The Village of Cheshire's master plan was developed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company

I had the unique opportunity to participate in a “Smart Growth” bus tour of communities in North Carolina, organized last year by the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and the Local Government Commission. We visited a variety of neighborhoods, from low-density to high, pre-car to newly developed, to learn how livable and sustainable principles can help a wide range of communities to adapt to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century.

Important lessons can be learned from each of the communities we visited. None were perfect, but as Joel Garreau pointed out in Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, now-revered places like Venice and London were pieced together over centuries; flaws were frequently pointed out by critics, and fixed over time. Flaws in these places will be addressed over time as well. What is critical about each location is that they are testing out new ideas of what a sustainable future could look like. The neighborhoods that had the best sense of place were those that were created over a hundred years, and they serve as great models for how to take Traditional Neighborhood Development, Form Based Codes and other contemporary planning strategies to the next level.

My observations from the experience are below. You can click here to download my full report on the trip, which includes more detailed information on each of the communities that we visited across the state: Charlotte, Belmont, Kannapolis, Cornelius, Davidson, Black Mountain, and Asheville.

1.) Urbanism can be scaled to fit all types of development, from big city to rural: One of the major misconceptions holding back the acceptance of livability and sustainability policies across a broad spectrum of American communities is that urbanism is anti-suburb, and holds no answers for rural areas. The variety of communities seen on the North Carolina Smart Growth Tour proves otherwise. Urbanism has improved livability in communities ranging from small towns like Black Mountain; to once-rural villages like Cornelius, Belmont, and Kannapolis that are struggling to avoid losing their identity as they are being absorbed by modern auto-oriented development; all the way up to larger cities like Asheville and Charlotte that are looking to repair damage inflicted by post-WWII retrofits implemented to make way for cars.

Residential development at the Bland Street Station in Charlotte’s South End / Photo: Gary Toth

True, urbanism reaches is fullest value at higher densities. But the social benefits of having a small center where one can walk to eat breakfast, grab a quart of milk, or hang out and chat with others around a cup of coffee can be achieved even in application of urbanism principles in small – and new – rural villages. While residents of places like Black Mountain and Cornelius will probably not be able to ditch their cars entirely, these places have the potential to reduce the daily auto trip load from the average of 12-14 daily trips per household. While this may not seem significant, reducing daily trips from 14 to 12 represents a 14% decrease – a significant contraction.

The clustering around a center offered by Cornelius and Black Mountain also dramatically increases the feasibility of a transit provider offering service. Typical suburban communities are too spread out to make transit stops efficient. Even a town as small as Black Mountain creates a focal point for passengers waiting for transit service to hang out, grab a cup of coffee, and perhaps even do some business.

More importantly, creation of urbanist developments in these traditional rural areas creates a sense of place, a sense of community, and better livability.

2.) Placemaking, New Urbanism, and Smart Growth can help protect rural communities from losing their identity to suburbanism. Communities such as Davidson, Cornelius, Belmont and Kannapolis have recognized that the biggest threat to their rural landscapes is NOT livability and New Urbanism; it is business-as-usual suburban sprawl. The latter, by leading to formula-driven housing, commercial and office developments that look the same whether in New Mexico, New Jersey, or North Carolina, erodes the sense of community that preceded its arrival. Beginning in 1996, Belmont, Davidson and Cornelius adopted form based codes to help stem the tide of suburbanism emanating out from Charlotte as its metropolitan area boomed.

3.) The production line efficiency of stamping out off-the-rack buildings limits the value of New Urbanism. The Town of Belmont’s clustering of new development into small pods with connected, properly-sized streets and alleys is an important step in the right direction. However, when compared to the Antiquity at Cornelius development, where a series of building styles varies from building to building, Belmont pales. While Cornelius does not exhibit an infinite variety of architectural styles from house to house, even a mild variety in housing types here makes a dramatic difference in the sense of place. It chips away at the “Disney-esque” feeling that New Urbanism is sometimes accused of creating.

4.) Pods of New Urbanist residential development need to be within walking distance of activity centers. Not to pick on Belmont, but their dozen or so New Urbanist pods are isolated and are a mile or two from commercial activity. Belmont does have a quaint, mixed-use Main Street, but shopping options are limited and in tough competition with auto-oriented strip development located along State Route 74, with a particular concentration at the interchange with Interstate 85. Compare this to Antiquity at Cornelius, where a small town center is being built right in the midst of new residential neighborhoods; or Davidson, which has recognized the importance of its historic downtown, surrounded by hundreds of residential units adjacent to and within easy walking distance of downtown. Antiquity, Davidson and even Black Mountain offer the potential to eliminate at least one round trip a day by car. Isolated pods do not.

5.) Livable street design is equally important in all residential places, regardless of population density. Complete streets create the engineering foundation for a great street; Placemaking completes the job. On destination streets, multi-modal activity is fostered by triangulating multiple destinations within easy walking distance. Buildings are located to create the “walls” of an outdoor living room, and ground floor uses engage people on the street. This is as true in the two-story buildings in downtown Belmont as it is with the multi-story buildings on Tryon Street in downtown Charlotte. The street cross sections tame traffic and provide comfortable settings for activity; the speed of cars does not intimidate. A street does not need to have been created 100 years ago to establish the destination street feel, as the developers of Biltmore Park Town Square have proven.

6.) Malls don’t have to be totally auto-dependent, surrounded by seas of parking. Biltmore Park Town Square in Asheville proves that mall can move back towards a more sustainable form, centered on a Main Street and with office and residential mixed in.

7.) New development may need to age gracefully like a fine wine; Placemaking layered on top of modern planning can accelerate the creation of attractive patinas. New Urbanist principles such as Smart Codes, Form Based Codes, Complete Streets, and Mixed-Use Destinations create the bones for sustainable communities. However, while newly-created developments like Antiquity and Biltmore Square, there is some of that “Disney-esque” feel mentioned above. Older downtowns in Asheville and Davidson, by contrast, felt more natural and comfortable, the result of gradual informal Placemaking over the years.

Antiquity at Cornelius / Photo: Gary Toth

Click here to download the full report.

The issue of safety and older drivers is an important one. And we are grateful for the way the special needs of those drivers are highlighted in a new report called “Keeping Baby Boomers Mobile: Preserving the Mobility and Safety of Older Americans.” (You can download it here.) Unfortunately, the report, produced by AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) in collaboration with TRIP, a national transportation research group representing contractors and engineering firms, continues to reinforce the “forgiving highways” orthodoxy that the transportation establishment has been promoting for too long now. (On the positive side, it also endorses a number of measures that AARP has been pressing for: better signs, retroreflective paint, brighter street lighting, etc.)

Drivers respond to their environment. Put them on a stretch of road that is wider, flatter, and straighter and they will drive faster. And on roads like these, speed causes crashes. Photo: Stephen Lee Davis/Transportation for America via Flickr.

It is time for AASHTO, TRIP, and other members of that establishment to recognize the limitations of “forgiving highways” principles. This approach, which aims to reduce crashes by designing roads to accommodate driver error, might work well for interstates, freeways, and rural highways. But it should not be applied to the rest of our nation’s roads. Evidence is mounting that not only does the “wider, straighter, and faster” philosophy fail to fix safety problems on urban and suburban arterials — it actually makes them worse. Let’s consider the issue of older drivers and safety from an engineering perspective. Engineering involves the practical application of science and math to solve problems, so we’ll take a closer look at the problem defined in the report and the applications suggested to address that problem.

