Streetcar Conversations: I got nuthin.

Earlier in the week we had a bang-up Urban Lunch event and brought out Cece Gassner from the City of Boise to talk about the streetcar proposal. And I have to admit, I had a really unexpected bunch of comments and questions. I am really just confounded - I just want to throw my hands in the air and say I got nuthin’. But the public deserves to understand exactly HOW we go to this point - the point where we are potentially going to build a rail-based downtown circulator.

So to kick off the discussion, here’s the tweet stream that came from my good friend, Dr. Norris Krueger, just before Urban Lunch:

So Norris’s first question to me was, “Are you going to let someone from the other side present as well.” I said, no, this is just a representative from the City talking about the facts of the proposed project, there’s no rah-rah-go-vote-for-the-streetcar advocacy happening.

He then accused me of letting Cece present “her” facts, as if there was some kind of contestable scientific evidence being presented here, which he also accused me of. Now, Norris is a scholar, and I have a graduate level degree in social science, and I don’t understand how someone with a Ph.D. could question the veracity of a series of engineering reports and traffic studies - which is exactly what was presented.

Here’s the facts. In 2003, Valley Regional Transit launched a study called the “Downtown Mobility Study,” the purpose they stated,

. . . was to develop a comprehensive approach to mobility within downtown Boise and for people traveling from, to and through the downtown area.

The final report and implementation plan to improve mobility in DOWNTOWN was completed in the Fall of 2005 - OVER FOUR YEARS AGO. The results of that report were not exactly kept secret from the public. The Idaho Statesman published FIVE articles on the study in 2005, including these findings and recommendations printed in the January 12, 2005 edition, on the FRONT PAGE of the local section:

The Downtown Mobility Study recommends more than $100 million worth of improvements to prepare downtown for the next 20 years. The consultants who wrote the $600,000 study say Boise needs a downtown shuttle with buses or street cars, two transit centers to accommodate a variety of transportation uses, and a revamp for the I-184 Connector to make it more biker- and pedestrian-friendly.

So it wasn’t kept secret from the public - the Statesman alone has published 16 columns on the Downtown Mobility Study. So it must have been that the public had no input into the study, then?

Nope.

As that same Statesman article noted,

After this week’s open houses, officials will have a chance to revise their draft plan based on the feedback they hear. Then the study’s final recommendations go to local agencies for public hearings and final approval this spring or summer, said Pamela Sheldon, planning and development director for Capital City Development Corporation, Boise´s urban renewal agency.

Oh. Ok. So there was a great deal of media coverage and the people have all had input on this thing and the plan was adopted. So the people must have been hoodwinked by a bunch of lobbyists or a bunch of crooked, untrustworthy organizations with no experience in governance. That must be it.

The City of Boise, CCDC, ValleyRide, Ada County Highway District, Idaho Transportation Department, Community Planning Association of Southwestern Idaho and Boise State University joined together to oversee and fund the study.

Huh.

Ok. So the consulting report must have been prepared by a political hack with no experience in transportation planning looking to sell a bill of goods to the people of the Treasure Valley?

Well, here’s the text from the “About us” page from the world-renowned engineering firm, Arup, that did the study:

Founded in 1946 with an initial focus on structural engineering, Arup first came to the world’s attention with the structural design of the Sydney Opera House, followed by its work on the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arup has since grown into a truly multidisciplinary organisation. Most recently, its work for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has reaffirmed its reputation for delivering innovative and sustainable designs that reinvent the built environment.

Ok. So they aren’t a hack firm, but they don’t know anything about transportation, right?

Well, let’s see - they built the rail line between London and Paris, the airport railway in Hong Kong, the subway in New York, and the freight lines in Australia.

So here is where we are in 2009:

• We began with a goal of improving mobility downtown.
• A global engineering firm with an impeccable reputation as experts in mobility authored a now four year old study recommending a series of improvements including streetcar routes.
• The public gave its input at open houses, and in open testimony to the elected officials of the City Council, and the Ada County Highway District.
• The plan was widely covered in the most popular media.
• The plan was adopted.

