I am ashamed to admit this, but what I am about to post was published in the Dallas Morning News in early June.
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/local-voices/headlines/20130606-j-branden-helms-downtown-could-use-one-less-highway.ece
The Texas Department of Transportation has its eyes on the roughly 1.5
mile stretch of highway between Woodall Rodgers Freeway and Interstate
30. Officials have presented nine rebuild or repair options. But some of
us favor a 10th option: demolition.
As an individual with a
master’s in planning who isn’t actually working in the field, I
certainly am not the most eloquent spokesman for this project. That more
aptly belongs to Patrick Kennedy, who has written about this on his
blog and been the featured crusader in this paper on the topic. He even
has a website devoted to it, anew
dallas.com.
I, however, do
have a unique perspective. I have lived in downtown Dallas for seven
years and worked in the core almost as long. In all that time, I have
used the freeway only a few times.
I have endured the long, lonely
walk between downtown and Deep Ellum far more often, and almost every
time have lamented the vast emptiness the freeway spawns between two
important Dallas urban neighborhoods.
That is what this is about.
Some
drivers do use this stretch of highway to get downtown, but most are
just passing through. Why are we sacrificing our urban neighborhoods to
continue to help Plano, McKinney or Lancaster grow? They are doing great
and don’t need Dallas to destroy its urban fabric to help them.
Meanwhile,
something the entire region is facing a shortage of — a true, urban,
walkable neighborhood — is divided. Imagine if we developed the freeway
area. It could be transformed from something that requires money to
maintain into something that provides tax revenue.
To some degree,
we in Dallas already know this. Look no further than Klyde Warren Park.
It has been hailed as a wild success exactly because it un-freeways the
area. Instead of dividing these neighborhoods, the park stitches them
back together.
So if we can make that case that demolition can be a
good thing, why is it not even an option? The answer is really twofold,
but both lie in the planning process.
First, TxDOT has built
highways for as long as its officials can remember. It is their first
responsibility. That works in outlying areas, where there are real
estate prices to consider when opening up new land for development. But
that doesn’t work for Dallas. What new land will be ready for
development if this freeway stub is redone?
The other reason
demolition is not considered is how the planning process actually works,
usually with an objective listed. With this project, as with almost all
of TxDOT’s, officials start with how they can move as many cars as
possible for the lowest cost.
Many of the options will require a
complete teardown anyway, so the project costs for this option would be
drastically lower. And certainly this option has the best return for the
city of Dallas and for cash-strapped TxDOT.
Ultimately, the best
way to get TxDOT to consider this option is local pressure. The city of
Dallas has to care enough. Otherwise it would be a long and bruising
battle. There are those who are skeptical that a city that thinks with
its car would actually pursue freeway demolition as an answer to some of
its urban problems. I think it is possible, but those who are its
advocate have to be loud and convincing.
As I alluded to in the article, there are better spokespeople than I. I leave you with the site.
http://www.anewdallas.com/
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Cedar Springs gets its Lipstick
In April, I gave a brief overview of the Uptown area of Dallas and what I'd consider to improve the urbanity of the district. One of those would have been a road diet for Cedar Springs. From the post:
Despite having the same amount of through lanes (than McKinney), Cedar Springs is roughly 50 percent wider. Each lane is one-two feet wider and there is also a center turning lane. Since the street is made for automobiles, there are no trees near the curb, primarily because traffic engineers deem them a hazard (more on that point in a moment). The sidewalks are narrow. There are no amenities like shade or benches. Buffer zones like on-street parking, poles or the aforementioned trees aren't anywhere to be seen. There isn't even local transit service.
...
My recommendations to fix Cedar Springs would be to remove the center turn lane, narrow the lanes, widen the sidewalk and add on-street metered parking.
Well, work has begun, sorta, on the first recommendation, but it will not improve the urban street scene. The turn lane is being replaced by a median. Everything else that makes Cedar Springs so dysfunctional will remain, and the "fix" they are doing now will not improve anything for the pedestrian or reign in the speed of the cars on the road.
The sidewalks will not be widened, leaving the narrow four-foot-wide strip in place, meaning that there is a small amount of space for when two groups of pedestrians cross, an awkward moment at best, border line dangerous at worst, given the very close proximity of the fast moving cars.
There will be no added on-street parking. The cars will still zoom by folks on the side of the street at uncomfortable rates of speed, just a few feet away, adding another uncomfortable layer to anyone walking here.
