Municipal Services Committee Receives Presentation On College Avenue Lane Reconfiguration – Plan Would Reduce College Avenue To 2 Directional Lanes And 1 Center Turn Lane, Add Bike Lanes

The Municipal Services Committee met 01/23/2023. Most of the meeting was taken up with a presentation on the College Avenue Lane Reconfiguration Presentation. Essentially, the city plans to reduce College Avenue between State Street and Drew Street from 4 lanes (two in each direction) to 3 lanes (one in each direction and a turn lane down the center) and bike lanes in each direction. Parking would remain unchanged. The change is planned to be completed this summer. It would cost approximately $130,000 and would be paid for from the 2021 Excess General Fund Balance.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the complete discussion.

The initial memo on the item submitted to the committee was confusingly written and had stated that there would be “two lanes in each direction, with a center left turn lane at each intersection from State Street to Drew Street,” which made it sound like there were going to be four lanes of traffic plus a center turn lane. Staff ended up submitting an updated memo that more clearly explained, “This redesign would simply involve the restriping of travel lanes along College Avenue to one lane in each direction, with a center left turn lane at each intersection from State Street to Drew Street.”

The proposed changes were prompted by a desire to increase safety, prevent drag racing, reduce speed and noise, and ease conflict between pedestrians/restaurant patrons using the sidewalks and people wanting to travel through downtown on bicycles and scooters.

Several years ago, Franklin Street had been converted from a 4 lane street to a 3 lane street as was now being proposed for College. That change had gone well and staff had discovered that it could actually handle 2,000 to 4,000 more vehicles a day than they had initially thought it could. Additionally, 4 lane to 3 lane road conversions have performed well in other communities.

Using pre-Covid traffic numbers, staff ran some analysis to see how the lane change would affect traffic flow and drive-times. They concluded that during the morning peak drive time, the changes would add less than 30 seconds of delay on average per vehicle. During the evening peak drive time, the average drive time could be increased by an additional two minutes. That was assuming that driving patterns did not change at all and nobody moved over to Lawrence Street or Franklin from College Avenue.

Due to how long the presentation took, there was not much opportunity for discussion before the Finance Committee started. Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland did mention that the police officers she had spoke with were “very much in favor of this.”

Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) asked if consideration had been made to expanding the effected area past Drew Street to Meade Street. Staff, however, had deemed that unfeasible because it would negatively impact the flow of traffic wanting to exist College prior to the lane reduction and could potentially cause them to cut through the neighborhoods on the north side of College. The section of College east of Drew Street also has an island down the middle of it and so would need reconstruction work to facilitate the lane change rather than the simple re-striping the other section of College would need.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1077521&GUID=C92D56F4-85B1-49B9-8AD2-11D60149A26E