Bumpers removed from Rolling Hills Drive in Fayetteville

Dennis Vance (left) and Triston Phipps, both with Fayetteville's Transportation Division, remove bumpers Thursday with other department personnel on Rolling Hills Drive in Fayetteville. City crews anticipate working through Saturday to remove the bumpers and replace them with flat reflectors. Go to nwaonline.com/200228Daily/ and nwadg.com/photos for a photo gallery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/David Gottschalk)
Dennis Vance (left) and Triston Phipps, both with Fayetteville's Transportation Division, remove bumpers Thursday with other department personnel on Rolling Hills Drive in Fayetteville. City crews anticipate working through Saturday to remove the bumpers and replace them with flat reflectors. Go to nwaonline.com/200228Daily/ and nwadg.com/photos for a photo gallery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/David Gottschalk)

FAYETTEVILLE -- The bumpers on Rolling Hills Drive are gone.

City crews on Thursday removed the rubber, armadillo-shaped bumps and bollards from the road running east-west from Fiesta Square to Old Missouri Road. Work went faster than expected, said Terry Gulley, the city's transportation services director.

Web watch

For more information on the city’s plans for Rolling Hills Drive, go to:

bit.ly/fayrollinghills

Short rumble strips with reflectors are replacing the bumpers. Gulley said he hopes to finish installing the new features today.

The obstacles will be a foot closer to the curb on each side, Gulley said. The painted lines will remain where they are, marking 10-foot lanes, he said.

"The obstacle is going to feel like a rumble strip or like the reflectors you cross on the interstate when you change lanes," Gulley said. "There's a bump, but it's not going to impede the car from going over it. But it will wake you up so you know you're in an area you shouldn't be in."

Crews put new overlay on the road from Market to College avenues earlier this month. The bike lanes were moved to the sidewalk near the traffic light.

The bumpers and bollards were part of a yearlong pilot project headed by BikeNWA, paid for with a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Two similar projects went up in Siloam Springs and Springdale.

The city has some concepts on the future of the street posted to its website. One has roundabouts placed at Sheryl and Loxley avenues. The city took public input from neighbors in November and got a mixed bag of results, said Chris Brown, city engineer.

"We know that we want to get the bikes outside of the curbs. That much, I think, there was consensus on," he said. "Exactly how we do that, and other elements of the project, are still to be determined."

Voters in April approved the money for permanent improvements with the passage of a transportation bond issue. Rolling Hills Drive and its surrounding neighborhoods will have about $8.5 million in bond money put toward drainage and street improvement. The intersection with College Avenue will also get a share of the $10 million allocated for work along the U.S. 71B corridor.

The city received a plethora of feedback from residents on the pilot project, a lot of it negative. The obstacles tended to catch drivers off-guard and many found the project unsightly, Brown said.

"Overall, we've got to be careful about reducing the capacity of streets when we add facilities for bikes and pedestrians," he said. "That's the balance we're always looking for."

Average speed of cars was about the same as before the pilot project went in, said Dane Eifling, the city's bicycle and pedestrian programs coordinator. The project had more of an effect early on but drivers appeared to get used to it, he said.

Cars did stop going into the bike lane, Eifling said. Average speed was about 37 mph in the 30 mph zone, he said.

"Narrow lanes are a commonality with calm streets," Eifling said. "But narrow lanes by themselves do not make people slow down."

The plan is to keep the rumble strips and reflectors on the street until the city is ready to start building the permanent project, Gulley said. That construction should start in 2023.

The new objects should stick to the ground better than the old ones, Gulley said. The old bumpers were bolted 3 inches into the asphalt and had a tendency to come loose, he said. The new material will be stuck with epoxy.

Gulley estimated the cost of the interim project at $10,000.

NW News on 02/28/2020

This story was originally published at 1:00 a.m.

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