On page 5, TRIP and AASHTO point out that left turns are of special concern because elderly people have more trouble making speed, distance, and gap judgments. These are all speed-related issues caused by cars going too fast through intersections. So what are the solutions proposed?

• Widening or adding left-turn lanes and increasing the length of merge or exit lanes
• Widening lanes and shoulders to reduce the consequence of driving mistakes
• Making roadway curves more gradual and easier to navigate

In other words, make the roads wider, straighter, and faster. How will this help?

AASHTO and TRIP suggest that wider lanes will allow drivers more room to maneuver, but this “countermeasure” only comes into play once the potential crash situation occurs. Nothing in the report addresses how to avoid the crash in the first place. And as the report clearly points out, such crashes are caused by speeds that are too high to allow drivers time to judge other cars’ speeds, their distance, and whether there is enough of a gap to make a turn (this doesn’t just affect older drivers, either).

Sadly, this kind of thinking is not surprising. It is exactly what the transportation industry has been doing since the 1960s. Buoyed by research on why interstate highways were so much safer than other roads, transportation experts convinced Congress during the 1966 Safety Hearings to apply the wider, straighter, and faster concepts to all American streets. As former career safety engineer Kenneth Stonex testified: “What we must do is to operate the 90% or more of our surface streets just as we do our freeways… [converting] the surface highway and street network to freeway road and roadside conditions.”

What is remarkable is how thoroughly and blindly the profession has adopted these principles.

We clear our roadsides of “fixed objects” such as trees, light poles, and other objects, creating “clear zones” to bring vehicles to controlled stops if and when they leave the roadway. We flatten curves, shave hills, and place guiderail and concrete barriers to redirect cars that stray. We install rumble strips to alert drivers when they are moving into an area that the engineer has placed off limits.

While the mission is accomplished for vehicles that do leave the roads, there is an unintended consequence: vehicular speeds go up. Paradoxically, more drivers do leave the road and there are more conflicts between drivers on the roads. And since speeds are higher, the consequences of crashes are far more severe.

Drivers respond to their environment. Put them on a stretch of road that is wider, flatter, and straighter and they will drive faster. Higher speeds may be okay on controlled-access freeways with no adjacent land uses or pedestrians, where sight distances are near infinite, curves are flat, and opposing roadways are separated by wide medians or center barriers. But those speeds don’t translate well to other environments.

We were so caught up in the idea that we were doing the right thing by building wider, straighter, and faster, that until recently we never stopped to check to see if we were getting the desired result. It is now clear from the evidence that higher speeds on all roads except freeways make us less safe. Research by Eric Dumbaugh [PDF] and evidence gleaned from the Netherlands Sustainable Safety program reveals that the key to safer non-freeway roads is slowing down traffic to speeds appropriate to context.

We understand that the concept that slower can be better is unpopular in a number of AASHTO’s member states. Rural and developing states incorrectly equate the idea of matching speeds to the context with “no more big roads to help us grow.” But if AASHTO wants to maintain its status as the “Voice of Transportation,” it needs to lead the industry into the 21^st century.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has already demonstrated this leadership. Its office of safety has produced a website to highlight proven countermeasures. Three of the top nine recommended measures involve approaches that either slow down vehicles and/or reduce the number of conflicts. None involve the 1960s approach of making roads wider, straighter, and faster. Similar recommendations are made on the FHWA Livability website.

There are other examples of respected members of the transportation industry acting proactively in the absence of leadership by AASHTO. In the “Smart Transportation Guide,” Pennsylvania and New Jersey DOTs provide guidance to their engineers on how to use design to slow down vehicles when appropriate for the context. The Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Congress for New Urbanism do likewise in their guide, “Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities.”

It is time for AASHTO to focus attention on the mounting evidence that arterials, collectors, and distributors need different solutions than freeways. High-speed roads in built-up areas not only decrease safety, they decimate the value of adjacent places, communities, and land use (as is so well said by Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns).

To address the needs of older drivers, AASHTO should be calling for design concepts that:

• When appropriate, slow down speeds to improve the ability of drivers to properly perceive speeds, distances, and gaps. See FHWA countermeasure for road diets and roundabouts.
• Eliminate the weaving and merging caused by multilane roads that are over capacity for all hours except perhaps the peak hour. See FHWA countermeasure for road diets.
• Eliminate the conflicts caused by a wide range of speeds created by road sections allowing some drivers to pass through at high design speeds in the same cross-section where others are slowing to enter or exit the roadway. See FHWA countermeasure for corridor access management.
• Eliminate the Safety Problems created by left turns on arterials, collectors and distributors. See FHWA countermeasure for roundabouts.

TRIP should embrace these solutions as well. Yes, it is an organization representing highway contractors and large engineering firms. But there will be as much money in building and designing roundabouts, road diets, and revamped access management as there would be in wider, straighter, and faster projects.

The end result would be truly 21^st-century roads that are safer for older drivers — and for everyone.

Photo: Stephen Lee Davis/Transportation for America via Flickr.

Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Credit: Andy Singer

Credit: Andy Singer

First, an explanation of what I call the “deadly duo”: travel projection models and Levels of Service (LOS) performance metrics.Travel projection models are computer programs that use assumptions about future growth in population, employment, and recreation to estimate how many new cars will be on roads 20 or 30 years into the future.

Models range from quite simplistic to incredibly complex and expensive. Simple models deal primarily with coarse movements of vehicles between cities, while complex models deal with the intricacies of what happens on the fine grid of urban areas. To be truly accurate, growth projection modeling can be expensive. Therefore, absent compelling reason to do otherwise, most growth projections tend to be done using less expensive techniques, which usually lead to overestimates.

Levels of Service (LOS) is a performance metric which flourished during the interstate- and freeway-building era that went from the 1950s to the 1990s. Using a scale of A to F, LOS attempts to create an objective formula to answer a subjective question: How much congestion are we willing to tolerate? As in grade school, “F” is a failing grade and “A” is perfect.

Engineers decided that LOS “C” was a good balance between overinvestment in perfection and underinvestment leading to congestion. In urban areas, a concession was made to accept LOS D, representing slightly more restricted but still free-flowing traffic. LOS is commonly (actually, almost always) calculated using travel projections for 20 to 30 years into the future.

Using basic traffic models and LOS C/D to plan and design the interstate system was a no-brainer in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. When deciding how many lanes to build on a freeway connecting major cities, a sensitivity of plus or minus 10,000 trips a day could be tolerated, and the incremental difference in cost to plow through undeveloped land was relatively insignificant.

Good approach, wrong setting

I’m not going to look back and quibble with the general philosophy of how the interstates and the associated high-speed freeways were planned and designed. On many levels, the approach made sense.

But it became increasingly less persuasive when applied to the rest of our road network. Unlike interstates and freeways, most roads exist not just to move traffic through the area, but also to serve the homes, businesses, and people along them. Yet in search of high LOS rankings, transportation professionals have widened streets, added lanes, removed on-street parking, limited crosswalks, and deployed other inappropriate strategies. In ridding our communities of the weeds of congestion, we have also pulled out the very plants that made our “gardens” worthwhile in the first place.

