WHY ONLY ROUNDABOUTS AT HIGH SPEED (40 MPH AND OVER) BUSY INTERSECTIONS

Note this is an excerpt from a longer monograph written earlier this month.

Major Intersections along high-speed roadways (40 mph and above)--Roundabouts Only

The...Keene [NH] roundabout now going forward by the NHDOT [New Hampshire Department of Transportation] brings out the key reason why—and real world example--roundabouts are the only choice for intersections along high speed roads (40 mph and above)--something, as you know, comes from among others the counsel of Barry Crown, perhaps the most experienced roundabout designer and software author on the planet.  He deserves major credit (though with a lot of help and years of volunteer efforts as you well know) for the $60 million Keene Bypass project being stopped and converted to four roundabouts---one already built handling 60,000 average daily traffic.  The other Keene roundabouts are: (1) the first, a single laner in front of the Monadnock Region Medical Center and (2) a $4 million all-city-financed two laner at Marlboro/Main/Winchester Streets which forms a gateway to Keene State College and along with Central Square defines the downtown core.  

                  High speed intersections and the roundabout

That fifth Keene roundabout on a 55 mph speed zone will be between the Keene Bypass Roundabout and the Keene Turn Roundabout 15 miles distant in Brattleboro, about three miles from downtown Keene at NH 9/Base Hill Road cross intersection.  That intersection along a straight section of NH 9 at the bottom of a long ascending grade to the west has long been a high accident section.  After the latest NHDOT 2010 effort involving a median treatment on NH 9 outward from the intersection and further tweaking of the signals still led to another fatal crash within two years.  The NHDOT in fact truly wants to address the safety there and now--finally it must be said—decided to employ the only known treatment for high speed cross intersections providing a modicum of safety: the roundabout. To deal with the high speed approach NHDOT also intends to utilize a curving of the eastbound approach roadway (the downgrade), a recognized treatment, to constrain approach speeds from the west leg.  While the roundabout does not promise to be a cure all for crashes at high-speed intersections, it surely will reduce the numbers of crashes, the severity of any resulting injuries and avoidance of the T-bone crash.  And at high-speed intersections benefit cost for car travel is highest.  As you know, the Maryland State Highway Administration (MSHA) pioneered along with Florida and Vermont the beginnings of roundabout development in the eastern United States.  And MSHA used roundabout technology to respond to mostly rural high-speed (40-50 mph on one or more approaches) intersections where no solutions had been found to crashes with serious and fatal injuries—roundabouts slashed injury crashes by 88% (see FHWA website:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/resources/casestudies/fhwasa09018/  ).

The Base Hill Road/NH 9 project for the NHDOT does stand above in priority in comparison to other choices, such as the three intersections (perhaps four when you consider the nearby entrance to the new NH 9 to a major shopping complex) along the Keene Bypass--all those intersections except Main Street involve no bicycles or walkers.  As you know a fatality for benefit cost analysis is valued at a  $6.1 million cost and an injury $126,000  (FHWA, 1999 dollars).  (Note the excellent Cambridge Systematics paper prepared showing metro fatalities and injuries more than twice the cost of congestion--the study sponsor, AAA supports a “zero fatality rate” policy, one it calls for declaration through a White House safety conference.)

The foregoing, as did my original message, places the high-speed intersections first and foremost the standard treatment for high speed intersections.  Of course, this entire discussion does apply at all across the lake in New York State (or Florida, Virginia and two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia) where the roundabouts unless unfeasible remain by policy the preferred treatment.  The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) backs up their “roundabouts only” policy with a central office roundabout design unit responsible for review of any NYSDOT investment in intersections where something other than a roundabout is proposed.  The fatalities along the US 7 corridor in Addison and Chittenden County alone--even in the absence of bicycle and walker usage--suggest the roundabout treatment even with acquisition of right of way when needed.  Note the Brattleboro Keene Turn Roundabout at $4 million arguably has already paid for itself in reduced injuries per year since 1999 when it was built--about 120 injuries based on the previous five-year rate and not including the one fatality in the last five years of the signal configuration.  And, as you know, tens of thousands of gallons of gasoline are saved each year at this intersection through conversion to a roundabout (note the VAOT study of delay). 

