Take Back the Streets

How one Dutch neighborhood made streets safer for the whole world

Traffic calming has swept the world over the past 20 years. It’s based on the rather simple idea that cars and trucks don’t have exclusive ownership of our streets. Streets are shared commons that also belong to people on foot and bicycles, in baby strollers and wheelchairs. Reminding motorists of this fact, traffic calming uses design features such as narrowing roads, adding speed bumps or elevating crosswalks to slow traffic and assert pedestrians’ right to cross the street.

This idea has altered the literal landscape of urban life in the Northern Europe, North America and the rest of the world as people move about their communities with more ease and pleasure.

The origins of this ingenious idea trace back to Delft, Netherlands, where residents of one neighborhood were fed up with cars racing along their streets, endangering children, pets and peace of mind. One evening they decided to do something about it by dragging old couches, coffee tables and other objects out into the roadway and positioning them in such a way that cars could pass but would have to slow down. Police soon arrived on the scene and had to admit that this project, although clearly illegal, was a really good idea. Soon, the city itself was installing similar measures called woonerfs (Dutch for “living yards”) on streets plagued by unruly motorists.

Invented by neighbors in Delft, Netherlands, who were tired of cars speeding down their street, traffic calming is now spreading throughout the world.

One can only imagine the response of city officials if these neighbors had meekly come to city hall to propose the idea of partially blocking the streets; they would have been hooted right out of the building. But by taking direct action, they saved their neighborhood and improved everyday life in cities around the world.

—JAY WALLJASPER
Photo by Walk Eagle Rock under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com.

Editor: Another chapter in Celebrating the Commons: People Stories and Ideas for the New Year from Commons Magazine being presented each Sunday at EYNU.

Kook Gathering of Waving Supporters

Tony Kranz was out and about this week with Lisa Shaffer at meet and greets.  These 2 candidates have been going non-stop.  While in Cardiff on Friday Tony let interested people know that sign waving was going to be happening on Saturday.

Well, Saturday was a gorgeous day and a whole crowd showed up - working to perfect their "wave" routine at the foot of the Kook statue.  Honking brought the expected grins and cheers. The dozens of bikes clubs and crowds walking along 101 were especially fun.

Tomorrow morning and afternoon there will be supporters for Shaffer and Kranz on busy commute routes. See you there!

Along with candidates Shaffer and Kranz, Councilwoman Barth was again waving a giant hand at the people in traffic. The Kook location, her recommendation (Good idea) as she and her husband, Don, are proud of the Cardiffian community character.  Community character has grown in framing what is most important in this election.  Images below from Barths FB page.

SANDAG Workshop

Shaffer snapshot of Barth by the flag.

Councilwoman Teresa Barth and Lisa Shaffer attended SANDAG's event on Friday. There were 6 people from Encinitas total. Mayor Stocks (SANDAG chairman) was a no-show, as was the rest of the Encinitas city council or any other city council candidate in the upcoming election.

Barth was promoting participation and linking to the story in her newsletter, Facebook and emails. The themes are those of highest interest to Encinitas citizens.

"SANDAG is seeking the public’s input on everything from affordable housing to public health, transportation, economic prosperity, social equity and environmental sustainability as it combines two large regional blueprints into one. 

Those two documents are the Regional Comprehensive Plan and the Regional Transportation Plan. The first provides incentives to steer growth toward areas with existing roads, transit and other infrastructure. 

The second outlines more than $200 billion of mass transit, road and freeway improvements scheduled over the next four decades."

Scheduling a meeting for public feedback on a Friday morning is typical of big expensive projects that require public input by law.  Working people will not be there.  Period. At least we can count on Lisa Shaffer and Teresa Barth freely sharing what they learned, what they contributed at this event.

Updated at 11:40 am to acknowlege the other Encinitas participants.

Tonight! Our Way or The Highway or Another Way

In a spectacularly bad scheduling conflict (editor: for which I personally hold Jerome Stocks accountable), Caltrans is presenting at the Community Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive from 6 pm - 8 pm; that is, during the same time frame as the City Council Meeting. 

"The meeting will provide additional information on lagoon studies that were not final during the circulation of the I-5 NCC Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) in 2010." Patch 

The graphic at the opening is to frame this event based on reality.  It shows that across all ideologies and parties the preferred method to reduce traffic is first and foremost public trasit followed by driving less.

This week we got a good laugh out of those Danes - where we know the bicycle riding in Copenhagen is like no other western metropolis.  The clip below isn't about cycling, it's about public transit - riding the bus and it is like no US promotion we have ever seen.

