Carrboro Town Staff Considers Replacing Fidelity St Bike Lanes with Car Parking

Posted on June 24, 2014 by patrick

Carrboro is a progressive town in many ways, but there are a few community characteristics for which the town really stands out- and one of them is Carrboro’s commitment to bicycle infrastructure. Carrboro is currently the only town or city in North Carolina meeting the American Bike League’s “Silver Award” standard and was home to the North Carolina Bike Summit just last year.

That’s why I was quite surprised to peruse Tuesday evening’s Carrboro Board of Aldermen agenda and find the following:

In an effort to better manage the Town’s parking resources, the issue of how to deal with the needs of longer-term parking for business employees arises. Some businesses have requested parking permits from the Town to allow all-day parking for their employees in public lots…The staff has been discussing two options that the Board could exercise in the interim to help with the immediate problem of employee parking. The first option was discussed at the April 15^th meeting and that is for the town to sub-lease out spaces in the Laurel and Weaver Street lots.. A second option that the Board of Aldermen could consider is to use Fidelity Street for permit-only, on-street parking, Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The street could hold an estimated 100 +/- vehicles. Permits would be issued to Carrboro business owners for use by their employees only.

This is a really bad idea for a lot of reasons that run the gamut from policy substance on bike lanes to policy substance on parking to symbolism to process. Before getting into all of that, though, here is the staff memo statement on the potential impact to the bike lanes on Fidelity St:

Allowing on-street parking on Fidelity Street would impact the bike lanes. Fidelity is a low traffic volume street and cyclists often utilize the traffic lane due to the width of the road and low traffic volume. The width of the street also encourages motorist to speed, therefore on-street parking may act as a traffic calming measure. The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety. However, on-street parking does affect the Town’s overall number miles of bike lanes. Additional signage would be required to direct parking. The estimated cost of the additional signage is approximately $800.00 and street markings would cost an estimated $5000. This cost would be offset by the fees of the permits to park.

I think this is not stating the impacts clearly enough. What I think this paragraph is trying to say is that the proposal to allow on-street parking on Fidelity Street would REMOVE the bike lanes. The comment “The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety” seems to suggest that after removing the bike lanes, the Town would paint a few sharrows on the street. As one of my colleagues recently tweeted after Streetsblog recapped a poor decision along these lines in Texas:

To avoid making this a very long post, I’m going to try to provide a quick rundown of a few detail-level reasons why replacing bike lanes with parking on Fidelity Street is likely a mistake, and move on to the two major reasons to try to come up with a better idea.

A Half Dozen of Reasons NOT to Remove Bike Lanes from Fidelity Street

The Town spent years waiting to repave Main Street with last year’s road diet, completing the “missing link” of bike lane coverage in town, linking facilities on Hillsborough Rd, West Poplar Ave, West Main St past the 605 building, Jones Ferry Rd, and yes, Fidelity Street. Now that we’ve linked all these facilities together, let’s not undo the linkage!
Removing bike lanes from Fidelity Street would be in direct conflict with the Two Guiding Principles (see Chapter 5) of the 2009-adopted Carrboro Bike Plan: “Assure safe and convenient bicycle access to all areas of the Town” AND “Promote bic ycles as a viable and attractive means of transportation.” Also not to be missed in this chapter is the plainly-stated Implementation Policy: “Provide bicycle facilities along all collector and arterial streets.”
Issuing parking permits for Fidelity Street only to employees of Carrboro businesses is more or less the removal of an open, all-resident resource (bike lanes) to provide a closed-benefit resource to a mix of residents and non-residents. (leased parking spaces for employees only) The likelihood of the town FILLING Fidelity Street with cars is unlikely when the majority of parking in town will remain free AND be closer to all the employers. Remember, even if only 25% of the spaces are full and the town doesn’t recoup the cost of repaving the street for a several years, the residents still lose their bike lanes.
It’s not clear the town has tried any real Transportation Demand Management (TDM) efforts with their own employees to address this issue; the fact that some of the materials in this item talk about Parks/Rec employees parking in the Weaver Street lot and sometimes even the Greensboro St lot suggest that more could be done here. There are at least 100 parking spaces at Wilson Park, which is about a 3-minute bus ride from the Century Center on the F bus. If the town really wants to promote parking space turnover downtown for local for-profit businesses, then a zero-cost step in the right direction would be encouraging non-law enforcement Town employees who work downtown to park at Wilson Park and take a 3-minute bus ride to and from downtown. I’m not sure how much parking at McDougle School is fully used during the day, but that is another right-on-a-bus-route location where downtown employees could be encouraged to park. Either of these approaches expands capacity downtown without dismantling a part of the bicycle network. Are there any incentives for town employees to carpool or vanpool to Carrboro? Does the town assist employees with bike purchases up to a certain amount? Maybe the town is doing these things already. If they’re not, they should try them.
Best practices in urban parking management literature often encourage curb pricing to promote short-term (1-3 hour) turnover and move long-term parking to decks. Carrboro presently encourages short-term parking in its deck and the Fidelity proposal puts long-term parking on a curb. It would be wise to consider if having our incentives flipped from the best practice position makes sense.
Random parking supply interventions without an overall strategy today are tomorrow’s grandfathered deals that set bad precedent. Let’s avoid doing these things.