The lanes will still be very close to freeway width, encouraging faster speeds to drivers of the cars, adding yet another discomfort for walkers.
The only benefits, albeit minor, are it will improve the aesthetics of the roadway and removing the turning lane will slow traffic a bit at entrances to properties along the roadway. However, seeing how Dallas does not have a shortage of auto-oriented streets with a landscaped medians where pedestrian counts can be measured with fingers and the turning lanes will still exist at the intersections of other streets, the benefits from an urban perspective will be small.
Once again, instead of doing something urban, Dallas does something by the book...the one written by the traffic engineers.
Despite having the same amount of through lanes (than McKinney), Cedar Springs is roughly 50 percent wider. Each lane is one-two feet wider and there is also a center turning lane. Since the street is made for automobiles, there are no trees near the curb, primarily because traffic engineers deem them a hazard (more on that point in a moment). The sidewalks are narrow. There are no amenities like shade or benches. Buffer zones like on-street parking, poles or the aforementioned trees aren't anywhere to be seen. There isn't even local transit service.
...
My recommendations to fix Cedar Springs would be to remove the center turn lane, narrow the lanes, widen the sidewalk and add on-street metered parking.
Well, work has begun, sorta, on the first recommendation, but it will not improve the urban street scene. The turn lane is being replaced by a median. Everything else that makes Cedar Springs so dysfunctional will remain, and the "fix" they are doing now will not improve anything for the pedestrian or reign in the speed of the cars on the road.
The sidewalks will not be widened, leaving the narrow four-foot-wide strip in place, meaning that there is a small amount of space for when two groups of pedestrians cross, an awkward moment at best, border line dangerous at worst, given the very close proximity of the fast moving cars.
There will be no added on-street parking. The cars will still zoom by folks on the side of the street at uncomfortable rates of speed, just a few feet away, adding another uncomfortable layer to anyone walking here.
The lanes will still be very close to freeway width, encouraging faster speeds to drivers of the cars, adding yet another discomfort for walkers.
The only benefits, albeit minor, are it will improve the aesthetics of the roadway and removing the turning lane will slow traffic a bit at entrances to properties along the roadway. However, seeing how Dallas does not have a shortage of auto-oriented streets with a landscaped medians where pedestrian counts can be measured with fingers and the turning lanes will still exist at the intersections of other streets, the benefits from an urban perspective will be small.
Once again, instead of doing something urban, Dallas does something by the book...the one written by the traffic engineers.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Can a Love Affair be Forced?
Two posts ago, I discussed the battle of the neighborhood near Fair Park that is bisected by S. M. Wright Freeway versus the Texas Department of Transportation over the revamping of the freeway. To recap, the residents would like a four-lane boulevard and TxDoT would like it six lanes to move what they predict to be a still heavy amount of cars. Unsurprisingly, I sided with the neighborhood.
On Wednesday, The Dallas Morning News published an editorial that basically says they should accept what TxDoT is offering. I encourage the reading of the comments in the link. The comments are different perspectives from the same point of view.
I disagree vehemently with their point, though I am not surprised this is the DMN's view, as the entire editorial board doesn't live near here and a good portion do not even live within the city. They have a hard time understanding something that is against what their way of life is dependent upon. Without highways, they couldn't live where and how they do, and therefore do not, or maybe even can not, understand how highways are bad for inner city neighborhoods.
But here's the part they seem to base their entire point on, which in and of itself is flawed.
TxDOT officials say that a very large number of cars — as many as 40,000 — will still need daily access to S.M. Wright, even after a redesign reroutes 67,000 vehicles from U.S. Highway 175 directly to Interstate 45. TxDOT says anything narrower than a six-lane road would create traffic jams and unacceptable hazards during peak hours.
Quoting TxDoT without any context or rebuttal will lead to a flawed standing. TxDoT either totally ignores or significantly downplays the Induced Traffic Principal. They see traffic as primarily a fixed number based more on supply-and-demand rather than the actual behavioral function that it is in reality.
The reality is that this road will contain very few regional travelers. As I describe the roadway, it can be referenced in this Google Maps link. Tx-310 (S. M. Wright) runs directly parallel to I-45 (Julius Schepps). From Overton Rd., where it turns into a limited access freeway from a surface highway, to I-20, there a twelve intersections, of which three are signaled and one is a cloverleaf. Aside from the cloverleaf, the three signaled and, to a lesser extent, the eight others will slow traffic on their own. That slower traffic is the kind out-of-neighborhood drivers dislike. In fact, zoom in on the road in satellite view and notice just how empty this road is. Moving over to I-45 reveals a lot more vehicles using the roadway.
