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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
| Can't tame the drivers, tame the streets
By Tatiana with Ribadeneira, Globe Staff, 3/12/2000
It's come to this: We have to be engineered into compliance with
traffic laws.
Unable to drive within the speed limit, or consistently obey stop signs
and red lights, or yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, or slow down around
schools and in thickly settled neighborhoods (including our own), we now
have to be physically coerced by traffic engineers to follow the rules of
the road.
Traffic calming: It's the newest and one of the most controversial
measures to try to control the nation's increasingly frenetic streets.
Apparently, traffic signs, stop lights, and police enforcement do
little or nothing anymore to rein in harried, hurried, or careless
drivers. Traffic calming, then, removes the element of choice when it
comes to stopping or slowing down. It introduces physical devices and
visual designs that induce drivers to do so or, in some cases, to choose
another route. So popping up all around now are things called neckdowns
and chicanes, speed tables and humps.
The traffic calming crusade has been driven from the street level. In
the City Weekly area, residents of neighborhoods in Cambridge, Brookline,
Somerville, and Boston have petitioned traffic departments to do more to
tame their roads.
Having redesigned numerous streets, Cambridge is in the movement's
forefront here with nearly 40 roadways on its waiting list for calming. By
June, three years after it began dedicating funds for traffic calming, the
city will have spent $250,000 for design and $1 million for construction.
Brookline, which adopted a traffic calming program detailing its goals
and policies in 1998, recently redesigned Harvard Street and plans to
tackle three other troubled thoroughfares this year. The town has
allocated $135,000 for traffic calming studies and $420,000 for
construction over the next five years.
In Somerville, traffic and parking department workers are conducting
speed studies, and the city plans to have a similar document in place by
next month.
Boston, pressured recently by a group in Jamaica Plain's Hyde
Square, plans traffic calming measures in a pilot program in several
neighborhoods. Results will help shape the city's traffic calming policy.
The city also has developed a scheme using some traffic calming techniques
to slow traffic on Congress Street between City Hall and Faneuil Hall.
Critics say traffic calming increases response time for emergency
vehicles, creates more wear and tear on cars and trucks, and sends traffic
to neighboring streets. The devices, which usually involve some
reconfiguration of sidewalks, curbs, and the street itself, impede plowing
and street cleaning, say those opposed, and these intrusive engineering
techniques inconvenience and obstruct travel by responsible drivers.
''We're talking about growing road rage, and one of the things that
aggravates us are these speed humps, speed limits that are too low for the
conditions, and police hiding in the woods,'' said Ivan Sever,
Massachusetts State Coordinator for the National Motorists Association.
The Wisconsin-based group, which claims 6,800 members, successfully
lobbied to repeal the national 55 m.p.h. speed limit.
''We have more and more cars,'' said Sever, ''and more people driving
cars, but less being done for cars and more and more against cars. This
just adds to the frustration.''
The frustration of drivers, though, couldn't be deeper than that of
Faith Michaels.
Outside her house on Walnut Street in Brookline, around 4,000 cars pass
by daily, almost half of which go faster than the 30-m.p.h. speed limit,
according to a traffic study. (Down the street, near the Lincoln School,
some 8,000 cars pass daily, about two-thirds of which exceed the speed
limit.) Michaels responded by erecting a plywood sign in her front yard
reminding drivers to slow down.
Her frustration led her take to the edge of the road on several days to
videotape the way cars, commercial vans, and school and MBTA buses ignored
the warning signs around the two schools on the street and screeched to a
halt to let children cross. Michaels' ''Wild on Walnut Street'' video, cut
to the song ''Born to be Wild,'' also captured one of the numerous crashes
she has witnessed in her dozen years living on the street. She calls
Walnut, which parallels Route 9 and is frequently used as an alternative,
a ''commuter's alley.''
Michaels' group, the Brookline Traffic Calming Coalition, presented the
video to the town transportation board, which chose Walnut along with
Winchester Street and Reservoir Road to be the next calmed under its new
program.
