The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) pushed ahead with the much debated Nickerson Street road diet back in August, decreasing the thoroughfare from four lanes to one in each direction, a center turn lane, with bike lanes on either side.

Despite support from a USDOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) study that found that rechannelizations in California, Washington and Iowa have not adversely affected roadway capacity, and data that indicates that the controversial Stone Way road diet improved safety and traffic, the decision to revamp Nickerson was met with split support and opposition. A survey we took back in June indicated that, of the 711 who participated, 48.4 percent were in support of the road diet, while 51.6 percent were against the plan.

Some of the major concerns opponents of the road diet argued is that, being one of only two east-west streets directly feeding Ballard industries, decreased lanes on Nickerson would be met with increased congestion and an inability to meet capacity demands. However preliminary data from the city indicates that the road diet is working as planned, according to a report from Publicola published Wednesday.

The city says that data collected three months after the implementation of the Nickerson rechannelization shows that the same number of cars have been able to use the street, and that speeds along the street have slowed somewhat since the restriping. From Publicola:

SDOT traffic manager Eric Widstrand says the data are still preliminary; the city will continue to do traffic counts through the rest of 2011 and release a full report after the end of the year. However, so far, the study shows that car and freight traffic haven’t been harmed by the lane reduction, and that traffic has slowed to be somewhat closer to the 30-mph speed limit on the road.

“Capacity has not decreased,” Widstrand says. “We’re still able to accommodate” between 15,000 and 18,000 vehicles a day.

Proponents of the project note that decreased speeding along Nickerson as a result of the rechannelization is a good thing. Since the road diet, the average speed along Nickerson has gone down from 40 to 44 miles per hour, to between 34 and 37 mph, according to Publicola. From the report:

“We aren’t slowing anyone down excessively,” Widstrand says. The new speeds remain higher than the 30 mph speed limit, but are still safer for cyclists and pedestrians. A pedestrian hit at 40 mph is about 85 percent likely to die; a pedestrian hit at 30 mph is about 40 percent likely to be killed.

Cascade Bicycle Club representative David Hiller says that neither the group nor the city has yet studied whether the number of cyclists using Nickerson has increased since the rechannelization (which was the case after the Stone Way road diet).

The Seattle Department of Transportation is prepping Taylor Ave N. for some new bikes lanes this week.

Unlike the dedicated bike lanes, the lanes on Taylor will be “sharrows,” which is short slang for “shared lane arrow.” This is just one bike lane project that will be coming to Queen Anne, and around the city, as part of the Bike Master Plan. From Publicola,

A 2004 study done on San Francisco’s (then) trial sharrows found that while placed and highly visible sharrows significantly reduced sidewalk riding and riding in the door zone and that drivers gave bikes more room when passing.

(Thanks to Brian Fabella for the picture!)

Publicola published an interesting story yesterday that raised the question of whether or not Seattle should extend the current closing time from 2 to 4 a.m. across the board, or stagger times throughout the city in an attempt to improve public safety. From Publicola,

The theory is that by encouraging staggered closing times, the thousands of customers who roll out onto the street at  am would be dispersed over the night. This would take pressure off of SPD, allowing them to do better, more focused enforcement. It would also help curb drunk driving (at 2 am there is little taxi cab availability due to the spiked demand for cabs with everyone settling up at the same time.) There would also be less concentration of noise on the streets at 2am solving one of the most frequent complaints from downtown residents. And of course with an increase in operating hours comes an increase in revenue (and jobs) for bars, and in turn, more revenue to the State and City.

Many cities across the country have started extending liquor service to 3 and 4 a.m., while a few have tried 24-hour service, including Birmingham, Alabama, Atlantic City, Memphis and the entire states of Nevada and Louisiana. Read Publicola’s full story here.

Since both Lower and Upper Queen Anne have a large bar and lounge presence, there’s no doubt the hill would be greatly affected by any change to the city’s current closing time. So, Queen Anne, what do you think? Should Seattle keep closing time at 2 a.m., extend it, or stagger it? Do you think this would improve safety in the neighborhood?