I’m looking at a GOOD magazine/Streetsblog proposal for a “livable street” [As of 2019, the page is available in the Internet Archive, but it requires a Javascript that is not available. This page on Streetsblog NYC appears to show the “after” image from the GOOD page. The location as it exists at present is in the image below — identified through the Riverside Memorial Chapel marquee.]
This is a prime example of what I call the Photoshop school of traffic engineering. Anyone with computer graphics skills can generate a before-and-after comparison like this. Often, it looks very attractive to the untrained eye — but, whether the proposed changes make sense is another issue entirely.
It would be nice if the Streetsblog people who created this graphic had a few more clues about street design. Some of the issues:
- The Yield marking sharks teeth are backwards. In both European and US practice, the points face toward approaching traffic. OK, this criticism may seem trivial, it’s like Spiro Agnew (Nixon’s first Vice President, for you younger folks) putting on a cowboy hat backwards during the 1968 presidential campaign. But the mistake in this graphic, like Agnew’s, is emblematic of other, more serious problems.
- The photo of the street in its current condition shows on-street parking on both sides. The “improved” photo shows no parked vehicles. While there is what appears to be a parking lane at the left rear of the image, it is empty, and approaching it via a dedicated bus lane would be illegal. Yes, we’d like to see less motor vehicle use in cities, but how is complete elimination of on-street parking going to fly with residents and merchants?
- The separated busway is shown at the side of the street where it also makes deliveries to businesses on that side impossible without blocking bus traffic.
- With only two lanes remaining for general traffic, deliveries to the other side of the street will seriously impede traffic flow.
- Right-turning motorists are in conflict with through-traveling bicyclists and buses. That requires a separate signal phase for right turns and will increase congestion, especially with only two travel lanes for general traffic. Without a separate signal phase, expect crashes.
- The separated bike lane has become a sort of fetish, to the exclusion of issues of actual traffic accommodation. In the photo, the narrow bike lane is separated from the busway by a raised berm, which poses the threat of a diversion fall that would dump a bicyclist in front of a bus. The bike lane is bordered its other side by a vegetated median which separates it from other travel lanes. The bike lane:
• Has very limited and non-expandable traffic carrying capacity;
• Can not be entered from or exited to either side of the street in mid-block;
• Complicates turning movements, for both right and left turns.
Note how a bicyclist is shown swerving left into the crosswalk from the bike lane. The bicyclist has the option to turn left only when the traffic signal ahead is red, otherwise being blocked by through motor traffic, and right only when no bus is approaching. A turning bicyclist will therefore block the end of the bike lane for those who wish to go straight. A left-turning bicyclist must ride along the crosswalk to the far side of the street, and finally, if the cross street is two-way, wait for the light to change again and use the crosswalk to reach the right side of that street This is hardly compatible with comfortable pedestrian use of the crosswalk or with efficient bicycle travel. The cross street in this example is one-way from right to left in the picture, and so the hypothetical (Photoshopped) bicyclist must be swerving into the crosswalk to access a mid-block destination which was not reachable directly.
Most of these problems can be avoided. For starters, let’s talk about getting bus traffic on one side of the one-way avenue and bicycle traffic on the other. Or if there is to be a bike lane to the left of a bus lane, let’s do it the way Madison, Wisconsin did and avoid the problems with entry, exit and turning movements.
