A view of current conditions looking south down Pleasant Valley Road across Longhorn Dam. Image: City of Austin
After substantial public engagement and a final engineering report issued back in July, the City of Austin’s Transportation Department has nailed down its plans for a pedestrian bridge crossing Lady Bird Lake near Longhorn Dam in East Austin — and as we’d hoped, the “Wishbone” bridge option presented alongside several others last year is the prize pig, ready to enter the design and development phases assuming voters sign off on the $460 million transit bond package expected this November.
Illustrations released last year for the “wishbone” pedestrian bridge design for the Longhorn Dam area. Images: City of Austin
That’s great news and all, since the wishbone design was both fun and functional, but the city also has some ideas to make this area a little safer in the meantime while we wait for the inevitable years-long construction cycle to deliver that bridge. There’s a good reason we’re getting some interim improvements here before the big project kicks off — it turns out this section of South Pleasant Valley Road is a little more dangerous than most, although the pandemic-related “Healthy Streets” initiative in this area did some heavy lifting to make room for pedestrian use over the dam.
Holy cow! They did it!
Thanks, @austinmobility! pic.twitter.com/jeveC0Bvpn— Tom Wald (@tomwald) April 11, 2020
Despite the addition of cones, the stretch of South Pleasant Valley Road running north to south between Willow Street and Lakeshore Boulevard — including the part passing over Longhorn Dam — averages one car crash every 11 days according to data gathered by the city’s Vision Zero program between 2015 and 2019.
Image: City of Austin
That adds up to a total of one death, 48 injuries spread between drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists; and a so-called comprehensive crash cost of $46 million during the study period. Between Cesar Chavez Street and East Oltorf Street, which includes the Longhorn Dam area, Pleasant Valley Road is one of the 13 “high-injury roadways” set to receive what the Austin Transportation Department calls “focused engineering design initiatives, improved signage, and targeted enforcement.”
In response to the city’s collected crash data, the interim improvements now planned around the dam while we wait for the pedestrian bridge have been upgraded with a focus on roadway safety — that’s for roadway users like pedestrians and cyclists as well as cars, since you enhance the safety of the first two by modifying traffic flow.
Play around with the map above for a comprehensive guide to the improvements planned for the area of Pleasant Valley Road over the Longhorn Dam and surrounding area — there’s a lot to look at over here.
South Pleasant Valley Road will receive three protected left turn lanes in this area, along with safer on-foot crossings assisted by two pedestrian hybrid beacons and crossing islands installed north and south of the dam, the first near Canterbury Street and the second at the entrance to the Krieg Softball Complex. Head-on collisions will be addressed by installing flexible posts between north and southbound lanes, and other lane striping adjustments will increase separation between vehicles.
Improvements for South Pleasant Valley Road over Longhorn Dam. Click for a larger view. Image: City of Austin
Three travel lanes on the bridge makes space for wider shared use paths that better meet demand for people walking, biking, and rolling on either side of the bridge. A 12-foot-wide shared use path will be built on the west side of South Pleasant Valley Road and an 8-foot-wide shared use path will be built on the east side of South Pleasant Valley Road.The path on the west side of the bridge will be built in a way that could be modified when the new “Wishbone” bicycle and pedestrian bridge is built to support adding back a fourth travel lane for transit or general purpose traffic.
By maintaining traffic signal operations and number of lanes at the critical Lakeshore Drive and Cesar Chavez Street intersections, South Pleasant Valley Road can be converted from four to three travel lanes between these intersections without affecting motor vehicle travel times while improving safety and access for people walking and bicycling.The number of lanes at the Lakeshore Drive and Cesar Chavez intersections will remain the same. Before the Krieg field entrance, the northbound lanes will merge to one lane to create space for the safety improvements presented above including new dedicated left turn lanes, separation between opposing traffic lanes, pedestrian crossing islands, and improved space for walking and bicycling over the bridge.After the new northbound left turn lane at Canterbury Street, a second northbound motor vehicle lane will be added to allow the same number of vehicles to move through one Cesar Chavez green light cycle as present-day. No changes will be made to the number of southbound travel lanes.
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