“Champlain Parkway: Get it Right the First Time”
Panel and Discussion Wednesday
February 3, 6:30 p.m. at Arts Riot, 400 Pine St.
Champlain
Parkway White Paper One: Evaluation
Let's
shape it to become a street the public can love!
January
16, 2016
Our
Parkway View—Do it right the first time by shaping a highest
all-modes safety and quality transportation street to:
- Play a central part in achieving a livable South End community
- Remove trucks off residential streets
- Assure safety, especially for those who walk and bike, while reducing global warming gases and other pollutants, cutting gasoline use, and intersection delay.
- Ignite and sustain a vibrant South End industrial-commercial-arts economy
The
current Parkway now promoted by the City, Vermont Agency of
Transportation (VAOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
gets very little right. Most importantly the current Parkway
completely fails the following critical tests. The City’s Parkway
design results in a net drop in safety for each mode. Added to poor
safety: the current Parkway design would increase global warming
gases and other pollutants, waste gasoline, strangle economic
vitality, cut off connectivity to key adjacent areas, and damage
neighborhood livability. Therefore,
Safe Streets Burlington (SSB) calls for stopping the project design
followed by developing revisions centering on major upgrades to
safety, reducing environment impacts, and increasing economic
benefits.
Remember
about 15 years ago the City itself fought against the route of Pine
Street from the old Public Works facility to Main Street and lost out
to FHWA and VAOT opposition. Since the last public hearing was held
a decade ago 2006, a large portion of today's Burlington population
never participated in formulating the current design.
Safe
Streets Burlington (SSB) challenges the current Champlain Parkway's
(Parkway) decades old purpose of speeding cars from I 189 to
downtown. The current 2006 Parkway plan correctly moves trucks off
residential streets, but new priorities of this decade demand safe
streets and intersections for our families and visitors. These
priorities include reducing gasoline use and all pollutants tied to
climate change, and maintaining economic vitality and growth
centering on the arts and business sectors. SSB condemns cutting off
the connectivity of the South End to Queen City Park Road, Kmart
Plaza and points beyond.
SSB
calls for a Parkway to become a street the public can love, a street
leading the parade to thriving, livable neighborhoods. Therefore SSB
abandons the Parkway purpose of the past half century--moving cars at
high speeds to downtown totally blind to what lies outside the curbs.
A Parkway design with separate walk and bike facilities along with
roundabout intersections cures most of the fundamental defects in the
current design. This separation of walk and bike facilities along
with safe intersections assures an immeasurable gain for the South
End and the City. Progress in other Vermont towns on safe streets
and our own North End corridor plan show the way. A project price
tag of $43 million requires the City to “do it right the first
time.”
Can
safety be ignored with a massive 47% predicted growth in Lakeside
Avenue traffic facing the Lakeside neighborhood just to get to Pine
Street? Can the safety and needs of those on foot and bicycle be
ignored in the face of a 39% increase of traffic along Pine Street
above Lakeside Avenue through the heart of the commercial, retail,
and arts section? The current design dismisses these questions. SSB
calls for a Parkway revised using designs which actually improve
safety for all modes along Pine Street and Lakeside Avenue.
City
leaders apologize for obsolete project design for every mode, and
promise later improvements to make up for admitted Parkway design
defects. SSB says correct the project defects now, don't kick the
can down the road! With $43 million to work with composed of 95%
federal funds, a “fits and starts” Parkway approach simply makes
no sense.
Burlington
residents who comprise Safe Streets Burlington call for quality and
safe transportation investing within our City. Like the late
urbanologist Jane Jacobs, SSB places people and neighborhood
livability first and catering to cars and trucks second. Both SSB
and the City start from common values, but the current Parkway design
does not meet today's safety and quality street features, namely,
sidewalks throughout, separate safe bike pathways and vehicle
travelways—all of which would be served at busy intersections by
the unrivaled safety and service of the modern roundabout. By
contrast all of these very features sparkle in the North Avenue 2.8
mile corridor plan embraced by the City in 2014. The North Avenue
design features separate cycle track end-to-end and sidewalks
end-to-end and at least three of seven signals converted to
roundabouts. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
support conversions of signals to roundabouts for seniors safety.
Three states including New York the transportation departments of
two Canadian provinces follow an intersection policy of “roundabouts
first.”
