Commentary
From Three Wheels, a Road Diet Perspective
By Guest Writer, Unfiltered 7-19-06
By Melissa Stiltner
I'm a disabled resident living at Eagle Watch Estates. My neighbors - residents of Eagle Watch Estates and Bruce Blattner Apartments, fully accessible apartment complexes, sparked this whole Broadway Diet mess. As a mobility impaired pedestrian, a regular vehicle passenger and a patron of local business, I am now more inconvenienced in my own neighborhood than I've ever been before.
Our stretch of West Broadway has a special use in that it's the only corridor following the river between Orange and Russell. This means that to get from downtown to North Reserve, from the airport to the University, from one side of the California footbridge to the other in a car, or to exercise any number of common scenarios you're probably traversing West Broadway. Partway through that trek is an intersection with Toole at an odd angle. Toole actually ends here, so you're merging onto Broadway when you get there - which increases
outbound congestion. From the inbound perspective Toole starts there as well, so Broadway traffic turning left onto Toole also increases inbound congestion. A new community of townhouses, where friends live, is right behind said butt-up adding more motors and peds to the stream. Surrounding this pressure point are several residential communities old and new. A significant segment of these residents are disabled, and nearly all of those people are mobility impaired, like myself. I drive my red Rascal-esque scooter plastered w/old band
stickers all over town; specifically in my neighborhood I frequent Safeway, Kum & Go, McDonald's, Triple Dragon Restaurant and St Pat's.
My neighbors also frequent YWCA Secret Seconds and "Trails," a bar directly across The Way. At Burton Street, my street, there was a blinking yellow crosswalk that was supposed to but never stopped traffic, so understandably several people have been hit there, and some of those incidents were fatal. At Broadway and Toole there was no crosswalk, and the curbs were wheelchair inaccessible. So we have a main thoroughfare to which all manner of activity gets channelled. Once captured, it's effectively impossible to escape the gauntlet with a river on one side and no probable connections on the other.
A group of residents petitioned the city to install a stoplight at Burton Street. Their proposal was shot down, but a separate plan went into the works. Some lines were painted; some barriers were placed, and what we know now as The Diet went into effect. The road went from four vehicle lanes, two intermittent bike lanes and two intermittent sidewalks to two vehicle lanes, one turn lane, two bike lanes and two intermittent sidewalks. Medians have been installed to bottleneck and wrangle the flow at critical points. Many community and city council meetings discussing The Diet have since passed, but construction marches on.
Inbound traffic crossing Russell is split into two directions: to Toole and not to Toole. Most traffic intends to "not turn left" onto Toole, but most of those in the left lane don't realize until the last second that by trying to spread out after sitting forever at a red light they in fact have to merge back to the right. I've counted these people many times from a passenger seat in the right lane as my PCA slows to 15mph to make space; 8 out of every 10 people in the left lane merge into the right lane within a two block span. That's an accident waiting to happen. Barriers have been placed at Burton Street such that no one can turn left onto Broadway; no one can go straight across Broadway continuing on Burton, and inbound traffic cannot turn left onto Burton. So to get to my appointment yesterday at Community Hospital, we had to turn right onto Broadway, left around Trails and right back onto Broadway to get to Russell. And coming home from Tai Chi Chih class by the Stephens Center, turning left onto Burton doesn't include turning lane safety. Going inbound or outbound past Toole, you can't turn left to access any businesses. As a result, the Kum & Go isn't open 24 hours a day anymore, so I haven't been over there since they changed their hours. Vehicular traffic as a whole, is slower, bottlenecked and more frustrated.
Frustrated traffic is dangerous traffic. People give less margins, stop much less frequently for pedestrians and take more risks to get home faster. When accidents do happen, emergency vehicles are hard pressed to get through. The frequency of siren activity went from negligible to expected. The casual listener will hear sirens at all times of the day and for a significant length as ambulances, police units and fire trucks try to navigate the congestion. If public safety is paramount, where does the transport of these workers fit in?
Let me, from my unique position, illuminate some details about mobility impaired life at Eagle Watch Estates. Not speaking medically, there are generally two capacities of independent mobility. You can either stroll around your neighborhood yourself or you can't. I can walk about a block and back without too much worry about falling down and getting stranded. I can barely walk across the parking lot, across Broadway, to Trails and back. I can't walk to the Kum & Go and Back. My scooter gets me to Safeway in one direction and McDonald's in the other. If I wanted to go to Trails, I could take my scooter down to Scott Street. There you'll find a controlled intersection with sensors. The light is not on a normal schedule but set to give Broadway the green until someone pushes one of the two cross buttons or a vehicle comes down Scott Street. Point of all this being, if you can only get around a little the only place you're going from here is probably a bar. If you can get around a bit more, you either have some good legs or an electric chair that can go a couple extra blocks without any inconvenience. You can also catch the inbound bus next to Burton across Broadway, but all of the people on this side of the street qualify for Mountain Line's Special Transit Service which picks you up at home for the same price. Speaking statistically might seem cold, but it's what I can present for real argument. I'm in favor of a pedestrian consideration at Toole. I'm even in favor of a fully controlled intersection at Toole.
