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Ride The Bus
Late into the Night
Longer operating hours for city buses are
creating ”a lot of excitement" among bus pas*
sengers who have long requested them, Athens
Transit officials say. Bus stops along eight
routes—numbers 1, 2, 5, 6A, 8, 9, 20 and 25—
will see service until 11 p.m. six days a week,
beginning Aug. 14, instead of shutting down at 7
p.m. In addition, the opening of the new Multi-
Modal Transportation center—also scheduled for
Aug. 14—means buses will converge on the new
center (instead of City Hall) for passengers to
transfer between routes.
The new center includes a few bike racks, a
dozen bike lockers, phones, restrooms and an air-
conditioned waiting room. There are 17 bus bays
and a bus information booth; city bus departures
(one UGA bus will also
stop there initially) will
be announced by an
electronic sign system,
interim Transit Director
Dan Jones said at a pub
lic information meeting
July 11. Some public car
parking will be provided
in the Classic Center's
deck, which has a high
pedestrian bridge that connects to the new bus
depot (pedestrians then take the elevator oi
stairs down into the building).
The "multi-modal" center is so called because
taxis and intercity buses were expected to stop
there, too, but both backed out, Jones said.
Rail transit is another prospective mode, too—a
freight line runs between the depot and the
parking deck—but Athens-to-Atlanta commuter
rail hasn't materialized yet. The longer bus hours
were recently approved by Athens-Clarke County
Commissioners at least for the next year, and
they probably will remain if ridership justifies the
cost. The six routes were selected based on high
ridership and feedback from ridc;s, Jones said.
Transit officials said other priorities for improved
service (given availability of funds) would be
more frequent buses and county-wide service.
John Hule jphuie@speedfactory.net
Comment Now
This Year’s MACORTS Plan
Citizens have until Aug. 3 to offer written
public comments on the new TIP—the annual
"transportation improvement plan"—proposed
by MACORTS (which stands for Madison Athens-
Clarke Oconee Regional Transportation Study).
The 200-page document is available on-line
(at macorts.org) and includes maps and brief
descriptions of 15 road-widenings, intersection
rebuilds, and one rail-to-
trail project scheduled
for design or construc
tion to begin within
three years.
Other projects not
yet funded are also
shown; dollar amounts
indicate that a project
will definitely be built.
Many proposed proj
ects—more are in MACORTS' 25-year "long-range"
plan—will get built eventually, although projects
favored by the state transportation department
(like four-laning Jefferson Road) sometimes
get priority. "A lot of the ultimate decisions are
made in Atlanta," ACC Planning Director Brad
Griffin told the Mayor and Commission at their
July 11 work session. Questions on the propos
als can be answered by Sherry Moore at the ACC
Planning Department, and written comments can
be emailed to macorts@co.clarke.ga.us. A public
information meeting on the TIP is scheduled for
Aug. 1 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the ACC Planning
Department at 120 Dougherty St.
BikeAthens' Dorothy Q'Niell thinks "there is
far more good than there is bad" in this year's
TIP. "We have come a long way," she says, in
funding transportation alternatives in the past
five years. Still, she says, some of "usual sus
pects" are still there—like road-widenings that
encourage more sprawl.
There is funding for the local Safe Routes
to School program, one of only two in Georgia.
(Initiated by BikeAthens at Barrow Elementary,
the grassroots program encourages children to
walk to school safely.) And bicycle and greenway
projects (including widening the College Station
Road bridges in 2009 enough to add bike lanes)
continue to move up the list. BikeAthens has
repeatedly requested a seat on the MACORTS
board, O'Niell says, but has received no response.
(Citizen groups from each county are supposed
to be represented, and Athens is presently
represented by the ACC Planning Commission.)
Athens-Clarke is also under-represented on
MACORTS, O'Niell points out. in that Madison and
Oconee counties have the same number of votes
as Clarke, but have many fewer citizens included
in the MACORTS area.
John Huie jphuie@$oeediaclory net
Prince Avenue
What Does the Future Hold?
"In five years, Prince will look nothing like
it does today," neighborhood advocate Tony
Eubanks told a Federation of Neighborhoods au
dience July 10. Within two years, a block-long,
three-story medical building will rise between
Park and Nacoochee avenues, and "it's only a
matter of time," he said,
before other properties are
developed along Prince.
Eubanks, who helped orga
nize the Community Approach
to Planning Prince Avenue, said CAPPA never
took positions on specific proposals. Instead,
it put forth images of a possible Prince Avenue
generated by citizens and design professionals.
The future will depend on neighbors implement
ing those principles "responsibly" by organizing
around specific issues, Eubanks said.
Developers of the new medical building made
substantial alterations to their plans through
discussions with neighborhood representatives
like himself, said Eubanks. "We've learned how to
work with developers," he said—but that means
being willing to compromise. "It's easy to say
'no'... but it's hard to say, 'How about this?" The
building will include retail stores and medical of
fices backed by a parking deck. Behind that will
be two multi-family residential buildings border
ing internal greenspace—which should cap off
any farther commercial development along the
two side streets, Eubanks said.
A previous medical building proposed for
the same block was killed by objections from
neighbors who said it was out of scale with
its surroundings. "What we had there was a
complete disagreement about what 'mixed-use'
meant," Jennifer Martin-Lewis of UGA’s School of
Environmental Design told the group. A 75.000-
square-foot office building with an added coffee
shop isn't "mixed-use," she said.
Eubanks also negotiated about neighborhood
concerns with Bob Gooch, who's long been plan
ning to put a Jittery Joe's coffeehouse at the
corner of Chase Street and Boulevard. Goech in
sisted his business needed a drive-thru window—
but ‘hat didn't have to mean a store surrounded
by a parking lot as initially proposed, Eubanks
said. In the final design, the drive-thru is barely
visible from the street.
More changes are coming along Prince
Avenue, Eubanks said. An eight-acre site on
Nacoochee Avenue that extends behind SunTrust
Bank is "guaranteed" to be developed soon,
and the New Way Cleaners property at Barber
Street is just awaiting the right offer. Piedmont
College could move into its new Prince Avenue
Baptist church site by August, he added, and the
Normaltown shopping district is changing, too.
But Prince has a problem that has kept it
from becoming a thriving shopping district like
Five Points, he said: speeding traffic. People
can't easily cross the street from Normaltown to
other shops, for example—which simply dimin
ishes the value of those properties, he sjid.
Commissioner Carl Jordon, who wa> in the
audience along with Mayor Heidi Davison and
two other ACC Commissioners, agreed that traf
fic speed "sets the culture
on Prince Avenue." Because
Prince is a state highway
(and commissioners voted
against taking over local
control and maintenance costs), the state trans
portation department will continue to set poli
cies, he said. "I don't think anything's going to
happe.. until we push a little bit harder," agreed
Commissioner David Lynn.
Mayor Davison added that the town of
Roswell just north of Atlanta "just absolutely
battled with the state" to make itself more pe
destrian-friendly. Roswell Mayor Jere Wood told
flagpole that his city has been fortunate: "We
could pick and choose what we allowed to come
in, because there were so many folks wanting to
build here," he said.
Mayor Wood said Roswell "got ahead or a
major road-widening in the 1990s with a com
prehensive rezoning of a seven-mile corridor
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The longer bus hours were recently
approved by ACC Commissioners
at least for the next year, and they
probably will remain if ridership
justifies the cost.
"We’ve learned how to work
with developers."
6 FLAGPOLE.COM • JULY 19,2006
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