Haywood Road Repaving Project, History and Details

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is performing a regularly scheduled road resurfacing of Haywood Rd in West Asheville from Ridgelawn Rd to Patton Ave. The project is identified as Project # HL-0003 in the State Transportation Improvement Project and will be implemented in the summer of 2023. 

The French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization is providing additional funding for the resurfacing project in order to improve safety along the corridor.

This road once served as the only route west out of downtown Asheville and was also a leg in the Asheville trolley system, which had a line than ran up to Beachum’s curve. When the location of I-240 was decided in the 1960’s, that interstate demolished many homes and streets in low income and majority black parts of town, including through West Asheville. I-26 and I-240 divide the City today and the interstate divides West Asheville into two parts. Haywood Rd runs along the top of a ridge connecting those two parts and is often considered the heart of West Asheville. Read more history in this Mountain Xpress article or download this excellent pdf, “The Story of Haywood Road,” published by the West Asheville History Project.

Each repaving project presents an opportunity to change lane configurations, improve intersections, improve ADA compliance, and make other alterations in between the curbs, in the current right of way. Repaving projects do not typically alter the curb configuration of the road or change the size of the right of way.

How to leave a public comment on the project

NCDOT is accepting public comment for the Haywood Rd resurfacing project until Jan. 13, 2023. Asheville on Bikes encourages you to include our  recommendations in your comments and send a copy of your comments to us at ashevilleonbikes@gmail.com. 

To share your comments with NCDOT: 

Email:  Haywood-Maintenance-Buncombe@publicinput.com  

Phone: (984) 205-6615

Mail: Attn: Alecia Hardy, NCDOT EAU

                     1598 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-1598

Our Summary of Haywood Rd Existing Conditions

This section of Haywood Rd is a vibrant commercial corridor connecting West Asheville neighborhoods. The road is in a 2 lane configuration except for the I-240 bridge and the junction with Patton Avenue, where it briefly extends to 4 lanes.

Existing conditions:

• Haywood Rd ranked 16 in the City of Asheville Close the GAP (p. 36 & 37) which indicates that the corridor’s existing conditions are unsafe and unnavigable for differently abled people.  
• Haywood Rd hosts the highest bicycle and pedestrian counts outside of downtown Asheville
• The vehicular average daily traffic volumes (ADT) range between 1300 – 15,000 / day 
• Pedestrian and bicycle needs have historically been ignored along the corridor. There are several American With Disabilities Act (ADA) violations along the corridor
• NCDOT representatives confirmed at the public engagement meeting on Dec. 6th 2022 that the proposed treatments were not informed by Haywood Rd crash data, speed analysis, or the Close the GAP plan.

Our Guidance for Haywood Rd Public Comment:

• All design changes to the corridor should be informed by vehicular speed and crash data with the goal of reducing excessive speeds and collisions. 
• A design speed of 20 mph throughout the entire corridor should be used if bicycle sharrow markings are to be incorporated into the project. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) recommends sharrows on streets with a less than 25 mph design speed. 
• Bicycle May Use Full Lane signs should be incorporated wherever sharrow marks are incorporated.
• Where road widths allow incorporate bicycle lanes with special consideration of bike lanes that funnel into bicycle boxes at intersections so that people on bikes have priority movement through intersections. 
• All pedestrian facilities must comply with American with Disabilities standards. 
• The design should include midblock crosswalks with refuge islands and elevated crosswalks. 
• All crosswalks must be marked. Unmarked crosswalks are unacceptable. 
• Signalized crosswalks should be timed to allow for the greatest allowable crossing time as opposed to the minimum. 
• Curb extensions and vertical speed control elements like speed tables and speed cushions should be incorporated to ensure a 20mph design speed and to improve pedestrian crossings. 

I-26 bridge concerns

We have also written about the special concerns that surround the future I-26 project bridge replacement at Haywood Rd and I-26, as well as the need to better accommodate the future users of the new greenway that will join Haywood Rd across from B&B pharmacy. This future greenway will wrap around to the Patton bridge, resulting in a car-free path to the west side of downtown with no red lights and less elevation change than the current dip to the river on Haywood before the climb up.

