Residents to Discuss Sycamore Drive Traffic Calming Tonight
Decatur Metro | June 17, 2010 | 12:57 pmOver at InDecatur, Dave announces a meeting this evening at The Church of Decatur Heights at 7pm for residents to discuss potential traffic calming measures along Sycamore Drive between “Hilcrest and the south entrance to the parking deck at DeKalb Medical.”
Dave states that “the objective is to discourage through traffic (which can take Arcadia and Winn Way) and slow traffic to improve the safety of residents.”
And over on the Decatur Heights blog, he has posted all the different road-widths along that stretch of Sycamore and gives a specific example of what could potentially be done to slow cars down.
According to Dave, both City Manager Peggy Merriss and Asst. City Manager David Junger will be in attendance at the meeting.
If they could somehow ticket every person that runs the stop sign in front of my house they could probably generate enough revenue to pay for whatever they want to do in about a week.
I’d be interested to know how “unsafe” the road is in the first place. How many accidents involving pedestrians have there been in the last 5 years? If the answer is zero, why bother even discussing this? Even if it’s 1 or 2, is all this worth the effort? No road will ever be 100% safe.
Instead, as usual, it seems we’re skipping that question, and proceeding directly to make changes and spend money to improve “safety” even if there’s no safety problem in the first place.
As for reducing through traffic, how many Sycamore travelers are just driving through, and how many are residents? Does anyone know?
Measuring safety by counting bodies is the ultimate measure, but it’s not the only measure. I also don’t think it’s the best one. It reminds me of the U.S. politicians who tried to measure success in Vietnam by counting bodies. There are a lot of factors besides just bodies you can look at to determine success, or in this case, safety. If road encourages actions which are risky, wouldn’t that create an unsafe road? E.g. if a road has a speed limit too fast for a sharp S-curve which makes it impossible to stay in your lane, isn’t that unsafe? We have one of those on Sycamore. And if a road is so wide and straight, that it encourages cut-through commuters to speed by a basketball court where kids play ball and a nursery where babies are being dropped off at 45 mph, isn’t that unsafe? I can’t believe you’d insist that the only measure of safety is whether or not a child has been hit in 5 years. What if the county wanted to change the road in front of your house to a 2-lane highway with a speed limit of 55 mph? Would you really wait until someone was hit before saying it was unsafe? I doubt it.
As for the suggestion that the city is just jumping on some bandwagon prematurely, this process and these conversations have been going on for 5 to 10 years. And re the through traffic, the city years ago had those traffic counter strips put on Sycamore . I’m not sure if they were measuring through traffic or just counting the total number of cars. You’d have to ask the city.
Babies are being dropped off at 45 mph? That seems more unsafe than speeders…
Don’t worry. Decatur parents use carseats. Some of the flying babies have helmets too.
Ah, but shouldn’t ALL those babies have helmets? I mean, I’d have thought Decatur parents were more conscientious.
Well, the helmet law only applies to bicycles but you’d think that Decatur “helicopter parents” would at least give their flying babies a parachute, if not a helmet. Maybe some of the baby-launching parents are “free-range parenting” types, as in “what’s the typical range that one can launch a baby at 45 mph on Sycamore?”
Heh! If we wait long enough, I’m betting someone will come up with the answer.
Only if there are fatalities. But so far none, so it’s completely safe.
Very cool — I love his idea about narrowing the car lanes and adding a bike lane. This would be a good step toward developing a string of ‘complete streets’ (streets that serve cars, pedestrians and bikes equally) all through Decatur.
DEM: no one has to die to prove that a street is unsafe for pedestrians. If the residents feel that the streets are unsafe to walk/cross — and in turn avoid walking them because of it — that’s proof enough that a change needs to be made.
So the mere “feeling” that a road is unsafe for pedestrians — in the absence of any actual injuries — is “proof” that changes need to be made? That is one incredibly low threshhold for “proof.”
Call me old fashioned, but calling something “unsafe” requires the thing to have resulted in some harm. Lots of people have an irrational fear that flying is unsafe. Does that make it so?
That other road users have surrendered Sycamore to speeding auto traffic resulting in a zero body count (for now) doesn’t make it a safe road. In fact, quite the opposite.
However, there are other salient reasons to reconfigure Sycamore into a “whole street” that have more to do with neighborhood appeal, street usage scaled for human beings and a better visual environment.
See above. My position is that it’s a safe road if, over a course of years, very few people are getting hurt. In fact, I’d say an absence of injuries is proof that it’s safe. That’s what “safe” means.
I have no idea what “street usage scaled for human beings” means. I live on the street, use it every day, and see other humans use it every day, too. My kids use it. I guess we have managed to overcome the fact that it’s not scaled for us, and to overcome the fear that apparently keeps so many other cowering inside their homes, afraid to walk along or cross the street.
