America wanted to have it all with no limits. Open space. Fast traffic. Big yards. Highways. Quiet neighborhoods. Lots of stores and lots of jobs. When you combine all of them, you get the average American city. Miles of low-density R1 zoning that doesn’t even allow a corner cafe. Urban highways cutting through struggling (and often empty) downtowns filled with useless open space. Big box stores with huge parking lots. Suburbs with huge yards built on former farmland.

We’ve created Blandville.

Blandville: A term for American cities that, in trying to blend urban and rural ideals, end up with soulless, sprawling suburbs, overly wide streets, and dead downtowns, creating a monotonous, car-dependent landscape that’s neither vibrant city nor charming country.

A few of the components of Blandville are pretty well known, but lets go into them in detail.

Stroads

You’ve seen pictures of them everywhere. Traffic engineers tried to combine country roads and local access streets. Charles Marohn called them stroads. The result was a Frankenstein hodgepodge of fast, ugly roads where through traffic and slower, local traffic conflict.

Putting major retailers and hundreds of curb cuts on corridors designed as through streets was a bad idea. Unfortunately, they’re everywhere now.

These roads lack the charm and bucolic beauty of country roads, and the streetlife and energy of urban streets. We tried to have it all, but got nothing. In fact, we got less than nothing, as stroads often have incredibly high rates of roadway injuries and fatalities. They’re also pretty ugly as far as infrastructure goes.

Neither urban or rural, they exist in a sort of gray area where people are trying to escape the city, yet still want all the commercial and retail choices of a city. Having your cake and eating it too isn’t a winning combination.

American Suburbs

Yes, there is always a market for suburban housing, and living just outside of a city is a perfectly reasonable choice. But the way American suburbs are designed leaves a lot to be desired. I attribute it to planners and developers trying to combine the country with the city and creating a weird, isolating hodgepodge that’s pretty unique to America.

Lots of open space, but most of it is useless (huge front yards) or paved over (excessively wide streets). The farmland is gone, so the neighborhood can’t really be described as “country”, but since corner cafes or any kind of retail/commercial is banned through zoning, the livability and convenience benefits of cities is also negated. It’s not country. It’s not the city. It’s also not a charming small town where you would run into your neighbor at the market square. They were also created with massive FHA and FHWA subsidies and outright federal spending. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but let’s not pretend that auto-centric American suburbs were conceived based on market demand or private spending.

Hollowed Out Downtowns

In St. Louis, 91 acres of land were demolished to make way for the Gateway Arch and the surrounding Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (now part of Gateway Arch National Park). This cleared 39 blocks of historic buildings and homes along the St. Louis riverfront in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a controversial process involving eminent domain that displaced thousands and leveled a vibrant urban neighborhood to create the open park grounds.

The riverfront neighborhood was replaced with suburban style office buildings with huge setbacks, excessive open space that’s mostly empty during the day, and highways. We tried to combine the city with country, but lost the charm of both.

This is one example of the Blandville-ication of American downtowns, but you can see it at a smaller scale all over the country: Excessive parking lots. Useless setbacks with ambiguous open space. Low density buildings encouraged through zoning that bring in 1/100th of the city revenue higher density projects would. Underutilized “parks” that are really just landscaping within building setbacks.

There’s often more underutilized open space and empty lots in American downtowns than there is in the suburbs. In trying to make urban areas more orderly and spacious like the countryside, we ruined what made them great: Their busyness, their density, and their diversity of building types.

The Tyranny of Parking

American cities didn’t just pave over their farmland for suburbs or their downtowns for highways. They paved over their potential for parking lots. Zoning codes across the country mandate minimum parking requirements, forcing developers to dedicate huge swaths of land to asphalt for cars, whether they’re needed or not. A strip mall needs 50 spaces for a coffee shop. An apartment building needs two spaces per unit, even if half the residents don’t own cars. The result? Urban spaces that feel like giant parking lots with buildings as an afterthought.

This obsession with parking is another attempt to blend the convenience of rural car travel with urban density, and it fails miserably. In the country, you need a car to get around. That’s fine. But in a city, mandating parking for every building turns walkable streets into car storage yards. It’s not just ugly; it’s expensive. Developers pass the cost of building and maintaining these lots onto renters, buyers, and taxpayers. In Blandville, you’re paying for parking you didn’t ask for, in a city that’s less livable because of it.

In some ways, American planning loves micromanaging the little things: 8 different facade treatments and 4 setbacks required for urban infill projects. Arbitrary FARs and height limits. Roads that are too wide because the fire department says so. Cafes aren’t allowed in suburban neighborhoods because reasons. Required parking lots are too big because some guy did a traffic study in 1974.

But on the other hand, American planning doesn’t like reasonable regulations at the regional level. Propose an urban growth boundary at a city commission meeting, and you’ll be laughed out of the room. Bring up densification around transit stops, and the NIMBYs will come out of the woodwork. Ask to study the reduction of parking requirements, and all hell will break loose. The planning profession has lost the plot. Planners no longer dream big, and they’re not encouraged to dream big, either. They’re expected to follow the rules and regulations written by other planners of a bygone era who seemed to hate cities, the countryside, or both. Their answer was to combine the country and the city so we could have the best of both worlds in one place. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

In the UK, I saw a lot of countryside. I also saw a lot of small towns and active downtowns. Everything in its proper place. In America, we’ve sold the countryside to private equity for more suburbs and hollowed out our most walkable places. It’s almost like the U.S. designed its cities specifically to maximize car sales. Maybe there’s some collusion going on?

