Category: CDOT

Safer driving in Charlotte? Or just less driving?

The city of Charlotte’s annual study of High Accident Locations found an overall drop of 26 percent in total number of collisions in the city for 2009, compared with 2008, with fatal collisions down 5 percent.

Are we safer drivers? Would that were so. The Charlotte Department of Transportation memo to the City Council says, “While the total numbers of collisions vary from year to year, CDOT attributes some reduction in collisions to reductions also seen in vehicle miles travelled. This is a trend occurring across the country.”

The top two causes for accidents? Inattention (cited 22.4 percent of the time) and “Failure to Reduce Speed” (cited 18.9 percent of the time). Alcohol use is the cause of 1.67 percent of the accidents. So while I applaud the police efforts to keep people from drinking and driving, it would seem that a far more effective way to reduce accidents and their costs (in human deaths, injuries, lost productivity and costs to those involved) would be to crack down on speeding.

Of course, I suspect that, like many drivers, some police officers just don’t think speeding is a very big deal. One example among many I’ve : The other night in the 35 mph section of Providence Road a patrol car blew past me. I sped up to see its speed: 55 mph. No siren, no blue lights, and a mile farther down the road (I had slowed back to the speed limit by then but a traffic light had slowed the cars ahead of me) the police car was just cruising along, not appearing to be heading to any crime scene.

Here’s the most recent accident report. And here’s a link to the previous year’s report (on 2008 accidents).

Have a great Labor Day weekend, and drive safely.

Safer driving in Charlotte? Or just less driving?

The city of Charlotte’s annual study of High Accident Locations found an overall drop of 26 percent in total number of collisions in the city for 2009, compared with 2008, with fatal collisions down 5 percent.

Are we safer drivers? Would that were so. The Charlotte Department of Transportation memo to the City Council says, “While the total numbers of collisions vary from year to year, CDOT attributes some reduction in collisions to reductions also seen in vehicle miles travelled. This is a trend occurring across the country.”

The top two causes for accidents? Inattention (cited 22.4 percent of the time) and “Failure to Reduce Speed” (cited 18.9 percent of the time). Alcohol use is the cause of 1.67 percent of the accidents. So while I applaud the police efforts to keep people from drinking and driving, it would seem that a far more effective way to reduce accidents and their costs (in human deaths, injuries, lost productivity and costs to those involved) would be to crack down on speeding.

Of course, I suspect that, like many drivers, some police officers just don’t think speeding is a very big deal. One example among many I’ve : The other night in the 35 mph section of Providence Road a patrol car blew past me. I sped up to see its speed: 55 mph. No siren, no blue lights, and a mile farther down the road (I had slowed back to the speed limit by then but a traffic light had slowed the cars ahead of me) the police car was just cruising along, not appearing to be heading to any crime scene.

Here’s the most recent accident report. And here’s a link to the previous year’s report (on 2008 accidents).

Have a great Labor Day weekend, and drive safely.

In Charlotte, walking has pleasures but problems, too

In my life as an associate editor at the Observer I’ve written a lengthy piece about my experiences walking 4-plus miles to work once a week in Charlotte, since March. Here’s the piece, with a photo slideshow.

But it’s too bad the slideshow with the package doesn’t show the evil “goat path” along Runnymede, where the sidewalk has not been cleared, to my observation, since at least 2001. Doreen Szymanski of the Charlotte Department of Transportation told me she believed the city had cleared it, at least once. I drive that way almost daily, however, and have never seen it cleared of muck and leaves. I’ve posted a photo below.

Some adjoining property owners – who ARE RESPONSIBLE because property owners bear the responsibility for keeping sidewalks clear of obstructions – have not-so-helpfully planted holly bushes there, the kind with prickly leaves. So if the bushes ever grow you’ll be crowded off the goat path and onto the teensy planting strip.

I’m already getting emails from readers, including one from someone who’s a quadriplegic. She writes:
“As a quadriplegic and wheelchair user, I blog about wheelchair pedestrian safety frequently. So many people fail to recognize that, as paratransit cuts continue, even more blind people and wheelchair users are taking to the streets to get around to doctor’s appointments, grocery stores, etc. as a necessity. Passable sidewalks, street signals and driver education are urgent concerns that need to be discussed in communities.”

Another reader tells of stealth pruning:
“After years of watching walkers and joggers (me included) duck — or walk in the street to avoid — low hanging branches on the sidewalk next to a large condo complex, I took my loppers in the dead of night and did some heavy pruning.Now, once a year or so, I just have to do some light maintenance. I leave the clippings — in the case of the first year, the limbs — on the grounds of the condo complex, thinking they would get the hint. Now, several years later, I STILL have to do my midnight pruning.”

