Pedestrian Safety: Education Isn’t Enough

B Street in Petaluma

For those who may have been eagerly awaiting my promised thoughts on affordable housing, I must again disappoint.  (I also fear that I may disappoint even when I finally get around to the topic, but that’s another story.)  The topic of affordable housing remains high on my list, but this has become an unexpected well-filled week, largely with interesting urbanist stuff that I’ll share after the dust has settled.

But for now, I’m too booked to do my careful urbanist introduction to the subject of affordable housing.  Instead, I’ll tackle a topic about which I could almost write in my sleep, although my ability to readily discourse doesn’t minimize its importance.  The topic is pedestrian safety.

A Petaluma resident, writing on the website Nextdoor.com, recently posted the following “warning” to his fellow citizens:

“I'm writing to alert you all of a dangerous situation affecting all of us who live in Petaluma: pedestrians in the crosswalks.

“You may not be familiar with crosswalks or what a pedestrian crossing the road might look like, so I've attached a photo of some notorious pedestrians using a crosswalk.  A pedestrian is basically a driver who is not currently in a car.  Believe it or not, at some time you yourself may be a pedestrian.

“You are probably alarmed and asking yourself now, "What can I do?"  The answer is simple: when you are driving and encounter a crosswalk, look to see if there are pedestrians on it.  Looking to the left and right is not enough, you may also have to look in front of you. Important: keep in mind that pedestrians are people who are NOT in cars, so if you look both ways and don't see any cars, that doesn't rule out the presence of pedestrians.

“- Signed, a resident of B Street and frequent pedestrian who takes his life in his hands every time he walks home from the 4th & C bus stop”

I appreciate his concern and his use of humor to express it, but he’s whacking at the problem with the wrong end of the stick.

I have a theory about addressing public problems, which I call the 10-50-90 rule.  To the best of my knowledge, the formulation is strictly mine, but it’s possible that I read it somewhere and am inadvertently borrowing it.

The 10-50-90 rule comes in three parts.  If getting 10 percent of the population to make a change is your goal, education will work just fine.  If the goal is 50 percent, incentives are required.  And if 90 percent is necessary, criminalization or some form of physical prohibition must be undertaken.

I’ll use recycling as example.  In the mid-1980s, as the recycling movement got underway, we didn’t need everyone recycling everything possible and inundating the fledgling recycling centers.  Instead, we needed a few people to do the right thing and to help the recycling centers ramp up.  Public service announcements, i.e., education, worked fine.

As the 1990s progressed, the perception of the social good of recycling and the ability of the recycling industry to handle more material both grew.  So incentives, such as reduced rates for smaller trash cans with no charge for separated recyclables, came into play.  The incentives worked fine, with the volume of recyclables steadily growing.

Today, we have firm goals for reducing the percent of the waste stream heading to landfills, so there is now public discussion of how to punish those who fail to follow the recycling rules.

As the desirable rates of recycling grew, we progressed from education to incentives to criminalization.  It worked well.

Back to the pedestrian safety issue highlighted by the letter writer, perhaps the shortfall of his approach is now evident.  For pedestrian safety, even 90 percent compliance isn’t acceptable.  Having every tenth pedestrian struck in a crosswalk would be a very unfortunate result.  Instead, as the Vision Zero folks correctly argue, our goal for pedestrian safety should be 100 percent.

The letter writer, albeit well-intentioned, is using education, the 10 percent tool, to argue for pedestrian safety, the 100 percent goal.  He has brought a knife to a gunfight.  (Another way to consider this situation to ask if the drivers most likely to put pedestrians at risk are even reading Nextdoor.com, or capable of seeing themselves in Frequent Pedestrian’s letter.)

So what are the appropriate tools?  Where high levels of compliance are needed, criminalization and/or physical prohibition are the choices.  It’s already illegal to strike pedestrians with cars and that didn’t solve the problem, which leaves physical prohibition.  We need to change the design of the streets to make pedestrians safer.

