EUGENE, Ore. — The Eugene City council and Lane Transit District officers met on Monday evening to debate the Moving Ahead undertaking, which is a development plan designed to make 5 main roads throughout town extra accessible for these taking the bus, strolling and biking.
The 5 corridors embody River Road, Coburg Road, Highway 99, MLK Junior Boulevard and thirtieth Avenue. The sort of changes to be made are nonetheless being mentioned nevertheless they embody, however aren’t restricted to site visitors indicators, bus stops, sidewalks and Em-X stations.
On river highway, LTD and metropolis officers say the realm could be appropriate for an Em-X extension, with a devoted bus lane.
They’re additionally contemplating varied enhancements on Highway 99, Coburg highway and MLK Junior Boulevard, although the specifics have but to be ironed out. Officials discovered it is best to attend on enhancements to thirtieth Avenue for now.
There are some folks against the potential adjustments, even calling the public-transit targeted plans out of date.
“We now have a trend toward electric vehicles. mass transit’s been on the decline nationally since 2014,” stated Meta Maxwell, a property proprietor in one of many mentioned corridors. “People prefer rideshare and other alternatives that weren’t really popular [when discussions began.]”
The undertaking is part of town’s 2035 transportation plan and it’s been in movement since 2015.
There have been no official votes forged on the assembly. The main function was to debate a number of the choices and are available to a consensus about subsequent steps. The groups will present suggestions in mid-March.
The subsequent steps of the method are based mostly in group outreach in keeping with Andrew Martin with LTD. He stated the organizations have been dedicating a lot of their time to that, regardless of some claiming the opposite.
“I think we’ve tried to have a very robust process and why those individuals feel like we haven’t reached them I’m not sure,” Martin stated. “We certainly want to make sure those people have their concerns reflected in the project.”
Based on the discussions held on the assembly, it might seem the method is much from the start of the development course of.