Here’s the photo of the Runnymede goat path, with holly bushes:

New diet coming to Selwyn Avenue

Here’s a tidbit from the city council’s Friday memo. A section of Selwyn Avenue is on the schedule to join some other in-town streets in a “road diet.” As with East Boulevard and with several blocks of South Tryon Street, the city Transportation Department is going to shrink a chunk of Selwyn from four lanes to three.

The idea is that where you don’t need the lane capacity, having fewer lanes can A) encourage bicyclists by adding bike lanes or extra pavement width, and pedestrians and B) work to subtly slow traffic. After all, the biggest contributor to traffic accidents in a city is – not trees, not telephone poles, not bicyclists – speed.

Here’s the section from the memo. Warning, CDOT jargon ahead:

Selwyn Avenue Street Conversion
Staff Resource: Johanna Quinn, CDOT, 704-336-5606, jquinn@ci.charlotte.nc.us

Each year CDOT staff identifies streets scheduled for resurfacing that could be candidates for
conversions. Typically, these are streets where the curb to curb space can be reallocated from four travel lanes, to 3 travel lanes and bicycle lanes. CDOT staff evaluates operating conditions at intersections and street segments, analyzes connectivity and multi-modal travel factors, prepares a technical recommendation, and informs the public. CDOT moves forward with road conversions that provide benefits to bicyclists, pedestrians, and neighborhood residents, while continuing satisfactory traffic operations.

Selwyn Avenue is on the 2010 resurfacing list. Staff has determined that the four-lane segment between Queens Road West and Colony Road should be converted from four lanes to three lanes with a 3.5 ft. wide outside shoulder. The new three-lane configuration will have one through lane in each direction and a two-way center left turn lane with dedicated left-turn lanes at side streets. The installation of a dedicated left-turn lane at Colony Road will require removal of the peak two-hour turn restriction from southbound Selwyn onto Colony Road.

Area residents are aware of this conversion and have had the opportunity to provide feedback at a public meeting, online surveys, and through the Myers Park Homeowners Association. A postcard mailer was distributed May 14, 2010 to notify residents that the changes will be
implemented this summer.

Staff considered a street conversion for the last remaining four-lane segment of Selwyn Avenue between Queens Road West and Westfield Road, but decided against it. A conversion would have to be asymmetrical and would take away some lane width, which would affect cyclists who regularly use this road segment as part of the “booty loop”. Staff took this proposal to the Bicycle Advocacy Committee which decided that cyclists and motorists have settled into a travel pattern that functions well for all users in this area.

Resurfacing Selwyn Avenue is scheduled for June. This will allow resurfacing to take place during Queens University’s summer break and enough time for all resurfacing debris to be cleared before 24 Hours of Booty at the end of July.

Charlotte meets EPA ozone rules. Sort of.

Visible air pollution shows in 2002 photo of Charlotte skyline

(Update 6:30 p.m. Thursday: I’ve edited and tinkered in several spots below, after a conversation with Steinman)
On my calendar for May 4, just above where I had scrawled “Primary,” was the note, “conformity deadline.” “Conformity” is bureaucrat-ese for whether the Charlotte region’s long-range transportation plans meet federal requirements for clamping down on ozone.
If the plans don’t pass muster, we lose a huge chunk of federal transportation money.
The plans don’t have to actually reduce on ozone, mind you. They just have to follow the right formulas and use computer modeling to show that ozone will go down.
I called Norm Steinman of the Charlotte Department of Transportation. (Dare I call him the conformity czar? He protests the term, which I just made up, but he’s in charge of the city of Charlotte’s measuring of the regional conformity models.)
Charlotte has passed, Steinman told me. The city was notified just a few days before. The letter, he said, was in the mail.
Almost 60 percent of the Charlotte region’s ozone comes from vehicle exhaust, including off-road vehicles. If you’re skeptical that it really will go down so much, given the projected population growth, join the crowd. It’s true, cars are getting cleaner and emissions are sinking. But in a growing city, the increasing number of vehicles on the road and the increasing number of miles they’re driving will partly counterbalance cleaner cars, especially as EPA standards keep getting tougher, as more and more evidence shows how bad for use zone and air pollution are.
But with the city’s high unemployment rate, fewer people are driving to jobs, Steinman said. It isn’t good for our economy but at least it helped with that conformity requirement. An even more important factor was that last summer was unusually cool and damp, with far fewer high-ozone days than usual.
Next up: 2016. That’s when Charlotte has to show that it can meet some even stricter ozone rules.

