Hillsborough and Morgan Roundabout Consensus: Put Community First
Morgan Street Roundabout Saga: Area Needs Broader Study
The group in attendance at the December 11th roundabout hearing advanced the need for a more comprehensive, community-focused plan for the Hillsborough and Morgan street intersection. None of the proposed plans have successfully addressed the community’s initial concerns—slower speeds, better pedestrian access, and less traffic. This project began as a community enhancement project rather than a transit project. The project thus far has catered to the opposite—traffic management with community and pedestrian impact as second priority.
This is at no fault of the designers. The engineering team has had a contract with the City of Raleigh to develop Morgan St. into a two-way street and to address the awkward Hillsborough and Morgan intersection. With such a narrow project scope the design problem became transit oriented. From the beginning this should have been a city council planning issue and not a transportation issue. A broader development plan for the area is needed that will outline the Hillsborough community’s needs with an intersection plan that will respond to those needs.
The community goals for Hillsborough St. revolve around turning the corridor into a vibrant community that has slower traffic speeds, smarter pedestrian access, additional street parking and less traffic. The Hillsborough Street Partnership has been working since 1999 to implement these goals and the street plan by Kimley Horn and Associates has already been approved. Hillsborough Street, west of the newly approved Oberlin roundabout, will turn into a two-lane street with a raised median.
So with that design as a precedent the Hillsborough and Morgan intersection is back at square one. Councilman Thomas Crowder is interested in hearing more solutions that support the community goals by use of broader development ideas. Some of the discussion that will need to happen include: How can 25% of traffic be diverted from Hillsborough St. to collector roads such as Wade Ave. and Western Blvd.? Is there anywhere else that traffic can be accomodated for movement between the beltline and downtown? Is it possible to connect Morgan Street to Western Ave. in order to relieve the burden on Hillsborough St.? Will there be any future consideration for public transit, such as street cars, along Hillsborough St.? What can be done to the Hillsborough and Morgan intersection to improve it from a pedestrian and community standpoint?
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Below are three of the rejected intersection solutions from the December 11th hearing. With a vote at the end of the meeting, most people in attendance voted to do nothing and leave options open.
Single-lane roundabout with express lane: alternative #3, figure 4
Single-lane roundabout with NO express lane: alternative #1, figure 2
Retrofit existing intersection: original alternative, figure 1
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CarnifeX
12/12 07:16 PM
Aren’t they planning on doing away with the prison next to morgan street? I would think that would be a perfect place to merge Morgan and Western. That could easily alleviate some of that load. I don’t see any point in trying to use Wade as it is already maxed out and I don’t see widening being very efficient w/o an alternative traffic route.
These plans seem to be following the same planning timeline/acceptance as the Plensa plaza. Great, yet another instance of Raleigh sitting on its laurels. I love this city and its growth but the way it does things drives me crazy.
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150
12/12 08:25 PM
Is that true that Central Prison is closing? I hadn’t heard that, and it surprises me, but that would be interesting.
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erin
12/12 08:38 PM
i didnt even realize the plan with the signs was an alternative. it was so poorly rendered. this project is going to take forever to get started. nobody (with power) wants to address the bigger area.
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freshsqueze
12/12 10:12 PM
I disagree. The City Council holds the key to the project and has the power to broaden the scope. There were three there last night who would typically agree with Crowder’s comments. (None of the newly elected council members were present.) PBS+J has their hands tied by the people and the city. Again, it looked like they haven’t worked on this project since the last two meetings; they showed NO NEW SCHEMES. Their schemes were either the recommended one, or ones from the pre-design phase that were initially dubbed inadequate due to site or traffic load factors.
Carnifex hit the nail on the head. Move the fucking State Pen out to Butner with all of the other Corrections and State/Federal facilities and make some connections.
What we need immediately is for the City Council to put PBS+J on hold, and issue and RFQ for an area plan design study that looks at multiple options.
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Betsy
12/12 10:34 PM
Thanks, Chad, for your hard work and insight in covering this project. If not for your write-ups, we would know little about the proposals.
My sense of the room last night was
(1) that the project reflect the primarily pedestrian & urban goals for Hillsborough Street, and that vehicular throughput should not take precedence (as it would on a city-to-city highway, or suburban arterial).
(2) everyone seems to agree that no solution is possible, so long as the project is considered in isolation (as it currently is considered). Rather, the congestion issue demands, requires, that the project be considered in the context of the street pattern feeding this site, and of the major trip generators around it.
A specific observation of my own:
If Raleigh sets clear ped-bike-urban priorities for this street segment, DOT would most likely defer to that, as per its policy. No one but the transportation-impaired would try to travel from one side of Wake County to another using Hillsborough Street.
But localities have to make their strategic preferences clear in order for DOT to give them consideration.
