Statistics confirm that American drivers continue to massacre walkers and cyclists.

Just the facts, folks. Sorry if it hurts your car to hear them.

Exactly How Far U.S. Street Safety Has Fallen Behind Europe, in Three Bombshell Charts, by Kea Wilson (Streets Blog)

We knew it was bad, but not THIS bad.

The United States has failed to reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatalities as fast as comparably affluent European nations, a new study finds — and the authors think we must employ the same simple, effective policies that they did to catch up in the fight the bloodshed.

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Rutgers University compared the last 28 years of available transportation fatality data from the United States with data from the four countries with the most closely comparable national travel surveys and levels of affluence: Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All four peer nations had reduced per capita pedestrian fatalities by at least 61 percent over the course of the study period — and standout Denmark did so by a whopping 69 percent — but the U.S. reduced ours by just 36 percent.

In other words, our worst peer country’s Vision Zero progress was nearly twice as fast as ours in the last three decades. And of course, U.S. pedestrian fatalities actually increased dramatically between 2010 and 2018. Only the U.K. experienced even a moderate increase over the same period — and some U.K. safety experts blame the rise on American-made SUVs.

"The coronavirus shutdowns are making more obvious a pre-existing epidemic of reckless street design."

A related story yesterday:

The future of work, and of commuting to work, surely will be different.

It should surprise no one that in New Albany, a political process currently being held hostage by mayor and city council president has no room for responsiveness on ANY matter of importance, much less the perennially abused street grid.

I doubt their automobile centrism has abated with quarantine. We'll see. My own period of detachment from involvement with public affairs originally was slated to expire on June 30.

We'll see about THAT, too. Let's have a look at genuine leadership out in Oakland.

Drivers Not Wanted on Oakland’s ‘Slow Streets’, by Laura Bliss (CityLab)

The California city isn’t the first to experiment with car restrictions in the coronavirus pandemic, but its plan to discourage drivers is the most extensive.

Last week, Oakland, California, announced a bold answer to shelter-in-place coronavirus claustrophobia: To create more outdoor space and safer corridors for essential travel by foot or bike, the city would restrict access to vehicles on nearly 74 miles of city street — about 10% of the city’s street network.

“In this unprecedented moment we must do everything we can to ensure the safety and well-being of all families across our city,” stated Mayor Libby Schaaf. “Closing roads means opening up our city.”

The “slow streets” initiative, which began on Saturday and will roll out in four segments through the duration of the coronavirus emergency, comes in response to citizen concerns about overcrowded conditions in parks and on sidewalks during the coronavirus lockdown. It’s not really a “closure,” despite the mayor’s phrasing: Emergency vehicles like police cars, fire trucks and ambulances are still permitted to enter these new pedestrian corridors, as are delivery vehicles and residential traffic. In fact, no drivers will be ticketed if they do drive on these streets.

The change is mostly a firm psychological nudge, said Warren Logan, the director of mobility policy and interagency relations in the Oakland mayor’s office. Confronted by a pair of traffic signs and a barricade blocking one lane, drivers now have to think twice about entering these streets. Many will consider taking a different route. And all will hopefully drive more mindfully when they enter a slow-streets zone — an increasingly important concern in cities where the relative absence of traffic has inspired a wave of speeding violations. “When they do turn into the street, they do it carefully,” Logan said.

After a week in action, Oakland officials say the streets are working as planned — no collisions, no reported instances of unsafe gathering, and more families able to move (and dance) at spacious distances. As if out of an earlier era, small children are riding bikes in the middle of the street without their parents needing to worry. “This is an opportunity to remember that these are our streets, not just streets for cars,” Logan said.

The same flawed HWC Engineering campaign donations-meet-street grid bait 'n' switch that wasn't working prior to the pandemic hasn't grown any more sensible with sheltering at home. It was crap then, and so it remains. 

Have Coronavirus Shutdowns Prompted an Epidemic of Reckless Driving? by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

Reports from many cities indicate a surge in aggressive speeding, and with it, automobile crashes. The statistics are remarkable and alarming in light of how much traffic itself has declined, with many businesses closed and residents sheltering at home ...

... The most common tendency I've seen in reporting of this phenomenon is to blame "reckless driving." In other words, it's just that people who have sociopathic and destructive urges are out there on the empty roads playing Ricky Bobby and indulging them, to tragic effect. Is that the whole story?

This pat answer is consistent with our societal bias toward always talking about traffic violence in terms of individual behavior: either it was just a tragic accident, or the people involved should have been paying more attention. Mainstream media rarely interrogate how street design induces drivers to behave in certain ways. Yet we've written about this again and again on Strong Towns, because the evidence is clear: when you design streets to make high speeds comfortable, you make tragedy statistically inevitable.

Over 40,000 Americans die in traffic in a normal year. The number of pedestrians alone killed by U.S. drivers from 2008 to 2017 averages out to one every 1 hour and 46 minutes. If we're appalled by the level of carnage on our roads while most of us are sheltering in place, we should certainly be appalled by the level of carnage the rest of the time. If we think there's an epidemic of reckless driving right now, it's just a continuation of the epidemics of reckless driving that we witnessed in America in 2019, and 2018, and 2017, et cetera. The status quo isn't anything to want to return to here.

The coronavirus shutdowns are making more obvious a pre-existing epidemic of reckless street design.

"We see a growing movement in cities throughout the world to stem the usage of cars and close streets to unmitigated traffic."

At the Modacity page at Facebook.

"My country is too big and spread out for bikes.”

A THIRD of all trips in America are one mile or less. HALF are three miles or less. The large majority are driven.

The potential for transformation is huge. But only if we stop making excuses and start making space for cycling.

We could be doing so much more in New Albany. But we're far too stupid and cowardly for that.

Why Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm, by Brooks Rainwater (CityLab)

In cities like New York, Paris, Rotterdam, and soon San Francisco, car-free streets are emerging amid a growing movement.

When asked what they like most about a city they have visited, almost no one answers: “The cars whizzing by on the streets.” Cultural attractions, the people we meet, walking through the city and gazing at plazas, buildings, and places—these are the things that make a city unique.

What if there was a way to get more of what we all like and less of the noise and congestion we don’t? Many cities are working towards that goal, by closing major streets to traffic and opening them up to people.

