{"id":642,"date":"2008-11-24T08:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T13:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/a-local-rural-road-is-not-a-collector.html"},"modified":"2008-11-24T08:14:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T13:14:00","slug":"a-local-rural-road-is-not-a-collector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/a-local-rural-road-is-not-a-collector.html","title":{"rendered":"A Local Rural Road is Not a Collector"},"content":{"rendered":"Quarterman Road is a local rural road through a rural neighborhood.\nReclassifying it as collector and raising the speed limit would create\na safety hazard.\n

\nThe first map below is from the \nLowndes County Thoroughfare Plan dated January 28, 2003<\/a>;\nthis is the version currently on the county’s public web pages<\/a>. It plainly\nshows Quarterman Road (near the top center) as a local road.\n

\n\"Thoroughfare<\/a>\n

\nThe Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) told me that it is possible to classify parts of a road differently,\nespecially when the major source of traffic is (in GDOT’s example)\na subdivision that is located closer to one end.\nThis is confirmed by the second map<\/a>, from the\nSouth Georgia Regional Development Center (SGRDC),\n\n\n\"Quarterman<\/a>\nwhich shows the RDC classification of Quarterman road into two\nparts, divided at the subdivision entrance, each part functional\nclassification 9, rural local road. Not only is it\npossible, it has happened in Georgia, and as we see by the SGRDC\nmap, Quarterman Road itself is an example, since it is already\nclassified in parts like that for 911 service.\n

\nWhy would residents of the subdivision drive 3 extra miles the\nlong way around Quarterman Road just to get to the same\nHambrick Road they can reach much faster by going the shorter way?\nI can attest that they don’t. Even if there is sufficient traffic from\nthe subdivision to reclassify the short part of Quarterman Road\nas a collector (and I have not even seen any evidence of that),\ntraffic from the subdivision is no reason to reclassify the long part\nof Quarterman Road.\n

\nDriving around Quarterman Road every day as I do, varying when\nto cover all times of the day, I have seen even less evidence\nof sufficient traffic to justify any change in the classification\nof most of Quarterman Road.\n

\n\"Quarterman<\/a>\nSome of the sheets of the road plan given to bidders for grubbing and\nclearing are still dated 2001. And the right of way that that plan was\ndesigned to fit was obtained in the early 1990s, as Commissioner Lee\nreminded us all at a public commission meeting;\nI think he said 1991. The current design for paving\nthe road thus long predates the county’s Comprehensive Plan.\nIf the current road paving plan was\ndesigned with the intent of turning Quarterman Road into a collector,\nthat design needs to be revisited in the light of the Comprehensive Plan.\n

\nThe third map is detail from the\n\nLowndes County zoning map of 11 December 2007<\/a>,\ncorresponding to the current \nUnified Land Development Code (ULDC)<\/a>.\nWith the exception of the yellow of the grandfathered-in subdivision and one\ngrandfathered-in house plot, and the green of the river conservation zone,\nit shows the entire area in white, as zoned E-A, or estate agricultural.\n

\n\"Detail,<\/a>\nThe fourth map shows the\n2030 Lowndes County Future Development Map<\/a>\nfrom the 2008 ULDC<\/a>\n(same vintage as for the zoning map).\nGreen on this map means “Agricultural \/ Forestry”, and the entire area\nbetween the Withlacoochee River and Cat Creek, north of Franklinville Road to the county line, is green, including Quarterman Road.\nThis is the map form of the long-term Comprehensive Plan the ULDC is supposed to implement.\nIt is clear that the county has no plan to develop this area that would\njustify reclassifying Quarterman Road as a collector.\n

\nThe road design also long predates the subdivision, land for which was only\nsold in 2003. However, the\nroad design is not a legal decision like the 1980s vintage rezoning\nthat permited the subdivision to be built. The road design is\nmerely an engineering specification that can be changed.\nThe county already has changed it for the tree canopies,\nfor which I thank all involved.\nThe county could for example make the road design narrower or put in speed bumps,<\/a> thus keeping the design speed low.\n

\nChanging Quarterman Road’s status to collector would be a substantial\nchange to the Comprehensive Plan, and should only be done by an explicit\nvote of the commission, which has not taken place.\n

\nMeanwhile, only last year the commission denied a rezoning request for another subdivision on Quarterman Road<\/a>, thus re-emphasizing the agricultural and woodland nature of the Quarterman Road neighborhood.\n

\nReclassifying Quarterman Road from “Local Roads Rural” to collector\nwould not make it safer. Quite the contrary, it would indicate\na higher speed limit, which would make this local road through\na rural neighborhood with small children, teenagers visiting each other,\ncats, horses, dogs, bicycles, and farm equipment, less safe.\n

\nAs we have seen in previous posts,\nthree ways to make the road design better fit a rural local road through\nan agricultural and woodland neighborhood would be to make it\nnarrower<\/a>,\nto not make the curves as smooth or to add speed bumps, and\n\nto set the speed limit slower<\/a>.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quarterman Road is a local rural road through a rural neighborhood. Reclassifying it as collector and raising the speed limit would create a safety hazard. The first map below is from the Lowndes County Thoroughfare Plan dated January 28, 2003; this is the version currently on the county’s public web pages. It plainly shows Quarterman […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[913,1736,12,72],"tags":[2144,1108,2139,2143,2030,3,2142,826,2147,2141,2,917,2140,2789,2146,1585,1945,2145],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canopy-road","category-lowndes-county-commission-georgia","category-politics","category-safety","tag-agricultural","tag-canopy-road-2","tag-collector","tag-comprehensive-plan","tag-gdot","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-department-of-transportation","tag-local","tag-local-roads-rural","tag-local-rural-road","tag-lowndes-county","tag-quarterman-road","tag-rural","tag-safety","tag-speed-bumps","tag-speed-limit","tag-uldc","tag-woodland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-am","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}