Following a test period where several parallel parking spaces on River Street were blocked to gauge the impact on public safety, the Ellijay Downtown Development Authority will hold another town hall meeting to receive feedback and comments from the local community.
That town hall is set for Tuesday, Jan. 11, 5:30 p.m., at the Ellijay First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall. It will be open to the public.
The DDA held its first town hall meeting to explain and answer questions about the downtown parking test period in September.
“We had discussed that, after the trial period ended, we would have another town hall for the public to give their feedback,” said Reece Sanford, Ellijay DDA chairman, during the DDA’s Dec. 14 meeting. “The time will be more convenient for the community to come and the location will be more convenient for numbers. It will be our January meeting, and the only item on the agenda will be traffic.”
The test run was originally expected to last through the Nov. 26 Light Up Ellijay festivities, but it ended before that event was held. Though a shorter project than anticipated by DDA members, it did offer some insight into how River Street would function without parallel parking.
Sanford said he heard mixed feedback about the approach, in which parallel parking spaces from River Street Tavern to the roundabout were blocked with steel barricades.
He said complaints included issues with deliveries, as trucks normally use those spaces to unload, and the use of steel barricades rather than decorative planter barricades. Those items were addressed in the DDA’s original proposal, but the suggestions, including temporary delivery zones, weren’t adopted by the city council, Sanford noted.
“I felt, for the most part, the council was fair,” he added.
Another complaint concerned limited handicapped parking, Sanford said. The DDA had discussed the possibility of temporary handicapped parking during the experiment, but there’s a lot of red tape involved in getting that established, he added.
“We need to be hyper-focused on (handicapped parking), and trying to improve it,” Sanford said.
On the positive side, Sanford said the barricades increased walking space while also providing a barrier that kept pedestrians from walking into oncoming traffic. The placement of the barricades also increased usage of crosswalks, he noted.
“The issue we’ve always had on that street is it’s hard for pedestrians to be seen if they’re stepping into a crosswalk from behind a parked car. That was entirely eliminated,” Sanford said.
DDA members Melinda Hadden and Keith Nunn said they also heard positive comments about the traffic experiment.
“They really thought it increased the safety level on River Street, especially around the tavern,” Nunn said.
Sanford said he learned from Ellijay Public Safety about one oddity that occurred with the speeds drivers traveled past the barricaded area.
“If you break the speed into 20 mph increments, they found less people were going 40-60 mph and less were going 0-20, but more people jumped into the 20-40 mph (area). There weren’t as many going extremely fast, but there were more kind of going a little bit too fast,” he said.