Portland and Park: Time for a two-way?

Dateline is putting its biases on the table first. We drive Portland and Park avenues frequently, especially during Interstate 35W construction. And we try to commute at least weekly on their bike lanes.

So we sat up and took notice when the city's recently approved 10-year transportation plan, Access Minneapolis, stated the city's intention to study converting these wide three-lane one-ways in south Minneapolis to two-ways, once freeway construction calms down.

If you drive one of the more than 12,000 cars that use Portland near Lake Street on a typical day, we'll pause for a second while you tend to that coffee you may just have snorted into your sinuses.

Your point of view is probably well represented by Steve Basile. He lives in the Standish-Ericsson area, but eschews two-way Cedar Avenue for one-way Portland and Park with their 35-mile-per-hour speed limits.

"Portland and Park work so well it would be tragic to see them devolve into just two more inefficient and congested north-south routes," he wrote in response to Dateline's query to commuters and residents on the Minneapolis Issues Forum e-discussion list. "Converting these to a two-way street would mean less efficient travel, consequential higher fuel use, and would likely drive traffic to other nearby overloaded north-south routes."

Peter Tobias of Powderhorn neighborhood expressed the value of the current configuration in parental terms: "Without Portland, I would have been late to child care half of last year. The attractiveness is not high speed, but smooth driving without red lights."

Ron Lischeid, who commuted to the university in the 1960s on the two streets, expanded on that. "It's quite possible and it happens often, maybe not at rush hour, that you can leave downtown and drive all the way out to Diamond Lake Road without hitting your brake," he said. "If you have cruise control, you could almost set it at 33."

On the other hand

But there's another side to the debate, one that Council Member Elizabeth Glidden has been hearing from residents of the neighborhoods like Central that are bisected by Portland and Park.

Maren Christenson lives in Central on Portland. She wants two-way streets. "I have personally witnessed numerous occasions where drivers appear to treat these streets as their own personal extension of the freeway," she said. Plus she finds the speed and direction create barriers between residents. Christenson notes a federal citation of research that found a number of beneficial effects from converting one-way streets to two-way. But that study was limited to downtown conversions, limiting its applicability for much of the length of Portland and Park, which are one-way from Washington Avenue to 46th Street, but mostly residential south of Interstate Hwy. 94.

Scott Hofer of Central concludes as a Portland resident that it's the one-way design and the width that promote an attitude that the twin streets are mini-freeways. "The current configuration gives much greater consideration to the needs of drivers that spend mere minutes traveling through our neighborhoods at the significant expense of pedestrians, bicyclists and the residents," he said. Some residents have sketched proposals that would reduce traffic from three to two lanes, while widening the bike lanes.

Evolution of the avs

Because they're wide and one-way, it's easy to assume that Portland and Park always were. But Park resident and amateur historian Ryan Knoke knows as much about the history of the streets as anyone we've met. He relates the following:

Park was lined with mansions before the 19th century ended, making it a mini version of Summit Avenue. The Crosbys, Heffelfingers, Peaveys, Bells and others from the city's social elite lived there, forming an improvement association that dictated setbacks from the street and other features. Their clout and ability to pay the assessments led to a two-mile section of Park becoming the city's first asphalt-paved street in 1892. These folks later were among the first in the city who could afford automobiles.

But by 1904, residents there already were raising concerns about traffic. In 1927, as the city developed southward, about a thousand area residents turned out at a City Council meeting after signing a petition expressing traffic concerns. The council in 1941 authorized a study of converting the streets to one-way. After World War II, with population exploding in Richfield and Bloomington, and the opening of 35W still 20 years off, Park and Portland were converted to one-way streets of two lanes apiece. An even bigger change came in the mid-1950s, when the 36-foot-wide streets were widened to 56 feet and another lane, wiping out a full 20 feet of boulevard. Some date neighborhood deterioration to that decision.

Some residents say the absence of two-way traffic minimizes the friction that prompts drivers to drive sanely. Although we're often on the side of the traffic-calming, our experience here is different. Dateline has never had a fender-bender on Portland or Park. But a few weeks ago, while heading home on Chicago Avenue from a reporting stint, our old beater was bumped into by a yahoo making a U-turn in the middle of that two-way street.

It's hard to drive faster than the speed limit on the twin one-ways at rush hour due to traffic volume. It's also stupid at any time of day, given that you end up at lots of red lights if you exceed the speed for which greens are timed. But it happens, and residents say one common reason cars speed is to beat yellow lights when traffic is light.

It's tempting to write off the complaints about Portland and Park as coming from people who should have known what they were getting when they moved into the area. But Glidden suggests that the city can't afford to write off the livability concerns of an entire area, much as it has fought to keep areas affected by airport noise viable.

According to Access Minneapolis, a study of two-way vs. one-way operations on Portland and Park was completed in the 1990s. But despite Star Tribune requests made weeks ago, city public works officials have yet to produce that study.

In the end, because Portland and Park are County Roads 35 and 33, respectively, Hennepin County will be a major player in any decisions made affecting the twin roads that some call 35P. For south Minneapolis, and its political leaders, it will be a telling test of whether there's a compromise between accessibility and livability.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438