Dekalb Commission’s Comprehensive Clifton Backlash
The Dekalb County Commission is trying to fight the power. In a bi-partisan move at their recent meeting, the commission refused to adopt the plan put forth by County Engineers arguing that it puts the cart before the horse. The road on which cart and horse are being placed is Clifton and the Clifton Corridor has become the poster child for what the Commission is trying to fight.
The Clifton Road Corridor runs from Briarcliff to North Decatur Road and includes the CDC, Emory Conference Center, Emory University Hospital, and other elements of the Emory Campus. It’s a very tricky busy road with lots of congestion. The current Comprehensive Transportation plan for the county focuses less on making the corridor usable through improvements in transit and pedestrian access and more on adding vehicle capacity. They want to widen the road and add items such as double left turn lanes, easing access into the pedestrian neighborhoods surrounding the road.
This flies in the face of the general Comprehensive Plan which emphasizes the importance of building around neighborhood centers that are less vehicularly focused. Further, it flies in the face of the researchers in Dekalb county who believe that the Clifton Corridor is a central destination in Dekalb county that cannot sustain the level of vehicular traffic that proposed increases in activity and housing density would generate.
Rather they prefer to see Clifton as transfer point between the first section of the Brain Train (running from Emory to Lawrenceville) and the rest of the transit market such as Emory loop shuttles, MARTA connecting service to Candler Park and Lindberg, and to the beltline. One employee went so far as to say that, “Before I retire, my goal is to see the Clifton Corridor be served by transit.” Those are pretty strong words.
There was considerable pressure that the meeting to adopt the plan, but a coalition of Elaine Boyer, Jeff Rader, and Kathy Gannon stopped the adoption in its tracks. They’re even risking federal dollars for road projects in order to make sure that the philosophy of the general plan is carried in to the choices of projects to fund in the transportation plan.
The next meeting is June 12th and no doubt in the that time, the county attorney’s office and ARC officials will do some serious arm twisting to get the commission to bow their notion of what the county should be. Will the Commissioners break? Stay Tuned and Find out!