Cul-de-sacs: Eating your property taxes while eliminating connectivity

If you live on the typical suburban cul-de-sac, as I do (that's mine in the photo above), snow events like the one we experienced today drive home another expensive consequence of suburban non-planning: The intricate, time-and-fuel-consuming snowplow ballet that is required in order to clear the huge circle of non-permeable surface created by cul-de-sacs.

It's a tedious job, to say the least. Trucks designed and engineered to generally go forward have their gears mashed back and forth as the driver struggles to push piles of snow off a skating rink-sized area. In the time it takes for a plow to clear a single cul-de-sac street, the same crew or driver could have finished six streets of the traditional pattern.

If you've looked closely at the City of Franklin's 2010 budget -- and have followed deliberations as the common council struggles to keep municipal services reasonably effective without significantly raising property taxes -- you are aware that fuel, vehicle and crew expenditures for snow removal are already necessarily cut to the bone.

These are cuts you may have already noticed in the past couple of years as your street didn't seem to get cleared as quickly. Or, as in my case, your mailbox may have been clipped as drivers hurry to cover more ground with fewer resources.

 
No one bats 1.000.

So - want to venture a guess as to exactly how many cul-de-sacs the city of Franklin's Highway/Parks Department is responsible for clearing, salting and de-icing each and every time it snows?

A couple dozen - 22?

Maybe fifty?

One hundred?

Nope.

DOUBLE that last guess. And add another 11.

211 cul-de-sacs.

That's 211 times that city trucks and city crews have to do a job that takes six times as long as it would take in a traditional, grid neighborhood.

Six times as much fuel.

Six times as many man-hours.

Six times as much mechanical wear-and-tear (in reality, much, much more as the trucks must shift into reverse repeatedly on each and every cul-de-sac).

Multiplied by 211.

In 2009 the city budgeted for $40,000 in overtime funds. Expenditures as of 7/30/09 were already $53,973.14, with $70,100 estimated as the year-end total. The 2010 budget requests $58,262.

The Highway Department notes that they face a 42% increase in the cost of road salt for 2010 as well.

Cross your fingers.

Still think sprawl and poor design doesn't cost you money?

See also: The Cul-de-sac Safety Myth

Comments

[A Facebook User]

The link you have to "The Cul-de-sac Safety Myth" goes on an on about how Cul-de-sac Safety is a Myth but never gets around to supporting that assertion. What evidence is there that Cul-de-sacs are no safer than grid streets?

[John Michlig]

The title claims that the cul-de-sac safety assumption was/is just that: an assumption. The article asserts that no evidence exists to show some sort of increased safety on a cul-de-sac.

To wit:

"The belief that cul-de-sac street networks are safer than the alternatives is a myth in the sense that it was advocated without a demonstration that such networks were safer. There was also no recognition by advocates of cul-de-sacs for safety reasons about how cul-de-sac networks would work in reality, after they emerged in the ad hoc, incremental land development processes that dominate land development practices. The absence of empirical and theoretical justification for cul-de-sac-based networks continues to the present. There are some conceptual reasons to believe that cul-de-sac networks actually may be more dangerous, or at least as dangerous, as grid networks and other modified grid street patterns, which emphasize connections among streets that facilitate vehicular and pedestrian access for residents in every direction.

"The gridiron street pattern of rectangular or square blocks in which streets are aligned at right angles was claimed as far back as the 1920s to be the most dangerous street pattern. The antigrid argument had taken root by the 1930s among many experts. Then it was incorporated into federal housing guidelines and other sources of official influence. After World War II, the belief that cul-de-sac street networks were safer and settings for sounder housing investments became the conventional wisdom."

From another article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5455743

Lucy says safety has always been a big selling point for cul-de-sacs. From the beginning, builders noted that they gave fire trucks extra room to turn around, and that they prevented strange cars from speeding by on their way to somewhere else. Ads for cul-de-sacs often pictured children riding bikes and tricycles in the street.

These days, those images seem grimly ironic to people who actually look at safety statistics. For example, Lucy says cul-de-sac communities turn out to have some of the highest rates of traffic accidents involving young children.

"The actual research about injuries and deaths to small children under five is that the main cause of death is being backed over, not being driven over forward," he says. "And it would be expected that the main people doing the backing over would in fact be family members, usually the parents."

Armed with such arguments, critics of the cul-de-sac have won some victories in recent years. In cities such as Charlotte, N.C., Portland, Ore., and Austin, Texas, construction of cul-de-sac-based suburbs has basically been banned. In other places, cul-de-sac communities have been retrofitted with cross streets.

[jpk]

Having grown up on a cul-de-sac in Franklin, I really enjoyed this.

The pic of the mailbox was apt. Our family's was jury rigged with pipe in an huge, winged L-shape so that it wouldn't get buried/demolished during snow season. Uglist mailbox ever, but everyone else's always got crushed - every year.

I live downtown now, but the memories of the cul-de-sac were great. I rode my big wheel round and round, and loved to jump the curb into our driveway.

At the same time, I wouldn't dream of moving back. I know now how dull cul-de-sacs are and isolated from the real world.

[www.nickschweitzer.net]

Cul-de-sac's to increase connectively (something you never prove in your post) among the neighbors on the cul-de-sac. While the streets are less connected, neighbors tend to be closer on cul-de-sac's especially if there are families with children.

[Michael Horne]

I so wish folks would use "culs-de-sac" as the proper plural of this hideous phenomenon.
Thank you.
Michael Horne

[John Michlig]

Michael Horne - With all due respect, the strictly correct plural is indeed "culs-de-sac." However, the (arguably) accepted colloquialism is "cul-de-sacs." For instance, the book SUBURBAN NATION uses the colloquialism, and its author, Andres Duany, is a smart cosmopolitan dude.

Nick - you want to reel in that undocumented "tend to be close" comment before it gets eviscerated with pesky facts?

[Jarrett at HumanTransit.org]

Excellent. Even without snow, cul-de-sacs are a powerful metaphor for anti-urban design at all scales. For my perspective as a transit planner, see here:

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/04/be-on-the-way.html

[Los Angeles SEO]

The intricate, time-and-fuel-consuming snowplow ballet that is required in order to clear the huge circle of non-permeable surface created by cul-de-sacs.