BANGOR – Though some were reluctant to discuss it yet again, city councilors agreed this week to take another look at the six-month-old ban on left turns from State Street to Howard Street.

The issue is being brought back before the council at the request of Councilor Hal Wheeler, who said he was approached by a group of residents displeased by the move, which aimed to reduce traffic volume and speed on Howard Street.

The matter will be placed on the agenda of the May 13 meeting of the council’s transportation and infrastructure committee, City Manager Edward Barrett said. The meeting will start at 5 p.m.

Howard, which many motorists had been using as a throughway to and from the Bangor Mall area, runs between busy State Street and Stillwater Avenue. It crosses Garland Street, where one of the city’s middle schools is located. It also intersects with Mount Hope Avenue.

The intersection of State and Howard streets also was identified by the state Department of Transportation as a high-crash location.

The left-turn prohibition was one of three steps city officials agreed last year to try for six months in an effort to reduce the volume and speed of traffic on the street.

The other two steps, which councilors earlier agreed to leave in place, were a raised crosswalk and a traffic island, both built on Howard.

After a six-month trial period that ended last October, city councilors voted 7-2 to make the left-turn ban permanent.

The ban on left turns so far has been implemented in a temporary, low-tech manner with city employees placing several orange barrels on the section of State Street leading to Howard to block vehicles from making the turn.

Workers were getting ready to build a concrete traffic island at the intersection earlier this spring, but put the project on hold when they received word that a movement to eliminate the restriction was afoot.

Not all of the councilors wanted to revisit the issue, which took up hours and hours of discussion last year and the year before.

Councilor Richard Stone noted that city officials have “spent more time discussing Howard Street than the city budget.”

Though the measures the city put in place appear to have had the intended effect, at least on parts of Howard Street, some of the people living in that part of the city told councilors Monday that traffic had increased on other nearby streets.

City Engineer Jim Ring said last fall that daily traffic volumes for Howard Street dropped more than 30 percent after left turns were banned and the raised crosswalk and traffic island were built.

Daily traffic volume also has decreased on Birch Street and the section of Mount Hope Avenue west of Howard, but the number of vehicles using Fern and Maple streets has increased, Ring said.

In addition, Bellevue Avenue, which runs parallel to Howard, saw a major traffic increase because it now is part of a dogleg route State Street drivers are using to get to Howard. They apparently are turning left onto Bellevue, left onto Garland and then right onto Howard.

dgagnon@bangordailynews.net

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