Philadelphia: The Curse of the One-Way Street

By Dom Nozzi

In January 2012, I accept an invitation to serve as keynote speaker for a forum entitled “Walkability: Philadelphia Strides Into the Future.” I give the presentation on a Thursday night at the Academy of Natural Sciences on Logan Square.

My message, in part, is that while the city is already one of the best in the nation for walkable quality (largely due to its high density and proximity of destinations), the city needs to engage in transformative tactics to get to the next level. That the greatest cities share a common trait: they are all world-class places for enjoyable walking.

“It is not about providing more space for pedestrians (such as building new or wider sidewalks),” I point out. “It is about taking away space from cars (via road diets, removal of off-street surface parking, and so on), so that cars are assigned more of their fair share of space, rather than be allocated an excessive amount of space.”

“It is about increasing the cost of driving, so that motorists are paying their fair share of the costs they impose on society.”

“It is about increasing the inconvenience of traveling by car, so that cars do not unfairly inconvenience other users of streets.”

I also note that the pedestrian must be the design imperative. That everything else – cars, transit, the handicapped, even bicycling – come second. When buildings and streets are designed, in other words, the first and primary objective is that the design improves conditions for walking. Only then do we look at providing for other forms of travel, and then only in such a way as to not impede or reduce pedestrian quality. Maximizing pedestrian quality effectively ensures that the community has maximized its quality of life, its economic health, its civic pride, and its sustainability.

I walk for several miles throughout the Philadelphia city center to get a better sense of the walking conditions. Immediately, I notice that the City has converted nearly every downtown street into a one-way street. So thorough, jarring and unpleasant is this conversion that it hits me over the head like a two by four. It is instantly clear to me: for Philadelphia to dramatically improve its walking quality, it must follow the lead of the large and growing number of cities throughout the nation that are converting their one-way streets back to two-way operation.

Philadelphia had made this unfortunate change to one-way streets back in the 1920s.

Why are one-way streets ruinous? Because they inevitably increase car speeds, motorist anger and impatience, and motorist inattentiveness. Streets quickly become a raging, peddle-to-the-metal racetrack of hurried, high-speed cars. Retail shops and residences start fleeing from the newly hostile street. Bicyclists are increasingly pushed onto sidewalks because of the immensely uncomfortable, incompatible danger of trying to share the street with the hurtling cars (bicyclists, in response to one-way streets, also find themselves increasingly riding the wrong way on one-way streets, as do some motorists). Those shops, homes and offices that remain on what are now a form of downtown highways start setting themselves back from the hostility of the street, or turn their backs by boarding up windows, pulling entrances to the side or back, and creating the immense, unfriendly blank walls that are now found on so many of downtown Philadelphia’s streets – thereby killing the energy, vibrancy and interest that a street needs for pedestrian quality.

The incompatibility of bicycling and one-way streets in Philadelphia is evident in at least a few ways. Not only the frequent bicycling on sidewalks I observe, but also the fact that the City has decided to remove on-street parking on many downtown streets in order to install in-street bicycle lanes. Healthy downtown streets have on-street parking on both sides, which slows cars and obligates more attentiveness by motorists. On a well-designed downtown street, car speeds tend to be slow enough that most bicyclists are comfortable sharing the street with car traffic, and on-street bicycle lanes (which detract from creating a human-scaled street environment, and probably increase car speeds) tend to be unnecessary and inappropriate. But when Philadelphia converted to one-way streets, this bicyclist comfort was lost, thereby obligating the need to degrade the pedestrian (and retail) quality of many streets by removing much on-street parking.

Worst of all, the experience for the pedestrian becomes awful with one-way streets. The ambience is quite loud (high-speed cars are the leading source of noise pollution in cites), and seemingly unsafe (high-speed cars seem very dangerous to the pedestrian, and often ARE dangerous due to the tiny reaction times high speeds create). Impatient, inattentive, hurried motorists conditioned to be that way on one-ways also do not tend to be in the mood or have the patience to offer the needed courtesy to pedestrians trying to cross or otherwise navigate on streets.

I acknowledge that many one-way streets in Philadelphia will be very difficult to revert back to two-way, as most streets are quite narrow. Probably only those streets that are three- or more lanes in size can be converted back to two-way, or two-lane streets that have low traffic volumes.

On the positive side, my hat is off to the city of Philadelphia on siren use reduction by police and fire trucks. In my two and a half days in downtown Philly, I hardly heard a single siren. This siren reduction is an enormous boost to the quality of life, the sense of calm and serenity, and the overall well-being of the city. The siren reduction in Philadelphia is in striking contrast to most American cities, where emergency vehicle sirens are nearly constant, 24/7 attacks on eardrums that powerfully create the impression that the city is under siege, or in an active war zone.

While the siren reduction is highly admirable, an essential task remains.

Philadelphia must convert many of its one-way streets back to two-way operation if it expects to get to the next level of quality walkability.

Doing so will enable Philadelphia to attain world-class greatness as a city.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Road Widening: Contemporary Blood-Letting

By Dom Nozzi

A revolution is occurring in the transportation field. After nearly a century of a transportation paradigm that has — as its imperative – the premise that the key to a better future is making cars happy, many are now increasingly seeing the essential need to leave that thinking behind. To beneficially transform our communities by taking the opposite approach: making people, not cars, happy.

