Walking, biking safety in city

The Vision Zero plan is designed to meet Boulder’s laudable goal of reducing “the number of traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries to zero.” The multi-faceted plan includes implementing countermeasures at high-crash locations, improving signal timing practices, employing innovative intersection and street designs, installing signs and pavement markings, and education. According to the city’s website, feedback for the overall plan has ended, although citizens can always submit transportation feedback to the city’s online engagement platform.

One subset of the city’s Vision Zero work is the Vision Zero Innovation Program, which used $250,000 of the city’s Vision

Zero funding to try out twenty “innovative, quick-build projects” at specific locations. These projects are designed to “reduce vehicle speeds and improve safety and comfort of people walking and biking.” The projects were initiated in 2020, and the city currently is seeking comment on its preliminary recommendations to keep 11 of the projects, remove 5 and modify 4, based on data, observations and feedback the city has received. The city is recommending keeping certain projects in place where an actual decrease in speeding or other improvement resulted. Likewise, the city is recommending that other projects be modified or removed where they failed to produce the desired outcome or raised other issues.

Another work product arising out of the Vision Zero program is the city’s new Core Arterial Network (CAN) initiative. This one involves design improvements to Boulder’s high-traffic arterial streets, which is where 65% of the severe crashes occur in Boulder. CAN will focus on connecting protected bike lanes, enhancing intersections and pedestrian facilities, and implementing transit upgrades to increase safety.

The city also has other transportation initiatives aimed at increasing safety (the 20 is Plenty residential speed limit program comes to mind). Keeping track of them all isn’t easy. But innovation is necessary to increase safety, and transportation modes are evolving. Fortunately, the city is monitoring the success and failure of these programs and removing or modifying projects that may not work in practice. Boulder is sharing with other cities the results of its experimentation, and other cities are reciprocating. We are benefitting from a nationwide laboratory, and I have noticed drastic changes for the better during recent bike rides in urban centers such as Boston and Washington, DC.

So, now that we can ride our bikes, where can we park them so that they won’t get stolen? Andrew Shoemaker, ashoemaker@sgslitigation.com

It is important to have safe mobility options for pedestrians, bicycles and vehicles, and, at the same time, it is important to keep traffic moving so people can get where they need to go and don’t add to our air pollution by sitting in traffic.

My initial thought while reviewing the city’s statistics regarding traffic safety in Boulder is that we actually do pretty well. We don’t seem to have a lot of serious injuries or fatalities due to crashes. The crashes we do have seem to occur mainly at certain intersections.

The simple mechanisms such as the redlight photo enforcement to prevent people from running red lights and the ominous white van on the side of the road that snaps your photo if you speed, both seem to work well at curtailing those actions. However, the pedestrian crossings where the yellow lights suddenly start flashing and a driver, without warning, has to somehow stop on a dime while they look around to see if there is a pedestrian or bicycle that wants to cross the road, seem to be dangerous for all concerned.

A review of the results of Boulder’s Vision Zero Innovation Program indicates that measures utilized for traffic “calming” had limited success at best and in some instances, traffic speeds actually increased slightly. The program with chicanes which work to squeeze the traffic flow of a street down to one lane so that cars going in opposite directions have to stop and take turns going through the one-lane section, actually works to inflame drivers rather than calm them. The one on Quince and 17th also makes it nearly impossible for pedestrians to pass through because there is no sidewalk so the pedestrians need to either take a turn while the two cars going in opposite directions wait or the pedestrian has to share the narrow path with a vehicle. I am relieved to see that this chicane will be discontinued.

I wish the Boulder project had studied crashes between bikes and pedestrians. I see bikers on sidewalks all over town and I have been in too many close calls while walking down the sidewalk. Frustratingly, there is almost no enforcement to keep bikes off of sidewalks, so the danger continues. It would be great if the city worked on creating effective sidewalk barriers to keep bikes off the sidewalks that do not have designated bike lanes.

Fern O’brien, fobrien@fobrienlaw.com

Back in 2015, the “right-sizing” of Folsom created massive congestion and an uproar among citizens. The term “right-sizing” rubbed me the wrong way. It was so arrogant. This is the “right size” of the street so if you don’t like it, you are wrong by definition, since this street is now right. Starting off with that is not the right way to move toward what everyone wants: safer streets. The city council rapidly retreated from this decision and I don’t expect to see that term used again, at least in Boulder. In fact, the city has moved forward on a much more positive path.

Reducing the size of streets and purposely creating pinch points is a bedrock strategy in Boulder’s Vision Zero. I didn’t like the sound of this: purposely giving cars less space? But after inspecting most of the projects listed on the Vision Zero website, I was impressed. Cyclists and pedestrians are not compressed with the cars, and pinch points certainly slow down vehicles.

Of course, there are alternatives to slowing traffic that don’t create vehicle conflicts and might be more aesthetic, such as speed bumps, stop signs, and automatic photo radar. The VZIP website states that “speed humps/cushions are not an option under the VZIP.” While those options are more costly, it is illogical to rule out an alternative as a matter of policy. This type of restrictive thinking is counterproductive. The goal morphs from “keeping our citizens safer” to “implementing VZIP.”

Street painting, especially at intersections, has had remarkable results according to a Bloomberg Study.

And street painting doesn’t narrow streets and doesn’t create congestion. I’d love to see this approach used first before we install all the traffic pylons. Most of the projects I viewed were in neighborhoods and in such cases, I’d love to see the neighbors in that area decide what works best for them.

Lastly, the whole idea of zero traffic deaths is unattainable. While we should have aspirational goals, we shouldn’t have unattainable ones. Humans are fallible and will always make mistakes. We should continue striving towards safer streets, but having a program name that is doomed to failure, however catchy, isn’t inspiring.

Bill Wright, bill@wwwright.com