Category: Roadways

Revealing driver behavior on Clark Street with a radar gun

July 30, 2013 / / 2 Comments

People prefer to cross Clark Street at Menomenee Street in groups of unacquainted individuals.

This is a more detailed post of the one at Streetsblog Chicago.

On the overcast morning of Friday, May 4, 2012, I recorded the speeds of 412 cars at four locations along Clark Street in Old Town and Lincoln Park for 15 minutes at each location. I missed counting the speeds of 42 cars. The embedded map shows the locations and some basic statistics.

What did I find? There’s a relationship between street width and the speed people drive. The highest speeds were found on the widest portions, and the lowest speeds on the narrowest portions. However, this basic study is far from scientific. A better study would record the locations simultaneously (necessitating 4 radar guns), calibrated equipment, consistent training for the researchers on data collection methods, a longer recording duration, and comparison to a control street that had a uniform width at four locations.


View Radar gun places on Clark Street in a larger map

1. Southbound Clark Street at Germania Place

My assistant and I set up the radar gun and camera immediately south of Sandburg Terrace and pointed the radar gun at people driving southbound on Clark Street between a row of parked cars at the concrete median (pedestrian refuge island). Classes would start soon at the Latin School on the east side of Clark Street. Compliance with state law requiring drivers to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk was weak, to say the least, but compliance wasn’t explicitly measured.

  • Average speed: 17.21 miles per hour (MPH)
  • Maximum speed: 30 MPH
  • Cars measured: 151
  • Speed limit: 30 MPH
  • Drivers exceeding the speed limit: 0
  • Width: 224 inches (from west curb to pedestrian refuge island)
  • Effective width: 140 inches (excludes parking by subtracting 7 feet)
  • Crashes: 35, of which 4 were bicycle, and 3 were pedestrian.

Only one car-car crash (actually a 3 car crash) produced an injury. What’s interesting about this location is that in a lot of the crashes, the cars were traveling in the same direction. There’s a lot of school drop off and pick up activity here for Latin School of Chicago students, so it could be that many people are pulling away from the curb to merge into traffic and collide.

2. Northbound Clark Street at Menomenee Street

  • Average speed: 30.83 miles per hour (MPH)
  • Maximum speed: 50 MPH
  • Cars measured: 121
  • Speed limit: 30 MPH
  • Drivers exceeding the speed limit: 53.72%
  • Width: 395 inches (from east curb to dividing line). This includes the parking lane but no cars were parked within 50 feet, north and south, of the measurement location.
  • Crashes: 20, of which 2 were bicycle, and 1 were pedestrian. Many of the non-bike and non-ped crashes involved a parked car or taxi. The only injuries experienced were by the 2 cyclists and 1 pedestrian.

3. Northbound Clark Street at Lincoln Park West

We stood on the “pie” (traffic island) that separates northbound Clark Street traffic from northbound Lincoln Park West traffic to measure the traffic driving on Clark Street between the pie and the concrete median separating it from southbound Clark Street.

  • Average speed: 25.60 miles per hour (MPH)
  • Maximum speed: 40 MPH
  • Cars measured: 58
  • Speed limit: 30 MPH
  • Drivers exceeding the speed limit: 27.59%
  • Width: 252 inches (from concrete median curb to west curb on the pie)
  • Crashes: 4, of which 1 was bicycle, and 2 were pedestrian.

4. Northbound Clark Street between Lincoln Park West and Dickens Avenue

This location is 125 feet north of the previous location.

  • Average speed: 22.54 miles per hour (MPH)
  • Maximum speed: 35 MPH
  • Cars measured: 58
  • Speed limit: 30 MPH
  • Drivers exceeding the speed limit: 2.44%
  • Width: 264 inches (from east curb to dividing line).
  • Effective width: 180 inches (excludes parking by subtracting 7 feet)
  • Crashes: 0

Me measuring speeding drivers on Clark Street with the speed gun, my clipboard and paper, and a GoPro camera to record the speeding drivers and the results on the speed gun. 

Bike Walk Lincoln Park’s proposal

In 2011, Michelle Stenzel and Michael of Bike Walk Lincoln Park published a document to “Make Clark a Liveable Street“. The first two pages show an aerial photo of the same section of Clark Street where I measured automobile speeds, North Avenue and Armitage Avenue. On the first page, existing conditions are laid out. The second graphic shows proposed improvements.

