The Way Ahead to Modern, Safe, Streets--AAA, AARP and CROW

THE WAY AHEAD TO MODERN, SAFE STREETS—AAA, AARP AND CROW

     …or tackling our poor highway safety performance now costing 15,000 fatalities a year compared to the safety rates leading nations like England, Norway and Sweden

Alert!  U.S. streets unsafe for all who walk, bike and travel by car!  With twice the fatality rate per vehicle mile of England, Sweden and Norway more than 15,000 die in the U.S. from poor safety performance.   Once first in highway safety, the U.S. now ranks 15^th (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development).

In different ways, sets of letters reflect policies and street designs the United States must adopt if we are to decrease the truly gruesome results of trying to get from here to there by foot, bicycle and car on our streets and highways—particularly for walking and bicycling modes increasingly in demand and growing as the historic carcentricity era slowly recedes into history following an undeserved overwhelming dominance for more than a century.

Ironically, car drivers complain about bicyclists and walkers clogging urban streets while they themselves and their passengers die at an alarming rate!  Moreover, the changes in safety infrastructure addressing walk and bike safety—cycle track and roundabouts—directly reduce car occupant carnage too.  Decision makers call this “win win.” 

AAA   AAA (the American Automobile Association) truly gets it as the leading representative of auto interests for decades.  Their recent study found the costs of vehicle accidents in large metropolitan areas were twice the cost of congestion and even in small metros were far higher than congestion costs.  AAA simply calls for a White House Safety Summit and for that Summit to adopt a “0 Fatality Rate” policy and put the nation to work on highway safety in an effective way.

AARP   With the U.S. in just a few decades experiencing an increase of their senior population growing from 10 to 20 percent, the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, developed policies of interest to the older generation and when it comes to transportation “livable streets” and safe streets lead their policies.   Seniors drive less and walk and, potentially, bike more.  But obviously unsafe urban streets, AARP became a leader in the “complete streets” movement which in most cases means at least a recognition of the problem and minimal treatments to address the needs of the walk an bike modes.  Still, AARP does take the unusual step of touting and strongly supporting intersection safety, particularly replacing traffic signals with modern roundabouts.  Half of all senior driver deaths on American roads occur at intersections compared to less than a quarter of all fatalities—and roundabouts cut serious injuries and fatalities for car occupants and walkers as well as providing improved safety for cyclists.  Seniors lack one physical element important for their safety, a decreased ability to judge approach speeds so important to merging and intersection entry decisions, a problem cured by the lower speeds and reduced conflicts afforded by the roundabout.

CROW  The CROW  “manual clusters all the knowledge about road safety in the Netherlands”  and the aptly titled CROW “design manual for bicycle traffic”, already popular in England, is quickly becoming the design guide of choice for street cycle design in the United States.  The CROW bicycle design manual is critically important as it contains the design for urban and rural roundabout designs with pathing for cyclists which cyclists identify as the safest type of intersection.  The Dutch design manuals only include single lane roundabouts—if more than a one lane roundabout is required then bike and vehicle modes are separated, far easier in a nation with no hills and valleys than the typical American landscape.  Still a Swedish study does show that properly designed there is a safety gain for cyclists at a two-lane roundabout over a traffic signal—and less delay and other benefits.

These three sets of letters show some of the ways the United States need to go to bring safety to our streets for all modes.  The French, for example, may have the best comprehensive highway safety programming in a nation with the highest number of roundabouts in the world.  In 1970 France had a third higher rate of fatalities per vehicle mile  than the U.S. but today their rate is a third less than the U.S.  If the U.S. could attain the French highway fatality rate, 5,000 less Americans would die each year on the streets and highways.  It is all about safe streets.

Winooski Circle NOT a Roundabout

The Winooski circle can best be described as a traffic circle, an oval or a traffic circulator (Daryl Benoit's description--he is former CCRPC staffer).  What Winooski's facility is not--it is not a modern roundabout. 