But there are two BIG reasons why NOT to remove bike lanes on Fidelity Street and replace it with parking.

Carrboro Needs to Approach “Parking Problems” as “Access Problems”

The worst thing about this proposal is that it suffers from the “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome. The staff text is built on the assumption that since complaints have been lodged about long-term parking for downtown employees, they must be solved by creating new parking spaces. This orientation is part of the problem. Instead, the questions that need to be asked are:

Can we get some or all of the employees in question downtown without a car? Yes or no?
Can we do things to convert some of the “no” answers in question 1 to “yes” answers?
Can we better manage parking that already exists, downtown or outside of downtown?

These questions will widen the solution set if pursued in earnest.

But here’s the other big reason to keep bike lanes on Fidelity.

The Future Growth of Cycling in the US (including Carrboro) Depends on the Expansion of Facilities That Don’t Require BRAVERY to Ride On

If we really want to expand bicycling in Carrboro, we have to grapple with the fact that the biggest barrier to this outcome is reducing both real and perceived danger to people riding bikes from cars. Roger Geller’s excellent piece on the Four Types of Transportation Cyclists breaks down Portland, Oregon’s population into the following groups by their proclivity to bike for transportation (as opposed to recreation) purposes, and puts 60% of Portland’s population into a category he describes as “Interested But Concerned,” which he describes as follows:

About 60% of the population. These residents are curious about bicycling…They like riding a bicycle, remembering back to their youths, or to the ride they took last summer on the Springwater, or in the BridgePedal, or at Sun River, and they would like to ride more. But, they are afraid to ride. They don’t like the cars speeding down their streets. They get nervous thinking about what would happen to them on a bicycle when a driver runs a red light, or guns their cars around them, or passes too closely and too fast.

Geller goes on to emphasize:

No person should have to be “brave” to ride a bicycle; unfortunately, this is a sentiment commonly expressed to those who regularly ride bicycles by those who do not. There are many cities in modern, industrialized nations around the world with a high bicycle mode split. They have achieved these high levels of bicycle use through adherence to various cycling-promoting policies and practices. But, one thing they share in common is they have substantially removed the element of fear associated with bicycling in an urban environment…In these “fearless” cities septuagenarians are able to ride alongside seven-year-olds safely, comfortably, and with confidence throughout the breadth of the cities[1]. Making bicycling a more widespread and mainstream means of transportation in Portland will require substantially addressing concerns about personal safety.

The path to expanding bicycling as a pleasant and convenient choice in Carrboro (and well, most anywhere) is the path that develops infrastructure that is as safe as possible AND feels as safe as possible to people age 7 through 77. For the “Interested But Concerned” group, bike lanes are significantly better than no bike lanes, and Protected Bike Lanes are better still. Recent research has found Protected Bike Lanes have significantly increased bicycling where they have been built in several US cities.

Carrboro’s upcoming Jones Ferry Rd project will incorporate a Protected Bike Lane under NC 54 as part of the design. We need more facilities like these, not fewer.

Right now both the “Interested But Concerned” and more aggressive “Strong and Fearless” riders (see Geller’s typology) both have a choice that meets their needs on Fidelity – bike lanes for the former and riding in traffic for the latter. Removing the bike lanes damages the bike network for the largest groups of users.

So let’s work on access issues for employees who work in downtown Carrboro, and let’s give them choices to get downtown- to free up parking spaces for paying customers at our local businesses. But let’s not do it at the expense of our award-winning bike network that we’ve worked so hard to build.

Thanks for reading.

The Dream of Places Where Young Children Walk Freely

Posted on June 1, 2014 by patrick

Sidewalk in Park Slope, Brooklyn

In September of 2013, our family took a 1900-mile road trip up and down the East Coast to see an old friend get married and visit family. Along the way, we decided to spend a few days in New York City. I wanted to take a city vacation and see some of the public space, transit and bicycle improvements in NYC under Janette Sadik-Khan‘s management as Director of Transportation that I had become familiar with via Streetsblog.

