As the 8th. ward's representative to the Lake Street PAC, I'd like to respond to Scott Persons' comments about whether the 4-lane options chosen by the PAC for the west side of Lake Street (from Dupont to Hiawatha) will "increase capacity" on Lake. Put simply, that's certainly what they're intended to do, despite the fact that Lake currently serves 4 lanes of traffic. How does that work? Largely by eliminating some on-street parking and giving bikes and buses short shrift.
Here are the details:
The two options chosen by the PAC this morning are 4-lane options that are designed to increase traffic flow and accommodate projections for future traffic growth. All four of the options presented to the PAC members were evaluated by the Technical Advisory Committee to determine which options would increase levels of service (often referred to by acronym (LOS), these are "unacceptable" delays since they may require cars to stop through one or more cycles of a traffic signal). Current levels of service were generally deemed to be adequate or acceptable; however, LOS projections for SOME intersections on Lake for the year 2025 were considered unacceptable. So what are these future projections based on? From what I can tell, the county is projecting a growth in traffic of between .53-.75% per year.
Now to clarify the differences between options W-2 and W-3. Option W-2 includes a left-hand turn lane, with inadequate space for buses loading/unloading (8 ft), inadequate accommodations for a shared bicycle traffic lane (11ft), and inadequate width for parking lanes (8 ft). Option W-2 also calls for the number of parking spaces on Lake to be reduced by half, from 300 to 150.
The second option chosen by the PAC, W-3, includes designs for left-hand turn lanes and parking on one side of the street. Sidewalks in the W-3 plan are a little wider (12 feet as opposed to 10 ft), but the space accommodations for buses loading and unloading are still considered to be inadequate (bus stops are in a traffic lane on the side without parking), the shared traffic lane width for bicycles is still inadequate (11 ft), and on- street parking spaces have been reduced to 80.
So options W-2 and W-3 do not provide adequate accommodations for buses loading and unloading or for bicycles. (Sidewalk space for both options is considered adequate for pedestrian traffic but is probably not sufficient to accommodate cafe tables and outdoor dining.) So what do these two options do? They keep traffic flowing quickly and they accommodate the increase in traffic that is projected for Lake in the future.
Oh, and incidentally, these two options are the only ones that allow Lake Street to remain within the State-Aid Standards for federal funding. Yes folks, that's right: those 3-lane solutions that seemed so attractive to many of us in the community aren't feasible because they fall outside the funding requirements. And after all, securing federal funding seems to be what this project is REALLY about.
And lest this information be discounted because I've recently joined STRIDE, let me say that my sources come right from the County and from Smith Parker (see the Transportation Analysis prepared by SRF Consulting dated August 13, 2003 and the memo from the Technical Advisory Committee to the PAC, dated November 12, 2003).
Liz McLemore
Bancroft Neighborhood
