MORGANTOWN — The intersection of Beechurst Avenue and 8th Street.
The multi-pronged intersection of Stewart Street, Protzman Street, Van Gilder Avenue and Hoffman Avenue.
And, potentially, the intersection of U.S. routes known locally as University Avenue, Pleasant Street and the Westover Bridge.
Roundabouts have been recommended for each of the above intersections following a two-year study of vehicle and pedestrian movements in and around downtown Morgantown.
The findings were recently presented by Colin Frosch, a traffic engineer with consulting firm Kimley-Horn.
The $500,000 study is based on microsimulation, in which data on vehicle and pedestrian movements was gathered at dozens of locations and plugged – along with regional travel demand model traffic counts – into software allowing Kimley-Horn and the study’s steering committee to see how various proposed changes would impact traffic flows.
“The purpose of this study was to assess the existing safety, parking, congestion issues within the downtown Morgantown network with a primary focus on congestion from a metric standpoint, but then also understanding if we make safety and pedestrian improvements, are we adversely affecting the congestion that’s in Morgantown,” Frosch said.
But roundabouts are just the beginning.
The removal of vehicle traffic at Grumbein Island – the University Avenue mesh point of pedestrians and vehicles between WVU”s Mountainlair and Martin Hall – is also on the list. The restriction would include closing University Avenue to vehicular traffic between College Avenue and Beechurst Avenue and aligning Willey Street with a new connection to Beechurst.
Further, it’s recommended that Willey Street lose the U.S. 119 designation and become a local connection while a new stretch of U.S. 119 is constructed through the Richwood Avenue “loop” to align with Snider Street.
Other recommendations from the microsimulation study steering committee include changes to the intersection of University Avenue and Falling Run Road; restricting a portion of Monongahela Boulevard down to two lanes and various signal timing optimizations.
It’s a lot to take in.
And the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization would like to hear your thoughts on it as part of a future update to the MPO’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan.
“We are going to take the recommendations from this study to the public as part of our outreach for the transportation plan update so we can more fully examine and discuss with the general public the recommendations of this study, and the policy board will be able to understand the reactions that we’ve received to this,” MPO Executive Director Bill Austin said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Plan is a long-term planning document for local transportation infrastructure and policy.
A link to Frosch’s PowerPoint presentation is available at the Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization website, plantogether.org. There’s also a link to the MPO’s YouTube channel, where you can watch him present it during the MPO Policy Board’s May meeting.
