Bending The Culture Curve

There's been a lot of news since the last post about complete streets and safety at this site.

Traverse City leaders are making traffic safety a priority and released a Bicycle Safety Rules PDF.

Also See IPR: Bike-Car Crashes Concern City Leaders In T.C.

There was a study released on the most dangerous cities for pedestrians in the U.S.
See NYT: On Wide Florida Roads, Running for Dear Life

And the University of Michigan did a study that concluded Michigan traffic accidents have a higher external cost to society than crime.
See DetNews: Traffic crashes cost Michigan $9.1B, more than crime

These reports gave me the impetus to mention something that I neglected in The Mandate Of Complete Streets.

That is Culture. What makes walking part of a culture and why are some areas safer? Is there a culture of safety?

When I think of a walking culture I think of the U.K. Specifically, The Ramblers. Walking is so important to the fabric of English society that the Ramblers ensure that at least once per year every foot path in the U.K. is traveled in order to maintain the public's right-of-way.

Can we have that? How do we make walking safely part of our culture when for the last 50 years the United States has been expanding roadways and making roads safer for vehicles but dangerous by design (Transportation for America PDF report) for everything else? How does the culture buy into the idea that more than vehicles move?

While Complete Streets are a new thing in the U.S., the similar concept of Living Streets has been in England since 1929.

So we could wait 80 years and let the ideas of Complete Streets filter through the culture, or we could use data to drive our decisions.

At my job I analyze data sourced from across Michigan and establish baselines of how many Internet problems per number of devices is normal and then look for areas with abnormal trouble rates and search for ways to lower that baseline rate.

When I read the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute study: Societal costs of traffic crashes and crime in Michigan: 2011 update, I realized similar data was available in the study's data source: 2009 Transportation Data Center
Data Set Codebook

We had accidents per county and the census can give us population. Perhaps I could apply them?

I found some Michigan web sites with traffic crash data:
-Michigan Traffic Crash Facts
-Michigan State Police Traffic Crash Statistics
-Michigan State Police Traffic Crash Reporting Information

They had the reports I was looking for as PDF's:

-2010 Michigan Traffic Crash Facts for County/Communities
-MICHIGAN STATE POLICE CRIMINAL JUSTICE INFORMATION CENTER CRASH STATISTICS NUMBER OF CRASHES REPORT STATEWIDE TOTALS FOR 01/01/2010 THROUGH 12/31/2010 (all caps is the original format)

Methods

I used the 2010 Census to get population numbers.

I exported the crash data from the PDF's to a spreadsheet.

I then calculated median accident rates per number of people in the community and also plotted these on a graph to look for trends.

I did not expect to see any trends or correlations as there seemed to be so many different variables that can have an effect on traffic accidents. But that is not what I found.

Results

The calculated median accident rate for Michigan in 2010 is 32.2 accidents per 1000 people. And it all fit on a trend line (which surprised me):



Next I uploaded the tables to OpenHeatMap to see if there was any pattern to which counties were above this 32.2 accident rate and which were safer. Green is a lower accident rate and red is a higher accident rate by population.

Link to larger version: Michigan County Accident Rate (You can hover over each county to see its Accident Rate score)


It appears to me that rural counties have a higher rate of accidents when weighted for population.

I then applied the same methods to Bicycle Accidents and Pedestrian Accidents.

The calculated median bicycle accident rate for Michigan in 2010 is 0.13 accidents per 1000 people.



Full size Map: 2010 Michigan Bicycle Accident Rate



The calculated median pedestrian accident rate for Michigan in 2010 is 0.15 accidents per 1000 people.



Full size Map: 2010 Michigan Pedestrian Accident Rate


The Bicycle and Pedestrian Accident rates do not show as strong a correlation as total accidents but there is still a pattern.

When looking at the county maps it appears to me that the counties with a strong biking culture have the highest rate of bicycle accidents. These would be counties hosting large Universities where many students use bikes out of necessity and Grand Traverse County where people choose to ride.

It is harder to make sense of the Pedestrian Accidents map. It could be suburban walkers who don't have access to sidewalks are in greater danger.

To explore this possibility I made a map of the Walk Scores Of Michigan's 65 Most Populous Cities with data from WalkScore:



What you see is that city cores have higher walk scores and the suburbs get progressively worse (clearly evident in Wayne County). But is this related to safety?

At MichiganTrafficCrashFacts.org there is a Data Query Tool that lets you build specific maps and tables for defined areas. I used it to look at Traverse City and Grand Traverse County.

2010 Crashes in Grand Traverse County involving pedestrians:

You can see that though many pedestrian accidents were reported within Traverse City proper these usually did not result in injury. But the pedestrian accidents in Grawn, Kingsley, and Williamsburg while fewer in number resulted in serious injury and fatalities.

2010 Crashes in Grand Traverse County involving bicycles:

What I see on this map is more bike accidents downtown, but worse injuries outside of downtown.

What do we do?

Based on these maps and tables I believe that implementing design concepts such as Complete Streets can make roads safer for people, whether they are walking, riding a bike, or driving a car. And I believe that if we make the roads safer for all forms of transportation then more people start using those other forms of transportation. The economy, freed from the burden of unnecessary accidents, grows.

By bending the accident trend lines we can change the arc of our culture.

There are still many questions though and I hope that the research here can serve as a baseline for the future. Two big questions I look forward to having answered are:

-do communities that implement Complete Street designs see their Accident Rate decline?
-do communities with better WalkScores have lower accident rates?

For anyone who wants to do their own research I have uploaded my spreadsheet to Google Docs from there is it easily exportable.

Relating To The Big Picture

The census shows Detroit is going away.

With no other option to maintain infrastructure, counties depave roads as revenue declines.

And business owners report they can't get employees to move to the state.

Via Rustwire: Michigan CEO: Soul-Crushing Sprawl Killing Business (I was suspicious of this but looked into it and found that this letter was originally sent to the Michigan Municipal League in August, 2010)

We’d like to stay in Michigan, but we have a problem. It’s not taxes or
regulations. There’s lots of talk about these issues but they have no
impact on our business. We spend more on copiers and toner than we do
on state taxes.

Our problem is access to talent. We have high-paying positions open for
patent attorneys in the software and semiconductor space. Even though
it is one of the best hiring environments for IP firms in 40 years, we
cannot fill these positions. Most qualified candidates live out of state
and simply will not move here, even though they are willing to relocate
to other cities...

...We are becoming a place where people without resources are grudgingly
forced to live.

...There’s a simple reason why many people don’t want to live here: it’s an
unpleasant place because most of it is visually unattractive and because
it is lacking in quality living options other than tract suburbia. Some
might call this poor “quality of life.”

...some boosters trumpet our “unrivaled” freeway system as if
freeways and sprawl they engender are “quality of life” assets. In San
Francisco, the place sucking up all the talent and money, they have
removed — literally torn out of the ground — two freeways because
people prefer not to have them.

The reasons listed in this letter are the same reasons Michigan is at the bottom of the Gallup wellbeing index



The big picture is building roads won't attract professionals who can live anywhere; building capacity for people will. Some people say how Detroit goes goes the rest of the state. Some people think Traverse City is somewhat immune from downstate problems because of the pleasantness of the environment here. Regardless, the choices made for infrastructure send a signal to those who may move here. What do we tell them?

"I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means"

I'm borrowing that line from Princess Bride to refer to the word "Avenue". To many residents of Old Town, Boardman Lake Avenue would be built to route traffic around the neighborhood. To the City, Boardman Lake Avenue would be built as infill development in order to create more tax revenue.

Residents don't want the increased traffic that would come with infill development and the City can't pay for a new road without property to capture taxes from.