Cities have limited space, and how it is allocated is tremendously important for people. The denser a place, the dearer each square foot is. Yet all over the world, cities were retrofitted to accommodate cars, giving them an outsized portion of urban space and limiting the area in which people could walk, sit at cafes, or play games with friends.

Many cities in America are newer than those in other parts of the world; most were born before cars but expanded tremendously afterwards. This wasn’t the case in Europe, where centuries of settlement made it difficult for the continent to fully succumb to the automobile. In the postwar era, European cities could have followed America’s lead in designing around cars. Most, however, made very different choices.

The geometry of space shouldn’t favor one very large mode of transportation over others that need room to grow and flourish ...

Transportation for America has unveiled their three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy.

Transportation for America has unveiled the organization's three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy. The three principles are as applicable in New Albany as anywhere else. Candidates, your thoughts?

1 Prioritize maintenance
2 Design for safety over speed
3 Connect people to jobs and services

Check it out.

A New Vision for Transportation (Smart Growth America)

Listen Up, Washington: No New Roads (Charles Marohn at Strong Towns)

---

A VISION FOR 21ST CENTURY TRANSPORTATION IN AMERICA
Yesterday our colleagues at Transportation for America unveiled their three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy. That may sound pretty wonky, but taken together, they paint a vision for what the tens of billions we spend on transportation each year should actually accomplish for people. Instead of just talking about how much money to spend, these principles delve into how we can better spend the money we already have.

The principles are worth exploring in their entirety—which you can do here, with some great, shareable graphics—but here's why we're really excited about them: they will help create safer, more walkable communities.

Principle #1: Prioritize maintenance
Outcome #1: Cut the road, bridge, and transit maintenance backlog in half

Principle #2: Design for safety over speed
Outcome #2: Save lives with slower, safer road design

Principle #3: Connect people to jobs and services
Outcome #3: Determine how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, and prioritize projects that will improve those connections.

Why these principles matter for Complete Streets

Our work at the National Complete Streets Coalition is all about making sure that everyone who uses our public streets can do so safely, and the second principle—design for safety over speed—speaks directly to that. In far too many communities, maximizing the speed at which vehicles travel is the primary motivation behind street design; too often, safe accommodations for people walking, biking, or using transit are afterthoughts, if they're even considered at all. While politicians and agencies talk a big game about prioritizing safety, in practice, it's really just talk. Pedestrians are being killed by people driving at rates not seen in nearly three decades.

If we had a federal transportation policy that explicitly prioritized safety above everything else, our streets and communities would start to look different. Slip lanes in developed areas might be replaced with bulb outs. Extra wide lanes for cars would be narrowed to slow vehicles, making more space for people.

Sidewalks and slow speed lanes for modes likes bikes and scooters would be the norm, not the exception. Once you leave the interstate, streets would be designed to slow traffic—and protect people—instead of speeding vehicles through places to the detriment of safety for all people who use the street.

And principle three is just as important. Complete Streets, and ultimately complete networks, enable people to reach jobs, schools, grocery stores, and many other resources using whatever mode of travel they choose or rely upon. Using new data, we can better assess whether people can get where they need to go on foot or with a bike or via transit. These data can and should help us prioritize the projects that fill in gaps and missing connections in our network. By measuring what matters, then using those data to guide our decisions and investments, we can create safer, more accessible, thriving communities.

"While we inherited a transportation system built on racial discrimination and a belief that moving cars is most important, it does not mean that we can continue with the same type of thinking."

Here's the link, and the title says it all.

Equitable, just and inclusive transportation systems are within our reach, by Veronica O. Davis (Roads & Bridges)

Taking into consideration Team Gahan's ongoing aversion to books and reading, not to mention genuinely purposeful and inclusive communication, I'll highlight the conclusion while noting that the entire article is worth ten minutes of every one's time.

Bringing it all together

As transportation professionals, we are charged with ensuring people are able to move from Point A to Point B safely and reliably. While we inherited a transportation system built on racial discrimination and a belief that moving cars is most important, it does not mean that we can continue with the same type of thinking. Even as we grapple with new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, dockless bike-share systems and scooters, we are susceptible to repeating past mistakes unless we completely shift the paradigm. In point of fact, complete streets and Vision Zero require us to think, act, and design differently.

We must:

• Make bold decisions to reallocate lanes for single-occupancy vehicles to other modes such as public transit, biking and walking.
• Champion complete streets and Vision Zero as a philosophy and a way of doing business so they become more than paper documents.
• Recognize whose voice is not being heard in the process and then being proactive and reach out to those communities. This may include increasing resources to be able to engage the community.
• Create a framework and vision that sets the ground rules for new technologies to serve all communities.
• Increase the number of women and people of color within the profession, so we may reflect the communities we serve.

Following the examples set by our predecessors is not an option. We must shift the paradigm to right historical injustices by designing a network that is inclusive of all people as we prepare for the future.

Today's lesson for Councilman Aebersold: "A street is the framework upon which we build places. It’s not about speed. It’s not about 'getting there.' "

From May, 2017. Given incumbent at-large councilman Aebersold's propensity to mistake streets for roads, this would be a FINE OPPORTUNITY for one of his Democratic challengers to cite some facts (as below) and compel Aebersold to eat his words, especially as it pertains to Tricky Dickey's trio of the chosen, Sam Charbonneau, Jason Applegate, Chris Fitzgerald -- anyone got a pulse when it comes to street sense? Thank you.

Over and over again, these notices pop up.

For the most part, driving on the surface streets of Vancouver is easy but walking or biking around the city is often another matter entirely. In an effort to make Vancouver’s roads safe, convenient and more comfortable to a broader array of users, the city is in the works of adopting a Complete Streets policy to guide future road development and upgrades.

Until ours is sensible, it won't be, and so I'll continue making the point.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A CITY STREET?, by Sarah Kobos (Smart Growth Tulsa)

IF YOU SAID, “TO MOVE CARS FROM POINT A TO POINT B IN THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME,” YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

What is the purpose of a city street?

It’s not something that most of us think about very much.

If you said, “to move cars from point A to point B in the least amount of time,” you are not alone. Heck, you may even be a city traffic engineer. Especially in car-oriented places like Tulsa, city streets tend to be seen as a conveyance, allowing us—as long as we have a car—to get where we need to go.