So, what continues today along US 7 major high speed intersections with sigs or signals amounts to a form of "Russian highway roulette" whether at Ferry Road in Charlotte, Ferrisbugh State Highway, VT 103 in Clarendon and the intersections north of that point to U.S. 4 in Rutland (all fatality crash sites), and yes, Little Chicago Road in Ferrisburgh.  Unfortunately conscious decisions to build higher injury rate signals rather than roundabouts at US 7/VT 103, Taft Corners and US 2/Industrial Drive in Williston (now nearing construction and speed limits along those roadway approaches are 30-35 mph) provide us with a test of safety performance of intersections where roundabouts were predicted to perform at a higher level but were rejected for traffic signals.  Over the next few years the wisdom of those choices can be easily observed.  Is it not fair today to conclude what will happen because of the rejection of the roundabout choice will not be pretty?   Finally, the discussion to this point addresses primarily the car mode only, not walking and bicycling aspect  (although a bicyclist fatality did take place at the US 7/Ferry Road intersection).

ANY WALKABLE AND BIKABLE BUSY STREET IN VERMONT? NOPE, NOT YET

ANY WALKABLE AND BIKABLE BUSY STREET IN VERMONT?  NOPE, NOT YET

Burlington, VT and other U.S. cities qualify through sincere and good works designations as “bicycle friendly” and “walk friendly” communities.  Yet Burlington like practically Vermont communities and others in North America rarely feature  a single both walkable and bikable busy street for all regardless of all age and skill.

True, Burlington does rightfully boast of its three-decade old Church Street Marketplace, a totally walkable four-block long plaza with three substantial cross street intersections where safe “shared space” takes place with all vehicles yielding to plaza walkers.  Actually, for about two early morning hours when coffee and breakfast eateries operate, an informal bicycle and walker use occurs, a brief period each day when the Marketplace truly achieves a completely walkable and bikable status.

       What qualifies as “bikable or walkable”?

A reasonable definition of a walkable and bikable busy street requires a context where those who walk and bike—regardless of age and skill—can move comfortably with a minimum of delay and with a high level of safety.  Until the advent of the modern roundabout in 1956—particularly single lane roundabout designs which now almost erase delay for all users and for walkers reduce injury rates by 90%--walkability could only occur through plazas and undergrounds other designs which ban cars.  Now corridors, nodes and areas involving busy streets can attain a walkable status using roundabouts, sometimes supplemented by other traffic calming devices.  Of course street segments throughout this discussion presumably include sidewalks.  Walker safety depends first and foremost on restraining vehicle speeds, something roundabouts uniquely do by design besides featuring median treatments as part of crossings so the walker deals when crossing with traffic operating in only one direction at a time. 

Vermont boasts downtown roundabouts in Montpelier and Middlebury with walkability nodes extending a block or so outwards, modest but still important contributions to qualified walkable streets.   Manchester Center joined the Church Street Marketplace as the second walkable corridor in Vermont last November with the completion of the second and third roundabouts along busy Main Street including one roundabout turning “malfunction junction” as it was called in the past for traffic jams during busy times in the upscale retail area to the “function junction” with the new roundabout. 

A bikable busy street remained elusive until the introduction a few years ago in North America of a second European innovation “cycle track”, a bike lane separated from vehicle travelways by curbing, planters, bollards or other barrier types.  The two-mile east-west Montreal DeMaisonneuve cycle track completed in 2007 highlights a major effort in bicycle network investments.  This City project and other bikeway installations extending several miles through the center of Montreal may well have inspired the “bixi” bike, a shared bike system invented and first installed in that City in 2008 and since exported with equivalent rousing success to cities like Melbourne, New York City, London Washington, DC, Boston and Minneapolis.   