This is probably why this is being referred to as a "Development Project" now. MWaT had it earlier this week: Introducing The “West Boardman Lake Development Project”

The R-E later: TC delays Boardman Lake Ave. contracts

Relevant documents have been posted to scribd by Gary at MWaT: City Commission Packet Jan. 3, 2011 (begin at page 40)

What the City is planning on is having a process similar to what happened for The Barns at the Commons. But this would be for a proposed "West Boardman Lake Redevelopment Project" and would be completed by this April (I was being snarky at a City Planning Commision meeting when I referred to Boardman Lake Ave as a "construction project"; guess I wasn't really that far off base). However, nowhere is it mentioned that a traffic analysis would be performed by an outside agency.

This seems to me like planning to cook dinner before I even knew what ingredients I had available.

How can we rely on traffic analysis that was last done in 1993-1994 before downtown was such a huge draw? Wouldn't it be better to hire a firm to do a thorough traffic analysis first? Where is the traffic on Lake, Cass, and Union going to and coming from? How can we have a public study session if we cannot even identify the technical nature of the problem?

Timely related news via Grist: Do roads pay for themselves? Well, no

Praxis

In his Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about a company named Dumpmines which was bought by "Praxis". This company made money by mining old landfills to recover valuable materials.

Sounds like a great idea.

American Waste will soon be doing something like this. They are building a Material Recovery Facility (Facebook link) which will be able to mechanically separate recyclable materials from the incoming trash stream. What this means is even if you forget to sort your recyclables from your trash then ostensibly some of those missed items will still get sorted.

So if Traverse City is going to move ahead with a single waste hauler (though I am not sure this is something that needs to be done) then this ability alone would make American Waste my preferred choice. But add the option to opt-out and to have curbside yard waste pickup and they become the top choice in my opinion. And I have to admit that by allowing niche operators like Bay Area Recycling for Charities to conitnue to operate my ire about this program has been dramatically reduced.

The three proposals only vary by $7.20 per year; but in terms of the time each person needs to dedicate to thinking about and dealing with trash and recycling then this does not seem to be unreasonable as I believe dealing with American Waste will save me over an hour per year (in other words, I'll trade more than one hour of labor at home for paying an extra $7.20 per year to a waste hauler).

Kelly at RecycleChicken has put together a comparison table of the three proposals. Note that the only advertiser at the RecycleChicken web site is American Waste so this may not be a totally unbiased recommendation on their part but this is a good starting point.

The City has more information on the Single Hauler program at their site.

Thoughts On The Proposed Boardman Lake Avenue

[this is the email I sent to Traverse City officials]

Dear City Officials,

I live in Old Town, on Ninth St between Lake Ave and Cass St, and I strongly oppose building Boardman Lake Avenue.

My opposition is based on the fact that the proposed street will only create the problem it is seeking to solve. As a daily pedestrian I see a traffic speed problem, especially on Lake Ave, but not a traffic volume problem. Building a new road will only exacerbate the speed problem and cause traffic congestion.

Because building more roads will always lead to more traffic by definition - this is why traffic gets modeled as a gas - it expands to fill the space given to it.
Does the city want to build roads or fix the traffic issues? - you can't do both.

The neighbors I talk to want to fix traffic issues, not build more roads.

I understand things have been said to long-time residents of Old Town about the traffic in our neighborhood. But that was before Tom Vanderbilt wrote 'Traffic' in 2008. Before the Braess paradox (i.e., "in a network in which all the moving entities rationally seek the most efficient route, adding extra capacity can actually reduce the network’s overall efficiency") was understood to apply to traffic models. And in the last 10 years many communities tried to build their way out of traffic congestion only to fail; while communities that have closed streets have improved the flow of traffic.

Why would Traverse City try the failed road building solutions of the past?

Here are my questions for everyone to consider before Boardman Lake Avenue is built:

- Has a traffic study ever been done to indicate that this new road would work as intended? Or does the preponderance of traffic use Cass St as a north-south corridor into and out of downtown. How much traffic is related to St. Francis school pick-ups and drop-offs?

- Is there an example anywhere, of any town, ever successfully decreasing in-town traffic by building a new road? The answer I have found is No, more roads always create more traffic within five years. The lesson other cities have learned is you cannot build your way out of traffic problems and more streets always lead to more traffic.