We hope this future bridge design can be an example of the multi-modal changes this corridor needs, instead of forcing a car-centric design into the middle of this vibrant area.

You can read that earlier post here, which links to the I-26 project public documents.

The post Haywood Road Repaving Public Comment Guidance, NCDOT Project # HL-0003 appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Email the Commission:  AVLDowntownCommission@PublicInput.com Leave a voicemail: 855-925-2801, then entering code 9272

Call into the meeting tomorrow (12-9-22) at 9:35am to leave live public comment. Dial 855-925-2801, enter code 9272, then press * and select option 3

Support for the complete street treatment is wavering and your comment is critical in moving this project forward. Call or sent a quick email that states:

“I support the College / Patton Complete St project because it’s important that our City commits to expanding its mobility options to provide safer and greater access into and through downtown Asheville. This project aligns with the City’s of Asheville’s Comprehensive Plan and transportation planning, like the recently adopted Close the GAP. We cannot continue to lead NC in pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and death. Complete Streets are proven to be an economic driver and a component of affordability. The more mobility options into downtown the more parking is available for others.” 

Here is AoB’s letter to the Downtown Commission about this project:

Dear Downtown Commission, 

On behalf of Asheville on Bikes Board of Directors and our members (over 900 strong) I’m writing to you to encourage your support of the College / Patton Complete Street project. Asheville on Bikes and Connect Buncombe partnered to fund the design phase of this project for many good reasons.

Reasons Asheville on Bikes and Connect Buncombe support this project: 

• Asheville continues to lead in North Carolina in pedestrian and bicyclist collisions
• Active transportation is a component of housing affordability. Overwhelmingly lower income households rely on bicycle communing. 8.3% of City residents do not own a car; the City has the obligation to provide safe and accessible infrastructure for these residents as well as motorists.    
• Our community continues to support investment in active transportation facilities as evidenced by the Merrimon Rd reconfiguration (currently under construction) and the recent robust support for active transportation facilities included in the upcoming Haywood Rd resurfacing project. Each individual project serves to advance the whole. Each project is a necessary piece of our future active transportation network.  
• Active transportation investment is a critical component of urban density and downtown functionality. As the City continues to court developments like Aston St Project, 319 Biltmore Ave Project, 360 Hilliard Ave Apartment, the Maple Crest Apartments it must simultaneously invest in mobility options beyond automobiles so that people can connect to their home, their work, and places of recreation and enjoyment by a variety of modes.
• This project is more than just adding bike lanes as it serves to maximize the utility of the public right of way; it adds an additional 175’ of loading zones, improves pedestrian crosswalks, and provides a greater buffer between people and moving vehicles.

The City’s transportation staff also supports advancing a complete street treatment through the College and Patton corridor.

The College / Patton project page addresses a variety of potential concerns: 

• The Asheville Police Department and Asheville Fire Department have been consulted on the project design, including lane widths and configurations, to ensure that emergency vehicle access is not negatively impacted. 
• Current traffic volumes on College and Patton are between 4,000 and 6,000 vehicles per day. 
• These daily volumes are well within thresholds for single-lane streets.
• Business owners have also raised concerns about the bicycle facilities potentially impacting their business operations and revenue potential. Numerous studies have shown that adding bicycle facilities has no negative, and in many cases, a positive impact, on businesses. A sample of these are linked below.

Studies that show the economic impact of projects similar to College/Patton:

• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849
• https://www.peopleforbikes.org/statistics/economic
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-08/for-store-owners-bike-lanes-boost-the-bottom-line 
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422151318.htm
• https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/biking-lanes-business-health-1.5165954
• https://www.ibigroup.com/ibi-insights/bike-lanes-good-small-business/

On Dec. 5, Patti Glazer of Glazer Architecture, PA submitted an email to the Downtown Commission requesting that the commission oppose the College / Patton Complete Street project. The letter states: 

“Public outreach has been very obscure with no public forums. Until recently, the City’s Project Page on the City of Asheville website did not even present the Plan. The only information available on-line was the study/video analyzing whether the bike lane conversion should be the right lane or the left lane. There was no discussion or information as to whether College/Patton St. is an appropriate place to implement bike lanes at all.”

