Photo via Flickr user La Citta Vita
As Martin pointed out on Saturday, subtle anti-urban rhetoric is often too casually thrown into the public arena, intentional or not. But even in our existing legal framework, small regulations of this very nature abound in code, let alone the major restrictions that prohibit density and development. The most recent example is the case of Paulo Nunes-Ueno, who’s received flak for putting a sandbox at the end of his driveway for neighborhood children to play in.
By all accounts, Nunes-Ueno’s sandbox is technically illegal on paper, as it encroaches on public right-of-way. But in the practical world, the regulations prohibiting this kind of use are based off archaic notions of segregated uses and traffic optimization, mixed in with a fanatical panic of kids being hit by cars– all of which are driven by notions of privatization, which really have no place in a discussion about public streets.
The oddest argument I hear against Nunes-Ueno’s sandbox is the one that evokes the 5PM commuter rushing to drive home only to slam at 40mph into an unsuspecting child who was playing with sand only moments earlier. The imagery works because it’s sensationalist– motorists only drive that fast because they’re under the impression that only vehicles have priority in the roadway.
A lot of this has to do with how street design has been standardized in the U.S., with the division of public right-of-way into travel and parking lanes, sidewalks, planting strips, etc., all of which are designed for a single use. Regulating it in code means wider right-of-ways, more wasted space, and less land for development. The alternative standard, a street designed for a multiplicity of modes and uses, is a concept already perfected by the Europeans.
While converting all our low-traffic residential streets at the bottom of the network hierarchy into woonerfs may not be entirely practical, Nunes-Ueno’s case represents the small prices we still have to pay for outdated anti-urban regulations that stifle the city’s path forward for vibrancy and livability.
Converting all the little roundabouts into mini-play-fields would be a great traffic calming measure. That would surely slow down most motorists whizzing around the back streets trying to avoid the arterials.
Yeah, I’d let my kids play in those, that sounds like a brilliant idea.
If we want to slow down cars, make it crappy to drive fast there: Speed bumps, cobble stones, etc.
I think it’s hopeless. Americans generally treat every street like an arterial. It’s easy to do when you’re sitting up high in your SUV behind way too much horsepower. It’s going to take a war on car to change things.
I honestly don’t think most people would get upset about slowing traffic down in their neighborhood. No one wants to live or raise children beside a race track.
I live on a two block dead end, one lane, parked cars on both sides. I have neighbors WITH SMALL CHILDREN who race up and down their own street in their SUVs.
Do speed bumps work? Or do creeps just race over those too?
I think it depends on where you deploy them, like most traffic-calming measures. And how high they are. I’ve seen them on arterials (see, for example, MLK by Powell Barnett Park) where they are low enough that people can take them at 30. I’ve also seen them on private rights-of-way (like Canal Drive in Fremont) where they are high enough that people are forced to slow to 15.
And I think Matt has it about right – most people, particularly parents, want slow non-arterial streets. The real struggle is around the arterials, and finding funding to slow down the non-arterials.
For some reason, this comment makes me think of this cartoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZAZ_xu0DCg
Speed bumps don’t work. What DOES work is narrowing the road
I don’t really understand the psychology here, but there are studies about this. If the road appears narrow and curvy, so that it feels like you’re driving inside a gorge, people slow down. (The road doesn’t actually have to be narrow… but it has to APPEAR narrow. Overhanging trees are great for this purpose.)
The woonerf concept is actually American and originated in New York City in the late 60′s and very early 70′s – there are plenty of images of them.
I’m pretty sure the Hauptstraße in Heidelberg dates a bit further back than the 60s.
But, really if it dates from before cars, it can’t be a woonerf by definition.
So Pike Place is not a woonerf? :(
Cars existed in 1907, but probably not.
Sigh. Insert anecdote about how when I was a kid we played in the street all the time and people drove their cars slow enough in residential areas that they and the kids would see each other in time to avoid accidents. I’m kind of depressed that the planting area is considered a car right-of-way. I’ve always felt they made cities seem less concreted-over and that’s why they were there — to get a minimum amount of “green” space.
And I love the idea of converting some of the roundabouts to play areas. Would never happen of course because of the OMG CARS problem. Maybe we could make more streets so they are only thru paths for walkers and people on bikes. The “dead end” areas could then be converted to mini-parks and play ares.
