Most “Pedestrian Infrastructure” Is Really Car Infrastructure

[M II A II R II K]

Most “Pedestrian Infrastructure” Is Really Car Infrastructure


February 1, 2021

By Joe Cortright

Read More: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...infrastructure

Houston’s “Energy Corridor” is a commercial district west of Downtown Houston that’s home to a number of energy companies like BP and Conoco Phillips. Unsurprisingly, it’s a heavily auto-dominated area. We read with great interest recently a news report describing a new pedestrian infrastructure project at the intersection of two main arterials there, Eldridge Parkway and Memorial Drive. The Houston Chronicle hailed it in an article titled “The Energy Corridor District unveils west Houston’s first protected intersection.”

- For starters, the inescapable fact is that you have two busy multilane arterials the kind of roadway that’s been consistently shown to be the most deadly to pedestrians. Nearly 60,000 cars a day go through this intersection. Second, a key feature of the project is two right-turn “slip lanes” that slice through the corners of the intersections. Slip lanes like these increase the crossing distance for pedestrians while also allowing (and even encouraging) cars to make faster turns. The slip lanes have marked crosswalks, but they appear to be governed only by “yield” signs, not traffic lights, and Houston drivers are notorious for not yielding even when the law requires it. — The big underlying problem though is that the Energy Corridor is a place laid out for cars and car travel. The reason no one walks in Houston, or in its Energy Corridor, as in so many such places in the US, is that there’s very little nearby to walk to. The Energy Corridor is just a short distance from Houston’s mammoth Katy Freeway, the nation’s widest. A quick glance at Google maps shows that within a block or two of the intersection you have a single bank, a convenience store, a CVS drug store, and a lone Chinese restaurant and almost no other retail or service businesses.

- With 60,000 cars zooming by, with slip lanes that encourage drivers to take fast right turns, and with nothing nearby to walk to, it really doesn’t matter how wide the sidewalks are or how beautiful the plantings or how numerous the bollards. While this has the veneer and some of the trappings of walkability, it’s just not a walkable area. There’s a lot of loose talk about “retrofitting suburbs” and “walkable suburbanism” but examples like this show just how hollow and meaningless those terms can be. And while we’re picking on Houston here, you can find similar examples of performative pedestrian infrastructure in almost every U.S. city. — As we’ve said, much of what is labeled pedestrian infrastructure is, in reality, car infrastructure. In a place populated entirely by pedestrians and bicycles, for example, there’s no need for wide rights-of-way, grade separations or traffic signals. In even the most crowded cities, people simply walk or ride around one another. If it’s just people walking, there aren’t even lane markings. Humans have long had the ability to avoid collisions, using subtle visual cues. Pedestrian friendly places don’t need elaborate infrastructure.

- Real pedestrian infrastructure is a dense, mixed-use area that shuns or at least slows private automobiles. A place with a mix of housing types (apartments, duplexes or triplexes and single family homes), local-serving businesses, and a grid of streets, rather than the rigid, hierarchical arterial/collector/cul-de-sac model of the Suburban Experiment. It’s about neighborhoods where people don’t have to cross multi-lane arterials to shop, attend school or visit a public park. Walkability and pedestrian safety are really about building great places, not piecemeal and largely decorative so-called infrastructure. — While advertised as improving pedestrian safety, the Houston project actually widens and lengthens the existing slip lanes. It also increases the slip lane’s radius of curvature, enabling cars to make the turn even faster than would be possible in the narrower, sharper slip lane they replaced. Both the wider distance of the new slip lane, and the faster speeds it tends to encourage actually make the intersection more dangerous for pedestrians than before.

.....

See all the pedestrian infrastructure? (This is actually the “after” picture.) Image credit: Energy Corridor District







These pedestrian safety problems are apparent when you look at the promotional photographs provided by the project’s sponsors, the Energy Corridor District. The first shows a nice new intersection, but you’ll notice one element conspicuous by its absence: pedestrians.







Of course the project’s design aimed to be very pedestrian oriented. You can tell that from the artist’s pre-construction concept. Like so many such illustrations, it shows roughly as many pedestrians and cyclists as cars (we counted 38 cars and 41 pedestrians and bikes). The reality of course is closer to all cars and zero bikes and pedestrians.







Orlando suburb, Lake Mary, where the city has constructed two pedestrian bridges over the highway, with a 153-foot span. These elaborate and expensive pedestrian bridges are at best a remedial effort to minimize the danger this environment poses to anyone who isn’t in a car. They don’t really make the area any more desirable for walking.

[Crawford]

You see this all over the U.S. Incremental pedestrian improvements in sprawl that are really car improvements with a few giveaways for pedestrians.

And there are no pedestrians; the sidewalks, benches and parks are empty, and are window dressing for passing motorists.

