SDOT's Plans for N 80th St at Aurora Ave N

Eric Widstrand, SDOT Traffic Operations, attended the steering committee meeting on April 4th. He told us that congestion at N 80th and Aurora N has brought them to a design that eliminates left turns both eastbound and westbound from 80th onto Aurora and changes N 80th to a configuration with 2 lanes eastbound and 1 lane westbound from Linden to Wallingford.

What?

Congestion is inevitable. It's just a matter of when. More than enough of our rights of ways are taken up for vehicular lanes. 80th is a small street that passes by many single family residences and Bagley Elementary. I think the context suggests a narrowed corridor of safety, visibility, and slow speeds.

Some street trees and other plantings, broad sidewalks, textured crosswalks, a ped light at the school crossing at Stone, and a left turn arrow in the signal cycle at N 80th (and Greenwood Ave N) would be a logical direction to go and a reasonable use of the right of way.

More lanes for vehicular traffic is not a relevant direction to go in 2007. Limiting circulation of cars onto the state route is counterintuitive. The streets around 80th and 85th are already heavily burdened with cut-through traffic and not a calming device in sight. No lefts from arterials to state routes just exacerbates the situation.

Enabling killing speeds of vehicles in a school zone is unreasonable.

A little congestion is something we need to get used to. More lanes for cars in such a limited right of way does not make a complete street. Let's put our transportation dollars where our policies and propaganda are. Walkable Seattle, right? These glorified ramps from I-5 to Puget Sound have got to stop. Now would be a good time.

Planned Arterials?

I was looking at the street classification map on-line at seattle.gov and noticed something I hadn't noticed before. It is something called Planned Arterials. Maybe I missed it previously or maybe it's new. Anyway, there's a few of those planned in the south sector, and north sectors of the Greater Greenwood Bi/Ped Safety Coalition area.

I'd like to know more about it.

It worries me when residential streets become defacto arterials. I don't know how this particular thing works. Planned Arterials. I would not want my street to be reclassified as an arterial.

I think we already dedicate more than enough of our right of ways to vehicles.

Take a look at this map. Look at the legend for planned arterials.

There's one over Phinney Ridge and down to Market St. Another couple in Blue Ridge (14th) / near Carkeek (105th) and some up in Broadview as extensions of streets west and Linden Ave. Dale Johnson from the Broadview CC said that by taking the arterial classification on Linden, it puts them in line for street improvements, but does it really? Look what's happening on Greenwood N? Is that an improvement? Are there any guarantees that Linden wouldn't eventually become a formalized bypass for Aurora?

Seems risky.

http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/streetclassmaps/planwebsmall.pdf

If you know more about it, please post.