April 26, 20214 yr 1 hour ago, Foraker said: I would hope that the idea of closing streets will become likely now. I seem to recall that the Clinic wanted to close Euclid for several blocks through their campus for "buses only" (and probably bikes) but the city said "no," and I think the federal highway folks wouldn't let Superior be closed through the square because it's a federal route. But the public and the new administration might be more amenable now. The bus lanes on Euclid tend to cause confusion for people who don't normally drive down Euclid, and over time a lot of drivers seem to have learned to just avoid Euclid. With less traffic, maybe closing Euclid to through traffic in various places would be acceptable. If I'm not mistaken, the federal routes through the square include US-20, which is considered the longest road in America. Which would make the feds far less likely to agree to close it. A little trivia: depending on the actual route through the square, either Terminal or Key is the tallest building located on this 3,000+ mile road.
April 27, 20214 yr 6 hours ago, E Rocc said: If I'm not mistaken, the federal routes through the square include US-20, which is considered the longest road in America. Which would make the feds far less likely to agree to close it. A little trivia: depending on the actual route through the square, either Terminal or Key is the tallest building located on this 3,000+ mile road. If you think that Secretary Buttigieg is going to say "we can't possibly have US-20 go around the outside of the square -- because it's America's longest road!" -- I'd take that bet.
April 28, 20214 yr On 4/26/2021 at 3:06 PM, Foraker said: The bus lanes on Euclid tend to cause confusion for people who don't normally drive down Euclid, and over time a lot of drivers seem to have learned to just avoid Euclid. With less traffic, maybe closing Euclid to through traffic in various places would be acceptable. I don't disagree, but also have read that having no traffic on certain city streets was detrimental to local businesses. Main St in downtown Buffalo was opened to traffic again after decades of only having streetcars and pedestrians. It has breathed some new life and activity into the street with meter spots serving local businesses.
April 28, 20214 yr 1 hour ago, Cleburger said: I don't disagree, but also have read that having no traffic on certain city streets was detrimental to local businesses. Main St in downtown Buffalo was opened to traffic again after decades of only having streetcars and pedestrians. It has breathed some new life and activity into the street with meter spots serving local businesses. I would agree that long stretches with no cars can be a problem. Although it's already dead as it travels through the Clinic, and seems likely to remain so. So I'd be in favor of closing that stretch entirely except for buses. But I was thinking more along the lines of closing the street to through traffic only at selective intersections. In other words, let the cars have access to almost all of Euclid, but not as a continuous through street. It could be as simple as bollards (or large planters) that force cars to turn but let buses through. The cars can still access the next block, but they have to go around and come back, they can't just drive through. Cyclists, pedestrians, and buses would continue as usual. With Superior, Chester, Prospect, and Carnegie running parallel, Euclid really doesn't need to be a continuous through street anyway. So as a first step -- close Euclid through the Clinic to all but buses. Then maybe halfway between the Clinic and E55, and halfway between E55 and E18. Start there -- does it have a positive or negative effect on traffic and bus travel times? If it's a problem, bollards are easily removed. Low cost trial.
April 28, 20214 yr Why? If it's open to buses still, what's the point of closing it to cars? It's still a path for motor vehicles, with all the noise and danger to pedestrians that implies. And what's the gain? You already have space for bikes, and for pedestrians, and for transit. The corridor isn't overly crowded with any of those things such that they are demanding the lanes for cars. edit- you're idea seems like a solution (let's close roads to cars!) in search of a problem.
April 28, 20214 yr 1 hour ago, X said: Why? If it's open to buses still, what's the point of closing it to cars? It's still a path for motor vehicles, with all the noise and danger to pedestrians that implies. And what's the gain? You already have space for bikes, and for pedestrians, and for transit. The corridor isn't overly crowded with any of those things such that they are demanding the lanes for cars. edit- you're idea seems like a solution (let's close roads to cars!) in search of a problem. The problem is BRT lacking in R. With all of these parallel streets for cars, there really is no reason we need to allow cars on Euclid at all -- except that residents and businesses along Euclid were built with Euclid-only access. Further reducing car traffic would both speed up the buses and provide a safer cycle route from the east into downtown.