Respectfully, Glazer’s critique of the process does not match the facts and timeline of public input presented by staff and posted on the project page. Public outreach began in Feb. of 2020 and will continue through Jan. 2023. The project has been presented to the Downtown Commission several times before today’s meeting. Additionally, Glazer’s email included an attachment of 36 businesses operating on the corridor. Twenty-four of the businesses claimed they were “Not Notified,” of the project but a scan of the public process shows that 41% had either received an email from the City or responded directly to the City’s Stakeholder engagement tracking.

41% of the businesses that claimed they were not notified…were notified. The City has those tracked notifications and interactions.

Our City faces many challenges and opportunities and reasonable people can disagree on what’s best for our community, however, it’s integral to decision making that the best information is shared with decision makers. I trust this commission to deliberate with the facts when it considers the future potential of safe prosperous streets that serve the needs of our community. Thank you for your service to our City. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Mike Sule 

Asheville on Bikes

The post Urgent! Email or call the Downtown Commission in Support to the College / Patton Ave Complete Street Project appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Asheville on Bikes encourages people to attend the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) public comment session. Please encourage design treatments that: 

• Calm vehicular traffic to 20mph
• Prioritize the safe and predictable movements of differently abled pedestrians
• A mix of bicycle facilities including bike lanes, bike boxes, sharrow marking, wayfinding, and bicycle corrals.

Meeting info here: https://www.asheville.com/news/2022/12/public-opinions-sought-for-haywood-road-improvements/

Project page and survey: https://publicinput.com/Haywood-Maintenance-Buncombe

Today’s meeting is a drop-in session from 4-7 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 6, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 587 Haywood Road in Asheville. Anyone can attend.

4 questions for the Haywood repaving public meeting

1. How are your 3 alternatives informed by the City of Asheville Close the GAP analysis?
   • The Close the Gap analysis by the City evaluates our pending transportation projects with important criteria not previously considered together. Among other items it analyzed: public comments; the predicted effects of projects on walking, biking, and transit of City plans; expected costs; known deficiencies in biking, walking, transit; housing and commuter patterns by income and race.
2. How does NCDOT’s Complete Streets Policy inform your designs?
   • NCDOT requires all projects to go through an evaluation process to determine the elements necessary to build a complete street. There is both an NCDOT Complete Streets policy and an implementation guide to consider. As per the guide, “All projects will be evaluated using the Complete Streets project evaluation methodology attached and referenced herein. The five-step evaluation methodology will assist project managers and engineers in identifying bicycle and pedestrian needs, selecting the appropriate facility type, and estimating added impacts to the project.”
   • We want a street design that meets those guidelines and also uses NACTO design criteria. We don’t want a complete street in name only, or a street that has elements in the design that are not practical improvements for each of the transportation modes in use on the corridor.
3. Are all of the facilities ADA compliant on all 3 alternatives presented?
   • All facilities should be ADA compliant as planned and as installed.
4. How has the Haywood bridge design in the I-26 project changed since it was last presented to the public? Please explain how the bike and pedestrian features of that proposed bridge design interact with your 3 alternatives presented for this road?
   • Links to I-26 public materials: I-26 video fly through of the entire project. Link to pdf of the bridge design: 2018 NCDOT Map of Haywood interchange. There may be a newer map featuring an updated design. If so, it should be made easier to find on the NCDOT I-26 project website.
   • The Haywood Rd repaving project bisects future I-26 the bridge replacement project. That bridge, ramps, and intersection project is planned as part of the I-26 connector and set to begin within 5 years. The design of that future bridge is critically important to the function of this corridor.
   • The last public design of the Haywood bridge showed a design that is inappropriate to the commercial nature of this corridor. The design, still published today, shows a 4 lane road in a divided highway configuration with center median, contained with a widened right of way, allowing for additional ramp space and other car-centric features.
   • Both the bridge design and the design changes made at repaving should work together to make it safer and easier to move on foot, by bike, by bus between the two sections of Haywood Rd, nearby business, and the greenway. It should not be designed with a primary focus on free-flowing auto traffic.
   • The I-26 bridge project also includes a major new greenway that connects West Asheville to downtown across the Patton bridge. One entrance to that greenway is near Haywood Rd and the Asheville City Schools property, across from B&B pharmacy, adjacent to an I-26 ramp. This will be a major source of bicycle, ebike, scooter, and pedestrian movements on the corridor.

