But if you're just joining us, here's my problem with just widening roads: when a road is built or widened, often costing tens of millions of dollars (as in 72's case), developers see the increased capacity and begin building homes. Nothing wrong with that if done intelligently, but they don't stop building, and a couple of years later, the road is congested yet again. (Don't believe me? Look at Chapman Mountain.) It's back to square one, and more taxpayer money is spent on widening the road yet again. Here are some alternate solutions that, when implemented in tandem with widening the highway, might make it worth the big bucks.
1) Better Land Use Planning
One problem with 72 West is the variation in zoning practices along the corridor, from Madison's "strict" zoning to unincorporated Madison County's complete lack of zoning.
A relatively simple but extreme solution would be to impose a building moratorium along the corridor. But from an economic development standpoint, that probably isn't such a good idea, plus it would more than likely move the sprawl elsewhere rather than stop it. A more sensible solution would be to draw up a uniform land-use plan for the corridor that crosses city/county boundaries. Restrict new "greenfield" development (e.g. new single-family homes on existing farmland) while identifying dense, mixed-use and "grayfield" redevelopment opportunities (parking lots, underutilized shopping centers) along the 72 commercial strip.
Whatever is done, every government entity with a stake in the corridor would have to support it. For example, it would still fail if Madison County approved it, but Limestone County didn't. If we had some sort of regional planning authority in place, this would be a whole lot easier to do.
2) Access Management
Why does every business need to have an entrance off this highway? And when that's not enough, there's crossovers every 1000 feet, filled with drivers trying to U-turn and turn left, creating a hazard for those just passing through.
Here's an idea: how about building a one-way service lane on the each side of 72, allowing access to businesses that won't interfere with through traffic, and eliminating all left turns except at traffic lights. Eliminating all crossovers as well should leave just enough space to create an undivided 6-lane highway, or keep the remaining 4 lanes of auto traffic and add either a landscaped median or a dedicated transit lane.
3) Public Transit
As with the rest of Huntsville, high-frequency transit along University is non-existent. A few Shuttle routes go as far out as the SuperTarget shopping center, but are infrequent and inconvenient for most commuters. The ideal transit option along this corridor would need to be something flexible enough to serve both commuters and shoppers. I believe in this case that would be Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). BRT allows the frequency of light rail for about a fifth of the cost along with the flexibility of a bus. Passengers board and exit at a station, much like a rail line. But there's a catch: even with a dedicated lane, BRT is still at the mercy of the traffic light, though they can be synchronized to give priority to the bus. Here's how a hypothetical BRT corridor along University would look (click to enlarge):
A transit center/park-n-ride would be built near the new Madison Hospital/Balch Road, where riders from areas farther out could either park or transfer from a local bus route. From there, they could take one of two routes: a Research Park express route that would run primarily during rush hours, or an all day route that would run to downtown, with stops at most major intersections and shopping centers. Buses would run every 10-15 minutes and would be equipped with Wi-Fi and bike racks.
With the new transit corridor, parking won't be as necessary, allowing for redevelopment of many of the large parking lots that line the highway.
There would also need to be serious pedestrian improvements along the corridor, from the addition of sidewalks along the highway (and connecting them to businesses) to crosswalks at every signalized intersection. Greenways can be built near 72 to allow for bike commuting, especially to Research Park.
6 comments:
Huntsville needs to give more incentives to redevelop blighted areas closer into downtown, instead of encouraging more sprawl. There's no mass transit in Huntsville because there's no population density to justify the economics of it. And there's no density because the city continues to encourage sprawl over redevelopment.
You can't pave your way out of traffic problems. Just look at Los Angeles, Dallas, or Atlanta. Want less traffic? Create more density and build mass transit. Believe it or not, not everybody has to live in a 4 bedroom, 4000 sq ft house with a 1/2 acre lot. But that's the way the majority of people in Huntsville live.
Another option would have been to plan a 3-lane access road behind the developments on the North side of 72. I would have planned it to run from Nance Road, behind Weston Ranch apartments, connect to the Hughes Road extension, and behind Lowes and Star Market to Wall Triana. This would have given folks living on the North side of 72 access to all these shopping areas without actually having to get onto Highway 72, relieving at least some of the traffic. It could then be extended both east and west as the large undeveloped tracts of land on either end are developed. It would also provide an alternate route when wrecks or signal problems block 72 like happened a couple of weeks ago.
David
How about moving some of this development down to "South Madison" ... down where Wal-Triana vears east from Boeing Blvd all the way down to Triana? The road is already 4-laned. Or how about on the corner of Zierdt and Martin Road. There are so many neighborhoods being built all up and down these roads, but there is only one little convenience store to service all these people. Heck, the pizza places don't even deliver down here.
Martin/Zierdt is another example of what happens when laissez-faire planning meets out-of-control sprawl-- you get thousands of homes in an area with few amenities and obsolete infrastructure (and, as the last anonymous says, you can't even get a pizza delivered there). In that case, there should be a building moratorium until the infrastructure catches up and a future land-use plan is in place. Shouldn't be too much of a problem since the new subdivisions there are sitting mostly empty.
I would love to see the Huntsville, Madison, and a few other communities to team up to form a metro-wide planning commission. Portland, OR and the Twin Cities in Minnesota have done this to coordinate develop, plan for population increases, streamline traffic issues, and as 1st Anony said, not pave out of a problem.
By the way, just found your blog and it is pretty awesome.
Having a bus service that didn't keep bankers hours would be a huge improvement. It is really second rate to have bus service that skips stops at the end of the day so they can shut down by 6:00 and they don't even run on the weekend. The "express" model is a great idea. Currently the system is virtually useless to people who work 8 hours a day and is truly useless on the weekend. Unless you are drunk downtown. There's a bus for that.
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