My Priorities for Bike Walk Greenville
Dom Nozzi
It has been an honor to serve on the Bike/Walk Greenville (BWG) Board of Directors.
I urge BWG to adopt an official Position Paper and Priorities document. Such a document clearly shows the community what BWG believes are the most pressing issues to advance the objectives of BWG, and where BWG stands on bicycling and walking issues. Such a document also allows BWG to more quickly respond opportunistically if, for example, SCDOT requests mitigation for an SCDOT project, or if unexpected funding for bicycling and walking should emerge in the future. In addition, the list can help potential donors to BWG to consider donating to the most important objectives of BWG.
For what its worth, the following are my personal position paper and priorities for BWG.
I will start by noting what I have come to firmly believe in my 40 years of academic and professional work in transportation planning.
I am convinced that meaningfully promoting more and safer bicycling and walking is much less about providing facilities for bicycling and walking and is much more about taking away from motorists. Namely, for meaningful progress, we must take away speed, space, and subsidies from motorists.
Admittedly, this is a very long-term process. But that does not make it any less true -- or in need of disregarding. In addition, the statement is not meant to imply that other tactics are never to be pursued.
A town center -- to be healthy and thriving – requires lower and safer speeds, and what economists call “agglomeration economies” (i.e., clustered compactness that delivers proximity and human scale). In particular, a healthy town center must, in its design and actions, make the pedestrian the design imperative. No action in the town center should be allowed to degrade pedestrian comfort, interest, safety, or convenience.
My priorities:
1. Incrementally have the City and County assume ownership and maintenance of state-owned roads and streets in Greenville and Greenville County. Without doing this, very little meaningful progress can be made for the nearly countless, essential redesigns needed for roads and streets in our area. As an aside, the City and County must insist that the State fund most or all of the needed redesign of streets in the area, as it was SCDOT that created the original, flawed design.
2. Incrementally put roads and intersections on a “road diet.” It is inappropriate for the town center to include any roads that are larger than three lanes in width. In addition, intersections containing more than one turn lane (i.e., a double-left turn or a left & right turn lane) must be shrunk to remove the excess turn lane. Similarly, all right-turn lanes (particularly slip lanes) must be removed in the town center, as this sort of high-speed highway design has no business in the city center. All continuous left-turn lanes in the town center must be converted to raised medians coupled with left-turn pockets. Road and intersection diets are, by far, the most important objective I know of for Greenville to meaningfully improve traffic safety, boost the number of bicyclists and walkers and transit users, improve property values, reduce noise pollution, reduce sprawl and promote compact and mixed-use development, reduce the pressure to increase taxes, reduce “Ponzi Scheme” design and development, reduce road rage, reduce speeding, increase tax revenue for the City and County, improve the health of the town center, promote travel independence for all residents – particularly seniors and children, dramatically improve public health, and promote overall quality of life. The most terrible, dangerous, car-only “stroads” in the Greenville town center are the top candidates for road diets and eBike design (see below): Augusta Ave, Peter Hollis Blvd, McDaniel Ave, Wade Hampton Blvd, Academy St, Stone Ave, Buncombe St, Rutherford St, Richardson St, Townes St, Poinsett Hwy, Pleasantburg Dr, Laurens Rd, Mills Ave, Church St, Butler Ave, Washington Street, North Street, College Street, and Dunbar St.
3. Reform motor vehicle parking. Land development codes should be revised to convert minimum parking requirements to maximum parking allowed. The City must also require a substantial increase in the number of new residential developments that unbundle the price of parking from the price of the housing. Businesses must be required to provide parking cash-out for employees. The City must substantially increase the quantity of town center streets that include priced on-street parking. Town center businesses must be required to share parking. The City must establish a program where parking spaces are leased to town center businesses and homes. Existing town center parking garages must be wrapped with active retail and residential.
4. Reform the City street design manual to make low-speed, attentive street design the default design, and eliminate forgiving design tactics. This shall largely consist of smaller turning radii, more narrow widths for travel and turn lanes, smaller intersections, give-way streets, on-street parking, bulb-outs, mid-block crossings, and woonerfs. Street accessories must be human-scaled to signal to motorists that they are in a low-speed environment (for example, street lights no taller than 14 feet, post-mounted traffic signals rather than mast-arm or wire-hung signals, shorter street signs, and requiring canopy street trees).
5. Reform City and County land development codes and incentives to substantially increase the amount of compact, higher density, mixed-use, human-scaled, smaller setback, smaller lot size housing. Replace the conventional use-based zoning code with a form-based code. Make accessory dwelling units easier to install in single-family neighborhoods. In the town center, prohibit off-street surface parking as an allowed use (incentivize building infill on existing surface parking). In particular, prohibit parking between the front building façade and the street, and require front building facades to be no more than 10 to 20 feet from the back of sidewalks.
