MORGANTOWN — The cities of Morgantown and Westover along with Monongalia County, WVU and the state and federal departments of transportation have invested in a comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian plan for the greater Morgantown area.
Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Director Bill Austin said federal guidelines mandate that the MPO’s Metropolitan Transportation Plan be multi-modal and regularly updated.
The initial plan was for the MPO to handle updates to the bicycle and pedestrian portions internally.
That plan began to change in February, when two WVU students were struck by vehicles in separate incidents over the span of a month. The accidents resulted in the death of Leah Berhanu, 21, and left Sara Queen, 20, with serious injuries.
“With the recent fatality and other concerns the city has had with their pedestrian issues like sidewalk maintenance and other things … the consensus of the policy board was that we should move forward with an enlarged bicycle and pedestrian plan,” Austin said.
The plan comes at a cost of approximately $266,000, with 90 percent of that covered through federal and state highway funds. The remaining 10 percent comes by way of a local match.
The Monongalia County Commission provided a total of $9,900 to that end. Morgantown City Council approved $8,510. .Austin said there are also financial commitments from WVU and Westover.
Austin said the plan will include a full inventory of all the sidewalks in the urban area as well as a demand model indicating where people are walking and biking to and from.
“It will identify a complete network for the area. It’s a very involved plan with some nationally recognized experts,” Austin said. “They will also work on the funding end of it for all our communities — Granville, Westover, Star City — including a capital improvement program and the identification of grants for the projects.”
Alta Planning and Consulting has been tapped to handle the work in conjunction with Stantec Engineering. The plan is expected to take a year or more to complete.
“It’s a real step forward and comprehensive look at those issues throughout the urban area and it includes a lot of implementation steps — things city administration, the towns and the DOH can do to implement a more pedestrian and cycling friendly community,” Austin said.
Members of Morgantown City Council said the plan will get the city closer to greater implementation of the complete streets philosophy, which calls for rights of way to be designed with all forms of transportation in mind, not just motorized vehicles.
“When you just talk about complete streets, you don’t really get complete streets,” Deputy Mayor Jenny Selin said. “You have to actually design and build them. This would get us closer to that position.”
Austin said the consultants will likely begin work sometime next month.
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