The city of South Burlington has been working with consultants to create what they are calling an Active Transportation Plan. Officials recently held a third, and final, public meeting to review the plan and receive input.
The plan is intended to “provide the vision for a connected network of walking and biking facilities that gets people safely to where they want to go.” It incorporates wheelchairs, scooters and other mobility assistance devices and envisions a transportation system that improves the quality of life and environment. The project has been in the works for about 10 months.
The consulting firm VHB drafted the plan. Transportation Project Manager Drew Gingras provided an overview, noting they started with an analysis of existing conditions.
“The city had an incredible database of the existing walking and biking facilities, any available traffic data, crash data, safety data that we had. We took all that and we developed this plan and a prioritized list of these evaluation criteria. We have six options up there: safety, connectivity, equity, accessibility, feasibility and public input,” Gingras explained. “We took all of that, worked with our advisory group, worked with our product team to develop this final evaluation criteria. And then once we had that kind of prioritization of it we divvied it up into different categories for each one of these.”
Gingras said each category was analyzed and ranked. They determined that safety and connectivity were the highest priorities for the project.
“Crashes particularly involving normal roadway users. Speed along the road, generally speaking, a higher speed road leads to less safe roads,” Gingras noted. “We also looked at what we call quality gaps. These are literal gaps. Looking at these intersections, crossings and those ultimately became the basis for our project list.”
Residents at the meeting pointed out a number of concerns about the plan.
“It seems like corridors on average are ranking higher than intersections here and there are plenty more intersections that are problematic,” one resident said.
“I can’t see when I’m trying to get somewhere on my bike and walking, I don’t end up at a point of no return. And I know that the Open Space and Parks Master Plan is being done and there’s the desire to see how this interfaces with that,” another South Burlington resident found.
“I think one really, really important thing you’ve left out of that is shopping,” one individual commented
“Who’s going to pay for this? Are these things actually going to happen?” one curious woman asked.
Gingras noted that the next step following the public meeting will be to finalize the program and policy recommendations and the project list.
“That whole plan is going to have in addition to the infrastructure recommendations, the program and policy recommendations, it’s also going to have kind of a tool kit for designs,” said Gingras. “So give you an idea of how you can build out the recommendations, what are the options for the city for safety improvements, for bike facility improvements, for pedestrian facilities. And then we’ll build out an implementation plan, basically a recommendation and next steps to make every single project that we’ve recommended a reality. Here is what you need to do. Here are potential funding resources et cetera. And so you’ll have within that a plan to build out everything that is going to be recommended. We’ll put all that into a report-slash-plan. Present that in draft form to the council and then finalize it after.”
The plan will be presented to the South Burlington City Council this month.
