May 7, 2013 · 2:11 pm

Should the Entire Community be Designed for Walkability?

By Dom Nozzi

I prepared land development regulations for Gainesville, Florida’s town center in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I dubbed the regulations the “Traditional City” overlay regulations that were intended to promote walkable, vibrant, rewarding pedestrian design in Gainesville’s town center.5198849601_19c0be6735

A friend suggested that such regulations should be applied citywide. I responded that doing so would be unwise.

First, it would be very difficult, politically, to apply the Traditional City development regulations to areas that were built exclusively for cars — places where, as the area was first developed, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users were only considered as afterthoughts. Places that Christopher Leinberger calls the “drivable suburbs.”

Another part of the problem with applying walkable design features to drivable locations is that doing so would be restricting lifestyle choices in the community. In essence, requiring walkable design in drivable locations would be forcing walkability down the throats of people that prefer suburbs and car dependency. By contrast, my overall approach to community design is that we want to protect and promote choices in neighborhood design. Walkable traditionalism or suburbs, not one or the other.

It is hard enough to require the walkable design in more compact, town center locations, let alone applying walkability tactics to places in the community that are so utterly unwalkable today that they would need to start from scratch by being mostly bulldozed before made walkable.

In addition, there is something to be said for creating a striking, obvious contrast between a walkable town center location and the outlying drivable suburbs. A more striking contrast, for example, could accelerate the process of growing the proportion of citizens who seek a more sustainably walkable lifestyle.

This is not to say we should necessarily give up on the outlying areas. But if we must prioritize due to a lack of resources — and in this age of fiscal and economic woes, it seems clear that we must prioritize — I think we should start with saving and improving our town centers, where most people already seek walkable design.

Town center areas will, I’m convinced, increasingly outcompete the drivable suburbs due to the inevitable future of rising resource and fuel costs we face in our future, and the unsustainability of regional, sprawling, car-based design. Such inescapable trends will convince a growing number of people that it is rational and desirable to live and travel more walkably. The walkable lifestyle, for several decades, has been less popular — even though more sustainable – mostly because of the distorted, unsustainable price signals of exceptionally low fuel costs and heavy car subsidies, among many other reasons. Distorted signals that make it seem rational to live in outlying areas and to be auto dependent.

We’ve got plenty of work to do in our town centers to enhance the walkable lifestyle such locations best provide. Let’s not delay the long-needed repair of such places by diverting scarce public resources to areas that will be much more costly to retrofit into walkability. Places that may never be able to provide high-quality walkability regardless of the money we sink into that effort.

If we apply a triage concept to community design, it may be that we realize we can save some of our town centers with some restoration efforts, but also realize that the drivable suburbs may have been built initially with such unsustainable design that money and effort might be mostly unable to save much of it. And might divert resources from town centers that could have been saved had we not diverted money and effort to unsalvageable suburbs.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

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April 23, 2013 · 2:42 pm

Does Traffic Calming Increase Air Pollution?

By Dom Nozzi

In May of 2000, a resident of Boulder, Colorado emailed a fairly common complaint to me in response to my praise of “traffic calming” (which uses street modifications to compel cars to slow down to safe, attentive speeds).

I thanked the gentleman for his comments. I went on to state that I had not spent a lot of time trying to track down every single report about traffic calming. But since I read a fair number of calming reports and have not seen a pollution problem reported, I’ve not had cause to doubt the claim of increased air pollution due to calming until I got his comments.

What I had learned from Jeff Kenworthy and Peter Newman, however, has made me highly skeptical of claims that suggest there is less air pollution from high-speed, free-flowing car traffic.

