My Wheels are Turning

Notice anything different on Front Street over the weekend?

(Click to enlarge)

An on-street bicycle parking experiment is underway on Front Street for the next month, or two. Located in front of Red Ginger and the State Theatre, a space dedicated to cars now has room for 12 (+/-) bicycles. The project is a result of effort by TART Trails, through McClain’s Cycle and Fitness and a grant from Specialized.

It’s unfortunate that the parking wasn’t installed earlier in the summer as intended, however, there’s no time like today to get something accomplished.

There is plenty of riding, and parking, ahead of us before the snowplows force the rack off the street, so please use it and show city staff, and area businesses, that these racks fulfill a need.

In addition, send the city manager, DDA, and city planner feedback on the concept , value and suggestions/support for more locations in 2011 (emails below).

Why Bother with On-Street Bicycle Parking?

A need for more bicycle parking in Traverse City.

MyWHaT is a strong supporter of on-street bicycle parking. It accomplishes the direct result of providing convenient parking to area businesses & public spaces, but it also accomplishes several other goals for a community focused on increasing active transportation & has concerns about public space.

My brainstorm of  benefits:

• Fulfills a latent demand for bicycle parking.
• Improves the walking & wheelchair experience for sidewalk traffic.
• Provides space for up to 12 visitors, instead of the typical 1.2 average per car.
• Increased visibility for and of bicycles. After all, bikes belong.
• Increase visibility of store fronts, as the bikes don’t block the view of street-level entrances.
• Saves the city money locating & building infrastructure singly for bicycle parking.
• Saves the city money on maintenance of light poles & trees damaged by free-range bicycle parking.
• Traffic calming: on-street parking adds a human scale to the street. Motorists slow down when people are present.
• Combined with street beautification, can help create a sense of place across the entire public right-of-way.

Do you have any other benefits to add?

Where do you see some other opportunities for on-street bike parking?

(Map of Suggested Locations)

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The Installation

No fan-fare, just two engineers getting a job done.

SUPPORT ON-STREET BIKE PARKING: Send your comments regarding on-street bike parking to: City manager, Ben Bifoss, city planner, Russ Soyring, Executive director of DDA, Bryan Crough

bbifoss@traversecitymi.gov,rsoyring@ci.traverse-city.mi.us,bcrough@ci.traverse-city.mi.us

Related Articles

• Bike corral installed at Jolly Roger Taproom (myballard.com)
• New York Trades Parking For Pedestrian Space (BrokenSidewalk.coom)
• More home shoppers include bike access on their list (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Nick Marsh: Cycling carrots in Copenhagen (nudges.org)

UPDATED 09/03: Additional contacts added below.

Peter’s guest post about how a community’s choice between one-way and two-way streets reflects its values is poignant. It’s not just on this BLOG that residents are talking about street design and use.  There are neighborhood traffic committees, both official, ad hoc and impromptu discussions happening on front porches, alleyways and sidewalks across the city. Presentations by a leading traffic engineer generated large audiences in middle of summer.

Street design is sexy!

The practice of building and maintaining streets at a minimal level of innovation is no longer acceptable. Streets and right-of-way reflect most of our public space and we’re beginning to realize that it’s insane to let a single-use run amok.

Focus on State Street: The Forgotten Child

As Peter mentioned in his post this morning, we have a focal point in the proposed West Front parking deck that requires innovation and strategic planning to manage the extra motorized traffic that it will create. Yes, the deck will grease the wheels of ‘development’ in that corridor, but will it be car focused or people focused development? State Street, as designed now, is primarily populated by businesses focused on serving people in cars. In between businesses are parking lots, both public and private, most of it very cheap. It’s not true that parking decks aren’t subsidized. The external costs to the surrounding neighborhoods are high.

An all out strategic plan for the entire city needs to go with any state of the art blue print and economic promises accompanying the West End parking deck. The first two-parking decks did not, it’s a requirement for the third downtown parking deck in a decade. We can begin by asking for elimination of the State Street one-way.

Supporting a Smart Choice

It’s my understanding that city staff isn’t necessarily opposed to this idea and they need to know that we, the citizens of the region, are aware of the issue and support, at the least, the idea, if not full implementation. Below is my draft of a letter to send to the city manager, his assistant and the city planner. I limited its scope and readers will certainly have additional recommendations. Share them with us here in the comment section and then share them with the city staff.

EMAIL CONTACTS: Please consider drafting your own (use mine as a model if you need to) and send it to: bbifoss@traversecitymi.gov • Ben Bifoss, city manager; mvitous@ci.traverse-city.mi.us • Makayla Vitous, assistant to cm; rsoyring@ci.traverse-city.mi.us • Russ Soyring, city planner.