Before anyone starts sketching complicated crosswalk configurations or designing new warning light systems, let me point out that speed is the single biggest predictor of pedestrian deaths.  If we want fewer dead people in walking shoes, what we need is to slow traffic.  Which is exactly the point that the Twenty is Plenty folks have been making for years, with a growing number of successes in Europe and more of than a handful of adherents on this side of the Atlantic.

But simply posting a 20 mph speed limit sign isn’t enough.  Rather than following speed limits, most drivers are accustomed to driving at the speed that feels comfortable for the road, which is how speed limits come to be set.

So what is needed is to make streets feel uncomfortable at higher speeds, effectively forcing drivers to travel more slowly.  And we know how to do that.

Frequent Pedestrian makes a specific reference to B Street in Petaluma.  I know B Street, often driving it.  I find that my comfortable speed on B Street is 28 or 29 mph, validating the 30 mph speed limit.  I also note that it is an uncommonly wide and open street, with 12-foot travel lanes, Class 2 bikes lanes, and room for parallel parking.

What if we reallocate that space?  At a minimum, we reduce the travel lane widths to 10 feet, giving the extra space to the bike lanes.  And perhaps we also convert the parallel parking into diagonal parking on alternating sides of the street, making the travel lanes into chicanes.  The likely result would be slower traffic and improved pedestrian safety.

There are limits to how far we can push this approach.  Under state law, streets can’t be configured for speeds under 25 mph.

(Isn’t it odd how the lowest allowable street speed is also the lowest speed at which pedestrians are more likely than not to die when hit by a car?.  At 20 mph, most pedestrians survive; at 25 mph most die.  The 25 mph minimum speed limit is like a humane hunting rule for drivers.  If you must hit a pedestrian with your car, make sure he’s dies at the first impact and doesn’t suffer.  More proof that the Twenty is Plenty folks are onto something.)

So, while I applaud the initiative and spirit shown by Frequent Pedestrian, I suggest that his efforts and his humor would be better directed at City Hall and at the State Capitol in arguing for street designs that promote better pedestrian safety.

To keep my desk free for other tasks. I think I’ll defer affordable housing for another couple of posts.  Instead, for my next post, I’ll offer a few more thoughts on the question of comfortable driving speeds, which I introduced above.

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)

Narrowing the Spectrum of Street Users

I’ve written several times about “Twenty is Plenty”, an initiative in many towns, mostly European but spreading toward U.S., to reduce speed limits on most streets to 20 miles per hour.  A recent sidewalk encounter gave me another reason to think that Twenty is Plenty is an enlightened concept.

One of my first household tasks each day is walking an elderly Golden Retriever.  Tyson will turn 15 in a couple of weeks.  (There are several different equations for converting dog years into human years.  By the equation I find most reasonable, Tyson’s 15 years will convert to 80 human years.)  At his age, he struggles with mobility and breathing, but a quiet amble around the block gives him needed exercise.

Also, it gives him a respite from sharing a house with two younger, rambunctious dogs.  He can stop and sniff a blade of grass as long as he wishes without another dog shoving him aside.

With his uncertain balance, a leash is often an encumbrance to him.  Plus, if he tries moving too quickly, falling down is the usual result.  So I let him walk unleashed much of the time.

Being unleashed, Tyson often finds a way to greet other early risers, wheedling for a kind word or a scratch behind an ear.  I usually try to keep him away, allowing his targets to continue with their mornings unimpeded, but he can be wily about avoiding my knee nudges.

Thus, a few mornings back, I was standing idly on the sidewalk with the leash folded in my hand, watching the old boy casually sniff an orange tree, when I was surprised by a handful of bicyclists streaming past me on the sidewalk, probably twelve-year-olds on their way to the nearby junior high school.

They were pedaling at a moderate pace, maybe 8 to 10 miles per hour and were giving me as much clearance as the sidewalk would allow.  However, my immediate concern was keeping Tyson, whose failing vision and uncertain hearing might fail to distinguish between a quicker-moving bicyclist and a slower pedestrian, from sticking his nose into the stream of bicyclists, seeking attention and getting a tire in his snout for his effort.

