City will convert weird five-block stretch of one-way and beautify lakefront area in $6.8 million project.
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, November 19, 2007
Downtown drivers won't be surprised to see barrels and barricades on West Cesar Chavez Street near South First Street this morning. After all, that stretch of Austin's front porch, between seemingly endless utility work and the birthing of three office buildings and our avant-garde City Hall fronting Cesar Chavez, has been more or less a construction battle zone for the past decade.
What's different this time is the reason for the barrels.
That weird portion of Cesar Chavez, a five-block renegade of one-way sandwiched between miles of two-way, is about to get with the program and become two-way as well. At the same time, the City of Austin is going to spend the money to spruce up what has become an increasingly tired piece of waterfront. The $6.8 million project — just three years ago, the estimated cost was less than $4 million — will include construction of a 32-foot-wide esplanade on the south side of Cesar Chavez between Congress Avenue and South First, with new trees, benches and other prettifying.
The historic Buford fire tower will remain but lose its little parking lot. There will be bricked crosswalks at several spots on Cesar Chavez. And the hill above the lake will get a limestone retaining wall and improved access from the street to the hike-and-bike trail.
When it's all done — by March, the city hopes — the current five eastbound lanes on Cesar Chavez will become three eastbound and two westbound lanes, with left-turn lanes and medians in various places. And people going north on Congress wishing to go west to MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1), who for years have had to overshoot Cesar Chavez and execute what became known as the Second Street (and later Third Street) Shuffle, will be able to turn left at Cesar Chavez.
The city — which has been studying this microproject for years, more actively since the City Council approved it more than two years ago — says its traffic studies show that going from one-way to two-way won't slow things down appreciably. It was the desire to get people around faster that led to downtown Austin having so many one-way streets decades ago.
The civic winds on that have changed, however, with the new watchwords being "traffic calming" and "walkable streets." Anyone who has spent time on foot along Cesar Chavez would not think immediately of either calm traffic or walkability. But businesses have finally begun to sprout in the lower floors of the two office buildings flanking City Hall, and downtown advocates say that two-way streets help shops and restaurants by slowing people down.
The two-way regime instituted a few years ago on Second, aided by recent or ongoing construction on three of four blocks from Congress to San Antonio Street, has certainly accomplished that. As part of this project, Third west of Congress will also join the two-way party.
I feel calmer already.
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http://www.statesman.com/news/conten.../1119wear.html
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