Washington Avenue Safety Project 14th to 19th Streets

The City of Golden has been working on a plan to improve the pedestrian experience on Washington Avenue between 14^th Street and 19^th Street and the safety of motorists entering and exiting Washington Avenue by investing in streetscape upgrades that enhance sight distances at intersections, shorten pedestrian crossings, and add new bike lanes and a crosswalk at 17^th Street. The project has been discussed with the immediate neighborhood since early 2017. The result has been citizen direction that improved safety for pedestrians and motorists is more important than maintaining the maximum amount of on-street parking. As a result of this direction, the preliminary plan for the project includes the addition of bike lanes between 15^th and 19^th Streets, installing a new cross walk with shorter crossing distance at 17^th Street, controlling parking locations to assure adequate sight distance at intersections, widening the parking lane to lessen conflicts with traffic and maintaining one thru vehicle travel lane in each direction from 15^th to 19^th Streets, instead of two southbound lanes as currently exists.

In the next several weeks, the Downtown Development Authority will be discussing whether to fund the implementation of the safety project in 2019. Please take a moment to look over the project visualization and preliminary plans and let us know what you think by asking a question or making a comment in the forum section.