What about that roundabout? Bremerton city officials have received renderings of what another roundabout — this time on the Manette Bridge’s eastern edge — would look like.
The city has a $1.7 million pedestrian and bicycle safety grant to fund road improvements on Washington Avenue, between the bridge and Fifth Street. Construction is slated for 2015.
Nothing is set in stone, Bremerton Public Works Director Chal Martin points out. The roundabout would cost about $600,000, leaving the project with around $1 million more to do the rest of the roadway. Wider sidewalks and bike lanes are pretty much mandatory (given the name of the state program from which the fund came) and Martin says that means the road will be channeled down from two lanes in each direction to one (as you can see in the photo) because there isn’t room for two once the bike lane and sidewalk widening occurs.
But it’s early in the process. Opinions welcomed. Below is a rendering of the improvements with a traditional intersection, for you to also consider.
When N. Washington is narrowed to one lane each direction (and there’s no question this must be done to bring the sidewalks up to code) , a roundabout is the only way traffic can flow w/o backing all the way to 2nd St, if traffic lights or three-way stop lights are the only options. The roundabout on the Mannett side seems to be working fine.
Has the tradeoffs between maintaining the traffic light vs the roundabout been factored into this study?
Not planting trees along Washington Ave.(per the rendering of the roundabout option) should be a cost saving also.
I am not from your area, but I am in an area where we have roundabaouts. I avoid them like the plague, folks just don’t seem to understand how drive them. Almost every time they stop like a stop sign and not yield. So think about that as you discuss putting this in. I also know that these are very difficult for truckers. My son drives and he says these are just not made big enough for them. We have had some truck roll over in them. Which then backs up traffic for hours cause you have to get the truck righted. I don’t know if you have a high volume of trucks in that area but think about that too as you discuss this.
I love roundabouts, and I think this one would be a wonderful, functional addition to the west end of the Manette bridge. I highly recommend working closely with Kitsap Transit to ensure that buses are able to navigate the sharp turns. I rarely see large trucks on this bridge. A roundabout would allow traffic to move more freely to cross the bridge or to head on over to 11th Street. Trees are great, but purchasing the trees and ongoing care of the trees might not be worth the investment. A better use of funds than trees could be adding a tiny pocket park with permeable surface and a couple of benches for pedestrians. That would of course be dependent on the availability of that little square of property beneath the rundown houses that are to be demolished.
Pedestrian and street-scape improvements along this area of Washington Ave will be a great improvement for the neighborhood and downtown. It would be nice to see the improvements continue to the north from the bridge intersection. This area is a busy connection point for pedestrians accessing Evergreen Park and runners and walkers doing the bridge-to-bridge loop.
The single-lane configuration seems to be the right scale for the road and current traffic patterns. I agree with Richard that the roundabout option would be best to keep traffic moving during the 15-minute afternoon rush.
2015 is a ways away. The intersection design should anticipate and accommodate the proposed Spyglass Apartment building. The best design would be to access the garage from Washington Ave.
Thanks to Bob Dollar last night for pointing out that the rendering with the traditional intersection has a designated bike lane on the roadway itself. While the rendering of the round-a-bout has no designated bike lane and has the bikes using the sidewalk with pedestrians with an oddly placed light pole that appears to be smack in the middle of where the bike lane would be. Some explanation on that deviation in the design would be appreciated. That has become a typical Bremerton engineering pattern. I can think of more than one location right this second where a pole or obstacle was placed in the path of a sidewalk or ramp taking it out of ADA compliance that exists right now and was from recent projects within the past 3 years.
Also every time one of these projects comes up where green features are included it is done so per DCD codes and the Public Works Department staff neither of which has to deal with maintenance beyond the completion of the project or if we are lucky the first year. Instead the Parks Department, who typically has zero opportunity to advise or make any recommendations on the plantings historically per this type of project, will have the full on burden of attempting to maintain it in the future under the parks budget. (ie the Gateway is the perfect example of rogue planners doing whatever the heck they want and then dumping it on parks or more recently volunteer citizen taxpayers to clean up and or maintain).
The Parks Department has no money built into its budget for the maintenance of any additional green features. Nor does it receive any additional money for these add ones via other department decisions. The Mayor, the Council, DCD and Public Works needs to get their collective act together with an improved green feature maintenance funding plan before one step of this project leaves the table. This is nothing new but when you are the department that does not have to deal with the financial ramifications you are not forced into making any corrections in your decision making when it comes to future projects.
And those red area’s had better not be bricks. Bricks are already causing problems on Pacific and 4th, yet even more of them are going in right now on 11th.
With the gutting of the TBD last night for the Lower Wheaton Way, electrical, railing and sidewalk overruns any additional projects like this one coming down the pike, will either suffer for lack of funding to cover overruns that always occur with the current city talent pool. For those of you who are not familiar the money that comes from the TBD is in significant part your car tab licensing fees. Remember the ones that were promised to be collected from you and used for road maintenance around your homes and businesses. Well that tab road money is now being used to cover overages for the Lower Wheaton Project so that lighting features, sidewalks and railings don’t get fully cut from it.