So as current conditions exist, of the 40,000 cars that TxDoT predicts will use the new roadway, few will come from the current S.M. Wright roadway. That means two things. They predict much of the traffic will come from the neighborhood and/or from drivers from C. F. Hawn Freeway (U.S. 175), which used S. M. Wright to get to I-45 prior to the reconstruction of the right-of-way. Both are flawed, I believe.
First, this is a much more transit-dependent community, so fewer neighborhood trips from within will actually use the road than TxDoT believes. Much of Texas has poor, if any, transit service or other alternatives. Therefore, a higher amount will have to use those roads. However, they use the higher amount, regardless of context. Arlington or my hometown of Midland and this neighborhood, can not be modeled the same. But they are anyway.
Second, very few folks will exit U.S. 175 to use the new S.M. Wright roadway, just to merge with I-45 eventually anyway. This is the point that TxDoT misses when it is directly related to Induced Traffic.
When the freeway portions of C. F. Hawn and Julius Schepps get full, people will figure out a new way, mode or time to travel. With TxDoT assuming a linear function for traffic counts, they assume when the capacity is reached, this overflow will go somewhere else, not change their behavior.
That is the essence of this debate. If TxDoT gets their way, they will do like the southern portion of S.M Wright and build an excessively wide, unneeded roadway that doesn't fit within the neighborhood it runs in, keeping the neighborhood needlessly divided.
This is why I will always debate those that say American love their cars. As long as state agencies like TxDoT unnecessarily focus on highways, then we will always have a lopsided choice. We love our cars because it is the only convenient option, not because they win on an even playing field.
On Wednesday, The Dallas Morning News published an editorial that basically says they should accept what TxDoT is offering. I encourage the reading of the comments in the link. The comments are different perspectives from the same point of view.
I disagree vehemently with their point, though I am not surprised this is the DMN's view, as the entire editorial board doesn't live near here and a good portion do not even live within the city. They have a hard time understanding something that is against what their way of life is dependent upon. Without highways, they couldn't live where and how they do, and therefore do not, or maybe even can not, understand how highways are bad for inner city neighborhoods.
But here's the part they seem to base their entire point on, which in and of itself is flawed.
TxDOT officials say that a very large number of cars — as many as 40,000 — will still need daily access to S.M. Wright, even after a redesign reroutes 67,000 vehicles from U.S. Highway 175 directly to Interstate 45. TxDOT says anything narrower than a six-lane road would create traffic jams and unacceptable hazards during peak hours.
Quoting TxDoT without any context or rebuttal will lead to a flawed standing. TxDoT either totally ignores or significantly downplays the Induced Traffic Principal. They see traffic as primarily a fixed number based more on supply-and-demand rather than the actual behavioral function that it is in reality.
The reality is that this road will contain very few regional travelers. As I describe the roadway, it can be referenced in this Google Maps link. Tx-310 (S. M. Wright) runs directly parallel to I-45 (Julius Schepps). From Overton Rd., where it turns into a limited access freeway from a surface highway, to I-20, there a twelve intersections, of which three are signaled and one is a cloverleaf. Aside from the cloverleaf, the three signaled and, to a lesser extent, the eight others will slow traffic on their own. That slower traffic is the kind out-of-neighborhood drivers dislike. In fact, zoom in on the road in satellite view and notice just how empty this road is. Moving over to I-45 reveals a lot more vehicles using the roadway.
So as current conditions exist, of the 40,000 cars that TxDoT predicts will use the new roadway, few will come from the current S.M. Wright roadway. That means two things. They predict much of the traffic will come from the neighborhood and/or from drivers from C. F. Hawn Freeway (U.S. 175), which used S. M. Wright to get to I-45 prior to the reconstruction of the right-of-way. Both are flawed, I believe.
First, this is a much more transit-dependent community, so fewer neighborhood trips from within will actually use the road than TxDoT believes. Much of Texas has poor, if any, transit service or other alternatives. Therefore, a higher amount will have to use those roads. However, they use the higher amount, regardless of context. Arlington or my hometown of Midland and this neighborhood, can not be modeled the same. But they are anyway.
Second, very few folks will exit U.S. 175 to use the new S.M. Wright roadway, just to merge with I-45 eventually anyway. This is the point that TxDoT misses when it is directly related to Induced Traffic.