But these oftentimes heroic transportation revolutionaries face an enormous dilemma: We have been so thorough in making cars happy for the past several decades that much of our world is designed in such a way that it is impossible to travel without a car.

Tragically, convenient, easy car travel we have bankrupted ourselves in creating is not conducive to creating safe, lovable, human-oriented, sustainable, enjoyable places that induce civic pride (indeed, it is utterly destructive of a better place to live). Those of us who have discovered this, then, are stuck with the enormous task of trying to point out that the path to a better community – to a better future – lies in doing something that at least initially, seems harmful to our happiness: inconveniencing car travel and car parking (and making car use more costly).

How do we make the following message resonate?…

“You have one way to travel, and we propose to improve your community by making that form of travel more difficult and expensive.” This is, of course, not what we actually say, but what we say is generally translated by many to be this message.

Perhaps we transportation revolutionaries are the modern-day equivalent of those who pointed out long ago that the blood-letting thought by the entire medical community to improve human health was actually HARMFUL to a person’s life…

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

 

 

 

Does Traffic Congestion Increase Fuel Consumption and Air Emissions?

By Dom Nozzi

Advocates for better transportation and better quality of life often make an important tactical mistake. And the promoters of car dependency, road widening, and suburban sprawl have achieved an enormous victory.

Why?

Because nearly all environmentalists and advocates for a better community quality of life have come to agree with sprawl and road widening advocates that efforts to reduce traffic congestion by, say, widening roads or synchronizing traffic signals, is a common sense way to reduce air pollution and gasoline consumption.

Isn’t this obviously true?

After all, such measures to smooth traffic flow and reduce “stop-and-go” traffic improve fuel efficiency and reduces air emissions. A great many studies confirm this.

Right?

Therefore, for decades, environmentalists and quality of life advocates have often joined forces with road widening and sprawl advocates by agreeing that adding turn lanes or travel lanes, or synchronizing traffic signals, is an effective way to reduce fuel consumption and air emissions.

Environmentalists, in other words, continue to oppose road widening because it will promote sprawl, but grudgingly (?) end up admitting to themselves that road widening or traffic synchronization WILL reduce air pollution and gas consumption. Widening a road is not ALL bad.

As a result, the sprawl and road widening lobby has regularly been successful in their efforts to gain political support for widening roads and promoting sprawl. “We need to do it to reduce gas consumption and air emissions!” Most environmentalists, interest groups, and elected officials heartily agree.

There is only one small problem with this “common sense” argument.

It is quite wrong.

In a ground-breaking worldwide study of cities in 1989 (“Cities and Automobile Dependence”), Jeffrey Kenworthy and Peter Newman came to a startling, counterintuitive conclusion: cities that did not spend enormous amounts of money to widen roads and ease traffic flow showed LOWER levels of air emissions and gas consumption than cities which went on a road-widening, ease-of-traffic-flow binge – despite higher levels of congestion.

How could this be?

The reason is that nearly all roads are free to use (there is almost never a need to pay a toll to drive on a road). “Free-to-use” roads inevitably encourage “low-value” car trips. That is, trips that are of relatively low importance, such as a drive across town on a major road during rush hour to rent a video…or buy a cup of coffee.

The most effective way to reduce such “low-value” car trips is to charge motorists for using the road by tolling the road (either with toll booths or electronically). Toll roads are a very equitable “user fee.” The more you use a road, the more you pay. In doing so, motorists are more likely to use the road only for the most important car trips, such as the drive to or from work, or medical emergencies, for example.

When roads are free to use, they become congested quite quickly because of all the “low-value” car trips on the road.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult, politically, to use a toll to charge motorists for using a road. The result is that almost no road is tolled.

Traffic congestion, however, provides a “second best” way to more efficiently use a road by reducing low-value car trips. And congestion occurs without any need for politicians to take wildly unpopular actions.

Traffic congestion shaves off a significant number of low-value car trips by placing a “time tax” on car travel (as brilliantly noted by traffic engineer Ian Lockwood), because when a motorist uses a congested road, they must “pay” with their time, as the congestion will cause delays in their trip.

The result is that a great many motorists find that the congestion is intolerable and decide in both the short- and long-term to do something else. They opt to use a less congested road. They use transit, walk, or bicycle. They travel at non-rush hour times. In the long run, many will move to a location that is closer to their daily destinations as a way to avoid the congestion.

And as Kenworthy and Newman found in their worldwide study of cities, this means that more congested cities see less air pollution and less gas consumption because so many low-value car trips have been eliminated by the congestion.

I should also note that transportation is a zero-sum game: Each time we improve motorist comfort or convenience by widening a road, adding a turn lane, making a road a one-way street, adding more free car parking, or synchronizing traffic signals, we reduce the comfort and convenience of all other forms of travel – transit, walking, and bicycling inevitably become less common because car travel becomes more pleasant, and pleasant car travel makes non-car travel less pleasant and more dangerous. More trips by car – rather than by transit, bicycle, or foot – leads to more gas consumption and air emissions.

Tragically, then, environmentalists and quality of life advocates have ruinously joined forces with the road widening and sprawl advocates to “reduce congestion.” Such efforts, ironically, have led to communities with crushing debt, an awful and downwardly spiraling quality of life, much higher air emissions and fuel consumption, less transportation choice, more car dependency, less civic pride, more sprawl, more highway deaths, and an utterly unlovable city.

