BRT Meeting - Mineral Point Rd. Sidewalk Widening
postedBRT Meeting - Mineral Point Rd. Sidewalk Widening
A meeting was held in October to provide information on the sidewalk widening plan on Mineral Point Rd. The current BRT project, as well as a separate 2024 BRT project that seeks to improve bicycle and pedestrian facilities along Mineral Point Rd. was discussed.
The effects on terrace trees and sidewalks was also part of the conversation.
Meeting Materials
Question 1: If we're taking a traffic lane west off Whitney Way on Mineral Point Road does that mean there's only one travel lane?
Answer: (Tom) No, that's not the case. Right now there's width for three lanes, there's two travel lanes, and then a bus lane right there. We are eliminating the bus lane and buses will travel in general purpose traffic for 1,000 feet so that we can provide room for this widened sidewalk. So the BRT bus will travel in general traffic. It won't have a dedicated lane for 1,000 feet.
(Mike) So we've established that just west of Whitney Way and Mineral Point Road westbound, there will be two general purpose travel lanes. The bus will drive in the left general purpose travel lane. There will be a BRT station just west of Whitney Way. The bus will stop in mixed traffic and serve that station in the westbound direction. In the eastbound direction it'll have its own dedicated lane, but in the westbound direction it'll stop in mixed traffic and it actually there won't really be traffic behind it even though we stop and lock traffic lanes all the time. I'm Mike from Metro by the way, so even though there will be the bus stop in the live traffic lane, because it's turning off of Whitney Way from its own dedicated lane on Whitney Way, it really just doesn't we don't get a ton of benefit by having a dedicated bus lane there, so we'll stop at at that station just west of Whitney, Wye, Okay.
Question 2: What about snow removal and snow onto the bike lane when it's too close to the road?
Answer: (Tom) Yeah. It's our understanding that on this pathway the streets [department] will help us with this widen sidewalk as far as snow maintenance. It will get it may not be the first bicycle facility in the city that's cleared, but it will be cleared.
Question 3: My question is, the thing that worries me is the number of crossings of this path. When I was out there, I counted 22 driveways and 14 street crossings counting Whitney Way, and that's a lot of crossings. And are you trying to combine any of these driveways? And what about places where you have I've seen where you've got mounds of plants right next to the sidewalk, obstructing side lines. Is there any effort to deal with that? Sight lines from the topography where the parking lot down below the sidewalk.
Answer: (Tom) Okay. So the question is is that there's quite a few driveways and side roads on the on the north side. And you said 22 and then will there be any effort to address the sight lines? Okay. I will say that you're correct. You know, there are driveways and the like. However, the north side have fewer driveways. (Audience Member) I disagree with that. (Tom) Well, we between the high school, the Nautilus Park, and the Garner Park, and so that amounts to ten per mile and those are things as far as sight lines we have purchased right of way, and we've got our engineer here. How are we addressing the sight lines? (Mike) I'm Michael Schneider. I am a BRT designer. I worked for ADCOM I'm based here in Madison and I've been helping the city out with the BRT product. For the sight line across the driveways and streets. There are some trees, for example, that are being removed near the intersections. We do have some areas that have driveways that have, whether it's planting or other stone walls that will be removed. So we did look through and see which ones were feasible to remove to improve side lines at those driveways. One other thing that I'll note that we actually two other things I'll note to help some of those crossings, we are implementing some raised crossings in some of the streets that will elevate the pedestrians and bicycles more like a driveway rather than the current street crossing. That will give more priority and it'll feel like the pedestrians and bicycles will have a higher priority than currently. The other thing we're doing on the far east end is we are implementing a semi protected intersection at Whitney Way and Mineral Point Road. That's to try to give pedestrians and bicycles more space in the intersection as they navigate crossing movements.
Question 4: So our next online question is wouldn't having only sidewalk by Quick Trip make the bike corridor discontinuous? That's the same section where the most injuries and deaths are occurring.
(Renee) Obviously, we know that a five foot sidewalk is not the ideal solution, so we've tried to look at minimizing those. Minimizing the total distance. Knowing that people would ride through there and that we would continue into the future to look for solutions to get a more ideal situation. We know that at five foot it is not providing a lot of room for two people to meet each other in that corridor. But we do know that that's a place where people still need to go. So we would be looking to improve that over time. And that would just be a place where people would have to go slowly when meeting someone to make a safe pass.
Question 5: Can you talk about the trees on the 6302 Block of Mineral Point Road, that is at the Marbella Condominiums. You didn't really talk about them in your presentation or does that mean they're all staying up? They are all mature trees with lots of canopy and the people who live there would surely miss them.
Answer:(Tom) I believe that one reason why we are purchasing that right away from all of the condo owners is so that we could preserve those. Michael, do you want to add to... (Michael) I think there might be one tree removed at the intersection... but the majority of those trees will remain... (Tom) the one on the corner will be removed. (Audience Member) and it's marked are the trees clearly. Is that a red mark? (Tom) In the PDF the red mark denotes it's and then the plan view on the top X shows where it shows it is but the remainders the remainder are being saved...
Alder William Tishler
District 11
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