Posts about Boulevardize
Pedestrians
6 steps to boulevardize Wheaton's Viers Mill Road
Viers Mill Road (MD 586) in downtown Wheaton sticks out like a sore thumb from its surroundings. It currently acts as a barrier between the historic walkable urban town and the Westfield Wheaton properties. The road should be a celebrated urban boulevard. Its right-of-way goes back to colonial times, but was rebuilt as a suburban arterial in the 1960's.
Photo by the author.
Despite the fact that Viers Mill Road between University Boulevard and Georgia Avenue was rebuilt for un-walkability by our forebears at the dawn of the suburbanization era, it currently sees a lot of pedestrian crossings. I am one of those pedestrians. Here are some ideas to improve the road so it more accurately reflects its current uses.
- Increase the width of the median. It is far safer to cross a six lane road if you have a safe midpoint. The current median is a tiny ribbon of concrete that's about a foot wide between Reedie Drive and University Boulevard. When I stand on it, I feel very nervous.
- Move the bus stops just south of University Boulevard to the corner of Ennals Avenue. When I ride the RideOn 34 home from Friendship Heights/Bethesda, I'm usually the only passenger who gets off at that stop who then crosses Viers Mill Road at the crosswalk at University Boulevard. I am clearly a part of a small minority of passengers whose final destination is east or north of the bus stop.
Most other passengers diagonally cross Viers Mill Road towards Ennals Avenue. Some cross to the bus stop located across the street in order to connect with the C4/Q's/38 etc to go north on Viers Mill Road into car-dependent suburbia towards Rockville. Consequently, most passengers who get off the bus at that stop end up crossing mid-block... on a six-lane road with a one foot median.
- Create a block at Ennals Avenue. Currently, a motorist on Viers Mill Road has little way of knowing that there is a small cross street between Reedie Drive and University Boulevard. There isn't even a signed crosswalk between the Ennals Avenue sidewalk and the CVS across the street.
On Friday, February 5th, I almost saw a car collision between two motorists because there are no markings to cross Viers Mill Road from the (suburban-style) CVS parking lot. The curb cut for the CVS parking lot aligns perfectly with Ennals Avenue.
Plenty of crossings between strip malls and side streets have blinkers or traffic lights. This would be a reasonable place to put one in to make motorists aware of potential pedestrian and automobile crossings. Better notification of the crossings, along with the wider median and relocated bus stops, would all work together in providing pedestrian vitality. The increased street activity will tell motorists that it is time to slow down.
- Narrow the lanes. Current lane widths are built to suburban arterial guidelines. Narrowing them to 10 or 11 feet (except the one lane that must be 12 for delivery trucks) would cause motorists to slow down and drive more gently, causing fewer collisions. The narrower lane widths would be more consistent with an urban boulevard like Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda.
Most motorists currently ignore the bus lane. - Fully separate the bus lanes. The right lane on Viers Mill Road has "Bus Only" painted on it just south of University Boulevard. However, just like on 7th Street NW in DC, few personal vehicle operators heed or even notice the markings. Inexpensive rubber poles would explicitly separate the bus lane, similar to the bike lane on 15th Street between Massachusetts Avenue and U St.
There is precedent for using the rubber poles in Wheaton. MCDOT used them on Reedie Drive across from Triangle Lane (in front of the Mid-County Services Building) to create a bulb-out so pedestrians have less asphalt to cross and motor vehicle operators are more aware of the crosswalk. (The MCDOT deseves credit for implementing this good idea.)
CVS's curb cut could remain a place for automobiles to cross the bus lane. It will not add much danger because the bus lane will have much less traffic than an automobile lane and the buses will be stopping at the relocated bus stop right in front of the CVS curb cut/Ennals Avenue crosswalk. The separated bus lanes would be in effect between University Boulevard and Reedie Drive both northbound and southbound.
- Improve the crosswalk across Viers Mill Road on the south side of Reedie Drive. Pedestrian bridges suck for pedestrians. It's that simple. They're a metaphorical middle finger to them. They're always underused, whether it's in Seven Corners, Hyattsville, or proposed at the Silver Spring library.
