Jim Thorpe Borough is considering limiting traffic to one direction on a narrow downtown street as part of a vast parking and traffic realignment project it has undertaken in recent months.

Council, during a workshop meeting Thursday, kicked the tires on making Quarry Street “one way,” but which direction traffic would flow, or if the change is necessary at all, is still up in the air.

“I think if you’re going to make it one way, it should be flowing down toward Broadway because otherwise you force all of the traffic onto Race Street and then you have to go back down to the bottom and it will be a nightmare down by Myst with people trying to make a left to come back into town,” Mayor Michael Sofranko said. “Also, any trucks are going to have a real hard time making the turn there where the new distillery is on Race Street.”

Race Street, Sofranko added, often gets blocked up by UPS or FedEx trucks making deliveries.

“Quarry is the escape route off of Race Street,” he said.

Jim Thorpe Public Works Manager Vince Yaich said the borough can’t plow Quarry Street going from Broadway to Race Street because the trucks can’t make the turn onto Race Street.

“There is a pole right there on the left and the smallest plows on the trucks anymore are 9 feet,” Yaich said. “A couple times we tried it and the plow would actually get on the curb and if the snow was deep enough, it would hang the truck up and you had to get the loader over there to get the truck off.”

If the borough limited traffic to one way in that direction, Yaich said, an employee would need to be stationed at the Quarry and Broadway intersection until the plow made a pass going in the opposite direction.

Police Chief Joe Schatz said his personal preference, if a change is made, would be to send traffic on Quarry from Broadway to Race Street.

“We lived here for years and we all know if you go up and want to turn back around to go to a shop or something, where do you turn around at, right there at Quarry,” Schatz said. “You have to take everything in consideration. People are still going to try to turn around no matter what you do.”

According to Schatz, most people the borough’s meter attendant talks to already think the street is limited to one way.

Sofranko suggested council wait on any Quarry Street changes to gauge if it’s really necessary.

“I don’t know that we need to create a problem where there might not necessarily be one,” he said.

Packer Hill Road has also been the on again, off again subject of one way discussions at council meetings over the years. Schatz said the borough has received complaints about traffic backups at the bottom of the hill near the Carbon County Courthouse Annex and Route 209.

“It’s dangerous there right now,” Councilwoman Joanne Klitsch said. “It happened to me this weekend. Whoever is coming down the hill, they do not see that stop sign and they do not stop.”

Councilman Bob Schaninger said Thursday he would be in favor of only sending traffic up the hill.

“We talked about this years ago and you’re going to get pushback from the county because the people in that top lot at the annex won’t be able to jump back down,” Sofranko said. “They don’t want to go back up through Center Avenue. And if you do send them up Center Avenue, the residents in the 100 block go off about 4 p.m. when the county lets out because all of that traffic is coming up.”

The borough said it would keep both streets on its radar as it authorizes its solicitor to update ordinances related to parking and traffic flow.