Madison Avenue Complete Street

Madison Avenue Complete Street

City of Albany, Albany County, New York

Creighton Manning conducted a feasibility study of implementing a road diet along portions of Madison and Western Avenues by incorporating complete streets design features. The study analyzed 14 signalized intersections to quantify the impact of the reduced number of travel lanes and identified potential benefits and impacts to passenger vehicles, bicycles, transit vehicles, and pedestrians. The development and evaluation of the alternatives considered several criteria including safety; maintaining the existing curb lines; allowing sufficient opportunities for turning vehicles to enter and exit mainline traffic; maintaining parking on both sides of Madison Avenue, and achieving standard lane widths. The preferred alternative included re-striping Madison Avenue to provide a three-lane section with a bicycle lane and upgrading traffic signals where necessary to create a coordinated signal system.

Creighton Manning was the prime consultant responsible for traffic engineering and transportation planning required to evaluate the potential impacts of a road diet, and public participation. The analysis included accident analysis, traffic forecasting, use of traffic simulation software to model traffic operations for five alternatives, and cost estimates for the preferred alternative.

Creighton Manning was also the prime for the second phase of the project to design the $3.5M road diet project to accommodate multiple modes of traffic along Madison Avenue. The design included a five-foot wide green bicycle lane. This federal aid project received $1.4 million in Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funding to calm traffic on Madison Avenue from Partridge Street to Delaware Avenue and Lark Street. Phase 2 of the  design project was completed during the summer 2018.