With the completion of a $34.8 million transportation improvement project in 2019, Green Street may finally live up to its environmentally friendly name.
The project, called the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project, or MCORE, is being designed to promote walking and biking, reduce vehicular traffic and make it safer for anyone traveling through the University District.
In addition to Green Street, several other highly traveled side streets in the heart of the campus will see street upgrades starting next fall.
“This project is unprecedented in many ways,” said Roland White, an engineer with Facilities and Services, which has spearheaded the project’s planning for the university.
He said the university has teamed up in the past on projects with the cities of Champaign and Urbana, and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District, but nothing of this size and scope focused on the core of the community.
“Never have we invested these resources to the core campus and the core community,” he said. “It’s a very smart and far-reaching investment.”
Of the $15.7 million federal grant match, the city of Champaign is leading the project by putting up $9.6 million, the city of Urbana $2.1 million and the U. of I. $3.6 million. The grant was obtained by the Champaign Urbana Urbanized Area Transportation Study group.
White said the partnership has held strong because the project’s impact on each partner – 80 percent of the area’s jobs are within a mile of the project’s corridors – is so huge.
“There already is a really good relationship between the partner agencies because of past experience working together,” he said. “It’s made synchronizing all of this much easier than it might have been.”
The five-phase project also is unusual in that work within the University District will be done while classes are in session in an effort to meet federal completion guidelines.
“It’s led to an accelerated design and delivery process,” he said of the guidelines, which will include a year of engineering planning before the first project becomes shovel-ready in fall 2016.
Green Street will get most of the attention as designers attempt to reconfigure the thoroughfare to create a multimodal approach friendlier to alternative transportation options. Three of the five projects will focus on Green, with major work slated for the area in front of the Illini Union.
White called that area “ground zero” for campus transportation issues, noting that 12,000 vehicles and a significant number of buses pass there each day. He said the current Illini Union configuration causes an undesirable and potentially dangerous “weaving area,” where vehicles, buses and pedestrians all fight for position.
“It’s sort of a natural connecting point for all transportation modes, so there’s a lot going on in that first phase,” he said.
White said conceptual plans call for reducing Green Street in that area from four to three lanes, with the space from the fourth lane used to create dedicated bike and bus lanes. The work would make it easier for bikers and pedestrians to navigate Green, creating a safer environment for them in the process.
“The project is being designed to offer people more choices, encourage alternatives, increase safety and make traffic flow more predictable in some of the most-traveled locations in the region,” he said. “The end result will be enhanced mobility for everyone.”
The two other Green Street projects are from Fourth Street to Neil Street, including the underpass east of Neil, and from Busey Avenue to Race Street in Urbana. Work will focus on improving pedestrian and bicycle access and making the streets safer.
The remaining projects include work on Wright Street from Armory Avenue to White Street, with work extending west on both streets to complete the corridor. Work on Wright may include heated bus stop enclosures for students, who currently congregate in the Illini Union Bookstore lobby when the weather turns cold.
White said the work would set the area on a path for managing future development in the immediate area.
“This is how you handle growth, by planning and reacting before it becomes unmanageable,” he said. “This has the possibility to be a legacy project that not only changes the look of the community, but its behavior.”
That’s why communication is such an important project component, said Steve Breitwieser, a media communications specialist for F&S.
He said a website explaining the project and offering construction updates is already up and running at www.mcoreproject.com. The site offers a project fact sheet, videos, articles and even animations of the proposed work using local traffic data. The site will continue to be updated and include related closures and detours.
“We want to help connect people with the information,” he said. “This is going to cause short-term discomfort, but the end result will set us, literally, on a more solid path for the future.”