Posts about Road Diet

Engineers from the State Highway Administration say that many segments of University Boulevard carry fewer vehicles today than 20 years ago, while elsewhere traffic levels are about the same. With a few changes, the street can carry as much traffic in 4 lanes as it does with 6 lanes today.

While the street will have to be widened to make room for station platforms, the MTA won't need as much room as they did in their previous plan to keep all 6 lanes and add the Purple Line. With less space needed for car traffic, only 8 businesses will be displaced, compared to 25 before.

Reducing the number of car lanes on University Boulevard will cut speeding, meaning that a street where pedestrians are now frequent collision victims will be transformed into a safer and more welcoming place to walk or bike. There will be room for wider sidewalks and possibly even a cycle track, and there will be bike parking at each of the three Purple Line stations along the corridor, at Piney Branch Road, the future Takoma-Langley Transit Center and Riggs Road.

Meanwhile, key intersections will get traffic lights and turn lanes. This will not only make the street safer to cross, but allow trains to move more smoothly, reducing potential collisions with other vehicles or pedestrians.

These upgrades will help the Purple Line fulfill its economic promise. Both Montgomery and Prince George's counties want to transform the aging strip malls along University Boulevard into an urban corridor akin to downtown Silver Spring. Making University Boulevard a safer and more attractive place to walk will support that goal.

This design change is also good news for Montgomery County's bus rapid transit initiative, which proposes a countywide network of dedicated bus lanes. In dense, close-in areas like Bethesda, Silver Spring and Takoma Park that have the most potential ridership, existing pavement is often the only place new bus lanes can go. However, plans to repurpose traffic lanes for buses have met resistance from residents and county officials alike.

If transportation engineers say we can give car lanes to transit on University Boulevard, it can work elsewhere in the region as well. Hopefully, the Purple Line in Langley Park will serve as an example to the Montgomery County Planning Board and County Council as they consider the BRT plan this year.

This is great for the neighborhood, but it is tempered by the fact that this section of Glebe also has some Arlington's biggest and busiest car intersections.

In response, Arlington is proposing a number of changes for pedestrian safety at the intersections with Wilson Boulevard, Fairfax Drive, and Carlin Springs Road.

These changes are definitely an improvement to the current conditions, but ultimately Arlington needs to more completely rethink Glebe, from its intersections to how many lanes the road really needs.

Northbound on Glebe Road at Wilson Boulevard. Image from Google.

The picture above is what a driver sees while waiting to proceed north Glebe at Wilson Boulevard. Several cars could fit in the space between the crosswalk and the white line.

The intersection itself is very large and it is difficult for drivers to see what is ahead of them, not to mention those trying to cross on foot before the light changes. Even despite this large distance, a driver trying to left onto Wilson Boulevard does not have to wait for a green arrow if they think the way is clear.

Current (top) and plan (bottom) for Glebe and Wilson. Images from Arlington County and Bing.

The plans move the crosswalks to align with the white stop line. This would reduce the amount of pavement that pedestrians need to cross. The county will also eliminate a slip lane on the southwest corner.

However, the new design still leaves two slip lanes which encourage speeding and create potential conflict points between drivers and pedestrians.

Northbound on Glebe Road at Fairfax Drive. Image from Google.

Plan for Glebe and Fairfax. Image from Arlington County.

At Glebe Road and Fairfax Boulevard, two slip lanes are being removed but one slip lane will remain. This is unfortunate, since pedestrians already face the task of crossing 8 lanes of traffic at this intersection.

Other corners will get rebuilt and become sharper. This will extend the sidewalk and slow down cars negotiating a turn, reducing the amount of roadway that pedestrians need to cross and make pedestrians more visible at the intersection.

Concrete will replace some of the brick sidewalks at the intersection with Wakefield Street, closer to the ramp to I-66, and provide a smoother surface for pedestrians and cyclists connecting to the Custis Trail and the Arlington Loop.

At the intersection at Carlin Springs Drive, Arlington will move a stop light pole to be less intrusive on the sidewalk, replace brick crosswalks with the more traditional zebra-style painted crosswalk, and replace the concrete on the sidewalk itself.

There are no slip lanes at this intersection, but pedestrians face challenges from crossing another 8 lanes of traffic while cars are negotiating unprotected left turns and avoiding traffic that is entering and exiting from the Ballston Mall Garage.

