Letter: City can still change course on one-way streets

Letter to the editor

The Gainesville City Commission could step back from a bad idea this week and change course. A commission majority on Thursday could halt plans to install mile-long, narrow, one-way obstacle courses on two important streets through neighborhoods, dense student housing, University Avenue, Midtown, and the Innovation District — past businesses, offices, churches, a school, a community center, UF Norman Hall, and the site of a proposed 15-story building.

Out of nearly 400 miles of streets in Gainesville, the mile of West 10th and 12th Streets between NW and SW 8th Avenues, bisected by University Avenue, was picked for major reconfiguring and put on a list in 2022 of projects funded by federal ARPA (COVID relief) allocations. As the plan moved along since then, the City made no effort to inform the public about it, much less seek input. A few residents first heard of it when a construction contract appeared as a consent item on a commission meeting agenda in September.

If the City had done real-world analysis and public engagement, the idea wouldn’t have gone far. Obviously, the hundreds of drivers a day who use those two streets would be rerouted around one or more blocks to get where they’re going, like my neighbors and I are, on our one-way street pair. That doesn’t make streets safer. Just the opposite: the more turns, the greater potential for injury to bicyclists, pedestrians, and drivers and the more fuel, congestion, pollution, and road wear. People still drive the wrong way. One who recently did that on my street crashed into a neighbor’s parked car, totaling both vehicles.

Beyond making the mile of 10th and 12th Streets one-way, the design has two-way bike lanes, narrow single-car lanes, and parallel parking between them, as well as some raised barriers near intersections. The question naturally arises of how drivers are supposed to pull over for emergencies, to fight fires and rescue injured people, or to make deliveries, pick up passengers, and collect trash. RTS buses would no longer run to/from UF on those street segments, defeating their purpose of reducing car traffic.

The reconfiguration also calls for surveillance tech to mine the data of street users, another trend in Gainesville government.

Contracts are signed, materials are bought, and construction is set to begin in January, in a rush to spend ARPA money before the deadline. Most residents, business owners, apartment managers, students, workers, and other users of those and surrounding street segments have no idea this is in the works. A few residents who belatedly found out about it got the City Commission to have reluctant staff hold an “informational workshop” on Tuesday and to discuss the one-way pair at the commission meeting on Thursday. 

Click here for information about the one-way pair informational workshop on Dec. 2.

Other people got no such response when the commission ignored their request to rescind a 40-year license giving Santa Fe College two blocks of NW 5th Street to close for the use of the college’s Automotive Technology Training Center, a plan hatched by SFC and the City with zero notice to neighbors or anyone else who uses the century-old public street. It appeared as a consent item at the same September meeting as the one-way pair, when the commission approved both.

What has been called “the abomination,” installed this year on a short segment of NW 8th Avenue, soon had its unpopular “zipper” barriers removed; its notably unused wide bike lanes remain, narrowing the street for 17,000 vehicles a day to single-file. (Two pedestrian and bicycle crossings added years ago on those same six blocks are a welcome addition that neighbors had long sought.)

Some cities have undone their one-way street pairs after finding them more dangerous, and some bicycling activists and traffic engineers reject barriers and excessive bike lanes as ineffective at best. But more “Vision Zero” traffic policy (begun in Sweden, 1995) is coming to town.

Sooner or later, the dominant few people at the top — elected, employed, and appointed — will again be out of power. Until then, when they think “No Kings” and “Home Rule,” they could look in the mirror, think “Golden Rule” toward constituents, and do better at running an accountable, transparent City government, by and for the people they serve and whose money they spend.

As far as safer city streets, there are no perfect solutions and no villains or saviors. We all depend on transportation for what we do and have. We all want safety for ourselves and others, and we all have to take responsiblity when driving, riding bikes, walking, and otherwise getting around. On all 400 miles of street in Gainesville.

Tana Silva, Gainesville

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