We’ll see you at the meeting!

The post Questions to ask at the Haywood Road NCDOT meeting on 12-6-22 appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Call to action: Send your feedback to the City of Asheville

It’s important for you to send a short letter of support about this project. Please send your feedback to Jessica Morriss, jmorriss@ashevillenc.gov, and cc: ashevilleonbikes@gmail.com so we can follow your feedback on this project. Link to project page from the City of Asheville.

Examples of situations this project is designed to improve

If you’ve ever biked south on Biltmore, rolling south past Posana in the heart of downtown, and struggled with drivers who straddle both lanes, or who made abrupt stops while looking for parking, this plan helps fix that – and more.

If you’ve wanted to invest in downtown Asheville by building or renovating a piece of real estate but struggled to make the numbers work because of some planned number of parking spaces and space for delivery vehicle access, these bike lanes are a win. By moving people, not cars, we can have increased density and new housing units downtown that are a win for all parties involved. Getting to that point means building a better transportation network so that we waste less space storing cars.

If you’ve ever climbed up Biltmore Ave on your bike from the baseball stadium and encountered a long line of backed up cars in the area of Mamacita’s or Barley’s, this proposal creates a bike lane beginning at the Orange Peel that would whisk you to the top of the hill. If you’re one of the 4000+ households in Southside or Kenilworth and you’ve ever stayed in to avoid the hassle of traffic and parking, even though you were ½ mile from downtown, this plan is part of the solution that will help reconnect you to your downtown. 

If you are a business owner frustrated with conditions that make loading and unloading of trucks dangerous or impossible, this project is designed to improve loading zone access.

This project connects our multimodal grid

In the first image of this post, you can see where we are missing bike and ebike connections downtown (the green lines are current bike lanes). Now consider what is coming in the near future:

1. College and Patton in downtown will be reconfigured with east – west bike lanes in the next 12 months. 
2. Biltmore Avenue and McDowell Avenue south of downtown will receive a different traffic pattern during their next repaving. The recently completed corridor study collected public feedback and has been approved by City Council; It calls for a redesign that will rebalance the lane configuration of both streets to handle smoother traffic flow and make room for bicycle lanes running north-south (as well as sidewalk and intersection improvements). Kenilworth, White Fawn, Southside, St. Dunstans, and Biltmore Village neighborhoods will be fully reconnected to downtown once those changes are complete.
3. RADTIP’s greenway will connect to the baseball stadium via an additional greenway segment, Nasty Branch, coming up Southside Avenue and connecting to a grid of bike lanes at McDowell, Coxe, and Biltmore. That additional connection will allow riders on the river to visit downtown from either the future Nasty Branch / Southside greenway or the current Haywood Rd bicycle climbing lane.
4. Asheville Unpaved proposes to create improved walking and biking trail networks at Mountainside Park, Asheville Middle School, and adjacent to the French Broad Greenway West, including sections of dedicated bike trail. 
5. A new ebike is being sold every 52 seconds or faster in the U.S. At the 2022 People for Bikes E-bike Summit, which was hosted in Asheville, the bike manufacturers in attendance stated that they expect 50% of U.S. bicycles sales to be e-bikes within 5 years. There are no hill problems or parking problems when you ride an ebike.  

The bike lanes along this section of Biltmore Avenue complete a key connection within downtown and they also connect to many other plans, allowing people to move to and from downtown more safely in the near future, some without needing a car.

Here is a quiz for you

We made it using statements we’ve heard during the meetings about this project. 

Please voice your support for this project and the valuable bike lanes it adds to our multimodal transportation grid in Asheville. Send your feedback to Jessica Morriss, jmorriss@ashevillenc.gov, and cc: ashevilleonbikes@gmail.com so we can follow your feedback on this project. 

The post Call for feedback on bike lanes and traffic pattern change for Biltmore Avenue south of Pack Plaza appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

May 17, 2022
70 Court Plaza 
Asheville, NC 28801 

Dear Asheville City Council, 

On behalf of Asheville on Bikes’ Board of Directors and its members (over 800 strong), I’m writing to encourage you to vote in support of the Merrimon Ave road reconfiguration.