It is time to recognize an undeniable truth: The only path to a reduction in car dependence, reduced air emissions, reduced gas consumption, reduced sprawl, more transportation choice, better quality of life, more public health, less traffic injuries and death, less sprawl, a better economic environment, lower taxes, and more civic pride is to take away space from cars by narrowing roads and shrinking parking areas, increasing the cost of car ownership and use, and increasing the inconvenience of driving a car.

Widening roads, adding turn lanes, creating one-way streets, and synchronizing traffic signals are all enormously counterproductive to achieving these essential community objectives.

Traffic congestion, car inconvenience, and higher costs for driving are all friends of a better community, a better quality of life, and a better environment. Don’t continue to let the sprawl and happy car lobby fool you into thinking otherwise.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Will the “Sustainability Transportation Analysis & Rating System” Help Us Stop Ruining Ourselves?

by Dom Nozzi

Recently, a colleague of mine expressed a great deal of enthusiasm over a new transportation planning tool known as “Sustainable Transportation Analysis & Rating System” (STARS). He felt it would greatly improve long-range transportation planning. That instead of local governments preparing “wish lists” that mostly consisted of counterproductive road widening projects, we’d instead have more beneficial, sustainable and sensible transportation projects due to the new STARS evaluation tool. I told him that I wished I could be as optimistic about STARS.

Why am I pessimistic?

Frankly, I don’t see why it would be difficult for the conventional road and car lobbies to claim that road widening promotes “sustainability.” Like the lobby has so successfully done for several decades (even most environmentalists still believe this), the road-widening cheerleaders will claim that widening will reduce carbon emissions and promote “access” and “mobility” by reducing car congestion.

Ergo, widening promotes sustainability!

Even though some of us know that widening worsens congestion, reduces accessibility, reduces mobility, increases carbon emissions, increases gas consumption and increases sprawl, I believe the conventional wisdom will continue to believe (and convince elected decision-makers) that widening will improve each of those measures.

Ian Lockwood (and others) taught us how easily the conventional wisdom can use biased terms to fool us. “Improvements” sounds great for all forms of travel, but is a code word for improving conditions for cars. “Traffic efficiency” also sounds great for everyone, but is a code term for faster car speeds. And so on.

I’ve seen many “progressive” measures in my career that seemed revolutionary at first, but were then co-opted by the conventional thinkers to suit their purposes. One example: Departments of Transportation (DOT) all over the nation using what they call “context-sensitive design.”

In my experience, “context-sensitive design” sounds great. It sounds like we’ll see DOT designing and building roads that respect their context by being slower speed and more narrow when their new, wider roads enter towns.

Instead, what we get is trivial window dressing. More shrubs and grass along the median, for example, to make 8-lane superhighways “context-sensitive” when they ram their way through a (formerly) sleepy, low-speed town.

In sum, I don’t think we’ll see much in the way of positive changes until we start seeing big price and inconvenience issues for motorists via much higher gas costs, priced and scarce parking, and no money to widen roads. Fortunately, those things are starting to emerge…

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

America Has the Lowest Level of Bicycling on Earth: What We Can Do to End the Shame

By Dom Nozzi

In his 2010 book, One Less Car, Zack Furness points out something that should utterly shame all bicycle advocates, alternative transportation activists, planners, and elected officials: no nation on earth has a lower percentage of bicyclists than the United States. A pathetic one percent of all commuting in the US is by bicycle. Even in places with bitterly cold, forbidding weather – such as the Northwest Territories adjacent to the North Pole – bicycling rates are higher.

How could this be? After all, those promoting more bicycling and less motoring have successfully convinced towns all over the nation to install bike lanes, bike paths, bike showers, and bike parking.

The reason, as Michael Ronkin, former bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the State of Oregon has brilliantly and provocatively pointed out, is that it is NOT about providing facilities for bicyclists. To effectively convince large numbers of Americans to commute by bicycle, it is necessary to TAKE AWAY SPACE FROM CARS (and increase the cost of car travel).

[Note that in this essay, I am referring to “commuter” bicyclists. Commuter/utilitarian bicyclists are those who use a bicycle for travel to work or shop, for example. “Recreational” bicyclists, by contrast, are bicycling for entertainment or exercise.]

A new paradigm is needed for effectively promoting a large increase in bicycling in America. For several decades, there have been two large advocacy groups aggressively promoting their idea of the best way to recruit more bicycling:

1. The “vehicular cyclists,” led by John Forrester. The VC advocates claim that no in-street bike lanes or separated-from-the-road bike paths are needed for bicycling. The best, safest way to bicycle is to have a bicyclist travel by following the same rules of the road as the motorist (largely to increase predictability and visibility). I subscribed to this view ever since reading Forrester’s Bicycle Transportation in grad school back in the early 1980s.

2. The “separated bicycle path” group, which holds that the way to recruit large numbers of new bicyclists is to separate them physically from dangerous, high-speed car traffic. The assumption of this group is that the main reason we don’t see large numbers of bicyclists in the US is that most people are put off by the danger inherent in bicycling in the street with cars.

Both of these tactics have miserably failed to recruit large numbers of new bicyclists in the US. The US continues to have, by far, the lowest number of bicyclists in the world.

Why?

The vehicular cyclists take an approach that even in theory is only applicable to a small number of people – those who have the courage, skill and athleticism to bicycle in the street with cars. Even VC advocates admit that their approach, even if widely used, would not result in a large number of new bicyclists.

