The first 24 hours of two-way streets in downtown Manitowoc are in the books, and Mayor Justin Nickels couldn’t be happier.
In a new release, the mayor explained that there were no accidents on 8th, 10th or 11th Streets, much like some had predicted.
He also said that the flashing red lights will be changed this morning to their normal operation starting at 9:00 a.m.
I was on the roof of Brix for a little over half an hour live streaming the traffic (which you view by clicking here) and have a couple of observations.
First, when the bridge went up, traffic was backed up on 8th Street all the way to 10th Street on Washington.
While I couldn’t see 10th Street, my assumption is there was traffic there as well.
It appears to me that traffic was able to rather quickly get back to flowing at a normal pace once the bridge was lowered.
While I haven’t been stuck in bridge-related traffic for quite some time, it seemed to me that the traffic jam cleared much more quickly than it had before.
Second, semis turning onto 8th Street from Washington do take up quite a bit of the southbound lane as they make the turn.
If southbound traffic is not paying attention this could end up causing an issue, but as of now, no problems.
