A 206-page, just-completed state transportation study concludes that adding the “gateway effect” and “bike boxes” to Western Avenue will make its East Lynn stretch safer and easier to travel.
The study outlines ways to spend more than $26 million to improve Western Avenue, also known as Route 107.
City Council President and state Rep. Dan Cahill underscored the importance of making improvements on Western Avenue Wednesday. Cahill, who lives in East Lynn and drives Western Avenue every day, also pointed at the improvement’s price tag and said, “… every year that goes by the cost most likely will rise.”
Most people who drive down 107’s East Lynn length know it features two sources of major aggravation. One is the free-for-all intersection at Western Avenue and Eastern Avenue, a major location of serious local accidents. The other aggravation is located at Western Avenue’s Salem end where traffic flowing from that city gets squeezed into Lynn with a traffic lane merger.
It’s hard to say if lane-merging features like the “gateway effect” and safety ones like “bike boxes” will improve Western Avenue.
The hard truth about road projects, like any other venture paid for with tax dollars, is that improvements must be prioritized. Some items in 107’s lengthy study report are going to have to get shelved.
As Cahill pointedly noted, securing state money for road improvements is a challenge for local officials that can extend from one year to another. Lynn’s legislative delegation has done a good job ensuring projects like the Wyoma Square road repaving and traffic signal work secured money.
But Cahill’s right: now is the time to spend money on 107’s East Lynn stretch instead of waiting into the next decade to do the work or until the next fatal accident occurs on Western Avenue.
Any plan to spend money on 107 should be focused on the top priority needs for the street, beginning with making traffic flow smoothly through Western Avenue at Eastern Avenue and Stanwood and Maple streets and working with the city of Salem and the state to ease the bottleneck straddling Lynn and Salem.
Taking a priority approach to improving Western Avenue might force the city to veer away from the “smart streets” planning philosophy state transportation officials and, by extension, federal officials endorse.
The latest in transportation planning trends, smart streets encompasses a total transportation scheme, including pedestrian and bicycle needs. It’s well and good to envision how people on foot and bikes will use 107.
But the street is primarily a crosstown thoroughfare funneling into busy side streets, and planning for its future should be focused on automobile traffic. If lane and signal changes can make Western Avenue safer for vehicles, then they can also make it safer for bicyclists.
Ranking priorities is a hard-headed task that inevitably disappoints people. But it is the only way to get realistic improvements undertaken in anywhere near a timely fashion on Western Avenue.
It’s time to move from the study and public hearing phase on Route 107 to the funding and construction phase.
