Median islands aren’t currently on the table for the Washington Ave redesign, because a turning lane has been planned for that space.

As city planner Jeannette Brugger pointed out to Ashley Hahn this fall, when she asked about adding a buffered bike lane, there’s only so much space on the street. Keeping the 10-foot travel lanes and introducing back-in angled parking is chewing up a lot of that space.

What about creating a buffered bike lane, like we have on Spruce and Pine streets?

“It’s a matter of fitting everything in really,” explained Jeannette Brugger, a transportation planner at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission who has worked on the Washington Avenue project. “There’s a lot of competition for space. We had to keep the 10-foot [wide] lanes, keep back-in, angled parking, two travel lanes and left turn lane.”

Bike lanes must be at least five feet wide and buffers require three additional feet of width. So adding buffers would require an additional six feet that would have to come somewhere like the median or angled parking.

The debate is also not fully settled over whether Washington Ave. should continue to have five lanes, or whether capacity should be reduced to three lanes, and that also has implications for safety. The more lanes there are, the more conflict points there are.

This image below, comparing a traditional four-way intersection to a roundabout illustrates the concept of a conflict point.