Here’s an bit more on the city’s work to remove the two traffic islands along West Bakerview Road (they’ll start work tomorrow morning, and the city is asking people to avoid that area, if possible). This article will run tomorrow:

City crews will remove traffic islands along West Bakerview Road this week, an effort to decrease congestion and improve safety along the heavily traveled corridor.

Bellingham Public Works crews will work Wednesday through Friday to remove median planters along Bakerview between Palisade Way and Northwest Avenue and between Northwest and Pacific Highway, near Fred Meyer.

The islands at those locations clog up traffic because it limits the number of left-turning vehicles queuing in the center turn lane, city officials said.

“I remember coming to the conclusion that removing the islands was a no-brainer after performing several site visits during (evening rush hour) and witnessing several close calls as traffic consistently stacking into the through lane,” said Steve Haugen, traffic operations engineer at Public Works.

Removing the islands lets more vehicles wait to turn left onto Northwest Avenue and into the Fred Meyer driveway, he said.

The islands were installed to improve the road’s aesthetics when that stretch of Baker-view was widening and improved in 1998, and it was done with the expectation that some islands may have to be modified or removed as traffic increased in the future, Rory Routhe, assistant director of engineering, previously said. Some islands have already been modified, he said.

“We expect more will be modified in the future as needed for safety and capacity re-quirements,” he said.

More than 27,000 vehicles a day use Bakerview east of Northwest, and more than 16,000 a day use it between the freeway and Northwest, according to Public Works data.

The work, which will take place between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., will require some lane closures. Flaggers will be out there directing traffic. Work dates and times are may change, depending on weather or last-minute changes in work schedules, according to Public Works.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Bellingham street work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.