When the freeway portions of C. F. Hawn and Julius Schepps get full, people will figure out a new way, mode or time to travel. With TxDoT assuming a linear function for traffic counts, they assume when the capacity is reached, this overflow will go somewhere else, not change their behavior.
That is the essence of this debate. If TxDoT gets their way, they will do like the southern portion of S.M Wright and build an excessively wide, unneeded roadway that doesn't fit within the neighborhood it runs in, keeping the neighborhood needlessly divided.
This is why I will always debate those that say American love their cars. As long as state agencies like TxDoT unnecessarily focus on highways, then we will always have a lopsided choice. We love our cars because it is the only convenient option, not because they win on an even playing field.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Priorities and Signal Timing
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece to help dispel the myth of signal timing as an effective tool in the fight against congestion. Reader Ken sent me this from NPR, a look at signal timing at singular intersections.
I won't spend too much time on it, but I want to point out some very relevant observations from it.
It's a common problem in transportation planning as I see it in Texas. There are two questions in regards to transportation planning that are similar, but have two totally different answers.
How can we move as many people as possible? or How can we move as many cars as possible?
In Texas as a whole and Dallas in particular, the second question is almost always the one asked.
I won't spend too much time on it, but I want to point out some very relevant observations from it.
- Why are the lights timed only for cars?
- How do freeways effect the timing?
- Differently designed crossings can prioritize pedestrians over cars.
- Cities have different strategies and priorities for their intersections.
- What are the land uses near the intersection?
It's a common problem in transportation planning as I see it in Texas. There are two questions in regards to transportation planning that are similar, but have two totally different answers.
How can we move as many people as possible? or How can we move as many cars as possible?
In Texas as a whole and Dallas in particular, the second question is almost always the one asked.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Neighborhood needs Versus Regional Traffic
A couple of months ago, I made my first foray into any aspect of the Trinity River Project, a post about the most controversial portion. While there are many aspects of the project, conceptually, most are not so divisive (though some do become so during construction or afterward). It seems, however, anything involved with transportation in this project does. The Calatrava bridges have generated controversy and the tollroad may be the most divisive issue in the city. But a third portion shouldn't be.
Before I get into details, let me get a few generalities out of the way to set the stage for the rest of the post. Parks are generally not controversial. There aren't many people who say we don't want any parks in my neighborhood. That is a reason why some transportation planners in the sixties began to try and package their freeway plans with a parks component. Freeway revolts had swept many cities across the country and were widely seen by community activists as parasites within the neighborhood rather than a benefactor like planners had. Planners hoped that combining them would increase public support, and in the case of elections, support at the polls.
Aside from race and racial politics, there may be no bigger motivator for civic engagement in cities across the country than transportation projects. The reasons are myriad, but traditionally it has been a battle of neighborhoods versus regionalism.
I have stated before many times that out cities are shaped by the transportation systems that serve them. On a micro-scale, our neighborhoods are no different. Compare Highland Park, generally considered to contain the most desirable neighborhoods in the region, with freeways on its borders to old South Dallas near Fair Park, which is bisected by I-30, I-45, U.S. 175 and a small one-mile-freeway stub in Tx-310, also known as the S.M. Wright freeway. These divided a once functional, if not outright vibrant neighborhood. As the neighborhood ceased to function as originally built after the intrusion of the freeway, those that could move out did and were replaced by the lower class. The neighborhood started its decline. This scene I painted is specifically around the Fair Park area, but applies to countless neighborhoods in cities across this continent.
The Trinity was supposed to rectify some of this. S.M Wright freeway, which contains part of U.S. 175 as well as the freewayed portion of Tx-310, is slated for a redesign. The problem with this freeway as it exists is it runs parallel to I-45, measures a little more than three miles, contains a 90 degree turn onto the C.F. Hawn portion of U.S. 175 and is about 2,000 feet (less than 1/2 mile) at its furthest from I-45. Most freeway planners strive for around five miles between freeways.
So to recap, S. M. Wright is redundant, a neighborhood detractor and dangerous. Seems like a slam dunk for an uncontroversial transportation project within the larger Trinity Project, right. If I said the Texas Department of Transportation is involved, would that change your mind?
I'll give this link from the Dallas Observer to get the meat of the battle between TxDoT, who loves building highways for cars, and activists from the neighborhood.
