Bike Accident Tracker: Contra Costa Least Safe Place to Bike

Hola amigos, I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but I've been trying to figure out what my intentions and ambitions with this publication are, exactly.

In the meantime, a totally excellent example of public data sharing and professionally-managed crowd-sourced journalism: The Bay Citizen's Bike Accident Tracker. Maps, charts, data. Agent at fault, type of crash. Really great stuff.

Click to enlarge--and note the customized search/sort featers at left.

Aggregated results: Contra Costa County is the worst. Not for the total number of crashes, but for the percentages of bike commuters who are involved in accidents. From 2005 to 2009 there was an average of 288 accidents involving cars and bicycles in CC, or 11% of the roughly 2568 bike commuters.

San Francisco, though it posted far more accidents, also posted far more commuters--and only 4% of them were involved in crashes.

Transit Tensions: Development Enhancer, or Mobility Tool?

I hope my professors will let me submit light rail prospectus analysis in multimedia:



An excellent series of accompanying blog posts at Transport Michigan gets to the heart of the issue:

Over the past decade, developers and city officials across the U.S. have taken an interest in downtown streetcar systems as a development tool. The model was the Portland Streetcar, opened in 2001 as a 2.4-mile loop connecting downtown Portland to a former industrial area just to the north. Rechristened the "Pearl District," that area boomed with new luxury lofts drawing Portland's growing professional population. Ironically, just as housing developers extended streetcar lines out to posh new residential districts a century ago (Woodbridge in Detroit is one such "streetcar suburb"), streetcars now offer cities and developers a potentially lucrative tool for facilitating the return of well-heeled residents back into the inner city. Transit advocates have long sought transit-oriented development to increase ridership, but streetcar advocates flip the phrase, proudly calling streetcars "development-oriented transit," although some Portlanders complain the district has grown too "hoity-toity" for their taste.

...

On a more fundamental level, though, when we lack regional rapid transit, and tens of thousands of transit-dependent Detroiters have to rely on unreliable, infrequent buses to get around, is it really appropriate for us to put real estate development that primarily serves newly arrived professionals before meeting the transit needs of the entire region, and especially those of the less privileged? This author's status as a twenty-something white guy from an affluent, educated background makes him a strong candidate for being one of those professionals, and I'm all for more housing in Cass/Midtown (though I think it's vital for it to be mixed-income), but I still think regional transit has got to be first.  [bold mine]

Mobility is part of equity. Planning for streetcars with local stops designed to spur development and boost property values without a pre-existing regional transit network smacks of boutique transit. Transit can have positive externalities, but only when it helps people get from point A to point B.

The issues of privilege, gentrification, and which needs transit serves are certainly at issue here, but equity concerns are not the only ones. A streetcar with an overly local focus, in the absence of good regional services, runs counter to the forces that generate lively and diverse city blocks: letting people move freely about the city. Cities are great because they have a wealth of different activities housed cheek and jowl: opera, sports franchises, boutiques, professional services, offices, residences. Attempts to cluster these into zones usually leads to a breakdown of the very diversity that generated the foot traffic that generated the diversity, you dig?

Human Transit recently weighed in on the importance of mobility vs. local place-making. The two elements should balance each other in any self-respecting city: the former about passing through, the latter encouraging staying around.

The trick is the dialog: keeping that pendulum balanced between transit that encourages people to, say, take the streetcar for all their local errands, and transit encouraging mobility. These are not mutually exclusive functions, but recognizing the different motives behind transit projects helps avoid imbalances. Too far to the local, and isolation/stagnation can ensue. Too far to the mobile, and you have a land of no-places (see auto-dependent freeway suburbs with replicated chain stores surrounding parking lots off 6 lane median-less arterials for what maximum mobility looks like).

The late 20th Century car-centered model led to the massive conversion of land area from placehood functions to mobility functions.  Transit's great virtue is that it provides a lot of mobility using relatively little space, so that more area can be devoted to places, both public and private.  ...