Suggest turning down volume and turning on closed caption (CC at bottom of screen).

For video clips with community members speaking out about the I-5 widening, Stocks and company defending, obscuring and confusing the issues go to encinitasyouneedus YouTube channel where some of the clips for I-5 are grouped.

SB 375 Explained

As a public service this article by Darrell Steinberg is reproduced its entirty from the February 2008 issue of Western City, a publication of the League California Cities. 

I want to thank the League of California Cities for this opportunity to write about my bill, SB 375, and what I think is the biggest environmental issue of our time: the relationship between how California grows and our efforts to combat global warming.

A pundit once said that the three biggest issues in California are growth, growth and growth. California’s constant growth affects nearly everything around us, from our schools to our water supply to our roads. According to projections, this won’t change anytime soon. California is expected to grow by another 20 million people by 2050.

The big question is this: How can California continue to grow and at the same time maintain the quality of life to which we are accustomed?

While that question is usually at the heart of California’s thorniest policy debates, this year there’s a new wrinkle to the conversation because of landmark environmental legislation passed in 2006. AB 32 says that the state must reduce greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020.

To reach the goals of AB 32, California governments (both state and local) must find ways big and small to reduce their carbon footprints. Many, of course, are already doing this, and the California Air Resources Board (ARB) is also developing a program to reduce carbon emissions from a variety of sources.

Cars and light trucks are the single greatest source of carbon emissions -- generating about 40 percent. But AB 32 does not specifically speak to land use or transportation. This is where my bill, SB 375, comes in.

Everybody talks about the high-profile solutions to global warming: hybrid cars, solar panels and wind-generated energy. Of course, these solutions are important and necessary. But by far, the hardest decisions we will have to make are about land use and transportation.

Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled

The question before us is: How do we maintain local land use authority while at the same time creating incentives for cities and developers to build housing closer to job and retail centers? By moving housing closer to urban cores, we can reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in California.

Why is this important? In the past 16 years, California VMT has increased more than 30 percent, growing faster than even our rapid population growth. The implications of this increase in VMT are dire; 50 percent of air pollution comes from highway vehicles, and California consumes more than 1 million barrels of oil per day. One can only imagine what these figures will be when the state grows to 60 million people in 2050.

In human terms, the implications of doing nothing are just as dire -- more Californians spending more time in traffic and less time with their families. The longer driving times will poison our air and increase health problems for the most vulnerable among us. And California farmland, a main economic driver for our state, will disappear as we continue to locate housing farther away from cities and job centers.

By signing AB 32 in 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger showed that he’s serious about the threat automobile emissions pose to California. California’s cities are also showing that they’re ready to take on this challenge, taking steps that include switching city auto and bus fleets from dirty diesel and gasoline to cleaner burning fuels, and passing green building ordinances. California cities recognize that they must be at the front lines in our continued battle against global warming.

Cities should also be at the forefront of any effort to reduce VMT, and they can do this best by working collaboratively with other cities to come up with regional solutions. This is already happening successfully through councils of governments, with the idea that traffic or bad air doesn’t begin or end at a city or county border. It’s a regional problem.

Take the example of a resident of City A who works in City B. This very typical individual deserves more than the independent efforts of two cities to reduce emissions in his or her community. Such a resident would surely benefit from a multijurisdictional, regional transportation plan in which land use, transporta tion funding and reductions in green house gases are linked, precisely as they are in the real world.

California’s best regional transportation models not only prove that growth can be accommodated, but that the foot print can be more compact and necessary expenditures for transportation can be tailored to a region’s housing needs. A key part of SB 375 is that these pioneering regional blueprints should be emulated and adopted into a cohesive state strategy .

Crafting the Bill

I have wrestled with how to craft a bill that relies entirely on incentives to strengthen the existing regional transportation planning model while respecting local governments’ land use permitting authority. The bill requires a commitment to housing all of our future residents in such a way that homes are located closer to jobs, thus ensuring that we can meet our climate-related objectives.

I don’t pretend that this is easy, but I believe it is essential. The major incentives in the bill come from reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that expedite review of projects located within what the bill calls a "sustainable communities strategy." This is basically a beefed-up version of the existing regional transportation plan with the addition of a regional emissions target, criteria for prioritizing development away from agricultural and resource lands, and adding several CEQA incentives.

The bill calls on ARB to establish greenhouse gas reduction targets (on the same timeline as AB 32) for every region of the state. The regions would adapt their housing and transportation plans accordingly to take advantage of the CEQA reforms the bill offers. If a region is unable to achieve the ARB target, it would submit a "supplement" that contains the steps it would need to achieve the target. Rural counties are exempt from the bill.