6. Establish a well-funded city-wide traffic calming program. This program will include such tactics as horizontal interventions (such as bulb-outs, chicanes, give-way streets, woonerfs, neck-downs, on-street parking, road/intersection diets) and shall strongly discourage vertical interventions such as speed humps. Existing speed humps should be incrementally removed city-wide and replaced with horizontal interventions. At a minimum, humps must be retrofitted to include bicycle channels. Calming shall also include a reduction in turning radius size (where the radius is currently designed for high-speed turns and oversized vehicles). Especially in neighborhoods, create smaller intersections, add on-street parking, reduce the width of travel lanes, create give-way streets (usually by adding on-street parking), install bulb-outs, and create woonerfs. Street accessories must be human-scaled to signal to motorists that they are in a low-speed environment. For example, using street lights no taller than 14 feet, using post-mounted traffic signals rather than mast-arm or wire-hung signals, installing “gateway” archways, using shorter street signs, and requiring canopy street trees. Traffic calming should rarely – if ever – use any of the “five Ws” that have been tried by all cities over and over again for the past century (and have resulted in our roads and streets now being more dangerous than ever): Warning signs, Warning lights, Warning paint, Warning education, and Warning enforcement.
7. Convert existing one-way streets in the town center to their original configuration as two-way streets.
8. Given the explosive growth in eBike use (and the potential to not only drastically expand the demographic groups that can bicycle but also reduce motor vehicle trips), the City must substantially expand the infrastructure conducive to eBike travel. Emphasis must be placed on road dieting oversized roadways. When this is not feasible, the City or State must redesign the curb lane as a slow-speed lane (woonerf or give-way street).
9. To help increase regular walking and bicycling in the area, establish a weekly or monthly “community walk” or “community bicycle” event. The intent would be to incrementally increase the number of participants to include hundreds of residents. Such an event promotes the exceptionally important objective of “normalizing” walking and bicycling. The many other cities that have established something like this find that it is helpful to make it a somewhat festive, party-like event. Making the event seem fun helps grow the number of participants (mostly through word of mouth or witnessing the event). Citizens who tend to find bicycling dangerous tend to feel much safer and more likely to ride as a result of the “safety in numbers” feel to the event. Residents in Boulder CO, for example, holds a “Happy Thursday” ride each Thursday that includes hundreds of cyclists (with decorative/blinking lights and music and costumes) riding through town. Nearly every Italian city holds an evening “la passeggiata” (a community walk). Because bicycle helmets can “dangerize” bicycling and undermine “normalizing” bicycling, a companion for community bicycle events is that while bicycle helmets are voluntarily allowed, they must not be mandatory. Indeed, the City must lobby the State to not adopt a law that requires bicyclists to wear a helmet.
10. Increase the use of motorist user fees to provide more transportation funding equity and reduce excessive, low-value motoring promoted by subsidies. Fees include such things as metered parking, gas taxes, VMT fees, congestion tolling, mileage-based emission fees, and pay-at-the-pump car insurance.
11. Support the adoption of a “land value tax.” Land value taxation is an alternative to traditional property tax systems, in which property taxes are levied based only on the value of the underlying land and not on the value of any buildings or other improvements to the site. Traditional property taxation strongly discourages town center infill and renovation projects, and strongly induces town center property owners to speculatively hold property as asphalt parking lots. In addition to using the land value tax to promote conversion of existing town center parking lots to buildings, the City should adopt land development code and building code revisions that reduce the cost of infill or renovation projects. For example, some cities have adopted a two-tiered building/fire/electrical/handicapped code so that such codes are relaxed or exempted in town center locations.
12. Establish an “Idaho Law” in the region that allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and signal lights as stop signs. Where appropriate, create scramble intersection crossings for pedestrians.
13. Create and retain convenient and safe routes with alleys, short street block lengths, and mid-block crossings.
14. Expand the mileage and neighborhood connections for the off-street paved path system and protected in-street bike lanes. Support the conversion of abandoned rails to trails, and “rail banking.” Crossing at grade is preferred rather than grade-separated bridges or tunnels, and when such a crossing is deemed too dangerous, the preferred solution is a road diet at that crossing (i.e., creating a two- or three-lane crossing). Grade-separated crossings – when used – must be funded by SCDOT, as it was the SCDOT design that required a grade-separated crossing. It is understandable that motorists object to the high levels of annoyance associated with the use of signalized, at-grade crossings. Fortunately, this annoying design is made much less necessary – and is often not needed -- when the road is narrowed to a two- or three-lane crossing, which is one of the many reasons a road diet is preferable for bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists.
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