CNU 24: Getting Around Detroit

Downtown Detroit and the Detroit River

Being newly returned from the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, CNU 24, I have pages of notes to review, with the goals of extracting the best quotes and stories to share and also of reminding myself about the subjects into which I should dig more deeply.

But CNUs are more than four days of chatting with other urbanists and listening to speakers expound, often eloquently, on topics of city-building interest.  It’s also spending the better part of a week living in a city and learning its quirks.  Not having visited Detroit since 1999, I was particularly interested to wander about the city that has become the focus of much debate about the functions and failures of cities.

So, before I get to the content of CNU 24, I’ll write about my experiences as a visitor to Detroit.  Today, my topic will be mobility, both as a pedestrian and a transit rider.

Crossing the Street:  I was slow in making my reservations for CNU 24.  As a result, all of the hotel rooms set aside for attendees had been claimed by the time I began making plans.  After casting about, I found an acceptable hotel near the other end of downtown from most of the conference venues, but connected to the center of CNU activity by the Detroit Peoplemover, about which I’ll write below.

I arrived in Detroit on a Monday night, two days before the conference was to officially open.  I was there early to partake in a bus tour elsewhere in the state, which is another story I’ll eventually share.  Being in town early and at a distance from where I might bump into other early arrivals, I had a free evening.  After a day of flying, I was also hungry.

I have an aversion to hotel dining rooms, but Yelp quickly came to rescue, alerting me to a brewpub directly across the street.  It seemed a perfect solution.  I tidied up, headed downstairs, charged out the front door, spotted the brewpub no more than 100 yards away, and then came to a halt.  There was an eight-lane high-speed arterial between me and the brewpub.  And there was no crosswalk, at least not a direct crosswalk.

To walk to the brewpub, one had to cross the side street, then the arterial, and then back across the side street.  A total of three signal crossings to get to a front door that was no more than a long pitching wedge from where I stood.  There can be intersections where omitting a crosswalk is caused by legitimate site constraints.  But this one seemed solely the result of prioritizing drivers over pedestrians.

Wait, did I write three signal crossings?  Make that four.  The arterial was eight lanes wide, with a similarly wide median.  The lane count can be seen in the photo above.  And the same traffic engineer who had omitted the crosswalk also decided that cars shouldn’t wait for pedestrians to cross eight lanes of traffic plus the median, so timed the cycles such that walkers had to stop on the median.  So now four signal cycles were required to cross the street.  Four complete cycles as my hunger grew worse.

Except that four didn’t quite work out either. The second crossing of the side street adjoins a right turn only lane heading into a tunnel under the Detroit River.  As I waited for the light to turn green, drivers began making right turns on red in front of me.  It was a perfectly legal traffic motion.  But the turning cars gave momentum to the queued cars and when the light turned green, they kept on turning.  Fifteen cars and a city bus turned in front of me as I waited for someone to give me the right-of-way that was mine.  When the lane was finally empty, the light was again red.

So that was five signal cycles for a pedestrian to walk a hundred yards from a hotel to a brewpub.  Not much walkable urbanism in that equation.

Trying It Again:  The food and especially the beer were good enough that I returned to the brewpub twice more during the week.  Both times, I made the trek in four signal cycles, but both outings were still eventful.

The first time, I had to skip away from two cars that began slowing making the right turns without looking for pedestrians, one driven by a pair of young ladies flirting with a guy on the sidewalk and the other driven by someone absorbed in a cell phone call.

The second time, I left the brewpub to find myself fighting upstream through a sidewalk full of excitedly chattering folks.  A police officer told me to make my way quickly because beers and punches were beginning to be thrown.  I took her advice.

At least at this intersection, walking the sidewalks of Detroit was inefficient and eventful.

Transit Training: A truism among transit managers is that getting a new rider to take a first trip is one of the biggest challenges.  Even as a fan of transit, I concur that the first trip can be a source of trepidation.  Learning how to pay the fare, deciphering the route map, and knowing where to stand to catch the right train are all sources of uncertainty.

My schedule required me to catch the Peoplemover early Tuesday morning to the hotel where I would board my tour.   So I decided to take a trial run Monday evening to learn the system.  The plan worked out fine, with the only surprise being that the loop was recently reversed to run clockwise after years of running counterclockwise, so I was determinedly looking for a train in one direction only to have it sneak up behind me.

