[BikeLongmont] Street Design Forum: Trip Report

[Richard Masoner]

The Longmont Street Design Forum was Saturday morning at the Senior
Center in Roosevelt Park. The purpose of this forum was to look at the
state of the art in modern traffic calming techniques.

I arrived about 10 minutes late because I took my old fixed-gear bike
and the left pedal broke off about a half-mile from my house. I
considered going all the way with one leg, but then turned around and
got a good bike.

Bike Longmont member Craig Smith was there, along with TAB member
Veronica Summers and city councilmembers Karen Benker, Fred Wilson,
and Doug Brown. Several residents interested in local traffic
mitigation attended, and much of the city staff involved with traffic
engineering were also at the meeting.

Dr. Reid Ewing gave his presentation first, showing the attendees what
is currently used around the country for traffic mitigation and
discussing a lot of the lessons learned over the past couple of
decades.  "Slow points" (e.g. speed humps and so forth) can actually
increase peak speed -- motorists slow down for the hump, then speed up
to make up for the perceived lost time. The same is true for stop
signs that are placed to slow people down -- motorists brake, then gun
the engine and accelerate quickly from the stop. For any of the
engineering solutions to be effective, they must not be placed too far
apart.

The current thought in traffic mitigation is that for most cases,
diverting traffic (street closures and so forth) are bad. They just
move the problem from one neighborhood and into another neighborhood.

Also, traffic mitigation can't just be done on one road -- it must be
done on a neighborhood wide scale, because otherwise the problem will
just move to parallel roads. Dr. Ewing opined that education (signs,
radar trailers) don't work. I tend to agree.

Dr. Ewing then showed several photographs of existing efforts in
Longmont and gave his critique of them.

The second presenter, Nazir Lalani, was unable to attend because his
flight was cancelled due to weather. A guy from the LSA consulting
firm gave Lalani's presentation, which was about the potential for
backlash and the importance of process and communication to minimize
the backlash. I personally think this was one of the more important
parts of this forum, and I also believe that almost nobody in
attendance "got" this message.

The third presenter, Dan Burden, then gave his presentation in his
usual engaging style. He also gave his opinions on specific things
that Longmont can do, emphasizing community and walkability. He also
talked quite a bit about getting buy-in from stakeholders, especially
the emergency response people who frequently object to traffic calming
measures because of there impact on response times. Dr. Ewing had
addressed this also, mentioning that when traffic calming measures are
put in place, there are many fewer accidents, making the whole
response time issue moot because no response is needed.

As far as specific measures go -- narrowing streets, bulb-outs,
contrasting colors, and patterns, wider bike lanes and so forth --
there wasn't anything new in that area, though I had the feeling that
city councilmembers and some TAB members weren't aware of these
effective measures.

We broke for lunch after these presentations and I met some people who
are very interested in traffic mitigation for their neighborhoods.
Several people from 3rd Avenue were there, as were people around the
hospital area and elsewhere along Mountain View Avenue. Everybody
there is in favor of the 25 mph speed limit.

Councilmember Fred Wilson had a really goofball idea about putting
rumble strips next to bike lanes. I informed him very clearly that
rumble strips are about the most dangerous road treatment you can use,
and anybody who installs rumble strips -- especially in an urban
setting -- is not doing bicyclists a favor.

After this there were small group discussions, but I had to skip out
because my son had a basketball game. Perhaps Lauren, Craig, or
somebody else on the list who was there can let us know how it went.

Richard Masoner