I actually did play in the street, but back then the streets were empty between rush hours and on weekends especially Sunday.
The big differences now is the all day shop, work, play, multiple income families.
Also, when I rode my bike in the suburbs of Long Island it was like a ghost town…all the Dads being at work in “The City”. Now the jobs are all over the place.
Not longing for the good olde days, but it is a difference in how the streets are used.
How cities can get drivers biking:
We actually have some safe, slow streets right here in Seattle that are examples of being able to force drivers to slow down. In several of the older neighborhoods you can find roads with a single lane. Drivers take turns and wait for a car going the other direction to pass before they can drive. Because these roads are so narrow, driving 10 mph seems dangerous, so people keep under that.
My point is that we know how to do this. We can design roads for much slower speeds by narrowing them and expanding some other use, such as sidewalks. I think designing for 10mph is a good goal in residential neighborhoods, though I’m sure some areas would be happy to make it to 20.
Yeah, there are wonderful examples of single-lane conversions. In my neighborhood 19th Ave changes from a minor arterial (Galer to Union) into a residential street (Union to Yesler). In between Union and Spring, half-circle planters jump into the street to create a temporary one-way block. When I drive a Zipcar through there, I’m going 35 without thinking about it north of Union, while only 10-15mph south of Union. Those obstacles instantly reset my expectations for personal speed. It just works.
http://goo.gl/maps/FLbmx
For a driver paying attention to the road, those half-circles don’t slow a car at all. For the “one-way” section of the street, there are fewer cars parked alongside the road, allowing greater visibility. I actually feel more comfortable going 25 mph through those chicanes than along a typical street lined with cars on both sides (which can hide kids).
Our street isn’t “one-way” but with cars parked on both sides of the street there isn’t room for two cars to pass each other. Due to the narrow ROW most drivers tend to go very slow (though some speed through anyway).
@Sotosoroto Where can you take a traffic circle at 25 mph? On most of the traffic calmed streets with parking on both sides you’d have to be driving like a NASCAR driver to even get up to that mid-block.
Edit: replace “one-way” with “one lane”.
Adam, Zach was discussing the zig-zag-inducing half-circles in the middle of blocks, not traffic circles at intersections.
Here in Kent, due to a lack of highways, people tend to use neighborhood streets as arterials.
Even Kent-Kangley, which is a fairly wide boulevard for a suburb, turns into an Interstate during rush hour as its the main wait to get from Kent to growing suburbs of Covington and Black Diamond.
Those roads are dangerous and highspeed because they are so wide. Everything screams “go fast”. Kent has historically required wide streets in neighbourhoods without on-street parking and planter strips making it a pedestrian dead-zone (only reinforcing high speeds). This is changing to a degree do to new street manuals and the braveness of kids and adults alike taking back neighbourhood streets and biking on Kent-Kangley.
Lack of highways? South King county has so many highways they’re coming out of their ears. Kent-Kangley Road is a state highway. 509, 99, 599, I-5, West Valley Highway, 167, 18, Maple Valley Highway, and 900 (MLK) are highways. South King County seems to have at least twice as many highways as either Seattle or the Eastside or the north end. I’ve asked around why the south end has so many more highways compared to the other regions, and it seems to be because it was developed later than the other regions, when cars were more central to society, and also because industry was focused in the south end and trucks need large roads. The rise of oil made both wide-scale cars and industry possible, so they developed hand in hand.
So it’s strange that you think south King County doesn’t have enough highways, when it’s the place where people who want the most highways move to. Likewise, I’ve consistently heard that the south end has less traffic problems than the north end, because people can spread out on so many highways.
The traffic jams in eastern Kent/Covington/Renton are another phenomenon. The cul-de-sacs were intentionally built so that there’s only one road out of a neighborhood. That leads to traffic concentration, of course. The cities have allowed tons of houses to be built without enough arterial capacity to handle the traffic, so no wonder there are traffic jams there. Meanwhile in Seattle, a larger driving population gets around without as much neighborhood traffic jams because the grid allows people to choose many different streets rather than all converging on one street.
I love this city. We continue to surrender our roads to bicyclists without once questioning the need, but throw a huge fit when someone turns a grassy area that kids play on to a sandy area that kids play on.