The pedestrian bridge across Viers Mill Road between Reedie Drive and Georgia Avenue is one of the less offensive examples of its kind because it at least provides a convenient route the the Metro for commuters who park in the upper levels of the Metro garage. Also, when a shopper gets off the Metro, the pedestrian bridge is the most obvious path to the mall.
However, the reverse is not true. Depending on which exit a transit-oriented customer uses to leave the mall, crossing Viers Mill Road at Reedie Drive could be more convenient. The businesses along the eastern side of Viers Mill Road would love the increased foot traffic. Many pedestrians might make a new discovery such as Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center.
Regardless, the increased foot traffic on the sidewalks and crossing the street will further tell motorists that they are on an urban boulevard and to drive accordingly. I personally use this crossing when I walk to the mall from my residence, too.
Looking across from the CVS to Ennals Avenue. Note the lack of even a crosswalk.
The upcoming 2010/11 Sector Plan will lay the framework for Wheaton to better use its existing walkable urban infrastructure and achieve its potential as an economic and social center of place. In order to facilitate this important process, all the infrastructure must be arranged to facilitate this positive growth. With a few small (low-cost) changes, Viers Mill Road between University Boulevard and Georgia Avenue can better serve the town that exists partly because of its historic proximity to the road.
(Comment)
Roads
Fairfax needs a street grid, but more than an island
Fairfax City just enacted a new commercial real estate tax dedicated to transportation, and plans to use the money to facilitate redevelopment on Fairfax Boulevard. The area surrounding Route 123, branded as "Northfax," will be the first priority for large-scale redevelopment. While the plans are still in a very early stage, and redevelopment proposals have not yet even been formally submitted, a dedicated funding source makes it likely that redevelopment in Northfax will move relatively quickly.
Fair Lakes Market Commons.
The Fairfax Boulevard master plan recommends a "8/10/10/8" design of new local streets: 8 feet for on-street parking on each side, a 10 foot travel lane, and wide sidewalks. The recommended design would resemble the street pictured above, at the Market Commons development in Fair Lakes. It would create a pleasant place to walk, ride your bike, and spend money at local businesses.
It would be great to have new walkable streets in Fairfax City in places that are currently taken up mostly by surface parking. Doing this, though, will be easier than implementing the main aspect of the master plan: taming Fairfax Boulevard itself. The recommendations in the master plan call for a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly boulevard with five travel lanes and two access lanes for local traffic. The "5-2" design would make Fairfax Boulevard a much more pleasant place to walk along. It would also make the street easier to cross, so that local residents could more easily get to places on the Boulevard on foot or bicycle rather than adding to the traffic.
Top: Fairfax Boulevard today. Middle: The Boulevard with the "5-2" design.
Bottom: The 5-2 design plus future street-oriented development.
Images from the Fairfax Boulevard Master Plan.
But the City Council and key developers working in Northfax are skeptical about the 5-2 design. "You want drive-by business," Randy Kenna of Archstone said at a City Council work session last year. Local access lanes, Kenna argued, create an "unwelcome distance" between cars and the retail destinations.
Without a more ambitious redesign of the Boulevard focused on all users, the local streets will be nice places to go... by car. Like Market Commons and many other new developments in Fairfax County, they will be islands of livability surrounded by inhospitable wide roads. Fairfax can and should choose a better route.
Preservation
Dinner links: hungry for good architecture, stimulus money
Photo by Prince of Petworth.
Arlington Bike/Pedestrian Committee meeting tonight: Michael Perkins encourages you to check out the meeting, 7 pm at the Birch room of the Courthouse county offices. Interesting agenda items include "Pedestrian/motorist awareness, 'Look-Wave' (aka 'eyeball to eyeball'), and "Planning for Lee Highway" among others. If you go, email your notes or an article to info@ggwash.org.
Seattle won't boulevardize: Seattle will get rid of the ugly elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct, but only to build a $4.25 billion tunnel instead. Douglas Willinger must be pleased, but Ryan Avent isn't. "It is a curious political world when the perfect Being right is war: Today's installment of Adam Pagnucco's "War On Chevy Chase" series compares each Purple Line alternative side by side. In almost every metric, light rail comes out on top.
