As noted in earlier chapters, the most intense period of Huntsville’s growth coincided with the wide-spread adoption of “sprawl”-oriented development patterns. Consequently, the city established a transportation network in response to this intense period of growth and the wide varieties of single-use developments. This network continues to serve the region very well – commute times are among the lowest of comparable metro areas – but as with re/development patterns, impending change will necessitate a long look at how we get around Huntsville in coming decades. – The Shrinking Transportation Dollar

There are multiple factors at play with regard to transportation planning and most important among them is the change in roadway financing. Available transportation dollars have become very limited within the past decade and, in recent years, declining State revenues and uncertain Federal funding have combined to squeeze municipalities for money to maintain, expand, and upgrade local networks. Huntsville’s own “Restore Our Roads” campaign is key evidence of that.

The “Restore Our Roads” campaign was a result of top priority regional projects being deferred by the Alabama Department of Transportation due to lack of available funding. The City raised its own taxes in order to make it more feasible for the State to engage the projects in a timely manner and, as a result of the campaign, Huntsville has dedicated $25 million per year towards improving critical transportation networks throughout the community. This is an unprecedented strategy, but until the fiscal climate changes on the State and Federal levels, local governments are going to bear more of the burden for the construction and maintenance of their own roads.

Almost 40,000 people per day move on and off of Redstone Arsenal; well over 100,000 workers commute daily into the City of Huntsville.

This underscores a point made in the discussion of the re/development issue. As funds for roads become more difficult to procure, communities will have to be more judicious in planning and constructing new roadways. Each new road constructed generates an additional expense in future infrastructure maintenance. This places a demand on communities that each roadway—new and existing—be used as efficiently as possible.

For Huntsville, this is particularly true. Not only are the short commuting times a selling point for business recruitment, but the role of the City as North Alabama’s regional employment center requires a high-functioning commuting roadway network. The importance of the health and viability of the transportation network cannot be overstated—particularly as the region continues to add workers and residents.

Solutions in Traffic Technology

Today, cities have choices beyond building new roads or adding more lanes. There are strategies that can supplement the standard approaches to adding capacity to the overall mobility network. Technological solutions for managing traffic congestion are improving rapidly, and innovative approaches to signalization and monitoring are helping municipalities get more capacity out of existing roadway infrastructure. With this new technology, like intelligent transportation systems (ITS), roads do not need to be designed for the “worst case scenario Signalization can be programmed to respond to the ebbs and flows of the daily commute, so that intersections function better, and cars move more consistently and steadily. By coordinating technology and construction/expansion, a city can get more bang for its paving buck.

Providing Options

Another advantage of implementing high-tech solutions is that it becomes easier for roads to be designed and/or modified for more context-sensitive, and multi-modal, options. The vast majority of the current local network is designed to move cars – as it should be – but often without consideration of alternatives. In cases like Memorial Parkway and Interstate 565, the car is obviously the primary and only applicable mode. On most major surface high-volume corridors as well, automotive traffic must take priority.

However, as context scales down – that is, as it transitions from large-scale uses to smaller commercial and neighborhood settings – the streets that serve them should offer multi-modal options. Unfortunately, in Huntsville, they have often provided limited options.

The Five-Lane Section

Huntsville is well-served – and perhaps might be over-served – by a street design that has two travel lanes of traffic in one direction, a continuous center turn lane, and two more travel lanes in the opposite direction; a cross-section of five lanes. The lanes themselves are often generously wide, and they encourage speed. Drivers intuitively perceive the connection between lane width and speed. This design model is particularly good at moving cars through parts of a city. However, when they traverse neighborhoods, they serve more as an “edge” than a “seam”; that is, they divide neighborhoods rather than knit them together. It is a design that is uncomfortable to walk along, unsafe to bike, and at times very difficult to safely cross.

To some, this might not register as an issue. However, a significant concern noted both by planning staff and by public comment was the dearth of meaningful and effective bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Other discussions included how Huntsville has hundreds of miles of sidewalks, but the existing sidewalk network is fragmented and in too many cases “doesn’t go anywhere.”

