Transfer Point: Madison accelerates plans to upgrade its transit system
Transfer Point: Madison accelerates plans to upgrade its transit system
By Abigail Becker, The Cap Times
“…In the last five years, Madison has approved the construction of 14,000 housing units, which leads to, in Transportation Director Tom Lynch’s estimation, about 120,000 daily car trips. In the last two years, Madison has approved 3.3 million square feet of office, commercial, industrial and institutional space, which create 60,000 daily car trips, according to Lynch.
If Madison continues to grow at the same rate it has since 1990, the city’s population could hit 355,000 by 2050, while Dane County’s population could top 1 million, Lynch said. The downtown isthmus is expected to gain about 10,000 jobs in the same timeframe, according to the Madison Area Transportation Planning Board.
“Our transportation challenge as a city is accommodating not only the current demand for transportation but the future demand and needing to realize that, given our geography, we are just not going to be able to accommodate demand for single occupancy vehicles,” Rhodes-Conway said.
Simply put, the isthmus is running out of room for car traffic and parking.
“It’s just not sustainable,” Lynch said.
While cars will play a role in the future of Madison’s transportation system, Lynch is confident that the extra capacity required to move people around the city will have to come from other modes of transportation…”