Join SDOT staff next Wednesday evening to learn more about changes to the 23rd Avenue corridor, including the planned route for the Central Area Neighborhood Greenway. The public open house begins at 5:00 p.m. at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School.
Open House
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
5:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Thurgood Marshall Elementary School
2401 S Irving Street
Accessible by Metro Routes 4, 8 and 48
The purpose of the projects in the Central Area is to balance safety, mobility and reliability needs for a variety of users in the area, as well as enhance the local community and natural environment.
Improvements in each phase include:
- New pavement
- Sidewalk improvements
- Lighting improvements
- Increased transit reliability
- Traffic signal improvements
- Public art
- Adjacent neighborhood greenway
The corridor changes address the current state of the roadway – hundreds of patches where potholes existed, narrow lanes, a lack of turn pockets at key intersections and narrow and uneven sidewalks – as well as balance the needs of users in the area. SDOT will redesign 23rd Avenue between E John Street and Rainier Avenue S (Phases 1 and 2) from the current four lanes (two lanes in each direction) to three lanes (one lane in each direction and a center turn lane). Between E Roanoke Street and E John Street (Phase 3), the road will remain four lanes. SDOT will also implement a nearby neighborhood greenway, called the Central Area Neighborhood Greenway. This greenway will provide a safer, calmer street for people to walk and ride bicycles.
Phase 1 roadway construction is expected to begin in late 2014, with greenway implementation prior to roadway construction.
For roads like 23rd Avenue with fewer than 25,000 vehicles per day, redesigning a street from four lanes to three can have many benefits, including:
- Reducing collisions
- Reducing speeding
- Allowing vehicles to turn without blocking traffic
- Managing drivers cutting in and out of travel lanes
- Creating space for wider sidewalks
- Making streets easier to cross
- Easing travel for large vehicles (e.g. buses)
Learn more about a similar project on Nickerson Street. As a result of the project, the road became safer and kept people and goods moving.
For more information about the 23rd Avenue Corridor Improvement Project, please visit the city’s Web page at http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/23rd_ave.htm and www.seattle.gov/transportation/centralgreenway.htm for information about the Central Area Neighborhood Greenway, or attend the February 26 open house.
Translated project information will be available in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Oromo, Tigrinya, and Amharic.