Parking, planning, paths and bus fares

Downtown parking proposal stirs up protest

UGA planning to be managed in Atlanta?

Alt-trans funds: Sidewalks & South Milledge bike-ped path

Possible bus fare increase

Local news a-plenty

From Flagpole:

• Downtown parking deck
• GA's slack attitiude toward train funding
• Downtown parking fees
• Possible bus fare increase
• 2005 SPLOST: "$8 million is available for local streetscape, sidewalk and infrastructure upgrades"
  

From ABH:

• Milledge Ave ped/bike trail

$500K available for alt trans projects in Athens

Athens-Clarke County has $500,000 to spend on bike, pedestrian, and transit projects, and we want to hear from you on which projects you'd like to see happen.

Read the post below and then please fill out the poll on our blog home page.

Details & project descriptions via the ABH:

A standing committee of five commissioners is deciding how to spend $500,000 the commission earmarked for alternative transportation - walking, biking and buses - in 2006.

Officials said they want to spend $75,000 to update a plan for future bike lanes written in 2001, expanding it beyond the three-mile radius from downtown that was mapped out eight years ago. They also want to hold back $25,000 for incidental expenses.

Projects that parks, transportation and Athens Transit officials said could be funded with the remaining money include:

► $400,000 to buy land for a future expansion of a planned, federally funded park-and-ride lot at Oconee Street and the Athens Perimeter.

► $400,000 to widen College Station Road between Research Drive and Barnett Shoals Road to add lanes for bike riders.

► $400,000 to build 1.3 miles of sidewalks along Oglethorpe Avenue, Whit Davis Road, Cherokee Road, Research Road and Cedar Shoals Drive.

► $400,000 to build a trail connecting the Multimodal Transportation Center to a planned rail-trail project in East Athens.

► $400,000 to supplement sales tax revenue earmarked for the North Oconee River Greenway.

► $400,000 to build paths in a proposed park along Pulaski Creek.

► $400,000 to build a bike lane along West Broad Street/Atlanta Highway from Alps Road to greenspace near the Middle Oconee River.

► $400,000 to build an off-road path connecting Milledge Avenue and Milledge Avenue Extension.

► $200,000 to buy land for bus shelters at stops where the local government does not own right-of-way.

► $50,000 to promote Athens Transit bus service.

► $20,000 to buy and install 40 bike racks around Athens.

Commentary on the Loop Interchange proposal

UPDATE

As for the value of the interchange to the ACC transportation infrastructure, there are some yet-to-be answered questions, particularly regarding the source of funding for the project. BikeAthens has often stood opposed to projects that consume tremendous sums of local transportation funds. Unlike federal funds flowing through GDOT, local transportation funds can be directed to projects at the behest of our own M&C - including bike/ped projects - without GDOT interference, and so are truly prized as the most "flexible" sort of funding, albeit very limited funding.

Jennings Mill Parkway was one example of such a locally-funded project opposed in recent years. BikeAthens favored a two-lane road versus the proposed four-lane road, believing that the four-lane road was overkill for even long-term projected traffic counts, and also because a more reasonable two-lane road would have left significant local funds available for other uses, including sidewalk construction (the four lane design was ultimately approved in an 8:2 vote of the ACC commission).

According to GDOT officials at recent transportation planning meetings, there is a surprising reluctance to put the new Loop interchange project into a GDOT work plan to make it eligible for federal funding, thus, local funding may ultimately be required if the project is to be built. This reluctance on the part of GDOT is not necessarily specific to this project, but is moreof a general blanket policy being put in place by the new GDOT Commissioner - to not add any more roads to the work program at the present time.

$28 M is a significant sum of local funding, and we can think of many other things that the local funds could be used for. On the other hand, we do approve of the elimination of all three of the projects that were scrapped by local planners in order to obtain the $28 M. In addition, there is some very interesting potential for greenspace acquisition that might accompany the purchase of ROW needed for this particular interchange.

