{"id":10167,"date":"2023-04-24T21:55:31","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T21:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/?p=10167"},"modified":"2023-04-24T21:55:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T21:55:31","slug":"for-this-committee-highway-planning-can-be-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2023\/04\/24\/for-this-committee-highway-planning-can-be-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"For this committee, highway planning can be fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent Wednesday morning in a bright green committee room in City Hall, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization Technical Committee held its monthly meeting to discuss everything from bike lanes to traffic jams.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To most, this meeting would seem like the stuff of mind-numbing bureaucratic nightmares. But not to the group\u2019s chair, Nishith Trivedi, who has been on the committee since 2018.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d he said, despite the fact that the day\u2019s agenda included discussion on bus stop improvements <\/span>and the approval of a parking study for downtown Hillsborough<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI get to see what everyone else is doing, coordinate together, collaborate together, work together in improving the entire transportation network.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The feds require this \u2014not that members have fun (Trivedi may be unique in that regard) \u2014 but that local transportation organizations work together. In this case, that means Durham County, a portion of Orange County, and northeast Chatham County.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The committee\u2019s mission is to screen potential projects and provide advice to the elected officials on the MPO Board.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first action item on the agenda: approval of five new projects for federal funding, with an opportunity for public comment. It was a good day for bicyclists, as the projects included the development of protected bike lanes on Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have received five comments so far\u2026basically just saying that they were happy that the projects were more broad-based, that there were bike and pedestrian facilities,\u201d member Kelly Fomenko announced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Other projects can be transformative for the region. According to member Andy Henry, the committee\u2019s input can transform the landscape of the area and the development of local cities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere used to be a proposed freeway bypass to go around the northern half of the city of Durham and this committee took that off the long-range plan so that it never got built,\u201d said Henry, who has been on the committee since 2002.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHad we not done that\u2026north Durham would look completely different. It would be suburbanized,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The five projects, including the bicycle project, passed unanimously.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next on the agenda was a presentation on a congestion management process, which sparked a heated debate among representatives over how it would affect federal funding for their areas (a reminder that all politics is local).<\/span><\/p>\n

The meeting ended with reports from the North Carolina Department of Transportation staff. After the meeting, many members stuck around chatting to each other about work, home, and inevitably, transportation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The committee, although most likely completely unknown to the common Durhamite, has had large impacts on Durham and the surrounding region.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAny type of transportation improvement you see [within the area] has most likely come through this committee or started in this committee,\u201d said member Brandon Jones, a division engineer at the North Carolina Department of Transportation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The importance of the work doesn\u2019t mean the process isn\u2019t slow and bureaucratic, though.<\/span><\/p>\n

Member Ellen Beckman said that when she started in 2005, the MPO\u2019s top priority was securing funding for the East End Connector, which would link the Durham Freeway and U.S. 70.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The East End Connector opened to traffic this past summer, in June 2022. <\/span><\/p>\n

Photo at top: The work of the technical committee sometimes takes years to translate into completed highways. A case in point: The East End Connector, shown here at groundbreaking. Photo from North Carolina Department of Transportation.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a recent Wednesday morning in a bright green committee room in City Hall, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization Technical Committee held its monthly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[276,359],"yoast_head":"\nFor this committee, highway planning can be fun - 9th Street Journal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The technical committee of the local Metropolitan Planning Organization deals with some pretty dull stuff \u2013\u00a0unless you're a member.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2023\/04\/24\/for-this-committee-highway-planning-can-be-fun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For this committee, highway planning can be fun - 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