Not everyone is or was convinced by the show. The residents from Old North Davis Neighborhoods who have to deal with the congestion and dangers on a regular basis certainly would like to see the change. The business community however is not convinced that the changes would not impact the ability of people to get to downtown.
The take home points are that the roads can service the same number of vehicles with two lanes as they can with four. That seems counterintuitive but the proof is in the streets that have undergone the process before. The key is how you deal with the intersections rather than how many lanes you have. Moreover, it can do it safer and more efficiently.
Dr. Burden’s presentation started with overview. Our approach to streets in the past was that we used to build things without thinking about how best to do them. We approached capacity as a linear function–the more cars, the wider we built the streets, the more pavement we generated. However, this is an expensive approach as it takes money to buy property to widen roads. And it is also not the most efficient use either.
He looks towards a complete street policy. That means developing sustainable transportation–transportation that is about meeting present transportation need without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. As we look to the future, we need to look toward an integrated approach to meet a range of transportation needs.
The example he gave is how Vancouver utilized its immense growth growing upward but not outward to have a highly compact city that is not choked with congestion nor does it feel like the typical concrete jungle. They have utilized their infrastructure needs by prioritizing money in the following direction: (1) walking (2) bike (3) transit (4) freight; and least: single-occupancy vehicle travel.
Dr. Burden looks towards land-use and transportation as the solutions to the problems. We begin by developing different rules for urban versus suburban road designs. The development of smart streets can help form highly-connected of these complete streets.
In the PowerPoint that is linked below you can see the concept of smart streets where you have street connectivity and sidewalk completeness are correlated with lower average vehicle use per person as well as dispersed vehicle loads that decrease congestion and improve safety.
By smart streets, we mean streets that are the right size for the place that they are. The narrower the streets, the more comfortable the setting for walking. He shows in the PowerPoint the difficulties of crossing four lane streets versus crossing a two-lane street, with an island and a pedestrian cross-lane. Furthermore, smart streets are designed and managed with speeds and intersections appropriate to context. To advance walkability and compact development patterns, smart growth street designs manage speed and intersection operations to advance overall community objectives.
We look to move people, not just cars. Therefore we design streets that encourage transit, bicycling, walking, and have HOV/ HOT lanes. We increase the quality of travel by enhancing view and comfort, traffic calming and personal security. We also utilize smart growth principles through more intense land use densities, the promotion of mixed-use development, and development that is supportive of transit.
One key thing to remember is that smart streets add value to adjacent houses and businesses. People are more apt and desirous to wanting to live in places where vehicle, bike, and pedestrian access is good. He also cited examples of dangerous roads where property value dropped because no one wanted to live there.
Pedestrian crash risk increases with number of travel lanes and speed. Reducing the number of travel lanes reduces risk, and makes it easier to cross the street. Reducing non-essential lanes frees space for higher and better use. Streets exists all the time, but peak traffic may be a concern for as little as thirty minutes a day.
There are considerable benefits to this. Safety improves at least 25 to 40 percent. Traffic moves with greater uniformity. Compact intersections are more efficient. There is a greater cost savings. The turns are easier. And the road are more friendly for seniors.
I strongly recommend viewing the PowerPoint presentation because it shows very clearly how having a road diet makes the roads more accessible to pedestrian traffic.
In addition, it demonstrates why four lane roads are the most dangerous in terms of turns, lane shifts, and speed.
There are three crash types that can be reduced by going from four lanes to three.
First the rear-end accident which occurs if a car is turning and the car behind is going too fast. They may crash into the stopped car that is trying to turn or possible the car ahead that is slowing for the stopped car.
There are side-swipes as one car tries to veer right to avoid a turning car.
Finally there is the left turn broadside. He shows how often one of the cars in the right lane may be screen by an approaching car in the left lane, thus you cannot see them and judge their speed as you make a left.
In one study they found a crash rate reduction from 146 per year or 1 crash every 2.5 days, to 87 per year, one crash every 4.2 days, a 34 percent reduction. The injury rate reduction was even more dramatic at 68% going from 41 to 12, once every 9 days to once every 30 days.