At Menomonee Street, measurement location 2, the document says “pedestrians must cross 6 lanes with no safe haven”, a width of just under 66 feet. In the later pages, the first existing condition is blatant: “Wide lanes of auto traffic moving at speeds in excess of the speed limit”. My analysis in May demonstrates this.

How does BikeWalk Lincoln Park propose to “transform this stretch from a car-oriented ‘super-highway’ to a people-oriented liveable street”? By installing protected bike lanes, putting the street on a diet, and installing new and well-marked crosswalks among other ideas.

Width and speed summary

Ordered by location:

  1. 224/140 inches. 0% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  2. 395/395 inches. 53.72% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  3. 252/252 inches. 27.59% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  4. 264/180 inches. 2.44% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit

Ordered from narrowest to widest to see how width relates to speed:

  • 224/140 inches. 0% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  • 264/180 inches. 2.44% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  • 252/252 inches. 27.59% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit
  • 395/395 inches. 53.72% of drivers exceeded 30 MPH speed limit

Notes

Crash data is within 100 feet to avoid the overlap of the final two locations, which were 125 feet apart. Crash data comes from the Illinois Department of Transportation for 2005-2010. The Bushnell Velocity Speed Gun was borrowed for this analysis. The radar gun was filmed to show a speeding car and its speed simultaneously. The video below shows a driver traveling at 50 MPH in a Children’s Safety Zone (as it’s within 1/8 mile of a park, Lincoln Park, making it eligible for automated speed enforcement).

Curiously, no traffic counts have been collected on Clark Street near any of the count locations.

View the video on Vimeo.

Screenshot of traffic count website. Go to the Traffic Count Database System and search for “1700 N Clark Street, Chicago, IL” in the map. 

A new freeway depreciates itself and the city as fast as your new car

July 17, 2013 / / 6 Comments

A Metra train bypasses congested automobile traffic on the free-to-use Kennedy Expressway. 

Elly Blue wrote about automobile depreciation last week. Depreciation is the value of the automobile that disappears because it’s not as valuable anymore, for reasons of mechanical decay and the “used” factor.

Depreciation is, for many individual consumers a hidden cost. But any responsible accounting of the costs of driving includes it as one of the largest associated with car ownership. The fact that such a large and unprofitable investment is necessary to living and working in most areas of this country is a major source of poverty and failure to get ahead for people and families, and is a hidden source of poverty on a national scale.

The same exact principle is at work in our road system.

It’s depreciation at the societal level. It’s irresponsible not to plan for it, but we do not. A freeway, once built, immediately begins to deteriorate and become congested, it loses its ability to provide the jobs that often were much of the argument for building it in the first place.

Think about the Circle Interchange project the Illinois Department of Transportation is bent on building. For 10 minutes I monitored the “public forum” room at the late June – and final – public meeting about the project to rebuild and increase capacity at the intersection of I-290, I-90/94, and Congress Parkway. I heard seven people speak and at least five of them focused their two minute speeches on the “good jobs” that this project would provide. These are the same “good jobs” that $470 million spent on any other transportation project would generate, like the underfunded but highly beneficial CREATE project that reduces congestion and travel times for freight, Metra, and Amtrak trains in the region.

The Circle Interchange will add an imposing flyover to Greektown and residents and workers on Van Buren Street. 

Building something for jobs is the worst reason to build something. At least with transit (or tollways, for this matter) there is a recurring funding stream, with every use. Oregon is slowly moving in the direction of taxing drivers by mile instead of by gallon, but starting only with electric vehicles. Illinois is issuing bonds for its freeways with the country’s worst credit rating.

Elly’s article had me thinking of other ways cities lose. One of the commenters mentioned there is a loss in property taxes, when properties are demolished to make way for the highway. As Rick Risemberg wrote, “Roads themselves do not pay property tax, of course.” The revenue from those razed properties is eliminated, permanently.

This train flyover represents what the Circle Interchange flyover, over Halsted, will look like. At least this flyover has a revenue stream.

Another way cities lose property tax because of highways is that it makes properties around highways less valuable. It also makes existing, now vacant properties less desirable to developers. So, we have less revenue and then a lowered desire to develop there. Seems like a Catch-22.