So why now, when Mayor Bieter comes out and wants to actually do what he was elected to do - in fact directed by the public to do - are people acting like this idea was pulled out of someone’s backside? The next phase in the plan is IMPLEMENTATION.

There’s still more to this story - the “disconfirming evidence” as Norris puts it - disconfirming what exactly I don’t know, pending confusion on what a downtown circulator is for and what it isn’t for, but those are issues for another post.

The point of this post is to understand HOW we got to the current proposal to build a downtown circulator. It was through a rational planning process, conducted by experts, with input from the public, approval by elected officials, and coverage by the mainstream media. This isn’t some last-minute whim by a snake-oil politician as critics like failed city council candidate Dave Litster, and photographer turned municipal government gadfly Dave Frazier would have you believe.

Where in the Treasure Valley . . . are all the bike lanes?

I’ve been commuting via bicycle for the last year-and-a-half, and I have people say to me all the time something to the effect of, “I don’t know what the hell you cyclists are complaining about, there are bike lanes ALL OVER downtown and the rest of Boise.” As my recent twitpic tirade showed, however, that is not the case:

No bike lanes on Broadway

No bike lanes on Idaho Street in downtown Boise

No bike lanes on University Drive

So if there’s no bike lanes on the main east-west thoroughfare in downtown Boise, and none on the major streets near the University where HUNDREDS of students use bicycles to commute, just where the heck are they?

Well, they are currently few and far between, but ACHD is actually working to rectify that with a nearly 300 page plan to better prepare Ada County to truly be a safe and decent place to cycle (instead of just paying lip service to safe cycling as we have done in the past):

The new plan, if/when enacted, will finally resolve the issue of really having no bike lanes downtown. Below is the map showing current bike lanes in the downtown core:

Not a pretty picture. All we have now is bike lanes on portions of Main, and Ninth. The rest of downtown is a crap shoot. It doesn’t help also that 1) The city of Boise controls NONE of this; and, 2) that CCDC actually owns Eighth Street. Throw ACHD into the mix and you have a few too many cooks in the road building kitchen. The proposed bicycle lanes for downtown looks a little better:

The ACHD proposal adds lanes on Eighth and Tenth. This is a good start, but I still think we need to continue talking about our transportation system and what exactly we want it to accomplish.

For my part, I don’t want traffic moving quickly through downtown - that is only one vision of what our streets should do. My sympathies don’t lie with the guy who works downtown and lives in Meridian, who just wants to get his SUV out of here, up the Connector, and into his three car garage in a non-descript subdivision where he knows none of his neighbors.

Vision #2 is different: People staying downtown spending money, socializing, networking, and coming up with new ideas. A downtown that is cool, clean, diverse, and SAFE for people to wander, ride, sit, contemplate, enjoy.

These are our streets. The engineers we employ at ACHD build our transportation grid based upon what kind of downtown, city, and region we choose to live in. The new bicycle plan is a great start on implementing vision #2. Let’s keep it up.

Does poor infrastructure create unsafe conditions for pedestrians and cyclists?

As I rode through the Eighth and Battery intersection this afternoon I decided to take a couple of quick shots of the blinking light TCD’s (Traffic Calming Devices) that the ACHD engineer was so proud to tell me existed at this intersection. You have probably seen these before - these are above ground flashing lights that surround crosswalks. In most instances these flashing lights work really well. But not when they are completely run in to the ground:

So really - there’s no stimulus money available to repair some infrastructure at a crosswalk next to a SCHOOL, a crosswalk at which nearly 400 cyclists a day pass through during morning and evening commutes?

Will ACHD respond to Boise area cycling deaths?

Unless you have been living in a cave you know that three cyclists have died in Boise in the last few weeks. As a bicycle commuter, this is an issue of tremendous importance to me. I have in fact led my own small crusade on this issue trying to get ACHD to reverse the stop signs at the Eighth and Battery intersection. This is the intersection right behind the Boise Library!, directly adjacent to Foothills school:

Intersection of Eighth and Battery, Boise, ID.

