Newspaper Page Text
COURTEOUS MASS
Friday, April 29 • 6 pm * Thomas and Clayton Street downtown,
near the Athens Banner-Herald. Enjoy a short ride on a pleasant
in-town route at a comfortable pace. Show our daily newspaper
that bikes do belong on our roads.
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
Thursday, May 5 • 6 pm • Little Kings. Comer of Hancock &
Hull. Prize drawings, open bar, and good food. Pick up your copy
of our new Athens-Clarke County Bike Map and elect BikeAthens’
2005-2006 officers and board.
More info at wvyw.bikeathens.com
SERVING BRUNO-I
I I AM-2 PM ON SUNDAYS
DOWNTOWN
BRUSCWETTA WITH ^
SMOKED SALMON &. MASCARPONE /
FRITTATAS
MARGWERITA SCRAMBLE
NEAPOLITAN GRIDDLE BREAD
X/ BLOODY MARY. MIMOSAS. BELLINIS. X
M BOTTICELLIS AND MORE >
DOWNTOWN
ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION
Athens is a city built around the fluctuation of
seasonal traffic patterns. The University of
Georgia's presence forces the community to deal
with 35,000 more drivers for eight months out of
the year, even more in football season. The
University itself has learned to deal with the
influx. The school is refreshingly tyrannical about
alternative transportation in this automobile-
based city, compelling most campus-goers to
depend on their own leg power or a free public
transportation system.
Athens-Clarke County, being a democracy, is
slower to come to grips.
The University refined its alternative trans
portation goals in 1996. After extensive research
on other similarly-sized campuses, the Office of
University Architects unveiled the newest Master
Plan for campus development The plan, still in
effect focuses on "a more 'walkable' and interac
tive campus, with...
attractive, well-land
scaped open spaces."
Implementing the
plan has meant in part
shifting busy roads and
parking accommodations
to the periphery of
campus, reducing road
traffic to speed up bus
rides, building more
parking decks instead of
surface lots, improving
the quality of walking
areas and providing ade
quate bike lanes.
Jackson Street is con
sidered the best example
of the implementation of
the plan, the ideal for
the rest of campus: the
University has created better bike lanes, wider
sidewalks and bus pull-off lanes to accommodate
bus and car sharing. This area of North Campus
has a large deck that replaced the various smaller
asphalt lots and increased green space.
Biking on campus is easier, since the increase
of the availability of bike lanes and racks, but
Danny Sniff, University Architect doesn't think
the University is quite finished. He hopes in the
future to replace regular racks with lockable bike
containers and to install showers ir. buildings for
students, faculty and staff who bike to class.
Students recently voted to approve the construc
tion of Tate II, a building near the Tate Center
and the Student Learning Center that will poten
tially provide for student needs.
Td like to see a place in Tate II, a little
shower area, so if students ride their bikes to Tate,
they can shower, then catch a bus and ride the
bus to class all day." Sniff says of future plans.
Athens-Clarke County has been trying, too.
Athens Transit has attempted to mate the city
less car-dependent with mixed results. The down
town decks have increased parking capacity
without sprawling into pricey downtown property;
bus stops and buses have increased, some buses
sport bite racks for cycling-minded commuters
and bite lanes are easier to find.
"We're really just trying to give folks the
choice," says Butch McDuffie, Director of Athens
Transit "With improved bus shelters and bus
stops, people are more apt to wait on a bus, so
we're improving those."
Several streets, including the currently under
construction East Broad St, have gained bite
lanes, lighting and sidewalks in recent years.
Despite improved bus shelters and bike lanes,
Athens Transit faces bigger budget concerns and a
more diverse audience than UGA, so it has had
less success than the University.
The University bus system serves over eight
million riders every year, with most routes pro
viding buses every five minutes throughout all of
campus. The buses serve central roads on which
cars aren't allowed, and the future plans show
more roads closing to cars on the interior sections
of campus, further increasing the importance of
campus buses. As an additional incentive, the
buses are free, subsidized partly by the student
transportation fee.
The Bus. Athens' public transit can't be as
enticing. It serves most of the county and the
campus, including rural stops, according to
McDuffie, but residents haven't taken to the
transit like students have to the UGA buses.
Promising data show growing interest in
Athens public transportation, according to
McDuffie: "Sixty-five percent of our riders are
choice riders, riders who have the option of dri
ving but chose the bus instead, and that's telling."
Bus ridership has increased in recent years,
now totaling over a million rides a year, but that's
still about seven mill^n fewer rides than the
University provides.
"The problems Athens Transit faces are the
same problems as many small cities," Danny Sniff
points out. "Critical mass has to occur before it's
economically feasible to use a bus system."
The fare is a sizable difference between Athens
Transit and the UGA system. Also, Athens Transit
buses are free for students, faculty and staff, but
Athens buses for the general public have just
increased to S 1.25 a ride.
McDuffie doesn't see the fare or the fare
increase as a roadblock to riders. "The fare hadn't
increased in eight years. People accepted the
inevitable increase as reasonable, and we really
didn't face much opposition. We had a lot of
people asking how we'd gone that long without
increasing."
The bus system in Athens faces two big issues,
according to McDuffie: frequency (most routes run
at 20-, 30- or 60-minute intervals), and the buses
stop running around 7 p.m. With additional
funding and income from rides, Athens Transit
aims to have 15-minute frequency throughout the
county. "We hope to go up to 43 buses from 23 in
the next six years" McDuffie says.
Meanwhile, the new Multi-Modal Transportation
Center (MMTC) is scheduled to open in October
downtown on East Broad St The multimodal
center will serve as a transportation hub and
transfer center for city buses and University
buses, and it will connect to the Classic Center
parking deck. East Broad St will be a three-lane
road, with a center turn lane, bite lanes, lighting
and sidewalks," McDuffie says.
While the university continues to pursue less
ened dependence on the automobile (including
building more student housing on campus),
Athens-Clarke attempts to build its bus system
while accommodating the automobile, lacking
the control over its environment that the
University enjoys.
Amy Venable
Amy Venable is a student at the University of
Georgia.
Jackson Street on campus is considered the best example of UGA’s plans to handle traffic.
10 FLAGPOLE.COM • APRIL 27, 2005