UPDATE — The Jefferson County Commission in its meeting Thursday agreed to work with Shelby County officials and the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham to produce a regional connectivity study, which would let the three coordinate on traffic planning.
The Jefferson County Commission on Thursday will be considering a resolution to enter an agreement with Shelby County and the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham to produce a regional connectivity study.
The commission in its committee meeting Tuesday agreed to take up the idea in its full meeting Thursday. Roads and Transportation Director Chris Nicholson said the aim is to better connect the two counties.
“We will be putting in 10%, Shelby County will be putting in 10% with the ability to get to around a million dollars worth of the study,” Nicholson told commissioners. “Right now, what you see is the first phase. That’s us putting in $27,000 and Shelby County putting in $27,000.”
That investment would match money available through a regional planning commission grant.
Deputy County Manager Heather Carter said the hope is to create a multijurisdictional traffic model.
“One of the challenges that we have dealing with (U.S.) 280 and traffic on both of those sides between Jefferson and Shelby is that we tend to not align all of our planning together,” she said. “This was a very unique opportunity that was supported through MPO to allow us to blend those traffic models and to try to define (ways of dealing with) congestion. A lot of the old approach was not working.”
MPO, which operates under the auspices of the regional planning commission, is group of local officials who coordinate planning for long-range and short-term transportation projects.
Carter said after the commission’s committee meeting that a lot of work has gone into developing road projects and building partnerships with the Alabama Department of Transportation and the MPO. Those partnerships have created an ability to coordinate and look for opportunities to do real regional planning.
Carter credited Nicholson with coordinating with MPO.
“He (Nicholson) currently participates in that as the county engineer, (and) we’ve had a lot of support from them about getting funding right,” she said. “A million dollars is a lot of traffic modeling. I’m so very appreciative to them for that investment and then, of course, the commission for supporting and being intentional about those investments. One of the things that’s very, very important about actually being able to make this sort of sustained improvement is that we develop a good plan and then we continue to stick to our good plans.”
The challenge with infrastructure is that it’s expensive, Carter said, especially when roads are adjusted for developments that are already in place.
“Oftentimes, you find yourself in a position of making a massive investment and it seems like it’s building a road to nowhere,” she said. “But that’s really not the case. In order to really do this in a way that’s not tremendously disruptive and adversely impactful to our citizens, we need to do this before the development gets there. And we need to be able to manage the ongoing development in a way that works together with that planned development versus in conflict with it.
“The one thing we can’t make any more of is land,” Carter continued. “Over a period of time, we know it’s going to develop. We just want it to develop in the most efficient and impactful way to provide the most benefit to our citizens. Doing these combined traffic models lets you look at it from that 100,000-foot view to all the things that it connects to, to really do synergistic design.”
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