Residents living near NE 75th Street between 15th Avenue NE and 35th Avenue NE are coming home today to a postcard from the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) outlining the changes that the department has chosen to make to the arterial.
additionally, at about 2:30 PM this afternoon, the NE 75th St project email listserv received an email also outlining the changes (excerpt below):
After five public meetings, numerous on-site observations, and a review of traffic data, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) reached a final recommendation for the corridor, involving the following changes to Northeast 75th Street between 15th Avenue Northeast and 35th Avenue Northeast:
- Providing one general purpose travel lane in each direction
- Installing a two-way center left turn lane
- Adding a new marked crosswalk at 28th Avenue Northeast
- Striping bicycle lanes in both directions
- Removing on-street parking on Northeast 75th Street, except at Nathan Eckstein Middle School where parking will be maintained for school buses and general parking
- Adding photo enforcement cameras for the Nathan Eckstein school zone
To summarize, the above is essentially Proposal 4 with some adjustments made to accommodate buses and event parking in front of Eckstein Middle school.
Meet your new NE 75th St configuration — Proposal 4 (with some Eckstein Middle School adjustments).
SDOT will begin the rechannelization of the street the week of August 26, with the goal of completing striping before the school year starts on Wednesday, September 4.
Jim Curtin at SDOT was kind enough to send us the plans for the new-and-improved NE 75th Street (783 KB PDF), which include the following bits we’d like to highlight (red lines and figures indicate features to be ADDED, green lines and figures represent current conditions that will be REMOVED):
NE 75th Street at 15th Avenue NE (north at the top).
Where NE 75th Street meets 15th Avenue NE, the new, separate bicycle lanes start/end on the east side of the intersection. Left turns are now made from a separate left turn lane.
NE 75th Street at 20th Avenue NE.
At NE 75th Street and 20th Avenue NE (a long established bicycle north-south route), the bicycle lanes continue. Left turns are made from the dedicated left turn lane from 75th to 20th.
NE 75th Street at 25th Avenue NE (north at the top).
At NE 75th Street at 25th Avenue NE, the bicycle lanes continue, and left turns from 75th to 25th have their own lane.
NE 75th Street at 30th and 31st Avenues NE — West front of Eckstein Middle School (north at the top).
Here’s where things change up a bit: Eckstein Middle School. To make room for a school bus zone/event parking in front of the school, the dedicated left turn lane disappears, tapering away as the eastbound travel lanes and the bicycle lane move toward the north/center of the roadway.
NE 75th Street at 33rd Avenue NE — East front of Eckstein Middle School (north at the top).
Then, on the east side of the front of the school, at 33rd Avenue NE, eastbound travel lane and bicycle land move to the right/south as the left turn lane becomes available again.
NE 75th Street at 35th Avenue NE (north at the top).
The new left turn lane continues through the intersection with 35th Avenue NE (the green lines on the plans above are removed). The separate eastbound bike lane ends at this point (but may continue to connect with the 39th Avenue NE Greenway in the future).
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For a look at the before and after of a similar project, SDOT recommends we check out the changes that were made to Nickerson Street in 2010. A study on the roadway before and after rechannelization was released in March 2012, and can be viewed here (429 KB PDF).
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