Month: December 2010

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Lessons For St. Louis From the UK’s “20’s Plenty” Campaign

[B’ Spokes: I wounder if Baltimore with 42% of traffic fatalities being pedestrains will take notice of this?]

from Streetsblog.net by Angie Schmitt

If you ever have the bad fortune to be involved in a collision as a pedestrian, your chances of survival hinge on one crucial factor: the speed the motorist was traveling.

If the driver was going 40 miles per hour, the victim has only a 15 percent chance of living. But at 20 miles per hour, the pedestrian’s odds jump to 95 percent, according to research by the United Kingdom Department for Transport.

Motorists are allowed to travel up to 35 miles per hour through St. Louis’ 4th Street, a popular pedestrian thoroughfare in downtown. Gateway Streets

We’ve reported before that communities across the UK have adopted a 20 mph speed limit in a campaign to protect pedestrians and cyclists called “20’s Plenty.” The concept could soon be tested in New York City.

Given the striking connection between driver speed and pedestrian safety, it’s surprising more cities haven’t followed suit. Network blog Gateway Streets examines how this concept might be applied in the city of St. Louis, where motorists are allowed to race through pedestrian-laden downtown streets at speeds as high as 35 miles per hour.

The speed limit on the majority of streets in the St. Louis CBD is 25 mph. Outside the CBD, but still within downtown, speed limits are commonly set at 30 mph. Some of the arterial roads through downtown, however, have 35 mph speed limits despite crossing major pedestrian corridors. Pedestrian safety, it seems, plays second fiddle to making sure vehicles get from one side of downtown to the other as quickly as possible.

Perhaps most baffling of all are 4th St and Memorial Drive. Thousands of tourist cross these two streets every year to access the Arch and Old Courthouse. Improved sidewalks to cross Memorial Drive and the I-70 trench were only just completed last year. Yet, the speed and volume of traffic on these streets still scream danger. The 35 mph speed limits on these streets are unacceptable. For comparison purposes, the 3-5 lane streets on either side of Fort Washington Way in downtown Cincinnati—very similar to I-70 and Memorial Drive, here—have 25 mph speed limits.

When 20 mile per hour speed limits were imposed in the UK, towns saw road fatalities drop by as much as 22 percent and safety was improved for both pedestrians and drivers. Their example provides a great framework for the city of St. Louis, as well as other cities.

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Road diet on Lawyers Road in Fairfax a big success

from TheWashCycle by washcycle

This is data from FABB on VDOT’s results after reconfiguring the road to remove a traffic lane and replace it with two bike lanes.

  • Average speed dropped by about 1 mph, from roughly 45 to 44 mph, but there was a more notable change in the fastest speeds. Before the road diet, 13% of vehicles were recorded at 50 mph or above. After, only 1% of vehicles were recorded at or over 50 mph. These speed results led VDOT to reduce the speed limit on Lawyers from 45 mph to 40 mph.
  • In the four years prior to the road diet, Lawyers averaged 15 crashes per year. In the first year after the road diet, we observed only 3 crashes in the same segment of Lawyers, for an 80 percent drop. It is too early to make any firm conclusions about the safety results, but the initial trend is very encouraging.

And from a survey

  • 69 percent of respondents said Lawyers seems safer after the road diet was implemented, compared with 15 percent who felt that it seems less safe.
  • 47 percent of respondents bicycled on Lawyers more often than before, indicating that the road diet encourages cycling as a travel mode.
  • 69 percent of respondents said auto travel times have not increased, even though 59 percent said speeds dropped.
  • 74 percent of respondents agreed that the project improved Lawyers Road.
  • 71 percent of respondents agreed that other road diets should be considered in Northern Virginia.

That is really encouraging, and kudos to VDOT for pursuing this project.

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Reliant Fish Co – stop before making a right on red

Open letter to Reliant Fish Co:

This is to inform you that one of your drivers came very close to causing me a great deal of harm. Please inform your drivers that making a right on red requires a full and complete stop before proceeding (and that is at the first line you come to at an intersection not the last one, that is the crosswalk.) State law also requires yielding to any pedestrian lawfully in a crosswalk. This is NOT done by veering left a bit so the front part of the truck avoids the pedestrian and then sharply turning right so the rear of the vehicle can mow down the pedestrian.

Please help make Maryland with the 4th highest pedestrian fatality rate safer.

Thank you.

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Drivers must stop a school bus which is, er, stopped.

… a man who zipped past a school bus, while it was picking up children with its lights flashing and stop sign extended, was found not guilty recently by a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge.
"He can only be guilty if he failed to stop any school bus," Judge Marcus D. Williams said at the end of the brief trial of John G. Mendez, 45, of Woodbridge. "And there’s no evidence he did." …
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Let’s Improve Infrastructure and Cut the Deficit

from Our Failing Infrastructure by adickert
The President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released its final report this week. Included in the list of recommendations is a 15 cent increase in the federal gas tax to begin in 2013. ASCE applauds this proposal as a fiscally responsible way to begin solving the nation’s infrastructure crisis.
ASCE has long been sounding the alarm about the failing state of the nation’s infrastructure and the need to invest as much as $2.2 trillion over the next five years. But over the past several years, the Highway Trust Fund has relied on transfers from the general fund, at a cost of $35 billion, just so that surface transportation projects authorized under SAFETEA-LU may continue to move forward.
The reliance on the general fund has been detrimental to the nation’s fiscal health and has created an unstable environment for state surface transportation programs. Inclusion of a 15 cent gas tax increase would help Congress to move ahead on passing a long-stalled multi-year surface transportation bill, and bring solvency back to the Highway Trust Fund.
Increased funding for infrastructure is an investment in our future. If we succeed now, we can rebuild old and unsafe infrastructure, put people back to work and lay a foundation for future growth.
If you want to help the economy and make infrastructure safer, contact your legislators and urge them to vote on the gas tax provision.
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