The Case for Transportation Choice

It is important to keep one fact in mind: like other metropolitan areas, the car will continue to be the primary mode of transportation in the Huntsville metro area. To plan for any other expectation would be unrealistic and unfeasible. However, it would also be unrealistic not to plan for more transportation diversity in growing the network, precisely because of anticipated increases in population and demand.

There are a wide variety of reasons for diversifying connectivity in a community; foremost among them is in response to market forces. As discussed in earlier sections, the largest demographic cohorts – the Boomers and the Millennials – are leading a shift in what a community wants and needs from its transportation infrastructure.

From the perspective of the Boomers, as they age into retirement – and live well into it – many of their generation are becoming less comfortable with frequent and/or extended driving. Though some might give up driving altogether, many are looking for opportunities to simply drive less. If they’re provided opportunities to get around without driving – not exclusively, but for shorter or less imperative trips – they’re taking advantage of these opportunities. Developing a multi-modal network serves the health and safety of Boomers, as well as social well-being: making it easier for individuals to stay in their homes and in their neighborhoods as they age.

For Millennials, the attraction to a diverse network comes from several places. One motivation is part of a broader demographic trend away from sprawl-based development. This up-and-coming generation has been buying homes in smaller numbers than previous generations. They express high levels of support for alternative modes of travel — from bike and pedestrian accommodations to transit and newer alternatives like ride-sharing and car-sharing services.

Another motivation is financial constraint. Millennials are being hit twice– by coming out of college with more debt than any previous generation, and coming into a job market that is among the worst in half a century. As a result, many younger citizens have been deferring large-scale purchases – such as houses and cars – and looking for lower-cost alternatives. More so than predecessors, they have been looking for (and choosing) communities that offer those alternatives, be it transit, bike/pedestrian, some iteration of the “sharing economy“, or a combination thereof.

An additional consideration, less pronounced but still apparent, is the extent to which this group is attuned to environmental concerns. Multiple polls and studies find Millennials to have more interest than prior generations in sustainability issues, and they are expressing those ideals in their purchasing habits.

Increasing Capacity by Decreasing Demand

Market forces aside, another benefit of transportation choice is that it can help maintain the performance of the car network. Though it might be some time before there is a statistically significant number of bike commuters, traffic performance can be improved greatly even by eliminating some of the small local trips that add unnecessary volume to the street network. When residents have no choice but to make a vehicle trip, it adds strain to the roadway network and increases drive times for those who actually do have to drive among destinations.

Health and Transportation Design

Positive health outcomes are among the benefits of a diversified transportation system. Though the modes may continue to be dominated by the auto, simply providing more opportunities to walk and bicycle can have marked effects on public health. In a state that struggles with obesity (and childhood obesity in particular), integrating more physical activity into transportation can improve the physical well-being of residents.

This is felt in particular at either end of the age spectrum. Among the elderly, access to safe and comfortable walking infrastructure has been shown to improve and extend the quality of life of senior residents. Among our youth, there is more exercise – and more freedom – when parents feel comfortable letting their children walk or bike to a friend’s house, or to a store, or to school. Though these instances might seem highly localized, their cumulative effect on the well-being of residents of all ages is worthy of consideration.

Another consideration of how a mobility network is built has to do with the working-class and the challenges for lower income households. Recently, the United Way of Madison County completed their “Community Needs Assessment”, an analysis of the issues facing the most vulnerable segments of our population. ‘Access to Transportation’ was consistently rated the highest, or among the highest, by those surveyed in terms of stressors. More than food, more than rent, more than child care, the ability to get around town – to get their children to school, to get to and from employment, to access goods and services – was cited as one of the biggest challenges faced by lower-income residents.

Even more striking was that when reviewing the ranking of concerns from the perspective of the service providers or other local stakeholders, transportation was not as highly ranked. This illustrates the fact that the need may be much greater than a surface analysis would indicate. To that end, providing a more varied mobility network would help reduce the pressure on families who might have limited resources for getting where they need to go.

But What About Transit?

