Taylor City Council signaled a change in direction on revised striping and lanereduction plans designed to prevent future bottlenecks on two of Taylor’s busiest streets, Second and Fourth.
Officials hope the alterations will calm traffic through downtown and surrounding areas as the city grows.
“You have one group of people saying it’s going to take 20 years before we double in size, then you’ve got another group that says we’re going to be doubled in five years. I lean toward five years,” said Mayor Dwayne Ariola at Thursday’s council meeting. “As more and more traffic comes through here, my fear is that we’re going to have a bottleneck.”
The mayor pushed his fellow elected leaders to make a decision on the street-plan amendments to avoid costly delays.
The alterations for Second from Main Street to Davis Street had called for slimming the roadway from four lanes to two and adding angled parking on the north and south sides.
City Engineer Jacob Walker said there is sufficient capacity available for lane reductions, as the current street volume is 15,280 vehicles per day. With just two lanes, the thoroughfare can handle 25,460 vehicles per day, he added.
Council members voted to amend the plans by adding a center turn lane, and making the parking on the south side of the road parallel instead of angled.
This results in a fewer parking spaces, but allows for safer left turns, officials said. It also increases the project cost by about $15,000.
Walker presented data indicating that reducing the roadway to two lanes with a center turn lane may result in up to 47% fewer crashes.
Meanwhile, Fourth has a “split personality,” planners said, with the western portion being part of the busy downtown area and the eastern portion crossing under railroad tracks and having less necessity for parking spaces.
The previously approved changes to Fourth called for updated striping from Main to Dolan Street, trimming four lanes to two with a center turn lane, adding a two-way bicycle track on the north side of Fourth and parallel parking on the south side in downtown.
Walker said the planned capacity is over 29,000 vehicles per day and the current volume on Fourth is 14,010 vehicles daily, so there would still be room to accommodate traffic growth.
“The previous condition was four lanes, so the street was much larger than the volumes would demand,” he added.
The council voted to remove the bicycle lanes from the plan in favor of building an off-street shared-use path in the future. The new direction for Fourth would add parallel parking on the north and south sides of the road in the downtown area, switching to striped shoulders on the road as it heads east.
The change reduces the immediate cost of the road by about $20,000, but the city would have a future cost of $600,000 to construct a shared-use path.
Since the path would cross under the train tracks, there will be a one- to two-year permitting process through the railroad as well as additional costs depending on what the rail company requires.
