There's been some justified hand-wringing lately how hard it is to get to our public library. As Chapel Hill Town Council Member Mark Kleinschmidt noted, the library's location and site plan are "really very car-centric." I get a little snitty when I hear this kind of observation. Of course he's right. But why wasn't it so obvious to the Town before we sited and built the library? After all, it's not like no-one pointed this out at the time.
Granted, none of the current members were on the Council when the Library was built over 15 years ago, but there was a different group of 9 "environmentalists" sitting at the same table and this is what their advisory boards told them:
Planning Board Chairperson Bruce Guild said the Board had considered the application on March 5th, recommending approval of the request by a vote of 6-2. He noted that one member was not satisfied with the proposed location of the building, suggesting that it would be better located on the lower, flatter portion of the site. Mr. Guild stated that the Board had discussed access to the site extensively. [...]
Richard Palmer, Transportation Board Chairperson, said the Board had recommended non-approval of the application by a vote of 8-1. Mr. Palmer said the non-approval was based on concern about the safety and adequacy of access to the site. He noted that the Board found that provisions for left turns from the site onto Estes Drive, particularly for buses, were inadequate.
I just can't emphasize enough how important land-use decisions are to transportation planning. The location and density of buildings are what determine whether we are able to walk to lunch after taking the bus to work, or ride a bike safely to the grocery store. Of course, the siting of buildings can also have an impact on the location of transit when we start looking at fixed-guideway* systems, which we are finally doing (again). When the location of transit stops is more permanent, complementary land-uses often follow. I think of St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans as an example of this. (* Fixed guideway can mean light rail, other rail, trolley cars, busways, etc.)
OP commenters Gerry Cohen and George Cianciolo recently pointed out that the Special Transit Advisory Committee (STAC), of which they are both members, is recommending two possible options for serving the Triangle with fixed-guideway transit. According to Gerry, both plans call for a connection along the existing rail line from Carolina North to downtown Carrboro, then by UNC Hospitals and through Meadowmont to I-40. Obviously, this will rely on access to these corridors to work. What are we doing to make sure we don't close off any options? What should we be doing?
Here's an excerpt of the STAC's Transportation Planning Map, showing existing rail lines in maroon:
Issues:
Comments
I agree with your approach
I agree with your approach Del, but I think you also need to throw economic development into the mix. If people have to drive to Durham or RTP to work, it's less likely that they will be using transit to run their errands given that those other communities have day-to-day amenities within easy access of commuting routes.
The bottom line for all of this is that we need to think more about how we create a local economy, making it easy for people at all ends of the financial spectrum to live and work here. That's when we will see transit blossom. Then we can provide limited parking for visitors.
In the meantime, I wonder if there is a way to use UNC's CAP program model and expand it out to everyone in the community as another way of promoting commuting alternatives.
The CAP or Commuter
The CAP or Commuter Alternatives Program is described at http://www.dps.unc.edu/dps/alternatives/commuter_alternatives_program.htm
Terri, I'm not sure that
Terri,
I'm not sure that transit can't help create that local economy. If employers/retailers know that their employees and/or customers can access their establishment both day AND night, without the need for a lot of parking (notice I didn't say no parking), then they might consider siting their facilities in locations that otherwise would be considered inoperable. In locations with limited parking, an efficient transit system could expand the geographical range from which employers/retailers could draw beyond that provided by bike/pedestrian access. But it has to be both efficient (i.e, frequency of service) and operate on a schedule conducive to business.
"Crossability" is vital. I
"Crossability" is vital.
I live right off 54W and we are only one rainy December twilight away from a bus rider dressed in a dark winter coat being hit crossing from one side of that highway to the other.
It would be great to see flashing crossing signs like the one on Jones Ferry Road at all the bus stops on 54, but my guess is that's a DOT thing.
I just wish there was a
I just wish there was a traffic light where you exit the library. That left turn is terrifying, particularly at rush hour, a common time for students and tutors to be using the library.
Earlier this year the town
Earlier this year the town of Chapel Hill Published a mobility report for the MLK Blvd corridor (http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.asp?NID=1134). It emphasized cross-ability quite strongly. I made the point at the Planning Board's review that we also have to think of how people get *to* MLK. I live just 15 minutes' walk away, but the sidewalk that gets me there is narrow, cramped, unlit, and extremely creepy at night. Other neighborhoods don't even have sidewalks to link them to the excellent transit service and increasing retail and services along MLK.
