Posts about SHA

I figured that this incident was a fluke.

Almost exactly one year later, another driver on the stem of the intersection drove past the stop sign and right on into our yard, running over a pine tree and the second apple tree. Again, luckily, nobody was hurt, or so we assume, given that the driver was somehow able to back out of the yard and drive away before we got home.

With no more apple trees left, I was worried that the next car would hit a family member. So I asked for a guardrail.

After a thorough and professional site visit by a SHA engineer, I received an email from Cedric Ward, Assistant District Engineer - Traffic (Montgomery County) at SHA, which said,

According to [SHA's] guidelines, a roadside barrier is warranted for only the most severe roadside obstacles.... Considering that none of the[se]...roadside obstacles are present at the subject location, a traffic barrier is not warranted at this location.

Looking at the 2006 Guidelines for Traffic Barrier Placement and End Treatment Design Ward referred me to, I learned that "the function of a roadside barrier is to shield the motorist from impacting an obstacle along the roadside."

According to the SHA guidelines, a traffic barrier is warranted only if there is a roadside obstacle that cannot be removed or relocated out of the road's clear zone, defined as "the total roadside area, starting at the edge of the travel lane, available for safe use by errant vehicles."

Thus, the guidelines allow SHA to put up a traffic barrier to protect people in cars from driving into embankments, bridge parapets, non-breakaway signs or lights, signal supports, water bodies more than two feet deep, large boulders, utility poles, drainage ditches, and/or trees.

But they do not allow SHA, in general, to put up a traffic barrier to protect people who are not in cars from being driven into. People who are not in cars are not a roadside obstacle that motorists need shielding from. And indeed, at least judging from our experience, it is not dangerous for a person in a car to drive into a yard where people, not in cars, might be.

To be fair, the guidelines concede that, on urban streets, a traffic barrier may be placed "in sensitive areas such as school playgrounds." So perhaps we might have qualified for a guard rail if the driver were likely to drive into our house, instead of just our yard.

As yet, the lack of a guard rail has not really been a big problem for us. Nobody was hurt, apple trees can be replaced, and we have installed some new, large landscaping on our property. And the SHA did put up a yellow sign with a black two-directional arrow at the intersection.

But the lack of a guard rail was a very big problem for Kelay Smith and Derrick R. "Mooky" Jones, who were killed by a driver in Prince George's County in August 2008 while they were walking along a stretch of MD Route 4 without sidewalks or guard rails.

And it should be a very big problem for the State of Maryland, which was ordered by a civil jury in March to pay $3.3 million to Smith's daughter and mother.

State traffic barrier guidelines notwithstanding, people in cars are not the only users of the road. What will it take to get the SHA to revise its guidelines to routinely take the safety of all road users into account? This is not a rhetorical question.

Julie Lawson tweeted about one case at Carroll and Maple streets, along the main path from the Takoma Metro to Takoma Park. The sidewalk was blocked for construction at an adjacent building site.

Following resident complaints, DDOT sent an inspector to check out that site. ANC Commissioner Sara Green reported in an email to the Takoma listserv that the contractor was required to restore the sidewalk. Next week, when they get a permit, they will be able to close it again but will need to put up barriers to create a temporary walking path.

Meanwhile, Montgomery Sideways posted about a case where the Maryland State Highway Administration closed the Georgia Avenue sidewalk as it dives below the railroad tracks in Silver Spring, despite a policy against doing that. William Smith writes,

I stood there for a awhile and saw pedestrians crossing Sligo Avenue a few yards to the east of the crosswalk. Sure, there is a sign there telling you to cross the street, but if you need to go the other way—say, to Jackie's, or Lotus Cafe—what do you do? Cross illegally, that's what you do.

And if a driver hit one of these pedestrians crossing, would police blame the pedestrian for not walking far out of the way to find a legal crossing?

Each case may be individually relatively minor, but they all create danger that can cause injury or death. And when many exist in the same area, they create a broadly unsafe situation. Worse yet, sometimes these closures last for months or years, like a closing on East-West Highway in Silver Spring which Eric Fidler documented in a video:

Update: Commenter Shipsa01 pointed out a hilarious example in the Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood, where buildings on both sides of a street both tried to close their sidewalks and posted signs instructing pedestrians to cross to the opposite side... where there was an identical sign pointing the other way.

