Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Architects proposing Road Diet, Cycle Track for Tacoma's Pacific Avenue

The Cycle Track Concept for Pacific Avenue
The City of Tacoma has posted some interesting architectural renderings (A) (B) of two concept designs for the greening of Downtown Pacific Avenue.  In both concepts the architects propose additional street trees, rain garden-type storm drainage, and some form of road diet with bicycle right of way.  In Concept A, bicycles would get a bike lane on both sides, but they would also have to compete with angled parking.  In Concept B, bikes would get their own dedicated right of way to link Old City Hall at S. 7th St. to S. 17th and the planned Prairie Line Trail.  Few transit elements appear to be present in this streetscape treatment, but there may be more to this than can be seen from the PDF's posted by the City.


Ken Peachey, a local cyclist, sees an opportunity for the City to live up to its sustainability principles.  In an email he sent out this week he cites the recently unanimously adopted City of Tacoma's Mobility Master Plan policy, which was unanimously adopted by the City Council back in June, which states:
the City will give “…precedence to pedestrians, then to bicyclists and public transit. …The City of Tacoma will use this model as a conceptual tool for elevating pedestrians, bicyclists and public transportation in the planning and design of streets in a manner that is consistent with the City’s Complete Streets policy and Climate Action Plan."
Interested people are encouraged to attend the charette scheduled for Thursday and to submit their comments on the plans to soneill@cityoftacoma.org by 5pm on Friday, December 10th.
Posted by Chris Karnes at 2:53 PM
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2 comments:

  1. I think this could make Pacific Ave, Tacoma's "flagship" street, become the poster child for our Mobility Master Plan.

    That being said, I don't think it's realistic to consider this a primary means of drawing more business downtown. This improvement means many good things, but economic development is not one of them.

    Economic development/growth is going to be promoted through other more fundamental types of improvements/investment. That includes things like our tax structure and also structuring incentives that make locating in downtown Tacoma a more competitive option relative to the alternatives (suburban strip-malls, office parks, and neighboring cities).

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  2. Actually, development of this sort has drawn shoppers to the areas so treated. surveys in various cities--notably Toronto--showed that bicyclists, eg, spent more per visit than drivers, and of course you can park twelve bicycles in the space of one car, resulting in a net gain of potential buyers.

    And transit vehicles, of course, need not park at all, but merely drop off dozens of shoppers, employees, whatever per stop then move on.

    The experience of Hasselt, a city in Belgium, provides an instructive insight to the question of urban mass transit. Several years ago, burdened with ever increasing traffic, Hasselt faced the prospect of dipping into the civic coffers to build yet another ring road. But the mayor and town council thought a little outside the box, and decided to make all public transit in the city free of charge.

    That's right, they effected a total subsidy of public transit.

    The results were stunning: transit use went up by 800%; traffic dropped so dramatically that they not only abandoned the plans to build a new ring road, but closed down an existing one and converted it to a greenway and park; and business in the city center increased so much that, rather than losing money from the subsidy, the city found itself awash in tax receipts, enabling them to improve services for all while reducing taxes!

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