Gainesville City Commission votes to stick with one-way pairs for West 10th and 12th Streets

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After about an hour and a half of discussion in the morning session of the December 4 meeting, Gainesville City Commissioners voted 4-3 to proceed with the plan to convert West 10th and 12th Streets to one-way pairs between SW 8th Avenue and NW 8th Avenue.

The one-way pairs are part of the City’s Vision Zero program and are intended to complement other safety investments along University Avenue, reduce conflicts at major intersections, promote multimodal use by adding 1.7 miles of bike lanes, and add on-street parking.

Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker said the conversation “elucidates the fact that there is advocacy here from this dais,… so please know that we’re advocating. This is part of that process. A lot of people are concerned… I’m trying to find balance, and I’m trying to make sense of it all.”

Commission Ed Book said he had started out “neutral” on the project, but looking at “unbiased reports coming from universities and traffic engineering firms, [they] have changed some thinking about one-way pairs, and that’s just a fact.” He mentioned a 2024 study that “talks about the myths of one-way streets” and said some cities are changing one-way streets back to two-way streets; Debbie Leistner from the Transportation Department said those are in the context of higher-speed roads and are usually in commercial districts, while this project is in a residential area. Book said some studies indicate that one-way pairs can actually increase car speeds, and “that’s a decrease in safety, to me.”

Mayor Harvey Ward: “We must guard against the idea that until the project is finished, it is okay to turn a blind eye to the money that’s been spent on it and then reverse course.”

Mayor Harvey Ward said some other projects had previously been approved with the knowledge that parking would be added in this project: “None of this exists in a vacuum. This is all a holistic approach to the project.” He reiterated that money was already spent on the project and added, “We must guard against the idea that until the project is finished, it is okay to turn a blind eye to the money that’s been spent on it and then reverse course.”

Ward continued, “I’m going to remind everybody that we are not done growing as a city, and that is uncomfortable. That is uncomfortable for those of us who have been here for a long time. It is uncomfortable that we are bigger. We are a mid-sized city. We are going to be larger than we are now… Traffic is going to get worse if we don’t plan for what to do differently… I’m talking about 10 years from now and 20 years from now.”

Ward reminded Commissioners that they declared a Traffic Violence Crisis in January 2023, “and we have made it safer. The data show that we have reduced the number of not only fatalities, but crashes in general, while adding more people to the community. Re-engineering streets is the most important thing we can do to reduce injuries on those streets… Vision Zero is kind of an abstract concept, but it’s really about human lives… We need to hear the whole context and be thinking about this holistically and not just based on a very small number of blocks.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut: “Our neighborhoods are being impacted and being destroyed, and so at some point, we have to stop… I’m not sure why we decided to encroach on this neighborhood and destroy it.”

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said, “Here’s what I’m deeply committed to… preserving our neighborhoods… Our neighborhoods are being impacted and being destroyed, and so at some point, we have to stop… I’m not sure why we decided to encroach on this neighborhood and destroy it.”

Commissioner Casey Willits said the study about the “myth of one-way pairs” showed problems with multi-lane one-way streets, and “that’s not what we’re talking about.” 

Public comment

Two people spoke in favor of the plan during early citizen comment, and one person spoke in favor of the project during the agenda item but said the City needs to “up the game on outreach.” Four people spoke against the project during the agenda item, with most claiming that they had never heard about any of the community engagement meetings. 

Commissioner Ed Book: “I haven’t heard anybody that lives or works in the area say they’re for it. That’s really important.”

After public input, Book said, “I haven’t heard anybody that lives or works in the area say they’re for it. That’s really important… I know we have committed some monies, but… poor decision-making is when you take those monies and you continue to go down an option that may not be a good option.” He again said he had started out neutral on the project but said he now opposes it: “It does not benefit, it does hurt the neighborhood and the people that live there in various ways, and it is not necessarily a safer option.” 

Book read from a study that said “one-way streets also have an inherent inefficiency which leads to — this is important — longer driving distances. They prevent drivers from taking the most direct route to their destination… That’s in direct conflict with Vision Zero goals because that’s putting more cars, driving in more ways and more distance, in the same areas that we’re trying to [keep] them out of.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman: “I think it’ll have incremental improvements or incremental kind of inconveniences that go into it… Whenever you’re making change, there’s always this sort of friction.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said, “I think,… for the people that are both in favor of this and for the people opposed to it, I think it’ll have incremental improvements or incremental kind of inconveniences that go into it… Whenever you’re making change, there’s always this sort of friction.” He said he would “prefer us to have a much more nimble process,… but we are very far down the pathway on this whole thing.”

Chestnut pointed out that the vote to approve the one-way pairs was in 2022, when many of the Commissioners were not on the board yet. She said, “I’ll be voting against this. And I think we should take the funds and re-orient them. We have potholes all over the city. We have streets that need to be repaired.”

Ward replied, “I do want to say that much of this money can’t go all around the city because some of it comes from very specific sources.”

Funds must be spent by the end of 2026

Duncan-Walker said she would rather see more sidewalks, and she asked City Manager Andrew Persons how the funds could be reapportioned. Persons said that if the Commission decided to reverse course on the one-way pairs, staff recommended moving the funding to the work that the City is doing on SW 6th Street: “As you all know, a significant portion of the funding for this is American Rescue Plan Act dollars that the Commission allocated through your Vision Zero effort, and that money has to be expended by the end of 2026… It essentially has to stay within that category of sort of Vision Zero projects.”

Duncan-Walker said she likes to focus on “areas that have seen the least investment, particularly over time… So I would just want to make clear that whatever we do, and I do want it to be sidewalks, I do want it to be road improvements, I’d like to see that happen in this neighborhood, in 5th Avenue… I’m not in favor of the current project.”

Funds are from ARPA, GCRA, and gas taxes

Willits asked where the funds were coming from, and Chief Operating Officer Brian Singleton said $445,000 is from ARPA funds, $699,000 is from the Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area, and $50,000 is from the gas tax.

Commissioner James Ingle said he was “real skeptical about kind of stopping at this point in the project and trying to redesign it.” He said he acknowledged that “big student housing” developments may be harming historic neighborhoods in the area, “but I don’t see how changing two-way streets to one-way streets has the same type of impact that those do… I think it’s just kind of bad policy to start scrambling things at the last minute,… especially when we’re down to the wire on what we can use some of the money for.”

Motion

Duncan-Walker made a motion to “discontinue the one-way pair project and have staff bring back ways to redistribute the funds.” Chestnut seconded the motion.

The motion failed 3-4, with Eastman, Ingle, Ward, and Willits in dissent. No other motions were offered.