Could there be a safer, friendlier, better version of upper Washington Ave in Albany?

That was the question at the heart of the the public kickoff meeting Wednesday for the Washington Avenue-Patroon Creek Corridor Study. The Capital District Transportation Committee is working with the city of Albany, the University at Albany, and engineering consultants to look at how the important transportation artery could work better for all sorts of people -- pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.

This topic has been popping up a lot in recent years because of the ongoing development along the corridor, including the addition of private student housing. As a first step in addressing some of these concerns, the city of Albany lowered the speed limit on the stretch from 45 to 30 mph in 2016.

"We want to know from the users of the road, the neighbors of the road, what you think of the road, what you think the problems are," CDTC executive director Mike Franchini told the crowd.

Here are three quick takeaways...

Basic info

The Washington Avenue-Patroon Creek Corridor Study is looking at the segment of Washington Ave from Brevator Street on the east to interchange for I-90 Exit 2 on the west.

The $90,000 study is backed by CDTC, and the engineering firm Creighton Manning is heading it up. It will be working toward producing a draft report with recommendations for sometime this fall, at which time there will be another opportunity for the public to offer input.

In the meantime, you can submit ideas and suggestions at the project's website.

Slides from the Wednesday's presentation are at the top in large format -- click or scroll all the way up.

This study won't necessarily directly lead to a project that changes Washington Ave. It's more about getting a handle on what's happening there and then suggesting what the range of possibilities are.

OK, onto to those three takeaways...

The current road doesn't really match with the way people want to use it

The meeting drew about 50 people and they had plenty to say during a Q&A session and group mapping sessions about issues they have with the road in its current form. A quick, condensed, not-comprehensive list of concerns:

+ Speeding, red light running, and crashes.

+ Crosswalks and are far apart, the wait times to cross with the signals are too long, and the road itself is very wide for a pedestrian to cross.

+ The connections with adjacent parcels such as the Harriman State Office Campus and Patroon Creek development are confusing and hard to use.

+ The ramps pulling in traffic from those adjacent parcels create dangerous interactions between vehicles and bikes.

+ The shoulders are full of gravel and debris that make them dangerous for cyclists to use.

+ And at least one person asked about restoring the speed limit to its older, higher level. (Driving at 30 mph with the road in its current design does feel very slow.)

Of course, people who are perfectly happy with something don't tend to show up at public meetings to voice their satisfaction. That said, people did have a wide range of complaints.

It sounds like there's a chance the recommendations will include a road diet or something similar



One of the road dieted sections of Madison Ave.

Many of those complaints point to there being a fundamental problem with the design of this part of Washington Ave -- mainly that it was built to handle much more traffic than it actually does.

Washington Ave is six lanes wide near Exit 2, five lanes wide near UAlbany's Collins Circle, and four lanes wide by Brevator Street.

In a presentation about the current condition of Washington Ave, Creighton Manning's Jesse Vogl highlighted the traffic volumes along the road: 19,500 vehicles per day by Exit 2 and 15,600 vehicles per day near the connection with Route 85.

Those totals put this section of Washington Ave below the 20,000 vehicles-per-day threshold recommended by the Federal Highway Administration for considering a road diet, the sort of reconfiguration the city has been applying to Madison Ave in Pine Hills. A road diet typically includes a reduction in the number of vehicle lanes in order to calm traffic and open up space for pedestrian and bike amenities. (Madison Ave traffic volume: 15,500.)



A slide from the presentation.

Vogl also showed a graph depicting the number of vehicles per hour along Washington Ave throughout the day. There was no point when that figure rose above the guideline for a three-lane roadway.

That's not to say that a road diet is necessarily the best choice for Washington Ave. But the numbers suggest it's something that will get consideration.

The bigger picture is worth thinking about

This corridor study is focused tightly along Washington Ave itself. But it's hard to talk about many of the issues without also talking about, for example, the ring roads around the State Office Campus, or access at the Patroon Creek development, or the fact that Brevator is bizarrely wide.

In retrospect, there are probably a lot of planning decisions in this corridor that people would like to have back. Maybe there's an alternate timeline in which Route 85 doesn't act like a barrier to extending one of the city's most-desired neighborhoods, the State Campus isn't surrounded by a moat of asphalt, and a big luxury apartment complex is un-walkable.

That's a lot to unwind, and much of it is outside the scope of this study. It's still worth thinking and talking about, though, because there's a lot of potential in this part of the city, especially if the state ever decides to truly shake things up on the State Office Campus. And as with any situation of this type, the best time to start planning for it will always have been sometime in the past.

Earlier

+ There were a bunch of good comments on the post previewing this meeting.

+ A way to say "more like this" when it comes to talking about how streets are designed

+ A cookbook for designing Albany streets