DW liked the idea, and DC heard there would be carousels and was sold. While we had an enjoyable 7-hour visit to Manhattan, we spent most of our time in Brooklyn, where none of us had been before.

Driving on Hudson Parkway and some of the roads from Connecticut into Manhattan and finally Brooklyn left me a little white-knuckled, but after finding a place to park the car for a few days, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and instantly felt my blood pressure go down.

In Park Slope, where we were staying, with a few exceptions, the sidewalks are 10 to 18 feet wide pretty much everywhere, the main streets have two lanes of traffic plus on-street parking on both sides, and the minor streets have one lane of traffic and on-street parking on both sides.

Typical Intersection in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Quickly I realized that the physical environment generally put a much greater distance between DC and moving cars than we experience here in Carrboro. With the wide sidewalks, you already have a lot of safe space to walk, but then the parking lane adds another buffer the width of one car, about 8 additional feet, from moving traffic.

The blocks also have very few curb cuts/driveways to watch for traffic in between cross streets. This environment does a lot to reduce vehicle speeds, and we witnessed parents all over the place in Park Slope who let kids under five years old ride scooters down the sidewalks or walk freely without holding their hands, even on the busier avenues. Older kids (the ones below I’m guessing were 7-10 or so) were often walking to school by themselves.

Kids Walking to School, Park Slope, Brooklyn

I find that one of the most persistent sources of mental stress as a parent is keeping DC safe from traffic, everywhere. Talking with other parents, I know I am not alone in this, and we are right to be worried. Motor vehicle crashes are far and away the leading cause of death among children aged 0-19 once you get past prenatal problems and congenital birth defects. Put another way, within the realm of things parents can do something about, cars are the most deadly threat their children face.

While Brooklyn and NYC have tremendous amounts of pedestrians, and also their own challenges in terms of pedestrian and bike safety that advocates such as Twitter user @BrooklynSpoke are working hard to remedy, the basic amount of walkable, mostly safe urban fabric they have to begin with is enviable.

My key take-away from Brooklyn was that between the sidewalk size, street trees and parking lanes buffering the traffic, along with large public spaces such as Prospect Park and the DUMBO waterfront area, if we lived there for a month and DC began to understand how things worked, we could be a good deal less focused on holding his hand to keep him away from a potential distracted driver making a 42-mph mistake on a 35-mph road.

While we would not be able to discard vigilance entirely, we would spend more time in areas that our brains classified as “Safe zones” and less time in places where the dominant thought is “let’s walk, but watch out.” We’d spend more time focused on enjoying each other’s company and less on the threat posed by traffic.

Southern Village Greenway

Recently DC has started to really enjoy using a balance bike, and the only disappointment with this is that the number of facilities around where I can really safely let DC go is limited. The Morgan Creek Greenway in Southern Village is one such place, and I’m very grateful it was built into the community when SV was designed.

I know Carrboro has made a lot of strides to improve on-road bicycle facilities in the form of bike lanes, but as cities such as Copenhagen, Portland and even New York City are showing the rest of the world, the ability of the bicycle to become a truly significant community transportation choice greatly expands when there is a network of facilities for biking that are separate and safe from car traffic. Carrboro already has two such facilities in the Libba Cotton Bike Path and Frances Shetley Greenway. I’ll say more about these facilities in a future post, and why their benefits to the town are so important.

We also have an opportunity in the recent “Slow Zone” proposal for Downtown Carrboro, which would limit traffic speeds within the greater downtown core to 20 mph or lower. I hope to write more about the Slow Zone proposal in the coming weeks. In the meantime, as you’re driving around town, give a self-imposed max of 20 mph a try. It’s not that much of a change in your travel time, and is safer for everyone.

Carrboro Open Streets a Fantastic Success, Also Highlights Work to Be Done

Posted on April 25, 2014 by patrick

Palm Sunday weekend was great. The sun was shining, the allergy meds held the pollen in check, and Carrboro’s 2nd Open Streets event was about as picture perfect as it gets. Before I go into details from Carrboro Open Streets, a quick definition:

What Is An Open Streets Event?

Originating in Colombia in South America, and first called Ciclovia, an “Open Streets” event is one that closes city street space normally allocated to cars and gives it to people on foot, bicycle, skateboard, inline skates, a wagon- pretty much any non-motorized vehicle, for several hours at a time. With an emphasis on community, physical fitness, and green transportation, it is common to have bicycle riding and bicycle maintenance instruction, as well as fitness classes from martial arts to zumba, yoga and aerobics.