NCDOT, Division 13, City of Asheville staff, members of the Multimodal Transportation Commission have all worked in good faith to produce a public input process that clearly defines the benefits and tradeoffs of a 4 to 3 conversion on Merrimon. The final voice for a more complete Merrimon rests with you on May 24th. This is your opportunity to lead and advance safety and dignity of our public rights of way for all people traveling by a variety of modes.

For those of you concerned about the political repercussions of supporting a safer street configuration, I direct you to the outcome of the public process where 59% of more than 4,000 respondents supported a 4 to 3 conversion on Merrimon Ave. This 59% is a historic result in support of this conversion.  

More importantly, please take a moment and listen to this public comment from Gaia to the Multimodal Transportation Commission made on 3/24/2021. Gaia’s courageous statement helped catalyze the support that  brought this vote to you. Gaia was struck by a motorist while crossing legally on Merrimon Ave and, as a result of that collision, has suffered dearly. I invite each of you to draw upon Gaia’s courage and examine the opportunity before you. Your vote either advances safety and dignity or re-commits our community to the existing conditions of carnage.

Each vote in support of the Merrimon road reconfiguration is a vote to affirm our collective commitment to public safety on our rights of way. Help lead our City in a direction where these articles become untrue: 

1. Asheville continues to lead in North Carolina in pedestrian and bicyclist collisions
2. Asheville Citizen Times, A troubling trend: Asheville ranks first in the state for pedestrian deaths per capita). 

According to NCDOT and the City of Asheville, the Merrimon data shows that:

• “ …there is approximately a 150% higher rate of crashes on Merrimon compared to other similar roadways across the State (for every 10 crashes on other similar roads, Merrimon gets 15) (City of Asheville Merrimon Ave Story Map, Crashes)
• Approximately 23% of crashes on Merrimon involve an injury and property damage estimates total more than $7 million.
• Merrimon experiences about 13 crashes every month. The chart below summarizes the corridor’s crash statistics.

(City of Asheville / NCDOT Merrimon Story Map, Crashes)

If the current design results in nearly one crash every other day and produces nearly three injuries / month, how can we allow those conditions to continue for the next 10 to 15 years?  

Advancing public safety means designing for people moving by a variety of modes and prioritizing for our most vulnerable road users. 8.3% of City residents do not own a car; the City has the obligation to provide safe and accessible infrastructure for these residents as well as motorists.  

NCDOT and City of Asheville’s analysis states, 

“a potential 29% crash reduction factor, which, if realized, could lead to approximately 50 fewer crashes and 10 fewer injuries on Merrimon every year. If applied evenly across the board, these crash reductions could reduce property damage by about $300,000 every year.” 

Considering the existing conditions and the potential return on the investment resulting from a road reconfiguration, the Merrimon Ave re-stripping is a low cost, low hanging fruit, high yield investment in public safety. The current configuration isn’t working for anyone so it’s time to apply a new approach and a more complete design. The Merrimon road reconfiguration is an initial intervention which elevates safety and dignity on our streets. 

NCDOT and the MPO are currently studying whether to make similar improvements to Biltmore Ave, McDowell St, Tunnel Rd, and Asheland Ave.  Decisions on those recommendations should be coming to you within a year. These future opportunities to improve safety on our streets will be in jeopardy should you hesitate now to make this commitment on Merrimon Ave.  

There are lessons to be learned from the Charlotte Street road diet that apply to your vote. The Charlotte Street project was kicked around for 20 years before a road diet treatment was finally approved by council over the concerns and objections of some residents who loudly objected. Like Merrimon, sidewalk improvements were outside the scope of the project but the road diet and new bike lanes have increased pedestrian use.  As a result of the success and the calmer conditions, the City of Asheville and  NCDOT are expanding sidewalks on Charlotte Street to I-240. When the City leads, NCDOT follows. We need your leadership now. 

While the road diet is often framed as controversial, the public support is strong and well informed; citizens desire safer streets and more mobility options. Charlotte Street, Wilma Dykeman Greenway, Coxe Avenue all endured moments – often months or years of moments – of controversy before being supported by City Council. Each one of those projects has been a success, and Merrimon will be too.  On behalf of Asheville on Bikes, I urge you to vote in favor of safer streets and approve the Merrimon Ave road reconfiguration. 

