Ann Arbor Lowertown Mobility Study meeting *now*

[Ken Clark]

This meeting just started, not many people on the meeting.  Here's the link, if you have some time:

Lower Town Area Mobility Study

Lower Town Area Mobility Study

[Kirk Westphal]

I'm sorry I had no idea this was happening.  When was this meeting announced? I attended the final "office hours" and I thought that the presentation to the Transportation Commission was the end of the line. 

Based on the last presentation, I was profoundly disappointed in the consultant's lack of grounding or alignment with our Vision Zero Transportation Plan and the Carbon Neutrality Plan, and their complete absence of any vision to permanently decrease vehicle speeds such as through significant road diets (Division) or more 2-way conversions. No robust analysis of the hospital intersection, either.  It all seems designed to maintain automobile "levels of service" for UM employees to speed through our city to get to the parking structures on Maiden Lane and at the hospital as quickly as possible.  I'm very sad to say that I think it would be a disservice for council to accept this plan.

--
Please note that WBWC google groups is an unmoderated forum. It was developed by the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition as a tool for bikers and walkers to discuss key issues and share information. However, not all views expressed in this group are the views or values of WBWC. For more information about WBWC, meetings, and projects, please visit www.wbwc.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wbwc+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wbwc/1794877499.703306.1632434966320%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Ken Clark]

Kirk,

First, it's a study, not a plan.  Council will be presented with the recommendations, but I don't know that it's planned to be adopted.  It's more a 'hire a consultant to discuss ways to handle a particular traffic corridor'.  Their recommendations are pretty heavy on biking and walking accommodations, actually, along with speed management and travel demand management.  Since it really sounds like staff told them they were hired to 'fix' congestion problems, it's a lot better than we might have expected.

And in fairness, it's not clear there's much desire on the Council level to actually make transportation in Ann Arbor carbon neutral.  I get the impression they were willing to write that into the plan when they thought it was a smaller part of our emissions, and we were only dealing with resident travel.  When some of us pointed out we're supposed to count a portion of non-resident commuter traffic, and OSI finally got some numbers for that, I think council choked.  It's not like the Transportation Commission is taking that problem on, or the Environmental Commission, or the Energy Commission, or the Planning Commission.  It's kind of fascinating how all of the commissions seem to point to someone else when this topic comes up.

It would be kind of terrific, actually, to get a transportation greenhouse gas consultant study done here.  Tell them we want to get to carbon neutral with our transportation emissions, do a proper estimate using the complete ICLEI / EPA list of emissions sources, then tell us how we could get to zero.  Then that consultant could point fingers hard at the University (which is also ignoring the problem), the DDA, and city staff.  Point out the horrible job we've done implementing non-motorized plans from the past, the lack of support for transit at the city level, and our suburban land-use.  Our near complete absence of traffic calming would show up too.  But that would make the DDA heads explode, so that can't happen.  (And the U would probably ignore it anyway.)

The suggestions so far are to convert a lot of the intersections to roundabouts, which is the method most likely to slow traffic while getting through staff and possibly actually happening.  Some of the roundabouts would be the smallest/lowest speed arterial roundabouts suggested by NACTO.  Parking, rail, employment, and housing are outside the scope of the study. 

I would swear they announced this meeting at the last one.  I know it went on my calendar about that time.  I thought someone here had mentioned it too.  I'm told it was on the WBWC Facebook page recently. 

Ken

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wbwc/CAAYd4F9ynxT3VzOfApzSG7o%3DVC%2BmYt-xXq2QVt29rgFEcr-y0w%40mail.gmail.com.