Walkable Communities: Planners Presentation

—TJPDC April 22, 2003

Presenters:

Notes compiled by Hannah Twaddell, Renaissance Planning Group

Attending:

Ursula Lemanski, National Park Service

Donna Shaunesey & Jim Fitzgerald, JAUNT

Emily Harper, Nelson Parks & Rec - Get Active In Nelson

Bill Guiher, VDOT

Mark Rickards, VDRPT

Becky Crowe, FHWA Bike/Ped

Chris Gensic

Rhonda Edwards, TJPDC RideShare

Bruce Appleyard, Charlottesville Planning Commission

Theresa Butler, VDOT Assistantt Resident Engineer

Darren Shafer, Roanoke Valley RC/RideShare Manager/Traffic Engineer, Roanoke Co

Rebecca White, University Transit System

Michael Lasko, RideShare Outreach Coordinator

Fred Boger, Nelson County Planning

Cabell Lawton, Fluvanna County

Hannah Twaddell, Renaissance Planning Group

Morning presentation:

• Monument Avenue, Richmond, a stellar walkable street. Historic area.
• people in love with our streets? Do they want their wedding photos taken on them? Photos of Embarcadero. Wide sidewalks, on-street parking (convenient for small scale retail), street cleaning; bike lanes; travel lanes; light rail
• State Street, Santa Barbara - 14,000-16,000 vpd on two lanes with bike lanes; parallel roads & grid; some 20 blocks long and planning to add 5 or 6 more; electric buses running every five minutes; every type of shop from pawn shops to Macy's, Office Max, hotels, restaurants; the street runs under Highway 101, the model Harrison used for the Hydraulic/29 workshop
• Mountain View (San Francisco) intersection, a former T that is now curved at the end with a median- makes it physically impossible to speed up at the yellow light
• Castro Street (Mountain View), designed by UC Berkeley landscape architects Michael Friedman and Greg Tong; a two-lane street narrowed from four lanes with close-set buildings, sidewalks, parking, valley gutters (at edge of parking instead of sidewalks curb); sizing and scaling results of speeds of about 20 mph.
• Speed limits - for streets with on-street parking & shopping you want 20-25 mph; for parkways you can have up to 35 without too much noise
• Santa Cruz Pacific Avenue - redeveloped after 1989 earthquake - turned into a great street to draw in shoppers and not for regional traffic, spurring great high density buildings; residential and commercial stock; has not only space and place to walk, but also many interesting details that make it inviting
• Greenville SC - still functions as a main street, traffic moves slowly but flows; this was developed under a German mayor and Aubrey Watts when he was city manager (?) there; different street treatments at crosswalks; shrubbery encircled by iron railings that channel pedestrians and cars (could do this in shopping center parking lots).
• Mesa AZ - main street - seven lanes narrowed to four with medians and channelized islands; moves about 15,000 cars with parallel streets; a recent change that is beginning to support the revitalization of downtown. So think of highway dollars as core dollars for rebuilding local economies. Flat median - brick (stamped concrete) lined with yellow lines.
• Palo Alto California St - moving about 21,000 vpd; angled parking & two inner/two outer lanes. Some cyclists feel uncomfortable with this - you must be OK about commanding the outer lane, which is moving slowly, so it's possible. Some communities are trying reverse angled parking (Seattle) with success - drivers back into the space and pull out, allowing much better visibility.
• Marina, CA - pop 20,000, could support about 4 or 5 villages, currently has no downtown and just a string of shopping plazas; they are locating a transit hub there but it has no linkages or parking connecting it - they need to complete the missing pieces of the street grid and build the small bike/ped and emergency responder links from the main streets into the activity centers like schools - as little as 100 linear feet of concrete in some places. Creating this connectivity will set the stage for the redevelopment and is the cheapest solution. And so far no community in the US as far as Dan knows has applied for funding to complete their connectivity. Many of these projects would be less than $1,000, but they require a stellar public process in order to gain commitment to connecting people's backyards.

Notes from walking tour of downtown Charlottesville - mall, Market, Preston, West Main.

Ways to improve:

• Public seating on the downtown mall (almost all at cafés now)
• Trash pickup and strict enforcement to prevent merchants from putting out trash out inappropriately
• Put "men at work" signs in the street instead of on sidewalks
• Redesign intersections to allow pedestrians to cross safely - properly located mid block crossings, reorient stacking lanes, replace signalized intersections with roundabouts - make intersections "compact and efficient"
• Look at Tuscon, AZ for the best engineering work on mid block crossings

Afternoon presentation:

