THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605110135
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
A quick-hit study to determine what kind of public transit system could best serve a changing Oceanfront is being pursued by resort planners.
Members of the Resort Area Advisory Commission voted unanimously Thursday to pay an expert to recommend the kind of people carrier best suited for a heavily developed, tourist-oriented stretch of beachfront.
The object is to get visitors, especially summertime visitors, out of their cars and into buses, trams or trolleys to ease congestion along Atlantic and Pacific avenues.
Commission chairman Roger Newill said the study would cost about $25,000 and would be conducted by ``somebody who has done a lot of resort transit systems.''
Added commissioner David R. Hager, ``We've talked about the need for expert analysis on transportation in the resort area, because a parking plan has been deferred.
``We want to do a 60-day study and come back with recommendations for developing a user-friendly transit system in the resort area.''
Recent street improvements on Atlantic Avenue and pending plans to give Pacific Avenue a major face lift - which would involve narrowing traffic lanes and reducing the speed limit - has spurred the need for a transit study.
Plans to vastly expand the Pavilion Convention Center on 19th Street, six blocks from the Oceanfront, also figure in the urgency.
The city was supposed to undertake a parking and transit study this year to complement a recently completed Pacific Avenue Corridor study, but the project was delayed because the cost - an estimated $200,000 - vastly exceeded budget estimates.
Newill and commission members decided to move ahead quickly with the transit study as Newill explained, because ``transit is more important now than parking.''
Traffic and parking have long been season problems along the three-mile length of the resort strip, which stretches from Rudee Inlet to 42nd Street.
The advisory commission and the City Council have long wrestled with various remedies. They have considered then dropped plans to create one-way traffic flows along major corridors, building multi-story parking garages, banning on-street parking along Atlantic and Pacific year-round and other options.
Cost, resistance from Oceanfront merchants and lack of clear-cut planning have combined to halt progress in solving either parking or transit problems.
Tidewater Regional Transit trolleys have served the Oceanfront for nearly a decade, but its failure to maintain consistent route schedules and Oceanfront traffic congestion has prompted the city, and especially advisory commission members, to seek a more reliable public transportation system.
Newill envisions linking a new resort transit operation with a light rail system that has been under study by Hampton Roads communities for more than 10 years.
Area planners are now talking about a light rail link between the Oceanfront, downtown Norfolk, the Norfolk Naval Base and possibly Hampton, Newport News, Williamsburg and Richmond.
So far the plans are strictly in the pie-in-the-sky phase, Newill concedes, and the potential cost of implementing them would be astronomical. by CNB