Having attended the national Strong Towns Summit in Tulsa a few weeks ago, I can’t stop thinking about a different definition of city streets.

Why? Because our future depends on it.

To better understand what I’m talking about, we need to clarify the difference between a street and a road.

Think about a road as a way to get from place to place. It should be fast and convenient, maximizing efficiency and helping you reach your destination in a timely manner. Notice how the definition of a road includes the idea of a “place.” A road connects places.

A street is not a road. A street is the framework upon which we build places. It’s not about speed. It’s not about “getting there.” If you’re in a place, you’re already there. Thus, it’s imperative that streets serve the people in a place, not the cars speeding through it. And because places generate jobs and taxes and opportunity, we should start thinking of streets not as conveyances, but as a platform for building wealth.

SNIP to the conclusion.

By focusing our energies on older places that are inherently walkable and already served by existing infrastructure, we can increase quality of life along with tax revenues while building great places people love.

Not in Nawbany, but in Idaho: "Main Street is no longer only a place for cars — it is a place increasingly linked to public spaces built by and for locals."

As it pertains to taming the inadequacies of a high-speed, pass-through street grid, Mayor Jeff Gahan and his merry band of minions have spent the past few years seeking to disprove the time-tested axiom that one must break eggs to make an omelette.

In effect, they've substituted powdered eggs, and as a result, it's an omelette, all right -- just not a very good one.

We've spent millions of dollars for an illusion of reform that in plain fact has resulted in a doubling-down of car-centrism. One-way highways have been transformed ... into two-way highways. The problems remain, and the opportunities continue to be squandered.

But one thing cannot be denied: Gahan's campaign finance coffers have been enriched by all the folks and their companies who have benefited from these contracts.

Are you feeling any safer? I'm not. Meanwhile there's a quaint little local oligarchy, carved out at the expense of each and every one of us. Look past the smoke, mirrors, deception and bright shiny objects, and see the corruption hiding in plain sight.

It's not a pretty picture, is it?

TAKING BACK MAIN STREET IN HAILEY, IDAHO, by Katherine Peinhardt (Project for Public Spaces)

Can a city re-design its Main Street to the human scale? The town of Hailey, Idaho set out to answer this question in 2015, starting with Highway 75, a primary thoroughfare for multiple towns in the Wood River Valley. The highway, which moves large volumes of high-speed vehicles every day, also serves as Hailey’s Main Street, though the wide street was no place for locals to linger and it lacked a true sense of place. PPS and partners at New Mobility West, an initiative of Community Builders, along with transportation organizations like Mountain Rides kicked off the placemaking process by joining Hailey residents in taking a closer look at Main Street and reimagining it as a place for people. The process was made possible through the vision and funding of the LOR Foundation, which works on the ground with rural stakeholders to meet local challenges and create a shared vision of success.

Yes, the fight to remake streets for the use of all people, and not only their cars, is a social justice issue.

The AARP understands it, too.

Crossing the street shouldn’t have to mean crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. While unsafe streets disproportionately affect older people, safe streets are for everyone. It is critically important to adopt policies that ensure our streets are designed for all who use them — pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and public transportation users of all ages. All of us need safe and efficient streets. That won’t happen without change.

It's undoubtedly important to resist harmful agendas, whether propagated by faraway partisan bureaucrats engorged with payola bucks, or local officials just down the street.

Arguably, the local officials are more accessible when it comes to compensatory re-training. It isn't always the case, but it can be a place to start.

Muting the excesses of our car-centric street grid and making it more responsive to the needs of humans isn't about neighborhood safety alone, or the health benefits of alternative modes of transport, or even civic aesthetics. 

All these matter, but as this article makes very clear, car-centric street design perpetuates inequality. That makes it a social justice issue, one that budding community leaders need to be better informed about.

The article has been linked here before, but let's do it again. A refresher course in truthfulness is never a bad thing. There was a time when I didn't understand these concepts, either. Happily, there's ample guidance for those wishing to learn more about the importance of street grid reform.

New Albany inched forward with last year's two-way reversion. We can do far better.

The Hidden Inequality Of America’s Street Design, by Diana Budds (Fast Company)

New data shows that pedestrians in the U.S. are more likely to die if they’re poor, a person of color, uninsured, or old.

Urban design has a long history of perpetuating racial and economic inequality, and the burden of bad streets is still being disproportionately borne by underserved populations. According to a new report, pedestrians in the United States have a higher risk of being killed by cars if they’re people of color, aged 65 or older, uninsured, or from a low-income household.

The report, called “Dangerous by Design 2016,” is authored by the National Complete Streets Coalition, a working group within the nonprofit Smart Growth America, which supports socially equitable, environmentally responsible, and economically healthy urban design strategies. The report focuses on designing streets for multi-modal transportation, and ranks every state and more than 100 major metropolitan areas by what it calls the Pedestrian Danger Index, or PDI, which assesses the likelihood of a car hitting a pedestrian by comparing the rate of pedestrian deaths in an area to the rate of people who walk to work. (SGA calls this the best available measure of how many people are likely to be out walking every day.)

“The leading goal is equity in implementation for all avenues of transportation,” says Emiko Atherton, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. “It really is about not only treating everyone equitably, but also encouraging departments of transportation to focus on the most underserved.”

Put simply: Bad street design is disproportionately impacting historically marginalized groups in America ...

Take note, progressives: "We’ve built an unsustainable transportation network that makes all of us feel isolated, vulnerable and embattled, no matter how we’re getting around."

It is my aim to continue repeating this simple fact: one needn't be a progressive to grasp messages like the following, but if you consider yourself a progressive in political and social matters, it's contradictory to dismiss messages like this.

I've educated myself. So can you. This writer lives in Washington D.C., and you might be tempted to reject his point insofar as it applies to a smaller setting like New Albany.

You'd be mistaken. It's a difference in degree, not basic facts. I learned them, and you can, too.