The current library location
The current library location is car-centric but imagine for a minute you could pick the library up and put it anywhere you wanted, including displacing current buildings. Where could you put it that wouldn't be car-centric? Nowhere. And the reason is that housing in this area is too spread out for any place that large numbers of people go to not be car-centric.
To get a book at the library you need a library card, which means the library has your address. I'd love to see a map of the addresses of library users over a week or a month.
Terri Buckner correctly
Terri Buckner correctly laments the difficulty and danger
in crossing MLK for bus riders who live in the neighborhoods
along that road. The good news is that we no longer allow
roads like that, a five-lane cross section with no median.
The extreme danger of crossing that road, especially at night
in the winter when it is dark when many commuters get off the
bus, is, well, just plain stupid design. As a resident of the
south side of town, I can't thank the council enough for
walking away in 1990 from 4.3 million dollars from the DOT
to widen South Columbia to the same 5-lane cross section
by a 6-3 vote. Finally we are about to get a more contemporary
road improvement, over the objections of the UNC Hospital
managements, and, to a lesser extent, the UNC Chancellor.
There are now all kinds of survey stakes in the ground along
S. Columbia, so what we've been waiting for since 1980
might actually happen.
This is why it is so
This is why it is so important to envision the consequences of what we plan to do. Didn't anybody think about the ability to cross a multi-lane, hilly (equalling limited sight in some areas) boulevard with no median? When plans were made, did Chapel Hill end, for all intents and purposes, at the east side of MLK?
Northing will ever replace taking the time to do things right.
BTW, Terri-I agree wholeheartedly that economic development, that is part of revenue neutral deveopment is vital. I appreciated your order of things to happen-
"The bottom line for all of this is that we need to think more about how we create a local economy, making it easy for people at all ends of the financial spectrum to live and work here. That's when we will see transit blossom."
Planning for transit first, and then building to justify the transit won't work.
Well building for cars
Well building for cars first, and then planning for transit later certainly doesn't work. That's how we got here (that's especially how we got the MLK Blvd that we now know).
We have to envision the Chapel Hill and Carrboro of the future, imagine the majority of people not owning cars (this will come to pass in my lifetime). Where will we live, how will we get around?
If we assume cars will always be there, we will all end up lost on our cul-de-sacs and wondering why someone didn't think of this before.
I hope that you don't think
I hope that you don't think that was my point. Planning for cars is literally not a viable option.
My point is that planning for a number of big transit hubs first is risky. Big residential areas are not self supporting and will not financially support transit. The idea is to balance residential and commercial. For now it seems as though we are planning a specific kind of transit before we know what is going where. We should plan concurrently.
I lived on the west side of
I lived on the west side of MLK 1970-72 and 1979-84, so don't blame me.
Interestingly, when the roadway was widened to 5 lanes circa 1969, there was a pedestrian tunnel constructed UNDER the road from a parking lot in what was the right of way of the old roadbed to a restaurant across the street. Is the tunnel stil there? I used to use it to cross the road.
(It was somewhere between Longview and Unstead)
Yeah the tunnel is still
Yeah the tunnel is still there under the bus stop shelter at the UNC-Shed Bldg.
Del, I'm not clear what you're saying. Don't see how transit can be actually built concurrently with resid/comm development.
But developers can be guided by a solid rail or other fixed transit plan which can be counted on to be built once the ridership is there. Bus routes are so variable.
I don't yet see a definite transit plan that the Northern Area and UNC developers could use to help with their planning.
Terri Buckner correctly
Terri Buckner correctly laments the difficulty and danger
in crossing MLK for bus riders who live in the neighborhoods
along that road. The good news is that we no longer build
roads like that, a five-lane cross section with no median.
The extreme danger of crossing that road, especially at night
in the winter when it is dark when many commuters get off the
bus, is, well, the consequence of a just plain stupid design. As a resident of the
south side of town, I can't thank the council enough for
walking away in 1990 from 4.3 million dollars from the DOT
to widen South Columbia to the same 5-lane cross section
by a 6-3 vote. Finally we are about to get a more contemporary
road improvement, over the objections of the UNC Hospital
managements, and, to a lesser extent, the UNC Chancellor.
There are now all kinds of survey stakes in the ground along
S. Columbia, so what we've been waiting for since 1980
might actually happen.