Best example, take three of the 120-foot diameter Shelburne Street roundabouts (as designed for construction in 2017), or three of the Montpelier downtown Keck Circles, or three of the Middlebury roundabouts—three of these fit inside the Winooski facility with plenty of room to spare.   Or, drop six of the 90-foot diameter full-service Manchester Center Grand Union roundabouts, still room to spare inside the Winooski circulator.  Take two of the two-lane 172-foot diameter Brattleboro Keene Turn roundabouts and they fit easily inside the Winooski facility.  

Big diameters means high speed, means higher crash rates.  Solution to Winooski--tear out the middle area and put too normal sized two-lane roundabouts and provide lots of resulting unused space to the businesses which front the north/west/east sides of the street.  This means, for example, no more going through the sidewalk "squeeze" at Sneakers, safe walk mode crossings all round, and much slower speeds.  Besides the inside area gets no use at all now. 

Current roundabout practice for urban areas with walk and bike mode use are 90-130 feet diameter for a single laner and 150-180 feet diameter for a two laner.  All 10 Vermont busy street roundabouts (plus two under construction) conform to these diameter ranges. 

Roundabouts are all about safety and cut overall serious injury and fatality rates by about 90%.  Ditto for single lane roundabouts for walk mode.  Seniors are particularly vulnerable at intersections when walking or driving.  While a quarter of all fatalities in the U.S. occur at intersections, more than half all senior driver fatalities occur at signed or signaled intersections.  Except for depth perception senior drivers ability equals that of younger drivers.  Not a single walk fatality has yet occurred at the more than 4,000 U.S. roundabouts since the first roundabout was built in 1990 in Las Vegas.  No wonder AARP advocates replacing existing traffic circles with roundabouts.  But here in Burlington our walker fatality rate at our 75 signalized intersections is about one per decade plus lots of serious injuries during recent years.

The Burlington Walk Bike Council seeks a demonstration roundabout next summer at an all-way stop intersection so all our residents can have some first hand experience with a roundabout without having to go to Middlebury, Manchester or Montpelier downtowns.  Also on VT 15 there are roundabouts in Cambridge, Hyde Park and a new one under construction in Morrisville (Waterbury US 2/VT 100 on Main Street also under construction).

Finally, for New York State Department of Transportation “roundabouts first” policy dates from 2005 and now is the approach of other state departments in Virginia, Rhode Island, Florida and Maryland.  Vermont was the first to have a state law requiring consideration of a roundabout at any dangerous intersection because of the safety improvement offered by the roundabout.  It’s the law!

San Francisco and Seattle Trail Walkable Manchester Center, VT?

Yes, up to the last few years the current three-roundabout corridor in Manchester dwarfed major cities like San Francisco and Seattle when in came to walk-mode safe single lane modern roundabouts.  Actually just about any downtown with one of the roughly 4,000 roundabouts nationwide tops New York City which has a zero tolerance of the roundabout which aided several European nations including France pass the United State in highway safety performance over the last two decades (the U.S. once first in 1970 now ranks about 14th and seems to continue falling).

Transportation Alternatives, a pro-walk/bike and safe streets organization in New York City told Vermont's walk/bike summit earlier this year one cannot find a single roundabout in that City while the rest of New York state whose roads are a state responsibility operate on the first U.S. state policy of "roundabouts first" in place since 2005.  If  New York Mayor Diblasio truly pursues a "0 fatality rate" on his City streets he must abandon the City's "0 roundabouts" policy as the U.S. roundabouts cut serious injuries and fatalities by about 90%--single laners with proper design cut walk/bike mode fatalities by about 90%.

Yes, Seattle is the home of traffic calming circles on local streets dozens of them--but hardly a roundabout to be found on a major busy street intersection.  Ditto for San Francisco home of an aggressive bike organizations.  San Francisco?  Well it is one of 22 U.S. cities with special federal programming for major cities with extraordinarily high walk mode injury rates. Again in spite of roundabout training (one in 2007 by the New York State  roundabout leader Howard McCulloch at a Firsherman's Wharf hotel) had nary a roundie at that time.

So, if you want to see roundabouts in a community place there as the result of a 1995 plan for the self-proclaimed "5th Avenue in the Mountains" take a trip to Manchester Center, VT--its Main Street truly walkable.  The other half of their plan for Depot Street removes the only remaining traffic signals and will likely include cycle track (protected bike lanes) thereby creating an ideal shopping experience in a walkable/bikable environment--New York City, San Francisco and Seattle take note!

