Open Thread (6/25/2008)

Plenty of TV news last night about a Champaign study to revise traffic signals downtown.  I got excited.  Then all I heard was talk about making it more friendly for ..... PEDESTRIANS.

Maybe the reporters had to filter some stuff for their story.  I would sure hope that any big review of traffic signals would work to improve the flow of cars.  I know its my own pet peeve - but I really want some timed signals on the 1-ways so cars can make them all in sequence.  Surely that can be done while also being friendly to those who want to walk across those streets.

I'd love to hear more from people in the know.

Actually I quite appreciate the scramble on Wright and Green, I walk through there several times a day. 

When it was first installed, I DID wonder why the entire thing wasn't striped, but apparently that's not standard American painting.  Places where that is the standard make those intersections really easy to notice, though.

Still, if they are going to use two parallel lines for a crosswalk, I'm surprised they don't paint in the diagonal crosses as well as the regular ones.

6th and John is easy enough to cross as a pedestrian.  Traffic is low enough that half the time you can safely jaywalk (I'm talking a situation with NO cars coming from any direction). 

I will say that THE number one improvement for pedestrians, from my point of view, was the installation of the timed crosswalks.  Now it's easy to know for YOURSELF if there is time for YOU to cross, knowing your own speed and ability.  This has no doubt helped drivers as well, by reducing the number of people caught out in the middle of the crosswalk when the light turns red for them for real because they misjudged how much time was left on the old plain "flashing red" system.

A couple of other items to be thinking about related to traffic and pedestrian designing.

Akibare made some good observations. Nonetheless, think about these designs related to any person with physical handicaps. Let's take the intersection of 6th and John, as an example. If you can not see, how does any of the design help. There is a clicking sound, but this does not occur at any other intersection so how does one interpret this? The individual can not see the countdown lights, does not see the sign that says "right turn allowed if no one in intersections," and to add to the confusion this is the only corner in campus town with this design, my point about no repetition going south on 6th. As the student handicap association mentioned, the university invited their input about this design and then ignored everything mentioned that would improve the design. Same intersection, if I can see, but move slowly for whatever reason. Are these lights long enough to allow me to safely cross. This applies to any and all intersections in the community--with or without a countdown light. If there is not sufficient time to cross and I can do accomplish this, there is no safety island in the middle of the street for me to stand on until the next light cycle.

A major issue is the inconsistency of designs through out the community so the way finding or cluing for individuals, especially anyone physically challenged, is not good. There are much better designs.

The uneven sidewalk and street surfaces are used for cluing, but if an individual is on crutches, has balance problems, uses a manual wheel chair, the surfaces are dilatory and inhibiting.

If a Barnes Corner is being used correctly by both driver and pedestrian, it is much more efficient related to turning because the turning corner is free of pedestrians thus allowing more cars to turn and not continue to do so through the yellow and red lights because the drivers are frustrated for waiting for pedestrians. This works even better when integrated with one way couples. This allow traffic to flow rather smoothly. Then add traffic lights in the middle of the block so the intersections are totally clear and road rage almost disappears. The observation is accurate that the Barnes Corners are very poorly marked, meaning that anyone not used to campus town would never figure out how to use them. This adds to the traffic confusion, especially at 6th and Green.

All of these issues will be magnified when the two buildings on Green street and one on Springfield are completed. The streets are not designed nor can they be designed to accommodate the increase of engress and egress. One way to solve the problem is to make the two streets one-way couples.

Try moving around the community emulating any physical handicap and see how well you do. Do this alone without someone else there to help you.

Pattsi Petrie

I don't hold up 6th and John as any example of great (or terrible) design.