Within the United States, Open Streets events have taken place pretty much everywhere- New York City, Madison, WI, Minneapolis, Austin, Honolulu, Los Angeles, and smaller communities such as Roanoke, VA, Clearwater, FL, and locally, Durham and Carrboro.

Also, since these events are designed to highlight the benefits of bicycle transportation, I want to share how we got there, which I think illustrates some of the problems that the Open Streets movement is trying to address in the first place.

Getting to Carrboro Open Streets 2014

In the week leading up to Open Streets, DC made it clear that DC wanted not only to ride the balance bike AT Open Streets, but that DC also wanted to use it to GET to Open Streets. Seeing as DC wanted me to bring my bike as well, this presented a non-trivial problem for us. How were we going to cross key streets on the way to the Open Streets zone safely? When I walk and DC ride as a duo, if any sudden danger element intrudes on a situation, such as a distracted driver, I can literally snatch DC off the balance bike if I have to. Fortunately, we have never needed to do this, but when you’re walking your own bike across a street, this is not going to happen as fast, and in such situations, seconds count. DW was also heading to Open Streets, but she would be arriving via her own bike later, so parental tag-teaming was also not an option. There were at least five crossings where cars do more than 25 mph regularly between our house and the Open Streets.

Taking the Bus to Carrboro Open Streets

We settled on a two-part solution. Part 1: Chapel Hill Transit to the rescue! Realizing that the bus could get us pretty close to the Open Streets event, this cut down our set of complicated two-bike crossings from five down to two. DC waited on the sidewalk while I loaded my bike into the rack on the front of the bus, and then I carried DC’s balance bike onboard.

Once we got off the bus, we still needed to cross two streets where cars take corners too fast, because many of Carrboro’s curbs are far too gentle to calm traffic effectively. DC follows directions well, but is not yet skilled enough to cross streets while surveying the environment for safety threats and acting defensively without my help. So we settled on “the Fox and the Chicken” method, based on this old riddle, where I left one bike on the ground, put DC in my left arm and one bike in my right hand, and crossed the street. We then crossed back with just DC in my arms, and then got the second bike and repeated the child-in-one-arm-bike-in-the-other move. Then we went to the next intersection and did it. Again. Without the bus, this would have been 30 street crossings to reach Open Streets. We managed to do only six. I recognize that most people don’t have children in the age bracket that are beyond a stroller and not yet proficient in crossing a street on a bike; however, the fast-turn corners in town present different variations of this problem to everyone, but particularly our senior citizens and small children.

We Made It! Carrboro Open Streets 2014

Having successfully reached Open Streets without getting in a car, we immediately started checking things out. There was an outdoor climbing wall that looked like great fun and already had a line to try. Folks from the Recyclery offered to take our photo together with our bikes. We were told how we could get discounts to the Carrboro Farmers’ Market if we stopped by on our bikes. Another person invited us to a fitness class.

Neighborhood Loop Bike Parade

Someone announced that a kids bike parade/neighborhood loop ride was starting in a few minutes, and we decided that sounded like fun.

Helmet Check Before Kids Bike Parade

I did not get the gentleman in this photo’s name, but he did an excellent job leading the ride from Weaver St down Lindsay, down Poplar, and up Oak. He also gave the kids a short lesson in how to properly tighten a helmet and even adjusted a few helmets that needed tightening to be fitted correctly. Volunteers at each of the intersections watched for cars and stopped them as needed. As short as the loop was, it was still the first time DC and I have ridden on neighborhood streets together, which was a big deal for us.

Bike-On-Bus Practice

After the neighborhood bike loop, we ran into some friends in front of the Chapel Hill Transit “Mobile Mural” bus, which was there to let people practice putting bicycles in and out of the bike rack.

While chatting, DW joined us and then and got to try the bike-on-bus rack, which she reported was very helpful in allowing her to get used to how the bike rack worked without the pressure of wondering if everyone on the bus was waiting for her. CHT Operator Akalema was helpful and encouraging, and gave good advice that CHT operators are “not in there waiting impatiently for you to hurry up. We know how long it takes to get the bike secured, and we want it to fit in well just like you do.”

Bike Decorating and Obstacle Course

Weaver Street Opened

We then took DC by a craft table where there were all sorts of stickers, pipe cleaners, etc. DC’s bike was well-decorated within 5 minutes. DC then tried his hand at an obstacle course that featured riding through cones, up a ramp, and over the rungs in a bumpy rope ladder.

Self-Powered Smoothies

Next we got in line for the crowd-pleasing Blend-Your-Own-Smoothie on a bike stand. We picked strawberries, while others near us in line picked coconut milk, pineapple, and blueberries. I tried to let DC do the blending but the adult bike spacing between the seat and pedals was just a little too long for DC’s gait. I cranked the pedals for about 45 seconds total, stopping every now and then to see how pureed the drink was, until it was indeed, smooth.