Harvesting 50 On-street Parking Places to Create Urban Core Four Block Cycle Track

Is Burlington, VT Really Committed to a Bikable Downtown Core?--A Current Parking Study May Hold an Answer

Below is a challenge to the staff and study membership looking at a target residential area of the Burlington, Vermont urban core where harvesting 50 on-street parking spaces would allow for easy installation of a two-way cycle track along one of the only two north-south corridors feasible--each corridor critical to the access of the the walk-only Church Street Marketplace and accessing all the primary institutions of the the City--from Fletcher Free Library, YMCA, Memorial Auditorium Complex and City Hall to the highest volume cooperative market in the United States--City Market.  Burlington touts itself as walk/bike friendly, seeks the highest level national designation and like practically all urban areas today faces the prospect of major street corridor re-configurations (in this case) or outright reconstruction to provide quality bicycle  and walk "infra."  The City gets a taste of the challenge in the following suggestion communicated this week at the start of a residential parking study from this member of the advisory committee----

Burlington Residential Component of Overall Parking Study 

      ...Including a study component--harvesting of 50 parking spaces on South Union from Pearl to Main Streets to enable installing two-way cycle track

An important element of a parking study needs to be how to harvest downtown on-street parking spaces on key blocks where cycle track naturally belongs—blocks where street reconstruction in order to install cycle track obviously is cost-prohibitive.   The task is to suggest option to remove parking and other impediments between Pearl Street and Main Street along South Union Street so that cycle track can be installed to serve the neighborhood and various business, institutional and other destinations.

In one neighborhood selected for analysis—including South Union between Pearl and Main Streets—such a needed downtown cycle track exists along with a cost prohibitive reconstruction—only “harvesting” roughly 50 on-street spaces enables installing cycle track on the west side and provides for 10-11 foot travel lane (now mostly nine feet, far too narrow to prevent constant incursion by vehicles into the bike lane—a context that extends from Pearl Street to the end of North Union at North Winooski Avenue). 

The three blocks of South Union constitute a natural connection to adjacent uphill residential areas and Buell Street as well as some of the residential areas just north of Pearl Street.  It is the only north-south main plateau street to service a residential area of similar size or scope in the downtown. 

The importance of this South Union Street connection to major attraction sites cannot be denied.  The Marketplace is one, but consider the immediately adjacent YMCA, churches, City Market, Fletcher Free Library, the Roxy Theater and Memorial Auditorium.

Look at the other five similar historic north south corridors on the main downtown plateau.  The Pine Street and St. Paul Street corridors no longer exist erased by Burlington Town Center—and even a St. Paul restoration though desirable at best would be limited to walk and some bike mode traffic which to the north faces the coming blockage from the new transit center.   The western corridor, Battery Street involves Battery Park to the west and a sharp downslope so that by College Street walk and bike mode movement to Church Street becomes somewhat problematic because of increasing grades as one approaches Main Street.  Note that Battery Street with stable to declining traffic numbers does remain a good candidate for on-street or sidewalk level (or hybrid) cycle track, possibly attained through a road diet.

The leaves two corridors—the Marketplace’s Church Street obviously does not allow bicycle or vehicle modes.  And South Winooski clearly becomes a critically important corridor for the blocks between Pearl and Main Streets to be reconstructed with quality cycle track and roundabouts. 

Obviously there one or more avenues can lead to harvesting the 50 spaces, including but not limited to demand management, regulation, re-allocation of nearby parking resources, and, yes, if economically reasonable purchase of space for surface parking expansion and/or parking garage facilities.   What this residential parking study can do is plot alternatives to attain the goal we seek:  a quality, usable by all, two-way cycle facility on South Union Street between Pearl and Main Streets.

It is also important to note that the City does designate the downtown area and the treatments and improvements in the downtown area do not have to conform or should they conform to areas outside the downtown.  There is the grand scheme if you will of long bike corridors isn the Burlington City Transportation Plan and all of North and South Union are designated a bike route in that 2011 (pre-cycle track era) plan.  But it is only fair and reasonable to focus on the economic and social center of our City in the downtown, and initiate quality infrastructure there first on a no-regrets basis and not get lost in “let’s wait and do the entire corridor” thinking that prevents any action whatsoever to start already decades long delay.

