The City of Kalamazoo can and should improve the way that people travel through it. That’s the message of the Complete Streets Coalition, a grassroots group that’s recently been holding rallies around the city.
In particular, members say the city’s one-way streets confuse people and push traffic into neighborhoods. WestSouthwest spoke with Complete Streets members Jim Ferner and Laura Livingstone-McNelis about what the group hopes to see change.
Livingstone-McNelis says in her neighborhood near Kalamazoo College, traffic has become more intense over time. She says that concerns her as a parent, especially as her daughter has hearing loss and vision impairment.
“With her disabilities, she’s very unsafe at this location,” because of the traffic, Livingstone-McNelis says.
Livingstone-McNelis says at least some of the extra traffic comes from “cut-through” drivers trying to travel west on West Main Street from the Stadium Drive corridor.
Drivers can’t turn left directly because West Main Street is one-way moving east at that point. Instead, motorists face a convoluted route involving Allen Boulevard, Elm Crossover, Elm Street, Kalamazoo Avenue and Douglas Avenue to travel west on West Main.
Michigan Avenue cuts off on Western Michigan University’s campus.
“Because they cannot go through West Michigan, and through the campus – which they should really be going through the campus if things had been planned right from the beginning – they now travel through our neighborhood,” Livingstone-McNelis says.
She says the extra traffic makes those otherwise quiet neighborhood streets less safe.
“What really needs to happen is we need to have a left turn lane from Stadium going onto West Main in front of the Walgreens,” Livingstone-McNelis says. She adds that she’s taken this idea to the city, but says it has mostly been met with “excuses.”
City Engineer Matt Johnson says his department cannot by itself install a left turn lane at West Main Street from Stadium Drive. Both roads are state trunklines controlled by the Michigan Department of Transportation.
On the other hand, Johnson says the city is working with MDOT, neighborhood groups and Complete Streets to better the traffic pattern in that area.
Ferner agrees with Livingstone-McNelis that Kalamazoo has a problem with people driving on residential streets to avoid the one-ways.
“My definition of cut-through traffic is people that think that going on a neighborhood street, two or three blocks off a main street, is faster. And it’s only faster when they speed, run stop signs, and of course they bring the litter and the noise with them,” he says.
Ferner and Livingstone-McNelis see other disadvantages to the city’s one-way streets. Livingstone-McNelis says she thinks there’s a “huge amount of confusion” about streets that run one-way in some places and two ways in others.
“And when you have confusion you have more accidents,” she says.
The rules on some streets change so often, she says, people have a hard time keeping up with them.
“You have people second-guessing themselves, whether they should or shouldn’t stop, whether they should or shouldn’t slow down, whether they have the right-of-way or they don’t,” she says.
That’s on top of name complexities such as Cork Street turning into Whites Road and then becoming Parkview Avenue.
A one-way traffic pattern makes businesses on the street less visible, Ferner adds.
Ferner and Livingstone-McNelis say they hope to see many of Kalamazoo’s one-way streets become two-way. Ferner says he’d also like to see measures taken to “calm” traffic on some streets, to make them easier for non-motor travelers to navigate.
He says traffic-calming proposals have been met with “stonewalling” from the Kalamazoo County Road Commission, which would have to make some of the changes.
The Road Commission’s Joanna Johnson says she’s “disappointed” to hear the county’s position described as stonewalling. Johnson says the county "listens and tries to respond" to concerns about the roads, while following its rules for best practices.
