[Summit] What's Next for the Traffic Calming Project?

[John Bazik]

On Sat, Nov 05, 2005 at 12:57:12PM -0500, Jack Templin wrote:
> Hi All,
> I read BETA's Traffic Calming Plan yesterday, and have watched the recent
> construction of bump-outs on many of our side streets.
> 
> I haven't, however, been able to find online any information about what, if
> anything is, next? Are future proposed projects (the Hope Street shops
> district improvements) from BETA's plan approved? budgeted? Scheduled?
> 
> Thanks for any information.
> 
> Jack Templin

This is it for now.  The city, our councilman and SNA all agreed that it
would make sense to do the project in phases, in order to gauge public
acceptance, evaluate its effect on traffic, and allow for traffic
patterns to adjust to the changes.  The new traffic calming features
may be sufficient in some places, and may displace traffic onto other
streets - it's hard to know for sure what will happen.

The total cost for the BETA plan was around $2 million.  The project
you see cost around $700,000, so it's about 1/3.

As always, it's a question of money.  Kevin Jackson paid for this
project from his share of a city bond issue from 2000.  Under the current
administration, I would guess that further bonding is unlikely.  We have
discussed using Federal "main street" dollars to fund the work on the
commercial corridor (and that was a key reason for leaving it out of
the current work).

The Dept of Planning is enthusiastic about our traffic calming.  I was
told the other day by a city planner that other neighborhoods like what
they see over here and want some for themselves.  I believe that the
folks at planning would like to establish a city-wide traffic calming
program like some other cities have, and do it all in-house.  This would
lower the cost and make it part of what they do, instead of a special
one-time project, like ours.

But the bottom line is that no further work is budgeted or scheduled.
Much depends on the reaction, so if you like it, be sure to say something!
Those who hate it are not holding back.

John