A New Way To Work

Savannah Highway

Here is a vision for Savannah Highway that takes a congested and unattractive road and transforms it into a functional and attractive boulevard.

THE BIG PICTURE:

This image identifies four commercial/retail centers along Savannah Highway. Each one of these centers would be designed according to the example below. In identifying these areas both north and south of Savannah Highway, as commercial property owners begin updating their buildings, sell their property, or reconfigure the buildings, they could do so according to the community plan. Surface streets could connect in former parking lot spaces and provide connecting points to neighborhoods blocked from accessing retailers without entering Savannah Highway.

Based on figures from the COG only 44% of the traffic traveling on Savannah Highway is commuting through the area. The remaining 56% of the traffic on Savannah Highway are trips that begin or end on the road. Accordingly, if you provide a means for people to reach a location along the highway through other surface streets by connecting the parallel streets, there is the potential to remove 56% of the traffic off of Savannah Highway.

ZOOM IN:

rendering

This image is an enlargement of one of the commercial/retail centers above. The red buildings are retail or commercial buildings. The yellow buildings are residential. Note that the existing roads are solid black lines and the proposed streets are dotted lines.

As an exercise to understand the purpose and concept of connecting streets, identify any residential building and pretend that the resident who lives in that building needs to buy a gallon of milk. First, find the route that they would be forced to take if they used existing roads. You will find that most residents are forced to enter Savannah Highway to do to their shopping. Now, imagine that the dotted lines are existing streets. Take the same resident who needs the gallon of milk and find a path for the resident to purchase the milk from the nearest commercial center.

POTENTIAL FUTURE ROAD DESIGN OF SAVANNAH HIGHWAY:

This is the design that Glatting Jackson created for Savannah Highway. This design adds pedestrian paths, crosswalks, tree-lined streets and a bike lane.