State Street (147th St to 153rd St)

[Coyote]

State Street reopening:
After delays caused concern for some neighbors

[Mjs5050ss]

State Street reopening:
After delays caused concern for some neighbors

Looks like this is finally open.
https://app.truelook.cloud/dashboard/27 ... 3fa0n7xb9v

[ProgKingHughesker]

If they were gonna close it now, why not just go ahead and 4-lane it instead of having this exact same headache again in 10 years?

[Busguy2010]

If they were gonna close it now, why not just go ahead and 4-lane it instead of having this exact same headache again in 10 years?

That was my exact thought. It was closed such a long time, it made no sense not to do 4. We gotta be able to do better than that.

[Brad]

If they were gonna close it now, why not just go ahead and 4-lane it instead of having this exact same headache again in 10 years?

That was my exact thought. It was closed such a long time, it made no sense not to do 4. We gotta be able to do better than that.

The reason they had to close the entire road was they raised the grade quite a bit and when doing that they had to place a large surcharge across the entire width of the road for a storm sewer pipe. The surcharge takes a while to settle.

Here is a photo I took a couple weeks ago:

881A0237.jpg

[BRoss]

If they were gonna close it now, why not just go ahead and 4-lane it instead of having this exact same headache again in 10 years?

I think it's mainly about cost. Douglas County has a lot of rural roads that need to be upgraded. 20 years ago, southwest Omaha was mostly (and still has a lot of) two lane roads and turning traffic always caused bad backups. I think they learned that suburban areas need to be at least three lanes to alleviate that problem and make it more manageable until the funds come to make it four lanes. And they still have a lot of two lanes roads that need to be addressed in NW Omaha.

Four lane divided roads tend to be much more expensive than a three lane stretch such as what they did here. There's no curbs, no median (or essentially two separate parallel streets) - just one stretch of asphalt. And four lane roads these days often require other additional aspects such as sound walls.

Beyond that, there's also an issue with creating more lane miles that need maintenance. If the capacity is not needed right now, then why build more that needs to be maintained and will likely need to be repaved by time it really is needed?

I would love to see them all widened to four lanes. But I think it does make sense to make sure the arterial roads of upcoming areas are at least three lanes.

[Mjs5050ss]

If they were gonna close it now, why not just go ahead and 4-lane it instead of having this exact same headache again in 10 years?

I think it's mainly about cost. Douglas County has a lot of rural roads that need to be upgraded. 20 years ago, southwest Omaha was mostly (and still has a lot of) two lane roads and turning traffic always caused bad backups. I think they learned that suburban areas need to be at least three lanes to alleviate that problem and make it more manageable until the funds come to make it four lanes. And they still have a lot of two lanes roads that need to be addressed in NW Omaha.

Four lane divided roads tend to be much more expensive than a three lane stretch such as what they did here. There's no curbs, no median (or essentially two separate parallel streets) - just one stretch of asphalt. And four lane roads these days often require other additional aspects such as sound walls.

Beyond that, there's also an issue with creating more lane miles that need maintenance. If the capacity is not needed right now, then why build more that needs to be maintained and will likely need to be repaved by time it really is needed?

I would love to see them all widened to four lanes. But I think it does make sense to make sure the arterial roads of upcoming areas are at least three lanes.

I always assumed it was with the hopes that it would be the city's problem by the time they needed to be 4 lanes.

[Renovator2559]

Expensive 4 lane streets to serve a few cars and encourage more subsidized housing sprawl? What needs to happen is to have better zoning and no more culdesacs that cause too much funneling of traffic on few exit points and design these neighborhoods to be more walkable suburbs and have their own local services without having to make every arrand trip a road congesting experience! It's sad to see how Omaha incurs plenty of debt from these low tax paying culdesacs, who are unable to pay their full share of road maintenance.

This subsidizatiom isn't sustainable. Fix the traffic generating and funneling problem, rather than patching a temp fix that only costs plenty to maintain with long ugly bars of expensive traffic lights!

[Brad]

What needs to happen is to have better zoning and no more culdesacs that cause too much funneling of traffic on few exit point

You are lumping a bunch of items in to Zoning that have nothing to do with zoning.

cul-de-sacs are not part of zoning.
Many of the metro municipalities do try to minimize cul-de-sacs.
One local municipality leader actually makes fun of cul-de-sac at public meetings.

As far as the "Few Exit Points", Only 3 per mile between the main intersections on main roads, that's what's allowed. Again, that's not zoning. I also believe that was an agreed upon number between several city, county, and state departments, it has noting to do with developers building cul-de-sacs instead of connections to the main road.

[almighty_tuna]

One could say that right now Brad is running a...zone defense.

[nebugeater]

One could say that right now Brad is running a...zone defense.

That often happens when someone calls an audible.

[BRoss]

As far as the "Few Exit Points", Only 3 per mile between the main intersections on main roads, that's what's allowed. Again, that's not zoning. I also believe that was an agreed upon number between several city, county, and state departments

Yeah, they don't like full movement intersections closer than a quarter mile apart. Having them closer causes traffic flow issues.