Streets Are Like Sentences, Or, Making Walking Less Annoying

Walkability is about more than safe, interesting streets lined with potential destinations — though those things are extremely important. It’s also about eliminating the little pressure points that annoy people and make them wish they weren’t walking in the first place. In other words, much like sentences, streets need to be “edited” not just for big things but for the little problems as well.

I’ll try to touch on various little pedestrian problems in the future, but for now note the cross walk buttons in the picture below. For some reason, one of them has been placed in an illogical and difficult-to-find spot.

A crosswalk in Salt Lake City, looking west.

In the picture above, the green arrow points to the East-West crosswalk.

But bafflingly, the button to trigger the signal for that crosswalk is located on the poll near the North-South crosswalk. It’s marked by the red arrow and is a good 20 feet from the crosswalk it serves.

The button may have been installed on that distant post to save money — though Provo has installed separate posts in some places that’s clearly more expensive — but that still doesn’t explain why it faces North, away from the correct crosswalk.

The same intersection, looking north.

The picture above further illustrates the problem: one crosswalk button, marked by the red arrow, is easy to find. The other button, however, is on the other side of the pole (north) and almost as far from the crosswalk it serves — marked by a green arrow — as it can be. Just putting it on the side of the pole facing the photo (south) would have been a huge improvement.

These sorts of things are like typos; people don’t stop moving when they hit them but they do momentarily slow down. And the problem is particularly bad in Utah, where large streets create huge street corners; when I walked up to this intersection it took me at least three times as long to find the button as it would have at a better-designed spot. It was a brief pressure point that didn’t need to exist.

People won’t give up walking as a result of little errors like this. But they will be annoyed, if only subtly. And that’s unfortunate because the emotional memory they’ll have from walking will be negative.

The point is that a good street should be like most forms of good writing: it should blend into the background and let the user flow from one point to the next. Exceptional beauty can stand out, but both writing and city design fail when the mechanics become clunky and slow or when they call too much attention to themselves.

Finally, note how in these pictures there aren’t actually many people on the street; that’s the best evidence of all that the design of this street isn’t working. With better “editing,” streets like these should become more lively and pleasurable to use.

There Are Many Pieces to the Transit Puzzle

Via Twitter, I recently saw of the picture below from Brandon Stone:

This picture shows the end of a sidewalk on Decker Lake Blvd. It was taken by Brandon Stone

Stone explained the situation in a couple of tweets:

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams responded to Stone’s tweets, so hopefully things will get better in the future.

But in the meantime, this spot is a perfect example of a space that is antagonistic to people. I’m left wondering what the designers of this street were thinking and how they expected people — as opposed to cars — to get around. Unfortunately, however, they probably never even considered people.

As a result, brave commuters like Stone are forced to navigate legitimately dangerous situations. I’ve written many times about accidents on this blog — most recently in November — and a spot like this seems designed to encourage them. Whoever made it should face criminal charges.

This situation also emphasizes the problems of an incomplete transit system. If I understand things correctly, Stone was taking transit but couldn’t safely walk from the station to his destination. That’s sure to discourage other transit riders and makes me wonder why we’ve invested all this money in light rail if we’re not actually going to connect it to anything. This must change.

This situation also shows that we’re not thinking of transit correctly. Based on Stone’s experience I’d say the system was designed to shuttle drivers from place to place — or parking lot to parking lot — thereby making car trips shorter. In other words, transit is being treated as a partial replacement to driving. It’s supplemental.

A better approach — and an obvious one when destinations are so close to stations — is to treat it as a complete replacement for driving. That’s a distinction I wrote about in this post, and we’re really quite close here.

In any case, until these kinds of situations change we’re throwing away money on infrastructure, creating ugly places that few people will use and, most importantly, make it difficult and dangerous to get around. Why would anyone want to do that?

What’s Wrong Here? Or, Bad Design Breeds Bad Neighborhoods

Work recently took me to West Valley City, where I took the picture below:

A neighborhood in West Valley City.

The picture doesn’t show very much, but after I took it I was surprised at how much information I could glean. And unfortunately, most of that information isn’t good.

Probably the most obvious sign of trouble is the graffiti on the street sign. I’ve written in favor of street art in the past, but this work clearly has… questionable artistic merit. In a nutshell, it goes to the broken windows theory that says that a mess in the built environment breeds additional problems.

But that isn’t the only problem here. What’s probably even more telling is that there no sidewalks. That means anyone who wants to walk has to do so in the street, with the cars. So it’s a hostile environment for people.