There is a strong current in New Urbanism, not without detractors, that does seem interested in abolishing mobility.  Patrick Condon's idea for Vancouver, for example, would cancel a single proposed subway line and instead replace all of the city's electric trolleybuses with streetcars that go the same speed as the buses do.  He would cancel a mobility-improving project and instead spend money in way that that may do great urban things but doesn't increase mobility at all.  Once his network was complete, nobody could get anywhere any faster than they can now. 

This makes sense only in a context where going places (even under renewable elecric power) is an objective evil.  Streetcars, in this vision, supposedly cause greater urban density to be built at livable neighborhood scales, so that people meet more of their needs close to home.  People spend most of their time in their own "villages" and others nearby.  They simply do not travel far across the city, and had better not be in a hurry when they do.

It's understandable that "urban village" is a winning concept right now.  We do need to increase the self-reliance of each part of a city, so that travel demand for many of life's needs can met closer to home.  The pendulum swung far the other way in the late 20th century, toward surrendering placehood to movement.  I support and eagerly participate in efforts to help it swing back.

But I think we can see what it might look like to swing too far in the new direction.  We stay close to home, and thus evolve transport systems that are useful for going short distances and useless for going long ones.  And the obvious retort to this is:  In that case, why live in a city?  Why not just live in a country village, or in a small city?

Remedial Street Grids

Street grids can be, in theory, an effective way to alleviate congestion on major suburban arterials. Frequently, lack of alternate routes, shared parking lots, and destination sprawl will concentrate traffic by virtue of the multiple car trips necessary to complete a set of errands.

Streetsblog DC has a great post about a rejected alternative to highway expansion in Charleston regarding a congested stretch of 4 lane suburban arterial. Read on:

The proposed secondary street grid would have been perpendicular and parallel to the existing arterial road.

To ease congestion on Savannah Highway, officials in Charleston have proposed an eight-mile, $489 million expansion of Interstate 526 through the towns of West Ashley, Johns Island and James Island.

One plan SC DOT rejected was developed by the Coastal Conservation League. The League opposes the I-526 extension, saying the project will destroy wetlands and perpetuate sprawl while having no effect on congestion on Savannah Highway. Their alternative proposal, “A New Way to Work,” could serve as a model for how to improve safety and make communities more livable while avoiding the expense and sprawl caused highway expansion.

“A New Way to Work” asserts that the congestion problems on Savannah Highway can be solved through street-level interventions in key locations. The biggest shortcoming of Savannah Highway, say League staff, is poor design. Their report notes that the road has a driveway every 80 feet, on average, creating a chaotic scramble between drivers who use the road to travel far distances and those who dash in and out of retail establishments. The lack of connectivity in the street network also limits drivers’ options, forcing traffic onto the arterial road.

What is needed, the report states, is a hierarchy of streets for different types of trips.

In its proposed redesign of Savannah Highway, the League would:

• Eliminate many curb cuts
• Install medians to control turning
• Repair connections between cul-de-sac-style, disconnected streets

These three principles are recommended by the Transportation Research Board to reduce congestion, preserve scenic landscapes and improve safety of motorists and pedestrians.

“It centers around the power of the network streets to relieve the knots in the system,” said the League’s Josh Martin. “We’re trying to create a really great, livable, walkable multi-modal street.”

Sigh.

Biking No Man's Land II: Overpasses and Frontage Roads

In the first post about biking in downtown Danville, I chronicled the way land-use patterns tilt different parts of the same commercial corridor precipitously toward complete streets, or precipitously toward automobile only zones.

Southern downtown is frustrating, but the No Man's Land deal-sealer is the difficulty of negotiating its southern boundary. Biking in and out from the north is not the greatest, but after getting to the Iron Horse Trail, it is rather pleasant. To the south, though, there are two choices for leaving Dodge, both dangerous.  

