Nickerson: Vital for neighborhood traffic flow and access to the tunnel
The McGinn Administration’s recent move to redirect Nickerson Street (on Queen Anne’s north edge) from an all-too-busy four lane road into a more modest two lane road with bike lanes and a center turn lane is not cut and dry.
There’s been a lot of attention to the policy shift in large part because it’s a tangible reflection of the Mayor’s passionate commitment to improved bike and pedestrian safety. I certainly respect his view and his policy priority.
One larger public policy concern, however, is the impact on our neighborhood traffic and access relative to the deep bore tunnel. As you can imagine, the city has identified Nickerson as a major arterial necessary to ensure access from Queen Anne, Magnolia and Ballard to the tunnel. N. 46th in Fremont and N. 39th in Frelard as well as Nickerson and then finally West Mercer all play critical roles in ensuring quality traffic flow from the West to the East in our city to the SR 99.
SDOT does not appear to have an aggressive plan to ensure the integrity of those three major arterial roads in a post-tunnel environment. The kicker is that the Mayor is opposed to investment in the West Mercer arterial improvements that would strengthen traffic flow from Elliot Avenue (ie especially critical to Magnolia, Ballard).
So, in effect, the Administration is opposed to improving BOTH a primary arterial (West Mercer) that three major neighborhoods–Ballard, Magnolia, and QA–need to access the north portal to the tunnel AND capacity for the ‘second’ major arterial (Nickerson) as well. In fairness, McGinn is accurate and right in that “it’s just paint” so at least we are not making major, permanent structural changes to Nickerson that can’t be reversed. That gives me hope that he’s open to reviewing the data on either side.
If you make Nickerson difficult to access the tunnel, it will obviously force more people to West Mercer. That’s exactly the opposite direction literally and figuratively we want people to travel. We want the 150,000 people of the NW neighborhoods to use the closest, most convenient northern arterial to SR 99 and not funnel unnaturally into West Mercer.
The unknown question is whether these changes will indeed make it more difficult to travel from West to East. I don’t know the answer but intuitively a one lane direction during rush hour traveling to SR 99 seems more difficult than a two lane road.
Still, from a safety perspective, let’s appreciate that Nickerson indeed needs reform since it is dangerous and traffic moves too quickly. Students at Seattle Pacific University deserve a safer campus environment, and we need to make safety improvements to benefit everyone. And from an aesthetic perspective Nickerson could use some TLC.
I am struggling that SDOT identifies Nickerson as a major, vital arterial for traffic flow and access from three neighborhoods with 150,000 people and yet says there is virtually no impact from the people trying to access the deep bore tunnel.
No one in our neighborhood wants Nickerson to become a cross town highway. But we do want the street to handle the right number of vehicles to improve access to SR 99 from Magnolia and Ballard.
In the meantime, I’d like to see us improve the safety of the street by slowing traffic, increasing enforcement and signage for pedestrians and bikes while the city figures out whether or not Nickerson is vital for improved access to the tunnel or not. It’s tough to have it both ways.
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
A good place to improve one’s thinking about NW Seattle folks’ access to the proposed CBD bypass toll tunnel (replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct) is the City of Seattle traffic flow map at http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/tfdmaps.htm. Present day daily traffic volumes are shown for many streets.
The north portal of the new tunnel is on Aurora just a tad south of where Mercer crosses.
The flows today on West Mercer, a main access route to the new tunnel from Interbay, are not shown on this map. I wonder why.
A number that IS shown is the 47,700 vehicles per day on Nickerson, many of which in the present day would be going TO the Viaduct.
I haven’t yet seen a map of the City’s estimate of how traffic will divide and flow once the new toll tunnel is in place and the Viaduct is gone. Maybe that depends on the amount of toll that will be charged by WSDOT to go through the new tunnel. I wonder if the Transportation Commission will be thinking about the traffic on West Mercer when that toll is established.
There are lots of questions to be answered in the environmental review. How is that going?
Rep. Carlyle,
I understand your concern about capacity but keep in mind that road diets work because they match capacity with the nearest bottleneck, in this case the Fremont Bridge if you’re traveling east and the Ballard Bridge is you’re traveling west. Currently, even if you ADD lanes, your commute will take practically the same amount of time. Similarly, if you reduce the amount of lanes (in this case by one), your commute will take practically the same amount of time. Here’s how Matt the Engineer put it on QueenAnneView.com,
“Currently, we drive 45MPH for a minute, then wait 10 minutes to get onto the Ballard bridge. Or drive 45 for a minute and wait 10 minutes to get past the Fremont bridge (whether or not you’re heading onto it). The 45mph makes you feel good for that minute, but it doesn’t speed up your trip in the slightest. All it does is make it very dangerous for the pedestrians on Nickerson.”
Please take a moment to review the results of the Stone Way Road Diet study: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/docs/StoneWaybeforeafterFINAL.pdf
-Pedestrian collisions are down 80%
-Bicycle traffic is up 35%.
-Vehicles speeding by 10+ mph dropped by 75%!
I urge you to share your thoughts on the MagnoliaVoice and QueenAnneView blogs – there are plenty of people who would like to hear your opinion there. It would be nice to have a dialogue with decision-makers in that kind of informal setting. Also, it would be nice for decision makers to try cycling or walking the impacted route as it stands currently. I bike it regularly and feel like I dodged a bullet every time I make it across untouched. It truly is unsafe.
There is a lot of speculation in this post, and we don’t even HAVE the tunnel yet. Let’s move forward on this safety measure, and then whenever the tunnel finally gets built we can readdress this if need be.
“I am struggling that SDOT identifies Nickerson as a major, vital arterial for traffic flow and access from three neighborhoods with 150,000 people and yet says there is virtually no impact from the people trying to access the deep bore tunnel.”
Ah, let me help you with this struggle. All a road diet would do is match the size of the road to the bottlenecks. We currently have a big fat pipe with a bottleneck at either end. Matching the size of the pipe to the bottlenecks can actually improve flow, since your speed is more constant.
“In the meantime, I’d like to see us improve the safety of the street by slowing traffic, increasing enforcement and signage for pedestrians and bikes…”
How do you propose we slow down traffic on Nickerson? That’s actually the point of road diets – rather than having the feeling of a freeway, you use engineering techniques to keep cars flowing at a lower speed. Nobody pays attention to the current speed limit signs, and lowering the posted speed won’t change anything.
Also, keep in mind that this is simply restriping the road, which should cost less than $50k. $50k doesn’t buy a whole lot of extra enforcement. Let’s say the average police officer in a car costs us $200k for a year full of 8-hour days. That $50k will buy 5 years of 2-hour enforcement a week. Then we’re back to the same situation but with less money.
I was informed by WSDOT traffic engineer Mark Bandy at the tunnel open house at Ballard High on November 17 that the computer model forecasts do not show significant future use of Nickerson and West Mercer for connection to or from the planned toll tunnel under downtown Seattle.
This is partially a result of the required tolling of the tunnel, which will tend to discourage use of it.
In the back half of the current decade, those of us in Magnolia and Ballard will be using the City of Seattle’s waterfront boulevard for trips that were formerly on the Viaduct.