TRAVERSE CITY — Planning and city commissioners will get a look this week at how Traverse City’s Mobility Action Plan is coming along.
They’ll meet Monday for a joint study session and hear an update from Progressive AE, the firm the city hired to draft the plan. Its aim is to map the city’s values for how its streets can best serve all users, including drivers, cyclists, pedestrians and more.
The report so far considers other cities’ efforts, including Ann Arbor, Detroit and Kalamazoo. That last one is the former home of the nation’s first pedestrian mall, which has since been opened back up to traffic, city planner Shawn Winter said.
A one-size-fits-all approach treating every city the same wouldn’t work, according to the report. Winter said the approach has shifted toward assembling a network where different streets serve a different set of users.
“We can’t have every street be everything for everyone, so it’s important to acknowledge that there are some streets appropriate for freight, because freight’s part of the basic economy for any community, and some streets are more appropriate for local residents primarily,” he said.
City and planning commissioners will have two group discussions, one on how to brand the city’s mobility plans and another on what its complete streets values are, meeting materials show.
The in-progress Mobility Action Plan will help guide a citywide policy determining which city streets best serve those various purposes, Winter said.
Next steps for the plan are to complete the draft by July, then adopt it in August, documents show. Another community engagement meeting could take place in March.
Meanwhile, city commissioners appointed an ad hoc committee to start drafting a complete streets policy. Mayor Pro Tem Amy Shamroe will chair the committee, while commissioners Mi Stanley and Tim Werner will serve on it. Werner has in recent months pushed the city to adopt a new complete streets policy to bolster the city’s commitment that city leaders first agreed to in 2011.
Comments are closed.