BUSINESSMAN PREFERS ONE-WAY STREET

Broadway should be turned into a one-way street, not widened.

That is the view of Dr. David Crowe. He doesn't think much of the city's plan to widen a stretch of Broadway that extends past his orthodontist office.

Crowe says making Broadway one-way eastbound and Independence Street one-way westbound from Kingshighway to Main is a better way to move traffic along one of the city's busiest thoroughfares.

Broadway is four lanes wide from Kingshighway to Clark. There it narrows to a two-lane street, extending all the way to the Mississippi River.

The city's five-year capital improvements plan proposes widening Broadway to four lanes from Clark to Caruthers at a cost of $400,000.

The city's Planning and Zoning Commission voted Wednesday to extend the widening past Caruthers, to Perry.

The expanded project is included among 20 road and bridge projects the commission wants funded if voters approve a transportation sales tax.

Commissioners asked the City Council to place the tax issue on the August ballot.

The project would cost an estimated $500,000. City Planner Kent Bratton said the cost will increase when stormwater improvements ware made to alleviate recurring flash flooding in the area.

But Crowe said it doesn't make sense to widen Broadway to Perry.

"I think that spending three quarters of a million dollars to widen Broadway for a few blocks is not really going to solve the problem," he said.

Unless the street is widened all the way to the downtown, there will be a bottleneck where the street narrows from four to two lanes, he said.

"If you could somehow wave a magic wand and make Broadway four-way all the way to Main Street, it would probably be the answer. But that can't be done unless you expend extraordinary amounts of money."

The city ultimately will have to address the traffic flow problem, he said. "They will eventually have to go to one-way streets."

Mayor Al Spradling III said the issue of one-way streets needs to be addressed. But he maintained Broadway still needs to be widened and the stormwater problem addressed.

Spradling said ultimately he expects Broadway to be widened all the way east to West End Boulevard. The portion from Perry to West End would be relatively easy to do because much of the widening could be done along the edge of Capaha Park, he said.

But from West End eastward, many businesses are separated from the street by only a sidewalk. As a result, he said, it would be virtually impossible to widen Broadway east of West End.

Spradling isn't concerned that his law office may lose some of its small front yard to the widening project. He said the project would address the flash flooding.

The Caruthers and Broadway intersection regularly is covered with water during heavy rains. "It becomes actually a big lake at the intersection. You can float cars through it," the mayor said.

Talk of making Broadway one-way isn't new. In 1976, the council made Broadway one-way eastbound from Main to Pacific to cut down on accidents and improve traffic flow. But the move angered many Broadway merchants, who complained it strangled their businesses.

In November 1977, two-way traffic was restored on Broadway from Main to Lorimier. But Broadway remained one-way from Lorimier to Pacific until September 1983. Since then, traffic has flowed two ways over its entire length.