Across the Jamaicaway in Boston, Roberto Martinez shares Michaels'
annoyance. For 28 years, he has lived on Mozart Street, a long, narrow,
one-way on which traffic heads uphill toward Centre Street, passing by the
John F. Kennedy School and its playground entrance. The speed limit is 30,
except during school hours when it's 20, but cars routinely fly by doing
40 and 50, said Martinez. He got some idea of the speeds when a police
speed board was posted at the top of the street.
A cut-through from Egleston to Hyde squares, Mozart has plenty of
collisions at Chestnut Avenue, where many drivers fail to heed stop signs.
Martinez, leader of the Mozart and Chestnut Crime Watch, said his group
has been talking about slowing traffic on Mozart for six years, to no
avail. Last year, he joined neighbors from adjoining streets, including
Sheridan and Forbes, to form the Hyde Square Traffic Calming Coalition.
''When you cross the street, you don't want to feel like you have to
dodge a car,'' said Martinez. ''On a street like Mozart, it shouldn't be
like that.''
Netherlands led the way
A similar feeling kicked off the traffic calming movement in the 1960s
in the Netherlands. Angry at cut-through commuters using their
neighborhood streets as superhighways, residents of the city of Delph
placed benches and obstructions on the streets (they even reportedly tore
up the brick pavement one night) to force cars to travel at reasonable
speeds. Their protest shone a light on the peril of pedestrians, the need
to reevaluate road usage, and a desire to have cars share streets with
others. Dutch towns responded with a variety of strategies that gave
walkers a priority over cars.
Germany, Denmark, and other European countries followed with modified
plans, designing residential streets that curbed cars' speed to about 20
miles per hour. Although some US cities used some traffic calming
techniques in the 1970s, it was not until later that municipalities such
as Portland, Ore., and Seattle, developed traffic calming programs.
Cambridge started redesigning its streets in 1993.
''The thought behind traffic calming is that streets are for everyone
and everyone has to be able to use them comfortably, pedestrians, bikes,
cars,'' said Cara B. Seiderman, Cambridge transportation program manager.
''Cars are allowed, but should not have dominance over everything else.''
Roads designed for speed
That's a 180-degree shift in traffic engineering. For decades, since
the interstate highway system was finished in the 1950s and '60s, cars
have ruled US roads, even small residential streets. Then, engineers built
wide, unobstructed throughfares for cars.
''Certainly, the frame of mind when I came out of school was to move as
many cars as quickly as you can without them running into each other,''
said Mike Coleman, senior traffic engineer for the city of Portland, Ore.,
which started calming streets in 1985. ''We were concerned with volume and
capacity. We didn't know how to think any other way.''
As suburbs developed, their residents became car-dependent commuters,
and major roads became congested. Nearby residential streets, ample and
conducive to speeding, became a problem.
''With all the obstacles out of the way, they were safe for vehicles,''
said Jeff Parenti, a transportation engineer for the town of Brookline,
''but other users of the road were put at risk by cars that went as fast
as it was safe to go.''
The speed drivers perceive as safe, however, is frequently not within
the speed limit. Often, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety, drivers choose a speed they believe is unlikely to result in a
ticket. Seiderman and other traffic calming advocates blame the high
speeds on faulty street planning.
''Basically, the reason people speed is because the roads are designed
to allow them to speed,'' said Seiderman, who went to Denmark in 1986 as a
Fulbright Scholar to study traffic calming. ''It makes no sense: We have
roads designed for one speed and planned for another.''
Speed kills. It reduces the time drivers have to avoid crashes and
lengthens stopping distances, increasing the chances for a crash (no one
calls them accidents anymore) and its severity. According to the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speed is a factor in almost a third
of all fatal collisions, killing an average of 1,000 Americans a month.