The chain link fence and the weeds aren’t doing the street any favors, but I think many of these problems trace back to the lack of walkability. It means there are fewer people out on the street — so there’s no one to catch vandals or other criminals — and that people who can chose to live in a more hospitable setting will.

And it gets worse. Just across the street sits this house:

A recently refurbished home in West Valley City.

That’s one of the saddest pictures of a neighborhood I’ve ever taken. It also bodes very badly for the long term prospects of this home, the neighborhood, and nearby projects like this one.

But the point is that the real problem here isn’t vandals, or chain link fence, or lazy owners who create homes that need refurbishment. All of those things are merely symptoms of a larger issue: this area is not well-designed. And until it becomes more hospitable to people all the refurbishment projects in the world aren’t going to put an end to the crime and social problems for which West Valley City is known.

Change Is Coming to Center Street

Last night the city council discussed possible changes to Center Street. In an article, my colleague Genelle Pugmire reported the sidewalks downtown are beat up after recent construction projects and need to be replaced. The article continues:

Of the four proposals previously shown, the council picked the option that offers not only wider sidewalks, but some plaza areas and places for bistros to put outdoor seating. On Tuesday McGinn brought the council three tweaked alternatives to that option with costs ranging between $224,000 to $4.7 million for the ultimate remake. All dollar amounts are the very high-end estimates and don’t take into account a number of benefits that construction can bring to lower costs.

Apparently some of these costs could be defrayed by having private developers — the LDS Church, for example — incorporate upgrades into current building projects.

Construction on Center Street has created a unique opportunity to improve various things such as bike infrastructure and sidewalks.

After debating the issue online and reading Genelle’s article, I’m inclined to agree that due to ongoing construction this is a great opportunity to improve the city. If the sidewalks and other things are gone or nearly gone already, there’s no reason not to build them back better than ever.

I’m especially excited for any potential improvements to the bike infrastructure, improved outdoor dining, and rumored plazas.

But I say that with a few caveats. First, there are worse places in downtown that desperately need “sprucing up.”

This area of Center Street could certainly improve, but other parts of downtown need improvement much more.

Hopefully the city is thinking just as critically about investing in and improving those areas because unlike Center Street, they actively repel users. University Ave, Freedom Blvd, and 100 South all come to mind.

Center Street just west of the Covey Center is another spot that fails in nearly every way. Hopefully improvements will come to this area someday. I didn’t realize until I took this picture that this street is at least seven lanes wide. That’s wider than many freeways.

Second, improved sidewalks and other amenities are not, by themselves, going to bring a significant number of new people to downtown. This is more or less the argument I made last night in a kind of online debate in the Support Downtown Provo Facebook group.

For the sake of time, I’m going to borrow from the comments I made last night*: the problem in downtown is an insufficient number of people.

My solution to that problem is adding people via density, job creation, etc. Relatedly, there seems to be a sense among some people — including myself in the very recent past — that there is a huge pent up demand in Utah Valley, and if we could just tap into it downtown would flourish. I disagree with that assumption; if it existed, we’d already be seeing it.

In other words, I’m trying to look at this in terms of supply and demand. Right now there is an over supply of sidewalks space, for example, so adding more only cheapens it. And because most sidewalks in downtown tend to be empty much of the time, having more of them will just emphasize the emptiness.

This large section of sidewalk is already underused. The way to fix that problem is to add density, not more sidewalks.

All of that said, Genelle’s article seems to indicate that these improvements aren’t about inducing more demand for downtown space — or in other words directly incentivizing people to come out and patronize the area — so much as they’re about planning for future growth and capitalizing on a unique moment. Development is cheaper and easier right now so it makes sense to do it.

In that context, they’re exciting. The next step will just be adding the people to make all of this worth it over the long run.

The biggest problem here isn’t bad infrastructure, it’s that there simply aren’t enough people in downtown Provo to fill the space. Hopefully coming improvements in downtown will make spaces like these better and will be coupled with increased density.

*My view on this issue evolved last night as I was debating and reading about it. For what it’s worth, I’d highly recommend checking out the Facebook group where that debate took place to see other people’s excellent insights — which persuaded me — and to stay abreast of what is happening in the city. Here’s the link again.

Crowdsourcing City Improvement

When L.A. wanted to spend $10 million to study broken sidewalks, 70-year-old Angeleno Peter Griswald thought the price tag was too high and decided to do something about it. According to the Los Angeles Times, that included doing the job himself. For free:

As I surveyed the chaos, Griswold, a 70-year-old retiree, sped up on a Schwinn bike and hopped off, wearing shorts and a floppy blue Coast Guard Auxiliary hat, reporting for duty. He grabbed a portable GPS out of a bag and began punching the controls as he stood over a spot where tree roots had lifted the sidewalk 10 inches.

