Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Congress Reauthorizes Funding for Safe Routes to School

Excellent news as Franklin prepares to kick off its own Safe Routes to School program: 

Congress Reauthorizes Funding for Safe Routes to School - America Walks.

Congress has passed the long-term transportation extension through December 2010, meaning that the federal Safe Routes to School program will be funded at the FY2009 level of $183 million throughout the remainder of FY2010 and the first quarter of FY2011. 

Proposed agenda items for next Economic Development Meeting

 

Here are my submitted agenda items for the Franklin Economic Development Commission meeting scheduled for Monday, April 26 (6pm; room to be announced).

I'll post the agenda when it appears; unfortunately, there is no guarantee that any of these items will appear.

1) Digital Visioning Presentation: This will reprise the presentation I gave, at the mayor's request, to the Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee. IT WOULD BE USEFUL TO HAVE POWERPOINT CAPABILITIES FOR THIS; I can make paper handouts if PowerPoint is not possible. [Note: I'm long overdue in sharing my Digital Visioning presentation here on SPRAWLED OUT. The illustration above is a preview.]

2) Franklin Trails Committee update: Walking Workshop and next steps.

3) Web 2.0 and Economic Development: Discussion of implementations to the City of Franklin website that can be made at little or no cost; discussion of FaceBook page for Franklin Economic Development news and issues; etc.

4) Re-engagement with/re-assessment of the 27th Street project: I'm told by Mayor Taylor that the Economic Development Commission is essentially responsible for the 27th Street Steering Committee, yet it is my opinion/observation that the EDC membership is woefully under-informed as to the issues facing the project as well as the monies being spent. (I note, for instance, that the 4/20/10 Common Council agenda item G.5 concerns the Drexel Avenue Interchange in relationship to 27th Street, and the EDC has not offered the Common Council a recommendation on the issue.)

I think we have to:

• Tear this thing down to its component pieces, review the timeline, and make sure this ongoing expenditure still makes sense in the current (and anticipated) economic climate, as well as in light of Oak Creek's evolving indifference; and
• If we're going forward, reassess the streetscape planning and design to leverage new federal grant and funding opportunities that accompany certain design choices that I do NOT see in any current streetscape drafts.

If the 27th Street reassessment means distributing a bunch of binders full of review information at this meeting and then holding the discussion at a subsequent meeting (after the EDC membership has had time to review the material), so be it.

Suburban indifference meets walkable downtown? Car kills 5-year-old in front of Greendale Village Hall

 

Photo: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

This is just an incredibly difficult story to take in.

It happened yesterday in Greendale, Wisconsin, a community blessed with excellent pedestrian facilities and a main street. Two young children, accompanied by their mother and aunt, walk their bikes across a street in a crosswalk. A car turns right, coming off of a stop sign, and kills the five year-old girl, then progresses on unaware of what had just occurred.

The driver was an as-yet unnamed 59 year-old driver from my suburb of Franklin. She was questioned and released; alcohol was not suspected.

How does something like this happen on a village main street, well equipped with sidewalks? Was the driver talking on her cel phone? Somehow not looking RIGHT to turn RIGHT, missing the sight of two adults, two children, and two bikes crossing?

Sadly, the partial answer may be as banal as this: Years of suburban driving in speedway-street Franklin, an environment where pedestrians are rare, made this particular driver much, much less attuned to pedestrians than she should have been, even in a pedestrian-heavy environment like downtown Greendale.

The indifferent suburban driver, conditioned by years of banked turns and streets devoid of life, meets the walkable town center.

Am I too harsh? Read the story.

Greendale — For about two hours Wednesday, two small bicycles - one pink with white tires and the other a boy's model with training wheels - lay in the grass next to an intersection where a 5-year-old girl had been struck fatally by a car while walking with her mother, brother and aunt.

As police left the scene, both bicycles were placed in the bed of a Fire Department pickup truck. Within an hour, an assortment of stuffed animals and a bouquet of white and blue balloons had taken the bicycles' place next to the intersection.

The girl, Ava Marie Zimmerman, and her mother, Tonya Zimmerman, 29, were struck by a silver Honda Civic about 10:20 a.m. at Broad St. and Northway, directly in front of Greendale's Village Hall, Police Chief Rob Dams said.

The girl died at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office. Her mother suffered minor injuries and was taken to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, Dams said. The girl's brother and her aunt were not struck, Dams said.

The car's driver, a 59-year-old Franklin woman, was stopped at a stop sign on Northway while the girl and her family members walked in the crosswalk west across Broad St., Dams said.

The girl and her brother were not riding their bicycles when the incident occurred, Dams said.

The woman turned right onto Broad St., struck the girl and her mother and drove a short distance before stopping, Dams said. The driver apparently did not realize what happened and was not trying to leave the scene, he said.

Bystanders, including an off-duty nurse and an off-duty Milwaukee firefighter, performed CPR on the girl until an ambulance arrived, Dams said.

Lissa Berg, who owns a nearby pet store, said she ran to the intersection after hearing screams.

"I thought maybe there was something I could do, so I ran to where the commotion was," Berg said.

Berg said paramedics were performing CPR on the girl when she arrived at the intersection.

The girl was "lying down in the crosswalk, and her bike was lying next to her," Berg said.

A distraught woman was with the girl, Berg said.

Emergency officials initially requested that a Flight for Life helicopter be sent to the scene but decided to take the girl to the hospital by ambulance because the helicopter was delayed, Dams said. The helicopter's delay did not affect the girl's medical treatment, Dams said.

The car that stuck the girl was towed after police inspected its exterior and undercarriage. Police covered the car's license plates with pieces of brown paper bags while they examined it.

Driver questioned

The driver was taken into custody for questioning but was released that afternoon, Dams said. She has a valid driver's license, and police do not think alcohol was a factor, Dams said.

The case will be reviewed by the Milwaukee County district attorney's office, Dams said.

The girl is the second pedestrian killed by a vehicle in Greendale since the village was formed in 1938, Dams said.

            via www.jsonline.com

Obama Bicycle Policy Wins Love From Cyclists, Scorn From Trucking Industry

The beginning of the end for mindless road widening?

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a weekend bicyclist, might consider keeping his head down and his helmet on. A backlash is brewing over his new bicycling policy.

LaHood says the government is going to give bicycling – and walking, too – the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money. The former Republican congressman quietly announced the "sea change" in transportation policy last month.

"This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized," he wrote in his government blog.

Read the rest at: Obama Bicycle Policy Wins Love From Cyclists, Scorn From Trucking Industry.

The ROI for smart growth and placemaking: "Love Ain’t Enough: Put Up or Shut Up"

Fortunately, creating communities that feature great places and human-scaled development is paying off in terms of higher property values and their attraction of non-polluting industries. This link features other returns-on-investment in digest form:

Like any next, big something, placemaking is growing up. And in its role as gawky adolescent, it’s beginning to realize something most of us have long since come to accept: You can’t skirt by on youthful good looks forever.

Today, efforts to create more endearing and enduring surroundings are being subjected to decidedly grown up demands. And with them, smart growthers—from enviros to designers to code reform advocates—are learning one of life’s hardest lessons: Love will only take you so far.

Son, you’ve got to demonstrate sufficient returns.

Recently, a city asked me for some help in their argument for funding transit oriented developments with TIFF dollars. The top arguments that immediately came to mind are the same reasons that cities are investing in planning and zoning reform, even during these tight times. City planning is able to speak to a variety of the significant challenges that currently face us. Here’s the soundbite version of the top 4 drivers.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

How do walkable neighbourhoods contribute to the local economy? They increase long term asset value for many reasons, including increased housing value, less crime, higher walkscore, lower vehicle miles traveled, less carbon emissions, fewer auto costs, greater personal fitness, decreased infrastructure cost, more hours available, real community, and the list goes on.

PUBLIC HEALTH

What does obesity cost, and how is it effected by where I live? The average white male living in a compact community weighs 10 pounds less than his counterpart in a low density subdivision, according to the British Columbia School of Planning. Every 1% rise in the urban sprawl index increases the risk of obesity by 0.5%, according to Boston University School of Public Health. The medical costs to treat obesity in the US for 2008 is estimated at $147 billion.

Read the rest at PlaceShakers and NewsMakers

Can Roads Control Your Driving? The answer is YES

 
Where I live, we like our roads WIDE and FAST. Take, for example, the road pictured above -- posted at 25 mph and four lanes. Perhaps 30 cars per day travel on this road. Do you think they see the speed limit sign or the myriad factors that make this road feel ripe for 50-60 mph?

That's design speed - a concept, I was surprised to learn, that a 17-year Plan Commission member in my city was unaware existed.

Yes, POSTED SPEED and DESIGN SPEED are indeed two completely different things. If you live in a suburb, try driving the POSTED SPEED for a while and see how long it takes for cars to stack up behind you. And start using their horns.

Forward-looking communities understand and control DESIGN SPEED, defined by the AASHTO Green Book as "the maximum safe speed that can be maintained over a specified section of highway when conditions are so favorable that the design features of the highway govern." In other words, it's the speed at which you feel safe driving on a given road due to it's width, sight-lines, lack of turns, etc.