It was only as the last bicyclist slipped past and I secured a handhold on Tyson’s collar that I was able to direct an imperative toward the trailing rider, “In the street!”  To which his response, tossed over his shoulder as he continued on his way, was that his parents had told him the sidewalk was safer.

Well, of course the sidewalk is safer.  For them.  But their presence on the sidewalk greatly reduced the safety for elderly dogs taking morning moseys.  And perhaps also for the middle-aged owners tending to the elderly dogs.

Then I looked at the situation from the perspective of the parents.  If I had a twelve-year-old child, would I want him riding a bicycle on a street that is often a route for speeding and/or distracted drivers? 

And even if I could convince myself that a twelve-year-old would be okay on the street, what about a nine-year-old, the age at which bike riding to the nearby elementary might begin to seem appropriate?

I began riding a bike to school at age nine.  But my route didn’t include streets as busy as the street on which I now live.  And even then it took me only eight weeks to find myself lying in the street next to my bike with the skin scraped from my nose and a milk truck turning the corner toward me.  (You can tell my age by the fact that milk trucks were still doing home deliveries in my youth.)

As you presumably guessed, the truck driver stopped in time.  He also helped dust me off and send me on my way home, on foot, for cleanup and bandages. 

But the experience stuck with me.  And I’d have a hard time sending a nine-year-old on a bike into the street in front of my home.  And that would be a shame because I’d want that nine-year-old to have the personal freedom to find his own way to the nearby elementary school.  It’s even possible that, with training and safety warnings, I’d encourage the nine-year-old to use the sidewalk instead of the street, even if it endangered elderly dogs and middle-aged walkers.

I’ve previously written about the challenge of allocating street users across a right-of-way, recounting an anecdote from an Oregon project with which I was involved many years ago.  The problem is taking the wide spectrum of users, from senior citizens using walkers to inattentive drivers edging above the speed limit, and dividing them into two streams, one using the street and one using the sideway, in a way that minimizes the risk to all.

It’s not a problem with an easy solution.  And it finds me putting twelve-year-old bicyclists on the roadway with speeding motorists and nine-year-old bicyclists on the sidewalk, endangering seniors with walkers, neither of which feels right.

One way to simplify the challenge is to reduce the spectrum of street users.  Obviously, we’re not going to speed up seniors with walkers, but what if we slow the motorists?  What if we drop speed limits from 30 mph to 20 mph?  How does change the allocation of users?

Personally, I’d be more comfortable letting a nine-year-old ride a bicycle in a street where the speed limit is 20mph.  Not only is the speed differential between the cars and bicycles reduced, but drivers are more able to respond to bicyclists when traveling at the lesser speed.  And that change improves the safety for both seniors with walkers and elderly dogs.

All of which is consistent with what the Twenty is Plenty folks have been telling us for awhile.

It’s always interesting where encounters during early morning dog walks and the resulting cogitations will lead.  In this case, it led to a new way to justify that Twenty really is Plenty.

Next time, I’ll write about the relationship between urbanism and environmentalism, a relationship on which I seem to have a different perspective than some.

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

Slowing Cars with a Bucket of Paint

I’m often disappointed with the slowness at which I think.  Given enough time, I can assemble logical thoughts just fine, but it takes longer than it seems that it should.

All of us come home from occasional parties frustrated by bon mots that popped in our heads ten seconds too late.  But there times when the key facts to a problem are in front of me for a half hour or more, a problem to which I know the perfect urbanist solution, and yet the pieces don’t fall into place until the opportunity to interject the solution has passed.

As a case in point, I recently sat through a public hearing on a proposed apartment project in Petaluma.  An element of the project was a road diet along the frontage, converting a current four-lane road into a two-lane street, with a center turn lane and two 12-foot travel lanes.  The width left over after the diet would be used for a new parking lane and for wider bike lanes.  In general, I supported the concept.

