More sprawl is not the answer to traffic problems on Nicholasville Road

In his May 20th op-ed, Barry Saturday again railed against Lexington’s Division of Planning and, specifically, the Imagine Nicholasville Road study. For those unaware, Imagine Nicholasville Road, is a study and set of recommendations of how to improve Nicholasville Road. Some of those recommendations are removing the reversible lanes, disallowing some left turns, adding 10’ separated bike/walk paths, encouraging Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and establishing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on the corridor.

An aspect of the BRT recommendation is having a center bus only lane for some parts of the road and having bus/right turn lanes on other parts of the road. One important note: these are merely recommendations and each recommendation will require substantial work before anything changes. Mr. Saturday claims the planning department is continuing their “ongoing assault on our city” and using “unscientific” surveys to “trick well-intentioned Lexingtonians”, all with the goals of increasing bus transportation, increasing urban density, and preserving our rural land. Nefarious indeed.

He backs up these claims by saying he has spoken to “thousands” of Lexingtonians and they also disagree with the study. He claims that this is bad or wrong because few people want to ride the bus, density makes neighborhoods angry, and not all rural land is worth preserving. His solutions are the same that he has stated before. Replace Lextran with “alternative transportation options” and open up more rural land to build more housing.

This is the same short-sighted suburban sprawl that has led us to this situation. Sprawl is not sustainable, in any meaning of the word. Sprawl does not pay for itself. It triples public service costs while also not providing much in terms of taxes, especially in Lexington where most of the city’s budget comes from the occupational tax. By spreading things out and housing people on the periphery, you are all but requiring them to have a car to get around, thereby increasing the number of cars on the road and making traffic worse. The current traffic situation is a result of having a large number of commuters coming in and out of Jessamine county during rush hour.

There is simply not enough space to build enough lanes to allow every commuter to drive by themselves in a timely manner. That many lanes would require leveling most everything around and building something that would rival most interstates. Lexington dodge a bullet by not having an interstate bisect us, let’s not try to recreate that. Besides, adding lanes is at best a temporary solution, with congestion getting right back to where it was within months.

Mr. Saturday was correct in one regard; sprawl makes public transit worse. This is because public transit works best when it connects destinations and has few stops. Spreading everything out makes the bus take longer and carry fewer people from stop to stop.

We cannot continue to push people into the surrounding counties for affordable housing just because some neighbors refuse to accept any change. Having more duplexes, fourplexes, or accessory dwelling units doesn’t destroy a neighborhood, but widening roads certainly can. The best place to house our would-be neighbors is in our existing neighborhoods where there are established services and amenities.

As Lexington grows, things will have to be reassessed to see if they are working for the city as a whole. That includes looking at ways to move more people, not just cars, on our existing roadways. Making the bus quicker and increasing reliability helps move more people more efficiently. Developing our underused corridors offers the opportunity to provide nearby neighborhoods new services and amenities that they may not have to drive to. Imagine Nicholasville Road is by no means any sort of panacea, but it helps us move towards a more equitable city, where people can afford to live in town, in a neighborhood where they may not have to use a car for every trip.

Blake Hall is an advocate for better urban design and walkability who blogs at Build A Better Lexington and is a member of Lexingtonians United for Livability.