The Municipal Services committee met 08/26/2024. The biggest chunk of the meeting was spent reviewing the design plans for the concrete reconstruction of Lawe Street between College and Wisconsin scheduled to take place in 2026. The new design includes dedicated bike lanes, some changing of street width between College and Washington Street, the introduction of raised medians at the intersection of Lawe & North and Lawe & Pacific, and the removal of over 30 trees that are in poor condition or too close to the work being done.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend the design for approval.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The city applied for and was awarded Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding for this project, and, as a result, the street had to be reconstructed according to WI Department of Transportation guidelines. [As you may recall, these guidelines and the potential loss of $2.8 million in grant dollars was one of the issues at play when the city was considering the resolution to remove Lawe Street’s truck route designation.]
Andy Rowell, a representative of Ayres Associates of Green Bay, the consulting firm that worked on the project design, reviewed the proposal.
The roadway between College Avenue and Washington Street was being widened to make room for a bike lane. The city was also working to acquire a three-foot-wide strip of grass from Lawrence University along that area so that they had more space for the sidewalk now that the street was being widened.
At the intersections of Lawe & North and Lawe & Pacific, the city was going to install 8-foot-wide raised medians to help pedestrians cross at that intersection.
At the railroad crossing, they were going to reconfigure the sidewalks so that they crossed the train track at a 90 degree angle instead of the more oblique angle they cross it now.
The area between Spring Street and Wisconsin was not going to undergo any construction, but they would be restriping that section of roadway to continue the bike lane.
Finally, they would be changing the through-lanes and turn-lanes the Wisconsin Avenue intersection. Right now, there are two lanes that go southbound on Meade Street through Wisconsin Avenue and continuing onto Lawe. Those lanes then very quickly merge into one just south of Wisconsin Avenue. It’s not the safest of situations. They will be changing that so that there is one dedicated right turn lane from Meade onto Wisconsin, one through lane from Meade across Wisconsin into Lawe Street, and one dedicated left turn lane from Meade onto Wisconsin. This will eliminated the rapid merging of two lanes down into one just south of Wisconsin Avenue and provide space for the planned bike lane.
One member of the public spoke at the meeting. He was confused because the diagram of the design seemed to show work being performed on his property. He was told that all the driveway aprons were going to be reconstructed and for some properties that work needed to be extended up into the driveways to make sure that everything slopes property and homeowners were not left with big bumps between their existing driveways and the new aprons and sidewalks. All of that work would be covered by the project budget and homeowners would not be billed for it.
As part of the project, between Franklin Street and Spring Street, 21 trees were slated to be removed due to poor condition and 10 trees were going to be removed due to proximity to the construction and the grading work that needed to be performed. Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) said that District 2 constituents were interested in receiving more information on the evaluation process and what factors specifically resulted in each of them being slated for removal.
The project engineer Jason Brown said that the city forester had reviewed them all last year and would probably need to go back out and look at them again in order to provide an account on each tree. He did note that some of the trees near the Wire Works building had been heavily trimmed due to the overhead lines, and the forester had marked some of those for removal so that they could be replaced with trees better suited for being underneath overhead lines; however, the city was open to reevaluating those.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) asked what the plan was for redirecting truck route traffic while Lawe Street was closed for construction.
Project Engineer Brown said that they were still a year and a half out from the project start date, so they had not yet worked out the details of that plan. He acknowledged that there would need to be a plan to not only route trucks around this area but also help trucks that needed to get to businesses within that area still be able to do so while the street was shut down. The details of that were something that would be figured out when they were further along in the process.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) asked if the Lawe Street redesign followed the city’s new Complete Streets Policy. Per Traffic Engineer Eric Lom, the design “did kind of make it in under the wire”. [I wasn’t sure if he meant that the design was completed right before the Complete Streets Policy was enacted or right afterwards, but either way…] The design was consistent with the Complete Streets Policy in that it had 10-foot car lanes as well as traffic calming measures at both North Street and Pacific Street. Beyond that, they were limited in what they could do because the bike lanes prevented them from being able to install curb extensions and the fact that it was a truck route prevented them from installing any sort of vertical elements.
The committee voted 5-0 to approve the concrete reconstruction design as presented. Underground sewer and water work is scheduled to take place in 2025, with the reconstruction of the road taking place in 2026.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1226864&GUID=3DA77B94-225D-4252-A3A5-51C9F88D7130
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