The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization convenes on Tuesday the 22nd, and there might be just a few notes in passing. They have published this month a map of sidewalks and sidewalk projects on busier streets rated collector and larger.
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| Sidewalk Inventory |
All of the MPO's maps are collected here, some of them current, some of them last updated within the last two or three years.
In the minutes to last month, there's a discussion of the safety trend data, and one note in it really should deserve greater pause and reflection.
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| Glimmers of understanding on congestion, speed, and safety |
If because of less congestion during the Pandemic there is more speeding and proportionately more crashes, what then is the relation between congestion and safety? There is sometimes, maybe often, a trade-off between congestion relief and safety, and we ought to give this more thought when we have prioritized congestion relief and higher speeds.
For example, one of the items is discussion of funding an expansion to the Cordon Road plan to include Keubler and a desired interchange with Highway 22. The County and allies would like Cordon Road built out to four full auto travel lanes.
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| Desire for four auto travel lanes on Cordon Road |
But we already have a speeding problem on and near Cordon Road.
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| During Christmas Tree season last year on Cordon Rd |
How is widening and more lanes going to help us here with safety? If we live now in a world in which less driving is an urgent need, why is prioritizing safety over speed not a no-brainer? The MPO should be giving climate and safety much more thought.
The MPO convenes remotely at noon on Tuesday the 22nd. (Full agenda and meeting packet here.)
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| Meeting info |
1 comment:
County staff stated about a year ago at a joint ELNA-ESSNA meeting that they expect Cordon will be improved to five lanes which would include two travel lanes in each direction and one center turn lane with the addition of some turn lanes at key intersections such as State and Cordon, Center and Cordon to look like Silverton and Cordon.
They also plan to put more traffic lights. I believe they have already been included in previous SKATS projects. Some of this work will automatically slow some of the traffic as density increases. It appears that most of the vacant land next to Cordon will be developed as multifamily or higher density development. Note the 680 housing units expected at State and Cordon Road. Center and Cordon is already zoned RM and It is assumed that Sunnyview and Cordon will be rezoned as RM before long.
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