How to Make a Really Good (New) City Street

Make it like downtown Geneva, Switzerland. Or Valencia, Spain. Or Portland, Oregon. Even Court Street between Olive and Academy will do.

Those were among the suggestions for how the streets around the nascent Route 34 corridor redo should be configured to make pedestrians and bicyclists safe and happy.

They emerged Tuesday night at the main branch of the library where Deputy Director for Economic Development Mike Piscitelli was joined by other city staffers and some 40 citizens. It was the fourth public workshop held to solicit suggestions for the evolving Downtown Crossing/Route 34 makeover.The project recently was awarded a $16 federal grant to launch the infrastructure phase

That $31 million project will create two “urban boulevards” out of South and North Frontage roads, filling in the ditch of College Street. There will rise developer Carter Winstanley’s new high-tech and medical-oriented office building, called 100 College, while highway traffic moves underground into the Air Rights Garage, if the plan works,

If successful as advertised, the plan will link the medical district, Hill, and Downtown with narrower streets as well as urban boulevards where bicylcists and pedestrians would share the road with drivers.

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