Detours — Then A Bridge— Ahead

Get ready for some short-term driving detours around Temple Street and Route 34, to make way for long-term changes stitching Downtown and the Hill back together.

The Temple Street stage of that years-in-the-making reconstruction of center-city streets will now take place across two phases — with road closures and detours in the mix, as well as some significant if temporary changes planned for a stretch of York Street where cars keep killing people.

City Transportation, Traffic & Parking (TT&P) Executive Director Doug Hausladen and city-hired consultant Anna Mariotti gave that update on Downtown Crossing Phases 3 and 4 Tuesday night during the latest monthly virtual meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team.

They detailed the next steps on that decade-long, state and federally-funded overhaul of the Rt. 34 mini-highway-to-nowhere that so far has yielded a College Street bridge and the Alexion building and, when Phase 2 is complete early this summer, a new protected intersection on a reconnected Orange Street.

Hausladen and Mariotti said on Tuesday night that Downtown Crossing’s next phase—which will connect Temple Street and Congress Avenue with a new bridge—will in fact take place over two phases, dubbed Phase 3 and Phase 4.

“It’s being done in two phases to make funding more phased and feasible,” Mariotti said.

Phase 3 will see the construction of an abutment and the raising of the road by eight feet at the ends of Temple Street and Congress Avenue in preparation for the construction of a bridge, to be known as Temple Crossing. That phase of the work should last from this month through November.

Phase 4 will then see the actual construction of the new Temple Street bridge. The construction start date depends on when the city secures adequate funding for the project, and the bridge should be complete sometime between 2023 and 2025.

Phase 3’s bridge prep work will allow Winstanley Enterprises to start building its planned new 10-story, 500,000 square-foot biotech lab and office tower at 101 College St. on a parcel adjacent to where the Temple Street bridge will one day stand, Mariotti and Hausladen said.

In a follow up email, city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli explained that the city expects Phase 3 to cost roughly $14 million in total, and the city has funding lined up to complete that work this year.

“Due to the complexity of the scope for MLK Boulevard (and related utility relocations), this work was deferred to the new Phase 4 along with the actual bridge deck which will carry Temple Street over to South Frontage Road,” he continued. ​“We will have a cost estimate for Phase 4 sometime in late spring. Our City Plan Department is managing the project and did a great job aligning a scope of work with available funding.”

Hausladen and Mariotti also said on Tuesday night that the imminent start of Phase 3 construction will result in a fair number of road closures and detours.

Most notably, the section of South Frontage Road between College Street and Church Street as well as an adjacent section of Congress Avenue will be closed to vehicle traffic for five months, from June through November.

“While this is significant, the city has invested heavily in not just official signs on road detour routes, but also in developing alternate routes with the intent of preventing traffic from entering the general area and reducing congestion.”

Some of the roadway adjustments the city plans to make to alleviate the traffic burden caused by the closure of South Frontage Road will be the temporary conversion of York Street between Howard and South Frontage to two-way, the temporary conversion of Lafayette Street between Congress and Church Street South to one way, and the permanent opening of a new section of Columbus Avenue between Orange Street and Church Street South.

Hausladen promised plenty of signage on Park Street, Howard Avenue, College Street, and other nearby streets on the western side of the road closure diverting traffic away from South Frontage Road. There will also be new signage added to Columbus Avenue ​“pushing people to use Exit 44” on I‑95.

A Deadly Intersection

The road reconfigurations and construction projects associated with Downtown Crossing Phase 3 will also have a direct impact on a uniquely deadly stretch of York Street.

That’s York Street between Howard Avenue and South Frontage Road.

Last October, 25-year-old Yale Law School student Chris Lim died at that intersection of York and South Frontage after a truck making a legal right turn from the middle lane struck him as he rode his bike through the intersection in the right lane.

The crash occurred at the same intersection where a medical student named Mila Rainof was killed in 2008 and a 42-year-old pedestrian named Melinda Trancredi was killed in 2017.

A host of local safe streets activists told story after story about the dangers of that intersection when petitioning the state legislature to pass a new law in the works that would legalize a speed camera pilot. (That law passed out of the state’s Judiciary Committee this week.)

The string of pedestrian and cyclist deaths at that hotspot also sparked a joint effort by Downtown Alder Abby Roth and Hill Alder Ron Hurt to petition their local legislative colleagues and the city’s Traffic Authority to make a suite of traffic safety improvements to York and South Frontage.

In particular, in a letter written to the Traffic Authority last Nov. 5, the two alders called for the city to:

• Remove the right turn arrow from the middle lane of York on the approach to South Frontage;

• Change the timing of the traffic signal at York and South Frontage to allow for pedestrians to cross a few seconds earlier than vehicle traffic — a so-called leading pedestrian interval;

• And remove the left lane of traffic on York from Howard Avenue to Crown Street and replace it with a separated bike lane.

“While arguably the proposed changes will slow traffic at this intersection by a few seconds, as referenced above, we believe that is a positive outcome,” the two alders wrote in their November letter. ​“While speed was not a factor in the most current death, speeding — and red light running — are serious problems at this intersection, which put all users of the road at risk every day. Given the high number of pedestrians and cyclists who frequent this area, which also has vehicles speeding to and from the highway, we think changing the infrastructure to enable traffic calming is long overdue.”

Roth: City Must ​“Act With Urgency”

During this month’s Traffic Authority meeting, the commissioners discussed — but did not vote on — any of Roth’s and Hurt’s recommended infrastructure changes for York and South Frontage.

And in a follow up interview after Tuesday night’s management team presentation, Hausladen explained how Downtown Crossing Phase 3 will impact that deadly intersection in the short run and, potentially, in the long run as well.

The big change will be the five-month conversion of York Street between Howard and South Frontage to two way. That temporary conversion will also come with the temporary removal of the current middle lane right-turn arrow heading up York Street.

“There’s a lot of traffic” on that stretch of York Street today, Hausladen said, largely because it’s where main entrance to the hospital is, at 20 York St.

“That construction period change is going to allow us to study what happens when we convert York Street to two way.” That is, with one of the northbound lanes dropped in order to accommodate a new southbound lane, the city will be able to see if converting York Street to two way permanently is feasible given the amount of traffic flow that part of the city needs to accommodate.

Two way roads lead to lower speeds than one way roads, Hausladen said, by the simple fact that the roadway is narrower.

“If we can show through data that a two-way condition reduces the demand on northbound York Street, we can then start doing things with the right of way that are not just vehicular oriented.” Like, for example, trying to find a way to put in a designated bike lane.

He said his department’s goal is to make York Street two way permanently.

He also noted that the city has budgeted $800,000 in state capital improvement funds to address high speeds on South Frontage by building out three raised intersections and a new protected cycletrack on that road.

As for changing the way the traffic signal works, Hausladen said, he’s in support of leading pedestrian interval — but is reluctant to install one at this single intersection without making similar changes at intersections across the city.

“It would not be a safe implementation of a leading pedestrian interval to do a one-off implementation,” he said.

While a citywide signal implementation and education project would be much more costly and time-intensive, he said, the new federal transportation administration appears to be teeing up funds for these very types of safe streets improvements.

In prepared remarks she read at this month’s Traffic Authority meeting, Roth commended the city’s plans to temporarily convert York to two way, to temporarily remove the middle lane right turn arrow, and to study how traffic responds during the upcoming construction period.

“I want to emphasize the urgency of making change at this intersection,” she said.

“We cannot slowly and reactively address our traffic safety crisis. We must be proactive and act with urgency.”