By Scott Nicholson Bike safety, bypasses and walkways were among the transportation
issues on the agenda of the Boone 2030 charrette, with an audience,
town officials and regional planners discussing the future of
the area.
A group of community members
participates in an assessment tour of downtown Boone Tuesday
morning, as part of the design charrette working toward
a land-use master plan.
Photo by Mark Mitchell
Wade Walker, a consultant and urban transportation planner for
Kublins Transportation Group, talked about Boone’s long-term
transportation needs on how routes might change over the next
20 years, as well as how land-use changes will affect transportation.
The conversation also migrated to include bicycling and pedestrian
access.
“If DOT is denying bike lanes on our new road construction,
we’ll never get past that,” said participant Dave Robertson.
“People would use their bikes more if it was safe.”
Discussion of a Boone bypass was also a topic of interest, touted
as both a way to ease in-town traffic stress and create more route
options. One audience member said a park-and-ride system could
be a better option because of energy savings, while another said
some analyses showed two two-lane roads outperformed a four-lane
road.
Boone Police Chief Bill Post said a bypass wouldn’t affect
local traffic, and he was worried about increased truck traffic
in town, which he said was extremely dangerous. He said major
intersections would still be congested even with a bypass.
Boone Town Council member Stephen Phillips said the council wanted
to keep the Boone bypass on the list, even though it was currently
unfunded and that it might change in the planning process. Phillips
said university students’ contribution to traffic could be
reduced by improving bike lanes, busing and adding affordable
housing closer to campus.
Walker said ASU had a lot of staff members living in Tennessee
who might benefit from shared transportation, with possible connections
at the intersection of U.S. 321 and U.S. 421 northwest of Boone.
Several students in attendance said they would use weekend bus
routes if they made direct connections to major cities and the
Charlotte-Douglas Airport.
Boone Public Works director Blake Brown said expanding the town’s
greenway trail was a slow process, though the town received some
money through an obesity-prevention grant to connect the existing
trail to the new high school. Brown said right-of-way concerns
had slowed the trail’s expansion, though the N.C. Department
of Transportation was becoming more aware of the role of bikeways
and walkways.
“DOT’s main objective is moving traffic,” Brown
said. “That’s where we’ve got to find a middle
ground to make it convenient for citizens and move traffic in
an orderly manner.”
One audience member questioned the value of the planned widening
of a portion of King Street, saying it would “change where
the congestion is” instead of moving traffic more quickly.
Construction is expected to start this year, adding additional
turn lanes and four-laning a section of the 1.1-mile segment.
Walker reminded the audience that the plan could also include
making some roads smaller if they weren’t fully used or if
the town wanted to add bike lanes or medians.
“We don’t like to say the transportation tail wags the
land-use dog, because it all goes together,” Walker said,
adding landowners might recognize they would lose some driveway
accesses as land use changed. He said an urban boulevard would
limit driveway access but improved traffic flow, an idea common
in Europe and becoming more utilized in American planning.
Brown said the town had been working on a walkability plan, which
included education on jaywalking, which some said impeded downtown
traffic. One person suggested making the downtown road a walking
district, and another suggested triggered road signals that allowed
pedestrians to control traffic flow.
“People consider downtown Boone a destination, and getting
there is half the fun,” Walker said, continually reminding
the audience that local needs might change by 2030. “Once
you get there, you want to walk and enjoy the town.”
Brown said people thought there were a lot of parking spaces downtown,
though students often used the one-hour parking spaces during
classes. There are 181 angled spaces and 133 straight, sidewalk-parallel
spaces in town.
Phillips said the town was still working on right-of-way for the
planned improvements to Howard Street, with the loss of some utility
easements a sticking point. He also suggested it as a possible
pedestrian-only area.
Greenway Road was cited as an “informal bypass” that
carried additional traffic, and the Blue Ridge Parkway was mentioned
as another way to bypass traffic for motorists traveling to Blowing
Rock from the east.
Robertson said Hodges Gap Road, which is one of the routes used
by students living at University Highlands near the town’s
western border, had “some nasty curves” and should be
improved in light of the additional traffic it now carried.
Walker said ASU’s construction goals were to create a walkable
core campus, minimizing traffic penetration on campus and preserving
current parking areas for use as building sites instead of expanding
the campus outward. Motorists would use satellite parking lots
under that scenario.
The Tuesday-afternoon discussion was part of “The 2030 Land
Use Master Plan” charrette hosted by the town of Boone and
taking place this week.
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