“You hit this here,” he said, “and you go over there.”

Anyone of average intelligence, he said, could be taught in one hour how to use a GPS to record the precise location of bad sidewalk.

In a nutshell, Griswald’s idea is to organize a brigade to inspect sidewalks. Though city officials in L.A. apparently said implementing the idea could be complicated, Griswald thinks it could work and people would be willing to pitch in.

In a smaller city like Provo with a lot of volunteering and, I think it’s fair to say, a somewhat less diverse and far flung population, there’s no reason to assume Griswald’s idea wouldn’t work even better. And though Provo has fewer miles of crumbling sidewalk this concept could be deployed for all sorts of tasks, all the while saving taxpayer money.

And the obvious financial benefits for cities are really just the tip of the iceberg here. In addition, residents who use spaces again and again are likely to know more about those spaces, offering greater efficiency and insight than professionals who may only show up for inspections. On top of that, there are less quantifiable benefits; if a lot of people get out in the community inspecting things and making suggestions, it’s fair to say that they’ll acquire an even greater appreciation and admiration for their city.

This empty lot was recently the subject of a discussion in a Provo Facebook group. People obviously have ideas, so it makes sense to capitalize on the community’s creativity and willingness to pitch in when seeking solutions. The same is true for all sorts of city problems.

Putting People in the Streets

I’ve observed before that some of Provo’s best spaces lack people. Sidewalks are often empty, streets are too quiet, and benches go unused. Apparently, Chicago has a similar problem.

The link in that last sentence goes to a Chicago Sun-Times article explaining how the mayor there is starting a new people-oriented campaign:

Determined to promote economic development and make Chicago streets safer for pedestrians, Mayor Rahm Emanuel got the ball rolling Wednesday on an innovative program he calls, “Make Way for People.”

Right off the bat this is an interesting effort because it’s operating under the assumption that getting people on the street has both economic and safety benefits.

As the article continues, it details efforts to use parking spots and too-wide streets as places for people to congregate and sit. The effort will also include mini-parks — presumably similar to the idea of urban gardens I brought up in this post — as well as alleyway seating, farmer’s markets, and more.

Interestingly, there’s a sense that the entire idea is an experiment:

“If it works for the community, it can be turned into a permanent amenity. If it doesn’t, it’s really easy to dismantle.”

Sidewalks and public spaces, not to mention alleys and parking lots, are wasted when not used by people. That means the community is spending money but getting a less-than-sufficient return on investment. As Chicago’s efforts demonstrate, there are ways to better use these kinds of city features while at the same time bolstering prosperity. The key, it would seem, is creativity and a willingness to experiment.

Sometimes Provo streets are filled with people, as Center Street was on a recent Friday night.

Other times, Provo’s streets remain empty. Chicago is currently engaging in a large experiment to solve this problem there.

Convention Center Sidewalk Opens

This week, the sidewalks along Freedom Blvd and 100 North around the Utah Valley Convention Center re-opened. They had been closed for months or longer during construction, but are now available to the public. And despite the shortcomings of the convention center itself, the sidewalks are actually fairly pleasant.

Sidewalk along Freedom Blvd looking south toward Center Street.

Sidewalk along Freedom Blvd looking north toward 100 North.

In addition, a comment on yesterday’s post offered more information about the upcoming convention center parking lot. According to Wayne Parker, the city was contractually obligated to have parking. That parking originally was going to come with a new hotel, but the hotel fell through and the city had to build the lot on it’s own.

Does this information make me hate the new parking lot any less? No. But it does shed light on the significant challenges facing city officials — whom I have a tremendous amount of respect for — as they work to revitalize downtown. Wayne also mentioned in his comment that the parking lot will indeed likely be temporary. So huzzah for that.

Perils of Unwalkable Streets

Slate’s Tom Vanderbilt wrapped up his series on walking last week with a few points that should resonate in Provo.

Vanderbilt begins his article by recounting the case of a mother who was convicted of manslaughter after a drunk driver hit and killed her son. The case made national headlines last year, and Vanderbilt points out that the problem began when the mother led her children from a bus stop across a busy street. In other words, it was a lack of safe walking routes that set the stage for the accident.

Significantly, this is exactly the same thing I was talking about in this post about Freedom Blvd. The lesson is that whether in Provo or Georgia — where Vanderbilt’s story takes place — people realistically won’t walk long distances to get to nearby locations. Even worse, big arterial roads are dangerous and there is little funding to improve walking infrastructure.

