What about the residents and business owners on Mohawk?
| Wednesday, Aug 11 2010 12:11 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Feb 10 2011 06:33 PM
Images
Q: Many of us residents who have entrances and exits onto Mohawk Street between California and Truxtun avenues are very concerned about being able to make left or cross-traffic turns into or out of our gated communities and businesses due to increased traffic on that stretch when the Rosedale Highway connection is complete. Do you know if Caltrans or the city have taken this into consideration?
There are approximately 300 residents (condos and apartments) in that area. This does not count all the businesses with many employees and clients that frequent the 10-story and many other offices.
-- Janet Cason
A: Ted Wright and Ryan Starbuck, who are engineers with the city of Bakersfield, took this one up:
Mohawk Street is classified as an arterial street on the city street system. Arterial streets typically carry the highest volumes of traffic of all city streets and are mostly for higher-speed through traffic. Because of these conditions, arterials are generally designed with very limited frontage access. Arterial streets normally have raised median islands to further restrict left-turning traffic, especially left-out turning traffic.
Much of Mohawk Street between California Avenue and Truxtun Avenue currently has raised median islands, but there is a portion that does not. There are currently no plans to install a raised median in this area, but one could be installed in the future to prevent left turns out onto Mohawk from the private roads/driveways along this stretch should this movement become an issue.
Tower Way, a public street, will also eventually need to have a median "worm" installed at the intersection to restrict access to left in, right in and right out. This will eliminate the left turn out movement, which can be very challenging on arterial roadways.
Overall traffic on this segment of Mohawk Street was reviewed as part of the environmental document for the Westside Parkway (which includes the Mohawk Street extension project), but specific turning movements into or out of private driveways were not included in this review, and are not normally included in this type of traffic analysis.
