BANGOR – An effort to undo the ban on left turns from State Street to Howard Street officially was launched this week, when a group submitted an affidavit calling for a citywide vote.

The group began collecting signatures Friday, after members received the green light from City Clerk Patti Dubois, according to spokesman James Butler. Butler recently purchased and is restoring the historic Robinson House, located at the corner of State and Howard Streets.

As Butler, Howard Street resident N. Laurence Willey, and Birch Street residents Diana and Sean Harper see it, the issue affects far more than the neighborhood.

“It’s a citywide issue,” Willey said Thursday during a gathering at Butler’s home. “It affects you wherever you live,” he said of the left-turn ban, which he said was the result of “hodgepodge planning” and an approval process driven by politics.

Butler and Diana Harper also said the ban was a fairness issue. The street belongs to everyone and everyone should have equal access to it.

A former City Council chairman, Willey said that what Bangor needs, given its changing traffic patterns, is a comprehensive approach to traffic management.

Butler agreed: “Isn’t traffic an issue all over the city?”

Howard Street resident Bob Cimbollek, who was among the residents who lobbied city officials to take action to reduce the volume and speed of traffic on the street, said that the left-turn ban wasn’t what he and others had in mind, but that it appeared to be serving its purpose.

Cimbollek said Friday that traffic counts on Howard have gone from 3,500 vehicles a day to 2,000.

“We feel it’s about safety versus convenience,” he said, noting that many children live on the street and that there are elementary and middle schools and a park in the neighborhood.

To bring the issue to referendum, the group must gather by July 21 at least 2,272 signatures from registered Bangor voters, or 20 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, Dubois confirmed Friday.

The move comes a week after the City Council’s 4-4 vote on a proposal to lift the ban, which would have required five affirmative votes. The vote followed more than an hour of debate and the presentation of an informal petition with 500 signatures calling upon councilors to lift the ban.

Butler said the group hopes to gather many of the signatures it needs during early voting hours at the Bangor Civic Center today and on Monday.

Volunteers also will be at the city’s four polling places on Tuesday, when Bangor voters decide several primary election races, a state referendum question and the school budget.

The group’s goal, Butler said, is to put the issue to a citywide vote, which would take place in conjunction with the presidential election in November.

Howard Street, which many drivers 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 Mount Hope Avenue.

The left-turn ban was one of three steps city officials agreed last year in an effort to reduce the volume and speed of traffic on the street. After a six-month trial period that ended last October, councilors voted 7-2 to make it permanent.

The other steps were a raised crosswalk and a traffic island, both built on Howard.

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 recently told councilors that traffic had increased on other nearby streets. Others said it had proved an inconvenience they thought was unnecessary.