[hipster duck]

Sometimes I feel it would have been better for every mode - cars/trucks, pedestrians and transit - if instead of having these massive arterial "stroads", North American cities just built a denser web of smaller limited access local freeways in addition to the long distance interstates, and kept their surface roads relatively small and pedestrian-friendly.

Instead of having commercial uses strung out linearly along an arterial for miles, you'd concentrate them in nodes near exits of these local freeways.

As is, driving along these massive surface arterial roads is not an efficient way to cover long distances. You average about 30 mph or less, after having to wait for long left-turn cycles at seemingly every intersection or hitting constant red lights. It would be better if that traffic were more free flowing. Of course, for modes other than cars, the current situation is a 0 out of 10.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Sometimes I feel it would have been better for every mode - cars/trucks, pedestrians and transit - if instead of having these massive arterial "stroads", North American cities just built a denser web of smaller limited access local freeways in addition to the long distance interstates, and kept their surface roads relatively small and pedestrian-friendly.

Instead of having commercial uses strung out linearly along an arterial for miles, you'd concentrate them in nodes near exits of these local freeways.

As is, driving along these massive surface arterial roads is not an efficient way to cover long distances. You average about 30 mph or less, after having to wait for long left-turn cycles at seemingly every intersection or hitting constant red lights. It would be better if that traffic were more free flowing. Of course, for modes other than cars, the current situation is a 0 out of 10.

ie. something closer to the Japanese model of 2-lane elevated expressways > high-density multi-lane arterials with wide sidewalks > narrow local shared streets in low-density residential areas?



https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-da...-54150983.html


https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/to...ay.html?page=3

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

ie. something closer to the Japanese model of 2-lane elevated expressways > high-density multi-lane arterials with wide sidewalks > narrow local shared streets in low-density residential areas?

I wasn't even thinking about Japan, but that's an interesting case study!

I had Northern European metro areas like the Ruhrgebiet or Randstad in mind.

Actually, even here in Toronto we have a few isolated examples: the old Highway 2A stub of the defunct Scarborough expressway is the local freeway that allows the adjacent section of Kingston Road to be a bit of a community street. Or the small 4 lane Allen Road expressway kind of allows Marlee to be a humanly-scaled, albeit car-oriented commercial strip.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I wasn't even thinking about Japan, but that's an interesting case study!

I had Northern European metro areas like the Ruhrgebiet or Randstad in mind.

Actually, even here in Toronto we have a few isolated examples: the old Highway 2A stub of the defunct Scarborough expressway is the local freeway that allows the adjacent section of Kingston Road to be a bit of a community street. Or the small 4 lane Allen Road expressway kind of allows Marlee to be a humanly-scaled, albeit car-oriented commercial strip.

Funny, the Ruhrgebiet immediately came to mind when you said that. For what it's worth, the car oriented areas of those cities still suck. And their transit still kicks the shit out of North American cities.

[shivtim]

It's especially frustrating when we have good examples of what can be done. In Atlanta we have similar projects that are a complete waste of money and are really oriented towards cars (e.g. this horrendously expensive bridge), but on the other hand we have things like the Beltline, protected cycle tracks, and neighborhood zoning requirements for active use with no curb cuts allowed. It's just really inconsistent.

[Doady]

I think the main problem with the suburban corridors in North America is the lack of them. Often suburbs just use the existing concessions as arterials. They do not build new arterial corridors in between the existing concessions, or the corridors are not complete and remain discontinuous. In recent years, some bigger suburbs, they start to think bigger and think ahead, they try to complete corridors, they they to build new ones, to reduce the distances between corridors, and thus reduce the capacity needed for each corridor as well. This is also important for public transit, to reduce the walking distance between bus routes.

If you look at Brampton for example, the east-west concessions are almost 3km apart, and in the past they did not build any new east-west corridor between Queen and Steeles. But in more recent times they built Williams Parkway between Queen and Bovaird/Castlemore, and Sandalwood Parkway between Bovaird/Castlemore and Countryside/Wanless. Those two corridors help to take the pressure off from the other four. That's six east-west corridors instead of four. Six bus routes instead of four. This kind of thinking ahead and looking at the bigger picture has generally been lacking in sprawl until recently.

[BnaBreaker]

But guys, they gave the pedestrians PLANTS to look at. Come on, be reasonable... what more could one ask for?

[ardecila]

This kind of argument frustrates me.

First, any kind of accommodation to the pedestrian in an American suburb is a HUGE improvement over the status quo.

Second, every case is different. Sometimes you need a pedestrian bridge to solve an unavoidable conflict and ensure both motorists and pedestrians can move safely and smoothly through an area. Is this trail underpass in Chicago "really a piece of car infrastructure"? If this were a flat crossing, the high numbers of people using the trail would have to cross a busy street, probably with a signalized crosswalk. Inevitably you'd have a lot of jaywalking and eventually a collision leading to injury or death. In this case the underpass ADDS convenience to the pedestrian by ensuring an uninterrupted and low-stress trip through the area.

