Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010

City eyes Crabtree traffic again

Raleigh launches its third review in two decades, with no obvious solution in sight

The city is reviving a decades -old discussion on how to reduce traffic congestion in one of the Triangle's busiest bottlenecks: Crabtree Valley.

City staffers and council members met with Raleigh citizens Monday at an open house, where they listened to neighbors' ideas and put forth several of their own proposals.

The city is conducting a $250,000 traffic study of the most notoriously congested section of Glenwood Avenue. It's the latest of several surveys and traffic studies conducted during the past four decades.

The city says 40,000 to 70,000 vehicles per day pass through the area, which stretches from Glenwood's Beltline interchange past Creedmoor Road.

"We're trying to vet everything against improving transit accessibility and making sure solutions are conducive to multiple transportation options," said Eric Lamb, the city's transportation services manager. "The whole point is to come up with a set of ideas. And we're encouraged to see what other people come up with that we haven't thought of."

The city in recent decades has considered two proposals to restructure the corridor. One envisioned a parallel road crossing the Beltline. The other would have tied the road into the Beltline farther south.

In the 1980s, Raleigh considered building a thoroughfare behind Crabtree Valley Mall and turning it and Glenwood Avenue into a pair of one-way streets.

The new road would have gone through the BB&T bank site on Creedmoor Road and across a 700-foot bridge over Crabtree Creek, tying into Glenwood to the northwest. On the southeast side, it would have passed over the Beltline and reconnected with Glenwood.

State highway planners said then that would be the most efficient way to move commuter traffic. But Crabtree Valley merchants and nearby residents opposed the idea, arguing the one-way pair would confuse shoppers and delay local drivers.

The city dropped the idea.

Then in the mid-1990s, developers proposed what was dubbed "a shopping spreeway." It would have looped behind the mall and connected with I-440 south of the existing interchange at Glenwood Avenue.

The state Department of Transportation, after conducting its own study, said the $30 million proposal was doable, but not ideal.

Over several years the City Council twice considered the spreeway proposal, but rejected it.

Since then, the city has turned away from a potential part of the solution.

The city last year dropped from its Comprehensive Plan a northwestern extension of Crabtree Valley Avenue, which runs behind the mall, past Creedmoor Road to Glenwood Avenue. That extension, first proposed in 1968, could have become part of the one-way thoroughfare or the spreeway.

Lamb said part of the city's goal is now to make the area more accessible to pedestrians and public transportation, in addition to easing traffic woes. Regardless of which proposed solution the city chooses, he said, it won't happen all at one time.

"We have to figure out how we can do scaled implementation of some of these items," Lamb said. "You can't come in with one giant project."

Council member Nancy McFarlane initiated the current study last March.

McFarlane said she's confident this round of studies and discussion will produce more results than in previous years, partly because of the push for more public transit.

"It's been tossed around and tossed around, and everyone keeps putting it on the back shelf," she said. "Maybe that's because there is no really great answer."