Improving Streets in Greenville SC

By Dom Nozzi

Butler Avenue from Pete Hollis Boulevard to Washington Street creates a number of significant negative impacts for the many homes that are near it, as well as those seeking to walk or bicycle along Butler. The primary problems are dangerous motor vehicle travel and extreme levels of noise pollution [see below for details about the health impacts of noise]. These problems are primarily caused by excessive motor vehicle speeds, excessive curb-to-curb highway design, and emergency vehicle sirens.

The three most effective tools for correcting these problems include:

1. Sirens. The City should request that the County not use Butler as a primary route for emergency medical vehicles. The daily number of such vehicles is excessive, and the siren volume is ear-splitting. Alternative and likely faster routes such as the non-residential Academy Street are far more appropriate for such vehicles.
2. USPS. The US Postal Service facility at Washington and Hudson streets has chosen to use Butler and Asbury to route a convoy of mail delivery vans twice a day to and from their facility. The vans are loud and often exceed the speed limit. The City should request that the USPS use the non-residential Washington and Hudson streets to route its vans to and from its facility, rather than residential Butler and Asbury.
3. Credit Union Drive-Through. The four-lane drive-through for the Credit Union at Butler and Asbury funnels a large volume of motor vehicles onto Butler and Asbury day and night. These vehicles often exceed the speed limit, which is particularly dangerous because drivers are often distracted by filling out deposit or withdrawal slips while driving to the drive-through. The City should request that the Greenville Heritage Federal Credit Union reconfigure its drive-through so that vehicles enter and exit the drive-through from Washington rather than Butler and Asbury. This can be done quickly and inexpensively.
4. On-Street Parking. On-street parking must be installed on both sides of Butler for nearly all of the distance from Pete Hollis to Washington. This is an exceptionally low-cost and quick way to significantly slow traffic to the lower speeds appropriate for a residential street. On-street parking does this by substantially reducing the width of Butler, and adding “friction” to the drive. On-street parking also reduces the need for excessive, undesirable off-street parking lots and spaces. Should the demand for on-street parking be too low to have at least 75 to 80 percent use of on-street parking spaces throughout the day and night, landscaped bulb-outs need to be installed to frame on-street parking spaces and permanently maintain the needed narrowed width of Butler even when on-street parking is not occurring. Because Butler is more narrow north from Asbury, there may not be sufficient width for both on-street parking and an in-street bike lane. Should there only be room for one of these features, the City should preference the installation of on-street parking on the more narrow sections of Butler.
5. Raised, Landscaped Islands and Trees. Butler from approximately Asbury to Washington lacks the raised, landscaped islands found on Butler north from Asbury. This creates an excessively wide expanse of curb-to-curb asphalt from Asbury to Washington. This open, highway-like design from Asbury to Washington signals to motorists that they can safely drive at excessive, inattentive speeds (which, indeed, is precisely what happens). This problem can effectively be corrected not only with on-street parking, but also the installation of raised, tree-landscaped center islands on Butler south of Asbury (and several other low-speed geometry designs). Installing large canopy street trees on Butler is important not only for slowing vehicles, but also for beautifying an ugly street, and cooling a hot section of Butler. Equally important is the need to reduce the curb-to-curb distance on Butler south of Asbury by narrowing the travel lanes and turn lane, and shortening the length of the left-turn lane (I’m sure the overly long turn lane was installed due to lengthy queuing lines of left-turning vehicles, but sacrificing public safety and quality of life is in no sense justified simply to promote motorist convenience – particularly in this urbanized residential town center location).
6. City Assumption of Ownership. The City needs to at some point assume ownership of Butler from the South Carolina DOT. Not doing so severely restricts the use of effective design tools for improving Butler to properly serve as the residential street it has evolved into.
7. Turn Lanes. The double left turn lanes at Butler and Pete Hollis need to be replaced by a single left turn lane, as the double left is an inappropriate highway-oriented design that belongs in drivable suburbs rather than an urbanized location (I recognize that one of those two lanes is a dual left turn and straight ahead lane). Double left turns drastically increase motor vehicle speeds and inattentiveness. These problems and the significantly increased crossing distance the left turn lane provides create extremely dangerous conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians. The double left also significantly increases motor vehicle traffic volumes on Butler. Similarly, the right turn slip lane at Butler and Washington needs to be removed for the same reasons as noted above for the double left turn. Both the Butler intersection at Pete Hollis and at Washington are vastly oversized and must be necked down to reduce the crosswalk distance. Further amplifying this problem is the highway-oriented, high-speed, oversized turning radii found at both of these intersections, which not only increase the crossing distance but promote dangerously high-speed, inattentive turning movements by vehicles. These turning radii (and those for several driveways serving Butler) need to be reduced in size for safety because the high-speed geometries they employ are exceptionally dangerous. The left-turn lanes and oversized turning radii are extremely dangerous – they are particularly daunting for seniors, mothers with strollers, and children. Finally, on the topic of crosswalks, textured crosswalks such as brick have been shown to send a more visible, attractive, tactile, and audible message to motorists that they need to slow down for crosswalks.
8. In-Street Bike Lanes. Butler serves as an important bicycling route and is capable of attracting significantly higher levels of bicycling. If installed between on-street parking and the travel lane, bike lanes should be colorized to provide an enhanced visual signal to motorists that they are driving on a more narrow, slower-speed street. Installing a bike lane between on-street parking and the curb creates “protected” bike lanes that are more inviting to less confident bicyclists (such as children and seniors). This “protected” design also provides the benefit of further slowing cars on Butler, as on-street parked vehicles will extend out further from the curb.

