Can you redesign your street?
Last Spring Good Magazine ran a “Redesign Your Street” contest. One of the winners was Shaun Smakal with his rendering of an alley in Flint, Michigan with a heavy emphasis on sustainable energy and green technology.
Each winner’s rendering has an interactive graphic & worth the risk of being inspired.
- Fifth Place: Times Square, New York City by Pilar Pastor.
- Fourth Place: Auckland, New Zealand by Aaron Nelson.
- Third Place: Flint, Michigan by Shaun Smakal.
- Second Place: Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Juli Kaufmann.
- The Winner: Portsmouth, Virginia by Steve Price. (Think Front St.!)
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Anyone have ideas or renderings for Northern Michigan?
Until we have our own contest for Northern Michigan, send your rendering/ideas our way and we’ll post them.
An open letter to Mayor Bzdok:
Mr. Mayor,
I so appreciate your forum and your openness to allow feedback on the topics of the day. Thank you for your courage and insight.
Before we get all carried away with the rebuilding of Division Street, I think we need to stop for just a moment.
The perceived PROBLEM is NOT the street, it’s the MOTORISTS and the laws they do, or do not obey.
Changing the layout of Division Street, without changing the motorist, is like taking whiskey away from an alcoholic and leaving them with fine wine.
There is a win-win-win staring us right in the face, here in TC!
The “shovel ready” catch phrase of the past two decades in Traverse City has been “traffic calming”.
Why? Traffic at high speeds makes noise, breaks down roads, decreases the quality of life, causes fear in the “silent movers” (peds &cyclists) and divides parts of our town.
Sir, I assert, “There are no such things as BAD ROADS, only BAD DRIVERS”!
MDOT engineers would not and cannot design bad roads. Stories of drivers sliding off roads, crashing, etc are rarely the fault of the design and construction of the infrastructure, but the mis-use and careless attitudes and the lack of skills by the motorists in town.
It’s official….We are NOT the “Motor State” any more.
Michigan is attempting to re-invent itself by going “green”.
Traverse City can and must lead this new green way, by demonstrating a new, friendlier transportation system.
We do not have to “re-invent the wheel”, but simply look and research other states and communities that have enacted laws to make the quality of life more desirable.
For example: In California, (the inventor of the “right turn on red”), when a pedestrian steps off the curb, the law says motorists MUST stop.
Last October, I rode a bike many, many miles around metro Seattle. At non-motorized trails, even mid-block, cars stop when they see approaching cycle traffic, yielding to the cyclist or ped. They (the motorists) even smile and wave! At first I was dumbfounded by the drivers actions, but it’s the LAW. They get it, “we don’t”.
If Traverse city really wanted to be a leader, we should post our new traffic laws at the city limits, post signs adjacent to every traffic light (no sign posts, way up there on the wire) and posted on every STOP sign in town…”Yield to peds and bikes, it COULD be you”.
Change the street laws, post them and enforce the laws with “Draconian measures”. Word spreads quickly. With a positive public service campaign reminding drivers of severe penalties and posting TCPD for revenue enhancement, Drivers will soon learn TC is no place to be asleep at the wheel. The privilege of driving will and should be respected. Bad drivers will and should pay fines.
As an attorney, I will defer to your knowledge of the law to guide us in the finer points of civilizing and correcting “motoris horribilis”.
If the cars collide on Division Street because a motorist did stop for a ped/cyclist, it proves the “too fast for conditions” law. We CAN and must set reasonable speeds for our streets.
It’s NOT the streets fault!
It’s the motorists.
It’s way cheaper to change the limits, the laws and enforce them than it is to re-design a street. Again, Its NOT the street’s fault!
Traverse City declared itself a “bicycle friendly” community last fall.
Let’s prove it!
To everyone.
Thank you for your time and consideration, Mr. Mayor.
Sincerely,
John Robert Williams
873 Peninsula Drive
Traverse City, MI
Amen. To most of it.
We certainly need to revisit laws, driving behavior, increase/improve pubic campaigns and be creative in making this a truly livable city.
But, there are roads that, by design, encourage speed over caution. Division St. is one of them. You could have all the signs in the world stating a reduction to 25mph, but if it remains a wide-open, 4 lane highway, particularly through the stretch south of 8th st., it will have limited results. Current conditions offer no design indication that it is a neighborhood. There are no street calming amenities there are working cognitively to slow drivers down. Yes, we need more strict laws and enforcement, but coupled with some tweaks, large and small, in how we build these places.
Book recommendation: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way we Do I’d just add that MDOT engineers don’t intend to build bad roads and are not bad people. They just use some dated models and assumptions.