Geoff,
We continue to surrender public ROW to cars, including cars using part of a RapidRide bus lane as a convenient place to park a car. I can think of no more inconsiderate place to park a car than that.
Car owners don’t own the public ROW any more than bikers do, but we designate huge chunks of public ROW for exclusive use of cars.
That bikes get to have a little bit of exclusive space shouldn’t be that controversial. To say they shouldn’t get any is very hypocritical.
Is it legal to park in the Rapid Ride ROW? What happens to your car when you do? Nice try.
And yes, car owners do own the roads (which you have conveniently relabeled “public ROW”) because they pay the lions share of the costs associated with them.
Why should bikes get exclusive space? They can share something they don’t pay for, but in no way do they deserve exclusivity for something they don’t pay for.
One other thing, bikers don’t even use the exclusive space they are given half the time, especially downtown. The city goes through the trouble of putting bike lanes on 2nd and 4th Ave, only for bikers to bomb down sidewalks and hold up traffic on 3rd.
But we are getting off topic here. My point was the mere hypocrisy of the original complaint about the sandbox. If non arterials are safe enough for bike greenways, they should be safe enough for our kids.
Geoff,
You might want to fact check. Gas taxes do not cover the majority of local road costs. Cyclists pay taxes too. And they don’t wear down the roads. Cyclists save the city money through reduced wear and tear on the roads.
Cyclists pay taxes? Since when? Oh right, if they own a car….
But again, Chris, that wasn’t the point.
Another blissful sole who doesn’t know where the city and county roads budget comes from.
I’ve tried both the 2nd and 4th ave bike lanes. 2nd itself is okay, but only if you’re over near the bus lanes on the right hand side, and can operate at high speeds. The left hand side bicycle lane is for if you’re feeling suicidal: door zone, trucks parked across it, what-me-yield-or-look-haha-no cars whizzing off and onto 2nd. 4th is too steep and car infested. Therefore, 3rd or the quite legal use of the sidewalk.
What possessed the City to put in such poor dedicated facilities might be a good question. Probably some combination of disproportionate funding for car infrastructure, politics, and geographical constraints.
As to the RapidRide lanes, yes, some of them are RapidRide lanes only during peak, and only in the peak direction. At great cost to taxpayers due to operating inefficiency, cars are indeed being allowed to park in much of the RapidRide lanes.
That would be great cost to SALES tax payers, to be clear.
Geoff, the vast majority of local roads & streets are paid for by *property taxes*. So, car drivers don’t pay for them… homeowners pay for them.
So if you go by the stupid idea that whoever pays for it owns it, the homeowners should be able to put sandboxes out if they want to, put bike lanes in if they ride bikes, etc. In fact there has to be *some* coordination between neighbors, or the public roadway (which you have conveniently relabeled “car facility”) becomes unusable. Part of that deal is letting the homeowners with bikes have some of the road, letting the homeowners with cars have some of it, etc.
troll
Not a troll, but thank you for that insight.
Here, Geoff. Educate yourself:
http://publicola.com/2010/08/31/we-all-pay-for-the-roads/
Seattle makes out pretty good on the gas tax. Bellevue receives only $1.25M of it’s total revenue from it’s share of the State’s Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax; about .15% of total revenue. The City gets more from Cable TV franchise fees. Of course the largest share of tax revenue is from sales tax (8.4% of the budget resources) and the biggest ticket item next to a house is the purchase of a new car. Maybe we should have Lexus lanes since they pay for more of the road than Chevy owners ;-)
Bike lanes aren’t for bikes. They are for no cars. Drivers use roads like maniacs if you give them too much space.
Thank you for reminding us that “road diets” are there primarily to protect pedestrians, but also bikers and car drivers, too.
It appears to be some sort of basic psychological problem: give people a wide road and they speed up.
You have to keep roads narrow in order to keep speeds down. There are multiple studies proving this.
It gets even worse. In some cities the land use code does not allow ANY play equipment on a street facing side of a residential lot. The justification is a combination of safety and attempts to make city codes match the regulations of a HOA managed neighborhood.
My aunt had to remove a swing set from her corner lot in a small town in rural Wisconsin for this very reason. The “yards” on the two sides of the lot not facing the street are very narrow and don’t really have room for the swing set.