Here's the link to the
Here's the link to the Chapel Hill Carrboro Long Range Transit Plan that references MLK Jr. Blvd and Carolina North:
http://townhall.townofchapelhill.org/planning/long_range/transportation/...
All I read in these comments
All I read in these comments is desire and reality fighting their never ending war.
The way of life you are used to; the libraries, stores, houses, and food were all provided to you by cheap, war subsidized oil. Can that even translate into a new era of peak oil and climate change?
Maybe the trouble is that this way of life is not sustainable without the automobile.
Ruby said that planning is about the future, but her words and the words of others show the reality that they are planning from a failed past. They are hoping to keep some semblance of familiarity in the face incalculable changes.
How we live right now is the only thing that shapes our future. Karma is a b*tch. Look closely at your desires.
There are some parts of our
There are some parts of our life I think we should keep and some parts I will happily give up. What's your vision for the future of Orange County, Christian?
So my friend Corey recently
So my friend Corey recently sent me this link to an article about the walkability of various metropolitan areas. I tried to get him to post here, but he's being shy this week, I guess.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/04/walkable.communities.ap/
There were some real flaws in the study, but the results are still interesting. I thought this bit was quite pertinent:
Trying to make MLK crossable
Trying to make MLK crossable at this point is like closing the proverbial barn door after the horse has gotten out. But even if you could snap your fingers and magically transform MLK into a two lane road with crosswalks every quartile mile it would create a new set of problems. The people that drive on MLK aren't joyriders that will stop driving on MLK if it becomes two lanes. Instead they're people going from Point A to Point B via the best means possible and oftentimes the only means possible (other than using other roads). Some of those people have to drive everywhere they go because of where they chose to live but others have to drive everywhere they go because there aren't enough places to live where you don't have to drive everywhere you go.
People think this is a small town but it's not. The number of jobs around here has been growing quickly for a long time. Pittsboro and northern Chatham County are becoming, in effect, suburbs of Chapel Hill / Carrboro.
Ultimately it all comes down to a problem of physics. That is, people and trees can't physically occupy the same space. More and more people are moving here they have to go somewhere. Lest this depress people from an overall environmental perspective, keep in mind that when more people are driving and polluting here that means less people are driving and polluting elsewhere. It's bad for our local environment but it's not necessarily bad for the overall environment.
And what's your vision for
And what's your vision for the future of Orange County, Christian - er I mean Jose?
What is my vision for the
What is my vision for the future of Orange County? Well, why does it matter?
This is how I would like it to look:
http://blogs.theage.com.au/ilovefootscray/IMG_2688%20-%20forest%20villag...
So, do I get my future? Is it up to me? Will others in Orange County let me have it? Will the real estate developers let me have it? Will Weaver Street Market let me have it? Can I keep it 4eva and eva?
I have no vision for Orange County, its landscape will be shaped by forces well beyond our comprehension. And I am ok with that. We are like any other animal on this planet that gets forced into population control when it lives beyond sustainability.
So, I am sorry you missed my point. All these "visions" (hallucinations?) of our future are an excuse for change and only create conflict.
The only answer is to live simply.
Live your future now and it all the rest will fall into place. If you think Orange county is too car centric, sell your car. That will be one more person walking, taking the bus, and slowing down. We do not need a leader, we need more leaders. Be a leader not by telling people what to do but by living what you want.
So Ruby, what is your present reality of Orange County? Know that, because that will be its future.
PS: I was once told by my my uncle who was a town planner in Lyndhurst, NJ that "Trying to plan a city is like trying to put a cat in a barrel of water; it's probably impossible, you bleed when you try to do it, and all you end up with when you are finished is a wet smelly cat that hates you." :^)
My point is that although
My point is that although none of us can shape the community into exactly what we want, we can all work to make it better. You're spending a lot of time tearing down other people's suggestions of what should be done, but the fact is things ARE going to change and we have to do something if we any any say in that. If your goal is for all development to cease right now, then you could be working toward that.
As far as the notion of, if
As far as the notion of, if you want Orange County to be less car-centric then just sell your car, this reminds me of the single most important thing about trying to effect change in the world and it is this: Be realistic. It sounds simple but it's something that is often forgotten. Idealism is a great motivator for change but when it comes time to act, being realistic is vital. If you tell the people that literally can't live without a car to just get rid of their car then the immediately write you off as being unrealistic. If you tell the people don't want to live without a car to just get rid of their car then they'll immediately become antagonistic towards you. If you tell the people that both can't live without a car and don't want to live without a car then you've put someone on the other side permanently. Persuading people takes subtlety and tact.
