The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) says a new federal study shows that road diets calm traffic and reduce collisions. SDOT recently put Nickerson Street on a road diet, taking it to one lane each way.
The USDOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) released a report that reviewed the safety record of lane reduction projects in California, Washington and Iowa. The report says that rechannelizations don’t adversely impact roadway capacity. It states, “Under most annual average daily traffic conditions tested, road diets appeared to have minimal effects on vehicle capacity because left-turning vehicles were moved into a common two-way left-turn lane.”
You can read the full document, entitled “Evaluation of Lane Reduction ‘Road Diet’ Measures on Crashes,” here.
Tell us what you think. There has been much debate about the Nickerson road diet. Now that its complete, we would like to hear about your experiences. Let us know in comments below.
23 responses so far ↓
1 MsFrench // Aug 20, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Impact on capacity minimal? I beg to differ. I just attempted to drive from QA to Fred Meyer in Ballard. I thought I’d take 15th and go over the Ballard Bridge. THAT was a mistake. One lane, traffice backed up for a couple miles. OK, I bailed on that idea and got on Nickerson to go over to the Fremont Bridge. Evidently, the Fremont Bridge was up and traffic was backed up almost to 12th W. Way past SPU. OK, so I bailed on that and attempted to get up to Aurora. Once again, a line of cars was backed up from the 6 street intersection above Seattle Country Day school, all the way up to McGraw. I have no problem with people riding bikes, and wanting nice safe bike lanes, but please, Mayor McGinn, tell me how I can buy a dozen plants for my yard and shop at Fred Meyer, and get it all home on my bicycle. How about putting the bike lanes on SIDE STREETS and not major thoroughfares? What a mess…
2 Matt the Engineer // Aug 20, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Heh. You’re blaming all of that on the road diet? Welcome to rush hour traffic.
(where is 15th one lane?)
I’ve had neutral experiences with Nickerson so far. I actually didn’t notice the change the first time I drove on it.
3 Cyclist // Aug 20, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Or blame it on the ballard bridge work in the following post. C’mon people, let’s pay attention here!
4 MsFrench // Aug 20, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Hey friends, it was 1:00 in the afternoon when I experienced this… on a week day. One could hardly expect ‘rush hour’ traffic at this time. Yes, I realize it was a convergence of traffic issues that caused the back up on every major arterial off of Queen Anne… but still, if all it takes is one closed lane on the Ballard Bridge and the Fremont bridge opening up, mid day on a week day, to cause a 10 minute drive to take 40 minutes, then maybe we need a an extra couple of lanes to allow a little more circulation on Nickerson to help keep traffic moving. I don’t even want to think about what would happen at 8:00am or 5:00pm. I’ve lived on QA for 20 years and have never had this experience before the Nickerson ‘diet’. I think it’s going to be an on-going problem.
5 Eugene Wasserman // Aug 20, 2010 at 4:47 pm
The SDOT press release left out an important fact from the study. “However, for road diets with Average Auto Daily Trips above approximately 20,000 vehicles, there is an increased likelihood that traffic congestion will increase to the point of diverting traffic to alternative routes.”
Nickerson today is about 20,000 vehicles and a lot of freight.
6 Matt the Engineer // Aug 21, 2010 at 11:23 am
[MsFrench] What caused the backup on your way to Aurora all the way to McGraw? It feels like you’re missing something here – I just can’t imagine that at 1:00 on a weekday. I’m also not sure how you’re attributing that to the Nickerson diet.
How would more lanes on Nickerson helped your problem? You’d still be stuck on 15th. The Fremont bridge would still be up. And the mysterious backup on the way to Aurora would still be there.
7 Matt the Engineer // Aug 21, 2010 at 11:30 am
[Eugene] If you follow the footnote to the source document, this is where they came up with that figure:
“In 1995, Kirkland closed another roadway
for reconstruction. They forced totals of 30,000
vehicles (ADT) onto the two + TWLTLroadway.
The roadway never crashed. These extremely high
numbers continue to astound researchers. What is the
upper limit? This 30,000 ADT may be it. In most
cases carrying capacity numbers must be lower.
Researchers do not have enough knowledge to say where and
how peaks are reached, but many feel comfortable with 20-
23,000 ADT’s. Each community must set its own upper limits.”
Hardly hard data about 20k being a limit. If the road diet doesn’t work well here, we can always restripe.