• Great graphic of three layers - civic, commercial, residential overlaid into neighborhood
• There is no answer to traffic congestion except building mixed use villages with holistic transportation
• Most of the improvements in older streets are small, but significant - street trees, arcades, on-street parking - and can be funded through a variety of sources - CDBG, highway, economic development programs.
• Need to work closely with economic development and social service communities to ensure that redevelopment doesn't cause gentrification to the point of pushing lower income housing and discount shopping out of the village.
• The villages make a lot more money for retail, and the parking gets used around the clock instead of only during daytime hours.
• Good zoning: www.lgc.org (CA local govt commission) - Ahwahnee principles code book is about to come out. Some of the best communities, however, have very few written regs, and instead have changed the process & trained staff to apply good principles.
• Portland (and soon Charlottesville) have regs such as requirements for connections in all new developments.
• Seattle has institutionalized a lot of the bike & ped principles, but still relies primarily on neighborhood master plans.
• Bridgeport Way, University Place, WA - took a center turn lane, converted it into a median and used access management to create a multi-modal street for bikes, peds, transit, cars. Crashes reduced significantly. City has gone from two to 400 miles of sidewalks, attracted 60 new businesses on the corridor.
• We have a lot of transportation money; the problem is the priorities. For the money it takes to do one freeway interchange ($100 million) you can put in a light rail transit system.
• Mixed use buildings - typically ground level retail or businesses such as medical offices, offices on second floor, residential on upper floor(s); Broadway St, Vancouver BC
• Winter Park FL - very quick (two-years) conversion from a JC Penney's anchored mall into a dense, walkable shopping & entertainment village- so fast that they still haven't built the structured parking, so people wait in lines of cars for a mile to get in to park (even though they could park in a neighborhood and walk there instead).
• Do taller buildings require different fire equipment? Typically three to four stories can be handled with existing equipment, which is about the most many redeveloping cities will go.
• Galaxy Village Center example - showed various stages in planview and photos of the conversion of a linear street into a mixed use shopping and entertainment district
• Missoula, MT example of a street ready to redevelop
• Level of Quality instead of Level of Service. The LOS measures in the Highway Capacity Manual now essentially call for the fewest pedestrians possible as LOS A, exactly the opposite of what one would plan to achieve in creating a pedestrian-friendly community. Dan has developed Level of Quality measures instead - see his chart.
• US A1A Fort Lauderdale, FL - redevelopment of that street which was at gridlock into a multi-modal corridor with pedestrian access to the beach -by taking out the diagonal parking, putting in a median and sidewalks.
• Example of replacing a portion of a center turn lane into a median with only one turning point (combined with access management along the corridor) - lowers vehicle conflicts, increases pedestrian safety.
• State DOT's actually prefer sidewalks to be offset from the roadway because it helps protect the outer edge of the right of way.
• Most city codes allow for a four-foot sidewalk, a rollover curb and short driveways. That's too narrow for people to walk comfortably side by side; allows cars to park halfway on the sidewalk; and encourages people to park partially in their driveway and partially on the sidewalk. Six feet is the minimum for a sidewalk - make it big enough for two people to walk side by side with one pushing a baby stroller - it really should be seven. Rollover curbs don't serve anyone's needs well, except a developer who hasn't decided yet where to put his driveways.
• Try making a rule that sidewalks should be socially friendly - big enough and pleasant enough for people to walk side by side.
• Sidewalks in neighborhoods can be a learning space for kids learning to ride, but wouldn't recommend creating sidewalks that are intended for shared use with cyclists; fix the streets instead.
• Portland and Seattle have been the poster children of walkability for some time - but two great towns to study now are Charlotte, NC and Sacramento CA - they are deeply engaged and enthused about making it work, and they have hired excellent staff & plans in place. Dan would like to see Charlottesville become this type of lead city among its peers.
• Chris Gensic announced that VDOT was in the process of updating its 1996 subdivision street standards and was currently soliciting public comment. Harrison asked for any folks present to share any comments they developed with the Commission, and said the PDC, through its Rural Transportation Tech Committee (at least) would be submitting comments. Hannah and Harrison said they would share the ideas developd by the Committee later in the week at a Virginia APA/ VA Association of PDC's meeting in Richmond.
• On the often-cited conflicts between the fire/rescue providers and proponents of smaller scale streets - Dan would be focusing on this at the Wednesday workshop, but briefly noted he wanted to encourage the emergency service community to help make streets safer through better design, just as they had worked over the past fifty years to make houses and buildings fireproof and safer.
• When you design a build a street, what is the most essential thing you have to address? Drainage! But don't stop with just one goal - have a checklist - terminating vista, travel lanes, parking, crosswalk. In the past, we've had only the goal of lessening congestion, usually by adding lanes or width, which ultimately backfiles.
• Shy zone - the buffer between buildings, streets, and pedestrians; Furniture zone - the area where we have planters, benches, etc; the Walk/Talk zone - the actual sidewalk. Old school - start from centerline, plan travel lanes, then think about the edges (sidewalks). New school - build from the outside in - start with the buildings, to shy zone, walk/talk zone, furniture zone, curb, travel lanes. Photo of Holland Michigan - four lanes reduced to one, and it's extremely popular.