There have been small changes to the corner, but it remains closed. In late March, operating pedestrian crossing signals were removed and new signals were installed, but these remain inoperable.

In addition, "no parking" signs were placed along the approaches to the corner in front of 1200 East-West Highway. Despite the no parking zones, barriers for a temporary sidewalk to protect pedestrians were not installed. Finally, the sidewalk is in the process of being built, but it's unclear how quickly that will be completed.

One of SHA's District 3 engineers responded to the email from Evan Glass. The reply seems to push blame for the delay to Pepco.

"Our SHA inspectors are coordinating on a weekly, if not daily, basis with the developer, his contractor and the utility companies to facilitate the completion of the work at this intersection," the response explained. "Once the signal work is complete and Pepco finalizes its work to power the new signal controllers, the contractor will be able to complete the sidewalk and pedestrian ramps and have them open to pedestrian traffic again."

Regardless of the cause of this months-long delay to open a sidewalk, the issue remains: during construction, there should have been a temporary provision for pedestrians. SHA's own policies state that "completely closing a sidewalk for construction and rerouting pedestrians to the other side of the street should only be done as a last resort."

This "last resort" has been standard operating procedure at this and other intersections for too long. Pedestrians continue to cross at this corner. The latest delays only extend the dangerous conditions that should not have been created in the first place.

The treatment of pedestrians at this intersection has been unacceptable. Pedestrians don't just disappear when construction happens, especially in an urban, transit-accessible area like Downtown Silver Spring. It's disappointing that SHA has allowed projects to all but ignore pedestrians during years of construction. The latest delay is just adding insult to injury.

The Maryland State Highway Administration has put Silver Spring pedestrians in danger by failing to uphold its own standards for pedestrian safety at the construction sites, at the intersection of East-West Highway, Newell Street and Blair Mill Road.

Silver Spring resident William Smith started Montgomery Sideways, a blog dedicated to pedestrian safety in the county. "Passage through this intersection is horrible if you're trying to get across East-West Highway, because it's been neglected," he tells us.

"It's encouraging people constantly to take risks," Smith explains, "because you really don't have a choice if you want to get across the street here."

Even the signs indicating sidewalk closures are poorly placed. Rodney Elin navigates the neighborhood in his wheelchair. "Construction and temporary signs," he says, "are actually placed in the pedestrian pathway," forcing him to double-back. On the northern side of the intersection, the nearest alternate crosswalk is almost 1,000 feet from the sidewalk closure.

"If these road closed signs were placed in a more thoughtful way," Elin says, "I would actually be able to get by these signs that are supposed to help me."

SHA's own guidelines for "Accommodating Bicyclists and Pedestrians Through Work Zones" state:

Completely closing a sidewalk for construction and rerouting pedestrians to the other side of the street should only be done as a last resort. To the maximum extent feasible, the alternate pedestrian route should be provided on the same side of the street as the disrupted route.

As SHA's guidelines suggest, there is a better way to handle construction than simply shutting down sidewalks. Three years ago, the District announced new standards for temporary sidewalks at construction sites, putting an end to the practice of closing sidewalks in busy urban areas. State roadways go through urban areas, including Silver Spring. SHA must recognize the necessity of sidewalks to the state's walkable communities.

It may too late for this intersection, but SHA needs to start upholding its own standards when construction results in long-term closures and detours. It is unacceptable for SHA to permit a sidewalk closure that forces pedestrians to choose between backtracking nearly 1,000 feet or dashing across a busy highway.

GHSA gave the Examiner a statement actually claiming that Michelle Obama's initiatives to get more people outside walking and exercising could be a cause of the deaths. Not only is that ridiculous, it's misleading: even if more people walking has led to an increase, more people walking will lead to safer conditions generally.

If more people are walking, the rate number of crashes may rise simply because of numbers, but the actual crash rate, any person's chance of being hit or killed, is lower. More pedestrians get hit every year in New York than in Miami, but it's far more dangerous to be a pedestrian in Miami; it's just that so many more people are walking in New York. More get hit in downtown DC than elsewhere in the city, but walking is riskier in many of those other areas.

The press release also ignores the report's recommendations that government do more to design safer roads. Perhaps that's not a surprise since the organization comprises state highway safety officials who have done little to even admit to, let alone address, their governments' complicity in these pedestrian deaths.