Note that on-street parking and raised landscaped islands on Butler are effective in reducing neighborhood noise pollution, because the lower motor vehicle speeds induced by these tools effectively reduce noise pollution.

Why Is Noise Pollution a Serious Public Health Concern?

The professional literature shows a clear connection between noise pollution and a number of medical and societal maladies such as high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, depression, inability to engage in conversation, foul mood, fatigue, loss of sleep, anger, poor concentration, productivity losses at the workplace, cognitive impairment, tinnitus, hearing loss, and failed relationships.

Creating Meaningful Pedestrian Safety on Stone Avenue

In response to a Greenville newspaper article discussing efforts to promote pedestrian safety on Stone Avenue, I posted the following:

Is the City serious about improved safety on Stone? The City will show it is not serious if it opts for what all cities have tried for the past century to “improve” safety. For the past century, all cities have opted for the same ineffective tactics that have suffered from extreme diminishing returns for several decades. I call them the “Five Warnings”: More Warning Lights, More Warning Paint, More Warning Signs, More Warning Education, and More Warning Enforcement. Stone Avenue will remain a car-only death trap — particularly for seniors, children, bicyclists, pedestrians, and the handicapped — unless the City assumes ownership of Stone from SCDOT and installs a road diet. Going from 4 or 5 lanes to three is a no-brainer. Dover-Kohl consultants had previously called for a road diet, and SCDOT rejected it. A road diet will quickly and cost-effectively result in (1) significant improvements for homes along and near Stone, (2) significant improvements for smaller retail shops along Stone, (3) significant improvements for cycling and walking along and across Stone, (4) significant improvements for children and seniors and the disabled using Stone, (5) a significant drop in crashes on Stone, and (6) a big drop in City maintenance costs (read: lower taxes). Important note: Going from 4 lanes to 3 does not reduce road capacity, despite the conventional wisdom.

My Credentials

I have 40 years of academic and professional experience in the field of transportation. I am a lifetime bicycle, walking, and transit commuter. I have a Master’s degree in town and transportation planning. I have been a bicycle commuter in nine cities. I was the lead planner for the Gainesville FL greenway transportation system. I was a member and Vice Chair of the Design Team for the Gainesville FL Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization. I wrote several land development regulations to preserve and enhance the livability of neighborhoods, including the Gainesville noise control ordinance. I have a high level of professional expertise in traffic calming, pedestrian design, and traffic safety. I have professional expertise in increasing the number of bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users. I wrote the long-range transportation plan for Gainesville. I served on the Board of Directors for Bike/Walk Virginia. I was a member of the Association of Pedestrian & Bicycle Professionals. I am a nationally certified Complete Streets Instructor, which allowed me to co-host workshops throughout the nation. I have delivered 93 public speeches pertaining to transportation in cities throughout the nation. I have published two books on the topic of transportation. I served on the Boulder CO Transportation Advisory Board as well as the Asheville NC Bikes Policy Committee. I currently serve on the Bike Walk Greenville Board of Directors.

