UPPING URBAN WALKING, BICYCLING AND PUBLIC TRANSIT SHARES--THE TASK AHEAD

THE URBAN TRANSPORTATION MODAL CHALLENGE...INCREASING WALKING, BICYCLING, AND PUBLIC TRANSIT NEEDS MORE THAN ENCOURAGEMENT, ENFORCEMENT AND EDUCATION

PART 1:  INCREASING WALKING AND BICYCLING MODES

Many U.S. and Canadian major cities and population centers make promotional efforts to potential visitors describing walker and bicycling friendliness, touting particular promenades and bikepaths, and suggesting these “active modes” make up niche in the community.   In just the last four years led by Montreal seasonal bike-sharing networks starting with rental bicycle kiosks sprung up in many metropolitan with surprisingly huge trip numbers and positive public response.  A new stream of initiatives arises from transportation and community efforts advocating walking, bicycling and public transit as a means of addressing among other concerns better health, global climate change and traffic congestion.

From another entirely different direction comes a wave of economic change driven by workers and employers alike which takes the form of locating work and residency in compact communities—we used to call them cities—where all services are available without a car and home-to-work trips occur primarily through one or more of the three non-car modes—walking, bicycling, and public transit.  The new trend involves living and working without the expense of car ownership.  Car share programs quickly arose to support a primarily non-car lifestyle.

This transition from the auto age—the millennium represents a nice reference point—to the new urban “community transportation age” forces a look as to where we are now heading and those nations—principally Western Europe—where the three key modes already account for 40-50 percent of urban trips, about four times the U.S. 13 percent share of U.S. urban total trips by foot, bicycle and public transit.  By knowing the comparative modal shares, the infrastructure required to support larger shares for non-car trips quickly becomes apparent.

Since a growing segment U.S. urban transportation “consumer” already abandoned the car for other modes, the needs for alternative mode infrastructure—equality with that of the car—can not longer be ignored.   And, a look at the comparison of the U.S. and Canada urban travel by mode to those nations with well established and continuing modal share reveals a truly momentous gap.  

First let’s look at the modals shares for urban trips using the median number of seven Western European countries:

Walking           29%

Bicycling          12%

Public Transit   12%

Median Total Walking, Bicycling and Public Transit:  53%

The U.S. and Canada walking and bicycling urban trip shares are very similar: 

    Walking: Canada 10%  U.S. 9%.

    Bicycling:  Canada 1%   U.S. 1%

    Public Transit: Canada 14%  U.S. 3%

These numbers for the European group versus the U.S. are clear:  European group walking mode shares three times the U.S., and bicycle mode share ten times the U. S.  Ditto for the European group versus Canada.  For public transit modal share, again the European group, 12%, four times the U.S. share, 3%.  The U.S. and Canada similarity in walking and bicycling shares are noteworthy as Canadian gasoline prices are about $2.00 more a gallon and incomes somewhat below U.S. levels.  The point is that modal shares for walking and bicycling are not just a product of gas prices and income—though they do a play a role—but also infrastructure to support those modes.  Note that European gas prices are four to five dollars more a gallon than the U.S. and incomes in some of the nations in the European group (Germany and some of Scandinavia for examples) are higher than the U.S.

The public transit comparison does present a surprise.  The U.S. number, 3% urban trip modal share for public transit is dwarfed by a number four times as large, 12%, for the European group.  But in the case of Canada, 14% of the urban trips are by public transit, two percent above the European group median.  Suffice to say the three major Canadian metropolitan areas—Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver—all feature extensive public transit systems with both Montreal and Toronto possessing subway and commuter rail as well as miles of walker undergrounds.

Clearly North American laws, education, and encouragement related to bicycling and walking modes require advancement.  But regardless of those three areas, without modern infrastructure little change in the modal shares can be attained.  One cannot get to half the West European modal shares—five times the current bicycle modal share here now and half again the walking mode share—through simply cheerleading, better transportation law, and more traffic tickets.  This target, for example, represents shifting more than one in seven urban trips to walking and bicycling.

