The Forest Hill Road Neighborhood Representatives

Re: response to MAAI letter of March 25, 2008: 

  Dear Sirs: 

Please observe the attached Chellman letter of March 29th:
http://www.macon-bibb.com/FHR/Forest_Hill_Road_Observations_Chellman.pdf

We do not accept the MAAI plan as modified up to and including MAAI’s  March 25 response.   We ask MAAI to explain why the Citizen's Compromise Plan (CCP), offered by Mr. Chellman, is not suitable from an engineering (technical) and planning standpoint.  That is, we wish an explanation of why, engineering-wise, each of the features offered by Mr. Chellman are not better or at least equal to the County's design from both a functional and safety standpoint.  Your prior explanations have asserted that the County design is safer, but have not demonstrated why.  We find the assertions wanting, given prior admission that MAAI has not revisited previously completed projects to determine if design assumptions, especially regarding safety, were supported by built projects.  Given anecdotal evidence of the danger of “suicide lanes” in the completed projects, and the design speed of 45mph employed for the Forest Hill Road project which aggravates such dangers, we question the relative safety of the MAAI design compared to the CCP design.   We do not want to know merely what is unacceptable, but why.  
  
A timely redesign of the FHR project to become the CCP may be beyond the ability of Stantec, as Stantec has already stated a 6-9 month period would be needed for them to do so.   Additionally, "Van Etheridge, a Moreland Altobelli engineer who works with the county's road program, said a total redesign of the project would take an additional five to eight years to complete... " (Macon Telegraph 2-28-08).  
  Thus we are now asking for Stantec to reveal the computer program they have been using to do the FHR design.  

Sincerely, 

The Neighborhood Representatives.