How did a two-lane extension of SW 24th Avenue
make it into the 2000 MTPO 20-year transportation plan?

John Maruniak was UF's chief planner during the events that made a two-lane extension of SW 24th Avenue from SW 34th Street eastward to Archer Road part of MTPO's 20-year transportation plan. He is currently a traffic planner in Lake County, Florida. Below is his response to a query as to how the extension, which would obviously degrade UF's Natural Area Teaching Laboratory, made it into the plan.

E-mail from John Maruniak (JMaruniak@co.lake.fl.us) to T. J. Walker, 3:02pm, 15 May 2003.

"You'll be glad to hear that I have not suffered any blows to the head lately and therefore, still remember most of the genesis of the SW 24th Avenue extension proposal. Sometimes I'd like to forget it all. I'll be as accurate as I can, because I know some of this could be critical. Before I begin with the factual aspects, I will offer you my opined analysis.

Much of this is related to the intersection of SW 34th Street and Archer Road. There is the situation of two 6-lane roads intersecting with double left turn lanes and a long cycle on the traffic signal that is overburdened and at the point of capacity failure, if not already beyond that point. Rob Ayers, a former DOT planner once told the MPO's Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) that the next step in alleviating conditions at that intersection would have to be a grade-separated overpass. The TAC agreed that an overpass was not a desirable solution for the intersection. Marlie Sanderson, Transportation Director for the MPO, had been pushing a 4-lane Hull Road as the solution to allow traffic to bypass the intersection and go from west Gainesville and the interstate, to Shands Hospital. As you know, President Lombardi was instrumental in holding the line against 4-laning Hull Road.

Another component of that proposal was the traffic conditions on SW 20th Avenue and how could you relieve congestion without 4-laning 20th and also avoid two 90-degree turns between SW 20th and Hull Road. The TAC did not see any future in pursuing a route that would extend SW 20th through the Doyle Conner Building and onto campus, though that was discussed. Associated with this was the Campus Development Agreement, a final action of the Campus Master Plan signed in 1998, that provided funding for paving SW 24th Avenue as well as other road projects.

As I remember the facts of the charette, the MPO, through a vote of the commissioners, funded a charette to address these and other traffic issues immediately west of the campus. The Presidents Task Force on Transportation and Parking had already produced a study with recommendations that were being implemented and these recommendations were to be considered during the charette process. (You may want to get a copy of that report from Greg DuBois in Parking Services, because it may have some of the charette proposals, including the original proposal for SW 24th Ave) Dan Burden was hired as the charette facilitator. He used to be in Tallahassee working with the DOT on bike and pedestrian issues. He had since retired to High Springs and was working as a consultant. The charette was open to the public and held at various locations around Gainesville with a goal of recommending transportation improvements for the west side of campus, especially along SW 20th Avenue.

Early-on, the charette developed the idea of developing proposals to help the west side of SW 34th Street evolve into a student village environment with easy, non-vehicular access to campus. A consensus developed that a local road network should be established in the neighborhood and that paving SW 24th Avenue and making north-south connections from it would be a way to frame the neighborhood. The last charette meeting was held at the Reitz Union and there was a flurry of proposals, negotiated items and last minute agreements to reach a final consensus.

I arrived late to the meeting as Ed Poppell and Otis Jones were leaving. Poppell said to me that he had secured an agreement to not include any Hull Road 4-laning proposal in the Charette consensus and for me to make sure that it remained that way. At that point, the extension of SW 24th Street through the Natural Area, was already on the table. The extension was taken out and put back in the plan several times and, as I recall, it was in the plan when the meeting wrapped up. It was seen as a way to bypass the Archer/34th Street intersection and move students from the SW 20th Ave apartments onto campus. There were other issues brought up during the final minutes of the charette and it was agreed to hold the line and end the charette. Marlie Sanderson, of the MPO staff, said that his staff would map out the proposals and present the map to the TAC for further discussion and refinement.

In the interim, I lobbied Marlie to delete the extension of 24th onto the campus. At the next TAC meeting there was one map that had the extension and another map without the extension. As I remember, the TAC meeting ended with a map that deleted the extension of SW 24th Street onto the campus through the natural area. I had distributed information and maps about the NATL and brought up the issue of the sink at Natural Area Drive (Surge Area Drive at the time) and the hazardous waste facility adjacent to the proposed route. At some later point I saw a presentation (I think it was at an MPO meeting) that showed the SW 24th extension back on the map."



In an e-mail later the same day, John Maruniak responded to a query as to whether UF promised to furnish all or part of the right-of-way for the proposed two-lane extension of SW 24th Avenue:

E-mail from John Maruniak (JMaruniak@co.lake.fl.us) to T. J. Walker, 4:50pm, 15 May 2003.

"As for any right-of-way issues, I don't recall any dicussions ever getting to that point. Jerry Schaffer was VP during the formative years of the SW 24th Ave proposal and he was open with me on this type of subject. I can imagine that other parties might have talked about right-of-way. For example, Bruce DeLaney at the UF Foundation has had longtime contacts with developers in town and told me on several occasions about his various suggestions to a developer regarding how Museum Walk apartments or other projects should develop in that area. He would normally discuss issues about land trades, right-of-way requirements, etc. in that context. As I remember, he was involved in a campus boundary dispute along the southern portion of campus adjacent to a proposed veterinarian clinic to go in the structure immediately south of the sink. There could have been some discussions about right-of-way that gave the impression of a promise, but I'm sure that no actual promise was made. The Charrette days were too early for that."