Residential Neighborhood Street as Greenway Extenders?
Nashville neighborhood roads could be repurposed as Greenway Extenders. This is my neighborhood which truly looks like a Greenway at any given moment.
Note the inexpensive road design - just a plate of asphalt. No curb, no gutter, no sidewalks. This is typical of most neighborhood road in Nashville.
If Nashville shifted gears and adjusted our culture to be pedestrian forward by reducing speed limits to 20mph on local residential streets & embracing the law of yielding to pedestrians, we could quickly have many more 'Greenways' for recreation and health.
2 stories of children either being struck by car or almost struck by car while trying to get to school bus this past week in Nashville
Nashvillians are not known for their pedestrian culture. We don't seem to know what to do when we encounter a walker in the roadway. Despite there being a 3' passing rule, the same as for bicycles, I can attest that this is not often being followed.
Pedestrians are to walk against traffic (walker should be 'face to face' with the driver). This facilitates being seen. It is also the law.
It is also the law to yield to pedestrians (even if they are in the wrong ie) jaywalking).
When a school bus is stopped, drivers are supposed to stop. There were 2 stories in the news this week, one of a 12 year old who was struck trying to get to her school bus and another of a boy nearly hit while doing the same.
This should be an eye opener for all of us. SLOW DOWN for PEDESTRIANS. YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS.
Even if walkers are moving slow, they have the right of way!
Just FYI - Traffic Calming Applications require signatures from 4 separate nonrelated households or support from a neighborhood association.
I'm working on an application for Golf Club, Woodleigh, Forest Park and Timber Lane. This is a purely residential neighborhood yet the speed limit is 30mph. There is a culture of walking here but also insensitive drivers (cutting through?) who go much faster even with children and dogs about. To say the least, it is not often relaxing or rejuvenating to go out for a walk though it should be!
From Metro:
Metro Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program: In general, Metro’s public streets meet engineering standards for safe operation. Unfortunately, streets increasingly carry more traffic than they were designed to, were often built without pedestrian or cyclist accommodations, and some drivers do not operate responsibly on the streets. The Metro Traffic Calming Program is designed to identify, prioritize, and help mitigate the undesirable effects of traffic in residential neighborhoods. The most common goals for traffic calming projects are: lower traffic speeds, and safer street accommodations for non-drivers.
Traffic calming represents the continual effort and commitment of Metro to improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods. Metro Public Works, along with other agencies such as the Metro Planning Department and the Metro Police Department, work together to assist neighbors to keep our streets safe for all users. Recommended improvements should be an enhancement to each neighborhood and projects are therefore developed in concert with residents.
In order to provide a fair evaluation of a very high number of neighborhoods desiring to participate, applications for traffic calming are accepted only during specified times.
Currently, these are:
January 2 through January 22 July 8 through July 22 To apply for traffic calming in your neighborhood, please visit this site during open application periods.
You may email applications to MPWTrafficCalming@nashville.gov. To request a speed trailer please visit the Metro Hub at hub.nashville.gov. To request speed enforcement by a police officer, please contact the Police Department Traffic Division at 615-862-7738.
Recently, I had the pleasure to meet The Music City Riders United group whose advocacy work is focused on better public transit in our city.
Soon after, I had a fund raising dinner party for The Sidewalk Foundation and a deep thinking native Nashvillian friend said, 'walking is the most basic form of public transportation'. We were discussing, to our eyes, one of the reasons the Transit Referendum did not pass: citizens cannot figure how to get to the bus on foot or where it would be safe and comfortable to wait for it.
People walking to the Bus on Sharondale and Hillsboro
My Bus Stop
Then, I was listening to the former NYC Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz on Fresh Air (NPR, Terry Gross, LINK for full interview) and thought, he nailed Nashville with this description:
'There are bad public transportation systems out there. 90% of the country has lousy public transportation. It's called a bus that comes around every 1/2 hour or hour. It largely serves poor people. When a system only serves poor people, it's a poor system'.
Good news, we are not alone, I guess.
