Businesses want more traffic, not less

To experience truly bad traffic, Iowans go on vacation.

"I do business with brokers on either coast, and their lifestyles are very different," said Al Weaver, department manager for Skogman Commercial Group in Cedar Rapids. "When I tell them I can leave my driveway in the country and be at work in 12 minutes, they don't believe me."

The consulting firm INRIX  ranks just two Iowa metros in its 100 worst metro areas for traffic: Des Moines (89) and Council Bluffs-Omaha (68). Dubuque's 11.8-minute commute tops CNNMoney's annual ranking of the nation's quickest commutes.

But it's all relative, and even in Iowa larger cities have a few intersections or sections of highway were confusion and congestion combine.

"There's certain quirks, but if you drive there every day you adapt to them," said Paul Hanley, University of Iowa professor of urban and regional planning.

And in a neat application of Yogi's Rule -- "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" -- the busiest areas are often  the most sought after by business. City planners must balance  business needs with the efficient movement of traffic.

"The mission is to get as many cars through an intersection as you can," said Hanley. "The objective is speed.

"From the business perspective, they tend to get upset and lose business when drivers can no longer visually see and scan the storefronts. This is not say we're back in the fifties and doing our shopping from the storefronts, but there's still this drive to keep the storefronts visible."

Last year's $8 million project at one of Cedar Rapids's busiest intersections, First Avenue and Collins Road NE, maintained and even improved business frontage, adding dual turn lanes to all four intersecting streets and new right-turn lanes to the busier driveways.

"This is really to, not eliminate, but alleviate some of those (congestion) issues," said Rob Davis, the city's engineering manager. "One of our goals was to improve access without eliminating parking."

Davis said the project took just three parking spaces from surrounding businesses.

The area nearest the intersection will be finished this summer with installation of a median from Collins Road to near the entrance to the Lindale Mall Sears store. The new, wider, landscaped median will replace the one removed during last year's work, Davis said.

Perhaps because medians are a deal-breaker for most businesses seeking a new location, Davis emphasized no median is planned further south on First Avenue.

Businesses "like the high traffic count, but they want to make sure their property is accessible," said Kirk Hiland, managing broker for NAI Iowa Realty Commercial. "Most of your fast foods are not going to be at a median-controlled area or intersections."

"You've got exposure, you've got traffic counts, but you've cut your traffic base by 50 percent" with a median, said Weaver. "At the other extreme, go from four lanes to five lanes with a turn lane, that actually enhances it because now it's easier to make that turn."

Improvements will also work their way west along Collins Road, where plans call for dual left-turn lanes at intersections and additional right-turn lanes into busier business entrances. They'll be accompanied by sidewalks where there are none now and parallel bicycle paths.

"This is really to not eliminate, but alleviate some of those (traffic) issues,"  Davis said.

Across town, any attempt to rework less-than-ideal layouts such as the Williams Boulevard-Edgewood Road-Wilson Avenue SW would run into a lack of available land. Most of it has gone to commercial development since the complex was laid out in the 1960s.

"There's  a balancing act between what you can afford to purchase as far as right of way," said Hanley. "You get landlocked. There's a mismatch between our planning and the land development at times.

"You'd like to add a lane but you've got businesses or residences."

The most recent major change in Iowa City was to accommodate bicycle and foot traffic. Washington Street reverted to a two-way street to allow cyclists to reach downtown.

"The feedback we got from (businesses) was that customers not familiar with Iowa City get confused by the one way," said John Yapp, city transportation planner. After the change, "it seems to be functioning fine."

Planning is underway to address a chronic traffic issue on the east side of Iowa City, where trains on the Iowa Interstate Railroad often block First Avenue between Mall Drive and Bradford Street. Yapp said work will begin next year to elevate the railroad and lower the street.

"Our hope is it will reduce cut-through traffic through the neighborhoods,"  Yapp said. "It will be more a free flow of traffic."

Yapp, who's also director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County, said the crossing accounts for most business complaints about traffic. He said the MPO has landed a $2.4 million federal grant for the project, estimated to cost $6 million.

Iowa City also employs "bump-outs"  along Market Street to slow traffic. Bump-outs extend the sidewalk area on the corner, defining parking stalls.

"It effectively narrows the travel lane and helps people travel slow through the intersection, but it also makes crossing safer for the pedestrians," Yapp said.

Fast-food, convenience stores, and drug stores like Walgreen's and CVS "have site selection down to beyond a science," said Weaver. "They're looking for what's called the hard corner. They're looking for the intersection of two busy streets and they want access to both of them."

That's what location specialists call the "hard corner."

"It magnifies the exposure," said Weaver. "They don't want to be in the middle of the block, they want to be on the corner."

Preferences extend to which side of the street, too.

"If you're a pizza place or a fried chicken place, you want to be on the going-home side of the street," said Weaver.

"If you're a coffee shop you want to be on the going-to-work side. If I had to make a left turn to go over there and a left turn to go out, you wouldn't stop."