Comments on: Paces Clairemont Development To Fund Bike Lanes on Commerce Drive

By: Deanne

Deanne — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 15:33:12 +0000

Why, I do believe you’ve just thrown out a challenge to Officer Lindsay and the DPD! :0)

On the rest, I’d still like to hear back from the City on whether they intend to complete the public input process before making any permanent changes to Commerce Dr. DM, do you have in a request for info on it?

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 22:40:04 +0000

Commerce can’t stay 5 lanes+, and be safe for pedestrians and bikes. At that size cars will go 50 mph regardless of what the signs say. Commerce does not have a consistent flow of heavy traffic. The benefits of the road diet on Commerce far outweigh keeping all the lanes for the cars that make the road busy for a total of less than an hour in a day. The road is over-engineered right now – it’s too wide for the average daily trips it handles, it’s dangerous because it’s too wide and its width flies in the face of our goals as a city. Other than that, it’s perfect. And when we have a private sector entity ready to pay for its remedies, then we are in a great position to make the fix.

By: Deanne

Deanne — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 17:47:24 +0000

A road diet isn’t required to slow down traffic on Commerce Dr. It sure shouldn’t be the first option the City tries. The City’s spent many (many) months working on the Citywide Speed Limit plan and Commerce Dr is slated to be reduced to 25MPH. All of the streets have been categorized and mapped, the City’s proposal to GDOT and Dept of Public Safety is pretty much ready to go, and residents have been asked for their opinions about it at numerous meetings (workshops, neighborhood meetings, Neighborhood Alliance to name a few) and online since early last summer. Monday night I asked Lena Stevens (staff lead for it) if her new Google Fiber project assignment is going to put this one on the back burner. Without hesitation, Lena said no and added that a question about it is included in the City’s mailed survey now underway. Based on what David Junger and Lena told Decatur Heights neighbors during their Oct meeting with us on All Things Speed Limit related (also attended by Mike Booker, Keith Lee, John Madajewski, John Maximuk, Fred Boykin, and Scott Drake), their plan was to take it to the City Commission in Feb or March. I’d think that means that they intend to do it as soon as the presentation is updated to include the survey results. Can”t imagine that will take long at all.

I’d think the majority of folks are in favor of safer crosswalks. A road diet isn’t required to accomplish that goal either. Simply assessing other options just like the City does for many other locations, while not as exciting, should allow for another solution that will work out just fine.

Perhaps DM will be kind enough to inquire about both the City’s plans for continued public input for the C-C Plans and on when the Citywide Speed Limit proposal will be going before the City Commission for approval to proceed with submitting it to GDOT and GA DHS. It’d make our discussion more productive to hear directly from the City on it..

By: Frankie and Johnny

Frankie and Johnny — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 17:05:36 +0000

You may be right. From my side of town, Oakhurst, its getting easier to get to Edgewood Retail than downtown Decatur (in spite of Edgewood’s atrocious parking lot). I must admit my shopping is more practical: groceries, drug store, hardware sort of stuff, not what Decatur is aiming for anyway. Fortunately I don’t have to commute through Decatur (the other side of the problem), but many people do. I’ll leave that issue to them to weigh in on.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 14:48:57 +0000

The thing is – you can’t have it both ways. You complain about “clogged” streets and someone else complains about how unsafe it is for pedestrians on Commerce because cars are going too fast. If you build a street that allows cars to go 50 mph, which is how Commerce was built, then don’t be surprised when cars go 50 mph. And then don’t be surprise when it’s impossible to make that street safe for bikes and pedestrians. So we have to decide – do we want a “beltway” around downtown with cars going really fast? If so, then that undermines our goal of having a walkable city because you’re creating a cement moat around downtown to keep out pedestrians. If we build roads for cars to go really fast on, then we become like every other downtown in metro Atlanta that is boring, bland and has a hard time attracting businesses and customers.

We’ve been successful by making our downtown more, not less, pedestrian friendly – that is what we are known for – a walkable downtown and city at a human scale. If your goal is to move cars faster in Decatur, then you are throwing all of this out the window. We should not try to eliminate cars all together, they need to have their place, but they must also find a place in our traffic hierarchy, with the understanding that by prioritizing bikes and peds we have established an viable and successful economic development strategy.

By: Frankie and Johnny

Frankie and Johnny — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 03:05:23 +0000

rising tide? I’m with you Deanne. Just how far are we willing to go to thoroughly clog up downtown Decatur. Its gotten significantly worse with the recent road diets on major streets.

By: Deanne

Deanne — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 02:57:52 +0000

… um… thanks? ??