Large study on transit use in metro Atlanta

From the AJC:

After a major study, the Atlanta Regional Commission knows a lot more about who takes transit in the area and why. But the numbers, released Thursday, also beg the question: As the Atlanta region prepares for a referendum on funding regional transportation projects, is there really demand for regional mass transit?

While the ARC does not plan for Athens-Clarke or its surrounding counties (MACORTS does all that), its decisions will certainly affect us, especially as they relate to regional rail and other transit options.

I'm with MARTA CEO Beverly Scott on the crux of the issue:

"Part of the problem you’re looking at now is chicken and an egg," she said. With service that is more frequent, faster, more integrated and more convenient, "[transit ridership] numbers absolutely would go up."

In cities that have well-planned networks of user-friendly inter-city rail, intra-city light rail, subways, buses, trolleys, and shuttles, people absolutely use them.

Connect these transit options to walkable, bikeable, and otherwise transit-oriented communities, and you've got yourself a sustainable place worth living in and visiting.

Comment on MACORTS Transportation Improvement Program

The Madison Athens Clarke Occonee Regional Transportation committee is now seeking comments on the Transportation Improvement Program, the short list of local projects to be funded by federal, state and county budgets. Comments will be accepted through Wednesday, October 21, 2009.

Use our convenient webform to send your comments to MACORTS!

See this earlier post for more information.

More about the TIP

ABH covers the Transportation Improvement Plan:

State funding for transportation is hard to come by lately as the Department of Transportation prioritizes a backlog of projects it cannot fund with declining fuel taxes. A proposed six-year transportation plan for Clarke, Oconee and Madison counties includes only a fraction of the projects listed in years past.

Among the projects that are scheduled to move forward over the next three years:

► Buying land for a new Athens Perimeter-Peter Street-Olympic Drive interchange scheduled for construction in 2014.

► Extending the North Oconee River Greenway from Oconee Street to College Station Road.

► Turning an abandoned East Athens railroad into a walking trail.

► Buying land to eventually widen Mars Hill Road.

► Completing Jennings Mill Parkway, which runs parallel to Atlanta Highway.

► Rebuilding the College Station Road bridge over the North Oconee River.

Those projects mostly are federally funded, but some also include funding from state and local governments.

red = not so much
green = yes, please

BikeAthens will host a TIP review & analysis meeting on Thursday, Oct. 1st, 6 pm at Trappeze.

All are welcome!

Athens area Transportation Improvement Program

Recently, we called for public comment on the "Long Range Transportation Plan" for the Athens area. Many thanks to all who submitted comments!

Now, we urge you to comment on the "Transportation Improvement Program."

The LRTP, as its name suggests, is a 25 year plan.

The TIP, on the other hand, is the 3-5 year "ready-to-be-constructed" list of transportation projects. The projects in the TIP come from the broader LRTP list.

Commenting on the TIP (hopefully) affects the more immediate short-term prioritization of projects.

Stay tuned to our website, this blog, and our listservs. We'll be posting info soon on a TIP review meeting as well as a convenient comment submission form through our website.

Here's the official announcement from MACORTS planners:

The public comment period for the MACORTS FY 2010 - 2013 Transportation
Improvement Program begins on Monday, Sept. 21st and ends on October 21,
2009. The full Draft TIP and supporting materials are now posted on the
MACORTS website (www.macorts.org) along with a comment form that can be
submitted directly from the website. If you would prefer materials in
hardcopy or on CD, please contact:

Sherry F. Moore
Transportation Planner
Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study
Athens-Clarke County Planning Dept.
macorts@co.clarke.ga.us
(706) 613-3515

Long Range Plan in the news

Banner-Herald reports.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a comment!

The Athens area "Long Range Transportation Plan" needs your input

The LRTP is a document which outlines the transportation plan for the Athens region for the next 25 years. Now is your chance to tell local planners what kind of transportation choices you would like to see in Athens.

