Around Town in October

Spectator

Let’s check in and see what’s happening locally, given how depressing national and international news has become.

In Traverse City, we’re not quite done fiddling with State Street. It was two-way, then for a long time it functioned quite nicely as a west-to-east one-way street for a few blocks. But when construction on the parkway restricted some east-west flow, it went back to being two-way. The decision has been made by the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) to leave it as a two-way street, though it’s not completely clear why the DDA is in charge of one stretch of that or any street.

Now, because walking half a block to cross a street at a light is simply way too much work for us, we want to put pedestrian crossings in the middle of those short blocks. Safety was mentioned, but there’s no evidence safety will be achieved.

Two-way and one-way streets each have advocates and each claim traffic flow, speed, and safety are somehow enhanced by their preferred option. We know from our own traffic study the two-way configuration has slowed traffic marginally but not significantly. According to the Transportation Research Board, one-way streets are marginally safer because they reduce the number of t-bone and head-on crashes but, again, the difference is not especially significant.

It’s a little different for pedestrians. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), unlit pedestrian crossings on two-way streets with no median create a 19-30 percent increase in the likelihood of a pedestrian being injured. It turns out that not paying attention to traffic coming from two directions is more dangerous than not paying attention when it comes from one direction.

That half-block hike to a lit intersection might seem arduous, but is significantly better than dodging cars mid-block.

Speaking of pedestrian crossings, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) says they will try their best to replace the pedestrian bridge from the Traverse City State Park campground to the beach with an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant version, though they aren’t currently sure of the cost or just how they’ll do it.

The initial plan, to remove the non-compliant bridge and instead create a grade-level pedestrian crossing at a lit intersection, was met with loud protests because those of us who live here know people would try to dart across wherever and we know that would be incredibly dangerous. So, to their credit, the DNR listened and will make a good faith effort to build a new bridge.

Back in downtown TC, we’re heading into the final design stages of a pricey farmer’s market with permanent structures and space for more than 100 vendors. Unclear what we’ll do with the thing in the winters, though with a $3 million price tag, having it sit empty for any length of time surely will not be part of the plan.

We’re going to put another $1 million into Rotary Square, though it didn’t really need to be all that fancy. The lawn, left alone and somehow connected to the work ongoing at the river, would have likely offered limitless, albeit temporary, options.

At the river, the Fish Pass project grinds along, probably more massive than most of us thought. Per the Great Lakes Fishery Commission FAQ site, there’s still no word on which fish will get to pass, though we know the sea lamprey will be stopped, nor how the fishery as a whole will change. (Read more at glfc.org/fishpass-faqs.php.) We seem to have forgotten it’s a $30 million experiment, and while the scientists involved think it will be a model for many others to follow, we don’t know for sure if it will work.

We’re still on an endless quest for more housing, though this talk about the needs for tens of thousands of more housing units in northwest lower Michigan seems unrealistic at best. What are the questions being asked that result in those numbers? Does this “need” come from people who want to move here but are somehow prevented from doing so? Lack of housing would certainly be detrimental, but where are those people going to work? Are there tens of thousands of jobs unfilled or about to be created? If we create the housing, will the jobs somehow appear?

Housing in the region doesn’t much count for the new urbanists, whose primary goal is density. They want duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, apartments atop garages, and backyard accessory dwelling units (ADU). And more taxpayer subsidized apartments and condos, and all in Traverse City’s urban core.

What is not clear, however, is that people want to move here so they can live in a dense urban environment. When we brag about this being “God’s country,” we’re not talking about the beauty of housing density. Some people might like a little space, some trees, and maybe some birds that are neither seagulls nor pigeons; what others keep derisively calling sprawl is actually a home ownership dream writ large for others.

And on we go.

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