Council to Consider Changes on Union Street

City Council will consider a report on the Union Street Corridor Study and its recommendations Saturday.

City manager Rashad Young is recommending that the council approve the study’s short-term recommendations and approve the direction of the long-term recommendations of the plan, subject to further refinement.
 
The plan stems from a recommendation in the Waterfront Small Area Plan that the city review vehicular, pedestrian and other impacts along the Union Street corridor, which is defined as from Pendleton Street to Jones Point Park.
 
Some of the short-term recommendations include:

• Improving the connection of the Mount Vernon Trail to Pendleton Street for bicycles
• Connecting Oronoco Park to Founder’s Park for pedestrians
• Eliminating the crosswalk at the intersection of Union and Pendleton streets and providing a designated walking corrodor on the east side of Union between Oronoco and Pendleton.
• Marking a bike lane/shared lane at the intesection of Queen and Union streets
• Parking part-time on Union Street between Prince and King streets. This pilot project would offer part-time parking restrictions to encourage pedestrian circulation during peak pedestrian hours (afternoon/evening and Fridays and Saturdays.)
• Designing, with input from the community, a pedestrian plaza on the south side of the unit block of King Street.
• Raising a crosswalk at Union and Gibbon streets and raising a crosswalk with landscaping at the mid-block crossing of Union Street at Windmill Hill Park.

Long-term recommendations include:

• Creating a shared street at the core of Union Street between Cameron and Prince streets by encouraging pedestrian space and urging bicyclists and motorists to travel more slowly.

The long-term project would require a “considerable amount of capital funding,” according to a memo from Young to City Council and would likely be constructed within five to 10 years.

The principle design element of the shared street concept is that both the street and sidewalks are flush from bulding face to face and textured pavement and bandings would delineate pedestrian only spaces with everyone sharing the roadway.