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Don't let a five-lane road stunt Lake Street
Star Tribune - Published 07.23.04
online at http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/4889781.html
by Jay Walljasper
The city of Minneapolis is about to undertake a huge move on Lake
Street, which will affect life in the city for the next 50 years.
Lake Street is more than simply a street, it is the most definable
place in Minneapolis with the exception of downtown. And its vitality
is crucial to the vitality of the city as a whole.
That is why I am alarmed by plans to turn Lake Street into essentially
a five-lane road in the vicinity of Chicago Avenue. The hope is
that more traffic lanes will ease congestion and pollution problems
in this struggling inner-city neighborhood. But the reality will
be something far different: A neighborhood that shows great potential
for revitalization will have the life sucked out of it.
Widening the traffic lanes to accommodate more and faster traffic
on Lake Street will stunt local businesses, increase crime, worsen
road safety and send a message to the predominantly immigrant, minority
and working-class residents of the area that the convenience of
commuters passing through is more important than the future of their
community.
It will also increase traffic and pollution; numerous studies have
shown that increasing road capacity only increases the number of
cars using that road. And in the case of Lake Street, much of that
new traffic will be people only passing through.
Stretches of Lake Street have seen a remarkable turnaround recently,
thanks largely to immigrant business owners willing to invest in
the area. This renaissance is heading in the direction of Lake and
Chicago from both sides. The development of the old Sears building
is another positive note for the area.
Yet these trends are imperiled by the highway engineers' plan to
strip away parking along Lake Street to make way for more traffic.
This will not only make it harder for passing drivers to patronize
these businesses, but it will stymie the public street life so essential
to any lively business district.
The lack of a parking lane not only means less parking, it also
means there is no buffer zone between pedestrians on the sidewalk
and the traffic roaring by on the new five-lane road. The experience
of Lake Street will be less like strolling a city street and more
like walking alongside a busy highway. This will dampen foot traffic
in the area, which is not only bad for business but bad for public
safety. People on the street are the single best deterrent to crime.
The good news is that we don't have to make a hard choice between
a congested street or a lifeless neighborhood. An alternative plan
is being presented by City Council members that would smooth traffic
problems at the same time that it promoted Lake Street as a vibrant
place. It is a compromise solution that converts the street to a
three-lane configuration, including turn lanes, with a rush-hour
parking ban to accommodate traffic from the area's businesses.
It's not a perfect plan, since businesses will lose parking and
pedestrians a measure of safety for several hours a day. But it
is a far sight better than the present plan, which imposes a suburban
model on a classic urban street.
It's important to note that traffic volumes on Lake Street projected
for the year 2025 (and traffic engineers are notoriously inclined
to exaggerate these figures) still don't equal those of 1964, when
the street was under the present configuration. This is not a crisis
that needs to be drastically and immediately fixed.
There is too much at stake for the future of Minneapolis to rush
into a decision. I urge everyone involved with the decisionmaking
to take a breath, and then step back from the five-lane plan and
adopt a plan that will enhance life in the neighborhood, not stunt
it.
The landscape of Minneapolis is filled with the remains of poor
planning decisions, made in the rush to force a suburban solution
onto urban places. Just look a few blocks down Lake Street to Nicollet
Avenue, where one of the city's great avenues was chopped in half
to accommodate a Kmart store with acres of (mostly empty) parking.
We don't want to keep making the same kind of mistake.
And once we've thought a bit about the future of Lake Street and
the future vibrancy of the neighborhoods around it, we should also
take another look at plans for the 35W/Lake Street access project,
with its many lanes of traffic.
-- Jay Walljasper, who writes frequently on urbanism, is executive
editor of Ode magazine -- an independent international magazine
published from the Netherlands in English and Dutch editions. He
lives in Minneapolis. Mr. Walljasper also recently joined
the staff of Project for Public Spaces
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