Praise be!
From Emory…
By this time next year, Clifton Road will be a wide, tree-lined corridor welcoming students, faculty, staff, patients and other visitors to Emory University and Emory Healthcare facilities. Clifton Streetscape, a project to improve access, safety and aesthetics along Clifton Road, is slated to begin in mid-to-late June and continue until late spring/summer 2017.
The extensive construction effort centers on Clifton Road from North Decatur Road to Haygood Drive/Eagle Row. It will include widening of the road and sidewalks, a bike lane, repaving of Clifton Road, new landscaping and improved visibility of intersections along Clifton Road.
If you’ve been blowing out your suspension on this road for more years than you can remember and want more details, click the rendering above to look at the larger image. Or just keep reading…
An almost half-mile segment of Clifton Road will be resurfaced and widened, and a bike lane will be added along the east side. A “sharrow,” or shared bike-vehicular lane, will remain on the west side of Clifton Road.
Sidewalks will be widened to eight feet, with the addition of a five-foot planted strip along the curb, and trees and other plantings will be added to new medians. Streetlights similar to those at Emory Village and Emory Point will be installed as well.
A new right-turn lane will be added at Clifton and North Decatur roads for westbound traffic headed toward Emory Village.
A new traffic light and ingress/egress lanes also will be added at Healthgate Drive and North Decatur, where there is currently a gated, limited access entry near the North Decatur Building. This access point will be for use primarily by Emory University and Emory Healthcare faculty and staff who are accessing the parking decks along Gambrell Drive and is not intended for patients or through traffic.
As you can see in the first rendering at the top of this post, a ” new, two-story pedestrian bridge will be installed over Clifton Road from the new J wing to Emory University Hospital” starting in July.
Yes, you can expect lane closures and delays along Clifton for the next year or so, but man is this project long overdue!
Want to dig even deeper? Emory has created an entire website for this project that you can check out for yourself.
Repaving this stretch is way overdue. But it won’t matter much if the county continues to do nothing about the incoherent traffic light timing between North Decatur and Briarcliff. Seeing two consecutive green lights while traveling on Clifton in this area is a rare occurrence. Even in the middle of the night, there is zero light coordination or response to the volume of traffic.
Start your happy dance! There’s a major GDOT project to overhaul traffic signals along Clifton Rd, Clairmont Rd, and Church St (25 signals total) :
http://documents.atlantaregional.com/transportation/quarterlyfactsheets/DK-344C.PDF
(Don’t know when the work is slated for Clifton and Clairmont, but the N.Decatur/Church St intersection is estimated to be completed around the same time that Fuqua Phase II wraps up– end of 2017.)
This is a missed opportunity to provide real bicycling infrastructure that could be used by faculty, students, and commuters to this busy area. Sharrows do not work, as any bicyclist or driver will tell you.
Traffic is such a problem along this corridor, why not try to improve it by encouraging more cyclists and getting them out of the way of cars? Dedicated bicycle lanes are the answer!
this cyclist likes sharrows better than bike lanes. but either is better than nothing.
I’m confused. Am I reading the statement from Emory incorrectly?
To me: It says that the section they are refinishing is including a dedicated bike lane. Of the section they are not refinishing- the west side- it will continue to be the sharrow.
Is Emory paying for this?