I finished the outing comfortable with the Peoplemover, an outdated but functional rail system that runs autonomous two-car trains around a loop of perhaps three miles through downtown Detroit.  A total loop takes perhaps twelve minutes, so having two trains running gives a headway of about six minutes.  It could have been a component of an efficient transit system if it connected to transit hubs.  Unfortunately, those transit hubs were never built, although Detroit is finally taking steps in that direction.

With my first trip complete, I looked forward with confidence to my Tuesday morning outing.  Perhaps too much confidence.

I hopped on the first train Tuesday morning, with my destination station firmly in my head.  As the train pulled into the station, I noted the location of the hotel where I would catch the tour about a block away.  I stepped to the doors, ready to complete my trip.  And the doors didn’t open.  As the only passenger on an autonomous train, there was no one to whom to complain.  A pair of would-be passengers looked back at me through the door, but seemed impassive.  Perhaps early morning door malfunctions were common.

After a thirty-second pause, the train moved on, the doors never having opened.  I quickly recalibrated, disembarked at the next station and found my way to the hotel in plenty of time.  But it took me several days to again trust the Peoplemover, which isn’t the way to build ridership.  However, the system never let me down again.  Indeed, it was integral to the success of my time in Detroit.

So walkability and transit had their small Detroit failures, much like most cities.  Perhaps Detroit isn’t a unlike the rest of the country as many would argue.  Lessons were being learned.

When I next write, I’ll return to the theme of becoming active North Bay urbanists, again listing opportunities to get publicly involved.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Were None of Us Ever Kids?

I recently recounted the story of a Petaluma land use hearing during which I missed an opportunity to suggest a project change that should have been obvious to me as an urbanist.

The hearing addressed a proposed apartment complex.  An element of the project was repainting the fronting street to reduce the travel lanes from four to two, with the surplus width being redistributed to a center turn pocket, bike lanes, and parking.  The preliminary plan showed the remaining travel lanes retaining the current lane width of 12 feet, a typical width for public streets ranging from residential roads to arterials and even to older freeways.

The neighbors had a number of objections to the project.  One of those concerns was excessive driving speeds through the neighborhood.  A subsequent traffic speed study found that the 85 percentile speed was 38 mph, which is moderately fast for a largely residential neighborhood.

The point that I failed to make is that the 12-foot travel lanes were a part of the travel speed problem.  Reducing the lane widths below 12 feet would have had the effect of slowing cars.  The reduction happens because drivers feel confined by the narrower lanes.  It’s a point of which I was well aware and on which I’ve previously written, but I’d become somnolent in my backrow seat

Despite whiffing on my chance at the hearing, the door for the comment remained open because the Planning Commission decided to seek additional input on several points and continued the hearing to a later date.  I used the second chance to chat with the City Engineer and several Planning Commissioners about my lane width thoughts.

The project returned for future consideration a few days ago.  I eagerly read the updated staff report to learn if there was any revised thinking on the lane widths.

I was moderately satisfied.  The staff report acknowledged the possible value of reduced widths and then took the decision away from the Planning Commission and instead made the City Engineer responsible for the final determination during his review of the construction drawings.  It was an approach in which I could see both good and not so good.

On one hand, I find the City Engineer a reasonable sort and I trust him to make good decisions.  Although I’ll also forward to him this post and my earlier one for his consideration.  Also, as a civil engineer, I’m always pleased when issues that are largely in the realm of engineering are determined by engineers and not by laypeople. 

But on the other hand, I wished there had been the opportunity for the Planning Commission to affirmatively endorse the concept of reduced lane widths as a traffic speed management tool in Petaluma.

With issue at rest until construction drawings, there wasn’t much reason for me to attend the hearing.  But I’m a sucker for the stuff, so again found myself hanging out in the backrow.

And I’m glad I did because another facet of travel lane widths arose.

Late in the hearing, as the Commission was homing in on their decision, a Commissioner, noting a pair of convenience stores directly across the street from the proposed apartment site and shown in the photo from the project site, suggested that children living in the apartments would occasionally visit the stores.  The Commissioner asked the City Engineer about the possibility of a painted crosswalk.

The City Engineer, correctly in my opinion, demurred.  He noted that drivers, because of a curve in the road, might not have a clear view of the crosswalk so would be prone to responding to it inadequately.  At the same time, the children might be emboldened by paint on the pavement and would be too quick to assume that the cars would honor it.  The result could be a more dangerous situation that without the crosswalk.