• Different types of streets are needed - avenues, streets, lanes - but each has to have its dimensions right. For example, you can have narrow streets (16 feet wide) that accommodate fire trucks as long as you get the turning radius right at each end of the street - you don't have to have a big wide street thoughout. See "Healthy Streets" book by Dan Burden, Harrison Rue et al.
• Alleys: photos of alleys with buildings that have windows, doors, and garages along the alley - provides eyes on the street, allows for relegated parking.
• Lane: photo of a lane with a 90 degree curve that breaks all the rules, but the sharp curve slows traffic to the point where it's actually safer than a broader more typical curve.
• Streets: like lanes, streets are about access, not about speed - the speed is on the avenues - fire trucks etc are going to make time on the avenues, the streets and lanes provide access to the houses and businesses. Seattle builds all its streets to 24 feet width, and they have a clear space about every 100 feet to allow fire trucks parking room, which works fine. Another strategy is to put hydrants at mid-block crossings or corners, where no one can park.
• Tall trees in a canopy provide a psychological traffic calming device. With slower speeds, drivers have more reaction time, and don't need the "auto recovery zone" that engineers sometimes cite as a reason to avoid planting trees on the sides of streets. Tree roots, by and large, don't affect pavements, as long as the paving is good quality and the tree species is selected properly. Trees on rural roads help provide drainage, lessening need for curb and gutter.
• Avenues: Speeds now get above 25 mph. Some have parking on the street - diagonal or parallel - and bulbouts with trees planted in them. Traffic moves about 30 mph in free flow, 20 mph in peak times. Myers Park, Charlotte NC, designed by John Noland, extremely well designed residential avenue with a deep tree canopy. Trees can prolong the life of asphalt by 30 to 70 percent because of the reduced heat on the roadway. There are some similar benefits to home energy costs in tree-shaded yards.
• Avenues in quiet areas with low speeds don't need bike lanes. On higher speed roads, definitely put them in. Interesting photo from University Place, Washington, Grendview Drive of a ten-foot driving lane next to a median with a seven-foot bike lane that doubles as a lane for automobiles to pull over for emergency vehicles. This helps keep traffic speeds down while still providing for all the modes. The photo was originally a rural road design, serving some 30,000 people. Key factors were making the road fit the topography and making the road fit the context of the surrounding communities.
• Bike lanes in the intersections allow for a wider turning radius without making a bigger intersection. There are 22 benefits to bike lanes, only 2 of which have to do with bikes - see the list on www.walkable.org.
• Reflectors on the yellow center line help ensure drivers stay in their zone at night and in the rain or fog; some versions of reflectors are flush with the road so snowplows don't dig them up.
• Boulevards: Multiple lanes, but speeds can still be controlled in neighborhoods with features such as short taper lanes and stacking areas at turns. All the roads in Florida are narrowing their lanes to accommodate bikes, by state policy.
• Road Diets: Almost any road, properly designed can handle 18,000 vehicles per day. VA policy (apparently) calls for widening from two lanes to four once a road reaches 7,000 vpd. This is not needed. The problems are at the intersections, so you widen with turning lanes just at those points, not throughout the length of the road.
• Interesting photo of drivers in a snowstorm - people naturally gravitate to two lanes on a four lane road when it's snow covered, leaving a buffer in between the lanes and between the road and the sides. This is how we operate the most safely. If we operate this way all the time, we have lots of room for bike lanes, sidewalks, etc. The photos he shows for several slides after this all carry about 20,000 vpd, narrowed from four lanes to two. Kirkland, WA has put every road in town on a diet, and you can travel the entire city from freeway to town center, about five miles, going 30 mph continuously. The prudent driver sets the speed. The crashes come down because of the lower speeds, more reaction time, and general culture set by the scale of the street. Almost all these road diet projects are simply restriping - and can be pitched as a "try it and see" project. See example of Hartford Asylum Avenue conversion.
• On a bigger street like US 29 in Charlottesville, that carries 60 - 80K vpd, Dan would recommend converting the outer lanes to bus/bike lanes with short distances allowed at intersection for turning vehicles, instead of the continuous turn lanes they are today. This approach works well in Ocean City, MD.
• The key to allowing for fewer lanes is access management, which boils down to controlling the turning movements and the driveways into which they go.

Issues and Barriers:

• Political will to spend money on bike/ped projects. For this, one could focus on simple fixes like restriping, and focusing on highest priority areas that are important for economic development.
• In Virginia, counties maintain no roads, so they have limited opportunities to influence the policies. The possible "win" here is the find the most cost-effective methods, since VDOT is very low on funds now.
• Changing the vision so that the slight overhauls of infrastructure can achieve a significantly new place and result in new habits by travelers. Having the "win" info like the tax benefits and the improved traffic flow and reduced crashes helps to support a change of vision. Often the decision to change policy is not around transportation, but around economic development - investing in projects that invite and encourage new development that recoups the investment.
• Need a good set of case studies and documentation of how well these principles work - the Active Living network is working on this, and there are some sources out there, like the National Main Street program, and the local government commission www.lgc.org and Congress for New Urbanism www.cnu.org.
• Identifying, preserving and/or acquiring the right of way to make the critical bike/ped connections in a community is a key issue - the Kirkland, WA example is a good one to showcase this.
• Transit officials and planners need to remember that pedestrians are the customer base for transit.