While they believe their approach would lead to a large number of new bicyclists, off-street bicycle path advocates fail to understand that “perceived danger” for bicycling is only a minor reason why commuter bicycling is not popular in the US.

Car travel is so heavily provided for and promoted in the US that it is highly irrational to travel by foot, bicycle or transit (even if we provide bike paths, sidewalks, better transit, etc.). There are a great many reasons why nearly all trips in the US are by car. Some of the more important reasons why the car is more rational in the US is that compared to other forms of travel, the car excels in the following ways:

Comfort

Protection from weather

Climate, music and noise control

Cargo-carrying capacity

Passenger-carrying capacity

Status

Ego

Protection from violent people and strangers

Speed

Travel range

Subsidized fuel and roads

Subsidized parking

The perceived safety provided by off-street bicycle paths, when compared to the above car benefits, does not even come close to convincing the vast majority of Americans that bicycling is preferable to car travel. In other words, the above list of car travel benefits far exceed the benefits of safer bicycling.

As an aside, an important reason why the off-street bike path tactic is highly counterproductive, is that even if it were possible to find the trillions of public dollars necessary to install a comprehensive network of off-street bicycle paths, doing so would essentially abandon the road to it always being a “car sewer.”

A Third Way for Bicycle Promotion

The key to successfully creating a large number of new bicyclists, and reducing undesirable car dependence, is to establish a “third way:” End the extreme pampering of the car so that the list of reasons why it makes sense to bicycle outweigh the reasons why it makes sense to travel by car.

Tactics for Effectively Creating Large Numbers of New Bicyclists

A. Government Measures

• Narrow roads in the community (popularly called “road dieting.”). In general, streets in a town should be no larger than three lanes in size.
• Reduce the amount of off-street car parking (particularly FREE parking). Governments should end the highly counterproductive, costly practice of requiring new development to provide off-street parking. Much existing off-street parking should be shrunk in size and often replaced with buildings.
• Design streets to obligate slower and more attentive driving. Tactics include provision of on-street parking, use of relatively narrow travel lanes, requiring buildings to be pulled up to abut streetside sidewalks, removal of traffic safety devices (such as traffic signals, flashing lights, stop signs, etc.), installing bulb-outs, reducing the height of street lights and traffic signals, installation of canopy street trees, shortening block lengths, and other traffic calming measures.
• Electronically pricing roads and parking so that drivers pay their own way with user fees, instead of being heavily subsidized with free roads and free parking (free parking is the biggest subsidy, by far, in the US).
• Substantially increase the state and federal gas tax. The gas tax has not been raised in 18 years (1993). By not increasing the gas tax, the US transfers an enormous amount of national wealth to oil-producing nations in other parts of the world. The relatively low gas tax is another in a long list of examples of motorist subsidies that promote excessive car travel. This loss of user fee revenue severely strains government finances, because in order to pay for the enormous costs of providing for car travel, governments must raise (non-gas) taxes such as property taxes or sales taxes or income taxes to pay for car travel. Alternatively, governments must cut other government services, which harms quality of life and makes our society less civilized.
• Require relatively large employers to provide a “parking cash-out” program, and use such a program for all government offices. Parking cash-out, as Donald Shoup points out, is a program that offers the car commuter a choice: Either keep your free parking space at work, or give up the parking space in exchange for a higher salary, a bus pass, or other perks.
• Require that the cost of parking be “unbundled” from the cost of a home or business. Currently, nearly all homeowners and consumers of goods and services pay a hidden parking cost – housing, goods, and services are more expensive because it is expensive to be required to buy extra land to provide for (and maintain) car parking. If this car parking cost was unbundled, housing, goods, and services would be less expensive, and people would be less compelled to drive a car excessively.
• Requiring relatively high levels of street connectivity. When streets are connected, bicyclists that are less comfortable on main roads are able to find lower-speed, lightly-trafficked side streets for bicycling. Existing dead ends and cul-de-sacs can sometimes restore bicycle connectivity with connector paths linking the cul-de-sac with a nearby street.
• Converting one-way streets into two-way streets. One-way streets strongly discourage bicycling because such street design promotes excessive car speeds, motorist impatience, and inattentive driving, not to mention the loss of residential and retail development along such streets. Increasingly, towns in the US are converting one-way streets back to two-way operation, and seeing extremely rapid improvements. See my blog for my thoughts about one-way streets.
• Reducing trip distances. Governments are able to do this by finding ways to increase residential densities in appropriate locations, allowing “mixed-use” development (where homes are combined with offices and retail, for example), and keeping “community-serving social condensers” such as farmers markets and important government offices in the town center (rather than allowing them to relocate to remote suburbs).

B. Citizen Measures

• Civil disobedience. There are a number of measures which are being used increasingly in the US to protest excessive, detrimental car dependence in the US. These measures include various forms of civil disobedience, “guerilla” tactics, or direct action. Examples include “critical mass” bicycle rides (where large numbers of bicyclists will gather and ride in large groups on streets in such a way as to inconvenience motorists), temporarily converting car parking into parks, etc.
• Elections. Citizens can campaign for candidates who support the measures described above.
• Normalizing bicycling. Bicycling in the US is substantially marginalized because bicyclists dress in ways that visibly set them apart from “normal” people. Most wear a bicycle helmet, which tend to be unfashionable, messes up hair, and sends a message that bicycling is dangerous. Many bicyclists also wear brightly-colored lycra bicycle clothes, which gives a very unusual, “elite athlete” appearance. It is important that bicycling be seen as more “normal” if bicycling is to become more common in the fashion- and status-conscious US. Bicycling advocates, then, can better promote bicycling by dressing in everyday leisure or work clothing while bicycling, and using a bicycle helmet less often (particularly when bicycling in relatively safe, low-speed environments such as town centers). See my blog for my thoughts about bicycle helmets.

