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DISTRIBUTED <br />Orange / - Grsl�As <br />Orange County Commissioners <br />Chairman Moses Carey <br />POB 8181 <br />Hillsborough NC 27278 <br />Dear Mr. Carey and other Commissioners: <br />8232 Morrow Mill <br />Chapel Hill, NC 27° <br />January 31, 1991 <br />Thank you for opposing the widening of NC54 west in Orange County. <br />is <br />4 <br />is <br />When North Carolina is unable to give its teachers a raise, this is NO time to <br />consider wasting millions of dollars on the Department of Transportation's massive <br />highway- widening and road - building project. <br />With lives being sacrificed in the Gulf crisis we should be conserving <br />oil by cutting back on unnecessary driving, encouraging or even man- <br />dating car - pooling, and developing a well - planned mass - transit system. Random <br />suburban development and reliance on individual autos uses ten to fifty times as much <br />land and wastes many times the energy of mass transit .Autos pollute our water <br />supplies with toxic run -off and foul the air with poisons that damage our lungs and <br />brains. We must plan and work toward mass - transit BEFORE we have wasted the needed <br />funds on highways and parking -lots and spread ourselves out to where the <br />convenience of mass - transit is not feasible. Furthermore, mass transit must be made <br />available to all, including those who cannot afford an individual car to get to a job or a <br />doctor, and those who through age or disability are unable to operate a vehicle safely. <br />Nov is the time for planned land -use to concentrate development at appropriate <br />centers along mass - transit corridors. Several of these corridors have already been <br />studied by the Joint Greater Raleigh- Durham - Chapel Hill- Carrboro Transportation <br />Advisory Committee. Also the Triangle Net -work for Transportationthas worked out a <br />comprehensive Triangle -wide Public Transportation System incorporating light rail, <br />buses, park - and -ride lots and bike lanes, which I urge you to consider. <br />One particularly unwanted and unnecessary high- way - widening plan <br />which should be scrapped entirely is NC 54 between I85 at Graham and <br />the By -pass at Carrboro. The supposed future "need" for this was apparently based on <br />car - counts on a football Saturday in 1989, before completion of I40 actually decreased <br />traffic on this section of road. On these special occasions buses could be chartered from <br />Exit 148 of I85 to the game. The only part of this proposed plan that should be executed <br />at all is a stop -light at the intersection of Fayetteville Road and NC54 at Carrboro, and <br />that is needed now. <br />Now is the time to balance the budget and hasten the end of the Gulf War by <br />concentrating on energy - saving and mass transit instead of building unneccessary <br />roads. At this time of crisis our love - affair with the auto is downright immoral! <br />Very truly yours, <br />tef. 7oz- 3 749 <br />