Rhinelander city council to consider making Brown Street a one-way

The Rhinelander city council on Tuesday agreed to move forward with having city administrators work with Town & Country Engineering to explore what it would take to have one-way traffic on Brown Street. 

Mayor Kris Hanus provided the council with “some back story on this grenade that I kind of launched at the last council meeting.”

“So as you guys know, you approved the initial concept of looking at the ($1.5 million) infrastructure improvement around our downtown — Courtney Street, Frederick Street, parts of Davenport,” he said. “Well that led us to the discussion of well if we’re going to replace the streets around downtown, we’re about due, if we choose, to do a seal-coat on the original downtown project, which would be Davenport, Brown, the sections that are about eight to 10 years old.”

Hanus explained seal-coat work requires repainting of roads as well.

“One thing I found out about city government is it’s a rabbit hole,” he said. “You start one spot and it starts leading you to somewhere (else).” 

Hanus asked if now is the appropriate time to discuss making Brown Street a one-way street. 

“Because if we’re going to have to re-seal it, re-stripe it, it would be appropriate to make that decision before we do that and have to do that all again in a couple of years,” he said. 

Hanus said if the council is interested in exploring doing that, then city administrators could research prices, get a feel for how the community feels about the proposal and if the city could gain anything with regard to parking.

He said he wanted to get the council’s feelings about making Brown Street a one-way now, because if there wasn’t any interest, he wouldn’t want to waste the time of the city’s employees.

“The initial concept would be a one-way street from Anderson Street to Fredrick … and it would be a one-way going north,” Hanus said. “The reason why we thought that was because the one side of the street already got angled parking supporting that so you would kind of only be changing the parking pattern on one side.”

Council president Carrie Mikalauski said since Hanus mentioned the idea of making Brown Street a one-way, a number of residents contacted her saying they wanted the change to occur. 

“They do not like the parallel parking and … then they also referred on how much better it was when Minocqua did this,” she said. “So from a number of people that I spoke to, they are interested in this.”

Alderperson Thomas Barnett said he had similar experiences with residents. 

“I had a few people come up to me and I actually started some of the conversation just out of curiosity ‘What do you think about turning Brown Street into a one-way?’ And I can honestly say that I heard nothing but positive responses in favor of at least looking at it and seeing how it would work. I personally would agree with that. I would say there is always some new way of looking at something to improve it. So, to at least look at, I don’t think there’s any harm in that at all and I think it’s a very good thing to look at and consider.”

Hanus said he thinks those who were involved in the remodeling of downtown eight years ago would never have thought the topic of the city needing more parking would be a conversation.  

He said he believes that speaks to how the city’s downtown is growing and having the issue of needing more parking is a good problem. 

Alderperson Gerald Anderson said the city is assuming there would be enough room for parking on both sides of the street. 

Hanus said right now, making Brown Street a one-way would be “kind of a paint job kind of approach” instead of a reconstruction approach. 

He noted conversations with regard to public safety and public works are yet to be had.

“Because this is kind of our busy time of the year,” Hanus said. “I mean, if you notice, a lot of the town’s torn up with projects. So I don’t want to waste department heads’ time thinking about this, discussing this if it was ‘No, we don’t want it.’ so it’s kind of we’re getting the first initial feedback from you guys, we’re going to have those meetings, come back to you with rough estimates of costs, can it be done, is everyone kosher. From there, if you give us blessing, we’ll probably do a couple public listening sessions to get feedback. We’d notified the businesses that are affected by this on those blocks. From there, we’d come back with that feedback and let you guys make a decision.”

If Brown Street was going to become a one-way, he said, it would probably occur some time next spring.

Alderperson David Holt said he believes there’s “enough curiosity and interest to explore this.”

“So I’d be in favor of at least the exploration to see what all the pros and cons would be,” he said. 

Alderperson Luke Kramer said  his initial feelings were against the idea. Some residents who he spoke with, he said, didn’t understand why the city would want to make Brown Street a one-way. 

However, with angle parking, he said that put his concerns to rest with regard to public safety. 

“One-ways always lead to higher speeds when it’s a double lane,” Kramer said. “But if it’s a single lane, I think it would be worth looking at.”

Hanus explained the city could potentially gain 30 parking spots, at least conceptually. 

Hold asked if there would be any impacts to traffic lights. 

Hanus said lights would only be modified, at least that’s the thought for now and carries only “a little cost,” or maybe they wouldn’t even be needed. 

“That was actually my thought, if you got angled parking on two sides and you got a one-way street, do you even need a traffic light?” Holt said. 

Before the council agreed to move forward with exploring making Brown Street a one-way, chief of police Lloyd Gauthier asked the council to consider potential effects to emergency response. 

“Obviously we’ll be doing some talking on this, but for emergency response purposes, we want it to flow north, south,” he said. “Because otherwise if we respond to an emergency, which we quite often do at 28 North Brown, we are going against traffic, and if there’s angled parking, you’re not going to get a big truck down there. So we’d just request that’d be a huge consideration for emergency vehicle flow.”

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].