Providing New Bicycle Facilities

I would be remiss if I did not mention the need to provide well-designed bicycle facilities and parking. While neither would recruit large numbers of new bicyclists, both are important for at least two reasons. First, it is important that bicyclists be given safe, convenient places to bicycle and park. Second, providing such facilities sends the important message that the community respects and promotes bicycle travel.

The Bicycling Transect

There is an emerging concept in urban design known as a “transect.” The concept essentially posits that there is a place for everything and everything has its place. Dennis McClendon states that it is “a way of classifying different kinds of neighborhoods along a continuum, from rural to suburban to city neighborhood to downtown; things that belong in once zone would be out of place in another.”

In the Smart Code introduction, version 6.5, Andres Duany says that “one of the key concepts of transect planning is the idea of creating what are called immersive environments. Successful immersive environments are based, in part, on the selection and arrangement of all the components that together comprise a particular type of environment. Each environment, or transect zone, is comprised of elements that keep it true to its locational character…planners are able to specify different urban intensities that look and feel appropriate to their locations…a farmhouse would not contribute to the immersive quality of an urban core, whereas a high-rise apartment building would. Wide streets and open swales find a place on the transect in more rural areas while narrow streets and curbs are appropriate for urban areas. Based on local vernacular traditions, most elements of the human habitat can be similarly appropriated in such a way that they contribute to, rather than detract from, the immersive character of a given environment.”

Applying the Transect to Bicycle Facility Planning

Appropriate bicycle travel routes vary based on their location in a community in the following generalized ways:

Walkable Town Center

In this location, the pedestrian is the design imperative, which means that quality design emphasizes a low-speed street design. This means that there are generally no more than two travel lanes (and possibly a turn lane or pocket). Curb radii are modest, and combined with intersection and mid-block bulb-outs, minimize crossing distances for pedestrians.

Further enhancing the safety, comfort and convenience of the pedestrian is on-street motor vehicle parking, sidewalks, and buildings abutting the back of sidewalks.

There is a dense, connected grid of streets with short block lengths.

When designed properly, the modest motor vehicle speeds mean that most all bicyclists are able to safely and comfortably “share the lane” with motor vehicles (that is, ride within the motor vehicle travel lane). Those bicyclists who are not comfortable sharing the lane with vehicles are able to ride on nearby parallel streets.

In walkable urban locations, in-street bicycle lanes should generally be considered a “transect violation,” since their installation usually means that average motor vehicle speeds are increased (due to the perceived increase in street width for the motorist). Bicycle lanes also tend to increase the crossing distance for pedestrians, and are often incompatible with on-street parked cars unless an excessively wide bicycle lane is created.

Note that I do acknowledge that when a walkable, compact urban location contains major (arterial) streets that such streets generally require the installation of in-street bicycle lanes. However, when such major streets require bike lanes, it is a strong indication that the street itself is a transect violation. Ideally, such streets should be re-designed to be compatible (or “immersive”) in the walkable location through such techniques as removing travel lanes, adding on-street parking or other mechanisms that dramatically slow down motorists and obligate more attentiveness in their driving.

Also incompatible in this location are bicycle paths separate from the street. Such paths are not only unaffordable to install in this location, but significantly increase bicyclist danger.

Suburban

In this location, in-street bicycle lanes tend to be most appropriate on major (“arterial”) streets, due to the increased average car speeds. Bicycle lanes should be 4-5 feet wide.

On-street motor vehicle parking tends to be used somewhat less on suburban roads than on walkable urban streets. Building setbacks are larger, as are turning radii.

In general, bicycle lanes are not necessary on intermediate (“collector”) streets, due to low traffic volumes.

Like walkable urban locations, bicycle paths separate from the street are generally incompatible in this location. Such paths significantly increase bicyclist danger, largely due to the number of cross streets, the reduced visibility of the bicyclist, and the false sense of security created for the bicyclist.

Rural

In this location, bicycle paths separate from the road tend to be most appropriate, due to the relatively high speed of motor vehicles here, and the relative lack of crossing roads.

On-street motor vehicle parking tends to not be used on rural roads. Building setbacks are largest in this portion of the transect, as are turning radii.

In-street bicycle lanes are sometimes appropriate here, but are not as appropriate as in suburban locations.

Transect Summary

In sum, bicycle travel routes are increasingly separated from motor vehicles as one moves along the transect from walkable urban to suburban to rural.

Bicycle Parking

My master’s thesis in graduate school emphasized providing properly-designed bicycle parking. It has become quite common for bicycle parking to be provided improperly. So many strange, unusual, non-functional forms of bicycle parking are provided that I have concluded that the main criterion for selection of bicycle parking is aesthetics and low cost. Like car parking, there is only one form (or with very minor variations) of acceptable bicycle parking design: the “inverted-U” (also known as the “Hitch-To”). This relatively low-cost, durable bicycle parking design is vastly superior to most all other forms of bicycle parking that have proliferated in the US. Communities should require this design in the same manner as they require only one form of car parking. Doing otherwise trivializes bicycling.