Add to this, missing sidewalks on 80% of Nashville's roads (AKA no safe way to walk to the bus) and you get a severely under-utilized public transportation system in the setting of mounting traffic as our city grows.
Nashville, this needs to change.
Other cities have made a commitment putting pedestrians first and Nashville could too. Sidewalks need to go in as a first step. Naturally, then, public transportation use would grow and traffic could be reduced.
'Many scientist have one big idea, which they stick with throughout their career,' writes Daniel M. Davis in The Beautiful Cure. I feel this way about sidewalks for Nashville.
'Above all [scientists] aren't afraid of being wrong'. These thoughts, in this blog, are my own. I am passionate about helping Nashville transform into a great walking city for the health and safety of its citizens. This work is voluntary and therefore I may not have all the facts correct from every angle. What is presented, I believe to be accurate and fair.
Walking is the most elemental form of mobility and sidewalks are a basic ingredient in a thriving public transportation system. Without sidewalks, many cannot access the transportation system, such as the bus, safely or simply.
Without sidewalks, there is a barrier to use the bus.
This is why I was so happy to be invited to talk with the Music City Riders United (https://workersdignity.nationbuilder.com/mcru17). This group is working hard to make riding the bus a better and more practical experience.
I shared with them a few critical sidewalk facts that make riding the bus difficult for many.
- 81% of Nashville's roadways do not have a sidewalk
Other cities have reduced their speed limits on local streets as part of Vision Zero.
Could Nashville?
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Maybe we shift gears from Walking Districts to the creation of Walking Cities. Speed limit reduction could go a long way to helping pedestrians feel safe and be safe.
Incredibly proud that this work is being used for further research and to spark discussion. We need this.
Nashville Pedestrian Death Registry.org was created spring 2017 as a joint project to further investigation of how people die while walking in our city. As with most things, the more you learn about the subject, the more complicated and interesting it becomes...
Anthony and I both knew that the stories were more detailed compared to what we read in news and police reports. The map of pedestrian deaths is also very different from what we were hearing as assumed trouble spots.
Favorite quotes from article from NPR below:
45 percent of pedestrian fatalities go unreported in local news outlets, and that when they do, the details provided by police and journalists may be contributing to misperceptions about why pedestrians die.
Last year was the deadliest on record for the city, with 23 killed
Initial traffic crash reports don’t seek many details about victims on foot — often only whether the person was in a crosswalk or wearing dark clothing. Those limited details, without more context, could lead to “victim blaming”
The researchers examined news articles, finding them “jarringly” formulaic, often completely composed of the routine facts that are included in federal crash reporting forms. That can leave out details about the victim, and context about the quality of sidewalks and crosswalks, street lighting, other infrastructure and road conditions.
“Media plays a big part in how we have public perceptions about public safety issues,” Robinson said, adding, “there’s very little coverage of infrastructure at all.”
TSU Researchers: Pedestrian Deaths Are Misunderstood, In Part Because Of Police And Journalists
6/27/2018
Researchers at Tennessee State University say they’ve found shortcomings in how pedestrian deaths are documented and reported through local news outlets.
In a study presented Tuesday (PDF), the pair of researchers said they found that roughly 45 percent of pedestrian fatalities go unreported in local news outlets, and that when they do, the details provided by police and journalists may be contributing to misperceptions about why pedestrians die.
Anthony Campbell, assistant professor of public administration, said he decided to investigate walking deaths because he’d picked up on some misunderstandings while compiling stories of local victims for the Nashville Pedestrian Death Registry.
Last year was the deadliest on record for the city, with 23 killed.
Anecdotally, people didn’t understand where these were happening, or why.
“People tend to say, ‘Oh, well, down on Broadway or something? People get drunk, come here …’ ” he said. “And that’s not. None happen there. Mainly because cars aren’t going fast enough. And then when you look where we found deaths are occurring are out at the perimeter, where people are having to walk home or go from point A to point B and there isn’t a sidewalk.”
Stats provided last year by Walk Bike Nashville show the most deaths (12) occurred on Old Hickory Boulevard, followed by Gallatin and Main Street in East Nashville (11), Murfreesboro Pike (11) and Nolensville Pike (8).
