City prepares for second round of Downtown Loop discussions, brings significant plan improvements

Few topics get downtowners' interest piqued like solutions to the Downtown Loop, the once-futuristic but now largely-derided cobbling of streets together into a multilane surface-level route around the city center district.

No sooner did the City announce next week's second-pass look at a proposal to convert the one-way Loop to two-way traffic flow than did listservs start filling with comments and concerns over the idea.

Many of those need further scrutiny, yes. But it's hard to overstate how much of an improvement the second look at the Loop changes is over the first round presented to the public earlier this fall.

While the initial two proposals kicked the can a bit on some of the poor urban designs implemented for the Loop in its 1970s incarnation, differing largely in whether or not to extend the loop east towards Dillard St., the new version smartly reintegrates Liberty St. and (to a lesser extent) Cleveland St. into the downtown traffic picture, while edging-off curves on the northeastern and northwestern sides of downtown in ways that could spur future development.

Let's look at what's new and better:

Liberty Street Gets Liberated: The two initial proposals cut out the gentle curve connector between Roxboro and the northern side of the Loop, bringing Rox/Loop traffic to a signalized intersection at Holloway. But they also kept the Sneaky Pete dogleg of the Loop carrying one-way traffic from Chapel Hill St. and City Hall Plaza to Roxboro/Liberty -- while keeping the superblock of Liberty between Roxboro and Dillard one-way.

(In these photos, green areas reflect abandoned road corridors. Click any image to view a larger version.)

The new plan is far, far better:

• That dogleg gets booted to the proverbial curb, with Liberty St. realigned almost due west to connect down to Church St. in front of Trinity United Methodist Church.
• The Liberty St. superblock gets two-way again, creating a major re-connection between the eastern side of downtown and the rest of the city center.
• Cleveland St. doesn't get a true restoration of its alignment, as some have asked for, but would become accessible northbound from City Hall Plaza, which itself would be newly extended to the Morgan St. northern side of the Loop.

One of the major pluses to this plan: the opening up of a significant-sized parcel between Holloway/Morgan, Liberty, and City Hall Plaza to support future development.

Bus Station Becomes Byway, Great Jones Gets Greater: Similarly, this version of the plan does a nice job of "squaring off" the northwestern side of the Loop, which in the initial proposals would have kept its rounded bits brought in by urban renewal:

In the revised proposal, another suggestion from the first set of public meetings comes into play, with a better realignment of Morgan St. and Great Jones St. there at the SouthBank Building:

From a downtown development perspective, this change on the northwestern side of the loop -- which makes Great Jones St. more prominent, and bringing this side of the Loop to a signalized intersection with Morgan St. -- makes the SouthBank site owned by Greenfire a much more interesting block for redevelopment, significantly adding to its size.

Assuming the Norfolk Southern rail corridor could be dealt with, you'd also have a much easier time developing the western side of Great Jones in what's today the West Village parking lot.

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The new preferred alternative otherwise largely maintains the vestiges of Alternative #1 in the initial proposal; the currently one-way connector from the southern side of the Loop to Roxboro is used for clockwise/westbound traffic, with the Loop contained to its initial dimensions as opposed to a Dillard St. routing.

Mangum St. also stays one-way southbound in the current proposal, though City staff likely continue to want to convert that to two-way throughout the urban core as part of future plans.

Of course, there still promise to be plenty of concerns to address at next week's meeting (Thursday Dec. 10, 6-8pm at downtown's Temple Bldg.)

Mangum 506 developer Susana Dancy has raised concerns as whether the width of roads like Holloway/Morgan and Roxboro is really necessary for traffic levels or whether it maintains a pedestrian-unfriendly environment that is too car-centric.

Dancy's business partner and downtown architect Scott Harmon, meantime, asked whether the one-way loop option he's discussed -- based on the Viennese ring, with a one-way loop with landscaping and park-like elements supporting car, pedestrian, bike and transit options -- isn't worth studying.

To downtown activist and blogger Michael Bacon, though, the revisions to the plan mark "a great interim step;" he notes the challenges the City and contract engineers at Kimley-Horn have in balancing Durham desires with the often groanworthy requirements of NCDOT:

Right now, the loop is, split between the two halves, US-70 Business. Because that's under the strict control of NC-DOT, the city can't do ANYTHING to it with out NC-DOT's say-so.  And NC-DOT is very, very clear that it basically cares about one thing and one thing only -- "level of service," which basically means how bad the traffic is for the automobiles given whatever traffic configuration you want to propose.

The city's transportation staff and Kimley-Horn are basically doing a slow walk with a sophisticated traffic model and minor adjustments as they go. Basically saying, how much can we do with a very limited budget to make things better and still get NC-DOT to sign off on it?  My take on this plan is, if we can do this for a reasonable budget and without any sass from NC-DOT, by all means let's do it.

The City's published the revised proposal plus the original ideas on its web site.

Comments

[Toby]

Great post, Kevin, and great news from the city! This revised proposal takes several big steps forward from the previous ones. The Public Works Dept deserves credit for continuing to push the design process forward, while maintaining a sense of realism about what will fly (drive?) with NCDOT.

I'd like to see more details with regard to bike and pedestrian amenities on all of the affected streets. Will it be possible to walk from downtown to the library without having to sprint across Roxboro? Or walk from Five Points to West Village, with good sidewalks and crosswalks on both sides of Main? Can I ride my bike along Ramseur and feel reasonably safe from speeding cars?

[Chris]

I'd say the process appears to be working at this point. Hooray!

Additional details need to be worked out, and those of us interested need to keep on top of this issue -- thanks, Kevin, for the good coverage. I wish it was some other night than Thursday so that I could make it.

[Ken K]

I may not be there in time to comment at the Thursday public session, but could someone please remind the consulting firm that NCDOT has committed on paper to acknowledge "Complete Streets" as a goal in future projects? That may help smooth the way to create a better bike/ped experience with any changes to the Downtown Loop.

http://www.completestreets.org/policy/state/north-carolina-beefs-up-policy/

[Owen]

I'm a bit late to this one. This a big improvement to the old plan and I wouldn't make any further changes to the west end. However, the east end still needs work.

(1)Roxboro is still too wide. Does it REALLY need to be two-way? I'd rather have a 3 lanes, 1 way Roxboro with parallel parking, than 1-way, 5-lanes Roxboro with no parking.

(2)Still no stoplight or pedestrian crossing planned along Morgan between Mangum and Roxboro. There should be stoplights at Cleveland and Chapel Hill.

(3)Cleveland should be extended across Morgan. This would involve changing the direction of one-way City Hall Plaza. Illustrations linked below.

(4)The Ramseur/Roxboro intersection is still a cluster****. Tear down the bridge and make it a simple signalized intersection, with Roxboro being one-way, and Ramseur being two-way.

The latest plan:
http://www.reprehensible.net/~orulz/clevelandmorganbefore.jpg

My plan:
http://www.reprehensible.net/~orulz/clevelandmorgan.jpg