Bastrop, Tx–Responding to downtown business owners Feb. 10, the city council aborted a brief experiment in moving traffic into and through the downtown area. Other approaches to solving daily traffic slowdowns downtown must be quickly explored, however, council members insisted.
The experiment began Feb. 2 when Alley A, a North-South artery between Main Street and the Colorado River became a one way route between Spring and Chestnut Street, also known as Loop 150. During peak driving times, especially in the late afternoons, the result was more backed up traffic from Main Street to the West across the Colorado River bridge on Loop 150, said Police Chief David Board. Given more time to adjust, drivers might adopt new strategies for moving through and around the downtown commercial district, said Board.
The experimental arrangement, which precluded East bound drivers on Chestnut from turning left into the narrow Alley A, was roundly assailed by some downtown business owners, including Dan Hepker of Bastrop Copier at the corner of Chestnut and Main. The scheme was costing him business because customers were frustrated by the new arrangement, he said, and Hepker predicted more accidents and injuries sparked by driver frustrations. “It’s a dangerous situation now,” he said.
Deli Depot owners also said customers were facing more impediments to patronizing the popular establishment.
“We’ve created a worse problem than we had (downtown),” said Council Member Terry Sanders.
The council voted unanimously to abandon the one way experiment beginning at 7 a.m. Feb. 11, but some of them warned that a problem remains to be solved and the solution may have some downsides, including the loss of some downtown parking on Chestnut Street.
“Something’s got to be done,” said Council Member Joe Beal.
Council Member Willie DeLaRosa urged City Manager Mike Talbot immediately to contact the Texas Department of Transportation, which controls Loop 150, about dusting off a proposal from 1995-96 which would eliminate Chestnut Street parking between the river bridge and Main Street in order to created a protected left turn lane from Chestnut onto Main Street. When TxDOT floated the idea more than a dozen years ago, the council baulked a losing the curbside parking spaces, DeLaRosa recalled.
Mayor Terry Orr reminded the council that one impetus for the Alley A experiment was to improve safety for parents and pupils headed to the Calvary Episcopal Church pre-school which fronts on the busy alley.
Talbot echoed a comment by Beal to the effect that fixing one downtown traffic issue could create others at the same time. The situation “needs evaluation and more input,” said Talbot.