But turning Glebe Road into a safer street cannot just focus on the intersections. Planners must consider if Glebe Road is wider than necessary. The section through Ballston is 6 lanes compared to the usual 4 along the rest of the route.

These extra lanes are less than a mile long, and allow parking in some sections but not others. Passing Ballston Mall, there is not any parking. Drivers speed up into that third lane for about ¼ mile before having to turn onto Wilson or merge back into the travel lane.

This means that in an area with increasing numbers of pedestrians and cyclists, drivers have to make confusing lane changes that can distract them from seeing other road users or encourage them to be reckless.

The intent of these lanes is to serve drivers coming on and off I-66. But Glebe doesn't have similar extra lanes around exits onto US 50 and I-395. It would be better to simplify the road so that drivers can focus their attention on what is going on around them rather than trying to negotiate a confusing right-of-way.

Glebe Road is Virginia State Route 120, meaning the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) controls the road. Thus far, VDOT has been unwilling to consider changes to roads that reduce the amount of space for vehicles, which ties Arlington's hands.

The pedestrian improvements for Glebe Road are welcome, but as more development comes to Ballston, Glebe Road needs to become a street that better balances the needs of all users and keeps them safe.

Notify drivers faster

A friend, who works outside the District in a car-dependent area, got 11 camera tickets before finding out about even the first one. If she was driving 11-15 miles over the speed limit, that would come out to $1,375 in fines. What does this achieve?

Since the goal of cameras needs to be getting people to obey speed limits, red lights, and other traffic laws, the quicker DC tells people they've gotten a ticket, the better. Psychologists call this "contiguity," and found that whether one's punishing animals, children or adult humans, the closer a punishment is to the infraction, the more effective the punishment.

We'd actually get the most behavior change if every time someone sped or ran a red light, a sign lit up a bit down the road saying, "You just got a ticket. Please don't speed/run red lights." However, this could anger and possibly distract drivers, and also, current cameras require a human to review each ticket to be sure it's fair. Therefore, this is probably impractical.

However, we can ensure that the tickets come as quickly as possible. A bill around ensuring safety could require that the contractor mail tickets within a set period of time.

The DC DMV also has a system where you can sign up with an email address to get notified about tickets, deadlines for late penalties, and more. Unfortunately, right now you have to get a ticket and then use that ticket number to sign up with the system, "for privacy reasons." At least for DC drivers, the DMV could sign up people for this service when they renew a car registration. Is there anything else that could be done for out-of-state drivers, besides having the DMVs of neighboring states work together?

Let MPD use camera money to buy new cameras

AS we discussed previously, more cameras with lower fines is a more effective way to get people to follow laws than fewer cameras with higher fines. In order to have more cameras with lower fines, however, DC needs to be able to buy more cameras.

The current crop of cameras MPD is ordering were in the pipeline for at least two years, and they're still not in place. That's largely a consequence of the procurement process. Even though the cameras bring in money, all of that money goes to the general fund. If MPD wants another camera or even if an existing one breaks, they need a line item in the annual capital budget specifically authorizing spending that amount of money on cameras.

There are reasons to budget this way. It forces more transparency and ensures that spending follows the priorities of the mayor and council. However, it also makes everything really, really slow.

A bill around cameras could give MPD the power to buy more cameras out of the revenue from other cameras. This would dovetail well with the suggestion from last week that fines automatically lower as more cameras come in. That way, safety improves, but drivers also get the reduction they want, and we maintain the overall balance of severity against certainty.

Use revenue for safety programs

There are other ways to make the streets safer. In particular, often the "design speed" of a road does not match the speed we want people to drive. For a long time, traffic engineers thought that it would be safest if they built every road to handle faster traffic than people actually wanted. The thinking went that if they did this, if a driver sped, they would still be able to avoid hitting a tree or something.

However, this created roads that sent psychological signals to drivers that they should travel faster. Drivers did, and a conventional wisdom evolved that faster driving was appropriate in that area. Standards evolved around setting a speed limit at the 85th percentile of how fast cars are traveling, which meant that the road design, which created a general practice, then became its own law.

To slow down traffic in residential areas, we can set lower speed limits, but most people ignore them. We can then put up cameras, but drivers will continue to feel tension between the signals they get from road design and the posted limits. The best way to solve this is to redesign the road with the right design speed.

