Kansas City Bicycle Log |
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Posts, email, and ideas related to bicycling and bicycle advocacy. I post these mostly for my own convenience in being able to keep them archived and searchable, but if you get some use of them, more power to you! Among other interesting items here is a fairly complete record of my involvement with the grassroots effort in support of the BikeKC initiative in the Summer of 2002. You can find everything from press releases to letters to the city council to exhortations to other bicyclists to write letters to the editor. See what worked well and what caused us problems in the effort to pass BikeKC. From my point of view, this was almost a picture-perfect grass-roots movement. The result was that BikeKC was passed on August 15th, 2002. Now we have to work to make sure the plan becomes reality! Most of that is in the 8/25/2002-8/31/2002 archive.
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Friday, October 18, 2002
The Potential of Traffic Calming In the Kansas City Metro Area
I would like to offer some comments on the CMAQ Bicycle/Pedestrian applications at http://www.marc.org/transportation/cmaq/overview.htm. I am discouraged to find among the CMAQ bicycle/pedestrian proposals, no proposals that deal with traffic calming. Traffic calming techniques have been developed, honed, and are now broadly used in other countries and states. They are well proven create a better environment for and encourage far more people to walk and bicycle on short trips around their neighborhood and city. It will be a l-o-n-g time before every street in the KC metro area has a sidewalk. But if we can use proven techniques to calm traffic we can leverage our existing road network to create far more pedestrian and bicycle trips at a far lower cost. Neighborhood Streets -------------------- The need for this was brought home to me as I and my six-year-old son walked to a neighbor just three houses down a few days ago. We live on a narrow, two-lane 25MPH street that, despite its lack of sidewalks, should be a nice quiet neighborhood street suitable for walking or bicycling. But because it is a 4-block "straight shot" with a steep hill and no stop signs, motor vehicle speeds commonly approach 50 MPH. My son and I were nearly run down by an automobile approaching over a blind hill at well over 40 MPH. Trucks roared by just inches from us at well over 45 MPH. Enforcement alone will never stop this kind of driving--which would make walking unpleasant and dangerous even if sidewalks were provided--because a "straight shot" is just too tempting to motorists. But relatively inexpensive traffic calming techniques could easily change the character of this neighborhood and encourage far more walking and bicycling. See http://www.trafficcalming.org/ Arterials --------- Four-lane roadways in the KC area typically lack sidewalks and any sort of bicycle facility. Motorists race each other, pass on both right and left, and generally create an environment very uncomfortable and discouraging to pedestrian and bicyclist. I live only three blocks from a nearby strip mall, but even though I like to walk, I rarely walk there because the route involves a sidewalk placed immediately adjacent to a 4-lane, 50MPH "racetrack". Meanwhile, shopping centers around Raytown are drying up because nobody shops at them, even though they are within easy walking distance of hundreds of homes. Nationally recognized bicycle/pedestrian expert Dan Burden has demonstrated an inexpensive way to turn these difficult roadways into roadways that are inviting to pedestrians and bicyclists and more pleasant for motorists, as well. He calls it a "road diet" and it involves re-striping 4-lane roads to create 3 lane roads with center turn lane and bicycle lanes on each side. He finds these positive outcomes from "road diets": * bike lanes give motorists more border width * cars move at more uniform speeds (prudent drivers set prevailing speeds) * people are able to enter and exit driveways more easily * pedestrians have six feet more separation from motorists * automobile crashes reduced 30-70% * overall motorist trip times were unaffected * property values along the road rise * commercial businesses along the routes benefit * the treatment works well with 20,000 and even up to 30,000 vehicles per day I strongly feel that traffic calming could be an effective and inexpensive way of changing the character of our entire metropolitan area to encourage more walking and biking as well as having very broad benefits to all citizens in creating a more liveable and vital city. Suggestions: * MARC should discourage substandard projects such as sidepaths * MARC should educate communities about traffic calming * MARC should encourage communities to incorporate traffic calming * MARC should give priority to projects involving traffic calming * CMAQ funding criteria should be refined enough to detect the difference between a substandard project of dubious value (sidepath) and a sophisticated approach capable of changing the entire dynamic of a business district or neighborhood (road diet) Thank you for considering my opinions and I appreciate the work you do to make the metro area a better place for pedestrians and cyclists. --Dr. Brent Hugh Raytown, Missouri |