Traffic Calming in Greenville SC

By Dom Nozzi

Regarding speed humps…

I am possibly the biggest advocate in South Carolina for using traffic calming devices on streets, as I believe slowing cars is one of the most important things we can do in cities for better safety, quality of life, reduction in low-value motor vehicle trips, and noise reduction.

Speed humps, however, are an exceptionally problematic tool for slowing cars. On the list of bad ideas for slowing cars, speed limit signs are at top of the list for being the worst. Stop signs are about as bad. And humps are #3 for being a bad tool.

Here is why humps are a bad idea:

They punish motorists even if the motorist is driving fairly slowly.

They can damage vehicles.

They create noise pollution for neighborhoods.

They create problems for emergency response vehicles.

They are annoying for cyclists.

When spaced improperly, they promote “jackrabbit” driving (ie, frequent slowing and speeding between humps).

An important reason why many cities such as Greenville use (or overuse) humps so often (there are way too many humps in Greenville) is that they are very quick and low-cost to install. Which makes them an easy way for elected officials to satisfy neighbors concerned about speeding vehicles.

However, the best way, by far, to slow motor vehicles is not to use “vertical” interventions such as humps, but to use “horizontal” interventions. Examples of horizontal interventions include:

1.       Road diets, where excessive street lanes are removed. The most common diet is going from 4 lanes to 3.

2.       Landscaped or hard-surface bulb-outs (usually used to frame on-street parking or create a mid-block pedestrian crossing). Many bulb-outs are admirably used on Greenville’s Main Street. Ideally, this “pinching down” the width of the street creates a one-lane-wide pinch point that obligates motorists to “give-way” when a motor vehicle approaches in the opposing direction.

3.       Chicanes, which are a form of bulb-out that obligates motorists to move in a slower, weaving, more attentive pattern.

4.       Traffic circles and roundabouts.

5.       Installing on-street parking on streets without such parking. Again, this narrowing of street width works best when a “give-way” street is created.

6.       Installing formally-aligned street trees abutting the street to create a sense of enclosure and human scale.

Each of these horizontal interventions is much more conducive to bicycling and emergency response vehicles than vertical interventions such as humps. They are also much better at creating a safe environment for walking. As well as created the much-needed human scale and sense of place that is lost when we oversize streets and intersections.

On my list of top priorities for Greenville to become a better city, traffic calming is near the top of the list. But calming needs, again, to be achieved with horizontal rather than vertical interventions.

Is “Twenty Is Plenty” A Good Idea for Greenville, South Carolina?

By Dom Nozzi

Greenville, South Carolina – where I now live – had some of its bicycling and walking advocates consider adopting a “Twenty (mph) Is Plenty” program to enhance walking and cycling safety.

I was asked what I thought of the idea.

I responded by saying that when I served on the Boulder Colorado Transportation Advisory Board, one of the agenda items that came before us was a “20 Is Plenty” campaign, which was ultimately approved by Council. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/06/18/boulder-20-mph-plenty-signs/

I expressed serious reservations at the time.

While it is extremely important to effectively slow motor vehicle speeds, revising speed limit signs down to 20 mph does almost nothing to meaningfully slow vehicle speeds because what controls vehicle speeds is almost entirely based on the design speed of streets. Almost no motorist pays any attention to signs. Lowering limits on signs, therefore, can be seen as little more than ineffective lip service.

Cities like Boulder and Greenville have an enormous number of streets with design speeds far above 20 mph, which powerfully induces excessive speeds by vehicles.

An important concern here is that a great many might conclude that “our work is done” on slowing vehicles, simply because we’ve lowered limits on signs. Such people don’t realize that work has not even started if we simply change speed limit signs.

Another moderately legitimate argument against lowering limits on signs without lowering street design speeds is that this is an underhanded way to allow the City to collect revenue, as the lower limits on signs will — due to higher design speeds for streets — lead to a jump in speeding tickets.

