5 The Streets of Falmouth Neck Henry N. Cobb ●In considering the current debate about the possible return of two-way traffic on State and High Streets, it is important to recall that this one-way pair was ● a key element of the circulation plan put forward in Victor Gruen’s “Patterns for Progress”. The premise of that plan—a premise now widely discredited—was that a more prosperous and livable city would be achieved by creating a high volume, high-speed perimeter loop around the downtown. This was in fact a very bad idea for a small city whose greatest appeal lay in the intimate proximity of its residential to its business districts. ● On the eastern perimeter of the downtown, the Franklin arterial wiped out an entire community in the name of “slum clearance”; ● on the west, where no such justification could be claimed, the less destructive but nonetheless profoundly un-neighborly solution of a one-way pair was put in place. ●A very large investment will be required to repair the carnage wreaked by the Franklin arterial. ● Happily, on State and High Streets the error is easily corrected at very little cost, and I was pleased to learn that the City Council’s Finance Committee last week recommended proceeding with traffic studies required to evaluate the feasibility of returning those streets to neighborhood-friendly two way operation while still accommodating the flow of commuter traffic between South Portland and I-295. ●Painful as it is for me to contemplate Spring Street, I want to applaud the good work of the consultant team engaged by the city’s Department of Planning and Urban Development ● in preparing the very thorough and thoughtful Spring Street-Free Street Area Streetscape Plan, published just a few months ago. Credit should also go to the Portland Society of Architects, ● whose earlier studies served as a catalyst for the City’s effort. It is especially promising that this work is going forward simultaneously with the State/High Street study, so that Portland can benefit from coordinated planning of these closely interrelated elements of its circulatory system. ● The Spring Street streetscape plan contains detailed recommendations for changes to the dreaded arterial that will surely make it less hostile, although it will take an awful lot of doing to make it into a really attractive street. ● At the eastern end, the plan makes a serious though I fear largely futile effort to recover the lost continuity of Middle Street. Truthfully, I still cannot bear to contemplate that tragedy. ● At the western end, the plan proposes several interesting improvements, including a small park at the corner of Spring and High Streets and a widened tree-lined promenade in front of the Holiday Inn. Last but not least, ● the plan suggests the possibility of installing a Woonerf—that ingenious Dutch invention for safely mixing cars and people—at Congress Square, so as to link the Museum to the Plaza from which it is now separated by a complicated, confusing and dangerous intersection.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:01:20 +0000
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