The top end speed was dramatically reduced as well, as the percentage of people driving over 36 mph fell in half at the North end of this particular diet, remained constant through the diet, and then fell from nearly 30% to just below 20% at the south end.
And yet, here’s the key. The street with reduced lanes handled the same vehicle volumes as before. Which means that if businesses are fearing that it will hurt business, there is no evidence to support that claim.
And yet in this particular study, on-street parking increased from 29 percent to 41 percent. Pedestrian volume increased by 23%. Bicyclist volumes increase 30%. So doing the math, the road diet by increasing pedestrian and bicyclist volume and holding traffic steady, actually increased the number of people who used the road rather dramatically. So if your concern is the downtown business, this actually makes them more rather than less accessible.
In short, the evaluation found that this avoids increasing traffic onto neighborhood streets, reduced speeding on the main street, increased bike and pedestrian volumes, reduced crashes, increased parking, increased resident satisfaction in terms of pedestrians and parking. And noise levels also went down.
For pedestrians this means reduced crossing distance, elimination or reduction of multiple threat crash types, the installation of crossing island makes crossing simpler and easier, it reduces the top end speed, it provides a buffer to the sidewalk from travel lanes, and it reclaims the street space for higher and better use than moving peak hour traffic.
The PowerPoint also shows that it improves traffic flow as you no longer have cars blocking lanes to make left turns. You no longer have dangerous left turns onto the main street. The key to managing the traffic is not the number of lanes but rather how well you handle the intersections that lead onto this stretch and off of this stretch.
With good managed and designed road diets, you can actually increase the number of people that utilize Fifth Street in Davis and can actually increase the use of downtown rather than decrease it.
How much will this cost? I asked City Manager Bill Emlen, he said probably one million. That is something the city could get a grant for or even in the next 90 days utilize federal funds. But they have to move on it. Right now the fears of downtown business will prevent this from happening. This is a stretch that has a large percentage of the city’s total accident per year on it.
The Davis City Council will take up this issue in April. In the meantime, it is instructive to view the PowerPoint it illustrates clearly some of the principles identified during the presentation.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I am all for the road diet program on 5th Street. I think it will work much better than what we have now. My only qualm is encouraging bike traffic on that corridor. I think it would be better to keep east-west bike traffic between B & L Streets on 8th or 4th and off of 5th.
Hey Bill, er Mr.Emlen “where’s that FD report?” WE are going to trust the dollar costs this man peddles?? Get real. I thought re-striping 5th was about $50K?? Can someone else illuminate the cost increase?? WE(this city)can’t get a grant for a million for this and I’d be very surprised if we are the only ones who need money for projects like this from the feds.
The road diet would be quit a bit more extensive than re-striping Fifth street. This would take actual infrastructure work to do a median, new lanes, parking, sidewalk, etc.
I think it is worth investment.
BTW, Bill also told me that we had a SACOG grant to do something but it expired.
Do the change, but not if it costs big bucks. It doesn’t have to, but you can count on it that Davis will make this project as expensive as possible, so that Bill Emlen keeps his employees well paid.
Emlen is probably not being entirely truthful. Can you verify with SACOG that we HAD a grant at one time but we let it expire?? The grant we had probably only covered a small fraction of the cost…oh, and what the bleep is this about PARKING…There should be NO parking of any kind on 5th between A and L. Period. Screw this idea completely if we are talking all this work, at this time, during this economy. Sorry-“Go away, come back tomorrow” as the Wizard said
I just threw parking in there, I don’t think there would be parking either come to think of it.
This is another example of why I get upset about the salary issue, we don’t have the opportunity because of that to do these kinds of projects which we really need.
Fire department argues that they are a public safety issue, this is a real public safety issue, how many accidents on that stretch a year? How long before someone dies right in front of the fire department because we can’t afford to do these safety upgrades???
Davis cannot force all economic development in the dowtown core area and then capitulate to all the downtown residents to prevent auto traffic. I think this a common sense diet.
A large percentage of the population lives far away from the core area. Davis lumber is in the core area. Have you ever tried to haul a sheet of plywood or flats of perenials on your bike?