To read the remainder of the article, please click on link above
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If you know someone who has perished on foot in Nashville, please contact us. We would like to talk to you.
I'm so excited to help spread the word that on Tuesday, June 26th, 2018, Anthony Campbell is giving an important talk about how pedestrian deaths are reported in the media.
This has been a hot topic in the pedestrian advocacy world as so often the factual details of what occurred are reduced to 1) was the pedestrian in a crosswalk, 2) was the pedestrian wearing dark clothing and 3) was alcohol or drugs involved. He and I both felt strongly there must be a deeper story with these deaths, more complex, and leaning heavily on how people actually live crossed with infrastructure and policy. With this in mind, we started Nashville Pedestrian Death Registry to track these deaths in Nashville.
Now, Anthony, along with Cara Robinson, have developed a talk entitled Dying While Walking: Interrogating Media Coverage of Pedestrian Deaths in the United States. Anthony is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Tennessee State University, a good friend and my partner at Nashville Pedestrian Death Registry.org. His research focuses on the lived experience of citizen-government relationships and the qualitative dimensions of how humans interact with the built environment. As an avid cyclist, Anthony has first-hand exposure to the importance of a safe transportation infrastructure.
I'm so pleased and proud of the work he is accomplishing and hope you will make time for this interesting talk.
Date and Time
Description
Join us for the presentation, Dying While Walking: Interrogating Media Coverage of Pedestrian Deaths in the United States by Anthony Campbell, PhD and Cara Robinson, PhD of Tennessee State University's College of Public Service (description below).
Bring your own lunch and meet us at the Avon Williams campus of Tennessee State University campus in Training Room #2 from noon to 1pm. See you there!
In recent years, a wide array of policy and technological innovations have been introduced in order to lower individuals’ risk of dying while driving. At the same time, there has been an increased risk of dying while walking. According to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the number of pedestrians killed in the U.S. had the biggest ever single-year increase in 2016 – 5,997 (an 11% increase from 2015). Moreover, there was a nearly 25% increase in the 5-year span from 2012 to 2016. This increase in pedestrian deaths has resulted in public and nonprofit organizations developing strategies to improve pedestrian safety. One of those strategies has been the widespread deployment of educational campaigns to raise awareness about pedestrian deaths and ways to enhance safety. Juxtaposed to these campaigns has been the media’s coverage of pedestrian deaths, which are largely a product of police reports. Given the theoretical models related to the media’s disproportionate impact on public opinions, as well as the media’s and public’s impact on public policy decisions, it is necessary to interrogate how the media impacts the portrayal of pedestrian deaths in the United States. Utilizing media content analysis, and drawing upon media reports (from 2012 to 2016) in five large U.S. cities and one county, this research helps illuminate the role the media plays in constructing the narratives surrounding pedestrian deaths, and ultimately pedestrian safety. These narratives impact urban design and public policy decision-making related to pedestrian infrastructure and public safety. The media’s coverage of pedestrian deaths deserves interrogation, because as Malcom X powerfully avers, “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Use Your Manners: Slow Down, Give Them 3'...Talking about proper etiquette towards our pedestrians in Nashville!
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Edmund Burke – Manners are more important than laws. Upon them in a great measure, the Laws depend. The Law touches us but here and there, and now and then.
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What is profoundly lacking in manners is not slowing down & providing 3 feet to our pedestrians when you see them in the road. The great majority of our roadways in Nashville do not have a proper sidewalk therefore, to walk, you must be in the street.
Don't do this!
Use your manners, be patient & pass with 3' in a slow and controlled fashion.
When you see a pedestrian, please slow down & give them 3 feet. It's good manners and it's the law!
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The estimated duration until we finish the sidewalk network is 1000 (not a typo) years!!! Want more sidewalks? You can help: make a donation to The Sidewalk Foundation.
Instead of a Transit Referendum, How About a Pedestrian Infrastructure Referendum?
