Weaverville – Weaverville is the latest town to embrace the bicycle/pedestrian trend that so many towns have assumed. At last month’s town meeting, the Weaverville Town Council adopted the Active Weaverville Bike-Ped Plan, but what exactly does the plan layout for Weaverville?
According to Rachael Bronson, a resident of the town and who presented the plan to the board, the plan’s purpose does three things: “identifies connections to places people want to bike and walk to, builds the network to connect them with sidewalks and greenways, and then the third piece is how to foster a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly Weaverville.”
Bronson said that the town applied for and got a Department of Transportation (DOT) grant to develop the plan that would make the town eligible for future grants. “If you have a plan like this in place, if adopted…DOT will fully fund projects.” She then reviewed the project’s timeline, which started in September 2021 and culminated last month with the council’s adoption of the plan.
Bronson then gave an overview of the plan, starting with what she called “the catalyst projects,” which included 10 projects (out of over 70) from Main Street to across the future I-26 bridge to Monticello Road to Merrimon Ave. to Hillside. They include everything from sidewalk improvements to multi-use sidepaths to streetscaping to traffic calming and spot improvements.
“There is not a dedicated bicycle lane or shoulder improvement in the top 10. I wanted to mention that…that’s not intended to be a lack of bicycling support or desire or anything. It’s more that these linear bike projects are incredibly sensitive [to cost], She explains.
She told the council, “The whole goal of the network is to really do three things: connect the northwest part of town,” where there is a lot of growth. “The other piece is Lake Louise. You now have this amazing community center, wonderful park, this wonderful community asset. How do you make that more connected….Then the third goal is really to reroute these amazing sidewalks.”
She then gave the overall system plan, which extended out into Reems Creek, over and down Monticello Road, south to Aiken Road, and New Stock.
She told the council that the easy work had been done and the tough work remained, but the good thing was that there is a lot of opportunities as this was the Year of the Trail, NCDOT Complete Streets Policy money, grant funding and public/private partnerships.
The adoption of the plan is just the start of a long road to a more bicycle/pedestrian-friendly Weaverville, and a lot more work and money will be needed to make it a reality.