A street solution for everyone

By Thomas Lackner

Closing Second Avenue to traffic so Physicians' Clinic of Iowa can build unimpeded doesn't make sense. Consider the ramifications: increased traffic on adjacent streets, loss of access to businesses on Second Avenue west of 10th Street and reduced access to the downtown area for southeast quadrant residents.

Closing off Second Avenue ensures that Third, Fourth and Fifth avenues will become two-way streets. This doesn't both me but it may bother the people who live along those streets. To improve traffic flow, the city will have to eliminate parking on those streets so there can be two lanes in each direction.

Closing Second Avenue also will add traffic to already-stressed First Avenue. Some members of the City Council claim drivers will use Second Avenue until they reach 13th Street, then they will swing over to First or Third Avenue for two blocks, then back to Second Avenue. That's not going to happen. No driver will make three extra turns to justify this bit of land-snatching.

Putting that extra traffic on Third Avenue also will slow down that traffic as at least one more stop light will be needed, at 15th Street, so crosstown traffic can get across the street.

None of this needs to happen. There is an easy alternative: Put Second Avenue underground for three blocks. The land the council wants to give away is on a hill already, and it would be easy to excavate and put the street underground, allowing PCI to build over the top. It wouldn't be cheap, but it's cheaper than putting half a dozen businesses out of business and inconveniencing generations of residents on three other streets. There is ample precedent for such an approach in well-run cities elsewhere.

PCI could even incorporate an underground parking garage, keeping their patients warmer in winter, cooler in summer, dry year around and avoiding the water runoff from acres of pavement at ground level.

Or the city could sell PCI air rights over Second Avenue for two blocks so it could connect the proposed buildings above street level. It's less attractive but cheaper.

If the mayor and council want to be the visionaries they claim to be, they need to govern for the whole city. That means enhancing, not reducing, access to the downtown area and meeting the needs of residents and small businesses, as well as large businesses. There are solutions that accommodate everyone.

It just requires some imagination, something the mayor promised us in his campaign. Will he and the council deliver on that promise?

Thomas Lackner of Cedar Rapids is an adjunct biology instructor at Coe College and a freelance writer.