Dayton Street Grid – Are we changing to Two-Ways?

As a follow-up to our previous entry about the plans to convert Downtown’s one-way streets to two-way, here is the latest news…

I had the chance to attend a small stake-holder meeting this week about the proposed two-way street conversion for Downtown Dayton.  Back in December, the consulting group Tetra Tech presented two possible proposals in a series of public meetings.  In case you didn’t read the previous post on this topic, the proposals would have resulted in the loss of 26% or 83% of our current street parking spaces.  Needless to say, neither option was warmly received by the public.  After talking to a few folks, I learned that city leadership was none too thrilled either.  City planners (who have a much better idea about how our downtown works than some out-of-town consultants) worked on their own ideas and explained what the city expected to those same consultants.  Though the official proposals won’t be released to the public until the next public meeting (April 5th at the RTA Wright Stop Plaza Meeting Room), I’ve been told that the adjusted proposals will not be eliminating much street parking (if any), and only certain streets and sections of streets will in fact be converted to two-way. 

As I was very disappointed with the first set of recommendations in that they were what I felt to be a wasted opportunity to improve downtown, I am optimistic that there is a good chance the next proposal will be much more promising.  What do you think about our one-way streets downtown?  Do you think they should be converted?