Also, the staff and board chairperson of the Downtown Development Authority need to be included: bryan@downtowntc.com • Bryan Crough, E. D. & Community Development Director; rob@downtowntc.com • Rob Bacigalupi, Deputy Director; ncf1997@aol.com • Burian, Robert C., Chairperson.

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To City Manager R. Ben Bifoss and staff,

Lately, there has been a lot of attention focused on the design of our streets. Count me as one of the voices that believe that we can design them to better reflect the values of city residents. The neighborhoods have voiced their desire to live in a city that isn’t dominated by, and built solely for the convenience of the motorist. The list of prescriptions is lengthy, however, there is an opportunity now to fix one of the forgotten streets: State Street.

I support converting State Street from a one-way street back into a two-way street, including the short section of Pine Street.  The proposed West Front parking deck is an excellent impetus to kick-start this conversion. The parking deck will purposefully increase the amount of motorized traffic in our city. That needs countering with any and all professional recommendations possible to reduce the negative impacts that will occur. The parking deck doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There will be consequences for other modes of transportation, as well as on the economic vibrancy & livability of adjacent parts of the downtown  and in the neighborhoods. A strategic plan to deal with the impact needs to be more than simply converting a street back to a two-way, but it is a start to the conversation that must occur. (I’d be happy to sit with you to explore more changes and enhancements that need to occur, like a real reduction in surface parking, raising the price of street parking, and leading edge traffic calming and LID storm-water treatment.)

A walk along the route is revealing, the 3 decade long experiment of a one-way street on State Street has hindered economic activity, active transportation, transit and increased safety concerns downtown. One-way streets are known to create excessive speeds, unnecessary circling (which leads to congestion and reduced downtown desirability) and a decrease in walkability and bikability. Front Street is successful and our city would be much improved if we could emulate, improve and augment that on another street.

One-way streets have one purpose: moving cars quickly through a place at high speeds. On State Street, it is also built to provide parking for Front Street. We, as a community, have moved beyond this need. It no longer makes sense to maintain a 1960′s traffic experiment.

I would like to see the city move forward. Plans for the west end parking deck need to include a redesign of State St. back to a two-way street among other changes to our street network.

How can I help you make this conversion?

Sincerely,

Gary L Howe

Traverse City Michigan

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Peter’s posts are at:

• Part I: One-way & Two-way Streets Reflect a Community’s Priorities
• Part II: A One-Way Desert of Parking: State Street

Is State St. Simply Front St.’s Parking Lot?

Guest Contributor: Peter Spaulding, part 2 of 3.

Part I: One-way & Two-way Streets Reflect a Community’s Priorities

What does the average citizen or visitor to Traverse City think of State Street?

When I look at it I see a waste of space, a desert of parking and a one-way street that serves only to provide smooth access to parking. Maybe others see it differently, but State Street is by no means an example of a street done right in Traverse City. Nice landscaping and street trees fail to make it a livable street; the few businesses that attempt to exist on or even between it and Front are fighting a difficult battle against terrible urban design. It is a boring, unpleasant and uninhabitable place for humans and businesses alike.

Wayfinding on State St. says a lot: Front St. District (photo GLHowe)

State Street’s woes begin with its subordinate relationship to Front Street. Whether actively decided upon or simply defaulted to, State Street became over time the automotive dumping ground for Front Street, a basically understandable and common outcome. The mall, the strip mall, and easy parking enthralled suburban consumers throughout the latter part of the last century; many well-meaning planners and downtown businesses blew their cities apart in unfortunate attempts to compete.

Now the time has come to take the necessary steps to realize State Street’s latent potential, and make it a testament to livability and activity in Traverse City instead of an embarrassment.

Dumping Ground for Parking

The most glaring problem with State Street is its overwhelming dedication to parking, but creating new public places for people to inhabit and enjoy is possible. Changing to a two-way orientation would immediately convert State Street from a temporary space to pass through into a place where people come together. The slowing of traffic and the visibility, walkability, and accessibility created would immediately make non-parking development on State Street more feasible and appealing.

Changes to State Street would also improve the functioning of present and future parking decks downtown. The Hardy Parking Deck would become more accessible, reduce circling traffic, and improve operation of Park Street’s intersections as the 101 N. Park building begins to draw visitors and residents. Without a State Street conversion, significant new development associated with a parking garage at Pine and Front could create significant problems. Problems at Front and Union, and along West Front to Division would limit accessibility to the deck, reduce the success of new businesses and create confusion and congestion that motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists would all be affected by.

