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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

S-curve changes coming in 2015

Street levy will fund roadway makeover on lower South Hill

The S-curve of South Monroe Street, South Lincoln Street and West Seventh Avenue is one part harrowing, one part autobahn and two parts broken roadway.

Parts of the street are also ancient. There’s a cast iron pipe from 1894 buried underneath the steep grade of Monroe.

Thanks to the new 20-year street levy, which was approved last week by 77 percent of voters, all of that will change next year. Two lanes will go down to one, the curve will be smoothed out and the pavement will be brand new. The pipe will be replaced with a newer, steelier model.

The project, one of the first to be done with the levy’s dollars, will remake Monroe and Lincoln from Second Avenue to Eighth Avenue, connecting new blacktop to what was recently completed, leaving the Lincoln-Monroe arterial revamped all the way south to 29th Avenue.

Like all road projects in the city henceforth, this road construction project will be part of the city’s integrated plan to repair water lines and update stormwater drainage systems while fixing streets.

“We have some old water line. We have about everything old in this project, especially when we get downtown,” said Steve Hansen, the design engineer on the project. “We have a lot of cast iron.”

When complete, the new stretches will look similar to what’s south: better lit sidewalks separated from the street by storm gardens, enhanced pedestrian crossings and integration with a modern stormwater system. Existing traffic islands will be preserved and landscaped.

The road diet on Monroe, which took it from two lanes to one, will continue toward downtown through the curve, and a second lane will appear on Lincoln only after its intersection with Seventh.

“You really don’t have the introduction of much traffic until then,” Hansen said. “It does allow us to smooth out the S-curve and it makes it a little bit more pedestrian friendly.”

A new crosswalk will be installed in the middle of the last curve at Seventh and Lincoln, where the shrunken road will allow for easier crossing.

“It’s an excellent location where you can see upstream pretty good on a fairly narrow lane,” Hansen said.

The sidewalk on the east side of Lincoln heading down the hill will be lost to make room for a separated sidewalk on the other side of the road while preserving two lanes for traffic. Project officials told members on the city’s Public Works Committee the east sidewalk is rarely used and covered in a sheet of ice in the winter because of a nearby spring.

Monroe will continue to have two lanes from Second to Seventh, with new separated sidewalks and lighting. State-owned greenspace along Fourth Avenue, hugged by the Interstate 90 on-ramp, will be used to naturally filter stormwater.

City Councilman Jon Snyder, a transportation advocate, said he was pleased with project overall, including the lost sidewalk, saying sometimes a “net loss can turn into a benefit.”

He did question the paucity of crosswalks on Monroe and had larger concerns about bike accessibility on the entire South Hill.

“I think the big problem is not necessarily Lincoln-Monroe by itself, it’s the whole context of the entire South Hill,” Snyder said. “We haven’t made a lot of progress for north-south bike lanes.”

He pointed to the reconstruction of South Bernard Street in 2006, which he said could have been built with bike lanes but instead has street parking. Monroe and Lincoln won’t have bike lanes or street parking.

Snyder said he would likely continue biking up Monroe, but considering its steepness and speeding traffic he knew not many cyclists would join him.

“As a cyclist, I’ll continue to use that street,” he said wryly. “But they shouldn’t be designing streets with me in mind.”