I believe a light at Burton would be redundant with lights installed at Toole and Scott, and only serve to cater to a very specialized need.
Broadway needs to be widened back to at least four lanes with lights at Toole. It's not like we're giving that extra space back to nature, or the growing population is giving up their cars because of a crappy stretch of road, and all that congestion is horrible for the air.
People can speculate about the moral priorities of city planning, but it's not a government's place to protect every person from their own decisions. The city council has taken on the task of making West Broadway as safe as possible. However the changes that have been made and laid out for the future so far have only served to make West Broadway more dangerous. It may not have worked before, but it certainly doesn't work now. In programming, this is a familiar and understandable phenomenon: a bug fix begets another bug. The difference here is, will anyone fix this mistake? Shouldn't this abstract dilemma now be left to voters?
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A similarly dangerous situation is on the other end of the diet. Driving home from the University via West Broadway every day, I see the logjam that occurs when cars stick to the right lane to avoid getting caught behind drivers turning left onto Higgins or Ryman, then have one block to merge into the left lane before the right lane is forced to turn right onto Orange. Inevitably, people in the right lane don't realize they have to turn right until the last minute, when they frantically veer left, crossing the solid line and changing lanes in the middle of the intersection trying to get back onto Broadway. I can't tell you how many near-misses and road rage-y incidents I've seen here. I'd be very curious to know what the accident statistics have been for this intersection.
Another thing I've noticed is that anyone trying to turn right off of Broadway now has to contend with impatient vehicles right on their bumper. Once upon a time, people could simply change lanes to avoid slowing down for someone turning right. Again, I'd like to see the stats for rear-end collisions before and after the road diet.
One thing I immediately noticed when I moved here was how difficult and inconvenient it was to get on and off I-90. I had been conditioned to use the "freeway" to move from one side of town to the other. That conditioning ended quickly, and I now often forget that I-90 is there (not completely a bad thing, but not conducive to good traffic flow either).
"Controlled access" is an amazing thing; people will drive well out of their way if you make it easy and smooth. So, identify the three or four major points that people move to and from (that's pretty easy to do in Missoula), and do whatever it takes (money and sacrifice) to provide controlled access routes between them. This often takes the form of a "loop" but it doesn't have to, and it also doesn't have to happen all at once.
It's just a matter of time before this has to happen. The only real question is how bad things will have to get before then, and how many more boneheaded experiments we'll be forced to endure.
Broadway did not have bike lanes before the 4 lane to 3 lane conversion. Not having bike lanes was a big safety problem for bikes and cars. With the new configuration, this problem has been solved. Also, median refuges were not installed to 'bottleneck' traffic, but to give a safe refuge in the middle of the road for pedestrians and bikes. The refuge works well at Burton. A pedestrian needs to cross just one lane of traffic at a time, with the refuge in the middle. No more will a walker cross the road only to have one car stop and another car swerve around and hit the person. The refuge at St. Pats was good too, but it was not permanent. We should work towards getting that ped refuge back, as many people cross at that point.
As far as access to business is concerned, you _can_ get to all of them, but a few extra turns may be needed. I support finding ways, within the current 3-lane system, of improving business access (modern single lane roundabouts are one way).
Concerning, "People give less margins, stop much less frequently for pedestrians", I have found the opposite to be true most often. With slower speeds and higher visibility, drivers find it easier to stop for pedestrians. A nice effect: fewer cars have to stop with lower speeds. This is called 'road resilience.' Under the old 4-lane, lots of traffic would have to come to a screeching halt, due to higher speeds and less visibility. My research shows that this new 3-lane is better for air quality because of this resilience.
And, finally, let's consider the statement, "it's not a government's place to protect every person from their own decisions." I agree with this. Many people have chosen to drive their cars. Driving is not a right, but a privilege (you have to get a license). A 'red carpet' will not be rolled out for every driver to get every place the quickest way possible. But we should make it safe for walking and biking, even if it means more time to drive. But the irony is that as more people choose to walk and bike, and motor vehicle speeds become lower, the driving population will face less congestion and get places faster (less stop and go). As I have said in other posts about this, we need to look systematically at transportation in Missoula. Let's make walking, cycling and transit the best in the west. Full-time drivers will greatly benefit, along with the rest of us.