I though the suburbs were supposed to be about liberty and freedom?
Heh. Yeah, that’s the right-wing pitch, but I’m not sure right-wingers know what freedom means; the managed suburbs (HOA-land) are about conformity.
Many small towns have avoided this level of psychotic conformity, but others manage to outdo the HOAs in fanatical conform-or-else regulations.
I think safety was a big driver of the regulation, turns out some kids got killed along the main road through town a few years back and the play equipment in the front yard was thought to contribute. The police chief at the time was the one who proposed the regulation and he had come from a suburb of Milwaukee which was mostly made up of HOA type communities.
There are a ton of bad streets in Europe, too. Just as there are good ones here.
Good point. Often because Europe does have superior public transit, it gets fetishized. But I’ve been on plenty of pedestrian unfriendly streets in Europe, particularly in Brussels!
Yes, Italy is a country I never want to be a pedestrian in again. Switzerland is pretty bad, too. France is much better in the North than it is in the South.
People do seem to drive faster in London and Russia than here. Enough that I feel uncomfortable crossing the street unless there’s a light to stop them. The drivers do stop to avoid an accident but it still feels too close to me.
Ireland absolutely sucks; and most of England is pretty atrocious too.
I liked my shitty Irish streets, thank you very much! ;-)
Well good on ya. I have some pictures of “county lanes” with 80k speed limits that are about 1-1/2 lanes wide with stone walls on each side. Great for riding a bike when you have to contend with farmers using kite string to herd cattle across the road and tractors (which drive through town to avoid taxes). Most disappointing place to visit I’ve ever encountered. But then the Irish seem to like it that way as it keeps foreigners away. With generational roots I understand the Irish fixation with property rights but it’s so closed down and development such a shit pit that the country is literally cutting off it’s nose to save face.
English road design standards are whacked, but in practice, stick with the old narrow curve streets and people WILL drive slowly. It’s just psychology.
The occasional wide streets in England are truly frightening though — once unleashed they drive like maniacs.
Yes of course, but European design standards (particularly German/Danish/Ductch/Swedish which have the safest roads in the world) are much clearer about the hierarchy of roads and appropriateness of different designs in different contexts. Unlike here I doubt many European design standard would encourage a standard bike lane on a road with speed limit above 35 mph, it would call for a separated cycle path. Similarly design standards for local roads call for significantly more and aggressive traffic calming.
I’d agree with all of those except Germany. I’ve been to places in Germany where low-level country highways plough right through the heart of medival cities and it felt like there was really no way to cross those streets safely.
Yeah Germany is the worst of the bunch, but I would just point out that in the context of this discussion I’m talking about their standards and laws, not what has been done in the past, which I think the other countries I listed have done a better job fixing, ie spending money to fix past errors.
Yes. From that standpoint, I think Copenhagen really has the best streets. Physically separated bike lanes are present on basically every major street, with signals periods for them! Sidewalks are mostly nice, and a lot of cobblestone areas to slow down traffic. The only thing was at times the streets felt a bit too wide in some area. We could do that here, but people get their knickers in a twist about road diets and “sharrows”.
You mean like this:
Bellevue was considering “bike lanes” for part of the Bel-Red corridor with 40mph speed limits. I think that’s been squashed but you never know until they stripe it. At least the new NE 12th bridge has decent ped/bike access designed in. But given the tizzy fit the Council threw over possibly losing 300′ of traffic lane to save money and improve access to the $3 billion dollar investment in East Link there’s still a long way to go.
There are bike lanes on Bothell-Everett Highway in some areas where the speed limit is at least 45. Naturally, at the interchange with 405 it just disappears with no guidance. Sadly, it’s actually the best way to make a lot of trips on bike, because any parallel road that goes through is full of frankly psychopathic cut-through drivers.
I was just watching a documentary about the Autobahn.
They cut through solid mountains just so they could keep the grade less than 4% so speed would be maintained without having any uphills.
Also the depth of the roadbeds is like 3 times deeper than average.
As Sherwin alludes to, applying highway design standards/principles (ie the idea of “clear zones“) to low-speed, low-volume streets is ridiculous. I can see the value of codes like this in arterials and some collectors but application to local roads is ridiculous.
