REHOBOTH BEACH, Del.- Upgrading the side streets in Rehoboth Beach, with the focus being on Baltimore and Wilmington Avenue to spruce up their look. It's been about two months now that a task force full of residents, business owners and commissioners have been discussing how to move forward with the project, today's meeting focused more on specifics of the street layout. The task force went over specific measurements that need to be reached for car lanes, bike lanes, parking and more, while all that can be a lot to dive into, it still made the members on the task force question some aspects of the current layout. To refresh everyone on the task force, Rehoboth Beach Mayor Stan Mills reiterated the overall goal of the streetscape project. Mills said, "These streets basically encompass the downtown commercial core of Rehoboth Beach and the improvements we're looking at are intended to elevate the perception of this commercial core relative to the boardwalk and Rehoboth Avenue." The biggest goal for the task force is looking into under-grounding utilities. The city is in contact with a engineer about if that is feasible, which task force members say is a must for the aesthetics of the streets. Now, the group is looking into enhancing the current layout by keeping the idea of being safer for pedestrians and bicyclists in mind. The idea of adding a bike lane came up, but it wasn't a very popular idea because it would take away space from the roadways or the sidewalks. Frank Cooper, a Rehoboth Beach Resident said, "But in this situation I think that you are actually serving the cyclists and everyone better by using a sharrow system then you are by individual bike lanes." So to off set that, the task force voted to approve the idea of making Wilmington and Baltimore Avenue, and First and Second Street as welcoming to pedestrians as possible. Howard Menaker, a Rehoboth Beach Home Owner said, "In all applications the pedestrian pathways, the sidewalks be as wide as feasible in each block of this area that we are considering and use that as a guiding principle." That topic hit a road block with this idea because of a very narrow area, but that's when the task force says each road in this project needs to be looked at differently, but still make sure people on the sidewalks don't feel cluttered. The task force did not get to talk about all aspects of the project today but did make some good progress. The hope is to be able to finalize the rest of the details at next week's meeting so that the Rossi Group can begin designing what the overall project will finally look like.
Streetscape Task Force Talks About Becoming More Pedestrian and Bicycle Friendly