Our streets make us unhappy. They don’t have to, by Colin Browne (Washington Post)

... The crazy thing about the automobile is that despite claiming a wildly disproportionate amount of public space, it’s still a slow and frustrating way to get across town. This is not because of all the buses, pedestrians and bicyclists. It’s not because the speed limit is too low or the traffic lights aren’t timed properly. It’s a feature of the machine itself. Cars take an enormous amount of space to safely move the one person inside and another enormous amount of space to store when they’re not being used, which is 95 percent of the time. If you live in Nebraska, you can maybe make that work. In a major world city such as ours, the acreage simply isn’t there.

We’ve built an unsustainable transportation network that makes all of us feel isolated, vulnerable and embattled, no matter how we’re getting around.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. We can think bigger. We don’t have to sacrifice the safety and livability of our neighborhoods to prop up a wasteful and dangerous transportation system.

What does a low-stress street network look like? We need wider sidewalks. Everywhere. Walking to the store with a grocery cart or pushing a stroller to day care or getting to the bus stop in a wheelchair should be smooth and easy for everyone, no matter where you live.

We need protected space on every single street for a variety of active transportation modes. Every child in the District should be able to ride a skateboard or a bike or a scooter to school safely. Not just once a year for a photo op — every child, every day.

We need dedicated space for affordable transit in every neighborhood. According to AAA, the average cost of owning a car in the District is about $8,000 per year. No one should have to pay that kind of money just because he or she can’t afford to live near a Metro station or a reliable bus line ...

Green street design: New Albany can't have nice things because our "leaders" don't, and our "pillars" aren't.

Because for the clique to even intelligently discuss it, they'd first be compelled to imagine it. They can't, and it's not even close.

And so we settle for the best that C-minus students can offer. It isn't much.

‘A VIRTUOUS CYCLE OF GREEN’: HOW STREET DESIGN CAN BE CALMED BY NATURE, by David Goldberg (Sightline)

Making Cascadia’s streets more like gardens ensures complete streets are green streets.

A revolution is brewing in the streets of Cascadia’s major cities. Not since the mid-20th century has this region seen such a wholesale remaking of city rights of way.

Rapid growth is driving experimentation in ways to move more and more people through the same corridors, whether by foot, bicycle, transit, rideshare or private vehicle, all while accommodating a rising tsunami of deliveries. And as as ever more buildings fill urban space, those public rights of way become critically important refuges for greenery.

Until recently, traffic engineers designed streets solely to move cars. For them, street trees were to be eliminated as roadside hazards and landscaped zones were a hindrance to “vehicle throughput.” Today, though, planners increasingly see space for trees and plants as vital to safety, clean waterways, and resiliency and adaptation to climate change.

Some cities are beginning to fuse four strains of fresh thinking that have emerged over the last decade or so:

Complete Streets
Vision Zero
Green Stormwater Infrastructure
Urban Forestry

“Trees and other plants clean the air, add economic value to real estate and commercial sales and they make places where people want to be,” said John Massengale, co-author with Victor Dover of Street Design: the Secret to Great Cities and Towns (Wiley 2013). “Perhaps most importantly, they slow cars down, which is critical to achieving Vision Zero.”

“There is a virtuous cycle of green,” said Brice Maryman, senior landscape architect at MIG|SvR in Seattle. “Giving street space over to plants and trees helps slow vehicles, and once you have slower vehicles you can use even more space for natural functions.”

Also, some of the same techniques that can be used to calm traffic and create safe zones for people on foot or bicycle offer opportunities to introduce more soothing vegetation and ecological functions—ensuring that complete streets are green streets ...

Agonized drivers scream bloody murder as Louisville contemplates a 9th Street shrink 'n' slow.

Photo credit: Undivided Nation.

Let the coddled drivers' bitching begin.

On second thought, it probably already has. Amid the spitting and snarling and all-purpose selfish venom, I'll just be resting here with a beer and cigar, thinking back to all the places I've been that have nice buses, trams and subways extending from city center into the outlying areas.

Soon I'll be walking to work again. It's going to be a quite a pleasure.

The Future of Ninth Street: City debuts potential redesign, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

Louisville Metro Government officials are hoping that by 2022, Ninth Street, from the riverfront to Broadway, will look less like a hazardous highway on the edge of downtown and more like a version of Queens Quay in Toronto.

The street has long been considered problematic, as it effectively divides downtown from the predominantly minority neighborhoods in west Louisville, as well as promotes high vehicles speeds and dangerous crossing conditions for pedestrians.

“It’s well past time for the physical and psychological divide at Ninth Street to end,” Mayor Greg Fischer said in a news release highlighting ways that the street could be transformed.

The draft plan, which was created by consultant Gehl Architects with input from residents, shows three alternatives for Ninth Street but identifies one — the Urban Parkway — as the optimal choice, asserting that it would provide adequate vehicle capacity while improving safety for pedestrians and cyclist and creating new public space.

The Urban Parkway plan would make Ninth Street a four-lane road, down from six lanes, and reduce the lane width to between 10 feet and 11 feet, down from its current 11 to 14 feet. The plan also calls for a bike lane divided from the vehicle lanes, a shorter median, a walking path from Broadway to the Ohio River and 20- to 25-foot landscaped sidewalks with places to sit, play and shop ...

In New Albany and Florida, bicyclists and pedestrians remain at risk when planners refuse the change car-centric nature of the street grid.

Read this sentence.

Florida's complete streets law led officials to tack on bike and pedestrian infrastructure without changing the car-centric nature of the state's transportation planning.

Allow me to fix it.

Jeff Gahan's de-Specked two-way street reversion led HWC Engineering to tack on bike and pedestrian infrastructure without changing the car-centric nature of the state's transportation planning.

Actually, almost all the biking infrastructure suggested by Speck was removed amid gleeful cheering by the irresolute likes of CM Greg Phipps (has he ever actually been on a bicycle?), but the analogy holds.

The two-way street grid project has not been transformative because Gahan didn't allow it to be. Speck saw the larger picture, but Gahan made adulterated sausage from it, rendering potential boons to walkability and bikeability into yet another omnibus paving project to appease speeding drivers, and now we're left with paltry returns from what might have been genuinely meaningful, and without the political will to make the necessary changes. Phipps himself already has surrendered -- not that this is unusual.

Yep.

Told you so. Now can we all join together and do the right thing?

#FireGahan2019

Florida’s Complete Streets Law Saved Thousands of Lives, and That Wasn’t Enough, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

A new study highlights the successes and shortcomings of the state's 1984 law that mandated consideration of walking and biking routes in transportation projects.