Charlotte snags ‘Smart Growth’ award

Although Charlotte’s policy to design streets to better accommodate pedestrians and bicycles remains under assault by the local developers’ lobby – who claim the extra pavement required for sidewalks and more streets isn’t good for the environment – note that the Environmental Protection Agency has given the city an award for those very same Urban Street Design Guidelines.

The EPA announced today that Charlotte is one of four winners of its Smart Growth Awards.
Click on this link to the EPA web site, which should be updated after 3 p.m. Here’s what the press release says:

• Policies and Regulations: City of Charlotte for Urban Street Design Guidelines. As the central city in a rapidly growing metropolitan area, Charlotte, N.C., is under intense development pressures. Rather than continue the automobile-dominated development patterns of the last 50 years, Charlotte adopted Urban Street Design Guidelines to make walking, bicycling, and transit more appealing and to make the city more attractive and sustainable.

Other winners:

Overall Excellence: Lancaster County (Pa.) Planning Commission for Envision Lancaster County. “Lancaster County, in south-central Pennsylvania, is known for its historic towns and villages, and its fertile farmland. To maintain the county’s character, its diverse economy, and its natural resources for future generations, the Lancaster County Planning Commission established a countywide comprehensive growth management plan, which protects valuable farmland and historic landscapes by directing development to established towns and cities in the county.”

• Built Projects: Chicago Housing Authority, FitzGerald Associates Architects and Holsten Real Estate Development Corporation for Parkside of Old Town. “Parkside of Old Town sits on eight city blocks that were once home to a public housing complex notorious for criminal activity. The redevelopment has transformed the neighborhood by reconnecting it to downtown Chicago and tying together mixed-income housing, parks, and new shops and restaurants.”

• Smart Growth and Green Building: City of Tempe, Ariz. for the Tempe Transportation Center. “The Tempe Transportation Center is a model for sustainable design, a vibrant, mixed-use regional transportation hub that incorporates innovative and green building elements tailored to the Southwest desert environment. The Tempe Transportation Center is a true multi-modal facility that integrates a light rail stop, the main city bus station, and paths for bicyclists and pedestrians.”

Less traffic downtown?

I’m working on non-blog matters today (I’m writing my regular Saturday oped column, this week about the Soul of the Community survey, and what people really want in order to feel loyalty to where they live. Read it Saturday at www.charlotteobserver.com/marynewsom)

So I’ll just share this interesting info, which rolled into my e-mail inbox a few minutes ago. Weekday morning traffic in downtown Charlotte is down. It’s from the city’s Department of Transportation. In their words:

CDOT has released results of a traffic count study conducted in September 2009. The area examined was uptown Charlotte. Counts were collected during workdays from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

Analysis of the data indicates:

1. Counts of vehicles declined from 2006 to 2009 by over 6,000 cars (approximately 15%) to the volume last seen in 2005.
2. The average number of people in vehicles has remained fairly constant since 1997 at about 1.1.
3. While certainly the downturn in the economy has played a part in the change, the increased use of mass transit (CATS buses-local and Xpress and LYNX light rail) has contributed to less rush hour congestion as well.
4. Another contributing factor is the increase in uptown dwellers walking to work and school.
5. Many companies allow workers to telecommute.
6. Traffic counts were not conducted in 2007 and 2008 due to numerous large road construction projects in uptown.

Slack DOT care may worsen flooding

Since we’re expecting heavy rain, what are the chances Charlotte’s streets will flood? Pretty high, especially since a good many storm drains on our streets have been clogged with debris since the last heavy rain – or even longer.

The photo above is a drain on a city-maintained street near where I live. It has been clogged with debris for weeks (maybe months, I only noticed it after the recent flooding). Its inability to drain is one reason a nearby low spot on Wendover Road collects water during heavy rains, often putting a lane on Wendover under water. And the drains along Wendover itself are, if anything, even more clogged.
I asked Charlotte DOT director Danny Pleasant recently about the clogged drains. He said his department clears them and to report clogged drains on the city’s 311 phone line. (I confess I haven’t called 311 about the drain in the photo; I wanted to see if it would get cleaned anyhow. It hasn’t.) Update: I got a call about 4 p.m. from the city’s solid waste services department. It cleans the tops of drains, and CDOT cleans the underneath and the catch basins. I suspect the drain in the photo above will be cleaned by tomorrow morning. We’ll see.
But Wendover, Pleasant said, is state-“maintained” (quote marks mine). I wonder how many years it has been since the state has cleaned Wendover or its drains.
Note this photo of dirt in the Wendover gutters. The dirt is so deep the weeds are, in some spots, knee high. The state’s road maintenance efforts are, well, the best word is slovenly. Is it this bad in other N.C. cities? Readers in Asheville, Greensboro, Raleigh, etc., are state-maintained roads in your city similarly clogged with years of dirt and debris?
I will note, however, that homeowners who aren’t keen on flooded streets could always clean the storm drains in front of their houses and dig the dirt from the gutters.
Where does the dirt come from? Some of it’s yard-care debris that’s blown into the street (How about telling your landscapers to stop that?) and some is from construction sites, where contractors break the erosion laws and let soil run off into streets and creeks – the largest cause of water pollution. The gutter near the storm drain in the photo above is 3 inches deep in sandy sedimentation from two construction sites up the hill.