After all, it is too simplistic — too narrowly focused — to just think about the impacts of stop-and-start (or slow-and-start) car travel on air pollution emitted by individual motor vehicles. Yes, it is nearly certain that stop-and-start motor vehicle traffic increases air pollution emitted by individual cars in a highly localized, discreet location where the stopping and starting occurs. skycrest_2But this micro focus ignores the important but typically overlooked motorist behavior modification that occurs at the regional level when we widen streets or calm them. For example, how many trips are encouraged or discouraged (especially the low-priority car trips) when we widen a street or install traffic calming measures? How many more or less car trips occur at rush hour? How many more or less will drive instead of take transit, bicycle, or walk?

Kenworthy and Newman make the crucial point that travel behavior changes that we induce through widenings or calming on the scale of a community totally overwhelms any benefits of free-flowing traffic at the micro level of a given segment of street.

Consider the comparison between higher density congested areas and lower density, free-flowing areas. One would expect that the congested areas generate higher levels of air pollution than the free-flowing areas. But we know that people who live in higher density, more congested areas where transportation choice is high have been clearly shown to produce much less air pollution, per capita, and generate much less air pollution, per capita, than those who live in remote locations without a travel choice (those who have no choice but to travel by car). The worldwide analysis of cities conducted by Kenworthy and Newman confirms this.

Yes, on various congested street segments, air pollution is relatively high. But at the community-wide level, air pollution is much lower than cities with lower-density, free-flowing traffic. And this is because of the large reduction in the number of rush hour, major-street car trips that occur due to congestion, traffic calming, and other measures (“low-value” car trips that are induced when streets are widened or made more free flowing).

It is illogical to assume that making car travel easier with higher speed, free-flowing designs will reduce air pollution (and fuel consumption) impacts — given the likely behavior modification that induces motorists to engage in more driving than they would have engaged in had the street been more congested or more traffic calmed.

As Thomas Kuhn points out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, it is nearly impossible for those who have worked under the traditional paradigm to accept overwhelming evidence or conclusions from the new paradigm. For example, most of us will go to our graves steadfastly refusing to accept the premise that traffic congestion and traffic calming have a number of benefits, even though the evidence is mounting.

_____________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

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April 17, 2013 · 8:29 pm

Sprawl, NIMBYs, and Gigantism

By Dom Nozzi

NIMBYs (not-in-my-backyard activists who tend to oppose all development of a compact, walkable nature) often cloak their arguments under the moral-

BI_Nimby4_aunt

high-ground mantle of environmentalism. “SAVE THE TREES!” “PROTECT

BAMBI!” Many ecologists and environmentalists (who should know better)

 

also get caught up in the NIMBY hysteria of stopping all development (even development that furthers community quality of life objectives).

It has only been recently that the national Sierra Club has admirably reduced their widespread NIMBY efforts and focused more attention on the real culprit — sprawl. In my work as a town planner in Florida, there were several instances where in-town development (even in-town pedestrian paths, of all things!) were hammered by intelligent environmentalists — environmentalists who were comparatively silent in the face of the incremental, relentless, larger-scale ecological destruction that was happening in outlying areas (ironically, such sprawl development was happening at an accelerated pace in part because of the actions of in-town NIMBYism).

I don’t necessarily hold up all proposed in-town infill developments as models of sustainable, walkable design. I do think, however, that such infill — in the grander scheme of environmental sustainability — is a much-preferred form of development than dispersed sprawl development because, crucially, the infill development is found in ecologically preferred locations. I much prefer the loss of, say, a few trees in urban, disturbed woodlands (that many environmentalists fight tooth and nail to save), or the loss of a few raccoons and squirrels (that some environmentalists also rally to protect), to the loss of hundreds of acres of nearly pristine woodlands, and high-quality habitat that is home to, say, eagles, fox squirrels, and gopher tortoise.

I honestly don’t believe there is a third choice: Loss of neither in-town squirrels or outlying quality ecosystems (the choice that naively believes we can somehow stop population growth). I believe that south Florida is a testament to the belief that there was no third choice. That infamous region — and many others throughout the nation — shows the ruinous results of fighting against in-town, infill development to “save Bambi.”

