Two projects, set to break ground later this summer, will reduce the number of lanes on Market and Wishkah streets in an effort to make the downtown area more inviting for passing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
Market Street
The City of Aberdeen will oversee the Market Street project, which also includes repaving the nearly mile-long stretch between South F and North Park streets. The work, according to Public Works Director Malcolm Bowie, will begin sometime in June or July.
The project, Bowie added, will cost around $900,000, with $500,000 coming from a state grant. The remaining amount will come from the city’s transportation benefit district, which allows cities to collect extra fees on vehicle registration to pay for local transportation projects, according to the state Department of Licensing.
Crews will start by planing the street’s deteriorated asphalt, and will then overlay it with new asphalt and stripes. The plan, Bowie said, is to reduce the now four-lane street — with two lanes in each direction — to three, with a single lane in each direction and a shared turning lane in the middle. The city will also implement a bike lane on the street’s south side.
Wishkah Street
A similar plan is in the works for Wishkah Street, which Department of Transportation officials plan to reduce from three to two lanes. Since the street is a state highway, the DOT will oversee that project. Though Heron Street serves as the other half of Highway 101 going east, there are no plans to change its lanes, officials said.
Though the city has not yet proposed a lane-width plan, DOT’s Olympic Region Administrator Kevin Dayton said it would happen later this summer.
Reducing the street by a lane, officials added, would slow traffic down and encourage drivers passing through town to stop in Aberdeen’s downtown area. Additionally, the reduction would allow room for a bike lane and more parking, which some say is congested.
Conceiving the 101 project began last year when DOT officials met with council members and city employees, Dayton said.
“The idea was, from then on, why are we running three lanes, which just encourages people to zip through town, when perhaps maybe taking it to two … would provide some amenities in the downtown area such as better parking, maybe a bike path,” Dayton said.
Dayton added that reducing the number of lanes wouldn’t necessarily mean more traffic jams. The department’s traffic engineers, he said, determined that the current three lanes are too many for that stretch of road.
The project, Dayton said, is also cost-efficient, and would end up being the same amount the department spends to repaint the lines on Highway 101 in Aberdeen every year. Claudia Bingham Baker, a DOT spokeswoman, said that cost is usually less than $10,000.
The exact stretch of road, Baker added, has not yet been determined.
Officials discussed the plans for both streets in a meeting on Thursday morning. Attendees included city officials, members with the Aberdeen Revitalization Movement and the state Department of Transportation to discuss progress with various development projects throughout the city.
Many volunteers and officials agreed that the project would help bring more people to the downtown area.
Scott Reynvaan, a volunteer and former director with ARM, said he sees the issues with traffic on Wishkah street on a daily basis from the ARM office on I Street. People who visit the office, he said, regularly mention how concerning it is to cross all three lanes as a pedestrian.
“You have this highway that comes into town two lanes, then all of a sudden you get to downtown Aberdeen, and it’s three lanes,” Reynvaan said.
“It doesn’t make sense. So this is something that I think will help slow down and calm down traffic in downtown and make it more inviting.”
Bowie said the initiative to slow traffic and be more friendly to alternative transportation methods was one that communities across the state have been trying out.
“We’re adopting a new mindset that probably WSDOT has taken the lead on for communities to make it so you’re not just trying to push vehicles through town, but make the community a lot more livable,” he said.
“This is a chance we have to see if we can make a difference … and make it more attractive to different modes.”
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