The University of Wyoming and the City of Laramie are currently in the preliminary planning stages to renovate and possibly remove the 15th and Ivinson intersection.
“City staff has always known that the university has looked at the intersection, and how we could improve it,” Derek Teini, planning manager for the City of Laramie, said. “It’s always a good goal, if you’re having unsafe pedestrian and vehicular interaction, to try and fix that.”
The crosswalk is a major thruway for freshman and other students, and runs through the intersection from the south side to the north side of Ivinson Street.
“Traffic patterns are generally moving north, south, east, west, however none of the intersections are actually lined up perpendicular to each other, which would be typical of an intersection,” Teini said. “That’s one complicating factor about the (15th and Ivinson) intersection. Because of that orientation, it’s bigger, it’s wider, and because of where this intersection is, with the University of Wyoming, dormitories and then main campus, this is that crossing point.”
Part of the UW Facilities Planning Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) is to find a way to renovate intersections running from Ivinson Street to Willet Street to shorten commute time for pedestrians crossing the 15th and Ivinson intersection. Studies in 2009 showed that over 800 pedestrians are crossing at Ivinson during peak hours, and around 13,000 vehicles travel through it per day. Of these vehicles, around 60-65% were estimated to be traveling to campus.
“What we have in our long-range plan, is to look at how do we calm traffic to create an aesthetic feel of ‘hey, you’re on campus now’ and reducing that pedestrian commute time across campus,” Jennifer Coast, deputy director of UW Facilities Engineering, said.
The LRDP calls for three possible scenarios for redesign of the pedestrian and vehicle intersection at Ivinson. The first scenario would ad a chicane, one or a series of S-bends to slow traffic. The second would remove the intersection altogether to avoid it being a thru street for traffic. The third and final scenario would extend frat mall across Ivinson to also remove the intersection.
“We want to make sure that we are reducing traffic through there, but also we want to make sure that there is a really good flow from an aesthetic perspective from east campus to west campus,” Coast said. “We could create that by giving pedestrians the hierarchy, so it will make the walk quite a bit faster.”
Teini discussed the process for engineers and how they apply their knowledge to improve the intersection.
“They look at the physical design of the intersection, so how it physically sits in that spot,” Teini said. “They look at things like altering traffic movements, so restricting certain turning movements, maybe timing certain movements, whether it’s a stop light or other types of mechanisms. They look at restriping, or changing the actual physical layout of the intersection.”
Last year, an engineering design class looked at the intersection and developed design alternatives to improve the pedestrian crossing, and looked at possible solutions such as overpasses and underpasses. A representative from City Planning sat in on the presentations, but whether these designs will be used or referenced is unknown as of now.
Coast said that the idea of an overpass is mentioned frequently, but would not be a good solution because of space and the probability that students would avoid using the overpass and cross the street anyways.
Because of the preliminary nature of this renovation, there currently are not any designs, however, after funding and talks with the Wyoming Department of Transportation begin, design can begin as well.
