2 bridge options for Batavia council to pick

The next downtown Batavia bridge will connect Main Street or Shumway Avenue to Adams Street.

Or maybe First Street to Webster Street.

The city council's community development committee Tuesday recommended both options to the full city council. The council will vote on them Nov. 15.

The committee refused to pass along, however, a recommendation of “no bridge.” Three aldermen who are not members of the committee asked for that, but none of the CDC members supported it.

The Adams option passed 4-3, with Aldermen David Brown, Dan Chanzit and Lucy Thelin-Atac opposing it. The Webster option passed 6-1, with Alderman Alan Wolff opposing.

“Either one of these will do something for the downtown. The main goal is to look 20 years from now. The further south, option D (Main to Webster) is really the one we need to look at building, because it will provide the most (economic) benefit,” Wolff said.

When he ran for mayor in 2009, one of his positions was that land developers needed to know where a bridge would be sited, even if it weren't built for a long time, so they could make plans for new buildings in the downtown. Bridge placement could also affect a downtown electrical substation, and expansion of the city's wastewater treatment plant.

The recommendations boil down several years of work by a citizens committee and consultants charged with determining where a second bridge should be built in relation to the Wilson Street bridge. The committee last year came up with eight crossings, with several corridors at each. Traffic consultants this spring narrowed it to the Adams and Webster sites.

Chairman Dave Brown suggested the committee combine both options in one “either/or” resolution, and leaving it to a future city council to pick one, when (if ever) a bridge is actually proposed.

Besides the seven members of the committee, Aldermen Jim Volk, Victor Dietz, Michael O'Brien, Janet Jungels and Dawn Tenuta attended, as did Mayor Jeff Schielke.

Just because the committee didn't recommend it doesn't mean “no bridge” is dead. Any aldermen could make such a motion Monday night.

“The idea of spending $20 million to get a ‘C' crossing experience doesn't attract me at all. I'm convinced we need to spend our next bridge development efforts further south,” Dietz said. He was referring to the consultants' conclusions that adding a second downtown bridge could only raise the grade on rush-hour traffic flow on Wilson from an “D” (almost failing) to a “C.” Some residents have recommended the city drop plans for a downtown bridge and work on a regional crossing near Union Street or further south to relieve crosstown congestion now and in the future.