Road Blues: City Starts Pedestrian Work Downtown, Resurfacing Projects

Plan on a few more trouble spots in your mental map of Kirkland road construction this summer: Central Way downtown, the north side of Market Street and spots on Rose Hill, north Juanita and the Totem Lake area.

The work on Central Way began Monday, a major project to improve pedestrian safety between Lake Street and 4th Street, and to install a video camera that will be used starting later this year in a centralized computer traffic control system.

The other four projects are part of the city’s ongoing resurfacing or “overlay” program, the first beginning this week on NE 104th Street on Rose Hill, from 128th Avenue NE to 132nd Avenue NE. Beginning next week, resurfacing will start on Market between Forbes Creek Drive and 16th Avenue.

Later, resurfacing will commence on NE 124th Street from 93rd Avenue NE to 100th Avenue NE in north Juanita, on the Finn Hill side of NE 124th. Then well to the east resurfacing work will be done on NE 124th in the Totem lake area between 124th Avenue NE and Slater Ave/132nd Avenue NE.

Each of those projects is expected to take a couple weeks, with the last one wrapping up by October.

The work on Central Way in the heart of downtown Kirkland will be complete by the end of August and includes parking closures and at times traffic lane closures at the intersection of Lake Street and Central Way.

The main work is to install crosswalk “bump-outs” at four busy intersections: Central Way and Lake Street at the southeast corner; 177 Central Way next to U.S. Bank on the south side; Central Way and Main Street at the southeast and southwest corners, and Central Way and Fourth Street at the southeast corner adjacent .

Bump-outs are crescent-shaped extensions of the sidewalk into the parking lane, and improve safety by making pedestrians more visible, more clearly indicating to drivers that people are about the enter the street, and shortening the crossing distance.

The work will also result in five new parking spaces on Central Way at Peter Kirk Park, improved water drainage to prevent on-street "ponding" and the installation of artistic "dot mosaic" disks. The discs will showcase Kirkland's proximity to the water, be set into the sidewalk at various locations between Lake and 4th Streets. Some work to level out buckling sidewalks will also be done.

The video camera will be installed as part of the city’s transition to a computerized traffic signal control system based at City Hall. It will include cameras at various points between State Route 520 and downtown, then along Market into Juanita, as well as between the city boundary at 132nd Avenue NE on Rose Hill west past Interstate 405 to downtown.

“We’re slowly transitioning to a central monitor station here at city hall,” said Kari Page, spokeswoman for the city’s Public Works Department. “We’ll have that later this year.”

The “intelligent” control system will allow traffic engineers to adjust signals to traffic flow, using monitors at City Hall.

Both the pedestrian improvements and resurfacing projects are funded by the city's Capital Improvement budget, with a state grant also being used for the downtown work. 

For more information about the downtown work, see the project web site or go to http://www.kirklandwa.gov  and search Central Way Pedestrian. For details on the resurfacing work, see   http://www.kirklandwa.gov/depart/Public_Works/Capital_Improvements/Street_Preservation_Program.htm.