Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Valuable Stats on Biking & Walking in U.S.: Obesity and sedentary lifestyles correlate

From the Planning Commissioners Journal:

The Alliance for Biking & Walking, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has released a remarkably useful report for anyone interested in bike, pedestrian, public health, and traffic safety issues. Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2010 Benchmarking Report is available to download as a pdf file; you can also separately download the Executive Summary. The Report is replete with data. In fact, there's an almost overwhelming amount of data, covering a wide range of topics. But what's most important is how well organized and designed the report is -- and how easy-to-read the charts, maps, and graphics are (several are included below with permission of the Alliance). It's a pleasure to come across a document like this.

Isn't it odd, that, according to the maps below, more people walk and bike to work in northern states that experience winter and cold weather than do in the south?

 

Read the rest at: Valuable Stats on Biking & Walking in U.S. - Planning Commissioners Journal

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 ...

Slide show: street network design pre-1950 vs. post-1950

Though unaccompanied by narration, clicking through these 50 slides from the Congress of the New Urbanism will give you a good general overview of street connectivity issues and how we arrived at our current sad state of affairs.

Norman Garrick compares street network design from pre-1950 and post-1950, factors that help determine the overall safety of safe pedestrian travel, and explains why it is so obvious that the pandemic of sprawl development is to blame for unsafe, poorly designed, disconnected neighborhoods.

Street Networks: Traffic Safety, Travel Mode Choice and Emergency Services

View more presentations from Congress for the New Urbanism.

Factoring ‘Walkability’ Into Home Values

The New York Times highlights increased home values in cities where people can walk from place to place:

Real estate agents often chant the mantra “location, location, location,” which essentially means “find a home in a well-kept neighborhood with good schools and a low crime rate.”

Some may cite a fourth factor, “walkability,” a concept supported by self-styled “new urbanists” who advocate denser cities designed for the pedestrian and mass transit as much as for the car. In their ideal neighborhood, you could walk to a bookstore and then to an ice cream shop, and your children could walk to school, probably unescorted. (It sounds like so many movie depictions of America in the 1950s.)

They argue that walkability lowers crime — that good people on the streets drive away the bad guys — and that it generally improves life and sharply raises home values. Whether it helps homes retain their value when the market slumps, however, seems a harder question to answer.

A study published in August by C.E.O.’s for Cities, a group of urban redevelopment advocates, found that in many ways, the street corner beats the cul de sac. It looked at the sales of 90,000 homes in 15 markets to estimate how much value was associated with something called the Walk Score. Using a 100-point scale, this score rates the number of destinations, including libraries, parks and coffee shops, within walking distance of a home.

The scores for America’s 40 largest cities can be found at Walkscore.com by typing in an address. For instance, the White House scores a near-perfect 97: a “walker’s paradise,” the Web site says. Another famous home, the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles, rates a 25. (You can get lost in Walkscore.com for hours; the “Brady Bunch” house, the exemplar of 1970s suburban life, scores an above-average 75.)

The study found that houses with above-average Walk Scores commanded a premium. It was as much as $30,000 in cities like Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Sacramento and San Francisco, wrote Joe Cortright, the study’s author and an economist at Impresa, a consulting firm in Portland, Ore.

Read the rest at: Everybody’s Business - Factoring ‘Walkability’ Into Home Values - NYTimes.com

Wisconsin Safe Routes to School Case Studies: DC Everest Junior High School

In 2007, DC Everest Junior High School of Weston, WI (near Wausau) received $242,900 in Safe Routes to School funds for their project.

From the Wisconsin Safe Routes to School Reporter, Winter 2009.

The DC Everest Junior High School project installed a sidewalk on the street in front of the school, added a sidewalk from the school entrance to the new sidewalk at the front of the school and changed the traffic flow into the front of the school to one-way. In addition, a new multi-use path was created to allow students to enter at the back of the school. Prior to these improvements the area in front was a safety concern as missing sidewalks and poor layout of the street and parking lot in front of the school led to cars, buses and pedestrians all mixing together.

Now that these infrastructure improvements have been made the school is implementing pedestrian safety lessons in physical education classes, promoting bike safety, and promoting safety to the community.

With help from the Marathon County Health Department, over 400 students have received pedestrian safety lessons. The school has incorporated pedestrian safety into its bowling unit since the bowling alley is a 10-minute walk from the school. This daily walk allows the schools to incorporate safety into an existing activity. In addition, students participated in a fun game of pedestrian safety Jeopardy prior to their bowling unit in PE.

Last fall, a Walk to School event was held for all the junior high students. Students walked 3/4 mile from Kennedy Park to the school during our Walktober event week. Three walk to school dates were organized and each time a student participated they received a chance to win for prizes. Although two of the days were rainy 43 students participated each day along with teachers and administrators.

Planning is already underway for bicycle safety month in May. The Perfection on Wheels bicycle stunt team will be performing at DC Everest during a bicycle safety school assembly. In addition, the school will continue to work with the Community Resource Police Officer to provide bicycle helmets at reduced prices for all the community schools. The school will also promote the bike rodeo sponsored by the police department.

To further support students bicycling to school, two new bike racks were added at DC Everest Junior High. A count in October showed over 50 students rode their bikes to school and used the bike racks. The school intends to add another rack in the spring and continue to add more racks as needed.

Contributed by Karen Wegge, DC Everest Junior High

An early success for the Franklin Trails Committee

ABOVE: One of Franklin's many "roads to nowhere." In the background: Pleasant View Elementary School, which is accessible by a single, slim, sidewalk-less, shoulder-less road.