As an ardent suburban biker, I know the roads that are good, and the roads that are dangerous. #1 most death-defying, damn-I'm-in-a-tight-spot place: freeway overpasses with onramps. #2: high speed (40+) frontage roads with gravelly <4 ft shoulders. Let's mix some Homer with our Gunsmoke and call them Scylla and Charybdis. A closer look:

Scylla Sycamore: Anatomy of a Beast

The only way to get to the Iron Horse Trail from the south end of town is to use Sycamore Valley Rd as it passes over highway 680. The screen captures and photographs below illustrate the difficulty of this endeavor.

1) Southern edge of Danville Blvd/Danville shopping district/Dodge.

2) Street view:

No bike lane, and the sidewalk ends. A subtle signal about who is welcome. Beyond that ped dead-end, cars merge to the right at will and at speed onto a gently banked ramp to 680 south, regardless of what color the light is. No pedestrian crossing there.

3) Street view a little tighter in:

No pedestrian crossing, but hey: a bike lane! It's hard to see, but by the island (just left of the 680 sign), a bike lane emerges. It disappears across the intersection, and then reappears by the next island, then disappears, then reappears across the overpass, then disappears, etc. It's comical that someone thought that a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't four foot margin between freeway-aroused automobiles and a bicyclist would even be worth the paint.

O = bike lane, X = No bike lane

A patchwork bike path described as such is misleading insofar as it implies that the object described is, in fact, a patchwork bike path. It fails to summon the agoraphobic terror one gets when biking across the gray expanse of what is not technically an intersection, but rather a space for cars to ascend to, or decelerate from, highway velocities triple and quadruple a bicyclist's. One feels as though there may as well be a bike path across a runway at SFO.

Of particular danger and high dexterity-need is the switch from the 2nd "O" to the 3rd "O" (L to R). One must cross a lane of cars, cars having just experienced the g-forces better known as the cloverleaf exit, cars with drivers having just tasted the anticipation of flooring it on the straightaway to even out a leftward-tugging centrifugal force, cars that are supremely totally not expecting a bike to appear in front of them, nor prepared to brake for said bike.

One must reverse this maneuver as one moves from "O" the 3rd to "O" the 4th. Cars leave the overpass, and right-turning traffic moves into the dedicated, banked right hand lane. One must somehow move from the right of these cars (while on the overpass) to their left (@ "X" the 4th and "O" the 4th). While doing this, one must contend with new cars being added to the travel way from the off ramp near "X" the 4th.

The reward at the end is safe passage on the Iron Horse Trail/Ithaka. I only take this route, somewhat counterintuitively, at night, when traffic is lighter. Doing so requires waiting to verify an absence of headlights on the cloverleaf, and then pedaling like hell. Scylla. I avoid it.


Charybdis: The Choke Point

After the complications of Scylla, it's anticlimactically simple. Heading south, with Sycamore to the left, a biker follows a bike path for a hundred yards, and then a generously wide shoulder picks up the slack. So far so good, until the choke point.

  

The picture does not show that the 3 foot shoulder is rather gravelly, mostly inclined (heading south), or that the woosh of 45 mph cars is muy frightening. Whereas Scylla involves timing and a mad dash to the other side, Charybdis requires a sustained, disciplined sprint. Since I am not terribly fast (12-15 mph being my guesstimated cruising speed with a slight incline), this stretch takes about 4-5 minutes, but feels like 20. The uphill, devilishly, increases as you get to the end.

The risk comes from the speed differential between the hypothetical car and bicyclist. A professor of mine once showed the following chart (I do not know the source, but in addition to being a transportation planning lecturer, he is also a transportation planning consultant, so I trust it) to indicate the effect that vehicle speed has on crash mortality.

The numbers on the axes are difficult to read, but a vehicle-pedestrian crash at any speed over 30mph stands an excellent chance of causing a near fatal injury or death.

Check for Pt 3 of the Biking No Man's Land series, coming soon, in which I'll review a few potential fixes pipe dreams.

A Biking No Man's Land in Danville, Pt I

Problem: south of the where the Iron Horse Trail meets San Ramon Valley Boulevard/Hartz Avenue, downtown Danville is a biking no man's land.

