Lawrence resident Jim Lee knows what he thinks about the safety of traffic on 23rd Street.

“I feel like I may have a wreck every time I go down there,” he said. “You have places where you feel like you’re begging to get in a wreck.”

City officials want to find out how many other people agree. They have hired HNTB Corp., an Overland Park engineering firm, to survey 200 residents about 23rd Street traffic.

The phone survey, which began last week, is the first step in a plan to eliminate or consolidate driveways and access points along the busy stretch of road, particularly between Iowa and Louisiana streets.

“Data tells us that when you have 8 million choices on where you should turn, you are not as focused as you should be, and that is when accidents happen,” said Terese Gorman, the city’s engineer.

Some business owners along the road, though, are lukewarm to the idea.

“I can’t imagine any business getting excited about the idea of losing an access point,” said Mark Arndt, owner of Border Bandido, 1528 W. 23rd St. “I don’t care if a customer only has to drive an extra 40 yards to get into your business, it is going to make it less convenient.”

Kevin Wallace, project manager with HNTB, said the survey should be complete in the next couple of weeks. Afterward, HNTB will contact business owners to arrange meetings about a limited number of projects for the first phase of changes.

“This definitely won’t solve all the projects on 23rd Street,” he said.

Gorman said the city was planning to find businesses to work with the city rather than forcing changes.

“Hopefully we’ll create some success stories, and people will see they don’t need a personalized curb cut in front of their businesses,” she said.

Wallace said it was too early to say how many businesses would be affected. Improvements could include relocating driveways near intersections, eliminating driveways at businesses that have more than one access point, or creating a plan for multiple businesses to share a single driveway.

City Hall has roughly $940,000 in state and city funds to spend on the improvements.

Wallace said the city would also help pay for other on-site improvements, such as reconfiguring parking lots to accommodate new access points.

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“We don’t want to leave anybody in a lurch out there,” Wallace said.

He said the survey results would be used to help present information to business owners. The survey may show that people would be more likely to visit 23rd Street businesses if traffic congestion decreased, he said.

Lee said that would be the case for him.

“I just hate going down to any area out there,” Lee said.

Arndt, at Border Bandido, isn’t so sure.

“I have thought for a while that (idea) is overblown because if you drive in Kansas City, this road isn’t near as bad as a lot of roads back there,” Arndt said.

Gorman said HNTB should present its report to city commissioners this summer. Construction likely would not start until spring 2007.