Wide open. The trees do little to counter the real purpose of State St, as designed now: the storage of cars & moving motor vehicles through town, quickly (photo: GLHowe).

Move Away from One-way Streets, Beginning with State Street

While a Front Street conversion would be doable and ideal, an easy and necessary first step would be to convert State Street as soon as possible. We will have a prime opportunity as the DDA is set to erect their third parking deck in the near future. Leaving behind the one-way orientation of the past would help to eliminate the use of State Street as solely a conduit for the easy entrance and exit of Front Street traffic.

Present and future parking decks give us an opportunity we as a city can’t afford to miss; we need to make State Street a quality place. By reverting to two-way operation and developing significant new housing (including affordable housing), shops and restaurants on parking lots we no longer need, we will more fully use our investment in structured parking and increase investment in our city. Traverse City will still be a small town, it will just be a more compact and vibrant, and less dedicated to the automobile and its unfortunate storage requirements.

Let’s choose to enjoy State Street as a place, and take the steps necessary to make it happen in the next 5-10 years.

• Part I: One-way & Two-way Streets Reflect a Community’s Priorities

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Editor’s Note: Peter is hitting on something expressed before by others. Some have even expressed it on this BLOG in comments (thanks JRW).  I support the idea of tying a conversion of State St. back to a two-way street to the likely construction of the West Front Street parking deck. So far, I’ve heard no discussion of how the city plans to handle the increased motorized traffic through the city, as well as downtown, the third parking deck will create; I’ve tried.

I’ll post a follow-up on this, and a small call to action, later today.

Editor’s Intro: Introducing MyWHaT’s newest guest contributor, Peter Spaulding. Peter lives and works in Traverse City where he is a freelance urban designer and planning consultant. He is co-founder of Placework DG and a graduate of the Urban and Regional Planning program at the University of Michigan. This is part 1 of a 3 part series on one-way and two-way streets. Currently, Traverse City has 4 major one-way streets: Front St., State St., 7th Street and 8th Street.

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One-way Streets to Move Cars

Guest Contributor: Peter Spaulding, part 1 of 3

One-way street networks in Traverse City need evaluating to see if they truly carry out resident goals, as a conversion back to two-way operation could yield real benefits for multiple user groups. While drawbacks exist for each orientation, the solution that is most appropriate is dependent upon the goals of neighborhoods and the city. One-way streets were ideal when we as a nation were trying to clear out of towns and cities in order to fill up suburbia, but they make considerably less sense today. Justifications for conversion in the downtown core and in the central neighborhoods rely on the same fundamental justifications, but several special considerations can and need to be made in each case.

Are one-way streets stuck in the past?

Pros and Cons

One-way streets are designed to move the greatest number of people possible (in cars), as quickly as possible. Removing opposing traffic and the moderating influence of possible head on collisions allows motorists to concentrate less while operating closer together at higher speeds. One-way streets can also cut the incidence and severity of traffic congestion, delay, and time required to enter or exit the city.

One-way streets eliminate some direct routes and force road users to make extra turns and travel greater distances to reach destinations. In this way, one-way orientations create more traffic and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and can confuse non-local motorists. In extreme instances, motorists might lap blocks multiple times or give up and go home or to the mall. One-way streets reduce the viability of downtown businesses in other ways too. Streets crossing one-ways always have one street facade invisible from automobiles, the western facing facades of Union, Cass and Park Streets are invisible from Front St., making storefronts and successful businesses more difficult there than on east facing Façades.

One-way streets serve the motorist first-and-foremost and deal only with pedestrians and other stakeholders as an afterthought, they are great when a city serves primarily as an office center and moving office workers into and out of the center quickly is very important. When retail businesses and pedestrians are valued, the drawbacks of one-way streets are harder to overlook.

Two-way Streets as Compromise

In a balanced city where residents and other transportation system users are important, two-way systems are an improvement. Two-way streets aren’t optimized for anything, they represent a compromise that attempts to accommodate everyone. In a downtown context, two-way streets offer improved accessibility and direct routing, give all shops improved exposure and make wayfinding easier. Two-way streets reduce turning movements, speeds, volumes[1], and miles traveled, all of which improve downtown livability and safety, and help to make a downtown a pleasant place to be.

Lower speeds and volumes make pedestrians and bicyclists feel more comfortable, they make outdoor café seating enjoyable and help to create the sense of a place to be, not just a place to pass through. On one-way streets you can get the sense that everyone is leaving; on two-way streets, if one lane of traffic is leaving town, then the other must necessarily be coming to town.[2] Even as a psychological trick, the sense of place created by two-way streets is more welcoming.

