We are rarely surprised by some of the strange, even kooky, recommendations that come up at various government boards and councils.
But even we could not have predicted how absurd the latest recommendation from a supposed “transportation consultant” to the city of Burlington would be.
The city council last week heard a presentation of what was obliquely described as a “road diet.”
Most regular people would just call it for what it is: narrowing the road by reducing the lanes of traffic.
But not just narrowing any road.
No, these consultants somehow think, and actually recommend, that the city agree to narrow one of the busiest roads in the city, Church Street, right through the center of downtown.
The area is about one mile long between Tarleton Avenue (near city park) past Williams High School to West Fifth Street on the edge of downtown.
The potential for subsequent traffic jams would seem to us, and we suspect to most regular Burlington residents, to be self-evident.
Their idea for this stretch of Church Street, believe it or not, is to reduce the number of travel lanes from four (two in each direction) to two (one in each direction) – two, as in the number you’d find on a typical residential street rather than the busiest thoroughfare in the city – with a raised median in between. That median also means, effectively, restricting the ability of drivers to turn into various businesses along this part of Church Street.
Now, even during their presentation, the consultant/bureaucrats acknowledged that traffic might be slowed, but not beyond what they assess to be an “acceptable level,” according to some fancy metrics the state maintains. Not as good as it currently is, but an acceptable level of slower, and delayed, traffic.
Regardless of what bureaucrats and consultants find to be “acceptable,” we seriously doubt regular Burlington drivers will find it to be tolerable, and certainly not any improvement whatsoever.
We never cease to be amazed at the fads that transportation consultants, and sometime state government agencies like NC DOT itself, get obsessed with – the most prevalent in recent years being so-called roundabouts, rather than simply having traditional intersections.
When we see these types of proposals coming from consultants to state government, our first thought is there’s entirely too much money being spent (i.e., wasted) on dreaming up such crackpot schemes.
How about spending what money you have fixing potholes, adding traffic lights, turn lanes, or other real improvements.
What did surprise us is that Burlington’s city council sat passively, listening to this ridiculous proposal as though, of course, who wouldn’t want to restrict traffic and create delays on Burlington’s busiest roadway.
Instead, Burlington’s elected officials need to make crystal clear that they don’t, and won’t, support this idea – not now, not in 2028 when the state plans to acquire the necessary right-of-way, nor 2030, when DOT apparently plans to put this “road diet” lunacy out to bid.
