Agenda - 02-16-1988 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ridesharing Ridesharing services for the Triangle Area are provided by the Tri-A-Ride Program of Triangle J Council of Governments. The program operates carpool matching through employers or individual requests. Tri-A-Ride provides a fleet of vans for vanpooling, and provides maintenance, insurance, driver training, and even free mileage to drivers who are agreeable to operate the vanpool. The goal of the Tri-A-Ride Program is to increase vehicle occupancy by making it easy for commuters to find persons with travel times and origins and destinations similar to their own. As mentioned earlier, increasing vehicle occupancy will have a major impact on reducing congestion of the street network. It is difficult to get people out of their cars and into carpools, vanpools, or buses, even when the service is convenient, inexpensive, and pleasant. Incentives to share the ride and disincentives to riding alone are a necessary part of any effective method to increase vehicle occupancy. One incentive under consideration is the construction of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes along I-40 between the Research Triangle Park and Raleigh. Bicycles Bicycling for commuting purposes is a significant alternative to the private automobile, especially in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area. An estimated 6-10% of the population of Chapel Hill and Carrboro commutes to work or school by bicycle on an average day. Facilities for bicycles must be taken into account when planning new roads or widening existing roads. Proper on-road facilities such as a bike lane or wide outside travel lane, as well as exclusive bike-pedestrian paths provide for safer bicycle travel, reducing bicycle-automobile conflicts and thereby increasing the capacity of roads for automobiles, and increasing the attractiveness of riding bicycles. Summary Increased use of other urban travel modes such as ridesharing, public transportation, bicycling and walking cannot eliminate the need for a improvements to the existing road network or new thoroughfares, but can defer the need to do so for many years. The primary goal of the Transportation Advisory Committee and local transportation professionals is to get the most efficient use out of our roads, whether through increasing vehicle occupancy, traffic operations improve- ments. construction of connections between existing roads to shorten travel distances, or use of staggered hours or flex-time to reduce travel demand during peak hours. When these efforts have been exhausted, widening of existing roads and building of new roads is necessary to reduce or eliminate the undesirable and hazardous effects of traffic congestion. The Thoroughfare Plan allows needed improvements to be protected until their implementation is deemed necessary. 4.7