Expect Traffic Detour from Church Street Storm Sewer Construction
Decatur Metro | January 2, 2014
The Decatur Minute reports that barring any weather delays, construction of a new storm sewer along Church Street south of East Maple will close the street to northbound traffic starting today. Here’s the full note, which also includes the map above…
Weather permitting, Reeves Contracting plans to start installing the new storm sewer on Church Street south of East Maple on January 2. The new storm sewer will extend from East Maple down Church Street towards the CSX railroad and then east on East Howard Avenue.
Businesses on Church Street between East Maple Street and East Howard Avenue should notify patrons that once work begins, traffic will be limited to one-way in the southbound direction, so they will have to approach this area from East Trinity Place.
On-street parking on Church Street will be limited in the immediate area of construction. A schematic plan illustrating temporary traffic changes can be viewed here.
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Great, yet another one-way street in this area! Should make Color Wheel pickup interesting.
BTW, who decided to make both Maple and Howard one-way in the same direction (east to west)? It doesn’t seem very logical. Before changing Howard for the bike path (which I actually use to ride my bike), I was able to avoid a lot of traffic by using Howard and Church Street. Wouldn’t it make sense to change the direction on Maple?
It would make total sense. Right now, “going around the block” requires travel on Trinity, which everyone claims is too congested. We push traffic onto it when there’s already a totally coherent network of blocks in place. Silly.
Howard used to be two way. It was changed to one way 15 or so years ago. E Maple has been one way for as long as anyone can remember. Changing E Maple’s direction would produce a lot of cut-through traffic on a very narrow street.
Umm, isn’t a cut-through what a street is supposed to be?
+1. How come it’s considered cut-through traffic heading east but not when it’s headed west (as it is now)?
Because there would be a great deal more traffic coming from McDonough trying to avoid the corner by the Chick-Fil-A then there is now coming from Church St. The inconvenient left turn from Trinity westbound onto Church southbound discourages traffic trying to cut through from that direction.
Perfect. Then it would be fulfilling its purpose.
There are several places of business on East Maple, one is a visitation center. Making it a two way or changing the direction would make parking a nightmare for those businesses and create more danger for children walking down the street. Before the construction, the few that would try to use it as a cut through would speed recklessly.
+1
I would like to point out that it might be considered a waste of overall resources in the downtown area to have a street that is only used by the few that live on said street when it should be serving other purposes as well. Do we really want to build a street and then discourage people from using it? Doesn’t make sense. Changing the direction of Maple is just common sense for the common good. In general, and for the common good, it ought not cause any more “problems” for traffic to go one way, rather than the other.