April 28, 20214 yr If you've ever been to Salt Lake City and visited downtown, you'll know that Main Street was ripe for a redo. According to this article, the city is considering making it car-free permanently. This is a great idea IMO. With light rail and bike paths already in place, this is not a good street for drivers. There are already some great restaurants, a major shopping center and a major theater/performance center on the street. I really hope this becomes a permanent change. https://www.fox13now.com/news/coronavirus/local-coronavirus-news/a-big-chunk-of-slcs-main-street-will-close-to-cars-maybe-permanently?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
April 28, 20214 yr 2 hours ago, Foraker said: The problem is BRT lacking in R. With all of these parallel streets for cars, there really is no reason we need to allow cars on Euclid at all -- except that residents and businesses along Euclid were built with Euclid-only access. Further reducing car traffic would both speed up the buses and provide a safer cycle route from the east into downtown. It wouldn't do either of those things. The thing aliwing up BRT is that the signal prioritization was never implemented, not traffic levels. And Euclid already has bike lanes, which are frankly lightly used. and there are no pedestrian facing uses along that stretch of Euclid, nor a likelihood of any being developed there, so there isn't that benefit, either. Again you have a solution in search of a problem.
April 28, 20214 yr 4 hours ago, X said: It wouldn't do either of those things. The thing aliwing up BRT is that the signal prioritization was never implemented, not traffic levels. And Euclid already has bike lanes, which are frankly lightly used. and there are no pedestrian facing uses along that stretch of Euclid, nor a likelihood of any being developed there, so there isn't that benefit, either. Again you have a solution in search of a problem. I agree that signal prioritization is a bigger issue. And this should not be a high priority, I don't feel strongly that this is something that needs to be done. Those narrow bike lines on Euclid are terrible -- they're too narrow and not cleared often enough. Less car traffic on Euclid would still be welcome.
May 3, 20214 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
May 3, 20214 yr Another big road diet coming to Dayton... Remake of large stretch of North Main gets boost from state funding Dayton has been awarded more than $4.7 million in state funding to help remake a large section of North Main Street that residents have complained about for years. The funds will help put North Main Street on a “road diet” — likely shrinking the roadway from four lanes to three, which officials and residents hope will reduce speeding and traffic crashes. The road would have one lane in each direction and a center turn lane. Currently, the road has two lanes heading in each direction, north and south. More below: https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/remake-of-large-stretch-of-north-main-gets-boost-from-state-funding/ZI2BETHL6BBX3HZJZEVM6E2AQE/ “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
May 3, 20214 yr Dayton knows it's like a marriage. Better to apologize afterward than ask for permission.
