Construction will start this month on installing curb cuts on three intersections of Southeast Park Crest Avenue in Vancouver.
Once the cuts are made, the street will be one step closer to a complete overhaul, one that saw it go from a two-lane road with speeding cars to a two-lane road with bike lanes, speed humps, street lights and a sidewalk path leading from Southeast McGillivray Boulevard to Mill Plain Boulevard.
After this round of curb cuts, the street will need one more grant to finish putting the graded slopes leading down to the road at every intersection on the street. Jean Kent, chairwoman of the Cascade Highlands Neighborhood Association for more than a decade, said the association’s action plan called for more mobility in the area to make sure people in wheelchairs, kids riding bicycles and anyone else can use the sidewalk.
To do this, as well as make Southeast Park Crest Avenue safer, the Cascade Highlands Neighborhood Association has completely revamped the street, an undertaking that started in 2002 with a strong partnership with the city of Vancouver and various agencies that provide grants to the public.
“If you do the work, you can get stuff done,” Kent said.
So far, the traffic-calming additions to the street are cutting down on accidents. According to crash data from the Washington State Department of Transportation, there were 88 crashes on Park Crest between 2001, the earliest that the department’s data is available, and 2015. Between 2001 and 2007, when most of the work was being done, there were 51 crashes. From 2008 to 2015, after the traffic calming portions of the project were installed, there were 37 crashes.
When Kent moved to the Cascade Highlands neighborhood about 20 years ago, drivers would regularly zip along Southeast Park Crest Avenue. It was used not only by motorists, but bicyclists and pedestrians, including students walking to nearby Mountain View High School. There is a pathway to get to the school on the roadway.
Wy’east Middle School is also close, and Kent would regularly see students walking home in the dark. She contacted the city, and within a month, streetlights were up.
That showed Kent and the rest of the association how to get improvements to their neighborhood. They started working with the city to learn how to make the area safer.
“City transportation staff made a huge commitment to teaching us neighborhood leaders who were interested about traffic calming,” Kent said. “They offered us classes taught by various people knowledgable in the field.”
Jennifer Campos, a senior planner with the city, said there are different ways to try to slow down traffic. Some ways actually make the road tighter, which should slow drivers, and other ways make the road simply appear smaller, which could also slow traffic.
“(A visual change) forces people to focus in and be more aware of their surroundings,” Campos said. “You can change the striping of the roadways to help tighten up that field of vision.”
Planting trees along the road can also make it appear tighter, Campos said, which the city did on Southeast Park Crest Avenue in 2005. However, the biggest changes in street safety come from more major projects such as speed humps and curb extensions, Campos said.
“We create a package of everything to try to get the best benefit we can,” she said. “Some streets, we can’t put speed cushions or speed humps for a variety of reasons, so we try to find other tools, like street murals.”
The curb-cut project, which has a construction contract of about $134,000, was funded through the city’s Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program, real estate excise tax revenues and a Community Development Block Grant. Campos said all the projects on Park Crest came from similar funding or the city’s general fund.
Kent thinks the traffic-calming additions to Park Crest are working.
“There are still a few idiots who drive too fast,” she said. “Most people drive to the speed limit, now.”
Campos said citizens and neighborhood associations are always welcome to speak to city departments about making streets safer, which can be done through the Neighborhood Traffic Safety Alliance. Kent praised city officials for their willingness to work with Cascade Highlands in teaching residents how to make their neighborhood safer and then giving them the tools to do so.
“You can get stuff done in this city if you’re willing to put in the time and energy,” Kent said. “They’re willing to help you. It makes life wonderful.”