Champlain Parkway White Paper One: Evaluation
“Champlain Parkway: Get it Right the First Time”
Panel and Discussion Wednesday
February 3, 6:30 p.m. at Arts Riot, 400 Pine St.
Champlain Parkway White Paper One: Evaluation
Let's shape it to become a street the public can love!
January 16, 2016
Our Parkway View—Do it right the first time by shaping a highest all-modes safety and quality transportation street to:
- Play a central part in achieving a livable South End community
- Remove trucks off residential streets
- Assure safety, especially for those who walk and bike, while reducing global warming gases and other pollutants, cutting gasoline use, and intersection delay.
- Ignite and sustain a vibrant South End industrial-commercial-arts economy
The
current Parkway now promoted by the City, Vermont Agency of
Transportation (VAOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) gets
very little right. Most importantly the current Parkway completely
fails the following critical tests. The City’s Parkway design results in
a net drop in safety for each mode. Added to poor safety: the current
Parkway design would increase global warming gases and other pollutants,
waste gasoline, strangle economic vitality, cut off connectivity to key
adjacent areas, and damage neighborhood livability. Therefore,
Safe Streets Burlington (SSB) calls for stopping the project design
followed by developing revisions centering on major upgrades to safety,
reducing environment impacts, and increasing economic benefits.
The current Parkway now promoted by the City, Vermont Agency of Transportation (VAOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) gets very little right. Most importantly the current Parkway completely fails the following critical tests. The City’s Parkway design results in a net drop in safety for each mode. Added to poor safety: the current Parkway design would increase global warming gases and other pollutants, waste gasoline, strangle economic vitality, cut off connectivity to key adjacent areas, and damage neighborhood livability. Therefore, Safe Streets Burlington (SSB) calls for stopping the project design followed by developing revisions centering on major upgrades to safety, reducing environment impacts, and increasing economic benefits.
Remember
about 15 years ago the City itself fought against the route of Pine
Street from the old Public Works facility to Main Street and lost out to
FHWA and VAOT opposition. Since the last public hearing was held a
decade ago 2006, a large portion of today's Burlington population never
participated in formulating the current design.
Safe
Streets Burlington (SSB) challenges the current Champlain Parkway's
(Parkway) decades old purpose of speeding cars from I 189 to downtown.
The current 2006 Parkway plan correctly moves trucks off residential
streets, but new priorities of this decade demand safe streets and
intersections for our families and visitors. These priorities include
reducing gasoline use and all pollutants tied to climate change, and
maintaining economic vitality and growth centering on the arts and
business sectors. SSB condemns cutting off the connectivity of the South
End to Queen City Park Road, Kmart Plaza and points beyond.
SSB
calls for a Parkway to become a street the public can love, a street
leading the parade to thriving, livable neighborhoods. Therefore SSB
abandons the Parkway purpose of the past half century--moving cars at
high speeds to downtown totally blind to what lies outside the curbs. A
Parkway design with separate walk and bike facilities along with
roundabout intersections cures most of the fundamental defects in the
current design. This separation of walk and bike facilities along with
safe intersections assures an immeasurable gain for the South End and
the City. Progress in other Vermont towns on safe streets and our own
North End corridor plan show the way. A project price tag of $43 million
requires the City to “do it right the first time.”
Can
safety be ignored with a massive 47% predicted growth in Lakeside
Avenue traffic facing the Lakeside neighborhood just to get to Pine
Street? Can the safety and needs of those on foot and bicycle be ignored
in the face of a 39% increase of traffic along Pine Street above
Lakeside Avenue through the heart of the commercial, retail, and arts
section? The current design dismisses these questions. SSB calls for a
Parkway revised using designs which actually improve safety for all
modes along Pine Street and Lakeside Avenue.
City
leaders apologize for obsolete project design for every mode, and
promise later improvements to make up for admitted Parkway design
defects. SSB says correct the project defects now, don't kick the can
down the road! With $43 million to work with composed of 95% federal
funds, a “fits and starts” Parkway approach simply makes no sense.
Burlington
residents who comprise Safe Streets Burlington call for quality and
safe transportation investing within our City. Like the late
urbanologist Jane Jacobs, SSB places people and neighborhood livability
first and catering to cars and trucks second. Both SSB and the City
start from common values, but the current Parkway design does not meet
today's safety and quality street features, namely, sidewalks
throughout, separate safe bike pathways and vehicle travelways—all of
which would be served at busy intersections by the unrivaled safety and
service of the modern roundabout. By contrast all of these very features
sparkle in the North Avenue 2.8 mile corridor plan embraced by the City
in 2014. The North Avenue design features separate cycle track
end-to-end and sidewalks end-to-end and at least three of seven signals
converted to roundabouts. The American Association of Retired Persons
(AARP) support conversions of signals to roundabouts for seniors safety.