In sum, the South Union Street corridor—Pearl to Main Street—not only deserves and rates cycle tracking lacking only the removal of on street parking to achieve that objective with very little expense.   The street itself is uniformly about 25 feet in width curb-to-curb throughout its length (also extending from Pearl Street north to North Winooski).  The current basic configuration is an eight foot parking lane (the very minimum allowed), a travel lane of about nine feet, a two-foot marked bike lane lines and six foot bike lane.  The current configuration serves not users well and because of the minimum widths for each mode poses a constant safety concern.  Parked vehicles cannot open streetside doors without invading vehicle travel lanes, drivers aware of the narrow travel land routinely crowd into the bike lane and wise bicycles use the sidewalks during busy traffic times.

So what is the parking inventory—all on the west side of the corridor?  The block from Pearl to Buell Street is residential parking only totaling 24 spades and four driveway curb cuts:  six spaces/curbcut, six spaces/curbcut, six spaces/curbcut, two spaces/curbcut and four spaces to Buell Street.  From Buell to College Street several different uses exist as follows with abu 18 parking spaces: two spaces/curbcut, four spaces/curbcut, two spaces/curbcut, 5-6 spaces related to the funeral home, City Market entry, five metered spaces, parking lot entry, YMCA with unloading area, College Street.   From College to Main Street:  seven metered spaces, parking lot entrance, then loading and access spaces associated with the Memorial Auditorium. 

Vermont Roundabout Celebrates 19th Birthday

Montpelier's Keck Circle celebrated its 19th birthday and my letter to Mayor Hollar and City Councilor takes note of the 20th anniversary coming up in 2015 and the kinds of changes in transportation since that first northeastern U.S. roundabout was built--there are now fourteen roundabouts in Vermont, about 4,000 in the nation and several states and provinces in Canada with "roundabouts first" policies in place. 

Dear Mayor Hollar and Councilors:

On this day, the 19^th birthday of Keck Circle, am writing to look forward to Sunday, August 16, 2015 when the first modern roundabout in the northeast (east of Las Vegas and north of Maryland) ends the teenage years. 

Keck Circle, the 19^th roundabout built in the United States, represents a modern technology dating from its inception in 1966 in the U.K. and composed of stone-age materials.  It is my hope to perhaps lunch with some of the City committee members and councilors from the 1993-1995 period of study, design and construction. 

It is noteworthy the $64,000 all-City funded project design costs were $2,300.  Pinkham Engineering of Burlington, later merged into Summit Engineering, handled the design with the involvement of Michael J. Wallwork of Florida, then with the Florida Department of Transportation and since the late 1990s a leader in roundabout design nationally.

At some point the City certainly will update this historic intersection.  The original plan featured a slightly narrower entry on the Main Street northbound and the large vehicle override of the eastbound entry on Spring merits attention.  Certainly as we renew our core urban streets with cycle track Keck Circle bicycle accommodation needs at least a minimum upgrade to on/off ramping where approach lanes narrow thereby allowing cyclist the choice of shifting onto shared space with the walk mode along with shared crosswalks—you will find more than one Middle School student traveling on the sidewalk north of Keck Circle and Main Street below while on their trip to and from school.   Wallwork led the national evolution of bicycle accommodation design to—at a minimum--on/off ramps on both single and multi-lane roundabouts in recent years. 

As you are well aware a roundabout at Barre Street and Main Street remains as the chosen treatment to connect Winooski East and West Bikepaths—easily possible as part of the re-use of the beverage outlet re-development.

Mayor Hollar and City Council          August 16, 2015                                       Page 2

Montpelier’s two roundabouts played a key role in my neighborhood’s North Avenue corridor study just now ending with two field trips including one where our resident group was given the positive emergency vehicle experience at your roundabouts by Fire Chief Robert Gowans.  The outcome of our study includes an unprecedented long term recommendation for cycle track from end to end of the 2.8 mile corridor and conversion of three of the current seven signalized intersections to roundabouts.

