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146 <br />Comments on Transportation Element <br />Holly Reid <br />Walkable Hillsborough Coalition <br />May 19, 2008 <br />My name is Holly Reid and I am a co-founder of the Walkable Hillsborough Coalition, a <br />group of community volunteers who have worked the past seven years to advocate for <br />pedestrian and bike ways for Hillsborough, surrounding communities and Orange <br />County. l have been involved in the exploring the possibility of reopening a train station <br />in Hillsborough. I am also one of the twenty-nine members of the Special Transit <br />Advisory Commission, whose charge was to recommend a regional transit system for <br />the Triangle region to our joint Metropolitan Planning Organization representatives. Our <br />final report will be presented to the MPO's this Wednesday, May 21, in Raleigh. <br />Over the years and especially through my involvement on the STAC, I have learned that <br />the Triangle area is one of the most sprawled regions in the country and that we expect` <br />a million more people to Wake, Durham and Orange Counties in the next 20 years. I <br />have learned that we are off-the-scale auto centric in our country, and that we are <br />realizing the great costs of this choice every day: poor health, poor community <br />connections, dangerous and unattractive alternative modes of getting around, <br />disenfranchised young and old, loss of commerce in our downtowns, and an <br />irresponsible carbon footprint, to name a few. <br />I believe our Unified Transportation Board recognizes these huge community costs. <br />They have listed many of these them as key issues in a future Comprehensive <br />Transportation Plan that is recommended in Objective T-3.2, and they see this plan as <br />addressing strategies for all transportation modes, including bike, pedestrian, rail and all <br />other critical transit facilities. <br />What is absolutely critical to righting our heavily over-weighted single modal car culture <br />is a new multi-modal transportation system that is well emphasized in Goal 3. What <br />needs just as much emphasis in Goal 3 is future development that is compact, walkable <br />and in mixed-use neighborhoods along transit corridors supported by transit. Transit and <br />pedestrian-oriented development is the critical nexus of transportation and land use <br />and it needs to be highly emphasized .and cross-referenced frequently in our <br />Comprehensive Plan. In my view and the Coalition's view this needs to be written right <br />into the Overarching Goal as the most important change in transportation and land <br />use, agame-changer for our future. <br />I am also going to emphasize a couple of other objectives that our Coalition <br />recommends to be added to the Comprehensive Plan. We recommend a new <br />Objective T-4.4 to implement the Special Transit Advisory Commission's <br />recommendations for regional transit (including light rail, passenger/commuter rail, <br />expanded bus and transit-oriented development at a future Orange County train <br />station in Hillsborough). Being very involved in Safe Routes to School initiatives I am also <br />very interested in our Coalition's recommendation to add Objective T-1.8 to coordinate <br />with Orange County schools to provide safe walking and biking routes within 1.5 miles of <br />all schools for children during school hours and residents after hours. Connectivity for <br />