The Municipal Services Committee met 02/24/2025. They spent around 30 minutes reviewing and discussing the final update on the College Avenue Lane Reconfiguration project. The reconfiguration changed College Avenue from 4 lanes of traffic to 2 traffic lanes, a center turn lane, and bicycle lanes in each direction. After 18 months the changes have resulted in a 12.7% reduction in crashes as well as nominal reductions in traffic volume and vehicle speed. Although noise was not a metric that had been tracked, a couple participants indicated they had noticed no decrease in noise.
The committee ended up voting unanimously to recommend that the lane reconfiguration be made permanent.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
City staff reviewed the data they had collected on traffic impacts and community feedback.
- Reportable crashes had decreased 12.7% from August 2023 (before changes) to December 2024.
- Traffic volume had decreased 1.4%
- Average speed had decreased by 0.6 MPH or 3%
- 85th percentile speed had decreased by 0.8 MPH or 2.8%
City Traffic Engineer Eric Lom said it was a little dangerous to read too much into the decrease in traffic volume because that could have been influenced by other factors such as the downtown construction projects.
Travel-time through the downtown corridor was only marginally altered by the changes. Westbound traffic could actually get through more quickly post-changes as compared to pre-change.
Eastbound traffic took, on average, 10 seconds more to travel through downtown during peak times of the day which was less of an increase that staff had expected.
Community feedback regarding the changes had been generally positive with 63% of downtown business owners satisfied with the change and people feeling that it was easier to park and exit vehicles on the street-side. There had been negative comments regarding traffic flow, but Public Works Director Laura Jungwirth stated her experience was that the changes had not affected traffic flow that much.
Director Jungwirth also played a video in which downtown business owners, residents, and visitors expressed their satisfaction with the changes.
Jennifer Stephany, the executive director of Appleton Downtown Inc., attended the meeting and spoke in favor of the changes. She said that when they sent out their most recent survey to their members, they only had around 19 people respond. She took the low response rate to be an indication that people were generally comfortable with the changes. Of the responses they did receive, 40% were very satisfied, 75% indicated that their foot traffic had remained the same or increased since the changes, and 63% indicated they felt downtown safety had improved.
Ms. Stephany said that walkability remained a high concern for ADI, and the bike lanes were important. She finished up by saying, “We really want everybody to be comfortable in downtown, and we do feel that the lane reconfiguration brings that to downtown.”
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked if bicyclists had expressed safety concerns about parked cars opening their doors into the bicycle lanes, and Traffic Engineer Lom responded that they had not received any feedback. He noted that it would not have been possible to place bike lanes in between the curb and the parked vehicles (rather than in between the parked vehicles and the traffic lane) because of the bump outs at the intersections.
Alderperson Hartzheim asked if noise levels had been measured prior to the project. Her impression was that the changes had not impacted downtown noise much. Mr. Lom said that they had not been asked to measure noise levels and added that it was challenging to get good data for that.
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) had been the one person who had voted against implementing these lane changes back in 2023. The contract to make the changes had been $71,190, and Alderperson Croatt’s understanding was it would cost around that much to change things back to the original configuration, so he wasn’t in favor of undoing the changes.
He said that some of the initially concerns had been the noise as well as cars “racing” through downtown. He didn’t see anything that addressed those concerns. He thought they still had work to do in those areas. He did think the decrease in crashes was positive.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) also thought they still needed to work on the noise problem downtown.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) was pleased with the results and liked that downtown had become safer and more pedestrian-friendly. He commented that, as a bicyclist, his biggest pain point was not downtown itself but the area in between downtown and the College Avenue bridge.
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) commented on the increased bicycle safety that resulted from the changes and, while agreeing that drag racing was still an issue, thought that the scale of the problem had decreased.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) asked if city staff had expected crashes to decrease and how much they had expected them to go down. Traffic Engineer Lom said that other cities had experienced anywhere from a 5% to a 25% reduction in crashes when they had implemented similar lane reconfigurations. He thought that the reduction in downtown Appleton would stabilize at around a 15% decrease.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) also liked the changes and wondered if the recent changes to the city’s noise ordinance might help impact that issue going forward.
The committee voted 5-0 to approve the College Avenue lane reconfiguration.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1281846&GUID=EA8D424D-62F3-40B0-ACC8-2D6BA385B729
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