Ponce's Complete Street conversion has entered homestretch

Ponce’s Complete Street conversion has entered homestretch Josh Green Tue, 06/11/2024 - 12:46 Urbanists, rejoice: Atlanta BeltLine Inc.’s conversion of a busy section of Ponce de Leon Avenue into a safer, more approachable thoroughfare for pedestrians and bicyclists is nearly finished.

Following delays, the Ponce de Leon Avenue Streetscapes project started construction in fall 2022 as an effort to improve pedestrian and bike connections between Boulevard and John Lewis Freedom Parkway. It covers just shy of .7 miles overall at the confluence of four intown neighborhoods, with popular destinations along the way including Ponce City Market, Green’s, Whole Foods, and the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail.

According to a BeltLine construction update issued Wednesday, all sidewalk reconstruction, light-pole installation, and landscaping along the Ponce route has been completed. The BeltLine’s contractor, JHC Construction, is now working with the Atlanta Department of Transportation to convert all traffic signal operations for new signal heads along Ponce.

Bike lane improvements and pavement re-striping is scheduled to continue through mid-June, according to project officials. (Currently, bike lanes end just east of Ponce City Market, where new pedestrian medians were recently installed.)

An ABI photo from late May showing crews installing a new pedestrian refuge median in the shadow of Ponce City Market that’s since been completed. Atlanta BeltLine Inc.

Previous conditions heading east on the avenue near Ponce City Market. The Ponce-BeltLine ramp will be installed at left. Google Maps

Ponce bike lanes will be extended on both sides of the BeltLine, up to the entrance of the Kroger in Poncey-Highland. But tight right-of-way constraints and existing traffic-lane configurations on that section of Ponce are prohibiting the in-street bike lanes from being extended all the way to Freedom Parkway, BeltLine planners have said.

Trees and new lighting stand in buffers between sidewalks and the forthcoming bike lanes. Traffic signals will be reconfigured at Boulevard, Glen Iris Drive, Midtown Place, and the entrance to Kroger and the 725 Ponce development, per BeltLine officials.

Meanwhile, the direct connection between Ponce and the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail that’s been in planning stages for a dozen years continues to progress, though onsite work has gone idle.

According to BeltLine officials, JHC will begin building the access ramp once the Georgia Department of Transportation approves plans for walls and materials that are under review now.

A layout of the Ponce ramp system, which will look similar to Edgewood Avenue’s metal-ramp connection to the Eastside Trail, as pictured above. Courtesy of Atlanta BeltLine Inc.

That project aims to create a more seamless, quicker, and ADA-accessible means of exiting the BeltLine for Ponce’s shopping and eating options, and vice versa. Plans call for a steel ramp, stairs, and railings at the northwestern corner of the Ponce-BeltLine bridge, similar to Edgewood Avenue’s metal-ramp connection to the Eastside Trail where Old Fourth Ward meets Inman Park. The surface, however, won’t be serrated metal, in order to spare dogs’ feet, BeltLine officials have said.

An enhanced pedestrian connection at Ponce has been part of the Eastside Trail’s design since it debuted in 2012. Previous plans to begin work in summer 2021 were delayed.

Find a refresher on the Ponce project and more context in the gallery above.

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