By Ashley Wiebe

Downtown businesses want streets converted permanently

May 8, 2017 | 5:21 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Construction crews have reopened the intersection at Second Street and South Railway and traffic along the stretch of Second Street has been converted back into a one-way street.

It’s been more than 30 years since Medicine Hat saw two-way traffic in the downtown.

Second and Third Street were both converted to one-way streets in the 1980’s.

But the recent construction has business owners talking and many agree that it’s time to make the switch back to two-way streets.

“The two-way street and slower [speed] makes it that much more inviting to come,” said Jeremy Knodel, co-owner of Station Coffee Company. “That’s, I think, the feel that we want downtown to be, is, it’s simple and it’s easy.”

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Knodel believed having two-way traffic on every street downtown would benefit business.

“I think as soon as you make the speed a little bit slower, people can look around a little bit,” he said.

Second Street was converted into a two-way while construction crews worked underground at the intersection with South Railway.

The plan was to have traffic flowing down both sides while crews worked and convict it back once the work was complete.

That piece of the project wrapped up last week.

“They got it paved on Friday and it was open over the weekend, so it’s done ahead of schedule,” said project manager Ammar Mahdi.

Third Street was also converted to accommodate traffic heading both east and west, but it’s only temporary.

Mahdi said it’ll be up to municipal works to covert the street, if it’s something the city wants.

But City Centre Development Agency chairman Les Schwabe said he’s not convinced that’s what the downtown needs.

“When you look at the service trucks that come down here, courier drivers, you know, other kinds of service vehicles that double park out here that run into businesses, all these things are going to obstruct traffic more than they’re going to allow traffic to flow,” he said.

Schwabe said he doesn’t want to see the streets torn up again, after work on Second Street wrapped up last year.

“I’ve heard it mentioned a few times about having two-way traffic, but personally I don’t know if it’s going to benefit, or what the benefit is,” he added.

But Knodel said two-way traffic and slower speeds would make the downtown more accessible.

“If you’re not used to coming downtown, you don’t have to be terrified that you’re going be turning down the wrong street,” Knodel said. “We’re changing stuff every year. We’re digging up streets and stuff. This would be a change that we could immediately see a benefit from.”