Apple knows what to do: Georgetown Metropolitan rebuts Marc Fisher's criticism of locals' rejection of the Apple Store design. GM talked to Georgetown ANC commissioner Ron Lewis about it. "They know what we want, he said, they just aren't delivering it."
Stimulus update: Charles County Commissioner Gary Hodge wants a light rail line from Branch Avenue as part of the federal stimulus; USDOT nominee LaHood has strong ties to road building companies; transportation's share of the stimulus is shrinking amid tax cuts and other spending.
Roads
Breakfast links: Progress and detours
What the Stanford robocar sees.
Not saving the environment: A new Atlanta-area motorsports park will be LEED certified. Only thing is, motorsports is about driving loud cars very fast, and it's 57 miles from Atlanta. Via Richard Layman.
New Haven moving toward a boulevard: New Haven took one more step toward converting its underutilized, neighborhood-killing Route 34 stub freeway into a boulevard, soliciting proposals for consultant teams to design and execute the change.
11,000 tour buses and no place to park: District and WMATA officials are trying to plan for an estimated 11,000 tour buses to come to DC for the Inauguration, and where to park them. In addition to common sites during major events like RFK Stadium, according to the Post, WMATA will use some Metro station parking, but wants to keep some (free) for area residents. They're also looking at sites as far away as Laurel Racetrack, Six Flags in Bowie, and Wolf Trap.
And: Advocates of a more walkable Tysons argue Fairfax needs to move faster to change the zoning now that the FTA has approved the Silver Line; Annapolis' three-year-old municipal garage is losing lots of money, because people would rather park on the street for free (tip: Ben Ross); a tongue-in-cheek DailyKos diary attacks Obama's choice for Secretary of Transportation as not representing change ... even though he hasn't nominated anyone yet (tip: Jeff Wood).
Roads
Breakfast links: good pieces you might have missed before the election
Arundel Mills near Baltimore and rural Frederick's future. Photo by jtcoleman on Flickr.
"Isn't Maryland supposed to be the Smart Growth state?" BeyondDC asks that question as Frederick County approves a huge outlet mall, which will further spur auto-dependent sprawl way, way outside the Beltway (especially if the ICC is built).
And Rosapepe doesn't care: Speaking of the ICC, a group of Maryland sutudents unsuccessfully lobbied state Senator Jim Rosapepe, who claims to be an environmentalist but won't support efforts to defund the ICC.
Freeways bad part LXXVIII: Next American City summarizes the arguments against urban freeways and nationwide efforts to replace the worst with boulevards.
Roads
Silverman demagoguing on Whitehurst
Cary Silverman is sending a postcard to voters in Foggy Bottom and Georgetown promoting misguided notions about traffic. Many people believe that more roads = less traffic and fewer roads = more traffic, but that's not true; converting a freeway to a boulevard usually makes about half the traffic disappear, with the boulevard usually able to handle the rest. But Silverman is playing to the cheap seats for votes:
Photo by Pak Gwei on Flickr.
Jack Evans wants to demolish the Whitehurst! Dump 42,000 more cars each day onto residential streets in Georgetown and Foggy Bottom and get rid of a key emergency evacuation route? That's what happens when you put developers before neighborhoods.Converting the Whitehurst to a boulevard wouldn't "dump" cars onto residential streets. If there's any spillover, it would be on M and Pennsylvania, which aren't so residential, but if properly designed like Octavia Boulevard, spillover should be minimal.Cary is the only candidate who will
- Keep the Whitehurst intact and working
- Enhance its appearance and functionality
- Make better use of the area underneath the structure
- Improve traffic and pedestrian conditions at either end of the Whitehurst
The "key evacuation route" argument is one we hear a lot about freeways, but is fairly silly. The Whitehurst doesn't go much of anywhere; at the western end, you have to go through a traffic light to the Key Bridge or Canal Road. Canal is no wider than M, so if cars are evacuating on the Whitehurst onto Canal, then they'll just block cars evacuating from M, and the boulevard plus roads like 31st would easily fill the bridge. Quite simply, the Whitehurst isn't the bottleneck; the Key Bridge and Canal Road are. And the Whitehurst already jams up constantly at rush hour; how would an evacuation be any different?
