KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The City of Kansas City, Missouri, recently made a change to traffic on Truman Road.
It's a part of a preferred protected bike lane project from Oak Street to Van Brunt Road along Truman Road.
Shop owners along Truman say it's hurting their business and is causing drivers confusion.
Shawn Arcidino is the owner of The Atomic Collision shop on Truman Road.
He says over the sander, and other auto work he does at the shop, he’s hearing a lot more honking from confused drivers.
“We knew we had a problem on our hands then,” Arcadino said.
He says the streets were just re-finished.
The city of KCMO added a bike lane, but at the cost of taking away a traffic lane.
Arcadino decided to tell the city how he felt about it by putting up signs, taking a dig at the city and saying the traffic change is ruining Truman Road.
“The sign actually does something good,” he said. “There was no warning, there’s no education. I’m literally letting people know this is where they want us to park now and everyone has the same reaction.”
A spokesperson for KCMO said Arcadino is parking where he’s supposed to — in the right lane next to the bike lane.
“I'm going to put something new up every day," he said. "This is going to hurt my business, it's going to hurt traffic and the safety of my customers.”
On Monday, KSHB 41 saw drivers slam on their brakes and having to swerve around each other with the new traffic pattern.
Bailey Waters, with the KCMO Public Works Department, says the work isn't done yet.
According to Waters, the city will add parking rule signage and stick barriers along the bike lane. She said it’ll be finished in about three months.
“People will be able to park against the buffered bike lane,” Waters said.
Waters explained why the city decided to make the changes.
“The main reason we are taking away lanes of traffic on Truman Road is because of the dangerousness of the street,” Waters said. “There’s extra room on the road. With how many lanes there were previously and with how much traffic is on the road. So what do we do with extra space? We see time and time again that roads become safer when you take away lanes from the road when it’s not congested.”
Waters said the city is not ticketing or enforcing parking now.
But in the future, the parking guidelines will remain the same despite one lane of traffic being taken away.
Waters says people can only park in the right lane when it's not peak traffic.
This means people can't park on the eastbound direction from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and westbound direction from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Arcadino said he's disappointed that the city didn't receive input from business owners.
“It’s not good for business,” he said. “We didn’t ask for this, we didn’t get to vote on it — every business feels like I do. I’m just vocal about it.”
Waters says the parking rules could change again.
“We are analyzing traffic counts right now to see if we can make it a permanent traffic lane,” Waters said.
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