As far as whether Chapel Hill / Carrboro (CH / C) should cease development goes, it seems to me that for the most part it is UNC that determines whether development occurs. UNC is building like crazy and that means development is inevitable. CH / C gets to determine whether and what kind of development occurs in CH / C, but if they decide to allow no development in CH / C then the development generated by all the jobs created by UNC will just occur elsewhere instead. I'm not saying that is good or bad but rather I'm saying that that just is.
As far as my vision for the future of Orange County goes, well, I have no consice vision of that per se but I do have some thoughts about it but it is late now and it takes me time to organize my thoughts so I'll leave that to this weekend.
Ruby, by tearing down others
Ruby, by tearing down others ideas I am creating the orange county I want. Do you get it yet?
Jose, I am not telling others to not drive cars. That would be as silly as trying to plan a community that is not car centric for a community that drives cars.
Thinking about the future of
Thinking about the future of Orange County makes me think of how the lines for political entities are arbitrary and that that's the way it has to be even though it's sometimes not good. I've lived in CH for a long time and I feel I know this area wll but northern Orange County might as well be on Mars. I know nothing about it.
UNC has a huge effect on the area surrounding it. But that includes Durham County and Chatham County and Carrboro, each of which can just say "We're our own entity and UNC is Chapel Hill's issue, we'll do what whatever we want." And similarly, UNC can say "We'll do whatever we want and we only have to worry about what CH thinks" without worrying about the effect it has on Durham County and Chatham County and Carrboro. I think it would be better if UNC were smack in the middle of one big political entity. Not that that's changeable, but I'm just sayin'.
Oh I like your attitude in
Oh I like your attitude in all this, call it the fatalistic approach, or the tao.
1. UNC rules.
2. The development issue is regional.
3. The car will continue to rule.
4. Towns are ungrateful to their planners.
I believe what can be done by one and all is visioning, like the Village Project did a while back. It may not lead anywhere of course, but then it just might have a tiny influence. But fundamentally, it helps us ourselves sort out our own thinking on what is desirable and what is attainable [or not].
An example: I have grown to hate the disturbance of modern yard technology - in summer, the mower, in fall, the blower. Particularly on Sunday morning, but at all times generally. I would love to see them banned by the town, or limited in when they can be used. But that is just not on, now, is it?
Plus, I am part of the problem. I use a mower in the summer.
So, I guess we live with it and make do [the tao] or else we eventually seek greener pastures elsewhere. Many of us will likely do that as the area continues to suburbanize and become ever more like Cary [what else will north Chatham become?]
As far as the notion of, if
Realism is good. Given air quality, fuel availability, traffic congestion concerns, not to mention the decline of domestic automobile production coupled with the decline of the dollar, planning to continue car-centric development into the future seems hardly "realistic".
Building even one 85000 sq ft facility off Estes Drive and claiming that the existing bus service is adequate to support the added traffic seems the antithesis of realism. Does CH transit run that much excess capacity on existing routes? The need for wider lanes to allow motorists to safely overtake cyclists on Estes is undeniable. So, lets be realistic--increase the lane wdth on Estes to 14' from Greensboro to Franklin and eliminate the right-turn-only lanes before beginning CN, and plan for additional transit to be provided with each step of development.
Melanie, anyone can walk
Melanie, anyone can walk into Davis Library or any other
libraries on campus and use them, even to check out books.
Some of the computers in the libraries require a UNC
login, while some are not
restricted at all for internet use.
I believe that non-UNC folks can easily get a library card
for UNC. Davis Library and the Health Science Library
are incredible resources for all of us to use -- free.
Furtheremore their open hours are generous.
However, this is not the main issue here.
When the last major library expansion was contemplated,
your questions were asked and answered.
There are two reasons that
Davis and other UNC libraries are not good substitutes for
the town library.
The first is that the materials are different. UNC libraries
are research-oriented and don't have the popular magazines
and books, as well as children's books, that the bulk of the users of the town library
want. The second reason is -- surprise, surprise -- parking.
The mower issue has at least
The mower issue has at least one solution- get a push-powered one. Less pollution, more exercise!
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/reelmowers.html
As to cars "continuing to rule," planning around this assumption only reinforces its likelihood as the outcome.
