Ames City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting parking along recently reopened Hyland Avenue from Lincoln Way to Ontario Street.

Sandy Ryan, Ames city clerk, said the proposal was adopted on all three readings at council meetings.

She said the City of Ames received a grant from the Iowa Department of Transportation for a bike path on Hyland Avenue, but it would not allow for parking on the bike path.

Iowa DOT indicated in a city council meeting that if parking exists over bike lanes, potential hazards exist because bicyclists and motorists expect the bicycle lane to be unoccupied.

In addition to the hazards, allowing parking along the bike lanes would not be maintained in a manner acceptable to DOT.

Carl Mize, Ames/ISU Bicycle Committee chairman, said the big question about parking allowed on Hyland centered around parking on the north end near Unitarian Fellowship Church on Sundays.

“The Unitarian Fellowship Church relied on quite a bit of on-street parking,” Ryan said.

Unitarian Fellowship even offered to pay the city to ensure the availability of public parking along Hyland Avenue on the east side on Sunday mornings from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., committe documents state.

In a letter to the city council, Lucy Thomas, president of Friends of Central Iowa Biking, wrote that allowing such a “rental” of parking spaces would present too many safety hazards.

Mize said the feeling of the bicycle committee was, “If it’s a bicycle path, it’s a bicycle path, and it’s not an occasional parking site.”

Mize, who is also a member of the Unitarian Fellowship Church, said they are trying to work out alternatives for the parking problems the new plan will cause the church.

With the new ordinance, Mize said, Hyland Avenue will be striped as a two-lane road with two bicycle paths on the outside areas — one on the east side and one on the west side.

Meter parking will be discontinued.

The bicycle paths on Hyland Avenue will be the first on-street bicycle paths in town, Mize said.

“We’ve just about finished coming up with a new bicycle master plan,” Mize said.

The plan calls for the addition of a number of miles of bicycle paths in Ames.

He said workers have not yet marked Hyland because “they’ve been waiting to mark the whole street at one time.”

Scott Logan, city traffic engineer, said “No Parking” signs will be posted along Hyland Avenue within the next few days.

Lane markings will be placed as soon as possible so bicyclists can start using the new paths.

Ryan said the ordinance will become law when the ordinance is published, which she expects to be done sometime this week.