How can you not think it is absurd? What could five people making 80K per year study for 365 days? It is going to cost X to repave the street, Y to tear it up and plant sod. If I got three estimates for each, it might take me (alone) a day to figure out the best option.
You're greatly simplifying what needs to be looked at. There will be traffic counts, scenario design, modeling and so on. I do like the idea of just putting up temporary stuff to see what happens.
This is another example of people not understanding what transportation costs.
Actually, I do understand what transportation costs. And it seems as if a lot of the cost is waste. Just think of the transportation network we could have if we eliminated the wasted money.
Traffic counts? Someone delivers the strip in the road that counts the cars that drive over it. Very inexpensive. Even if someone sat in a running car, counting cars for a whole week, you are under $5,000, including overhead. I doubt scenario design would be included in this "study." Maybe they will sketch a couple of options, but most design work will come after the decision is made, and the costs will be included in the project's costs, not the $350K for this study. Modeling and forecasting, sounds fancy, but probably not really necessary in this scenario. Since this is a relatively short stretch of a very quiet street, it definitely shouldn't cost hundreds of thousands to figure out the current usage, and forecast where the cars will go if this street is pedestrianized.
Again, I understand that it is expensive to build things, especially infrastructure and transportation projects. But if we are smarter in the way we spend our money, we will have much more to show for it. Take the money used to "study" projects and spend it ON the project, and we will be a much better city.