If anything the city parks department should partner with blocks that want to do this type of stuff, maybe paying for a speed hump or two on the street. That will be a low cost win for everyone. A organically developed community gathering space, a safer street, and all for the cost of a few thousands dollars.
Speed humps don’t work. Narrowing roads, and making them appear narrower, does. I don’t know why, but that’s what the psych studies tell us.
So all you pro-sandbox people, when a homeowner wants to put something other than a sandbox or garden in a public right-of-way area, will you be just as supportive of his effort? When it’s something you aren’t in favor of, like someone building an extra parking space in that spot, will you still be ranting against “archaic and anti-urban codes?”
hint: curb cuts are anti-urban
I see parked cars blocking sidewalks all the time. I haven’t heard of any of them being threatened with $500/day fines if they don’t move the car.
A further irony here is that kids play on sidewalks. They do. I’ve seen it. Are they more likely to run out into traffic when throwing a football around on a sidewalk, or when making castles in a sandbox?
heh…and enforcing that law is probably right above the marijuana possession for SPD. I’ve called in numerous cars parked on the sidewalk, and only twice can I remember seeing them get ticketed.
You can get them ticketed and sometimes towed.
I vaguely recall ordinance 501.70.360…if so the senility probably isn’t kicking in yet.
In Portland it is very common to see planter strips with raised beds or other vegetable gardens. In the lower-income parts of Portland, it is common to see properties where they have filled this area with gravel and park some POS car. Both are accepted, generally. The car parking may not be legal, but I see it all over, so I would imagine it is not enforced.
Raised-bed planters are allowed in Seattle, with some restrictions. See this document for more info. The gist of it appears to be that you can build a raised-bed garden so long as you leave 1′ of space between it and the sidewalk and 3′ between it and the curb (to allow room for car doors).
Makes me wonder…supposing the sandbox meets the setback requirements, what’s stopping them from calling it a “rock garden”?
I live in an area where you can pretty much put whatever the hell you want into the “public right-of-way”, a very wide area, as long as you don’t interfere with the actual part of the right-of-way which is used (the road, or the sidewalk, or the drainage ditch).
Wow, that’s quite a ramble. Privatization? Really, how is taking peoples yards and extending ROW, be it bike lanes, sidewalks or planting strips a push for privatization? By archaic notions I assume you mean like having enough room for fire trucks to squeeze through. In general as a cyclist I hate road furniture. It’s typically implemented as a squeeze play where your riding lane goes from 3′ to zero. I can understand the mini roundabouts in some cases of uncontrolled intersections. I can understand why old neighborhoods allow on street parking but the door zone is never a good place to be on a bike.
But, but, but…. I thought the ideal was mini-blocks of a straight street grid extending unimpeded as far as the eye can see. Whereas these European utopias are typically winding labrinths.
Grids or “labyrinths”? Yes. There are many ways to do it.
The typical old-world labyrinth of streets developed accidentally as a network of spaces between buildings where people could walk. It’s usually fine for walking, though it’s easy to get lost. The American tight street grid was invented intentionally for streetcar operations and walking, and generally does fine at allowing people a variety of efficient walking routes to commercial areas and transit nodes. There’s sometimes private land — lots of spaces between buildings that you aren’t allowed to walk through (of course children, who always play with principles of efficient urban planning foremost in their minds, will always cut through back yards and driveways rather than go around the block). That’s why the blocks have to be so small to provide efficient walking routes. Anyway, you may find vibrant urban spaces in either. Usually in the labyrinth, since it developed around a vibrant urban space. And sometimes in the grid, since it can plausibly allow efficient and free walking patterns and fine-grained mixture of uses, though that is not always present.
One big anti-pattern is the non-network. When you can’t get across I-5 anywhere between 92nd and Northgate Way. East of the Bridle Trails, where you can’t get from 132nd to 140th between 60th and 37th, or from 140th to 148th between 60th and 40th. In parts of southeast Seattle where it’s very difficult to travel east-west generally. Another big anti-pattern is huge swaths of single-use land (usually residential). Cul-de-sac non-networks can sometimes be fixed by poking short MUPs through from one cul-de-sac to another (if the will is there — often homeowners in the cul-de-sac prefer to imagine themselves living in rural places where nobody goes through). Large single-use areas, too, again if the will is there. Seattle has lots of naturally-imposed barriers that break networks (bodies of water and ridges), but then also lots of self-imposed barriers like freeways.