Respectfully, 

Mike Sule

Executive Director, Asheville on Bikes 

enc: AoB Research Addendum For City Council

The post AoB Open Letter Urging City Council To Vote In Favor of 4-3 Conversion For Merrimon appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Asheville on Bikes (AoB) is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to cultivate the culture of urban and commuter bicycle riding through advocacy, education, and celebration. More than 25,000 people have participated in our group rides, hundreds of middle school children have learned to ride through our youth cycling program, and our active membership includes more than 800 residents of Buncombe, Haywood, and Henderson counties. Our after school bicycle program at Asheville Middle School is the only bicycle education program in the state of North Carolina that has run continuously for the last 10 years. In 2020, we won a major national award when we were named Bicycle Advocacy Organization of the Year by the League of American Bicyclists.  We are active advocates for multi-modal projects, complete streets, and bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure.

ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF SELECT 4-3 CONVERSION PROJECTS

PLANNING DOCUMENTS THAT SUPPORT THIS PROJECT

Click here to see on one page the 23 planning documents that agree with, call for, or support a 4-3 conversion with bike lanes for Merrimon (pdf).

MYTHS ABOUT THIS PROJECT

LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED OR BEEN DISABLED IN COLLISIONS ON SIMILAR ROADS IN OUR AREA

These are news stories about a few of the many preventable fatalities and injuries occurring on roads in our region. In the current 4 lane configuration you are 150% more likely to be involved in a collision on Merrimon when compared to the NCDOT database of North Carolina roads of similar size.

• Yvonne Lewis, 67, Struck and Killed on Merrimon, WLOS 2015
• Jared Anthony Leyva in critical condition after hit and run Hendersonville Rd, 2016
• Alexander Bautista-Gomez, 10, and Milena Alejandro-Bautista, 5, Killed Crossing Fairview Rd 2016
• Emmanuel Garcia, 22, struck on Hendersonville Rd 2022
• Edward Jamal Chalk 4 Killed on Hendersonville Rd 2016
• Shannon Chisholm forges new life in wheelchair, Hendersonville Rd, 2015
• Jeremy Johnson killed riding a bike home from work, Tunnel Rd, 2008
• NCDOT studies Hendersonville’s streets, thanks to high share of pedestrian injuries

You might also enjoy reading:

• Our Merrimon 4-3 Reconfiguration Resource Page tracking all things about this project
• Asheville on Bikes authors a separate study of proposed road diet for Merrimon 33 page pdf

Related content:

• Letter to City Council for May 24th vote, which cited this research addendum

The post Merrimon 4-3 Reconfiguration Research Addendum appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

The City of Asheville is planning a public meeting and comment period to gather public feedback about a proposed 4-3 conversion (road diet) for Merrimon Avenue. This conversion would take place as part of an upcoming NCDOT repaving project, a project which had been delayed, until now, by the pandemic and by discussions between NCDOT and the City about the future of Merrimon Avenue. Repaving projects include re-striping between the curbs, and that re-striping can be designed to create a different traffic configuration, as is proposed for Merrimon.

This repaving and subsequent 4-3 conversion is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to make Merrimon Avenue better fit the needs of the community. Asheville on Bikes is excited about this project and we will be publishing more as the project moves forward. You should follow this project and discuss it with your neighbors. 

It takes courage to stand up and ask for a change, to prod a world full of uncertain outcomes. At the start of our campaign in favor of a road diet on Merrimon, we’d like to honor all the victims of collisions over the years and the many people who have spoken up in the past to ask for changes on Merrimon. We appreciate your courage and are humbled by your sacrifices.

If you or someone you know has been injured as the result of a collision on Merrimon, we’d love to talk to you more about it. Send us an email with our contact form and we will follow up. 