Soon after we got lunch at Weaver Street Market and watched the cheerful Bulltown Strutters play up and down East Weaver Street and on the lawn.

Overall Take-aways

Later at home, DW and I were talking about the event, and we both had a few take-away moments from Carrboro Open Streets. DW noted the complete lack of the typical unhealthy food being served at a street festival- no fried dough, no corndogs, etc. Sure, anybody who wanted to get cookies, ice cream, or other fattening food doesn’t have to look far in Carrboro, but with the health/activity focus of the event, we agreed that this made sense. She also appreciated getting to see certain types of fitness classes that she might try another time.

DC was thrilled to “win” a frisbee for completing the bike obstacle course, and reported that getting to honk the horn of the Chapel Hill Transit bus was another favorite moment.

For me, my favorite part was the simple joy of having a significant stretch of pavement in town where I could let our child ride free a bit and generally not worry that DC was one distracted driver away from catastrophe. Thanks to Carrboro Open Streets, DC spent more time than ever on a bike last weekend, and experienced some considerable confidence gains in learning to ride.

The other recurring theme was the number of Carrboro residents I ran into who said in one way or another, “we should do this every week!” While it certainly would be unusual to have many of these activities every Saturday morning (Bike Blender Smoothies in December, anyone?), I think there’s definitely a potential upside to conducting a Carrboro Open Streets event more frequently than once a year.

What Next for Carrboro Open Streets?

To me, Carrboro Open Streets has implications for both transportation and tourism. I’ll start with the latter.

I spoke with Alderperson Randee Haven O’Donnell for a few minutes, and Randee pointed out that some of the folks surveying Carrboro Open Streets participants were finding that non-trivial numbers of people were coming to Open Streets from outside Carrboro, as local tourists from the Triangle region. Now that there’s a hotel in town, maybe we should consider pairing two to four Carrboro Open Streets events to be on the Saturday mornings that follow 2nd Friday Artwalks. This allows a visiting tourist to pair two city culture events in a one-night visit. It also allows visitors to experience the Carrboro Farmers’ Market as well.

On the transportation front, the more I read and the more I use bicycle facilities in our own community and others where cyclists are completely separated from vehicle traffic, the more I realize how critical such facilities are to getting the large portion of the population that would bike if it was safer and FELT safer. I freely admit that adding more facilities like this to downtown is challenging, but I think we should try to identify opportunities downtown (and throughout the town) for more bike/ped-only segments in the transportation network.

See you all at the next Carrboro Open Streets!

Carrboro #Sneckdown Photos from Previous Storm

Posted on February 9, 2014 by patrick

As we wait for the latest winter weather event to roll in, with possibilities of more heavy snowfall, I wanted to put up some of the #sneckdown photos I took last time. Here’s what I saw. First, let’s look at an aerial photo of the intersection of Davie Rd at West Poplar Avenue. Both roads are one car lane in each direction; Poplar Avenue also has a bike lane in each direction. But look at how much pavement the pedestrian must traverse to reach the sidewalk on the other side of Davie when walking east/west on Poplar. For perspective, the white bars are road marking stop lines; each is about one car width. The green line representing the pedestrian path is probably 4-6 times the width of a car.

Davie at Poplar Sneckdown Aerial

Now let’s see what happens when mother nature drops some snow on this intersection:

Sneckdown Groundview at Davie and Poplar

As you can see, a large swath of this area remains relatively untouched by all but a few car tires. The ability of a limited number cars to take this turn at high speed was prioritized over the safer crossing of pedestrians when this corner was engineered, and if we want to maximize walkability in town, we need to correct mistakes like these.

Filling the curb out through the red triangle in the first photo in this post would be a great step forward. The corner could be rounded a bit if that would help, but we want cars to turn right slowly here, not quickly into the path of pedestrians.

My second #Sneckdown site was a no brainer- this #Sneckdown is actually painted on the street! See below, West Main St at West Weaver St:

Sneckdown Aerial: West Main at West Weaver St

Perhaps the worst offending intersection in town for providing an accelerated corner on one of our critical streets, the area above in red should be paved and raised, because while the actual number of intersections here is low, the vulnerable condition that the white triangle of paint supplies to pedestrians deters greater walking activity at this intersection. Here’s a photo from the storm:

Sneckdown at West Main and West Weaver

Once again, a large berm of snow demonstrates how a pedestrian mid-intersection island would be welcome here as a perceived safety and actual safety improvement. The road diet on Main St has been a big improvement for pedestrians and cyclists on this corridor; getting a refuge island of some type here would be another great step forward.

