Meeting planned to weigh GATEWAY location
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 26, 2012 1:46 PM
Wayne County commissioners and the Goldsboro City Council will hold a joint meting Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. with the Goldsboro-Wayne Transportation Authority to discuss results of a feasibility study on the proposed GATEWAY transfer station.
The meeting will be held in the training room on the second floor of the Jeffreys Building, 134 N. John St.
The study was undertaken to determine whether it would be more cost-effective for the GATEWAY administrative offices to remain at their current location at 600 N. Madison Ave., or to move into a new transfer station proposed as part of the Union Station renovation project.
Terry Jordan, GATEWAY director, said early indications are that it does not appear there will be much, if any, difference in operating costs.
GATEWAY paid $7,500 to Martin/Alexiou/Bryson, a consulting company that specializes in transportation planning and traffic engineering services, to conduct the study.
GATEWAY and Goldsboro officials also are negotiating with Union Station architect David Gall to review the design of the transfer station in an effort to reduce the project's approximately $5 million cost. The cost of the review is not to exceed $20,000.
It had been hoped that the feasibility study would have been completed in February. However, Jordan asked the consultants to fine-tune their work.
For example, the initial study did not include the square footage of the existing transfer station with the square footage of the administrative offices when calculating costs.
As originally planned, the administrative offices would have remained in their current location or would have rented space in Union Station once it is renovated. That changed to include the administrative offices in the new transfer station planned to be built adjacent to Union Station.
The transfer station will have bus slots, a covered opened area, an interior centralized heated and cooled area, a concession area and office, scheduler and ticket seller.
The joint meeting was recommended by authority board member and City Councilman Bob Waller. He urged the authority board to hold the meeting as soon as possible because of pending budget discussions.