[wwmiv]

Perhaps the answer is to have the district roped off at the entrances and exits during weekend street closures and having police ID everyone coming in, to keep underage out and to dissuade those who aren’t patronizing a business or accompanying someone who is from entering. Staff up police presence generally within the restricted area, and allow outdoor drinking during the street closure hours within the designated restricted area. Encourage businesses to be more proactive community members and encourage a wider variety of styles of bars, rather than having them mostly be shot and beer bars. This is NOT the area for daytime businesses, and we shouldn’t be trying to turn what is part of Austin’s success into something else.

Main Street in Grand Junction is the treatment I think would work best for 6th street—turn it into 2-way one lane each way from Brazos to Sabine, weaving thru each block like a snake to create semi-circular seating and gathering areas, with limited angled curb-inset street parking mid-block with some spots explicitly reserved for police, others metered. This would allow ample space for day-time food trucks and other shops set up in tents and booths, accomplishing the daytime use in a way the preserves the full spectrum of the existing nighttime use.

As for traffic control, I would purposefully misalign the end of the lanes at each cross-street intersection, change specific cross streets to two-way 2 lanes each (IE San Jacinto & Trinity) between 5th and 7th and reverse their one way directions of travel south of 5th (thus each street becomes a “going to” or “going away” from 6th—this would aid in traffic flow and ease the transitions from one-way to two-way for those two blocks*, and also maximize the effectiveness of the 5th/7th one way couplets—see below on 5th), remove the vehicle signalizations at 6th, and add a raised planted median to them to require right hand turns only at 6th (each block thus being accessibly only by the adjacent cross streets), and add pedestrian hybrid beacons to each cross street. For the Congress to Brazos block switch to two lanes in each direction. I’d also give Neches the great streets treatment and get rid of the lights at 5th & 7th entirely. add stops signs to Neches and let the traffic on 5th and 7th pass them.

Once 35 reconstruction happens and we have the deck park, fully pedestrianize 6th from Sabine to 35. Sabine itself is already planned to be pedestrianized between 7th and 4th, meaning 6th would become a court in the block between Sabine and Red River (a small roundabout at the end). In tandem, redirect all westbound traffic to a newly one way 5th (from 35 to Congress). This single new pedestrian only block would become the meeting place of three distinct pedestrian zones: 1. Dirty 6th, 2. Waller Creek, 3. I35 Deck Parks. Talk about maximizing synergy.

*it does this by both discouraging the use of the cross streets for thru-use, which eliminates any potential bottlenecking at the 5th/7th intersections, by redistributing that traffic to intersections northward, and also allow 5th/7th/SJ/Trinity to function like a de facto roundabout.

I will draw what I mean later and post a picture—it’ll help explain.