We thank Cobb DOT for listening and responding to our safety concerns. We are residents, employees, shoppers and users of the roads in Cobb County. We also ride bicycles for transportation and recreation, and request that Cobb DOT restripe this segment of Johnson Ferry to 11-ft lane widths, leaving a safe shoulder for bicyclists to use.

We’ve been told that reducing the travel lanes from 12-ft to 11-ft width would make the road less safe because of truck traffic, high speeds, many curb cuts (driveway entrances), lack of connectivity to other bicycling infrastructure, existing alternate bicycle routes, etc.
We’ve been told that there’s been an Engineering Judgment to keep the lanes at 12-ft.

Our questions are:

1. Which Engineering Criteria in the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices) published by the Federal Highway Administration were used to assess this segment?

2. What other modalities of travel were applied & considered when taking this assessment?

We’d like to say that at no taxpayer cost, Cobb County can make this segment of Johnson Ferry more COMPLETE and SAFER for ALL users of the road. By restriping to 11-ft lane widths, it will leave an (appx.) 3-ft “shoulder” for cyclists to use.

Doing this will:

1. Increase Safety for Pedestrians: Providing an additional buffer between the motor vehicles and people walking, jogging, or out with their children.

2. Calm Traffic: Studies by the US Federal Highway Administration have shown that narrowing lane widths slows traffic. This will help address one of Cobb DOT’s concerns with high speeds. The segment is posted at 40 MPH. How many times do you drive by & get passed by someone driving more than 50 MPH?

3. Follow Georgia DOT’s Complete Streets design manual: Text was purposely included in the GDOT Complete Streets design policy to allow local government to request restriping of lanes in favor of adding bike lanes as part of GDOT maintenance projects (see the last paragraph of Section 9.4.2 of their Complete Streets design policy – there is a qualification included relating to safety).

4. Follow Cobb’s Own Complete Streets Policy, addressing other users of the roads aside from strictly motor vehicles: In 2009, Cobb Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the Complete Streets Policy. It states, “Cobb County will implement the Complete Streets concept by considering safe access for all users to include motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users including individuals with physical disabilities and senior citizens in the planning, design, construction and operation of streets within its jurisdiction.”

5. Create safer on-street connections for people who chose to use a bicycle for transportation. The death or injury of a person riding a bicycle affects us all, especially one that could be prevented through better engineering and design by accommodating all users of the road network. Unfortunately we’ve had several high-profile deaths of bicyclists in Cobb County this year. And we have friends that have been hit – or nearly hit while riding along Johnson Ferry.

5. Continue to build out a safer connected network: Lower Roswell has Bike Lanes & a Multi-Use Trail. Johnson Ferry on the Fulton County side has bike lanes.

6. Cost ZERO Taxpayer dollars. In the Cobb 2010 penny sales tax SPLOST, $278 million was budgeted for road projects. Zero was budgeted for on-street bicycling facilities. Shifting the painted lane markings during a resurfacing project bears no construction costs.

7. Support Cobb’s 2010 Bike & Pedestrian Improvement Plan:
* - Chapter 6, Design Guidelines (6.2.1) state, “Adding paved shoulders to an existing roadway without curb and gutter, or restriping a roadway to obtain a paved shoulder outside the travel lane can be an effective and relatively inexpensive way to improve a roadway for bicyclists”.
* – This segment is rated Level of Service “E”. Adding wider shoulders will increase the Level of Service.
* Latent Demand is rated 2 out of 5. Very high demand exists.

8. Does not preclude any future projects to incorporate safe bicycling accommodations.

Feel free to send a pesonal email to the Cobb County Commissioners and DOT at:

Chairman Tim Lee: tlee@cobbcounty.org
Helen Goreham (District 1): hgoreham@cobbcounty.org
Bob Ott (District 2): bob.ott@cobbcounty.org
JoAnn Birrell (District 3): joann.birrell@cobbcounty.org
Lisa Cupid (District 4): lisa.cupid@cobbcounty.org

DOT:
Faye DiMassimo, Director DOT: Faye.DiMassimo@cobbcounty.org
Daniel McDuff, Deputy Director DOT: Daniel.McDuff@cobbcounty.org