With all the rain today, I thought I'd share some pictures to remind you how much it used to stink crossing from the east side to the west side of the Line Creek Valley when it rained.
For those of you not familiar with the area, the old intersection of 68th Street, Gower Drive, and Waukomis was a geometric cluster and it was all in the floodplain. This was the only way to get across Line Creek between Barry and Vivion Roads (4+/- miles). I-29 didn't count as it only had half interchanges at Waukomis and Gateway Drives. This was the area back in 2003 which shows the old disjointed intersections and the new alignments.
Below is a picture looking north form the old intersection of Gower and Waukomis. Water would flood from the Lake Waukomis tributary on the left side of the picture and flow over the road to the main channel on the right.
Below I was looking west on NW 68th Street from the stop light. The Line Creek box culverts would take a decent rain but water would still pond on the street as it was flat with the ground and the ditches were not deep enough to keep water off the road.
Below I was looking northwest from the old intersection of Bryan and Waukomis. The old Bryan Road Bridge was so undersized and not high enough and water from the Lake Waukomis tributary always crossed over when it rained a lot or a tree got stuck under the bridge. It was bad enough having to naviate that intersection with the 60 degree skew and free for all merge movements with Robinhood Lane across the street. I'm sure that intersection layout made all sorts of sense back in 1922 when the area was developed as Miltonwood and people used horses and buggies but it didn't function with cars.
Sometimes it would flow so fast that the street would have to be closed as evidenced by all the gravel gone and the grass mowed down.
Today of course it doesn't flood anymore, people don't have to walk in the road and over the ditches to catch the bus, and the intersections are at 90 degrees and have proper sight lines to see cars and sidewalk users.
I don't know how to embed streetview so check out the new street corridor here. The new Waukomis also is a three lane street vs an intrusive four lane speedway. Want to compare how a three lane and four lane street have different travel characteristics?
A lot of citizen input formed the footprint of this road. People didn't want a 4 lane speedway like Barry Road or Line Creek Parkway. They liked the trees and rural character of the corridor. Long time residents didn't want to be forced out of their homes.
I have a whole other post I will write some day on my evolution as a transportation engineer as it relates to this area but the new section of Green Hills Road cost half as much as a four lane road, required minimal new right of way, and has more trees than comparable four lane arterials or parkways because the budget wasn't blown on overkill pavement and moving dirt.
This is a sneak peak of the new Green Hills Road but one can tour the corridor on streetview by clicking here.
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