/ Modified may 1, 2012 6:54 p.m.

Kozachik: Let Taxpayers Change Road Plans

Councilman wants to reduce scope of Broadway widening project

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik wants the Regional Transportation Authority to consider changing the plans for widening Broadway from Euclid Avenue to Country Club Road in Tucson.

He wants the project tweaked to fit the available funding and the traffic volume on the road now. He held a neighborhood meeting Monday night to get feedback from others who oppose the widening project.

"The message last night was use those $42 million, do some intuitive things such as keep the existing alignment, put bus pullouts in, use some sound buffers in, put landscaping, put bike lanes up out of the traffic," Kozachik says.

The plan in place for Broadway calls for widening the road to three lanes in each direction, plus lanes for bicycles and pedestrians. Kozachik instead suggests using the remaining $25 million that is scheduled to come from county bond funds, which may not be available for many years, toward other projects such as repairing the city's ailing roads.

"The voters were told by 2030, the traffic volumes will justify going to eight transit lanes," Kozachik says. But traffic studies show there's not as much traffic as engineers expected by 2012, so the project is unnecessary, he says.

Kozachik wants the RTA to give the citizen's task force for the road project the ability to change the scope of the work, and he wants this to be a model for the other road projects.

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