It’s worth remembering, too, that not all congestion is bad. John Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee and current CEO and President of the Congress for New Urbanism, suggests that congestion is like cholesterol: there is a good kind and a bad kind.

What makes the prevailing situation even more troubling is that there are no comprehensive requirements dictating the use of either LOS or travel modeling in transportation planning and project design. The “Green Book” from the Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) (more formally known as “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets”) clearly states that these are guidelines to be applied with judgment — not mandates. So does the Federal Highway Administration’s “Highway Capacity Manual.”

The idea that we must rid our roads of  any and all traffic congestion is, in fact, a self-imposed requirement. As Eric Jaffe wrote in an article for Atlantic Cities in December, 2011:

Although cities aren’t required to abide LOS measures by law, over the years the measure hardened into convention. By the time cities recognized the need for balanced transportation systems, LOS was entrenched in the street engineering canon.

Worse yet, many designers size a road or intersection to be free-flowing for the worst hour of the day. Sized to accommodate cars during the highest peak hour, such streets will be “overdesigned” for the other 23 hours of the day and will always function poorly for the surrounding community.

If that isn’t troubling enough, LOS is often calculated using traffic predicted 20 years into the future, even in urban settings. Until the forecasted growth materializes, the roadway will be overdesigned, even during the peak hour. Overdesigned roadways encourage motorists to drive at higher speeds, making them difficult to cross and unpleasant to walk along. This degrades public spaces between the edges of the road and the adjacent buildings, encourages people to drive short distances, and generally unravels a community’s social fabric.

Let me repeat: Contrary to what you may hear, there is no national requirement or mandate to apply LOS standards and targets 20 years into the future for urban streets. This thinking is a remnant from 1960s era  policy for the interstate system, and has erroneously been passed down from generation to generation.

There is no national requirement or mandate to apply LOS standards and targets 20 years into the future for urban streets. Credit: Andy Singer

So what are the right approaches?

Asking the simple question, “Do you want congestion reduced at a particular location?” is a question out of context. It’s like asking you whether you want to never be stung by a bee again. Of course, the answer will be yes. But what if I told you that to in order to never suffer a sting again, every plant within a several mile radius would have to be destroyed — and that you could never leave the area of destruction?

You would have a completely different answer, I’m sure.

The question that needs to be asked in urban settings is not whether you ever want to sit in congestion again. Who does? The question is whether you want to eliminate congestion on your Main Street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — knowing that the consequence would be a community with decimated economic and social value, increased reliance on car use, increased crashes, and, ultimately, more congestion.

Recognizing the need for balance, a number of entities are beginning to promote approaches sensitive to the context.

I was the New Jersey Department of Transportation’ s project manager for  the “Smart Transportation Guide” (STG), adopted jointly by the state DOTs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.   The STG directs DOT designers to consider the tradeoffs between vehicular LOS and “local service.” It goes on to say that if the street in question is not critical to regional movement, that LOS E or F could be acceptable — and that designers may actually need to design to slow down cars.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers, an “international association of transportation professionals responsible for meeting mobility and safety needs” also promoted this concept in its landmark “Context Sensitive Solutions Guidelines for Urban Thoroughfares.” Florida DOT has adopted multimodal LOS standards, and cities like Charlotte, N.C., have elevated pedestrian and bicycle LOS to the level of that for automobiles. We have a long way to go, but the door is opening.

Creating balanced standards for roadway design will benefit transportation as well. In the Netherlands, the “Livable Streets” policy led to a remarkable improvement in safety on their roadways. They started in the 1970s with a crash rate 15 percent higher than in the U.S., and now have a crash rate 60 percent lower.

Design with the community in mind

It’s time for communities and transportation professionals alike to accept that we have been using the wrong tools for the wrong job. LOS and travel modeling may be effective when sizing and locating high-speed freeways, but are totally inappropriate in every other setting. If travel modeling with high rates of growth is used to make street decisions, your community may be doomed to a series of roadway widenings or intersection expansions. If vehicular LOS C or D performance measures are adopted as non-negotiable targets, major road construction will be heading your way.

Village, suburban and city streets need to be designed with the community in mind using the PPS principle of Streets as Places to  create a vision for a great community and then plan your streets to support that vision.

Lets not be fooled by the appearance of science behind Levels of Service and Traffic Modeling. As I pointed out in an interview with Wayne Senville that was published in the November 2010 “Planning Commissioner’s Journal,” LOS standards are easy to understand — and that’s exactly what makes them so dangerous.

All images by Andy Singer.

The “complete streets” movement has taken the United States by storm, and has even taken root in countries such as Canada and Australia. Few movements have done so much to influence needed policy change in the transportation world. As of today, almost 300 jurisdictions around the U.S. have adopted complete streets policies or have committed to do so. This is an amazing accomplishment that sets the stage for communities to reframe their future around people instead of cars.

But communities cannot stop there. Complete streets is largely an engineering policy that, according to the National Complete Streets Coalition website, “ensures that transportation planners and engineers consistently design and operate the entire roadway with all users in mind — including bicyclists, public transportation vehicles and riders, and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

Getting transportation professionals to think about including pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users is a key first step in creating great places and livable communities. But that is not enough to make places that truly work for people — “streets as places.” The planning process itself needs to be turned upside-down.

We at PPS like to say that engineers can ruin a good street, but they cannot create a good street — a street that is truly complete — through engineering alone. A small but growing group of communities have recognized that to really “complete their streets,” they need genuinely place-based and community-based transportation policies that go beyond routine accommodation.

“The design of a street is only one aspect of its effectiveness. How the street fits within the surrounding transportation network and supports adjacent land uses will also be important to its effectiveness.” — Charlotte “Urban Street Design Guidelines”

This illustration from Indianapolis's "Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines" reflects how the new wave of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.

Communities such as Indianapolis, Charlotte, Savannah, San Francisco, and Denver have created community-based street policies that turn the transportation planning and design process upside-down, acknowledging that the role of streets is to build communities, not the other way around. The example from  the Indianapolis “Multimodal Corridor and Public Space Design Guidelines” illustrates how this new genre of street policies specifies Placemaking guidance as well as how to accommodate all modes.

PPS is helping communities realize a different vision of what transportation can be. We’ve worked in small communities in rural areas, such as Brunswick, Me.; Newport, Vt.; and Tupelo, Miss. We’ve gone to larger communities such as San Antonio, Tex., Los Angeles, and San Francisco. On our travels, we’ve conducted capacity-building  workshops, helped develop street typologies, created visions for right-sized streets, and worked on community-based transportation policies.

Place-based plans, policies, and programs allow downtown and village streets to become destinations worth visiting, not just throughways to and from the workplace or the regional mall. Transit stops and stations can make commuting by rail or bus a pleasure. Neighborhood streets can be places where parents feel safe letting their children play, and commercial strips can be designed as grand boulevards, safe for walking and cycling, allowing for both through and local traffic.