May 20, 20214 yr Why Cars Rarely Crash in Buildings in the Netherlands Another impressive video from Not Just Bikes highlights the serious shortcomings of US and Canadian road design:
May 24, 20214 yr From the City Beautiful YouTube channel. Bike Lanes Aren't Good Enough. Link at bottom to the case studies mentioned in video. U.S. case studies of projects that have created safe space for bikes: http://www.rethinkingstreets.com/
May 30, 20214 yr Today's NYT email newsletter talks about highways and the racial and economic fallout from the destruction of urban neighborhoods. Highway removal Today, there is a movement to reverse the damage, as the Times multimedia reporting project — by Nadja Popovich, Josh Williams and Denise Lu — describes. Rochester, N.Y., is removing a downtown highway built in the 1950s and trying to stitch a neighborhood back together. Syracuse, N.Y.; Detroit; and New Haven, Conn., have committed to replacing stretches of highway with walkable neighborhoods. Residents in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Oakland and Seattle are asking city officials to do the same. To support these efforts, President Biden’s infrastructure proposal includes $20 billion that would help reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways. His transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has called the issue a top priority for the department. The future of the country’s highway system is about much more than those neighborhoods, too. It will also affect public health and climate change. And the debate is happening at a fascinating moment: Many of the midcentury highways are reaching the end of their life span, and attitudes toward transportation are shifting. The automobile remains the dominant way that Americans move around, and that will not change anytime soon. Mass transit is not a realistic option in less populated places. But it is realistic in cities, and more city residents and planners are starting to question whether they want major highways running through their neighborhoods. One telling statistic comes from Michael Sivak of Sivak Applied Research: After decades of uninterrupted increases, the number of miles driven each year by the average American peaked in 2004. “As recently as a decade ago,” said Peter Norton, a University of Virginia historian, “every transportation problem was a problem to be solved with new roads.” That’s not always the case anymore. On the same topic, Noah Smith of Bloomberg Opinion writes: “It’s difficult to overstate the damage that we did to our cities by putting giant highways right through the middle of neighborhoods. But San Francisco has shown that highways can be taken out and relocated. We can fix what we broke.”
June 6, 20214 yr How expanding bike infrastructure reduces traffic: "You can't just paint sharrows on a road and expect people to start biking" "Bike lanes were 99% of our headlines but less than 1% of our budget" Edited June 6, 20214 yr by gildone
June 15, 20213 yr Author Not a highway removal but a ramps removal/simplification.... "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
June 26, 20213 yr I didn’t take any photos, but downtown Dayton is in the process of upgrading all of its crosswalks to high-visibility zebra crossings. “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
July 1, 20213 yr Author Do you think Ohio or any other state would be this bold? We are, after all, facing a climate crisis that will demand bold, aggressive actions. Welsh government suspends all future road-building plans Deputy minister for climate change announces move as part of plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/22/welsh-government-to-suspend-all-future-road-building-plans "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
July 2, 20213 yr On 7/1/2021 at 12:08 AM, KJP said: Do you think Ohio or any other state would be this bold? We are, after all, facing a climate crisis that will demand bold, aggressive actions. Welsh government suspends all future road-building plans Deputy minister for climate change announces move as part of plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/22/welsh-government-to-suspend-all-future-road-building-plans Never, even though Ohio probably doesn't need climate as a reason. Our our roads and highways are overbuilt as it is and the cost of future maintenance obligations are mounting. Just local roads alone are overwhelming city budgets. @surfohio They should have added Albany, NY. They have an elevated highway cutting off views and access to the city's riverfront. The city wants to remove it. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Mr-Biden-tear-down-this-highway-15879751.php Edited July 2, 20213 yr by gildone
July 2, 20213 yr On 4/24/2021 at 8:21 PM, KJP said: Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes gave a plug for this book in his latest video on noise in cities. The authors live in Delft, Netherlands, which may be the quietest city in Europe. To keep this post in line with the topic of this thread... one of the things Delft has done to accomplish this is to keep most cars out of the city center, reduce traffic speeds in the city, and use porous pavement on streets with higher speeds, which reduces road noise: Edited July 2, 20213 yr by gildone
September 7, 20213 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
September 9, 20213 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 4, 20213 yr Vision Zero Cleveland looking for action (and input) to reduce traffic deaths Marc Lefkowitz - The Land - Oct. 4, 2021 "This month, the Vision Zero Task Force, as it’s known, is finally ready to act. ... An action plan will be the next step for the Vision Zero Cleveland Task Force that formed when former Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone in 2017 met with local advocates who wanted Cleveland to also set a goal to “zero out” traffic related deaths. ...the Task Force has taken almost five years to reach the point where it is now, on the verge of holding nine public meetings, many in areas containing the most dangerous one-mile road sections. The Task Force hopes to gather input from residents on where and why they feel unsafe walking or biking. It will then use that information, plus more data from a survey it is circulating, to produce an action plan." visionzerocle.org (CLE Vision Zero thread is locked)
October 19, 20213 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 13, 20213 yr Author https://twitter.com/BoiceDerek/status/1458632440738721792?t=t9tC7rmTW4fO9ymVXSyzVw&s=19 "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 20, 20213 yr As we slowly implement real improvements for complete streets and as we continue to make the case for why they are needed... If you ever hear a skeptical planner, engineer or public official say "This isn't the Netherlands", remember this video. The Netherlands wasn't always like it is now. In 1970 the Dutch had a higher rate of traffic deaths (deaths/100,000 population) than the U.S. What we see there today is the result of a 5-decade long, incremental process of re-engineering their roads and streets. . Edited November 20, 20213 yr by gildone
November 22, 20213 yr Author Love this thread. Here's a few from it... "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 27, 20213 yr I discovered a podcast called: "Car-free Midwest". Here's the trailer: https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-ei2uj-e1924ee The podcast just started a year ago.