In the meantime, keep your cameras at the ready if the weather shapes up to be snowy on Tuesday into Wednesday. We could have more #sneckdown photo ops!

Rare Opportunity Today: Carrboro and Chapel Hill #Sneckdown Photography!

Posted on January 29, 2014 by patrick

It’s near midnight on January 28th as I write this. As everyone wakes up on the 29th, we will have a rare opportunity in the Triangle to see how the snow reveals which parts of our intersections are not needed to allow cars to move freely. Clarence Eckerson of Streetfilms (see 3-minute video below) has pioneered the art of taking film of leftover snow and plowed roadways to show where intersection treatments for pedestrians could be improved, while keeping traffic moving at lower and friendler-to-pedestrians speeds.

This type of photography has gotten its own Twitter hashtag this winter, combining “snow” and “neckdown”- the term for narrowing a roadway at an intersection, into “#SNECKDOWN.” Here’s a screen capture of a great example from a few days ago in Massachusetts:

So keep your camera handy on Wednesday and document our local #sneckdowns! Who knows when we’ll have this chance again…

Quick Thoughts on Carrboro Music Festival 2013

Posted on September 30, 2013 by patrick

Another Carrboro Music Festival (CMF) is in the books, and generally speaking, it was a great afternoon. The timing of the event usually provides some of the best weather central North Carolina can offer, temperature/humidity-wise, and today delivered on that count in spades. I biked all over the place, taking advantage of our new bicycle facilities on Main Street and the elevator to the roof of the parking deck. (more on that later)

As usual, the music was tremendous- I caught several excellent performances spanning a slew of genres, mostly from people who live in town or nearby. The Tim Smith Band‘s reggae-influenced cover of “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison was my favorite surprise of the day- just flat out awesome, even in a set that pretty much killed for 40 minutes straight. Doug Largent‘s organ playing was a great joy to hear in person for the first time as well. DC and I closed out the night at Steel String listening to Wes Collins‘ riveting “Waiting,” and then packed up the stroller and headed for home.

Wes Collins (standing) & Danny Gotham at Steel String Brewery

Beyond enjoying the day, though, I spent a portion of my time wandering around thinking about what the CMF tells us about Carrboro for the other 364 days of the year.

Here are my take-aways. Unsurprisingly with me, they are public space and transport-centric:

Lots of cities talk about “managing/cultivating/some-action-verbing” their brand, and I have previously heard that a good brand “delivers on a promise.” Carrboro has a brand and it lives it without much fuss- the town is informal, fun, musical, artistic, accepting, and comfortable with a certain amount of chaos in service of those things. The CMF is not the town putting on a persona for a day; it’s just Carrboro being Carrboro, only more than usual. That’s a good thing.
It’s great to see buses running in Carrboro on Sundays. We need our transit network to be a seven-day-a-week service. I asked Chapel Hill Transit staff and they said that a total of 679 passengers rode the two buses that provided Shuttle service on Sunday.
Even on the day of the year when the most visitors the town receives at once are there, traffic just isn’t that bad. And maybe the alternatives to get downtown help a lot with that, but still.
The parking deck was open, but not from the side that most people were likely to get the chance to take advantage of it. Even so, Levels 1-2 and a small part of 3 in the deck were filled. The roof, 4, and 5 were mostly empty even after going past all the spaces reserved for the hotel. Check it out:
3rd Level Parking Deck During Late Afternoon CMF
The sidewalks on our major streets need to be wider. Walking in Carrboro can sometimes feel tenuous under usual conditions, but the CMF crowds exacerbate this by pointing out how deteriorated some of our sidewalks are in our most heavily-trafficked areas. I’m thinking particularly of the sidewalks just east of the railroad tracks on both sides of Main St. Hopefully we can plan for some improvements here for the pieces that 300 East Main’s redevelopment will not address.
Closing Weaver Street between the intersection with Main/Roberson and the Weaver/Greensboro intersection yields a pretty minimal impact to the overall traffic conditions but provides a fantastic livability dividend to everyone who gets to enjoy the street. We’ve had a long-term closure of this space for the Weaver Street re-construction and multiple events like CMF and Carrboro Open Streets show us that the town can not only survive, but THRIVE- without that roadway capacity. We should think about what an opportunity that is for Carrboro to create a public space unlike any other in a town our size. More on that in a future post.

Did you have any observations you’d like to share from CMF 2013? Please add them in the comments!