Countries outside the U.S. are not immune from focusing on street design as an isolated discipline. After World War II, many countries around the world became enamored of a planning approach that was driven by traffic engineering. Some, like the Netherlands, reversed course relatively quickly and returned to community-based, livable street design. Ultimately, the Dutch went even further in the right direction, in part thanks to the influence of the legendary Hans Monderman (himself a traffic engineer), who developed and promoted the concept of “Shared Space.” Monderman’s designs emphasized human interaction over mechanical traffic devices. By taking away conventional regulatory traffic controls, he proved that human interaction and caution would naturally yield a safer, more pleasant environment for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

We are poised to create a future where priority is given to the appropriate mode, whether it be pedestrian, bicycle, transit, or automobile. Cars have their place, but the rediscovered importance of walking and “alternative transportation modes” will bring more people out onto the streets — allowing these spaces to serve as public forums where neighbors and friends can connect with one another.

In order to truly complete our streets, they need to be planned and designed appropriately, using the following guidelines.

Rule One: Think of Streets as Public Spaces

Not so long ago, this idea was considered preposterous in many communities. “Public space” meant parks and little else. Transit stops were simply places to wait. Streets had been surrendered to traffic for so long that we forgot they could be public spaces. Now we are slowly getting away from this narrow perception of streets as conduits for cars and beginning to think of streets as places.

A street in Amsterdam.

Streets and parking can take up as much as a third of a community’s land, and designing them solely for the comfort of people in cars, and then only for the most congested hour of the day, has significant ramifications for the livability and economics of a community. Under the planning and engineering principles of the past 70 years, people have for all intents and purposes given up their rights to this public property. Streets were once a place where we stopped for conversation and children played, but now they are the exclusive domain of cars. Even when sidewalks are present along high-speed streets, they feel inhospitable and out of place.

The road, the parking lot, the transit terminal — these places can serve more than one mode (cars) and more than one purpose (movement). Sidewalks are the urban arterials of cities. Make them wide, well lit, stylish, and accommodating. Give them benches, outdoor cafés, and public art. Roads can be shared spaces, with pedestrian refuges, bike lanes, and on-street parking. Parking lots can become public markets on weekends. Even major urban arterials can be designed to provide for dedicated bus lanes, well-designed bus stops that serve as gathering places, and multimodal facilities for bus rapid transit or other forms of travel. Roads are places too!

Rule Two: Plan for Community Outcomes

Communities need to first envision what kinds of places and interactions they want to support, then plan a transportation system consistent with this collective community vision. Transportation is a means for accomplishing important goals — like economic productivity and social engagement — not an end in itself.

Great transportation facilities truly improve the public realm. They add value to adjacent properties and to the community as a whole. Streets that fit community contexts help increase developable land, create open space, and reconnect communities to their neighbors, a waterfront, or a park. They can reduce household dependency on the automobile, allowing children to walk to school, and helping build healthier lifestyles by increasing the potential to walk or cycle. Think public benefit, not just private convenience.

Due to peak-hour design, Speer Boulevard in Denver limits the northward expansion of downtown Denver while remaining empty at midday. Instead of adding value to the community, it actually limits the city economically, socially, and in every other way. It doesn't even do what it was designed to do: solve congestion during peak hour. I-25, just to the north at the top of the photo, is bumper to bumper during peak hours. The 10-lane cross-sections become a mere parking lot.

Designing street networks around places benefits the overall transportation system. Great places — popular spots with a good mix of people and activities, which can be comfortably reached by foot, bike, and transit — put little strain on the transportation system. Poor land use planning, by contrast, generates thousands of unnecessary vehicle trips, clogging up roads and further degrading the quality of adjacent places.

Transportation professionals can no longer pretend that land use is not their business. Transportation projects that were not integrated with land use planning have created too many negative impacts to ignore.

Transportation — the process of going to a place — can be wonderful if we rethink the idea of transportation itself. We must remember that transportation is the journey; enhancing the community is the goal.

Rule Three: Design for Appropriate Speeds

Streets need to be designed in a way that induces traffic speeds appropriate for that particular context. Whereas freeways — which must not drive through the hearts of cities — should accommodate regional mobility, speeds on other roads need to reflect that these are places for people, not just conduits for cars. Desired speeds can be attained with a number of design tools, including changes in roadway widths and intersection design. Placemaking can also be a strategy for controlling speeds,. Minimal building setbacks, trees, and sidewalks with lots of activity can affect the speed at which motorists comfortably drive.

Speed kills the sense of place. Cities and town centers are destinations, not raceways, and commerce needs traffic — foot traffic. You cannot buy a dress from the driver’s seat of a car. Access, not automobiles, should be the priority in city centers. Don’t ban cars, but remove the presumption in their favor. People first!

Moving Beyond Complete Streets to Build Communities

Complete streets policies support these three rules. More importantly, they open the door for new ways of thinking about how the transportation profession should approach streets. But communities cannot get complacent and expect transportation planners to carry the whole load of creating great places. Instead, community leaders and advocates need to collaborate with the profession to tap their engineering skills to help build streets that are places.

Using an “upside-down planning approach,” this new collaboration can help the United State achieve success in tackling public health problems, climate change, energy consumption, and a failing economy. We can once again foster streets that are the cornerstone of great places.

To see the palette of PPS tools that are available to help you create streets that are places and foster “Building Communities Through Transportation,” visit our transportation services page.

Often, livable streets movements start at the grassroots level, and after increasing pressure, the city government responds. Interestingly, in Philadelphia, the democratic streets movement appears to be occurring simultaneously at grassroots and institutional levels.

A temporary chicane is part of the Better Blocks Philly project. Photo: Gary Toth

Drawing attention to the current street renaissance is Better Blocks Philly, a 10-day project of community-driven temporary street changes that runs through October 23. Leading the project is the South of South Street Neighborhood Association (SOSNA). With the  help of several Philadelphia engineering and design firms, they’ve constructed temporary street changes on streets within the Graduate Hospital neighborhood. The end goal is to demonstrate the value of “complete streets” concepts to neighbors.

SOSNA invited me to help kick off their project by speaking on October 13 about how to use Completing Streets to foster Placemaking and what PPS calls “Streets as Places.”  The attendees responded well to a dialogue about how Placemaking principles can help reverse the long-term damage that Jane Jacobs attributed to the 20th Century trend of tuning our streets for the car, which has gradually nibbled away at our communities.

A pop-up parklet at the corner of 17th and Christian Streets, which later in the night served as a gathering place. Photo: Gary Toth

With the support of the city, SOSNA installed temporary bump-outs, mid-block crossings and pop-up parklets that double as bump-outs. The parklet at the corner of 17th Street and Christian served as a wonderful outdoor café for those of us waiting for the kickoff event to begin. The SOSNA residents had hoped to install several other features, such as mini traffic circles, but city staff have plans to pilot those elsewhere in Philadelphia.

The city is certainly not sitting on its hands while neighborhoods are fermenting change. In 2009, it painted buffered bike lanes on Pine Street and Spruce streets in Center City on a temporary pilot basis. This was an experiment to determine the effect that the elimination of a travel lane and replacement with bike lanes would have on all modes of traffic. Since each street was scheduled to be resurfaced a year later, this was a low-cost, low-risk experiment.

