Category: CDOT

Streets like Paris, eh?

So I’m sitting in this windowless room in the belly of the local transportation bureaucracy: sixth floor, city-county government center. CDOT offices. (Charlotte Department of Transportation for you non-geeks.) It’s only 8 a.m., so I’m pretending to be awake. And I start to notice what’s on the walls:

A white board with markers and erasers. Above it a clock (analog). A calendar. A poster of the 2004 Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Thoroughfare Plan.

Then I spot a print of Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 “Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie” with people in umbrellas crossing a rainy street (copy above). A print of a Monet scene of a railroad in the snow in Paris. A poster with a photo of the Pont Alexandre III over the Seine. And a Michelin map of the city of Paris.

Do you realize how significant this is?

Let me explain. Charlotte is not Paris. Our traffic engineers (including the NCDOT folks) move traffic. They value speed, efficiency and “safety,” not beauty or the value of the experience. Limited access highways through historic neighborhoods would be just fine by too many of them.
Paris is a city with high-volume, high-speed and beautiful boulevards that retain fabulous street life alongside the traffic. Walking down a Paris sidewalk is a magnificent experience. Even the traffic islands are magnificent. They don’t have Independence Boulevard or South Boulevard. They have true boulevards. I have said for years that our traffic engineers and transportation planners needed to visit Paris and bring home what they learn.

But CDOT has been changing. It redesigned the city’s street standards. It pushed the City Council to adopt a Bicycle Plan. I was there this morning to hear about its proposed Pedestrian Plan. (More on that at a later date. It will be discussed at a City Council Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday (Dec. 10) at 2 p.m., Room CH-14 of the Gov Center).

The windowless conference room, I’m told, has been dubbed “the Paris room.”

Someone at CDOT gets it.

CDOT: “Don’t Walk Here” Wall Doomed


Here’s the word from Danny Pleasant, interim director of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, responding to my post earlier today about this pedestrian obstruction on Brevard Street as you head from Fourth toward Third Street:

Good news, Mary. We have a project to convert Brevard Street between Trade Street and Stonewall Street into a more pedestrian oriented, two-way, two-lane street. It will follow the current work of converting Caldwell Street to two-way operation. We are in the process of selecting a design firm. The process should finish up in October. The project will include sidewalks on both sides of Brevard the length of the project. It will take a couple of years to build. But when it’s done, the brick wall will be gone.

Here’s what I had written earlier:

Don’t you love this? Walkable Charlotte, eh?

This particular barrier to pedestrians is on Brevard Street, between Fourth and Third streets, a half a block from the Transportation Center — a spot to which thousands of people walk daily.

Last time I asked about it, several years ago, someone at either CDOT or the city planning office told me they were waiting for that property to develop and when it did, they’d make sure the sidewalk got built. That’s been several years. Guess they’re still waiting. I’ll see what interim CDOT chief Danny Pleasant has to say.

And to be fair, I’ll say that CDOT has improved dramatically in its attention to pedestrian comforts, and that uptown Charlotte is, square foot for square foot, the largest pedestrian friendly site in the city. Does anyone know of any others that would compete for that distinction?