Shared Space = Mind Blown

I've been exploring the concept of Shared Space in transportation lately and am obsessed with the intersection implemented in Poynton, UK.  Shared Space is a traffic concept that gives equal rights to all modes of transportation within the right of way.  I can't explain it any better than the clip below.  

If you like what you see, I was recently able to spend some time with the designer of that intersection, Ben Hamilton-Baillie, at CNU22.  His presentation was excellent and in some cases mind blowing.  Here it is in its entirety if you are interested.

And finally, here's a presentation that I was able to find that does an excellent job explaining Shared Space and providing some additional examples of real world implementations.

So, this concept is becoming increasingly popular as it creates place, reduces traffic congestion and increases safety..  When can we do this here in Roswell?

Town Hall Roswell | Building a Walkable & Bikeable City

The 4th installment of Town Hall | Roswell is tomorrow night at Muse & CO Fine Art.  The topic is Building a Walkable & Bikeable City.  I'll be doing a brief presentation and then I'll be moderating and participating in a panel made up of Lew Oliver of Whole Town Solutions, Steve Acenbrak of Bike Roswell and Matt Foree of Bike Roswell.

Come check it out tomorrow at 7pm.  RSVP Here It's free for RoswellNEXT members and $10 for the general public.  If you purchase at the door, tickets are $15.

Placemaking 101: Straight Outta Compton

Roswell Parks & Rec.. we love you.. but do you love us??  Your fence tells me you don't.

The fence at Roswell Area Park Pool is definitely meant to keep people out.

Could our parks and rec department, the best in the state, do a better job of placemaking?  I've written before about their obsession with the Security Alert signs.  

Makes me feel so welcome and safe.

On the topic of fences, I truly think we could do better evidenced by the Sunnyside Gus Ryder Pool fence in Toronto.

The fence still exists and a person who climbs this and enters the pool is not the responsibility of the city at that point.Seriously, you would think our parks were straight outta compton with the barbed wire and the Security Alert signs.  

Goulding Place Single Family Renderings

While sifting through the upcoming city meetings schedule, I came across the first renderings I've seen of the Front Door Communities single family product that will be going up at Goulding Place.  I'm a little disappointed by the percentage of homes that have front loader garages.  That really isn't in keeping with the rest of Goulding Place even though the builder is making some effort to maintain a consistent architecture.  The biggest thing I like about this project is the opportunity for connectivity.

Here are the images beginning with the Site Plan..

Invasion of the Advisory Signs...

I was walking to the Roswell Farmers and Artisans Market yesterday when I came across a shiny new road sign. Regular readers know that I'm not a fan of frivolous road signs that tell us things that are either plainly obvious or completely unnecessary.  This sign is one of those.

New sign along Norcross St approaching Historic Rowell. I feel safer already.

Here's what that spot looked like last month...

The fact that there is a sign here now isn't going to cause me to drive any slower. I'm going to drive at the speed the road feels safe at.

As a driver on a city street, you know there are curb cuts, you know there are side roads, you know there are intersections and you drive accordingly.  A sign is not going to change driver behavior.  Road design changes driver behavior.  If you follow the logic used for this sign to its eventual conclusion, you will have a sign for every driveway and intersection to alert unsuspecting drivers to the the chance that there are intersecitons or that other cars may be trying to access the road they are on.  

We have an almost perfect illustration of this right here in Historic Roswell.  There are no fewer than 12 road advisory signs in a .4 mile stretch along Alpharetta Hwy right through our Historic District.  Here's a collage courtesey of Google Street View.  This garbage pollutes our historic corridor all the way to the River.

Advisory signs are taking over our pubic realm in Historic Roswell.

The only thing these signs are doing is polluting our public realm with bright shiny objects.  Yes, they give some people a false sense of security that they are somehow now safer from bad drivers.  News flash.. we are all 'bad drivers' at some point and signs aren't going to prevent that fact.  

These types of signs are meant for high speed environments that require advance notice of intersections so drivers can reduce speed and plan accordingly to make turns.  Think Highway 316 to Athens or GA 400 north of the access controlled section.  We don't need this type of Highway engineering in the heart of a city where speeds are 40mph or less.  

Please STOP THE MADNESS!!

East West Alley Master Plan - Public Input Wanted

The public meeting for the East West Alley Master Plan is next week on 6/17.  Activating our alleys is an incredibly efficient way to expand the vitality of our Canton Street area.  There are numerous examples of successful alley conversions worldwide but I really like some of the concepts illustrated by the Alley Network Project.   They are small tight places that make you feel cozy.  They can be fantastic places for art installations.  And most importantly, they enhance connectivty and thus walkability and provide opportunities for creative reuse of space. So, if you want to add more vitality around Canton Street and continue to build our downtown, try to attend.  

My one piece of feedback is that we need to make these the first examples of active "Shared Space" or Woonerfs in the metro area.  

Here's the flyer.

20 is Plenty and Other Crazy Thoughts

Earlier this year in an online forum on Reddit, I laid out my quick list about what the top transportation needs are for Roswell.  My list in no order of importance and applicable to most cities was as follows:

• Bring MARTA Rail to North Fulton
• Increase Street Connectivity
• Remove Reversible Lanes
• Build More Roundabouts
• Drop speed on ALL residential streets to 20 mph
• Build the Roswell Loop

Most of my suggestions focused on increasing transportation options and improving safety.  Interestingly, the one that got questioned was the point about dropping speeds on residential streets to 20 mph.  When I indicated that my rationale was for safety reasons, one commenter insinuated that this isn’t necessary because we don’t have a pedestrian death problem in our residential areas.  I agree and we should feel fortunate for that.  However, I think many a homeowner can point to multiple occasions where they have encountered drivers speeding recklessly on neighborhood streets.