The good news is that planners have the tools to undo Blandville and create places that feel alive, human, and connected. It starts with embracing clear boundaries between urban and rural, and realizing the value of both.

Urban growth boundaries, like those used in places like Portland, Oregon, can preserve farmland and countryside while encouraging denser, walkable cities. Planners can champion zoning reforms that allow mixed-use developments and higher densities within existing built-up areas. These changes can bring the convenience of urban life without sacrificing the quiet of the suburbs. When we build within our cities, we relieve the development pressure that consumes our farms and countryside. Unfortunately, there is a knee-jerk anti-city bias that many planners and politicians have, especially since many of them live in auto-centric suburbs and visit cities only during vacations. I believe this bias has held back a lot of progress, and I’m not sure the issue is solvable within our city planning profession. It is what it is.

But by putting people first and embracing bold visions, planners can transform Blandville into vibrant cities while preserving countrysides, where every street, square, and neighborhood feels unmistakably alive.

Enjoyed this article? Feel free to put some change in my tip jar. This article originally appeared on Substack.

The post The Rise of Blandville: The Cost of Mixing The City and Country appeared first on Car Free America.

State DOTs control many surface streets in cities due to a mix of historical factors, regional transportation coordination needs, and the higher traffic volumes of these streets. This is all well and good. However, many roads that were once local or county roads were taken over by state DOTs during the mid-20th century, especially after the establishment of the Interstate Highway System. The goal was simple: Move traffic as quickly as possible to and from interstates. Pushing more traffic through surface streets, many in urban areas with vulnerable road users and nearby parks and schools, was the priority during the 20th century.

Take, for example, Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia.

Aware of the road’s shortcomings, city officials have long sought design changes that would reduce crashes. But they are powerless to act on their own, because the boulevard is controlled by the state of Pennsylvania.

That situation is common across the United States, where many of the most deadly, polluting, and generally awful urban streets are overseen by state departments of transportation (DOTs). Often they were constructed decades ago, when the surrounding areas were sparsely populated.

Although only 14 percent of urban road miles nationwide are under state control, two-thirds of all crash deaths in the 101 largest metro areas occur there, according to a recent Transportation for America report. – Vox Magazine

With increasing roadway fatality rates due to a plethora of factors, FHWA and many state DOTs have made safety a priority. And a big part of safety is roadway design. While many state DOTs have constructed excellent safety projects which reduced fatalities, the timeline for projects is long and the need is great. The added bureaucratic layer of redesigning a state road also slows things down, especially when a project includes streets belonging to multiple jurisdictions (state and county or state and city). MPOs often make safety and complete streets a priority, but MPO priorities often don’t filter up to state DOT long range plans. A lot gets lost in translation.

State DOTs also have a lot of other responsibilities and oversee state-wide transportation systems. The nuances and community needs of some half mile state road running through some neighborhood often takes a backseat to, say, maintaining hundreds of miles of interstates or dealing with major national emergencies. When an agency is responsible for so much infrastructure over such a large area, even well-meaning DOTs find it difficult to act as a local transportation planning agency for much needed safety and complete street projects.

What’s the solution? Some DOTs have given their streets to cities, allowing more responsive street design. These projects are few and far between, however. But if a new national program were created, is this something that can be broadly applied across all 50 states and to hundreds of cities? If states did systematically give some urban streets back to cities, it would have to come with major funding increases. Difficult, but not impossible. Cities have far less transportation funding than states, though, and states share only 14% of transportation funds with their cities. Funneling more transportation money to municipalities (which, some say, is already owed to cities given how much they contribute to gas tax revenue and economic development) could be a long term policy goal to help accelerate safety projects on wide, fast streets – exactly the places where we need safety projects the most.

What would this look like at the national level? If formulas were changed to allocate more money to cities, cities could then apply to state DOTs to take over the most problematic state roads. Application criteria could include:

• Crashes: The more serious injuries and fatalities, the higher the ranking.
• Land uses: Schools, retirement communities, parks and other pedestrian trip generators nearby would increase the ranking
• Number of lanes: The higher the number, the higher the ranking
• Pedestrian/bike/e-mobility traffic counts
• Planning: A completed road safety audit with identified safety countermeasures would be required

Candidate state roads would be ranked, with the highest ranked given priority for this new funding. The state road, along with a percentage of new funding contingent on completing safety measures within a certain time frame, would then be transferred to the cities.

A new national program does seem like a heavy lift, but given the number of crashes on our state roads, particularly in urban areas, big problems call for big solutions. This program would also free up state DOT staff for bigger, more regionally significant projects while reducing their role in local planning issues – planning work that is more appropriate for municipal staff. State DOT focus could then shift exclusively to regional projects.

Let me know your thoughts on X. I’m thinking out loud here. @CompletedStreet.

The post State DOTs Should Control Far Fewer Surface Streets appeared first on Car Free America.

