So-Laf ‘Sooner’ rush under way

...
written by CanadaBobEh , April 27, 2010 - 05:12 pm

Well, there goes all hope for a speedy way to get to Lafayette from Broussard / Hwy 90. Looks like the new Amb Caff will become a parking lot like the Amb Caff section from Target to Walmart. Notice they saved their money on posting speed limit signs. Soon you'll be bumper to bumper and 20 mph. Unless...unless.. there is some smart design put into "service roads" that parallel Amb Caf and let the shoppers get out of the way onto a side road then on to their store/resturant of choice. At least a median was built into this extension from the beginning, however I fear it will be bulldozed and turned into one big turn lane in the very near future.

...
written by Match U Peach U , April 27, 2010 - 05:32 pm

The territorial imperative at work.

...
written by EXISTENTIALIST HOMME , April 27, 2010 - 05:35 pm

Mr. Langlinais, if you are still so gullible as to think that Durel or his Brother-in-law,"the most honorable mayor of Youngsville,Hah!Mr.Viator would ever, ever, conduct business in an open,
above board, clear light, you better think again, these two midget-minds have the very best con artist as cronys wanting the whole pie to be gained by the annexation of I-49 south.........These cronys started in this parish on a shoestring and have climbed to the top of the stink pile of greediness, through under the table dealings, aided by past and present parish administration........
Especially the present, Parish Administrators and their cheaply bought Councilmen....

...
written by Jason D. Faulk , April 27, 2010 - 08:16 pm

CanadaBobEh-
I hear your fears. Some possible alleviation to this problem can be had on several fronts...
1.) the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) which currenly also happens to be the Parish Council (until the 2010 census enlarges to neighboring parishes, which will then require representation) is a federally mandated entity which is charged with looking after long term transportation planning, for years has worked on a "Tri-Partite Agreement" involving Cities of Lafayette and Broussard as well as the Parish of Lafayete (ergo LCG) which would govern aesthetic issues: street trees for one, driveway access management, and multi-use side-pathways. It could be anticipated that wise management of access point will reduce the choke points of the roadway. The median strip design was also included as or one it is more aesthetically pleasing and offers opportunity for tree plantings and two it will facilitate experts attest nationwide, 20% more traffic flow by virtue of reduced lane maneuveurs and stoppages as seen in a center turn lane equipped roadway. The wide median (more than one lane wide) also allows for U-turns and ample safety clearance for cross-overs at non-signalized intersections (though Chemin Metairie does not appear designed this way.)
2.) Broussard apparently has their first ever "zoning" of some sort set to take effect for the half of the roadway currently within their city limits, roughly LA 89 to US 90. Let's hope the focus for "high-end retail" while it may look much like the current big-box and outparcel world currently seen on Ambassador from Kaliste to Congress, will play out with less driveways and more inter-parking lot connections.
The City of Lafayette if successful in incorporating sufficient lands along the third to half of the lands from La 89 to La 339 or independently through the LCG as Parish Council, could apply a special zoning district or Zoning Overlay District much as was done on Louisiana Avenue extension to enhance standards for this section to govern against the problems you have identified.

In a bigger picture however, you are right in seeing that nothing but suburban scale building in a hop-scotch fashion will leave a disjointed landscape for some time to come and in a future buildout will nevertheless remain exclusively car dependent and unsustainable (early plans for the faddish "Segway" lanes on the sort of "right-of-way" deed notwithstanding.) Continuing to build out our landscape, removing this fertile soil from agriculture use should be done wisely, with an eye towards achieving the best possible urban environment which will ultimately cost the cities (and ultimately ourselves) less money in taxes and utility costs to build and maintain electrical, water, sewer, cable, concrete street and drainage costs as well as stormwater retention areas which use up valuable land to ameliorate flooding caused by runoff from new development, as well as the costs of policing and providing fire coverage and park space to more spread out areas.

3.) As an example of what could be done along the lines of your suggestion, several cities have begun dismantling their old, under-utilized freeways at a time when the design life indicated that a replacement structure would be needed.
A famous example of this is Octavia "Boulevard" in San Francisco which replaced the Central Freeway. Similar has been proposed to restore the historic, culturally significant and scenic Claiborne Avenue (Expressway) in New Orleans.
Here's a video which gives an idea of what this would look like:
http://www.streetfilms.org/lessons-from-san-francisco/

You can see that service roads or more exactly "slip roads" immediately adjacent to the central through lanes of a boulevard would allow for the local traffic movements you address while allowing the "through-traffic" a more unfettered flow along the roadway. All uses would still have stoppages at signalized cross streets, but surely this is something that could be done here.

The question though, is how much in additional funds would it cost to purchase the right of way from landowners who it appears already fetched a nice price for the parcels sold to DOTD for the existing roadway.