I have been thinking a lot about why the Transit Referendum did not pass (May 2018). Without a culture of walking, not many have had the experience of being late or caught in a rainstorm and hoping on a bus. My main theory is the Transit Referendum failed, in part, because we have not fostered a culture of pedestrianism in Nashville.
We valet our cars when there is visible parking a block away. We complain about traffic and yet, without a safe way to walk, getting out on foot is for the few: those who have to and those who are determined.
I voted for transit but worried that we were putting the cart before the horse. Without obvious ways to get to transit (safe, well designed sidewalks so you could walk to your destination) it did not seem clear how this was all going to work.
Frankly, our track record on transit and sidewalks are not good. We still have sidewalks missing from 75% of our roads. Our bus stops are not inviting or safe.
The bus stop at Golf Club and Hillsboro - a weedy ditch strewn with trash. This is NOT is some out of the way place but rather in between Vanderbilt and Greenhills, 2 thriving parts of Nashville. No sidewalk = no way to safely get to or from bus stop!
Pedestrians, in any concentration that matters, can only be found in a few areas such as the Gulch, 12th S, Downtown. The vast majority of Nashville lacks decent walking infrastructure and therefore only the brave or those who have to walk. Herein lies the root of the transit argument. If stepping off the bus leaves you literally in no-man's zone, how do you argue that more buses or different kinds of buses are needed?
We need to have a SIDEWALK PLAN that makes real progress fast and has a completion date set. Citizens need to have walking as an safe option and then transit will naturally be a logical next step.
In my inbox this morning from Ha.Le', a yoga studio on Hillsboro at Blair.
Another benefit...Children often fall asleep, too!
Good day to make sure there are no obstruction to walkers. Trim bushes, pick up debris, make sure your trash cans are in the road, not blocking the right-of-way!
Our bodies are made to move, and specifically, to walk. We are fundamentally designed to use our feet to move from one place to another. This means that, on a biological level, walking activates important physical processes and balances our bodies in important and sometimes profound ways.
The power of walking comes through the movement. Our circulation increases, which allows our tissues to be nourished by more blood and oxygen. This nourishment allows them to repair and heal minor stresses, often before we notice them. Walking also allows us to enter into a naturally rhythmic state, which helps our minds shift into light meditation and stress reduction mode with ease.
The motion of putting one foot in front of the other coordinates complex interactions between muscles, bones, and connective tissues. It is an ongoing conversation that keeps each part healthy and connected to the whole. Increasing regular walks allows the body to adjust muscles and movements back toward healthy alignment and engagement, correcting some gait issues caused by too much sitting and not enough moving.
The corrective power of walking is well documented. Studies have shown that walking eases joint pain and arthritis by lubricating the joints and strengthening the muscles that support them. It also boosts immune function, reducing sick days by 43%. It can improve posture by reestablishing natural movement patterns, and it provides all the benefits of weight-bearing exercise. Because walking requires your body to stand upright against gravity, it increases bone density and muscle tone.
Walking is a powerful way to increase whole body health, and is especially effective when you go for walks outdoors. This brings you connection with nature, fresh air, and sunshine, helping to reduce stress levels and relax the body and mind. Walk more to increase your overall sense of well being.
Wish I could say the roadway below was an anomaly or at the outskirts of Nashville. Unfortunately, all too many streets in Nashville look like this one. This is Sharondale, looking east at Hillsboro Rd. Linden Waldorf School is to the right and the bus stop is at the corner on the left. This is in between Vanderbilt and Greenhills near the I-440 interchange.
Every morning, this scene plays out. People trying to get to the bus or walking to their destination on a very narrow street with a 35mph speed limit (who can say why this was a every a good idea!?!). When school is in, there is a temporary reprieve to 15mph in the zone.
The right side of the street has a deep ditch often with flowing water and the left, although recently developed, with no sidewalk.
I really cannot understand, how in 2018, this situation still exists.
A friend of mine sent this photograph this morning from 2016 when Mayor Dean was in office. As alluded to, Nashville has been talking about sidewalks for too long.
There have been lots of 'plan' but seemingly little action as we still cannot walk safely and comfortably in too many areas that are in the heart of Nashville.
