Not So Super Streets

One of the most popular posts ever on this blog discusses the “interchange boondoggle,” or the many failings of Provo’s new I15 on-off ramp on Center Street (click here for a second post on this topic).

The post is popular, I think, not because it’s particularly great but because the onramp is so obviously horrible and everyone hates it. It’s like a nightmare, except that it’s real and cost more money than most of us will make in a lifetime.

And yet despite the absurdity of this piece of built environment, Provo may get another highly questionable, computer-generated intersection that promises to be a disaster for pedestrians, cyclists and humans generally.

The new intersection is called — ironically I hope — a “super street” and is being considered for an intersection in north Provo:

Utah Department of Transportation officials told legislators Wednesday they are considering using that new design — sometimes called a J-turn, or a restricted crossing U-turn — in Provo at the intersection of University Parkway and 2230 North.

The idea is to increase traffic flow and cut down on driving time for most people. Fair enough.

But it’s also so complicated that I had a hard time figuring out what was going on — other than more driving:

The Super Street design would force all traffic on 2230 North to turn right. Motorists who wanted to go straight or left could make a U-turn a few blocks down on University in a provided spot. Those who wanted to go straight could return to the intersection and turn right onto 2230 North.

Luckily, The Atlantic Cities also recently reported on “crazy intersections” that are designed to make us safer. That article included this illustrative video:

That intersection seems needlessly complex just at first glance, but the real problem is that like all of these other exotic projects UDOT likes to put in — things like diverging diamonds — this makes the street far more hostile to people. As The Atlantic Cities puts it:

In theory – i.e., in conflict-point diagrams – these intersections should be safer than more traditional ones. But there are two caveats to that promise: Sangster is really talking about safer intersections for cars. Pedestrians and bikers aren’t figured into any of these models, and Sangster has yet to encounter designs that do a good job of incorporating them (or transit). There also isn’t much hard data on the safety of these designs because so few of them have been built (and even accurately modeling them on a computer can be tricky and expensive).

The article goes on to note that these ideas are best for times “when a local road outside of town has grown so congested that it needs to be converted into a highway.”

That point about hard data is also worth emphasizing. The Center Street I15 interchange almost certainly looked good in a diagram, but there was so many accidents that they had to alter it with a stop sign. I still see accidents almost every time I use it and, again, it’s widely hated. So diagrams aren’t necessarily a good indicator of how people will actually behave.

UDOT is considering a confusing new kind of intersection for this already bad spot. Instead, this space needs to be more pedestrian-friendly.

The intersection in question is certainly bad as it currently stands, but it’s is not a highway outside of town. It’s also a prime candidate for the kind of parking lot infill that I advocated in this post — though a bigger, ugler and more dangerous intersection wouldn’t promote infill. And in any case, it’s the type of place that we need to make more pedestrian friendly and more bikeable. It needs to be more human.

But this “super street” doesn’t look promising. Instead, it looks like more car-oriented infrastructure that is increasingly out of tune with a city striving for a high standard of living. And ultimately, Provo doesn’t need another disastrous boondoggle.