Florida epitomizes Sun Belt autosprawl and all its attendant dangers for people on foot. The state routinely ranks among the deadliest for walking.

But it could have been worse, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Florida adopted a statewide complete streets policy in 1984. The law stated that routes for biking and walking must be considered in road construction projects, with a few limited exceptions. It also charged the state with developing a statewide “integrated system of bicycle and pedestrian ways.”

The law, now 34 years old, did not transform car-centric transportation planning in Florida, and the state’s streets remain unacceptably dangerous for walking. But even this incremental step saved lives, according University of Georgia researcher Jamila Porter.

Porter and her team compared changes in Florida’s pedestrian fatality rate to national trends, as well as to other Sun Belt states without complete streets policies. They found that pedestrian deaths fell faster in Florida after the complete streets law was adopted than they would have if the state had tracked trends in peer states or the U.S. as a whole. The difference added up to between 3,500 and 4,000 lives saved over a 30-year period.

While Florida’s per capita pedestrian fatality rate fell 60 percent, from 6.36 fatalities per 100,000 people to 2.56, it remains among the most dangerous in the nation for walking. In 2015, only Delaware had a higher rate.

In interviews with 10 Florida DOT officials, each with at least 15 years of experience, Porter and her team also highlight how the law was not sufficient on its own to change the cars-first culture at the agency. While infrastructure for walking and biking was tacked on to projects, the state still focused on moving motor vehicles, not creating safe bike and pedestrian networks.

“We did well what we thought we knew to do well. We provided a 5-foot sidewalk… that was it. Or we provided a bit of bike lane,” said one staffer. But the state was still “consumed with the requirements — that we have adequate capacity for cars on roadways — and part of that was based on the ability of a car to get from location A to B in a timely manner and fast.”

Other state policies worked against the goals of the complete streets law. One staffer pointed out that Florida still places too much emphasis on metrics of motor vehicle throughput, like level of service, that undermine pedestrian safety. Some said that while the state’s policies were better than most, Florida should have made more progress.

New rules of thumb in transportation planning provide thumbnails for scoring local political aspirants.

It occurred to me to backdate this post to 2004, thus providing enough time for 4th district councilman Pat McLaughlin to methodically consider the potential uses of thumbs.

OUR OLD PLANNING RULES OF THUMB ARE “ALL THUMBS”, by Joe Cortright (Strong Towns)

We all know and use rules of thumb. They’re handy for simplifying otherwise difficult problems and quickly making reasonably prudent decisions. We know that we should measure twice and cut once, that a stitch in time saves nine, and that we should allow a little extra following distance when the roads are slick.

What purport to be “standards” in the worlds of transportation and land use are in many cases just elaborate rules of thumb. And while they might have made sense in some limited or original context, the cumulative effect of these rules is that we have a transportation system which is by regulation, practice, and received wisdom, “all thumbs.”

SNIP

Our “all thumbs” approach to transportation planning leads to a specific pattern of development that is as inefficient for cars as it is hostile for persons traveling on foot, via bicycle and on transit.

What is needed are a new set of rules of thumb. Like all heuristics, this isn’t meant to be taken as a final set of “standards” to fit every situation – but there are some emerging ideas about what we might emphasize.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #1: CLOSER IS BETTER
Having more different destinations close at hand facilitates a wide range of mode choices, especially walking and cycling. Mixing uses, which is often anathema under traditional zoning codes turns out to be desirable for consumers and expeditious for transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #2: SLOWER IS SAFER
When cars and people on foot and on bikes interact, safety comes from slow speeds even more than separation. Local streets that move traffic slowly are friendlier—and safer—for non-auto modes of transportation.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #3: SHARING IS EFFICIENT
Rather than require every use to provide parking for the peak hour of the year, arranging uses so people can park once, and walk mostly leads to less traffic, greater safety and more congenial, fine-grained development patterns.

NEW RULE OF THUMB #4: OUR OBJECTIVE SHOULD BE ACCESSIBILITY, NOT MOBILITY
Many transportation heuristics emphasize speed: how do we make things move faster. But what we really care about is getting to (or being at) our destinations, not rapidly traveling among them. Speed should be secondary to choice.

* “I want to highlight and emphasize that the city did not rush to make a decision on the finalization of the conversion project. Instead, the city took its time and was methodical. The City also was not afraid to compromise and modify the plan as needed, especially when it came to changes prompted by the feedback received from residents. This project exemplifies how local government, community members, and contractors can come together to design the best plan for their city,” stated City Council President Patrick McLaughlin.

Grid Control, Vol. 30: These weird, useless "enhanced" crosswalk gizmos remind us that HWC's and Deaf Gahan's "complete roads" downtown are not "complete streets."

They've been called "enhanced" crosswalks and "high visibility" crosswalks. They're a prominent feature of downtown New Albany's new two-way street (or is it "road"?) grid.

In the following announcement from the University of Virginia, crosswalk safety remains entirely about the pedestrian, who must "use" these mechanisms correctly in the faith-driven hope that drivers might understand their own responsibilities to share the patch.

Not everyone pushes the button.

But how many drivers are paying attention?

How many know what this means?

Rapid Flashing Beacons Enhance Crosswalk Safety at the Push of a Button

... “Rapid Flashing Beacons allow the University to put more lights in more locations across Grounds in ways that are less invasive, easier to maintain, and less disruptive to traffic. Most importantly, RFBs are very reliable. All of this points to increased pedestrian safety if used correctly,” said Director of Safety and Emergency Preparedness Marge Sidebottom.

Because these lights are above ground at approximately eye level, it’s easy for pedestrians to check that lights are flashing before entering the crosswalk. Drivers should be aware that flashing lights means that a pedestrian is near. Unfortunately, though, not everyone pushes the button.

“The key to safety is that pedestrians must activate the lights,” Sidebottom said. “Studies have shown that the rapid flashing lights are effective in getting drivers' attention, but pedestrians need to push the button. Then, they need make sure that cars have stopped before entering the road. Pedestrians always face the greatest danger in a run-in with a car, regardless of who has the legal right-of-way.”

