Pedestrians, bikes may have priority in Broadway/Warm Springs future

Pedestrians and bicyclists have become the priority as the Ada County Highway District deliberates on improving the five-way intersection at Broadway and Warm Springs at downtown Boise’s east end.

Two concepts now in play involve adding bike lanes, sidewalks and signalized pedestrian crossings.

To make room for these non-motorized amenities, ACHD proposes removing center turn lanes,  preventing mid-block left turns and removing street parking on a block of Warm Springs.

A third option would make no changes at all.

ACHD shared the concepts March 31 at an open house at the Boise Senior Center, where the public could leave comments for ACHD staff to consider. Comments can be submitted online until April 14.

ACHD will present the concepts to the Boise City Council on April 29. The ACHD team then will present a recommendation to the ACHD Commission on May 11, with a Commission decision anticipated May 25. The concepts will still be subject to alterations until the scheduled construction date in 2019, said ACHD spokesman Craig Quintana.

“These proposals are not set in stone. They are etched in, at best, wet sand,” he said.

Last year, ACHD decided not to pursue more automobile-centric options. These were a dog-bone shaped roundabout or a split intersection to return Broadway and Avenue B to a prior configuration where one street did not feed into the other.

Both would have involved major reconstruction of the intersection and both would be dangerous for pedestrians. A multi-lane roundabout presents scenarios of a car in one lane stopping for a pedestrian while a neighboring lane may not stop, said Rod Ashby, ACHD’s project manager.

A return to the split intersection that was in place until the late 1980s would create a second intersection for pedestrians to cross. The Avenue B/Warm Springs intersection would be several hundred feet east of the Broadway/Warm Springs intersection.

“The major reason for this project is bicycle and pedestrian improvements,” Ashby said. “This does not help with that.”

The two similar concepts under consideration are of a “smaller scale” and leave the street alignment in place. They address Broadway/Avenue B from Front Street to Jefferson Street, and Warm Springs from just west of the intersection to Avenue C.

Both propose a 5-foot-wide buffered bike lane with painted lines 1.5 feet apart to separate cars and bikes on both sides of Broadway and one side of Avenue B and new sidewalks for both streets. Both also include new signalized crosswalks at Bannock and Dona Larsen Park.

Both also remove the center turn lane on Broadway and Avenue B and install a raised median to prevent mid-block left turns. This would prevent northbound drivers on Broadway, for example, from turning into the Broadway 111 shopping center. Both proposals also prohibit U-turns.

“We want to maintain the existing traffic flow and we want to improve the intersection for bikes and pedestrians,” Ashby said.

One alternative also removes the “free” right turn from Warm Springs to Avenue B, where a dedicated right turn lane curves away before the intersection, and installs a stop light at the free right turn from Warm Springs to Broadway.

The East End Neighborhood Association, which has been vocal about St. Luke’s Health System’s desire to eliminate Jefferson Street two blocks north of the Broadway/Warm Strings intersection, has not committed to an alternative. The association will meet later in the month to decide, President Tiffany Robb said.

“Our overall thought before this (open house) was no-build,” Robb said. “We just want to make sure Broadway-Warm Springs is not a hodge-podge.”

She said the neighborhood wants to be assured  that Broadway-Warm Springs changes interact well with the new Broadway Bridge and the St. Luke’s proposals for Jefferson and Fort streets. Robb’s thoughts touched on alternatives rejected and in play.

“We want more focus on pedestrians and cyclists,” Robb said. “We’d like our neighborhood put back together and not be the huge arterial it has become (referencing the rejected split-intersection concept) …   We want our drivers to still have a comfortable, smooth transition from road to road.”

The proposed alternatives do not include improvements for vehicle traffic at the intersection, which during afternoon peak hours has an average level of service of D on a scale of A to F as spelled out in the Highway Capacity Manual published by the Transportation Research Board. Level D is an average delay of 37 seconds.

ACHD predicts that a no-build option would lead to a level of service of E or a 77-second delay. Quintana points out that for nearly all hours, other than the evening rush, traffic flows smoothly.

“We allow major arteries to function at a level of E at peak hours,” he said. “These are short periods, twice a day.”