A counterargument to my “lip service” concerns is that our community — by lowering limits on signs — has sent a message to city government and the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) that our community strongly desires slower vehicle speeds. And we want the City and SCDOT to start getting serious about designing streets for slower speeds.

Effective tools?

Much more on-street parking. On-street parking provides a quick and low-cost calming tool for our community. Such parking provides a safety and convenience boost for homes, a way to reduce noise pollution, a way to reduce the need for large asphalt off-street parking lots, and a way to provide a financial boost for small retailers. Ideally, on-street parking creates a “give-way” street, which is a street that is narrow enough that motor vehicles approaching each other from opposite directions must have one of the vehicles give way to allow them to pass each other.

Road and intersection diets (ie, removal of excessive travel and turn lanes).

Landscaped bulb-outs (to reduce the width and crossing distance of streets).

“Woonerfs” (Dutch “living street” design — see Wall St in downtown Asheville NC).

Converting one-way streets back to two-way operation.

Replacing stop signs and traffic signals with traffic circles and roundabouts.

Installing large canopy street trees.

Replacing the several miles of dangerous “continuous left turn lanes” throughout Greenville’s town center with raised medians.

Reducing the height of street lights, signs, and traffic signals.

By the way, I believe it is important that we actively oppose the use of speed humps for vehicle speed reduction (an all-too-common calming method that has important downsides). This City needs to remove existing humps, as they are a noise pollution problem, punish even slower speed vehicles, are terrible for cyclists, and are a serious problem for emergency vehicle response. Removing the humps needs to be coupled — simultaneously — with installation of preferable tools such as methods I mention above.

It must also be noted that humps give traffic calming efforts a black eye, as a great many citizens are understandably highly annoyed by humps, and that annoyance is often generalized to apply to all forms of calming.

In sum, I’m happy to see the widespread interest in slower speeds for vehicles. I don’t necessarily oppose a “20 Is Plenty” effort to reduce limits on signs. But we need to be careful about strategies to effectively achieve that exceptionally important objective of slowing vehicles, and not just pay lip service to our doing that.

Requesting Safe Speeds for Croft Street in Greenville SC

By Dom Nozzi

We need to have the City of Greenville deliver a “Neighborhood Slow Zone” sign to our Greenville home in our north Main Street neighborhood due to excessive car speeds.

While such signs will do little, if anything, to slow cars on our street, it does perhaps send a visible message to neighbors and others in the city that we need slower speed street design.

For the record, when the City is in a position to engage in the much-needed re-design of Croft Street from Rutherford Street to Wilton Street to obligate motorists to drive at slower, more attentive speeds (i.e., speeds that are compatible with safety for children, seniors, the handicapped, and bicyclists), that design must include horizontal interventions, not vertical interventions.

Desirable horizontal interventions include:

*Landscaped bulb-outs forming pockets for on-street parking

*Painted on-street striping for on-street parking

*Chicanes

*Abundant planting of large canopy trees abutting the street curb

*Human-scaled (rather than excessively tall highway-scaled) black wrought iron and historically designed street lighting that is no taller than 14 feet

*Brick crosswalks/intersections

Undesirable (vertical) interventions include:

*Speed humps – humps are exceptionally undesirable for a number of reasons: They create noise pollution, they can damage cars (even those driving at low speeds), they are extremely undesirable for bicyclists, and they are extremely detrimental to public safety because of their exceptionally negative impact on emergency vehicle response.

Note: Ideally, for safety, reduction in noise pollution, and property values, the section of Croft Street I identify above should be designed to be narrow enough to create “give-way” street dimensions. In other words, dimensions that obligate motorists in opposing directions to give way when a motor vehicle approaches from the opposite direction.

I lived on a give-way street in Gainesville Florida and can therefore understand why traffic engineering studies show that give-way streets are extremely safe, walkable, and considered to be such a desirable street that the most wealthy families in my city ended up living on that street.

School Road Crossing Paradox

By Dom Nozzi

A transportation board I serve on was asked to help provide funding for a crossing guard at a school in my area.

I urged the board to look beyond this narrow, somewhat knee-jerk question to a much more important “first things first” question.

