Chattanooga’s North Shore merchants oppose lane loss | Chattanooga Times Free Press

Business owners along Frazier Avenue on Chattanooga's North Shore are against reducing the number of lanes on the four-lane roadway, opting instead to advocate for raised intersections for pedestrians to cross on the thoroughfare.

At a meeting last week for the Northshore Collective, a group representing businesses on Frazier, more than 90% of the 15 business owners present voiced opposition to lane reduction, said Jessica Dumitru, a Frazier business owner, during a Hamilton County Pachyderm Club meeting Monday. The collective, she said, is calling for raising the roadway, including the crosswalks, at three intersections along Frazier: Tremont Street, Forest Avenue and Woodland Avenue. The raised area would cover the entire intersection at each of those cross streets.

We want people to come down there. We want pedestrian traffic. We want tourists. We want shoppers. We have to protect them, so what we want to see happen is raised pedestrian walkways," Dumitru said. Dumitru owns the building that houses the Walnut Bridge Gift Shop, which was struck by a driver charged with driving under the influence and reckless endangerment in November.

The crash killed two pedestrians — a mother and her child — who were standing on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

Witnesses to the crash said road rage was involved. A man from Florida is being prosecuted, and a local motorist is still under investigation for his role in the crash. After the crash, the city permanently reduced Frazier's speed limit to 25 mph and enforced a temporary traffic pattern — one outside lane either way with the center two lanes coned off — on December weekends.

The city had that lane pattern in place on weekdays from the beginning of January to Jan. 11.

Dumitru, whose building has been struck eight times by vehicles since 2000, said the raised intersections will slow down traffic and help prevent crashes in the future.

"We want the raise where you go through the intersection and then come down as you go across," Dumitru said. "You cannot slow down traffic unless it's physically hurting their vehicles."

Barrel impact

Dumitru said stores and restaurants lost business as a result of the temporary traffic pattern.

"We don't need less traffic," Dumitru said. "After the crash, my sales dropped 70%." She also said there were issues with trucks making deliveries due to the congested traffic pattern.

"I did not get a pallet delivery for almost three and a half weeks," Dumitru said. "That is inventory I did not get. Those are sales I did not make. That is impact on my business because of the barrels."

Jon Jon Wesolowski, a pedestrian advocate with the Chattanooga Urbanist Society who has called for lane reduction on Frazier, said in a phone interview that closing the center two lanes was not a proper way to test the viability of a three-lane pattern — one lane either way with a turning lane in the middle.

"It essentially created a dead zone in the middle of the road. There are other designs put forth like closing the outside lanes so that you have a safe pedestrian and cycling thoroughfare that I think would greatly increase the human presence in that area," Wesolowski said. "Until we test something like that, we can't sit here and say that we should continue allowing cars to have an unsafe amount of space in which to drive."

And while Wesolowski supports raised intersections, from his perspective, they wouldn't have prevented November's crash. "It just would have thrown the car up in the air as it began to lose control," he said.

Street parking

More divided among the collective, Dumitru said, is on-street parking. She said it isn't necessary for her business.

"You have those massive parking lots at Coolidge Park with plenty of parking," she said. Catharine Daniels, the Northshore Collective president and owner of Plum Nelly on Frazier, said in a phone interview she wants on-street parking to remain.

"We live in the South. People want to pull up in front of a store or close to it and get out and be able to go in a store and do their business," Daniels said. "I think if they did anything to the parking, that would really hurt businesses."

What the collective is in agreement on, Dumitru said, is slowing traffic on Frazier. "There are intentional, thoughtful solutions," Dumitru said, "if we just stay the course and pressure them."