Well, I walk it every day, sometimes twice a day, and every single time see at least one vehicle FAR exceeding the speed limit, running one or more of the stop signs, and on one rainy morning a couple of months ago, watched not one but two motorists blow past TWO schools buses that were stopped with lights flashing. “Street usage scaled for human beings” simply means making it a little less car-friendly, and a little more human friendly. The car can kill the human, but rarely the reverse.
Safe means…
1. Secure from danger, harm, or evil.
2. Free from danger or injury; unhurt: safe and sound.
3. Free from risk; sure: a safe bet.
4. Affording protection: a safe place.
Sycamore is none of those but if we can make it safer and more attractive for a little outlay, I’m certainly willing to go listen.
If “free from risk” or even its variant “secure from risk” is part of your standard, then there is no safe road anywhere. There’s also no safe car, bike, train, blender, etc.
Of course walking across sycamore presents some risk of injury. So does running across a field — you may twist your ankle. The relevant question is: is the risk too high? And in measuring the risk we should take a look at the historical rate of injury. The responses here suggest that people actually don’t want to consider the data. They want to fix a problem that may be completely imaginary.
Yes. safety is relative and it is a perception. I think you’re getting it.
Which grass covered field is safer to walk through? The one that the neighborhood association filled in the holes and removed hidden trash or just any old field that no one died in recently?
I think you’re getting it.
_______
Gee, thanks.
So a street can only be one of two things: “safe” and “unsafe”?
I guess that means there’s no difference between the old 4 lane Ponce and the new 2 lane Ponce running through downtown Decatur to you.
No. I’m just saying that before we call it unsafe — the label that seems to be thrown around very loosely here — let’s look at the safety record. If the result is zero injuries, then I’d say it’s safe. If it’s more than zero, then we get into degrees of safety, which informs the proper response.
What I am hearing here is, the heck with the objective data. All that matters is pure subjectivity. If people don’t feel safe, they’re not safe. I don’t think that makes much sense.
DEM, you’ve got a valid point. People do play the safety card quite liberally. But there’s a reason for that. Years of DOT-driven decisions have shown that it’s one of the few ways to get traction for change. If you can argue safety, that falls into one of the existing buckets.
I’d venture a guess that what the residents are really looking for is a street that feels humane rather than inhumane. Public space that can be utilized willingly without dread. Personally, I think that’s totally valid and should carry sufficient influence to sway infrastructure decisions but, in most places, it’s not. So count on “safety” to be the rallying cry until we gain a larger cultural appreciation of the qualitative value of good public space.
Oh Gosh! This is so cool that y’all are discussing Sycamore Drive! These are all good points & very worthy of discussion. Please do come tonight– the whole point is to get us all talking about what we DO want to see along Sycamore Drive! (Crosswalks! Crosswalks!)
Thanks Decatur Metro!!! YOU ROCK!!!
Thanks for promoting this meeting, DM. We welcome anyone from anywhere at the meeting. Come express your opinions in person. We don’t bite.
Safe to me means a road that my children can ride their bikes on to school without fear of speeding cars running them off the road. Safe is a 25 mph speed limit through a residential area.
Yikes, I wish I could go to that meeting to warn against the use of “street turtle” refelctive devices in lieu of bulb outs. You will see causualties with those things, they are very hazardous to bicyclist. I am an experienced cyclist and have had 3 run in’s with them on Church St, I survived but barely. My idea? I would love to see them do a road diet, and widen the landscape strip to six feet on both sides and plant oaks along the road. It would be gourgous and safer. One study found a 46% decrease in crash rates across urban arterial and highway sites after landscape improvements were installed.34 Another study found that placing trees and planters in urban arterial roadsides reduced mid-block crashes by 5 to 20 percent.33
TreesRock (NN?), I thought the “Bott dots” (so named because they were invented by a Mr. Bott), but more commonly called “turtles,” had reflectors so bikers could see them. In any case, my proposal for two 11′ traffic lanes and one-sided parking on the 30′ sections and two-sided parking on the 40′ sections would use turtles only until the concept was proven, then replaced with concrete “bulb-outs” similar to those at the crosswalk at Fairview and Ponce (which is 30′ wide with two 11′ lanes and a 8′ parking lane. Narrowing the street to only two traffic lanes is not practical, since many have to park on the street. We also limited the discussion to things which could be done without moving the curbs, as we have no idea when funding for major changes will be available. I suggested relatively low-cost remarking and turtle-ing. The details can be seen at DecaturHeights.com. Since we didn’t drive the process to a final top 5 list (controlling neighborhood meetings is similar to herding cats), it wasn’t clear how many bought into my proposal, or even seriously considered it. But the traffic calming benefits of marking two 11′ traffic lanes have been demonstrated on W. Ponce and on Church. I caught a lot of flack on incorporating Sharrow lanes into the proposal. Apparently this is a controversial topic among bikers, who must google for the word. Unfortunately, Fred was unable to review the proposal before the meeting and make suggestions. Without moving the curbs, there’s no place along Sycamore where a dedicated bike lane can be incorporated. People will prefer two-sided parking in the 40′ sections from Ponce to Pinehurst, and will not give up one-sided parking from Pinehurst to DeKalb Medical. I’m of the opinion sharrow lanes in the traffic lanes alert vehicle drivers to the probability of bikers. Many want the speed limit lower from 35 to 25 (as it is on Sycamore St), rotation of the cities two speed indicators to be on Sycamore Drive our fair share of the time, and more frequent patrolling by DPD and especially Officer Bob on his motorcycle (whom I personally have never seen in our neighborhood). We also encouraged those north of the city limit to partition for a four-way stop at Bridlewood.