I ride this every day as I go from Boise State’s campus to meetings downtown. The intersection is the only intersection that favors cars over bikes/pedestrians. In affect, ACHD has forced ALL the traffic from Capitol Blvd. down this street rather than dispersing it among Batter, Fulton, Broad, and Front, which would make more sense. It is obvious to anyone that rides this stretch that TONS of pedestrians and cyclists use this corridor. It is also obvious that cars are driving WAY too fast through here, an with all the peds and school kids this creates an extremely dangerous situation, that one day would lead to what I came upon just the other day:

As I tried to get through the intersection there was a two car pile up blocking traffic. School kids looked on.

I e-mailed my ACHD Commissioner and have not gotten a response. I have though gotten a response from an ACHD engineer, who described in engineering terms why they wouldn’t enact my suggestion to reverse the stop signs to slow traffic. Here’s the complete correspondence if you care to read the whole tale. The short story is this: cyclists are dying, your public agencies are doing nothing. If this is an issue you care about please contact your ACHD commissioners.

First e-mail from me to Commissioner Rebecca Arnold:

Rebecca:

Greetings. Just wanted to make you aware of a real problem intersection in your district (I am also a constituent in your district). I am staff at Boise State - resident urbanist in the College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs. I am a bike commuter, and travel the greenbelt up Eighth Street every day for meetings downtown. The intersection at Eighth and Battery is a serious safety concern. Bikes and pedestrians use this corridor extensively. As soon as they come off the bridge behind the Library! they have to stop so cut-through traffic can whiz by at 30 MPH. This is the only place south of Front where the Eighth street corridor is forced to stop. And it makes no sense. On the northeast corner sits Foothills School. The kids are forced to walk in these dangerous conditions as well. I would ask that you please make it a priority to alter the traffic pattern so that cars have to stop, and they seek another less dangerous route to cut through to Ninth Street. What I propose is moving the stop signs so traffic on Battery must stop. I am attaching two photos - one that shows the area, and a second of the scene I witnessed today as I came to the intersection - a two car pile up mid-intersction as Foothills children looked on. For dramatic effect I’d say that this intersection is an accident waiting to happen, but alas it already has. Hopefully the agency will act before the next one involves a child or bicyclist. Thank you -

Here is the response I got from an ACHD engineer:

Dear Mr. Blanchard,

Thank you for your recent comments regarding the intersection of 8th and River. This intersection as a topic of discussion has come up recently, which is not surprising since the advent of warmer weather usually finds a larger number of cyclists on the road.

This particular intersection is somewhat unique in the downtown area. River St. is classified as a major collector; it is the only east/west route south of downtown and north of the Boise River, providing a connection from Capitol Blvd. to points west. Consequently, it carries approximately 8800 vehicles per day. 8th St. is a classified as a local street at this location since it dead ends to the south; it carries approximately 1700 vehicles per day, not including pedestrian and bicycle traffic (more on those counts below).

When we consider intersections for an all way stop condition (AWSC) or reversal of a two-way stop condition (TWSC), we look at a number of factors that include traffic volumes on both the major and minor street, accident history, left turn conflicts, sight distance concerns, and pedestrian/bicycle traffic. Ideally, an AWSC will have relatively equal volumes on both streets while TWSC generally stops the minor street at the intersection of a higher volume roadway. If stop signs are located on major street approaches at the intersection of a minor roadway, it tends to result in vehicular noncompliance on the major street, since drivers become accustomed to a lack of conflicting traffic. This creates a larger disregard for stop signs in general, even in places where they are appropriately located. The more “unwarranted” stop signs we have on our roadways, the greater frustration drivers encounter when it is not at all obvious as to why the stop conditions were initially placed.