Pedestrians account for 13 percent of motor vehicle deaths, according to
the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Cognizant of those facts, Boston introduced in the Legislature last
year a bill to lower the speed limit for residential areas from 30 to 25
miles per hour, said Andrea d'Amato, Boston transportation commissioner.
Statistics show those five miles make a huge difference. According to a
1995 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the
probability of a pedestrian being killed by a car is 3.5 percent at 15
m.p.h. The chances rise to 37 percent if the car is going 31 m.p.h. and 83
percent when a car is traveling 44 m.p.h.
Lowering speed limits on individual streets, however, is a bit of a
Catch-22, say traffic engineers, because before the state will allow such
a move, studies must show that 85 percent of those who drive on a street
are already traveling at the proposed speed limit.
''It's circular reasoning here,'' said Bennet Heart, senior attorney
and director of the Communities Project for the Conservation Law
Foundation, a nonprofit, member-supported environmental advocacy
organization. ''It makes some sense: The state does not want to see speed
limits imposed that are unrealistically low. No one wants to impose laws
that will be routinely and grossly broken.
''But I would argue that the 85th percent rule is flawed and is putting
the interests of motorists too high relative to other people,'' said
Heart, who worked with the city of Providence on plans to calm the Elmwood
neighborhood there. ''Under state law, traffic calming may be the only way
to slow down traffic.''
Signs, signals insufficient
Indeed, street signs such as ''Slow'' or ''Children'' are not
doing the trick, say calming advocates.
''Signs tend to blend into the scenery after a while,'' said Portland's
Coleman. ''They're kind of like a new painting on the wall. When you first
get it, it's special and you look at it, but then it just blends with the
decor.''
Traffic signals, too, seem to have a decreased effect on motorists.
Cambridge replaced a traffic light in front of the Morse School at Granite
and Pearl streets with a raised intersection a year ago because drivers
routinely sped up to catch the green or yellow light.
About 260,000 crashes a year are attributed to drivers who run red
lights, according to statistics from the Insurance Institute. Between 1992
and 1997, fatal motor vehicle crashes at traffic signals increased by 24
percent. A study conducted in Arlington County, Virginia, showed drivers
ran a red light at a busy intersection every 12 minutes, every five
minutes during the 8-9 a.m. rush hour.
Boston's d'Amato said the city has filed legislation to allow the use
of red light cameras. Attached to a pole, these cameras photograph the
vehicles whose drivers run red lights, allowing communities to enforce the
violation with tickets.
Cambridge's Seiderman said signs and signals, engineering tools from
the old school, have their uses, but are not speed-control devices.
Cambridge residents persist
Astrid Dodds doesn't have to be convinced. She's seen the
ineffectiveness of signals and signs first hand. For a decade, she and the
Agassiz Neighborhood Council have been trying to make Oxford Street in
Cambridge easier to maneuver for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers. The
spine of the neighborhood, Oxford Street runs from Harvard to Porter
Squares. The Agassiz School and a playground are located along the way.
Dodds, who has lived on abutting Wendell Street for 30 years, said
Oxford is ''an appealing alternative to Mass. Ave.'' and is used by quite
a few cars and trucks. Speeding was out of hand, though, and residents
approaching from side streets found it difficult to access the road. There
were, too, crashes involving children on bikes and pets hit and killed.
Seeking relief, the group petitioned the state to ban trucks on Oxford.
That helped, but not enough, Dodds said. Residents then barraged the
police with complaints, urging speed traps. Officers responded, but
couldn't remain indefinitely, and the problems reemerged when they left.
Next, the committee lobbied for more traffic signals. A resident near the
Forest-Oxford intersection spent 11/2 years documenting crashes and
near-crashes there, an effort that convinced the city to install a light.
With no luck getting one on Wendell because there was already a light at
nearby Sacramento Street, the group talked the city into a signal at
Everett Street, two blocks distant from Wendell.
