Follow-Up Meeting to the June 20th Neighborhood Meeting

June 23, 2016

As a follow-up to the public neighborhood meeting called by Chief-of-Staff Jeff Greene last Monday, June 20th, the Chief-of-Staff office set up a meeting with the following attendees. We were asked to come up with a solution that addresses the concerns brought forth by the ONEN Transit Committee (ONEN) and Save our Street Nevada (SOS) with the goal of implementing such solution with the scheduled bus route changes in September 2016. The minutes from this meeting may be found here.

Attended:

Craig Blewitt (MMT)
Brian Vitulli (MMT)
Vicki McCann (MMT)
Kathleen Krager (Traffic)
Courtney Stone (Transit Coalition)
Mike Anderson (SOS)
Melody Griffin (SOS)
Brian Safigan (ONEN)

Not Present:

Jill Gaebler (City Council Representative)

In summary, MMT offered a compromise that moves route 19 to Weber Street or Wahsatch Avenue. They were leaning towards Weber as it is only one block away from Nevada. The other route would remain in Nevada according to their plan.

ONEN does not accept this compromise for the following reasons:

• A bus line remains on the busiest north-south arterial street in violation of the ONEN Master Plan and City ordinance.
• ONEN feels that Wahsatch Avenue is a much better place for the local bus due to safe and easy access to the Bon Shopping Center, medical buildings, and charitable organizations along Wahsatch Avenue using existing infrastructure.
• ONEN is concerned with buses sharing Weber Street with drop-off and pick-up at Steele Elementary. This daily event is already very chaotic.

MMT and City traffic stated that their goal is to add a transit/bus lane to Nevada Avenue with the possibility of adding Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in the future if required. They do not want to move buses back to Cascade Avenue because it passes through a heavy pedestrian area of Colorado College.

The ONEN Transit Committee is offering our own compromise that serves the bus patrons that prefer a local bus down Wahsatch Avenue and recognizes the advantages of a second bus route down Cascade Avenue to serve a more direct route between UCCS and the downtown terminal. However, any high-capacity transit beyond 30-minute intervals using standard 35-40′ buses shall use the I-25 corridor.

Please sign our petition to support the ONEN Bus Plan:

[emailpetition id=”2″ width=”100%”]

 

 

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