Plan aims to stymie gridlock growth
By RYAN LaFONTAINE
rlafontaine@sunherald.com
GULFPORT --Anyone who's ever been behind someone making a left turn on Pass Road knows the value of a good set of brakes. If your afternoon commute runs along U.S. 49 near Interstate 10, you might as well walk.
Throw in a few fellow drivers with a death wish, plus escalating gas prices and a swelling population, and suddenly the future of daily commutes in South Mississippi seems horrifying.
Profound traffic congestion, once a problem limited to major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, is rapidly becoming a serious issue in much smaller communities across the country.
On Thursday, the Metropolitan Planning Organization approved the Coast Transit Authority's long-range development plan designed to relieve future gridlock with public transit, including an electric streetcar line along the beach and a bus-rapid transit system from Pascagoula to Bay St. Louis by 2030.
In a 2005 pre-storm study, the Gulf Regional Planning Commission reckoned an average of 70,000 drivers a day used U.S. 49 and about 27,000 traveled Pass Road. Recent population estimates show those numbers growing significantly in the future.
That same year, some of the nation's most celebrated urban planners met at a summit in Biloxi to dream up ideas for rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. During the brainstorming sessions, a transportation committee suggested a light-rail system or other forms of mass transit to help ease future traffic flow and connect the three Coast counties.
The dream of a Coast connected by an impeccable public transit system appeared to meet its demise when Congress sliced a chunk of federal funding from an emergency-spending bill in June 2006.
In an effort to keep the transportation plans from being shelved next to several other charrette-born ideas, the Gulf Regional Planning Commission expanded its research of population and traffic trends and CTA studied several types of mass transit, including a light-rail line.
Dozens of U.S. cities have turned to light-rail and bus-rapid transit systems to help relieve traffic strains, but will such systems work here and can South Mississippi support them?