You may find the various video material of our November 1, 2013 field visit (particularly the 5:43 second segment) taken on that last summer-like Friday taken when school let out at the Middle School, then later at the peak 4-5 p.m. traffic, about 2,100 vehicles an hour, at the US 2/302 roundabout.  Note the Keck Circle “walking school bus” from Union, the ambulance run, the rookie driver operation of a chartered Greyhound bus, and the two people in the splitter island refuge viewing the wind-driven wheel atop the bicycle sculpture.  http://goo.gl/DdajOC 

As you all recognize a revolution in transportation begun in the 1990s with Montpelier roundabouts and transportation paths a reflection of the early period when the City and the State attained regional leadership.  Now on the immediate horizon for Montpelier are cycle track to bring bicycling to all regardless of age or skill.  Further we are near both intercity and commuter rail with more than a thousand workers accessing your worksites via 12-20 trains daily stopping at the new transit center (already 50 Link bus runs each workday service handling about 500 individual commuters from Burlington to Montpelier, Middlebury and St. Albans with the first Link bus dating from 2003).

Yours truly,  Tony Redington

Highway Trust Myth, Vermont Commuter Rail, Champlain Parkway Funds Sufficient for Commuter Rail Start

The Myth of the “Highway Trust Fund,” Vermont not ready for commuter rail, if only we had the $40 million for the limited Champlain Parkway project commuter rail would be only a matter of months away…

My comment on Vermont Digger to “Highway Trust Fund” piece on August 1

The Highway Trust Fund really became a Transportation Fund in 1993 when a portion of the “gas tax” was dedicated to transit. Now rail and transit grow and car travel doesn’t, So we need general funds to support transportation. We did not tax horses when the car came along and it is time to stop expecting a declining source–car taxes–to support transit and rail here and Vermont in the nation. In Vermont we need–for the first time–to start government funded commuter and intercity rail as well as investing in walking and bicycling infrastructure (no more bikepaths!) on our town centers and urban busy streets. That is what Vermonters want today–they cannot bike and walk nor take commuter and intercity rail so too many are stuck with their cars.

Response to my comment by a reader:

How well did light/commuter rail work with the Champlain Flyer? Vermont doesn’t have the population density to make it work! Not to mention wouldn’t intercity rail compete with CCTA for ridership? The last CCTA bus I pulled beside and peeked into had a grand total of 2 people on board.

As for pouring tons of taxpayer’s money into a bicycling infrastructure, the climate doesn’t justify it. Hard to imagine many people who would be willing to bike in subzero temps, snow storms, and continuous rain. I do bike often, but only on bikepaths. I avoid like the plague, biking alongside motor vehicles for safety reasons.

It is pointless to even consider tossing taxpayer money into any proposal where the % of people willing to use it would be very small.

And my response to the Champlain Flyer and commuter rail:  …compared to 2000 and the Champlain Flyer there are now 50 buses each workday plying the three rail corridors from Burlington to Montpelier, St. Albans and Middlebury.  All these buses with over 500 commuters (1,000 trips a day) individually save about $8,000 yearly over taking a car on a 40-mile one way commute versus solo driving, after taxes.  Begun in 2003, the buses, now larger in some cases, still have standing room only once in a while--and still growing double digits each year.  About 3% of Vermonters shifted from cars to something else since 2000, about 9,000 overall.  Going from over 300 commuters to 1,000 on the Montpelier-Burlington corridor--very likely--makes three roundtrips am and pm plus a noontime run economic, similar in performance to all but one of the dozen new commuter rail lines in the U.S. since 1990.   A few less long-distance commuter buses actually would be a good thing as the money saved shifts to commuter rail. 

The Champlain Flyer was to be a start but suffered from too short a run (14 miles) to be effective as commuter rail market is 20-50 miles range, and the Middlebury/Burlington has the least potential of the three. 

If the Champlain Parkway money were shifted to commuter rail--$40 million--then all three commuter lines could start literally within in a year or two, with, yes, the Middlebury run first as it is being upgraded right now to passenger speeds for the Ethan Allen extension to Union Station.