There are many ways to reduce design speeds. Bulb-outs at corners reduce the distance pedestrians have to cross and create visual signals to travel slower. Cycle tracks reduce the visual width of a street. Bioswales, medians, and gently curving lanes (chicanes), like those suggested for C Street, NE, can add green features and slow traffic.

The camera law could mandate that camera revenue, over and above the revenue dedicated to the FY2013 budget and which doesn't go to cameras, would go into a special fund that DDOT can use to redesign roadways. Those roadways need to be ones with speeding problems today, where the change reduces the design speed of the road.

What else would you suggest?

"I'm not sure what the original rationale was for keeping this street open on weekdays, but I think that the last seven years have shown us that there's a lot more demand for public space in downtown Silver Spring than there is for a single block of road."

Nonetheless, turning Ellsworth Drive into a permanent pedestrian mall may not be the answer, and there are two reasons why.

First off, successful pedestrian malls have pedestrians at all times. Stores need people passing by to get customers, and if there aren't enough people walking by, they'll close. Ellsworth may be crowded on a weekend evening but not the rest of the week. Are the sidewalks busy on a Tuesday morning? Or a Saturday night after 10pm?

Ellsworth Drive does have shops and restaurants and movie theaters, but not enough to keep it busy at all times. Though thousands of new apartments have been built in downtown Silver Spring over the past ten years, there are still very few people living within a quarter-mile of Ellsworth Drive, meaning that the only people on the sidewalks are those who came intentionally.

Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica has a wide variety of stores and other activities taking place at all times.

Main Street in Charlottesville has a number of bars, including the one where Dave Matthews got his start. Like Boulder, Charlottesville also has a major university nearby, drawing tens of thousands of carless college students who have to walk everywhere.

On Third Street, you can buy anything from today's newspaper to a coffeepot to a skateboard. You can also have dinner and a drink afterwards. Above are apartments, offices, hotels and a hostel, and a few blocks away are Santa Monica's famous beaches. Together, all of these amenities create places where the sidewalks are busy at all times, which justifies closing a street to cars.

Second, we shouldn't be asking why the sidewalks on Ellsworth are so crowded, but rather why sidewalks everywhere else in Silver Spring are so empty. Ellsworth Drive currently works well for cars and pedestrians. But most others in the downtown area, from big ones like Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road to little ones like Thayer Avenue or Fenton Street, have been designed to move cars, resulting in some pretty uninviting places to walk.

The biggest reason why businesses along Georgia Avenue or Colesville Road may continue to struggle despite the ongoing revitalization is probably because nobody wants to walk there. Tight sidewalks and speeding cars are enough to encourage walkers to find safe places, like Ellsworth Drive, and stay put as long as they can.

The space given over to cars on Georgia Avenue is as wide as the through lanes on the Beltway.

How can we create more public space in downtown Silver Spring? Make the streets narrower. At its intersection with Silver Spring Avenue, Georgia Avenue is nearly 110 feet wide from curb to curb. That's as wide as the through lanes on the Beltway.

Let's say you made the lanes on Georgia 10 feet wide, narrow enough to get cars going 30 miles an hour. Keeping the current setup, with six lanes for through traffic and two for parking, you could make the road 80 feet wide, freeing up thirty feet of pavement for other uses, like wider sidewalks, a landscaped median, or space for cafe tables.

You could do this exercise with any street in the business district, giving space back to the pedestrian without changing traffic patterns. But if we were really ambitious, we would change traffic patterns, giving over street space to bikes or transit vehicles, such as the DC streetcar, which may one day continue up Georgia Avenue to Silver Spring. These changes could allow our streets to move more people than a lane of cars ever could while making them much nicer spaces to be in.

Georgia Avenue's a nice place to drive through, but a pretty miserable place to walk.

What Georgia Avenue could be like. Drawing by architect Darrel Rippeteau.

The argument for making Ellsworth Drive a pedestrian mall is pretty similar to the one for building a bridge across Wayne Avenue to the new Silver Spring Library: drivers speed through downtown Silver Spring, so let's keep pedestrians far away where they can be safe. But doesn't this condone speeding?

We should make all of Silver Spring safe and fun for walking, even if it means drivers have to slow down. In doing so, we'll help local businesses, improve traffic, and return public space to the people.