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.
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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
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