It is important to note that the bill does not prohibit development on agriculture lands or other resource lands. In fact, the most successful regional blueprints plan for about half of the new growth in their respective regions on "greenfields" and not as infill projects.

Proposed Changes to CEQA Provide Incentives

Rather than mandating specific land use or transportation planning results, I have insisted that the bill proceed with the use of incentives. For years, local governments and developers have asked for changes to CEQA to spur development in urban centers, and that is what the bill contains.

The bill proposes four CEQA changes for primarily residential projects:

1. Projects that can mitigate their impacts may use a new "sustainable communities environmental assessment" that would be reviewed under the substantial evidence standard and would not be subject to legal challenges in the same way as mitigated negative declarations;
2. Projects that need an EIR because the impacts cannot be fully mitigated are only required to review the "project-specific" impacts;
3. Projects can be relieved from the imposition of additional traffic mitigations under CEQA if they comply with traffic mitigation policies adopted in advance by the local jurisdiction; and
4. Projects that are consistent with the sustainable communities strategy will not be required to do a separate environmental analysis of the greenhouse gas impacts of traffic associated with the project.

Again, these CEQA incentives are designed specifically to accommodate developments that will reduce the miles that Californians drive every day. If only the four major metropolitan areas in California adopted plans that reduced VMT by 10 percent, 250 tons of pollution would be eradicated from our air -- the equivalent of eliminating all air pollution from electric utilities, petroleum refining, oil and gas production and all waste disposal combined.

Working with the League and other key stakeholders, my objective is to craft legislation that is practical, efficient, cost effective and, most importantly, will help California meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals contained in AB 32, the Governor’s Climate Change Action Plan and elsewhere. I have amended the bill to alleviate many concerns already, and I will continue to be responsive to all responsible parties. Climate change is the environmental issue of this and the next generation, and it is incumbent on all of us to get it right.

Fundamentally, growth is a positive thing for California. We must ensure that the state grows in a sustainable way to maintain our quality of life for the generations to come.

Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), state senator for California’s 6th District, which includes the City of Sacramento and parts of Elk Grove and Citrus Heights wrote this in 2008. Previously, he served as a member of the state Assembly and the Sacramento City Council.

Green Lane Project

The Green Lane Project is a new effort that will work closely with six U.S. cities to help them build world-class cycling networks on city streets. These will be cities that are poised to make significant progress over the next two years in installing cycle tracks and related improvements, which we’re calling Green Lanes. The Project will facilitate a partnership between the cities and provide them with resources and technical assistance, while expanding the knowledge base and sharing it widely.

I can't, It's too sweaty

If you have ever imagined what your work day might be like if you rode a bike daily instead of driving a car you no doubt struggled with the inevitable questions:

1. What about sweating?
2. What could I wear to ride, then change?
3. Where to store bike at work.
4. What if I got a flat or other broken part?
5. What if I have to stay late or leave my bike?

 

The example in the above clip is for a huge population in one of the biggest urban centers. Encintias would be considerably scaled back like the Bikestation in Santa Barbara. Imagine being able to check off all of the concerns at the opening of this post with a convenient spot to secure a parking place for your bike, to shower, to change for work, to fix a flat and even leave your bike overnight or pick it up after regular work hours?

This is called removing obstacles to quality of life choices. The mayor pushed hard for his electric car to have a charging station at the town's center. In all of San Diego County there are a small percentage of electric car owners. Conversely, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of bike riders in San Diego County, with more each year. This bikestation concept represents a creative solution that fulfills quality of life goals of healthy living, economic opportunity (for small business), affordability for commuters, flexibility, resilience, sustainability, lowered carbon dioxide emissions, traffic congestion and parking congestion.

About that parking problem in Encinitas, did you know that 14 bicycles fit in one car parking space?  And that traffic congestion? Eight bicycles that fit into one car road space. Even just a beginning of a shift in choices from daily car use to biking would be felt in our parking lots and busy main arteries.  Safety is the other leading deterrent to biking and that will be a different post.

There is a longing in this community for innovative planning and visionary leadership. In fact, Encinitas is falling far behind communities all across the state and the nation.  How we all get around is just one more challenge we can look to our candidates for office to hear our ideas, look to other leading examples and step away from approaches that belong to another era whose time has passed.

Today is Dues-day: Tail Wags Dog Planning

Tuesday is Dues-day. The dues are simply schooling yourself on how our local governance is organized, who are the players, what are the screw-ups, where is the money and what things get reported?

You’re a citizen, an advocate for democracy with this first step, paying attention.

