the creation of a new public plaza at
the end of Ladd Ave.
As I reported last month, the Office of Transportation and the Bureau of Planning have embarked on a project to improve the 7 Corners intersection (where SE Division, Ladd, 20th, and 21st streets converge).
At last night’s Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, Tom Armstrong from the Bureau of Planning introduced the three design concepts and received feedback on how the designs might impact bike traffic.
Armstrong told us that the two goals of the project are “How can we enhance this area to give it a more distinctive place, while at the same time maintain mobility through the intersection.”
The most complicated aspect of this project is that SE Division is a four-lane, high-speed thoroughfare that gets about (according to Armstrong) 13-14,000 cars per day. That type of volume makes planners nervous and makes them worry about things like “congestion management implications” (more on that below).
Here are the three conceptual drawings for the intersection (descriptions from Bureau of Planning in italics, followed by my comments). Please keep in mind that these are just concepts meant to start discussion, no final designs have been approved: