Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

"Road Diets" mean CRASH REDUCTIONS -- But NO FUN for asphalt-happy municipalities anxious to widen every possible road

From the study: "A road diet involves narrowing or eliminating travel lanes on a roadway to make more room for pedestrians and bicyclists. (They) are often conversions of four-lane, undivided roads into three lanes—two through lanes plus a center turn lane."

The study was conducted in California, Washington and Iowa:

"The Iowa data indicate a 47 percent reduction in total crashes while the HSIS (California and Washington) data indicate a 19 percent decrease—a substantial difference."

It's clear from the results that road diets do reduce crashes - the only issue appears to be just how great a reduction.

 In other news: On the July 13th Franklin Common Council Agenda -- you guessed it -- a road widening party.

You see, every little north-south or east-west suburban road has a six-lane arterial inside of it waiting to burst forth ...

Read the rest at: Road Diet Crash Reduction Variations Studied By DOT | Planetizen

Good Advice from The New Republic

Posted from my iPad (clumsily), a quote from The New Republic's blog that certain Franklin aldermen should keep in mind before they scuttle pedestrian access on a road project tomorrow night:

"What is needed to catch up with the pent up demand for walkable urban places, especially in the suburbs, is complete transportation policy reform. Since transportation drives development, we need to build the second half of the American transportation system--rail and bus transit and bikes and walking-- while repairing our existing roadway system. Only this will allow for the emergence of the walkable urban places that the market, economy, and environment demands."

Christopher Leinberger, The New Republic

“Leave Your Car in the Garage” as sell copy for real estate

The trend toward walkability as a real estate selling point is noted at How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic 

Trawling through some real estate brokerage sites, typically in fairly dense small towns and pre-war suburbs, a refrain keeps catching my eye: “Leave your car in the garage.” The listing will then note the proximity to trains, schools, etc. I’m not sure who first came up with this rallying cry — and based on what I’ve seen in some of these towns (pedestrians being mostly people moving to and from their cars) I wonder if it might be more real-estate bluster than anything else — i.e., the potential of walking is there, as is the potential for the great room to be great and the massive chef’s kitchen to produce fare worthy of Grant Achatz, but in the end this potential gives way to some real or imagined vehicular reality (I need to get groceries, it’s just easier). But I can’t say I’ve ever seen a real estate ad that promised: “Take your car out of the garage, often!”

Read the rest at: How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic » Blog Archive » “Leave Your Car in the Garage”

New York Times’ Political columnist David Brooks changes his mind on suburbs

A profile piece in the latest New York Magazine does much to explain why conservative columnist David Brooks is so often excoriated by conservatives and liberals alike: He insists upon clinging to the notion that one's ideas and opinions should be informed by the ongoing revelation of facts rather than the frozen-in-amber tyranny of ideology.

Brooks changed his mind recently. Not one of those small changes, like grande instead of venti. He abandoned an idea that until recently made David Brooks David Brooks.

“I’ve changed my view of suburbia,” he says. We’re sitting at the Best Buns Bread Company in the Village at Shirlington, a sort of prefab town square in Arlington, Virginia, designed to be quaint and homey. The streets are fresh red brick. The lampposts are faux antique. The trees are evenly spaced. A color-coded map explains the area’s layout, like a mall. The neighborhood’s culinary diversity—Aladdin’s Eatery abuts Bonsai Restaurant abuts Guapo’s—is matched only by its patrons’ ethnic lack thereof. We are sipping coffees and munching on identical Ginger Crinkle cookies, when it occurs to me: I am in a David Brooks book. We are Bobos. This is Paradise.

“In my last book, I was pretty pro-urban/suburban sprawl,” he explains. Pro is an understatement. On Paradise Drive, released in 2004, was a satirical, pop-sociological exploration of American suburbia, but also a celebration of it. Consumerism wasn’t just empty accumulation; it was how Americans express themselves. In the ever-expanding exurbs, he wrote, every man creates his own private bubble, “an aristocrat within his own Olympus.”

“Now I’m much more skeptical,” he says. For the last three years, Brooks has been researching and writing a book on neuroscience. At least that’s his shorthand for it. It’s basically about how unconscious processes—in short, emotions—shape our behavior, and what that means for public policy, all told through the stories of two composite, pseudo-novelistic characters. (A working title was How Success Happens, but he dismissed it as too Gladwellian.) Good policy, he argues, should understand that people make decisions emotionally, not rationally. It should also try to foster good habits with “communitarian” solutions like pre-K education, or zoning laws to prevent Wal-Marts from taking over neighborhoods. In other words, says Brooks, “the more contact with other people, the better.” Hence his newfound beef with suburbia. 

Read the rest at: How New York ‘Times’ Political Columnist David Brooks Manages to Be Both Irrelevant and Absolutely Essential -- New York Magazine

Making trails part of USEFUL INFRASTRUCTURE rather than appendages and afterthoughts

ABOVE: What passes for a road shoulder in Franklin on the road leading to its middle school and Little League Complex. Good luck, kids!

Sometimes it's the little changes that make the difference. Let's hope this sensible Comprehensive Master Plan amendment, initiated by Plan Commission member Kevin Haley via the Trails Committee on which he also serves, is the beginning of the end of random, pointless trails in Franklin.

Item III.F on the July 8th Plan Commission Agenda:

F. City of Franklin (Adoption of Milwaukee County Trails Network Plan)
Property: City-wide
Zoning: City-wide

Regarding: 1. (Comprehensive Master Plan Amendment) AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND THE CITY OF FRANKLIN 2025 COMPREHENSIVE MASTER PLAN TO INCORPORATE THE MILWAUKEE COUNTY TRAILS NETWORK PLAN AS A GUIDELINE REFERENCE WITHIN THE COMPREHENSIVE MASTER PLAN 


"Baby boomers are coming of empty-nest retirement age, and at the same time their children are buying their first homes, and neither group wants large lots in remote places where little is going on."

Another reason a viable trail and sidewalk system is INFRASTRUCTURE, and not merely "parks and recreation."

Today's home buyers aren't just looking for good schools and low crime rates when they evaluate a neighborhood, many brokers say. They're paying much more attention to what they can walk to.

"Everyone wants to know now how close they are to stores," says Linda Duggan, an owner of The Duggan Group real-estate agency. She recently had clients who, given a choice between a house in Danville, Calif., and another that was bigger, newer, $300,000 cheaper—and 20 minutes farther from town—chose the first one. Earlier this year Scott Newman, of Newman Realty in Chicago, started highlighting how close his listings are to amenities. The number of amenities in walking distance can vary sharply from block to block, he adds.

"For a lot of Americans, the whole problem of traffic congestion and having to drive everywhere to do almost anything has made other choices more attractive," says Kaid Benfield, director of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council's Smart Growth Program. Urban planners say it's also a matter of demographics: Baby boomers are coming of empty-nest retirement age, and at the same time their children are buying their first homes, and neither group wants large lots in remote places where little is going on. Fear about future oil prices is also increasing the attractiveness of walkable neighborhoods. 

Read the rest at: A Walker's Guide to Home Buying - WSJ.com

The Rise of Walking and Biking

It's summer, and you may be seeing more people out on the street walking and biking. But it's not just because the weather is nice. There are more people walking and biking year round, and the Department of Transportation is responding by dramatically increasing the amount of money spent on projects for pedestrians and cyclists. This is a look at the rise of foot-powered travel in America.

Read the rest at: Transparency: The Rise of Walking and Biking - Transparency - GOOD