Allanya Guenther wrote: "We are heading in the wrong direction making major thoroughfares such as East and West Burnside one way corridors. This creates barriers to getting where one is going, in my opinion."
Burnside, in its current configuration, is a barrier to where many people want to go...
1. Becuase you cannot turn left off of burnside, to reach any side street to the left of your direction of travel requires a series of 3 turns onto 3 side streets.
2. Because there is no parking along much of W. burnside downtown, you must turn to a side street in order to park. This can involve multiple turns (see above) if the side street you want is to your left.
3. North-south traffic is held up by longer traffic light wait times than in other downtown blocks. This is because traffic timing works differently on two-way streets. With one-way couplets you can syncrhonise traffic flows throughout the grid. Thus, the couplet will improve north-south travel.
Maus wrote: "Really, in a perfect world, the nicest thing you could do for Burnside is to make the Burnside/Sandy intersection in SE take actual turns, so that westbound Burnside gets to go once for every time that Sandy gets to go."
This is exactly what the plan proposes. See this document:
http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=90266
See pages 5 and 6 of the PDF (labelled as pages "20" and "21" of the document.)
Also note that E. Burnside will have 4 travel lanes going into this area. A number of people have criticized this plan as reducing the number of lanes on Burnside. While it is true in some blocks that total lanes are decreased, in blocks where congestion is likely to occur, extra lane capacity has been maintained.
.thumbnail.jpg "Farmers Market Bounty, North Portland")
re: BLOG: Smoldering Argument over West Burnside Couplet
Allanya Guenther wrote: "We are heading in the wrong direction making major thoroughfares such as East and West Burnside one way corridors. This creates barriers to getting where one is going, in my opinion."
Burnside, in its current configuration, is a barrier to where many people want to go...
1. Becuase you cannot turn left off of burnside, to reach any side street to the left of your direction of travel requires a series of 3 turns onto 3 side streets.
2. Because there is no parking along much of W. burnside downtown, you must turn to a side street in order to park. This can involve multiple turns (see above) if the side street you want is to your left.
3. North-south traffic is held up by longer traffic light wait times than in other downtown blocks. This is because traffic timing works differently on two-way streets. With one-way couplets you can syncrhonise traffic flows throughout the grid. Thus, the couplet will improve north-south travel.
Maus wrote: "Really, in a perfect world, the nicest thing you could do for Burnside is to make the Burnside/Sandy intersection in SE take actual turns, so that westbound Burnside gets to go once for every time that Sandy gets to go."
This is exactly what the plan proposes. See this document:
http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=90266
See pages 5 and 6 of the PDF (labelled as pages "20" and "21" of the document.)
Also note that E. Burnside will have 4 travel lanes going into this area. A number of people have criticized this plan as reducing the number of lanes on Burnside. While it is true in some blocks that total lanes are decreased, in blocks where congestion is likely to occur, extra lane capacity has been maintained.
- Bob R.