The infrastructure barriers to more U.S. walking and       bicycling:  cycle track, roundabouts and shared space

The major barrier to increased bicycling and walking numbers in urban North America can easily be identified as Europe which came into the auto age late, had to react to protect a once dominant and safe walking and bicycling increasingly unsafe and repressed by cars.  The reaction came in two forms—traffic calming (increasingly in the form of roundabouts) and cycle track, both developments coming into their own in the last quarter of the 20^th century.  Roundabouts literally invented in the U.K. in 1966 began to find its way into North America in the 1990s and today there about 14,000 roundabouts here—and Americans now have at least occasional first-hand experience with this technology.  And traffic calming in one form or another has become widespread.  Cycle track—protected onstreet bike lanes using curbing or planters--only now is beginning to be recognized with Chicago in the process of installing 100 miles of cycle track and Montreal with several curb separated miles of cycle track dating from early in the last decade.  Shared space—a no signs, no signals, no curbs—represents a fusion of roundabouts and traffic calming elements taking advantage of the fact that drivers operating at a few miles and hour will, essentially, interact with human traffic in a friendly way and yield to walkers and bicyclists.  Shared space gets employed primarily in busy retail and tourist contexts. 

If U.S. urban areas aim to multiply their walking and bicycling modal shares, then extensive investments in cycle track, roundabouts (with walker crossings and for bicyclists multi-use paths or bikepath crossings) and shared space infrastructure holds the key. 

How this infrastructure works with the other key mode, public transit, gets addressed in the next post.

PlanBTV CHARRETTE--A LIMITED SUCCESS

SAFETY TAKES A BACK SEAT IN THE BURLINGTON WATERFRONT DOWNTOWN PLAN CHARRETTE
---no roundabouts, bike (cycle) track (a positive) and no car constraints (termed transportation “balance”)


At the windup meeting of the Burlngton (VT) PlanBTV charrette last week the most spontaneous, enthusiastic applause over the two hour session arose when the project manager Brian Wright stating future transportation options said the words “commuter rail.”

The PlanBTV, major initiative in the overall of the City master plan process focuses on “a new land use and development master plan currently under development for Burlington's Downtown and Waterfront”( see http://www.burlingtonvt.gov/PZ/Comprehensive-Planning-Overview/

The charrette process, a week long exercise with lots of public interaction involves work tasks and reports (to be delivered) by an ensemble team of urban planners brought in from various places led by Town Planning +Urban Design Collaborative with Wright the onsite manager. The transportation sub-meeting attended by about two dozen participants with a majority from various departments and transport organizations ranging from the transit authority to the University of Vermont transportation programs and parking administration. The citizen minority, mostly oldsters, centered on a broad range of issues ranging from corralling the car-centric view, increased bicycle and walker infrastructure and yours truly as a self-confessed roundabout advocate.

Transportation Trends

Several trends in transportation arose in the transportation session: a collapse of car travel in Vermont to single digits in the last decade and possible decline in this decade, a sharp drop in Burlington area solo driving commuters, a current downtown surplus of parking even in the absence of a formal parking broker system to maximize efficiency, and a 70% increase in the last decade in bus riders. The background Planning Department studies suggesting a one percent increase for the foreseeable future as well as high levels of population growth appear completely out of line with recent historical trends and U.S. Census projections—they need to be revisited, refined, and then reported.

Suggestions for “commuter choice” program expansion, cycle track (also called bike track is grade separated street adjacent bike lanes, for example, Blvd. De Maisonneuve in Montreal) with first efforts a connection of the Church Street Marketplace and the Waterfront, sufficient parking supply to meet the needs of retail and other downtown development, and the all-roundabouts approach of Carmel, IN where the Mayor in that 79,000 population City is two thirds of the way toward his studied view of the city becoming a one traffic signal town with one hundred roundabouts. Suggestions connecting the waterfront to the Marketplace or beyond to the University included a gondola system, light rail (“trolley”), a funicular as has been suggested in the past, and a walker/bike “people mover” type sysem.

The Backdrop

During the week the charrette took place during legal proceedings against the driver who allegedly hit broadside another vehicle and killing the solo occupant, Karen Bourneman, in a typical T-bone crash in December 2010 at the Main and St. Paul Street only about 200 feet from the charrette windup session at City Hall. It was in November 2011 that the American Automobile Association (AAA) called for a White House Summit to adopt a “zero fatality rate” policy for U.S. highways, a policy found in their authoritative study which concluded that the costs of metropolitan deaths and injuries dwarfed the costs of highway congestion. Street safety design needs to provide the kind of treatments that make the high speed right angle crash, the type that took the life of Ms. Bourneman on streets with a 25 mph speed limit. Street design needs to be considered with a zero traffic fatality rate high on the list of considerations.

