public hearing

Last week, the Meadowmont Community Association (our homeowners' association) sent out a letter (a paper letter, via actual mail!) with the nominal purpose of informing residents of upcoming hearings before Town Council on the routing of the proposed light rail line. (For details on the issue, see my first blog post and my followup.) It omitted some important details however, so I wrote a response and emailed it around to some of my neighbors. I've posted it on my new single-issue website http://meadowmontlightrail.com, and I'm reprinting it below. I hope everyone has a great 2012. — Geoffrey F. Green

On June 27, the Chapel Hill Town Council will be providing recommendations to the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Transportation Advisory Committee regarding the alignment of the proposed light rail line which will connect Chapel Hill with Durham, UNC Hospitals with Duke Hospital and downtown Durham. As a Meadowmont resident, I'm particularly interested in the choices of routing which involve Meadowmont, and I'm interested in what others in the local progressive community think about the options.

When the approval of the Meadowmont community was up before Town Council in 1995, one of its selling points, and presumably one of the reasons Roger Perry and East-West Partners were allowed to build at such high densities, was the reservation of a 50-foot wide mass-transit corridor (see also here). The corridor is still there, still free of development, and passes by the commercial area and rental apartments before making a turn behind the residences in the Cedars retirement community.