From the Roundtable: The lines in the battle of West Broadway are drawn once more

The word libraried may not be in the dictionary, but that’s the term one KFRU caller came up with the other day to sum up his thoughts about the next stage of the contentious West Broadway “improvement” project. With Columbia poised to spend $105,000 on the design phase of the project, the caller and others see parallels with the somewhat deceptive obfuscation involved in the Boone County Public Library’s “renovation” project a few years ago.

The caller came up with a brand new meaning for an ancient word, a verb-to library-meaning to proceed and do something while pulling the wool over our eyes and hope no one notices what they’re doing. The caller said the city is librarying us when it comes to widening West Broadway between Aldeah Avenue and Clinkscales Road.

The last time I wrote about West Broadway, the city had just received an extensive report written by Crawford, Bunte and Brammeier, of St. Louis. It’s an inch thick, with colored charts, diagrams, aerial photos, the accompanying text and conclusions.

I do not contest the expertise of this 35-year-old consultancy, which outlined a relatively modest, less invasive approach to curing the blockage of this trans-Columbia artery. The flaw in their report for me goes back to who paid and the conclusions.

I have no quarrel with governing entities engaging and paying for the expertise of recognized consultants. Over the years, Columbia has been well served by the external advice of recognized expert consultancies, such as Black and Veach, which have wisely advised our Water and Light Department for decades.

I’m suspicious here with CBB of the expectation that this consultancy’s conclusion jibe with the most politically palpable course to follow as the lines in the Battle of West Broadway are drawn once more. Just as land appraisers may divine what lending agencies expect to be told when it comes to valuing property, my guard is up here. Maybe signals, consciously or unconsciously, were passed between city officials and CBB.

Passions are beginning to heat up once more about improving West Broadway. For me, Broadway in the contested area needs to be widened to a minimum of four lanes.

Broadway’s role in the city’s transportation scheme for me is just as significant as such broadened arteries, as Providence Road, Business Loop 70, Route B and Stadium Boulevard. Earlier this year in considering the plight of Scott Boulevard-a street no more significant than the contested section of West Broadway-the Columbia City Council wisely appropriated the money to widen Scott to two lanes in each direction.

A particular irony is Broadway’s connection to Downtown Columbia. Both the City and the University of Missouri-buttressed by the Sasaki Group’s report the latter paid for-have a genuine concern about the central business district. Yet the city appears to be somewhat disingenuous about the future and economic health of the city’s core by proposing the continued constipation of West Broadway which is the principal traffic artery that feeds traffic into downtown Columbia from the west.    

The CBB report proposes to modestly widen West Broadway, furnishing the street with a median, “pedways” and turnouts at a number of intersecting side streets. Through some arcane process, CBB has decided these “improvements,” while keeping Broadway single-file in each direction to placate a somewhat testy group of opponents, will somehow speed up the flow of traffic and number of vehicles the road can handle.

One curious defense for keeping West Broadway down to one lane in each direction has to do with what I believe to be specious projections of growth and development on Columbia’s far west side. There’s the belief further westward development beyond the point where West Broadway curves southward into Scott Boulevard will be restricted by Perche Creek. Aside from the 500 Year Flood Plain, creeks have been and will be bridged and developers in the future can be expected to push Columbia’s lebensraum west of Scott Boulevard.

This is coupled with a widened Scott Boulevard that will lead to more development to its south and west that will feed thousands of additional vehicles inward, some of them to Columbia’s center with no place to go but down West Broadway. The city seems bound and determined to proceed with its restricted vision about West Broadway, but there may be some cracks in this paving of their plans as to what should be done.

In addition to studying what Broadway currently carries and attempting to project the future based on current flows, the consultants should have studied what a widened Broadway could and should do to support the city’s entire traffic network. That includes current relief for such notorious traffic bottlenecks such as Stadium Boulevard and Providence Road.

The difficulty in coming up with the money to pursue this folly during a spell of austerity in the city’s finances may be an ally for those of us who want West Broadway widened. Let’s put this one on the shelf for awhile. For the time being, no one could say the city libraried the project.