That doesn't mean a city or town can't be realistic about making a deliberate turn away from auto dependency while recognizing that there needs to be a transitioning method that makes sense given today's conditions. We have many opportunities to take a step forward in this regard. One example is that Carrboro is poised to take on a Downtown parking study sometime in the next several months, ostensibly to figure out how to improve PARKING in downtown.
However, the study should really be a Downtown ACCESS study- asking how do we get people into Downtown Carrboro conveniently, effectively, and safely in order to enjoy the goods, activities, and amenities there? One of the outcomes of an access study would indeed be recommendations on how to make parking work better downtown, but that outcome would be lined up beside recommendations on how to get more people downtown using the bus, biking, or walking. In short, how can the town maximize the economic/social activity benefits of people coming downtown while minimizing the pollution/congestion costs of cars coming downtown? This is a better question to ask than "how can we make it easier to park?"
I still would like to see a
I still would like to see a feasability/numbers study that would prove that a library "downtown" would service more "walkers" than the one on Estes Drive. How many schools are in walking distance of "downtown?"
Additionally, why duplicate buildings? Perhaps a better solution would be for the towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill to negotiate with UNC to allow their residents to use Davis /the undergrad library for "free"--with money coming from the towns? Rather like the "free" bus service...(which isn't really FREE--at least not if one is a taxpayer.)
Since we are thinking outside the box.
Joe, The Information and
Joe,
The Information and Library Science Library in Manning Hall has a large collection of children/YA books- many of which you could never find at the public library. The UNC Libraries don't have everything the public library has, but they do have children's books, if you know where to find them.
How do you get more people
How do you get more people to downtown Carrboro without parking issues? People are so bent on thinking outside the box that they're forgetting to think inside the box. The answer is obvious. Let them live near enough to downtown Carrboro so that they don't have to drive there! In addition to frequenting local businesses via walking or biking they could walk or bike or bus to work at UNC instead of driving. And then because more people would be using sidewalks and bike lanes there would be more justification for improving or expanding sidewalks and bike lanes. (I still think bike lanes would be better off being on a piece of pavement cars can't get to just by veering a little bit, like sidewalks are, but I won't re-hash that now.)
The best way to make CH/C less car-centric will never come about because literally no one wants it. The way is to dramatically increase population density in CH/C, which would reduce the number of people that are forced to drive.
I live close to UNC and I walk to work. That's good for me. The neighborhood I live in is not densely populated and it feels like it's out in the country. That's good for me too. But when I get to work and look out my office window I see a big building that UNC is putting up and I can't help but wonder where the people that eventually will work in that building are going to live.
I had to search long and hard for a decent house close to work that I could afford and even then I had to save for years and then buy the cheapest place in the neighborhood. Home prices are high and it's not because people live in giant mansions with cement ponds but rather because there is a shortage of homes. Intellectually I know that everyone except for the people in my neighborhood would be better off if my neighborhood were more densely populated. And yet I know that if that happened now my home price would go down and when I went out onto my back deck, instead of trees I'd see someone else on their back deck staring back at me. And I don't want those things to happen. So I'll harp about it on a message board because I can do so safely while knowing that I'm not causing the changes that are unpleasant for me to actually come about. Yes, I'm a hypocrite, but at least I'm cognizant of it.
There is another X factor in all this that people may not always be aware of. People that care about stuff like this post on this board and are active, etc. But there are are big chunks of areas here and there in CH/C that consist of nothing but huge, very expensive houses on big pieces of land that belong to people that have more money than God and they don't give a crap about any of this stuff. They've got theirs and nobody is going to take it away from them. They've got two massive vehicles for each person in the household and they drive everywhere they go and nobody is going to change their lifestyle. If you raise their property taxes $5,000 a year they'll pay it without blinking because $5,000 a year is nothing to them.
Do you remember the crazy high school kid that killed his parents at their home in Chapel Hill a couple years ago? I looked up the address and then checked out that neighborhood just out of curiousity. I said before that my own neighborhood has expensive houses and is sparsely populated but it isn't even close to that neighborhood. The lots are huge. The roads are very wide even though there is little traffic and no cars parked on the street that I saw. There is even a country club and golf course!
In fact, the family in question (where the kid killed the parents) had no connection with UNC at all. They had struck it rich elsewhere in the oil business and decided to move to Chapel Hill because it's a nice place for wealthy people to live. This place is less than a mile to the east of the UNC campus.