There was extended public comment on the apartment project, probably over an hour, during which the neighbors mostly expressed their opposition to the project.  Although not expressed as frequently as concerns about parking sufficiency and building massing, a recurrent theme was the speed of traffic.  Neighbors recounted their fear of crossing the street and their unwillingness to allow their children to play near the street.

In keeping with typical public hearing behavior, it’s likely that the situation was exaggerated.  Personally, I’ve driven the street a number of times without noting any abhorrent traffic patterns, but it’s also likely that concern had at least some basis in fact.

And yet it was only at the end of public, as the Planning Commission Chair raised the gavel and looked about the room asking if anyone else wished to speak, that the penny finally dropped for me. 

It’s well-established that reduced traffic lane widths result in slower traffic speeds.  As replacements for the long-time standard 12-foot lanes, 11-foot lanes or even 10-foot lanes can calm traffic noticeably.  And yet here I was, watching a public discussion of a proposed road diet that called for 12-foot traffic lanes in a neighborhood that was loudly bemoaning excess traffic speeds and I was sitting on my hands.

I was still marshalling my thoughts, trying to decide how best to phrase my lane width insight, when the gavel dropped.  Nuts, another opportunity missed.

My failure was particularly galling because several articles on land width have recently crossed my desk.  A study presented to the Canadian Institute of Transportation noted that accidents are minimized when traffic lanes are 10 to 10.5 feet in width.

Better Cities and Towns reported the same study and complemented it with the information about pedestrian deaths being reduced at lower car travel speeds.

Writing for StrongTowns, Rachel Quednau noted that most crosswalk warning systems don’t function as well as hoped, so lesser lane widths, resulting in slower travel speed and greater opportunities for drivers to react, is the only solution.

Most persuasive was a piece from CityLab, written by walkability expert Jeff Speck, that summarized the current data on lane widths.  Speak also linked a study from the National Association of City Transportation Officials with an even more rigorous assessment.

Before dipping further into the role of lane width changes, I should offer a refresher on speed limits.  Speed limits are set based on how fast cars travel in the absence of posted speed limits.  City Engineers are empowered to change those results, but only slightly.  So the primary determining factor for a speed limit is how the driver perceives and responds to the road design.  (I wrote more completely on this subject, including a fun and pertinent North Bay anecdote, in an earlier post.)

Setting speed limits based on actual speeds may seem an odd approach, but with a thought experiment the reasonableness quickly becomes apparent.  Imagine a new freeway with broad sweeping turns, wide shoulders, perfectly smooth pavement, and plenty of bridge clearance.  Now imagine that a sign is posted at every on-ramp limiting driving speed to 35 mph.  What would happen?

There would be two streams of traffic, one responding to the posted limit and driving perhaps 35 to 40 mph.  And another stream that didn’t see the signs and is driving 70 to 75 mph or even faster because that’s how drivers respond to freeways.

 And when two disparate streams of traffic try to occupy the same roadway, accidents will happen, potentially a lot of accidents.

Admittedly this is an extreme case, but something similar would happen if a 25 mph sign was posted on a road that was designed for 35 mph.

 The paradoxical result is that, when someone complains to city hall that drivers are speeding through their neighborhood, a correct response, and the most convenient and easily implemented response, is to raise the posted speed limit.

I dined with a cousin last evening, a fun dinner at a sidewalk café on a fall evening with a slight chill in the air.  During the meal, she told of a neighbor who was embarking on a crusade against speeders on the collector street passing by the side of his home lot.  Being my typical slow-witted self, I failed to note to my cousin that her neighbor was effectively arguing for a higher posted speed limit on the street.  However, I’ll forward this post to her.  Whether she shares it with her angry neighbor is up to her.

The other, less convenient option available to city halls is to change the drivers’ perception of the street.  This option is the source a StrongTowns blog that may be the most delightfully pithy blog post ever.  I highly recommended spending the necessary 15 seconds to digest the absurdity that it highlights.