While cycle track along with grade separated bikepaths or shared paths can place a street near a “bikable” status, busy intersections, mostly signalized, remain both a delay and safety risk, curtailing bike use by the less skilled, old and young.  In Burlington, the shared path along Riverside Avenue from the Community Health Center to the Winooski Bridge represents a similar case in point—walkable and bikable except for the complex signalized intersections at the Health Center, a second intersection about mid-way to the Winooski Bridge and the final intersection at Colchester Avenue/Riverside Avenue/Barrett, site of a walker fatality in 2012. 

Walkable and bikable now doable—cycle track along street sections and roundabouts at key intersections

But a bikable corridor can be fashioned with cycle track and a “pathed” roundabout at key intersections.  This reaches a bikable and walkable level. A roundabout at key intersections with pathing designed to handle both walkers and bicyclists—separately or in a shared format.  An alternate design—a shared or separate bike and walkway also rates as both walkable and bikable.  A perfect example of a pathed roundabout can be found just south of the City of Plattsburg on NY 9 where a sidepath composed of a two-way bicycle path and a separately marked walkway on the east side of the highway then crosses a roundabout on the east leg—an example of a short walkable and bikable corridor because of the distance between major intersections.

This emergence of a new paradigm of walkability and bikability owes a great deal to the Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel who gave a major boost for cycle track since 2010 with his commitment to build 100 mile of cycle track in his first term, and the initial pages of a new book this year extolling the Mayor’s commitment.  That book, “Reconsidering the Bicycle”, by University of Vermont Professor Luis Vivanco, touted as the first anthropological study of the bicycle, builds on Professor Vivanco’s work as a Burlington bicycle advocate and historian.  Perhaps more important in the roundabout-path connection comes in two secondary research findings in a 1994 Dutch study authored by Chris Schoon and Jaap van Minnen and another study from the Swedish transportation research agency in 2000 (VTI).  In the two nations where a cross section of the population bikes and walks, each study identified the high level of safety gain at intersections converted to single lane roundabouts for bicyclists as for walkers (as compared to signed and traffic signal intersections) when roundabouts are combined with paths so that bicycles avoid having to “take the lane” to travel through the roundabout and instead use the separate or shared use crosswalks.   

In sum, the formula for converting existing streets and building new streets to attain walkability and bikability remains straight forward—cycle track/separate bike or shared paths for bicyclists, shared paths or sidewalks for walkers, and pathed roundabouts at key intersections.  Plans already exist plans in Vermont and elsewhere either ready to go or easily revamped to carry out the new walkable-bikable design formulas.  Case in point, again, Manchester Center where its 1995 called for a pedestrian circulation plan of all roundabouts on its T shaped street grid of Main Street and Depot Street.  The Main Street corridor of roundabouts completes the Main Street part of the plan and a revision of the Depot Street plan to include cycle track appears feasible and the completion of Depot Street includes about three roundabouts, including converting two traffic signals.  The entire shopping mecca becomes a walkable area and its east west spine—walkable and bikable.  And not a single traffic light in sight!   Putney Road in Brattleboro awaits construction funding for converting the three traffic signals south of the Keene Turn Roundabout to roundabouts and installing full walking and bicycling on each side of the roadway—thereby reaching full walkable and bikable status.  Now all that remains is for Vermont transportation planners and policy makers at all levels to use the walkable and bikable formula to remake our urban areas and town centers into truly havens for walking and bicycling. 

A LETTER HOME--KEENE, NH

Sent a letter to the Keene Sentinel regarding a recent visit and the status of transportation there--the City successfully fought the NH Department of Transportation $60 million bypass project with four roundabouts (one built) instead plus cutting away some of the seas of asphalt--the City has four roundabouts in place including one on Main Street and one in front of the regional medical center, one more in the planning stage and a sixth just two miles south of town on NH 12 in Swanzey.

Dear Keene Sentinel Editor:

A hometown trip last week for a school class get together, a Jon Daniels event and viewing the newest roundabout also led to the discovery--no rental bicycles available in the Elm City.  This unfortunate development came while finding the new excellent bicycle route and trail map for the City.