This passage might have been written by HWC Engineering, hence the sad reality of the imperfect implementation of two-way roads (are they streets?) in New Albany.

That's because as a non-automotive user of the city streets, I've found these credit-card-sized flashing beacons to be complete and utter jokes.

People walking still will find it far safer to look both ways and cross in the middle of a block; in spite of claims that traffic is moving more slowly since the reversion, the fact is that far too few calming measures were built into the rebooted grid. Team Gahan bet the farm that "friction" alone would calm traffic sufficiently for the myriad other two-way benefits to emerge.

Maybe, though these streets are still straightaways, just like before. They're still built to promote speed and indifference, just like before, though now with "enhanced" crosswalk beacons intended not as a legitimate means of rectifying a root problem, but as a "hey, we did something" gesture, another bright, shiny paste-over symbol, this one pointing to how the fundamental mobility issues downtown have not been addressed at all by a "modernization" program that preserved (certainly on purpose) the downtown grid as composed of "complete roads" rather than altered into "complete streets."

Charles Marohn nails the explanation of this difference in a six-year-old post from Strong Towns. It is published here in its entirety. Jeff Gahan made sausage out of Jeff Speck's prime proposals by handing them to HWC Engineering, and HWC Engineering co-opted it in precisely the fashion described by Marohn.

Speck understood the transformative nature of a genuine complete street. Gahan feared it.

Cowardice won.

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CO-OPTING COMPLETE STREETS

The idea of a Complete Street is compelling in almost every way, but when the engineering profession begins to adopt it wholesale, we need to pause and look at the outcomes. Are we getting Complete Streets, or are we getting Complete Roads. The difference is tremendous and will impact the financial viability of an approach to building places that is long overdue.

The Complete Streets concept is one that is long overdue. We've spent two generations transforming a public realm once comprised of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods into auto-only zones. These are places where the kids used to play ball in the street. Today a kid can't even play safely in their own front yard.

At Strong Towns, we've worked to illuminate the fact that this transformation has been done at tremendous financial cost. This is not only because the construction of wider, flatter and straighter streets has been expensive, but because the auto-centric nature of the transformed public realm drives private-sector investment out of traditional neighborhoods, dislocating it to places that provide more buffering to the car.

Not only that, but the redevelopment that has happened in these neighborhoods has largely been on a suburban framework, using the parking ratios, setbacks and coverage restrictions of modern zoning to reduce density (and the rate of return). Financially, these places are largely insolvent, lacking the tax base to maintain their basic infrastructure.

Enter the concept of a Complete Street. To me, the fundamental contribution of Complete Streets to the discourse surrounding the future of our towns and neighborhoods is the recognition that our streets must serve more than just cars and that the public realm can no longer be an auto-only zone. The fact that the Complete Streets model has broken the stranglehold that the auto-only design mentality has had on our streets should be the cause of unending rejoice.

In March I was able to have dinner with Kaid Benfield. During the course of our conversation, he enlightened me on how the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards were tweaked with Neighborhood Design principles. The result, LEED-ND, takes a great concept -- buildings that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly -- and overlays it on a development framework that reinforces these principles. In other words, no more "green" buildings in the middle of a greenfield, with 30 mile commutes each way.

In a similar vein, we're going to now, humbly, suggest a way in which the Complete Streets concept can evolve to achieve what I believe is its principle intent, that being Complete Neighborhoods.

I've now seen two projects where engineers promoted the use of "complete streets". In each I see the engineering profession co-opting the Complete Streets moniker without any thought to a Complete Neighborhood. For the engineers on these projects, the approach remains the same. I'll quote from our piece, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer:

An engineer designing a street or road prioritizes the world in this way, no matter how they are instructed:

Traffic speed
Traffic volume
Safety
Cost

The rest of the world generally would prioritize things differently, as follows:

Safety
Cost
Traffic volume
Traffic speed

In other words, the engineer first assumes that all traffic must travel at speed. Given that speed, all roads and streets are then designed to handle a projected volume. Once those parameters are set, only then does an engineer look at mitigating for safety and, finally, how to reduce the overall cost (which at that point is nearly always ridiculously expensive).

One of the places I've seen Complete Streets applied is My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project (also known as the College Drive project). In this instance, the design starts with a minimum design speed and a projected traffic volume, the latter being the stated impetus for the project. This analysis provides us with four lanes of fast-moving traffic. The engineers then move on to the "safety" criteria and the mandate that -- if we can afford it -- we accommodate bikes and pedestrians. This is done, of course, at tremendous cost - estimated at over $7 million for a mile of road.

Now notice that I called this route a "road" and not a "street". Understanding the difference between a road and a street is critical to understanding the problem we have with engineers misusing the Complete Streets approach. From our Placemaking Principles for a Strong Town:

To build an affordable transportation system, a Strong Town utilizes roads to move traffic safely at high speeds outside of neighborhoods and urban areas. Within neighborhoods and urban areas, a Strong Town uses complex streets to equally accommodate the full range of transportation options available to residents.

Roads move cars at high speeds. Streets move cars at very slow speeds. We should build roads outside of neighborhoods, connecting communities across distances. We should build streets within neighborhoods where there are homes, businesses and other destinations. The auto-road is a post-WW II replacement of the rail-road. The street should be what it has always been; the street.

The fundamental design flaw of the post WW II development pattern -- the false premise upon which every other design tragedy has been committed -- is the transformation of our streets into roads.

High speed auto travel has no place in urban areas where the cost of development demands a complex neighborhood pattern with a mixing of uses, multiple modes of travel and a public realm that enhances the value of the adjacent properties. High speed traffic destroys value in our neighborhoods. It drives out investment. There is no amount of pedestrian enhancement that we can build to offset the negative response people have to being in the close proximity of speeding traffic.

Without aggressive traffic calming -- which is part of the Complete Streets playbook -- we will simply be building Complete Roads. A Complete Road will not transform the public realm, no matter how much money we put into accommodating pedestrians and bikers with bridges and tunnels. A Complete Road will not attract significant private-sector investment in the key neighborhoods where we have so much existing infrastructure liability. And a Complete Road will cost a fortune, without changing the insolvency problem facing our cities.

