Transforming City Streets Immediately, Affordably

[Metro Jacksonville]

Transforming City Streets Immediately, Affordably



In this remarkable Ted Talk, the Transportation Commissioner for the City of New York, Janette Sadik-Khan shows the tranformation of New York's streetscapes and the wave of lifestyle change and city living that they have brought about.  Pursuing literally the opposite techniques employed by Jacksonville, the results couldnt possibly provide a starker contrast.  Safe, walkable, crowded vibrant streets, and created for a fraction of the cost.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2013-oct-transforming-city-streets-immediately-affordably

[Noone]

Very nice. And how does this connectivity Transform itself with our St. Johns River an American Heritage River a FEDERAL Initiative in this new 20 square mile DIA/CRA in the USA zone?

Ben- JCCI we need to kayak Downtown before 2025

[thelakelander]

Great speech.  A lot of what's shown has been embraced by several communities, both large and small. Here's a few examples of what NYC and the larger places have embraced that's been implemented in Florida over the last 25 years.

Lakeland

Lakeland started doing stuff like this back in the 1990s. Major streets were incrementally converted into linear parks and all one-way streets were converted to two-way.  Bike paths were also installed all throughout town.


This used to be a four-lane highway.


This used to be a 3-lane one-way road with parallel parking on both sides.  It's now a narrow two-way road with the extra asphalt space converted into a linear park that stretches the length of the city's entire downtown.


Lane diet projects to accommodate bikes have also been done.  Here's a street about a mile or two south of DT. It was a two lane street.  Now, there's one lane for cars, two for bikes, some parallel parking and sidewalks.


St. Petersburg

Growing up in Central Florida, St. Pete was commonly referred to as "God's waiting room" or a place where old people go to die.  In the late 1990s/early 2000s, all of that started to change. During that era, the city got pretty aggressive on changing its streets to become bike friendly. Since 2006, it has been designated a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly City by the League of American Bicyclists. It's also known as one of the top 10 bike friendly cities in the country. 

http://www.shermanstravel.com/top-tens/top-10-cities-for-cycling/st-petersburg-florida

Today, you can get around the entire town on bike pretty easy. One thing I've noticed while biking there is that driver behavior has changed over the last decade.  Cars actually slow down and acknowledge your presence at points where multi-use trails cross streets.


Biking in the burbs.  I'm not a die hard cyclist but enough infrastructure was in place that I ended up doing a +40 mile bike trip on a beach cruiser between downtown St. Petersburg and Clearwater.  If I had more time, I would have continued north of Tarpon Springs.


A separated bikeway in downtown St. Pete. A vehicular lane was removed to create space for bikes.


You can't beat a morning ride along Tampa Bay.


Bike signals.  Want to place a bet on how long it takes for Jax to get its first bike signal?


Orlando

While not large scale, Orlando's 2002 lane diet of Edgewater Avenue in College Park (similar to our Edgewood Avenue in Murray Hill) has helped transform to look that corridor and there's statistics illustrating before and after traffic/safety data. 

Edgewater Drive used to be a four-lane FDOT facility.  When it was time to resurface the street, the City of Orlando agreed to take it over.  Instead of painting the four lanes back in, it became a three lane roadway with bike lanes and parallel parking.  Now over a full decade in, bike/ped use has shot up and a number of infill and small adaptive reuse projects have popped up along Edgewater.


Where it transitions from a four lane roadway to one featuring bike lanes and parallel parking.


Edgewater now has something downtown Jax doesn't. Can you guess what it is?


A shot of some infill developed since the lane diet project.