- Does Traverse City want to spend so much money on a new road without trying much less expensive traffic calming measures first?

- What would be the environmental impact on Boardman Lake from more road salt and sediment?

- How will pedestrians safely access the Boardman Lake trail? I heard a person say at an Old Town neighborhood meeting that the Boardman Trail bridge was built so pedestrians could avoid walking next to busy Eighth St. But now we might put a new high-volume street between the neighborhood and Boardman Lake? So instead of having to walk next to a busy street we'll have to cross one?!

- Wouldn't this road simply move the traffic problem elsewhere such as...

- Would Boardman Lake Ave cause dangerous backups on Eighth St as vehicles attempted to turn south?

- Would Tenth St become a favored east-west route?

- How much more traffic would all of Old Town see?

Finally, as conditions exist now it is almost like being caught in a perceptual three-sided box. What I mean by that is that there are three boundaries that are perceptually hard to cross as a pedestrian- 14th Street, 8th Street, and Division Ave. Let's not complete the box with a high speed cut through that will not solve anyone's problems.

Thanks for your consideration.

Additional reading:

'Traffic: why we drive the way we do'
http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/

Removing Roads and Traffic Lights Speeds Urban Travel
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=removing-roads-and-traffic-lights

Braess Paradox
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

One Person's Trash

Some thoughts on trash.

There were many complaints about the rail cars parked on the private rail lines behind Boardman Lake condos. Apparently they blocked the view of the Cone Drive parking lot. I was surprised by the complaints as I find the means of industrial production to have its own beauty. Things like rail cars, bridges, skyscrapers, and freighters. What makes rail cars an eyesore yet a freighter in our beautiful bay an attraction? Why did people complain about rail cars yet seem to miss the trash scattered around Boardman Lake and the acres of invasive baby's breath next to the condos? In fact, I was saddened yesterday when the cars were no longer there.

Perhaps it is because working on a single issue (that really isn't a problem) is easier than fixing real problems.

Like Traverse City's single-hauler waste removal proposal. What problem are they trying to fix? What will this do to innovative business like BARC that want to offer comprehensive recycling and curbside compost pickup? As it is now I pay $10 per month to Waste Management based on a voluntary program Christine Maxbauer spearheaded. That's the way it should be - let neighborhoods get their own deals but don't get city government involved.

In other words, if you like having one cable company you're going to love having just one trash hauler (and told you can't use anyone else). That would be like telling everyone they have to use Charter or they can't have television and Internet.

Or it may be the city is working on a single-hauler trash program because that is easier than dealing with real issues that are hurting businesses and citizens. How about fixing a real problem like that recently highlighted by the Northern Express and craft a "BYOB" ordinance so the tiny restaurants can succeed?

A Nice Time To Focus On Good News

Since there has been plenty of complaining about biomass and other unresolved issues, here is some good news to celebrate:

@DowntownTC: Old Town Parking Deck anticipating to be Platinum LEED certified. Includes solar panels, green roofs, electric car outlets & bike lockers.

The Traverse City GIS Department is using ESRI software to make available the Tax Parcel Viewer.

And this news which will have a big impact in my life: TC to get year-round flights to Denver (now I am hoping for a Rockies - Tigers World Series)

[update 3/06/2010] New eateries, stores move in downtown


A Renewed Excitment[sic]

What makes Northern Michigan such a perfect place to own a restaurant? Everything. I think those who have lived up for many years may have become numb to what is up here. Often I am asked somewhat incredulously why I would leave Vegas and the enviable position I held to move to "this". I answer the same every time, "because it is world class up here." The jobs our farmers and produces do warrants, no demands, of us excellence. It falls on all of us to take the embarrassment of riches we have up here in terms of raw product and present it as perfectly as it is given.

New Sidewalks

Traverse City has been replacing sidewalks in some of the core neighborhoods this fall. And I have seen where existing trees have been given wide cutouts so they'll have room to grow.

As an alternative to cutours, I recently read about another option at Homegrown Evolution: Rubber Sidewalks Rescue Trees