In his writeup of the report, the Post's Ashley Halsey III buys into Betkey's narrative wholesale. He talks about how many fatalities in Prince George's and Fairfax counties, in particular, involve crossings at night, away from crosswalks.

But missing in this discussion is the question of why people are trying to cross dark roads where there are no crosswalks. In many busy areas of those counties, there are shopping centers along multi-lane arterials with poor lighting and long distances without crosswalks. If someone on foot wants to get to one of those stores and isn't in a car, they have few alternatives. The pedestrian could be more careful, but also the government could be putting in better streetlights, crosswalks, and traffic signals.

To frame his piece, Halsey cites a fatality in Landover which did involve a signalized crosswalk. According to the article, the pedestrian signal was flashing the red "don't walk" hand icon, during which time three teenagers ran across the road. A driver hit and killed 15-year-old Wayne Cuffy. Halsey's piece is dripping with accusations against Cuffy:

It is the kind of risk teenagers take: darting across six lanes of traffic, paying no mind to the flashing sign warning pedestrians to await the green light. Wayne Cuffy and his buddies bolted across Landover Road on their way to the mall Tuesday night, a mistake that cost the 15-year-old his life when he stepped in front of a Ford Expedition at Dodge Park Road. ... It was dark, and rush hour was winding down when they dashed into traffic toward the mall. Cuffy was struck just after he left the curb.

But wait. The signal was flashing the red hand. That means the traffic light was red for cross traffic. For the driver to hit Cuffy, the driver had to have run the red light (added: or made a turn without yielding).

Yet there's absolutely no mention of this fact in Halsey's article. Who's really at fault: a teenager who hurries to get across the road before the light changes, but while cross traffic has still got the red light, or the driver who hits him despite the red light?

Other state officials did acknowledge these issues, like this statement in the report from North Carolina:

Rapid urbanization, a weakened economy, and growing numbers of vulnerable populations (including older pedestrians and socio-economically disadvantaged groups) without other transportation options have challenged the State to keep up with issues specific to pedestrian safety and mobility.

Or from Nevada:

Like many other places in the southwest, the road network in Clark County consists of arterials that are designed as six lanes with intersections jumping to eight lanes. In urban area that bisects freeways or beltways, intersection can be as large as 12 lanes! Streets are flat with wide lanes that are comfortable for speed and there are few places marked for pedestrians to cross the street. On major arterial streets the norm is to have nowhere for up to a mile stretch for pedestrians to safely cross the street.

Betkey seems to ignore this serious problem in his own state. It's too bad the safety heads from North Carolina or Clark County, Nevada aren't the ones running GHSA, and that the safety official in such an urbanized state is blind to the other serious factors behind pedestrian safety besides

If you live in Maryland, please email Betkey, his boss Neil Pedersen, and Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley and express your disappointment that your safety official is ignoring serious road design issues. Ask them to prioritize fixing dangerous roadways in Prince George's and elsewhere in the state that give pedestrians no safe opportunity to cross streets.

It's easy to blame iPods or Michelle Obama, but more important to work to make the roadway network actually usable by pedestrians. That's the real way to improve both the numbers of people walking and their safety.

Update: GHSA is disavowing the Obama quote to Dave Jamieson of TBD, but the Examiner reporter, Scott McCabe, insists they suggested it.

Back in October, Delegate Waldstreicher cc'd me in an email conversation he was having with Sarah Libby, the friend of one of the tragically deceased young men. She wrote,

I was trying to figure out a way to turn this terrible tragedy into something positive and I was thinking that perhaps there could be some sort of legislation regarding blinking lights around metro stops and large intersections. Adam and Rory were being responsible drinkers in that they took the metro home from the bar rather than drive ... after a certain time, the lights at that intersection [Rockville Pike and Marinelli Road] go from Green and red to blinking yellow and there is no walk sign.

Sarah struck a chord with my life experience. I use the Metro for play as well as work and have walked home after many nights out. The thought of being tragically killed after responsibly using the Metro for nightlife is sobering for anyone. When I asserted that Rockville Pike in its current pedestrian-unfriendly form would be an impediment to realizing the vision of the White Flint Sector Plan, I did so from the both the heart and from personal experience as a pedestrian.