Carrboro’s Summer of Bike-Ped Infrastructure, Part 2

Posted on August 14, 2013 by patrick

Earlier in the month I covered some improvements to the local pedestrian grid on Davie Rd and at the intersection of James St and Hillsborough Rd. However, the most high-profile change to the Carrboro street grid this summer is undoubtedly the Main St Road Diet.

Definition: Road Diet

First, what’s a “Road Diet?” Simply put, it’s the reconfiguration of a roadway to remove excess space for cars, and the reassigning of that space for the use of cyclists and/or pedestrians, and in some cases, transit vehicles. Carrboro’s road diet on Main St involved taking a 4-lane road section with no bike lanes down to a 2-lane road with a center turn lane, and bicycle lanes in both directions.

Sample Cross-Sections

Recently I’ve been working as a beta tester for some programmers developing a terrific tool called StreetMix that allows non-engineers to propose street cross-sections for their communities. Here’s the basic before vs after comparison in graphic format. Where you see “Bus Lane” please simply interpret that to be a drive lane in this case. I was just trying to pick different vehicles in the StreetMix program and missed the label.

And here’s what the AFTER configuration is:

Benefits of the West Main Street Road Diet

There are several immediate benefits that this project creates for the community:

Shortens the maximum number of moving vehicle lanes that a pedestrian must traverse to cross Main St. Instead of 44 feet of cars, the pedestrian only needs to cover 33 feet where they need to be on their maximum guard for their safety. This is of particular benefit to children, senior citizens, those with mobility impairments who walk slower than average, and parents pushing strollers.
Fulfills a recommendation of the Carrboro Safe Routes to School action plan and provides safety benefits in a school zone.
Completes a major gap in the bicycle infrastructure network.

I want to place major emphasis on the final point in the list above. For many years, Carrboro has been working slowly and steadily to expand its bike lane and greenway network, with most major street segments in town represented.

The map below shows how effectively Carrboro has been at placing bike lanes on its streets. Green lines represent greenways and off-road bicycle facilities. Orange lines represent wide outside shoulders. Purple lines represent on-street bike lanes. Notice the big gap in the purple network starting at the intersection of West Main and Hillsborough Rd, which then extends south from there past Poplar, Fidelity, and Weaver St, all the way to Jones Ferry Rd.

The road diet turns that grey section to purple and completes several linkages among SIX other roads with existing bike lanes!

Pre-Road-Diet: West Main St Bike Network Gap. Map produced by Town of Chapel Hill

The reason is this is so important is that some of the best research on the propensity of Americans to bicycle for transportation, even in super-bike-friendly cities like Portland, Oregon, indicates that the largest proportion of the populace falls into what Portland refers to as “Interested But Concerned” potential bike riders. These folks would LIKE to bicycle more, but have concerns about personal safety, and generally prefer to bicycle in a space that is clearly identified as being for cyclists first and motorists second. A bike lane meets that criteria for many people, and this road diet fills in a major gap in a network of facilities that address a perceived safety issue for many potential riders.

While I would still like to see us figure out ways to build even more separated bike-only facilities both on and off streets, this is a most welcome improvement to the Carrboro cycling infrastructure.

Congratulations to the town and NCDOT for working together to make this happen! Look below for some photos of the implemented Road Diet.

Pre-Road Diet

Post-Road Diet

Carrboro’s Summer of Bike-Ped Infrastructure, Part 1

Posted on August 7, 2013 by patrick

Summer is construction season, and as we approach the middle of August, there are several projects nearing completion in Carrboro that will make life better for pedestrians and bicyclists, and a few others that have made significant progress. If you haven’t spotted some of this work going on around town, here’s a quick review of two of the notable projects. I will cover others in a subsequent post.

James St / Hillsborough St Intersection Improvements

James St / Hillsborough St Improvements

Perhaps the smallest project, though still very worthwhile, is the curb expansion and installation of an island at the intersection of James St and Hillsborough St. This intersection is a critical location for middle school students walking to McDougle Middle School. Quail Roost Drive is the final segment of many walks to the school since it provides the most direct path to the building via the gate at the end of Quail Roost that opens onto the school’s running track. The new island, expanded curb, and improved crosswalks will calm traffic and reduce turning speeds at this intersection.

In the photo to the right from Google Earth, you can see the cones (representing a potential curb enlargement) that NCDOT put out for most of the last year to gauge motorist, pedestrian, and cyclist behavior prior to the permanent installation. The NCDOT Board awarded the town a Small Construction Funds stipend of $40,000 to complete this improvement, which is part of the town of Carrboro’s Safe Routes to School Action Plan.

