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November 18, 2020 By RGC

A Call to Action on Hwy 390

JH News & Guide Guest Shot by Luther Propst, Nov 4, 2020

https://www.jhnewsandguide.com/opinion/guest_shot/a-call-to-action-on-hwy-390-speeds-safety/article_aebba7e1-6948-5ff9-87ed-c4971966563c.html

Highway 390 has one of the highest rates of collisions between motor vehicles and moose of any road in the contiguous United States. The all-too-frequent photos of dead animals are heartbreaking. The high speeds along 390 are also a hazard for people — from toddlers to retirees — who cross the road to access the pathway.

The 390 corridor plays several important roles. Given these various and competing functions, speed limits are patently too high. Current speed limits and patchy enforcement simply do not strike an equitable balance between highway engineers’ desire to move traffic fast, wildlife advocates’ desire to reduce collisions between ungulates and motor vehicles, residents’ desire to turn left safely out of The Aspens or Nethercott Lane, or parents’ desire to safely cross the street and walk the pathway with a stroller.

Instead we live in a dictatorship of highway engineers in which their desires trump everything else. In the latest example of imbalanced priorities the Wyoming Department of Transportation just completed a speed limit study that spends 71 pages to tell us that the current mix of speed limits is just fine, thank you and if anything, they should be higher.

They are not just fine, and they are not too low.

The crux of the study reads: The traveling public is the best judge of a safe driving speed for themselves and most of the people (85%) will travel at a reasonable comfortable speed based on roadside conditions consciously or unconsciously [sic]. Setting speed limits lower than the 85th percentile creates violators in law-abiding citizens.

Does the same laissez-faire principle apply to blood alcohol content while driving, speeds through school zones and pretty much every other law in the books? Under this logic there would be no speed limits and we would all drive at a speed that makes us feel comfortable.

Here’s the challenge: WYDOT controls Highway 390. Its highway engineers are dedicated public servants. I am especially grateful to the local WYDOT folks who plow snow and maintain our highways. The issue is that speed limits are determined by an agency dominated by a single professional caste: highway engineers. These speed limits do not adequately account for competing values. Their priorities are not the priorities of folks who live along the road and certainly not the priorities of the moose and other critters that inhabit the corridor. The highway engineering profession creates conditions in which motor vehicles move fast and efficiently, while discounting competing values. Period.

There is little, if anything, that Teton County government can do directly to reduce the speed limit or otherwise influence management of Highway 390. The only hope to change decisions is through sustained community engagement.

As Abe Lincoln said: “Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.”

The public must express its sentiment to change anything along 390.

Speed limits only work with a reasonable level of enforcement. Enforcing the speed limit on 390 is primarily the responsibility of the Wyoming Highway Patrol, with the Teton County Sheriff’s Office playing a secondary role. Given the state’s deepening financial crisis, the highway patrol is spread thin. The sheriff also has limited staff and generally prioritizes patrolling county roads that the highway patrol does not. Therefore, the County Commission should increase the sheriff’s budget to support more speed limit patrols on 390.

To create the needed changes, nonprofit organizations and/or members of the community, perhaps with support from Teton County, need to create a citizens’ vision for the future of the corridor and a comprehensive corridor action plan for realizing this vision. This action plan should:

• Propose more consistent speed limits for the 7.7-mile Highway 390 corridor that balance various values.

• Increase enforcement of speed limits.

• Determine best use of portable dynamic message signs and fixed radar speed signs.

• Analyze whether removing vegetation or adding streetlights makes 390 more or less safe for people and wildlife.

• Develop pilot projects for testing animal detection systems that detect wildlife near 390 and warn drivers.

• Expedite planning for effective placement and design of wildlife crossings.

• Evaluate design improvements and traffic calming investments such as roundabouts, pedestrian crosswalks, narrower lanes, bulb-outs, bus lanes and medians.

• Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of transferring management of 390 from WYDOT to Teton County, designating 390 as a national scenic byway or designating the corridor a special wildlife management area.

We can make Highway 390 better serve the needs and aspirations of the community. Now is the time.

JH News & Guide Guest Shot by Luther Propst, Nov 4, 2020

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Filed Under: News Media Articles, Plans and Policies, Press, Traffic Studies, Uncategorized Tagged With: recent news

November 11, 2020 By RGC

Building More Roads is Like Addressing a Weight Problem by Buying Larger Pants

As seen here in Jackson Hole News & Guide

Guest Shot by Brot Coburn, November 11, 2020

As an older guy I sometimes step back to take a broader look, beyond the time horizon of the daily news cycle. The population of the earth has tripled during my lifetime (I passed this eerie personal milestone on Dec. 5, 2019, by my calculation). The first tertile of that growth took some 500,000 years to unfold. Unconstrained, head-spinning economic expansion, as I’ve witnessed over decades in China and India as well as in the U.S., cannot continue indefinitely.

Perhaps our leaders and citizens can take a moment, too, to ponder the possibilities (and needed sacrifices) of a truly sustainable world and ask at least one pertinent local question: How long can we continue to expand our road network?

Politicians speak nobly about transit, sustainability, the environment, reducing fossil fuel consumption and preserving the character of Jackson Hole.

In a recent survey conducted by Friends of Pathways (“How Do Local Candidates Feel About Pathways?”) the candidates unanimously called for expanding use of alternatives to personal vehicles, and voiced support for the ongoing development of pathways. Yet only Christian Beckwith went on record opposing construction of the Tribal Trails Connector, along with Commissioner Luther Propst.