After speaking to staff and the Maryland SHA and MCDOT, Del. Waldstreicher updated Sarah on November 9,

MCDOT and SHA are conducting a station-by-station review to focus their safety efforts on those Metro stops with significant post-midnight pedestrian traffic. For example, I assume there will likely be light changes near stations like Wheaton, Glenmont, and Bethesda (in fact, this has already happened at the White Flint station). Meanwhile, less dense stations like Medical Center and Grosvenor will likely have no light changes. I think this common-sense approach is exactly what we need from both a procedural (less bureaucracy) and substantive point of view.

Delegate Waldstreicher made another fair point,

Hard-red lights at 2 a.m. could possibly encourage non-compliance by drivers (there's no-one around so they'll just go). It may have the same effect on some pedestrians. Even though I believe we are in the right and the net effect will be positive, I don't want to pretend that cycled lights are a silver bullet.

As frustrating as the substance of this point may be, I think it's a valid concern. A traffic light could lull a pedestrian into a false sense of security when a motorist is just going to run them over anyway while ignoring a red light. Sarah subsequently replied:

I understand the concern of non-compliance with the lights during the later hours causing more danger and might I suggest red light cameras in those intersections? ... If nothing else I do believe that the 24 red/green lights will slow people down. According to some witnesses, this young man who killed Adam and Rory was going between 70 and 100 mph.

Being from the area, he like most of us probably knows that all of the lights around here blink after midnight and while yellow means yield, realistically that does not happen. I think that had he known that there is an actual non-blinking light ahead he would have started to slow down, especially if he knew he could get a red light ticket."

The replies from the SHA, MCDOT, and the county police were all very prompt, professional, and responsive. They deserve credit for listening and trying to make things better in the short term. None of the current staff of MCDOT or the SHA is responsible for decisions in the 1960's that turned Rockville Pike into the monster that it is today.

This tragic event shows how quickly people who are otherwise uninterested in transportation policy quickly become experts when it touches their life. It also underscores how much our infrastructure and urban form shape our everyday life. In another email with Sarah, I compared my experiences that inspired me to become an advocate to taking the Red Pill in The Matrix, a metaphor she agreed with. Sarah and the families of Adam and Rory have taken the most painful kind of Red Pill.

Very often, a painful life experience can inspire someone to make a difference in the world. The silver lining of the tragic deaths of Adam and Rory is that the county and state are now closely examining pedestrian transportation policy around Red Line Metro stations. The actions will move Montgomery County towards a more balanced transportation system for all.

Recently, something new suddenly appeared in the plan: MDOT's very expensive idea to spend $3.4 billion to widen I-270 and create more traffic in Montgomery County and more sprawl in Frederick County. We debated the wisdom of this project last year, and the Montgomery County Council scaled it back a bit, but MDOT had stacked the deck to basically force them to choose among highway widening options.

Technically, the TPB is supposed to conduct a public input process to formulate this plan, but in reality they simply "staple" together the requests from DDOT, MDOT, and VDOT. There is a brief public comment period which has now come and gone, but the TPB buried the announcement of this item in fine print, meaning almost nobody knew it was under debate until this very late date.

There are a lot of other projects that would be nice to build, too. There's the Purple Line. The Corridor Cities Transitway. Marc Elrich's Bus Rapid Transit ideas. Governor O'Malley published a plan to expand MARC service in the 270 corridor and the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

However, the common refrain for many of these projects is: they're very expensive, and we can't afford them right now. They are expensive, but so is the 270 widening. It's even more expensive. Yet somehow that one pops into the long-range plans while the others don't.

Ultimately, Maryland has no money. They bonded the next few decades' worth of federal revenues for the ICC. Eventually, they will be able to scrape together some more. By putting this project into the plan, it biases the future decisions about this money toward building it, even though residents of the region never got to discuss if they'd rather have this project or MARC, plus the Corridor Cities Transitway, plus a Red Line extension, plus streetcars, plus even more.

Why doesn't the plan call for MARC? What about other transit improvements around 270? Or building the Purple Line with federal transportation formula money, the guaranteed money that would be used for the highway but which Maryland could use for transit instead, instead of waiting for a very competitive and uncertain New Starts grant?

This is the process by which state "highway departments," those folks in the transportation bureaucracy who still see their mandate as finishing old 1960s highway plans, get the highway projects done despite public support for transit over roads.

