Politics & Government

Main Street Still Awaits Lane Reduction

The new traffic pattern will reduce Main Street from four lanes to two, creating designated left and right turning lanes and a center lane from Washington down to Howley Street.

Main Street still awaits its new traffic configuration.

City planner Blair Haney said some of the re-striping has been done, such as crosswalks, and he expected the majority of it to be complete by Thursday.

A stop downtown Thursday morning, however, showed the crux of the reconfiguration -- and the most controversial piece -- had yet to be done.

There was still two lanes of traffic in both directions instead of one, except for where a large concrete median and a smaller one have been installed.

And even where white lines were erased when the street was repaved, cars generally kept to two lanes if they could.

The new pattern will reduce Main Street from four lanes to two, creating designated turning lanes in certain spots and with a center turning lane from Washington down to Howley Street.

Haney said that in addition to subcontractors painting the new lane designations, they will also paint the parking spaces back in along Main Street.

Once that's done, there won't be anymore free parking, at least for now. Haney said he's unsure of the long-term plan but meters will be re-installed once the spaces are painted.

Over the next several days, signs will go up and the timing of the traffic signals will be tweaked.

Haney said some of the signage will be new to designate where to turn, etc, while some is just replace signs removed during construction.

As for traffic signals, he said, the timing will be adjusted as the city and engineering consultants get a better sense of how traffic flows in the new pattern.


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