Columbus Consolidated Government

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TO: Mayor and Councilors

Date: 1/7/2003 12:00:00 AM

TO: Mayor and Councilors

Date:

Created:

6/17/2008 10:01:00 AM

THRU: Isaiah Hugley, City Manager

FROM: Richard Bishop, Deputy City Manager

Subject: Lakebottom Park/18th Avenue One Way Traffic

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No attachments for this document.

The renovation of the Lakebottom Park has increased park useage

considerably. One of the problems created by the increased activity in the

park is the shortage of both off-street and on-street parking. Residents along

18th Avenue have been impacted by vehicles parking in No Parking zones, parked

facing the wrong direction, blocking residential driveways and blocking

driveway sight distance. In addition, the practice of Park patrons' vehicles

parking along the west side of 18th Avenue creates a hazard for children

running across 18th Avenue to the Park.

The Traffic Engineering Division has conducted intersection turning

movement counts for all intersections around the Park to get an accurate

picture of existing traffic patterns. These counts were placed into our

Synchro computer program which has the ability to model traffic patterns using

traffic simulation. Traffic simulations were prepared to compare the existing

two-way traffic patterns to proposed one-way traffic patterns. The best

traffic pattern was to make 18th Avenue one-way northbound from 13th Street to

Garrard Street with all other streets around Weracoba Park remaining two-way.

The advantages to this plan are as follows:

- Provide more parking for the Park by creating angle parking along the

east curb next to the park.

- Create No Parking Anytime zone along the west curb eliminating

parking, blocked driveways, and sight restriction complaints from residents.

- Eliminate the practice of children running across 18th Avenue to the

Park.

This plan has been presented to the Weracoba/St. Elmo Preservation

Society for input and review. You will find a letter attached from Mark

McCollum, Society Chairman, voicing support for the one-way on 18th Avenue and

with recommendations to create 4-way stops around the west side of the Park to

discourage thru traffic in the adjacent neighborhood. These 4-way stop

requests will be considered as part of the traffic pattern changes:

- Creating a 4 way stop at 16th Avenue and Virginia Street

- Creating a 4 way stop at 17th Avenue and Garrard Street

- Creating a 4 way stop at 17th Avenue and Virginia Street

- Creating a 4 way stop at 17th Avenue and Springer Street

- Creating a 4 way stop at 17th Avenue and Rhodes Street

Our next step is to present the appropriate traffic ordinance changes

to Council in order to have the new traffic patterns in place prior to the

beginning of the Spring Baseball season. If there are no objections from

Council, staff will have the ordinances ready in January for approval.