Two- way conversions might make access to downtown by car take a bit longer during the peak season, but would be more intuitive and offer better business visibility year round. Two-way street conversions would realize benefits in livability, walkability, and downtown vibrancy, and need to be considered as a way to further improve and support a constantly improving urban experience for Traverse City.

[1] While downtown volume is ostensibly good, volume as a result of increased speed is bad.

[2] Presumably to have tons of fun and hang out with you!

Related Articles

• Many cities changing one-way streets back (USA Today)
• One-way Streets in downtown Flint converted into two-ways (mlive.com)
• The Return of the Two-Way Street (governing.com)

* More images from MyWHaT’s tour of Montreal’s bicycle network at our Flickr page *

Love for the sharrow

At the beginning of July I explored the use of the sharrow. Since then, I have experienced the wide use of them in Montreal and New York.  Love may be too strong, but there is certainly a new found fondness and understanding of how they could be used in Traverse City.

Sharrow use across an intersection in Montreal.

Montreal is using them liberally as a design solution to difficult situations, like connecting two disconnected bike paths or shifting traffic coming out of a bike lane. This pavement marking’s use is growing in north America’s most bicycle friendly cities. It’s technically called a “shared lane marking” or is otherwise broken down as “share+arrow=sharrow”.

The appreciation for the sharrow inspired a map of Suggested Sharrow use for Traverse City (below). It’s robust and will stretch the minds of certain city staff (not to mention public), yet the suggested placements are all achievable and would go a long way in communicating that Traverse City is serious about improving it’s image as a bicycle friendly place. My goal is to encourage more trips by bicycle and design solutions like sharrows will help.

Bikes Belong

In the previous post, I went through the uses of the sharrow. Mainly, they are used to position bikes away from opening car-doors, however, the basic advantage I see is that they communicate that bicycles and cars have an equal right to the lane; that bikes belong. They aren’t meant to replace bike lanes or the need for separate bike paths. They are one tool in the tool-box for encouraging bicycling by delineating bike routes, communicating that bikes belong and guiding the direction and positioning of traffic. As I saw in Montreal, they are also a great design asset effective at connecting a bike network that is truncated or broken by a narrow street, intersection or broken street, like one-way streets.

The Sharrow Map

View Larger Map

Each sharrow has an explanation to its placement. Icons: Red boarder = could be implemented ASAP; Black boarder = possible future location; Yellow boarder = pushing the limits of what’s possible, but not unreasonable.

What do you think? Have you ridden in a city that used sharrows?

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EXTRA: The southeast Michigan bicycle BLOG M-Bike posted a piece yesterday asking, “Would Sharrows work in Detroit?” What’s interesting in Detroit is that they have streets overbuilt for current use. The result is plenty of public right of way for bike lanes and segregated bike paths, which are preferred over sharrow use. Traverse City has a limited street network and our main areas where safety is the issue arguably have little room for bike lanes. MyWHaT ran a post about biking in Detroit earlier this year.

Be Palettø!

Via the Arch Daily.

Nine students in Denmark at the Aarhus School of Architecture turn a courtyard into an interactive play scape that follows the social trails of the people who use the courtyard.

Use it as an elevated trail, use it to hang out on or just marvel at the design.

The project has information about the process and design at it’s BLOG, Be Palettø! Thibault Marcilly is the point person and can be reached at thibault.marcilly@wanadoo.fr

Any smart engineer/architect/builder types out there looking for a challenge?

Roundabout Resource Page

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The Roundie Love Continues

Graphic by USA Today introducing the modern roundabout and what is and what it isn't.

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It’s amazing how much attention a simple traffic device can garner! The modern roundabout continues to be a story, not only locally, but nationally. The U.S.A. today is the most recent high profile publication to cover it with this story by Mike Chalmers titled, ‘States embrace roundabouts for intersections‘

It’s a fairly standard story; it gives the talking points about safety and mentions that they tend to be unpopular where proposed, and loved after installed. The reader comments are also predictable, ranging from the “I hate them” to the “Why is this a story? They work. Learn how to drive people.”

The article quotes a 2007 study by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program of the National Academies that confirmed previous studies on the increased safety of roundabouts. Stating:

“Converting a traditional intersection to a roundabout led on average to a 35% drop in crashes and a 76% drop in fatal or serious injury crashes.“

The NCHRP study (pdf) had a particular focus on modern roundabouts in the United States in order to highlight national cultural and context specifics.

