Transportation policy debates are often characterized as highways vs. transit or automobiles vs. alternatives. But they are more fundamental than that. The real debate is between the engineering view and the planning view.
Engineers ask, “how are people going to get around and how can we make their travel safer and more efficient?” Planners ask, “how should people get around and how can we manipulate them into making what we think are the right choices instead of the wrong choices?”
The problem with the planning view is that it is impossible for central planners to determine what is the “right” choice for everyone. So they simplify the question and focus just on one thing, such as energy or pollution. Then they simplify still further and chant, like the pigs in Animal House, “automobiles bad; transit, walking, and cycling good.” Never mind that automobiles are more energy efficient than most transit or safer than cycling.
In setting this priority, planners show that they place no value on people’s time or money. Nor do they even care about energy, safety, or whatever issues led them to prefer transit, walking, and cycling in the first place. Light rail kills far more people, per billion passenger miles carried, than cars on urban roads, and — counting energy losses in generating and distributing electricity — light rail in most cities uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile. It doesn’t matter: automobiles bad; transit, walking, and cycling good.
This attitude shows up in a recent plan published by the city of Portland, a leading advocate for the planning view. This document declares that walking is a “fundamental human right,” that Portland has a “pedestrian first” transportation strategy, and that implementing that strategy means spending lots of money on new pedestrian ways.
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A map on page 15 shows streets that have no sidewalks. While that sounds dire, the Antiplanner once lived on a Portland-area street with no sidewalks, yet lots of pedestrians used the street and it was safe to do so because the neighborhood had a low population density. I suspect it was much safer than walking in some of Portland’s high-density neighborhoods, such as the Pearl District, which is touted for being “walkable” because of its short blocks but where there are more cars and thus more potential conflicts between cars and pedestrians.
Page 19 is a map showing roads and streets that are designated “major city walkways,” “city walkways,” and “neighborhood walkways.” One of the major city walkways is Interstate 84 from downtown Portland to 102nd Avenue, which is approximately six miles. Yet I-84 doesn’t go anywhere useful for pedestrians. It is noisy and unpleasant for pedestrians (who aren’t legally allowed to use it) and follows a gulch in a windy path that is about a half-mile longer than any of several east-west streets that are lined with sidewalks on both sides. Why is it a major city walkway, and does the city want taxpayers to spend a bunch of money adding pedestrian paths to this freeway?
In some cases, adding walking paths will mean cutting down on street space for automobiles. Sandy Boulevard has historically been a major route — U.S. 30 — for auto travel. It has sidewalks on both sides, but Portland wants to widen sidewalks and reduce auto lanes from five to three. It has already done so for part of the street but wants to complete the job, thus adding to urban congestion.
Among the many other proposed “major city walkways” are West Burnside, Barbur Boulevard, and Foster Road. All of these but West Burnside already have sidewalks. Does the city plan to reduce auto lanes on each of these major thoroughfares?
There are things Portland can do to make streets safer for pedestrians without making them more congested for autos. As the Antiplanner noted last week, most pedestrian fatalities take place at night, in places other than intersections, and alcohol is often involved. Yet nothing in Portland’s pedestrian plan seems aimed at fixing those problems. That’s because Portland has taking a planning approach rather than an engineering approach to the problem.
‘Engineers ask, “how are people going to get around and how can we make their travel safer and more efficient?” Planners ask, “how should people get around and how can we manipulate them into making what we think are the right choices instead of the wrong choices?”’
That’s a bit simplistic. The engineer may observe that, given the constraints of the area, at most 500 cars (or equivalent) have space and time to pass, and the demand is 800 cars, each carrying one person. So the engineer decides to ‘manipulate’ people into sometimes going by bicycle (1/2 car each person) or buses (2/50 cars each person).
It’s also a bit contradictory, since Antiplanner has been known to advocate road pricing, which sounds a lot like ‘manipulation’.
There’s a robotic obsession by some when it comes to sidewalks. As you point out there weren’t safety problems in the residential area. Yet it just had to be done.
It reminds me of this spat in Grand Forks, ND. For the life of me I can’t figure out why if safety is the concern they don’t change the speed limit to 10MPH. It’s a residential street that’s for accessing property, not getting someplace.
https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/4278549-grand-forks-neighborhood-getting-sidewalks-despite-complaints
For both her and her husband, Jared, it’s a financial issue as well. Their bill, to be paid back over 20 years, is more than $8,000. Jared had organized a petition driver earlier this year to stop the sidewalks and said he got a majority of the area residents to sign it.
“It’s just frustrating,” he said, standing near the site in his lawn where he’s already started landscaping his garden to accommodate the project. “Nobody wants it, but they basically come up with excuses, like ‘Well, we need to connect the city,’ and stuff like that.”
On a bright note, we know of at least one city that hasn’t banned gardens in the front yard.
yet.
Gone are the days where engineers would be tasked with the capacity for honest output of data.
Was the “Animal House” reference meant to be a funny poke using the Oregon based movie, or was it just a misremembering of the classic book “Animal Farm” with bleating sheep?
Why not just put those rising tire shredder things when the pedestrian light is lit.
I’m trying to think through the sentence that described accidents as taking place often at night and often with alcohol involved. Personally, I think that safety can be improved regardless of who causes an accident. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that an under-the-influence pedestrian was at fault for some hypothetical incident. Even in such a situation, it would be better to have an injured pedestrian getting a ticket, than to have a pedestrian who died. The pedestrian would have had a better chance of survival if the car had been traveling at a lower speed.
I’m not sure if that conflicts with Mr. O’Toole’s point, or works right into it. He’s advocating engineering approaches improve safety. I’d argue that narrower traffic lanes will lower speeds even when the total auto-capacity is left unchanged, and that the drivers won’t usually be conscious of the speed change when engineers take this type of approach.
I moved out of the core of the City of Portland as far as my wife would permit to a much less dense area in the City of Milwaukie, Oregon. It’s a lot less stressful here than where I used to live in the City of Portland near Division and 32d.
The City of Portland went through in the early parts of this decade and ‘upscaled’ this stretch of Division and nearby Clinton streets: narrowing the roads and widening the sidewalks. Now they are planning on running Rapid Bus Transportation through this segment. The end result is a very compressed living situation where cars, bicycles and pedestrians are crammed together. Before this the area is kind of in an economic malaise in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2008-09) but it is also very affordable to middle and lower middle income people.
So, my quality of life took a big hit with Portland Transporation’s (PBOT’s) traffic calming and diversion of SE Division inner city.
In Milwaukie, we don’t have many sidewalks but I can walk the main street nearby for a good minute or more before there is a passing car. And we’ve got extra big yards. It is tranquil and pretty safe by comparison to where I lived after PBOT.
But wouldn’t you know just a few years after I move to Milwaukie the progressives take over the City Council here, and now are pursuing much the same as their Portland ilk (fortunately this Council doesn’t have the big bucks Portland has). If we were still in the frontier days, I’d move west; but doing so now, means I’d be in the Pacific Ocean.
Why we didn’t have as many pedestrian deaths 50 years ago.