Three versus Four (redux)
Tonight's the night for the Athens-Clarke County Commission to make its decision about three-laning a portion of Prince Avenue. I've waxed poetic on this subject before, so I won't needlessly bore you with any more of my rants. I do, however, think it's worthwhile to go over some of my key disagreements one final time.
Quite simply, this will significantly increase traffic congestion and further clog up one of the main traffic arteries which flow into downtown Athens. As a result, a large number of cars will probably jump over to the nearby streets in Cobbham and Boulevard as they attempt to bypass the logjam.
Contrary to some assertions in the Athens Banner-Herald in recent days, three-laning Prince Avenue will do little if anything to encourage walking or increased bicycle use. What it will do is further congest an area which is already starting to reach its limit with traffic.
Furthermore, some on the commission want to take over the majority of Prince Avenue from the state DOT in an attempt to possibly three-lane the entire road heading into Jackson County. This would be wrongheaded for a variety of reasons including - but not limited to - increased expenditures in a needless area for our local government (depriving funds from going to other avenues such as a master sidewalk plan or The Bus) as well as the potential threat of hindering the ability of emergency vehicles from Athens Regional Medical Center to quickly respond to situations downtown.
I haven't seen eye-to-eye with the Banner-Herald's editorial board in recent days, but they get it right on this one. Let's hope the commission can do so now.
Quite simply, this will significantly increase traffic congestion and further clog up one of the main traffic arteries which flow into downtown Athens. As a result, a large number of cars will probably jump over to the nearby streets in Cobbham and Boulevard as they attempt to bypass the logjam.
Contrary to some assertions in the Athens Banner-Herald in recent days, three-laning Prince Avenue will do little if anything to encourage walking or increased bicycle use. What it will do is further congest an area which is already starting to reach its limit with traffic.
Furthermore, some on the commission want to take over the majority of Prince Avenue from the state DOT in an attempt to possibly three-lane the entire road heading into Jackson County. This would be wrongheaded for a variety of reasons including - but not limited to - increased expenditures in a needless area for our local government (depriving funds from going to other avenues such as a master sidewalk plan or The Bus) as well as the potential threat of hindering the ability of emergency vehicles from Athens Regional Medical Center to quickly respond to situations downtown.
I haven't seen eye-to-eye with the Banner-Herald's editorial board in recent days, but they get it right on this one. Let's hope the commission can do so now.
posted by Jmac at 8:19 AM
7 Comments:
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I find the the third paragraph of this post particularly unconvincing.
Maybe that's unsurprising since you don't provide any justification for the assertion that 3-laning won't stimulate non-motorized traffic.
You may be right, but it's hard to see how that's possible, at least based on the rise of non-motorized traffic on the reconfigured Lumpkin. Add to that the fact that Prince has retail businesses that are destinations in themselves, something that Lumpkin doesn't really have.
So how is it that a safer pedestrial environment wouldn't encourage people to visit Prince's retail locations on foot?
You simply recycle all of the same arguments against three-laning, without analysis or additional insight. You've made a thorough and complete list of what's been said previously in opposition.
Your arguments could be correct. With exactly zero factual information to back up your assertions, however, we do not know.
Links to data supporting these assertions would be helpful.
For example:
"Quite simply, this will significantly increase traffic congestion . . . a large number of cars will probably jump over to the nearby streets in Cobbham and Boulevard as they attempt to bypass the logjam." Prove it.
" . . . three-laning Prince Avenue will do little if anything to encourage walking or increased bicycle use . . ." Prove it.
" . . . the potential threat of hindering the ability of emergency vehicles from Athens Regional Medical Center to quickly respond to situations downtown . . ." Again, prove it. Here, you seem to admit that it's not provable -- "potential threat." Yeah, it could be bad.
Without data, we don't know.
Darren
While I thank our anonymous poster and Darren for their comments about my strength of my arguments, their concern is more than likely unwarrented because I had written about this earlier and have, in the past, commented about it at length at both Hillary's blog and at Athens Politics.
I sort of put up a half-hearted summary/argument.
My apologies for not having any concrete data - though I will point out, both of your criticisms come without any data to back them up as well.
Our anonymous poster doesn't enjoy my third paragraph saying I don't do anything to prove it won't stimulate pedestrian traffic, but there is little in his/her rebuttal to say it will stimulate pedestrian traffic.
There is a passing mention - without concrete data it should be noted - to Lumpkin Street. This can easily be explained due to the large volume of students which flood that area - particularly at the intersection of Baxter and Lumpkin. These are students who would either ride a bus (another form of alternative transportation) or walk/ride a bike from their dorms.
It seems to me that to suggest that it is solely the result of three-laning Lumpkin Street fails to see the entire picture.
I think my central point remains - the influx of workers from Jackson County and beyond - along with those who live along Hawthorne Avenue and Oglethorpe Avenue - who use Prince Avenue to reach employment along that corridor or in downtown will be affected by reducing Prince Avenue from four lanes to three lanes.
It will increase traffic congestion and wait times - this is true at both Lumpkin and Baxter whether or not you think such a change is significant or minimal.
I also ask where are these pedestrians on foot coming from? If they come from the Cobbham area, why is there the need to three-lane the road? They'll be on the side of the road that is dominated by retail business.
Because when we talk about 'retail business' all we really mean is the one sliver of commercial space that holds The Grit. The Bottleworks facility has ample parking and a backroad access which is very easy and conducive for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. So are we going to completely restructure an entire section of our road because of increased access to a handful of businesses?
If this was an Eckerd's or Wal-Mart we'd have people shouting about favoritism at every turn. But The Grit makes it 'cool?'
And Darren ... I didn't feel the need to rehash my personal analysis of this issue or link to other arguments against this. I summarized ... for that, I am terribly sorry to annoy you. Of course, considering the arguments I 'rehashed' are strong on their own and haven't been answered in any forum I've seen, I don't know how invalid they are.
Although I'm for three-laning, my point was not to say that your arguments were wrong. My point was that many of them are unprovable. Arguments on BOTH sides of the issue tend to follow the same pattern: "such-and-such will happen if they do/don't three-lane Prince," without much empirical evidence in support.
(and a minor complaint: I didn't say that you "rehashed" anything, so I think you're quoting yourself when you put rehash in quotes in your last paragraph).
Darren
Is that really a complaint? I don't mean that in a snarky way either ... well perhaps a bit. But this uber-close analysis of my citings is mighty weird.
Snark as much as you want.
Darren
But the philosopher wants to know, Darren, how does one provide "empirical" evidence of what "would/would not happen in the future if some course or action were/were not taken?
The reasoning here seems fundamentally "economic" in nature, which does have some empirical "stuff" behind it (we would hope?).
The sorts of people who tend to drive down Prine are the sorts of people who need to drive down Prince. Making that drive less fun will not encourage people not to do it, so much as it will just make the vast majority of those people have less fun on their way to work/wherever they are going. I think this is what Johnathan is saying. It's hard to know how much "empirical" evidence he could produce for his claim, or you for yours. We could poll the people who drive down Prince regularly and ask them why they do it, I suppose.
Has anyone out there in Athens done this already?
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