Old-timey Downtown Danville, the proper downtown north of the IHT access point, is well integrated with the regional bike/ped path. The historic downtown's "antiquated" land-use pattern of small blocks, on-street parking (with additional lots behind the shops), and retail make it an ideal place for pedestrians, and its convenient IHT access points only intensifies incentives for leaving the car at home.

The IHT, somewhat ironically, marks the southern boundary of the bike/ped friendly zone. On the Google Earth screenshot below, the IHT is in blue, the historic downtown is the "A" pushpin, and the No Man's Land is outlined in yellow.

Downtown Danville. 680 runs North to South, from top of image to bottom, respectively.

The zone bordered in yellow could have been an asset, an extension of the historic downtown. Unfortunately, the difference between it and the downtown could not be more stark. Just north of the blue circle, blocks shrink, streets narrow, and stores front the sidewalk. South of the blue circle, the road widens to 4 lanes, (in some cases 5), and parking lots push storefronts back as much as several hundred meters from the (now perfunctory) sidewalk.

From El Nido restaurant to the street is +/- 300 meters

The Livery Mercantile is a lost place entirely: cabin-like shops in various shades of colorless brown held at a distance by a big parking lot forest. I avoid it. It's like, unpleasantly arboreal. Arboreal in the sense that there are no sightlines; it is hard to orient oneself; it is dark; the buildings actually do look like dark huts. Instead of following the predictable geometry of the courtyard/plaza blueprint (see above image; geometric assets aside, it's still just a car-choked variation on a classic pedestrian urban space [imagine filling this with parking, or the Plaza Mayor]), the Livery lot is an amoebic lagoon.

Endor?

So let's be clear: this part of town is not friendly to pedestrians or bikers. If the historic downtown is where people go for a pleasant meal or a shopping stroll, or a midsummer festival, the No Man's Land is where you do the daily errands: Lucky, Walgreens, CVS, McCaulous, multiple banks, etc. The Bowling Alley. So it's a fairly vital part of any Danvillian's weekly life. Except for McCaulous.

If land use patterns made biking safe and desirable, more people would be free to make the choice to deposit checks, pick up groceries, etc, on their bikes. But in a place built for cars, there is only one option: cars. Unless you really enjoy going against the grain, like me.

As much as the land use planning decisions make this a tale of two Danvilles, one for cars and one for bikes/peds(/and cars, too; there really is plenty of parking, proof that you can have it both ways), what really makes the southern downtown a No Man's Land is access. Lack of it: getting to this area from the south, and getting back out of this area to the south present bicyclists with a dangerous set of options that only further discourage anything beside driving.

More on this in the next post.

Growth and the Role of Rail

When the cost of HSR is discussed in that way that makes it seems formidably, unAmericanly expensive, the context of HSR's pricetag is rarely established: i.e., that if rail does not happen, many billions will be spent, regardless, on freeways and airports. Obviously, rail does not end the need to spend billions of dollars on roads, freeways, and parking, but it relieves congestion and saves the expenses of expanding those networks. The San Antonio Express-News gets it right:

According to a study commissioned by the Texas Transportation Commission, during the next 20 years, more than $300 billion in 2009 dollars needs to be invested in Texas roads and freeways just to keep commute times from worsening. Adjust that figure for expected inflation and the cost balloons to $488 billion.

The gasoline tax, which provides most of the funding for road construction and maintenance, is expected to provide only $160 billion in revenue during the same period. Legislative leaders have characterized the state's transportation funding as a crisis: Texas is running out of money to build new roads.

California, long maligned as the golden state of governmental malaise, has embarked on a different path. In 2008, California voters approved $10 billion in bonds as a down payment on a $40 billion high-speed rail system that will link San Diego to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to San Francisco and Sacramento via the Central Valley.

Eventually public transit becomes cheaper (and more attractive) than continuing to expand road networks. Los Angeles hit a breaking point: look at the popularity/buzz around Villaraigosa's 30/10 plan to expand transit in Los Angeles. I hope more cities and states see those costs, too, and mobilize in favor of transit.

