Is one-way to two-way worth the pain?

Cabdriver Cliff Grother drives the city streets as much as anyone, and on Wednesday he said a City Hall plan to permanently close busy Second Avenue SE from 10th to 12th streets SE wouldn't complicate his life one bit.

“Progress doesn't complicate life,” Grother said. “If it makes it better, short and sweet, people have to adjust to progress.”

The nine members of the City Council on Tuesday evening felt essentially the same way when they expressed support for closing a portion of Second Avenue SE so Physicians' Clinic of Iowa can build a new 180,000-square-foot medical “mall” there.

Read more from Rick Smith on his blogNo one has ever suggested that readers who e-mail comments to Gazette Online represent a scientific survey of the residents of Cedar Rapids.Even so, the negative jabs that surfaced Wednesday on Gazette Online about City Hall's proposal to permanently close Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12 streets SE were reminiscent of those of recent weeks about a City Hall proposal to spend $540,000 to protect local residents from their Yardy yard-waste carts. The City Council backed off that one.

No one has ever suggested that readers who e-mail comments to Gazette Online represent a scientific survey of the residents of Cedar Rapids.

Even so, the negative jabs that surfaced Wednesday on Gazette Online about City Hall's proposal to permanently close Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12 streets SE were reminiscent of those of recent weeks about a City Hall proposal to spend $540,000 to protect local residents from their Yardy yard-waste carts. The City Council backed off that one.

The PCI project, which will cost about $44 million with a parking ramp, will become the anchor for a newly forming Medical District, which the city, the city's two hospitals and PCI created via agreement last fall.

In conjunction with the closure of a piece of Second Avenue SE, the council also talked about converting both Second and Third avenues from one-way arterials to two-way streets. Several consultants have proposed the idea in recent years, council member Monica Vernon noted.

The idea of converting the avenues to two-way streets doesn't bother Jaime Rote, 23, a bar manager at Zins, 227 Second Ave. SE.

“Personally and business-wise, I think getting rid of one-ways would make everything a lot better,” Rote said. ”It can be confusing, especially if you don't go downtown that often.”

Council member Chuck Swore, who presented the idea to close two blocks of Second Avenue SE to make way for PCI's medical mall, said he was questioned about the idea at two speaking engagements Wednesday.

The questions didn't change his mind.

“With gain, you're liable to have some pain,” Swore said. “But if we want our Medical District to get off on the right foot, I would think we would want to be as receptive as possible, within reason, of assisting them in whatever way we can.”

He said the City Council wants to hear from the city's traffic engineer about the details and costs of changing traffic flow. In the plan to close a piece of Second Avenue, 10th and 12th streets SE would remain open, he said.

On Wednesday, Ron Griffith, the city's interim traffic engineer, referred to three or four different studies in the last five years that discussed downtown traffic and converting the one-way avenues into two-way streets in the downtown. Another study is about to be completed, he said.

However, actually closing Second Avenue SE between 10th and 12th streets is a new wrinkle, Griffith added.

Griffith put the cost of converting Second and Third avenues from 19th Street SE to 13th Street SW at about $1.8 million, which would cover changing traffic signals at intersections and signals at the downtown railroad crossing. Upgrading the crossing signals so trains would not have to sound horns would add considerably to the cost, he added.

Griffith said two-way Second and Third avenues likely would feature one lane of traffic in each direction with a center turn lane.

No doubt, he added, some traffic that now uses Second and Third avenues would migrate to the wider First and Eighth avenues if Second and Third became two-way streets.

In the end, he said, traffic engineers never know for sure where traffic will go until a change is actually put in place.