Here’s a question to chew on: What’s the ugliest road in the Fairbanks area, and why?
“I don’t know if it’s the ugliest, but the most user unfriendly is, I think, is College Road,” said David Cory, as he was walking his way into Fred Meyer Wednesday evening.
Cory had to mull over the question for a moment before giving his take. He said, when he thinks “ugly,” he thinks potholes. But he said his judgment is also about safety and functionality, and that parts of College Road just seem hazardous.
“I mean, to me, an ugly road is a road that’s not designed well – you know, engineered well – when you’re pulling in and out of it or whatever,” Cory said.
The unflattering superlative is something transportation planners want people to attribute to a local street of their choosing. In fact, it’s not just a question – but the first question in a new survey launched by Fairbanks Area Surface Transportation Planning, or FAST Planning. That’s the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Fairbanks area.
FAST Transportation Planner Olivia Lunsford said they intend the ugliest road query to break the ice when people open up the survey.
“Whether you’re on foot, or on a bike, or in a vehicle – you probably have opinions about some roadway,” she said in a brief interview.
Lunsford said the question is an experiment. She said it’s not meant to restrict people to aesthetic judgments; it’s meant to get people thinking about how they interact with and experience the infrastructure they use to get around.
Lunsford also said responses are generating real data: Airport Way, with its concrete barriers and frontage roads, is emerging as an early frontrunner among the 25 responses they’d received as of Wednesday afternoon.
“People have a lot to say about these features, and so that’s already coming out. It’s just a one sentence question, and people are putting bullet points and naming all the reasons why,” she said.
The survey asks people for their opinions on other things, too. It includes multiple choice questions about what’s working well for respondents’ transportation needs, and what they think could be better. There’s also a separate mapping element that lets people submit site-specific comments.
The survey comes in an early stage of FAST Planning’s work to update its Metropolitan Transportation Plan. The document covers a roughly 20-year period, and it aims to guide transportation improvements for not only motor vehicles, but also transit and freight users, as well as pedestrians and cyclists. The federal government requires MPOs, like FAST, to create the long-range plan and update it regularly.
Lunsford said the survey is a preliminary part of a planning process that she estimates will take around a year and a half. She said responses will produce some foundational information that helps the planners draft the document.
“We’ve got short-, medium- and long-range projects that we try to get into the plan, and we can’t come up with those projects unless we have this feedback on the front end,” Lunsford said.
The survey launched Tuesday and FAST intends to keep it open through Nov. 11, according to Lunsford. The online version is available on FAST’s website, and paper versions will be available at the Noel Wien Library, she said.