Middle Country Road Renaissance Project - Special Transportation Issue

None of the communities of Brookhaven escape from the problems of traffic and highway design. However, lately many Brookhaven communities have been the subject of road widening proposals. Additionally, the Department of Transportation has generated recommendations from their LITP 2000 study. Thus, we have dedicated this issue of the Sentinel to Transportation issues.

What Causes Traffic?

Traffic congestion in suburban settings is caused by several factors. First, it is caused by the hierarchical design of our street networks. That is, neighborhood streets empty into collectors, which empty into arterials. The diagram on the right which was taken from James Kunstler’s Home From Nowhere. depicts this suburban model. As can be seen every component of a community has its own connection, which then all empty on to an arterial. Rather than provide us with a variety of routes, and a variety of transportation options, such models have narrowed our transportation choices to getting in the car and driving out to the inevitably congested arterial.

The second diagram below, taken from Duany et.al The Suburban Nation shows that same suburban model on the top of the diagram, but contrasts it with a traditional neighborhood development (TND) model on the bottom. Each half of the diagram includes the same components, shopping,apartments, single family housing etc. The difference is that the TND is organized in an interconnected street system that serves to reduce demand on the arterial. Such a design not only provides for alternative routes, but encourages walking or biking to a variety of destinations.

A second factor in the generation of congestion which is closely associated with the first, is the dissociation of the various pieces of community. Our communities no longer contain a continuum of activities. This separation of uses was meant to protect us from harm. It has failed to accomplish this, and has instead created unsafe, congested, automobile driven settings. In a section entitled, "When Nearby is Faraway," Duany et.al. underscores the extent of the measures used by municipalities to separate uses. The picture below shows a housing subdivision located adjacent to a shopping center, and serves to underscore the difference between adjacency and accessibility.

“Local ordinances have forced the developers to build a wall between the two properties, discouraging even the most intrepid citizen from walking to the store. The resident of a house just fifty yards away must still get into the car, drive half a mile to exit the subdivision, drive another half mile on the collector road back to the shopping center, and then walk from car to store. What could have been a pleasant two-minute walk down a residential street becomes instead an expedition requiring the use of gasoline, roadway capacity, and space for parking.” (Duany et at p.25)

Such models not only encourage, but almost demand the use of our cars on a restricted number of roadways. It is easy to understand why our arterials, such as Rt. 25 or Rt. 347, become congested.

To reduce congestion we need to reinvent our communities so that they include interconnected street networks, and a diversity of uses. We also need to create origins and destinations which can be effectively connected by transit options. Thus, increasing the density and diversity of our community centers will not only provide many of our communities with an important sense of identity, but can serve to reduce congestion by making transit viable, and by reducing the need of getting in and out of cars, and pulling on and off of multi-lane highways. Take a look at the diagram on the right. This diagram taken from Greenberg’s Poetics of Cities, shows a simply change in design which could have a significant impact on traffic. The diagram I have labeled A is the design which is most common in Brookhaven. Parking lots front stores and lie adjacent to roadways. In the second half of the diagram labeled B the design is simply flipped. In this configuration, if the roadway is pedestrian friendly, “...the shopper can roam easily and conveniently past all the stores in all four retail strips, dropping money as he goes.” (Greenberg, p.199) Thus, not only will such designs help to reduce traffic, but if streets capes are designed correctly will increase business.

Below is a streetscape designed incorrectly. It shows a multilane highway and stores fronted by parking lots. The H stands for Hugos goods and the P, Philippa’s customers. As you can see their is no way in the world that Philippa’s customers will cross the no mans land created by the parking lots and wide multi-lane highways to get to Hugos goods. If they are real motivated they may attempt to cross the area in their cars, but more likely they will deem that to difficult and forget about it. The point here is that if we wish to reduce traffic congestion, and enhance business our streets must be pedestrian friendly.

Safety

On Mothers Day their was a Million Mom’s March to Washington to protest the violence in our schools. Certainly, that was an admirable undertaking for those who participated. We should protest the violence in our schools, until it is reduced to zero. However, moms and dads who wish to insure the safety of their children, must also begin reacting the the carnage occurring on our streets. Car crashes are the largest killer of American teenagers, accounting for more than one third of all deaths. (Open up Newsday on almost any given day , and read about the loss of yet another young promising life.)

“When they get behind the wheel, teenagers automatically join the most dangerous gang in America. Automobile accidents kill over 45,000 people annually in this country, almost a Vietnam War of casualties every year.” (Duany et,al)

Such deaths are a function of the way we design our communities, (teenagers like their parents must have a car to get anywhere) and the high speed nature of our roadways. Wider, straighter roads encourage speed, and as speed increases so do the number and severity of accidents. Many of these deaths are, thus, preventable.

Mean Streets

The deaths that occur on our roadways include pedestrians as well as drivers. Indeed, on its web site the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) recounts that 13% of all people who died in traffic accidents were pedestrians. Each year thousands of Americans are killed and tens of thousands are injured walking down the street. “In 1997 and 1998, 10,696 pedestrians in the U.S. were killed in traffic accidents. More than 1,500 of these victims were children under the age of 18.” The elderly also face a higher risk of death as pedestrians. According to STPP 22% of all pedestrians killed were over 65, even though only 13% of the population is elderly.

The dangerous environment for pedestrians is not simply a fact of modern life. Pedestrian deaths in the U.S. are far higher than in any other industrialized country. (STPP) Unfortunately, traffic engineers continue to fail to address these problems.

An example of such failure is the LITP 2000 study just completed by the DOT. The DOT gathered input from a whole host of citizen committees the one I served on was the Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Special Needs Committee. Our committee made up of volunteers from Nassau and Suffolk Counties met in Farmingdale, a long trip for the several Brookhaven, and east end residents that participated. We listened to problems, brought in speakers, brainstormed for solutions, came up with criteria to evaluate those solutions, and prioritized our recommendations. This process took months to complete. Unfortunately, not one of our recommendations was included in the DOT’s final plan. Why? Because the DOT simply characterized such things as creating a safe, comfortable, and convenient streetscapes for pedestrians and cyclists, and those with special needs as quality of life issues. So much for the public process.

The recommendations of LITP 2000, the widening of roadways, and the renaming of HOV lanes to express bus lanes, illustrates the vastness of the philosophical shift needed within Region One of the DOT.

Certainly traffic engineers will argue that all their proposed widenings contain sidewalks and even some crosswalks. However, due to the way in which they are designed, their lack of buffers, their closeness to high speed roadways, and their lack of adjacency to shopping and other amenities, these are facilities that few will use. According to STTP, one respected safety expert has described the kind of ad-hoc placement of pedestrian facilities as being like “trying to mend a severely broken leg using only a bandage.” (STTP)

Our engineers must begin adhering to a basic rule stated by Norman Bel Geddes the designer of the U.S. Interstate system in 1939: High speed highways should connect our towns and cities not pass through them. A simple rule. Where highways infringe upon the town they must take on the low speed designs of boulevards, and where high speed roads pass through the country side roadside development is not permitted. Simple advise that has been routinely ignored.

Resolution of the problems of safety, convenience, congestion, mobility, and the deterioration of community will come only when we have come to understand that these issues are interconnected. Our solutions must, thus, also be interconnected, and must integrate transportation decisions with land use policy. - Connie Kepert

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