City, state and regional planners all agree: Kalamazoo needs to make its roads more bike-friendly. Last year they sought input on where to start. And tomorrow they’re again asking people to share their thoughts.
Two busy roads have emerged as candidates for non-motorized makeovers. WMUK’s Sehvilla Mann spoke with the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Jason Latham about what could change on Stadium Drive and Michigan Avenue.
On whether the Michigan Avenue-Stadium Drive corridors can give some of their space over to bike lanes
We didn’t look at in great detail, but we did have a consultant on board who helped work with our traffic safety engineers – and we really looked at that intersection from Stadium Drive to Oakland, so – right down to downtown, and there are a lot of lanes there and it looks like we could probably take one of those lanes, still keep the parking and maybe design a protected bike lane in that location.
It looked like we could deal with the average daily traffic with one less lane. But as you move to the east, and you end up with only three lanes and I think that would just be a little too tight to be able to fit that many cars through that eastern half of downtown, with losing a lane.
The nice thing is if you look at that charrette and what we talked about, we talked about maybe that trail system or bike system or anything that would be protected, potentially – actually went off of the state trunk line and onto city streets.
On MDOT’s interest in non-motor traffic
We’ve always wanted public input, and we’ve been designing wider shoulders and bike lanes for years. Years and years. I think at this point we’re starting to I think get a little more feedback on where the future of transportation is going, and I think a lot of the studies are showing that the urban areas are getting a little bit more built up.
I think that the suburban sprawl was going on for quite some time; now we’re seeing a little bit more concentration in downtown and once you get into downtowns, a lot of people don’t drive as much. So we’re seeing the average daily traffic – those numbers – either stay the same, year after year where, in the 70s, 80s and 90s it kept going up.
It was almost exponential. You just saw so many more people driving on a regular basis. Now it’s kind of flattened out. So we’re thinking that more people are starting to walk or take public transportation or ride their bikes.
On when the plans might be realized
We have a vision; that’s the first step. The next step is to actually, formally bring it into our five-year plan and start the design. So I can tell you it’s not going to happen in the next couple of years. That’s for sure. But we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we can – make sure we get to this location as soon as possible.
