The intersection of 7th and Dunn street looking northeast. (April 12, 2023)
The intersection of 7th and Dunn streets looking northwest. (April 12, 2023)
The intersection of 7th and Dunn streets, looking northeast. (April 12, 2023)
Reinstallation of the stop at 7th and Dunn streets. (April 12, 2023)
Reinstallation of the stop sign at 7th and Dunn streets. (April 12, 2023)
The intersection of 7th and Dunn streets, looking northeast. (April 12, 2023)
The intersection of 7th and Dunn streets, looking northeast. (April 12, 2023)
Around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, a yellow-vested crew from the street division of Bloomington’s department of public works started drilling holes to reinstall stop signs for 7th Street traffic at Dunn Street.
The work was finished by around 3 p.m. That makes the intersection at Dunn and 7th, just west of the Indiana University campus, an all-way stop.
The stop sign went in, because city engineer Andrew Cibor used his legal authority, to order the placement of the stop signs for 180 days.
Cibor’s order is based on a study of crashes along the 7th Street corridor, before and after the 7-Line separated bicycle lane was installed in 2021. The study showed an increase in crash numbers, especially at the intersection of Dunn and 7th Street. Continue reading “Stop signs reinstalled at 7th & Dunn in Bloomington”→
Four intersections are not recommended by the BPSC or the traffic commission to have stop signs reinstalled (gray). At Dunn Street (red) a stop signs is recommended to be reinstalled. Floated but not acted on were the ideas of putting a 20 mph speed limit on 7th Street and making Indiana Avenue a two-way street.
Bloomington traffic commission (March 24, 2023)
7th Street looking west just after the turn from Woodlawn.
A recommendation from city engineer Andrew Cibor, to reinstall five stop signs along 7th Street in downtown Bloomington, will not have complete support from two advisory groups when it lands in front of the city council.
On Wednesday, the traffic commission followed suit, unanimously recommending that the intersection at 7th and Dunn street be restored to an all-way stop.
It’s not clear when the recommendation will be put in front of the city council for a vote.
Both appointed groups explicitly rejected Cibor’s recommendation that stops for 7th Street traffic at Morton, Lincoln, Washington, and Grant streets also be reinstalled.
The vote against reinstallation of the other four stop signs was unanimous on the BPSC. But traffic commissioners were split 4–2.
The stops for 7th Street traffic at Morton, Lincoln, Washington, Grant, and Dunn streets were removed, but those for the north-south side streets were left in place.
The elimination of the stops was meant to encourage the use of the east-west corridor by cyclists.
Now with a year’s worth of crash data in hand after the opening of the 7-Line, Bloomington’s city engineer Andrew Cibor is recommending that the five stop signs be reinstalled.
The reinstallation of the stop signs would have to be approved by the city council. Before the city council considers the engineer’s recommendation, two of the city’s advisory boards are supposed to weigh in—the bicycle and pedestrian safety commission (BPSC) and the traffic commission.
On Monday, the BPSC unanimously rejected the idea that all five stop signs should be reinstalled. But the BPSC unanimously supported reinstallation of the 7th Street stop signs at Dunn Street.
The aerial image with perspective from from the north is from the Monroe County online property lookup system.
View from the north of the Poplar Building on 7th Street on July 19, 2022.
“You have a beautiful neighborhood that we want to assist in improving ever further by the removal of the IU Poplars Building.”
That’s a line from a July 12 heads-up letter that was hand-delivered by Renascent, Inc. to neighbors of the Indiana University Poplars Building on 7th Street, west of campus.
Renascent is the company that has been contracted to do the demolition work, which has already started.
The hand-delivered letter warned residents of upcoming closures of Grant Street, west of the building, and Dunn Street, east of the building.
After postponing the question at its Aug. 7 meeting, Bloomington’s city council will take up the issue on Wednesday (Aug. 14) of adding parking to Dunn Street, between 6th and 10th Streets. The proposal is to reduce the two-lane, one-way street to a single travel lane.
Dunn Street at 10th looking south. Aug. 12, 2019 (Dave Askins/Beacon)
The Dunn Street parking proposal is part of some legislation that also revises a neighborhood permit parking zone boundary for residents who live on 17th Street. What’s proposed is to add the south side of 17th Street to the newly established neighborhood parking permit Zone 6, in the Garden Hill neighborhood, west of the Indiana University football stadium.
The legislation revising the parking ordinance is a second reading, so action by the council would be the final vote.
The council’s Wednesday agenda also features a first-reading item—an appropriation ordinance to supplement Bloomington Transit’s 2019 budget. The local public transit agency recently received federal grant awards that will allow it to purchase $1,128,000 worth of new buses—one battery-electric bus for fixed route service and two buses for para-transit service. The grants cover $902,401 of the cost.
Next week on Tuesday, the council will hear Bloomington Transit’s 2020 budget proposal, as part of a four-day Monday-through-Thursday series of presentations from all city departments about their proposed budgets for the next year.
In 2020, Bloomington Transit will be budgeting for an additional four battery-electric buses at a cost of $1 million apiece—contingent on winning the kind of grants that are funding 80 percent of the cost of the electric bus in Wednesday’s appropriation ordinance.
Separate parking issues on Dunn Street and 17th Street together make up one of the two items on Wednesday’s city council agenda. The second agenda item is also related to parking—the eligibility requirements for service on the parking commission are proposed to be loosened.