In the article, I fully support Hank Lawson and the South Dallas Action Plan. Why does TxDoT want six lanes to move so many cars? Because that's what they do. They'd be more accurate if they changed their name to the Texas Department of Highways. They dabble here and there in other forms of transportation, but the vast supermajority of their work is highways. You don't go to a bakery to get deli meats and you don't expect TxDoT to do walkable, pedestrian-oriented infrastructure.
Here's my recommendation, which will sound almost exactly like Lawson's.
1) Connect the C.F. Hawn portion of U.S. 175 with I-45 with a straighter freeway. There is a floodway, parking lot and few homes between the two points. The parking lot and floodplain are easily remedied and I'll get to the homes in a minute.
By doing this step, Dead Man's Curve and the subsequent death and injury that accompany it are removed. Those risks are still inherent in driving in general, but with a standard freeway connection, the risk is far less.
2) Demolish S. M. Wright Freeway. It is redundant and unneeded, as I detailed above.
3) Ideally, I don't think anything but cross streets need to be restored. However, realizing that step is far too drastic for the auto-centered folks at TxDoT and Dallas officials, I can at least support the concept of a four-lane street, particularly if on-street parking and a landscaped sidewalk are included. This four-lane street would connect with Ceasar Chavez Blvd. at I-45 and meet with the rest of Tx-310 at Overton Rd.
4) Connect every street that was severed by the freeways building. Some of these include, but aren't only, Warren Ave., Copper Dr. and Southland St.
5) Restore the former freeway right-or-way not needed for the street to neighborhood uses, including housing, retail, parks and any other need. For every house that was demoed in recommendation 1, a new one of equal size should be built in the old ROW, minimizing the impact to the occupants of the demoed houses.
Lawson said he thinks traffic will be bad on I-45 because of this neighborhood focus of S. M. Wright's redesign, but I'm not sure. First, I-45 is still the freeway from which U.S. 175 merges. If it passes political muster, the two lanes that are added to I-45 when it merges with U.S. 175 could be added to the freeway at its new intersection. In the end, the lane miles would not decrease, only the freeway's intrusion into the neighborhood.
Second, local traffic will be substantially better. A restored street grid will require far less miles to travel within the neighborhood, regardless if the destination is within or without. The shortest point between two points is the grid. It requires one turn. With the grid severed as is now the case, it requires many. If a driver is west of the freeway and wants to travel north, they have to go south on the frontage roads first. A restored street grid would allow them to make a left turn instead, shaving many miles off just one driver's trip. Collectively, the neighborhoods sees exponentially fewer local miles traveled within the neighborhood, thanks to the improved efficiency.
All of this should be appealing to TxDoT. They strive for efficient movement of cars. But they also can't see local needs precisely because they want to move those cars. In this case, they are saying the neighborhoods needs do not matter because residents of other neighborhoods and suburbs need this road to get where they are going faster and need to zoom through this area to do it.
I have two main frustrations with this line of thought.
I understand TxDoT isn't concerned with land use or neighborhoods. They are concerned about highways. But to ignore the link is foolish. Different land uses require different needs from the highways. Highways encourage different land uses. They are inextricably linked. You shouldn't and I dare say mustn't do one without the other, but TxDoT does.
Given this constraint, the biggest of my two frustrations lies with the City of Dallas. They should be looking out for this neighborhood. They are elected to do that. TxDoT isn't.
There are countless examples, even within Dallas, of the effect different types of streets have on surrounding land uses. Griffin St versus Main in Downtown. McKinney and Cedar Springs in Uptown. Henderson vs. Fitzhugh in Knox-Henderson. Narrower streets are more vibrant. From a financial standpoint, they produce far more revenue than their wider counterparts. They also cost less to maintain. So why the reservation on their end?
I don't have a great answer for that. The only thing I think that has validity is that the city is run by traffic engineers and most of the City Councilmembers still believe the archaic thinking of wider streets, highways and more cars bring prosperity.
In reality, they only give fuel to growth of the places on the outskirts as people are encouraged to live further out as they can easily zoom through the close-in neighborhoods. The current model of city building used in the United States encourages disinvestment of existing areas, rather than an addition of new ones to accommodate growth in the population. Conversely, their archaic line of thinking gives fuel to the decline of these closer in neighborhoods. It is not a coincidence that the most vibrant urban neighborhoods in Dallas do not have a freeway running in the middle.
Until this thinking changes, particularly by elected officials, neighborhoods surrounding these streets and highways will continue to suffer, and that suffering will be to the benefit of the places further out.