Both engineers and citizens participated in the evaluation, and the experiment was judged a resounding success at all levels. Crashes for all modes went down. Most notable was a 34 percent decline in crashes that resulted in injuries requiring a trip to the hospital. Surprisingly, crash rates even went down for motor vehicles, which is attributable to elimination of speeding by the 15 percent of the motorists who used the extra lane to dangerously weave in and out at well above the speed limit.

Spruce Street before. Photo: City of Philadelphia

Spruce Street after. Photo: City of Philadelphia

Cycling rates on the street increased, riding on the sidewalks decreased, pedestrians felt safer — and all of this was accomplished without reducing travel times and traffic volumes.

Encouraged by the success of the pilots on Spruce and Pine streets, the city decided to try its hand at reducing the cross-section of Market Street between 15th and 20th streets. This truly shows courage of conviction — Philadelphia City Hall is located at 15th and Market! Market Street is also a major destination street in Center City, while still needing to handle traffic.

City staff feel confident that it has more than enough lane capacity to handle traffic even after a lane reduction. But to test the theory, they’ve decided to close one lane off temporarily using orange cones and barrels. It the experiment goes as the city expects, the reclaimed lane on Market Street will be reprogrammed with a bike lane, landscaping, and improved pedestrian crossings.

Read more about the Market Street project on NewsWorks, and find out more about Better Blocks Philly on their Facebook page or on their website.

Congestion on Maine's Gateway 1

Maine’s new Governor Paul LePage has shut down State DOT support of the grassroots, bottom-up Maine Gateway 1, a community-led land-use and transportation planning project for Maine’s mid-coast.  A letter from LePage’s office to Don White, Chairman of the project’s Implementation Steering Committee, explains “Gateway 1 does not correspond with the immediate priorities of this administration…we have made the decision to suspend the planning process.”

This decision is so short sighted on so many levels that I am not sure where to begin. Governor LePage’s unilateral decision to abandon 21 communities in Maine is a huge step backward for 21st Century transportation. It is a blow both to the slow migration of government back to democratic grassroots decision-making and to the public support of the idea that transportation agencies are justified in raising funds to continue with their missions.

The Action Plan for Maine Gateway 1 involved representatives from 21 Corridor Communities to build a vision and a specific set of solutions to encourage local economic growth in addition to addressing the region's transportation concerns.

The project’s Action Plan says it “illustrates how solutions can emerge when communities team up with state and federal agencies and put everything on the table.  The plan was developed by representatives from 21 Corridor communities in the form of a Steering Committee, who worked together with the Maine Department of Transportation and Maine State Planning Office with the support of the Federal Highway Administration and four regional planning commissions.  Together they developed not just a vision, but a set of specific solutions, both local and regional.  They arrived at a plan that simultaneously provides for economic growth, preserves transportation resources, and keeps the highly livable, scenic ‘brand’ of MidCoast Maine.  At the heart of the plan is a marriage of land use and transportation. The plan recommends a pattern of future development that will reduce stress on the transportation system along with a set of strategic transportation investments.”

One would think that both liberals and conservatives alike would praise such intents. Yet, last fall, anti-livability demonstrators began turning up at community organized meetings and used all sorts of tactics to disrupt the discussion.  Members of the Tea Party – who solidly supported Governor LePage’s election- even made wild allegations that somehow the United Nations was behind Gateway 1.  Our biggest loss in this move may not be the project itself but the disappearance of truth and good old fashioned, honest and respectful American debate in the political decision-making process.

If Gateway 1 sought to revoke property rights and community self determination as part of some “nefarious” UN plot, you couldn’t tell it from talking to the hard working American citizen leaders in the 21 communities that participated in the Gateway 1 process.

In fact, I can tell you so myself: as part of a National Cooperative Highway Research Program study, I interviewed residents and leaders of a number of the communities.  I also participated in and observed the community response to the early democratic town hall type discussions that kicked off the process.   Here are quotes contained in notes from my interviews: “the state agreed to honor the local right to self-determination”;  or “for the first time, the state DOT has shown a sincere interest in helping us sustain our local economy and character”;  or “for once, the state government listened to our needs and concerns.”  Overall, the process had restored the communities’ belief that the state DOT was there to help them, instead of focusing more on bridges and pavement than on people’s well-being. This all ended with Governor LePage’s decision to “suspend the planning process” on March 2, 2011.

Those of us who are not embedded in the 1950s era transportation culture realize that the era of single purpose spending is over.  We can no longer afford to shovel precious tax payer dollars to resurface a half of a mile of Interstate highway, when the same investment — $1.5 million – could help create wealth and preserve rural landscapes in 21 communities along 120 miles of Maine’s mid-coast. The Gateway 1 project recognized this.

I will close this post with some of the same words that I used to begin my June 8, 2010 piece Putting the Livability Agenda Back in Place: we are entering a dangerous era in the history of transportation.  Our existing infrastructure is crumbling, and the public has lost its willingness to fund transportation improvements. Investment in high-speed, grade-separated highway capacity worked well for a few decades, but has led to unintended consequences for the nation’s health and the global climate. Meanwhile, research shows that congestion indicators in metropolitan areas across America are much worse today than they were in the 1970s.  In many parts of the country, even in some of the the least affected areas, congestion measures are 200 to 400 percent higher than they were before a massive investment in freeways.

To navigate our way forward over the next 20 years, we will need to base our decisions on data and learn which investment decisions of the 20th Century worked (and which ones made our problems more complicated).   We have to uncover the truth about how things have changed and think carefully about how things will continue to change over the next fifty years, adapt to those new realities, and govern accordingly.

We have to recognize that relying on a transportation culture that intentionally puts pavement and bridges over the needs of communities (which resulted partially from a policy that had its purposes in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s), is no more viable today that counting on the milkman to deliver milk to our door every day.  But most important, we have to foster the tried and true American principle of open, honest, and truthful debate.

—

For more on this topic: 

• Maine Governor Paul LePage Shuts Down Gateway 1 Project, featured by  Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)
• Money-saving Planning Effort Squelched by Maine Gov. Paul LePage, featured on Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Gary Toth is Senior Director of Transportation Initiatives with Project for Public Spaces.  Gary has thirty eight years of experience in the transportation establishment, thirty four as an engineer helping the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) navigate projects through the public process. Meg MacIver also contributed to this post.

 

The United States Department of Transportation is planning to start leveraging transportation spending to build livable and sustainable communities.

Communities and advocates have been pressing the US transportation industry to be more proactive about achieving livability goals for decades. Yet, the transportation industry continued to pursue the notion that the safety and mobility of the motoring public was paramount.  Prior to the Obama Administration, these calls fell on deaf ears; now, it seems, we have an opportunity to begin to turn the battleship around.

“The pedestrian is the indicator species for a healthy, vibrant community.”
- Beth Osbourne, Deputy Assistant Director for Transportation Policy USDOT
For more quotes from the forum see our live Tweeting

On Thursday, September 24, ContextSensitiveSolutions.org, an FHWA website managed by Project for Public Spaces, hosted an online Forum on Livability for the US Department of Transportation (USDOT).In this forum, USDOT detailed several new programs related to a new Partnership for Sustainable Communities among USDOT, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that promise to reshape development patterns around creating stronger community centers, more compact, mixed-use and walkable environments, and enhanced transportation options.At the same time, these programs would focus development in existing developed areas and protect farmland and open space.