First, they put them into a long-range plan despite the fact that there is no money. Then, over time, people start to argue that the project "has been on the books forever" and we just have to complete it. Since it costs so much, there isn't room to fit any other really big projects in there for a long time. Eventually, it happens, and suddenly another really big, really unaffordable road project appears in the long-range plan.

TPB director Ron Kirby and Maryland transportation secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley say including this doesn't commit the state to building it, but does designate it "something we want to do." Meanwhile, all the other, better transportation ideas apparently aren't "something we want to do."

The TPB shouldn't be making decisions today about what major projects to build in 2030, at least not without a real public input process instead of the sham one they use today. If the board is going to put expensive transportation projects into the plan, there should be some long-term transit expansions, not just whatever big highway MDOT wants to build today. In the meantime, the TPB should take this project out of the plan and open up a more genuine comment period on what long-term projects Maryland residents would really like to see.

And well it should. In the targeted half-mile stretch of MD 355 between Brookes and Odendhal Avenues, described in the Gazette as a "block," there are six street intersections. There are two lanes of traffic in either direction, with a bi-directional turning lane in the middle.

There are seven bus stops, for the seven-day-a-week 55 and 59 Ride-On buses. There are apartment buildings, a supermarket, fast-food and sit-down restaurants, office buildings, stores, and a shopping center. And there is one crosswalk—at Chestnut Street, 0.4 miles south of the crosswalk at Odendhal.

Again according to the Gazette, the Gaithersburg police chose this section of MD 355 "based on complaints from the public." But who could the complainers have been? Given the police department's response—writing tickets for jaywalking—it's unlikely they were the people forced to choose between walking nearly half a mile out of the way to cross at a crosswalk or dashing through five lanes of traffic on a state highway. That leaves the people who see the road through a windshield and have to slow down when pedestrians try to cross in front of their cars.

So maybe the City of Gaithersburg should try again. If they're really concerned about pedestrian safety, perhaps they should cut back on the jaywalking tickets and instead propose a joint effort with the MD SHA to put in a few more places for people to cross safely and legally on foot.

Yes, this might mean a slightly slower trip, for the people who use this major commuting route in cars. But how about all of the other people who want to use the road without reorganizing their day or risking their lives?

Allow me to begin by emphatically stating that the County Executive and the Department of Transportation (MCDOT) are committed to transit services in the County that achieve the intent of our growth policies and master plans. This includes continually improving upon the transit services and programs we currently provide based on budgetary allocations ...

As stewards of the County's transportation system, we have a responsibility to serve all users, not only transit patrons, but also for motorists who depend on personalized transportation and convenience, pedestrians and cyclists, as well as the freight industry who rely on the transportation system to deliver their goods and services. Our charge is to provide a balanced, safe, effective and efficient transportation system that satisfies the needs of all users. The goals and objectives of each mode often compete or are in conflict with one another, and it is for that very reason that we attempt to provide a balanced set of policies and operational strategies to equitably serve all of our customers. I, and this Department, would not be faithfully serving our residents by discounting the transportation needs of one mode at the expense of another.

There's nothing false about what Mr. Holmes is saying on its face. But the subtext is clear. Holmes believes that designing any roadway in any way other than to move vehicles equally isn't "balanced." However, buses carry far more people than cars. As Pedersen said, sometimes you move more people by designing the roadway to give buses a bit of priority. That's no less balanced.

Later in the letter, Holmes dismisses the idea of synchronizing signals in ways that might move more people but fewer vehicles, such as timing signals around major transit centers so that buses can more quickly exit the station and move along the road. For the rest of ACT's ideas, Holmes either gives specific technical reasons why they are infeasible, agrees to look into them, or passes the buck to SHA for state roads.

Sure, some bus priority measures wouldn't work in certain areas. But the two letters are night and day in their tone. Pedersen isn't saying that he's going to ban cars from state roadways, and Holmes isn't saying he doesn't care about buses. But Pedersen says that transit is important, and SHA is going to work with WMATA to try to figure out how to make priority corridors work. Holmes says that he's fine with running transit if the County's master plans and budget contain transit, but he's not going to do anything to inconvenience cars.

When it turned Bethesda and Silver Spring into what they are today, Montgomery County was one of the region's most progressive in its views on development and transportation. Ike Leggett is letting his motorhead, autochauvinistic DOT head Arthur Holmes drag Montgomery County down an opposite and harmful path.