Before I get into details, let me get a few generalities out of the way to set the stage for the rest of the post. Parks are generally not controversial. There aren't many people who say we don't want any parks in my neighborhood. That is a reason why some transportation planners in the sixties began to try and package their freeway plans with a parks component. Freeway revolts had swept many cities across the country and were widely seen by community activists as parasites within the neighborhood rather than a benefactor like planners had. Planners hoped that combining them would increase public support, and in the case of elections, support at the polls.
Aside from race and racial politics, there may be no bigger motivator for civic engagement in cities across the country than transportation projects. The reasons are myriad, but traditionally it has been a battle of neighborhoods versus regionalism.
I have stated before many times that out cities are shaped by the transportation systems that serve them. On a micro-scale, our neighborhoods are no different. Compare Highland Park, generally considered to contain the most desirable neighborhoods in the region, with freeways on its borders to old South Dallas near Fair Park, which is bisected by I-30, I-45, U.S. 175 and a small one-mile-freeway stub in Tx-310, also known as the S.M. Wright freeway. These divided a once functional, if not outright vibrant neighborhood. As the neighborhood ceased to function as originally built after the intrusion of the freeway, those that could move out did and were replaced by the lower class. The neighborhood started its decline. This scene I painted is specifically around the Fair Park area, but applies to countless neighborhoods in cities across this continent.
The Trinity was supposed to rectify some of this. S.M Wright freeway, which contains part of U.S. 175 as well as the freewayed portion of Tx-310, is slated for a redesign. The problem with this freeway as it exists is it runs parallel to I-45, measures a little more than three miles, contains a 90 degree turn onto the C.F. Hawn portion of U.S. 175 and is about 2,000 feet (less than 1/2 mile) at its furthest from I-45. Most freeway planners strive for around five miles between freeways.
So to recap, S. M. Wright is redundant, a neighborhood detractor and dangerous. Seems like a slam dunk for an uncontroversial transportation project within the larger Trinity Project, right. If I said the Texas Department of Transportation is involved, would that change your mind?
I'll give this link from the Dallas Observer to get the meat of the battle between TxDoT, who loves building highways for cars, and activists from the neighborhood.
In the article, I fully support Hank Lawson and the South Dallas Action Plan. Why does TxDoT want six lanes to move so many cars? Because that's what they do. They'd be more accurate if they changed their name to the Texas Department of Highways. They dabble here and there in other forms of transportation, but the vast supermajority of their work is highways. You don't go to a bakery to get deli meats and you don't expect TxDoT to do walkable, pedestrian-oriented infrastructure.
Here's my recommendation, which will sound almost exactly like Lawson's.
1) Connect the C.F. Hawn portion of U.S. 175 with I-45 with a straighter freeway. There is a floodway, parking lot and few homes between the two points. The parking lot and floodplain are easily remedied and I'll get to the homes in a minute.
 |
| From the South Dallas Action Plan. The Red Line is the proposed Trinity Tollway. I would only include the red line from C.F. Hawn on the top of the slide to the point where it meets I-45 in the middle. I would also get straighten out the curve and insist on a standard freeway intersection. |
By doing this step, Dead Man's Curve and the subsequent death and injury that accompany it are removed. Those risks are still inherent in driving in general, but with a standard freeway connection, the risk is far less.
2) Demolish S. M. Wright Freeway. It is redundant and unneeded, as I detailed above.
3) Ideally, I don't think anything but cross streets need to be restored. However, realizing that step is far too drastic for the auto-centered folks at TxDoT and Dallas officials, I can at least support the concept of a four-lane street, particularly if on-street parking and a landscaped sidewalk are included. This four-lane street would connect with Ceasar Chavez Blvd. at I-45 and meet with the rest of Tx-310 at Overton Rd.
4) Connect every street that was severed by the freeways building. Some of these include, but aren't only, Warren Ave., Copper Dr. and Southland St.
5) Restore the former freeway right-or-way not needed for the street to neighborhood uses, including housing, retail, parks and any other need. For every house that was demoed in recommendation 1, a new one of equal size should be built in the old ROW, minimizing the impact to the occupants of the demoed houses.
Lawson said he thinks traffic will be bad on I-45 because of this neighborhood focus of S. M. Wright's redesign, but I'm not sure. First, I-45 is still the freeway from which U.S. 175 merges. If it passes political muster, the two lanes that are added to I-45 when it merges with U.S. 175 could be added to the freeway at its new intersection. In the end, the lane miles would not decrease, only the freeway's intrusion into the neighborhood.