A mixed bag at at a productive Franklin Trails Committee meeting Thursday night.

First, some very good news: The committee has been awarded a Walking Workshop grant from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. The grant was brought to the committee by alderman Kristen Wilhelm, who also completed the application. 

The Walking Workshop will act as a launch for the comprehensive Safe Routes to School program, through which we hope to get a significant grant for the city of Franklin which will make it possible for more children to walk or bike to school if they choose. The grant requires no match from the city of Franklin, so the funds would be, essentially, free money that we can use for engineering, education, encouragement, and enforcement efforts.

Once it became clear that we would be pursuing the Safe Routes to School grant, we immediately met with Franklin School District superintendent Dr. Steve Patz, as input from the district and Pleasant View administration will be vital. We also asked that a Franklin School Board member be asked to join the Trails Committee.

Our Trails Committee is an organizational body that consists of membership appointed by the mayor. We were tasked with (quoting the April 7th motion) "researching grants to provide funds for design, land acquisition,construction of walking and/or bicycle paths specific to S. 51st Street, and a connector between Pleasant View Elementary School and S. 51st Street and return to the Council with recommendation for application of grants."

Since then, the Council has approved the Trails Committee's pursuit of a Walking Workshop grant, and the larger, very comprehensive Safe Routes to School (SRTS) grant (which is limited to areas two miles from a grade school; the Walking Workshop is free to address Franklin High School). 

At this point, the establishment of specific goals and identification of problems we want to overcome will be the job of a larger, yet-to-be-formed SRTS Task Force that will consist of stakeholders from all areas of the community; school faculty, parents, residents, homeowner's associations, public safety (fire and police) officials, City staff, etc. These are the people who will decide our specific areas of focus as we address "non-vehicular connectivity" in Franklin -- specifically, in this case, for students attending Pleasant View Elementary.

There was, however, some dissent from one member of the committee as we were spit-balling suggested goals to bring into the first task force meeting. More on that in an upcoming posting when I discuss the difference between Design Speed, Posted Speed, and Operating Speed as they relate to the Drexel/51st/Rawson speedways and the safety of anyone not sheathed in metal. I'll also talk a little bit about how sprawling, incremental development in suburbs creates monster collector roads that eventually need to be tamed.

Guess what? Walkable neighborhoods INCREASE home values

This was an excellent presentation to come across as I prepare for tonight's Franklin Trails Committee meeting. This is one of the reasons I try to get the Economic Development Commission involved in creating USEFUL trails rather than simply recreational paths.

From Kaid Benfield's blog:

Home values in walkable neighborhoods are measurably higher than those that are not, even when other relevant factors are controlled in the analysis.

Below is an illuminating slide show on the subject that was presented by economist Joe Cortright at a transportation colloquium recently hosted by the Congress for the New Urbanism in Portland.  Some key points from the presentation:

• “Walkability” is not just about sidewalks.  Are there places you can walk to?
• Examining data from 98,000 home sales in 15 metropolitan areas, and controlling for other relevant factors, each increase of one point on Walk Score’s walkability scale raises home values by $700 to $3000.
• In Charlotte, the increase in value was $1,986 for each Walk Score point.
• Improving walkability raises home values by $10-30,000.
• Because mixed-use development produces big gains in walkability, the findings are evidence of a strong market for mixed-use neighborhoods.

I have to admit that the slide show was a little clunky on my computer (and there is no narration), but it is manageably short (24 slides) and well illustrated.  Enjoy:

Walking the Walk: How Walkability Increases Home Prices in U.S. Cities

View more documents from Congress for the New Urbanism.

Safe Routes to School - 1200 feet above a raging river

This is from How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic:

A bit of perspective on the getting-children-to-school-safely question.

The irony is that turistas will pay handsomely to enjoy the same privilege — one person’s risky infrastructure is another person’s quest to relieve the ineluctable boredom of modern life.

(thanks Rich!)

Trails Committee widens its focus to include Franklin High School

Though Victory Creek subdivision can be seen from the Pleasant View Elementary playground, there is no way to walk from here to there - yet.

Last night's Trail Committee meeting was fruitful. While our focus remains on improving accessibility to Pleasant View Elementary School through the Safe Routes to School program, alderman and committee member Kristen Wilhelm located a Wisconsin DOT Pedestrian Roadshow/Walking Workshop grant that will bring a facilitator to Franklin for a series of presentations to community stakeholders. This will provide a introduction to the Safe Routes process as well as a focus on Franklin High School access issues - - effectively widening our initial area of influence to cover two Franklin schools.

Anyone who's observed the corner of Drexel and 51st before and after a school day -- and certainly before and after sporting events -- knows that something must be done to decrease the amount of vehicles on the road. As long as students from even adjacent subdivisions (see above) need a vehicle to get to school, that congestion will continue.

While Safe Routes to School deals with engineering and trail-building issues, the program also works to educate the community, making a safer environment for non-vehicular traffic. Once we add some connectivity, drivers will learn to treat these residential streets with a great deal more respect than they do currently.

Baby steps toward a walkable community

 

Two pieces of good news: 

Monday's meeting with Franklin Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Steve Patz went very well, and we can expect collaboration with the school district when applying for Safe Routes to School grant funds.

On Tuesday night, "Request from Trail Committee for approval to proceed with the grant writing and application process for community planning related to trails and pedestrian routes" was passed unanimously by the Common Council.

The Franklin Trail Committee meets tonight to keep the ball rolling.