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City staff say Active Transportation Plan will prioritize corridors, split long routes after public feedback
Summary
South Burlington staff presented the Active Transportation Plan update, saying the draft will go to City Council on Feb. 3 and that long corridors such as Hinesburg Road have been split into sections after public input to better match treatments to local density and need.
City planning staff presented an update on the Active Transportation Plan (ATP), describing the project as a year-long, CCRPC UPWP-funded effort that will shape bike and pedestrian capital projects and programs for the next three to 25 years. Erica Qualen, deputy director of capital projects, said the project has included three well-attended public open houses and a robust outreach survey and is now in a final revision phase before a planned draft presentation to the City Council on Feb. 3.
"This project is one of the primary purposes... to plan out the next 3 to 25 years of particularly capital projects that will be needed to build out our bike ped network," Qualen said. Staff and consultants have identified projects and applied an objective scoring system to prioritize work, but commissioners and residents pressed staff to add more nuance in long corridors.
Nick Allerton, the city planner working on the ATP, said algorithmic scoring initially flagged Hinesburg Road as a top priority for separated bike facilities but that public feedback argued against treating an entire long corridor with uniform design. "Due to some of the way that those variables were weighted, Hinesburg Road actually popped up in this ranking system as being the highest priority," Allerton said. In response, staff proposed splitting corridors into sections and weighting population density so that segments with higher need receive different recommended facilities.
Commissioners and members of the public also asked how the ATP ties to transit and employer-focused strategies. Qualen said connectivity to transit was a highly weighted metric in the scoring and that some smaller, near-term projects—such as crosswalks and gap closures—could be expedited even as large separated facilities remain long-range. "Transit was one of our metrics and connectivity and proximity to transit... got quite a few of those points," she said.
The planning commission will review staff clarifications and a refined project list; the draft will be posted to the CCRPC project page, with a likely mid-January draft posting and a goal to finalize in early March.
