City officials heard residents of Little Rock's Riverdale area loud and clear Monday night: They're not willing to give up travel lanes on Riverfront Drive to widen the Arkansas River Trail system.
The residents often expressed that sentiment with outbursts of boos and shouting over speakers to get their point across.
People who live, work and bike in the Riverfront Drive area met with city planners, engineers and parks officials to go over a proposal that would reduce the four-lane road to two vehicle lanes -- one in each direction -- to expand the bike lanes already in place.
Al Harkins, who lives in the Canal Pointe condominium subdivision off Riverfront Drive, made the residents' agenda clear from the start of the meeting.
"Explain exactly what you have to do to make this happen so we will know how to attack it, because that's what we are going to do. What's the process you have to go through so each step of the way we can fight it -- because this is going to be one hell of a fight," Harkins said.
The city staff hosted the meeting to get public input before applying for a $325,000 federal Transportation Alternatives Program grant that would pay for most of the street reconfiguration. If selected to receive the funding, Little Rock would have to contribute about $85,000.
The latest proposal presented at the meeting, which had been tweaked a bit since city officials described the project to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last week, called for expanding the 4-foot-wide bicycle lanes currently placed on each side of the street to 10 feet and keeping an 11-foot-wide lane for motorists in each direction.
The landscaped median in the middle of the road would remain unchanged.
Public Works Director Jon Honeywell said that according to a traffic study completed last week, about 9,800 vehicles travel the road daily, averaging a speed of 45 miles per hour on the first half of the street near Cantrell Road and up to 55 miles per hour on the second half near Rebsamen Park Road.
Expanding bike lanes and reducing vehicle lanes would serve to slow down the traffic and make the area safer for everyone, said Jeremy Lewno, the city's part-time bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. He said national standards state that a street with less than 18,000 vehicles traveling it daily can be reduced to two lanes without any negative effect on traffic.
"We could double capacity out there still without it having an impact on traffic congestion," Lewno said.
City employees fielded questions about how many bikes use the roadway, why more police officers didn't monitor speeders in the area and how many crashes occur on Riverfront Drive each year. When answers to most of those questions weren't immediately available, the crowd responded: "Well, don't you think that information would be helpful?"
"Are we spending $400,000 for 20 bicycles or 20,000 bicycles?" one man asked.
"This is a solution looking for a problem, and once again the city favors bikers over motorists because that's the politically correct thing to do. You don't care about the motorists," Dick Buzbee added. He lives nearby on Overlook Drive.
At one point Parks and Recreation Department Director Truman Tolefree had to stop the public comments to calm the crowd.
"There's no need to be disrespectful. This is a part of the public process. Honestly, we truly do want to hear your feedback. If you're telling us, 'Hey guys, you are headed in the wrong direction here,' then we might need to take another look at this," Tolefree said.
Mark Webre, the parks department's deputy director of operations, said the night's input would likely change the scope of the project, if the city proceeds at all. The staff will take back the comments to City Manager Bruce Moore and proceed from there, he said.
Some attendees said they were bicyclists or walkers and that they supported the plan. They were in the minority of the more than 100 people packed into a small conference room at Winrock International, which is located on Riverfront Drive.
By the end of the meeting, the residents in opposition to the proposal made clear that they weren't against expanding the bike lanes if it were done in a way that didn't reduce travel lanes.
Harkins stood up at the close of the meeting to make an announcement to the crowd.
"We've pretty well determined we don't oppose most of this. We just oppose not having four lanes. They got my support if they don't do that," Harkins said.
Lewno told Harkins that the other versions of the proposal offered different options for the bike lanes -- such as adding lanes on nearby levees or taking out the middle landscaped median of Riverfront Drive -- but would cost Little Rock taxpayers much more money. Indeed, the levee option was estimated to cost about $20 million, Webre said earlier in the meeting.
Harkins interrupted Lewno's comments and responded, "We don't care," turning his back.
The river trail that starts at the Big Dam Bridge runs along Rebsamen Park Road and into Riverfront Drive, traveling the full length of the drive. From the Big Dam Bridge, going in the other direction, the trail crosses into North Little Rock and connects to a pedestrian bridge back across the river into downtown Little Rock. There's currently a gap on Cantrell Road near the Dillard's headquarters that prevents the trail from fully connecting into a loop.
Residents said Monday that they would contact the Little Rock Board of Directors to express their opposition. A date wasn't set for another meeting or an announcement on how the project will move forward from here.
Metro on 04/28/2015