Transportation policy has drastically shaped the face of America.

We hope that we will look back on this initiative as a watershed moment in the history of transportation in America—a return to the idea that transportation investment should be about livability and community outcomes, not simply moving vehicles.

The idea that the transportation system should support community and societal outcomes is nothing new.Prior to the passage of the first federal aid highway act in 1916, road building was the responsibility of communities.They built roads to serve people and the needs of the community.Even when Americans authorized their government to begin taxing them to add highway infrastructure and create dedicated transportation agencies, we did so because we wanted the government to help improve our quality of life.For reasons which I outlined in a 2007 article entitled “Back to Basics in Transportation Planning” the American transportation establishment has lost its way.It is exciting to believe that the Obama Administration will be trying to help us find our way back to our roots.

Transportation policy is increasingly including efforts to improve accessibility, rather than just mobility.

Today’s webinar built upon the anticipation and excitement created by the June announcement of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.Key officials from the USDOT’s Office of the Secretary (Beth Osborne), the Federal Highway Administration (Gloria Shepherd), and the Federal Transit Administration (Robert J. Tuccillo) covered the guiding principles of the new Partnership:

1. Promote more transportation choices
2. Promote equitable affordable housing
3. Enhance economic competitiveness
4. Support existing communities
5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment
6. Value communities and neighborhoods

These goals signal that our transportation leaders will finally tackle broader societal issues, which for decades they have insisted were not their purview.Issues covered by the presenters included land use, housing, climate, energy security and public health.

Later, the webinar addressed the inevitable question:“What Does the Future Hold?”Answers were encouraging. We can look forward to performance-based planning, especially using benchmarks that go beyond the narrow transportation focus that has conventionally dominated DOT and MPO planning and investments.Finally, an era may be approaching in which community vitality, equitable access to transportation, and a match between housing, jobs and transportation choices are equally as important as pavement quality and congestion levels.

Major changes to long-range planning practices, which advocates such as PPS have demanded for quite some time, are also on the horizon.I have personally advocated for multi-modal corridor planning that integrates transportation and land use, with Placemaking as a key foundation.PPS will again explore some of these ideas in a blog post next week.

Most critically, the speakers indicated that there will be changes in the transportation funding structure.Currently, there is a huge disconnect between strategic and policy-level transportation planning and how public funds are actually spent.It is encouraging to hear that these expenditures will be based on performance measures that go beyond pure transportation objectives.It sounds like we may actually be getting back to the basics!

The road ahead for transportation in America will only get more interesting -- and hopefully more livable.

PPS has been contributing to the idea of livable transportation for almost two decades.We were involved in publications like the The Role of Transit in Creating Livable Metropolitan Communities, as well as a 2008 publication written for AARP entitled Great Corridors, Great Communities: The Quiet Revolution in Transportation Planning.Additionally, our recent Citizen’s Guide to Better Streets: How to Engage your Transportation Agency was published to help advocates work constructively with public agencies in order to create more livable and sustainable streets and neighborhoods.In these efforts, we are proud to have been able to build on and supplement the work of other great organizations such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Reconnecting America, the Surface Transportation Policy project, among others.

We believe that non-profit organizations and advocates across the country—at the local, state and national levels—have both leadership and implementation roles to play in helping Washington achieve these goals. PPS will continue to be actively engaged to keep the public informed to make change happen in communities across the country.

Abu Dhabi, a rapidly-growing city

The third in a series of reflections from the travels of a 34-year veteran Traffic Engineer from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.  Gary Toth, who had previously never been abroad, spent a week in the United Arab Emirates capital city of Abu Dhabi. He found the city to be rapidly positioning itself to become one of the most progressive and sustainable transportation networks.

Abu Dhabi is a city of almost 900,000 people. It has grown remarkably since 1960, when it was a village of 25,000 based on camel herding, pearl diving fishing and farming.  Then it was learned that Abu Dhabi – currently one of the seven emirates comprising the nation of the United Arab Emirates – was sitting on one tenth of the world’s oil reserves.

Abu Dhabi grew slowly at first.   With most of its growth after 1975, Abu Dhabi is a modern city that grew during the height and glory of the automobile era.  With endless and cheap oil, it was logical that the city planners saw no need for transit, walkability or other non automobile modes.  Interestingly, availability of cheap and abundant energy fueled Abu Dhabi’s growth much in the same way that it did for America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America was the world’s leading oil producer. Transit was deemed irrelevant, inconvenient and restricting, and the city was built on a backbone of wide, modern boulevards laid out on a super block type grid.   The downtown core consists of a multitude of 20 story or more buildings fronting on these boulevards.

Although their super blocks are very porous and contain low density buildings laid out on a grid, the grid is not connected well across the broad boulevards and much of the carrying capacity of the internal streets has been clogged by illegal but municipally tolerated parking.  The net result is the same as it has been for every other automobile oriented city in the world: cars and more cars, queued up 18 hours a day.

Inside a downtown superblock. Note “illegal” row of parking in middle of the street.

With the downtown core at capacity, smaller satellite centers started springing up wherever there was space.  To its credit, Abu Dhabi recognized the unsustainability of continuing to base its growth solely on the car and cheap energy without planning to minimize congestion, conservation of natural resources and energy. The city is now planning for a sustainable new future.  In September 2007, it released Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, which calls for new national performance measures that respect natural resources, the fragile environment, air quality and livability.  A nation that has abundant oil has called to “…cautiously use existing wealth, to actively explore renewable energy production, to reduce the consumption of non renewable resources…”

This release was rapidly followed by the development of a new Urban Street Design Manual (SDM), due for publication in August of this year.  I was fortunate to have played a small part in it this past June, with the lion’s share of the work having been done by their Department of Transport, their Urban Planning Council and a consultant team led by Otak International and Nelson Nygaard.   The SDM pays homage to the AASHTO Green Book – America’s universally accepted design reference and highway design guidelines.  While thanking them for serving as the foundation for design of the current transportation network in Abu Dhabi, they found it lacking to serve as a guide for “…urban streets where modes of transportation other than the automobile are present.”

The new SDM will be founded on the following community based principles:

1. Good street design starts with pedestrians. The world’s great cities are delightful and safe for walking, resulting not only in reduced rates of driving but also improved public health.
2. Street design supports reducing Abu Dhabi’s CO2 emissions, urban heat island effect and water consumption.
3. Street connectivity enhances capacity and allows smooth traffic flow.
4. Street design follows from place. Streets are not just for movement, but for supporting the land uses along them, including the enjoyment of residents and economic success of businesses.

Wow!

A city with abundant oil and the ensuing wealth to accomplish whatever it pleases has decided to turn the corner.  A city that continues to grow in leaps and bounds in spite of escalating congestion and inadequate infrastructure has decided to reinvent itself based on placemaking and sustainability. Why can’t we do the same in the US?

Of course, I am not naïve, and there are some obvious answers that others will offer:

1. Abu Dhabi does not have to face the political gauntlet to get things done.  Although my experience working with Abu Dhabi government in June reveals that they are open to ideas and input, the truth of the matter is that they don’t have navigate the grueling politics of America to get things accomplished.
2. Abu Dhabi is in a much sounder financial position based on the nationalization of their oil reserves.  This will make a difference when it comes to rightsizing, retrofitting and traffic calming existing roads, as well as creating the transit backbone of the future Abu Dhabi.
3. Abu Dhabi is so new as a major city that its bureaucracies have not had the time to develop an entrenched culture.

