Citizen Jim calls for a three-month experiment: Close Second Avenue SE temporarily and measure what happens

CEDAR RAPIDS - James Maxted, 1936 Grande Ave. SE, doesn't like the proposal in the City Council hopper to close Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12th streets SE at the request of Physicians' Clinic of Iowa, PCI. And he is proposing an experiment.

At the Tuesday evening council meeting, Maxted, a retired Rockwell Collins systems engineer and currently an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa, proposed a three-month trial in which the city would temporarily close Second Avenue SE and see what happens. Such an experiment will tell the City Council much about the real ramifications of closing a section of Second Avenue SE permanently for PCI, he said.

The council should be operating on “cold, hard, factual data” when it makes any decision about Second Avenue SE, Maxted said Wednesday. The issue, he said, is not what is good for PCI, but what is good for the community.

The council has said that closing the section of Second Avenue SE would be accompanied by converting Second Avenue SE and Third Avenue SE to two-way streets, which arguably could complicate Maxted's idea for an experiment. Converting to two-ways in the downtown, even for an experiment, might require a large expense to change train signals at the tracks in the downtown to face both directions.

Maxted said he would like to see the two-way conversion as part of the experiment as well.

PCI wants to build a new medical building, what it calls a “medical mall,” at Second Avenue SE at 10th Street, and it wants to build on what is now a section of Second Avenue SE. An earlier idea to have the building straddle Second Avenue SE and use skywalks to get across it adds to the project cost and will hurt patient flow through the mall complex, PCI says.

Four of nine council members this month expressed support for closing the avenue even before they have seen any information related to traffic congestion or costs. A traffic study, which PCI and the city are paying for, is under way.