Some small changes might still be made and have been actually been made from plans shown in the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Examples: not at-grade crossing of Verona Road at the Beltline (tunnel), frontage roads staying along the Beltline and Verona Road rather than dipping into the neighborhoods in the southeast sector as they had proposed, wet pond to be on right-of-way near U-Haul rather than down next to Dunn¹s Marsh. These changes came about because of strong input from my neighborhood and perhaps others.
But I agree that WisDOT has been basically closed to taking a broader regional and more future-oriented view that many ordinary citizens have. WisDOT is completely set on widening Verona Road and, next, of course, the Beltline. They say people aren¹t ready for and won¹t use mass transit, they say only a tiny percentage of traffic would use an ³outer Beltline,² and they say they are doing a lot for bicyclists and pedestrians with this project. One example they used over and over was making wider islands for pedestrians to stand on as if it wasn¹t the many lanes to cross that was really the problem for pedestrians. Another was that they would be painting bike lanes on the frontage roads as if that couldn¹t be done right now and now has been done. While they were working on the Verona Road EIS, Larry Barta would not admit that the Beltline was already clotted with traffic and is stop and go or nearly so most rush hours, but the minute the Final EIS was complete, he readily admitted that was the case. Now he is in charge of studying the whole Beltline issue. Meanwhile, the Beltline is quite built up, and widening will mean more displacements and so on. The ATC towers are now in for the high voltage lines, some quite close to the Beltline lanes, but there may be room to cram in another lane or two. I haven¹t actually measured. At Thursday¹s meeting, we were told that we shouldn¹t worry about the issue of more traffic pouring onto the Beltline from Verona Road because with longer merge lanes there would be ³more storage.² But the truth is that the stop and go traffic goes on for miles beyond the intersection, not merely to Seminole Highway. In looking at this one little intersection of Verona Road/Beltline, they don¹t consider the fact that the Madison metropolitan area is continuing to expand and that eventually they will be building that ³outer Beltline² both to bypass this Verona Road/Beltline bottleneck and to service the ever-growing population of the suburbs. I¹m absolutely certain this will happen. Some other metropolitan areas I¹ve seen not in Wisconsin have bypasses so far from the city that the city isn¹t even visible in any way, but we seem to be stuck on laying acres of concrete right over neighborhoods already built. Nor will they even provide right of way for public transit in their plans. Mainly they just say that since they¹ve classified 151 as a ³backbone highway² that it must be non-stop from beginning to end: the classification justifies what they are doing. Mass transit is someone else¹s business, I guess. On another subject, I was shocked when Mayor Pfaff proclaimed that this little project would be a ³renaissance for Dane County² and will ³change the face of southern Dane County.² That¹s majorly overblown and probably downright false. For my neighborhood, I think the prognosis is just the opposite. The project will provide less access, not more, to businesses in the area, and in fact it is wiping out quite a few now and will wipe out most of the rest when Phase 3 comes in. When he said he would turn over the program to our ³DOT friends,² I just about choked. To respond to your final remarks, I agree that no major changes can be expected for this project, but I believe there might still me a few tiny, fairly inconsequential tweaks they would consider. On 5/20/12 9:55 PM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > I attended the Verona Road project last Thursday. > > I've been attending public forums on this project about every other > year for the past decade. The approved project is just as horrific as > I imagined 10 years ago. > > The meeting was opened by Fitchburg mayor Pfaff who was very excited > about this project. He thinks this will be 'a renaissance' for the > area. He concluded by saying something like "We thank the taxpayers > for their generosity". > > "Generosity"??? > > Stage 1 and Stage 2 will cost (at least ) $175 Million. That money > doesn't come from passing the hat around. It doesn't come from > selfless donors giving of their own volition. > > No, it comes from taxes. Its a subsidy for public transportation. Just > like the high speed rail that we don't have, or the regional light > rail we don't have. It might be a practical necessity, or an abuse of > the public trust. But its not 'generosity'. > > Also in the works is Stage 3. Its not approved yet, but its likely > going to cost (at least) another $230 Million. > > Note that all of this is just for one single intersection. Meanwhile, > DOT is currently studying the *entire* Beltline. No doubt they will > discover the need for many absolutely essential improvements. How much > will that cost? Start saving, because you're paying for it, whether > you're feeling generous or not. > > What if we had spent the last 10 years looking at regional > transportation more broadly, and considered modes other than single > occupant vehicles? Well we did, and those ideas also came up at every > one of the public meetings I attended. But we know how that went. > > So, in answer to George's question: > "are there any processes available to the public that can result in > project changes at this late date? " > > The answer is no, and there never was. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
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