Mobility study selects final action

The final 10th Street Mobility Study affirming a preferred course of action was released to the public May 3, said Raymond Hess, senior transportation planner for the City of Bloomington.

A network of two-way streets will replace the set-up that now exists in the 10th Street corridor, Hess said. The area involved in the study extends from 10th Street to 17th Street and from Dunn Street to the State Road 45/46 Bypass.

In 2008, IU partnered with the Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization to discuss ways to improve the 10th Street corridor for all modes of transportation, including vehicular, pedestrian and bike traffic, Hess said.

“The north side of campus has long been identified as a traffic concern,” he said. “Numerous studies have been done in the past that go back to the 1960s. It’s been discussed since before I even began working for the city.”

Graduate student Christina Sell said the area needs a change.

“Especially since a student died,” she said. “It’s funny how tragedy speeds things up.”

Goroves/Slade Associates, Inc. was hired in early 2008 as a consultant for the study. Hess said the company, based out of Washington, D.C., had worked on the original campus plan.

“They did a fairly different approach to this study than other studies done recently,” he said.

The consultants came up with three alternatives and analyzed how well they would perform, Hess said. Alternative zero was to keep everything the same. Alternative one was to make a network of one-way streets and extend Law Lane to connect with 14th Street. Alternative two was to keep the same road alignments, but make them two-way.

“They analyzed it again for all different types of mobility — bike, car, pedestrian — and their conclusion was that alternative two best met the intents of the study,” Hess said. “It marked improvement for all forms of transportation.”

In the one-way alternative, Hess said vehicular movement improved. However, one-ways are often associated with higher speeds and would have negative effects on pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

Sell said she thinks the two-way option will be easier on motorists.

“A lot of out-of-towners go the wrong way on streets,” she said.

In the recently released report, Hess said some implementation strategies were identified that can be broken up into three segments. The first segment is 10th Street and Law Lane. The second is Law Lane to Fee Lane, where the consultants advised making improvements to the existing corridor so it can accommodate new traffic. The final segment is the realignment of 13th and 14th streets between Fee Lane and Dunn Street.

“That’s the much more extensive part of the project,” Hess said. “There is some private ownership, and we have to be mindful of how improvements would affect the neighborhood.”

This was a planning-level study, however, and it acknowledges that there is a lot of design that will go into the implementation of the final decision, Hess said.

“The consultants did not have the resources or time or budget to design the corridor,” he said. “But they did identify some interim measures that can be done to make some improvements along the corridor. For example, they recommended a speed analysis and also suggested opportunities for better pavement markings. Nice measures that the city can consider on a case-by-case basis.”

So far, the team has not had a chance to strategize about how to take the next step, Hess said. With federal funding spoken for until 2013 or 2014, Hess said the actual engineering is not anticipated for the next several years.

“Construction is several years out beyond the engineering,” he said. “That discussion has already begun between city and campus on interim measures.”

Students are one of the primary users in all modes of transportation through the area studied, Hess said, and the University targeted student opinion in the making of the study.

“Hopefully we did a good job of capturing the interests of students in the study,” he said. “And they can appreciate the suggestions that came out of it, especially when it gets implemented.”

Two public workshops were held to get students and community members involved in the process, Hess said.

“I think everyone should have a say in what affects the entire city,” junior Maryanne Alalade said.