A lot of variance requests have sprung up to ask the Board of Zoning to allow exemption from Sidewalk Bill #493.
If you see these signs, please send them to me. Unfortunately, it often takes citizen emails to the Board of Zoning Appeals asking that they NOT grant the variance. Your voice is truly needed. These requests come up fast and there is not a lot of time for walking/sidewalk advocates to have a voice so please take a moment and email now (info below)!!!
This variance request is on Estes in between Abbott Martin and Woodmont on the east side of the street. What you cannot see from this picture is that I am actually standing on the sidewalk that is on the adjacent side street. If there is an adjacent sidewalk, a variance is not to be allowed per the law. This is how we will eventually develop a complete sidewalk network.
As you can see, there is no place for a pedestrian to have safe and comfortable passage on this stretch of Estes. If I add in legal passage, you can quickly know this is not ADA compliant in any stretch of the definition.
Adding their piece of sidewalk to Estes would be a great gift to the neighborhood and is the land owners responsibility under current law.
Please take 3 minutes out of your day and write to:
We design our streets like roads, as if their primary function — and sometimes their sole function — is the movement of automobiles.
Many people don’t grasp the difference between a street and a road. They think the terms are interchangeable, and rightly so. In the United States, we’ve spent decades — and trillions of dollars — blurring the distinctions.
Streets: The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem of businesses and homes that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobiles) are the indicator species of success. Successful streets are environments where humans and human interaction flourish.
Roads: In contrast, the function of a road is to connect productive places to one another. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad — a road on rails — where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two.
With a street, we’re trying to build a place. With a road, we’re trying to get from one place to another. Streets emphasize wealth creation. Roads are about movement.
Why is this distinction important?
Designing our streets as if they were roads creates three fundamental and interrelated problems.
First, it’s really expensive. We spend a lot more money on everything from engineering to asphalt when we overbuild our streets. And because poorly designed streets suppress demand for biking and walking — two lower cost alternatives to driving — they actually induce even more demand for transportation spending.
The kind of streets that are typically located in auto-centric areas are not only less financially productive, they also tend to be less adaptable, less flexible and thus more financially fragile. The financial struggles our cities face are directly related to the poor financial productivity of our auto-based development pattern.
Third, designing our streets as if they were roads is not safe. These environments combine fast speeds with randomness and complexity, a condition unsafe for drivers and particularly unsafe for anyone outside of a vehicle.
Stroads: The Futon of Transportation
A stroad is a hybrid of a street and a road. Much like a futon, it tries to do two things at once and is forced to compromise on each. A stroad tries to move cars kind of quickly along a corridor that also builds some wealth. The result is expensive infrastructure serving low-returning properties that fails to move traffic quickly while being particularly dangerous.
A stroad is the worst kind of transportation investment we can make, yet we build them all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. If you are driving between 25 and 50 miles per hour, you are probably on a stroad. They are everywhere.
That’s because of the way in which transportation professionals approach street construction. As they do with roads, they start the process by selecting a design speed. They then establish the volume of traffic they are designing to accommodate. Given the speed and volume, they then reference a road design manual to provide recommended dimensions for safe automobile travel. Finally, they calculate the cost of the project.
The order of these values — speed, volume, safety, then cost — works well for roads, but it is nearly the complete inverse of what is needed to build a productive and safe street. Successful streets emphasize safety first — and that’s safety for everyone, not just driver and their passengers— and then focus on cost, volume and finally speed.
If we want a place to be successful, automobile speed can't be the top priority of street designers. It needs to be their lowest priority.
#Slowthecars
The most compelling thing we can do today to make our cities wealthier and more successful is to substantially slow automobile speeds on our streets.
We need to incrementally shift each of our stroads to become either a street or a road, distinguishing the parts of our existing transportation network over time to emphasize either a street function (wealth creation / complexity) or a road function (traffic movement / simplicity).
And while the fragile financial condition of our local governments is what compels us to make this change, it is clear that building lower cost, higher returning streets will also save lives and improve the quality of life for our citizens.
That is why #slowthecars is such a critical part of implementing a Strong Towns approach.
