Asheville – Ken Putnam, transportation director for the City of Asheville, shared before city council plans for the Merrimon Avenue road diet. The plan was to reduce US 25 from four to three lanes between W. T. Weaver Boulevard and Midland Road. When Councilwoman Gwen Wisler asked which of the three Midlands he intended, she was told it was the southernmost, which is near the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary. Reasons for considering the change included making Merrimon safer and complying with council’s ambitions for creating more complete streets.
Putnam was requesting council’s approval to enter into an agreement with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NC DOT) for the $2.5 million project. Council was only asked to provide a $275,000 match. Plans called for constraining carbon-burning vehicles to one northbound lane, one southbound lane, and a central turning lane; and dedicating the leftover space from the existing fourth lane to multimodal transit.
As reasons for moving forward, Putnam cited 64% support in a survey with over 3,000 respondents. Also, he said the Charlotte Street road diet was working well, with a 59% decrease in automobile crashes and an average reduction in motorist speed of 3%. Thirdly, the contract contained a removal clause, which would make the city liable for up to $300,000 should consequent safety issues warrant reversion to four automobile lanes.
Sandra Kilgore was the only member of council to nay-say the proposal. She began by questioning the reported positive community response. She asked if addressees had been collected to verify that respondents actually intended to use Merrimon Avenue with some regularity. Information was not available.
Kilgore explained that she had attended the February 28 public meeting held, presumably, to solicit input. She said the majority of the 300 attendees were not local. She described the meeting as being full of proponents. All the pictures on the wall were promotional, not giving other opinions a footing. She added she couldn’t find anybody to answer questions, but finally somebody asked what she thought of the program. When she responded, they acted incredulous that she could oppose what so many others supported. The one-sidedness was “very upsetting.” Members of the community speaking during public comment corroborated her impressions of the meeting. Kilgore maintained the city could spend $275,000 or $300,000 in many other ways for greater community impact.
Kilgore explained one of her concerns about the project was public safety. She said a lot of cyclists are professional/competitive, but families with kids were going to want to ride in the bike lanes nonetheless – on a high-traffic business highway. What’s more, the avid cyclists with whom she had spoken told her there were enough trails that they did not need to use Merrimon.
She spoke of delays when city buses stop and passengers struggle with boarding and lighting; she told of delivery trucks unable to turn into businesses also stopping everybody behind them. She said people passing parked vehicles in the center lane to turn in front of them would likely increase the number of crashes. One speaker during public comment asked how trash day would go; another was told by advocates for the project that delivery trucks could park in the center lane and then handcart goods across the busy lanes of traffic. The fire department had approved of the changes, but the police department was not yet convinced the change would help their response times.
Kilgore did not think it was appropriate to consider the successes of the Charlotte Street road diet as predictive of what would happen on Merrimon. Charlotte Street was largely residential with a few businesses, but there were over 180 businesses on Merrimon, making for a lot of curb cuts. Traffic volumes on Merrimon were around 30%-40% higher, and that was according to 2016 data. Kilgore suspected part of the success of Charlotte Street’s road diet was drivers preferring to use Merrimon Avenue now, but Mayor Esther Manheimer said studies had refuted that hypothesis.
Manheimer intervened for damage control, saying many of Kilgore’s objections were not accurate. She started with personal stories of cycling and walking in the area and of crashes. Manheimer said the northern part of Merrimon was all that was under consideration; the DOT did not deem the southern end of the road appropriate for the road diet. Delays for delivery trucks, she said, were estimated at 17%, not 17 minutes, as Kilgore had stated. The business community, Manheimer said, did not object to the road diet, because it would be good for business.
During public comment, as could be expected for any change, most who spoke were opposed. They were mostly business owners disagreeing with Manheimer’s assessment of their preferences. One even said Kilgore’s comments read as if he had written them.
Those in favor of the changes were all cyclists, many of whom regularly travel Merrimon despite delays and safety issues. Clark Mackey, chairman of the board for Asheville on Bikes, said cyclists and pedestrians, “avoid [Merrimon] like the plague.” He acknowledged the project was controversial. Not only was it going to affect the daily routines of many, it was, “asking our world to change.” Mackey said Merrimon, as a community asset, was failing all its users already. Persons using Merrimon, he said, are 150% more likely to get in an accident than they would be on any similar road in North Carolina. Mackey compared building vacancies on Merrimon to those on Haywood Road. He suggested businesses didn’t want to locate on Merrimon because of traffic gridlock and other delays.