That “first step” question is about what the appropriate, long-term solution for this crossing happens to be – a solution that furthers the long-term goals of my Board to promote safer and higher levels of walking and bicycling.

I believe it is unwise in this case to offer our assistance – no matter how indirect – to a solution that does not further the goals of Board, because even indirect assistance implicitly (or perhaps explicitly) suggests that our Board believes the solution chosen for fundraising is the correct one. One that is necessary and sufficient.

This school crossing question is an interesting, all-too-common school transportation puzzle that to me does not quickly bring to my mind any clear solutions due to issues that make it a complex problem to solve. I have spent the past number of days giving a lot of thought to how this crossing should be designed, and prepared a set of thoughts and recommendations below. I sent these thoughts to a few of my transportation safety colleagues, which led me to make a few minor additions.

As I understand the situation, the school is set in a low-density suburban location and sits very close to a neighborhood that apparently is the home of some of the students (some as young as 6 or 7).

South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) is firmly opposed to establishing what is being called a mid-block pedestrian crossing that would provide a 0.5-mi. route from the neighborhood to the school. SCDOT is only willing to allow the crossing if a crossing guard is hired for the new crossing. Without the guard, SCDOT insists that those wanting to walk or bicycle to the school be obligated to add a mile to their journey (tripling the distance) by crossing at a signalized intersection far down the road. This suggestion – while common – is shameful and absurd. It ignores human nature, and is disrespectful to those wishing to bicycle or walk to school.

What this breathtaking inconvenience amounts to is a requirement that ensures almost no student will walk or bicycle to the school, but instead end up in a bus or a car ride provided by an inconvenienced parent. Insisting that a bicycling or walking student triple their distance to a school very close to their homes is akin to demanding a motorist irrationally drive several miles out of their way to get to a destination that they are literally across the street from.

Of course, human nature being what it is, we all know what will happen here. A large number of bicycling and walking students will not be willing to triple their distance to school but instead will seek to cross at the intersection directly from the school to the neighborhood in question.

Frankly, I’m surprised SCDOT has not installed a 20-foot tall razor wire fence from the neighborhood to the signalized intersection in an effort to prevent a non-signalized crossing.

We must remind those who need reminding that mid-block crossings, ironically, are typically far safer than signalized intersections. Not only do they recognize the inevitability of mid-block crossings (and therefore design for them), but the number of conflict points is far higher (over 30) for signalized intersections compared to mid-block crossings (2 points of conflict).

The following are my thoughts about what should be done here. I am assuming below that the only reasonable option – the option that best promotes safety — is to create a crossing at the neighborhood:

*Paying for a crossing guard is a short-term bandaid that cannot be sustained in the long term. It is an overly expensive option in part because the guard would be needed for only a tiny period during the full day (mostly near the time classes start in the a.m. and when classes end in the p.m.), and will therefore be entirely inactive for nearly the entire day the guard will need to be posted at the crossing. One of my transportation colleagues is a Senior Research Associate at the Highway Safety Research Center at the Univ of North Carolina. Her work focuses on bicycle and pedestrian safety, especially estimating exposure to collisions. She told me that she spent some of last summer interviewing police officers in North Carolina about their experience with crossing guard programs and also worked with a student on a literature review of the effectiveness of such programs. “The literature said that the [crossing guard] programs made people feel better. It’s a ‘feel good’ program. There was no proof that [crossing guards are] associated with safety. … There is proof that traffic calming efforts that result in slower speeds do make it safer for pedestrians including children. Thus, your traffic calming suggestions [in your set of recommendations here] are good. Traffic speeds near schools should be 20 mph or less so that drivers can stop in time to avoid killing someone.”

*I do not believe it is a good idea to create a safe crossing at the intersection adjacent to the neighborhood with an overpass or underpass, as the cost is high and the number of users would be too small – partly because many will opt to save time and effort by crossing at grade.

*I do not believe a roundabout makes sense at the intersection adjacent to the neighborhood due to large imbalances of traffic volume on the intersecting roads during the day. Unfortunately, I don’t know the average daily [motor vehicle] trips (ADT) for the road, but it is likely to show very high spikes when school starts and ends, and very low volumes at other times.

