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Durham Chapel Hill Carrboro MPO list 213 214 Bret Martin: Reviewed list of priority transportation projects. 215 216 Paul Guthrie: Does the STIP process allow you to articulate one of the reasons why there is such a problem 217 right above 15/501 on I-40 westbound? Namely, they lose a lane, it drops to two lanes and it backs up for miles. 218 I realize in this scoring game that doesn’t play out, but that road is not adequate to receive the traffic coming into 219 it.220 221 Bret Martin: Safety is a component of the scoring but that is only along the segment of the road that is 222 considered, not a segment remote from the project. 223 224 Heidi Perry: You said I-85’s widening was taken off the STIP because traffic had not increased the way NCDOT 225 had predicted it would, so why do we expect the traffic on I-40 to increase? And NCDOT doesn’t think the 226 building of the light rail will alleviate the traffic on I-40? 227 228 Bret Martin: Because traffic on I-40 has increased. On I-85, the traffic hasn’t really increased. Who uses I-40? 229 It is Alamance County commuters, and on NC 54 it’s Alamance County commuters and Western Orange County 230 going to Chapel Hill. They are using I-40 to go to RTP and south Durham, etc. Look at the major employment 231 destinations and look at the origins and growing residential origins in Orange County, explains a lot of it. 232 Downtown Durham and Duke are big employment hubs, and I-85 is the connection to that, but the traffic is not 233 really growing, but on I-40 it is. I-40 is pretty much at capacity from NC 86 to 15/501. 234 235 Heidi Perry: When you add more lanes, don’t you bring more cars? 236 237 Bret Martin: That is something what happens. This is usually assessed with the cumulative impacts assessment 238 of NEPA environmental impact assessment for a STIP project. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are not accepting the 239 growth they were expected to accept but maybe should accept in order to bring people closer to their jobs. 240 Alamance County’s growth is exploding, with a very strong commuting relationship with the Triangle. Some of 241 this has been absorbed by Chatham County, and north of Pittsboro. 242 243 Heidi Perry: When I read this, I see that the main scoring thing is that you are improving the level of service, and 244 the cost benefit looks good because you are improving the level of service, but you are really not, you’re just 245 bringing more cars into the service and spreading it out more. It seems you are double scoring. 246 247 Bret Martin: But if it costs in congestion scores, it basically double counts congestion as a score. 248 249 Paul Guthrie: If a road becomes less usable, what happens? They go to another road. That puts pressure on 250 mass transit, utility systems, and all kinds of things that come off this. We are next door to one of the fastest 251 growing cities in America. We are at the crisis point of how we handle the future in transportation. 252 253 Amy Cole: I want to make sure I get my plug in for these projects. Numbers 13, 14 and 16. Numbers 13 and 16 254 are tied together as projects to help out with the Safe Routes to School program and scoring seems significantly 255 different. Item 14, this project was scoring much higher. I want to ensure that stays on the list so that at some 256 point it happens. 257 258 Alex Castro: I agree. I don’t understand why 13, 14 and 16, particularly 13 and 14 which are in the Orange 259 County Safe Routes Action Plan aren’t higher priority. They have higher scoring. 260 261 Bret Martin: This is not a scoring list, just a list that will be submitted to the BOCC. Because we are so limited 262 on the projects we can submit for scoring, we might be in the position of needing to prioritize before we submit 263 so that we can tell them which ones are more important to us locally. If the SPOT 4.0 committee determines that 264 7