Gosh, is the capital city willing to stick its neck out? Do ya think we *might* have some pull? Aw, it’s hard to say whether we rate higher than, say, Bahama, or Hope Mills?
Finally, there are ways for the city to influence the traffic patterns through and around the project location. Those include plans for opening new roads and other transportation improvements.
The new council has the political will and the understanding of how a city behaves differently from a suburb. My sense is that they will be willing to look at the larger picture and do the right thing.
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orulz
12/13 02:28 PM
Closing Central Prison isn’t really on the state’s radar. I’m sure it has been studied at some point, but it’s probably not going to happen any time soon.
The good news is, a lot of additional street connections are possible without relocating the prison. See this map I made. Carl Dawson, the city’s director of Public Works, indicated that the connections in red are already included in a feasibility study due around the first of the year; the connections in blue are in the city’s comprehensive plan (southwest district thoroughfare plan) so they might be included in the same study as well.
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150
12/13 03:25 PM
Orulz, did you get any sense from talking to Carl Dawson about how many people would use those possible extensions? I ask because it doesn’t seem to me that many people use Ashe to go to Western Boulevard. Obviously, Morgan is only one way at the curve, at the moment, but Morgan, where it is two ways, is deserted compared to Hillsborough. I wonder if extending Morgan to Ashe would accomplish much.
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Michael
12/13 04:13 PM
I would think you would want to keep traffoc off of Ashe. Its very narrow where it meets Hillsborough and would require a major change to the intersection at Western I think it should also be more of a neighborhood street given that its lined with homes. It seems the Morgan/Blair Dr. extension would be much more viable as a major artery.
I would think also that Pullen could carry more traffic than it does especially if the bridge over western is reconfigured, which probably needs to happen anyway. I also saw in an old Centennial Campus master plan that the intent for Pullen was to extend to that Ovel Drive, Centennial Pkwy intersection, rather than hitting Bilyeu in a ‘T’. The Oval at Centennial is aligned on axis with the Bell Tower and Pullen align in this way would reinforce that axis and be a good pedestrian connector between Main Campus and Centennial. There is also a large Mixed use development planned for the area between Western and Centennial.
So I think Pullen and the Blair Dr. connection would and should take most of the N-S traffic.
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notatthemeeting
12/13 04:33 PM
I hope bicycle traffic was discussed at the meeting—doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in the article or comments.
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orulz
12/13 05:57 PM
I did not get a chance to talk at length with Carl Dawson about the connectors, though I did send an e-mail, which he forwarded to the individual managing the study.
The point of the Morgan extension to Ashe is not to divert traffic from Hillsborough to Ashe, but rather to send the traffic on the (newly two-way) Morgan down Ashe to Western rather than piping it back up to Hillsborough. I predict that the Morgan-Ashe connector would REDUCE the traffic on the narrow neighborhood stretch of Ashe between Hillsborough and the RR tracks. I would say that the only negative impacts of extending Morgan to Ashe would be 1. Charlie Goodnight’s losing some parking, and 2. Pullen Park Lofts apartments getting torn down (which would happen anyway, eventually, as this ugly little apartment complex is already ripe for redevelopment.)
RE the Pullen extension to Centennial, I’ve seen the same map as you, but what I’m going by is the “mission valley opportunity area” map from the 2006 Southwest District Plan Update.
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150
12/13 06:52 PM
Orulz, I know, that’s what I was talking about, too. My point was that Morgan, east of St. Mary’s Street, where it is two ways, doesn’t have much traffic now, compared to Hillsborough. Will that change, after it becomes two ways all the way to Hillsborough? If so, then an extension to Ashe makes some sense, because it would reduce the number of cars on Hillsborough.
I’m just curious as to the traffic projections for Morgan when it becomes two ways. Right now, with the amount of traffic it gets, I can’t see the benefit of an extension to Ashe.
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freshsqueze
12/13 07:02 PM
The engineers diverted 20% of the current Hillsborough traffic load to a converted 2-way Morgan Street. Based on this figure, a one lane roundabout (without the express lane) would be ‘rejected’ by DOT, according to PBS+J. The Ashe extension would theoretically provide some alleviation for the one laner to be possible, but PBS+J were reluctant to discuss anything outside of micromanaging this one intersection.
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AHands
08/10 05:30 AM
Paying Attention is good.
Mary Roach, reviewing “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us)” for the NYTimes wrote:
...This basic truth - feeling safe kills - lies beneath many of the book’s insights. Americans think roundabouts are more dangerous than intersections with traffic lights. Roundabouts require you to adjust your speed, to merge, in short, to pay attention. At an intersection, we simply watch the light. And so we may not notice the red-light runner coming at us or the pedestrian stepping off the curb. A study that followed 24 intersections that had been converted from signals or stop signs to roundabouts showed an almost 90 percent drop in fatal crashes after the change…
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