The lifestyle change is even more dramatic because she lives in an auto-centric, mostly unwalkable neighborhood. It’s one of those neighborhoods that might be vaguely walkable for someone healthy, as there’s a grocery store and some other services about 3/4 of a mile away via hilly suburban streets and stroads. But for people who have limited mobility, it’s a challenge. The identity shift of having one’s car taken away, combined with living in a neighborhood that is essentially inaccessible without a car is a hard pill to swallow. The way we’ve built U.S. cities compounds the mobility challenges almost every aging person will face.

So now, there’s an ongoing battle between my elderly relative who wants to keep her freedom (her automobile), and other relatives who recognize her declining driving skills and want to keep her safe. This battle is replicated in homes throughout the country because of how we’ve designed our cities. Giving up a car in most of the U.S. means being completely dependent on other people for most of one’s daily needs. And if someone lives in a retirement community, it means being dependent on other elderly people whose driving abilities are also declining. It amazes me how we’ve built almost all of our neighborhoods in a way that traps people once they reach a certain age.

Many of these issues could be mitigated by building more affordable retirement communities in walkable, transit-friendly neighbourhoods. But whenever I visit downtowns or urban centers in the U.S., I hardly ever see people over 65 or 70, which is a growing demographic. So where are they? Mostly still driving while living in auto-dependent places. The decline after the age of 80 is real, however, and living in a car-dependent place quickly becomes a prison after a certain point. A simple drive to the supermarket becomes a logistical ordeal if driving becomes impossible. This is also true if one becomes disabled, which can happen to anyone. I was temporarily disabled last year, but since I was still able to walk and take transit for all of my needs, the impact on my lifestyle was far less than had I lived elsewhere.

While I was visiting Barcelona, I noticed something that I seldom see in U.S. neighborhoods: A broad mix of age groups. Everyone from babies to 80 year olds. The mix of housing types, the high transit usage, and the pleasant, walkable streets all play a role. There’s also a plethora of “3rd places” in the city where people can socialize. If you live in a place where you can walk a few blocks to access all of your daily needs while also mingling with your neighbors (which has its own health benefits), you can maintain your quality of life far longer than if you had to drive everywhere.

Integrating retirement communities into our cities instead of isolating them in the suburbs is a great way to create inter-generational places similar to Barcelona. Diversity cuts across all demographics, including age.

Mobility freedom isn’t discussed enough in the planning profession considering it impacts every single person if they live long enough. Walkable communities don’t just mean mobility freedom for the next generation. They mean freedom for previous generations, too. They mean one less source of stress for families. They mean allowing people to remain independent for possibly a decade longer than living in a car-dependent place. And they mean better quality of life for everyone.

The post Being Elderly in Unwalkable America appeared first on Car Free America.

1- Zoning is a national law, not a municipal by-law

This might be the single most interesting characteristic of Japanese zoning that differentiates it from zoning in North America. Here, cities are essentially the sole masters of their zoning, they conceive it, adopt the bylaws and then apply them as they see fit. This isn’t quite wise considering how many cities, particularly smaller ones don’t really have the expertise to plan a city decently with euclidean zoning. In Japan, the national government created the zoning law, which it could do by mobilizing expertise to make a good set of laws.

That being said, cities aren’t completely cut off from the business of zoning. Though the law is adopted by the national government, its local application is left to city governments, as long as they respect the national law. So cities still have some power, but they have guidelines, which seems to me to be a good compromise. The only issue is that it eliminates possibilities of experimentation which could find better ways of doing things, as cities cannot try a different approach, they are bound by the approach established by the national government.

2- There are only 12 different zones

In North American zoning, there are often hundreds of different zones with different characteristics. In Japanese zoning, cities can only define 12 different zones, going from low-rise residential zones to exclusively industrial zones. There are certain variations between these zones, like the maximum ratio between the building’s area and the lot’s area, or the Floor-Area Ratio (ratio between the sum of floor areas of every story of the building to the lot’s area), but overall the rest of the zone, especially the uses allowed in it, are the same. The ratios I named just above are crucial to define what kind of density is allowed. And even though these maximum ratios can vary, cities can only select certain values.

For example, for Category I low-rise residential zones, cities can only choose a maximum ratio between the building and lot areas of 30, 40, 50 or 60%. The lowest possible maximum FAR (Floor-Area Ratio) is 50%. For comparison’s sake, in the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu zoning I described earlier, following the rules, the maximum building-lot ratio is 33%, though in practice, it is generally about 20-25%, which is typical of Québec suburbs.

3- Zones still restrict uses, but they tend to allow a “maximum” use instead of an exclusive use for each zone

In North-American zoning, zones clearly specify which use is allowed on it. In general, zones allow only one or two uses. For example, a residential single-family detached home zone tolerates only single-family detached houses. Don’t try to put a convenience store or a school in one, nor a duplex. Similarly, multifamily zones allow only apartments, don’t try to build a house in one. In commercial zones, only commercial buildings are tolerated, any kind of residential use is prohibited. Etc…

If we want to illustrate this principle of zoning with exclusive uses, this is what we’d get:

The columns represent different zones, the rows represent the different uses. When the square at the intersection of a certain column and a certain row is red, it means that the given use is forbidden in that zone, when it is green, that means that the use is allowed.