While the Untied States will certainly have to face these obstacles, there is no doubt in my mind that many can turn the corner here in America as well.  To do so, it will be necessary for those of us who recognize the need to change start working together to frame the issues in a way that encourages our political system to line up behind the national interest.   The myriad of non profits, philanthropic funders and private sector folks who are all pushing the proverbial cart in the same direction will have to roll up our sleeves and find a way to finally and totally align our missions.  We will have to work together to take advantage of the Federal Highway Administration’s Livable Communities Initiative.

If we sit back and watch Abu Dhabi, the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries of the world adapt to the new world order and position themselves to be world leaders, by default, America will be relegated to the “second world.”

Shared Space in the Netherlands

The second in a series of groundbreaking reflections from the travels of a 34-year veteran Traffic Engineer from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.  Gary Toth, who had previously never been to Europe, spent a week touring the Netherlands with fellow PPSers Fred Kent and Kathy Madden.  Their mission was to learn more about the Dutch approach to Sustainable Safety, bikeped accommodations and community-based transportation to support our Building Community through Transportation campaign.

Below is what they learned about the emerging concept of Shared Space, from seeing it first-hand and spending time with Willem Foorthuis and Wiebe Wieling of the Shared Space Institute.

What is a Shared Space?
Shared Space is more a way of thinking than it is a design concept.   It is most readily recognized as a street space where all traffic control devices such as signals and stop signs, all markings such as crosswalks, and all signing have been removed.  Curbing is removed to blur the lines between sidewalks and motorized travel way.  The philosophy is that absence of all of those features forces all users of the space — from pedestrians to drivers — to negotiate passage through the space via eye contact and person to person negotiation.

This is all premised on the idea that traditional streets allocate distinct spaces to the different modes, and in doing so create a false sense of security to each user leading them to behave as if they have no responsibility to look out for other users in “their” space.  This obviously works best for operators of motor vehicles, who are sitting within the protection of a ton and a half of steel.

How did it originate?
Shared Space was pioneered by the late Dutch traffic engineer and PPS friend Hans Monderman.   Monderman spent the early part of his career as a “traditional” traffic engineer.   As his experience grew, he became concerned that many of the engineering “improvements” that government was making in the interest of safety actually made some road segments more dangerous.  He observed that this was particularly true in urbanized areas, from villages to cities.   These were the areas that brought high volumes of pedestrians and bicyclists into conflict with cars and trucks.  In urban areas, the allocation of space is heavily regulated by signing, traffic lights, crosswalks, sidewalks, etc, all of which create the sense for each user that the space is their own and they can behave as they choose therein.   Responsibility for one’s own behavior was eroded; users simply had to stay within the limits prescribed by speed limits, white stripes and red or green lights. Monderman is quoted as saying: “We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior …The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”

Monderman developed a simple, if counterintuitive solution.  If he removed the traditional cacophony of signing, striping, and traffic lights, people would stop looking at signs and start looking at each other.   Particularly with respect to drivers, this returned them to the mindset of a fellow citizen, inducing them to regain the manners that they possess when crossing paths with a fellow pedestrian while passing through a corridor at home or at work.   One nods to the other, “go ahead;” they smile at each other and move on their respective ways.   On our roads, motorists have been groomed to feel as if they have absolute priority and there is no need to respect the passage of pedestrians or bikers, at least until the traffic light turns red.

This concept is often misunderstood in American traffic engineering circles.   Monderman has occasionally been vilified in the US as “the Dutch nut who wants to remove all signs, curbs and traffic signals on roads.”   Early on, he was thought to be a dangerous fool by his fellow engineers in the Netherlands.   Thanks to his remarkable persistence and professionalism, he was able to overcome ingrained views on road safety engineering on arterials and streets in urban areas.

A Balanced transportation system
Monderman believed firmly that in order for Shared Spaces to work, they needed to be part of a system that consists of well-organized, well-regulated highway systems.   He was known to say, “The slow network needs the fast network to work.”   We heard the same from Willem Foorthuis of the Shared Space Institute while touring the Haren Shared Space (photos below).   When I asked Willem whether government has been receiving pushback from motorists, he answered, “No. Folks traveling longer distances from village to village have ample options to exit the road before reaching the Shared Space, and use the parallel high speed through road.  It is what they would have likely done anyway, Shared Space or not.”

Monderman also made no claim that his Shared Space principles would apply universally.   Like any good traffic engineer, he advocated an “engineering” study of a particular site to determine what would work best.

The role of land use in creating a successful Shared Space
All of the Shared Spaces that Monderman – or the Shared Space Institute (the organization that he helped to create) – have helped organize have been in “urbanized” areas.    Like many American traffic engineers, Monderman and the Shared Space Institute believe that the adjacent land use – the relationship of the buildings to the street, the presence of shops and other activities, etc — significantly influences motorists behavior.   “If you want people to behave like they are in a village, then build a village,” he was often heard saying.

The two photos at right from Ejby in Denmark demonstrate the effect of land use on the effectiveness of shared space.

1. A Shared Space was created on both sides of a regional rail line that has bisected the town in an attempt to counteract the bisecting effect.  This photo is from the least successful of the two spaces, which doesn’t have the land use to support the Shared Space concept.  As a result, when we were at the site, cars continued to speed through this space with little regard for pedestrians:

2. The next picture is from the western side of the tracks in Ejby.  Here it can be seen that a village setting has been created and the site worked more effectively:

The politics of Shared Space
Shared Space also has a political dimension to it.
We in America think we have a monopoly on politics and resistance to new ideas, but public skepticism about Shared Spaces runs high in Europe as well.   When we were in Haren, where one of the most successful Shared Spaces to date has been created, Mayor M. Boumans lamented that he had to compromise his vision for a pure shared space in order to get the townspeople to buy in.   Seniors, skeptical that about being able to cross anywhere they choose, persisted in asking for a striped crosswalk.  Shopowners, worried about cars parking too close to their shops, lobbied for a physical measure to limit how close cars could get to the shops.  Mayor Boumans decided that he would need to settle for a very good Shared Space that he could build during his term, rather than continue to fight for a perfect Shared Space that might only exist in his imagination if he didn’t yield.  In the photos below, one can see how bike racks were strategically located to organize where cars could park:

Willem Foorthuis, Director of Research and Development for the Shared Space Institute, told us that creation of Shared Space is a political process, not an engineering process.   As stated in the Institute’s book entitled From Project to Process, A Task for Everybody:
“Often in Spatial Design projects, the role of politics is limited to approving plans, but in a Shared Space process, the politicians are expected to have a coherent view of man and society from the outset and have to make a definite choice about what level of participation is desired.”

In essence, creation of a Shared Space requires not only removing physical barriers, demarcations and signs from the space itself, but from the planning process as well.   It requires champions who understand how to collaborate across many disciplines to achieve buy in, and the persistence to push on in spite of the naysayers.    In many ways, the process is similar to the PPS Placemaking Process.  In the words of PPS Founder and President Fred Kent, “At first, they will say it can’t be done, and then, you do it!”

