Kalamazoo's War on Motorists: Downtown Streets

The city of Kalamazoo is planning to spend 30 million dollars to convert several downtown streets from one-way to two-way.  This proposal seems likely to make the city worse for drivers.

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about traffic downtown.  When Kalamazoo was first being developed over a century ago, most of the places that people would want to go were located downtown (which initially was the whole town).  Naturally, many roads were built to head to downtown Kalamazoo, including Westnedge, Burdick, Portage, King Highway, East Michigan, East Main, Gull, Riverview, Pitcher, Douglas, West Main, Stadium, and Oakland Drive.  Over time, the city expanded and important destinations spread throughout the city and its suburbs.  But the roads stay where they are, so drivers often need to travel through downtown Kalamazoo even when they aren't heading to or from there.

To facilitate the flow of traffic, in 1965, the city converted many of the busiest streets in downtown from two-way to one-way.  There are obvious advantages to one-way streets.  Without opposing traffic, cars can safely move faster.  There may be room for an extra driving lane, as for example, a road that could hold three lanes traveling in the same direction can only hold one lane each way.  With one-way roads, traffic lights only need two cycles rather than four.  All of this means that drivers can move through the city more quickly and are less likely to get stuck in traffic jams.

Eliminating one-way streets will reverse these benefits.

For years now, the city of Kalamazoo has been planning to convert downtown streets to two-way.  Back in 2019, the city of Kalamazoo acquired control of several major state-owned roads in Kalamazoo.  It will have to pay for future maintenance of these roads, which was previously funded by the state.  In a rare moment of reasonableness, commissioner Don Cooney voted against the transfer.

As result of this, the state highway M-43 was rerouted.  It used to go straight through Kalamazoo along West Main, along the one-way streets of Michigan Avenue and Kalamazoo Avenue downtown, and then along Gull Road northeast to Richland.  Since the downtown streets were sold, they could no longer be a state highway.  For the other pieces of M-43 to connect, it had to be rerouted along state-owned roads.  Thus it now makes a ridiculous detour along US-131 up to Plainwell, then along M-89 to Richland, avoiding Kalamazoo completely.  Gull Road from downtown to Richland was redesignated as M-343.

The city has been promoting plans for the conversion of streets to two-way.  While you might think they could just repaint some lines and reprogram the traffic lights, the project will actually cost tens of millions of dollars and take 8-10 years to complete.

One supposed reason for the change is to benefit pedestrians.  While advocates of the changes claim that downtown is hard to walk, I doubt this.  Recently, I crossed the widest part of Michigan Avenue in about 10 seconds without running.  If the width of a road doesn't change, the time to cross it won't either.  Some proposals do include "bump-outs" near crosswalks, but this comes at the cost of eliminating traffic lanes.  While pedestrians should always watch out for cars, two-way roads mean that pedestrians can be hit from either direction.  In addition, two-way traffic means more possible turns at intersections.  This increases the danger to pedestrians, since turns are often allowed at the same time that pedestrians are told to walk.

Allowing two-way traffic would seem to increase the danger of head-on collisions.  However, advocates claim that the changes will make drivers safer.  If this is true, it is only because of reduced traffic speeds.  Of course, if you make speed limits low enough (and get drivers to follow them) you will eventually reduce fatal crashes.  But this comes at the cost of wasting drivers' time.  You could eliminate traffic deaths completely if vehicles could only go 10 mph, but we don't do this because people's time also has value.

Perhaps the stupidest argument for the change is that one-way streets are racist.

When the roads were originally designed, it followed "historic redlining practices," DOT wrote, creating a barrier between Kalamazoo's Northside neighborhood, the city's predominantly Black neighborhood, and the central business district.

It's unclear how Kalamazoo Avenue being one-way makes it more of a 'barrier' than when it was two-way.  In any case, residents of the Northside don't seem to have any difficulty getting to downtown.  One could just as well argue that making the streets two-way is a racist plot to create traffic jams that stop black people from driving to downtown.

The planners seeking to change the roads in downtown Kalamazoo should take heed of a similar experiment in Paw Paw back in 2014.  The village decided to implement a "road diet" to reduce Michigan Avenue in downtown Paw Paw from five lanes to three.  This "traffic calming" measure included reverse angle parking.  Not surprisingly, eliminating half of the road's driving lanes created traffic jams, which alienated local businesses.  The change was soon reversed.

Rather than try to obstruct drivers who need to drive through downtown, Kalamazoo should create alternative routes so that drivers can bypass downtown.  One project that has been discussed for years is extending the the US 131 Business Loop to Riverview Drive.  This would allow easier access to the industrial area north of downtown and make it possible for most trucks to avoid traveling through downtown.

Another idea is to extend Howard Street to Burdick Street (so that it continues onto Reed Avenue).  This would reduce the traffic on Maple Street, which has been the subject of complaints.

The city of Kalamazoo should help drivers get to their destinations more easily, not make it harder for them to do so.