Note that I’ve put the uses in an order of increasing “nuisance”, the lower you get, the more the use is one we tend to want to separate from residential areas. Nuisance is a very loose definition, even just increased activity is considered “nuisance” because of the noise and circulation it brings about. That’s why schools are considered greater “nuisance” than residential areas, even if in fact we want to keep schools in residential areas, to keep kids from having to take buses to get to school.

If we wanted to illustrate the principle of Japanese zoning in a similar way, we’d get something like this:

The difference is evident. There is a lot more green. That is because Japanese do not impose one or two exclusive uses for every zone. They tend to view things more as the maximum nuisance level to tolerate in each zone, but every use that is considered to be less of a nuisance is still allowed. So low-nuisance uses are allowed essentially everywhere. That means that almost all Japanese zones allow mixed use developments, which is far from true in North American zoning. Euclidean zones CAN allow mixed uses… but in practice, it is very rare that they do so.

This great rigidity in allowed uses per zone in North American zoning means that urban planing departments must really micromanage to the smallest detail everything to have a decent city. Because if they forget to zone for enough commercial zones or schools, people can’t simply build what is lacking, they’d need to change the zoning, and therefore confront the NIMBYs. And since urban planning departments, especially in small cities, are largely awful, a lot of needed uses are forgotten in neighborhoods, leading to them being built on the outskirts of the city, requiring car travel to get to them from residential areas.

Meanwhile, Japanese zoning gives much more flexibility to builders, private promoters but also school boards and the cities themselves. So the need for hyper-competent planning is much reduced, as Japanese planning departments can simply zone large higher-use zones in the center of neighborhoods, since the lower-uses are still allowed. If there is more land than needed for commercial uses in a commercial zone, for example, then you can still build residential uses there, until commercial promoters actually come to need the space and buy the buildings from current residents.

So in a way, regarding use restrictions, North American zoning tends to be “exclusive”, Japanese zoning tends to be “inclusive”

By the way, here is the actual image from the Japanese norms. As I said, when an use becomes allowed in a certain zone (yellow square), it remains allowed in all higher zones (squares to the right remain yellow). The only exception to that is the exclusive industrial zone, which is meant for heavy industry that is best kept separate from other uses.

Note that this means that when a city wants to zone for, say, big commercial stores, they are forced to allow a variety of “lesser” uses in the same zone.Same thing for offices, if they want to build offices, they must zone for at least a Category II mid-rise residential zone, on which the smallest maximum ratio they can put is 100% of FAR (but they can go higher, up to 500% FAR), which means in practice apartments with at least 3-4 stories. If they want to allow bigger offices, they must also allow bigger residential buildings and stores in the same zone. This “bundling” of uses imposes mixed use developments on cities.

4- Japanese zoning doesn’t differentiate the types of residential use

I already mentioned how North American zoning tends to treat single-family and multifamily as two separate uses to keep segregated. Even different forms of both can be treated as different uses, town homes can be forbidden even in single-use zones, duplexes can be banned from zones planned for apartment blocks. In Japan, there is no such segregation. Residential is residential. If  a building is used to provide a place to live to people, it’s residential, that’s all. Whether it’s rented, owned, houses one or many households, it doesn’t matter.

This doesn’t mean that people can build 10-story apartment blocs in the middle of single-family houses (at least, not normally). As I mentioned, there are maximum ratios of building to land areas and FAR that restricts how high and how dense residential buildings may be. So in low-rise zones, these ratios mean that multifamily homes must also have only one to three stories, like the single-family homes around them. So in neighborhoods full of small single-family homes, you will often see small apartment buildings full of what we would call small studio apartments: one room with a toilet.

Once again, this type of zoning reduces the need of competence from urban planners to have a decent city. In North American cities, if the planning department doesn’t plan for enough multifamily or single-family zones, you can create big problems. There may be shortages of either multifamily or single-family zones, pushing prices up for that kind of housing. In practice, it’s most often rental units that get the shaft, resulting in sky-high rents as there is a rental unit crisis. In Japan, since they don’t differentiate between the two, people build what they actually need rather than what is commanded from above. And if there is not enough multifamily housing or that land is running out, pushing prices up, buying rundown houses and replacing them with multifamily housing is a sound business plan.

However, in practice, this largely means that multifamily homes tend to congregate around schools, commercial sectors or train stations. This makes sense, because as I said earlier, the revenues per square foot of land of multifamily uses is higher than for single-family homes. So multifamily promoters will tend to be willing to pay more per square foot and thus will beat single-family promoters for desirable lots, especially since multifamily residents will tend to favor proximity more than single-family residents.

5- It includes rational rather than arbitrary height limits

In North America, the number of stories buildings can have is limited, but these limitations are completely arbitrary. For instance, if buildings in a zone have 2 stories maximum, then there is likely going to be an height limit of 2 stories put on the zone. Why 2 stories? “Because that’s what is built here, so that’s what you can build”. The height limits make no sense.

Now, there is a reason why one would do height limits. Height limits to allow the sun to shine on the street makes sense, and one can argue that you need some space between buildings to allow some air flow. Those are defensible arguments for height limits… but they do not justify the arbitrary limits put in place in North America. When houses are separated by 80-90 feet, don’t pretend that you absolutely need to limit buildings to 2 stories for “air flow” or shadow avoidance!

