Newstead Avenue Improvement Project

Washington University Medical Center(WUMC) was in the midst of a $1 billion building expansion that would grow staff and patient volumes and place additional demands on the transportation system. Newstead Avenue runs through the heart of the BJC/WUSM campus. Lochmueller was called upon to perform a comprehensive traffic analysis and identify transportation improvements needed to accommodate the area’s growth. That analysis identified that vehicular improvements were required to accommodate vehicles on Newstead Avenue.

Lochmueller, along with other partners, developed a concept plan to widen Newstead Avenue to improve traffic flow and redistribute traffic to allow an adjacent parallel route to provide safer pedestrian accommodations. The widening of Newstead Avenue required the signals at Forest Park Parkway and Duncan Avenue to be entirely rebuilt and minor modifications to be performed at Clayton Avenue. In addition, 14 streetlights and 33 sidewalk lanterns were relocated behind the new curb.

Limited right-of-way and the abundance utilities along the corridor posed the greatest challenges during design, especially at Forest Park Parkway and Duncan Avenue. Our design team met bi-weekly with WUSM and the other civil designers to present updates and coordinate our designs based on new information from the field, our client, and other stakeholders. As an add-on to the design project, WUSM brought on our engineers to provide Maintenance of Traffic services to minimize the impact of the construction job on daily commutes as much as possible. As such, our team reviewed each stage of temporary traffic phasing and made recommendations to the design team and contractor on how they could be modified to improve efficiencies in traffic, as well as improve safety conditions for both motorists and construction workers.