Three states including New York the transportation departments of two
Canadian provinces follow an intersection policy of “roundabouts first.”
Why safety first? When the Parkway project began in 1965 the U.S. ranked first in highway safety and then sunk to 19th in
the world. With a fatality rate twice that of leading nations,
attaining the lowest rates translates to saving 13,000 U.S. lives a
year. Both walk and bike fatalities remain a pressing concern as we
encourage more people to undertake these healthy modes of travel.
Burlington recorded five fatalities since 1998—two pedestrians, one
bicyclist, and two drivers—all of which occurred at signalized
intersections. Consider that there has not been one single fatality to
date at any of the 4,000 roundabouts in the U.S. built since 1990.
Compare the roundabout record against two Burlington pedestrian
fatalities occurring since 1998 at its 75 traffic signals.
Now
for the first time we have Vermont downtown roundabout data covering
over 50 years with only one recorded pedestrian injury at the five busy
downtown roundabouts in Montpelier, Middlebury and Manchester Center!
Compare one pedestrian over a half century to five injuries (one
critical) at two Parkway intersections in just four years (Pine at
Locust and Lakeside)! Compare the Vermont downtown roundabouts to
Burlington's overall “dirty 17” intersections (13 signalized) recording
an average of one pedestrian injury yearly (one fatal) 2011-2014! SSB
insists that the City must not make $43 million in street investments
and fail to complete any modern safe facilities for those who walk, bike
and travel by car! The Parkway design must turn to safety first!
The
current Parkway design pales in comparison to the 2.8 mile North Avenue
“model of excellence” plan adopted by the City Council in October 2014.
In spite of massive expected traffic growth up to 47%, the Parkway
design lacks North Avenue's basic features: end-to-end cycle track,
end-to-end sidewalks, conversion of injury generating signals to
roundabouts. Instead, the Parkway actually adds five new injury
generating signalized intersections! Even the “new” Home Ave. to
Lakeside Ave. section lacks either sidewalks or cycle track. Even FHWA,
while opposing Parkway roundabouts, boasts of their benefits: “Compared
to other types of intersections...Roundabouts improve safety: more than
90% reduction in fatalities, 76% reduction in injuries, 35% reduction in
all crashes, slower speeds are generally safer for pedestrians.”
Compared to the single lane roundabout the typical traffic signal
doubles vehicle crashes, increases pollutants by about 30%, and raises
rates of serious and fatal injury rates by upwards of nine times (900%).
Roundabouts uniquely also lower vehicle speeds outwards one to two
blocks.
SSB
disagrees with the City and VAOT. The City says that VAOT blocks
further safety and service changes to the Parkway. The City says in
effect that the South End must accept unsafe streets and transportation
infrastructure because these are forced on the City by VAOT and the
Montpelier FHWA office. SSB rejects a situation wherein the City is
forced to spend $43 million in transportation infrastructure, to accept
the crashes and injuries (and, yes, perhaps a fatality or two over the
20 year lifetime of a transportation investment) or is faced with losing
$40 million federal dollars. SSB points to the last significant busy
street investment—the opening of the Church Street Marketplace 35 years
ago—when SSB insists we can no longer ignore decades of no meaningful
change for safety on Burlington busy streets!
Last
but not least the Parkway clearly impacts surface and stormwater runoff
increasingly of concern and directly affects the Barge Canal superfund
site. This site continues being active today and an ongoing threat to
Lake Champlain, the source of our City water supply and centerpiece of
the of our waterfront tourist economy. Contaminated and toxic soils
throughout the Parkway route and westward through the enterprise zone
remain a continuing challenge. Re-Imagining includes adopting recent
innovative practices and treatments to improve runoff performance,
reducing pressure on the Barge Canal superfund site, and addressing in a
straight forward fashion contaminated soils.
SSB
calls for an immediate stop to project design. SSB calls for starting a
discussion of new designs centering on safety and environmental and
economically beneficial upgrades--upgrades without unreasonable
associated costs, time delay, and permitting. The residents of the City
and the South End, the City, the State and FHWA officials certainly
share our SSB values—relocating truck traffic outside of neighborhoods, attaining true safety
for all users, pursuing sustained economic vitality, acting on climate
change by reducing pollutants and gasoline use, and achieving livable
neighborhoods. Now the sole task remains of applying our common concerns
to a project which is so critical to our South End neighborhoods and
the City.
To join SSB and help to bring a world class street to the South End, a street our residents can love, please visit our website www.SafeStreetsBurlington.com or email SafeStreetsBurlington@gmail.com
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