Item A: South Willamette Street Improvement Plan

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Lets think outside the "street." Upper Willamette St between 29th and 24th perhaps should be visualized not as a through street but to facilitate shopping. Amazon Parkway is the logical throughway for traffic into town down (revising the transition with Pearl of course...) By creating a "parking avenue", merging private frontage parking with circulation eliminating curbs and driveways, auto, bus, pedestrian and bicycle access could be coordinated and planned into the design of the layout. Traffic volume would be reduced since through traffic would bypass on Amazon as well as accessed from Amazon. Deliveries should access the stores from the streets behind. Utility poles should be underground to reduce visual clutter and trees planted along with other calming green shade features to attract consumers. Bike paths, sidewalks and bus transit could flow through the district facilitating access to the various stores in a park like setting. A Willamette Commercial District should focus on a multi-mode circulation pattern for destination shoppers by eliminating through traffic. Without that congestion and traffic pressure, more people would be attracted to visit and shop with far less stress. I just spoke with Dan Burden, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, (614) 595-0976. http://www.walklive.org/about-the-institute/our-team/Dan mentioned that he has handled "road diets" of 4 lanes to 3, resulting in a 30% increase in business for merchants. Currently he's working on a project in Long Island, NY with 33,000 vehicles daily in just 2 lanes. He believes this can be done by removing the traffic lights and using mini-round-abouts.I mentioned that South Willamette St has a volume of 16-18,000 vehicles and he said that was a "piece of cake". Ran across this and wanted to forward it to you and Cogito. http://mayormcginn.seattle.gov/nickerson-street-project-improves- safety/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nickerson-street-project-improves-safety Nickerson Before and After: http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/media/PDF/120301PR- NickersonBeforeAndAfterStudy.pdf Stone Way Before and After: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/docs/StoneWaybeforeafterFINAL.pdf