Stay tuned .... and weigh in with your own thoughts during the public comment period February 25 - March 12.

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Regarding yesterday's Banner-Herald article:

A-C Seeks New Loop Interchange

by Blake Aued 2-13-08

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/021308/news_20080213058.shtml

This well-reported story describes plans for a new interchange connecting the Loop to the Atlanta Highway via the existing four-lane dead-end road near Heyward Allen Toyota. The interchange is proposed to relieve increasing congestion on Mitchell Bridge and Tallase/Oglethorpe Roads, which cannot be widened. As the story says, local planners needed to come up with $28 M to fund this project, and to do that made changes to three other existing projects in the transportation plans. The article states:

"Road planners will give up a project that would widen travel lanes and add a center turn lane to South Milledge Avenue between Whitehall and East Campus roads, saving $8 million. They'll scrap wider travel lanes from long-range plans for Jefferson River Road, saving $9 million. .... MACORTS is also drastically cutting back a politically unpopular four-lane road connecting U.S. Highways 29 and 441, instead now wanting to build a two-lane road connecting U.S. 29 to Danielsville road, primarily to serve fire trucks at a new fire station in that neighborhood ..... "

Of interest to bike/ped enthusiasts is that the South Milledge and Jefferson River Road projects both included the construction of bicycle/pedestrian facilities, and although the automobile components of the projects are being scrapped, the bike/ped components will remain intact, meaning that both of these former road-widening projects are now strictly bike/ped projects.

Of interest to the environmental community at large is that a section of planned roadway between Highway 441 (Commerce Road) and U.S. 29 was eliminated. This section of road has in the past been opposed by citizens who were concerned that the road would bisect the Sandy Creek Basin, including Cook's Trail, and cause significant disturbance in a large area of environmentally sensitive wetlands.

The amendment was formally adopted by the MACORTS Policy Committee at their meeting yesterday. There will be a 15-day public comment opportunity on this new interchange beginning February 25. More information on that comment period will be posted next week.

ABH: "A-C seeks new loop interchange"

From today's ABH:

Athens-Clarke officials want the state Department of Transportation to build a new Athens Perimeter interchange in West Athens.

The new interchange would be located off a dead-end, four-lane road near Heyward Allen Toyota, between the Oglethorpe Avenue/Tallassee Road and Atlanta Highway exits. It is intended to take cars off increasingly busy Westside streets like Mitchell Bridge Road and Oglethorpe Avenue that can't be widened, Athens-Clarke transportation planner Sherry Moore said.

"The idea is to relieve some of the congestion on Atlanta Highway and get that traffic on the loop without taxing the surrounding roadways," Moore said.

No money is available for the $28 million interchange, and engineering, right-of-way acquisition or construction won't begin before 2011.

For years, the DOT has planned to rebuild several perimeter interchanges, including ones at Olympic Drive, Lexington Road and Atlanta Highway, to handle increasing traffic.

To pay for the new interchange, MACORTS, a board of officials and residents that oversees state-funded transportation projects in Clarke, Oconee and Madison counties, will scale back plans for three other local projects.

Road planners will give up a project that would widen travel lanes and add a center turn lane to South Milledge Avenue between Whitehall and East Campus roads, saving $8 million. They'll scrap wider travel lanes from long-range plans for Jefferson River Road, saving $9 million.

MACORTS also is drastically cutting back a politically unpopular four-lane road connecting U.S. Highways 29 and 441. Instead, they now want to build a two-lane road connecting U.S. 29 to Danielsville Road, primarily to serve fire trucks at a new fire station in that neighborhood, Moore said. That change will save $11 million.

MACORTS is likely to approve the changes when its policy committee meets this morning. The changes will be open to public comment for 15 days beginning Feb. 25, Moore said.

The DOT also has pushed back $1 million in funding to buy land for an East Athens trail along an abandoned railroad from this year to next year.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 021308

Commentary to come...