Downtown Gateway

[atl_transplant]

Wanted to develop my idea discussed here a little bit more!

@atl_transplant

until you get to our money shot, S. Saunders is an eyesore coming off I-40. First impressions matter to visitors and ease of access matters to office people just as much. I’m pretty sure this is covered in our master plan and Downtown South will definitely help but at this point we’re already looking at 50,000 vehicles per day on this corridor and developments will cause for oversaturation of even the 6-lane road we have today. Coupled with the traffic signals that’d make Saunders a more desirable and safe corridor with our developments would just lead to a slog. Looking at Wilmington St, we have a pretty unobstructed straight shot from 40 to Downtown with a pretty good view too. Add Downtown facing ramps, Eliminate the signal with City Farm Rd and grade separate and you have a limited access parkway leading straight into our two most important downtown streets.
Then you can turn Saunders into the 4-lane slower speed development filled neighborhood corridor it deserves to be while also eliminating strain and pressure on it and Blount / Person. Here’s a very rough sketch, would need some more advanced ramp braiding etc

The main goal of this is to improve safety, mobility and connectivity to and from Downtown from the North and South.

Map Posting as link now since it won’t embed

Starting with the south, lets look at volumes. I wish I had Peak Hour, TMC and Classification numbers but AADTs will do! ArcGIS Web Application

So for this I’m counting Lake Wheeler, S Saunders, Wilmington, Hammond, and Rock Quarry as our South Entering / Exiting numbers. Combining the AADT of these five corridors we’re looking at around 121,000 vehicles per day. A pretty hefty number for traditional streets.

If we were able to construct a southern approach Limited access parkway (similar to the stubby I-175 and I-375 in St. Petersburg, FL0 on the existing Wilmington St corridor from S Saunders St, create a North facing interchange at I-40 to MLK Drive, we could greatly reduce the pressure on the four other approaches and give them road diets / pedestrian / dive development etc give them all they need. I wish I could project how many vehicles this would reduce from the other roads, but without TMC and Peak hour numbers I’m not even going to throw a number out there because it’d probably be wrong! But I’d think maybe half off of S Saunders.

Besides the ramps with 40, this would actually be incredibly easy to construct because
1 - the road is already in place
2 - there’s barely any intersections that would be affected
3 - minimal ROW needs
4 - No neighborhood disruptions

As discussed over in the BRT feed earlier, there’s some plan / desire to re think the MLK / West St / S Saunders area as can be seen in the map as well.

Let’s talk about the North now. Looking at those AADTs

• 34,000 Wake Forest Rd (S of 440)

• 27,000 Atlantic Ave

• 37,500 Capital Blvd (S of 440, jumps to an insane 85,000 N of 440)

The Capital Blvd Corridor study has some ideas, but I’m thinking to take things a step further by turning the Mainline to the NCDOT definition of expressway, basically just remove the three signals between Downtown and 440. Also, the West St Extension tying to Wake Forest Rd and connecting Wake Forest Rd to downtown via an extension to Salisbury / Wilmington. Hopefully this could drive a seamless development corridor and maybe the city could acquire the Railyard! I’m probably dreaming here, but hey, someone has to have the idea.

But again here, the main goal is creating a safe, efficient route for all modes to and from the northern extents of Downtown while also creating two corridors on either side of Capital to drive development.