Morgan Creek Greenway Sets a New Standard for Local Bike Facilities

Posted on July 11, 2014 by patrick

While Chapel Hill and Carrboro have some of the highest rates of walking and cycling for transportation in North Carolina and the Southeast, there is still a lot of work to be done to build a continuous network of bike/ped infrastructure that both IS safe and FEELS safe. The recently published final Chapel Hill Bike Plan notes that one of the primary reasons identified by residents for why they do not ride their bike for transportation is safety. (see pages 25-27 for the excellent Level of Traffic Stress Assessment)

With that in mind, it is critical to recognize the outstanding leap forward that the Morgan Creek Greenway project in southern Chapel Hill represents, and the standard it sets for other future off-road and on-road facilities in the area.

Recently we’ve begun taking family bike rides on the Morgan Creek Greenway, and the reasons are numerous:

It’s safe from cars. The greenway is 10 feet wide and from where we usually begin at a parking lot off of NC 54 to Southern Village, there is not a single roadway to cross thanks to the new Culbreth Rd. underpass. Within Southern Village, the crossings of the streets are on low-speed, 2-lane only roads with limited traffic, 3-way or 4-way stop signs, and pedestrian bulb-outs at the crossing points.
The scenery is terrific – creeks, bridges, honeysuckle bushes, wildlife.
It takes you somewhere- we usually integrate dinner in Southern Village into the roundtrip; the picnic tables outside Pazzo are in the shade late in the day.

Here’s a map of the Morgan Creek Greenway, connected to the Fan Branch Trail, via the Culbreth Rd underpass. While the graphic says “trail segment planned for 2014,” I’m sure that will be updated soon – the trail and underpass are completed and open.

Morgan Creek Greenway (map by Town of Chapel Hill)

While at present, the trail seems to end at a parking lot along NC 54, this project is part of a larger effort to bring the trail all the way to University Lake. Another great benefit of this trail’s current and future alignment is that in addition to the already-served Scroggs Elementary school, there is the potential to also link Culbreth Middle School, Frank Porter Graham Elementary, and Carrboro High School to the same trail. You can take a look at the future potential of this greenway by viewing page 13 of this PDF on the Town of Carrboro website.

By the time the greenway reaches Smith Level Rd, the current project to add bike lanes and sidewalks to Smith Level Rd should be complete to the Morgan Creek Bridge near the Carrboro Public Works facility. This will allow the growing network of on-road bicycle lanes to connect with the off-road network that includes the greenway system.

Everybody who had a hand in making this happen in Chapel Hill should be very proud- it’s a terrific community asset!

Here are a few more photos from various locations along this map.

Bridge Over Morgan Creek

Culbreth Rd Underpass Approach from the South

Fan Branch Trail Section

Looking Through Culbreth Rd Underpass

Thanks for reading!

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!

Pedestrian Crashes and Vehicle Speeds in Carrboro, 1997-2012

Posted on March 28, 2014 by patrick

Recently, the Carrboro Transportation Advisory Board brought a proposal for a “Slow Zone” in downtown Carrboro to the Board of Aldermen. A Slow Zone is an area in which traffic calming measures are deployed and speed limits are lowered to 20 mph to reduce the number of bike and pedestrian crashes.

Does this really matter for pedestrian safety? I decided to look into the data for Carrboro, and here’s what I found.

The Highway Safety Research Center in Chapel Hill has a queryable database for all sorts of crash data, including pedestrian crashes. I ran a query for Crash Severity and Estimated Driver Speed where that data was reported for Carrboro from 1997 to 2012, the full dataset.

The database counted the following number of pedestrian crashes by severity:

Killed: 2 deaths
Disabling Injury: 20 injuries
Evident Injury: 33 injuries
Possible Injury: 37 injuries
No Injury: 3 non-injuries

Considering that when nobody is injured, a report is much less likely to be filed in the first place, I threw the “No Injury” category out due to the small number of responses. While the number of pedestrians killed was also small, the gravity of the consequence led me to leave this category in the next step of analysis.

I then took the midpoint of the ranges of each speed reported for the various types of crashes. This means that for crashes coded “Zero to 5 mph,” I put the speed down as 2.5 mph. For “16 to 20 mph,” I put down 18 mph. You get the idea.

