Make your voice heard on ideas for Aurora Ave. N. as Seattle continues safety upgrades

ByElaine Porterfield, King County Metro

Cross-posted from the Seattle Department of Transportation

Aurora Ave. N. is one of Seattle’s busiest streets, connecting many neighborhoods, businesses, and travelers every day. We are sharing several ideas to help envision potential future improvements along Aurora Ave. N. These early sketches would require additional outreach, design, and funding to further develop and implement.

We want your feedback as we continue to study these potential options. Please check out the new drawings on our website and share your thoughts on these ideas by April 5 by taking our short survey or attending one of our coming open houses.

This year, we are also continuing to build immediate safety enhancements such as a new walk signal in Bitter Lake, widening and repainting crosswalks, and more center medians to reduce conflicts at intersections. This will add to recently installed safety improvements which give pedestrians a head start to cross the street and prevent cars from turning into crosswalks during red lights.

Immediate safety improvements in 2024

While we consider the future of Aurora Ave. N., we’re also building several near-term safety improvements.

We’ve already completed several safety upgrades including:

  • Installing new pedestrian-first walk signals.
  • Repairing and upgrading sidewalks in Licton Springs.
  • Adding new “No Turn on Red” signs.
  • Building a concrete-protected bike lane around Green Lake, recently honored as one of People For Bikes’ top 10 best new U.S. bike lanes.

This year, we will continue building more travel safety infrastructure upgrades, including:

  • New pedestrian crossing signal in Bitter Lake at N. 137th St.
  • Center medians and dividers at N. 103rd St, N. 128th St., and N. 143rd St. to help reduce potential conflicts at intersections.
  • Hardened centerlines at all traffic signals that do not have protected left turns to slow cars turning at crossings while encouraging more ‘right-angle’ turn movements to improve visibility.
  • Widening and repainting all marked crosswalks.
  • Continuing to develop a variety of traffic calming and placemaking ideas to make it safer and easier to walk and roll on nearby neighborhood streets as part of the nearby Aurora-Licton Springs Home Zone Project.

We’re pleased to share the community ideas for each segment of the project area.

Examples of four potential options for Aurora Ave. N. which illustrate community ideas like wider sidewalks, bike lanes or a center-running bus lane. More drawings are available on our website and new public survey.

Through our previous series of Community Design Workshops, we identified several corridor improvements that community members would like to see further explored. With community collaboration, we were able to develop a new vision for the corridor’s future.

Each of these illustrations focuses on a different potential improvement which community members told us was important to them. Creating different images for each idea will help lead to clearer survey results so we can understand your preferences and priorities, but the end result may end up combining multiple ideas.

Do these ideas for each segment of the corridor reflect your priorities? Please let us know by taking our survey.

We are hosting a survey to request feedback on community ideas and better understand if we’ve incorporated the ideas and priorities folks shared with us to help develop a new design vision for the future of Aurora Ave N, including transit services.

The survey will be open through April 5 and is available in multiple languages, including:

  • Aurora Ave Project Draft Ideas Survey (English)
  • Aurora Ave 專案初步構想問卷調查 (Chinese, Traditional)
  • የአውሮራ ጎዳና ፕሮጀክት ረቂቅ ሃሳቦች የዳሰሳ ጥናት (Amharic)
  • Encuesta sobre las ideas preliminares para el proyecto de Aurora Ave (Spanish)
  • Ang Palatanungan ng mga Draft na Ideya ng Proyekto sa Aurora Ave (Tagalog)
  • Khảo Sát về Ý Tưởng Dự Thảo của Dự Án Đường Aurora Ave (Vietnamese)

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AuroraAve202402

Coming open houses

We’re also hosting three open houses (two in-person and one virtual) to share the draft community ideas and to hear from community members like you.

Please join us at one of the following open houses:

  • Tuesday, March 12: 1-2 PM at the Broadview Library, 12755 Greenwood Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98133
  • Thursday, March 14 (virtual): 6-7 PM (visit our website for a link to the virtual meeting, coming soon)
  • Thursday, March 21: 6-7 PM at the Bitterlake Community Center, 13035 Linden Ave, Seattle, WA 98133

What’s next?

The input you provide over the next month will help us refine and narrow down these potential concepts, and get closer to selecting a preferred alternative for this project.

How we will use your feedback:

  • We’ll make refinements and further evaluate the concepts regarding the advantages, disadvantages and feasibility of each option.
  • Some ideas may not move forward, while others may evolve or be combined as we develop options for the entire project area.
  • We’ll continue the concept analysis, environmental review, community engagement and design work needed to select a preferred alternative.
  • You can find more details about our evaluation criteria on the project web page.

While we continue to talk with the public and evaluate these potential options, we will also continue our efforts to identify funding to build this project so that we can develop the timeline.

As we move forward, we are making progress on our community-informed vision for Aurora Ave. N. as a place that connects communities, people and goods throughout Seattle, while making upgrades that improve safety and meet the mobility needs of all travelers.

We’d like to thank the Washington State Legislature for continuing to support this important project. We’re also working closely with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) in the implementation of near-term safety improvements and planning for longer-term changes. Thank you WSDOT for your ongoing partnership.

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