Taking a road from 4 car travel lanes to 2 with a center turn lane and adding bike lanes can actually improve the road’s ability to handle car traffic. On it’s face it strikes many people as counterintuitive, but it’s true. Given the right situation, less is more when it comes to traffic flow.
“Streets with four lanes of car traffic and an ADT (average daily car traffic) lower than 20,000 are often candidates for road diets.”
from Model Design Manual, 2011
Here’s a great vine video from Jeff Speck of Cupola Media showing what that looks like.
According to this City of Bend mapping website, the ADT at 3rd Street and Greenwood Avenue is 16,328.
So the question is this: Is there any reason you can think of why folks would object to a road diet on Greenwood?
Here’s a challenge. Maybe the best people to ask are the ones who own businesses, work on or commute along that portion of the avenue between the Newport Bridge and NE 4th. Report back what you hear and we’ll share your feedback.