Another Commissioner then asked what the City Engineer believed children should do to reach the convenience stores.  He said that they should walk down the sidewalk to a nearby arterial, cross the street with the signal, and then walk back on the other side, a route that would add 1,000 feet to their route.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed the several Commissioners, and perhaps also the City Engineer, were uncomfortable with his answer but, without another solution to offer, the discussion moved onward.

At that point of the hearing, I had no opportunity to contribute to the discussion, but if I had, I would have said something like.

“Are you people kidding me?  Have none of you ever been kids?  Even if a child is willing to walk the extra 1,000 feet, his companions would call demean his timidity and pressure him into joining them in jaywalking.  And that peer pressure would be far mightier than any assumptions we make this evening about the walking routes children should follow.

“I know this instinctively because I remember being a kid.  And yes, I was more of a rule follower who had to be egged into pushing the envelope.  I’m only now catching up on the rebellions that I missed in my youth.

“And I’d be surprised if many of the Commissioners don’t have similar memories from their childhoods.

“But if we acknowledge that children will jaywalk and that the City Engineer is correct in nixing a crosswalk, what’s the alternative?

“It’s the tool that has already been given to the City Engineer in the staff report.  This is the chance for the Planning Commission to strongly encourage the City Engineer to make full use of that tool and to reduce the lane widths to 10-1/2 feet.

“At that width, the 85th percentile speed will drop from 38 mph to perhaps 32 mph.  At the lower speed, children would be more likely to see approaching cars, drivers would be more likely to see pedestrians, and, if the worst occurs and a pedestrian is hit, the likelihood of survival would be higher.

“Although not going as far as the Vision Zero folks, who target no pedestrian fatalities, or the Twenty is Plenty folks, who argue for 20 mph speed limits on many streets, would have us go, encouraging reduced lane widths and the resulting lower driving speeds is a firm step in their direction.

“Ultimately it comes down to what our roles as adults should be.  Should it be to piously tell kids not to make stupid choices so we can claim blamelessness when they do so anyway?  Or should it be to build a world in which kids can make stupid choices without spending the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or worse?  I vote for the latter.”

Perhaps I didn’t have the opportunity to make this plea, but I will continue to look for windows to push this perspective, both on this project and elsewhere.

In my next post, I’ll touch lightly upon the recent events in Paris.  Without claiming to be an expert on terrorism, I’ll note that there are aspects of the situation that bump against urbanism.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Not Every Expenditure Is an Investment, Even If It Involves Beer

Long-time readers, at least those with good long-term memories, will recall when I grumbled about the American Society of Civil Engineers and their incessant carping about the need to “invest” in infrastructure.

The summary is that ASCE issues frequent studies proclaiming the need for government “investment” in new infrastructure or infrastructure maintenance.  Until recently, some of the studies claimed benefits that were less than the cost of the infrastructure work, which immediately disproved the argument that any money spent would be an investment.

More recently, perhaps because of the barbs sent their way by StrongTowns and others, the benefits claimed in the ASCE studies have outweighed the costs, but not by much.  And the benefits still contain fuzzy benefits such as the value of reduced commuting time.  I’m fully in favor of parents spending more time with their children.  But if someone chooses to live thirty miles from their job, I don’t want my tax dollars spent based on a capriciously assumed value of them getting home five minutes quicker.

Rather than calls for reasonable public policy, the ASCE studies seem more of a rationalization for full employment of civil engineers.

(Disclaimer: I’ve belonged to ASCE since I joined as a student over forty years ago.  But at this point, I continue the membership only for the ancillary benefits and to flip through the magazine, preferring the more rigorous infrastructure philosophies of StrongTowns, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and Smart Growth America, among others.)

It’s unfortunate when a national organization uses misleading words such as “investment” when setting forth positions on matters of public policy.  But it’s worse when the terminology begins to permeate local dialogue.

Thus, I was disheartened when the local Petaluma newspaper recently polled its readers “Should the City of Petaluma invest in a crosswalk to allow safe passage between shops and breweries along North McDowell Boulevard?”

(For those not familiar with Petaluma, the phenomenally successful Lagunitas Brewery has put down deep roots along the east side of McDowell Boulevard in an industrialized section of Petaluma.  The roots include an always busy pub offering Lagunitas beer, good food, and fine entertainment.  Following Lagunitas’ lead, several other, smaller breweries and tasting rooms have started on the opposing side of McDowell, which is a busy arterial.)

To put a cost to the suggestion, it’s well established that a painted crosswalk by itself wouldn’t be an adequate solution.  The painted lines give a false sense of security to pedestrians while providing an insufficient alert to drivers, so often result in more car/pedestrian accidents than an unmarked crossing.  And if that’s true for sober pedestrians, it’s even more true pedestrians who’ve had a beer or two.