A good place to start would be spreading an appreciation for the fact that Caltrains saves 2.5 lanes of traffic on 101 during each commute. Is it more expensive to add miles of highway or close a $30 million operating budget for the beleaguered rail agency?

Ascertainable Fact: Sprawl Neither Demanded nor Profitable

Not demanded:

(From the WSJ. Italics mine. Bolding mine. Underline mine.)

Much of this week’s National Association of Home Builders conference has dwelled on the housing needs of an aging baby boomer population. But their children actually represent an even larger demographic. An estimated 80 million people comprise the category known as “Gen Y,” youth born roughly between 1980 and the early 2000s. The boomers, meanwhile, boast 76 million. (And, uh, we're gonna outlive them.)

Gen Y housing preferences are the subject of at least two panels at this week’s convention. A key finding: They want to walk everywhere. Surveys show that 13% carpool to work, while 7% walk, said Melina Duggal, a principal with Orlando-based real estate adviser RCLCO. A whopping 88% want to be in an urban setting, but since cities themselves can be so expensive, places with shopping, dining and transit such as Bethesda and Arlington in the Washington suburbs will do just fine.

Count me in that 88%, obvi. I'm wracking my brain for a peer to (anonymously) trot out as a counterexample, but I can't.

Not Profitable:

Transportation for America breaks down a report indicating that these Gen-Y preferences (density, infill, transit-links, walkability) have big economic bonuses:

In Dallas, Texas, for instance, downtown retail sales rose 33 percent the year after the new light rail system began operation. Portland, Oregon attracted $3.5 billion in private investment after just $100 million in streetcar funding. In Sarasota, Florida, downtown development costs clocked in at just half the cost of new development in the suburbs and generated four times the revenue in tax receipts.

Denver, Colorado perhaps best exemplifies the market for new approaches to growth and transit. Home values for Denver residents within a half-mile radius of the Southeast light rail line increased by 18 percent just as home values in the remainder of Denver declined by 18 percent, between 2006 and 2008. Nationwide, one study found that every one-point increase in a home’s “walk score” — a measure of how accessible the area is by foot — corresponded with a $700 to $3,000 increase in property value.

Transforming a City

If you have 25 minutes, this PBS documentary about the work and legacy of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogatá, is well worth a watch.

Transportation investments under his watch have improved the quality of life and reduced the crime rate for a city that used to be synonymous with danger and drug cartels.

Watch the full episode. See more e2.

Before the video starts there are 2 short ads ... do not lose heart! Plus, Brad Pitt narrates.

Streetscape Designs

I love streetscape design. The constraints are concrete (pun?): a travelway of x ft across, including sidewalks ... and a question: how to use it? I've been wanting to write a post titled something like "Anatomy of a Streetscape" for a while, and while this is not that post, it is as useful an introduction as any.

Cesar Chavez Street, six lanes of asphalt that's the dividing line between the Mission District and Bernal Heights, is about as close as it comes to a freeway while still being a city street.

But unlike a freeway, it's surrounded by housing, schools, a church and a smattering of businesses. Now it's the latest city street in line for a major transformation to make it more inviting to pedestrians and bikes.

The plan calls for narrowing the street from six lanes to four, with left turn lanes at major intersections, adding bike lanes in both directions, widening and landscaping the median, planting more than 300 trees along the corridor and installing energy-efficient lighting.

The design calls for two pedestrian plazas, at Mission Street near Capp Street, and at Precita and Bryant streets; widening the sidewalks at the corners; shoring up and adding curb ramps; and putting in planters to capture storm water.

In addition, the sewers will be upgraded and the stretch between Hampshire Street on the east to Guerrero Street on the west will be repaved.

I've written before about how grade school parents make an excellent constituency for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure enhancement (Safe Routes to School, etc), and a few of the proponents quoted in the article were parents and grandmothers. Indeed, the movement for redesign started with a neighborhood petition in 2006.