Roundabouts aiding safety and traffic service may well be the glue enabling bikable as well as walkable downtowns and village centers. A look at the “widest paved Main Street in the world” does appear to have a good potential for the newest downtown trend—protected bicycle lanes termed “cycle track.”  Chicago moves forward on their first 100 miles of cycle track forged by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Seattle just completed a lengthy Linden Avenue two-way cycle-track facility on Linden Avenue (take a ride through a UTube video).  With perhaps minimal adjustment a basic six-foot cycle track may fit along each side of Main Street from Central Square to Main Street Roundabout. 

Cycle track—another European import like the roundabout—gives everyone from eight to eighty of all skills the freedom to bicycle in a safe and comfortable way, particularly if key intersections feature a roundabout armed with shared or separate bikepaths so the bicyclists cross on the crosswalks thereby avoiding being forced to join the more dangerous traffic in the vehicle travelway.  Cycle track may well be the street design equivalent of the Ipad and Iphone when it comes to popularity and speed of adoption.   

It is good news that the dangerous Base Hill Road intersection gets a roundabout treatment in the near future and, hopefully, the rest of the bypass gets “roundaboutized” in the near future.  As you know Keene is one of only a few cities of its size in the nation without a rail line—the rights-of-way to connect to Fitchburg and Bellows Falls remain ready for reactivation to enable once again passenger and freight rail service destined for Boston, New York, Montreal and parts beyond.  And the City seemed to anticipate the return of rail passenger service as much of the old rail station area remains mostly open ready for its return. 

Roundabouts, cycle track and rail passenger service restoration—sounds like the transportation action agenda for an all-American city!  

$39 MILLION PARKWAY[ETTE] WALKABLE-BIKABLE? NOT REALLY.

$39 million Champlain Parkway[ette]—A Poor Quality Walking and Biking Design

Tom Peters, the popular management writer stresses in a best seller “Thriving on Chaos” the premium leading managers and companies place on quality in their products and services, certainly a hallmark of the Steve Jobs approach for everything he did. 

With the Champlain Parkway in Burlington, VT still mired in legal procedures, a look at the current plans for the new 0.7 mile “parkwayette” with four major intersections—Pine Street, Home Avenue, Flynn Avenue and Lakeside Avenue—reveals poor quality walking and bicycling design.  Not very impressive with a $39 million projected cost in federal funds with $10 million already expended in various planning and design tasks in a project dating back about a half century.

To give a sense of what $39 million represents, it is about half the $83 million estimate for Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC) re-vamping practically all of the inpatient rooms into a new single occupancy building.  A complete light rail facility from the waterfront through the Marketplace, FAHC, UVM, then under Main Street to the south and the edge of Champlain College—including the light rail equipment—also costs about $80 million.  Cost of commuter rail self-propelled passenger equipment, stations and capital upgrades from Burlington via IBM Technology Park to the State House (about ten stations): $59 million.  

The Parkwayette does featrure a shared path on the west side accommodating both walkers and bicyclists—but the City’s decision some years ago declining recommended single lane roundabouts (as a cost saving measure) creates a far higher delay and expected injuy rates for walkers, bicyclists—and yes, cars occupants also.  The Parkwayette needs to slow 55 mph traffic down to 30 mph, something very difficult with signalized intersections but easy using the traffic calming roundabouts.  Literally the Parkwayette becomes obsolete the moment—if that ever comes---of the completion using current design.

Times certainly have changed since the 1950s and actually the change process accelerated in just the past year or so as cycle track (protected bike lanes) are being adopted rapidly as the basic way to make roadways accommodate bicyclists of all skills and ages.  The roundabout certainly has been a consideration since the first in the northeast was built in 1995 in Montpelier and the first busy street Burlington roundie at the Shelburne Street “rotary” design will be both single lane and provide a shared path for use by bicyclists and walkers, a path connecting to all the shared crosswalks.  Both bikable and walkable, the Shelburne Street roundabout can easily connect when cycle track along the north south corridors gets installed in the future.  

