Quote:
Originally Posted by Sawtooth
...it's too bad that the Boulevard (Harrison) has become a connection from Hill Road to downtown, but at least it has narrow lanes with massive landscaping to buffer traffic. Number 5 is small.
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I'd like to add to this. ACHD has done a little work to mitigate traffic on Harrison. The dog-legging of the intersection at Gary Lane and Hill Rd was meant to "encourage" drivers to use Gary Lane and State St and avoid using Hill Road to travel all the way downtown via Harrison.
The 36th and Hill intersection was also slated to be dog-legged, until the Collister Neighborhood association got involved. I think the consensus was that the dog-legging of Hill at 36th was very unpopular. Thus the reconsideration to build a roundabout.
Conversely, as far as I know, nothing has ever been done to mitigate traffic on 27th. In fact, 10 years ago or so, the right lane on inbound State St at 27th was changed from a through lane to a right turn only, thus encouraging eastbound traffic on State to turn right on 27th. Before that, some traffic continued through to turn right on 23rd to make their approach to downtown. Of course, I don't really have any hard evidence of that, but I've long suspected it.
Also a factor, was the construction of the Broadway Chinden connector which eliminated the 23rd St connection to River ST. I'm sure this did a great deal to increase traffic on 27th.
Also keep in mind, the setbacks on Harrison are huge compared to the setbacks on 27th.