8 Cris // Aug 21, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I have worked in an office building on Nickerson for 7 years so I drive it at least twice per workday. Agree that it works at times, but I also have never seen gridlock, congestion and miles of frustrated and reckless drivers like I have this week. Mid-day it took me the same amount of time to drive up from a meeting in Federal Way as it did to get from 15th to my office (near Tully’s) via Nickerson. Ridiculous.
Heading east in the full-length of Nickerson street backup I counted 11 cars that U-turned into oncoming traffic to find an alternate route and 4-5 cars driving in the middle turn lane for blocks and blocks (some very fast).
The combination of the two portends one hellacious accident before this cluster**** is rethought. Luckily for them when this occurs, I haven’t seen but one or two bike riders.
Have also tried coming down the hill from 99, but the back streets were also insanely congested with drivers trying to avoid Nickerson and require one-way traffic with all parked cars.
Finally at the base of the hill I found it impossible to cross Nickerson Street to get to my office parking lot.
Anyone thinking this will ease with fall and fewer boaters is forgetting about returning SPU students.
Can’t get to and from my office mid-day, so neither can my clients. When my office lease is up I may have to move.
9 Greene // Aug 22, 2010 at 9:40 am
I really can’t understand why people are arguing that there is no problem with this. To me it seems pro-bicycle folks are clawing at any justification they can get for this change. It’s bad. Period. And if you’re arguuing that its great, you either dont drive this road, or you’re blindly being pro-bike because you are just feeling defensive of the lifestyle you’ve chosen. I drive this road everyday and these changes are not minimal, they are very impactful. And to me the irony in all of it is….. THERE ARE NO BICYCLISTS! I have seen ONE. ONE! This is so frustrating. My husband said it took him 45 minutes to get form Ballard to Fremont on his lunchbreak because he had to run an errand for work. He popped by home to grab some food before zipping back off to work and I thought he was going to blow his top. He was so angry and frustrated. These road diets are just silly. We already lack space on these roads for the population that lives here- it just boggles my mind that they have done this. Get out the paint and change it back please!
10 Nancy Christensen // Aug 22, 2010 at 4:19 pm
We moved to the area nearly 9 months ago as we tired of the commute and felt QA would be the best location for us working in the DT area. What a relief to experience a 15 minute commute vs. an hour on a good day. Then the “road diet” -my commute time has doubled to 30 mins It seems that we have had more of a “fast” than a diet. When does common sense kick in?
11 mike // Aug 22, 2010 at 4:56 pm
“My husband said it took him 45 minutes to get form Ballard to Fremont”
what does this have to do with the road diet? why would you cross 2 bridges to go to fremont? that makes no sense. leary takes 10 minutes DURING rush hour traffic to get from ballard to fremont.
the roads can handle the population that lives here quite easily, they are plenty wide. even with road diets.
nancy, if you are working downtown from queen anne, why are you going backward to take nickerson? talk about a lack of common sense…
12 Nancy Christensen // Aug 22, 2010 at 6:56 pm
I so appreciate your concern about my common sense. I am amazed at your wisdom since you have no idea where I live or where I work to determine the fastest route. The map, gps, and map quest must have it all wrong.
13 Joshua Daniel Franklin // Aug 22, 2010 at 8:06 pm
With recent construction and other delays on both the Ballard and Aurora Bridges, and the frequency that the Fremont Bridge is up, this has been a bad week for crossing the ship canal. The main purpose of the road diet is traffic safety anyway, so we won’t have any numbers for at least a year. That FHWA paper is very clear that there is a statistically significant reduction in frequency of crashes due to road diets.
14 Greene // Aug 22, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Wow, Mike. I guess we should all submit driving proposals to you before ever leaving our houses because you know better than anyone in the city. If you must know, My husband was driving north on 15th getting onto Nickerson just before the Ballard Bridge, to drive to Fremont. It took him 45 minutes because when the Fremont bridge goes up, and with ONE lane of traffic now instead of two, there is gridlock backed up twice as far… Have you driven this yet Mike?