Here are four pieces of Merrimon information you can read or listen to today:

1. Yvonne Lewis, “Patsy,” is not forgotten. Nor are her neighbors, who protested the conditions that lead to her death in 2015 while attempting to cross Merrimon at Coleman. 
2. Injuries are continuing to occur on Merrimon. Listen to Gaia’s heartfelt account of the costs from just one of the recent collisions. This is a public comment recorded by the Multimodal Transportation Commission on March 24, 2021 and obtained by AoB after a public records request. 
3. Please re-read the past public comments about this street. Your comments helped defeat the 2018 Merrimon Road widening, and they deserve close examination. Read the many different voices that are crying out for change on Merrimon. 
4. Asheville, the tenth largest city in NC, continues to rank #1 in pedestrian and bicyclist death and injury. As the Citizen Times reported earlier in March, between 2010-18, Asheville ranked first in the state per capita in both total pedestrian crashes per year and in pedestrian crashes that result in injury or death. 

It is not necessary to be injured regularly in order to use a transportation network, to move about in a City. It is not necessary for a person to die trying to cross the street. We support a 4-3 conversion for Merrimon Avenue north of downtown for many reasons. And one of the best reasons is that it will make the road safer for all users. 

Here are related posts you may enjoy:

AoB: Merrimon Avenue: Road Diet proposed!
AoB: Resource page tracking this project on our site.
City of Asheville: Project page for this project
City of Asheville: Story map with data overlays for collisions, bike, ped, traffic volumes and more
Iowa DOT: Cute road diet explainer video, 6 minutes
FHWA: Road diet case studies
FHWA: Road diet myths

The post Merrimon Avenue: Road Diet Proposed! appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

Dear Ms. Bereis,

The post Amelia: Faster driving speeds will make Merrimon more dangerous and less pleasant for all users, whether they are walking, biking, or driving appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

The post Jamie: I am very concerned about the plans proposed for Merrimon Avenue and what it will do to our community appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.

I am submitting input on the Merrimon Avenue widening project as an Asheville resident, a public health professional, and an enthusiastic-and-extremely-concerned bicyclist. NCDOT’s proposed plan for widening Merrimon Ave from W.T. Weaver Boulevard to Edgewood Road completely misses the mark with both process and design, and fails to meet the needs of all residents who wish to travel this corridor on bicycles and on foot.

The process used to develop this plan—particularly the apparent complete lack of engagement with the City of Asheville, and the fact that no alternatives were presented to the public—is incredibly troubling. Further, the proposed design itself would make this corridor (which is already notoriously treacherous for bicyclists attempting to travel between North Asheville and the downtown area) even worse. This design mimics some of the worst roads in the Asheville area and runs completely counter to the groundswell of support in Asheville for people-centered road design that allows residents and visitors to move throughout the city safely and by many different modes.

The City of Asheville has already invested years of effort to develop thoughtful, comprehensive plans for improving multi-modal transportation in our community, including the Asheville in Motion (AIM) plan and the Asheville City 2025 Plan. NCDOT’s Division 13 should partner with the CoA Transportation Department to align designs for improvements to Merrimon Ave with these existing plans.

The current proposal does not even align with NCDOT’s own Complete Street Policy, or with NC’s Vision Zero Policy, which both call for close coordination and partnership with local government to design complete streets that optimize mobility and safety for all users including pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transit users. NCDOT Division 13 should ensure that the process it uses to develop alternatives for the Merrimon Ave corridor, as well as the details of those alternatives, align with the existing guidelines in these policies.

Finally, the current proposed design does not meet existing federal standards or align with evidence-based design guidelines from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). In particular, the proposed 2-foot bicycle lane along with a planned 40 mile per hour speed limit is a glaring failure to align with AASTHO recommendations of at least 4 feet bike lanes. Sub-standard design is a recipe for even greater safety issues for bicyclists and pedestrians.

I am disappointed and extremely concerned by the total lack of engagement with the City of Asheville, the lack of proposed alternatives, and the proposed design which leaves bicyclists effectively fending for themselves against high-speed vehicular traffic. As a bicyclist I am convinced this design will leave me and my fellow bicyclists far worse off than we are now. I encourage NCDOT Division 13 to go back to the drawing board and work closely with the CoA, local businesses, and residents, to design a Merrimon Avenue that works for us all.

Sincerely,

Emily Kujawa

Emily Kujawa, MPH, RD

Executive Director, Kujawa Consulting

The post Emily: NCDOT’s proposed plan completely misses the mark with both process and design appeared first on Asheville On Bikes.