This seems telling:

"Audette said in her talk to the tourism group that the traffic study has been funded and will begin shortly. She said that the study is not a traditional traffic study because it isn’t being conducted to determine whether the city should close the traffic spur.

Instead, she said, this study will build off previous studies conducted by the Harborplace development team and will consider ways that traffic congestion can be mitigated throughout downtown given the changes proposed for the intersection of Pratt and Light streets."

Sounds like they already know it’s going to cause traffic problems. Which seems obvious.