Unfortunately, the winding, wide roads in residential subdivisions encourage high-speed driving. And an enormously hazardous environment for kids and non-vehicular traffic (walkers and bikers).

The new goal is to create roads that enforce a lower design speed. Toward that end, it's time to make sure local Plan Commissioners -- even multi-decade veterans who can quote the UDO from memory -- are made aware of the concept and begin to make recommendations to developers (like insisting on buildings close to the street when possible) that are consistent with the goal.

The Infrastructuralist has a great piece on new research that shows safety-enhancing road design works:

New research from the University of Connecticut suggests that minor reductions in vehicle speed are possible through changes in the street environment. Through the use of roadside parking, tighter building setbacks, and more commercial land uses, road designers can make drivers  subconsciously drive more slowly, according to a study of hundreds of roads in Connecticut. It’s a revelatory demonstration of the power of design to change the way people interact with transportation.

For years, the Dutch have been telling us about “self-explaining” roads. According to experiments conducted in the Netherlands, drivers are more likely to follow cues like narrow lanes and street trees than they are to respond to decreases in speed limits. The implementation of these self-explaining streets across that Northern European country has resulted in a significant reduction in automobile collisions, to a point where Dutch drivers are less than half as likely as their American counterparts to die in a road accident. (For a closer look at auto accidents around the world, click here.)

Nevertheless, U.S. transportation engineers have generally ignored this European experience, focusing instead on “forgiving highways” that overcompensate for drivers’ mistakes through generous curve radii and wide lanes.

Unfortunately, while these efforts have been successful in reducing fatalities on the high-speed Interstate system, they’re far less effective for urban situations, where they generally encourage drivers to go faster, putting more drivers, as well as bikers and pedestrians, in danger. Lowering the speed limit has rarely worked to reduce drivers’ speeds, especially for chronic speeders.

And the suburbs do indeed spawn faster drivers:

The study also demonstrated conclusively that, compared to urban and other commercial environments, suburban neighborhoods had higher driving speeds — likely because of fewer distractions for drivers. Similar data showed that the further buildings were set back from the roadways, the faster drivers moved. In other words, the more built-up the environs of a road, the slower drivers went.

So the conclusion is this: People can be induced to reduce their driving speeds when cars are parked along the roadways, when buildings are close to the street, and when those buildings include commercial rather than residential activity.

via www.infrastructurist.com

Real Estate’s Next Big Thing: Walkable Communities

 
ABOVE: Get back in the car. FOR GOD'S SAKE, GET BACK IN THE CAR!

Why work to "rehabilitate" car-centric suburbs like mine? Because property values go UP in walkable communities.

To be a savvy investor in US real estate these days, you need to look beyond the business news headlines and target human-scale developments that will grow because of long-term demographic trends.

Human-scale homes and communities feature amenities that you can walk, bike, or take public transit to without getting in a car. I live in such a development in Grayslake, Illinois, where I can walk or ride to Starbucks, the supermarket, bank, dry cleaner, library, and hardware store. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else right now.

via www.minyanville.com

Some GOOD news: Secretary LaHood's Policy statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations & Recommendations | Congress for the New Urbanism

Change is good:

“Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.”

via www.cnu.org

GoogleBikes: Now mapping your bike routes

 

New from Google: a "Grab Your Bike and Go" feature to give cycling directions for all maps.

Some features:

* Identifies cycling facilities (for now in "hundreds of US cities")

* Shows which routes are considered safer than others, including paths that have limited or no driving

* Uses elevation grades to estimate times and recommend routes . .

Read more at at: Discovering Urbanism: Google adds bicycle directions to maps

Pedestrians should not have to apologize to drivers for walking in residential areas

A close call this morning. After dropping off my daughter at school, I turned left on the narrow, shoulder-less roads surrounding Pleasant View Elementary and went into a slow-but-scary slide as a man walking his dog appeared dead-center in front of me.

He was screened from my view by a van stopped at the intersection; had I been traveling the tiniest bit faster (I was creeping along due to the ice), my vehicle surely would have, at the very least, made contact with the man and/or his dog. As it was, we stopped with space to spare, but I still jumped out to apologize. The gentleman could not have been more congenial, and actually apologized to me because, he said, "I should learn to walk closer to the edge of the road."

An attitude change is needed in this city. Pedestrians with no safe shoulder or sidewalk on which to walk should not have to apologize for their presence.

Now, imagine if I'd been in the habit of texting while driving, and did so while taking that turn this morning ...