In addition to organizing parent of gradeschool children, another tactic for creating more sustainable, complete streets is to run traffic counts. Engineering standards are prescriptive in the way they seek to create streets for specific capacities of automobile throughput. If streets see less traffic, there is a quantitative argument to be made that a travel lane for cars might be better used for median expansion/beautification, wider sidewalks, or a bike lane.

Given the amount of traffic on Cesar Chavez--50,000 cars/day, and its connection to 101--underuse was probably not a very useful argument. More info about Cesar Chavez redesign,

Starting a redesign as a pilot/temporary change is another way to get opponents to test run an idea. See the success of the re-timed traffic lights on Valencia Avenue. The green wave may not technically be streetscape/infrastructure, but it nonetheless directly affects the street environment.

Here's an article about similar plans for the Masonic Streetscape. Love looking at aerial diagrams like this one:

Incentive for Safer Streets: Fun!

A Volkswagon-funded project asked the public to create proposals to make "dull" practices like going the speed limit, taking the stairs, and recycling, into fun practices. Here is the winner:



I can envision civic leaders worrying about losing out on some revenues from forgone fine monies, but seriously, this is awesome. Something that Kevin Richardson said in the NYTimes reminded me in a big way of best practices for motivating students:

Mr. Richardson, a producer for Nickelodeon’s games division, says that traffic law enforcement’s emphasis on punishment, not reward, is outmoded. “Thinking of all the interesting ways we can penalize a few bad or distracted apples is a mis-distribution of energy and attention,” he said in an e-mail message.

If creating positive incentives > policing in a classroom, why not in society at large? More, please.

Here are the other finalists:

Department of Pipe Dreams: Highway 680 Bus Rapid Transit, Pt I

Making fantasy transit maps is a favored pastime of at least a few urban planning bloggers, but I must confess this pipe dream was dreamed well before I read about Transbay's dream Bus Rapid Transit plans, mega MTA, or a Boston with an MBTA urban ring. Goes to show that fantasy is a standard, and seductive, business.

In this post I'll give a general overview of why a BRT line linking West Dublin/Pleasanton BART and Walnut Creek BART in the Highway 680 right of way would be a good idea, if wishes were horses. In Part II, I'll go into more detail about Bus Rapid Transit particulars, individual station locations and treatments, what kind of feeder bus networks would be needed, and what incentives and enhancements could boost hypothetical ridership.

The Pitch

Interstate 680, north of 580 and south of 24, is clogged with traffic, especially during commuter rush hour. Large sections of it are built out, making expansion difficult. The Walnut Creek BART Station in the north and Dublin/Pleasanton Station in the south take commuters into Oakland and San Francisco, but full parking lots and underused buses limit station capacity. The area in between the stations is a transit desert, served only by a scattering of County Connection bus lines. These bus lines already use the two BART stations as convenient route termini, but rely on the anonymous, tucked away, San Ramon Transit Center for their origin. Housing developments and sprawl continue at the edges of existing development, further impacting 680. Cities and towns surround 680, yet the corridor lacks density or sheer population to justify a BART connection. (BART is already in trouble for expensive boondoggles, landing on the wrong side of violent and financial civil rights disputes, and being politically obligated to build out to inefficient locations because those locations happen to contribute revenue to it.) 680 is the principal artery for the region, a necessity to get to either BART station, anywhere else in the Bay Area, and many local trips.

BRT on 680 would fill in the gap between D/P and Walnut Creek

Note how developments are concentrated around 680, but spreading eastward in San Ramon/Danville. BART Stations are located where 680 and 24 intersect in Walnut Creek, and 680 and 580 intersect in Dublin.

The Overview

Bus Rapid Transit for the 680 corridor would link the under-construction West Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station to the Walnut Creek Station. It would have its own dedicated right of way for the duration of the route, off board fare collection, and triple-door low floor buses (or raised platforms) to facilitate minimal holding times at stations. To cater to business commuters, the buses could offer wireless internet. Stations will be built around intersections where 680 crosses over or under major suburban arterials.