So, let's see what we have. What we have is northern Chatham County building Briar Chapel, a giant development in which will live a bunch of people that will work at UNC and drive up and down 15-501 to work each day. And then right next to UNC we have big chunks of sparsely populated land on which live people with no connection to UNC because people that work at UNC have regular incomes and therefore can't afford places like in that neighborhood. There are two golf courses (UNC has one too) within a mile or two of UNC. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the golf courses 5-10 miles out of town and then have the 5-10% of people that play golf drive there when they play instead of having a bunch of UNC workers live 5-10 miles out of town and then drive in and out of town every day for work?
Okay, I'll step of my soapbox now. It's not like I expect all those problems to be solvable but it's just that I never even hear people express them how I do and it makes me wonder if I think differently than other people or I'm missing something or what.
Ah, Jose... it's at times
Ah, Jose... it's at times like this when the wise pilgrim learns to recite the "serenity prayer" over and over silently until gravity is restored.
It may take awhile before things get crowded enough, but I have to believe that the golf courses will give way to homes & parks at some point.
Erin, thanks for the
Erin, thanks for the information. How many parents with their
kids go to the SILS-Manning llibrary? Do the directors of this
library advertise their collection to people in the community?
It would be wonderful, for a variety of reasons, if parents
took their kids on field trips to the
many attractions on the campus, libraries and other,
using the CH bus system. Unfortunately, I regularly ride the
four bus lines that go up S. Columbia, but rarely see little kids
and their parents on the town buses.
Jose, welcome to the
Jose, welcome to the awareness club! You are not alone with your feelings! We are out here; those of us not planning, accepting things as they are, living simply, free.
OP is a vent for people who think they have some control over life. This blog has not done anything for the community and never will. (Not an insult, just a reality) What you are picking up on is the cognitive dissonance that occurs when people are to afraid to face the fact that they cannot have it all. I remember reading a comment in another post about a woman who could not walk to the library with 20 pounds of books. Yet no one commented on a simple solution to her problem. Take out less books! And I cannot help to wonder why a blog that talks about these issues is not running on a solar powered system (see http://aiso.net/).
Of all the planned cities I have studied while I was getting degree in American history there is not one that succeeded in the way it was planned. City planing is just social management. It takes a dictator to plan a city with any hope of it adhering to the script. And this kountry (that is not a typo) is so in love with its' "freedom" that is would rather poison its children then walk to a library. Well, deep freedom is being OK with not having a library, is OK with being dictated too, as well as being OK with having the world descend into a ball of polluted ash.
It is going to take a huge shift in consciousness for the majority of people to start living more sustainably. That shift will happen, by our own will or by nature's force. At this point I see nature's force winning.
Just keep living your life like you do. Every leaf falls exactly where it is supposed to.
I'll belatedly try to
I'll belatedly try to address some unifying points in this pleasantly-broad post. (Full disclosure: I currently live in Pacifica in Carrboro and mostly bike, even to Durham, but have owned a smogmobile for the past 5 years and use it way too often, though only ~5k/year. I am also NOT a certified planner of anything, which probably shows :-)
Regarding MLK and its crossing: replace the 5-lane with 2 car lanes plus BRT. (One smoglane each way--yes, that means more smogmobile congestion.) This could be done "traditionally," e.g. bus (or tram, if you swing that way) where the left-turn lane is now, or side-by-side, e.g. Toronto's new Cherry St plan. If in the middle, the transit stops become crossing points. If side-by-side, ya only gotta cross 2 lanes anyway. Allow transit to control traffic: i.e. as the bus/tram approaches an intersection, its light goes green and the cross light goes red.
Regarding transportation to Carolina North: a plan like the above might give a better connection with transit and discourage smogmobiling. More on Estes and MLK below.
Regarding transit access to the CHill library: this is 2 problems:
* access to Estes & Library
* the long walk from Estes & Library to the building
I don't have a good solution to the latter, but have some ideas regarding the former.
Regarding
* linking the library, CNorth, Cboro, et al
* land use
The advantages of hub-and-spoke transit have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The disadvantage tends to be hub congestion: e.g. a major problem with CHill Transit is that most everything goes through Columbia and Franklin, which is slow. Which is why, IIUC, when scaling, hub-and-spoke tends to be complemented by rings. So how 'bout an "Orange Bundt" :-) to promote transit-oriented development.