Throughout Huntsville’s BIG Picture process, this question was brought up in repeated venues and formats. People of all ages and backgrounds asked about if and how we could expand our current transit operations. Huntsville’s current transit system consists of fixed-route Shuttle bus routes and the demand-response Handi-Ride paratransit service. Ridership has increased significantly in the last half-decade– –but even with this growth less than 2% of the city’s population uses transit on a daily basis. One important item to note up front: Current transit operations in Huntsville, like many cities, is constrained by one primary concern – funding. If the community agrees that Huntsville should have a broader transit network, then funding considerations must be kept at the forefront of any large-scale transportation discussion.

Cost scales up by capacity, of course. Fixed-route bus service is among the most cost-effective transit modes, but it doesn’t have nearly the carrying capacity (or return on investment—for example, transit-oriented development) that larger modes would. There are several options ranging from streetcars, to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), to light rail, and heavy commuter rail. Naturally, these options increase greatly in cost, to the point that most networks require significant investment from the federal level, particularly for start-up or expansion. The challenge is that, much like road funding, federal funding for transit has also been shrinking. Indeed, the bulk of recent expenditures have gone to maintaining or expanding existing networks in large metro areas. Funds for new and innovative systems in mid-sized cities have been much harder to come by, and uncertainty on the federal level makes it very difficult for local transportation organizations to plan for transit. To make matters worse, the Alabama state constitution bars transportation tax revenues from being spent on anything but roads and bridges.

Recognizing that transit funding is scarce, but demand exists (and is increasing), it is likewise important to study what type or types of transit might make sense for Huntsville. Rail has been a popular request, but is among the most cost-prohibitive. Buses are much less expensive to purchase and implement, but they don’t have the support among a broad constituency that would make them a feasible option. Mid-range options like BRT might offer a good compromise, but they’re still costly, they have certain demands on rights-of-way, and they might also require some level of public buy-in. Regardless, some balance must be found between cost and anticipated ridership for the citizens of Huntsville.

The other side of the coin with transit is land use. Huntsville’s varying topography (mountains) and man-made barriers (i.e -Redstone Arsenal) have a lead to a very spread-out development pattern, making it a challenge to implement additional, higher-capacity transit in the city. In order to make buses or trains financially feasible to implement and operate, there must be sufficient ridership, and that ridership must have areas of concentration. This is often referred to as “transit-supportive density”, and there are very few areas in Huntsville that would fit that description. Picking up one or two riders per stop means that in order to stay feasible, the mode must make many more stops. However, in doing so, the cost-efficiency and gain of ridership of a transit system is reduced. There must be fewer stops with more people, if heavier transit like BRT or light rail is to make sense.

With these constraints in mind, if the community does wish to have greater access to public transit, the city needs not only to plan for the network, we need to change the physical way in which our city is being built. Creating and supporting areas of higher density – not necessarily everywhere, but in targeted areas agreed upon by the community – will offer the concentration of ridership that can make public transit more feasible. The seeds of that vision can be seen in Downtown, but there isn’t much in the way of development outside of the core that would qualify.

Interestingly, there are some technological innovations that are helping to lower the threshold of what must be in place for transit to work. Currently, in order to get “choice” riders (those who do not have to ride transit, but choose to) to participate in sufficient numbers, a service must offer frequent trips and limited wait times. That will require a lot of extra buses or train cars, and a lot of extra drivers and maintenance, merely to keep the wait times down; and there’s no guarantee that any of the vehicles would be used to capacity. This is a very cost-inefficient approach to attracting ridership.

Continued advances in both system technology and personal technology may offer ways to serve more riders with less investment. Technology can help identify peaks in ridership and reduce headways to suit. In terms of personal technology, apps already allow individuals to accurately track the schedule and progress of public transit– minimizing wait times and allowing personalized route planning. Having handheld access to transit information will be important to support it.

From the broadest perspective, with all the challenges and opportunities facing transportation in Huntsville, the key will be to put a plan in place. Particularly in terms of traditionally underserved modes like bicycles, pedestrians, and transit, laying out a community-supported vision is the first step in achieving better implementation.

Even if the community doesn’t see, for instance, a new BRT network for another ten years, the time to begin planning for it, studying its viability, and identifying supportive land use strategies is now.