A Re-vamped Jefferson Avenue, A Shared-Use Path Downtown, and a Safer Cary Street
Welcome to What's Next, Richmond: a newsletter that highlights changes coming to the Richmond region. Today's features are organized chronologically from the immediate future to later this decade.
Soon!
Construction begins in the next phase of Church Hill’s Jefferson Avenue Improvements
Have you ever noticed that Jefferson Avenue doesn’t seem quite symmetrical? It isn’t just an illusion.
This appearance is entirely based on the fact that the first phase of the Jefferson Avenue Capital Improvement Project only covered one side of the street. Starting this summer, construction on the second phase of the project will bring symmetrical changes to the other side of the street.
It’s easiest to understand the changes when looking at the overhead map.
In 2020, contractors for the Department of Public Works adding traffic calming measures as well as added greenspace and sewer improvements to the area covered in the black square.
This summer, contractors will complete Phase 2, which will include the two block stretch of Jefferson Avenue from 25th Street to East Leigh Street.
In addition to making the area look greener and nicer, these traffic calming measures will help ensure that the street is safer for all users. The two main interventions used are bump-outs and narrowed lanes.
Bump-outs, also called curb extensions, are expansions of the curb on both sides of an intersection that make the road narrower. This serves to give pedestrians a shorter crossing distance. They also modify driver behavior in the intersection.
Physically drivers can not make a sharp turn at the intersection without hitting the curb, and thus can not begin turning until they have the next crosswalk fully in view. This prevents collisions with pedestrians crossing parallel to the approaching driver. Psychologically, the narrower lane encourages drivers to slow down when approaching the intersection, which reduces the probability that they will crash into another car, pedestrian, or any other user of the street.
The traffic calming improvements will have an added benefit of making Church Hill’s traffic circles in the project area actually feel like traffic circles. It’s a relatively common occurrence when driving (or biking) in the area for drivers outside of the traffic circle to assume right-of-way (incorrectly) over drivers in the circle. Like most driving and traffic issues, I believe this has less to do with people being “dumb,” more to do with bad design.
The traffic circles in Church Hill don’t really look like traffic circles, and drivers don’t really need to drive in a circle to navigate them. There’s plenty of open space around the circle, and the circles themselves are not raised up very high. Drivers can easily drive in a straight line beside them, or even drive directly over them. Both of these actions prevent the circle from doing it’s job- encouraging drivers to slow down to prepare for a turn, which helps them be aware of road hazards as they cautiously navigate the intersection.
I believe that these traffic calming improvements on Jefferson Avenue will encourage drivers to actually engage with the traffic circles the way they are intended to be used. No driver re-education needed!
Though Phases 3 and 4 aren’t scheduled until 2027 at the earliest, we should see some improvement on this stretch of road starting this summer.
Upcoming!
A busy section of Leigh Street in downtown will have a shared-use path
The section of Leigh Street between 3rd Street and the viaduct over the Shockoe Valley can be a little chaotic. Certain lanes suddenly terminate, motorists frequent this route to access the interstate, and there’s a heavy pedestrian presence due to both the VCU medical center as well as the GRTC (temporary) downtown transfer station. Biking in the area can also leave a lot to be desired in terms of safety and comfort.
Starting in the summer of 2025, the city will seek to fix several of the issues with this street section by performing a major overhaul on the area. This capital improvement project known as the Leigh Street Streetscape, and is a subset of a larger series of projects to the surrounding area.
According to the Department of Public Works website, the project seeks to “provide signal improvements at the intersections; sidewalk installation; shared use path (SUP) for bicycle and pedestrians, and streetscape improvements throughout the project limits.”
This will include a plethora of new trees and greenery along the project. There will also be curb bump-outs at virtually every intersection along the project path, and a shared-use path that connects into the existing bike lanes on the Martin Luther King Jr. bridge.
A shared-use path is like a wider sidewalk that is intended to be used by bikers and pedestrians simultaneously. Many shared-use paths in the city, such as the Capital Trail or the Gillies Creek Trail, are paved with asphalt. According to the concept design plans for this project, the shared use trail will be paved with “decorative concrete.” The path will span the entire length of the project and will terminate on 3rd street.
These improvements will together increase the visual appeal of Leigh Street, helping it look less like a feeder road to a highway and more like a component of a vibrant city. This is more important than it may seem. By making people feel comfortable walking across or biking along this section of road, it helps create a sense of place that didn’t exist previously. I believe that drivers feeling like they’re in a beautiful place just as important for traffic calming and safety as the actual bump-outs included in this project.
We can hope for a more pleasant trip along Leigh Street by the end of 2025.
In the Future!
Main Street and Cary Street will be safer
By the end of 2026, there will be a series of new curb extensions along Main Street and Cary Street.
This project is a component of the response to the high frequency of accidents and deaths along these streets in the city despite them being heavily pedestrianized areas.
Richmond is a Vision Zero city, meaning that they are part of a larger network of cities that have vowed to reduce traffic related deaths to zero per year. According to Richmond’s Vision Zero Action Plan, the method to achieve this goal is to improve infrastructure and reduce speeds on city roads so that crashes are less likely, and less severe when they do occur.
The bump outs should aid in meeting both the speed and safety goals.
If you’re trying to picture how Main Street will look after the completion of this project, the visualizations included in the city’s traffic calming survey leave a lot to be desired.
We can get a sense of how they will look using similar bump-outs that are already installed along the Bike-Walk Street in Church Hill, which travels up and down along 29th Street from Nine Mile Road to Shockoe Bottom.
Like the curb extensions along 29th Street, the Cary and Main Street Bump-outs will be filled with flowers and bushes to increase their visual appeal.
We can look forward to a lower-injury experience in VCU and the Fan starting in the next two years.
Thanks for reading!
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