APPLETON — Twelve months into an 18-month trial period, the downtown College Avenue lane reconfiguration has resulted in a 29% decrease in crashes.
The experiment also has reduced travel times through the corridor during certain periods, and when travel times have increased, they haven’t been nearly as long as traffic engineers expected.
The data supports and adds to the findings from the first five months of the study .
The reconfiguration changed College Avenue from a four-lane street to a three-lane street — known as a road diet — in an effort to improve safety and reduce traffic speeds and noise. The project affects College Avenue between Richmond Street/Memorial Drive and Drew Street .
Previously, that stretch had two lanes of travel in each direction, plus on-street parking on each side.
With the reconfiguration, the street has one lane of travel in each direction and a center left-turn lane at each intersection between State Street and Drew. It also has a bicycle lane in each direction. The on-street parking remains.