The Bloomington City Council voted to raise the city’s base towing fee at its meeting Wednesday and approved construction on a section of Third Street/State Road 46 near Park Ridge on the east side of the city.
Construction will begin in March. Craig Shonkwiler, a transportation and traffic engineer, presented the plan at the meeting to strip the top surface of asphalt off the road from College Mall Road to State Road 446, which is less than a mile long.
The project also includes restructuring a portion of the road from Clarizz Boulevard to State Road 446. The road will continue to be two lanes going east and west but will include a left turn lane in the middle of the road to give people better access to driveways and side streets. There will also be six-foot wide bike lanes on both sides.
This comes after there have been many reports of car accidents near Park Ridge, a neighborhood accessed from Third Street/State Road 46, Shonkwiler said.
District 3 representative Ron Smith said he got in a wreck near Park Ridge a couple weeks ago. He asked Shonkwiler how safe the proposed changes would be. Shonkwiler said models have shown a decrease in crashes with more space to turn, but there aren’t any actual numbers on whether the changes are safer for traffic.
Bloomington resident Greg Alexander suggested the city partner with the Indiana Department of Transportation to make sure the new stretch of road will be safe for pedestrians, not just drivers. He talked about how Purva Sethi and Margaret Miao-Keong, who were both recently killed in traffic incidents, were both crossing the road when they were hit as the vehicles were turning onto other roads. Sethi was a third-year law student at the Maurer School of Law and Miao-Keong was a 66-year-old Bloomington resident.
“They don’t ask, ‘Is this going to get law students killed?’” he said.
The project costs $1,915,446 and is anticipated to be finished by Aug. 8.
After weeks of debate and opposition from local towing companies, the council voted to raise Bloomington’s base towing fee from $125 to $135. Bloomington’s towing fees now match the rest of Monroe County and IU.
The council said this is meant to avoid predatory towing, which is when a towing company is contracted to tow vehicles as soon as possible without allowing vehicle owners time to return to their cars before being fined.
During public comment, Bloomington resident Jeff Mease argued the change in price could increase fare competition between towing companies in Bloomington. He said there are already issues with competition between towing companies because the Bloomington Police Department and governmental buildings contract with only a handful of towing companies.
City attorney Michael Rouker said the city contracts with a few companies it trusts to respond quickly and get the job done well. The comment was met with laughter from towing company owners in the crowd.
Max Stryker from Stryker Towing and Repair argued no towing companies in Bloomington practice predatory towing.
Stryker said raising the base fee and allowing vehicle owners to pay only part of the towing fee or create a payment plan could make it more difficult for employees to get paid.
“How do we get our money and not go out of business?” he asked.
Council president Stephen Volan asked Rouker who approves the city’s contracts with towing companies, but Rouker didn't know. Volan said a good step toward making city-initiated towing more inclusive of other towing companies would be for people to know who approves those contracts.