If changing the drivers’ perceptions is pursued, a number of tools are available, from stop signs to speed bumps to street trees.  But in most cases the easiest and most cost effective is to reduce lane widths.  On streets that are already striped, fog lines can be pulled in to reduce driving widths.  (I’ve previously suggested this for B Street in Petaluma.)  On streets that aren’t striped, a dashed line down the middle can serve the same function.

Although it’s a simple and effective solution, it also seems a solution that fails to gain traction as well as it should.  In fact, people often seem remarkably uninterested in it.

I’ve had conversations with groups who were agitated about speeding and arguing for increased law enforcement, speed bumps, flashing lights, more stop signs, etc.  After I patiently explained why modified lane striping was the best and perhaps only real solution, they generally seemed mollified, departing quietly and unwilling to broach lane painting to city hall, ensuring that their problem remained unsolved.

It seems that mobilizing law enforcement or inducing city hall to spend lots of money are the only problem solving approaches that fire our enthusiasm.  That disappoints me.  We should revel in low-cost, simple solutions, but we don’t, at least for traffic speeds.

Which brings me around to one of the reasons for this post.  There will be a meeting on pedestrian safety at the Petaluma Community Center on Thursday, September July 17 at 5:30pm.  I don’t recall what organization is hosting the event, but I’m planning on attending.  And perhaps I’ll have the chance to mention lane widths.

Back to the recent hearing, I may have missed my opportunity to make comments during the public hearing.  However, the Planning Commission deferred their decision, asking the applicant for additional information before rendering their judgment.  The continuing process won’t include further public comment, but there may still be opportunities to sway Commissioners.  I’ve already exchanged private thoughts with a couple of the Commissioners on lane widths and I know that several are occasional readers of this blog.  So I can perhaps make a difference even if I whiffed my first chance.

Better late than never.

For my next post, I have one more insight from the apartment project hearing to share, on the oddly tenuous relationship between effective project planning and the Goals in General Plans.

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

In Springtime, a Middle-Aged Man's Fancies Turn to Sidewalk Cafes, Brew Pubs, and Block Parties

With spring having sprung (not that we had a real winter in the North Bay), it’s time to check in on a few old favorites, both places and subjects.

Ray’s Deli: I’ve previously written about the role that Ray’s Deli and Tavern plays in the life of my Petaluma neighborhood.  Recently, a local architect suggested meeting at Ray’s to discuss the relationship between urbanism and climate change, a suggestion to which I quickly acceded because of both the subject and the meeting place.

However, the architect was late for our Friday afternoon meeting, so I ended up sitting at a community table, sipping on a bottle of water and observing the springtime angst of junior high school students newly freed for the weekend. 

It was a mind-numbing swirl of apprehension over who had said what to whom, who was fighting with whom, and who might have a secret crush on whom.  The drama, amped up by a Friday afternoon in springtime, was enough to make my head spin.  And to make me decide that being a junior high teacher must be in one of Dante’s circles of hell.

But the key urbanist point is that we were all occupying the same space.  Me awaiting a climate change conversation and the hormone-charged mass of teenage tragicomedy were both considering the same assortment of deli sandwiches, chips, and beverages.

And we’d all walked there.

It was an uncommon combination for a largely auto-oriented small city.  It was also pretty darned cool.

McDowell Brew Pub District: A few months back, I noted a brewing (pun intended) pedestrian problem along North McDowell Boulevard.  With the Lagunitas Brewery putting down ever deeper roots on the east side of McDowell and upstart breweries such as Petaluma Hills getting underway on the west side, there was an increasing problem with pedestrians crossing the 40 mph McDowell without the benefit of traffic aids.

Right now, the problem is exacerbated because most of the available parking is on the west side of McDowell and most of the patronage is heading to Lagunitas on the east side.  A parking lot proposed by Lagunitas on the east side will alleviate some of the concern, but there would still be a problem with pedestrians engaging in an evening of brew pub hopping.

