Agenda for Bike Walk Greenville
Bike Walk Greenville asked people to offer suggestions for making the Greenville town center safer for bicycling and walking. Here are my suggestions.
Greenville needs to shrink the size of turning radii size at intersections, as shown in this illustration. Far too many intersections in town center Greenville are dangerously overwide. The result is a strong inducement for dangerous motor vehicle turn movements – driving too fast and turning too inattentively. This is not to mention the much larger exposure distance that pedestrians must contend with as illustrated below.
Greenville needs to remove all town center slip lanes. Again, there are far too many slip lanes in the town center, which creates the same problems that oversized turning radii create.
Greenville needs to remove travel and turn lanes for all streets in the town center that have more than 3 lanes. There are more than 16 such “STROADS in town center Greenville.
Greenville needs to remove all double-left turns in the town center.
Greenville needs to reduce the width of any town center travel or turn lane that is wider than 9 or 10 feet. Lane widths of 10 feet are appropriate in town centers and beneficially improve a street’s safety and human scale.
Greenville needs to reduce the height of street signs and street lights and traffic signals in the town center to send a visual message to motorists that they are driving in a low-speed environment. For pedestrians, shorter signs, lights, and signals create a romantic, human-scaled, pleasing atmosphere for walking.
Greenville needs to install far more on-street, metered parking in the town center, as this creates slower, more attentive motor vehicle driving, improves human scale, dramatically improves the health of retail shops and restaurants, and provides the city with more revenue for such enhancements as streetscape improvements.
Greenville needs to convert many miles of continuous left turn lanes in the town center to raised medians with turn pockets.
In short, Greenville has its work cut out in creating a more walkable, bikeable town center. It is far past time to get started. The first step, as I’ve written about extensively in the past, is to have Greenville gain control of the many town center roadways that need the essential medicine I call for above. For decades, tragically, the South Carolina Dept of Transportation (SCDOT) has controlled these roads, and since they have vigorously opposed these fixes since they began control, it has been nearly impossible to bring Greenville town center roads to a healthy condition. The moderately good news is that SCDOT is taking tiny steps toward agreeing to this overdue medicine. I continue to urge Greenville to take control from SCDOT, however, as SCDOT thinking is moving glacially slow.