If you keep up with local transportation news at all, you know the proposed project to narrow Monroe Street from just north of Indiana to the base of the North Hill has been a hot topic. Some people worry that it will cause traffic bottlenecks through the area, and that there is too much traffic to reduce the roadway to one lane in each direction with a middle turn lane.
So, the City of Spokane is going to do a trial run to see how it works. According to the Spokesman-Review, crews will put temporary striping on North Monroe Street to show how their proposed three-lane configuration would work. This will happen in late spring and remain until fall. This will coast between $300,000 and $500,000.
The temporary striping will include markings for curb extensions at intersections to help pedestrians cross Monroe as well as wider parking spaces along curbs. City officials will then study how permanent construction changes might affect traffic, including travel times behind Spokane transit buses.
Yup, this is gonna suck. I take Monroe home because Northwest and Maple have become too contested.
I guess is time to go back to using Post again….
I’m not sure where exactly all the growth is, but Alberta/Driscoll/Assembly and the roads to them have become so congested. I know Spokane pales in comparison to Seattle, but ugh, I hate the traffic. It’s all been this last year or two… my quiet little NW corner apparently isn’t so quiet anymore.
That’s a good question about the growth, because data shows there’s less than 1% growth happening per year in Spokane. And yet we have a housing shortage too. So where are all these people coming from that are making the roads congested? No clue but it seems to be happening on most north-south routes, while you can still get east and west fairly easily. I’m curious to see how much the new striping configuration will really slow things down. At least the City is doing something different and doing a trial run before spending the money to do something permanently that may or may not work.
Hopefully it goes well
I’m just a driving wuss. 🙂
I don’t even like driving more than 15 minutes on weekends because it’s “too far. “
I’m the same. Will avoid driving anymore if I can 🙂