I’m really impressed with the way the town and NCDOT worked together on this with the trial of the various configurations of cones to represent the island and curb extension. I hope that Carrboro Planning and Public Works will find a new problem intersection to tackle next.

Davie Rd Sidewalk

Davie Rd Sidewalk In Progress

Another great project that is providing an important missing link to the pedestrian network is the sidewalk presently being built along Davie Rd from Jones Ferry Rd to Fidelity Street. This will be a 5-foot wide sidewalk on the east side of Davie Rd with a storm sewer as part of the design.

According to the American Community Survey 2005 – 2009 five year estimates, the Census Tract in which this sidewalk sits has one of the highest walk-to-work shares of any Census Tract in Orange County, at almost 5%. Another 19% use public transportation to get to work, which means that almost a quarter of the working adults in this area start their journey to work on foot.

Hopefully this piece of sidewalk will be completed along the full length of Davie from Fidelity to Main St in the future. There are a few other projects underway in town that I will cover in Part 2 of this topic.

Five Great Reasons to Bulldoze the BCBSNC Building In Chapel Hill

Posted on June 1, 2013 by patrick

BCBSNC Headquarters – A Building Its Own Architect Doesn’t Know What Do To With (photo from newsobserver.com)

Today Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC announced they are consolidating their operations in Durham and vacating their dated, modernist solar-cooker-on-cinder-blocks digs in Chapel Hill, because the building is inflexible, expensive to operate, and bad for workers:

Blue Cross officials said the insurer’s distinctive Chapel Hill headquarters – a rhomboid, glass structure designed by the architect A.G. Odell Jr.’s firm – had become more costly to operate than its other buildings and didn’t fit the way employees work today.

The article adds:

Blue Cross expects the move to Durham will ultimately save it more than $2.5 million annually in utilities and operating costs.

“It will be a walkable, flexible environment, and create a community of literally all of our employees,” Borman said.

As for the Chapel Hill headquarters, Blue Cross plans to work with town officials to determine the property’s future, Borman said.

McMurray [the building’s designer] worries what will become of his building.

“It’s sad that they’re leaving it,” he said. “I don’t know what you do with it.”

I visited this building this past year on a day with temperatures in the 60s to low 70s. The air conditioning was cranked up like it was in the high 80s or 90s outside, which I assume is part of the reason why their utility costs are so high- whoever occupies the building must combat massive solar gain through the roof. Even the guy who built the building can’t think of a reason to keep using it.

The site layout is as flawed as the building, with curvilinear roads in a mid-century suburban layout that wastes space with both pavement and grass. But as much as anyone hates the announcement that a major employer is leaving, the silver lining is an opportunity to redevelop over 30 acres, or more than 1.5 million square feet of land. If this dysfunctional building was torn down, what could fit there instead?

For inspiration, here are five other examples of quality urban development that could fit in that area or less:

1. Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic (photo by Flickr user Iurbi)

This picture perfect town is mostly enclosed by a bend in the river that winds through it. The area within the river bend is about 80% of the size of the BCSBNC site.

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

2. Vernazza, Italy (photo by Flickr user damianocerrone)

Hemmed in by the see and a hill, Vernazza only takes up about 40% of the BCBSNC site, and that includes some of the harbor.

Vernazza, Italy

3. Downtown Shelburne Falls, MA (photo by Flickr user neonlike)

Picturesque small town in Massachusetts with a waterfall, an abandoned bridge covered with flowers, and a trolley museum – in about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

Shelburne Falls, MA

4. The entire pedestrian-only section of Church St and the 8 surrounding blocks in Burlington, VT. (photo by Flickr user devils4ever)

About 91% of the size of the BCBSNC site.

Church St, Burlington, VT

5. The Downtown Core of Black Mountain, NC (photo by Flickr user Bass Player Keith Hall)

East of Asheville, the downtown of Black Mountain is about 50% the size of the BCBSNC site.

Downtown Black Mountain, NC

6. And One Bonus Location: East Franklin St (photo by Flickr user Zannie Gunn)

The space bound by Columbia St, Franklin, Rosemary, and Henderson takes up about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

East Franklin St

Any of these building patterns are more resilient for changing times than the modernist design of the BCBSNC building, which was always more about making abstract aesthetic statements than being useful to the people using the building or embracing the neighboring parcels in a constructive way. When was the last time you heard someone say Franklin St “doesn’t support the way people work or live today?”

Build a street grid on this site and populate it with many smaller buildings, public spaces, and much less parking, and Chapel Hill can have a tremendous new urban neighborhood built to last. This is an exciting opportunity. What could you imagine here?

CityBeautiful21

Urban Planning for the 21st Century

Category Archives: Street Design