There's a reason people like walking down the High Line - it allows them to experience the city without having to constantly worry about crossing streets and scanning traffic. No matter how much traffic calming you put in, you can't completely eliminate this psychological burden on the pedestrian unless you take cars out of the equation with bridges or underpasses.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ardecila

If this were a flat crossing, the high numbers of people using the trail would have to cross a busy street, probably with a signalized crosswalk. Inevitably you'd have a lot of jaywalking and eventually a collision leading to injury or death.

The bridge solution also has risk:

Design errors draw blame in collapse of FIU pedestrian bridge that killed 6

A doomed design was the "probable cause" of the horrific collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Miami last year that killed six people and injured 10, the National Transportation Safety Board found Tuesday.

The 174-foot-bridge section, designed to connect Florida International University with the city of Sweetwater, was still under construction on March 15, 2018, when it crashed to the road below. Eight vehicles were crushed, seven of which were occupied.

A peer review that failed to detect the calculation errors by designer FIGG Bridge Engineers – and an engineer's failure to recognize the importance of cracking before the collapse – contributed to the tragedy, the board said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...se/2449316001/

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Orlando suburb, Lake Mary, where the city has constructed two pedestrian bridges over the highway, with a 153-foot span. These elaborate and expensive pedestrian bridges are at best a remedial effort to minimize the danger this environment poses to anyone who isn’t in a car. They don’t really make the area any more desirable for walking.

This must be a Florida thing. Why would they make you walk half a mile just to cross the street? I'm jaywalking.

[uaarkson]

Originally Posted by ardecila

This kind of argument frustrates me.

First, any kind of accommodation to the pedestrian in an American suburb is a HUGE improvement over the status quo.

Not in this case, really. It's a waste of money that could be better spent on places that already have inherent walkability.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by uaarkson

Not in this case, really. It's a waste of money that could be better spent on places that already have inherent walkability.

Exactly. Money spent on "urbanizing" sprawl is largely being flushed down the toilet while actual urban fabric rots.

And much of the "urbanization" are just crazy boondoggles, like those Orlando pedestrian bridges. Total dystopian madness.

[Steely Dan]

it's too bad that you can't just literally buy pedestrians, because if you went out and bought $35M worth of pedestrians and stuck them at one of these intrsections, by their sheer numbers (and resultant congestion) they'd eventually make it more pedestrian friendly than the fancy and expensive infrastructure projects that almost no one actually uses.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by badrunner

This must be a Florida thing. Why would they make you walk half a mile just to cross the street? I'm jaywalking.

Yeah, that's funny and even more evidence that this was designed for vehicular traffic instead of pedestrians. They could've at least built the bridge directly over the crosswalk if the objective was to make it better for the pedestrian. But they obviously don't want to move the traffic signals.

[muppet]

That in Europe is named as an exercise in car culture -making the pedestrians second place and detouring multiple times the distance to make way for cars. No one mistakes it for being 'pedstrianisation', rather the opposite.

That was how they did it in the postwar era -tunnels were also very popular. The result instead was that no one used the bridges as it took too long (and instead ran a more dangerous gamut dodging cars instead, increasing accidents), and the tunnels became favoured haunts for criminals lying in wait.

Nowadays the cars are the ones that get buried/ get put on bridges, or have to give way to pedestrians.

[dubu]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

it's too bad that you can't just literally buy pedestrians, because if you went out and bought $35M worth of pedestrians and stuck them at one of these intrsections, by their sheer numbers (and resultant congestion) they'd eventually make it more pedestrian friendly than the fancy and expensive infrastructure projects that almost no one actually uses.

its too bad you cant buy cars for those drivers where the cars can park side by side on the street and have a door on the front of the car and the back wheel or wheels can turn so you can get in and out of spots easy. parking parallel with the street is not very good. how cool would it be to drive a car where you could skid without skidding and wearing out your back tire or tires. no more culdesac's and not being able to turn around.

then buy a whole new city with less streets and more trains like this.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by badrunner

This must be a Florida thing. Why would they make you walk half a mile just to cross the street? I'm jaywalking.

Especially bizarre given that there's already an at-grade pedestrian crossing.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by dubu

its too bad you cant buy cars for those drivers where the cars can park side by side on the street and have a door on the front of the car and the back wheel or wheels can turn so you can get in and out of spots easy. parking parallel with the street is not very good. how cool would it be to drive a car where you could skid without skidding and wearing out your back tire or tires. no more culdesac's and not being able to turn around.

then buy a whole new city with less streets and more trains like this.

looks like tombstones. No thanks.