Fayetteville residents give College Avenue concepts a spin

Drawings of proposed street improvements for College Avenue from North to Sycamore streets. One has a raised median, the other a turn lane.
Drawings of proposed street improvements for College Avenue from North to Sycamore streets. One has a raised median, the other a turn lane.

FAYETTEVILLE -- People driving along College Avenue from North to Sycamore streets should expect fewer driveways, strategically placed medians, and more trees and streetlights by late next year or early 2024, according to plans presented Monday.

City officials and contracted consultants with Garver Engineering and RDG Planning & Design displayed plans at the Fayetteville Public Library for work on College Avenue generally between North and Sycamore streets.

Construction cost is estimated at $6.2 million, Public Works Director Chris Brown said. The city has $1.5 million in federal aid available for construction, with another $1.8 million pending, he said. The city also has money available from a transportation bond voters approved in 2019.

About 28,000 cars go through the stretch daily, according to an interactive Arkansas Department of Transportation map online.

The amount of right of way needed for the work generally would not change, although car travel lanes would shrink a little bit, Brown said. Concepts showed an 80-foot-wide cross section with sidewalks and green space on the east and west sides of the street, four car travel lanes, and either a median or a middle turn lane.

Car travel lanes are generally 12 feet wide along the stretch now, Brown said. Under the proposed design, outside car travel lanes would be 11 feet wide. Inside travel lanes without a median would be 10 feet wide, and with a median, inside travel lanes would be 9 feet wide.

Sidewalks would be 6 feet wide with an additional 6 feet of green space separating pedestrians from cars on the east and west sides. Drawings showed generally more trees and decorative streetlights on the west side of the street, with utility poles and smaller streetlights on the east side.

David Fortner, a Fayetteville resident, said he appreciated the way the plans urbanized the stretch by making it more appropriate for bicycles and pedestrians and encouraging cars to go slower. Right now, College Avenue largely is unsafe for pedestrians, Fortner said. He compared walking College Avenue today to taking a hike with missing pieces of sidewalk and inadequate green space.

Fortner particularly liked the way the west side of the street was proposed with better tree coverage and tall, decorative lighting. Medians with trees also should help drivers act more mindfully of their surroundings, perhaps encouraging them to go the posted speed limit, he said.

"This does not look like the kind of road you'd want to speed on," Fortner said.

Kenneth Ruge with A&K Commercial Leasing owns a half-acre commercial lot just north of Sycamore Street on the east side of College Avenue. He questioned a part of the plan that showed consolidating three driveways at his property into one.

"We have a curb cut for each business," he said. "If you try to share a curb cut between businesses, unless it's just going to be super wide -- which I think is what they're trying to eliminate -- you're going to have to have somebody driving into your parking lot to get to the other one. There's no room for that."

Ruge said he felt the combination of consolidating driveways and replacing turning lanes with medians would likely encourage cars to pull unsafe maneuvers to get to their destinations, instead of having direct access. The plan as shown would add green space and reduce the number of parking spaces on his property, he said.

Brown said the city hopes to start construction early next year. The project should take nine months to a year to finish, he said.

The project is part of the city's overall U.S. 71B corridor plan, which involves work planned from 15th Street north to Lake Fayetteville.

Web watch

The public comment period for work on College Avenue from North to Sycamore streets will be open until Aug. 23. For more information and to submit comments, go to:

https://bit.ly/fay71bprojectstatus

 



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