Why conservatives should love transit, and more

A few links to interesting reading: A piece on “Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit,” here.
One provocative excerpt: “Support for government-subsidized highway projects and contempt for efficient mass transit does not follow from any of the core principles of social conservatism.
A common misperception is that the current American state of auto-dependency is a result of the free market doing its work. In fact, a variety of government interventions ensure that the transportation ‘market’ is skewed towards car-ownership.”

A wonderful profile of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood by the NY Times’ inimitable Mark Leibovich here.
Here’s a closer look at the new state of Virginia standards that won’t put state highway money into developments that don’t meet a connectivity index. The article is from New Urban News, and it criticizes VaDOT for not being aggressive enough with its connectivity standards.
It also references the study done in Charlotte by CDOT and Fire Department staff that found more cost-efficiency for emergency services in connected neighborhoods than in cul-de-sac-collector neighborhoods. Here’s a link to where I wrote about it, and here’s a link to a slide show about the study itself.

(Note, Delaware is doing something akin to Virginia. The New Urban News main web site says: Delaware mandates connected streets The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), which has jurisdiction over most streets and roads in its state, is — like Virginia — requiring that new subdivision streets be connected to neighboring areas.

From the Colorado-based High Country News, a piece on the possible end of Exurbia, at least in the West.

A word about that story: I’ve read several pieces in recent months in which people say suburbia is on its last gasps, and the recession will kill it. I’m skeptical. Among other reasons: At least in my neck of suburbia (Charlotte), financial stress means people are less mobile than before – they can’t sell their houses, or find jobs to move to. Thus, they are not leaving exurbia even if the want to. In addition, housing in the far ‘burbs is still, dirt for dirt, cheaper than in the city (vast exurban McMansions and uptown luxury condos notwithstanding.

Many “Death of Suburbia” themes are premised on the assumption energy prices will rise. I believe they will, and savings from cheap housing will be undercut by the gasoline prices needed for long commutes to work and shopping. But for now gas prices seem to have stabilized. Further, local governments around here – and I suspect elsewhere – are in no mood to crack down on any kind of development, there being, for now, virtually none going on.

Assessing Charlotte’s transportation

(The city adopted a bicycle plan last year to help riders such as this)
This is for transportation policy wonks, among others. The city of Charlotte’s transportation department has issued its yearly report on how the city is doing on its Transportation Action Plan. Here’s a link, if you’d like to read it in full.
The good stuff: The city adopted a Bicycle Plan, and the light rail ridership substantially outstripped its projections.
But there’s cause for concern: Despite new city policies, more attention to pedestrians and requirements for building more sidewalks, the percentage of city residents who live within a quarter mile of schools, parks and transit is lower now than in 2004. Of course, that may have as much to do with the lack of neighborhood parks and with school-siting decisions than with whether sidewalks are adequate.
Here are some “issues and challenges” identified in the report (their wording, not mine):
– The percentage of population within ¼ mile of schools, parks and transit is lower today than in 2004, making access by walking, bicycling, and short vehicle trips less viable.
– The percentage of multifamily units being approved in the wedges [not near the transit or major business corridors] is higher than the land use targets called for in the Centers, Corridors and Wedges growth framework.
– NCDOT’s project designs typically do not reflect Charlotte’s urban needs (for example Mallard Creek Extension).
– Gas tax revenues at the federal and state levels continue to decline, reducing the funds available for building and maintaining roads.
– ½-cent sales tax revenues for transit are lower than anticipated.
– Without a local dedicated transportation funding source, at levels consistent with the TAP, Charlotte will struggle to keep pace with continued growth and increased travel demand.
Here are some of the accomplishments the plan notes (again, their wording):
– Charlotte residents passed $160M+ in transportation bonds during 2008.
– Key road and intersection projects were advanced as depicted in Map 1.
– LYNX Blue Line averaged over 15,000 daily riders in its first year of service.
– The Committee of 21 [a local group] and the 21st Century Transportation Committee [a state group] convened and identified transportation revenue options to address transportation needs at the state and local levels.
– Both the Federal Highway Administration and the North Carolina American Planning Association honored the TAP as a model plan.
– Council adopted the City of Charlotte Bicycle Plan.