Downtown Provo is probably the most walkable place in the city, and possibly the county. But it still struggles with wide streets and long blocks that are difficult, and occasionally dangerous, to cross. Other parts of the city are struggle even more with the same problems.

Later in the article, Vanderbilt quotes transportation engineer Peter Lagerway as saying that big long blocks with wide streets — a description fitting most of Provo’s major roads and something that has also come up repeatedly on this blog — are a serious problems:

“It’s certainly nice to have sidewalks, but the biggest problem is the width of our streets, the speed of our streets, the high traffic volumes and geometrics of the intersection—you just can’t get across,” he says. “If you have fewer lanes, tighter curb returns, lower speeds, then it works for pedestrians.” Shorter blocks are key too. “We don’t build enough streets,” he says. Rather, we have superblocks.

Reading this article I was pleased that it touched on so many of the issues facing Provo. And as it ultimately points out, the goal isn’t to become Manhattan-esque. Rather, it’s simply to become a safer, wealthier and happier community. More walking, Vanderbilt might add, is one way to make that happen.

The Image of an Ideal Street

Next American City recently published an interview with Mike Lyon, who is involved in the Congress for the New Urbanism and who runs a planning firm. Among other things, Lyon mentions how cities are trying to become more walkable and more sustainable, but also sometimes have regulations in place making the needed changes illegal.

Lyon goes on to comment on the importance of urban biking before he’s asked what an ideal street ought to look like. This is his response:

It would probably have three-to-five-story buildings, maybe mixed use, pretty much built up to the edge of the sidewalk. It would have a nice, wide sidewalk with trees, benches, cafe seating. And then towards the middle, a protected bike lane facility that meets the needs of the majority—simple bike lanes don’t go quite far enough for a large population of people.

Narrow travel lanes. In Europe you’ve got buses that travel on nine-foot lanes. Here we have standards of 11-12 [feet]. Parallel parking is usually a good thing for streets, one that can create friction and slow down motorists. It also creates a barrier between people biking and people walking, not just from a comfort perspective but also from a pollution perspective: Having that buffer means you’re less close to the exhaust from passing vehicles.

Having very visible, clear crosswalks at every intersection, every corner. It sounds ridiculous that I have to say that, but you go to so many cities and that’s not the case. I’d like to see people of all ages on the street as well—a really dynamic atmosphere where you feel comfortable doing any number of different activities.

Efforts to revitalize downtown often focus on “projects” like the convention center and the Tabernacle Temple. But significantly, many of the streets and sidewalks around downtown lack the elements mentioned in the quote above. As we think about economic and cultural progress in downtown, it’s important to remember that the success of the streets connecting the big projects is at least as important as the projects themselves.

University Ave has wide sidewalks and occasional cafe seating, but few mixed use buildings (the pictured Wells Fargo building being an exception), no bike lanes, and extremely wide lanes.

100 North, as viewed from the corner of University Ave. This street is not an arterial, yet it also has astonishingly wide lanes more befitting a highway. It also has no trees, no bike lanes, no mixed use structures and, though not visible from this picture, large parking lots on every block until 500 West. As in the picture above, there also isn't much foot traffic on this street.

Freedom Blvd in the vicinity of 1500 North. Freedom is a major arterial road, so the conventional wisdom would be that the resulting traffic would spur economic development. Yet this picture illustrates clear violations of just about every concept Lyon introduces in the quote above. I don't think it's a coincidence that this area is also generally blighted, both economically and aesthetically.

Lingering, Loitering, and Lively Sidewalks*

From chapter 4 of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities:

“Why do children so frequently find that roaming the lively sidewalks is more interesting than back yards or playgrounds? Because sidewalks are more interesting. It is just as sensible to ask: Why do adults find lively streets more interesting than playgrounds.”

One of the great challenges Provo faces is to cultivate lively, bustling sidewalks, particularly in downtown but in other neighborhoods as well. Hopefully our sidewalks will soon not look like the photos I took for this post.

Relatedly, this article* discusses the importance of encouraging loitering in cities — though author Emily Badger notes that it might be more productive to call it “lingering.” She writes,

“Lingering, on the other hand, is both a means to an end and a desirable end in itself. People who linger create vibrant public places and welcoming streetscapes. They also increase the safety of an area, with more eyes on the street. And leisurely foot traffic can lead to more street commerce, more connected communities, and spontaneous exchanges.”

There are people in Provo right now trying figure out how to increase sidewalk usage and get residents to linger in downtown. I was recently even at a meeting where this topic came up. But a great first step is simply getting out and experiencing the city ourselves.

* This post was supposed to link to an Atlantic Cities article, but for some reason did not. That has been corrected. Apologies.