The in basket: Ralph Gribbin and Gary Blankenship are hoping the new traffic pattern in Manette with the opening of its new bridge will be smoothed with some changes on the short block of Pitt Avenue between Harkins and East 11th Street.
“What are the city’s plans for the streets leading to the bridge?” Gary asked. “At the very least, shouldn’t parking along (that part of Pitt) be stopped? Better, shouldn’t it be widened?”
Ralph would go further. “Ever since the old bridge was closed, Manette traffic has had to go straight through on Harkins to Pitt, stop, turn right on Pitt for one short block and stop at 11th Street before turning left onto it,” he wrote.
“Leaving those two stop signs where they are stops the smooth flow of traffic from the bridge to 11th and up to Perry and Trenton avenues.
“Removing those two stop signs, placing a Yield sign on westbound 11th just before Pitt, and a stop sign on eastbound 11th just before Pitt would make this the thoroughfare that should exist in that area.
“The same basic layout has existed at Trenton Avenue and 11th for years without any problem,” he said.
The out basket: I drove around there and it does have all the earmarks of a bottleneck, with little room for anything very large to make the turn if there is oncoming traffic.
The city of Bremerton is taking a wait-and-see approach to this, says Gunnar Fridriksson of the city engineers office, to see what drivers do naturally.
“The city had numerous conversations with (the state) about the after-configuration of the streets in Manette,” he said. “… What was decided was to wait a bit after the new bridge was open to see how traffic reacted with the new configuration. Often it just takes a couple of weeks for issues to iron themselves out and drivers to adjust to the new situation, and we did not want to spend unnecessary effort for signage and the like.”
There will be some changes made in that area, probably next year, but they’re not intended to help the flow to and from the bridge.
“The project is a Low Impact Development street project,” Gunnar said, “similar to what occurred on Pacific Avenue with pervious paving, rain gardens, etc…
“We will be going from the west end of (East) 11th Street, east as far as the money will allow us. We originally were trying to make it to Perry Avenue, but with the funding received, are trying to at least make it to Scott, but it may just be to Pitt.
“It should be a good complement to the redone Whitey Domstad viewscape,” he said.
Thanks for the research.
“The city of Bremerton is taking a wait-and-see approach to this”
I’m not surprised the city would wait for construction money to do anything major, but a good part of the problem is the parking on the West side of Pitt. Removing those posts to allow a wider street shouldn.t take all that much money.”
“Wait-and-see” seems the wrong response to me, for something with such a simple solution.
Thank you.
Gary
Pervious paving? Is that the same stuff that is aleady deteriorating on Pacific that the town council wants to raise taxes to replace? That’s from an article in the Sun 11/18/2011 saying they really want to institute the $20 car tab tax.
Hey guys, I brought this issue up to the City months ago. Maybe you were at the meetings? City engineer Larry Matel spoke about all the engineering conventions he’d attended on traffic calming. I pointed out that we want traffic to move along 11th, the retail core of Manette. The stop signs on Pitt and Harkin encourage people to bypass 11th and travel through residential streets off Winfield.
Here was a story I posted back then.
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/oct/06/adam-brockus-dist-3-meeting-discusses-manette-brid/
Larry and his engineering conventions are no longer with the City of Bremerton. Larry said he was going to put up traffic counters to see if more cars were travelling up Winfield as I asserted. But he never did. I’d be interested in working with anyone who wants the city to make a common sense decision here.