Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- City businesses and residents opposed to turning two streets in Palmer into a one-way traffic loop may have succeeded in sending the project back to the drawing board.

The state last week agreed to take a step back from plans to design the so-called one-way couplet after opponents repeatedly criticized the idea at a series of public meetings.

The project would turn the Palmer-Wasilla Highway from Hemmer Road on into a one-way road leading into Palmer and extend Dogwood Avenue behind the Carrs/Safeway store to create a one-way road leading out of the city. Business owners and city residents have protested the project, saying it would funnel traffic faster through the city, hurting businesses and making the walking-friendly downtown area unsafe.

State Department of Transportation project manager Jim Amundsen said public opposition to the plan has proven the need to take another look at ways to relieve traffic congestion in Palmer.

"Clearly we're going to have to take a step back," he said.

Amundsen said the transportation department plans to set the one-way couplet plan aside and form an advisory committee with state, city and business community members. The goal, he said, will be to reevaluate other traffic solutions and find one that suits the city. It could ultimately mean a new design, or it could mean changes to the one-way couplet now being proposed.

"That's a major change. But I can't see how I can not take a step back based on the overwhelming demonstration from these last two meetings, as well as last night's (June 16) council meeting that we don't have consensus. DOT is not interested in building things we don't have consensus for," he added.

Amundsen said he and others at the state transportation department thought there was community consensus on the project.

But after hearing businesses repeatedly speak out against it, calling on officials to rethink the plan, it was apparent consensus didn't exist.

The move came after -- and Amundsen said was prompted by -- a June 16 special meeting at City Hall. City business owners and residents who mounted a protest against the plan requested the meeting in hopes of convincing the city the one-way street idea wasn't the only option to ease traffic congestion in Palmer.

They paid for a Georgia-based traffic engineer, John Edwards, to fly up and speak at the meeting about one-way street projects in the Lower 48 that have recently been remade into two-way streets. Edwards also met last week with city and state officials about the project.

Edwards is a 40-year traffic engineer who said he has worked as a consultant with more than 100 communities in the Lower 48 to help solve various traffic problems, including turning downtown streets into one-way routes and, in a few cases, undoing the process.

He told the Palmer City Council a one-way street might solve the problem of too much rush-hour traffic on Palmer streets, but it could also cut businesses off from traffic traveling through the city.

"I have no problem with one-way streets. I just don't like them in downtown areas where you have a lot of retail," he said.

Edwards said the one-way setup makes it more difficult for people to move around the city by requiring drivers to travel in loops several blocks longer than a straight line would. It would also make a portion of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, from Hemmer on, into a one-way road.

"Not just the downtown uses, but commercial uses on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway will be pretty difficult (to reach)," Edwards told the City Council.

Edwards recommended the city instead extend Dogwood Avenue west of the grocery store, creating another route out of the city, and add stoplights at other city streets such as Outer Springer Loop to take pressure off the intersection at the Glenn and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

A light on Outer Springer would give residents and workers another controlled access onto the Glenn Highway. Currently after-work traffic backs up on side streets like Commercial Drive as workers from the electric and telephone cooperative wait for a gap in the busy Glenn Highway traffic.

The issue isn't just one of effectively moving traffic through the city.

Most city residents and business owners upset about the plan say they fear changing the city's traffic pattern will permanently alter the walkable, historic feel of Palmer's downtown.

Denise Statz, owner of specialty food shop "Nonessentials," related a conversation she recently overheard between two Anchorage women shopping.

"She said the blinking light in the center of Palmer is the last semblance of civility in Alaska," Statz said.

Gerry Keeling, the first child born at Colony Hospital after colonists arrived in Palmer in 1935, said she feared the traffic changes would fracture Palmer's historic district by creating a new railroad crossing at Dogwood Avenue and pushing traffic eastward.

"The greatest asset this city has is its lovely community and its sense of history," she said.

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her at 352-6709.

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