*I believe the most essential corrective is to redesign the crossing so that it is much more narrow and obligates more attentive and much slower turning and travel speeds by motor vehicles. The exposure of schoolchildren to motor vehicles must be minimized and the speed of vehicles must be ratcheted down – most importantly — by significantly reducing the number and width of motor vehicle travel- and turning lanes. Safety design options I would recommend to effectively achieve this: (1) Remove the left turn lane from the school to the road; (2) Remove one of the two school exit lanes feeding the road; (3) Significantly reduce the turning radius of the school exit intersection onto the road; (4) Install a raised refuge island median at the crossing; (5) Install landscaped bulb-outs or a chicane on a two-lane road to shrink the width of the road lanes to 9 feet (tall, limbed up trees could be a desirable way to signal to drivers that they are approaching a low-speed crossing); (6) Install a speed table for the new crossing; (7) Angle the new crossing so that those crossing are more likely to face on-coming motor vehicles; (8) Reduce the new crossing to a single lane, which would make it an exceptionally safe, exceptionally low-speed crossing that would occasionally obligate “give-way” vehicle movements; (9) Offset the new crossing so that it is further away from the adjacent intersection (doing so would more truly make it a mid-block crossing); (10) To reduce the walking and bicycling distance for students even more, a new path should be created that is diagonally aligned from the road to the school entrance; and (11) Reduce the posted speed limit of road to 20 mph (any street lights, traffic signals, or traffic signs along this stretch of the road must be significantly reduced in height – and street trees planted — to send a visible message to motorists that they have entered a low-speed environment).

Another one of my transportation colleagues prepared the attached crossing design suggestion for the school crossing. Like me, his design shows a diagonal alignment for a path to the school entrance, an angled crosswalk so that those crossing are facing traffic, speed tables at the crosswalks, raised refuge island landscape medians that remove portions of the left-turn lane, more narrow travel lanes for motor vehicles, and offsetting the crossing so that it is more distant and not influenced by the adjacent intersection. This colleague – Ian Lockwood – is a nationally prominent transportation safety expert with Toole Design.

*Should an affordable, near-term solution be essential, movable concrete barriers and structures can quickly and temporarily be installed at a very low cost, and remain in place until such time as a more permanent and attractive set of improvements – as I describe here – can be funded and installed.

*I believe quality solutions to this challenging design puzzle will require the community/school/SCDOT to hire a transportation design consultant (Ian Lockwood is an example of a consultant I would recommend be hired for this project). Hiring a consultant is highly likely to be better spent money than a crossing guard. One lower-cost option is to ask SCDOT engineers to design the new mid-block crossing by imagining that their 6-year-old son or daughter needed to cross the road to get to school, and could not (or would not) go to the signalized intersection to do so.

*Without any of these infrastructure changes I mention above (and maybe even with), the crossing will need a “hot” button to immediately convert a continuously yellow flashing crosswalk light to a red flashing light. I don’t love this idea, but there may be no way to avoid it.

*Any cost associated with a short-term guard or other new safety elements should be borne by either SCDOT, the school, or both. They are both responsible, after all, for an unsafe, flawed location and design of the school and roadway.

*In the longer term, the school needs to be re-designed so that its (newly-infilled) buildings abut the road, rather than being pulled far back from the road. In addition, if feasible, new residential neighborhoods need to be established surrounding the school (to make the school a neighborhood-based school).

Scenarios such as this school crossing puzzle are emblematic of why even with proximity, nearly all Americans – including schoolchildren – are in motor vehicles for nearly all trips. Shame on us for building a community that endangers walking and bicycling schoolchildren as a way to promote convenient, higher-speed motor vehicle travel.

The question ultimately comes down to this: Does this community and the state DOT place more value on the convenience of motorists or the safety of children?

Will COVID convert American Streets from Car-Only Sewers?

By Dom Nozzi

There was a great deal of discussion during the COVID pandemic about the possibility that many American streets would be transformed from high-speed, car-only roadways to slow-speed streets that safely accommodate walking and bicycling (or actually fully prohibit car travel).

But I believe it is highly unlikely that streets in US cities — with minor exceptions in high-density cities such as NYC — will see streets used for more than just car travel. As I point out over and over again these days, the US (and most other parts of the world) are way past the point of no return on extreme car dependence. There is, in other words, a point where there is no turning back.