Will Shared Space work in the US?
It is perfectly clear that from the engineering perspective, there is no reason why successful Shared Spaces cannot be created in America. From 2004 – 2008, seven European partners from five countries have created pilot projects.   Most have successfully enhanced the district where they were located.  Adjacent land use is a bigger key to success than engineering.    When created in village settings, where speeds are naturally low anyway, the pilot Shared Spaces were working spectacularly well.   When inserted into non-village settings, the sought after panacea for speeding failed.

In Drachten, the Netherlands, a Shared Space has resulted in such a sense of security that I was able to sit in a chair in the middle of the intersection, with little fear and, I might add little harassment from motorists!

Gary Toth safely sits in the middle of a Shared Space

There are places in the US where Shared Space concepts have already been implemented with some measure of success.   See below:

Cambridge, Massachusetts near Harvard Square

West Palm Beach, Florida

Davis Street, Portland, Oregon

While each of these depart somewhat from the true principles of Shared Space, they demonstrate that in the right places, we can create Shared Spaces in the US.

How do Shared Spaces differ from Woonerfs?
Woonerfs are places where pedestrians are given priority over cars.   In Shared Spaces all modes are considered equal.

Sharing the Road

Shared Space offers a basis for addressing safety issues, for overcoming community severance, for tackling congestion and for enhancing economic vitality in streets and public spaces. This can be accomplished if a street that passes through a place is thought of not only as a part of that place, but is designed and managed to allow traffic to be fully integrated with other human activity, not separated from it.

However, Shared Space implies more than simple design techniques. It also requires an innovative approach to the process of planning, designing and decision-making. New structures for municipal organization and public involvement are the result.

One benefit of Shared Space is that it empowers individuals to take responsibility for their own behavior.    The current preponderance of road rules and markings strip motorists of the ability to be considerate.  The mayor of Bohmte, Germany, a town implementing such a scheme, is quoted as saying, “We don’t want the cars alone to have precedence; we want to try and make the area pleasant for everybody.”

The Shared Space philosophy is not anticar.   It acknowledges that there is a role for the larger-meshed fast network, which is needed to support the fine-meshed slow network. The key point is that on the slow network motor traffic is welcomed as a guest, but has to adapt to certain social norms of behavior. The layout of the road must make this clear.

Studies completed by Monderman reveal substantial reductions in crashes, particularly serious crashes and fatalities in Shared Spaces.   This occurs because the perception of risk to oneself and to others causes drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians to be more alert and take fewer liberties.   This leads to more eye contact, and more measured decision-making which ultimately leads to less accidents.

Next Steps for Learning and Advancing Shared Space
In our time with the Shared Space Institute, we agreed upon several principles and areas of further action:

• Design Standards are not enough as even if you follow all of them, it doesn’t guarantee that the space will work as a place.

• We need to focus more on learning how places are created and learning from the projects that have been implemented in terms of their success or failure in creating a place and why or why not.

• There is a need for real scientific research that shows the value of Streets as Places/Shared Spaces in order to give credibility to the ideas which may be perceived as intuitive. But this research needs to be “action research” and we need to develop methods for evaluating spaces that add to just establishing standards.  We need to do economic research for land use and also for the CROW Road Standards. Data that is needed relates to: noise, fuel used, dust, economic impact and safety.

• Shared Space Insitute is currently doing research on blind people’s use of shared space (with members of an institution for the blind and its members) and have data on this already.

• Shared space is not a transportation concept, it is a political concept and placemaking is the process to accomplish it politically. They say that with Shared space, the road is just a part of the space.

• With Shared Spaces and Placemaking, there must be short term experiments!

Our friends at London’s CABE Space are also working to introduce shared space there.

The TCC report, while not being taken too seriously amongst transportation professionals, has received a lot of media attention, probably due to a concerted effort by the TCCs media relations department. In the interest of full disclosure, readers who may potentially be influenced by this research should understand that the TCC is not an independent organization with an unbiased interest in whether more and bigger roads get built. The TCC consists of 28 national construction organizations and labor unions, with two roadway design organizations thrown in for good measure. It is co-chaired by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association and the Associated General Contractors of America.

This is not a bad thing.  I spent 34 years helping a state DOT build roads myself.  But let’s not accept this as independent research.

Readers should also be aware of the major assumptions made in the report.

First, by their own admission, for vehicles other than large trucks, the TCC had no real data on whether road conditions actually contributed to the crash or not. The report is completely silent on whether this is really appropriate considering the huge difference in handling characteristics of cars versus large trucks. This is particularly true regarding events where vehicles left the roadway and collided with a fixed object such as a tree or bridge abutment.

Second, the TCC report admits that it does not contain adequate information on travel speeds: “In the 2006 CDS, 61% of cases have missing values for reported travel speed.” The most current information available was from 1986, and even then, the data was from only a fraction of the universe representing crash data collection.

These two major gaps in the research are particularly troubling when applied to urban arterials. We are being told by the TCC — frightened actually — into believing that we need to ramp up our “Forgiving Highway” approach.  Straighten and widen our roads or our lives will be at peril! The Forgiving Highway approach was cultivated on the Proving Grounds of General Motors almost 5 decades ago and has worked marvelously for the Interstate Highways and other freeways.

The problem is that modern transportation engineering, giddy over the success of application of Forgiving Highways to our Freeways, began to apply the same principles to local streets and the in-between class of roads: arterials. It was logical to think this way, and still is OK on rural arterials, where killer trees and ditches should be addressed.  However, the method is counterproductive in urbanized areas. An increasing body of research is revealing what Eric Dumbaugh (a brilliant young researcher at Texas A&M) talks about in several papers. “Livable Streets,” those designed in harmony to support (not ignore) the urban context, induce drivers to travel at speeds appropriate for urban environments. His research shows the Forgiving Highway concept applied to urban arterials actually increases midblock crashes and also sideswipes and encounters with poles, trees and other fixed objects.

I am a career transportation engineer, so I obviously believe in safety. But Dumbaugh’s research confirms what I began to understand during the last 15 years of my career.  Indiscriminately widening and straightening roads is not automatically safer.  Site specific engineering analysis of crashes needs to be applied before deciding on how to make a road safer.  Sometimes slowing it down is better.  Interestingly, some folks at PennDOT came to the same conclusion. Their back-of-the-envelope research revealed that crash rates increased on half of about two dozen of their “safety” projects. The only conclusion that makes sense is that motorists, feeling safer at higher speeds, drove faster.  Sometimes, upgrading one section of roadway might actually induce motorists to speed into a hazard on the adjacent section.

Am I anti construction and jobs? Absolutely not. Collectively it would cost just as much if not more to deploy a national safety program that rebuilds roadsides instead of clearing them out. The construction industry, which has helped America build the greatest system of high speed roads in the history of the world, can now help save lives by gearing up to help us build the rest of the transportation network: both slow and fast! I am sure that the Transportation Construction Coalition is well intended and wants to make our roads safer as well as create jobs. I urge them to “look before they leap” before using their substantial resources to promote and lobby for application of the Forgiving Highways paradigm to all of our roads.