The accident history at this intersection, based on data from the last five available years (2004-2008), shows six reported accidents in that timeframe with no more than two accidents in one calendar year. One of those accidents did involve a cyclist, though the cause of the accident was partially the fault of the cyclist for failing to come to a complete stop and would not have been prevented by reversing the stop signs. When compared to other intersections in Ada County, the overall safety record at this intersection is excellent. Every year we compile a high accident list for intersections in the county. 8th and River has not made this list of the top 250 or so intersections, either in number of accidents or accident rate, since we begin this analysis more than ten years ago.

The other potential issue with placement of stop signs on River has to do with the signals on River at Capitol and at 9th. These two signals create “platoons” of drivers that proceed east and westbound at 8th. There is little space between the two signals to queue vehicles, even if the signals were perfectly coordinated. This would present a problem if vehicles had to stop at 8th, with vehicles backing up onto both 9th and Capitol.

In Sept. 2008, we performed a count of bicycles at this intersection. From 7am to 9am, we counted 141 cyclists at the intersection; from 4-6pm, we counted 208 cyclists. The majority were on 8th heading to or from the Greenbelt. We understand this is a popular cycling route; as a cyclist myself, I use it quite frequently. However, the number of cyclists combined with the light motor vehicle traffic on 8th and lack of accident history does not warrant installation of AWSC or reversal of the stop signs.

My recommendation for cyclists who use 8th to access the Greenbelt is to think of yourself as a vehicle. Stop when there is conflicting traffic and proceed when it is deemed safe to do so. For pedestrians, there is an in-pavement flashing system located on the east side of the intersection. While the flashing lights do not guarantee vehicles will stop, it does provide an indication to traffic on River that there is someone crossing or about to cross the roadway.

Thank you again for your concerns regarding Ada County’s roadway system.

Regards,

Joshua Saak

ACHD - Traffic Design Engineer

And, my response to the engineer about why his response makes no sense:

Joshua:

Thank you so much for the detailed response to my question. I very much appreciate it. As a trained and experienced urbanist, I approach this problem from a very different perspective, however.

Transportation networks are not a collection of street classifications that form a mechanistic system. Rather, they are social, ecological, and most importantly they are political. Our streets operate the way they do because of political decisions, and because of community values that influence those political decisions. This is why I e-mailed Rebecca; this is a political issue, not an engineering issue.

But if we are going to use an engineering rubric to look at this issue, we should look at the intersection I described which is Eighth and Battery NOT Eighth and River. Your analysis basically flows like this: Eighth street is a dead end. River Street carries 8800 cars per day. Thus, cars win. So let’s recalculate that equation with the proper streets: Eight street is a dead end. Battery street is a dead end. Now what’s the equation look like?

Your solution in the end is status quo: stop at the sign and let cars have their way. That is a non-solution ESPECIALLY in light of a city that has had three cycling deaths in the last few weeks. ACHD will soon be under considerable pressure from more than just the citizenry to respond to this issue. Now is the time for ACHD to appear responsive, not non-responsive.

Your analysis also ignores both past and future, and takes the intersection out of context. Eighth street for over 100 years has been a pedestrian corridor, and as many city and regional plans that you could dust off in the archives speak of the day when downtown will connect to the river with one vast pedestrian corridor. And ACHD will almost certainly have to make changes to this whole system as the rail line again comes into operation (the entire traffic pattern at Rose Hill/Vista/Capitol/Crescent Rim will change - likely BACK to the way it was before), and the whole Eighth/Ninth/Battery/Broad area will absolutely change as the Library district is redeveloped. So asking cars to take a back seat to a pedestrian corridor will happen in this area in the future, so perhaps NOW is the time to start visioning this area.

Cars have other options for this, too. Cars can go to Front Street and come back up. They can even use Broad - and stop - just as I am proposing for Battery. Or, they can approach the area from Americana. Americana after all was what the city “paid” to get the Bench folks to agree to throw in and incorporate with the City of Boise in the 1950s.

Anyway, again I appreciate the time you took to detail this response, and that you did it very quickly. That speaks highly of the agency. I do think though that this is a political issue, and not an engineering issue, and thus would like to get a response from my elected official.

We’ll see what happens next.