MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 4 July 2009
Against another North College Avenue
Fayetteville
was too quick to go along with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation
Department's plans for North Garland Avenue.
As
usual, AHTD prefers its standard, boring, ugly, dangerous, anti-pedestrian,
car-focused, polluting five-lane design.
This design is a plague on our naturally beautiful state. Anybody who imagines that it's not
boring and ugly has developed far too much tolerance for boring ugliness. Here's a test: Drive North College from North Street
to Joyce Street and back, with attention to your surroundings, and with the
radio and cell phone off. If you
don't find your surroundings boring and ugly, you've been spending too much time
in your car.
Five
lanes are dangerous because the fifth lane is a no-man's land that's a magnet
for crashes, because five lanes encourages higher speeds which is just what you
don't want in town, and because pedestrians can't cross it safely. Five lanes form a nearly-impenetrable
"Chinese wall" between neighborhoods. The widening is obviously car-centered even though designers
might magnanimously add bicycle lanes and sidewalks. And five lanes of concrete help make Northwest Arkansas a
smoggy, polluted heat island.
North
Garland congestion is an inevitable result of the rampant growth of the
university and the UA sports program.
AHTD, the city, and the university responded several years ago with an
expansion of North Garland between North and Maple Streets from two lanes to a
nice-looking four-lane boulevard with a grassy, tree-lined median and sidewalks
on both sides.
But
rampant growth persisted, and now we're faced with the same problem on the rest
of North Garland. It's a good
example of a dictum from Al Bartlett (a fellow physicist and an expert on
overpopulation issues):
"Growth is never sustainable." This time the city and university have settled on one
solution, while AHTD has settled on a different solution. During a year of discussions, the city
developed a plan to extend the four-lane boulevard from North Street northward
0.75 miles to Melmar Drive, with a wide grassy median, sidewalks on both sides,
green space between the road and the sidewalks, and dedicated bike lanes
painted onto both sides of the road.
AHTD
goes along with the sidewalks and bike lanes but balks at the crucial
feature. Arguing that the median
will cut off too many roads and driveways, they prefer their standard fifth
lane with perhaps a few narrow pedestrian islands.
I
don't buy AHTD's argument. If you
drive along Garland between North and Maple Streets, you'll see that it also
cuts off several driveways and streets.
And Arkansas Avenue on the university's east side has a median that cuts
off several driveways, including two fraternity houses and a church. Cutting off driveways and roads is a
necessary consequence of growth and the resulting "need" for wider
roads. To try to solve the cut-off
problems by adding a fifth crash lane just makes everything worse. If we settle for AHTD's design, we'll
be settling for something approximating another plug-ugly North College Avenue
as the university's northern entrance.
University officials feel strongly that this is a bad idea, and from
what I know of this town Fayetteville does too. Five lanes is the antithesis of our Downtown Master Plan and
City Plan 2025.
The
Mayor's office has asked the City Council's Street Committee to accept the five
lanes in order not to delay the project.
The Committee should ignore this suggestion and insist on the grassy
median. After all, the city is
already paying $5 million of the project's cost, versus the state's $1.5
million contribution.
Looking
a little deeper, Fayetteville is part of a car culture that's too eager to
accept congestion as normal and to respond to congestion with the usual brute
force solution: more roads. But there are other solutions. How about more compact walking
neighborhoods? How about a
downtown where we can buy the necessities of life instead of having to climb
into our cars and drive out to the mall every time we need a screwdriver or a
pair of socks? How about more and
better sidewalks? How about a
Regional Mobility Authority that actually supports mobility by funding a real
bus network and a feasibility study for regional light rail?
But
the problem is deeper than the car culture. Behind the car culture lies the America's growth
fixation. All over town we
hear complaints about congestion, insufficient parking, too many apartments,
sprawl, and burgeoning schools.
These problems, which fill most of Fayetteville's political space, are
all problems of growth.
An
example: The University of
Arkansas decided, about ten years ago, to expand it's student body from around
10,000 to around 20,000. Once that
decision was made, the traffic congestion and the new apartments that we fuss
about today were inevitable. The
time to have prevented these growth problems was ten years ago, by reversing
the growth decision.
Today,
the city and the Chamber of Commerce discuss new ways to attract business to
Fayetteville. But is this really
what we want? Sure, more
businesses mean more tax income, but they also mean more people, more expenses,
more congestion, more apartments, more sprawl. We should decide for ourselves how large we want
Fayetteville to be, rather than accepting the growth mantra.
But
we didn't look ahead ten years ago, and now we have too many students, too many
cars, and congestion on North Garland.
If we must repeat the tired old response, namely more roadspace, let's
at least do it right. Let's build
a beautiful boulevard, not a boring car-centered replica of North College
Avenue.