A less broad Broadway? Maybe, as Wichita considers 3 lanes instead of 4
A skinnier Broadway may be in Wichita’s future as the city government begins to consider converting it from four lanes to three, opening space for bike paths where cars now go.
The plan is in the formative stages, but could begin as early as this year, as the city plans to replace worn-out pavement and striping between Central and 21st Street.
Taking out traffic lanes on Broadway would continue a city trend toward reducing the lanes available for cars, called a “road diet” in planning parlance.
A four-to-three conversion was recently completed on Mount Vernon in south Wichita.
In November 2019, the council voted for a conversion pilot project on Douglas, the main east-west commercial street downtown, to see if it would work before making permanent changes. That plan got sidetracked by the COVID-19 pandemic and remains on hold.
Broadway would be the most ambitious road-diet plan to date, maybe ever. It’s the main north-south thoroughfare through downtown and runs uninterrupted from city limit to city limit.
Outside the city boundary, it continues north as far as Newton and south to the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane.
The idea of a road diet on Broadway surfaced in two city meetings in the past week: the City Council on Tuesday and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board on Monday.
It came up as the bike/ped board considered recommending what to do with about $150,000 in funding earmarked for “multimodal” transportation paths.
Metropolitan Planning Director Scott Wadle told the board that if they want bike lanes on Broadway, the time to do it is now, when it could be appended to the city work that will already be going on in the area.
“You could get a really good bang for the buck,” Wadle advised the board. “And the reason why is that there’s already work that’s being done out there. So they’ve got to put striping there anyway.
“So there’s going to be a crew out there who’s already doing the striping . . . you just need to pay for the extra paint and a few extra hours to get them to put it in with bike lanes.”
Wadle said cutting the street from four lanes to three would make it safer for everyone.
“We know that Broadway has challenges, (it’s) one of the risky streets,” he said. “It’s got the most motor vehicle and pedestrian crashes on it and we know that a four-lane configuration is one of the most dangerous configurations.
“So going to a three-lane has huge safety benefits and you can improve conditions for people on the sidewalks too, because if you put in bike lanes, you can encourage folks to bike on the street. So we think there’s a lot of advantages to considering Broadway.”
A day later, that recommendation was carried to the City Council, with the board’s blessing, by City Engineer Gary Janzen.
He told the council that some of the money would be used to improve the confusing and potentially dangerous stripings where the bike path system crosses a flood control canal under the I-135 freeway at First and Second streets.
“We’re also looking at the Broadway corridor, which is scheduled for resurfacing from 13th to 21st Street yet this year,” he said. “And looking at past plans and future funding in the (Capital Improvement Program) basically for the full Broadway corridor from Central north, we think there’s an opportunity to look at possibly converting that from the current four-lane to a 3-lane with on-street bike lanes. So we’ll be looking into that a lot more soon to see if that makes sense in the future.”
The City Council approved the recommendation for spending the $150,000 on the proposals, without discussion.
Jane Byrnes, a member of the bike/ped board, said she thinks traffic would run smoother in a three-lane configuration.
On a four-lane street, motorists have to stop in a traffic lane to turn. A center lane would get them out of the flow while they wait to make the turn.
“That middle turn lane is magic,” she said. “Those outside two (car) lanes are going mostly without interruption.”
She also said it’s more equitable for the portion of the population that doesn’t have a car. “Everybody gets to use roads like that, not just cars, “ she said.
Russell Fox, also a bike-ped board member, said he supports a three-lane reconfiguration of Broadway, but didn’t see the board’s recommendation as a “clear and immediate” directive to do it right away.
“I was not under the impression that was anything besides one of several possible options that are being modeled right now by the city,” he said.
