Tag Archives: Transportation

$12M to widen US 41 N is more than $7.5M for a bus system

There is no public transit in Lowndes County, except for the tiny MIDS bus system (I like it, but it’s small). Meanwhile, the county proposes to spend more in a new sales tax to widen one road, $12 million dollars for Old US 41 North, than a bus system would cost, $7.5 million.

One short stretch of road vs. a three-line bus system to connect Wiregrass Tech, Five Points, Downtown, Moody, East Side, South Side, West Side, and the Mall.

Road and bridge proponents usually mutter that a bus system won’t pay back for years, if ever. And that’s right: bus systems usually operate at a loss because local governments subsidize them for the social and economic benefits they bring, such as these:

This project will provide mobility options for all travelers; improve access to employment; and help mitigate congestion and maximize the use of existing infrastructure by promoting high-occupancy travel.
Employment, safety, and less sprawl, all from a bus system.

What road and bridge proponents don’t ever mention is: Continue reading →

Public comment form on T-SPLOST Roundtable

Received today on T-SPLOST meeting in Waycross today. -jsq
The SGRC website has been updated to correct the error for the public comment form. Thank you for letting us know and helping to spread the word about these public meetings.

-Southern Georgia Regional Commission

The correction has this new link to the form. The form says:
Public Comment Form
Southern Georgia Regional Transportation Roundtable
and asks for your name, address, phone, email, and your comments. I bet you could email that information if you don’t want to print out the form and write on it. The public notice about the regional T-SPLOST meetings said:
Comments are being accepted by email at chull@sgrc.us, by fax at 229-333-5212, or by mailing them to SGRC, ATTN: SG RTR, 327 W Savannah Ave., Valdosta, GA 31601.

For more information please call Corey Hull at 229-333-5277.

-jsq

T-SPLOST meeting in Waycross today

Update 12:30 8 September 2011: SGRC provided a fixed link to the public comment form.

The first SGRC public meeting about the T-SPLOST Draft Constrained Investment List is today in Waycross:


View Larger Map
Wednesday, September 7, 2011; 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.; at the Southern Georgia Regional Commission Waycross Office; 1725 South Georgia Parkway West, Waycross, Georgia; presentation will begin at 6:30 p.m.
If you live near Waycross, you may want to compare your local projects in the Draft Constrained Investment List with the previous unconstrained list to see what’s still in there and if there are any 50% cost increases like the Old US 41 North widening.

The VLMPO SGRC web page includes a link to a Public Comment Form but as you can see that link gets “page cannot be found”. Doubtless that’s an accident, given that VLMPO is and SGRC are among the most devoted to transparency of local governmental organizations.

Fixed now, with this new link to the public comment form.

I’d like to point out VLMPO SGRC does T-SPLOST administration, but is not responsible for the content of the project lists; those come from your local governments and are selected by the T-SPLOST regional committee and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Here’s the PDF public meeting notice received 30 August from VLMPO SGRC along with the cover letter already published. HTML version is appended below.

-jsq Continue reading →

T-SPLOST public meetings coming up in a few weeks

The public meetings for Transportation Sales Tax Project List are coming up in a few weeks. The one in Lowndes County is:
Monday, September 19, 2011; 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.; at the Valdosta City Hall Annex; 300 North Lee Street, Valdosta, Georgia; presentation will begin at 10:30 a.m.
There’s a meeting in Fitzgerald later that same day, and an earlier meeting in Waycross on Wednesdday, September 7th.

If you’re interested in saying something about the 50% increase in the Old US 41 North widening project or about some of the other projects still on the constrained list, this would be the place to do it. You can also send in written comments. Here’s contact information.

-jsq

T-SPLOST Public Meetings Set —SGRC

Received yesterday. -jsq
For Immediate Release For More Information Contact:
August 25, 2011Corey Hull, 229-333-5277

Public Meetings Set for Transportation Sales Tax Project List

The Southern Georgia Regional Transportation Roundtable has set a series of public meetings to review the Draft Constrained Investment List for the following counties, representing the Special District for a proposed transportation sales and use tax: Atkinson, Bacon, Ben Hill, Berrien, Brantley, Brooks, Charlton, Clinch, Coffee, Cook, Echols, Irwin, Lanier, Lowndes, Pierce, Tift, Turner, and Ware.