Roundabouts are still on the table in Traverse City and will be for the foreseeable future. Division Street is being modeled this summer and the city will know more details for that corridor by August.

The MyWHaT roundabout resource page continues to be populated with links to further information, including a map of where the roundabouts can be found in Michigan. If you’re on a road trip downstate, swing through a roundabout.

Please peruse the resources and leave a comment if you have a question or something to add.

The goal: informed consent.

Rush hour in the Netherlands via Spacing Toronto

Some interesting safety statistics provided with this video:

• Injury rate per million km cycled: USA 37.5; NL 1.4
• Fatality rate per 100 million km cycled: USA 5.8; NL 1.1

It really is about making bike commuting irresistible…something we are a long way away from achieving..

I received this text message from my friend Sarna yesterday:

“Just went through an all walk in Chinatown, Oakland. It was AwEsOmE!“

The "Barnes Walk" at 9th and Webster Oakland, CA (photo Sarna Salzman)

I’ve used them in Taiwan; they are awesome. They send a clear message that a city’s right of way isn’t there solely for the purpose of people in cars.

The “Barnes Dance“, also called  a scramble or technically an exclusive pedestrian phase, stops vehicular traffic in every direction at an intersection. During this time, pedestrians are free to cross the intersection however they want, including diagonally. There’s no double checking for cars turning right and there’s no need to cross two sections of road.

You could do cartwheels kitty-corner through the middle.

For 20 seconds or so, it’s the peoples’ road. Hence the term ‘Barnes Dance’ named after Henry A. Barnes, a traffic commissioner credited with championing the feature in Denver and NYC. Apparently, people were so happy with the feature, they’d dance across the street.

Now, what’s wrong with that? We need to spoil our people, not our cars.

Mathew Roth has an interesting article on the history of the Oakland scrambles. After a prominent pedestrian death, the community rallied the troops and set out to change the nature of their neighborhood. They obviously encountered resistance from the city, but won a trial run that was so successful that they put in more scramble intersections.

And they aren’t the only city doing this. Toronto recently adopted the concept.

Time Lapse of Toronto’s first scramble intersection
by Sam Javanrouh (he has a other videos worth a gander)

Doesn’t Traverse City deserve a scramble? Where could Traverse City put in a ‘Barnes Dance”?

Immediate ideas:

• Cass St. and Front St. downtown intersection would be perfect. A clear sign that the city takes walkability and pedestrians seriously.
• I envisioned something like this as the fix for Grandview Parkway and Division St. With an ‘on demand’ system it would only halt traffic occasionally and even at that, briefly (20 seconds).

Where else?

Have you used a Scramble?

Maybe we should just create a scramble downtown this summer…whose in?

A View from the Cycle Path recently posted a series of videos to discuss when a segregated bike path is needed & when it isn’t. Of course, the model used is the Netherlands where people are the priority & the bike is considered like a vacuum; it’s just a tool.

Northern Michigan has a long way to go…currently, even the basic amenities are a fight. We simply have a culture & system that supports ‘no’ over ‘yes’, ‘status-quo’ over ‘change’, ‘I’m going to protect my ass & my retirement fund’ over ‘I’m up to the challenge, let’s do something creative’…ah, but that’s a rant for another day.

This post is about sharing two videos I vision happening in Traverse City.

The first video, a busy two lane with a 30-mph speed limit. With some changes to accommodate mixed use, this is a model for the four-lane section of 8th Street.

Am I way off?

This second video of a segregated bike path is along a much busier road that requires multiple-lanes for vehicles. Grandview Parkway? Garfield Avenue?

If your short on time, skip to 1:20 for the guy popping a wheelie across the road. Weee…

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These aren’t suggested as perfect fits for Traverse City, but surely they are doable. Imaginable? I’m not a huge fan of separated bike paths primarily because they are often seen as a way to remove bicycle riders from the main roads. They are too often supported as recreational, rather than for transportation. This defeats the purpose of encouraging more riding as a first or second choice of real transportation.

What’s elegant about the models shown here is that they treat all users as equals and recognize that to really achieve high rates of active transportation, the infrastructure needs to 1) provide direct routes to the places people want to go and 2) provide for different levels of real & perceived safety.

Traverse City will undoubtedly come up with its own solutions (or not), but we’d be foolish not to be learning from the places in the world that are succeeding at the things we want. There is a reason that the Netherlands has a 50% rate of trips made by bicycle and walking; they build it into the culture, the culture gets a taste for it and asks for more.

Simple.

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