Apparent Transportation Elements : (1) Included and (2) Apparently Left Out

A final report containing recommendations for the long term (a century, Wright explained) will be submitted and later public processes will take place as part of the overall City plan update.
While the decades old Church Street Marketplace cannot be overpraised and the waterfront development continues but remains far from complete, the transportation oriented options seemed to be left out in the final charrette presentation.

(1) Included

Wright called the recommendations “balance” and elements apparently include: (1) bike (cycle) track on Main Street to the waterfront from the downtown and Marketplace; (2) an underground and above ground parking garage as development occurs on the waterfront to substitute space now used for parking thereby enabling development; (3) acceptance of a transportation “balance” with no car significant constraints while future eventualities include commuter and intercity rail from the waterfront station, and an enhanced University of Vermont to waterfront transit provision via the Marketplace.

(2) Apparently Left Out

The following elements which came at either the the transportation meeting or final presentation apparently will not be included in the PlanBTV report:
(1) Concerns over access to and from the interstate from congestion on outer Main Street and extension in So. Burlington to I 89 were not addressed. The long expanse of pavement from East Avenue/Swift Street, perhaps Vermont's fattest highway section needs a diet and using roundabouts can easily be cut down to four lanes with a median. Roundabouts would erase much of the delay at the converted traffic light intersections thereby reducing times for traffic to access the downtown area. This results in more efficient transit times also. Note each signalized intersection with heavy traffic represents literally a cesspool of unnecessary pollution and gas consumption. Roundabout reduce fuel consumption and pollution (including greenhouse gases) by about 30 (the more the traffic the larger the reductiions).
(2) Use of roundabouts on outer Main leads to the possibility of assuring traffic calming treatments and roundabouts through the University of Vermont section of Main Street with both south corners of the green good roundabout candidates.
(3) To prevent the T-bone and many other injury crashes, roundabout treatments can be considered for an intersection or two to the east of the Marketplace and at least two intersetions to the west—Pine Street and Battery Street intersections appear most feasible.
(4) Battery Street intersections, particularly at Maple and all intersections north of College—Cherry, Pearl, and Cumberland--all present easy opportunities for roundabout conversions. Roundabouts along Battery also enable addition of a median making, for example, the College Street intersection, far easier walkers and bicyclists crossings.
(5) As I stated at the closing presentation, right now nothing stops a vehicle going 100 miles an hour down Main Street from College to the waterfront. A few roundabouts as outlined in (3) and (4) calms traffic, reduces delays, and for car occupants and walkers provides the roughly 90% reduction in serious injuries and fatalities found in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study of intersections converted to roudabouts in the U.S
(6) It would be easy and desirable to expand the "shared space" Church Street Marketplace crossings at Bank, Cherry, and College Streets further out east and west for at least half a block—this would be a natural extension of space already rife with mixed modes and increase the access of shoppers to adjacent businesses. Those business then become almost as valuable and economically successful as those on Church Street itself. One check U-tube “shared space” videos, particularly Drachten, GR and Bern, SW to get a feel for “share space” or just meader the intersections of the Marketplace. With a new transit center for the Downtown bus transit any conflicts on Cherry to “shared space” expansion would be erased.
(7) One exciting and needed extension of Church Street Marketplace in the charrette recommendations will be buildings on the Church site either side of Unitarian-Universalist Church. Careful delineation of possible uses in coordination with the Church will assist in making the Marketplace expand slightly with benefits for the vitality of the entire Marketplace, particularly the upper block. Even now one can easily improve the walker crossing of Pearl Street by installing a “median diverter,” essentially about a 15-foot median which forces traffic on Pearl to deviate from a straight path so as to act as a traffic calming/reduced speed treatment. This allows removal of the traffic light and through the installation of the median where the walker only has to cross one lane at a time along with reduced speeds, walker safety can be expected to be improved.