But it is the combination of cycle track and the roundabout at key intersections which reaches the quality status of the roadway being truly both walkable and bikable.  Anything other than a single lane roundabout--essentially stop control and traffic signals--generates a 500% greater rate of walker injuries and upwards of 300% greater rate of bicyclist injuries.  The Dutch and Swedish studies reporting this data remain very relevant because a cross section of the populations of those two nations of all ages and skills walk and bike versus, for example, bicycling busy streets in the U.S. mostly comprises young adult males. The one authoritative U.S. study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2001 found non-roundabout intersections overall about an 800% greater rate of serious injuries and fatalities.

Burlington does feature a fully walkable four-block Church Street Marketplace and a nearly walkable/bikable north side of Riverside Avenue where the shared use pathway street lacks possible roundabouts on either end and difficult cross-street accesses.

Any highway project can be revised—sometimes even after construction begins—to remedy issues.  It is not too late to re-design the Parkwayette intersections to include single lane roundabouts the shared pathway crossings, a design similar to that of the Plattsburgh, NY (NY 9) roundabout and walking/bicycle joint pathways which cross on the east leg of the intersection.  Not only would the re-design save scarce transportation dollars but serve all users better and even save some injuries too—if it ever does get the go-ahead in its current form.  So much for quality street designs which attain a high walkable/bikable standard.

A VERMONT TRANSPORTATION FUTURE WHICH DECREASES GREENHOUSE GASES 25% BELOW 1990 LEVELS

This blog includes July 30, 2013 comment material on a Vermont Digger column on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Vermont.

Over half Vermont petroleum use occurs in transportation when motor fuel consumption peaked around the millennium at over 350 million gallons.  Motor fuel use has been on the decline since–now about 11% lower at 312 million gallons (as of the end of 2011).   It very likely goes below the 1990 number of 279 million gallons before the end of this decade.  Decline car travel, driver choosing a family car with higher efficiency, and federal fuel efficiency standards already in place suggest the below 1990 gasoline use level by decade end.  We can be assured of being at the “end of the beginning” of reducing petroleum dependence and looking at 25% or more reductions of the 1990 motor fuel consumption levels in transportation.

Transportation remains the greatest opportunity to reduce consumption. In-state rail passenger services and commuter rail can help and only needs political support for the $60 million initial capital and $7 million additional annual operating funds to start (Amtrak support for two trains daily alone now costs $7 million a year). The bigger problem lies in lack of walkable and bikeable streets in our downtown and village center areas–this means literally the need to invest upwards of a billion dollars over the next decade in cycle track (protected bike lanes) and roundabouts both for safety and service.  As important, walkable and bikable streets key maximum accessibility to all transit types, and roundabouts reduce gasoline use at busy intersections by up to 20,000 or more gallons yearly.  And roundabouts on average at busy intersections reduce waits by about ten seconds for all users versus a traffic signal.

These changes require an immediate, significant increase in broad base taxes to deal with needed highway and rail/walk/bike infrastructure–otherwise moving below the 1990 levels of transportation use of petroleum becomes increasingly problematic.  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proposed a broad base tax, the income tax, for transportation of $1.9 billion to address highway and public transport needs, plus increases in traditional car related levies.  Proportionally for Vermont this equates to $100-150 million for transportation needs for all modes from broad base taxes while continuing to increase motor vehicle related taxation as in past practice.

Actually $150 million equals the amount Vermont employers expend for the 280,000 parking spaces employees currently use every workday.  This is based on a $600 a year cost of a surface parking space—capital cost, maintenance, amortization of initial cost, and property tax.   When you consider the 280,000 vehicles used daily by commuters must  also be parked at night at workers’ residences and far greater number provided “free” by merchants and institutions you very quickly get to a half billion a year subsidy of car parking at a minimum.  Shifting $150 million to various forms of non-car transportation which enables “harvesting” parking spaces for more valuable uses makes a $150 million more for transportation look like the same type of investment represented by the fluorescent bulb payback in energy conservation, insulating buildings, etc.