Fewer lanes for cars and newfangled lanes for bikes are part of Oberlin Road overhaul
Contractors will soon begin a one-year overhaul of a half-mile stretch of Oberlin Road near the Village District, replacing everything from sidewalks to sewer lines.
The new design will include fewer lanes for cars and more space for pedestrians and cyclists, including a type of protected bike lane that’s rare in the city.
The city’s Oberlin Road Streetscape Project will reduce the number of lanes for cars from five to three, one of which will be a center turn lane, between Clark Avenue and Bedford Street. The space freed up by having fewer lanes will be used to provide wider sidewalks, two dozen on-street parking spaces and bicycle lanes on both sides of the street.
And for the first time outside of downtown Raleigh, parts of those bicycle lanes will be between the parked cars and the curb, further protecting cyclists from traffic and cars getting in and out of parking spaces.
When the city proposed the new design in 2018, the cycling advocacy group Oaks & Spokes heartily endorsed it, saying it would be safer for cyclists and make would-be riders more comfortable riding on Oberlin. The city has since placed bike lanes behind parked cars on parts of Harrington and West streets in the warehouse district downtown.
The Oberlin Road design also includes new bus stops and more visible crosswalks, as well as sidewalk extensions up three side streets, Bedford, Everett and Stafford avenues.
The contractor, Moffat Pipe Inc. of Wake Forest, is expected to get started by the second week of October and finish by the end of 2024. The project will cost the city $3.6 million.
