The Smart Roads Alliance Position Statement on the Jackson County Comprehensive Transportation Plan, 12/14/09

The Smart Roads Alliance has serious concerns over the inclusion of a bypass, called the 107 Connector, in the Jackson County Transportation Task Force's Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP). (A bypass is a road or highway that avoids a built-up area and allows traffic flow without interference from local traffic.)  As members of the Task Force and the decision making process which created the CTP, the Smart Roads Alliance is not confident that the Task Force took the time to discuss or evaluate the potential environmental, economic, community and/or cultural impacts a bypass would have on our community.  It is this inadequate evaluation of consequences that causes the Alliance to believe that it is not in our community's best interest to support a bypass.    A new bypass has enormous potential to drastically change our community's traffic patterns, economy and landscape.  A bypass would divert 10,000-12,000 vehicles/day from our commercial districts, use 135 million dollars in taxpayer funds, dislocate approximately 50 residences and consume a ¼ mile swath of private property, 5 miles long, in Jackson County .  Conversely, all the other transportation projects in the CTP will fix and/or expand existing roads, thus maintaining current traffic patterns and preserving the landscape.  The Smart Roads Alliance agrees with the inclusion of all these other projects in the CTP.   Moreover, DOT's own modeling shows that the 107 Connector will not solve the congestion on Hwy 107 or at the intersection of Asheville Hwy. Yet it is often this congestion which is cited as the reason for building the 107 Connector.  However, as DOT's Pam Cook often stated, traffic on Hwy 107 is driven by land use.  Land use means just that, how the land is used.  In our situation, the land along Hwy 107 is filled with many popular destinations and it's the driving to and from these locations that causes congestion.   To address this congestion, the CTP includes many solutions aimed directly at improving Hwy 107, East Main Street and the intersection of Asheville Hwy.   Only when these solutions are implemented and traffic begins to flow more efficiently can we better evaluate the need for a $135 million bypass. Let's be sure that wrong reasoning is not being used to justify a decision as enormous as building a bypass.   One of the wrong reasons for building a bypass is the assumption that it will be needed to accommodate WCU's projected growth.  Given the history of enrollment at WCU there is considerable uncertainty about how this will actually unfold.  And, at any rate, distance learning will be a major element of their growth. (Distance learning students are students enrolled in online and off campus courses and do not come to Cullowhee.)   Smart Roads would encourage our community and its leadership to capitalize on the increased enrollment of on-campus students by demanding infrastructure improvements that encourage the WCU community to become active and supporting members of our economy.  A 107 Connector could possibly discourage the WCU community, (or anyone else traveling from the southern portion of our county) from participating in our local economy.  When modeled, a Connector accommodated the greatest number of vehicles/day if built south of Hwy116.  At this location, anyone traveling to or from our southern communities could enter and/or exit our area without driving through most of our main commercial districts.  There has been no evaluation performed by the Task Force or any other government body for that matter, of the potential economic impacts when 10,000+ vehicles/day are diverted from our commercial corridors.      Another potential impact of the bypass not evaluated by the Task Force is the interchange it would require at the intersection of Hwy 107.  In a private conversation with NCDOT's Pam Cook, she stated that, 'there will be a separate grade interchange that includes clover leafs and/or ramps'.  This sounds like an overpass.   DOT is reluctant to discuss the final design of this interchange because the project is still in the 'feasibility stage' and not the 'design stage'.  However, the Smart Roads Alliance believes that somewhere DOT has built an interchange designed to accommodate 10,000+ vehicles/day and, with very little effort, we could have the important information needed to understand the necessary footprint and/or height requirement of the overpass.  The design of an interchange is a vital consequence of the 107 Connector and its impact should be evaluated and understood before including it in the CTP.    Lastly, the Task Force was not allowed to explore transit and rail options as solutions for traffic problems in our community.  This is because DOT's traffic model cannot model for transit and rail options in rural areas like ours.  This seems a bit out of touch with today's concerns, to say nothing of concerns of 2035, the year for the model.   These are just a few of the reasons why the Smart Roads Alliance believes that the 107 Connector should be omitted from the CTP.  Other reasons include the dislocation of residents and communities, the destruction of farmland and open spaces, environmental degradation, negative impacts on air quality and human health, and a continued reliance on foreign oil especially as dwindling supplies and increased foreign competition causes prices to become increasingly straining on household budgets.   A decision will be made soon, with NCDOT relying heavily on the vote of the incorporated towns and the county commissioners. Please contact all town and county leaders and let them know how you feel about the proposed 107 Connector.   To learn more you can visit www.regiona.org and click on Economic Development, then Transportation Planning to view the Jackson CTP in its entirety.  Or please visit www.ncdot.gov and select Jackson County .  The 107 Connector is project number is R-4745. Select more info and then click on the image for a detailed draft map of the 107 Connector.