I continue to have little patience for the many otherwise intelligent environmentalists and neighborhood activists who shriek about their no-compromise position of minimizing residential densities. Such activists believe low-density development is the be-all-and-end-all of environmental conservation when it comes to in-town development. There are countless environmentalists who are guilty of this. There is little that I can think of that is a more damaging strategy for quality of life in our future than to persist in the strategy of thinking that low densities will save us.

Environmentalists must get on board with the idea that we need higher, livable densities (or, to use a term that is less inflammatory, “more housing”) in proper locations. If this does not happen, we will have no chance of averting a south Florida future…

Another way of putting this is that more housing (more residential density) is not the problem.

No, the key to a future rich in sustainability, quality of life, transportation choice, and civic pride is to insist on modest sizes.

Modestly sized street dimensions. Modest distances between homes, shops and jobs (and, implicitly, modest community and neighborhood size). Modest building setbacks.

All of these modest sizes, as our most loved, charming cities show, are best achieved by providing more housing (more density), not less.

By stark contrast, sprawl is most accurately defined by large sizes. Big setbacks, huge street dimensions. Monstrous setbacks.

All of these undesirable features are mostly likely to be realized when NIMBYs fight for less housing.

In other words, “large-size sprawl” is scaled for cars, not people. A deadly form of the disease afflicting most all cities in America.

It is the disease of gigantism.

_____________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

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April 12, 2013 · 2:44 am

The Carbon Tax and the Poor

By Dom Nozzi

A great many intelligent people have pointed out the obvious in recent years about our climate change – a change driven by carbon emissions – and our fiscal crisis: It is screamingly obvious that an extremely effective, fair way to reduce carbon emissions (and raise desperately needed govt revenue) is to enact a carbon tax. Increasing the price of Global-Climate-Change3carbon sends a much-needed price signal to people that products, actions and services that directly or indirectly use carbon have an embedded carbon cost. That cost is the climate change and environmental/societal woes hidden by a lack of a carbon tax.

Underpriced carbon is rapidly destroying our world and the future of our species.

An important reason why a carbon tax is equitable is that people using more carbon pay more tax. Such a tax would raise much-needed government revenue by charging people for societally unsustainable behavior.

One would therefore think that political liberals and environmentalists would be 100 percent in favor of a carbon tax. Such people, one would expect, would find such a tax a no-brainer.

But as I often point out, a very large number of desperately needed societal actions are squelched because of the red flag too often raised by liberals and environmentalists: “WE CAN’T DO THAT BECAUSE IT WILL HURT POOR PEOPLE!!!!”

We can’t raise the gas tax…because it will hurt poor people.

We can’t put this four-lane monster highway destroying our downtown on a road diet (taking it from four lanes to three, for example)…because poor people won’t be able to get to jobs.

We can’t ease our parking woes, make our town centers more compactly walkable, and substantially reduce the amount of off-street, gap-tooth dead zone parking lots…because charging people money for parking will hurt poor people.

We can’t raise the tax on cigarettes to reduce excessive smoking…because it will hurt poor people who smoke.

We can’t adjust electricity prices to promote energy conservation…because it will hurt poor people.

We can’t charge a tax on sugar…because poor people won’t be able to afford to buy a Pepsi.

We can’t charge a fee for a background check…because poor people won’t be able to afford to buy a gun.

We can’t charge an impact fee on sprawl residential development…because it will hurt poor people who buy sprawl homes.

[I’ve heard all of the above complaints more than once.]

At the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder Colorado yesterday, I attended a session on how we need to learn to live with global warming because we have passed the tipping point and there is no way we can avoid catastrophic warming in our lifetimes no matter what we do (session title: “Climate Change: Get Used To It”). A question came from someone in the audience: “If we establish a federal tax [like has been admirably done in Boulder and a few European nations] on carbon, won’t it be a very bad idea because the carbon tax would be unaffordable for poor people??”

As you can imagine, the question made my blood boil.

