WHAT’S THE POINT?
Alderman Matthew Petty makes a pretty good argument about shifting funds from construction on Rupple Road to College Avenue improvements. It should get a full airing.
The future of Rupple Road in west Fayetteville is again at the center of debate among city leaders. Now a disjointed collection of mostly two-lane sections, Rupple Road will demand a major face-lift to become the four-lane boulevard Mayor Lioneld Jordan has been pursuing for more than a decade, as mayor and when he served as alderman and chairman of the city’s Street Committee. There’s an area south of Owl Creek School where the road ends. Its eventual connection to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will be new construction on undeveloped land.
Ward 2 Alderman Matthew Petty, however, recently suggested there are reasons — about 1.7 million of them — to downsize the new Rupple Road between Persimmon Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. Build two lanes and make the critical north-south connection, Petty said, but save $1.7 million by eliminating two lanes so that money can be spent on more immediate needs. The extra lanes, he and city consultants suggest, won’t be necessary for traffic for a decade or more.
“There comes a point where spending becomes overspending,” Petty said last week.
Petty plans a presentation at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to pitch his idea. He faces an uphill battle, as it’s never easy to stop the momentum of a project already years in the making. That’s especially true when the project he’s trying to shrink is at the core of Jordan’s long-term transportation plan for the city.
Jordan campaigned on creating a “box” of fourlane boulevards around the city to give motorists more opportunities for moving east, west, north and south. That box is created by improvements to 15th Street, Crossover Road, Zion Road, Van Asche Drive, Howard Nickell Road and Rupple Road.
Without question, a full connection running from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Howard Nickell Road will be a welcome addition to an area often strangled by a dearth of north-south options. Nobody has suggested abandoning the project. The critical questions are how wide Rupple must be to meet traffic demand for the foreseeable future and, if not four lanes, what should those saved, voter-backed transportation dollars be spent on?
Petty’s answer: College Avenue.
It will take Petty some time Tuesday to explain his vision for College Avenue north of North Street, but at its core is a push to change one of the city’s busiest, and most poorly planned, commercial thoroughfares into something less ugly and less dangerous. The money saved from Rupple Road could fund sidewalk and safety improvements, particularly at intersections, he said. But he also wants city policy changes that would create incentives for developers to build new housing within a block or two of College Avenue, transforming the vehicle-centric commercial strip into a more traditional urban model mixing residential and commercial uses.
Petty makes a strong argument aldermen should consider with regard to Rupple Road. That doesn’t mean we’re convinced, and certainly Jordan isn’t.
“We have talked about it for 10 years,” Jordan said last week of Rupple Road. “I just think we need to build it right the first time and be done with it.”
Some have suggested Rupple Road might be the Crossover Road of the west, and what did the city and Highway Department just do on Crossover? Widened it to four lanes. Jordan may have a point. There are a lot of motorists who will agree wholeheartedly. But money has been shifted around city projects before with less-compelling arguments than Petty presents. Petty has offered an alternative, and that’s worthy of a serious discussion.