Specific Things to Ask the City For

The "Top Seven" recommendations (in the previous post) are intentionally fairly general.  Their purpose is to indicate an overall direction that the committee would like to see the Champlain Parkway design process take as it moves towards possible construction.  Some of them are completely self-explanatory.  Others could use a few "talking points" in order to ensure that the message is heard.  To that end, here is some background and a few specifics related to the top three recommendations.


ENHANCE ROUTES TO SCHOOL

In the context of the Champlain Parkway, "safe routes to school" basically means two things:  making it safe for kids to cross the Parkway at Home, Flynn, and Sears; and making it safe for them to travel along Pine (at least the portion north of Lakeside, which is all that is included in this project).  Most of what is needed to achieve these two goals is covered under the two recommendations that follow.  Even so, the committee included this recommendation as a stand-alone item because of how important it is to ensure that the Parkway enhances rather than hinders kids' ability to get to school safely.

Here are a couple of specifics related to safe routes to ask for that are not covered below:

1. Identify all locations where major routes to school intersect or follow the Parkway corridor and ensure that the design provides for continuous safe bike and pedestrian travel at those locations.  Traffic engineers tend to treat bike and pedestrian facilities very differently from travel lanes for motor vehicles.  No one would ever think of just ending a major street because there wasn't room to continue it, but sidewalks are the first thing to go if things get tight.  Especially in places where kids need to walk, this just isn't acceptable, and the project managers need to be held accountable for ensuring that the network of sidewalks and bike paths that kids need to get to school is complete.
2. Identify needed improvements to routes to school that are immediately adjacent to the Parkway corridor and construct them at the same time as the Parkway.  These should include things like a sidewalk along the south side of Sears Lane, pulling the sidewalk on the east side of Pine Street just south of Lakeside back away from the curb, and building a sidewalk up the south side of Locust Street (among others).

EXTEND THE SHARED-USE PATH

The current design calls for a shared-use path (10 feet wide, big enough for both cyclists and pedestrians) only as far north as Howard Street.  Given the increased traffic volumes predicted for Pine Street, this isn't good enough.  The city has an opportunity to work with adjacent landowners to continue the path all the way to the waterfront using the old railroad tracks that parallel Pine Street and curve behind Curtis Lumber to Champlain Street and Battery Street.  

What you will hear is that this can't be done.  The truth is, no one has really tried.  While a path along the railroad bed can't be paid for using the federal money allocated for the Parkway, there is a good chance that the city could find a way to build the path at the same time as the Parkway using local funds.  Imagine if there were a path along Pine Street that let you bike safely from Lakeside to Kilburn, and that then connected over to the waterfront!  This is worth pushing for.  So here's what to request, in a nutshell:

1. Conduct a feasibility study of building a shared-use path on the train tracks along Pine Street from Howard Street to Battery Street.  This study should happen as soon and as quickly as possible.  It should clear up who owns the rail bed (some indications are that it is city property already!), assess and resolve any historic issues, and create a preliminary engineering design.  

CREATE SAFE PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS

Currently, the intersections on the Parkway from I-189 all the way to Pine and Lakeside (in front of the Public Works building) are designed primarily for big trucks.  That is, the layout of each intersection makes it as easy as possible for trucks to drive through them at high speed.  This means every intersection has broad, sweeping curves, which are dangerous for pedestrians (especially kids) for two reasons:  they make crosswalks a lot longer than they would be if the corners were more squared off, and they encourage vehicles to take the corners at high speed (30+ mph instead of 10 to 15 mph).  

The current design includes pedestrian crossing signals at all of these intersections.  This is a good start, but given the volume and speed of traffic that would be traveling the Parkway, it isn't good enough.  The design for this stretch of the Parkway needs to change in two specific ways to make it safe for pedestrians and cyclists while still accommodating (but not bending over backwards for) big trucks:

1. Redesign all the intersections from Parkway and Home to Lakeside and Pine with much smaller curb radii.  This is the engineering term for describing how squared off vs. sweeping a corner of an intersection is.  Current radii are probably 60 or 70 feet; they need to be more like 15 or 20 feet.
2. Install crossing signals at these same intersections that, when a pedestrian or cyclist presses the button and gets a walk signal, all vehicle traffic in all directions gets a red light.  This will allow pedestrians to cross in any direction, and more important, it will prevent pedestrians from being hit by vehicles making right turns.  On a high-volume road like the Parkway, this is essential -- otherwise, the Parkway will become a barrier down the middle of the South End that few will cross.

In addition, there is a critically important change to the Pine Street section of the Parkway that needs to be incorporated into the design.  As anyone who lives or works in the South End knows, it's already pretty tough to get across Pine, even at one of the (very few) crosswalks.  Cars just don't stop for pedestrians, and this will only get worse if the Parkway is built.  There are two things that are needed in order to fix this:

1. Include crosswalks across Pine Street at Locust, Howard, Marble, and Kilburn.  Only two of these streets currently have crosswalks at all, and they only have one crosswalk per location.  All four intersections need crosswalks on both sides of each side street -- that is, two crosswalks per location.  
2. Install crossing signals and traffic lights that stop vehicles in ALL directions when the pedestrian crossing button is pushed.  The trick is to help pedestrians get across without making it easier to cut through to/from Shelburne Road on these streets.  Therefore, the lights shouldn't give a green light to the side streets -- just a pedestrian crossing when needed.