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.

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.