And there is no turning back in US cities.

One reason there is no turning back is that the emergence of car travel inevitably sets in motion an unstoppable political force: Because cars consume such a huge amount of space, and because travel by car — in a zero-sum way — makes life impossible without using a car to get anywhere, most all citizens realize that they must be full-time density NIMBYs (no higher density in my back yard).

This has been exemplified in so-called “enlightened” Boulder Colorado, where for at least 60 years there has been a violent battle waged by nearly every resident to stop all growth. If that fails, at least keep the density of the growth as low as is constitutionally possible. A battle one of my Boulder friends engaged in for years with the City of Boulder on her being allowed to have renters perfectly exemplifies this (as does the full-throated, screaming opposition to a road diet on Folsom Street in that city).

Car travel is a road to ruin that quickly becomes irreversible.

No silly little virus — no matter how deadly or how persistent — is going to change that.

The Keys to Transportation Safety

By Dom Nozzi

The key to creating safer intersections, roads, and streets is to move away from the century-long engineering practice of using “forgiving design.” https://domz60.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/conventional-forgiving-road-design-reduces-road-safety/

It is also essential for us to understand the counterproductive nature of calling for a reduction in traffic congestion or urging our officials to “ease traffic flow.” Both of these measures (which are such a consensus in our society that even cyclists, pedestrian advocates, and transit promoters also counterproductively call for such things) lead to a dangerous oversizing of road/parking/intersection infrastructure, and the use of high-speed road geometries.

By far, the best way to achieve transportation safety is to design roads and intersections for slower speeds – the opposite of “forgiving” design.

It is not a coincidence, by the way, that a growing number of cities are joining the “slow cities” movement https://www.planetizen.com/node/21630

And a big part of slower speed transportation design (and, therefore, more safety) comes from road diets, which involves removing excess travel lanes, as was done so spectacularly well on Main Street in my home city of Greenville SC. Such diets also include reducing travel lane widths (which can be quickly and inexpensively done whenever streets are re-striped). and shrinking the size and turning radius of intersections.

There is also an important need for converting one-way streets back to two-way operation.

Far too much space has been allocated to easing car travel and car parking. This has infected our cities with the gigantism disease — a disease that results in much less safety, much less prosperity, much less civic pride, much more sprawl, much less human scale, and much lower quality of life.

Appropriate Bicycle Route Design Depends on Context

By Dom Nozzi

When I was in graduate school at Florida State University in the early 1980s, I was so taken by the vehicular cycling principles mostly popularized by John Forrester in his book that I made his cycling philosophy the primary subject of my masters thesis.

Since then, my views have become more “nuanced.” While I agree with Forrester regarding the debris accumulation problems associated with in-street bike lanes, I’ve since come to realize that it is extremely important to significantly increase bicycling — in part by making it seem safer and more pleasant and more convenient for non-cyclists.

I believe, however, that “moving the needle” on ridership (ie, significantly increasing the number of bicyclists) is not about providing facilities such as bike lanes or bike parking or even bike paths for cyclists (this also applies to promoting walking and transit).

It is about taking away space, speed, and subsidies from motorists.

In the interim — before the inevitable day in the future when we can start doing those things — I think it is important to make it easier for the novice or aspiring cyclist. We need to make our town center streets very low-speed (such as with woonerfs, on-street parking, give-way streets, etc.) so that even the novice can comfortably share the street with motor vehicles.

As an aside, in-street bike lanes are almost entirely inappropriate in a low-speed town center, but “sharrows” (painting bicycle symbols on a street to signal to motorists that cyclists can share the lane) are a good idea for low-speed environments.

Main Street in Greenville does a pretty good job of providing a low-speed street that can be comfortably shared by many.

By contrast, higher-speed roads outside the town center usually need bike lanes, in my opinion.

And in any location where higher-speed motor vehicles are found, we need physically separate bike paths.

All this is to say that the appropriate bike route design is dependent on the location we are talking about.

I don’t think sharrows work well in high-speed locations such as suburbs.

One last thing: far too many town center streets are inappropriately high-speed in design and need to be significantly calmed so that shared use is possible.

