Advocacy Alert: Downtown Streets Plan

August 1, 2022

The City of Wichita continues to develop long-term plans to shape downtown to better accommodate development and to enhance the neighborhood as a place to live and work. Wichita’s Downtown Streets Plan is a strategic, comprehensive, and integrated plan for street design and for attracting and maintaining a healthy mix of uses and new development in Wichita. This plan introduces new downtown road configurations that meet all modes of transportation, including vehicles, bikes, scooters, and foot traffic, to provide greater safety and mobility to downtown residents, employees and businesses.

The city has recently presented the latest version at public meetings and the specific changes being planned can now be found in one document, which can be downloaded here or from the city’s website.

The deadline for comments to city staff is August 5. The Plan is not being voted on by the City Council for a couple of months, so at this point the best way to comment on the Plan is by contacting the City staff person in charge of the process, Tia Raamot, email: TRaamot@Wichita.gov.

Overview

Since at least 2010, the City and interested stakeholders have developed various plans to shape downtown to enhance the area as a place to live and work and improve its economic vitality. The latest Downtown Streets Plan is intended to be a strategic, comprehensive, and integrated plan for street design and for attracting and maintaining a healthy mix of uses and new development in Wichita. The Plan would change several of the downtown streets from one-way to two-way streets, would reduce the number of travel lanes on other streets and would add bike/scooter lanes on several streets. The changes are intended encourage and accommodate all modes of transportation including vehicles, bikes, scooters, and foot traffic, to provide greater safety and mobility to downtown residents, employees, and businesses.

In 2019 and 2020, several planning teams and consulting agencies provided data collection, and
technical analysis, and helped write the latest Plan. Several public meetings and focus groups (including representatives of both public and private organizations) were held to provide business owners and citizens with information about the Plan, and to receive feedback. Those who have been involved in the process overwhelmingly approve of the new Plan.

Bike Walk Wichita strongly favors adoption of the plan, although we believe that it could be improved by assuring that all crosswalks are clearly marked and maintained, adding bike/scooter lanes on additional streets, making as many of the bike/scooter lanes as possible protected by physical barriers or parked cars, and by implementing the entire plan quickly.

Aspects of the Plan that you may want to look at and comment on:

• Which aspects of the Plan should be given highest priority;
• Whether and in what way any additional streets in the downtown area should be changed;
• How crosswalks throughout the downtown area should be treated, including marking, signals, or other treatments;
• Whether any of the bike lanes [such as 1st Street + 2nd Street] should be “protected”, by being separated from traffic lanes by a physical barrier or parking, or merely buffered, meaning being separated by a painted buffer zone;

Please let the City staff know what you think about the Plan by August 5, 2022!