News
City Ditches Admiral Way Road Diet, Citing Traffic Concerns
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is backing off from plans to put Admiral Way SW, in West Seattle, on a "road diet
" (removing two car lanes and adding a turn lane, a bike lane, and a sharrow), citing "citizen input and further [analysis of] the lane usage" on the road.
The original proposal was intended to address the fact that cyclists feel squeezed by speeding cars on the uphill portion of Admiral, the fact that drivers currently tend to speed on Admiral (the 85th percentile speed, meaning 15 percent of cars go faster and 85 percent go more slowly, is 41 mph uphill and 42 mph downhill in a 30-mph zone), and other safety concerns along that stretch of road, where a cyclist was recently hit and badly injured during the morning commute.
The original configuration included six-foot-wide bike lanes on both sides of Admiral. On the uphill side, the lane would be protected by a row of parking and a three-foot buffer between the bike lane and cars; on the downhill side, it would be protected from traffic by a three-foot painted buffer. The new configuration includes one five-foot bike lane with a two-foot buffer on the uphill side and shared-lane markings (sharrows) on the downhill side.
"We heard from people who were concerned about travel issues that are happening already because the street bottlenecks into the West Seattle Bridge," says Admiral project manager Virginia Coffman. Admiral, Hoffman says, doesn't have as many cross streets as other roads that have been rechannelized, so there's less need for a left turn lane. And Hoffman says the city is installing radar speed signs along the road and a median crossing island at Admiral and SW City View.
Doubtless, those are all needed safety improvements. However, given the controversy surrounding similar proposal elsewhere in the city (NE 125th in Lake City; Nickerson Ave.), the changes could be a precedent-setting move that will make it easier for neighbors to defeat road diets---which, as we've said ad nauseum, make the road safer for all users, not just cyclists---in the future.
The original proposal was intended to address the fact that cyclists feel squeezed by speeding cars on the uphill portion of Admiral, the fact that drivers currently tend to speed on Admiral (the 85th percentile speed, meaning 15 percent of cars go faster and 85 percent go more slowly, is 41 mph uphill and 42 mph downhill in a 30-mph zone), and other safety concerns along that stretch of road, where a cyclist was recently hit and badly injured during the morning commute.
The original configuration included six-foot-wide bike lanes on both sides of Admiral. On the uphill side, the lane would be protected by a row of parking and a three-foot buffer between the bike lane and cars; on the downhill side, it would be protected from traffic by a three-foot painted buffer. The new configuration includes one five-foot bike lane with a two-foot buffer on the uphill side and shared-lane markings (sharrows) on the downhill side.
"We heard from people who were concerned about travel issues that are happening already because the street bottlenecks into the West Seattle Bridge," says Admiral project manager Virginia Coffman. Admiral, Hoffman says, doesn't have as many cross streets as other roads that have been rechannelized, so there's less need for a left turn lane. And Hoffman says the city is installing radar speed signs along the road and a median crossing island at Admiral and SW City View.
Doubtless, those are all needed safety improvements. However, given the controversy surrounding similar proposal elsewhere in the city (NE 125th in Lake City; Nickerson Ave.), the changes could be a precedent-setting move that will make it easier for neighbors to defeat road diets---which, as we've said ad nauseum, make the road safer for all users, not just cyclists---in the future.
