Street in Washington changing from four lanes to three lanes

WASHINGTON, Iowa (GTNS) ? West Madison Street in Washington will change from a four-lane road to a three-lane road in 2012.

The Washington City Council made the decision at its meeting Wednesday night. The vote was evenly split among the councilors, 3-3. Mayor Sandra Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the three-lane layout. Councilors Mike Roth, Merlin Hagie and Bob Shepherd voted in favor of the change. Councilors Fred Stark, Russ Zieglowsky and Karen Wilson-Johnson voted against it.

The three-lane road will be a two-lane road with the middle lane reserved for left-turning traffic. That center lane will be 14 feet wide, and the other two lanes will be 11 feet wide. There will be a 4-foot buffer zone, where cars cannot drive, on both sides of the road. Under the current configuration, each of the four lanes is 11 feet wide and there is no buffer.

The Department of Transportation has announced that it will repave West Madison from the intersection with Highway 1 to the intersection with Second Street. That project is scheduled for 2012. Once the road is resurfaced, the new three-lane configuration will be painted on. The new road will be the same width as it is now, 44 feet.

City Engineer Rob McDonald said the paint would last two years. If the council wanted to repaint the road back to four lanes, it would have to grind off the old strips of paint.

Wilson-Johnson, who also is chairman of the street committee that heard public comment on West Madison, said most of the responses she received were against changing the configuration.

?The feeling in town is that for the kind of travel we have, we don?t need a turning lane on that road,? said Wilson-Johnson.

Troy Jerman, a representative of the D.O.T., spoke at two of the street committee meetings earlier this year. He said three-lane roads tend to reduce speeding. Wilson-Johnson said she is interested in reducing speeding, but the city could do that without changing the number of lanes.

Stark said he had taken particular interest in the lane debate because it was in his ward, the 4th Ward. He said he talked to 10 business owners along the street, and seven were against the change and three were for it. Stark said three-lane roads are usually designed for cities that have bypasses for major highways, and Washington does not have such a bypass. He mentioned Muscatine, Mount Pleasant and Fairfield as a few of the nearby cities fitting that description.

Stark also mentioned the city didn?t want to slow down traffic too much on West Madison or else neighboring Monroe Street to the south would become a ?speedway.?

Hagie said he was initially against a three-lane road. He changed his mind after seeing the distance from the sidewalk to the street is only 20 inches on West Madison.

?If you have a pair of tractor trailers, and one wants to go faster than the other, he?ll use that outside lane, and when he does, he?ll put his wheels right on the curb or rubbing up against it,? said Hagie. ?I?d like to see a 4-foot buffer lane. It would get the vehicles farther away from any pedestrian on the sidewalk. I?d like to remind everybody that we do have a very nice pool that the younger generation absolutely loves. They?re walking on that 20 inches between the sidewalk and the curb.?

Shepherd said he rides his bicycle on West Madison, but knows many people who don?t because of the lane configuration. He said it was a tough decision for him, and he ultimately decided to support the three-lane design because of its safety record. At a street committee meeting, Jerman showed the committee members statistics indicating three-lane roads have reduced accidents wherever they have been tried. Shepherd said if the road isn?t safer after the change, the lines could be repainted back to a four lane.

Hagie said one advantage of a three-lane road is that it?s easier to see oncoming traffic when making a left turn. He said if two oncoming cars want to turn left at the same intersection, they block each other?s view of the outside lane. Police Chief Greg Goodman said that was exactly the scenario that causes many of the accidents on four-lane roads.