I wanted to leap to my feet and scream to her: “We are driving a car at a high rate of speed towards a fiscal and environmental cliff (given our huge government fiscal woes and our huge climate change woes). Do you mean to say that we should not step on the brakes?? That we instead go over the cliff because poor people cannot afford to brake?????”

 

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

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March 26, 2013 · 5:28 pm

Education Works When the Conditions are Right

By Dom Nozzi

I’ve always believed that because quality urban design is essential to quality of life, local elected officials tend to be strongly in need of a lot of education in urban design. As a city planner in Florida, I strove to provide officials with as much urban design education as I could when I wrote plans and staff reports for them to read, as well as when I gave presentations at meetings. I arranged to regularly have my city run a series of nine urban design videos on public access TV for citizens. In addition, I worked to have several urban design stars – such as Victor Dover, Andres Duany, and Walter Kulash – be hired on projects that required outside consultants. Each of them is spectacular as an educator on the design practices I advocate. Each has taught me essential urban design lessons.

In sum, I think the need for urban design education is always important on an on-going basis for commissioners and citizens.

But as my writings and speeches point out, the most effective education is based on our environment and our economy. We can “educate” till we are blue in the face, but we will accomplish little unless economic price signals (such as the increasingly intolerable cost of gas, the cost of road widening, the cost of sprawl homes, the cost of parking, etc.) are providing proper price signal education.

As for the environment, in my experience, a community usually does not engage in quality urban design until inconveniences and other difficulties of day-to-day life induces the political will that DEMANDS needed change. For example, consider a community experiencing high levels of road and parking lot congestion. Study after study has confirmed that conventional “solutions” (road widening and the provision of more free parking) are counterproductive and utterly unable to solve congestion problems.

What to do? It seems obvious that given the studies, road widening and more free parking should NOT be used as a solution.

Yet nearly all communities stubbornly disregard these studies and end up wasting millions and billions of public dollars to “solve” congestion with road widening and more free parking.

Fortunately, some communities (mostly bigger cities) eventually come to realize (after much pain, suffering, wasted time, and wasted public dollars) that the conventional tactics are failing to eliminate their congestion. And at that point, even the most pro-car, anti-transit citizens are often forced to conclude that their only hope for addressing congestion is pricing roads and parking, providing better transit, and creating alternatives (such as closer-in housing) so that people can avoid the congestion.ROADRAGE1

Given this, it was not education from books or speeches or videos that was the key to convincing the community that better urban design (or better transit) is needed. No, it was clearly the aggravation felt from the congestion that drove the needed change toward effective tactics. Education alone is not a painless shortcut to doing the right thing, unfortunately.

Yes, books and speeches and videos are important education tools, but such information needs to be in the right place at the right time to have an impact. Words and data can be a call-to-arms catalyst if conditions are right.

Take Leonardo da Vinci. In the 15th Century, he described the design of a helicopter. Over one hundred years ago, a number of far-sighted folks spoke eloquently about women’s rights. Yet such ideas generally fell on deaf ears because the conditions were not right.

My hope is that the urban design and transportation ideas I support can be in the right place when conditions are right so that the revolution can occur more quickly and less painfully.

_____________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

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March 19, 2013 · 4:48 pm

It’s Not About Adding Bike Lanes. It’s About Taking Away from the Car

By Dom Nozzi

For most all bicycling advocates, there is a single-minded tactic for increasing the number of bicyclists: Provide bike lanes, bike paths and bike parking.

However, in my career as a transportation planner, I have come to realize that to meaningfully increase the number of bicyclists, adding new facilities for bicycling (or for pedestrians or transit users, for that matter), the community must make driving and parking cars significantly more inconvenient and costly.bike lane in suburbs

How is this done?

Here are some excellent tools:

* Road diets (where road travel lanes are removed – going from four lanes to three is the most common diet).