Your input on this plan is critical!

Use our convenient comment form (with suggested comments), or download the hard copy form from MACORTS (pdf).

Comment deadline is August 18th.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to share your thoughts on this important document!

Long Range Transportation Plan

Transportation planners are working on the regional Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP). Planners started taking formal public comments on July 20th. Comments can be submitted through August 18th.

Submitting your comments on the LRTP is a huge opportunity to help direct the transportation development in Athens for the next twenty years.

If you would like to learn more about what the LRTP means, come to the BikeAthens discussion meeting at Trappeze Pub on Wednesday, August 12th, 7pm.

More information below:

MACORTS Public Comment Period

The Public Comment Period for the Draft MACORTS 2035 Long Range
Transportation Plan (LRTP) will begin Monday, July 20 and ends Tuesday,
August 18th. All of the public involvement materials and the Draft LRTP can
now be found at, www.macorts.org or at the Planning Departments in Athens,
Watkinsville, or Danielsville. Contact Sherry F. Moore at
macorts@co.clarke.ga.us for additional information. Please take the time to
read over the plan and give your input!

MACORTS surveying interest in rural bus routes

MACORTS, our regional transportation planning body, is conducting a survey to measure interest in running public transit to Madison & Oconee counties.

Officials said any rural transit system likely would consist of smaller vans that would, for example, ferry elderly residents from home to the doctor and back.

There are no plans to expand Athens-Clarke bus service into outlying counties, Athens Transit Director Butch McDuffie said, but he does get requests from carless commuters in small towns like Winder, Danielsville, Watkinsville and Lexington for some form of public transit.

MACORTS hosting public transit feasibility meetings in Madison & Oconee counties

PUBLIC MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

Public Transportation Feasibility Study

The Madison Athens-Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study (MACORTS) has contracted with Street Smarts to assess the need and evaluate the options available to provide public transportation service within the MACORTS region.

A public meeting will be conducted in both Madison County and in Oconee County to obtain public input on various service concepts for meeting public transportation needs in the community. The meetings will be held as follows:

Oconee County
Thursday, April 23 4:00 to 7:00 PM
Oconee Veterans Park Community Center
3500A Hog Mountain RoadWatkinsville, GA 30677

Madison County
Tuesday, April 28 4:00 to 7:00 PM
Madison County Government Complex
91 Albany AvenueDanielsville, GA 30633

Local trans planning: get involved & be heard

MACORTS, the regional transportation coordination body, is currently updating its Long Range Transportation Plan.

It's a little difficult to find on the MACORTS main page, but the presentation given by the consultants who are handling the model for the LRTP is now online. The model is a representation, based on traffic conditions and socio-economic data, of the geographic distribution of traffic in the Athens region.

Here's the direct link to the model.

On the plus side, they've included public transit for the first time ever, so we may get a more accurate picture when we look at Athens Transit and UGA Campus Transit as part of the network. However, the 2035 projection was based on current ridership - today's raw numbers, not percentages - so with the projected 50% MACORTS-wide population growth and 47% UGA enrollment jump, this obviously needs some adjusting.

Stay tuned for information on how you can submit formal comments on the LRTP.

Corridor study , MACORTS and BikeAthens

Flagpole reports the following:

With county planning staffers pleading they have a full plate already, Athens-Clarke County Commissioners backed away last week from broadening a county “corridor management” study to include detailed design specs for crosswalks and bike lanes, and perhaps policies on signs, speed limits, overhead utility wires and bus access. But county staff and Planning Director Brad Griffin insisted the $42,000, consultant-produced study was never intended to be a design manual.

The slick 35-page study suggests a dozen categories for county streets: “urban institutional” streets like Lumpkin, for example, should have street trees, patterned crosswalks and landscaped “pedestrian refuge islands” at midblock crosswalks, it suggests. “Suburban commercial” streets (like Barnett Shoals Road) should have wide sidewalks separated from the road by a grass strip, and driveway entrances should be limited to one per business, it recommends.

