Thank you for your comments. As you know the Village is testing a major change downtown Paw Paw. Implementing the start of the test period has been confusing, frustrating and has angered people. In part that is our fault. More on this later. Please continue reading this in its entirety. This is not an attempt to change anyone’s mind, rather to provide information for those that may have missed the 18 pre-meetings, missed the public invitations in the Courier-Leader and on our Facebook pages. Many attempts were made to engage people. Meetings were held at various times - morning, noon time, evening, weekday and weekend – to encourage participation. Individual notices were provided those in Michigan Avenue and Kalamazoo Street corridors. In addition, there were several other meetings with groups (school transportation people) and individuals to review the concepts and get their feedback as well. Many people came to those meetings. People from the village, the great area, Lawton, Mattawan, and Kalamazoo came to those meetings. The input was terrific and appreciated. The longest meeting lasted a couple hours although most were less. The concepts were greeted with great questions, cautions, skepticism, but always with a love for Paw Paw and a willingness to test the ideas. The feedback from these meetings led the Village Council move forward on testing ideas and dropping some ideas altogether. The reasons for testing the change are well founded and based in our master plan of 2009/2010. The Master Plan was led by a community steering committee, with lots of public input provided through, meetings, neighborhood meetings, focus groups, and written comments. In all, hundreds people provided input on the Master Plan. The Planning Commission held a public hearing when the final draft was ready. After the public hearing, they recommended the Village Council adopt the plan. After discussion, the Council did. The Master Plan has been our website ever since, and still is. In a nutshell, the Master Plan focused, in part, on strategies to help make and maintain the downtown’s vitality. As you know, our downtown is under pressure from strip development east, west and south of downtown, and now big box development. That pressure will likely only increase. Our downtown is vital to Paw Paw and efforts to maintain it are critical. We all may know downtowns that are not much more than ghost towns and nobody wanted that in Paw Paw’s future. The people providing input to the Master Plan wanted to protect the downtown. They wanted the downtown to be a ‘place’ people want to drive to rather than drive through. Since the adoption of the Master Plan, the Village, the Planning Commission, the Downtown Development Authority, a Master Plan Implementation Committee, and the Village Council have been studying and working on ways to make sure Paw Paw’s downtown remains healthy for many years to come. That is why form based codes, façade guidelines, walkability, increasing parking spaces, road diet (reducing lanes), angle parking, street seating, adding amenities, and other placemaking ideas have been studied. A part of that ‘homework’ included closely looking at other communities across Michigan and the country that have considered or implemented similar ideas. Also studied were traffic counts and the peak traffic hours. In fact, traffic modeling as done using the MDOT’s program. Our own engineer firm, Wightman and Associates, had people stand and count traffic movements. The level of service and capacity of each lane and intersection was studied. The pros and cons of parallel, pull-in and back-in (also called reverse angle) parking was studied. Considered were movements of emergency vehicles who move into oncoming lanes when the old through and turn lanes were full. Turning radius for semi-traffic was considered. Concerns for bicycling safety was considered. Remember, bicyclists already have the right to use all streets and roads. Designating bike lanes encourages use while being much safer. Studies determined back-in angle parking is safer than pull-in angle parking when considering vehicle-pedestrian, vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-bicyclist accidents. Thus, for the testing period, the Village Council decided to test the back-in angle parking. This, like getting used to seatbelts years ago, does take getting used to. While easier than parallel parking, many drivers today don’t choose parallel parking when it includes all the steps, or not at all. For those that may think they have a problem with backing in to a space, I suggest using the Village owned parking lot across from Maple Island or view the instructional videos found on our Facebook page or on You Tube. Most downtowns want slower traffic through town. They do this to aid the shoppers and pedestrians and giving greater exposure to their downtown businesses. They do this by lowering speed limits, adding calming features (bump-outs, etc.), and reducing lanes. Paw Paw is just the reverse, two lanes lead in from the east and west (with a turn lane) and then opened up into 5 lanes. Concerns have been voiced about Paw Paw’s traffic volume and questioned whether reducing the lanes will work without creating more problems. This came in the meetings and since. Communities with more traffic than Paw Paw have had made road diets and downtown parking changes with success. Of course, they experienced confusion, frustration and anger at the changes. Over time, they found the changes beneficial. Most made changes without any testing period. Not Paw Paw. Paw Paw considered three different recommendations for when to consider or not consider reducing lanes (road diets). Walkability experts said you could do them with the highest daily traffic counts. The federal highway articles suggested a lower traffic count and the MDOT had an even lower daily traffic count. Traffic on Michigan Avenue is lower than all three at less than 10,000 vehicles per day. While the traffic modeling, indicated the changes can work here with success, the Village Council wanted to test to determine if the modelling holds up for Paw Paw. They wanted to make sure the concepts work. That is what is great about Paw Paw’s testing period. Those in the meetings wanted to make sure the testing period included time when there is summer traffic and school traffic. That is being done. It is just paint. Nothing has been done that cannot be changed back. Now, back to the opening comment about some of the confusion, frustration and anger being our fault. Once the testing period was authorized, we moved to implement it for this summer and fall as those at the meetings wanted. We knew we couldn’t shut the whole downtown totally down for a few days to make the change. So, unfortunately, this meant the work was scheduled over 3 weekends; a time when there is less work day traffic. This added to the driver confusion because drivers see and experience the changes only in parts. For example, after the first painting weekend, the bike lane symbols were not present, the cross hatches were not present, the lights not re-hung at Michigan and Kalamazoo, right turn lane and through lane arrows were not done. This made for a lot of confusion for most, frustration and anger for others. When finally completed, the pavement markings, signage, light timing changes (Hazen, Gremps, and Kalamazoo) should make the changes easier to follow. Further, over time, adjustments to timing of traffic signal lights at Hazen, Gremps, and Kalamazoo will likely need adjusting to smooth flow out. At Kalamazoo, the signals are owned and controlled by the MDOT. So, as the work is completed, it ought to become easier for drivers. Finally, remember, this is only a testing period. Give it a chance. POSTED ON BEHALF OF THE VILLAGE OF PAW PAW
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 14:30:06 +0000
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