However, urban rail stations and bikeways are now known to raise property values and thus government incomes, though this money generated by them is usually not allocated to the infrastructure that created it. (Some places are beginning to use “value capture” mechanisms to do so.)

Risemberg makes sure to point out that gas taxes hardly cover the costs of building highways. I would add that, at least in this state, more and more is being spent on debt service.

And this is all slightly relevant to the article I posted Tuesday on Streetsblog Chicago about transit-oriented development. It’s the third of three articles on the topic based on a report by the Center for Neighborhood Technology that essentially says that Chicagoland, compared to San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, are not experiencing the same benefits of them as adding housing to the transit shed (within 1/2 mile of a train station) and that driving is up in the transit shed of Chicagoland while transportation costs, as a portion of household income, are rising faster in the transit shed than outside. These were surprising to CNT, where the expectation was, in brief, that living near a train station provides more mobility, closer retail and services opportunities, and thus would reduce dependence on expensive automobile ownership.

Shaming dangerous drivers, like they did in Bogotá

June 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

My friend D.D. said:

Oh, and the documentary i mentioned to you about Bogotá is on YouTube now
Cities on Speed: Bogotá Change
My favorite initiative Antanas Mockus started was he hired clowns to stand in intersections and make fun of drivers that disobeyed traffic laws

His reasoning was that Colombians care more about looking foolish than being fined.

I think something like that could work here:

Like, every day video an example of terrible driving and shame the person. Maybe follow them home, ask them what was so important that they had to risk the safety of other. Then they’ll say “well, i wanted to watch game of thrones” and look foolish.

Tell me I’m wrong with my Parking Meter Deal Part Deux calculations

April 30, 2013 / / 16 Comments

A parking meter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, displays the word “fail”. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

I want nothing more than to believe Mayor Rahm Emanuel has created a good deal but I believe his own parking meter deal is just as ridiculous as the deal – from Richard M. Daley and 45 aldermen – that preceded it.

Rahm’s deal changes none of what Chicagoans abhor about the current deal, which include:

  • It scheduled many price increases, without offering the buyer, those who pay to park, any additional value. Value could come in the form of a parking benefit district, where the revenues pay for local infrastructure improvements.
  • The city gets none of the revenue (it collects fines, though).
  • It costs us more than we ever expected (disabled parking placard, reimbursement for street closures, road work, and festivals).
  • It removes control from the city administration and aldermen over our streets. Thanks goes to Active Transportation Alliance for pointing this out in their excellent June 2009 original report (since retracted and revised) in which the organization said, “As a result [of the lease], planners and neighborhoods have lost control over one of their most powerful urban planning and revenue generating tools.”

It changes nothing that policy makers dislike about it:

  • We can’t implement dynamic or market or congestion pricing, unless the revenues for CPM stayed the same or were increased (although this would have to be negotiated).
  • It throws another cog into the city’s plans to expand bike lane mileage. We’re already having a difficult time with merchants not wanting to lose parking in front of their store, despite all the evidence pointing to bike lanes increasing revenues. To make way for a bike lane, the metered parking space has to be moved to an equally valuable spot within the same Parking Region. The alderman has to get involved and it’s not an easy process.

Rahm’s deal, which the city council must approve as an ordinance, doesn’t help Rahm’s priorities.

The Active Transportation Alliance report said, “This lease agreement [from 2009] compromised the city’s ability to adjust parking policy; because of the agreement terms, meters will be the primary consideration in the planning of our city streets. Everything else, from traffic flow to pedestrian, bicycle and transit facilities may only be considered after meters and their corresponding income has been considered.”

Rahm’s new deal doesn’t change that, but in fact will likely give CPM the same or more revenues under the plan. It will reduce the chargeable hours by 12 hours on one day (the newly free Sunday) and increase by 1 hour at more valuable times (weekday and weekend evenings) in areas that charge $2 and $4 per hour, and is increased by 3 hours at the same times in areas that charge $6.50 per hour. I’ve attempted to estimate how much more revenue with the spreadsheet below.