The problem is the reflectors don’t reflect in the day, they blend in, concrete bulb outs can also be problematic in that they squeeze bikes into traffic often without the biker or automobile noticing creating a “sucide” squeeze effect. It is funny that you mentioned Church (temporary turtles) and W. Ponce as the two examples, and my experience as biker I have always disliked them. That said, I prefer the turtles on Church to the former four lane approach. If I had to choose, I would take the turtles as a temporary solution until the sidewalks are widened for a larger landscape strip. I like the officer Bob solution with a longerterm more expensive option of widening the landscape strip. That said the benefits reaped from a landscape strip would exceed the cost over time with water absorbtion, lower level ozone pollution reduction, property value increase, and increased traffic safety.
Nooooooooo! There is no “me” in “we”– I don’t share Dave’s view on the “complete street” concept AT ALL!!!
In fact, I LOVE envisioning a “complete street” Sycamore Drive!!! There’s definitely a goal to come out of this meeting with a list of short range safety solutions that we can pursue for immediate implementation. Getting the conversation started on more long range targets is very important too! Sycamore Drive is well traveled by lots of Decatur folks. As a neighborhood, maybe we’ve gotten so focused on the basics that we’re not considering all of the possibilities.
The bicycling community’s insights are especially helpful. ( Boy, it’s something else when y’all come whizzing through– a blur of pack after pack after pack! My littlest kin love it! Even the dog thinks it’s cool! ) Please keep thinking on it– no sense in going after the stuff that doesn’t work.
There are tentative plans to continue this discussion when we get together again to go over the City’s assessment of things. Fred will get to pick the date for the next meeting. (My bad! I took his advice of : “Pick a date & go for it! You’ll never get a date that suits everyone.” D’oh! Picked his vacation week!)
Peggy Merriss and David Junger attended tonight, much thanks to both. Thankfully, no one produced a baked in “here’s what we’re gonna do” plan. I think the meeting may have veered from the agenda a little bit into revisiting the work already done in the area of traffic calming on this street and what is feasable. That was good. I learned a lot of the how and why things came to be but no one could explain why Sycamore goes from 25mph limit to 35mph limit after it crosses Ponce. (20mph is the statistical knee when cars become lethal to humans). This is weird considering the fast section crosses two school entrances. I also learned that the car dealerships on Scott use Sycamore as a race track to demo those shiny sexy cars. The Decatur police change shifts right at the peak of commuters racing into Dekalb Medical Center and the road width varies from 40 to 50 feet along the way without any visual fog lines to restrict lane width.
IMO There was a good case made that the street is dangerous and some effective calming measures could be implemented relatively inexpensively. Maybe even in our lifetime.
I would have liked to attend but couldn’t due to a work commitment. I would especially have loved to have heard the case for the road being dangerous, and if it was based on any actual evidence as opposed to the subjective impressions and anecdotal observations posted here.
Whatever these calming measures are, I just hope they’re not speed bumps. I hate those things.
“I also learned that the car dealerships on Scott use Sycamore as a race track to demo those shiny sexy cars.”
Well, problem solved then. There are zero car dealerships on Scott.
Actually, isn’t there a Saturn dealership? Or has the road already become Lawrenceville Highway by then? But yes, the dealerships and used car lots are on Church and North Decatur.
Saturn is toast.
You are correct. That should have been Church Street. No way to edit once posted.
I knew what you meant. I was just teasing.
I can see how auto dealerships would cause an increase in traffic and unsafe driving. That makes sense, especially since I recently bought a car and they had me drive through a residential area for part of my test drive.
Good high level summary of the meeting, Richlandistan. We were pleased to see about 30 people at the meeting, some from bordering neighborhoods. We’re in the process of compiling the list of suggestions, which will be posted at DecaturHeights.com. PM & DJ of the City have asked for a few weeks to reply as to what can be done near term (within a year) and when. We tried to focus on low-cost solutions (like lane remarking, crosswalk painting, speed limit changing, signs, and enforcement) which don’t involve moving the curbs (who knows when there will be money for a major project like that).