In my earlier post, I debunked the idea that a painted crosswalk would be a solution, noting that drivers tend to overlook crosswalks when driving at higher speeds.  Also, the stripes give pedestrians a false sense of security.  The paradoxical result is that car/pedestrian accidents tend to increase after crosswalks are painted on high-speed streets.

The only solution I could conceive at the time was a full signal, but cost was neither affordable for a financially-strapped City nor justified by the few financial benefits that would flow to the City.

I still stand by my previous conclusions, as unhelpful as they may have been, but was recently forced to take another look at the situation.

I’d been unexpectedly lucky in my previous visits to Lagunitas, often snagging one of the few current parking places on the east side of McDowell.  So when an urbanist friend recently suggested meeting at Lagunitas for urban conversation at 2:30pm on a Thursday, I readily agreed.  How much beer drinkers could possible start imbibing that early in the week or the day?

As it turns out, there were a lot of early beer drinkers.  I eventually parked two blocks away on the east side of McDowell.  And as I walked back toward McDowell, my friend called.  She was at McDowell and ready to cross, but was dismayed by the number of cars and their unwillingness to stop.  So she would await my arrival.

We eventually worked our way across the street and had a pleasant and enlightening discussion, but the experience of crossing McDowell stayed with me.  So I now have another solution to offer.

And it’s the obvious solution, building off the work of Twenty is Plenty, Vision Zero, New York City, and even my own thoughts on traffic calming in my neighborhood.

Here’s the comprehensive plan.  We reduce the lane widths on McDowell from 12 feet to 11 feet or even 10 feet, add bulb outs at intersections, and perhaps adjust the lane alignments with slight angle points, all of which would encourage lower speeds.  As drivers respond to the more constrained conditions and new reduced car speeds are observed, the speed limit could be set at the lower speed, perhaps 25 mph.  Now we paint the crosswalk across McDowell and the drivers would respect it.

I’m sure that many are shocked with the idea of reducing the speed limit on a major arterial, but it’s the likely way of the future, with many communities going this direction to encourage alternative modes of transportation and to save the lives of pedestrians.

Besides, the length of McDowell between the major cross streets either direction from the breweries, Penngrove Highway and Corona Road, is a little less than a mile.  The additional time to drive that distance at 25 mph instead of 40 mph is only 50 seconds.

I know that the total extra time is that 50 seconds multiplied by the many people who drive McDowell over course of a day.  But that still leaves the question of whether many people multiplied by 50 seconds each is worth more or less than the reduced stress levels of the brewery district pedestrians and the reduced risk of pedestrian injuries or fatalities.  It’s not an easy balance to judge, but I come down in favor of the pedestrians.

Also, if pedestrians can cross McDowell safely and the businesses east of McDowell aren’t adversely impacted by the street parking for the breweries, then Lagunitas needn’t build the new parking lot and the lot can instead be used for new industrial uses.  Wow, economic development through lower speed streets!  What a concept!

I have no expectation that a lower speed McDowell will be implemented anytime soon.  But I think it’s the way of the future.  I hope to live long enough to write “I told you so.”

Block Parties: To conclude, I’ll touch on block parties.  When I last mentioned the subject, the Petaluma City Council has apparently given their approval to City staff to update and to clarify the block party rules, including a green light for block parties in more locations.  Since that update, I’ve sent my thoughts to City staff on how the rules might be updated, including ideas I’d gleaned from other North Bay cities and from observing block parties during the summer of 2014.

However, there has been no resulting action.  I know that City staff has a number of high priorities.  I also know that I could have been more diligent with my follow-up.  Nonetheless, it seems a shame that we’re facing another summer of legal limbo for what should be a rite of summer, simple neighborly block parties.

