Traffic Safety and Road Diets:
Notes from Two Glendale Meetings
Glendale City Council formally accepted a $254,795 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety for speed enforcement, cell phone/distracted driver enforcement, and pedestrian safety education at its August 17 meeting. The next day, Glendale’s Safe and Healthy Streets Program hosted a Road Diets webinar which focused on efforts around the country to balance mobility (moving as many vehicles as quickly as possible along a route) with access (ease of using services along a route).
At the city council meeting, Herbert Molano suggested gathering information on which grant programs were effective, and which intersections’ problems were mitigated. Council members agreed to seek “evidence-based programming” and called for a staff report. John Drayman reminded everyone that while reports would take awhile, constituents need immediate city action to reduce excessive speeding.
The August 18 webinar, which wasn’t planned to coincide with the city council discussion, featured quite a bit of “evidence-based” findings on traffic calming “Road Diet” measures. These Diets reduce the number of vehicle lanes, widen travel lanes, and incorporate bicycle lanes and pedestrian walkways as well as more street parking.
Among the goals of a road diet: improving safety, livability, access, and sustainability. The webinar focused on arterial roadways with poorly performing commercial areas that were redesigned to reward short, sustainable trips (and improve access to those commercial businesses) instead of long, unsustainable trips.
In Seattle, the “Stone Way” case study showed a 2% reduction in aggressive speeders, an 35% increase in bicyclists, a 14% reduction in overall collisions, a 33% decline in injury collisions and an 80% decline in pedestrian collisions, and a ripple effect in which neighborhood traffic also decreased on adjacent streets. The conclusion city planners reached: all street users benefited from reduced vehicle speeds, more mobility choices, on-street parking, safer conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists, an economic boost provided by better access to local businesses, and increased livability.
A fascinating case study from Macon, Georgia, showed how a new master plan to connect Mercer University with the historic downtown district, Medical Center, and the Convention Center across the river overcame pockets of opposition by creating a smaller, multi-modal transportation corridor. Among the conclusions of the webinar speakers: safety is a prime selling point of road diets, but the new designs often become “classy improvements” that revitalize unique districts along their routes.
To condense the notes: plenty of “evidence-based programming” in the August 18 Safe and Healthy Streets webinar can provide Glendale with a Road Diet model to reduce speeding, improve safety, and better balance mobility with access.
[...] Reducing the number of car lanes, and dedicating that space to bicycle paths, walkways, and street p… Glendale traffic engineers are considering a “road diet” for Verdugo Road, and the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets Plan recommends similar engineering solutions throughout the city. [...]
For a good local example of a road diet, drive La Tuna Canyon eastbound from Sunland Blvd. What was once two travel lanes each direction separated by a double-yellow line is now a single travel lane plus bike lane in each direction, separated by a center left turn lane. Since there are many driveways in the residential part of La Tuna Canyon, it’s now much safer for residents who may have to wait for oncoming traffic to clear to turn left into their driveway, without having to worry about being rear-ended.
It is important, however, that a good outreach effort must be made to involve local residents in the planning and implementation process in order to avoid contention:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20101009,0,5955452.column
[...] on the road diet proposal Glendale city staff report: Proposal to Conduct a Road Diet Test Case Sunroom Desk Notes on Traffic Safety and Road Diets Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets webpage explaining road diets and their [...]
[...] Thank you to Walk Bike Glendale, leading the way in this city to improve transportation safety for all users on our streets and sidewalks. The group is advocating for a test road diet on Honolulu, and has been reaching out to the community to educate residents on the benefits and increased safety of road diets. The track record of such redesign efforts is excellent: Sunroom Desk summarized a 2010 presentation of successful road diets around the country. [...]
[...] Safe and Healthy Streets Plan development included webinars and case studies for city staff. Sunroom Desk road diet webinar notes indicate that road diets have achieved real success in cities across the U.S. The rate of accidents [...]