City To Hold Railroad Crossing Improvements Workshop – Nov. 12th
Decatur Metro | October 22, 2009
Last month Hugh Saxon promised our city commissioners “extensive community participation and master planning effort” as part of the $1.5 capital bond project – detailed in the Community Transportation Plan – to improve railroad crossings at Candler/College/Trinity and McDonough/College/Howard. Today we learn a few more details about those meetings. From the city website…
A community workshop to discuss the railroad crossing improvements will be held on Thursday, November 12, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the City Commission meeting room of Decatur City Hall, 509 North McDonough Street, in downtown Decatur. We hope you will be able to join us to learn more about this project.
As part of its capital improvements program, the City of Decatur is considering options for improvements to the railroad crossings at Candler and McDonough Streets in downtown Decatur. The purpose of the work is to improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, bicyclists and others using these facilities. Measures required to implement a quiet zone in the railroad corridor will also be considered.
Also, here are a few more budget and timeline details specific to the intersections from the city’s webpage, which I had not seen before.
Candler/College/Trinity
- Budget: $1,200,000
- Status: Preliminary
- Bid Date: November 2011
- Construction: January 2012 – August 2012
- TE project – $1,000,000 awarded in February 2008
- DOT facility / CSX facility
- Quiet zone?
McDonough/College/Howard
- Budget: $600,000
- Status: Preliminary
- Bid Date: November 2011
- Construction: January 2012 – August 2012
- TE Project – $480,000 awarded in February 2008
- DOT facility / CSX facility
- Quiet zone?
Note that the question of whether to make these two intersection “quiet zones” has yet to be decided. A great reason to attend and participate in the November meeting!
h/t: The Decatur Minute
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Good news to hear the staff has set a date for community input. This is one of the issues the Commission voted on over the summer. It’s been a long time coming. What will be interesting is the Quiet Zone debate. The poll done for the Community Transportation Plan was split 50/50 was on zones, all other questions were answered with margins more like 60/40 or 65/35.
What I hope does not happen is that folks get bogged down in the Quiet Zone debate because these are complex intersections crossing a RR and also the Atlanta-Stone Mountain PATH. This will be our first attempt at remodeling two major intersections to be more pedestrian and cyclist friendly. The community really needs to get involved in this discussion as to what they want these intersections to accomplish.
Since I didn’t know, I found this description of what a “Quiet Zone” is plus requirements.
http://www.intrans.iastate.edu/ltap/Tech_News/2004/nov-dec/quiet_zone.htm
I also forgot to direct readers to Decatur’s Community Transportation Plan on the City website.
http://www.decaturga.com/cgs_citysvcs_dev_transportationplan.aspx
If you go to Chapter 6: Streets/Recommendations, you can some preliminary studies and suggestions about these two intersections (& others). You can also go to Appendix B: Railroad Quiet Zone for particular information relating to Decatur’s issues.
Upon first seeing this post, I was thrilled that something is finally being done about these two dangerous intersections. Then I looked closer at the post and realized that construction won’t begin until January, 2012. I know the cogs of government move slowly and we’re dealing with the CSX, but c’mon the Brooklyn Bridge was built in less time that it will take to improve these intersections. I’m less concerned with quiet zones than with the death zone this corridor creates. Remember the hit and run back in May? http://www.decaturmetro.com/2009/05/20/decatur-resident-dog-hit-by-car-in-crosswalk/
As a resident of south Decatur with two small children, I often opt to drive instead of walking to downtown because crossing the tracks on foot is just too big a risk. And that’s counter to what living in Decatur is all about.
The Brooklyn Bridge took 16 years from plan to finish.
3 years were spent just getting plans approved and that didn’t even involve a railroad commission!
I stand corrected. My exaggeration went too far perhaps.
Or maybe not, at the time it was built the Brooklyn Bridge was the world’s longest suspension bridge. The residents of south Decatur aren’t asking for anything nearly as elaborate, just a safe way to get from S. Candler or S. McDonough on a bicycle, pushing a stroller, walking, etc. A proposed completion date of August 2012 puts that reality at just under 3 years from now. Regardless of parties involved, that’s a heckuva timeframe to reconfigure two intersections.
Was the idea that they would address the College/Howard/Atlanta Ave. intersection also just a dream? That one is at least as big a mess as the other 2, and so close to both Oakhurst Elementary and Renfroe that the “quiet zones” won’t make much of a difference unless it includes that crossing too.
