The road could have remained two way. Given the one way alternatives, this was the better result. Plus, around 80 percent of the people using St. Helens use it southbound already. Traffic directions should be set how people normally want to use them. Thus, little is going to change.

Making it one way northbound would have placed a Do Not Enter sign at the traditional entrance to downtown as councilmember Bill Evans called it.

Given the choice between facilitating people to come into the central business district easier or to leave quicker, I am glad the priority is on enhancing people to enter downtown. Downtown Tacoma is one of the easiest one to leave already with all of the freeway entrances.

Finally, I don’t know of hardly anyone who likes reverse angle parking. The proposal on the table will allow people to park normally front end angled. Also, more on-street parking spaces will be made available though the present configuration.

I dont know about anybody else, but I still plan on riding up St Helens. Ill be damned if Im going to start going up Broadway or Stadium Way.

This is just another example of the city catering to potential Tacomans, rather than catering to the ones that have been here for years.

You know why its easy to get out of downtown? Because there isnt much keeping people there. Its not as if the street layouts prevent people from going downtown all the time.

Surely we give drivers enough credit to understand that turning left on 9th is just as easy. I’m not sure I buy that someone looking to go to the Theater District will get distracted elsewhere and suddenly never make it.

I understand the concerns of the BCPA and the merchants, but a one-way only southbound street feels very dangerous for pedestrians and for parkers. If you’ve ever stood there and watched drivers barrel down St. Helens from Stadium then veer left and then race St. Helens trying to make the 9th St light, you’ll know that people are really gunning it there. And my hunch is most of them aren’t looking to stay but they’re going toward the freeway.

and then race St. Helens trying to make the 9th St light, you’ll know that people are really gunning it there.

If you watch the mid-intersection crossing between the Bostwick and the Pantages plaza (does it have a name?) you’ve probably also seen a number of these same drivers trying to take out pedestrians. If this becomes one-way southbound this will become more of a problem and we will likely loose the mid-intersection crossing for pedestrians. It’s sad when our pedestrian connectivity begins to disappear in a downtown.

(sorry for the consecutive posts)

I used to live in the Bostwick overlooking Broadway. I saw a whole bunch of people driving the wrong way on Broadway. Broadway is literally a broad way, so it’s not as dangerous, but a driver getting confused from 9th and going uphill is bad news. I’d rather see it one-way northbound, but I’m with crenshaw that the two-way is better than southbound.

Broadway is a more gradual hill I’ll agree, but the road is in much worse shape. St Helens also has a much wider road area, so you aren’t playing chicken with oncoming cars.

Now if the street went one way in Either direction, wouldn’t that ideally leave room for a bike lane???

I actually am not a big fan of bike lanes, in general. They tend to have lots of debris since no one drives in them, and only give the illusion of safety (vehicles may block, opening car doors are a hazard, etc.). In other words, the way it is now works fine.

Also, somewhat unrelated, for NB vs. SB, how does a different direction of travel equate to less parking? That just sounds wacky to me.

Oh, and the reason that the bicyclists were late to the game in commenting is that people just didn’t know about what was going on. TWBC did not appear to be aware of the changes until I contacted them, and the TNT didn’t even print anything about this until Monday. All of this was well after the public meetings held by the city AND the council committee hearing. Not all interested parties were made aware, so by and large the only people that showed up were BCPA and Downtown Merchants.

Does anybody else ever wonder about not having cars go any direction on St Helens?

I think that actually did come up in another thread related to this issue. Unfortunately, there is not a good track record for such things in the past (Broadway used to be closed between 11th and 13th, and apparently that block turned into a ghost town). It’s nice to think it could be made to work, but there would be a lot of skepticism. Especially over the loss of parking, of course…

(Random idea: what if there were a year-round street market on the block?)

I was thinking the same thing about a market on that block. Maybe a hybrid of a farmers’ market and Portland’s food cart “district,” (near Stark and Broadway) which has an incredible variety of cheap good food. I think people might be up for walking a block or three to access that sort of thing, especially given the need for better places to grab lunch downtown.

Does anybody else ever wonder about not having cars go any direction on St Helens?

As mentioned, that was tried on Broadway when the Tacoma Financial Center was built. In fact, there is a “artist rendition” of the Financial Center and Broadway at the time with lots of people on it. The reality was it impeded the area for businesses and set downtown back.

From what I have read cutting off traffic to a street completely usually has a bad result unless there is a major event like a farmers market or 6th Avenue event. Pike Place Market still allows cars in front of it even though they have 1000 times the pedestrian traffic of anywhere in Tacoma.

No doubt this issue will be re-visited when the UWT wants to close streets by them.