Second, local traffic will be substantially better. A restored street grid will require far less miles to travel within the neighborhood, regardless if the destination is within or without. The shortest point between two points is the grid. It requires one turn. With the grid severed as is now the case, it requires many. If a driver is west of the freeway and wants to travel north, they have to go south on the frontage roads first. A restored street grid would allow them to make a left turn instead, shaving many miles off just one driver's trip. Collectively, the neighborhoods sees exponentially fewer local miles traveled within the neighborhood, thanks to the improved efficiency.
All of this should be appealing to TxDoT. They strive for efficient movement of cars. But they also can't see local needs precisely because they want to move those cars. In this case, they are saying the neighborhoods needs do not matter because residents of other neighborhoods and suburbs need this road to get where they are going faster and need to zoom through this area to do it.
I have two main frustrations with this line of thought.
I understand TxDoT isn't concerned with land use or neighborhoods. They are concerned about highways. But to ignore the link is foolish. Different land uses require different needs from the highways. Highways encourage different land uses. They are inextricably linked. You shouldn't and I dare say mustn't do one without the other, but TxDoT does.
Given this constraint, the biggest of my two frustrations lies with the City of Dallas. They should be looking out for this neighborhood. They are elected to do that. TxDoT isn't.
There are countless examples, even within Dallas, of the effect different types of streets have on surrounding land uses. Griffin St versus Main in Downtown. McKinney and Cedar Springs in Uptown. Henderson vs. Fitzhugh in Knox-Henderson. Narrower streets are more vibrant. From a financial standpoint, they produce far more revenue than their wider counterparts. They also cost less to maintain. So why the reservation on their end?
I don't have a great answer for that. The only thing I think that has validity is that the city is run by traffic engineers and most of the City Councilmembers still believe the archaic thinking of wider streets, highways and more cars bring prosperity.
In reality, they only give fuel to growth of the places on the outskirts as people are encouraged to live further out as they can easily zoom through the close-in neighborhoods. The current model of city building used in the United States encourages disinvestment of existing areas, rather than an addition of new ones to accommodate growth in the population. Conversely, their archaic line of thinking gives fuel to the decline of these closer in neighborhoods. It is not a coincidence that the most vibrant urban neighborhoods in Dallas do not have a freeway running in the middle.
Until this thinking changes, particularly by elected officials, neighborhoods surrounding these streets and highways will continue to suffer, and that suffering will be to the benefit of the places further out.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
The False Promise of Signal Timing
Oftentimes, opponents of transit will offer where they say transit money should be invested. These include things like capacity increases, new roads or highways and programs like intelligent transportation systems or other things like signal timing to reduce delays caused at stop lights. It is that last one that I want to dissect.
First, let me say what I think should be obvious in this scenario. If it were as easy as the pundits insist, it would have been done already. I have railed against the power traffic engineers have in planning our neighborhoods, communities and cities. This is a common tool they have. But there is a reason every street can't be timed.
In an urban area, the distance between intersections is very short. This is a big reason why traffic engineers love one-way streets in urban settings. It gives them a measure of control over traffic flow.
One-ways are also preferred for timing because cross streets that have traffic flow onto those streets can be controled by traffic lights. Turning from a one-way to a one-way is no different than a right on red. On two-way streets, a left turn has to cross a divergent traffic stream. This time spent waiting reduces traffic flow, which is a violation of traffic engineers thinking. That is also why there are turn lanes, but in urban areas, where real estate is scarce, that is not as easy to do.
There are other micellaneous factors as well. One of my favorites is a human behavior, and unable to be solved in a traffic engineers handbook of formulas. A common example, if a visitor is new to an area and completely unfamiliar with the surroundings, they will naturally drive slower. This conflicts with the commuter who drives in every weekday and is trying to get to the office as fast as they can. The commuter will change lanes to pass the slower driver and lane changing has proven to slow traffic. All this has a negative impact on timing because it isn't measurable.
I'll use Downtown Dallas as an example. I'll start with the Elm/Main/Commerce corridor. Elm and Commerce are opposite one-ways and Main is in the middle with a lane in each direction. We'll worry about the intersections with the north-south streets later.
Starting with Elm, running west, it is easy to time them, it is one way. Taking the speed limit as the base, it is easy to measure distance and time and change the lights accordingly. It is easy to set how long the lights cycle through the green, yellow, red cycle. There are no conflicts at this point with other streets.