So instead of a simple crosswalk, an overhead signal would be required.  Given the cross street near the breweries, the best solution would likely be fully signalized intersection.  (From published accounts on the brewery question, City public works staff quickly reached the same conclusion.)  The cost of fully signalizing the intersection hasn’t been estimated, but $250,000 is a reasonable guess.

So, the poll posed by the newspaper becomes whether the City can recoup $250,000 from facilitating commerce in the burgeoning brewery district.  Unfortunately, the answer must be “No”.  The only City revenues would be sales tax and perhaps a few transient occupancy taxes from folks who don’t choose to drive home after an evening of enjoying craft beers.  Those revenues don’t come close to covering a $250,000 capital cost.

(It’s true that the breweries might capture $250,000 in additional net revenue, but spending public funds to generate private profits isn’t reasonable public policy.)

However, every municipal expenditure needn’t be an investment.  Neither paving the streets in front of our homes nor mowing our neighborhood parks has a financial return.  Instead, we choose to tax ourselves so the city can fulfill tasks that we find improve our quality of life. 

And that finally makes the poll question what it should have been all along.  “Would the City of Petaluma spending $250,000 for a signalized crosswalk to allow safe passage between shops and breweries along North McDowell Boulevard be an appropriate quality of life expenditure?”

As pleased as I am to have framed the question correctly, my answer unfortunately remains “No”.   Spending municipal money to remedy the flaws inherent in a brewery district taking root in an industrial area bisected by a busy arterial is throwing good money after bad.  The funds would be only a bandage on the gaping wound that is our long-time affair with drivable suburbia.

However, in the unlikely event that the City had a spare $250,000 sitting around, I might very well support spending the funds to help create a brewery district in a more walkable part of the community.  Beer can be a good community amenity, if it’s located in a place where folks can take transit or walk home after an evening of conviviality.

Perhaps the redeveloped fairgrounds could be an eventual site for a brewery district.  Or perhaps the underutilized industrial buildings near E. Washington and Copeland could provide a suitable home within a short walk of the SMART station.

(Disclaimer: I’m currently chatting with a local developer about a site concept that could include an extensive tasting room for local beers.  The discussions are preliminary.)

Petaluma should be proud of the brewery culture that is taking hold in the community.  It can become an important part of the town if we make good decisions about how to support it.  And that doesn’t include putting an expensive crosswalk on a busy arterial.

Also, we need to quit describing every possible infrastructure expense as an “investment”.  The poor word choice only complicates an area of public policy in which we already struggle to make good decisions.

My next post will take a different angle on the subject I noted in passing above, using taxes to accommodate a shared vision of the public good, even if not an “investment”.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

(Note: The photo above of a Dublin bar is by Petaluman David Powers.)

Stopping for Pedestrians

A reader recently asked for my advice about adding crosswalk markings in his community.  I provided contact information for a key contact in his town.  But I also provided a warning about the response he might receive.

The crosswalk location of interest to him seemed, at first glance, to be a reasonable place for additional street markings.  The street crossing connected a district that is largely residential with a district that is more mixed-use, offering restaurants, niche retail, and office space.  A number of pedestrians already cross at the spot he identified and it seems likely that more would follow if a crosswalk was painted.

But the location was also on a busy arterial, marked for 35 mph and often driven at 40.  The nearest signals were several blocks away in both directions.

I warned my reader that he was likely to get pushback from City Hall about his suggestion.  And the concern from City Hall would be reasonable, because crosswalks often don’t function as we expect, especially as speeds increase.

Although drivers are required under the law to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks and intersections regardless of the speed limit, the rate of compliance drops at speeds above 30 mph.  The cause is probably a combination of the speed at a car approaches an intersection, reducing reaction time, and of the additional stopping distance required at higher speeds.

On the other side of the equation, pedestrians are often emboldened by a crosswalk, stepping confidently into a street and trusting drivers to respect the painted stripes.

As a result and paradoxically, vehicle/pedestrian accidents often increase when a new crosswalk is provided on an arterial.  Because many drivers fail to respect crosswalks, pedestrians are often more safe when they are careful to cross the street in the absence of a crosswalk.  Perhaps elevated levels of stress have unfortunate long-term health implications, but when the immediate goal is reaching the far sidewalk, fear can be a good thing.

I’m eagerly awaiting a report from the reader about his reception at City Hall.