If there is one thing our current financial situation should teach us about the engineering profession it is this: engineers will bankrupt us if given the chance to build our cities and towns the way they envision them. It is predictable that the engineering profession will embrace the concept of a Complete Road -- which is nothing more than a bad design made PC by throwing an expensive bone to bikers and pedestrians -- because it fits with their hierarchy of values (speed, volume, safety and then cost). Insidiously, promoting Complete Roads will ensure them more funding than they would otherwise receive. You can call them "streets" all you want - unchecked, they are going to build "roads". (For example, check out the 14-foot highway lane widths on the Complete "Street" cross section on My Hometown's Last Great Old Economy Project).

We love Complete Streets. They are essential to a Strong Town. Let's get out there and build them, but make sure the engineers don't con you into a Complete Road. Demand slow cars and a Complete Neighborhood to go along with your Complete Street.

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For previous Grid Control series links, go here.

South Bend: "But why slow down traffic at all? A major reason is economic growth. Smart Streets isn’t just a traffic project — it’s economic development."

A mayor who makes public speeches? How is it possible?

Pete Buttigieg lays it all out. The thinking is clear, and the delivery conversational. I try to imagine a New Albany mayor -- any of them -- communicating like Pete Buttigieg. Surveying the aspirants, I still don't see one. Is it time for the "Draft Ed Clere" movement yet?

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Mayor: Smart Streets will mean a more vibrant downtown South Bend, by Pete Buttigieg (South Bend Tribune)

Walk around downtown South Bend today, and you’ll see tremendous investment and growth.

From the recently renovated LaSalle Apartments, located on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, to the Courtyard Marriott under construction by the former College Football Hall of Fame, from the conversion of the JMS Building to the massive renovation of the former Chase Tower, there are signs everywhere of the fastest downtown growth in generations.

What you might not realize is that each of these projects happened with the help of Smart Streets.

Today we celebrate the completion of the repaving, streetscaping and traffic redesign known as Smart Streets, as planned and under budget. The city and our partners took roughly one year to complete work that would normally take three or more.

Doing it this way was disruptive, but allowed us to get it over with quickly — like tearing off a Band-Aid. I appreciate the patience of the commuting public as daily routines were impacted, as well as the efforts of the planners, engineers, and workers who made it happen.

We moved forward on this project after dozens of public meetings and several votes of the Common Council and Redevelopment Commission, with strong support from the downtown business community. Still, I recognize that not everyone is a fan of the changes.

In particular, some residents have expressed frustration with the idea of traffic calming, a major feature of the project. Why would the city ever deliberately act to make traffic go slower? Isn’t the point of a road to get cars where they are going as quickly as possible?

First, remember that the changes to commuting times are minor.

A recent side-by-side comparison by The Tribune showed just a three-minute change in the overall drive time from Angela Boulevard in the north to the Chippewa roundabout on the south side — almost the entire length of the city. You can still get across the core of downtown in less than five minutes, most of the time.

But why slow down traffic at all? A major reason is economic growth. Smart Streets isn’t just a traffic project — it’s economic development. And by that measure, it is already a tremendous success.

We’ve counted a total of over $90 million in private investment from businesses who say Smart Streets was a factor in their decision — a threefold return on our public investment.

If you’re glad that the Chase Tower is being renovated rather than torn down, or that Main Street Row is getting a new façade at private expense, thank Smart Streets.

A vibrant city has streetscapes that work not just for cars but also for pedestrians, bicyclists and shops. The old traffic pattern forced pedestrians on Main Street to walk alongside a four-lane highway blasting traffic out of the area as quickly as possible — not exactly an inviting place to walk, socialize or shop.

Today, our new downtown is a destination rather than a throughway. It’s a tremendous improvement, for which a few minutes’ slowdown is the price we had to pay.

The other major consideration is safety. Not everyone loves roundabouts like the ones we have installed, but they can lead to dramatic safety improvements.

Studies have found that roundabouts can reduce injury crashes by up to 80 percent. The slower speeds in the downtown area are also a safety enhancement: when speeds go from 35 miles per hour to 25, it cuts the risk of fatalities by more than half.

No street design can prevent all serious accidents. But we know that Smart Streets improvements can save lives in the years to come. This is one reason the U.S. Secretary of Transportation recognized South Bend with the Mayor’s Challenge Award at a road safety summit last year in Washington.

Of course, safety depends on users as well as engineering. We’re counting on residents to pay attention to signs and markings, and to familiarize themselves with safe use of crossings, bike lanes, roundabouts and other features.

Green crosswalks are for bike traffic. Red areas are forbidden to cars. Divided sidewalks indicate two-way traffic. Taking advantage of Smart Streets improvements means spreading street smarts about how to use them.

In the months and years to come, we will continue to tweak markings, signal timings and design to ensure the best environment for drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and businesses.

But the bulk of the work is behind us. Now is the time to become familiar with the improvements and changes, and take advantage of the increasingly vibrant downtown that South Bend deserves.

Pete Buttigieg is mayor of South Bend.

Louisville "Streets for People" series is worth a read by New Albanians, because two-way traffic is only the end of the beginning.

We covered the first in Chris Glasser's informative Insider Louisville series here:

Us, too: "Louisville’s roads need to be designed for citizens, not cars."

 ... To take (Louisville mayor Greg) Fischer at his word and judge him by his own standard, our city is falling well short of the administration’s stated top goal. Fischer’s annual budgets speak volumes on this matter — they’re his defining action, louder than his words. Yes, there is a small amount allocated to build a bike network — a pittance that Metro Council undercuts every year during the budget review period — but beyond that, there is virtually nothing that will begin to push us toward achieving Fischer’s goal of 25 percent of trips occurring on foot, bike or bus by 2030.

Glasser's second installment offers an interesting twist on downtown Louisville's "9th Street Divide."

... Much has been made of the city’s “9th Street Divide” — the supposed invisible racial line that separates black Louisville to the west from white Louisville to the east. The city’s segregation (and inequality) is a matter of fact, but the “9th Street Divide” is a fallacy — or at least, a simplification of a broader, more complex idea. What we have, actually, is a crater of surface parking lots in our western downtown, creating a void in what could be a thriving city center.

Yesterday's third and final essay raises a point critical to Jeff Gahan's program of road reworkings in New Albany (in general) and the soon-to-be-finished Downtown Grid Modernization Project (specifically).

