maybe we could get some business owners willing to give up some street real estate in return for something. Or are you only going curb-to-curb and reusing the existing space? I understand the proposal for re striping Willamette from 18th to 24th is for single north and south lanes and a turn lane. I live in South Eugene and drive that corridor 2 to 6 times daily. At the peak times 9- 12-5 the current configuration barely handles the traffic. If it is reduced to single north south lanes the congestion and back up traffic will bring the area to a stand still. Center turn lanes only account for left turns, traffic is stalled much of the time buy right turns into and out of shopping centers and waiting for pedestrians at the crosswalk intersections. Traffic in that area must have 2 lane options to maneuver left turn right turns and the buses that take up the right lane for stops. I think at 24th and Willamette in the northbound lanes the left lane should be a left turn lane and the right lane - straight ahead and right turn. Currently, the left lane is left turn and straight and the right lane is right turn. Traffic gets hung up there a lot for those of us heading straight north. I think there are few bikes on Willamette because it is so unsafe to ride there - they are often on the sidewalks heading in opposite direction of traffic and I and my husband have had near collisions several times with bikers on sidewalks. Scary. I tried riding a bike on Willamette - too vulnerable for me. Good luck with your work. wow. Big deal.