The pedestrian connections at either end could indeed be much better, but what does Silverman mean by "improving traffic conditions"? The east end is already a tangle of ramps to and from Rock Creek Parkway. It's about as "improved" for car speed as possible. And I doubt Silverman means removing some ramps to make traffic movements more straightforward and easy to understand at the cost of some speed.
Boulevardizing the Whitehurst isn't "putting developers before neighborhoods," it's putting neighborhoods before traffic. Championing the freeway is like McCain and Clinton's gas tax scam from back in May.
Roads
Lunch links: Building one freeway, tearing one down edition
Photo by Step It Up 2007 on Flickr.
Transmissivity is the watchword: Chicago's Peopling Places has a nice discussion of signs that cover store windows, creating a bad pedestrian experience. DC's zoning update may restrict this practice.
One step closer to a boulevard: Seattle has released eight possible options for replacing their aging, elevated waterfront highway. Three options would replace the highway with a boulevard; there are also some (presumably very expensive) tunnel options.
Roads
Does "moving" sound like "removing" with an Oklahoma accent?
In May, USA Today ran an article, "Oklahoma City swaps highway for park":
Photo by nalilo on Flickr.
Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state's busiest highway.Wow, sounds great! OKC is getting rid of a highway and replacing it with nothing. How intelligent of them to realize that replacing highways with boulevards often doesn't create gridlock at all, but simply causes fewer driving trips altogether.Tear it down. Build a park.
The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.
Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.
Some cities want traffic routed around downtowns. Others want tunnels or highways that pass under streets. A number of cities want to close highways and replace them with — nothing.
Let's keep reading the article:
In Oklahoma City, the interstate will be moved five blocks from downtown to an old railroad line. The new 10-lane highway, expected to carry 120,000 vehicles daily, will be placed in a trench so deep that city streets can run atop it, as if the highway weren't there.Wait, what? That doesn't sound like "nothing." That's a 10-lane highway a mere five blocks away. Sure, burying it is a good thing to do, and OKC can eventually build on top of the highway. But it's still more capacity, 173,000 per day instead of the 120,000 carried by the aging old road.
Call it a smart idea to move the highway away from downtown and stimulate development in its place. Call it a better way to build a ten-lane freeway, if you must build one. But don't call it removing a freeway. If there's a new freeway five blocks away, that's called moving, not removing.
Except for the pesky fact that Oklahoma City isn't actually doing what the article is discussing, it's a good article that lays out the case for removing freeways. It cites Buffalo, Nashville, Cleveland, New York's Sheridan, and DC's Whitehurst as examples of proposed removals. And there's this great quote:
"Highways don't belong in cities. Period," says John Norquist, who was mayor of Milwaukee when it closed a highway. "Europe didn't do it. America did. And our cities have paid the price."H/T to commenter Bianchi.
Roads
New Haven next to boulevardize a freeway
In 1957, New Haven tore down a neighborhood near its waterfront to build a freeway. It created a barrier between downtown and Union Station, cut off streets, created dark shadows under huge ramps, and fostered more car-oriented and pedestrian-unfriendly development in the hospitals and huge parking garages that were built there.
Pre-freeway, post-freeway, and hopefully post-post-freeway.
The freeway never went anywhere, with other neighborhoods successfully fighting the destruction that the freeway wreaked on Oak Street. Now, Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that New Haven is proposing to tear down the freeway, develop new mixed-use buildings in the space, and reconnect the street grid.
Why is Washington DC's Mayor instead intent not only on keeping those freeways that should be boulevardized, like the Whitehurst, but also rebuilding long-gone roads through our parks?
@ggwash
- Successful speed cameras require fair speed limits
- Amid scandal, don't lose sight of Gray's policy achievements
- Montgomery plans 160-mile, "gold standard" BRT system
- Bethesda gets new but terrible bike racks
- DC's parks are 5th best in the nation, says "Park Score"
- VDOT ignores own data, pushes widening I-66
- DC's divide need not be black and white
Greater Washington
District of Columbia