15 Steve // Aug 23, 2010 at 12:09 am
You people are ridiculous. I live on Nickerson and the changes in traffic and time to travel on this road have changed little or not at all because of the re-striping. Now I must say it is probably a shock to the ones go who 40mph plus on this road before that are now subject to driving behind someone actually going the speed limit. I will say that the first few days were pretty bad, and that is because work was still being done one the repaving project near the bridge, and there will still be problems because of the work being done on the Ballard and Aroura bridge. Also there is not one lane of traffic leading up to the Fremont bridge, in fact there are three, two to turn onto the bridge and one leading to Westlake or Dexter, this always backed up when the bridge went up and will continue to do so. It seems that most people’s anger and lack of understanding of this change blocks their view and skews their reality of the truth. Nickerson is safer now for cars, pedestrians, and bicycles. All of which was not the case before, of course there will still be accidents and traffic will back up just as it did before. My main reason I am for this road diet is not at all for bicycles, that is simply a added bonus. What I was really concerned about before this road fix was the excess speed of motorist on this street. Yes, most of you people just use this stretch to get from one place to another, and your speeds indicate that. Crossing this street even on a corner was a gamble having to cross 4 lanes, and the number of pedestrians hit along this stretch prove that. People will still speed of course and there will still be accidents but at least now the average speed will be reduced(and god forbid take you 1 minute longer to travel this stretch) overall this makes Nickerson safer for everyone. Don’t worry you naysayers I’m sure you will quickly find something else to be angry about.
16 Greene // Aug 23, 2010 at 11:22 am
Thank you Steve for your remarks. So because I disagree with something happening in my community, I am angry and a naysayer? Well… that’s an interesting assumption about me, but not true. I drive within the speed limits, cautiously and appreciate others who do so, but because I do not agree with you on this change- I am clearly one of the speeders? And am I clear that you criticizing the people who use this road to get from one place to the next; assuming those people are the problem drivers? I thought roads WERE for getting from one place to the next… weird that I would use a road for that purpose. I will gobble up my words if this turns out to be a wonderfully fabulous thing. In high traffic times it seems to make this problem area worse.. which really really really… is super sucky.
17 MsFrench // Aug 23, 2010 at 11:51 am
Steve, clearly there are a lot of us who drive on Nickerson frequently, and have noticed the negative changes caused by the re-striping. It’s only going to get worse once SPU is back in session. There may be 3 lanes for traffic at the intersection by the Fremont Bridge, but they all condense down into one very slow lane. It does back up significantly further than it did when there were two lanes. It also takes significantly longer to clear the traffic once the bridge is back up. I sat through 7 or 8 stoplights waiting in that one lane of cars the other day. That’s easily an extra 20 to 25 minutes. The business owners along Nickerson are just as frustrated as the drivers. When traffic is stopped waiting for the bridge, their customers can’t even turn into their parking lots. It really is a congested mess. Not every minute of the day, but far more than it used to be. And for what? A few cyclists at best? How many cyclists will there be once the weather turns cold and rainy this Fall? If you are concerned about slowing speeders on Nickerson, I’m sure there are other ways to do it just as effectively. We drivers are angry, but I think justifiably so…
18 Michael // Aug 23, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Geeez…they JUST finished paving and remarking by the Bridge. Most of the backups are because of lanes closures for the striping, the fact that the Traffic lights aren’t yet reconfigured (they ripped out the sensor loops, so they haven’t been working normally since the street was scraped.) Plus, Portions of Aurora has been closed and on Thursday Aurora was completely closed from like 6-9pm closed due to a jumper. The project isn’t finished yet….at least give it a few weeks for things settle, then you can complain with impugnity.
19 Michael // Aug 23, 2010 at 12:49 pm
whoa, sorry for the bad grammar. Hastily written.
20 Matt the Engineer // Aug 24, 2010 at 4:12 pm
For those that are curious here are some pictures of the backups on Nickerson.
21 Greene // Aug 25, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Haha! It feels like that at rush hour with that darn bridge up!
22 98119 // Aug 26, 2010 at 9:33 am
I was on Nickerson yesterday at 7:30am, 4:30pm and 8:15pm and again this morning at 8:30am. Zero issues. I did experience some congestion back during the initial paving but that was obviously a result of the lane closures and the SPD guiding traffic. Full disclosure: I don’t own a bike but I’m thinking about buying one.
23 afriye13 // Aug 26, 2010 at 2:22 pm
We’ve been on it at random times, haven’t noticied anything different. The speeds people are driving seem unchanged, as well. It will be interesting to see the stats whenever there are some…