An Open Letter to the Ames City Council
Council Members,
I write today because I wish to express a great deal of concern about the Lincoln Way Pedestrian Study’s Phase I methodology. I also write today not out of habit but because the product put before you prepared by SRF and Snyder & Associates is so bad I feel morally obligated to do so. I feel I have built up a degree of trust and respect with all of you and to not write today felt wrong.
To be blunt, this initial report is disgraceful, it is deceitful, morally bankrupt and it will kill people. This report encourages nothing approaching a modern look at multi-modal infrastructure and most importantly seems to absolutely ignore if not be entirely ignorant of the damaging impact of failable operators of multi-ton devices capable of lethal force. This feedback might seem overly colorful or dramatic but I simply cannot imagine a more flawed planning document that purports to be studying the safety of pedestrians.
Modern street design assumes safety risks that result from non-compliance are expected, they aren’t to be controlled they’re to be worked with. Modern street design looks at the single greatest threat, automobile operation, and works to mitigate that threat. There isn’t a single sentence spent discussing vehicle speeds, lane widths, driver compliance with control devices or speed limits in this document. This document focuses almost exclusively on performance of vehicle operations and if they’d be negatively impacted by attempting to mitigate the chances of people dying.
This approach is disgraceful and has been rejected by cities around the world who have adopted “Vision Zero” policies. These policies enforce the philosophical viewpoint that no fatality or injury is acceptable with an understanding that a zero fatality and injury goal isn’t possible to attain without focusing squarely on all sources of traffic fatalities and injuries and prioritizes them by weight. This ends up putting a heavy emphasis on geometry of roads and the impact on street design on the speed automobiles and the mitigation of flawed performance of the drivers piloting them. This approach has seen significant payoffs and reduction of loss of life and loss of quality of life around the world. Nothing remotely resembling these modern approaches is contained within this report.
The underlying traffic concept of level of service and traffic counts serve to be deceitful and cover up clear analysis flaws while relying on 1950s 60s and 70s understandings of the movement of people. It focuses on “Level of Service” which values the reduction of “average delay” a methodology that by definition assumes the paramount nature of the automobile and sees anything else in it’s way, a traffic signal, a change in speed limit, a person crossing the street, as an obstacle and a detriment to ideal conditions. The result of this mode of analysis is the creation of conditions ideal for only those who are traveling by car, and thus ignores those capable and culpable of doing the most harm. Increased vehicle speeds result in more collisions and more serious collisions it’s that simple. I find it to be dangerously ignorant if not deceitful to hide behind outmoded metrics to justify taking limited action when lives are on the line.
The manner in which this report puts responsibility for safety at the feet of those least able to impact outcomes, people walking and biking, and entirely ignores responsibility of those operating machines capable of lethal force is morally bankrupt. This report should be shelved and should be put back out for bid with a clear mandate for modern understanding of traffic safety; a clear mode prioritization ordered as: pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders and lastly automobile operators; a focus on the reduction of crashes and crash severity by focusing on the primary cause, vehicular speed; and an understanding of the impact of the built environment and street geometry on automobile speed.
I hope you weigh this feedback and understand the strong language here is not overly dramatic but appropriate for such an abysmal planning document. Perhaps I should have simply pointed out the following, hopefully it’ll seem as absurd to you as it does to me: the report presents no measurements of vehicle speeds at any of the studied intersections, and doesn’t once discuss compliance with speed limits in the corridor.
I wish you all the best from Amsterdam,
Trevin
