A stoplight turns green on Erwin Street at its intersection with South Broadway Avenue. (Santana Wood/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

The Tyler City Council on Wednesday approved a study to help guide the future of downtown traffic and mobility amid a flurry of new development.

The traffic study will be performed by Kimley-Horn at a cost of $195,900.

Michael Howell, Metropolitan Planning Organization director, said the downtown traffic study is a combination of studies already done by Smith County and the city of Tyler. The county performed its study on the immediate downtown square, but the MPO is focusing its study on all of downtown — from the boundaries of Palace to Beckham and from Gentry to Front Street.

The ultimate goal is to look “at different streetscape options and different things that can be done to try to improve mobility and especially for multimodal options whenever you look at pedestrians, cyclists, and the other forms of transportation that are out there,” Howell said.

Downtown has seen growth in recent years through the redevelopment of the People’s Petroleum Building and the Plaza Tower as well as the jail renovation, new residential living areas and more, Howell said.

It’s essential to consider how motorists will be entering and leaving downtown as well as parking, pedestrian infrastructure and more, he added.

“It’s really trying to have that holistic multimodal option of still seeing how do we accommodate the growth that we have been seeing, that we expect to continue to see, over the next years,” Howell said.

The city has started to test alternatives, such as if four-way stops will work better than functioning signal lights in some spots, he said.

The study also will look at circulation, two-way versus one-way roads and other factors.

“We kind of wanted to take a fresh look at that and try to see if there’s a way that we could really improve the whole circulation for getting around and through (downtown),” Howell said.

Part of the plan is to implement temporary changes likely in the fall, Howell said. Those include setting up cones to mimic different parking areas and changing roads from one-way to two-way.

“Essentially, we can test a few of these (changes) so it’s not just all conceptual,” he said.

Funding for the study is from a federal grant, Howell said.

The downtown traffic study is expected to begin early next month or soon after and take about 10 months to complete.