In a similar fashion, starting on the west side of Commerce and running east, the lights can be timed.
No let's add a few cross streets. I'll use St. Paul and Ervay, since they are similar to Elm and Commerce. The timing here would begin at the point of intersection and work out. So at Ervay and Commerce, to Ervay and Elm, timing is measured, then using the same method described earlier, the rest of the lights are set down the street. This is repeated on St. Paul. The difficulty is low in getting each intersection timed
Now comes the impossible part. Main Street is two-way. If a timed direction is set at both ends of the street, running toward the other end, sooner or later the timings are going to meet. In part because the block dimensions are different, but also because we have two converging directions, Main can never be timed for both directions.
Now to further hammer home the point, let's add a north-south, two-way street to the mix. The problem here is amplified from the previous example. Now we have an intersection that isn't just a one-way to a one-way, but we have a full four directions. If we had a hard time timing one street with two directions, how can another work? Which direction takes priority?
Lastly, let's add up just the six streets we looked at. The four one-way streets were well-timed, but the two two-ways were not. What happens though, when we add those two two-ways to the already timed intersections?
If all the other streets are taken into account, with their varying directions, different dimensions and different access points, there will never be any true timed streets. The best we can get is what we have now, some that are, others that aren't.
The last point I want to leave you with is this, if greater and faster traffic is bad for the urban environment, as I have discussed in numerous posts on this blog, why do we want to increase capacity and speeds on urban streets. Shouldn't the idea be to slow down traffic, thereby making pedestrians feel safer and therefore more likely to have a vibrant urban core?
First, let me say what I think should be obvious in this scenario. If it were as easy as the pundits insist, it would have been done already. I have railed against the power traffic engineers have in planning our neighborhoods, communities and cities. This is a common tool they have. But there is a reason every street can't be timed.
In an urban area, the distance between intersections is very short. This is a big reason why traffic engineers love one-way streets in urban settings. It gives them a measure of control over traffic flow.
One-ways are also preferred for timing because cross streets that have traffic flow onto those streets can be controled by traffic lights. Turning from a one-way to a one-way is no different than a right on red. On two-way streets, a left turn has to cross a divergent traffic stream. This time spent waiting reduces traffic flow, which is a violation of traffic engineers thinking. That is also why there are turn lanes, but in urban areas, where real estate is scarce, that is not as easy to do.
There are other micellaneous factors as well. One of my favorites is a human behavior, and unable to be solved in a traffic engineers handbook of formulas. A common example, if a visitor is new to an area and completely unfamiliar with the surroundings, they will naturally drive slower. This conflicts with the commuter who drives in every weekday and is trying to get to the office as fast as they can. The commuter will change lanes to pass the slower driver and lane changing has proven to slow traffic. All this has a negative impact on timing because it isn't measurable.
I'll use Downtown Dallas as an example. I'll start with the Elm/Main/Commerce corridor. Elm and Commerce are opposite one-ways and Main is in the middle with a lane in each direction. We'll worry about the intersections with the north-south streets later.
 |
| Map of Downtown Dallas. I'll reference this and add crude Microsoft Paint edits. |
In a similar fashion, starting on the west side of Commerce and running east, the lights can be timed.
 |
| Both Elm and Commerce are now timed, and traffic flows freely. |
 |
| So far so good. All these lights are timed. |
 |
| The two converging directions make timing signals virtually impossible on an urban two-way street. |
Now to further hammer home the point, let's add a north-south, two-way street to the mix. The problem here is amplified from the previous example. Now we have an intersection that isn't just a one-way to a one-way, but we have a full four directions. If we had a hard time timing one street with two directions, how can another work? Which direction takes priority?
 |
| Here's the problem intersection, with no ability to time every intersection on both streets. |
Lastly, let's add up just the six streets we looked at. The four one-way streets were well-timed, but the two two-ways were not. What happens though, when we add those two two-ways to the already timed intersections?
 |
| Just these six streets, without counting the others in Downtown, have no hope of being timed. |
If all the other streets are taken into account, with their varying directions, different dimensions and different access points, there will never be any true timed streets. The best we can get is what we have now, some that are, others that aren't.
The last point I want to leave you with is this, if greater and faster traffic is bad for the urban environment, as I have discussed in numerous posts on this blog, why do we want to increase capacity and speeds on urban streets. Shouldn't the idea be to slow down traffic, thereby making pedestrians feel safer and therefore more likely to have a vibrant urban core?
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