I have lived in Athens for more than 30 years. My wife and I recently decided to retire here and move closer to downtown, to a walkable in-town neighborhood. We enjoy walking to adjacent neighborhoods and businesses, as well as downtown—but crossing Prince Avenue can be dangerous. Speeding traffic makes Prince Avenue uncomfortable for pedestrians and cyclists. To become a prime retirement destination for baby boomers like me, Athens must become more pedestrian friendly, and Prince Avenue is a great place to start.

Complete the Street

Local business owners and nearby residents would like Prince Avenue to be a beautiful extension of downtown Athens, safe and comfortable for all users—pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers. Prince Avenue could be the model for the redesign of other in-town commercial streets, such as Oak/Oconee/Lexington Highway and Broad Street/Atlanta Highway. The design project Complete Streets: Prince Avenue, initiated by citizens and developed with professional advice from University of Georgia faculty and Athens-Clarke County staff, proposes an appealing and practical upgrade for inner Prince Avenue, from Pulaski Street to Milledge Avenue: three traffic lanes with pedestrian refuge islands at the crosswalks. 

The downtown section of Prince Avenue is an ideal candidate for such a “road diet” because of the increasing pedestrian, bicycle and bus traffic serving the UGA Health Sciences campus. Examples in cities and towns all over the United States show that road diets improve safety and spur economic development, and when properly designed they certainly do not create traffic bottlenecks. In fact, a three-lane configuration can more efficiently serve vehicles than four lanes. See the study “Rethinking Streets, An Evidenced-Based Guide to 25 Complete Street Transformations.”  

Complete Streets: Prince Avenue is the heir to the 2004 urban design project Community Approach to Planning Prince Avenue, which was based in part on surveys and interviews with representatives of businesses and institutions on the street. 

ACC Planning staff completed two corridor studies in February 2012: Oak Street/Oconee Street and Prince Avenue (athensclarkecounty.com/4278/Corridor-Studies). The Prince Avenue Corridor Study, which incorporated many of the recommendations from CAPPA, states, “Research of similar corridors and land uses reveal that three-laning and other options pertaining to right-of-way width and design can aid in the overall functionality of the corridor. Between Milledge Avenue and downtown, average daily vehicle trips on Prince are consistent with those of similar arterials in numerous communities that have implemented Complete Streets ‘road diets.’“ 

In addition to formally adopting the corridor studies, the ACC mayor and Commission adopted a complete streets policy in 2012: “The Complete Streets concept is an initiative to design and build roads that adequately accommodate all users of a corridor, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users and motorists.” 

These ideas are not new, nor are they applicable only to Prince Avenue. In June 2013, ACC solicited, at a cost of $17,000, an analysis of Atlanta Highway by Atlanta’s Urban Land Institute, “Strategy to Redevelop and Revitalize the Atlanta Highway.” One of their recommendations: “Consider converting the corridor to a multi-purpose road that accommodates cars, bikers and pedestrians. This serves the purpose of slowing traffic down. It also makes going to shopping along the corridor more of an experience where people may linger longer.” If such a redesign is good for the Atlanta Highway, it’s certainly good for Prince Avenue.

Where Are We Now?

At the mayor and commission’s June 10 work session, ACC Transportation and Public Works Director David Clark presented a traffic engineering perspective on Prince Avenue. His presentation included several options for increasing pedestrian safety at crosswalks: moving the Grit crosswalk, textured (faux brick) crosswalks, overhead flashing yellow lights and more elaborate overhead flashing red lights. Cost estimates were given for each of these modifications, but surprisingly, no cost estimate was provided for pedestrian refuge islands. In any case, experience in other cities shows that all of these enhancements have limited effectiveness when the roadway has more than one travel lane in each direction.

Road diets received short shrift at the work session. Their benefits were too quickly glossed over, and their challenges were exaggerated. Communities have learned that modified roadway design is far more effective in changing driver behavior than signalization, signage or even enforcement. 

The commission missed the opportunity to broaden the discussion at the work session. There was no reference to Complete Streets: Prince Avenue, and CAPPA was mentioned only briefly at the end of the discussion. The most surprising omission was that the Prince Avenue Corridor Study was not mentioned at all! It is a shame that the ACC Commission is not leading a public discussion about the most desirable future for the corridor and how to get there. Instead, the commission has wedged itself into a tunnel vision of narrowly defined parameters and limited modifications that suit the status quo.

The Prince Avenue Corridor Study provides the necessary urban planning context for upgrading the design of the street. To develop this context, the commission began the implementation of the study in 2012 by directing planning staff to look at zoning along the corridor. Many citizens were disappointed that zoning was being planned without consideration of complementary transportation issues and right-of-way design. As a result, in June 2013 the planning commission requested a joint work session with the mayor and commission to discuss the Prince Avenue Corridor Study. A year later, this meeting has not occurred.

We Need Leadership

At the June 10 work session, the commission decided to postpone any decisions about Prince Avenue until after a planned road safety audit by the Georgia Department of Transportation this fall. But it is unclear how prescriptive the RSA will be. GDOT is not going to tell us how to redesign the street, certainly not the locally controlled section between Pulaski and Milledge. They will defer to the local government. 

The mayor and commission have the responsibility to lead our city’s planning efforts. To decide among the options for improving Prince Avenue, our elected representatives should refer to the broad and detailed analysis given by the Prince Avenue Corridor Study and subsequent proposals and be ever mindful of the most desirable future we can attain. Piecemeal and limited modifications will shortchange the community of a great opportunity to spur economic development by expanding the pedestrian friendly design of the traditional downtown business area along gateways to Athens.

Through more than years of discussion, it has become obvious that we need to look at a comprehensive approach to planning for the future of Prince Avenue. It has also become clear that any plan must begin with making Prince Avenue safe for all users. We have the opportunity to work with GDOT under existing complete streets policies to create an environment that is safe, aesthetically pleasing and conducive to increased economic activity. We have the tools; we simply need the leadership to implement them.

For a visual conception of the future of Prince Avenue, see completestreetsprince.org.