Elon’s town council has decided to submit three sidewalk projects and one street upgrade as candidates for a regional wish list of road projects that will ultimately be shared with the N.C. Department of Transportation.
The council voted 4-to-0 on Tuesday to recommend the inclusion of these proposed ventures in a 13-item list that’s being compiled by the Burlington-Graham Metropolitan Planning Organization – a multijurisdictional confab that advises the state on transportation initiatives.
Lori Oakley, the town’s planning director, presented these items to the council that evening based on her previous discussions with the town engineer Josh Johnson. Oakley added that she and Johnson settled on the four entries she shared with the council based their placement on the town’s own list of transportation priorities as well as their odds of scoring well with the NCDOT, which uses a complex rating system to determine its own allocation priorities.
“All of these projects are in the top 10 of our multimodal plan,” Oakley added. “And just so you know, there are currently 74 projects competing for those 13 slots [on the Burlington-Graham priority list].”
Among the four items that the council approved is the proposed “modernization” of South Williamson Avenue with additional turn lanes and a “multimodal” path between Trollinger Avenue and the Burlington municipal limits. In addition, the council signed off on three sidewalk projects – one along Ballpark Avenue and two more along different sections of West Haggard Avenue.
The inclusion of three sidewalk projects among the town’s four entries didn’t sit well with Elon’s mayor pro tem Monti Allison. Councilman Michael Woods defended the Ballpark Avenue sidewalk as a prime route for employees of Elon University who like to hoof it to work. All the same, Allison saw little rationale for doubling up on sidewalks along West Haggard Avenue.
Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe was also ambivalent about submitting sidewalk projects along both the north and south end of West Haggard Avenue. She nevertheless went on to encourage the council to endorse the list as presented by the town’s planning director.
“I don’t see that south side as being a higher priority,” she said of the second West Haggard proposal. “But it also has less cost to it. So, it might be scored higher [by the state]…I say leave it on [this time]. But I think we need to reprioritize what we’re submitting in the future.”
The council’s 4-to-0 vote in favor of the four proposed projects excluded councilmember Stephanie Bourland, who was absent from Tuesday’s proceedings.
