Councilors select one-way solution

SOUTH PORTLAND — After nearly nine months, it appears South Portland has come to a full stop in its ongoing Ocean Street parking debate.

On Monday, the City Council accepted the recommendation of local engineering firm Sebago Technics and agreed to limit traffic on Ocean Street to one direction only, between E and D streets.

Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis held out for keeping two lanes of traffic as originally designed by Sebago last year. However, that also would have meant keeping Sebago’s original design for parallel parking even though the council recently acquiesced to intense lobbying from local business owners who wanted to retain angled parking in front of the Smaha block.

Meeting the demand for angled parking meant cutting one lane of traffic, due to the limited space left following completion of a $3.6 million sewer separation project that has kept the entire Knightville district in dust and din since spring. After catch basins and pipelines are rebuilt to keep stormwater out of the sewer system, preventing raw sewage from backing up into Casco Bay during heavy rains, Ocean Street will be made over, with wider sidewalks including “bump-outs” to accommodate trees and new LED streetlights, leaving more room for the city sidewalk plow. That and modern requirements for angled parking spaces, which makes them nearly five feet longer that those previously painted on the street, leaves little room for travel lanes.

“We only have so much street,” quipped Councilor Tom Coward. “I suppose one solution would be to move all of the buildings back five feet.”

Phil Notice, owner of the Bridgeway Restaurant, suggested two-way traffic could still be had, if the city would accept narrow, 11-foot travel lanes for the one block between D Street and the Legion Square rotary at E Street.

“It’s going to look like a parking lot in that area no matter what you do,” he said.

But only De Angelis supported Notice, using the opportunity to rail on her fellow councilors for failing to support local residents, who voiced concern for the one-way configuration.

“You’ve done a great job listening to the businesses,” said C Street resident Sarah Adams. “I am concerned that you are going to now pipe traffic into the residential areas. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think you need to also do a good job protecting the quality of life in the residential component of the neighborhood.”

Adams lamented that residents would “never be able to mount the email campaign” backed by businesses, that flooded the inbox of City Manager Jim Gailey in late July with nearly 100 messages of support for the angled parking, previously considered and dismissed by the council.

That’s where De Angelis chimed in, after Sebago engineer Dan Riley acknowledged the one-way configuration will funnel traffic onto D Street.

“You certainly will see that. Some people who want to go south will make the first left on the first available street that’s available to them,” he said, adding that drivers will eventually figure out that using the next available turn at C Street will lead back to Waterman Drive with fewer extra turns.

“Phil Notice’s idea is not perfect, but the decision of this council is not perfect,” said De Angelis. “It was not a smart choice to do what we did, but people panicked over 96 pages of emails that were primarily not from residents; they were out-of-towners.

“We made a stupid choice. It was not a smart decision,” said De Angelis of the council’s 6-1 vote on Aug. 21 to retain angled parking on the Smaha block, albeit reversed, said Riley, to accommodate anecdotal evidence that most cars enter the block from Legion Square.

“Parallel parking is the safest, the smartest, the best choice,” said De Angelis, faulting the council for accepting Riley’s report advising one-way from E Street to D Street as a better option to continuing that pattern to C or A streets.

“Don’t now talk about safety and concern for the residents, because there is none. That’s just more bunk.” said De Angelis. “If we were so big on accepting reports based on safety concerns the original recommendation was about the safest we could do this. But we're backpedaling and in a mess now because we didn’t accept that report."

De Angelis said she would “never accept” any parking and traffic pattern other than Sebago’s original design, which called for parallel parking everywhere on Ocean Street.

“We could have done the right thing in the beginning and we didn’t,” she said. “If we had done the right thing to begin with we wouldn't even be having this discussion. If we had tried the parallel parking, it was only paint. If it was really horrible, if it was really the death knell [of businesses], we could have gone back.”

 Mayor Patti Smith said the city will conduct a traffic study from March to April of next year to determine how the change to angled parking and one-way traffic on Ocean Street affects the side streets.

"Minimizing the one-way right now is the best thing we can do,” said Smith. “But I think we do owe the residents and the businesses to put some factual data to the issue. Maybe that might trigger an additional action, or it may not, but at least we will have the data to say this is how it impacted us. That’s one thing we can commit to show that, in good faith, there is a favorable outcome for both residents and businesses.”

Gailey said that at the next council meeting, Sept. 17, a vote will be taken to amend city codes, allowing angled parking on Ocean Street to be set 45 degrees from the curb, rather than the standard of 60 degrees. Without that change, not even a single lane of traffic will have room to pass the Smaha block.