If you’ve been thinking of hosting a block party, but have been awaiting clarification on the rules, here are my thoughts: 

• ·         Proceed with your party planning.  Block parties are great ways to build communities and the City seems supportive even if the Municipal Code is lagging behind.
• ·         Go ahead and check with the Police Department.  (Email me if you need help with contact information.)  But don’t be deterred if the response seems ambivalent or vague.  Their hands are also tied.
• ·         When configuring your use of the street, remember that passage of emergency vehicles can quickly become an urgent need.  Leave a travel lane of at least 16 feet in which the only impediments are items such as chairs which can be whisked away quickly as needed.  (Last year, I attended a party where a bounce house blocked the emergency vehicle lane.   The organizer told me that eight men could move the bounce house quickly if needed.  Relying on eight men to be immediately available during an emergency seemed a bad plan.)
• ·         Although the City doesn’t yet have an insurance requirement, they may soon.  And an insurance rider may be good protection for a party organizer in the event of a bounce house accident.  I’d recommend at least checking with one’s agent.

But above all, have fun.  And if you want to invite me to the party, I’m always willing to enjoy some neighborhood camaraderie.

Next time, I’ll mount my soapbox to complain about flawed thinking behind sidewalk and bike path alignments.

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

Easing the Pressure on the Gas Pedal

In my last post, I began to write about an on-line neighborhood chat on the subject of teenager drivers traveling with excess haste on residential streets.  However, I was distracted by the participants in the chat, many of whom belong to my generation, calling for reduced freedoms for high school students.  The advocacy was sufficiently unexpected that it took me down a path of memories of student battles fought and student freedoms won when I was young.

Today, I’ll stay on topic.

The on-line chat, which happened during the run-up to a meeting between the administration of the nearby high school and concerned neighbors, was an attempt to list the topics that the neighbors wanted on the agenda.  The most significant concern, by far, was speeding and other aggressive driving behavior in the surrounding neighborhood.

Being a resident of the neighborhood, I can confirm that the issue is legitimate.  I don’t find the driving to be so obnoxious that it affects my everyday life, but there are a handful of drivers who consistently drive with unreasonable aggressiveness.  A neighbor recently told me of being passed on her street while she was driving near the speed limit, a driving decision that is clearly inappropriate in a residential neighborhood, especially a walkable residential neighborhood.

Having identified driving as the principal worry, solutions were offered by the parties.  Someone suggested a need for speed bumps.  Someone else correctly noted that most fire departments don’t allow speed bumps because they slow emergency vehicle response times.

The conversation then turned to increased policing, either through the use of local police or through the neighbors reporting license plate numbers to the school.

Before wandering off into questions of closed campuses and dress codes, someone stated that, student driving concerns aside, it nonetheless remained true that the streets had been built for cars.

Although I didn’t have the time to participate in the conversation, there many comments I wanted to interject.  This is my chance.

Vertical Traffic Calming: Speed bumps belong to a group of traffic management tools generally known as vertical traffic calming.  Related tools are speed humps, which are widened speed bumps that can be driven safely at speeds of 20 mph or more depending on the design, and speed tables, which are expanded areas of raised pavement, often at drop-off points for stores, and are intended to make drivers feel as if they are in the pedestrians’ realm, rather than the pedestrians being in their realm.

It’s true that fire departments generally oppose vertical traffic calming on the grounds that it slows emergency vehicles.  Personally, I find the opposition is a fine example of giving infinite weight to one decision element, emergency response time, over another decision element, slowing everyday traffic.

Of course, bringing more reason to fire department policies will be a long and difficult battle.  In the meantime, we can observe the irony of fire departments arguing for public safety by arguing against measures that would slow traffic.  I love a good bit of irony.

Horizontal Traffic Calming: Although still not a favorite of fire departments, horizontal traffic calming is more likely to gain approval and can often be more successful at reducing speeds.  It was a disappointing, but not unexpected, that the chat participants didn’t even mention horizontal traffic calming.  Although effective, horizontal traffic calming measures are not among the tools of which most people think.

Typical horizontal traffic calming measurements are reduced lane widths through paint or relocated curb lines, bulb-outs at intersections, reduced curb radii at intersections, and even parking that alternates between sides of the street, resulting in a chicane for drivers to traverse.

