By WMBD TV
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (WMBD) — The Bloomington city council voted last night to change a part of the plans for the downtown streetscape project.
The change is affecting what they call flex lanes, lanes for non-cars for deliveries and short-term parking. Those flex lanes caused some concern with the business and community about the lack of parking in the area.
“Since the approval of the streetscape program, we’ve heard concerns from downtown businesses about the flex line because it was going to replace 32 parking spaces,” said Billy Tyus, deputy city manager for Bloomington. “Parking is at a premium in our downtown.”
“While there is enough parking, it’s just a thing that we want to try to figure out a way to accommodate both deliveries and parking, but also multi-modal traffic.”
The change will implement a hybrid system, with some areas on North Main Street having long-term parking and flex lanes.
“We would replace the exclusive flex lane with a lane that has some parking, but also delivery zones so that we could have a space for trucks and other delivery vehicles coming into our downtown, but also, you know, making way for parking so that we did not get rid of so much parking,” Tyus said.
He hopes this will get the best of both worlds, making parking accessible while also having delivery zones too.
“We see it as a compromise. That doesn’t compromise the project. We’re hopeful that the downtown businesses will be excited about this based on what we’ve talked to them about when we’ve talked to them about it,” he said.
The change will affect the 300 to 500 blocks of North Main Street, from the McLean County Museum of History to Killarny’s Irish Pub.
This story originated at WMBD-TV. The original story can be found online at CIProud.com.