* Employing low-speed street design (such as on-street parking, bulb-outs, tight turning radii, and other “traffic calming” tactics).

* Mixing homes with retail and jobs.

* Providing more in-town housing (such as “granny flats”).

* Shrinking the size of parking lots.

* Increasing the gas tax.

* Installing more on-street car parking.

* Charging market-based prices for the use of roads and parking.

* Eliminating “minimum parking requirements” in the zoning code (ie, regulations that require the installation of at least “X” amount of car parking for particular developments – parking MAXIMUMS are far preferable).

* Requiring buildings to be pulled up to the street so that there is no car parking between the front of the building and the street.

Without taking steps such as these, installing bike lanes, off-street bike paths, bike parking, showers at work, etc., will have very little impact on recruiting new bicyclists. Without these tools, distances are too excessive for convenient bicycle travel, costs are too low for driving a car, and there is too much of a difference in speed between cars and bicyclists.

With regard to convenience, because cars consume so much more space (on average, about 17 times more space is needed for a person in a car than a person in a chair), motorists need to feel inconvenienced by street and parking dimensions if we are designing a community for the pleasure of humans rather than cars. Urban designers call this pleasant, relatively intimate spacing as “human scale” design.

I should note that one of the most effective ways to recruit new bicyclists is to create the conditions that deliver large numbers of bicyclists in the community. This is because when a lot of community residents are bicycling, many non-bicyclists are inspired to try bicycling. With a lot of people bicycling, it seems much more hip, enjoyably sociable, and safe to ride a bicycle. And as has been shown in studies, bicycling safety dramatically improves due to safety in numbers. The more bicyclists are bicycling, the safer bicycling becomes. Given this, once a threshold is reached with regard to the number of bicyclists, community bicycling can reach a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle where the existence of a large number of bicyclists recruits even more bicyclists.

We too often recommend the bike lanes, paths, and bike parking when asked how to induce lots of new bicyclists. When very few new bicyclists are then recruited (due to the enormous obstacles I describe above), the Sprawl Lobby will disparagingly point out how wasteful it was to install bike facilities, and insist that we “get real” by getting back to the program of car-happy road widening.

I think many of us know there are more effective tactics, such as those I mention above, but when we only have a hammer, all our problems look like nails. It is time to start finding ways to introduce the effective tools to grow the number of bicyclists.

______________________________________________________________________________

My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

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March 12, 2013 · 1:28 pm

The Economic Merits of Road Diets

By Dom Nozzi

“Road diets” are instances where a street is shrunk in size by removing travel lanes. Most commonly in America, this occurs when a four- or five-lane street is reduced to a three-lane street.

A common concern associated with a road diet is that such a road modification will be harmful to the economic health of the street, primarily because of the concern that the “diet” will reduce traffic volumes on the street.chicago road diet

Proponents of road diets point out, however, that such road modifications tend to be highly beneficial for economic, land use and safety reasons. Proponents note, for example, that reducing the number of travel lanes makes the street more of a “drive-to” destination (where motorists drive more slowly and attentively) rather than a “drive-through” corridor (where motorists drive faster and less attentively).

The “drive-to” nature of the road diet is based on the tendency of the lane reduction to create a calmer, slower, safer and more attractive venue – a “park once” place where the motorist is more likely to want to park, walk around, hang out, and enjoy the setting (this sort of newly-created environment also tends to make the street more inviting to residences, and makes the street safer).

The following studies and reports provide a sampling of information showing the economic (and other) merits of road diets.

Dan Gallagher, the Charlotte, North Carolina Transportation Planning Manager, led a study that looked at the “before” and “after” property values along a street in Charlotte which had undergone a road diet.