The SMART Codes that many cities, including Petaluma, now use to regulate their downtowns include a number of horizontal traffic calming measures.  One can visit the Theatre District of Petaluma to observe lesser lane widths and bulb-outs.  The recent Petaluma Boulevard road diet also includes horizontal calming.

Horizontal calming is important because it induces drivers to reduce speeds by making them feel uncomfortable at higher speeds.  As California speed limits are set by the actual measured speeds of drivers, horizontal calming can also lead to reduced speed limits.

And reducing average speed is important because it makes the street more safe while also limiting how fast much the occasional reckless driver may travel.  Horizontal calming, and the resulting reduced speed limits, are key elements of the European Twenty is Plenty movement, which argues that 20 mph is an appropriate speed for most neighborhoods, and the parallel Vision Zero movement, which targets zero pedestrian death through numerous measures including lower vehicle speeds.  Vision Zero has been implemented in New York City with a widespread speed limit of 25 mph.

The Twenty is Plenty and Vision Zero movements grew out of the fact that we’ve consistently built streets that can be comfortably driven at speeds in excess of the speeds for which we had hoped.  Perhaps it’s my sense of humor, but I find it funny that one of the biggest problems encountered during a recent cross-country driverless car experiment was the frustration of other drivers that the driverless car wouldn’t exceed the posted speed limit.

Also, slower speeds have multiple benefits, from reduced stopping distances to increased awareness of other street users, as described in this article from Minneapolis about the benefits of reducing travel speed by just ten mph.

If we want safer streets, we need slower travel speeds.  And slower travel speeds don’t need speed bumps when bulb-outs and striping will work just fine.

Policing: Policing can be a valid strategy to reduce traffic speeds, but it’s expensive and its effectiveness often has a limited duration.  The sight of a cruiser parked at the curb with an officer observing traffic or of a motorist awaiting a ticket will slow traffic that day and maybe for a couple of days afterward, but speeds will soon return to prior levels.

Most of us have probably observed this phenomenon on freeways where the sight of a police cruiser causes the average speed of the car pack to drop from 75 mph to 65, only to return to 75 within a few miles.

Policing is a bandage on streets that weren’t designed consistent with the intended travel speeds.

Street Uses: Lastly, I want to visit the comment that streets were made for cars.  It’s a particularly ironic, and incorrect, comment in my neighborhood.

I don’t know when the nearby streets were first paved.  But I know that my neighbor’s home was built in 1918, with my home following two years later.  And I don’t think either home was among the first in the neighborhood.

It seems likely that the streets were first laid out in 1910 or before.  And in 1910, the predominant street users would have been adults walking or bicycling to work or to errands, children playing, and horse-drawn carts delivering milk or hauling agricultural products to market.   If there were any cars, they were likely putt-putting along under a speed limit of 10 mph or less.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that automotive industry campaigned to dedicate streets primarily to cars, including inventing the word jaywalking.

I’m not arguing that cars should be excluded from streets.  They serve a legitimate purpose and make our lives more convenient.  But the balance between cars and other possible users of the street has been renegotiated in the past.  There would be nothing wrong with another renegotiation, including one that slows cars to make the street friendlier for all.

I understand that most neighborhood discussions about traffic speeds quickly turn to speed bumps and police.  But there is a wealth of other strategies that work better and create better communities.  We only need to become more knowledgeable.

Next time, I’ll write about the basic stuff of streets, asphalt.  Petaluma recently lost a sustained battle against a new asphalt plant in town.  Years ago, I weighed in on that controversy.  Now, I want to revisit my old words and to note that others are supporting a related position that I took at the time.

Schedule

In recent months, Petaluma Urban Chat has become consumed with the question of the Fairgrounds, resulting in extra meetings and changing locations.  But, our standard meeting time and place remained the second Tuesday of the month, 5:30pm, at the Aqus Café.  This month, that date will fall on April 14th. Let’s gather at Aqus, 2nd and H Streets in Petaluma for an update on the Fairgrounds effort and to discuss future Urban Chat topics.  All are welcome.

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