The city isn’t saving $1 billion – it hasn’t spent that money and there was no surety that it would; the press release acknowledges this, calling them ” estimated future charges”. The point here is that CPM and the city have agreed on how things like street closures and disabled parking placards will be paid for (by the city). CPM isn’t going to agree to any deal that reduces the value of the company to its shareholders.

No one asked to have free parking on Sunday. No one asked to have free parking on any day. Sunday is the day when people drive the least! If anyone deserves a break, it shouldn’t go to a small segment of the popular (“Sunday churchgoers”, Rahm said, acting as if they’re being harmed, and excluding churchgoers who don’t attend on Sundays), but to everyone who had to pay more than the parking space was worth and anyone who couldn’t get a bike lane in while people are being doored left and right.

Why else is free parking a bad idea? The experts at Active Transportation Alliance wrote:

Underpriced curb parking is a hidden source of traffic congestion and stimulates the most inefficient form of urban transportation. Underpriced parking encourages drivers to cruise for cheap parking, which harms everyone’s health and safety, slows down automobiles and buses behind the cruiser, and provides little benefit to the cruiser. It is a danger to bicyclists and pedestrians because cruisers focus on finding the right spot, not on whether a pedestrian is crossing the street.

It’s this last point, the lack of focus on anything but the parking spot, that is believed to be the cause of a cyclist being severely injured last week on Milwaukee Avenue.

Just like Daley, Rahm didn’t consult the one alderman whose ward might be affected most (it’s unknown if any aldermen were consulted). If this trend of the current city council being the most “rubber stamping” in all time (by my favorite local blogger Whet Moser), I predict it’ll be passed.

Calculations

[table id=8 /]

Since the number of spaces doesn’t change between the old and new scenarios, there is no need to calculate the total $ per space per region. Revenue estimate assumes the space is always occupied. In the new scenario, proposed by Rahm Emanuel and CPM, all spaces not in neighborhoods have become slightly more valuable, enough to more than make up for the reduced value of spaces in neighborhoods.

Updated May 3, 2013, 15:51 to add a link to the current version of Active Transportation Alliance’s parking meter report and to say that it replaced the original report. 

Where does this road diet rule come from?

April 17, 2013 / / 14 Comments

55th Street road diet from summer 2012. This is the best road diet photo I’ve got. Traffic counts here indicate 15,700 cars daily (based on a single day of measurement in 2006).

“Roadways with Average Daily Traffic (ADT) of 20,000 or less may be good candidates for a road diet and should be evaluated for feasibility”, via FHWA. The documents – here’s the second one – I’ve found so far on FHWA’s website don’t explain the research behind this assumption. How should a road be evaluated for feasibility? The second one bases review of a street on crash type, severity, and rate.

View 4600 W Foster Avenue in a larger map. Alderman Laurino is correct in her description of how many lanes are here. The road is only striped for 1 lane in each direction.

This concerns me because CDOT seems to have adopted this as a policy. They are using it as a reason to not consider a road diet on Foster Avenue. However, though, Foster Avenue between Pulaski Road and the Edens Expressway has only “1 and a half lanes” in each direction, according to local Alderman Marge Laurino of the 39th Ward (see John Greenfield’s interview below, which is an expanded version of one published on Grid Chicago in two parts).

Interview

Greenfield: Where in your ward would you like to see speed cameras installed?

Laurino: Well right now I don’t know that we have locations that would fit some of the criteria that we’re looking at. Currently I think the ones that they’re putting in are going to be where there have been pedestrian fatalities and I don’t know that I have anything that fits that really strict criteria but I would… Just a suggestion, Foster Avenue in front of Gompers Park. I mean it’s often times an area where cars really speed because for whatever reason, where there are no homes and that and it’s just wide-open parkland people just seem to hit the accelerator. I don’t know why that it but it appears to be the case.

JG: Is that a long stretch with no stoplights?

ML: From Pulaski to Cicero it’s a long stretch and it’s not one lane. I want to call it one-and-a-half lanes. There really shouldn’t be two lanes of traffic going in one direction but they seem to squeeze that in. So anyway that might be a potential place for a camera. We’re also looking at something called a road diet, where we just, through paint markings and paint striping, make the street narrower. That would be on Foster Avenue, let’s say between central Park and Cicero.

JG: Is there any talk of putting in bike lanes there to take up the extra space?

ML: No, for whatever reason it doesn’t fit their criteria.