Citizen Tip = Face value is rarely enough information to compare and contrast. 

Let's take roadwork as the subject.  There are all those who use the roadways including motor vehicles, bikes and pedestrians.  Some of these may be commercial, buses or visitor vehicles just passing through and using the roads.  By all measures the vehicular traffic is the most dangerous, the most polluting and the hardest on the roadway infrastructure. And car-centric changes to streets are far more expensive than those for biking or walking trails.

Everyone who uses, benefits from the roadways have a stake in these streets serving each driver's, biker's or walker's purposes.  Safe movement is the highest priority with convenience following.  (In practice accidents are often caused by an individual making that second priority overtake the first with high speed and carelessness for the sake of convenience).

The regulatory bodies are the city's traffic engineering staff and the traffic commission who report to the city council. Besides local ordinances, regulations include state and federal laws governing roadways. As witnessed by a recent state ruling to raise the speed limit on Quail Drive, logic and common sense fell victim to a ruling that basically rewards speeding.  Long story, see clip. In another instance, this time San Elijo Avenue stretch of roadway (part of Manchester) included this clip by residents who lived there virtually begging for street calming solutions for this treacherous curve. 

Seems safe for you to assume that residents pleading for safety are key.  You would be wrong. What we do not see on the surface are the dealings with large land owners, housing or commercial development projects that are officially and unofficially vetted by the city staff.  We have no way of knowing where and when such projects might be scheduled. 

Case in point this week is a street, traffic study contracted last summer for a portion of Manchester.  Despite this being a street where no residents had complained about problems, had relatively low accident counts a contract for almost $147,000 was awarded.  All the council agreed to the study despite nobody except Jerome Stocks whole-heartedly endorsing the study claiming the road was far more treacherous on his bike with his child than highway 101 or El Camino Real. *ahem*

Here are several more clips with the public speakers. All of these contribute to the deliberations.

 

One thing hasn't changed in years, these public speakers were never properly informed and they were not informed for this week's meeting either. 

 

For an edited clip of the presentation with some of Maggie's comments, click here.  For Teresa Barth's statements click here. 

These clips, the links to the the other road width, speed, curve issues here and in yesterday's post give a wealth of background to what actually hold most sway over the planning and engineering staff's priorities and council majority decisions.  It is not a one size fits all challenge or solution.  None of this happens in a vacuum and it is too simplistic to point out a few scapegoats, even the mayor or a state law.  There are solutions if our staff and council would be open to alternate solutions.  There is institutionalized preference given formula solutions and large land owners or large development projects are weighted far above and beyond reality or resident information, experiences and perceptions.

Redefining Normal

ENCINITAS: City policy threatens trees on picturesque street, residents say

The North County Times article speaks to our city's real problem (from residents point of view and from an sound ecosystem point of view) with the aggressive butchering of trees to achieve ill-defined, questionably justified planning goals and parks and recreation practices (separate but equally destructive for trees). 

This article contains a list of all of the 82 Special Status Streets that were given exemptions from mandatory widths dictated by codes.  Nothing has been allowed this exemption since 1993 or since the current city council majority has been in power.

It's time to redefine what these roadway codes are and why they take precedence over all of the people who live along these streets, like the Crest Drive neighbors and the Wotan Drive neighbors in the article who are petitioning the city.

More than a decade of relying on developer deals to run a city in a piecemeal fashion for a revenue stream or infrastructure improvements, insensitive to safe and sustainable living for the children, the  people, wildlife and the trees (always working 24/7 though far older than most residents) is blind to reality. 

This isn't a simplistic challenge.  This is a giant connect the dots with vision and intelligence.  It demands the kind of coordination between traffic, housing, public health, environmental limits, economic changes and other criteria within our General Plan.  The need for the status quo to be revisited is the very reason the update to our General Plan was needed and why discarding and / or disallowing diverse voices now is a big mistake.

This week one council agenda item will be  to discuss the study findings for widening a portion of Manchester Avenue.  Those neighbors spoke out with the same concerns of these people in the article above, so we are all connected.

image credit: 11:11

SANDAG - Water & Traffic & Numbers all Questioned

Prior to the meeting tonight, April 11, 2012, with a SANDAG Presentation on the agenda (swoon) it is good to be reminded of the questions from the council three years ago. The companion piece to this was the SANDAG Growth 2050 Forecast posted here in late February. 

What do you feel about the questions and the responses? The responses from the SANDAG demographer seemed like very weasel-like words. Planner Patrick Murphy was candid about the growth numbers coming from the city. It just seems like a real effort must be exerted to get the facts.