In Japan, the height limit that exists make sense, it’s an easy rule that can be applied everywhere, it’s easier shown than explained:

So, the farther the building is set back from the street, the higher it can be. The wider the street, the higher the buildings that can be built next to it. These rules are sometimes omitted from certain places where they want to build higher buildings, like offices in skyscrapers for instance.

Note that this guideline also exists in North American cities, but is often bypassed by arbitrary height limits written in every zone..

6- Cities still conserve the right to require certain geometric criteria

Despite the national guidelines, cities aren’t completely powerless. They can identify zones where certain rules will be waived to allow higher densities, or alternately, establish certain criteria like a minimum quantity of green spaces on each lot, minimum setbacks, etc… But the basic rules of zoning are still defined by the national government.

Conclusion

This was simply a description of another zoning model to show how things can be done differently.

Personally, I believe these practices make a lot more sense than the current standard zoning practices in North America. The creation of a national law establishing a limited number of zones is, in my opinion, a great idea, as well as the elimination of the single-family/multifamily distinction and the inclusive zoning for uses rather than one-use zones. Using general rules to solve problems regarding sunlight instead of allowing cities to put arbitrary limits on height is an excellent idea. When you have a problem, the rules must be set up to directly solve the problem and be universal rather than arbitrary numbers which only have a loose connection to the actual problem.

In short, Japan’s zoning laws are more rational, more efficient and just plain better than what we do now.

Now, this isn’t the only model around. New Urbanists push for form-based zoning to favor walking and to allow mixed used developments. Houston in Texas is known as a city without zoning because it doesn’t restrict land use through its planning agency, anything can theoretically be built anywhere (though there are private covenants that limit what land can be used for and there used to be stringent minimum lot and minimum parking rules that severely restrained density).

What’s important to take away is the incredible mess that our indefensible euclidean zoning has made of our cities and that there are many better ways to zone our cities that are out there. The question isn’t whether we should change our zoning laws or not, it’s how they should be changed.

The post Japanese Zoning appeared first on Car Free America.

I’ve been walking and cycling along Phase 2 extensively, and now that it’s largely complete, I’ve noticed some safety issues that I hope are resolved with future projects. These issues involve the intersections that pass through the Underline. Some of them are more a matter of convenience, but most involve a danger to the growing number of people who use the trail. Here’s my list:

• SW 13th St: The mid-block pedestrian signal should be on recall (automatic), and not actuated (activated by push button). There are enough pedestrians that cross here to necessitate a “Walk” during each red phase of the adjacent signal. The actuated pedestrian signal causes significant delay for trail users and encourages people to cross against the light rather than wait for the signal. Timing the pedestrian signal to the one at the SW 1st Ave. intersection would make a world of difference.
  
  
• SW 25th Rd: A difficult signalized intersection for pedestrians and cyclists. It’s next to a I-95 off ramp which allows right turn on reds that cross the trail. There’s a pedestrian activated flashing beacon here and new crosswalks, but 5 lanes of traffic adjacent to a highway and a trail crossing aren’t a good combination. My concern is traffic turning right from SB I-95, since drivers may not have time to react to pedestrians if they take the corner fast and speed through the SW 1st @ SW25th intersection. It looks like there’s enough right-of-way to create a 6′ wide median refuge island here, however, which would slow traffic a bit and make the trail crossing more visible. Long term, a pedestrian hybrid beacon or full signal would be ideal if it were timed with adjacent signals.

• SW 26th Rd: This is another tough signalized intersection. There are new crosswalks, bike crossing markings and a refuge island here, but traffic getting off of I-95 and turning right across the trail poses a significant risk to pedestrians. There’s also a pedestrian activated flashing beacon, but that may not be enough to stop drivers in time given the geometry of the WB turn lane coming off of I-95. Short term, I would replace the flashing beacon with a pedestrian hybrid beacon or full signal. Long term, I would redesign the right turn channel off of I-95 to create an urban T-intersection to replace the “swoopyness” of the road. A tighter turn radius would slow traffic down and give drivers more time to react to trail users. Surface roads shouldn’t be designed like highway ramps.

• SW 16th St: There’s a new crosswalk here along with removal of a channelized right turn, which helps. But this is still a wide intersection (about 80′ across) that creates a lot of pedestrian/vehicle conflicts. There’s enough right-of-way to shift the lanes on SW 16 St. slightly to create a 6′ wide pedestrian refuge island. I’m told that raised crosswalks were not permitted along the Underline, however, which is unfortunate because it’s the ideal solution to slow traffic and increase driver awareness. Given this limitation, a leading pedestrian interval (LPI) would also be a great safety countermeasure to protect trail users from turning vehicles during their “Walk” phase.

• SW 17th St.: Same situation as SW 16th St. A median refuge island may not fit here, however, but an LPI should be installed to protect trail users.
  
  
• SW 19th St.: The last intersection of the Phase 2 segment. Since it’s unsignalized, it seems like a raised crosswalk would be ideal (if allowed in the future).

A lot of progress has been made with the Underline, but my concern is that these intersections will lead to an increasing number of vehicle crashes with trail users if additional safety countermeasures aren’t installed. The Underline should be a safe, contiguous path even across intersecting roadways. This means expecting drivers to drive slower and stop more often across the trail to accommodate its increasing number of users.