Summary

It is quite possible for the US to end its humiliating, unsustainable lead in the world for lowest level of bicycling. Americans are NOT genetically predisposed to drive a car rather than bicycle. The effective tools are not a mystery. Using them is simply a matter of leadership on the part of citizens and elected officials. Yes, it will be difficult to “take away from the car” to increase bicycling. But if we are, as a nation, truly serious about reducing ruinous, unsustainably high levels of car dependence, and substantially growing the number of bicycle commuters, the steps I outline above are essential.

There are very few, if any, “win-win” tactics for car and bicycle travel. Instead, car travel and bicycle travel are more of a zero-sum game. Increasing the level of bicycle travel inevitably means taking away space from cars, inconveniencing cars, and making car travel more expensive.

It is important to point out here that for over 100 years, the US has engaged in the opposite: We have taken away space from bicycles, inconvenienced bicycles and made bicycling more expensive.

For the sake of improving our health, the health of our cities, and our future quality of life, we must begin the incremental, long-term practice of ratcheting down car pampering. The longer we wait, the more painful it will be.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

The Unintended Consequence of the Florida Growth Management Law

By Dom Nozzi

Florida adopted growth management laws in the mid-1980s to address, among other things, the perceived harm being caused by rapid, substantial residential and commercial development in Florida. Having been a senior planner employed by Gainesville, Florida for 20 years to help that city comply with those laws, certain things became clear to me:

1. The Florida growth management law paid quite a bit of lip service to environmental conservation, reducing traffic congestion, promoting smart/infill growth, etc.

2. The “concurrency” rules in the law (new development is not allowed unless facilities and services are in place to serve the new development) were seemingly a matter of common sense, but in practice the only concurrency that mattered was that roads needed to be wide enough to serve new car trips served by the new development. Because available road capacity tends to be in sprawl locations and in-town locations had no available capacity, the unintended consequence of implementing the growth management law was to strongly promote sprawl and discourage infill development. One result is that road concurrency was used as leverage by NIMBY no-growthers to stop in-town infill development (and thereby indirectly encouraging more sprawl via NIMBYism). Road concurrency even discouraged walkable, compact, mixed use new urbanism in sprawl locations, since conventional administrators, elected officials, planners and engineers could not be convinced that such design would reduce per capita car trips.

3. Planners in Florida had no time or encouragement to engage in any form of planning or visioning. Planners were mostly bean counters, and the “Future Land Use Maps” planners were asked to create were nearly identical to the existing land uses already found in the city. The urban design element I wrote for Gainesville’s long-range plan was optional, not required.

4. In 20 years, I was aware of no city or county in north central Florida which laid out a “smart growth” or new urbanist plan as part of their update of their long-range plan for the growth management law. This was largely because while the law paid lip service to “smart growth,” there were no incentives or requirements in the law to create transect-based (or form-based) land development regulations (regulations that would properly place emphasis on design for walkable sustainability rather than the conventional, exclusive concern for what happens within the building).

Again, all that mattered was that available road capacity exist for the new development.

In sum, while the law paid lip service to smart growth, the law and its implementation was the antithesis of smart growth or new urbanism. The law powerfully and effectively PROMOTED sprawl, car dependency and enormously wide roads.

In my opinion, Florida was, in many (but not all) ways, made worse – ironically — after 20 years of implementing a growth management law intended to protect its transportation, its quality of life, its economics and its natural environment. Again, this was mostly because all that mattered was road concurrency, and because the law provided no guidance or incentives or requirements for smart, compact, sustainable growth. The law was mostly responsible for ramping up the amount of vision-less bean counting in Florida.

My hope is that out of the ashes of the now-repealed Florida growth management law, we will see the emergence of new land development laws that effectively promote or require smart growth – growth that promotes the full range of lifestyle and travel choices (rather than promoting only one choice – the suburban, driveable choice).

A Better Path for Florida

The state should have “smart growth concurrency” rather than “road concurrency” – no new development unless a form-based code is in place. Laws, in other words, that promote transportation choice and lifestyle choice. Laws designed to make people — not cars — happy.

It is not clear to me, however, whether the state of Florida will show the wisdom and leadership to reform its land development laws in such a way. Hopefully, emerging energy, political and fiscal crises will compel the state to be smarter than it has been in the past.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

The Future of Cars

By Dom Nozzi

To be healthy and sustainable, cities need to leverage “agglomeration economies.” That is, a healthy city with a high quality of life is one that is relatively compact and walkable.

Because cars consume an enormous amount of space and travel at such high speeds, they are toxic to cities by undercutting agglomeration. Even so-called “green” cars disperse cities and drain the lifeblood out of them because their relatively large size and speed enable sprawling of cities into the hinterlands.

Cars isolate us from each other, and make us a society of loners. Again, the objective of creating a healthier city is undercut by the car, because cities thrive via exchange, where people are interacting with each other. A society high in what Robert Putnam calls “social capital” is a healthier society – economically, physically, and emotionally.

In the early days of motordom, cars and roads actually were helpful to cities, as they promoted better commerce, more productivity, more ease of travel, more consumer choice, and larger markets. But for several decades now, cars and roads have suffered from a severe form of diminishing returns. Each new car that is bought and each new widening of a road delivers less and less benefits. Today, as a result of this on-going and growing diminishment, the costs of cars and roads far outweighs the benefits.