The central point is enhanced and in bold.

Streets for People: A missed opportunity on Lexington Road

This month and next, Metro Government will be completing work on the Lexington Road Safety Project — a repaving and redesign of the corridor between Grinstead Drive and Payne Street.

As stated in the city’s press release, the “new configuration is intended to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents as previously demonstrated by similar projects across Louisville.” Bike lanes will be added, and the project will improve drainage along the roadway, which neighbors Beargrass Creek and sits partially in a floodplain.

The colloquial term for a project like this is a “road diet.” It will look like this:

Road diet for Lexington Road.

While a project like this is progress to a certain degree, it’s also a huge missed opportunity — one that falls short of the original goals of the plan and fails to keep pace with what’s being implemented throughout the country. With “progress” like this, we can simultaneously be moving forward and falling behind.

The last sentence neatly summarizes the issue for New Albany. Judging from their past exploits, we can rely on our leadership cadre to declare victory and erect self-congratulatory plaques, but the fact is that the long overdue implementation of two-way streets is only a partial victory. It is the end of the beginning, and there is far more to be done.

There are walking issues, biking issues and connectivity issues. Dan Coffey will disagree, but he's an irrelevant anachronism, a sort of ideological love child spawned by Strom Thurmond and David Duke, to be breast-fed by the Thoreau Institute.

Does Jeff Gahan have a plan for the next phase of street modernity?

If so, let's see it. This whole thing about waiting to reveal designs until the milling begins is so very Ceausescu, isn't it?

Us, too: "Louisville’s roads need to be designed for citizens, not cars."

If Greg Fischer's words aren't enough, just think where this leaves Jeff Gahan.

Speechless?

Streets for People: Louisville’s roads need to be designed for citizens, not cars, by Chris Glasser (Insider Louisville)

This is the first in a series of articles focusing on Louisville’s street design. Written by Bicycling for Louisville Executive Director Chris Glasser, the “Streets for People” series will be published with the goal of encouraging a (polite and civil) online discussion of these topics. Please see the comment form below.

... Mayor Greg Fischer, it should be noted, is fantastic at talking about the need for our city to shift away from its car dependency. Fischer was one of the driving forces behind a national report on “Innovation Districts,” which advocates for redesigning cities’ infrastructure for improved walkability. In his strategic plan for Louisville, the top goal is to “improve multi-modal transportation and community streetscapes.” Fischer is as well-spoken as any leader on the importance of walkable, bikeable, inviting city space.

This is great. Unfortunately, it’s not enough.

When being interviewed by Charlie Rose recently, the mayor argued that actions speak louder than words. “You know, what I always say is, I don’t watch the lips, I watch the actions,” he said. “That’s really what’s critical and that’s how people judge us.”

To take Fischer at his word and judge him by his own standard, our city is falling well short of the administration’s stated top goal. Fischer’s annual budgets speak volumes on this matter — they’re his defining action, louder than his words. Yes, there is a small amount allocated to build a bike network — a pittance that Metro Council undercuts every year during the budget review period — but beyond that, there is virtually nothing that will begin to push us toward achieving Fischer’s goal of 25 percent of trips occurring on foot, bike or bus by 2030.

What can be done? Here are three suggestions, along with a map to show where they could be implemented:

Fund two-way street conversions in urban neighborhoods.
Remove traffic signals, replace them with stop signs.
Design major intersections to be nodes, not throughways.

Them's fightin' words: "Streets are for everyone, not just motorists."

At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to repeat myself.

From Victoria, British Columbia, comes another reinforcement of well-reasoned points that consistently elude so many New Gahanians as they stare at their phones while driving.

A few bucks more for complete streets?

Of course. We have a hundred years of redress to accomplish.

Comment: Streets are for everyone, not just motorists, by Todd Litman (Times Colonist)

... Many urban streets are becoming more complete and multi-modal, including better sidewalks and crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes and bus stops.

Some people assume that this harms motorists. They are wrong. Everyone benefits from improved travel options that reduce traffic and parking congestion, increase road safety and reduce motorists’ chauffeuring burdens. Most people will experience times when they cannot drive; better mobility options prepare our community for our future selves.

Of course, roadway changes are disruptive, but please give them a chance. Slowly but surely, complete-streets policies are helping to create more efficient and complete communities.

Thanks Victoria, for improving walking, cycling and public transit. Please don’t stop.

"A street is the framework upon which we build places. It’s not about speed. It’s not about 'getting there.'"

Over and over again, these notices pop up.

For the most part, driving on the surface streets of Vancouver is easy but walking or biking around the city is often another matter entirely. In an effort to make Vancouver’s roads safe, convenient and more comfortable to a broader array of users, the city is in the works of adopting a Complete Streets policy to guide future road development and upgrades.

Until ours is sensible, it won't be, and so I'll continue making the point.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A CITY STREET?, by Sarah Kobos (Smart Growth Tulsa)

IF YOU SAID, “TO MOVE CARS FROM POINT A TO POINT B IN THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME,” YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

What is the purpose of a city street?

It’s not something that most of us think about very much.

If you said, “to move cars from point A to point B in the least amount of time,” you are not alone. Heck, you may even be a city traffic engineer. Especially in car-oriented places like Tulsa, city streets tend to be seen as a conveyance, allowing us—as long as we have a car—to get where we need to go.

Having attended the national Strong Towns Summit in Tulsa a few weeks ago, I can’t stop thinking about a different definition of city streets.

Why? Because our future depends on it.

To better understand what I’m talking about, we need to clarify the difference between a street and a road.

Think about a road as a way to get from place to place. It should be fast and convenient, maximizing efficiency and helping you reach your destination in a timely manner. Notice how the definition of a road includes the idea of a “place.” A road connects places.

A street is not a road. A street is the framework upon which we build places. It’s not about speed. It’s not about “getting there.” If you’re in a place, you’re already there. Thus, it’s imperative that streets serve the people in a place, not the cars speeding through it. And because places generate jobs and taxes and opportunity, we should start thinking of streets not as conveyances, but as a platform for building wealth.

SNIP to the conclusion.

By focusing our energies on older places that are inherently walkable and already served by existing infrastructure, we can increase quality of life along with tax revenues while building great places people love.