The post Miami’s Underline Is Great. Here’s How We Make It Even Better appeared first on Car Free America.

Biscayne is essentially a border vacuum, a phrase coined by urbanist and writer Jane Jacobs. She writes:

A border—the perimeter of a single massive or stretched-out use of territory—forms the edge of an area of ‘ordinary’ city. Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence.

Border vacuums are often anti-urban and divide neighborhoods. Unlike regular borders, they exert a negative influence on surrounding areas. They can be superblocks, railroad tracks, long blank building facades, wide, inaccessible streets, or even poorly planned waterfronts. They stifle pedestrian access and create a psychological and physical barrier dividing neighborhoods. Biscayne Blvd has evolved over the years as the primary border vacuum between neighbourhoods west of it and wealthier, waterfront neighborhoods to the east. The primary issue serving to divide these neighborhoods is a lack of safe pedestrian crossing opportunities along the entire boulevard.

NACTO recommends pedestrian crossings every 200 feet in urban areas, or about every city block. There are areas on Biscayne where there’s 1000 feet between crossings, and sometimes more. While I don’t recommend signals at every intersection, Biscayne does need more signal density. And Biscayne also needs to function more like a local road rather than a through street. It’s unacceptable to expect people to walk so far out of their way to access a safe crossing. While FDOT has taken the initiative of installing Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFBs) at several mid-block locations, it’s not enough.

FHWA recommends Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons (PHBs) on streets with posted speed limits over 40mph (Biscayne is 30mph), but given Biscayne’s high volumes and frequent speeding, I’d replace all RRFBs with PHBs to increase driver compliance. If PHBs are too complicated for drivers to understand (something I’ve been hearing lately), just use a regular signal at the mid-block location. There’s no mistaking the meaning of a red light.

New mid-block crossings with PHBs or regular signals should also be placed proactively near new developments all along Biscayne Blvd. Many new residents and office workers will walk for a significant portion of their daily trips as projects come online. New mid-block crossings will help knit together neighborhoods that have been divided by the lack of safe crossings on Biscayne.

Now for the signalized intersections. I’ve written about Leading Pedestrian Intervals extensively, and other FDOT districts have installed hundreds of them in urban areas, but Miami still seems averse to them. I would trial run the busiest Biscayne intersections in Miami with LPIs for several months to prove to officials how effective they are. Phase 2 would include every signal on Biscayne. I’d also experiment with No Turn On Reds and Pedestrian Scrambles at certain intersections, giving pedestrians added protection during their walk phases.

Upgrading mid-block crossings and LPIs would go a long way in making Biscayne Boulevard safer for pedestrians and preparing the street for our evolving neighbourhoods. These upgrades are relatively cheap and could be installed within a year if FDOT, Miami Dade County and the City work together. Preventing another tragedy like what happened to Jaklin Sabag should be a priority for officials who claim to want safer streets.

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So it was relief when we heard the roundabout at this location was being expedited by FDOT. Roundabouts are one of the most effective ways to reduce crashes and fatalities at intersections, especially weirdly configured intersections with a lot of traffic. As I learned more about the SW 13th St. design and watched construction progress, however, I became concerned. I saw that certain left turning movements within the roundabout required cars to cross 2 lanes of traffic within a very short distance. This has to do with the small radius of the roundabout and its 2 lane configuration, whereby southbound to eastbound traffic only has a few feet to make a turn from the outer roundabout lane to the inner lane in order to make a left. 2 lane roundabouts such as this one can create additional vehicular conflicts compared to single lane roundabouts.

While I do like the signals on (almost) every leg to stop traffic for pedestrians, I also noticed the oddly placed pedestrian crosswalk on the eastern leg.

Yes, there are now high visibility crosswalks on all intersection legs, but Aaron DeMayo of Future Vision Studios also had a plethora of comments on the FDOT plans.

Unfortunately, most of DeMayo’s comments suggesting a single lane, bar-bell shaped roundabout were not implemented, even though a similar roundabout was built a few miles away in Coconut Grove. The concept he proposed is a superior product compared to FDOT’s plans. Construction on the roundabout was completed a few months ago and it will be interesting to look at the crash data. While I expect injuries and fatalities to still be much lower than pre-construction, these design issues are a missed opportunity to not only address traffic conflict issues but improve the urban design of the intersection.

Not to be outdone, I also noticed Brickell’s roundabout at SE 6th Street, built several years ago, has some design issues. The lack of a pedestrian crossing on the western leg, and the swoopy south to west bypass lane are the most glaring problems. Having large segments of traffic completely bypass the roundabout defeats the very purpose of the roundabout: To slow down traffic.

I often see pedestrians walking from the west side of the S. Miami Ave bridge, realize there’s no crosswalk, and run mid-block across several lanes of traffic to get to the Brickell City Center on the east side of the roundabout. The high-speed southbound bypass lanes make this roundabout almost completely useless at slowing down traffic and improving pedestrian accessibility.

These design issues all seem to err on the side of speeding up vehicles through the roundabouts. It seems some engineers want the best of both worlds: The safety benefits of converting traditional intersections into roundabouts, and an intersection which doesn’t slow down drivers too much. Unfortunately, these two goals are incompatible with each other. The best roundabouts are those that make drivers slow down to 20mph or less because driving faster feels unsafe due to the design speed. So while it can be said that even a poorly designed roundabout is better than no roundabout at all, accommodating all pedestrian movements and dramatically slowing vehicle speeds is just as important as the decision to construct a roundabout. Let’s hope future designs take this into account.