In our world of extreme car dependence, the road infrastructure and dispersed lay-out of our communities has made travel by foot, bicycle or transit nearly impossible. Extreme car dependence has at least partly been fueled by the fact that when a community designs itself for easier, more efficient car travel, it inevitably makes it more difficult to travel by foot, bicycle or transit. Providing for cars, in other words, is a zero-sum game.

And this “game” is a self-perpetuating downward spiral, because by making walking, bicycling and transit more difficult (by providing wide roads and expansive parking lots), we continuously recruit new motorists who were formerly walking, bicycling or using transit. A growing army of car “cheerleaders” is created, and this puts increasing political pressure on elected officials to provide even MORE for the car, which further ramps up the recruitment of even more new motorists. It is a nearly unstoppable cycle.

Tragically, this massive shift of nearly all of us from walking, bicycling and transit to a world of extreme car dependence has resulted in an enormous PRIVATIZATION of the costs of travel. In the past, before the car, households spent only a tiny portion of its budget on travel. Walking and bicycling are extremely low-cost, and transit is mostly a cost borne by society at large. But with the substantially growing need over the past several decades for a household to own one, two, three or more cars – cars which now cost, on average, about $8,500 per year each – the amount of money individuals and households must now allocate to travel has gone through the roof. Indeed, some estimate that travel costs are now the second highest expense – at about 21 percent – a household must now pay for. Second only to housing.

And that, quite simply, is unaffordable.

As an aside, I would argue that the most important task, if we are interested in easing the affordable housing crisis, is to reduce the number of cars that a household must own.

In addition to the diminishing returns I noted above, another enormous threat is increasingly looming on the horizon. A growing consensus of energy, oil, investment and geology experts are now convinced that the world will soon – if not already – face “peak oil.” Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. Inevitably, peak oil will result in exponential increases in the cost of gasoline, which will quickly bring prices to a level that is unaffordable for all but the wealthy.

Signs of peak oil are already here, as some have noted that we are, for the first time, seeing “peak car use” on a per capita and even a society-wide level. We are also seeing a growing number of people – particularly younger people – show a growing interest in living in a walkable town center where car use is optional rather than required.

Increasingly, cities are finding that they can no longer afford to pay for the exponentially growing costs of providing wider roads and bigger parking lots for cars – in part due to the on-going (and energy-crisis-related) world-wide economic turmoil, debt and recession.

For a long time, many have recognized the substantial costs that extreme car dependence brings to society – particularly the economic and environmental costs. As a result, we have witnessed heroic, tireless crusades to reduce car dependence and increase the number of trips made by transit, bicycle or walking. This has largely been an effort to provide more buses or bus stops. Build more bike lanes or paths. Install more sidewalks.

But it is NOT about providing new facilities for transit, bicycling or walking. It is about TAKING AWAY space from the car. Only when we shrink roads (by putting them on a “road diet”) and take away some of the excessive (and free) off-street car parking can we be effective in increasing the number of transit users, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

All of this is not to say that we must get rid of all cars. But it IS about acknowledging that for a more pleasant and sustainable future, our communities must be designed so that cars behave themselves.

The Future

How do we make cars behave themselves? How do we create a more sustainable world with a higher quality of life, transportation choices, and a better economy?

First, we must put an immediate end to road widening (Obama has poured billions into widening in recent years, by the way). We must set about engaging in the highly productive, beneficial task of putting our overly-wide roads on a diet by making, for example, 4- and 5-lane roads 2- or 3-lane roads. We must replace asphalt parking lots with housing, offices and shops.

Because of their enormous size and speed, a world that is designed for happy people rather than happy cars will be one where the motorist feels INCONVENIENCED when she or he drives a car. The motorist must also be obligated to drive much slower and much more attentively. This will dramatically increase safety, transportation choice and quality of life.

Furthermore, we need to bring an end to the gargantuan subsidies we provide to pamper the car. A brighter, more sustainable future, then, will be one where it is much more expensive to drive a car. This may be seen as bitter medicine, but our society has been a very unhealthy patient for several decades, which means it is in need of strong treatment.

For all these reasons, in the future, the role of the car in our lives will be diminishing. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that cars will become less important in our lives (which will both improve our lives and our bank accounts). Car use will not be impossible, but it will be much more like flying in a plane. In other words, car travel will become much more rare – and only for special occasions or luxuries.

In sum, we need to return to the timeless, sustainable tradition of designing our communities to make people happy, not cars.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

 Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

 

 

Are Robotic Cars a Good Thing?

By Dom Nozzi

A friend of mine – who is a dedicated environmentalist, and in agreement with me on a great many issues — recently gushed about how much she was looking forward to the growing advances in cars that are robotically able to drive themselves.

But I was less than fully supportive of her enthusiasm.

I told her that I don’t buy the claim that we can build cars that will drive themselves, and that our transportation future will be solved or made significantly better if that were pursued. Automation of cars (and planes and transit and other things) scares me, because I don’t see how we can eliminate human error in the design of such things, or design automation that is so sophisticated that it can ALWAYS properly respond to an incredibly complex world of situations.

I am certain that we will never see a world where everyone gets around in their own personal George Jetson flying machine piloted by robots and using unlimited, no-pollution fuel. That, like the Christian heaven, is pure fantasy.

The key for our future is to not design robot cars. It is to design communities where car use is an option. Where it makes rational sense for nearly all of us to use high-quality transit (operated by humans rather than robots).

