New plan for Nicholasville Road will hurt our quality of life, not help it

Lexington’s Division of Planning is about to remove several car lanes on Nicholasville Road in order to install bus-only lanes they call Bus Rapid Transit. This means car traffic there will be a disaster, and overflow will spill further into neighborhoods and onto Harrodsburg and Tates Creek Roads.

On Thursday, May 21, the Lexington Division of Planning’s “Imagine Lexington” hosts a public hearing on their ongoing assault on our city, and if you’re like the thousands of Lexingtonians I’ve spoken to, this plan worsens quality of life for everyone in Lexington and should be opposed. Here’s how the plan, and their unscientific surveys trick well-intentioned Lexingtonians into supporting a scheme that is bad for everyone, and severely impacts the most vulnerable.

Lexington’s Division of Planning, within the city’s executive branch, is the organization pushing all this, funded by your tax dollars. They have three main goals:

1. Increase bus transportation
2. Increase urban density
3. Preserve rural land

All of these objectives serve Planning’s ends, and none sounds nefarious on the surface. Let’s unpack current popular opinion in Lexington:

1. As to bus transportation, the vast majority of Lexingtonians support ensuring free or low-cost transportation access for those who need it.
2. Regarding density, we recognize that our population is growing, and some different types of housing may be required in some cases.
3. When we think of rural land in Lexington, our horse farms are a major source of our heritage as a city, and preserving that is important to us.

Here’s the problem: first, very few people want to ride a bus, and Lextran’s own numbers show the average number of passengers per mile driven on their buses could fit in a Toyota Camry, including the bus driver. On average then, LexTran has about the same number of employees (over 200) as bus riders. This, of course, is a ridiculous waste of tax dollars, and alternative transportation options should be put in place.

Second on density, Lexington’s Planning has angered many neighborhoods, such as Nicholasville Road’s Penmoken Park and Tates Creek Road’s Glendover, by forcing them - against their will - to accept zone changes that alter the character of their neighborhoods.

Third, preserving rural land is important to maintaining our heritage, but preserving a random cattle farm may not be critical to our community’s needs, especially if it could be more effectively repurposed to alleviate our massive affordable housing, gentrification, and transportation issues. As the city of Lexington is only 30% of Fayette county, we need to decide if we really need quite that much farmland, or if we can release some to smart development to encourage a better balance in housing supply.

Here’s how all this is connected. Planning is all in on 20th century bus technology. To them, there’s no other option and they’re unwilling to even consider change, even if it would improve the lives of our people. Seriously, ask them. To make bus use effective, they must first prevent new rural land from being developed, even though that would both alleviate traffic congestion and create affordable housing (and create jobs - ask the Chamber), because expansion makes buses even more expensive. Once expansion is prevented, then the focus is on zone changes and altering neighborhoods to make them denser, because that forces people to live closer together, making bus use cheaper, even if the neighborhood objects. Current councilmembers have been all too willing to ignore even their own constituents’ pleas in order to accommodate Planning’s goals. Additionally, the lack of housing supply causes home prices to go up, which is why Planning has also heavily supported the ineffective Affordable Housing Trust Fund. They’re creating a problem, and playing savior to it at the same time. Folks, it’s time we stop this madness.

Planning’s latest email (May 14, 2021) states this plan will guide decisions for the next TWENTY years. So even if you elect new council members, this will be extremely difficult to undo for a generation. As they say, an ounce of prevention… Please join your fellow Lexingtonians in telling your councilmembers “No” to yet another Planning power grab.

You can make your voice heard in several ways: email your councilmember (search lexingtonky.gov), join the Zoom meeting by requesting an email link from imagine@lexingtonky.gov, and finally, send another email to imagine@lexingtonky.gov to tell Planning you want them to say “No” to their Nicholasville Road changes.

Barry Saturday has served the Lexington community as a social studies teacher, financial advisor, past HOA President, and 2018 candidate for city council.