Gallagher’s staff evaluated property value information for the East Boulevard road diet in Charlotte in March 2013. Phase 1 of the diet occurred in 2006. Phase 2 occurred in 2010. The county property tax assessment re-evaluation was done in 2003 and then again in 2011. The non-residential tax value of properties fronting East Boulevard was $90 million in 2003. The non-residential tax values of properties fronting East Boulevard was $133 million in 2011 – a 47 percent increase. This increase occurred despite the 2008 “great recession” that affected Charlotte and the nation.Road-Diet

The corridor was pretty much “built out” before the road diet, which largely means that the value increased for properties that were not developed or redeveloped. The increase, in other words, cannot be attributed to value realized due to new construction.

The following is a bibliography on the economic (and other) merits of road diets

  York Blvd: Economics of a Road Diet. http://la.streetsblog.org/wp-content/pdf/york_blvd_final_report_compress.pdf

Going on a Road Diet.  http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/11septoct/05.cfm

Economic Merits of a Road Diet, by Dom Nozzi http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/2003/08/17/economic-merits-of-road-diets-and-traffic-calming/

El Cajon’s Road Diet. http://www.walkinginfo.org/library/details.cfm?id=3967

Safety and Economic Benefits of a Road Diet.  http://www.slideshare.net/choyle75/safety-and-economic-benefits-of-road-diets-5-10

Road Diets.  http://www.planetizen.com/node/44645

Franklin Ave Road Diet. http://www.thelinemedia.com/features/franklinaveexperiment102412.aspx

Orlando Road Diet. http://rickgellerforcc.blogspot.mx/2011/09/road-diets-economic-revitalization.html

“To Smooth Your Drive, Slow It Down, He Says”, by Keith Schneider. 10/27/04 New York Times.

“Guidelines for the Conversion of Urban 4-lane Undivided Roadways to 3-lane Two-Way Left-Turn Lane Facilities”, by the Iowa Department of Transportation. April 2001.

“Narrowing Federal in Delray a dream”, by Meghan Meyer, Palm Beach Post (Florida), 3/6/03.

“Pedestrian-friendly downtown works for Delray”, by Leon Fooksman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3/6/03.

“Road Diets: Fixing the Big Roads”, by Dan Burden & Peter Lagerway, 1999.

“Traffic Calming: Some Urban Planners Say Downtowns Need a Lot More Congestion”, by Mitchell Pacelle, Wall Street Journal, 8/7/96.

“Automobile Dependency and Economic Development”, by Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1999.

“The Costs of Automobile Dependency”, by Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1999.

“TDM and Economic Development”, by Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 2001.

“Sustainable Community Transportation”, by Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1991.

“Lake Worth: Reclaiming a Small Downtown”, by Cynthia Pollock Shea, Florida Sustainable Communities Network, 10/28/98.

“Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities”, by the Local Government Commission. Center for Livable Communities.

“Traffic Calming Reference Materials”, by Ian Lockwood and Timothy Stillings, West Palm Beach FL. October 1998.

“Taking Back Main Street”, by Engineering News Record. January 1998.

“Vital Signs: Circulation in the Heart of the City — An Overview of Downtown Traffic”, by Gerald Forbes. 1998.

“Do New Roads Cause Congestion?” by Jill Kruse. Surface Transportation Policy Project, March 1998.

Stuck in Traffic (book), by Anthony Downs.

“Widening Roads Worsens Traffic Congestion”, by Tanya Albert. The Cincinnati Enquirer. 1/13/00.

“Evaluation of Lane Reduction ‘Road Diet’ Measures on Crashes and Injuries” by Herman Huang, Richard Stewart, Charles Zegeer. University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. July 2001.

“The 3rd Motor Age”, by Walter Kulash. Places. Winter 1996.

“Emergency Response: Traffic Calming and Traditional Neighborhood Streets” by Dan Burden & Paul Zykofsky. Local Government Commission. Center for Livable Communities. December 2000.

“Take Back Your Streets”, by Conservation Law Foundation. May 1995.

“Traffic Calming”, by Cynthia Hoyle. American Planning Association. Planners Advisory Service Report #456. 1995.

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607Car is the Enemy book cover

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

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