David
Roy, City Council Member from District 6 is hosting a community meeting to be
held on Saturday, January 21st, from 10:00 a.m. to 12: p.m., at 300 LaPorte
Avenue. The meeting focus will be the creation of a grid pattern for the transit
system of the City of Fort Collins. This system which will eventually feed into
the planned Mason Corridor Spine, linking the City of Fort Collins with the rest
of the Front Range with commuter rail, a safe, efficient and sustainable
transportation mode.
The community meeting on the 21st is an opportunity for citizens who believe
in economic development, mobility, and sustainability to gather together to plan
for an exciting future for Fort Collins, and the Front Range.
Working for a transit solution based on a grid pattern is an initiative that
will serve the purpose of intra-mobility for the citizens of Fort Collins. So
much of what is sold as 'improvements' in road projects are simply bigger and
costlier roads, designed to funnel people out of a community, instead of making
communities more livable and attractive, functioning at a human scale.
There are moments when a community makes choices that citizens of the following
generations must live with. Voters in the Denver-Metro area provided an example
for us this past November with their approval of Fast Tracks, a light rail
expansion reaching to Longmont.
We know from experience that relying on traditional road projects often results
in only more congestion, pollution, and bigger roads. They are almost always
more expensive than touted, while hardly ever achieving, even in a limited
manner, improved mobility, lessened pollution, and livability. We can make a
better choice.
There are many stories to be told about what the lack of a high functioning
transit option in Fort Collins means to this community. We speak of the need to
be inclusive, to promote sustainability, and to secure economic health for every
member of our community. Transit is one very real way to help achieve all of
these goals for our citizens.
A transit design for Fort Collins based on a simple, efficient grid pattern,
eventually feeding into the corridor spine, provides a unique opportunity for
the City of Fort Collins to leverage its Core Identities (CSU, the Poudre River,
Downtown, an Arts and Cultural Neighborhood, and the nearly 6 mile long North-
South corridor itself: the Foothills Mall, Barnes and Noble, etc.), into a
regional attraction and economic engine, with in-fill and redevelopment spurring
on opportunities for New Urban Development.
The implementation of a grid pattern will create a transit system designed for
citizens to travel from their homes to their work places easily and efficiently,
while reducing congestion and pollution as well as providing an opportunity to
get to the cultural, economic, educational, and social centers necessary to be a
fully engaged citizen in Fort Collins.
Regional connections that work are made more possible by the implementation of a
grid and spine transit system. Instead of facing only gridlock on I-25, a
commuter rail connection for this community will signal the arrival of a more
mature Fort Collins, using a sustainable design to achieve an efficient
connectivity with the rest of the Front Range. If we expect to develop into a
community that is a leader of this region, and the State of Colorado, the
development of commuter rail in our community is one of the significant options
available to achieve that goal.
Please join us on January 21st to discuss the critical issue of transit, and
the implementation of a grid system for Fort Collins. It's time to move!!