Leelanau County officials say they are eagerly awaiting the release of a transportation study associated with The Grand Vision which may – or may not – shed light on how roadways in the region designated as “corridors of significance” might be improved.

“I am told that the study will include some information on M-22 and M-72 in Leelanau County, and we should be seeing that study very shortly,” Mary Tonneberger, chair of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners, said last week. Tonneberger represents the county on a multi-jurisdictional steering committee for The Grand Vision, a regional land use and transportation study that was concluded last year.

After a “final” Grand Vision report was released in 2009, some Leelanau County commissioners questioned whether the $1.3 million study contained any useful information related to transportation concerns and roadways, especially given that the effort was funded by federal transportation dollars.

In September 2009, a majority of Leelanau County commissioners voted against adopting a resolution of continuing support for the goals of The Grand Vision and what appeared to be its evolving focus on issues such as affordable housing, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and a variety of other “smart growth” initiatives not directly related to roads or transportation.

Around the same time last year, officials of The Grand Vision announced that a “technical transportation study” that had been commissioned from a national consulting firm, Mead & Hunt, would be released by the end of the 2009.

“We’re still waiting for that study,” District No. 2 commissioner James A. Schaub Sr. said last week. Schaub voted with a majority of the county board last year against further support for goals of The Grand Vision.

“I’ve always said I might change my mind about The Grand Vision if we can finally see something from them that gives us some idea of how we can improve our main transportation system here in Leelanau County – our roadways,” Schaub said.

Since last year, organizers of The Grand Vision have set up six separate committees to deal with issues ranging from small farms to solar energy – but only one committee dealing with transportation. Earlier this month, the chairman of The Grand Vision’s transportation committee, Evan Smith of Traverse City, resigned from that post, citing a conflict of interest with goals of The Grand Vision.

Smith explained that he is also associated with a group that oversees the Traverse City Transportatation and Land Use Study (TC-TALUS), as well as the Traverse City Chamber of Commerce’s transportation committee – both of which have differing views on transportation issues.

“Although I continue to support goals of The Grand Vision, I was running into difficulty trying to represent three different organizations with differing views on some of the same topics,” Smith said.

Currently a topic of controversy in Traverse City is the status of a project to improve Eighth Street, a major east-west corridor through town. Some in the community are advocating using federal “stimulus” dollars to repave the street according to an existing plan, while others advocate adding bicycle lanes – and creating a new design that might result in the loss of federal funding. Those most closely associated with The Grand Vision appear to favor adding the bike lanes.

Leelanau County resident Bob Otwell, executive director of Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation (TART) Trails, Inc., has been an ardent supporter of The Grand Vision, and formerly chaired the TC-TALUS group as well. Otwell appeared before the City Commission last week to argue in favor of adding the bike lanes to Eighth Street.

“The thing you need to realize about The Grand Vision is that it was a TC-TALUS project to begin with, and so it is very Traverse City-centered,” Otwell told the Enterprise last week.

Some $3.3 million in federal transportation funding got TC-TALUS off the ground about five years ago. At the time, a central question was whether a highway bypass should be built around Traverse City, facilitated by a proposed span over the Boardman River, the Hammond-Hartman bridge.

When plans for the bridge were scrapped, some $1.3 million of the federal funding was set aside for The Grand Vision, with the remainder set aside for “implementation” of transportation improvement projects. Ongoing efforts of The Grand Vision are being underwritten in part by what is left over from the $1.3 million plus additional grant funding, Otwell explained.

The chairman of the Leelanau County Road Commission, Lee Bowen, explained that the roughly $2 million left over in “implementation funding” following release of a Grand Vision strategy report won’t accomplish very much. It costs millions of dollars just to pave a few miles of roadway, he explained.

Two years ago, Leelanau County commissioners agreed to expend $6,000 in county funding to become part of The Grand Vision effort – a small amount compared to what is being spent overall.
“Leelanau County is just a bit player in this,” Bowen said.

Nonetheless, a local group has formed to see what can be done in Leelanau County to address some of the transportation and traffic challenges ahead. Last week, a Grelickville Commercial Corridor Task Force held its initial organizational meeting at the Elmwood Township Hall.

“The Grand Vision has designated the Greilickville Commercial Corridor as a Corrridor of Regional Significance,” according to a notice of last week’s special meeting. The group, which was to include Leelanau County Road Commission representation, has the goal of charting a course “aimed at the future implementation of parking, access management, and infrastructure improvements along this 1.3-mile corridor over the next 2-5 years.”

“There probably won’t be any magic formula in this new transportation study for how to deal with the M-22 and M-72 corridors of significance in Leelanau County,” said Bowen, “but we’re eagerly waiting to see that study.”