News & Views You Can Use
Repaving Projects to Look at Three-Laning Local Roads
originally published March 5, 2008
Three-lane streets (with center “suicide” turn lanes) can carry almost as much traffic as four-lane streets do - and are both safer for drivers and easier for pedestrians to cross, while freeing up extra space for bike lanes. That’s why several formerly four-lane streets (like Lumpkin and Baxter) have in recent years been re-striped to three lanes. In fact, county policy now calls for any four-lane street to be considered for three-laning whenever it comes up for repaving. That will soon happen with Cedar Shoals Drive and North Avenue; the Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Department of Transportation and Public Works will hold a public meeting at 120 Dougherty St. on Mar. 17 at 7 p.m. to consider the “possible” three-laning of those streets.
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.
Also, Hawthorne Avenue between West Broad Street and Oglethorpe Avenue will soon be resurfaced, county engineer Jason Peek says. (The county performed a similar resurfacing last year on Hancock Avenue, west of Milledge.) To minimize traffic disruption on that busy corridor, most of the work can be carried on at night over a three-week period, he says. Old pavement will be ground off, but rather than being discarded, will be incorporated into the new surface. That will save hauling costs, Peek says. To avoid any “surprises,” a public information meeting will be held at 120 Dougherty St. on Wednesday, Mar. 5 from 7-8:30 p.m. Staffers will have some traffic data on hand at that meeting, transportation Director David Clark says, because his department realizes that many citizens would like to see that section of Hawthorne returned to a four-lane configuration. Staffers are not planning on making any kind of recommendation to that extent, though, because they’ve not been directed to do so by ACC Commissioners, Clark says.
Road Projects Line Up Under a New Georgia DOT
originally published March 5, 2008
Recent changes at the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) - including the appointment of Gena Abraham as its new head - may presage a new direction for the often-criticized agency, local officials say. 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. And it’s not just Athens that has issues with GDOT, Roswell mayor Jere Wood told Flagpole in 2006. “They’re just getting beaten up right and left,” Wood said, in conflicts when Georgia cities try to design pedestrian-friendly streets. The agency has been “under a lot of pressure to change,” he said then. Wood added, “they’re trying.”
GDOT has been borrowing money for years - against anticipated federal funds - to pay for projects like the building of Georgia Highway 316, says ACC transportation planner Sherry Moore. Now those bonds are coming due - and “the money coming out of DOT is getting less and less,” Moore says. “And that’s across Georgia. Everybody’s funding is dwindling.” Proposed projects are being modified to make them cost less, she says. “The money's drying up, and the new commissioner, both in the same timeframe, has really created this shuffle in terms of GDOT. So we’ll see where it all goes.” But Moore thinks that constant local pressure on GDOT, from elected officials and county staffers, has helped to change the agency. For example, GDOT has in the past refused to fund sidewalks or bike lanes unless they were part of a road-widening project. Now, Moore says, “that attitude has changed a little bit.”
MACORTS - the three-county board that requests road projects (its full name is (Madison-Athens-Clarke-Oconee Regional Transportation Study) - last month approved the addition of bike lanes and sidewalks along Milledge Avenue (outside Loop 10) and Jefferson River Road, but without widening either road as originally planned. (Both road-widenings were cancelled in order to conserve money for another project aiming to add a new westside interchange to the Loop.) Moore thinks that dropping the road-widenings, and building only the sidewalks and bike lanes “is more consistent with what we hear about these particular corridors, what’s actually wanted [by local citizens].“ Neither project has yet been funded by GDOT, so designs and construction dates have not been determined. Also in MACORTS plans, and scheduled for construction in 2010, is widening of the College Station Road river bridges to accommodate bike lanes.
To Athens-Clarke Mayor Heidi Davison, it’s “a good sign” that MACORTS dropped two road-widening projects. “And that’s what I’ve been hoping… that we might see some change in culture” at GDOT, towards becoming “more sensitive to the needs of local communities to look for ways that they can accommodate multiple users - at significantly less cost to [GDOT]. And that would give us some of the relief that we’re looking for in terms of congestion and air pollution.” Davison has met new GDOT Commissioner Abraham, and finds her to be honest and “a quick study.” She adds, “I’m very impressed…. She just brings a different sensibility to her work.”
A public comment period on the latest MACORTS plan will remain open until Mar. 12. See www.athensclarkecounty.com/macorts for more information or to comment on the plans.
Water Rates To Change
As Soon as July
originally published March 5, 2008
Some ACC water restrictions could be relaxed in early April, accommodating suggestions made earlier this month by Governor Sonny Perdue, said ACC Deputy Manager Bob Snipes last week. Outdoor “hand” watering (by hose) may be allowed again, and individual permits may be issued to water newly planted lawns, Snipes told members of the ACC Water Conservation Committee at a meeting Feb. 27. Specific recommendations will go to Mayor Heidi Davison by mid-March, he said, and Davison has the authority to implement them. But the county is still under a state mandate to reduce water usage by 10 percent, Snipes added. That will require April water usage to be limited to 16 million gallons per day - about the same amount used by citizens during the restrictive months of the past summer. “We’re going to have to be pretty diligent in terms of our indoor usage as well,” he added.
The 13-member committee - which includes representatives from local businesses, UGA, the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, the Upper Oconee Watershed Network and ACC staffers - also got a last look at a “conservation rate structure” before it goes to ACC Commissioners this spring for approval in June (it could be implemented July 1). Exact rates haven’t been set yet, but the new water rates - intended not to bring in more money, but to discourage spikes in water demand that are expensive for the county to provide - will set a “base rate” of water usage for each customer.
For industrial customers, that base rate will be the customer’s average monthly water demand during fiscal year 2006; for residents, it will be the “winter average” of water used from December 2005 through the following March. The winter average is supposed to reflect a resident’s normal indoor water usage. If a customer uses 10 percent more than his base usage, he will pay 25 percent more for the extra water. If he uses up to 125 percent of his base amount (in any given month) then the last 15 percent will be billed at half again the normal cost. And if his demand should exceed 125 percent, the amount of water over that amount will cost him two-and-a-half times the normal rate. (If that’s hard to understand, it’s probably been explained correctly….) For customers who conserve water, or use the same amount every month, bills could even go down. But for those who use more water in some months than in others, bills will go up - depending on how much water they use during the heavier (usually summer) months.
For most water customers, the actual cost increases won’t be very large, county staffers say. Eighty percent of water sold will be billed at the cheapest, “tier one” level, Public Utilities Director Gary Duck said. “We’re not talking about large sums of money here,” said Snipes, the initial intent is to make people more conscious of their water usage. But setting up the “tiered” rate structure will make it possible to raise rates later, he added, if needed to encourage conservation. And during a time of extreme drought, a “totally different” rate structure might be implemented, committee chair (and District 7 ACC Commissioner) Kathy Hoard said. In a sample water bill provided by the Public Utilities Department, a residential customer who uses twice as much water in one month as his base amount would pay about $30 more that month than he does under the present system.
With the top rate tier at only 2.5 times the minimum rate, no customer (no matter how much she uses) will pay more than that for water. And even the county’s largest industrial water users - if they don’t vary their usage from month to month - will pay a lower per-gallon rate than does a homeowner who reaches the top pricing tier by watering her lawn. A multiplier of six or seven times the per-gallon minimum would better encourage conservation, Duck acknowledged; but, he said, “we know that’s not going to be palatable.”
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