Then, using the number of crashes of each type, I created a weighted average speed in Excel for every type of injury that pedestrians experienced from cars reported in Carrboro from 1997 to 2012. The bottom line:

For those Killed, the average speed of the car involved was 38.0 mph
For those experiencing Disabling Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 28.2 mph
For those experiencing Evident Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 17.1 mph
For those experiencing Possible Injuries, the average speed of the car involved was 11.2 mph

There’s no mystery here- the slower the speed of the car involved in the crash, the less harm to people on Carrboro streets.

I’ve been following this discussion online as it pertains to New York City, where incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio has realized that more people die due to traffic than crime in NYC, and the goal of #VisionZero – no traffic deaths in New York City, has become one of their key policy priorities for quality of life in New York. The graphic accompanying this post is based on NYC data, which shows that New Yorkers are NINE TIMES more likely to die when struck at 30 mph than at 20 mph.

Clearly there’s a link between vehicle speed and pedestrian crash severity in Carrboro as well.

I encourage everyone to check out the TAB’s discussion of the Slow Zone(PDF) before the Aldermen, and if interested, to view the data behind this post at the link below.

Carrboro-Ped-Crash-Data-1997-2012.xlsx

Orange County Wants Your Ideas For The Southern Orange Library Branch

Posted on March 24, 2014 by patrick

I was thrilled a few days ago to get a message from Orange County Library Director Lucinda Munger, announcing two upcoming public input sessions for the Southern Orange County Library Branch, now planned to be built in downtown Carrboro.

It’s great to hear that this project is moving forward and that the staff is thinking about how to make it a public resource that reflects the community. I asked Lucinda if she could expand a bit more on what type of input they’re seeking, and here was her response:

This is really the community’s chance to tell us about what they want this to be like: – what it feels like when you first walk in, what should it look like and what types of activities does the community want to see at this library that will service the not just Carrboro, but the Southern portion of the County. Also, they will be asked what do they think about the proposed site – pros and cons. Plus, the library will be starting an continual online conversation thru the Friends of the Carrboro Library Facebook page, www.facebook.com/OCSouthernBranchLibrary, and an online survey – with the same questions as at the meeting – beginning March 25.

Here are the days and times for the meetings:

Tuesday, March 25: 6 to 8 p.m., Hickory Tavern, 370-110 E. Main Street, Carrboro
Saturday, April 12: 12 to 2 p.m., Town Hall, 301 W. Main Street, Carrboro

I’m definitely hoping to attend one of the meetings, and will be sure to post the link to the online survey when it is available. Come out and support your community library, and share your vision for the future!

North Carolina Carfree Commute Map 2012!

Posted on March 19, 2014 by patrick

Recently I started following @shanedphillips on Twitter after reading a terrific guest column he wrote at Planetizen. Shane lives carfree in Los Angeles and blogs at www.betterinstitutions.com. I’ve added him to my blogroll today- please check out his writing.

He is also hashtagging this month as #marchmapness on Twitter as he is creating carfree commute maps for various states. I asked him about NC, and he whipped this map up in less than a few hours. Thanks, Shane!

For Carrboro, three of the four primary Census Tracts that make up most of town have non-car commute rates of over 20%. If you zoom in you will see that there is a big change in non-car commuters from Census Tract 107.05 to Census Tract 107.06, where non-car travel drops from 24.9% to 6.4%. My first read on this was “well, the F bus goes up North Greensboro St and Hillsborough Rd, but then turns back south on Old Fayetteville Rd- that should explain it.”

But look again- while transit commuting falls from 7.6% to 4.8%, the real drop in non-car commuting comes from the loss of Bike and Pedestrian commuting. In 107.05, over 17% of commuters walk or bike to work.. But in 107.06, only 1.6% of commuters bike, and nobody walks. Also interesting is that if you go one Census Tract *further* away from the employment center of Chapel Hill / Carrboro, bike commuting actually *increases* to 2.6%.

To me, this is an indicator of how powerful proximity to a significant mixed-use destination can be on transportation choices. The Census Tracts closest to downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill have very significant numbers of people commuting without cars.

What do you see of interest in this great tool that Shane created?

Trip Report: Travel By Train in North Carolina in 2014

Posted on March 17, 2014 by patrick

Piedmont Arrives at Durham Amtrak Station

Nearing midnight on March 6th, the Weather Underground reported that the stuff coming down outside was “Light Freezing Rain Mist.” It had been falling, somewhere on the physical line between rain, sleet, snow, and ice since early in the evening.