Like this, Transmilenio style (Bogotá, Colombia)

Investing in the highway right of way would centralize and reorient bus operations into a main trunk route fed by feeder buses. Feeder buses would run along the high-volume arterials that traverse the region--streets like Crow Canyon, Bollinger Canyon, Ygnacio Valley, and Stone Valley Roads. Users would need to get to the nearest arterial, and from there, using the system would intuitively mimic how they already move around the region: accessing and exiting 680.

While BRT could certainly be used for a variety of daily trips, its largest value-add will be for commuters traveling out to Oakland and San Francisco, or commuters coming in to the office parks in San Ramon and Pleasanton. BRT's guaranteed traffic-free ride to BART will reduce incentive to both a) drive to BART, and b) drive to the final workplace destination, taking cars off the road and diminishing rush hour traffic.

Stay tuned for the list of stations and locations of feeder routes!

Transportation Planning, Teaching, and the Importance of Objectives

Last Thursday I attended one of the West Contra Costa Transportation Advisory Council's Technical Advisory Committee meetings. Add that all up, and you get a WCCTAC TAC, pronounced "wicktactac." Which is exactly what they call it, beautifully enough.

Anyway, I took the 72R from El Cerrito Del Norte, and got off just north of Church and San Pablo Ave, where the City of San Pablo offices are. The complex has a low profile from the street, but opens up onto a pleasantly lush Spanish-style courtyard. I found the room with help from a friendly janitor, introduced myself to John Rudolf, my contact from the Berkeley Planning open house, and took a seat for the meeting.

A representative from Caltrans opened the meeting by reviewing implementation plans for installing traffic cameras along the Interstate 80 corridor. The closed circuit cameras would be placed at intersections between on ramps and local streets to monitor traffic before it gets to the highway. 23 cameras already dot local streets along I-80; this project would add 54 more to monitor local traffic at specific highway access points.

Everything seemed pretty open and shut: Caltrans was improving infrastructure to enable it to better monitor local conditions at access points to the critical highway in the area. There were packets of information with lists of proposed intersections, maps, and bullet-pointed lists of official things. From what the Caltrans rep reported, I gathered that Caltrans had approached cities about potential CCTV camera locations, and had asked the relevant contacts if their respective cities would like cameras where indicated. The response: yes. So Caltrans moved forward with the project, but failed to adequately communicate the objective.

The evidence I have to substantiate the lack of a communicated objective is only what I witnessed at the meeting. Christina Atienza, Executive Director of WCCTAC, asked whether any data existed re how often the 23 existing CCTV cameras were used. There wasn't, yet. A representative from another city asked what the new cameras would be used for. To identify traffic conditions on local streets was one answer, but no one could describe what functionality this would add, especially since no one was sure whether the existing cameras were being used. Would Caltrans respond to camera-ID'd situations? How? Caltrans is responsible for I-80; local streets are in the purview of local cities. How would video be stored? Who would review the video? Do the police want it for law enforcement? Did anyone ask the police about this project? Another proffered purpose was to ascertain the cause of accidents on local streets. But if Caltrans' task is to keep I-80 flowing smoothly, then knowing about accidents on local streets is relevant ... in ways the presentation did not make clear.

My lasting impression from the meeting is not the relevance of CCTV to local streets along the I-80 corridor, but rather the relevance of my years in urban education to transportation planning. From my years at the MATCH Charter Public High School and Prospect Hill Academy, I learned that student progress happens when lessons have concrete objectives framed in relevant ways. Both elements are critical: I realized too late that just being clear lead to uninspired students ... i.e., "I know exactly what I need to do, but don't really get why we're doing this." Breaking a skill down into easy-peasy step-by-step doesn't (by itself) make a student want to practice that skill, far from it. And pursuing relevance without clarity amounts to pandering: like using popular lyrics for analysis without actually teaching how to link diction and imagery to themes and main points. Maybe it's "relevant" to a student, but what is she being asked to do with it, and can she practice and perform that skill? Creating relevance in your classroom is difficult, and can come in many different packages. It could mean framing a lesson in a larger context before diving into skills, or it could mean whispering encouraging words to a struggling student, and letting the knowledge that the teacher cares create its own relevance. Point is, the teacher needs to define the destination and establish why getting there matters, by (almost) any means necessary. Clarity and relevance.

