MPO sizes up transportation goals
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Nov 17, 2015 | 9:38 pm
1 min read time
191 wordsAll Latest News, TransportationThe Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization reports that Greater Des Moines is making progress on some transportation goals but heading the wrong way on others.
The agency reviewed the goals in the November 2014 report “Mobilizing Tomorrow,” which examined everything from bicycle lanes to accident rates.
Let’s start with the good news:
- The area has a relatively low 0.68 fatal accidents per million vehicle miles traveled.
- Five miles of new trails are going in, cutting the remaining trail gaps to 61 miles.
- Eight miles of marked bike lanes and shared lanes, called sharrows, have been added, for a total of 31 miles.
- Transit ridership is up 9 percent in a year.
Now, a few areas that are trending the wrong way:
- The rate of 5.74 serious-injury vehicle crashes per million vehicle miles traveled is relatively high.
- The percentage of area bridges that are deficient rose by 1 percentage point, to 26 percent.
- The average age of public buses was 9.2 years, up from 7.7 a year ago.
- The percentage of public transit vehicles that are beyond their useful life rose to 39 percent this year, up from 18 percent.
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