The signals thinned traffic a bit, but the roadway still felt perilous,
said Dodds. People parked their cars too close to corners (nearer than the
20 feet away required by law), obstructing the view of motorists turning
onto the street from side roads. The group got ''No Standing'' signs.
Still, Oxford Street did not feel comfortable.
''We went through the whole cookbook,'' said Dodds. ''For people like
us who tried everything, we're easy converts to the idea that traffic
calming is more effective and friendlier to drivers, and less costly. We
can accomplish more by reconfiguring the physical world.''
Eventually, city officials agreed to redesign Oxford, with curb
extensions, raised intersections and crosswalks, and chicanes, which are
barriers or extended curbs on both sides of a street that force cars to
slow (see graphic, Page One). The city awaits completion of a sewer
project before making those changes.
Calming cost-effective
Parenti and Seiderman agree that traffic calming is self-enforcing and
thus cost-effective in the long run. A traffic circle at Williston, Evans,
and Downing roads in Brookline cost the town about $15,000. A speed hump,
wider than a traditional speed bump and the cheapest traffic calming tool,
runs between $500 and $1,200, depending on its width, Parenti said.
Lowering speed limits and installing signs and signals are passive
solutions that require driver cooperation and enforcement, say calming
advocates. In the Greater Boston area, where drivers are notorious for
aggressive driving, traffic calming devices are more appropriate, Parenti
said.
''Traffic calming is the great equalizer,'' said the engineer, who came
to Brookline from an industry consulting firm almost two years ago. ''It
doesn't matter how much of a jerk you are: If you come up to a speed hump
or neckdown, you have to slow down. You can't plow right through it.''
Still, opponents complain. The measures planned for Oxford Street in
Cambridge came under fire by some neighbors who complained the proposed
curb extensions and chicanes were ugly, dangerous, and did away with
much-needed parking.
Katherine Watkins, hired by Cambridge two and half years ago to manage
traffic calming endeavors, said the curb extensions will do away with
illegal parking, and 11 metered spaces will be lost between
Kirkland and Everett streets near Harvard Square to accommodate chicanes
and a raised crosswalk. Several parking spaces will be added in
residential areas, she said, by relocating fire hydrants to street
corners.
Portland fire officials balk
In Portland, Coleman said, opponents were often people living near the
street slated for calming, not on it. Concerned that traffic might be
displaced from the calmed street to clog theirs, they wished for calming
too.
It was the fire department that balked when the program reached its
peak about five years ago and some 100 speed humps a year were being
installed. As they do cars, the devices slow down emergency vehicles, and
the fire department, which had been approving the projects street by
street, said its trucks now faced too many barriers.
Coleman said the city did extensive speed tests involving various
engines and traffic calming devices, and finally decided to designate
''sacred streets'' as emergency routes.
Heart, of the Conservation Law Foundation, said that as with everything
else, there are tradeoffs to consider with traffic calming.
''Let's say we conceded that traffic calming on one street slowed down
an emergency vehicle by 10 seconds,'' said Heart. ''Let's agree that that
will happen and there is a risk in that. Then balance that against the
benefit that you'll get from traffic calming every day, 24 hours a day,
and think which one will save more lives and benefit more people.''
The Conservation Law Foundation has published two citizens guides,
''Take Back Your Streets: How to Protect Communities from Asphalt and
Traffic'' and ''City Routes, City Rights: Building Livable Neighborhoods
and Environmental Justice by Fixing Transportation,'' encouraging traffic
calming.
Another traffic calming bugaboo is street cleaning and snow removal.
Particularly in the snow belt, communities worry they will not be able to
plow or use other equipment efficiently if they install raised traffic
calming devices that protrude from the ground. Calming supporters rattle
off a long list of cold-weather cities that embraced traffic calming:
Boulder, Colo., Vancouver, Toronto, New York City, and Portland, Maine.
And the whole concept, after all, took root in the Netherlands, Germany,
and Denmark.
