East side motorists, take note. The narrow, bumpy Old Vineyard roadway that was closed nearly two years ago may soon reappear on your GPS car screen.
City traffic engineers have called a public meeting for 7 p.m. Tuesday in the City Council chambers at 200 Old Bernal Avenue to outline their plan to close the one-and-a-half mile new Vineyard Avenue for two to three months this summer. By asking motorists to detour onto the old roadway, contractors can expedite the work to rip out the two controversial traffic circles and rebuild the street and pave it.
At the same time, major roadwork will be under way on Vineyard Avenue between Bernal and Montevino, where a wider planted median will be installed. Once four lanes, the street in that sector has been narrowed to one lane in each direction by street striping. The new median will make the change permanent, and will also eliminate curbside parking on both sides of the street.
The extensive roadwork on Vineyard is expected to impact most critically on Ruby Hill parents and teenage drivers who already find themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic on school days as they make their way to and from high schools, middle schools and Vintage Hills and Valley View elementary schools.
“If the public supports our plan to make use of the Old Vineyard Avenue, we can get the traffic circle work done by early fall and get the new Vineyard re-opened,” said Jeff Knowles, Traffic Engineer and Deputy Director of Public Works. “Besides removing the traffic circles, we also have to install left and right turn lanes at the intersecting streets.”
Built at a cost of $6 million, the new Vineyard Avenue extends east from Pietronave just east of Montevino to Ruby Hill. The traffic circles were installed primarily to service the Neal Elementary School, which has not been built. Those streets, which also connect to Old Vineyard and private driveways on the old roadway, will become T-intersections at the new Vineyard, controlled only by single stop signs on those streets. No traffic signals are planned to replace the circles.
Knowles said the circles were designed to allow a continuous flow of vehicles into and out of the Neal School site, where traffic signals would require long left turn lanes and delays during peak school traffic hours.
Without the school, and growing speculation that it may never be built, the traffic circles are not needed, although they have served to reduce speeds on Vineyard, where the posted limits range from 50 to 40 to 35.
Knowles said that the maximum allowed speed on Old Vineyard during the construction project will be posted at 25 mph. Without Old Vineyard as a temporary traffic detour, the removal of the traffic circles and related new construction could take much longer, possibly to the end of the year, he added.