Get real folks. My office is downtown and I hate turning on to 5th street when I leave for home (whether biking or driving). However, Davis needs to support a certain number of autos. Changing 5th street to 2 lanes will just push them to other streets.
Former City Engineer Pat Fitzimmons said it would cost $10,000 to $20,000 to just re-stripe the street. Current City Engineer Bob Clarke said it costs $200,000 or more for the full installation of a complete set of new intersection signals. We would have to do that at the F and G Street intersections with 5th. However, there is already electricity at those locations, a controller box, poles that might be used, etc., so that cost would be considerable lower. Also, any signal heads removed from the F and G intersections could be reused elsewhere in the City. So maybe the cost at these two intersections would be in the range of $100,000 each. So the total is under $250,000 for the whole package. I am not an engineer or a City employee, so take this estimate with a grain of salt.
The landscaping shown in one of the diagrams we produced can be done at a later date, in phases.
The City once had a grant from SACOG for I believe $600,000 to do this lane reduction work on 5th Street, but had not yet committed to the project. As a result, that money was spent elsewhere. At a recent hearing City engineer Bob Clarke said he thought it had been used to resurface 8th Street.
This is an answer to several comments:
Rich: You are not alone in thinking bikes should be diverted to other streets, just as many people think pedestrians should have to walk several minutes out of their way to cross the street at a signal. But the fact is bicyclists have every legal right to use 5th Street, and clearly many do. The City already discourages this with “no biking on sidewalk” stencils, and by directing bike traffic from the bike path east of L Street down to 3rd Street. None of that works, and more of that redirecting won’t work either. People bike on 5th right now in spite of its hostility because it is the shortest, quickest, and most direct route to where they want to go. So let’s recognize how lucky we are that so far none of the half dozen pedestrians and bicyclists who are hit by cars every year on 5th Street have been killed. We need to stop this trauma and create a safe bike lane link connecting the bike paths west of A Street and east of L.
Fwed: Sure, there are a lot of cities who want money, but there is a lot of money available right now. We are in a 120 day window that opened last Monday to put projects into the local transportation improvement plan which SACOG administers and then apply for federal stimulus funds. We could do this with the 5th Street project IF the City moves expeditiously. No EIR work is necessary, because the proposed design is already in the adopted General Plan, because this is a safety project, because this is an environmentally beneficial project, and because it has NO negative impacts to traffic flow–in fact the last model showed it improves traffic flow and reduces travel time and delay throughout the corridor.
David explained why he included parking. It is just one of the reasons other jurisdictions have used the lane reduction concept. We need bike lanes, Woodland wanted room to widen sidewalks on Main Street in their downtown, and other cities have done these designs purely for their safety benefits.
Are we kidding?: Where did you hear anyone who favors this project say we want to “prevent auto traffic.”? I sure didn’t. I have never heard anyone in our neighborhood groups say it. Dan Burden didn’t say it, nor has any other street designer I work with said it. Moreover, the last traffic model gave a result that has been seen in the real world in other cities–that traffic isn’t “prevented” by the lane reduction, but enhanced. In many of the examples Dan cited, traffic volumes went UP after lanes were removed, because people come back to a street that works better and doesn’t scare them away.
Changing 5th Street to 2 lanes will not push traffic to other streets. However, changing the traffic signals at the F and G Street intersections four years ago did. The new signal timing make it virtually impossible for more than one vehicle to turn left from F or G onto 5th Street with each green light, and makes any driver caught at a red light wait through 2, not 1, green light phases for other drivers. This added 30 seconds of delay for every driver in the corridor, on average. As a result, traffic volumes on B Street, 8th Street, and in the nearby neighborhoods has already gone up as impatient drivers try to avoid the signals.
As to your “get real” comment, will you please look outward to the real world? There are hundreds of streets that have received this treatment in the last two decades, with great success. Dan showed a few dozen examples at the workshop Friday. You won’t have to carry plywood on your bicycle, we are not preventing traffic, and there are no losers with this solution. Only winners.
