http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/traffic.mp3
People in and around Traverse City have been arguing for decades about traffic problems and how to fix them. It's a tough nut to crack though and just last week a lawsuit was filed over steps the city has taken toward a redesign of the busiest road in town: Division Street.
Traffic is a top concern among voters, especially in certain neighborhoods, and 2013 is an election year.
To get a sense of the problem just sit on Randolph Street a few blocks from the water in Traverse City where cars come in and out of Slabtown Neighborhood. Rick Buckhalter is pretty sure they're not heading to a house in the neighborhood. He assumes they're cutting through to avoid lights and backups on U.S. 31. Buckhalter is running for mayor this year and he used to live nearby in Central Neighborhood where he saw cars cut through constantly. He saw accidents on neighborhood streets that totaled multiple cars.
"The cars had to be towed because they hit at such a high speed," says Buckhalter.
Cut-through traffic drives lots of people in this town crazy, but Traverse City's geography is challenging. Boardman Lake sits right in the middle of the city and there are large chunks of parkland on the west end. That creates a few bottlenecks and lots of cars looking to avoid them.
The town is exploding with new development though and there's always talk of building new roads to accommodate the traffic. That's why Grant Parsons says it's time to make a choice. He's the attorney who filed the lawsuit last week. Parsons wants to know whether Traverse City will build itself for people or cars.
"Is anybody saying we are not going to simply make bigger roads the more cars that come?" asks Parsons.
No candidate is saying that, exactly. They are talking about slowing cars down and making the city more "walkable". One candidate even has a logo that's a street with a bike lane.
But Grant Parsons wants someone to take a stand before the city is, as he sees it, overrun by cars. He wants Traverse City to become officially "anti-car" as a policy.
"And if you want to come here and you want to figure out how to do business is this town and you want to rely on this town to support you, you're going to have to figure out a way to do it without loading more cars in here," says Parsons.
Division Street
Ground zero for this issue in the next few years could be Division Street. That's the stretch of U.S. 31 that bisects the city and takes cars between Meijer and the bay.
Last year voters were asked if they would give up some parkland along that road in order to calm down the traffic there. The public said yes and Mayor Mike Estes was one of the advocates of the ballot question. Estes wants to see Division become friendlier for people on foot and bikes.
Exactly what will happen with that parkland still needs to be decided and the courts will now have to decide if the vote was done correctly. Grant Parsons claims at least 60 percent of voters needed to approve the idea and the vote was just short of that super majority.
In any case the state owns U.S. 31 and will have to make the changes. Critics expect the Michigan Department of Transportation will just build more lanes for more cars to get thru the city more quickly.
But Estes says MDOT's mission is to build safe roads. He notes the ballot language approved by voters says the parkland cannot be used to construct "additional thru traffic lanes".
"We can have a turn lane but not a true fifth lane," says Estes.
Keep the cars out of the city
Another old idea that has resurfaced is a bypass that would let cars heading to Acme go around Traverse City to the south. It was divisive for many years because the original proposal involved a new four-lane bridge over the Boardman River and filling in wetlands.
It won't be up to the city but Estes agrees with people now saying the idea is worth revisiting.
"Generally speaking, I don't believe in constructing new roads," says the mayor. "I just think they create new problems but I think that a bypass around Traverse City has got to be seriously looked at."
Estes's opponent Rick Buckhalter agrees, though he is not convinced a bypass would help much. Buckhalter says the money for a bridge might be better spent on some kind of light rail system.
"To help reduce the volume of traffic is just as important as controlling the speed of traffic," he says.
Light rail might be a stretch for a town as small at Traverse City. There's just one U.S. city its size with a light rail system, Morgantown, West Virginia. It's a university town and the rail lines connect the campuses used by almost 30,000 students.
Buckhalter has another out-of-the-box idea for cutting down on traffic in neighborhoods. Residents of Slabtown have discussed closing their north entrance by making it a one-way exit. Buckhalter would support at least experimenting with gates to see where the cars go when you close off one street or another.
"You'd have to experiment," he says, "because it might not work and be a failed experiment but at least you tried."
Such an idea might shock a city planner. But it could be enough to earn a town the reputation of being anti-car.
IPR invited the seven commission candidates to discuss traffic problems here. We suggested they answer the questions below and comment on any idea presented in our story.
- Comment on specific solutions--that involve new asphalt--to the city's traffic problems that you would advocate.
- How much are neighborhoods threatened by traffic?
- What needs to happen on Division Street? Is a real solution politically possible?
- Should TC strive to be less or more accommodating to automobile traffic? How would you do that?