Modal equality through traffic calming.

Modal equality is the ability of walkers and bicyclists to get safe, healthy, accessible, pleasant, and efficient (SHAPE) access on a road network similar to automobiles. We can SHAPE up with traffic calming.

Bicycle Boulevards close streets to automobiles, with chokers and diverters, in order to reduce the volume and speed of traffic that peds and bikes contend with. Another approach to reduced auto traffic is to close the intersection itself, since that addresses a crossing network for bikes and peds. Closing 25% of intersections to automobiles will allow other modes like walking cycling and boards to gain access across a city. It will save 50% of the revenue (Half of Belmont's projected road repair bill from auto usage is $15M) and improve throughput- since the direction of traffic on remaining streets is known and can be optimized- like one way roads- eliminating the delay from intersection second guessing. The remaining public works revenue can be better targeted since the options are reduced.

Braes Paradox said that additional roads, or network options, add anarchy into a network. The result is increased congestion. Physicists Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, along with computer scientist Micheal Gastner, looked at the price of anarchy caused by self-interested drivers and showed that closing off roads improves throughput.

Design elements like roundabouts, for the optimized network, reduce options for collisions, resulting is saved time and money for drivers. Time magazine writes Carmel, Ind., is driving in circles. Since 2001, the Indianapolis suburb has built 50 roundabouts, those circular alternatives to street intersections that have become a transit fixture in much of the rest of the world. Because roundabouts force cars to travel through a crossroads in a slower but more free-flowing manner — unlike traffic circles, roundabouts have no stop signals — in seven years, Carmel has seen a 78% drop in accidents involving injuries, not to mention a savings of some 24,000 gal. of gas per year per roundabout because of less car idling. "As our population densities become more like Europe's," says Mayor Jim Brainard, who received a climate-protection award this year from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "roundabouts will become more popular."

Headway unrealized until we slow down

We are in this planet toasting pickle because planners have designed cars into our forests, food, water and health systems. Now as a resource depleted planet asks for urgent solutions these same planners say we need to make transit an attractive alternative to get drivers to use it and stop generating green house gases. 30 minute headways are not really attractive. An axiom among transit planners is that 15 minutes is the maximum if you are going to seriously attract drivers. Transit systems must start a drive to double their service level to achieve the sort of ridership and other social benefits (air water health) we know them to be capable of delivering.

This expert way looks at headway (how fast a transit system goes between stops) and keeps the system in all its planet toasting glory and bring transit and other disadvantaged modes up to toasting par. Separated routes for bikes, grade separation for transit, etc to equalize headway with speed which surprising means more energy. But we end up with funding and NIMBY issues which result in incomplete systems and the O'Toole criticism of unfunctioning modalities stealing from drivers.

Another way is to take away planet toasting headway from drivers and share it with other modes. Road diets, bus only lanes, headway via intersection closures to automobiles for bike boulevards, fifteen and twenty mile per hour neighborhood and collector streets plus 25 mph arterials in the city limit, 50% of intersection closed to automobiles with pocket parks and play grounds that allow bikes and peds through in a system of traffic calming that's linked to the landuses of children and returns a sustainable return on investment of $2500 per resident in reduced road repair and stormwater mitigation, PAYD, unbundled parking, etc. are the types of solutions that share headway and cost across modes making choices more appealing.

This is not say that we end up like LA which proves that drivers can handle a infinite congestion, i.e. nothing the experts say for workable transit will work if autos continue to see expanded capacity. We need to realize that we in this mess because the experts don't know what they did and how to fix it. By slowing down traffic we can improve VMT (x=vt) and improve throughput since the carrying capacity is raised. It just takes a minute longer to go between freeways. But by seeing equivalent headway between modalities drivers can see an option that will have real financial consequences in the choices they make.

Landuse control for transit agencies

We regulate a lot of bad things- for example there is no gun range by your house, no paint manufacturer. We also don't regulate a lot of bad things like pesticides. Or cars which not only kill people and poison the air but now eat our food (ethanol), starve our soil (cellulosic), burn our forests (sprawl), and are threatening to drink our water (hydrogen).

Just because we don't regulate a bad thing does not mean its good and needs continued funding.

On the other hand its in-effective long range planning when we use federal funding sources with their insidious requirements like designed-in-racism-in-sprawl. Since the gas tax funds transport, cars get built into the cycle of generating revenue. Our MTC plans are then hobbled- for example crossing streets prevent effective grade separated Caltrain times and toxic traffic slows down buses and stunts children. Without going for a connected and whole transit system we end up with a discombobulated mess; primarily because none of the landuse changes to make it successful are thought through and implemented. Universities, for example, control the landuse decisions around the campus and can appropriate property, like San Carlos Ave and El Camino from the city and state. Transit agencies should control the landuses within a 1/4 mile of the STATION FRONT for a slow system like Caltrain and two miles for HSR. Without these landuse controls other modes have a hard time competing and getting access with cars and become sitting duck for the O'Toole's. And why walking, which is our signature form of transportation on this planet, ends up being called alternate transportation. Instead of bonding to raise matching funds for federal dollars we should bond or tax for a complete system and eliminate gasoline since it doesn't fund anything that's controlled locally.