November 28, 20213 yr 1 hour ago, gildone said: I discovered a podcast called: "Car-free Midwest". Here's the trailer: https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-ei2uj-e1924ee The podcast just started a year ago. It's on Spotify too!!
December 19, 20213 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
December 31, 20213 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 27, 20223 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 27, 20223 yr So I'm assuming I-481 becomes I-81 and the "former" I-81 through town will be aux interstates. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 27, 20223 yr Author 17 minutes ago, ColDayMan said: So I'm assuming I-481 becomes I-81 and the "former" I-81 through town will be aux interstates. Yes. It won't be cheap....$2 billion. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 27, 20223 yr Author More from New York... "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 27, 20223 yr The Rochester freeway removal is pretty impressive. Google Maps has a satellite view that shows the land bare and ready for redevelopment. I'm curious if they are going to remove the rest of the former inner loop from it's start at I-490 and the baseball stadium. So far they've removed about 1 mile of the 2.5 mile inner loop freeway. I've actually been working on a job in Rochester that utilizes some of the former freeway land.
January 29, 20223 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 31, 20223 yr On 1/29/2022 at 12:25 PM, GCrites80s said: ^LOL, the city the most Americans know besides their own is Orlando. Due to Disney World which contains facsimiles of all the 'radical' concepts mentioned above.
February 8, 20223 yr Fantastic proposed law being discussed in California: When is the last time I-71 turned a profit?
February 8, 20223 yr Not in Ohio, but an interesting if maddening article nonetheless: TXDOT just halted a road diet in San Antonio. Businesses had invested millions in the area thinking the road diet was coming. I hope this is just Texas being Texas and not a portent of things to come around the country: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/2/8/texas-dot-doubles-down-on-urban-highway-expansions
February 9, 20223 yr On 1/26/2022 at 10:18 PM, ColDayMan said: So I'm assuming I-481 becomes I-81 and the "former" I-81 through town will be aux interstates. Yes, 481 will become 81, and the former 81 will become Business Loop 81, using those green signs that I think I have only seen in Michigan. BL81 will still be an expressway on both approaches to downtown Syracuse--from the north and south--but will disperse into the streets in the middle of town. Interstate 690 will still run east and west along the north side of downtown. 81 southbound has never had a direct connection to 690 westbound, and there were plans to make that connection as a part of this project, but there was almost no support for removing more of the city, including possibly parts of the Franklin Square neighborhood, to accommodate the connection, so this part of the plan will not go forward. I am sad about the elevated highway being removed, because it really brings you into the thick of things in a visually impressive manner, but I still completely support this project. If everything works out, there will be innumerable possibilities for re-connecting the city's two centers--downtown and University Hill.
February 23, 20223 yr Author "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
February 23, 20223 yr ^It's great to see and I'd love to see more cities tackle this issue... but as a bit of cold water on the parade, it's important to realize this is simply in a testing phase until 2023. And then, after the testing period, they hope to start issuing fines. If this proves unpopular between now and 2023, it might never even get to the point of issuing fines.
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