In Cambridge, speed humps and raised crosswalks and intersections are
marked with removable posts. Plows have stripped the reflective tape off a
couple of the devices, but Seiderman said that happens often even where
streets are flat.
Boston proceeds with trepidation
Such concerns, however, have caused many municipalities trepidation (in
this area, Boston most notably) as they consider traffic calming's popular
vertical, or raised, devices. While insisting the city is ''very open
minded,'' d'Amato repeatedly stated that a Boston winter can
restrict her department. She highlighted projects that involve mostly
signage and signaling - which she places with enforcement, landscaping,
and engineering in her definition of traffic calming. She said she sees
traffic calming as a ''combination of techniques.''
Conceding that signage and signaling appear to have limited effects
these days, d'Amato said, ''Signs don't solve problems, but we need to pay
attention to signs.
''Vertical elements are not the only way to tell cars to slow down,''
said d'Amato, who is also the mayor's chief of environmental services.
''Cobblestones are another tool. We can do this in ways that do not affect
emergencies and plows.''
The city did include some bonafide traffic-calming tools in its plan to
improve pedestrian safety and slow automobile traffic on Congress Street
between City Hall and Faneuil Hall. Scrapping a controversial proposal to
build a $3 million elevated pedestrian bridge over the street, the city
collaborated with abutters, advocacy groups such as WalkBoston, merchants,
and residents on a design that includes neckdowns, street narrowing,
sidewalk widening, and textured pavements. Bids for the work are to be
solicited this spring, d'Amato said.
The neckdowns, where Congress intersects with State and North streets,
will narrow Congress from three to two lanes, slowing traffic and
shortening the distance pedestrians must travel to cross the street.
Devonshire Street is to be narrowed in front of the Old State House to
create a pedestrian plaza incorporating what is currently a traffic
island. The plaza will help accommodate pedestrians using the State Street
MBTA station, d'Amato said. Sidewalks near the Holocaust Memorial are also
being widened.
The city is also changing its use of cobblestones in the area. Now,
pedestrians walk on a cobblestone section to cross Congress from
Government Center. Under the new plan, pedestrians will cross on a smooth
surface and cobblestones will be installed in the street approaching
intersections to signal drivers to slow down. D'Amato said engineers
considered a speed table or raised intersection in the area, but decided
against it because they worried about proper drainage and flooding.
Boston, which counts 300,000 cars on its registration rolls and
estimates 600,000 cars are driven into downtown each day, plans to study
traffic calming more closely through an interdepartmental committee formed
about a month ago. The effort is part of Access Boston 2000-2010, the
first city-wide evaluation of the city's streetscape since the 1960s to
identify future projects.
''Traffic calming is one of the many reasons why the mayor stepped back
to look at the city as an integrated whole,'' said d'Amato. ''Boston is a
huge city with a lot of roadways. This cannot be treated simply. There is
a lot of frustration out there, but we have to proceed as prudently,
cautiously and quickly as we can.''
John Panzer, who hung a banner in front of his house in Hyde Square
that says ''Sheridan Street Kids Say Slow Down,'' hopes the city will move
soon. He says it can be harrowing to get his four children in and out of
his car at the sidewalk.
''People drive like they don't ever walk,'' said Panzer, ''like they
don't know what it's like to cross the street when a car is bearing down
on you.''
Neighboring cities, contrasting approaches
In Somerville, traffic officials are also proceeding gingerly. William
Lyons, director of traffic and parking since August, said city
neighborhoods that are used as cut-throughs could benefit from traffic
calming. He said, however, the city will study why drivers get off the
arterials around the city to use residential streets and whether to lower
the speed limit, increase enforcement, or coordinate signals to better
move traffic where it belongs. Lyons did say the city planned to adopt
standards to apply traffic calming uniformly where needed.
''We want a comprehensive approach to the problem instead of
traffic calming being the be all, end all,'' said Lyons, who worked on
calming projects in his last capacity with a traffic consulting firm.
''We're not going to rush into doing traffic calming for the sake of
traffic calming.''