A 2001/02 roadway resurfacing project converted this narrow undivided four-lane facility to a three lane roadway with bike lanes and parallel parking in Orlando's College Park neighborhood. This complete streets road diet involved a transfer of jurisdiction and maintenance from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to the City of Orlando.  As a result of the road diet, Edgewater Drive has seen a 23% increase in pedestrian traffic (2,632 trips after verses 2,136 trips before), a 30% increase in bicycle traffic (486 trips after verses 375 trips before), and automobile travel delays increased by only 10 seconds during the morning peak hours.  Furthermore, the automobile Daily Traffic Volume for this roadway has decreased 12%, from 20,501 trips before improvements to 18,131 trips four months after the project's completion.

http://www.cityoforlando.net/transportation/TransportationPlanningDiv/pdf/Edgewater.pdf


Anyway, one thing that stands out in her TED Talk is the concept of defining local goals. What's Jacksonville's goals?  Where are we going and why?

Our transportation network investments should reflect these questions.  To date, they don't. Bill Killingsworth attempted to proper address this exact issue when he was working on the mobility plan and fee, both of which followed the goals expressed by the local community that came out of citywide visioning plans a few years earlier.

One of the major initiatives of that effort was improving the bike network in a similar fashion to what NYC has done in this video.  Unfortunately, we've wasted three years playing politics on many solutions that can be quickly implemented with a couple of buckets of paint.  That's the largest difference between a NYC, Chicago, St. Petersburg or even Lakeland and Jacksonville.  Actual implementation and affordability isn't the issue.  It's finding the best path through all the obstacles tossed in the way before that.

Very nice. And how does this connectivity Transform itself with our St. Johns River an American Heritage River a FEDERAL Initiative in this new 20 square mile DIA/CRA in the USA zone?

Ben- JCCI we need to kayak Downtown before 2025

Wrong thread, unless we're talking about paving the river with asphalt and driving on it.

[Noone]

^Right thread especially if you get off a Great River and there is a continuous connectivity next to a bike rack and an intermodal infill organic node that enhances walkability, rail, or a cycling option that will continue to make Downtown a Destination and not a pass through.

[thelakelander]

And of course, Doug Skiles just did a similar project in San Marco.

What I like about it is that people can literally transform the streetscape in a single weekend.

I was trying to stick with stuff that pre-dated NYC's recent adoption of complete streets style concepts but yes, the recent work in San Marco, as well as FDOT's revamp of Kings Road around Edward Waters College are great local examples.  Hopefully, we'll see a lot more of these ideas come to fruition locally, sooner rather than later.

From my experience, implementation isn't the time consuming part.  It's the process that has to occur before then.  It can drag on for years if you have to first work on modifying policy to allow for implementation that will last longer than a day or weekend.  However, when you have a local government led by a majority who believe in this stuff, then things can happen virtually overnight because that process of throwing stumbling blocks gets reduced dramatically.

[Noone]

Streetscaping, How about a bike rack at Bay St. and Catherine St. Which is now part of the Northbank Riverwalk and is right next to the Jim Love, Kevin Kuzel 26' Berkman Floating dock compromise misrepresented by OGC during the 2013 FIND grant application process. DIA Board meeting tomorrow. The Chair of the Downtown Experience committee Tony Allegretti is aware of the issue and I hope that he would support this. There are other examples.

Streetscaping with waterfront Public Access street ends should be a part of the discussion. it's positive.

[floridatrop]

Great speech.  A lot of what's shown has been embraced by several communities, both large and small. Here's a few examples of what NYC and the larger places have embraced that's been implemented in Florida over the last 25 years.

Lakeland

Lakeland started doing stuff like this back in the 1990s. Major streets were incrementally converted into linear parks and all one-way streets were converted to two-way.  Bike paths were also installed all throughout town.


This used to be a four-lane highway.


This used to be a 3-lane one-way road with parallel parking on both sides.  It's now a narrow two-way road with the extra asphalt space converted into a linear park that stretches the length of the city's entire downtown.


Lane diet projects to accommodate bikes have also been done.  Here's a street about a mile or two south of DT. It was a two lane street.  Now, there's one lane for cars, two for bikes, some parallel parking and sidewalks.

I recognize these!

[sheclown]

Get it done, and get it done quickly.  How refreshing. 

Great article.