Straight streets really do allow cars to speed. One of the reasons traffic is so fast down Roosevelt, for example, is it’s very straight, and has no traffic signals.
So… people that have been more places in the world than I have: do residential neighborhoods in non-US cities have as much on-street parking as those in US cities? Pictures of woonerfs I’ve seen don’t tend to be jam-packed with parked cars like Seattle residential streets.
What do woonerf experts/enthusiasts think of the non-arterial portions of Fairview Ave E? There’s no sidewalk but tons of pedestrians (it’s a popular dog-walking spot) and a few slow cyclists. It feels like a public space that cars occasionally nose through. It doesn’t feel at all that way in the sidewalkless neighborhoods north of 85th, though. Maybe Fairview is just mixed-use enough, with a couple little shops, recreational activities along the lake, and some commercial and industrial sites within a few blocks, to be vibrant, while the more segregated land uses farther north (with all the businesses on a few major arterials) don’t give people places to walk to.
Typically there is no room for parking, because the streets are much tighter. Far fewer people in urban neighborhoods own cars. But then again there is far less need for a car if you live in the city; the transit works (and people are willing to spend money to keep it working), and amenities are close by.
In the US, I am a fan of onstreet parallel parking. I think it makes our larger, higher-speed streets more pedestrian friendly by providing a buffer between pedestrians and traffic. It also makes streets easier to cross than they would be if the same width was entirely devoted to moving traffic.
I agree, I think parking works OK on US side streets. I just wish we’d keep parked cars farther from corners — even on a bike, sitting far forward of where I’d be in a car, it’s hard to see around them to cross traffic without nosing out into the cross street, even at some arterials. Turning onto Fremont Ave. in upper Fremont is much harder than it should be.
I guess I’m usually not a fan of parallel parking on arterials. Bike lanes have to be extra-wide near parked cars to avoid the door zone, and often enough there could be space for bus lanes or queue jumps if street parking was removed. I think shared lots for customer parking make more sense (there’s one of those in West Seattle somewhere, maybe near Alaska Junction, that’s behind the row of businesses, so it doesn’t really have that “giant parking lot frontage” effect).
In the *smaller* ancient European cities I’ve been in — ones with little or no public mass transportation — there is very little room for parking. There may be a couple of parking lots stuffed in on odd edges of town.
People drive small cars, and they park them where-ever they fit (often at crazy angles). There is usually no distinction between road and sidewalk in an old city. They drive slowly on rough cobblestone roads of varying width. People don’t drive unless they’re going long distances — they frequently walk or bicycle for “short” distances such as five miles. And of course everything is closer together, so five miles will get you well into farm country.
Big cities are different; they frequently have hunks which are like the small towns, interrupted by multi-lane boulevards every so often. Parking remains “whereever you can stuff the car”.
In Istanbul, drivers will park anywhere they can fit their car… often on the sidewalk or even on the landing of a staircase that’s alongside the street.
Most urban residential streets in Thailand (called soi) are just two lanes wide with no sidewalks or shoulders, just a narrow drainage gutter on each side and the wall of the property or front patio of the shop house. A lot of people own motorcycles, not cars.
1970s era subdivisions on the Eastside have very wide (almost 4 lanes) streets even when every house has at least a two-car garage and driveway. People fill their garages with junk and then park their car in the driveway instead. Very rarely would the street fill up with parked cars (if you happen to live next to a school). It’s totally a waste of space and encourages speeding. That’s why I love it when the snow comes down to cover the pavement.
Interesting that there is no mention of the word “liability” anywhere in this discussion. I would bet that someone would blame the City and the Nunes-Ueno family if their child was hit by a moving vehicle while playing in a sandbox in the public right-of-way. Not saying that is right, but that is a necessary part of the calculus here.
This is a massive driver to everything any public agency does in the US. Frankly it’s behind about half of the stuff that sucks in this country.
Eric Fischer has been doing some fascinating research that models the balance between our desires for calm streets when walking and for speed while driving.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6gxjm4UN7VjR0JNUWdvOTVYQUk
As I interpret his results, any street experiencing traffic between 25 and 45 mph is Doing It Wrong, optimizing neither for pedestrian or automotive use.
That makes sense.