Council Approves 'Vision' Plan for North Avenue

North Avenue's new look in East Tosa will be as close as possible to what most neighborhood planners wanted to see – in fact, the option chosen Tuesday night by the city is called "the Vision Option" for its parallels to their imagined streetscape.

It's also been known simply as "Option 2," "the no-left-turn-lanes plan," and, most popularly, the "no chicanes plan."

Traffic lanes will be straightened and slightly narrowed and parking and bicycle lanes will be clearly and colorfully marked. New signals, mid-street pedestrian refuges and bolder crosswalks aim at a more pedestrian-friendly environment.

All that will be atop new, smooth asphalt after the existing concrete pavement is ground down.

The cost is not insignificant. The "Vision Option" price tag of nearly $1 million amounts to almost one-third of the total capital improvements budget earmarked for that stretch of North Avenue over the next five years.

The Common Council passed the measure unanimously, with aldermen from around the city giving the nod to 1st District Ald. Jim Moldenhauer and Alds. Bobby Pantuso and Joel Tilleson of the 5th, who supported it wholeheartedly on behalf of their East Tosa constituents.

Ald. Pete Donegan, also of the 1st District, voted with the rest, but he had made his feelings known earlier in committee meetings leading up to Tuesday's final vote.

Too much of the city's too little money was being spent too fast, Donegan said in Traffic and Safety hearings, and mostly in the name of bicycle-friendlieness. Nothing wrong with bikes, he said, but it had been his impression that the main goals of investment in the comprehensive North Avenue Plan had been economic development – encouraging new businesses – and making North Avenue/East Tosa a more walkable district.

Donegan was skeptical about spending so much on bike lanes when, he believed, it was unproven that offering them would produce significant use as a transportation alternative to the car.

Ald. Pantuso said he was of the "if you build it, they will come," persuasion, regarding bike lanes, and he was widely seconded.

The city's hired consultant, traffic engineer and analyst Ken Voight of Ayres Associates, had presented the "Vision" plan as only one of three options, but he came to its defense as well.

Voight said he believed that, as the city’s first fully realized bike route, North Avenue should be done right so that it gets the respect of the community.