City To Discuss Eighth Street Restriping

A consulting firm hired by the city to study the impact of temporarily restriping Eighth Street from four to three lanes will present in-field observations of the experiment at Monday night's city commission meeting.

URS Corporation has conducted traffic counts and turning movement counts at 20 locations in the corridor before and after the installation of the new pavement markings. A representative from the firm will share the collected data to date and discuss the impact of the restriping project at Monday's meeting, which will be held at 7pm at the Governmental Center.

City Planning Director Russ Soyring says his department has received "numerous comments both in support and against the restriping" since the project began. Discussing his own observations, Soyring says that "although speeds have dropped down a bit, we still have a speeding issue with motorists going too fast" on Eighth Street. He also says there are brief intervals three or four times a day during the work week when "motorists queue up or travel at slow speeds," and that making a left turn onto Boardman Avenue is "difficult during the busy travel times." But Soyring also notes that the "walking environment seems to be much better," with motorists traveling farther from the sidewalk and generally going at lower speeds, and that users have commented that crossing the street as a pedestrian has improved.

The Eighth Street "road diet" was enacted after residents submitted a petition last spring requesting the testing of a new configuration of Eighth Street ahead of a planned total reconstruction of the road in 2018. The pilot project is intended to be in place for one year, after which time the city will either make the restriping permanent or return the original lane markings to Eighth Street.