I don’t drive down 5th street to go downtown. I drive down 5th street to go right by the downtown. I don’t want to hear that making it safer to drive, ride a bike or walk through or along the 5th street corridor will cause fewer people to go downtown. There is just no factual basis for that.. I hate driving this section of roadway and avoid it at all cost. I’ve experienced near misses as people change lanes to weave through the traffic. I’ve witness multiple accidents due to high speeds. It’s time for the downtown businesses, especially the woman who manages Ace Hardware, to stop living in the 1950’s and take a look at the broad benefits to the community and the downtown by making some changes along this stretch of roadway.
If anyone doubt that we have a public safety crisis on 5th Street, here are the numbers for the first two months of 2009:
56 accidents total citywide in two months, 52 of them on streets (4 in parking lots). Six of these, or 12% of the street accidents, were on the 5th Street corridor. As has been the case the past few years, we are again on a pace for roughly 350 accidents citywide, over 10% of them on just 4,000 feet of a single street. What is really concerning, though, is the breakout of the accident types on the 5th Street corridor, in order of occurrence:
1. Car vs car on 5th west of L.
2. Bicyclist hit parked car on G just north of 5th.
3. Bicyclist hit by car on F just south of 5th.
4. Bicyclist hit by car on 5th between G and the tracks.
5. Pedestrian in crosswalk hit by car at 5th and B.
6. Car vs car at 5th and B.
So of the 6 incidents in the corridor so far this year, 4 involved bicyclists or pedestrians. All 4 of those people, and one other individual in a car vs car crash were injured.
If our experience is anything like many of the cities Dan Burden and I have data for, half or more of these incidents could be avoided by putting the proposed fix into place.
We are now urging City officials to suspend the analysis process on the 5th Street project and immediately move to have SACOG amend the transportation improvement plan and apply for stimulus funds to get this street fixed with a road diet. If we don’t move within the 120 day window, we may once again be in a position where we can’t afford to do the fix, or only have funds for a few pointless bandaids.
Right now, lots of people use 8th street instead of 5th since 5th is awful. Expect 8th street to get much worse.
After years of waiting and waiting, we’re out of davis now too. Bought a home in Woodland and Davis can add us to yet another two vehicles worth of traffic coming into campus every weekday but never stopping or shopping here. The city needs to address the issues of folks similar to us before it’s too late.
Reply to PRED: Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry we lost your family. Living in Woodland, though, you will have the benefit of seeing a road diet in action. Two through lanes were taken off Main Street there 15 or 20 years ago, in order to calm traffic, improve the feel of the corridor, and provide room to widen the sidewalks.
8th Street in Davis will not get worse if 5th Street is fixed with the lane reduction design. In fact, it will probably get better as drivers go back to 5th. People are now using 8th Street in increasing numbers to avoid the delays caused by the unconventional traffic signal timing at the 5th Street intersections with F and G Streets.
The data is not great on 8th Street traffic volumes, because of different times of day or seasons, or counting locations. Still, interpolating between the data I have been able to get, it looks like traffic volumes on 8th Street between Oak and F jumped over 1,000 cars a day as soon as the signal timing was changed in February of 2005. This was almost a 20% increase from the base of 5,700 vehicles a day.
We see higher traffic counts on B Street, and more drivers impatiently pushing through Old North Davis on C, D, E, 6th, and 7th. I hear the situation is the same in Old East Davis. Basically, traffic has already been diverted as drivers seek alternate routes to avoid the chaos and signal delays on 5th Street.
In quite a few of the almost 100 streets I have information for, traffic volumes on streets after a road diet stayed the same. In some cases it went UP as people came back to a street that worked better.
Again, there are no losers with this redesign.
Steve, we moved because of the economy in Davis. I love that you want what is best for the Davis community but I’m not your target market. We were bike riders except when it rained. But now we’ll be adding to the street traffic because davis still hasn’t addressed it’s housing issue.
ps. the school district also lost 2 grade school children.
PRED: Bike riders in Davis are our target market. This project would close the gap in the bike facility network, where excellent bike paths end at A Street on the west and L Street on the east and drop bicyclists into limbo. Bring the family back over for a ride after we get the lanes that are in the General Plan striped on the street.