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Western North Carolina The Mountain Region including Asheville
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Old 10-27-2017, 07:24 PM
 
Location: West Lenoir
172 posts, read 288,805 times
Reputation: 170

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North Carolina is among several states that forfeited money designated to build safer sidewalks or bike lanes near schools, according to usestreetblog. org. North Carolina returned about $4 million that was available by 2012 federal transportation bill giving states four years to spend funds from the Transportation Alternatives program. The Transportation Alternatives program is funding for walking and biking infrastructure. States had until Oct. 1 to make plans to use that money, but several did not spend all of the money available to them by that date.
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Old 10-28-2017, 05:52 AM
 
788 posts, read 777,473 times
Reputation: 992
I have never lived in an area developed enough to need side walks and bike lanes . After our areas main road was 4 laned a side walk was run a couple miles to town so kids can walk safely to town from high school ! Think its more for the cross country team to get to other back roads safely .

Sounds like your paying attention to funding issues and live in Asheville areas so you should all ready have your own answer . For those that need sidewalks and bike lanes I would say there will never be enough around the city .
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Old 10-28-2017, 08:31 AM
 
Location: Winston-Salem
4,218 posts, read 8,502,969 times
Reputation: 4488
hardluk1, you are missing the point. I too do not live in an area where this money would have necessarily been relevent, but it doesn't mean that the State of NC shouldn't have a comprehensive plan for non-motorized transportation that includes enhancing sidewalks and bike lanes near schools. Without reading the referenced report, I would draw the conclusion that NC didn't want to spend a little money to get $4 million for alternative transportation. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe someone knows more about this program and can give us the skinny.

P.S. Not sure why this is in city-data. Seems like it applies to the entire state.
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Old 10-28-2017, 10:10 AM
 
641 posts, read 664,662 times
Reputation: 1095
That's one of the proposed changes in the Kanuga Road expansion - to add bike lanes with the road widening, largely for the increased bike traffic to DuPont. But it doesn't sound as if the money referenced above would have been available for this anyway. As an aside, there is no way in hell I'd ever ride a bike on that road, bike lane or not.
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Old 10-28-2017, 12:52 PM
 
11,113 posts, read 19,477,898 times
Reputation: 10174
Next time you're driving to or from Brevard - Hendersonville on Rt. 64, notice there is virtually NO room on either side for bicycles. And the white line(s) are right up against the edge of the road.


Yet, there are those fools on bikes riding on Rt. 64 all the time, especially in the spring and fall. Combine that with other fools passing on the double line(s), some curves and hills, and there can be a serious problem.
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Old 10-29-2017, 05:20 AM
 
788 posts, read 777,473 times
Reputation: 992
roadpony Maybe I'll wait for the OP to tell ME if I'm wrong as we all have opinions about how money should be spent . Sidewalks are needed in citys so people don't have to walk in the road and folks with disabilities have safe egress but to add bike lanes for the ever few that ride bikes in the city's , NO . Let them ride in normal traffic as they have been for decades and follow the same rules of the road as the rest of us as I did went I rode to school rather than ride a bus then in middle school 50 years ago . Just enforce the laws on bike riders when not following the rules of the road for them as it is as that rarely happens . If you ride for exercise go to a rural area or go ride a the ole race track .

Again there's better places to spend money like road up keep and widening of some roads just for normal traffic .
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Old 10-29-2017, 08:27 AM
 
Location: NC
5,429 posts, read 5,965,483 times
Reputation: 9227
NC left 4 million in TAPS (Transportation Alternatives Program) funding on the table after 4 years. This money returned to the Feds accounts. It is my understanding that some of the money was "free", but the majority required a 20% funding by the state for 100% full funding by the Feds. It is still amazing that providing increased bike paths and pedestrian sidewalks at 20 cents to the dollar was considered a poor investment by our NC legislature.

It does appear that some states fully funded the Federal dollars then diverted those dollars to other transportation infrastructure upgrades. Not sure how that worked, the articles I found were very superficial in their coverage.
If it was legal to divert the money, I wonder, for example, why our legislators didn't use it to fund part of the 245 million Bonner Bridge project on the outer banks.

(BTW, I think this topic might be better served in the entire NC forum, and not just this sub-forum.)
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