Local schools would open on a three-hour delay the next day. Despite this weather snarling rush hour traffic in the Triangle, I covered 110 miles from Charlotte to the middle of the state with near-military precision on the North Carolina Amtrak train, The Piedmont.

I traveled to Charlotte for a two-day conference, and given the location of the conference hotel and the time I needed to be there, the train made perfect sense. I drove to Burlington and boarded train 73 on Wednesday morning. Due to some school traffic in rural Orange and Alamance County, I nearly missed the train- I stepped onto the platform at 7:51, and the train departed right on time at 7:53. The station attendant said “cutting it close, huh?” I told him not having to go through security theater and wait an hour to board was the big advantage of the train over the airport. He agreed, checked my ID, saw that I had an E-ticket in the Amtrak app on my phone, and sent me on my way.

NCDOT City of Burlington Locomotive

For those who have not ridden the train before, or at least not recently, here’s what you can expect these days.

The train was practically spotless- seats and floors clean, windows washed, with convenient trash/recycling bins everywhere.
The morning train I took was a mix of business travelers and families/individuals traveling for leisure. The evening train back was the same, but with a significant percentage of college students in the mix
We hit all our station stops on time southbound, and arrived into Charlotte four minutes early
Most of the track is continuously welded rail, which makes for a smooth ride
The Cafe Car is now completely self-serve. Coffee is free; there are vending machines for soda and snacks.
If you get off in Charlotte, you will find yourself south of Downtown, but across the street, the #11 bus ($2.00) will take you Uptown to both the Transportation Center and the Lynx Light Rail in about eight minutes.
Electric outlets at all seats- I sent emails and charged my phone most of the way
There are some nice touches celebrating the Old North State- etched glass panels bearing the state seal; all of the locomotives are named for NC cities, with their number denoting the year the city was founded; a paint scheme derived from the red, blue, and silver in the state flag, and passenger cars named for the State Flower (Dogwood), State Bird (Cardinal), State Mammal (Gray Squirrel), State Reptile (Box Turtle), State Shell (Scotch Bonnet) and more.
Yeah, I know you’re curious about the State Shell now. Tell us more, Wikipedia!

NCDOT has been steadily developing the rail service between Raleigh and Charlotte since the early 1990s. To keep costs low, NCDOT has refurbished equipment from other rail agencies, most recently adding former Go Transit locomotives from Toronto commuter rail service to their fleet to be re-manufactured and redeployed, far below the cost of buying new locomotives.

Over the years travel time has been cut from more than four and a half hours down to the current schedule of 3:10, which at rush hour between Raleigh and Charlotte, almost certainly beats driving.

Gray Squirrel Passenger Car (photo by Mark Turner)

The Piedmont has been one of Amtrak’s leading success stories over the past few years, and has regularly been a national leader in ridership growth. An investment of over $520 million as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act will add 32 miles of new track and make numerous other improvements by 2017.

The improvements will allow NCDOT to add two more roundtrips between Charlotte and Raleigh each day, for a total of five departures in each direction including one pair of departures between Charlotte and New York City on the (currently in service) Carolinian.

While my outbound trip was flawless, my return home hit a minor snag- we were delayed outside Burlington for twelve minutes while we waited for the over-an-hour-late southbound Carolinian to pass our northbound evening Piedmont. I still got back to Burlington less than fifteen minutes late, and I later found out that the train made up five more minutes and got to Raleigh only ten minutes late.

The bottom line- we’re on the verge of having a really terrific in-state train service in North Carolina. If you haven’t tried it recently, you should give it a shot on a future trip.

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!

Carrboro Parking Summit: Questions for Attendees to Ask

Posted on January 31, 2014 by patrick

If you’re attending the Carrboro Parking Summit as a citizen or member of the media, it is possible that at some point during the event, you will hear someone claim that Carrboro needs to build more parking downtown.

If you do, here are three great questions to ask anyone making that suggestion:

You are advocating that we build more parking spaces in Downtown Carrboro. Where should those parking spaces be built?
Who should pay to build those parking spaces?
How much should it cost to park in those spaces?

I look forward to hearing how it goes.

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