At the April 5 monthly meeting of the Tucson City Council, the public had an opportunity to comment on the 30 percent design plans for the widening of Broadway Boulevard from Country Club to Euclid Avenues. Since a large crowd was expected, the venue was changed to the Pima County Supervisors meeting hall at 130 W. Congress Street—there was still standing room only at one point.
The usual mundane business of the council took about 45 minutes, then the show began. Mayor Jonathan Rothschild held up two stacks of speaker requests of equal size, one in each hand, and said that the community appeared to be evenly divided on the issue..
Before the call to the audience began, Project Engineer Beth Abramovitz, made a presentation detailing the history of the project, and addressing some of the objections received through comment cards and the project website. She noted that most of the negative comments were against the project in its entirety rather than specific aspects of the 30 percent design plan.
The members of the public who spoke also argued either for or against the project as a whole rather than specifics of the plan.
The audience as a whole seemed to be composed of somewhat more people against the project than those in favor, though that may be just how it appeared. Those against the project came complete with tee shirts, wristbands, and signs which were deployed every now and then. Those in favor had no such props.
After Abramovitz completed her presentation, Councilman Steve Kozachik gave a brief but scathing anti-project speech ending with the odd statement, “So we’re spending 74 million dollars so people can get out of town one minute faster 20 years from now, makes absolutely no sense.” The statement is odd because it followed Abramovitz explaining that the one-minute-in-20-years figure was based on a projection of a 22 percent increase in traffic volume over that 20 year time period. She added that she could not estimate the travel time 20 years from now because the software could not calculate a rate for traffic that did not move at all.
The negative side had one point that was brought up consistently among the the speakers. They claimed, some citing census data, that there has been no increase in population or traffic, so the project is not necessary and a destructive waste. The positive side argued that growth and increased traffic will happen, the project is part of the voter approved Regional Transportation Authority, and that the 30 percent plan is already a compromise and should proceed. The negative side countered that the RTA has provisions for altering or canceling projects that are based on changing conditions or erroneous data, and the alleged zero percent increase in traffic qualifies as one of those.
The council will vote on whether or not to approve the plan at this 30 percent level of design completion.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2016.
Hey why not float a bond that we can swat down AGAIN? It is the only way to make our voice heard.
How about a space balloon ride from one end of Bwdway to the other!! We could do it for 75$K a ride.
Think of the sales tax increase. What a plan. Where is Chuckelberry on this great idea???
He’s out at the casino with our money trying to raise some money for the arts. I love it when the locals refer to the road mess as Chuckholes.
Nice job Chuck. Bonding future debt to make up for past waste of road repair money.
Are there any more stupid voters than Tucsonans?
5th poorest city in America, and DAMN proud of it.
Good story, though I think there were many more people who turned in speaker cards to speak against the project than for it. I personally know five people who had in cards and were not chosen. The mayor had already selected the 10 from each side when he held the cards up.
I am sorry you missed the part about context and historic buildings. They are more than 50 years old and that defines a historic building. There were experts in the field of historic buildings and members of the historic commission that were not called on to speak so the “tear down the old buildings” folks could just assert they were not historic and no one with credentials was called on to contradict them. That is a flaw in this type of hearing and approach to holding it.
You have also missed what is going to happen to the people – homeowners – living behind what will be the new boundary of the road. You missed mentioning all the businesses that are being destroyed and how the land will sit vacant for 10-15 years. Just look at Speedway near 6th and also by Stone to see vacant lots waiting for redevelopment. You missed talking about the lost property tax revenue and sales tax revenue, crucial to this city budget in HOPES of greater revenue in the future. Or the roadway may look like Broadway between Alvernon and Columbus – a wall backing up to residential property. That is not a vibrant commercial area!
This project was sold with false information to justify it, as many transportation projects are. The cementheads constantly over-project traffic volumes to justify their own budgets, profits, etc. Now that it’s obvious that the claims made about this project were a pack of lies, and now that it’s obvious that the design process was a total sham wherein public input was ignored, it should be scrapped. It’s simply not necessary to degrade and destroy neighborhoods to widen the roadway to six lanes. Koz is right–it would be an incredible waste of money.
It bears repeating, for the umpteenth time, that transportation is about moving PEOPLE, not just cars. Cars are just one way to move people, yet they completely dominate transportation policy, as if cars were more important than the people who live in the city, despite the fact that cars are the dirtiest, unhealthiest, and most dangerous way to move people.
Cars are 20th-century. Long past time to join the 21st century. You really want to revamp Broadway in a proactive, public-benefit way? Leave it the same width it is now, but make it a corridor for alternative modes of transportation. The redevelopment will follow, just as it did downtown.
The local governments can not afford to widen roads they refuse to maintain. This is of their own making.
There are so many arguments against spending money on widening Broadway that it is almost incomprehensible that this issue is even discussed. Just to mention a few: It makes no sense to demolish businesses to widen a road that runs into the bottleneck of downtown anyway. The current traffic volume on Broadway is hardly a cause for concern – for half an hour every weekday after about 5pm it may take a few minutes longer to get through – at all other times there is no delay. This would not be grounds for spending millions and demolishing businesses in any other city that I have heard of – there are many many more valuable causes to spend this money on. The effect of this widening project is in fact probably going to be negative: I predict that it will increase traffic on Broadway, causing gridlock when more cars line up to pass through the downtown bottleneck.
Flat, black, and wide. Koz, when you build an arena, do you build it for a low capacity or do you build in extra capacity for larger crowds? No different for a roadway. Plan ahead. Build it as approved by the voters.