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close windowCase Study No. 29
Bellevue, WA
Prepared by Karen Gonzalez, City of Bellevue, WA.
Over the past fifteen years, the significant business and residential population growth in Bellevue, Washington has resulted in negative traffic impacts, especially where congested arterial streets surround residential neighborhoods. The City has found that motorists carried their high driving speeds and risky behavior from arterial roadways into residential neighborhood streets, decreasing the safety and comfort of pedestrians.
The study of streetscapes and traffic calming has shown increasingly that motorists’speeds and driving characteristics are greatly influenced by cues given in the street design and surrounding environment. The City addressed this problem through its Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program. To protect neighborhood streets that connect directly to arterials, the City decided to look for a treatment that would indicate to motorists they were leaving an arterial street and entering a residential neighborhood. Gateway treatments such as neighborhood signs and physical roadway features such as landscaped islands or colored-textured pavement were considered.
Neighborhood signs are located on this landscaped median island at the entrance to the Surrey Downs neighborhood.
A landscaped island with pavement treatments at the entrance to the Surrey Downs neighborhood.
The City began experimenting with the use of gateway treatments in the late 1980’s. Although developers were using gateway treatments to identify their subdivisions, little was being done with this concept by local agencies. In 1989, the City worked with the Surrey Downs Community to develop a plan that would help reduce vehicle speeds and make conditions safer for pedestrians, while at the same time, identify a neighborhood.
The Surrey Downs Neighborhood is located one block south of the Central Business District (CBD). The community is surrounded by a collector street on the west and by minor arterial streets on the north, east, and south, which serve as access to several freeway interchanges. Because of these roadways and the neighborhood’s close proximity to the CBD, the protection and preservation of the neighborhood’s walkability and livability was very important to the residents.
Plans were made to use physical changes to the roadway environment to reduce traffic impact and improve pedestrian conditions in the neighborhood. Landscaped medians and colored-textured pavement treatments were designed. The medians were approximately 2.40 m (8 ft) wide by 9.15 m (30 ft) long, which narrowed the travel lanes to 3 m (10 ft). Colored-textured pavement set behind the crosswalk area adjacent to the median measured 10 ft (3 m) wide, and sloped to a 50 mm (2 in) vertical rise at its center to make drivers feel a slight rise as they travel over the colored pavement and enter the neighborhood.
Five gateway treatments were designed for the Surrey Downs neighborhood. Three locations included landscaped medians with pavement treatments, while two others received only pavement treatments to allow on-street parking. Posted speed limits for the neighborhood streets remained 40 km/h (25 mi/h). At the time this project was developed, design and construction averaged $10,000 for each entrance with a landscaped median and approximately $5,000 for the colored-textured pavement treatment. Two budget lines in the City’s Capital Investment Program, Neighborhood Enhancements (NEP) and Neighborhood Traffic Calming (NTCP), provided funding, and the design was completed in-house.
The project’s effectiveness was determined more on public perception than on actual speed reduction. Speed studies conducted at the gateway treatments with landscaped medians showed speeds reduced 3.5 km/h (2 to 3 mi/h), possibly attributed to the narrowing of the travel lanes. Vehicle speeds did not change at locations where colored-textured pavement was installed despite the slight rise of the pavement.
Although the speed studies showed limited impact, public perception of the positive benefits produced by the project was widespread. Like other median projects in Bellevue, residents feel that the gateway intersections to the Surrey Downs neighborhood are safer for pedestrians because they must only cross one lane of traffic at a time. Further, residents’ concerns about vehicles cutting corners as motorists entered the neighborhood were eliminated by the medians. Residents also felt the gateway treatments helped to identify the vitality of their community, enhancing the residential character, and improving the pedestrian environment by making it less appealing to non-local traffic. The success of this project has led to the construction of many more gateway treatments as part of traffic calming efforts throughout Bellevue.
Karen Gonzalez
Neighborhood Programs Manager
City of Bellevue
301 116th Avenue SE, Suite #150
Bellevue, WA 98005
Office Phone: (425) 452-4598
E-mail: kgonzalez@ci.bellevue.wa.us