“One of the most dismaying aspects of serving on the Commission,” Propst wrote, “is the width of the disconnect between the steady stream of aspirational resolutions about climate change, etc., and the real decisions that continue to push our community in the wrong direction.”

What we need are transportation alternatives, not road alternatives. Our abiding task is to address growth, not merely accommodate it or, more typically, build our way out of it.

So what will the community get out of paving a new road at the Tribal Trail Connector, and at what downstream cost?

At the moment it appears to be an expensive, potentially dangerous, environmentally unsound and locally disfavored way to increase the incentive to drive cars more, and ride bikes less. If driving a single-passenger car is easy and enjoyable, why do anything else? Inevitably the connector will be used as a shortcut between south Jackson and Teton Village, through a neighborhood with four schools.

Smarter alternatives exist, and have been proposed by Beckwith and others: congestion pricing, careful transit design (including micro-transit), and smart traffic signals.

When the weather allows, the existing Tribal Trails Pathway has long been my preferred transportation option to south Jackson: I can reach the door of Smith’s grocery from our house in Wilson faster on my e-bike than in a car, even when there’s little vehicle traffic. The pathway allows for this and was a major incentive for me to purchase an e-bike. (Never mind that this travel advantage is thoroughly enjoyable, too — a rather different feeling than I have when driving locally. I do ride responsibly, as we all must.) For half the year e-bikes present a viable alternative to driving for many, and it’s no coincidence that sales are mushrooming.

Once a motorable road connects Highway 22 to Tribal Trail, however, I might as well just drive. In the meantime, I really don’t want to be stuck buying a larger pair of pants.

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Filed Under: News Media Articles, Press, Public Input, Uncategorized Tagged With: biking, tribal trail connector

October 3, 2020 By RGC

Use smart lights and roundabouts, not new roads, to address congestion

Use smart lights and roundabouts, not new roads, to address congestion
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Filed Under: News Media Articles, Press, Public Input, Uncategorized Tagged With: induced demand, smart signals

September 1, 2020 By RGC

Is it Time for Congestion Pricing?

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Filed Under: News Media Articles, Plans and Policies, Press, Uncategorized Tagged With: Christian Beckwith

May 21, 2020 By RGC

Tribal Trail: bad timing for a big price tag

The Tribal Trail Connector – a half-mile segment connecting the existing Tribal Trail Road to Highway 22 in northern South Park – has been steadily working its way through the county’s approval process. As the date for the Board of County Commissioners to decide whether to advance the road process nears (on June 2), so do budget decisions in a fiscal crisis. So far, the projected cost to the county ranges from $2-3M, with a total project cost ranging from $8-17M. Given the controversial process thus far, and the commissioner’s own time, bandwidth, and funding constraints, we asked commissioners to put Tribal Trail on the back burner and not to fund it this year. Not to mention that the future of Tribal Trail is also closely tied to future development plans for northern South Park, which (if now is the time to consider its development) needs full funding for holistic planning.

May 20, 2020

Teton County Board of County Commissioners

RE: Please put the Tribal Trail project on hold

Dear Madam Chair Macker and Commissioners,

Thank you for the extensive time and detailed considerations each of you has made into determining next year’s budget given the COVID-19 funding crisis. We last wrote to you expressing our support for fully funding a neighborhood plan for northern South Park, if you believe now is the time to consider development there. In contrast, please put the Tribal Trail road on the back burner and do not fund it now.

Road building is a costly process, whether in staff time, consultant services, stakeholder facilitation, or construction. The cost to the county alone was last budgeted at $2.4-$3.2 million, and the entire project could reach $8-17M. Of course, you have not yet made a decision on whether or not to build the Tribal Trail road, let alone decided on the design that would determine final costs – so these numbers are rough guesses.

This discussion has long been controversial. We find it extremely significant that most of the stakeholder group asked that the process be halted – and that their request was not honored. A controversial proposal like this places a real burden on our community members to engage meaningfully during an ongoing public health crisis. And it adds a cost to your own decision-making bandwidth when you clearly have higher priorities.

Right now, and in the coming year, our community and our elected leaders should be most focused on core government services that provide for human health – whether that’s public health, human services, water quality planning and management, responsible planning, or conservation. These last few months have repeatedly demonstrated the fundamental value of these services for our mental and physical health. Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, where can this money, whether several thousand for facilitation or many million for a road, be put to better use?

Please focus your limited budget and limited time on more-important, less-controversial projects, and put the unnecessary Tribal Trail project on hold for at least a year or indefinitely.

Sincerely,

Signature Brooke Sausser community planner

Brooke Sausser

Community Planning Manager

Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance

This letter appeared in the JH News and Guide and was reposted on the JH Conservation Alliance website

This letter to the Teton County Commissioners can be download it here.

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Filed Under: News Media Articles, Press, Public Input, Uncategorized Tagged With: tribal trail connector

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Plans and Policies

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Commissioners Compromise our Ecosystem

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Public Input

Commissioners Compromise our Ecosystem

Pothole Boondoggle

The Paradox of Tribal Trail Build Options

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Traffic Studies

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Press

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Commissioners Compromise our Ecosystem

Development Roars on, and We Foot the Bill

Pothole Boondoggle

Contracts

Study will create new traffic modeling system

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