Shortly after this exchange, Smart Growth America released their “Dangerous by Design” report.  The report looks at the conditions and design standards of U.S. roads for use by non-motorists.  I haven’t yet read the entire report and will likely write further after I’ve completed my reading.  But for today, I wanted to note one particular finding from the report.

A study was done on Florida arterials with speed limits of 35 to 40 mph, counting the number of drivers who stopped for crosswalks where pedestrians were waiting to cross.  They found that only 1.1 percent of all drivers stopped.  Perhaps the rate is Florida is lower than the national average, with drivers in other states more respectful of pedestrians, but 1.1 percent is so appallingly low that it remains an embarrassment regardless of the other states.  And, although it’s only one data point, the Florida study fully justifies the warning I gave to the reader to expect City Hall pushback on his crosswalk idea.

Of course, another way to look at the data is to question whether we’ve set speed limits too high when pedestrians are likely to be present.  Which brings us back to the “Twenty is Plenty” argument.  Perhaps 20 mph is too low for arterials, but even 30 mph could have a dramatic impact on pedestrian safety.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

April Fool’s Day 2014

Urbanism doesn’t necessarily lend itself to practical jokes but, like most realms of human endeavor, it has the potential for quirkiness and whimsy.  That’s close enough for me to offer a quarterly urbanist celebration of April Fool’s Day.  Of course, this quarter I can celebrate the real April Fool’s Day.

In this post, I’ll look at an unusual approach to street lighting, the aromas of a city, the use of a bicycle motif to illuminate urban space, and a couple of non-traditional approaches to crosswalk painting.  I’ll conclude with another look at the infamous North Carolina bridge that continues to exact a stiff cost on unwary truckers.

Montreal Street Lighting: Trying to lighten the mood during the long winters in the northern latitudes, the Avenue du Mont-Royal in Montreal hosted a design competition for wintertime street lighting.  The winner was “Idee-O-rama”, a series of internally illuminated streetlights that look like speech bubbles.  The content provides humorous comments on winter in Montreal.  Come spring, the lights will be removed, but will return for the next two winters.

The Aroma of a City: Some may still complain that cities can sometimes be pungent.  But many 21st century cities, aided immeasurably by improved street design, sewer systems, and air quality standards, are far less odoriferous than the cities of centuries, or even decades, past.

To illustrate from where our noses have come and what olfactory improvements may yet be possible, SPUR, a San Francisco-based urbanism advocacy organization, is hosting an exhibit of urban aromas.  The curators are from the California College of the Arts.  Unfortunately, the exhibit is ending almost as I write this, which means that we missed our chance to smell “Paris 1735” and “New Jersey Turnpike”.

Urban Illumination: One element of urbanism is finding productive and interesting uses for space that would otherwise be wasted.  These imaginative uses serve two functions.  They increase the vitality of the city.  And they improve walkability by reducing uninteresting walks past underused or vacant land uses.

One of the greater drags on urban vitality is the space beneath elevated freeways.  It’s often a dark, dank space through which the occasional pedestrian can only scurry.  But a group in San Antonio is tackling the challenge, fabricating outsized light fixtures out of bicycle components and LEDs.  It’s not a complete solution to the use of land under freeways, but it’s an elegant step in the right direction.

Breaking the Mold on Crosswalks: San Francisco is the most recent city to consider rainbow crosswalks to celebrate its diversity.  Not everyone is happy with the idea, with some noting that the rainbow colors will soon be discolored by gum, trash, and foot traffic.  I concur with their concerns, but applaud the effort to use crosswalks as another element of the urban canvas, adding character to a city.

More to my taste is the work of Roadsworth, a 40-year-old Canadian who has been adding illegal whimsy to crosswalks for more than a decade.  His work is reminiscent of Banksy, the extraordinary graffiti artist who I described in my last quarterly summary of quirkiness.  But Roadsworth, although not without political content, is more content to remain within the realm of delight.

From crosswalks that become flights of geese to double yellow lines that swirl around and into sewer lids, he brings a creative eye to cities.  And the public approval of his work has allowed him to skirt the threat of jail time and heavy fines.

The Bridge is Still Winning: For April Fool’s Day a year ago, I introduced readers to a clearance-challenged bridge in Durham, North Carolina that made a habit of ripping off the roofs of vehicles whose drivers failed to note the multiple warning signs.  Durham Public Works tried the stem the tide of decapitation with new and brighter signage, but the respite in the carnage was short.  The videos are captivating.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)