Speed has a logarithmically negative effect on survival rates for pedestrians involved in collisions with cars.  A 10% increase in vehicle speed increases pedestrian fatality risk by 40-45%.  Data shows that when a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling at 20mph, they have a 95% chance of survival.  However, as the speed increases, the survival rate plummets.  When a car is traveling 40 mph, the pedestrian survival rate drops to just 15%.  This is just plain physics.  Doubling speed results in the required stopping distance quadrupling and the kinetic energy absorbed at impact is also fourfold.   We may not have a death problem here in North Fulton but nationwide, more than 30,000 people are killed in car crashes annually and an increasing percentage of those are pedestrians.  Ten times that number are seriously injured every year.  The costs to society are staggering but we accept it as a necessary evil to support our auto-dependence.

Slowing down to 20 mph is a radical idea that would increase safety in our communities for pedestrians and cyclists alike.  That said, simply lowering speed limits isn’t a panacea.  Drivers generally drive at the speed they feel safe regardless of the posted speed limit.  This comfort zone, the speed that feels safe, can also be called the design speed or the speed at which the road was designed to be safely navigable.  The philosophy of wider, safer, faster holds true here.  The wider the road is, the safer it feels at higher speeds.  This counterintuitively increases speeds which conversely decreases safety for everyone involved.  

We’ve all lived in or driven through residential subdivisions with streets wide enough to fit parked cars on each curb and two active lanes.  The problem with this is that the streets in suburban residential areas are rarely every fully lined with parked cars.  The end result of this is a dangerous design with wide expanses of asphalt that encourage teenagers to test their limits and rushed commuters to push the gas.  This would happen in this environment regardless of whether the posted limit was 30 mph, 25 mph or 20 mph.  It’s just not conducive to a slow drive.

That said, a 20 is Plenty campaign such as those that are having great success across Europe and the UK would be a bold step to create safer and more walkable cities.  The movement is slowly making its way to the US and is now under consideration in several cities and towns in the northeast.  New York City is considering it and some people have even gone around town putting up their own signs on light posts.  There is also research indicating that slower street speeds are linked to more social connections, a stronger sense of community, higher property values and increased walking and biking.  

It almost sounds like a no brainier.  So, this is how I would propose phasing in a 20 is Plenty campaign: 

• Step 1 (year 1-3).. Give all neighborhoods and subdivisions the option to adopt a 20 mph limit.
• Step 2 (year 4).. Adopt on all roads that have residential as  > 50% of their frontage and on any road that fronts a school or park for a quarter mile in each direction.
• Step 3 (year 1-10 and beyond).. Re-engineer streets over time to narrow lanes and install street calming devices that would encourage slower speeds.

The next time you’re driving through a neighborhood remember that 20 is Plenty.

City Green Week!

This week I will be posting exclusively on the City Green project.  The DDA will be presenting its revised concepts to city council next Monday, May 19th at 6pm at City Hall.  Come see the new plans for where the War Memorial will go.  I don't have images yet but will post them when they are available.

Please try to make the meeting and wear green to show your support!!

For more info, go to: www.citygreenroswell.org

To sign the petition of support go to: http://www.change.org/petitions/support-the-roswell-city-green-project

Help us get it to over 500 signatures!

CNU Atlanta: Blogger Smack Down!

I'll be participating in the CNU Atlanta Blogger Smack Down next Thursday, 5/15, at CNU Atlanta's monthly Thirsty Third Thurdays (T3) networking event.  I'm really looking forward to this and it shoudl be interesting.

Well, it won’t really be that much of a smackdown, but the gloves are off as we will find out who’s behind some of the coolest urbanism and architecture blogs in Atlanta.  I'll be there along with the guys behind ATL Urbanist (Darin Givens), Architecture Tourist (Terry Kearns) and History Atlanta (Conor Lee).

Have some questions? Ask away on the Facebook event page here. We’ll use the Twitter hashtag #CNUATLT3 during the event!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, May 15th
• Time: 530pm - 730pm
• Place: Steel Restaurant & Lounge, 950 West Peachtree St, NW

Get Social.. Follow NewUrbanRoswell on Twitter and Facebook 

A Tale of Two Bus Stops - An Unintentional Tactical Urbanism Intervention

I'm not sure if everyone remembers way back in early 2012 when the city of Roswell installed some more people friendly bus stops.  There were several covered shelters added around town and a number of our unsheltered stops had little seats added to the bottom of them to make waiting for the bus a little more bearable for those who choose to (or are forced to) endure the 30+ minute headways that one can often experience as a suburban bus rider...  

Anyway, I saw something a few days ago that I'm honestly shocked I did not pick up on before...  Apparently, the city has left riders at one of the more frequented stops literally standing.  I walk by here several times a week and more often than not, there are people standing waiting for the bus.  However, just up the road, maybe 200 yards, there's another stop that has two perfectly good Roswell-green seats that I've NEVER seen get used.  

Humane places don't require that people bring their own chairs to the bus stop.The previous stop pictured could use one of these green seats.

I'd say it's time for the city to move those green seats to the right bus stop. Well, unless we want more chairs to be added to the side of highway 9.  Or, maybe just add another green seat.

Also, for those who are interested, that chair is a crude form of what geeks like me who run in the planning circles, would refer to as "Tactical Urbanism."  For more on that topic and how citizens can make impactful, sometimes illegal and always fun interventions in their city with minimal effort check out the handbook on the subject: Tactical Urbanism 2: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change