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    Opinion: Reducing Downtown Speed Limits is Great, But Not Nearly Enough

    Next week, Columbus City Council is hosting a public hearing on the topic of reducing all Downtown streets to a 25mph speed limit, almost a two full years after the idea was first raised.

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    Reducing car travel speeds is a great first step to improve both pedestrian safety and overall quality of life Downtown, but it stops far short of what should be done to truly address the issue.

    Why Are People Speeding? What’s The Rush?

    To be clear…most drivers aren’t speeding because they’re assholes. They’re speeding because many streets in Downtown Columbus are designed for high speed travel. We have a combination of wide lanes, wide roads, and one-way thoroughfares with synchronized traffic lights to minimize stopping, and clear open vistas that tell your brain subconsciously that you’re on the open road.

    The end result, is that 45mph feels like an acceptable speed in a 35mph zone, regardless of posted signage. Changing the sign to 25mph is not going to change those psychological underpinnings that make us drive faster without even realizing it.

    Can’t We Just Hand Out More Speeding Tickets?

    I’m going to pretend you didn’t just ask me that.

    Ok, fine. I’ll answer it.

    Police enforcement is a bandaid solution. It’s a last resort.

    If you’re handing out tickets for jaywalking, you don’t have a jaywalking problem, you have a street with inadequate crossing infrastructure where people want to cross.

    If people are speeding, threatening them with a monetary fine not only isn’t a good long-term behavioral adjustment, it’s an outsized penalty for the poor and middle class while being a minor inconvenience for the wealthy.

    The problem with Downtown speeding that has to be addressed… is poor street design.

    The Real Solutions

    Changing out speed limit signs is probably the cheapest task within the bag of tricks that can be used to reduce travel speeds in an urban environment. All of the others that I’m about to run through each have a cost associated with them, which will vary quite a bit street by street. I also want to say up front that not every solution is a good fit for every single street. Some streets require multiple implementations, and some maybe none at all.

    Narrower Travel Lanes

    This is an easy one, and mostly requires a bit of paint and a bit of planning. The default switch, as popularized by city planner Jeff Speck, is reducing lanes from 12 feet wide to 10 feet wide. Plenty of streets throughout the entire region are even more narrow, with lanes closer to eight feet or even six feet wide. There’s no reason Downtown can’t be set up the same way.

    From a report by The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO):

    Narrower streets help promote slower driving speeds which, in turn, reduce the severity of crashes. Narrower streets have other benefits as well, including reduced crossing distances, shorter signal cycles, less stormwater, and less construction material to build.

    The extra space leftover can be converted to bike lanes, wider sidewalks, medians or whatever else is most appropriate on the individual streets.

    Two-Way Conversions & Road Diets

    One-way paired streets are not only designed to accommodate faster speeds, they’re also dangerous for creating situations for wrong-way drivers. Many of the current one way streets in Downtown Columbus were converted from their original two-way form by traffic engineers to get cars in and out of Downtown during rush hour. Not only are those purposes no longer as essential in a post-COVID, work-from-home world, highway reconfigurations with the ongoing I-70/71 project have drastically altered travel patterns on all Downtown streets, and updates are overdue.

    It may sound counter-intuitive that fewer travel lanes would actually be beneficial for drivers, but there are a growing number of “Road Diet” examples where not only safety is being improved with the slower speeds, but the situation is also improved for drivers who will experience fewer crashes, which leads to fewer traffic jams. I’ll leave it to VOX to explain further:

    Medians, Trees and Separated Bike Lanes

    The quicker and easier way to narrow sight lines for drivers and create a slower driving environment is through the addition of medians, sidewalk trees, and separated bike lanes. Even young new trees can add verticality to wider streets.

    More Infill Development

    The hardest and most unpredictable part of slowing down drivers is by filling in empty surface parking lots with new buildings. The wide open roads will only truly be closed in once new buildings fill back in the empty parking lots that contribute to those wide open visual spaces.

    This solution is more up to the private business sector than it is the local government, but incentives and/or penalties could be enacted to encourage land owners to sell or develop their underutilized Downtown parcels of empty land.

    Two Examples of Success, One Example of Inaction

    Gather around, children and let grandpa tell you the tale of Gay Street.

    The year…. was 2007. Construction was wrapping up on a project that converted Gay Street from a three-lane one-way west-bound thoroughfare into a two-way single-lane pedestrian-friendly street lined with new homes and small businesses.

    Gay Street in 2007 (top) and 2022 (bottom) — Photos via Google Streetview.

    Prior to 2007, Gay Street was a place were it was easy to drive 35mph (regardless of posted speed limits) because it was designed that way. Today, you’ll see most vehicles traveling closer to 20mph (again, regardless of posted speed limits) because it’s designed to encourage slower travel.

    I recall meeting for an article interview with former Columbus Public Service Director Mark Kelsey (now retired) after the completion of Gay Street’s renovation, and he called it something along the lines of a “signature street” for Downtown. I asked “Shouldn’t you want every Downtown street to be a signature street?” and he chuckled before realizing that I was serious, while he wasn’t. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since 2007, and a new generation of city planners have an updated focus on 21st century pedestrian concerns rather than 20th century traffic engineering.

    Another great example of successful traffic calming implementation is Civic Center Drive, along the Downtown Columbus riverfront. Adjacent to the “Scioto Mile” park and waterway improvements, this street was converted from a four-lane one-way south-bound speedway into a two-way single-lane tree-lined scenic drive. Thanks to widened sidewalks, pathways and curb bumpouts, pedestrian crossing and biking activity has been encouraged safely while cars are driving much slower than before.

    Civic Center Drive in 2007 (top) and 2021 (bottom) — Photos via Google Streetview.

    In a different spot Downtown, we’ll find a great example of a potential conversion opportunity on Main Street. The five-block stretch located between High Street and Grant Avenue is currently one-way east-bound and five lanes wide. Main Street is already a two-way street east of Grant and west of High, so there’s no real reason for this small stretch of Main Street to be in this configuration in 2023.

    Main Street in Downtown Columbus in 2022 — Photo via Google Streetview.

    A small set of local businesses have cropped up along a portion of Main Street in this area, but crossing the street as a pedestrian can be perilous, and sidewalk patio dining is noisy with what is essentially a five-lane highway just 12 feet away from your al fresco meal. A two-way conversion with medians, street trees and bike lanes would go much further to calm traffic on this stretch than just updating signage with new numbers.

    What Comes Next? The Downtown Plan, of Course.

    It’s sometimes easy to feel frustrated when change isn’t happening fast enough, but the good news is that there’s already momentum in the realm of Downtown street improvements.

    An updated master plan for Downtown was created and adopted in 2022, which includes a lot of the types of improvements I’ve listed above, in addition to improved mass transit infrastructure, private development guidelines, and green space expansions.

    a rendering showing Broad Street near the statehouse with dedicated center-running transit lanes and a two-way, protected cycle track
    A rendering showing a redesigned Broad Street Downtown – by MKSK.

    In order to be successful, this master plan has to be done in conjunction with any other types of planning efforts, from LinkUs to Zone-In to small scale retail incubation projects to speed limit changes.

    A reduction to 25mph Downtown is necessary, but can’t be done in a vacuum. So let’s get that part done as soon as possible so that we can move on to the rest of the steps for traffic calming and pedestrian safety improvements.

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    Walker Evanshttps://columbusunderground.com
    Walker Evans is the co-founder of Columbus Underground, along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.
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