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From The Dispatch:
One-way might not be best way to prosperity
By Mark FerenchikProperty owners and the city’s own consultant said it would be better for business development to make Mound and Fulton streets two-way when the Downtown freeway corridor is reconfigured. But state transportation officials said those streets, which will carry traffic to and from the I-70/71 merge, will be three lanes, one way – and that’s final.
From the article: “You can’t let traffic engineers build cities.”
I tend to agree with this statement. While traffic engineers are an integral, and important, part of any large scale project, IMO it’s bad for urban areas when traffic engineers take the lead design role. I would think ODOT would not want to have parking on the feeder streets.
I’d like to have an economist weigh in. Traffic is an enormous cost mainly because of time lost in route. At rush hour, how many minutes would making these streets two-way add to a commute? Multiple that by an average hourly wage, and then by how many thousands of people would use these streets every day. Opportunity costs are real costs, and congestion adds to it. Part of why we need a $2/gallon gasoline tax… but that’s another issue.
Speaking of other issues: Gay St certainly worked well, but it didn’t have and doesn’t have the kind of traffic the feeders will.
But you are talking what? 3-4 hours a day that those streets would see that volume of traffic? Why should we continue to sacrifice what’s good for our city just to get people out of it quicker.
Maybe with ODOT so dead set on this, it will convince those in charge to convert Long, Spring, Front and maybe 3rd/4th.
3-4 hours a day, five days a week, thousands of cars adds up. Messy but conservative calculation: someone makes$20/hr ($41,600/year). Two-way streets add 6 minutes to their commute a day. That’s $520/yr/person added cost. Only 1000 people commuting along these roads is $520,000/yr. That’s REALLY rough calculating, but I think you’d agree it’s quite conservative both in number of commuters and avg. salary of auto commuters downtown.
I’m not an expert, though, which is why I’d like an economist’s perspective. To take into account those costs plus ODOT’s concerns and weigh them. Granted, I’d prefer a higher gas tax to get a lot of these folks out of their cars and onto buses and bikes.
I’m all for reclaiming 3rd/4th/Long/Spring. I’m hesitant to support that those streets should be two-way, but I’d love for some of their lanes to be converted to gardened areas, bike lanes, and on-street parking. They certainly won’t need more than two lanes of traffic each. Tops!
Or we work to create real solutions in this city that can mitigate congestion and provide attractive (time and cost) alternatives to commuters.
Although the split needs to be fixed, paving under the city every few years to “fix” another issue isn’t a long term solution.
If 6 minutes is really that bad, leave 10 minutes early.
Jefe, your argument is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that those people could work that extra 6min/day at $20/hr, which likely is not the case. Most people are are paid to work a set schedle (eg 40hrs/week, no more, no less). You could put a price on their free time at $20/hr bc that is what they choose to trade for their labor, but that still doesn’t factor in the diminished capacity presented by a 40-hour work week.
We have to think about incentives. By making it more convenient to get in and out of the city quickly, and reducing commuting times, we are encouraging more sprawl. If we are to think seriously about revitalizing urban areas, giving people positive incentives to live farther from the urban core is a bad idea and economically irrational due to the strain low-density development puts on our infrastructure (not even considering the environmental and national security concerns raised by consuming oil in automobiles).
With three traffic lanes, there are likely to be closer to 30,000 cars per day on both Mound and Fulton than 1,000.
Jeffz,
Good point about the calculation. Transportation modelers usually value in-vehicle-travel-time at roughly half of the individual’s salary.
As far as the two-way streets idea goes, it seems to defeat the whole purpose of the split project to reduce congestion and improve safety. If the goal is to increase congestion, as Jeffz suggested, then I see little benefit to rebuilding the split at all.
I can understand the reasoning for wanting the feeders to remain one-way with synced traffic lights.
I was just happy to read that they’d be three lane streets instead of five lane, and that the speed limit would be kept to 25mph. I don’t think that sounds as bad as the current configuration of some of our more lifeless downtown streets.
I understand my calculation was low on cars. I haven’t the foggiest idea how many cars go through there.
