Item A: South Willamette Street Improvement Plan

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I am a heavy user of that part of the street, shopping there 1-4 times a week. I drive there because I am usually getting groceries.I use Market of Choice, Eugene Hardware, Down to Earth, OCCU, US Bank, Chevron, and Instaprint frequently. I use Capellas, Office Max, Rite Aid, Skopils, and several other businesses regularly. We visit family members who live farther down Willamette once a week.I sometimes ride a bike to do errands but not to that part of town. I am very supportive of walking and biking in general. I have given myself a few weeks to think this over and listen to the opinions of others. That said, I think changing the street to 2 lanes is a stunningly bad idea. What happens to one lane traffic when there are bikes in the bike lane where you need to turn right? You stop and wait, and everyone behind you must stop and wait, and traffic will slow down and clog up very quickly. And while you are waiting to turn and there are others in the center lane waiting to cross both the car and bike traffic lanes, how long will they wait? People get frustrated and start making poor decisions to try to get across. That increases the danger for everyone. Some times of day there is a lot of commuter traffic, both car and bike. My nephew is one of the bike commuters.At these times it seems that the bike traffic would be heavier and the bikers less interested in shopping than getting home, so more and faster riders could be present.There would also be more cars as people go home after work. This seems like a nightmare to me. I can say I would not ride my bike on Willamette even if there were bike lanes. It would not feel safe to me. If you had asked me a few years ago if anything would keep me from shopping in this area, I would have said no. However, repeated frustrating and very long waits during the last road construction project finally did me in. I reluctantly went to other branches of places that had them and to different and less satisfactory stores. All of that increased my driving time and mileage as these substitute places covered a larger area. Right now when I leave Market of Choice, it is difficult at times to turn north onto Willamette, the most direct route home for me. It is also difficult to turn east onto 29th because of the one lane traffic coming from the west combined with the westbound traffic. At times that we have given up and turned west on 29th, gone up to Lincoln and around to 19th to get back to the university area where we live. This proposal will only make all of these issues worse in my view. I support better sidewalks and adding incentives to ride bikes on the streets on either side of Willamette, or another plan as long as there are still 4 lanes of traffic on Willamette. If there are not, businesses will surely be hurt and the number of people helped will be far fewer than the number of people whose frustration and restricted choices will lead them to give up and go elsewhere. To me this is an idea with good intent that would cause far greater problems than it would solve.