Factors for prioritizing from 44 possible improvements to the network.
•Does ti connect two separate pathways?
•Does it make it easier to reach a particluar destination?
•Does the public request it?
•Does it reduce trip length?
•Does it make pedestrians safer?
And several more.
Scores ranged from 0 to 15 for the different 44. RPG then organized them by the total point score, from the top down to the bottom 44. Even though some of them are (of course) below average, that doesn’t mean they’re unnecessary or bad.
No specific improvements listed, but I’ll get that for my story.
And Scott turns it to the council for questions.
Seevers: Any public comment?
None.
Council’s turn.
Jim Wood: You took public input at one meeting: How many people?
Scott: We had 18 people fill out surveys, maybe two dozen people actually attending.
Wood: So your priorities are based on what they told you. Scott: No, they were a part–not all of it. Wood: How much weight did you give them?
Swearengen: We looked at what would most help the system: Gaps in the system are a big problem so we gave fixing it a high point score. Destination links are important so it can be used for more than recreation.
Wood suggests there’s a lot of subjectivity. Greg Kisela (City Manager): You can’t really avoid that, but they’ve done it best to set it to a clear, understandable grid.
Wood: How do schools fit in?
Swearengen: DES is included as one of the destinations in that category. We debated how to look at DMS; we finally decided that since it’s in the county and not a multi-modal destination—”It’s accessible pretty much by bus.”—and wasn’t listed by the public as an important multi-modal destination–we decided not to use it.
Wood: What about Commons Drive? That’s rated high, but it’s a county street. “I’d sure like to see Destin tax dollars go to things in Destin.”
Scott: “That’s a great point. We had a lot of discussion about that … Commons Drive, while it is part of the county jurisdiction, is a very important roadway for multimodal transportation. Identifying it in the plan is a good thing, it allows the city to hold that plan up” if there’s a problem because of something the county’s doing.
Kisela: It does help a lot to have documents like this in these discussions.
Wood: It might help at Transportation Planning Organizations too.
Councilor Sandy Trammell: In the 2000 plan, getting an east-west corridor for bikers was a top priority. Have we addressed that or even identified a site? She can’t make out the details of the maps to tell.
“I see red line, I see blue lines, I don’t see anything that says proposed east-west corridor for bikers.”
Bagby finds it on Map C. Much discussion of what it shows follows as they try to figure it out. And it’s Map F if you’re looking at bicycles.

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