Technology is not going to save us. Unless we change our behavior by, among other things, re-arranging how our communities are designed, our world will collapse.

There is no future in private, motorized transportation.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

 

 

 

Why Do Americans Hate High Residential Densities?

By Dom Nozzi

Most Americans dislike density because they are so utterly car-dependent. Since cars consume vast amounts of space, higher density is despised because, by definition, density creates compact, human-scaled spaces. Therefore, it is an awful aggravation to own a car in a dense place. Given this, Americans understandably are violently opposed to density. By being a motorist, one has a strong vested interest in opposing density. Even “greens” and “liberals” (many of whom are motorists) often oppose higher densities.

The photo below illustrates the problem. With just a tiny number of people in an area (in this case, 40 people), there is gridlock. No surprise, then, that there is growing bi-partisan support for a “no growth” agenda. Both Democrats and Republicans now join in opposing density and growth (which they view as the beginning of road and parking lot congestion — for a motorist, congestion is Armageddon).

One thing the photo clearly demonstrates is that since only 40 cars are needed to congest a street, it is nearly impossible for a healthy city to not have congestion. And that widening a road will almost immediately re-congest when a few more cars are added.

The solution should be obvious: don’t widen roads.

Instead, create design that allows those who cannot tolerate the congestion to avoid it: connected parallel streets, more density, more transit, more mixed use (housing interspersed with jobs and shopping), staggered work hours, and so on.

_______________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here.

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

 Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

 

Is Rail a Practical Option for a College Town?

By Dom Nozzi

A few months ago, a college student told me that he was thinking about conducting research to learn about “cheaper high-speed rail, low-speed rail, or maglev options (if there is such a thing) for a small university city in the southeast, and how it would impact the city financially, socially, economically etc.”

In my response, I told him that one thing I’ve worked hard to point out in my work as a transportation planner is that when transit is proposed (particularly expensive transit), conditions need to be in place to make reasonable ridership rates more likely.

In my research and experience, I informed the student, it seems quite clear that even with very high quality and very frequent transit, very few “choice” riders will choose transit over car travel.

“Choice” riders are those who are wealthy enough to have a choice as to whether to travel by car, or other means (such as rail or bus transit). In unhealthy, unsustainable American communities, only those without a choice tend to use transit (homeless, low-income, students, etc.), and even then the number of transit riders tends to be very low.

Why will so very few decide to use even quality, frequent transit? Largely because America, as my books note, begs people to travel by car as often as possible. Roads are free to use, gas is artificially cheap, distances are enormous, cars provide unparalleled comfort and privacy and prestige, cars carry a lot of passengers and cargo, cars are almost always much faster, and perhaps most importantly, 98 percent of all parking made available to American motorists (according to Shoup) is a free parking space.

Given this, I asked the college student, isn’t it irrational to use even quality transit when all these factors are in place?

Communities, I pointed out, end up spending huge sums of money to provide transit and end up with the “empty bus” syndrome, which is VERY bad for transit public relations (motorists get angry when they see empty transit vehicles after all the public money was spent). Empty buses and trains give transit a public relations “black eye” that hurts the future political prospects for better transit.

About 15-20 years ago, the college town of Gainesville, Florida (where I was a senior city planner) set up a circulator bus (which was festooned to look very much like a trolley car) that provided frequent service between the university and downtown. The fare was 10 cents.

Almost no one used it.

The lesson from all of this is that without conditions conducive to transit being in place, it can be a very bad idea to spend money for transit. Even quality transit. Because despite conventional wisdom, it is not the lack of quality transit that keeps people from using transit. It is the excessive provisioning for car travel that keeps people off the trains and buses.

The first task for more healthy, well-used transit, then, is to make car parking scarce and priced.

If that is done, even poor-quality, infrequent transit service will be regularly used (and I should hasten to add that with scarce and priced parking, sufficient political will is generated so that the transit quickly becomes high-quality and frequent).

Ratcheting down the extreme pampering and subsidizing of American motorists, in other words, is the starting point for better transit ridership. The initial step is NOT to provide better transit.

Only when conditions are not heavily tilted toward happy cars (tilted toward cars with such features as free and abundant parking) will the political will emerge to make it feasible for a community to be willing to invest in quality transit.

Note that ending motorist coddling will not only result in more political and community interest in better transit. Reducing the excessive privileging of motorists will also, over time, create community development patterns that are conducive to better transit.

Higher-density homes, retail and office will begin to emerge in town centers, major intersections and important street corridors, because a community that makes car travel pay its own way will be one where development patterns that allow residents to travel by transit (as well as walking and bicycling) will become more desirable and sought after by homebuyers. Why? Because there will be an increase in the number of residents seeking ways to travel without having to put up with expensive, difficult car travel.

And compact development provides that form of travel choice.

The high transit ridership by college students in Gainesville is therefore completely predictable. Parking on the university campus is scarce and expensive, which makes high demand for quality transit service inevitable.

Tragically, by contrast, Gainesville has far too much free and abundant parking in its urban area off the university campus. The city, importantly, also has residential densities that are way too low to support transit.

Happily, the days of free and abundant parking – even in car-happy cities such as Gainesville – are coming to an end due to rising gasoline costs and the related economic woes that America is now saddled with. With parking becoming more scarce and more priced, residential densities conducive to healthy transit will start appearing.

And that will bring the emergence of quality rail, bus, and maybe even maglev to cities such as Gainesville.

__________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here.

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com