Broadway Road Diet Fiasco Continues

Some of the first posts I ever did was about the Broadway Road Diet here in Missoula. I have been against it for years yet the city continues to ignore the businesses downtown and force the road configuration down their throats.

There was a great article in the Missoulian today concerning the business's frustration with just that. The city really doesn't want to make any changes to the configuration. They say they want to listen to what everybody has to say but in doing so, they continue to put off the real issue. The diet is a failure. The only reason for it was the Liberal City Planners, King and Bender, wanted to be recognized by their friends and peers as being progressive and enlightened by reducing traffic and putting in bike lanes (both are avid bikers). The issue of safety is a red herring as all the deaths on the stretch involved the victims and alcohol.

The city wants to "reframe" the discussion to that of what we do with the entire corridor instead of admitting the project was a colossal failure.

Missoula city officials are trying to reframe the conversation about West Broadway. They want the discussion to be about the entire area - not just one about lanes of pavement.

This, along with the Charette discussions last week, are clever ways of diverting attention from the real issue of the failure of the project to to that of how the entire area should be planned.

The business owners see right through the deception and are fed up with the entire fiasco.

Many business folks no longer attend meetings about the corridor. They're still disgruntled about the narrow street, and they don't trust city officials to listen to them. Ask them about the big picture, and they point back to the road.

“We're both hoping that they change the streets back,” said Ford Johnson, who spoke for himself and Ken Thormablen of Ken's Barber Shop. The shop sits near Cedar Street and West Broadway.

Many business owners believe the city didn't listen to them the first time around, and they now refuse to give input. The city held brainstorming sessions last week, but business owners said this week that many members of their constituency were absent.

“Business people don't go to those meetings,” Johnson said.

“I got so angry and disgusted that I quit going,” said Terry Rice, who manages the Sweetheart Bakery.

She'd attended earlier meetings but they weren't worth her while, she said: “They weren't interested in what people had to say. It was a done deal.”

The Charette was a "kum-ba-ya" meeting where the following resulted:

A week ago Wednesday, more than 80 people offered ideas for how to make the corridor a “gateway” to Missoula's downtown. Then, the next night, the group put the best ideas into one grand plan for the corridor. They'd like an upscale area with dense development. They want a place where “young professionals” choose to live. They want to be able to walk to get a cup of coffee and pick up drycleaning.

Outcomes from the session could be years in the making, and people in the business community said this week that their minds are on immediate issues.

There didn't need to be a meeting at all. The solution is simple. Put the lanes back to four. Quit spending all the money and wasting everybody's time on all this progressive, feel-good, mumbo jumbo crap that means nothing.

Sprawl in Missoula

The Missoulian ran a fantastic opinion piece yesterday entitled "Sprawl: The ultimate scapegoat" by Robert Bruegmann. The online version of the Missoulian doesn't have the piece but I have linked the same piece from the LA Times which they titled "Gridlock, schmidlock". I think the Missoulian ran it because they wanted to add different (correct) point of view to the discussion on sprawl, light rail or transit, and building/expanding roads. He focuses on Los Angeles but it can easily apply to Missoula and the Bitterroot considering the recent push for light rail, the road diet, etc.

Mr. Bruegmann comes highly qualified as he is a professor of architecture, art history and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is chair of the art history department and is author of "Sprawl: A Compact History". He does a nice job of debunking a lot of commonly accepted "truths" that sprawl is horrible, constructing or expanding new roads induces more traffic, and the solution to all this is building mass transit. I think all of this is relevant to the current debate in Missoula and will stir up the hornets nest of the anti-growth and anti-automobile crusaders. It will be fun to watch them attack Mr. Bruegmann's ideas and him personally.

I'll keep you posted on the fireworks!

There was another pedestrian/vehicle accident on West Broadway in Missoula on Saturday night. Although it was not fatal, it was the kind of accident that the infamous "Road Diet" was supposed to prevent. When watching the newscast, it was clear that the real problem with safety is lighting and alcohol, not the amount of lanes. The drunk pedestrian was leaving the bar and crossing the middle of the street and the sober driver did not see him until he was on top of the hood of the car!

Interestingly, the five fatal accidents that were used as the justification for the Diet were the same conditions as above. The Diet was supposed to end vehicle/pedestrian accidents. The city of Missoula rammed this project through despite the protests of the Missoula Downtown association (MDA) and other concerned individuals. The real hidden agenda behind the project was for people like MIST (Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transportation) and other local Bike/Ped organizations to tout this fad project to their peers across the country as to how "progressive" Missoula is. The real reason for the project was to reduce traffic to downtown Missoula and to create bike lanes. They used safety as a cover so that if anybody opposed the project they could be labeled as putting financial reasons ahead of safety. A typical tactic of the left or progressives.

The city staff and many council members support this project and consider themselves liberal progressives.The project has hurt businesses along the corridor to the tune of over 30% in some cases which is catastrophic for a small business. The MDA and the Chamber are currently circulating a petition to put the matter on the ballot in November so the people of Missoula can vote on whether they want the project. Even though the Diet is very unpopular with most the citizens and almost all the businesses downtown, the council and mayor are finishing up the project and it it supposed to be done by the end of August.

The Missoulian ran a story a few weeks ago about a forum held in Missoula discussing light rail options. The headliner of the forum was a gentleman from San Francisco, Lewis Ames. The goal is to use the build a small scale commuter rail system between Missoula and Hamilton. The people supporting it, from what I can tell, are citizens of Missoula, not citizens of the Bitterroot valley. The reason is noble, to reduce the amount of automobile traffic in Missoula which, in turn will improve the air and water quality.

There are several problems with this proposal and why it will fail.

1. 
   Most importantly, what is the incentive for Bitterrooters to use the light rail in the first place? There is really no reason for Bitterrooters to use it as there is nothing even close to gridlock during the morning and evening commutes. One can drive from Hamilton to Missoula doing 65 MPH the entire way over 90% of the time. I also assume that the train would take up to twice as long to make it to Missoula due to stops and speed.
2. 
   Who will pay for it? Missoulians or Bitterrooters? If the citizens of Missoula should if they don't want the cars. The citizens of the BR valley will never vote a tax increase or bond issue for it.
3. 
   The system will never be able to support itself if it ever is built. There will never be enough commuter ridership in the valley. It will become a drain on the local governments in Ravalli and Missoula counties.

Just like the Road Diet and Roundabouts, this is all about the local "progressives" wanting to impose European ways of doing things on Western Montana.

It is foolish and doomed for failure.