In 2010, Governor Sonny Perdue signed into law the Transportation Investment Act of 2010, a law prescribing a regional sales tax referendum for transportation projects. Jay Roberts, State Representative from District 154-Ocilla, and Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said “This law gives

Continue reading →

Atlanta’s T-SPLOST

Atlanta at least included some public transport in its T-SPLOST list, although most of its list will more likely make problems worse for pedestrians.

Ariel Hart wrote for the AJC 15 August 2011, Regional transportation list approved

If the projects are built, in just over a decade passengers could be riding trains from Atlanta to Cobb County or to Emory University, or traveling new, swifter ramps through the Ga. 400/I-285 interchange, or finding countless arterial roads wider and less clogged, from Henry County to Cherokee County and all points in between.
New swifter ramps! Countless arterial roads less clogged! Well, except by pedestrians trying to scurry through the faster traffic.

Why, in the second decade of the 21st century, do we continue with a failed traffic model from the middle of the 20th century? Seems to me traffic safety should be pertinent and should include pedestrians. and instead of more unsafe roads making life unpleasant and unsafe for communities, we could go for roads that serve communities.

-jsq

Snake Nation Road at Lowndes County Commission Monday 8:30AM, Tuesday 5:30PM

No rezonings this time, but plenty of money to be spent on this and that. The one I wonder about is
5.a. Change Order to Snake Nation Road Contract
We heard last time from Joe Pritchard that the county had received some estimates for resurfacing on Snake Nation Road, but he needed some time to organize funding before presenting details. OK, fair enough, but why is it a Change Order? Didn’t they just vote on realignment of Snake Nation Road in June? Why two months later a Change Order, which usually means have to do it right now with no competitive bids?

Here’s a backgrounder from the VDT about a sinkhole being discovered on Snake Nation Road last December. And here’s the VDT in May on costs for fixing it:

“We are purchasing the property to the north, 5.22 acres, for $40,000 to reroute the road,” said County Manager Joe Pritchard.

Rerouting the road will cost approximately $300,000 versus at least twice that amount to reinforce the hole, put in concrete supports, and fill it to prevent the road from collapsing again.

Here’s the agenda for this morning and tomorrow evening.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2011, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

T-SPLOST projects as of 15 August 2011

Here’s what’s still on the agenda for T-SPLOST funding for our T-SPLOST region: Constrained Draft Project Listing, Southern Georgia Most of Lowndes County’s boondoggle road widening projects seem to have been bounced off the list. This one is still on there: $8 million to widen old US 41 North.

Some of the other projects may also be boondoggles for all I know, but at least all the ones to widen roads right to the north edge of the county and thus drive development all the way into agricultural and forest areas are gone. Here’s the list: Continue reading →

Retrofitting suburbia —Ellen Dunham-Jones

There are many jobs in this. The Five Points redevelopment is an example of what she’s talking about. It’s a lot better than building more sprawl: safer, less expensive, more jobs, less energy cost, more energy independence, better health, and more community.

Georgia Tech Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones spole January 2010 at TEDxAtlanta, Retrofitting suburbia

In the last 50 years, we’ve been building the suburbs with a lot of unintended consequences. And I’m going to talk about some of those consequences and just present a whole bunch of really interesting projects that I think give us tremendous reasons to be really optimistic that the big design and development project of the next 50 years is going to be retrofitting suburbia. So whether it’s redeveloping dying malls or re-inhabiting dead big-box stores or reconstructing wetlands out of parking lots, I think the fact is, the growing number of empty and under-performing, especially, retail sites throughout suburbia gives us actually a tremendous opportunity to take our least-sustainable landscapes right now and convert them into more sustainable places. And in the process, what that allows us to do is to redirect a lot more of our growth back into existing communities that could use a boost, and have the infrastructure in place, instead of continuing to tear down trees and to tear up the green space out at the edges.
Here’s the video: Continue reading →

Do we need more of the same unsafe roads?

Many T-SPLOST projects submitted by Lowndes County would make traffic safety worse.

More from Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones of Georgia Tech:

Even Buford Highway, she says, could be transformed with medians, trees and buildings set closer to the road. Changes that are known to slow traffic. But outside of the ivory tower, change does not come easily. Or quickly.

Last year Georgia spent more than two billion dollars on transportation, but only a tiny fraction, less than 1 percent, went specifically to pedestrian safety.

And what Lowndes County has sent in for T-SPLOST funding includes: Do we need more of the same unsafe roads?

-jsq