The Champaign County Regional Planning Commission is seeking public feedback on modifications to Lincoln Avenue. Through May 30, community members can provide input on a plan to change the corridor between Green Street and Florida Avenue.
The CCRPC received a grant for a study of Lincoln Avenue in 2022 from the Illinois Department of Transportation. IDOT previously identified an intersection on the corridor as a safety concern in 2017. After conducting research, collecting public input and making adjustments, the group is seeking a final round of feedback before presenting their recommendations to the Urbana City Council.
“It’s a major vehicle corridor, but also largely because of the University, there’s a lot of pedestrians, a lot of cyclists, a lot of bus riders that also use the corridor,” said J.D. McClanahan, Planner II at the CCRPC. “(We were) trying to figure out what the best recommendations we could do to balance between all of those modes and ensure safety and usability.”
McClanahan and his team have proposed the reconfiguration of the corridor into a three-lane road, with one lane in each direction and a center turning lane. As of now, the middle of the corridor is three-lane, while stretches near Florida Avenue and Green Street are four or five-lane.
In the proposed plan, the lane reduction will occur at the intersections of Florida Avenue and Green Street with Lincoln Avenue, respectively.
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“For the stretches that used to have more lanes and now have fewer, there would be a slight reduction in road capacity,” McClanahan said. “But the modeling that our engineers did said that with the other improvements that we’re doing … narrowing the lanes and doing all of these other improvements will still end up with better traffic than it would be otherwise.”
Also included in the recommendations is the implementation of raised bike lanes extending down the length of the corridor. Raised bike lanes provide additional protection for cyclists, as it is more difficult for vehicles to enter the bike lane, according to McClanahan.
The team also recommends the conversion of all crosswalks into mid-block crossings with rapid rectangular flashing beacons. At this kind of crossing, pedestrians can press a button to signal vehicles to stop.
“In that middle of the corridor around Ohio, Iowa, Indiana … there’s not traffic lights for a pretty long stretch,” McClanahan said. “The advantage of the RFBs, the rapid rectangular flashing beacons, is we would have those crossings at evenly located, evenly dispersed areas.”
If this round of feedback is supportive, the group will present their plan to the Urbana City Council during the summer. If the project is unable to secure a grant and must use city funding, detailed design would occur between 2027 and 2029, with construction beginning thereafter.
However, if grant funding is made available, the project’s timeline could be accelerated.
“I encourage students to take a look at the website, provide their feedback,” McClanahan said.
Community members can submit feedback to McClanahan at 1776 E. Washington St., Urbana, or by emailing [email protected] until May 30.