A final statement/question is that in the long view, what will it take to get all of Lafayette Parish out of this balkanized struggle for resources we are witnessing play out? We may not be New York or New Orleans or San Francisco, but for better or worse, those cities became consolidated entities long ago (with New York composing the equivalent of 5 parishes at that!)
There may yet be a way to allow for more community and neighborhood based "home-rule" while allowing for a less contentious division of the parishwide resources (the tax-base) and perhaps if we could stop fighting over who lives where and paid how much to which entity they feel for which no benefit returns to them, and instead see an allocation of tax resources based on a proportionate scale of needs relative to best practices and wise-use based upon resource efficiency, we could then begin to have some clarity in the struggle for how much infrastructure and services cost versus how much each user consumes relative to what they pay in.
This may sound convoluted, therefore I'll continue refining the idea to elucidate this further in language that won't scare people....

...
written by ragin_cajun , April 28, 2010 - 12:54 am

Jason Faulk--

Your comments sound alot more sensibe this time :) Engineering, economics, traffic flow. If LCG would limit its activities to these areas, maybe we wouldn't be so suspicious of its "master plan".

...
written by VOX POPULI , April 28, 2010 - 03:04 am

Oh, by all means Jason D. Faulk, you haven't scared anyone but the Broussard and Youngsville Mayor's! But, them maybe not,
JOEYS BRO-IN-LAW, you would'nt be our very own bought and paid for, LCG " RINGER ! EH ?

...
written by Jason D. Faulk , May 03, 2010 - 06:35 am

Ragin Cajun... thank you for the acknowledgement.
I recall the article and my reply to which you allude.
Certainly the intent in that post regarding the planning along the Caffery extension was not to raise the spectre of central planning, which to my thoughts implies a Soviet state economic policy. My assertion was that cities have a role to provide for the orderly development of the urban fabric and maintenance thereof which includes the civil infrastructure and the GENERAL scale to which private structures are built. This is one-part of what some zoning codes were established to do, to govern where what type of structures were to go and what capacity of usage would be allowed per acre and whether roads and public structures already in place were sufficient to accomodate the private structures.

Private needs are already regulated through many mechanisms, first of which is the constitutional mandate that one not damage the property of another. From this principle in law, come rules such as those which administer the regulation of industrial practices to ensure we do not have pollution that is harmful to the other as well as to the public as a whole. Further common needs are mediated between private participants through the actions of the state. Specifically I refer to the need to plan for urban space.

Urban planners are not charged with only considering where a road goes, how much it will cost, the amount of traffic it will accomodate, the environmental and economic impact it will have, but also what the end resulting urban environment will be for the citizens and stakeholders who will live there, work there, play there, travel through there and be affected by directly and indirectly.

The abdication of city-planning principles based on classical norms has enabled city planning to be privatized, the product not always meeting commons needs.

Do we for example not want a beautiful Johnston Street, a vibrant downtown, bicycle lanes, efficient mass transit, eased congestion, places that do not flood, recreational spaces, productive schools, businesses and industry? Does each individual private action ensure that these needs are met? I would say no. There are too many examples of unmet needs across the land wherever we turn. Many of those unmet needs were why our ancestors began organizing schools and lobbied for the university, for why our industrial board became an economic development agency, why the city of Lafayette electrified 30-40 years ahead of time and why even today we have fiber optics that rival all and continue lobby for the I-49 Connector (though I think the cost unduly prohibitive for the received benefits comparable to what could be achieved at a lower cost)

Private interests have their proper role, but I would assert that we cannot as a community leave planning in the hands of individual interests, that's how we got ourselves into Lafayette's traffic problem, how we arrived at miles of ugly roads, lined with every single building doing it's own thing, without consideration to the whole. Lafayette for years did not adequately implement any plans to enforce roadway connections in the private developments and henceforth the town was developed along it's farm roads and state highways. (Congress Street excepted)

I'm not naive in this, I know that here in south Louisiana, we have a long history of inheritance and land division and each doing as we please, meanwhile we also have a history of sharing in common needs such as building a courthouse and jail, raising church halls, building waterworks and floodways, learning agricultural techniques from Native Americans, helping neighbors in need and acting in common where the need was seen. Those common needs and actions are more difficult to manage in an ever larger community, but this makes the realization of the common needs ever the more critical for our time.

There were classical norms to laying the footprint for a city which held for millenia. It is only in the time since our cars arrived that we have had trouble recognizing that what we build may not necessarily enrich our lives, in fact it isolates us. The New Urbanists in particular have spoken about this at length. Concerns such as the classical means of architecture and urban scale were afterthoughts in the past. In addition the need to design societal energy efficiency into our cities is present. Sure, we can all put in a CFL light bulb and install more insulation. Those actions alone will be insufficient. Therefore, urban scale (and the proximity of it's food producing regions) come to the fore. Buildings too far back from a street or not sufficiently tall enough, spaces not planned to accomodate for mutual park spaces, for the mixture of residential and commercial uses, etc. all serve to exacerbate our total social dishesion and resource waste.

As a closing example of the considerations of urban scale, would you sit on a street-side cafe on Ambassador Caffery or Johnston Street? I doubt that any of us would. Even Camellia Boulevard is an unsuitable urban environment for such an activity and it is currently, (alongside downtown) held up to be the exemplar of good urban scale. We have much more to do.