PORT ANGELES — A block-long lane of Marine Drive will be narrowed with tube-cone stanchions beginning at 7 a.m. Monday in an experiment to increase safety at one of the city’s busiest intersections.
The temporary lane revision, expected to cost less than $3,000, could increase traffic backups in the city’s industrial core, Craig Fulton, Port Angeles public works and utilities director, acknowledged.
The barriers, similar to those separating the east and west lanes of the Morse Creek curve east of Port Angeles, will be glued to the roadway between Tumwater Truck Route and Tumwater Street, making the street so narrow that drivers will not be able to pass vehicles that are turning onto Tumwater Street or that are already stopped at the crosswalk.
The aim is to slow drivers as they approach a busy crosswalk at Westport LLC’s manufacturing plant on the north side of Marine Drive, Fulton said.
The barriers would be in place for at least a couple of months, as officials watch to see if the action makes the intersection safer.
“If it works, it will be permanent,” Fulton said of the project.
“We want to gauge any traffic impacts that might occur. What we are putting down can be removed if we want to try something else.”
Westport leases a parking lot from the Port of Port Angeles — formerly Blake Sand & Gravel property — on the south side of Marine Drive near the crosswalk.
Employees cross the intersection during shift changes.
The intersection also is traversed by nearby Platypus Marine workers, city residents heading to the nearby Port Angeles Boat Haven and patrons of Hooked Cafe near Tumwater Street.
“For the amount of people who cross that intersection, it’s probably one of the most utilized by vehicles and pedestrians,” Fulton said, comparing it to intersections along Lincoln Street.
It’s especially acute during Westport’s morning and afternoon shift changes, and during lunchtime.
“It’s very chaotic,” Fulton said.
“If there is a [driver] who has stopped to allow a pedestrian to cross, you still have people passing on the right who do not know there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk.”
The issue is one the city has struggled with for years, dating back at least to October 2012.
That’s when the City Council abandoned plans to conduct a $22,700 study to examine building an overpass or pedestrian tunnel at the location that city officials decided would have been too expensive to pursue.
The project that will be completed by noon Monday will include removal of no-parking restrictions on the north side of Marine Drive west of Tumwater Street to allow two-hour parking.
Two-hour parking signs also will be installed on the south side of Marine Drive to provide parking in unrestricted spaces now occupied for long periods of time
Two-lane east-west Marine Drive is a major conduit for marine trades workers, truck and semi-tractor trailer drivers, and the hundreds of workers who are employed at Nippon Paper Industries USA and staff Port Angeles Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office on Ediz Hook.
Marine Drive also has a marked shoulder for the Olympic Discovery Trail, popular with bicyclists heading out to Ediz Hook who also must deal with the vehicular confusion, Fulton said.
Fulton acknowledged the lane revision could back up traffic in a section of the city where vehicles already bunch up during the day.
The three-block area contains Cedar Street, a main conduit to the city’s west side; Tumwater Truck Route, which has a traffic signal and connects to the west portion of U.S. Highway 101; and Tumwater Street, which also connects to the west side.
Fulton said the city worked with Westport to come up with the plan.
He said the company has been raising concerns about the crosswalk for several years.
City and company officials have met several times “in an effort to address safety issues for Westport employees,” company General Manager David Hagiwara said last week in an email to the Peninsula Daily News.
“They have been supportive in trying to find solutions, and the traffic revisions as proposed are the latest in the efforts to resolve the situation.”
After construction of an overpass or pedestrian tunnel was rejected, city and Westport officials came up with a plan: flashing yellow lights that cost the city about $10,000.
Workers crossing the street press a button that activates the lights to warn drivers coming from both directions they are entering the crosswalk.
During a midafternoon shift change last week, workers pounded on the button, then streamed — some in a dead run — across the street.
More often than not, drivers drove through the crosswalk with workers still walking across the street or just starting across.
One worker slapped the back quarter-panel of a vehicle as it passed right in front of him about a foot away.
Like the option of building a pedestrian overpass or tunnel, installing a traffic signal would be too expensive, Fulton said, estimating the cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Hooked Cafe owner Merri McDonald’s has a bird’s-eye view of the intersection from her vantage point on the south side of Marine Drive, a few paces from the Tumwater Street intersection.
She said Friday that the flashing lights are not very visible in the wintertime darkness.
She saw the street being measured Thursday for the stanchions.
“The guys, every time they cross the street down here, they risk their lives,” McDonald said.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Reporter Rob Ollikainen contributed to this report.