Hi, folks. Sorry to use this moment as a political opportunity, but I couldn’t resist pointing out that Patti Garrett has addressed exactly Writerchad’s concern in her blog recently (full disclosure: I’m her campaign chair). She offers up some practical ideas for what we can do in the short-term to address safety issues along College Ave while the larger efforts unfold:
http://votepattigarrett.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/a-safe-decatur-pedestrian-safety-on-college-avenue/
So that the Quiet Zone doesn’t derail the focus of these changes, can any one address whether a quiet zone can be declared for only certain hours? I think a nice compromise would be a quiet zone
from 11PM to 7AM…and thereby not creating a hazardous student/pedestrian issue, as is argued if it were to be 24 hour.
The infrastructure and attendant cost required for the quiet zone would seem to dictate that it be 7/24. I also don’t think the FRA would allow partial hours due to the irregularity of the trains and possible confusion to the engineers driving them.
Thanks, Fred, for posting that link. Is there any timeframe for the Atlanta Ave crossing changes or are they off the schedule entirely?
I’m Nancy’s neighbor. Fred, you mean the transportation plan isn’t going to do anything about the Crossing at Atlanta Avenue? You know, that’s a major way that folks get from the north side of town to Renfroe, and the intersection is really worrisome. I had understood it would be addressed in the plan.
Re: The Atlanta Ave. Crossing. The City applied to the GDOT for Transportation Enhancement (TE) grants during the last TE grant cycle for these 2 intersections with the understanding that the City & School System would apply to GDOT for a Safe Routes to School (SRTS) grant for Atlanta Ave. We had the agreements in place, it was identified as a SRTS infrastructure improvement, etc. by both the City and the School System.
The GDOT delayed the first GDOT SRTS grant application cycle for years (they did not award the first grants until this past summer – thus making Georgia the LAST state in the USA – and behind the District of Columbia – to award any funding).(GDOT has had roughly 16 million dollars to spend on SRTS infrastructure projects in the state for – heck – 4 plus years).
And we lost. GDOT decided to award the grants based on congressional districting (I’m on the state SRTS Advisory Committee and we fought that hard). Meaning GDOT awarded one grant per the 13 Congressional Districts instead of ranking all the grants together and picking the top ten or whatever. I “heard” that Decatur didn’t get a grant because we were already doing so well and “they” needed to spread the money around……
Plus they capped the grants at $500,000.00 each and the Atlanta Ave crossing was going to be more than that and the GDOT was not too interested in Decatur trying to break it out into two phases and applying for two grants.
There are a lot more details to this and I’ve gone way too deep (probably) for a lot of readers. We actually backed off of going after Atl. Ave directly with GDOT SRTS and applied for smaller projects, but that intersection was our original target.
Go look at the concept drawing of the Atlanta Ave. intersection in the Community Transportation Plan, you’ll see a very nice overhead before/after concept drawing of it. I think we may apply for it in the next TE grant cycle, but I’m not sure exactly when that is – and the GDOT is out of funds now anyway.
We also have a TE grant to do a Road Diet on West Ponce from the Fernbank bridge to the Post Office – going from 4 travel lanes to 3 with bike lanes and some parking along the sides. We submitted the final documents long ago and have yet to receive the funds. I spoke with GDOT’s Chief Engineer/Interim Commissioner last June and he assured me the project would “happen soon”, but I’ve since found out that GDOT just doesn’t have the funds right now….that Road Diet should have been completed over a year ago!
I could go on about this for some time……
And how many years ago did we vote on the bond issue to fix this?
Two years ago, I believe.
The bond issue only covered the City’s required 20% match for the TE funds. If I remember correctly, we weren’t sure at the time of the bond referendum if we’d get the TE grant that grant cycle or not, but the City felt it enhanced our chance if we could show GDOT that we had our 20% match in hand.
It takes awhile to get the TE funds even after you’re awarded so in the big scheme of things, a two year wait (to even start the public input and design phase) is not that far out of line. However, waiting over a year plus for the Road Diet on W. Ponce AFTER Decatur has submitted every document GDOT has asked for IS out of line, but GDOT has allocated its Funds to other projects and doesn’t have the cash to cover our TE grant. Nice, that!
What’s sad is the federal TE program is about the ONLY transportation program that offers funding opportunities for these types of projects. It is pretty much the only source of funds to do bicycle and pedestrian projects – the TE program has funded most of Decatur’s Streetscape phases. So you can thank TE and Decatur’s grant success for all the nice sidewalks, trees, benches and trash cans you see around town.
(The solar trash cans come from sanitation fee funds, but that’s a comment for another blog post!)
If Decatur wanted to build a freeway, there would be lots of places we could apply for funding.
GDOT rocks ! LOL