Basically take Estes (or most of it) and the 54 bypass and replace some car lanes with BRT or tram (like the above proposal for MLK) to create a ring around CHill and Cboro. Promote density inside and near the ring: all development needs to minimize parking and maximize transit/street access. (With parking in back: see David Sucher's animated GIF. Thanks, Patrick McDonough!) If you don't build parking, they won't SOV. (Call me Stalin, cue the whining :-)
54 and Estes already almost-ring: the tricky part is WNW, connecting e.g. Estes & Seawell School and e.g. the Main/54 split, crossing Bolin Creek. For that, I have no good solution. Mebbe nuke the smogmobiles altogether, and go elevated? (Pay for this by instituting a toll on Estes between N Greensboro and Seawell School :-) Connect to existing transit with minihubs/transfer-stations at, e.g. Estes and 54 .
The Bundt
* complements the existing, pretty-good bus service on Franklin and MLK/S Columbia, while reducing hub congestion.
* connects e.g. CN (MLK and Estes, can run a spur farther north), Cboro, south UNC
* gets near e.g. the hospitals, S Village, Univ Mall, Meadowmont
* opens up lotsa possibilities for adjacent TOD
* keeps everything Orange, potentially simplifying the politics. (Compared to, e.g., using 40, below.)
Note that the Bundt is not too different from current STAC plans (about which I am minimally knowledgeable). The major differences, AFAICS, are
* they use 40. IMHO that's too far east for good TOD (YMMV) plus gets one into the regional planning morass.
* STAC doesn't complete the loop around CHill/Cboro. They have BRT 3/4 of the way around, but only HOT on 40 to the NE.
The SILS Library is
The SILS Library is fantastic, but like all the libraries at UNC, it's designed to support UNC students, not the community. The juvenile lit collection in Manning Hall supports aspiring librarians and library science researchers. It's not really set up for family visits. Community members are welcome at all UNC libraries, but I never felt all that comfortable spending much time there with my toddler because you're right next to grad students working and studying. It's not like being at the CHPL where kids are everywhere. I'm a SILS alum, so I say this all with great affection for SILS and UNC.
In regards to a downtown library: Orange County's priority for libraries should, in my opinion, be a Carrboro branch. Folks who can't get to CHPL easily might be able to get to Carrboro easily, if the branch could be located near downtown.
It doesn't make sense to build another Chapel Hill branch when there's already an exisiting structure that needs expansion. At what point does the cost of new construction and renovation, plus staffing at two sights, outweight the benefits of having a downtown branch?
Jose, Christian - Isn't one
Jose, Christian -
Isn't one of the main points of this blog to give folks ideas about taking action? to decide where to start and what action to take?
There's really no need to throw our hands up in the air and say it's too difficult to achieve a "huge shift in consciousness" so let's just go on living as we have.
We tackled environmental problems in the past: the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 70s have been pretty successful, and often at cheaper cost than expected. (see Gregg Easterbrook at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/global-warming)
So it might help to keep these things in mind when we start talking to our elected officials about taking some action.
I am not against action. I
I am not against action. I am for wise action. and I do not throw my hands in the air. I keep them in my pockets while I am not using them. :^)
We need to focus our efforts more efficiently. Instead of being on a planning committee to fight with developers over where to build a library we need to march on the town halls of Amerika and get them to make laws t stop developers from building inefficient buildings, to start taxing carbon, to fund solar design, etc. Laws like the Clean Air Act were what made the auto companies develop catalytic converters. But the first Clean Air Act was passed in 1955. I am afraid we do not have 35 years to wait for change.
If you want a better perspective on what it will take to change the effects of global warming read Monboit's book "Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning".
Anyway, I am done with all this. See you on the street.
That article from The
That article from The Atlantic was truly inspirational. That's what we need more of. And he's right.
Re. Christian's post, I looked up that book on amazon.com. I haven't read the book but by the descriptions of the reviewers there it sounds not so useful. The way the review makes the book sound like doom and gloom isn't good. And the comparison to Michael Moore...if there is one thing the environmental debate in the US doesn't need it's someone that divides people even further rather than brings them together. Remember, for the purposes of that article in The Atlantic, we're not talking about Chapel Hill but rather the entrie nation.
The article in The Atlanic was right. The stage is set up well for someone that can _smartly_ engage the masses...not the minority already on the bandwagon, but the _masses_.
All of this is getting off of the topic of local Orange County stuff though.
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