Cape city council to vote on downtown traffic study

A new traffic study could help decide how best to route traffic on Main and Water streets in downtown Cape Girardeau.

The city council today is expected to hire a St. Louis engineering firm to conduct the $12,700 study. The special meeting will be held at 4 p.m. at city hall.

The study will look at existing traffic flow and also assess downtown parking conditions, city officials said.

The city will pay for the study. But additional studies may be done later to look at traffic flow throughout the entire downtown, extending as far west as Pacific Street and from north of Broadway south to Highway 74.

Any expanded traffic studies likely would depend on securing grants from the Missouri Department of Transportation, city manager Doug Leslie said.

Downtown merchants have been divided over whether to change traffic flow on Main Street. The street currently is one-way southbound from Broadway to William Street.

The city's planning and zoning commission couldn't resolve the matter. The commission in May recommended keeping the status quo, citing frustration over the fact that downtown merchants couldn't agree on what would be best for traffic flow.

Commissioners and even some downtown merchants suggested a professional engineering study was needed.

Crawford, Bunte, Brammeier Traffic and Transportation Engineers will do the study. The city engineer's office will provide traffic counts to the consulting firm.

"We are trying to save money by doing some of the work ourselves," said Abdul Alkadry, acting city engineer.

Completion date

Alkadry said the traffic study could be completed by the end of September.

The study would be reviewed by the city's planning and zoning commission. Any final decision to change traffic flow rests with the city council, Leslie said.

The proposed traffic study comes little more than a month after the city finished renovating Water Street and turning it into a southbound, one-way street designed to funnel visitors to the floodwall mural.

But Leslie said the traffic study will take another look at how best to route traffic on Water Street in conjunction with any possible traffic changes on Main Street. The study also will look at traffic flow in and out of the South Main Street parking lot and possible improvements to the parking area.

Water Street, which has angled parking on the east side, could be restriped if Water Street were to be changed to a northbound route, city officials said.

Traffic engineers will meet with downtown merchants as part of the study, Leslie said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123