However as a basic principle, I just say *I* as a visually sighted person appreciate the counters.  If people want to add more features for the handicapped, that's great, but the previous situation of no counters and no nothing was WORSE. That's all I'm saying.  The counters are nice and long, just as they always were. The only difference is they now have a counter. If you're slow, you KNEW before to only start crossing when you had the max time, so when the light is actually walk GREEN. You'd wait and start a new cycle, fine. But able bodied people don't need all that time, so they are going to start crossing during the flashing red, which is 100% reasonable. Problem was, there was no way to tell whether you had 15 seconds of flashing red left, or only 3.  Sure, you could check that the auto light hadn't gone to YELLOW yet, but on a wider street, that alone isn't always enough time.

So, you'd get people dashing out into the street only to have the light change halfway across.  Clearly you can't just run them over, so the waiting auto traffic would have to wait for those people to finish crossing.  Now, it's easier to see "oh, 10 seconds left? I'd better not risk it, I won't bother running for the intersection, I'll just take my time and get the next cycle."  Mainly I appreciate the counters at Green and Wright, Green and Goodwin, Lincoln and Illinois, and downtown Champaign at University and Walnut, those are the larger intersections I cross on a regular basis.

Several new crosswalks do have audio, they say "walk light is on" and the like. I can barely hear them. The one crossing Lincoln at Illinois is probably best, I can detect that it is saying "walk light is on, to cross Lincoln."

Meanwhile forever now the crosswalks in Yokohama and other cities have played loud MIDI-type tunes, one tune for each direction. In Yokohama, one direction is "touryanse" and the other is "catcher in the rye." Some cities use different birdcalls. But the point is, they don't rely on language and the sounds are loud enough to be easily heard over traffic in the entire intersection.   They also have raised dots along the sidewalks to show people where to walk and where the intersections are. These aren't raised so high that people can't roll over them, but they are definitely standardized and feelable if you know what you're looking for (they're also painted bright yellow most places).

6th and Green is weird, because 6th is one way AND gets relatively little traffic compared to Green. So tons of people don't bother waiting for the "all walk," they run across the street when traffic stops on Green, plus just cross 6th on the north side any old time.  I suppose the thought was that people do often cross diagonally (this is true) but the fact that it's so trivially easy to jaywalk across 6th (north OR south of Green) means most people just cross 6th separately and by the time they get to Green are only needing to cross straight across Green.

Man, I'd not considered that Burnham 301 and that huge thing on Green would have parking exits on Springfield and Green - will they?  'Cos yeah, that will... not be so good.

(Mind, I don't mean to imply that things can't be made better - just that I do appreciate some of the things that have been done.)

There are details on the initial plans for the downtown intersections here.  It appears that there are a few intersections that will be losing turn lanes making vehicular traffic much worse, especially around rush hours.  As we saw with campustown, what is good for pedestrians is not so good for traffic. 

Random thoughts...

Crosswalks are nice, but when we see drivers ignoring pedestrians who are already out in the middle of the street it does not really matter if there are some worn white lines on the pavement or not. 

I like the idea of giving the pedestrians a head start like at 4th and green.

I think that making 2 lane roads out of 4 lane roads will ultimately make downtown more dangerous for pedestrians as the longer wait in traffic will make drivers impatient and more likely to speed and blow lights.  Taking away turn lanes will also increase the lines of traffic waiting to get through intersections.

There is virtually no enforcement of current regulations regarding crosswalks and pedestrian safety downtown.  Will this increase? 

It is not clear that Champaign wants to facilitate traffic flow in the middle of downtown. So this might not appear in the plan. What needs to be done is enhance the traffic flow through the perimeter streets for those drivers who want to pass through downtown and not make it a destination. This would apply to State and Randolph and First. The rest of the streets are being viewed as destination streets. Along with the designs, there needs to be an improvement in signing, which is basically awful throughout the community.

The above applies to the thinking about campus town. This is why one-way couples would facilitate movement.

Pattsi Petrie

It is a very high pedestrian area and vehiclular movement should and will be slow.  If you do not want to drive slowly choose a different route.  Vehiclur speed is not going to be the top priority in these locations.

I understand that, but if the city is going to slow vehicle traffic thru the middle of town, shouldn't it also work to create better driving alternatives?  We need options between Lincoln and Prospect and between Bradley and Kirby.

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