Is “Twenty Is Plenty” A Good Idea for Greenville, South Carolina?

By Dom Nozzi

Greenville, South Carolina – where I now live – had some of its bicycling and walking advocates consider adopting a “Twenty (mph) Is Plenty” program to enhance walking and cycling safety.

I was asked what I thought of the idea.

I responded by saying that when I served on the Boulder CO Transportation Advisory Board, one of the agenda items that came before us was a “20 Is Plenty” campaign, which was ultimately approved by Council. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/06/18/boulder-20-mph-plenty-signs/

I expressed serious reservations at the time.

While it is extremely important to effectively slow motor vehicle speeds, revising speed limit signs down to 20 mph does almost nothing to meaningfully slow vehicle speeds because what controls vehicle speeds is almost entirely based on the design speed of streets. Almost no motorist pays any attention to signs. Lowering limits on signs, therefore, can be seen as little more than ineffective lip service.

Cities like Boulder and Greenville have an enormous number of streets with design speeds far above 20 mph, which powerfully induces excessive speeds by vehicles.

An important concern here is that a great many might conclude that “our work is done” on slowing vehicles, simply because we’ve lowered limits on signs. Such people don’t realize that work has not even started if we simply change speed limit signs.

Another moderately legitimate argument against lowering limits on signs without lowering street design speeds is that this is an underhanded way to allow the City to collect revenue, as the lower limits on signs will — due to higher design speeds for streets — lead to a jump in speeding tickets.

A counterargument to my “lip service” concerns is that our community — by lowering limits on signs — has sent a message to city government and the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) that our community strongly desires slower vehicle speeds. And we want the City and SCDOT to start getting serious about designing streets for slower speeds.

Effective tools?

Much more on-street parking. On-street parking provides a quick and low-cost calming tool for our community. Such parking provides a safety and convenience boost for homes, a way to reduce noise pollution, a way to reduce the need for large asphalt off-street parking lots, and a way to provide a financial boost for small retailers.

Road and intersection diets (ie, removal of excessive travel and turn lanes).

Landscaped bulb-outs (to reduce the width and crossing distance of streets).

“Woonerfs” (Dutch “living street” design — see Wall St in downtown Asheville NC).

Converting one-way streets back to two-way operation.

Replacing stop signs and traffic signals with traffic circles and roundabouts.

Installing large canopy street trees.

Replacing the several miles of dangerous “continuous left-turn lanes” throughout Greenville’s town center with raised medians.

Reducing the height of street lights, signs, and traffic signals.

By the way, I believe it is important that we actively oppose the use of speed humps for vehicle speed reduction (an all-too-common calming method that has important downsides). This City needs to remove existing humps, as they are a noise pollution problem, punish even slower speed vehicles, are terrible for cyclists, and are a serious problem for emergency vehicle response. Removing the humps needs to be coupled — simultaneously — with installation of preferable tools such as methods I mention above.

It must also be noted that humps give traffic calming efforts a black eye, as a great many citizens are understandably highly annoyed by humps, and that annoyance is often generalized to apply to all forms of calming.

In sum, I’m happy to see the widespread interest in slower speeds for vehicles. I don’t necessarily oppose a “20 Is Plenty” effort to reduce limits on signs. But we need to be careful about strategies to effectively achieve that exceptionally important objective of slowing vehicles, and not just pay lip service to our doing that.

Speed Humps Not a Good Traffic Calming Solution

By Dom Nozzi

Speed humps are a commonly used tool by cities to calm (slow down) car traffic.

In response, many bicycle activists rightly request that when speed humps are installed on a street that they be channeled so as not to be a hindrance to cyclists.

The best solution in the long run, however, is to end the installation of vertical interventions such as speed humps and remove all existing humps.

Horizontal interventions such as road diets, landscaped bulb-outs, raised and landscaped medians, canopy street trees, and on-street pocket parking are far better for quality of life, safety, noise pollution reduction, avoidance of emergency vehicle disruption, beautification, human-scale, reduction of speeding, and avoidance of vehicle damage.

It is long past time to end the use of speed humps in cities. Existing speed humps need to be removed, and replaced with design features mentioned above.