In St. Paul, University Avenue is mostly two lanes in each direction. When the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line gets rolling, what if it became one lane in each direction?
Business advocate Chris Ferguson, chair of the Central Corridor Business Resources Collaborative, owns a Dairy Queen at Stadium Village in Minneapolis. His collaborative thinks the four-lane to two-lane idea could be good for business up and down the Central Corridor in St. Paul, and perhaps Minneapolis, too.
“We’re getting ready to study it, is probably the best way to put it. We have funding, and we’ve been meeting up with community stakeholders in Ramsey County and Hennepin County,” Ferguson said. “We’ll look at it section by section, to see what might fit.”
The idea is a single lane in each direction would make the corridor — which is more of a business district than a commuter route — into something a bit more navigable to pedestrians and drivers alike. You could add parking, or bike lanes, or parking AND bike lanes, to boot. Crossing the street, or biking alongside it, would get easier, and so would driving up, pulling over and grabbing a cup of coffee.
That said, the impact on shoppers heading to a boutique store would be different than the impact on truck drivers, Bus Rapid Transit, and businesses that rely heavily on deliveries.
“The potential for bringing parking back is interesting. Different types of businesses would be impacted differently,” Ferguson said.
Could happen — but it probably would not happen everywhere, all the time. Ramsey County Engineer Jim Tolaas said a grant-funded committee of city, business and advocacy folks are taking a serious look at the “one lane in each direction” idea, though the county is less excited.
“I think some good things can come out of this study, as long as it doesn’t come up with a decision before we can gather the data,” said Tolaas on Monday.
If it ever gets off the ground, the one-lane idea would probably be implemented “in selected areas, and perhaps during selected times,” Tolaas said.
He noted that 90 percent of on-street parking has been removed along the corridor to make room for the light rail. To return some of that parking, “you’d have to take out one of the through lanes.” Are traffic volumes low enough or high enough to justify further changes to the avenue?
Among his questions: “Right now, traffic volumes on many portions of University Avenue are considerably lower than they were prior to construction. Where did that traffic go? … Are business owners being penalized right now, by having their traffic diverted to other (commercial corridors)?”
It’s unclear if traffic is presently cutting through the surrounding neighborhoods or has moved to a different arterial road, or if traffic is gradually coming back. He’d like further study, and he’d like that study to happen once the light rail trains are up and running and a clear pattern of driver and pedestrian behavior emerges.
The Ramsey County Board held a workshop on Oct. 15 to get an update about the four-lane to two-lane proposal. The committee studying the proposal received $115,000 for their work, including $75,000 to facilitate a three-to-four month community dialogue, and $40,000 for traffic modeling and other technical analysis.
The funds came from the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative ($75,000), with $30,000 from the city and $10,000 from other philanthropic sources.
The committee’s leadership team includes Ferguson, Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers executive director Jim Roth, Asian Economic Development Association director Va-Megn Thoj, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman’s policy guru Nancy Homans, Midway Chamber of Commerce President Kari Canfield, University Avenue Business Association board member Larry Peterson, Neighborhood Development Center founder and chief executive officer Mihailo Temali, St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce public affairs manager Zach Schwartz, and Southeast Business Association representative Michael McLaughlin.