...

Commissioners had bounced the study back to staffers for further work, but planning director Griffin told them last week he would need “a rather extensive timeline” and perhaps an outside consultant to revisit the study. That won’t happen soon; instead, Commissioners appear likely to approve the present study - now over a year old - as the basis for the future “complete streets” study they’d rather see. (“Complete streets” refers to street designs that accommodate all users, not just drivers.)

Other upcoming discussions may include updating the county’s Bicycle Master Plan (which designates plans for bike lanes) and whether to replace the planning commission (perhaps by BikeAthens, which has requested it) as the citizens’ voice on the MACORTS board. (MACORTS is the multi-county board that requests local transportation projects from the state DOT.)

We've long argued that we deserve a place at the table for discussions regarding transportation planning in Athens. Every recommendation BikeAthens has ever made (expanding transit service, installing more cross- and sidewalks, slowing traffic, and developing a connected network of bike facilities) would increase the safety and accessibility of Athens' transportation system. We look forward to a supportive vote and participating on the MACORTS board!

News for the "M" in MACORTS

From MainStreetNews.com, which covers the surrounding counties:

A regional transportation study recommends over $42 million worth of Madison County road improvement projects by 2030. But how many of those plans included on the long-term regional transportation study will become reality has yet to be determined.
Sherry Moore, transportation planner for Athens-Clarke County, said an annual transportation improvement plan update will indicate which county roads targeted by the Madison-Athens-Clarke County-Oconee Region Transportation Study (MACORTS) have the best chance for the recommended upgrades the soonest.

For the full story, click the link above.

Transportation news from Flagpole

Lots of useful news for BikeAthens supporters in this week's Flagpole.

More on the potential for 3-laning Cedar Shoals Drive and North Avenue:

County staffers are not making any recommendation “at this point” on whether to three-lane either street, traffic engineer Steve Decker says. “We are studying all the streets, taking regular traffic data… we don’t even plan to make a recommendation at the meeting; we want to hear what the people have to say,” he says. Without having traffic counts at hand, Decker guesses volumes on both streets to be under the 20,000 cars per day that is considered to be a practical maximum for three-lane streets.

Plus, discussion of GDOT's current budget crunch and new Director:

GDOT has sometimes frustrated local citizens and elected officials in picking which projects to fund, and typically favors expensive road-building and road-widening projects over cheaper sidewalk or bicycle facilities. Adding trees or crosswalks along a state- or federally-numbered road (like Prince or Milledge avenues) usually involves a tug-of-war with the agency, which sees roadside trees as a safety hazard and doesn’t like to see traffic slowed down along the routes that it maintains.
But ... constant local pressure on GDOT, from elected officials and county staffers, has helped to change the agency.

See the link above for both articles in their entirety.
Thanks to reporter John Huie and Flagpole for covering these issues!

Long Range Transportation Plan - update

Starting Monday, Feb. 25, MACORTS will be taking public comment regarding a
proposed amendment to the Long Range Transportation Plan. The complete
information will be posted on the MACORTS website (www.macorts.org) today.
The comment period will last until March 12, 2008. No public meetings will
be conducted, but MACORTS staff will be available to answer questions via
phone (706-613-3515) via e-mail (macorts@co.clarke.ga.us) or in person at
the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department.

Long Range Transportation Plan comment period

Monday opens a public comment opportunity for an amendment to the Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP), which concerns a proposed new interchange connecting the Loop to the Atlanta Highway.
The interchange is designed to relieve increasing congestion on Mitchell Bridge and Tallassee/Oglethorpe Roads, which cannot be widened. To balance project funds, three other projects are being modified in the LRTP. Information on the amendment will be available here soon.

No public meetings will be held, but comments may be sent online to macorts@co.clarke.ga.us through March 12.

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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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...