Why
safety first? When the Parkway project began in 1965 the U.S. ranked
first in highway safety and then sunk to 19th
in the world. With a
fatality rate twice that of leading nations, attaining the lowest
rates translates to saving 13,000 U.S. lives a year. Both walk and
bike fatalities remain a pressing concern as we encourage more people
to undertake these healthy modes of travel. Burlington recorded five
fatalities since 1998—two pedestrians, one bicyclist, and two
drivers—all of which occurred at signalized intersections.
Consider that there has not been one single fatality to date at any
of the 4,000 roundabouts in the U.S. built since 1990. Compare the
roundabout record against two Burlington pedestrian fatalities
occurring since 1998 at its 75 traffic signals.
Now
for the first time we have Vermont downtown roundabout data covering
over 50 years with only one recorded pedestrian injury at the five
busy downtown roundabouts in Montpelier, Middlebury and Manchester
Center! Compare one pedestrian over a half century to five injuries
(one critical) at two Parkway intersections in just four years (Pine
at Locust and Lakeside)! Compare the Vermont downtown roundabouts
to Burlington's overall “dirty 17” intersections (13 signalized)
recording an average of one pedestrian injury yearly (one fatal)
2011-2014! SSB insists that the City must not make $43 million in
street investments and fail to complete any modern safe facilities
for those who walk, bike and travel by car! The Parkway design must
turn to safety first!
The
current Parkway design pales in comparison to the 2.8 mile North
Avenue “model of excellence” plan adopted by the City Council in
October 2014. In spite of massive expected traffic growth up to 47%,
the Parkway design lacks North Avenue's basic features: end-to-end
cycle track, end-to-end sidewalks, conversion of injury generating
signals to roundabouts. Instead, the Parkway actually adds five new
injury generating signalized intersections! Even the “new” Home
Ave. to Lakeside Ave. section lacks either sidewalks or cycle track.
Even FHWA, while opposing Parkway roundabouts, boasts of their
benefits: “Compared to other types of intersections...Roundabouts
improve safety: more than 90% reduction in fatalities, 76% reduction
in injuries, 35% reduction in all crashes, slower speeds are
generally safer for pedestrians.” Compared to the single lane
roundabout the typical traffic signal doubles vehicle crashes,
increases pollutants by about 30%, and raises rates of serious and
fatal injury rates by upwards of nine times (900%). Roundabouts
uniquely also lower vehicle speeds outwards one to two blocks.
SSB
disagrees with the City and VAOT. The City says that VAOT blocks
further safety and service changes to the Parkway. The City says in
effect that the South End must accept unsafe streets and
transportation infrastructure because these are forced on the City by
VAOT and the Montpelier FHWA office. SSB rejects a situation wherein
the City is forced to spend $43 million in transportation
infrastructure, to accept the crashes and injuries (and, yes, perhaps
a fatality or two over the 20 year lifetime of a transportation
investment) or is faced with losing $40 million federal dollars. SSB
points to the last significant busy street investment—the opening
of the Church Street Marketplace 35 years ago—when SSB insists we
can no longer ignore decades of no meaningful change for safety on
Burlington busy streets!
Last but
not least the Parkway clearly impacts surface and stormwater runoff
increasingly of concern and directly affects the Barge Canal
superfund site. This site continues being active today and an
ongoing threat to Lake Champlain, the source of our City water supply
and centerpiece of the of our waterfront tourist economy.
Contaminated and toxic soils throughout the Parkway route and
westward through the enterprise zone remain a continuing challenge.
Re-Imagining includes adopting recent innovative practices and
treatments to improve runoff performance, reducing pressure on the
Barge Canal superfund site, and addressing in a straight forward
fashion contaminated soils.
SSB
calls for an immediate stop to project design. SSB calls for
starting a discussion of new designs centering on safety and
environmental and economically beneficial upgrades--upgrades without
unreasonable associated costs, time delay, and permitting. The
residents of the City and the South End, the City, the State and FHWA
officials certainly share our SSB values—relocating
truck traffic outside of neighborhoods, attaining true safety
for all users, pursuing sustained economic vitality, acting on
climate change by reducing pollutants and gasoline use, and achieving
livable neighborhoods. Now the sole task remains of applying our
common concerns to a project which is so critical to our South End
neighborhoods and the City.
To join
SSB and help to bring a world class street to the South End, a street
our residents can love, please visit our website
www.SafeStreetsBurlington.com
or email SafeStreetsBurlington@gmail.com
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