A six-block stretch of downtown’s Baker Street could soon be converted from a one-way to a two-way street.
The proposal comes from downtown business organization Central Atlanta Progress, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
The project could cost some $2.7 million, $1.3 million of which the City of Atlanta would foot the bill for, with CAP covering the rest.
The effort to re-stripe the east-west running Baker Street from Piedmont Avenue to Centennial Olympic Park Drive is part of a broader effort by CAP to make downtown roadways safer and easier to navigate.
Of course, there’s no consensus on whether the conversion would be good for automobile traffic.
We will never have the downtown we say we want if we keep designing it around automobiles.
— Thomas Wheatley (@thomaswheatley) June 3, 2019
Some local businesses and residents have complained that making the switch would further congest an already car-choked corridor.
The opposition to the project was so vocal, in fact, that the Atlanta City Council has delayed moving forward on it for two weeks in order to further study the implications, according to the ABC.
Then again, as the urbanist logic goes, sometimes roads can only become safer for pedestrians and cyclists at the expense of comfort for motorists.
On a piece of downtown’s Peachtree Street, for instance, the city plans to ditch the car lanes in exchange for a Dutch-style “woonerf,” a lane-free shared space welcoming to pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.
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