Comments regarding the CTP by Adam Bigelow, Community member, 12/16/09

This is an important issue and one that needs reporting.  In the article written by Justin Goble about the hearing, I am quoted as saying: ""I agree with all the folks that have spoken in favor of removing the connector from the CTP," he said. "I like to call it the 'John Bardo Expressway.' Our leaders need to consider the extent this will impact the welfare of our citizens."" While I did say the first part of this quote, including naming the proposed road as the "John Bardo Expressway"  (which I am now updating to be the John Bardo/Bear Lake Reserve Expressway to reflect what I believe to be the economic impetus for this road proposal), the final statement attributed to me is not an accurate account of what I said, nor is it even a condensation of my statement summing up the "gist" of my message.  In order to rectify this mistake, and to further the dialog on the road project, I am responding in the hopes that my letter will clarify things.  What I addressed to the Commissioners at the hearing concerned the necessity of building this road based on the idea of continued vehicular traffic growth, without looking at and thinking about the impacts of Global Climate Change and Peak Oil.  There is an assumption that we can project growth based upon how things have grown in the past, and based upon how we have grown in the past we can assume that we will grow exponentially more in the future.  I believe that without accounting for the effects of Global Climate Change and Peak Oil, we cannot accurately predict future growth, especially of fossil fuel dependant and intensive vehicular transportation.  When looking at Peak Oil effects, we need to understand that oil extraction will not just shut off like a faucet when we run out, but rather the amounts of available oil will decrease, and its extraction will get more difficult.  These, and other contributing factors, including market speculation, will cause the price of oil to go up, and its availability to go down.  As oil, and therefore gasoline, gets more expensive, will we truly see an increase in vehicular traffic on our highways?  When the price of oil jumped to $170/barrel and the price of gasoline rose to $4.50/gallon we saw a decrease in traffic counts, as well as an increase in public transportation usage and car-pooling.  The NCDOT has stated to me that they can not include ideas of Peak Oil in their considerations, and therefore can only base their projections on incomplete data.  I asked that the Jackson County Commisioners, who can include other factors besides traffic counts, reject the Hwy 107 connector and look for other options for relieving congestion.  Thank you,  Adam Bigelow

Comments regarding the CTP by Avram Friedman, Canary Coalition Director, 12/16/09

I'd like to bring some things to your attention that were not addressed in the report from the Jackson County Transportation Task Force. Comprehensive public transportation options were not considered.  And, overall health and environmental impact of the various options were not compared.   It has been expressed that the county should leave environmental impact issues to such agencies as the Army Corp of Engineers, the federal EPA and appropriate state agencies.  But, please be reminded that the levies in New Orleans prior to Katrina were designed and built by the Army Corp of Engineers,  the toxic waste ash dam on the Emory River near Kingston, Tennessee was approved by the Army Corp of Engineers and the EPA and more than 500 mountains in West Virginia, Kentucky and East Tennessee have been dynamited, lowered up to 1000 feet in the shameful practice of mountain top removal coal mining,  all with the approval of the Army Corp of Engineers and the EPA.   I urge this commission not to avoid the responsibility of considering health and environmental impact yourselves before approving the CTP.   This past summer, a temporary staff member of the Canary Coalition, Brian McCauley, a graduate student at Duke University, conducted and published a study on the concept of a state-wide light-rail system that would connect various campuses of the state university together from Wilmington on the coast to Cullowhee in the mountains, including all the major communities in-between.  Using Jackson County as the example, the report describes how the cost comparison between a light rail vs. new road construction is favorable; how existing corridors can be used eliminating the need for vast land acquisitions; how a public transportation system that connects Sylva to Waynesville to Asheville and beyond would relieve traffic on existing roads; how parking issues would be favorably impacted on campus and in town; how the health and environmental impact compare favorably for light rail; how more practical it is to consider public transportation for a growing population than it is to prepare for more automobile traffic in a world where fossil fuel supplies are growing increasingly uncertain; how more affordable it would be to collaborate with other counties and the state on a comprehensive public transportation system than it is for Jackson County to develop its own public transportation system. We submitted this report to the DOT and we were thanked.  But, it was never presented by the DOT to the Transportation Task Force for consideration.  And it wasn't mentioned to you in the final report.  I submit it to you now, asking you to take it under serious consideration and to advocate for it to our state representatives and senators, as well as to the DOT.   I also have a second study conducted by the Canary Coalition two summers ago that I'm going to submit and ask you to review.  It's entitled "Air Pollution Costs Jobs."  This study addresses the effects of air pollution on agricultural industries, the forestry industry, the tourist industry and on the productivity of virtually all workers in all businesses and industry in areas, such as ours, in which poor air quality is a serious issue.  For instance, you may be aware of the fact that one in three children between the ages of 1 and 14 in western North Carolina has suffered at least one asthma attack. But, you may not have realized that every time a child has to stay home from school, generally a parent also has to take off from work to stay home with that child. When this happens hundreds of thousands of times, as it does in our region, considerably reduced productivity adds up to higher prices for goods and services as it reduces quality, which, in turn makes products from our region less competitive in national and global markets. This reduces production and ultimately costs jobs to our region.   Literally paving the way for 10,000 more car trips each day through Jackson County, by building a wasteful and un-needed by-pass could have a significant negative impact on our already poor air quality.  Add that impact to a new mammoth coal-burning power plant Duke Energy is building just southeast of here, an expanded Jackson Paper plant that we now know is putting out a lot more than just steam, a Tuckaseegee Mills that might be burning toxic and polluting chicken litter near the downtown area and we are setting up ourselves and our children for a new respiratory wing at Harris Regional Hospital and spending more money on health care than we'll ever gain from new jobs in our community.  I urge you to exercise some vision and remove the by-pass from the CTP before approving it.  This community doesn't need it. Thank you, Avram Friedman