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Let’s talk about the pros and cons of LPIs. To play devil’s advocate, I’ll list the major con first and get it out of the way. These are arguments I’ve heard from [redacted] agencies who are still hesitant to try LPIs.

• Impact on Intersection Capacity: LPIs reduce the time available for vehicles to clear intersections during each signal cycle, potentially impacting intersection capacity during peak traffic periods and increasing delay. Keep in mind this is only a few seconds of delay, and signal timing could be rebalanced by extending the cycle length slightly. The fact that cars may need to wait a few more seconds for pedestrians to cross is, in my opinion, a worthwhile trade off to make intersections safer. We also need to think holistically about delay. Pedestrians and cyclists are road users, too, and engineers should take their trip delay into account.

The pros of LPIs:

• Pedestrian Safety: The primary benefit of LPI is improved pedestrian safety. By allowing pedestrians to start crossing before vehicles get a green signal, LPIs increase visibility and reduce the risk of conflicts with turning vehicles. Numerous LPIs have been implemented across the nation with results showing a significant improvement in pedestrian safety. The official pedestrian crash reduction is 13% according to FHWA, but other real-world results have shown a 34% reduction in serious injury and fatal pedestrian crashes. Another study in State College, PA has shown a 58% reduction in pedestrian crashes at treated intersections.

• Reduced Conflicts: LPIs help minimize conflicts between pedestrians and turning vehicles, particularly left-turning vehicles, which might otherwise intersect with pedestrians in crosswalks. Often, drivers try to beat pedestrians in parallel crosswalks so they can make a turn without having to wait for people to cross. This conflict is now eliminated, since the signal clearly assigns right-of-way to the pedestrian. In fact, LPIs can help improve traffic flow since much of the pedestrian traffic in a crosswalk is cleared out during the LPI phase.

• Increased Visibility: This falls under safety, but pedestrians are more visible to drivers when they start crossing before the vehicle signal turns green, reducing the likelihood of collisions.

• Encourages Walking: By making pedestrian crossings safer and more comfortable, LPIs can promote walking as a sustainable and healthy mode of transportation. Even for people who don’t know what LPIs are, they will feel safer at the intersection.

Ideally, LPIs are combined with No Turn on Reds (NTOR) to give added protection to pedestrians. This idea makes some traffic engineers uncomfortable because of capacity issues, but did you know that the U.S. is one of few nations in the world that even allows Turn on Red by default? Our drivers have been excessively coddled at the expense of eroding safety and increasing pedestrian deaths. If NTOR means drivers have to wait a few more seconds so that people have a far lower probability of dying on our streets, I will gladly take that trade off.

NYC, LA and other cities have recently installed LPIs, but the process is often bogged down by needless engineering criteria and bureaucracy, and signal-by-signal rollouts are slow. Yes, standards and formal processes for roadway changes are needed and should be used for many safety devices, but the benefits of LPIs are so great and the costs are so low (often under $1500 per signal) that this is a case where neighborhood or city-wide installations are justified. And that’s exactly what Tampa has done. FDOT’s District 7 has installed 500 LPIs over the past few years, one of the leading State DOTs that is taking pedestrian safety seriously.

Cities are always looking for low cost, high benefit, quick win projects that have a tangible, easily proven safety benefit. There is almost nothing that beats LPIs in this regard, and cities across the U.S. should be rushing to change their signal timing to reap these safety benefits. Pedestrian lives are at stake.

Resources and Research

• Bloomberg: The Incredibly Cheap Street Fix That Saves Lives (Leading Pedestrian Intervals)
  
• DDOT and VHB presentation on LPI results
  
• Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal article: Leading pedestrian intervals – Yay or Nay?
  
• The Urbanist: Bellevue Implements Strategies to Protect People Walking and Rolling Downtown

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Initially, I thought these regulations were draconian: A centralized economy putting additional restrictions on capitalist entrepreneurs. The U.S. is generally averse to heavy handed, top town regulations for private development, as we tend to let cities decide urban design issues for themselves. Several issues led to China intervening in the skyscraper party, however. The sheer number of buildings being constructed during this boom led to overbuilding, developer bankruptcies and poor architecture at a grand, highly visible scale. Since many developers are at least partially state-owned, that means the state was on the hook for many supertalls – even if left half-constructed. Overbuilding also means high vacancy rates. The Ping An building in Shenzhen, one of the tallest buildings in China, is still almost half empty.

Tall buildings don’t mean well-designed buildings at the ground level, either. Many of the supertalls that went up in China were inhospitable to pedestrians, weren’t integrated with surrounding buildings, and ignored staggered setbacks which would allow for light at the street level. A focus on the pedestrian experience and architecture that reflects the character of the city can arguably provide more dividends than a few hundred meters in building height.

It will be interesting to see how these regulations will change China’s cities. The supertalls already constructed will represent an era of unprecedented, untamed growth and experimentation. China putting the brakes on this building boom is understandable, however, and a shift in priorities may make China a model for urban design in the future.

