City Council Agenda and Packet 2024 01 09 - SP

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MEMORADUM Date: January 8, 2024 TO: Louisville City Council From: John Leary, 1116 LaFarge Ave Subject: Close Main Street Work Plan Item I note that the 2024 City Council Work Plan is on your agenda for further discussion at tomorrow night's special meeting. I have the following comments on the Work Plan item "Main Street Closure." There appears to be an assumption this project, albeit its listing as a "low priority," is something Louisville should be pursuing if there is time and resources to accomplish it. This is a highly controversial concept and has no place in your Work Plan. I will discuss why in the below headings of neighborhood impacts, economic impacts, and competition equities. Neighborhood Impacts Closing Main Street would have the effect of diverting traffic onto neighborhood streets creating noise, especially from trucks and buses', as well as creating safety issues for children in these neighborhoods. The transition of neighborhood streets to collector streets is not at all what people expected when investing in their homeS2. 2. For at least 40 years, Louisville has invested taxpayer money in creating parking spaces to support downtown businesses and to ameliorate parking impacts on neighborhoods adjacent to the business district. There are estimates that each space can cost as much as $20,000, or more, to build and maintain. 3. Removing the parking places on the closed part of Main Street, largely for the purpose of increasing the number of cars coming to downtown, would only exacerbate the parking impacts on residential areas. Most of us Old Town Residents have no problem 1 RTD has determined moving buses to Front Street is not feasible due to limited turning ratios. This issue came up at a meeting during the Covid crisis. People on LaFarge were concerned about noise and safety issues associated with buses. Participants in the discussion, favoring closing Main Street, appeared to become experts in driving buses and in the purposes of public transportation. I was deeply embarrassed by the discussion. Unconscionable statements showing an ignorance of the social and environmental issues associated with public transportation were frequent. I am not an expert on public transportation, but spent most of my career working on air quality and estimate I have ridden over 200,000 miles on RTD. z Years ago, the issue of closing Main Street came up. City transportation staff did an analysis of expected impacts associated with changing the Old Town traffic configurations. Their conclusion was that the railroad already restricted traffic going east/west and combining this impact with a north/south restriction on Main Street would create significant impacts on neighborhoods.