Losing race against growth

David Jameson of the Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce had a letter in the Aiken Standard Wednesday commending the leadership and action of the City Council to annex Whiskey Road and painting a rosy picture of our moves to meet transportation needs.

I agree that annexation is a good step but it should have been done sooner.

Over the past four years the idea of annexing Whiskey Road has been suggested to Council several times, but city staff informed Council that there would be additional costs for policing the road and upgrading the signal lights to allow synchronization, and the improvement to traffic flow would not be significant. Now the idea is being touted as having the potential for great improvements to traffic on Whiskey Road. Why this change in attitude? I suspect the following information has more than a little to do with it.

The City's first-ever traffic management ordinance was passed in 2004 after more than two years of foot dragging and watering down. The stated purpose of the ordinance is to maintain a level of traffic volume no more than 90 percent of capacity on all roads covered by the ordinance.

Section 42-177 of the ordinance states "(a) for the purpose of determining the level of traffic study required the planning director shall prepare and update at least every two years an official map listing current levels of service of critical roadways in the city limits and in the city utility service area."

The first two-year update required by the ordinance was ordered last October and the figures were very bad news for the City. Roger Dyar, the City's traffic consultant, made physical traffic counts and prepared an updated level of service map dated Nov. 28, 2006. It confirmed what most of us already knew. We have major traffic problems on Hitchcock Parkway, East Pine Log from Whiskey Road to Richland Avenue, Route 19/Whiskey Road from Park Avenue to Mead, Dougherty Road and Whiskey Road from Centennial to the Aiken Mall. They were all rated at more than 90 percent of capacity.

The bottom line is that David's commendations of Council need to be taken with a grain of salt. City Council and the Chamber of Commerce have for too long paid too little attention to the implications of uncontrolled growth, and the Council has only reluctantly and far too late taken any action to find solutions.

Whatever the level of service figures are on the final, adjusted, updated official map it is likely that some will be less dire than the November 2006 level of service map and they will not include the traffic impact of a myriad of projects already approved by the City and County. These projects are estimated to produce another 36,000 to 40,000 new vehicle trips per day on our already congested roads.

We must strengthen the traffic ordinance and diligently enforce it rather than make adjustments to minimize the problems. Development is going 70 mph and we are poking along at 40 mph. Aiken and its citizens are losing the race.

-Richard Smith
The writer is a member of Aiken City Council.