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The rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs), often referred to as self-driving cars, has sparked excitement and debate in equal measure. Promising a future of safer, more efficient transportation, they also raise concerns about job displacement, privacy, and safety. If you listen to many consultants involved in AVs, they promise a new era of transportation, free from the worst aspects of having to drive a car while still traveling in a car. Many critics, on the other hand, say AVs will exacerbate the worst aspects of car ownership. Let’s explore the pros and cons.

The Pros of Autonomous Vehicles

1. Improved Safety: Well, maybe. This can go under both pros and cons. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to significantly reduce accidents caused by human error, which accounts for the majority of road accidents. These cars use advanced sensors, cameras, and machine learning algorithms to make quick decisions and avoid collisions. NHTSA is in the process of collecting data on AV safety and describes how driver assistance systems can reduce crashes. California is also collecting data on Cruise and Waymo AVs, and it shows promising results. On the other hand, there are many unknowns regarding AV safety, and we don’t know the consequences of having an entire highway filled with them. We have to think about other road users as well. Pedestrians and cyclists pay attention to driver feedback to negotiate right-of-way. How will they negotiate with an AV? What feedback will it provide? How will a pedestrian know that the AI recognizes him as a pedestrian when hoping it stops before the car hits them?
2. Reduced Traffic Congestion: Connected AVs can communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure, leading to smoother traffic flow, reduced congestion, and shorter commute times. Connected AVs communicating with a traffic signal, for instance, can change signal timing in order to reduce delay at an intersection. AVs can also adapt to traffic volumes and find the most efficient route.
3. Accessibility: Autonomous vehicles could provide newfound mobility to people who are unable to drive due to age, disability, or other factors. This could lead to greater independence and quality of life for many individuals. Of course, the same benefits can be said for transit without having to buy an expensive vehicle.
4. Environmental Benefits: By optimizing routes and driving patterns, autonomous vehicles can reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Electric autonomous vehicles, in particular, could play a significant role in reducing air pollution. This is the major benefit of AVs and electric cars in my opinion. Imagine a place like Los Angeles when more than half of the cars on the road don’t have tailpipe emissions.

The Cons of Autonomous Vehicles

1. Job Losses: A major concern surrounding autonomous vehicles is the potential displacement of millions of truck drivers, taxi drivers, and other transportation-related jobs. Preparing for this workforce transition is a significant challenge. Truck drivers are the #1 most common job in a plethora of U.S. states, and a technology that eliminates those jobs quickly becomes a burden to those states. What’s the plan to replace those jobs and retrain those workers?
2. Privacy Concerns: Autonomous vehicles gather vast amounts of data about passengers, their destinations, and their behavior. This raises important questions about data security, surveillance, and how this information may be used by companies or governments. Actually, cars are already gathering vast amounts of data about you and selling it to other companies as well as government agencies.
3. Ethical and Legal Dilemmas: Autonomous vehicles may face situations where they must make split-second decisions, such as choosing between hitting a pedestrian or a cyclist. Resolving these ethical dilemmas is a complex challenge that requires careful consideration. Also, what is the legal framework to sue an AV manufacturer because its software led to the death of a person?
4. Reliability and Safety Concerns: While proponents argue that autonomous vehicles can reduce crashes, skeptics worry about their reliability, especially in unpredictable conditions like heavy rain, snow, or construction zones. Ensuring these vehicles are safe in all situations remains a significant hurdle. Two Cruise vehicles in San Francisco recently malfunctioned and interfered with an ambulance, showing the problem AI has in predicting unusual (and usual) scenarios. I once heard an AI researcher describe self-driving car software as less like playing a chess game and more like a conversation. That is, in chess, there are only a finite number of moves which can easily be predicted. In a conversation, everything and anything is on the table and predicting the outcome of a conversation is much more difficult.
5. High Initial Costs: Autonomous vehicle technology is currently expensive, making these cars inaccessible to many consumers. Widespread adoption may depend on the affordability of self-driving technology. That’s not all. The cost of regular cars is also going up, with fewer new cars under $30,000 and almost none at the $20,000 mark. Who will be able to afford AVs? AVs may be unaffordable overkill for consumers when governments could take on the financial burden and expand fixed rail transit, which provides a host of other environmental and land use benefits.
6. Sprawl: What happened when driving was encouraged and subsidized during the 2nd half of the 20th century? Sprawl. The further people could drive, the further they could live and work outside of traditional downtowns. This created entire communities designed around the automobile which were impossible to access with any other mode of transportation. AVs may encourage another round of sprawl development as people no longer have to drive their cars, but can sit back, work on their laptop or even sleep while the car drives to its destination. Each new transportation technology shapes the land use around it. Intercity railroads in the early 20th century created compact, dense cities with defined edges. Trolley cars created walkable neighbourhoods. Cars created less dense, more geographically dispersed suburbs. New fixed rail transit systems are redeveloping neighborhoods with transit-oriented development. What type of land use will AVs bring?

Autonomous vehicles hold immense promise, however, they also raise complex challenges related to job displacement, privacy, ethics, and safety. Ultimately, the success of autonomous vehicles will depend on careful regulation, ongoing research and development, and a commitment to addressing the societal issues they bring to light. It’s crucial that we navigate this new world with our eyes wide open to both the possibilities and the pitfalls of AVs.

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