The idea behind my calculations isn’t flawed, even if the numbers are guesses. Opportunity costs are very real. People’s time is better spent being productive at work, being with your family, or enjoying leisure. It is not well spent in traffic. Also, the costs of traffic are much more than just lost time.
I agree with both jeffz and lifeonwheels that real solutions and better incentives are needed. Making it less efficient to commute by inflating people’s time on the road isn’t a good incentive, though. It only increases already negative externalities involved with traffic and congestion. Higher gas taxes, more efficient public transportation, and better urban planning would all help.
^ +1
“Configuring Mound and Fulton as two-way streets would defeat the purpose of the project, which is to reduce congestion, said Nancy Burton, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Transportation.”
Hold up, I thought the purpose of the project was to make the interchange more safe, with an added bonus of less congestion. IMO these are not at all the same. The safety concern isn’t that there are too many cars, it’s that the on/off ramps were poorly planned and require slashing across multiple lanes of traffic to get on and off. During rush hour, obviously this causes congestion. But when there are only 2 access points per highway, all the space in between that is currently backed up will flow easily because there’s no merging all the way through downtown. So how do 2-way feeders mess that up? How does the speed of traffic on surface streets really affect the congestion on the highway?
I suppose you are right that hassling people to the point of giving up their cars isn’t sufficient, especially when the mass transit alternative is to drive to a parking-and-ride and take the bus in. And let’s face it, even folks who wanted to sell their houses and move closer to the city probably could not do so in the current market.
Until we give people outside the urban core a reasonable alternative, they will choose to drive. If we continue to incentivize this habit by burning transportation funding on expanding highways that were never intended to carry the traffic they currently carry (ie the John Boehner plan), we are essentially putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. But it requires quite the leap of faith for our politicians to stick their neck out for a transit line, with the idea that “if you build it they will come.” Hopefully Charlotte and other success stories will debunk this misconception. I think we are close to a tipping point in favor of rail in America, but perhaps that is just wishful thinking…
Depending on the precise design, if there isn’t enough capacity on the feeders (Mound, Fulton, etc…), then queues of vehicles could eventually back up onto the highway, which would be a serious safety concern.
“If we are to think seriously about revitalizing urban areas, giving people positive incentives to live farther from the urban core is a bad idea and economically irrational due to the strain low-density development puts on our infrastructure (not even considering the environmental and national security concerns raised by consuming oil in automobiles).”
With what you mentioned in the parenthesis you can safely discard the adjective “economically”.
Another good thing out of this is that the city is recognizing the need for two-ways. Hopefully this bodes well for the rest of downtown.
LoT2, that’s exactly my thought in reading it. For the Dispatch to even run a story like this is a pretty impressive reality check for the rest of the public to think about.
jeffz, you made me shudder by mentioning the B word… or B man, rather. eeeeeew.
Yes, I do think it’s appropriate to analyze which streets are two-ways and which are one-way. I think the feeders are the most logical to be one-way. Then I’d like to see (as Walker knows) a couple one-ways each going N/S and E/W to keep some local traffic moving efficiently through downtown. There’s certainly no reason for every darn street to be one-way, though. Even I think it’s excessive.
This is precisely what I complained about a year and half ago. It’s nice to see it finally get noticed (or re-noticed I guess)
http://www.columbusunderground.com/mound-and-fulton-to-become-portals-to-downtown
I have to admit this is my biggest concern over the project and am still am at all not happy about it. According to ODOT’s impact study these streets will raise decibel levels 5-10 near these streets, go right through one of the densest sections and most affordable (in places) sections of housing in downtown (Americana, Commons at Grant, market mohawk, miranova, Waterford and Renaissance among others)and will only last ten years post completion till they reach current saturation. I’m glad to see that the one way streets will be 25 mph, but I can’t see them being truly pedestrian friendly…
IF we actually want affordable downtown housing downtown it makes no sense to do this the one place that has it.
Seems kinda pointless to have spend all that money on Caps and then have pedestrians have to cross feeders like this once they do…
I don’t want anyone to get hurt in the split either, but the cost to my neighborhood seems awfully high.
Sigh can only hope for the best now,ODOT has more or less made their mind.
More reasons why you build a city around people…