By contrast, it's full speed ahead with the new tools in Cambridge,
where completed projects have been well received and anticipation for new
ones is high.
On Berkshire Street, one of the first sites done, 85 percent of cars
were traveling 30 m.p.h. After traffic calming, speeds were reduced to 21
at the vertical traffic calming devices and to 24 m.p.h. in between,
according to speed studies. Ninety-five percent of vehicles now travel at
or below the 25 m.p.h. speed limit. The street got curb extensions, raised
crosswalks and intersections, and a chicane, all for about $200,000,
including repaving, said Watkins.
On Granite Street, traffic slowed from 28 to 24 m.p.h. Nearly
three-fourths of those who returned surveys to the city indicated they
liked the project, which cost about $100,000 because drainage pipes had to
be moved.
''Anything that keeps people safe and traffic moving in an orderly
fashion has to be sensible,'' said Charlotte Karney, a 6-year Granite
Street resident and mother of three.
A post-traffic calming study has not been yet done for Columbia Street,
which was finished last fall. But Sharon Stentiford, who has three sons
and has lived on Washington Street just off the strip for 13 years,
doesn't need a study to tell the difference. The city added raised
intersections and crosswalks, curb extensions, chicanes with alternating
parking, improved crosswalks, and 60 trees for about $300,000, Watkins
said.
''Because it was so straight, Columbia Street was a prime place to drag
race,'' said Stentiford, who worried about letting her children cross to
go to Columbia Park. ''You could hear the rubber burning at night and
screeching. I don't hear them drag racing anymore. It was a good
idea about putting the angles on the street because it forces people to
focus their attention on driving. They're not on automatic pilot
anymore.''
Leonard Paris of Fayerweather Street, whose wife's Toyota Corolla has
been hit three times in two years by folks using their street as a
cut-through, can't wait for a traffic calming proposal there to become a
reality. The city plans to extend the curb at a bend near their home,
forcing cars to make a tighter turn. The project also will include other
curb extensions and a raised intersection. Watkins said it will likely be
installed after sewer work is completed.
Advocates praise Cambridge
Long-time pedestrian advocate Ann Hershfang, president of
WalkBoston, said she wishes Boston would take advantage of torn-up streets
like Cambridge does. Cambridge coordinates its traffic calming projects
with public works endeavors. She said Boston has missed many opportunities
to improve its cityscape recently.
''Whereas Boston digs up the streets, puts them back and you don't get
anything out of it, Cambridge improves it when built back,'' said
Hershfang, who is also chairwoman of the Transportation Research Board's
pedestrian committee. ''That is just so smart and so cost-effective. They
have flexible thinkers and flexible engineers. Cambridge is a perfect
example of where there is a will, there is a way.''
As Werner Lohe sees it, there has to be a way. A Brookline lawyer, Lohe
lives down the street from the traffic circle at Williston, Evans, and
Downing roads and has seen what it has done for his neighborhood. First,
it did away with a 110-foot sea of pavement at the intersection, reducing
cut-through traffic and making commuters who still use the road slow down
significantly. Second, it made the community more livable. The circle,
Lohe said, has become the focus of the community: The neighborhood
association held its block party there the last two years; the Boys and
Girls Club planted daffodils in the fall; and neighbors have worked on
keeping up the landscaping.
''We have to make a decision about the future,'' said Lohe. ''Do we
want more cars, or more transit and places for people to walk? We need to
find solutions that make all these things work together.''
In this part of the country, there is no room for more roads,
say traffic calming engineers. They fear, too, that if they built roads,
cars would come.
''As a society, we cannot keep building ourselves out of traffic
congestion,'' said Watkins, of Cambridge. ''We need to be looking at other
alternatives. The way I see it, traffic calming is about a community being
able to make choices about its street. And this is really a community
decision: It is up to the people who live on the streets to decide what
their streets are like.''
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on
3/12/2000. |