Judging by the reaction she received, the Caltrans rep did not make the purpose of the CCTV proposal clear or relevant. Now, I already stated my lack of knowledge behind the run-up to this meeting, but I sense that a better presentation would have more clearly laid out what functionality an expanded CCTV system would accomplish, and how it would benefit both Caltrans and surrounding cities. Done effectively, this would address who would monitor the video feed, what tools they would have to respond to traffic conditions, how much a city would need to increase its operations budget and where that money would come from, and why the proposed cameras would be better than what is already in place. None of those questions were answered in the discussion at the meeting.

Another reality I discovered while teaching is that a lesson plan can always be more specific. For example, maybe the rep was thinking the CCTV objective was to monitor traffic, and the relevance was that each city could have better traffic information. Sounds good, but in the same way that "Students will be able to learn the causes of the Civil War" also sounds good. Both objectives fail when put into practice. What should students be able to do at the end of the lesson? List 5 causes? Rank 5 causes? Evaluate whether the causes were worth the bloodshed? Similarly: Monitor traffic? And then do what about it? etc. An objective needs to be actionable to be legit, and neither "learn causes" or "monitor traffic" cut it.

Interestingly, the second element in the Caltrans presentation fared much better. The project was to install technology in stoplight-regulated I-80 on ramps to determine when the lines of waiting cars gets too long. The objective was precise, and clearly presented: to install back-of-queue detectors to insure that no on ramps backed up onto local streets. And its relevance: whenever the detector is triggered, the stoplight regulating access to the highway will automatically stay green for longer intervals to allow faster traffic flow, preventing back-ups, and no one wants back ups. The only issue remained how to decide where to put the sensors--it was decided that Caltrans needed to confer a second time with each city office. Compare that process to the ambiguously open-ended CCTV cameras and you start to get a sense of why some plans founder, while others unfold predictably toward completion.

Sprawl Repair

I wouldn't mind being Daniel Jarrett ... for a day ... or more ...

Because this is excellent.

Transit's Role in Sprawl Repair

" ... since government has much more direct control over the street than over the development parcels, we might move faster on sprawl repair if we focused on the arterial first, or at least at the same time."

He takes Fresno as an example--it has a massive road network largely dominated by arterials, and it does not face significant congestion challenges. Here's a sample pitch that he would deliver to local officials:

" 'What if we learned from Los Angeles's path?  Instead of waiting until it's really expensive, as Los Angeles did, what if we take early, gradual, inexpensive steps to make our arterials safe and attractive for transit?  That doesn't mean ripping up our single-family neighborhoods, but it does mean rethinking our arterials so that they're safe and attractive places for pedestrians, and so that they provide appropriate levels of priority to transit.  We don't need transit to be attractive to everyone, we're not 'forcing' people to use it, but it could attract people who already want alternatives to driving.  Let's face it, a lot of our citizens are struggling on low incomes, and cars are expensive.  Many families would experience sudden improvements in wealth if they could get rid of one or more of their cars.'

'So we need to gradually repair our sprawl.  That doesn't have to mean big increases in density.  We'd build some denser centers for people who want a more urban life, but we're not going to build townhouses in your back yard -- or at least not until you and your neighbors want us to.  Mostly, we just need to stitch things together so that people can walk and cycle more safely, both to complete local trips and to get to transit stops.  It means making sure that at every transit stop, there's a protected way to cross the street, because you can't use transit for a round trip unless you can use stops on both sides of the street.  It means adding pedestrian links to cul-de-sac neighborhoods, so that they are through-routes for bicycles and pedestrians while remaining cul-de-sacs for cars.  And it means making sure that the design of bus stops and transit priority conveys a clear message that transit riders are valued as citizens, and appreciated for the contribution they make to a sustainable and functional city.' "